Podcasts about so jamie

Oncology, Etc. is a monthly ASCO Education podcast exploring topics in oncology through interviews with emerging thought leaders, physicians, and innovators. In this episode, hosts Dr. Patrick Loehrer (Indiana University), Dr. Jamie Von Roenn (ASCO), and Dr. David Johnson (University of Texas) discuss the importance and impact that friendship has made on their careers. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts | Additional resources: elearning.asco.org | Contact Us Air Date: 8/3/2021   TRANSCRIPT [MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This is not a substitute for medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. PATRICK LOEHRER: Hi, I'm Pat Loehrer. I was born in Chicago, moved to Indianapolis when I was in high school, went to Purdue University, went to Rush Medical College, came here to Indiana University. And I've been on faculty ever since. I'm now a distinguished professor and the former head of our Cancer Center and Director of our Centers for Global Oncology. JAMIE VON ROENN: So hi, I'm Jamie Von Roenn. I'm a medical oncologist and trained at Rush with Pat and subsequently stayed in Chicago at Northwestern and came here to ASCO as the VP of Education about eight years ago. DAVID JOHNSON: Hi, I'm Dave Johnson. And I'm in Dallas, Texas. I'm a medical oncologist originally from Georgia, spent a large part of my career on the East Coast and in Tennessee before relocating to Dallas to become Chairman of Medicine in 2010. I stepped down from that position last year and now serve as an elder statesman [INAUDIBLE]. So we are excited to be here today for a new endeavor sponsored by ASCO, a podcast entitled Oncology, et cetera and with a heavy emphasis on the et cetera. We are here to talk with thought leaders, physicians, authors, innovators in oncology and beyond. To be honest with you, we have a lot of interests. And so I'm going to turn to Jamie and ask Jamie, why are we doing this? Jamie is the instigator behind this. So Jamie, why are we doing this podcast? JAMIE VON ROENN: So I think the primary reason we did this is to remind people why they chose oncology, that all three of us are people who are super excited about this profession, about what we've learned and what we've given and how we've shared it with each other and with the profession in general, that it's the science. It's the relationships. It's change. And it's incredibly fulfilling on all of those levels. DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, Pat, what are your thoughts? PATRICK LOEHRER: When Jamie asked us to do this, this was something that we jump at. I love Jamie dearly. Dave and I both share this mutual admiration society. I deeply admire Jamie. And, to do something with Dave who is one of my closest professional friends, this was just a great opportunity. We thought in our conversations, though, as we talked with other people, that it would be good just to talk among ourselves and particularly about the notion of friendship and what it means to each of us personally with the idea that maybe those listening might reflect on that in their own lives. DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, so you mentioned-- you made a distinction there, Pat. I'd like to know what that distinction represents. You said you had your personal friendships and your professional friendships. How do those differ? PATRICK LOEHRER: Well, you know, I'm not sure how it is for you, but my wife is outside of medicine. I've known her. I had my first date with her 50 years ago. And I have friends that I really don't like to talk about business with. I just talk about other things, our kids, family, whatever. Our friends in medicine are a little different. We have deeper conversations about our work. And there are certain aspects of our work that I think touch us personally. We have patients that we've become close to that are rough. And, many times, I don't share those interactions with my friends at home because it's just not important to them. So I treasure especially you guys, I treasure deeply. We've shared a lot over the years. JAMIE VON ROENN: So it seems to me that friendships in general are built on shared experiences and that the experiences in medicine are so different from anything else. And, if you don't have friends in your profession, you may not actually have the opportunity to share and sort of have a sounding board for how difficult things are sometimes in spite of how inspiring it is. DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, I think I like your distinction. Both of you pointed out the shared experience. The world of an oncologist, viewed from the outside, may appear to be a rather morbid specialty, but, in fact, it's one that I personally find incredibly rewarding. But there are those moments that are challenging and difficult-- patient encounters, professional setbacks, et cetera. And it's nice to have someone within the profession itself that can relate to those experiences, especially failure. I know, Pat, you've had lots of failures. [LAUGHTER] JAMIE VON ROENN: I think we all have. PATRICK LOEHRER: Thank you. Just as a background, there have been, in this group, five runs for ASCO presidency. And only one of them has been successful. So yeah, we know failure, Dave. JAMIE VON ROENN: But I think it's important because no one is successful all the time. And it's your friends who actually get you through that and let you see, OK, yeah, I'm still OK. And I think it's the other side of that too. Everyone who's honest has suffered from the imposter syndrome. And it's your friends you can openly share that with. And it helps you go the next step when you're struggling. DAVID JOHNSON: So you mentioned that the two of you met during your residency training. What prompted that friendship then? And how has it been sustained over the last many years? I won't say the number of years, but a lot of years. JAMIE VON ROENN: So we actually met when I was a medical student, and Pat was my intern who I worked with. And then, when I was an intern, Pat was the resident. DAVID JOHNSON: So that accounts for all your problems in the medical field? JAMIE VON ROENN: It accounts for how well trained I am. DAVID JOHNSON: I see. JAMIE VON ROENN: But I think it was the sense of joy in the profession that probably connected us and a love of people. I don't know. Pat, what would you say? PATRICK LOEHRER: Well, it was a special time back then in medicine. Our particular hospital was a resident-run hospital. I think we acted first and then asked permission from the attendings later on. And it was really very special. There's a lot of people from Rush who have gone into oncology in many different areas. And so it was very special. Jamie I knew. We really did not keep in touch until she gave a plenary paper at ASCO. And I remember writing her a note. And I was so proud to see her up there. And I wrote that in a note. And we started, basically, communicating and getting together regularly. And so, each year at ASCO, as you know, we get together, the three of us, collectively or individually, and have a dinner. It's really the highlight of the meetings for me. DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, I had the good fortune of Pat and I coming together, I think, shortly after I completed my fellowship. And Pat and I were both starting our academic careers, he at IU and I at Vanderbilt at the time. And we interacted through one of the major NCI cooperative groups that, unfortunately, no longer exists. It may have been due to our work, Pat, that caused the Southeast group to divide. But it was through Pat that I met Jamie. And so that's been really one of the most rewarding relationships that I've had professionally over the last, now more than 40 years. I mean, it's been a long time really. PATRICK LOEHRER: And we were on the ABIM together, the three of us, which was a riot. It's another one that seems like a thankless position, but we realized how hard it is to write very good questions. And we would spend a lot of time together doing this. I learned tremendously from the two of you and the others around the ABIM. JAMIE VON ROENN: Yeah, that was a remarkable experience for us because it's a small group of people putting their ego outside the door and working together. DAVID JOHNSON: And the challenge of maintaining one's knowledge base, I mean, honestly, I hadn't thought that much about it until I was invited to join the ABIM. And thank you, Pat, for making that possible. I consider it one of the highlights of my professional career is being a part of that. And I realize how controversial the work that ABIM is doing today, but, still, I think it was a wonderful experience. JAMIE VON ROENN: We've been pretty lucky to share multiple professional activities. I mean, when you were president, Dave, I was on the board. We shared ABIM. We shared some ECOG work way back. It's been a lovely crossing of paths beyond friendship . DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, I think one piece of advice that I give to residents, and especially those who are interested in heme-onc fellowship, is find a friend. It's really important that you do so. I was fortunate to have the two of you and some other friends during the course of my career. And I must say, turning to a friend for advice, for assistance, for mentorship-- I can't remember who said it first. Having a friendtor is really, really important in the course of one's professional development. JAMIE VON ROENN: It's an important message because it takes time. When people are in training, they often think they don't have time, but this is a value on every level. It's more than worth the time. PATRICK LOEHRER: I just want to jump on that friendtor. We all have had people that we work closely with. In Indiana, it's been Larry Einhorn who was a role model for me when I was a medical student and then became a mentor when I was a fellow at a junior faculty. And he is, again, one of my closest friends. And he is one that gives me advice, but also just listens. And, similarly, he'll come in and ask me advice, which was mind boggling that someone of his stature would lean on us. But I was trying-- I was just going to put a caveat or a corollary to your statement about finding a friend. Dave, what I tell people, I think it's more important to be a friend than to have them. I think, if you get into the habit of helping other people and being a friend, you'll collect people close to you down the road, but, boy, it's not a one-way street. It really has to be the best friendships in which you give and you also happen to receive, but it's really a nurturing process. It just doesn't happen by chance. It happens because the people make an effort in it. JAMIE VON ROENN: Absolutely. DAVID JOHNSON: So what do you look for in establishing those friendships, Pat? What attracts you to an individual to even consider establishing a friendship? PATRICK LOEHRER: Well, I like to have friends who are dumber and uglier than I am. And that's why I really migrated to you. I mean, I think, when I looked around the room, I said, this guy could be my friend. DAVID JOHNSON: It's amazing. I saw myself in the mirror when I saw you. JAMIE VON ROENN: So I'm going to take that more seriously and say I think what we have done with each other is looked for people with values that connect and that, in the end, whatever those values are, that's what makes the friendship last. PATRICK LOEHRER: Well, it's interesting. As we talk about, in academics, one might think that you become friends with people in your own disciplines, but Jamie was a age researcher in palliative care. Dave, you were a thoracic oncologist. And I was a GI. And the loneliest friendship would be with thymoma people. But none of us really merged together because of our own professional disciplines. It really was something else. I think there was a higher power that pulled us together. DAVID JOHNSON: Oh, I think Jamie touched on it. I mean, it's the values that we share, I think. And I'll go back to something we talked about earlier, which is our shared love of the profession itself. I think I was 10 years old when I first seriously thought about being a physician. You may argue that a 10-year-old can't think seriously about anything, but, throughout my youth, all the way through college and, ultimately, medical school, medicine was my goal. And I've never regretted making that decision. I know there's a lot of unhappiness in the medical profession in this day and age and a lot of talk about burnout. One recent study actually even suggested that over half of all physicians would not recommend medicine to their children as a profession. I find that disheartening. I'd be delighted if my child were to choose such a profession. She didn't, but I would have been delighted had she done so. And I know, Pat, you have children who have pursued medicine as a career. PATRICK LOEHRER: Yeah, I was-- actually, at my son's graduation, I was up in the balcony away from everyone else taking photos, but I did find myself with a tear coming down my eye watching him just because it was an affirmation that my life was something that didn't steer him away from medicine. I think he did find, in my life, the joy that you can find in this profession. I want to change this a little bit to you guys, Dave, because you talked about the profession. And, several years ago, well, you both have had some really tough episodes in your life, but, Dave, you came down with lymphoma many years ago. And I do remember an ASCO presentation that I think Jamie helped put together in which there were several of you. I think Nick Vogelzang and Sandra Horning were up there. And you shared your experience of having cancer and shared some of the stories, I think, of friendship. But I do remember the phrase that you used at the end of the talk about how you had a deeper appreciation about the majesty of our profession. That's always touched me, but can you reflect a little bit about your illness and having lymphoma as a cancer doctor and what you learned in terms of this topic of friendship? DAVID JOHNSON: Well, we, as oncologists, think we know what it's like to have a serious illness. And I certainly was no different than most oncologists. But, when I myself was diagnosed with a malignancy, I must say, I had many of the emotions that I've witnessed in my patients. And, also, suddenly, my brain went completely blank. I couldn't think about what it was that needed to be done. And I, like most patients, began searching for the perfect answer. How would I deal with this? But I was also curious because, a few years prior to my own diagnosis, another faculty member at the institution where I was at the time had been diagnosed with ALS. And he wrote a very personal and moving piece that was published in The New England Journal about his experiences at that institution and how he was treated by his fellow physicians. And, actually, what he had to say was not all that complimentary in some instances. And I wondered myself how I would be dealt with by my fellow physicians. And I must say, my experience was virtually the polar opposite. I was surprised, honestly, at how heartfelt the good wishes were, the way that my colleagues went out of their way to try to make sure that I was successfully treated, was dealt with appropriately, even colleagues at my institution that I had not known that well finding excuses and reasons to drop by the office that seemed manufactured, quite frankly, but were clearly, again, intended to lift my spirits and make me feel positive about my future. It really made me realize just what a special profession we're in and then, to have friends that I could turn to, such as you and others, who really did a lot to lift my spirits. So, when you see that, you can't help but be really moved by the men and women who come into this profession and particularly those who choose oncologist as a specialty. PATRICK LOEHRER: I had a colleague who succumbed to glioblastoma. And he was-- when he was first diagnosed, he told me there were three kinds of friends, he realized. There were the long-lasting friends that he's always had. There were people who he thought were friends who kind of just faded away, mainly because they didn't know what to say. And then the third group were these unexpected friends, people that he didn't really know that very well, but came into his life and really made a difference. It was very insightful. DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly the experience I had as well. And the group that unexpected was perhaps the most surprising to me, but really I came to appreciate greatly. PATRICK LOEHRER: Many years ago, when we were doing the board questions, Jamie was not able to come because her husband Kelvin had been diagnosed and then, shortly thereafter, passed away from cancer. I knew him when I was a resident. He was a feared neurosurgeon. He made Ben Casey look like Dr. [INAUDIBLE] He was an incredibly intense, wonderful man, but I've not talked much deeply about that. And, with some reluctance, Jamie, I don't know if you want to share a little bit about how you felt as a palliative care doctor, and then here's your husband who's dying of cancer. JAMIE VON ROENN: Sure. And it kind of echoes what both of you have said. Here I was, a palliative care doc. And I thought I understood what death and dying was about. And, after Kelvin died, I was blown away. And I recognized, I said the right things, but I never really understood them. And it changed the way I talked to patients forever. And I too had the same experience of friends who are new, old, and otherwise, those that disappeared because they were too uncomfortable. And I was shocked that there were partners, oncologists, who could never ever say anything to me because they were too uncomfortable talking about death. And here it was something they were supposed to be trained to deal with. And, in fact, I remember, many times, Pat, you calling and checking in on me. And I remember in particular one day when I was down, and you said, wow, you are in a dark hole. And I was. And it took a long time, but it's friends that get you through and the ability to talk about what nobody wants to hear that helps you recover ultimately and move on. And those are life friends, but there's something different about people like the two of you who understand these experiences from a different perspective. DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, I think these shared experiences, they're not shared in the sense that we experienced it personally, but the fact that we were able to relate to one another and share those very personal moments only fortifies and solidifies an existing friendship. And there are a lot of people I would not have that discussion with, but there are a few. And you are certainly among those two that I would. PATRICK LOEHRER: Well, I mean, you guys mean a lot. And I know-- I'm trying to think of the time. Back when I was thinking about becoming a heme-onc division chief. I gave Dave a call. Dave was head of heme-onc at Vanderbilt, I think, for 68 years or something. I can't remember. You were there for a long time. And I called him up. And I thought for sure there would be this, yeah, Pat, you'd be great. You'd be a wonderful division chief, but there was just this silence. It was like, I don't know, about 90 seconds of just pure silence. And then you said, yeah, it's mostly a good job. Then you reflected a little bit about this. And, in terms of this rejection, I think the other thing you taught me is it's OK not to be the first choice. But I can't remember. What choice were you for the division chief? DAVID JOHNSON: 11. PATRICK LOEHRER: 11. Yeah, I love that. I love that. DAVID JOHNSON: That's true. I mean, they interviewed 10 people before I was offered the job. So I knew I was in the top of all candidates. PATRICK LOEHRER: Top hundred, huh? This is like Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [INAUDIBLE]. DAVID JOHNSON: They ran out of candidates. PATRICK LOEHRER: Well, you know, that part, I've got to be honest with you. The stories with you guys have helped me out quite a bit because junior people would look up and say, oh, look at these guys. Aren't they successful? But they don't realize that we have stumbled and failed over the years in many things. And the best thing you can do is just laugh about it when you try. But, going back to the notion of friendship, there is no greater joy than I have is to see you guys, who are my friends, succeed. And a definition, I think, of a friend, at least a minor definition, is, when someone gets an award, that you find greater joy in them getting the award than you would if you got it yourself. If you find yourself kind of jealous and wondering, well, I wish I had that, probably, it wasn't your friend then. But I've gotten so much joy in watching you guys succeed. JAMIE VON ROENN: So I think there's a corollary to being a good mentor, which is, when your mentees surpass you, then you were successful. And it's the same with friendship. PATRICK LOEHRER: I'm one of the most successful people in the world then. DAVID JOHNSON: I was getting ready to say, I think we've all succeeded wildly then. [LAUGHTER] JAMIE VON ROENN: But that is the goal. I mean, what's the point of being able to help people if you don't make them the next set of stars? DAVID JOHNSON: We've been lucky to have a lot of really terrific men and women who we've been able to work with over the years and call them mentees, but, in reality, we've been their mentees. They've been the ones that have taught us so much. I'm very proud of all of them. JAMIE VON ROENN: Yeah, I think that is something to be proud of. And, when I look back, it's those things that make me most excited about what I've accomplished. PATRICK LOEHRER: Well, I think, every good relationship, you really get more out of it than you get into it. Even as we have our heart to hearts with our patients and having end of life discussions, I usually get so much out of that in a reflection of their own personal love for each other and their family and what they treasure in life. But, again, with you guys, unabashedly, I'll say this in public. I love you deeply. And I appreciate your friends. CS Lewis had a book called The Four Loves in which the most unnatural of the four loves was friendship, but it's what he actually thought was probably the most important one because it's so unique. And it's not expected, but you guys, I think, are an important part of my life. And I thank you for that. JAMIE VON ROENN: I love you both and feel the same. It's the luckiest thing there is. DAVID JOHNSON: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much for that. Well, I think our time is about up for today. I want to thank all the listeners. I'm sure there's tens of thousands listening to this. Well, I just called Pat's friends and told them listen. So we plan to do this monthly. We already have a scheduled guest for our next podcast. It'll be Dr. Otis Brawley who I think many of you know by reputation, one of the leading luminaries in oncology in the United States. He's now at Johns Hopkins. I think it'll be a really enlightening and fun conversation to hear what Otis has to say about the current state of oncology in this country. So, with that, we'll sign off until next month. Thanks, everybody. [MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the ASCO eLearning weekly podcast. To make us part of your weekly routine, click Subscribe. Let us know what you think by leaving a review. For more information, visit the comprehensive eLearning center at elearning.asco.org.

