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Wool fiber carding and preparation is our topic in this episode as our Summer Spin In continues. Current spinning and knitting projects along with a couple of rants are also on the program! Show notes with full transcript, photos, and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha's Projects I frogged the foot of my Drops Fabel sock, turned the heel and I am knitting the gusset. Picked up a long dormant shawl called Simple Shawl by Jane Hunter that I started in March 2018. Using Michael CWD in the colorway San Francisco Fog. Cast on the pullover Atlas by Jared Flood for my brother. The yarn I'm using is Navia Tradition. My gauge is 20st/4” instead of 24st/4” so I am making the smallest size. I have knit about 7” of the body, excluding the ribbing. Because I cast on with a provisional cast on and the body is all stockinette it is very curly. It looks like a holiday wreath! In the last episode, I mentioned that the color work chart distinguishes “dominant” color and I was guessing what this meant. Thank goodness for YouTube and Jared Flood who has a great video explaining why we want to pick a dominant color and the technique for doing this. I'm still spinning on my green/brown merino.  Hidden Brain: This is the link to the website. Then search for the episode, “Why We Hold Onto Things” from May 31, 2021. I was unable to put a direct link to the  episode. Kelly's Projects I finished carding about 400 grams of Oxford batts and sampled them. Yes, actually sampled! I made two small skeins of about 20 g each. One is 2 ply and the other is 3-ply. Since the fleece was slightly sticky I used boiled water to put in the wash bowl and they both washed up nicely. I like the 2 ply best. It is softer and fluffier. I now have a full bobbin of singles all spun up. Here is the project page for this handspun.    I started a handspun sweater! I am using a new pattern called Dark Green Forest (Ravelry link) by Christina Körber-Reith. She also has the patterns at her website, Strickhauzeit. Her website also has both measuring/fitting and bust dart tutorials.  Summer Spin In Topics Don't forget your tetanus shot! From Nathalie (SuperKip) Two additions that might be helpful: Don't prep fleece when you're pregnant (toxoplasmosis is a danger) For ‘rescue'-fleeces, a flick-carder is also very helpful, this also gets rid of many waste types of yarn. Carding Fiber preparation tools: Hand cards, flick carder, mini combs, combs, drum carder, blending board Hand Carding with Beth Smith Spin Off Free Guide to Wool Carding and Combing Skirting How to Skirt a Fleece by the Spinning Loft How to Skirt a Fleece Video by Rayne Fiber Arts Mill processing Fiber Shed Mill Inventory Producer Directory Fiber Prep Ravelry Group: Fleece Processor List Mendocino Wool and Fiber Valley Oak Wool Mill Morro Fleece Works Full Transcript Marsha 0:03 Hi, this is Marsha Kelly 0:04 and this is Kelly. Marsha 0:05 We are the Two Ewes of Two Ewes Fiber Adventures. Thanks for stopping by. Kelly 0:10 You'll hear about knitting, spinning, dyeing, crocheting, and just about anything else we can think of as a way to play with string. Marsha 0:17 We blog and post show notes at toTwo Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com. Kelly 0:22 And we invite you to join our Two Ewes Fiber Adventures group on Ravelry. I'm 1hundredprojects, Marsha 0:29 and I am betterinmotion. Kelly 0:31 We are both on Instagram and Ravelry. And we look forward to meeting you there. Both 0:35 Enjoy the episode. Marsha 0:43 Good morning, Kelly. Kelly 0:44 Good morning, Marsha. Marsha 0:45 Well, how are you today? Kelly 0:47 I'm doing fine. I'm out in the trailer. I've been complaining about how cold it is here. It's in the 60s again, again every day. Well, not right now it's less than that here now. But I'm wearing an undershirt, a long sleeve shirt, a flannel shirt. And on top of the flannel shirt I have a shirt jacket that will probably come off as we go. But it's cold here. Marsha 1:19 Well, it's cool today. I don't know what the temperature is. But it's it's overcast. And the wind is blowing. It's very cool. And I but I have to say I'm not complaining. It feels very nice. After that hot hot weather we had Kelly 1:29 Yeah. Marsha 1:30 It was like 110. Like, I still, even now two weeks later, people are still like how'd you do with that heat, right. But everybody's asking, but so it's nice. And it's overcast and breezy and cool. But that's how it was yesterday morning. And then it turned out to be a beautiful day it was actually quite warm. So yeah, sort of typical for us is cool, and overcast and sort of misty in the morning. And then Kelly 1:55 Yeah, it's been wet almost every morning here for the last week. So it's been cold in the house. And of course I'm not going to-- I am not running the heater in July. That's ridiculous. Marsha 2:10 I don't know if they have this in other parts of the country. But there's a group in in Seattle, all the neighborhoods have a group in this way. It's called Buy Nothing. And it's basically where you can't sell anything. You just post everything out for free. So I've been posting up things like yesterday, well, the one that I thought was so interesting is--I think I got it as a Christmas gift years ago.It's a, it's for grilling, it's a fork, but also has a thermometer in it. Like 10 people wanted it. So I just had to pick somebody. And then other stuff nobody wants, you know, but it's kind of fun. I mean, you know, Kelly, remember you were talking about in front of your house, because you do live on a high traffic street. You just were putting stuff out in front and then and then it was fun to see how fast it went. And then you started going around looking for things to give away. It's kind of like, it's like now I'm very motivated. And I'll tell you why I'm motivated in a second. But anyway, someone's coming today to pick up--I have an old ice cream maker, you know that we had probably in the 60s, right? That we used to make ice cream. It's the hand crank kind that you put ice in and the rock salt and stuff. And so and she's all-- this woman is super excited about it, because she's gonna use it for their Campfire or Girl Scout troop to make ice cream, which is really fun that's going to get used, right? Kelly 3:33 Yeah. Marsha 3:33 it's it's kind of fun. It's a little addictive. And you know how I am. For years, I've had such a hard time getting rid of stuff. But people are so excited about it. You know, and this other woman, you know, she's excited because I just posted up-- I have a, you know, a large, really large stainless steel mixing bowl. And I posted that up and she's like, Oh, I'm a baker. And I said I'm a baker too, you know. So I thought maybe I'll meet my neighbors this way. Because it's just, you have to be in a certain block radius. So, um, so probably I think it's, I think it's nationwide. Kelly 4:11 I don't know. Marsha 4:13 So I will... let me just say why I'm doing this as is. You know I've...as you know, the listeners now I have my house that I've had in Ballard for many years. I'm getting that ready to rent. I moved into the house I was growing up in. I've had to combine two households. And I've done really well getting rid of stuff. But there was that last stuff that you know, that you hang on to. You think maybe I'll use it, right? Maybe I will make ice cream in the hand crank ice cream maker. And I've been thinking that for how many years? My mother had it in her basement and I thought it's never going to happen. So and if I do get a wild hair that I am, I will go buy one again but I'm probably never going to miss that thing. So I'm...and I had a...Yeah, there's all kinds of things I'm getting rid of and little things but they'll just make space and so I'm now motivated. In the basement because... and Kelly you know this and people if you're following my Instagram feed, you probably know what I'm doing. But I took everything in the basement.. The basement is divided into half. One half is...there's a rec room with a fireplace and a bedroom. And the other half we always called it the dirty part of the basement. But that's where the washer and dryer is and the workbench and stuff, the furnace, hot water heater. So I took everything out of that dirty part of the basement and put it into the rec room. Then I had the wiring redone the plumbing redone for a new hot water heater, new washer dryer, new sink. And then we painted the walls because it was just bare concrete walls. Well actually, they've been painted with calcimite which is like, almost like a chalk like substance, and it doesn't... you can't paint over it. The paint just peels off, so I had to wash down all the walls. Scrub the floor, degrease the floor. So I painted the walls, the trim on the windows, I painted the floor... two coats of concrete paint on the floors. So now I... last night I started moving things back. But Kelly, did you look at my Instagram post this morning? Kelly 6:20 No. Marsha 6:21 I think I posted it last night of the shelving unit, Ben shaking it. He said they're not safe. So I ordered last night, I just saw that you can go and order and pay for stuff at Home Depot and just go pick it up. So I ordered it and I get a text in about 15 minutes that it's ready. So Ben went over and picked up the shelving units and we built three shelving units. So today after we finish recording, I'm going to now start putting things that I'm keeping back on the shelf. And my plan is, if it doesn't fit on those three shelving units I'm not keeping it. Kelly 6:55 Oh, that's a good idea. it will keep you honest Marsha 6:57 And my other plan . Yes, and this is my other rule. Nothing sits on the floor. If it sits on it, I can't keep it if it sits on the floor. It has to go up on a shelf. Is that a good plan? Kelly 7:11 Yeah. Marsha 7:12 Do you think it's attainable? Kelly 7:14 I don't know. We'll see. How many people want your free stuff? Marsha 7:22 Yeah. Kelly 7:26 Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Marsha 7:28 So anyway, and I will put a... Well I think I got kind of motivated too because pulling everything out... when I saw all of the stuff in the rec room my thought was, I'm one item away from being a hoarder. One more item and it might be at the tipping point. And then as Ben said to me, you know, a lot of stuff is not my stuff. A lot of it is stuff that is other people's stuff that I inherited. So like, I've talked about this before, but you know, 10 sets of dishes that were all inherited from various relatives that I didn't buy, I don't want them, but I now have them. And I don't know what to do with them. And so and then along those lines, having that conversation with Ben sort of motivated me. It did, it sort of did motivate me and then also, he recommended the podcast Hidden Brain. I think the show airs on NPR, but it also is in the form of a podcast and he had an episode and I will try and find a link to it. I forgotten the name of it. But it's something basically about why we keep things and a lot of times it has no monetary value but it has sentimental value. And how do you and how... Which is true. Like I have these...I talk about all these dishes I have. That old treadle sewing machine... things I don't necessarily want. But the people who gave them to me really wanted me to have them. My aunt really wanted me to have that treadle sewing machine but I don't use it. So it's silly to keep it but I feel sort of duty bound to keep it, you know, and all the family history and photographs. I don't want them. And so I've decided I'm going to contact other members of the family and see if they want them. So they can store them and not me. Kelly 9:18 You should just do like my aunt's have done and... Marsha 9:24 just put it on their porch... Kelly 9:27 Grab a batch of pictures, stick them in a bag and just either put them in the mail and send them or, well, like my my aunt will send something home with Aunt Betty or my mom drops something off when she comes here. It's like you start divesting yourself by giving the stuff to to other people. So yeah, like zucchini. You can just drop it on their porch. [laughing] Marsha 9:54 And you speed away. [laughing] Maybe I should put my family photos on Buy Nothing. if you want instant family. Kelly 10:02 Funny! Marsha 10:02 No, I just think... and like the other thing too is I have been saddled with things. I adored my aunt. I loved her, my dad's sister, but she did all the family history. And I have three banker boxes full of all of her research, two trunks full of photographs. And I don't know how many plastic bins full of photographs. And I got, well, chosen or saddled with the family history stuff. And I, the truth is, I don't really care that much. And I know that's terrible to say, because everybody's doing all this family research, but somebody else in the family who is more motivated and cares more than I care should probably do it because I... My aunt, I think thought I cared a lot more than I really cared about all the family history. So anyway, way too much information about what's going on here. But I'm in purge mode. Kelly 11:05 All right. Marsha 11:07 So, Kelly, yes. Should we talk about, like, fibery things now? Kelly 11:11 I think so. Marsha 11:12 Okay. Kelly 11:13 You're not purging any of that. Right? Marsha 11:19 Well, I know I'm not yet right. Not now. But I do need to figure out a different way of storing. Kelly 11:23 Well, that's a perpetual question. What do you do? Yeah. How do you store those? Yeah, yeah. Marsha 11:28 So let's get to projects. Do you want to go first? Kelly 11:31 Sure. I'll go first, because mine is short. Oh, first of all, Marsha 11:35 is that good? Kelly 11:36 I don't know. Well, it's fine. It's, it's kind of normal. It's kind of the way it's been recently. But I finished carding about well... I'm gonna say finished because the Oxford fleece was in two bags. And I finished one bag of the Oxford a fleece and it's about it's about 400 grams. And so then I sampled. So I, I made a two ply, about 20 gram skein, I think, of two ply and a small skein also of three ply to see which I liked better. And I was, I was thinking I was gonna like the three ply better, but I liked... I actually liked the two ply better. It's fluffier, part of it might just be the amount of twist that I put in the three ply. Even though I like a nice round three ply. This particular yarn that I made, it feels sort of buttoned up. It's kind of like, you know, it's round. And, and, and, you know, bouncy, like a three ply is, but it feels kind of just too much twist. There's just too much, too much twist in it. And it just really wants to be a little looser. At least that's what I'm thinking. If I had done the three ply, with less twist. I mean, normally, you put a little more in, because you're going to be untwisting a little bit more when you ply the three ply. And so I think that might be what happened. I wasn't intentionally doing that, but maybe that's what happened. Anyway, it just feels a little too tight. And the other one feels nice and fluffy and loose. And so think I'm gonna do a two ply. And so I started a bobbin. Last-- yesterday, and I managed to spin an entire bobbin, most of a bobbin, of this Oxford fleece. So I'm still keeping my options open that I may opt to do a three ply. You know, I'm not gonna ply it right away. Think about it, and I'll do a second bobbin first before I decide, but I'm pretty sure I want to do a two ply with this. So it's nice, it's it's springy. It's softer than I expected it to be based on when I was carding it. Marsha 14:06 Mm hmm. Kelly 14:08 But it's like a medium You know, kind of a medium workhorse kind of fleece but softer than the Perendale. That Perendale that I talked about a couple of episodes ago, that blue and green one. Blue, green and yellow from the prepared fiber that I bought from Sheep Spot. The Oxford is a little softer than that. Actually is quite a bit-- it feels quite a bit softer than that now that I'm spinning it. Now I think I mentioned that I didn't do the best washing job when I first washed it, so it's a little sticky. So I just when I washed it, I just used boiling water in the bowl, along with some soap and washed the skeins and they came out really nice. So I wasn't too worried about it. I had done that before. So I wasn't too worried about the, the fact that it was a little sticky spinning. And it's perfect for spinning now. Because even though you know, even though the weather is cool here, you know, it has been in the high 60s. So if I sit in a little sunny spot and spin, it slips really nicely. You know, it's more lanoliny than sticky once it gets a little warmed up. So I mean, I'm not, this is not spinning in the grease by any means. It's... Marsha 15:32 Right. Kelly 15:33 It's, it's clean, but it's still got more lanolin in it then I really liked to have. So that's one thing that I'm working on. My spinning project. But I also started another project for our spin-in which is, you know, making something out of your handspun. So I started a handspun sweater. Marsha 15:59 Oh, Kelly 16:00 So I spun the yarn years ago, well, over several years. Maybe people who've been listening for a while might remember. It's the CVM fleece and I had it processed at Yolo fiber mill which is now Valley Oak Wool Mill, a different owner. But it's up in Woodland, California. And I had it when we first moved here to this house, so that would have been '05. I'd had the fleece for at least at least a year, maybe came from the fair in 2004. Sat around here for a while before I sent it away to be processed. And then once it came back, I started spinning it and I used that same fleece for the... There was like six pounds of it. And I used that same fleece that sort of taupey beige fleece for the Orca sweater, the Orcas Run sweater, my big, bulky sweater. But this is a fingering weight, three ply, and then I dyed it red over the kind of beige color. So that made it kind of a terracotta, rust, I don't know what you would call it exactly. But it's real pretty. The dye color was called dark red. And I found a pattern. So, again, I had talked many times about what pattern I was going to use, right? I had a couple of choices in my queue that I was pretty sure I was going to use one of them. And then finally I just decided you know what I'm going to go looking again. And so I found a pattern called Dark Green Forest. And it's by Christina Korber-Reith. Korber-Reith is her last name, k o, r, b e r, dash r, e, i, t, h, she's German. And I actually looked up how you how you pronounce it. Marsha 18:17 Mm hmm. Kelly 18:17 In German. And...but I can't say it that way. I did the best I could. But she has, she has some really interesting patterns. Nice, kind of the long sweaters that I like, cozy and casual. The one I'm using has a cable like a honeycomb cable down the sleeve. It's got a saddle shoulder, which... I don't know if I've ever done an actual saddle shoulder before. But I think this is a saddle shoulder because the cable comes down from the collar and then goes down, down the top of the shoulder and then down the arm. The collar is a square collar. I don't know that it would be called a shawl collar. But it's nice. It's...you start at the... you start at the collarr and go down and it's it's one of those collars that folds over and is just square. You know, it's just Marsha 19:22 like a sailor's collar. Is that what they call it? Kelly 19:24 Yes. Yeah, I think that is what you would call it. That is what it's like, exactly like that. And it has ribbing on it. So I've gotten... I've gotten down... I'm in the the arm hole increases. Marsha 19:43 Mm hmm. Kelly 19:45 But I got messed up somehow. And I need to... I'm trying to decide whether I want to go forward and see if I'm in the right place for the cable. You know that cable crossing, or do I want to rip it back again, because I already ripped it back once to to get back to where I thought I knew where I was. And now it's not looking right. So. So I have to decide what I want to do. Do I want to forge ahead? Assuming that I'm right?Or, or did I somehow make a mistake again, not paying attention and get an extra, you know, an extra row in there. So. So anyway, that's where I am with that. But I'm really liking the pattern. It's fun. It's well written. I've made good progress, but with a collar that big. I still haven't gotten that far down, you know? Yeah, I'm in the, in the yoke. A little bit below what she calls the yoke in her pattern, so. But I'm excited about it. I have a sweater on the needles again, something more than a dish cloth. Marsha 20:55 Mm hmm. Well, I was just looking at the pattern. I think it's a very nice pattern. And I love the color. That terracotta color, I think is really nice. Kelly 21:03 Thank you. Yeah, I'm really pleased with it. I was laughing because somebody, I was talking to somebody about making things. And I suddenly realized, I like everything I make. I mean, it's good, right? I'm making it so it should be made the way I like it. But, but it was kind of funny. This person that I was talking to was much more critical of her stuff than I am. I'm like, you know, Oh, I like that. You say Oh, I like the color. I'm like, yeah, isn't it great? Oh, I like how your sweater turned out! Yeah, yeah, isn't it great? [laughing] Marsha 21:48 That's interesting. I'm trying to think... do I like everything I make? I like most things. I've had some. I say I like everything I've made. I like the yarn and the color and stuff. Sometimes. They don't fit right. Kelly 22:05 Yeah, I have some. Yeah, I have some fit complaints about some of the things I've made. Mostly related to raglan sleeve shaping that has the raglan part starting at like two stitches. And yeah, my top of my shoulder is much broader than two stitches. So unless we're talking about, you know, a totally high neck collar, that's not enough. But even those, I mean, I yeah. I guess it has to do with when, right? Especially when I'm making it or when I first finish it. It's like, Oh, I love this! Once it's in my drawer or closet for a while I sometimes realize oh, I don't love this as much as I thought I did. You know? Marsha 22:56 Yeah, Kelly 22:56 I--you know, I noticed because I don't grab it out as much. Marsha 22:59 Yeah, yeah. Kelly 23:01 But yeah, no, I'm not very critical of my own work. There's, I've made-- I did make one hat that I thought okay, this is really ugly. Marsha 23:12 Was that the charity hat you made? That you were talking about in the last episode or two episodes? Kelly 23:17 Oh, no, I, well...I guess I could count that one. I think that one's kind of ugly. And oh, well, not ugly, just not the best thing I've ever made. So maybe two things. No, this is one I made a long, long time ago. And I was going to a meeting and I just had to grab stuff to make a hat. You know, I knew I was going to be sitting in a meeting for a long time. So I just grabbed yarn. And the colors didn't really go together. And then I decided to make stripes. Because I thought oh, if I if I make the stripes of this way, it'll look better the colors will actually go together. One was like a teal and the other one was like a rust color. And they just didn't, you know that can be... that could be a really pretty combination. But this particular teal and the particular rust just wasn't wasn't a good mix. So I know that that hat sat in my stash for a long time with me thinking, well, maybe it's not so bad if I look at it in a different light. Oh, I think it's all right. Or then I thought, oh, maybe I'll just overdye it and I thought you know, I just just put it in the bag of goodwill stuff. Marsha 24:26 Mm hmm. Kelly 24:28 So I finally did get rid of it. And one of my, you know, times of going through the closet and getting rid of stuff that hat went in. So yeah. Anyway, but those are my only two. Really my only two projects at this moment are the spinning project and the new sweater on the needles. So... Marsha 24:48 Well, very nice. You're busy. Kelly 24:50 Yeah, I had hoped to wash fleece. And I won't go into a lot of gory detail but my top load washing machine from 30 years finally died. So... Marsha 25:06 Yes, so did you get another top load? Kelly 25:08 Yeah, yeah, it's another just basic washing machine. So it's coming on Friday. Marsha 25:14 30 years. That's actually a really long time for... I mean today for appliances, Kelly 25:21 The one we just bought will not last 30 years, I'm sure. Marsha 25:24 Well, good. Kelly 25:25 So we'll hope it works. Nobody at the place knew anything about, you know, things like can you just... Marsha 25:32 can you wash a fleece in it? Right?They really couldn't answer that question. [laughing] Kelly 25:34 Will it just spin and drain? Oh, you know, can you open it up in the middle of the cycle? You know, all that stuff. They didn't know anything about it. So we'll see. I have my fingers crossed. I think I'll be able to use it. I'll be able to figure something out. It has a pause button. So you know it locks but it does have a pause button. So I should be able to... Yeah, I should be able to do something with it. I don't know. But it doesn't have... it has an automatic water level. That might be a problem. Marsha 26:08 Oh, yeah, cuz you want to Kelly 26:10 Yeah, cuz I wanted to fill and then put stuff in. So I need-- I might need to figure out how to make it fill with nothing in it. Stupid. I don't know why they can't just make a--Well, I won't go into a ramt. It just, it's just ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with a regular washer. And I you know, I was reading through all of the things and oh, you know, you need this washer because it's gonna make your clothes last longer. I'm sorry. People don't want their clothes to last longer. People want to go shopping and buy a new outfit next month. It doesn't make any sense. Marsha 26:51 Actually, that's a really good point. I never thought about that. Because that was the the selling point of those front load front load washing machines is they're more gentle on your clothing because there isn't the agitation. But to your point, we don't want our clothes to last because we buy clothes are so inexpensive that we just buy new clothes. Kelly 27:11 And honestly, my clothes have gone in a... Now I just sound like an old lady on a rant but my clothing has gone into a top load agitator washer for 60 years. I have never felt like my clothing wore out too fast from going in the washing machine. Never! Not once have I had something that I thought, oh my god, it just wore out so fast from going in the washing machine. Marsha 27:40 Okay, so since we're on rants, I'm going to add my little rant to this. It's not about washing machines and appliances, which that could be a whole--that's a whole nother podcast of ranting! Light bulbs. So Marsha 27:54 Oh no Marsha! [laughing] Marsha 27:57 I'm gonna say... [laughing] But here's the thing. I remember when they came out with the LED light bulbs. And the big selling point of those light bulbs is that they were going to last 25 or 30 years. So I had all these random light bulbs, and I discovered most of my lamps are three way. So I bought all new light bulbs. Because I as I say had all these different light bulbs. And so I bought all new three way light bulbs. Put them in probably two months ago, and two of them have burned out. Now, I think... And I clearly sound like a conspiracy theorist when I say this, but I don't think I am. I think it's the truth. I think they're designed to break because it's not-- it doesn't make any sense. It's not a smart business model to make light bulbs that last 30 years right? Because nobody's gonna go buy your light bulbs. They won't buy them again for 30 years. Kelly 28:50 right Marsha 28:50 So the business model is they use less energy, which is good. But they cost more. Like I don't know, they cost more to make? I have no idea. They cost more to buy which is good for the manufacturer. And you have to buy them just as frequently or more frequently than an incandescent bulb so it's a great business... it's a business model that makes sense. You don't want them to last. Planned obsolescence. You don't want things to last, you want things to slow down. You know, you want things to break and wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Old lady, old lady Failor here! Kelly 29:30 And old lady Locke here having our rants Marsha 29:34 Okay, does that make me sound like a conspiracy? Kelly 29:38 No, why would you make something-- Why would you make something like a light bulb that would last for 25 years? Because yeah, once people... Marsha 29:47 It's a bad business. Kelly 29:48 It's not an appliance. I mean appliances don't even last 25 years! Marsha 29:53 Your furnace! The furnace doesn't last. I mean it's funny, the the oil furnace that was in the house. This house was put in 1929 and my parents took it out in the 70s so that still forty... but there was nothing wrong with it they just wanted... they were sold a bill of goods that electric was better which is ridiculous. Kelly 30:14 Okay, now, last one last rant! That big green furnace in the basement that I loved the look of? We had replaced and it had, I mean it had had trouble and it was inefficient and eventually we did end up getting a new one last year because our furnace had gone out a couple of times. Remember it was out for a while last November a year ago? So it had died. This is again a 1920s furnace they had to cut it up to get it out of the basement because it was so big. So we get a new one and it has a thermostat on it with a programmer, right? Prrogrammed thermostat and Roberts like okay, we have to do this because programming your thermostat is really really more efficient because you know you you have a timer, blah, blah... I said it's not more efficient because if you have it on a timer it's going to come on whether or not I'm cold. If I'm cold I turn it on and when I'm not cold anymore I turn it off and that's more efficient. He's like, no no it's much better... Guess what! Even though our furnace is much more efficient then the old one was, because we had it on the timer for the winter our heating bill was more! Marsha 31:37 Oh yeah? Kelly 31:38 I'm turning that off so now I'm only going to turn it on when I'm cold and turn it down and not turn it on in the morning you know before you get up. It just... Marsha 31:53 Yeah. well I say that's an interesting point because I know that they...The reason they say that you should have a program is that then you're not like, oh I'm cold turn it up and then it's putting all this energy into heating it up. You know it's just like it keeps it at this constant temperature but to keep it the constant temperature you're using energy, right. So I can see there are these things we accept as the truth that are not necessarily the truth. Kelly 32:18 Yes. Marsha 32:19 Well... furnaces. I go back to furnaces. My friend Susanna she has a house built in like 1900, I think. Here in Seattle, and she has the original furnace. Yeah, and it works. Yeah. So think how old that furnaces like over 120 years old. Kelly 32:35 Yeah, very cool. Marsha 32:36 And it works fine. So and I've spent evenings in her house and it's a lovely temperature. So there you go. Okay, and enough ranting Where are we I think because we got sent we went down this rabbit hole of ranting I believe I'm talking about my projects. Kelly 32:50 Oh my gosh, yes, you are. Quickly. [laughing] Sorry. Marsha 32:55 I have to get through these fast. Okay, so my socks. I frogged my socks because, remember the socks I'm making. I forgot to turn the heel. So I rip that out and I turn the heel and I'm now working on the gusset. Kelly 33:07 Oh, good. Marsha 33:08 I'm working intermittently on my Simple Shawl that I started years ago but I work on that periodically. I'm still spinning the green brown Merino. Nothing new to report on that. So I will.. don't need to talk about that. Since we talked too much on our rants, I won't go into all of that. But I did cast on the pullover Atlas by Jared Flood for... And I'm making this for my brother. And the last episode I had swatched. I talked all about swatches. And so I'm not getting gauge. I'm getting 20 stitches in four inches as opposed to 24 stitches in four inches. Okay, so based on his size and my gauge, I'm making the smallest size. And that's... and so he brought back the the other Jared flood sweater I made for him and which we talked about. Is it Cobblestone? Yeah, he brought that back and I measured that and it's the same, it's gonna be a little bit bigger, maybe about an inch bigger, which I think is good because he doesn't want... he wants it more slim. As I talked about in the last episode, he wants it a bit more slim fitting, I don't think it should be super slim fitting based on the weight of this wool. So I think it's gonna be the perfect size. Kelly 34:22 Well, that's good. Marsha 34:24 So that's good. I do have... But now I want to talk about the color work. I do have some concerns about the color work, but I have to let it go. Because... well I shouldn't even say this, it's perfect. I know I'm just kind of concerned. So the body of the sweater is this very bright grass, Kelly green kind of. And then the color work is in a navy blue and kind of a light like a sky blue robin's egg blue. My concern is, you know, when you...when you talk about, like you take a picture of your color work and put it in black and white, and you see how the colors work then and what stands out? My concern is that the, the...when you look at them together, the light blue and the green, sort of blend together a little bit. There's not as much distinction between the Navy and the green or the Navy in the light blue. I'm, I'm committed to using these colors. So I don't I mean, I'd have to buy a different color. And looking at the colors. I... there's like there's not, there's not a huge range of colors in this yarn. So my options are like red, brown, white, gray. And that's... I'm kind of wondering if maybe, like the white would be, I don't know. I think I'm just gonna start knitting it and see how... because just looking... because I didn't complete the whole color work pattern. And maybe it will all be fine. In the end. I don't know. Kelly 36:04 Well, and Mark chose those colors, right? Marsha 36:08 Yeah, well, Yes, he did. Kelly 36:13 Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what he wanted. Marsha 36:17 Yes. But I think there's one thing picking the colors. And then picking colors for color work. Kelly 36:21 Yeah. Marsha 36:22 Right. Because I don't know that much about it. And he knows nothing. Well, he knows a lot about color. Don't get me wrong. He knows a lot about putting colors together because of his background in design. But a knitted fabric? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know. Kelly 36:38 He was looking at the pattern. I remember him looking at the pattern and right, and looking at the colors that he selected. So I don't know, anyway. Yeah. Marsha 36:49 So yeah. I'm not gonna worry about it. It's just something that's just is flickering through my brain. I wonder, huh? Wondering. And but again, when you complete the pattern, it might be fine. Just doing... I think I did 10 rows of the pattern. And the whole colorwork thing is well over that. So anyway, but the other thing I want to say is, do you remember in the last episode, we were talking about that in the pattern, it's a very well written pattern. But when you get to the color chart, it actually tells you on each row, which is your dominant color, and I had no idea what they were talking about. And so I said, I'm assuming the dominant color is going to be you knit..., you hold it in your dominant hand, in my case, that's my right hand. That's completely wrong. [laughing] So anybody who listened and knows anything about color work will know that that's wrong. This is what happens when you have no information, but you act like you're an authority. So I anyway, I... Kelly, you had pointed out that Jared Flood actually has a good video on explaining dominance. And so I put a link in the show notes about that, you actually are supposed to hold the the dominant color in your left hand. And I would I recommend the video, there's other videos out there too, but explains why you want to pick a color as a dominant color. And then also how you use it. Typically, people hold the dominant color in their left hand, he is not as fast that way. He actually holds both colors in his right hand. But he has this very interesting technique, which he demonstrates in the video of twisting your hand, so that you have the two different different yarns available. And he also talks about, there's another video he does about stranding and how you capture the floats in the back, which is very good. And this is all common knowledge for people who do a lot of color work. Not having done any color work, this is really informative. So I'll put, I put a link in the show notes on the video about dominant color. And then also in their patterns, they tell you which is the dominant color. But he said most color work patterns, they don't tell you. So also techniques for deciding which would be the dominant color. Kelly 39:04 Oh, that's good. Because Yeah, I have noticed that that's not something that's usually in the in the description. Yeah, at least in the description. Like, when you read the pattern, the pattern page, you know the description in the pattern page, you don't see it. Maybe in the written pattern, it will tell you but but yeah, that's good. Marsha 39:24 And then he and then even to the point to where the dominant color may change throughout the pattern. So you know, like in so like... Kelly 39:35 interesting. Marsha 39:36 Yeah, so yeah, so that was just very interesting, something I knew nothing about and I made that offhand remark and I realized like I was wrong! So I just want people to know and I, I did there were some comments in the show notes and people had posted. One listener posted a video, a link to a video in there. So all that was really helpful. So I just wanted to share that That's so... That is it for me with projects. Kelly 40:03 All right. Marsha 40:04 Oh, and I should say too about this sweater, and I talked about this before--that you're supposed to do a tubular cast on. And then knit two and a half inches of ribbing, and then start the body. And as I talked about in the past, and in the last episode, I'm doing a provisional cast on and just starting with the stockinette. And then I'm going to go back and do the ribbing. So I have done about seven inches of the stockinette. If I had included the ribbing, I'm supposed to knit it from the cast on with the ribbing, I'm supposed to about 10 and a half inches of the body where I then start doing shaping though, Kelly 40:41 So you're close to shaping. Marsha 40:43 Yeah. This, if I subtract the two and a half inches, I need to knit eight inches, and I'm about at seven inches now. So another inch and I'm going to start the shaping. When you do this technique, it's very curly. It's like I'm going around and around and around and it never seems like I'm getting anywhere. Yes, it looks like it looks like a holiday wreath because it's bright green. And it's just basically a big log, I mean and a big umm... Yeah, it's like, it's like a wreath, kind of. Around and around. It never seems to grow. So and I think I may have done this with his other sweater too, is that when I finished the whole sweater, I will probably wash and block it before I go back and do the ribbing. Because it is so curly. I think it's gonna be very difficult to measure how it should be. Kelly 41:34 Yeah. Marsha 41:37 So, but I'll report in on this. So as I say that's it for... that's it for projects for me. Kelly 41:44 Good. Sounds like you're making good progress. Marsha 41:49 on some projects, yeah, not so much on others. Kelly 41:53 Well, the summer spin is moving along. And it's also Tour de Fleece. I forget what day we're on now, I was doing pretty well at the beginning of it. Accounting for what I was doing each day that had to do with spinning. I had a couple of days that I didn't card or spin or anything so I got kind of off. But anyway Tour de Fleece is going on. The summer spin in is going on. And in this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about fiber preparation. Marsha 42:27 So and Kelly, you mentioned this last time, but we'll mention again. Don't forget your tetanus shot. Kelly 42:32 Oh, yeah. And then we had some feedback, too. Marsha 42:34 Yeah. So Natalie, Superkip. She added don't prep fleece when you're pregnant. And because toxoplasmosis is a danger and I'm not sure what that is. I honestly did not Google it. All I know is, it's a danger. So okay. And I did watch a video to where she said she always wears gloves. Just latex gloves on. So that's probably smart to do too. And then Kelly 43:00 I have to say I wouldn't do that. Yeah. I like the feel of it. I know. But if you're squeamish about about touching, yeah, I guess. Marsha 43:13 Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so I wanted to mention that. Kelly 43:19 And then she also mentioned about when we talked a little bit about the rescue fleeces that might have more stuff in that, you know, bargain fleeces that might have stuff in them, more so than something that you'd buy at a fiber festival. And she mentioned a flick carder being really helpful. And I had forgotten to mention that but yeah, that is a good example. Its a good use for flick carder, if you can somewhat keep the locks of your fleece intact. When you wash it, if it's the type of fleece where that happens. Then you can kind of just brush them out with a flick carder, brush out the ends and you can get out a lot of the waste that way. Marsha 44:02 The first thing I was just going to mention is if you if you get a raw fleece and you know we've talked about washing it, but what we did not talk about was skirting. And so I was just gonna mention, we won't go into great detail but the concept of skirting as you lay the fleece out with the cut side down, and the so called dirty part up and then you just go around and you pull out areas that are matted, or areas where the fibers look like they're broken. If there are manure tags on it, or bad stuff that you just don't want in there. Probably as we talked about in the last episode if you've bought a fleece at you know like from a show it probably will be pretty well skirted, but it's a good idea just to go through it again. The other comment too on the video Well, I'll just say I put a link in to a video by Rain Fiber Arts. That was very good. And she is talking about how to skirt a fleece. And she also talks too, if you see if there's any signs of eggs, or moths or something, and just don't even let that into your house. Kelly, you can add something to this too, about, what are your thoughts about things to look for, when you're skirting that you'd want to pull out? Kelly 45:30 Usually the parts that you don't want are around the edges, you know, so like the, if the fleece has been rolled up, and you can unroll it and see kind of, you know, depending on how it's been rolled, and how well you're able to unroll it, you might not exactly be able to see the shape of the sheep. But you know, like the manure tags would be in the back edge, the britch wool, which is the wool on the backs and kind of toward the backs of their legs, is more coarse, usually and that's towards the edge of the fleece. If they have, you know, the fleece around their legs might have been, well, like the fleece that I was carding the Oxford, there were some sections of that fleece, some pieces of that fleece that had dark hairs in it from the leg. Dark leg hairs in it, which really, if I had been doing a better job, I would have, I would have skirted a little bit better and taken taken that out. And that would have been around the edge, as well. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes around their neck, you'll find a lot of hay from, you know, from eating. And so you can take some of that out, if you want to, you know, be real harsh with your skirting and get out the most of the veg manner. So a lot of it is around the edges. The other thing that I wish I had done more of with this fleece that I have, is... and I did a little bit of it when I was picking and carding. But a lot of times you can shake the fleece, if you can shake the fleece. Especially if you have... I would love to have a table that was like mesh. Because the second cuts, any second cuts, well, you know, a lot of that will fall away, a lot of the veg matter will fall away, some of the things that you don't want will fall away and, and you can see it a little bit better if you shake it, you can see, you know, where are those areas where you have second cuts and those little short bits. So I need to do a better job of that. My habit is, you know, to look at the fleece when I first get it home, and then roll it back up and put it away and then I get on a tear about washing and I just grab some of it, you know. What I really should do is lay it back out, sort it. Look for places where the fleece is really nice and put all that together. And wash just that section and be really intentional about what parts of it you wash, as opposed to just, you know, grab a piece of it that's going to fit in the washer and wash it. So you can be intentional about your fleece, if especially if you get a nice one, right? Where you want to keep the nicest bits together. If it's a fleece like a lot of the... And maybe this is why I do it. A lot of the bargain fleeces that I've gotten, you know, they're just jumbled in a bag. And there's no knowing what what part of the fleece is what. So that's how I got my start and maybe that's why I have some bad habits when it comes to grabbing out bits to wash. Marsha 48:56 Yeah. The first fleece I bought was actually a Shetland fleece. And I just took it out of the bag and I put it i... like tore it in half or smaller batches and just washed the whole thing. Yeah. And that was a mistake because what... and now this is specific to Shetland, but I took a class by Judith McKenzie about taking a Shetland fleece and because the fiber so different depending on where it is on the sheep, you really don't want to take the... You can do anything you want to do, but it's better to separate out the different fiber, different textures and fibers because-- and I didn't know that about a Shetland. So I just, you know... but I think in any fleece there are going to be different textures depending on where it is on the sheep. So I did that. I just washed all of it and carded it and started spinning it. Is it bad? No, not necessarily but it could have been better. Kelly 50:00 Yeah, it's just different. You know, if you if you want a really super... if you want to get like, every type of yarn you can get from a fleece, then you have to be more intentional about it, right? You'll find the finest part and you'll make a nice yarn that's fine and soft. With the more coarse part, you'll make something that's a more workhorse yarn. But, but if you want to just make a sweater, you just mix it all together and make a sweater. I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing that. Yeah, right. Marsha 50:36 Well, and I was... the other thing I was gonna say about skirting is sort of, for me, you know how I am. It's like, I want to use every bit of it. Because this precious thing I bought, I want to use every bit of it. Yeah. And it's okay to be aggressive, you know? Yeah. Well, you don't need to save all of it. It's okay. Kelly 50:53 I think I've told this story before about the, I think it was like 40 pounds of fleece that I got from... I was at a spinning day and somebody said, Oh, you know, my brother in law has fleece in his barn. Would you be interested? I'm like, of course! So I went and got this 40 pounds of fleece. And I'm pretty sure that's what it came out to be. And anyway, I opened it all up on my lawn and made piles. And I found myself at the end, even though I had so much of it, I found myself going back to the trash pile and taking taking bits that I had skirted out and putting them back. So yeah, you know, it's hard. It's greed. Fleece Greed is a real thing. Right? So, but but some people are better at that than than others. And then there are some people who keep their carding waste. You know, when I'm carding, and I clean off the carder, the waste that's on the small drum of the carder, I toss it. But there are people who save that and use it for something else, you know, and you can do that. But I, that's not something I do. I think about it. [laughing] And then I tell myself how much fleece I have in the garage. And I toss it in the bin. Marsha 52:23 So about carding, let's talk a little bit about carding, then, oh, as I say, it's a huge subject. So and we can't go into the minutiae of it. But let's just talk sort of, in general about carding. The different tools and whatnot. Kelly 52:33 Well, I put a couple of links in the show notes about it, I have a drum carder, and I, one of the things that I can say for sure, whether using hand cards or a drum carder, is that you really want to not overload, you know. Less is more. You really can go faster if you don't try to put too much in. And I have also learned that it's faster for me, even though it doesn't seem like it, if I do some picking first, which is like separating all the fibers. And so I'll just, you know, stand at the table and pick a whole bunch of, you know, like a whole box of fiber, one of those, you know, reams of paper boxes. I'll take a bunch of fiber, and I'll do the picking until I've got a good amount in one of those boxes, and then I'll start carding. And that really helps because it's already-- the fibers already separated and doesn't get clumped and stuck in the drum carder, and then I usually do two passes. With this fleece that I have, I did the first pass and got a bunch of batts. And then I pulled off strips from each one of those bats and blended them you know, blended them together and did a second pass. I've done with some fleeces depending on how, how much what kind of fleece it is and how it looks, I might do a third, a third pass. Or if I'm blending two colors together. I'll do, you know, I'll do each color that I'm blending, each part that I'm blending separately. And then I'll pull strips off and weigh them and run them through the carder together and then probably have to do a third pass to get them better blended. The first pass usually isn't very well blended and then the second one is much better. So I do a first one to just kind of get everything organized separately. And then a second one to blend and then a third one to finish the blending if I want the blending to be more even. So you can do the same thing with the hand cards, the blending. I've done that before. It's not so... I don't do so much weighing when I use the hand cards, I just kind of eyeball how much I'm putting on. I might weigh it ahead of time to say like, I want 70% of this and 30% of that. And so I have my two piles. But then when I put it onto the cards, I'm not weighing each time I use the hand cards, I'm not weighing these. So yeah, that Carding is... I enjoy it, it seems like it will be a slow process. But actually, that 400 grams that I carded, you know, went through the carder, I picked it, and then it went through the carder twice. And it was a, you know, a couple of hours, maybe two or three times during the week. So I mean, that's not that much time. It didn't seem like it was that much time. Marsha 55:53 No, it's not bad. You just listen to podcasts or watch TV or something. Yeah, Kelly 55:58 yeah. Or listen to a zoom meeting. [laughing] Kelly 56:09 So that's um, that's how I card. Now, the flick carder, we talked a little bit about that already. That kind of requires that you have the lock structure still intact in your fleece. And then I just put it on my lap on top of like a magazine on top of my lap and just brush out the end of the of the, the tip end of the fleece and then turn it around and brush out the the back end of that lock and then set it aside and start another one. And that works really well. I don't have mini combs. And I kind of would like to have mini combs. I have the big combs that you clamp onto a table and I took a class on using those, which was really good. But I haven't really used my combs much since then. They're I mean, they're really a nice piece of equipment. But for some reason I'm not... I'm just not in the habit of getting them out and using them. And I think mini combs might be something that I might like to have. Because, just because they're something you can just sit and do. Marsha 57:17 Right, right. Kelly 57:19 So I'd be interested to hear what people think about mini combs. And then the other thing I have not used is a blending board. And I know most of the time people are using a blending board with fiber that's already processed to to you know, mix colors together and make interesting rolags or punis. So, but that's not something that I've ever done. So I'd be interested to know how many of our listeners have used either a blending board or mini combs and whether they think either one of those things is kind of an essential, an essential tool. Marsha 58:04 How big are mini combs? Kelly 58:04 About, probably about, I would say the ones I've seen, maybe about two and a half to three inches across. They're smaller than hand cards. Marsha 58:16 Okay. Kelly 58:17 But they they have the same kind of, you know, like, the same kind of tines as like the bigger combs. I think two rows of tines. And you use them the same way where you put them perpendicular to one another. Like you put the fiber on the one comb and then you... Marsha 58:35 Oh here I'm looking online at them right now as we speak. Kelly 58:39 So I've been thinking about maybe getting a set of mini combs, because that is one type of preparation that I haven't ever done. And I know there are a lot of people who really like it and you can get a lot of the garbage out of your fleece that way. Moreso than with carding. More waste, you know, there's more waste, but you get more of the best part of the fiber. Marsha 59:12 Right. Yeah. Okay. Kelly 59:15 So, anyway, so that's my, my experience of of carding and combing fiber preparation. So and I have a couple--Like I said, I have a couple of links in the show notes for that. Marsha 59:28 Okay, good. The other thing that we I just I thought that we decided we should talk just touch on, too, is also mill processing. You don't necessarily have to process this yourself. And so we have some links in the show notes. Fibershed did a mill inventory of mills across the... Well Fiber shed is a California based group. So they show one mill in California, they show mills across the country, but they don't have them listed by name, so. But the link is in there, it's interesting to look at. There's also a link to the producer directory. And that Kelly too, we were talking about that before we recorded. That has not just mills, but people who are producing fiber. And also on Ravelry there's a Fiber Prep Ravelry group. And they don't have mills listed in like a central location to go to see all the mills that are listed. But in the discussion thread, people are talking about the different mills. Yeah, I think my sense is, what you have to do is you just have to Google mills for processing, wool, alpaca, whatever and search for the mills. I know some of the mills popped up. But I know the three that I know, fairly locally to me. They're processing their fiber for their own yarn. They're not processing fiber anymore for people who just want to have a fleece processed. So yeah, there are mills out there. I think though, you have to just Google and start searching. As we said, there, it's difficult to find one location that just has a list of all of the mills doing small batches of in the United States, right? Kelly 1:01:21 Yeah, Valley Oak Wool Mill is the one that that I've used in California. And then there's also Mendocino Wool and Fiber Company. Again, this is just California. I think the eastern part of the United States has a couple of really well used mills and there are a lot. There are more of them in that area. But yeah, Mendocino Wool and Fiber is the other one. I haven't used them but their website, I can put their link in the show notes as well. mendowool.com is their website Marsha 1:02:01 When we... what we talked about in the last episode is you know if they can't... most not all, but mills can either just wash it and and prep it for spinning or you can just have it processed into roving or you can have it processed into yarn if you want to do that. But that's another resource. Kelly 1:02:23 And it is true there are a lot more of them that process your wooll into fiber preparations. Morro Fleeceworks is another one in California that I was forgetting. A lot more of them process into roving than process all the way to yarn. There's a real lack of mills, small mills, that process your wool all the way to yarn, and a lot more of them just the process or fiber. Marsha 1:02:58 Yeah. So I just wanted to mention that. All right. Um, so let's just briefly talk about carding. I, you know, I have a drum Carter, I have the carding the combs that I use. I don't have a blending board, which would be kind of nice because I do remember I bought... I think it was up on Whidbey Island at the Whidbey Island spinners... little packets of mohair locks that were dyed. And those are great to blend in. So I was thinking I should probably get it. It'd be nice to get a blending board but all in good time. Right. Kelly 1:03:45 Mm hmm. Well, you can do that blending with your with your drum carder too. Marsha 1:03:51 Yeah, that's how I've done it in the past, because I did some at your house with your drum carder. So I should, I should try it here. Anyway, so anything else we need to add to this topic? Kelly 1:04:06 Um, I think if you are going to go look at the fleece processor list in the Ravelry group that we've posted, if you are going to go look at that list, I would suggest starting at the most recent posts. Because the thread has been going for like six years or something. So you know, something you get out on page one is maybe not even...Maybe not even there anymore. Marsha 1:04:34 Yeah, yeah. Kelly 1:04:36 Yeah. So Well, I'd be interested in hearing what other people do and also you know, if you have a mill that you've used to process fleece that we haven't mentioned. Maybe we could start a list. Marsha 1:04:53 Yeah, there you go. Maybe. Yeah, we should! I know like some people have used Shepherds Wool that does Crazy that we like so much. People have had yarn prop don't Kelly 1:05:07 Stone Hedge Marsha 1:05:08 Stone Hedge. That's the one! That's the name of it I want to say because they make shepherds wool their worsted weight. Yeah. So I know that they've had them. So maybe we should start a list Kelly. if nobody's done it, maybe we need to. Kelly 1:05:24 Yes. Well, we can start by-- we can start by asking our listeners to provide us feedback. With mills that they've used or that they know of in their area. We've got three California ones listed on our show notes for today. But yeah, we need to put in some other states. Yeah. All right. Project. Project. Yes. Just what I need. [laughing] Marsha 1:05:53 So anyway, but the summer spin-in goes through Labor Day, which is September 6. Kelly 1:06:00 So and we have two finished object threads. One is for finished spinning. And the other one is for finished projects. So if you're making something out of hand spun, you can join us. You don't have to be spinning this summer to join in. Marsha 1:06:15 Yeah. Kelly breaking in while editing 1:06:18 Oh, coming in from the future, to say that we forgot to tell you that we will have prizes from Three Green Sisters again this year! We'll talk more about that next episode. Marsha 1:06:31 Okay, Kelly. So and then do we have any more housekeeping? Kelly 1:06:34 I don't think so. Marsha 1:06:36 All right. Well, then, I guess we'll say goodbye. Kelly 1:06:38 All right, Marsha. Marsha 1:06:40 We'll talk we'll talk to weeks. Kelly 1:06:41 Okay. Bye bye. Marsha 1:06:42 Alrighty. Bye bye. Kelly 1:06:43 Thank you so much for listening. To subscribe to the podcast visit to Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com Marsha 1:06:50 Join us on our adventures on Ravelry and Instagram. I am betterinmotion and Kelly is 1hundredprojects. Kelly 1:06:58 Until next time, we're the Two Ewes doing our part for world fleece! Transcribed by https://otter.ai  

About Ben KehoeBen Kehoe is a Cloud Robotics Research Scientist at iRobot and an AWS Serverless Hero. As a serverless practitioner, Ben focuses on enabling rapid, secure-by-design development of business value by using managed services and ephemeral compute (like FaaS). Ben also seeks to amplify voices from dev, ops, and security to help the community shape the evolution of serverless and event-driven designs.Twitter: @ben11kehoeMedium: ben11kehoeGitHub: benkehoeLinkedIn: ben11kehoeiRobot: www.irobot.comWatch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/B0QChfAGvB0 This episode is sponsored by CBT Nuggets and Lumigo.TranscriptJeremy: Hi, everyone. I'm Jeremy Daly.Rebecca: And I'm Rebecca Marshburn.Jeremy: And this is Serverless Chats. And this is a momentous occasion on Serverless Chats because we are welcoming in Rebecca Marshburn as an official co-host of Serverless Chats.Rebecca: I'm pretty excited to be here. Thanks so much, Jeremy.Jeremy: So for those of you that have been listening for hopefully a long time, and we've done over 100 episodes. And I don't know, Rebecca, do I look tired? I feel tired.Rebecca: I've never seen you look tired.Jeremy: Okay. Well, I feel tired because we've done a lot of these episodes and we've published a new episode every single week for the last 107 weeks, I think at this point. And so what we're going to do is with you coming on as a new co-host, we're going to take a break over the summer. We're going to revamp. We're going to do some work. We're going to put together some great content. And then we're going to come back on, I think it's August 30th with a new episode and a whole new show. Again, it's going to be about serverless, but what we're thinking is ... And, Rebecca, I would love to hear your thoughts on this as I come at things from a very technical angle, because I'm an overly technical person, but there's so much more to serverless. There's so many other sides to it that I think that bringing in more perspectives and really being able to interview these guests and have a different perspective I think is going to be really helpful. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.Rebecca: Yeah. I love the tech side of things. I am not as deep in the technicalities of tech and I come at it I think from a way of loving the stories behind how people got there and perhaps who they worked with to get there, the ideas of collaboration and community because nothing happens in a vacuum and there's so much stuff happening and sharing knowledge and education and uplifting each other. And so I'm super excited to be here and super excited that one of the first episodes I get to work on with you is with Ben Kehoe because he's all about both the technicalities of tech, and also it's actually on his Twitter, a new compassionate tech values around humility, and inclusion, and cooperation, and learning, and being a mentor. So couldn't have a better guest to join you in the Serverless Chats community and being here for this.Jeremy: I totally agree. And I am looking forward to this. I'm excited. I do want the listeners to know we are testing in production, right? So we haven't run any unit tests, no integration tests. I mean, this is straight test in production.Rebecca: That's the best practice, right? Total best practice to test in production.Jeremy: Best practice. Right. Exactly.Rebecca: Straight to production, always test in production.Jeremy: Push code to the cloud. Here we go.Rebecca: Right away.Jeremy: Right. So if it's a little bit choppy, we'd love your feedback though. The listeners can be our observability tool and give us some feedback and we can ... And hopefully continue to make the show better. So speaking of Ben Kehoe, for those of you who don't know Ben Kehoe, I'm going to let him introduce himself, but I have always been a big fan of his. He was very, very early in the serverless space. I read all his blogs very early on. He was an early AWS Serverless Hero. So joining us today is Ben Kehoe. He is a cloud robotics research scientist at iRobot, as I said, an AWS Serverless Hero. Ben, welcome to the show.Ben: Thanks for having me. And I'm excited to be a guinea pig for this new exciting format.Rebecca: So many observability tools watching you be a guinea pig too. There's lots of layers to this.Jeremy: Amazing. All right. So Ben, why don't you tell the listeners for those that don't know you a little bit about yourself and what you do with serverless?Ben: Yeah. So I mean, as with all software, software is people, right? It's like Soylent Green. And so I'm really excited for this format being about the greater things that technology really involves in how we create it and set it up. And serverless is about removing the things that don't matter so that you can focus on the things that do matter.Jeremy: Right.Ben: So I've been interested in that since I learned about it. And at the time saw that I could build things without running servers, without needing to deal with the scaling of stuff. I've been working on that at iRobot for over five years now. As you said early on in serverless at the first serverless con organized by A Cloud Guru, now plural sites.Jeremy: Right.Ben: And yeah. And it's been really exciting to see it grow into the large-scale community that it is today and all of the ways in which community are built like this podcast.Jeremy: Right. Yeah. I love everything that you've done. I love the analogies you've used. I mean, you've always gone down this road of how do you explain serverless in a way to show really the adoption of it and how people can take that on. Serverless is a ladder. Some of these other things that you would ... I guess the analogies you use were always great and always helped me. And of course, I don't think we've ever really come to a good definition of serverless, but we're not talking about that today. But ...Ben: There isn't one.Jeremy: There isn't one, which is also a really good point. So yeah. So welcome to the show. And again, like I said, testing in production here. So, Rebecca, jump in when you have questions and we'll beat up Ben from both sides on this, but, really ...Rebecca: We're going to have Ben from both sides.Jeremy: There you go. We'll embrace him from both sides. There you go.Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah.Jeremy: So one of the things though that, Ben, you have also been very outspoken on which I absolutely love, because I'm in very much closely aligned on this topic here. But is about infrastructure as code. And so let's start just quickly. I mean, I think a lot of people know or I think people working in the cloud know what infrastructure as code is, but I also think there's a lot of people who don't. So let's just take a quick second, explain what infrastructure as code is and what we mean by that.Ben: Sure. To my mind, infrastructure as code is about having a definition of the state of your infrastructure that you want to see in the cloud. So rather than using operations directly to modify that state, you have a unified definition of some kind. I actually think infrastructure is now the wrong word with serverless. It used to be with servers, you could manage your fleet of servers separate from the software that you were deploying onto the servers. And so infrastructure being the structure below made sense. But now as your code is intimately entwined in the rest of your resources, I tend to think of resource graph definitions rather than infrastructure as code. It's a less convenient term, but I think it's worth understanding the distinction or the difference in perspective.Jeremy: Yeah. No, and I totally get that. I mean, I remember even early days of cloud when we were using the Chefs and the Puppets and things like that, that we were just deploying the actual infrastructure itself. And sometimes you deploy software as part of that, but it was supporting software. It was the stuff that ran in the runtime and some of those and some configurations, but yeah, but the application code that was a whole separate process, and now with serverless, it seems like you're deploying all those things at the same time.Ben: Yeah. There's no way to pick it apart.Jeremy: Right. Right.Rebecca: Ben, there's something that I've always really admired about you and that is how strongly you hold your opinions. You're fervent about them, but it's also because they're based on this thorough nature of investigation and debate and challenging different people and yourself to think about things in different ways. And I know that the rest of this episode is going to be full with a lot of opinions. And so before we even get there, I'm curious if you can share a little bit about how you end up arriving at these, right? And holding them so steady.Ben: It's a good question. Well, I hope that I'm not inflexible in these strong opinions that I hold. I mean, it's one of those strong opinions loosely held kind of things that new information can change how you think about things. But I do try and do as much thinking as possible so that there's less new information that I have to encounter to change an opinion.Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah.Ben: Yeah. I think I tend to try and think about how people ... But again, because it's always people. How people interact with the technology, how people behave, how organizations behave, and then how technology fits into that. Because sometimes we talk about technology in a vacuum and it's really not. Technology that works for one context doesn't work for another. I mean, a lot of my strong opinions are that there is no one right answer kind of a thing, or here's a framework for understanding how to think about this stuff. And then how that fits into a given person is just finding where they are in that more general space. Does that make sense? So it's less about finding out here's the one way to do things and more about finding what are the different options, how do you think about the different options that are out there.Rebecca: Yeah, totally makes sense. And I do want to compliment you. I do feel like you are very good at inviting new information in if people have it and then you're like, "Aha, I've already thought of that."Ben: I hope so. Yeah. I was going to say, there's always a balance between trying to think ahead so that when you discover something you're like, "Oh, that fits into what I thought." And the danger of that being that you're twisting the information to fit into your preexisting structures. I hope that I find a good balance there, but I don't have a principle way of determining that balance or knowing where you are in that it's good versus it's dangerous kind of spectrum.Jeremy: Right. So one of the opinions that you hold that I tend to agree with, I have some thoughts about some of the benefits, but I also really agree with the other piece of it. And this really has to do with the CDK and this idea of using CloudFormation or any sort of DSL, maybe Terraform, things like that, something that is more domain-specific, right? Or I guess declarative, right? As opposed to something that is imperative like the CDK. So just to get everybody on the same page here, what is the top reasons why you believe, or you think that DSL approach is better than that iterative approach or interpretive approach, I guess?Ben: Yeah. So I think we get caught up in the imperative versus declarative part of it. I do think that declarative has benefits that can be there, but the way that I think about it is with the CDK and infrastructure as code in general, I'm like mildly against imperative definitions of resources. And we can get into that part, but that's not my smallest objection to the CDK. I'm moderately against not being able to enforce deterministic builds. And the CDK program can do anything. Can use a random number generator and go out to the internet to go ask a question, right? It can do anything in that program and that means that you have no guarantees that what's coming out of it you're going to be able to repeat.So even if you check the source code in, you may not be able to go back to the same infrastructure that you had before. And you can if you're disciplined about it, but I like tools that help give you guardrails so that you don't have to be as disciplined. So that's my moderately against. My strongly against piece is I'm strongly against developer intent remaining client side. And this is not an inherent flaw in the CDK, is a choice that the CDK team has made to turn organizational dysfunction in AWS into ownership for their customers. And I don't think that's a good approach to take, but that's also fixable.So I think if we want to start with the imperative versus declarative thing, right? When I think about the developers expressing an intent, and I want that intent to flow entirely into the cloud so that developers can understand what's deployed in the cloud in terms of the things that they've written. The CDK takes this approach of flattening it down, flattening the richness of the program the developer has written into ... They think of it as assembly language. I think that is a misinterpretation of what's happening. The assembly language in the process is the imperative plan generated inside the CloudFormation engine that says, "Here's how I'm going to take this definition and turn it into an actual change in the cloud.Jeremy: Right.Ben: They're just translating between two definition formats in CDK scene. But it's a flattening process, it's a lossy process. So then when the developer goes to the Console or the API has to go say, "What's deployed here? What's going wrong? What do I need to fix?" None of it is framed in terms of the things that they wrote in their original language.Jeremy: Right.Ben: And I think that's the biggest problem, right? So drift detection is an important thing, right? What happened when someone went in through the Console? Went and tweaked some stuff to fix something, and now it's different from the definition that's in your source repository. And in CloudFormation, it can tell you that. But what I would want if I was running CDK is that it should produce another CDK program that represents the current state of the cloud with a meaningful file-level diff with my original program.Jeremy: Right. I'm just thinking this through, if I deploy something to CDK and I've got all these loops and they're generating functions and they're using some naming and all this kind of stuff, whatever, now it produces this output. And again, my naming of my functions might be some function that gets called to generate the names of the function. And so now I've got all of these functions named and I have to go in. There's no one-to-one map like you said, and I can imagine somebody who's not familiar with CloudFormation which is ultimately what CDK synthesizes and produces, if you're not familiar with what that output is and how that maps back to the constructs that you created, I can see that as being really difficult, especially for younger developers or developers who are just getting started in that.Ben: And the CDK really takes the attitude that it's going to hide those things from those developers rather than help them learn it. And so when they do have to dive into that, the CDK refers to it as an escape hatch.Jeremy: Yeah.Ben: And I think of escape hatches on submarines, where you go from being warm and dry and having air to breathe to being hundreds of feet below the sea, right? It's not the sort of thing you want to go through. Whereas some tools like Amplify talk about graduation. In Amplify they aim to help you understand the things that Amplify is doing for you, such that when you grow beyond what Amplify can provide you, you have the tools to do that, to take the thing that you built and then say, "Okay, I know enough now that I understand this and can add onto it in ways that Amplify can't help with."Jeremy: Right.Ben: Now, how successful they are in doing that is a separate question I think, but the attitude is there to say, "We're looking to help developers understand these things." Now the CDK could also if the CDK was a managed service, right? Would not need developers to understand those things. If you could take your program directly to the cloud and say, "Here's my program, go make this real." And when it made it real, you could interact with the cloud in an understanding where you could list your deployed constructs, right? That you can understand the program that you wrote when you're looking at the resources that are deployed all together in the cloud everywhere. That would be a thing where you don't need to learn CloudFormation.Jeremy: Right.Ben: Right? That's where you then end up in the imperative versus declarative part where, okay, there's some reasons that I think declarative is better. But the major thing is that disconnect that's currently built into the way that CDK works. And the reason that they're doing that is because CloudFormation is not moving fast enough, which is not always on the CloudFormation team. It's often on the service teams that aren't building the resources fast enough. And that's AWS's problem, AWS as an entire company, as an organization. And this one team is saying, "Well, we can fix that by doing all this client side."What that means is that the customers are then responsible for all the things that are happening on the client side. The reason that they can go fast is because the CDK team doesn't have ownership of it, which just means the ownership is being pushed on customers, right? The CDK deploys Lambda functions into your account that they don't tell you about that you're now responsible for. Right? Both the security and operations of. If there are security updates that the CDK team has to push out, you have to take action to update those things, right? That's ownership that's being pushed onto the customer to fix a lack of ACM certificate management, right?Jeremy: Right. Right.Ben: That is ACM not building the thing that's needed. And so AWS says, "Okay, great. We'll just make that the customer's problem."Jeremy: Right.Ben: And I don't agree with that approach.Rebecca: So I'm sure as an AWS Hero you certainly have pretty good, strong, open communication channels with a lot of different team members across teams. And I certainly know that they're listening to you and are at least hearing you, I should say, and watching you and they know how you feel about this. And so I'm curious how some of those conversations have gone. And some teams as compared to others at AWS are really, really good about opening their roadmap or at least saying, "Hey, we hear this, and here's our path to a solution or a success." And I'm curious if there's any light you can shed on whether or not those conversations have been fruitful in terms of actually being able to get somewhere in terms of customer and AWS terms, right? Customer obsession first.Ben: Yeah. Well, customer obsession can mean two things, right? Customer obsession can mean giving the customer what they want or it can mean giving the customer what they need and different AWS teams' approach fall differently on that scale. The reason that many of those things are not available in CloudFormation is that those teams are ... It could be under-resourced. They could have a larger majority of customer that want new features rather than infrastructure as code support. Because as much as we all like infrastructure as code, there are many, many organizations out there that are not there yet. And with the CDK in particular, I'm a relatively lone voice out there saying, "I don't think this ownership that's being pushed onto the customer is a good thing." And there are lots of developers who are eating up CDK saying, "I don't care."That's not something that's in their worry. And because the CDK has been enormously successful, right? It's fixing these problems that exists. And I don't begrudge them trying to fix those problems. I think it's a question of do those developers who are grabbing onto those things and taking them understand the full total cost of ownership that the CDK is bringing with it. And if they don't understand it, I think AWS has a responsibility to understand it and work with it to help those customers either understand it and deal with it, right? Which is where the CDK takes this approach, "Well, if you do get Ops, it's all fine." And that's somewhat true, but also many developers who can use the CDK do not control their CI/CD process. So there's all sorts of ways in which ... Yeah, so I think every team is trying to do the best that they can, right?They're all working hard and they all have ... Are pulled in many different directions by customers. And most of them are making, I think, the right choices given their incentives, right? Given what their customers are asking for. I think not all of them balance where customers ... meeting customers where they are versus leading them where they should, like where they need to go as well as I would like. But I think ... I had a conclusion to that. Oh, but I think that's always a debate as to where that balance is. And then the other thing when I talk about the CDK, that my ideal audience there is less AWS itself and more AWS customers ...Rebecca: Sure.Ben: ... to understand what they're getting into and therefore to demand better of AWS. Which is in general, I think, the approach that I take with AWS, is complaining about AWS in public, because I do have the ability to go to teams and say, "Hey, I want this thing," right? There are plenty of teams where I could just email them and say, "Hey, this feature could be nice", but I put it on Twitter because other people can see that and say, "Oh, that's something that I want or I don't think that's helpful," right? "I don't care about that," or, "I think it's the wrong thing to ask for," right? All of those things are better when it's not just me saying I think this is a good thing for AWS, but it being a conversation among the community differently.Rebecca: Yeah. I think in the spirit too of trying to publicize types of what might be best next for customers, you said total cost of ownership. Even though it might seem silly to ask this, I think oftentimes we say the words total cost of ownership, but there's actually many dimensions to total cost of ownership or TCO, right? And so I think it would be great if you could enumerate what you think of as total cost of ownership, because there might be dimensions along that matrices, matrix, that people haven't considered when they're actually thinking about total cost of ownership. They're like, "Yeah, yeah, I got it. Some Ops and some security stuff I have to do and some patches," but they might only be thinking of five dimensions when you're like, "Actually the framework is probably 10 to 12 to 14." And so if you could outline that a bit, what you mean when you think of a holistic total cost of ownership, I think that could be super helpful.Ben: I'm bad at enumeration. So I would miss out on dimensions that are obvious if I was attempting to do that. But I think a way that I can, I think effectively answer that question is to talk about some of the ways in which we misunderstand TCO. So I think it's important when working in an organization to think about the organization as a whole, not just your perspective and that your team's perspective in it. And so when you're working for the lowest TCO it's not what's the lowest cost of ownership for my team if that's pushing a larger burden onto another team. Now if it's reducing the burden on your team and only increasing the burden on another team a little bit, that can be a lower total cost of ownership overall. But it's also something that then feeds into things like political capital, right?Is that increased ownership that you're handing to that team something that they're going to be happy with, something that's not going to cause other problems down the line, right? Those are the sorts of things that fit into that calculus because it's not just about what ... Moving away from that topic for a second. I think about when we talk about how does this increase our velocity, right? There's the piece of, "Okay, well, if I can deploy to production faster, right? My feedback loop is faster and I can move faster." Right? But the other part of that equation is how many different threads can you be operating on and how long are those threads in time? So when you're trying to ship a feature, if you can ship it and then never look at it again, that means you have increased bandwidth in the future to take on other features to develop other new features.And so even if you think about, "It's going to take me longer to finish this particular feature," but then there's no maintenance for that feature, that can be a lower cost of ownership in time than, "I can ship it 50% faster, but then I'm going to periodically have to revisit it and that's going to disrupt my ability to ship other things," right? So this is where I had conversations recently about increasing use of Step Functions, right? And being able to replace Lambda functions with Step Functions express workflows because you never have to go back to those Lambdas and update dependencies in them because dependent bot has told you that you need to or a version of Python is getting deprecated, right? All of those things, just if you have your Amazon States Language however it's been defined, right?Once it's in there, you never have to touch it again if nothing else changes and that means, okay, great, that piece is now out of your work stream forever unless it needs to change. And that means that you have more bandwidth for future things, which serverless is about in general, right? Of say, "Okay, I don't have to deal with this scaling problems here. So those scaling things. Once I have an auto-scaling group, I don't have to go back and tweak it later." And so the same thing happens at the feature level if you build it in ways that allow you to do that. And so I think that's one of the places where when we focus on, okay, how fast is this getting me into production, it's okay, but how often do you have to revisit it ...Jeremy: Right. And so ... So you mentioned a couple of things in there, and not only in that question, but in the previous questions as you were talking about the CDK in general, and I am 100% behind you on this idea of deterministic builds because I want to know exactly what's being deployed. I want to be able to audit that and map that back. And you can audit, I mean, you could run CDK synth and then audit the CloudFormation and test against certain things. But if you are changing stuff, right? Then you have to understand not only the CDK but also the CloudFormation that it actually generates. But in terms of solving problems, some of the things that the CDK does really, really well, and this is something where I've always had this issue with just trying to use raw CloudFormation or Serverless Framework or SAM or any of these things is the fact that there's a lot of boilerplate that you often have to do.There's ways that companies want to do something specifically. I basically probably always need 1,400 lines of CloudFormation. And for every project I do, it's probably close to the same, and then add a little bit more to actually make it adaptive for my product. And so one thing that I love about the CDK is constructs. And I love this idea of being able to package these best practices for your company or these compliance requirements, excuse me, compliance requirements for your company, whatever it is, be able to package these and just hand them to developers. And so I'm just curious on your thoughts on that because that seems like a really good move in the right direction, but without the deterministic builds, without some of these other problems that you talked about, is there another solution to that that would be more declarative?Ben: Yeah. In theory, if the CDK was able to produce an artifact that represented all of the non-deterministic dependencies that it had, right? That allowed you to then store that artifacts as you'd come back and put that into the program and say, "I'm going to get out the same thing," but because the CDK doesn't control upstream of it, the code that the developers are writing, there isn't a way to do that. Right? So on the abstraction front, the constructs are super useful, right? CloudFormation now has modules which allow you to say, "Here's a template and I'm going to represent this as a CloudFormation type itself," right? So instead of saying that I need X different things, I'm going to say, "I packaged that all up here. It is as a type."Now, currently, modules can only be playing CloudFormation templates and there's a lot of constraints in what you can express inside a CloudFormation template. And I think the answer for me is ... What I want to see is more richness in the CloudFormation language, right? One of the things that people do in the CDK that's really helpful is say, "I need a copy of this in every AZ."Jeremy: Right.Ben: Right? There's so much boilerplate in server-based things. And CloudFormation can't do that, right? But if you imagine that it had a map function that allowed you to say, "For every AZ, stamp me out a copy of this little bit." And then that the CDK constructs allowed to translate. Instead of it doing all this generation only down to the L one piece, instead being able to say, "I'm going to translate this into more rich CloudFormation templates so that the CloudFormation template was as advanced as possible."Right? Then it could do things like say, "Oh, I know we need to do this in every AZ, I'm going to use this map function in the CloudFormation template rather than just stamping it out." Right? And so I think that's possible. Now, modules should also be able to be defined as CDK programs. Right? You should be able to register a construct as a CloudFormation tag.Jeremy: It would be pretty cool.Ben: There's no reason you shouldn't be able to. Yeah. Because I think the declarative versus imperative thing is, again, not the most important piece, it's how do we move ... It's shifting right in this case, right? That how do you shift what's happening with the developer further into the process of deployment so that more of their context is present? And so one of the things that the CDK does that's hard to replicate is have non-local effects. And this is both convenient and I think of code smell often.So you can pass a bucket resource from another stack into a piece of code in your CDK program that's creating a different stack and you say, "Oh great, I've got this Lambda function, it needs permissions to that bucket. So add permissions." And it's possible for the CDK programs to either be adding the permissions onto the IAM role of that function, or non-locally adding to that bucket's resource policy, which is weird, right? That you can be creating a stack and the thing that you do to that stack or resource or whatever is not happening there, it's happening elsewhere. I don't think that's a great approach, but it's certainly convenient to be able to do it in a lot of situations.Now, that's not representable within a module. A module is a contained piece of functionality that can't touch anything else. So things like SAM where you can add events onto a function that can go and create ... You create the API events on different functions and then SAM aggregates them and creates an API gateway for you. Right? If AWS serverless function was a module, it couldn't do that because you'd have these in different places and you couldn't aggregate something between all of them and put them in the top-level thing, right?This is what CloudFormation macros enable, but they don't have a... There's no proper interface to them, right? They don't define, "This is what I'm doing. This is the kind of resources I can create." There's none of that that would help you understand them. So they're infinitely flexible, but then also maybe less principled for that reason. So I think there are ways to evolve, but it's investment in the CloudFormation language that allows us to shift that burden from being a flattening inside client-side code from the developer and shifting it to be able to be represented in the cloud.Jeremy: Right. Yeah. And I think from that standpoint too if we go back to the solving people's problems standpoint, that everything you explained there, they're loaded with nuances, it's loaded with gotchas, right? Like, "Oh, you can't do this, you can't do that." So that's just why I think the CDK is so popular because it's like you can do so much with it so quickly and it's very, very fast. And I think that trade-off, people are just willing to make it.Ben: Yes. And that's where they're willing to make it, do they fully understand the consequences of it? Then does AWS communicate those consequences well? Before I get into that question of, okay, you're a developer that's brand new to AWS and you've been tasked with standing up some Kubernetes cluster and you're like, "Great. I can use a CDK to do this." Something is malfunctioning. You're also tasked with the operations and something is malfunctioning. You go in through the Console and maybe figure out all the things that are out there are new to you because they're hidden inside L3 constructs, right?You're two levels down from where you were defining what you want, and then you find out what's wrong and you have no idea how to turn that into a change in your CDK program. So instead of going back and doing the thing that infrastructure as code is for, which is tweaking your program to go fix the problem, you go and you tweak it in the Console ...Jeremy: Right. Which you should never do.Ben: ... and you fix it that way. Right. Well, and that's the thing that I struggle with, with the CDK is how does the CDK help the developer who's in that situation? And I don't think they have a good story around that. Now, I don't know. I haven't talked with enough junior developers who are using the CDK about how often they get into that situation. Right? But I always say client-side code is not a replacement for a managed service because when it's client-side code, you still own the result.Jeremy: Right.Ben: If a particular CDK construct was a managed service in AWS, then all of the resources that would be created underneath AWS's problem to make work. And the interface that the developer has is the only level of ownership that they have. Fargate is this. Because you could do all the things that Fargate does with a CDK construct, right? Set up EC2, do all the things, and represent it as something that looks like Fargate in your CDK program. But every time your EC2 fleet is unhealthy that's your problem. With Fargate, that's AWS's problem. If we didn't have Fargate, that's essentially what CDK would be trying to do for ECS.And I think we all recognize that Fargate is very necessary and helpful in that case, right? And I just want that for all the things, right? Whenever I have an abstraction, if it's an abstraction that I understand, then I should have a way of zooming into it while not having to switch languages, right? So that's where you shouldn't dump me out the CloudFormation to understand what you're doing. You should help me understand the low-level things in the same language. And if it's not something that I need to understand, it should be a managed service. It shouldn't be a bunch of stuff that I still own that I haven't looked at.Jeremy: Makes sense. Got a question, Rebecca? Because I was waiting for you to jump in.Rebecca: No, but I was going to make a joke, but then the joke passed, and then I was like, "But should I still make it?" I was going to be like, "Yeah, but does the CDK let you test in production?" But that was a 32nd ago joke and then I was really wrestling with whether or not I should tell it, but I told it anyway, hopefully, someone gets a laugh.Ben: Yeah. I mean, there's the thing that Charity Majors says, right? Which is that everybody tests in production. Some people are lucky enough to have a development environment in production. No, sorry. I said that the wrong way. It's everybody has a test environment. Some people are lucky enough that it's not in production.Rebecca: Yeah. Swap that. Reverse it. Yeah.Ben: Yeah.Jeremy: All right. So speaking of talking to developers and getting feedback from them, so I actually put a question out on Twitter a couple of weeks ago and got a lot of really interesting reactions. And essentially I asked, "What do you love or hate about infrastructure as code?" And there were a lot of really interesting things here. I don't know, maybe it might be fun to go through a couple of these and get your thoughts on them. So this is probably not a great one to start with, but I thought it was interesting because this I think represents the frustration that a lot of us feel. And it was basically that they love that automation minimizes future work, right? But they hate that it makes life harder over time. And that pretty much every approach to infrastructure in, sorry, yeah, infrastructure in code at the present is flawed, right? So really there are no good solutions right now.Ben: Yeah. CloudFormation is still a pain to learn and deal with. If you're operating in certain IDEs, you can get tab completion.Jeremy: Right.Ben: If you go to CDK you get tab completion, which is, I think probably most of the value that developers want out of it and then the abstraction, and then all the other fancy things it does like pipelines, which again, should be a managed service. I do think that person is absolutely right to complain about how difficult it is. That there are many ways that it could be better. One of the things that I think about when I'm using tools is it's not inherently bad for a tool to have some friction to use it.Jeremy: Right.Ben: And this goes to another infrastructure as code tool that goes even further than the CDK and says, "You can define your Lambda code in line with your infrastructure definition." So this is fine with me. And there's some other ... I think Punchcard also lets you do some of this. Basically extracts out the bits of your code that you say, "This is a custom thing that glues together two things I'm defining in here and I'll make that a Lambda function for you." And for me, that is too little friction to defining a Lambda function.Because when I define a Lambda function, just going back to that bringing in ownership, every time I add a Lambda function, that's something that I own, that's something that I have to maintain, that I'm responsible for, that can go wrong. So if I'm thinking about, "Well, I could have API Gateway direct into DynamoDB, but it'd be nice if I could change some of these fields. And so I'm just going to drop in a little sprinkle of code, three lines of code in between here to do some transformation that I want." That is all of sudden an entire Lambda function you've brought into your infrastructure.Jeremy: Right. That's a good point.Ben: And so I want a little bit of friction to do that, to make me think about it, to make me say, "Oh, yeah, downstream of this decision that I am making, there are consequences that I would not otherwise think about if I'm just trying to accomplish the problem," right? Because I think developers, humans, in general, tend to be a bit shortsighted when you have a goal especially, and you're being pressured to complete that goal and you're like, "Okay, well I can complete it." The consequences for later are always a secondary concern.And so you can change your incentives in that moment to say, "Okay, well, this is going to guide me to say, "Ah, I don't really need this Lambda function in here. Then I'm better off in the long term while accomplishing that goal in the short term." So I do think that there is a place for tools making things difficult. That's not to say that the amount of difficult that infrastructure as code is today is at all reasonable, but I do think it's worth thinking about, right?I'd rather take on the pain of creating an ASL definition by hand for express workflow than the easier thing of writing Lambda code. Because I know the long-term consequences of that. Now, if that could be flipped where it was harder to write something that took more ownership, it'd be just easy to do, right? You'd always do the right thing. But I think it's always worth saying, "Can I do the harder thing now to pay off to pay off later?"Jeremy: And I always call those shortcuts "tomorrow-Jeremy's" problem. That's how I like to look at those.Ben: Yeah. Yes.Jeremy: And the funny thing about that too is I remember right when EventBridge came out and there was no CloudFormation support for a long time, which was super frustrating. But Serverless Framework, for example, implemented a custom resource in order to do that. And I remember looking at a clean stack and being like, "Why are there two Lambda functions there that I have no idea?" I'm like, "I didn't publish ..." I honestly thought my account was compromised that somebody had published a Lambda function in there because I'm like, "I didn't do that." And then it took me a while to realize, I'm like, "Oh, this is what this is." But if it is that easy to just create little transform functions here and there, I can imagine there being thousands of those in your account without anybody knowing that they even exist.Ben: Now, don't get me wrong. I would love to have the ability to drop in little transforms that did not involve Lambda functions. So in other words, I mean, the thing that VTL does for API Gateway, REST APIs but without it being VTL and being ... Because that's hard and then also restricted in what you can do, right? It's not, "Oh, I can drop in arbitrary code in here." But enough to say, "Oh, I want to flip ... These fields should go from a key-value mapping to a list of key-value, right? In the way that it addresses inconsistent with how tags are defined across services, those kinds of things. Right? And you could drop that in any service, but once you've defined it, there's no maintenance for you, right?You're writing JavaScript. It's not actually a JavaScript engine underneath or something. It's just getting translated into some big multi-tenant fancy thing. And I have a hypothesis that that should be possible. You should be able to do it where you could even do it in the parsing of JSON, being able to do transforms without ever having to have the whole object in memory. And if we could get that then, "Oh, sure. Now I have sprinkled all over the place all of these little transforms." Now there's a little bit of overhead if the transform is defined correctly or not, right? But once it is, then it just works. And having all those little transforms everywhere is then fine, right? And that incentive to make it harder it doesn't need to be there because it's not bringing ownership with it.Rebecca: Yeah. It's almost like taking the idea of tomorrow-Jeremy's problem and actually switching it to say tomorrow-Jeremy's celebration where tomorrow-Jeremy gets to look back at past-Jeremy and be like, "Nice. Thank you for making that decision past-Jeremy." Because I think we often do look at it in terms of tomorrow-Jeremy will think of this, we'll solve this problem rather than how do we approach it by saying, how do I make tomorrow-Jeremy thankful for it today-Jeremy? And that's a simple language, linguistic switch, but a hard switch to actually make decisions based on.Ben: Yeah. I don't think tomorrow-Ben is ever thankful for today-Ben. I think it's tomorrow-Ben is thankful for yesterday-Ben setting up the incentives correctly so that today-Ben will do the right thing for tomorrow-Ben. Right? When I think about people, I think it's easier to convince people to accept a change in their incentives than to convince them to fight against their incentives sustainably.Jeremy: Right. And I think developers and I'm guilty of this too, I mean, we make decisions based off of expediency. We want to get things done fast. And when you get stuck on that problem you're like, "You know what? I'm not going to figure it out. I'm just going to write a loop or I'm going to do whatever I can do just to make it work." Another if statement here, "Isn't going to hurt anybody." All right. So let's move to ... Sorry, go ahead.Ben: We shouldn't feel bad about that.Jeremy: You're right.Ben: I was going to say, we shouldn't feel bad about that. That's where I don't want tomorrow-Ben to have to be thankful for today-Ben, because that's the implication there is that today-Ben is fighting against his incentives to do good things for tomorrow-Ben. And if I don't need to have to get to that point where just the right path is the easiest path, right? Which means putting friction in the right places than today-Ben ... It's never a question of whether today-Ben is doing something that's worth being thankful for. It's just doing the job, right?Jeremy: Right. No, that makes sense. All right. I got another question here, I think falls under the category of service discovery, which I know is another topic that you love. So this person said, "I love IaC, but hate the fuzzy boundaries where certain software awkwardly fall. So like Istio and Prometheus and cert-manager. That they can be considered part of the infrastructure, but then it's awkward to deploy them when something like Terraform due to circular dependencies relating to K8s and things like that."So, I mean, I know that we don't have to get into the actual details of that, but I think that is an important aspect of infrastructure as code where best practices sometimes are deploy a stack that has your permanent resources and then deploy a stack that maybe has your more femoral or the ones that are going to be changing, the more mutable ones, maybe your Lambda functions and some of those sort of things. If you're using Terraform or you're using some of these other services as well, you do have that really awkward mix where you're trying to use outputs from one stack into another stack and trying to do all that. And really, I mean, there are some good tools that help with it, but I mean just overall thoughts on that.Ben: Well, we certainly need to demand better of AWS services when they design new things that they need to be designed so that infrastructure as code will work. So this is the S3 bucket notification problem. A very long time ago, S3 decided that they were going to put bucket notifications as part of the S3 bucket. Well, CloudFormation at that point decided that they were going to put bucket notifications as part of the bucket resource. And S3 decided that they were going to check permissions when the notification configuration is defined so that you have to have the permissions before you create the configuration.This creates a circular dependency when you're hooking it up to anything in CloudFormation because the dependency depends on the resource policy on an SNS topic, and SQS queue or a Lambda function depends on the bucket name if you're letting CloudFormation name the bucket, which is the best practice. Then bucket name has to exist, which means the resource has to have been created. But the notification depends on the thing that's notifying, which doesn't have the names and the resource policy doesn't exist so it all fails. And this is solved in a couple of different ways. One of which is name your bucket explicitly, again, not a good practice. Another is what SAM does, which says, "The Lambda function will say I will allow all S3 buckets to invoke me."So it has a star permission in it's resource policy. So then the notification will work. None of which is good or there's custom resources that get created, right? Now, if those resources have been designed with infrastructure as code as part of the process, then it would have been obvious, "Oh, you end up with a circular pendency. We need to split out bucket notifications as a separate resource." And not enough teams are doing this. Often they're constrained by the API that they develop first ...Jeremy: That's a good point.Ben: ... they come up with the API, which often makes sense for a Console experience that they desire. So this is where API Gateway has this whole thing where you create all the routes and the resources and the methods and everything, right? And then you say, "Great, deploy." And in the Console you only need one mutable working copy of that at a time, but it means that you can't create two deployments or update two stages in parallel through infrastructure as code and API Gateway because they both talk to this mutable working copy state and would overwrite each other.And if infrastructure as code had been on their list would have been, "Oh, if you have a definition of your API, you should be able to go straight to the deployment," right? And so trying to push that upstream, which to me is more important than infrastructure as code support at launch, but people are often like, "Oh, I want CloudFormation support at launch." But that often means that they get no feedback from customers on the design and therefore make it bad. KMS asymmetric keys should have been a different resource type so that you can easily tell which key types are in your template.Jeremy: Good point. Yeah.Ben: Right? So that you can use things like CloudFormation Guard more easily on those. Sure, you can control the properties or whatever, but you should be able to think in terms of, "I have a symmetric key or an asymmetric key in here." And they're treated completely separately because you use them completely differently, right? They don't get used to the same place.Jeremy: Yeah. And it's funny that you mentioned the lacking support at launch because that was another complaint. That was quite prevalent in this thread here, was people complaining that they don't get that CloudFormation support right away. But I think you made a very good point where they do build the APIs first. And that's another thing. I don't know which question asked me or which one of these mentioned it, but there was a lot of anger over the fact that you go to the API docs or you go to the docs for AWS and it focuses on the Console and it focuses on the CLI and then it gives you the API stuff and very little mention of CloudFormation at all. And usually, you have to go to a whole separate set of docs to find the CloudFormation. And it really doesn't tie all the concepts together, right? So you get just a block of JSON or of YAML and you're like, "Am I supposed to know what everything does here?"Ben: Yeah. I assume that's data-driven. Right? And we exist in this bubble where everybody loves infrastructure as code.Jeremy: True.Ben: And that AWS has many more customers who set things up using Console, people who learn by doing it first through the Console. I assume that's true, if it's not, then the AWS has somehow gotten on the extremely wrong track. But I imagine that's how they find that they get the right engagement. Now maybe the CDK will change some of this, right? Maybe the amount of interest that is generating, we'll get it to the point where blogs get written with CDK programs being written there. I think that presents different problems about what that CDK program might hide from when you're learning about a service. But yeah, it's definitely not ... I wrote a blog for AWS and my first draft had it as CloudFormation and then we changed it to the Console. Right? And ...Jeremy: That must have hurt. Did you die a little inside when that happened?Ben: I mean, no, because they're definitely our users, right? That's the way in which they interact with data, with us and they should be able to learn from that, their company, right? Because again, developers are often not fully in control of this process.Jeremy: Right. That's a good point.Ben: And so they may not be able to say, "I want to update this through CloudFormation," right? Either because their organization says it or just because their team doesn't work that way. And I think AWS gets requests to prevent people from using the Console, but also to force people to use the Console. I know that at least one of them is possible in IAM. I don't remember which, because I've never encountered it, but I think it's possible to make people use the Console. I'm not sure, but I know that there are companies who want both, right? There are companies who say, "We don't want to let people use the API. We want to force them to use the Console." There are companies who say, "We don't want people using the Console at all. We want to force them to use the APIs."Jeremy: Interesting.Ben: Yeah. There's a lot of AWS customers, right? And there's every possible variety of organization and AWS should be serving all of them, right? They're all customers. And certainly, I want AWS to be leading the ones that are earlier in their cloud journey and on the serverless ladder to getting further but you can't leave them behind, I think it's important.Jeremy: So that people argument and those different levels and coming in at a different, I guess, level or comfortability with APIs versus infrastructure as code and so forth. There was another question or another comment on this that said, "I love the idea of committing everything that makes my solution to text and resurrect an entire solution out of nothing other than an account key. Loved the ability to compare versions and unit tests, every bit of my solution, and not having to remember that one weird setting if you're using the Console. But hate that it makes some people believe that any coder is now an infrastructure wizard."And I think this is a good point, right? And I don't 100% agree with it, but I think it's a good point that it basically ... Back to your point about creating these little transformations in Pulumi, you could do a lot of damage, I mean, good or bad, right? When you are using these tools. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, is this something where ... And again, the CDK makes it so easy for people to write these constructs pretty quickly and spin up tons of infrastructure without a lot of guard rails to protect them.Ben: So I think if we tweak the statement slightly, I think there's truth there, which isn't about the self-perception but about what they need to be. Right? That I think this is more about serverless than about infrastructure as code. Infrastructure as code is just saying that you can define it. Right? I think it's more about the resources that are in a particular definition that require that. My former colleague, Aaron Camera says, "Serverless means every developer is an architect" because you're not in that situation where the code you write goes onto something, you write the whole thing. Right?And so you do need to have those ... You do need to be an infrastructure wizard whether you're given the tools to do that and the education to do that, right? Not always, like if you're lucky. And the self-perception is again an even different thing, right? Especially if coders think that there's nothing to be learned ... If programmers, software developers, think that there's nothing to be learned from the folks who traditionally define the infrastructure, which is Ops, right? They think, "Those people have nothing to teach me because now I can do all the things that they did." Well, you can create the things that they created and it does not mean that you're as good at it ...Jeremy: Or responsible for monitoring it too. Right.Ben: ... and have the ... Right. The monitoring, the experience of saying these are the things that will come back to bite you that are obvious, right? This is how much ownership you're getting into. There's very much a long-standing problem there of devaluing Ops as a function and as a career. And for my money when I look at serverless, I think serverless is also making the software development easier because there's so much less software you need to write. You need to write less software that deals with the hard parts of these architectures, the scaling, the distributed computing problems.You still have this, your big computing problems, but you're considering them functionally rather than coding things that address them, right? And so I see a lot of operations folks who come into serverless learn or learn a new programming language or just upscale, right? They're writing Python scripts to control stuff and then they learn more about Python to be able to do software development in it. And then they bring all of that Ops experience and expertise into it and look at something and say, "Oh, I'd much rather have step functions here than something where I'm running code for it because I know how much my script break and those kinds of things when an API changes or ... I have to update it or whatever it is."And I think that's something that Tom McLaughlin talks about having come from an outside ground into serverless. And so I think there's definitely a challenge there in both directions, right? That Ops needs to learn more about software development to be more engaged in that process. Software development does need to learn much more about infrastructure and is also at this risk of approaching it from, "I know the syntax, but not the semantics, sort of thing." Right? We can create ...Jeremy: Just because I can doesn't mean I should.Ben: ... an infrastructure. Yeah.Rebecca: So Ben, as we're looping around this conversation and coming back to this idea that software is people and that really software should enable you to focus on the things that do matter. I'm wondering if you can perhaps think of, as pristine as possible, an example of when you saw this working, maybe it was while you've been at iRobot or a project that you worked on your own outside of that, but this moment where you saw software really working as it should, and that how it enabled you or your team to focus on the things that matter. If there's a concrete example that you can give when you see it working really well and what that looks like.Ben: Yeah. I mean, iRobot is a great example of this having been the company without need for software that scaled to consumer electronics volumes, right? Roomba volumes. And needing to build a IOT cloud application to run connected Roombas and being able to do that without having to gain that expertise. So without having to build a team that could deal with auto-scaling fleets of servers, all of those things was able to build up completely serverlessly. And so skip an entire level of organizational expertise, because that's just not necessary to accomplish those tasks anymore.Rebecca: It sounds quite nice.Ben: It's really great.Jeremy: Well, I have one more question here that I think could probably end up ... We could talk about for another hour. So I will only throw it out there and maybe you can give me a quick answer on this, but I actually had another Twitter thread on this not too long ago that addressed this very, very problem. And this is the idea of the feedback cycle on these infrastructure as code tools where oftentimes to deploy infrastructure changes, I mean, it just takes time. In many cases things can run in parallel, but as you said, there's race conditions and things like that, that sometimes things have to be ... They just have to be synchronous. So is this something where there are ways where you see in the future these mutations to your infrastructure or things like that potentially happening faster to get a better feedback cycle, or do you think that's just something that we're going to have to deal with for a while?Ben: Yeah, I think it's definitely a very extensive topic. I think there's a few things. One is that the deployment cycle needs to get shortened. And part of that I think is splitting dev deployments from prod deployments. In prod it's okay for it to take 30 seconds, right? Or a minute or however long because that's at the end of a CI/CD pipeline, right? There's other things that are happening as part of that. Now, you don't want that to be hours or whatever it is. Right? But it's okay for that to be proper and to fully manage exactly what's going on in a principled manner.When you're doing for development, it would be okay to, for example, change the Lambda code without going through CloudFormation to change the Lambda code, right? And this is what an architect does, is there's a notion of a dirty deploy which just packages up. Now, if your resource graph has changed, you do need to deploy again. Right? But if the only thing that's changing is your code, sure, you can go and say, "Update function code," on that Lambda directly and that's faster.But calling it a dirty deploy is I think important because that is not something that you want to do in prod, right? You don't want there to be drift between what the infrastructure as code service understands, but then you go further than that and imagine there's no reason that you actually have to do this whole zip file process. You could be R sinking the code directly, or you could be operating over SSH on the code remotely, right? There's many different ways in which the loop from I have a change in my Lambda code to that Lambda having that change could be even shorter than that, right?And for me, that's what it's really about. I don't think that local mocking is the answer. You and Brian Rue were talking about this recently. I mean, I agree with both of you. So I think about it as I want unit tests of my business logic, but my business logic doesn't deal with AWS services. So I want to unit test something that says, "Okay, I'm performing this change in something and that's entirely within my custom code." Right? It's not touching other services. It doesn't mean that I actually need adapters, right? I could be dealing with the native formats that I'm getting back from a given service, but I'm not actually making calls out of the code. I'm mocking out, "Well, here's what the response would look like."And so I think that's definitely necessary in the unit testing sense of saying, "Is my business logic correct? I can do that locally. But then is the wiring all correct?" Is something that should only happen in the cloud. There's no reason to mock API gateway into Lambda locally in my mind. You should just be dealing with the Lambda side of it in your local unit tests rather than trying to set up this multiple thing. Another part of the story is, okay, so these deploys have to happen faster, right? And then how do we help set up those end-to-end test and give you observability into it? Right? X-Ray helps, but until X-Ray can sort through all the services that you might use in the serverless architecture, can deal with how does it work in my Lambda function when it's batching from Kinesis or SQS into my function?So multiple traces are now being handled by one invocation, right? These are problems that aren't solved yet. Until we get that kind of inspection, it's going to be hard for us to feel as good about cloud development. And again, this is where I feel sometimes there's more friction there, but there's bigger payoff. Is one of those things where again, fighting against your incentives which is not the place that you want to be.Jeremy: I'm going to stop you before you disagree with me anymore. No, just kidding! So, Rebecca, you have any final thoughts or questions for Ben?Rebecca: No. I just want to say to both of you and to everyone listening that I hope your today self is celebrating your yesterday-self right now.Jeremy: Perfect. Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining us and being a guinea pig as we said on this new format that we are trying. Excellent guinea pig. Excellent.Rebecca: An excellent human too but also great guinea pig.Jeremy: Right. Right. Pretty much so. So if people want to find out more about you, read some of the stuff you're doing and working on, how do they do that?Ben: I'm on Twitter. That's the primary place. I'm on LinkedIn, I don't post much there. And then I write articles that show up on Medium.Rebecca: And just so everyone knows your Twitter handle I'll say it out loud too. It's @ben11kehoe, K-E-H-O-E, ben11kehoe.Jeremy: Right. Perfect. All right. Well, we will put all that in the show notes and hopefully people will like this new format. And again, we'd love your feedback on this, things that you'd like us to do in the future, any ideas you have. And of course, make sure you reach out to Ben. He's an amazing resource for serverless. So again, thank you for everything you do, and thank you for being on the show.Ben: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. This was great.Rebecca: Good to see you. Thank you.