So Jamie is out in LA (by the time this airs she will *hopefully* be home!) so Doug is going solo for this ep, but if you are a MAFS fan in the least, this is the episode for you! Doug brings his brother Matt on the podcast to chat allllll about how they felt when Doug first told them he was going on the show, their first impressions of Jamie, and SO much more!!!! This is a super insightful episode into some parts of Doug and Jamie's life that haven't been shared much if at all! Also, Doug spends time remembering their sweet firstborn angel baby, Johnathan Edward, as well as shares updates from moving back to New Jersey and how school is going for Henley and Hendrix. He also chats about how learning love languages has greatly helped his and Jamie's intimacy struggles. And thank you to our sponsors: Ritual - Get key nutrients - WITHOUT the BS - Visit ritual.com/HMCP to start Ritual today and get 10% off during your 1st 3 months!  Gabi - Check out Gabi's website today and put your policy to the test like we did! Get a better insurance with Gabi. It's totally free to check and there's literally NO OBLIGATION. Just go to gabi.com/hotmarriage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comedian and Gunners fan Jamie D'Souza got into football at the age of 11 and as the 'The Invincible' came to the end of their reign... So Jamie talks about how it's all been downhill for Arsenal ever since. We talk Saka's chances of making an impression for England at the Euros, if Arteta is the man to bring home the Premier League title (or even the Papa Johns Cup) home to The Emirates and why Jamie would favoured a centre-back in his 'fantasy cult five-a-side' Arsenal team over Ian Wright. We also talk about Jamie D'Souza's amazing ability to compare any comedian in the world to any professional footballer...  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ComTalkFootyPod Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comtalkfootypodPresented/Edited by: Sam Michael Music By: David HoareArtwork by: James Gent

We are excited to welcome Lavinia Brown to HMCP this week! Lavinia Brown, who is helping mothers to heal the patterns that are keeping them stuck is our guest today! Lavinia is an ambitious, multitasking psychodynamic coach, supporting other women to find the commitment and courage to parent their ‘inner children’ and claim their adult voice. She’s also a momma to 3 who has both loved and hated motherhood. She has had to confront her own childhood trauma. Besides being SUPER helpful to others as a coach, she is quite the adventurer! So Jamie has lately been trying to figure out if some childhood trauma has been affecting our marriage relationship and we are excited this week to chat with Lavinia about how to reparent our inner child. We split the interview into 2 parts, so be sure to come back next week for Part 2! Before we share the interview, we chat about Jamie's upcoming birthday party! 21:42 - Welcome to HMCP, Lavinia! 21:55 - What caused you to even learn about how to heal your inner childhood trauma and how do you know that what you're offering is actually helpful? 25:01 - You said, "They didn't care for me the way that I needed to be cared for?" What's a good example of recognizing that in yourself and as you parent your kid? 33:10 - What do you do if you are trying to not mask your frustrations? Answers to "Can you share some practical ways that we can reparent our inner child?" and more in part 2 next week!!! For all things HMCP check out our Instagram handles: Hot Marriage. Cool Parents. - https://www.instagram.com/hotmarriagecoolparents/ Jamie - https://www.instagram.com/jamienotis/ Doug - https://www.instagram.com/doughehner/ Lavinia's Website: https://www.laviniabrown.com/ Lavinia's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laviniabrowncoaching/ And thank you to our sponsors: Ana Luisa Jewelry - Go treat yourself and your loved ones and go to analuisa.com/hotmarriage and use the code hotmarriage to get 10% off! Agency - Go to withagency.com/hotmarriage for a free 30-day trial, just pay $4.95 for shipping and handling! See withagency.com for all the details. Subject to consultation. Canva Pro - Design like a pro with Canva Pro! Go to canva.me/hotmarriage to get your FREE 45-day extended trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Its here, Its finally here, 2020 is finally about to be in the past. No Booth again this week, still wondering where he is. So Jamie and Jarrod got into all the Premier League action over the Christmas period. Soooo many games including the magic of Boxing Day. Last show Jamie told us that Sheffield United needed to get a win in one of there last too games, so you can imagine how he feels. They discuss the potential to shut the league down for a "winter break" since some teams are dealing with a Covid outbreak causing the postponement of 2 games this week. As usual Jamie brings us the Bury AFC update on the back of some good results recently and we get an SPFL update as Rangers push to end Celtics dominance over the league and stop them from winning a 10th straight title. They also odly get into a bit of a Covid in Football discussion and talk for waaaay too long about the local domestic competition and how they can fix it. This weeks Show Poll: Should a Fan in there teams Kit also wear a Captains armband? as seen from a Brisbane Roar fan As always: Rate, Review and Subscribe/Follow the Podcast. Hit us up on our Socials: Twitter- @TalkinPremPod Facebook- The Talkin Prem Podcast Instagram- The Talkin Prem Podcats

On May 10th, 2001, Jamie Snow was sentenced to natural life in prison for a murder he did not commit. Jamie had lost all faith in his incompetent public defenders, but had one last Hail Mary in him. Jamie filed a motion to fire his lawyers two months prior, only to find out they beat him to it, and they were already trying to quit. The state and the judge would not allow it. So Jamie and his team went to the sentencing hearing unprepared, expecting a 20-60 year sentence, only to be blindsided with life without the possibility of parole. The prosecutor had thirty three pages of arguments, and Jamie’s team had two. This twenty-first episode of Snow Files exposes the repetitive systemic failures that lead to Jamie’s wrongful conviction, and the severe injustice that is still so hard to undo today, twenty years later. Interact: Join the Discussion: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SnowFilesPodcast Full Episode Docs/Video/Audio: https://snowfiles.podbean.com/p/docs-by-episode/ Contact us: info@snowfiles.net Got a tip? email: tips@snowfiles.net or call 888-710-SNOW (7669) It's free and confidential Visit our website: Free Jamie Snow: http://www.FreeJamieSnow.com Sign the Petition Asking for DNA Testing: http://www.JamieSnow.net Music Credits: YouTube Audio Library: https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music Theme Song: Black Moons, The 126ers

This week’s episode features author Jaime Layland and Associate Editor Dharam Kumbhani as they discuss the ariticle "Colchicine in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome: The Australian COPS Randomized Clinical Trial." TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Dr. Carolyn Lam: Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast, summary, and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr. Greg Hundley: And I'm Dr. Greg Hundley, associate editor, director of the Pauley Heart Center, VCU Health, in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Greg, for our feature discussion we're talking about a very hot topic these days, the role of colchicine, this time in patients with acute coronary syndrome, with Australian data. I cannot wait to get to that, but I'm going to make you wait because I want to tell you about a whole lot of other really cool papers in today's issue. Dr. Carolyn Lam: First, have you ever wondered what is the association between risk factor control and cardiovascular disease risk in type 2 diabetes? Well, today's paper answers that. It's from Dr. Wright from University of Manchester and her colleagues who looked at a retrospective cohort using data from the English practices from Clinical Practice Research Datalink, or CPRD, and the Scottish Care Information diabetes dataset. They also linked to hospital and mortality data and identified more than 101,000 patients with type 2 diabetes in CPRD matched with almost 379,000 controls without diabetes and almost 331,000 patients with type 2 diabetes in the Scottish Care Information diabetes database between 2006 and 2015. The main exposure was a number of optimized risk factors, and these are: (1) Nonsmoker; (2) total cholesterol less than 4 mmol/L; (3) triglycerides less than or equal to 1.7 mmol/L; (4) HB A1c less than 7%; and (4) systolic blood pressure less than 140 or less than 130 mmHg of high risk. Dr. Greg Hundley: Carolyn, I am very curious. Lots of data here. What did they find? Dr. Carolyn Lam: So the key findings were: Dr. Carolyn Lam: First, even with optimally managed risk factors, people with type 2 diabetes still had a 21% higher risk for all cardiovascular disease events and non-fatal coronary heart disease, and a 31% higher risk of heart failure hospitalization compared to patients without diabetes. Dr. Carolyn Lam: 2. Only 6% of people with type 2 diabetes had optimal risk factor controls, so a very low percent. Dr. Carolyn Lam: 3. The association between the number of elevated risk factors and cardiovascular disease events and mortality was much stronger in patients with type 2 diabetes but without cardiorenal disease compared to those with established cardiorenal disease. People without cardiorenal disease were also younger and more likely to have suboptimal risk factor control and fewer prescriptions for risk-factor-modifying medication. Dr. Carolyn Lam: So take-home message: Greater use of guideline-driven care, clinical decision support, drug intervention, and self-management support should be encouraged for risk factor control, and people with type 2 diabetes and without cardiorenal disease may especially benefit greatly from cardiovascular disease risk factor intervention. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice, Carolyn. Dr. Greg Hundley: Well, my first study comes from Dr. Gregory Lewis from Mass General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Carolyn, another quiz: Have you wondered about differences in metabolism in those who exercise versus those that do not? Dr. Carolyn Lam: Greg, I wonder about that all the time when I'm running out there. Dr. Greg Hundley: In this study, cardiopulmonary exercise testing, or CPET, and metabolite profiling was performed on Framingham heart study participants aged about 54 years with 63% of them being women with blood drawn at rest in 471 subjects and then again at peak exercise in 411. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Nice, and kudos for the majority women. So what were the results? Dr. Greg Hundley: The authors observed changes including reductions in metabolites implicated in insulin resistance and increases in metabolites associated with lipolysis, nitric oxide bioavailability, and adipose browning. Exercise-induced metabolite changes were variably related to the amount of exercise performed, peak workload, sex, and body mass index. There was attenuation of favorable exercise excursions in some metabolites in individuals with higher BMI and greater excursions in select cardioprotective metabolites in women despite less exercise being performed. Four metabolite signatures of exercise response patterns were analyzed in a separate cohort. The Framingham offspring study of 2,045 were about age 55 years and 51% were women, two of which were associated with overall mortality over a median follow-up at 23 years. Dr. Greg Hundley: So Carolyn, in conclusion, the authors found acute exercise elicits widespread changes in the circulating metabolome. These findings provide a detailed map of the metabolic response to acute exercise in humans and identify potential mechanisms responsible for the beneficial cardiometabolic effects of exercise that could be useful in future studies. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Beautiful. I'm going to keep exercising and I bet you will, too, Greg. Dr. Carolyn Lam: So this next paper is a mechanistic study that revealed a special population of tissue regulatory T-cells in the heart with a unique phenotype and pro-repair function. So this comes from corresponding author Dr. Cheng from Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Wuhan Hubei, China. He and his colleagues studied the dynamic accumulation of regulatory T-cells in the injured myocardium in mouse models of myocardial infarction, myocardial ischemia re-perfusion injury, or cardiac cryo injury, and using state-of-the-art methods such as bulk RNA sequencing, photo conversion, parabiosis, single-cell TCR sequencing, adoptive transfer, and functional assays. Dr. Greg Hundley: Carolyn, interesting. What did they find? Dr. Carolyn Lam: They showed that regulatory T-cells that accumulate in the injured myocardium after myocardial infarction or myocardial ischemia re-perfusion injuries had a distinct transcriptome which differs from lymphoid organ regulatory T-cells and other non-lymphoid tissue, and this represents a novel population of tissue regulatory T-cells in the heart. These heart regulatory T-cells were mainly thymus driven and recruited from the circulation showed active local proliferation with the IL-33/ST2 axis promoting their expansion. With the phenotype of promoting tissue repair, heart regulatory T-cells over-expressing spark contributed to elevated collagen content and enhanced maturation in infarct scars to prevent cardiac rupture and improve survival after myocardial infarction. Dr. Carolyn Lam: So in summary, this paper identified and characterized a phenotypically and functionally unique population of heart regulatory T-cells, which may lay the foundation to harness these cells for cardiac protection in myocardial infarction or other cardiac diseases. Dr. Greg Hundley: Wow, Carolyn. Very interesting. Dr. Greg Hundley: Well, my next paper comes from Dr. Michael Rubart from Indiana University School of Medicine, and as some background it's going to discuss calmodulin. So calmodulin mutations are associated with arrhythmia syndromes in humans. Exome sequencing previously identified a de novo mutation in CALM1 resulting in a P.N98S substitution in a patient with sinus bradycardia and stress-induced bidirectional ventricular ectopy. The objectives of the present study were to determine if mice carrying this N98S mutation knocked into CALM1 replicate the human arrhythmia phenotype and then to examine some of the arrhythmia mechanisms. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Okay. So what did they find? Dr. Greg Hundley: Carolyn, several techniques were used in this study. Mouse lines heterozygous for the CALM1 N98S allele generated using CRISPR and caspase 9 technology. Also, adult mutant mice and their wild-type litter mates underwent electrocardiographic monitoring. Ventricular D and re-polarization was assessed in isolated hearts using optical voltage mapping, and action potentials in wholesale currents as well as calcium influx were measured in single ventricular myocytes using patch-clamp techniques and fluorescence microscopy, respectively. Microelectrode techniques were employed for in situ membrane voltage monitoring of ventricular conduction fibers. Carolyn, it was really a comprehensive study. Dr. Greg Hundley: So what did the authors find? Heterozygosity for the CALM1 N9S mutation was causative of an arrhythmia syndrome characterized by sinus bradycardia, QRS widening, adrenergically mediated QTC interval prolongation, and bidirectional ventricular tachycardia. Second, beta adrenergically induced calcium influx L dysregulation contributed to the long QT phenotype. And finally third, they found that pause dependent early after depolarizations and tachycardia induced delayed after depolarizations originating in the His-Purkinje network and ventricular myocytes, respectively, constituted potential sources of arrhythmia in the CALM1 N98S positive hearts. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow. Sounds like a really comprehensive study. Thanks, Greg. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Let's talk about some other papers in this issue, shall we? There is a Perspective piece by Dr. Klassen on the COVID-19 pandemic, a massive threat for those living with cardiovascular disease among the poorest billion. There's an ECG challenge by Dr. Littman on a malignant electrocardiogram. Here's a hint: It's a pseudo-infarct pattern with important learnings. They're in an exchange of letters between Drs. Packard and Schwartz regarding the role of lipoprotein A and modification by alirocumab, a pre-specified analysis of ODYSSEY Outcomes randomized clinical trial. Dr. Greg Hundley: Oh thanks, Carolyn. I've got a couple other papers. Dr. Venkateswaran Subramanian has a Research Letter entitled Lysyl Oxidase Inhibition Ablates Sexual Dimorphism of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Formation in Mice. Professor Jan Cornell has another research letter entitled Colchicine Attenuates Inflammation Beyond the Inflammasome in Chronic Coronary Artery Disease. The LoDoCo2 proteomic substudy. And then finally, Dr. Sanjay Kaul from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has a white paper reviewing the benefit/risk trade-offs in assessment of new drugs and devices. Dr. Greg Hundley: Well, Carolyn, how about we get on to that feature discussion and learn more about colchicine and acute coronary syndromes. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yeah. Let's go, Greg. Today's feature discussion is all about colchicine, that commonly used treatment for gout that has recently emerged as a novel therapeutic option in cardiovascular medicine. I am so pleased to have with us the corresponding author of today's paper, Dr. Jamie Layland from Monash University, as well as our associate editor, Dharam Kumbhani, from UT Southwestern to discuss this very important trial data from Australia. Jamie, could you start us off by telling us all about this Australian COPS trial? Dr. Jamie Layland: We performed the Australian COPS trial back in 2015, and it finished recruiting in 2018. Essentially the trial was a trial to look at the safety and efficacy of colchicine being used in acute coronary syndromes, and this was prior to the release of important trial COLCOT. So essentially we randomized patients who presented to the hospital with an acute coronary syndrome to receive colchicine twice daily for one month followed by colchicine once a day for 11 months, and we followed these patients up for a minimum of 12 months. This was performed across 17 sites across Australia, and we looked at a composite endpoint of total death, acute coronary syndromes, unplanned urgent revascularization, and stroke. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Nice. So Jamie, could I first clarify that this was an investigator-led trial, I'll bet, and man, first of all, applause for doing this. I can only imagine how much work this took and maybe then tell us about the results. Dr. Jamie Layland: Yeah. So this was an investigator-initiated trial through a network of academic investigators across Australia on limited research funding, so through philanthropic and institutional support. So it was a huge effort over a number of years, and I'm very thankful to the support of Circulation and Dharam in supporting the paper, which I think was a great success. Dr. Jamie Layland: So the results of this trial were a surprise to us all, but essentially this was a negative trial in the sense that colchicine did not improve the primary outcome, so there was no improvement in the rate of the COLCOT outcome. And interestingly, there was an increase in total mortality, in particular non-cardiovascular deaths were higher at five compared to the placebo at one. That was over a 12-month follow-up period. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Interesting. So Jamie, I'm going to ask the question that's on everyone's mind then: What's the difference between your trial and COLCOT? Dr. Jamie Layland: That's a great question. Obviously, COLCOT was a much larger trial. COLCOT was an international trial of over 4,000 patients. Similar patient demographics, similar patient subgroup of acute coronary syndromes. However, importantly, COPS was a trial of inpatient initiation of colchicine. So patients when they had their STEMI, or non-STEMI most commonly, they were given colchicine usually within 72 hours of their index hospitalization and sometimes sooner, and this was given prior to discharge. With COLCOT, the median time of administration of colchicine was around 14 days, so slightly different groupings there. However, in COLCOT you were allowed to administer colchicine as an inpatient. You can see obviously from the European side of cardiology the impressive data when colchicine was given earlier in COLCOT how this translated to improved outcomes. So clearly, there is a potential benefit there for early administration of colchicine when you look at these two trials. Dr. Jamie Layland: But we administered colchicine acutely when patients presented in their index hospitalization. We also importantly used a different dosing schedule to COLCOT. So COLCOT was 0.5 mg daily and we used 0.5 twice daily. This was for the first 30 days, and this was based on early data from the group from western Australia who showed that when colchicine was given to patients at a BD dosing in those patients who were already on aspirin and high-potency statins, there was a significant reduction in hsCRP, obviously a commonly used marker of inflammation at four weeks, and also based on data showing that there was a heightened inflammatory response in the early days following an acute coronary syndrome. So we felt that using this twice-daily dose would be advantageous and potentially helpful for our patients. So they're the two main differences between the studies. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Thanks for explaining that so clearly. Dharam, could I have your thoughts? This was, of course, discussed heavily, right, by the editors. Could you give us a sneak peek of what else was discussed? Dr. Dharam Kumbhani: The trial is very important, although it is smaller perhaps in sample size and kind of done with less resources than COLCOT. I do think this adds to the body of literature on colchicine for secondary prevention of CAD. And one of the interesting things is that we see we also have the LoDoCo2 trial, which was a slightly different population, Jamie, which was the chronic coronary artery disease patients, but also still looking at secondary prevention. What is really striking to me is that a very similar signal in non-CV death was noted in that trial as well. Again, it was not seen in COLCOT and LoDoCo1, but it was very interesting that a similar finding was there. So I do think this is something that the field will need to investigate more and really try to understand is this just noise and by chance alone, or is this something that that's a real signal for. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Jamie, what are your thoughts about that and in LoDoCo differences with your trial? Dr. Jamie Layland: Good question, and a very important topic that obviously is currently under discussion amongst the colchicine community. As I said, it was a surprising result. We weren't anticipating this non-CV death signal, but as Dharam said when LoDoCo2 came out, a fantastic trial again, but this signal of non-CV death. I don't know whether it's merely just a noise as you say or whether it's a significant finding, but clearly we need to do more research in this field to understand the mechanism and whether this is a real signal or not. It seems a little bit discordant with previously published work. So if you look at the literature in patients with gout from across the world, there's no real signal of increased non-CV death in those patients. However, with patients with acute coronary syndrome as we are administering the colchicine on a daily basis and then commonly this isn't used for gout, so that is a slight difference. But certainly, there was no signal in the non-CV literature to support the findings that we had and the signal in LoDoCo2. Dr. Jamie Layland: The other thing to note is in a cohort of five non-CV deaths, three out of those five patients were actually not taking colchicine at the time of their death. They stopped the drug prematurely. So I think we just need to take a step back and really await the results. Obviously, we've got two-year and five-year data coming out from the COPS trial which will be interesting to look at, but also the Clear Synergy trial from the McMaster team, that would be a very important trial providing more data on this potential signal. But reassuringly, and I feel more reassured knowing the COLCOT data, which is a slightly similar cohort to ours, showing that there was no trend towards increased non-CV deaths. So I think it's something that we have to be aware of and there will be lots of metro-analysis I'm sure being published in the coming months looking at this specifically. But yeah, I think we shouldn't cast any aspersions on colchicine yet. I think that's too early, but I do think we need more data. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Thanks, Jamie. Speaking of looking deeper in your data and looking at those who died and were they taking the medication and so on, you did some other post-hoc analysis, right? And maybe you could just describe briefly, for example, the 400-day followup. Dr. Jamie Layland: Yes. So the interesting thing with our data, and I had mentioned this before, is that we had limited resources, so we really wanted to do this trial, and obviously competitive funding is tricky at the best of times, but we were really committed to doing this trial and we had a group of investigators who were all committed to doing this trial. But for this to work, we had a single research nurse and a fellow performing the follow-up. So at times, there was a little lag between the timing of the follow-up. So we ended up getting follow-up which was slightly prolonged over the 12-month window. On average, it was around 400 days. When we looked at the 400-day data, we saw that there was an increasing separation of the biomarkers after 365 days. Dr. Jamie Layland: The results, this was obviously not the primary outcome, this was a sensitivity analysis, but there was a suggestion or a significance out to 400 days with an improvement with colchicine. However, this is the primary composite outcome, so revascularization, acute coronary syndrome, stroke, and total death notwithstanding this positive outcome, there was still this trend to high rate of mortality, so that has to be taken into consideration. But there was a suggestion that the longer the duration of colchicine was given for, it culminated into these lights affect. And we see from CT data that colchicine actually has some plaque-modulating effects and reduces high-risk or low-attenuation plaque. So you could hypothesize that as the majority of the benefits seen in colchicine in LoDoCo2, in COLCOT, and in COPS was the reductions in urgent revascularization, stroke, and acute coronary syndromes. Dr. Jamie Layland: So perhaps there is this effect that colchicine is having on plaque stabilization so we're seeing less longer-term events, but this is just hypothesis generated and we need more data to support that. But it is a very interesting finding nonetheless. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Thank you. Dharam, could I hand you the last word on where you think this field is going or where you think it should go? Dr. Dharam Kumbhani: I think Jamie put it really nicely. I think he outlined the study nicely with its strengths and its limitations, and I think this is obviously a debate between perhaps the colchicine believers and the ones that are still perhaps trying to understand a little bit more about its true role, because as was mentioned I think there's really a benefit in ischemia-driven revasc. I think we've seen that in almost all the colchicine trials. There is no reduction in mortality, and as we saw in the COPS data maybe it goes the other way. So I think from a pathophysiological standpoint it makes sense. I think there's good translational data to suggest that it would be beneficial in this patient population, but I think that's the beauty of having clinical trials and the ones that are done by different investigators and perhaps in different settings, because they help us answer the truth. And whether colchicine becomes a stable part of our armamentarium for secondary prevention of CAD going forward, I think the jury is still out and as was mentioned I think Clear Synergy would probably be very helpful in hopefully tying all this together. Dr. Dharam Kumbhani: So again, I want to congratulate Jamie and his team for really providing us with a very interesting trial done in a very pragmatic setting, and I think the field is very thankful to them for providing us with this information. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Thank you, audience, for joining us today. You've been listening to Circulation on the Run. Don't forget to join me and Greg again next week. Dr. Greg Hundley: This program is copyright the American Heart Association 2020.  