It's time for a fight to the death! Ben and Phil do the podcast's first ever movie swap: Each one picked a film that the other had to watch, no questions asked. Now it's time for each of them to review the other person's choice. The competitors? Phil chose Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a movie that is pretty much inexplicable. So Ben trying to explain it goes about as well as you'd guess. Phil is subjected to Ben's “favorite” movie ever, Attack the Block, a genre mash-up alien invasion nightmare. What happens when these films go head to head? Give us a listen to find out! Phil takes this week's WAYWA to discuss the versatility of Ewan McGregor and his role in the Netflix original miniseries Halston. Be sure to follow the podcast on Twitter @WEDIDNOTWATCHIT for episode drops, show news, and the most unique entertainment takes you've never heard!

See my notes here on DX Circle!Audio Source: https://a16z-live.simplecast.com/episodes/a16z-infra-1-2iEyBTf5a16z on InfraIntroductions and Backgrounds [00:00:00]Martin Casado: [00:00:00] So this is the a16z infrastructure show. This is actually the very first one.  Where are we going to be talking about infrastructure companies investing in them, building them products? It just turns out that we're three GPS at a16z, and we all have a lot of experience in info.Like all of our companies were infrastructure companies. We do a lot of infra investing. So the way that we're going to structure this session is first, we're going to introduce, our backgrounds in context of that. Many of you know, us, many of you have worked with us. But we do want to give you a sense our relationship with infrastructure and how we went through it.So we'll and we each go through our own kind of bios that way and I'll orchestrate that. Okay. Th then we're going to talk about why infrastructure is different. This isn't B2B, this is an enterprise, this isn't vertical SAS. It's specifically infrastructure. And it's my it's my favorite topic and my favorite area.So we'll go through that. We've got a lot of great questions on Twitter, and so we're going to try and get through those. And then if we still have time, then we'll open up to questions. Uh, for everybody else. So that's rough, we plan to have this every two weeks and we want to cover everything as things go, we want to cover category creation and we want to cover open-source and we want to cover the shifts and go to market and the cloud and investing and everything else.So we're going to go ahead and start with our intros and just, yeah, very quickly. So for the, if you don't know, so I'm Martine I'm a GPN Andreessen Horowitz, and. I actually want to start by introducing Ben actually having him introduce himself, but I want to let you know how I met Ben. So I was doing my PhD at Stanford in the networking space, and we spun out and we started a company called this Sera.This is the software defined networking space. And we started it right before. Like the great recession, the nuclear winter had set in and we were struggling. And one of our investors who was also on our board was Andy Rachleff, who was actually a professor at Stanford at the time, but he's this super famous investor from benchmark.And we were at the, we were at the bottom of the recession and we're like, we had a professor as a CEO and he needed a new CEO and we were talking with Andy Rachleff and we're like, who would be the best person on earth? It's well, there's this guy that just sold the company to HP.And his name is Ben. And I had never heard of him at the time. And and we should talk to him. So this I, this was in 2008, so I got introduced in the band and he came in, of course, Ben's you have so insightful and he'd just done it. Like he just built a company at the same thing. And uh, so I asked Ben if he would be our CEO, actually.Ben, do you remember what you said in response to that? I don't. I don't. I said, no, you said I'm too rich.You're like to be CEO of a company like this. You gotta be piped in. And so instead, however, Ben and Mark invested Ben ended up joining the board. And so much of what I've learned has been with Ben. And so I thought it'd be great if Ben, most of you know him, but it'd be great if he just gave you a quick rundown of kind of his background with respect to infrastructure that we'll move on to David.So Ben, if you wouldn't mind. Ben Horowitz: [00:02:36] Yeah. Sure. And that, that did bring that a, man's got to know his limitations. If you know how hard a job is if you're going to give somebody a really, really hard, nearly impossible job, it's it really helps if they're not rich, I have to say, yeah, that's a good hiring tip as well.At some point, rich people are just like, this is too hard. I'm going to the Martin Casado: [00:02:54] beach. Things we learned multiple times, I think, in, in our Ben Horowitz: [00:02:57] careers. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah kinda my career, actually, my, probably my career in infrastructure, I started way back when I was an engineer at Silicon graphics and kind of the first.I was working on, we were, we had to put, we had an operating system called IRX or truss Unix-based and we were the first we had built the, the original multiprocessor machines. And so there was this task of having to. Put semaphores on all the Colonel processes and so forth so that they went collide and you wouldn't have all these weird race conditions, which was I would say probably the most complicated engineering job I ever had, but.Eventually then eventually went to a company called Netscape where I was in charge of kind of the web servers and then we needed a directory kind of project. And so we that's where we. I got the idea to  popularize LDAP and kind of make up the directory standard.And that was like my big infrastructure thing there. And then Mark and I founded a company called LoudCloud, which was one of the first or the original kind of cloud computing company started much too early. Ironically, because there wasn't enough infrastructure like principally, there was no virtualization, for example.And so you couldn't really do cloud computing in that way, but the tools that we had so we transformed that company into a company called Opsware and that's the one that I sell to HP, which made me to to rich, to take Martine stock. Martin Casado: [00:04:21] And since joining Andreesen, you've done a lot of infra investing actually so comfortable.It'd be great to just go through that a bit. Ben Horowitz: [00:04:28] Yeah, sure. Made a bunch of introduced structure investments. The first  investment I've made is on a company called Okta, which was very familiar to me from my directory days. And more recently I've invested in a company called Databricks.And then, most recently one called any scale and Databricks is infrastructure for AI and big data. And any scale is a new way to, how do you get the kind of processing power that you need, at the growth rate that you need. Now that Moore's law is definitely not going fast enough to support the hunger of AI and it can turn it can basically Make the cloud look like your laptop and make it very easy to program in parallel.Martin Casado: [00:05:10] Awesome. All right. Cool. So I was one of Ben's investments. He joined, we were definitely for a journalist Sarah networks. I was gonna say there was another one, sorry about that. Yeah we so very honestly I learned so much of what I know by having been on my board.We ended up selling the company to VMware where I ran that business. And when I left, there was about a $600 million business and end to end, that was about an 11 year journey. And then I joined Andreessen Horowitz where I also focus on core infrastructure. And as part of that, I'd always heard of DaveBut I met him and I don't know if you ever have these moments where you're like, I dunno, you meet someone new and it's like talking to a long lost brother, but I feel like he's lived this parallel life to me as far as the company he's built and what he's done. And so super happy he was able to join as well.And do you, if you're cool with it, it'd be great to get your personal journey through infra just to set the stage before we actually dive in. Sure, sure. David Ulevitch: [00:06:03] And this is great. This is a favorite topic. So. I was one of those people probably like you Martina and who fell into infrastructure early in my computing career.And I had an internship at a mom and pop ISP in Sydney, Diego because I had demanded to our family that we get real internet. Not like AOL or prodigy much to the dismay. I think of my sister because all her friends were, her prints were on like AOL, but when I wanted internet, so we got that. And then I was able to get an internship in eighth grade at this company and learned all about this.This is a company that's run on Sonos and later on a Solaris, which are just a slightly marginally better than IRX that Ben was talking about. But only marginally and So I learned all about routing and networking and Unix, and started my career as a mediocre or programmer there. It was great to understand how appearing works and how the internet worked.And I really, at that point fell in love with the internet and how it cross borders and how, you had this asymmetric opportunity to either write code or do something that could reach a whole bunch of people. And then there was sort of one technology in particular that I fell in love with, which was the DNS or the domain name system.And I started buying domain names. I would eventually went off to to college and built a domain name management sort of service because I started to own a bunch of domain names and all these other tech people started to use my free service. And we had the founder of Rackspace using my service.We had distinguished engineers at sun and chief scientist at Microsoft. And at that point we became big enough that we needed to build a network. And so I started to learn about things like any CAS networking and how the internet really started to come together from a commercial standpoint. And we got Rackspace that data centers, things you don't have to do any more.Cause we have AWS and GCP and Azure, but we started to build out a global network. We got IP addresses allocated to us, and I really had an incredible experience learning how to scale up and infrastructure. And that eventually paved the way to building a company called open DNS, which was a cybersecurity company that started out.As a consumer company to give people a faster and safer and better internet experience. Many, many millions of people wanted that none of those people wanted to pay for it. They'd rather go buy a cup of Starbucks once a month, instead of paying me three or four bucks a month for a better internet and safer internet.But it turned out a lot of businesses were using our product and the timing, this was We started the company at the end of 2005. And so by the 2007, 2008, the iPhone was out. People were bringing all kinds of wireless devices into the office devices, you couldn't install traditional end point security onto.And so a lot of it administrators were using open DNS to provide better protection as a network service, without having to install endpoint software, because we were delivering all of our security as a service using the DNS. And that was a novel innovation that we had. We'd come up with.And so all these businesses were using it. None of them were paying us and we needed to make money. And so in 2009, we went through a major transition to becoming an enterprise cyber security company and starting with all those millions of free users, eventually figuring out what two ones are businesses.And we'll talk about some of that today, but it started to go down that sort for enterprise, go to market and. That's what ended up becoming a decent sized enterprise cybersecurity company. We sold to Cisco. And like you said, we were you and I have a very mirrored career path. And in some ways I went on to run the security business at Cisco, which was a great experience working with really great people.We had about 240,000 customers. It was really an exciting opportunity to both operate and lead at scale, we did a bunch of acquisitions and I was very happy after three and a half years in Cisco to to get a call from someone that people that know a16z well know, Jeff stump is on our team here and talk to him and Ben and you, and a whole bunch of folks.And they've been here ever since now. It's two and a half years, and I invest in enterprise software, but a little bit of, a little bit of the infrastructure stuff. I think the one investment that we've announced in this space is is census, which sort of operated the, at the data layer. We can talk about that later.What is Infra? [00:09:51]Martin Casado: [00:09:51] So I think maybe for starters, especially since we've got a very varied audience, it's probably good to cover, like what infrastructure actually is. So what do we mean by infra? Why is it exciting? Why does it make sense to actually have a separate, talk around in for us?It for traditionally has meant that the stuff that apps are dealt on. And so it, traditionally has been compute network storage. These days is everything from dev tools to security, to API APIs. But think about it is the underlying layers that we use to, to build modern compute apps.And, it actually is quite different. Like companies and infra are, tend to be quite different than other, and that, they tend to be like quite technical. They tend to be horizontal. They they tend to have, complex insertions. They tend to be the product of. Real tactical work.They tend to be a little disconnected from business users. And so if you look at an infrastructure company, they often look quite different than, a typical app company. But they've really had a moment in the last couple of years. If you heard names like Okta and snowflake and GitHub and Databricks and do on MuleSoft and Datadog, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, these are all core infrastructure companies.Will Infra Ever Be Over? [00:10:56]And so I think, actually, it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts. Ben and David, which is, it's always been these underlying. The underlying technology, but you always have to wonder is is the day of infra ever over like steel? Are we ever done, like building like the concrete and like the rebar and whatever, and it's just about apps or is it going to continue to be a growth area?Because this year, last year just been phenomenal for infra. And if you have any opinions on that, it would be fun to talk through it. Ben Horowitz: [00:11:20] I think we're very far away from Infrastructure being over and it being done. And what happens is the needs of the applications change.And then the infrastructure has to change. The kind of, one of the first big shifts in our careers in infrastructure was the shift to cloud computing, which completely changed the requirement. As one of the brilliant things about Nycira networks is that networking got completely, just got devastated in terms of all of its architectural flaws. Once you move into the cloud environment. And, we used to talk about, okay, East West traffic versus North South traffic and. You know what Cisco could do and what kind of and so forth. And then, but that happened at every layer in the stack, storage was broken, the operating systems were broken every kind of piece of infrastructure wasn't built for that kind of an architecture.And so it has to be completely rebuilt and, and then as, things have scaled, then things have to be upgraded, on, on the other side, as we move from just procedural programming so AI, and now we're, the data is the program. There needs to be a whole tool chain to support that.And then, a lot of people are going, Oh, wow. Like this NFT thing is an amazing craze and it seems like it popped up overnight. But the, those of us who are infrastructure, people know that this thing has been, decentralized computing. And, trustless state, across machines is something that's been worked on since 2009.And and the first kind of cut at NFTs for things like crypto kitties blew up the infrastructure, so the infrastructure needed to be revamped. And so anytime there's a new important application need, I think, it ends up causing an evolution of the infrastructure. And that evolution of the infrastructure is, maybe the best thing to look at.If you're trying to understand. Stan what's going to happen in the future because, like I say, a lot of people are like shocked and amazed by NFTs and they just think it's some wackadoo thing. But, for those of us who have been like an infrastructure where Oh yeah, this is coming and we're surprised it took this long.And now that it's here, we know exactly what it is. So it's a a great way to fortune tell what's going to happen in apps world as well. Martin Casado: [00:13:32] Yeah. Yeah. I was, I always find it interesting to walk through like the major trends that we track and infra, particularly with respect to this, because it just drags on so much behind it, an early, I think an early lesson that I learned building an infra company as.It just seems like lower layers of the stack never go away, but there's always something that you build on top of them. And so it's almost like we're just gaining in complexity over time. And so I want to talk to a few of the trends that we track at a 16 Z and then, and then David, as I end up, it'd be great.Trends - Data [00:13:59]If you want to add any of them, but it'll just give you a sense of the disruptive power of infrastructure, how big the markets are, and how it, it opens up future potentials for say what's companies or investment. One of them, this is going to sound like a cliche.But but it, I, there is a lot deep there and that is that as data. And what do we mean by data? Data is just so central to how we build businesses, right? And again, like this is one of these cliches, which everybody has been saying. It we've been saying it for 20 years, but like we have these massive proof points recently of, large companies, large startups, snowflake Databricks, for example that are centered around data, but then applications and.And all of in front of is really to empower applications of using data for differentiation. In fact, actually, if you look at the application space, you're like okay, like what differs like three different SAS? Those let's look at three different, like whatever, three different SAS apps say that they're consumer apps.And you're like, okay, to build one of those things, Yeah, you have to understand distributed systems, but we know that yeah, you have to build a big cloud service. You have to know that, like these things are hard things to do. But they're pretty well understood, but to actually do good personalization and actually to do good prediction, to actually use data in a way that's differentiated, that's almost where a lot of the battle has moved to.And as a result, we're seeing this kind of explosion  of companies and tooling around data. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to enable those that are building SAS apps, the ability to to do, whatever on the business side they're wanting to do with kind of higher accuracy, whether this is wait time prediction, whether this is personalization, but this is pricing, whether this is fraud detection.And so from an investor standpoint, there's probably too many companies to track and you always have seems an infrastructure. You've got these kinds of explosions and then these contractions, right? Like you see an explosion of apps. Companies, and then they consolidate, we're seeing an explosion of data companies and they're going to consolidate.So if you look at data as as a market segment, it's growing about twice as fast, the cagar is the rest of infrastructure. So it's a major area, it's a major area of focus and investment. And again, you've got dozens of companies that underlie it. So that's one trend that we're very focused on.Trend - SaaS [00:15:59] Another trend that's quite interesting is, when David Ben and I got into the game decades ago, like software companies were actually software companies. Like they shipped software that's where I cut my teeth. There's you'd write code and you'd ship it. And you built companies around that.Like you built companies around having releases and getting them out and being able to debug remotely and supporting, complex HCLs Hardware compatibility lists. It's in different environments. And that was really what the companies looked like. These days it's very tough actually to find Harbor company or sorry, shipping software companies, almost every company is becoming basically a SAS company or an operations company.And it's just a very. Different type of company, right? The way that you write software, the way that you support the software. It all is becoming operations and there's huge impacts to infrastructure because rather than having something that I can give to somebody else, that's easy to debug and run.The question is how can I have high up times internally? And listen, we've seen massive increase in, or like changes in personnel. Like for example, SREs now are very much in demand. There's change in the programming style to do this change in development methodology, changing in the tool set and so forth.So this is also another kind of cross vertical area. That's very interesting. Do you mean be, want to talk a little bit about the pro-sumer ization of infrastructure or bottom up, because that's an area that you focus on quite a bit.Trends - Security Analytics, Billing, Metering [00:17:14]David Ulevitch: [00:17:14] Yeah, actually I was thinking, as I'm listening to you talk about these things, I was thinking that, all of these trends are talking about have the.These massive derivative sort of downstream effects, right? So when people talk about the massive amounts of data, that creates opportunities, not just for the storage companies and the database companies, but then it creates new opportunities for the analytics companies. It creates a new surface area for security companies to focus on data privacy and data governance and all this regulatory controls around data.And that all of those standalone, all of those derivatives, sorry. Sort of our categories of their own. When you talk about every company is becoming a SAS company and we don't ship perpetual license software anymore. One of the things I think you and I have heard over and over again, especially when we talk to infrastructure companies and I'm sure Ben sees this as well, is that all these companies are now dealing with major issues around billing and metering of their customers.And, AWS may have a major metering solution for being able to do billing and metering. But all of the SAS companies building on top of these platforms have almost nothing, right? There's, they're older tools around subscription billing, but not a lot around usage based billing. I'm sure companies like Twilio have had to build their own.Then, you mentioned the SREs and all this operational sophistication that companies need that creates whole new opportunities around management tools. Around, across cloud and private cloud sort of management tools that people need. And so all these major trends end up coming up with all these derivatives categories that ended up getting created that are brand new surface areas for new companies to be made.And many of them are just very large, even on their own. That's what I was thinking about as you were. Martin Casado: [00:18:46] I do think it's worth it. And just a moment, we'll get more in kind of the weeds and questions that are, I know, on, on many folks minds, things like, open source and so forth.Trends - Prosumerization of Tech [00:18:55]But I do think it's worth talking through what makes it infrastructure companies. Different like how we look at it on David Ulevitch: [00:19:02] the, on the bottom, on the bottoms up point, you were asking about, developers have way more power and control than they've ever had before in terms of the buying decisions of technology, especially for technology companies.And that has changed. I think the entire go to market for infrastructure companies. You're no longer a sales person reaching out to a CIO to arrange a golf game, to talk about. While your database is better or why your data center is better. Like all those days are gone. Now you're basically doing content marketing to get somebody excited about the technology that you've created.The developer is just going to download it. Maybe it's open source at the heart of it. They're going to download it and play with it. Or they're going to set up an account and start using it right away. They have to have time to value that's measured in minutes or hours. And then eventually you're going to start tracking all the analytics and data of how people use it.And that then eventually feeds over to a sales person who tries to go create a much larger opportunity, but that transformation has been, I think a, not a major shift in how every infrastructure company has ever gone to market before compared to how they're going to market today.And it's been a major re-imagining of even the stack and how sales teams and marketing teams come together inside of infrastructure companies. Martin Casado: [00:20:12] One thing that's super, I think maybe unique to infrastructure, which is you almost have this weird barbell construction with the team, which is most infrastructure companies require a kind of a deep understanding of the market or technology, right?Like you had to understand DNS, Ben had to understand the cloud. I had to understand the networking. And so the people that do it tend to be the, tend to be, technical founders, very focused on that. But at the same time at the same time, there's like actually tends to be a much more difficult go to market as well.Just because, often you're selling something that's low level, that's relatively technical. Normally you're actually somewhat removed from the business, value. You're like, yes, I get the case of software defined networking, yeah. makes things operationally more flexible or like whatever it is.It's very difficult to actually tie that to our revenue. And so I think one of the things that's tough about being a founder for an infrastructure and even an investor is you do need someone that, both has to be very good at go to market and has to be very good at tech and product.And and we see this in a lot of the founders and then everybody up here, and I don't know, Ben, I don't want to put you too much on the spot, but you saw, like my evidence. So I just, I just look how naive I was early on. I was just so tech focused and later I just had to learn, go to market and it took about 10 years and this and that.And I'm just wondering do you have any thoughts about how you bridge that gap either as a founder or as a board, or, how do you think through that? Because I think it is probably the broadest gap between technology and go to market in the industry. Ben Horowitz: [00:21:37] Yeah, that's a great lead up. I would say, one, it varies a little, so it depends where in the infrastructure stack you are. So in a Sarah was, I would say the worst case scenario in terms of go to market challenge, because it was infrastructure that.Was basically at the bottom of the stack. So if something went wrong with Nicera, then you basically get fired as the customer. And that's always a tough place to start with a new company. You really have to be. Comprehensively good at product marketing sales, lead generation story.Every everything's gotta be exactly perfect to get that off. These days, just no matter how compelling your value proposition or how great your technology is that ends up being a thing. But it is always. I would say challenging because you are going, you're the underpinning and if your stuff doesn't work and if your company doesn't last and all the things that people have to trust about, you have to be in place and, Oh, by the way, if you ever, God forbid have some kind of breach, you'd just die right there.A lot of the things that I look at are, most of what I do with the infrastructure companies that I'm on the board on are focused on and, helping the founders, CEO get the right kind of partners, I would say on the kind of sales and marketing side To do that product.And I always assume that the founder doesn't quite know what they're doing. And like really one of my favorite stories on this was, Okta has got off to a very rough start because of this go to market problem. And what happened was, they had come from salesforce.com and salesforce.com had a very kind of specific go-to market idea, which worked for an app, which was, Hey, we have.One 10th, the features of CBO, the on-premise product. So we're not going to go sell to those guys. We'll sell the guys. They can't get to because it's too heavyweight. And so they start at the bottom of the market and they work their way up. So Octa tried that, but it turns out. Little companies don't care that much about their security infrastructure.So it was a terrible place to start. And so just, me, a lot of the things we worked on is, okay, not only are we selling to the wrong customer, but because we're selling to the wrong customer, we have the wrong channel. We have the wrong pricing. We have the wrong marketing, like everything is wrong and we have to make that shift.And of course, once they made the shift, they went from being a company that looked like it. Wasn't going to make it to a very successful company, just highlight how important, go to market ends up being usually what makes an infrastructure company succeed or fail. Yeah. It's Martin Casado: [00:24:08] it's just so you would hope that this is the challenge for those that have spent, whatever their schooling to learn business.So they understand all the challenges, but in France almost, primarily product and tech founders, right? Like David  like DNS, and it's interesting when you see I remember when I first met David I'm like, listen, this guy is like a head of sales, right? All he thinks about as good a marketer you've talked with Ali or any of.Any of these founders for these companies is just, such a big focus. And even like D David, th just to pull you in really quickly, I remember you're like the last three years I've been like a student of go to market. Like, how did I. Did you know, and now as you take board seats, for example and you work with, infrastructure founders do you feel tempted to drag them into, go to market or focus on product or, David Ulevitch: [00:24:51] yeah, I think I look, I think there's different phases of the company journey.And I think, that when I think about my own experience and then. The companies that we work with, and then we spend time with people. Basically you have the technical founder hat, which is you need to have a technology that works. That's really good. It's differentiated at solving a real problem.And it really, 10 X way to what the world looks like in me, to Ben's point about Salesforce. I may not do everything that the incumbent solution does, but it does something else just in a dramatically better fashion that, so you wear that technical hat and product hat and you build that, but then eventually.Every founder sort realized. I was like, just because you build it does not mean that the customers will come. And so I found that out in multiple painful ways, because every time you solve that problem, then you want to Uplevel your company. Then you have to resolve that problem. And so figuring out and spending time with customers and really putting on that sort of sales CEO, hat, I think is one of the best ways to actually become a great CEO.Because it means that you're listening to your customers. It means you're understanding exactly what the market is telling you. People always ask questions, like how should I price my product? What, how should I package it up? A lot of those questions actually get answered just by being in the market.And you, as a CEO of, I think of an infrastructure company, you can't outsource that. Like you can get help from your product team, from your product marketing team, but you actually can't outsource it. You have to be out there with your customers, especially if you're aspirational and who you want your customers to be.You can spend time with your current customers. That's great. But if you want bigger customers or you want a different segment of the customer base or a different vertical to go after, you have to get out of there. So I was spending, this is like the period of my life, where, and I think, Ben and Martina and lots of people that are listening can relate to this.You ended up getting the, United global services and you realize that's actually a status you'd never want to get, because it means just spending too much time Martin Casado: [00:26:34] on the road, seven years, seven years of golden services, man. David Ulevitch: [00:26:37] It feels really good when you first get it for cancer.Yeah. Ben Horowitz: [00:26:41] Yeah. That's a. It's very bad for your health. It turns out. David Ulevitch: [00:26:44] Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Ultimate Pyrrhic victory and, and but, so I really enjoyed the experience of getting out in front of customers and recognizing that the software and the services we had built in the infrastructure we had built to deliver that service.Was powering some of the biggest companies out there are some of the companies I respected the most. And so that, and then we're actually one of the most interesting things about that journey is you actually find out your whole company really loves that experience too. Like engineers that are working on really hard engineering problems, love finding out that, you went from having your biggest deal, be like a hundred thousand dollar.Annual deal to closing a customer, that's paying you now a million dollars a year. And like the satisfaction of knowing that, the code that you write and the services you've stood up are now I'm getting paid for in that way, because people are finding that value. Like I found that really satisfying and exhilarating, but the only way to go through that journey is I think to be as close to the customers as possible then brought up like, 500 really important threads.You talking, he mentioned channels. He mentioned pricing. Like all of these things are things that you just have to spend a lot of time on. And the worst part about all of them is that once you actually get one working and get it right, it's only going to work for a while and you create more Slack somewhere else in the system where you dedicate your attention, but then once you then go, tighten up the Slack somewhere else, you have to come back to pricing.You have to come back to packaging. We have to come back to your channels and distribution strategy. And that, that for the, the right kind of founders, I think is really an exciting part of the company building process. Deplatforming and Decentralization [00:28:13]Martin Casado: [00:28:13] Awesome. Okay. Let's I'm going to, so I think we should get a little bit into the nuts and bolts now.There's one topic I want to go too into David. I actually, so this, we've had an amazing few years in infrastructure. Like many of the top enterprise companies are like core and for companies, it's data it's, whatever, but Going forward. There's also a lot of opportunity, both in frontier tech.Like whether it's satellites, but we're also just seeing like the traditional players being blown up. And I know one that you've been focused on is listen. There's a lot that's going on with kind of regulation and compliance. And when you see companies taking political stands and you and I hit this and I helped run a CDN, many years ago.And. You ran a DNS server and this has always been an issue. But often when you try and deep platform, infrastructure is what reshapes to provide hosting. And so love your thoughts on the current environment and what that might mean to infrastructure.And those in this audience that are thinking about building infrastructure companies. Oh, yeah. We'll call David Ulevitch: [00:29:10] this a leading question, but I know, my views on this, so I'll share them widely, which is that, I think companies have a right to operate. They want the way they want to operate.But when I looked at what was happening, around the election, when AWS kicked parlor off their services, like I, and I say this about actually any opinion about parlor or, and, I guess I've only seen AWS do it. They want what it really is to me signaled, it was like, this is a great.Infrastructure opportunity because for a long time, I think people felt like the lower layers of the stack were fully baked. There's no room for innovation, Azure GCP, and AWS have cornered the market on standing up hosting and infrastructure and services at those low layers. But, if you're running a service like parlor and you can just get thrown off by one of those services that, you just get thrown off by the other two as well.Then all of a sudden. There's going to be people that are now like fully invigorated and have been now catalyzed in action to go re-imagine. How do you build truly like Bulletproof globally, distributed, decentralized hosting and infrastructure solutions. And we know that in the crypto world we're seeing this across a number of of the crypto initiatives to create file hosting, file distribution content distribution, and all of these things now are going to, I think, start to get a ton of R and D effort because one of the great things about the internet has been that it's been decentralized and, as these Cod platforms of urgent and offered a lot of flexibility, they've also now centralized a lot of that control that the internet used to de-centralized.And so I, I get excited about the idea that, maybe parlor, which, good writtens are not good writtens, but it may end up being the greatest catalyst to re-imagining infrastructure that we thought was done fully baked in that no room left for innovation. And I'm sure someone's going to start to tie together new pieces of new ways.And I'm excited for that. Ben Horowitz: [00:30:56] Yeah, and really interesting on that, parlor, there's a lot of things that would be very hard to run on a decentralized service right now. Like Netflix kind of comes to mind as something you would rather not try, but parlor could definitely work. So that is a, like a really interesting idea.Like parlor is something that you could probably decentralize right now Martin Casado: [00:31:16] for sure. I just love the info when this whole thing went down or just funny to see the different personas and yours is definitely like the, I think the infrastructure founder view, which is, this goes down and some people like, this is good, parlor's a bad thing.Others are like, Oh, this is council culture. This is terrible. This shouldn't happen at central ship. But my reaction was yours, which is this is totally a failure and infrastructure. That's right. David Ulevitch: [00:31:38] Yeah. And we know it can be done the pirate failures than online the parent days, like two decades now.And this is a site that has been legally shut down so many times. It's it's still on there. Totally. And we know what can be done, but it can be done better in a more scalable way. And in a more general purpose Martin Casado: [00:31:52] way. So my sensibilities were totally offended just because I'm like, how is it possible that you can actually shut something like this down?Whether it's politically the right or the wrong thing to do, I was less concerned with, it's just, when we ran a set CDN back in the early two thousands, there were these sites that like, Interpol would show up, every couple of months asking to take it down and whatever, and they would just pop up somewhere else going for, and so in this day and age, especially with crypto, the fact that you actually could cancel something means that like it's time to rethink.The stack not by the way, because of any political agenda, positive or negative. It's just like infrastructure is meant to be ubiquitous in everywhere. And this is just, I think either a failure of imagination on the case of partner, or maybe we've gotten to a place where infrastructure, isn't what it used to be.And that's David Ulevitch: [00:32:35] exactly right. That's exactly right. There's still room for innovation Open Source is becoming Irrelevant [00:32:38]Martin Casado: [00:32:38] Let's talk opensource. I actually, so I have a bit of a, I think I'm a contrarian position on opensource. Ben, it'd be great. If you could backstop me on this one or contradicting or contradictory. Sorry.Here's the thing. For those that are listening, what is open source? So open source has been around for quite a while. It's the idea that, if you're writing code, the code should be, visible for. For everybody so they can look whether it's, to modify it, to build a community around it, to make sure that, it's correct to to address bugs, et cetera. This is a massive movement and, there's just been a lot of, focus on open source as the way to build these businesses. Yeah I can't help, but think that actually opensource. Is actually becoming a little bit irrelevant and not for the reasons, people say meaning it's fine to build an open-source company and it's fine to have open source, but in the era of SAS, Whether it's infrastructure satisfied in the era of you're actually running a SAS service, it's not super clear the role that open-source plays.Certainly not as clear as it did say 10 years ago. So if I'm shipping you software, if that's my business model, I'm shipping you software open source is something that people can get and like download and run. And it's a great kind of go-to-market channel. You get, the actual users of the open source become your customers.But if I'm building a SAS service, even if I open source the actual functionality of it, there's so much of the operations, which is actually really hard about this stuff, that is an open source, right? If you think about AWS as an open source, there's nothing open source about it. Get hub, isn't open source snowflake, isn't open source, but these are these kind of developer focused companies that are all very huge, that, and we had this question on Twitter and I think it's a great question. Like where does the source fit? It yeah. Going forward. I actually think, listen it's still like what it used to be. However I do think it's it's diminishing and relevance because the consumption model is becoming a service and listen, David, I know you've got an opinion on this.Would love to hear that. And Ben would love to hear yours as well. David Ulevitch: [00:34:28] I'll just say mine really quickly. Cause I, my view that people are conflating multiple things here, which is, I always view SaaS as basically a way of outsourcing IT. And so when you sign up for a SaaS service, you're effectively saying, I don't want to pay somebody inside my IT organization to run something, on-prem manage it, install patches and updates.And so it's a little bit orthogonal and I agree with you that. People are paying for SaaS, whether it's open-source underneath the hood or not, they're not paying for open-source, they're paying for it basically to not have to pay to manage something themselves. And in fact, they often pay a premium for that.I think the open source angle is often I'd go to marketing. What's a marketing way to get to build awareness to give people competence in your product. But I don't think that open source. Component isn't important at all. Like I'm agreeing with you, but it's really because of the framing to me is about outsourcing it.Not about whether they're paying for software or not paying Martin Casado: [00:35:22] for something. It's just, I've just felt like there's so much industry focused on open source. And this, I have a long personal history with open source, I've funded it, I've worked on it. I think it's fantastic. It's transformed the industry.It will continue, but if you look at a new company in the infrastructure space, It's most likely they're going to monetize with a SAS service. Not all the case and if that's the case, it's just not super clear how relevant open-source it's like you can have it and it's great. And yeah, it's great from maybe a marketing community standpoint, but it's not clear to me that going forward, like this is the thing to rotate on.Ben, did you have a comment?  Ben Horowitz: [00:35:51] it's funny when you think about the history of it, right? Because the thing that made open source destroy. Closed source were these big internet services because if you were running Facebook or Google, there's no way you can take a closed source piece of infrastructure and build Facebook on it.Because if there is a bug it's way, way, not okay to be dependent on some software company to patch it and ship it to you. That's just too long, a low. And so that moved everything to the thing that made everything open source was running these big services. But when the open source became services, Themselves then the kind of value of the open source went away.And I agree with David, it became a marketing tool. It actually is. Weirdly analogy is like an industry where, but when it went to streaming, then, the song is almost more of a marketing thing for building the brand of the artist than a way to make money. And. In a way open source is more, just a branding thing for the company and not how they make money.They make money on the service. Martin Casado: [00:36:54] Yeah. I mean it just, for everybody listening, we love open source. We're huge fans of it. I'm on the board of maybe seven open-source companies and they're all great. It's just, we used to hand ring as founders and investors so much about, Oh, can you do open source and still monetize it?And we just don't worry about that anymore. If you have an open-source company, great. Don't worry about monetizing it because we know you're going to most likely monetize as a, a SAS offering. And that just doesn't count isn't cannibalized because nobody wants to operate their own infrastructure.Infra Company Margins [00:37:22]So I actually want to take this moment to dovetail a little bit into another question on Twitter. Which is another thing that we actually obsess about a lot, which is the margin question. So yeah, I feel like so many of the, so many of the the way to think about software companies, the unit economics came from the days of like shippable software, right?You're like, Oh, 80% margins. Cause you ship it and people run it. But more and more in particularly for infrastructure, like we've mentioned. Like the companies are monetized as services. I think AWS, or whatever platform, any scale Databricks. And the thing about, a service, especially in infra is, the Mo the margin structure actually can start to matter.We've been doing this internal study, hopefully it'll turn into a blog post soon, but it's interesting if you take a an average. SAS company that's built on top of the cloud. The amount of contribution that cloud has to margin to the actual cogs is significant, right? It can be like double points of margin.And as long as the company is growing, that doesn't really matter. Especially in this macro economic time or debts, basically free, like these companies that get these great valuations cause they're growing very well. But while they're doing that, whether they're taking on VC funding or. Or whatever, they're writing all of this unoptimized code, that's running on these clouds.And then let's assume that at some point in time, the growth slows down then margin really starts to matter. And if you've got multiple points of margin, Like the impact to the market cap of the company is significant. So let's say you've got a $20 billion company that's doing this.The difference in 10 points of margin could be, billions of dollars in market cap. And when, and then, so you hit these very interesting situations where it totally made sense to use the public cloud early on hundred percent because you're growing very quickly. Then let's say, you saturate your market and you go public or whatever, then you slow down.Then all of a sudden, like it's hard to pay that margin tax. And then when you have actually pretty good arguments for repatriating like Dropbox, did you basically say, listen, it will never make sense from a cashflow perspective to build a data center, but this is probably 10 billion of dollars of market cap that we can save.Oh, sorry. I'm just, David wants to do a question. Oh yeah. So maybe, yeah. Yeah. So let me explain a little better. What I mean by this, which is if you're offering a SAS service. And let's say you're running it on AWS or you're running on the cloud. And let's assume that you're doing some level of compute while you're doing it.Like you're paying AWS. So you actually have a co like a cogs cost, like a cost of goods. So to bring on a new customer, it's expensive. On your AWS bill, for example, that hits your balance sheet as margins. And when you're a growth company, when you're invested like, by David or Ben or myself and your invest, when you're being investigated by a VC, you don't really worry about that as much because you're growing very fast and you're mostly valued on growth, but as soon as growth slows.It really matters and there's probably, tens of billions of dollars right now, trapped in kind of cloud margins. It's something that we're very focused on. And so I don't think that we fully rationalized how much margins are going to play a role going forward, but you have to believe with all these SAS companies, IPO, knowing that there's going to be a reckoning and Ben, I know, you've been watching the data space as well.There's been a lot of discussions around margin. I'm wondering if you think is there a big reckoning coming where this has to be reconciled? Can we just grow forever? Is this like a non-issue. Ben Horowitz: [00:40:34] I think that, it's funny, the data space is a little bit special with regards to your ability to get out of the monster clouds because of the data gravity problem in that let's say you're an analytics company, you have to be proximate to the data because the thing that's more expensive than the regular, storage and compute is bandwidth.And specifically been with. Out of the cloud. So if you are an analytics tool and you have your own data center and you're talking to say Databricks or snowflake or Redshift and another cloud that's going to be a very expensive proposition for your customers to move that data across. Whereas moving data within a cloud of course is nothing.So I think that's a special case, but I do think that. On the other hand for things that don't necessarily interact with a lot of other kind of components in the cloud yeah, like it's real, it is a gigantic amount of money at scale. So I do think that's going to. FIA thing for certain companies.Here's Martin Casado: [00:41:30] this thing I'm just kidding, just from an industry standpoint. And here's what I'm curious on. We're in this very special macro economic time where debt is very cheap, right? And the public markets are valuing. Companies based on growth. And then of course, on the private markets, we value companies a lot on growth because it's so hard to even calculate margin.It's just so early, and they're just mature. And so let's assume that there's this whole cohort of companies in the last five years that are funded by VCs. They get to scale, they go public, they all have great growth and then they start to slow down and then you find that.There's you know, 10 points of margin plus captured, by the cloud, this could be hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap, I just wonder if there's going to be a reckoning here. And does that mean that we're going to see a layer that optimizes that? Are we going to see repatriation or, it's a very open question in my mind.Ben Horowitz: [00:42:21] And so what is the thing that causes debt not to be cheapest? Also, that's a macroeconomic question. These countries are printing money, like crazy good. It would basically destroy the country to raise interest rates now. It's a very. Dangerous given how much money we owe, but Martin Casado: [00:42:39] I feel so much, it's an odd thing to say, but I feel so much of the current state of infrastructure is being dictated by exactly this, which is, it's a weird thing.It's basically yeah. We're printing money. And a lot of it's going to AWS because we don't care about margins. That's basically the collection of it because we're just focused on growth. Uh, but if the growth slows and or infrastructure interest rates go up, I do feel we're going to have Like a significant portion of the economy is going to be trapped in this layer.And I think it's very interesting to see whether, we can dig our way out of it. Are we going to see optimization companies? Are we going to see repatriation? This is going to blow up infrastructure yet again. I don't really know the answer. David Ulevitch: [00:43:14] I don't know the answer either, Martin. One thing I think people underestimate is that there is a level of competition in the infrastructure space and people forget that pretty, but it's easy. It's easy to actually remember it when you need to. So I think most of us who are on boards have gotten an email at one point or another from a company that we've invested in.It says, Hey, great news. We found out about these things called reserved instances. And all of a sudden we've lowered our Amazon bill by 25%. We're saving millions of dollars a month. And you're like, great. You figured this out now. It's fine. It's good. But the same thing happens when they say, wait a minute, we just got an incentive to move to Azure and we can save 30% on our bill.'cause like to use the Bezos quote, " your margin is my opportunity" that will eventually get used against all the major cloud players. And even the old school providers, like the Equinixes of the world are now starting to offer more and more sort of dynamic like services elastic like services.And I think that the margin issues and tends to solve as there's contraction in the market. And that people find ways, whether it's an overlay tools, the pride optimization, and as the virtualization to us continue to get better and better. You're just going to see more and more people be able to move more nimbly and that'll push pricing down.Martin Casado: [00:44:26] I think. I'm going to take the, I'm going to take the counterpoint on that, which I think is totally reasonable. A reasonable thing to say is it's not an issue right now. And once it becomes an issue, like we can move workloads around or optimize here's okay. Listen, you're all you all are hearing it now.Here's my prediction, which is there's so much money at stake. I think fractions of, a trillion dollars, right? So much money. If the macro economic environment changes that we're going to see a thermonuclear detonation on the cloud, it's just going to be like, Holy shit. We've got just, so much money in market cap trapped on this layer.And yes, we could do these 20% optimizations, but Oh, by the way, if I have a. Focused. If I built my own data center, for example, I can drop it by a factor of 10 and we're going to see just like the cloud kind of decimated PCs. I think there's a chance that we see it moving back. Who knows, but I do think we're talking of numbers of that size, right?David Ulevitch: [00:45:15] Yeah, but I'm okay with people building their own data centers. We, when you and I were having that discussion about parlor and infrastructure, I think that the more structure we have out there and the more choices, the better Martin Casado: [00:45:25] that was good, every section stays relevant.David Ulevitch: [00:45:27] There's a related point, Martine that in the discussion of sort of margin, which is that. Usually the cost of the company is incurring to run. Their service is not at all related to the way they price their offering. In fact, usually in the in fact, the best companies don't connect those things at all, because usually the customer has some axes of pricing that might be users or storage, but the actual cost of the service might be based on compute cycles or processes or something else.And th that's actually, I think where companies need to be a little bit more in tune with what their actual costs are and what the incremental cost of a customer is, and that they can certainly do independent of the macro environment. Martin Casado: [00:46:05] I dunno. I just think everybody talks about technical debt and we're like, Oh, it's bad  but like it's all fun and games until it's a $200 billion problem. And somebody looks like, literally somebody looks at the, like the U S economy. And it was like, Oh my God. Again, like some percentage of market cap is being owned by AWS or whatever.And then I think that people get very motivated to make big dramatic changes. And we'll just see. 

Connor started Respoke Collection less than a year ago. And as a print on demand business, it presents unique challenges and amazing opportunities. So Ben brought him on today to share how Printful powers his brand and what he's done to shift the dynamic from 1-time buyers to repeat customers that come back again and again.

New ASIC Regulations and How They Affect Forex TradersPodcast: #400: New ASIC Regulations and How They Affect Forex TradersIn this video:00:24 – I’m joined by Ben Clay from Blueberry Markets00:43 – Why are ASIC making these changes?01:43 – If you have more experience, will these levels change?03:12 – How does this affect Australian traders?04:00 – How will these changes affect non-Australian traders?05:35 – I’m looking for a new broker. Can I join Blueberry?06:11 – What should you look for in a good Forex broker?07:36 – Can a trader contact you directly?09:21 – A goal to help people succeedAndrew Mitchem:There are new changes coming from the Australian regulators affecting us as Forex traders. So let's discuss how that's going to change things with the Australian brokers. Let's get into it right now.Andrew Mitchem:Hi traders, Andrew Mitchem here at the Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 400.I’m joined by Ben Clay from Blueberry MarketsAndrew Mitchem:And today we're joined by Ben Clay from Blueberry Markets to discuss the upcoming changes through ASIC and how it's going to affect us as traders, whether we be in Australia or overseas. So Ben, welcome, great to have you here today.Ben Clay:Thank you, Andrew. Thanks very much.Why are ASIC making these changes?Andrew Mitchem:So Ben, we're here about these changes out of ASIC, so it's the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. So can you tell us how is this likely to affect us? And first of all, why are ASIC making these changes? What is it that they're doing and why are they doing it?Ben Clay:Sure. So essentially the changes are mainly to protect traders at the end of the day, especially new traders coming on board. There's a lot of new traders that come into brokers on one to 500 leverage, the maximum leverage that can be offered and that's just too much risk for someone who doesn't know anything about the Forex markets to be trading on. So these changes is to try and help new traders get a better understanding and trade on much lower leverage, which will be one to 30 for Forex pairs. So they can get an understanding of how the products works before jumping into higher leverage.Andrew Mitchem:Okay. So it's mainly about leverage and protecting some of those newer traders.Ben Clay:Absolutely.If you have more experience, will these levels change?Andrew Mitchem:That's one of the reasons. So does that mean that once someone understands risk and they've been through trading for a while, things can change, or is that leverage that you just mentioned pretty much set?Ben Clay:No, that's exactly right. So when a client has a bit of experience and has some trading history, they can actually become what's called a sophisticated trader. So there'll be some extra parameters that they have to go through, which we'll send out to our clients in the next month, but it will basically almost be a test to show that they understand the markets and that they clearly understand the risks of when it comes to Forex trading. Like myself, I trade on high leverage. It's just a way that I prefer to trade. So, me, myself, I would want to be listed as a sophisticated investor so I can have that as an option to trade on much higher leverage.Andrew Mitchem:Right. So it's about educating the client as well. So they're not just going in there gambling and throwing it all away, and then all goes wrong.Ben Clay:Exactly. That's exactly right.

(image credit: CWWally: http://www.threadless.com/@cwwally) “Tech In Religion” is a running series under the Technically Religious umbrella. In these episodes, we look at technology - be it a website, a phone app, or a gadget - that somehow deepens, strengthens, or improves our experience of or connection to our faith (our religious, moral, and/or ethical point of view). This is a tech review lovingly wrapped in a through-line about faith in general and our experience of faith in particular. The goal is to uncover and promote tech you (our audience) might not have heard about; or describe a use for tech you may know, but didn't think of using in connection with your religious experiences. In this episode, Leon Adato is joined by Yechiel Kalmenson and Ben Keen, along with a voice new to Technically Religious listeners: Jason Carrier. Listen or read the transcript below: intro (00:03):(music)leon (00:32):Welcome to our podcast, where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT, we're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways. We make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is technically religiousLeon Adato (00:53):Here on technically religious. We focus on how we work to make our religious lives compliment, or at least not conflict with our career in tech. But what about the way tech enhances our lives as people with a strong connection to our faith or lack thereof in our ongoing series Tech in Religion, we aim to do just that. In each episode, we'll highlight technological innovations that enhance, strengthen, and deepen our connections to our religious, moral or ethical point of view. I'm Leon, Adato, and opining with me today on the tech that helps us in our religious observances are, Yechiel Kalmenson.Yechiel Kalmenson (01:28):Hello again.Leon Adato (01:29):And Ben Keen.Ben Keen (01:30):Hello, everybody.Leon Adato (01:31):And Jason Carrier.Jason Carrier (01:33):Hey, thanks for having me.Leon Adato (01:34):All right. As we are want to do here at technically religious, we begin every episode with a bout of shameless self promotion, where everyone here can talk about whatever they're working on or whatever strikes your fancy. So Ben, how about you start us off? Who are you? What are you doing these days? And also it is required. Tell us your religious moral or ethical point of view.Ben Keen (01:56):Sure. Uh, my name is Ben Keen. I'm from, uh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I work for a large retailer as a senior systems administrator with a focus in monitoring, and monitoring, uh, engineering, uh, I'm on, the, uh, Instagrams and all that as the_Ben_Keen, you can also follow my, um, medical alert service dog at bolt_the_service_dog. Yes, that's a lot of underscores,Leon Adato (02:26):But the fact that your dog has an Instagram is justBen Keen (02:28):Absolutely, uh, more than Medical, uh, more followers, the better trying to get awareness out there for, uh, veterans and people that require, uh, the service of these medical service dogs, which is awesome. Um, from a faith-based, uh, point of view, I am, uh, I deem myself as a Christian. Um, more so a non-denominational Christian. I don't say a Methodist or whatever, even though I grew up, um, as a preacher's kid within the United Methodist church, I kind of, uh, take on, uh, the different views of different religions and combined to make for myself.Leon Adato (03:00):Wonderful. Well, welcome back to the show next up, uh, Jason, how about you go next.Jason Carrier (03:06):Sure thing. So I'm Jason carrier. I'm uh, currently a product manager at SolarWinds. Uh, I have a real strong, uh, networking technology background and, uh, I also do some freelance on the side. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at network_carrier, uh, or my website, uh, bhodi.net, uh, B H O D i.net. And I consider myself a Buddhist, but just love studying philosophy in general.Leon Adato (03:29):Nice. Okay. Yechiel tell us about yourself.Yechiel Kalmenson (03:33):So, uh, I'm your Yechiel Kalmenson, uh, journeying out of New Jersey. I'm a engineer at VMware, excuse me. Uh, engineer at VMware, you can find me online, on the Twitters at yechielk. Or at my blog at rabbionrails.io, Or you can, uh, read my week. You can subscribe to my weekly newsletter or buy the book at Torahandtech.dev.Leon Adato (03:56):And you consider yourself to be?Yechiel Kalmenson (03:58):An Orthodox Jew.Leon Adato (03:59):Very good. Okay. And I had the fact that I had to prompt them on that is even better because I am Leon Adato. I am a head geek. Yes. That's actually my job title at SolarWinds. Also, uh, you can find me on the Twitters, which I say just to horrify Keith Townsend's daughter every time at Leon Adato. Uh, I also pontificate on things, both technical and religious at adattosystems.com and I to consider myself to be an Orthodox Jew. And every once in a while, my rabbi lets me say it out loud in public. So this episode is, this episode is a little different than some of the stuff that we do, because it's really just a tech review that is cunningly disguised as a religious discussion. Um, we're talking about the tech that helps enhance or deepen or strengthen our connection to our, whether it's a faith or our moral point of view or ethical point of view, that kind of thing. So, um, really what we're talking about are the things that help us to be full religious people in the world around us. And because we're it, people it's got to have a tech angle to it. So um, Jason, I'm going to pick on you first. What are some things that you use in the process of your day or faith that helped make it better?Jason Carrier (05:12):Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so in, in Buddhism for people that aren't aware, there's this concept of the three jewels, so a Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, it's like the three places that you can kind of seek refuge when you're having issues or, you know, just struggling with something. So, uh, Buddha's kind of the teacher Dharma is the teaching and then Sangha is the community, your, your kind of spiritual group. Um, so, uh, the technology that I use, uh, uh, for, for, uh, kind of, uh, connecting with myself, uh, I'm a big fan of a guided meditation. And when I'm doing that, I really like having, uh, something that sort of like noise canceling headphones. So it sort of closes out the outside world and, uh, during guided meditations, I've really found that I appreciate the ones that are using, uh, binaural beats. Is that something you're familiar with? I have not tell us about it. Yeah. So, uh, binaural beats is like different frequencies that sort of affect your psychological state in interesting ways. And when you combine that with guided meditation and using, uh, you know, noise canceling headphones, you can kind of almost, uh, force yourself into a certain, um, emotional state, uh, just by listening to these tones. And, you know, since Buddhism is really focused on that and, uh, kind of, uh, getting that inner sense of peace and calm and that kind of thing, I find it really helpful.Leon Adato (06:27):Nice. Do you have a particular brand? We are not sponsored by anybody, so we can say whatever the hell we want to do you have a particular brand that you, uh, you like or you've discovered?Jason Carrier (06:38):Um, so Sennheiser speakers work really well, but I tend to buy the Bose ones cause I'm a little pampered, I guess.Leon Adato (06:48):Okay. All right. Say, you know, put it out there. It's good. Okay. Fantastic. Anything else? oh.Jason Carrier (06:52):I'm a fan of Radical candor if you couldn't tell? Yeah,Leon Adato (06:55):Yeah, no, I like it. So, uh, anything else for the review this, this time?Jason Carrier (07:00):Um, let's see. I also really, uh, find that, uh, just having the internet in general is something, I can't imagine how difficult it would be as someone who's trying to practice Buddhism in America, if the internet didn't exist, you know, because getting access to Vedic writings and then getting the translations to those would not be possible if it weren't for the internet.Leon Adato (07:19):I, I'm thinking back to the Dr. Strange movie where he says, I speak fluent, Google translate. So that's, that's immediately the quote that comes to mind. Um, yes, it's amazing how people were religious before, you know, the internet was invented, like how did they do that? So, but, but yeah, no, no, it, it has opened up a lot of avenues and a lot of access for a lot of folks as far as that goes. All right. Um, anything else?Jason Carrier (07:45):Um, that would be the, the biggest one, I guess the last thing I would just mention is, uh, with, with connecting to people, I found that, that, social media is extremely helpful. Um, I kind of expand, personally, I expand the, the concept of sangha to, to include whoever I decide rather than just my Buddhist community. It's whoever I decide fits in that bucket, but that's just, uh, my personal practice, I guess.Ben Keen (08:07):That could be a dangerous game. My friend.Jason Carrier (08:10):Aha. It keeps things interesting. That's for sure.Leon Adato (08:12):Right. Okay, awesome. So, uh, Yechiel, uh, you're, you're up? What, what kinds of stuff do you have that help you out?Yechiel Kalmenson (08:18):Sure. So, um, the number one app that I never leave anywhere without, um, is of course the app that controls the giant space laser.Jason Carrier (08:30):That had to come up. Absolutely had to come up.Yechiel Kalmenson (08:32):Obviously can't leave home without it.Leon Adato (08:36):Right. Well mostly because then you wouldn't know where not to go, I mean.Yechiel Kalmenson (08:40):Well, duh. Yeah. You know, it's really mess up your day when you end up in the middle of the forest fire, just because, you know, you forgot to,.Leon Adato (08:47):You forgot. Right. You know, and it's, it's kind of awkward when it's like, you know, your father-in-law who said, Oh, you were going There, my bad, my bad. Yeah, no. I get it.Yechiel Kalmenson (08:56):Um, but Yeah, so on serious note. Um, yeah. And of course in Judaism we do where the people of the book, um, we do a lot, a lot of learning, um, and I'm on a number of daily schedules, you know? Um, I have, for example, every day, um, Jews go through the Torah on an annual cycle every week we read another portion. So, um, everyday I try to read like a seventh of that portion called an Aliyah. Um, so I got, I finished the Torah portion of the week by the week. Um, there's also, um, for example, the books of the Rambam by Maimonides I'm on an annual cycle to finish through them. Um, I try to finish through Psalms, the Tehillim, um, on a monthly cycle. So, and my commute is obviously, uh, well back when we had commutes in the olden days. Um, so that was like the natural time to, to get these things done. Um,Leon Adato (09:53):That's true.Yechiel Kalmenson (09:53):And then like in the olden days that would involve taking like six, seven books at least. But now of course I have it on my smartphone. Um, I have an app that keeps a number of those schedules for me. And then those that aren't, for example, the Psalms is on its own its own app just because I like having it has another functionality so yeah, I have a number of apps that, uh, keep, keep my schedules for me and help me go through them on my commute, which is a great use of my time. Um, another thing is, you know, Jews have a lot of, uh, things around the calendar. Uh, there's Jewish holidays, Jewish observances. So I have a Hebrew calendar on my phone. It's called HeabCal,Leon Adato (10:39):Yup.Yechiel Kalmenson (10:39):And it's great, It integrates with Google calendar. So I set that as my default app in any, as my default calendar and any appointment, I have anything, you know, I just enter it there and I automatically can see if it falls out, you know, if the company, uh, holiday party will conveniently fall out on Hanukkah and then I don't have to go,Leon Adato (10:58):Which we've talked about in a past episode. I wouldn't. Yeah. How to avoid the company Christmas party. Yeah. Tips and tricks.Yechiel Kalmenson (11:06):Yep. Um, so that's for Jewish counter in addition, um, also like on a day to day, um, there's a lot of things that, um, depend on the time of day, for example, different prayers have to be set at different times. So I have an app called My Zmanim, which means in Hebrew my times, um, which lists the Halachic times, depending on your location, uh, depending on where it's, when the sunrise sunset is in your location, it'll tell you, for example, when is the latest time to do the morning prayer, or when you can start doing the afternoon prayer, et cetera.Leon Adato (11:36):Right.Yechiel Kalmenson (11:38):And last but not least is, um, my compass, which I do not use for camping because I haven't been camping in two decades at least. Um, but Jews face, uh, Jerusalem when they, when we pray. So, um, in America, we generally, in the olden days, we used to just generally approximate it to East, um, which is generally the direction of Jerusalem, but now I'm the, you know, every smartphone can have a compass app and have a special Halachic compasses show you precisely where Jerusalem is. So that is very convenient and very cool as well.Leon Adato (12:15):Right. And, and just to, to clarify it, because it'll give you the choice of like, what, what direction is East or what direction is the shortest path allowing for the curvature of the earth towards Jerusalem?Ben Keen (12:27):wait the earth, wait wait, Earth is curved. Wait, what?Leon Adato (12:30):Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Uh, just a little bit of news in case you missed it BenYechiel Kalmenson (12:35):Yeah, Jews believe the earth is round. One of the weird quirks We haveLeon Adato (12:39):One of our stranger, well, it's also how weYechiel Kalmenson (12:42):Make our calculations for the space laser easier. So,Leon Adato (12:44):Thank you, Oh, you got there just before I did. Right. Um,Yechiel Kalmenson (12:48):Sorry.Leon Adato (12:48):Uh no, that's okay. And, uh, I will also say that HeabCal.com, which is the website that goes along with the heat Cal app is one of the first things I usually introduced to my non-Jewish friends when they're trying to figure out, like, can Leon work on this day? Or what? Like, what is it? It's a really accessible website that gives you a chance to understand, like when is sunset and, and what days matter, and things like that. It's, it's a pretty cool one. Um, all right. Uh, from our panel of experts, any questions or clarifications or anything you want to ask?Ben Keen (13:24):Not so much a question, but just, just one thing I would like to point out. Um, you know, Yechiel made an interesting comment about when we used to commute to work. You know, and obviously, you know, over the last year, uh, we've had to really augmentate how we, uh, how we do do things.Leon Adato (13:46):Uh huh.Ben Keen (13:46):And the one thing that I found interesting for myself anyway, is trying to find a new time to, to have that, whether it's meditation or time to read or time to listen, because you're right, like, you know, the commute 40 minutes, put a podcast on, drive down the road, get to your office. You're good. Uh, my commute now is 10 stairs.Leon Adato (14:07):Right.Ben Keen (14:07):From, you know, from my ground floor to my second floor. Not, not a good time, you know, not a lot of podcast listening time. So I think it's interesting how we've really started to take this new, uh, way of doing business and how, and finding our time for that. So the one question I would like to pose to Yechiel then is, you know, when, when is your time now? Like, you know, you lost your commute. So now when, when is your time, how are you making that work with everything?Yechiel Kalmenson (14:33):Yeah, so that was challenging. Um, in the beginning, I did indeed, um, fall, fall behind on a lot of my study schedules, um, before I managed to get back on the train, so to speak. Um, eventually I just, you know, work things out, you know, I've found other times that, you know, I rearranged my schedule and like now I do most of them, for example, in the evening, right after I finished putting the kids to bed. Um, some of it, I moved for example, to right after my morning prayers. So I'll just take a little longer on the prayers and I'll do my Tehillim, my Psalms at that time, for example. Um, but yeah, but you did bring an interesting point. Um, and that I used to my commute time was usually my unwind time. You know, I would finish work at 5, and I would get home at 6.Yechiel Kalmenson (15:16):And that hour was, you know, I didn't realize how crucial it was for my, wellbeing to, uh, unwind between the craziness of work and the craziness of supper and bedtime and, you know, putting the kids to sleep. So eventually I came up with an agreement with my wife where, um, I do take, I like about a half an hour after work, which I call my commute time. I just, you know, stay my office just wasting time doing whatever it is. And I still come home about a half an hour earlier than I used to in the pre days. So it works for everyone,Leon Adato (15:51):Right? I have heard lots of folks talk about that particular aspect. You know, that the, that the drive to work, the, the commute to work was a way where they were mentally ramping up, getting ready for the day running through their, You know, this is what I'm going to do today, or this is what I'm going to, you know, or just, you know, not everybody loves their job and just, you know, building up the, you know, the strength of the resolve that they need to get through whatever they're getting through. And then the same thing in the re, in the opposite, coming back. And, uh, one of the com, one of the comments that we got when we wrote a work from home guide at SolarWinds was, to still take your commute, to get up in the morning, get dressed, walk out the door, whether it was walk around the block, or walk up and down the street, or whatever it is, but leave to go to work and come back in the house.Leon Adato (16:44):But now you're at work. And at the end of the day to do the same thing in reverse that when you've, when you're done, you get up and you leave the house, you know, you leave the apartment house, you know, et cetera, and you go home. And then when you come home, that is, that is your transition. And I've heard from people that even though it is completely a trick that you're completely like, we, our brains are not, we're not stupid. We know we're not really leaving and we're not, but somehow that, that transitional aspect really does have an effect on us. Um, And it's,Yechiel Kalmenson (17:21):To be fair, our brains are stupid.Leon Adato (17:24):They're still a little meat sacks that can be fooled sometimes. That's true. So,Ben Keen (17:29):And I think, and I think a lot of that sorry to cut you off Leon, but I think a lot of that does circle around tech, you know, because as technical professionals or any, really any professional, but I'll speak from the tech, side of the house. Cause that's what I've been living for the last 20, some years of my life. You know, it's hard for me to turn things off. You know, we All we always carry these little pocket sized computers around, they call phones nowadays that we get emails and IMS and whatever, um,Leon Adato (17:59):yeah.Ben Keen (18:00):On them, you know, and what I, what I struggled with initially was trying to find time for myself, you know, whether it's to do faith-based activities, like read something or do whatever, or if it was just a simply breathe, you know, just kinda, you know, and, um, and I told my friends, like, you know, one of the things my wife and I were fortunate to do over the last few months, we actually bought our, we bought our first house together.Ben Keen (18:30):Hey, Ooh. Um, so.Leon Adato (18:32):Mazel Tov!Ben Keen (18:33):Yeah. Thank you. So the office I'm sitting in now is my dedicated office space. This is my domain, you know, and this is where, this is like my little happy space. My wife can decorate the rest of the house, do whatever she pretty much wants within reason. Um, but this is my little happy corner. And I told her like, you know, like this is where I'm comfortable. And, you know, I know it's not very techie, but at the same time, like when I'm going to do work, whether it's for my 9 to 5 paid job, or some of my, uh, you know, accidental techie, things that I find, you know, I think every person in tech finds themselves in amongst friends or an organization that we become their go to IT person. Right. Um, I don't do any of that outside of this room.Ben Keen (19:23):Like I won't take conference calls. I won't do this podcast outside of this room because this is my tech space. So I think it's really important for people to understand, you know, how you make those adjustments. And, you know, especially for someone that follows a very strict counter, like with my faith, I don't have, I don't have a set calendar. I dont have to pray by this time on this day, you know, like it's.Leon Adato (19:49):Right.Ben Keen (19:49):For me, it's wherever I am. I can pray right now. Like it doesn't really matter. Um, but it's interesting to hear how, how Yechiel has been going through that with his pretty stringent, uh, calendar and dates.Leon Adato (20:05):So it is, and again, part of this whole episode is the, you know, how we adapt things and also how we use, how we use technology to enhance that. Um, so I wanna, I want to continue with the Orthodox Jewish, uh, parade of tech. Uh, I have not been given access to the giant space laser, uh, yet, uh, my rabbi.Yechiel Kalmenson (20:29):You haven't been showing up to the meetings, obviously.Leon Adato (20:30):Well, no, my rabbi told me that it's the whole Sephardi thing. He's just very uncomfortable with, uh,Yechiel Kalmenson (20:36):You're right, you're right.Leon Adato (20:36):People who eat kitniout, having access to this space. Like this is a whole bunch of inside baseball jokes that like, you know, a 10th of the, of the listeners may get. So anyway, um, there are a couple of, of technical, uh, items that I did want to bring up for this episode. The first one is actually low tech. Um, one of the challenges that people in Judaism have, especially people who are maybe new to, uh, you know, deeper level of observance, is that before you eat anything, you have to say a blessing.Leon Adato (21:07):You know, the idea that if you don't say a blessing, you're, you know, you're stealing from the King that you're, you've, you snuck into the garden and you've grabbed this and you haven't said, thank you. So you want to say that, thank you. And there's a thank you that you say, but there's a blessing you say before you eat in a blessing, you say after you eat, but it depends on what kind of food it is. Is it bread? Is it bread like, but not really bread? Is it something that came from a tree? Is it something that came from the ground? Is it something that came from a repeatedly flowering bush? And so on and so on and so forth? There's a whole bunch of things. Like you'd think that bananas would be the tree blessing, but it's not because banana trees are actually bushes.Leon Adato (21:42):They're just really tall ones. So you have to say the bush, so it can get a little bit weird. And then sushi is the is the really the Widowmaker, like no one knows what blessing to say before sushi, because it's just everything. So anyway, there is, uh, a phone number, that you can text with the name of your food, and they will text you back. It's an automated system with the blessing you say, before you eat, and the blessing you say after it. So it's just a text system. You don't have to have the internet in your pocket. You don't have to, you just text. And, and it was something that obviously came up before smartphones were really a thing. Um, but I'm just, I'm tickled by it because it's such a, it is such a fundamental activity in a Jewish day, right? We eat. So we say blessings for the stuff that we eat, but it's also a point of deep confusion. You know, what do you say when you eat one piece of pizza, versus two pieces of pizza versus whatever, like these are the arguments and the debates that we have, and this text system arose to try to fill that gap.Jason Carrier (22:48):I'm curious how that would work on the other side. So is there a per, a person over there that's just waiting for these texts to come in and, you know, they have like a little prayer book and they're, you know, uh, figuring this out or is there a big database of all the different food items that have the prayers next to it?Leon Adato (23:02):That's it, it's, it is absolutely a technical system where it's a database and they're looking for keywords, and various misspellings, pizza with one Z, and so on. Um, because sometimes it's little kids, right? Like they're trying to do that. So, um, it's a whole database and then there's just, you know, the answers the answers are known. So it's not that hard. It's just that some people, again, sushi is the really hard one, but, you know, there's that, so that's the first one. And I just, again, I'm just tickled by it because it's so old and it's so old school, as far as it goes, the next one up is, um, safaria.org, which is another website. There's an app for it also, but this has pretty much every single religious text in that, you know, if you're Jewish, you would probably be interested in seeing most of the time with translations.Leon Adato (23:52):It's got the old Testament it's got, uh, Psalms, it's got, you know, uh, the, all the Prophets it's got commentaries, it's got, um, just a ton of stuff. And if you, if you get a login, which is free, but you can actually annotate it yourself to say, well, what about this? What about that? And you can actually bring your own notes into it as you're learning it, or, you know, going through it or have your question about it. So Safaria, again, the translations make it really useful. And the other thing is that it is copy paste able. So when you're having a discussion with somebody and someone says, well, where did you read that? Half the time the hard part is, well, I have it on a book on a shelf, and I don't know how to give it to you now, like, do I take a picture with my phone and send it to you?Leon Adato (24:37):What do I do? But you can actually copy paste it and put it in an email or put it in a teams message, or whatever, and have your discussion or your conversation or your interaction that way. So it's really useful. It's a not-for-profit organization that started up a few years ago and it's just gone gangbusters. So I really, I really am enjoying it. And the last one is, um, the com, the organization, the, the publisher called ArtScroll, um, also known as rabbi scroll. Arthur scroll, sorry. Another inside joke. Anyway, um, ArtScroll, uh, has an app specifically for the Talmud and for not a lot of money, you can get an entire tractate of Talmud. Um, there's a bunch of them. I don't remember. 36 37. I don't know. It's, I'm sure Yechiel knows, but there's a number of tractate, tractates of Talmud, and you can get one.Leon Adato (25:33):And what it does is it will translate it for you. It will highlight, uh, which parts of the, of the thing you're reading are questions, which are answers, which are rebuttals, which are because, sometimes the hardest part of Talmud is understanding whether someone is arguing, or just clarifying, or asking a question or debating, like, what are you, what are you saying here? That is where you get lost down the rabbit hole, and this uses some color coding. Uh, it will also for those people who don't read Hebrew so well, it will add vowels. Uh, I know that doesn't sound like something, but Hebrew is not typically written with vowels. So those of us who are new learners for Hebrew find ourselves stuck half the time, because I don't know what this is doing, because it's just, again, No vowels. So I'm really lost. Um, it'll add those things.Leon Adato (26:24):And the Talmud is a very non-linear text there's comments that refer to something that's three books ahead, or five books behind, or a half comment from a app, appendix that was over here. It's all interconnected. And the app makes those as hyperlinks so that if you read something and it's, it's referring to something, 4 books behind you tap it, and it will take you 4 books behind. So you can see what that reference is before you keep going. So it's a really, really useful app. And, um, you know, as you build your library of, of things that you've purchased, it just becomes even that much more useful. So those are, those are the three that I wanted to bring out, uh, for at least this episode of our conversation. And I will, once again, open it up. Any questions or comments about those?Yechiel Kalmenson (27:19):I will just add that I'm a huge fan of Safari as well. Um, like I think it revolutionized the way, um, it pretty much put a whole Jewish library in your pocket, and it's just amazing. Like, my dad works in a publishing, like a, in a publishing house and his job is to add the footnotes, um, like Talmudic texts. A lot of times, like Jewish text. A lot of times I like reference passages from the Talmud, from the Bible, from Chasidic texts or whatever. So he's been doing this work like since, before I was born. So like way pre-internet, I have no idea how he did it. He's a genius. Um, but, um, but yeah, but app, an app, like Safaria pretty much, you know, in my head that's, you know, my dad in an app, cause like whenever I had a question about a text or something, I knew I could always call him. And like, unfortunately now I don't call him as often. SoLeon Adato (28:18):You call him about personal things. Now you ask how he is not just, it's actually nicer. Cause this is like What! You can only call me when you don't remember a text now it's like, no, I only call you because I, you know, yeah, it's, there's especially in Judaism, but I think a lot of Faiths there is the comment, not the myth, but the comment about somebody who's memorized all of the Bible or all of this or all of that. And I think in this day and age we lose sight of what an achievement and, and also how normal, both what an achievement and how normal it was that people who had committed a set of texts to memory, weren't doing it as a parlor trick. They weren't doing it just to show off they were doing it because they wanted that text in their back pocket with them. And that was the only way to have it. So the, you know, and so they did that. And, and nowYechiel Kalmenson (29:15):I would say similar to how like the earlier, like the creators of Linux and the web and everything built, all these things with, like, they actually had to memorize, you know, programming syntax and things like that. And, you know, and knowing three languages was a huge deal because that meant you had to memorize three reference books, the size ofLeon Adato (29:34):Right. Exactly. They actually knew how re, regular expressions worked. Like that's.Yechiel Kalmenson (29:38):yeah,Leon Adato (29:39):That's magic to me. I just,Ben Keen (29:41):Well ,I mean, if it's, if It speaks to anything of the time we live in, now, people can quote movies like that.Leon Adato (29:49):Uh huh.Ben Keen (29:51):You know, but then people, don't people, some people, and this is not a knock against them, but when you ask them, what is, you know, in the Christian faith, what is John 3:16 say.Leon Adato (30:00):Uh huh.Ben Keen (30:00):You know, if you look at any sort of like major league sports program, mainly baseball, you'll see people with the signs saying John 3:16.Leon Adato (30:13):Uh huh.Ben Keen (30:13):And I don't, you know, some people are like, what does that mean? Meanwhile, they can quote Verbatim, you know, episodes one through nine of star Wars,Leon Adato (30:22):Right!Ben Keen (30:22):Which, um, I'm with them on that. Right. You know, like I'm cool with that. But, you know, I think it really speaks to, um, the trend of, you know, what do we take, you know, because we have all these apps and websites and stuff like that.Ben Keen (30:35):Great tech, I think that's people have become less lenient or less yeah. Less relying on their own memory. You know, plus, you know, nowadays we have in a text-based let's face it. We have what? At least 13 passwords to know, just to log in the work, right. Because you've got two factor authentication, you've got biometrics, you know, all this stuff and you change one password and it changes everything across the board. So, you know, for me, it's a struggle sometimes like the doomsday for me is when my admin account, my personal account and my operations account all expire on the same day.Ben Keen (31:15):And they're all, they all, they all have different password complexities of like, you know, well, this password has to be at least like 12 characters. This one has at least be 25, you know, 14 different, special characters in this one, you know, it's just crazy. So when we pause and really think, you know, think about it in how much tech has pushed us to be remembrance of what does that say? You know, and break out the Google Fu you know, it's one of those things, especially at, you know, as parents in tech and, uh, those of us that are strong in our religion, we want to teach our children, our religious faith, you know, whatever it is. And so now having these fancy little computers, we call phones in our pocket. You know, if my kids ask me, well, Hey dad, what does this mean? Right. Well, let's find out together. Right. You know, it's no longer just, you know, dad regurgitating something that his Sunday school teacher may or may not told him while whipping his hand with a ruler.Leon Adato (32:11):Right.Ben Keen (32:12):Type of scenario.Leon Adato (32:13):Right. I, uh, Yeah, it does. Again, I think the technology really has the opportunity to enhance our, um, our experience of our faith or, you know, our ethical or moral point of view. I think it has a chance to, um, Ben, as you say, like, instead of just regurgitating our half remembered and half misremembered, thing, you know, we can, we can offer accurate information, whether it's to our kids or to coworkers or whatever. And when somebody says, well, I just don't understand, like, what does that mean? You can offer almost an impartial source, like here, read this, and if you have questions, we can talk about it, but you know, you don't just have to take my word for it also. Um, and I think that that really raises the level of discourse in a lot of ways. So, um, all right. So this was a good start to this ongoing, uh, series that we're going to be doing. Um, I'm going to drive it to the lightening round. Does anybody have any final words before we close it out?Ben Keen (33:14):One final word from me is simply, you know, leveraged to tech con. We were just talking about, if you have questions, whether it's your own faith or, you know, if you have questions about exactly what, w, what does Jason mean when he says, he says he's a Buddhist, or what does that mean?Leon Adato (33:28):Uh huh.Ben Keen (33:28):You know, is he, is he rubbing like the belly of some little fat guy squatting, or what is, you know, now you have the ability to leverage that tech and figure out exactly what Jason's faith is, because that might help you learn more about your coworkers. And, you know, when you can know something more about your coworker, that can, when you start talking about team projects, because let's face it, even though we're all working from home, we're still doing team projects. You can collaborate a lot easier because you understanding, you know, if I try to collaborate with you, Leon, you're like, ah, that's, that's a bad day. And that's, here's why, you know, it's, it's the Sabbath or whatever, um, observation it is within, within a Jewish calendar, at least now I know professionally, don't schedule any meetings with Leon.Leon Adato (34:13):Right.Ben Keen (34:13):You know, and I think that's one thing that we all ought to remember that the tech isn't just to learn our faith, but it's to help us learn about other people's faith.Leon Adato (34:19):So you're saying that LMG T F Y is for, uh, faith as well as, you know, how do I log into this? I like it exactly a hundred percent. Any other final words?Yechiel Kalmenson (34:32):Um, yeah, I this was, it was an interesting discussion. Um, and I find that often when we, the topic comes up of like, you know, technology that helps us with our religious practices. Um, and I've gotten questions from both sides of the spectrum, you know, both from like old timer, religious folks who are like, you know, how can you use technology to, for such sacred things in both from, you know, the secular perspective, like this is tech, you know, why are you bringing your religion into this? Um, so one of my favorite passages in the Talmud, it says that the world actually, when God created the world, he wasn't planning on putting gold in it, but then he decided to put gold. Um, so because he knew that the Jews would be building a temple for him in the desert, and they would be using gold to make the temple. So there, that's why he put golden to the world. In other words, the only reason why we have something as beautiful as gold in the world was because God wanted the Jews to, to serve him in the desert. And I think that can be that lesson could be taken for pretty much anything in the world. You know, especially all these advances that weYechiel Kalmenson (35:38):Have these days, where from God's point of view, the only reason why he put them in the world where he put the potential for these things in the world is so that we can all serve him in our way, serve him and make the world a better place, help each other and help make the world better.Jason Carrier (35:55):I was actually gonna make a similar point to what you just made. There is a, just because something is new doesn't mean it doesn't have an intrinsic value and provide a new way for seeing the old. So, uh, I've learned a ton of about my own religion and the history of it through Wikipedia, you know, uh, the, that you can learn a ton using the internet. And so there's definitely intrinsic value to, to that. Uh, you don't need to necessarily do it the way that it was being done 2000 years ago, to get that, that benefit in your life, you know?Leon Adato (36:25):Right. Uh, and, uh, my, my final word will be as long as we don't lose sight of the fact that the old way is also still valid, that, that the new, the new way is certainly novel because that's what the word novel and new mean. But also, um, and it can be engaging because of its novelty, but at the same time, we can't lose sight. We can't think that the, the new and novel way is somehow better than the old way. It's merely a different way to interact with it. I think that a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that we don't need this old way anymore because we have this new that no, no, no. The, the old thing exists still exists for an equally valid reason that hasn't gone away simply because you have, uh, the new one. And, you know, that's not me saying that, you know, as a 30 year it person, I'm not saying, you know, Hey, you got the huh, these new fangled things. They're not as good. No, I'm not. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying though, is that both are equally valid and both have their, their uses. All right. This has been an amazing conversation. I want, I appreciate everyone taking time out of their evening to show up. Um, thank you so much for being here.Yechiel Kalmenson (37:41):Thanks for having us.Jason Carrier (37:43):Yeah. Thanks for putting this together. Leon.Ben Keen (37:44):Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for putting this together and thanks for having us Leon, I appreciate it.Leon Adato (37:49):Thanks for making time for us this week, to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technically religious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect us on social media.      

Welcome to this special episode series! Recently I recorded a training video for my 2CCX students and I made them commit to taking on 5 different challenges that would help them strengthen and grow their businesses. On this first episode we discuss challenge #1, Simplify your business. So tune in and see how these challenges can help you and your business get to where you want to be. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets Podcast. All right, I want to share with you guys something really cool. So recently I did a training for people who were inside of my Two Comma Club X, high-end coaching program. And the training chat really cool, and I thought it'd be fun to share it with you guys. So I'm actually going to break it up over the next five episodes. There are five challenges that I gave them to do to be more successful inside their business. So, that's kind of the game plan. So each episode we'll cover one of the five challenges, and this very first challenge is called Simplify Your Business. So we're going to cue up the theme song, we come back, you guys will have a chance to hear and behind the scenes of a private training I was doing with my Two Comma Club X, high-end coaching students, and I hope you love it. Whenever I would go to bed, I always like trying to do a lot ahead of time, this is my business model, I know what it is, it's like I'm driving traffic to a landing page, and then from here I'm upselling people on the phone, or I'm doing a webinar, or I can have a structure, like what you're doing, right? And it's all the speakers are coming in that are giving you ideas. The goal is not to be like, "Nevermind, I'm believing that," rip it up and start something new. And the next speaker, you throw it away and something new. Instead, it's like listen to every single speaker and listening to their model and be like, "That's really cool, I love how they're doing that." And then be like, "That piece right there, that one thing that person said, that's something I can take and I can apply to my existing framework, the existing business I'm trying to do." Okay? Because if you're not careful, you're going to hear all, again, we have so many amazing speakers, all of them had their own take on how to do business. If you're not careful, you're going to rip up and rewrite your business plan 20 times in the next two days, which is not going to help you. It's not going to get you to momentum, it's going to get you out of momentum. Right? So the goal of this is to keep the frame or keep the business that you're working on, but then looking for what's the piece of gold from each presentation. Right? I'm going to be sharing these five different things. And each of these things, some of you guys might thing, "That one's not for me. That one's not for me," and, "That's the piece of gold I needed, I can add here, and I can apply to the framework that I've already built. It's going to help me to speed up and help me get to that next spot faster." Okay? And so that's the way I want you guys to start looking at this week, not, "I'm rewriting my business plan 20 times over," it's, "I have 20 amazing people coming, what's the one piece of gold I can take from each speaker that I can apply to the existing thing that I'm already working on to help amplify it and help get me back into momentum?" Does that make sense? So that's kind of the goal. So with that said, I'm going to jump into five different things I kind of wanted to go through with you guys, and I think they're fun. I'm excited for it. So, all right. So the first thing, so again, I got a bunch of just things. So my first thing I want to put out there for everybody is the thought process of how can I simplify my business? How can I simplify my funnels? Last year, we did an affiliate retreat, some of our top affiliates came, and they came to Boise, and then Dave and Miles and everyone, took them out to McCall where they did water skiing and everything. Before they went out to have the big party, because I wasn't invited to the party. I'm just kidding, I was probably invited, I just wasn't able to go. But before they all went, I sat down for like an hour with everybody and kind of asked everyone about their businesses, and everyone asked me some feedback on this stuff. And I remember one of the people who was there, her name is Alex, she asked me the biggest advice. I kind of asked some questions on her business. And really quick, I found out that basically she had like, I don't know, half dozen or more funnels that she had, she was driving traffic to, she was trying to do all these different things. And I said, "Ma'am, my biggest piece of advice for you right now is to simplify everything." I said, "Pick the one funnel that you like the most and delete the rest." This should not be something where we're driving traffic to six or eight or 10 different offers. If you are, it gets very, very difficult. It's hard to focus all your efforts. I think a lot of people see my business and they're like, "Russell, you got eight offers." I'm like, "Yeah, I have 400 employees." You know what I mean? We're doing 10, $15 million a month. Don't necessarily model me because we've got more staff recently. When you get the point where you're trying to go for the billion dollar company, then look at me. But right now, what most guys are trying to zero to a million, million to ten, and ten to a hundred. So in those windows, the thing that's going to drive you is simplicity, one funnel. And what's crazy is as I'm doing this book launch, Alex, she interviewed me on her thing, and she said, "Man, the biggest thing that grew my business the last year is when you were in Boise, and you said I need to kill all my funnels but one. She's like, "I left all stressed out because I love all these funnels. I put so much time and energy, but I thought, everyone says, 'Do what Russell says,' so I'm going to do what Russell says." And she's like, "I killed all these babies and I kept one." And she's like, "Because of that, all my focus is on my ad dollars, my promotions, my content, everything's focused on one thing, and because of that, it's grown." And so I want to challenge you guys today. Again, this comes back to this whole over the next 20 speakers, don't try and reinvent 20 different business models. It's simplifying the one you have and figuring out the nuggets of gold you can apply to it. Okay? So I'm going to show you guys if I was to start over right now, like the most simple model on earth, and this is all I would do, if it was me and I'm trying to make a million to $10 million a year company, I would do this. Okay? And I'm going to show you, it's Ben Settle slide, because Ben is the most consistent, simple business model I've ever seen, and it's exactly what I would do. So Ben has got one product. Since the last couple years, he's developed a couple of other ones, but the reality, all those other products are... so he publishes a monthly newsletter. It's 97 bucks a month. You get a physical print newsletter in the mail every single month. And that's kind of what his business model is. And if you see, he sells other things, all he's done is over the last 10 years, he's been publishing this newsletter. He'll be like, "What are all the newsletters on this topic?" And he'll take like 30 issues, and he puts them with the others, like, "Here's my new product." And it's literally just his issues that are grouped together based on topics. So he only has one thing he does. Every month, he writes the newsletter and he sells it. It's 97 bucks a month. And that's it. Right? And then he's got a squeeze page, and a squeeze page is basically, "Come here, give me your email address, and then I'm going to sell you my newsletter." Right? So people come here, they go to bensettle.com, they put their email address in, and then he has his one product he sells. Basically, what he does is he sends out an email every single day, selling his one product. That's it. That's his business for the 10 years I've known him. I'm on his email list. I get an email every day, sometimes twice a day. And all he does is he promotes one thing and that's his newsletter. That's it. That's the business model, simple, easy, million dollar a year business right there, one product. And he sends an email a day. So you come in and here it is. I was just pulling this today, I took a screenshot just to show you guys. March 11th, there's email. March 11th, there are two emails. March 10th, there were three emails. March 9th, there were two emails. March 8th, my birthday, there were two emails. March 7th, there was email. And just consistently, consistently, right? So his whole business model is get people to come to my squeeze page, they give me their email address, I email them every single day to tell them to buy my one product. And you'll go, "Russell, what if they already bought the product, then what do I email them?" The same thing! Okay? Because guess what it does? It gets people to stick. It's funny, the biggest growth I had in my business was five or six years ago, we decided we were going to focus 100% of our efforts on click funnels. And prior to that, most of you guys probably didn't come into my universe prior to that, but if you would have looked at it before, we had so many different offers, they were all over the place, like something selling this, and this, and this. And so I'm emailing my list, I'm like, "I don't know, I'll promote this today, and then this," and they're all sorts of random things, right? And when we said, "Okay, we're going to sell click funnels," everything's focused on this one thing, one product, one service, then everything grew for us. Right? And even now, if you look at my business, we have front end funnels, like the books and things like that, but the only goal is if you want to buy the book is that you get into click funnels. Everything leads to this one road. And so the business model could be as simple as a squeeze page, get somebody email, to opt in, and then a print newsletter, or a webinar, or a membership, just one thing, right? Or my high-end coaching, whatever the one thing is, and then every day email about it. And even if they bought it, you still email them every single day because it increases their likelihood of sticking. Right? They're seeing another promotion. It's like, "I did buy it. I remember buying that, that was a good thing I bought it. It's a good reminder." It's a stick strategy. Probably three or four times a year, someone on my marketing team will come back and be like, "Russell, we need to use all the Actionetics complex features where people who have already bought this, it pulls down, they don't see any more messages about this and that." And like, "No, stop trying to be so technical and geeky. I don't care some about the book and they get 15 other emails about the book, because guess what? Now they're more likely to actually read the book because I keep selling them." I'm like, "Selling them on buying, it's one thing, but selling them on actually consuming it is another thing. So I'm going to keep telling you about it, and telling you about it, and telling you about it. I don't care if they bought it five times, I want them to keep getting it. If they got it and they've read it, I want them to keep reminding like, 'Yeah, that book was good, I need to go back and read it again, let me reference that thing.'" Right? So don't think that even though Actionetics and every email autoresponder has all these complex features where you can after someone's done this, pull them out so they never see the emails again, that's not necessarily good. Right? Simplify, keep things simple. During Funnel Hacking Live, after Garrett White had his presentation, we had this really cool moment backstage. I would love to, in fact, we did record, I just did the recording of it, but he told me, he's like, "A year ago," he's like, "My technical marketing team just convinced us to move off of Actionetics so we can move to, I can't remember what the other one was, something else, because that we could do all these more complex things and more split testing. And if they bought this, then like," he had this huge map. And he's like, "A year ago, they convinced me to do that." And it was funny because I had tried to convince Todd to let us use a more complex email software too, because I was like, "we can get so much more complex and so much better if we did this." And Todd laughed and he's like, " Dude, Russell, you haven't even finished the follow up sequence, like one, like you're trying to get more complex and you only have a simple, basic one right now." And we told Garrett that year. It's like, "You know what's funny?" He's like, "In the last year, working on this super hyper amazing sequence, it's going to do a million things." He's like, "Because of that, we've never sent an email out to our list during that time, because we bought the complexity, now it was so complex we never actually used it." And he was like, "I'm going home. We're canceling everything, we're moving back, we're just getting back to the simple, send an email every single day." I don't know, there's so many tools that create complexity, and I think that's what's keeping most of us from where we want to be. So strip complexity. And I don't care if you use the Actionetics, or active campaign, or anyway, it doesn't matter, but just simple. Like Ben's model is simple. He doesn't stress out. Every day he spends 15 minutes writing an email, sends it out, sells his one product and that's it. And once a month he writes print newsletter. That's the business. And the guy's written like eight zombie novels since I've known him because he's got nothing else to do all day, other than write a 20 minute email, send an email, do the once a month newsletter he publishes, and then he writes zombie novels all day. That's it. So, simplify. How can we simplify our businesses and quit overcome complexing them. We can do that. Our company now, "Let's pull things back, let's simplify it, simplify." And I think some of you guys may have heard me told this story, I went, this is probably, I don't know, maybe a year ago, I went to John, and obviously I'm obsessed with funnels, right? I'm like, "John, okay, in a perfect world, how many funnels do you want from the funnel team that we can give you, the traffic team, to go to market and drive traffic to?" And I was hoping it was like one a week or two a week, whatever. And he's like, "Two." I'm like, "Okay, what is that two a week, two a month, two a day? You let me know, we will do it." And he's like, "No, two total. That's all we need. I don't need more funnels." He was like, "In fact, if you stop making funnels, we would be completely fine." He was like, "Well, we're good now. We just need you guys focusing more on getting traffic into the funnels we have." That's what he told me. And I was like, "Oh." I remember Brandon and Kaelin Poulin came to our office in Boise. And I was showing them everything like, "This is our funnel building team." And there's like four or five people. And he's like, "What do they do all day?" I'm like, "They build funnels." He's like, "You guys still build funnels?" Like, "Yeah, dude, that's what we do." And he's like, "Huh." He's like, "We built a funnel three years ago and we just keep driving more traffic to it." And I was like, "Huh." There's the aha, right? You guys saw Brandon and Kaelin on stage getting the Two Comma Club C Award with one funnel. So simplicity, simplify things. Don't make them more complex. Okay? So many guys don't want complex things. I'm the same way, because I love creativity of the creating. Focus your creativity on new creative to get people into the one funnel you're focusing on. That's the shift in mindset. Okay? So, number one, simplify. Look at lead magnet, email daily core offers. Here's Ben's: people opt in, he sells them his newsletter, and he sends an email every single day about the newsletter. Okay? This is kind of something we've been talking a lot over last couple years about, publishing daily. I think some people stress out about it. Like, "I don't know how to do it, I'm not going to be able to do it." I want to simplify it again. Okay? Look how Ben Settle does it. Okay? He sends out an email every single day. Here's a snapshot of just since February 23rd, like literally, every single day. So he sends an email every day, and then he takes that same email, and he goes to his blog and he posts it, copy and paste it to the blog. Now he's posting a blog post every single day. Email a day, blog post a day, it's the same thing word for word, copy and pasted, but he's publishing every day. So if you know like, okay, if I'm publishing every day, I've got to send an email to my list every day. I know that. I'm going to log in, send an email to my list, and I'm going to copy the email, and I'm going to post to my blog and boom, now I'm done. Okay? I think so many times we get so scared about, "The publishing everyday thing, how am I going to do it?" It can and it should be more and more simple. Okay? All right. So the first challenge I have for you guys, I got five challenges today. Challenge number one, I want you to look at the funnels you are creating, the funnels you're working on, the business model you have, and think, "How can I simplify this? How can I make it where I can do the entire business in one hour in quarantine, then go play with my kids the rest of the day?" Right? How can I simplify my business? That's the first challenge for you guys. Okay? Challenge accepted? Can you guys all do that?

Welcome back! This episode Ben talks about the events of last week, that stunned the country only if you weren't paying attention. This episode is full of expletives and political talk, and also understanding the intricacies of free speech. So Ben in the most unprofessional way possible reads verbatim the 1st amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Finally, Ben does a final catharsis of the treason that occurred last week where 4 conned traitors were killed and a police officer (who was also a Trump supporter) was bludgeoned to death by the crowd with an American flag and a fire extinguisher. That's all I got, no more political talk, well unless another insurrection happens and I have to catch a flight. Enjoy!