100 episodes, wow. We never thought we would make it past 10 and here we are 90 episodes later. So Jamie and I got together to discuss the good, the bad, and all the sequels we have covered. We talked about how it all started, favorite movies/interviews, and we preview what films that are on the horizon. A huge thank you to each and every person who was a guest. We thank them all throughout the episode, but here is a full list sequelsonly.com/interviews WRITE US A REVIEW WHERE EVER YOU LISTENED! Thursday is our interview with Lisa Wilcox better known as Alice from Nightmare on Elm Street 4 & 5. So we talk about a lot of that, but so much more. Lisa had a very interesting start in Hollywood and told me how she wanted to be a doctor before pursuing acting.

Jaime O'Connor is a digital strategy nerd who is dedicated to helping brands understand their growth opportunities in the digital landscape. Her windy path to building Inspired Focus Digital has included selling scrunchies in 4th grade, a grocery delivery business, a social enterprise that bled itself dry, and an event operations company. She has also built marketing teams at venture-backed organizations and bootstrapped products brands that achieved 6x growth and 8 figure success. She has worked with major organizations like the NFL, NCAA, USA Cycling and growing brands like Pro Challenge, Silipint, Happy Hair Brush and Savor Beauty. She is on a mission to educate up and coming brands with the knowledge they need to level up and play in the professional arena.   Thank you so much for listening! WE ARE SO GRATEFUL!!!! Our Sponsor:  Multifamily Foundation If you are serious about learning how to buy apartment buildings then don't wait, go to www.multifamilyfoundation.com and let us help you build your foundation. Investing for Lifestyle and Legacy: https://www.yarusiholdings.com/ Our ENTIRE Podcast, Books and Health Suggestions: https://www.amazon.com/shop/yarusiholdings Subscribe To Us On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1SuXB01d14DC8ZnEWpRQdQ?sub_confi rmation=1 Subscribe To Us on #Libsyn: http://multifamilyfoundation.libsyn.com/website Subscribe To Us on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-multifamily-foundation/id1484177595   Transcription: Hi everyone. And welcome again to the Jason and pili project. I am so excited because I am with Podmax Global today. We are streaming with them and I am so excited to be here. Part of this group, they put me together with the amazing Jamie O'Connor. Jamie O'Connor is, you know what? I am going to actually let her tell you about what she does because she is fantastic. Hi, Jamie! Hey Pili, how's it going? So glad to have you like I was telling you before off camera. You're my new best friend. Please tell all my listeners why? Well, I think it's because you mentioned that I really like to focus on helping people build brands. Um, and for me, that doesn't mean, uh, pretty colors and nice logos. It really is talking about who you are and not truly authentic core way and who you want to be speaking to in that authentic way in building trust and relationship. And I do that mainly by supporting my clients on the paid advertising side of things. So handling the Facebook and Instagram pieces, but I've, um, built brands myself. This is my, my agency's my fourth business. So I've owned my own eCommerce stores. I have helped, um, product based businesses grow to seven and eight figures. I've worked with NCAA and SL before. Um, I like to joke, I actually took the entrepreneurship red pill before I was able to know better. So I saw   here, you start, you started selling scrunchies in the raid. I probably, you know, if, if there had been an internet in the fourth grade when I was in the fourth grade, I'm sure I would have bought them from you. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it was, it was my classmates and my, I think it was the yeah, fourth grade class. I would like sell them at home and sell them to my friends and my classmates. I had no idea at the time that I was like a little entrepreneur. Um, I think I also started, you had a little shack in my backyard. Um, and I set up an office when I was 10 and I created like a mom's helper business. So I could like watch her while mom was home. So I apparently it was just like born into via, so I love this. So you were a born entrepreneur, you have helped so many people along the way, build their brands. Let's dive a little deep into that. So say, okay, you bring me on, we have a great conversation about how you can help me. How would that conversation go? Yeah. So, you know, we work with brands and companies that, or I guess I should say first, we work with companies that wants to build a brand that wants you. They want longevity that want to build something that actually has a legacy behind it in whatever way that means for   you. So I don't work with people who are dropshipping out of China or like want to be a flash in the pan because I don't feel like I can make an impact and a difference in my own world by helping people. I thought I want to help businesses that are trying to create an impact themselves. So first and foremost, that's usually where any conversation I have starts. And I'm a, I'm a really big believer in what I preach, which is authenticity and honesty and transparency. And so I'm like that from the very beginning, whenever I'm talking to anyone and you know, if you're not there yet, because we focus on the heat advertising side, if I'm just starting to talk to somebody, um, I'll be really honest. Like if you're not there yet, then I'll give you the resources. You need to figure out how to nail down those pieces of your business, your brand, to, to take it to the next level so that you can actually be successful when you start to invest money in getting your name out there. Because so many people want to do that as their quick fix, they want to, they want to, you know, start spending money on, on advertising before really they're ready. And all that's going to do is expose your cracks and expose the things that maybe show me where your company is broken or your product is broken, um, in a more accelerated   fashion. And a lot of times you can fix some of those cracks, fix some of that foundation ahead of time, and then be that much more successful when you decide to like invest money to move the needle. I want to pinpoint the hashtag truth, all the truth that you just laid out for so many people out there you are. So right when you say like, if we were to just jump in new company, even like some of the older companies that have been there and they haven't fixed those cracks, once you get yourself out there and you get your I'm sure once they have a conversation with you, you get up people in a very, very big way. If there's cracks in your foundation, if there are, if you're don't, if you don't have your foundation set, I am so sure. Like you said, marketing will just show your cracks in a very large way to vary very large audience. We have this conversation, you figure out that my foundation is very stable that I just need to build. Now I need to like make the house nicer. I have the house started. It's like the, all the sticks are, I should know better than sticks, but you know what? I need the framings up. For some reason my mommy brain doesn't want to work today. The framing's up. Maybe I have supply with slapped on, but you come in. What's the next step after   that conversation? Yeah. I mean, of course this is my favorite time, because most of the time, if you are in that place, then you at least no exactly who you want to be talking to you. And if you don't, then that's something that we can work through because you've, you you're like on the edge of it, you figured it out. So typically when we're at this point, then we are first doing basically a really deep dive brain discovery. I had the amazing pleasure opportunity. I don't know, to work with I'm a marketing genius last year, and really learn from his guidance and his tactics, his name's Ron Lynch. And he, um, has been behind really some of the greatest like selling and marketing campaigns that have ever happened. Um, he worked with Billy Mays and Oxyclean and GoPro. And so I got to learn from him how to really deep dive into who is, who is the target market, who is the persona that you want to talk to your avatar, if you will in marketing speak, um, what are their pinpoints like, what really makes them tick and what are the aspirations? Where do they want to go? And then how do you loop your product, your service, whatever it is, or when we're working with a client. So if it was you, how do we loop in what you were providing to those exact people in a way that's going to resonate with them   in a deep, fulfilling way that they want to work with you. They want to find out more about you. And so that's the first step in our process is we really dig deep into that so that we create, um, what we like to call our word document, essentially. It's like, it's the thing that you, as the client, us as your agency partner, and honestly, anyone else who's going to talk, touch your marketing can use as kind of your lighthouse. This is the thing that's going to guide. Any decisions you make when you're putting yourself out there in a really public way. And so it guides copywriters and creatives and ad buyers, and what kind of targeting you want. And it creates this really cohesive foundation for everybody. So that not only are we all on the same page, but we're all moving towards the same target basically. So that's kind of, that's the next step that we take. That's usually the first month of working together. What we really focus on. We'll do. Um, I guess one piece that is important is because we're ad buyers as well. We do test this with data. So we test the messaging that we are making, the assumption that your target consumer is going to care about. And we get real data to prove it's going to work before you go spend tons and tons of money. And that's one of those pieces that we see happen. So   often it's like, okay, I'm ready to dive in. I'm ready to spend money in advertising and making investment, but we actually don't have anything yet to really prove it that this is what's going to work. So we really take their approach from the angle of being a strategic partner, to anyone we work with that we want your business to be successful. We don't want you to dump tons and tons of money in and just see what happens. We want this to be a long lasting relationship, and we want your company to be a long lasting company. So we'd rather take the time, find the answers and then say, okay, we've got this, let's ramp it up. So how do you test the market? Just to dive a little bit deeper if you don't mind me asking. Cause that's actually a little bit of your core secrets. No. You know? Okay. So before getting into that, one thing I will say is that, and I think this has been a huge reason why we've been successful in my agency and we don't really lose clients, but also in just getting clients, is that I don't believe in hoarding my knowledge and my information. Like I believe, yes. I knew we were best friends. Um, I'm sorry that like we should share the knowledge. There is an abundance of opportunity out there and we hear the knowledge. I am not afraid to like share my tactics with   people and then you go out and use them because honestly, that's how I got to where I am is learning from people doing it myself. And that's the type of person I am. So if you're the type of person who's like, okay, I want to try that out and figure out if I can do it, then awesome. Go do it. Because honestly you're not my client. Anyway, my client is the business owner who doesn't have time and doesn't want to be doing this stuff themselves. So go ahead, go do it. And then come talk to me and we'll have a combo and we'll figure out like who you should go after in the market or how I run my systems in my business. So anyway, that's a total tangent, but my, I love tangents and my, my smile. I mean, for everybody, that's watching this on YouTube. My smile is as wide as the screen right now for my podcast listeners. I am smiling really big because my mindset is the exact same. Give it all away. Who cares, who takes it, let their ships level up because chances are they're going to come back and level up your ship. So give it all away. Okay. So what was my question again? Actually do the data testing. So goodness, you know, this is, I think people don't actually realize this incredible opportunity that we have. I mean, you hear bits and pieces about the fact   that small businesses have these opportunities that we'd never have before for through the social platforms like Facebook and Instagram and YouTube to get their name out there, but the level of information and the level of data and targeting that we have is so incredible. It's beyond anything that we ever could have imagined. Now there's probably some data conversation to have in there that is about how much information is available, but we don't need to have that conversation. We can, we could go down that rabbit hole and I, you know what, I appreciate it, it's it is what it is now, but let's continue down the rabbit hole. So that's the thing is that, you know, we, as, as business owners, as marketers, we can find the right people at the right time now. And so for a very small amount of money you can take, well, we do is called message block testing. So we'll take, okay, we think this is the pain point of the target market. So we find the target because it's available through Facebook is usually how we use it. Um, and we'll put these messages just at very low dollar amounts up to maybe 400 impressions. And we just see which ones resonate without giving them a call to action, which ones get people to engage in some way to click on that information. And it tells us, okay, this message resonates. This one does it, the solution resonates this   one doesn't and therefore we can then create kind of a bigger picture of what is going to connect. And then that can guide creative. It can guide copywriting. It can guide camp, overall campaigns, all of those things, if you do it for a very small amount of money early on, and then do it again and again and again, just, yeah, that is amazing. You just clued me into, uh, like something that we can both share with the audience is Instagram already tells you, if you have a business page on Instagram, Instagram already tells you which, which posts you do that get the biggest hits. And I just realized that I wouldn't have, but to put the two and two for marketing standpoint, unless you had just said that, so people rewind or hit that button. That'd be winds every like two minutes back, two minutes back and listen to everything that Jamie just shared, shared. And do it go to your Instagram accounts, go to your Facebook accounts and see what Facebook tells you about the little, the little ones you don't have to default to actually, like you said, you don't have to spend a couple billion dollars and figure out which ones hit. Oh my goodness. Thank you. That's huge. So let's dive in. Oh, well, one last piece of that is that it depends too on if you're an established business and you already have like raving fans and people, you can   put these messages or look at your existing posts either way, whichever way you want to do it in front of your existing people. And that's not much more effective because those are the people you already know are your exact audience. But if you aren't an established business and you're trying to figure it out, you can find two things, both like your, what you think your target markets are and what messages resonate. And maybe, and I had this happen with one of our clients. We did this testing with, they were so off on what they target market was what it turned out. They thought that they were this like weightlifting brand in this light, bro, hang out at the gym brand. But actually people saw them as a wellness brand. It was a different market and a different message than they had been spending a year marketing to. So yeah, there's a lot to, lots of glean from that. The thing is, and I get this from, I follow what's his face, Gary V a lot. You don't know what content is going to hit. You don't, you don't know. Even if you think at your target market brand is something. If you've been putting out certain content has been hurt, hitting a certain type of person, and you don't know it, that's a huge amount of just people that you are not targeting and helping even more. And like people like Jamie can help you   find that, Oh, listener of mine. So listen in for more. So Jamie, take me further down the rabbit hole. We do this test and we find out exactly who my target customer is. What's the next step? Oh man. Okay. So, um, now we have our messaging, we have our, um, targets and we have our, our, essentially our lighthouse strategy, our word document, ready to go. And everyone's on the same page. Wait is a great place to be. And honestly, if you are looking at working with any kind of agency out there, I highly you to be asking these questions about, are you, how do they make sure you're on the same page and how do they make sure that they have a really strategic plan in place to help you grow your business? Because, um, I have gone through my fair share of agencies on the client side myself, and it was not common practice. And I think every business deserves. Do you have that level of treatment? Um, even say those questions one more time for the listeners. Yeah. So I would say asking, how are they going to keep you on the same page so that you all know that you're going the same direction? Um, and how are they going to make sure that you are staying aligned as they grow as well company with you, hopefully, and then as you grow and the directions that you're going and not all agencies   think about the bigger picture that way they don't really always look at the chemist can say very key focus in their area. Now, if you have a team that is able that there is like, we have the thing, we just want you to do the one small section then great. But most small businesses need a little bit more of a partnership than that. So I think it's worthwhile to dig into those, um, pieces of the, of that relationship. So yeah, Mmm. Basically from this point is when we get into building what we call the full funnel. So sales funnel, um, which, you know, outside of marketing land, the idea behind the sales funnel is that you are driving people that have never heard of your brand before. So that's your cold audience. Those are the people that they may be problem aware. Mmm. They may be solution aware, but they don't realize that you have the solution. So you're introducing your brand to them. Um, and that is your top of funnel. That's your cold audience. And that's how we essentially capture people to come in and get them, introduce you. So that they're like, Oh, I've been thinking about that. Or I didn't realize that that would be a solution, but I'm going to, I'm going to start to like pay a little bit of attention. Then we get into your middle of funnel. So you're driving anyone who engaged in a somewhat significant   amount of way, um, in that top. So your top can be typically it's not your organic post cause your organic posts on Facebook and Instagram. And, and honestly on YouTube, if you're putting content on YouTube, um, it's going to people who are subscribers or, or maybe they're finding you via search, but that's going to be what we consider warm cold is the ways that you're getting out there, getting in front of people who wouldn't happen following you. So warm audience. This can be that combination of all of your, again, Eric. And then on the paid side, we are basically building, um, Omni presence for you. So we, we work with people who are willing and want to create content. Um, and that, and we essentially put money behind the distribution of that so that people are seeing many different layers of who you are and what the value is. You bring the authenticity and that builds trust. And they're seeing that on a regular basis and this isn't sales pitches. Now you can drop a few in there when they make sense, but this is really building a relationship with them. So I really like in the sales funnel, well, the advertising sales funnel to dating the cold audience is the first day. You, you are asking them to grab a coffee with you when you see them in the bar or in an online chat or whatever it is you're going to do. You're   not going to ask them to marry you in that very first instance. Now don't get me wrong. We all probably know some crazy person who like got married in two weeks and like that, that works. So there are those people and you do occasionally have to have those things at the top and not the middle where you're like, Hey, let's get married right now. And somebody out there is going to say, yes, that's it just, it happens. So you don't want to leave those people off the tape while you want to talk to them. But the majority needs to go through building a relationship with you. Yeah. So that's where your middle of funnel, your warm audience exists. And then at your bottom of funnel, these are the people who have regularly been engaging with you. They're commenting on your ads and your posts there subscribing to your YouTube channel. They're going to your website, they're doing the things that are indicating I'm really into you. And I think we take this to the next level. And then you get to ask the question and you get to make the sale. Because at this point they want to be with you. They will see what the opportunities are to actually take it to the next level. And so, whatever that is, if you're an eCommerce brand, this is where you are. Um, putting an ad in front of somebody that just added it to the   cart, but they, their kid yelled at them and they walked away or they got deed or whatever. Um, and you're saying he don't forget to come back. We're here, blah, blah, blah. Or they looked at products, those kinds of things. That's what those ads would look like. If you're, um, lead generation or consulting or a digital product, this would be a little bit of that hard sales pitch of like, you should get on the phone with me because I'm new, changed your life in these five ways or whatever it is essentially. This is where we build all of that out. And we're doing a lot of testing. We use that middle of funnel to do a lot of the testing of the messages that we've figured out from that early testing phase. Now we're testing that in a, in a more cohesive, holistic way with, with beautiful creative and video and content and copywriting and all of those things put together and finding the ads that are like taking off. And then those are the ones that were putting in front of those cold audiences. Because like I said before, if you are, if it's resonating with the people who are already engaged with you, then it will speak to the people in your cold audiences that maybe don't know you exist, but you're going to see that ad and be like, Oh, how'd they now? I mean, we've all had that experience, right? We're   like always, Oh, were they just in my head? How does Instagram know? I need to color my hair? Oh yeah. Cause I pissed post pictures all over. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing is that, so now we have this opportunity, right? Where these platforms have an obscene amount of data on you. We can figure out how and who we want to speak to. And if we have that perfect marriage of, of how we actually speak to the things that you're experiencing and what you want right now, and then we have the platform that puts it in front of the right person. It's like, boom, they get me. So I love it because we've seen it as consumers. We see it all the time on Instagram, on Facebook. And we see like my, my instance with the color dye, I'm saying that story because I actually bought hair color off of Instagram because I try to a couple of weeks ago on Amazon, apparently Amazon shares their info with Instagram and Instagram knew I needed here at color. And after getting like, I wouldn't say bombarded by, I saw a few of their ads with like, I'll try it. I'll go down the rabbit hole. I'll press the buttons. I was like, well, I already pressed all the buttons for about 10 minutes. Here's my credit card. Boom. I'll get my, I'll get my hair color back. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it works completely works. And   you Jamie, and this is for all my listeners. Jamie knows how to do that. All that because I know you, Oh, my listener have been just like me. You seen that ad on Facebook. You're like, Ooh, that's a cute dress. Or, Oh, that's an awesome cologne or look at that awesome. Put in the whatever. And you've thought about it and you've followed them and you're going to go back to them. And that's how people like Jamie do their work. So Jamie inception into your life. It's, it's an amazing thing. I know we could, like you said, we could go into the whole like data thing, but you know what, as a business owner and a connect consumer, I'm actually kind of thankful for it. I mean, there's stuff that I'm sure. I don't want these people to know about me. We don't know personal information about you. So that's good as a business owner. And I know most of my audience are business owners or thinking about it or are entrepreneurs are hard or, you know what, maybe I have a fourth reader out there that's watching this and they're like, I want to sell sprint cheese. The thing is like, you need a team and Jamie can be a part of that team. So Jamie, I want to also talk to you cause we still have a little bit more time. I want to talk to you about content creation. Because a lot of   people I know as I was starting to go into the marketing thing and when I hired my first market marketing professional, we actually didn't get along because they were like, okay, now you have to create all this stuff. I'm like, wait, what? You don't do it all for me. So what I have to do these things now, what exactly. But let's talk about the content creation because I actually love it now. Like I love creating content, but for those of you, and I know you're out there, talk a little bit about content creation from a professional. Yeah. Well, I mean, first and foremost, I relate, so I myself, same boat as you. I love it. Now I have my own podcast that is focused on the entrepreneurial journey and I love creating it. I love being a guest, but for a long time I was so resistance. And so I empathize heavily my clients on that front. Um, but the interesting thing is that again, the opportunity that exist right now and really that has existed over there. The last five to 10 years is pretty incredible for small businesses to be able to get out there. And what's become really prevalent. This kind of crazy time that we're living in at this particular moment is that the, the playing field is level. We have celebrity, he's literally recording their nightly shows on their iPhones and broadcasting it to the world. So fantastic. It's pretty   amazing. So like right now, I think it won, honestly, the playing field has been leveled for a long time, but for a lot of us, if it was hard to really wrap our heads around that and believe that to be the keys, but it's, but now it's like in our face, it's so true that you do not need to have an amazing setup. You do not need to have a, you know, thousand dollar camera or a production crew or any of these things to create content. That is just, I mean, it's not true. Like quite literally, um, since you have a YouTube channel, like I think I bought this mic, um, for 60 bucks on Amazon and I got this ring light for free, um, from one of my coaches and like I'm in my living room. There's nothing that should hold you back. So production is off the table. So that's gone now. I think one of the things I have found myself and then with my clients that really is another roadblock is what content to create and what, what should I be talking about? What should I be putting out there? And the first thing is something we've already been talking about so much is authenticity. Like, who are you at your core? Why do you do what you do? What is it that you do? Why did you get to where you are? Those are all pieces of content that we   can create. You can literally sit down and write 10 different items in those categories. And all of the sudden you have content. You know, if you manufactured goods or you have an office space behind the scenes type things or magical how to use, um, all of those kinds of pieces that display your knowledge or display who and what and why you are, those are all things that can create one minute, 10 minutes snippets without having to think too deeply about it. And quite frankly, the way that the world works and how quickly we're moving. My biggest piece of advice is like write down those things, create that list. I actually, I have a, um, a list that I will give your listeners and we can talk about that or way a guide to create essentially your first 24 pieces of content topics. Um, and that can put you in a spot where, okay, now I have 24 pieces just start creating it because the reality is is we set, okay. The first time that we recorded a video or did whatever we're going to do, I'm sure I could dig in and find some graveyard ones that just make me crazy. My husband, and I'll call ours the dark ages, but it's still, Oh my gosh, they're all still there. And it doesn't matter. And you know what? It actually makes you that much more relatable because we've all been there. So, you know, don't   be afraid to put it out there and the more you do it, the better you're going to get. And eventually it's going to seem like you've been doing this your whole life. So that's, you know, and it gets buried. We're moving so fast in this digital age. It doesn't matter now. I mean, if you get on and you say like inflammatory things or things that aren't that great things don't get buried, don't get buried. But again, you know, well, I guess this goes back to the very first thing I said, which is, I like to work with people who want to leave a legacy. And so honestly, somebody who does that, it's probably not someone I'm going to work with anyway. And it is what it is. So don't worry about it. If you, your authentic self is a good person that wants to leave an impact on the world. Then the biggest thing you need to do is just be out there, be out there, be authentic, get your message across. And for those people, again, I'm going to come back to this because there's so many people who are against content creation. You need to create content. If you are, I believe this. Let me, let me know if you believe this. Okay? So Jason, I have this conversation online all the time. We think everyone's a brand. Everyone is a brand now because you want, if you are on social and even   if you're not, you're, you're going to be somehow. But if you're on social, you're a brand. If you try and get a job, people are going to look at your social media content. If you are a business owner, people are gonna look at your social media content. So you are a brand, whether you like it or not. So the content that you are already creating, whether it's putting pictures of your dog, cute doggie, by the way I watched him go around. He's like, mommy's not paying attention. I'm going to go up on the couch. What was I talking about? Cause I started talking about your dog and that was a whole content creation on its own. So if you're creating content about your dog, great as so cute. If you're creating whatever you're posting, you're already posting content. So why not use that authentic self to push it to just another level of positivity and, and whatever it is you want to push out into the world? Do you agree? Oh, absolutely. Totally. I mean, we hear stories all the time of people getting or losing jobs because of social media content that they put out there. So without a doubt, it's true. I mean, I have my husband like is not anywhere on social media, except he is on social media because I post pictures and I'm not social media. He is out there. Um, and that is it's, it's true of yourself, but   it's true. Especially if you're an entrepreneur and a business owner, the reality is, is that one, your customer is already out there. You might as well put out there some level of authenticity to control that conversation so that people are seeing who you are at your core. And that is just going to create a halo effect around it. And you know, you can run an advertising funnel without having that content. And you can create some like simple ads or whatever, but it's becoming a saturated market. And without that content out there, and without that, that piece of it to build off that authentic, just to be, to build authority, to build trust, you're just another one in the marketplace. People want that connection. They want to connect with you. No matter what you sell, you could sell sports drinks you could sell, you could sell. I don't know, scrunchies. As I said with my scrunchie, not really a cringy my head headband. So whatever you sell be you, Oh my goodness. Be you. And I love this conversation that I had with you. I would love to talk and talk about content and marketing, and I'm sure there's so much more you can share, but if you could just share one more thing and was the only thing that you could leave my audience with, what would that be? I would say that one of the, and we've touched on this a little bit, but   one of the most important pieces, and one of the biggest downfalls I see of companies is, is making the assumption that whatever they're selling or whatever they're doing can benefit this mass general amount of people. And one of the best things you can do that will help you create that content and will help you actually be way more successful is really figuring out exactly who you want to be talking to exactly who you want to be working with and, and speaking to them. And this, this is something that then helps you in so many ways, because you're going to answer those questions and figure out what content to say, but you can go on and think about that person. Like they're an actual human being, put them into a human person that you can think of and create a video where you're talking to that person. And if you do that, if you don't assume that everything is or that your product or your service can help so many people. And if you talk to that one person, you're going to be excluding all these other people. If you, if you get rid of that notion and you really focus on exactly who you want to be talking to, actually creates so much more authenticity. It creates so much more effect in a positive way to attract the people you really want to be talking to. And it creates focus for you in where you're   going with your marketing. Wow. You just spoken to my heart, everyone who's listening. I know I already told you to rewind, but rewind again. Seriously. You need to relisten to that. Cause Jamie just gave you a tidbit of information that could change your business right now, figure out who your audience member is. You're one person put a face to that person, put everything to that person. What's the person's job, everything. What does the person smell like? And talk to that person. And it will attract people because now you're being so authentic. Cause you're having this one on one conversation with your audience. Thank you so much, Jamie. This is the best conversation before I let you go. Let's talk about too. I think it's two things. How can people find you and where can get, where can they get those 24 content topics? For sure. So, um, for your listeners, I've created this page, this guide it's inspired focus, digital.com/jp projects. And if they go there, I have a guide that essentially walks them through 24 questions that they can answer that essentially will create 24 pieces of content. Um, and simply get the ball rolling, to be able to have all of this content and on there as well. If they do want to find out a little bit more or take it to the next level, they can, um, call with my team to just talk a little bit of strategy. So I   encourage you all click on the link. It's going to be below and give Jamie a call. Even if it's just to have a 10 minute conversation about marketing, she's going to Uplevel your life with one phone call. And I hope, I hope this gave you so much, so much value cause I know it did for me. Thank you so much, Jamie so much fun. It was such a blast talking to you about this and for my listeners out there, I am so grateful to you. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please rate, review, subscribe. It would, I would hug you for that. And thank you. Thank you so much for joining me on the day's NPV project. Again. Thank you to Jamie. Bye. Now join us for your second cup of coffee. Every Monday through Friday at noon live every day, bring us our best content we've done so far. Super excited, super engaging bunch of great guests. We're here to answer your questions and so appreciate listening. Make sure to check this out. Can't wait to see you. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

So Jamie goes to the dentist... and she was told she has a "special mouth". While her mouth does sound special, it's not a typical compliment. Ever get an odd compliiment?