“Running communities are a reflection of American communities, and if we know that American communities have been shaped by racist real estate laws; racist criminal justice systems; racist police officers; racist, segregated schools…how can there not be racism in running?” This is an episode of Social Sport – another show on the CITIUS MAG Podcast Network. This show is hosted by Emma Zimmerman and features conversations with endurance athletes of all types committed to fostering social change. The athletes she speaks with on this show are climate change activists, mental health advocates, and promoters of more inclusive outdoor spaces. Through Social Sport, she shares the stories and thoughts of people who explore the connection between sport and activism in their lives. Ben Chan is an ultra runner and activist, perhaps best known in the New York running community for his racing attire—leopard print short-shorts and a cowboy hat. But in recent times, Ben has also become well known for his activism. On this episode of Social Sport, we focus on Ben’s exchanges with a certain, high-profile race director (Gary Cantrell AKA "Lazarus Lake") who banned Black Lives Matter from his events. It can be difficult to talk negatively about people who have large followings, lots of power, and have created events that are, frankly, important to the running community. But Ben and I both feel that we need to hold everyone accountable for their words and for the communities they create—in sports and beyond. This episode was recorded about a week ago, and since that time, more exchanges have unfolded; "Lazarus Lake" shared his racist speech openly on a prominent podcast. So Ben’s sentiments shared in this episode are, perhaps, even more important. Follow Ben on Instagram: @malerunner More episodes of Social Sport can be found on CITIUS MAG. Subscribe and listen to Social Sport on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts. Also discussed in this episode: The importance of Ben’s running outfit for challenging stereotypes of Asian-Americans Running as a form of expression The Barkley Marathons documentary Outside Magazine article, “Why Did a Virtual Ultra Ban ‘Black Lives Matter” Runner’s World article on Ben and Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee Ben’s post on anti-Ku Klux Klan residents and pro-Trump residents holding opposing rallies, 11 miles from Big Backyard Ultra The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin The Autobiography of Malcolm x, as told to Alex Haley

Ben Chan is an ultra runner and activist, perhaps best known in the New York running community for his racing attire—leopard print short-shorts and a cowboy hat. But in recent times, Ben has also become well known for his activism. Today, we focus on Ben's exchanges with a certain, high-profile race director (Gary Cantrell AKA "Lazarus Lake") who banned Black Lives Matter from his events. It can be difficult to talk negatively about people who have large followings, lots of power, and have created events that are, frankly, important to the running community. But Ben and I both feel that we need to hold everyone accountable for their words and for the communities they create—in sports and beyond. This episode was recorded about a week ago, and since that time, more exchanges have unfolded; "Lazarus Lake" shared his racist speech openly on a prominent podcast. So Ben's sentiments shared in this episode are, perhaps, even more important. The importance of Ben's running outfit for challenging stereotypes of Asian-Americans Running as a form of expression The Barkley Marathons documentary Outside Magazine article, "Why Did a Virtual Ultra Ban 'Black Lives Matter'' Runner's World article on Ben and Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee Ben's post on anti-Ku Klux Klan residents and pro-Trump residents holding opposing rallies, 11 miles from Big Backyard Ultra The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin The Autobiography of Malcolm x, as told to Alex Haley Quote: “Running communities are a reflection of American communities, and if we know that American communities have been shaped by racist real estate laws; racist criminal justice systems; racist police officers; racist, segregated schools...how can there not be racism in running?" Follow Ben: Instagram: @malerunner Follow Social Sport: Instagram: @socialsportpod Facebook: @socialsportpod Twitter: @emmamzimm --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/socialsport/support

Come on in for a spin, Emmy Harr & I have a blast as we cover topics such as following your bliss and pop up christian camps. Check out Emmy with her crew over on Your Essential Nature! Book mentioned by Emmy: Unknown Speaker 0:02 You're listening to the Spiritual Dope podcast with your host, Brandon Handley the spiritual Unknown Speaker 0:11 with today's Unknown Speaker 0:11 guest from your essential nature's podcast this spiritual worked out ready Brandon Handley 0:20 hey there spiritual dope I am on today with Emma har and she's coming to us here from your essential nature podcast. I met Emma through Dr. Ben chambers and the your essential nature podcast. And that podcast is based on the longer yearning that we all have to know ourselves at the deepest level. And in this podcast series, they explore the template to know yourself, experience peace, and grow in mindful awareness and bring more light into the world. Who wouldn't want to be check in into that? Right. So thanks for joining today. You know, tell us a little bit about what brings you here today. Emmy Harr 1:06 Oh, my goodness, yes. Well, um, this is a common mistake. So I'll give you a little past card for this. But my name is actually me. So just like the Emmy Awards, short for Amber. So um, yeah, as far as bringing in, I think we're just kind of in this expansion phase of getting connected with your right tribe. Okay. And with your essential nature, Ben did an amazing job kind of plucking the the the misfit toys and putting them together. And we just had an amazing chemistry as the the group of four of us. And with that, each person's kind of doing their own thing, as far as building their spiritual practice and their spiritual businesses, and helping clients that way. And so, yeah, you and I got connected from mutual friends and mutual friends. And it's just, now's the time to say yes, and manifestation. So absolutely. Brandon Handley 2:04 I love that. So I like to start these off with the idea that sources speaking through us, and that there's somebody out there listening to this podcast today. And a message can only come through you to them through this podcast. What is that message? Unknown Speaker 2:30 Patience. Emmy Harr 2:34 Definitely patience, especially when it comes to the surrender process. As your life starts unfolding, it's happening for you, not to you. And it takes a little bit of patience, probably more patience than anybody wants to admit that they are. Brandon Handley 2:50 Sure, sure. We are not patient. People, especially, especially in Western society, right. How has that shown up in in your life? Emmy Harr 3:05 page? Oh, gosh, yeah, definitely more of a recent thing. So I remember when I was little, I always felt like I was different, not like a weird, different, but a really good different. And not an arrogant sense of I'm better than everybody. But just like, I felt like I knew something more than the average person my age did. And lo and behold, that was basically just like utilizing light, right? Like That was my gift is being a beacon instead of darkness really. And so I remember just like going through middle school, especially a little bit of high school, college, even post college, just feeling like I was like, Am I just so abnormal, that I don't have anybody, like, even my really good friends? That like truly gets me, you know, like, and I remember just like yearning for these deep relationships. And then, ironically, about five years ago, I moved from Wisconsin to Austin, Texas. And that was when my whole life was really just like, flipped upside down. like totally shaken. I remember. As soon as I stepped foot on Austin ground I remember looking straight up to the sky and asking what the hell am I doing here? Because I truly, I know I was guided down there and I knew it was gonna be like a powerful season in my life. But I mean, immediately like, I could just feel my whole aura just shaking, like could not get grounded for the first like year and a half No matter how much yoga, meditation, dance like none of that. And I remember just like crying, just begging for one person, one person that understood my heart and Yeah, then and of course, that can be friendships. I know for a lot of people, it's romantic partners as well. And we're always just craving that soul partnership. And yeah, I can tell you like, even with Austin I was that's when I started basically commission only a business insurance and finances, and I had no concept of what business or sales meant, you know, I came from the infant room with 14 infants prior to. So I was really I was on my own I had one friend that was never there, he moved from Austin with me. And then I didn't know anybody working 90 hours a week studying learning this whole new realm. You know, it was really a you eat what you kill type of environment, right survival mode on its on its best. And it just felt like I was always just like hacking away, right, like taking the ice pick to a sculpture. And yet the sculpture wasn't forming. And I was just working so hard. And it nothing was flowing, like not even my energy was. And so fast forward three years, I moved to Kansas City, again, a divine, a divine way on how I knew it was Casey that I was supposed to go to. But it just felt like a huge way it was just like, lifted off my my chest, I could breathe, even though it was freezing. And it just felt like things were coming together. And now I have an amazing tribe of members who like to have depth, in depth conversations, they like to talk about God, we can have civilized conversations, on politics, spirituality, all of this. And within the last probably six to eight months, I've just really been at this surrender phase of like, okay, universe, you're the one leading my life, I'm just swimming through it. I'm totally just at bay here. And I can say that, since that's happened, it's just been a lot more peaceful of a life. And I'm still being taken care of, you know, it's more of a less survival more of an abundance mentality. And so, you know, it's funny, I think about well, it only took me 28 years to get to that point. But I know people were in their 60s that aren't even at that point. So when I talk about patience, I mean, patience. Brandon Handley 7:30 For sure, for sure. Lots in there. Right. So thanks for sharing, kind of that, you know, backstory on I remember, I went to Texas, went to Dallas. And I think that I had a really similar experience where I got down there and I was what what am I doing here? Maybe it's just Texas. They are, they are a different breed. And that's okay. Right. And, and, you know, you mentioned, you know, you know, all the yoga all the meditation kind of makes me think of all the king's men and all that, you know, you know, Humpty Dumpty couldn't put it back together again. But, uh, you know, but that's it, right? Like, everything you were doing you still you weren't kind of coalescing and gathering shape, they're right, or form the form at least that you were in search of, while you were in Texas, right. And you also talk about this being in survival mode. And, and, you know, kitten, you know, eating what you eat what you kill, right? survival mode aspect, and, you know, that's, it's, it's kind of a, it's a tough existence, right? There's a, there's a Francis ism involved with survival mode, right, there's a, there's a closed off sness of being in survival mode. Primarily, because you don't know that there is another mode available. Right? Like, this is just kind of how you're taught to, you know, go out there, it's like, you're literally being pushed out of the nest. Right? Yeah. Like, you know, you either fly, or you're or you figure out some other way to make it about a little broken wing. So, you know, definitely, definitely interesting to kind of be going through all that and also looking for some type of connection. You know, when when you're talking about, you know, killing you know, you know, eating what you kill in that moment. Even that phrase limits the potential of connection, right, if that's your mentality, right? Um, you know, it's kind of like, if we think of like law of attraction, like who's drawn to that, right. And then of Iran because it you know that that also to me indicates like the Yeah, the certain strength of will and desire to live and be so doesn't you know, there's also that right. But you probably weren't really thinking of it in those terms. I could be wrong, right? You may not have been thinking about it in those terms at that time, because it sounds like you're like, I gotta get the hell out of here. And where is the next year? And the next year for you? Kansas City. Unknown Speaker 10:26 I mean, you know who, you know who Brandon Handley 10:29 am Right, right, you're right. Like if I've got even even if I've got a map up on the wall and a Dart, the likelihood that is going to hit Kansas City, and that's going to be, you know, my nama stay place. Right. Oh, God, why and how so? Tell us a little bit about how you ended up there. What was it that drew you to Kansas City? Yeah, that's Emmy Harr 10:51 so funny. Um, I had never even heard of Kansas City until a few years ago. And just real quick, Brandon Handley 10:59 Kansas City's in Missouri. Not Kansas. No, it's Emmy Harr 11:03 both split town. It's so what the hell no. Brandon Handley 11:08 This is a strong note to that. It's like calling turkey burgers like hamburgers, right? Like that's just to know that's it. That's a turkey Patty. Emmy Harr 11:16 No, there's Casey, Mo, and Casey. Okay. I learned that the hard way. So my, one of my dear friends from college moved here. I think four, four years ago or something. So I was still in Austin. She moved here. And I remember in Austin, when I was starting to make a little bit of money, I got the flow of business. You know, I was like, cool. The reason I'm making money and want to make money is so that I can go travel and experience the world, right? And so where do you go, you go to Kansas City to visit one of your best friends. So I remember I was I came here during summertime, in 2016, or 2017. And it was so much fun. It was great. And the irony is I remember she took me out for bagels. And we were sitting outside in the sunshine. And I remember being I was just starting to get into real estate investing at the time. And I was like, You know what, Brett? I'm, what if what if I bought a duplex and you live on one side, and I live on the other and we'll just be best friends forever, right? So, but it was just kind of like just talk, I was like, I'm not moving here like I don't know. So then fast forward a year, it was October of 2018. And end of September, I just nothing with my business with insurance was working. Everyone was canceling their appointments, I was getting chargebacks, which is where money gets taken out of my account because somebody cancelled their policy. I was nobody wanted to book an appointment. It was just like dead. And I was like, Okay, what is God trying to tell me here? Like, clearly this is a stop, right? And so, my business partner at the time, he was like, Okay, I just kind of throw it out to him. And I was like, You know what, I'm just going to stop until until October because that's when Medicare starts. And that was like a lot of what I was doing. And he was like, Yeah, cool, but what are you going to do for your soul? And I was like, what, and he was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna almost force you to go up to Wisconsin and go visit Brittany in Kansas City, whatever you want to do. And I was like, okay, so I flew up to Wisconsin to visit family was there for a few days road trip down to KC to visit Brittany who had just had surgery. And so I just remember arriving in Kansas City. And the first day that I, the first morning, I woke up, it was 40 degrees, which, by the way, I think I was actually born on the sun. So anything less than 80 degrees is freezing to me. So the fact that it was 40 degrees. And I was just like, yes, like seriously, just a weight lifted off. I felt just such immense peace. And to me that Spirit speaking to me, that's God's peace, his presence. And I was just like, Okay, and then all of a sudden, all of these business inspirations just kept firing. And I was like, just I felt like I was home. And then, so after this, this visit with Britt, then I went back to Austin. And I was literally depressed, couldn't get off of the couch, my my friend's couch at the time, by the way, because for three days straight, and I remember my business partner, he'd have to text me to be like, hey, go for a walk today. Like I was in mobile. It just didn't feel right. And I was in between spaces because I had a duplex under contract that took five and a half months to close and it was just like, kind of a pain right? Then I don't remember how but I think my partner and I, we we met up for lunch one day, and I just randomly blurted out, I'm moving to Kansas City. And there was a sturdiness and the tone and the frequency that we both knew. We We're like, Oh, crap, it's time. And so I got everything squared away, closed on the property found renters in Austin. I hosted my parents for Christmas. And then they actually helped me pack up, and then move to Kansas City on their way back to Wisconsin, which was so sweet. And yeah, so then the irony Now, remember that story of Brittany and I bagels and the irony is now I own a four Plex. She's not one of my tenants yet, but one day, I'm sure she will be. No, but yeah, I ended up investing in real estate very quickly when I got down here and and that in and of itself was divine timing. And yeah, so it just I remember like walking in the rain and the snow that first that first season because I moved here December 2019. And I was like, yeah, this is great. Again, rain and snow, not my cup of tea. But it just felt like Oh, I'm so so happy. My heart was just Oh, singing in the rain. Brandon Handley 15:54 I love it. I love it. It's kind of like, you know, you get this divine inspiration. And it is imminent in some way, shape or form. You don't know how it's going to happen. But you just kind of you have that you have that peek into the future. All right. And you speak it into existence, right? You make a joke about it. Right? You speak existence, though, right? It's real similar to kind of like how you're in. Kind of like you're like, I don't see any clients. I don't see any business. I don't see any of this. And sure enough, that these are the things that you're saying to yourself. And sure enough, you're not seeing any of it right. It's you're speaking that into existence. And then, you know, you find yourself in a place of harmony. And you know, this kind of good resonance where you're you're sitting or Brittany, you're hit by this sun. And things start opening up again for you because you've opened up right, because you've sent out like this sense of harmony in that space, where you were where you guys are kind of hanging out eating the bagels. And then when you go back and you're just kind of morose, right, you're like, Fuck, Texas. It's just isn't it? Right this this, isn't it? This isn't my space. This isn't something is off key. Right. And and, you know, again, you felt like in your heart to like the end, you felt the things weren't moving at your pace five and a half months to close on a place. I mean, come on. Right. So thanks, Unknown Speaker 17:29 dad. Good. Can Emmy Harr 17:30 I just add it took me 35 days to close on a four Plex here. Right? So wait, this is what it's supposed to be. Brandon Handley 17:37 Right? Right. So I mean, you know, when when you are in alignment with your sense of purpose and bliss and your own good feeling. This isn't and you know, people always kind of, you know what I'm talking about following your bliss and just out there was a world we follow your bliss. Look, there's a certain that you know, there's a there's a discernment between like following your bliss and imminent folly. Right. So you were though, you know, you're following your bliss, your heart intuition. And when you're doing that, just as you're highlighting right now, your story indicates that the universe opens up and gets behind you with that right universes like Pikachu, this is this is happening, like you said, for you, not to you. Right. And so that to me, sounds like what your experience has been so far. Have I got that about? Right? Emmy Harr 18:35 Yeah, absolutely. And I might even add, like for so I've always been deemed as sensitive, right? Like, I have an act and not only like not just really not emotionally sensitive but just like an awareness right. And one of my one of my spiritual comrades here in KC we were just talking a month ago, and she even said, because nobody can understand the why, you know, like, I came down to Texas and I again, I was guided down there, I knew it was Texas that I had to go, I could feel the energy of God saying Yes, go with that. And but I knew it was going to be like a learning curve. And so my, my spiritual comrade just made a comment, like, you know, there's there's different you know, how there's like different war zones or different like boot camps or base camps throughout. And it has a different energy when you drive past them, right. And so she said, the same thing with the spirit realm is there's these different Warzones these different base camps, and maybe just maybe Austin happens to be one of them. And I was connecting into that. And Casey like that we have a lot of like, there's the International House of Prayer here. Like there's a lot of a lot of that spiritual and spirituality. Even the religion here, you know, it's just like more Unknown Speaker 19:57 God Yeah, so Emmy Harr 20:01 maybe I was even picking up on that. And that's why like, which came first the chicken or the egg, you know? Brandon Handley 20:08 Not for sure. I love that I love that idea to have you know, the the camps, right and different energies and, you know, I'm always reminded of the book the obstacles away. I'm not a big fan of the book, but that's what it reminds me of right? Have you ever read it, but the idea is, and then and then you know, as you're talking and you're sharing that kind of reminded of like, I'm even just holding up a mirror when you're trying to shine the light, right? Maybe your mirror was down in Austin, and the light was shining over into right like, Kansas City, right? You know, this is here's, here's where you catch your, your, your, your ray of sunshine is over there over here type of thing, you know, write a letter, but anyways, right? That's just kind of the thought processes, as I'm listening to the story. So you're kind of you're following your bliss. You're, you know, feeling your spiritual self, right? Where's Where did you feel like you kind of connected with your spirituality and felt the strong pull for that. And I love the idea to have like, you know, what are you going to do for your soul? I love that. Right? And Was that something that helped spark that? Or was that already in existence? Because I know, you'd already talked about a lot of yoga and meditation as well, where where did you initially kind of connect with source and decide that that was going to be a part of your life? Emmy Harr 21:38 Yeah, so I was born and raised Catholic. And so God has always been a part of my life now. I love the traditions and rituals of Catholicism. However, the strictness never really resonated with me, but Jesus guide disciples, saints, just having an army for us. That always resonated with me ever since I was little. So luckily, I had that foundation innately and also fostered. Now when it became more of a relationship with God, instead of just an abnormal what word Am I looking for? Like just an abstract thought, right? I was in college, one of my dear friends, she had actually tricked me. And I talked about this on your essential nature, but she had tricked me on what happened to be a student led, faith based retreat. I didn't know is faith based. She was just like, yeah, it's really fun. You get to throw like, pockets of glue at each other. And there's like a mud fight and all of these things. I'm like, I'm super extroverted by nature. And I'm like, yeah, that's amazing. And I just transferred colleges. So of course, I was like, wanting to look for, like, get to know people and meet people who like to do fun things. And so when I was there, I read it, like dawned on me, okay, this is, this is about God. And I remember looking at Ashley, and I was like, what she's like, I'm sorry, I just didn't think you would come. Like, you're right. I probably wouldn't not like out of anti God or anything like that. Just a matter of, okay, like, I already know, God, I don't need to do anything, you know. But that's what, that's what opened my eyes to this concept of having a relationship. So that's how I in my world, Faith is the relationship of religion is the structure or the dogma. And so I started learning and developing relationship. And then I just had great spiritual mentors. And then eventually, I think it was my, either senior super senior year, I met a mentor that kind of blended this whole new age energy realm, she was very intuitive. I would even call her a medium. But then she also had this Christianity foundation as well. And she did a beautiful job from marrying the two. And that to me felt right and so for her to be like, Oh, yeah, I can see this energy in the room. I'm like, wait, there's a whole other round, like it was the next level of faith for me. I was like, Okay, so then, yeah, I just kind of started and just kept growing from there. And I just keep listening to what feels true for me, like what resonates it's a different frequency. Brandon Handley 24:32 Now for sure. I love that. You know, I love the idea to this army for us, right? So it sounds like even even before you know, even while in Catholicism, you had this army for us mentality, right? The University of benevolent universe, right? This this kind of digital energy source, acting on your behalf right? And that's great. I love that. Yeah, I've never heard it said like that. And I think that that's, that's great, right? And I also like this little piece to where, you know, faith is. Faith is what again, I wrote down notes, Unknown Speaker 25:13 but the relationship Brandon Handley 25:13 faith is relationship and then your religions call it the framework right of everything else. No, I like that idea too. Because I look at I look at that, too. Without this kind of foundation of any type of religion, or spirituality background, right? It can be a challenge to lean into any type of spirituality, right? If you don't have kind of the foundation for it, and you start to feel you, like you said, you're kind of like, an peth, like high energy, connection to source, you can begin to wonder, what is this? What am I feeling? What am I going through, and if you don't have a, at least a framework, you are, you're kind of sLl, right? Like, you're just kind of out there without any anything to bring you back or ground you, right? Or something to at least anchor yourself to Emmy Harr 26:16 something and I would even, I would even take it one step further. I know from my like, my parents generation, and I might even say that the degeneration just underneath them. Like it's not spoken about, even if you are extra feely, like I remember, in seventh grade, I actually became I think for at the time, one might have said I was depressed. But I was depressed because I was witnessing How rude. My classmates were being to this one, one particular classmate of mine, and I could almost feel her sadness. And I didn't know what was going on. And my mom thought I was going crazy. She signed me up for a child psychologist wanting to help me, you know, she's like, I don't know if she's suicidal. I was not. But I mean, that's how that's like, how I could process at the time. And so they shut off, you know, at no, at no criticism for themselves, but they were shut off because their parents were shut off, right? Like, that was the Great Depression era. So everyone was in survival mode. And then that's just kind of what was taught, and then handed down. And so if you're feeling me, or seeing or hearing these different things that you don't know, or you don't have the framework or foundation for, it can be really tricky when you're not even in a a, like an area where it's spoken about to normalize it. Brandon Handley 27:45 Not 100 100%, right? And I love that too. You know, you're looking, you're looking back through history, and you know, what's acceptable in this energetic realm, right? So what you're kind of explaining is, you didn't have the ability to protect your energy field, right? Or the, you know, how do you address that again, and your parents addressed it by being like, Oh, she's okay. I don't know what the fuck her but let's go get her some help. Right? Because they did. And that's awesome, right? Because they realized that they weren't their limits, you know, as a parent myself, I'm like, Alright, we know if I'm out of all the other options, let's, who can we reach out to? Right? And what what do we got there? So, um, I love it. And then so your, your your friend, the New Age, energy, you know, connecting the realms of, you know, Christianity into all that even a mediumship? What would you say? You know, she did all that, you know, what have you taken away? And how are you implementing what she taught you? Like, what were a couple of key pieces that you you feel like you pulled away from her that you're replicating? Emmy Harr 28:56 That's a great question. That's so interesting, because I feel like everything's just been so fluid. Like, it's just one extra layer kind of building, building bricks laying on top of each other. So to pinpoint it, I remember being in our office late on Tuesday nights where we were playing with the enneagram. Right? And she was teaching me intuition how to just pick what felt right. You don't have to analyze but just pick what felt right. Or we would play with other personality. wheels are, I don't know some more of the psychology side of, of intuition. Really, because psyche means intuition, I believe. And, but then just more I would say trusting a that you can see, like into another realm. I always thought that that was for somebody higher up right and I'm actually like in in development That that trait I didn't even realize that I had. And then I can put two into get together like, Oh, I do see things without even realizing. So trusting the intuition and trusting what you're seeing, right, because that's another form of intuition, I would say is probably the biggest one. And then also healing. So energy healing, she introduced to me Reiki, and that was a whole other like, the healing aspect was massive for my growth. Brandon Handley 30:31 And let's talk about that for a second. So what I do want to talk about that but but before we do that, when you say intuition, Unknown Speaker 30:41 what do you mean? Emmy Harr 30:46 The internal knowingness Brandon Handley 30:51 I like that. Yeah, that's good. You know, listen, because I don't know. You know, when when somebody says intuition exactly what you mean by that. So the internal knowingness i think that that, that that's a great, that's a great way to say it. succinct, even. So thank you. And then energy healing, reiki, right. I talked about that. Once I've never experienced it myself. I've had the offers right to for people to do it for me. But I've never had the experience. So talk to me kind of what that experience has been like for you. And you know, how you felt afterwards? Emmy Harr 31:30 Yeah, so Reiki is really, it's divine lead. You know, there's a lot I'm learning that there's a lot of misconception on this new age, energy. And the fact that it's almost like black magic and know everything if it's done correctly, it should be divine LED, so whether you call it source God, power universe, he she it, you know, it's always with love and light intention. As always, if you're going to a real, a real healer, it's going to be with love and light as the intention anywho. So Reiki is basically just a cleansing of our energy centers, also known as chakras along the body. And we know that everything in life is energy, like even this hard table that I'm sitting at is made up of energy, it's just matter. And so we have energy around us also known as the aura, and then we have energy zones within us the chakras. So Reiki is really just utilizing someone's intuition because we are the vessels for God's like love. And where where things feel out of alignment or imbalanced or whatever the the word you want to use. You just send love and light because really love heals all. And so she was she was showing me Reiki and she would do it on me and I always felt like a peacefulness, a calmness. I felt lighter. People in pictures during college, they were like, are you losing weight, you have a glow to you. I wasn't losing weight. I was just reading my old baggage that I didn't need to keep, right. Like, we're emotional hoarders. I didn't need to keep that on me anymore. I learned that lesson. And so yeah, it was just it was so inspiring that by the end of college, so my super senior, I did become level one certified and Reiki. So then that led to other realms of energy healing as well. But yeah, it's it's a powerful gift. I mean, really, we're just giving each other Brandon Handley 33:37 how, yeah, right. That's great. I love the idea to write emotional hoarders. You really are. It's like, I mean, and for no reason other than I don't think that we know any better. Right? You can't you know, what's, what's so what's the line? I forget who it is do what you do until you know better? Right? You know? And you know, you just you do best until you know better and I think that we are emotional hoarders and I love that I was pissed just a minute ago and I want to share some more about that let's we're gonna last week I was saying you know, you just hold on to that forever right? instead just be like, just let that go That was a moment and and what's next what's behind that and what's what are we going forward into? So you know, I love the idea of spiritual dope, right? How like this is just like, that's your hit every day like you can get like this you can get like this weird you know, full body super high vibration through spirituality, right? That's the kind of the spiritual dope, right of spiritual dope. So what would you say like some of your spiritual dope is if you're just getting ahead of it? What is that? Emmy Harr 34:52 Gosh, even there's a running joke with your essential nature because every we film every The other week, and every other week when we do meet up, it's just like we're hanging out. And like buds are just hanging out at the table. Just invigorating conversation. I can't even explain it. So my spiritual dope my hit, is the conversation where we get to go in depth. Aside from that, I do get a spiritual dope when I either give and or receive energy healing. Love it. Brandon Handley 35:29 Agreed, right? The this right here, right? This kind of conversation, we just get the opportunity to share your story. You can exchange, you know, the these high energy ways of being with somebody else. And they get it, right like to like, Oh, yeah, yeah. And not only that, but like, and there's more. But wait, But wait, there's more. Right. But wait, there's more and like, Oh, wow. Or like, why did I didn't think about it that way? And you know, helping somebody changed, change their paradigm. Right. And I think that that's what you guys are able to do on your essential nature as well. Right. So how did you get looped into doing? That was a couple other gentlemen. Right, you know, doing the your essential nature podcast? How did you get involved with that? Emmy Harr 36:19 Yeah, truly, it was kind of one of those surrender moments where I didn't even ask for it. It just presented itself. And it felt right. So I followed it. So Ben, Dr. Benjamin chambers, he was really the the director, if you will. So he had, he had been getting a lot of these downloads, which for him is from spirit, right? downloads of some type of podcast talking about things that aren't being talked about, or in a way that they're not being talked about, or something like that. I see Benji chambers podcast on that. But he he and I always had like a sarcastic sense of humor with one another. So I got looped in with him originally, because he hosts guided meditations on Tuesdays. And so I've been going to those for maybe six months at the time. And we we have a great sense of humor. Like we just kind of shoot the shit like, give each other crap. And we just jive really well with humor, humor, humor, IQ, chemistry. Anyways, so he had brought this up, and he was like, well, I really want to get a group together. I'm going to ask these guys, but I really like I think you should be a part of it. And I'm like, okay, like, I never said no, in my brain. I was just like, yeah, it's fun. I like hanging out with you. I like to get to know other people. And I'd like to take my hint of spirituality. So in my mind, I was like, already on board, but apparently wasn't conveyed. Because he kept like, kind of pursuing or like, tickling. Like, he would keep bringing it up, like, Oh, you should do this. Like every other week, he would just make a comment as if I wasn't fully convinced or something. So then finally, I was like, yeah, so when are we like, let's not talk about it. Let's be about it. When are we? When are we filming? He's like, oh, you're in? Like, yeah. So he kind of orchestrated it. He, he knew the mic. They had met a year ago, Dave they had met prior to and then he just kind of got this sense that it would be the four of us would have a really good chemistry. Brandon Handley 38:25 And you guys do have you guys do have good chemistry. And that's funny, too, right? The when we doing this, right? We've been talking about this, but like when it's like just pull the pull the trigger. Right? Emmy Harr 38:37 That's kind of our mo like, I'm very much the the Dewar and he's very much the seer, I guess. I don't know, see the visitor? I think we're both visionaries. But yeah, I just I've got more of an action base to me, if Brandon Handley 38:57 you will. Sure. Sure. I mean, look, you just you you uproot yourself ran down to taxation, then like, you're like, Hey, I'm gonna make this decision. And I think that that's a big part of it, too. Once you kind of make the decision that sounds like you just move ahead with it. Right. And I look, I made the decision, but let's, I mean, what's next, right? Like, I mean, what else we need to talk about? Then let's just go do it. Right. Emmy Harr 39:20 That's so important to me. And that's kind of where, you know, I do feel like my, sometimes I've, okay, oftentimes, I've felt like I have to in our worlds kind of always at war in a way I know all this language. It sounds like I'm so intense. I'm really anyways, but um, so I have this like really bold entrepreneur movement maker, right? I was 100% Commission. No, of course I have that fight of me. You know, this is like I can thrive anywhere. But then I also do have this this soft, emotional conversation. Let's not do timeframe. So that's more of like the spiritual realm, right? So I consider it the entrepreneur realm, which is more masculine. And then my spiritual side, my spiritual realm, which is typically more and more feminine. And one thing that I've noticed as I'm moving it, like stepping out of the entrepreneurial realm, to the, in the traditional sense, and stepping more towards the spiritual realm, is that for some reason, in the spiritual realm, decisions are scary. And for me, I've always really been a big proponent of make a decision and commit, figure out the details later. That's how Apple moves. That's how Amazon moves, like, just figure it out. But you have to commit. Brandon Handley 40:42 Sure, sure. So, you know, that's another part about I love that you brought that up. That's another big part about spiritual dope, is this idea? Yeah, there's of the softness, there's no timeframe, the surrender, you know, side of spirituality, there. You know, if we look into nature, right? We still have rainstorms. We still have, you know, raging rivers, we still have things that are forceful, right? And dynamically, so and it's okay to take action and be the one to initiate it to be a part of it. Right. And to go with what you feel and say, I've gone Austin, I've gone to Kansas City, you know, I'm doing these things and, and like you said, I'm committing to this, and I'm just gonna do it. I don't know how I just know that I am. Right. And that is like, like your like your Shawn attention to it's it's something that there's a fear and trepidation, I think, in making a decision with many people in the spiritual realm. And I think that mainly because if they, and this is my self speaking, right, coming into this space, if you don't have like, this kind of this hunter mentality, if you don't have like this business mindset, right? You feel almost like, it's against your nature in order to say you're committed to it, right? almost like you're afraid that if somebody finds out about, you said, you were gonna do this, and it didn't happen, and how can you believe in you know, all the spirituality then? Right? Because it's like, they don't want to be found that well, that's okay. Right? to like, not have that thing happen. Right? I love the one. There's plenty of them out, though. And the exact lines but like, you know, I always say, if I gotten exactly what I wanted, like when I wanted it, when I was younger, or any that like I'd probably be dead. Right? So it was probably spirit looking out for me for not getting what I wanted in those situations, right? Like, well, you know, so there's that, but the idea of drawing a line in the sand, or even a target and a destination for a lot of these people spirituality, it's like, they feel like it's too connected to materialism. Right? Where in actuality, a vision is not too far off from having a goal, right? Plenty people can have a vision, My vision is my goal, right? Or all these other things where ambition is more tied, you know, for me, growing up, like ambition was always tied to, you know, material success, whereas ambition can also be tied to this great spiritual vision. Right? So connecting, you know, those two streams of thought has been a big part of spiritual dopler again, connecting with somebody like yourself who's leading with spirituality, ambition and and this commitment and decision making capability that you've got is still being spiritually LED and is blowing the doors and you know, everything like I said in the beginning here is opening up for you because you're doing it that way and you're connected with your spirituality. Emmy Harr 44:02 Yeah, and I might even say two things about that to help kind of bridge that that gap that some people in the spiritual realm like fear is a I always figured you know, God, God can see the entire forest I can maybe see a tree. So like, if he is the one telling me and directing me Hey, you need to go to Austin or Hey, you need to do go to Casey or you need to do this podcast. Why wouldn't I want to trust that like, he's got this vantage point he's an eagle and I'm just a squirrel. You know what I mean? Like hell yeah, I'd rather trust somebody else than myself. And not not to separate the two right like cuz we are all God, we're all spirit but then also it comes into the fact of manifestation, meaning, well, and this is something that I learned with my spirituality is once my intuition or my inner child or My angels would tell me something, or show me something and I would act on them out of trust. And then they're more likely because then it's building their trust. You know what I mean? Like, it just feels like a mutual pendulum, if you will. Okay, so we know that she's hearing us, she's receiving the messages, and she makes this she makes option or takes action on them. So yeah, we're gonna keep feeding her. You know what I mean? says this, this manifestation of when, when you say you're going to do something and do it, then it's, it's convincing your brain or your spiritual army that yes, she deserves more, she gets more, you know. So that's helped me. Brandon Handley 45:41 Now, I love that, thanks for sharing that. It's really funny. There was um, you had another guest on who who really said it really similar, different different storyline, the similar outcome, right? You say you're going to do it, and you do it. And the universe becomes kind of like this. You know? Emma says that she's going to do it, right. Emma says that she's going to emphasize it's just going to keep keep opening. All right, Yep. Yep, go ahead, open up the path open up the path just because otherwise, like, right, it's like, you know, why would I open up the door? If you say you're not gonna do it? Right? Why would I? Why would I clear the path if, hey, I'm gonna be there at five and you show you don't show up? Right? Well, I'm not gonna keep open up the path for you. Right? So. So real, real similar stuff there. Um, favorite like is did you have any outside of like, of course, I Bible on scripture, any books, movies, anything that just kind of blew your mind on spirituality? Emmy Harr 46:44 Gosh, so many. I remember there's this one movie called Joshua, when I was little. It's an older movie, I think it was probably in the 90s. But that was just like, again, learning to trust in something bigger than ourselves. And then as far as spirituality, there's like books on chakras, like aura cleansing. So that really helped me. And then I would say, probably my most recent, which was just very profound. Because of timing in my life, I just finished reading the surrender experiment by Michael singer. And not so that that was just so crazy, because I was actually part of a virtual book club club, who with a corporate couple of older women who wanted to read that book, months ago. And I was like, Hey, I'm not in like, I'm already reading free books. Right now. I'm not in the capacity to read it. But can I at least still join for the conversations, right? So don't we've talked maybe once or twice about the book, because it was such a quick read for them. And it was just fun. It was like a spiritual dope, it was a hit. But we never really registered what what they were reading, like what the content of the book was, because it just didn't feel like the right timing for me. then fast forward about a month and a half or two, I think about two months. And I just got this inkling you need the surrender experiment. And fourth of July, I was with my buddy, Jeremy Snowden. And we were just doing some inner work spiritually. And I had the revelation of a retreat center, a vision of a retreat center. And I was like, no way. Like, that's, it was so not me that I was like, This is divine. And so that it was for. So it's just after that vision that I got this inkling that I need to read the surrender experiment. So Ben actually bought us a couple copies. And we started reading it and or just before the day before I started reading it, I mentioned to one of my co workers. And he was like, oh, that'll be great. It talks about him in building a retreat center from scratch. And I was like, You're lying. I was like, No, this is super big. And man, I could not put that book down. I'm a slow reader, especially when it comes to work, like this type of inner work. Sure. But I finished that book in like two or three days, and I just I could not put it down. I was like, as is so crazy. Brandon Handley 49:19 Yeah, that's it's a great one too. I definitely enjoy it. You know, it just begins in that, you know, with the, you know, the whole idea of how limited are you and I write with with what we think we what we think we know with our limited, whatever experiences versus what the universe what Source Energy knows is capable of. And if we go with the idea of having a benevolent universe, if we go with the idea of having an army that's helping to make things happen for us, what happens if we let go the reins a little Bit what happens if we just say, you know, show me what you got? Right? And just kind of take it? And that's the Oh, yeah, agreed. I mean that that blew my mind when he kind of described that to me in that book, right. Trying to experiment. The chakras and or, or cleansing books. Would you have like one or two that are top of mind that you share out with others? Emmy Harr 50:24 Yeah. Do you mind if I go grab it? Because the author here? Okay. Unknown Speaker 50:30 The more Emmy Harr 50:32 like, it's actually an inner like, almost might I say self Reiki in a way, but it's, it's called your aura. And your chakra is the owner manual by Carla McLaren. Okay, and so it should it. It kind of goes through or walks through the process of what each aura represents how to what do you want to visualize how to clean it, how to cleanse your aura, your chakras, and then grounding yourself. It kind of goes through techniques with that. So I love that as I was getting started. Nice, Brandon Handley 51:03 nice. Perfect. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. Where should Where should I send people to kind of come check out what you're up to? Emmy Harr 51:14 Yeah, definitely. So your essential nature is on both Facebook and YouTube for platforms. It's probably going to expand but for right now we'll just stick with Facebook and YouTube. Brandon Handley 51:26 Fantastic. And before you hop off, is there anything else that you feel like you should share today with with spiritual Oh Unknown Speaker 51:34 gosh, do Emmy Harr 51:35 we have an extra three hours? Brandon Handley 51:38 Sure podcast for Unknown Speaker 51:40 surely. Surely. Brandon Handley 51:42 Yeah. So guys, if you want to check out more Have a look. So your says me up here and Emma in the emails? Which is it again? Unknown Speaker 51:52 know, what emails are you looking at? Brandon Handley 51:55 I don't know. I saw Ms. I saw ms somewhere. So I just want to make sure it's me. Right. I was like, Listen, so it's me. Me. Yeah, you guys want to go find so this is probably the third time it's happened to me on spiritual dope. It's like cuz, you know, and, and I was gonna ask this one. Anyways, so if you guys want to go find out more, what he's up to the podcast that she's talking about is so much fun, your essential nature. You know, the three, four of you guys all get on there, you have a good time you talk about some really cool topics you have what's cool is it's not, you know, just diverse in you know, racial or, you know, male and female dynamics, but also the age dynamic too. So, you know, there's just a lot I think that has gone on really great with what you guys have created. So thank you for what you have created, and what you're sharing out there with your group. appreciate what you're doing. Emmy Harr 52:56 And likewise, thank you for having me. Unknown Speaker 52:58 Thanks for listening to the spiritual in Thank you, me for being on the show. Does spiritual dough Be sure to follow us on Facebook and on our website does spiritual joe.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Connor Gross has been selling online for years. But this is his first Black Friday/Cyber Monday as a Shopify merchant. So Ben asked him to come on today’s episode of Ecommerce Marketing School to share what he’s planning for his brand, Respoke Collection, a print-on-demand business for car enthusiasts. Here are the offers, emails, and onsite updates he’s making that will help him drive sales this holiday season. And he also shared his secret for getting free press this time of year (it’s genius).

"How do I get my hands on some Alden rare shell cordovan boots or shoes?" It's one of the questions we get asked the most. So Ben from @stitchdown and @tichoblancoshoes decided to crack it open, along with plenty of other listener questions you can learn a ton from.What are the best ways to store your footwear if you don't have a ton of space? Why does roughout leather never need to be conditioned? Who's making the best suede out there? What's the next big trend in boots???We answer all those and more—give it a listen. This episode was sponsored by Standard & Strange, where you don't NEED an engineering degree to buy their engineer boots...but it helps. Theme music: The Road by Punk Rock Opera

Mondeeeeeee how are ya! Our country has really expanded its vocabulary since Covid hit; Cluster... community transmission... outbreak... the list goes on! So Ben called a cafe and tried to book a table, but the challenge was he had to drop as many of those topical jargon words into the convo as possible. Jono also explained how he was caught on his daughters Zoom call in a very vulnerable scenario! Finally, we learnt about your side hustles, and we also caught up with Dr. Siouxsie Wiles - the wonderful microbiologist who talked us through the current stages of Covid. Enjoy!

What do you do when you’ve spent over a year posting a weekly commentary on how tech ideas and concepts relate to Jewish thought, and specifically the Torah reading for that week? You make a book, of course. That’s exactly how Torah && Tech came to be, and on this episode, I'll talk to the two authors, Rabbi/Programmers Ben Greenberg and Yechiel Kalmenson. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon (00:32): Welcome to our podcast, where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT, we're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways. We make our careers as IT professionals mash, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon (00:53): What do you do when you've spent over a year posting a weekly commentary on how tech ideas and concepts relate to Jewish thought and specifically the Torah reading for that week? You make a book of course! And that's exactly how "Torah and Tech" came to be. And today on our podcast, we're going to talk about it. I'm Leon Adato. And the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my partners in podcasting crime and the focus of today's episode. We've got Yechiel Kalmenson. Yechiel (01:18): Hello. Leon (01:19): and Ben Greenberg. Ben (01:20): Hello there. Leon (01:21): And you've both been on Technically Religious before. So you know how this works. We begin with shameless self promotion. So Ben kick it off. Tell us a little bit about you and where people can find out more of your glorious, good thinking and work. Ben (01:34): Okay. Shamelessly. So I'm Ben Greenberg and I'm a developer advocate at Vonage. And you can find me on twitter @rabbigreenberg and/or on my website at bengreenberg.dev that's Greenberg with an E not a U and find me in general on the internet bank, Greenberg dev, dev dot two all over the place. Leon (01:54): And how do you identify religiously? Ben (01:55): Mostly identify as an Orthodox Jew. Leon (01:57): Yechiel you're next. Yechiel (01:58): Well, I'm a Yechiel Kalmenson again, um, I'm usually a software engineer at VMware currently taking family leave to be a full time dad. You can find me on Twitter @yehielk. You can find my blog rabbionrails.io and like Ben, I identify as an Orthodox Jew. Leon (02:15): Great. And just to circle around I'm Leon Adato, I'm a Head Geek at SolarWinds. Yes. That's my actual job title and SolarWinds is neither solar nor wind. It's a software vendor that makes monitoring stuff because naming things is apparently hard. You can find me on the Twitters as I like to say, because it horrifies my children @leonadato. You can also hear me pontificate about things, both technical and religious, on my blog adatosystems.com. And I also, for the trifecta, identify as an Orthodox Jew. And if you're scribbling any of this down, stop it, put your hands back on the steering wheel, pay attention to the road. Listen, because we're going to have these things in our show notes, along with all the other links and ideas that we're going to mention in the next little bit. So you don't have to write it down. We've done the writing for you. Um, now normally we dive into our topic, but because the topic is a book I'd like to go from shameless self promotion to shameless book promotion can one of you please tell me where people can get their hands on a copy of Torah && Tech. Yechiel (03:15): For sure. Well, you can buy the book at most retailers and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, nah Goodreads isn't a retailer. Um, pretty much anywhere where you can buy books. You can also read more about the book and about our newsletter on our website at Torahandtech.dev that's Torahandtech.dev. Leon (03:35): So diving in, I think one of the first questions, a lot of folks who were working in tech or religion have is what does it take to make a book? Like, just talk about the process of getting this book together, getting it online, selling it, editing it all the, you know, how was that process for you? Ben (03:53): It takes a lot of sleepless nights right now, Yechiel (03:55): For sure. So in all fairness, unlike other books where you sit and write it, like this book is a little different, it's sort of, it's a compilation of the year's worth of weekly newsletters. So the sleepless nights were spread out over a year of Thursday nights. When you realize a 10 o'clock "gosh, I didn't do the newsletter yet." Ben (04:14): So there, there was two things that we did when we took, we decided, okay, we have this year of newsletter content. We want to turn into a book. There were two things that we did almost the exact same time. We took all the content of the year's newsletters and put into one big Google doc, which you can imagine, Leon, it's like a bit of a messy document. And then we did the second thing, which was, we direct messaged you on Twitter and said, "how do we make a book?!" Those are the two things that we did once we had those. Yechiel (04:41): Yeah, because while we're on this subject, I do want to give a shout out the idea to actually put this in the book, came to me when I was helping Leon work on his book. Uh, "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer Asks", or I did a bunch of that. Um, yeah. So over a year ago, Leon asked me to help him edit a book, which turned out to be just reading and telling Leon how awesome it was. Leon (05:02): You are my rabbinic sensitivity reader, which I know it sounds like I'm making a joke, but it really was. I am not a rabbi. Um, I've never been to Yeshiva and I was writing a book that was at least 50% Judaic content. And I wanted to make sure that I wasn't talking out of my rearend sometimes. So I needed somebody who was like, yeah, no, see that idea there? No, that's not a thing. Yeah. Yechiel (05:23): But like I said, I ended up just rubber stamping it because it was pretty good as, as it was you know, I forced myself to put comments just to justify the money you actually paid me for it, but it was good. Anyway, Ben (05:36): You sound like a city rabbinic kosher supervisor in Israel. Leon (05:40): Oh gosh. Wow. And some of you will get that joke. Yechiel (05:47): With the exception that this book was actually kosher, but yeah, but working on that book and also hearing the Technically Religious episode where you spoke about that book gave me the idea that, Hey, should maybe put this into a book. And I, I reached out to Ben about the idea and he was all for it too. So when it was time to actually do it, when we got through a year, um, we reached out to Leon. And if anyone is thinking of writing a book, I think Leon might be able to squeeze you into his busy schedule. Ben (06:12): Not through volunteering your time. Leon (06:13): Yeah. Right. No, no. I am. I mean, people who have been listening to this podcast know that, um, we are here for you, whoever, whoever the we is and whoever the, you are, we are here for you. So if that is something you want to know, I'm happy to talk to you about the process. Um, but I'm curious, did you, did you get an editor involved? Ben (06:31): I had a little bit experience putting together a book before I, when I was in, uh, working in the congregational Jewish world, both on campus in the synagogue. I put together a book when I was on campus and a particular book in the congregational world. And they were both again self published. And, uh, and I did everything. I edited my own, uh, texts. I made my own graphic design. I put together the manuscript I, I did from A to Z and this time around, I didn't want to do that again because I know that I'm not a good editor of my own content. And I know from experience the mistakes that I find and unlike something in the digital space, it is much harder to edit a mistake once it's printed and in people's bookshelves. And it's much harder to put out a version 1.01, exactly bug fixes are harder in hardcover or paperback copies. Leon (07:26): Really difficult. Ben (07:27): It's very difficult. Leon (07:28): So patching becomes a very literal process. Ben (07:31): Very little process, like print it out, another piece of paper and tape it onto the book. Uh, so this time around, I really want to make sure that we had people with us who could help us, who were not so, uh, I wanna say privileged to the text or who read it at such privilege readers as the ones who write it, the people who look at it with a more critical eye. And so we did hire, uh, people, uh, to both edit all the texts, uh, spelling, grammar, flow, style. And we actually work with somebody who specifically was not our rabbinic supervisor, Leon, somebody who didn't have extensive Jewish background or experience. Coz one of the goals of the book for us is to be accessible to those without that background. And so every time she raised a question, "what is that? What is this? How do I understand that." It was a great moment to inflect and think about, well, how do we make that better? And how do we make that more accessible? And how do we make that more understandable? So that was a critical part of the work she brought to it as well. Um, yeah, so we, and then we hired somebody to help us with graphic design and somebody to help us with the type scripting, uh, type scripting type scripting? The manuscript type setting type scripting. My mind has been too much in typescripts recently. Type setting. Like type of this book, Leon (08:51): It's a strongly typed book. Ben (08:53): It's a very strongly typed. Yes, indeed. It's got a method signature for every chapter. Uh, that is a, that was a bit of the process. And then of course they, every one of them, I mean, were offered invaluable help. Right? I think that that's true. Right? Yechiel. They all, they've made the book turn from a big, huge Google doc with a year's worth of newsletter content into something that actually could be printed and made sense and looked and looks presentable. Leon (09:23): So again, for people listening, thinking, Oh wait, no, you know, I haven't thought about making a book, but maybe that's a thing. So we're talking about, um, first of all, doing the work of the work, right? Writing the book in this case, you divided the work into 52, easy to digest pieces. Um, and just wrote a little bit of the book every week. Um, I want to remind everybody that if you write 10,000 words a day, you'll have a book. And if you write 2000 words a day, you'll have a book. And you write 50 words a day, you will have a book. Please do not think that there is some minimum requirement of word generation before you can have a book. Um, I, I'm a big believer that people who, who do writing should understand how powerful it is and share it. So that's the first piece. The second piece though, is that once you've done the work of the work and you have the book, um, you got an outside editor in this case, you got a fresh set of eyes to look at this and say, this makes no sense to me whatsoever. Um, can you clean that up? And that was your Canary in the coal mine, so to speak and also graphic design, which, um, is I think again for a lot of us, it's like, well, what do you mean? I just want words on a page and there's a cover, there's, you know, you know, art inside the book always helps to illustrate a point. You know, how, how involved was the graphic designer for all that? Yechiel (10:43): Yeah. In our case, there's no graphics in the inside the book, there's no pictures or anything or diagrams. Um, so it was just for the cover, I think, no, unless you're referring to the type setting, Ben (10:51): It was just the cover. The type setting was separate. That was a separate person to help us with that. But that also, by the way, people often don't think about those sorts of things. Like what style do you want the words to come out as? What are the, each font choice reflects a different sort of, it's almost like an interior designer for a book, you know, like you're trying to think of what kind of vibe you want to send with the fonts you choose. And then double for us on top of that was while the book is entirely, mostly in English, there are a few snippets in, in Hebrew, which are translated on the spot. So if you don't understand Hebrew. You don't have to be stumped by that. But then at the same time, the what about font and type for a non-English characters. And how do you present that in a primarily English book. These sorts of questions, which I don't think I definitely, I didn't think about before we started engaging in it and ends up being really a crucial part of it. Because if the presentation, the book isn't worthwhile, if someone doesn't enjoy holding the book and wants to read the book, they're not going to read the book and then all your efforts are essentially for naught. Leon (12:04): Right? And, and I'll underscore another point is that, first of all, just the types need consistency that chapter headings have to look the same all throughout the book and they can't look the same as subheadings and they can't look the same as whatever they should be similar. Like you said, you know, good interior design means that, uh, you know, there's a theme that I know when I go from one room to another room, it doesn't feel jarring, but at the same time, I know I'm in a different place. I'm looking at different things, but also something that people don't think about is, uh, electronic publishing, that it's not just about the printed book. It's also when you're, when you're doing an E publishing, those font choices are critically important to the conversion, into an ebook that if you get it wrong things, things don't lay out correctly anymore because the epub generator, whether you're talking about, um, Amazon's Kindle, uh, or, uh, Smashwords meat grinder or whatever it is really needs those font choices to be the same all the way through the book to know what it's doing. So having a typesetter who's aware of that and who can catch those little mistakes, say, I will tell you, it saves hours because I did it myself for the book. And it was probably the most labor intensive part of the entire book that I did because I didn't know what I was doing. Ben (13:24): You would you say it's more labor intensive than the work of the work of actually writing the book? Leon (13:28): Yeah, it was, it was, it was more, it was more error prone. I had to go back and redo the conversion to the ebook probably almost a hundred times before I finally was able to find my butt with both hands and, and get it done. So yeah, it's, it's really a big deal. Okay. So what else about the book creating process, um, was interesting to you or exciting to you or frustrating to you or whatever? You know, what stands out? Yechiel (13:57): I guess I will say don't come in with the expectation of like making a million dollars off of it. Um, Leon (14:05): Only half a million. Yechiel (14:07): Okay. Especially if you're self publishing, it's not an expensive process at all. Um, I think we got it under about $500. If we make that back, that'll be nice if we make a little more, um, that'll be even nicer, but yeah, I don't see this. Uh, I don't see us quitting our day jobs anytime soon over this. Leon (14:27): Uh, and I will second that, uh, yeah, The Four Questions has not, in fact, uh, supplemented my income to the point where it can cover my mortgage or even Starbucks and a year and a half later, uh, yeah, a year and a half later, it still hasn't paid for itself. So I it's a labor of love. The next question I have for you though, is we've talked about right, because you really have something you have to say. So what was that you had to say, what is the thing that you couldn't live without having this book around to put it into the world? Ben (14:59): I think it, for me, it's the same thing that the driving force behind the weekly newsletter, which is really the impetus for the book and the foundation of the book, which actually Leon, if I can be as audacious is also a bit of what your podcast is about, which is that the world of technology, the industry that we're in, despite what many might think is not a value neutral conversation is not a value neutral industry at that, that there is a need to have value driven conversations and ethics driven conversations in the work that we do day in and day out. And the newsletter, which really was, as I said, the foundation of the book and the book itself is our attempt to really put out that message through the authentic voices for us, which is through our traditions, through the tradition of Torah, their tradition of Judaism, but it could be in anyone's authentic voice, the same kind of idea, which is to engage in that value driven conversation. Yechiel (16:01): And the corollary to that. I think in the other direction, you know, there are some, you know, some voices in the religious side that view technology as a threat or, you know, something to be avoided or at least, you know, severely limited. Um, I think it's important for people to realize that technology just like anything else in the world is a tool, a tool that can be used for bad, but can be used for good. And it can be used to, you know, some people may feel threatened a bit, but on the other hand, it can be used to promote values of goodness and kindness and justice. And that's another point that, uh, that and the Torah && Tech, the double ampersand, which implies that both are needed Torah, you know, tech without Torah or values in general, um, can go very dangerously. But also Torah without tech is missing a way of expression. Leon (16:53): Right? I think that that one of the most powerful lessons that's come out of this podcast and also as I've been reading the book is, is that two way street that if you can accept, so let's say you're coming from a religious point of view. If you can accept that, um, Torah has relevance to technology, you then must accept that technology has relevance to Torah. And if on the other hand, you're coming at this from a technical point of view, and you're just kind of curious about, you know, how could you make that relevant to, you know, religion? Like what is that all about? If you accept that that technology has incredible relevance to religion, it helps not only as a message spreading technology, but also as a, you know, this is how you collect data and this is how you validate things. And this is how you, you know, all of those wonderful things that we as IT people do. And you say, this is valid toward, uh, a religious tradition. Then you must accept that the religious tradition can reflect back. Ben (17:50): You know, I often think about the moment of the printing press and what the printing press did as a technology to traditional communities like our community, like the Jewish community, what it did to it was not only just a print books, it radicalized the availability and accessibility of knowledge across communities and people, regardless of station life, regardless of, uh, you know, where they started from had with effort could have the ability to find a book and get the education to open that book and have access to storehouse of knowledge. And of course it began as a trickle when the printing press began, right? Because the amount of books were small, but then as years went by and the, the availability of books can greater and greater, I'll give you a great example of this is if you go to a lot of, uh, older synagogues from several hundred years ago in medieval Europe, and they're still around in Poland and Ukraine and Russia, you often find that their, the walls are covered with the prayers. And the reason why they're covered with the prayers because no one had initially had access to books. And so they would come into synagogue and they would need to know the words of the liturgy to say. And the only way they knew what words to say was by like literally going into three 60, turning around in the synagogue to follow the walls of the, of the prayers that were covered in them. And then the printing press happens. And suddenly over a period of time, a revolution occurred in, uh, in a democratic visitation of knowledge. And you could say a similar thing is happening and it's happened and is currently still happening in technology of today and what it's doing and how can we not have that double ampersand conversation of how it's impacting both Torah and how Torah is being impacted by it and how the two of them are in conversation with each other. Leon (19:47): And I can't help but think about, uh, so it's, uh, what is it now? Is it still June? I dunno. It's like the 327th day of March, as far as I can tell it's, uh, it's yeah. It's June, um, June, 2020. And, uh, so, you know, COVID is a thing that's still happening. And the joke is that in January, every yeshiva in America, every yeshiva across the world would be tell families if you have a television it's, you know, if you have technology, it's really not okay. You need to keep technology completely out of the hands of your, our students. We don't want their, their minds sullied by this technology. And by the end of February, every yeshiva on the planet was like, okay, so you just jump on your internet and go to Chrome and go to Google meet so that you can have your chevroota. The pivot to technology was like instantaneous. It was just Ben (20:38): Wish it was instantaneous. So, and I'll give you an example from our, our own lives. Uh, when our kids were in Israel, we're doing a remote learning in their schools, which was neither remote nor learning, but an attempt at doing remote learning, uh, initially was very chaotic. And the reason why it was so chaotic was a while our kids go to a state, uh, religious, uh, public school. So it's in the more modern end of the religious spectrum. It's not an ultra Orthodox public school. It's a, what might call a modern Orthodox public school. All of the educators in the public school that teach Judaic subjects come from the other side of the road for us, literally in where we live. And the other side of the road is an it's a beautiful city with wonderful people called Modi'in Illit and or Kiryat Sefer, and Kiryat Sefer doesn't have WhatsApp, doesn't have zoom, doesn't have Google meets. And so suddenly they're being told by the misrad hachinuch by the ministry of education, that they must do these classes over a technology. They don't even know they don't have computers in their, in their homes. How are they supposed to do this yet? They did. And they learned how, and suddenly after a very chaotic period of time, we have, you know, essentially charidi, uh, morot, charidi... Ultra Orthodox educators going and conducting, with professionalism, with like suave and knowing how to run a Zoom meeting with 40 Israeli kids and not be chaotic. But how do you get from A to Z? That was a bit of a tumultuous period, but to watch that happen in real time was quite amazing. Leon (22:22): I think we're at the point where people hopefully are interested in, but I want to identify who is this book for? Like, I could see that as I was sketching out the notes for this conversation, I thought, well, maybe it's for programmers. You know, who happened to be Jewish? Who are Judaism curious? Uh, maybe it's just for credit, you know, you needed credibility on Twitter. So you could say author in your Twitter profile. On the other hand, I could also see you writing this book for religious people who happen to be in technology, or are tech curious, or maybe it's just for your spouse to say, look, honey, this is what I've been doing with my evenings. Like what, who is this book for specifically? Who's your target audience? Yechiel (23:00): I just want to start off off the bat because it probably has to be said, this book is not intended to try to convert anyone to try to proselytize. Judaism specifically does not have a tradition of trying to proselytize people. And we're pretty adamant about that. We do not, not only are we not trying to proselytize you, we do not want you. We believe that, you know, God accepts everyone. God puts everyone in the world for a reason. If everyone was the same, it would be boring. Ben (23:27): Except my next door neighbor. Yechiel (23:28): Your next door neighbor might have to change. Um, but, but yeah, so this book is not trying to convert anyone. It was just, uh, presenting one point of view of many. Um, who did we write a for? Uh, I'll admit we started off for ourselves. Um, like the project are in tech. The weekly newsletter started as just like a small project for me and Ben to keep in touch, then ran off from like we used to, we used to be coworkers. We worked together at our first job and then Ben ran off to Israel, but that was one friendship I wasn't willing to let go so quickly. So, um, we started this project as a small collaboration to help us keep in touch, which solidly grew. And as it grew organically, we discovered on our own who our audience was. And it seems like the answer is - there's no one single answer. I mean, obviously like you said, you know, programmers with their religion, with an interest in religion or ethical conversations and religious people with an interest in tech, but also people who are completely not religious. Um, people from all ends of the spectrum, people are not technical. People are not religious. We've gotten feedback from all of them. And it seems like pretty much anyone who's interested and who believes, like Ben said that tech is not a value neutral, uh, space. And who believes that values, that these conversations around values have to take place, is the intended audience for this book and for the newsletter. Ben (24:58): Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting how this we're finding well, the newsletter cause the newsletter's been around for a lot longer. Right. So how are finding the newsletter has impacted people. And then, and then as a addition to that, or an addendum to that as the book has been published and people are now getting a chance to sort of read the book, how it's impacting people. And just this evening, a few minutes before we had our engaged in this wonderful conversation together, I had one of my regular chats with one of my sets of aunts and uncles who live out in the great Northwest of America, the great Pacific Northwest. And they are not, uh, the most engaged couple in traditional religious Jewish life. And by not the most engaged, I mean, not engaged at all. And, uh, they bought the book, uh, and I think, and I asked them and I was correct. It was the first time they ever bought a book on Amazon and the Torah category in their entire adult lives, or, you know, lives in general from Amazon or any bookstore before the world of Amazon. And, uh, you know, I told, I told my uncle, you know, the next step is you have to actually open the book after you buy the book. He said, okay, fine. I'll get there eventually. But you know, the, you know, the idea that, that people are thinking, this is an interesting subject. And so he's, you know, he's far from this field as one can be he's in the medical profession, but the, but this such technology, right, it's pervasive and it's something a lot of people think about and they get, they get hit with it from media sources, from the news, whether it's talking about facial recognition or about, uh, tracking, uh, contact tracing of coronavirus patients, our government's authorizing tracking patients through smartphones. It was just a lot of that conversation happening, particularly in this moment and this time. So this book is piquing that curiosity, I think of folks who are just kind of like, even if they're not in tech, but are curious about, you know, some of those larger questions that circulate that are integrated in the, in the world of technology. Leon (27:05): Right? And, and I think that we've gotten to a point where every new technology that comes in, a lot of people are having an automatic reaction of, "am I okay with this?" Not just, can I use this? Do I understand this? Because I think for most people they've gotten past, or they never were at a point where technology threatened them or made them feel uncomfortable. It was just a state of being it's on their phone, it's on their, whatever it is, it's a tech, right. And whether we're talking about Tik Tok or contact tracing or password management or whatever, um, or Facebook, the question isn't, how do I use this? The question is, am I okay with this? Right. And how do I use this? There are lots and lots and lots of guides out there for how do I do this, but am I okay with this? There's not a lot of guides that speak to, should I be okay with this? And it's not an, it's not an automatic yes or no for all of humanity. Right? You have to know who you are. You have to know where your, where you set your boundaries and that helps you identify, are you going to be the kind of person who's okay with it? Yechiel (28:17): For sure. And this conversation is actually what Torah && Tech is about. I like saying that we don't offer a lot of answers in Torah && Tech but we hope to start to start having you question, or we hope to start these conversations. I have had people asking these questions and discussing them and seeing for themselves, what are they okay with? What are they, you know, what values do they bring to their work? And you know, what type of people do they want to bring? What type of personalities do they want to bring to their, to their work, to their technology. Ben (28:47): Our chapters typically end with questioning back to the reader, asking the reader what they think. And we don't do that. Just rhetorically. We are also interested in what they actually genuinely think. And we want this to be a conversation. And it's actually, I think, part and parcel to our style and to the tradition that we come from, which is to answer a question with a question and to try and engage the person in. I'm not going to tell you what to think, because a there's a multiplicity of possibilities of how one could think about this, but I want you to come to what your approach to it. I want to come your answer. And I'm curious what you think. You know, just speaking personally, I'm really grateful that I work in a place where I have a manager who tolerates me answering every one of his questions with another question, and he never gets annoyed and he is not Jewish in any way, shape or form an amazing guy from England. And I think I'm the first person he's had to work with, who nonstop, only answers his questions with questions. And I'm grateful that he loves it. And we engage in this great discourse together. But we do the same thing in our book. We always leave readers with questions more than answers. Cause it's the, what was the, I forget exactly who, but there was a scientist who credited his, Speaker 3 (30:03): It yeah. Isador [Isaac] Rabi. He was a Nobel prize winning physicist. Ben (30:08): Leon you're just the font of knowledge. Leon (30:10): I've quoted him before. And he said, he said, I use this in a talk. I gave actually in Tel Aviv. Yechiel (30:15): In fact, you use it in your book as well. Leon (30:18): Uh Oh, it is in my book. That's right. He says, you know, um, more than anything, my mother made me, made me a scientist. Uh, he said that, you know, every other kid in Brooklyn would come home and their parents would say so, did you learn anything? My mother, no, not my mother not my mother. What did you ask any good questions today? Ben (30:34): I, I I've heard that quote so many times, and yet I still say to my kids, every time they get home, what'd you learn today? It's like, I can't absorb it. Leon (30:42): Right. You'll get there. Ben (30:44): They'll get there a Nobel prize because of me, because I didn't ask that question, Yechiel (30:47): They'll get it in their own rights. Leon (30:49): Right. They'll earn their own way. So, but that does lead me to an interesting question, which is, um, what are some of the comments that you've gotten back if you, if you end every post weekly post, and now every chapter in the book with a question, what are some of the interesting feedbacks that you pieces of feedback you've gotten over time? Anything that stands out in your mind? Yechiel (31:09): Actually, one conversation that was pretty interesting started in, uh, uh, in response to one of the issues of the newsletter that was put out. Um, this was actually like most newsletters. Like there's I know there are, Torah like we choose like a thought from the Parasha related to tech or current events or whatever it is. This one I decided to have just like a stream of thought, the stream of consciousness, um, about, about the culpability of AI, artificial intelligence, and specifically people who write it. Um, so let's say if I program and an artificial intelligence and it goes ahead and does some damage, how responsible am I for the actions of this program that I wrote? And I did it in the, like starting the style of a Talmudic discussion. Um, there wasn't much in the way of answers, just like raise different possibilities, um, look at, you know, why, why it would apply, why it wouldn't apply. Um, it was more of a stream of consciousness. I really hoped it made sense when I fired it off. Um, but actually that one was the one who got the most comments back. People like actually engaged in that conversation. And they're like, you know, people raised different possibilities, different analogies that I had missed. Um, it was a really enjoyable conversation, Leon (32:26): Probably about a year and a half ago. I had a conversation on a different podcast, um, the on-premise podcast, uh, which is part of gestalt IT, and there, again, there'll be links in the show notes. And, uh, the conversation was about bringing your whole self to work, whether or not it's okay. Whether there are certain things about ourselves that we should just leave at home, you know, as, as some people say, you know, you know, if you've, if you've got this thing going on, leave it on the door, leave it at the door. And we talked about whether that was even possible. Um, and for me being part of that conversation, the, you know, the elephant, the kippah wearing tsitsus draped elephant in the room was my Judaism. Like, can I leave my religion at the door? And what does that even look like? And at what point does, does keeping a lid on it means suppressing essential, important parts of myself, Ben, to your point, you know, it's part of our tradition to answer questions with questions that is part of the way that we analyze ideas. It's part of the way that we debate concepts. And of course in it, we do that. How much of that can I leave to the side before I stopped being me at all and become either offended or suppressed, not depressed, but although it could be that too. So I guess this is a two part question one, are you able to bring your whole selves to your job right now? Have you always been able to do that? And what was it like working on a project where that was so fully true that doing Torah && Tech allowed you to be every ounce of the programmers that you are, and also every ounce of the Jews that you are. So, you know, again, have you always been able to do that and what was it like working on this book? Ben (34:12): So I I'll start, I guess. And I think that, uh, to answer that question, it's kind of, to me, it feels like a bit of walking on a tightrope and, uh, I do make an effort to bring my whole self to my work. And in some ways I'm grateful for the unique circumstances that I'm in, which is that I happen to work in an international company with a very large R&D office in Israel. And so everyone in all the other offices across the company have become, acculturated to, uh, well, Israel and Jews are not one and the same. That is true. That's a very important statement to make. And Israeli Jews are not the same as Jews from other parts of the world. That's also true and there's a great diversity, but nonetheless, it is people who live in places where there are no Jews at all. So who become acculturated to working with Jews. And so that's helpful. And, you know, and not only just Jews, right, Leon, but also kippah wearing Jews, you know, observant Jews in the Tel Aviv office. And so they get to interact with them and they come and visit here in the pre pre days before the crurrent days, they would spend time with that and, and be attuned to the sensitivity of kosher restaurants, things like that. So that's part a and part B is yes, that's all true, but you also don't want to be harping on it all the time and you don't want it, You have to always be sensitive a little bit of being mixed up SIM like a little bit of like, uh, yes. Being there, but also pulling back a little bit and, and making sure you don't take up all the space in the room and it's all about you and your uniquenesses and sort of your, your unique needs and sort of your, your, your unique perspectives, because it might come as a surprise, you know, especially, you know, somethings depending on how great your feeling about yourself, other people are also unique and they also have unique perspectives and they also have unique place that they're coming from, and they also want to contribute those unique things. Right. And so like leaving some space, leaving some oxygen in the room and, you know, and again, not to stereotype, definitely not to stereotype or to generalize, but sometimes we, as a people can take up a lot of the air in the room and to, and to let others have some of the air to breathe and to speak as important. Leon (36:35): My coworkers who are listening to this podcast are probably nodding. So, so ferociously that they're going to get, put a Crick in their neck. They require a neck brace after they're done Yechiel (36:46): I'm in a different situation. Of course, I work in the States and New York, um, and having been on the receiving end of workplace proselytization. And like I said, Jews specifically do not like proselytizing. I try not to have specific religious conversations at work other than with the few other religious Jewish coworkers I have. Um, of course when it comes to like things that will affect my work, I'll have those conversations up front, you know, things like Shabbat or kosher lunches or things like that. So, you know, I'll definitely speak up. And actually there's a whole chapter in the book. Um, your guide to working with your observant coworker, which I had a lot of fun writing. I wrote it when I switched teams and had to have all those conversations over again and decided that it would be helpful for others. Um, but conversations around that go beyond that. It's like the kind of conversations that we have in Torah and tech that I try not to bring up at work as much as possible. And in that sense, like you said, the newsletter and then the book we're away for me to express that part of myself, which I really enjoyed, Ben (37:49): You know, there's a larger conversation to be had here as well, that sort of transcends the workplace. So I just recall a couple of incidents where, uh, on the speaking circuit in conferences, and you would get some guidelines about what to say what not to say, how to, how to speak in the most successful ways. And all the advice overwhelmingly was incredibly on point was incredibly helpful and I think was, uh, necessary to make sure the space was maximally, welcoming, and accessible to a diversity of people from all backgrounds... Except when it comes to people with religious sensibilities. And I would actually add to that religious slash cultural sensibilities because, you know, coming again, uh, from Israel, uh, there's things like, so one of the guidelines to concretize, what I'm saying, uh, from one conference in particular was trying if you make a mistake or you're trying to say something that you should avoid something, don't use the oft-repeated term of like, God forbid, God forbid you should do that because there might people in the room who don't believe in God, and that could offend them to say, God forbid. And so whether one is a religious or not in Israel, that is one of most common expressions amongst everyone in the country. Even if the die hard, most ardent atheists will say, God forbid, it just it's part of the lexicon. It's just part of the cultural sort of dichotomy. So you're trying to get maximum welcoming as possible, but in doing so, you're not thinking about, or you're not at all elevating as part of the consideration, those people who come from either religious backgrounds or come from countries that are not Western European countries and, and how to think about that, how to actually make space. And, you know, I heard this by the way, from a colleague of mine, a previous former colleague of mine who comes from very different backgrounds, you know, from a Muslim background and she's an amazing person. And she often talks about that as well, about how, yes, maximally diverse places means there's maximum diverse or Western Europeans and, and, and, you know, Northeastern Americans. And what about everyone else in the world? Like from North Africa or from the middle East, or from Asia who are not Western Europeans or North Eastern Americans and, you know, what do you, what do you do about that and how do you, and how do you, uh, raise up the diversity and the ability for all people to come to this space, even if they're not, um, German or French or British. Leon (40:16): So this has been an amazing conversation. There's a lot more, I think we can go into with everything hope. Uh, hopefully I'll have a chance to have you back and talk about specific chapters, but before we wrap up, uh, one more opportunity for shameless book promotion, where again, now that we've heard about it and we are champing at the bit, and we can't live another minute without this book in our lives, where can we find it? Yechiel (40:37): Um, so yeah, so, like I said, in the beginning, um, you can buy it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, uh, on your Kindle, on your Nook, on any, on most other retailers. Um, what I forgot the first time around was that if you do not live in North America or in a primarily English speaking country, a Book Repository, I'm told by Ben, is the go-to and it's on there too. Uh, we will have all those links in the show notes. Um, and of course you can also go to TorahandTech.Dev to order the book and also to sign up for the newsletter. So you can get a sneak preview of volume two, which will be coming out in about a half a year. Ben (41:13): Yes. Leon (41:14): Not only can you, you ought to, you should, Ben (41:17): You're encouraged to, and you get a ToraandTech.dev. You can find, uh, the table of contents. So you get a sense what's in the book and on Amazon and the other retailers you'll find sample chapters as well. So you can really get a fuller idea of what it's like. And that website as Yechiel mentioned his Book Depository, which if you're living anywhere in the world where English books are harder to come by, it's a great place to go to get your English books. You might not get them for a few months, but you can order them. And eventually they get shipped to you. Josh (41:50): Thanks for making time for us this week, to hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, http://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect with us on social media. Leon (42:04): Ugh! We still need a tagline for this episode. Ben (42:06): Can we just go with "Buy our Book? Yechiel (42:08): I guess that works for me.

In this episode, we are Frankly Speaking with the co-authors of Our Happy Divorce, Nikki and Ben.   Nikki knows how being supported by a strong, loving family can influence the way a person navigates life, love, marriage, and motherhood. Having grown up as a member of the iconic San Francisco 49ers football family, she was thrown into the limelight at a young age. The values her family instilled in her have helped shape who she is today, and she continues to live by them.coparents Ben intimately understands the detriment divorce can cause in the lives of children. The example of his parents’ divorce instilled in him a deep commitment "to do" better by his own kids. Ben is an investor, board member, philanthropist, golfer, and sports enthusiast. But above all, he is a dedicated father and family man who understands the importance of putting his ego aside and his children first. IT  WAS  NOT  PERFECT ... Nikki and Ben define their own personal story with us and discuss what happy looks like today. Inspired by their son, they developed ways to co-parent, step-parent with an emphasis on putting the children first. As they say, “If we can do it, anyone can do it”. As Catherine says, "DIVORCE does not mess your kids up, it is how both parents BEHAVE before, during, and after divorce that can mess your children up." There is a different way to get Divorced. Let’s talk about it… Getting to the “Happy” … We chat about cleaning up the wreckage of the past and forgiveness. How can we stop pointing the finger at our spouse and get honest with ourselves? Do not fool yourself, your children know what is going on. Open discussions about financial settlements and joint custody. Using the Divorce Process to redefine what your life, your finances, and relationship will be like post-divorce. Co-Parenting and Step-parenting survival tips during the pandemic. Want to learn more about Our Happy Divorce? Visit their website at https://ourhappydivorce.com/ Whether you are thinking of divorce/separation, are in the midst of a divorce, or embarking on your new life after divorce, this episode has something to help you. If you have questions for us or a topic you’d like us to cover, contact us at hello@mydivorcesolution.com or visit MyDivorceSolution.com ----more---- Karen Chellew: Welcome to We Chat Divorce. Hello, I'm Karen Chellew, legal liaison, here with Catherine Shanahan, CDFA. We're the co-founders of My Divorce Solution. We're a company whose mission is to change the way people get divorced by providing a different approach, financial clarity, and an online course to help couples develop a transparent plan that will optimize the outcome of their divorce. Karen Chellew: Each podcast we sit down with professionals who provide insight and frank discussion on real people, real situations, and real divorce. Today we welcome Nikki and Ben, co-authors of Our Happy Divorce: How Ending Our Marriage Brought Us Together. That's fantastic. Co-founders Ben Heldfond and Nikki DeBartolo understand that no divorce is ever easy, especially for those involved. Karen Chellew: After nearly a decade together the couple decided to split, and inspired by their son, Asher, to find ways to happily navigate a divorce. Ben and Nikki created Our Happy Divorce, a service empowering and inspiring people to think differently about divorce, co-parenting, stepparenting, and what it means to put kids first. Nikki and Ben describe themselves as ordinary people who have accomplished something extraordinary. They have sidestepped a lot of the booby traps that make most divorces acrimonious. Nikki and Ben say, "If we can do it, you can do it." Thank you. Ben: No truer words have ever been spoken. Karen Chellew: I love that. So first and foremost, I want to say thank you for the beautiful gift you sent of your book, your bookmark. It was awesome. Beautiful gift. And for people who receive that, it's just so inspiring just to open the box and feel the book, so you guys have done a great job. Catherine Shanahan: Aren't you supposed to send that over to me, Karen? Karen Chellew: What, the chocolate? Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. Where'd that go, Karen? Karen Chellew: Everything but the chocolate's on its way. Ben: Everything. Catherine Shanahan: I'll give you my address so I can get one of those. Ben: There you go. That's a deal. We'll get that off to you. Karen Chellew: Oh, that's good. So a service inspiring people to think a different way about divorce. How do you do that? Ben: Well, I think we do it through our story. All this book is is our experience. We're not lawyers, we're not therapists. We just happen to figure out a way to have an acrimonious divorce. We didn't have a roadmap. Collaborative divorce was sort of in the beginning stages, but you know, it was just the two of us. We say if we can do it, anybody can do it because we are two Type A personalities who somehow came to a point of putting the past behind us and not making anybody a villain, and putting our son first. And then everything sort of fell into place. Nikki: Right. It wasn't perfect in the beginning. I think people need to realize that, that we went through some rocky months. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, yeah. So that's a really good point, Nikki. Let's talk about that a little bit because if you read anything I write, or if you ever talk to me, or if anyone has gone through our process, they'll hear me say not once, but probably a thousand times because I am a stepmom. I have been divorced and I have raised five children in a blended family, so I am a firm believer that divorce does not mess your kids up. It's how the parents behave before divorce, during divorce, and after divorce that can mess your children up. Catherine Shanahan: However, you call your company or your book The Happy Divorce and I think everybody has to define happy. What is happy, and that can mean something different to everyone, and that's okay. Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: So happy for somebody could be that... as a stepmom I can remember, happy for me sometimes was that my stepchildren went home on Sunday night, and that's okay. Nikki: That's okay. Catherine Shanahan: Because it's exhausting, right? Ben: Yeah, yeah. Nikki: That's totally normal. Ben: Yeah, and Nikki said it took time. I think if you had asked us 13 years ago what happy meant, what our definition of a happy divorce was, it would have been that we could just be in the same room together. Catherine Shanahan: Exactly. Nikki: Or at like an event together or a birthday party together. Ben: And not make everybody feel uncomfortable, but most importantly our son. Catherine Shanahan: Right. Ben: So even today, we know people who have happy divorces, they might not be to the extreme that Nikki and mine are, or they might be better, it's just that you put the kids first. You don't hand the kids the emotional bill to pay for something that they had absolutely no choice in. Catherine Shanahan: Exactly. I think your son said it so cute, and he is... Asher, right? Nikki: Yes. Karen Chellew: Adorable. Catherine Shanahan: Oh, my God. He is so cute. I watched your video clip and he said, "You know, I always wanted siblings. Well, maybe not so much." Ben: After it came, right, yeah. Nikki: And he was like, "Oh, can't they go back?" No. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, yeah. I thought that was so cute, and it's so true. So his happy was, "I got them." Well, maybe today I don't want them. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: You know, it was so cute, it kind of ties it all up. And so in divorce we say that with our couples when we're negotiating a settlement where we're going through their financial portrait with them, which it's kids and your finances. So what would your happy be? Is your happy keeping the house? Is your happy having the retirement monies? Is your happy having your children three days a week? Every other weekend so you can have your career? Define what your happy is. So I love the title of your book, and it's okay to define that, and to define your co-parenting, because your co-parenting is not the same as my co-parenting. Nikki: No. It's different for everybody. Karen Chellew: And it's okay. Nikki: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: So how did you come to your happy, the two of you? Nikki: Well... I think it took less work on my part than it did on his. Karen Chellew: Oh, why is that? Nikki: I sort of set out thinking, "How am I going to do this?" My parents are still married after 52 years, so I kind of had the mindset of, "Okay, what am I going to do to make my son's life as close to the way I grew up as possible, but being divorced?" So that was always something that was in my head, and it was sort of ingrained to try to figure out a way to make him... have what I had growing up and not feel slighted. Ben: Yeah. Nikki: [crosstalk 00:07:40] not so much. Ben: And I on the other hand grew up in the complete opposite household of a family of parents who didn't have a happy divorce. So part of it was ingrained in me, being a child of the '80s, well, actually I was born in early '70s, but parents were divorced in the '80s. It was the way it was, right? People got divorced, and it wasn't, "How are we going to get along? How are we going to co-parent?" It's like, "We're going to go to war. I'm going to get my lawyer. You're going to get yours and it's going to be battle." Ben: I also was in a completely different place in my life emotionally. I wasn't a very happy person when I left our marriage. For me, that manifest itself at pointing the finger at Nikki. It was all her fault. It was all her... you know, if only she hadn't done this. If only she should have done... you know. And 'shoulding' all over myself. That's S-H-O-U-L-D, not the other one. Ben: But you know, and then what it took was a realization or clarity to find out what my part was in the relationship. So in order to get to happy, I had to, we had to clean up the wreckage of the past, and we had to get honest about what our part is and understand that it takes two to make a relationship, it takes two to ruin a relationship. Ben: And just like our happy divorce it works that way too. Now it takes four to make it, because we're both remarried. In our book, it doesn't go into what happened, who did what, who didn't do what, because at the end of the day, what we realize is all that stuff doesn't matter. What matters is that we both came to a place of forgiveness, but also admitted what we had done wrong. Karen Chellew: How did you come to a place of forgiveness? What started turning the tide from the anger and resentment, or whatever the negative emotions were? What happened on both of your parts to just start to turn that tide a little bit. Ben: Well, yeah, for me, again, Nikki wasn't as scorned I guess you could say, which is weird for her. Nikki: That's really weird for me. Ben: But you know, I left the house- Nikki: You [crosstalk 00:09:54] the one out for blood. Ben: Right, exactly. I left the house in a way that I look back and I almost cringe, a very dramatic way. I took off my ring. I put it on the bathroom counter with a picture of us torn out and I left. Nikki: Very dramatic. Ben: Very dramatic. Nikki: Like something I would have done. Ben: And I went and I did my research, and I looked for the best shark lawyer, the one who had all the biggest cases in Tampa. Definitely did my research. I called him and explained to him what I wanted, and I wanted to destroy Nikki, and I wanted to embarrass her, and I wanted to show our son what a fraud she was, at least how I saw her. Ben: So he took a very hefty retainer from me, and then he wrote up a manual on how we were going to go about doing what I wanted to accomplish. And I didn't read it for a little bit, and it was in my backpack that I carry everywhere, and I was on a plane back from LA to Tampa, and I pulled it out and I decided to read it. I got two pages into it, and this thing was like 30 pages long. Nikki: That's probably the same thing he gives everybody else. Ben: Right, just different boiler plate. Nikki: Names are just changed. Ben: Exactly. And then all of a sudden I had a moment of clarity, and I saw for the first time in a long time that if I went down this path, continuing to read this War and Peace destruction manual what it was going to lead to, because I knew where it was going to lead to, because I had been down that road. I had been part of my parents divorce down the road. Ben: Or I could try to find a different way and a different path. So I called Nikki when I landed and I said, "I need some time. I need some space." Because I knew I couldn't deal with the divorce in the head space I was in. Karen Chellew: Right. Ben: And probably Nikki too. We weren't ready to start talking about the end until we cleared up the past and found our part. So I called the lawyer and said, "I'm going to find a different way, if you could send back the balance of the retainer," and conveniently there wasn't much left. But it was the best money I ever spent. So then I started working with somebody that I knew, and just went through and found out what my in the relationship was, and my part in the ending of the relationship. And realized about halfway through that I wouldn't want to be married to me either at that time. Ben: I was not in a good place. I was not the father I thought I was, but more importantly I wasn't the husband I thought I was. So then I called Nikki to coffee, and she probably had no idea why I was calling her. Nikki: No. Because I kind of knew this was going on with him, so I mean- Ben: She knew. It was that black sedan that was following me everywhere. Nikki: And I knew that this was the mindset he was in. And I just knew I hadn't gotten to that place. I mean, yes, I was angry and I was sad and I was upset, but I wasn't in the place that he was at. Where I sort of was like, "Let's just get this over with. Let's just fix this... fix it to a point where it's just done." To me, I went at this a totally different way. Nikki: I did hire a lawyer, but it was kind of more like, "What do I do? Here's this divorce, what am I going to do with this?" So mine wasn't, "Let's attack him and let's kill him." Ben: Well, your hardest thing also was that you said it too, it was a, "Fix it." Nikki's a fixer. She wants to get in there and fix everything and not call her a control freak, but control freak. Nikki: I am a control freak. 100% Catherine Shanahan: Were you living together at the time or were you separated in different homes? Nikki: We were in different homes, but not really. At that time- Ben: Somewhere in between there... I was staying in a hotel for about six months, and then I'd come home and- Nikki: Did you really stay in a hotel for six months? Ben: Six months. The biggest most exciting time of my life during that time was when they released a new movie on the On Demand thing at the hotel. Catherine Shanahan: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Ben: Because I'd watched them all. And then I eventually got a place. So we weren't officially divorced yet when I had my own place, but it was when we told our son. He forced our hand to tell him because... Why don't you tell the story about us thinking we were getting over on him. Nikki: Oh yeah. So Ben would come over every morning before Asher would go to school. And you know, he would make sure he was there before he woke up. One morning- Catherine Shanahan: How old was he at the time? Ben: Four? Karen Chellew: Yeah? Ben: Four. Yeah. Nikki: So he comes in my room. Ben is already there. And he looks at me and says, "Hey mom, where did Daddy sleep last night?" And I always thought I did a really good job of messing up the bed thinking like, "Oh, okay." Ben: Yeah. Nikki: And I was like, "What do you mean? Right here." And he's like, "Where did Daddy sleep last night?" And I was like, "Oh, boy. This kid is way smarter than we're giving him credit for, so we need to do something, and it's time for us to sit him down as best we can with someone that young and just say, "Hey, this is what's happening. We love you." That's probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. Ben: Oh yeah. It was hard. But we framed it in a way and were open with him. If anything from our experience, again, not lawyers, not therapists, but through my experience with my parents, my experience with my son and our divorce is the idea that kids are resilient and they'll get over it, or they don't see things... is nonsense. It is absolute nonsense and I can say that from experience on both sides of it, right? "Oh, our kids will get over it. They're resilient. They don't know what's going on." Here a four-year-old who knew- Nikki: Exactly what was going on. Ben: Right. Playing Inspector Clouseau. Knew that I hadn't slept there because my bed wasn't made, my pillows weren't ruffled or whatever he did. So that's another message we try to get across is that, "Don't fool yourself." To me, and staying on my soapbox too much here, but to me, that's justification for behaviors." Karen Chellew: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Nikki: And too, to this day he still claims that he saw boxes, which we never let a box- Ben: At least we thought we didn't. Nikki: But he still says he saw boxes. Catherine Shanahan: You know, I think sometimes even if he didn't see boxes, he probably heard you talk about boxes. Nikki: Right. And in his head, he's like, "Oh yeah." Catherine Shanahan: You can probably remember talking about something in your childhood, but you don't really remember going to Disney World when you were two, but you remember seeing pictures that you went to Disney World when you were two. Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: So you think you remember you were in Disney World when you were two, right? Ben: Yeah. Nikki: It's true. Catherine Shanahan: I'm sure he heard about that or saw that. So he's a smart kid. Like I said, I feel like I know him a little bit from watching the video. Nikki: Yes. Ben: Yeah, he wraps up the book too. He's got a chapter at the end of the book that just puts a bow on it perfectly, because our happy... Your answer, "How does your happy look?" We didn't know it was going to be happy at the time, but you know, I called her to coffee after I'd done this work on myself. The first thing I told her was I was sorry, that I'd done some work myself and I realized that it's no one's fault, it's not her fault, it's not my fault. We equal parts of this and I'm sorry for my part. Ben: I went through some of the things. I wasn't a very good husband. I ignored you, I didn't... blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to apologize again, I already did that. Karen Chellew: Yeah. Ben: You're only getting it once. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, she's sitting here smiling and she's like [crosstalk 00:17:45]. Ben: She loves it. And so we went through it and then she apologized to me, which was- Nikki: Which was probably the first and only time I've ever apologized. Catherine Shanahan: And you're lucky because we have this recorded [crosstalk 00:17:59]- Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: You can both listen on repeat. Nikki: Yeah. Ben: And then from that moment on it didn't just all of a sudden become happy, but there was room to move, because then we both genuinely accept each other's apologies, and we told each other we loved each other, and that we committed at that meeting to putting our son first with every decision we made. So our happy looked like not what was in Nikki's bank account or Nikki's family's bank account or what I thought I deserved. Our happy was what was best for our son. Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. So you know we like to get real with everyone, and a lot of our viewers come from a wide range, and we deal with a lot of affluent people, but we also deal with people who aren't affluent, or they don't know that they're affluent. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: We do a lot of budgeting and we hone in on financials with everyone. And as a CDFA, I sit down and Karen does a lot of the budgeting with our clients, pre-divorce and post-divorce. So we listen to your story and it sounds great. You afforded him the ability to go through the mucky waters of what he needed to figure out for himself, which is a luxury, because he had that time to do that. Catherine Shanahan: And you blamed her in the beginning and you had all that anger, and you went and hired the bulldog, which oh, my God, we hear so many times people go and hire the bulldog, and only 10% of divorce cases need whatever everybody wants to refer to as the bulldog, and Karen loves to jump in and really get the definition of what a bulldog actually means, because you don't really need a bulldog. But anyway, that's a whole other podcast. Catherine Shanahan: But what did you do with your finances, because a lot of people who have money there, they can't access it during that time. How do you stay in a hotel room if you can't get the money? Did you two have your separate bank accounts, because people can't be happy if they can't get their financials, right? So if somebody out there wants to have a happy divorce, they come to us. Catherine Shanahan: So for example, for us we start with your finances. So we can afford them that time to work through the financials so they don't run to attorneys. You don't need two attorneys gathering your financial data. It's the same data you're collecting. You're paying thousands and thousands... We save people hundreds of thousands of dollars because why are you paying them to gather the same information and go through the packet of information you were asked to gather. Ben: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: Why would you both have to do that. So we do that so that they can work through their stuff, right? Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: So during that time- Ben: I think what's important at least is yes from my experience, and also from this process of writing this book with Nikki and talking with people, it doesn't matter if there are a thousand dollars in the bank or there's a hundred million dollars in the bank, you know for the most part, because what it comes down to is financial insecurity. Ben: And what I think the problem with divorce and why sometimes it goes sideways is because it deals with two of the biggest trigger buttons, I could use a different word, but trigger buttons of our human condition and that's romance and finance, and both those speak directly to ego, right? Catherine Shanahan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ben: And so our financial settlement was the same as our custody agreement is that we try to as much as possible take ego out of it, and to try to put Asher first. So when it came time to discussing finances, it was, "Okay, what's best for Asher?" Nikki or myself had to make sacrifices, or give more or take less or whatever it was, but it was... Look, it wasn't simple, right? It was easier though when we looked at it through a pair of glasses of what's best for Asher, and you take the ego out of it as much as possible. Nikki: Right. I mean, I think too for him it was about his life. Ben: Right. Nikki: And the way we wanted him to be raised. We wanted him to be raised at both houses as basically as much the same- Ben: As possible. Nikki: Even with rules. With four parents, there's a lot of rules too. Ben: Right. Well, there's a lot of communication. Nikki: Right. Ben: The other thing we did, which... We both had lawyers, so I don't want to say that we did this willy nilly. But we did what's called collaborative and it wasn't- Nikki: We did through. Ben: We did. Nikki: We sort of brought it to our lawyers and said, "Hey, this is what we think we want to do." Ben: Right. So what we've tried, and agreed to try is, "Let's figure out what we can do on our own, and let's go through it with this pair of glasses that we now have of what's best for Asher, try to take ego out of it and see where we go." Nikki: And I think for us too, I mean, I guess couples... One of his biggest things with me was, "Do you have a problem with joint custody of our son?" And obviously if he was not a good guy or had some sort of issues that would be a different story, but I mean obviously I had no problem with that. So that was one of the first things that kind of softened him a little bit. Ben: That was the first question I asked was, "Do you have any problem with doing 50/50 everything with our son from the left shoe to the right shoe?" Nikki: Right. Ben: And she said, "Of course not. You're his dad." So I said with the other stuff we can work it out. And so then we started with that foundation, and then we were on the same page with that. Then we went to some other things like the businesses that we had together. Nikki had a jewelry company that she had started that I owned half of. I had a record label that I had started with her sister, which is kind of weird, but you know, so it wasn't necessarily about how much each one was worth at the time or the balance sheet of the jewelry company versus the record label. Nikki: It was things that he could have been like, "Oh, I'm going to get her because I want my half of that." Ben: Yeah, and I had no desire to be in the jewelry business. But if I was looking at it- Nikki: Why should you be? Ben: Yeah, right. Right, but if I'd been looking at it from a scorned ego standpoint, I was like, "I'm going to take the jewelry business because I know how much it means to her." Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: Well I think it's really great that because you work through... Well, let me back up first. It's because I always say two people, you come together and you get married, it takes two people to get married, and it takes two people to get divorced, you know? Ben: Yup. Catherine Shanahan: And none of it has to do with your children. So you took the time to heal first, and then you made the important decision, so Karen, you know and you can pick up from this, the process that we developed because we're both divorced before we started... We saw how people got divorced, and when I went through my divorce eight years ago I just thought, "Hell, people have to get divorced different. This is just ridiculous." Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: The way we work is you do your financials first, and then you take your agreement, and we do a lot of negotiated agreements, and when we get to them take this to your attorney, pretty much what you're saying and have them draw up this agreement. You don't need them to talk to each other to tell you what you should do for yourselves, right? Nikki: Yup. Ben: Right. Karen Chellew: You just need to know what you want, and they don't necessarily spend a lot of time helping you figure that out. Catherine Shanahan: And you don't need a judge how to set up visitation for your lifestyle and your child. Ben: Control your own destiny. Nikki: I do all our calendar, well, because I'm that person. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. Ben: Literally, she prints out... We used to- Nikki: I still use paper. Ben: In the beginning we used to meet at the same coffee shop, the same table, with Nikki's calendars, which are legendary, you know, not an iPhone calendar, not a computer, like the actual calendar printed out and we'd go through the month and you know, "What days are you traveling?" And I'd tell her- Catherine Shanahan: I love that. Ben: And we would do the schedule. And then over time this is sort of how the evolution of our divorce happened. Then now, she just does it. I entrust in her, not that I didn't entrust in her before, well maybe not. Catherine Shanahan: But it works. Ben: But it works. But now she does it, and it's in our shared calendar with Asher. Nikki: He knows where he is. He knows where to go. Ben: And it's 15 days, and if- Nikki: Sports is on there. Anything. Everything's on that calendar. Dinners, everybody can see it. Ben: But the thing that we went to too is again, we tried to see where we agreed or what we could do by ourselves and ended up doing the whole thing, and hashing out the whole settlement over many coffee meetings. It didn't just happen at that one coffee, but same table, same coffee shop, and then we handed it to the lawyers. Catherine Shanahan: I love that. Ben: We said, "Add your 'whereas' and run on sentences and you can get it as [crosstalk 00:27:06] as possible, so you can get paid $450 an hour for somebody to then reread it to try to find a way out of that run-on." Anyways... no offense. Karen Chellew: So I'm going to observe here that during all of those coffee shop meetings and all of those different interactions that the end result that you redefined your relationship as parents of Asher, and as your future. So I think that is fantastic, and I think that's what we try to help our client understand that use the divorce the process, and use that time to redefine what you're going to be like post-divorce, because your kids need to be able to depend on that and rely on that. Karen Chellew: And it's a very important time, and the time you spend fighting and arguing with each other, the less time you spend on creating that new relationship. So I think that's key what you did. Ben: Nobody's ever been happy or survived feeding their kids poison hoping the other one dies. Karen Chellew: Right. Ben: I think that happens a lot in divorces is that... And again, one beautiful thing about this process is when I left that house I was angry, I was going to go to war, I was going to go down the same path as my parents had gone done. But now I realize my parents didn't sit around the table when they got divorced and premeditate how they were going to not get along and how they were going to get us in the middle of that and all that awkwardness, it was just they were so blinded by the things we talked about earlier, the romance, the finance, and egos were hurt so they were blind to it. Ben: I was blind to it. When I left that house and I hired the lawyer and I wasn't talking to Nikki, I wasn't purposely sitting there going, "Hm, how am I going to screw up my kid?" But it's hard. It's hard on them. It was hard on me growing up. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, well you know, nobody gets married thinking they're going to get divorced. Nikki: No. Ben: No. Catherine Shanahan: And you know, truth be told, myself included, there are times that you sit back and you say you wish your kid didn't have to go between one home and the other. Ben: And he does too. Catherine Shanahan: Nobody wants their child to do that or spend half their Christmas. Then you have more children and you don't want them to have to leave their siblings and all of that. It's not an easy process, and you can't be normal and wonder, "Is my child okay?" Even though they're happy and healthy. We know they are. I mean, my children are thriving, and I'm happy for them. They're doing so well. Catherine Shanahan: I'm remarried. I got married in June. I feel like I have the love of my life and I'm so blessed, and my children love him, so all of that, but we do wonder sometimes. But I think that's okay, and I think that's part of just being healthy human beings. But sometimes, you know, we deal with so many people's emotions they can't see past that. Catherine Shanahan: I think what your son has learned most importantly is the respect, and the reason why you let Nikki take over this whole calendar issue is because you respect her, and she respects you and that's why she does it. For your son to learn how a couple can respect each other is probably the best gift, because that's the best love you can give a partner. Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: Because you can't fully love someone if you don't respect them. Ben: And you brought up just a good point about co-parents too. And our spouses currently are... Just the other thing, I'm sure you see clients and people who are divorced miserable, but remarried and happy, and yet they still have this hatred towards the other one, and it's just like if you could just take a step back and realize that if you hadn't gotten divorced, and you hadn't gone down that, you wouldn't have met the other person. Ben: And our spouses, Chad and Nadia, there's no question who we were meant to be with. Nikki and Chad, I still... I'm like, "She never looked at me that way. She never grabbed my hand like that." It's like I never think, "What if." And then on the flip side, Nadia- Nikki: It's the same way though. I tell her too. I look at her sometimes and I'm like, "I couldn't be married to him," but she just smiles and loves him. Ben: She loves me, the unconditional love, which means you love the good and the bad just as much. And then Asher gets to see this, and he gets to see healthy relationships, and he gets to see that even though his parents are divorced, and this is the most sobering part about it. A couple years ago we were on a fishing trip and out of nowhere he said, "This divorce is hard on me." And this is like three years ago. Ben: I felt like saying, "You little SOB. You have no idea what a bad divorce is or how hard divorce is." And then it hit me. Even as good as Nikki and I have it, and I don't think... Maybe it could get better if we lived together, but besides that- Nikki: No, it would definitely not get better if we lived together. Karen Chellew: He doesn't know that. He doesn't know that. Ben: So but just the idea of being displaced every couple days, and even though we live seven houses down, I've seen him go, "Oh, I forgot my math book at Mom's. I've got to go down and get it." Nikki: But he even says too, sometimes he'll look at me and go, "You and Dad get along so well. Sometimes I don't understand why you're not married anymore." And I'm like, "We get along really well right now. We were meant to be best friends. We weren't meant to be husband and wife." I go, "You were meant to be here, so that's why we..." 100%. Karen Chellew: That's beautiful. Ben: Yeah, so a lot of kids read Dr. Seuss books as a kid, he was always an animal junkie, so we would read him animal encyclopedias, and he knew every single animal, where they came from, where they lived. And we always knew that we wanted to take him to Africa on a safari. But with the shots and everything... So if anything was going to send our divorce south, and it was if one of the other ones had taken Asher to Africa without the other one. Ben: So this past summer, Nikki and Asher and I went to Africa, just the three of us together on a safari. Nikki: I didn't feed him to any animals. Ben: And I didn't die. There were no lion accidents. Nikki: No accidents. Ben: But it was a great opportunity for our son. Nikki: Yes. Ben: Our spouses, when we told them- Nikki: I mean, we asked them if they wanted. Ben: Right. Nikki: It was this open invitation trip. Ben: But her husband just has this small responsibility of being a sheriff of Hillsborough County, and my wife was raising our two sons and starting a practice of her own, so it just wasn't possible. Nikki: Raising your what? Ben: What? Nikki: Your two sons. Ben: Oh, no, two kids. Well, two sons and daughter. But she has two young kids at home, it just wasn't possible for them to go, but the response, and this is where it really just comes full circle, wasn't, "Are you crazy that you think it's okay for you to go to Africa in the middle of the bush with your ex-wife? Are you nuts?" It was, "Asher will love that. What a great opportunity he has to go to Africa with his parents, and have that experience." Nikki: And day two of our trip he looked at me and he said, "Thank you so much. This is the best trip I could have ever gone on." Karen Chellew: That's awesome. That's awesome. Catherine Shanahan: That's really rare. There's not very many... I don't know anyone... That's really rare and really special. Ben: Yeah, and again- Nikki: And I mean, there are people that still think we're crazy. Ben: Right. And it didn't happen overnight. Nikki: Our families thought we were crazy in the beginning. Ben: I still think they might. Nikki: I think they might too. Ben: But the important thing is, I think we started this conversation with this, and that it didn't happen overnight. Nikki: Right. Ben: And a small example of that is when Nikki married Chad, Nikki called me and said, "I don't think that I feel comfortable with inviting you to the wedding. It's because I don't want people to worry about how Ben's feeling, take away from 'this is my day.'" And I was, "Completely understandable." It wasn't ready. It wasn't the right time. It wasn't about me. It was about Nikki and her day and her second day, her and Chad. Ben: And she's right, all the guests saying, "Oh, the ex-husband's here? This is weird." But again, fast forward about three or four years later, I get married and Nikki and Chad and her whole family are at my wedding, and not like, "Gotcha," like, "Hey, you didn't invite me to yours, I'm going to show everybody I'm a bigger person." Sorry- Nikki: There's something in my ear. Ben: My phone is... So that she came to my wedding. So it's been progress, not perfection. Nikki: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ben: But it's been progress and it's getting there, and it didn't happen overnight. We've been doing this for 13 years. Catherine Shanahan: That's awesome. Karen Chellew: Yeah. Ben: It's just become more natural. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, that's really good. Karen Chellew: That is great. So let's pivot to the topic of the day because I think a lot of people will benefit from your perspective on the pandemic and COVID and parenting children through... or co-parenting children who are traveling back and forth, and a lot of what we're hearing is, "I don't know if my son or my daughter or my children are safe at the other parent's house because they're not sheltering in place and they're not making sure everything's taken care of." So we're hearing a lot of that. Karen Chellew: And everybody's just cooped up together, so what can you offer the parents and the kids going through this right now to offer some kind of support? Nikki: I think for us, I mean, obviously we have it a little differently than most divorced couples, but I think in the beginning we sort of sat down and had a conversation, an open conversation. We weren't going to keep anything from Asher. We wanted him to know what was going on in the world, but we were on the same page about what Asher was... You know, in the beginning it was kind of a little bit slower process, "Oh, they can do this. They can do this. They can't do this." Then all of a sudden it was like, "No, you can't do anything." Nikki: So I think it took both of us to try to explain to him too in the beginning like, "Listen, you really can't leave the house. You're not going anywhere. You can get in your car and you can go for a drive, but you can't stop anywhere. You can't talk to your friends. You can't see your friends. You can't do anything." And I think the same went for the two of us. We kind of said, "Listen, what's going on at your house? Where are you going to go? Where am I going?" We kind of got on the same page where we were like, "You have to shut it down." Nikki: I mean, other than the fact that my husband has to go to work, he even tries to shut it down where he goes into work, goes in his office, he sees all of about two people when he goes into work, and that's it, because he doesn't have a choice. Ben: Right. Nikki: But we just decided in the beginning, "Let's shut this down." And so Asher's obviously homeschooled now, or whatever that's called, virtual school, whatever. Ben: It's the new homeschool, yeah. Nikki: That kind of even made a decision too that the days Asher is at Ben and Nadia's house, he comes over to our house by 9:30 in the morning to start school, unless he's got a Zoom class that starts before that, and he does all of his schoolwork at our house until he's done, because- Ben: Otherwise it'd be mayhem with the two young... his brothers and sisters going into- Nikki: Them trying to do their school, and then him trying, you know, conflicts. All they want to do, when he's there they just want to be with him. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: What's the age different? Ben: Four and seven, so- Nikki: And Asher's 16. Ben: Yeah, so [crosstalk 00:39:14]. The other thing is that I think that the way we handle this pandemic and sort of a microcosm of how we handle life in our divorce. We had a conversation. We both agreed upon the rules at both houses that we were going to social distance, we were going to be responsible, we were going to shelter in place. We were going to do all the same things at both houses. And once we did that, all of a sudden, now our sphere of quarantine has widened. Ben: That's why Nikki and I are sitting next to each other right now and not because- Nikki: Because we quarantined together. I see the kids almost every day. Ben: Right. We can go down to her house because Asher's been going back and forth, being the outbreak monkey, so if it was going to be in one house, it was going to be in the other house anyway. Nikki: We're all getting it. If it's in one house, we're all getting it. Catherine Shanahan: What do you do, Ben, if Nadia doesn't agree with Nikki? Ben: About... Catherine Shanahan: Parenting, rules, or where you go? Ben: I think one of the greatest things about Nadia and Chad is we all co-parent together. Nadia's a therapist specializing in kids, so she brings a different perspective. She doesn't try to step on Nikki's shoes. She disagrees with some things we do with Asher, but she says it, and I'm sure Chad does too. She says it, and they say it, but at the end of the day, we're his parents. At the end of the day, we're going to make the ultimate decision, but for the most part, since it's evolved, the four of us usually sit down on the big ticket items. Ben: Nikki and I have different parenting styles. Nadia and I have different parenting styles. Nikki: Chad and I have different parenting styles. Ben: Right, and Nikki and I would have different parenting styles whether we were married or divorced. So it's just about finding the- Nikki: Some sort of common ground with all of us. Ben: Picking your battles. I learned to pick my battles with her. It's not worth the... Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. Ben: So the COVID thing, we ran out of paper towels for just a small example, but you know, I called Nikki, I knew that she probably had 25 cases, and even if she didn't I knew that she would give us one. Nikki: I did give you some. Ben: That's just the way- Catherine Shanahan: Are you hoarding? Ben: She's always been. There is no difference. She's- Nikki: I do not hoard toilet paper. I don't understand the toilet paper thing. I barely have enough toilet paper in the house. Ben: She's been preparing for this thing for what, 45 years? Karen Chellew: So you didn't say, "Asher, when you're at mom's house, just grab toilet paper, throw it in your bag and just run out"? Ben: No, and I go over there and I got caught robbing her pantry. Nikki: Yes, for snacks. And then if you notice my hair is pink. It is not normally pink. This has been a quarantine thing. And his daughter is convinced that her hair is going to be pink too, so I tried once, her hair's darker than mine, so didn't work. So now I've just instead of asking for permission, I'm like, "Okay, well I'm dyeing your daughter's hair pink." Ben: Yeah, I found out after I got home from work yesterday. This is, again, what our life is like today. It truly is. You talk about the byline on the book, but it's also the other one we talk about is finding a different kind of love. That's what we've done over the past 14 years, or however long it's been. I love this woman. I've always loved this woman. I think we kind of got confused with being in love and love. But luckily enough we never lost... We might have lost it for a little bit there, but we got back to it. Ben: Then it's evolved into this thing, you know, that is beyond us, beyond our wildest imagination. Again, if we can do it, and this might sound like French or Latin to some of your listeners right now, it's real, but it was a process. Karen Chellew: That's awesome. Ben: You know, if you're starting out, I don't know what you tell your clients, but take small steps, and that's what we had to do in the beginning is get the small wins, get the softball game where there wasn't an awkward feeling or event at your kid's school where you didn't walk away feeling awkward. That's a win. Nikki: Yup. Ben: That's a small win, and then the wins start piling up. Before you know it you're in Africa and no one's dying. Catherine Shanahan: I love that. We tell our clients you know, "You do not have to tell your children that their mom's an alcoholic, or their dad's an idiot. If they're an idiot or an alcoholic they'll see it for themselves." Ben: Right. Nikki: They will. Catherine Shanahan: Just be the dad or the mom that you want to be because that's what they're going [crosstalk 00:44:09]. Ben: Love that. Catherine Shanahan: Like I said it brings tears to my eyes. Literally I had chills when I watched your video because, you know, I do what I do and Karen can speak for herself, but I know that she does it also, but we do what we do because we're advocates for the children of the parents that we helped, and we've helped over 400 couples already. One day I'm hoping that the children of the parents will stand up and say, "Those women helped my parents divorce a better way," you know? Catherine Shanahan: We don't need attorneys fighting for parents to set a parenting schedule or to help divide assets. That's what you have professionals to do. So we're doing what we're doing to help people divorce a better way. We just need the attorneys to tie it up and put the 'as is' or 'as set forth' or whatever those words are. We don't really care. We just want them to have financial clarity and to help them to set up a co-parenting plan that works for their family. Catherine Shanahan: I'm like Nikki, I like to write paper agendas and put stickers on everything and all that stuff. Nikki: Me too. I love it. Catherine Shanahan: That's how I like it too. Nikki: I just won't get rid of it. Catherine Shanahan: I love hearing your story because I think that's how it should be. Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: I hope you can come to our Mrs2Me Summit and maybe speak and talk to our attendees. Ben: Oh, we'd love to because that's why we wrote the book. It's not... This is truly an altruism. Nobody wants to spill their... And in the book we talk about our shortcomings. We talk about our failures. We're imperfect, but what we have is real and just for it to be inspirational. We're so happy to do this thing, and then run into people like you guys and others who... Ben: We kind of kept our head down. As silly as it sounds, when we got divorced there was no Facebook or Instagram. There's Myspace, but not a lot of divorced, co-parenting- Catherine Shanahan: Myspace, is that even around? Karen Chellew: I don't remember that. Ben: Right, so we didn't have support groups online to go to. Then even writing the book, it took us four years to write this book because we'd get in a fight, this was my idea and I was- Nikki: [crosstalk 00:46:16] say, "No, I'm not doing your book." Ben: I'm not doing your effing book, blah, blah, blah. Nikki: Yeah. Ben: So then all of a sudden we get the book out and we're starting to do some research, and we see this huge community online. It's not like, "Oh, no, we just launched a book and there's so many other..." It was like, "This is great." Nikki: Like, "This is awesome." Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. Ben: Because these people have the same goal as us and it's to let people know- Nikki: There's a different way. Ben: There's a different way going into it. Not even after they're divorced and it's yucky and all that, but I think I went into it thinking if I get divorced, it's War of the Roses. It's on. This is the only way to go. Nikki: That's the only kind of divorce I ever knew though. Catherine Shanahan: I tell people, "No." They come to us sometimes when they've been the process and we're like, "Oh, my gosh, I wish you would have came here first because you just wait..." I mean, they spent 20, 40,000, and they come with bags of papers. They don't even know what they have. I look at Karen, because the legal process to me is such a crock sometimes. It's not logical thinking, and as a financial I'm like, "What?" So she's like, "It's the process. This is the process." Look at her, she's laughing because I get so annoyed that people spend money for that. Catherine Shanahan: So we're digital. We work nationally, so I just crack up at the process. So I just wish people come here first because it would save them so much angst. It starts couples fighting when they don't even have to fight. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: I said, "Oh, my God," because they get served this nasty language and they say, "Oh, my God, he's going after this," or, "She's going after this." And the couple will say, "I didn't mean that. I didn't mean to do that." So now a war began where the person didn't even mean it. Catherine Shanahan: So when you said you got to work out your stuff first, I was like, "Thank God he came to his senses," because he didn't really want to attack you, but that's how it would have started because like you said, Nikki said, "Yeah, he probably sends that to everybody." That's exactly what that attorney does. And unfortunately they have to send it like that because that's the process. I'm glad you [crosstalk 00:48:28]. Ben: For us, at least for me it was really thin ice. I think that that's the thing is one misstep... I don't know if you guys saw The Marriage Story, but that is a perfect example of one... If she just maybe read that letter in that first meeting, it might have turned out the way it seemed like the movie had ended. And for me, if I hadn't just had that moment of clarity right then or pull it out at the particular time, whatever it was and whenever it happened, who knows, but it's in the beginning, it's just so... It's a powder keg. Ben: To go to people who are aligned with a better outcome will help you, guide you down that path of the right way. We didn't have that, but luckily we got there. Karen Chellew: Kudos. Ben: Someone tell that woman, Scarlet Johansson, "Read the letter." Nikki: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: Yes, yes. Karen Chellew: Well you guys are great, and I think one of my takeaways from today is first and foremost have the conversation. Try to have as many conversations as you can as rugged as they are, but also what I've noticed from hearing you today is whenever something happens today or yesterday that kind of is a trigger, I see that you assign it to that person, not to your relationship that broke apart years ago. And I think a lot of couples haven't developed the ability to do that whenever the other person does something that's irritating or that creates that trigger, "That's why I divorced him. I hate him. He's a terrible person blah, blah, blah." Karen Chellew: But I see you just saying, "That's Ben." or, "That's Nikki." And we're different and you move on. I think that's key in the ongoing relationship. Nikki: Give it a day [crosstalk 00:50:23] we'll come back to that. Ben: Yeah, I mean, I think Nikki [crosstalk 00:50:26] the same thing is that some of the same buttons that I pushed when we married, I still pushes. She still pushes the same. Like you said about parenting, our parenting skills would be different, our styles would be different if we were divorced or married, same as the personality. Nikki: Right. Ben: But it's a lot easier to accept Nikki today being her best friend than it is being her husband. But it's still, I'll also give it a day when she tells me she's not doing the effing book. I'll let her Italian hot head cool off a little bit. Nikki: Cool off for a minute. Ben: Then I'll come back. Catherine Shanahan: I'll take your roll of paper towels and I'll go home and talk to her tomorrow. Ben: Exactly. Karen Chellew: I love that. Well, thank you both for being with us today and to our listeners, the book is Our Happy Divorce. And your website is ourhappydivorce.com. You're on Instagram. You're on Facebook I believe as well. Ben: Facebook, Twitter, everything @ourhappydivorce. Yeah. Karen Chellew: All right. We're happy to meet you. Nikki: Nice to meet you. Karen Chellew: And we hope to see you soon at Mrs2Me. We'll talk with you a little bit more about that. Nikki: Thank you. Karen Chellew: Thank you again. Have a nice and safe and healthy day. Ben: Yeah, thank you. And thank you for everything you guys do. Thank you. Karen Chellew: Thank you. Have a great day. Bye. Ben: All right, thank you guys so much, and let us know about that whatever... the summit or whatever- Karen Chellew: Yeah, we will. We'll reach out to you. Ben: However you want to use us to help spread the message because it sounds like we're very much aligned. Karen Chellew: Great. Yeah, we'll stay in touch. Ben: Okay. Thank you guys. Karen Chellew: Bye. Catherine Shanahan: Be well. Bye.  

Prima Donnas. Attention-Seekers. RockStars. 10x Engineers. These are people who are driven to be (or at least be seen as) the best of the best, the cream of the crop. And maybe they are (and maybe they aren't). But the challenge is their NEED to be SEEN in that light. Whether we encounter them in the NOC or among the congregational flock, their behaviors can be distracting, disruptive, or downright toxic. Are there lessons we've learned from our IT tenures, our religious experiences, or even our sacred texts which might shine a light on how to handle (and even help) these folks to be better members of our community? Listen or read the transcript below. Leon (00:06): Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Doug (00:53): Prima donnas, attention seekers, rock stars, 10 X engineers. These are people who are driven to be, or at least to be seen as the best of the best, the cream of the crop. And maybe they are... Yechiel (01:08): And maybe they aren't, but the challenge is there need to be seen in that light, whether we encounter them in the NOC or among the congregational flock, their behaviors can be distracting, disruptive, or downright toxic. Ben (01:19): Are there lessons we've learned from our IT tenures, our religious experiences, or even our sacred texts, which might shine a light on how to handle - or even help - these folks to be members of our community? Leon (01:30): I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my partners in podcasting crime, Doug Johnson. Doug (01:36): Hey! Leon (01:37): And also Yechiel Kalmenson. Yechiel (01:39): Hello again. Leon (01:40): And newcomer Ben Keen. Welcome to the show. Ben (01:42): Hey, thanks for having me guys. Appreciate it. Looking forward to this. Leon (01:45): No problem. We're looking forward to it too. I think it's a good topic. I think it's one that, um, a lot of folks in IT are sort of thinking about struggling with, but before we dive into it, we have a tradition here on Technically Religious of shameless self promotion of guests before anything else. So Ben being the newest member of, uh, of the speaker pool, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you identify religiously and all that stuff. Ben (02:09): Sure. Uh, my name is Ben Keen. I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I'm a senior system administrator, uh, self deemed monitoring engineer for one of the largest retailers in denim, American Eagle Outfitters. Uh, you can find me on Instagram and um, as Leon says, "the Twitters", uh, @the_Ben_keen. I am a United Methodist. I'm a son of a preacher and I identify myself more of a collective Christian, whereas I take things from all different kinds of religions and kind of bring into my own self. Leon (02:39): Um, okay. Doug, tell us about yourself. Doug (02:41): I'm Doug Johnson and the CTO for a startup called WaveRFID. We do inventory using RFID cooled tags and things like that. I'm actually not on social media. I got off of it. I'm on LinkedIn a little bit, but not very much. I don't even have a website or a blog that I want to promote. So that's just the way it, uh, I'm a born again, evangelical Christian. Leon (03:01): Practically a technical Luddite. Doug (03:03): But on purpose! Leon (03:04): On purpose, right. A purposeful Luddite. I don't know anybody who's an accidental Luddite. Actually. It takes effort these days. Um, okay. Yechiel, what about you? New Speaker (03:14): Yes, so, uh, I'm Yechiel Kalmenson. You can find me on the Twitters @YechielK. Um, I have a blog at http://www.RabbiOnRails.io and I'm an Orthodox Jew. New Speaker (03:23): Okay. And I'll square the circle here. Uh, I'm Leon Adato. I'm a Head Geek. Yes, that's my actual job title at SolarWinds, uh, which is neither solar nor wind because naming things is hard. You can find me on the Twitters, which we all say to annoy Keith Townsend's daughter. Um, you can find me there @LeonAdato. I blog and pontificate on things both technical and religious at https://www.AdatoSystems.com. And I also identify as Orthodox Jewish. And I wanna remind everyone who's listening that if you are scribbling those Twitter handles and websites down, madly, stop it. Just relax. Put your hands back on the wheel of the car or wherever you are listening to this because we're going to have show notes out the day after this podcast drops. So we have all the links of everything that we're talking about. You don't need to write things down. Um, as good IT folk. I think the first thing we want to do on this topic is define our terms. What do we mean when we say 'rockstar'? Doug (04:24): Well, Let's start with what's a real rockstar. I was a rock disc jockey, a celebrity, if you will, uh, for 11 years. And I met a lot of rock stars. Leon (04:34): I want to point out only because Doug and I grew up in the same city that Doug was the number one top rated drive time disc jockey at a particular point in time here in Cleveland. So when he says he's a celebrity, he really is. Doug (04:46): I also found out how much fun it is to be a celebrity. Not. Okay, but just the way it goes. But in any case, I met a lot of people and uh, met a lot of rock stars. And there are people, rock stars who are total jerks. They would, I mean come into the studio and they'd bounce all over the place and they'd scream and they'd throw stuff and you know, just make total jerks of themselves. And then there were other people who were real rock stars. I mean, they take somebody like Ainsley Dunbar. Ainsley Dunbar, so drummer for Jefferson Starship and Journey and John Mayall blues... And just tons of people. If you look on his Wikipedia page, he's played with everybody. I had lunch with him. Nicest guy we've ever, I mean, we just had a great time. Talked about everything and he was, but he's a real rock star. So you know, a rock star is basically somebody who can do their job on stage and take, take care of business. Leon (05:46): Okay. And I think that's definitely the, the good definition of it. But we also have that again, that negative definition, which is somebody who's, you know, attention seeking behavior, looking to push social limits in ways that often doesn't need to be pushed, you know, those kinds of things. So I think that's another part of it. Um, all right, so that's generally speaking, but what do we mean when we say a rock star in the world of tech and IT like what, what is, what does that typically mean? Yechiel (06:15): So I think in general, when people speak about rock stars, rock star developers, rock star engineers, um, it's all referred to in the business as the "genius asshole." This'll be like the person who can code in 20 languages who can solve lead code puzzles in their sleep. You know, you can spin up, you know, in 2000 line of lines of code application and over the weekend. But at the expense of not really being part of the team, um, to put it mildly, like their code will be extremely unreadable. They'll follow their own conventions, won't follow best practices. They'll solve things in brilliant ways, but very unconventional ways, like using really esoteric parts of whatever language they're using, um, which makes it really unreadable for people coming after them trying to maintain their code. Ben (07:06): Yeah. Or you've got the example of that new hire and it kind of comes in and joins the company and thinks that they are better, or know more than everybody else and comes to your desk, uh, where you are the subject matter expert, uh, not trying to glorify yourself, but you know your role. And they come into your cube trying to tell you how they would do your job better. Uh, and not really giving any good fruit to bear from that interaction. But on the flip side of that, you also have those people that joined a team, bring their skill sets to the, to the table to teach people how to fish. You know, like you could sit down with that Linux engineer, that windows engineer and they can show you what their experience has brought, brought them to this floor and teach it to others. Yechiel (07:52): Yeah, I mean, rock star is not necessarily a bad thing. There are some rock stars who are really humble and personable. Um, I like saying a lot. I don't remember who I heard this from and I really feel bad because I use it a lot. And they really want to give credit. Um, but I heard someone say that "a 10x engineer is not someone who can produce 10 times more code than other people, rather 10 X engineers. Someone who brings up 10 other engineers to their level." Doug (08:20): Eric Elliott, JavaScript guy. He's, he said that, I don't know if he's the first one to say it, but, Yechiel (08:24): Oh well thank you. Leon (08:27): There we go. So credit where credit is due because you are both wrong and you know when to give credit, Yechiel (08:32): but the good ones, Leon (08:33): Right! The good kind. Exactly. Um, so on the, on the bad side, I remember, so this is tech, but it's not IT tech. Um, way back in the day when I was working in theater, one of the people that I knew got a job building the, a chandelier for "Phantom of the Opera" when it opened on Broadway. Okay. So those people who know the show, the chandelier comes crashing down and has to be rebuilt after every show. And he built it in such a way that he was the only one who could figure out how to put it back together. And he basically got himself, you know, 'forever work' on that show because he built it in a way that no one else, you know, could, could manage. And that's, that's not okay. It's one thing when you say, "This is so complicated that most people just can't figure it out because it's so hard." But it's another thing when you purposely build something, whether it's code or a chandelier, in a way that no one's just ever going to figure it out because it's a special puzzle that only, I know. Doug (09:32): It almost feels like the bad rock stars in tech want a bus factor of one. Right. I mean think about it. I mean the whole thing is. ... Leon (09:41): (laughing) I just love that: "bus factor of one." Okay. Yeah. Yechiel (09:45): Yeah, it's job security. Doug (09:46): It is, but I mean, it's just wrong. It's bad for the team. It's bad for everybody. I mean, when you reach my age, you realize that you don't want me to be your bus factor of one. Bad things could happen to me tomorrow. Who knows? It's just, you know, it. But I bet I get the impression that there are rock stars that they considered themselves the, the bus factor. If it wasn't for them, it would all fall apart. Leon (10:07): Right. Well, and I've, I've always told people who are in that position, right? Like, Oh no, I'm the only who can do this. This is just remember "Irreplaceable is unpromotable," you know, so if you want to be, if you want to be the one person, like, okay, but you ain't never go into her and right. You know, if you win the lottery, because that's the only, you know, I, I don't like the other examples, you know, look, if I win a lottery, I love you guys. I mean it, I'm going to go buy an island, like I'm done. Right? So, you know, if you make it so that your leaving, you know, completely destroys an environment that's just not okay. Um, and I think that that idea of, you know, if you leave, it all falls apart. I think that takes us to a different aspect of it. You know, this being Technically Religious, we've talked about the technical, but I want to talk about the religious also that, that there are rock stars in the religious world. Now there's something that I say a lot and then yechiel you came up with a corollary. You know, I've said a couple of times on the show that no religion has found the cure for the common asshole. The flip side of that is that, um, nor has any religion taken out an exclusive patent for assholes. So you're going to find 'em everywhere. But I'm curious about what a rock star looks like in our religious life, like in the pews and the, you know, in our church or synagogue or place of worship. What, how does that manifest? Doug (11:26): Well in, in Christianity there's, um, there are people who essentially set themselves up to go ahead and be the whole ministry. I mean, they are, the central chore, it all hangs on them and, and because this Christianity of course they, uh, you know, they come across as very humble. They, they, they of course, you know, you, you need to be humble. But they are so that they're more humble than you'll ever think of being. Um, and so of course they're rock stars and you know, that they can build a whole, the whole ministry ends up, uh, being built around them. In fact, there are ministries that are named after people that you realize that they haven't done anything to, uh, effectively take care of that bus factor. If something happened to them, their ministry is gone. Whereas there are other ministries that are continuing on. Billy Graham ministries is still doing work even though his name is on it, but he's dead and it's still, he built an organization in such a way that it could continue on after he was no longer able to do the work. Leon (12:40): Warren buffet this week came out with a message they did their annual message, you know, for Berkshire Hathaway. And one of the things like nine words that caught everyone's attention was "we are already well positioned for our departure." Meaning that Warren Buffett and his partner, his partner is 96 year old one. Warren Buffett is like 86, 87 something like that. Like they know that eventually they're not going to be in that company and they've already, you know, they've dealt with it. They just haven't made a big deal about it. But yeah, that kind of thing. Doug (13:13): There are rock stars in Christianity. Worship leaders have to be up front. I mean it just, that's the whole concept of being a worship leaders. You're getting everybody to come along, but not everybody who is a worship leader, uh, is leading the congregation. They're basic. They're, they're actually looking more to have the spotlight on themselves. It can, it can go either way. Ben (13:36): And on top of that, you take away from the leader, whether it's the pastor, the lay leader, whoever's leading the worship, and then you flip the camera over to the pews and you see those people who... And no judgment of how you worship. If you're, if you're motive, which means raising your hands and waving of them around and stuff like that. If that's your way of communicating with your, with who you call God, all the power to you. But when you take those actions and you just start making it a show to bring the light upon yourself, you're, you're really missing the message. You know? Uh, we're supposed to be bringing message in light upon who we refer to as our God, not ourselves. And there's a lot of same people that not, but five minutes later or in the parking lot honking their horns, flipping you off, calling you all sorts names for cutting them off, but they didn't spend an hour talking about how great Jesus, how in tune they are with their religion. And then five minutes later it's gone. Leon (14:33): Yeah. I've, I've seen that. So Yom Kippur is one of the most intense holidays in the Jewish calendar. Um, it's a day where you fast for 25 hours. It's uh, it, it again, it's really intense and at the end of it, uh, people want to go home, they want to get a bite to eat and I've watched people cut other people off and scream words and stuff like that. Like you just had, it was the high point of the entire year and here you go. Like this is not our finest moment, Ben (15:01): That one hour. You know, you got to carry that forward if you want to, if you want to be seen as the rock star, that carries with you. Leon (15:10): So just as an interesting point of sort of cultural comparison in Judaism, the, the leader of the congregation, the rabbi is often not doing anything. That the job of running the service often falls to just people in the room. And it is fairly participatory in the sense that in many congregations someone will look around the room and say, "do you want to do the next part?" Do you want to do the next part? And in some places it goes around paragraph by paragraph in some parts of the service, um, you know, throwing things around. Certain people have certain jobs simply for consistency sake or because it requires a little bit extra preparation. Um, but that's, you know, th Doug, your point of having a worship leader doesn't always exist there. However, I've seen that in the smaller congregations, in the startup congregations, in Judaism, it usually revolves around one or two people who have a key collection of skills because it is... You've got to be fluent in Hebrew. If you got to be fluent with the music, you've got to be fluent with the different variations of weekday, morning, afternoon, evening services versus, you know, the Sabbath war and versus a holiday of which there are 9,362 I think Yechiel, you can correct me if I'm off by one or two on that one. Um, you know, there's a lot and every single time there's a variation, there's something extra that you say or don't say. And so the person who has the, you know, again, it's a unique collection of skills. So there's not always a group of people. There might be one person who's, "no, no, no, I've got this one!" Yechiel (16:46): Even in larger congregations, I don't think we are completely rock star immune. Um, you will have those people who are more, you know, to Ben's point, it's more about the show and appearing more religious than everyone else and more devout than everyone else. You know, I've been to congregations where the prayer is basically a contest of who could finish last and it goes to ridiculous lengths. Leon (17:09): I'm in really fast car creations where it's like, you know, "can we get it done in 20 minutes?" And it makes me nuts. Yechiel (17:14): It's like the 6:20 minyan. Uh, yeah. The one like the first where people actually have jobs, pray at. So yeah, they're trying to finish as quick as possible, but you have those where, um, you know, they're just closing their eyes and waving their fists and you know, going, yeah, like Ben said, you know, it's not exclusive to Christianity. Leon (17:34): Yeah. I've also seen people, um, I love this where they are trying to lead from the rear. Where the person who is leading the prayers, again, it goes, you know, around the room, somebody is invited up to lead this part and somebody in the room thinks that they're not doing the job that ought to be done and so going to do it for them from their position, seven rows back. They're going to sing louder, they're going to pray louder. They're going to let you know that they're done with this part of the, you know, of the prayer and you should be now too, kind of thing. And it's just not the most gracious moments when you're trying to have a prayerful experience when trying to connect with the divine. Those are some examples of, of what we mean when we say rock star, what do "they" mean? Like this is what we mean. These are our examples. But there's, there's a different collection of "they". So we have to do, as we talked about the "they" and then and say, what is it that they mean when they say rock star, when you encounter the word rockstar in the wild, what are they talking to? Doug (18:30): One of the first places that I have seen it and seen it repeatedly is in, uh, in tech ads. Uh, I mean those of us who do dev work, you know, we move around a little bit. Sometimes you're doing consulting you're doing or, or you'll come onto a project for a while, just you move a lot. So you read a lot of dev ads and just a lot of people who are running these job postings are looking for "rock star programmers." And, and, and as a matter of fact these days, if I see that I'm out, I mean, if they're looking for a rock star, I, I just know I'm not going to want to go ahead and have anything to do with them. Because either they don't know what they're talking about or, um, they have really unrealistic expectations of what somebody is going to be able to do. But it just comes down to there's, there's, you know, they're, they're the, the, the big companies that think they need to ask for rockstar programmers so they can get the cool kids to go ahead and apply to their job. Um, and then there are the, the startups, the young bro startups that actually, you know, they believe that. They, they think being a rock star is a cool thing and, and, and they're going to go ahead and they want to have other rock stars to be working with them so they can all just be a bunch of rock stars. And have a rock band or something. I have no idea. It just makes no sense to me at all. Leon (19:54): Acer was founded on the idea that everybody they hired got straight A's in college. Like that was their shtick for a little while. Doug (20:02): I was going to say it probably didn't last very long. Did it? New Speaker (20:07): I wonder if they're still around? New Speaker (20:07): My favorite quote for that is the, the A students are managed by the B students, uh, who are work for the company owned by the C students. Ben (20:15): Well, I think, and going back to who "they" are, uh, you know, you have those people that make their resume or their, their social media profile on LinkedIn or whatever, where they labeled themselves rock star. And this isn't about your, you selling yourself. Obviously when you're looking for a job, you need to sell yourself to your possible, to the employer as a, as a candidate because you're going up against five, 10, 15 other people. So you want to make yourself stand out. But it's those people that are just so about them. Um, you know, I know personally when I interview, uh, one of the hardest things, so I served eight and half years in the military, right. And, um, so one of the things I found hard to do was really to justify myself because in the military, it's team, you know, as a team, we did this, we did that, you know, so when I first got out and I was talking to a possible, you know, possible places of employment, they're like, "Well, what did you do?" I was like, well, "we..." You know, and they're like, "no, no. What did you do?" And you know, you got to kind of learn how to promote yourself without overdoing it and becoming that rock star. Yechiel (21:26): Although when someone does write rock star in their profile, it's worth paying attention to what they actually mean with that because, and this is true, someone actually wrote a language called "rockstar" just so that they can call themselves a "rockstar engineer." It's an actual programming language that compiles. Leon (21:41): If you want to find it. We were all laughing about it before we started the show http://codewithrockstar.com. Um, so if you, too, want to be a rock star programmer, uh, you can do that in all humility. You can be humble while saying that you're a rockstar programmer. Um, and Yechiel, you were saying that, uh, some of the programming terms where they use like lyrics of songs. Yechiel (22:03): Yeah, the syntax is all rock lyrics. Doug (22:05): I do have to say that I, the best title I was ever given, and it's not quite as good as Leon's "Head Geek", but an a year before I left this job, I was also, I was a sales engineer forever. And when they could tell I was starting to get somewhat dissatisfied, a new box of cards showed up and my new title was "solution visionary." Everyone (22:26): OOOOOOOhhhhhhhh!!! Doug (22:26): So that's on my LinkedIn page now even, but I didn't do it for myself. Leon (22:31): Um, yeah, it's like nicknames. I don't know that you can give yourself those nicknames. If somebody else gives it to you, then you could sort of wear it with pride but also like nicknames. It only works for a particular group of friends. You know that with this group of friends, you're "stinky" and this other group of friends, maybe your, you know, "home run" or whatever, but, but you, you can't introduce yourself and just decide that that's what you're... Yechiel (22:54): And someone out of the group of friends can't just go over." Hey stinky." Leon (22:59): Okay. So having talked about, you know, again defined our terms. I think the bigger question is, um, you know, how do we deal with people who either see themselves as rock stars or, or are in that position? Like what are some things, some actual strategies that we can have to work with, deal with, interact with? Like, what can we do there? Doug (23:21): Going back to what Ben said about the military all being about team, you actually can go ahead and, uh, build up the team that you're on, um, in such a way to, uh, give you strength in numbers against the rock star if they really are being a jerk type rock star. I mean, in essence I've come into, I've come into situations where there was a rock star architect, whoever it was that just, you know, was making everybody miserable. And everybody on the team was so cowed that they just, nobody would stand up that nobody wanted to, you know, put their head up and get nailed by this guy. Um, I've been at this long enough that, and I've got enough people that don't like me in the world. I have no trouble with people now. So I would go ahead and, you know, start building up the team so that they, they kind of see that it was all right if everybody on the team thinks this is a bad idea, even if the rock star doesn't, if everybody on the team and you sort of build the whole idea of team, you can sort of mute the, uh, the, the, uh, power of the rock star by the numbers of everybody trying to accomplish things together as a team. Ben (24:32): Well, in my case, you know, dealing with, um, uh, you know, you have those people you're in your work face that are like, "I fixed it" person or "that's my fix" or uh, the ones that say, "Oh, I'm sure you were thankful that I was around today." Um, but you know, as a Christian growing up, I was always taught the importance of group over self. Uh, the aspect that where you are only as strong as the weakest link. Um, and that permeated through my eight and a half years of being in the military, whether it was being deployed to Iraq or, uh, sitting stateside, wherever it was. You know, a story about Iraq, you might remember the story of Geraldo Rivera, uh, who literally, uh, destroyed a mission by drawing stuff in the sand because he wanted to be the rock star. Um, people in the military can relate to the term PT stud. That's someone that can continuously do a 300 PT score in the army. Uh, that's the old PT tests. I'm not familiar with the new ones, so don't hold me to that. Uh, or the weapons guy that the pers, the person that can go out and just knock down 40 out of 40 targets every single time. Some of these people are very humble about it, you know, they put in the work to hit those scores. Uh, so you deal with them one way, but dealing with a person that kinda comes in and is arrogant about it, you really need to kind of either mentor them down or leave them to their own devices and eventually, you know, Darwinism takes effect almost. It just works itself out. Leon (26:04): Right. And that's one of the things that, that I've, I've done, you know, not as not in a management role but as a, somebody on a team is that I think that rope can be a really, um, interesting correction corrective service to apply. And what I mean by that. Doug (26:21): You tie them up and throw them in the closet? Leon (26:22): Yeah, no, that's exactly not it. No, blanket party. None of those things. Um, but what you do is you find, you know, as you're talking about things as a team, you find those projects that are perfect for lone wolf. You know, that, that one person can go off and you say this would be great for Alfred to do. (No offense to anyone who was named Alfred.) Um, you know, this would be, this would be fantastic for this to do. Why don't they do that? Because then they can go off and be the rock star and one of two things are gonna happen. Either it's going to be amazing and they're going to get all the attention that they need and crave and it's going to be good for the company and reflect well on the team. But it hasn't pulled anybody away from what they were doing. It gets that person completely out of your hair. Or if the person is that self inflated but doesn't actually have the skills that they think they do, kind of rockstar, then it's going to expose it in a way that doesn't put anyone else on the team at risk. So as a team, when you see those, those project opportunities, those, you know, whether it's a subcomponent of what you're working on or whatever and say, "Oh, this is something that, you know, again, Alford can do all on his own." You know, those are the things that you keep on offering up, um, to get them out of the way or to, you know, either temporarily or, or longterm. Um, I also think it's interesting in the Jewish tradition, there's a story about we should, how we should always walk around with two slips of paper, one in each pocket. And on one sip of paper it says, um, you know, "for me the world was created." And on the other slip of paper it says, "I am nothing but dust and ashes." And that we stand in the mid point between those and that in any given moment, we might need to pull out one slip of paper or the other. And that's, you know, obviously that's to keep ourselves humble. That's to keep ourselves, uh, in check. But I also think that there's a way to have that kind of conversation with the people who see themselves as rock stars is, is to continue to inject that, um, that thinking or that, that frame of reference, uh, along the way. So that's tech. However, I think that in our religious life, there's, you know, we encounter those rock stars. We've talked about it before. But I also think it's interesting because in our religious texts we run into rock stars. So I wonder if you have any thoughts about, you know, and as you are wandering through the pages of your faith and you hit a rock star, like what, what do you do? What does your religion do? How do you, how do you react with that? Cause we might find lessons that we can carry over into our daily life there. Yechiel (29:05): So yeah, and a sense we said they were like good rock stars and bad rock stars. And we definitely find both. And religious texts, for example, um, I would say like the number one rock star in the Jewish religion is Moses who led the Jewish people. And yet we, the one point that keeps coming over and over is his humility. Like from the beginning where he's arguing with God, like he does not want to do it. He's really reluctant to take on the, the, the leadership and all through the end where he's constantly putting himself out, you know, putting himself between God and the Jewish people to protect them and shield them from their own mistakes. Leon (29:45): Right. And, and, and the, the Torah ends saying, no human will ever walk the face of the earth that is as humble as Moses. Like it, that point just keeps getting driven home. So yeah, that's a pretty strong point. Yechiel (29:58): But then of course you have the other end. Uh, you have people like Pharaoh or like Cicera. Um, in fact, the Pharaoh is described in Ezekiel. As someone who says, "לִ֥י יְאֹרִ֖י וַאֲנִ֥י עֲשִׂיתִֽנִי" Li y'ori va'ani asisani" Te Nile is mine. And I have created myself." Meaning someone who feels like he doesn't need anyone. He's self-made. He's created himself essentially. And he doesn't need, you know, to hell with anyone else. Leon (30:23): Right. And, and we all know how Pharaoh worked out in the end. So that's again, a good cautionary tale. I also think that as we're reading, as we're reading our religious text, one of the things that, that strikes me is how in some cases incapable and in some cases unqualified, the people who are doing these amazing things are. I mean, um, you've got, you know, Jacob, who's, who's considered, you know, the, the, the Prince of Truth. And yet he was, it was kind of a liar. A lot. Or you've got Joseph, uh, who's considered, you know, a tzadik, a righteous man, but he was kind of narcissistic for a lot of the narrative. Um, and that's even if you ignore the Broadway play and the technicolor dream coat and all that stuff that, you know, he's, he really wasn't, he was probably kind of a little bit much to have to, you know, have dinner with sometimes. And I feel like a lot of times the underlying message is that God isn't picking people because they are super competent. God is picking people who are the least likely to have been able to achieve this on their own. Just to drive the point home. Again, Yechiel your point. You know, Moshe... Moses didn't want that job. He fought against it. And you know, I think that at the time people are like, "Who's going to lead us?" "Moses." "What?!? What are you talking about? that's like... Could you have picked anybody worse for this job than that?" No, I actually couldn't have picked anybody worse. That's why I did it. Yechiel (31:57): Yeah. And specifically about Moshe, um, I read one of the commentaries, I forgot which one right at the moment. Um, he had, like a very heavy stutter, um, to the point where, where he didn't actually speak to Pharaoh. He would speak to Aaron and Aaron would talk to Pharaoh and the reason why God chose someone with such a stutter was so that it would be sort of obvious that it wasn't Moses' doing it was God working through him. Leon (32:24): Yeah, and I think that you know, again in our religious life when you meet that that rock star, you know in in church, in the pews that the, the interesting thing is if you think, if you hold even an inkling, that God has somehow smiled down upon you to achieve or accomplish some particular thing, that's probably a really good indication that you suck. Doug (32:47): I mean we'll see. I mean in an on on the other side of the Testament divide, we've got the same thing. I mean most of, most of the people who are the leaders in early Christianity were not the ones that you would think of... Peter is the number one guy and he was a total jerk and he was like really impulsive and flip flopped all the time. I mean, it's just the worst to deal with. And nine times out of 10, Jesus is having to turn them in and just say, go "chill dude." You know what I mean? He went in in like two verses. He went from a, you know, God told me, "God told you that Peter", to "get you behind me. Satan." I mean really that, and that's two verses we go from God's talking to you and Oh yeah, apparently so Satan. So honestly Peter, just if it, if it hadn't been God, it wouldn't have happened. Leon (33:40): Um, okay. So those are, those are some ways to frame as you're reading scripture, as you're reading your religious text to remember that there's probably an underlying message that these people, for as great as the things that they achieved themselves, we're still flawed human beings. Were still, you know, walking around with their own struggles, which they sometimes overcame and sometimes didn't. Um, but bringing it back to real life again, you know, we've got people, we've got personalities in our religious communities and I wonder what are some things that we can do to interact with them, to deal with them, to, to, you know, how do you respond? Yechiel (34:19): I just roll my eyes and move on. Leon (34:21): Right, right, right. Exactly. And I think frequently that works. You know, the joke I always give is "Well, that's, that's when, you know, it's time to start a breakaway minyan..." You know, start your own congregation, which is going to be for, you know, guys 35 to 37 who drive Ford focuses because, you know, you have a, you have a congregation for every possible... Doug (34:39): Well, I've, I've found combinations of humor and um, scripture can be really helpful. I, um, I was... There, there was a number of years ago I was teaching a, a Bible study, uh, before church started. Um, and I was traveling 45 minutes to this church. It was a small church. I was supporting it and that kind of stuff. And one Sunday morning just everything went wrong. And I arrived, ten minutes late, teach my class and the elder - the main elder, the guy who kept everything going, the main guy - pulled me aside and basically reamed me a new one. Uh, and I said, okay, I've got a class to go teach. We'll talk about this later. Um, and went and taught my class and afterwards, afterwards I said, I'm going to take, take what you said, I'm going to go ahead and, uh, pray about it and I'm going to think about it and look at scripture and you know, we'll talk next week." And so as I was doing all that, I get down and I went back the next week. I said, "I went through all the scripture that I could find in. The only time I've found where somebody was arrived late was when there was this battle. And Saul was all set to go and Samuel arrive late. And Saul had gone ahead and done the, uh, had gone ahead and done the sacrifice. And the thing that I found interesting, my elder friend, is that Samuel, the guy who arrived late is not the one who got in trouble." And he apologized. And we moved forward and we became great friends as a result. Leon (36:09): There's a couple of things going on there. I mean, obviously there's the humor aspect, but I think also just asking, you know, if, if you have the ability to do that, to say, "What is it? That's, why do you feel like you have to carry this entire load?" I've been places where the people just thought that they were the only one who cared that much about it, that, you know, they didn't think that anybody else, you know, felt that strongly. And when you said, "No, actually several of us do." And so if they're, you know, let's, how about I take this part and you take that part or you know, you, you can sit back. I've had people who, who literally ran the entire service, but when we asked them, said, "I really wish I could do nothing. I'd like to just show up and be a participant." And they meant it. They weren't being, it wasn't false humility. They really meant that they wanted to just be in the back, but they felt like if they didn't do it, no one was going to. And as soon as we were able to show them, no, so-and-so has got this and so and so has this and everyone has this and we certainly when you feel like it, we'd love you to participate but please do not feel like you have to. And that that was regulatory for everyone. Ben (37:24): And I think that speaks volumes too to taking it back to the workplace, pulling it up, you know, getting away from religion and going back to tech when you have a new hire comes to the company and kind of explain to them the culture of the company. You know, I've held a few different jobs as a contractor before landing my full time job now. Uh, so I worked for law firms, I worked for banks, I worked for small startup companies. I've worked for software development companies, uh, and now in retail. And the one thing I always found interesting going from company to company assignment to assignment was the different cultures. you know, the law firm was very black and white, very yes-no, very binary. Um, but here at American Eagle, it's a little more lax, you know? Um, so when you get that person that comes from that atmosphere where the rock star ism, if that is, that's not a word, if not I'll coin it. It, um, you know that rock star ism is almost bred into the culture. You know, when you look at a law firm that's a very intense, very go at it. Get what you get when you can get it type world. Compared to the world I live in now where it's very more a collective good, you know, you think when you see our jeans, you don't think it takes that much to sell them. But let me tell you behind every pair of jeans are the few hundred people you know. And if you have someone that comes in with that rockstar mentality that I am it and without me, the company fails, you're only going to see yourself a failure. But if you split, pull them aside very tactfully, very nice. Hey, look, this is our culture here. If they get the message and they change their ways, awesome. But if they're a complete jerk and don't change their way, well then there's other ways to sort that out through HR or just Darwinism at its finest and let it work itself out. Leon (39:19): Anybody have any final thoughts? They want to leave with everyone who's listening. Doug (39:22): If you're at a place with no rock stars, look around. It might be you. Everyone (39:27): Ooh! Ouch! Doug (39:27): Hey listen, I have to admit the place where I was also "solution visionary." We were at a show and they, the team brought me a bottle of "Arrogant Bastard Ale." Cause sometimes being right comes across as being arrogant. So, you know, it's, Ben (39:42): and I think that's the key takeaway. Uh, knowing the difference between being arrogant and being right. You know, having that ability to say, "yes, I know what I'm talking about." But having the ability to listen to key points from other people. What are the things I enjoy about being a monitor engineer is we leverage a product called SolarWinds, the exact same SolarWinds that Leon, uh, works on. Um, but we have a community online and there we can share ideas back and forth. My idea may not be the one that always goes forward as the best idea, but at least my idea went forward and it's a collective learning experience. So when you have that type of atmosphere, you'd... we pull each other up, you know, and that weekly becomes stronger and you can move on to the next. Speaker 7 (40:28): Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, https://www.TechnicallyReligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect us on social media. Doug (40:40): Hey guys, this was fun. You want to hang out tomorrow? Yechiel (40:43): What, with you nerds? I'm way too cool for that!

The "Dirty Sons of Pitches" have made a promise to their listeners to determine the worst film of the last decade, and they will see this promise through. Their tournament of bad had excluded two titles, movies that were believed to be unbeatable for the worst of the worst. So Ben and Nate watched "A Serbian Film" and "InAPPropriate Comedy" back-to-back, and have come to some surprising conclusions. Available on iTunes and Spotify

Ben makes things, but mostly, Ben makes living things. In the beginning, it was fish. One fish, two fishes, hard orange fish, deep teal fish. He even started a business over it! Then the fish seemed.....small. They tended to have to stay in a tank and weren't cuddly enough. So, what's the next logical step? Make a human! So Ben (with the help of another maker) made a baby! What's next on his creation adventure? I don't know, but I get the feeling its a yeti.

Ben Stokes joins me on “Everyday Conversations on Race,” to talk about his experience being a person of color adopted by a white family in Australia. He didn’t become aware of racism until his family moved from a small town to a larger city. That was when he would frequently encounter white people who would keep asking him where he was from and look at him in disbelief when the told them he was Australian. Despite having a strong Australian accent, he was often discounted as an Australian because of his brown skin. After coming to the US, with so many people of color, the questions still persisted from white Americans who couldn’t believe that someone with brown skin could be from Australia. Ben has lived and worked in the US for over four years. You’ll want to hear his story of how he was harassed by security agents as he re-entered the US from a trip abroad. His story is unique and not uncommon. Despite his experiences, Ben is the founder of the start-up SocialTable. SocialTable  brings people together across differences over great food, great conversation and the desire to connect and build community.   Biography Ben is the CEO and Founder of SocialTable. His personal, academic and professional journey to date is impressive and colourful – to say the least! View Ben’s LinkedIn profile. Born in Sri Lanka, Ben spent his early years in a rural orphanage before he was adopted by Australian parents who raised him in Tasmania. Ben started his Uni years as a Med student, studying Medicine and then a Masters of Tropical Medicine and Public Health. Along the way, he recalls encountering great mentorship by the then CEO of St Vincent’s Hospital. Funnily enough, Ben’s mentorship with the St Vincent’s Hospital CEO actually prompted his realisation that Med was not where he would be most happy. So Ben took some fairly drastic turns and completed a Law degree. The skilled communicator and leader’s story of becoming a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist (having worked on the success of several med-tech products in the US market, as well his own enterprise SocialTable, along with his building projects for his very own orphanage in Sri Lanka) is too long for me to document here but it is full of insights, intelligence and authenticity. Ben can be contacted through email: ben@socialtable.co or through his LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bpstokes/

Aerospace engineer April Blackwell works at NASA’s Mission Control. She dreamed of being an astronaut but her type 1 diabetes diagnosis at age 11 changed everything. Since that day, though, she has found ways to break down barriers and pursue her love of space. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! April calls herself a "rule-questioner" and shares where asking those questions got her. She and Stacey talk about everything from family – she has two young children – to what it’s like to work as part of history in the space program. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! In Tell Me Something Good, a milestone for a tween with T1D – and her whole family gets in on the celebration. Sign up for our newsletter here This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcription (Note: this is a rough transcription of the show. Please excuse spelling/grammar/punctuation errors) Stacey Simms 0:01 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes. By Real Good Foods real food you feel good about eating, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom. This week, aerospace engineer April Blackwell works at NASA's mission control. She always wanted to be an astronaut, but she was diagnosed with type one at age 11. And that changed everything. But since that day, she's found ways to break down barriers and pursue her love of space. April shares where asking those questions got her and we talked about everything from family - she has two young children - to what it's like to work as a part of history in the space program in Tell me something good a milestone for a tween with type one, and the whole family gets in on the celebration. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your healthcare provider. Stacey Simms 1:32 Welcome to our first full show of 2020 Happy New Year everybody. Hope your year is off to a great start if you're new to diabetes connections, welcome. I'm your host Stacey Simms. We aim to educate and inspire about type one diabetes by sharing stories of connection. My son was diagnosed 13 years ago, just before he turned two. He's now a freshman in high school. He's 15 years old. My husband has type two diabetes I don't have diabetes, but I have a background in broadcasting and local radio and TV news. And that is how you get the podcast. As you have heard, if you are a longtime listener, some new things this year, we have some new sponsors. I dropped a minisode, a short episode last week. We're going to be doing those every week. So you get the full episode, which is something like this where it's an interview and we have some segments and then you'll have that minisode and planning for every week right now. We'll see how it goes. Which is a much shorter episode just me on one topic. And please follow along on social media because we're doing more new stuff this year. On the Tell me something good segment which has become really popular in the show. We're putting that out on social media every week, making sure you're following on Instagram. I am Stacey Simms on Instagram, there's only the one account on Facebook, Diabetes Connections the Group, although I do post everything on our page, but you know how Facebook is sometimes they are just obnoxious and don't show you everything you want to see. Something else I'm trying in the new year is transcription. I am putting in the show transcription of every episode. On the episode homepage. You can go to diabetes dash connections dot come, and you scroll down. Make sure you look at the current episode, click on that. And in the show notes will be the transcription of the interview and hopefully the whole episode as well. as well. Something new we're trying we'll see how people like it will see how you respond if it's popular and people use it will keep doing it. I have had a lot of requests for the transcripts over the four and a half years of the show and as Technology is better and better. It's been a lot easier to get that done. Done. Maybe I'll do it behind the scenes minisode One of these days and tell you about all the changes that we've gone through and some of the technology as podcasting really grows, how things have changed, but I know you're here to talk about April and NASA and how she got involved in the space program. It's such a great story. My talk with April Blackwell in just a moment, but first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop. One Drop is diabetes management for the 21st century. One Drop was designed by people with diabetes. For people with diabetes. One Drops glucose meter looks nothing like a medical device. It is sleek, compact, is sleek, compact and seamlessly integrates with the award winning One Drop mobile app, sync all your other health apps to One Drop to keep track of the big picture and easily see health trends and with a One Drops of script You get unlimited test strips and lancets delivered right to your door. Every One Drop plan also includes access to your own certified diabetes coach. If you have questions you don't feel like waiting for your next doctor visit. Your personal coach is always there to help. I am so excited to have One Drop on board. Their program is amazing. Check them out, go to diabetes dash connections calm and click on the One Drop logo to learn more. My guest this week is not someone who takes the answer No, and accepts it and goes away quietly. April Blackwell grew up dreaming of the space program. As you'll hear, she watched out for NASA news. Like most of us watched Saturday morning cartoons when we were kids. But a diagnosis of T1D in sixth grade grounded her astronaut dreams. But how did you decide to carry on anyway? You know what did you have to do? To get where she is at mission control. her blog name and her Skype handle are nerdy April, and you'll hear me ask about that. But I gotta tell you, when you talk to someone on Skype, which is how I do a lot of these interviews, the the avatar, the logo, whatever you want to call it, of their name, or their face is on the screen. So the whole time I was talking to her, it said nerdy April on the screen, which really made me smile, all right here, which really made me smile on the screen, which really just made me smile, and I did have to ask her about it. Her story, though, is it's a story of grit, of asking questions and refusing to give up. Here's my conversation with mission controls. April Blackwell. Stacey Simms 0:03 April, thanks for joining me. I'm sure you're really busy. And I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. How are you? April Blackwell I'm doing wonderful. How are you? Stacey Simms I'm great. And I'm excited to be talking to you. I have lots and lots of questions. But I have to start with, with your name online and on Skype as we're talking nerdy April. Did you reclaim that nerdy title? April Blackwell 0:27 Oh, I am a I'm a proud nerd. I think all nerds who are truly nerds are proud of it. So it actually started though, because the my blog title started as Nerdy April's Space Adventures. And if you take that as an acronym, like, you know, everything NASA related, it spells out NASA so it kind of was a little bit of a play on words and acronyms there, but it kind of turned into just Nerdy April and that's how I've been rolling lately. Stacey Simms 0:59 Okay, So I want to ask you at the blog, I want to ask you about NASA, but let's start at the beginning. You knew that you wanted to be involved in science and in space from a very early age, right? April Blackwell 1:13 Yeah, I was only about five or six years old. I was in a kindergarten and my dad actually, he is an aircraft mechanic. And so there's a little connection there. But he also is just a deep lover of the space program. And he grew up in the Apollo days, sort of that romanticized moon landings and everything and he was just an amateur but it and his love for the space program just really captured me. And so that's kind of where that all was inspired from. Stacey Simms 1:45 What were you doing, though, at age five? I mean, when you were with your dad, looking at stars were you watching launches? April Blackwell 1:52 We weren't watching launches. I grew up in Arizona, so it's pretty far away. Florida, where most of the launches happened. Well, Stacey Simms 1:58 (laughs) I was thinking about on TV. April Blackwell 2:00 Yeah, yeah, I definitely watch some on TV we did have a very rudimentary telescope. So we would go out and mostly look at the moon since that was it a big target we could watch. It didn't have a tracker or anything on it. So it was all manual. And it required some fine tuning by dad before I could look through it. We built model rockets together and launched those later on. I went to sort of local science camp during the summer, and started getting excited about computers and everything that had to do with science. So robots and engineering type problem solving. And so it just stayed with me my whole life. Stacey Simms 2:45 Wow. So when you were diagnosed, not too many years later, you were 11. What happened? were you hoping to actually be an astronaut at that time? April Blackwell 2:55 Yeah, so I i think that was always the pointy end of the spear for was to be an astronaut. And, you know, that's when you watch TV and everything those, those are the people that you see. And so that was always kind of my final goal. When I was diagnosed at 11, it took a little bit of time for me to realize that, you know, astronaut was going to be more difficult now that I had type one diabetes. And some of that sort of came into focus later in my life. But at 11 it was kind of just heartbreaking. You know, I was watching launches and getting excited about space, but then knowing that that probably would never be a reality for me. Stacey Simms 3:41 So at age 11, you know, I guess you have many choices, but you can say to yourself, well, that's that I've got to find something else and be devastated or too bad. Or I'm going to move forward and do this some way somehow. Did that decision happened for you? immediately. Did it take some time for you to continue to love science the way you did? April Blackwell 4:01 It definitely took some time. And I guess I'll just touch on the fact that I think being diagnosed with diabetes at 11. Well, in the first place, there's no great time to be diagnosed with diabetes. But I think being diagnosed at 11, it sort of puts you on this really fast trajectory towards adulthood. Because you want to maintain your independence as much as you can. My parents implemented it, such that I had to be able to give myself shots and test my own blood sugar before I could spend the night at a friend's house, for instance. And so that was a big motivator for me. And I think, you know, maybe I always had a little bit of an inclination towards being a little older than what my physical age was. You can ask my mom I used to wake up early on Saturday mornings, to watch the news, not cartoons, just in the hopes that I might see you know, some information about NASA. But I think, you know, sort of that catalysts of putting me on a trajectory towards adulthood helped steer sort of my ideas about what I wanted to be in the future. And while I knew I could never be, or probably could never be an astronaut, space was so exciting to me and talking about rockets talking about, you know, low Earth orbit and traveling 17,500 miles an hour, five miles per second, thinking about these huge engines that need to take astronauts and supplies up to space, I just couldn't get it out of my blood out of my brain. And so I decided that even if I couldn't be an astronaut, I would love to work in the space program in some capacity. And that sort of led me to looking at an aerospace engineering degree. Stacey Simms 5:54 All right, let's go back for a second about your parents in the transition at age 11. What was your diagnosis story like, were you very sick for very long? I mean, I know we kind of sometimes we talk about it like and then you you didn't have diabetes and then you did and then life went on. Can you kind of fill us in on on how you found out? April Blackwell 6:13 Yeah. So it was, I guess nothing extremely remarkable about it, but maybe that's why I should tell it is because, you know, there is this sort of the normal warning signs that everyone comes up or comes up against. And so it was kind of in the Christmas time frame, December timeframe. I just got a cold. And then, you know, my grandparents were in town for the holidays, and we usually would stay up late playing cards, and you know, eating Christmas candy, and I just, I couldn't I just physically couldn't I was extremely fatigued. And then when I started getting up multiple times during the night to go to the bathroom, you know, my mom bless her heart, thought that I was probably suffering from a urinary tract infection. And her old wives tales, of course, told her that we needed to treat this with the cranberries. Unknown Speaker 7:14 Of course, April Blackwell 7:15 yeah, so. So we hit up the cranberry juice pretty hard for a little while, and it just wasn't getting better. And so we started going to the pediatricians office. And it took almost a week of daily pediatrician visits. I, I joke to that I could just pee on command, because every time I would show up there, they would tell me to, you know, get a urine sample. So it sort of became this joke. And then I was finally diagnosed on December 30. And they told us that we needed to head over to the children's hospital right away straight from the pediatrician’s office. We had no idea what diabetes was about at all. I absolutely had zero idea. I don't think my parents really understood it at all. They were just scared. And so we had we went over to the Children's Hospital, but unfortunately it was a sort of a skeleton crew because it was the holidays and New Year's and stuff. So they told us to just go home. And it turned out that my old pediatrician, he actually lived next door to us. And so he came over for a couple days to help give me some insulin shots and test my blood sugar. While we still had no idea what you know, was to come more shots every single day and blood sugar tests every single day. So it was definitely a steep learning curve as I think most diagnosis stories are. Stacey Simms 8:41 Yeah, it can just take so much time to get the diagnosis. I get so frustrated by that. But you know, at least they got it before it was even more devastating. Fast forward a few more years, you have kept your interest in space as you said, What did you wind up studying in college or did you go you know what, where did your path lead you to continue after high school. Right back to April answering that question in just a moment, but first, diabetes connections. is brought to you by real good foods. Have you tried them yet? high protein, low carb, grain free, gluten free. They have so many delicious products from breakfast sandwiches to pizza. The stuffed chicken is delicious, the little poppers that they make are just excellent. You know, it's really nice to have something convenient when you're not in the mood to cook or if you're a 15 year old boy, you know you're starving and you need something to get you between the half an hour before dinner. So Ben evil just get a little personal pizzas and heated up. We're really big fans of really good foods. I'm thrilled to have them back on the podcast for the new year. The new year and I'm excited to try some of the new products they have out right now. And I'm excited to try some of the new products they have out right now. We will be bringing you some taste tests as we go forward. But find out more and go to their store but find out more, go to diabetes dash connections dot com and click on the real good foods logo. now back to April talking about what happened after high school. Let's go now back to April and I'm asking her about what happened after high school How did she get to where she is now April Blackwell 9:01 Yeah, so I was very fortunate to get a full ride scholarship in state in Arizona, and because of my grades, so I went to Arizona State University and studied aerospace engineering. And then once I got out, I kind of hit a little bit of a roadblock because there was a period of time in the aerospace industry that the space shuttle was looking at being retired. And so the the future of NASA was a little bit unclear as to what was going to happen. So a lot of companies and related industry sort of put put a hold on hiring right around that time. Which was unfortunate but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I ended up getting a job working with the army of all things in Huntsville, Alabama. So I moved across the country. Free to work in a triple wide trailer we like to call it in Huntsville, Alabama, which just sounds so glamorous. Unknown Speaker 10:10 Oh yeah, the stars all end up there. April Blackwell 10:14 But it turned out to be a really great experience. So Stacey Simms 10:17 did I also see somewhere where you were testing helicopters? April Blackwell 10:22 Yeah. So that's what I was doing for the army. And it was really awesome. It wasn't it wasn't quite space. But it was a really great way to get my feet wet on just what it means to be an engineer and what kind of engineering I personally like because there's so many different avenues you can go with that degree. So I got to fly on experimental helicopters and boss test pilots around which was really fun. The group I was in actually was really tight knit and it I'd say even more so than my group at NASA Now. And part of that, I think is because, you know, you had to fill out paperwork that said, who in your group would go tell your spouse or your significant other that there had been an accident. And so we really counted on each other to to watch out for each other. And all of them absolutely supported me with my diabetes. You know, my flight suit had specific pockets with snacks and blood testers and stuff. And so we always kind of joked, like, oh, if you need a snack, April always has one in her left lower leg pocket or whatever. Stacey Simms 11:42 Let me just jump in and ask. So when I said you were flying helicopters, I was gonna ask you how the heck did you get clearance to do that as a person with diabetes, but it was as a passenger? April Blackwell 11:53 Correct. Yeah. So I flew on them not actually physically flying them, but it did still require FAA medical clearance which took about six, six months to get all of the paperwork in and get clearance to finally fly on the helicopter. Stacey Simms 12:10 so that's what I wanted to ask you about. Can you talk a little bit about doing this because it's it sounds so exciting and I know so many young people who want to serve in the military or want to fly and Yep, we've just got, you know, the, in the United States, FAA says now you can be a commercial pilot with type one. So progress there. But right, what do you need to do, you know, as we're going to talk about your path going forward, to kind of accomplish what you've done. You've mentioned medical screenings, things like that. You there's just a lot is there a lot of paperwork and exams? I April Blackwell 12:44 Yes, I will tell you it's a little bit of a black box. Even now with the FAA ‘s new guidance. That type ones can apply for these waivers for class two and class one medicals. It's not clear to me how many type ones they've actually accepted into those medical clearance buckets. That data is never published. And, in fact, the process to get a medical for me, like I said, took about six months. And it was really me going to an FAA Doctor who said, Hey, I can't clear you because you have type one diabetes, I can check you for all the other stuff, but that's going to require some special paperwork. So he sent in his recommendation, of course, I had to get letters and agency readings from my endocrinologist. Initially, the paperwork I started with about a year's worth of data. I sent that in and it took about three back and forth between me and basically a blackbox doctor in Washington DC at the FAA to finally get the amount of paperwork they wanted. And to be honest, I just got frustrated with The process and so I called my mom and dad back in Arizona, and I said, Hey, can you just run down to the Children's Hospital and literally make copies of every single piece of paperwork that they have, since my diagnosis? Back then it was all paper, not, you know, digital, it was literally copies of these pieces of paper, you know, probably a three inch thick, you know, stack of papers, and I literally sent that into the FAA and I said, this is all the data that I have from my diagnosis, you know, X number of years ago, and I have nothing else to give you, basically, and they finally said, Okay, okay, that's that's enough. And they granted me clearance for one year. But it was it was a frustrating process and I haven't tried to get another one. You know, since moving to Houston because I do all of my medical clearance now through the NASA doctor so I can talk with them directly. There's an actual face to face, but the FAA doctors are a little bit of an enigma I guess. Stacey Simms 15:06 So I guess the lesson there if a parent is listening or if an adult with type one is listening is be persistent. April Blackwell 15:13 Yes. If it's something that you really want, you know, you're going to find a way to overcome it and do it. And I just, I just always say, never give up and be a rule questioner because there are a lot of rules that are based on old data and old diabetes technology and management techniques. So it's worth asking the question, because a lot of these doctors especially, you know, if you think military doctors and FAA doctors, they deal with really, almost perfect human specimens, if you will. And so they're just, they just don't have the knowledge of you know, what is going on in the diabetes sphere these days? Stacey Simms 15:54 What an interesting thought, Yeah, why would they know because everybody is like GI Joe walking in. Unknown Speaker 16:00 Yeah, exactly. Stacey Simms 16:02 That's a really interesting thought. Okay, so you're, you're, you're in these experimental helicopters, you're following your career. You're in a triple wide in Huntsville. How’d you get to Mission Control? April Blackwell 16:16 Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I will say just before I leave the helicopters for a minute there in Huntsville, you know, I had this opportunity to sort of push a lot of barriers that type one diabetics came up with against because the military doesn't allow type ones, you know, that were previously diagnosed at least right now. And so I got to go through the altitude chamber, the helicopter dunker trainer, which is basically two days of being drowned alive. And I went through the parachute course. And all of these required talking with doctors and just explaining the situation to them because they literally don't deal with type 1 diabetic patients, because that's a disqualification right off the bat. And all of them were super receptive, super open to it. My military friends supported me going and talking to them and coming up with plans. So you know, we would come up with a plan, like we're going to leave your pump on till we get to this pressure, and then we're going to take it off and leave it outside of the altitude chamber, you know, and that's going to be 15 minutes. So make sure your blood sugar is at least 130 at that time, or whatever it is, you know, but it was a really great way to sort of break down those barriers. And I even included a two week course at the Naval Test Pilot School, in Pax river, Maryland. So that was a really kind of culmination of all these, you know, sort of barriers that I had overcome and a way to, you know, sort of solidify that I was on the right path. Stacey Simms 17:54 That's fantastic. Wow. And that's great to have that support from the people around you. I love to hear that. April Blackwell 18:00 Yeah, they were really great. Stacey Simms 18:02 You get, you get dunked, that sounds so enjoyable. I mean, I know you and I, it sounds like we have very similar personalities and enjoy a lot of the same activities (laughs) April Blackwell 18:11 Bananas. Unknown Speaker 18:14 Tell me about what led you then to your position at NASA? April Blackwell 18:17 Yeah. So from my my helicopter job, I was doing a lot of traveling around two weeks every month I was gone. And for a newly married person, it was just a little bit hard on the family so started looking for, you know, some other opportunities and found these jobs pop up in Mission Control. And I had absolutely no inkling that I would even get called to interview for them. But it turned into, you know, this flight test experience that I had, working on the helicopter as well. Well, it sounds completely different, actually was a lot of the same skill set that they look for in flight control. rollers. And so that sort of, you know, allowed that door to be open to get an interview at NASA. And of course, I ended up falling in love with it. I mean, it was job working at the home of manned spaceflight and now crude spaceflight with women, you know, joining in and getting to work in such a historic building like Mission Control. And you know, I'm even going there tonight I'm working this evening, that evening surf to fly the International Space Station. So it's, it's just really a dream come true. YOUAREHERE Stacey Simms 19:33 Okay. I have chills as you're talking about controlling the International Space Station. The the setup, I just want to take a moment because I think we all do know what Mission Control and flight control you know, what it looks like and what you do, but and correct me if I'm wrong here, but what we're talking about is what we see in all those movies. Right. When you know when they say Houston, we have a problem your Houston I mean, you were that big room, right? Yes. The diagram was all the guys in the white short sleeve t shirts and the glasses from the movies that we've seen all these years. That's Mission Control. April Blackwell 20:07 Exactly a skinny tie and a pocket protector. We don't smoke anymore and missing control. Yeah, but if you get in the elevator it's in, it's in the same building so that the room for instance, if you've seen the movie, Apollo 13, the room that that movie was based on is actually just one floor up from our current International Space Station control room. And so when you get in the elevators, I always joke it's sort of this aroma of like 1960s cigarettes and coffee mixed together. But that's just the way missing control smells and it's, it's hard to describe. Stacey Simms 20:47 Alright, so when you're going to work tonight, and you know, controlling the International Space Station, tell us what that really means. I mean, do you mind breaking it down a little bit? What are you going to be doing? I mean, in Yeah, I understand. April Blackwell 21:00 Absolutely. It's not that hard. So basically, you know, we sit at a big console that has several computers, we monitor a lot of telemetry data coming down from the space station all the time. And it uses a satellite constellation to make sure that we can get our data even when they're on the other side of the world. So we look at that data, we make decisions based on that data. If we see any anomalies, we may send commands up to the vehicle. And then on certain days or nights, you know, there may be a big event like a docking or undocking, maybe a spacewalk. And on those days, you know, it's our job is even a little bit more critical because we'll be sending lots of commands and making sure that the space station is performing. Its absolute best to make sure we don't have any anomalies where maybe there's another vehicle really close by, so Stacey Simms 22:00 Have you ever had an experience that was kind of frightening is the right word, but you know, where, where someone or or a mission was in jeopardy. April Blackwell 22:13 Um, I've had a few kind of small anomalies happen. I haven't been on console for anything very major. But that doesn't mean that major things haven't happened. This was, you know, hasn't lined up with my console shifts. But it's interesting because even when when stuff happens when you aren't on console, you sort of have this adrenaline because you know what that person sitting in the seat is feeling, you know, the whole lead up to being a flight controller. It's not like you're hired and the next day here on console, we call it almost a second master's degree. So you have about two years of training. About a year, a little over a year of that is sort of bookwork so you're learning a lot of information about that. The system we control, and you're taking oral examinations. And then the next piece of it is simulation. So we actually simulate, you know, really bad days, days that are worse than any any days, we've actually seen real time. And this is all to prepare you for that prioritization skill of being a flight controller and being able to work through stress. stressful situation. So we always joke that, you know, one small anomaly in the real room feels like 5050 anomalies, you know, in the simulation room, and that's just how we have to train ourselves to be able to cope with that stress. Wow. Stacey Simms 23:44 What is the best part of it for you? Is it walking into that building? Is it knowing that you know that elevator is there and you're part of all that history? Is it just you know, logging in for the day I'm curious what you know what gets you still very excited about this? Because obviously You are? April Blackwell 24:02 Yeah, so I'd say there's kind of two pieces of it, there's sort of a physical, almost just, you know, like chemical response, when you cross the threshold into Mission Control, you know, you have to swipe your badge like five times, you know, to get in the building, and then get in the room and all this stuff. So when you cross that threshold, it really is like, you're just leaving all your other problems and everything else that you've thought about that day, outside, because you need to focus. And you need to bring your best self, you know, in here, because there are literally at least six humans on board that are counting on you to take care of them and take care of their spaceship. And then as you sit down, we have what we call big boards and the friends so they're like these big projection screens and we're always getting video down from the space station, usually in about six channels. And we call it the windowless room with the best view because the view is just incredible. I mean We now have these HD cameras on board. And as you're flying my favorite place to fly over the sort of the Mediterranean Sea, and just the colors juxtapose there with like the desert sand and Africa, it's, it's just incredible. And without actually being an astronaut, I feel like it's close to being the next best thing. And then the second part is sort of what you were talking about the history, you know, in this in that very building just one floor up is where the controller sat when we landed on the moon. And they worked through problems real time, you know, to tell the astronauts what to do. And these were people that had computers with much less computing power than our iPhones today. And they were very young. If you look at any of the documentaries and everything, these were like 20 something kids fresh out of college, you know, space, there wasn't as much history then. So it's hard to you know, lead your whole life thinking you're going to be working in space. It's like something you just thrust upon you basically. And they were able to overcome all of that and be able to land man on the moon. It just, it still blows my mind today, even when I walk in that building. Wow, Stacey Simms 26:17 that's amazing. So does Type One Diabetes on your job? Do you mind telling us a little bit about your routine? Because there's some very long shifts, lots of pressure, you know, you can't exactly take a lot of breaks, I would assume. Can you talk a little bit about how you manage it? April Blackwell 26:32 Yeah. Um, so I mentioned before that we're constantly monitoring telemetry from the space station. And as type one diabetics, we're kind of used to that already. Actually, we constantly monitor telemetry coming from our own bodies. I use a CGM. So I set that in a prominent place. And it is just become part of my scan pattern. I scan all of the data that I'm looking at Looking for anomalies. And then I also glanced over at my CGM, and just make sure that I'm trending the way I want to be trending. And generally on console, I'll keep my blood sugar a little bit higher. So try to avoid going below about 120 or so just because I know if at any moment something could hit, basically. And so, you know, I don't want to have that rush of adrenaline drop me really low. So I try to keep it a little bit higher. I always have snacks in the control room, we're allowed to eat, you know, as you mentioned, they are long Fest, so you usually have a meal that you eat while you're there. And then all of the flight directors also know that I have type one, that's not a requirement or anything, but I think as a member of their team, it's important that they know that's something that I'm also monitoring and so it may require that I you know, step out for a quick two minutes to go grab a snack or, you know, do a little Check or change the site even I've had to do that at work. And so I think just being really candid and open and and, you know, open to answering any questions that they have is really important in sort of these high stress jobs like this. Stacey Simms 28:19 And a while back, I interviewed Ernie Prato, who also works at NASA and also lives with type one. And I know you know each other. Unknown Speaker 28:27 I don't, this is gonna sound so weird. So I just kind of a mom question. So I'm sorry for asking it. But like, do you guys see each other at work? Do you check in with each other? I mean, I know not everybody with type one. Diabetes has to be friends. But the mom and me is kind of hoping that you support each other. April Blackwell 28:44 Yeah, so it's funny that you mentioned Ernie because we sort of have this unofficial Johnson Space Center Type One Diabetes club and Ernie actually sits in Completely different building off site. He sits over at the airport now. So I don't see him daily, but we have sort of instant messaging capability and so will frequently talk on there. And we have another friend who actually works in the search and rescue area. So he's doing a lot of cool things with the military in order to get our astronauts safely home after they land. And so it's really fun we all meet and you know, you think we would like talk about space and stuff because that's what we do. But we always end up just talking about our diabetes and what devices were using which ones are you know, giving us trouble which ones were low on supplies for, if anyone's tried to like, you know, come up with engineer way to make something work better or whatever. So it's really fun to sort of have that outlet and especially at work with kind of like minded people. Unknown Speaker 30:01 I'm glad I asked Stacey Simms 30:05 what do you think would be next for you? Do you have other goals within what you're doing now? I mean, what you're doing now is so exciting. And I would assume you would want to do this forever. But are there other things that you would like to accomplish that you're working on? April Blackwell 30:18 Oh, that's a loaded question. There's so many things. Right now, I think my focus is just to you know, be the best engineer I can at work. And then I also have two little kids. So I Unknown Speaker 30:33 yes, I want April Blackwell 30:35 a three and a half and a one and a half year old. So they are taking a lot of my energy right now. And I think that's totally fine. That's, that's the season I'm in and so I want to be able to enjoy that. And so I think as far as my career goes, and everything, I definitely still have that astronaut dream out there. And I think there are opening up some new ways To be able to make that happen, and if not for me, then definitely the next generation of diabetics or maybe, you know, if we come up with a cure, then the non diabetics. But I'm really excited to see where that goes. And then I, I think, also just kind of spreading this message that you know, even if you perceive that there's a something that could hold you back as a type one diabetic, make sure that you are asking questions because it may not always be a hard know, and you sort of need to figure out what it is that is really keeping you from doing those things. Stacey Simms 31:36 I don't want to get too personal, but I know a lot of listeners will be interested. You know, when you have type one. There are a lot of concerns about having children. I mean, less so today, but you have to do so much work, it seems to me, you know, was it? Gosh, you seem like such a disciplined person anyway. And again, I don't want to pry but healthy pregnancies you did okay. You said you had a CGM. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that? Yeah, April Blackwell 32:01 um, so I actually don't get this question very often, I think because everyone's so focused on the NASA and space scope, but I'm really happy to share it because I think it is important. It's not something that a lot of women talk about. So, yes, I had two kids, three and a half and a one and a half, one and a half year old now. The first was a girl and everything went really, really well. I was induced, and that was sort of just my ob was being a little cautious with having diabetes and making sure I didn't go too long. And so I was induced, which turned into like a 40 plus hour labor, which was unfortunate. But everything turned out just fine. And she has a lot of attitude now. So something worked there. My son, so he's just about 18 months now, a little bit different flavor of pregnancy. As weird as that sounds. He had a lot of fluid around him while I was pregnant. So I gained a lot more weight. And I was just generally uncomfortable because I felt like my stomach was literally just gonna like burst open, it was so, so stretched out. And he ended up being a C section baby and he was over nine pounds. And that was again early induced about 38 weeks, so to completely different pregnancies. I had good control through both and you know, all of the non stress tested all of that when we're going well, and it just turned into a little bit of a different labor situation with my son so but I have two awesome Healthy Kids now and they do take a lot of my energy It's interesting because you know, my daughter being three and a half, she understands I have these sort of extra devices hooked to me. Console, she, she knows the word diabetes, she knows the word pump, she knows that sometimes I eat her applesauce pouch when I'm low and we're at the playground. Because that has happened before. Sure. And my son is still you know, he's just, he isn't quite to the point of communicating those feelings yet. So he'll touch my site, and I'll tell him No, you know, but it's just interesting seeing how they react to it. And I think in a way it will hopefully make them more empathetic to you know, friends or people in the future that they come across and this is just a normal part of life. And you know, everyone has something they're dealing with, I think, you know, Type One Diabetes happens to be mine, but everyone has something and so keeping an open mind and judging people based on devices or things that they see right off the bat I think is really important. Stacey Simms 35:07 Do you mind if I ask what devices you use? But pumping CGM? April Blackwell 35:11 Sure I use the tandem. x to polymer and sex sex. com g sex ctm. So I get that data right on the pump, which was really nice. Yeah, I like both of them's though. I'm a big fan. Before Stacey Simms 35:30 I let you go, you know, this is kind of a tough question for you to answer. But your mom and dad, you were 11 when you were diagnosed, you shared this love of space and science with your father. Your you have an incredible career. You have two children, they must have been worried during the pregnancy. You know, have you had a conversation with them about Wow, did you ever think after that diagnosis where I would be today? April Blackwell 35:55 Oh man, we've had a lot of conversation about this. Yeah, it's it's very cyclical. I think for us, you know, when I was growing up, I would definitely have months where I was not literally diabetes high, but just high on life and really excited and full of energy. And then I definitely had points where I was really low and upset that I had diabetes. You know, the one person that I knew that really wanted to be an astronaut, and literally couldn't because of this disease, you know, somehow I was chosen to have this disease, of course. So I went through all those emotions and those feelings and my parents were always there. They always supported my dream. And they really stressed to me the importance of working hard. And I will tell you, engineering is hard work. And it is hard to get through engineering school, even if you're really passionate about it. And so that support was priceless. I know my mom, you know, see Susan emotional person. And I think she was sometimes afraid that I wouldn't be able to sort of realize some of these dreams. And it's so great. Now, you know, I'm in my early 30s and I have my dream job. And I send her picture hers, you know, for Mission Control probably every week, just because I think it's really cool. And, you know, seeing her and the being able to decipher that, hey, like, we made it together. It's not it's not just me. I mean, they did so much to help me and my poor Mom, you know, she's, she's not the most most into space, but she like dragged herself to those space museums that me and my dad wanted to go to Oh, man. Sometimes she would be doing her crocheting over in the corner. So bless her heart. She was such a trooper. through all of that, but I think it's really important now to, for her to see, you know, these moments in my life. And now she gets to share those with other people that she meets that, you know, maybe they've just had a diagnosis like this, or they know someone going through an issue that's, you know, putting up some barriers and she can say like, hey, look like we got through it. It's totally doable. I think that's the key, it's doable, and it's going to be tough. But if you want something, you need to just go for it, and it'll absolutely work out. So we've just sort of on and off had those conversations, you know, let's see, I've had diabetes for 20 years now. So the last 20 years, I would say there's been conversations like that throughout the whole time. Wow. Stacey Simms 38:48 Well, that that's great. I'm so glad that you've had this conversation with your parents, you know, as a as a mom have a son who is figuring out what he wants to do, you know, and we don't want diabetes to hold him back. Don't mind saying I find your story incredibly inspirational. So April, thank you so much for joining me. And, you know, I'll be following you on Instagram and elsewhere and looking for those pictures of Mission Control and everything. Thanks for joining me April Blackwell 39:13 absolutely anytime. Stacey Simms so much more about April at diabetes dash connections come and I'm going to talk about her had a really emotional reaction to something. I'll share that in just a moment but first… Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And you know when you have a toddler diagnosed with type one like we did, you hear rumblings for a long time about the team years, but when it hit us at full force a little early, I was so glad we had Dexcom early. I was so glad we had Dexcom Benny's insulin needs started going way up around age 11. And frankly, they continue to go up and told, I think they started topping out about age 14 really just late last year. And you know, those hormones, swings, everything we had to do all the adjustments we've made. I cannot imagine managing diabetes during this crazy time. Without the Dexcom continuous glucose monitoring system. We can react more quickly to highs and lows, see trends adjust insulin doses with advice from our endo. I know using the Dexcom g six has really helped improve Benny's A1C and overall health. If your glucose alerts and readings from the G6 do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. To learn more just go to diabetes dash connections calm and click on the Dexcom logo before I move on from April Blackwell, in her terrific story, I just want to share one more thing. So when I, when I talked to all the guests, I always grab pictures of them, right? You see that on social media, when we put the episodes out or at the episode homepage, there's usually a picture of a product or the person or you know, the crux of what we're talking about. And often they email me photos, but sometimes I scroll through just to kind of see which one I'd want. Then I can say, Hey, can I grab that one picture or whatever. So I was doing that with April. And I came across, and I'll see if I can get her permission to share this in the Facebook group. She has a picture of herself dressed as an astronaut. And that picture is from about and that picture is from, you know, she was diagnosed, she was diagnosed at the end of December. So it's Halloween. I mean, it's just really a couple of weeks before she was diagnosed and seeing her as a little girl, knowing what she wanted to do, and knowing where she is now. And just I guess I could have been sad about it because I got very emotional. And I guess the reaction could have been, oh, it's too bad that you didn't get to be that astronaut but my reaction Was this? I mean, I really got emotional, it's kind of embarrassing. Was this, this swell of admiration, I'm not sure I'd be that strong, whether I was 11 years old or, you know, an adult, to be able to turn that situation into what she has been able to do with it. You know, and as she mentioned with Ernie Prado, who also works at NASA, and you don't have to be a you know, an aerospace engineer, to just kind of overcome what type one throws at you. And I think that's what happened when I saw that photo. I just thought, gosh, you're all of you.. All of you just have to be strong. You know, even if you don't feel strong, you kind of have to be you kind of have to be and yes, parents too, but it's a different kind of strong for us, right. That's a that's a different story altogether. So I'll see if April will let me post the photo and I wonder if you'll have the same reaction that I did. Foot boy What a great story and I can't wait to follow along with her. It's nerdy April I'll link it up in the show notes on her Instagram account on her Instagram account all right time for Tell me something good brought to you by our friends at real good foods. And this one is real good foods. And I know it's a podcast and I shouldn't be saying things like you got to see the picture. But you got to see the picture. And I will post it in the Facebook group. I will be posting it later this week on Instagram as we start posting the Tell me something good stuff. But Amanda lovely. posted a photo of her kids celebrating what they call their last Lantus party. And she says the reason they were having a party, Annika, who is her daughter with type one is 10. It burns right Lantus burns a lot of people if you're not familiar, this is a long acting insulin. This is a commonly used long acting insulin. And Amanda said that Anika isn't a fan. This was a big moment. The picture shows as they're having their last Lantus party, Anika with two of her siblings in party hats. party hats, so it's Nina and chi and they are hugging her and everybody looks like they're having a It looks like a birthday party. I mean, it's really cute. And apparently Malin, who is five but not in the photo was also wearing a party hat. party hat and the dog was as well but not pictured Amanda, you got to send us a picture of the dog. But they were really excited and supporting their sister, which is why this is the Tell me something good. Not so much about the pump start although I'm sure she appreciated that and that's fun too. But, too, but it's always just so nice to see a family kind of get behind each other, right? I mean, gotta have that kind of support. And I will say that if Lantus burns, you or your child know that there are long acting alternatives, not just switching to an insulin pump. And by the way, Amanda make sure you save some of that long acting just in case you have pump issues, right? You know, you never want to have no long acting on hand, just in case talk to your endo. But if you're having an issue with Lantus, ask about switching, there are other long acting's out there that don't burn as much and that work differently, but that's definitely an endo level decision. Do you have a Tell me something good story. It can be anything from a diversity a milestone of a last Lantus party. We have lots of fun stuff to share. And I love telling your good stories. You can always email me Stacey at diabetes dash connections. com or post in the Facebook group message me, you know, send a carrier pigeon, whatever works for you. We will be sharing these pretty far and wide this year. And I'd love to hear your story. With the time shifting nature of podcasting, as I've mentioned before, you know, sometimes and recording before things are happening that I want to talk about, and then they'll the show airs afterwards. And all of that to say, a lot of you've been following along with Benny, who has been on crutches for six weeks. And as I am taping this, he is hopefully getting the word in the next couple of days that he can be off crutches, and maybe start some physical therapy. So next week, I hope to tell you a little bit more about that. And we're also going to the endo, which is a really good time for me to interview Benny because we're alone in the car and we're in the same space for once because that kid is so busy, I don't even see him half the time. But I'm going to try to talk to him about control IQ in the last year and lots of things changes he's made. Control IQ and things that have gone on since we've last talked we've made some other changes. And you know, he's just a different kid than he was even a year ago which is kind of breaking my heart and kind of fantastic but Boy, it's been it's been a big year for him. I don't know about you. But when my kids went from middle school to high school, it wasn't it wasn't just a different school. It was like a different life. High School is very different. The schedule is different. The work is different. And I remember with my daughter, who is now a freshman in college, and as you're listening is going back to school next week to do her second semester there. It just flies by it goes by so quickly. So I'm trying to hang on for dear life. And hopefully Benny will will talk to me talk to you, and we'll get him on the show as well. Tons of events coming up. I'm not even going to run down the list. I will ask you though, to go to the community page at diabetes dash connections calm. You can see where we've been where we're going. I've got a kind of a de facto book tour, because I am the world's worst diabetes mom, which is taking me on the road right now but two events a month. You can see them on the community page and see if I'm coming to your town. And if not, and you'd like me to come speak or tape a podcast or whatever. Just let me know. Just let me know. Next week, just let me know. Alright, later this week we have our second minisode. This one's going to be all about sleep overs. What worked for us, I had some questions about that. And I'm answering them. So we're gonna be talking about sleep overs. That episode will air on Thursday, January 9, and then our next regular interview episode will be next Tuesday. Thank you, Tuesday. It's gonna take me a little time to fall into the rhythm of this, but I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. Let me know what you think. As always, the show is here for you. Thanks, as always, to my editor, John Bukenas from audio editing solutions, and thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms, and I'll see you back here on Thursday. Transcribed by otter.ai