What could turn a left-tube favorite into the IDW's poster child overnight? Just ask ContraPoints. Well actually you can't, because she deleted her Twitter after a run-in with some folks who have accused her of saying things that are offensive to non-binary people. To get more info, Tris Mamone has a good explainer here that I would recommend. I'd also recommend this video by another non-binary YouTuber, and this video by trans YouTuber Kat Blaque. So Jamie and I are here, not to adjudicate the trans questions involved but to talk about so-called "cancel culture." Was ContraPoints canceled? What does that mean exactly? Is it true that the left is a circle firing squad cancel machine? How ought we deal with tough criticism online? And since Jamie is a smart philosopher person, what insights does philosophy offer us on these questions? I think this was a really valuable discussion that will help put a lot of these issues into the proper perspective. If you are a smart philosopher person like Jamie, here is some reading she recommends: Rachel McKinnon: Allies Behaving Badly; Talia Mae Bettcher: Trapped in the Wrong Theory; Robin Dembroff: Beyond the Binary; Katie Dotson: Tracking Epistemic Violence. Download Here

Marilyn Monroe, Jamie Sheriff and Me Hi, this is Hal Aaron Cohen and welcome to my podcast Tales of the Road Warriors No guest, today. Just me, Hal Aaron and I’ll be driving solo. You still get a great story , though. One of my own Tales of the Road Warriors. Fun times! Today, I want to share what’s ahead for the Tales of the Road Warriors podcast, but first, let me tell you a little about what’s been going on, as well as what’s going on right now. First, I want to thank all of you for listening, especially those of you who follow and share the show with your friends and on social media. I also want to thank everyone who has been a guest on the show, and thanks in advance to those who will be joining me on future episodes. Oh, and lest I forget – I’d like to give a big shoutout to my old friend Joe Walla for allowing me to use his instrumental, PLAYA DEL SPAIN, featuring his fretboard virtuosity and signature, Hola Gente! – as the opening theme music.  By the way, “Hola Gente” is Spanish for “Hello, People” A couple of weeks ago, I recorded a live episode of TotRW with Lizanne Knott, her daughter Ciara and Philly folk-rock music icon and author, Dan May. It was a sweltering 102 degree day and I  can’t thank  them enough for participating. It was recorded live by Kev Gallagher at the Tattoed Mom on 5th & South Street in Philadelphia as part of the Philadelphia Podcast Festival. Kev is the host of a podcast called, Everything is Awesome and is the co-host of The Zombcast. Kev also writes for Dark Knight News and is working on a science fiction series and probably more projects I’m not privy to. He’s ALSO a dad to two kids. Despite all the stuff he’s got going on in his life, Kev volunteered to record all of the podcasts at the Tatooed Mom during the week of the Philly Pod Fest. So a HUGE thanks to Kev  . Also a big thank you to Nathan and Taegan Kuruna the organizers of Philly Podcast Festival  – for including a new, still-in-the-baby-stages Tales of the Road Warriors. I am grateful for the opportunity, even if I did choke a little and probably squandered my opportunity a little bit. Tell you what…  I’m blaming the heat. In the meantime, Dan, Lizanne and Ciara were the perfect guests. I haven’t edited that show yet and I apologize for getting behind, but, I got a healthy dose of last minute music gigs, and  that combined with trying to get ready for the live podcast and a big event in Orlando, Florida, I’ve just been short on time. I try to get an episode out every Thursday, but, as you know – Life happens. Being the Chief, Cook and Head  Bottle Washer, I can’t always be as consistent as I’d like right  now, but I’m working on solutions. Hopefully,  I can find a collaborator or possibly build a small team to keep the show running a little more efficiently. So what’s next? Well, I’m going to take a brief hiatus because I’m heading for another Podcast event. This one is the big one. It’s called  Podcast Movement 2019 and they’re expecting about 3,000 podcasters from all over the world, all converging in Orlando, Florida. My goal is to learn all I can about the podcasting industry; meet some movers and shakers, check out new opportunities in podcasting, maybe acquire a sponsor or two, some new gear and ultimately make Tales of the Road Warriors better than ever. I’m still in the process  of tweaking  the show, the format, curating great guests and stories and honing my own skills as a host. I know I have a long way to go, but as my old Pappy used to say, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts”. So now that you’re all caught up, it’s time for a Tale from Uncle Hal… I call it Me, Jamie Sheriff, and the Ghost of Marilyn Monroe If you’ve been listening to past Tales of the Road Warriors, then you already know I was a singing waiter for about six years. SO, this happened at the Great American Food and Beverage Company. Now, at the GA, we had two dining main dining areas – the Piano Room and the Green Room. Piano players couldn’t work in the green room because well, there was no piano in there. In the Piano Room, however , there was an old spinet which actually sounded pretty great considering the pounding it took night after night and there were some pretty good keyboard  players working there. There’s Chuck Francour, who still entertains around the Florida area and now calls himself Sweet Charlie, David Bloom, entertains American tourists in Mexico at a beautiful  resort, Joe Turano, who worked with Ricki Lee Jones, Michael Bolton and was musical director for Al Jarraeu for 17 years. There were a few others, but most noteably – Jamie Sheriff. Jamie went on to become an 80’s solo artist. His album, No Heroes was engineered by the legendary producer, Ken Scott – most noted for his work with David Bowie. To this day, we’re all still in touch on Facebook. I still talk to Jamie pretty regularly. Now, I played mostly guitar, but occasionally switched to piano for a song or two. I’m no virtuoso, but I play well enough to accompany myself on piano for some songs. One of those songs  was Candle in the Wind by Elton John. But, if Jamie had time between customers, he would offer to accompany me on the piano while I played guitar. One night Jamie suggested something novel… He asked me if I ever thought about just singing the song without the guitar while  he accompanied me on the piano, so I could concentrate on the vocal. I felt completely naked an totally insecure if I wasn’t holding a guitar while performing, but I’d seen others, who didn’t know how to play an instrument, get up and sing, so I thought why not, and agreed to give it a shot. Now, hanging on the wall, just to the right of the piano were these mirrors. Painted onto the mirrors were silhouettes of famous -people, these mirrors were very popular in the sixties  and 70’s. One had  Elvis. There was one each of all four Beatles (I think – Maybe just John Lennon)… and then the one closest to the piano was Marilyn Monroe. So Jamie starts playing the Candle In  The Wind, I’m just standing there like a poor man’s Wayne Newton or some lounge lizard, feeling completely stupid. So , then, I just jumped right into the first verse. Hey, you know what? It wasn’t horrible. Once I started, I felt a little more comfortable.  While, in the midst of singing, that Marilyn mirror caught my eye. So I quickly thought, “Hey, here’s an idea… I’ll take the mirror off the  wall during the instrumental and then during the third verse, I’ll  hold it up to the crowd and that’ll be really cool!” But Marilyn had  an even grander idea… I removed the mirror from the wall easily enough. I didn’t drop it. Everything was going as planned. As Jamie’s piano solo was concluding, I set the mirror at my feet, planning to pick it up as I sang, “Goodbye Norma Jean, from the young man  in the 22nd row…” But before that happened,  I noticed a few people staring at the ceiling and murmuring, so I looked up to see what they were looking at… The mirror was sitting at my feet at such an angle that when the light above the piano hit it, it projected a blue, ghostly image of Marilyn Monroe, smiling down at the people dining at the table in front of me. Not everyone in the room saw it until I got to that part of the song. SO I milked it for all it was worth. I dropped to my knees and gazed into Marilyn’s haunting eyes as I sang the last verse. A quiet reverence took hold  of the room and when the song ended, the crowd just sat there stunned for a second or two, then burst into a huge applause. It couldn’t have been better if we had planned it. Of course, from then on, Jamie and I made that song a permanent part of the evening, whenever we worked together. I like to think that Marilyn herself was smiling at me with approval that night. I hope you enjoyed my little story. Please add Tales of the Road Warriors to your favorite podcast app. If you’re on an iPhone, you can listen on Apple Podcasts.  For Android, there are several options. My favorite is Himalaya. If you go the Tales of the Road Warriors home page, there are links  to several of the most popular apps for podcasts. Oh! Hey!! The reminds me. It’s come to my attention that there are still plenty of people who don’t listen to podcasts. Not this one, not any. I’ve come to discover that some of you haven’t discovered podcasts, don’t know how to listen to them, don’t understand the advantage of having podcasts in their life. So, I’m working on a “how-to” video, to demonstrate the different ways to listen to podcasts in order to make it easier to get into them. I’ll let you know when it’s ready, so this  e of you who already enjoy podcasts can finally share the experience with friends. All right, I think I’m done here. Mission accomplished! So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going for a drive! Listen to Tales of the Road Warriors on HIMALAYA Please listen, share and comment below. There’s also a Tales of the Road Warriors Facebook Group if you want to start or contribute to the conversation there. Anyway, let me know what’s on your mind, one way or another. Thanks !  

Our 5 friends are eating at a local diner on the planet and one of our heroes has a crush on Sexy Tech Girl Violet! After a lil love quarrel with Jamie and Mike, Violet steps outside to eat her sandwich when a monster comes down from a cloud and kidnaps her. Our fighter follow her down a pipe which took them to Mario Land..wtf? Yeah you read it! So Jamie runs off to find here while the others meet a new friend named Shroom. But our story doesn’t end here..stay tuned for Part 3!

On this month’s podcast we discuss the role of science in fine art.  Specifically, what can science tell us about a work of art’s origin and authenticity?  Can science help us discover fakes and forgeries undetected by traditional connoisseur style observation?  We are joined by the famous art scientist Jamie Martin to discuss these issues, recount famous forgery scandals, and delve into his techniques and practices. Resources: http://orionanalytical.com/media/ http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/blogs/all-blogs/sotheby-s-at-large/2016/12/scientist-art-world-james-martin.html https://www.wired.com/2016/12/how-to-detect-art-forgery/ https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-the-8-most-prolific-forgers-in-art-history-that-we-know-of https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/10/wolfgang-beltracchi-helene-art-scam https://news.artnet.com/market/forger-wolfgang-beltracchi-exhibition-296551 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/arts/design/ken-perenyi-art-forger-now-sells-his-work-as-copies.html Episode Transcription:  Steve Schindler:  Hi. I'm Steve Schindler. Katie Wilson-Milne:  I'm Katie Wilson-Milne. Steve Schindler:  Welcome to the Art Law podcast, a monthly podcast exploring the places where art intersects with and interferes with the law. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And vice versa.  The Art Law Podcast is sponsored by the Law firm of Schindler Cohen & Hochman LLP, a premier litigation and art law boutique in New York City. On this episode of the podcast we will be discussing the role of science and fine art. Specifically what can science tell us about the work of arts origin and authenticity? Can science help us discover fakes and forgeries that would be undetected by more traditional connoisseur-style observation? Steve Schindler:  We’re here today with Jamie Martin, Senior Vice President and Director of Scientific Research at Sotheby’s auction house, a title that really doesn’t do Jamie justice. Jamie is an artist, art conservator and forensic scientist. In 2000, he founded a company called Orion Analytical that became the preeminent materials analysis and consulting firm, specializing in the scientific analysis of art and cultural property. Working at the intersection of art and science, Jamie has revealed multimillion dollar forgeries in the art market, taught at The Getty Conservation Institute and the FBI, and conducted more than 1800 scientific investigations for museums, galleries, insurance companies, and private collectors around the world. Katie and I have both worked closely with Jamie and it is a genuine pleasure to welcome him to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast Jamie. Jamie Martin:  Hi! Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yes, thanks for being here Jamie. So what can science tell us about art? Jamie Martin:  The way I like to phrase it is, is that science helps art tell its own story. Science can reveal the structure of the work, its composition and its condition. Steve Schindler:  How Jamie would you say that science intersects with questions about authenticity and fraud? Jamie Martin:  Well, in about 2009, the College Art Association codified guidelines and standards for authentications and attributions. Steve Schindler:  What is the College Art Association? Jamie Martin:  I'm not a member, but my understanding is that it’s a national association of art historians principally in colleges but also working privately or working in museums as well. Steve Schindler:  Okay, so they came out with some guidelines? Jamie Martin:  They did and in codifying guidelines they identified three essential elements involved in the authentication attribution process. The first oldest most important and never to be replaced is stylistic connoisseurship, which is examination with learned eye of the scholar. The scholar is the person or the entity that attributes and actually authenticates work of art. The second essential element is the provenance of the work or the documented history from the time it left the artist studio to present day. And usually that’s fractured or incomplete in some way. The third essential element which has been part of these kinds of studies for at least a 100 years, but was codified in this document, is scientific or technical examination. And the role of science and technical examination in authentication and attribution studies is twofold, one is to test the claimed attributes of the attribution of the work and also test the claimed attributes of the provenance. In other words to see if the physical substance of the work is consistent with its attribution and provenance, the other principle aim of science and technology is to provide investigative leads, so to better understand the object – essentially to let the object tell its story about where it was, when it was, what it was. And those leads can help art historians and researchers better place the object in time, in some cases in a particular artist studio. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So what is the analysis of the work actually look like in terms of what you’re doing, maybe walk us through a typical examination of a painting? Jamie Martin:  So generally speaking from start to finish, every exam would start with visual inspection of the work in bright white light, the same way that a connoisseur would examine the work.  They want to see the composition, or the design. They want to see the color, the opacity, essentially the facture of the work, the way the work is constructed. They’ll then move the light to the side, which is called raking light, and that reveals information about the texture of the work. And often identifies the presence of restoration or alteration, because in an authentication study a scientist doesn’t want to inadvertently identify restoration as original, find a problem and reach a wrong conclusion.  Scientist and conservators then use ultraviolet light which, when I was a teenager these were lights on the ceiling of my room that illuminated Led Zeppelin posters. Steve Schindler:  I had the same posters and the same lights – by the way. Jamie Martin:  Alright. So we use the same lights now to illuminate works of art and materials have inherent fluorescence which allows us to see the distribution of different materials and often the distribution of restoration and alteration. We then use infrared light. We can't see infrared light as humans, but we can use cameras to detect it and record it and create an image. And with that we can often better see restoration, but more importantly we can see through the paint. We can see through some materials to see what lays beneath, so artist underdrawings. We can see inscriptions that have been obliterated or erased. And all of those are noninvasive techniques that basically tell us about the object as a whole. We then take the object and we put the object under what’s called a stereo binocular microscope – a microscope that gives us a three dimensional color image of the work and magnifications up to about 90 times – and with this we can look at the fine detail of the work.  We can begin to understand its structure and its condition.  We create a mental inventory of the number of different materials. We account for the presence of restoration. And this process helps guide the subsequent analyses that we do. The best most reliable way to analyze the work from a statistical point of view is to take the work of art, put it in a blender, destroy it, mix it up into a powder, take a pinch and analyze it.  We obviously can't do that. So we have to select visually representative areas of our work and conduct our analyses on that. We have a range of noninvasive techniques that we can use. Not taking a physical sample, actually not touching the work of art, we can identify the elemental composition, so the elements like sodium or lead or mercury, we can identify where they are in the work. In the case of Remington sculpture, that can help determine whether the work was cast before Remington died or if it was cast after the artist died. And if after, whether it was authorized or unauthorized.  If it’s a work of art like a painting or a painting on paper or a drawing, we can map the elemental composition of the work. So we can look for elements that stand out. Given the attribution, let’s say an artist who’s painting in 1800, if we find concentrations of elements associated with original material that is part of the object and those elements only became part of paints after 1800, then that raises red flags about the work. And then we can use other techniques to identify what those materials are. In variably however in most cases we need to take a sample and we need to analyze the sample so that we understand the full composition of the material to give you an idea of the kind of sample, the sample size that we need are typical sample sizes range from about 1/1000th of a millimeter to about 40/1000ths of a millimeter, which is about the width of a human hair. Katie Wilson-Milne:  How do you even collect a sample that small? Jamie Martin:  It’s good question. You collect it using the same microscope that you use to find the sample location, so using a microscope that’s analogous to a surgical microscope, same kind of microscope a neurosurgeon would use. And we actually use neurosurgeon tools. I use a scalpel. And I’ll use the scalpel to remove such a tiny piece of material, I can only see it with a microscope, but that one little tiny microscopic specimen can be used for one or two or five or ten separate analyses depending on what the questions are. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Jamie I think one question we shouldn’t let go by for too long is how are you qualified to do this work, right. I mean the way you described the analysis of the art, presupposes a certain amount of knowledge when you look at the piece under the light initially and you’re sort of doing the visual analysis. How do you know how to do that? Jamie Martin:  Well, conservation scientists have different backgrounds, some are PhDs who have advanced degrees in chemistry or engineering. Others come from the conservation ranks. And that’s the route I took. My background is a little different. It’s a bit unique in the field, when I was 13 my father gave me a microscope, a chemistry set and sent me to art school. And so from a very young age I was taught how to mix different powdered pigments together to make paint. And how to stretch canvases much the same way it was done in old master days in workshops. And at the same time I was blowing little things up in my bedroom with my chemistry set and beginning to explore the world with a microscope which sits on the desk I have now. After high school I attended a traditional art school in Baltimore. And we were taught to emulate the techniques of the old masters and one thing I became very proficient at doing was doing copies in museums where I could create works in some cases that were indistinguishable from the originals. I did a copy of William Merritt Chase of the Baltimore Museum of Art. And as I was walking out with it one day, the director of the museum asked me if I was taking it back to storage.  And I sort of laughed. Steve Schindler:  You were in training either to be a conservation professional or a forger – Jamie Martin:  Well that – that’s very interesting when I applied to the conservation graduate programs which included Winterthur, the admissions committee raised questions and flagged me, because my art portfolio was so strong and my ability to copy was so good. They were concerned if they trained me as a conservator and a scientist that I would be a master forger. It turns out and I didn’t know at that time, I'm a bit of a master detective at catching forgers.  So I got a graduate degree in art conservation at the University of Delaware, then I went on to postgraduate work at University of Cambridge. Then I set about creating the first two fee-for-service conservation analytical labs in the United States, one in a museum and one privately and they were both setup to provide basic conservation science services to conservators and museums that didn’t have scientists. So what equips me to take samples and what equips me to interpret the data and reach reliable, accurate conclusions is having taken about 15,000 samples and having conducted about 13,000 FTI or analyses.  It’s just a lot of experience, the good luck, good fortune of working with really good scientists over the years who were able to teach me the tools of the trade. And then being surrounded by excellent people in museums and the conservation field and interestingly also in the art law field. Steve Schindler:  So let’s talk about your detective skills, because one of the ways that we met was in connection with a case involving fakes and forgeries. How prevalent are fakes and forgeries in your view in the art market? Jamie Martin:  Well, we really don’t know.  We read in newspapers and magazines from time to time that it’s been estimated that 50% of works are fake or 80% of works are fake, but if you dig a bit deeper into those articles it’s often someone trying to make the claim to attract business and create a fear that everything is sold in the market place is potentially a fake. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yeah, I feel like I've read articles, “half the works on every museum all are fake, you just don’t know it.” Jamie Martin:  Yeah, we just don’t know, there’s been no study done. There’s no data to look to. What we know publically is probably a small fraction of the art forgery case isn't fakes that are in circulation or from cases like the Beltracchi case or the Knoedler case or the Rudy Kurniawan case that dealt with wine, there are lot of investigations being done behind the scenes by law enforcement that we’ll probably never know about. And a lot of investigations I did were done under confidentiality agreements that I can't discuss. Someday I hope the FBI will get on to it, burst the forgery ring and make people whole. I would say that forgeries can be a significant problem, depending on what is being forged or faked and where it’s being sold. So generally a ring of forgers has a target market in sight. They more or less know the market that they want to create the works for and sell the works for. There is some evidence to suggest that forgeries pertaining to a particular artist spike up after a big exhibition on the artist or after publication of the catalogue raisonné, because there’s a lot of technical information and a lot of visual information that a forger can take and create a pastiche – using some of the materials that are disclosed in the publication. It’s one of the reasons why scientists like I, scientist in museums often don’t disclose everything we find, but withhold some important information, so that we don’t give away all the secrets of detection or we don’t disclose publically all of the stupid mistakes that forgers are making. We like them to continue to make those stupid mistakes. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So can you tell our audience briefly about the Beltracchi case? Jamie Martin:  Yeah, so Wolfgang Beltracchi and his wife devised a really sinister scheme to create a large group of fake works that reportedly created in Europe, say between 1910 and 1930. And they would use publications that sided exhibitions of works by known artist that didn’t give illustrations, didn’t give sizes.  They gave the artist name, the date, and the title of the work. And that was the basis of the provenance for the work. They could create a work, point back to that publication and say, “Oh, here’s the work.” What was particularly clever was that they created the false provenance of the so-called “Jagers collection” and Jagers happened to be Beltracchi’s wife Helene’s maiden name. And what Beltracchi did was to create framed posters of his fakes, he put them in a room. He had period furniture. Katie Wilson-Milne:  I love this part. Jamie Martin:  And his wife dressed up as her grandmother and posed with the works.  Beltracchi used an old box style camera that would make the image a little blurry. He printed the photographs on deckled paper, which would have been period, photocopied them. And then you can imagine when Helene would take the painting and present the perspective owner with the photograph of the painting photographed with her grandmother, people would say, “Oh my God, the family resemblance!  You look so much like your grandmother.” And as this often the case with fakes and forgeries it doesn’t take much to nudge someone to the point of accepting what is false as true. They didn’t look deeper.  That was enough for them to believe the story that Beltracchi assembled. Steve Schindler:  It always seems in these cases that the purchasers and fakes so much want to believe.  Whether it’s in the Rudy Kurniawan case that you just eluded to before – passionate collectors of wine want to believe that they’re getting these rare vintages so much that they overlook obvious clues.  In other cases, they buy works where the signatures are misspelled, as we’ll get to, so part of it just seems to be tremendous excitement and passion on the part of the purchasers. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Well and there’s no incentive for anyone in that chain to want something to be fake, right? The buyer wants it to be worth what they paid for it. They want it to be by the artists they think it’s from. So who in that chain wants to disrupt that? Jamie Martin:  Well, in a very clever way of introducing the fakes is to introduce the fakes that art fairs or dealers where there’s a real time pressure to purchase.  So for example in an art fair, a fake might be exhibited, and you might get two people in the span of two or three days looking at the work, basically competing for who’s going to purchase the work. There really isn't the time to step back to examine the claimed attributes, so the work is attributed to artist X in year Y. I think I’d like to step back, look at some books published on the artist perhaps the catalogue raisonné and see if this work really fits. And then I want to look at the provenance. And I want to find out if there was actually a Jagers collection. And if not, those are going to raise red flags for me. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So how did he get caught? Jamie Martin:  Beltracchi got caught, because the Doerner Institute in Munich, Germany was given a painting by the police to examine and they found two things working with an art historian who probably was the first person to break the case. He noted that the fake labels that were applied to the back of many of the works were of a gallery that didn’t exist at the time the works were purportedly dated. So the gallery label dates were mismatched. The Doerner Institute then examined the painting and they found that the painting contained historically inaccurate materials. So pigments that weren’t introduced and used at paints at the age of that particular work of art.  And that’s enough to conclude that the work couldn’t have been – could not have been constructed at that time, and that raised huge flags. At that point I understand that police began to assemble lists of works that were likely Beltracchi fakes. I became involved through looking at a number of works for private collectors and auction houses and was commissioned actually by 60 Minutes to examine a fake Beltracchi work in the style of Ernst, so I could explain to Bob Simon how Beltracchi created the work, but more importantly how Beltracchi got caught. Now Beltracchi was very careful about his materials. He would purchase old canvases that would have been used in the same period, so if you tried to date the canvas, it would be appropriate. And he tried to select paints that contained pigments that would be used at that time. So he would go to the store and he would look for Winsor and Newton paint and he would turn it around and look at the label. And it would say Zinc White. And that was the limit of Beltracchi’s knowledge of paint manufacturers. Now because paint manufacturer from time to time hired me to reverse engineer their competitors’ products to tell them what they were using to make paint, I was aware that manufactures often topped off or added materials to paints. And in this case the manufacturer added a little bit of a very opaque pigment called Titanium White to the Zinc White. And they used modern synthetic organic pigment called Phthalocyanine Blue that they used to top off or make the blue paint that Beltracchi used more intense. And those two materials were very easy to detect. And they proved that that those works were not authentic. Beltracchi himself I think was quoted saying, “Ah yeah, the Titanium White.” Katie Wilson-Milne:  We should probably interject, Steve, to explain the legal background that it’s obviously not illegal to copy something that’s in the public domain, if you say it’s a copy and you tell people that you painted it and it’s not by the original artist. What is illegal is fraud and pretending that a work authored by you is by another person and leading a buyer, inducing a buyer to buy that work based on that fact. Jamie Martin:  Correct. Steve Schindler:  And so one question, Jamie, is – you mentioned before that you, one of the things you search for are these anomalies and you’re able to determine whether a work could have been created at the time that it was purported to be created, but do you actually authenticate works? Jamie Martin:  No, rarely will scientific or technical examination unilaterally attribute or authenticate a work. And -- Steve Schindler:  Why is that? Jamie Martin:  Well, because there isn't a chemical or material fingerprint that would allow you to individualize a work to one and only one artist at a particular time. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So science can't tell you something is authentic, but it can tell you something is fake? Jamie Martin:  It can tell you that something is fake.  From time to time, you can form a conclusive, reliable, durable opinion that a work is fake based on science. It can also buttress an attribution more provenance, but it will never substitute for the absence of or a defect in provenance or stylistic connoisseurship. Steve Schindler:  Do you think in the area of stylistic connoisseurship which, is often criticized as being sometimes objective, insular, elitist, whatever you will – whether there is a place for science or an opportunity for science to replace the work of the connoisseur and I'm thinking particularly about advances in artificial intelligence the type of technology that makes an Apple iPhone work, the facial recognition. Do you sense that there is a place for that kind of technology in making attributions or authentications? Jamie Martin:  For probably about 10 years there’s been an emphasis in the computer science and physics disciplines to use image processing, computer analysis and things like fractal analysis, sparse coding analysis to essentially replace what – in some cases is viewed as the subjective eye of the kind of connoisseur – with the more “objective eye” of the computer looking at a photograph. There’s been some interesting and promising research done which I believe can enhance the work of authenticating or dating works, that is, clearly showing that something is inconsistent with the work of an artist. Or in the case of Dürer drawings – comparing Dürer drawings to see how closely the strokes and the pressure applied to the implement and the basic composition is.  However I haven’t seen any technology at this point that is able to accurately attribute works absent the human input of a scholar, of a conservator, of a scientist. I think it’ll probably happen in my life time.  It’ll hopefully happen before I retire. Katie Wilson-Milne:  You describe a very complimentary process, but there has been some suggestion that there’s a tension between a traditional connoisseur – a PhD in art history, works at a museum – and scientific analysis that, I don’t know, there’s a perceived fear that science is replacing that scholarly expertise.  Is that something you come in contact with or you also perceive? Jamie Martin:  Well, so there are a universe of conversations probably that are going on and they’re informed by different experiences and backgrounds and opportunities. I haven’t experienced that tension myself, before or since coming the Sotheby's, but I come from an old school conservation science background where I'm one of three players. I view it as a three legged stool. And that first most important leg of this stool is the curator, is the catalogue raisonné author, is the independent expert. The second leg is the provenance leg, and I'm the third leg.  