New for 2020, it’s Scotch Pursuit! Ok, not really. But what better way to start the new year by trying something new and having Dr. Rachel Barrie, the master blender for The GlenDronach, BenRiach, and Glenglassaugh of Brown-Forman, come and show us the ropes. We talk about malting, peat, Glens and Bens, rules and regulations to be considered a scotch, the temperatures and more. This is a fantastic 101 to the scotch world and even made us, not so much scotch curious, but more single malt curious. Since this recording, we’ve tried numerous single malts and found some great ones. If you have an “entry Scotch” for bourbon drinkers, drop it here in the comments. Show Partners: At Barrell Craft Spirits, they explore whiskey in an entirely new way. The team selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of its parts. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about Al Young. Why all the Glens and Bens? Does the altitude affect the whiskey? Talk about growing up around scotch. Tell us about your doctorate. Tell us about the the brands. What is an old school malt? How do you keep malts consistent? What is malting? What is the process for making scotch? What kind of stills do you use? What is your favorite cask? How do you make a blend? How old does scotch have to be legally? Is there a lot of evaporation loss in the barrel? What proof does BenRiach come out of the barrel? How many barrels are in a typical batch? Do you have a team helping you blend? Is there a limit to the number of times you can use a barrel? Tell us about the special releases. 0:00 All right, and I want to make sure that I'm saying these right. Ben Ben. Ben rush when we have Ben react. Oh, gosh. Ben, Ben react. Well, no, I want to be able to introduce and kind of talk about it. So Ben, we are going to hear him fumble. Glenn chronic, right and then Glenn glassing Oh no, glass, glass, I 0:23 have a glass of wine glass. Okay. 0:27 I must leave that one and 0:32 I'm gonna butcher this so bad. 0:45 Happy New Year everybody. It is Episode 234 of bourbon pursuit. And with the new year it comes time that we can all reflect back and start with a clean slate. It gives us a chance to focus on where things are exciting and where we see change happening and we looked at the world of bourbon 1:00 Saw that there's too much drama. So we explored what else this wonderful water whiskey has to offer. And we decided that we're going to start venturing off into scotch. So now you can look forward to a whole lot more scotch podcast happening in 2020. All right, that was a bad joke. We're not gonna be doing any of that. We don't have any other scotch playing episodes, except for this one you're gonna hear today. So you're in the clear. All right. Now let's get on with the news. The bourbon world loss and other great on Christmas Day at 2019. With the passing of Al young from four roses. Alice served in various roles at four roses for 52 years. In 1990. He became distillery manager and in 2007, was named four roses bourbon brand ambassador. He was also historian and published the book for roses. The return of a whiskey legend in 2010. I was inducted into the whiskey magazine Hall of Fame in 2015. And he's also a member of the Kentucky distillers Association, Kentucky bourbon Hall of Fame. After the dedication of the 50th anniversary bottle in 2017. He was boosted in the spotlight and he was regularly seen during 2:00 Private barrel selections. We captured him telling the story of four roses and part of his career. Way back on episode three in 2015. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, friends and the entire four roses community. We covered this in the podcast way back in July because on July 3 2019, lightning struck a warehouse at beans maturation complex on the site of the former Old Crow distillery on McCracken road. The warehouse held an estimated 40,000 barrels of whiskey and collapse resulting in a fire. The site is located in the banks of the Glens Creek, which flows into the Kentucky River, which eventually goes into the Ohio River. State Fish and Wildlife investigators later found dead fish along 62 miles of all three waterways with the most impact happening in Glens Creek in the Kentucky River beam. Suntory has agreed to pay the state of Kentucky more than $700,000 following the environmental damage from July's warehouse fire, according to Global's courier journal that Kentucky Energy and Environmental cabinet negotiated a $600,000 fine with the 3:00 Companies Jim beam's brand new unit, an additional $112,000 to reimburse the agency for its expenses from the fire. Now we've talked about the rise of shipping alcohol on the podcast plenty of times before. But now there are studies coming out, the volume of liquor sold online in the US should be more than quadrupled by 2020 for reaching an estimated value of $13.4 billion. And this is according to I Ws or who is the global benchmark for beverage alcohol and data intelligence. out there hurdles that come on this, you've got the antiquated three tier system, you get blue laws and individual states that take care of age verification. And you also have perception because half of the people that were surveyed during this thought that purchasing online was illegal, with companies like drizzly leading the charge, along with other retailers using things like instacart for Costco, people like this. They're doing same day delivery. Expect to see more that it didn't happen in 2020. Thank you to everyone who supported the bourbon pursuit Christmas charity. 4:00 raffles, we raised $13,740 for the USO pets for vets and love city. We appreciate everyone who took the time to donate to these good causes and the winners, you'll be receiving your items in the mail over the next two weeks. We've been truly impressed by our latest pursuit series offerings. Episode 18 of pursuit series was our first ever ride barrel. And it came from Finger Lakes distilling. It's a four year old but it packs fruit and spice all in one for $65 and we also released Episode 19, which is from our Tennessee stock. It's a 10 year old bourbon and it tastes like those orange push ups that we all used to love as kids. We have less than 15 bottles remaining of Episode 18 and about 80 bottles left of Episode 19 we also have less than 10 bottles remaining of Episode 12 so you better act fast. You can get the links to purchase all these by going to pursuit spirits.com this was an exciting episode for Ryan and I we don't know anything about scotch like none 5:00 Least when we started this podcast, we were curious about bourbon. And we started to learn a whole lot more before really diving into it. So what better way to get the full experience about scotch, then by having Dr. Rachel Barry, who is a master Blender for multiple lines of scotches, come on the show and show us the ropes. We talked about multi Pete regulations be considered a skoshe temperatures and a whole lot more. This is a fantastic one on one to the scotch world, and even made us not so much scotch curious, but more so. single malt curious. Since this recording, we've tried various American and foreign single malt and found some that we've really loved and enjoy. So there's a lot more out there than bourbon for most of us. Now. Sit back, Let's relax. Let's hear what Joe from barrel bourbon has to say. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 5:51 I'm Joe Beatrice, founder of barrell craft spirits, we explore whiskey in an entirely new way. My team at barrel craft spirits selects and blends barrels of whiskey 6:00 into something greater than the sum of their parts. Next time ask you bartender for barrell bourbon. 6:06 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char. There are a few people you meet in life, where they just instantly feel like they're a brother or a family member, or someone who just cares so deeply about another human being that they would just do anything for a total stranger. 6:27 That's who al Young was. Al young, was probably the most knowledgeable person in bourbon that never wanted any credit. Al Young was this incredible brand ambassador for four roses, who had started working for the seagrams company in 1967. And had been all over the place in the distilling business. You know, to me that the pinnacle of his career was when he served as the plant manager for four roses, everybody talks about the master distiller but our was 7:00 plant manager. And when it came time to retire, they found another job for him because they didn't want to let him go. Because anybody who ever met our young just felt this Kismet kind of special relationship to him. He was, he was avuncular, caring kind, and he wanted to know about you. That's what made our young so special was that it was about bourbon and he loved four roses. But it was never about really anything other than the people. I wanted to know where you grew up. How many kids you have, what you love about whiskey, what you don't like, he wanted to talk to you and learn about you. And so when he passed away on Christmas Day, this past week, 7:50 I think 7:51 a lot of us felt that we felt this big hole that we lost a friend and yeah, we 8:00 always talked about how we lost a whiskey legend. But more than anything, Al was everybody's friend. And if you ever did a barrel pick with him if he ever shook his hand if you ever had a drink with him in a bar or, or had a sandwich in a cafe, you know what I'm talking about. Now, Young was one of a kind, and he will be missed. 8:25 And that's this week's above the char. If you want to learn more about al Young's contributions, go check out my Forbes article, visit forbes.com. And you should also check out the book he wrote about four roses. You can just find it on Amazon search for four roses. Until next week. Cheers 8:48 welcome back to this episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon, Kinney and Ryan here on site in in another studio or at Brown formance. Yes, but today we're talking about 9:00 topic that's so green to us. Like, um, I, we got this email from Andrea who set this up. And I said, Let's take it, let's do the opportunity because we need to branch out a little bit because we've been so bourbon focused in our podcasts and our lives. We forget about this. Oh, there's this whole other world of whiskey that we're not even touching on. And then actually, if you look at it sort of Trumps even what bourbon does on the global map to Oh, yes. But by far and it's funny on the way here, I was thinking like, all right, what we're going to talk about and then like, start thinking, like, when I was when you're like in your 20s, early 20s, you like, kind of make all these rules for yourself. Like, I will never pay someone to mow my lawn or my kids won't be the ones that screaming at the restaurant. And another role for me was, because I'm from Bardstown. I will never drink scotch. But today, I'm changing that and I'm excited to learn about it and drink some scotch. I know it's going to be exciting to do that. And that's really why we have it. It's a 10:00 This is what I love about this is that we have a guest on today that is is pretty world renowned, especially for the scotches that she blends and she touches. You know, I think we might be a little jaded, we might be sitting in the bounds of royalty right now not even really recognize it. Yeah, we're peasants, Scott. 10:19 So let's go ahead introduce our guest today. So today we have Rachel Berry. Rachel is the master Blender for Ben wreck, the Glen. Glen glass and all i got i hope i got that right for single malt Scotch whiskies in the brown Forman portfolio. So Rachel, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. You did well with those Kenny Yeah, I know. He was kind of fumbled through this quite quite comical 10:42 because we want to have a glass of Glen glass and though it was that, is that how it was? I said a glass of glass. Ah, let's see. That's a very basic question. It starts off while the Glens and Ben's what like there's, you know, Glenlivet, Glynn morenci Glen, Glen glass and Glen dragon 11:00 We're with altitude Really? Okay, so Glenn doneck is very deep down a valley in the valley of brambles. 11:09 So it's a Glen. Okay, and Glenn Glasser is deep down beside the sea. Okay. So you have to again, go down and tickling glossa and then Ben reacts a little bit higher altitude we call those dollars here. 11:28 dollar Yeah, yeah. go fishing. Exactly. You can go fishing. They're absolutely good surfing there. Oh, no, there's no service 11:39 whereby the see Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah. And then Ben react is slightly higher altitude. So it's a bad. Okay. Yeah. So I'm assuming the altitudes do something to the whiskey that really kind of pushed into the name is it as well? Yeah, everything makes a difference with scotch. I mean, scotch whiskey. 12:00 been around since 1494. 12:03 If not for centuries before that was our earliest recorded evidence and we've got 128 distilleries in Scotland and no to disillusion the same is the spirit with the greatest diversity of style and individuality of character in the wild. 12:19 And we're gonna be tasting three years a little bit later we'll dive into those I probably jumped ahead. itinerary or 12:26 so yeah, altitude is a part of it is a part of it. It's one part of many parts. Okay, glad we got it kind of like you know pinos, you kind of grew up you know, to our wine, you kind of grow in the more lower humid regions, then you have grapes in the higher regions, they get more sun and sky kind of gives different flavors white, right? It affects it affects the maturation effects of fermentation, where the distilleries, gotcha. Cool. And so you're based out of Scotland too. Is that correct? Absolutely. We're in Scotland. Well, I was born, five minutes from Glen donek distillery, and I was brought up the air 13:00 Then I went to Edinburgh University and the head office the brown Forman production head offices in Edinburgh, or the Scotch whisky. merry go round by so you're destined to be in scotch? Absolutely. And, you know, I've come home working for Glenn doneck and bendrick and going glass, because, say born near Glen donek. I learned to surf with my dad at Glen Glasser and learn to glide at Ben REAC. That's cool. So I guess talk about growing up around it. I mean, was it was your family having influence into it at all? Or was it just something that you just kind of naturally gravitated towards? Well, my dad was the first to share with me a weed jam when I was far too young. I shouldn't say this to be having a weed drum. 13:46 beat everybody. 13:48 And he also collects malt. So it was a big promote efficient model. 13:52 And, you know, it's more actually being involved in farming as well. You know, it's more of that side of things. 14:00 Then distilling, but yeah, it was serendipity getting into really, 14:05 because I'm a chemist by trade, and I could work for oil or, you know, pharmaceuticals and offer jobs with those. But then I just happened to be cycling past the Career Service on the last day, adult was advertised at the scotch whiskey Research Institute didn't even know such a job existed and got the job. And then I've never looked back for years and researching the alchemy of scotch and then making it so that's even a fun journey. Now the other thing we forgot to mention you're also a doctor the trade might not it might correct so last year, I got an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh so I was honored to be given that feel even worse about myself now. 14:49 You're not only seeing the hands of greatness we're also a doctor. 14:53 Well, I actually studying medicine first as well. It's quite funny. Well was good medicine. 15:00 Why See? That's why I say you know we drama D keeps adult 30 yep away 15:07 How much have you been drinking already today? Not in this kit. 15:12 So let's let's talk a little bit more about you know your history. You know going because I know that you've had your hands in a lot of the Glens and bends of the region as well before you were a master Blender here at Brown Forman taking care of the brands here. So kind of talk about some of that history too. Yeah, I mean, I started off with a Glen and the far north of Scotland and to Glens. The margy Glen Murray, and then also eila with our bag and work with their blends as well creating them so that was, that was a fun journey. I was 1617 years and then move to more worked more with xyla 15:54 with the highlands clan, and also with the lowlands 16:00 was a Glasgow distillery. And then 16:04 a couple more. 16:07 I lost and another Highland. But I've left the best to last working with Baron Corbin because it's truly going home. So I've done my whiskey exploration. Yeah, you've seen them all. Yeah, whenever I see a bottle Glenmorangie I'm like, is it tastes like oranges? Or you know, like, I don't know it, it looks like an orange bottle like, I don't know, what's, what's the difference between like you talked about, I'll guess that's where Laphroaig and you know, different types of brands. What makes the region different? Like one part is one part. I mean, a lot of it is down to the conditions. So 16:46 we'll talk about space side and stuff like that to 16:49 go 50 to 60 distilleries in it. So that's where most of the distilleries are. And Ben react is right in the heart of space sites. 16:57 Halfway between the mountains See, and it's beautiful. 17:00 Beautifully balanced. And, you know, it tends to be you know, fruit laden moles are from Speyside so when rain is particularly fruit Laden, like orchard fruit. 17:12 So everything makes a difference. shape of the stills water the barley. 17:18 Yeah. And then the highlands I've actually would like with Glendora there's actually very few distilleries in the eastern Highlands there's only three. So Glendora is incredibly distinctive. 17:29 And it's a real old style old school mode, which makes it an old school because you gotta understand we're coming to this you know, we know mash but let's start the basic like, what is is God's vs. Okay, here we go. Here we go. We've only got four malt whiskey anyway. Yeah. single malt and that's the caterpillar that's growing. That's what people are really loving. And, and we've got three award winning top distilleries. three ingredients. malted barley, so has to be malt for single malt 18:00 Whiskey meter. 18:02 Like sir deserves 100% one all. Gotcha. So when you go the tour, it's like it has to be 100% Well, 18:11 they're always like 15 you 1% corn You know, that's the thing 100% malt because malted barley is the most complex material you can create flavor from in the world. There's hundreds of flavor compounds created from malted barley. And there was that versus other grains, because it's just all cast in a pool of amino acids of lipids as well as the starch that gives you the sugars. So there's just so much on the on the husk, you even get vanilla, you get searchers, there's so much to be extracted and converted by the yeast to flavor so it's much much more than just 18:51 alcohol. So in you know, in fermentation, you actually create the same flavors as you would do in a wine. So, you know, people often say Oh, how come 19:00 This great penis from mote 19:03 mall is magical. It just creates all this flavor. And that's why notice those are the same. It's a very complex material. And it's the synchronicity of, of where the seller is every single step of the process that creates quite a distinctive character as well to say how do you keep that consistent 19:20 between the distilleries because I would imagine that you know, one farmers multi bar one farmers barley that you got to bring in and malt like you had to have some sort of process that try to get a consistency. Yeah, but I mean, there's always going to be some sort of variations. Yeah, I mean, the malted barley varieties per year might be slightly different and more to do with the harvest. But generally, you know, most of Scotland will be growing the same, the same varieties because they're the ones that are working and you know, disease resistant and and grow and give you the highest yield. 19:53 But I mean, multi process can affect it. Ben Rhea, we've got all more tanks, which is something really special 20:00 one of only two distilleries of those, you know, 55 distilleries in Scotland that to have the Maltings so that's you know, something something special we don't maltol year but we do batches somebody doesn't know can you describe what multi malting is just bring that would be that somebody 20:18 is bringing the barley to life. So the barley is harvested spring barley is harvested in August and then it will be melted typically, you know, in the autumn 20:34 or it can be kept as but just the green barley as we call it before it's melted for longer and malted in the spring. 20:41 But malting means that you basically steeping water. Okay, so you're giving it some moisture, which is encouraging it to grow. Yep. And the growing phase is called germination. And that's where the mall is layout and the floor and the old style is with a, you know, to shovel it, basically 21:00 Mo shovel and turn it starts routing together it stops it from knitting together with sprites, okay and ensures an even temperature. And this allows the the enzymes to start working and the fooling the barley into thinking it's growing right because given that those conditions and so when we got the enzymes just perfect and the body is modified so this activate those enzymes, it's then we need to stop it. And that is done through mulk killing. And that's where the the germination barley is, is is raised on to Multi Floor. And beneath that there is heat and that's the kill. Okay. 21:42 Traditionally, Pete was used and most distilleries when we were back, but then you know, in the 20th century there was gas etc. So, so so most distilleries these days are undefeated. 22:00 with Ben reate, we've got both. So we're very lucky to have both. But Pete itself, is is, is found a lot in Scotland. 22:12 For Ben REAC. We source it from nearby the distillery and there was Caledonia forests 10,000 years ago and over 10,000 years, the Caledonian forest is as broken down over time over this time, and created the piece that we use. So Arpita actually, you can see fibers in it almost like fibers of wood. So is this like, like sphagnum peat moss or anything like that type or no, this is more like woodridge widger Okay, this is because it's from the northeast where you have Caledonia forest. Whereas if you went to Iowa, which is an island off the west coast, which makes the most 22:53 was the highest density of peated whiskies when it is a peat moss, a peat moss. Yeah. 23:00 No moss and also only because I use peat moss. I've agrico like turf. He's, he's 23:07 a 23:09 horticulture degree and we we use peat moss to like improve soil profiles and textures because it's rich in organic matter 23:18 all that organic matter you see this decade over 10,000 years and different parts of the geography of Scotland and you have you know different types of vegetation. And when you burn the peat, which fuels the fire that most of barley, 23:35 the aromas from from that material that vegetation and permeate the barley. So this introduces smoky flavors and you know, more nyla you find something more medicinal, more CBD decaying sweet seaweed type of smell. 23:54 Whereas, with Ben REAC it's that sweets would smoke on 24:00 Like a barbecue smell I think people in Kentucky would love it. 24:04 You know, it's really, really sweet. I guess that's based on the native vegetation there. Yeah, absolutely. But also in space side this is very, very rare, right? We Pete, every year we do about 15% of what we do. And then I get to have fun playing tunes with the beat on the competed stock and with flavor and create flavor so so it's great fun but space I typically is undefeated malts they tend to most of your glands 24:34 So Ben Ben reacts really very bold and adventurous and having Is there anything like heat shortage or is that ever word like people here talking about you know, uses evoke or whatever they're like, oh, Ukrainian oak shores they ever complained about they're all using all our Pete. We thought plenty. 24:55 There's plenty of pee. Gotcha. doesn't actually take that much Pete to create smoke. Gotcha. 25:00 etc. So it's all relative, isn't it? probably use more in your horticulture. Yeah, farmers and weekend gardeners. Let's see, I was kind of curious about like, what was the shift of moving away from Pete? Was it just in efficiencies of scale? Or was it a change in flavor that people were looking for? Like, what was that? Because you said most distilleries are kind of shifting away from that. 25:22 Well, this know historically, 25:25 it was more to do with the fact that we could get natural gas to to 25:33 drive barley and which is more efficient. 25:36 And also, you know that for the environment overall. So yeah. 25:45 We got, we got we got barley, they were melting it and then we're killing it. Yeah, dry it out to stop the germination process. All right, where we at steps the next step? Oh, we get the multi barley in 26:00 millat we have to put in a mill. And there's two different types of mill and distilleries. porcius or Bobby mill, and they've got four different rollers. And when it goes through the mill, this cracks open the husk, which is the surface of the barley. And then it goes down to the next level of rollers. And it gives you three different particle sizes, which are the husk on the outside of the barley, the grist in the middle and the flower, and you have to get perfect combination to give you the best taste and to get the most extraction. How do you get the perfect combination? Well, you just know what's right for you guys. And then you can use a sieve and use a sieve and you you work out your different particle sizes percentages, got a really simple process to for the guys to the distillery 26:45 analogous to like the corn that we take in, you know, basically turn into a powdered form. We're sitting there getting ready to do our mash. I guess the 26:55 flower package is not good because it would clog up the mash tun 27:00 Okay, okay give it will give you lots of alcohol and also it's not as good from flavor. 27:06 husk is great because it gives us a filter bed and mash tun and we want to produce a clear war target. So when we drain it off, and you know it filters through, and then the rest is the majority of 70% in the middle size particle skips great flavor and alcohol. Awesome. Alright, so we're moving past the mills where we're going next we're going into the mash tun and there's different sort of mash tons and scotch. I Glenn jornet. We've got copper mash tun 27:37 which goes right back decent job six, it's incredible. Lots of content with copper. It's a traditional recompile very slow process takes six hours to mash. Ben react also takes a long time to to mash very slow, where some more efficient, bigger distilleries might take three hours. But we believe slow and steady wins the race. That's right. The the tortoise always wins when I read this 28:01 Yeah, you know, Peter Pan, do you know the tortoise scene? Yeah, well, you get complexity in whiskey if you take your time. That's right. So with bedrick, for example, we we add one water at around 6065 degrees, 28:23 we mash this and then we drain it off through the filter bed. And then we add another water, a higher temperature around 74. And we drain off and they both go into the fermentation process. And then we add two more waters, which just clean it all out and go back into the first with the first water from the next run. And so we saw remash water, so it kind of 28:51 so we, we basically are great economists in Scotland. We don't let any job goes to waste. Yeah. And so with 29:00 mentation Are you all hanging your head on like this is our own yeast we've had for since 1400 or whatever, you know, we've got great distillers yeast that the whole industry uses which are perfect for scotch, she'll be black distillers uses profit for scotch. But when we ferment as well, you know, this is where the magic comes in, you know, we know we've got 29:23 wash backs that you know, air does the natural Flora can get into so it can influence the fermentation as well. 29:33 Tanks kind of sort of thing. Gotcha. Well, it's a Glen Donna, we have Scottish large wash backs. And sorry, I thought it's large. It's a wood. Oh, okay. I'll never would see he knew exactly was not miss anything. Yeah, like I got nothing here. So 29:52 my computer 29:54 was like, you know, you think about some disorders we go to and they've got the Cypress tanks. You know, that's my guys, man. That but yeah, this is 30:00 Uh, 30:01 yeah, so yeah, so squad is large and therefore, you know, it can you know pick it can breathe. You can never get it fully cleaned. But that's great because it gets more of the micro flora. Yeah. Your 30:15 character character. 30:18 Character Yes. funks a good boss. Robust, robust Highland character. Yes. That's how royalty says yeah. 30:29 Alright, so we're through fermentation. We're, I'm saying distilling copper stills, right pot stills. Oh, copper ports tell ya, I noticed again, notice no column stills ever never call themselves from all over. And while they're saying it's because it's pretty efficient and what we see around here that's kind of what a lot of the lot of the stories hang their hats on are doing a lot of bourbon and a lot of runs at once is basically using a really massive column stills. We have one of the most inefficient process 31:01 Incredible complex to flavor. It's all about the flavor and the end of the day. And with single malt in particular. 31:10 There's lots going on. So you want to take one cut this special for your distillery in the second distillation. So there's two distillations, typically in scotch. first one's called the wharf style tends to be the bigger style. And the second one is the spirit. So 31:30 in the first still, you distill the beer from around 8% alcohol up to around 20 24%. That's called low winds. And then you take the low winds, which is 24 and two, the second still the spirit still, and we, we cut the middle point, so whether it's the ceiling over 31:52 with bendrick, for example, 13 minutes, we just recycle. So we cut it, it goes into one 32:00 chamber. And then the middle heart goes into another chamber and that is for Philippians cask. And then the tales go back into that first chamber and then they're all recycled. So it's a very slow process, but it means that we capture very specific flavors. And then the still design is has an influence as well. So a Ben reate we've got very pure shapes so they just look quite beautiful pairs. And the this captures almost a fully peer job. Apple characters like an apple or church and the sales were that Glen Drona. We have 32:40 almost like saxophone stills. 32:43 Very unusual design. Certainly in terms of the neck, it curls around, up and down just like a swans neck. And this is very, very unusual. 32:53 So we have a boil ball that gives you lots of reflex and then the swans neck so we get this unique character. 33:00 How many different kinds of stills Have you seen over your course of time? You know, with all the time so I mean there's there's not kind of like a 33:09 I guess a good recipe that everybody kind of follows along like around here everybody goes oh, let's just call them down and we'll call today Yeah, well yeah, write a check and then in Dumbo Scotland all the stuff for sites Yeah. Oh coppersmith and the replace the stels member scotch whiskey is been gone for a long time Glendon It was 1826 You know, when I got those cells, so they'll replace them. Exactly. You know, every every little batch every you know, everything just the right, same, exactly same dimensions, but each distillery Yeah, so they're the man they're the coppersmith. Gotcha. Yeah. So quite often, you see stills just driving along the road. 33:49 being replaced. Yeah, that's awesome. Though. The corporate does where I mean corporates makes great conductor. It's wonderful for flavor because it catalog 34:00 is more fruit takes it the harshal elements. It's, it's magical. Absolutely. And so from there you've got your hearts and you're swimming you're filling barrels. Now you're filling barrels lately. Is it typical still 53 gallon sometime x bourbon cask like we're talking about the book is interesting because if you go back to 1826 for example, back then, it was Sherry principally that was important into into Scotland and bottles. And then the cast's were just use the surplus before then it was Aquavit, I Water of Life clear spirits. And you know, that farmers made because they had surplus barley. Who wouldn't? Yeah, 34:46 a little bit different around here. Normally, you would call that moonshine? Yeah. 34:51 Yeah, so it was serendipity, as many things and then the scotch industry that these Sherry cast and the main but the results are 35:00 podcast klarich cast what at that point? And we're used to, to host the whiskey which 35:08 you can ask me that. I love with no. I mean, I've spent so much time analyzing oak from around the world. I just love them all. I cannot say that. That's a cop out. Yeah. I love the one. I'm creating the whiskey with that day better. So today Yeah, yeah. Today president with that cast, I'm fully present with each cast. Gotcha. Absolutely. Alright, so what was the last cast you used? What was the last before? Well, I came to Louisville a few days ago. And the last cast I knows from was 35:44 definitely Glenn Dornoch, Patrick Hammond f cask. The last one px px Sherry right. And yeah, so that was the last one I'm learning the beauty of scotch and parvis 35:57 authenticity as well. 36:00 That we have this incredible selection we have to use a walk. Walk is the best. Yeah. You know, other words just do not cut the mustard. They don't have the complexity. 36:11 But apart from that it can have been you know, virginal we can use just like in Barban and or use casts So, for example with Ben redic we have the most eclectic collection of casks in space eight if not in the whole of Scotland. And we're has 13 we've got everything from the virgin not to bourbon to rum, to red wine, Bordeaux, New Yorker to Moscow masala to Tawny port report to a Miss Miss Miss Spano. 36:50 Madeira, so turn Okay, yeah. So you have all these different cask and I guess we'll get into to your your black magic of blending 37:01 Well let's talk about blink. So like here, like the master distillers like you know the celebrity or the you know the person that everyone looks to like but I hear over there the master blender is kind of like the runaway hit and away nosing lots of casks I know is about 5000 samples per year from casks 37:23 because it's such a complex spirit and no two castles in there very can be very different. 37:31 So I've noticed about hundred and 50,000 casks well my lifetime so far, 37:37 and counting and counting. But, you know, is the key part of, 37:44 of, of delivering a perfectly balanced single malt is knowing, obviously, what would you use what your wood policy is because we can reuse them more than once and then the different recipes of such 38:00 are almost in the cast selection. So the percentage you might use a bourbon cask virginal although very few us first you know we've got a real we're onto a winner here with Brian for men because we have source of virgin oak it's absolutely amazing it's great to play with and tons of us to work and tons of great dad Daniels barrels good for desirable for so take your pick so yeah so it's up to the master blender to kind of work out in conjunction obviously in collaboration with various people in the business so our influence in various various people in the business to see I think this will really work and consumer love it and you so like we're doing it. Are you like all right I went 30 bourbon expert and blends and when 35 x Madeira blends and or Derek has finished and then to blend to make you know a brand or like or no formula. Well it's it's really up to 39:00 whiskey. And to be honest, it's the whiskey that tells me 39:04 because she can keep me in Kim, it tells you it tells you the story tells you what it wants to be, you have to listen. And see you're not the guidance counselor. 39:16 Like Jackie says, when you know when she gets barrels off, she can like taste them and be like, all right, you're going off to be the old forester. You're going to be the prohibition series. You're going like here and there, but yeah, actually, you actually let the whiskey Tell you what, what to do with it. Absolutely. You know, like, 39:36 the characters whiskey Jasmine, what to do with it. I mean, with Ben react, it's got perfect balance of fruit Mononoke you know, and that is the key for me is to create character individuality. 39:50 Make it shine, just bring it all out, you know. 39:54 So, with Ben week 10 for example, general this is an appropriate time so yeah. 40:00 Yeah So Ben Murray lunch 40:08 with the careers of master distiller spanning almost 50 years, as well as Kentucky bourbon Hall of Famer and having over 100 million people taste his products. Steve nalli is a legend of bourbon who for years made Maker's Mark with expertise and precision. His latest project is with Bardstown bourbon company, a state of the art distillery in the heart of the bourbon capital of the world. They're known for the popular fusion series, however, they're adding something new in 2020 with a release named the prisoner. It starts as a nine year old Tennessee bourbon that has been finished in the prisoner wine companies French oak barrels for 18 months. The good news is, you don't have to wait till next year to try it. Steve and the team at Bardstown bourbon company have teamed up with rackhouse whiskey club rackhouse whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer. Their December box features a full size bottle of Bardstown suffusion series and a two 41:00 Hundred milliliter bottle of the prisoner. There's also some cool merchant side. And as always with this membership shipping is free. Get your hands on some early release Bardstown bourbon by signing up at rackhouse whiskey club.com. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 41:19 So, with Ben week 10 for example, general this is an appropriate time. So yeah. 41:25 Yeah, so Ben Murray. 41:30 So this is the core whiskey from Ben REAC. It's unpainted, or just make sure we're going which way Left to Right Left, left, right, left Bell know if you're not. 41:40 Yeah, well, the last time we did this, were wells with with Jackie and I went right to left and I was like, I'm not getting the same notes as you all but you know, that's me for not following directions. So this is this is the great label one that we're trying. So this is Yeah, this is the core product and this is 42:01 A marriage of 42:05 bourbon so principles john Daniels car says the main constituent of this product and also some Sherry cask from European oak and then also some of the brain for forming cooperage virgin oak, which is medium toasted and medium charge the same chat Tanya yes or no for a smell like Hawaiian Punch or like you know like the pineapple. Pineapple like like a toasted coconut like yeah more you know is that the more fruit you're gonna get? It just keeps on giving memory it just like is so fruit laden it's like a pina colada or something. 42:48 Well, you get pina colada Yeah. I got an apple orchards how work with ripened ripening peaches. Yeah, Rhino come up with the best tasting notes for you. 43:00 They're everything I had as a child. And I'm like, All right, we're gonna find this in the whiskey. Yeah. And you find it. I did. Well, I didn't have pina coladas when I was a child, but 43:11 I did have lion punch. Yeah. You ever had Hawaiian Punch? Yeah. Okay, cool. I know what you're talking about for all relatable still. 43:19 So very fatty. very fruity. Yes. Very nice. pear shaped cells. Yeah. You know. Beautiful. And you got a Yeah, I mean, some people who who drink wine really loves us. So, you know, becoming from Shapley or, you know, sharni you know, that fruitiness 43:37 is very, very distinctive layers of fruit. So, what kind of proof what kind of proof we're looking at 43% alcohol, which is 86 degrees proof. 43:49 So, it's a good strength. It's just the right strength to keep the fruit martynuk in perfect balance. So like with scotch like bourbon, they typically like art for years. We can start selling this one 44:00 Are you all like we can start selling this? Well legally it can be from three years old. Okay, okay, but I would never sell think about three years old because 44:11 the complexity is so much richer. It just gives you more a 10 years old so at three years is that for the single mother to be called a scotch? It has to be at least three years over boss. Okay, so any scotch whiskey be a blend of Multan green, because we do have green distilleries as well. 44:33 Like what other kind of grants or you know, we focus on the single malt because that's where all the flavor is. 44:41 So, if you look at other grains then is like like filler, like it doesn't really have it doesn't bring as much complexity or character to 44:51 the Scotch whisky industry was built on the complexity of single malt 44:58 and the green 45:00 Yeah, was pretty much there as a as a filler. Gotcha. See? Yeah, greens cheaper. So like, yeah, we're saying a mall is, you know, expensive to make the match process. It's handcrafted. It's you know, it's barley is expensive, sort of talking about aging. 45:18 Because it seems that barrels seem to like, retain a lot more liquid over in Scotland and Lino The longer they sit, I mean, you've you've got scotches that are yet wanting to learn 50 years old gin gin? Yeah, it's hot as hell. Yeah. And so we never get so Scotland. 45:39 I know sometimes I wish I lived there because be so easy to grow grass is the perfect weather. You know, we've got I guess that's why 45:49 we have an incredible landscape. Yeah, Scotland is so lush. And yes, it's perfect for barley as well on the east coast and then P on the west coast. 46:00 Public question. Well, yeah, 46:04 it's add, it's okay. I didn't count grass. Well, it's like, we're talking about how hot it is here versus Scotland. And I'm like Scotland is the perfect place to grow grass because grass here in June, July, it's like, it hates it. But it's good for bourbon because it's evaporating and moving it out of the barrel, you know, and I guess that was the question more along the lines of evaporation. I mean, you see in a lot of evaporation last over in Scotland that you would compared to like bourbon that are that's coming from Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, what what's considered a we call it a short barrel here, you know, like, if it's like below, like 100 bottles were like, Ooh, that's a short barrel. That one's gonna be good. Do you have Scotland? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We lose about on average for the whole industry. And it does vary. And then we get into another discussion. We lose about 2% of the volume and leasers about cold per year 46:57 of the original desk, which is ok. 47:00 We're about what five to 8% I think is kind of what you see around here at least at the first year. I think it's upwards double digits. But yeah, after that it kind of settled. Yeah. So what that means because it's a very slow reduction and also the the apple strength goes down. I know in bourbon, it goes up. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. 47:21 There you go. I told you you were coming in with 47:24 no idea. Yeah. So the ankle strength goes down. And that means that you're extracting different things from the the old cast the longer you leave it because that strength is going down. But you're only losing 2% volume, meaning that you can leave it for longer. It's got more interaction with the word more oxidation, most importantly for single malt because that gives you the elegance of complex to the top notes, etc. The finesse that you find in a single malt is nice, but I'm how much different flavor now to get in this. You know, 86 proof tenure. What does this 48:00 single malt Yeah, yeah Ben REAC there's a lot going on it's like it's incredible the flavors you can get out of it. Like I said, we're pretty amateur and scotch and you know, most of the scotch I've had had been very heavy peated so it's like really pungent kind of earthy like smoky type. This is definitely more on the fruity or side and more like Captain Crunch berries. We ever can crunch with the berries. Sorry, talking to him, but I can imagine what you're enjoying. Well, so it's kind of like, you know, cereal in the milk. What will sugary substance yeah you have like a really sugary berries. And absolutely. 48:44 That is the 10 years or cheers for another delicacy here in Kentucky Fried pizza. 48:53 Fit pizza. Never heard of a big sugar cookie with the 49:00 Oh, I had that with this whiskey for lunch. See we're on the same wavelength. And it was just amazing because you get the fruit you get the malt which is like the creaminess of custard and vanilla. And then you get the oak, which is like the actual sediment on top and the lovely pastry base. Yeah, you know, so layered. Have you have you tried it yet? for pizza? If you tried this? Oh, no. Yes. I noticed you having a Oh yeah, we said we 49:29 are Ryan. Kenny. Ryan. Yeah. And then we have both been drinking. 49:35 So 49:37 we see Oh, 49:40 sounds good. Cheers. Cheers. 49:44 Y'all for pizza? Yeah, somebody new pairing? Take them take them back to Scotland. I will. Yeah, I said I probably I need to visit our local patisserie. Oh, yeah, maybe they 49:56 call it them. But it is it's just like a bakery. And that's the beauty. 50:00 Henriette, because it's in a sweet spot between the mansion in the sea and has a perfect environment to give you this balance of fruit modern look, if you go up the hill of it to other sellers, you get a little more kind of delicate fruit but without the malt. And if you go down it gets a bit more oil and it loses fruit. So we have the perfect balance to 50:19 little higher up. Yeah, yeah, cool. But this, I like the hierarchy. Yeah, yeah. Power up. Yeah. 50:28 What about the next Ben? And while I do the same facility? Yeah, yeah. It's the same, same. 50:34 different, different a different expression. But the different expression here and Black Label for anybody. Yeah, I mean, anyone that's curious. We have curiosity is anyone that's curious about beat because this is the piece of all there it is. Yeah. And going back to the 1970s. This is the only way 50:57 this is the only space side to have peace and welcome back to the 97 51:01 And and off space site. So an RP 51:05 is there has to be there has to be a ton of people that love that the taste and the smell of Pete. And I don't know for me it's hard to kind of gravitate towards like a more fan of of the the other Ben versus the peated. But yeah, I think this is also could have been my upbringing. I don't know if it's our upbringing it could be, you know, our palates not adjusted to it, you know, because a bourbon Bourbons very sweet. We've had torn pieces. Yeah, maybe that what it is, but you know that we come from Bourbons. It's very sweet. Yeah. Well about the barbecues. 51:38 Smoking weed like a ha ha. Yeah. 51:43 He likes to smoke me. I got my green and I got do some brisket, some pulled pork and some ribs. Yeah, like that. It does. And you have any forest you have forest. Burnham forest. So salvus in the forest, your brother a few boys, guys. 52:01 Tiger scout Yeah, start playing baseball maybe it wasn't about it I never really never really made it ever have the pleasure of maybe you know as you age just wow I love having a little campfire Yeah, I had I had flint and steel at one point I think that was the coolest thing ever got out of Boy Scouts was actually having my lens steel. Oh yeah, yeah, being able to actually create a fire with that like just, you know, well have a sniff back there. It will take you back there. You're in that forest. You feel like with your fire steel. You've got some marshmallows being toasted. 52:35 Ah, you've got some sugar maple in there as well. sugar maple. 52:43 It's just so it's just so radically different than what we drink. You know? That's, that's, that's why it's so like, it's still 52:50 just as you haven't tried to, you know, 52:54 open your mind. I knew I was coming into the diversity of flavor we got here you little bin is 53:00 The gateways are gateways God gateways gods and this is like Big Bang 53:05 well big bands little bit higher and strength as well okay 6% alcohol non chill filtered and nice to decrease gotcha what uh what are they? Were they coming out of the barrel typically at you didn't already say that did you know I didn't know we know they go down 53:20 okay so over 10 years, we're probably going to go from the felling strength of around 63.5% you say 163.5 is what you go into the barrel so 63.5% 136 730 737 degrees proof and then it goes down to losers over 10 years but 5% alcohol so I'll go down to about 5859 Okay, basically, pen Twitter's in the warehouse, concert warehouse it ends up in size of the warehouse. Traditional dunnage or tall is there an idea in the scotch world of like single barrels 54:00 Because I guess Glendora can Ben Rick, we we do single bottles for for for customers for you know for retailers, you know some of the specialists. So to see the single cast Yeah. 54:14 So yeah, absolutely. And we've got we've got cast strength and expressions as well so yeah. All right around the corner. So but this is 4692 degrees proof 54:33 right? Oh yeah, this one reminds me of like my 54:38 smoke a turkey every year for Thanksgiving and has this like Cajun rub that I put on it's like a real spicy and smoky so like, kind of get kind of makes me regret reminds me of that. And this is Barban cast. Cast. No wonder 54:57 I feel like I'm 54:59 still suffering. 55:00 That's why you're loving it because it's still got the sweetness. Remember I said it was the Pete has wood rich so yours like smoking mood. Yep. And then got the Emperor front caviar. And then unlike the island malts, we are very fruit laden even in distillation so we get all that fruit in there as well as the smoke. So like smoking a fruit pizza, smoking a fruit pizza. I love it. Yep. Get it on the cam everything. Everything is under the fruit pizza around here. Yeah. Oh, and maybe some some bananas on the barbecue with some chocolate in them as well. Dark Chocolate Chocolate. Banana croquettes it since you've been to Kentucky I've not had the pleasure. Oh, wow. Change Your Life. But I'm gonna ask for about Banana. Banana, rolled in. Mayonnaise and then bake. It sounds so good. And you could crush that peanuts on it. It's magical. 55:57 Barbecue that and it's this is exactly 56:00 Glass right here, nailed it. You know, you just have to open your minds and Kentucky to the flavors that you can join your food. You know? So I guess another question that we get to kind of, you know, kind of related back to bourbon a little bit is with inside of bourbon, we have this idea of like, oh, like there's a huge shortage, like, all these higher age expressions are getting very hard to find. They're very, very expensive. And everybody rushes and jumps and like there's this huge influx of people that are really starting to buy. Now, do you see that still happening like in the scotch worlders that scotch has just been around for so long? It's had the luxury of time and stocks and that you're able to still put out 10 2030 year old expressions and they've been agent since 1400. Yeah, you know, may I ask, Is there any actually left in the battle and Kentucky after 10 1520 years? Yeah, not much after, I'd say. What was it I think, you know, we have we know some distilleries around they have they have some 15 57:00 20 year old releases, but you're looking at 70 to 95 bottles in the bank cash during a cash drink something like that. You know you, you talked to Chris Morris we've talked about before and birthday Bourbons and stuff like that with the heat cycled warehouses that there are times that even 12 years old that they haven't the casks. Yeah. So imagine Christus forgot to put the plug. 57:24 I would imagine with Virgin oak, there would just be wood, wood and more wood. And lots of food. Yeah, I would imagine for a very long Oh, yeah, definitely. I'm sure like, it takes a lot. You're like, all right, this is very tacky, or Yeah, like, bitter kind of finished to it. So there's like we're all just going for balance. I mean, the fact that single malt. Ben music is so fruit Laden. It means that with maturation over a long time, you're just getting the escaping that balance convert in the woods into a softer flavors and 58:00 Get a lot of reactions happening rather than just a distraction. So it's very, very complex. But in answered your question, yeah, we've got some older songs and we're very lucky at Ben react because started putting in 1972 again, and we've got starts going back to the end of the piece of models. So we've got 21 year old Tim porous Well, it's fully peated but tastes like caramelize Pier. It's incredible. And Honey, I need to enable untoasted ever had a pair caramelized? There you go get on it on Oh, yeah, it's amazing. You know, so really, yeah. peachy, but you know, so And yeah, so we have all this wonderful whiskey that for people to discover 58:48 in flavor, you know, people are just waking up tomorrow. Well, so I guess the I go ahead and I was gonna say and these so what like a typical barrel dumping these blends like how many barrels are 59:00 Yeah, typically bad. Yeah. And Ben Rhea typical batch would be around 50 to 60. Okay, it's pretty small. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean it's pretty small batch single malt 59:13 per bottling and obviously I want to keep it consistent as well each time so yeah, very cool. Well, yeah so we bought mostly bourbon bourbon for the the Curiosity is the 10 year old was the virginal the Sherry and the the bourbon. And we've got lots more expressions besides using wine cast, etc. Oh, yeah, I get to play. So you're getting like me, it's like a pessary you get so much different flavor going on. He's going into that cake shop. Is it like here we have like a like, 59:47 I don't know what this word comes. My accountability partners are like tasting panel tasting panel. That's what I'm looking for. To like. 59:54 You know, just make sure that everything you're blending is consistent with the brand 1:00:00 Rachel or is there? Or is there a team behind you as well? That's sort of like to be on the team. I do. I think I've passed. 1:00:07 I think I could do just for pizza. You know, I've got an assistant. This is just one, just one assistant. On flavor side. Here. There's like a likes like five or six, five or six. However, however, you know, the distillery team as well, everyone gets involved. Everyone gets involved. Gotcha. You know, the final product is and speaking the final product, let's talk about the last one we have on our right, which is the Glen dronicus. So talk about what this is. And really what this expression is, as well. Yeah, you said it so perfectly drawn. Know, 55 minutes later, I think I figured it out. 1:00:41 Well, that means valley of the brambles. You've heard the brambles, brambles, brambles, no blackberries, blackberries there. Oh, 1:00:49 it's beautiful. It's in Highlands. But isn't a valley in the highlands. And it's I was born very close to silly brought up there. It's the richest most abundant 1:01:00 landscape for agriculture. You'd love it. 1:01:03 It's great soil. Great, just best barley and Scotland near Glendora distillery and primarily we use Sherry cask that's what really sets us apart 1:01:18 we say 1:01:20 there you go 1:01:22 really going hard with the apples here lots yeah like applesauce or rather not baked because what oh no they're not baked not be 1:01:31 there you go oh wow well I get everyone's nose is different of course Oh, sorry 1:01:39 yeah I mean ourselves she said yes we've got saxophone shape skills which means that we have a robust kind of earthy character and on top of that we've got all these fruits which are picking up 1:01:52 but Bramble fruits is quite dominant I think a picots figs 1:01:57 Oh yeah, all that going on. Kind of 1:02:00 Soft fruits and the and the darker fruits come through. So, with gone donek we source Spanish oak, from from Spain from Galicia is filled with two types of sherry, primarily 1:02:17 Pedro Jimenez and all the Russell and Pedro Hammond. I think we buy the most pedra Hammond f casks in the industry because Pedro Hammond eth is known as the King of cherries. And it gives you a really anxious kind of sweetness, dates, raisins, dark chocolate, all that going on. And that really sweet and then the other also is dryer and nuts here. 1:02:41 So yeah, so we for the 12 year olds 1:02:45 have 12 year old petropolis 12 year old are also and we bring them together, and the combination is the perfect balance for Glen tonic. So a question about when you're using 1:03:00 You know, x px and alluro. So barrels and stuff like that, because you use them multiple times over. Is there like a, because you're going to only extract so much of that flavor, you're not going to get it every single time. So it's like, Is there like a chalk line? It's like you like 123? Like, like we've used this three times. Yeah. And so and so you know, like we need, we need one that's first new fill or a few new fills to add into this to kind of keep that sort of consistency to it. Yeah, absolutely. It's just 1:03:32 my path I've got archaeon flight path and working on because obviously as volume grows, and it will people love going john, we're just gorging casks for the 12 year old and they're all first fill. pajamas and all their also you did ask in this first fill, and we just scored those and then we'll maybe refill them with new make the new fill. And then I know that it's going to take longer for a second fall. So it might be 18 years. 1:04:00 are more or am I even have to rewrap it back into ourselves? If it's not? If it's not if it's not worked as well or it's not extracting enough, but Spanish is incredibly deep in color and talents. It's like Spanish podcast last a long time. So, typically in the industry going back to the 19th century, there would have been used to be four or five times, you know, and they would have still been strong when it leaked, etc. The solid the Gothic. Steve's a big casks. And, but we only use them 1:04:35 twice, really? And if I was to fill a third time, I would probably not gonna give me Yeah, I'm gonna be back after a few years. I mean, reracked I take it take the risk out of that cast and put it into First of all, gotcha. Okay. So, you know, it's like, if you've got kids, you know, if they're doing well at school, you leave them as that school and doing well and they're flourishing and they're, you know, becoming great individuals, if they're not doing so well, that 1:05:00 school you might take it out and put into for school. Rachel, you hit the park with this one. This one's awesome like that you like the Glen? Yes. I think I'm a Glen fan. I like I like the valleys in the highlands. Yeah, well the thing about Glen janyk is I'm a judge at spirits competitions. Okay. And for me the whole mark of fine whiskey full stop. But especially fine single finest single malt is that it must be complex balanced loads of character. And always deliver more on the taste than on the nose. Yeah. xid expectations every time. This is Yeah, this reminds me of like a apple cider with all the you know the get the cinnamon sticks and the morning spices all in there kind of just like a little bit prettier version of that. But 1:05:52 I see again, the spice from the all are also cast. So you could get gin, warm gingerbread bake in the oven center. 1:06:00 Thanks absolutely great for Christmas. For me, like no, I think all our Christmas in a glass you know? Or Yeah, definitely fall as well. So you get a nuttiness at the back of the palette from the other also. So when you taste it up or just have another sip, yeah, go for it. Yeah, I guess I another question about because I know that Glenn tronic has a really big kind of cult following sort of behind it to like it's it's one of the most popular brands that are out there. And I know I joined 1:06:28 it I know there was a head of in in a probably a year, maybe a year and a half ago there was released called like 1993. It was kind of talk about sort of that and sort of some of these, these sort of special releases that are coming out that a lot of these sort of a whiskey nerds and scotch nerds are really going for Yeah, I mean, the beauty of Glenn donek is that its traditional, and we haven't changed anything. So it's that's why I call it it's kind of old style. 1:06:56 And what that means is your recommend nature and obviously we 1:07:00 You have seasons. So for example, the spring and the spirit of steel and I get a little bit more kind of like vines and almost a grapey quality from all it's incredible. And then into June I'll get more kind of dark fruit and jamee into October and Autumn in the fall. You get more of this nutty tobacco leaf leather is incredible. So what does this mean? Well, obviously when I create 12 year olds, I'm using whiskey from all the seasons and I'm giving that perfect balance taste, getting all that complexity that you love with a single casks, individual cask bottlings. You know, it's giving the connoisseurs an opportunity to wow they're appreciating all these different complex flavors that are coming through and different cast at different times. They're getting that chance to really have a taste of complexity of Plantronics and different individual cast. So it might be a cast that's more robust and more full body Normally, you know all our offices 1:08:00 Maybe from from November. Or it might be one that's a bit more spicy from the winter. Or maybe one that's just before Jeremy from the summer. Like, you know, no, that's awesome. So yeah, so and they love and they love discussing it. They love it. They love it, but you know your stuff. 1:08:21 Listen, I read a few forums and I see what people are talking about what they're buying, and I just get curious and that's just one of the things that happened. That's not quite a following Glenn Dornoch has got quite a following and more and more gravitating and I think you know, with this quality I think people in Kentucky are gonna love it. Yeah, and this one actually, you know, it has a little bit of a darker and richer color than than the Ben but well the Ben and Ben Maria can go and donecker all natural color. And that means it's just from the from the cast naturally cast imparted color. 1:08:53 Other other malts might be have caramelize for example. 1:08:57 But you know, it's all natural for us. 1:09:00 So, the color that you see is coming from the Spanish shock and pedra menethil are on the roster, Cherie. So, yeah, you get a more intense, more intense color. Well, you know, that's, that's awesome. And thank you so much for the information. And, you know, also, thank you so much for flying all the way to Scotland to have this interview with this unbelievable. I mean, this was a pleasure for us. So I know, I know, it was definitely an honor for us to actually have you on here. Because there's, there's probably so many people in the scotch world that know who you are. And it was a pleasure for us to finally have this introduction from somebody like you to say, you know, lead us through a scotch tasting like this. So it was it was really an honor. That's absolutely my pleasure to be with you. I hope I've managed to convert at least one of you to add single malt Scotch to your repertoire. I think we might have like a Glen and Ben might be in the ticket here. Yeah. So I agree. Glen and have been glad in the back. Yeah, yeah. So you're going for 1:09:59 Yeah. 1:10:00 glendan have been Yeah, I agree. I mean this cleanse dronicus really good. And then the I'm still I'm still not on board with the Pete yet. Maybe it just it's like everything else it just makes you like your coffee. I don't drink coffee I don't drink 1:10:13 coffee. 1:10:16 I either like it like black nothing in it like, like Peru or Nicaraguan blends, like they're real kind of fruity like panicky kind of, or I like it as an almond milk latte where you go nutty that's why you like them but don't like milk coffee cuz kind of like brings it down. See you like both bands Don't you like smoking on to you were there in the forest. I was in the forest in the camp, you know? Turkey and mark you were? Yeah, you see it's interesting because interesting. Y

In this episode, Lisa interviews one of the athletes she and Neil coach through Running Hot who has just completed his first 100 milers but Vin is not just one of their athletes but the head of the technical department in the business. In this race debrief they go deep into the mindset of what it takes to overcome injuries (a broken back) and temporary setbacks to ultimately succeed. About Vin Framularo Vin Framularo is from Trumbull, CT, USA, and has been a member of the Running Hot Coaching family for over a year.  Vin is coached as an athlete through the Running Hot Coaching program, and also excitingly helps the Running Hot Coaching team lead digital marketing initiatives. He has been a competitive runner since high school and has been ultrarunning for over 2 years. Vin recently completed his first 100-mile race at the New Hampshire Hamsterwheel Ultra Race in November of 2019.  His journey as an ultra runner and overcoming a broken back was recently featured in UltraRunning Magazine online in November 2019. Vin is the CMO & Co-Founder of The Framularo Group.  He has been in the marketing and interactive media sector for over 15 years.  Vin is an entrepreneurship graduate of Babson College and has his MBA in Management and MS in Interactive Media from Quinnipiac University.   When not leading fun marketing initiatives or running, Vin is an avid skier, snowboarder, and coach at EPIC Interval Training in Connecticut.   In 2019 Vin raised $3,976 for Vermont Adaptive Ski & Sports to benefit adaptive athletes, as part of the Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Race and Team Run 2 Empower.   He is a member of his local trail running group the CT Trailmixers, a Freemason, a member of the Sons of the American Legion in his community, and a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon alumni board. Connect with Vin at: vin@framularo.com http://instagram.com/vinframularo https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-framularo-1690505/ https://www.facebook.com/vinframularo   We would like to thank our sponsors   Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7 day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.   All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more.   www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group   www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalised health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guess work. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyse body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our  Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness and potential at: https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com    Transcript of Interview   Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by Lisatamati.com.   Speaker 2   00:12 Hi everyone. This is Lisa Tamati here. I'm pushing the limits. Thank you very, very much for joining me once again on our podcast. We lo ve to have you join us. And today I have a special guest all the way from Connecticut and the USA and this is a guy who has been a part of our world now for about a year and a half I think. And is actually works with us at running hot and is our VP of everything I called them. Get involved with the head of the technical department if you like. And he's the one that makes everything run smoothly in the background because Neil and I definitely don't know what the hell we're doing. So welcome to the show Vin Framularo. Vin How you going?   Speaker 3   00:54 Oh, thanks Lisa. Great, good morning. Thanks for having me and always loved talking with you every week and yeah, it's, wow. It's, you're right. Almost a little more than a year. I've been part of the running hot family and pretty excited and have been following you for a little time before that. And I'm sure we can get into that a little bit. So I'm excited to be on. I love your podcast and you know me, I'm huge on the personal development and stuff. So excited for your answer.   Speaker 2   01:23 One of the reasons I wanted to bring Vin on the show, we had a, one of our other athletes and we're going to do a few athletes over the next few months. One of our other athletes met, scrapped and from New Zealand who just did his first 100 K we, we might've been a case study out of ed of him and we did a bit of a coaching session. So we're going to do something similar today. We're going to, she it VIN story and his background and how he's just got to complete some very, very big races. So Ben came to us, well he found us on the needs as you're doing joined us, joined up, and then we actually connected over all the technical staff and we ended up getting him on board with our company. But then his has got an incredible mindset and this is what I really want to delve into today because he has, he has a relentlessly positive editor that I just cannot lay sometimes. And his mindset really, really shines through. So I want to dig in today a little bit into Vin's history and his running successes that he's head, but also how he's got the, because he's had a couple of massive obstacles to overcome on the way. So then I want you to start by telling us a little bit about you, your family, where you're from and how you got into running and what you've been doing.   Speaker 3   02:44 Sure. Thanks Lisa. Yeah, so I'm from Trumbull, Connecticut, born and raised and I've lived a lot of different places, but that's always been home base. And right now I'm talking to you in my house, which is about a mile away from my parents and where I grew up. So we have our entire family in our neck of the woods here. And I have, I'm one of five siblings, so I have an older sister and older brother and two younger twin sisters. And I think you know, I, I'm the only runner in the family and I always tease people about that cause every family needs one of us crazy endurance athletes or renters. And kind of interestingly, I got into running when I was about nine or 10 years old because basketball was my first love and big sport at the time. And I remember telling my dad, we used to go vacation up in the purchasers and I really want to improve my speed and my vertical jump for basketball.   Speaker 3   03:47 Now I'm not the tallest person, but man, I could jump jump like a kangaroo. And when I was like a young kid, I was like, okay, I want to be even better. So I, I forget how I came up with the idea. I think I saw it in a movie and I was like, dad, I need to get ankle weights and strap them to my, my feet and then I can run up and down the mountain when we go on vacation. And most parents would tell you you're crazy, you know, and especially to a nine or 10 year old, I wanted to do this and my dad was like, sure, no problem and I'll follow you in the car. So I would do this two two mile loop around the mountain with ankle Wade strapped my feet and my dad would follow me in the car and took his day.   Speaker 3   04:29 He still takes credit of not just the genetics as an athlete, but that he's strapped ankle weights on my feet and I'll tell you, that worked excellent. I got good at basketball. It helped my overall fitness and just as a young kid to take that initiative, now that I think about it, I'm like, wow, what kind of nine year old wants to be like, yeah, I want to go run two miles up the mountain with ankle weights on my feet. Especially nowadays, it's like, no, I'll probably just play video games or hang out with my friends. Right. But yeah, so that really led into, I really started to get serious about running in my high school career. I was still playing basketball and then I needed a sport to do in the fall. So I first played soccer and then spring ran track and the track coach was like, Hey, congratulations, you're going to run year round.   Speaker 3   05:25 And I'm sure a lot of runners have probably been through that and they were a Multisport athlete and I was like, wait, you mean like run for fun? Like distance and what the hell? And you know, just like most runners, I fell in love with it. And it was really at that time I learned, unlike most sports where it's like you fight for playing time or you fight for to be on a team. This was the first sport I was part of. Not only if you weren't as good, you got more playing time. So to say that it really had a direct correlation to the hard work that you put in, you get out. And I was always a really hard worker and I was, you know, went on to captain, all of my teams in high school as well as ran in college and grad school. So that was really the base of running. And then fast forward, you know, till about a year and a half ago when I found running high, I started getting into ultra running, which is ironic because I remember in college reading runner's world and having your senior buddy Dean carne ASAs on the cover of a magazine. And I'm like, man, this guy's nuts. Why would anybody want to do that?   Speaker 3   06:44 And I think at the time I had just run my first marathon and I was probably 18 years old and ran the, ran the Boston marathon just for fun and for training. And I was like, gosh, sounds terrible. Why would I be? And at the time I was so, so it's funny how life, you know, he kind of point you in certain directions and I'm very grateful. I found you guys and ultra running for a lot of reasons, but that's kind of a brief background to my story there.   Speaker 2   07:15 Yeah, right. That, that, that sort of, I can't believe you did a marathon at 18 years old. Okay. You have definitely got a nutty gene and yet that's definitely come out of late. So, and then last couple of years, so I think it was like two and a half years ago. Then you had a really bad accident that you were currently in training. Can you check, go into a, into the story a little bit?   Speaker 3   07:41 Yeah. So I've told myself after college, but after college I'm like, gosh, I'm never going to run a marathon ever again. I'll just be a weekend warrior and have fun doing some five K's and half marathons and stuff. And then it all kind of ebbs and flows. So I eventually recapped marathon and thought it'd be a great idea to sign up again for a marathon. So I signed up for the bend, Oregon marathon, and that was right around my birthday, which was in April. So I was pretty excited and I was like, I'm getting started training for it and started really get back into running shape because I went for about a year or two where, you know, my career took precedence over. I was still running but not, you know, training as much as I should be. And you know, those rest days would turn into week long rest days and stuff instead of hitting the gym when he should be.   Speaker 3   08:35 So I was snowboarding in February and I went off a mogul and landed really hard. It was super ICL. I'll never forget it was presence day weekend. It was a Monday, which was our holiday and I didn't realize at the time, but when I fell back on my back, I'm a mogul. I could barely get up and couldn't move my right leg at all. So I got, went to the mountain doctor in ER, and then when I got home, went to the ER and it turns out I broke my back. And of course, like a typical runner, I don't know. I said, you know, I just want to know, well doc, how, how long is my recovery time? Cause I have a race in nine weeks. So if my marathon was nine weeks away and he looked at me like, you don't understand, you probably won't be walking right through about a year or two and you'll, you might not ever run again.   Speaker 3   09:27 Wow. And my response to the list, I remember kind of just looking at them and go, well what if I dropped to the half marathon marathon? And the doctor just looked at me like I had two heads and says, that's not going to happen. And so I left the doctor that day and I was like, no, that's going to happen. I'm, I'm going to that race compromise. I'll do a half, but I'll be there. So I went and got a second opinion. Of course that doctor kind of said something similar and that I decided to take it into my own hands and say, no, I can heal myself. I'll do lots of stretching, lots of rehab for my back. Lots of exercises and a lot of mindsets. So I started to look into alternative therapies and it's kind of like if you want different results, you have to do something extra ordinary.   Speaker 3   10:23 I heard about this book called self-mastery through conscious autosuggestion by you know, it's from the 1920s lease and it was this author, a meal, a meal QA, and basically it's just all the power of your mind and the power of belief and saying every day in every way I'm getting better and better. And I listened to that book. I got the audio version at the time religiously for like two hours at night when I went to bed and two hours in the morning. And I did that for weeks between the rehab that I was doing, just stretching, strength training and as well as constantly feeding that belief system and my mind through that book, I was able to not just be walking back to normal, but the pain was totally gone and I was, we're not to run that half-marathon nine weeks after hurting my back.   Speaker 3   11:18 Granted it was the slowest half marathon I had ever run in my life. But it was also the most fun cause I was just so grateful to be running. And and there was also a lot of fun for me cause it was made me be really grateful for the running and my body that I always kind of took for granted. And my running career up to that point was always just about trying to hit PRS, you know? So this was really eyeopening just to be grateful to my slow time. Yeah. Was a PR for someone else and just to be able to be out there and to have something. I love that. I've been doing my pretty much my whole life be kind of almost ripped away.   Speaker 2   12:01 You Beck was damaged or wasn't so your spinal cord was obviously intact or like your, your right knee looking properly.   Speaker 3   12:08 I broke my sacrum and my L L four and L five and so those just leading all the way, it felt like all the way from my buttocks up through my, my lower back. So that was   Speaker 2   12:24 A lot of rehab as well as the mindset stuff. So you are really focused on both of those aspects for that nine weeks to get back to that.   Speaker 3   12:34 Sure, yeah. Yeah. And and now, you know, I still take that as a priority. I'd never go to my chiropractor regular really to keep taking care of that back and I'm fully heal now and you know, thankfully. But really that also taught me that,   Speaker 2   12:51 Yeah, you, you really believe that. I mean, and I, and I certainly believe this too. And that's funny that that book that you mentioned, self mastering, what does it, self-mastery,   Speaker 3   13:00 Yeah. Conscious auto suggestion or auto suggestion through self-mastery, through conscious autosuggestion science, say that self-mastery through conscious auto suggestion.   Speaker 2   13:17 Now this is really important because this was written in the 1920s, and like the science is now catching up to what was then probably very woo and not, not validated, but it was obviously a great book already. And now science is really validating. Like wait was Dr. Joe Spencer and Bruce Lipton, who I talk about constantly on the show, talking about the power of what you believe and what you put in your head. It's not just you know, you, you, when you are, you're willing something to happen and you actually influence yourselves and your, your body to heal itself. And I do think that this is a very, and this is not an easy thing to do, it's not like, well, I've just decided today to believe in this. It's going to have to really reprogram that subconscious mind, don't you? And this has helped you like moving forward from this where you like, you're really interpersonal development. It's like you're always reading everything.   Speaker 3   14:19 Yeah. I'm even rereading your book right now. Yeah. We're running hot, which is a great one. I would recommend that to anyone listening. So,   Speaker 2   14:28 And we're re-publishing that guys soon. So running hot does Stacey you know, I are editing a whole lot through that book and re re what do you call it? You're republishing it. Putting out a second edition, hopefully in time for the release of my other book, relate those which comes out in March as well. So bit of a plug there for myself. So what chapter? That one, but next to the personal development. It's really, really so important that you do the work before you need it. You actually, you've got the tools when you, when you hit a crisis side.   Speaker 3   15:03 Yeah. And you know, great example that we still, I was thinking of it recently and I just encountered right before we got on the call, I was talking about this woman I met at my, I just finished my first a hundred miler as you know, and thanks to your Neil's awesome coaching through running hot and you know, I could talk for hours about that. And yeah. And cause woman that was at my race, she was pacing a friend of mine who was an adaptive athlete visually impaired. And it was my first encounter with her and I got to see her again this weekend and she was like, man, you're so positive. And the whole time. I remember at one point you were, we're sitting around the campfire, I wasn't sitting by, just came in quick, said hi and then went back out cause it was a loop course and she goes, man, you look like you were, you could be asleep walking up, but you're still smiling and you are still, Nope, I gotta just keep moving forward and that, you know, and I, she asked me if I'm always like that and I'm like, yeah, generally I am, but you know, I take a lot of deliberate practice to work on my mindset.   Speaker 3   16:13 I'm constantly reading books. I'm constantly listening to podcasts such as yours. I remember the start of that race, someone was complaining about the weather, you know, it was 30 degrees Fahrenheit and then it got down to like 26 degrees   Speaker 2   16:28 Fahrenheit zero here. Yup.   Speaker 3   16:29 Yeah. At all. I just remember thinking, well I got to get, get away from this guy because they're not going to last. You can't go into a race like that with that kind of mindset. And sure enough, that person only lasted for about five hours in a 30 hour race because you can't look at it.   Speaker 2   16:49 You got to surround yourself with people who are positive and who believe that you can get there and, and, and avoid like the plague. Like anybody who's going to tell you you can't do something or it's all complain about everything, every five minutes because that is going to set all of your energy. So you had the, the, the way it was all at that race to go, I'm going to remove myself from here to keep myself. And it's protecting yourself, you know, that's protecting your mindset. And we need to all do this. And our daily lives protect their mindset from people who will run us through a nice size, who are negative, who tell us we can't do things like the doctor who said that you won't, you know, you know, you'd probably run it run again and you certainly won't. You're running a marathon, you know, a half marathon and I'm weak.   Speaker 2   17:38 So, so this, and this is what I've noticed with you is you have, I mean, you and I both do a hell of a lot of personal development stuff. We find a bitter out stuff. In fact, I think I'm a development junkie. But I, I still have a ways to go I think in comparison to you as far as the positivity that you bring on an absolute daily basis. Yeah. A couple of months ago, VIN was doing I think 400 monitor at the malt 100 mile race over the now I want, because this is a rice that didn't go according to plan and you'd spend a freaking long time gone hard out training, sacrificing a hell of a lot to be at this race. Can you walk us through that, that race in what happened?   Speaker 3   18:28 Sure. How you approach that. Yeah, that was exciting and I was, I was super pumped for that race. That was my first a hundred mile attempt. And going into that, you know, I'd run a handful of 50 milers and 50 Ks and I'm still a very much newbie ultra runner. But thanks to you and, and Neil, I got on that starting line. My fitness was on pointed, my mindset was on point, but it was a lease as you know, it was one of the hottest days of the year and about a decade here, back home. So in Vermont, the average temperature including in the morning and at night was about 98 degrees Fahrenheit, which I don't know the conversion of Celsius on your end, but then it got up to 115 degrees during the day. And again, and you know, and I was like, I trained for that. I, you know, based on your recommendations and made sure I trained in the sun and the heat and my family was there, so I was really excited and I was fundraising for Vermont adaptive.   Speaker 3   19:36 So I was pumped. I got bib number seven through fundraising, which is my lucky number. So I was like, approach that starting line. And I, I always make a joke, I'm like, the hardest part of a race is over once you show up for the starting line. Right. And on the hardware people. Some people look at me like I'm crazy and some people laugh, but the race is supposed to be fun for me. As long as you're like, you put in all the hard work and if you can wake up and not hit that snooze button and you know, some of these ultras start at like weird hours and once you get rid of all that pre-race anxiety, it's like boom, okay, let's go. And it was so hot that day. I experienced something I would never even expect to be a race, obstacle size, starting at really bad trench foot just from sweating into my shoes so much.   Speaker 3   20:28 And I changed my socks multiple times. I changed my shoes. You know, I put all the stuff that you're supposed to put on your feet, but it was just so hot. And I remember I got to mile 50 which was the first point I saw my family and my mom's a nurse and going into the race, I told them, Hey guys, make sure, just no matter what, tell me to keep going and you're doing great. So no negativity and my family's not negative, so I didn't have to tell them, but they're also the type. If I was like, Oh, I'm a little tired, they'd be like, Oh, we're proud. Yeah, you can sit down. Like, so I, I got to mile 50, and at that point that had been the furthest I'd ever run. And I felt great and I was holding back a lot cause it was really hot.   Speaker 3   21:15 But I knew my, my foot was getting aggravated. So I took my shoe off and I knew I needed to bandage up my foot and my mom's face just went white. She just looks, cause my foot looks so bad from the trench foot. And she was such a good sport. She didn't say anything and she was like, sweetie, I'm so proud of you and what do you want to eat? And she just, but I could tell by the look on her face as a mom and a nurse, she was like, Oh gosh. So my family bandaged me up. I had a little snack and I kept going. And you know, I felt great. The fitness was still there and everyone was like, Hey, it's your first hundred milers, especially on this course. If you could still run at mile 70 you're in good shape.   Speaker 3   22:01 Very good shape. So I got to mile 70 and I still had plenty of time for cutoffs and I was like, yeah, okay, let's see if I could still run comfortably and I could. But then the next two miles it went downhill at parts where it should have been runnable at least that was basically the mile. Before that I was like, okay, I can still run like a nine 30 mile. Which honestly I wasn't doing the whole race but I can still comfortably run that pace. Then my gate got so messed up from the trench foot and my shin got so swollen like a golf ball that I then limped a mile that should've been runnable in about 25 minutes and then the next mile took me about 34 minutes. This last one can grow, which, which is so frustrating cause all I could think was like, wow, you spent all this time and I, you know, I spent all year training and just visualizing the finish line of that race. And I started to do the math in my head. I go, okay, worst case scenario, if I just lived for the rest of the race in 25 minutes per mile or 30 minutes per mile. And that put me farther than the cutoff, which was like, you know, I did the runner math in my head, which normally I can't do math. But then it became all of a sudden you're like a math genius and you're like, that puts me out like 35 hours in 12 seconds, you know?   Speaker 3   23:24 And I remember dropping out and I told one of the volunteers and he said, man, but you still got, you've got plenty of time for the cutoffs. And I go, well that last two miles basically took me an hour. And he was like, Oh yeah. And I knew at that point it just, and if there wasn't a time cut off me, I probably would've kept calling. But I just knew I had eventually would miss some of those cutoffs. So that was hard. But I was still very proud of myself cause that was the further side ever go and run.   Speaker 2   23:55 And this is the, the the thing that got me about that story cause I mean any, you know, things can go wrong in, in a race and yes you could have carried on and just got to the the time limit and then, and then being shut down by the rice people organizers and there was a hell of a fallout on that race. So many, many people didn't finish that race would normally fell. And there's always reasons and there's always things that can happen and we can't, we cannot control all the variables. What we can control is the preparation we do, which you had done, you're done the work, done the mindset sit stuff you've done, the visualization and the it should happen. Basically you got through, what was it, 88 mile 81 or something. And then you hit, you had to pull it out of the rice.   Speaker 2   24:42 Yeah. So most people that I've worked with that would have just st them into the doldrums, like they would have been hitting the net carb once they actually got over the pain and the physical thing then comes in the a I find out I didn't make it. I sit this huge goal and the disappointment is huge cause you, you've given your heart and soul and all the time that you could have been spending with your friends and your family and or has gone to nothing apparently nothing. But you and I know that they, it's not the case with you. And I was expecting like we've got a couple of days later we go to on the, on the phone or on the, on the call and I was expecting to have to give you a really good pit talk. Call me pulling you out of the doldrums.   Speaker 3   25:27 A nice coach. Yeah.   Speaker 2   25:30 But how I did it late too, I was like, you got on the plane. Yeah, this happened. That happened. But I was still great and it was all SEM and I, and I was just like, Holy hell   Speaker 3   25:42 Yeah. You know, and I think I described it when people are like, then how's the race? And I made it to mile 72 that day and I go, Oh my gosh, it was such an Epic day. And even though I didn't hit my goal, I knew like I know going in that race for next year, like my fitness was there and I felt awesome and you know, base thanks to our training program and just mindset was there. And then I understood it and I kind of laughed a little cause I'm like, Oh, this is why all these ultra runners describe the races and like, Oh, I've had this many starts and this many finishes. And I was just laughing about just, you meet all these interesting people during the day that you're just cheering on and supporting and you might run with some people for half a mile or you might just pass them at an aid station or, you know, I shared with some, even some folks like 10 or 15 miles or even more throughout the course of the day.   Speaker 3   26:38 And it was just so emotional, like taking your whole lifetime of emotions and compressing those into one day, like all the ups and downs in the laughs and you know, and the friendships in the family. And so I think that's why I came out of it really positively. Cause I even though didn't hit my mileage goal to the finish, I still had all these awesome experiences and and a lot of us failed and we failed hard, you know, and it's like I left it all out there and really happy. It's not like I was, I finished, but like half, you know, you hadn't given it a go. They didn't give him my all. I'd definitely give them my all. And I definitely was you know, out there when I, I remember coming to the decision to stop. And I, at first I was like, Aw man, I is, cause I'm not like that.   Speaker 3   27:35 I'm not a quitter at all. But I was like, Nope, I'm good with this. I made it this and, and, and that's hard to do. You know, he's, and I was huge and the next day I took it as a sign, as the proper decision cause we were in line for lunch and I met this nice woman who had had trench foot and like kept pushing through it. And to this day she says she still has like nerve damage from it. And I just took that as a sign from like a higher being, you know? Yeah. Ava and you made the right decision so you can still come back stronger.   Speaker 2   28:08 You know, though, we gotta think about this like we're not, we're not in a war and we don't need to do permanent damage to ourselves. If we, if you were a soldier and you got three to four, you had to carry on in any option, you'll never die. We have the luxury of not being in a silly situation like that. And it's your question like Dave. And so there is no point in an ultra marathon in my opinion now as a mature person to depend on a damage and I've done permanent damage to my body. It's like paying the price or not pulling out when it should have pulled out of races and so are really convenient with like, you know, it's not about being lazy, it's not about giving yourself excuses to pull out. It's about really when it's time to pull out.   Speaker 2   28:52 And I'll tell the story from a friend of mine, Mecca who he and I were in the New Zealand thing together and we're doing 24 hour ricing and we were over in England and we worked so hard, both of us for eight years to qualify as being the national team to go with me for our champs and stuff and the Commonwealth games. And we were over in England and we were racing in two hours into the run. His leg broke like wrist fracture and a broke and he was trying to run with a broken leg, you know, because this is how strong you Monte can get to a point where you can nearly like and he actually had to be dragged off like kicking and screaming. He was not taking off and we had to really calm him down and he was so badly disappointed and he, we'd make the next five years in, in knocked it out of the ballpark and at the age of 50 was 55 when he did his best time ever of 217 Kaizen in 24 hours.   Speaker 2   29:47 Wow. He came back, you know what I mean? But the thing is he was, he was going to be running in doing real massive damage. You know, you shouldn't [inaudible]. And so the moral of the story is yet, remember this is a sport and that we don't have to do, this is not a life on the line and we shouldn't be pushing fit degree. Now when you did do this and you worked through this in your mind and you keep yourself positive, so a lot of people lose their confidence and then they're down on themselves and then everything starts to spiral downwards. And of course you've, you've absolutely naked your body. Like you've used a hole or reserves cause you've just run 72 miles. We're emotionally in a, in a, in a whirlwind anyway cause your body's naked and with you, I just didn't see any of that. I've never not seen that. I've usually seen people go down and really depressed and then it might take two weeks or it might take a year for people to sort of come back out of it. And you like, right. I remember saying to you it was the next week or something that you were like, right, we'll find another race.   Speaker 2   30:54 What's up? And I'm going, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Just let you better come up close and, and, and, and so on. You're like, I haven't done with thing. I want. Oh, another one. Yeah. You did some other rices. The theme just was last weekend. It was the weekend before.   Speaker 3   31:10 Yeah, two, two weeks ago, it seems like months ago.   Speaker 2   31:16 Did you go to us and say, right, I'm gonna do 30 hour rice and I want to hit a hundred mama. Yeah. She wanted that a hundred Mahler. And this is, so this was a course that went around around, so you pick up the story of the event.   Speaker 3   31:30 Yeah. So this was exciting. So I was excited for this one. It was again, local, this was in New Hampshire and they call it the hamster wheel race, but race directors were awesome and I was looking at different ones to pick out and I, you know, to your point, importantly, I did take my much needed rest days. I took almost like that month off and I think I have the mindset after the Vermont, I made sure I signed up for another race, but I made sure I took those rest days and caught up with friends and family and enjoyed social time and just enjoyed, you know, going to the movies. And I think that really helps you rebound too from what I went through in Vermont, at least from me because it gives you something else to look forward to. And then I also knew, I was like, okay, I don't need to go out and crush it this week cause I, I know I'm resting cause I had this other big challenge coming up. But I was excited about New Hampshire cause it was a much more runnable course and remodel, you know, obviously a lot of pills and I, I do not like power hiking. These, I am like the worst power Hager, which I've been trying to work on as an [inaudible].   Speaker 3   32:38 So I was like, yes, I'm going to go. And the weather temperature was totally the opposite of Vermont. So that was exciting. I went out this race fell feeling really good all day. I was probably like leading the race up until about mile 70 and thanks to your great advice coach you said, you know, careful the cold weather can just suck the life out of you. Man. Did it ever, especially the New Hampshire called and, but again, going back to my mindset, people are like, Oh my gosh, it's so cold. And this one had a very high dropout rate because of the cold. But instead of focusing on how cold it was, I was just running and I had just got like a, a new cheap jacket and some new gear from Amazon essentials and instead of focusing on how cold it was, I was just like, Oh man, this gear's great. I'm so glad. You know,   Speaker 2   33:30 It's hard to get a ton of gear and have everything I own.   Speaker 3   33:33 Yeah. I was like, I gotta send that Jeff Bizo as a thank you now cause this stuff is keeping me warm, you know, so, so it was really picking out those things. And you know, I went through the first 50 miles way too quick. I think I went through and about, but I felt good. I went through about eight 40 paces and I had some friends yelling at me like slow down, slow down. And I was teasing them. I go, you're not the boss of me. Like let me run my race. And sure enough, my second half of the race was much slower, but I just told myself, Nope, just keep going. It doesn't matter how fast you go. And I remember when it got made in my body tightened up really bad and really started to slow down and I always say like I, I have a quote from, it's from you, from one of your podcasts. And I, I remember telling myself, Hey, it's okay to be the tractor and not the Ferrari as, as long as I'm just moving forward one step at a time. And that, that definitely got me through with my time at that race. And then once the sun came back out, it was almost like gives you a second life and you have a little breakfast snack or something pushing through that night.   Speaker 2   34:49 There's a couple of points I wanted to bring out the so you pet your, you're still new to the, out to running game on us. So pacing is is still something that you are learning and it's, it's really hard to know like when you're feeling really great and you've done 50 miles and you're still feeling great but your pace is actually, you know, is too high, then you are going to pay the price and you can't imagine it and feel it until you've done maybe half a dozen races. And the me guy, I know, I know what's coming at more lady, so I'm gonna really take it, consumed it. And of course your tendency at the beginning, and I still did this, I just told a is to want to, I'll just get as much behind me as I possibly can and then if the wheels fall off, you know, but you actually causing the wheels to fall off, you know, but it's a, it's a really fine balancing it because even just naturally over the day you start to lose energy like we all do just in daily life. So your, your thoughts are get the most done as fast as possible in the first six hours. When it's more about the consistency and the planning of the, of the speed that you're going in. And then when it comes to cold, absolutely called I written told is way harder than heat to deal with for me personally, at least   Speaker 3   36:04 I think it is for me too. Yeah.   Speaker 2   36:06 Yeah. Cole just takes you will to live because   Speaker 3   36:09 I'll take the suntan.   Speaker 2   36:11 Yeah, it's the suction dry and makes you want to stop just moving and you just want to go to sleep. And that's, that's something that's really, really hard. So we had another couple of athletes doing a 24 hour rides here around one of the lakes here and it was freezing cold, not quite as cold as you, but was cold. And when you've been running all day, you have no glycogen left in your body and basically you're living on fat fuel and protein. Hopefully not breaking down too much muscle of your own muscle, but usually you are. So you've got no glycogens. They actually heat the body. All your reserves are gone. So even when it's hot, you can be freezing and shaking. So when it's really cold, you can be very Simic very, very quickly in a net sets. And we'll do that. So what happened then? You got through the night and then the does some, when the sunrise comes up, isn't it like a new Brie reborn?   Speaker 3   37:05 Oh yeah. And I kept telling myself to the food 0.2 weeks like what you and Neil have taught me. I just made sure I knew because it was cold or my body was burning more calories and I could tell I was much hungrier than, you know, you would be in the heat. And I just kept being like, it's okay, just keep snacking, keep snacking, keep eating, you know, follow my nutrition plan. And I had my nutrition plan laid out, but I was also supplementing that with a lot of aid station food and like real food and soups and stuff. And then I remember the last loop before the sun came up and I was almost falling asleep, like, like running, falling over. And, and I just remember going, Nope, just keep going. And my family had gone home and gone to the the hotel and I, I remember just saw myself, no, you're here to do work, just keep going. And once the daylight comes and we'll be back in the afternoon and you get to see them. So it's like I just told myself, keep going. It doesn't matter how fast keep eating and one foot in front of the other. And that really got me through and then I just kept being like thankful for packing the proper gear in the cold because I was like, Oh man, this is as people. Some people were running by me and, and like singlets and I'm like, how do you aren't a single it right.   Speaker 3   38:29 But yeah, it was,   Speaker 2   38:31 Yeah, you got to the a hundred mile.   Speaker 3   38:34 Yeah, I was pace most of the day for like, you know, at least 120 miles and I made it to the a hundred mile Mark and I still have time left in the race director said, Hey Ben, you got to keep growing. And I felt good up until I got kind of like a second wind at mile 88 and was running strong again. And but then around mile mighty six was a struggle. I think just mentally I knew I was hitting my hundred mile goal goal cause I had one minute to go and I knew it was going to happen and even if I crawled for the next four miles. So once I got to that hundred mile Mark I was like, no, I'm, I'm happy with that. Cause that was   Speaker 2   39:17 What was the goal that was, and this is an interesting point, what do you mean you put in your head is your goal. You will stop it there. So even if you like you could have carried on because you had time to carry on and go over. But in your mind you would actually sit a sit lemon of a hundred and even though, like you'd said, talked about possibly going on and doing maybe 110 or something like that, when you have that backup, go back to come to Priceline. So you have to be really, really careful about what you do as your, as your affects goal because that will be where you get to and not appealing more sort of like,   Speaker 3   39:55 And you're rightly say it absolutely was. My baseline goal was that a hundred mile and my big, I always try and set a big scary goal too. So my big scary goal was like, you know, 120 miles. But then I, my baseline was a hundred miles. But if I, if I had a baseline of a hundred K I would've stopped at a hundred K absolutely. Cause it was so cold and you're just like, but I told myself, Nope, I would, I'm here to do this and just keep it going. And I'm, I'm getting that a hundred miles ago and obviously I didn't have any serious health things like in Vermont. So I was able to continue and I felt good and honestly at points you feel you got to expect, you're going to feel like crap at multiple points in the race and not like a serious injury like your friend that broke his leg.   Speaker 3   40:43 But just knowing that you're like, Oh wow, I'm out of energy. I feel like crap. And once you're, I kind of expect it. I can recognize it, internalize it and then realize that it's going to get better. And that's really important for me because then when it does happen, I tell myself like for mile 70 to like 88 was when I say a struggle bus, Lisa, it was like a complete, but I told myself, I was like, yeah, I came to run this race until the wheels fell off and I was there to, you know, I had been training all year as you know, and I was like, yep, I expected the wheels to fall off so I expected this. So just keep going.   Speaker 2   41:27 You had prepared yourself so well and you'd sit, this next goal was a hundred mile. You wanted to join the a hundred miler club and I have to congratulate you because you know after, after that that problem that the mold that you experienced, it would be very easy to go, well, I'm not going to do anything for an exciting months. Yeah, maybe never come back again because I failed. And I know one of these sort of things that go through his mind and they're all legitimate. But the thing is, you had the resilience to get back up and just, just, what was it? I don't know, eight weeks later I would do another one was probably a little bit short for my liking or, you know, as a turn around time and I would, you know, you were ready for it. And, and I think you, you illustrate so many points that are so important then that's resilience.   Speaker 2   42:17 That's what have you set your goal out to be. That's what it becomes. You just, you learn a lot about pacing. You learn in the first race in Vermont, you learned a lot about, you know, the shit can happen regarding, you know, and you've gotta think like people, even like people are like thinking S's have races where they fail it and don't make it. You know, every ultra marathon runner has times when things go pier shade. I mean I've definitely hit enough of those. And then never, not cause you're heartbroken because you've just speak, you know, I was doing a rice in the, it wasn't even a rice, it was expedition. I know Himalayan is trying to do the world's highest marathon ever recorded a world record. And I'd spent a year and a half in preparing and I'm not good at our student. I'm not good in the cold.   Speaker 2   43:05 It's not my forte. I'm bitter and desserts. But I was with a guy who was a Mountaineer and done neighbor us and stuff and we were on entree and I get up there and after a year and a half or preparation, you know, over $50,000 of money raised from crows, the prime minister on African documentary, you know, like every, it was really big deal. And I get altitude sickness and I couldn't even start like the heartbreak and the disappointment. And this was getting towards the end of my career anyway. And it was just like freaking out, you know? And it ran off the crap out of me. But I had a couple of really good friends and my husband Haisley who just with a to pick up the pieces and it's really important that you have those people that they can channel. Come on, you've got this, we've got you. And we've got yet to blow you to pieces. When you sit big here he goes and then you fail at them. What I want you to understand is hurts, but you are someone who's pushing the limits. You're an ambitious person that's reaching for the stars and you cannot control all the variables.   Speaker 2   44:14 So if I don't think any, I just want you to wrap up. We've got to wrap up now. We've got a meeting coming up. We're going to get to our technical stuff. So we've been to get onto there, but then I just want to leave the last week to you. Tell us what you want to get across to people listening to this who are doing the first five K two who are just starting out on running. Who or who had aiming for an ultra marathon. Tell us what you want to get across.   Speaker 3   44:39 Yeah, I want to add it. This leads right to your point that you just brought up, Lisa too, that these things happen and everything happens for a reason and you're much more capable than you think you are. So you might be thinking right now it's all of those failures and those successes I think all provide a great frame of reference. So someone right now might be training for their first five K and say, Oh man, I'm struggling to break 32 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever their time goal might be. But then they might look back a year from now and be like, wow, now I'm running 25 minutes with ease. And remember when, you know, I was really struggling. So it's off frame of reference. So even those, those struggles that you go through and they really help you become a better person to kind of get the job done that you need to be, to be able to, you know, not just run these races and push the limits, but it's really a metaphor for life.   Speaker 3   45:37 Right. And I think I've learned so much from that. And at the time it might seem disappointing or it might seem difficult, but then when you look back and you're like, wow, look at the person I've become now because I've challenged myself and I've gone through those successes and pushed my limits to hit those goals and I might've hit a lot of them and I might've failed at some of them. But when you look back a year from now or even longer, it becomes like, wow, those help make me the person that I am today. And I can certainly say that for myself from my running career, you know, my business career going through like my broken back, I'd probably never would've found ultra running. I wouldn't have been introduced to you. You know? So everything really happens for a reason, to the development of who you are as a person. And if you look at it that way, I think you can be totally unstoppable with whatever you say your minds who, right?   Speaker 2   46:35 Definitely unstoppable than formulary. Yeah.   Speaker 3   46:38 Oh thanks Karen.   Speaker 2   46:41 Absolutely. Relentlessly positive. You're a real poster boy for the personal development side of things. And then if you work really hard on your mindset, you can change your own personality and you can become a stronger, better, more positive, happy person. You've certainly shown me a thing or two over the last year because, you know, like with our business side of things you know, ven really has changed their whole dynamic and the, our company because he brings a, a super amount of technical knowledge to the whole, to the whole business which we desperately needed. But he also brings when things don't go wrong, because by the same token as things go wrong and ultra marathon running, things go wrong in business. And when we, you know, we've been, you know, months preparing for a launch or months doing all of this sort of, you know, technical staff and then crickets, nobody got.   Speaker 2   47:33 And we're like, and we want to give up. And then it's like, well, no, we'll just try this other thing and we'll go down this track and we will learn, you know, he's relentlessly positive in every aspect of his life and that has been so valuable to us in our company. And is an escalate. It just really shows what you can achieve when you have this incredible mindset. So Venice, awesome. Having on the team. Thank you for sharing your, your story today with everyone from running hot. Any last things, any last words, Mike, before we get onto the actual words tonight? No, I think, you know, just what we said and I, I would encourage everyone to really at least listen to what Lisa and Neil put out and you know, I'm constantly learning from you weekly research. I really appreciate it.   Speaker 2   48:18 And yeah, just keep pushing forward team and take those wins and take those, you know, those use those losses to his growth opportunities. I mean that's a good place to stop. Thank you very much. Vin, if you want to reach out to Vin, we can, they find you on Instagram and Facebook and all that good stuff. Yeah, you can find me at Vin Framularo. So my first name, V I N and M, last name F R a M U. L. a. R. O. I'm on Facebook, Instagram. You could even email me vin@framularo.com or even reach out through running hot page and we'll put on the show notes because Vin if anybody needs help with anything technical and computers as far as things like sales funnels and click funnels and pretty much everything technical I don't really like to share you because you're too good to go. If anyone wants help, he's man. So thanks very much and we'll get onto our work now. Excellent. Thanks Steve. Have a great day.   Speaker 1   49:22 That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com  