My job is there just to steady the stool. Steve Schindler:  You’re telling yourself short Jamie but – Katie Wilson-Milne:  You’re creating a stool, but yes we take your points. Steve Schindler:  Yeah, one of the things that also dawns on me because we – we have experienced the problem in what we do of authenticators being reluctant now to authenticate work for reasons that we’re all well aware of: they get sued. They get sued by people who view themselves as possessing authentic works and they disagree with authenticators’ opinions. Katie Wilson-Milne:  What would be the basis for a lawsuit on those grounds? Steve Schindler:  Well, we’ve seen a lot of different theories, most of which had been rejected. It could be a theory of negligence, there have been reasons as wild as antitrust theories that have been set out. And the interesting thing is most of the lawsuits against authenticators end up either being settled or dismissed favorably towards the authenticators, but they have to spend an awful lot of money defending themselves, which is why they – in many cases, foundations and authenticating boards have stopped authenticating, and experts who are not paid a great deal of money typically to give opinions and find themselves tremendously at risk and we’ve been working in the art law community trying to remedy that legislatively at least in New York, but it does dawn on me that machines can't get sued probably, not yet. And so if there was a room for science to provide a clear or more objective authentication, it might alleviate some of the burdens on the whole process, I don’t know if you have any reactions to that. Jamie Martin:  I do I guess, I think the Knoedler case was probably a textbook case of where an expert in good faith working first for the Knoedler gallery and its director in providing reliable, accurate opinions on the attribution of authenticity of works and then subsequently working for a number of people who purchased works from the gallery – again in good faith providing accurate, reliable durable data and conclusions got caught up not in a lawsuit but in a flurry of subpoenas. Katie Wilson-Milne:  This expert is you, Jamie. Jamie Martin:  This expert is me. And I had never heard of a third-party expert having to retain legal council to produce documents and to represent the expert in court to answer allegations of obstruction of proper discovery and handling of evidence before. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So even the scientist can get caught up in these legal issues. Jamie Martin:  And it had a chilling effect during the Knoedler case.  Before Knoedler, I could pick up the phone and call someone of the National Gallery and ask if I could come in and look through the research files on a particular case. Once the subpoenas went out and Knoedler, which included the director of the National Gallery – I would call the National Gallery and I was told by my colleagues, “We’ve been instructed by the legal counsel not to answer the phone when you call.”  Now since Knoedler, that’s gotten better but the chilling effect in Knoedler was that you could be caught up in this and your life could be turned inside out. And other scientists who you know could say horrible things about you that had no basis in fact. And that was just the way the system worked. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Let’s talk about the famous Knoedler case which, you were involved in it, we were also peripherally. Steve Schindler:  Full disclosure – I guess at this point, since Jamie brought it up. We were representing Jamie and that’s how we were – fortunate enough to meet him and to be sitting here with him today. Katie Wilson-Milne:  There were many, many lawyers involved in the Knoedler case. All right, so the Knoedler Gallery was the oldest and one of the most respected art galleries in New York City and the United States. It had been a business for 165 years in a beautiful town house on the Upper East Side. And in 2011, at the end of 2011, it abruptly shut down declaring bankruptcy. In the background of this declaration of bankruptcy in going out of business was a brewing scandal over the sale of about 40 works of art that Knoedler sold and had alleged work created by who’s who of modern masters: Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, William De Kooning, and others. There was one other dealer, Julian Weissman, who had sold 23 similar works of art. But we’ll focus on the Knoedler aspect of this. These works were said to have brought in up to $80 million in profits for the dealers and following the galleries, closing this started to come out. There were rapid succession of lawsuits that were filed by collectors, alleging that these works were fake. And not to give away the end of the story they were fake. The provenance of these works had been sketchy. The works had all been brought to Knoedler by a Long Island art dealer, her name was Glafira Rosales who claimed to have obtained these works – never before seen on the market – from the children of a European Jewish collector, who wanted to remain anonymous for a variety of tantalizing reasons which people can look up in the newspaper. This collector had supposedly bought these works through a dealer and friend of these artist directly from the artist studios in the ‘60s – the ‘50s and the ‘60s. So that’s why the works had never been seen on the market before. The story changed slightly over time and no documentation was ever provided by Rosales substantially in these origins, but that was the story that gallery retold to the buyers of these pieces and then later when they were brought in to these lawsuits. So Knoedler and its President, a woman named Ann Freedman did maintain that the works were genuine through the beginning of many of these lawsuits, notwithstanding the fact that Jamie demonstrated that many of them, conclusively were not genuine. But in August 2013 in a parallel criminal investigation at the U.S. attorney’s office was involved in, Rosales was indicted and the FBI raided a house in Queens, where a very talented Chinese immigrant artist had been creating all these works. He had been creating these De Kooning’s and Motherwell’s and Rothko’s and the evidence was right there. Steve Schindler:  He had an amazing repertoire. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yeah it was incredible and it – and when law enforcement got at the house the doors were open, someone told me that or I read somewhere that a cereal bowl was half full and this artist had just fled.  Nothing had been really taken or disturbed, so it was pretty conclusive, after this Knoedler and Ann Freedman changed their story. They admitted the works were fake. And then they argued that they had also been defrauded, that they had no way of knowing that the words would have been fake. So there were series of civil litigations, most of them have settled, no criminal charges were ever brought against the gallery or Ann Freedman.  Glafira Rosales was indicted. She pled guilty. Steve Schindler:  She pled guilty and was given a very lenient sentence, which was house arrest, I believe, and some restitution. Katie Wilson-Milne: Yeah and the Chinese artist is no longer in the United States and that’s all we know. So Jamie tell us how you were involved in the Knoedler case? Jamie Martin:  Well, I was first hired by Ann Freedman and Knoedler Gallery to look at two purported Robert Motherwell paintings. And what became clear early on is that the works were created over old paintings, part of which had been removed with an electric orbital sander which was not a practice that Motherwell used. So that was one clue.  Another clue was that the works had a series of white grounds that were materials that Motherwell was not using in the 1950s. One painting was signed and dated ‘53, the other was dated ‘56 is I recall. So I was finding materials that Motherwell wasn’t using till late ‘60s and I was finding pigments that weren’t introduced in paints until the ‘70s. So that work concluded and some years later I was asked to examine Jackson Pollock painting that was purchased for around $17 million. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Also by the gallery or as – Jamie Martin:  Yeah, it was sold by the gallery as a work by Jackson Pollock and within just a few days I was finding acrylic paint and I was finding pigments that weren’t being used and artist paints until the 1980s and 1990s. I issued a report, the attorney gave it to Knoedler, and Knoedler closed the next day. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And so you were hired by a collector, a buyer to do that analysis? Jamie Martin:  Yeah. I then became involved in a series of other works including a purported Mark Rothko painting and that painting was a fake based on a number of features, the principle one being that the Chinese forger used a white ground underneath the paint. Mark Rothko never used white grounds in the 1950s. Katie Wilson-Milne:  What are white grounds? Jamie Martin:  A ground would be like a primer, it would be like a base coat that was applied to the canvas. In the 1950s Rothko was using a transparent colored ground and in this case it was an opaque white ground and it was a white ground that you could see at the edges, if you’re new to look for it. So that was a tip off on that work and they were whole selection of other works that I examined. For collectors, also for the U.S. attorney’s office and FBI, and to put it in a nutshell, what I was finding in this group of more than 20 works was a pattern of reuse of old paintings to make new paintings, so that the backs of the paintings looked appropriately old. Katie Wilson-Milne:  This is a common technique right?  Beltracchi was doing this too. Jamie Martin:  Very common technique. Take something that’s old and recycle it and on the front paint something that’s new and make it look old. So that was another thing I was finding – that material was being applied to the front of the works to make it look artificially old. I was also finding co-occurrence of the same material. So many of these works painted by more than five artists over a period that spanned about three decades from the late ‘40s to the early ‘60s contained the same white grounds.  I mean, the same white paints. Katie Wilson-Milne:  By different artists. Steve Schindler:  So this was a case where you were fortunate to be able to have tested a number of works by the same forger and even though each work in itself had anomalies that led you to conclude that they were fakes, when you looked at them collectively and it was overwhelming? Jamie Martin:  Exactly, so it was pointing to a common source for all of the paintings and that work continued. I was asked to examine the materials that were ceased from the Chinese forger’s garage which was an interesting process to go through for about six months. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So you were working with the FBI for then. Jamie Martin:  I was.  I was working for the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office on the case as well. So I was able to look at the evidence that they ceased. I was able to examine practice paintings that the forger had created to try to achieve something that look convincing. Katie Wilson-Milne:  You described several anomalies, what was the real smoking gun for you in the Knoedler case? Jamie Martin:  Well, it was a different smoking gun for different works, I mean we – we knew for example that Jackson Pollock died in 1956, so when I'm finding polymers and when I'm finding pigments that were first discovered and patented and first used in paints decades after his death, the only explanation would be time travel – which I'm not a big fan of, so these were obviously fraudulent works. There were also features that contradicted the provenance. One thing that was mentioned in the provenance was that the works were collected over a period of a few years. And they were stored for decades and they were stored in a “hermetically sealed room,” which implies a room that had stable conditions – clean, archival – and many of the works showed paint transfers. They showed accumulation of debris and grime, which was just inconsistent with the story. And that’s one of the features we look at. We not only look at the composition of the work that we’re studying, but we look at the provenance.  We look at the story to see if we see evidence of that or evidence that speaks against it. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Am I remembering correctly that you found a fleece fiber in one of the paintings? Jamie Martin:  Oh, that was a different painting. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Oh okay, I love that. Steve Schindler:  That was a different case, but that’s also one of my favorite stories. Why don’t you share that with us? Jamie Martin:  This is a work that was signed and it was dated 1932 and the work was fairly large. As I recall, it was about 24” by 36” or 32” by 48” and as usual, I went through all the first steps with the work: technical imaging, stereo microscope exam.  I made an inventory of all the materials used to create the work, from the canvas to the primer to all the different paints in the pallet. I analyzed all these materials, and I found that the binders and the pigments were consistent with paints that could have been used in 1932.  And that’s the point at which a lot of scientists or labs would stop and they would write a report. Katie Wilson-Milne:  It looks good. Jamie Martin:  It looks fine, we find nothing to speak against it.  That wasn’t my style, that wasn’t my practice, in part, because it’s informed by a forensic approach. So at that point whenever I engaged in a study and I find a result like that I start over. And I look at every square millimeter of the painting under the stereo microscope and I look for what’s called adventitious material, material that doesn’t belong there. Something that wasn’t part of the paint, something that the artist didn’t intend to include in the painting and I got – I started the bottom and by the time I got to the top two thirds of the painting, I found a fiber in the paint. And I knew it dried in the paint because two ends stuck out and the center was deeply embedded in dried paint. And I took a very small sample of that fiber and analyzed it and I found polypropylene. Polypropylene fiber was first discovered and introduced in 1958. So on the basis of finding one fiber I was able to conclude that there was no way that that work was painted in 1932. I had to spread out, I had to be sure that all the paint was integral across the surface.  Fast forward to 2015, there’s a book published in Paris called The Forger. And it’s a story of a young man who meets a master forger who teaches the young man all the tricks of the trade and the last trick of the trade is: when you’re creating a fake you should always wear a cotton or linen smock, because if one synthetic fiber falls from your clothing and becomes embedded in the painting a good scientist will find it and declare the work a fake. That’s been part of a lecture I've given that was on the Columbia Art Law School website for eight years. And I suspect the person writing the book has internet connection. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yeah, I do just want to say before we get off Knoedler that it would be hard to overestimate how significant this scandal was for the art world. I mean the art world is a very secretive place deals happen privately, there was not a lot of paperwork and the fact that this scandal was going on and being covered up so well for – well over a decade and that 10s of millions of dollars were being made off the sale of these fake works was really disturbing and even art world people who certainly don’t follow legal claims and cases know about this case, because of the amount of money and the number of forgeries, but also because of the significance of the Knoedler gallery to New York, it really pioneered the art gallery world and it had been at the forefront of the art gallery world in the United States for really long time. So if a buyer went to Knoedler they felt like, “well, if there’s anywhere I can go and I can trust what they’re going to tell me, it’s the Knoedler gallery.” And that really upended people sense of safety I think in the art market. Steve Schindler:  Right, and that was also reinforced by the judge who was hearing these cases in one of his decisions, because the Knoedler gallery and Ann Freedman, one of their defenses was well these sophisticated buyers should have known better, should have done their own due diligence and one of the things that judge said was, “but they were buying these works from Knoedler. They were buying them from one of the most respected galleries in New York.” Katie Wilson-Milne:  Which is the due diligence. Steve Schindler:   Right. Well actually, and one of the things – as long as we were talking about Knoedler still – that always interested me was how Ann Freedman used the fear of authenticators to speak out in her favor and we had represented a couple of these individuals who invariably recalled over to a gallery with a crowd of people shown a fake work and who looked at it and either didn’t say anything or said, “oh that’s nice” or something along those lines. And then afterwards she claimed that they had authenticated these works. And the way that they had authenticated them was to not shout out in a crowded room, “I think this is a fake!” Katie Wilson-Milne:  They stood in front of the work. Steve Schindler:  And they didn’t say anything. So – and of course they would never do that, they were not asked to do that, but even in the most ideal conditions most of these types of experts would have been afraid to speak out like that for fear of being sued and dragged further into this kind of case in the way that Jamie mentioned that he was. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And another significant aspect of Knoedler, and one of the reasons we are so thrilled to be talking to you, Jamie, is that it was one of the first times I think for a lot of people that they understood how science could interact with claims of fakes and forgeries and it was in such a public way that I think the scientific analysis of art hadn’t been widely discussed or understood before. I don’t know if you could talk a little bit about how important scientific analysis was to the outcome of the Knoedler scandal in general but also if you’ve seen the importance of scientific analysis or people’s perceived – how they perceive the importance of scientific analysis increase after Knoedler? Jamie Martin:  Well, I think what you have seen after Knoedler is an increase in the number of investor backed art analysis labs who are offering services to art investors and to some degree of art collectors. So, it was clear from Knoedler, because Knoedler was so widely publicized and covered over such a long period of time. And that the science really did factor quite importantly in the determinations that people recognized that science can be a very effective and necessary tool to assess those claimed attributes. Katie Wilson-Milne:  I will just say that, I perceive the scientific analysis of Knoedler being one of the most important aspects of the proof that was used in those cases and that without the science there were such competing opinions from so called connoisseurs that it was difficult for a non-expert audience like the judge or if there had been a jury to make sense of those kinds of claims, but when there’s the scientific report it sort of – it changed the game in the case. Jamie Martin:  Yeah, I testified in the De Sole case in January 2016, and what I heard after the trial was that the jury really did rely on the scientific information – the presentation of the findings in such a straight forward, visually accessible way – allowed them to understand the weight of the scientific evidence against the works, much in the same way that the testimony about the financial analysis and accounting did to. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Right. The De Sole case, just for our audience, was one of the biggest Knoedler cases that went to trial and then ultimately settled. Steve Schindler:  So, Jamie, if we were assembling the all-time Hall of Fame of forgers, who do you think would be on the top of the list? Who is the best all-time forger in whatever categories you want to rate them? Jamie Martin:  Let’s say, so this would be modern times, this would be since Van Meegeren  because fabulous forgeries were going on in Greek and Roman time and every time since. And Thomas Hoving talks a lot about that in his book. Van Meegeren was an incredible forger who exploited what he knew conservation scientists could and could not do. He knew that we could identify pigments. He knew that we had trouble identifying the binder, the liquid or glue that you mix with pigments to make paint. So he was very careful in his selection of pigments.  In order to make his paintings dry quickly he threw in a synthetic polymer called Bakelite, which, after he created the work, he would put it an oven and heat it for some hours or days and it would be rock hard, as if the paint had aged naturally over three or 400 years. He was later found out.  He was accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and the court instructed him that if he really was a master forger, he should paint a fake Vermeer in the court room. Katie Wilson-Milne:  So he was forging Vermeers? Jamie Martin:  He was forging Vermeers, and he sold a work to Goebbels, and he was in a lot of hot water over that. Steve Schindler:  Wasn’t that also one of his defenses and the collaboration allegation, that, “Well I wasn’t collaborating, I sold him a fake, I sold the Nazis fake art, not real art.” Jamie Martin:  Yeah. It was worth a try, it was a little flimsy. The thing is is that forgers have access to the same technical literature that I do. So conservation scientists like us, we publish the results of our findings, of analyses of documented artists, and if a forger wants to go and read our findings and try to replicate the same materials, theoretically they can do that. And there is a lot of evidence that forgers do look at technical literature. The best forgers I've seen – well, the worst forger I've seen, is a man named William Toy and he was creating fake paintings in Louisiana. His downfall was his love of cats. Katie Wilson-Milne:  That’s a classic downfall! Jamie Martin:  He had 20 or 30 cats in his home, and I did the project for the FBI, and they gave me memory sticks from cameras that showed cats all over his house, including cats on the table where he made his fakes. And in every one of the fake works I examined for the FBI I found cat hair embedded. So he was not a careful forger, but the forgers – Steve Schindler:  There were lot of lessons in that story. Jamie Martin:  Yes. Steve Schindler:  Some involved cats. Jamie Martin:  Yeah, don’t paint around cats and don’t wear polar flees when you’re creating an old master. The better forgers, the forgers that really had the painting skill, the kind of skill that I learned when I was painting, would have to be Beltracchi and then one other forger who’s name I refuse to speak publically, because he is absolutely unrepentant about his work.  But he’s probably the most technically gifted painter-forger I've ever seen. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And never caught. Jamie Martin:  No, caught. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Well, he was caught but not punished. Jamie Martin:  I caught him many times, but he was never indicted and he was never brought to account. Katie Wilson-Milne:  We’ll post links to some of these references. Steve Schindler:  We’ve also seen him bragging about his accomplishments and it’s frustrating. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yeah he speaks often in public in New York about his great skills. Steve Schindler:  We could do this probably for another hour, but we know you have places to go and every good thing has to come to an end, but thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. Jamie Martin:  You’re welcome, it’s always a pleasure. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Until next time I'm Katie Wilson Milne. Steve Schindler:  And I'm Steve Schindler bringing you the Art Law Podcast. A podcast exploring the places where art intersects with and interferes with the law. Katie Wilson-Milne:  And vice versa. Produced by Jackie Santos

Oh Friends, I’ve been dying to share this episode with you! Today on the show I’m pleased to welcome Jamie Clinard, who owns the shop Saturday Morning Pancakes. She creates adorable t-shirts for moms and kids inspired by 90s hip hop. You’ll have to head to the show notes to check out Jamie’s hilarious and so adorable shirts. What makes this interview so exciting and so incredible is that by digging into Facebook and Instagram ads last summer, Jamie has taken her business from being a nice hobby ($500-$1,000 a month in income) to hitting $1 Million in sales in March of 2017! She told me she’s on track to do $2.6 Million for her business this year(!!!) Listen Now And, no, Jamie didn’t start teaching others how to grow a business to get these amazing results. She doesn’t have all these hidden revenue streams or $1,000 products she’s selling. She just dug deep and focused on her t-shirt shop. Jamie got busy serving her customers well, finding new customers, creating ads, testing audiences, and scaling what’s working. That’s all she’s done, and she’s hit $1M in sales! When Jamie reached out to me to tell me what a difference Facebook ads have made in her business, I was seriously stunned!!   Now I KNOW Facebook ads work, but to go from a hobby biz to a 7-figure biz in less than a year?! They’re even more powerful than I realized! I hope you will listen to this interview with an open mind. Don’t set up barriers for yourself and think, “well, Jamie must have something special that I don’t.” Or “Jamie just got lucky.” Or “Great for Jamie, but this won’t work for me.” I want you to know Jamie is a SAHM, just like me and just like you. She grew her business in the margins. She was tinkering with ads during naptime and bedtime, and her business started taking off! In fact, after the first month when business really exploded, she had to turn her ads off because she was getting SO much business. She took the time to hire the right employees, set up the right systems, and then she turned the ads back on for massive growth! I hope hearing from Jamie will get you excited at what’s possible when you use Facebook ads to grow your business! 4:00 - A Shop That Started...Thanks To Pancakes! Jamie is also a mom of two kids, a 4-year-old girl and 18-month-old little boy. She worked in gang prevention before she got pregnant. She loved her work, but when she was expecting her daughter, her family decided it was time to pursue something different. There’s so much negativity in the world that Jamie wanted to find an outlet to bring more light and laughter to people. Jamie has always been a fan of 90’s rap and hip hop. In college she created a playlist called ‘Saturday Morning Pancakes’ to crank up every Saturday morning while she made pancakes for her roommates. They were the kinds of songs you just HAD to dance to! So when she thought about a company name, that was the first thing that popped into her mind. She thought about how funny it would be to incorporate hip hop phrases into kids clothing… turning something “tough” into something funny and cute. And it worked! People loved it. Saturday Morning Pancakes has taken off. (Just wait until you hear the behind the scenes!) 7:24 - Best Seller From The Beginning Jamie’s first tee design is actually still her best seller -‘Regulators Mount Up’. The song is so popular and well-known, but the twist of the kid tricycle is just so funny. That’s why Jamie thinks the tee has sold well. 8:40 - Crazy Business Growth...Thanks to Facebook Ads! We’ve been hinting a lot about Jamie’s crazy growth, let’s get to it! Until the summer of 2016, Jamie was doing everything for her business -- from the screen printing and shipping, to the marketing and designing, in her garage - with two kids in the house! Something snapped in Jamie and she wanted more from her business. With that motivation, she started researching Facebook ads, Instagram marketing, and email newsletters. It was pretty overwhelming to tackle all at once! So Jamie decided to pick one method and roll with it. It was around this time that Jamie found FB Brilliance. She was in a PR-focused group called Cupcake Magazine. She asked if anyone knew anything about Facebook Ads, and a member directed her to Brilliant Business Moms! She found us thanks to that group, and joined our course. It took Jamie two months to get through the content with two little ones at home, but it was exciting! She kept pushing past the tech hurdles and tougher parts of mastering ads, and she finally got her ads up and running! Jamie’s first ads were okay, but once she sat down and thought about her customer, it all started to come together. Jamie started thinking about all of the websites she would visit online, and all the interests she had, and she used that to narrow in on her targeting and show her ads to the right people. She started testing a few audiences at once, and things really started snowballing! As Jamie’s sales started to grow in a big way, her husband finally told her, “You need to turn off the ads!” She got so many orders that it was almost scary! She knew she couldn’t continue to run the business on her own. Jamie and her husband sat down together to refocus, and make a plan. Jamie hired a fantastic college girl to help her with shipping, and the business kept growing the more she scaled her ads. It was really fun...and addicting! After a few growth spurts, Jamie was able to get some warehouse space and hire even more staff to handle fulfillment and shipping. With all this growth, Jamie is still really involved in her business. She does all her Facebook ads and product design herself, but she has a team that helps her ship, and a company that helps her screenprint her tees. 13:20 - Nobody Can Nail The Heart Of Your Brand Like You Can Jamie tried hiring an ad agency to help with Facebook ads, because she thought there might be a lot of information she didn’t know. But… the ad agency totally bombed! They were targeting all sorts of strange interests and creating ads that just didn’t resonate with Jamie’s ideal customers. This experience helped Jamie realize she REALLY was the person who knew her business best! At the end of the day, a big fancy ad agency can’t capture what makes your business unique as much as you can. No one else has that special sauce! In our case Ellen, our team member, is perfect at making ads exactly how I envision them. Jamie also has an awesome team member  Carli, who is their Social Media Manager and always hits the nail on the head with her funny posts. Jamie’s first hire was her General Manager, Jenn, who is in charge of all operations. (To meet her entire, awesome team, just visit their about page!) It is scary to let go, but oftentimes letting go in some areas will allow you to grow! Isn’t it hard to be a mom and CEO? 16:00 - Tips For Hiring A Team We always recommend hiring for personality. That really matters! Jamie has found that her customers really connect with her team! They love getting to see them in action. Her team shares hilarious videos on Instagram stories, and Jamie loves it when fans write to her saying, ‘Your Team Is So Cute!’. 16:50 - Just HOW Big Did She Grow? To give you a sense of how much Jamie’s business has grown: she has 9 employees, a shared warehouse with an aftermarket company, and a shared space with a non-profit. Her business is bringing in six figures each month. “I never thought this was possible in my LIFE! I didn’t even think six figures in a YEAR was achievable!” 18:14 - Crushing Business Goals at SMP Okay, so I have to go on a little rant here. A lot of us mompreneurs receive patronizing comments on a regular basis: ‘“Oh honey, your cute little business” - that kind of thing. And it’s so frustrating! All of us are capable of six figure years and more!! We need to ignore the patronizers who think we just have a cute hobby. Our businesses can be so much more than that if we want them to be! In fact, Saturday Morning Pancakes is already a seven-figure company! (That’s still a goal of ours here at Brilliant Business Moms!) When Jamie hit a million in sales for the year, she was so in the grind trying to make sure everything was working, that she almost missed the milestone! (It happened in March of this year!) Once she realized that her company had surpassed seven figures, she and her husband did have a celebratory beer on the couch, and kept on working hard. “I would say to myself, ‘It’s working! It’s working! I hope it keeps working!’ I kept thinking I would wake up one morning and the ads would suddenly not work.” So far, Jamie’s business just keeps on growing, and now, she’s got a huge base of happy customers who will continue to come back and buy from her again and again! 21:00 - Why You Shouldn’t Set an Ads Budget So you ladies might freak when you hear how much Jamie is spending on ads, but stick with us to hear her ROI! Jamie determines how much to put into a given ad set (a particular audience that she’s showing a particular ad to) based on whether she’s getting sales for $6 or less from that ad set. If a couple of days go by and Jamie’s cost per sale is much higher than $6, she’ll turn off that ad set. And if she’s getting sales conversions for as little as $1 to $2 each, she will scale those ads aggressively! At first, Jamie started with ads for 2 t-shirt designs, and tested 5 different audiences per shirt. These days, she’ll often have 7 different ads going to 7-10 ad sets (audiences) inside each campaign. Jamie never caps her budget. If your ads are doing well, and earning you profitable sales, don’t limit your success by capping! Early on Jamie and her husband DID experience some moments of panic: “Oh my gosh! We’re spending $500 a day on ads!” In March, when they hit 7 figures, they probably spent $1,000 a day - and made $5,000 or more back in sales on that same day. Again, she always bases her spend off of her conversion metric:  $6 sales conversions or less = scale up baby! You might have some growing pains at first, but if you’re making profitable sales and can fill your orders, keep scaling! Hint: This is EXACTLY how we do things here at Brilliant Business Moms too, and I never would have hit six figures so quickly without this strategy! (And, yes, Jamie checks on her ads at least 3 times a day to make sure they’re still profitable :) 24:05 - A Great Big Ads Mistake Since Jamie is earning such a great profit from her ads already, one day of having a loss with her ads would be a bummer, but it wouldn’t end her business or anything! And of course, Jamie has setbacks or days when the ads perform less well than others. Jamie told me about the time when she meant to increase an ad set budget to $50 a day, but accidentally changed it to $5,000 per day! She didn’t catch the mistake for almost 3 hours!!! Eeek!!! Sales went through the roof, but she DOES NOT recommend this method! Her cost per sales  conversion was $30 each, so Jamie was losing a bit of money on each sale. Thankfully she caught her mistake quickly enough and didn’t spend the entire $5,000! It was more like $300, with some sales thrown in to recoup most of those costs. Jamie’s story totally cracks me up, because it sounds like something I would do! We all have goof-ups, but usually they’re just opportunities for growth and knowing what not to do next time :) 25:30 - Why Spending Big Can Mean Big Profits It’s easy to spend $1,000 a day when you’re getting profitable sales. In Jamie’s case, if she’s spent $30,000 on ads in a month, she’s made about $100,000 in sales that month - or more! Jamie says she’s getting back 3x her Facebook ad investment. If for every dollar I give Facebook they give me back three or four dollars in return? Well, I’ll keep giving them dollars all day long! Cause here’s the thing:  You can decide not to spend money on ads and work your buns off to earn $10,000 month all on your own. And I know you can do it!   But think about all the extra cash Jamie gets in the door from ads. She’s working the same amount as that solopreneur bringing in $10,000/month, but in Jamie’s case, she’s bringing in $70,000/month after she accounts for her ad spend. Even if you then factor in her growing team and say, half of those profits go to expenses, Jamie’s still coming out way ahead at $35,000/month in her pocket.  (This is just a general example for you to see why ads can be amazing for your business!) “It felt like magic,” Jamie said. Scaling Facebook ads for massive sales can be easy when you have a great product and you know your target market really well. And the more ads you run, the better you get at knowing what your customers will respond to! 26:50 - Campaign Structure Most of Jamie’s campaigns are optimized for conversions and then she chooses the purchase event. Facebook is so good at optimizing whatever action you tell them to! I’ve started optimizing for purchases with my $15 mini classes. I can show my ads to a cold audience, get super affordable purchases, and get a 2-3x ROI on my ad spend. And here’s a quick tip! Facebook has a neat resource called Facebook Blueprint. Sometimes they’ll do mini classes to help your ads experience. The teaching style is a bit robotic, but sometimes the instructors will totally nerd out and give you insider info! This is a recent tip I learned inside a Facebook Blueprint class:  People who are strong clickers are different than strong converters. Some people assume a traffic campaign will be enough -- just to get clicks and eyes on their site. But there’s way more competition for those clickers. And the clickers aren’t necessarily the same people who will convert into a customer. Just something to keep in mind as you run ads. 29:10 - Getting Started With Facebook Ads So what did Jamie’s first ad look like and how did it do? Her first ad was...also her worst ad! The very first ad Jamie ran was a promo saying they hit 10,000 followers on Instagram. She had 30 Facebook followers at the time. Needless to say, the results weren’t great! After taking our course, Jamie’s first ‘real’ ad was for one of her adult tee shirts that read ‘But First Gangsta Rap’ with a selfie of her wearing it. She was targeting cold audiences as she hadn’t quite figured out lookalike audiences just yet. But her sales were profitable! Jamie says she tried targeting from every angle to narrow in on her ideal customers, and probably 90% of the audiences she tested were not successful, but the 10% that were she threw everything at them and made massive sales! Jamie’s purchase pixel was already in place to track those sales and measure exactly how much it was costing her per sale for a given audience she was targeting. 31:05 - How Much Should You Spend to Know if it’s Working? Some of Jamie’s audiences convert immediately, low and quickly. Those are the ones she pushes money towards. Some audiences have no sales for 3 days, but all of a sudden they take off like wildfire. Jamie gives each ad set about 3 days at $5 a day before calling it quits. And if she has a gut feeling to push one audience a bit further, she’ll go with it! The more you run ads, the more you’ll get a feel for what’s worth hanging onto and what you can stop on day 1 because you just KNOW it’s not going to work out! 32:33 - First Month Ad Results Jamie can describe her results best by growth. She started advertising after finishing FB Brilliance in August. She experienced an immediate growth in sales of 500%. It was fast! And she instantly became a crazy person with Facebook ads. She really wanted to push things off the ground. She was researching audiences and checking her ads every 6 hours. “You can’t give up right away if it doesn’t go well,” Jamie cautions. She went through about 20 audiences before one worked. But once it worked, it REALLY WORKED. I still remember Jamie emailing me at the end of last August telling me about her month of 17k in sales! Things took off for her really quickly because she was constantly testing and tweaking her ads strategy! The selfie with her tee shirt was her only ad she was running at the time, but then she created ads for her ‘Regulators’ kid tee. Facebook tends to like women’s shirts better than their kids’ shirts, which is interesting! 34:40 - Way to go Facebook! I see Jamie’s ads in my Instagram feed all the time! I’m someone who sees a product I love, and I will buy it right away! Way to go Facebook, very smart with the targeting ;) The Facebook pixel is seriously awesome, you guys. They will go out and find people who will give you sales at the most affordable rate! 35:50 - Mind Blown With Lookalike Audiences Delving into Lookalike audiences really blew Jamie away. She did a lookalike audience based on her website visitors at first. Then she created an audience based on people who watched a marketing video SMP produced. Jamie has created lookalikes of people who have visited certain pages on her website, and a lookalike of her customers. You can get really deep with it! It’s amazing what Facebook can do! 36:31 - So Many Lookalike Options! I, Beth Anne, am currently running ads to build my email list. Let me give you an idea of how many lookalike audiences I’m leveraging: I have a lookalike of everyone on my email list I have lookalikes of people who have visited certain blog posts I have a value-based lookalike (which is a new feature Facebook rolled out where they take all your customer data and try to find people who will spend the most with you!) I have general customer lookalikes I have lookalikes of webinar signups You can do so many things with lookalikes, and the coolest part is, no one else’s lookalike will be just like yours - so you’ve got all these killer audiences of millions of people that only you can really target to! (Ok not exactly but… you won’t be competing person-for-person the way you would with an interest-based  audience!) 37:20 - Are Lookalikes the Best Performers? Or Interest-Based Audiences? Cold traffic sometimes will perform better than lookalikes for Jamie! If the shirt she’s advertising has been around a while, then cold traffic audiences are better. If it’s a new shirt she’s introducing to her audience, lookalikes or retargeting ads are best. One caveat:  sometimes Jamie finds that her ads will suddenly stop performing. What she’ll have to do then is change up a new picture and post text for the same shirt, reset the ad, and the sales turn back on. This is all part of being a savvy business owner! 38:36 - Jamie’s Best Ads Let’s have a look at some of the best ads Jamie has run. The first ‘But First Gangster Rap’ Tee, featuring her daughter’s preschool teacher! Image: Selfie type of photo that moms relate to. It’s totally cool, casual mom style! Copy: Coffee is great, but for reals, though. Nothing gets our day started quite like a little Biggie Smalls, am I right? Get free shipping with promo code → GRFreeShip Grab yours here -> Bitly Link 40:20 - Talking To Your Audience Like a Friend I love how conversational, casual, and fun Jamie’s ad is! This is how you would share about t-shirt you really like with a friend. That’s why it resonates so much with people. Jamie says she doesn’t want her company to feel like a big name brand. Saturday Morning Pancakes include gifs and memes in all of her emails. Jamie responds best when she can laugh with someone and, let’s be honest, who doesn’t!? 41:11 - Another Winning Ad Copy: First Gansta Rap. Then Coffee. Then I do the things. Grab this super soft gangster rap tee and turn your cold, cozy mornings into hip hop awesomeness. Get your free shipping code here → GRFreeShip And if you remember back to Melissa Kaiserman’s episode, she also said her customers don’t often use her free shipping codes! They just love the product!  It’s nice to include coupon codes, but don’t be surprised if most of your new customers don’t use them! 42:57 - Pricing Tees Jamie charges $31 for an adult tee and $21 for her kids sizes. So again, people aren’t coming to her for cheap tees, but they are coming to her for these hilarious and fabulous products that tell the world what they’re all about! Another factor in pricing the tees is that they’re sourced with high quality fabric, which makes her costs higher. Don’t be afraid to charge what you’re worth, and of course, leave enough wiggle room so you can afford to pay to acquire a new customer.  THAT’S how you scale up a business! 44:00 - Has Manufacturing Changed? Does Jamie screenprint her own shirts? SMP does work with a screenprinter now, due to the quantity. There’s just too many to do on her own! But Jamie does still screenprint a few of her shirts. During Christmas of 2016, Jamie was still screenprinting 60% of her tees, and her heating element went out! She was desperate for a solution, and even tried baking her tees in her oven! Jamie says she was desperate to make things work and not keep her customers waiting! 45:46 - Another Ad This ad is a flat lay of a t-shirt that says ‘You're The Wu To my Tang’ with a cute pair of sunglasses and cut-off jean shorts. Copy: GREAT NEWS! We are now offering our Wu Tang tees in another color! Woot woot for Wu Tang! Grab yours here: (bitly link to the shop page) Get 10% OFF with the code WuTang. (And shocker again! Not a lot of people are using the 10% off coupon!) 46:22 - What’s Working For Jamie Right Now Jamie has a great product that appeals to a specific niche. She’s always testing marketing. What else is working for her right now? “Build a community! People know when they're being sold to,” Jamie says. “I love my customers, and I’m sure we’d all be best friends if we had the chance!” I know just like Jamie, you and your customers are passionate about all the same things. You all have a story. Jamie has extended her branding and connection to her customers all the way down to the packaging of her products! Everything she does is light and fun! If you’re just trying to make a quick buck, people will know. Your business should be community-oriented. 48:00 - Loyal Customers Jamie says she’s always had a strong, loyal customer base. About 70% of her customers are new this year because she’s just growing like crazy. But once she earns a customer, they ARE repurchasing! This is why even if you can just break even on ads but get a bunch of loyal customers for years to come, it's worth it! 50:04 - Jamie’s Adorable Mom Moment You’ll have to listen for this adorable burn from Jamie’s 4-year-old daughter! I was cracking up! 51:20 - FB Brilliance is Opening its Doors Again! Was that not incredible hearing from Jamie!? Here’s the exciting news: If you’re ready to dig into Facebook and Instagram just like Jamie did and explode your business growth, I’m opening the doors to my course on Facebook advertising, FB Brilliance, this month! The doors will open Thursday, September 21st and they will ONLY be open for a week. I will close the doors Wednesday, September 27th - and that’s it, friends! I won’t re-open the course til next April. But I don’t want you to wait 7 months to learn a strategy that will get you the biggest bang for your buck and help you scale your business like Jamie did. In the meantime, I’m running a scholarship program from Tuesday, September 12th - Saturday, September 16th. This scholarship will be hosted inside my new Facebook group FB Ads For Brilliant Mamas. Five motivated ladies who submit their answers to all 5 assignments I give during my lessons will receive lifetime access to FB Brilliance, for free! You want to be in this group, and you WANT to be eligible for this scholarship by completing our totally doable assignments. And if you’re not sure about FB Brilliance, you still want to be in the group because you’ll learn a lot from my live sessions! (Jamie is also going to make a surprise appearance in the group towards the end of September!) Don’t hold yourself back! I know you can do it! Even if you have doubts that you can succeed, we will all be there to rally around you and help! And you can still grab our cheat sheet, 10 Things You Need to Know Before You Run Your First Ad right here: brilliantbusinessmoms.com/facebookadscheatsheet Keep In Touch With Jamie SaturdayMorningPancakes.com  