One of the misconceptions people often have about Quiet Light Brokerage is that most of our transactions are e-commerce based. In reality, we have got quite a sizeable number of SaaS deals in our portfolio as well. Today, the Saas CFO Blog founder Ben Murray is here talking about his career, the blog, and his passion for sharing the metrics founders need for better planning and forecasting. Through his blog, Ben shares his passion for organizing the numbers, implementing SaaS metrics, and forecasting. Ben's advice is all about getting the lumps out of the profit and loss. Anyone looking to learn more about the topic both from the acquisition and the ownership side, this is the guy to know and this is the episode to listen to. Episode Highlights: The value in forecasting. Why do it in the first place. Things that proper forecasting might protect your business from. Software recommendations for businesses looking to get started with inputting the financial data. Types of metrics that are important for the owner and potential buyer to dial in on. The Rose Metric. Numbers a potential buyer should be looking for in a healthy acquisition prospect. How deep should the buyer look into the metrics? Warning signs to look for in a business evaluation. The why behind the data. Healthy levels of sustainability in the balance between recurring revenue and sales/marketing expenses. How Ben became so interested in the SaaS arena and why he feels compelled to share his knowledge with his readers. The cash runway forecast model. How to get started in forecasting. Transcription: Joe: Mark one of the misconceptions about Quiet Light Brokerage is that some people think we do; the vast majority of our transactions are e-commerce related when in fact we've got quite a sizeable SaaS component as well. And I understand you had Ben Murray from SaaS CFO on the podcast recently. Mark: Yeah I just recently became familiar with Ben. I was going out and taking a look at some of the people that are writing in this space and just kind of doing some research trying to expand our network in this area and I happened upon Ben's blog and I was absolutely blown away. So Ben is a CFO obviously and specializes in the SaaS arena and talks a lot about the metrics that we want to be able to track in the SaaS world for better forecasting and better planning on the part of SaaS founders. So naturally, I thought I had to have this guy on the podcast. We also sponsored a little ad in his newsletter as well to promote David's webinar. David Newell for those of you that don't know recently did a webinar on how to solve a SaaS business for 6, 7, or 8 figures. We're going to include those in the show notes we'll also make sure that we advertise that in our weekly newsletter if you don't get that; a really, really well received. We've had hundreds of people attend and have had great response from that webinar. We partnered with Ben to help promote that webinar as well. And as I told you Joe just before this call he knows more about SaaS than you and I will ever really know because he lives and breathes this on a day in day out basis. And so we talked a lot about some of the metrics to look at, how to think about some of the metrics, how to calculate some of the metrics in a way that makes sense because we know that we're supposed to be tracking some things like lifetime value, churn, and everything else but how do you actually construct these calculations in a way that makes sense for your business and then forecasting as well. So the topic; I'll be honest, I got a little wide-ranging with my questions because I wanted to ask him every question at once. And it was difficult to stay focused because I wanted to ask every question at once but there's just some really cool nuggets in this podcast including one that you and I talk about all the time and that's cash versus accrual accounting. Joe: Yeah, most people think about it only in terms of e-commerce but SaaS and content they've got to do it as well just to get the lumps out of the P&L. Mark: Yeah I mean look it just comes down to this basic concept accounting; double-entry accounting system has been around for a long time and it's been around for a long time because it works. And so we should be making sure that we're actually paying attention to our books in the proper way and understanding what sort of insights we can pull out of this. Ben talks a lot about the need for forecasting which is something that I'm increasingly growing aware of as being an important tool for business owners. And we talked a little bit about how to do that in the SaaS world in this podcast as well so it's super interesting. And I think for anyone that's interested in SaaS both from an acquisition or an ownership standpoint, Ben is a guy to know, this is a podcast definitely to listen to. Joe: I'm looking forward to listening to it myself. Let's get to it. Mark: All right I have Ben Murray from the SaaSCFO.com, Ben thank you so much for taking the time for a conversation here on SaaS businesses, CFO and everything metric heavy. I'm really excited for this conversation. Ben: Thanks Mark, it's great to be here. Mark: So let's start out pretty simple and give just a quick background on yourself; what you do, and also a little bit about the blog. I found you through your blog the SaaSCFO.com but a little background on yourself so that our listeners know who I'm speaking with. Ben: Sure yeah. My name is Ben Murray and I've been in finance and accounting for the past 20 plus years and my background has been airlines and software specifically SaaS. And so I've been a SaaS CFO for about the last 8 plus years or so. And about 3½ years ago I started blogging at the SaaSCFO.com where I just wanted to share my metrics, models, templates that I've been using and creating over the years and hoping that others will have; they could use those and implement the models and metrics in their businesses right away. Mark: Yeah and look there's a lot of people that write on this material, right? I've come across a lot of different blogs that kind of become this intersection of marketing and metrics and company structure and everything else. Yours is really focused on metrics and metrics from a kind of financial outlook perspective and probably a deeper dive than I found in most other places. So I can definitely really, really appreciate what you're doing here on the blog and some of the information that you share. I want to start off with just kind of a big question, your website title is Ben's post on SaaS metrics and forecast; pretty simple. I want to talk about that second half there and the forecasting side of it. I know a lot of business owners and even buyers who are looking at acquiring a business look at forecasts with a bit of a skeptical eye and wonder well what's the real value on them? Now I think people that are growing businesses at a higher level tend to see the forecasts and see the value in them. But I'd love to pick your brain a little bit about the value in forecasting and creating a good forecasting model and maybe what the foundations are for that. So why don't we start with that first question as why forecast in the first place? I mean isn't it really more wishful thinking or is there a real science behind this. Ben: Yeah there's definitely a science behind it because it really leverages your operational understanding of your business and I really feel you can't forecast until you know where you've been. So really understanding your historical financials, all the metrics around that, and then once you have that then you can put a very good forecast together. But if you don't understand your current financial state it's going to be really hard to create a forecast and obviously, the number one thing is cash, right? Cash is king. So if cash is tight or you think it might be tight you definitely need that forecast to balance resource requests versus cash balances. So that's number one. After that say if you have decent margins then again it's really understanding where your revenue is trending; your margins are trending. And as you scale so you don't get in trouble down the road; if you hire too fast, invest too fast. So forecasts it's definitely I'd say part of science part of intuition but it's really critical I think in any business as you scale and of course just understanding your cash and then the metrics that are coming out of your forecast. Mark: Yeah, what are some common areas that you see people running into with a lack of forecasting; just kind of sticking their finger up in the air and feeling where the wind blowing today as they're growing maybe a rapidly growing business. You already mentioned one, hiring too fast and bringing on too much support staff maybe anticipating more growth in the future. What are some other things that proper forecasting might be able to protect you from? Ben: I think when you create that first financial forecast and you have been forecasting it really exposes areas in your business that are kind of weak data-wise. The number one thing is like booking; tracking your monthly bookings whether that's MRR or ARR basis you need to know when new lows are coming in or new customers are coming in any expansion business churn downgrades. So that sometimes exposes that tracking. You're going to be kind of revenue forecast together. It all starts with your booking patterns. So that's one thing. And then it's just basic stuff. What's your current MRR? What are your current customer accounts? How many paying customers do you have so you can put again that revenue forecast together and then it's just understanding where you spend. You know one big thing that I see with SaaS firms is that they're coding all their expenses to one big bucket. And I think once you reach say a million or two ARR you really have to have more sophistication in your financial forecast than you're coding expenses to buy an apartment because without that you really can't create any SAAS metrics from that. So you really need clarity around your expenses as well to see that quite a bit. Mark: Yeah and so much of this when I give presentations at a conference and I get to the part where I'm talking about keeping good clean accurate verifiable books I get the sense sometimes that it gets glossed over. And I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who say yeah I know my books are important but then when you find out are they actually managing them well we found out that they aren't and because it becomes sort of an afterthought to it. But what you said there at the end I think is so clear. Once you start having good numbers brought in to the business and you're starting to analyze these numbers it brings clarity to the business as well and being able to identify maybe the risks that are actually present in your company that you aren't seeing because you're not looking at the data. A lot of what you're saying here about forecasting, of course, requires keeping track of the numbers in the right way and you need to start somewhere. For somebody that's maybe at the smaller end of the spectrum in a SaaS operation, say sub one million dollars in revenue what sort of recommendations do you have to make sure that the data that they're getting is A. getting input correctly and categorized correctly and B. do you have any recommended software any recommended systems that you would start out with? Ben: Yeah I wrote a post because that was a question I was getting a lot on what SaaS accounting software can you recommend. And of course, when I speak with founders 9 out of 10 times their financials are in QuickBooks . So that's kind of a ubiquitous accounting system out there. And I've seen all sorts P&Ls but really it's good organization to your expense categories. Not having too many. Sometimes you see a QuickBooks P&L and it's 50 expense categories and you've got $5 posted in February and 10 the next month; just too much detail on that where a SaaS company is really 70 to 80% employee wages, benefits, taxes, etcetera. So that's the big thing is getting to know your wages classify them correctly; encoded by department. Then it comes down to travel, rent, commissions, so they're big expense categories that are common within SaaS, advertising, that you want to see those coded and classified correctly and kept track of each month so you're not getting behind and have very lumpy financials. So that would be the big thing is just to clearly categorize P&L by expense category and then obviously the other one is just not applying proper reverec which you can't blame SaaS founders that saved some 1 million but they're not playing proper reverec to their revenue. But eventually, you will need that in order to calculate again good metrics, good gross margin and so forth. Mark: Can you explain that last part a little bit more? Ben: Yeah, about the reverec? Mark: Yes. Ben: So often rates with an MRR business it's not as pronounced where you invoice monthly and recognize monthly but with annual contracts say quarterly, semiannual, annual, multi-year contracts you see a lot of SaaS companies posting that revenue right to their P&L. So, for example, a $12,000 annual contract that should be advertised and recognized over twelve months. They're posting twelve thousand in just one month. You'll see very lumpy revenue that it could be 50 or 100,000 in one month and it's $1,000 a month the next month and I've even seen negative in some months. And with that, you really cannot manage your SaaS business without a proper reverec and that could be finding a SaaS accounter bookkeeper who is familiar with the SaaS business model. But without that, you don't know your gross margins at all. You really don't know what's going on with your business kind of on a good steady run-rate basis. So again under a million, I get it. A million and two and scaling you definitely have to get to that point. Mark: Yeah. And so in our world again we've talked about this a lot on this podcast and pretty much every chance I get. And it's that simple difference between accrual and cash basis counting, right? Instead of saying oh I just got $12,000 in on an annual contract saying well I have an annual contract which means I need to service this client for the full 12 months and that equates out to $1,000 a month which I'm earning as I go along with this contract. It's kind of a foreign concept to a lot of people. But again the importance here is not treating the P&L like a statement of cash flows only and treat it again as a profit and loss statement. I would imagine Ben, this is something I didn't see on your site but I'm sure you've covered because your site is extremely comprehensive, it would make sense at that point to look at your financial statements and understand the balance sheet is going to be important in here as well. What role do you see and let me see if I can back up; I'm kind of all over the place right now but I'll ask this in a very basic way. I know a lot of people are kind of scared or mystified by the balance sheet. How much emphasis do you think people should put on actually getting familiar with the statement like that or do you think it's more important to look at some of the other metrics instead and focus on those? Ben: Yeah I think say as a founder-owner you do need to understand the balance sheet to some extent because the SaaS balance sheet is a little different than others. One obviously is deferred revenue, so in the example, we talked about when you invoice that 12k it's actually posted at the balance sheet as deferred revenue; as a liability, because you have an obligation now to say perform or to service that customer. The second thing with the new reverec standards you now have to capitalize the contract costs that arise when signing contracts with customers, for example, enabling commissions now that becomes an asset on your balance sheet. So that's the second area that's different with SaaS and that's actually new and then, of course, capitalizing software development. You can also capitalize software development once it reaches technological feasibility. And again that's another asset on your balance sheet. Other than that SaaS balance sheets are pretty straightforward but if you're applying the proper accounting you probably will see; you definitely should see deferred revenue and probably capitalized commissions. Mark: Yeah I can kind of hear the collective groan from people listening thinking well I thought we're going to be talking about SaaS metrics here and here we are back in the old accounting stuff but this stuff plays together, right? I mean when we go into some of the other more advanced metrics that you're talking about it depends on having those books done correctly so that you can pull out the right metrics and the right ratios that you're looking for. But let's get into some of those other metrics and just kind of a very basic question here, what do you consider especially forward for companies that 1 million maybe 5 million 10 million and then above as we kind of work up the strata here, what sort of metrics would you generally say are really important for an owner or potentially an acquirer to really dial in on a SaaS business? Ben: Yeah I think once you're past that early stage where you really have to manage your cash flow I mean it's going to be your go-to-market, sales, and marketing efficiency metrics and that's something I'm constantly looking at. So it's really all; it becomes a lot about the go-to-market efficiency. One are your inbound or outbound sales engine and marketing engines and then one metric that's a favorite of mine is cost of ARR, cost of MRR where you're looking at your ARR and MRR bookings and comparing that against your sales and marketing expense to see how much it costs you to acquire one that new dollar or ARR or MRR; that's a big one. And there's a great survey out there, a SaaS survey put out by KeyBank each year that provides those private company metrics so you can compare how you're doing against other SaaS companies who put data into that survey. So it's a great benchmarking tool. But again there are a lot of sales and marketing efficiency metrics that yeah as you're scaling, how efficient are you, how much cash is going to be required to hit your booking plan, and then really just that balance; it comes down to that balance between bookings and sales marketing. Mark: Yeah that's great. Let's talk employees it seems to be one of the costs that seems to kind of spiral out of control with SaaS companies on occasion right? The cost of supporting the clients can be higher and higher. You have something on the blog which I'd just kind of chanced upon which you came up with called the Rose Metric. Can you explain that a little bit? Ben: Yes sure. Again it kind of gets back to the concept that really a SaaS company or any software company is all about the staff; the employees because that's the major expense or as I call merits that investment in the business around your staff. And you see that revenue graph that you metric out there is kind of a general gauge around efficiency which I think is just too high level; too generic. So I want to look at really it's so important that your investing employees, that employees are happy because they are creating that software company; they're creating the product. And really comparing how efficient are we in headcount wages versus the bookings coming in. So it gets you kind of a balance of as we scale what resources do we need to support our bookings plan or rounding plan and just see how efficient we are in acquiring new MRR or ARR against our kind of employee headcount or employee wages. Mark: Yeah it's an interesting piece and again I'd recommend people take a look at the blog and kind of dig into some of these employee metrics. It's one that we don't see as much in our world and I think it's an interesting one to take a look at. From a merger and acquisition standpoint if you're a buyer coming into a business and trying to evaluate it where are you going to begin looking at a company's books? What sort of numbers are you going to be looking at in trying to calculate within that first day as you're trying to see is this a good opportunity and a healthy company? Ben: Yeah obviously the first thing you're going to look at is just are they good books are you inaudible[00:19:12.5] accounting so they're good financial statements. And then after that, it's really understanding the health of the recurring revenue because a lot of valuations are based on almost full of ARR or MRR and then also EBIDTA. So really when I look at it you know it's really looking into that recurring revenue; so the bookings data, what's your gross dollar retention, net revenue retention, how many logos are you losing per month, how many dollars are you losing per month, and churn and dock rates. And then of course if you've got multiple products it's understanding all of those metrics by the product lines. Because that's what you're really buying is the recurring revenue stream and of course any profitability or lack of profitability that goes along with that recurring revenue stream in the form of EBIDTA. So those are the same first things that I dive into is really understanding the revenue streams and then really the business model; what does it take to support that recurring revenue stream? Do you have tech support? Do you have CSMs? What's needed support that revenue? And then, of course, another big thing is to go to market engine; understanding sales and marketing, how they're acquiring customers, how efficient they are, and then of course looking into GNA, RND, the product roadmap etcetera. Mark: Sure absolutely. As far as dealing with a company with weak books like of we're evaluating a company that maybe has this lumpy revenue because they're recording everything on a cash basis. Are there ways that you can suggest that would not involve a whole deconstruction of books but maybe to be able to evaluate a business that has weaker books or weaker data tracking practices? Ben: Yeah if you really can rely on the financials for the revenue stream then you have to really build a backup through their bookings data or their invoicing data. So getting say a couple years of invoicing history of their subscriptions; so dollar amounts, start and end dates, it helps if you knew is this a new logo expansion etcetera so that you can reconstruct what the revenue stream should look like and then get back into you know what kind of expansion are you seeing, churn are they seeing so you can build out that revenue stream if it's not; if they're not [inaudible 00:21:30.3] to the financial statements. Mark: Sure. What would be some warning signs that you would look for an acquisition? Obviously, you said you would really look at the health of the recurring revenue. How trustworthy is it? Also the go-to-market cost as well. What are some things that would be just kind of a deal-breaker for you if you were evaluating a business? Ben: I mean a couple of things would be looking at again I think it's going to be around churn and payback periods. So payback periods are extremely important. So how fast are you paying back those upfront customer acquisition costs. So one looking at their cash balance, of course, are they trying to [inaudible 00:22:10.5] fund working capital through lines of credit or debt that their business model isn't quite working for some reason or the payback period is too long or they have just too much cash tied up in check. And then, of course, new logo acquisition, do they have the go-to-market model proofed out or product-market fit and then again just is churn under control, can they acquire customers but then can they retain them over time. So again those are some of the things that if you see warning flags; you might see some warning flags there that the metrics just as a whole don't add up together. Mark: Right. You mentioned payback periods. This is something that I've ran into a number of times where I see somebody pretty plainly put out there hey my LTV is this my CSC is this so look I'm going to acquire the customer for 80 bucks the lifetime value is $400 and you're going to make a great return on your investment on that. But when you dig into it a little bit deeper you find out that if you take like an 80% cohort, if you're taking a look at the majority of customers the lifetime value is much lower. There are a couple of unicorns in there that are pulling in this really high value. What are some ways that you can recommend dissecting this when you get this kind of flat up numbers of my lifetime value is X and my cost of acquisition is Y so, therefore, you're going to make that killing on this business. How can you sort of dissect that and actually get some better insights there? Ben: Yeah especially with LTV because that can be so sensitive to the denominator or what churn number you're using as the dominator. So you really have to understand what inputs they're putting themselves because that lifetime value can be all over the place. So again you mentioned cohort analysis, are they taking the cohorts, are they using aggregate churn or are you looking at really with check and payback periods you should be looking at it's really a point in time like the cohort analysis that what's the most recent cohorts coming in and the paybacks on those and also lifetime churn from the cohorts say from the past 12 months. So you really have to I think look at the details on the numbers that are building up into those formulas to really prove out what they're saying that they can really claim great numbers. Mark: Yeah, it's one of the reasons that LTV to me I'm not a big fan of that metric on its own I mean it's interesting but I think it's just kind of a live number way. It doesn't color a whole lot when you're looking at it by itself, right? It can really take you to a lot of different factors. Ben: Yeah and I definitely calculate LTV it's interesting because I think SaaS metrics in isolation don't mean much. You kind of have to look at the big picture obviously it's LTV to check but also looking at cost of ARR payback periods. So maybe it's one data point but it's not telling the whole story. So I do look at LTV but again I think say cost of ARR or the payback on that is a much easier way to understand. And LTV I still think is kind of a ballpark because it's always changing and it's such a sensitive calculation that it's not the number to just look at alone. Mark: Yeah. A question I get all the time from people and it's really basic in your world so I apologize for even asking this but people ask me all the time well how am I supposed to calculate my lifetime value, how am I supposed to calculate my churn when I have people that are still; that have been with me from day one? And these numbers sometimes can be difficult to calculate because of that or even people that are dropping off but then coming back on and then dropping off again and then coming back on. Ben: Yeah. I hear that a lot too. Yeah especially if you're a couple of years in you really don't know your lifetime value yet. Again it's just a formula; it's a calculation so it's a ballpark but you don't really know true LTV yet if you've just been around a couple of months or a couple of years. And then the whole dropping off dropping on back on that's where it just becomes almost company-specific that you really just have to define internally what does a new customer mean, when does it really mean that they churn so that everyone within the company understands that. And if you're in any sort of M&A then that's clearly; that you're transparent with how you're actually tracking those stats. Mark: Yeah. And I think that part right there that point is probably the key that I think is so important especially from an acquisition standpoint. If you're looking to acquire a SaaS company and you're just looking at the metrics on the surface how does that seller define those metrics within their own company and why did they set up those rules because with multi churn you can look at that in a number of different ways. You can calculate that number using different approaches the same way with LTV numbers you can use different approaches and get different results. So why did you choose a certain method; why did you choose a certain approach to this? And that's the color I think from an acquisition standpoint that starts to get really important when you're looking at any of these metrics is understanding the why behind what data is being presented and then the rules and applying a sanity test to it. Are these people just giving numbers because that's what they're supposed to pick or are they actually looking at these and using these metrics within their company, yeah just a really good point on your side as far as understanding the metrics and where they're coming from? Moving beyond that cost of acquisition, moving beyond the lifetime value numbers and you've mentioned a few times the going to market costs as well, what are some health levels for the sustainability of ARR or MRR on a SaaS business. Ben: You mean as kind of as far as the balance between recurring revenue and sales marketing expense? Mark: Yes. Ben: Yeah, so healthy levels, the things that I look at and this is probably more mid-market enterprise but usually if you can acquire bookings for $1 of a new ARR for a dollar of sales market expense that's pretty good. So again there are some surveys out there that kind of give you some benchmarks and that's kind of you can say in whole new logo and expansions of course expansion in ourselves should be a lot cheaper than acquisition, maybe that's 30 to 50 cents of sales and marketing expense acquire one net new dollar of ARR. So certainly it's just that you look in and if it's higher you just need to understand from that business why it's taking longer and what's the story behind go to market. Is that a longer sales cycle that's impacting the [inaudible 00:28:48.6] so just different things to really understand their business model. Mark: That's great. I'm going to just take a quick break from some of that heavy metric discussion here because we're throwing around a lot of acronyms right now. How did you get your start in this rollout? You said that you had experience in the airplane industry and then also in the software industry. How did you get to be so passionate about this and kind of digging in as deep as you do? Ben: Yeah well I guess one that you really loved forecasting and financial forecasting though in Excel models and you kind of build-up that tool kit over time and just really enjoy it really understanding the economics of businesses and especially software is so interesting and yeah I did start in the airlines which is also kind of metric intensive and very financially disciplined and I kind of applied that to the SaaS areas. So I just noticed out there a lot of resources on SaaS but it didn't quite I felt go far enough or really just give you the whole story and the template that they were using it kind explained it but then you might have to go do an hour or two of work to recreate what that person did. And so I said; I thought you could be a little different by just providing the exact models, the templates that I'm using and hopefully the bits and pieces of those would be applicable to some people in SaaS that they could incorporate into their business and I received great feedback from readers, subscribers downloading templates that it's helped them out a lot, founders that are trying to do their first forecast. So I just wanted that kind of transparent value exchange out there and it's just really from my kind of on the job experience as a SaaS CFO and just things I encounter every day that are pain points for me that could be pain points for others and just help them out with maybe something with a template that I've used to solve some of those problems. Mark: Yeah you have all these comments on the site from people who have written into about the resources and I love the one here that says great resources that save a lot of time and brain damage to replicate. It's very true. Again there's a really good stuff on here. You brought up forecasting again so I'm going to start to bring this full circle here back to forecasting because we talked about that and it's a topic that I'm personally very interested in as well right now. You have a whole page here on the cash runway model. Can you explain that at a high level and maybe we can get into it a little bit? Ben: Yeah definitely because I have my financial plan out there that I live in Excel every day that I kind of take it for granted that other people can also open up Excel or just dive right in and for a lot of people it's still a little too advanced so with kind of that you could say advanced side of financial planning model. So I tried to create something very basic and it is really inspired by a founder I talked to who said that he got some funding just with a super basic cash forecast. So I thought well how could I take that and just make it super simple say for founders and non-excel people to just start inputting even it really gets to their cash invoicing. So they really could forecast their cash balance and how long that balance is going to last. If they funded it and then they're looking for investments that they could say hey here's my cash invoicing coming up, here's my headcount, here are some other metrics; that major expenses and then just forecast their cash balance in one tab. So that was the genesis of it just trying to really boil down to really something basic that founders and again non-excel people could hopefully use right away. Mark: Yeah. And you have this template available on the site. And you didn't actually answer it's kind of the question I was going to lead into and that is how does somebody get started with forecasting if they don't have the resources for a CFO like yourself what are some basic models that they can put together to start forecasting their cash flow? Ben: Yeah, definitely. I think really it's understanding their invoicing patterns; so what is your cash coming in whether that's funding or just the invoices you're sending out to your customers or their credit card payments they're making online line through your site. So that's really the first step. It's just that cash in. And then it's going to be headcount. Again headcounts the majority of expense for SaaS company so really and I'm quite informal as to how do we easily calculate and forecast that expense. So whether you've got one person 850 cut that into model, forecast that expense out. So the second thing again is headcount. And then any other major expenses, maybe it's rent, maybe it's tradeshow, advertisements, so it's kind of that 80-20 rule start with those big expenses; start with the big invoices as a place to start to put together kind of a basic forecast. Mark: Right then as with all things you can refine that as you go along and improve it and make it more accurate and you can look back to see how accurate was our forecasting and get the insights that you need from there and be able to really plan out what's going on or if you're looking for funding obviously very useful for that as well. This has been really interesting and maybe a little bit of a scattered conversation because I want to talk about everything at once. That's my downfall. I've never really claimed to be the greatest podcast host in the world but there is just so much here to be able to discuss. We are up against the clock at this point though and so I want to give you the chance to kind of round it out and with what you do you obviously have a passion for a lot of this in you being able to help out a lot of people. What are some of the common problems or common questions that you get at the blog and what would you say to SaaS founders currently operating a business right now or those that might be looking to get into this through acquisition? Ben: Yeah I mean the kind of questions or problems that I see really one is just how do you calculate this stuff, how do you calculate these metrics, what are the inputs? And that really comes back to just a nice clean P&L that you take the time; make that investment through your bookkeeper or accountant to really set up a well-organized P&L because that's where all the metrics emanate from. And if you don't have that it's going to be really hard to calculate the metrics and really have that financial transparency to manage your business. So really again it starts with what's your SaaS P&L and I try post on there on my site kind of walking through from bookings down to income; what the major components of the SaaS P&L are and again it's getting good organization and good fundamentals there and then you can build upon it then you can start forecasting then you can calculate metrics. So again it starts with I think a nicely organized SaaS P&L. Mark: You know I had Babak Azad who was with Beach Body; he grew that company into a billion-dollar company and he was talking a lot about the metrics that they use there and I asked him a similar question about how do you get started; how can you start tracking this and his response was just what yours is and that is just start; you just have to start with it right. And your advice to start with a P&L and having that set up correctly. It's what we've been preaching here at Quiet Light Brokerage for a very, very long time. Get those books in order. You want to have those books in order. It doesn't matter if you want to sell or not. As a business owner having good financial records it's irreplaceable. Once you get it you will be so happy that you've had it. But it starts with how you're inputting it. I've run into bookkeepers; maybe you have as well but I run into bookkeepers especially when somebody hires them remotely who kind of don't want to do an accrual basis books because they consider it to be more difficult but it's the proper way to do it and as you said all the metrics derive from there. Alright, one last time Ben where can people find you? What's the best way to contact you? Ben: Sure you can contact me through my site. It's the SaaSCFO.com and then actually later this month I'm launching the SaaS Academy.com. It's an online digital course for SaaS metrics and more so that's coming out soon as well. But definitely my blog you can contact me through to the site. Mark: That's fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on. I hope to have you on in the future. In the future, I'll choose one topic and I'll stick on that for the entire topic but thank you so much for this really good overview episode. I really appreciate it. Ben: Alright thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me.     Links and Resources: Ben's Blog The SaaS CFO Ben's Blog post: The ROSE Metric Ben's Software Recommendations David Newell SaaS Webinar

 Discover why as a businessowner, you need to keep on sharpening your saw and continue learning Know why from time to time you need to be not in the hamster wheel of your business, pan out to be able to plan building a better one Learn the actionable steps you need to implement to be able to outdo, outshine and outclass your competitors and maximize your business Resources/Links: Get instant access to the business plan template Ben used to grow thousands of Australian Businesses in every sector:https://maxmyprofit.com.au/invisible/ Summary Ben Fewtrel is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at MaxMyProfit and author of the Business Exceleration™ Blueprint. He has been featured in Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed, Virgins in-flight magazine, Sky Business and many more. Ben is also the host of the popular Business Brain Food Podcast. In this episode, Ben shares how you can build the business you imagined. Check out these episode highlights: 01:31 – Ben's ideal client: My ideal client is somebody who has been building your business and they imagined something completely different to what they've ended up with. 02:01 – Problem he helps solve: The problem we solve would be that it has to do with knowledge like you don't know what you don't know. And I think a lot of people are good at what they do. So they start a business in that technical field. 02:46 – Typical symptoms people experience with that problem? they lack sleep. They get caught off and they losing sleep at night. 03:36 – Common mistakes people make when trying to solve that problem: They've worked with another coach or training organization of some sort. And what it is, is that they haven't taken ownership, that's probably the most common mistake. 04:42 – Ben's Valuable Free Action(VFA): Take a day or two out to actually take a step away from your business and work on your business rather than in it. 06:22 – Ben's Valuable Free Resource(VFR): https://maxmyprofit.com.au/invisible/ 07:25 – Q:'What's my top tip for being successful?' A: My answer to that question is to continue to be learning. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “Take a day or two out to actually take a step away from your business and work on your business rather than in it.” -@MaxmyprofitAUClick To Tweet Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland:0:09 Hello, every one a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible, my name is Tom Poland, sitting on the sand here at Little Castaways beach in Queensland, Australia joined today by another Aussie Ben Fewtrell. Ben, good day, a very warm welcome, sir. Where are you hanging out? Ben Fewtrell 0:23 Good I am Thanks for having me. I'm in Bella Vista in sunny Sydney. Tom Poland: 0:28 Bella Vista sounds very Spanish or something. But... Tom Poland: 0:33 Sounds nice wherever it is. So we both in Australia, beaming out to some 27 different countries around the world. For those of you don't know Ben, he's the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Max My profits. And we've known each other for a while quite a few years now, Ben never met in person, but met virtually lots of times and done lots of interesting joint ventures together and so on. Tom Poland: 0:53 So Ben, I would have to say I can offer my personal endorsement as someone who really knows what he's talking about when it comes to maximizing your profits. He's featured in the Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed, Virgin in-flight magazine, Sky business many more. He is the host of the popular podcast Business Brain Food, where he interviews, leading experts on anything and everything you need to know to help you build the business that you really want to build.

Ben and Jason had the opportunity to sit down and chat, just like the first episodes of Threads. Ben didn't want to follow a format for their conversation, but Jason couldn't handle recording without an outline. So Ben put a loosey goosey outline together to guide them. Even with an outline, hilarity and randomness ensued. Listen as Jason tells all about why he was jealous of Ben, and Ben spills the beans on how long it has been since he's seen the dentist. Jason thinks Ben likes getting "atta boys" and pats on the back from his posts on social media and in messaging apps. Ben isn't sure he agrees with that. This episode, though slightly unstructured, certainly brought us into the deep end. By the time we pressed "Stop" to end the recording, we both felt encouraged and validated after having another honest conversation. Thank you so much for listening to us! We appreciate each and every one of you. Can you do us a favor? Tell someone about this podcast if you enjoy it. Also subscribe, rate and review us on Itunes or where ever you get our podcast from.  You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Please email us with any questions at hello@threadspodcast.com

Writing through chronic illness and other challenges, with Karen Lock KolpThis writing thing often feels hard. A common text among the three of us (Jess, Sarina and KJ) goes like this: OW OW OW OWOWOWOW. Our brains hurt. But for this week’s guest, Karen Lock Kolp, it’s more than that. Because of a rare tendon condition, Karen does all her writing and online work—and we do mean all—using her voice. That means that when it comes to both dictation and writing through big challenges, she’s a pro, and her advice in this episode was solid gold on both counts.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 2, 2019: Top 5 Things to Remember When Writing is REALLY Hard. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Solopreneur Hour with Michael O'Neal Joanna Penn's The Creative PennKaren's Dictation Software Choices: Dragon Dictation, Chrome Browser, Dragon's Transcription Button.MouseGrid video on YouTube: How to Use the Dragon MouseGrid (as it turns out, it’s focused on navigating in Facebook with Dragon, but still a great video)It's a Long Way to the Top, AC/DC#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Karen: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado PerezThe Purloined Paperweight, P.G. Wodehouse Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913, Daniel WolffKJ: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Abbi WaxmanJess: God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America, Lyz Lenz (Hear Lyz on the podcast here.) #FaveIndieBookstoreJeff Kinney's An UnLikely Story in Plainville, MAKaren Lock Kolp is the author of Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life with Your Young Child and 10 Secrets Happy Parents Know: How to Stop the Chaos, Bring Out Your Child’s Good Behavior, and Truly Enjoy Family Time (Your Child Explained). Find out more at Karen's website: We Turned Out Okay. Listen to her podcast here. Her popular episode Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics is here. This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                00:01                Howdy writers and listeners. August is basically over. September is here and this is the very last time I can invite you to join us in Bar Harbor, Maine for the Find Your Book, Find Your Mojo retreat from September 12th through 15th of 2019. It's a fantastic chance to get some one on one time for your project with me or Author Accelerator founder Jenny Nash, and then dig in with all your might in a gorgeous setting surrounded by your fellow #AmWriting word nerds, including Serena Bowen, who's going to talk about indie versus traditional publishing. There will be bonding, there will be writing, and knitting and artistic renderings of words of the year and all kinds of festivities and I for one can't wait. Find all the details@authoraccelerator.com/am writing.KJ:                                00:55                Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                             00:59                All right, let's start over.KJ:                                01:01                Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                             01:04                Okay.KJ:                                01:04                Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia.Jess:                             01:13                And I'm Jess Lahey.KJ:                                01:15                And this is #AmWriting with Jess and KJ. #AmWriting is our weekly podcast about all things writing, be they fiction, nonfiction, some bizarre intertwined creation, short stories, proposals, essays, long pieces, short pieces. And most of all, the one thing we always are is the podcast about getting the work done.Jess:                             01:46                And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And you can find my work at the New York Times and the Washington Post and recently at Air Mail, which is a new venture by Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair. And that was kind of fun to write for someone new.KJ:                                02:06                I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of How To Be a Happier Parent and the former lead editor and writer of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times where I am still a contributor. I'm having a freelancing break while I work on what will be my second novel and my first novel, The Chicken Sisters will be out next year.Jess:                             02:24                So exciting.KJ:                                02:26                That's who we are. That's why you should listen to us. Today, we have a guest that I think you are also going to want to listen to. I want to welcome Karen Lock Kolp. She is a child development expert and a parenting coach with a podcast, a thriving online community, and she is the independently published author of 10 Secrets Happy Parents Know. But we are not going to talk about anything parenty because what we are gonna talk about is getting all that work done because Karen is also a woman who lives with chronic illness. She has a tendon disorder that she'll describe to you later, but it has made her an expert in the use of her voice, both as a podcaster and in dictating her writing, which I know you're all going to want to hear about. And it's also made her an expert at keeping her butt in the chair sometimes whether she wants to or not, and getting her work done anyway, even when it's really, really hard. And that's why you're here. So thank you so much for joining us.Karen:                          03:28                Oh, thank you. It's really wonderful to be here. This is very exciting for me. Your podcast is one of my favorites. It is one of the few that survived my recent digital reset. Yours was one of the few that I brought back in because it's incredibly valuable.Jess:                             03:51                Oh, that's so nice. We survived a purge. That's so exciting.KJ:                                03:56                I purged lately too, although I partly purged just because I get so frustrated with the iTunes podcast app and switched and then once I switched I realized I hadn't brought everything with me and some of it I didn't miss.Jess:                             04:08                I had that moment where iTunes said, you seem to have not downloaded this in awhile. Do you still want to listen? And I thought about it and I said, well, no, actually I'm done.Karen:                          04:20                That's really cool. I did that.KJ:                                04:22                So Karen, so what I really want to talk about today is the specifics of writing with chronic illness, but also more on a general note, just the challenges of writing when it's hard. I think that we all have times when we feel like this is impossible and you have written through moments that I think most of us would define as actually impossible. So, start by telling us where you stand and how this started for you.Karen:                          04:56                Wow. It's, it's quite a story. So, actually first of all, I think I just want to say that I was well into writing my second book before I would dare to call myself a writer. So there's that as well. I was like, I'm a podcaster, I'm not a writer. You know what I mean?KJ:                                05:14                Yeah, no, we all have that. Yeah. I mean it's always, well, I wrote for the New York Times, but only online, you know Nobody, none of us thinks we're a real writer yet. Yeah, except maybe Salmon Rushdie, he thinks he's a real writer.Karen:                          05:34                Thinks he's a writer. Yeah, exactly. A real writer. I was midway through the second book and I was like, I said to somebody, Oh, I'm a writer. And I was like, wait a minute, I actually am a writer. I'm like, that's pretty cool. For me, it all started eight years ago, more than eight years ago now, I contracted a tendon disorder. And the way that I did it was I got a gastric disease called diverticulitis, which I would not wish on my worst enemy. And I took some (this is the nearest that my doctors and I can figure out) I took a really strong course of antibiotics to get rid of it. And they had a thing in them called fluoroquinolones. And since that started, since I went down this rabbit hole, it's been discovered that fluoroquinolones cause tendon problems largely in kids, but caused these problems anyway. And the rheumatologist told me, probably four or five years in that like I'm one of the lucky few who it stuck around for it. There's like a third of people who get this that they get it and get better right away. And then there's a third who sort of get it and it sticks around for a couple of years. And then I'm one of the ones who's, you know, it's gone on for a really long time.KJ:                                06:42                That's just annoying.Karen:                          06:45                I mean, isn't it?KJ:                                06:48                The truth is that in a single hand card game, odds don't matter and it’s either going to stay or it's not and if it stays those odds just make you mad.Karen:                          06:57                Yeah. And I, I, it took me a long time to get here, but I, I would say that what I've done is I've kind of gone through a real metamorphosis, you know, before I was a caterpillar and then this was my chrysalis and now I'm a butterfly. Like I truly understand the meaning of differently abled in a way I never, ever did before. For the first couple of years, the focus was really on my legs. I lost almost complete use of one leg in particular (my right leg) because of some of the tendons in it. And then there was a sort of very long rehab. But while I was going through that, I needed a wheelchair. Whenever I left the house it was a mess. And when that got better, then my thumb tendon started to go. And I'm still basically really still recovering from that. The legs are much better than the upper body. So all my writing is done online, and I do it with a speech recognition software. But, I want to even go further back than that, if it's okay.KJ:                                08:04                Yeah.Karen:                          08:05                Because I, the whole reason that I started to do anything is because I wanted, it sounds, it may sound silly, but I wanted to give a TED talk. I was, I remember watching TED talks and loving them and laughing at them. Like I couldn't move, I was stranded in a chair. And I remember thinking, you know what I could do, I could do a TED talk in a wheelchair. I want to do a TED talk. And so what, I, I haven't done one yet, I'm still hoping to, but this whole thing started because I was like, well, I want to do that. So my husband especially helped me try to figure out like, how could you do that, because at the same time as I wanted that I was also feeling incredibly useless and a total burden at home. We had two young kids and I couldn't be the house wife, and I couldn't be the cook. And I couldn't be the laundry and I couldn't be the chauffeur. So I really was feeling very down, like not quite suicidal, but if you got hit by a bus it wouldn't be a problem kind of thing. I had to learn first that there is value in me even if I can't use my hands or my legs. Once I learned that, my family was like, we need you, we need you to be the brains, which is how we define it around here. Then I could sort of look outwards from that. And that was when I really decided, I think I want to do a TED talk. And that has led to so much cool stuff. And even if it's not ever a TED talk, I'm so happy.KJ:                                09:33                Well, I mean, you know, it's kind of cool that it started from that, right? And, and it remains as a goal, but now you have, you know, you have so many other goals that you have achieved in the meantime.Karen:                          09:54                That's a very good thing to know. I mean, I, it's nice to have that validation, you know.KJ:                                10:01                Yeah.Karen:                          10:02                Thank you.KJ:                                10:02                I almost don't even know where to go from that, but so you've picked a topic and you took it from there. It's sort of hard to list all the things that you have, but you have this thriving online community, you have a coaching business, you have a lot going on now. What came first?Karen:                          10:28                So first came the podcast and that came about in a really interesting way too, because my husband wanted me to have an iPhone. So part of my problem, part of the hands per happened because I was doing too much texting on a phone that had those nine buttons, you know what I mean, where you'd have to like cycle through the number one to get to a and all those sorts of things. And that really blew up with the thumb tendons and my husband's like, okay, we're gonna get you an iPhone because it's playschool. You won't ever have to worry about like anything. You know, there's no, you don't have to choose between apps. Like it's just, it's there for you, there's no worries with an iPhone, which my family has since they've gotten Androids and there are times where they want to throw them out the window, you know what I mean? But I still have an iPhone because I need it. And that was when I really first discovered podcasts and one of my favorite podcasts was done by an entrepreneur who teaches other people how to start an online business. And I really wanted to start an online business.KJ:                                11:34                You need to name the podcast, by the way.Karen:                          11:37                Oh, that podcast is called The Solopreneur Hour podcast with Michael O'Neal. So I got into his podcast and I started trying to do something. I made a horrible, horrible website with my husband's help that I'm so glad it's gone, basically. Because I just needed to start and I knew I wanted to do something for parents of young children. I have a master's degree in early childhood education, I've got a bachelor's in human development and family relations, I've got nine years as a preschool teacher in an industry standard, state of the art, absolutely wonderful town-run preschool program. The town I grew up in actually. And I wanted to help parents cause I couldn't be in the classroom anymore, so maybe I could, you know, I could at least help them that way. So, I'm developing this pretty awful website and I'm doing it listening to Michael O'Neal's show. And I wrote to him at one point to basically say thank you because what he was doing was making me feel like I could do this, like this was attainable by me. And I explained my tendon condition and he read my letter on the air and he gifted me three months in his coaching program. I just want to take a moment to send up a silent thank you to him because I don't know what I would've done if I hadn't had him. But I mean, what, he's just a wonderful guy.KJ:                                13:08                Say a thank you to you because if you didn't reach out, do you know exactly when he would've come and knocked on your door if you hadn't written that letter? Never.Karen:                          13:17                Exactly.KJ:                                13:19                Yeah. You know, we often are like, yeah, I was really lucky because, but you made your luck.Karen:                          13:24                Yeah, that's very true. And I remember the feeling of like, this is really happening. Like, Oh my gosh. And his real jam, the thing he's really good at helping people figure out is what's your brand. And so we went through, as I said, he took one look at my goofy website that I had been working on and he was like, Oh, you know, this isn't going to fly. Yes, not this. Exactly. And then we spent, I would say probably a good part of those first three months coming up with the concept and the brand. And I, I will never forget the day after trying three or four, you know, names, when I said to him, you know, what I've been really thinking about and pushing around is the idea of a podcast called we turned out okay. And he was like, that's it. He goes, that's it. And then he goes, you know what your tagline is? It's the modern parent's guide to old school parenting. I was like, yes. And it was just so much fun. So the whole process was fun and like he made it fun and he made me feel like I could do this, you know? Whereas at home I was sort of getting a little bit of like, are you sure? Do you really want to take this on? This is a lot for somebody with, you know, with the conditions and the problems that you've got. And it was so motivating and such fun to be in that program, so I'm grateful to him. Very grateful.KJ:                                14:43                Well, and it's cool that it came about that he offered that to you, but this is also sort of a moment to recognize that getting some coaching can be super helpful. I think a lot of us are really reluctant to spend money on our dreams and, and also we have this feeling that if we were really capable, if we could really do it, we could do it on our own.Karen:                          15:08                Exactly.KJ:                                15:10                If I were a real writer, I wouldn't need an editor's help. If I were a real entrepreneur, I wouldn't need a coach to guide me through finding my brand. And that is, that's just, that's just not true. We all need to learn where we're going and getting in with an expert can can cut your time in half, it can inspire you, it can help you see exactly what you saw, which was that it might not look to people on the outside like you were ready to do this, but you wanted to prioritize it. I think that's cool, too.Karen:                          15:45                Yeah. So that's how I got started. That's a really long story for how I got started.KJ:                                15:51                Okay. We accept long stories. So at this point, you're podcasting and then you must at some point have sort of decided, well, I need some blog, I need some writing to go with this podcast. Let us know how you figured out how to do that, especially given that you were gonna need to dictate.Karen:                          16:15                So I think one of the, one of the things that a lot of people overlook I guess or don't want to hear maybe, is that you've got to start it before you know what it is. You have to start it before it's fully formed. And I started the podcast in 2014 or 2015, it's just over four years old. So 290 episodes in, in four years and counting. I got to maybe like 56 or 57 and I did an episode called Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics and people went nuts for it. Like I started to get emails from people and that got downloaded more than any other episode I'd ever done. People really responded to the idea that, wait a minute, there are these little Ninja tactics I can do to make my home life better? It's super easy, but things that I know as an early childhood professional that maybe, a parent who's not, wouldn't know, you know what I mean? So things like, how to make no sound like yes was one of those first Ninja Tactics. What I did from that was I decided to write a book called Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics. And I wanted to be able to talk about it in written form as well. You know, there's this idea you should have an email list. I've been taking a lot of time to try and figure out what my email list is going to be and I've gotten to 2019 and I figured it out and I love it. And people again are really responding to it. It's a weekly newsletter now, where I always get to vary it. But, I started it as, Hey, if you want to get notified when Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics is available, then I'll put you on this email list and you can find out and that really grew from there. For me it's been a lot of experimentation and exploring my burnout rate. So I used to do a six episodes in a month. And I realized that after the second year that that was not working for me. It was too much. I couldn't concentrate on my coaching clients if I was spending that much time on the podcast. Instead, I started doing these biweekly live members only calls for the people in my community. And, and if I did that twice a month instead of this extra podcast, I suddenly, I wasn't burned out anymore. I was focusing my energies in the right place because the people in the community could then say to me, here's my question about this. And I could go, Oh my God, people who listen to the podcast need to hear about that too. So I'm serving my clients first and then being able to bring these cool things to the listeners.KJ:                                19:08                Right.Karen:                          19:09                So, then I started listening to Joanna Penn, the Creative Penn podcast. And I started to sort of reframe myself as not just as a podcaster, but as an author as well. And what she does is so cool because she's all about like write books that are really professional and well written and fantastic at giving good advice and keep writing them. And I was like, you know what, that's something I could do. And so I've been working on that.KJ:                                19:43                So wait, wait. You're saying that's something I could do, but you don't type.Karen:                          19:50                No, I don't type, exactly.KJ:                                19:53                First of all, we want to know how you actually do it, but how did you get over that mental block of, you know, I'm going to write, but not with a pen, not with a keyboard, and not with a pencil.Jess:                             20:07                I'm especially waiting to hear about that because I have tried.KJ:                                20:11                We want the mental block first, then we want the tools.Jess:                             20:15                I just can't. I've tried so hard, so I'm dying to hear how you do all the dictation.Karen:                          20:20                Can I just say that it was not without many temper tantrums? I mean, I think this is necessity as the mother of invention. There was no way for me to do this without the speech recognition software. So I had to form a truce with the speech recognition software. So for me over these years now I've spent, I don't know if I've gotten my 10,000 hours in or not yet, but I would say probably. But the way that I got there was by doing it. So, I work much better if I can read something that is printed. So, my husband printed out the entire user manual for speech recognition software. So I was learning the commands - because there are these interesting commands that you can use. So you can tell it to click here, you can tell it to click save, you can bring up a mouse grid. I think if you guys are looking for the tool that has been a lifesaver for me. It's this idea of a mouse grid. So I want you to envision your computer screen and you say the words mouse grid. And what happens is a grid of nine blocks comes up on your screen. Say I want to click something in the lower left corner, that that happens to be the number seven. So I would say seven. And then the mouse grid would reappear, but the whole mouse grid is now where the number seven used to be. And so it's a little more focused now in that corner.KJ:                                21:57                And where do you get something like that?Karen:                          22:00                Where do you get the mouse grid?KJ:                                22:02                Yeah.Karen:                          22:02                Well, I use Dragon Speech Recognition software, so it's a component of that. But I'll tell you, I learned how to use that properly by watching the most beautiful and just heartbreaking video on YouTube. I mean you think you've got problems, right? And then you Google how to use the Dragon mouse grid and the person describing it to you is a person who not only has lost the use of his arms and legs, but also has speech difficulties and they are describing to you how to use this mouse grid and then they are using the mouse grid. By the time he gets to the small enough place in the grid in this video, I am crying. I mean my thought was if somebody like that can not only do that, but teach me how to do it, there is nothing that will stop me. Like what a good, incredibly good example of someone who's making it work no matter what, you know?KJ:                                22:56                Wow. All right, we're going to find that. We're going to link it.Karen:                          22:58                So, the mouse grid is a huge tool. I've discovered that Dragon plays very well with Chrome and not very well with Firefox, for example. So there have been times where I have felt like I was drowning and that I just couldn't get a breath. I wish I had a better description. Like, I will sit down and I'll be like, alright, I'm going to write a blog post and I use the speech recognition software to open Google Chrome and then I use it to navigate. to the inside of my website, not the outside pages everybody sees, but the sort of private admin pages and I get to the correct post.KJ:                                23:56                And you're doing all that using the Dragon Dictate?Karen:                          23:59                I am, yeah.KJ:                                24:00                So we think of Dragon Dictate as something that lets you dictate a story, but you can sort of basically set it up to run your whole...Karen:                          24:09                You can, yeah. You can use their voice commands for all of this. But what I've learned to be more patient with what used to kill me so bad was I would get three quarters of the way through that process and then I would open the dictation box, but sometimes Dragon can't see and doesn't know what you're trying to do. I don't know how else to describe it - it won't write anything. You'll say something and it will say, we can't recognize that speech or something and you're just like ugh. So I would get all the way to that point and then the app would crash or something like that. Talk about temper tantrums! But I just kept playing the song It's a Long Way to the Top by AC DC. I kept thinking to myself, there's no other way. Like it's either this or you go throw yourself in front of a train, like what's it gonna be here honey? And, I knew I wasn't going to do that, so I was gonna have to keep doing this basically. Does that make sense?KJ:                                25:15                Oh yeah, no, it totally, it totally makes sense. So now you're writing a book via Dragon Dictation and all of the challenges that that entails and then you're editing it the same way.Karen:                          25:33                I am. And, and I have learned - this was such a breakthrough for me. So, say if I'm going to write the title of a chapter and have Dragon sort of recognize it, I can now make a recording for my podcast, get my microphone out and my headphones and stuff like that. And I can say the following. So, here's the title of my book that dragon will recognize. OK. are you ready?KJ:                                26:04                Yeah.Karen:                          26:05                Cap educating cap. Happy cap kids, colon numeral nine cap ways to cap help cap your cap, child cap, learn cap to cap and joy cap learning, something like that. I can't remember it exactly, but I'm, that's the book I'm working on right now.KJ:                                26:19                So, you're fluent in, you're fluent in punctuation.Jess:                             26:24                There really is a whole other language.Karen:                          26:26                It's a whole other language. But what's neat is you can get into the flow of it in a recording sense. So like I can record 15 minutes of language that sounds like that. And, and I can, there's a transcribe button in Dragon and it will take that and put it on paper but legibly so that it can be read. It just says educating happy kids. Nine ways to help your child learn what they need to know. And it's like such a mirror every time this, every time I see this appearing, I'm just like, yay!KJ:                                26:59                I need to quickly hop in and apologize for only naming your most recent book cause I knew that you had more. But in the intro I, for whatever reason just threw out the first one. We will be listing them all.Karen:                          27:10                Oh, thank you. No worries. I mean, I appreciated that you listed any of them. I mean this is the one that I'm currently working on, so this is the one that my brain is like really thinking about. So I just today, today I sent it off to my editor for final revisions, so yay.Jess:                             27:31                It was funny when you said the thing about how if you want to do this thing badly enough, you can figure it out. But when we were interviewing Shane recently about the fact that he uses his two thumbs to type entire books on his iPhone and Oh my gosh, you know, KJ and I used to have a segment in the show called Ow It Hurts, but it was always like it hurts. Like, Oh, I don't really want to write this, but not like I have to write an entire book with my two thumbs. If Shane Burcaw can write three books with his thumbs, I think I can figure out the intricacies of how to use dictation software.Karen:                          28:17                If you want to, if it's a real goal of yours. I think a lot of times that I would not be a podcaster or an author without the tendon disorder. Like I was, I was too invested in my own life. I guess. I remember sort of having this yearning, like I remember being 38 about a decade ago and just saying to my husband, like, you know what, isn't there anything else? I mean, I love you and I love the kids, but isn't there anything else? I think had I not gotten the tendon disorder and, and had all of that other stuff kind of stripped away from me, I'm not sure that I would've had the guts even to try something different. Even now I will walk into a Christmas tree shops and I get tired, so I often need to find a seat so you'll find me sitting on the bird seed. This happened just recently. I was in line of Joann Fabrics and the line was so long that I literally sat down on the floor and crossed my legs and apologized to everybody around me and said, this is just what I have to do. I mean, once you've been through things like that, those are really socially embarrassing situations and it's like, well, I can do anything if I can do this.Jess:                             29:36                I just am fascinated. I've never, I'm fascinated. My brain is stuck on the line that I wouldn't be a writer without my tendon disorder. I think, you know, the thing, the very thing that makes that more difficult for you is the thing that made it happen. And I find that really wonderful and fascinating and complicated.Karen:                          29:54                Yeah. Thank you for recognizing it. When I think metamorphosis, that's really what I think of. And I came to our conversation today with a couple of points that I wanted to make sure to cover. If anyone is trying to work in difficult circumstances that, that I thought they might want to know, this is what's worked for me and the first one is to just own it, to say to yourself, this is what I want to do. Like it can be so easy for us to get caught up in I've got to get dinner on the table and I've got all these duties that we have in our day and there can be some guilt around backing away from work or family and saying, I'm taking this time to do this thing that I really want to do. And for me that had to come first.KJ:                                30:44                Yeah. I mean, if, if you are in a situation where you have limited resources, be there physical or mental to put them into this thing that at that moment is only for you is really hard. You know, it's very easy to say to yourself, well, you know, if I'm going to have like an hour of, of like sort of on time today because I'm suffering from exhaustion or because I get physically tired, I should put that into my kids' school meeting or dinner or you know, something. So I think that's really important.Karen:                          31:21                Yeah. That's what's worked for me. I remember lying in bed one morning just before I wrote to Michael O'Neal, just before I started to like come up with this website. And I remember lying in bed one day and every day I had been thinking, you got to get busy living or get busy dying, which is from a movie, it might be from the Shawshank Redemption. I literally would lie in bed going, are you going to get up now cause you got to get busy living or get busy dying. And on this particular day I sat up in bed and I said out loud, I am doing this and I'm not even sure that I knew what this was yet. But like it was this idea of I am breaking free of the sort of constraints. Whether they are because I feel guilty that I can't do very much or because like my time really ought to be spent on this other thing. And I was basically like, I got no hands. So like I'm going to do this, whatever it is.KJ:                                32:21                I was just going to say, okay fine. If you can get your mental head around it. And it also sounded like you had had partner support, which is great, but sometimes we have to go on without it.Karen:                          32:34                Yup. Yup. Yup. It was huge. So Ben used to say to me, he's actually the producer of my show. And what's funny is he has a day job, he goes off to work every day and that doesn't have anything to do with audio. But he went to school for sound engineering and his friends from college are people who work on the Today Show or who have won Grammy's and stuff like that. And he basically decided that his life was going to take a different path, but we used to joke, we'd pass a radio station in the car and I'd be like, Hey, let's move here and I'll be the talent and you can be the producer. And like that's kind of what's happened, which is so interesting. So he gets to feed his audio soul a little bit. He gets to geek out over, you know, making the show sound great and like all the cool, you know, little audio things that he couldn't do before. So support is really important. But I will say this, too. Ben is the one who, he was like, he used to say like, we need to get you with your friends because you're so much happier when you're like with people. He would say, I've seen you come alive today. We went to a party or something and cause it's just so hard to be sitting alone and you know, only feeling like you can't do stuff. So, when I said to him, I think I'd like to try starting a a business, he was like, yes, please. I'm glad because you need something to do with your mind. So he was always very, very supportive from the beginning. I didn't think to put that on the list, but I think that's probably pretty important.KJ:                                34:05                Well, it's, it's hard to be the partner because you can think to yourself, you know, if I were in that position, I would do such and such. Well, and first of all, you don't know what you would do, but secondly, you can't actually do it. So, you know, you can look at your partner and see, well I, she really needs to get out there and, and do stuff with her friends. But it's not like he can pack you into the car.Karen:                          34:25                Yeah, exactly.KJ:                                34:28                To be them too. All right, well what comes next?Karen:                          34:29                Alright. So next for me was the idea of just starting small, like small habits have won the day for me. When I first started, and even sometimes now, I have a version of your open the document, you know what I mean? And I always felt like, so if you've got 5% use of your hands, what can you dedicate that 5% to? And sometimes it was twirling spaghetti and that was all I had, you know. But if I've got 15 minutes, if I can take the next 15 minutes and dedicated to writing something like, and then I don't do anything else for the rest of the day, that's fine. I put one foot in front of the other today. I took one step. So really small habits that you do repeatedly. The next thing I think, cause you can say to yourself like, it's too big. I can't, I just can't. But, but if you try to break it down to like the smallest step, the step, the step that you feel like, okay, I can do that, I will do that. And then you're done for the day and you come back to it the next day. So small habits are fun and good. The next one that comes up for me is celebrate the wins. Even the tiny ones like - so actually, I've been writing a fictional book one minute at a time, which I know sounds crazy, but it worked for Neil Gaiman so I feel like it's gonna work for me.KJ:                                35:57                It's really the only way to do it. It's just a question of whether they're consecutive minutes or not.Karen:                          36:02                Yes, exactly. I just don't have the time to commit to even 15 minutes a day of fiction writing, but I can open a notebook and it's actually, it's hand strengthening practice too is how I look at it. I can open a notebook and I can write a sentence. And what I've been taken to is I'll write a full sentence and then I'll make the next sentence be like the beginning of the next sentence. So the next day when I come back, I've got a writing prompt basically. And I have found that it's enough to keep this story alive for me. Like, so I had the idea for the novel and I did a lot of work around who's who, what's the main character dealing with? I have a dear friend who lives in Maine and the property next to her dream property has been taken over by a jerky landlord who insists on bringing like people from away who shoot off guns and bring bands in and they're raising a family. And so I'm writing this to give her some hope, basically. I've been having a ball with it, one minute at a time. So that's one of my one minute, like that's one of my tiny habits. I can't do more than that. So that's what I do. And when I do it, I celebrate that win, like I did this today. Yes.KJ:                                37:20                Yes. All right. Keep going. Do you have time to?Karen:                          37:25                I got two more, two more. I think my most important resource is energy. When my energy level is gone, it is gone and I have to go to sleep for eight hours to get it back. So, I tend to work in projects and the way I think of it is like I'll do so quarterly, I'll look at this each quarter anew and my project for the first month of the quarter is recording the podcast episodes and getting those show notes done so that for the whole quarter. So now I've got two other months that I can keep writing or I can do other cool stuff. This August we're gonna have a staycation. So I get to do that because I planned in July for August. So I'll get that project completed and then work on the next project. So, for this quarter it's been educating happy kids has been really my next project. That and rest.KJ:                                38:24                That's your next book, right?Karen:                          38:25                Yup. That's my next book. I have found that is a really great way to manage my energy level because I can see progress as I'm working through a bigger project. For me that really, really works. It may not work for everyone. Some people might like to sort of get a little bit of something done every day repeatedly, but I like to be able to say, okay, that project is finished and now I can move on to the next one. So I've been doing that. And then the last one, and this is probably the most important one, is the idea of trying again tomorrow. So like if today is a blowout, if you cannot do it, if, if everything has gone wrong today, you still have the choice to get up and try again tomorrow.KJ:                                39:11                Cool. Yeah, no, that's, that's great. I love it.Jess:                             39:14                We've also observed in the past, this happens to me with writing and it happens to me with teaching that some of my very worst teaching and writing days have been followed by some of my best. So that's a good reminder for me that no matter how crappy things go on one day it can turn around completely the next.Karen:                          39:33                Yup. Yup. And as I think as a part of all of this, there's this idea of support.Speaker 3:                    39:39                Like we talked about that a little bit with my husband, right? But you guys are such a support for me. The #AmWriting Facebook group is one of the only places I go on Facebook. I go there and I go into the group of We Turned Out Okay listeners that I have developed over there,KJ:                                39:55                It is the only place I go.Jess:                             39:57                It's literally true. KJ and I, what we did was we made it so that the group is our bookmark for Facebook. So if you're going to go on Facebook, you have to go there.Karen:                          40:07                No way.Jess:                             40:08                Yeah.KJ:                                40:09                You can, that you could have two bookmarks, one for our group and one for your group and then you never have to risk being caught up in something

In Yeshiva - a system of advanced learning in the orthodox Jewish world, there’s a saying: “Shiv'im Panim laTorah” - which means “there are 70 faces of Torah”, but implies that there are many equally valid ways of getting to a certain point. That idea resonates with IT practitioners, because there are many paths that led us into our career in tech. In this episode, Leon continues the conversation with guests Corey Adler, Rabbi Ben Greenberg, and returning guest Yechiel Kalmenson about how that made that literal pivot, from yeshiva into the world of IT, and what their experiences - both religious and technical taught them along the way. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of it with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on https://adatosystems.com. Thanks! Doug: 00:22 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:48 This is a continuation of the discussion I started last week with Yechiel Kalmenson, Ben Greenberg and Corey Adler on how they pivoted from a life of Orthodox Jewish studies into a career in it. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation. Leon: 01:03 Okay. So, I think a lot of people are asking themselves at this point, now that they have a better sense of what yeshiva was like and how very different it is from a secular education, how very different that kind of world is from sort of a normal working situation: How did you do it? How did you go from this really intensive... Yechiel, I think you said from 7:30 in the morning until 9 or 10 o'clock at night learning constantly, with a couple of bathroom breaks and a little bit of food and maybe a nap... go from that to learning to code or learning IT or whatever it was? How did you get through it? And in fact, Yechiel, since I mentioned it, why don't you go first? Yechiel: 01:42 So, I guess as I transitioned to programming through tech support, so I was doing that before. Though I knew I would have to move on at some point because tech support... There was, there was a limit to how much I could grow there and how far it can get. And actually, it's funny, before you asked, you asked like, you know, "what would your mother think?" She was actually the one who, it was her idea. She had someone in her office who went to a bootcamp, (actually a friend of mine) who went to bootcamp and later got a job as a programmer. And she was telling me, "No, why didn't you do that? You know, you're smart, you can do that." And I was like, "No, that's not for me." You know, in my head at least "no programmers were these genius hackers who had been born with a silver keyboard in their laps. And like, that wasn't me. And like, you know, I might be smart, I'm not that kind of smart. And I like, I just kept telling her, "No, that's not for me. I, you know, he could do it. I can't." And then I promptly went home and took my first coding class and been hooked ever since. Corey: 02:42 For the record, my keyboard was platinum, not silver. Yechiel: 02:46 Well, Ya know, we're talking about the layman... Lay folks. Leon: 02:50 right, well, he's Brooklyn, you're Chicago, you know, there's a whole economic strata. Yechiel: 02:55 Right. Anyway, so I took a few free coding classes online and got hooked and saw that this actually was something I could do and this was something I enjoyed. And once I realized that I was ready to commit to it for the long run, I enrolled in a bootcamp - FlatIron School. I don't know if you heard of it. I took it part time while I was still doing tech support. So back to our yeshiva days, I would work all day and then code all night, up too late. You know, until 2 to 3:00 AM like three or four nights a week. But it was a transformative experience. I met Ben at the same bootcamp. He went to the same boot camp as me. He's been bugging me ever since. And then half year later I got my first developer job. Leon: 03:38 So Ben? Ben: 03:39 So I decided to go to the Flat Iron school, as Yechiel did for the sole purpose and aim to continually bug him about my challenges in programming for the rest of my professional life. And I and to have someone to bother on Slack forever and ever and ever. But I also chose Flat Iron school in addition to Yechiel because I knew that I needed to retool and retrain and I knew I also didn't have a lot of time to do that. When you have already a family and responsibilities, you need to make a career transition quick. There's no time to go back for another four year program or two year program or even a one year program. And so the Flat Iron school at that point had a self paced program. I think it still does. I'm pretty sure it does. But it has a self paced program where you basically can do the program as fast as you can do it. And I tried to do it really fast. I left my job and I did it full time over the course of a summer - a summer plus a little more. Hours and hours and hours. And I actually think that spending four years in a yeshiva/college combined was a really great prep for that, because as Yechiel mentioned earlier, that days are very long. And balancing a dual curriculum of yeshiva studies in college meant that when I was in college, I was starting my day at around seven in the morning and ending at around 11 o'clock at night in studies all day between yeshiva curriculum and a yeshiva, (Beit midrash) study hall time. And combining that with traditional college classes. So the bootcamp - which is meant to be a very intense experience because it's full time and it's a lot of material - actually didn't feel that intense. It actually felt less. So it was actually a pretty relaxing experience, although intellectually stimulating and it definitely pushed me in my knowledge and learning. I didn't feel it didn't feel overwhelming because I had that experience from combining yeshiva and college at the same time, which is a very intense thing to do. And so, uh, within a few months of graduating from the boot camp I also found my first job, and it happened to be seated right next to Yechiel in the same company. Yechiel: 06:07 So I thought I'd gotten rid of him Ben: 06:08 ... on Long Island. Yeah. Cause everything eventually ends up back on Long Island. So we worked together for about a year, one cubicle apart from each other in a lovely place where it felt like you walked into the set of "The Office" every day. Leon: 06:29 So I've been in it for 30 years and, and it's amazing how many environments that show evokes for folks. It wasn't just there. Ben: 06:39 No, definitely not. Not this just in Scranton Pennsylvania. Leon: 06:42 Okay. Corey, it's your turn. Corey: 06:45 So I went to NYU as previously mentioned I got degrees in computer science and Jewish history. Afterwards I went to Case Western for only one year of Grad school, which is a story in and of itself, but it is something that my brother, who has a Ph.d and just recently got tenure at Northeastern Illinois University loves to beat me over the head with on occasion... Leon: 07:14 I was gonna say he doesn't rub that in your face at all? Every five minutes. Corey: 07:17 Oh he totally does . But I get to make fun of him because I make more money than he does. Leon: 07:22 Well, a Ph.d in history or in political science only takes one so far. Corey: 07:27 It does. That's really true. That's really true. So afterwards, then after Case Western, I went into the workforce and started worshiping at the altar of Stack Overflow. Leon: 07:39 And who doesn't do that? I want to point out that , recently I had the privilege of taking a few folks who were sort of in the adult version of yeshiva called kollel, which is for married guys. And they had been doing this for just a very little bit of money, but were learning scripture, Torah, all day long and realized - very much like you three did - that they needed to get a job. That their time of being able to do this was sort of coming to an end. And we also realized in the community that IT might be a wonderful transition point. And so I took them, in a period of about four months, from basically being at a point where the most technically advanced thing that they used was a flip phone. You know, not even a chocolate bar phone, but just one of the old dumb flip phones into programming, network engineering, sysadmin. And a lot of people said, "How could they do that? How could you take them so far, so fast?" And one of the things I want to emphasize for the folks who are listening is that the yeshiva program is not one that's structured to tell you the answers, (which we alluded to before). It's not about, "do you know the answer to this test?" "Okay, I pass the test . Moving on." It's, do you know how to think about the material? Do you know how to ask yourself - not just "what is the question and the answer", [but] "why is THAT the question? Why did they ask that question here? They could have asked any one of a dozen or two dozen or a million possible questions about this material. Why did they start there?" And when you start to look at information that way, why was that the question they asked? Why was that the answer they gave? Why didn't they give this other answer? When you start to think about that, your brain begins to process information in a very different way. And what that means is that you can categorize and digest information - especially IT information - much more efficiently than folks who might've come up through a more traditional learning program. And we'll talk about that in a little bit, but I just wanted to highlight that because it came out in each of your stories. So I'm curious on the flip side, what about this transition to IT do you think was harder for you three coming from yeshiva than it might have been for folks coming from a different route, from a more traditional American educational route. Yechiel, how about you go first? Yechiel: 10:11 I guess the main point is like Ben mentioned, it applies to any career change. I don't know if it applies specifically to someone coming from the yeshiva or from the rabbinate. The lack of formal education in the field, with me I didn't get a computer science degree. I didn't go to college for four years learning this stuff. And I know there are people in the field who believe that that is a hindrance. In my professional life, I didn't find that to be the case. I mean I appreciate the value of a computer science degree. I mean it teaches you the theory behind computing, the theory behind... and it is something that helps me in my life now. But to get started, it's like, when you're a carpenter, you don't have to know the theory of how the tools work, how, wood works. All you have to know is how to actually take a saw and a hammer and a nail and make things work. And that's something you can pick up. My first job as a web developer, that was literally just banging tools and nails together. And sometimes actually did feel that way. Like Ben can attest. And even though now I'm doing more backend-y, computer science heavy stuff, that's all stuff I was able to pick up later on. I was able to pick it up on the job as they say. Ben: 11:29 I often imagine, or conceive of our projects together in our first job together as we were building a sukkah out of code and a sukkah is... during one of the Jewish holidays in the calendar year, we're meant to go outside and build these temporary structures to dwell in for a week, and they're very fragile structures, that can easily yield themselves to the wind, to rain, to cold. And that's the intention behind them - is to reflect on the fragility of life. And so, often times, the code we're building in that first job felt very much like this sukkah of code. Um, the fragility of code. Yechiel: 12:14 And if I can extend that analogy, Leon: 12:17 Of course you can! We KNOW you can. Yechiel: 12:18 There's a popular meme that goes around every year around Sukkot time (which is the holiday when we build the Sukkah), of a photoshop-ed sign at a Home Depot saying "Dear Jewish customers: Unfortunately, we don't know what the thing that connects a thing to the thing is. You'll have to be more specific." And sometimes googling programming questions can feel like trying to figure out "what is the thing that connects the thing to the thing and does the thing, it makes the thing work? Ben: 12:46 It's an interesting question you asked. And I think for me the biggest differentiator there was: ultimately that the work I'm doing nowadays is not imbued with the same level of... sanctity? Uh, the same level of holiness, the same level of devotion and dedication that the work I did before was imbued with. And and I think in some ways it was both simultaneously challenging to come to terms with that, and come and reckon with that; but it also has made my life a lot easier. It both a challenging thing... I'm used to working in what I do 24 hours a day and having no differentiation between work and life, and yet getting used to having the differentiation between work in life. And having a time when I'm not working has actually been really pleasant. And discovering these things called "weekends" has been really nice. I didn't know what they were before and now I know what they are and they're... It almost feels like the episode of "Downton Abbey" when the matriarch of the family asks very naively and very innocently - but also from a great place of great privilege - "A 'week end'? What is a week end?" I asked that out of, not great privilege, but out of great stress. "What is a weekend?" And now I know what a weekend is and I never want to lose it ever again. Leon: 14:28 I just have to emphasize, again, for the it folks who listen to the show, that if you feel like you've been overwhelmed, just think of the hardworking rabbis who have... you know, we talk about 60 hour weeks in IT and "Oh my gosh, we have a Sev one call that went all night" and things like that... That if you wondered if there was something that was a notch higher, apparently the rabbinate is it. So just to let you know. Okay. So Corey, how about for you? Corey: 14:56 For me the most difficult thing was just trying to find the right balance between my work life and my religious life. So in keeping those two worlds kind of separate, but kind of mingled. But then also having to try to explain to people what that meant. So try to explain to my boss, "No, I'm sorry. I understand that there's a sprint launch coming up on Monday, but I can't make it because there's the holiday" Or in winter time, "Yeah. I'm sorry. I can't be at a four o'clock meeting on a Friday..." Leon: 15:33 ...because sundown is a half hour from now. Corey: 15:35 Yeah. The Sabbath is starting and I just can't make it or "Yes, I'm very appreciative that you bought lunch for everybody, but I can't actually eat this." And "Yes, I understand. And no, this didn't have to be blessed by a rabbi" Or "No, I can't make a 7:30am meeting in Pennsylvania because I've got to attend morning services." And also the idea that so many times - especially earlier on in my career - I would run into people who are doing 50 - 60 hour work weeks, and they're telling me all about working on the weekend and doing some Saturday work. And for me it's, "Well, okay, well how am I going to make myself look like I'm working as hard as they are, but I have one less day to put in the same hours that they are?" So it was really trying to maintain that balance between my work life, my professional life, and having my religious life. And where I was allowing the two to kind of coexist. Leon: 16:41 Interesting. Interesting. All right, so we started to hit on it, but I want to take the flip side of 'what was easier, coming from a yeshiva background'? What did you find about the transition to IT that was easier for you? Again, we talked about a few things, but is there anything else you wanted to add? Yechiel: 16:55 So I guess like you mentioned earlier, yeshiva thinking, for those who had a chance to look a little bit at the Talmud, yeshiva thinking, or yeshiva learning really trains you for thinking in abstract concepts. When you're programming, you're always trying to abstract things. You have a problem, a real physical world problem and you needed to abstract it into the idea what is the problem... what's the question behind the problem? What's the ultimate problem? And there are layers upon layers upon layers of abstractions. And I found that my time in FlatIron... I always, like I told you I'm a teacher at heart. I was always going back and helping students. And I found that this is something that a lot of people coming in from other fields struggled with that I struggled a lot less. Just idea that like when your screen says "x", it doesn't mean "x". It means the idea behind "x". It was something that came more naturally to me and that's yeshivas in general. Specifically. I learned in a Hasidic yeshiva, which puts a stronger emphasis on philosophical and Jewish philosophy. So they were constantly abstracting stuff. Going layers and layers deeper into the ideas. So that's one idea which you touched upon. Another idea actually, which I found interesting, which is not universal to tech, but and my company, Pivotal, we're very strong on the idea of pair programming. Like literally that's all... Like all day, every day. Every bit of code is written by a pair. We don't, we don't work on our own. We rarely ever solo on our own. And that that's a challenge to a lot of pivots moving into Pivotal. But actually at yeshiva, that is how we do all of our learning. Most of our learning is not done through lectures or listening to rabbis teach. There is some of that, but most of the learning is actually done in a system called a chavrusa, which is two people sitting together and learning together, trying to figure out the passage of Talmud, trying to figure out the commentary together, and delving deeper and deeper. So the idea of back and forth, exchanging ideas, thinking out loud, breaking a problem down together with someone else is something that came naturally to me and which I actually enjoyed when I came to Pivotal. Corey: 19:10 Does that make yeshivas agile? Yechiel: 19:11 Yes we are. We have a sprints. We have... Leon: 19:14 Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, you're right! Yeshivas are the original agile organization. Ben: 19:22 So who are the product managers in the yeshiva? Corey: 19:26 The Mashgiach? Yechiel: 19:27 The Mashgiach is sort of the supervisor who lays out the road map, tells you which material you're responsible to cover over the next week or so. And then you break off. And then at the end there's a retro where the Rosh Yeshiva, the head of the yeshiva gives a lecture on the material. Leon: 19:44 I see a blog post - a very serious blog post on this Ben: 19:49 In the Torah && Tech newsletter. Leon: 19:50 This is awesome. Okay. So Ben, how about you? Speaker 4: 19:54 Everything Yechiel said resonated and I would say just to add a little bit to that, the ability to switch back and forth between the concept and the implementation of the concepts. Between finding in the details, in the practical details, finding the conceptualization and then in the conceptualization, being able to go into the practical details, back and forth I think is very much a part of the world of programming. And I did also see it as an area that was very hard for a lot of people to come to terms with. That "I'm looking at this line of code and I know this line of code is executing this following thing, but in the execution of this following thing, it's also demonstrating to me this programming concept. And I see the concept through its execution" - is actually just a natural part of learning in the yeshiva world. And it just makes a lot of sense, it made a lot of sense to me from the beginning. I think that's a wonderful thing to port over from yeshiva life into IT life. Leon: 21:13 That's beautiful. Corey. Corey: 21:16 For me, and I touched upon this earlier, which was the idea of having to go step by step through the thing. You can't just jump to the end. And I'm sure we're aware of some of the, the traditional introductions to the idea of logical coding, like the, the old "Peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich" example. Tell me how to make a peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich. Leon: 21:43 And if you're our friend Aaron Wolf, you actually have several loaves of bread and a few jars of peanut butter and a few other things. And you end up destroying a bunch of those as the students in the class attempt to try to tell you how to do that and do it wrong and realize the flaw in their execution instructions. Corey: 22:00 Yeah. And it ended up destroying some students along the way. Leon: 22:02 Well, right. But that's just all part of the fun. Corey: 22:05 That's true. You gotta take your fun where you can Leon: 22:08 Shout out to Aaron Wolf. Corey: 22:12 So going step by step. And thinking about things logically, having to think things through - if something doesn't work, trying to question what's going on. Those things really ended up helping a lot when I started out. Leon: 22:32 Nice Leon: 22:34 We know you can't listen to our podcasts all day. So out of respect for your time, we've broken this particular discussion up. Come back next week where we continue our conversations about "Pivoting Our Career On the Tip of a Torah Scroll." Josh: 22:46 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, https://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect to us on social media. Leon: 23:00 So there's these three rabbis that walk into a bar. Ben: 23:00 Uh, that's not how it goes. Yechiel: 23:00 I think you totally ruined that joke. Corey: 23:00 This is how that joke goes.  

In Yeshiva - a system of advanced learning in the orthodox Jewish world, there’s a saying: “Shiv'im Panim laTorah” - which means “there are 70 faces of Torah”, but implies that there are many equally valid ways of getting to a certain point. That idea resonates with IT practitioners, because there are many paths that led us into our career in tech. In this episode, Leon speaks with guests Corey Adler, Rabbi Ben Greenberg, and returning guest Yechiel Kalmenson about how that made that literal pivot, from yeshiva into the world of IT, and what their experiences - both religious and technical taught them along the way. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of it with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on https://adatosystems.com. Thanks! Josh: 00:24 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:48 In yeshiva, a system of a dance learning in the orthodox Jewish world, there's a saying: "Shiviim paanim laTorah,", which means "there are 70 faces of Torah". But it implies that there are many equally valid ways of getting to a certain point. That idea resonates with it folks, because there are many paths that led us to our career in tech. Today I'm going to speak to people who made that literal pivot - from yeshiva into the world of IT - and what their experiences, both religious and technical, taught them along the way. I'm Leon Adato, and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are returning guest Yechiel Kalmenson Yechiel: 01:20 Hey, thanks for having me back. Leon: 01:24 No problem. And also his partner in coding crime, Rabbi Ben Greenberg. Ben: 01:29 It's great to be here. Leon: 01:31 It is wonderful to have you. And sitting across from me, because he's also a Cleveland-based Orthodox Jewish Geek, is Corey Adler Corey: 01:39 Live long and prosper, Papu. New Speaker: 01:41 There we go. Okay. So before we dive into the actual topic at hand, I want to let you all do a little bit of shameless self promotion. Everyone, take a minute and tell the Technically Religious audience a little bit about who you are and how they can find you on the interwebs. Corey: 01:58 So, hi, I am Corey Adler. I am a team lead engineer at Autosoft. You can find me on Twitter @CoreyAdler and I am the constant pain and Leon side, Leon: 02:08 Literally and figuratively, yes! Yechiel: 02:10 Well, uh, my name is Yechiel. I'm a software engineer at Pivotal. Um, on Twitter you can find me @YechielK. My blog is at RabbiOnRails.io, and I also co-author a weekly newsletter called "Torah & Tech" with Ben Greenberg. Ben: 02:26 And I am that Ben Greenberg that Yechiel just mentioned. I'm a developer advocate at Nexmo, the Vonage API platform. And I also am that coauthor of "Torah & Tech" with Yechiel, and you can find me on the Twitter world @RabbiGreenberg, or on my website at BenGreenberg.dev. Leon: 02:44 Great. And for those people who are wondering, we're going to have all of those links and everything in the show notes. And finally I should just to round out the four, uh, Orthodox people of the apocalypse, I guess? I don't know. Corey: 02:56 You've been watching too much Good Omens. Leon: 02:58 Right? I just finished binge watching it. Anyway. I am Leon Adato and you can find me on the twitters @LeonAdato, I did not attend to Shiva, which is a point that my children who DID attend yeshiva are quick to mention whenever I try to share any sort of Torah knowledge. I started out in theater. I know that comes as a complete shock to folks who wonder why I could do that if I'm so shy. It's almost as weird a path to IT as Torah is. And one that's definitely informed my understanding along the way. But again, we're focusing on this yeshiva path and that's where I want to start. I want to hear from each of you, where you started out, what your sort of, growing up experience was. Ben: 03:41 Uh sure. So I guess I'll start. So I grew up in San Diego, California, a little far also from the center of what seems like the center of Orthodox Jewish life in America, in New York City. But I moved to New York for Yeshiva and college at the same time. And I went to a yeshiva college called in English, the Lander college for Men, and in Hebrew, or in a New York accented Hebrew, The Beis Medrash L'Talmud, which was and still is in Queens, in a little neighborhood in Queens called Q Gardens Hills. And so I was there for four years, right, that simultaneously yeshiva and college. And then after I graduated that I said, "I'm not done with yeshiva." So I went for another four years to another yeshiva, this time to study for a rabbinic ordination. And I did that at yeshiva called - and they only have a Hebrew names so I apologize for the three words in Hebrew here - Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, which at that time was based near Columbia University in the upper west side of Manhattan, and is now in Riverdale, which is a neighborhood in the Bronx, also in New York City. Corey: 04:55 So I guess I'll go next then. I grew up, born and raised in Chicago. I went to Skokie Yeshivah, and that's yeh-shivuh, not Yeshiva. Why? It's that way. Nobody knows. Leon: 05:07 But they beat you enough until you just stopped saying it the other way. Corey: 05:10 You get shamed if you say it the wrong way there. After high school I went to tlearn in yeshiva in the old city of Jerusalem for two years at a place called Nativ Ariyeh. Afterwards I came back to the United States and went to New York University. Not "YU" Leon: 05:30 Yeah, NYU, not YU. I went to NYU also, although we didn't know each other because I'm old and you're a baby. Okay. So that means Yechiel you're bringing up the rear on this one. Yechiel: 05:43 Yeah. I'll round off the lineup. So, I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, center of the world. But for yeshiva, I left town. I went to Detroit, I was there for five years after which I went to a yeshiva in a small village in Israel called Kfar Chabad. Then I came back to New York and I studied, for my Rabbinic ordination at the Central Chabad yeshiva in Crown Heights in New York. Leon: 06:10 Fantastic. Okay. So now we get to laugh at ourselves when we were young and idealistic and had no idea what the world was going to throw at us. What were your plans at that time? Like what did you think life was going to be like? You know, IT may not have been your ultimate life goal. So what did you think it was going to be? Yechiel we'll go backwards. We'll start with you this time. Yechiel: 06:32 I'm glad you can laugh because I actually look back to those days pretty fondly. So back then I was of course very idealistic. My plans were to be a Chabad rabbi. For those in the audience who don't know Chabad is a sect within Orthodox Judaism. And at least for the sake of simplicity all I'm going to say about them is that they're very strong into Jewish outreach and bringing Judaism to unaffiliated Jews, all Jews. So back then I had plans to be, to go out somewhere in the world and be a Chabad rabbi and that's what I was studying towards and what I was learning. And in fact after I got married, I even did live out part of that. I moved to Long Island for a few years and we helped a local Chabad house until eventually the bills caught up with us and we realized that it wasn't paying. Leon: 07:23 So Ben, how about you? Ben: 07:24 So I first of all, I do want to comment on the fact that only a Brooklynite would think "moving out of town" was moving to Long Island, New York. I do just want to make that comment as we're engaging in this conversation. Leon: 07:39 It is definitely the New York state of mind. Corey: 07:41 Yup. Ben: 07:42 And I also do want to say another wonderful thing about... well *a* wonderful thing about Chabad: In my role now is a developer advocate. I do a lot of traveling and I have encountered and have had the great fortune to spend, many Shabbatot and holidays - many Jewish Shabbats, Sabbaths - with Chabad houses around the world and have truly seen the diversity of both Jews and non Jews who attend Chabba for Shabbat meals, for Shabbat services. Just a couple weeks ago I was at Chabad in Venice in Italy and saw just really like every, every type of person. The whole spectrum of human life, it felt like, was present in the Jewish ghetto in the courtyard, celebrating Friday night services and dancing in the streets for Shabbat services with the Chabad. So it was really just quite beautiful. I had such a wonderful time in yeshiva for those eight years, I decided I actually wanted to be a rabbi and so I spent about 10 years of my life actually working as one. And I worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a campus Rabbi, A Hillel Rabbi, which is central for Jewish student life on campus. And then I went from there and I worked as a congregational rabbi in Colorado. And then I actually did some community organizing work after that in Chicago around gun violence and immigration reform. And so I kind of got to experience both nonprofit Jewish organizational life in the latter part of my career in the Jewish world. And then also in the beginning part, more traditional forms of being a rabbi, like a campus outreach and congregational rabbinate, the synagogue / pulpit rabbinate. So I actually did it for a bit and I feel fortunate that I've had that opportunity. Leon: 09:49 Wow. That was kind of the gamut. Okay. Corey top that! Corey: 09:54 For me, actually, I've known since fifth grade, pouring over old Tiger Direct catalogs Leon: 10:04 Oh that brings back..., Corey: 10:04 I've known for a long time that I wanted to get somewhere into the tech industry. But I always, I imagined myself originally going into programming video games. I loved playing Starcraft and Madden and all these fun games and I wanted to actually work for one of these companies and imagined it was going to be so much fun programming video games for a living. Speaker 1: 10:32 So, so you didn't, you didn't have visions of being a Chabad rabbi on Mars? Corey: 10:37 No. Leon: 10:38 Okay. All right. Okay, fine. So, um, along with that, along with what you thought was going to be, what was the part - because I know a lot of the folks who listen to Technically Religious don't have a window into this world. So what was the thing that you enjoyed the most; or the most impactful thing about that part of your life that, you know, the time that you were learning in yeshiva? What was it that that really just, you know, would have drawn you back? That you would've gone back again? That you look back most fondly. Ben: 11:05 So for me, I think there are very few spaces in life, or opportunities in life where you get to just sit and ask questions, meaningful questions, and engage in the pursuit of trying to figure out what... meaning: trying to figure out the intentionality behind why... why you do things, why you don't do things? And get engaged in just intense philosophical, theological questions ranging from sometimes the most pragmatic - like, "Is my dishwasher kosher?" And all the ramifications and permutations of that; To very theoretical questions around, "Well, who possesses greater reward for doing a good deed: somebody who is obligated to do that, or somebody who's not obligated?" And spending hours delving deeply into questions like that. Where else do you get the opportunity to do that, and just take the time? It was a precious gift to have that time and to have a carved out dedicated space for those kinds of ponderings and intellectual pursuits. Leon: 12:15 Nice. Nice. Corey, how about you? New Speaker: 12:19 For me it was the ability to stop thinking about the end result and focusing on those individual steps that lead to that end. Quite often we, as a society and as individual people, we end up trying to jump to the conclusion trying to find ... just go straight to the end, see what happens. But when you're learning, Talmud in particular, you may already know what the law is before you started learning a particular section. You may have read it in some law book else elsewhere before you even seen this discussion. But that doesn't mean you're going to know all the particulars. You don't know what all of the edge cases are, as we would say. Arguments for and against various positions. And even on something simple like, "hey, my animal just caused damage to your animal." Like, what do we do in this circumstance. Even that, just getting that ability to focus in and delve into the steps versus getting straight to the end. Leon: 13:25 Nice. Okay. Yechiel anything to add to that? Yechiel: 13:29 Yeah. For me it was actually, the fact that how yeshiva was a world where you're totally immersed in - like people I speak to are generally shocked to find out that a regular day for yeshiva boy, or yeshiva, bochur in our parlance, would start at 7:30 AM and go till 9:30 PM sometimes. And it's nonstop learning. You have a small break for eating, obviously for the three prayers every day. But other than that, it was just nonstop sitting and learning for over 12 hours a day. And that's something that you don't find anywhere else. It was, I think, a totally life transforming experience Leon: 14:07 You know, for those folks - and again, I didn't attend any of that, but I watch, I'm watching my kids go through it - and it's a very different thing than sort of the secular educational system where the goal of every school child is, "how do I get out of this as fast as possible? How do I skip as much as I can? How can I just memorize the questions for the test." This is a culture, this is a world that, as I like to tell folks, it's almost that nobody cares about the answer. The highest praise, the highest reward you can get from a teacher is "you asked a really good question." And that says something about the attitude that's there. That we enjoy this, we enjoy the playfulness with ideas. Yechiel: 14:51 And to add to that, that's actually a big difference between studying in a yeshiva for example, or studying for a degree or for a certification or whatever. Whereas in most cases you're studying, you're trying to gain a piece of knowledge. You want to... you're learning for your degree, so you want to know all that. Let's say you're learning for your law degree or for your computer science degree, wheatever it is - there's a certain piece of knowledge which you want to acquire. In yeshiva it's not about learning the subject, it's about, like I said, it's about the journey, not about the destination. It's about spending the time learning. It's not like if you can finish the tractate of Talmud quicker, then like, "okay, that's it. You can go back to you know, to your house and go to sleep." That's not what it was about. It wasn't about gaining a particular piece of knowledge. It was about the process of learning. Leon: 15:38 And the joyfulness of... taking joy in the process. Given that: Given how wonderful it was and how exciting and fun it was, what made you decide that you are going to pivot away from it? That you weren't going to become the Chabad rabbi, Yechiel. That after 10 years as a pulpit rabbi or organizational rabbi, you're going to make a move and specifically into IT What, what was it that got you to that direction? Yechiel: 16:04 Okay, so I'll take this one. So as I mentioned earlier, for various reasons we wont' get into, the rabbinate didn't work out at the time and got to a point, you know, a growing family, bills don't pay themselves., food doesn't put itself on the table. So I started looking outside of the rabbinate for other sources of income and tech was a pretty natural choice for me. When I was a kid I was that kid in the back of the classroom with the mechanical pens taking it apart, breaking and trying to figure out how the spring worked. Or anything. I don't know how many watches my parents bought me that ended up in like a mess all over my desk. So that was always something I enjoyed, figuring how things worked. And when computers, when I started getting access to computers, that was like a whole new world for me to take those things apart. I, I'm not one of those kids like wrote code at the age of 10, but I did enjoy figuring out like, you know, what tick, what made computers take, how they worked on what was going on under the hood. So when I was looking for something to do, my first job actually out of the rabbinate was doing tech support. Which was great for me because I was learning these different systems and how they worked and how to troubleshoot them and how to debug them. And it slowly progressed from there. Eventually programming was just the logical next step and haven't looked back since. Leon: 17:25 So Ben how about you? Ben: 17:26 So I've always been a bit of a geek and I've always loved tech. In fact, so this is my second career, but in many ways it's also my third career because when I was in high school, I founded a hacker conference with my friend and partner in crime at that time. And we actually just celebrated its 20th year of the Hacker Conference in San Diego, and it's one of the largest infosec conferences in southern California to this day. And we had our own little network penetration, security testing company back then as well. We didn't necessarily use those words back then because then the mid to late nineties, it was all kind of new and everything was evolving at that point. We were kind of right on the cusp at that point. And so it was actually a really exciting time to be in it. And so when I decided that it was time really to take a break from the rabbinate take a break from the clergy life - 10 years in the clergy is kind of like 40 years in another career. And I was ready for a bit of a break and it was also correlating with the desire of my family and I to think about a move out of the States into Israel. And to start thinking about ways in which we would support ourselves in Israel. And the idea of going back to a career in tech, which was something I was always interested in to begin with. And I had a bit of a history in it, albeit a very old history at that point because tech has moved and has continued to move to move really fast. So things that I was doing in the 90s like writing some code in Perl for example, would be like totally... Right? Leon: 19:11 Perl! Everyone else: 19:11 (general mocking of both Leon and Perl) Ben: 19:16 So one of the conference I was at a few months ago was at FOSDEM, which is one of the largest open source conferences in the world. Totally a free conference. Unbelievable amounts of people are there. It's in Brussels or, at least was that year. And literally every sector of the tech community is under that roof, including Perl associations and Perl groups. Leon: 19:39 Ahhhhh. It's my happy place! Ben: 19:39 And it was so beautiful to see that, it brought back so many memories of my childhood. And so tech felt like a good place to go back to. And it's a very good career and a good career path where I live now in Israel. So it just, it made a lot of sense, Corey: 20:00 Dear God, you guys are old. Everone: 20:01 (laughter) Leon: 20:05 OK Corey. All right. So what about you? Corey: 20:08 Well, I second the idea of being a total geek as you well know, Leon. But for me yeshiva was always just the first step in a journey. I knew I was going to end up in IT, but I knew that the whole yeshiva experience was something that I needed for myself in my life, it helped me become more independent. It helped me figure out a lot of things about myself along the way. So I knew I needed that. I knew what I wanted to get out of it and needed to get out of it, but it was not the permanent solution for me. I knew that eventually I was going to come back down to Earth as it were and... Leon: 20:48 Oh yes. Come down from on high, the Crystal Tower of Yeshiva and back down to down to the dust, in the gutter, Corey: 20:57 Which is better than the dark tower. Leon: 20:58 Well, okay. Corey: 20:59 Of Perl for example. Leon: 21:01 Oh See, okay. See we had to go there. Al right. So I'm curious about this because again, it was such a pivot. Were any of you resistant to the idea at first? You had this opportunity, you each had a predilection for technology, so you saw that it could work. But was anything in you saying, "Nah, that just... Oh, you know, what will the neighbors think? What will my mother think?" Was there anything that held you back? Yechiel, how about you? Yechiel: 21:27 So yeah, actually I was pretty resistant to the idea at first. Like I mentioned, I've always seen myself going into community service, going into adult education. Teaching is something that I really enjoy. I still enjoy it. I try to incorporate it into my tech career. Like the Torah & Tech newsletter and my blog and also at work mentoring, mentoring interns. Teaching is in my blood. And I always thought that I would be someone who taught, who led, who spoke. And in addition I was also, I was raised on the ideals of community service. So going off to the other direction was tough for me. Though what helped me come to terms was going again back to when I was a kid, a particular genre of stories that I really lovedwas stories from the old country, from the shtetl. There were the Jewish towns with a Jewish shoemaker and the Jewish tailor. And there's actually like a class of Great Torah scholars who could have easily gotten a position as a rabbi or in some yeshiva teaching. But they specifically did not want to use their Torah as a means to support themselves. And as a kid that was something that really touched me and I sort of romanticized it. So now when I started looking away from the rabbinate towards working for myself and I realized that actually technology nowadays is the blue collar work of today. Today's programmers and developers and sysadmins - those are today's shoemakers and blacksmiths. And you know those are the people that make the world run. And the idea of supporting myself through my own handiwork started appealing to be more and more. Leon: 23:11 It's an interesting thought. I have met one rabbi who is also an auto mechanic, but that's not the typical career path that you find for folks. So yeah, I like the idea that, IT is the next tradesman for, especially for itinerant scholars. Ben: 23:27 I will say though that now having lived in Israel for about a year, this is an area where there are, I do believe there is a cultural divide between American Orthodox Jewry and Israeli Orthodox Jewry. And the fact that in my own neighborhood, I know somebody, for example, who has a Ph.d in Academic Bible from Hebrew University and works with his hands all day as a craftsman. And it just brings back to mind stories of maybe some famous Jewish carpenter from 2000 years ago that some people might have been around... Leon: 24:03 Wow. We're just going to throw little shade. Yechiel: 24:07 Pretty sure this is your first all Jewish panel. So we had to, you know... Leon: 24:11 Yeah, we had to at least take one shot. Ben: 24:14 But I say that as a joke, but there's so many people like that in my neighborhood and my community who have ordination or I would advance degrees in Jewish studies or both and who are not working in that field, who are not working in Jewish communal service. And yet they volunteer. They give classes at night or on weekends on Shabbat. They teach they offer sermons. Our community is basically... Our personal community, where we go to synagogue, our community in Israel is essentially lay-led. And so people take turns signing up an offering words of Torah on Shabbat and holidays and a lot of those people who do that are, those possessing rabbinic ordination. Or, if not rabbinic ordination, having spent years of their life in yeshiva and who had decided to pursue a career as opposed to making the Torah or Jewish life their career. And a part of that is just the economics of the country, that it's just hard to sustain oneself in Jewish communal service in Israel. So people end up taking other jobs. But it's also, I think there's part of an ideal here of, we would call maybe "Torah v'Avodah" of Torah being combined with a job - of Torah and some kind of occupation going hand in hand. And that not being a less than ideal, but that actually being the ideal. So just an interesting reflection as I'm listening to this conversation and thinking about how I situate myself and sit where I sit now and can see both sides. And I've lived in both sides and the differences between those two. Leon: 26:02 Nice. Okay. So Ben as long as you're going, how about you? What was the challenge pivoting away from the rabbit into a career in coding? Ben: 26:10 I think it's a challenge that a lot of people who are going into a second career often face regardless of what their own particularities are, which is letting go of what others think; or what you think others are thinking. And for me that was a challenge. Leaving the rabbnic world was challenging because you - especially if you go to a hyper-focused mission driven rabbinical school, which I went to - there is, uh, a real sense of serving the community and that being the passion and drive of one's life. And switching to another career can feel like you're letting down your teachers, your mentors, your rabbis, your peers, your fellow alumni, you're a co collegial community. But recognizing that what helped me was the recognition that all of those people that I just mentioned, they also care about you and they wants what's best. They want what's best for you as well. And if they don't, they probably are not somebody you want to be invested in a friendship with to begin with and you shouldn't be necessarily taking their opinion to heart to that extent. That anyone who cares about you, who wants what's best for you, will recognize that maybe it's time. Will recognize along with you, and honor the fact that you expressed the idea that maybe it's time to switch careers and maybe it's time to move to something else. And I think getting to that point where recognizing that others value you and care for you and are not looking down upon you or critiquing you. And if they are, it's okay to say, "enough of you, you're out of my life." It's okay to do those things and to put your life first. And what's best for you and your family. Those were some major hurdles, but once I got over them became it became pretty straightforward. Leon: 28:18 Nice. Corey! Corey: 28:20 For me wasn't too difficult because, as I previously mentioned, I knew I was gonna go into IT all along. For me, the most difficult part - was because I had grown up and been in some religious schooling system for my entire life - It was the idea, of leaving the cocoon as it were. And you know, now not everybody I'm going to meet is orthodox. Not everybody that I'm going to have to deal with in school or in work is going to be, you know, a member of the tribe as it were. You know, so there was a little bit of trepidation, but I knew it was gonna happen. Leon: 29:12 Got It. Leon: 29:13 We know you can't listen to our podcasts all day. So out of respect for your time, we've broken this particular discussion up. Come back next week where we continue our conversations about "Pivoting Our Career On the Tip of a Torah Scroll." Roddie: 29:25 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, https://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect to us on social media. Leon: 29:38 So there's these three rabbis that walk into a bar. Ben: 29:40 Uh, that's not how it goes. Yechiel: 29:42 I think you totally ruined that joke. Corey: 29:44 This is how that joke goes.    