He’s a Phantasm addict! He’s a Phantasm addict! (Like the Buzzcocks song, yeah? Does the reference work? Whatever.) That addict is Jamie and after getting a taste of “Batman – Mask of the Phantasm” he need more Phantasm in his veins (on the podcast). So Jamie sat Rich and Anthony down in bean bag chairs … Continue reading "147: SFFCH – Phantasm"

We're all fans of Prince in our own way but the Uglee Truth's Producer Dub is a HUGE fan. So Jamie decided it would be a good idea to give him an outlet to process the emotions related to the passing of his favorite artist. On this Uglee "eeXtra" Jamie and Producer Dub pour a glass (or three) of "purple juice" and crack the mic so he can share several stories and favorite moments from his Prince-past.

The Ugs could not be more excited that their very first Uglee Truth interview is with Chef #NickNappi. As of this episode, Nick is a Top 4 finalist on FOX's season 6 of #MasterChef. If you're a fan of the show you'll know Chef Nappi to be a genuine and unfiltered man's man... as well as one very talented chef. And, guess what? He's a fan of the #UgleeTruth too. So Jamie and Paula were delighted to get some quality time with the very "fedora-ble" Chef Nappi for this episode. We hope you enjoy it and please share the show with your friends and make sure to watch Chef Nick on #MasterChef every Wednesday night on #FOX. #realmencook #TeamNick