NB This is a new version -- I accidentally uploaded the wrong file previously Episode thirty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis Presley, and is part three of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "The Flying Saucer" by Buchanan and Goodman.  Also, it came too late for me to acknowledge in the episode itself, but I have to mention the sad news that Dave Bartholomew died today, aged 100. He will be missed.  ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   There are many, many books about Elvis Presley out there, but the one I'm using as my major resource for information on him, and which has guided my views as to the kind of person he was, is Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, generally considered the best biography of him. This 3-CD box set (expensive on CD, but relatively cheap as MP3s) contains every surviving recording by Elvis from 1956, including outtakes. This more reasonably priced ten-CD box contains every official release he put out from 1954 through 62, but without the outtakes. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   We've talked before, a couple of times, about Elvis Presley and his early recordings. Those Sun records are the ones on which his artistic reputation now largely rests, but they weren't the ones that made him famous. He didn't become the Elvis we all know until he started recording for RCA. So today we're going to look at the first single he put out on a major label, and the way it turned him from a minor regional country star into the King of Rock and Roll, a cultural phenomenon that would eclipse all music prior to him, and lead John Lennon to say "Before Elvis there was nothing". As you might remember from the last episode on Elvis, a few weeks ago, Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had managed to get Elvis signed to RCA Records for a sum of money far greater than anything anyone had paid for a singer before, after Sam Phillips made what seemed like a ludicrous demand just to get Parker out of his hair. And this was a big deal. Sun Records, as we've seen, was a tiny regional operation. It was able to generate massive hits for Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash after Elvis left, but that's only because of the cash the label was able to make from the Elvis deal. It's safe to say that the whole genre of rockabilly was funded by that one deal. RCA, on the other hand, was one of the biggest labels in the world. The first thing RCA did was to reissue his last Sun single, "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", backed with "Mystery Train". With RCA's backing, the single did far better than it had on Sun, hitting number one on the country charts at the beginning of 1956. But was that enough to make the money RCA had paid for Elvis worth it? When Elvis went into the studio on January 10 1956, two days after his twenty-first birthday, the pressure was on him to record something very special indeed. Before going into the studio, Elvis had been sent ten demos of songs to consider for this first session. The song he ended up choosing as the main one for the session, though, was a song by someone he already knew -- and for which he had a third of the songwriting credit. Mae Axton was an odd figure. She was an English teacher who had a sideline as a freelance journalist. One day she was asked by a magazine she was freelancing for to write a story about hillbilly music, a subject about which she knew nothing. She went to Nashville to interview the singer Minnie Pearl, and while she was working on her story, Pearl introduced her to Fred Rose, the co-owner of Acuff-Rose Publishing, the biggest publishing company in country music. And Pearl, for some reason, told Rose that Mae, who had never written a song in her life, was a songwriter. Rose said that he needed a new novelty song for a recording session for the singer Dub Dickerson that afternoon, and asked Mae to write him one. And so, all of a sudden, Mae Axton was a songwriter, and she eventually wrote over two hundred songs, starting with her early collaborations with Dub Dickerson: [Excerpt: Dub Dickerson, "Shotgun Wedding"] She was still also a freelance journalist, though, and it was easy for her to make a sidestep into publicity for hillbilly acts. For a time she was Hank Snow's personal publicist, and she would often work with Colonel Parker on promoting shows when they came through Florida, where she lived. She'd interviewed Elvis when he came to Florida, and had immediately been struck by him. He'd talked to her about how amazed he was by how big the ocean was, and how he'd give anything to have enough money to bring his parents down to Florida to live there. She said later, "That just went through my heart. 'Cause I looked down there, and there were all these other kids, different show members for that night, all the guys looking for cute little girls. But his priority was doing something for his mother and daddy." She promised she'd write him a song, and by the end of the year, she had one for him. [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Heartbreak Hotel”] "Heartbreak Hotel" was, initially, the work of Tommy Durden, a country singer and songwriter. As Durden used to tell it, he was inspired by a newspaper story of a man who'd died by suicide, who had been found with no identification on him and a note that simply read "I walk a lonely street". Later research has suggested that rather than a suicide, the story Durden had read was probably about an armed robber, Alvin Krolik, who had been shot dead in the course of committing a robbery. Krolik had, a few years earlier, after confessing to a string of other robberies, made the news with a partial autobiography he'd written containing the lines “If you stand on a corner with a pack of cigarettes or a bottle and have nothing to do in life, I suggest you sit down and think. This is the story of a person who walked a lonely street. I hope this will help someone in the future.” Whatever the actual story, it inspired Durden, who had a few lines of the song, and he played what he had to Mae Axton. She thought a lot about the phrase, and eventually came to the conclusion that what you'd find at the end of a lonely street was a heartbreak hotel. The two of them finished the song off, with the help of Glenn Reeves, a rockabilly singer who refused to take credit for his work on the song, because he thought it was ridiculous. Reeves did, though, record the demo for them. They'd already decided that the song should be pitched to Elvis, and so Reeves impersonated Presley: [Excerpt: Glenn Reeves, "Heartbreak Hotel"] A lot of people have claimed that Elvis copied that recording exactly, phrasing and all. Comparing the two recordings, though, shows that that's not the case. Elvis definitely found it easier to record a song when he'd heard someone else doing it in an approximation of his style, and in the sixties he often *would* just copy the phrasing on demos. But in the case of "Heartbreak Hotel", Elvis is not copying Reeves' phrasing at all. The two are similar, but that's just because Reeves is imitating Elvis in the first place. There are dozens of tiny choices Elvis makes throughout the song which differ from those made by Reeves, and it's clear that Elvis was thinking hard about the choices he was making. When Mae played him the song, insisting to him that it would be his first million seller, his reaction on hearing it was "Hot dog, Mae! Play it again!" He instantly fell in love with the song, which reminded the young blues-lover of Roy Brown's "Hard Luck Blues": [Excerpt: Roy Brown, "Hard Luck Blues"] Elvis got a third of the songwriting credit for the song, which most people have said was insisted on by the Colonel – and certainly other songs Elvis recorded around that time gave him a credit for that reason. But to her dying day Mae Axton always said that she'd cut him in on the song so he might be able to get that money to buy his parents a house in Florida. The session to record "Heartbreak Hotel" started with the engineers trying -- and failing -- to get a replica of Sam Phillips' slapback echo sound, which was a sound whose secret nobody but Phillips knew. Instead they set up a speaker at one end of the room and fed in the sound from the mics at the other end, creating a makeshift echo chamber which satisfied Chet Atkins but threw the musicians, who weren't used to hearing the echo live rather than added after the fact. Atkins isn't the credited producer for "Heartbreak Hotel" -- that's Steve Sholes, the A&R man at RCA Records who had signed Presley -- but by all accounts Atkins was nominally in charge of actually running the session. And certainly there would be no other reason for having Atkins there -- he played guitar on the record, but only adding another acoustic rhythm guitar to the sound, which was frankly a waste of the talents of probably the greatest country guitarist of his generation. That said, Atkins didn't do that much production either -- according to Scotty Moore, his only suggestion was that they just keep doing what they'd been doing. To start the session off, they recorded a quick version of "I Got A Woman", the Ray Charles song, which had been a staple of Elvis' live act since it had been released: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "I Got A Woman"] After that, the remainder of the first session was devoted to "Heartbreak Hotel", a record that has a sense of thought that's been put into the arrangement that's entirely absent from the Sun Records arrangements, which mostly consist of start the song, play the song through with a single solo, and end the song. The whole point of those records was to capture a kind of spontaneity, and you can't do much to play with the dynamics of an arrangement when there are only three instruments there. But now there were six -- Scotty Moore and Bill Black were there as always, as was D.J. Fontana, who had joined the band on drums in 1955 and was recording for the first time, along with Atkins and piano player Floyd Cramer, who played on many of the biggest hits to come out of Nashville in the fifties and sixties. Atkins and Cramer are two of the principal architects of what became known as "the Nashville Sound" or "Countrypolitan" -- there are distinctions between these two styles for those who are interested in the fine details of country music, but for our purposes they're the same, a style of country music that pulled the music away from its roots and towards a sound that was almost a continuation of the pre-rock pop sound, all vocal groups and strings with little in the way of traditional country instrumentation like fiddles, mandolins, banjos, and steel guitars. And there's an element of that with their work with Presley, too -- the rough edges being smoothed off, everything getting a little bit more mannered. But at this point it seems still to be working in the record's favour. After recording "Heartbreak Hotel", they took a break before spending another three-hour session recording another R&B cover that was a staple of Elvis' stage show, "Money Honey". Along with the addition of Atkins and Cramer, there were also backing vocalists for the very first time. Now this is something that often gets treated as a problem by people coming to Elvis' music fresh today. Backing vocals in general have been deprecated in rock and roll music for much of the last fifty years, and people think of them as spoiling Elvis' artistry. There have even been releases of some of Elvis' recordings remixed to get rid of the backing vocals altogether (though that's thankfully not possible with these 1956 records, which were recorded directly to mono). But the backing vocals weren't an irritating addition to Elvis' artistry. Rather, they were the essence of it, and if you're going to listen to Elvis at all, and have any understanding of what he was trying to do, you need to understand that before anything else. Elvis' first ambition -- the aspiration he had right at the beginning of his career -- was to be a member of a gospel quartet. Elvis wanted to have his voice be part of a group, and he loved to sing harmony more than anything else. He wanted to sing in a gospel quartet before he ever met Sam Phillips, and as his career went on he only increased the number of backing vocalists he worked with -- by the end of his career he would have J.D. Sumner and the Stamps (a Southern Gospel group), *and* the Sweet Inspirations (the girl group who had backed Aretha Franklin), *and* Kathy Westmoreland, a classically-trained soprano, all providing backing vocals. However, the backing vocalists on this initial session weren't yet the Jordanaires, the group who would back Elvis throughout the fifties and sixties. One of the Jordanaires *was* there -- Gordon Stoker -- but the rest of them weren't hired for the January sessions, as Steve Sholes wanted to use members of a group who were signed with RCA in their own right -- the Speer Family. So Ben and Brock Speer joined Elvis and Stoker to make an unbalanced gospel quartet, with too many tenors and no baritone. When Elvis found out at a later session that this had happened as a cost-cutting measure, he insisted that all the Jordanaires be employed at his future sessions. The next day, to end the sessions, they regrouped and cut a couple of ballads. "I'm Counting On You" was rather mediocre, but "I Was The One" ended up being Elvis' personal favourite track from the sessions: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "I Was The One"] At the end of the sessions, Steve Sholes was very unsure if he'd made the right choice signing Elvis. He only had five tracks to show for three sessions in two days, when the normal thing was to record four songs per session -- Elvis and his group were so slow partly because they were used to the laid-back feel of the Sun studios, with Sam Phillips never clock-watching, and partly because Elvis was a perfectionist. Several times they'd recorded a take that Sholes had felt would be good enough to release, but Elvis had insisted he could do it better. He'd been right -- the later versions were an improvement -- but they had remarkably few tracks that they could use. Many of those who'd loved Elvis' earlier work were astonished at how bad "Heartbreak Hotel" sounded to them. The reverb, sounding so different from the restrained use of slapback on the Sun records, sounded to many ears, not least Sam Phillips', like a bad joke -- Phillips called the result "a morbid mess". [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Heartbreak Hotel”] Yet it became a smash hit. It went to number one on the pop charts, number one in country, and made the top five in R&B. This was the moment when Elvis went from being a minor country singer on a minor label to being Elvis, Elvis the Pelvis, the King of Rock & Roll. After the sessions that produced "Heartbreak Hotel", Elvis went back into the studio twice more and recorded a set of songs -- mostly R&B and rockabilly covers -- for his first album. Almost all of these were Elvis' own choice of material, and so while his versions of "Blue Suede Shoes" or "Tutti Frutti" didn't match the quality of the originals, they were fine performances and perfect for album tracks. While the "Heartbreak Hotel" session had been in Nashville -- a natural choice, since it was both relatively close to Elvis' home town of Memphis, and the capital of country music, and Elvis was still supposedly a country artist -- the next couple of sessions were in New York, timed to coincide with Elvis' appearances on TV. Starting with the low-rated Stage Show, a programme that was presented by the swing bandleaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Elvis quickly moved up the ladder of TV shows, appearing first with Milton Berle, then with Steve Allen, and then finally on the Ed Sullivan show. On his first appearances, you can see the Elvis that people who knew him talked about – even as he's working the audience with what looks like the utmost confidence, you can see his fingers twitching wildly in a way he's not properly conscious of, and you can tell that under the mask of the sex symbol is the quiet country boy who would never meet anyone's eye. Each show caused more controversy than the last, as first Elvis' hip gyrations got him branded a moral menace, then he was forced to sing while standing still, and then only filmed from the waist up. Those shows helped propel "Heartbreak Hotel" to the top of the charts, but the Colonel decided that Elvis probably shouldn't do too much more TV – if people could see him without paying, why would they pay to see him? No, Elvis was going to be in films instead. But all that work meant that Elvis' fourth set of sessions for RCA was fairly disastrous, and ended up with nothing that was usable. Elvis had been so busy promoting "Heartbreak Hotel" that he hadn't had any chance to prepare material, and so he just went with Steve Sholes' suggestion of "I Want You I Need You I Love You". But the session went terribly, because Elvis had no feel for the song at all. Normally, Elvis would learn a song straight away, after a single listen, but he just couldn't get the song in his head. They spent the whole session working on that single track, and didn't manage to get a usable take recorded at all. Steve Sholes eventually had to cobble together a take using bits of two different performances, and no-one was happy with it, but it reached number one on the country chart and number three on the pop charts. It was hardly "Heartbreak Hotel" levels of success, but it was OK. It was the B-side of that single that was really worth listening to. A leftover from the album sessions, it was, like Elvis' first single, a cover version of an Arthur Crudup song. And this one also gave D.J. Fontana his first chance to shine. [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "My Baby Left Me"] By this point, it was very clear that if Elvis was given control of the studio and singing material he connected with, he would produce great things. And if he was doing what someone else thought he should be doing, he would be much less successful. A couple of months later Elvis and the group were back in the studio cutting what would become their biggest double-sided hit, both songs definitely chosen by Elvis. These days their cover version of Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" is the better-known of the two sides they cut that day, but while that's an excellent track -- and one that bears almost no relation to Thornton's original -- the A-side, and the song that finally convinced several detractors, including Sam Phillips, that Elvis might be able to make decent records away from Sun, was "Don't Be Cruel", a song written by Otis Blackwell, but credited to Blackwell and Presley, as the Colonel insisted that his boy get a cut for making it a hit. Otis Blackwell is another person who we'll be hearing from a lot over the course of the series, as he wrote a string of hits, including several for Elvis, who he never met -- the one time he did have a chance to meet him, he declined, as he'd developed a superstition about meeting the man who'd given him his biggest hits. At this time, Blackwell had just written the song "Fever" for Little Willie John: [Excerpt: "Fever", Little Willie John] That song had become a big hit for Peggy Lee, in a version with different lyrics, and Blackwell was at the start of an impressive career. We don't have Blackwell's demo of "Don't Be Cruel", but he recorded a version in the 1970s which might give some idea of what Elvis heard in 1956: [Excerpt: Otis Blackwell, "Don't Be Cruel"] Elvis' version showed a lightness of touch that had been absent on his earlier RCA records. He was finally in control of the sound he wanted in the studio. "Don't Be Cruel" took twenty-eight takes, and "Hound Dog" thirty-one, but you'd never believe it from the light, frothy, sound that "Don't Be Cruel" has in its finished version, where Elvis sounds as playful as if he was improvising the song on the spot: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Don't Be Cruel"] Both sides of the record went to number one – first “Don't Be Cruel” went to number one and “Hound Dog” to number two, and then they swapped over. Between them they spent eleven weeks at the top of the charts. But even as Elvis was starting to take complete control in the studio, that control was starting to be taken away from him by events. His next session after the one that produced "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel" was one he had not been expecting. When he'd signed to make his first film, a Western called "The Reno Brothers", he'd expected it to be a straight acting role with no songs -- he wanted to follow the path of people like Frank Sinatra, who had parallel careers in the cinema and in music, and he also hoped that he could emulate his acting idols, Marlon Brando and James Dean. But by the time he came to make the film, several songs had been added -- and he found out, to his annoyance, that he wasn't allowed to use Scotty, Bill, and DJ on the soundtrack, because the film company didn't think they could sound hillbilly enough. They were replaced with Hollywood session musicians, who could do a better job of sounding hillbilly than those country musicians could. Elvis didn't have any say over the material either, although he did like the main ballad that was going to be used in the film -- the other three songs were among the most mediocre he'd do in the fifties. By the time "The Reno Brothers" was finished, it had been renamed "Love Me Tender", and we'll be picking up on Elvis' film career in a future episode...

NB This is a new version — I accidentally uploaded the wrong file previously Episode thirty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Heartbreak Hotel” by Elvis Presley, and is part three of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “The Flying Saucer” by Buchanan and Goodman.  Also, it came too late for me to acknowledge in the episode itself, but I have to mention the sad news that Dave Bartholomew died today, aged 100. He will be missed.  —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   There are many, many books about Elvis Presley out there, but the one I’m using as my major resource for information on him, and which has guided my views as to the kind of person he was, is Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, generally considered the best biography of him. This 3-CD box set (expensive on CD, but relatively cheap as MP3s) contains every surviving recording by Elvis from 1956, including outtakes. This more reasonably priced ten-CD box contains every official release he put out from 1954 through 62, but without the outtakes. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   We’ve talked before, a couple of times, about Elvis Presley and his early recordings. Those Sun records are the ones on which his artistic reputation now largely rests, but they weren’t the ones that made him famous. He didn’t become the Elvis we all know until he started recording for RCA. So today we’re going to look at the first single he put out on a major label, and the way it turned him from a minor regional country star into the King of Rock and Roll, a cultural phenomenon that would eclipse all music prior to him, and lead John Lennon to say “Before Elvis there was nothing”. As you might remember from the last episode on Elvis, a few weeks ago, Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had managed to get Elvis signed to RCA Records for a sum of money far greater than anything anyone had paid for a singer before, after Sam Phillips made what seemed like a ludicrous demand just to get Parker out of his hair. And this was a big deal. Sun Records, as we’ve seen, was a tiny regional operation. It was able to generate massive hits for Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash after Elvis left, but that’s only because of the cash the label was able to make from the Elvis deal. It’s safe to say that the whole genre of rockabilly was funded by that one deal. RCA, on the other hand, was one of the biggest labels in the world. The first thing RCA did was to reissue his last Sun single, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”, backed with “Mystery Train”. With RCA’s backing, the single did far better than it had on Sun, hitting number one on the country charts at the beginning of 1956. But was that enough to make the money RCA had paid for Elvis worth it? When Elvis went into the studio on January 10 1956, two days after his twenty-first birthday, the pressure was on him to record something very special indeed. Before going into the studio, Elvis had been sent ten demos of songs to consider for this first session. The song he ended up choosing as the main one for the session, though, was a song by someone he already knew — and for which he had a third of the songwriting credit. Mae Axton was an odd figure. She was an English teacher who had a sideline as a freelance journalist. One day she was asked by a magazine she was freelancing for to write a story about hillbilly music, a subject about which she knew nothing. She went to Nashville to interview the singer Minnie Pearl, and while she was working on her story, Pearl introduced her to Fred Rose, the co-owner of Acuff-Rose Publishing, the biggest publishing company in country music. And Pearl, for some reason, told Rose that Mae, who had never written a song in her life, was a songwriter. Rose said that he needed a new novelty song for a recording session for the singer Dub Dickerson that afternoon, and asked Mae to write him one. And so, all of a sudden, Mae Axton was a songwriter, and she eventually wrote over two hundred songs, starting with her early collaborations with Dub Dickerson: [Excerpt: Dub Dickerson, “Shotgun Wedding”] She was still also a freelance journalist, though, and it was easy for her to make a sidestep into publicity for hillbilly acts. For a time she was Hank Snow’s personal publicist, and she would often work with Colonel Parker on promoting shows when they came through Florida, where she lived. She’d interviewed Elvis when he came to Florida, and had immediately been struck by him. He’d talked to her about how amazed he was by how big the ocean was, and how he’d give anything to have enough money to bring his parents down to Florida to live there. She said later, “That just went through my heart. ‘Cause I looked down there, and there were all these other kids, different show members for that night, all the guys looking for cute little girls. But his priority was doing something for his mother and daddy.” She promised she’d write him a song, and by the end of the year, she had one for him. [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Heartbreak Hotel”] “Heartbreak Hotel” was, initially, the work of Tommy Durden, a country singer and songwriter. As Durden used to tell it, he was inspired by a newspaper story of a man who’d died by suicide, who had been found with no identification on him and a note that simply read “I walk a lonely street”. Later research has suggested that rather than a suicide, the story Durden had read was probably about an armed robber, Alvin Krolik, who had been shot dead in the course of committing a robbery. Krolik had, a few years earlier, after confessing to a string of other robberies, made the news with a partial autobiography he’d written containing the lines “If you stand on a corner with a pack of cigarettes or a bottle and have nothing to do in life, I suggest you sit down and think. This is the story of a person who walked a lonely street. I hope this will help someone in the future.” Whatever the actual story, it inspired Durden, who had a few lines of the song, and he played what he had to Mae Axton. She thought a lot about the phrase, and eventually came to the conclusion that what you’d find at the end of a lonely street was a heartbreak hotel. The two of them finished the song off, with the help of Glenn Reeves, a rockabilly singer who refused to take credit for his work on the song, because he thought it was ridiculous. Reeves did, though, record the demo for them. They’d already decided that the song should be pitched to Elvis, and so Reeves impersonated Presley: [Excerpt: Glenn Reeves, “Heartbreak Hotel”] A lot of people have claimed that Elvis copied that recording exactly, phrasing and all. Comparing the two recordings, though, shows that that’s not the case. Elvis definitely found it easier to record a song when he’d heard someone else doing it in an approximation of his style, and in the sixties he often *would* just copy the phrasing on demos. But in the case of “Heartbreak Hotel”, Elvis is not copying Reeves’ phrasing at all. The two are similar, but that’s just because Reeves is imitating Elvis in the first place. There are dozens of tiny choices Elvis makes throughout the song which differ from those made by Reeves, and it’s clear that Elvis was thinking hard about the choices he was making. When Mae played him the song, insisting to him that it would be his first million seller, his reaction on hearing it was “Hot dog, Mae! Play it again!” He instantly fell in love with the song, which reminded the young blues-lover of Roy Brown’s “Hard Luck Blues”: [Excerpt: Roy Brown, “Hard Luck Blues”] Elvis got a third of the songwriting credit for the song, which most people have said was insisted on by the Colonel – and certainly other songs Elvis recorded around that time gave him a credit for that reason. But to her dying day Mae Axton always said that she’d cut him in on the song so he might be able to get that money to buy his parents a house in Florida. The session to record “Heartbreak Hotel” started with the engineers trying — and failing — to get a replica of Sam Phillips’ slapback echo sound, which was a sound whose secret nobody but Phillips knew. Instead they set up a speaker at one end of the room and fed in the sound from the mics at the other end, creating a makeshift echo chamber which satisfied Chet Atkins but threw the musicians, who weren’t used to hearing the echo live rather than added after the fact. Atkins isn’t the credited producer for “Heartbreak Hotel” — that’s Steve Sholes, the A&R man at RCA Records who had signed Presley — but by all accounts Atkins was nominally in charge of actually running the session. And certainly there would be no other reason for having Atkins there — he played guitar on the record, but only adding another acoustic rhythm guitar to the sound, which was frankly a waste of the talents of probably the greatest country guitarist of his generation. That said, Atkins didn’t do that much production either — according to Scotty Moore, his only suggestion was that they just keep doing what they’d been doing. To start the session off, they recorded a quick version of “I Got A Woman”, the Ray Charles song, which had been a staple of Elvis’ live act since it had been released: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “I Got A Woman”] After that, the remainder of the first session was devoted to “Heartbreak Hotel”, a record that has a sense of thought that’s been put into the arrangement that’s entirely absent from the Sun Records arrangements, which mostly consist of start the song, play the song through with a single solo, and end the song. The whole point of those records was to capture a kind of spontaneity, and you can’t do much to play with the dynamics of an arrangement when there are only three instruments there. But now there were six — Scotty Moore and Bill Black were there as always, as was D.J. Fontana, who had joined the band on drums in 1955 and was recording for the first time, along with Atkins and piano player Floyd Cramer, who played on many of the biggest hits to come out of Nashville in the fifties and sixties. Atkins and Cramer are two of the principal architects of what became known as “the Nashville Sound” or “Countrypolitan” — there are distinctions between these two styles for those who are interested in the fine details of country music, but for our purposes they’re the same, a style of country music that pulled the music away from its roots and towards a sound that was almost a continuation of the pre-rock pop sound, all vocal groups and strings with little in the way of traditional country instrumentation like fiddles, mandolins, banjos, and steel guitars. And there’s an element of that with their work with Presley, too — the rough edges being smoothed off, everything getting a little bit more mannered. But at this point it seems still to be working in the record’s favour. After recording “Heartbreak Hotel”, they took a break before spending another three-hour session recording another R&B cover that was a staple of Elvis’ stage show, “Money Honey”. Along with the addition of Atkins and Cramer, there were also backing vocalists for the very first time. Now this is something that often gets treated as a problem by people coming to Elvis’ music fresh today. Backing vocals in general have been deprecated in rock and roll music for much of the last fifty years, and people think of them as spoiling Elvis’ artistry. There have even been releases of some of Elvis’ recordings remixed to get rid of the backing vocals altogether (though that’s thankfully not possible with these 1956 records, which were recorded directly to mono). But the backing vocals weren’t an irritating addition to Elvis’ artistry. Rather, they were the essence of it, and if you’re going to listen to Elvis at all, and have any understanding of what he was trying to do, you need to understand that before anything else. Elvis’ first ambition — the aspiration he had right at the beginning of his career — was to be a member of a gospel quartet. Elvis wanted to have his voice be part of a group, and he loved to sing harmony more than anything else. He wanted to sing in a gospel quartet before he ever met Sam Phillips, and as his career went on he only increased the number of backing vocalists he worked with — by the end of his career he would have J.D. Sumner and the Stamps (a Southern Gospel group), *and* the Sweet Inspirations (the girl group who had backed Aretha Franklin), *and* Kathy Westmoreland, a classically-trained soprano, all providing backing vocals. However, the backing vocalists on this initial session weren’t yet the Jordanaires, the group who would back Elvis throughout the fifties and sixties. One of the Jordanaires *was* there — Gordon Stoker — but the rest of them weren’t hired for the January sessions, as Steve Sholes wanted to use members of a group who were signed with RCA in their own right — the Speer Family. So Ben and Brock Speer joined Elvis and Stoker to make an unbalanced gospel quartet, with too many tenors and no baritone. When Elvis found out at a later session that this had happened as a cost-cutting measure, he insisted that all the Jordanaires be employed at his future sessions. The next day, to end the sessions, they regrouped and cut a couple of ballads. “I’m Counting On You” was rather mediocre, but “I Was The One” ended up being Elvis’ personal favourite track from the sessions: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “I Was The One”] At the end of the sessions, Steve Sholes was very unsure if he’d made the right choice signing Elvis. He only had five tracks to show for three sessions in two days, when the normal thing was to record four songs per session — Elvis and his group were so slow partly because they were used to the laid-back feel of the Sun studios, with Sam Phillips never clock-watching, and partly because Elvis was a perfectionist. Several times they’d recorded a take that Sholes had felt would be good enough to release, but Elvis had insisted he could do it better. He’d been right — the later versions were an improvement — but they had remarkably few tracks that they could use. Many of those who’d loved Elvis’ earlier work were astonished at how bad “Heartbreak Hotel” sounded to them. The reverb, sounding so different from the restrained use of slapback on the Sun records, sounded to many ears, not least Sam Phillips’, like a bad joke — Phillips called the result “a morbid mess”. [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Heartbreak Hotel”] Yet it became a smash hit. It went to number one on the pop charts, number one in country, and made the top five in R&B. This was the moment when Elvis went from being a minor country singer on a minor label to being Elvis, Elvis the Pelvis, the King of Rock & Roll. After the sessions that produced “Heartbreak Hotel”, Elvis went back into the studio twice more and recorded a set of songs — mostly R&B and rockabilly covers — for his first album. Almost all of these were Elvis’ own choice of material, and so while his versions of “Blue Suede Shoes” or “Tutti Frutti” didn’t match the quality of the originals, they were fine performances and perfect for album tracks. While the “Heartbreak Hotel” session had been in Nashville — a natural choice, since it was both relatively close to Elvis’ home town of Memphis, and the capital of country music, and Elvis was still supposedly a country artist — the next couple of sessions were in New York, timed to coincide with Elvis’ appearances on TV. Starting with the low-rated Stage Show, a programme that was presented by the swing bandleaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Elvis quickly moved up the ladder of TV shows, appearing first with Milton Berle, then with Steve Allen, and then finally on the Ed Sullivan show. On his first appearances, you can see the Elvis that people who knew him talked about – even as he’s working the audience with what looks like the utmost confidence, you can see his fingers twitching wildly in a way he’s not properly conscious of, and you can tell that under the mask of the sex symbol is the quiet country boy who would never meet anyone’s eye. Each show caused more controversy than the last, as first Elvis’ hip gyrations got him branded a moral menace, then he was forced to sing while standing still, and then only filmed from the waist up. Those shows helped propel “Heartbreak Hotel” to the top of the charts, but the Colonel decided that Elvis probably shouldn’t do too much more TV – if people could see him without paying, why would they pay to see him? No, Elvis was going to be in films instead. But all that work meant that Elvis’ fourth set of sessions for RCA was fairly disastrous, and ended up with nothing that was usable. Elvis had been so busy promoting “Heartbreak Hotel” that he hadn’t had any chance to prepare material, and so he just went with Steve Sholes’ suggestion of “I Want You I Need You I Love You”. But the session went terribly, because Elvis had no feel for the song at all. Normally, Elvis would learn a song straight away, after a single listen, but he just couldn’t get the song in his head. They spent the whole session working on that single track, and didn’t manage to get a usable take recorded at all. Steve Sholes eventually had to cobble together a take using bits of two different performances, and no-one was happy with it, but it reached number one on the country chart and number three on the pop charts. It was hardly “Heartbreak Hotel” levels of success, but it was OK. It was the B-side of that single that was really worth listening to. A leftover from the album sessions, it was, like Elvis’ first single, a cover version of an Arthur Crudup song. And this one also gave D.J. Fontana his first chance to shine. [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “My Baby Left Me”] By this point, it was very clear that if Elvis was given control of the studio and singing material he connected with, he would produce great things. And if he was doing what someone else thought he should be doing, he would be much less successful. A couple of months later Elvis and the group were back in the studio cutting what would become their biggest double-sided hit, both songs definitely chosen by Elvis. These days their cover version of Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” is the better-known of the two sides they cut that day, but while that’s an excellent track — and one that bears almost no relation to Thornton’s original — the A-side, and the song that finally convinced several detractors, including Sam Phillips, that Elvis might be able to make decent records away from Sun, was “Don’t Be Cruel”, a song written by Otis Blackwell, but credited to Blackwell and Presley, as the Colonel insisted that his boy get a cut for making it a hit. Otis Blackwell is another person who we’ll be hearing from a lot over the course of the series, as he wrote a string of hits, including several for Elvis, who he never met — the one time he did have a chance to meet him, he declined, as he’d developed a superstition about meeting the man who’d given him his biggest hits. At this time, Blackwell had just written the song “Fever” for Little Willie John: [Excerpt: “Fever”, Little Willie John] That song had become a big hit for Peggy Lee, in a version with different lyrics, and Blackwell was at the start of an impressive career. We don’t have Blackwell’s demo of “Don’t Be Cruel”, but he recorded a version in the 1970s which might give some idea of what Elvis heard in 1956: [Excerpt: Otis Blackwell, “Don’t Be Cruel”] Elvis’ version showed a lightness of touch that had been absent on his earlier RCA records. He was finally in control of the sound he wanted in the studio. “Don’t Be Cruel” took twenty-eight takes, and “Hound Dog” thirty-one, but you’d never believe it from the light, frothy, sound that “Don’t Be Cruel” has in its finished version, where Elvis sounds as playful as if he was improvising the song on the spot: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Don’t Be Cruel”] Both sides of the record went to number one – first “Don’t Be Cruel” went to number one and “Hound Dog” to number two, and then they swapped over. Between them they spent eleven weeks at the top of the charts. But even as Elvis was starting to take complete control in the studio, that control was starting to be taken away from him by events. His next session after the one that produced “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel” was one he had not been expecting. When he’d signed to make his first film, a Western called “The Reno Brothers”, he’d expected it to be a straight acting role with no songs — he wanted to follow the path of people like Frank Sinatra, who had parallel careers in the cinema and in music, and he also hoped that he could emulate his acting idols, Marlon Brando and James Dean. But by the time he came to make the film, several songs had been added — and he found out, to his annoyance, that he wasn’t allowed to use Scotty, Bill, and DJ on the soundtrack, because the film company didn’t think they could sound hillbilly enough. They were replaced with Hollywood session musicians, who could do a better job of sounding hillbilly than those country musicians could. Elvis didn’t have any say over the material either, although he did like the main ballad that was going to be used in the film — the other three songs were among the most mediocre he’d do in the fifties. By the time “The Reno Brothers” was finished, it had been renamed “Love Me Tender”, and we’ll be picking up on Elvis’ film career in a future episode…

NB This is a new version — I accidentally uploaded the wrong file previously Episode thirty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Heartbreak Hotel” by Elvis Presley, and is part three of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “The Flying Saucer” by Buchanan and Goodman.  Also, it came too late for me to acknowledge in the episode itself, but I have to mention the sad news that Dave Bartholomew died today, aged 100. He will be missed.  —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   There are many, many books about Elvis Presley out there, but the one I’m using as my major resource for information on him, and which has guided my views as to the kind of person he was, is Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, generally considered the best biography of him. This 3-CD box set (expensive on CD, but relatively cheap as MP3s) contains every surviving recording by Elvis from 1956, including outtakes. This more reasonably priced ten-CD box contains every official release he put out from 1954 through 62, but without the outtakes. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   We’ve talked before, a couple of times, about Elvis Presley and his early recordings. Those Sun records are the ones on which his artistic reputation now largely rests, but they weren’t the ones that made him famous. He didn’t become the Elvis we all know until he started recording for RCA. So today we’re going to look at the first single he put out on a major label, and the way it turned him from a minor regional country star into the King of Rock and Roll, a cultural phenomenon that would eclipse all music prior to him, and lead John Lennon to say “Before Elvis there was nothing”. As you might remember from the last episode on Elvis, a few weeks ago, Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had managed to get Elvis signed to RCA Records for a sum of money far greater than anything anyone had paid for a singer before, after Sam Phillips made what seemed like a ludicrous demand just to get Parker out of his hair. And this was a big deal. Sun Records, as we’ve seen, was a tiny regional operation. It was able to generate massive hits for Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash after Elvis left, but that’s only because of the cash the label was able to make from the Elvis deal. It’s safe to say that the whole genre of rockabilly was funded by that one deal. RCA, on the other hand, was one of the biggest labels in the world. The first thing RCA did was to reissue his last Sun single, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”, backed with “Mystery Train”. With RCA’s backing, the single did far better than it had on Sun, hitting number one on the country charts at the beginning of 1956. But was that enough to make the money RCA had paid for Elvis worth it? When Elvis went into the studio on January 10 1956, two days after his twenty-first birthday, the pressure was on him to record something very special indeed. Before going into the studio, Elvis had been sent ten demos of songs to consider for this first session. The song he ended up choosing as the main one for the session, though, was a song by someone he already knew — and for which he had a third of the songwriting credit. Mae Axton was an odd figure. She was an English teacher who had a sideline as a freelance journalist. One day she was asked by a magazine she was freelancing for to write a story about hillbilly music, a subject about which she knew nothing. She went to Nashville to interview the singer Minnie Pearl, and while she was working on her story, Pearl introduced her to Fred Rose, the co-owner of Acuff-Rose Publishing, the biggest publishing company in country music. And Pearl, for some reason, told Rose that Mae, who had never written a song in her life, was a songwriter. Rose said that he needed a new novelty song for a recording session for the singer Dub Dickerson that afternoon, and asked Mae to write him one. And so, all of a sudden, Mae Axton was a songwriter, and she eventually wrote over two hundred songs, starting with her early collaborations with Dub Dickerson: [Excerpt: Dub Dickerson, “Shotgun Wedding”] She was still also a freelance journalist, though, and it was easy for her to make a sidestep into publicity for hillbilly acts. For a time she was Hank Snow’s personal publicist, and she would often work with Colonel Parker on promoting shows when they came through Florida, where she lived. She’d interviewed Elvis when he came to Florida, and had immediately been struck by him. He’d talked to her about how amazed he was by how big the ocean was, and how he’d give anything to have enough money to bring his parents down to Florida to live there. She said later, “That just went through my heart. ‘Cause I looked down there, and there were all these other kids, different show members for that night, all the guys looking for cute little girls. But his priority was doing something for his mother and daddy.” She promised she’d write him a song, and by the end of the year, she had one for him. [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Heartbreak Hotel”] “Heartbreak Hotel” was, initially, the work of Tommy Durden, a country singer and songwriter. As Durden used to tell it, he was inspired by a newspaper story of a man who’d died by suicide, who had been found with no identification on him and a note that simply read “I walk a lonely street”. Later research has suggested that rather than a suicide, the story Durden had read was probably about an armed robber, Alvin Krolik, who had been shot dead in the course of committing a robbery. Krolik had, a few years earlier, after confessing to a string of other robberies, made the news with a partial autobiography he’d written containing the lines “If you stand on a corner with a pack of cigarettes or a bottle and have nothing to do in life, I suggest you sit down and think. This is the story of a person who walked a lonely street. I hope this will help someone in the future.” Whatever the actual story, it inspired Durden, who had a few lines of the song, and he played what he had to Mae Axton. She thought a lot about the phrase, and eventually came to the conclusion that what you’d find at the end of a lonely street was a heartbreak hotel. The two of them finished the song off, with the help of Glenn Reeves, a rockabilly singer who refused to take credit for his work on the song, because he thought it was ridiculous. Reeves did, though, record the demo for them. They’d already decided that the song should be pitched to Elvis, and so Reeves impersonated Presley: [Excerpt: Glenn Reeves, “Heartbreak Hotel”] A lot of people have claimed that Elvis copied that recording exactly, phrasing and all. Comparing the two recordings, though, shows that that’s not the case. Elvis definitely found it easier to record a song when he’d heard someone else doing it in an approximation of his style, and in the sixties he often *would* just copy the phrasing on demos. But in the case of “Heartbreak Hotel”, Elvis is not copying Reeves’ phrasing at all. The two are similar, but that’s just because Reeves is imitating Elvis in the first place. There are dozens of tiny choices Elvis makes throughout the song which differ from those made by Reeves, and it’s clear that Elvis was thinking hard about the choices he was making. When Mae played him the song, insisting to him that it would be his first million seller, his reaction on hearing it was “Hot dog, Mae! Play it again!” He instantly fell in love with the song, which reminded the young blues-lover of Roy Brown’s “Hard Luck Blues”: [Excerpt: Roy Brown, “Hard Luck Blues”] Elvis got a third of the songwriting credit for the song, which most people have said was insisted on by the Colonel – and certainly other songs Elvis recorded around that time gave him a credit for that reason. But to her dying day Mae Axton always said that she’d cut him in on the song so he might be able to get that money to buy his parents a house in Florida. The session to record “Heartbreak Hotel” started with the engineers trying — and failing — to get a replica of Sam Phillips’ slapback echo sound, which was a sound whose secret nobody but Phillips knew. Instead they set up a speaker at one end of the room and fed in the sound from the mics at the other end, creating a makeshift echo chamber which satisfied Chet Atkins but threw the musicians, who weren’t used to hearing the echo live rather than added after the fact. Atkins isn’t the credited producer for “Heartbreak Hotel” — that’s Steve Sholes, the A&R man at RCA Records who had signed Presley — but by all accounts Atkins was nominally in charge of actually running the session. And certainly there would be no other reason for having Atkins there — he played guitar on the record, but only adding another acoustic rhythm guitar to the sound, which was frankly a waste of the talents of probably the greatest country guitarist of his generation. That said, Atkins didn’t do that much production either — according to Scotty Moore, his only suggestion was that they just keep doing what they’d been doing. To start the session off, they recorded a quick version of “I Got A Woman”, the Ray Charles song, which had been a staple of Elvis’ live act since it had been released: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “I Got A Woman”] After that, the remainder of the first session was devoted to “Heartbreak Hotel”, a record that has a sense of thought that’s been put into the arrangement that’s entirely absent from the Sun Records arrangements, which mostly consist of start the song, play the song through with a single solo, and end the song. The whole point of those records was to capture a kind of spontaneity, and you can’t do much to play with the dynamics of an arrangement when there are only three instruments there. But now there were six — Scotty Moore and Bill Black were there as always, as was D.J. Fontana, who had joined the band on drums in 1955 and was recording for the first time, along with Atkins and piano player Floyd Cramer, who played on many of the biggest hits to come out of Nashville in the fifties and sixties. Atkins and Cramer are two of the principal architects of what became known as “the Nashville Sound” or “Countrypolitan” — there are distinctions between these two styles for those who are interested in the fine details of country music, but for our purposes they’re the same, a style of country music that pulled the music away from its roots and towards a sound that was almost a continuation of the pre-rock pop sound, all vocal groups and strings with little in the way of traditional country instrumentation like fiddles, mandolins, banjos, and steel guitars. And there’s an element of that with their work with Presley, too — the rough edges being smoothed off, everything getting a little bit more mannered. But at this point it seems still to be working in the record’s favour. After recording “Heartbreak Hotel”, they took a break before spending another three-hour session recording another R&B cover that was a staple of Elvis’ stage show, “Money Honey”. Along with the addition of Atkins and Cramer, there were also backing vocalists for the very first time. Now this is something that often gets treated as a problem by people coming to Elvis’ music fresh today. Backing vocals in general have been deprecated in rock and roll music for much of the last fifty years, and people think of them as spoiling Elvis’ artistry. There have even been releases of some of Elvis’ recordings remixed to get rid of the backing vocals altogether (though that’s thankfully not possible with these 1956 records, which were recorded directly to mono). But the backing vocals weren’t an irritating addition to Elvis’ artistry. Rather, they were the essence of it, and if you’re going to listen to Elvis at all, and have any understanding of what he was trying to do, you need to understand that before anything else. Elvis’ first ambition — the aspiration he had right at the beginning of his career — was to be a member of a gospel quartet. Elvis wanted to have his voice be part of a group, and he loved to sing harmony more than anything else. He wanted to sing in a gospel quartet before he ever met Sam Phillips, and as his career went on he only increased the number of backing vocalists he worked with — by the end of his career he would have J.D. Sumner and the Stamps (a Southern Gospel group), *and* the Sweet Inspirations (the girl group who had backed Aretha Franklin), *and* Kathy Westmoreland, a classically-trained soprano, all providing backing vocals. However, the backing vocalists on this initial session weren’t yet the Jordanaires, the group who would back Elvis throughout the fifties and sixties. One of the Jordanaires *was* there — Gordon Stoker — but the rest of them weren’t hired for the January sessions, as Steve Sholes wanted to use members of a group who were signed with RCA in their own right — the Speer Family. So Ben and Brock Speer joined Elvis and Stoker to make an unbalanced gospel quartet, with too many tenors and no baritone. When Elvis found out at a later session that this had happened as a cost-cutting measure, he insisted that all the Jordanaires be employed at his future sessions. The next day, to end the sessions, they regrouped and cut a couple of ballads. “I’m Counting On You” was rather mediocre, but “I Was The One” ended up being Elvis’ personal favourite track from the sessions: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “I Was The One”] At the end of the sessions, Steve Sholes was very unsure if he’d made the right choice signing Elvis. He only had five tracks to show for three sessions in two days, when the normal thing was to record four songs per session — Elvis and his group were so slow partly because they were used to the laid-back feel of the Sun studios, with Sam Phillips never clock-watching, and partly because Elvis was a perfectionist. Several times they’d recorded a take that Sholes had felt would be good enough to release, but Elvis had insisted he could do it better. He’d been right — the later versions were an improvement — but they had remarkably few tracks that they could use. Many of those who’d loved Elvis’ earlier work were astonished at how bad “Heartbreak Hotel” sounded to them. The reverb, sounding so different from the restrained use of slapback on the Sun records, sounded to many ears, not least Sam Phillips’, like a bad joke — Phillips called the result “a morbid mess”. [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Heartbreak Hotel”] Yet it became a smash hit. It went to number one on the pop charts, number one in country, and made the top five in R&B. This was the moment when Elvis went from being a minor country singer on a minor label to being Elvis, Elvis the Pelvis, the King of Rock & Roll. After the sessions that produced “Heartbreak Hotel”, Elvis went back into the studio twice more and recorded a set of songs — mostly R&B and rockabilly covers — for his first album. Almost all of these were Elvis’ own choice of material, and so while his versions of “Blue Suede Shoes” or “Tutti Frutti” didn’t match the quality of the originals, they were fine performances and perfect for album tracks. While the “Heartbreak Hotel” session had been in Nashville — a natural choice, since it was both relatively close to Elvis’ home town of Memphis, and the capital of country music, and Elvis was still supposedly a country artist — the next couple of sessions were in New York, timed to coincide with Elvis’ appearances on TV. Starting with the low-rated Stage Show, a programme that was presented by the swing bandleaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Elvis quickly moved up the ladder of TV shows, appearing first with Milton Berle, then with Steve Allen, and then finally on the Ed Sullivan show. On his first appearances, you can see the Elvis that people who knew him talked about – even as he’s working the audience with what looks like the utmost confidence, you can see his fingers twitching wildly in a way he’s not properly conscious of, and you can tell that under the mask of the sex symbol is the quiet country boy who would never meet anyone’s eye. Each show caused more controversy than the last, as first Elvis’ hip gyrations got him branded a moral menace, then he was forced to sing while standing still, and then only filmed from the waist up. Those shows helped propel “Heartbreak Hotel” to the top of the charts, but the Colonel decided that Elvis probably shouldn’t do too much more TV – if people could see him without paying, why would they pay to see him? No, Elvis was going to be in films instead. But all that work meant that Elvis’ fourth set of sessions for RCA was fairly disastrous, and ended up with nothing that was usable. Elvis had been so busy promoting “Heartbreak Hotel” that he hadn’t had any chance to prepare material, and so he just went with Steve Sholes’ suggestion of “I Want You I Need You I Love You”. But the session went terribly, because Elvis had no feel for the song at all. Normally, Elvis would learn a song straight away, after a single listen, but he just couldn’t get the song in his head. They spent the whole session working on that single track, and didn’t manage to get a usable take recorded at all. Steve Sholes eventually had to cobble together a take using bits of two different performances, and no-one was happy with it, but it reached number one on the country chart and number three on the pop charts. It was hardly “Heartbreak Hotel” levels of success, but it was OK. It was the B-side of that single that was really worth listening to. A leftover from the album sessions, it was, like Elvis’ first single, a cover version of an Arthur Crudup song. And this one also gave D.J. Fontana his first chance to shine. [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “My Baby Left Me”] By this point, it was very clear that if Elvis was given control of the studio and singing material he connected with, he would produce great things. And if he was doing what someone else thought he should be doing, he would be much less successful. A couple of months later Elvis and the group were back in the studio cutting what would become their biggest double-sided hit, both songs definitely chosen by Elvis. These days their cover version of Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” is the better-known of the two sides they cut that day, but while that’s an excellent track — and one that bears almost no relation to Thornton’s original — the A-side, and the song that finally convinced several detractors, including Sam Phillips, that Elvis might be able to make decent records away from Sun, was “Don’t Be Cruel”, a song written by Otis Blackwell, but credited to Blackwell and Presley, as the Colonel insisted that his boy get a cut for making it a hit. Otis Blackwell is another person who we’ll be hearing from a lot over the course of the series, as he wrote a string of hits, including several for Elvis, who he never met — the one time he did have a chance to meet him, he declined, as he’d developed a superstition about meeting the man who’d given him his biggest hits. At this time, Blackwell had just written the song “Fever” for Little Willie John: [Excerpt: “Fever”, Little Willie John] That song had become a big hit for Peggy Lee, in a version with different lyrics, and Blackwell was at the start of an impressive career. We don’t have Blackwell’s demo of “Don’t Be Cruel”, but he recorded a version in the 1970s which might give some idea of what Elvis heard in 1956: [Excerpt: Otis Blackwell, “Don’t Be Cruel”] Elvis’ version showed a lightness of touch that had been absent on his earlier RCA records. He was finally in control of the sound he wanted in the studio. “Don’t Be Cruel” took twenty-eight takes, and “Hound Dog” thirty-one, but you’d never believe it from the light, frothy, sound that “Don’t Be Cruel” has in its finished version, where Elvis sounds as playful as if he was improvising the song on the spot: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Don’t Be Cruel”] Both sides of the record went to number one – first “Don’t Be Cruel” went to number one and “Hound Dog” to number two, and then they swapped over. Between them they spent eleven weeks at the top of the charts. But even as Elvis was starting to take complete control in the studio, that control was starting to be taken away from him by events. His next session after the one that produced “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel” was one he had not been expecting. When he’d signed to make his first film, a Western called “The Reno Brothers”, he’d expected it to be a straight acting role with no songs — he wanted to follow the path of people like Frank Sinatra, who had parallel careers in the cinema and in music, and he also hoped that he could emulate his acting idols, Marlon Brando and James Dean. But by the time he came to make the film, several songs had been added — and he found out, to his annoyance, that he wasn’t allowed to use Scotty, Bill, and DJ on the soundtrack, because the film company didn’t think they could sound hillbilly enough. They were replaced with Hollywood session musicians, who could do a better job of sounding hillbilly than those country musicians could. Elvis didn’t have any say over the material either, although he did like the main ballad that was going to be used in the film — the other three songs were among the most mediocre he’d do in the fifties. By the time “The Reno Brothers” was finished, it had been renamed “Love Me Tender”, and we’ll be picking up on Elvis’ film career in a future episode…

It's finally 2019 and what better way is there to start the year than looking at the one we just left? So Ben and Erik did what they do best and ranked the best of just about everything they consumed in 2018. Come along and see what they liked and *really* liked. Sounds fun, right? RIGHT?! Intro and outro music: The Long Hike by Louie Zong louiezong.bandcamp.com

The 50th episode of the Take Talk Podcast featuring Ben Harris and Jacob Zuiderhoek! In this week's episode; T.J. Lane returns (TTP4) to guest host while Zuiderhoek is in Wisconsin. So Ben and T.J. discuss the Kawhi-Derozan trade, Le'Veon's contract, the Madden cover announcement, review new music from DRAM, Chance The Rapper, and The Internet, the Carmelo Anthony trade, Tiger Woods' performance at The Open and much more! Please make sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram @taketalkpodcast along with subscribing on Spotify, iTunes, iheartradio, and Spreaker. Enjoy one of our best shows yet, and thank you for 1 whole year of listenership!

The 50th episode of the Take Talk Podcast featuring Ben Harris and Jacob Zuiderhoek! In this week's episode; T.J. Lane returns (TTP4) to guest host while Zuiderhoek is in Wisconsin. So Ben and T.J. discuss the Kawhi-Derozan trade, Le'Veon's contract, the Madden cover announcement, review new music from DRAM, Chance The Rapper, and The Internet, the Carmelo Anthony trade, Tiger Woods' performance at The Open and much more! Please make sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram @taketalkpodcast along with subscribing on Spotify, iTunes, iheartradio, and Spreaker. Enjoy one of our best shows yet, and thank you for 1 whole year of listenership!

Why Dave Decided to talk to Ben: Ben Adkins is a Licensed Chiropractic Physician who grew his Practice using Facebook Marketing. He then helped other local businesses do the same in a little town called Poplar Bluff, Missouri. His focus on small business development has catapulted him to becoming a Guru of Internet Marketing. Ben realized that other local businesses across the globe need effective marketing, thus he created Closer's Café; a resource for those who are looking to build their own ad agency so they can help their community thrive. Visit closerscafe.com to get more information on: How To Build a Successful 6-Figure Facebook Agency From Home. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: Evolution of Internet Marketing and technology (8:15) Live and die by your calendar (12:38) Helping Businesses within Social Media (17:00) Knowing you Clients and foundation setting: (21:44) Closer’s Cafe Blog: (28:16) Quotable Moments: "There is such a technology gap from there to here. We now have the ability to do things that we could never dream of before." "You don’t have to create your course, before you sell your course." "Its amazing all the things you can get done when you have a deadline on your calender." "If you can just get that first win with doing some form of internet marketing and then you can start stringing together wins, it’s amazing what happens one to two years down the road." Other Tidbits: Ben discusses the importance of course creation and live teachings. He also elaborates on the importance of building a solid foundation by spending and planning your time doing the right things. Understanding the fundamentals is crucial to one’s success. Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00     Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Hey everybody. Welcome back. You guys are in for the ride of your life today. Speaker 2:     00:20     So excited. This is a guy I've been following for years. I'm so honored to have been atkins today, so Ben, welcome to the show. Speaker 3:     00:27     It is so good to be here in such an honor to be hanging out with you today like this was one of my favorites. This is one that comes down to the car. You know, sometimes you go to sleep by it. I think that's sort of the fun thing about these writers. We got people falling asleep listening to this stuff, but that's. That's a very intimate place to be right it. Speaker 2:     00:43     If I'm in your bed, that's a good thing. I know. Oh No. I'm so excited. This is, again, for those of you guys who don't know Ben, Ben starting off basically as the, as a chiropractor, getting it at getting leads from facebook and really has gone on to become the guru guy, the legendary marketer here in the industry when it comes to really local businesses and getting mad massive amount of traffic and leads for local businesses. So I was so excited to have been on. We're going to kind of take this wherever it goes. But, uh, again, Ben, thanks so much for all that you're doing. Anything you want to add to that before we dive into this? Speaker 3:     01:20     No, man, I'll tell Ya. It's like you were saying it's to have gone to school as long as I did to become a chiropractor and then to look up one day and realize, oh no, this is what you do. No, not that. This is your gig now this is, you know, and I wouldn't trade it for the world, that whole experience, but I tell you, it was a, it was an interesting path to get from there to now. Speaker 2:     01:41     Well, let's talk about that path because there's a lot of people who are in your situation years ago. We're thinking, Gosh, you know, what else can I do? How else can I make that transition? Or, you know, I've got this skill set, but I don't know if it's really marketable and things. And again, we're joking around. I think a only because the fact that your son's turning seven, uh, you kind of figured that Speaker 3:     02:00     2011, right? Right. So, you know, it was crazy. I, I got out of school and I did sort of the, uh, I moved pretty close back to where I was from and I only got into chiropractic because I'm, you know, I had a really good chiropractor where I was from. He seemed to be really successful and he seemed to have a cool life and everybody seemed to like this guy. People would travel from all over and I was like, you know what a cool gig. You get to help people and you know it. It's not like a crazy expensive business. Once you actually get into it, it's more of the expenses. Usually the marketing that's, that's the whole ballgame. Um, and I got into this whole Gig and I think I made the mistake a lot of folks I work for someone for a little while, decided that wasn't for me and you know, it real quickly. Speaker 3:     02:46     I'm like, no, this is the whole reason I went to school with so I didn't have to do this. Uh, so I started my own practice and it was one of those things where, I mean there was not a lot of ramp up, but I had some money that I'd saved up. I had somebody that had borrowed from family because that's, that's always the best thing. Right. And, and I went out and I opened my practice up and um, you know, it's funny. It's one of those things where it was a oh crap moment pretty quickly I opened the doors up and, you know, I knew I had to do marketing, I had done some marketing, but the first week, like we're sitting there, we're getting the place sort of an order. And the only person that comes in is my account and he comes in and like the first week it was like, thank God my accountant who was just, I think felt sorry for we have Ed. Speaker 3:     03:33     So I had one person that had come in and, you know, I remember going to that weekend and just being like sitting there with like, you know, I kind of expected that, but we're going to have to really get with it. And the very interesting part about it is, is when you open up a business like that and it's not busy, you have a little bit of extra time to really dig into some things. And so it was really, there it was, you know, those first two or three months I look back and the fear and not sleeping and then go into work and it kind of do the stuff that side. It was really sort of figuring out, okay, how are we going to get people through the door? Because also the other mistake is not built in a big budget for marketing. So I didn't have a bunch of ways to reach out to people, so I was on facebook, you know, I just happen to be on facebook. Speaker 3:     04:14     This was sort of that time. Things were getting really interesting with facebook and uh, I started doing some things and researching all that everybody else was doing that was working. There wasn't really anybody in the chiropractic niche that was doing it. Um, I was following people like, you know, Russell and I was following the Kurds and you know, all of the big guys, the Internet marketing space and I'm like, if I can apply what these guys are doing over here, you know, we can do some interesting things. And so we started doing some things on facebook, doing some, you know, some other things with Google Seo, things like that. And I tell you it was, it was a right place, right time sort of stuff. Within about six months I had a practice that was rivaling those that had been there 20 years and how busy we were. Speaker 3:     04:54     And that sort of the moment that I was like, well, this is interesting, but, you know, starting to get busy and I had a lot of local business owners that were in the town that I was in and said, hey, you know, can you, can you come help us do this stuff? I was like, sure, yeah, totally. That was taking a lot of clients and the probably the best thing that ever happened was my wife said, listen, the chiropractics one thing, but if you're going to work with other people and take time away, you better charge for best thing that ever happened. So the smart person in my life, you know, the one that's actually got it together, it says do this. And so I did this. And so I started doing that. And pretty quickly because the marketing was working by it, I was getting clients help that wanted my help with that. Speaker 3:     05:36     I started getting really busy and this was sort of the big turnaround for me. I, I sat down and realized this stuff's working well. It's working well when I applied to other industries, um, I don't have time to take on more clients, but I would still like to make money, you know, helping other people. So I thought I was the first person to ever thought of this. I sat down in front of Microsoft word and started typing and I wrote down the things that we were doing that were working and he was selling it locally. Just people. I was like, dude, with you here, go read this. And then I, you know, you start to realize there's people all over the world and there's a much bigger marketplace and, you know, I won't bore you with the details of that. But within about a year I had a business selling that stuff that, uh, was dwarfing the chiropractic office because it was just a much bigger marketplace. Speaker 3:     06:26     And you know, I think it's Kinda like Russell in the potato gun stuff that he talks about. It was one of those things where it wasn't like I didn't get rich at first doing that stuff but it. But it was something broke in my head and I was like, oh, this is what's going on. Okay. And so from there, you know, I, I hired someone to come in and to help me with the chiropractic side and, and I didn't mean for this to happen, but I was there, you know, three times a week. And then I was there two times a week and then I had not shown up in two months. And you know, and before I knew it was one of those things where I said, I guess this is my full time Gig and I tell you, I, I think the best part was somehow by the grace of God, I was blessed with the first set of customers that bought my stuff online. Speaker 3:     07:12     Uh, were just amazing people. Of course, we all run into the stuff here and there. That's not, that's not representative of what this is. But the majority of the people that bought from us, we're just the most interesting people on the planet. And so I pretty, pretty quickly determined. I was like, this is, you know, the people that I want to help. But at the same time, it's funny, when I stopped the chiropractic office stuff, I kept doing this stuff with the other local businesses that were asking to. And so it was one of those things where I looked up one day and I said, okay, this was a really beautiful thing. I have people that are hiring me to do one thing and then I have a whole other set of people that are basically asking me to report on what I'm doing here and that's working. Speaker 3:     07:54     And so that's, you know, a very, uh, short, I don't know if there's a short as it should've been, but as a short form of what happened to me between, you know, go into chiropractic school, graduating in 2000, seven to 2011. That's sort of what happened. And it was, it's been a crazy ride. It really has three. That's just awesome. So doc, as we take a look at this thing, um, I know a lot of people can say, well, Gosh, you know, ben started this thing at the very beginning where it was easy and now there's all this competition. Can someone really do the same thing now? Um, I tell you, you know, you get a lot of people that, you know, it's, it's changed. Like I couldn't go back. I couldn't do the same things that I did now to grow it, uh, that, that I didn't grow it back then. Speaker 3:     08:33     But what's, what I think a lot of people miss is we have such a technology can technology gap from there to here. We now have the ability to do things that we could never dream of before. Like now I can know I can go in with the auto responders and things like click funnels, page builders and I can go in and do something in a matter of an afternoon that used to literally take me two weeks to a month. And you know, I think that's the really interesting. Forget that it's. Yeah. It's one of the things when you see what you currently have, you, everyone always thinks, oh, it's always been that way. I remember it took months to get a website up. My first website. I thought I was going to die. It was forever. And you know, even if you the template, it's something that's the thing that a lot of people miss. Speaker 3:     09:19     Even if you had a template for something still copying that template over was it took forever and you know, we had wordpress back then, but it wasn't the word press we have now and you know, doing all those things was very, very tough. And you know, another thing that we discovered and you know, I want to give this one of the things that you think you've thought of A. I look over at Russell, I'm actually reading expert secrets last night because it was just the next on my list. And so I got all the way through expert secrets last night and I've noticed that Russell's been doing this. What are the other big things that we've started to realize was we can take the knowledge that we have or someone else has. And I think I discovered this probably in 2013, 2014 that it works for me is you don't have to create the course before the course is. Speaker 3:     10:00     So, you know, and that's, that was a huge thing for us too, is you want going to repeat that for anybody who's listening to this thing, please, please, please listen. I've never been set at one more time. Sure. The key is you don't have to create your course before you sell your course. And that was the big thing for us too, is we go out and we'd be working with a dentist, let's say, and we'd get some great results with a dentist and I'd say, well okay, we need to create a product about this because there's a lot of people that will really be into it. And how we had been doing it for a long time, it's just been a monster for us, is we will actually open the door. Say these are the bullet points, this is what we're going to teach you, but it's going to be live with the first time and you know, we'll sell tickets to that and we'll sell tickets to an event that is live. Speaker 3:     10:45     And what's really interesting about that is a lot of people would think, well, I'm not going to sell as much as I do it live. People really want to be a part of it the first time and be a part of the live thing. And they'll, they'll actually spend more money to be part of it live. And so a lot of what we've been able to do over the last few years is when we have great success, what was success with a local business or a method that we're using with local business, we're able to go out and say, okay cool, let's do something where we can teach this live now. And we make money teaching. It's very, very quickly without there being anything created because we do have the speed of, you know, of course creation they are, but we also have the speed of being able with tools like clickfunnels and Kajabi to build a members area or to put together the sales page is very, very fast and within a span, and this took some practice by the way, but within a span of maybe 48 hours, we can have all of the mechanics setup and ready to go and go out and tell people about it and it works. Speaker 3:     11:39     I love it. In fact, it's kind of funny. Russell's on the process. We're in the process of creating his next book, traffic secrets. Nice. And it's again, because he's learned from her experience, her last two books, the only way he's going to do this is going to do a live event first and Speaker 2:     11:54     teach it all. Now that's all been taught. Now we've got the curriculum and we can take that and actually write the book off of that. So I think what you're saying there is so key and that is live events are one of the best ways of creating products you can ever, ever imagined. Speaker 3:     12:08     Yeah, that's the thing. I think that for me, I was always. I go back to the Jason Fladlien days. For those of you that don't know Jason Fladlien, Jason is amazing and hey, Jason always told me and I got some really great advice from him starting out. That probably changed my life forever. Jason says, if you can't sit down and create it in one sitting, it's over. That's over. There's going to be something that comes up. So what are the core things that we've really come up with? And this is whether I work with local clients and doing something for them or I'm working with people teaching, you know, the stuff that we're doing. It's always I've got to sit down at my calendar and say, this is the day, this is the day that this is going to get done, or at least my part of this is going to get done. Speaker 3:     12:46     And whether that'd be a live class alive, a bit, whatever. And it's going to be done and so my part has to be finished and so it's amazing all the things that you can get done when you have a deadline on your calendar, you know, and it's amazing how you can stretch it out if you don't. Oh yeah. I think that that is the probably the most important thing for me is I live and die in my income, goes way up and way down by my calendar. And you know, we've got a lot of recurring revenue. We have a lot of those things coming in right now. It's very predictable. But in terms of if I really want to make the, you know, put points on the scoreboard, I know where I started, it's my calendar and I, it's like, okay, this has to be done by this date or you have to be ready to present it Speaker 2:     13:25     live by the state. Now staff can take it from there. But that's super important. Oh my gosh. We are two comic callbacks program. We rolled out a funnel hacking live. It's all based on that one thing. And it's a flat to a promo is what we refer to it as, you know, it's letter, basically a letter, let her go and type of moment. And that is you're either gonna sure they're going to die or you're going to create it. And we, even today we were talking about it, we've got a large, you bet we have coming up here next month and it's the same thing. You look at our calendars and Russell just did a podcast on it where those deadlines, even though we are a successful big company, we still live and die by deadlines. It's not our team knows, you know, we were not pushing that out. It's going to launch here. So get ready. And that means late nights. It's whatever it takes, it has to happen. So I. Gosh, then it's so cool just seeing the success that you've had by living, by those principles. Speaker 3:     14:18     Well, I think that's the thing. If you really look around, and of course there's exceptions to the rule, but if you really look around at those of us that have been around for a little while and we sort of see what's going on, but those of us that have stuck around, those of us that have not only stuck around but grown and you know, I think that's, that is a common theme that they very much live by their calendar and they very much live by, you know, being able to be speedy with how they put certain things out, but also maintain a level of quality even though there is a lot of speed behind the way that they're doing it. I think that that is a huge, huge key to the whole ballgame. Speaker 2:     14:49     So yeah, I love it. So Ben, tell me what, uh, Speaker 3:     14:52     what industries are you in right now as far as local business? I know you guys have dentistry, you've got chiropractors. I think you can do some legal stuff. I mean, you're all over the place. It's really interesting. You know, I, I have all these things that we like to do in terms of, you know, Internet marketing and teaching and things like that, but I always love the things that you can do that don't require a lot of your time. Um, but bringing in recurring income every month and people stay forever, I think. I think that's a, it doesn't matter how successful you get, it's always fun to have those things that you can set in motion, you can tip the domino and not really do anything else. And it's money that's gonna be for, for you five years down the road. And so we got into this thing and I had someone that was on our staff that we hired on that sort of fit this model once we started getting into it. Speaker 3:     15:38     But we figured out, you know, facebook started to cut out all of the organic reach, four pages to the people that already liked them. Right. And so that was like a huge thing and so a lot of people kind of gotten this mode of okay, facebook, I don't need to focus on that. What they didn't realize, and, and we started seeing this because we had the local clients. What they didn't realize is even though that organic went away, there's still this really interesting thing that's happened and now people do, really, two things were there after a business, you know, especially in smaller towns that they do this, they'll go check it on google. So they go look at the website, but that's sort of a here's what the business wants me to see. And then they go to facebook, like I blown away by how many searches people are putting in because they heard it on the radio, they heard it through a friend or even just a city named chiropractor. Speaker 3:     16:26     And then they'll go click on one. And so I, I didn't realize this for a while, but the facebook search got into a big deal. And so the one thing that has to be happening, uh, for a business, and I do this actually at least a few times a week, especially when I'm traveling, I'll get on, I'll search a place and if there's no content on the facebook page, I'm like, what's that? It not only is it dead on the facebook page, it's probably dead inside, you know, so I was making these really interesting psychological jumps and I said this is, this is the thing, and so we started going to businesses and we said, you know what, if we could go out there and help them with their social stuff everyday, and we, we built out this silly model of, okay, we've got 180 posts for chiropractors. Speaker 3:     17:09     Great. They look great. Took forever, took the art department forever to put 'em all together, but they look great and how quickly can we brand them per office? Okay. And from there, how quickly can we put them into a software program that rotates? So it goes through all of the posts, two posts a day at the end of three bucks at rotates, because nobody's going to know three months apart, two posts a day, 180 posts it, it started and we started figuring out how to scale something like this. So we've got a hundred 80 posts. We use it for just about every office that we've got and then we step it for the office that takes you 20 minutes with, you know, a piece of software and then we put it into the mix. And this is something that businesses are more than willing to pay if you're not doing social media management. Speaker 3:     17:51     Social media management is like a 500 to a thousand $2,000 a month thing, right? Nobody wants to. Nobody on a local level wants to pay that, but you go in and you charge them 100 to $200 a month for something like that all day. And so we got on this really weird tear of chiropractors, dentists, Jim's, you know, people that are everywhere. There's a lot of independence and it's not so much chains. And uh, we started kind of going into that business and you look up one day and you realize, okay, this is killer, like, and these are, and nobody ever asked for anything else. Like it's there, it's doing it. They're happy because they've got content all the time. So even if they want to post your own content, they've got some sort of bad is what we started really realizing pretty quickly with that is it helps them up in the search rankings and facebook which are becoming actually more important. Speaker 3:     18:37     So what we have gotten into is I don't do a lot of lead Gen marketing just straight coming out and selling legion anymore. What I do now is I go in and we find businesses that will do like a facebook posting thing and then we have this bed of clients now that are paying us 100 to 200 bucks a month. And then we go in for the certain ones that had it, you know, they just got something special going. They're the ones that, you know, you can see out of all your clients, they really have something. We say, okay, we want to run a lead Gen campaign with, you know, this is going to be the one that's $2,000 a month, something like that because they can actually make it back. And so we've built this really interesting business and you know, we did this ourselves first. Speaker 3:     19:17     This was something we wanted to get really good at. And then this is where the interesting thing started happening. I started sort of teaching it to my normal crew of Internet marketers and they started doing it and of course you had your crowd of people that are always the top performers. They go kill it, they kill it, they kill it right away. But what we also started finding is there were people that we have been helping for a long time. They just couldn't seem to put it together. You know, there's that crowd that you love them. They're just such good people. But they couldn't put it together. And a lot of these people were able to do this because I think it was a much more simple and you know, there wasn't a lot of variables with that. So I kind of got into this mode of I'm like, okay, we've got to have a whole section of our company that if I'm teaching email marketing and product creation and that's not for you, I can say go do this over here because this is the thing that if you start here, you're going to get your wind and I found that that is the number one thing with all that we do is if you can just get that first win with doing some form of Internet marketing and then you can start stringing together wins. Speaker 3:     20:15     It's amazing what happens a year, two years down the road. If you're starting to build it up. Plus you got a little recurring income to start giving you a little more time. So that's. That's been the focus. The last little bit is really building out the systems for that so that. I mean we had it built into our business, but building out the systems in a way that we could give it to other people so that they could go do it. And so far I've been super jazzed because I have people, like I said, that were just years into this, couldn't put it together and now they're, they're successful with that, but they're also starting to put together other things that are much more advanced and they're getting winds. They are too. And I think that's the thing. It's with what we do. It's so confidence based, you know? So anyways. Yeah, that's the core. Speaker 2:     20:56     This is why I love having, I'd love talking. You just drag vod value bomb after value by. So I seriously. So again, if you guys are, listen, this guy's stuff, whether you're a local business or not, I might. Gosh, the importance of getting a win for yourself, a win for your clients. I know for us at clickfunnels is one of the main things we're looking at doing right now is trying to add some quick wins for people that come on. I mean obviously as a SAS company man, we're always concerned about churn. We're always looking at that type of thing. But even as a local business churn is important to you as well. I mean, yeah, I love the fact that you've got this huge ground floor of success from people who are basically paying you on a monthly basis. You've got monthly recurring revenue coming in and then from that you just kind of pick, pick the clients that you want to work with that are your best opportunities and it's just what a great, great way of looking at a business. Speaker 3:     21:43     Yeah. And you know, that's what's so great is once you sort of get past that initial um, you know, sort of getting to know your clients and getting the foundation set for them, um, you know, there are funnels that work, you know, and we built these originally on clickfunnels, you know, a couple years back, we started building these things and it's, there's things you can give away a local market, get people through the door and with the ones that we're looking to work with, if you can just get people through the door, it's over. It doesn't matter why they came in, if they can just meet the doctor, if they can just meet the lawyer, if they can just get in there the first time, you're good and they're going to be your people forever. And so that, that's the big thing is we had all these great legion funnels because that's what I used to do, you know, out of the gate. Speaker 3:     22:23     That's what I used to do. But what was so great is now. Whereas I would walk into a business and the only reason I love this stuff by the way is, you know, sometimes it's hard to build your first product. Sometimes it's hard to sell a physical product, but there's a million chiropractors out there. Well not really, but there's a lot, you know, there's a million dentists out there and there's so many of these people that have tried to do certain things and they need help and they want help and if you put the right price tag in front of them, which, you know, low ticket but recurring, it's a really big thing for them. And then, like I said, you had get them some results there. They get happy with what's going on, it's super easy to now come in and say, well, we've got these funnels that have been working all over, um, or I know this, this chiropractor that has these funnels that have been working all over and to put them and implement them and now you've got their trust and they're willing to take a chance on things with you. So it's, it's been a lot of fun and it's been a lot of fun seeing other people be successful with it too. Speaker 2:     23:15     So. Awesome. So tell me, I know in the local market I'm here a lot as far as, you know, reviews and things like that. Is that, uh, an opportunity? It's something that's. Speaker 3:     23:26     Yeah. What's, what's real, what's not real about the whole review thing? What's interesting is, you know, I think a lot of, uh, a lot of what happens the local markets with, you know, people that actually have brick and mortar businesses is there's so much to do. And there's so many of these big companies out there that are, that are really targeting women, so there's, you know, like the high booze and the know, like the big, big companies that are really targeting them and they're pitching a lot of things at them. But I think a lot of these local businesses don't know really what matters. And so I think what we really try to extend out to anybody that we help or the, you know, we're teaching people to go help people. It's really lock in the things that they need to do and in what order. Speaker 3:     24:06     Okay. So I think that's the key is you can do everything. You can do all these things. You can spend so much money just like with what we do. Right? But, but there's an order to things that makes a lot more sense. So we always tell people the first things that we do with local businesses, you've got to have your website looking great. And you know, it has to be somewhat seo friendly at least. But at the very least, it's got to be looking right because a lot of times the local market, it's just about someone telling their friend about something great and then they're going to go stock the business for a little while. So the first thing is you have to have that website looking great. That is such an easy thing at the at this point. But the second thing is you have to have your facebook page producing content because I think a lot of people miss out on how many people are coming there to get an inside look at what the business looks like. Speaker 3:     24:50     And I, like I said, I got my phone right here and it's, it's crazy to me how I will not. I guess I'm lazy. I don't switch over to safari from the facebook APP and I'll just search for the business there. So those are things until those things are locked in that that's the big thing. Now, the only other thing I'll say is this, when you get into like your google my business listing, that is one of the easiest ways people get their foot in the door with local businesses to as they say, listen, I saw you here and I'm this. Something's wrong with this. And did you know it said this? And businesses are more than happy to pay someone to fix those things because they don't know how. It's not even that they haven't seen it. Most of the time they just don't know how to fix it. Speaker 3:     25:31     And then you get into like if you want to get into reviews, that's a very interesting place to be right now because there's a lot of big things like Google just came down with a, hey you can't review gate. And that was something that was happening for a long time. And for those that don't know what that is, that's your inside an app, you know? Or like the company would send an email, hey, what'd you think? And they would select one of the stars and if they select the too low, they wouldn't send you to Google. But if you selected really high, they would send you to Google to actually put the review there and there was. So what was really interesting, so is there was a lot of that going on that's going away, but you've got a. you've got a lot of companies that are really on top of how important reviews are because I think we all, when we're googling things from Ron, yeah, we're all looking for that. Speaker 3:     26:16     And I think a lot of times, you know, with local businesses where we tell them to do is say in your office, you've got this stream of people coming every day in your office, in your restaurant, you've got a stream of people ask, give them the opportunity so you know what we do a lot of times it's the dumbest thing in the world. Now. I used it even charged for this because we're trying to charge them for something else. But I say put up a sign that's it. Put up a sign that walks them through how to do this because the people are coming into your business everyday. I already love you. Let them fill out and fix that stuff, and so a lot of what we've helped with that kind of, but I think it's very good that you bring that up. A lot of what we do is literally we just have a step by step, this is how you go give our business a review and please go do it because it helps us and we put a sign up and it's amazing how you can shift the balance of things between a business and their competitors just by leveraging the people that love them already. Speaker 3:     27:08     So yeah, I love that. Super cool idea. I love the idea as far as the whole review game because yeah, it's always fun. Anytime you take a look at the history of there was always some marketer out there, US included, who's always trying to assist him. At first we can provide this and eventually it all comes back to the whole black hat. White Hat. White hat always wins out in the end. Yeah, without a doubt. Just the way I think if you can start off being white hat man, matter of luck to you and your business. Yeah, I mean it's always one of those things where you have to be following the right people I think, and I think that the right people out there, they may piss you off from time to time, but at the same time you always respect that they're trying to do things the right way and if you're following the right people, you tend to, you know, it's always who taught you, you know, you always seem how to do something and so that's, that's one of the big things is I've always stayed away from reviews because I was like, something's not right here, you know, at the very least just tell people that like you to go in, but it's, you know, but I also can't fault anybody that's done that because if you have, if you didn't get an advantage getting advantage as long as it gets. Speaker 3:     28:11     But now that it's against you get away from it. Yeah. Well you were kind enough as we were talking earlier, as far as put some different things together to help our users out. What was, you got to some offer you were looking at that to closers cafe or something like that. So we got this blog that we've been doing and what this blog turned into, it was a boy from any sort of document, the things that we're doing and you know, we, we, you know, you run into these things everyday that like, you know, or just these weird little pockets of the way business works or that weird thing and how this dentist's office work. And so this was sort of a place for me to start documenting all the things that I was learning and I've always found it very, very helpful to go back and see certain things as it's been sort of a marketing diary for me. Speaker 3:     28:56     So closers cafe, we put that together and what are the things that we wanted to do for everybody that was listening to this. I think that there's always this ramp up of things in experience that you have to go through when you're in any business. And so, you know, we've been doing this local business thing for awhile and we've made lots of mistakes, but we've, we've nailed some things down and we've done some things in and so we have six funnels. We have some of our best things that have worked for local businesses. There's a chiropractor, if there's a dental, there's a gym, there's restaurants, there's a couple key funnels that. And just about every market we've ever run these particular funnels in. We've made it rained for businesses. You know, we've got people through the door, we've gotten results and we've actually changed what their business was like because of that. Speaker 3:     29:40     So what we wanted to do is, because this is such a funnel centric podcast, this is like, and like I said before, when we first built these, it was all testing on clickfunnels to. So what we wanted to do is give that away to folks that you can go in and you can see it. And how this is sort of structured is it's not just, hey, here's the funnel. It's, here's the ad we ran, here's the targeting, here's the actual what the actual page look like. I, I hate when I feel like there's something that's cut out. Uh, so we put all this stuff together so that folks could go in and sort of see what we're doing, how it works, and even if you're not into local stuff or helping with digital services as we call it, this is something that you can look at it and you can start seeing the similarities between whatever you're doing and how it works with a local. Speaker 3:     30:19     And you know, listen, I also think I know a lot of really great marketers. They all eat, they all go to the dentist. They have to go to the chiropractor. It's always nice to have those things to help the people that you love the most, you know, just by giving them that. So it's closers. Cafe a slash forgot her actually closers. Cafe Dot com slash funnel hacker. You'd think I'd never said a url before. We were talking about the closers, cafe.com/funnel hacker and you can get our six best funnels and for, for local and like I said, that's been something that a lot of people will put those in action and we've seen people saved businesses before that we're having a tough time and that's pretty powerful. If you can make that sort of impact on someone that you like, that you're just so awesome. Speaker 3:     30:56     So again, everybody has closers. Cafe Dot Com for those of you are new to the domain game, so closers, cafe.com, forward slash funnel hacker to good. But again, Ben, I can't thank you enough. You're just always so generous. You so willing to give to our community, to others. If people want to reach out to you and get more involved with you, what's another way they can do that? You can always jump over to closers. Cafe Dot com and just say, hey there, we've got places that you can find us. You can contact us there. My email address is always a good one bid at three, three p dot CEO. That's, you know, one of those weird company names. That's the umbrella, right? Because we're all official. Even always send me an email and sometimes my email it gets a little bit clogged up, but I, I always like when people are reaching out there and we can have an email back and forth. Speaker 3:     31:44     I, my goal was whatever I've done in this whole thing is, is big as we've gotten. I never want it to be so big that we can't have an email conversation with folks. So feel free to reach out to me there too and we'd be glad to help out any way we can. So your email one address one more time if you don't mind for sure. It's been e n@thirtythreelikethenumbersp.ceo, you know, short, but equally hard for people to get just by you saying it, but you know, it's amazing. That can be that short and people still be like, no, what was that? So good stuff. Oh, well, any parting words as we wrap things up here now? I think, I think the key is that you know it, if you're in it right now and if you're listening to this podcast in particular, I think one of the key things you're trying to figure out is how can I take this stuff that I'm already good at or something that I'm really interested in and really grow it. Speaker 3:     32:32     And I think the key is, is like we were talking about put something on your calendar so you know, I want to have when I'm trying to have done by this date and you know, I want to have it done because by this date I want to have this much income coming through the door. And I think that's the big key for me. That's the big takeaway is I started making the kind of money I wanted to make when I started writing it down and putting it on a calendar. And it's amazing how you start hustling when. That's the big thing. So, you know, I always used to say take action, but for me, taking action is always just, hey, look at the counter, what I had to do today. And big, big empires are built by what you do today and how each of your days sort of stacks up into a lot of days. Speaker 3:     33:12     So I would say that you got tools, you've got the tools, you've got the knowledge, you have your expertise. If you don't have your expertise will go, go read a book, you'll get the expertise pretty quickly if you go do it. And I'd say that's it, just get it on a calendar, start moving. And I think that's. That is the secret. Literally it's dumb is that is that is the secret to my success, man. I love your secret. Well, love you to death then you're always so much fun to have to be around. Again. Guys, check out what was your cafe.com forward slash funnel hacker getting closer, cafe.com. Forward slash funnel hacker. Follow Ben. Reach out in. This guy's been crushing it for almost a decade now online, but even more so than that as far as an entrepreneur goes and this guy just knows his stuff. So again, I can't thank you enough. You're just such a dear friend and appreciate all the issue for us and I wish you all continued massive success and everything you're doing. Thank you so much for having us in. This is fun. As always, this is one of the most fun things to be a part of. Yeah. Thanks Ben. Thanks. Speaker 4:     34:11     Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me where I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over 650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people. At the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if you'd like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you so I can go to itunes rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.

After coding live at Lean+Agile DC 2018, Ben Scott of Ippon Technologies joins Bob Payne to talk code craftsmanship and getting proper feedback from the business side.  Ben explains a way to quickly build a quality demo from scratch – creating the first demonstrable piece of value.  Bob and Scott walk through their opinions on (shudder) best practices, living in ambiguity in agile methods, and bridging the gap between IT and business. Bob Payne: [00:00:03] Hi I'm your host Bob Payne. I'm here at Lean+Agile D.C.. I'm here with Ben Scott and we're listening to "Stand in the Place Where You are" by RBM played on the music fiddle version which is really disconcerting for me. It's like Fugazi. You know elevator music which is definitely elevator music. But country elevator music. So Ben we were talking earlier about lots and lots of things but you were talking about sort of your experience here trying to do live coding and talk. What was your what was the gist of your talk? What were you talking about with. Ben Scott: [00:00:56] So, let's start with the problem statement: Whenever you start a project from scratch mainly it's really hard to get good business demos and keep the business interactive with getting proper feedback. You'll see a lot of demos with terminals. Hey let's see what my code can do and you have to look at log statements or use post postman to demonstrate APIs. And then the business kind of glazes over it. And I think a lot of issues stem from developers trying to recreate everything internally. Someone has to provide a demo that even started a presentation with zero code I could provide a business level demo with a front end application backend with database usage deployed to the cloud. All within the same presentation within 45 minutes. So that was kind of the gist, some people really liked the felt it really demonstrated well what could be done now. They're probably unsure how to adopt down to their own organization but it's mostly a show that it is able to do that and you don't have to buy it. It's FREE.  Ben Scott: [00:02:14] It's opensource a tool that I use is called J Hipster and I think overall great.  Bob Payne: [00:02:23] Yeah I mean for those of us who've been familiar with play or Rails or any of the generative frameworks you know that it was not should not have been surprising but I realized how how painful it is for most organizations to get to that first demonstrable piece of value.  Ben Scott: [00:02:50] Yes.  Bob Payne: [00:02:51] It is a little a little insane.  Ben Scott: [00:02:53] It is. The key differences are with J hipster is it really tries to adopt the enterprise level technology. Bob Payne: [00:03:00] You see the full stack you've got full size containerized deployments.  Ben Scott: [00:03:05] You can you don't have to but it sure does generate Docker containers. I use the docker file to let you generate a Docker container from your code. It will generate your CD pipeline script. It supports multiple privacy circles C.I. Jenkins obviously and a few other really really kind of handhold you through the whole process of getting a code from scratch all the way to diploid and ready. It can't do anything about your business level code that's on you right. But all the bootstrapping and plumbing it generates according to best practices of the time with us.  Bob Payne: [00:03:45] I winced on the inside. I don't like the phrase best practices but best that I'm okay with. Ben Scott: [00:03:54] Yes well it's always a big debate. What is best practice. Like for depending on where you are which technology you're using and your opinion because it's a hotly debated topic Your Domain Driven Design or you don't. Some people really love it some people hate it. Yeah that type of thing.  Bob Payne: [00:04:12] Yeah I try to stay away because people always ask us for as consultants are always asking for the answer and there really only is know fee here given your situation. Here are a few options that we've seen people be successful. Yes you know and you know I always sort of try to steer people away from that. Like calling people resources. There's a few you like hot button words that I can't make can move resources around us our projects exactly rituals and scroll to find that I hate things that that pull it out of the somewhat grey world that we actually live in.  Ben Scott: [00:05:05] Yes I actually like to prefer I prefer to live in this ambiguity. I don't like to define what scrum is definitely. I don't like too dear to a Agile philosophy per se or implementation whenever somebody dresses. Hey what is ads out to you. To me it's you delivered a piece of software that was correct at the right time and how you got there might differ based on the people working in your company. Yes we might use Scrum or not. It depends if it's a good fit with that place and sometimes it's now or sometimes they just decide as long as we do what scrum says we are agile and we just get away from what they really mean.  Bob Payne: [00:05:50] Yeah. Defer to authority. There is a good strategy.  Ben Scott: [00:05:55] So I don't like to prescribe things.  Bob Payne:[00:05:57] Yeah.  Ben Scott: [00:05:58] When we hire Scrum Masters always ask me what's your process. What tool to use. You know you use Jira. I don't prescribe - you use what you like to use right.  Ben Scott: [00:06:07] Well your client will let you use yes whatever you is best for your situation which will change.  Bob Payne: [00:06:15] So how do you so I know you've been doing a lot of technical coaching coaching. What do you what do you find most rewarding. Because sometimes it's it's you know it's it's a tough slog sometimes and there are always those little nuggets that just say yeah you know that will keep me going for a few months banging my head against this team or this wall or whatever. Ben Scott: [00:06:43] So I really enjoy bringing upskilling developers on where they lack and I'm not a awesome developer. I'm a very niche developer who understand the agile practices so I can do their job testing frameworks Cucumber, or perform sensing as a Gatling I know how to do them and the basic forms right and the tools to know how to use them. Eventually it clicks at first like I don't want it. It is what QA is for but eventually it clicks and it's really fun to see a click. Likewise I work a lot with the business side on bridging the gap between developers and the business we actually start working together instead of the whole campus. This is the business that we need to take to go on like what we need is. Of course we do to this refactoring. We need to adopt this technology or just trying to bring them together so they actually work as a team and we'll stack clicks which is much harder than it was going developers. Bob Payne: [00:07:40] Yeah. Ben Scott: [00:07:41] That's that's really fun.  Bob Payne: [00:07:42] Yeah that is. Yeah. We like speed we have that sort of mission of making people's lives more valued fulfilling and productive. It's kind of our or our mission if we can do that on an individual basis or you know we health and organization so that it helps the folks. But it all fundamentally comes down to you know people people in interactions and you know hopefully making a you know a decent world for them to sort of grind away at the code code is an unforgiving.  Ben Scott: [00:08:21] Yes we'll spend days looking for that tiny little mistake.  Bob Payne: [00:08:27] Yeah yeah. So what's the other big dogmatic thing you're railing against. I don't know that you're actually railing against any big dogmatic things but you seem like the sort of person that might. Ben Scott: [00:08:41] There are some things I'm very strict on and it's is code craftsmanship to the detriment of sometimes I'm actually delivering value and I understand that. But there are times to be fast and dirty. You have a production bug.  Bob Payne: [00:08:55] Yep. Ben Scott: [00:08:56] There's a feature that needs to go to the market right away. OK we can do that fast and dirty. But if that's every time there's a problem.  Bob Payne: [00:09:06] Right.  Ben Scott: [00:09:06] And at that point I don't have any issues slowing everything down and I guess focus on craftsmanship. Let's focus on actually teaching what solid principles mean because over time you're going into being faster more maintainable code. The sustainable pace and that takes time to learn. It might take six months a year to really get there. It's a huge investment and it's the responsibility of the entire organization to to foster that. So just like we have the Center for agile excellence or you go to an agile coach organization talk about processes.  Ben Scott: [00:09:39] You should have a software craftsmanship as well a new way to mentor the developers. And that practice that's probably where I'm the most strict on.  Bob Payne: [00:09:51] OK yeah no that's ... Yeah. That's a good place to be strict I think. I often think of the three things that can make a great team. It's discipline, continuous improvement, and play the long game you know not the short term gain necessarily but product delivery is is not project right now. Ben Scott: [00:10:16] And I completely understand there's times we have to go really fast for whatever reason it is. Maybe there's a bug that's costing thousands of dollars. When it's in production.  Bob Payne: [00:10:23] Yeah. Ben Scott: [00:10:24] And yes. Quick and dirty fix but then think about it and fix it again the right way. Bob Payne: [00:10:30] Yeah. Well everybody. It's interesting because that the current understanding where the current sort of popular understanding of technical debt is that it is a bad thing and you know when they first started talking about it Ward Cunningham and and you know some of the folks on the first XP team actually used it in more the financial term debt. Sometimes you do take down. You know you go fast to be quick and you might incur some debt. You got to pay it down. Always cost a little bit more to pay it down. But sometimes that's the right decision. But when you're paying off the credit card with another credit card you're in drips.  Ben Scott: [00:11:20] That compounds quickly. Bob Payne: [00:11:21] Then You need to re platform the whole thing. Ben Scott: [00:11:26] And then it just never ends.  Bob Payne: [00:11:27] Yeah. Bob Payne: [00:11:28] And that's what the craftsmanship comes in play because if you instill those values when you build a new software and maybe you'll be a little bit better and last longer.  Bob Payne: [00:11:36] Yeah. So is IPPON primarily you know do you or most of the folks steeped in XP stream programming and.  Ben Scott: [00:11:47] So I would say most of us are what I would consider like Premier consultants as far as developers. Most of us are developers. So in that sense we're a bit different from most agile consulting companies. We focus a lot on the engineering aspect of agile versus the process and most of our developers don't always subscribe to Agile values. They like to get their stuff done and they're like good code and beautiful aspects that don't always adhere to delivering to agile way which is fine. But you couple that wish people would truly understand agile and you've just multiplied yet the actual value of it. It's like the cross-functional needed agile deep expertise to guide the ship but you still need a technical deep expertise on what good coding practices look like. Yeah and we also like to embed with our clients. We don't always like to take the whole project and then deliver at the end. We like to develop right and while we could develop we'll pair with them or we'll teach developed practices how to test and how to automate the whole thing and the whole the whole package. I think that's where our values will be different than other places. Bob Payne: [00:13:07] Yes. And we've you know at LitheSpeed we've been happy to be able to partner with the guys periodically because we focus primarily on the people in the process and you guys can focus on the technical chops.  Ben Scott: [00:13:25] Yes. Bob Payne: [00:13:25] Yeah. I'm primarily a PowerPoint engineer and there is no PPT unit.  Ben Scott: [00:13:34] No I'm really bad at PowerPoint.  Bob Payne: [00:13:39] I wouldn't say I'm good. But the reason I'm not very good is because there's no there's no unit test framework to how to get good. I was talking to somebody earlier because I I was when I was developing you know I got immediately test infected like TTD like real TDD not the ATDD or BDD. Not that those things are bad but that thinking and design process of TDD was an amazing force multiplier for me as not a terribly great developer. It allowed me to focus know where I was know that I hadn't broken something else because I couldn't keep every esoteric detail from the entire system. Ben Scott: [00:14:38] Yes.  Bob Payne: [00:14:39] In my head some people love that they loved the challenge of I've got every single detail in my head. But that doesn't scale. It does and test.  Ben Scott: [00:14:52] It's a good thing you brought TDD like I have my own opinions about it. And you're right. Some people love us some people hate it. And to me there's a lot of focus from the process scores to do TDD when developers aren't ready for it. Bob Payne: [00:15:06] Yeah yeah yeah.  Ben Scott: [00:15:07] Just like everything will be fine if you just do TDD.  Bob Payne: [00:15:11] Yeah I don't believe that to be true. Everything will be fine if you have engineers that are that are that really you know there I sort of look at the code and you can see the thought process of the developer in the code and that is much easier for me to read to read tested code than it is to to create an elegant you know you start throwing in some Lambda's there and we're we're we're parked. I mean because I struck part of my psychosis if you will. And I think it's reasonable to call it that around TDD as I started in Lisp and I don't know if you've ever tried to debug lisp or scala. It's probably easier now and in scala but there's just the interpreter. Back when I was doing this so you had a command line and you read in a file and something pops out and it is the most amazing black box in the world because it's just it's interpreted. It's a functional language and 42 is the answer, right? I forgot the question we asked in end. So unless you knew that those little pieces worked. Yes pull that out throw it into an interpreter and see if it give it some some values in and see if it makes sense because all it takes is a misplaced pen. It could be anywhere and it will usually evolve out to something that still works.  Ben Scott: [00:17:04] And I guess where I differ what it is like or I'm strict on tests in the same commit as the code.  Bob Payne: [00:17:11] Yeah.  Ben Scott: [00:17:12] I don't prescribe to. You must write a test first. Bob Payne: [00:17:15] Sure.  Ben Scott: [00:17:16] But it must be in the same commit. Yeah that's that's kind of where I differ. And some people are really good at writing tests first. Some are not. Bob Payne: [00:17:24] Yeah. Ben Scott: [00:17:24] But everybody should be able to write before or after, there's not. Never does ..That's Not allowed. Bob Payne: [00:17:31] Yeah I think it's a reasonable place to be strict. I think for me just I. Bob Payne: [00:17:39] I loved Arlo Belshee. I think it was our Arlo Belshee that coined the term test infected because some people either are or are not. And it's like you know that zombie strain virus. And I don't know which side is the zombie in which is the not here but I think the TTD folks are probably the zombies. But if you were when you find yourself on one side of that divide I think that the folks that actually like TTD and I know it is not universal. It's it's one of the more powerful and least used agile engineering practices.  Ben Scott: [00:18:15] Yes. Bob Payne: [00:18:16] I mean Pairing, people say they pair, but nobody pairs. I mean not like. Ben Scott: [00:18:21] Well not like extreme program where you must pair. Right. We like to pair for occasions like right. Here's a difficult piece of code. Let's work on it together or for mentoring. We'll pair for code reviews the type of thing we'll do some pairing for writing prose not so much right. How hard is it to write Pojos. You know it's so many people go down this rabbit hole to we test the setters and getters like I don't care. Like ok. Probably not. I'm OK. But really how long would it take you to actually do it if you said if everybody said we need to.  Ben Scott: [00:19:09] So. So interesting thing. So the debate by just writing a piece of code using reflection finds a perjures sets the value gets the value a certain done. So all my pages are tested automatically. Bob Payne: [00:19:25] Yeah. and now with generative frameworks it is it is relatively easy. I was cured of that debate because I'm not a great programmer. When I misformatted the way I created a Java date. And so when I made and I always know how to make your assertion not against the same constructor that you used. So I use distracted at this other date class add some other stuff in and misuse the constructor and when I assert it against the string format it value, i'm like "Well that's not right." And I don't know that I would have found that regular regular test or I would have I would have found like f'd up dates in the database or in the persistence layer or in the front end and I'm like I might not know. Then I've got a whole different problem but because I knew it I found out early that it didn't work like the debugging. For me it was just so much so much easier. Ben Scott: [00:20:36] And eventually you have to use common sense. You look at your POJO like well maybe I don't need to test every single one of them. But if you're serializing a date you should test that because for whatever reason it's so strict that the date format it will kill you application is different for might just use a whole AI behind it to be able to extract data and decide what date it is.  Bob Payne: [00:21:00] You guys likes you know you guys like screw up the order of the month and the day like what is this? Ben Scott: [00:21:05] It has Slashes no slashes. Bob Payne: [00:21:07] Dashes no dashes, dots..  Ben Scott: [00:21:10] Or you add milliseconds and you expect no milliseconds and it still won't truncate it'll just die right there. Bob Payne: [00:21:17] Yeah. Ben Scott: [00:21:17] So testing that. That's a good test. Typically also have a serialization test if it's data layer i'll serialize or deserialize back to the object, validate, but I might not validate.  Bob Payne: [00:21:30] You know that was that it was more important when he had to write her own serializer. Ben Scott: [00:21:37] Well I don't write my own serializer but I do write my own test for the annotations like for date format for example did you do the right format right. Does the precision matter or those type of things you have and I'm working on a project right now that for whatever reason the order matters. The order should not matter but whoever was sending it to they got that code where the order of your serialization matters and they can't just construct the object they actually validate it in its raw format first.  Bob Payne: [00:22:05] Okay. Ben Scott: [00:22:06] So then we have to validate that we send in the right Json format but in the right order each field. It shouldn't matter. At least in my opinion it should not matter.  Bob Payne: [00:22:15] No. But yeah well unless you want strong coupling in implementations which I'm shocked at how many are organizations really like strong coupling. Ben Scott: [00:22:33] I'm not sure they like it or just live with it. Bob Payne: [00:22:36] Yeah it's Like oh my god. It's like it's like the old Korbo or SOAP. Oh man. Ben Scott: [00:22:42] This is how we've always done it so we will continue. Bob Payne: [00:22:44] Yeah. Yep. So what else would do you. What's interesting to you in what hobbies do you have besides like? Ben Scott: [00:22:56] Kids.. Does that count as Hobbies? Bob Payne: [00:22:58] Yeah. Ben Scott: [00:22:59] It takes a lot of my time - it's fun time, it's really interesting and enjoyable to watch and grow. But I did find my most of my hobbies dropped away little by little. Bob Payne: [00:23:10] Yeah. Ben Scott: [00:23:13] When I did become a parent. Bob Payne: [00:23:16] I picked up new hobbies like I had never watched soccer before because I didn't like sports because those were the people that beat up the geeks. And now I'm doing like Magic the Gathering which I avoided in college like the plague. Ben Scott: [00:23:43] I never got into that. Bob Payne: [00:23:43] Because I was more of a punk than a D&D. There's a reasonable Venn diagram there. But but. Now I'm going to Friday Night Magic with my son. Ben Scott: [00:23:55] So that's a very fun but very expensive game. Bob Payne: [00:23:59] It is. Like you know a lot of people like do sports gambling. I think that's even worse. You know. Ben Scott: [00:24:06] Yes. Bob Payne: [00:24:07] Liaisons in a Russian hotel. Let it get very expensive very quickly depending on what you're doing. Ben Scott: [00:24:17] And I also do gaming video games typically do single player story type games. Bob Payne: [00:24:23] Oh really? given your military background. You've had enough First Person Shooter.. Ben Scott: [00:24:31] We'll it's more that to play online takes dedicated time whereas a single player. I can stop anytime. Pause and walk away. Bob Payne: [00:24:39] Yeah. Ben Scott: [00:24:40] I find that sometimes as a parent it's really hard to get an hour dedicated time. Bob Payne: [00:24:43] Oh yeah yeah. Ben Scott: [00:24:44] straight to play, it's like no I cannot help you to do anything because I'm in my game. If I'm doing single player I can quickly pause and do something else. That's how I mostly got into it. Ben Scott: [00:24:54] Before kids I was mostly into Dota. Bob Payne: [00:24:59] sorry? Ben Scott: [00:24:59] Dota Which is a different type of game. Bob Payne: [00:25:02] OK. Ben Scott: [00:25:03] League of Legends. Very similar as the birth of League of Legends. Was one of the first of those types of games.  Bob Payne: [00:25:11] Okay. But that's when I decided it would be hard for me to play because it requires 1 hour blocks.  Bob Payne: [00:25:19] Oh yeah. Yeah. Ben Scott: [00:25:22] Couldn't dedicate that anymore.  Bob Payne: [00:25:23] I know, yeah. So there's there's probably a game waiting for me this evening when I go home. So let's see. But. Ben Scott: [00:25:35] Let's see what else now spend time with family. Every Wednesday we have. Bob Payne: [00:25:42] Long walks on the beach and. Ben Scott: [00:25:43] Ah.. Not that, Just cook and eat and and drink and be merry. Revolves around food, and every Wednesday we have big family dinner.  Bob Payne: [00:25:55] Wednesday? Ben Scott:[00:25:55] Yeah Wednesday just because weekends are crazy. We also do on weekends. But we found that doing it in the middle of the week it kind of cuts the week and half. Bob Payne: [00:26:04] Yeah. You talk about work a little bit the stress and excuse to escape the daily grind of get up go to work. Come back do homework or other things. It's another event middle of the week that's a bit unusual but yeah it works for us. Bob Payne: [00:26:22] Yeah Wednesdays are not that exciting, it's dessert day. So. Ben Scott: [00:26:26] I like family Wednesdays. It's fun. Bob Payne: [00:26:29] Ok cool. We'll have to we'll have to do dessert/Dota/. Ben Scott: [00:26:37] Well I haven't played that game in so long i'd probably be terrible at it now. Bob Payne: [00:26:41] It's ok. You're better than I am  Ben Scott: [00:26:44] Probably. Bob Payne: [00:26:48] Thanks a lot, Ben Really appreciate it.  

Do you know your fabricator? Meet David Carmody, Division Manager and CID+ at San Diego PCB Design. As a service bureau, San Diego PCB works on a variety of PCB design projects. Learn why David says, “You gotta know who you’re fabbing with” and how he is using DFM Reports to help customers integrate design and assembly in this episode of The OnTrack Podcast. Show Highlights: Memorable designs in telecom space and the development board for Dragon II, a SpaceX project, for the capsule they hope to take to Mars Package on packages, dropping the DDR - removing the burden on the designer Palomar advisory program - student programs for learning PCB design San Diego PCB acquired by Milwaukee Electronics, EMS and Engineering Services DFM report - a “stoplight report” for customers before starting build - customers love it and it fixes issues proactively especially with packaging A lot of engineers don’t know the manufacturing side and DFM reports can help with this “You gotta know who you’re fabbing with”  Will additive manufacturing processes be the answer? The business model remains to be seen. 3D printing - you can’t print copper (yet) Altium User Groups - have Altium in the title but we don’t run them! We’d love to support. Altium User Group in San Diego is very active and supportive. Advice from a Pro: Always keep learning, it will keep you fresh and make work more fun. PCB design isn’t the only practice David has mastered - he’s a martial artist too Links and Resources: David Carmody on Linkedin San Diego Altium Users Group Website San Diego PCB Milwaukee Electronics Tecate, NM Manufacturing Facility   Hi everyone this is Judy Warner with Altium’s OnTrack podcast - welcome back. Once again I have another incredible guest to speak with us today, but before we get started please follow me and connect with me on LinkedIn. I try to share a lot of things relative to engineering and PCB design and on Twitter I'm @AltiumJudy and Altium is on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and if you'd please subscribe and give us some comments so we know what you'd like to hear more about that would be great. So today again we have a great guest which is David Carmody of San Diego PCB David has a new title now: he is the division manager and he also has a CID. So David, welcome and thank you for joining me here at Altium today. So, we've known each other for a little while and I've had the benefit of being over at San Diego PCB and looking over your shoulder to some pretty wild complicated designs. So tell us a little bit about your day-to-day from the perspective of design bureaus and the kind of work that you see? Okay, we do get a lot of different designs, a bunch of varied designs, so we see a lot of military application, we see a lot of new technology - wearable technologies and things like that as well; it is pretty much all over the map though. I mean we get a little bit of anything and everything just because of the the nature of the service entity. A lot of the more upscale - so to speak -designs are the real nanotechnology sort of stuff where we're cramming a ton of the little parts into a board that's less than a half square inch total in size, or we're packing everything into a big housing that has to get heat out somehow because, I mean, we're sending up high output micro processors into into space and there is no airflow so we need to get the heat out in other ways. So there's a lot of that sort of stuff that we do get to see and and play with and and learn from as well. I think San Diego is kind of a neat place to work too because there is a lot of Defense here and there's also call comments and telecoms, and even in our local area, although I'm sure you see work from all over the country? We do we also have kind of some neat things right here in our own backyard. Oh yeah. So across that variety what would you say some of your more memorable designs would be? I was gonna say we do have have some telecom stuff that's gone on and those are those are fun boards just because they've got big processors on them and lots of high-speed lines, things like that. Most memorable, for me personally, would probably be a SpaceX design. I was able to design the development board for the Dragon 2. Oh my gosh!we’re not worthy! Do you mean the dragon heavy that they just launched - the second Falcon that ever went? Yeah the the Dragon 2 which is the capsule that they hope to take to Mars one day. Oh so that that one! Yeah.  I did the development board for that so it's just basically a big processor board with a lot of RF communications on it and things like that and they're breaking out all the other boards from that, and that was a fun project. I got to be a part of that was really cool. Yes, I sold some R4s to them and got to go through that facility a few times so I'm like a weirdo SpaceX geek and then we also sponsor the hyperloop pod teams for universities. So Ben that's helping us here with recording this; he and I got to go up and hang out at SpaceX and see them do that. I saw some of those pictures. So sorry for being so weird but I’m a kinda SpaceX geek. Yes, it’s been fun. We do have a couple of space contracts we've worked directly with NASA and MIT and also with Space Micro so, we've definitely learned our way around the Class 3A specifications and we know that inside and out. Not easy, really dense stuff. So you talked a little bit about the nanotechnology, is that where you sort of see the bleeding edge going? What are the the most challenging designs? I was gonna say the packaging is actually changing quite a bit, we're seeing some things that the packaging is doing that's well, quite frankly, I'm not terribly happy with because it takes away some of our place - but things like package-on packages is coming around. That's really cool technology, I mean, you put down the DSP or the PGA - whatever it happens to be - and then you can drop the DDR right on top of it. There's nothing for us to do; it's purely an assembly process, if that. Wow. So that stuff is definitely interesting and removing a burden, so to speak, on the designer but yeah, then the package size itself is just getting smaller and smaller. We're being pushed into HDI technology more and more often. 0.3 millimeter BGAs are pretty common, 0.4s are all over the place now. I mean even big ones. So the 0.3 three millimeter BGA's are getting common. I've been able to work on things as small as 0.15 millimeter though. So it was a flip chip sort of design where we're pushing the envelope on that thing so it was experimental, and things like that. I don't think they actually ever built it was costly, that whole get up then but that's that the trend we're seeing. Just everyone's pushing the package design more and more all the time. Something I noticed I took a peek at, even though I've known you for a while - I took a peek at your LinkedIn profile. I don't know that I'd ever done that and I like to ask people a lot, how'd you get into this industry? Because most of us didn't start out this way, but we ended up here. So did you start out there? I notice you took courses at Palomar College which is local here, and I don't know if they still do, but they used to have PCB design courses? That they do I'm actually on the Palomar Advisory Committee right now and we're helping to restructure some of that stuff and try to join up a little bit more, their student base through there. They've got a pretty good offering right now to make it better but yeah it's still active and it's it's one of the few places that you can really go for formal education. So it's good that they're there keeping it alive, and not just keeping it alive but updating it. Right, and that's kind of where you started out was it not? It was. Or did you just join them recently as part of the Advisory Committee, or did you start learning design there? I did technically start learning some design there but it was an accident really. [Laughter] See, my point is, we didn't do this on purpose. No absolutely not. Basically I had gone through their program and really gravitated - back then at least - 3d was just emerging. It was all in AutoCAD, there was no such thing as SolidWorks, it was just coming around. So I ended up jumping into AutoCAD 3d mechanical sort of stuff and and did my degree on that and then got on to nothing but waiting list after waiting list. So at that point I was talking to a guy that I was working with, he goes: call my brother in law, he does something in computers. And I talked to this guy, he was a PCB designer at Intel - I'm actually working with him now, we recently hired him, but yeah he's working out in our Arizona office but he gave me some excellent time; never actually met him face to face at the time but he gave me some phone time and told me what to look for, and what this industry had to offer and gave me a couple of places to go after. And I went after both - I ended up getting an offer from both of them, but I liked the smaller business so I took that side of things and spent 12 years back at an ‘unnamed company’ as the Design Manager. Laughter, well not as awesome as Sandy Opie… Well I don't know, it hasn't been a year yet, so San Diego PCB was acquired actually by Milwaukee Electronics right. Yes it’s been about a year and four months now, time flies. So Milwaukee is a really capable EMS shop up in-  remind me? It's Milwaukee. Oh is it Milwaukee! Yes, their primary branch is in Milwaukee - okay this confuses everyone - because we have multiple brands out there now. So our Milwaukee electronics brand has most of our engineering services and the EMS as well there. Up in Canby, Portland Oregon, now that's where we have Screaming Circuits - that is our quick term prototype house and there is also EMS there as well. Most people don't know that but the factory shares the floor for that and then we also have - actually it's also called Milwaukee Electronics - despite that, it's in Tecate Mexico but they've got a huge building down there and they're there literally clawing the mountain out from being behind this building. Right I've seen photos of it, it's really quite lovely, at least the photos are, it looks really modern. It's a very impressive facility. I was able to visit there and I had seen pictures of it when the shop floor was was only 50% filled; that place is full and like I said they're calling out the mountain now behind them, so that they can add on and I think gain about 30% more square footage. Growing like crazy. How has that been, that acquisition, for your customers and for you, there's obviously synergy there between the two firms so how has that been for you? The two companies, the acquisition itself was great, Milwaukee Electronics is a fantastic company to work for. I really enjoy all the people that are there. The synergy has taken some time to get things rolling, but I'm starting to see a little bit of a snowball effect and so we're starting to pick up some momentum to where Screaming Circuits is sending us customers back and we're sending them customers in and we're starting to get a collaborative database of the customers going right now, so that we can take a more active role on that and and really sell to both sides. There's been a little bit of crossover, but like I said, it took probably six months before I saw even the first crossover and right then another one happened, and then another one, but now we're up to where we're getting about at least one customer a week or something like that, that's doing some sort of crossover. so it's definitely building up speed. But it's still going to take a little bit more time. So since our listeners and watchers here will are mostly engineers and PCB designers, what do you think the benefit is to collaborating design to EMS - what are the benefits you think that occur there? When you're collaborating, one of the biggest things that's coming out right now, is basically  DFM report that we've been doing, it's something that I've been doing for years. Say a customer has their own design team, they want me to be a second set of eyes - something like that. I'll go through the design either on a cursory level if you just want me to look at DFM/DFA sort of issues. Do you want me to look at your circuits, do you want me to look at this whole thing - make sure that you placed it correctly? I coined that a ‘stoplight report’ a long time ago, and basically it's just - we give a nice little green note if it's informative only: this looks good it was done right, give a yellow note if, hey you might want to look into this, you might have some potential issues or, hey this part’s hanging off the board edge you're gonna knock it off, this needs a correction before it goes out - and those are obviously the red items - so customers seem to love that. I mean it's really easy, real clear-cut. They can kind of skim through it, hit the items that they want and that is really building up some speed right now with with a few customers because they've had an internal source for a long time. They've been using Screaming Circuits forever, but Screaming Circuits is going: okay you're going into bigger yields, you need to fix these sorts of items - let's fix them ahead of time and that's what we're being utilized to do. That sounds absolutely incredible especially now, because in the marketplace so many engineers are laying out their own boards. They may or may not have time or access to spend a lot of time with their fabricators our assembler, so I think to have that sort of oversight would be very welcome. I don't know if that's what's driving it or just having a second set of eyes what do you think? Probably a bit of both, I mean the engineers obviously get EMI and and EM theory, they do that really well, so they they always lay out the board well for that. But they aren't necessarily the best packagers, most PCB designers are puzzlers so, we do the packaging portion real well that's what we like to play with. But if you’re a good PCB designer you're going to know the EM side and you're also going to know the manufacturing side. A lot of the engineers don't know that, so they don't really look at that. I mean, I've been given boards that were completely routed and they said: rip out all the routing because this guy did it with 6mm vias with a 12mm pad on an 80mm  thick board and so, it's just wrong all the way around. And placement wasn't bad on that… But the aspect ratio is the killer. -and he used decent trace widths, but I mean, the most problematic piece of the board, and he killed it. And like it's a good thing that companies like Altium and other EDA companies make such powerful, great software - but there's no place in the software that says: no, stop dummy,   you can run DRCs or whatever, but it won't necessarily flag it for for DFM if your aspect ratio is off or whatever, unless you've turned those settings on or off I can imagine right? Yes but you can still improperly program DRCs too, you can say: hey I want 1mm holes on this board… I've heard you and Mike Creeden say that a design tool is only as good as the designer.    -yeah you absolutely need that and I mean, someday in the future would it be great to see the tools incorporate that sort of stuff? Yes, but at the same time you’ve got to know how your fab works too… And you don't want to limit yourself either because you could potentially create self-limiting things that are really irritating... -oh yeah. So I think we're gonna just keep giving you powerful tools and you guys have to work it out. Yeah I mean, we can just zoom up and zoom up and, hey that via looks plenty big enough to me, I could put my fist through it, but not in reality. The packaging thing that I was referring to earlier that is just starting to drive this industry just because of big 0.4 millimeter pitch BGA. I'm working with a fabricator that can't quite do the the latest and greatest and all of a sudden that pattern starts to become a challenge that’s almost impossible to break out. Right yeah I don't know where this train’s going… Yup I don't know - it will stop somewhere at some point… I know, I know, except it seems like we just keep creating some breakthrough so I'm keeping my eye on things like additive manufacturing, whatever we could do it 1mm, controlled trace and pull it off but there's no clear front-runner. Yeah, the additive processes are very interesting, haven't seen anyone really start pulling off a business model out of it. The 3d printing technologies is also very interesting but you can't print copper unfortunately, so they can't - yet at least - so there's some major hurdles there too that they have to go through. It'll be interesting. Well I wanted to shift gears a little bit because you, along with your colleague Randy Clemens here in San Diego, run a really solid Altium user group here and for those listeners that don't know this, Altium User Groups, they have our name in the title but we don't run them - they're completely run by the users, for the users they're very democratic and we just lend support and it's something that we've been talking a lot about here, is that we would like to grow the user community and help people launch groups. So can you give us a little bit of background and give us the do's and don'ts maybe, if people that are thinking about starting a local users group from what things have worked, when things maybe haven't worked, and how do we get more people to launch user groups? Just sign up - just for a little background on that - there was a user group that was here for quite a while that was run by Bill Brooks and it had some traction, it was running for quite a while and then either the community or whatever, started to kind of drop off a little bit. Randy and I saw that as a bad thing basically, and we talked to Altium, talked to a few people here, and then put together a general terms for the the group. Randy has always done Google boards, the blog and stuff, so he's very good at that, he's got a pretty major Altium tutorial board actually that's out there. So he took some of that and ported it over and turned it into a San Diego Altium User Group Board, you can just google that: San Diego Altium User Group and you'll find his board. If you sign up you'll get meeting invites so it's really that easy. All of our IP, as it were, is all up there and and I mean fully freely distributable so anyone can go ahead and take that as a template and start porting it over. Randy would probably help if anyone asked to set up or clone a board but Altim is really great on this thing, they're really helping us out, they help promote it you guys are actually doing lunches for us and all of that, so we really, really appreciate all that support. Lunch is a good way to get people out - just feed them and they will come. Exactly, you feed them and they show up. So we were restarting the group, it had a little bit of a slow start and it's kind of typical. I think we had all of three people show up once plus the the huge group of Altium group and San Diego PCB group because we host the location but no I mean our last last attendance was in the 30s somewhere, so it's it's doing real well now. What do you think the benefits are to the users that participate regularly? One of the big things is we always bring Chris Carlson out for new updates and stuff so we can see things as they're coming out. He gave us a wonderful tutorial on 18 not long ago, really to help us all dive into it as as the interphase changed. I thought Randy was gonna eat us alive - he came out he's like yeah bring him - he had a slide deck going, and ‘what about this?’  God bless Chris Carlson, our senior FAE, he addressed most of those things and just said, no Randy we just moved it over here, it's just over there and we tackle most of it. But what I really appreciate is that Chris actually took four things back to our R&D team, and I think that kind of real-time feedback, it helps us make better tools right? And if we make better tools we sell more software, it's not rocket science right? Right and we're happier designers… Right your’e happier and you’re productive and so I think it's a win-win and I think Altium is doing a good job culturally. So say you were in... I don't know... New Hampshire okay, and you knew there was a pretty good-sized design community what would you say the first steps would be to get something going? First of all, probably to clone that board that we've already got… And we will share this, by the way, in the show notes and we'll share that if you want to go take a look at it, because Randy has done a good job of kind of making a charter, it would be a good model to share. -so it's a fairly basic charter but yeah, clone that board, start marketing it against that, call Altium… Me, call me I will help you. -so get them to put it out in a newsletter and a blog or something along those lines so you can start that foot traffic and then invite your buddies, invite your friends and get them to do the same. I interrupted you there, so you said that Chris came out and you got to see the latest and greatest, Chris did a good thing on showing you AD18 - what other kind of benefits do you think the users see over time? I mean we've already kind of hit on the the dynamic feedback and that's obviously great information, but just the user-to-user help is always nice too. I mean I've had people come in with a laptop and and open it up and go, look I'm struggling over here, what the heck do I need to do? What rule do I need to write to make this thing work right? And we can just basically rub shoulders and get things moving and get a workaround if it needs it just to move it along. Well I've been really impressed since I've been down here for about a year now and just seeing the group it's just very active and it seems like a really healthy thing and yeah all I get to do, is use my card and buy you guys lunch and if you want a speaker we’ll send one, if you don't want one we won't interfere so I think that user-to-user and that you guys really get to own it, is sort of a powerful model because it's not like we're going to come down and spring a free sales pitch... Yeah well, Altium doesn't go in they're not salesy. Yeah but we try actually, not to do it. No, it's been fantastic for that. Well I wanted to bring this up because you and Randy spoke at AltiumLive and Randy took a little part of his time speaking to talk about the Altium user groups and I was so surprised! I'm like, well you can spend your time talking about that if you want Randy, but I didn't think there would be that much interest - but I happened to pop in the back door just to see how it was going and people were really engaged and then people came and talked to me after. I think there's kind of a hunger to do it. I'm just wondering... I just wanted you to share with our listeners, if people did want to do it they would see, oh here's some steps to take because I don't know, though, that maybe we've done a really good job of advertising it because we do want to stay out of it, we want to contribute but not inserting ourselves into an organic user’s group. So, thanks for sharing that part. Hm-mm yeah, for the AltiumLive, Lawrence Romine asked Randy to do a little bit of a spiel on that and yeah, there were a lot of people from LA that sounded like they were going to be starting their own, or a couple of them, depending on the demographics or Geographics up there and then there were quite a few out of state as well that that sounded like they wanted to start one. I went to one in Utah, which I guess has been going on for a while. So, I got connected with someone actually at AltiumLive and we ended up connecting and there was like 80 people there to see Ben Jordan talk about AD18, I'm like okay, Wow! 80 - it was huge, but I think that group has been very active and been around for a long time so it wasn't like a new thing and they actually come from Salt Lake and south of there, so it was almost like two combined groups. So anyways, thank you for sharing about that. Any final thoughts? Nothing that I can think of right off the top of my head. Well thank you so much for coming in today… -Thank you You’re a good sport and we really appreciate you in San Diego PCB and thank you for sharing. Oh one thing I wanted to ask you was because the upper-end (age-wise) is starting to kind of age out in the industry and we're getting new ones coming in, what is one - since you're sort of a veteran designer - what is say, one or two pieces of advice that you would give to a young designer? The number one thing I would say is, never stop learning. I mean I got into a rut at one point where I wasn't learning I couldn't stand up on the the current trends, things like that, and that job got to be a drag, it really did because it's - overall - we did the same thing over and over all the time. It's very repetitive, but if you're standing up on the latest trends you always have something else to reach at and something else to go after. Always have the latest way to solve something too, so it just makes the job overall a breeze; makes it a lot easier to do day-to-day and keeps it fun and interesting. Very good. Okay, last question: I said that was the last one but I like my very last, last question - I call this part of the podcast designers after hours okay - so there's people like you and I know in common, like Bill Brooks who started the Alts Music Group. There's the sculptor, I just spoke to Chris Hunrath earlier today, who's a scuba diver. So what do you like to do after hours? Honestly Mike my side is a little sore right now because I did some martial arts last night so that's one of my little best-kept secrets, so to speak, been doing that for a long time done Tan Sido, got a third-degree black belt there, and then migrated over to Kung Fu and have a black sash. Well, remind me to never make you mad! You’re so soft spoken and could kick my butt. [Laughter] Pat's the one that always bounces that around the office but he's honestly the only one I’d ever damage too… [Laughter] That's cool. See, another interesting after hour designer. Well David, thanks again and I know we'll see you soon again. This has been Judy Warner and David Carmody of San Diego PCB. Thank you for joining us today we'll make sure to share our links below and please visit us again next time. Until then, remember to always stay on track.

Alex still hasn't returned from honeymooning! So Ben has Chris back on so they can discuss the scoreless run that continued in Charleston, and Ben's trip down there. They also discuss our team's injury woes and the important question of which super power with conditions they'd rather have. Thank you for listening! Come on you Jacks! Soccernsweettea.com orthocarolina.com Instagram: @talkinjacks Twitter: @talkinjacks Facebook.com/talkinjacks talkinjacks@gmail.com Music: "Good to Be Alone" by The Bomb Busters, used under Creative Commons --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/talkinjacks/support

On this episode our hero Alex gets married! That poor woman. So Ben invites Chris Davis on the pod where they rant and ramble about a 0-0 draw and try to figure out how to do this thing properly. Happy honeymooning Alex! Thank you for listening! Come on you Jacks! Soccernsweettea.com orthocarolina.com Instagram: @talkinjacks Twitter: @talkinjacks Facebook.com/talkinjacks talkinjacks@gmail.com Music: "Good to Be Alone" by The Bomb Busters, used under Creative Commons --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/talkinjacks/support

Join Altium’s Judy Warner and Ben Jordan for a conversation on Multiboard PCB design.   Show Highlights: Many different product areas are being impacted by developments in Electronics, opening new frontiers - beauty products, wearables Electronics are replacing things that traditionally were not electronics Electronics product development are increasingly driven by engineers, but other makers are inspiring growth in the market - i.e. sofas, smart homes Design and product driven electronics, PCB designers are being pushed to partion boards into multiboard systems Everybody faces this multiboard challenge Immediate visual feedback in 3D design / 3D modeling definitely helps Major recurring challenge in industry: aligning connectors and aligning components that have some kind of outward expression on the actual product; MCAD and PCB assembly alignment. Multiboard design editor allows you to do this. Altium trivia and the origin of making tools for makers Ben's brother and his first soldering tool Links and Resources: Multiboard in Altium Designer 18   Hey everybody, Judy Warner here. Welcome to the OnTrack podcast.I'm the Director of Community Engagement here at Altium and this is our very first podcast.You're very brave to listen and we're happy to have you. If you're new to OnTrack altogether be sure to sign up for our OnTrack newsletter which is online at resources.altium.com, or watch our OnTrack instructional video series which you can find on YouTube, and our goal with OnTrack is our tagline is to inspire, educate, and connect, and by bringing you together, the PCB design community, we hope to do that. So, please add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or on iTunes and you can also follow me personally, please oh please, on LinkedIn or at Twitter at Altium, at Altium Judy and follow Altium on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Now, let's get into the fun stuff. So, today I thought we would talk about a subject that seems to be prevalent today in PCB design conversation, and that is about multi-board design. Many designs are going, as things become more complex, as we all know the automotive market, and so many others, because of size, weight, and power, they're being smaller, we're having to do rigid flex design, we're folding things upon themselves, we're fiting things into very tight spaces so you may have just been laying out single board designs not long ago and then you find yourself entering this sort of complex world that comes with it, comes with it a lot of, you know, new and challenging new aspects of things you need to think about in the overall design. So, a few of those things that I've learned about from my guest Ben Jordan is partitioning, connection management, and signal and power integrity. So I brought in Ben Jordan, who is our resident multi-board expert, and my friend and colleague, and partner in crime. Thanks for having me.So Ben, talk about what you see sort of currently going on in the EDA market as a whole, what's going on at Altium, and what kind of challenges specifically you see designers facing and sort of how they overcome them.Yeah, well, if you look at the PCB design and electronics board level electronics design sort of industry over history over the last, I don't know, even four decades, the march has always been in it. I can't see it changing any time really soon, to make things smaller, cheaper, more reliable,better for production runs, and more compact, and that's really taken an uptick. It's, to me, if I could graph complexity versus board area, I'm sure it would look something like a hockey stick.You know, up- Mmhm.-up and to the right, and that really has always been that way, it's just that with exponential things like this, we see it, the further to the right you go the more acute it becomes, the issue of trying to fit more in less space, and this is partly brought on by higher levels of integration in thesemiconductor side, sometimes it's alleviated by that as our guest at AltiumLive recently in Munich, Lee Richie, aptly pointed out that-   Mmhm.PCB designs can in some cases get simpler and simpler because more integration on the actual microprocessor is happening,but at the same time we're dealing with greater densities, greater pin out densities, but something that we have noticed in our industry is, is that there are many companies that were not electronics companies or that on the outside their products may not be considered primarily an electronic device, but- I just saw this in a magazine, like a whole article about electronics and beauty products, like, what?Right, exactly.   Or like, a device you can put on  your thumbnail so you know if you're gonna get sunburned, and it's an electronic device, t's, it's everywhere. Like you said, it's very prevalent.Yeah, like, wearables is actually a classic sort of prescient example of that, where we, we no longer have mechanical watches. A mechanical watch is considered a luxury item these days and is very expensive if it is a genuine mechanical watch.   Mmhm.Just like having a horse has become a luxury item after the automobile replaced the entire horse industry, and we see the same thing happen in many different sort of product realms, and so wearables is a good example of that.   I wear a Fitbit, I love this thing, it's cool.Me too, yours is cooler than mine now. A lot of my friends have Apple Watches as well and, so electronics is replacing things that traditionally weren't and these companies are primarily driven by product design and function, not by the engineering team having a good idea. So electronics companies in the past, and there's still many of them that do do this, see themselves as an electronics company and the product development is driven by engineering and inventors who are electrical engineers or equivalent, but then there's this whole growth in the market that happens through furniture makers, ar makers, you name it.   That's another weird thing I saw.You name it, and they're becoming- -about the sofa, there's like a whole deviceset being embedded into a sofa, I'm like what?And smart homes, just think of all the control going on.   Yeah, yeah yeah.So, so these, but a lot of these are design slash mechanically driven product manufacturers or designers and so the electronics has to fit within that and as a result PCB designers more and more are being forced to partition the design into a multi-board system. So how do you think we're doing as an EDA industry and addressing that and giving them tools that are, you know, easy to onboard and get up to speed quickly, right?   They can't spend six months learning how to do really excellent multi-board design, so- -Exactly, so everybody, that's just it, every, everybody faces this multi-board challenge, but in the past, we're not the first company, we're not the first, Altium is not the first EDA company to provide a multi-board design solution, but we are the first in that range of the market where anybody can actually afford our, our tools. If they're a professional designer they can afford Altium Designer and it's pretty well known, and our mission has always been to include the technology people need for everyday kind of design, and advanced technology for design and not withhold that just because somebody is not an enterprise customer. I mean the enterprise has different needs around data management and workflow management, but from an actual design and computer-aided design perspective every PCB designer should have multi-board design capabilities because they all face the same problems, and so I think this is the first timethat in the mainstream we've seen anybody address this multi-board design issue with proper connectivity management and 3D modeling of the system to make sure everything's going to fit.So typically, if you, if you're a PCB designer, and you want multi-board capabilities,that's going to be, it's going to be a huge cost driver for the software at large, I'm not talking about Altium per-se but if you wanted to acquire that ability inside your EDA software it's expensive than, you're saying.   Yeah, up until now it's been very high-end packages that had this capability that we're, we're talking maybe ten times the licensing cost, but. Wow.But, I mean there's many different ways of doing it, and most people out there, even myself in my hobby context in my shed, I've done multi-board design systems, and so I realized, and Altium, you know we realized, that it's something everybody needs and we shouldn't withhold it and charge extra for it. It's, it's just, it is a mainstream problem and so the technology should be available to the mainstream. So, that the other way of doing it of course is how people aredoing it up until now if they don't have those tools. You have to create Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets to maintain lists of pins on different connectors, which connector is where on the design. You have to create a hop, a high level or top level, I nearly said hop level. [laughter] You have to, I know, it's crazy but you have to, you have to do this kind of stuff because if you think about the actual problems associated with it there's, there's, there's a couple of different things. If you're doing a simple stacking design, you can reuse a board shape, for example. The boards will always, not always but maybe they will be the same shape. Think of an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi that has, has shields or capes or whatever they plug into it and they stack up vertically through the connectors and that's, that's a nice elegant way to prototype things, butto go to production it's a bit tricky, and if you're, if you're developing a multi-board system like that it's fairly straightforward, but most systems are not that straightforward, and the different PCBs within the overall product may be in different locations, different planes of orientation, and can interconnect with board to board connectors or cables and harnesses, and then you get into issues like, how do you, how do you manage the pin outs? That's a big one.Connection management is a big issue, with multi-board designs even if you're stacking one board on top of another and you have a header and a socket, a mating socket, most people don't even realize until this, the blue, magic blue smoke is coming out of the first prototype [laughter] that, well actually the female connectors pin out is numbered from looking top down on it, in terms of the library and the footprint in the library you start traditionally pin one is at the top left and you go anti-clockwise, but that means when that connector is on the bottom side of a board plugging into another board beneath it, it's mirrored.Yeah. And this very simple thing can wreak havoc on the design process and time-to-market so, so we needed to provide tools to prevent those kinds of problems.And I'm not a designer. I am, come from the fab and EMS side, so I'm honestly asking these questions, I'm not, but doesn't the ability of our software to do 3D help with that to visually giveyou a sense that it's flipping instead of just sort of imagining how it's gonna go together- It certainly does.-until it's physically in front of you?Yeah, it's really important to have that immediate visual feedback in whatever tools you're using, and if what you do is design anything, you need immediate visual feedback to get things right, and having that 3D modeling helps you align things, but the other side of this, the other area which is probably aside from incorrect pin assignments, one of the other areas that we noted in the industry that people struggle the most with is aligning connectors and aligning components that have some kind of outward expression on the actual product.So, in my, I think of audio gear all the time because I'm into that, right, but, so one example is if I were designing a new amplifier I'm going to have some potentiometers and other controls on the front panel and so I have an enclosure, I have a front panel that has markings, and it has holes, and that's designed in MCAD, but the PCB assembly has to align perfectly to that, and I may actually want to realign components to match external holes and cutouts in the enclosure, and the multi-board design editor actually allows you to do that, allows you to go into a mode where you can actually move individual components and there could be things like potentiometers, or that their main intent is connectors that have to interface with other mating connectors on other boards, and you can actually cause them to snap together so that on the other PCB design you've got absolute confidence that you can make that first prototype and the connector will be in the right place and other components won't interfere with it in 3D space. Yeah, I've seen some of you designers here in our office doing these, you know, rotating and showing, oh if I fold this over then this component is gonna run into that part or whatever I'm being able to just shift things slightly and it move kind of globally, is it's really fun to watch.It looks almost like a computer game to me, right? Yeah.But it's really great how you can move that and and see it mechanically, you know in that 3D space instead of, remember the old days of prototyping, going whoops, forgot about that, and it was completely built out and there's all these expensive parts and you would salvage what you can but some were just like going in the trash can, and   I actually have an interesting bit of Altium history trivia about that. Alright let's hear trivia, cool.because we had, we had that exact issue, we, some people who've been around our orbitfor a while will have, will remember that we used to do FPGA design stuff,  and we actually had a hardware design team, and their role was to design development boards for developing FPGA designs in Altium Designer, and those boards were modular so we had the Nanoboard 2 is the one on thinking of, we had this huge motherboard, and on top of that you had a daughter card that plugged right in that had, that could have different FPGAs you could try from different FPGA manufacturers, and we had another three different modules you could plug into different locations on the board and each had different input output options, and so during the design process of this we ran into issues with 3D clearance. There were some actual problems, this is a multi-board system, and back then the only way our hardware team were able to model this was to print the board designs that they did have in outlines out in 2D and cut those out and glue them one-to-one on bits of cardboard, corrugated cardboard.I would cut it all out of cardboard and glue with hot melt glue or hot snot we'd call it. [laughter] They'd use hot snot to glue the connectors in the positions where they would be on the final boards and plug them all together like this multi-board mock-up using cardboard, and the actual bulky components would be on it. That's funny.And it was so time-consuming and, too tempting sometimes to leave out some parts that should have been on that model but just, due to time constraints were left off, and I remember-Plus I'm thinking, and then the CEO walks by and thinks you're doing arts and crafts, I mean. Well, I mean it was necessary, but we actually had some boards that couldn't be plugged in in their first revision and had to be revised with a different bill of materials because there was, there were some power supply inductors that stuck out too far and when the whole assembly was together they, they seriously would not fit.So, it had, it's like, if only we'd had this then maybe we could have reduced the cost of the product, products, and so on. So there's a lot of, and as I was saying earlier I think it's inevitable that any professional designer will run into these sorts of problems at some point, the tools need to be provided for them.Well, I had the rare and cool opportunity to speak to Dave Warren one time on a Skype call from Australia, one of our original founders, and I was just trying to get a sense of who the company was and he just reminded me of like, a swashbuckling pirate, like give 'em the tools, you know like, he just he, you can tell he was so passionate about, nobody should pay these, you know, crazy prices for functionality. Whoever wants 'em should have them, by God. You know, in his Aussie accent like you and he cracked me up but I really, it really came through to me that he was about make sure that anyone who wants these tools can have them. That they're reachable and that, it's a fun story by the way. That's cool well that has been an undercurrent of the whole history since the founding and, to hear that straight from the horse's mouth is not at all surprising to me.I remember him sharing a similar story about when we acquired NeuroCAD in- Oh he told me about that, yeah. -the late 90's.So NeuroCAD was the first neural net based, you know routing technology. Yeah, he told me they were charging 118 grand for that software, and he said "we, so we bought it and we cut the" I'm doing like Scottish accent now, "we cut the bloody horns off it and gave it to the people." Yeah, they priced it-So, how much did you sell it for after that?It was $395 I believe. $395, after $118 grand.And the company that developed it sold maybe three or four licenses to a few big companies.We acquired the technology and start, immediately put the price at like, 395 or, you know, under$400 and it sold in the first month, it was over a million dollars of sales because it just, people wanted it they just couldn't afford it.   Well, we are out of time, but one last thing I want to thank you by the way for sharing all that.   Every time I talk I learn something amazing from you, Ben. So, on the fun side, I've always noticed, I've worked with PCB designers over 25 years plus, and something I noticed they all had in common is they have really interesting lives. I like to call it designers after hours. So Ben Jordan, what do you do after hours?Ooh, ooh that sounds risqué. Yeah no no, this is a G-rated podcast. I'm a very G-rated person after hours actually.I've always been into technology but I'm also from, I'm the youngest of six and from a very musical family so all my brothers and sisters were into music and played instruments and actually the reason I'm into electronics is because of my oldest brother, Les, he was a great guitarist but he was also an electronics technician and used to build his own tube amps and all sorts of cool stuff, so he gave me my first lessons in electronics and my first lessons in guitar right around the time, he bought me my first soldering iron actually for my eighth birthday and taught me how to solder.I burned myself on that thing many times and I loved every minute.I'm like, this was learning but it was, I've never looked back and then, and then right around when I turned 12 he bought me myfirst electric guitar and I haven't looked back on that either. I mean, we just, we are influenced by the world around us but sometimes in our lives we have kind of heroes, and he's definitely one of my biggest heroes and showed me this, this is, this was what my life was always going to be about.Electronics and guitar and, you know, and now I have a family too, so between, between family and work and, I squeeze hobby electronics and guitar in-between those, but it's very full and very fun. That's great. Well it was great having you and I'm sure we'll have you again 'cause you are a wealth of information on lots of subjects.   So, let's just wrap up our first podcast here. Well thanks everyone for listening in on this conversation with myself and Ben Jordan.Please remember to subscribe to this podcast and remember to always stay OnTrack!

When this show first aired back at the end of November, 2016, the real estate markets were booming, and mortgages were easy to get, but my guest, Ben Rabidoux, had some very specific predictions. First, he predicted that Ontario would implement a foreign buyers tax, just like happened in Vancouver.  Bingo.  In April of this year, five months after we aired this interview, the Ontario government announced a 15% tax on foreign real estate buyers. Second, he also predicted that mortgages would be more difficult to get in 2017.  Right again, as the problems at Home Capital, one of the biggest alternative mortgage lenders in Canada made it a lot more difficult for some buyers to get a mortgage. So Ben was correct on these predictions, and a few others, so I’m not surprised with that track record that this was one of our most downloaded episodes.

Not only do you want to attract your ideal customer, but you want to repel the people who you know are not right for you. In this episode, we provide specific examples that illustrate why understanding your WHO is so important, and then we lay out a proven strategy for empathy that will help you get into the eyes, ears, and mind of your ideal customer. Listen to Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes Important links from this episode: Try StudioPress Sites Sites Weekly Newsletter Subscribe to Sites on Apple Podcasts Brian Clark’s article: How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content One-click download of empathy map PDF The Transcript Jerod Morris: Welcome to Sites, a podcast by the teams at StudioPress and Copyblogger. In this show, we deliver time-tested insight on the four pillars of a successful WordPress website: content, design, technology, and strategy. We want to help you get a little bit closer to reaching your online goals, one episode at a time. I’m your host Jerod Morris. Sites is brought to you by StudioPress Sites — the complete hosted solution that makes WordPress fast, secure, and easy … without sacrificing power or flexibility. For example, you can upload your own WordPress theme, or, you can use one of the 20 beautiful StudioPress themes that are included and just one click away. Explore all the amazing things you can do with a StudioPress Site, and you’ll understand why this is way more than traditional WordPress hosting. No matter how you’ll be using your site, we have a plan to fit your needs — and your budget. To learn more, visit studiopress.com/sites. That’s studiopress.com/sites. Welcome to Episode 5 of Sites. As you may have seen, last week we announced the show on Copyblogger — its official public introduction — and the response has been swift and overwhelming. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed, left ratings and reviews over at Apple Podcasts, and reached out to me on Twitter with kind words. I really appreciate it. We are just getting rolling here with Sites, and I look forward to continuing on this journey with you toward better, more powerful websites. So … in our first four episodes, we did one complete cycle through our four pillars of a successful WordPress website. Now in this episode we find ourselves back at the beginning … with content. In Episode 1, we discussed the simple three-step process for creating a winning content marketing strategy — understanding the who, the what, and the how. That episode is an important precursor to this one, so I recommend you listen to it. In today’s episode, we’re going to build on that overview and dive deeper into the first of the three steps: the WHO. Then in the next two content episodes after this one, we’ll discuss the WHAT and the HOW. Why is the WHO so important? Here is a quick review from Episode 1: Before you can get someone to buy from you, you need to know what to say to them, and how to say it. You’ll never get that right unless you know who you’re talking to. Call them personas, avatars, or even characters if you like. Your first step is to do the research that allows you to create a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal customer. Don’t underestimate the importance of the word ideal in “your ideal customer.” That, of course, is an excerpt from Brian Clark’s blog post The Simple 3-Step Process for Creating a Winning Content Marketing Strategy, on which Episode 1 was based. This week’s episode, Episode 5, is based on Brian’s follow up post, titled: How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content. I will perform that post for you now, edited slightly to fit the audio medium. Immediately after the reading, I’ll issue this week’s hyper-specific call to action. Here now is Brian’s post, How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content. How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content “Hello, I’m a Mac.” “And I’m a PC.” You remember Apple’s “Get a Mac” series of commercials that ran from May 2006 to October 2009, right? The commercials were short vignettes featuring John Hodgman as the sweet-yet-bumbling PC and Justin Long as the creative, hip Mac. Those 66 short spots were named the best advertising campaign of the previous decade by Adweek. The success of the long-running campaign leads one to believe that Apple certainly knows who its ideal customer is. Of course they do … because they chose their ideal customer, right from the birth of the Macintosh itself. That doesn’t mean that everyone responded favorably to the ads. While researching for this piece, I ran across a commenter who maintained that the campaign had “backfired” because the PC character had actually been more appealing to him. No, the campaign didn’t backfire (no one runs a series of ads for three years if they’re not working). Instead, Apple chose who not to attract as much as they chose who they hoped to convert. Apple knew they were never going to get hardcore PC people to switch to a Mac. Instead, Apple used these 66 humorous little stories to target those who were more likely to “swing” toward Apple — after being educated about the benefits by the contrast between the two characters. Sounds like really great content marketing to me. In fact, given the nature and duration of the Get a Mac campaign, it resembled serial online video marketing more than traditional advertising. So, the first (and most important) step in our 3-step content marketing strategy is determining your “Who.” Who do you want to attract and speak to, and just as importantly, who do you want to drive in the other direction? It all comes down to your values, first and foremost. What are your core values? Apple’s values were well reflected in the Get a Mac campaign — creativity, simplicity, and rebellion against the status quo. These core values were consistently present in the prior “Crazy Ones” campaign, and before that, the iconic “1984” ad. Some feel that Apple has lost the ability to innovate since Steve Jobs passed. Whether or not that’s true, I think the perception of Apple has changed among those of us who were initially strongly attracted, because their advertising now, for the first time, tries to appeal to a more general audience. Steve would definitely not approve. Modern marketing is about matching up with the worldview of your ideal customer. Outside of a monopoly, there is no such thing as marketing that appeals to everyone, and yet, companies still try and routinely fail. On the other hand, think of Patagonia. The founder of the outdoor clothing and gear company invented an aluminum climbing wedge that could be inserted and removed without damaging the rock face. This reflects Patagonia’s founding core value: “Build the best products while creating no unnecessary environmental harm.” Of course, not every company has a core value built into the founding story. Most businesses exist to simply sell things that people want, so it’s up to management to find the core values that they want to reflect in their marketing to attract the right kind of customer. For example, there’s nothing inherently ethical about ice cream, beyond ingredients. So Ben & Jerry’s adopted the values of its two founders, which had nothing at all to do with ice cream. Not everyone who likes ice cream necessarily agrees with reduced Pentagon spending and the fight against climate change, but the people who do care about those things turned Ben & Jerry’s into an iconic brand. It doesn’t have to be all sunshine and light, either. If your core values fall in line with a “Greed is good” mentality, you’ll certainly find people out there who share this worldview. You just have to unflinchingly own it. You need to understand who you’re talking to, yes. But you don’t just accept who you find — you choose who to attract. What does your character look like? In the Get a Mac campaign, Apple literally created a character that personified what their ideal “swing” customer aspired to be. It’s time for us to do the same. You can call them personas or avatars if you like — I prefer character. That’s because the first step is the research that allows you to create a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal customer. As far as fiction goes, we’re creating a character that will be the protagonist in their own purchasing journey that your content will help them complete. Since this journey is based on as much reality as we can glean from our research, it’s more like a fictionalized drama “based on actual people and events.” When I say the prospect is the protagonist, that means the hero. Your content is a powerful gift that positions your brand as a guide that helps the hero complete the journey that solves their problem. If this sounds like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to you, nice work — we’ll elaborate on this aspect in the “What” portion of the strategy. This journey does not take place in the context of you wanting to sell more stuff. It’s understanding how the prospect thinks, feels, sees, and behaves in the context of solving the problem that sets them on the journey in the first place. And don’t forget about instilling them with your shared core values. Why would this person choose you to assist them on the journey, out of a sea of other choices? Because you already see the world like they do in an important way, and they’ll pick up on that shared worldview immediately upon coming across your content. Your core values are your secret attraction spell. Instead of hiding your world views in the hope of never offending anyone, you now realize the power of being loud and proud — and attracting like-minded people who see you as the only reasonable choice. Now, most people don’t end up using this representative character in their content, like Apple did with Justin Long in the Get a Mac commercials. It’s really a composite to refer back to so that you never lose sight of who you’re talking to, what you should say, and how you should say it. On the other hand, the Get a Mac commercials were just two guys standing and talking in front of a minimalist, all-white background. If you’re thinking in terms of online video marketing, you could do a lot worse than looking to this campaign for inspiration. And think about your explainer videos. Wouldn’t a character that represents who you’re talking to give you an edge over competing marketing approaches? At a minimum, contemplating the actual use of the character in your content will force you to get things just right. Let’s look at a method for doing that. You are not your audience Given that you’re seeking to attract people who share your values, it’s tempting to overly identify with your audience. While you’re going to have things in common, it’s dangerous to think your ideal customer is similar to you in other ways. You’re a subject matter expert at what you do, for starters, and they are not. You need to make sure you don’t fall victim to the curse of knowledge, a cognitive bias that occurs when a person with expertise unknowingly assumes that others have the background to understand. This one assumption alone can sink your content marketing efforts. Plus, you don’t want to assume that the audience shares other characteristics that you have — you want to know, as well as you can, what they’re thinking, feeling, seeing, and doing. In other words, for you to have the empathy to walk the buyer’s journey in their shoes, you must first see things from their perspective. Then you’ll be in a position to create the content that “coaches” them along the journey. Let’s take a closer look at empathy, the definition of which consists of two parts: The intellectual identification with the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. The vicarious experiencing of those feelings, thoughts, or attitudes. It’s often said you want to enter the conversation that’s already playing in your prospect’s head. By matching up values and worldviews, you’re also aiming to enter the conversation in the prospect’s heart, and that’s how your marketing triggers the right motivation at the right time. The process we use for achieving this is called empathy mapping. At the foundation of the exercise is this statement: “Our ideal customer needs a better way to BLANK BECAUSE BLANK.” Empathy maps vary in shapes and sizes, but there are basic elements common to each one: Four quadrants broken into Thinking, Seeing, Doing, and Feeling Two optional boxes at the bottom of the quadrants: Pains and Gains To get started, you can download and print a large version of the empathy map we use at Copyblogger and StudioPress. Just go to the show notes for this episode: studiopress.blog/sites05. You’ll find the link to download the empathy map right under the player. The map allows you to easily organize all of your research and other relevant materials. The four quadrants represent the sensory experience of your ideal customer while in the prospect phase. Ask yourself questions such as: What does a typical day look like in their world? How do they think about their fears and hopes? How do they feel about the problem your product solves? What are they thinking when they resist solving the problem? What do they hear when other people solve the problem? Who do they see as viable options to solve the problem? What do they see when they use your product? What is the environment? What do they say or feel when using your product? What are their pain points when using your product? Is this a positive or a painful experience for them? Do they hear positive feedback about your company from external sources? What do they hope to gain from using your product? Jot down needs and insights that emerge as you work through this exercise. Then simply paste those notes in the proper boxes on the large empathy map. At the bottom of your empathy map, you can also draw two boxes: Pains and Gains. In the Pains box, you can put your customers’ challenges and obstacles. Ask, “What keeps my customer up at night?” In the Gains box, include the goals your customers hope to accomplish. Ask, “What motivates my customer to solve their problem?” and “What are their hopes and dreams?” Now … describe your character in detail You’re now ready to create a written composite of your character. Some people do several paragraphs, or perhaps a page of description. You, being the smart person that you are, might consider taking it further by creating a character bible, just like novelists and screenwriters do. In this context, a character bible is a detailed outline that lays out everything about your prospect in one place, so you can easily access their personality, problems, and desires. It may seem like a lot of work, but you’ll be happy you did it once you start coming up with the “What” and the “How” of your content marketing strategy. ***** That was a reading of Brian Clark’s blog post How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content, the second part of a multi-part, step-by-step series on content marketing strategy that we’ll be continuing here on Sites. I know it was pretty detailed and a lot to remember just listening, especially everything about the empathy map and all of those questions. You can see the entire transcript for this episode, find a link to Brian’s blog post, and download the empathy map (one click, no email address required) at studiopress.blog/sites05. When we pick up the series again four weeks from now, the next time we discuss content, we’ll take the next step and begin the process of figuring out “what” information your prospect must have to complete their journey with you. You’ll go from stepping into your prospect’s shoes to walking the buyer’s journey with them. Now here is this week’s hyper-specific call to action: Call to action This one’s pretty obvious right? I mean, Brian basically laid out the call to action right there at the end of the blog post when he said, “You’re now ready to create a written composite of your character.” So, that’s your call to action: go create a written composite of your character. But just don’t do it off the top of your head, willy-nilly style. Make sure you do your research. Ask yourself all of the questions that Brian laid out for you. Questions like “How do they feel about the problem your product solves?” and “What do they hope to gain from using your product?” And there were others. Doing your research and answering these questions will help you fill out your empathy map, which is a part of this call to action. Don’t skip steps and don’t look for short cuts! Doing the work at this stage will set your website up for long-term, sustained success. Again, go to studiopress.blog/sites05 to see the full transcript of this episode, which includes all of those questions bulleted out, as well as the link to download the PDF for the empathy map. Coming next week, we move on to design and discuss a topic that is closely related to what we discussed this week. We’re going to discuss 3 Ways Your Web Design Can Better Connect You to Your Audience. And guess what you better know about your audience before you can create a design that helps you connect better? Exactly. The stuff we discussed in this episode. So make sure you take that call to action! That’s next week, on Sites. Finally, before I go, here are a couple more quick calls to action for you to consider: Subscribe to Sites Weekly If you haven’t yet, take this opportunity to activate your free subscription to our curated weekly email newsletter, Sites Weekly. Here’s how it works: Each week, I find four links about content, design, technology, and strategy that you don’t want to miss, and then I send them out via email on Wednesday afternoon. Reading this newsletter will help you make your website more powerful and successful. Go to studiopress.com/news and sign up in one step right there at the top of the page. That’s studiopress.com/news. Rate and Review Sites on Apple Podcasts Also, if you enjoy the Sites podcast, please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts (formerly known as iTunes), and consider giving us a rating or a review over there as well. One quick tip on that: to make the best use of your review, let me know something in particular you like about the show. That feedback is really important. For example, one of our early reviewers says: “I’ve been a fan of Copyblogger for many years and now I’m ready for this podcast to help my artist brain build my online business (oy). I’m ready to create the site I’ve wanted to build for how many years now?? I’m super excited about the guidance this show will give me for building my dream site. Thank you Jerod Morris.” You’re welcome … and thank YOU. To find us in Apple Podcasts, search for StudioPress Sites and look for the striking purple logo that was designed by Rafal Tomal. You can also go to the URL sites.fm/apple and it will redirect you to our Apple Podcasts page. And with that, we come to the close of another episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of Sites. I appreciate you being here. Join me next week, and let’s keep building powerful, successful websites together. This episode of sites was brought to you by StudioPress Sites, which was awarded “Fastest WordPress Hosting” of 2017 in an independent speed test . If you want to make WordPress fast, secure, and easy — and, I mean, why wouldn’t you — visit studiopress.com/sites today and see which plan fits your needs. That’s studiopress.com/sites.

This episode is sponsored by Soundstripe.com and our brand new sponsor Filmconvert.  So Ben had a crisis of confidence with his Feature edit this week. He was concerned about his last 1/3 of his wedding feature was stale and boring. So he asks Rich directly what his edit process is and how he goes about his short form edits. Ben is also concerned about his Atomos recorder still and how a potential new client job will affect his decision to purchase a replacement.   Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ourweekinvideo/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ourweekinvideo and now Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ourweekinvideo/ Or send us an email at ourweekinvideopodcast@gmail.com      We are proudly sponsored by Soundstripe save 10% off their subscription by using the code ‘OWIV’ at checkout.    We are also sponsored by Filmconvert - Giving the Power Back to the Filmmaker. You can also join us with using Filmconvert for 10% discount by using our code ‘OWIV’ at checkout.   Thank you for listening. SUBSCRIBE on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/our-week-in-video-video-production/id955970525?mt=2   To see our work, follow these links:   Ben’s http://www.brutoncoxvisuals.com http://www.theweddingcut.com https://twitter.com/brutoncox   Rich’s http://www.auroravideo.co.uk https://twitter.com/auroravideo

So Ben watches one Robin Williams movie and it fucks up his whole night. Yeah, we get all over the place with this one. An extra special extended version of the show to delve into loss, immortality, mortality, the future, Ben's fears, craft beer snobs and Wes' hatred of soul patches... enjoy!!!

It’s almost election day! So Ben decided to have some FUN with politics! Prez is the story of the U.S.A.’s first teen president, a story that didn’t happen…but could. It’s a little bit political satire, it’s a little bit Mad magazine styled jokes, and a little bit of fun for …

This month’s Slow Home Experiment is only a few days old and Brooke and Ben are super excited to see how many people have decided to join in on the daily kindness experiment. In today’s episode they talk about how they’re feeling a few days in to this experiment, what’s been challenging, what’s been surprising, and what small acts of kindness they’ve undertaken over the first few days. When this experiment was first announced there were two questions that kept coming up, so they spend a little time today unpacking their thoughts on each of them. Firstly, what constitutes an act of kindness? Does it count if we’re kind to ourselves? The second question related to money, and the cost of many popular random acts of kindness. The oft-quoted ideas of buying a coffee for the person behind you at the coffee shop, or buying flowers or a meal for someone - while lovely, thoughtful ideas - are out of the financial realm for most of us. So Ben and Brooke also spend some time working through a list of non-financial ideas that will hopefully encourage even more people to spread kindness this month. There is a long list of ideas over on the blog and you can find the show notes at http://www.slowyourhome.com/99 Enjoy! ==== If you're enjoying the show and want to know how to best support it, leave a rating or a review in iTunes: (https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/slow-home-podcast-brooke-mcalary/id985005895?mt=2) or head over to the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/slow) to help support the show financially. And thanks so much for listening! ==== Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/slow See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Deconstruct 53 Jerry is once again servicing a client for his business. So Ben and Patrice deconstruct something that is definitely not Shakespeare, even if it was very likely written by monkeys

Today, we have the author of the The Sports Gene, David Epstein. The Sports Gene is a New York Times bestseller about exactly what it sounds like: whether or not there are things that make certain people preternaturally more likely to be great athletes. It feels like a perfect thing to talk about considering, you know, the Olympics start today. So Ben and David talk about some of the greatest physical specimens in the world, one athlete you must watch out for in Rio, and the central weakness of the 10,000 rule everyone always talks about. Oh, and also, if aliens invaded and you had to pick one athlete to compete against the aliens in a competition they decide, which athlete today do you pick? David’s a journalist at ProPublica whose work appears in places like The Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, and much more. He just put out an exclusive interview with the former chief investigator of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which you should read here https://goo.gl/u48unt. - There's a transcript of the interview up here: http://buff.ly/2aG6aQ7 - If you liked what you heard, hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: http://blnk.st/28JBVIY - And read more about the Sports Gene at David Epstein’s website: http://goo.gl/8mJwAz That excellent intro and outro music you heard is by Nico Guiang. You can find more of it on Soundcloud [@niceaux] and Facebook [www.facebook.com/niceaux].

Ben ripped open his present.Inside was a penguin“Hello, Penguin!” said Ben.“What shall we play?” said Ben.Penguin said nothing.“Can’t you talk?” said Ben.Penguin said nothing.Ben tickled Penguin.Penguin didn’t laugh.Ben pulled his funniest face for Penguin.Penguin didn’t laugh.Ben ignored Penguin.Penguin ignored Ben.So Ben fired Penguin into outer space.Penguin came back to Earth without a word.Ben tried to feed Penguin to a passing lion.Penguin said nothing.Lion didn’t want to eat Penguin.Ben got upset.Penguin said nothing.SAY SOMETHING!Lion ate Ben for being too noisy.Penguin bit Lion very hard on the nose.OW! said Lion.WOW! said Ben.And Penguin said…everything!

Hey guys it's Dave here. I am flying solo at the moment. A lot going on here. James is currently packing up the last of his possesions to move to TX. So that's happening. So Ben and I got together and recorded this podcast. It was an hour of truly redefining material. It was a podcast that redefined not only podcasting but what it meant to be human. Unfortunately my computer crashed and we lost all of the audio. The weight of recording it over is solely on my hairsuit shoulders. So here ya go.

This week, Jacqueline swaps her general positivity for crank (as she wrote recently for BlogHer). So Ben grills her about dates canceling the day of, how ghosting is socially acceptable now, and how singletons keep their cool with friend after friend pairs off and disappears. What can we be doing to date better, or at least own our being single? Then they’re joined by Jesse Hirsch, the editor of Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn. He recently ended a 6-year relationship… because of his job (somewhat, he says). What happens when your schedule is dominated by work events? When your significant others doesn’t want to join? Or when they really don’t give a shit about why you think kohlrabi is the new cauliflower (which was the new kale). Have a listen for the crankiest show of this season. “I feel like in the next relationship it would be just knowing how to keep things distinct and not letting work bleed into every single aspect.” [21:30] –Jesse Hirsch on Love Bites  

Interview with Cal student Ben Einstein about his venture VapeSecret, which is an e-cig company that is focused on helping smokers quit smokingTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. Speaker 2:[inaudible] Speaker 3:you're listening to Kale expert, clear 90.7 FM. This is the method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex, dedicated [00:00:30] to the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host aliene Huizar. And today we have the founders of vape secret with us. We have Shawn Linehan. Hey Sean. How's it going? Good, how are you? Good. And Ben Einstein. Yeah. What's going on? What's up man? And then we got Dave, you lead. Thank you for having us. Hey, thanks for coming on the show. And this is really exciting cause we have three entrepreneurs with us who are actually cal students. That's right, right? Yeah. Okay. So two of your seniors and Davey, you are a junior. The Junior. Okay. [00:01:00] This is very exciting. And um, we reversed the first question we usually ask on this show is your, you've created something out of thin air. It's came from your brain, right? So give me, why don't we start with you, Ben. Give us the problem statement. Why did you, what is, what is the problem that you're trying to solve? Speaker 1:Hi Ma, I'm actually glad you asked me that because, uh, I think the problem that we had was mine. Um, Sean and I were actually working on a different project, [00:01:30] um, and we're working on the 11th floor of a building and every 20 minutes he would leave to go smoke. And it's really hard to develop any software if you're a coder is leaving every 20 minutes. Um, and so I said, why don't you try e-cigs and he said I did and they all suck. And I said, okay, let's make a good one. And 44 days later we did. What was the project you guys were working on? Yes, so we were [00:02:00] still working on, on that project as well. We're kind of doing two simultaneous things. It's crazy, but it actually is managing to work. Um, the other project is einstein.com which is an intelligent product recommendation Speaker 3:software. It's a mobile app that we're working on and is also making significant progress. Okay, great. So maybe we'll get to that later on in the day of the program. So, um, so you wanted to make an e cigarette cause you saw your friend Ben not be able to Sean not be able to [00:02:30] work for more than 30 minutes in a row, although a lot of coders have the same problem. Speaker 1:Yeah. Um, it was also the scent, um, the owner that, you know, smokers have, we're working in a small space and that was obviously, uh, not pleasant for everyone else. Um, but most of the Burton Lee's my friend, I didn't want him to die. So a good friend. Yeah. Smoking smoking's really bad. My grandfather died from smoking. I've always been pretty against it. And so I didn't really know much about the e-cig business. Sean [00:03:00] did a little bit of research and tried a couple, a couple of products and didn't like them. And so we figured out what the problems were with the existing product on the market. And what are those problems? Um, the most popular electronic cigarette is called blue. Uh, it's a little cigarette looking device, um, lights up blue at the end and it's very small and it doesn't produce a lot of vapor and smokers required a large amounts of smoke or in our case [00:03:30] vapor in order to be satisfied. Speaker 1:So it's not satisfactory. Um, it's also limited in that it's small in size, which means the battery's small, which means that you can't use it all day straight. Um, and we wanted to create a product that, first of all, it delivered the experience of smoking, uh, while simultaneously being able to do that all day while simultaneously being able to be affordable to people like us college students. Um, [00:04:00] and so we looked around and there were similar products that we wanted to create on the market, but there were being marketed for over 60 bucks. And that's out of the price range of most college students. And it's definitely out of the price range of putting entrepreneurs who are going broke. So, um, on here slash students, some students who are, who are on a student budget and spending all their extra money on trying to build, build the company. So, um, it came down to quality, um, [00:04:30] and affordability and, um, you know, we, we were hoping, we were luckily able to, uh, go through the entire product development, um, stage in, in just, uh, 40 days. And, uh, we were proud to have developed a pretty good product. Speaker 3:So what I want to get to your product development, we wanna tell that story. Um, but first tell me a little bit more about, it seems like from someone who's not really into this industry, that the e-cig market and in vape [00:05:00] market has exploded over the last few years or kind of they're everywhere, where you didn't used to see them very often. Tell us a little bit about the, the kind of macro backdrop again of the industry that you guys are trying to disrupt. Speaker 4:Yeah. So the industry has been around for a good number of years. Five to six years was actually invented by a dentist and in Asia, which is interesting, but you know, it, it, it's one of those products that sounds too good to be true. [00:05:30] You know, you get all of the benefits of smoking without any of the, the bad things. Right. And so for the past couple of years, um, you know, people were using them, they were being sold online, but there was so much pessimism about the product because nobody had ever really done any studies on them. Uh, so, you know, more, more and more research was done on the products. Uh, basically we find that although they're not perfectly safe, they are so Speaker 3:much safer [00:06:00] than traditional cigarettes, but they started to gain mass appeal. Um, and you couple that with companies like blue, who we, we don't really like, and they don't think they're that good of a product, but them having a lot of money in their bank accounts has, has really fueled the distribution of e-cigs. So you're 100% right in saying that they've totally exploded recently. Um, you know, it's interesting though because the products that have exploded are, are not the best products on the market. They're just the companies that have the most [00:06:30] money to have a blue, which is, you know, funded ridiculously. And then you have the other guys which are actually owned by big tobacco trying to keep people smoking. And I think they caught the realization that these products weren't going to go away and people were going to use them and people did want them and they joined the bandwagon. Speaker 3:So you're talking, you're listening to Shawn Linea and one of the founders of vape secret and all three founders are here helping us to learn more about the [00:07:00] product that they've come to market and they're also cal students to seniors and juniors. This is very exciting to have some cal local entrepreneurs on the program. So you guys are telling the story about, and this program by the way, as method to the madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. And so you were telling us about, you guys were building this software program, einstein.com and um, and Ben, you realize that Shawn was going [00:07:30] out and smoking every 30 minutes. Like, Hey, let's do another project to building a e-cig. And I would assume this is my belief. But you were not at e-cig expert when you came up with the idea. Is that right? I'm not at all. Speaker 1:I, uh, I, I was not an expert at then, but I can pretty confidently say that I'm an expert. Now. Tell me Speaker 3:about like when you, you had the idea, and I'm always interested in this kind of, this spark of innovation, like the thunderbolts hits, you're like, Whoa, [00:08:00] that's an idea. I know nothing about it, but it's an awesome idea as to take us from that moment to how you 44 days later, whatever it was, had a product. Speaker 1:So, uh, so first of all, Sean and I are not, uh, engineers in the sense that we don't, we're, we're primarily business guys. Um, we're primarily nerds and second, secondly, we're primarily business guys. And, um, the electronic cigarette idea kind of came about, um, for, for two reasons. First [00:08:30] of all, obviously it was practical because, you know, I didn't want John to smoke cigarettes anymore. But also, um, starting a company with no profitability in forecast is very difficult. Um, especially if you don't have much money. And so we saw this as an opportunity to solve a problem that we had and we assumed that other people had, but also to make money, um, so that be able to find that through our lives so that we can actually work on einstein.com. Um, [00:09:00] electronic cigarette industry is huge. And what we noticed is that aside from there not being a good product for this specific type of, of, of use case that we envisioned, it was also very complicated. Speaker 1:Many people didn't know about this. Um, it's almost as if, you know, you take an alien and introduced an iPhone too. I mean, you wouldn't really understand how to use it or how to, how to get, how to, how to get the value out of it. And a lot of electronic cigarette e-tailers are websites, um, had many, many products and it's very, [00:09:30] very confusing and overwhelming for someone to go through that and figure out what to use. So we saw our space as being the simplest electronic cigarette you can buy in that it literally takes 30 seconds to go through our entire website and fully customize an electronic cigarette. You get to choose from 20 different flavors. It's all done in a very, um, user friendly and beginner focused, uh, way so that people [00:10:00] who know nothing about electronic cigarettes can successfully purchase from us quickly, easily, and with confidence because we explain everything in such simple terms. Speaker 1:And so we sell one product, we have one unit, it's available in six different color combinations. Um, we literally walk you through the process. We tell you exactly what you're getting wide good, what's good about it. Um, and we're really focusing on the people that have been thinking about it. I've [00:10:30] heard about it, but haven't really pulled the trigger on getting electronic cigarettes. And we kind of want to be that first step, that stepping stone, taking them away from smoking these dangerous cancer causing traditional cigarettes and moving them on to this new, this new type of, of electronics of electronic cigarette so that they can get all the benefits of smoking without dying young or through the business car talking. I get that you are a good business guy. He's just giving [00:11:00] me exactly the problem and what you're trying to do to make it easy to solve. Speaker 1:But it take us a little, a little detour here and talk about the engineering side of it. So you guys have, you wanted to build an actual product that like does some stuff right? That creates more of a vapor and is cheaper. And so how did you go about the manufacturing process of coming up with the actual product? Um, so from a, from an engineering perspective, the electronic cigarette [00:11:30] consists of three components. First of all, as a power source, which is a battery, uh, second of all is what's called an atomizer, which actually, uh, takes the vapor, takes the liquid and vaporizes it. And the third component is the liquid that you're actually uprising. What we did is we did a huge amount of research into various manufacturers of these components. Um, we did a huge amount of testing on these products. I would get prototypes, give them to Sean, he'd smoked [00:12:00] them for a couple of days, tell me what was wrong with them. Speaker 1:And we work with suppliers all around the world who made this stuff to put together the unit that we have today, which is basically a collection of components from a bunch of different places. And the way we selected each part was first of all, for again for quality, which is our core. And second of all, for affordability, we wanted a product that was sub $30. Um, and so the, for example, our [00:12:30] liquids, um, they're made with food grade, all food grade materials. Um, our flavorings come from Italy. They're, they're food based flavorings. Um, again, we're trying to move away from the general idea of electronic cigarettes as being dangerous and trying to attach some sort of, of tangible, um, healthfulness though as much as we can in this type of product. So that we can actually say that we've [00:13:00] done our, our, our, our, our, our best effort in terms of trying to make this product as good for you as possible. Speaker 1:So, um, you know, the, the battery we selected was, was selected with, with people like Shawn in mind, people that smoke all day, they need a product that lasts all day. A battery can't die because that's my biggest fear. That's our biggest fear is that someone's battery dies and then they go to seven 11 to buy another pack of cigarettes are real vision is helping people quit. And we've done that very successfully. [00:13:30] And the way we do that is by, by creating a product that lasts all day, it's got a USB charger in the bottom so you can literally plug it into your, your phone charger or your laptop and use it while it's charging, which is a very unique feature. Um, our atomizer is some, one of the simplest on the market. And most importantly in terms of, in terms of, of, of, of our, our consciousness towards the environment is [00:14:00] everything about our product is rechargeable and we fill up. So unlike most of the products on the market where you buy a product and then you have to keep on buying the refills and cartridges and all sorts of new components, which you then throw out. Our product is fully rechargeable and we fillable. So not only is it more affordable for the customer, but in our opinion it's also better for the environment. Um, so yeah, that's basically the, the, the focus that went into the engineering side of what we were doing. Speaker 3:Okay, thanks. [00:14:30] You were listening to Ben Einstein, one of the founders of vape secret, a new company formed here on the UC Berkeley campus dedicated to helping people soft smoking by creating a affordable high quality e cigarette. Um, and I have the founders with me here, Sean Linehan, Ben ice, the name Davey Lee. Um, so 44 days. That's a quick time. So how did you get, it sounded like you had to test some different components and stuff. So how, [00:15:00] how did you get the capital to, go ahead. I'm Shawn you and tell me about how, how did that process work? How were you, how many atomizers did you have to buy before you found the right way? Speaker 4:Yeah, so it's, it's, it's actually really interesting. So we didn't take sort of the bottom up approach to engineering our product. Like you might imagine some companies do. We didn't go into cad and, and mock up all of these individual components that we then have to tool ourselves. We recognize that we [00:15:30] only really had a couple thousand dollars of our personal savings left and we needed to make due on that limited bandwidth. So what we did is exactly what Ben was saying was like, we, we went to factories with premade components and figured out how can we put them all together. Right? Um, so the, the capital constraint was pretty significant. We, we took some of the money from our other company, which we also completely self-funded just from our savings accounts, um, and bought [00:16:00] dozens of dozens of these atomizer components and just kept testing them and when they wouldn't work, uh, and some, some of them just outright didn't work, which is ridiculous. Speaker 4:You know, you're getting samples from companies that were trying to become our main suppliers for these components and they chest were broken, um, and cross them off full list. Yeah, exactly. Those guys we don't even have to worry about, even if their first sample doesn't work, you know, it's just not worth that. Um, so, you know, Ben Ben took the efforts in terms of [00:16:30] getting all of the different sample products and the, the engineering components of it. Um, and he did all of these different pieces simultaneously. So it wasn't like, okay, now we've got to find the perfect this, finished that and then find the perfect that and finish that. No, he, he sourced batteries and clear misers and liquids and atomizers and all of these different pieces concurrently so that we could, you know, test all the different configurations. Um, and you're right, 44 days was, it was a sprint. Speaker 4:So, you know, we had [00:17:00] this other company that we didn't want to ignore for too long. So Ben, while he was doing that, I then went with Davey to work on the website. I don't, we're primarily an ecommerce driven product. We don't sell in stores, we sell exclusively through our website. And so Davie and I worked on trying to perfect a beautiful design for our site, making it sleek, making it intuitive, making it the type of experience that I would feel comfortable having my mom on. [00:17:30] Right. And funny story, she actually did, did quit using our product, which I'm really proud of for my mom, my stepbrother, my brother and my stepdad and my best friend all quit using my product [inaudible] and myself. Quit, quit using it. So you know, that that was the aesthetic that we set out to do. And you know, luckily between Davey and I and Ben's input as well on the design, we were able to make something that, that we're really proud of. Um, Speaker 3:that, that's amazing. Congratulations. I mean, your [00:18:00] return on investment right there is huge. If you have your whole family quit complete smoking cigarettes and you have to, I mean when you say quit, I mean you still smoke, you smoked a e-cigarette. Right? And I've, I've been interested in this. I've seen like people and I was in an airport last week and it's like guys smoking and E-cigarette in the airport. And I was wondering like, what's the, um, there's no actually no second hand smoke issues or bathe second hand vapor issues [00:18:30] with an e-cigarette. Speaker 4:No. So, uh, at least according to the most recent studies, and I'd cite the name if I can think of it off the top of my head, but, uh, basically the, the deal is the only detrimental piece of the second hand vapor is exposure to nicotine. Now to your average healthy adult, non infant adult, like, you know, anybody 10 and up, um, and 80 and down, this has absolutely no problem. Or like, if you're pregnant or you're an infant, [00:19:00] I still would not recommend, you know, having vapor blown directly in your face. It's just, there's no proof that it's very bad for you, but you know, nicotine is in a high enough quantity, not good for you. Um, but for your average person, I mean this, this really has very little health health side effects. The, the vapor itself is comprised of a, of a thing called propylene glycol. It sounds scary, but honestly it's one of the most heavily researched [00:19:30] just components, um, over the past eight years. And it's found to be completely safe. It's in inhalers, it's in food. I mean, it's literally in a significant portion of the products we use on a day to day basis. Um, and that's what makes it visible, the vapor visible, um, and it's safe. So, Speaker 3:so when, when smoking is bad for you, it's not necessarily the nicotine that Speaker 4:creates a lung cancer. It's the smoke, certainly not the, the, the deadliness [00:20:00] of, of cigarettes is significantly, significantly not associated with the nicotine. Nicotine is a chemical is bad for you in high doses, like very high doses, but in the dose, that level that you're using cigarettes, it's not the component that's hurting you. The component that hurting you is the smoke itself, right? Like you're literally burning plants. There's thousands of other chemicals added to cigarettes and that's what kills you. Yeah. Speaker 3:Okay. [00:20:30] Very interesting. So we're talking to Shawn Lenahan, then Einstein and Dave, you either the founders of vape secret. It is a e-cigarette company founded here on the UC Berkeley campus. They're all students here at cal and have launched this new enterprise. When did you guys launch? Speaker 1:We launched a late July, late July, July. We, uh, we, we actually launched a website and a, it's funny, we actually got, um, interviewing by cvs in [00:21:00] San Francisco, um, on television and that was kind of the jumpstart for our business. And um, the, the core for what we're doing is not you selling your product today. We put you on a regimen where we wean you off of nicotine completely, which is kind of backwards. Our business professor theta sort of this, Speaker 4:yeah. Basically we, we aim to lose our customers over time. And the way we do that is [00:21:30] we, Speaker 1:you start you off at at a certain nicotine content and we slow you month to month. We send you new liquids every month that lower at, at increasingly lower nicotine contents. Shaun started off at 18 milligrams, I think. Yup. Um, and he, and now he's, what are you smoking now? Speaker 4:Three. And it's funny because for the first two months I actually was at the 18, um, for a longer period of time than I should have been. Cause I didn't want to, we were running out of inventory. Right. We had a very little capital. So we kept having to [00:22:00] continue to buy small quantities, smaller quantities, bigger quantities at a time. Um, so I was using the 18 cause we had a lot of that and I didn't wanna use the inventory that we were going to sell to our customers to help them quit. So, you know, somebody, somebody that we would, that we would have as a customer starting today would quit much faster than the 10 months that it's taken me. They would quit over a period from lot of nicotine to no nicotine, three to four months, just for frame of reference, 18 milligrams. Speaker 4:So you said, yeah. [00:22:30] What does that equate to? Like how many packs a day is that? It's about, uh, between like three quarters of a pack to a pack a day. Um, it's depending on how often you actually use the device. It works for somebody who's up, even up to two packs a day. It's really the strongest, uh, levels that we recommend using. And how does the, so the, it's almost a years of a service. It's not just a product. Correct. Cause you're sending people the lick, the smokeable liquid, if that's the right term. So a Cho, what are the economics [00:23:00] on our liquid versus packs of cigarettes? Yeah. So one, one liquid, which we sell for $5 is equal to about three packs of cigarettes in terms of time spent using it. Um, so one, one liquid lasts an average person. I'm a little bit under two, a little bit more than a week, which is about the same that somebody would have about three packs of cigarettes. Um, unless they're very heavy smokers. But with the vape it's about a week with the one bottle. So we're [00:23:30] literally saving lots of money. Right. I mean I was a smoker for 15 years, but that was years ago when I quit cause I'm an old guy. So what was the, uh, what are the packs of cigarettes go forward today? The ones hours I was, were Speaker 1:about $7 on the average in Berkeley. Wow. So just right there just to save money, you should, you should buy vape secrets, right, man, we actually have a calculator on our homepage where we can tell you exactly how much you'll save this year. [00:24:00] Uh, if you switch, if you switched to electronic cigarettes. Nice. Um, okay, so you guys started in July, so you've been around for about three quarters now and you, you're showing your whole family as quit basically. It's not a like, yeah, you're on the road to quitting. Tell us some more, like how many have you sold? How many stories do you have of people quitting? Um, we, we try to keep in touch with all our customers. Some people it's easier. Some people it's harder. We actually have discovered [00:24:30] that we appeal more to older people because of the simplicity of the site. Speaker 1:Um, because of the simplicity of the product. And older people are generally not as, uh, into communication, especially the email and things like that. Um, so there's been a little bit difficult for us to, to keep track of those numbers. Exactly. Um, we've taught, we've helped dozens of people quit and we've sold hundreds of units. Um, so, um, the business is growing and our only constraint right now is [00:25:00] really, um, is just, you know, getting the word out there. Um, getting, getting people to learn about it and word of mouth has proven to be our strongest marketer. Uh, we hope maybe this, this presentation might help us also a little bit. Um, but the, the important thing for us is that we want to be able to maintain this experience, this personalized experience, um, without getting that diluted by, by getting [00:25:30] too many customers too quickly. Speaker 1:And so, you know, every package we s we ship out is hand packed by us. There's, you know, we, we hand write a note to every customer and we try to develop a really strong personal connection and relationship with them because smoking is an emotional thing. It's a very personal experience. And we're, you know, who are a bunch of kids that come into someone's life who's been smoking for 30 years and tell them, hey, we can help you quit. Um, it's, it's a very bold statement for us to make and it's something we don't take lightly [00:26:00] and we try as hard as we can to make that experience as pleasant and as professional as possible. So it's only, you guys have two businesses, but you're also seniors. A cow. What majors do you guys have? A, I'm a business major. We've mastered the art of, of being good students while simultaneously, uh, trying to be good entrepreneurs. So you are your business as well then? I know I'm not a business major, I'm just the business guy. Um, I [00:26:30] uh, I made development studies major. Um, I learned about developing economies and things like that. Um, but I read a lot about business and uh, Shawn teaches me everything that's important to know that he learns in Oz. You Speaker 3:guys are, uh, it's April. So graduation is staring you in the face and you have two businesses. Yeah. Is that the plan, you guys are going to go full force after May. Speaker 4:That's, that's the plan. Yeah. And we're not, not gonna [00:27:00] not gonna hesitate, you know, actually can't wait to graduate so we can really sit down and focus. Right? Like focused is the biggest issue. Um, with school you, you have varying schedules all the time. You have different wake up days every day, right? Sometimes you have class at eight, 10, 1112 and we're, we're ready to be able to, to truly dominate. Speaker 3:Yeah. So did tell me about the path to domination you felt like your, and we're speaking with the founders of vapes, secret hearing methods [00:27:30] of the Madison on KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM, Ben Einstein, Sean Lennon and David Lee. These guys who started this business while trying to graduate from cal, they're about to do that. So I want to know now you're going to graduate. The shackles are off. You can drink from the capitalist Downton as much as you want. So what, what's the difference? How are you going to get from where you are today to selling thousands of these helmets? How big a market did you save? This was Ben Speaker 4:big, is it? [00:28:00] So last year it was a one point $3 billion industry and it's projected to hit 15 billion over the next 10 years. Speaker 3:Okay. So if you can get half, half of a percent, you're doing well, how are you going to get there? Speaker 1:Um, we were really working on trying to get our, um, our supply chain in place so that we can actually, uh, produce these products in, in really high quantities. Um, right now we're kind of doing small dots [00:28:30] runs, which keeps our costs higher than they should be or merged. Immersions are still fairly healthy. Um, but we can always do better in that sense. Um, but again, it's in test. This is, um, this is something that we started out of necessity and we realized that this was an opportunity to really help people quit smoking. And so we're actually passionate about it. We really care about this. And you know, anyone we meet who smokes weed, you try and convince them to quit, not just so [00:29:00] we can get a customer, but also cause we, we think smoking's bad. Shawn is in better shape than he's ever been. Speaker 1:He, he doesn't get tired running up and down stairs anymore. Um, not that programmers do that much, but he actually goes to the gym more than any of us do. Um, but you know, for us the, the important thing was, um, you know, what did Winston Churchill said, don't let your school and getting in the way of your education. Um, we, we've learned more in the past year working together than we probably have [00:29:30] in all four years of college. And so at this point, um, where we're going to go, just in terms of the time commitment. Also for me, I'm putting myself through school. So, um, you know, the financial and the financial responsibilities of paying for college, um, have been, have been, uh, pretty serious on my family and you know, the opportunity to be finally be able to work full time, um, on what we're trying to do. Um, the ability to dedicate not only all [00:30:00] of our physical time, but our mental capabilities. I mean, if we're studying for a test until three in the morning and then we try to come into work the next morning, we're not 100%, whereas if we don't have tests anymore, we can actually dedicate our entire, you know, she be you in our brains to, um, to building new businesses Speaker 3:and thanks to you guys for coming on today and telling your story about how you sorted vape secret. We'll have to have you on another time to talk about Einstein. Um, but you've been listening to the band, Einstein, Sean Lenahan [00:30:30] and David lead of the founders of vapes secret. They're a seniors here on campus about to graduate and go full force into this, um, e-cigarette company that I've created. Um, and to learn more that you guys can go to vape secret.com right. That's the URL to check out. Speaker 1:That's correct. And actually there's a, a special cow promotion for Berkeley students. Uh, if you place an order, you put into words, go bears into the coupon code and you'll get 10, 10% off of your [00:31:00] sale. Speaker 3:Alright, we got a plug in at the aunt's, a nice word fan. And uh, thanks for coming on guys. You've been listening to KLX Berkeley's method to the madness. Have a great Friday. Everybody. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Doba’s in Canada and frankly can’t be bothered with your silly “podcasts” at the moment. So Ben did what every feral cat does when it’s cornered: he brought Joe Bush in to help. At least that’s what I assume feral cats do when cornered, I’ve never actually seen one. Ben’s not actually a feral cat, The post The List: Top 100 PS1 Games appeared first on Read the Manual.

*I catch up with the biohacking king of the universe Ben Greenfield on the wondrous occasion of the release of his incredible new book called Boundless* *. This is a 670-page monstrosity that covers all aspects of healthy living, peak performance, and how to attain the ultimate goal of healthspan - living a long, happy, productive life.* But don’t be intimidated by its length and the wide variety of subjects covered - have fun with it! Take advantage of the variety in the different sections, flip through the book, and start reading whatever title piques your interest the most. “Hidden Variables That Make or Break Your Mind, Body, and Spirit,” and “How To Burn Fat Fast Without Destroying Your Body,” and “ Maximize Your Symmetry and Beauty” are just a few examples of the wide-ranging and fun topics Ben covers in the book. At the time of this recording, the main subject on everyone’s mind was the quarantine, so we talk a little about how Ben is making the most of this time at home. He’s pretty used to it, since he was homeschooled from kindergarten through 12th grade, and he shares the reason why his children elected to opt out of traditional school and start homeschooling, or “unschooling” as he calls it. Unschooling is a simple concept: pay attention to a child’s interests and passions, and then surround them with as many life-based experiences as possible to allow them to pursue those passions. Ben is adamant about not pushing his kids to go to college, but he still is preparing them for any and all options through fun but rigorous at home curriculum. His intention is for them to really experience the things they are interested in, and if college is one of those things, then they’ll be prepared for all the standardized tests and applications too...basically, Ben’s kids are hardcore training, unschool style! Speaking of hardcore training, Ben shares how Boundless came about: “About three years ago, I started to pivot from a real focus on performance and focus on anti-aging and lifespan.” Of course exercise is important and key to longevity, but we know by now that overdoing it will never do you any favors. Pushing your body is just that - pushing - and hitting the pause button frequently enough in your life is integral to a long and healthy life. So Ben recommends you don’t focus too much on killing it every single day when it comes to your workouts. He’s a big fan of a simple but vigorously paced walk, as walking at a pace that gets your heart rate up is one of the easiest workouts you can do, and one that won’t put too much stress on your body. Ben also describes a few other easy exercises you can do for longevity, and we get into a discussion about the limitations in aging. Ben then shares some of his thoughts on vegetables (eat them) and I bring up a podcast he did with previous guest Dr. Saladino ( https://www.bradkearns.com/2019/05/28/saladino/ ). Ben also brings up an interesting point: “You can disable every plant defense mechanism through fermenting, soaking, sprouting, and other ancestral preparation tactics.” He also points out that plant foods in older cultures were not just considered cultural staples but medicinal staples as well - things that could provide some amount of antioxidant protection or something like digestive enzyme support. Along with relaxing the breaks on intense exercise, Ben has also been more relaxed about his diet. He’s a fan of consuming, “a wide variety of foods, preparing them properly, and also paying attention to the enjoyment derived from gathering this wide variety of food as well.” I bring up Dr. Bruce Lipton’s work ( https://www.bradkearns.com/2019/06/28/bob2/ ) and Ben agrees that since your perspective has a powerful effect on your body, it’s incredibly important to not use up “excess time” with activities that are ultimately, not worth it. Ben asks: “What good is it to live until you’re 100 if 30 years of that life is spent in hyperbaric oxygen chambers and with laser lights in your office, taking all sorts of supplements? All this time spent trying to live a long time is time spent away from the family. At a certain point, you have to make sure you’re using your time responsibly.” Enjoy this (walking) podcast episode with Ben Greenfield and be sure to check out his book, Boundless ( http://boundless ). *TIMESTAMPS:* Boundless is Ben’s new book with many interesting chapters such as dig deeper about sleep, how to fix jet lag, and how to burn fat fast without destroying your body, and many more. [04:34] Social ties to the community are very important. This experience of staying home has been a drastic change. [09:09] Things may change for the better. [14:30] Brad and Ben discuss the need to restructure the educational process. [16:58] Kids are individuals. They have different interests to which their education should be directed. [18:58] It’s still important to satisfy the core curriculum, however.  [23:46] There are five core skills you should be attaining: reading well, expressing thoughts in writing, persuasion, math and arithmetic, and finally logic.  [27:01] Ben’s book was originally looking at anti-aging and has evolved into a worldwide study of how people are living a healthy life. [30:06] Is there a tradeoff between maximizing your health span and trying to perform great things in athletics and other aspects of life? [36:37] Walking is always one of the best life-enriching exercises. Ben talks about other important exercises for longevity. [40:06] Be aware and learn about what exercises are beneficial but don’t overdo. [45:35] It’s good to have goals for maintaining fitness. [48:10] What are the limitations of aging? Are there concessions we make? [49:51] The carnivore diet is okay, but we still need vegetables, according to Ben.  [52:32] What is a special Greenfield family dinner like? [57:46] It feels really good to eat healthy rather than putting junk into your body. [59:09] Seeking a balance of all this information takes a lot of work. You can think yourself into sickness. [01:00:03] *LINKS:* * Brad’s Shopping ( http://www.bradkearns.com/shop/ ) * Boundless ( https://www.amazon.com/Boundless-Upgrade-Brain-Optimize-Aging/dp/1628603976 ) * Kion ( https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/ben-recommends/supplements/kion/ ) * Range ( https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/range-why-generalists-triumph-in-a-specialized-world_david-epstein/19761382/item/32980861/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwhZr1BRCLARIsALjRVQOB9ysUvlOW4TDFr3M1jzf_7G1fk-zXRWPqmXtSXLvCmFz-5imxMLoaAiWZEALw_wcB&mkwid=ceAY0cNS%7Cdc&pcrid=430001851591&pgrid=102771208471&plc=&product=32980861&ptaid=pla-894501118442&utm_content=ceAY0cNS%7Cdc%7Cpcrid%7C430001851591%7Cpkw%7C%7Cpmt%7C%7Cproduct%7C32980861%7Cslid%7C%7Cpgrid%7C102771208471%7Cptaid%7Cpla-894501118442%7C&utm_source=google_shopping#isbn=0735214484&idiq=32980861 ) * Sirtuins ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4101544/ ) * Tabata Set for Bicycle ( https://www.active.com/fitness/articles/what-is-tabata-training ) * Boundless Book.com ( https://boundlessbook.com/ ) * Ben Greenfield Fitness ( https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/ ) Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-get-over-yourself-podcast/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands