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Today's Phone Tap victim was just told her bosses hired some outside help to cut costs. So… Jeff is posing as the consultant to let her know about the rude awakening that's on its way to her office…

Today's Phone Tap victim was just told her bosses hired some outside help to cut costs. So… Jeff is posing as the consultant to let her know about the rude awakening that's on its way to her office…

Co-host & Podcast Guest:  Kris Parsons:  kris@parsons-pr.comKris' Website:  https://parsons-pr.com/  Transcription:Kris Parsons00:02Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:16Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe. And I'm sitting here in our wonderful studios in Woodbury, New Jersey. And I've got a great guest today, her name is Kris Parson, and I'm gonna let her talk in a minute, but not quite yet. Because I want to take a minute and just review with everybody what our podcast is all about. We're changing the rules. And that's because we're just tired of putting up with everybody's rules. And you know, when you live by somebody else's rules, you're not living your own life. That's true. So we find that the luckiest people in the world are really good at handling rules. You know, they know that rules are necessary, they know that we need some structure, but they also know that we've been cluttered with rules throughout our own life. And so what they want to do is design their own lives free of rules. And you know, life is not about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself.Kris Parsons01:16Oh, that's interesting.Ray Loewe01:17So with that, let me introduce Kris Parsons, of Parsons, PR. And Kris has been with us many, many times. And actually, Kris is going to be our co-host. for the month of August. Yes, I'm excited. And she's going to be digging up past guests. It's going to be an interesting session. So Kris, introduce yourself first. You can get the plugin about Parsons PR if you want. Okay. Okay. And then we'll get into the good stuff.Kris Parsons01:44Great. Well, thank you, right, and I hope, everyone's doing well, today, we finally have a cool spell of this crazy, crazy weather in the east. Those of you in the West might not know, but you've got your own problems in the West. Anyway, Kris Parsons, Parsons PR, I have my own PR firm for about eight years now. And I've been doing various things. And what I like most is coming on Ray's show and talking about changing the rules. But that's not all you do. I mean, the nice thing about the luckiest people in the world is you've done many things. Ray Loewe02:17So why don't you tell me what I've done?  It might be revealing.Kris Parsons02:23You've probably forgot because you're involved in that? Well, you know, you started off with a series of books and courses. This was after you had a whole giant career with college money, and were interviewed all over the country about that helping people save money for college, right? Yep. So now then you decided to pivot, you decided to change. And now you're doing the luckiest people in the world? Which do you remember when I first met you? I said to you, oh my gosh, how are we going to introduce you? That's the longest name in the world. Hi, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com, but you wouldn't let me change it.Ray Loewe02:56But it's expression because it's who I am and you know, it's the interesting thing is I have a lot of restaurants I frequent, or at least I did before this pandemic thing. And they have no idea what my real name is. But they know I'm the luckiest guy in the world. And so it's branding.Kris Parsons03:17Right. Well, it's also conversation-starting, particularly when you're sitting at the bar.Ray Loewe03:21Yep. So anyway, what we're going to talk about, over the next few minutes here is we decided to do something really different for the month of August, right. But it's not different. We are bringing some of the luckiest people in the world, on the air. And we're going to show why they're lucky. And we're going to talk about their journeys. And what's happened is, a lot of the people that you're helping me bring back on now have been on before pre-pandemic, or during the pandemic, right? Yeah, we had both and we're gonna find out what happened to them. And we're going to find out how the luckiest people in the world make changes to facilitate this ongoing life that they have, which just gets better and better and better and better.Kris Parsons04:17Right. And I think what's exciting about this, and I think it's a great topic for August, it's subtle, you know, we ask people to come on and to come on as guests to come to your coffee and cocktails. I don't know if everybody knows the coffee and cocktails that was kind of created out of the pandemic where we would have a virtual networking session, right, we'd have coffee in the morning and cocktails in the evening and kind of just have people talk. And then the nice thing is, afterwards, if you wanted to go online and talk to somebody specific who was at the coffee or cocktails, we sent you the email, same thing you would do at a regular cocktail hour and hand somebody your business card. So that was kind of nice, and I think the subtle changes that people has a lot of people we had on there, met somebody, got a job offer, decided to partner, had somebody help them change their business, it was kind of fun to watchRay Loewe05:09But you know, it was so much better because you know, when you're stuck with somebody at a real cocktail party, you can't get away from them, here you can have internet failure. You can disappear and say, Oh, I'm sorry. But the interesting thing is that we realize that we haven't been able to see people right, face to face. And you know, conversation is such an important part of the lives of the luckiest people in the world. It is, and it's what drives things. And you know, I went on somebody else's community not too long ago, and I was asking him, why community is so important to them. So let me read a couple things. Over here. So some of the comments I got were, the reason that I'm part of a community is the commonality that I have with other people. And that I find that when I get together with people that have the same mindset, as I have several things happen. Number one, I feel comfortable and I feel safe. Good, okay. It's fun. I am able to find ever-expanding growth because I've got people who kind of think the same way I do. And I can play on their growth I can look at their experiences, and I can emulate what I want to emulate. One of the comments I got is that communities have a lot of the same people going the same direction, but often for different reasons. Okay. Most members of communities are there because they're seeking ways to be better. Okay. Okay. And, one of the most interesting one is, this young lady said, I go to these events, and often don't say much, you know, but I'm sitting there, and I get a chance to work through my own stuff, while I listen to others, and get energized and re-excited about life.Kris Parsons07:19No, it's absolutely, I mean, I feel that when I come on to the morning, coffee hours are the cocktail hours. And when I listen to the podcast, because, you know, we talk about change, and we say it's hard to change, but you can get something from hearing how somebody else did it. You know you can get Oh, they did it that way. Well, maybe I can try it. And if you do subtle things, you find all the sudden you're changing, you don't even know it. Sure. Ray Loewe07:43So let's talk a little bit about a couple of people that we know are going to be on in August. Okay, great, and what we hope to get from them. So let's start with a guy you know very well, Jeff Lincoln.Kris Parsons07:55Yes, yes. All right, Jeff, the coffee man, Jeff, coffee, man, Jeff, Jeff and I actually have known each other for many, many years. In fact, our children when they were little, and our children are in their 20s. Now, we played together we did Halloween trick or treating together. It was really great. And he and his wife, Linda Passero, own Passero'scoffee. And they've had that for years. And I've watched them grow and expand I might not be correct here. But I think he's got four locations. But he had to close a few down because of the pandemic. So we kind of reconnected with him during the pandemic, where he was kind of I have to kind of rework my business plan. Now, he always had the idea of doing more online shopping, more online coffee selling, more online events. That was always in his plan. But he didn't have enough time, because he had all these stores open when he had to close them on the pandemic that gave him the time. And he used us by being on our podcast and following some of your ideas to kind of take that step and be more serious with that.Ray Loewe09:01And I know when he came on one of our virtual coffee events. Somebody got so excited about learning about coffee that they asked him if he would do a virtual coffee tasting. Yes. And I think he worked that into his plan and I know I hired him to do a family virtual coffee tasting event. Right? Kris Parsons09:22That was very clever. I like that.Ray Loewe09:23But this is what happens when people get together and have conversations. It's not that all the ideas are new, although sometimes new ideas come into play. But it's getting that impetus and that energy going. It's sometimes you get permission from the group. And permissions is an interesting word here you get permission from the group to take the next step and move. Kris Parsons09:51Right, right, exactly what I think this is what I like so much about the things that you're doing with your company is that you said you give them permission. It's a safe place. There's no rules. It's not like, oh, who's supposed to speak and what happens next? It's really just a conversation. And some of the conversations that come out of it are completely in left field. But they lead to something else. And it's and it's very exciting and we connect people.Ray Loewe10:13Yeah. So Jeff is going to be a guest, yes, he's gonna be on August 4, yeah,he's gonna come back and talk a little bit about his experience so that we can learn how he was able to handle this business situation could have been disastrous. And yet, guess what, He's here. He's reopening. He's excited about things. You know, it all worked. And, and I would like to think we were part of that. Maybe we were and maybe we weren't,Kris Parsons10:43I think you were in fact, that's why Jeff's coming on because he says, You were, I mean, like I said, we give people sometimes the little kernel that they need to take that next step. They might have had it already in their head. But this is a nice way and the coffee, we just by introducing him to, you've got like 1000 - 2000 followers, just introducing those folks to his coffee is benefit enough.Ray Loewe11:06Yeah. And I even got to taste some coffee that I wouldn't have tasted otherwise. Kris Parsons11:10That's right, he has very unusual names of his coffee. I love that.Ray Loewe11:14Okay, so one of the other people that we're bringing back is another friend of yours. I have a lot of friends, Will Becker. Okay. And tell us a little bit about Will and give us kind of a preview. We don't know what he's going to say. But maybe we do. Kris Parsons11:29Well, the reason why I think Will is going to be very interesting is Will was in transition. He's another friend that I've known for years, he and his wife, Anna, who's an artist, she's amazing. He was in transition for a job. And he kept going to interviews and not getting the job because he kept kind of saying maybe the same thing or saying what he thought the interviewee or interviewer wanted to hear as an interviewee. But then, when he came to one of our podcasts, or you interviewed him, somewhere, he said, You taught him how to find out what you want. Like, instead of having the interview be about I'm giving the company what they want, what do you want, and bring more of yourself into the interview. And he did that. And the next interview, he got the job.Ray Loewe12:19You know, this is one of the mistakes that we all make, you know, we try to be somebody else. That's true. We try to live somebody else's life. And you know, we all have a brand that is uniquely ours.Kris Parsons12:31We just don't know it a lot. We don't know. Ray Loewe12:33Yeah and hopefully one of the things that we're helping people do here is to figure out what their brand is by listening to the way other people package themselves. And we have some online courses that I think were extremely helpful to Will in this case, but we're going to find out because he's going to come back and he's going to talk a little bit about his journey, and where he's going next. And that's what I'm really interested in because life is a continuing journey.Kris Parsons13:05I won't share it now. Because I want you to listen. And that's going to be August 17th. Will's going to talk to you about the 10 things, the 10 things you ask people, and I'm not going to tell you what it is I really want everyone to tune in. Especially a lot of people there's a lot of people in transition now, a lot of people looking for jobs. It's very interesting what Will has learned about himself what he's learned about others, and about perception, about the perception that people have of you, and what you think they perceive. And oftentimes we're really wrong. What we think people perceive of us.Ray Loewe13:40Well, yeah, because we like to think about what's real. And we all know from reality TV and everything else going on. That doesn't make any difference. It's all about perception. Okay, so another person that I know we're going to be talking to is Bill Hughes. Now Bill Hughes has been kind of a regular he's actually going to be one of our co-hosts out in the future. I think it's October, but Bill is a thinker. He's a very, very smart guy. He does a tremendous amount of reading.  He's on our coffee and cocktail event, almost always.Kris Parsons14:20Yes, I know he's a regular which we like because if not, sometimes we have little lean, lean days, and he's good to have on there.Ray Loewe14:27Well, one of the things I think he does is is he just observes and, he looks at what other people are doing. And he doesn't say an awful lot on these things. You know, he just sits there and listens. And I think the value that he gets from all of this is observing what other people are doing and that affects his life and he's also an executive coach and that helps him explain concepts and things to other people.Kris Parsons14:53Right. Well, you know, I have a favorite saying that and I think Bill falls right into this. The written word is your master, the spoken word is your equal, and the silent word is your servant. So I feel that Bill is great like that because he's a wonderful listener. And he's very silent, so when he does open his mouth to say something, people are all they want to hear what he has to say. Because it's important.Ray Loewe15:19I didn't know you were that erudite. I have all sorts of little things. And I didn't know that I knew the word erudite, either. So you know, so whatever it is, okay, so who else might we look forward to?Kris Parsons15:32Oh, well, another colleague of mine, and I've been working with her for years, Sharon McCullough, she is the owner and CEO of Expert Events. And she has an interesting story, because she like me, we have a little bit of downtime with COVID, all the events completely shut down. In fact, that first week in March, or whenever that was, we shut down four events that week. And these are huge events, like hundreds of 1000s of people. And it was pretty amazing how we had to pivot. But she is talking about how she's changing and how we're all changing with this virtual, you know, now, even going forward, where we all can see one another. Events are now all looking to include some kind of a hybrid, where you can still tune in to watch it because some of these galas people don't even like to come to, they just like to give them money and see what's going on. And now you can do it virtually. Ray Loewe16:26And it saves a ton of money. And parking. And parking. But interesting when Sharon comes on now, Sharon has been on before.Kris Parsons16:35She has all these people have been on before on their own particular podcast. So I encourage everyone, please go back to Ray's website, the luckiest people in the world, and find some of these episodes, because they're on there all the time. And so you can listen to them again, you know, they're all cataloged, they're all archived. Ray Loewe16:54And one of the big things here is that we kind of caught a lot of these people when they were getting shut down. Yes, when things were going the wrong way. And now they're back going the right way. And I think what we're going to learn a lot is how these people think, how they solve problems, and how they're always looking for a positive solution. And they find it right.Kris Parsons17:19I was very impressed by everyone. There's not a lot of naysayers. I mean, this was a tough time, and everybody was very positive and said, Okay, here's what we have to do now. And that's the whole essence of your company anyway, right?Ray Loewe17:32Yeah. And then we're gonna bring some new people on, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, some kind of what much more famous than we are? People? Okay, well, we're going to bring some Philly sportspeople on. And again, we're going to look at their journey. Because, again,  it's all different ways that we can think about life and the idea is if we can find that niche that fits us, if we can brand ourselves the right way, all of a sudden, life just takes on new meaning. And it starts to get exciting, and it starts to move forward. Right?Kris Parsons18:05Well, you know, they say that people are brought into your life for different reasons, sometimes to take it from step a to step B. And I just really encourage people to participate in some of the things that you're doing now your website, your coffee hours and we're looking to have the friends connection come back now we've done it virtual for a couple times. But now we're looking to have a comeback. We might actually do it in Philadelphia with Jeff at his coffee roastery in Port Richmond, that might be fun. And we're looking to maybe go elsewhere go national to Atlanta, Georgia, like linear we might do. What is it our barbecue smoker with Kevin?Ray Loewe18:41Yeah, we're gonna bring back people who said they were master barbecuists. We're gonna find out if that's really true. Exactly, exactly. So what are some of the other things that we're going to look forward to in August?Kris Parsons18:52Well, I just I would like everyone to know what you have going on. Because you started this company three or four years ago. You've built on it. You've got the podcasts, you've got your courses and books, you have a 90-day plan, right? You still have a 90-day plan to help people make change because change is hard for people. You've got your virtual coffee hours and cocktail hours. We've got the friends connection, and we hope fingers crossed, that we can bring back the travel connection soon. Ray Loewe19:20Yeah, I think the travel connection will be back next year.Kris Parsons19:23I hope so. We missed out on a fabulous cruise to Greece. That was a shame. Ray Loewe19:27Well, we'll redo it and it will be better because we know more and because we now know how to protect ourselves. And you know, we learned so much over the last year and I'm excited because over the last year we've grown in a different way. So we've interviewed some 50 people over the last year, okay, that are all luckiest people in the world. Many of them we didn't know before.Kris Parsons19:56No, we just found themRay Loewe19:58Through the connection. Through the networking caused by the other members in our community leading us to people that they think are interesting. And although we have a mission here, and the mission is to learn how to become luckier and luckier and luckier by reinventing ourselves constantly. Correct. I think the other thing that came out of here is that the luckiest people in the world, I think, are actually the most interesting people.Kris Parsons20:27They are and you know, and it makes for more interesting cocktail hours and coffee hours, right? Yeah. Nobody likes to sit and talk to a really dull person? Ray Loewe20:34Well, I don't think we've had a really dull meeting. And, one of the things that's happening is now more and more of the people that we've interviewed on our podcast are coming to our virtual coffee and cocktails. Oh, yes. And it gives us a chance to actually have a conversation with people as opposed to just hearing in a one-way monologue, what they're all about. And there's a lot to learn here, because I know one of the people who've come to the coffee session a number of times, we're not going to mention names here, but she's a young lady that's between jobs. Uh-huh. And, you know, again, it's what I think she's learning is that she doesn't necessarily just have to go back and repeat what she did before. Exactly. She's learning by listening to these other people that there are ways that you can take the best of what you did before. And focus on that, and figure out how to get rid of the junk that you did before.Kris Parsons21:37That's certainly what I did seven years ago when I opened up my own company. Ray Loewe21:41And the whole idea here is to be able to repackage things and to refigure out how to make your life better and better and better because life is short for us. And we want to make the most of it. And we want to have happy people.Kris Parsons21:55Right? And it shouldn't be afraid. I think fear steps in a lot. And you know, with money and things like that, but I think honestly if you take that first step or small steps and that's what I think we give people here with your podcasts and your you know, Friends connection, and we give people like small little kernels of wanting to try this.Ray Loewe22:16kernels, kernels what is that like corn.Kris Parsons22:18Kernels of Knowledge, kernels.Ray Loewe22:20It's jersey corn time it is. Anyway, we're about done, Kristine, So any parting comments?Kris Parsons22:28No, thank you for having me on. It's actually you know, it's kind of fun. I like to say as a PR person, I am behind the scenes, I usually put people in front. So it's nice to every now and then be on the microphone and express some of my views because I'm always propping up other people.Ray Loewe22:44And you know, keep listening to the podcast in there are gems, you know, and not everyone fits every person but they're all up on Apple iTunes. You can listen to them. And you can choose carefully which ones you only listen to, and you can fast forward through them and get the gist of things. And then I think one of the biggest things is come to coffee, virtual coffee, virtual cocktails every Thursday, and you can sign up on our website,Kris Parsons23:148:45 for the coffee and 4:45 for the cocktails, we end up getting people from the west coast to the 4:45. Because they're not going to get up at 5:30 for coffee.Ray Loewe23:26Now you never know. Right? Right. But but but the whole idea is you know, the more you show up, the more you get involved, the more we all get out of it. And it's a two-way piece here. It's what we learn from listening to others and what we get because new people participate, and we get new seeds that we can plant in our own gardens and make work.Kris Parsons23:50And you find it's a small world it becomes a smaller world. Some of the people get on I don't even know or people don't know. And then they find out they know them or they know them through somebody else. And next thing you know you have a new friend.Ray Loewe24:01Yep. All right. So Thank you, everybody, for being with us. Kris Parsons24:05Yes, Thank you. Please go to the website. Yep, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.comRay Loewe24:10I know it's long.com. But it's all one word, the luckiest people in the world.com. And once you get in your browser, you don't have to type it in anymore. That's true. All right, everybody. Have a great week. And join us again next week, when we're going to have one of Kristine's lively guest. Yeah, join us. And I'm not true which one but it's going to be interesting, amusing and fun. We'll have some previous talk to everybody later. Thank you.Kris Parsons24:39Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

So Jeff gets going… talking with Mike… next thing you know it leads to Star Wars, and Jeff SAYS he is NOT going to get to deep into it… half hour later you have a Star Wars podcast. Nerds. May the Force be with you. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jeff-sanguis-show/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jeff-sanguis-show/support

So Jeff gets going… talking with Mike… next thing you know it leads to Star Wars, and Jeff SAYS he is NOT going to get to deep into it… half hour later you have a Star Wars podcast. Nerds. May the Force be with you. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jeff-sanguis-show/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jeff-sanguis-show/support

America's children and teenagers spend tremendous amount of time on the internet and never more than during the Coronavirus pandemic, with families at home so much, people ordered food, got news and engaged with family and friends online. Youngsters whose schools closed, relied on YouTube for educational videos, attended virtual classes on Zoom and to Google Classroom and flocked to TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram for entertainment and social interaction. This cost of digital immersion has a serious health downside however, because the nation's youth have been exposed to a steady flow of marketing for fast foods, soft drinks, and other unhealthy products. Today we'll be discussing a new report from the Center For Digital Democracy entitled, "Big Food, Big Tech, and the Global Childhood Obesity Pandemic."     Interview Summary   Our guests today are Jeff Chester, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy and Senior Strategist Kathryn Montgomery, both are dogged and their work on this topic and in my mind are true pioneers.   So Jeff let's begin with you, before we dig into the nuts and bolts of the report could you explain to our listeners the role that data play in online food and beverage marketing? What kinds of data are the companies collecting and how?   Well today you no longer can separate marketing and advertising from data, data collection, data analytics, and data use, whether you're online doing any of the activities you just mentioned that kids were doing during the pandemic, where you go to the grocery store and use your loyalty card, go to the gas station, even pass a billboard, data about you is increasingly being collected, everything you do, everywhere you go, and not only you, what your family does and what your friends do and what your community does. All that is now collected and harvested. So personalized advertising can be delivered to you regardless of where you are and what you're doing. And food and beverage companies have been in the forefront taking advantage of all this data to push very unhealthy food marketing to children and teens.   So Jeff you painted this picture of a lot of data being collected of a lot of people and so I'm assuming this applies to children as well as teenagers when they're visiting the internet - that their data are being harvested and that gets used to market things specifically to them. So is that correct?   It works in a number of ways, even though there is a children's privacy law that supposedly limits the amount of data that can be collected on children under 13. In fact, companies collect huge amounts of data, they violate the law on children, and certainly teens are easily accessible by the data companies, but it's not just personal data, it's data about their families. So for example, the companies now know what mom and dad buy at the grocery store or the commercials even that the kids watch at home for example, when they're viewing streaming video or just regular television, so all that data is compiled. Let's talk about family data in addition to personal children's data, that's used to target advertising to them. What's important in the report is that today the food and beverage companies have become kind of Google's and Facebook's, the food and beverage companies are now leading data companies as well, which illustrates how much they value and understand the role that data plays in targeting audiences today, not just the United States, but throughout the world.   It's a very concerning picture, especially given that there is a law meant to protect this population that's being violated. So we'll come back a little bit later and talk about what might be done, but Kathy, how has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the way children and teens are being exposed to this food and beverage advertised in the digital world?   First of all, we know that children are already online in huge numbers, and that they're living their lives in this digital environment, they're conducting their friendships, they're interacting with people all over the world, using their mobile phones constantly, they are already in this digital ecosystem, as the industry likes to call it, 24/7. With the pandemic that was intensified, these young people were in greater numbers for a multiplicity of purposes. So they were perfect targets. They were in the crosshairs of the food industry and the tech industry constantly. And particularly for black and brown kids, this raises a lot of serious issues. And we also see some important intersections between the COVID-19 pandemic and the obesity pandemic, which is really one reason why we wrote this report. We wanted to have people understand how these two global pandemics are connected and that many of the young people who have been most at risk for COVID-19 have been those who suffer from childhood obesity and the related illnesses to that condition like diabetes, etc. These young people suffered from COVID and were more inclined to be very sick and sometimes die from it in greater numbers than other young people. And then at the same time, we have this huge pandemic of obesity that unfortunately in the US has fallen off of the public radar. That's another reason why we wanted to raise this issue and let people know about it. But in terms of black and brown youth, they are really in the cross hairs of the food industry. They are more avid users of digital media, they're on the gaming platforms in greater numbers, they're fully immersed and they're trendsetters for other young people. And the food companies have enlisted some of the icons of pop culture from these communities to promote some of the unhealthiest food you can imagine from fast food to sugar sweetened beverages and to do it through games, mobile technologies, every possible digital venue.   Let's talk just a little bit more about that if you wouldn't mind Kathy. So one might think that on the internet kids are just gonna be seeing the ads that they would have seen if they were watching TV, it would be similar things, they'd be seeing the sugar beverage company advertising its products with some athlete or some music celebrity or something, but you're painting a picture that's a little more serious than that. There are clever things that are done, it comes in different forms on the internet that can be especially hard to note as advertising, tell us a little bit more about that.   Kathryn - For a lot of people who as you say might have an understanding of commercials on television which we all can see and we can all get outraged about, but it doesn't work that way on the internet. The brands are really woven intricately into the inner relationships that young people have with digital culture. In gaming for example, you see brands woven into the so-called game play. It's done in a way that is personalized to each game player. They can crop up in the middle of a particular part of the game, they can be offered as rewards or ways to enhance your character's ability to fight a battle for example, or in some cases like with one of the Wendy's campaigns, they've created entire games based on character, so that's one example. And the other thing is that there's a lot of influencer marketing in this environment where influencers on social media will promote our brand to all their followers. And it doesn't look like advertising. It looks like recommendations, and it may be even more subtle than that.   Jeff - And unlike the commercials that many of us have grown up with, digital advertising is different, first place it learns about you. It learns what you like, what you do, how you respond, and it's able to change increasingly in real time. So for example, an ad or marketing message that you might view on your mobile phone is going to look different. It's going to be enhanced, adapted in some way. When you see the same ad, when you're on a gaming platform or a streaming video platform, these ads are increasingly personalized. And the ability to constantly track you wherever you go and use that data to create very relevant, engaging real-time advertising, which of course has been tested, measuring whether or not it triggers your unconscious and emotional spheres is one of the reasons why this powerful medium needs to be regulated.   So Jeff, the issue of marketing targeted this specific groups came up earlier, does that happen in this context?   Digital advertising works on an individual basis, on a group basis, the ability to leverage all the data that's collected today, and the fact that we live our lives in the pandemic enhanced that, on these digital platforms, enables the advertisers and marketers to create vast numbers of targeting categories. And also to understand that even if you don't buy, let's say junk food product X, that because of the habits of others who may have the same interest as you, but who do buy a junk product X, you're a potential target. And then they can then focus on you, even if you've never shown any interest in this particular food product. So there's just a growing number of ways to leverage data, to push unhealthy products, to young people that we've ever witnessed.   So I'm imagining that both the sheer amount of such marketing is of great concern, but also the fact that it's so precisely targeted and data are being used so effectively in this context probably gives the company as much more punch for every dollar they spend or every minute they have of your attention. So this is especially concerning. So Kathryn, what can be done to limit children's exposure to this type of marketing in the online world. And does the report make any specific recommendations in this regard?   We made a number of recommendations and we were so disheartened when we started this research that so little had been done recently, this was an issue that was discussed much more publicly. And a lot of us were involved in these efforts, not that many years ago where the concern about childhood obesity was really on the public agenda and companies were under some pressure to report to the Federal Trade Commission, for example, on how they were spending money to advertise to young people, and that has not happened in recent years. Interestingly, a lot of that has happened overseas. So in the EU countries, in the EU, generally in the UK and Latin America, there are stronger rules. And this issue is very much on the agenda. These are also global companies. So one of the things we've done in this report is to inform people about what's going on globally and to see how we need to look at U.S. policy in the context of global trends and the rising concerns in other countries about this issue. We have a long list of things that we recommend to policymakers and to companies. We think that the tech companies, for example, have some responsibilities and they've not stepped up to the plate on these issues. They play a major role here in the way they set up systems to facilitate and enhance this kind of marketing in the same way they did with the election. And what we learned from controversies over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, for example, so companies can do things to restrict what marketers can do on their site. So for example, we're very concerned that we need to do more to protect adolescents. They're very vulnerable to this kind of marketing. They're very much influenced by their peers. They have other kinds of vulnerabilities that make them particularly susceptible to the techniques that are used by digital marketers. We also believe that we need to look very closely at setting some clear standardized guidelines for what unhealthy food and beverages are. And I'll tell you everything we found in our report was unhealthy, whether it's the soft drinks or the French fries or the candies or the energy drinks that are commonly promoted aggressively on gaming platforms for example, we need to have clear guidelines about what can and can't be promoted. And we also need to focus on brands because if you restrict a certain product, but you don't restrict the brand, research has shown this causes young people to increase their consumption of unhealthy food. We list a whole bunch of techniques that are unfair and manipulative that needs to be addressed, particularly targeting black and brown youth. There needs to be a really clear focus on ensuring that is stopped.   So I'd like to ask Jeff in just a moment about some more of the policy implications for this and what might be feasible and effective in the context of what government can do. But Kathy, let me ask you one additional question. I know the food industry has for a number of years said, government doesn't need to regulate us because we'll regulate ourselves and they set up the children's food and beverage advertising initiative, which was an industry sponsored organization that was supposed to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy food, what happened to that? And why isn't that enough?   Kathryn - First of all they made sure that they only set up self-regulatory guidelines that applied to children under 12, not even 12 and under. So they've done nothing about adolescents at all. And they've been adamant about not wanting to do anything in terms of protecting adolescents. Most of the provisions focus on television, a few deal with digital, but not in a really adequate way. And generally what we see is there's no enforcement, there's no oversight. So you look at the techniques, you'll see that really these marketers are getting away with murder.   Jeff - And that's why the public health community and people who are concerned about public health and especially obesity need to start focusing on the food and beverage companies, as well as the platforms like Google and Facebook and take that snapshot because they are responsible for unleashing all these techniques, which we catalog. And until the industry feels the pressure, hopefully from regulators, these self-regulatory regimes will not in fact respond. What we found is not a secret. This is all known. And yet the people who were supposed to protect our nation's youth from this unhealthy group marketing simply have their heads purposely stuck in the digital sand.   So Jeff, are you any more optimistic that the social media platforms will have more effective self-regulation than the food companies do?   We're moving to a period of regulation, I think that the days of self-regulation are over, we have an unprecedented opportunity with the Federal Trade Commission now. President Biden has appointed someone who might be the most progressive champion of consumers and children and public health that we've had in decades. Her name is Lina Khan from Columbia University. She just took over a few weeks ago and we're seeing really a major overhaul. Now the Federal Trade Commission, which has the power to examine the data practices and the marketing practices, especially when it comes to the children and young people. We have a real opportunity to have the FTC act In this regard, in Congress, there is bipartisan interest to strengthen the rules that protect both young people and teens from a number of these data collection practices, which would have a direct impact on the ability of the companies to advertise and market junk food to them. And we're very helpful, right now we're on a path to try to reign in the power of big food and big tech, but it's certainly going to be an uphill battle. Too few people understand that the battlefield to protect young people's health in terms of obesity is really online.   It's nice to hear your optimism, that the FTC is one possible avenue for change. Are there other policy routes that might be effective? For example, can the states do anything on this level?   You are absolutely correct Kelly that the state attorney generals are taking a leading position in trying to break up Facebook and Google and Amazon really can and should play a role. The state of Ohio attorney general, a Republican has proposed that Google in essence, be declared a public utility, which would allow all kinds of regulation in state to protect the consumers, to protect the public. So, yes, there's also opportunities at the state level and even perhaps at the municipal level, in terms of the regulation of broadband, for example, or wireless communications, question is, is there enough capacity and interest and frankly support within the public health advocacy and professional scholarly community to start doing some of these things, because there's really just only a tiny handful of organizations working on this. And it's still frankly, very under appreciated.   Bios: Jeff Chester is Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a Washington, DC non-profit organization. CDD is one of the leading U.S. NGOs advocating for citizens, consumers and other stakeholders on digital privacy and consumer protections online. Founded in 1991, CDD (then known as the Center for Media Education) led the campaign for the enactment of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA, 1998). During the 1990s it also played a prominent role in such issues as open access/network neutrality, diversity of media ownership, public interest policies for children and television, as well the development of the FCC's “E-Rate” funding to ensure that schools and libraries had the resources to offer Internet services. A former investigative reporter, filmmaker and Jungian-oriented psychotherapist, Jeff Chester received his M.S.W. in Community Mental Health from U.C. Berkeley.   Kathryn Montgomery is Professor Emerita in the School of Communication at American University, where she founded and directed the 3-year interdisciplinary PhD program in Communication.  She is also Senior Strategist for the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD). Montgomery's research, writing, and testimony have helped frame the national public policy debate on a range of critical media issues.  In the 90s, she spearheaded the campaign that led to passage of the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). She is author of two books: Target: Prime Time – Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television (Oxford University Press, 1989); and Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet (MIT Press, 2007). Montgomery's current research focuses on major technology, economic, and policy trends shaping the future of digital media in the Big Data era.  Her recent work includes numerous reports and articles on digital food marketing, children's privacy, health wearables, and political microtargeting. She earned a PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Podcast Co-host and Guest:  Jeff Wuorio:   Jwuorio@yahoo.comTranscription:Kris Parsons00:00Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:15Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe. I don't know if I'm the one. I'm the lively host, but I'm certainly a host. And I'm sitting here in scenic downtown Woodbury, New Jersey, with my engineer Taylor, and he's gonna make sure that this program runs really well for us. And our guest today is Jeff Wuorio. And Jeff has been on before. And we're going to do a really interesting show today because basically, we're gonna write the last chapter in a book. So good morning, Jeff, how are you today? I'm excellent. How are you? Good. So let me introduce Jeff a little bit further. Jeff is a writing and publishing consultant. He's also a ghostwriter. I met Jeff years and years ago when he was a writer for Money magazine. And we've kind of stayed in touch over probably a 30 year, timespan. And Jeff has been on our podcast as a guest. And if you go back to Episode 42, you'll find out everything you want to know about Jeff. So Jeff, good morning. And the subject today is a little different. Because Jeff, you helped us write a book. And we're gonna talk a little bit about that. So, first of all, explain to, our listeners, what a ghostwriter does.Jeff Wuorio01:39Basically, the term is very apt because it does kind of describe in its entirety, what a ghostwriter does.  A ghostwriter essentially works with people to write a book without usually the requisite amount of credit that goes to writers, there may be a width, you know, he's with someone or something like that. But for the most part, we are behind the scenes largely. And it's a wonderful way to write because you meet remarkable people as a matter of routine, and help them express their thoughts and ideas to the best of your ability. So in that sense. It's like being smart, but somebody else is supplying the intelligence. And all you're doing is kind of massaging it a little bit so. Ray Loewe02:43Well, you know, it's a really interesting experience, because KC, who was my co-host for since the inception on this, changing the rules podcast, and I started this book, and then we got stuck. And we went to our friend Jeff, and Jeff got us unstuck. And I think it's kind of a two-way street. Because I think in one sense, you provide expertise that we don't have, you provided a flow for us, when we got stuck, you were able to make the words go together the right way. And so one of the things I would strongly suggest is that anybody who's got a book in their head, and has been thinking about trying to get it out that you use somebody like Jeff to get it out on the table. And we're mostly done with this book right now. And the interesting part of our podcast today is I think we're going to use it to write the last chapter. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, let me ask you a couple of questions. Jeff, I think this writing is a two-way street because we learn from you and I think you learn from us. So as we put together this book on the luckiest people in the world. What did you learn about the luckiest people in the world?Jeff Wuorio04:03It's really been inspiring, that, if any, if I gleaned anything from it, it is just how inspiring some people can be in living their lives in terms of going outside the norm and going outside the prescribed box that a lot of us are supposed to be in personally professionally and what have you and the creative and innovative ways in which they do that. It's just remarkable. How and when I guess one of the messages of the book is that there are so many avenues with which you can do this. That it's open to everyone who's willing to at least experiment to a certain extent.Ray Loewe04:53Yeah, and I think anybody can be the luckiest people in the world. But  you have to want to do this. And I think a lot of times, we sit there and we're not inspired. Let me go back to my old financial planning days. And tell a quick story. We had a lot of people that were in their 60s, who had tons of money and claimed they hated their jobs. And yet they refuse to quit. And why? And that's a rhetorical question, I really don't want to answer it, we'll answer it in a minute. And, then we had some other people who were in their same zone 50, 60, 70 claim they hated their jobs. And quickly, as soon as they thought they had the opportunity runoff and, stop doing what they were doing. And I think what happens in here is two things, it's the same thing. And in both cases, there wasn't a plan, and there wasn't some thinking about where you want to go. And those who had the money and refused to leave just didn't feel comfortable with the future, they didn't feel comfortable with change. And so they tend to, stay where they are, and put up with the agony that they had and the dislike of their current situation because they didn't know how to do it better. And, many of the others that ran off, were unhappy with their jobs. And what we found out is after three or four or five years, guess what they were back to being unhappy because they had no direction as to where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. And, you know, one of the things that we're trying to say in this book here is that the luckiest people in the world are those people who personally design their own lives, and then live them under their own terms. And the interesting thing is, these people are happy almost all the time, they're challenged and fulfilled, they know who they are, and what they want out of life. And they found a way to spend their time following what's fascinating and motivating to them without taking on obligations that they're not mentally or emotionally committed to. And when you think about this, and you think about the people that have been able to achieve this, you have to ask the question. So who wouldn't want to do this? Go ahead, Jeff.Jeff Wuorio07:28Just a quick thought, who wouldn't want to do this? Well, I think one thing that's, you know, for better or worse, we're all creatures of habit. We defer to the familiar. And I think that's a kind of a compelling reason why people, you know, this is the way it is, this is the way it was for my parents, my grandparents, that kind of thing. It's just the natural way of how things are and going outside of that is unnerving for a lot of people just because it's a break in habits, a breaking routine, and it's a breaking the status quo. And that can be very, very unsettling for a lot of people you know.Ray Loewe08:15Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head here because to,  make changes, you actually have to change. And, you know, we talk about changing the rules on this podcast all the time that, we get, ensconced in everybody else's rules and past situations, and a lot of people say, you know, the reason I hate work is because it's supposed to hate it, no, that's why they call it work. And the fact is, you don't have to do that. But you really do have to make change, and you have to want to make change, and you have to be able to implement those changes. And that I think, is what sets everybody else apart.Jeff Wuorio09:01Yeah, I'm working with a gentleman now, who basically one of his essential messages that he's trying to convey is that we are always unhappy or unhappier than we need to be, when we let you know, forces outside of ourselves dictate how we live our lives. The dictum of, you know, you go to school, you go get a job, you get married, you know, all these kinds of things that are external forces. And if you fall victim to them, as he says, you not only are going to be less happy than you can be but all the more important, you're going to be a whole lot less fulfilled and successful. however, you define success in terms of how you live your life. So it's not just touchy-feely, good kind of things. There is a pragmatic and practical element to this because you're more successful in what you deem an important component of success by not letting others dictate what you do and why?Ray Loewe10:09Yeah, and so this is what we tried to do in this book. And, Jeff, you did a masterful job in helping me lay this out. But we talked a little bit about this definition of the luckiest people. And we, have tons of stories in there about people who do this in their regular life, who have the mindsets that are necessary to feel lucky and be lucky. And we laid out what those mindsets are, and you know, often is still not quite enough. And that's what we kind of want to do in this last chapter that we're going to try and write today while we're on the air. And, that is that people tend to need support, that you can kind of want to be the luckiest person in the world, you can kind of try to be it. But it's a lot easier, it's a lot more fun when you hang out with other luckiest people in the world. And, and we have a community that has been forming over the last umpteen years of the luckiest people in the world. And what we've been trying to do is to try to do some things to support that community. So what we found is that change keeps occurring, that the world doesn't stay static. So one day, we feel like we're the luckiest people in the world, and then we get hit by COVID. And all of a sudden, the world shuts down. And those people that really are the luckiest people in the world have found a way to handle it and change. And usually, they do this because they have other friends that they can talk to other people that they can listen to. And that's the purpose of the podcast that we're doing right now. It's to kind of put in front of people, other people who are the luckiest people in the world, and allow you to sit there and say Why? Why are they? And what can I learn from them? So one of the things we've been trying to do, Jeff is put together a community and we actually have several things that we do to support this community. One is this podcast, where we try and put in front of everybody, a whole series of luckiest people in the world. So that you can sit there and say, Wow, this person did something that maybe I can do to or I can never do that in a million years. They don't all work but in there somewhere is something that will work for you if you listen to enough of them. And we also have this thing called coffee and conversation that we do and cocktails and conversation. And every Thursday, we get small groups of people together. And we try and have a conversation about what's going on in the world, and how we can feel luckier, and how we can learn from other people. We do a conference a couple times a year, and that conferences are either virtual or their real life, where we bring in some speakers to talk about how to feel luckier. And you know, one of the big things that I want to try to talk about a little bit before we get off the air today is .travel. And the travel connection that we put together because traveling is a great way to meet new people and to see the world through the eyes of other people. Unfortunately, we couldn't do that for the last year and a half. But we're getting back into the concept of being able to travel together. So what we hope to do is to invite people to join our group of the luckiest people in the world or form your own, whichever works for you. So go ahead, Jeff, I'm monopolizing this conversation, as I often do.Jeff Wuorio13:48By no means, I think in terms of the group, just the fact that there is such a group or there are such groups, I think helps mitigate that fear of doing something different because if nothing else, you realize you're not alone in doing this. There are other people who have considered this and have done so successfully. So you don't feel quite so singularly adventurous as it were, you find out there are other people doing the exact same thing, and here's what they're doing. And that's comforting and supportive. And I think the another thing to bear in mind is that when we say you know, the luckiest people in the world, it doesn't have to be a wholesale 100% other revision of your entire life. You know you don't have to be working on Wall Street pulling down $5 million a year. And then you chuck all that to become a pearl diver or something like that. There are gradations and there are levels of change. That can be very, very rewarding. And it doesn't have to be a complete redo of your entire life, even if just a component or two is changed, and make a world of difference in how you see that, how you feel, and how you view everything else.Ray Loewe15:12You know, that's a really good point. And I've got a couple of examples. But let me quantify this a little bit there,  tend to be three groups of people that need this kind of a community. There's a group of people out there that have made up their mind somewhere that they want to feel luckier than they are that they really want to take the time and design their own lives and live in the way they want. But they're stuck. They don't know how to do that. And a lot of times, they're stuck by circumstances, you know, they feel closed in they need the money that they have because they have a family, they've got kids that are going to go to college. And so they can't just chuck their job like you said. So how can they become lucky? So hold that thought for a minute. The second group that we get in here, are a group of people that say, you know, I used to feel like a lucky person in the world. But now for some reason, I don't. And I've gotten into this Limbo status. And it could be because of sickness or illness, it could be a change in family, it could be something like this COVID thing that we went through. And the idea is you fall off the wagon, and how do you get back. And one of the best ways of doing that is to have people to talk to, and maybe a mentor to help pull you out of that abyss that you're in. And the third group that fits in here are those people who truly feel like they're the luckiest people in the world now, but they don't want to fall off. And they're always looking for more, you know, if you stay status quo in life, you're usually going to wind up back where you were, at some point in time, you have to keep moving ahead and keep looking for what you want and how to expand and we have a whole bunch of people who are actively looking for how do I steal the next best thing that you're doing from you? Because I want to do it too. Okay, yeah. So I took some time before this podcast, I called up a couple of the people that are a show up all the time in our luckiest group, membership group. And I was talking to a guy by the name of Bill Hughes, and Bill is an executive coach. And he's been in the financial services business for most of his life. But one of the comments that he hit is this goes back to what you were saying before, it's not an all-or-nothing thing. And he finds that a lot of people get stuck because they're busy. You know, it could be a housewife that's got two or three screaming kids at home and is trying to work a job and take care of the family and do all these things. And when Is there time for me? And he said he uses something called opportunity days all the time with his clients. I think it's a wonderful thing. Where you know, you take a day off once a month, and you say, I'm going to find a way to create a day for me. And then I'm going to use that day to start to work on this, how do I get lucky? Or how do I get more control over my own life? How do I move forward? Okay. And then that one day maybe becomes two days a month, and then three days a month, and before you know it, it takes over and becomes the norm. So thanks to Bill Hughes for that comment, because I think it solves this issue of this all-or-nothing thing that you were talking about before. We had a young lady on our podcast not too long ago, her name was Lourdes Nichols. And Lourdes has a full-time job. She likes her job. She does advertising work with some of the newspapers in the Greater Chicago area. But she had an event that took place years ago when she was in high school and she found out that her mother was born in a Japanese internment during World War Two. And she was so horrified by this experience of people just losing a portion of their life. When maybe they didn't deserve it. You know, there were a lot of reasons why these camps were, put together. Most of them not good. But anyway, if you find yourself in that kind of situation, what do you do? Well, what Lourdes has been able to do is she said, I'm not going to quit my job, but I am going to take this cause I am going to make this cause part of my life's work. And I'm going to get engaged in it and I'm going to be fulfilled by it. And she's created this portion of her life for herself without quitting her job. Again, all of this comes from being able to listen to podcasts of what other people are doing, being able to talk to other people and find out what's important to them and how they're managing to do this stuff. You know, I think one of the people that we wrote about in our book, Ruth Kinzler. Ruth had a stroke during a summer event down at the Jersey Shore, and all of a sudden found herself partially paralyzed. So what did she do? She quit her job. And she started doing what she loved to do baking and cooking for people. And it just created a career for her. And it's, you know, how do you find out about these things? How do you get motivated to do these things? Well, I think you listen to podcasts, you talk to other people.Jeff Wuorio20:54And I think to, again, the group in its various forms. If nothing else, it just gets I hope I and I believe it will just get people thinking a little bit, if nothing else, in terms of maybe it's never crossed their mind that they could do something else. Or maybe it's never crossed their mind that they could keep the job that they like, and yet have this adjunct element of their life that they find incredibly rewarding. It's just a Kickstarter for creativity and thinking in ways that perhaps you never have before.Ray Loewe21:30Yeah. And again, you need help you need somebody to seed the idea for you, because we, unfortunately, can't think of all these things that are out there. And then how do you make it happen? How do you take little chunks and make those chunks bigger and bigger and bigger? You know, one of the other people I talked to prepare for this podcast was a young lady by the name of Bonnie Shay. And Bonnie is a professional organizer. And she specializes in photo organizing, and she's on all of these, she listened to all of these podcasts. And she said, You know, I've realized that I was brought up by my parents to be self-sufficient. They told me and I guess, parents like to do this, they want to raise you. So you're independent, and you can do whatever you have to do. And she said, By listening to these things and talking to other people, I realized that this is really a strength-based world. And I have certain strengths and things that I'm really good at. And when I do them, I'm happy. And when I do those things, I can't do very well, I'm not happy. But there are other people out there that can do those things for me. Yep. Yep. And part of this collaboration. Go ahead, Jeff,Jeff Wuorio22:45just interject very quickly, a very dear friend of mine that I see often here we play music together after he retired from an engineering post, began a financial planning practice, because he'd always wanted to do that. And he's enjoying it like nobody's business. It's wonderful. And when we got together this weekend, he as it happens, he said, I'm going to be hiring an assistant in the coming year, and I said, Well, that's great, you know, you're growing, you'll need some help. And he goes really that and I want to really clearly delineate what I do versus what I want my assistant to do, I want to do the things that I enjoy doing that I am good at that I value. And I do not want to do the things that I'm not particularly good at or don't particularly enjoy. And that's going to be the function of my assistant. So I can really focus on what really resonates with me. And it really parallels what you were just saying,Ray Loewe23:46and see this is how you craft your own life. This is you know, if you're gonna do what you want to do, you have to realize that there are a whole bunch of things that need to be done. It's just that you don't have to do them, you have to figure out how you're going to put this together. You know, another comment that Bonnie made to me, that was really interesting. She was sick for a while she had to get some radiation treatment for something and she was radioactive and she wasn't sick, sick. But she couldn't see other people and she said, You know, I had people delivering meals to my door because they knew I needed help. And you know, I would never think about giving a meal to somebody because it would have had to be perfect. And all of a sudden she realized that these meals that she got weren't perfect. They were just gifts and she appreciated them so much that she realized now she can give this gift other people don't have to be perfect. All right. So all of these wonderful things come from sharing and they come from talking to other people and they come from learning. So this is what we want people to do. It's if you want to be the luckiest one of the luckiest people in the world. You know you got to have the right mindset, you got to have the right kind of plan. And then you have to surround yourself with people who can support you.Jeff Wuorio25:10I also think it's important to point out that this does not necessarily focus specifically on older people, for, however, you care to define that the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, that kind of thing. This group and this mindset is for everyone, and, to a certain extent, you know, and again, to, it can be difficult for young people, you know, if you're just married, and you know, you've got a new mortgage, and you've got a baby on the way and things like that, you can say, oh, I've just got too much on my plate. But even if you can carve out a small amount of time, to have this, this element that really you value most, you're incredibly lucky, then because you're, you're gonna jump on something so important than something so wonderful that people, older people, like myself, didn't get to until later in life. And it reminds me of the story of in the book that you share about going to the Antarctic and going to see the penguins and one of the members of the group so that we couldn't go see the penguins because we were no longer physically capable of doing it. illustrating that, you know, if you put this off too long, you may not be able, to accomplish or even experiment with something that is of true value to you. So it's a call to action for everyone.Ray Loewe26:41Yeah, and it's a call to action that everybody should take, because why live in a state of unhappiness for a period of time. And let me just give you another example, I have a friend of mine who's 40 ish, okay. She's got a great job in the standpoint it provider with a lot of income and a lot of money. And she's got two kids at home. And she realized that her job is just not fulfilling. It's, great from the standpoint of making money, she's doing some good things, but she's not doing those things that she feels passionate about. So she took some time during this whole COVID thing when she was forced to stay at home, and went back to school and an online version and started taking courses. And those courses now are giving her the ammunition to start opening up maybe a new job search or new thinking about what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go. So it's all there. But we need to get those ideas thrown at us we need to feel. Find the passion, you know, one last story, and then we're going to kind of have to wind up. But we used to do these trips all the time with our clients. When I was in the financial planning business and uh. We're doing them now again, with the luckiest people in the world is a group. And we'll get active again, now that COVID is pretty much under wraps, and start traveling. But my wife, Sandy, and I did some traveling on our own. And it was great because we got to share experiences with ourselves. And we got to dictate where the trip went. But we also did a lot of traveling with other people. And we found out that when we traveled with other people, we not only saw the world through our own eyes, but we got the chance to see them through other people's eyes. And not only that, but the other people shared other experiences with them. And all of a sudden you sit there as you check countries off around the world that you've been to now. And every time I check off one country Jeff, I wind up with three or four new ones, because I'm getting the shared experience of other people. And they're just getting me excited about life and what I can do. So this is this isJeff Wuorio29:04In our experience, too. And travel my wife and I, a couple of years ago before COVID went to Scandinavia for a month. And yes, you do see how other people live. And you talk to them. And it's wonderful to see different value systems, different priorities, different lifestyles, things of that nature. But it's also reciprocal in that. I remember meeting these two young Italian women on the train with my wife, and they were just fascinated to see, you know, as fascinating as we were to hear what they how they lived. They said tell us about America, you know, what is it like, you know, you know, what stereotypes Do we have about America, but I'm not entirely accurate. And so it's a very reciprocal kind of benefit. You know you gain a lot but you also give a lot?Ray Loewe30:02Well, you know, unfortunately, Jeff, we're at about the end of our time over here. And I think the idea is that we've got this book ready to go, which should be out in the next couple of months. And we're excited about it because it shares how you can become one of the luckiest people in the world. But one of the big parts, and it's going to be the end of this book is that it's much more fun to do it with other people. And it's much easier to do with other people. And finding the community where you can get excited about life and people keep you there is really a great thing. So uhJeff Wuorio30:40I look at it is to say, You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.Ray Loewe30:45Yep. any last comments before we cut off Jeff?Jeff Wuorio30:48know that that I was saving that pearl for the end? So let's wrap up with thatRay Loewe30:52So okay, we'll have to back up. That was the end. All right. So everybody, stay with us over the next couple of weeks. We're gonna have another great podcast next week. And we'll try and give you more and more ideas about how you can be the luckiest people in the world and be part of that group, and enjoy life more and more and more. So thanks for being with us.Kris Parsons31:19Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Hi, this is Krista with episode number 113. On the wag out loud podcast, here's a tip help to keep your dog hydrated by adding fresh veggies to their meals. Most dogs that eat kibble are in a chronic state of dehydration and that contributes to problems such as kidney disease, or the formation of bladder stones. Vegetables are an excellent source of water and veggies like cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, and brussel sprouts are over 85% water. So raw, lightly steamed or even frozen veggies are great, but you'll need to crush or pulverize them in a juicer or a blender, or your dog won't be able to digest them.Welcome all dog lovers to another informative episode of The wag out loud podcast. And joining me today is Jeff Allen. Jeff Allen is the cofounder of Monkey's House a Dog Hospice & Sanctuary and a bestselling author of Where Dogs Go To Live!: Inspiring Stories of Hospice Dogs Living in the Moment. And he is going to share with us about where hospice dogs go to live. Jeff, we so appreciate you being with us today and can't wait to learn more about you. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your love of dogs?Sure, Krista. And first thank you for having me on. It's an honor to be on Wag Out Loud. Thank you. So my wife and I in 2015 started Monkey's House. It's a dog hospice and sanctuary. We've rescued over 120 dogs that were going to be destroyed in shelters that come to our little farm here in New Jersey. And they live a great final chapter of their lives. We feed more holistic food depending on the health conditions. They live in a home environment. So yes, we have 20 to 25 dogs at any time living with us throughout the house. And it's just a great place. We have volunteers that come over to help out. Wow! Well, Jeff, what do you consider to be a hospice dog? So generally our dogs that we that we rescue have multiple medical, so they're medically diagnosed terminal. They could have cancer, major heart issues, liver, kidney, most of them also have either they're blind or they're deaf. So we have or both, we have quite a few things. But my wife, she was a nurse for many, many years. Now she's retired and she's just doing this. So she really does have that background and she's learned so much about dogs that really helps out. And, and I just do a lot of other things for the organization. Wow, this sounds like a major undertaking. So why don't we go back? How was your dog Monkey the inspiration of Monkeys House? That's a great question. So when we we were fostering dogs at the time. And we got Monkey from this local rescue shelter, said Hey, would you take little dog has major heart conditions, again because they knew my wife could handle the major medical issues. So we said yeah, will take monkey and my wife said that Monkey needs To get some very inexpensive heart meds, we've seen this before in dogs, she went to the shelter that shelter vet said, just take take him home. Monkey's only gonna be around for like about a month or so. And that wasn't good enough for us. So we adopted Monkey took him to our own vet, he saw a cardiologist got on the meds he needed, which were like the $4 meds from Walmart, very inexpensive. And he lived 17 vibrant months with us. And that just kind of kicked it off, we realized there was there's very little resources for the terminally ill dogs in shelters. So we've started Monkey's House. That's fantastic. And what is your philosophy when it comes to dogs with a terminal illness? I know when we talked before, you had some different ideas about care, and you even have the beach and Santa, can you tell us more about all that? Sure. And that's kind of our saying, right? Where dogs go to live? I you know, so look, these dogs, we get them as healthy as possible. We're not saying we're curing them from their terminal diagnosis. What we're saying is, we get them as healthy as they can be. So they can enjoy those final moments. And those final final moments could be simple things like going outside and having the sun and the wind blow in their face. Or it could be the more exciting things. We have a senior dog bus, it used to be a senior citizen bus. They all pile in with our volunteers meet us at the Jersey Shore. We'll go to see Santa. And they all go the ones who can't walk. We have strollers, we have little wagons, the blind ones, they love the different smells. So it's really it says something for even for us, right as humans. It's like, Look, you have to live every day till the end. So that's what we will do with these dogs. And they do they love life. Lucky dogs, for sure. And how many dogs do you typically care for at one time? Did you say at one time we were at almost 30 at one time, which was a lot for us. We generally about 25. But we have been down to about 20 during the pandemic because we also social distance. A lot of the volunteers weren't coming over. And they're just starting, you know, a lot of us got vaccinated. So we're just starting to come back on. So we're getting back up there. We I think we have 22 right now. Okay. My main question is how on earth do you care for each dog's medical needs? When it comes to food and medications and supplements and anything else that they need to treat their illness? I would imagine that it's a 24/7 routine over there. It certainly is. Well, first, I have to have this big do a big shout out to all of our, our supporters, right, we're a donation based organization, a 501 3c. So we do get a lot of donations that come in that help support the financial end of it because it is very expensive for anybody having dogs it will be very expensive for medical surgery or issues. Then each dog is looked at when they first come, we actually take them to the vet, Michelle figures out a diet for them because depending on what their medical condition is, if they have cancer or if they have some type of liver or kidney issues, then they are put on different dietary supplements along with the the base food could be different as well. Some dogs get a chicken, turkey, beef, even pork or or so on. And we feed more raw if we can or gently cooked food. So it's all home cooked, no bag food. And we found that that food therapy is really makes a big difference. We still use the traditional medicine as well. I mean if they if they need to get meds, they get their meds. But we do find that on being on healthy food reduces that at times. Okay, that's great. So you've mentioned that you have volunteers, obviously that help you with all of this. How do these terminally ill dogs find you? They all the all the shelters around here now? know of us. So when they have a dog that has a major medical issue that needs to be…a lot of them have to be euthanized, sadly, that they will get in touch with us. And if we have room for them, then we would gladly bring them in to Monkey's House. First. They first they actually go to a quarantine foster for a couple of weeks. Because we don't want to potentially bring anything in from the shelter like kennel cough. So they're isolated for two to three weeks. And then they make their way to Monkey's House. And then they get they get all the love they can imagine… our aunts and uncles. Here's a good name for our Aunts and Uncles. I mean, our volunteers are called aunts and uncles. Because we want them to really be part of the family and they really fall in love with these dogs. That is amazing. And Where exactly are you in New Jersey?We're in Burlington County which is the Southern part of New Jersey.Okay. And that's why you're close to the shore. That's fantastic. Yeah. Well, Jeff, you and Michelle are doing such great, great work, so that these dogs can actually live out their final days and pure happiness. And I want to talk to you about the emotional strain on you guys. So knowing that these dogs won't be with you for a long time, how do you deal emotionally with all the attachment? And then the inevitable loss? You're constantly dealing with anticipatory grief, aren't you?We are. And, look, it's no different than, than anybody who has a dog, and that dog becomes sick, and you're taking care of it, and then it passes. It's heartbreaking. And honestly, every one breaks our hearts. And Michelle said one day, when they don't break our hearts anymore, that's when we'll stop. Because they deserve all of our love, and affection. You know, it's, it's tough, it is tough. But you know, we have 20 some, so we have to keep going. And you have to keep moving on. We're very sad. And we're sad for a long time. With 20 some dogs, you would think that we don't miss one dog. We miss them tremendously. there's a there's a big hole in the family for quite a while, I guess is no different than then someone who has one or two dogs to be honest with you. And can you set the scene? What What does Monkey's House look like on a typical day?I don't know there's any typical day here. So yeah, we, you know, I wake up, usually I'm up first, and I'll start getting some of the dogs out back in our big fenced in backyard. So they go out back and, and do their business or, and then I have to wake some of them up and carry them out. Because they can't they're not very mobile. And then we actually will get ready to start feeding and feeding takes about an hour and a half. Again, like I said, because it's all special meals. It's something that some of its pre cooked. But you still have to prepare 20 some meals. With the meds get the dogs we do have crates for a lot of the dogs for when we feed just so they're not getting into someone else's food with their medicine. So they are most of them are all separated. Once the feeding is done, then it's walking time. So they go out for walks. The ones that need a strollers and even we have a couple that are in their own little carts because their back end doesn't work. Put them in there, take them out. And sometimes you can't you're taking out five or six at a time on walks up and down the driveway. A few of the other dogs that can go further might go around the back field are, you know we have old country roads, there's not much traffic, you can go down the road, you know, then lunch, it's really funny around this time at lunchtime, it's very quiet, all the dogs are kind of resting. And then it starts back up again around four o'clock they get excited for dinner. And it's the same process again. And then on certain days of the week, like Wednesdays are the days that my wife takes all the dogs to the vet the pet bt some of them get physical therapy, the underwater treadmill, laser therapy. So usually she has about 15 dogs in our van that goes to the vet's on Wednesdays. And then sometimes on the weekend weekend, we'll try to do a trip out to the state forest, we live close to the Pine Barrens or if it's a special occasion, we we hit the beach.Well, this is a labor of love, for sure. And Jeff, you are an expert and caring for dogs with terminal illness. So let's chat about your thoughts about how we can care for a terminally ill dog here at home. What recommendations do you have?I think the biggest recommendation with will say, first have a great relationship with your vet, we joke and say if you're not that you're going to especially during COVID, you're not going to hug your vet. But if you don't feel like hugging your vet, you might want to find another vet, you want to find the best vet that's going to listen to to your needs and your dog's needs. Like I said, we do traditional and non traditional. So our vet's a little mix of the both. If you have a traditional vet that you want to look at some non traditional approaches, see if your vet's interested in that. A lot of vets will be if they're not, you know, maybe you need to find somebody else to to work with. But that's not said you have to have a great relationship with your vet. Because if your dog does become have issues and you need to get like say fluids for your dog, you can do fluids at home. The vet can teach you how to do that. I do it all the time. I don't have a medical background. So you could do something like that at home. We call that sofa medicine. Chapter, a chapter in the book I wrote it talks about all those things that you can do at home that you know, in the comfort of your home, because your dog might be get anxious when you go to the vet. So if it's done on your couch is going to be more relaxing to them and more relaxing to you. It's just have that relationship with your vet, and learn to educate yourself. So educate yourself as much as you can about the about the condition of your dog, I think that's going to put your mind at ease. Absolutely. And I think what you guys are doing that is so amazing, as you're helping these dogs, you focus on the moment, that you're not looking into the future. And you are actually giving them precious time and memories, and living in the here and now, which I think is fantastic. And I would think a lot of people that have a dog with an illness, they're already thinking about when the dog is gonna pass and they're not living in the moment, like you guys are. I want to say kudos to you for doing that. Because a lot of us would just be in grief already before the dog is even passed. Do you want to speak to that?Yeah, Krista, that the dogs feel that energy too. We have a big saying here that we try to keep everything positive, as much as we can, you know, the dogs that we take in, most of them have had a horrible life prior to us. But we don't think of that, you know, when they get here, we think of that point and forward. So everything is happy times, even when, you know, it's funny, we have a large Facebook following, and sometimes we'll say, Oh, this dog came in and they'll see pictures of it and is really abused. And people, you'll get some people that are like, oh, well it's in the best place it can be now, you know, going forward. Other people say that, but they also say, you know, bad karma for the previous owners. And we're like, no, don't even bring that up. Because we don't want to think of negative things. It's all positive. And like you were saying, it's all positive things. Even if your dog does have a terminal diagnosis. What can you do positive? Can you take them to a walk on the beach? No, if they can't walk, then can you put them in a stroller and take them somewhere? You know, it's just like you said it took little moments that they're going to enjoy. And when they enjoy, you're going to enjoy it.Yeah, I agree. And we have to, you know, a lot of us are control freaks. And we have to accept the fact that we cannot control our dog's illness. So to your point, live in the here and now and make their final days as wonderful as possible and that would help you as well. And while we're on the topic of you know, the caretaking role, it has to be emotionally and physically exhausting for us taking care of our dog and seeing them in their final stages. So Wouldn't you say that it's so important for us to take time out for ourselves so that we can better in taking care of them?Absolutely. I think we do need to do that. And again, like I said, if you could do that along with your dog, it's what, how better is that? Right? If you could spend some time, just even just sitting outside with them, doing whatever. And like I said, If as long as you know as much as you can about them, and the illness that they have with the condition that they have. Because that's going to put your mind at ease too. Because if you know what the stages are of that illness, then when things happen, you're going to understand it more so then then just be nervous and really upset about it. It's going to be upsetting, but at least you're going to know that knowledge is power in taking care of your dogs.And you mentioned that you have a very strong Facebook following. You don't have to go through this alone, right? There has to be so many support groups out there of others going through the same thing.Absolutely. You know, when we started Monkey's House in 2015, we didn't even think about what our Facebook group would be like we we just said, Oh, you know, we got we have to start one because we need to get followers and hope to support these dogs right financially and emotionally. But we didn't realize that we now have 70,000 followers on Facebook, around the world. And yeah, and it has it has been so yeah, not only do they fall in love with our dogs, it's amazing how they fall in love with dogs from they've never seen and one passes, we'll get you know, 10,000 comments and not just rip but like comments that they've been following this dog. But what is amazing is that when someone else's dog passes, like they'll, you can tell that maybe they don't have the support at home so much. But on the Facebook group, they'll say something about it, and then all the other people chime in and give them support. So it really is a big support network in a way and we didn't we didn't realize that was what Monkey's House was going to become, you know, the Facebook page and everything. So it's quite amazing. And also was one of the things that brings joy to my wife and I the most is when someone comments and says, you know, by following you guys, I took a chance. And I adopted a senior dog with medical issues because I realized I can do it. Or they'll say, I didn't put my dog down when I thought other people told me because I was listening to you. And I had so much, so much more wonderful time with them. Yes, there were tough times too. But, and that's those are the most rewarding things for us, is to not just the dogs that we have here. But we're helping people with their dogs as well.I just got goosebumps, that is amazing. You're touching so many lives. So all of your hard work, it has to just feel so rewarding when when you hear confirmation like that.It really is. because like you said, it is hard, it gets tough at times, sometimes, you know, sometimes, you know, we get down, I get down. And then when I start reading comments, or reading things like that, it really brings me back up and says you know what, I am doing the right thing. You know, we are doing a good thing for these dogs. So keep chugging along.Well, Jeff, you briefly mentioned about the book, and the book is where dogs go to live inspiring stories of hospice dogs living in the moment. How did that book come to be?You know, we we post every night on Facebook. And you know, if I did I do my wife, my wife probably does more than I do. My wife is more educational. I'm kind of more fun, you know, but people really enjoy it. And I started enjoying writing. So a couple of years ago, before I I put the book out, which was the end of last summer, I started writing about different dogs stories. And I just thought that they they deserve to have their stories told, I kept writing about the stories more and more. And within a couple of years, I basically had a book. So I, I put it out and it's got really, I got a five star rating on Amazon, I'm kind of surprised. 250 reviews, it's done very well. And it really does highlight all the stories of all the stories of dogs we have here. Not all the dogs we've like I said we had 120 that's about 37 stories in the book. And also, there's a little bit education in there talks about how Monkeys House how we care for the dogs, medically and in food therapy, and different things like that. And I talked about sofa medicine. So it tells you how you can take care of your dogs. If these fluids are inflamed and things like that. But it's it's very, I didn't want it to be sad. And I wanted to show people that. You know, these hospice dogs, a lot of people don't want to talk about hospice, right? It's a word that no one wants to talk about. But these dogs live life that's really why we titled it, where dogs go to LIVE. It's been a great experience I got this is my first book I've written I've actually I'm starting the second one. Now it's going to be out. It's a coffee table book actually of pictures of dogs and some some funny and inspirational quotes. Oh, that's fantastic. Well, this book not only has amazing reviews, but the endorsements that you have from top people in the industry. I mean, that is impressive. When Dr. Karen Becker or Dr. Judy Morgan or Rodney Habib, we all know those names, and they give high accolades to this book. So it must be very heartwarming as well as informative.Yes. I'm very thankful for all the people who did endorse, I said, I guess you're right, we got a lot of terrific endorsements for the book. And you know, to be honest, they just, they know what we do here. They know that the care we give these dogs, and they love what we do and and they read the book and they love the book too. So that was that was a plus double plus they get they love us and then they liked the book.that's great. And are there other facilities like yours around the country?Sadly, there's very few like ours, Krista, who's the you know, there's senior sanctuaries and a lot of senior sanctuaries have some hospice dogs. But, you know, a lot of shelters will have volunteers that might take their hospice dog home and they'll say, you know, take Fido home, just keep them comfortable in a bed and feed them and, and just let them rest until he passes. He does not and there's nothing wrong with that because I understand it. But that's not our philosophy. You know, our philosophy is we bring them to Monkeys House. We get them as healthy as they can be. For those final moments, and not just to lay in a bed, but to go to the Jersey Shore to take walks at the park, even if it's in a stroller, right, so they get the smells, they can they can get the sight.s So we, Michelle once said, you know, one of her quotes was just because you're dying doesn't mean you can't live. And that's how we feel about these dogs. We want them to live.And they have each other, which is fantastic as well.Oh, it's amazing to see, you know, 98% of our dogs are senior dogs too. And they come in here by themselves. Next thing you know, they have a buddy or two or three they're laying with, like a dog pile of a dog pile together. So it's really cute.That's fantastic. Well, Jeff, as we are wrapping up, I mean, my heart is so full right now. What would you like to leave us with?I guess I'd like to say that, you know, senior dogs, and especially these senior dogs with medical issues, they still have a lot of love to give, and a lot of love to receive. So don't write them off so fast. Enjoy your time with them. Especially if you have a dog that's getting older and, and has some medical issues. enjoy time with them. Like I. said, get as much information you can on the illness that they have. Have a vet that really respects your opinions and that you respect and love. And just enjoy that final time with your dogs.And it's perfect advice. Jeff, where can everyone find out more information about you? Monkeys House and your amazing book where dogs go to live?So Where Dogs go to live is in any bookstore has it. Amazon is a big place people buy it or Barnes and Noble online those type of stores. So they can go to where dogs go to live out on Amazon. And then our Monkeys House is monkeyshouse.org. That's our website. And from our website, you can obviously see a lot of the dogs. If you're interested in you know, donate or follow us on Facebook has a link to Facebook. And so please come check out Monkey's House, check out the book Where Dogs Go To Live!. FB: @monkeyshouse.org IG: @monkeyshouse_doghospiceAnd Krista I greatly appreciate for you having me on to talk about the dogs that we love so much. We appreciate everything that you and Michelle and all of your volunteers, aka the aunts and uncles are doing for these dogs. And hopefully we gave everybody some inspiration today that if you have an aging dog with an illness, that there's so much you can do for them in their final days. So Jeff, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. We appreciate our sponsor: PawpJust go to Pawp.com and be sure to use the code WOL to receive $5 off of your first monthThanks for Listening!Thanks so much for tuning in again this week. Have some feedback you'd like to share? Leave a note in the Bark About it section. Or you can click on the social media buttons to share an episode.Special thanks to Jeff for being on the show. Catch you next time!Also, don't forget to Subscribe for FREE and please leave a review: Apple Podcasts | Android | Spotify I Stitcher I iHeartRADIO“The Wag Out Loud pawdcast is supported by listeners like you! The show started as a passion project that would help all of us make well-informed decisions for our dogs' health and well-being. After many amazing guests, intriguing topics and incredible feedback, the WOL pawdcast is hitting a nerve. If you are interested in having your dog live healthier and longer and are finding value in this podcast, why not contribute to the show's success? It would not be possible to consistently produce a quality show without the listener support that is received. Thanks to all of the dog lovers out there!”The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. The host as well as guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experience and conclusions, and Wag Out Loud LLC neither endorses or opposes any particular views discussed here.

So Jeff's internet crapped out about 18 minutes in. The two bits are spliced together and there is a smallish gap between them so you know what happened ahead of time and why the conversations shifted to something else entirely.   Enjoy.

Jeff Dailey: https://www.prometric.com/about-us/leadership/jeff-daileyFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch: (00:05) Hey everyone, welcome back for episode 120 of Count Me In. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and this is IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Our featured speaker for today is Jeffrey Dailey. Jeff is Prometrics Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and he joined my co-host Adam to talk about data and technology. During their conversation, Jeff addresses the challenges associated with mass amounts of data, how to make decisions based on data and how the CFO's role has changed because of data and technology. Keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.   Adam: (00:47) So Jeff, data is becoming more and more important each day whether it's your latest smartwatch, a smartphone, your internet, things on your refrigerator, or your washing machine. It's getting thrown at us from every direction and even more so in business and for you at Prometric, how are you facing that challenge with all the data that we have in business and how have you adapted as an organization to meet those challenges?   Jeff: (01:12) Thanks Adam. Yeah look, I think the role that I play in Prometric as the CFO is really going to be leading to driving data-driven decision-making. And in order to do that, we really leverage analytic capabilities, not just within the finance function, but across the business. Our business relies heavily on understanding volume and capacity, of our clients and global candidate base for those taking tests in our test centers, as well as new modalities around remote assessment. So we're constantly looking at opportunities to gather and understand data, but also to use that to be quicker and more agile in our decision-making, it really becomes sort of foundational to us driving, data-driven decisions across the organization, it helps enhance forecasting, it helps us understand how we're allocating resources across the operations, as well as our technology investments.   Adam: (02:11) So if you look at your technology roadmap that you're looking into the future, what does that look like for you?   Jeff: (02:18) Well, right now we're in a unique disruption coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And I say that it's created opportunity in some ways, given all the disruption to our clients and frankly to all of the candidates that we support. One of the areas from a global technologies we've gone from what was traditionally largely a brick and mortar business model, to enhancing our remote assessment capability, to offer assessments and opportunities for candidates to sit from any location has been key when you're going through national and regional restrictions around social distancing and access to traditionally facilities where we have tested candidates. So operationally or product, we have deep investments that we're making across the technology platform to enhance both functionality, as well as expand in those areas of key features. Within our finance organization, we've actually also taken this as an opportunity to really invest in more, I'll call it cloud native systems and financial reporting technologies that are going to enhance our ability to streamline our close that are helping us in terms of forecasting and helping drive, more data-driven insights across the business from the finance organization, so we've not only had product investment, but also investment in our core ERP platform during this time.   Adam: (03:45) So what were some of the drivers for the decision to enhance your ERP solution?   Jeff: (03:51) Yeah, so I think first off is we have for several years looked into opportunities to consolidate multiple platforms that we had that had evolved both over time in different regions as well as, you know, take advantage of what I think now is really, truly a much more secure, fundamentally sound and feature rich opportunity, in what you're seeing in the cloud native ERP platforms. We see this as an opportunity to not only attack technology as our focus for the investment, but also process improvement and there are a number of areas that are features that we're rolling out that will be further automating the closed process, automating the financial reporting and forecasting process, and also just really trying to drive process improvement in business intelligence deeper into the finance organization.   Adam: (04:48) How has it been trying to do an implementation while having, probably your workforce working from home?   Jeff: (04:55) Great question. I think we have certainly been working remote for the most part, since the onset of COVID-19 about a year ago, but that being said, I think we have a global team and we've always had deep resources in Asia, as well as here in the US. We're using new collaborative tools. Certainly we've done a lot with remote video conference, we've got consultants dialed in they were helping us with that implementation, but I think the key has been having really deep sense around understanding of our current operating model and really having developed sort of the objectives collectively, while we're working remote, but to see where we needed to have opportunity for better access, as well as enhance the security and performance overall of the system that we're investing into.   Adam: (05:53) Circling back to data across the business. Why is it important for the finance function? Cause usually the finance function looks at their data and all the numbers and make sure everything makes sense. Why does it make sense to have the data connect across the organization?   Jeff: (06:07) Sure, great question. I think for us it really starts with understanding our client programs and the candidates that we support on their behalf. Our business is relying on volume and managing capacity through a global network and I think as I mentioned, that includes both the brick and mortar global channels supporting our candidates in center testing, to anywhere else from pop-up events that we run short term and then ultimately, expansion of our remote assessment capability. When you're looking at managing that level of capacity and the different modalities that we serve, it really has become critical from an operational decision-making and performance management capability to have a deep understanding and a deep base around analytics for the business. We are, you know, obviously each day kind of managing into the changing capacity restraints for coming out of COVID. We have had analytics that have provided us more insight into candidate behavior in terms of return to test centers, in our case. We've had certainly a large increase in candidates who are opting to take large-scale global national certifications and licensure exams online through our remote assessment tool, and understanding what's driving those decisions for candidates is critical for us to both enhance the product and the modality for them to have access to our content. When I look from a pure finance perspective, it really has been about harnessing data to help us understand more quickly more accurately what the business is performing during what's been a really disruptive time. We have used this as an opportunity to enhance what we do on a week to week basis in terms of our flash reporting. We have invested heavily in terms of pivoting how we do forecasting for the business. We are deeply connected using data from across operations, IT and our technology and product teams to really help us understand and allocate resources appropriately so that we can manage what, at times or headwinds that vary by region coming out of the restrictions that we've been under through COVID. When I think of, you know again, it's really driving us to be a more data-driven organization around decision-making and I've sort of looked at that as the role of frankly myself and my organization of helping harness that data in a way that helps us make not only good decisions, but also has consistent information accessible for folks across the organization so that everybody's able to easily interpret both the financial as well as the operating metrics that we deliver to the business.  Adam: (8:34) Definitely, so you mentioned that you’ve had to adapt to different business models because of COVID, can we talk a little bit more about that?  Jeff: (09:03) Sure. You know, first as many companies that experienced we had a significant impact on our business from the outset about a year ago. We took steps to maintain and manage service levels for clients that were still able to have their candidates into our test centers to test. But through that, we experienced quite a bit of backlog in our business because we were anticipating a lot of those candidates coming back in once the restrictions eased in each jurisdiction that we operate. When I look at what also happened during that time period, as I think I mentioned, we also took it as really having to ramp up a key product that's now a key piece of our growth driver around remote assessments. The ability for us to provide not only access for candidates during COVID, but also now going forward when we're coming out and seeing more clients embrace remote assessment as a key modality for their candidate base, has been critical in our strategy around investing into a new technology to serve our existing and new clients as we grow forward. We have really tried to migrate from what has traditionally been a brick and mortar channel to ramp up this remote assessment capability. There's a lot of analysis that's gone behind in terms of which clients we anticipate, you know candidate basis to move over into that modality and overall, I think it's just allowed us to really help manage capacity on both fronts because we're also managing our tests, and our administrators, our remote proctors and frankly our overall labor model around candidate support, and customer help desk. When I look at all the data that's coming out of those different organizations, again I kind of come back to tying it all together around how it feeds into what we're forecasting and also how we're using that to make data-driven decisions around what's best in terms of our resources and capital allocation as we look ahead at the next month, the next quarter and upcoming in the next year.   Adam: (11:27) So as you make those data decisions, can we move a little bit into data visualization? How are you telling a story for the rest of the team to show what's happening?   Jeff: (11:40) Well, I think for us it really starts with simplifying the objectives across the organization. As many companies have surely experienced in COVID you've got to make sure that you've got a clear vision and set priorities so that folks remain laser focused during a time that has been so disruptive across the economy in so many different regions, for us in terms of visualizing, we start with how we're performing as a global business, but the visualization and the work that we've done to try to drill that down to a geography as well as a product level view has helped enhance not only the financial review of the business, but also from an operational perspective help really make sure that we've got the right metrics that we're measuring, we understand how we've set markers and leading indicators for each of the business units to monitor and manage, and then to help sort of show progress against those has been a real positive coming out of this frankly because we've had a much more engaged group around our weekly reporting or weekly flash and reviews like that, that are helping us understand what capacity and what scheduling habits are telling us about where we're headed in the next period. You know, I think that level of data and visualizing that for not just again across the finance function, but also across the organization is helping really sync up what operation staff and support are driving. We have a global network of test centers as well as a team of remote proctors that deliver services to our clients. But it's also around candidate support. And when we've had to connect it's been having to understand data supporting candidates coming back in to test post COVID, as those restrictions have been lifted we've had much quicker access to understand where we had to expand capacity and where we had to manage for additional resources to support that backlog. Data has been crucial to helping us clarify, not only the expectation for candidates coming back in, but also helping our clients to define where they have opportunities to expand their own capacity for some of the offerings throughout a calendar year.   Adam: (14:08) So Jeff, as we kind of wrap up this conversation, I've been listening to you talk about your role as CFO and it seems like that the role of the CFO is changing and we've seen papers written about it, we've heard people, other folks talk about it and I just wanted to get your perspective as a CFO, how do you see the role of the CFO changing and as we look forward to the other side of this pandemic, what is that going to look like for you?   Jeff: (14:37) Sure Adam thanks. I think if I look historically the key roles around core finance capabilities have traditionally been around financial reporting, accounting, the controllership function and treasury. I think as you look forward, those are obviously still important in terms of stewardship of the business and overall command of operations. I think where I'm finding myself increasingly involved are more strategic discussions around, anywhere from investments that we're going to make in the company, both in terms of internal product development as well as corporate development and M&A opportunities for the business to grow into new markets and ancillary products. But I think it also really kind of, it takes a turn when you're spending much more time with the commercial organization when you're spending more time with the operations team, to really make sure that as finance has a role, not only in reporting, the outcomes of the work of those groups, really helping be part of the decision-making and helping influence the outcome to a better result. That's been particularly important for us coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, given not only this disruption to our business and our clients and candidates, but frankly across the team. We've had to find new ways of working remotely together and it's really been a time where we have really invested together as a leadership team with finance having a true seat at the table if you will, to influence the direction of the company. We have been involved in a number of our key client current portfolio, as well as new pursuits, helping align not only the financial plan that we expect to offer to the business to perform too, but also really helping understand the economics and how we can work better to support our clients during what's been a challenging time for their businesses as well. You know, I think adding to that, really trying to be a catalyst for change, when I think about areas that myself and my team have been involved in it's certainly been focused on business performance improvement. I think of that not just simply as cost initiatives and savings opportunities, but really how do we function better as an enterprise? We talked a little bit earlier around our opportunities that came during the pandemic around new product investment, as well as some of our financial systems and other technology investments we're making. Those are meant to really enhance what we can do as a finance organization to contribute to really overall enterprise performance. It helps us when we're getting better around using data analytics to drive pricing discussions with the commercial organization. It helps us when we're making investment allocation discussions or our investment allocation decisions with our technology and product organization and I think certainly looks at that finance has a seat at the table when we're talking about the evolution of our organization. As I mentioned, taking advantage of some of the disruption, but also really looking at where we can be much more of an innovator and really again, kind of coming back to finance having a seat at the table around being a catalyst for that change. I think this has been an opportunity for us to show the value of not just financial reporting, but also overall business performance. When we've gotten much deeper in terms of sharing with the organization how we're doing against not just plans that we set for the organization at the beginning of the year, but on a period to period basis where we're able to show where the investments are taking place, show where those are having the strongest return and make sure that we're allocating our capital and resources according to the best opportunities for us as a company.   Closing: (18:52) This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.

In this episode, I'm speaking with Jeff Warnick. Jeff is a portfolio Executive Director and marketing lead at Bristol Myers Squibb, a $140 billion pharmaceutical company that manufactures prescription drugs for cancer, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, hepatitis, arthritis, and psychiatric disorders.  Passion-driven marketing is where we focus on what our customers are passionate about and connect with our customers through those passions. In today's episode, Jeff Warnick and I discuss how his company has successfully implemented passion marketing, credibility marketing, and other marketing strategies. Connecting with Physicians through Passion Healthcare is one of the most passionate markets, especially for someone like Jeff who is working with oncologists who are trying to help cancer patients. The customers are in life-or-death situations. It's a tough area to market in because you are marketing a product that helps customers conquer something they hate (such as cancer) rather than marketing through a level-10 passion that customers love. People don't exactly line up for chemotherapy as they do for the newest iPhone. The industry Jeff works in is also heavily regulated, and he doesn't have the creativity and freedom most marketers do. Previously, Jeff and his team had marketed to oncologists using primarily analytics with lots of charts and tables, focusing on the data. They wanted to better identify the passions of the doctors and test connecting with doctors through those passions.  How Jeff Connected to the Passions of His Customers Jeff helped set up a system of market research about the doctors' passions. When physicians participated in this market research, they came into the interview with certain expectations. They thought Jeff was going to give them a patient case study. Instead, Jeff had them lay back on a couch with the lights dimmed. He asked them why they decided to become a doctor. This takes the physicians out of their element, causing neurons and synapses in their brain to fire that they weren't expecting. To do this, Jeff asks questions such as, “Why did you become an oncologist? How can I work with you to help patients more? Where is a place where you are happy?” and more. He also thanks to them for their hard work.  This disruption from the normal gives the physicians something unexpected, appealing, and intriguing. Because Jeff has established an emotional connection by showing the physicians that he cares about them, their patients, and their passions he is able to establish deeper connection and communication. When Jeff would ask these physicians why they became a doctor, it almost always came back to a family member or friend who had cancer or got sick. He realized that they had deep personal connections that drove them to choose their careers. Understanding this core motive had a big impact on Jeff. He wanted to help these doctors help their patients. Patients always want more time, and if they can't have that, then they want the best quality of time they can receive.  Focus Groups with Multiple Doctors Sometimes Jeff does the same exercise in a focus group with multiple doctors at the same time. These doctors are used to other doctors attempting to trip them up. They are continually testing each other because that is the culture of the medical world with lives on their hands. So Jeff has to be careful about which doctors he chooses for each group. If there is someone with an alpha personality, the other doctors might be more hesitant to open up. Or, the oncologists often don't like to get emotional in front of each other, so they tend to be more analytical about it. Using Story to Focus on Passions “The highest level passions are the emotions attached to the decision, not the decision.” -Jeff Warnick As marketers, we often focus on the buying decision itself because that's where we get paid. The key to successful passion marketing is to focus on the passion behind the customer's decision to buy.  If we know that a customer likes chocolate ice cream, we can't just say “here's chocolate ice cream.” However, if we realize that they like chocolate ice cream because they used to have it with their grandpa every summer, we can connect with that. We can use the story to find a parallel path and serve it up as the emotional driver. The passion is not the ice cream; the passion is the experience associated with the ice cream. Recurring Revenue The healthcare industry looks at recurring revenue a little differently than most other industries. They don't like to think of people's illness as recurring revenue streams because unfortunately, that means they're not being cured or they're still ill. However, there are certain types of medical conditions, like diabetes, that end up being recurring. They are also trying to evolve cancer treatment to be something that is manageable like diabetes, making progress toward it being a chronic condition instead of a terminal condition. Recurring revenue is still beneficial to companies like Jeff's because they are a public company with shareholders they are responsible to. However, they don't look at it in dollars; they look at it in terms of patients. How is staying on a medication going to improve a patient's life? How is the medication going to combat their symptoms or keep their blood pressure where it needs to be? This patient-oriented view can be beneficial in other industries as well. We can look at how our product or service will improve a customer's life and market it that way, implementing a recurring revenue system to ensure our products and services continue to improve their life. The key takeaway here is to build our products and services around something that improves our customers' lives on a sustainable basis and not just one time.  Credibility Marketing Personal health is an intimate subject, so physicians are very careful with how they make decisions. Their patients, however, really need two major things when they are making decisions. The first thing patients need is all the information. They want to know about the side effects, co-pay assistance, what they should talk to their doctor about, etc. The second thing they want to hear about is the experience of someone else who has been in their situation or who has their condition.  We can use both of these elements when we are building credibility with our customers. We can give our customers all the necessary information they need to make an informed decision and share the experience of other customers through testimonial videos.  Key Takeaways Thank you so much Jeff for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode: Passion marketing is a great way to make sure we are focusing on our customers and their core wants and needs. We can get great results if we mix passion marketing and analytics. One way to connect with customers is to disassociate them by taking them outside of their everyday life. Then we can get to the truths behind what they're passionate about. Focus on the passion attached to a customer's decision, not the decision itself. Use a story to package that passion. Focus on how a product or service can improve a customer's life. Build credibility by giving customers all the necessary information they need to make a decision and by helping them connect with other customers. Connect with Jeff If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Jeff, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-warnick/.  Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today's episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.  Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter. Share Your Story  How have you seen successful businesses use passion marketing? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers. Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/67-how-a-140-billion-pharmaceutical-company-used-passion-marketing/ 

How do you think of successful businessmen? Selfish and greedy or generous and thoughtful? I’m guessing there have always been both kinds, but overall, I’ve tended to think about people with a LOT of money in less than charitable terms. Pun intended. What if I told you about someone who has generated $100Million in annual business revenues, and not only gives generously, but wants others to be able to do what he’s done? We were privileged to talk with a man who made his fortune and realized that money and achievement alone didn’t bring him satisfaction. Come with us to find out what does. Guest Bio: Jeff Morrill started Planet Subaru in Boston years ago with his brother and brought with him into his business life, the ideas of win-win, superior service, and a culture of inclusion, mentorship, kindness, and sustainability that extends to employees and customers alike. At Planet Subaru, Jeff knows that those values must come with concrete steps… they must be implemented to be real and to mean anything. So Jeff’s team decided to power the whole facility with solar panels. They hired sales people from diverse backgrounds, who other dealerships wouldn’t hire. And they created an apprenticeship program to train women for higher-paying service jobs. Now in a new season of life, Jeff seeks to mentor others in leadership and promote the ethical business practices that he says made his bottom line all the better. Jeff wrote the book Profit Wise - How to Make More Money by Doing the Right Thing to share what he learned. The book teaches 10 principles for running a successful business that is also ethical and sustainable. See the list of principles in the Show Notes on the episode webpage. Instead of the shady, ruthless, or corrupt approaches to business that we’ve seen unfold all too often, stay tuned to hear how businesses… maybe even the one you run… really can, as Jeff says, “take the high road to raise your bottom line.” Explanation: Just so you know, this episode is actually part one of a two-episode arc with Jeff. This week we are releasing the parts of the conversation that focus on business, community, and how Jeff’s values of inclusion and abundance infuse his projects. Although this episode focuses on Jeff’s business, we believe that everyone will find inspiration in his life story, his powerful ethics, and his genuine human warmth. Toward the end of the original recording, Jeff turned the tables and started asking US questions about interpersonal communication and about our relationship. It became an “un-podcast.” It’s such a special and unique conversation, that we’re releasing it as its own episode next week. For full show notes including more about Jeff's unique businesses, links to other relevant episode AND a curated reading list, go to: https://www.here-together.us/pod/how-to-do-the-right-thing --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/here-together/message

Jeff wanted to introduce Russ to something new. So Jeff and Russ are going to review the SNES game Lost Vikings 2, which was later remade as Lost Vikings: Norse by Norsewest.

Transcript:Diane Dayton  0:02  This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KCDempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.KC Dempster  0:13  Good morning, everybody. This is KC Dempster. I'm here in the Wildfire Podcast Studios with Ray Loewe. And it is a beautiful day in Woodbury, New Jersey. And I know Ray's just dying to jump in here, but I'm going to hold on to this for a minute. This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about taking control of your life, living it the way you want to live, and we are trying to bring you topics and guests who can help you go down that path. Good morning, Ray.Ray Loewe  0:45  Thank you. And we're in the wonderful Wildfire Studios. You know, we have completed our first full year of podcasting. Okay, we did that with the last episode, actually. And we've completed 49KC Dempster  0:59  actually, we've completed 50Ray Loewe  1:01  Yeah, that's right. Okay, nitpick Go ahead.KC Dempster  1:04  Well, that's my job.Ray Loewe  1:06  And And the interesting thing is, we could not have done that without help. We've been guided through the process by the people at Wildfire. They have been wonderful. If you're looking for podcasting places one of the places to be okay, yeah, so let's talk about this year, because it's a brand new year. And we're going to change because we changed the rules, right?KC Dempster  1:30  That's right. And there's, there's hopefully going to be a lot of positive change the vaccine is, is already getting to some people, and hopefully it will get to all of us within the next, I guess they're saying six months to really get to everybody. But then we can start to maybe ditch the masks or, you know, go see our friends and hug our family. And, you know, I'm looking forward to that.Ray Loewe  1:52  But the amazing thing is, we're we're in a position to use the time that we have, you know, there's been a lot of people that have complained about losing a year out of their life here. And that's possible, if you don't do anything, right, but the luckiest people in the world don't do that. They're out expanding their lives. They're learning. They're, they're good. They're learning new techniques, we're gonna find out about some of this stuff, as we look back towards last year, and look ahead towards next year,Kris Parsons  2:19  Hey, I just I just finished about 20 things on my to do list that's been on there for 15 years.Ray Loewe  2:24  And if you don't take advantage of your time, then we're gonna throw you out of the The Luckiest People in the World Community.  So there. So so looking forward. I think we've learned some things last year, we interviewed a whole lot of the luckiest people in the world. And they were, they were motivating, interesting, fascinating people. And they're exciting. And we're not going to stop that. We're going to continue doing some of that. But we're also going to look at some of the things that our luckiest people in the world community tell us that they want.KC Dempster  3:01  Okay,Ray Loewe  3:02  so we're going to do some theme theme series in here. One of them that we're going to do, excuse me, is we're going to talk about the legacy that people are leaving, you know, we all leave a legacy whether we want to or not, right, kids grandchildren have lasting impressions of who we are and how they think about us.KC Dempster  3:21  Right a legacy is more than money.Ray Loewe  3:24  Oh, yeah. Forget the money part. While your kids don't watch it, yeah.KC Dempster  3:31  That was that was my eye roll that prompted that one.Ray Loewe  3:34  But But you know, I remember, you know, a maiden aunt I had long ago. And I remember her, I did not forget her, okay. But I hated every time I had to meet with her. And my mother was insistent that I was nice. And she was the aunt that that smelled of this old people's perfume. Used to pinch your cheeks and say how much you've grown. And I would duck outta there as fast as I could. And then I remember other relatives. I remember my grandmother really well. And when I think of my grandmother, I think of the smell of cooking.KC Dempster  4:11  Right? Yeah, she lived with you.Ray Loewe  4:12  Oh my and and and so the impression that we leave with our kids, our grandchildren and everybody else around us. Is there. Mm hmm. Okay, and we have time to make that whatever we want. Right? So we had a young lady last year Ashley Allen Come on and talk about the personal brand that you leave. And the personal brand is how people remember you how they think of you. So we're gonna bring her back this year and we have a young lady who's just called in. I think Bonnie Shea is on the line. Right? Hi, Bonnie,Bonnie Shay  4:46  I'm on the line.Ray Loewe  4:47  Okay, so say happy new year to everybody.Kris Parsons  4:51  Hi Bonnie, Kris Parsons here.Bonnie Shay  4:52  Happy New Year. Good to hear you Kris, too.Ray Loewe  4:56  Okay, so. So Bonnie was with us on one of our podcasts last year. And she told us a number of stories one was about falling off a bike. And what we learned is the luckiest people in the world really should plan on not falling off their bikeKC Dempster  5:10  and wearing wear a helmet,Ray Loewe  5:12  okay, and wearing a helmet. But we're bringing Bonnie back this year, because Bonnie is a photo organizer. And she's taking a really interesting look at photos. So Bonnie talk a little bit about what most people do in terms of they take this bunch of photos, they stick it in a book, and nobody ever looks at them. Right?Bonnie Shay  5:33  Exactly. Or they hide them in your attics or their basements because their boxes and boxes worth of them. And they move them from one house to the next. And they never look at them. And to me, people have a photographic story in their printed photos. And to me, it's a treasure, it's a gift. And so luckily, I'm poised in my profession to help people curate their wonderful collection of photos, reconnect with them, and realize that it's really a gift that keeps on giving. And let's share it.Ray Loewe  6:06  Yeah, and you're doing some unique things. And we're gonna have you on a podcast later. So we're gonna do a whole 20 minutes, maybe more on this, but but talk a little bit about your most recent endeavor into getting people were in photographs to talk about the photograph, and how to make that photo live.Bonnie Shay  6:27  Exactly. So I have a client and I'm working with his mother who is in her 80s. And he asked me to record his mom talking about the photos. And so I took that idea, and I ran with it. And I basically would sit with her and we could do it socially distanced. But I had a microphone so she could talk and I would show her a photo. And she would tell a story about it. And I could even prompt her with some follow up questions because I knew what she knew about the story. So now I have an audio recording of her voice, which is golden. And then I have the scanned photo color corrected. So it's a beautiful stellar version of the photo. And I in my work area, go and make a short video of her voice with the photo or maybe even a series of photos if it's a particular event. And it could be 1-3 minute long. They're not these length, full length movies. But they're just golden. And I've shared them with my client and his mom and his sisters. And they will have their mom's story whether they've heard it before or not. They want to hear it again and again and again.Ray Loewe  7:31  And you don't have to look through 10,000 photos in a dusty album. Okay, you know, exactly. And I think this is wonderful. This just shows the creativity of Bonnie is certainly one of our luckiest people in the world. And it just shows what they can bring to bear on. I guess we call it a problem. Hopefully it's an opportunity, not a problem. Yeah. And Bonnie shared with me a couple of other things. And while you're on the line, I'd like to enter into them, even though they're not your area of expertise, particularly, one of the other things we're going to talk about is storytelling, and how you craft stories. Now you just gave us one example of how you can take a photo and merge it together with audio and video and create this story. But you're telling me about some of these other organizations that craft stories of people's lives and showcase them somehow? Would you comment on them for a minute?Bonnie Shay  8:31  Yeah, I mean, I think StoryWorth is one of them, which I haven't investigated personally. But I plan on doing that this year where they have questions that they can ask people, let's say each week they get a question emailed to them. And they have it's not a blank canvas that they just start talking about their past. It's like a prompting question. And that you can write, you know, 50 words, 100 words, it's not a big thing, but you're reminiscing and you're reconnecting with your memories and of making them available for your family. So that's one. I also, can I'm going to go off topic just a little bit but I want to tell you what's related to the pandemic is that so many of us are not seeing people who we love in person, we're seeing them on Zoom or any other platform. And it's a lot about visual, right. So we want more pictures, we want more stories, because it sort of has to fill the gap of not being in person with people. Exactly so right you can use videos, audios in our digital world is beautiful, because we can get this out there and enjoy it. Whether we're together in person, which we're not right now or around the world, right time zones, who cares about time zones anymore because we can get on the same calls regardless of what diamondRay Loewe  9:49  Yeah, so so thank you so much for dropping in on us, Bonnie and early in the year we're going to have you on and we're going to start opening up this hole idea of storytelling and what are the images that we want people to think about us at because we have the time. And right now we are kind of locked up still. And we're going to be, and what do we want to make sure we do when we get out of this thing. So Bonnie, your thoughts and your ideas are wonderful. And keep saving them up, don't share them with anybody else.Bonnie Shay  10:25  And I'm only gonna share them with the luckiest people.Ray Loewe  10:31  Thanks for dropping in and have a great new year, Bonnie, and thanks for being with us.KC Dempster  10:36  I'm going to jump in very quickly. And to build on what Bonnie was just saying at the end. This past year, while we were in quarantine, my sister had possession of all my father's old home movies that he took of us as children. And she had it digitized. And we shared it with all the siblings, there's seven of us together. And so we set up a zoom call, and played the video and everybody was able to make comments or say Who was that? Because the younger ones don't know who some of the people in the, in the earlier movies were because they had already died by the time they were born. So it was it was it was we laughed? We had, you know, told stories and, and I have recorded the call. And hopefully it's up on YouTube. But if not, I'll it's still in my computer. So it's too big to mail to them. But you know, I do have it available. But it was a great, it was a great evening, we had such a good time.Ray Loewe  11:40  See, and this just shows what can be done. So anybody that's sitting home and saying that they're bored, right? Has no excuse, right? Okay. You know, you just have to get out and create. I had an interesting experience. And are we gonna get Jeff Lincoln onKC Dempster  11:59  the line? Actually, already?Ray Loewe  12:00  Actually, Jeff, happy new year.Jeff Lincoln  12:04  And Happy New Year, right, guys?Ray Loewe  12:06  I'm gonna let Kris How are you? Good. I'm gonna let Kristine introduce you after the fact. But I got a story to tell about you before. And it's so pertinent. So Jeff did an event with me and my sisters and my nieces and nephews. Okay. And we have this rather eclectic family. Okay, you know,KC Dempster  12:29  what else could it be with you?Ray Loewe  12:31  Well, yeah, we like each other. But we're spread out around the country. And we don't talk very much. And so we wanted to create an event. So what Jeff did is Jeff created a coffee tasting event for us. Now, before we get into the event itself, why don't you give us Kristine between you and Jeff introduce Passero's Coffee to us? Sure.Kris Parsons  12:51  Sure. Well, Jeff Lincoln and I go way back, we our kids played together when they were little, and our kids are now in their 20s. But Jeff owns, and is the President and CEO, President Lincoln as Ray likes to call him of caseros Coffee locations all around the Philadelphia area. And he had an intriguing time, because he basically had a lot of your customers and correct me if I'm wrong. We're all from the big corporations all around Philadelphia, which kind of closed down. So Jeff had to get a little creative. And I believe that this coffee tasting was one of his grand ideas to find a different way to get his product out there. Get people to learn about it. And just like there's a wine tasting, he's now starting to build his business of coffee tastings, which it was something that was in your your strategic plan for a while. Right, Jeff but but the pandemic helped to come to fruition, his study hall.Jeff Lincoln  13:47  Yeah. Certainly one of those ideas that was in a manila envelope and never got any further because when, when my shops are all up and running, I don't even have one open currently online. Hopefully spring possibly getting the others back open. You know, some many ideas as a business person you have, you know, and I just don't have the time and you just don't have the time and all of a sudden 2020 I've got the time.Ray Loewe  14:19  Yeah. And unfortunately, and and look at all of the creativity that has come out. And I'm sure a lot of this is going to flow through into your future in different ways. But let me tell you about this coffee tasting event, which was spectacular. So I had Jeff ship out three half pounds of different coffees to my nieces and nephews and my family. We got on a Zoom call in the morning. We had President Lincoln with us for coffee. We had president coffee with President Lincoln that morning, and we did a coffee tasting online. So we we didn't try and do fancy brewing. We had three cups, I think Some ground coffee. And Jeff led us through this process, which I think you can find out about now on your website. Is that correct, Jeff?Jeff Lincoln  15:09  That is that is yes.Ray Loewe  15:10  So anybody who's interested in this, do this. But what a phenomenal event, you know, we rebonded together. Yeah, we spent a wonderful hour everybody showed up. All right, everybody stayed online till the end. Okay. And before that they all had to leave early. And we're gonna do another one, because they said this was great. Let's do another one. Unfortunately, for Jeff, they want to do booze. AndKris Parsons  15:37  that's fine. funny, because we two things too. Yes, Jeff, we did it in our family. And Ray was talking earlier about being bored. Well, I had college students home during this pandemic, and they get bored very easily. But we did the coffee tasting. And it was really fun, because first of all, they're all starting to get into more and more coffee than they did when they were young. And it was just a fun bonding experience with our immediate family. But I think another great thing, Jeff, and I think this is what you're heading into is the corporate world. Already, the corporate world is getting a little bored with their Zoom calls. And I think Jeff is talking to some companies about incorporating a little coffee tasting or just a little coffee education on the Monday morning or Tuesday morning calls with, you know, all the managers that have to get together, how to keep it a little livelier, and make them all show up as if they have a nice cup of coffee that they can talk about. And then you can give them some fun facts. Let us give us a couple of fun facts that we didn't know about with coffee. Like you're not supposed to freeze it right. Or refrigerate it? Yeah.Ray Loewe  16:40  Yeah. And I've been doing that for years. No wonder I hated coffee. So just go ahead.Jeff Lincoln  16:51  No, I was gonna say, Yeah, I do have we've all been zoomed quite a bit this past year. And we've got more of it in front of us. And so the idea is, how can you? How can you keep people on the line and a little, a little more focused and interested in listening to the message that you really need to, once again, entertainment works and these types of coffee tastes, or virtual wine tastings. All help, I think are good tools for people.Ray Loewe  17:25  Well, you know, thank you for being one of our luckiest people in the world community members and Jeff pops on every once in a while for coffee in the morning on Thursdays. Yeah. Okay,KC Dempster  17:36  I have to thank Jeff for roasting coffee and sending it out to people because I ordered some blackdog over the holiday to introduce my visiting son to it. And he agreed it's good coffee.Kris Parsons  17:48  Very good. It's delicious. You convinced my husband who was a big coffee critic, but it's great. And now the nice thing is you have the time to get that online business, moving and sending coffee to everybody. It was a one stop shopping for Christmas in my house. Well,Ray Loewe  18:05  we're gonna have Jeff back. He doesn't know it yet. But we're certainly going to have him come in to some of our coffee events. And excuse me, probably some of our virtual conference events, and just show up every once in a while we'll drink a toast of caffeine. So Jeff, thanks for being with us. And, and happy new year, and thanks for being one of the luckiest people in the world.Jeff Lincoln  18:34  Well, thank you guys. Happy New Year. And onto a brighter one.Ray Loewe  18:41  Show you know in the interest of going forward over here, we have a couple of other people lined up that you guys don't know about yet. So we're going to get the original Philly Phanatic. Okay, we're gonna get a couple of people my age. Growing up the Holocaust, and some of the reasons why they're the luckiest people in the world. And we, you know, we I look at being the luckiest person in the world. I can't even think of what some of these people have gone through in their lives, right? And so we're going to keep introducing new concepts, new people, what are the things in your life that can make it more fulfilling, and make you feel luckier and luckier and luckier and luckier? So Kristine, do you have any other comments before we close up our run show for the day,Kris Parsons  19:37  no, other than I am going to go back and listen to these podcasts. Again, I like that idea of walking, which I have been doing. It's really a great way to do two things at once. And and it's true when you go back and listen to them again. And I think that is really important to make that point that we do need motivation because there are good days and there's bad days and while the luckiest people in the world have more good days. You know, you can't be happy all the time. So it's always nice to go back and have these touch points to say, Oh, yeah, right. Look what Bonnie's doing. And look what Jeff's doing. And look how Ruth turned her life around. That is helpful. That's all inspirational things that are very helpful for us. And that's why I'm grateful for for Changing the Rules podcast, and we look forward to it every every week. So keep it up, keep up the good work.Ray Loewe  20:22  KC any final comments over here?KC Dempster  20:24  No, I'm looking forward to an interesting year of change. And so let's let's go forward with a positive manner. And, you know, I agree with Kris, that I, I think the people we've spoken to have been inspirational. And because I'm the one that actually posts the podcast, and I get involved with getting the transcript up there. I do listen to them. Even after I've been participating in it, I get to listen to it again. And it's, it's really, really uplifting and revealing.Ray Loewe  20:57  Yeah, and, you know, if you don't take the ideas that are here and use them, then you're not going to feel as lucky as you otherwise would. So, you know, I think going forward, I think we're Our job is to put some interesting material on the table, both in terms of interesting people, and some of the things that interesting people are doing to make our lives more interesting, more fulfilling, give us control over where we want to go. So we'll be back in another weekend. KC, it's up to you to sign us off here.KC Dempster  21:28  Okay. Well, thank you for listening, everybody. Make sure you come back next week because we're going to have another great podcast.Diane Dayton  21:37  Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.   

Reach Jeff Wuorio at jeffwuorio.comTRANSCRIPTDiane Dayton  0:03  This is Changing the Rules. A podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.KC Dempster  0:14  Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster, and I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey. And we're bringing you a show called Changing the Rules because we believe that the luckiest people in the world change the rules to fit the life they want to live. And one of the ways that they decide what they want in their life is by constantly exploring new things. And that's why we're bringing interesting people with interesting lives to our podcast to expose our listeners and luckiest people in the world to new ideas and new people. So good morning, Ray.Ray Loewe  0:53  The morning, I'm here I'm almost awake even. So anyway, this is going to be an interesting day because Jeff Wuorio, our guest today is a person who always used to interview us. All right, Jeff. Jeff, we met years ago when he was working for Money magazine. And we were talking at that time about college and how to pay for college. And so Jeff, are you there?Say Hi,Jeff Wuorio  1:21  I am indeed.Ray Loewe  1:22  Hi. Okay. Well, let you say more in a couple minutes. But, but we met Jeff, way back when Jeff was in the process of thinking about college at that time, he's since put his kids through college. And now the subject has changed. And Jeff is certainly one of these luckiest guys in the world. Okay, because he certainly has designed his own life the way he wants to design it. And he comes up with some other traits too. I think that he's committed to using his talents regardless of what his age is going to be. He has this knack for following what's fascinating and motivating to him. And he gets enlivened by talking to interesting people. And he's very definitely one of the luckiest people in the world. So Jeff, welcome to Changing the Rules.Jeff Wuorio  2:17  And thank you for having meRay Loewe  2:19  and and Jeff, you're sitting where? today, let's make everybody jealous.Jeff Wuorio  2:25  Okay, I'm sitting in beautiful downtown, such as it is Buxton Maine, which is about 10 miles from the Atlantic eight miles from Portland and 15 miles or so from Sebago lake. So it's a it's a nice little part of the world.KC Dempster  2:43  Have you had snow yet?Jeff Wuorio  2:46  We are supposed to get snow Friday. Oh, my first.KC Dempster  2:50  Yeah, my sympathies.Ray Loewe  2:53  Oh, come on snow. in Maine is beautiful.Jeff Wuorio  2:58  Yeah. And like I say, if it knows, you're taking by surprise or upset when you move here, you really were not paying attention.KC Dempster  3:05  Indeed, indeed. Just snow is always beautiful for the first 24 hours. That's my opinion. And then after that I want it gone.Ray Loewe  3:15  So let's talk about your adventure here. Because you've been in Maine now for about how long in your life? How many years?Jeff Wuorio  3:24  Well, I went to school here, then moved around a fair amount when my children were in both my children who were born in Oregon when I was living out there, and we moved back here, I would say 25 some years ago, give or take a year or so. But that would be a rough estimate. So we've been, you know, at three years of college 25 years living here 28 all tolled?Ray Loewe  3:50  Wow. Okay, so you made a conscious decision to do this and, and you're one of the very few people that I know that actually made this decision early in life because you had a plan. Okay, so I think you were telling us earlier that you wanted your children to grow up in Maine. And so tell us a little bit about this decision that you made and how you implemented it, because I met you when you were doing Money Magazine stuff and now you got a different life and and we'll get into that different life but talk a little bit about how you consciously made the decision to move move to Maine.Jeff Wuorio  4:28  Well, it almost follows a script to a certain extent. When I graduated from school, I worked briefly here in Maine for a couple of years and then events did what they did, and I left Maine and of course being the wise 24 some year old but I wasn't saying I'm never coming back here. And and I was fortunate to live in a number of places I lived in Colorado lived in Oregon. But you know, as I grew older and had we had the children You really begin to think about, you know, where, where you'd really like to have them grow up and what your priorities are. And so I talked to my wife and I said, you know, just, I really have this idea that you'd be much happier back in Maine, we were living in a large city, and you know, all the pluses and cons to large city. And we just decided, you know what, let's go. So we, you know, moved, you know, I think my son was two, I think my daughter, his daughter was even one yet. So, it was a long car ride from Oregon to here, needless to say, so. But it has worked out beautifully. Because working from home, I was able to see my kids grow up. And, and they became so accustomed to, you know, dad being there sort of thing that was a wonderful, and, you know, unusual experience, given that a lot of you parents really don't see that much of their children that their careers, keep them away from the house. And a quick story about that, when we were moving back here, we stopped at a park in I think, somewhere up in upper New York State, for lunch, you know, we were eating and my son, being a three year old, immediately hooked up with another three year old boys up at the park, and they were running in good time. And all of a sudden, by Sunday, he turned to him and he said, Hey, where's your dad? And this kid looked at him like he had 10 heads. He said, what do you mean, where's my dad? Yeah, where's your dad? And he said, Well, he said, work, of course. And right, then I was struck by the fact that Nathan did not know anything else. In terms of the fact that he thought all fathers were at home. All fathers were there to make grilled cheese sandwiches upon demand kind of thing. And, and it was, it was really an epiphany for me, that I valued in that, you know, his experience was out of the ordinary, but so meaningful and so wonderful to him. And to me, that really stuck struck, it really stuck out when some other child said, You know, I have no idea what you're talking about, What do you mean, you lose your dad kind of thing in the middle of the day? So we've been here for 28 years, it's worked out beautifully. And no one knows no, we'll stay for a while longer.KC Dempster  7:25  I think you had to set some ground rules though when you were working from home, didn't you say?Jeff Wuorio  7:30  Oh, yeah. Initially, they thought it was kind of like carte blanche of Okay, that can be talking to Mr. Ray Loewe on the phone, interviewing him about scholarships, and how to search out, you know, bargains for college, and they could just march into my office. And usually, with some form of focused intent upon me to do something. And so eventually, we worked out a system where I read somewhere else, somebody had done this, and I have this great idea that, you know, I posted a notepad and a pen outside my office door. And then I sat them both down, that's it, okay. unless somebody's arm is just dangling by a thread, because they just been severed by a chainsaw, or there's a huge mushroom cloud in the distance, do not bother me, write it down, we'll cover it later. And they, and they learn and they and they adopted that, that very readily. So it all worked out very nicely. Because you know, at first it was a little rough. And I said, you know, you just can't keep coming in here and doing this, you know, the, what dad does? puts the clothes on your back, food on the table roof over your head. So kind of honor that dynamic a little bit.Ray Loewe  8:47  Okay, so we hear from a lot of people about the problem of they don't have enough time to spend with their kids, they're working too hard. They're there, they're working for somebody else here add their time is not their own. And here, you made a conscious decision. And I get the feeling that the decision was lifestyle first and professional second, but that didn't stop your professional career. Is that pretty young, pretty true?Jeff Wuorio  9:16  Fairly true. For the most part, yeah, I never lost sight of my profession or my professional goals. But there was definitely an element of you know, it's not all or nothing one way or the other. I really did not want to have that kind of out of balance kind of arrangement. So eventually, what happened was, I was doing freelance work with various publications Money, included things like that, and out of the blue. Somebody said, Have you ever ghostwritten the book? And I said, Well, no, no really ghost written a couple of books on my own, but that never ghost written a book. And they said, Well, we have this client is coming in. He's working for with john Wiley and associates in New York. And we'd like you to meet him and see if he could probably do this. And I think you know, but the heck, I'll try everything once. And we did the book, it worked out beautifully. And I began to think that more and more, I wanted to be a ghostwriter. Because for a number of reasons. First of all, I always like the book length size projects, because you can really immerse yourself in the material and really get into into some very, very significant issues. And I did is because like that kind of depth, and also to is that by ghostwriting, I've been fortunate to meet some absolutely remarkable people, some of the smartest people I've ever met some of the most talented people I've ever met some of the most provocative people I've ever met. And just just the proximity of that of capturing their voices in their books by ghostwriting has just been such an enormous experience for me, just like I say, and I really mean this, I probably learned something new every day. And I don't know many jobs where you can really honestly say that, so I became a full time ghostwriter about 25 some years ago. And right now I'm working on my 29th book, most of which is been ghostwritten. And it's been an absolute blast. If nothing else, but proximity to great minds and great thoughts. And all I have to keep saying to myself with some of these people, I remember once interviewing a Nobel Prize winner, and I kept saying Wuorio, just anything stupid. I mean, just once. And this guy, he was the sweetest guy, he wouldn't have said, you know, he's never said anything about, Oh, that's a dumb question or anything like that. But just being that close to those, those kind of minds and feel and feeling the wheels turning was just so rewarding and so uplifting, that it's been a great ride.Ray Loewe  12:06  Okay, so you you list on your website, you and I get a kick out of this. You have ghostwriter down there, but you have manuscript mechanic down there. That sounds ominous. Now Do you still write freelance articles for places are you pretty much all in the ghost writing business at this point?Jeff Wuorio  12:24  It's all it's all booked length now. You know, given the dynamics of the industry, freelancing for sure the pieces is getting tougher and tougher. And, you know, fortunately, I've gotten to that point in my career where, you know, one or two projects, and the finances take care of themselves, which is nice. So, and again, I prefer it I like the idea of really, those deep dives into topics that you know, shorter pieces don't often afford you the opportunity to do so. So it's it's pretty much book length work for the ghostwriting clients right now,KC Dempster  13:03  what were a couple of the more interesting topics that you've worked on.Jeff Wuorio  13:09  Well, there Boy, that's like saying, which one is your favorite children?KC Dempster  13:15  Well, whichever ones in the room is what that is.Jeff Wuorio  13:20  Yeah, or, or is writing on the piece of paper somewhere that it's posted outside the door? Well, I go through the book for an NFL quarterback came out just recently, which was absolutely fascinating about his upbringing and his, his development as a person as well as an athlete, which was absolutely amazing. Several years ago, I did a piece for a futurist, or rather a book for a futurist, where he teaches a very, very pragmatic empirical system for anticipating future events. Which I won't go into detail now. But if you read the book, you say, Wow, this isn't peering into the crystal ball kind of thing. There's a really a rhyme and method to, to understanding this. So I've worked with business people, I've worked with athletes, I'm now negotiating a new contract, to write a memoir for a chef who counts himself among Wolfgang Puck protegees. So that would be that'll be a lot of fun. And again, too just it's, it's wonderful to be able to take on a number of topics because basically, I consider myself sort of like the reader is sort of like this blank slate. If somebody comes to me with a book idea, or you know, let's say the chef is going to be talking about some very involved cooking things that I don't understand. It's helpful for me not to know a whole lot about that because in conveying that I tried To make it clear that, you know, you know, not everyone understands what this is. And the challenge means that if I understand it, we can convey that clarity to the reader. So. And at the end, I, oh, I learned something that I hadn't known before. And as I said, it's been the landscape changes every day. And that's fun for me. There's, there's very little routine and a lot of ways, which is nice.Ray Loewe  15:27  Ya know, what, what fascinates me is your thinking here, because you plan this more than most. I mean, it's, it's got to be hard for somebody to sit down and say, Well, I'm going to move to Maine, and I'm going to make my career blossom the way I wanted to do that. And yet, this is what you've largely done. Okay. Give us some of the thinking in there. What are some of the the the times when you were concerned, maybe that you made the right decision? What are some of the guidelines that you would give to other people who might want to do this? Because I think you're dealing you're living kind of an idyllic life. I mean, you're obviously one of the luckiest people in the world here. And it's because you've set the ground rules the way you want them, you didn't put up with other people's rules here, you made them work for you. So what are some of your thinking?Jeff Wuorio  16:20  Well, one thing that I learned, that I would urge others to do is that if there's a significant transition that they would like to make, say, either a different career or a different location, especially if it's a location where you've never lived, have a fallback, and give it a trial period, six months to be probably a year or so just to get your feet wet, because the experience versus the planning, you know, often don't come to meet at the same point. And it's really important to have that, you know, that safety valve as it were of, Okay, I can always go back to doing this, or we can always move back to where we were that kind of thing. But, you know, I guess one thing that we did was to say, okay, not only in terms of just monitoring our own personal satisfaction, happiness, all four of us to say, okay, in a year or two, you know, I'd like our income to be x, that kind of thing. And again, if that doesn't work out, we can we can tackle that then. But it was a benchmark for financial security, to to know, okay, this is our goal in terms of the finances of doing this. And the other thing that I made clear on are really emphasized was to keep the lines of communication open amongst the family, and say, Okay, how is this going? How are you? You know, how are you comfortable? Are you making friends? How's school? How's your new job Judy, my wife, that kind of thing, because I didn't want to have sort of this burning? Why did we ever leave Oregon, had a great job, a great home, I had all these friends, things like that. But I wanted to elicit you know, that kind of feedback, just to make sure that nobody was hiding, and an unpleasant reaction or feedback that they didn't want to share. But were nonetheless experiencing it. So those were basically all we really had in mind. We were fortunate in that, you know, we did move back to a place where I had a semblance of having lived here before, albeit in college, which is not exactly the real world. But you know, at least a sense of logistics of where things were, and things of that nature, which made it easier to so that might be another one too, is that you get to get to know the place a bit before you make a decision in terms of proximity to you know, the quality of schools, proximity to health care, public transportation, things like that. And as you know, as we get older, you know, my wife and I think about those things more much more so than we did, you know, 20-30 years ago, but just just the lay of the land is good to know. So you you have a sense of where things are even if you're brand new, and and be sure to I guess the other thing that we did this is a Be sure to enjoy the experience and don't expect it all to go smoothly. That was I was gonna say, Is there gonna be some bumps in the road here, you know? And per KC's comment about snow. I remember the first year that we were here when the children who are native Oregonians had never seen snow before. It was thrilling and they first come down and then by then by February, we're all doing our jack nicholson impressionsRay Loewe  19:58  Okay, so so You know, congratulations on achieving what many, many people would love to do, but you're not done yet. Because Where are you going? Okay. Do you see an end to this? I mean, you know, is there an end to ghostwriting? Or is this something you do for the rest of your life? With no time limit?Jeff Wuorio  20:20  I'm not sure yet, I guess, if it ever starts to strike me as if the spark isn't there anymore in terms of my engagement to the material and the enjoyment of meeting these people, it's not so much financial, it's more experiential in terms of is does it still feel special to do this kind of thing. And right now, it still does. And I don't foresee that changing immediately in the short term future. So and, and I'm person who needs to work, I know that for a fact, I'm my father's son in the you know, sitting on the rock sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch for me, I'll start having extended conversations with the dog pretty soon as I doKC Dempster  21:09  Thant might not be so bad.Ray Loewe  21:13  There's one other comment that you made. And and you said that there are a lot of people that have stories to tell the know itJeff Wuorio  21:25  very much. So the biggest problem as it goes, but it's interesting to meet certain people, and you start to categorize them, there are people who, it's just a pure vanity project in terms of this is a story that the world has been clinging to, it's thumbs hanging from a window waiting to hear kind of vanity to you know, somebody who's more defined. And so Jeff, I think I have something to share and things like that. But the biggest problem is somebody who says, I think I have a story, but I'm not sure if it's going to be interesting or not. And inevitably, when I talk to these people, even if they don't write a book, they knew like, but yes, you have more to share and say, than perhaps give yourself credit for because it's not surprising, because when we look at ourselves, it's so insular, in terms of, you know, what we're, how self aware we are, as it were. And, you know, I think a lot of people have a lot more to saying that, you know, it might take a book, it might might take an article, it might take a short story, things like that. But I think people have a lot more to share. And I think you know, it's healthier for everyone's, the more we share,Ray Loewe  22:44  and and when you can't figure out how to get it done. That's when you call somebody like Jeff, and, Jeff, give us your website. We're gonna post this in our meeting notes. We're just about out of time over here. But how do people reach you?Jeff Wuorio  22:59  Well, they can reach me at my website is www dot Jeff Wuorio jeffwuorio.com. And there, you can send me an email. And there's a telephone number and everything like that. And I'll look forward to hearing from somebody who, if nothing else, I love to talk about people's ideas, and turn into a project and meet more interesting people.Ray Loewe  23:26  And Jeff, you are one of the luckiest people in the world. And thank you so much for sharing your experience with us and our, our listeners. And it's time to go so Casey, what's gonna happen next week?KC Dempster  23:38  Oh, we have we're going to be talking with an amazing woman who has again another fascinating story to tell. So tune in, and have a great week.Ray Loewe  23:48  And Thanks, Jeff, and thanks for listening to us.Diane Dayton  23:52  Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you make your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.   

Jeff calls a man who's parents want him to move out of the house, but he's been waiting for the day he becomes a reality TV STAR....So Jeff is about to make BOTH dreams come true!

Did you know that leveraging your network is the most successful job search strategy? Use LinkedIn to turbo boost this strategy! In Episode 26 I interview Jeff Altman. Jeff is the host of the No B.S. Job Search Advice Radio, the No. 1 Podcast in Apple Podcasts for Job Searching. Jeff has been podcasting for over 10 years and his is coming up on 2000 Episodes! Jeff is also a Career Coach, a Leadership Coach and an Executive Coach having spent the previous 40 years in Executive Search earning the title the Big Game Hunter! So Jeff knows a thing or two about job searching and how it has changed over the years. We spend our time together talking about job searching, networking and the power of Linkedin. The conversation is littered with great advice for today's executive job seekers.

This week’s episode includes author Jeffrey Testani and Associate Editor Justin Grodin as they discuss empagliflozin heart failure, including diuretic and cardio-renal effects. TRANSCRIPT: 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 Centre and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr Greg Hundley: And I'm Greg. I'm the director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Dr Carolyn Lam: Greg, the SGLT-2 inhibitors have really revolutionized heart failure treatment, but we still need to understand a bit better how they work. And today's feature paper is so important, talking about diuretic and cardio-renal effects of Empagliflozin. That's all I'm going to tell you though, because I want to talk about another paper in the issue very related. And it's from John McMurray from the University of Glasgow with insights from DAPA-HF. But maybe a question for you first. Have you ever wondered what to do about loop diuretics doses in patients with heart failure and whom you're thinking of initiating an SGLT-2 inhibitor, Greg? Dr Greg Hundley: Absolutely, Carolyn. That comes up all the time and how do you make that transition. Dr Carolyn Lam: Exactly. And so this paper is just so important, and Dr McMurray and his colleagues showed that in the DAPA-HF trial, the SGLT-2 inhibitor, dapagliflozin, first, just as a reminder, reduce the risk of worsening heart failure and death in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction. And in the current paper, they examined the efficacy and tolerability that dapagliflozin falls in relation to background diuretic treatment and change in diuretic therapy, following randomization to dapagliflozin or placebo. They found that 84% of patients randomized were treated with a conventional diuretic, such as the loop or thiazides diuretic. The majority of patients did not change their diuretic dose throughout follow-up. And the mean diuretic dose did not differ between the dapagliflozin and placebo group after randomization. Although a decrease in diuretic dose was more frequent with dapagliflozin than with placebo, the between-group differences were small. So treatment with dapagliflozin is safe and effective regardless of diuretic dose or diuretic use. Dr Greg Hundley: Very nice, Carolyn. That's such a nice practical article. I really enjoyed your presentation of that. My next article comes from Professor Karlheinz Peter, and it's investigating the reduction of shear stress and how that might impact monocyte activation in patients that undergo TAVI. So this group hypothesized that the large shear forces exerted on circulating cells, particularly in the largest circulating cells, monocytes, while passing through stenotic aortic valves results in pro-inflammatory effects that could be resolved with TAVI. So to address this, the investigative team implemented functional essays, calcium imaging, RNA gene silencing and pharmacologic agonist and antagonist to identify the key mechanical- receptor mediating the shear stress sensitivity of the monocytes. In addition, they stained for monocytes in explanted, stenotic, aortic human valves. Dr Carolyn Lam: Lots of work done in a very translational study. So what did they find Greg? Dr Greg Hundley: They found monocyte accumulation at the aortic side of the leaflets in the explanted aortic valves. That was the human subject study. In addition, they demonstrated that high shear stress activates multiple monocyte functions and identify PZ1 as the main responsible mechanoreceptors representing, therefore, a potentially druggable target. So reducing the shear stress from a stenotic valve promotes an anti-inflammatory effect and, therefore, could serve as a novel therapeutic benefit of those undergoing TAVI procedures. Dr Carolyn Lam: Really nice, Greg. Thanks. We're going to switch tracks a bit, Greg. What do you remember about Noonan's syndrome? Dr Greg Hundley: Oh boy. Impactful, congenital disease for both the probands, as well as the family. Dr Carolyn Lam: That's truly beautifully put and you're right. Noonan syndrome is a multisystemic developmental disorder characterized by common clinically variable symptoms, such as typical facial dysmorphism, short stature, developmental delay, intellectual disability, as well as cardiac hypertrophy. Now the underlying mechanism is a gain of function of the RAs MAPK signaling pathway, kinase signaling pathway. However, our understanding of the pathophysiological alterations and mechanisms, especially of the associated cardiomyopathy, really remains limited. So today's paper contributes significantly to our understanding and is also notable for the methods that these authors use to uncover this novel potential therapeutic approaches. The paper is from Dr Cyganek and Wollnik as co-corresponding authors from the University Medical Center Göttingen in Germany. And they presented a family with two siblings, displaying an autosomal recessive form of Noonan syndrome with massive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. As the clinically most prevalent symptom caused by allelic mutations within the leucine zipper like transcription regulator 1. They generated induced pluripotent STEM cell derived cardiomyocytes of the effected siblings and investigated the patient-specific cardiomyocytes on the molecular and functional level. Dr Greg Hundley: Carolyn, is such a thorough investigative initiative. So what did they find? Dr Carolyn Lam: They found that the patients induced, pluripotent STEM cell cardiomyocytes recapitulated the hypertrophic phenotype and uncovered, a so far not described, causal link between this leucine zipper like transcription regulator 1 dysfunction and ras map, kinase signaling hyperactivity, as well as, the hypertrophic gene response and cellular hypertrophy. Calcium channel blockade and MEK inhibition could prevent some of the disease characteristics providing a molecular underpinning for the clinical use of these drugs in patients with Noonan syndrome. In a proof of concept approach, they further explored a clinically translatable intronic CRISPR repair and demonstrated a rescue of the hypertrophic phenotype. Massive amount of work in a beautiful paper. Dr Greg Hundley: You bet, Carolyn, and boy giving hope to address some of that adverse phenotype in the heart. What an outstanding job. Dr Carolyn Lam: You're right, Greg. But now switching tracks a yet again. What do you know about ischemic preconditioning? Ischemic preconditioning refers to the process in which non-lethal ischemic stress of the heart prevents subsequent lethal ischemia reperfusion injury and provides important intrinsic protection against ischemia reperfusion injury of the heart, as well as other organs. So in this paper co-corresponding authors, Doctors, Zhang, Xiao and Cao from Peking University and colleagues provided multiple lines of evidence that a multifunctional TRIM family protein, the Mitsugumin-53 or MG53 is secreted from the heart in rodents in response to ischemic, preconditioning or oxidative stress. Now this secreted MG53 protected the heart against ischemia reperfusion injury. In the human heart, MG53 was expressed at a level about 1/10th of its skeletal muscle counterpart. And MG53 secretion was triggered by oxidative stress and human embryonic STEM cell derived cardiomyocytes, while deficiency exacerbated oxidative injury in these cells. Dr Greg Hundley: Very nice, Caroline. Tell me the take home message. How do I incorporate this information, maybe even clinically? Dr Carolyn Lam: Well, these results really defines secreted MG53 as an essential factor, conveying ischemic preconditioning induced cardioprotection. Now, since systemic delivery of MG53 protein restored ischemic preconditioning mediated cardioprotection in deficient mice, recombinant human MG53 protein could perhaps, or potentially be developed, into a novel treatment for various diseases of the human heart in which indigenous MG53 may be low. Dr Greg Hundley: All right, Carolyn. I'm going to tell you about a couple of letters in the mailbag. First, there's a research letter from Richard Vander Heide regarding unexpected feathers in cardiac pathology in COVID-19. And then, there's a large exchange of letters between Dr Yuji MIura, Chuanli Ren and Laurent Azoulay regarding a prior publication, entitled "Aromatase Inhibitors and the Risk of Cardiovascular Outcomes in Women With Breast Cancer, A Population-Based Cohort Study." And then finally, Carolyn, there's another research letter from professor, Nilesh Samani, entitled "Genetic Associations with Plasma ACE2 Concentration: Potential Relevance to COVID-19 Risk." Dr Carolyn Lam: Wow, interesting. There's also an "On My Mind" paper by Dr Kimura on "contextual imaging, a requisite concept for the emergence of point-of-care ultrasound." There's an ECG challenge, by Dr Dewland, with a case of an intermittent -wide QRS complexes. There's a cardiovascular case series presentation by Dr Nijjar on "a solitary left ventricular septal mass and amaurosis fugax." Dr Greg Hundley: That's great, Carolyn. How about we move on to the feature discussion. Dr Carolyn Lam: Let's do that. Dr Greg Hundley: Well listeners, we are here to discuss again, another important paper related to SGLT-2 inhibition. And we have with us, Dr Jeff Testani from Yale New Haven and our own associate editor, Dr Justin Grodin from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Welcome gentlemen. Jeff let's start with you. Can you describe for us some of the background behind this study, and then also the hypothesis that you wanted to address? Dr Jeffrey Testani: Our lab is very interested in understanding volume overload and heart failure, why does the kidney retain sodium and why it stops responding to loop diuretics. Several years ago, when the SGLT-2 first came out, we saw them as a diuretic with the side effect of glucosuria. Back when they were still being thought of as primarily diabetes medications. But as the story unfolded and we saw that the SGLT-2 seemed to be doing something much more than just control blood glucose in diabetics and was demonstrating, particularly, a pronounced effect on heart failure outcomes, we got very interested in, better understanding this. We know that loop diuretics, they're really a double-edged sword. Loop diuretics are our mainstay of therapy to relieve congestion and heart failure patients, but they do so at the expense of quite a bit of toxicity. And we know that the loop diuretics directly cause neuronal activation, elaboration of rennin, norepinephrine, etc. through their effects directly on the kidney. In addition to causing normal moral activation through the volume depletion they cause. And as we all know, blocking the neurohormonal activation is one of the primary therapies we use in heart failure. So even though it helps our patients keep the fluid off, it does that at an expense of potentially some very negative effects. The interesting thing with the SGLT-2 inhibitors is, we've seen that in the diabetic populations, that they seem to actually improve volume status in diabetics, more so than one would really expect by the week diuretics that they are. And by and large, they were doing that without a pronounced activation of the neurohormonal system. So this led us to the conclusion that we really need to rigorously study this in heart theory and see what exactly are these effects of diuretics volume status and how much negative impact will any of those effects bring towards normal activation, kidney dysfunction, etc. Dr Greg Hundley: Very clever, Jeff. How did you go about addressing this question? What was your study design and what was your study population? Who did you enroll? Dr Jeffrey Testani: We wanted to have a pretty clean mechanistic study here. We weren't looking at ethnicity. We were really trying to understand a mechanism here and what are these agents doing to sodium handling in the kidney, etc. We enrolled diabetic patients that were stable. Per their advanced heart failure position, they were at added at a stable volume status. They hadn't had recent changes in medications diuretics, and we use the crossover design where we brought the patient in for about an eight-hour rigorous GCRT type study where we administered empagliflozin in 10 milligrams and then did some pretty rigorous characterization of them. As far as body fluids spaces, renal function, normal activation, your sodium excretion. Then they would continue that therapy for two weeks, come in for a terminal visit, that was a very similar protocol. Then we'd wash them out for two weeks and cross them over to the alternative therapy. And they were randomized whether they had placebo or epilobium first in order. Dr Greg Hundley: Very good. So a crossover design. And what were your study results, Jeff? Dr Jeffrey Testani: We were quite interested in the overall effects and it was actually quite surprising. We know the loop diuretic resistance is common and when physicians and patients are not responding well enough, oftentimes we add thiazides. And thiazides waste potassium. They waste magnesium. They increase uric acid. They usually cause renal dysfunction and significant normal activation. That was the default hypothesis that we would see that. And to the contrary, we pretty much saw the opposite of what a thiazide did. We saw a modest, but clinically significant natriuresis. So as a monotherapy, these drugs are quite weak. Although we saw a doubling of a baseline level of sodium excretion, that's sort of a clinically irrelevant amount as an acute diarrheic. However, when we added the eplerenone to a loop diuretic, we got a 30, 40% increase in sodium excretion. And just to benchmark that, if you look at the dose trial where they compared low dose to high dose Lasix, which were one X versus two and a half X, their home loop diuretic, they got a similar increase in sodium excretion. So even though 30, 40% increase in sodium excretion doesn't sound like a lot, it's all of our normal interventions. It's actually a pretty significant increase. We found that happened acutely. And to our surprise, that natriuretic effect had not completely gone away by two weeks. So the patient was still in a negative sodium balance at the two-week time point. And they actually had a reduction in their blood volume, in their total body water, in their weight, as a result of that kind of slow persistent, natriuresis that had happened over those two weeks. We were unable to detect any signs of normal MAL activation with this. There was actually a statistically significant better change in norepinephrine during the dapagliflozin period versus placebo. And there's some evidence that, that might be an actual finding of saccharolytic effect of these drugs. As in many of the other trials we've seen no, despite a reduction of blood pressure and probably volume status, heart rate stays the same or even goes down. And we saw an improvement in uric acid. We saw no additional potassium wasting. We saw an improvement in serum magnesium levels. So really kind of like I started this way is the opposite, in many ways of what we see, side effect wise, with the diuretic is what we saw with addition of an SGLT-2 inhibitor. Dr Greg Hundley: Listeners, we're going to turn now to Dr Justin Grodin, who's one of our associate editors and is also an editorialist for this paper. And Justin, we've heard some really exciting results here. The addition of a dapagliflozin to a loop diuretic enhancing the neurohormonal access and receiving some unexpected benefits on the electrolyte portfolio. Can you tell us a little bit about how you put this work in the context of everything else that we have been reading about this exciting new class of drug therapy? Dr Justin Grodin: This certainly is exciting because with the release of the DAPA-HF clinical trial, just about a year ago, we've really come to recognize that there really are substantial, long-term beneficial effects with SGLT-2 inhibition in patients with heart failure, and as Jeff alluded to, a lot of these effects, we saw that they were beneficial in individuals that are high risk or who already had heart disease and diabetes. And we weren't sure if that was going to translate to individuals with heart failure. We really saw beneficial effects in both, individuals with heart failure, with or without diabetes. So this is an interesting paradigm because, although we saw dramatic effects in long-term survival quality of life, the mechanism was actually somewhat murky. And a lot of this was transitive based on prior works. We obviously had a strong hypothesis that they would work through reducing incident heart failure and diabetics, but then we were left questioning what is the mechanism? And I think Jeff highlighted it quite well. There was the early thought that this was perhaps just a weak diuretic and that it was additive, and these patients were just getting long-term natiurer recess. And then others thought that there might've been, perhaps, some positive influence by some very low level, blood pressure reduction with these therapies. So in that sense, I think Jeff's paper really is put in context and when we reviewed it, we thought it was quite fascinating because I think as Jeff showed in his paper quite elegantly and actually in a very, very careful study, which the reviewers and your editorial staff appreciated, we really saw that there was a probably more robust response to natriuresis than we had anticipated. And importantly, this was independent of glycosuria, which is a very important observation. And if I might take a 10,000-foot view of at least this therapy and how we might think about it as an incremental therapy in heart failure, it's really doing something else. So we thought that with SGLT-2 inhibition, you get a little sodium and a little natriuresis, maybe perhaps a little bit extra, as it complexes with glucose. I think if you look at what the potential physiology would be with this therapy is that it's doing far more than that. And I think Jeff's study at least supports some of the speculation. And again, I'm going to perhaps look beyond SGLP-2 inhibitor, and then more so focus on the physiology of the proximal convoluted tubule. And given the location of the blockade, this is really priming the kidney, or at least Jeff's manuscript, and Jeff's analysis, supports the hypothesis that SGLT-2 inhibitors influence the proximal tubule environment, such that the kidney is ready to reset in natriuresis. And I think Jeff's data it at. least supports that because if we look at the proximal tubule physiology, there's really a lot more going on, then SGLT-2 inhibition. There are other receptors that it can influence that might also promote natriuresis. It can also promote increased distal sodium delivery to other areas of the nephron. And in essence, this almost, and in Jeff has put it this way before, which I totally agree. This gives the opportunity for the kidney to taste the salt, as opposed to the more common state that we have in somebody with heart failure and congestion, where, and I talk about this on rounds all the time, the kidney's response to a failing heart is to retain salt and water. So this kidney is in this perpetual state of dehydration. And I think the idea that Jeff's analysis is at least supporting, is that somehow, we were influencing the physiology in the proximal convoluted tubule, we are actually priming the kidney and readying it. We're almost hitting reset, where the kidneys may lose this physiology, thinking that the body is dehydrated and in essence, really readying it to assist with decongestion. Dr Greg Hundley: I love the way you explained that. It's almost as if I'm on ward rounds with you that just knocks home a lot of the message here, and the importance of Jeff's work. Understanding the physiology of the proximal tubule and then readying the kidney, instead of moving into a mode of retaining salt and water, actually allowing that to flow and facilitating a diaresis. I'll start with you, Jeff, and then come back to Justin. You might have unlocked a really special key here. What do you see as the next steps in research in this particular field? Dr Jeffrey Testani: I think Justin really, really captured the essence of what excites us so much about this is, most diuretics are a brute force sort of approach to getting salt out of the body. They are a stick, not a carrot and SGLT-2 inhibitors, when you look at them as how they would work as a brute force diarrheic, they are really wimpy and there is every opportunity for the kidney to defeat the of a SGLT-2 inhibitor, if it wanted to buy where they work and what they block. But the reality is, is that they really seem to be the carrot almost. if you think of resetting the sodium set point of the kidney, kind of quenching some of that salt first or sodium humidity that Justin was referring to. And the thing that's really interesting is when we look at trials like DAPA-HF. So despite the fact that they do seem to have this natural effect in blood pressure lowering effect and these different effects, they don't tend to cause hypertension, over diaresis, it's a much more of a natural, where the kidneys regulatory mechanisms are still operative. we have this duality of not causing over diaresis but causing diaresis. So it's really when the body needs to get rid of salt, it helps it do that. And so I think the next steps, at least for our research program is, we want to understand taking these drugs out of the context of stable, relatively euvolemic chronic heart failure patients. And when we put them into the acute setting of actual volume overload, do we see more robust diathesis and that natriuresis in that setting. The second thing is we want to dig into what is the internal mechanisms that are allowing the kidney to do these things. How is it that it's able to dump out salt when it's beneficial, but not leaked over to uresis. Since we're digging into those mechanisms, I think will give us some additional insight into this class. Dr Greg Hundley: Justin. Dr Justin Grodin: I think Jeff really encapsulated, or at least certainly highlighted some very important points, that are largely in parallel with where I foresee this. Because really, if you look at just study, a lot of these patients were quite stable. So the questions that come along are whether or not that this synergistic effect number one, is sustained long-term. Because there are some data, at least in diabetic individuals, that this might not be the case. So Jeff's paper elegantly highlights the influence of these therapies in two weeks. Now, whether that's sustained is certainly unclear. I think the logical next step is, "Okay. We show that we have a therapy that might prime the kidney for increased natriuresis" what are its effects and individuals that might need the natriuresis even more. So as Jeff highlighted individuals with more decompensated heart failure, that are more congested and more hypervolemic. And then obviously individuals that might be quite diarrheic resistant. This is something that I think Jeff and I have given talks on. And Jeff is clearly one of the world's experts in this space, but it's obviously a very attractive possibility that this might influence individuals whose kidneys are teased or trained into just holding onto sodium, no matter what. Or really no matter what therapies we give the kidney. I don't know if Jeff mentioned this, but at least in his analysis, they also showed through indicator dilution methods that there was a reduction in plasma volume in these individuals. And I think that's really important because we at least hypothesize that in many heart failure phenotypes, plasma volume is certainly a component of decompensation. So whether these kidneys have a more pleiotropic effect on the fluid balance from your status between the interstitium and the vascular space, long-term is really unknown. Dr Greg Hundley: I want to thank both Jeff and Justin. What an incredible, exciting discussion. And this paper, Jeff, were so thrilled to have the opportunity to publish it in circulation. And the clarity, helping us understand some of the mechanism of the efficacy of SGLT-2 inhibition. And then this unique combination of SGLT-2 with loop diuretics, potentiating, dieresis natriuresis without some of the harmful effects on serum electrolytes. And then I really appreciate both of you giving us an insight into the future where more work is needed to understand, is this a sustainable beyond two-week effect? And then, can these therapies, this combination, be helpful in those with decompensated heart failure. On behalf of Carolyn and myself, we wish you a great week and we look forward to catching you next week on the Run. This program is copyright, the American Heart Association 2020.  

And we're back!!! It has been a long month as we desperately looked around for films to review. With just the odd one on Prime and Netflix, we had to have a team meeting to come up with a review idea. Such meetings drag on when Neil says "it must be foreign language". So Jeff swore at him in Welsh. Meeting abandoned. We tried again a few days later. That meeting started well. Graham said let's look at the film's of Christopher Nolan (as Tenet "almost" opened around that time). Then Phil threw in "I have a foreign language film idea". Jeff accused him of being brainwashed by Neil and the meeting once again descended into chaos and abandonment once again. Third and final meeting. Graham, the peacemaker, said let's all pick a film we always meant to see but never got around to. It meant Graham could have a Nolan film, Neil and Phil could have foreign language and Jeff and Darren could make their own choices.

On this episode of the Holy Nerdy Podcast,  Caleb is taking a break this week as he prepares for move from Florida to Texas. So Jeff and I decided to do our Dragon Ball Manga review without him. We last left off with Chapter 59, and have 3 new chapters to cover. Goku’s battle with Moro isn’t going so well and the situation is looking bleak until we get the long awaited return of Vegeta and the debut of his mysterious new ability. Moro though has some tricks of his own that quickly turns the tide more in his favor. Over all these new chapters were fun, but the events that are transpiring are getting a little bit too convenient for our tastes.     TOPICS   Caleb's Big Move Dragon Ball Manga Review Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Review And Predictions     Follow us on Social Media Facebook Twitter Instagram   You can call us and leave us a voicemail at 806-680-6373. Let us know what you think of the show, comment on a topic, or even suggest a topic.

SUMMARY: Jeff Walters joins Steve for EP83 of the DYB Podcast and discusses his life's story of drug addiction to being a successful painting contractor. Jeff became the man of the house at a young age, which put pressure on him, though he had a very encouraging mom. He began playing in a band at the young age of 11 and worked hard --whether working hard for drugs or as he now does, to help give others a second chance. Not only does he have a wonderful, thriving business, but Jeff strives to give felons a second chance as he hires them and helps them to work hard to overcome their previous life choices to be successful, clean, and sober. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: How Jeff started out in a band at a young age and painted on the side to make money What the catalyst was that helped Jeff out of drugs and into being a successful businessman The hope Jeff offers to other convicted felons--helping them see beyond their past and work hard for their futures. The interesting start the 12 step program gave Jeff for his painting company and the encouragement he has for hiring today QUOTES: 1:34 Steve: "How did you get started in this crazy business?" Jeff: "Well, the funny part about it was, whenever I couldn't find anything else to do, I could always find something you paint. And this goes clear back from, in my teens, at that point I'm supposed to be an entertainer. So, I mean, I never thought of the painting business as a career. It was just a way to always make some quick, easy money." 3:04 Steve: "So you started playing music very young and then you figured, 'All right, well, I've got to actually generate some income.' How old were you?" Jeff: "17, 18. It was just kind of a side thing, when I was playing five nights a week and I did the holiday circuit and we had a band that traveled about five States. We did college one nighters for a few years, so I started pretty young. One of the neat things that there is, as I see some of the new young guys come in, now they're all 'gung ho' about starting the business and stuff. That wasn't how it was for me. I wasn't looking at it as a business at all, it was just a way to make decent money relatively quickly, but I didn't really look at it when I started, as that being a business or career." 3:52 "It was basically me and my mom growing up. So I didn't meet my dad until I was in my thirties. So it was me and my mom growing up and I was kind of the man of the house, but with that came a lot of, a lot of pressure. Mom was always supportive of everything that I did, but I turned to drugs, really, at a pretty young age and battled with some addiction issues for a huge chunk of my life. I'm thankful that I don't have to live that way today. I've been clean since, October the 6th of 2001. And it's something that I work on, really, every day." 5:29 Steve: "So you started off in new construction." Jeff: "I did. Yeah. Like most of us, right? Easy leads. Just usually no profit, unfortunately. But at that point, I wasn't looking at any of that. We're just trying to get some money to continue the lifestyle." 7:32 Jeff: "One of those things, Steve, where birds of a feather flock together, you know?" Steve: "Oh yeah. It's so true. That's one of my favorite quotes. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with-- Jim Rohn." 9:43 "When I got clean, that was almost a full time job for me -- just to try to find a whole new way to live and not associate with the people that you...that's why I took the halfway house for awhile. Cause that way, at least, I had someplace safe to go. I didn't have any money, I didn't have anything. So, finding a job sounded like the logical answer, except nobody would hire me. I'm a convicted felon at that point, I'm at a halfway house. I wasn't having very good luck finding a job. So I start up the business." 10:26 "Of course, at first...I didn't have any kind of advertising or anything else. As I would go to these 12 step meetings, I would tell them, say, "Hey, here's the thing. I just got out of treatment. Anybody has anything to paint, I'd like to do it." And at that point, I was just trying to keep the phone on." 11:29 Jeff: "An old timer once told me, "Look, all you need to do is stay clean till your next meeting." So that's how come I was attending three or four a day because I wasn't sure if I could make it til tomorrow, but I could make it to my next meeting. Then the days started turning into weeks and the weeks into months and then years. And here we are today." Steve: "These referrals from the meeting, they had a vested interest. They wanted 1) to support you, because it's like a brotherhood. And then 2) they were kind of there as accountability, too, after they pay you. They're like, "So Jeff, you're going to use this to pay bills and buy equipment, right?" Jeff: "Exactly...a whole new set of birds to flock together." 16:50 "I would way rather have some really good people that don't know how to paint. I can teach them how to paint. (Verses) somebody that comes in and says, "Oh, I got 27 years worth of experience." I'm like, "Yeah, I got 27 years worth of bad habits to break."  Steve: "Isn't that the truth!" 18:23 Steve: "Now, for our listeners who are not DYB Members, yet, you mentioned Monday. I just want to pack that a little bit. So, Monday is the new production management & admin management program that we have rolled out. And what Jeff's referring to is, we (in our 1-1 Coaching Meetings) built out an All Star Team CRM now, so that it's created its own application form. And so, then when he posts that link with his hiring ad, everybody drops into that form and it makes the process streamlined. Plus he's building his list, right, Jeff?" Jeff: "Right. Correct. And , the nice thing about doing that is now, they can fill out the app off of a cell phone. Before, I used to have him come in, fill out an application... I wanted to see if they could read and write and follow instructions, you know, and a lot of them couldn't do at least parts of those. But now, we've tried really hard to streamline a bunch of those processes and we see the benefits of doing that." 24:01 "I just wanted to, let some of the people know that there's some really good people there (felons) that really want to work hard and just want to do, want to change their lives and given the opportunity, some of them do that. We've had some really wonderful success stories over the years. And that's part of why, why I still do this. You know, God is good. He's given me some tools here where I can make a difference in some people's lives. So for me, I'm at an age where the money is important and I live comfortably, but that's not really the big motivator for me. So if anybody has any questions on that ever, they can sure contact me."   HIGHLIGHTS 0:18 Jeff meets his wife, who mistakes his employee, Johnny, for the owner as Jasmine thinks, "If Walters Painting will hire, Jeff, then maybe they will hire me." Little did they know, they'd get married a few years later! 01:45 Jeff starts playing in a band at a very young age and gets into the drug and alcohol scene. He then paints on the side to make quick cash for his lifestyle. 05:29 Jeff starts off painting in new construction for the easy leads. In 1988, Jeff is busted on drug charges and taken to prison. In 1991, is when he really started a painting business. 08:10 Jeff goes back to prison from 1995-1998, but he does work for the Department of Corrections eventually, painting about every correctional facility there was in Nebraska. 09:43 At a half-way house, Jeff tried to find employment, but as a convicted felon, no one would hire him. Jeff decides to start up his painting business. 10:26 Jeff begins asking for painting work at his 12 step meetings and landing work. 16:29 Jeff shares how he took his company culture to the next level, working with convicted felons and then having them all read business books together and discuss. 18:23 Jeff talks about how he has streamlined his business. 24:01 Jeff talks about his key motivator for business in giving hope to those who need a second chance.   LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Receipt Bank QuickBooks Online Monday: Project, Hiring, and Admin Management QBQ (The Question Behind the Question) Dave's Killer Bread ADDITIONAL FREE RESOURCES: Jim Rohn   Jeff Walters Facebook   Schedule Your Free Strategy Call With Steve Burnett   Thank you very much for joining us today! If you received value, would you take a quick few seconds and leave us a review on iTunes, please?   Press and hold to visit the page: Show Notes Page

We talked with Jeff Tomlin, the Chief Marketing Officer of Vendasta. Vendasta is a platform for selling digital solutions for local businesses and is one of Canada’s fastest-growing tech companies. Last summer, Vendasta closed a $40 million dollar round of fundraising, the largest venture capital raise in the history of Saskatchewan tech. So needless to say, they were on a tear, fueling massive growth coming into 2020. And then a global economic crisis happened. So we talked with Jeff about how this impacted the Vendasta rocketship, and how they’ve positioned themselves to continue growing. Vendasta sells digital solutions to small businesses in an age where small businesses are moving online faster than ever. So Jeff shared some incredible insights from their team on some of the trends that will emerge from the pandemic, and how they are working hard to help small businesses not only survive but thrive in 2020. We’re having conversations with tech leaders on how they’re facing the COVID-19 crisis head-on, how startups and tech companies can approach the challenges ahead, and how the world changing before our eyes will present unique opportunities for startups and innovators.

 It's Friday Night! That means it's movie premiere day! But all the theaters are closed. So Jeff and Donald fire up the online cinema to watch Trolls: World Tour!"Poppy and Branch discover that they are but one of six different Troll tribes scattered over six different lands devoted to six different kinds of music: Funk, Country, Techno, Classical, Pop and Rock. Their world is about to get a lot bigger and a whole lot louder."Stay tuned after the Trolls talk for a bit of speculation on the future of cinema and how Streaming may have gotten its foot in the door.Join the conversation at discord.gg/un3AQb7

It's Friday Night! That means it's movie premiere day! But all the theaters are closed. So Jeff & Donald fire up the online Cinema to watch Trolls: World Tour! "Poppy and Branch discover that they are but one of six different Troll tribes scattered over six different lands devoted to six different kinds of music: Funk, Country, Techno, Classical, Pop and Rock. Their world is about to get a lot bigger and a whole lot louder." Stay tuned after the Trolls talk for a bit of speculation on the future of Cinema and how Streaming may have gotten its foot in the door. Join the conversation at discord.gg/un3AQb7

After being fired from his first job helping out at a law firm, Jeff Lerner knew immediately that having a traditional “job” wasn’t going to be for him. So Jeff followed his natural instincts to pursue becoming a jazz musician, but after some bad luck, he found himself $492k in debt. Miraculously, Jeff was able to clear himself of all the debt in just 18 months after discovering affiliate marketing. After launching and then selling his massively successful digital agency, Jeff now considers himself to be an “Entrepreneurial Evangelist” with the mission of spreading the good news about the wide variety of ways people can achieve great success in the modern economy. Tune in to hear his incredible story!

James: Hi audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieved Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing podcast. Today we are doing a podcast and a webinar as well because I've an awesome presentation from Jeff Adler who's the Vice President of Yardi Metrics. Yardi is one of the largest property management companies in the nation and they have a lot of data behind them and Jeff is going to provide a lot of insight, which is going to give us a state of the union of multifamily industry. Hey Jeff, welcome to the show. Jeff: Well thank you very much James. James: Alright Jeff, so let's go back to last year 2019 where we had a really good podcast. I believe that's podcast number one. Where we call it a state of the union of multifamily for 2019. So this time is 2020. So let's have a recap. What has changed from 2019 to 2020 for the multifamily market? Jeff: Well, you know, in one regard, not much. Okay. And another regard a whole bunch. So if you kind of recall at the beginning of 2019 from an economic standpoint, there was a fair amount of uncertainty. The fourth quarter of 18 was kind of a Swan dive, we had an, a big inversion of the yield curve. The Federal Reserve had kind of raised rates. Stock market had kind of gone into a significant correction and 2019 we really weren't sure whether the economy would continue to be able to grow. Would the fed take the corrective action necessary? And the economy would be able to navigate some of the trade pensions and basically the continued health of the multifamily industry would it still kind of advance at a good clip or what was the state of supply. So there was some uncertainty around some of those kind of components. And so the picture is a bit more clarified from the macro economic standpoint. The feds did cut rates, the yield curve stopped its inversion flat again. And the economy kind of advanced forward, we had 2.3% growth over the course of the year. Job formation has still been quite good. Difficulties with supply had kind of stretched out that supply delivery curve and occupancies have performed well. Overall rent growth across the country has been around 3% with fewer markets performing poorly. Some of the hot markets kind of beginning to tamp down. So the one I would say negative component in all of the multifamily world is the regulatory backlash that occurred from rent control legislation in Oregon, New York and California, which has made those markets less attractive compared to others. But the basic outlines of the economy are still quite good. I just came back from the NMAC conference in Orlando I guess it seems like forever ago, but I think it's was only last week. And there the mood is very good, lots of capital lots of activity going on. People always worried about are things kind of richly valued, and they are. But if you look at the spreads in cap rate in the 10 year, still pretty good. You look at good availability, still very good. More capital is flowing into the multifamily industry from not only outside the United States, but inside of the United States with a multifamily being one of the two top asset classes for investments. So when you look at the demographics continued to be on a positive, you look at the supply, which we do not think will be out of hand and we just finished up a new supply forecast by property almost.    Taking into account a lot of the cycle time data we have on deliveries of projects. We think that we'll actually, as a country, deliver a tad less than the 300,000 odd units that were delivered in 2019. And we are in generally speaking housing shortage contrasted to the housing surplus that we had before the crash. So it's really a really good time to be in multifamily. It's almost so good we kind of pinch ourselves and saying we don't want it to be this good. There must be something bad. What's the horrible thing that's going to happen to us? We're just having a hard time dealing with good news as an industry. But I'm cautious. I continue to be cautiously optimistic. I don't see a recession at least until 2021 and quite frankly, with the way in which the economy has kind of come through this, I'll call it a mini manufacturing recession. It didn't really affect the services industry; it did affect manufacturing and sectors exposed to trade. With us actually coming out of that growth prospects for GDP are actually higher this year than they were in 2019. So I don't really see a recession till 2021 and one could argue very effectively, 2022 but certainly we have another good year ahead of us and inflation is not out of hand in any respect. And because inflation isn't out of hand, there really is no pressure for interest rates at the short end to move higher. And there certainly is no pressure on the long end. I mean, interest rates for the tenure are back down to below one six and they were at one nine, not just before this kind of corona virus scare. But if you look at that, like if there's no inflation, then you're not going to see kind of big interest rate moves. You're not going to see big interest rate moves. You're not even going to see moving in cap rates or movement associated with a recession.    It's really quite positive. I think the biggest issue if you're a multifamily investor right now is it's hard to find deals that aren't very richly priced. You have to be very prudent with your underwriting and with your capital investment. The competition for assets is quite extraordinary, particularly in cities adjacent to California and the Northeast; there are capitalist fleeing those areas. I've been speaking to folks in Phoenix where the market for multifamily is so amazingly red hot because of all the California is trying to move their capital out of California on a gradual basis. So I think that the biggest challenge right now is to prudently underwrite and to find opportunities that make sense. And if you're going to overpay and the fact of the matter is if you're in a competitive bid situation and you won, you overpaid. The question is will the market kind of bail you out? Are you in a rising tide so that the fact that you overpay at any particular moment doesn't really matter because the investment overall will perform well as the market and your value creation strategy plays out. So, long answer James, but I'm pretty optimistic about where we are in 2020. James: So what would cause the recession in 2021/2022? Jeff: Well as I've been saying quite a while, I don't know if I had this little piece here. Let's see. I'm trying to find out how do I kind of explain, this is a classic way of thinking about, and by the way, this slide is the same slide I've had since Trump was elected in November of 2016. Alright. So seems like, okay, things are a little more positive than I think they were even in November. Alright. So the balancing act has always been the pro growth elements of the administration's policy compared to the anti-growth elements of the administration's policy. Pro-growth seemed first tax reform, regulatory relief, executive orders. The anti-growth came later immigration control, which has restricted the amount of labor coming into the United States. It has created a labor shortage which has boosted incomes at the lower end of the economics and education scale. So it achieved its objectives at the cost of some level of growth and trade negotiation. Because the tussle with China has scrambled supply chains. And so there's a little bit of clarity with the signing of the USMCA in North America and the first phase of the Chinese agreement in I think in mid January. So trade negotiation is less of an anti-growth element than it had been. Immigration control still is an anti-growth element and the program elements are still kind of there, but kind of burning their way in and nothing much has happened. Infrastructure, education reform or healthcare, nothing's happened there. So when you look at it, I would say it's more like three quarters full versus a half full that I said in November. So what would cause a recession to occur? Well if you had a sudden increase in inflation, either labor cost inflation or materials cost inflation that would raise shorter term interest rates, that would cause an inversion and then you'd have a recession. Some significant macroeconomic demand shock, negative demand shock would cause it; apart from either of those things, I don't see a response and the other thing I do look for constantly is where's the debt bubble? Recessions are classically caused by excess leverage in certain sectors of the economy. So you constantly, in my mind, I'm constantly looking for where's the debt bubble and it's a big enough to cause a recession? Right now one could argue that there's a bit of a debt bubble in consumer auto loans, not that big a deal. It's not happening in mortgage or real estate. That's clearly the case.    Is it happening in corporate debt? Yeah, maybe, but they're sophisticated folks. Is it happening to a certain extent in oil? Well, one could argue that that the factors are a bit over levered and the banks are trying to sort of reel them back in. But at 55, 60 bucks a barrel, it's not so bad. I don't see, again, when you look around and say, where's the inflation coming from? It's not coming from materials and it's certainly not coming from oil. I'll go back here and kind of show you a little bit of slide on oil production. It's not coming from oil. It's not really coming from labor. If I kind of go back a further point, not really coming back from labor, rent actually; rent, real estate is a quite frankly a bit of a driver of whatever inflation we do have because of frankly regulatory constraints to supply and the cost of materials and labor. That's kind of hard to produce supply to enter the market. So I don't really see inflation cracking over too, I don't see from the material side, I don't see from the labor side. Read some interesting papers by the way, that one of the issues we kind of are scratching our head about is with all this labor shortage. Why aren't labor unit costs going up? Or the fact of the matter is the workforce is older, is less likely to move, is reasonably productive. So there is wage inflation at the bottom end of the scale, wages at the bottom end is going up 5% but it's not enough to offset people who are retiring it at higher wage rates and slower wage growth among older workers. So even, and we've had a long history of services inflation with goods deflation and seems to play out. Now long story is the multifamily, not exactly economic piece, but the basic point is if you understand the basic sort of lay of the land, interest rates lower for longer, not really no big inflationary pressure, then income producing real estate looks really good because you're not going to get a reprising on the value of the asset and that's the way real estate works and generally you got growing incomes. So that's the basis of not believing that there's going to be a recession kind of upcoming immediately. We always thought, we're going to eventually have recession, but I don't see the basis of the pressures that would give rise to that at least for the next 18 months or more. James: Got it. Got it. So a primary would be the political climate is what you are saying could be where we might be causing some of these potential recession. It depends on what's the policy and you don't see any other big risk, I guess, right. In any other... Jeff: Yeah. So I mean, so James, you're in Texas, I believe, Austin is that correct? James: Austin. Texas, Jeff: Yeah. So your state and your city is the beneficiary of misguided policies in other places. The growth in population, the growth in tech centers is really occurring in the South and the West. It's not to say that New York, San Francisco, LA, are not wonderful places have very deep tech hubs and tech ecosystems. But what's generally happening is that when a business decides it wants to scale, it doesn't scale. In California, it can't, it doesn't scale in New York. It scales outside. That's not the say that Google is building a big footprint in New York City to access that labor pool. That's not the say that there are large tech firms that are; just yesterday I think Google was trying to in a wall street journal get San Jose, we redeveloped the city of San Jose downtown as an employment and a commercial center. But the fact of the matter is the cost of housing and expansion is so difficult in these major gateway cities that places that are business friendly and have an intellectual capital infrastructure like Austin are growing quite rapidly. Ross, Austin, Raleigh, Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, these are places where the tech infrastructure on talent is expanding. Texas is a beneficiary of having a great business climate. And so population and I think I have a little slide on this one here, population is moving as one would expect. Population is moving domestically; Vegas, Austin, Phoenix, Raleigh, Charlotte, Nashville, Orlando, Dallas, and Denver. You know, these are places that have significant domestic inland ratio. If you look at the other, I'll call gateway cities, they have a significant amount of domestic out migration and in the past they really were covered by international immigration. Now that as coming down a population in the US is growing at seven tenths, I think now six tenths of a percent. So these cities over here are growing quite rapidly. And Austin is one of the beneficiaries of that. Jeff: Got it. Got it. So what about, I mean, in the beginning you mentioned about the cities just outside of California or like Phoenix, I mean, Phoenix and Las Vegas is beneficiary or people are moving out to California and why is that? Why is that driving? Why not they come to Florida or Texas? Why is Phoenix and Las Vegas which had a huge cycle in the past crash, it went from hype to so down. Why are they like now? James: So if you think about it both in New York and in California, you have a hollowing out of the middle. And so if you're extraordinarily wealthy, so let's convert this to almost a apartment investment discussion because of the structure of the economy if you can build a class A property in Northern or Southern California, you should continue to build it. They will continue to get occupied because there are a reasonable number of people that have continued to expand at the very high end of the market.    Jeff: Got it.    James: Conversely, in the very low end of the market, it is a draw for people from around the world who want to get a start in the United States. But if you're in the middle of the income stream, then your life isn't that great and your costs are quite high and you can improve your quality of life by going someplace not too far from where you are. So if you look at California, the people streaming out of California, Boise, Salt Lake, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and yes, companies are moving all the way to Dallas. But there's a steady stream of the middle income and I would say and low income and it will cost 50 to 150,000 a year. Educated, skilled, but not at the highest level, not the half a million dollar a year kind of thing or $300,000 a year, but right there in the middle. Now the same thing is happening coming out of the New York metropolitan area, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and that's streaming to the Carolinas and into Florida. That's what's happening. Orlando has a little bit of a bump from Puerto Rican immigration, but there's pretty much people streaming out of there. And if you're talking about people leaving Chicago, they're going more to the Tampa where they used to go for winters. The new workers are going to the gold coast and the people in Chicago go to the Gulf Coast and down to the Carolinas as well. And Carolina is Georgia and so forth. And this is just where, look at the numbers, look at where the people are coming from. I mean it's in the numbers, it's in the cost structure. Certainly the tax bill that it went to effect in 2018 is pushing people at the margin on a slow roll kind of basis, adding a little extra push to what's been going on otherwise. And so when I look at where the population is growing, where the new supply is going, where intellectual capital is moving this is what I see. That's what I see and that's where an investment standpoint, my own view is you want to be in places where the tide is rising. It's easier to make money where the tide is rising and populations are growing and the economy is boosting incomes and it is to kind of swim upstream. I'm not saying you can't make money in Buffalo or Syracuse or Cleveland, but it’s tougher. James: Awesome. Yup. Yup. So Jeff, I have a question in terms of the rising, I mean the capital is comprising the price of buying an apartment nowadays as reason now from, I mean if you look at Texas in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio and I think everywhere, I think everyone across nations. It used to be 50 a door to buy an apartment. Now it has gone like 80 to 100 and in some places 120, 130 a door even for a class B and C properties. So how does it make sense? Because you can construct new class A with that similar cost, like a hundred, 110, you should be able to? Jeff: But no actually you can't and that is the entire point. Because of restriction and again, we're obviously talking about the city and which part of the neighborhood, but the fact of the matter is that construction costs have risen significantly and regulatory burdens have risen significantly, particularly in kind of urban cores so that the cost of constructing new products is higher. Now there is a lot of work being attempted to bring down the construction costs through prefabrication, through potentially regulatory streamlining. But it's not as easy as it seems and there's a lot of institutional resistance to it. I've spent the whole year trying to help crack the sort of affordability code and it's literally just buried in a swamp. I mean, it's just, it's ugly. So can you build, if a city planner will let you build essentially what it was eighties product on sort of suburban ex urban land. Then yeah, you can deliver it at maybe 80, a hundred thousand dollars a door. But it's very hard to do so. And as a result, so if you think about values, values are driven by two things. One, what's the next best alternative? And two, are our incomes growing to increase the value of the asset? In multifamily, you have both of these dynamics happening. One, because of the general shortage of housing and the higher cost of adding capacity rents are rising. So if rents are going up three percent, NOI is easily going up five to six. Plus given the fact that interest rates are lower for longer and there's capital streaming into it that is saying, well my cost of capital is lower and all the institutions which started this cycle 10, 11 years ago, only in the urban sexy six all of them are spreading out all over the country and they're bringing their lower costs of capital with them and their lower return expectations and that is having an impact on values.    A third component I would also argue that kind of fills into the second one is that as cities grow and develop, and I'll use Austin as an example, Austin has become an institutional grade capital city. 20 years ago it wasn't, you had opportunities to capital, but now it is. So what that tends to as a city changed in its nature and becomes more broadly diversified and more accepted as having a broader economic base, institutions with lower cost of capital and lower return expectations now make it appropriate for investment and they drive up values. So it's kind of tied up in a second lot that I discussed. So multifamily is really in a situation where yes values are going up, but the real question you have to ask yourself is what does the future hold? Are the conditions under which the fact that the values went up are those likely to continue or are they likely to end? And like I almost hit myself over the head, I don't see how they end. So suddenly, admittedly we had always expected as a homeowner interest rate would increase a little bit and I think it's up to 65%. But it's down from 69 but up from 63 and we are going through a period of time where the millennial are getting older and they will want to live in basically the amenity if they have had children, more than one, they are more likely to want to live in the suburbs in better school districts, which is in the historical pattern. So, but be that as it may have, demographics are still very much people are renting for longer. They're getting married later. They're having fewer children. All that was elongating the rental period initially.    And then as people are living longer and living healthier they are selling the house and then moving back downtown in a multifamily asset. That one asset class you really have to worry about are very large suburban homes that are sort of ex urban go to Fairfield County, Connecticut. You can buy a big estate for a relatively speaking a song. Nobody wants to live there. The taxes are too high. It's too hard to get to New York. There's no reason to be there anymore. That asset class is going to experience some real problems, but if you're near an employment center with a modest sized home or apartment, you're going to do okay. James: Got it. Got it. Yeah. I mean, you don't see anything in the horizon as long as you're by the employment center you should be good from what we see right now.  Jeff: That just looks pretty good. So yeah, that's when someone says, okay, the careful thing you have to be at worry about excess leverage and overpaying. That's the biggest problem one has to be concerned with right now is there will be a recession. I don't know when. But you do not want to be in a situation where you are squeezed out during a recession because you're over levered and you have a debt maturity and you basically you get pushed out of a great long-term investment. That's the biggest concern. James: So let's say we have a recession right now, so the rents are going to drop. So if you have a long term loan, you should be able to ride and you should have some cushion in your operation cash flow. But one trick that has happened, not say one trick, one thing that has happened that what I realized in 2015 onwards, there used to be a lot of interest only loan started being given out by lenders after 2015. I don't know. That's what I feel. I know I used to be very hard to get even one year higher loan in 2015 and now it's like so easy to get three to five years higher loan. So it's the lenders that made it easier for people to buy and extend this expansion boom? James: Yes. I mean, so what they're doing is in order to sort of compete to get the loans, while they're not reducing the LTV percentage, they are allowing you to go IO and not pay down the principal which effectively helps you pay more. That's what it does because you have time for the rents to rise. So that by the time the loan comes due, you can refinance it and do okay. So certainly if you can get an IO loan for three to five years and increasingly you can fantastic. If you're a 65% levered, you can ride out a 5 or 6% reduction in rent that do occur in a recession. Obviously the reduction in rents will be higher at the class A levels than the class B, class B has got some more insulation. Value adds assets right now are priced to beyond perfection. So a lot of folks are basically saying, particularly in the institutional level, 150 units and higher, 90's or 2000 vintages a lot of the folks that I talked to were just saying it's not worth it. The prices are basically, I'm going to work for somebody else. I'm paying him all the profits from the value add. There's no point doing the work. So they're going back to, it's called core plus or kind of just building new again because those are the better returns converted value add. So the value add, you can still make work but you may have to sort of go under 50 units. You may have to do something to avoid the institutional capital pressure on values. And I saw about a year and a half ago credentials saying they were suddenly going to enter the value add space; by the way, I love credentials, they are great people, but it's kind of like run for the hills man because they're going into a value add place where you know there's an innovation risk. And that's not something they usually price too. I usually price to kind of a buy and hold deal. So they're not the only institution. A lot of institutions have found values add, but they found it as usual a tad late. Jeff: Got it. Got it. So I want to come back to the high leverage comment that you made. So on a value add deal, usually even though you buy it at 1.25 DSCR. So, for example, most of the banks gives us a loan at 1.25 but when you do value add that 1.25 could be 1.85, [31:22unclear] in a couple of years. So even though...   James: But when you're done [31:31unclear] in-going with the expectation that you'll invest in and raise the rents and then you'll be at a 1.75 when it's time to cash out. But my point being is, if you're paying a lot and you're not getting a big pop in the rent relative to what you paid, then that 1.25 may not move high enough to cover the risk. Remember, building a value add as anyone, I'm sure you and other people know. There's a lot of hard work. I mean, you've got to sweat for it. There's a lot of sweat to make a value add work. It's not just doesn't show up on its own. And I've seen a lot of value ads go horribly wrong. Because people didn't get the ducks in a row. So it takes skill to do one. But the fact of the matter is values add is really from a public policy standpoint and indictment of the inability of supply to expand to meet the needs of upper income renters because that's really what happens. What ends up happening is because there's not enough supply at the upper end value add is a near price substitute for new supply. It also happens to withdraw supply from the lowest income consumers. That is what it does because you don't add a new supply at the bottom end of the scale. And one could argue that the rent control in New York and rent control as executed in California are essentially a rebellion against value add because in New York they basically wiped out the value added trade entirely. And in California they basically changed the value adds from a maybe a two to three year exercise to a seven to eight year exercise. But remember they didn't say [33:30unclear] it's very difficult to build in any one of these locations to get through all the permitting and the environmental zoning and all these other kinds of garbage. But they're not stopping luxury housing. What they're trying to do is stop the value add trade because there's no structure to add supply in the middle to the bottom end of the stack. And the fact of the matter is that the public policy response is short term in nature. So rather than solving the root cause they are basically kind of putting a Band-Aid on the symptom and that's unfortunate. It's bad public policy. But I don't see it changing James: That's very interesting. Never heard anyone looking at that perspective that I know it's basically a going against value adds in that cities that's why the rank [34:25unclear]. But it absolutely makes sense. So I want to ask before we end because we are almost to the end, I want to ask a few more scenarios that may cost impact to the apartment; and you can answer it quickly in a short. Fannie and Freddie Mac becoming private, what could that be impacting? Jeff: Well obviously the intent is for there to be no impact and their current program and current capacity of 20 billion a quarter each without any kind of green exceptions is kind of, I'll say, calm the market. So it's always been profitable. It's been the most profitable part of the, the GSEs there is, I think, and the NHC and NAA are doing a fine job communicating to Congress the fact that multifamily isn't the problem. The blow up was in single family housing underwriting. So if you look at Brickman, David Brickman became head of Freddy and he came out of the multifamily industry. He was in charge of multifamily for Freddy. Now in charge of all of Freddy. So in my mind, that kind of bodes well because at least from Freddie and Fannie, they know how to make money doing what they do for multifamily. I mean, they make money, they know how to make money. It's always been profitable. They could rebuild their capital cushions relatively quickly. I think the issue will continue to be how does Freddie and Fannie support single family home ownership without pushing so hard on home ownership that it blows it up like the last time. So how can they retain their underwriting criteria? The fact of the matter is, should they be differentiate pricing by market for single family. They don't really do that and do that for multifamily much either; but they are supporting their mandate and really if you think about it Freddie and Fannie's mandate is to supply multifamily capital where the life insurance companies or other places won't go, which really is the middle of the stack. A smaller to mid size markets, class B assets. It's one of the reasons why Freddie and Fannie don't do construction lending. They say that's a commercial banks business. It's not our business. And so I'm optimistic that it'll all work out okay. It absolutely has been a tremendous boom to the multifamily industry to have Freddie and Fannie because it basically puts a lot of stability into asset pricing, but I think it's quite recognized. So I'm hopeful that that won't cause disruption. James: Got it. How was China's economy slow down could impact the US economy and multifamily? Jeff: The fact of the matter is the us economy is mostly driven by services and the dynamic and technology services in particular. So if you think about the recent trade spats, which really slowed and began separating the economies, the places that got hurt had a manufacturing or agricultural bend to them. Minneapolis, classic example right there. Even their urban jobs were tied to those sectors and then they lost employment. So I don't think it's a tremendous problem. The fact that there's excess capacity in China, for example, means that goods costs even less, there'll be less inflationary pressure on goods. What we sell to the Chinese are primarily agricultural goods that are what we sell. And anything else ends up being produced there with our intellectual capital. So, I think according to the trade agreement they'll buy some more agricultural goods, which will help rural areas, but they weren't big multifamily centers anyway, so it doesn't really have an impact. And for manufacturing centers, those were pretty much, manufacturing takes a lot of land that occurs in ex urban and rural areas where rents are low multi family, where it's done well is where it's tied to intellectual capital and technology that drives down costs globally. So all in all, I don't think much is what I'd tell you. James: Got it. Got it. And that's one piece of advice on how to be prepared as we move forward. And in case there's a recession, what kind of what would you advise a property investor that already owns a property or is going to buy a property? Jeff: Yeah. So I mean, first one should mind dependence. This is a relatively speaking low margin business. There is a increasingly systems and technology available to sort of squeeze expenses down. So the way one prepares for recession is always to really look at your cost structure and re-examine what you're spending money on in a very meaningful way. You need to sort of be mindful of your leverage and model up. What happens if your rents go down five or 6%. Remember, it won't happen all at once. What you'll see is the new leases will go negative, renewals will hang together. You will have a higher skipping of the upgrade. So you kind of need to model out what happens to you and in a recession, I don't think it'd be a big one, but only a mild one. What happens? Are you prepared? Do you have a cash flow reserve? Have you spoken to your investors and your lenders already about what you would do? So are you prepared? And then I'm chairman of a ULI council and our council members, about a year ago, we went through a recession planning exercise. Like what kind of recession we're going to have and what are you going to plan for right now; and so every one of the organizations that I was working with had had a recession scenario plan in place about a year ago. Not that they had to execute on it, but everyone had one. So what I've experienced in all of now I've seen through four or five recessions and a big blowout is you need to have a plan, you need to be prepared, in a calm moment have thought through what you're going to do because in the moment in the crisis your brain just doesn't work that well. Under that kind of stress you don't think it through. So I would argue whatever organization size you are, if it's just you and your spouse or you and a slogan of investors, spend the time now to come up with a recession plan, put it to paper, talk about it. And then begin asking on the steps that you can take right now to prepare yourself. Again, I hope you don't have to do it, but weaning and hoping it'll never happen and not being prepared for it is a sure fire away to not be able to capitalize on it. And we had a great session from Clyde Holland who basically he capitalized on recession. He's a chairman of Holland partners’ pledge, great guy. And he basically in preparation, he saw something bad coming in oh seven, he basically slashed costs built a lot of dry powder and basically waited to pounce and came out of the recession incredibly strong. Now I don't think we'll see another recession like that one in front of their 80 years. The recessions we're going to see it more like the typical post World War II recessions. But you can get yourself prepared and you can be ready to act. And with that James, I have to run. It's been a real joy speaking with you today. Take care now. Bye bye.  

Why Offers2Owners is Hitting Records (LA 1148) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about why offerstoowners.com is hitting records. Right before we started the show, I said, hey, do you want to talk about this before we launch the show here, Jill? Oh no. I think we know exactly what we're going to say. And I think- Jill DeWit: It might be the same. Steven Butala: We had the exact same opinion. Jill DeWit: We'll see. It'd be fun to see. Steven Butala: When that happens, it's just becomes a deluge of fat clothes. Jill DeWit: Oh, come on. We, let me tell you right now, listener, we always see eye to eye. We, there's never any disagreements in our work life or home life. Nah, peachy. Steven Butala: Yeah. If you've ever, if you're a little, if you're from the generation we are, and you've ever watched Little House on the Prairie and Laura Ingalls and that whole thing. Jill DeWit: Oh, just like that. Steven Butala: That's our life. Jill DeWit: That's totally our life. Steven Butala: A little bit of humor on the side. Everybody's prosperous, a little bit of a struggle, but it's healthy. Jill DeWit: Whatever you say goes. I'm home baking and waiting for you. Steven Butala: Can you imagine? Jill DeWit: In my long apron, with my hat on. Steven Butala: I'm out chopping wood outside. I'm not at work anywhere, I'm close enough to settle any disputes that go on with the kids. Jill DeWit: Yeah, we can come running out to you in the field. Steven Butala: Their oldest kid is a- Jill DeWit: When somebody trips. Steven Butala: The oldest kid's a school teacher. Jill DeWit: Yes. Steven Butala: She teaches all the kids around and everybody's happy. Jill DeWit: There we go. There we go. It's beautiful. That is our life. Steven Butala: And the weather's perfect every day. Jill DeWit: Oh yes, that's true. Okay. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Jeff wrote, tried an experiment this month. I sent about 400 offers with no phone number. Instead- Steven Butala: He means that he didn't include a phone number on his offer. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: Oh, okay. Jill DeWit: That's what I thought, that's how I took it. Steven Butala: I didn't understand it the first time I read it. Jill DeWit: I took that like that. Steven Butala: Okay, good. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Yeah. Trying to see if they email or write, or whatever, back. Steven Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jill DeWit: Okay, good. That's how I took it. So Jeff's like, I sent about four hundred offers with no phone number. Instead, I offered the seller a choice of accepting their offer on my website, sending me an email, or mail me back a signed purchase agreement. The experiment is still in progress and about 230 of my offers haven't reached the sellers yet. But out of the other 170, so far I've had two people visit my website portal, but not accept the offer. I've had one email and no letters. Has anyone else tried something like this with no phone number provided and what was your experience? Jill DeWit: I kind of like it, it's like trying to direct them where they want to go. I'm not sure how well that would go, so I'm going to see what one person has commented here. Lori wrote, Jeff, what drove you to try this? I'm curious. I've probably had same thoughts. I despise wasting time on the phone. But if I hadn't made myself available to talk, I would have missed out on being able to buy five properties worth over $100,000, because the little lady who owned them, one, didn't think I would possibly want four of them and mentioned that in passing. And two, she doesn't have email and a contact us form is beyond her.

When you’re starting a new business, it’s tempting to aim too big. Reach millions, and serve hundreds of thousands of customers.That’s a nice idea, but in reality, often your efforts to reach everyone lead to diluting your message, influence, and impact. Worse, without a clearly defined audience, you may end up reaching very few people at all.Jeff Goins thought he had to go big, and he succeeded. A few years ago, he launched a bestselling book, generated a million dollars in revenue for the first time, and acquired 17,500 customers for his online courses and programs.What did he end up with, other than the money? A ton of stress and dissatisfaction.Part of the problem was that Jeff didn’t really know the people he was serving. Worse, many of them hadn’t arrived at the solution they wanted through the mass education programs that he was selling.So Jeff made a radical decision -- he would work with only 100 people a year going forward. And he would still maintain his 7-figure revenue, except with higher profit margins due to lower overhead and a lot less stress.Sound impossible? It’s not at all. In fact, serving a small well-defined group of people delivers more value to those people, and therefore can be more lucrative. And the non-monetary upside includes more influence and impact, and more professional satisfaction.How many people do you need to work with to create the change (and the revenue) you want to make? Is it 10? 100? 1000? Listen in for guidance that may change the way you think about the people you choose to serve with your business.Article: https://goinswriter.com/100-person-rule/***To access the show notes, transcript, and links mentioned in this episode, view the episode page at: http://unemployable.com/podcast/This episode is brought to you by Freshbooks, easy-to-use cloud accounting software for people just like you. They’re offering a 30-day, unrestricted and no credit card required free trial to listeners of the show. To claim it, just click http://freshbooks.com/unemployable and make sure to enter UNEMPLOYABLE in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section.

This all-star squad built out a multi-team marketing department to support multiple products for their first-to-market fantasy sports content provider. Hear how Veronica Hamel focused her team around the right priorities and hires to scale with speed and purpose. Jeff Singer provides insight into the technical side of integrations while Morgan Lee gives a marketer's perspective on channel expansion.       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] Interviewer: Hello again and welcome back to Braze for Impact, your martech industry discuss digest, and this episode is the pain points of scalable production, and I'm so pleased to have esteemed guests with me today from DraftKings. Veronica Hamel, Veronica is the senior marketing director here at DraftKings. Morgan Lee, CRM specialist, and Jeff Singer, software engineering manager. Thank you guys so much for being here.   [0:00:41] Veronica Hamel: Thanks for having us.   [0:00:42] Interviewer: So where are we right now? It's All-Star break. Right? Is there seasonality to this? Are you guys kind of like in relaxed mode or reset mode or-   [0:00:50] Jeff Singer: Definitely, All-Star break is by far the quietest time of year for DraftKings.   [0:00:53] Veronica Hamel: From an execution perspective-   [0:00:55] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:00:55] Veronica Hamel: I think it's quiet, but from a strategy and planning, this is like the peak time of year for NFL. The end of June, early July, is when we're doing most of our NFL planning and when we're starting to have meetings with our executives, and getting them involved in our strategy, and getting their approval, and all of that kind of stuff. So from an execution perspective, it's definitely kind of a quieter time of year, but from a planning perspective, this is like peak time for us.   [0:01:19] Interviewer: Right? It's just a different part of the brain.   [0:01:20] Veronica Hamel: Exactly.   [0:01:21] Interviewer: You just got to switch gears.   [0:01:21] Veronica Hamel: Exactly.   [0:01:22] Interviewer: That's cool. So for those of you listeners out there, those folks who don't know what DraftKings are, who's got the boilerplate? Who wants to do it in two or three sentences?   [0:01:30] Veronica Hamel: So DraftKings historically was a daily fantasy sports company exclusively so really drafting a lineup, and you kind of rack up points, and you score points that you're competing against another player's lineup to win cash. And so historically, we've been exclusively daily fantasy sports and then recently in August of this past year, we launched Sportsbook as well, so now in New Jersey only we have Sportsbook which is just traditional sports betting. Who's going to win the Super Bowl this year, for example.   [0:02:00] Interviewer: Gotcha. And you guys were first to market with that. Right?   [0:02:02] Veronica Hamel: We were, yes, in New Jersey.   [0:02:04] Interviewer: That's very exciting. Veronica, I think you're the most tenured person in the room. Right? You've been for quite a ride with DK. Was it four or five years?   [0:02:12] Veronica Hamel: Five and a half.   [0:02:13] Interviewer: Wow.   [0:02:13] Veronica Hamel: Yes, it's been quite-   [0:02:14] Interviewer: Five half and a half.   [0:02:15] Veronica Hamel: Quite the long ride.   [0:02:16] Interviewer: Jeez. And I guess that wasn't even that long ago, but for some reason in my brain, it's like smartphones didn't exist five and a half years go. I don't know why.   [0:02:24] Veronica Hamel: Well, some of the channels we currently use did not exist or weren't being used by us five and a half years ago.   [0:02:30] Interviewer: Right. So DraftKings sprouts up in 2012, and you joined in 2014. Right?   [0:02:35] Veronica Hamel: Yep, yep.   [0:02:36] Interviewer: So what were some of the initial priorities and obstacles that you had to face to get the marketing engine really humming? Like was there a team in existence? Were you kind of the first one of your kind to start out some of these initiatives?   [0:02:48] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. So as most startups do, we started out with a pretty big acquisition team, and when I say pretty big, I mean three people.   [0:02:55] Interviewer: [crosstalk 00:02:56].   [0:02:56] Veronica Hamel: But we didn't have anyone doing retention yet, so I was the first retention person to come on. At the time, we didn't have a ton of customers, and so the whole point of having an acquisition team first is because you're trying to acquire new customers and then once you have those customers, you then hire and kind of build out a more retention-focused team, and that's what I came in to do five and a half years ago. In terms of the types of things we were tackling at that time, honestly it was getting out an onboarding series. Like, we started out very, very slow, and we didn't have all of the sports that we have now. We were mainly focused on just MLB and NFL. It was a very different time where it was easier at that moment because we had less complexity in terms of sports' seasonality and the number of sports that we had. But we also were starting up as a company, and so there was a lot that we had to kind of take on and figure out how to navigate.   [0:03:48] Interviewer: And as far as customer-facing comms, you were basically starting from zero. The world was your oyster. Right?   [0:03:54] Veronica Hamel: Exactly, yes.   [0:03:56] Interviewer: When you jumped in some of your first retention stuff, was it cross-channel right away? What were kind of the foundations of that?   [0:04:04] Veronica Hamel: Yeah, so when I first started, we actually only had email. We had email in what we call site merchandising, so a couple of placements on the site that we were using to communicate to our users, and that was basically it. Those were our two channels that we were mainly using. Email we split into transactional and promotional. That was it. So it was a very few channels, and at that point we actually didn't even have an app. We were exclusively a web-based product. So from there, when we actually launched our app, we started then in push channels and started getting a little bit more into the mobile experience side. Pretty shortly after we got into the push side is both when Morgan joined and when we actually brought on Braze.   [0:04:45] Interviewer: So mobile wasn't even part of the game when you were in there?   [0:04:47] Veronica Hamel: No.   [0:04:47] Interviewer: And now is it the biggest part of your business? I mean-   [0:04:52] Veronica Hamel: So in terms of the app, the app is definitely a much bigger part of our business. In terms of the channels that we use, it's actually still a fairly even split. We see a lot of traffic coming from email. Then again, it's mobile email, so people are opening on their phone and going right into the app, so it's a little bit different than kind of when we first started where our mobile web product was interesting to say the least. Now, we've kind of mobile optimized. We both have that in terms of a mobile optimized site, but also we we direct deep link into the app and people kind of have a better experience from there.   [0:05:26] Interviewer: Cool. And so acquisition team of three.   [0:05:28] Veronica Hamel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:05:29] Interviewer: Adds Veronica.   [0:05:30] Veronica Hamel: Yes.   [0:05:30] Interviewer: Team of four. And then Morgan joins the following year?   [0:05:35] Veronica Hamel: I think it was a year and a half, maybe two years later, like June of 20-   [0:05:38] Morgan Lee: Yeah, June of 2015.   [0:05:38] Veronica Hamel: 15.   [0:05:40] Interviewer: And what was Morgan's mandate when she started? She was brought in. You had one job.   [0:05:45] Veronica Hamel: It actually was push.   [0:05:46] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:05:46] Veronica Hamel: So when we brought her in, we were starting to experiment with push and kind of other different channels. And so originally the team was so tiny. It was me, you, Robyn, Jesse.   [0:05:57] Morgan Lee: Yep.   [0:05:58] Veronica Hamel: So it was pretty small, and at the time it was kind of generalists. Everyone had to do a little bit of everything, so I think Morgan got a pretty solid foundation of everything. But pretty quickly thereafter, her mandate was push and kind of figuring out this new channel that we were bringing on.   [0:06:13] Morgan Lee: Yeah. So I guess it really started off with email and learning how to code an email because that's all we were doing, and then we had one website where we were sending push notifications, but it was like once a week maybe. It wasn't really a strategy. It was just kind of, "Oh, we have a big contest this week. Let's send a push notification."   [0:06:32] Interviewer: And so still no mobile app at this point, or it was just kicking off?   [0:06:34] Morgan Lee: We had the mobile app.   [0:06:35] Interviewer: Okay.   [0:06:36] Morgan Lee: Yeah. And then, yeah, for me, I came on and, straight out of college, was just trying to learn everything that I could about email marketing, and mobile push, and CRM, how to send an A/B test, stuff like that, so I think it really helped me build a foundation for a lot of the skills that I have today.   [0:06:56] Interviewer: Gotcha. And so your focus was push. Is this when you started to move? I mean eventually after you hard-coded some emails.   [0:07:05] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:07:06] Interviewer: You moved away from the generalist perspective, and people started kind of focusing and like doubling down on channels.   [0:07:12] Morgan Lee: Yeah, I was kind of email and push for quite awhile actually because we had different life cycles. So I was managing the inactive life cycle, just trying to get people to reactivate, for NFL mostly. And then as part of that we started... I did email, but then also it was like specializing in push and figuring out the best campaigns to send users.   [0:07:36] Veronica Hamel: We've actually had a number of different organizational structures, so we've gone kind of back-and-forth between doing it at the life cycle level versus doing it more at the channel level. So we had a push expert, and we've kind of gone back-and-forth a few times, and I think ultimately it's really where you are in your business to know whether or not which one makes sense. So we're currently more at kind of a user perspective, so we've got all of our different teams. Like, we've got some calendar-based teams, and they're all doing all of the different channels versus being really specialized in one. It's all based on what you're trying to do with your users and where you are in your life cycle as a business, I guess.   [0:08:18] Interviewer: Meta. That's cool. And so, yeah, I mean also... Jesus... Having the agility to be able to kind of switch the dynamic and chemistry of your team. I mean I guess it's crucial. Right? Sometimes people just kind of stack broken stuff on broken stuff, and it's like, let's let it work itself out.   [0:08:35] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. That's one thing that DraftKings has always been really good at is being agile and kind of changing with the times, and reorging, and trying to figure some things out. Maybe a good time to bring in Jeff because that was a big reorg that we had that has been kind of the most impactful, I think, from the marketing perspective, is adding a platform layer and adding some engineering resources to us. And that's something we never had before, and it basically was that. It was one of those times where we had said, "Hey, this isn't really working. Let's try to figure something else out." And we decided to invest some engineering resources from the marketing perspective, and here we are with Jeff.   [0:09:13] Interviewer: And here he is. What a good segue that was. What an intro, rolling out the red carpet, Jeff.   [0:09:19] Jeff Singer: Yeah. So as Veronica was saying, engineering historically hadn't had much of a mandate to help CRM. There was a Marketing Platform team, but it had been very focused on the acquisition side and sort of site merchandising type thing, so some of the critical sell flows along the app but not sort of the actual retention and-   [0:09:43] Interviewer: Right, [crosstalk] products.   [0:09:44] Jeff Singer: The things that Veronica's team was focusing on. So I kind of came into the Marketing Platform team with the mandate of just like, "We need to figure out this whole CRM thing from an engineering and product perspective." And so actually my first week, I went to Braze LTR.   [0:10:01] Interviewer: Hey!   [0:10:02] Jeff Singer: And it was a great way to really deep dive because I had no prior experience in the marketing world.   [0:10:08] Interviewer: This was like three years ago?   [0:10:09] Jeff Singer: No. So this was last year.   [0:10:11] Interviewer: Last year.   [0:10:11] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:10:12] Interviewer: Oh, right. Because you'd been with the company for-   [0:10:13] Jeff Singer: I joined DraftKings in 2015. I hadn't moved over to marketing until 2018.   [0:10:19] Interviewer: So you were at LTR last year?   [0:10:20] Jeff Singer: Yes, I was at LTR last year.   [0:10:21] Interviewer: Oh, cool.   [0:10:22] Jeff Singer: And also my first exposure to the marketing world basically, and-   [0:10:26] Interviewer: It was a lot.   [0:10:27] Jeff Singer: It was a great-   [0:10:28] Morgan Lee: He's grown up on Braze.   [0:10:29] Jeff Singer: It was a great way to learn a lot about marketing really fast.   [0:10:33] Interviewer: I love it. That's so cool. And so what were some of the first things that you were kind of tasked with?   [0:10:38] Jeff Singer: So one of the things we had been working on at the time is... For a lot of the transactional emails, we had a previous engineering driven system that would basically take the things we knew that was going on with the user at the time, and transform that into some text, and call Brace to say, "Hey, basically this is the text, go send this email." That obviously isn't great from a marketing perspective because it makes it really hard to iterate. Like, if the turnaround time on changing the text or testing something new out is a month, you're not really going to be able to get anywhere fast. So one of the first things I did was kind of help move a transition over to have those emails be based off of events in Braze and then allow Morgan and Veronica's team to really iterate quickly on those emails.   [0:11:27] Interviewer: So who brought Braze to the table? Like, when you made this switch to marketing is it around the time that... I mean you guys have been using it for awhile at that point.   [0:11:35] Veronica Hamel: Yeah, so we started out using Braze just for push. So actually that's not true-   [0:11:41] Morgan Lee: For any [crosstalk 00:11:41].   [0:11:42] Veronica Hamel: [crosstalk] messaging.   [0:11:42] Morgan Lee: That's how I became like the Braze expert because I was doing push as a mobile channel and then we started off using Braze, and it was like, "Okay, another mobile channel. Morgan, you can take this, and kind of run with it, and figure out basically how we want to use the in-app channel, and how we can use it to upsell users, and cross users over to different sports." And it just kind of became another channel that we could use for upselling and crossing users over and reactivation.   [0:12:11] Veronica Hamel: So it actually came from our product team.   [0:12:14] Morgan Lee: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:12:14] Veronica Hamel: So our product team had brought on Braze as a way for us to pop notifications in the app itself. So if there was like a place where rather than them kind of having to build a new placement or a new pop-up at any given time in the flow, they hooked us up with basically the ability to be able to use the in-app messaging for us to be able to manage a lot of those pop-ups. Whether it was like, "Hey, user, take the survey, rate your experience," all the way through to we have a user or a player out in the lineup, and we need people to know. So we were using it more for the product side, and then we had kind of realized, "Hey, this is pretty intrusive to the customer experience." On the marketing side, we actually would really like to use it and manage it to make sure that it's being used properly and really being used to benefit the user experience rather than just kind of pop-up notifications everywhere.   [0:13:07] Interviewer: Gotcha. Cool. So we've got Morgan working with in-app and push. We get Jeff in the mix. He's going LTR. He's learning all this stuff. You guys start to scale, and it's with sophistication. So I mean how does the nature of your business complicate email marketing? Is it pretty nuanced?   [0:13:23] Veronica Hamel: Honestly, it's not just email marketing. It's all marketing. The big thing for us is the complexity of the business. Even when we just had DFS, it was a ton of different users, and we know so much about them that you want to be able to use that data to personalize and give them a better experience, but we almost had data paralysis. We had so much to use that it was kind of hard for us to know, well, what's the most important split or the most important for a segment to create? And from there just getting more sophisticated. So that was when we just had DFS. Then we launched two more products. So we mentioned that we have Sportsbook, and we're live in New Jersey. We also have Casino Games within embed in our Sportsbook app, in New Jersey as well. So basically we now have three products and now-   [0:14:09] Interviewer: And that's all owned by you guys, you all-   [0:14:11] Veronica Hamel: Correct. So that just increases the complexity because now you have users that are playing one only. So you're playing only DFS, only Sportsbook, only Casino, or we've got people that are playing kind of all of the combinations in between of of all of the different products.   [0:14:26] Morgan Lee: The sports world too is changing daily, and we have contests daily, and you can basically bet on any sport, so it's just constantly moving and changing, and especially for email which is a channel that is a little bit more difficult to personalize. Like, you receive an email in your inbox, and that's it. It's not going to change.   [0:14:46] Interviewer: A lot of tools out there for that.   [0:14:47] Morgan Lee: Yeah, Braze has definitely helped.   [0:14:49] Interviewer: So, again, let's wind back. We're talking about multiple products, multiple channels. How do you even manage that? I mean was this going on before the multiteam things started happening or did that kind of bring about the need for a multiteam setup?   [0:15:08] Veronica Hamel: I actually think that was one of the biggest reasons why we then decided to invest Marketing Platform resources. So engineer resources for our marketing team was... As soon as we got to a place of having multiple products, we were managing the complexity on DFS. It was difficult, but we were managing it, and we were kind of coming up with some different solutions for us to use. But as soon as we kind of got into this place of having three products... And one of our biggest advantages in that space is actually that we have a customer base already who might be interested in those other verticals. And so in order for us to be able to leverage that and do it well, we needed some sort of automation, and we needed to be able to better personalize to these users without manually creating 10 different versions of a campaign. And that's kind of what we're working on now.   [0:15:54] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:15:54] Interviewer: I haven't seen any of your campaigns because it's none of my business, but do you guys work with Canvas? Do you use that cross-channel... You know throwing promotions between people across products to kind of get them deeper and deeper into the DraftKings bubble?   [0:16:09] Morgan Lee: Yeah, I think right now we're using mostly campaigns, but we have setup some things as a Canvas. Jeff was talking about how we're moving all of our push notifications, the transactional ones, over to Braze as one of the big projects that we're working on. And we're building all of those in Canvas so that we can test copy, and test personalization, and how we kind of want to alert users of tickets, and stuff like that.   [0:16:38] Interviewer: So the three products are Sportsbook, DraftKings Live, and Casino?   [0:16:44] Veronica Hamel: It's Sportsbook, Daily Fantasy Sports, and Casino.   [0:16:47] Jeff Singer: There is also DK Live, but that's-   [0:16:50] Veronica Hamel: DK Live is more of a content platform.   [0:16:52] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:16:52] Veronica Hamel: So it's like complimentary to our products.   [0:16:54] Interviewer: Oh, cool.   [0:16:54] Veronica Hamel: Yeah.   [0:16:55] Interviewer: And do you guys plug that as well? Do you have whole campaigns around it?   [0:17:01] Veronica Hamel: It's mostly secondary, so it's kind of in the same campaigns that we're doing. We're already talking about placing a bet, or we're doing whatever, and then we're also giving you content in order to have you make better decisions in drafting your lineup.   [0:17:13] Interviewer: Nice. Any other cool tech toys or strategies that you guys are using?   [0:17:18] Jeff Singer: So one of the interesting things in our industry is that there's so many different regulations, and almost every state has different regulations around what users are allowed to do, and that's probably going to continue to happen with the way the regulations seem to be shaping up in the U.S. Around sports betting and casino. So we've actually been playing around a little bit with Radar for being able to trigger things around knowing where people are and kind of adding more location context to some of our campaigns.   [0:17:50] Morgan Lee: Yeah. And we've also been able to personalize messaging in campaigns using Radar. It's different to say, "Hey, enter this contest," but it's even more personalized where you can say, "Hey, thanks for entering this stadium. Plan DraftKings tonight because you're already there watching the game." So I think that aspect too has been really cool for us.   [0:18:13] Interviewer: Did you see the CEO of Radar, Nick Patrick, at LTR when you were there for that first time?   [0:18:18] Jeff Singer: I actually didn't, but I think-   [0:18:19] Veronica Hamel: Yeah, funny enough, I actually think that's exactly where this came from.   [0:18:22] Interviewer: Oh!   [0:18:22] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. Yeah.   [0:18:23] Morgan Lee: I was blown away. I thought it was a really cool product, and I was like, "Veronica, we should really look into implementing Radar," and we kind of ran with it.   [0:18:33] Interviewer: What?   [0:18:34] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:18:35] Interviewer: I got to let the marketing team know this. This is fantastic. And so now you guys have the multiteam difference from what I have come to understand. You have your calendar team and your triggers team. I mean how did the idea for a multiteam setup come about and was it difficult to rally support from that executive team, right? Because I mean I guess it's kind of you, Veronica, who has to kind of round up with Dan and kind of let them know this is a priority. This is what we need to invest in.   [0:19:05] Veronica Hamel: So in terms of us deciding we needed it, basically where we ended up landing was 95% of our effort was really going towards these calendar-based campaigns that were, "Enter this contest today or place a bet on something that's happening today." And we weren't really focused enough on user life cycle, so we had some kind of set it and forget it onboarding treatments, but we weren't paying enough attention to things like better notifications for a better user experience, or you've got a player in your lineup that is projected to score zero points because they're out for the day, and all kinds of these small different things that were both user experience and player life cycle that we just didn't have time to focus on. When we were focused on the things that were happening today and tomorrow, we filled up 99% of our plate, and we just never had time for anything else. So we decided to kind of break off a team and have them very specifically think about things that are a little bit more user life cycle. It was made possible by Jeff and his team. So in order for us to be able to do a lot of these things, we needed these kind of event-based triggers and data that we were able to then use in Braze to trigger those communications. So it kind of was both. We weren't focusing on it, and we realized that there was a huge opportunity, and too, we now had the resources in order to be able to enable this team to be effective.   [0:20:27] Interviewer: Gotcha. And so, like you mentioned, you just didn't have the bandwidth because there's just so many of these high possibility conversion moments around user behavior. Right? And you just can't grab them all. So when you expand to these two teams, was there concerns that it could be too much? Every little thing they do, they get a ping, and maybe it's overwhelming for a user?   [0:20:51] Veronica Hamel: It's a great question. When we started thinking about how we would setup this team, we also started thinking about needing a Preference Center and needing the ability for a user to opt out of very specific communications. We also then were piloting an internal tool. We were working on [inaudible] prioritization. So to make sure that a user could only see one contact in one day from the broadest sense, so there's still obviously transactional emails that a user can see, and transactional notifications a user can see in the back-end. But if we were trying to get a user to... Either they're inactive, and they dropped off, and we're trying to get them to come back to the site on some specific promotion that we know that they've reacted to in the past versus, "Hey, it's MLB All-Star break, play in that.' We started kind of prioritizing the life cycle campaign above the promotional campaign, so we were trying to be a little bit careful with that. But these two can actually speak a little bit more to an upcoming project that we have on Preference Center that I think is probably going to help that even more.   [0:21:52] Morgan Lee: Our Preference Center right now does have some communications that you can opt in or opt out of. We have leagues where you can play contests with your friends, so there's a lot of notifications in your league if someone posts a contest. So we have some of those, but it's not as personalized as we'd like it, so we want a notification center that includes push and email and also has a lot of the different trigger notifications that we've added. So we have a push where if you have an injured player in your lineup, you can receive a notification and letting that user know that the person is out, so having a preference for that. Also, user preferences in terms of what teams they like, what sports they really like. So that's also a project that we're taking on, hopefully pretty soon, Jeff.   [0:22:43] Jeff Singer: NFL's coming up, so we've got-   [0:22:44] Morgan Lee: Yes,.   [0:22:45] Jeff Singer: A lot of other things too.   [0:22:46] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:22:47] Interviewer: Are you guys big sports fans? Is it a prerequisite to join?   [0:22:50] Jeff Singer: Definitely not.   [0:22:51] Morgan Lee: No.   [0:22:51] Jeff Singer: I mean I am a pretty big NFL fan. There's a lot of people here at DraftKings who actually aren't sports' fans. I remember having to explain once to someone on my team, what I touchdown was.   [0:23:06] Morgan Lee: Oh, wow.   [0:23:06] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:23:07] Veronica Hamel: So [crosstalk 00:23:07]. From a marketing perspective-   [0:23:09] Jeff Singer: Maybe that's an engineering thing.   [0:23:10] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. That's definitely an engineering thing. From a marketing perspective, I think it depends on what they're going to do. So it's definitely not a prerequisite, but we do tend to hire, or we try to hire people that at least understand or want to understand because they're writing a lot of the copy, and they're talking to our players.   [0:23:26] Interviewer: I was just going to say copywriters.   [0:23:26] Morgan Lee: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:23:27] Interviewer: Right?   [0:23:28] Veronica Hamel: So from our perspective, it's much more important for people to kind of understand sports and have a couple of people. We do a pretty good job of almost having a balance between the super heavy sports fans that can kind of help and share some of that knowledge. And then more of the like creative, innovative marketers, we're not going to turn someone down if they're an awesome marketer but just don't understand sports. It's just a balance of making sure you have the right amount of both on your team.   [0:23:53] Interviewer: I mean it might be an idea to update the onboarding process at DraftKings to teach some of the... You know Football 101. What is a touchdown? How do I do it?   [0:24:02] Veronica Hamel: Well, maybe on the engineering side at least.   [0:24:03] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:24:05] Interviewer: So with this dual team structure, do you guys see an expansion to even more teams outside of Calendar and Trigger, or what does the next evolution kind of look like from your perspective?   [0:24:17] Veronica Hamel: Yeah. We actually just added a second team that is kind of cross product, and so we have someone that is very specifically focused on tech tools and process, and we're working with Jeff's team pretty heavily on trying to get to a place by the end of 2019 where we're pretty automated. And that has been a lot of work on both his team and my team in terms of coming up with the strategy and figuring out how do we test some of this stuff first before we just turn on automation and make sure that it's actually valuable. And automation is so broad that it's been a lot of strategic conversations around, "Let's bite off a piece of it, automate that, and then move forward, and kind of sequentially get to a place of better automation." So we have someone, Jesse, who actually was my second hire at DraftKings, and used to be Morgan's boss, who's been working very closely with Jeff's team on kind of automation, and tech tools, and process. And that's been really helpful to kind of push things forward a little bit faster than they were moving before.   [0:25:20] Interviewer: What other things in your stack are you guys working with? You mentioned Radar.   [0:25:24] Veronica Hamel: We use Segment today.   [0:25:25] Jeff Singer: Yeah, we use Segment pretty heavily for some of the event stuff I was talking about earlier. I know we're evaluating some kind of analytic tools. That's more on the product side than the marketing side, but as far as being able to understand how many of our users went through some flow and then the result of where they ended up.   [0:25:46] Interviewer: So between the three of you, you've seen a nice handful of iterations of the marketing team here at DraftKings. Do you have any like parting words for our listeners that are trying to build out a marketing org and balancing/juggling priorities?   [0:26:03] Jeff Singer: I think a big thing for me is just staying flexible and kind of being able to react to opportunities as they come up.   [0:26:11] Morgan Lee: Yeah. And I think so too, and it's actually gave me an opportunity to kind of move my career in the way that I wanted to. So I started with mobile, got really invested in that, and then learned a lot about Braze, and so that's now helping me on the triggers team where we're using a lot of the features in Braze to trigger notifications. So honestly think it can be good for a team to grow, and people can specialize and learn more about what they want to.   [0:26:38] Veronica Hamel: Yeah, I'd say the biggest thing is don't be afraid of change. Again, we've gone back-and-forth between segment-based to channel-based a couple of different times, and I think it really just depends on where you are as a company and what makes sense at that time. So hopefully, we have hired a great team of people who are super flexible, and they're willing to learn new things, and kind of take on new opportunities. And that's been the biggest thing for us, and just having a team that's flexible, and is willing to learn, and change with the times has been the most impactful.   [0:27:10] Interviewer: Don't be afraid to change. Stay agile. Will I see you guys at LTR this year? Maybe?   [0:27:15] Jeff Singer: Yeah.   [0:27:15] Veronica Hamel: Probably.   [0:27:15] Morgan Lee: Yeah.   [0:27:16] Veronica Hamel: We usually go.   [0:27:17] Interviewer: Excellent. All right.   [0:27:18] Veronica Hamel: Maybe we'll find another cool tool that we want to use.   [0:27:20] Interviewer: I think you just might. Keep your eyes and your ears open.   [0:27:22] Morgan Lee: Let us know who's going to be there.   [0:27:24] Interviewer: Absolutely. We will send you guys the lineup. So Jeff, Veronica Morgan, thank you guys so much for being here. Or, you know what? Thank you for allowing me to be here in your headquarters in Boston.   [0:27:34] Jeff Singer: Thanks for coming.   [0:27:35] Morgan Lee: Thank you.   [0:27:35] Interviewer: And thank you guys for joining us as well. Take care. [0:27:38]

What happens when you get master distillers from two largest rivaling brands together? Actually, some pretty good jokes. Fred Noe, Master Distiller at Jim Beam, and Jeff Arnett, Master Distiller at Jack Daniel’s, take the stage at Bourbon and Beyond to field questions asked by Fred Minnick. They talk about BBQ, celebrities, mash bills, the Lincoln County Process, and if Jack Daniels is actually a bourbon. Bourbon and Beyond 2019 will take place September 20th through the 22nd so if you want to be there in person to hear sessions like today’s podcast, go get yours at BourbonandBeyond.com. Show Partners: The University of Louisville now has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at business.louisville.edu/onlinespirits.  In 2013, Joe Beatrice launched Barrell Craft Spirits without a distillery or defied conventional wisdom. To this day, his team sources and blends exceptional barrels from established producers and bottles at cask strength. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. Check out Bourbon on the Banks in Frankfort, KY on August 24th. Visit BourbonontheBanks.org. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about drinking in moderation. What kind of music have your brands been part of? What is your BBQ connection? What is the history of your distillery? What is your mash bill? What is your proof point off the still? What do you think of the Lincoln County process? How do you train your tour guides? Tell us about Gentleman Jack. Tell us about Jim Beam. Is Jack Daniels a bourbon? Do you ever feel competitive against each other? What does your average day look like? What was it like to hang out with Mila Kunis? What celebrities are connected to Jack Daniels? How often do you introduce new products? 0:00 Hey everybody. If you have a bachelor's degree and live anywhere in the United States, there's now a way for you to take your bourbon education to the next level. The distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville is an online program that can be completed in as little as 15 weeks and will prepare you for the business side of the spirits industry. It's offered by the AA CSP accredited college of business. And this certificate was developed in partnership with industry experts to be one of a kind and it's going to prepare you for your next adventure. Learn more about this online program at business.louisville.edu/online 0:36 spirits Why is that? Why your barbecue sauce the Jim Beam barbecue sauce tastes so good. America's Got Jim Beam in it that's why 0:47 you made for it. And have you had the jab he had the jack daniels barbecue sauce. I'm sure they do. Um, no. I mean, if you had a VDD like Tyson Yeah. 1:00 add Whiskey and anything it's good for 1:16 everybody welcome back. This is Episode 214 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny and buckle in strap up whatever it is because we've got a lot of news to roll through. Kentucky al has announced the release of batch number three rye this Kentucky out Kentucky straight rye whiskey carries a 10 year age statement and will be bottled at 114 proof in the press release Dixon dead man who's been on the show previously and episodes 27 and 160 has assumed the title of Kentucky Al's master blender, but he commented, there is a lot of older juice and right number three, but it's the 10 year old stocks that really give it that richer, thicker, syrupy mouthful and bring the blend forward. And as you know by listening to this 2:00 That the youngest whiskey in a blend is the one has to be shown in the label. So this will be making its way out to major markets across the US this month with a suggested retail price of wait for it $199 and 99 cents. Last week I had the opportunity of joining the fine folks over a liquor barn here in Louisville to select the very first of not just any barrels, but the very first barrels from a newly launched single barrel program. From bullet bourbon. We had the opportunity to tour the grounds and do some blending for fun. And during that blending process. There was one that just blew me away. I picked it up and I just knows that and I couldn't set it down. I just kept smelling this bourbon and I kept tasting and I told the master Blender whatever is going on here with sample number six. Just give me this single barrel and call it a day. Come to find out. They gave us samples of 20 plus year stencil well a stock that they had sitting around to just have some fun with blending. But you better believe I took no part in 3:00 lending that in savored every last drop. It was a tease, but a special treat nonetheless to have that experience with those folks there. Then we headed down to the barrel tasting room where we had different barrels and different bottles with different mash bills and different strains to come away with a total of three different barrels. And these will be available at liquor barn locations across the state of Kentucky in a few months, and I'll be sure to let you know when they do drop. Last week we had the opportunity to head over to Bardstown, Kentucky, where we were in a very unique opportunity to select two barrels of Elijah Craig from six that were rolled out. For anyone that has been on a quick pic before you know that three is usually the standard. We are fortunate that the heaven Hill team pulled some strings and got us a six barrel lot. We came away with an 11 and a 12 year old bourbon and both were just killer at barrel proof. But we also proved it down to us bottling proof of 94 just to make sure it's still held up and of course it did look forward to these going on sale to our 4:00 Patreon community in the upcoming few months, and a special shout out to keg and bottle in Southern California for making this all happen. Find out more about our barrel pics and what we have going on@patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit and you can find out more and get bourbon delivered to your door from keg and bottle go to keg the letter in bottle.com. And speaking of barrel pics, we had one go on sale this week, our riff you like a hurricane from new roof is going to be available to purchase to our Patreon community. Now you've heard it on the podcast already but we will be in Frankfurt at bourbon on the banks next week, August 24. Go get your tickets. We hope to see you there because we're going to have our own booth will be talking about bourbon pursuit. However, we will also be sampling our pursuit series for all those who haven't gotten the memo yet. And speaking of pursuit series, it's now official. We will be bottling our first Kentucky bourbon next month that will go on sale sometime in the October timeframe. And we're ecstatic to be the first time 5:00 let you know that we have partnered with Will it distillery to bring this experience to you? I know it's still surreal to even hear myself say that we're partnering with Will it and we purchased two barrels of their high rye bourbon recipe that will be bottled as pursuit series. Cats drink non chill filtered the works, you know how it is in this high recipe. It's not even available to liquor stores or distributors that are selecting their own bullet family private state pics right now. So we feel super excited and super lucky to be able to bring this as a one off offering of what we're able to do. And we selected not just one but two of these barrels two months ago and they just landed our bottling facility this week. We're going to be the first independent bottle of Willett distillate and who knows how many years and we've got more news to announce with this but we're gonna have to make you wait just a little bit longer until we cross our T's and dot our I's. Now today's podcast it was recorded last year at bourbon and beyond in 2018. 6:00 Since we were there, sort of in a passive capacity, we had one session, but we didn't have the ability to kind of record. We got this after the fact and that means we don't have any video. So if you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook, I'm sorry. It's like we're going back one and a half years before we started doing video. But if you're on the road or you're running or you're just listening to audio as usual, then just continue as normal. But as you know, verb and beyond is just around the corner. It's taking place next month in Louisville, Kentucky from September 20 through the 22nd. The festival has expanded from two to three days and you will get the chance to see a lot of familiar faces there. Ryan and I will both be moderating panels. And you've also got the entire roundtable making a presence. Jordan from breaking bourbon, Brian from sipping corn and Blake from bourbon are all leading their own panels and workshops. Of course, you're gonna have Fred Minnick there too. It's an opportunity to drink some bourbon, listen to some bands, go listen to a bourbon workshop or seminar then go back out there and rock out was the headliners. 7:00 This is covered in a single ticket price. So if you want to be there in person to hear sessions like today's podcast, go get yours now at bourbon and beyond.com. We'll see you in Louisville. Also, let's toast a bourbon to the weather gods and hope for no rain and clear skies this year. Now, let's see what Joe from barrel bourbon has for us today. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 7:25 Hey everyone, Joe here again. In 2013. I launched barrell craft spirits without a distillery and defied conventional wisdom. To this day, my team and I sourcing blend exceptional barrels from established producers and bottle a cast strength. You can find it on the shelves at your nearest retail store. 7:41 I'm Fred making this is above the charm. This past week in the Philippines, a lawmaker put forth a bill to ban the sale serving and consumption of alcohol and alcohol beverages and streets, pathways, plazas, alleys, sidewalks, parks and parking areas. They're building 8:00 leaf is is that this will be a proactive response in the growing problems of alcoholism in the Philippine. And this is a quote directly from a doctor, their alcoholism and violence have clearly become key public health issues that require urgent attention. Hence, it is imperative for the country to initiate a national policy to curb alcohol consumption in public places in quote. So here's the thing Philippines, this has been done before. And it didn't work, prohibition in the United States basically open the world to the mafia. And it also showed that it didn't really curb drinking at all. What it did do was it increased the sale of bad liquor, and people would die from drinking the equivalent of ethanol or gasohol. And today when we see areas where there are dry counties, you have moonshiners, so people will find a way to drink 9:00 And I'll also say this, that the efforts to ban alcohol or alcohol advertising, they're growing. And they're growing because we have never really been able to figure out as a society, how to drink responsibly. So, when you're getting your fellas together your girlfriends together, think about this for a moment, you could be an example used of drinking responsibly. What does that mean? Well, Google drinking in moderation, you definitely don't want to get behind the wheel. To me, a big part of drinking in moderation comes down to the taste. I like to sip and savor and analyze every single molecule that's hitting my palate. And that's been a big reason why I've been able to develop my palate using mindfulness techniques. I also believe that there's a project out there called the mocktail project that would be great to include in your parties that would help push the drinking in moderation and someone sober, doesn't want to have a drink. They can have a 10:00 mocktail that's basically a folk cocktail. That's just as tasty as the cocktail would. And of course, the culture. We live in a society that does not want to educate young people why they cannot drink until they're 21. I have a five year old and he can tell you exactly why he is not able to consume the same bourbon that his father and mother do. Now, I'm not saying that parenting is easy, but I do think it's important that we educate our children that alcohol is not the devil. It is not some evil thing that demons cast upon you and the only way to not be caught up in its evil spell is to avoid it. And all honesty, if we just teach our children that drinking is bad for your body until you reach a certain age and your body is able to handle it. To me that is a more appropriate and honest and truthful way to bring someone up in this world. But 11:00 It's just easier to band stuff. Just ask the Philippines. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram at Fred Minnick, that's at Fred Minnick until next week. Cheers 11:18 gentlemen please take your seats to my left here is Jeff our debt master distiller for jack daniels. 11:28 And to my other left, Fred noe master distiller for Jim Beam. 11:37 Gentlemen, it is such a privilege and honor to MC what is an absolutely historic seminar, jack and Jim, what's the difference? The two world best selling American whiskeys. This is awesome. Now, both of you all have had a lot 12:00 of musical connections. Tell us let's see what the difference is starting there. From the music perspective. What kind of music has Jim been been a part of? Well, I guess the first one was my dad met Hank Williams Jr. So it got a little name that's a little name drop right there. And you know we've played with McGovern Gentry for a long time country. And then we're trying to ease into the rock a little bit with Nickelback. And in our latest buddy was a kid rock. So we've, we've kind of hit different john years of music so you like people who like to drink? mostly people like to drink Jim Beam. All right. 12:46 All right, Jeff. Now, I think there's a musician that's pretty well connected the jack daniels. What's the history there? Well, if you go back in our history, it goes all the way to our founder who was pretty world traveled considering he was born. 13:00 In a small town in Lynchburg, Tennessee, so he purchased some instruments he created a group called the silver cornet band had them play on the square in Lynchburg because he learned that music and whiskey and kind of go together. They're both very social. So he's kind of solved the connection. So it began very early for us, but I think the game changer and jack daniels history was back in the 1950s when Frank Sinatra first held up jack daniels on stage, he called it the nectar of the gods. Our sales doubled from 1955 to 1956. But he was a lifelong jack daniels drinker. It was after that as you started to see jack daniels not just don't rock stages and music stages, but also in a lot of movies. But Frank was loyal to death. He literally was buried with a bottle of jack daniels in his casket. So we were honored to come out with a whiskey that that honored his love of the brand a few years ago. Now there's also some photos of like Jimmy Page, drinking. jack daniels backstage, the Rolling Stones. 14:00 Lemmy from Motorhead slash from Guns and Roses. These are people that are pretty iconic, you know in the rock world. And definitely love jack daniels and we have we're very fortunate we've got a lot of people in music who love jack daniels. And once we find that out, we don't feel like they should have to buy jack daniels t shirt, so I write a lot of letters and send out a lot of T shirts to people to thank them for their love. Now, Fred, jack daniels used to employ a guy who made sure that Frank Sinatra always had jack daniels. Has Jim Beam ever done anything like that? What do you mean my chili Goblin like? So there was a gentleman from our buddies right? Frank Sinatra. Never he always had a case of jack daniels nearby. So they employed someone who basically from what I understand, just basically drove around with him made sure he was always with jack daniels are we when people are on tour, whatever market they're in, our sales force shows up and breezes them pretty well. So your 15:01 I haven't heard any of them complain about not getting plenty of Jim Beam. Alright, so that's, that's just a little touch on the music about what's the difference between YouTube. You're also both really big into barbecue. really big into barbecue. Now Jeff, I was a judge with you last year at the big jack daniels BBQ. Tell us about your big barbecue connection is jack daniels. Yes, we the fourth Saturday in October. in Lynchburg. We sponsor what we consider to be the Super Bowl of barbecue. It comes very late in the season for the Kansas City barbecue society circuit. But it's the top 80 teams typically 20 of those have come from outside the US. So they're representing countries like Switzerland, Estonia, Canada, Australia, England, but usually it's about 50 or 60 of the best us teams who show up there to win the jack daniels international Invitational barbecue is a great time. I know and I have served as a judge on 16:00 The shade tree only where I judged the major meat categories, but I could hardly walk. When I got up on the table that day. I did not pace myself very well, but 42 samples in about three hours and you better know what you're doing. So I know we've got some judges out here in the audience today who were looking on who can attest to that. 16:18 Now, Fred, you are a great barbecue pit man. You're also a great ham maker. You've got a personal connection to barbecue and why is that? Why your barbecue sauce? The Jim Beam barbecue sauce tastes so good. Because God ZM Amen. And that's why 16:40 you made for it. And have you had the jab. He had the jack daniels barbecue sauce. I'm sure they do know I mean, if you had ever 16:49 seen it, do you like their Tyson? 16:53 whiskey and anything? It's good Jeffrey, what's wrong with you? 16:58 Does anyone 16:59 know 17:00 Go customer for was over. Yeah, well, I had a plus or minus, you know, I should have said we should have a cuss word counter out there with you. You know, are you sorry, I'm a potty mouth. We can trust Jeff to be a gentleman but Fred boy, he can get go. I'm not a scholar, so don't even go there. 17:18 Now both come from very historic distilleries. Very, very historic. Tell us about how jack Daniel got started. Well, for those who don't know jack daniels life story. He was orphaned at a very young age, so he found himself without either his biological parents when he was a young teenager. 17:38 He was one of 13 children born to his father, one of 10 born to his mother, but he ended up moving away to work for his room and board on a neighbor's farm. That neighbor was a Lutheran minister and a farmer. More importantly, he owned the general store that still stands on the square in Lynchburg today, and of course back in the 1850s and 60s, small town general stores had to serve a lot of functions. 18:00 And that community had to be a small scale department store had to swear you picked up telegrams, but also would be the pharmacy of the community. So jack started out making medicinal whiskey for a Lutheran minister that was sold to the townspeople of Lynchburg at the general store. So from very, very modest beginnings, he was out there for at least a decade perfecting the craft and ultimately bought the distilling equipment and moved it to where we are today and that happened in the 1870s. So you know, in jack daniels history, other than prohibition every drop of jack daniels has been made from a cave spring in Lynchburg, Tennessee. It's one of the things I think that makes us really special. It's one of the reasons why we're is I think, consistent as we are. It's a great water source and and the townspeople of Lynchburg have made it their passion to carry on the mission of jack daniels in his absence since he he passed in 1911. And since since we've been able to become the number one selling American whiskey today. So Fred, you guys also 19:00 Have a lot of your connection to your family's history is also connected to the water. Tell us about that. Yeah, our, I guess my great great great, great grandfather Jacob been migrated into Kentucky a little place called harden Creek. And they were given away land to get people to come this way from the northeast. That's how bad things were back then they were given land away, just to come in here and grow corn. Yeah. And what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Jacob came down, got his parcel of land. He was a Miller of grain. Then he found out making whiskey was a good way to preserve preserve the grain. In fact, come to find out is whiskey making skills were better and more profitable than the milling of grain. So our family started making whiskey. Oh jacobin. And then as time went on, and railroad came through, his son moved it to Bardstown. Then prohibition came along shut off 20:00 is down 20:02 and along with a lot of other folks here in Kentucky, and after prohibition, Jim Beam started the old Murphy barber distillery backup spot right down here in Clermont, where he had been milling are grinding stone, limestone rock, there was a big spring there and a distillery. And so that's where we got moved from Harding Creek to Bardstown to Claremont, where we are today, and eight generations later, we're still there. So we're looking at both water sources. They're both limestone filter, they both very come from really strong natural areas of limestone, filtered x, you know, great access to the water. So we have a lot of similarities here. You know, from a cultural perspective, they're both very involved with music. They're both very involved in barbecuing, you've got some cool barbecue competitions as well. You both got barbecue sauces, and there's a lot of connections there. And then the water is pretty much 21:00 The same. Now let's talk about the recipes a little bit. Now, Jeff, I love you. You'll tell me exactly what your recipe is your mash bill, Fred, what's the Jim Beam? mash bill? How many years you've been trying to get that out of me for it. 21:14 I figured this would be the moment you would open up and share it. Not when I put me in that coffin, they might give it to you. I'm not going to give it to you because I know you want it so damn bad. It's true. It is I do want to bend the thing is Fred. If I gave you numbers, they ended up to 100 would you know if I was telling the truth? 21:34 I would make you put your hand on my book and swear it's the truth. So it's the book of bourbon. It would have to be the truth. wouldn't have to be shit. 21:46 fishes out for you. It has been a long time. It has been a long time. So let's just say that jack daniels is very sharing with their recipes. With now they share it and you guys been very protective of it for me for years. 22:00 But we can say that you're at least 75% corn. 22:06 You're more than 51% corn. Now we're more bitty 1% or then 51% corn. I'm not giving anything. Okay, because pretty soon as at how much raw, oh, you'll be able to figure it out but give you with this with the gentleman from Tennessee tell us from the mash mill recipe for jack daniels. I will you know, with the exception of the raw whiskey that we've just introduced, that's a 70% raw 18% corn and 12% malted barley pretty much everything that you've ever had from jack daniels shares what we call the old number seven rest, right? It's 80% corn is 12% malted barley and 8%. Raw. And I know Fred doesn't want to talk about it. But I would just say in general, jack daniels is about a half to a third of the typical raw content of a Kentucky bourbon. So when you start to contrast and maybe some of the differences, obviously whiskey and Kentucky bourbon that it begins at the grain, there was a deliberate choice to maybe go a little bit less on this 23:00 Ice that would be associated with Ryan going a little bit higher and corn and make it a little bit sweeter. So jack tends to push out into that sweet range a little bit. I think it's fair to say, I think I know your grain bill, but I won't tell anybody 23:12 with a brother, Jeff, you can say it here. No one's listening. No one's watching right now. They used to talk about it. 23:20 Actually, Chuck Cowdery had a good story about your dad and the issue of bourbon plus over there, you gotta go check that out. But sorry, so are our mash bills. The recipes are pretty close, you know, so they're pretty close to being the same them. And then let's look at the distillation perspective. You guys are both using column stills both using column stills. What are you coming off the still at what's your what's your proof point office Still, we we actually all of our stills are made out of copper. So there are columns still each is equipped with a blur, so it'll be a single pass but a double distillation process. We target 140 points. 24:00 roof and with the still design that we have, we can maintain that plus or minus one proof point. So we have a really tight range around our target. So 131 to 139 would be the range 140 is the target. What is your office still proof? Jim Beam? Yeah, that's where we'll change our taste is with distillation strength. But we go off the first distillation 125 second distillation 135. OK, so again, both very similar in distillation technique. And now med one med 132 to 140. And by law, they cannot go any higher than 160 proof. So that's actually telling you right there that they are deliberately going lower, so you can get some more of the characteristic from the grain in there. So they're both doing very unique things. And now 24:57 we get to that point where we start saying 25:00 A difference. Now, Fred, you you guys go and get Maple charcoal and filter your whiskey right before it right? No, wait, no, that's not Jim Beam. That's jack daniels. 25:13 Did you do any damn research before you? 25:20 Sometimes I apologize for my buddy here, you know, what do you think of the Lincoln County process? I mean, yeah, it's tradition. That's what I do. It's good. That's what makes them special. Well, do you like it? I enjoy what they do what they make. 25:38 So tell us about the Lincoln County process. And by the way, I didn't know I was trying to set 25:43 it up there a little bit. You know, even though Today we're in the second smallest county in the state of Tennessee, both by population and geography. You'll hear this charcoal Melling process often referred to as the Lincoln County process. So we're in Moore County, but don't get confused back in the 1860s lunch. 26:00 was in a larger county called Lincoln County. More county wasn't formed until the 1870s. But this was a regional variant of bourbon. It was just something that that popped up among local distillers and back in Jack's day, even though we're the only one you'll find there today. Back in Jack's day, there were dozens of different distilleries littered throughout the hills around Lynchburg taking advantage of the limestone water that we have in abundance there. But they began to charcoal filter 26:29 right after they would distill the whiskey and before they would put it in a barrel they would filter it through hard sugar maple charcoal became the variety of wood that was most preferred. People have asked me before the jack us any other different types of wood other than hard sugar maple and I wish I could answer that question. I think if he were here today, that's probably one of my top questions that I would have is what all did you experiment with before you settled there, but I will tell you this about hard sugar maple it's an indigenous word. It's all throughout the hills around Lynchburg. So it's it's a 27:00 easy to find, even after 150 years that we've been out cutting it and burning it for charcoal. The key advantage that I see from it is that it's a very low ash wood. And we're going Of course, we're going to take our whiskey through that. So we don't want a lot of ash coming out of the charcoal getting into the whiskey and going into the barrel. Today with modern technology, we could process that away if we needed to. But what I noticed is that there's really not much in the way of ash that comes off of it. So oak actually has quite a bit of ash. Maple does not so jack was not just known to use hard sugar maple in the charcoal mellowing process, but he felt that it was very important to change it frequently because he recognized that it was like a sponge and eventually a sponge will get full and get saturated. And so you need to do more than just pass through charcoal, the charcoal needs to be fresh enough to make a difference. So we're tasting our events every week, changing it out on the frequency necessary to make sure that it's making the difference removing the fatty acids cleans up 28:00 The grainy knows it comes off much lighter, sweeter on the foot, both on the palate and also on the nose. 28:07 Fred, I don't know about you, but I heard I listened to the process and I've seen it before a million times. And it just sounds like so much more work. 28:18 I mean, do you think that's why in Kentucky that they stopped using that process? We're just a little lazier probably 28:26 wouldn't have gotten around or in the 1700s. I mean, look at them. Oh, but I'm not really. But now. I mean, that's just that's what Jeff and them do. And I've always done it. So we use it. We used to do it in Kentucky. You know, the the bill distillers actually used to do a similar process in the 1800s. It just did not. It was not very popular here. And so it went away. We did some charcoal filtering after aging. Yeah, to kind of smooth out some of the whiskies back in the old days, but now we've done some different different techniques and filtering now 29:00 Your tour guides Jeff. They like the lumps and mortar rounds toward Kentucky. And they just say this makes us better. Kentucky bourbon. Yeah. Now I gotta say as a Kentucky and although I tried to be neutral and is my skin crawls a little bit when your tour guide start making fun of Kentucky now what do you trade? What he traded him over there? Well, of course I think it's friendly competition. I think it forces us both to be the very best at our game. And I think people when when we feel like we need to step up our game and mind our P's and Q's to make a better product. You know, I know that we've had people who've come and taking the tour jack daniels who've recently taken the Kentucky bourbon trail and some of them have come up and tell me that I asked the tour guide. They wouldn't say which distillery it was. But you know, why isn't that y'all don't charcoal mellow like jack daniels does. And the standard response you'll get is that all hail that's, that is nothing but a shortcut. And of course, I looked up shortcut. I looked up the definition of IO and it's amazing guy 30:00 was Fred know, well supposed to say shortcuts are supposed to save you time or money or both. And it's something that we invest days in that we spend over a million dollars buying wood and burning it and replacing it. So it's it's something we're pretty passionate about. But it's to Fred's point, it's one of those things that makes a Tennessee whiskey unique. It makes it worth exploring. The same way I think, you know, no, to Kentucky barbers are pretty much going to taste the same. This was something that was a regional choice to make Tennessee whiskey is different. And it's something that we feel like we perfected over the years and that we're pretty proud that we still do today. All right, let's go through our tasting here. The one on your lap if I'm correct, is jack daniels. My right so we can be? Yeah, the one on your left is jack daniels. For us up on stage is the one that's closest to you. Are you going to be You got it? 30:49 I got so we're serving here is a gentleman jack. Can you tell us a little bit about gentleman jack? Yeah, of course as a Tennessee whiskey, we charcoal mellow and we were talking 31:00 about that process being somewhat different than what they do in Kentucky to make a bourbon but that's right after we distill whiskey and right before we put it in a barrel, it slowly passes through 10 feet of hard sugar maple charcoal. So that's this is the distinct step that we do that makes jack daniels at Tennessee whiskey with gentleman jack. This was our first new whiskey since prohibition we introduced it in 1988. It was the only whiskey that we've ever done. We had charcoal melt it twice so it gets one pass of charcoal before it goes in the barrel it gets another one after it's been fully matured in the barrel and before it's bottle. So this is the double mellowed version of jack daniels. And what you'll notice about it is that it has a very distinct absence of oak finish. For people who a lot of times if people struggle with bourbon or with whiskies in general it will do it will have to do with the aftertaste of oak, some people find it pleasant, that's what makes them like bourbon for other people. It's a block. It's a reason why they can enjoy it. So gentlemen, jack was literally meant to be an approachable form of whiskey. 32:00 Using charcoal all natural this is. This is all water grains, barrel and charcoal. So there's nothing artificial added in here. But this kind of displays the art of mellowing by doing it twice. All right, Fred, what do you think? I'm Dyson idea. What do you been doing the whole time? I've been smelling that I All right. Yeah, that's fine. 32:21 I think I drank the whole damn thing. 32:25 That's bullshit. Yeah, when it comes when it comes to this one in particular, I often describe it as being very, very clean, 32:33 uncomplicated, but it has almost a citrus banana nose on it has an absence of the earthy wood notes in it. Very clean and light. The great Lincoln Henderson actually had a big hand in the development of gentleman jack he did Lincoln work for brown Coleman for 40 years. So between the people of Lynchburg and all the the whiskey making expertise we have at Brown Forman, which of course includes some great bourbon brands and now also scotch whiskey and a new Irish whiskey. 33:00 Brand we we cover the whiskey world pretty well today except with the exception of Japanese whiskey. We even have Canadian. So we're a whiskey company at our core. So Lincoln Henderson is the founding master distiller for both angel's envy and Woodford Reserve. He's in the bourbon Hall of Fame he passed away in 2013. great man. So there's a little bit of a bourbon iconic figure connected to that whiskey now let's taste a little bit of Jim Beam here. This is the this is the one we see Mila Kunis talking about all the time. 33:33 This mask about you know the person this is the world's best whiskey their words not ours, according to see. Yeah. So what let's look at the Mila Kunis and a little bit but tell us about what we're drinking here with the Jim Beam black champion. Black is our gym being Nashville. Which I'm not going to tell you Fred. I know. 33:57 You're not one. But we do. We aged long. 34:00 RGM been white label stays in the barrel for years. This is a six year taste profile. So we're putting barrels that are older than six, some that are six, and some are a little younger than six. That way we keep the product on the shelf with a domain curve. All right, I got it. I got interrupted here. I gotta interrupt you. Okay, there wasn't once upon a time it had an eight year old age statement on there. If you go back farther, it had 101 months. 34:29 History he was ready for me damn right. 34:32 Fred you remember we've done this ship before? Yeah. 34:36 You ain't sent me out man. I might. 34:39 I might look dumb, but it's just a disguise. 34:43 I still you know, the thing is, it took me a while to get over by still buy it. I'm glad to see it. But the big thing on this ad it's 86 proof. So it's got more age, higher strength. So gets a little bit more of what and I think bourbon is all about no more word. 35:00 Which I did notice gentlemen jack doesn't have that much wood on the nose and finish. But I mean if you want a little more the if you like the oak, then you know the Jim Beam black is more than the GMBYI Let's take a taste. You didn't do that good talking to you in the jack daniels Did you? Yes sir. Oh you did I miss that. You want to watch it? Should you always try to set me up? I'm not trying to set you up. So now here I am trying to set you up. You're setting me up. Here we go. No, I'll give you the my spiel is a drink thing. I'm drunk enough to give me that loaded. Sorry. 35:34 Is jack daniels a bourbon? 35:39 Hey, it's Kenny here. And I want to tell you about an event that's happening on Saturday, August 24. Because I want to see you in historic downtown Frankfort, Kentucky at bourbon on the banks. It's the Commonwealth premier bourbon tasting and awards festival. There's live music and over 100 vendors of food, beer, wine, and of course, bourbon. But 36:00 Guess what even will be there in the bourbon pursuit booth. You can check out all the events including tastings with the master distillers that you've heard on the show before and the People's Choice Award for the Best bourbon out there. You can get your all inclusive ticket for $65. Plus, you can join on the free Friday night event. Go and check it out. bourbon on the banks.org there are more craft distilleries popping up around the country now more than ever before. 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Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 37:24 Is jack daniels a bourbon? 37:26 Well, no, I mean, let's look on the label. You see the word BOURBON on her anywhere. It's in the North American Free Trade Agreement. 37:36 I political Oh, man. 37:40 Come on. JACK. Is jack daniels a bourbon? You know, according to NAFTA? Yes, it is. Oh, there we go. Thank you so much for coming. If you want to trust if you want to trust the view of our government, you know, you'd have to say that it is if you want to make your own decision about that. That's fine too. But if you look at everything in the federal 38:00 codes that define what a bourbon whiskey is. There are no exceptions when it comes to what jack daniels is our grain bill in the fact that were made in America, our grain bill, our distillation proved the fact that we only use new barrels or even make barrels for ourselves as a whiskey company. The only way to do that there's nothing that would disqualify us. But there's always been this argument that well, if you go to charcoal mellowing, it does distinctly change the spirit. Yeah, it changes the nose. It changes the mouth feel of it. And the actually it was the US government. Back in 1941. Who petition jack daniels This was after prohibition it ended. They wanted us to change our label from jack daniels, Tennessee whiskey to bourbon, they were trying to kind of go around and clean up who's operations and what they were being labeled as and they said, we've looked at your process. There's no exceptions. The what defined is bourbon, so why not just re label yourself so they submitted samples before and after charcoal mellowing, my salespeople actually offer those educationally today. 39:00 And they tasted it. This was the alcohol Bureau in Washington DC there actually was such a thing back then they tasted the product. 39:08 Government, they wrote us a letter, and 1941 that basically says we've tasted your product. And we have to agree that you don't have the character that's typical of bourbon whiskey. Therefore, if you want to label yourself a Tennessee whiskey, we won't contest it any longer. And of course, the US government has a way of changing their minds. So we can we've kept a copy of that letter just as evidence that we don't want to revisit that. We feel like the arguments been one. But we all we also say that it gives us hope, because it's the one evidence that we have in the last 75 years that our US government got any decision right. So we take that one 39:44 political angle. 39:46 You don't get me in trouble jail. Fred, I know is going to get me in trouble. So Jeff, 39:54 do you ever get tired of people asking you that question? Is jack daniels a bourbon? No, no, no. 40:00 Really I think as long as people are curious, that's part of the battle. You know, for the longest time whiskey from the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s whiskeys were all the rage. You know, the whiskey cocktails were what people ordered. But then we saw some pretty lean years as whiskey brands, the 70s, or the 80s 90s and 2000s. Were not necessarily so kind. So I think just having people to be bourbon curious. 40:26 Whiskey curious. 40:29 As part of the battle, you know, I always say if we can make whiskey interesting, collectively, but the rising tide will raise all ships. So I feel like jack daniels success doesn't necessarily have to come at the expense of Jim beam's. And I think probably Fred would say the same. That we can both have extremely successful brands because we we do have unique flavors, we have unique brands. And that's going to appeal more or less to different individuals. But I think just having people be curious about whiskey is the biggest part of the battle if they're open to trying it. I think they're 41:00 Something in the whiskey category that are going to like, all right, Do you guys ever feel competitive against each other, like you want to own the well over the other? 41:10 You know, the thing that, you know, the guys in production, were buddies, sales guys on the street. That's another damn store. 41:21 I mean, I'd have to agree. You know, Fred. Now, this is very rare that we would be on the same stage together. But we met about eight or nine years ago, in Berlin. It was amazing, because I think that was Fred's first comments. That means like, we're a state apart, and we had to come all the way to Germany to even meet. So we, we were at the Berlin bartenders convention and had a chance to actually we were representing American whiskey versus the other categories of global whiskey. So we decided against the devil Yeah, instead of having the fence between us. We were actually on the same side of the fence there. So we were we were in violent agreement I remember about the importance of limestone water and mixing up grains and using new 42:00 barrels, making it all natural not using colorings or flavorings and things of that nature. So, you know, there's so many things that are common about Jim Beam and jack daniels, of course, the one variant being charcoal mellowing, and people can decide if that's right for them. But I think as long as they're willing to to order a whiskey, there's a good chance that they're going to like something there. There we were, essentially, Jeff and me against the world. I don't think we did pretty damn good. 42:28 Well, we were lucky, because it was in Germany, and Jim Beam is pretty strong in Germany. And so all our sales people were kind of on one side and they were probably a little drunk. I think. 42:41 I think there's one thing we could agree to I actually have some friends who are what I call Doomsday errs, you know, who created fallout shelters who got Mr. ease and, you know, bottled water stacked up to the ceiling. And a lot of them have basically told me that I'm not I'm not hoarding cash. I'm basically putting bottles of jack daniels. 43:00 Whiskey and stuff like that because if the currency fails, they're absolutely certain that a bottle of whiskey is always going to be worth something regardless of what happens. 43:11 But but but Baka would not be. Yeah, I think if we go back to bartering, it's gonna be good to be in the whiskey business. What do you say? 43:19 Bam, right? You get more with a bottle of whiskey and you can handle the money. I guarantee it. 43:27 Well, gentlemen, it's been a real pleasure here. This is such a rare opportunity to have these two on the stage. I would actually like to take some questions from the audience how bad it would you like some light shirt from folks like that some questions? 43:42 Anybody have any questions out there? 43:45 What is a regular day for Fred? No. And Jeff Barnett. 43:51 I get up about 630 here down the August 1 thing, look at emails is like every other person. So do 44:00 Deal with meetings conference calls. And then I get to have fun and go down to the distillery. taste a little white dog right off the steel and then usually hit by the lab and taste some as liquor and then hang out at our visitor center, shake hands, take pictures, sand bottles, and then hit home but then the day they send me to 44:25 your liquor stores and bars, all days signing bottles, taking pictures, doing presentations, I'm sure Jeff's when he's on the west side. I'm usually on the east. 44:37 That same place. 44:39 You can see who's been ahead of you when you go into a liquor store. You see bottles on the shelf that have been signed by Jeff Arnett or Jimmy Russell or whoever is it well shit, I'm definitely behind him. You know, don't put dates on them so you don't know. Or maybe x coming. I'm not going to store and see bottles son from the last visit. And I think what shipping 45:00 Selling enough 45:04 one too many 45:06 I got out they don't let you get away. You know I think the the one word in that question that that puzzles me the most is regular I don't know that I've ever had a regular day as a master distiller because every day is it's different to me I feel absolutely blessed to work for jack daniels you know I'm a native Tennessee and argue that is probably the best known product from our state so have to have any hand in working at jack daniels to me was a dream job. But 80% of my time is spent in Lynchburg. The one thing that I'm most fortunate about is that I don't have to travel between facilities we make every drop in one spot using a water source which allows me to keep everything as consistent as I feel like it needs to be. It allows us to leverage you know, employees who have you know, several generations of experience making whiskey I think that I'm not the strength of jack daniels it is the people of Lynchburg who've committed over the years since prohibition to 46:00 Keep the brand going and growing. But I do spend about 50 to 60 days a year out on the road. So, you know, you become a little bit of a 46:09 celebrity in the world of whiskey. You know, it's amazing what passes that celebrity, you know. But you know, to to a whiskey fan, they want to meet you, they want to get a photo, they want to get a signature. And that's it's always an honor to do that. But we are sold in 170 countries today in 10 years. I've actually by the end of this year, I'll have visited 39 countries so cover a lot of the ground in a few days of the year. So let's talk about celebrities for a second. Let's go to what's it like spending time with Mila Kunis? My one man 46:41 I mean, it could have been worse, you know? Now Mila she she came here to Kentucky a couple times and we hit it off right off the bat. You're gonna love this story. I might as well go on and tell it. Surely I won't get any trouble since I've already cursed a little bit going on with Mila first came. They wanted to make sure that our first 47:00 meeting was on film. They didn't want us to get to know each other. And so she came to our home there in Bardstown. She was in the house. They were getting her hair and makeup wardrobe. You know, I pretty much do all that stuff myself. I don't I don't have hairdressers that go with me, kind of no reason to me anyway. My wife went into the house and was talking to me over there and she had her dog when Mila and her boyfriend at that time, Ashton Kutcher had to put her dog sleeping on Neil or something. So she got pretty emotional was holding Sandy's dog. And she said, I'm a little nervous to work with your husband. And Sandy said, Why? She's a walk curse a lot. 47:45 And my wife said, You're good. 47:48 She's a no you don't understand. I say fuck a lot. 47:53 She said, You're still good. 47:58 Sandy came out 48:00 And she came on was laughing I said, What's the funny? So Amelia is nervous to work with you. I said Why? She was he causes a lot, so it's no big deal. I know what she's worried about saying fuck around you. So we did our little meeting. It was on film, everything was cool. Cut, take a break. I got her ear and I said fuck it. 48:22 We're gonna get along just fine, big boat. 48:25 That's how I was. I was tell someone that after having met Fred I realized he was truly a master of the English language because he can take the F bomb and use it as every form of the English language in one sentence. 48:40 Yeah, all right, Jeff, as I play bartender here on stage, why don't you tell us one of your celebrity stories? Oh, goodness. Um, you know, we're very fortunate. Like I said, we've had a lot of people especially in the music industry. We were fans of jack daniels. So especially in country music, a lot of people and they think of, of Tennessee. If they don't 49:00 Think of jack daniels when they think of Tennessee I think they largely think of country music so I've had a chance to spend time him he 49:08 music table we even work, you know had a chance to hang out with with Zac Brown and 49:14 and his wife and his children and also now with Eric church, and to find out that his wife literally grew up about 30 minutes from my hometown, and what real and really good people that they are. I think that I think that's the most surprising thing that I find is that celebrities are not a lot different than we are, you know, some of them maybe are but the ones that I've had the privilege of meeting I've been always really surprised at just how humble and what good people they are. And of course if they love jack daniels even better, we got plenty to talk about if they do. I know you. You are partial to the ones that favor Jim Beam and I definitely have a I feel like a big fan base out there both in Hollywood and all over the music industry, jack daniels as well represented there. All right, everybody. Let's have another question. Who's got a 50:00 Question out here. Yes, ma'am. Right here in the back. coming to you with the microphone. 50:06 How often do you introduce new products? And when will your next one be introduced? 50:12 I'll answer for jack daniels. You know, how often do we come up with new products? You know, for the longest time we didn't, we had one brand that carried us for over 100 years. We introduced gentleman jack in 1988. We introduced single barrel in 1997. We didn't introduce any new products from jack daniels for about 14 years. And that wasn't necessarily due to our lack of interest of offering new products. It was really more about is the market even wanting a new product from us? Are they happy with what they have, but as as whiskey has taken off again, I think that's what we're seeing has changed the most is that people do want to try a lot of different things, including the loyal jack daniels people and that includes, you know, our newest grain bill that's come out is raw. So we have two different versions of it to me that's that's our new product and for this year, that's what we're going to continue to focus on. 51:00 Because to me, I think it's very different for people who maybe have never been a fan of jack daniels before. Maybe one of the reasons is the fact that we're very low and raw. And if you do like a high raw whiskey, we now offer that, you know, jack daniels, you know, like I said, we're very fortunate we have just a rabid fan base. And I think besides Harley Davidson, we just recently got named the brand that's most likely to be tattooed on someone. So, you know, people have asked me why, why did you come out with a rye whiskey? And it's like, well, my fear was that there's going to be this big burly guy with a tattoo that says jack daniels on his arm, and he's gonna taste rye whiskey this out. He really likes that. So we need to give him a jack daniels option. That way, he's not going to have to go and get his tattoo taken off. So but you know, to answer that question, we've come out with one new product a year for the last seven years. So we've gone from three to 10 in a really short period. So we're just kind of trying to maybe decompress a little bit from doing that and focus on what we've got out there. We feel like we've got a really strong profile. 52:00 There's something in there that out of those 10 that I think everyone's gonna like. 52:05 Now you were about to dispute the tattooed thing for No, no, no, no, I asked him. I was going to ask Jeff for his was, oh, I couldn't show you on stage. I'm sorry. 52:17 Between me and my wife, you're lucky, you're lucky. 52:21 Now, we do a lot of innovations. 52:26 My son actually, Freddie, he's he's got a project who just had a baby, by the way, or his wife had a baby. Right? Congratulations, grandpa. 52:36 Paul, I was holding Booker last time. 52:39 It was kind of cool. But Freddie's got a brand called Little Book, which so my father called him from the time he was a baby. So every year, he's going to make a straight whiskey or straight spirit blend. And so every year it's going to be another chapter into chapter one was 52:59 either 53:00 No easy. The second one's no easy task. First one was the big easy, but he's taking spirit streams from within the beam Suntory portfolio around the world, which he's got a pretty unlimited canvas. When you look at all the whiskies we have which, with this year, he did a 40 year old Canadian 16 year old Canadian rap, an eight year old, Kentucky straight raw, 53:24 all cash strength, just like his grandfather. And so we're doing innovations, probably one or two a year. And then we'll within our play knob Creek will go we've done single barrel rise, single barrel Bourbons, can strength. We do different things, all limited releases, because folks like Jeff said, they want different stuff. They don't want the same thing over and over and over. If we see something that really hits hard, like we did a base right and dark raw, which was, oh, I've got an idea that we could maybe execute for next 54:00 years festival Why don't we do a blend of jack daniels and Jim Beam for bourbon and beyond 2019 54:09 I go say won't ever 54:12 talk somebody 54:15 and they'll tell you what how drunk were you to when you agreed to 54:23 have your people talk to my 54:26 so you get this ball rolling Fred 54:29 should we have it for next year? 54:34 I would say this so I think it when you're looking at Tennessee and Kentucky you're definitely looking at some of the world's best spirits when it comes to whiskeys and you can't go wrong if you will explore around I think you're going to find there's something they're just gonna like. Oh yeah, for sure. So what you're saying it's better than Canada. 54:50 Well, it's different than Canada we have different rules. We have Canadian whiskey brand is 54:56 people like and more power to them. We got scotch whiskey brands. 55:00 get us in trouble. Yeah, we got Canadian. You know, I've recently become a fan of shared scotches oh you know students don't smoke repeat but I'm open to trying new things. 55:11 Well gentlemen, if you all if anyone in the audience has anything lab, I know you to do. I just poured you like four fingers there. Grab what you have a lap. Let's toast it to, to Fred know and Jeff Barnett chairs and now you all 55:28 chairs Transcribed by https://otter.ai

A Rabbi, a Priest, and an Imam walk into a bar. No, wait. Imams don’t drink. Most rabbis don’t drink much either, come to think of it. Priests drink—at least in the movies—but mostly not in bars . . . So maybe nobody walks into a bar? How, when, and where are we all supposed to figure out how to get along? My guest today, who also happens to be an old, good friend of mine, has an answer, or several. He’s Jeffrey Israel—a professor of Religion at Williams College and the author of a new book Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion. He argues that pluralistic societies like the United States need two uneasy siblings: a strong political will to recognize and protect our common humanity and also “play spaces” where we can give rein to the difficult feelings- anger, resentment, even hate- that can’t be erased by politics, a Beatles song, or just by wishing them away. In his generous and provocative book, Jeff mines Jewish-American humor from Lenny Bruce, Philip Roth, and the sitcom All in the Family for models of rough and reflective play. Spike Lee’s film Do The Right Thing gets a well-deserved star turn, too. And for a civics that can protect human dignity while making space for all the nastiness and alienation we have no choice but to live with, He looks to philosopher Martha Nussbaum, among others. It’s a difficult conversation for an imperfect and imperfectable world, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. So Jeff makes a bold case and invites us all to the table —rabbi, priest, Imam, and the rest us who don’t fit into easy categories—to hash it out. Surprise conversation starters in this episode: David Epstein on “lateral thinking”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snapper Season is underway, which guarantees all kinds of silliness, and Capt. Kirk was in the middle of it! So Jeff and Capt. Kevin took the show on the road to Theramed Medical Clinic in Callahan. Jeff shared his stories about Telluride, CO, Kevin talked about snapper fever, and everyone chimed in about their favorite pair of work boots.

Copywriter Jeff Kimes is our guest for the 144th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jeff is a former scientist and musician (or rather, he's currently a musician making his living writing copy for clients). We asked Jeff about his path into copywriting and a bunch of other topics including... •  Jeff’s journey from scientist to copywriter •  the “copywriting” lessons he learned as a musician •  how he creates connection with his readers •  the importance of setting the stage to create a better experience •  what he’s doing today as a copywriter (and where he is living) •  the challenges of writing for a single client and learning their voice •  the benefits of working with a single client •  how we can optimize for learning throughout our careers •  what Jeff is doing to build his authority today Jeff also shared a few thoughts about the ethics of copywriting and why thinking about how your copy serves your customers matters. Click the play button below, find it on your favorite podcast app, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jeff's music Joshua Bell in the Subway Video Brian Clark (Copyblogger) Brian Kurtz Scott Adams Jeff’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob:   This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground. Kira:   It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently. Rob:   For information or to sign up go to thecopywriterunderground.com. Kira:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob:   You're invited to join the club for episode number 144 as we chat with copywriter Jeff Kimes about how science, music and travel combined to make him a more effective copywriter. His research and writing process, seeking out experiences that grow his career. And we might even talk a little bit about the ethics of copy. Kira:   All right, welcome Jeff. Rob:   Hey Jeff. Jeff:    Hello. Kira:   I want to say welcome back because we already did interview months ago, but we just lost the file. It just didn't work out. So welcome back. We never got to publish that conversation, but I know this one will be even more insightful. So Jeff why don't we start this off just with the basics of how you got into copywriting and then we'll go from there. Jeff:    So as far as my own journey into copywriting, I've lived a couple different phases of life, which I think is pretty normal at this point in society. I started out in science. I was working in a psychoneuroimmunology lab. After school I was doing, working in vaccine development. I worked in neuroscience labs and stuff like that. And after a while I got really sick of the lab life and was really hungering for more. And I always had a real big travel bug inside of me. And so went on a, found jobs that facilitated that lifestyle. I worked at sea a lot in marine biology and used that to fund eight years of world travel that was very musically inspired. I'm also a musician and I'd go to a lot of countries where I was really inspired by their musical traditions and learned to teach over there. And then I would take what I learned and incorporate it into music that I was making back here in the U.S. and used that to launch a music project that I played with for several years. It was really fun, enormously fun. Not terribly profitable, but just a really, really beautiful life experience. And in that process of growing a band and trying to make music my life and make that my living started to really come into contact with the necessity of marketing.

The video game website Giant Bomb recently celebrated its tenth birthday so what better time to talk to its creator about the early days of the online games media, the future of games coverage, and getting fired in front of the entire world. iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/noclippodcast Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclippodcast Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,638 Patrons. --------------------------------------------------------------   - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip, the podcast about video games, the people who make them, and the people who play them. On today's episode we talk to a guy who grew up a short drive from the epicenter of the online media revolution. As video game website Giant Bomb recently celebrated its 10th year of operation, we decided to talk to its founder about skipping school, hosting podcasts, and getting fired in front of the entire world. Jeff Gerstmann is a name you either know or don't, depending on whether or not you care about the world of games coverage. Outside of the world of games, Jeff is a husband, son, and a grown-up local kid in Petaluma, a city in Northern California that sits on the outskirts of what many would consider a reasonable commute to San Francisco. There he grew up with his mum and dad who operated a tire shop. A small town kid, with a small town life who loved rap, skateboards, and video games. But inside the world of games Jeff is larger than life. He's part of a dwindling older generation of journalists who were there when the magazines died, and the world of internet reporting exploded. He's lead the charge on finding new ways to talk about games, be it on video, podcast or late light E3 live shows. And crucially, his surname became a rallying cry for media ethics when he fell victim to one of the most lamentable acts of brand self-destruction of the digital age. Much of Jeff's story lives in the gaming zeitgeist. Before I met him, I thought I knew most of it. You see, to me Jeff was a hero. He had figured it all out. Growing up in Ireland, years before Twitch or even YouTube had started, I'd watch him host shows broadcast live from the GameSpot offices in San Francisco. His job was talking about games, and he knew more about games than anyone I'd ever seen trying to do it on television. His job became a north star that I'd spend years following. And when I'd eventually find myself working in the same building those shows were filmed in, sitting at a desk a short walk from his, I slowly began to get a deeper understanding of Jeffrey Michael Gerstmann. Equal parts a quiet, contemplative person and a troublemaker, now responsible for keeping order. I recently sat down with Jeff to talk about the 10 Year Anniversary of his career's second act, the video game website GiantBomb.com. But the story of Giant Bomb and the story of Jeff Gerstmann are intertwined. So to tell you how Giant Bomb was founded we have to go back to a small town in Northern California, to the kid of the folks who ran the tire shop in sunny, quiet, suburban, Petaluma. - [Jeff] The first video game console I owned, it was the Fairchild Channel F, which was, it kinda came out around the same time, same window as the Atari 2600 but it had a few more educational games so I think that tipped my parents in the favor of getting that thing, it had this terrible plunger controller, there was like a decent bowling game but it just immediately failed. I had relatives who had an Atari 2600 and would kinda covet that thing and eventually they gave it to me when the video game industry kinda crashed. But we got into computers not long after that. I got an Atari 400 and that was really the first proper like hey, this is a somewhat successful platform with stuff coming out that mattered. And so I mostly started on a computer. - [Danny] What was the impetus for your parents getting it? Were they interested in technology at all or were you crying for it or what was the story there? - [Jeff] You know, my dad played some video games certainly over the years but I think that was largely because that's what I was interested in. We were going to arcades a lot and on the weekends we would go out, there was an arcade in town called Dodge City and we would go to Dodge City. You know, my mom went once or twice, this was like the height of Pac-Man fever so like I would be there, my dad would be there, we'd be playing games and there would just be this huge line almost out the door of people waiting to play Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man. And it was just weird, you know, because it was just another game, like to me it was just like, all right, well yeah, I don't know, Pac-Man's over there and it is what it is and I'm over here playing Galaxian or Vanguard or you know, whatever the heck else, I don't really remember talking to too many people about video games. This was, you know, this woulda been, god, 82 ish, like early to mid 80s really and I was going to elementary school then and just there were like one or two other kids I knew that had computers but most kids didn't and they weren't really into video games per say or if they were they weren't really letting on. So there was one kid I knew that had a TRS-80 and so I'd go over to his place and play Parsec and some other stuff like that. There was a kid near the tire shop that my parents ran that had a VIC-20 and I could go over there and play like Radar Rat Race and some other stuff too. - [Danny] So, I guess, what did you want to be when you grew up when you were like a middle schooler? Obviously games journalism wasn't a target you could exactly aim for so what were you thinking about your future when you were in like middle school, high school? - [Jeff] When I was in high school we saw a posting, so LucasArts was relatively local, they were in Marin County and, you know, this woulda been like 1990, 1991, somewhere around there, and they were looking for testers. And I remember applying for it but like I was 15. Like it was, logistically it would've been impossible for me to even do that job 'cause I couldn't even drive a car yet. And it was 20ish miles away. But also like I remember writing, like they wanted a resume, I wrote an essay and it was like, you should give me this job. It was real dumb, I mean, whatever, in retrospect it was like, that is not a way to get a job. Also, ridiculous to assume that that would've even been possible at 15. But yeah, that was the first time I ever really thought about working in video games, I woulda been like 14 or 15. - [Danny] So how did it actually come to pass then? What was your first gig in the industry and how did you end up getting it? - [Jeff] So, I started going to trade shows, I met a guy a named Glenn Rubenstein who was a year younger than I was and we went to the same school, we went to the same high school. And Glenn was writing video game reviews for the local Petaluma newspaper and also I think he had a column in the San Francisco Examiner which was a newspaper. And so there would be articles about like, this youthful guy writing game reviews, look at this guy, it was like kind of a story or whatever. So we became friends, then he kinda said like, hey, I'm going to CES, do you wanna come with me? And I was like, yeah, I would love to go see video games. - [Danny] How old are you? - [Jeff] This is, I'm 16 at this point, he's 15. - [Danny] Wow, okay. It's in Vegas, right? - It's in Vegas also, yes. He's like, hey do you wanna come to Las Vegas. So I pitched it to my parents and just said like, hey, this thing's going on, I'd really like to go do it and they said yes, for whatever reason they said yes. And so me and Glenn set out to go, he had been to one before, he had been to CES I think the previous CES in Chicago might've been his first and so I went with him to that and just like I bought myself like a blazer and put it on and went to this trade show and went around and played video games and tried to play blackjack wearing a blazer because I looked like maybe I was of age. And that's where we met Ryan McDonald. We needed, honestly, I think we just needed more people to help pay for the hotel room or something like that and Ryan was doing something similar, he was writing about video games for a Healdsburg newspaper, which is about 40 miles north of Petaluma, where I'm now, which, for people who don't know, Petaluma is about 40 miles north of San Francisco, so, you know, Healdsburg's getting pretty far out there. And we met Ryan at the local mall, he seemed like an okay guy and we're like, yeah, you wanna come, let's go to Las Vegas. And so I kind of started just going to trade shows, we all met the guys from Game Informer pretty early on, Andy McNamara and Paul and some of the early other reviewers that were there at the time, Elizabeth Olsen and people like that, and we knew some people that were doing PR for video games at the time and stuff like that so we just kinda started meeting people and getting around. So that led to, Glenn ended up, so Glenn actually got me my first couple of jobs afterwards. We started going to the trade shows, we were doing a local public access show that was not about video games, it wasn't about much of anything really, and basically like barely getting by in high school 'cause we were just doing all this other stuff and not wanting to go to school very much. And so he ended up getting in at a magazine, they were starting up a magazine, they were originally gonna call it Blast, they were gonna call it Blast and it was gonna be like this lifestyle magazine funded by the, I guess the CEO of Creative Labs, so the Sound Blaster people were starting, basically funding a magazine. And so I spent a year commuting to Berkeley working for this magazine right after I got out of high school, so that woulda been like 1994. I was 19 commuting to Berkeley, working for a magazine, having no idea what I was doing, and we were covering Doom and we were covering, what are some fun things you could do with your Creative Labs branded sound card and stuff like that, that place lasted a little under a year before it folded. We made it about three issues, I think there was fourth that was almost done, and then I was out of there and had no idea what to do next. I was 19 and jaded and like burned by how that job went and angry at everything. - [Danny] Yeah, had you dropped out of high school, had you just sorta finished it and then left off or were you thinking about college or were you thinkin', oh shit, do I jump to another journalism gig, what was your head space then? - [Jeff] I finished high school. Between the public access show we were doing and this video game stuff that was still pretty nascent, you know, it wasn't really a job, it was very easy to look at that stuff and go like, man, I don't wanna go to school, like it's a waste of time. And so there was awhile there that like, I'll get my GED which is like so you can kinda test out of high school. And they tell you that it's equivalent to a high school diploma but then in some ways it's kind of not, I don't know, there was a weird. I had missed so much school and also we, so we were doing the public access show and I filmed a teacher, so a teacher at the high school I was going to, our chemistry teacher got fired and I believe the talk was, and I'm not sure, it was sexual harassment from the sounds of things, like to students. And so the first day that they introduced here's your new chemistry teacher I had the video camera that we used to tape the show so I filmed them introducing this new teacher and all this other stuff and like asked them questions like it was a press conference. And they answered, no one said, hey put that thing down. Like I was very clearly pointing a video camera at them. And then like the next day, that day, the day after, something like that, like the principal called me and said, hey, what are you gonna do with that video tape? And I said, well we're gonna put it on television. - [Danny] Oh my gosh. - [Jeff] And he was super not happy about that. - [Danny] I wonder why. - [Jeff] Yeah, and so at that point we realized we had something so we called the papers and said, hey we got this tape and they started investigating it and it became a story, it was something that they, I think they were trying to keep very quiet. Later on that teacher would show up at my doorstep looking for a copy of the tape because he was trying to sue the, I don't know, he was trying to get something out of the school district or something over what happened, this was years later after I was out of high school. So that was very strange. So after that between the amount of school we were missing, I had like a guidance counselor basically recommend that I should go on independent study. Which was basically, at the time it was primarily, it woulda been like pregnant teens and people that like were having trouble in school and that sorta stuff and they were like, oh, we're piloting a new program for kids who don't necessarily fit into the standard curriculum and they pitched it like that but basically it felt like they were just trying to get me and Glenn out of there. - [Danny] Right, journalist at heart it turns out. - [Jeff] I guess, I don't know. And so that led to me getting much higher grades and stuff because I was able to just kinda like crank through stuff really quickly. I graduated early because I just finished the work. I mean, I graduated like two weeks early, not hugely early. But it was great, it felt like I was getting one over on the school district because I was doing a full semester of science while like reading a book in my patents hot tub or, you know, just like stupid crap like that. I was getting like journalism credit for the stuff we were doing going to trade shows and like video production, they were just throwin' credits at me left and right and so yeah, I graduated early, it was great, I was able to take that and go back to the high school that I had stopped going to and go talk to like the one teacher that I liked, Mr. Moore, he was a math teacher, great guy, I think he taught some of the computer stuff also. And I remember telling him like, hey, I just graduated. And he just looked at me and said, god dammit, Gerstmann, you got 'em. He seemed like dismayed that I had managed to get one over on the system somehow but he couldn't help, but yeah, it was a, that felt pretty good. - [Danny] Through his life, Jeff's do-it-his-own way attitude has been both a source of great strength and the catalyst for much drama. He attended a local junior college for a semester, but it didn't stick, preferring to do extra-curricular work like attending trade-shows with his friend Ryan McDonald, hanging out with local bands, and as he put it, learning how to drink. Around this time Glenn, who had gotta him the job at the magazine years earlier, started working for a new website in San Francisco's Richmond district. Just a few blocks from the servers of archive.org on the cloudy avenues of Clement Street, lied an office where a staff of 20 was running the website GameSpot. They had hired Glenn to lead the charge on a new console-focused spin-off of the site that they were going to call VideoGameSpot. - [Jeff] Glenn hired Ryan McDonald not long after that to be like the strategy slash codes editor and then I started freelancing for him because they wanted 100 reviews by launch and they were lookin' to launch like three months, four months from that time. And so I started crankin' out reviews and the way I always heard it was that I was turning reviews around really quickly, really clean copy, and so Vince Broady kinda said like, hey, bring this guy and let's see. And they brought me in as like an editorial assistant which was more or less an intern type role and within two or three months, not even two or three months, within like a month, the launch editor, there was a guy, Joe Hutsko, who would come on, it was one of Vince's friends who had just come on I think to kinda see this console site through to launch and then I think he was gonna go on to do something else somewhere else and I was working late one night and Joe Hutsko walked by and saw me there and he was like, you're still here, what are you doin'? I was like, this work has to get done. And then like the next day I had an offer letter for a full time job at that point. - [Danny] GameSpot would go through several transformations and acquisitions over the coming years. But as the business side of online media was learning how to walk, emerging technologies were creating exciting new ways for people to talk about games. GameSpot led this charge with one of the first video game podcasts, The Hotspot, and a weekly live show, On The Spot. Suddenly these young game reporters were starting to become more than just bylines. For years readers, the folks writing reviews and new articles, were just names at the bottom of a page. But now, for the first time, they were people with voices and faces. People with unique perspectives, opinions and personalities. And Jeff, with his experience doing public access shows in Petaluma, was at the forefront of this new form of media. The idea of streaming video games on the internet now is so blase and normal but back then I think to a lot of people it felt like magical, like a television channel that's broadcasting about games. From your perspective on your guys's end, did it feel weird to be like doing a live show that people were watching while you were just talking about this relatively niche hobby? - [Jeff] It felt like a natural extension of the stuff we had been doing. And it felt like, I don't know, it felt fresh and cool and like the tech was weird and sometimes it didn't work the way you wanted it to but at the same time we were wearing makeup, we had built a studio, we had lights, we had a jib, it was Frank Adams lowering a camera into the shot and all this other stuff and so coming from like these lame public access shows I was doing when I was 16 and stuff, like I had a weird leg up on a lot of other people because I was already relatively comfortable being in front of a camera. - [Danny] GameSpot continued to evolve. It went from indie to being purchased by media house Ziff Davis who then eventually sold it to CNET. By this stage the editor in chief was Greg Kasavin, who you may now recognize as the creative director of Supergiant Games, a studio we're currently running an embedded series on. His two right hand men at the time were Ricardo Torres on previews and Jeff on reviews. But when Greg left to start his career in games production, the role was never properly filled. Instead Ricardo and Jeff sort of ran it together, with increased influence being exerted on them from the powers above. The original founders of GameSpot had come from a editorial background but they were gone and the site was now being managed by people were less seasoned, more traffic orientated, and didn't value the power of editorial independence as much as they should have. - [Jeff] You know, there was an understanding about like this is kinda how this stuff is supposed to work, it's not always supposed to be an easy relationship if everyone's kind of sticking to their guns and doing their jobs and stuff. I don't know that they always saw the value of that, I think that's something that they corrected quickly, it was just kind of, it was a blip, if you look at GameSpot as a 20 plus year institution there was that brief period of time there where it was like, man, this went a little sideways for a bit and I was just in the right place at the right time, wrong place wrong time, whatever it was. - [Danny] What happened to Jeff next has been told a thousand times with new pieces added as time has provided new context. I myself spent years trying to fill in the blanks on how it all went down. Talking to friends and colleagues of Jeff who were there that day. It was a Wednesday in November, 2007 and the office was busily preparing for the weekly live-show which aired on Thursday afternoon. Jeff had just another another brush-up with management, this time over a review of Kane and Lynch which had made the sales department uncomfortable as they had sold a large advertising campaign to the game's publisher Eidos. If you visited GameSpot that week, the entire homepage was taken over by messaging about the game alongside a six out of ten review from Jeff. Jeff had had some run ins with top brass before and felt like he'd come close to losing his job a few times but this wasn't one of those times. It seemed like it had been dealt with, and he was already working on his next review. Later that morning his supervisor called him into a meeting and then called HR. He was told he was being terminated immediately, and as California is an at-will employment state, Jeff had no recourse. He was told to clean out his desk and bizarrely he was allowed to walk the halls for the rest of the day. Saying goodbye to his friends and colleagues, who were cursing the names of those in charge. Jeff drove home that day, the same 40 mile commute between San Francisco and Petaluma he had done thousands of times before. But this time it would be different, it would be a number of years before he stepped foot in the building again. There was no live show that week, the Kane and Lynch review had been taken down and then reposted and slowly over the coming days rumors began to circulate about Jeff's termination. Popular webcomic Penny Arcade ran a strip outlining the pressure from Eidos. Staff from the website 1UP, who were located just a block north of GameSpot on San Francisco's 2nd Street, held a protest outside the lobby of the building in support of the remaining staff. In an age before social media it would be a full eight days before the staff would actually speak up. And it happened on the next episode of On The Spot. The show ran with a somber opening. Ryan McDonald flanked by Ricardo Torres and a wincing Alex Navarro explained the situation. The camera pans out to reveal a full set with previewer Brad shoemaker, new hire Kevin VanOrd, community manager Jody Robinson and reporter Brendan Sinclar among a dozen of other staff. - [Ryan] Obviously we wanted to start today's On the Spot off a little different than we had in the past. The recent events and what happened last week in regards to our longtime friend and colleague, Jeff Gerstmann, being dismissed. It's been really hard on us and the response obviously's been tremendously immense and it's been on both sides. It's nice to see that everybody speaks up and has been kinda pullin' for us. On the other hand it's been hard obviously seein' GameSpot sucks written 100,000 times on forums and stuff so obviously we wanted to address this and talk to you guys today. Jeff was a personal friend to pretty much everybody so it was really, really hard that it happened the way it did. But yeah, we really wanted to say that we love and miss Jeff and give him, honestly, the proper send off that he deserves so that's what today's show's all about. And obviously you can see this is hard for me personally. - [Danny] For Jeff things were equally as bizarre. Tech Blogs like ValleyWag were running stories about the state of the site which were clearly sourced from somebody inside of GameSpot. The LA Times ran a story about the firing. And Jeff's mother received a phone call from a newspaper in Norway looking for a quote. It was three a.m. when the phone rang. - [Jeff] You know, some of it was just like, some of the people I talked to were very like looking for more dirt, they were expecting me to get on the phone and be like, oh, well here's where the rest of the bodies are buried. But like, you know, I was shocked. I was not happy about the whole thing but at the same time I feel good about the work I did while I was there and there were so many great people there that kinda got caught in some of this crossfire a little bit. I wasn't like, oh well here's the other nasty things that happened, there wasn't any. There wasn't anything else. So some people were coming to me looking for like some bigger story that I just didn't have to give. And that was strange, it seemed like everyone wanted something from me for a little while and it was a very weird time. And so at that point it was like, 'cause you know, like I was not an editor in chief in title but you know, we were running an editorial team. And so there aren't a lot of jobs out there at that level. It wasn't like I could walk into IGN or 1UP or, you know, I don't even know who else was even out there at that point, it wasn't like I could walk into those places and say, yes, make me your editor in chief. Like, they already have people in those roles, it wasn't really a viable thing. So at that point I was like, well I kinda need to maybe start something new. The weekend after everything went down or it might've been, it was like the Friday after or maybe it was like a full week afterwards, a bunch of people that I used to work with came up here to my place and we just hung out, like kinda impromptu, just have a bunch of drinks, play some Rock Band, and that sorta thing, and Dave Snider came by, Ryan Davis invited Dave over. And Dave was working on his stuff, I think Boompa was still up, they had a car website, you know, they were running Comic Vine, they were building Political Base which was another kind of wiki focused site for political donations in the run up to that election there, this was November, 2007. And so they were starting a new company and looking to build, they were building websites. And I was like, oh, that's cool, awesome, and nothing really came of it for a little bit. So I went and did a show on Revision3, so I drove into San Francisco, did that show, and then on the way back from or as I was finishing up that show I got a call from Dave and he said, hey, you should come by the office in Sausalito and just come by. I was like, all right, cool. And so on my way back from there I stopped at the office in Sausalito and looked at Comic Vine, the other stuff they were doing, and we sat in a room and ate sandwiches and I more or less committed to them right there. It was kind of like an, oh, we'll think about it and they were very much like, hey, why don't you just take a month and get your head together, like take an actual break 'cause this is so crazy and then let us know what you wanna do. And so we kinda started building a website not too long after that. - [Danny] Over the coming weeks several of Jeff's friends would leave GameSpot. Some were burned out from games coverage, this latest spell just being the straw that broke the camel's back. But others were leaving to work with Jeff. Fellow Sonoma County local Ryan Davis was the first. The two of them set up a blog, and started to a run a podcast which they hurriedly titled, Arrow Pointing Down. - [Jeff] So, every single person at the company that we were, that I was now a part of were people that had worked at that old company. And so we did not wanna give the appearance of people getting poached out of there and like I don't know if there was an actual non compete with some of the people in the building or anything that would've prevented them from doing this stuff but all of it had to be kind of like quiet and so it couldn't be something as simple as like, hey we want to hire you over here. It had to be like, well, if you were, if you were no longer working and you needed a place to work we do have some opening. You know, it was very much that sort of thing. But I knew pretty immediately looking at it and going, okay, we wanna team of about this size and I knew that Alex would not be available, Alex Navarro, I knew that he was not looking to do this sort of work at that time. He was, you know, I think already thinking about Harmonix, he ended up doing public relations for Harmonix for a brief period of time. Like I pretty much had a whiteboard, I knew in my head that I, at that point it was like okay, this is me, it's Ryan, it's Brad, it's Vinny. Which is not how you're supposed to hire people. You know, some people are like, well what are the positions that we're looking to fill and all this other stuff and, but like knowing like what we looking to build and we needed to be a tight team, who were the people that are gonna be impactful in those roles, like okay, Brad has a lot of experience in previews, he is a person that I know, like he knows a ton of people around the game industry. Like, I've worked reviews and so on the review side of things we didn't talk to companies all that often. Brad had that in his role so he left, he left and he had other things that he was maybe thinking about doing, it wasn't like a, it was not a clandestine like, he left specifically to, it was like, okay, he's out and we're gonna figure this out. And then we needed someone to do do video and we had been working with Vinny for awhile and Vinny was fantastic and it was like, okay, Vinny's really funny, this seems like a good fit for him and so we kinda went about it that way. It felt like night and day a lot of ways, but very similar in others. We were able to sit down for the first time, for me the first time ever, like I never thought I would have the opportunity to build something like this, you know. I was always like very respectful or very envious of like Vince Broady as like the editorial lead of the founder of GameSpot and so I was like, man, he took a chance and built this thing and built it from the ground up and look at it, it's this huge, this monument, it's lasted so long. And I never thought I would have an opportunity like that in my career, it just never seemed like it was in the cards. And so being forced into it was exciting. Because it let me sit down and be like, okay, what do we actually want to do? What do we think is actually the best way to cover games with a small team in this day and age? And when we started in 96 on VideoGameSpot, like the videos had to be very low frame rate and very short because no one could download 'em and, you know, it was like we were doing minute long video clips of gameplay and that was revolutionary at the time. You know, you had to install the Real Video Player and all this, you know, all this other stuff. And here we were on the cusp of like, actually we can kind of, we can kinda livestream, you know, the services to do it easily weren't in place, you still had to host it yourself and that got very expensive and all that and YouTube wasn't really there in the way that they are now, YouTube existed but it was, I don't think you could put up videos that were longer than five or 10 minutes at the time and it just was not a viable place for that at the time. And so we had to kinda sit down and say, well with the technology we have available what can we do? And we wanted to be a podcast, the Hotspot was one of the most fun things I had doing in my entire time at GameSpot and we knew right out of the gate that we wanted to have a podcast be kind of one of the main things. And then from there it was like, okay, well, do we wanna write news? Not really, none of us are really news writers per say. And it was like, well, we need to able to capture video of games and put it on the internet. And we need to be able to talk alongside it or something like that, whether we're cutting it together or doing it on the fly. And so Mike Tatum, who was the head of biz dev for the company just went out to the Apple Store and came back with the biggest ass Mac Pro he could've gotten at the time and set it the room with me and Ryan and we looked at it and we were like, neither of us know how to use any of this shit. And we messed around with it long enough to figure out eventually we could capture some footage. We were like, okay, we figured out, first the game we captured footage of was Hot Shots Golf for the Playstation 3. And we were like, okay, we captured the footage, now what do we with it? And we hadn't answered that question yet 'cause there was no website to put it on or anything like that. So those early silly days of just like putting that stuff together. We didn't really know exactly what we wanted to do, it was just a matter, it was very freeing in way to be able to sit down and be like, okay, here are the things that we liked doing before, let's try to keep doing that. And then the rest is up in the air. For a long time there we weren't even necessarily sold on the idea of just covering video games. It was always meant to be bigger than that. We were gonna cover music, we were gonna cover movies, you know, all this other stuff. But at the end of the day old habits die hard, it was very easy for us to cover video games compared to like, calling music PR people out of the blue and being like, hey, we wanna interview this artist that's coming to town, can you set, you know, it was just, we stuck with what we knew and kinda just mainly covered video games and flavors of Gatorade. Really it was the original mandate for GameSpot was we wanna create a site that we ourselves would use. And I approached it that way and said like, well, what kind of game coverage do I actually care about? And a lot of the preview related stuff at the time was just not, it was a lot of like carved up little parts of a game. Like, we're gonna give you assets on these three new guns and this two new trees and it was like, here's the rims and tires of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Outlets used to compete for the exclusive rights to run stuff like that. It was a very different time so we knew we were never gonna matter to publishers the same way the big sites did and that was fine, we wanted to kinda do our own thing and so that led to it being a little more guerrilla. You talked earlier about long footage of games being something of a novelty or a weird impossibility back then but for us it kinda just became a necessity because of the number of people we had and the lack of time we could devote to actual editing. It was like, just stuff kinda came in long out of the gate. And so we first launched as just a WordPress blog and we went to our first E3 in 08 with just a WordPress blog. We could run videos on it but it was pretty bare bones. It was mostly a placeholder, it was like, here's the name of the site, you can comment on these stories, and we were just kind of writing news and reviews and putting up videos here and there. And it was all pretty straightforward stuff, it was like that and the podcast. And then we rolled out the full site not long after that E3, it was like July of that year I think and then that was like, okay, now here's this full wiki, here's all this other stuff. Better user features, full message boards, all this other stuff. And so we went at it that way for awhile and then the premium membership stuff came later. - [Danny] It wasn't just old staff who were leaving GameSpot for Jeff's new project, users were flocking too. Once the full site was launched tens of thousands of profiles were created, a large portion of which were disenfranchised GameSpot fans who wanted to support Jeff and the staff who had left. I was one of them and I remember that time well. The passion and excitement of those days was one of the most powerful moments I've had as part of an online community. And the folks at Whiskey Media used this passion to help fund the site. Giant Bomb had taken the ad-free subscription model that GameSpot had pioneered, and added much more. For $5 a month you not only supported some of your favorite creators, but got access to bonus videos and features. New users signed up in their droves. - [Jeff] The launch of the site proper exceeded our expectations in a way that like wiki submissions were taking a week or more to approve because so many people were signing up and contributing and all this other stuff, it was just, we were staying up all night working on just the community stuff, moderation stuff. And then the premium membership stuff did well out of the gate. We went back and forth on a few ideas about what are we offering here and all that sort of stuff but yeah, it did really well that first day. Advertising was never really a thing for us, we had one in house ad person eventually for a brief period of time but like, you know, advertising's all about eyeballs and we were never gonna be the biggest website in the world, it was we were about, okay, well we want people who really care about this stuff and so, you know, in advertising you're trying to make a case for just like, oh no, this is a smaller audience but they're smarter and they spend more money and you know, at some point you have to go out and educate brands and say like, here's why you wanna advertise here instead of there or spend your money with us because our people are smarter or this and that and at the end of the day advertisers just want eyeballs so like you can go in and pitch that story all you want, it's just not how the advertising model typically works. So we had a few things where like, you know, we had some sponsored achievements on the site and there was a livestream, I was actually against it, but they did a livestream for, NTSF:SUV:SD, I think was the ordering of that, an Adult Swim show. Actually, I thought it was pretty funny. They did a livestream like live watch along with it. And so we were doing a few things like that that were innovative at the time I guess and so you would have people who understood like, hey, the internet is changing, it's not necessarily about just raw eyeballs. We wanna find people who are more engaged with a thing and you know, this was kinda like the nascent form of like the influencer type stuff about like figuring out who are these people we can get that have sway with their audiences and so on and so forth. But, us being an editorial operation, we could never really go fully into that world. So the stuff that I would be comfortable doing in those spaces kinda, we ended up shooting down a lot of stuff, probably more stuff than we signed because it was like, no, I don't think we can do that. So the advertising stuff was never really gonna be for us and for those reasons, it's just, you know, the advertising market just wasn't really compatible with our size and our scope but also kind of our mentality and where we were at with stuff so we wanted to try and find something different. And again, that was another Dave Snider, Dave was kind of the main first proponent about like, no, people will pay for good stuff on the internet, I know it. And I think I was a little more like, I don't know, man, people like to pirate stuff. But he's like, no, this will, he won me over pretty fast and we went through with it, we went on with it. - [Danny] Giant Bomb has been running for a decade and in that time the site has evolved to keep up with the changing desires of its audience. But there are a few shows that have lasted the test of time. Their weekly podcast The Giant Bombcast has had over 570 episodes and is one of the most popular video game podcasts in the world. And their Quick Looks series predated the creation of Let's Plays, still exists today. I asked Jeff to tell me about some of his favorites are. He notes their live E3 internet show, and eventually making the podcast profitable as some of his proudest achievements. As shows have come and gone, so too have staff. Just like GameSpot created a platform for Jeff to make a name for himself. Giant Bomb has become an incubator of talent all to itself. As the sort of captain of the ship as well, what does it feel like to be responsible for kind of what Giant Bomb has become in terms of its, as an incubator for talent, right. You've had people come through the doors and leave out the other side to go on to wonderful careers as well. Do you take a pride in that, especially considering, you know, how you seem to have a reverence for the people who gave you opportunities in your early career. - [Jeff] It's cool, I don't always think about it. Like, I don't know, like I look at it and go like, did I do anything for anyone, I don't know, I'm just here, I don't know, I just do my thing. And I don't know that I always, I used to take it really personally back in the GameSpot days when anyone would leave. I would always think like, man, why would you, why would you go do something else, we're doing great, we're doing all this other stuff, and now I look at it in retrospect and go like, maybe it was people like me in the senior roles for as long as we were that led to people below us wanting to get out for more opportunities, and go like, man, yeah, okay. But yeah, I used to take it really personally 'cause I just, you know, it was great to just, there were times where, you know, man, this is the best team I've ever worked with, this is great. Oh, three people are leaving over the course of six months, what's goin on? And the people that left in the run up to me leaving, at the time I was really bummed out, in retrospect I was like, oh, yeah okay, I get it. And things change and people change and they want something else out of their careers and they wanna take on new challenges and all that sorta stuff and I think that's great. At the same time, like I miss the people that have moved on. Like, there was a time there that there were, we were starting to have conversations, it's like, no, we need to move Danny O'Dwyer over to Giant Bomb, like we have, this should happen. And then he went out and found fame and fortune on his own without us and I was like, well, shit. Let that one slip away, I guess. - [Danny] There will always be a part of me in my professional sort of hindsight that will, I remember when you mentioned that to me at a certain point, I can't remember, was it when I had already handed in my notice or I think it was probably a little bit before maybe, where like, that is like the ultimate dream come true. But now I have a new dream come true which is that I get to just pop into the office and review European sports games twice a year or whatever. - [Jeff] Right, yeah, I mean, I have a code for FIFA that I don't know what to do with so. Might be callin' you for that one. So, it's stuff like that, like it's great seeing people out there doing their thing, and the thing I've tried to be better at this time around that I was terrible at back in the GameSpot days is try to keep in touch with people on a regular basis. Like it can be so easy just to put your head down and be like, I'm surrounded by these people, these are the people I see everyday, these are the only people I talk to because I don't have time for anything else. Discord has actually been really useful at that, honestly. Like hey, let's keep in touch with friends and try to maintain these friendships and stuff like that. So yeah, it's great being in regular contact with people like Patrick and Austin Walker and stuff like that. - [Danny] Giant Bomb lived under the Whiskey Media banner for four years, but the media startup was struggling to grow at a rate required by the landscape of the bay area investors and so the decision was made to fold the company to sell of its assets to suitable suitors. What happened next seemed impossible to anybody watching from the stands. - [Jeff] The process of us selling the company was strange, for a lot of the reasons you would expect. But you know, I think the thing that happened, every start up that sells or fails or anything always like to say, aw, we were just too early. We had the best ideas, too early. But you know, in some cases if we were a year later or something like that and YouTube had been more viable for longer form videos, like who knows what woulda happened. You know, we made the best choices we could along the way but at the end of the day, you know, they had launched a lot of other sites and wanted it to be this big network and when that kinda, I think that wasn't happening at the rate that they needed it to happen so it became a case of just like, okay, maybe it's time to move on and move onto a different business and do a different thing and so we were at that point lucky enough to be something that was sellable, you know. Like you think about the number of start ups now, especially the number of content companies that launched and just went under. And with Giant Bomb with the premium memberships and that sort of stuff we were in a pretty good position there to where we were doing something that people I think were just starting to get a sense of just like, hey, maybe this direct to consumer like subscription type stuff is something we should care about. And so it was something that people were starting to wake up to and be like hey, maybe we want some kind of back pocket plan in case this advertising thing doesn't always work the way it works now. So Mike Tatum, the head of biz dev for Whiskey, asked me one day, he said, hey, would you be open to maybe selling the company to CBS? And I just laughed. And I was like yes, of course, absolutely, go have those conversations, that's the craziest thing anyone's ever said to me, absolutely, yeah, of course. That's the thing, it was a very different time, a very different company, all that other stuff. Like the stuff that happened to me was this blip on this timeline of this multi decade operation that has had good people at the helm of it for almost all of its time, you know. And most of the people that were there when I was there last time and involved in some of that unpleasantness were long gone. So at this point it was like, hey, do you wanna go talk to John Davison about, you know, maybe comin' over there, and Simon Whitcombe. Yeah, they've been around this space for years, it's totally different people, like yeah, of course. And there were other people that were interested, the company that ended up buying tested was like lightly interested but not in a way that sounded all that exciting to me. And so yeah, I had lunch with John and Simon and in, this would've been, it was around the holidays, I don't remember the exact year anymore, it all runs together, man. But it was the holidays, it was like right after Christmas, we went into Christmas break knowing that it was likely that the company was gonna be sold early the following year. And that the GameSpot team was interested, was kind of like what I went into the holidays knowing. And so I met with them and we just kinda talked it out and, you know, like they had a good head on their shoulders and we were, you know, fairly attractive I guess in the sense that we had our own revenue, it wasn't like we were coming in and like, okay, you gotta bolt us to a sales team, you gotta bolt us to this 'cause otherwise we're gonna be losing money overnight. We were coming in doing pretty well in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, I wasn't in all the negations and meetings and all the back and forth for that sorta stuff but, yeah, it was an exciting weird time because we knew it was happening but we couldn't say it was happening. And rumors started getting out there a little bit, it was a very strange time, you know. It was so hectic. My dad went into the hospital as we were packing up the office to get everything out, and we were entering this quiet period where we wouldn't even have an office and we couldn't even say why, which was so unlike everything we had done with our community and all this other stuff. It was like, here's the thing where we are forced to not talk about this deal or act like anything is weird but we also are not in an office, it's hard to generate content when you're not in the studio. And there was just so much going on around that time, it was really, it was bizarre. I came out of it feeling like we did pretty good. For someone who came into that situation with little more than his good name I feel like I came out of it better. Personally better, better at my job, better at more types of things, better at running a, a little bit more respect for what it takes to run a business but also knowing when to sacrifice the business needs for editorial interest, you know, that sorta stuff. I was able to grasp more pieces of the puzzle, I guess. And so yeah, we came back in and it was fun because I had set up Giancarlo Varanini, I set him up real good where I saw him at an event the week before the deal was getting announced and I think my exact words were, hey I'll see you next week. And we left this Microsoft event or whatever we were at and. - [Danny] Did he know, did he twig it or? - [Jeff] He didn't know at the time but he pieced it together and then he was like, oh my god, you were saying what you were saying, yeah. 'Cause, you know, we still talk to a lot of those people that were over there. - [Danny] So strange, I think I told you, we were in the bizarre situation where the UK, I was at GameSpot UK and the UK sales team had leaked the deal to us, I think maybe six weeks before it was announced. - Wow. - We all knew and we couldn't tell the American office about it. - [Jeff] That's GameSpot UK for you, man. One year they tried to give FIFA an 11. - [Danny]Did they actually? - [Jeff] Actually, yes. They turned in a FIFA review that was trying to give it an 11 out of 10. And we had to be like, no, you absolutely cannot under any circumstances do that. - [Danny] For most of Jeff's life his career and hobby have been impossible tangled. And so for much of his life his identity has been too. For years his Xbox Gamertag was GameSpotting. He only changed it when he set up his new site, to GiantBombing. But since selling to CBS he's tried to create more distance between these two worlds. Jeff isn't the most social person you'll work with. He commutes to and from Petaluma every day, a 40 mile drive during bay area rush hour. Perhaps it's why he doesn't socialize much after work. Or maybe it's a convenient excuse to not have to. At his desk, he sits with headphones on, usually working on something. When he talks to you he speaks openly and honestly. When he doesn't want to talk, he doesn't. He's always struck me as a person who's gears are always turning, thinking about the work. Half enjoying it, half burdened by the weight of it all. He's tried to get better at delegating responsibility but in many ways Giant Bomb is his child and he feels like he needs to be in the room when decisions about it are being made. - [Jeff] For me that's the struggle. Like my personal struggle is like the time management aspect of it and like keeping everything going. Because before I had other things going on in my life you could throw as much waking time as you could at a thing and also we owned the company. It was a sick cycle where in the back of your head you could always say like, well I need to work until three a.m. because this could be the video that puts us over the edge and turns this thing into an even bigger thing. And so it was very easy to justify to yourself incredibly unhealthy work habits that didn't make the site better, that didn't lead to necessarily more content or anything like that, it was just it was very easy to spend every waking moment thinking about it. And now I don't and at first that made me feel guilty, yeah, that's the weird struggle of just like, it's all just kind of a weird head trip. And the worrying goes from like, am I spending enough time with my family, am I spending enough time with my job, this seems like stuff that everyone else figured out a long time ago but I'm coming to it over the last few years and going like, man, this is an interesting new challenge. But it's been great, I wouldn't, if it wasn't for my wife I don't think I would, I'm not even sure if I would still be doing this, honestly. I probably would've completely burned out or something by now without her to kinda have my back and all that sorta stuff. Yeah, she's been great. She's the best thing that ever happened to me, totally. - [Danny] Trying to create a distance between life and work you're passionate about can often be a struggle. But it was impossible for the staff of Giant Bomb to do so in the summer of 2013. This July will mark the 6th year since the tragic passing of their friend and colleague Ryan Davis and in recent months it's been on Jeff's mind a lot more. Last year the site launched a 24 hour livestream that plays videos from throughout the 10 year archive of Giant Bomb and users often vote for videos that Ryan is featured in. So Jeff is confronted with the memory of their friendship a lot more these days. - [Jeff] You know, going back to those videos and stuff, the relationship that Ryan and I had was very complicated and changed a lot over the years because, you know, we were close friends, we were in a band, we were inseparable, I got him hired, we became coworkers, I became his boss. And so the relationship changed along the way too. So yeah, I don't know, when I think about Ryan I think about the days before were working together, primarily. Those are my Ryan memories, usually. The videos, the stuff we did along the way, yeah, we did some really cool shit and I like a lot of it just fine, but me personally, I think about the stuff prior to, when Ryan was answering phones for AT and T internet at three in the morning when people couldn't get into their email, that's the Ryan I think of. The Ryan that was living with three other guys in this tiny ass place and we'd just go hang out and he wasn't 21 yet so I was indispensable. Like that sort of stuff, that's the stuff I think about when I think about Ryan. - [Danny] When I asked Jeff about the future of Giant Bomb he's excited, but cautious. Years of working on the internet has taught him to be careful about over-promising before stuff is built. Perhaps his experiences have also taught him not to plan too far ahead. As the site enters its 11th year its been changing its programming to try and bring in new viewers. Giant Bomb has been successful, it pays its own way at CBS, but it's still a website owned by a large media organization, so often the future is planned quarter by quarter, year by year. Perhaps the most surprising thing in coming to know Jeff, is how excited he still is about games. His Twitter profile reads "I've been writing about "video games my entire life. "It would be insane to stop now." So you wouldn't blame him for being burned out on video games after 30 plus years of talking about them. But if nothing else, the thing that strikes me about Jeff Gerstmann is that these days when you can be so cynical about video games he's still a true believer in the power of the medium, whether it be players of Pac-Man or Fortnite. - [Jeff] I think games are only gonna continue to get more popular. If you look at what we're seeing with something like Fortnite right now. Like, it's having a moment that, that Minecraft had before it. It's huge, it's bigger than a Five Nights at Freddy's, it's crazy. But like I'm just trying to think about like, you know, games that have penetrated the mainstream in a huge way. What we're seeing with Fortnite right now feels almost unprecedented. It's Pac-Man esque. You know, like Minecraft was huge, but not in a, like kids loved Minecraft, kids love Roblox, but Fortnite is cut such a wide swathe across society to where it's like all these popular mainstream sports figures are now doing Fortnite dances in actual sports and it's never been like that before. So in some ways like, gaming has kind of never been cooler or less cool depending on your perspective. Because it's literally everywhere. You know, everyone is carrying around a device in their pocket that is capable of feats that like it would've been insane, no console 10 years ago could've done anything like this. Granted, the controls are still bad. The technology is pushed so far forward and it's so pervasive and in so many different places and in so many different styles. You look at like Pokemon Go and the idea of location based gaming, you know, people getting out there and moving around to catch Pokemon, like all that stuff is amazing and it's crazy. But like where we're going on that front, I think if the technology bears out and data caps don't kill the dream and all this other stuff, we're gonna reach a point where anyone can play top level video games on the device they carry around with them every single day. And in some cases they are, I mean, Fortnite's on phones for whatever that's worth. So I think that this isn't gonna go away, this is gaming's kind of big push into the mainstream kind of once and for all. And I think that games coverage, that's a more complicated thing. If you look at YouTube right now with demonetizing videos and everyone trying to stream and everyone trying to have a side hustle streaming or something like that. Kids growing up like commentating games as they're playing 'em because they just watch people on YouTube and they think that's how you're supposed to play games. That's it, that's where we're going, or that's where we are already. And so I think over the next five years it'll be tumultuous because I think you'll see the bottom drop out of ads in a way that makes the Twitch streaming and YouTube and like the kinda hobbyist turned pro streamer, I think that that's gonna have to even out. I think it's only gonna get harder and I think that will keep a lot of people out eventually, or it'll lead to a growth in just the hobbyist streaming and people will have different expectations. They'll just be like, I'm streaming 'cause I like it, I'm not gonna sit here and think I'm gonna make a bunch of money. The same way I made public access when I was 16, it's like, oh, we're on television. Like I'm not making any money off of it the way real people on TV do but I just wanna do it 'cause it's fun. - [Danny] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Noclip Podcast. Sorry it took so long to get this one out, it was quite a long story and it's also kind of an impossible story to tell in its entirety so I had to pick my battles and figure out a narrative that kind of worked. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it was nice piece to celebrate a website that means a lot to me and I'm sure a lot to you as well. Now for the housekeeping, if you wanna follow us on Twitter we are @Noclipvideo, I am @dannyodwyer, we have r/noclip if you're interested in getting on board and talking on Reddit and of course if you're a Patron keep up to date on all the Patreon posts. Podcasts are available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and loads of other places anywhere podcasts are sold basically. We also have a YouTube channel where you can watch the podcast. That's Youtube.com/Noclippodcast. If you didn't know, we also make documentaries about video games, those are available for free with no advertising at Youtube.com/noclipvideo. Patrons get this show early for 5$ a month, if you're interested in supporting our work please head over to Patreon.com/noclip. And that's the podcast for another episode. We are actually at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco right now recording bunches of interviews which will be going up on the channel in the next couple of weeks. But we'll be back with another podcast in the not too distant future so make sure you hit that subscribe. We've never actually asked people to rate it, so if you're listening now and you're still listening at the end of this podcast, hey, why not rate us? Thank you so much for listening, we'll see you next time.

So Jeff recently found an article supporting something that he is very happy about. Apparently there is a certain chore that many experts are saying is pointless and it might be making our lives harder than they need to be.

Today’s podcast features Jeff Richardson ( @Richardsonstudios (https://www.instagram.com/richardsonstudio/) ), who has been in the industry for 24 years and considers himself a maverick. Listen in to learn about Jeff’s upbringing and how that’s translated to his business, such as how being homeschooled caused him to question everything. He’s all about attention to detail and creating extremely good, high end content; including content for ourselves. We need to show what we do, tell our story too. Make sure you catch why Jeff thinks there won’t be a photography industry in the next 24-36 months. Jeff also says it’s important to start and end the day right and he uses the 5 minute journal, morning and night. Jeff’s parting advice is to find one thing to improve, then get after it. Then you can move onto the next thing. Resources: 5 minute journal ( https://amzn.to/2EC872C (https://amzn.to/2EC872C) ) App: We Croak ( https://www.wecroak.com/ (https://www.wecroak.com/) ) Book: Jordan Peterson – 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos ( https://amzn.to/2EC89rg (https://amzn.to/2EC89rg) ) E-Myth ( https://amzn.to/2S8Ulr9 (https://amzn.to/2S8Ulr9) ) (#) Transcription was done by Temi.com which means it’s an AI generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video. Matt: [00:01] Hey guys, this is Jeff Richardson and you are listening to from nothing to profit. Speaker 2: [00:06] Welcome to from nothing to profit, a photographer’s podcast with Matt and Kayak where each week they talk to photographers about what is working in their business now so you can swipe those ideas and grow your business faster. Welcome to Kia: [00:23] from nothing to profit. We are so excited today to be interviewing one of my very closest friends in the photography industry. I feel like he’s kind of my brother Jeff Richardson and Jeff and I met many years ago, probably 20 years ago when we were like probably just out of college and I remember an image that he had photographed and it was at the national senior photographers convention and it was a couple standing on in front of a railroad and they were just draped all over each other super provocative image and jeff was dressed very conservatively and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to get to know this guy. And so anyway, we’re excited to introduce jeff to you. He would call himself a maverick in the photography industry. He’s been a photographer for 24 years and I know he did that. He specializes in luxury portrait photography. So Jeff, we are so excited to have you here today. Jeff: [01:21] I am pumped to be here. This is super exciting. And Are you hearing me right now? Matt: [01:26] Yeah, you’re coming through just fine. So I have known each other for a number of years as well. We spoke at some conferences together and uh, yeah, he’s an amazing person to be around and I don’t. Jeff, I don’t know if I’ve ever. If I ever appreciate you while I’m with you, that’s amazing actually. But I know I appreciate you when you’re not around me because the mental game that you cause when I’m not around you, like from conversation, like we’re having a conversation at a conference and I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I leave and my mind is going a million miles an hour. Is this still weird? Jeff: [02:05] You’re like, wait, what did he say? Oh crap. Oh my God. Yeah, that’s A. Oh, I would say we have a very rich history in the photography industry would be put in it. We put it mildly. Right, right. I’m, uh, I’m, I’m very passionate about our history. I think it’s fantastic and lots of good things in the future, that’s for sure. So yeah, I’m pumped to be on this with you guys. I see what you guys are doing. It’s very cool. The consistency is... Support this podcast

So Jeff has a personal dilemma in which he needs your help. He is supposed to see both his family and his wife's family in Florida for Christmas but his friend with pancreatic cancer just told him that he has an extra ticket to the Peach Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity but it may land Jeff in the doghouse! 

Kristi's on Vacation!! So Jeff, Dave & Gina chat about Thanksgiving, and give away a ton of prizes. Listen to find out how YOU can win this week, too!

Need some help with Drift, chat bots or Conversational Marketing? Hop on over and learn more about what we do for companies just like yours: http://goo.gl/WDyR7H Here’s a link to the Conversational Marketing / Chatbot Template: https://1mpul.se/2GheSrH Transcription: Remington from impulse, creative, and today we're going to talk about shutting down the conversation and want to be in by shutting down the conversation is when you're done with a a drift playbook flow and you don't want the prospect to be able to reopen that chat in order to continue a conversation. So when you are going through a Bot flow, you're going to have very well defined different routes that people can go through. Now, in most cases when we're talking about qualifying a lead or driving someone to a meeting, it's totally going to be okay to leave a playbook open so that a prospect can continue the conversation because in a lot of cases, if done right, a live rep would be continuing the conversation, wants to bought, hands it off, but there aren't going to be some scenarios where you don't want that functionality to happen. And what we do at impulse, creative a lot is we'll use bots to actually drive almost like landing page conversions where we're offering up an ebook or a white paper or a link to a video or signing people up for an email sequence. In a lot of those cases, we don't want that conversation to be able to be continued. We'd prefer that someone opens up a brand new one. So what I'm going to do today is show you where you can enable this setting within your drift playbooks to completely shut down the conversation. So just before you dig in, just make sure you're keeping in mind what the overall intent of that playbook is and try to figure out how you can decipher where people should go or would go, and then take it from there. So as we're in a drift playbook, you can get into that drift playbook by coming over to the playbook section and choosing your playbook. You'll see the conversation that happens here. Now as you scroll all the way down towards the bottom, you're going to be able to see the end of flow. So Jeff has done a great job of making this a little bit more apparent. It used to just be like, like the where the road just ended. Now they're giving us a little bit more of a conversation in regards to what is happening. So what you can do is click here in end of Bot flow and you've got three options. You've got, keep the conversation open, you've got auto close the conversation, but allow visitors to chat back in and they have permanently closed the conversation. Don't allow site visitors to chat back into the chat now. It doesn't mean that they're not gonna. Be able to chat with drift just means that they're not gonna. Be able to chat and continue the conversation in this actual message flow. So in this example, this is a landing page bought that we've created for our headline swipe file. There's over 300 ideas that you can go into and I'll leave a link in the comments if you're interested, but when you come down to this, we're just going to go ahead and choose permanently closed the conversation. Don't allow visitors to check back in. You've got an opportunity, be able to let the prospects have a final message here, and that could be driving them to another page to additional resources, you know, and it'll, in some cases you may not need it at all. It really depends on what your goal is in the rest of your playbook. So you can go ahead and press save and now you'll see that it'll say permanently closed. The conversation and conversations that reached this point will be automatically closed, so it will take it out of your conversations. Pain and site visitors cannot reopen from there. Just go ahead and press save playbook and then you'll be off to the races. Now, as I said before, you know there's going to be areas and times that you would use this and then there's going to be times that you wouldn't, but it's going to help you keep a cleaner flow of everything going on in your body and you'll be able to close those conversations and then make it so that you can drive people to the next steps. So some extra things to think about. Some bonuses here is as you close this conversation and as someone goes through the entire flow, maybe you set up additional triggering to to show up once they've done that, to take them to the next stage in the funnel, there's a lot of options that you can do.

Need some help with Drift, chat bots or Conversational Marketing? Hop on over and learn more about what we do for companies just like yours: http://goo.gl/WDyR7H Here’s a link to the Conversational Marketing / Chatbot Template: https://1mpul.se/2GheSrH Transcription: Remington from impulse, creative, and today we're going to talk about shutting down the conversation and want to be in by shutting down the conversation is when you're done with a a drift playbook flow and you don't want the prospect to be able to reopen that chat in order to continue a conversation. So when you are going through a Bot flow, you're going to have very well defined different routes that people can go through. Now, in most cases when we're talking about qualifying a lead or driving someone to a meeting, it's totally going to be okay to leave a playbook open so that a prospect can continue the conversation because in a lot of cases, if done right, a live rep would be continuing the conversation, wants to bought, hands it off, but there aren't going to be some scenarios where you don't want that functionality to happen. And what we do at impulse, creative a lot is we'll use bots to actually drive almost like landing page conversions where we're offering up an ebook or a white paper or a link to a video or signing people up for an email sequence. In a lot of those cases, we don't want that conversation to be able to be continued. We'd prefer that someone opens up a brand new one. So what I'm going to do today is show you where you can enable this setting within your drift playbooks to completely shut down the conversation. So just before you dig in, just make sure you're keeping in mind what the overall intent of that playbook is and try to figure out how you can decipher where people should go or would go, and then take it from there. So as we're in a drift playbook, you can get into that drift playbook by coming over to the playbook section and choosing your playbook. You'll see the conversation that happens here. Now as you scroll all the way down towards the bottom, you're going to be able to see the end of flow. So Jeff has done a great job of making this a little bit more apparent. It used to just be like, like the where the road just ended. Now they're giving us a little bit more of a conversation in regards to what is happening. So what you can do is click here in end of Bot flow and you've got three options. You've got, keep the conversation open, you've got auto close the conversation, but allow visitors to chat back in and they have permanently closed the conversation. Don't allow site visitors to chat back into the chat now. It doesn't mean that they're not gonna. Be able to chat with drift just means that they're not gonna. Be able to chat and continue the conversation in this actual message flow. So in this example, this is a landing page bought that we've created for our headline swipe file. There's over 300 ideas that you can go into and I'll leave a link in the comments if you're interested, but when you come down to this, we're just going to go ahead and choose permanently closed the conversation. Don't allow visitors to check back in. You've got an opportunity, be able to let the prospects have a final message here, and that could be driving them to another page to additional resources, you know, and it'll, in some cases you may not need it at all. It really depends on what your goal is in the rest of your playbook. So you can go ahead and press save and now you'll see that it'll say permanently closed. The conversation and conversations that reached this point will be automatically closed, so it will take it out of your conversations. Pain and site visitors cannot reopen from there. Just go ahead and press save playbook and then you'll be off to the races. Now, as I said before, you know there's going to be areas and times that you would use this and then there's going to be times that you wouldn't, but it's going to help you keep a cleaner flow of everything going on in your body and you'll be able to close those conversations and then make it so that you can drive people to the next steps. So some extra things to think about. Some bonuses here is as you close this conversation and as someone goes through the entire flow, maybe you set up additional triggering to to show up once they've done that, to take them to the next stage in the funnel, there's a lot of options that you can do.

Job Insights #8: The Job Interview – Get Prepped, You’re Going In! Full Transcript Below Welcome to Episode 8 of  Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. Job Insights Episode #8 is all about the Job Interview, from researching the company, finding out what exactly they do, what they produce and what is the latest news on this company? We discuss what to wear, what to do before the day of the interview arrives and how to be prepared so you can best let them know that you are the right person for the job. Serina talks about the STARInterview Response Method and technique that will help you prepare yourself for the interview questions. Glass Dooris a Job Search web site that will help you get the job that fits your life. Join the Job Insights team, Serina and Jeff, as they jump right into the deep end of the Job Interview, Get Prepped, You’re Going In! Check out episode 8 of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Thank you for listening! You can find out more about Job Insights on the web at BlindAbilities.comand follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIPSend us your feedback and suggestions by email. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store FullTranscript: Job Insights #8: The Job Interview – Get Prepped, You’re Going In! Serena Gilbert: So that when you're practicing and tailoring your answers to some of the commonly asked interview questions, you have an idea of how to frame all of your answers. Jeff Thompson: Job Insights. A podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Jeff Thompson: Three copies, you should be good. Your resume is a sheet of paper, a cover letter, maybe a sheet of paper. So it's not like you're taking in a briefcase on wheels. Jeff Thompson: To help you navigate the employment world and give you job insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. Serena Gilbert: Practice, practice, practice interview questions. Jeff Thompson: And you can find the Job Insights podcast on blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network, with host Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson. And you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.come. Leave us some feedback or suggest some topics that we cover. On Twitter @jobinsightsvip and check out the Job Insights support group on Facebook, where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community. Jeff Thompson: Relate it to something that you've done, and we've all had experiences in different areas and stuff, so hopefully you have something that will relate to the question they ask. Learn about resources for training, education and employment opportunities. Serena Gilbert: If you can, getting contact information or business cards of the interview panel so that you can use that to send thank you emails to them when you arrive back home. Jeff Thompson: Little things, or just little tips that might help push you to the top of the list. Serena Gilbert: Jeff, would you like to learn something new today? Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative), always ready to learn. Serena Gilbert: Always. You're a good student, right? Jeff Thompson: ... yeah? Serena Gilbert: That had a question mark at the end.   Speaker 2: Now please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights. Jeff Thompson: Hey, Serena. Serena Gilbert: Hey Jeff, how are you? Jeff Thompson: I'm doing good. How you doing? Serena Gilbert: I am doing great. Jeff Thompson: I've got a question for you. Serena Gilbert: I don't know, I'm a little scared. What's up? Jeff Thompson: What's your greatest weakness? Serena Gilbert: That would have to be you, Jeff. Jeff Thompson: Ha ha. Serena Gilbert: You set yourself up for that one. Jeff Thompson: Because that's one of the questions, Serena, that will probably be asked at a job interview. Have you ever had that asked at an interview? Serena Gilbert: I've definitely had that question asked at every single interview that I've participated in. And it's a little bit of a catch-22, because you're torn between, "Do I say what my real weakness is, or do I pick a weakness that is kind of a weakness but can be turned into something a little bit more positive?" And spin it a little bit. So that's a question that we'll go over a little bit later in the podcast, and give you some tips with how you might tackle that and have somewhat of a prepared answer so that you can shine in that interview. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, we're gonna be talking about clothing, all the professionalism that you want to bring into this, about shutting your phone off, about your ring backs. We're gonna be talking about being prepared, what you bring to the interview and all this. What kind of interview is it gonna be? Are you gonna find out there's gonna be three in a panel or just one person? So we're gonna be talking about your approach to the whole thing, how you get yourself all ready, and I think it starts in the early morning when you decide what to put on. Serena Gilbert: Yeah, so I have kind of a pre-interview routine that I go through, personally. I know, it sounds so fancy, right? So basically, and this isn't all on the same day. This can be within the few days that you know that you have the interview. The first thing that I do is I look back at the job description that I applied for. Because you might've applied for a few different positions at the same company, and you might not quite remember the specific job description of the job that you applied for. So it's always a good idea to review the job description so that you can have an idea of, 'okay, what are the qualifications they were looking for again? What's some of the things that are really important that this person does?' So that when you're practicing and tailoring your answers to some of the commonly asked interview questions, you have an idea of how to frame all of your answers. Serena Gilbert: The next thing that I do is I research the company that I've applied for. So some of the things that I take a look at are some recent news items, maybe doing a google news search. But then I also take a look at their home page and click on the About Us part of it, because that's where we're going to find what that company is really about. They'll tell you what their mission is, what their values are. Some of them will have their vision as well. They'll also talk about what product or service they provide, or if they're like a government agency, what types of services they provide to clients and things like that. That's gonna also be important for you to take a look at when you're framing, again, the questions and answers that you would be asking and answering during the interview. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's nice to be able to have that in your back pocket for the questions that might come up. Serena Gilbert: The next thing that I do, is I take a look at where is this job interview going to occur? And there's a few different ways that you can research this. When the person calls you to schedule the interview, it is perfectly appropriate to ask, "okay, so are you the building on the northeast corner of Main and 1st Street?" That's a common question that a lot of people ask, and the person scheduling the interview definitely doesn't mind letting you know where they are, and even giving you some basic directions. That'll help you if you do need to take public transit or even para transit to kinda do a test run to see 'okay, how long is this gonna take me to get here?' It's important when you do your test run though, to make sure that you're doing it at roughly the time and day that your interview would be on. So don't do your test run on a Saturday at 2:00, because the traffic is not gonna be nearly the same as a Monday at 8:00. So whenever possible try to mimic what that type of commute would look like, so you can be prepared with how long it realistically will take for you. Jeff Thompson: And that takes a lot of pressure off you, because on the day of the interview most anybody is gonna have a little bit of butterflies and be a little nervous. Anxiety can build up. So if you've already been to a place, you know, it's so easy to return. You're not exploring anymore, you're just traveling to the destination and then you're gonna get to the door and go in. Just to alleviate some of the stress by knowing where you're going and that you can get there on time and it fits your agenda. Being there 15 to 10 minutes early is a good thing. Serena Gilbert: Well, and you had mentioned alleviating butterflies, and there's a couple of additional things that you can do to help alleviate those butterflies. They're never going to go completely away. If you're in a job interview and you're not nervous, then you might not want that job, because frankly, anytime you really want something you should have a little bit of nervousness going on. It's just human nature. But one thing you can do the day before, or even a couple days before, is pick out your interview outfit. Because that can be stressful, if the day of, you take it out of the closet and your significant other or your son says, "Why is that so wrinkled?" Yeah. That's not fun, right? So pick it out a couple days before, try it on. Make sure everything fits, make sure there's no buttons missing, because that, again, could completely throw you off the day of. Iron it, put it away where it's not going to get any sort of fuzz or hair on it if you use a service animal, that sort of thing. Jeff Thompson: Take off the dry cleaning tag. Serena Gilbert: That's helpful, because that might be a little itchy, right? Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Serena Gilbert: The other really big thing that you can do, and this is gonna be a little bit of a longer discussion, is practice, practice, practice interview questions. And we'll talk about some commonly asked interview questions coming up next, but it's gonna feel a little bit awkward when you are practicing these questions. I'm not gonna act like it's not. But the more you practice it, the more you gather your thoughts, the easier it will be in the interview to recall that information and be able to chat a little bit more naturally with the people interviewing you. Jeff Thompson: Now Serena, at vocational rehab in Colorado, they do offer mock interviews because in Minnesota we do the same thing where you can do mock interviews and gain some experience. Serena Gilbert: We do offer mock interviews and we typically do mock interviews where it's maybe the counselor that you're working with as well as two other staff members that you've probably never worked with before or are not familiar with. Because we found that when you interview with your DVR counselor, you're pretty comfortable with that person when you're at that stage in the game, so it's not quite as reflective of what the real job interview might feel like. Jeff Thompson: That's great. And that's a service that's available to you, so if you would like to get some more experience, I mean, you can do it with your friend, your mom, your sister and stuff like that, but I like that idea that bringing in some people that you haven't worked with because then the anxiety comes up, and that's how it's gonna be in the real job interview. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. So  Jeff, I've a question for you. Jeff Thompson: Go ahead. Serena Gilbert: This one's an easy one, I promise. So this next question is asked probably in 100% of interviews. I'm sure I'm exaggerating, but I don't think I've been to one that this wasn't asked. So Jeff, tell me about yourself. Jeff Thompson: Well, I'm very young, dashing. I like walks along the beach and sunsets, and I don't think I want to go there. Serena Gilbert: No. Jeff Thompson: I want to stick right with the professionalism. I've been in recording media for 14 years, I started out in a band and I transitioned into podcasting later on, and I've been doing that for five years now. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. Many individuals when they hear the 'tell me about yourself,' tend to go off on a tangent into their personal life. Most organizations when they're asking you that, that's not what they are looking for. They don't need to hear that you're a single mom of three kids and you recently got divorced and you just moved to Colorado. That, honestly, will maybe put some more questions in their head that are a little bit distracting to the interview, and frankly, not really relevant to your skillset and your abilities and capabilities. So this is the question where you would want to use, we call it either a two minute pitch or an elevator pitch. There's all kinds of different ways that people refer to it. Basically you talk about your skills, abilities, education and experience, briefly, as it relates to the position. Serena Gilbert: So as Jeff demonstrated there, if he was applying for a media specialist position, for example, it's great that he mentioned the background as a musician and how he's been doing podcasting for five years. That immediately, honestly, a lot of employers would be like, "Tell me more about the podcasting, tell me a little bit about that." And it'll open it up for them to ask you additional questions and it might even make you feel a little bit more relaxed in the job interview. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Serena Gilbert: So Jeff, I think you asked me this earlier, so I'm gonna ask you another interview question for you. Jeff Thompson: Uh oh. Serena Gilbert: Tell me your greatest weakness. Jeff Thompson: My greatest weakness is I have a hard time not bringing work home. Because I'm always wired for doing stuff, and I want to get things done all the time. So when I'm at home, I'll still be working and that kind of thing. But you know, if you answer something like that, like you're an overachiever and stuff like that, wouldn't they rather hire someone that has a more balanced family life where they don't burn out? So that's why I kinda exaggerated that way. Serena Gilbert: Well, see you're gonna disagree with me. That's okay though. See, that one I don't see as like a horrible weakness, because yes, they want to see that work-life balance, but when somebody says that to me, it depends on how you frame it. Because when you first started talking, I thought, 'well, does he not stay on task at work so he has to take it home?' But then as you went on, it really seemed like it was more, 'I'm a hard worker and I really like what I do.' Jeff Thompson: Well, I usually have these cars that break down once in a while, so sometimes I'm late for work unexpectedly and stuff, I think. But you know, I really have a passion for these cars and stuff, so I should be getting better at that, but yeah, I'll probably be late once in a while. Serena Gilbert: Alright, so let's break down Jeff's answer. So Jeff mentioned that he has unreliable vehicles and that he is late to work, in his words, 'every once in a while.' So as an employer, I'm thinking, 'he's probably late all the time, because people tend to downplay that.' So it might be accurate, but that's not something that you'd want to share with an employer, necessarily. So we understand that that was a little bit exaggerated, but we wanted to demonstrate the kind of things that might distract an employer with a potential answer that you have to that weakness question. So one thing that if you really wanted to use what Jeff responded with is, "okay, in the past I have had some issues with being on time to work. However, since, I have gotten more reliable transportation. I have left my home earlier," that sort of thing. I would highly recommend, though, not using any sort of answer to that question that points out punctuality to an employer. Jeff Thompson: If I was asked that question again ... Serena Gilbert: Would you like a round two? Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Serena Gilbert: Alright, Jeff, tell me about your greatest weakness. Jeff Thompson: I think my greatest weakness is, it come down to delegating and stuff. I believe leadership comes in a form of delegation to hand the ball off to some people, but when, in time crunches and stuff, I tend to build a narrow team to make sure the job gets done and it may seem like I'm not giving opportunities to everyone, but sometimes there's times to hand the ball off to some people, but sometimes you have to keep it yourself. So delegating is a good skill of mine, I like delegating, I think a teamwork works great, and I think my weakness is I need to branch out a little bit more with that. Serena Gilbert: See, and I think that's a perfect answer, Jeff, because it shows that you have leadership skills, and it shows that you understand that maybe you could delegate a little bit more, but the only reason that you're not is because you care about meeting a deadline and having quality work. So in an employer's mind, those are all great characteristics to have and it's nothing that would prevent them from hiring you. That's the trick to the 'what's your greatest weakness' question. You never want to say, "I'm tardy to work all the time," or "you know, sometimes I'm a little bit slower on the computer," because that's just really big red flags to employers. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, I agree. Because you always want to leave with a positive. You always want to end it on a high note and not leave them wondering, or dragging it out into asking more questions than they really wanted to on this topic. Serena Gilbert: So there's some other types of questions that are very commonly asked in interviews called 'behavioral interview questions.' You might've heard of these, or if not, I'm sure you've been asked these and just not realized that they're behavioral interview questions. A behavioral interview question is a question that sounds a lot like, "tell me about a time when ..." Or "tell me what happened when this happened." So an example would be, "Jeff, tell me about a time when you had to manage multiple deadlines. How did you accomplish the task and what was the result?" Jeff Thompson: Yeah. And those are questions that will come up, because it'll be situation, how you handle the situation, and so you gotta be ready for stuff like that. But if something never happened like that in your life, don't make up stuff on the spot. Relate it to something that you've done, and we've all had experiences in different areas and stuff, so hopefully you have something that will relate to the question they ask. Serena Gilbert: Jeff, would you like to learn something new today? Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative), always ready to learn. Serena Gilbert: Always. You're a good student, right? Jeff Thompson: ... yeah? Serena Gilbert: That had a question mark at the end, so we'll see. But one method that I teach my clients to use when answering almost any question, this works on, even questions that aren't behavioral interview questions, is called the STAR method. So that's S T A R. So when a question is asked of you, you take the situation or task and explain that. So for the example of 'tell me about a time that you had to juggle multiple deadlines,' Jeff can talk about, gosh, this last week that he's been editing podcasts like crazy and how he approached that, how he broke that down, how he mapped out what his work was. So that, the situation or task is the fact that he had tons of podcasts that he had to get done and he wanted them out in a certain amount of time so that they're still relevant. The action that he took is how he broke down his work and how he prioritized what he needed to do first. So the result would be that Jeff met all of his deadlines and was able to release all of his podcasts on time with relevant content. Serena Gilbert: So the reason that a lot of employers a) ask behavioral questions, or b) like when people answer questions in this method, is it shows historically how you respond to any types of situations that would be similar to the work environment that they're in. Jeff Thompson: I think that's great, because people used to tie a string around a finger to remember this, that, and the other thing, and if you can relate something to the STAR thing, there you go; situation, task, action, and results. There you go. And you can do that quick enough in a two minute answer to a question. Serena Gilbert: Jeff will google that and put it in the show notes. Jeff Thompson: I will. ... Click on this. Serena Gilbert: So you've prepared for the job interview. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Serena Gilbert: You're there, you're entering the building, now what? Jeff Thompson: You're on time, too. Serena Gilbert: Yep. You're 10 minutes early, which is perfect. Jeff Thompson: Your phone is off. Serena Gilbert: You have a portfolio with you that has copies of your resume and cover letter. Jeff Thompson: And I suggest three copies. I don't think that there's too may times when you're gonna have five or ten. No one's expecting you to bring, but if you bring three copies you should be good. Your resume is a sheet of paper, cover letter, maybe a sheet of paper. So it's not like you're taking in a briefcase on wheels. Serena Gilbert: And I would suggest that you use the nicer paper for both the cover letter and resume, because although you might not be able to see it visually, but the print does look a lot better on the resume paper. It just pops a little bit more, and having that heavier card stock just presents a more professional image when you're handing those things to the employer when you sit down. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, this is something that you do in advance. Make sure that you get these copies made. Have them ready, so on your journey there, don't fold them. Put them in a portfolio thing, a nice, neat, attache case or some type of case that you bring in. Open it up and if there's one, two, or three people, hand them each one. Yeah. And that's a professional way to do it because they don't all want to be sliding a piece of paper from one person to the other. Because they all want to just glance at it. Serena Gilbert: And you might not realize it, but your interview starts the moment you walk into that lobby door. The receptionist is going to let people know if you walk in and you're having an argument on your cell phone with somebody, or if you walk in and you smell like smoke. Those are things that we really have to make sure that we're cognizant of, because the smell of cigarette smoke or even just how you walked into the door could end that interview for you before you even start it. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So when you come in, announce yourself. You'll probably have a chair to sit in. You'll sit there and you'll just wait because someone's gonna come down and greet you. And that's when you want to make sure that you can start up a conversation with the receptionist, the person that comes down to greet you and to bring you back to the interview room. That's when you're gonna have that light, personality type of conversation. You know, how's the weather, typical thing. My nephew does hiring, he's in the human services department and he hires people, I think he said he's hired over 20 people, 25 people, and he just started a couple years ago. But he says the interview starts at the door and that walk back, you can tell who a person is just how you casually talk. So remember, the interview starts when you come into that door. Serena Gilbert: And I know we've talked about this before and everybody knows my soapbox about disability disclosure and things, but that's just one more thing just to remember and think about if you do decide that you're going to disclose during the interview or, you know, they're obviously gonna see if you have a white cane or a service animal. If you do typically use a white cane, but maybe have some usable vision and you opt to not take that white cane to the job interview, just know that it could impact you in your first impression. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. I would say use your cane and if it's best, if there's lots of turns, they might start calling out, 'we'll go left here,' and you know, just pay attention to that because it's a foreign area, you haven't been there before, and get to the room. And when you get into the room and you find your seat, everyone's gonna be sitting down and stuff, make sure you get their names, whether it's their first name that you remember, try to remember their first names. And like the STAR thing, maybe you want to take one finger, two, three, and try and remember those names because it's very polite to be looking at each of the interviewers. Turn towards their voice and everything, pay attention to the three people, the two people, or the one person, that's a lot easier, but don't forget that there's other people in the room. If you can use their names, you can answer them by name. All these little, little things, they're just little tips that might help push you to the top of the list. Serena Gilbert: And a lot of people get a little flustered, because sometimes there's really long interview questions. And believe me, I've been on interview panels, we understand when somebody needs to have a question repeated, especially when there's multiple parts to it. I would rather somebody asked me to repeat the question than to not answer a good chunk of the question. Because if it's there, they want you to address it. It's not there just to add words to the question, believe me. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Serena Gilbert: And it's also okay to take a moment to gather your thoughts before you answer the question. Again, I would rather see somebody take a couple seconds to really think about what they'd like to say rather than hear them ramble and make absolutely no sense. It's very distracting when that happens. Jeff Thompson: Typically what they really want to do is sell you on their company. And you want to sell yourself on the company. So the questions are just gonna be getting to know you, explaining what the kind of job details there are, and when they ask you are there any questions for them, you want to be prepared. You may want to ask, 'what are the expectations of this position in the next three months?' Or you might want to even ask one of the persons there, 'what do you like most about this company?' You're turning the tide onto them and they can then tell you some stuff about the company, and that might break into some more conversation. So remember to have some questions ready for them. Serena Gilbert: I really like those questions that you said, because that'll get people really excited about talking about their company, and everyone loves talking about things that they like about where they work. So Jeff, what do you think is probably one of the questions that we should avoid asking during an interview? Jeff Thompson: "When will I be making six figures?" Serena Gilbert: "What are the benefits?" Jeff Thompson: "When do I get the corner office?" Serena Gilbert: "How much money am I going to be making? What are the benefits?" That's ones that, if they're going to hire you, there's a time and place to ask and negotiate those particular things. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. Serena Gilbert: Another question that I really like to ask, and it'll take kinda getting the wording down for what you're comfortable with, but I like to ask, "What are the characteristics of an employee that you're looking to fill this position?" They will inevitably tell you, they will literally lay it out for you. You can follow up with, "well, that's fantastic. Here's some of my experience that matches some of these things." You don't say it like that, but basically, "you know, I heard you say that you like somebody that can juggle deadlines. I want to let you know that in the past I worked in a position in podcasting where I had to edit multiple podcasts a week on a deadline and I was able to successfully do that." Right Jeff? Jeff Thompson: Yeah. There's that answer with the question mark at the end again. Serena Gilbert: Maybe. You know, you've only got like 400 episodes under your belt, right? Jeff Thompson: Yeah, but those questions, they're just questions to get to know you. Questions to see what experiences you have. Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). The interview is the time to really show your personality. Just like you were saying. They're interviewing you to see if you fit in basically with the office culture, honestly. That's the biggest thing that we're looking for when we're doing job interviews. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I would do some research by typing in 'questions to ask at interviews,' or 'questions that are asked at interviews.' You can always just research that because there might be that one question, you might read 30 of them, but there might be that one that just fits you really good and you might want to keep that in your back pocket. Serena Gilbert: So if anyone has been following the Job Insights Facebook page as well as our Job Insights support group, they would notice that I post a lot of information from a website called Glass Door. That is a website that has a ton of just articles and tips and things like that for job searching and interviewing. But most importantly, you can type in a company and you will find information specific about their interviewing process, and what types of questions are asked, what type of interviews they do, and it's basically like getting insider information because the information actually comes from people who have gone through the interview process before. Serena Gilbert: So this is irrelevant, but it's just a really good example, because you know, Toys R Us is no longer here, but for those who have applied at Toys R Us before, they do their interviews very uniquely. They would do group interviews and ask some very unique questions and the manner in which they narrow down people was way different. You're not gonna be by yourself at that job interview. And some of the more progressive companies do that, where it's this really weird, big group networking thing almost. So if that's the way that the company operates that you're gonna be applying for, it would be real helpful to know that before you got there, because that would be pretty overwhelming if you didn't know that that was gonna be the case when you arrived at a company. Jeff Thompson: Oh yeah. So be prepared. In this job interviewing process we went to the job hunt, now you're in the job interview, all this preparation work that you're doing, all this research on the company, is good practice because if you don't land this job, you're gonna have the next one, and you need to go through the same routines and stuff. And after a while you're gonna have these questions down. You know, you're gonna map it over to a different company, you're gonna change a few words here and there, and the same with your resume. Your resume is a working piece of document that works for that company. It might not work for the next company. So this is a good time to go through these, if you've got a mock interview you get to go through this process all the way through it, and then try it out on an interview, a real one, and you might have to try it out on a couple more. But as you go through this process, things are going to become second nature and you're gonna start to wing it a little bit better. And who knows, you might land that job you want. Serena Gilbert: So you're at the interview, and you just did a fantastic job answering all the questions, you've asked your follow up questions. Before you leave, there's just one more thing that you have to do. I would recommend, if you can, getting contact information or business cards of the interview panel so that you can use that to send thank you emails to them when you arrive back home. I am very traditional when it comes to that. A lot of people say that they don't send thank you emails, but it's one more opportunity to get your name in front of the hiring manager, to get your name in front of the panel, and to even bring up something that came up in the interview and discuss that. So a really good way to send a thank you email would be, "Thank you for the opportunity to interview for the Media Specialist position. I really enjoyed hearing about the new podcast content that you guys will be producing, and I hope I have the opportunity to contribute to your team. I look forward to following up with you," and then you can put your phone number, your email address, anything you want. Just to kinda tie that up and a lot of times people will even respond with a thank you. Which is kinda nice. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, it's not where you want to say "peace out, brother," and all that stuff. You just wanna kinda be cordial and professional. Like we said at the beginning, this is where you up your professional game. I used to have an email called 'ezj101' and a person actually told me, it was a counselor in the disabilities services office, she said to me, " Jeff, you're in college now. You're going to get opportunities and I just don't think this email address really carries that very far." So I got rid of the 'ezj' and I went with jthompson. Serena Gilbert: That's a good point. I don't know that we've talked about email addresses in our previous podcasts, but yes. Please, a very professional email address that's some form of your name, and sometimes numbers, but sometimes numbers can also date you, so be careful. Especially if you put your birth year after it. But some form of your name. You don't put 'ilovecows@gmail.com' or something like that, because that will not be a good, positive impression for your employer. Jeff Thompson: No? Serena Gilbert: No. I don't care if you love cows. That could be your personal one, but not for your professional job search. Jeff Thompson: Unless you're being hired on a farm hand position, that might work. So be aware of all the stuff that you're gonna be given. They're gonna give you business cards, you might have a business card to give to them. You're gonna have a resume, you're gonna have all this professional stuff going. You don't want to wear in the squeaky shoes or the shoes that light up, you know. You really want to knock this out. Get yourself a lint roller, get yourself someone, I don't know, some people have these amazon devices, the look or something like that? But put on an outfit, ask someone to give you their opinion of it, 'looks good, you look great, don't worry about it.' So go with that. Up your game, up your professionalism. This is real stuff, this is going for a job, this is a career, a lifetime journey and this is gonna be experienced, everybody remembers every interview they've ever had. And there's a reason for that, because it's a moment, and it's a moment that you really want to go in and bring your best game. Serena Gilbert: So what comes next is unfortunately that dreaded waiting game. So one question that we forgot to mention that you can ask at the job interview is "When do you intend on making a decision?" That's a perfectly appropriate question to ask. A lot of people are prepared to answer it, and typically they'll tell you something like, "oh, probably in about two weeks' time." If they tell you that it's going to be two weeks before they make a decision, I would recommend not following up before that two week mark, because if they're telling you two weeks, it's probably a reason that they're telling you that. Jeff Thompson: So you're saying not following up like sending a thank you? You're saying not following up by inquiring again about the job? Serena Gilbert: Definitely send the thank you as soon as you get home. But as far as actually making a phone call or following up and saying, "Hey, I'm just following up on the job interview." If they've told you it's gonna be two weeks I would wait til right around that two week mark to call them again. Jeff Thompson: There you go. Write it down, put it on the calendar. Serena Gilbert: Did we miss any topics, before we wrap up? Your chair squeaked. Jeff Thompson: Well, I had the thing, so I had to, you know. Put my hand up under my chin and look off into the wilderness. I know there's a lot of information that was given on here, and there may be more information that you might still be seeking. So I would talk to your counselor and see if you can set up a mock interview, because that experience, as Serena was talking about, you need to keep asking these questions, going through the questions that might be asked and when all of a sudden you're stumped one of them, like you know, right at the beginning when Serena asked me a question, I was stumped a little bit there. It happens. So if you can practice this, once you're in the groove of job interviewing, repetitious, asking in the mock interviews, see what your counselor has in their employment team that could probably help you out. Serena Gilbert: Jeff, what's on the docket for our next podcast? Jeff Thompson: Well, Serena, I think next time we'll be talking about reasonable accommodations. Serena Gilbert: We are. Sometimes it's hard to figure out 'what can I request? What's reasonable? What's not reasonable?' So I think it might help a little bit, just to chat a little bit about what an employer considers reasonable. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, because what's reasonable to one employer may not be reasonable to another one. And I see that word a lot and it's kinda vague. It's nice to hash that out, and I think if they can actually do something for you to get work done in an easier time, less money, there you go. Serena Gilbert: Well, we hope that you've enjoyed this episode of the Job Insights podcast. As always, you can always find us on Twitter @jobinsightsvip or on Facebook under Job Insights. Thanks so much and we will chat with you next time. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, we'll see you next time Serena, on Job Insights. And you can follow Job Insights on Twitter @jobinsightsvip. Send us an email, jobinsights@blindabilities.com. We're part of the Blind Abilities network and you can find us on the web at www.blindabilities.com. And thank you Chee Chau for the beautiful music. And you can follow Chee Chau on Twitter @elcheechau And as always, thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed. And until next time, Bye-Bye   [Music]  [Transition noise]   When we share, what we see, through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.   Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective: Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities Download our app from the App store: 'Blind Abilities'; that's two words. Or send us an e-mail at: info@blindabilities.com Thanks for listening.

How habits determine your success is something our guest for today knows firsthand! Jeff Winkler is the co-founder of Origin Code Academy, an organization that helps students get the skills they need to start and succeed in software development. On today’s show we begin by talking about good habits, bad habits and affirmations. Specifically we dig into which books are most helpful, and what Jeff does to persevere in the face of the many challenges of an entrepreneur’s daily life. Join us to dive into those topics and more on today’s CTO Studio! In this episode you’ll hear: Why do you need to allow yourself to fail? What do good habits get you more of? Does anything happen right away? What is Jeff's personal affirmation? Why must a C level leader be pathologically optimistic? And so much more! More About CTO Studio As the leader of Origin Code Academy, one of the things Jeff talks to his students about is how successful habits are at the core of everything you do. If you boil it down to the simplest thing you just need to look at one area and answer these questions: What are your daily habits? What is the outcome you are going to reach tomorrow, next year, 5 years and even 10 years from now based on those habits? Your answer will show you if you're on the right track or if you need to make changes. And Jeff does this personally; he decided to challenge himself by getting up at 4:30am! He knew he had to do it for a month. So that's what he did. He's now made it a daily habit for the last six weeks. As a result his Inbox has consistently been at zero at the end of each week and he's consistently had a plan for each day. But that doesn't mean he's perfect. In his own life and in the classroom he knows perfection isn't possible, but daily progress is and that is what the goal should be everyone. In fact, when he fails at something he gives himself 15 minutes to be upset with himself and then he moves on with his day reciting his own personal mantra: as long as you don't give up you will win. Next we jump into the start of the Origin Code Academy. I asked Jeff what sets this organization apart from the others out there, and Jeff takes us back to the start of the company. He had started an app previously with a developer he found on Craigslist; they sold that to Class Pass. He knew he didn't want to give up ownership in his next company if he had to and he felt like he could raise money if he built an MVP with revenue or user traction. But to get a prototype built would cost between $10k and $20k. At the same time coding boot camps had recently come out, they were about a year old. So he decided to pay $12k to teach himself how to code and then he could build the MVP himself. It didn't have to be a great MVP, it just had to be good so he joined a class. Everyone else in his class was there to change jobs or careers, he was the only one there to start a company. Afterwards no one in his class could get a job and they were all pretty upset. As a naturally curious person he decided to go on a job interview. During the interview they asked him to take a code test, something he didn't know was part of the process! During the interview he also explained his biz dev experience and was talking to one of the investors. That person asked him what he was up to next and Jeff was telling him about how everyone in his coding class wasn't able to get a job. The investor suggested he work on fixing that problem because it sounded like a problem Jeff was really upset about.  Initially Jeff was hesitant: schools are hard to scale. You have to get a building, train the proper teachers, etc. But after talking about it with the investor a bit more Jeff decided to do it. So Jeff came out to San Diego; there was no competition out here at the time so he went to a few co-working spaces to talk to people about whether there was a need for developers in San Diego. James Martin from Co-Merge was someone he spoke with and James told Jeff there was a definite need for more developers in the area. After that Jeff negotiated for one classroom and took it from there. Three years later they are going strong and have helped over 105 people get jobs in San Diego. The only students who haven’t gotten jobs are the ones who don't return his calls and/or don't show up for their meetings. Jeff fully supports all of his graduates during their job search process. His dedication and commitment are why at least 80% of his academy graduates are now employed as developers. Which led me to ask if he's found it's more about soft skills today than coding curriculum? Jeff says that has always been the case, they are just more aware of it now. He gives an example from the last 30 days: there's an employer in Encinitas that just hired one of their students. Two weeks after hiring this student the employer was back to attend a job fair. Jeff asked how the student was doing and the employer said the student is the best because the student never bothers him! All of his other employees will come to him with questions without exhausting all potential avenues, but when the student from Origin Code Academy comes to the employee with a question the employer knows the student has tried everything under the sun to solve the problem first. That student has created a successful habit of looking for answers on his own, a habit he did not have before joining Jeff's academy. Also on this episode of CTO Studio, Jeff tells us the top objections he hears from CTOs about bringing in code school graduates, and why you as a CTO needs to have a talent pipeline for senior engineers.

Job Insights #6: What Does Humor, Self-Advocacy and Feeling Got to Do with Mental Health Strategies? Meet Beth Gustin, licensed Professional Counselor   Full Transcript Below On Job Insights Episode #6, Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson are joined by Beth Gustin, LPC. Beth has years of experience in which she shares with us in this discussion on Mental Health and offers us some strategies in dealing with the anxieties and stresses during the job search.   Beth talks about the necessity of having humor to make the journey less stressful. Having the skill of self-advocacy because no one knows what you’ll need, more than you do. And if you don’t feel, you don’t heal. And that’s where self-care comes into play.   This is just a brief look at Mental Health and addressing just a few topics and we are excited to say that Beth will be back to share some of her insights in our upcoming episodes. Beth has also suggested a web site where you can find out about looking into therapy or finding some help and services in your area if you ever want to check it out. Here is a link to the psychology Today website.   Beth Gustin can be reached by email. and she can help you find the resources that you may be looking for.   Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities Appon the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.   Full Transcript: Job Insights #6: What Does Humor, Self-Advocacy and Feeling Got to Do with Mental Health Strategies? Meet Beth Gustin, licensed Professional Counselor   Beth G.: Knowing what comforts you. So do you like hot tea? Do you like a warm bath? Do you like walking outside and getting some fresh air? Knowing what works, and being able to have that readily available to you can help with depression. Jeff Thompson: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Beth G.: If you don't feel, you don't heal. It just basically means if you don't have an outlet for your emotions, whatever they may be, I'm going to tell you right now that every emotion you have is normal and valid and it's okay. Jeff Thompson: To help you navigate the employment world and give you job insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. So there's not one out there called, pull up your boot straps, is there? Beth G.: Nope. Serena Gilbert: You can Google that, Jeff. See what you come up with. Jeff Thompson: You can find the Job Insights podcast on blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network with hosts Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson. And you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.com. Leave us some feedback or suggest some topics that we cover, on Twitter @jobinsightsvip. And check out the Job Insights support group on Facebook, where you can learn, share, advise and interact with the Job Insights community. Beth G.: If you have the right support system, which is a crucial key when it comes to self care and adjusting. If you have a good support system and you have some professionals involved to help, such as rehabilitation counselors or low vision specialists, things like that. That definitely helps remove some of those emotional or mental barriers that might come up when we're working towards adjusting. Jeff Thompson: Learn about resources for training, education and employment opportunities. Beth G.: It's also good practice, like you just said, to work with someone that we may not mesh with very well because it teaches us, it's a learning experience. Serena Gilbert: Exactly, right Jeff? Jeff Thompson: Huh. And now please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson, with Job Insights. Jeff Thompson: How you doing, Serena? Serena Gilbert: I'm doing great  Jeff, how are you? Jeff Thompson: I'm doing good. I'm getting this feeling that people want me to get older. Serena Gilbert: I wonder what special day is coming up for you? Jeff Thompson: I don't know, but I think I'll be eating cake soon. Serena Gilbert: Your present's in the mail, it's coming via dot Amazon net. Jeff Thompson: Blind matter, too right? Serena Gilbert: Yes, blind matter. Jeff Thompson: It's be here on my next birthday. Perfect, perfect. Serena Gilbert: If you don't get it this week, you know, don't worry. Jeff Thompson: Well, this week? Serena Gilbert: This week. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, this week, right? Serena Gilbert: This week. Jeff Thompson: We do have a guest on the show and we're going to be talking to Beth Gustin and she's a national certified counselor and she's from Colorado and so is Serena, and I'm from Minnesota. How you all doing? Serena Gilbert: I'm great. Welcome Beth, we are super excited to have you on the podcast today. Beth G.: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Serena Gilbert: So today we are taking a break from our traditional topics with the Job Insights podcast. To touch a little on self care and how to take care of yourself, [inaudible] the job search and also in coping with blindness or visual impairment. One thing that many people that aren't really, really close to me don't realize is that I too, sometimes have some not so fun feelings about being visually impaired, and not being able to drive and things like that. And I think it's important for all of us to learn a little bit of techniques and to get some tips for working through that. Jeff Thompson: Beth, do you want to tell a little bit about your occupation and what you do? Beth G.: Sure. So I am a licensed professional counselor, mental health therapist, and I work in the community mental health field. I currently work with ages eight and up, prior to that I worked at another mental health agency, working with just adults. Before that I worked at the center for People with Disabilities, and I facilitated their low vision support groups and was the manager of their senior low vision program. I've also done Hospice volunteer work for about eight years, I no longer do that at this point in time, but I have done that. I've done some volunteer work at a homeless shelter and an adult day care as well. I have my master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and Counselor Education, which you have to have your master's degree in order to become a licensed professional counselor. Yeah. What else would you like to know? Serena Gilbert: That's a lot of stuff, Beth. So as you guys can tell, Beth has a lot of experience not only working with individual's disabilities but it sounds like young adults and adolescents as well, because you said you work with eight and up? Beth G.: I do, I've had this current job for about six months. That's a newer population to me. Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative), tell me a little bit more about your experience working with the Center for People with Disabilities? Beth G.: It's an independent living center, we had a multitude of different programs but I happened to work with the Senior Low Vision program. So we worked with individuals, oh gosh, I believe it was ages 55 and up, and the average age when I was there was around 85 years of age. And so we would help them, individuals who were losing their sight, we would help them adjust to losing their sight, help them relearn or learn new ways of doing the same things they'd always done. Because as we lose our sight, as some of us know, we have to adapt and find new ways to do the same things we've always done. So, whether it was showing them how to mark their appliances so they could still do the laundry and cook and things like that, whether it was teaching them technology so they could learn to use iPhones or computers. Anything and everything to help them either individually or in a group setting to stay independent and maintain their quality of life. Serena Gilbert: So many of those individuals you're working with ... Was it a lot of individuals that acquired their low vision or blindness, a little bit later in life? Beth G.: Yes, the majority had macular degeneration or something along those lines. Serena Gilbert: So what were some of the common things that you saw working with that population, in regards to transitioning into losing their sight? Beth G.: Most of them had extremely positive attitudes, given if they had macular degeneration, they would never totally lose their sight. I think that helped some of them regain some of the confidence that can sometimes be lost, when we first lose our sight. I saw a lot of anxiety mainly, when I worked with them, just as far as learning how to, like I said before, continue to do the things they've always done, just learning how to do them differently. And so a lot of the work was just helping them regain their confidence, or maintain their confidence and work with the anxiety. Beth G.: There were some symptoms of depression initially when we first hear that we are diagnosed with vision loss of any kind, I think there's a little bit of, oh my gosh, what's this mean for me? How's my life going to look? And so people might tend to isolate at first, people might tend to have a sense of initial hopelessness or helplessness, but if you have the right support system which is a crucial key when it comes to self care and adjusting. If you have a good support system and you have some professionals involved to help such as rehabilitation counselors or low vision specialists, things like that. That definitely helps remove some of those emotional or mental barriers that might come up, that we're working towards adjusting. Jeff Thompson: Beth, do you feel that you being blind yourself acts as some sort of role model to the clients? Beth G.: They said it did, I think it definitely helped, because I could relate on a different level. I've been blind since birth and I've had light perception although I've lost almost all of that over the past three to five years. But I think still having been born blind gave me an understanding. It's very different being born blind versus losing your sight later in life, but we still have to adapt and find different ways of doing things. And so having those different ways of doing things already working for me it I think helped all of us relate on a similar level and gave us a common thread with which to work from. Serena Gilbert: I noticed that you had said that a lot of anxiety comes, more so stemming from, how am I going to do this now, something that I've always done visually and Jeff and I have talked about this a lot on our previous episodes in regards to making sure to taking advantage of those training opportunities, and partnerships and support systems like you mentioned, to be able to help support you. And being able to develop those new skills just doing the same thing you've always done differently. The only thing you might not be able to still do is actually physically drive a car until you get that self driving car going. But other than that I think you can do almost anything, just differently. Beth G.: Right. And you can drive, just not legally. But I wouldn't ... Serena Gilbert: We're not going there. Beth G.: You're right though, I mean I think it's just that fear of how am I going to do this, and one of the things I was told, working with the seniors back then, was your brain remembers. So if you can close your eyes and kind of let your hands and your brain sort of guide you through the motions it takes a lot of the pressure off yourself. Jeff Thompson: Now Beth, you mentioned three major points, and the first one was advocacy, self advocacy, I believe it was. Can you talk about that? Beth G.: Sure and I definitely think about this when we're talking about students transitioning from high school to college, or transitioning into the work force. Knowing what you need and knowing how to ask for it, so it's a hard skill to learn, I think especially for not outgoing by nature, or don't feel like we got a lot of confidence, to say, hey Mr Smith I'm going to be in your level 101 History class and it would be very helpful if you could read what you're saying as you write it on the board, because I cannot see the board. To kind of take that lead, I guess in your life. Beth G.: For me, I personally found it helpful to go down to the college campus and happened to go to grad school and under grad in the same campus which helped, but going early and trying to meet the professors and introducing myself and meeting with the Disability Student Services Center, letting them know who I was and what I would need ahead of time, before class started so that I would have a smoother transition into class. Similarly, when we're looking at employment opportunities being able to help an employer understand what accommodations you might need and explain to them, you know getting to my job is my problem, so transportation is my worry not yours, because some employers will ask about that. Helping them understand that, hey can we maybe throw some clear braille markers on the microwave if braille is something that we utilize so that we can heat up our lunch and not have to ask someone for that. Beth G.: Asking though specifically if you orient me to my surroundings can you please describe either with a clock face where things are located or letting me go touch items so that I can learn where things are. But just being very specific in asking for what you need. Serena Gilbert: And I think that you'll find if you're super specific and just ask, almost everyone is super willing to help you out especially in an employment site. I've never had anyone say like, no I don't have time for that, because the reality is that little bit of time that's invested at the beginning allows you to have that independence, for however long you chose to stay with that employer. Beth G.: I agree. Jeff Thompson: You know as I was listening here, I actually remember that the first thing you mentioned was keeping a sense of humor. Beth G.: Yes. Jeff Thompson: Can you talk about that one? Beth G.: I think it's extremely important to be able to laugh, whether it's at yourself, at the situations. Serena Gilbert: Well how many things have we tripped over or walls have we ran into, and just laugh it off and keep going, right? Beth G.: We have to go out to the lobby area to get our clients, and at my last job and this job, I've done it twice now, I go out and I call a client and they sound similar to my client, and they've got the same first names, so I'm walking back and I'm realizing, this is not my client. You both kind of go like, you're not my therapist, you're not my client, and we just apologize and laugh it off and go get your client. Serena Gilbert: Yes. Beth G.: But, you know, things like that can be really funny if you let them. Running into walls, I mean, it took me a little while to learn, well both buildings that I was in, I went to the wrong office a couple of times, that's embarrassing. Serena Gilbert: Did you sit down at the computer and everything? Jeff Thompson: It's harder to log in that way. Beth G.: Look, why isn't this talking to me, what's going on? Serena Gilbert: I have almost ... you guys will laugh at this, so our building has like a main lobby in the downstairs area because we're in a building that has a lot of different suites and there's chairs and tables down there. I have on multiple occasions almost sat on somebody, and they're like, oh hi and I'm like, thank God you said something because I would have sat on you. Beth G.: And that is something that I wish that we could help the public feel comfortable in doing. Speak up, you know, we don't know you're there necessarily if we can't see you. Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Beth G.: It's much more helpful for everyone involved if you speak to us before we sit on your lap. Jeff Thompson: Yes. Unless it's santa clause, I mean that's about it. Beth G.: Right. Jeff Thompson: Yes, there's so many different times that there's ... even when you're alone or at a table setting and you stab into the mash potatoes, put it in your mouth and it's totally something else and it's like, you know there's a facial expression you give but you can't give it away sometimes, you've just got to swallow it. Serena Gilbert: Oh, I've had that happen before, I'm like, I though I'm about to eat a piece of corn and that is not corn, it's a whole piece of bread on my fork. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative) yes, but I like what you say about the public being aware of that, if they speak up just a little bit and not be afraid or shy away from an impending thing happening, especially like on the bus when you're ready to sit down, they wait until you almost make contact with them, you know, yes, so it does help. So if there's any sighted people out there, or councilors listening right now, just speak up sometimes and it really helps out the situation. Beth G.: And the same is true for if you're walking somewhere, and don't watch us run into the wall, I mean we have dogs and canes so hopefully we'll find it, but we're human and we don't always pay attention and we think about something else and it's okay to speak up and maybe say something, don't grab us or anything like that because that's not helpful. But definitely don't be afraid to speak up and ask, do you need some assistance or can I help you? Please don't say, over there or here or that way, those are not helpful phrases for us, the more verbal a person can be, the usually better off it is going to be for all of us. Jeff Thompson: Yes and that third item that you mentioned was ... Beth G.: It was, if you don't feel you don't heal. Which is a therapy phrase and it just basically means if you don't have an outlet for your emotions whatever they may be, I'm going to tell you right now that every emotion you have is normal and valid and it's okay. Where it becomes a challenge is if we don't have a way to express them. If we don't have someone we can talk to. If we don't have maybe physical ways to express our anger that are healthy, like punching pillows or mattresses or going to the gym. If we don't have way to express our sadness, maybe we don't have the words or we don't have the ability to speak at the moment but if we can do it through art or music or journaling, something like that. Again, you have to feel it before you can heal from it. Serena Gilbert: And I wanted to talk a little bit about that, so every one's super afraid of, you know the 'D' word, depression, but it happens. You know, we all experience it whether it's for an extended period of time and it's at a clinical level or, it's situational because you've got some not so fun things going on in your life, but I did want to touch upon that because I think that, that's more common in the blindness community than we all like to admit, because I see some posts in Facebook groups where we're not real happy about our situation right now and I want our listeners to understand that, that is a perfectly normal emotion, but it's also about, okay so you're depressed because you're not able to get where you want to when you want to get there. But there's some solutions we can do to that, how can we work through that and I think it'd be helpful to have a talk about a depression piece of things as well. Beth G.: Sure, and I also want to add to that a couple of things, I think anxiety, depression and anger are the three top emotions that I have observed in my work with clients, especially those with visual loss and employment challenges, and I also think it's important to allow yourself time to grieve and re-grieve. So, by re-grieving I mean, we may be very well adjusted to the fact that we are walking through the world with a visual disability, but it doesn't mean that myself or Serena or Jeff doesn't re-grieve, like oh, I wish I could drive, oh if only I could see my computer screen and not have to wait for somebody to come help me because my technology isn't co-operating, or whatever it is. We grieve and that can trigger depression or anger or anxiety, by anger, anxiety or depression, I'm not saying actual disorders, like not an actual anxiety disorder or a depressive disorder, I'm talking about symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety, but experiences like that can definitely lead to symptoms of depression or possibly depressive episode. Beth G.: I think the first thing is acknowledging, this is how I feel you know, are you finding yourself isolating more? Are you finding yourself crying more? Are you finding yourself more irritable? Do you find yourself sleeping more, are you not eating as much? I mean what are your symptoms, what are you doing differently that might make you stop and think, wow this is depression, and we don't have to like it, but that is what it is and so then how do we work with that and I'm a therapist, of course I'm going to say, go talk to your therapist if you have one, because I think that's one of the first things you can do to help yourself. Definitely rule out anything physical, any physical causes first because some vitamin imbalances, or hormone imbalances or heart conditions can mimic a lot of these symptoms of mental health, and so for sure rule out anything physical, but then definitely find someone you can talk to. Find a support group you can join, find an on-line support group you can join if you can't find one in person. Beth G.: Like I said, write it out, journaling is extremely helpful, I don't care if somebody writes, I've got not a thing to say, for five pages, that's okay you're still writing and something will come. Most times you're going to think you have nothing to say and you'll end up writing a lot of pages, because you have a lot to say. Music is a huge help with depression. You can find something uplifting that will change your mood, that can be helpful. Knowing what comforts you. So, do you like hot tea, do you like a warm bath, do you like walking outside and getting some fresh air? Knowing what works and being able to have that readily available to you can help with depression. And then lastly, I always encourage clients to keep, what I call a coping toolbox. So literally you get a box of any size that works for you and you put things in there that no matter what you pull out, it'll help you. Beth G.: And you can keep this by your bed, you can keep this in your living room. If you are someone who is [inaudible] you can keep one in your car, but anywhere that's easily accessible to you and you can put things in there like a scent or an aroma that is pleasing to you and makes you feel more calm and relaxed. You can put a CD if those even still exist for most of us, or some kind of MP3 player where you can listen to music and songs that you know are going to make you feel better. You can put in there, maybe a bag of your favorite coffee, or a couple of tea bags or whatever it's going to be. Anything that's going to help you feel better so there's no question asked, so it'll help. Jeff Thompson: Those are some really good points and I think one of the things that Serena struck on was that the 'D' word, society's expectations when you feel that they're looking upon you to admit that you have depression or to admit you have anxiety or it's just always expected that, I'm okay so I'm glad that you had all these suggestions for people to ... you know, I'm not going to carry around a Halloween trick or treat bag, that's not going to help me cope all the time. But, that makes sense because I find myself, I like, like a hot bath or a walk or something, or working out a little bit and it always helps. It always feels like I got an extra skip in my step, I guess. Serena Gilbert: And I was going to say for me, when I get like depressed about, I can't just get in the car and go do what I want to do, you know? For me it's singing in the shower, like it's, I can't sing in my car you know, and that always, always, always helps me out. Beth G.: And yes, depending on the severity of the depression, some people might be in this place where, those all sound nice but I just don't have motivation to do that, I don't have the energy, and so I think about things, such as, okay instead of looking at your to do list, can you make a list of things you accomplished that day and it may just say I got out of bed and had breakfast, that may be it for the day, but that's still better than just laying in bed and so it's finding baby steps that you can take to help yourself start to shift from that depression. Jeff Thompson: Beth, how important it is to recognize that you might be having anxiety or depression happening. Beth G.: To me it's extremely important because if we don't know what a person's experiencing, what their symptoms are, what they're feeling, what their thoughts are, what their emotions are, we aren't able to help as well and so if the person can recognize, you know, I don't know what's going on but here's what I'm experiencing, it allows us as the professionals to step in and say, okay well let's talk about what you've tried, or what used to work or let's try something new, or it allows loved ones, or those of us in support systems to say, hey, I've been there too here's what worked for me. Serena Gilbert: And I think it's great that you mentioned loved ones and support systems because I definitely want to touch a little bit on, what are some good self care tips for our family members or our loved ones, especially in a family where maybe it's a husband and wife, or even a mother and daughter where it's a sudden loss of vision, not something that's been dealt with over, you know, quite a few years or born with and things like that. Beth G.: My first suggestion would be to educate. Educate, educate, educate and learn as much as you can on both sides, whether you are the one with vision loss or you're the person living with someone with vision loss, but educate yourself on their cause of vision loss and what it might mean for them and keep the conversations open and it's important to open dialogue, roles might change temporarily or roles might change permanently, depending on how one's experience is with vision loss. So, definitely have good communication skills, be able to talk about the hard things, be able to talk about the fears that both of you have, from a husband and wife team, because the sighted individual is going to have some fears and anxieties as well and being able to just calmly openly talk about those things is, I think, one of the first steps to being, to successfully transitioning, for living with vision loss. Beth G.: I think it's also important to again, seek support. There's a lot of different support groups out there for a variety of things and just finding one that fits for you. Get to know other people who are in similar situations because maybe they're further ahead from where you are, you can learn from them, or maybe you can help someone else, because you're further ahead than they are in the process. Jeff Thompson: Wow. Serena Gilbert: I really like that you acknowledge that it's, it's perfectly normal for a family member to have those fears and anxieties as well, because I think sometimes when a family member gets diagnosed with a vision impairment or even just a life changing diagnosis of any kind, the person that has not had that diagnosis feels that they have to be the rock and the strong one, and not really show any of that emotion and just be there for the person that's going through it. So I love that, that's something that you brought to light here for us. Beth G.: Absolutely, I think it's crucial that both individual or how many individuals, even it's, you know, adult children or younger children but everyone needs to able to have a place to express their emotions and I think it's also helpful depending on type of vision loss and you know what the cause is, but if you know you're going to lose your sight more progressively, start to implement some non-visual strategies early on, so that when you do have less sight, your transition's easier and there's less anxiety. Definitely reach out to any professionals you can that can provide support and in a sense just so you can learn the skills that everyone is going to need. It can be very common that the sighted persons wants to begin doing everything for the person with vision loss and we don't want that, we still want to be independent, we still want to be productive and active members of the household and society so allowing us to struggle, allowing us to learn to do things differently and that could be painful to watch us struggle, but we don't learn if we don't do it. Serena Gilbert: Very well said. Jeff Thompson: Yes. That's true, when you said being the rock, when I taught woodworking the men would come and, oh yes they've done it, but they hadn't and they would just say it because that's expected of them and in my situation I had to be the strong guy, but I come from a family of rocks and it makes it tough to open up because everyone is very independent and everything so as the years go by, it's like an education process that just kind of evolves, and I think my friends catch on faster than my family did, if that makes sense. Serena Gilbert: At the risk of upsetting some people, it's interesting that you said that Jeff because you said like, you come from a family like, where the males are the rocks and I do think that there are differences between how males and females might cope with that, especially if it's later in life, like if you're from a really traditionally roled married and you always do the driving and you always do this and you always do that and that's taken away from you, I feel like that's, that's going to be a little bit different for a male versus a female. Beth G.: I want to speak to that as well, in regards to if anyone ever experienced this, but if you are traveling with a sighted person and you have brought along your mobility aid of choice, be it a cane or guide dog. We're not trying to minimize your role in helping us as a sighted person, but we need those aids to learn about our environment, to be more independent and to, as I've put it, rely on a sighted person more for the things we need help with versus the things we still can do on our own. So it's a balancing act I think, of letting somebody be a rock and at the same time keeping independence. Jeff Thompson: That's well put. So, Beth if someone may think that they, I don't know how to phrase this, but if someone's out there that may think that they're ... you know, you've mentioned what, I know it said ADA, Anxiety, Depression and Anger? Beth G.: Yes. Jeff Thompson: If someone may be questioning about those three things, what would you suggest for them to do, I mean or contact? Beth G.: Well, I mean I'm a firm believer in, it's okay to seek some professional help if need be, just to get through some of the tougher times. Now that can be a Mental Health Therapist, that could be your local Chapter for Blindness Organization, that could be an on-line support group, definitely seeking support in whatever way's comfortable for you in multiple ways, that are comfortable. But definitely seek support. Serena Gilbert: Do you have like, I know there's not a link that fits all, is there like a resource guide of some sort that maybe you can direct us in that, I just want something for our listeners, where if they do feel like they need help maybe there's like a National Organization they can reach out to that can help them locate a therapist somehow? Beth G.: There's a number of those. Serena Gilbert: Okay. Beth G.: So I'm thinking of like, the American Counseling Association I believe has a therapist directory. Serena Gilbert: Okay. Beth G.: Psychologytoday.com has a therapist directory. Serena Gilbert: I'm definitely using the Psychology Today one, I didn't even think about that, that one's great because it narrowed by insurance and things. Beth G.: And what you're looking for, for grief, for anxiety you can narrow it down by what you're experiencing. I can definitely put my email address [inaudible] if anyone wants to contact me directly, I can try to help link them to resources or answer any questions they might have. Serena Gilbert: Okay. Beth G.: I am willing to be a resource in that respect. Serena Gilbert: Well, that's awesome Beth, you might get a lot of emails. I think the most useful one would probably be that Psychology Today, because it's very accessible, not that the ACA one wouldn't be, but it also, just the way it let's you narrow your search down, I think that would be helpful. Beth G.: I agree with that. Jeff Thompson: So there's not one out there called, 'Pull Up Your Boot Straps', is there? Beth G.: Nope. Serena Gilbert: Google that Jeff, see what you come up with. Jeff Thompson: No, I had a father and a father-in-law that was their motto, tough it up you know, pull up your bootstraps, get on with it. Beth G.: Well sometimes it's not possible, I mean no matter how much the person would like to do that, that's where mental illness and your severe depression or severe anxiety can really keep us stuck, and so we'd love to pull ourselves up by the boot straps, but we need a little extra help to do that initially. Serena Gilbert: And I was going to say, that is really where you can see generational differences and their approach to mental health.  And I'm not trying to knock one generation or another but there are certain generations that don't really believe that counseling is something that's necessary or mental health or even medications for mental health in that regard, and that might be something that if you know that you do really want to move forward and have that independence that you'll have to kind of work through as well. Beth G.: Sure, and different cultures have different beliefs around the mental illness and things like that as well. Serena Gilbert: Yes. Beth G.: So, again you know it's finding what works for you, you don't have to go see a therapist but could you go to the gym and you know, work it out literally, because that can make you feel better. Can you find a friend you can talk to and what about religious involvement, like temple or a church or something? A synagogue, can you go there and find someone to talk to or if you're not religious but you have some spiritual practices, can you go locate someone that fits your beliefs spiritually, because that can be just as helpful. Serena Gilbert: The next thing that I wanted to chat about is something all three of us have gone through already, is the super fun job search and how sometimes it's not so fun because of the types of rejections and things that come through and I wanted to chat with you a little bit about how normal those rejections are unfortunately and maybe some coping mechanisms for that as well. Beth G.: Yelling and screaming works very well. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Serena Gilbert: I like it. Beth G.: Yes, it's a tough one and I will share, it took me, this is why I volunteered so much at those three places I mentioned earlier, it took me three years after grad school to get a job and it was a long stressful, semi sometimes depression filled three years, because it was just hard and so for me I threw myself into volunteer work. I had a couple of reasons for that, one is if you don't receive your 2 000 hours, and this may have changed I've been licensed since 2010, this may have changed, but back then if you didn't receive your 2 000 hours within five years, you retook the exam. And I was not going to do that and volunteer work counted. Beth G.: So for me I volunteered my behind off, because it gave me a purpose, it gave me something to do, it gave me a foot in the door, it gave me experience in the field, it gave me material for the resume. I found that to be helpful for me because volunteering in the fields that I wanted to work in as much as I could, to gain experience and get known, because it does also depend a lot on who we know not also just what we know, for doing the job. Jeff Thompson: Serena, as a councilor do you recommend providers or do you suggest a list or something of that nature coming from a state agency point of view? Serena Gilbert: What we usually look at is what type of health insurance the individual that we're working with has, many of our individuals don't have traditional insurance, like through an employer and I work with a lot of young adults so sometimes they have it through their parents, but many of my young adults have Medicaid, so we do have the ability to search the Medicaid providers and make recommendations. We do typically partner with our community mental health organization that's here, because they're really easy for our clients to get into because they have so many locations throughout this city, and then they have supplemental programs that they do with them that work alongside the therapy and medication. Serena Gilbert: Things like, they have a training program in culinary arts or in construction. They also do yoga and talk about nutrition and dietary needs, so they take a really holistic approach so it tends to work really well for the clients that I work with, but I don't typically make specific recommendations to you, you should go see this specific person, I usually give them a list. Jeff Thompson: That's good. Serena Gilbert: Let them kind of make their informed choice. Beth G.: Which I think is a much better way to handle that, because from a therapy stand point and for any professional that you're working with, it has to be a good fit and I tell my clients it's okay if you don't gel with me, it's okay if you don't like me or think I'm helpful to you, you know I ask to give me three sessions before you make that choice, but please speak up and ask for someone different if you're not comfortable this isn't going to help you, and so I think it's important to remember looking for professionals whether it's of vocational services, whether it's a specialist therapist, whomever it's going to be. Make sure it's a good fit. Serena Gilbert: That's a very, very good point because I think that a lot of our clients think well, especially with vocational rehabilitation and this may be the case sometimes, I'm going to put a disclaimer out there, sometimes you do have to work with somebody that maybe isn't your favorite person because that's the real world sometimes. Sometimes we don't get to make those choices but sometimes if there is a choice and it truly is impeding your ability to move forward, then it's okay to speak up, just like Beth said. I do agree with that. Beth G.: It's also good practice, like you just said to work with someone that you may not mesh with very well because it teaches us. It's a learning experience. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. Right Jeff? Jeff Thompson: Yes, experiences are good. I mean I actually went and saw a therapist years ago and some of that stuff sticks with me as coping mechanisms, as we talked about, and it's just a reminder to yourself that you know, we don't all have to be perfect and when you accept that you're not perfect and you accept the things you can change and the things you can't change, well it makes it a lot easier. A lot less stressful, the expectations you think others have of you and all that type of stuff. So, I like it and I like this conversation as I'm sitting here listening, I'm sitting back further and further in the chair just listening and it's really good stuff. Serena Gilbert: You were really processing, because when you listen back to this, when you edit you're going to notice that like I totally like dissed you there, and you didn't even notice because you were so deep in thought. Jeff Thompson: I'm focusing. So yes, I'm focusing. Beth G.: You're listening. Serena Gilbert: I think Beth caught it. Jeff Thompson: It is good information, it's good that it soaks in. I guess I must be really wanting it too, but like when you talked about writing and journaling I had a thought like, Stephen King, must really need some self help because he writes a lot. Serena Gilbert: Oh man. I don't even want to know what's going on in his brain right now. Those are the long books. Jeff Thompson: But I find myself doing that once in a while, is starting to write and also I write like three pages and I'm like, what's going on here? It's just spilling out and like you said to release that, to have someone to talk to, share stuff with, otherwise it's like a canister, it could just build up and build up and where's it going to go? Beth G.: We don't want the canister to explode so it's similar to having a medical, if you broke your leg, I hope to the powers that be, that you would go get help for that and it's the same with mental health. We all need a little help sometimes, whether it's the common cold or a sinus infection and you have to get antibiotics for that or it's, you know, a single defensive episode we actually get some help for that, if it's a life long illness go get some help for that, and I guess I'm going off on like the stigma around mental illness sometimes and the stigma around disability, but there's no shame in asking for help to get you through, and journaling is wonderful because if we can get it on paper it gets it out of our head. So we quit thinking about it. Serena Gilbert: You're making us just reflect so much, Beth. Jeff Thompson: I know. Serena Gilbert: Because I was just thinking like personally, things that, Jeff's going to laugh at this, but like hobbies help me a lot and it's hard for me, at least it was for me, to find a hobby that I can stick with consistently enough, and that was like helpful and accessible and all that great stuff and this podcast thing has really helped me. It's like something I look forward to every week and it's fun. Like I really look forward to it, I have fun sharing and I have fun helping people on it, certainly I think it's helped my mood, I don't know, I guess I'll just have to ask my husband. I think hobbies can play a big role in that mental health. Beth G.: There's a lot to be said around that, I'm glad you brought that up Serena because it makes me think of, your podcast helps others and so something I thought about I'd like to do my own podcast at some point as well because for me helping others makes me feel good, and does lift my mood and so if I have something hopefully worthy of others hearing that might help them move forward or help them see things differently or help them get a different perspective, I want to be able to do that. That makes me feel good when someone says, I never thought of it that way, or, that makes sense, or something like that. Serena Gilbert: Jeff, you have a new podcast perhaps. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Serena Gilbert: Let's add more. Jeff Thompson: Yes, this will be podcast 396, I believe it is, you'd think I'd be cured by now right, but you're absolutely right it does feel good when you capture moments and you can share it out there so other people can hear those moments and they're archived and you never know, like we'll get a message that someone listened to a podcast that was done a hundred ago, but it connected with them and that's what it's ... I just wish ... I don't know ... it's just interesting about podcasting. What it does for me and helping others. How you use it to teach and so tapping into all these people, and you yourself Beth, tapping into these people a little bit and hearing their stories and having them talk and all that, it's all ways of getting it out there and you know, you don't have to be on National News to get a story out. You can do it on podcasting and that's what I think we really like about that, even us, the little people we can get out there and make a difference. Beth G.: Absolutely. Jeff Thompson: I didn't say you were little, Serena. Serena Gilbert: Are you ... see that went right over my head if you were ... Jeff Thompson: Earlier, you mentioned you had the small Apple watch. Serena Gilbert: Ha ha ha. That was on a previous podcast, Beth. Jeff Thompson: Yes. Beth G.: I missed that one. Jeff Thompson: So Beth, I have a question for you. Beth G.: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeff Thompson: What suggestion would you have for someone who is in that transitioning age, whether it's from high school to college to the work place, because you mentioned that earlier, what suggestions would you have for that person, just headed down that journey? Beth G.: I think no matter how frustrated you get, don't give up. As far as applying for jobs, that becomes your full time job, whether you're sighted or have a disability. It's still going to be your full time job and I think when we have a vision loss, it may take us a little longer. There's some great resources out there, if you need some support with making sure your resume is formatted, whatever you need to help yourself be ready for the interview process but don't give up. Keep applying. The rejection's going to happen and it's going to hurt but don't stop because eventually you'll get there. I wish I had a better suggestion than that one, and it goes back to your coping skills, what are your coping tools, what's going to help you most when you do get down? When you lose your self confidence, when you lose your self-esteem temporarily because you're getting rejected so many times. Serena Gilbert: So Jeff edit this part out. So Jeff edit this part out. So Jeff edit this part out. Beth, I swear you must be bugging Jeff and I because you are ... I cannot tell you how much you are mirroring the things that we've said on the last, maybe two or three episodes we've recorded but not actually released yet. I mean, I don't know the right word, but it's kind of nice to hear that we're at least somewhat on the right page with the things that we are are putting out there. Beth G.: I mean those of us who live it, get it. That sounds very cheesy, but it's true. Jeff Thompson: Hey, we like cheesy. We didn't know that before, but now we do. Beth G.: I think there's a common thread or a common bond with any individual who experiences life differently if you will, than the rest of the population. Whether it's vision loss, whether it's hearing loss, whether it's mental disability, whatever it is, when we have people who are similar to us or have experienced similar situations, there's a common bond. Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeff Thompson: Yes, and I think that bond is when someone sits down across the desk from you and realizes that you are blind, visually impaired, that commonality right there make a connection, just like when I had teachers, sighted teachers, but then when I found someone else that was visually impaired, or blind, you know, I didn't know anybody at the time, so it really helped bridge that connection, I could relate and I could listen and not that I gave more value to it, but it just drew me in fast. Serena Gilbert: And it's almost like the, well if they can do it, I can do it, kind of mentality. Not that there's, not to like demean anyone or anything, but it's someone who's done this pathway they've been successful at it, so surely I can do the same thing? Beth G.: Sure, and I've had clients tell me that, well if you can do it, I can do it. It's like, well my disability is different than yours, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. Serena Gilbert: Yes. Beth G.: I think everybody can do it if they're given the right tools and the right support. It may take some longer and some may have some different goals they wish to achieve. I'm a firm believer, if it's not your goal you're not going to achieve it. So, make sure your goals are your goals, not your parent's goals, not your spouse's goals, they're your goals and if you have the right tools and support, you can get there. Jeff Thompson: I have a friend, Jessica Cox said, it's not can I do it, it's how can I do it? Beth G.: Exactly. Jeff Thompson: So when you get to that point where you realize you have worth, you have value and all that other good stuff going, when the ball's rolling in the right direction then you can start thinking of the positives, like how can I do that? Beth G.: And you can start talking about, when I do this, not if I can do this? Because if and when are two very powerful different words with very different meanings. Serena Gilbert: Stop making us think, Beth. Jeff Thompson: You're focusing, aren't you Serena? Serena Gilbert: I am. Jeff Thompson: I just love the focus of this podcast, you know, this is really one of those ones that is kind of, hidden, it's not one of the obvious ones, like a resume, it's wrong, it's right. Mental health, your ability to cope and to deal with things is very important but we all don't wear it on our sleeves all the time. Beth G.: No, it's also as unique as each of us is because we all present differently. Our symptoms present differently. Our coping skills are different from one of us to the other. Serena Gilbert: And I don't feel like I looked at every blindness podcast that's out there, but I've yet to see anyone really write about this topic or cover it, and I'd like to have it be out there more so there's not so much stigma with it. Beth G.: Which is exactly why I want to start my own podcast, honestly. I'd love to get something off the ground, and there are a lot of directions to go with this as we talked about in previous conversations, but I really think it's a ... I've looked as well and I thought I found something, because it's untapped niche that needs to be heard. Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeff Thompson: Well I would definitely listen, because I figure I just got my free session already, today. Serena Gilbert: We've got like three sessions, like we owe her so much money right now, Jeff. Jeff Thompson: Shh, shh. That's why I said one session, Serena. Beth G.: Once I can find some office space and then get the private practice going. Jeff Thompson: There you go. Serena Gilbert: We'll just Skype you, you know. Beth G.: This was a little challenging in the sense there's just so much content and I feel like I've just touched the surface on some of this. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Beth G.: But, I think that's a lot of podcasts that you can look at the surface and if they want to go deeper, they can. Serena Gilbert: So Beth, do you have any tips that you'd like to give some of our sighted listeners? Beth G.: Absolutely, one of them being, please believe us if we tell you we cannot see something, it's very difficult oftentimes, to explain what we can or cannot see, but if we cannot see it, we truly cannot see it and please accept that and move forward. And another one I think is helpful, if you're going to rearrange the office or the house, please tell us you've rearranged the furniture. Our shins really hate it when we come home and hit the coffee table we thought used to be there. Or you're going to sit on the couch but you're on the floor because the couch has mysteriously moved while you've been gone. It's just super helpful if you could let us know that you rearranged in our absence. Beth G.: And then lastly I think it's helpful if someone can say their name, before they speak to us so we can learn and match the voice with name. I don't know about anyone else, but it's not super fun going, is that Britney, is that Monica, is that Jo-anne, who is ... I know that person but I cannot place their name with their voice. Instead, you can say, hi Beth, it's John, then in time we can learn what your voice sounds like and lastly, it's a little embarrassing on our part if we end up talking to ourselves because we didn't see you walk out of it. So if you could sometimes announce that you're walking away, we don't talk to empty air that way. Beth G.: And those all may sound kind of silly or common sense but we don't always think in terms like that. So just a few things I wanted to add. Jeff Thompson: Well Beth, thank you so much for coming on The Job Insights, this has been a great podcast, great topics and can you give us some information if you want people to be able to contact you? Beth G.: Sure, it was my pleasure to be here and thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed talking about these topics as you can tell because I can talk all night. To contact me, I don't have a website up yet, it's coming soon so I'm working on a website, but until then, if anyone has any questions or would like to contact me, my email address is Bethg, as in golf, lpc, as in licensed professional councilor, @gmail.com. So Bethglpc@gmail.com is the best way to get a hold of me right now and hopefully the website will be coming soon. So that's me. Jeff Thompson: Well, Beth thank you so much. Beth G.: I enjoyed it, I really enjoyed being here and getting to know both of you more, and hopefully being able to help others in the process. Serena Gilbert: Thanks so much Beth. Beth G.: You're welcome. Thank you. Serena Gilbert: Bye Jeff. Jeff Thompson: And we'll see you next time Serena, on Job Insights, and you can follow Job Insights on twitter @jobinsightsvip send us an email jobinsights@blindabilities.com. We're part of the blind abilities network and you can find us on the web at www.blindabilities.com and thank you Chee Chau for the beautiful music, You can follow Chee Chau on Twitter @LCheeChau   Jeff Thompson: And as always we want to thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed and until next time. Bye bye.   [Music]  [Transition noise]   When we share what we see through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.   Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective: Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities Download our app from the App store: 'Blind Abilities'; that's two words. Or send us an e-mail at: info@blindabilities.com Thanks for listening.  

The Agile Toolkit Podcast I always say that DevOps in one sense is really an extension of agile principles out to everybody on the ship. -Jeffery Payne Bob Payne chats with Jeffery Payne, Founder of Coveros, at Lean+Agile DC 2018.  The Payne Cousins (not really) chat DevOps and tips for pairing developers and testers.  The discussion covers moving toward a generalized specialist model, testers showing up like a demolition crew, and the true meaning of pairing. [caption id="attachment_7988" align="alignnone" width="2024"] Jeffery Payne sits down with Bob Payne (not cousins..)[/caption] TRANSCRIPT Bob Payne: [00:00:02] Hi I'm your host and technical idiot, Bob Payne. Just struggling with the equipment there for a little bit, making making the the the big newbie mistake of hitting play instead of record. So I'm here at Lean + Agile DC 2018 and I'm here with Jeff Payne of Coveros. Jeffery Payne: [00:00:25] Your cousin right. Bob Payne: [00:00:26] Yeah. Cousin Jeffery Payne: [00:00:27] Yeah. Bob Payne: [00:00:27] Yep. So Jeff what what are you talking about here today since I am out here in the hall and not not in the talks. Jeffery Payne: [00:00:38] Yes I'm talking about dev test pairing. Okay so trying to get developers and testers to work together better. We find that that's one of the biggest issues we see on teams when it comes from engineering perspective. Bob Payne: [00:00:52] Yeah I mean I think the early agilists were a lot of XP teams that sort of did away with testers because everybody was considered to be a tester. I think it was also sort of a chemistry of the particular group of folks that were on that first team. And you had folks like Elizabeth Hendrickson, Lisa Crispin. A lot of folks sort of brought testing back into the Agil fold. Yeah what do you think the biggest problems you see with testing and agile teams or trying to get testers and coders to pair? Jeffery Payne: [00:01:31] Yeah I think obviously one of the biggest problems is that they historically haven't worked well together. They're kind of on different sides of the fence as a check and a balance in some organizations right. Jeffery Payne: [00:01:42] And and a lot of organizations even they prefer that their testers not even talk to their developers they want them to be independent speak because they think it's kind of like an editor if if you haven't seen it and then you review it another set of eyes you're not you know you're not influenced by the development. The other sort of clean room actually that's the traditional approach. Of course it's always been very late lifecycle and very manual right. None of those things work well on edge. All right. Bob Payne: [00:02:11] Well none of those things actually work well in life. It's not just an agile thing. Jeffery Payne: [00:02:16] So you know how do we change that? Bob Payne: [00:02:17] Shoot, it's not secure and doesn't scale. I'm glad we have 12 hours to fix this before production. Jeffery Payne: [00:02:22] Yeah, Exactly. Here you go have it done by tonight. So yeah. And so what we try to help teams fix that. Bob Payne: [00:02:30] Yeah. Jeffery Payne: [00:02:30] Address those issues. Bob Payne: [00:02:33] What are you what do you think has been most beneficial recently for helping you in that in that quest of getting folks to pair together. Jeffery Payne: [00:02:42] Well we have some techniques and approaches that we like to use to try to get them to work together and also learn from each other because you know if you're moving toward a generalized specialist model on your teams we like that model. Yup and you want collective code ownership and you want a whole team quality all these you know motherhood and apple pie concepts that we espouse too. You've got to get everybody productive during the entire Sprint or whatever you're doing story development or whatever. And the only way you can do that is that people start learning from each other and cross fertilize. Historically you know I was a developer developers aren't great testers for a number of reasons. Jeffery Payne: [00:03:20] Just you know out of the gate they're not very good testers and testers oftentimes particularly if they are manual testers they don't have a very strong technical background they don't know code they can't write automation right. Those two things together don't work very well. So we've found that by pairing Dev and test they can help learn from each other and become stronger teammates and collectively on the code better. Bob Payne: [00:03:43] Now do you find that tools like cucumber or other. I don't know if you're running into teams using fitness but are early on fitness is one of those tools cucumber most recently specked flow help bridge that gap so that testers can blow out those scenarios a little more directly after the fixtures are done or even before the fixtures are done. Jeffery Payne: [00:04:09] Definitely. Yeah I mean the the BDD oriented. Bob Payne: [00:04:12] Yeah Jeffery Payne: [00:04:12] Cucumber with Gherkin, kind of natural language approach is a great way to start moving particularly manual testers toward understanding how to automate without having to dive right in and start like you know trying to write good maintainable selenium scripts for instance or whatever. I mean it's hard to write maintainable any kind of scripts. Bob Payne: [00:04:33] Write would be better then record -those are a nightmare to maintain Jeffery Payne: [00:04:39] No doubt, or record any test is a bad idea because that's how they're sold often so. Bob Payne: [00:04:44] Right. Jeffery Payne: [00:04:45] That's how you know people think you're supposed to use those tools. We definitely like those kinds of tools that we think they help move a a tester toward being more capable of providing automation support. Bob Payne: [00:04:57] What sort of behavioral, I mean, You mentioned the word pairing. What does that mean when you say that because I see a lot of I see a lot of misuse of the word. I'm assuming you're not but the mis use of the word pairing Jeffery Payne: [00:05:09] I Might be, who knows. Maybe you'll tell me i'm wrong, Bob. Bob Payne: [00:05:11] And TDD, I see a lot of people misusing or not really understanding TDD. That's most common but Jeffery Payne: [00:05:17] Yes. Yeah. So I mean to me I'm basing it off of the definition of pair programming. Go you know getting two people together to work together collectively on some task. When you talk in dev test you're really either talking about those two people working together on code almost pair programming and one of our techniques is to use a dev test to pair program yet which is a little different right because one of them maybe doesn't actually know how to write code. So what does that mean. Right. In pairing. The other thing we use it for is to review each others tests. So if you're going to ask developers to do a unit test you want them to learn how to write good unit test meaning think through not just happy path but you know the errors and boundary conditions exceptions and all those kinds of things they usually inherently don't know how to do that a tester can by working with them help them understand how to do that better. Second if you're asking your testers even if it's manual to create tasks for integration for system for you know kind of the combinations of things across use cases and your business flows they often don't they often won't load the design. Well enough particularly if they haven't been involved in those activities they should be but often aren't. Jeffery Payne: [00:06:34] Yeah and the developer can help them think through and understand how does this software all pieced together to meet the you know the flow that we're looking for in our application and how users use it so they can help each other from a testing perspective we found. Bob Payne: [00:06:47] And one of the other things that I think a lot of a lot of testers can help with as well is what are the business rules like oh yeah if you're doing an under UI test which quite often happens in the developers domain you know what are the what are those conditions you know the happy path is easy and that's usually where developers go because they know the happy path works but they don't necessarily test those boundary conditions as or that or the business rules right if I had a whole bunch of J rules or other stuff I wouldn't test that through the UI right. Jeffery Payne: [00:07:26] Yeah no doubt. Bob Payne: [00:07:28] Yeah. Jeffery Payne: [00:07:28] And to your point about a happy path. The other thing we've seen is not every developer's like this but you know a lot of developers consider what they're building to be a work of art. Right. They're like Michelangelo creating the Sistine Chapel in their in their mind. Yeah and they're all about creating this beautiful incredible thing that's going to last forever and just people are going to you and all over it even if it's just their peers. Bob Payne: [00:07:49] Yep. Jeffery Payne: [00:07:50] And then the tester shows up testers like a demolition crew. Bob Payne: [00:07:52] Yeah Jeffery Payne: [00:07:53] Right. They're trying to poke holes in it and figure out what's wrong with it and it's kind of like calling your baby ugly. If you're asked to test your own code because you know you might have every intention but in the back of your mind you might be thinking I don't really want my Sistine Chapel to have problems in it or look bad and changing that mindset is part of getting Dev and tests to work together to understand the best way if you want to build something great is to find any issues as fast as you can see eradicate them. That's really about what it looks like when it gets delivered yet not what it looks like. You know while you're making the sausage right. Bob Payne: [00:08:27] Yeah. I find a lot of people use the term Pairing and they're really talking about working together on just acceptance criteria or something like that that's necessary but not sufficient. I think that deeper level of the deeper you can go in interaction and an understanding the better off your team is clearly Jeffery Payne: [00:08:52] We've had good success getting developers involved in doing some exploratory testing as well. Bob Payne: [00:08:57] Sure. Bob Payne: [00:08:57] You know a lot of times testers get together and do you know session based exploratory testing across stories or whatever. What about the idea of just getting the Dev and test together for a story they're working on and having an exploratory testing session where they work together and explore the product and talk about it and identify bugs. Again that gets the developers a little bit more comfortable doing testing and knowing what to look for thinking critically about the app. And of course it helps the tester better understand the app because if they're they don't understand something about what they're testing they've got the developer right there they can ask Hey what was this supposed to do or how was this supposed to work. Jeffery Payne: [00:09:32] Now I think the story is maybe vague did we really build the right thing or are we testing it properly. That dialogue's very helpful. Bob Payne: [00:09:38] Yeah. What else is exciting in your your world right now Jeffery Payne: [00:09:42] Nothing Bob Payne: [00:09:42] No? Jeffery Payne: [00:09:42] Nothing. Well as you know we do a lot of DevOps work. Bob Payne: [00:09:47] Yeah sure. Yeah it's the new edge issue. Jeffery Payne: [00:09:51] Yeah exactly. Bob Payne: [00:09:52] Yeah. Actually you know we were going to be talking later with some folks talking about sort of you know in many ways Agile is sort of hit a ceiling and I'm hoping this will open up gaps where we can get to real real agility and real cause. All too often it's seen as a fix for the delivery team not right. Not a systemic change that can build better value faster. Jeffery Payne: [00:10:23] Yeah and I totally agree. I mean I think one of the mistakes that the founding fathers of Agile made is you know they were all about collaboration getting everybody to work together. But they forgot a key piece of the lifecycle which was delivery and release and production and production oriented. Bob Payne: [00:10:41] And actually intake in the business side. Jeffery Payne: [00:10:45] Exactly. You know it's funny this group that was all about collaboration and getting everybody on the same page left all these people out right by mistake. Obviously they were creating it as they went so I understand. So I always say that dev ops in one sense is really an extension of agile principles out to everybody on the ship you know involved in the software delivery process in the full lifecycle software. Bob Payne: [00:11:09] Yeah and agile and dev ops are both the you know great grandchildren of lean which was all about that base that whole process right. Jeffery Payne: [00:11:21] Yes. Bob Payne: [00:11:22] Yeah. You know this reintroduction of the concept of value streams and value team and stuff - It's like back to the future. Jeffery Payne: [00:11:32] I'm sure you've studied up on the history you know all the way back through Demming and you know all the way back to you know statistical process control and even beyond that I mean it's clearly standing on the shoulders of giants like everything we do. It's amazing how many people don't understand that or take the time to find that out or understand. Bob Payne: [00:11:50] And the idea that that actually Devops, Yeah there's a whole bunch of cool technical stuff going on, but it's about closing the loop to be able to learn. And my favorite Demming quote about that was learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival. Jeffery Payne: [00:12:07] Here's some great pithy comments. You know we're in this. You know there was an article I read that compared it to an extinct extinction level event you know where we've got you know Internet of Things and big data and and organizations being able competitors being able to go extraordinarily fast and learn and reintegrate that learning. The end for the many organizations that will that will mean their doom and not going to pretend that DevIps or Agile is any silver bullet in allowing them to survive. But I just know the status quo is not the strategy I would take. Jeffery Payne: [00:12:56] Yeah. Well yeah I mean if software is really eating the world which I think we would agree it is then you'd better figure out how to optimize how you build deploy deliver and feedback information fast because otherwise you are going to be out of business. Yeah eventually. Bob Payne: [00:13:15] So what's happening over at your company Coveros. Jeffery Payne: [00:13:18] Coveros, yes! So We're busy little busy little beavers helping people with Agile and devops just trying to get it right. And when we focus more on the engineering aspects of both of those things but I often get asked to you know help pull teams together and figure out how to make it all work. Bob Payne: [00:13:36] Yup Jeffery Payne: [00:13:36] But we really like the the engineering aspects as I call it you know Automation doesn't solve all your problems right. I always say a tool with a fool is still a fool. Right. So you have to know what you're doing and you have to collaborate work together. But automation can help and as long as you take that philosophy you can leverage test automation and then you see ICD Automation and other types of automation effectively. If your view is that automation somehow solves all your problems it's a magic bullet right. And it all you know takes culture or you know magically make it all work then you're going to be really upset right because it's not going to work so that's kind of what we're focusing on. Bob Payne: [00:14:16] Magical thinking is a strategy has also proved to be not the greatest.. Jeffery Payne: [00:14:21] Hope. Hope is not a strategy. One of my favorite sales books and I use that a lot. Yeah everybody says it's not grounded in reality I would say just remember hope is not a strategy. Bob Payne: [00:14:30] Yeah yeah yeah exactly. Well great. What what's exciting you coming up. What do you see coming down the pike in the next. You know what I know prediction is tough especially about the future. Jeffery Payne: [00:14:47] Yeah the future because if I could I wouldn't be in this business or I'd be retired long ago. Bob Payne: [00:14:52] Yeah exactly. Jeffery Payne: [00:14:53] Well I am I'm excited about. Bob Payne: [00:14:54] What do you actually see that's here. Jeffery Payne: [00:14:56] Well I was very skeptical at first but I am a little bit excited about what's going on with integration of A.I. into Dev and test. There are some interesting things going on around how you can leverage AI capabilities to build better tests for your applications. Do testing in a better way. So what actually look interesting. Are they going to scale or are they going to work right we've been talking about AI and you know robots take over the world forever which of course is not going to happen. Bob Payne: [00:15:30] The joke is AI is the next big thing and always will be. Jeffery Payne: [00:15:34] Yeah it's very true because you and I we probably are same same relevant age and we were coming up through the techie ranks. AI got really hot for a while. Bob Payne: [00:15:43] I was in the computer architectures for AI master's program so Jeffery Payne: [00:15:47] Yeah! It was hot hot hot, VR - the first VR systems came out and everyone was talking about these awesome things and how we were going to live in alternative worlds. And all that stuff and of course then like a lot of things that it didn't really happen and kind of disappeared but it bubbled along and now it's kind of popped its head up again. Bob Payne: [00:16:05] And so I'm not familiar with the uses that folks have been you know the application in the testing area what is the is this especially for like I mean if you look at big data you don't know what's in there necessarily. So you don't know know what to test for like where's the where's the current application of. Jeffery Payne: [00:16:33] Well there's a couple. One is of course everybody's trying to figure out how to even test AI-based systems whether it's B.I or or whatever it is you know how do we know the answers right. Right. That's the age old problem in the systems is you know how do you actually know whether what you got is true or not because you kind of need that testing right. But the other side of it which which we're more focused on is other ways to build better approaches to automation that analyze the product analyze what you're building and not completely write the scripts for you but take a step toward providing you test automation capabilities and scripting without having to do that on yourself. There are some new tools out on the market really small startup stuff that's trying to take a different look completely at how we create automated tests and how we maybe do that automatically. Yeah and the software is a really hard problem. Bob Payne: [00:17:37] Yeah I can I can I can extraordinarily easily imagine doing like really good deep progression by looking at sort of big data. Big data user behavior. You know we've kind of done that to heatmap. You know we really need this piece to be bulletproof because of risk. I'm sure there are folks out there that are mapping the the usage. But I could also imagine very easily just observe what folks are doing and and learn from that. I mean it's the way to go. [00:18:20] You know Al p haGo learned how to play go and meet you know with you know the vast majority of the learning in a system like that is not from the ruleset right. The initial ruleset it's actually playing another copy of itself Veriga and and and going through the database of previous games which for go is actually harder than chess but apparently it never played go. But yeah it sounds easy it's go go. How hard could it be. Jeffery Payne: [00:18:53] Just go right. Just go. So what. What's up with that. Just sounds a lot harder. four letters. Just kidding but Bob Payne: [00:19:04] It is four letters is twice as many. Jeffery Payne: [00:19:08] That's fine. We're just having a great time here right. Bob Payne: [00:19:15] Yeah. Jeffery Payne: [00:19:16] So yeah that's what what I'm interested in that is just you know trying to take the dev ops concept to the next level. You mentioned round trip. Right. Which is you know a lot of people spent their early instantiations of automation just focusing on how do I get code you know from a change in their production as fast as possible with quality and stability as well. You have to balance those. But now I think the more sophisticated companies are saying OK well it's great to get there but what happens if you get there and something's wrong. What's the fastest roundtrip approach to fixing that and addressing that. Is it rolling back. Is it going roundtrip and coming through. You know because the the other thing that's and people say why is that important if we're not the kind of company like you know say and Amazon who's pushing code out every 11 seconds right. Jeffery Payne: [00:20:05] Why do you need that we need that for security and stability and performance service level agreements. I mean if you've got a problem in production it cost you money every minute every second it's down or that there is a risk out there with a security perspective you've got to figure out how to round trip change as fast as possible. And that's an exciting area I think has been under looked at. You know it hasn't really been the focal point of house is now I think starting to be. I mean this it is really ironic that the safest way to go is to be able to go fast. Bob Payne: [00:20:41] I mean Jeffery Payne: [00:20:41] Oh yeah. Bob Payne: [00:20:43] I mean the level you know I remember those days where company would have to fail over to their dark side and emphasis on fail right because it would be days hours just downtime before they could you know oh shoot the Oracle logs didn't replicate. Yeah. Or whatever. And in like extreme programming and some of the techniques there early on they were seen as risky and the real practice in the same way that drove up seems risky. If you're doing it the way you and I think they should be doing it. It's actually the least risky way of behaving Jeffery Payne: [00:21:37] Right. Yeah it is. Yeah of course there are some apps that you'd like to be able to push into production quickly but maybe can't ever fail. So you know you can't you know this you know the Amazon concept of roll something out there doesn't really work. Jeffery Payne: [00:21:53] Roll it back and tune it roll back out and you're kind of using your customer to test test and give you some time to live life critical for that. So there are certain ones that you need. You know just double down on your assurance process during your dev ops capability because it can't fail on the field.. For a lot of others you know. Bob Payne: [00:22:10] Well one of them one of the things that I've been thinking about because I quite often talked about high quality and the key is and someone came up to me and said what you're really looking for is expected quality. So and he had an example that was was a big oil and gas company and one of the things that they said is your labels are too good. He's like What do you mean said we need the labels to start to deteriorate immediately said we do not want to see someone pouring a lubricant into a cooking pan in Africa or in some other area where this is unfortunately a common practice with a brand spanking new company logo on the outside of that thing said is we actually need that to deteriorate. And I start to think about that because as you mentioned you know some fine you know I may not have critical transactions push something around or find a roll it back. You know that might be fine. You know canary roll out on Spotify right fine right. Jeffery Payne: [00:23:39] Yep. Bob Payne: [00:23:40] Canary Roll out on the firmware and in a medical device maybe not so fun. Jeffery Payne: [00:23:46] Yeah Bob Payne: [00:23:46] Because the Canary dies Jeffery Payne: [00:23:48] And it's a big Canary. Bob Payne: [00:23:48] . Oh yeah yeah Jeffery Payne: [00:23:55] Yeah. No. No doubt Bob Payne: [00:23:56] Yeah. Jeffery Payne: [00:23:56] And that and that is something that I think people misunderstand about dev ops. [00:24:00] You know when I speak about DevOps at conferences I always well attended everybody's interested in the topic because it's hot Bob Payne: [00:24:06] Right. Jeffery Payne: [00:24:07] People have this perception and unfortunately senior management does that Dev ops means speed and speed alone. The goal no fast can I push things into production. Bob Payne: [00:24:17] But imagine a life critical system where you could have test automation every single infrastructure. Code line Change is auditable in and you can get that level of safety. We used to put two you know extraordinary manual testing. Jeffery Payne: [00:24:44] Yes it was very expensive. Bob Payne: [00:24:45] And it's prone to possibility of non repeatable results. Somebody makes a mistake. Somebody configurations off. And now with you know with tools that where you have immutable infrastructure you have software configured network you can actually know to some a greater degree of certainty than we were able to in the past that you have a Conformance Test system. And that adds a lot of safety. Jeffery Payne: [00:25:24] It does and it helps with regulatory is yes right. I mean the one of the under the under represented aspects of dev ops is CM Bob Payne: [00:25:34] Right. Jeffery Payne: [00:25:34] Because if you're doing it right everything you're dragging your entire manifest of your software your test your environments your even your rollback your recovery procedures your monitoring capability. Dragging that all the way through production in a way that you know where everything came from and everything takes and ties together. And that's what regulators want. Right. Bob Payne: [00:26:00] Those that know they actually want safety they don't care about the stack of documents they use sadly to hopefully inspect that you knew what you're doing. Jeffery Payne: [00:26:08] Want you to demonstrate that you have a process that delivers quality and they want to see that there's relationships between the various things that you're using to do that. And dev ops gives you all that if you do it right. Bob Payne: [00:26:20] Yeah. Jeffery Payne: [00:26:21] If you do it wrong it just you know throws your code down through there and everything around it is changing constantly and you're never really going to get the speed or quality that you want. Bob Payne: [00:26:30] Yep well great so anything you'd like to close out with Jeff for Jeffery Payne: [00:26:36] Well just thanks for the chance to talk. I know you've been doing this a long time and it seems like a great podcast and we're really enjoying the conference. Looking forward to the rest of it. Bob Payne: [00:26:49] And if you can stand to hear me talk then they listen to some of the older ones I think Bob Payne: [00:26:55] Definitely. Jeffery Payne: [00:26:56] Ok cool Bob Payne: [00:26:56] I'll get some popcorn and listen to early one's .. I wish you had started it maybe five years earlier than that right. I mean. Bob Payne: [00:27:03] Yeah yeah Jeffery Payne: [00:27:03] If you had started like right around 2000. Bob Payne: [00:27:05] Yeah Jeffery Payne: [00:27:05] Then Bob Payne: [00:27:06] Yeah. Jeffery Payne: [00:27:07] You know you would have had some interesting.. Bob Payne: [00:27:08] There's a there was some gap years as well. Jeffery Payne: [00:27:12] But Well thank thank you very much for having me. Bob Payne: [00:27:14] Thanks.

  Click above to listen in iTunes... I've come to know and be increasingly amazed by Dana. His knowledge and skillset never ending and very impressive. Dive into this episode with notes to learn how he's using the Dream 100... What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. How's it going everyone, I am super excited for today. I have a very special guest on. Please go stop whatever else you're doing. Again this is another one. Take a piece of paper out, write down notes, write down inspiring things that come to you. This is the kind of episode that not just has the ability to teach you a lot, but have a direct impact on the thickness of your wallet. I'm very excited for our guest today. I have known him for quite some time. I'm always extremely impressed with everything that he does. I want to welcome to the show, Dana Derricks. How you doing man? Dana Derricks: What's up man? Hey, thanks for having me. And for anybody that's listening, if you're in your car, pull over, put your hazards on. Just stop what you're doing. Tell your dog to go away. Your about to get hit with some gold here. Steve Larsen: This is awesome stuff. Thanks for being on. Anyway, I've been just been super impressed with you. I think honestly the first time we met though was we were redoing the homepage of ClickFunnels and Russel's like ... I remember I came in one day and Russel was like ... He was like, "Hey man. Dude I got Dana Derricks man. He's going to come on over and he's going to help us rewrite the entire, all the copy for ClickFunnels' homepage." And I was like, "Cool. Wait, who's this?" "He's the goat farmer." I was like, "Wait there's a guy ... There's a goat farmer who's an internet marketer?" He's like, "Yeah yeah yeah yeah." And then you came out and you showed up, and you had overalls and like, sweet straw farmer hats. And I was like, "This guys is the man." And like ever since then I've just been diving into your stuff. I'm super impressed with what you do. Dana Derricks: Dude, thanks man. I'm glad I have one fan. Steve Larsen: Whatever. Dana Derricks: No, that was so much fun and don't forget what ... By the end of that trip, what did you end up wearing home? Steve Larsen: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So he came in one day, just so everyone on the show ... He came in one day, it was one of the last days, and he had a full chicken suit costume for me. What was ... You gave Dave a massive bear. Russell had ... He was the gorilla right? Dana Derricks: Yeah. Russell was a gorilla, Dave was a bear, you were the chicken. Steve Larsen: That's right. And I thought that it'd be funny to ride that on my motorcycle home. So I did. And we'll put that - Dana Derricks: And... Steve Larsen: In the show notes. Dana Derricks: Yeah. Please. And can we put the picture? Can we dig up the picture too? Steve Larsen: Yeah. I'll go find the picture. I'm just writing that down. Dana Derricks: Oh man. So good. Steve Larsen: Chicken. Dana Derricks: Such a good sport everybody. Steve Larsen, everybody. Steve Larsen: Oh thanks man. Appreciate it. Well hey, just so ... If you guys don't know, if you're not aware, Dana Derricks is one of the, I would say foremost experts on this whole concept that I feel like is extremely kind of gray, cloudy. A lot of people don't understand it, but it's this whole thing around the Dream 100 and how to actually implement it.   And I mean you literally wrote a book on it right? And when did that come out? Dana Derricks: When did the book come out? Steve Larsen: Yeah yeah. Dana Derricks: I think it's been out for about eight months. So probably about towards the end of last, of 2017. Steve Larsen: Okay cool. Now before, before you were doing Dream 100 ... So I mean, first of all, how did you become an advocate of Dream 100? How did you start doing it yourself? Was it ... I mean, I know the story, but for everyone else who's listening, like how does a goat farmer who's also a copywriter, who's also an internet marketer overall product creator, go directly into Dream 100 stuff as well? Could you give us a little backstory there? Dana Derricks: I know. Everybody at this point is probably thinking, "Stephen, what is wrong with you? Where did you find this guy?" Steve Larsen: "Who is this guy?" Dana Derricks: Yeah. "What's happening?" So yeah. So I guess a little bit of a backstory that got me into the Dream 100 was I'm the type of guy that's going to try everything, and then figure out what works and what doesn't. And when I figure out something doesn't work, I just keep moving. Like, so I always say like honestly, there's two things about me that work well. Like, number one I'm too dumb to overthink things so I don't get paralyzed by that. And then number two, for every ten things I try, one of them works and I'm thrilled. Like I'm so grateful for the other nine that didn't work so that I could get those out of the way to find the one that did. Right? So like for me, like I look at like major league baseball right? The best in the world, on the planet, go up to the plate and they end up getting a base hit or you know a single, double, triple home run only three out of ten times. Right? Like nobody goes over four out of ten. So what's happening the other seven out of ten times? They're striking out. They're hitting the ball and getting it caught. Like bad stuff's happening almost over two thirds of the time. Yet like, us in business we go and try one thing, we step up to the plate and we expect to hit a home run, and then when we don't we're like devastated and never want to step up to the plate again. So for me, I was not ... I wish I could share this amazing story of how I fell in love with the Dream 100, and it was this love story. But reality is dude, I tried everything. So back in the days of Google SEO, like, Google AdWords, and then YouTube, and then Facebook, and then like all these things I tried and tried and tried, and it just like, it sucked and I failed. I kept failing, and failing, and then I realized, "Wait a minute." I was already doing the Dream 100 before I even knew what it was, and that was the only thing that ever worked for me. So that's why I got obsessed, doubled down, wrote a book about it, and all that other good stuff. Steve Larsen: I mean, how did you first find out about it though? Was it straight from Chet Holmes course, from Russel's stuff, from ... Where'd you learn about it? Dana Derricks: Yes. So I actually first figured it out through Russell. I think he had something ... One of his things was like the lost chapter on the Dream 100, and he just kind of described what it was, and then he was talking about Chet and I was like, "Oh man. I have sifted through many stacks of hay looking for this needle, and I finally found it." And then I grabbed Chet's trainings and it was like game over from there... Steve Larsen: So what ended up happening. I mean you read this thing, and you go start implementing. Like what did you do first? Because there's a lot of ... I feel like there's just a ton of misconceptions. Everyone thinks it has to be this package, or it has to be this ... I don't know. I think we all over complicate it a bit. Like what did you end up go doing? Dana Derricks: Totally. So well, the first that I think everybody thinks when they first learn about the Dream 100 is, "Oh my gosh, I've already kind of been doing that. Right? I didn't realize it." So for me, the big epiphany immediately was, "Holy crap." So for those that don't know my story, I grew up in a town of, I kid you not, 512 people. Steve Larsen: Oh no way. Dana Derricks: Yeah. My graduating class was 30 and we had a big class. Steve Larsen: Wow. Cool. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So my life growing up, because we didn't have a movie theater, we didn't have a grocery store in town. We had nothing. We had a bunch of cows and not even a goat. Like what the heck? Right? So football was our life, and I love football so much that I didn't want to stop playing after high school. I wanted to play in college. And nobody from my school, or area for that matter, played in college or did anything after high school. Like it was just, like we're too small. Nobody knows about it. Like it's not for real. So I'm like, "Screw that." So none of my coaches ever played college football. They don't know how to help with recruiting and all this. So I'm like, "Screw that. I'm going to do it myself then." And basically what I did is I created these ... Well first I started with ... I printed out a list of 40 schools that I potentially wanted to play football for. And then I made a packet for each school, like literally a box, and in it had like the highlight tape, a letter of recommendation from a coach, a personalized letter addressed to the coach that I was sending it to, all this stuff right. And I mailed all 40. And I was like, "All right, sweet. Let's see what happens." Two weeks goes by nothing. I'm like, "Wow that was a waste of time." Third week, I get called to the principal's office which for me is not a good thing. Like, "Oh man. What did I do?" I go in there and there's a football coach in there, and I'm like, "Whoa." He's like, "Are you Dana," and I'm like, "Yeah. Who are you?" He's like, "I'm Coach so and so." And he's like, "I'm here to recruit you." And I'm like, "What? You're here to recruit me? You came all the way to my town?" He's like, "Yeah," and then day or two goes by and then I get called back in and suddenly there's two coaches in there from two different schools at the same time. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And I remember like ... Yeah. Like my principal pulled me aside and he's like, "Dana when is this going to stop. It's really disruptive." I'm like, "I'm sorry Mr.C, it's like a broken fire hose. I can't do anything." So long story short, because of the Dream 100, I didn't even realize what it was at the time, I ended up getting a pretty major football scholarship, and I'm the only person in the history of my school that's ever gotten any sort of athletic scholarship, and it's 100% thanks to the Dream 100. So that's like the first emotion you go through I think when you learn about the Dream 100 is like, "Oh my gosh. Why didn't I know about this sooner? I was already doing it." You know? And then it turns into, "How do I now leverage the crap out of this in what I'm doing today here and now?" Right? So what I did, just really quick, was I wrote out a list of my Dream 100 right then and there and I remember, I'll never forget, Russell was at the top of my list and I looked at it ... This was not that long ago either. This was only a couple years ago. I looked at it, I'm like, "There's no way that I could ever get that guy to ever pay attention to me or do anything with me." Right? And I erased it. I literally erased it, and then I was like, "Oh maybe." Right? "YOLO." So I put it back up on the side of the list, like with an asterisk. And I'm like, "Eh. Maybe." Right? And then fast forward like couple years, and then I go up, get to meet you and hang out with Russell, and speak at a Funnel Hacking Live, and all this other crazy stuff, and it's all 100% thanks to the Dream 100. Steve Larsen: So for everyone else also, before we started this Dana is an amazing copywriter. He's amazing and Dream 100, and between those two topics I asked him, I was like, "Which one do you want to talk about?" And he said, "Which one do you want to talk about?" I said, "Which one gets you the most frustrated and mad?" And he immediately said, "Dream 100." Why is that? Before we dive into some how you actually put this together, how come the Dream 100 gets you most ticked off compared to copywriting which is also very important? Dana Derricks: I love this question. So for me it's because I feel like it's sort of a tragedy that most ... Every single business isn't ... Like first of all that everybody just doesn't know about it, number one. And then every single business or entrepreneur isn't using it. Like to me that is such a tragedy. And for some reason, like I still don't know why. For some reason when people think of traffic and getting people into their funnels or eyeballs on their offers, or whatever, they instantly think, "Oh Facebook ads. I need Facebook ads." And for some reason, like that apparently is the only traffic source in the world. Right? Like, it's just this crazy misconception and the reality is is the Dream 100 is a much ... How do I want to say it? It's a much more sustainable approach because it will never go away. It worked 50 years ago, it works now, it'll work 50 years from now. And it also ... It's free. I mean it's targeted eyeballs on your stuff for free. And it's all about ... It's really not that difficult. It's just building relationships with people. So that ... I guess that fires me up is like why everybody thinks they need to have Facebook ads or whatever else when they could be using the Dream 100 instead. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I feel like maybe that is part of the issue though is like, most internet marketers now are ... We're just spoiled. I mean before Facebook days, I mean how did everyone get the traffic that they needed. It's exactly what you're talking about right now and I feel like that's ... Not that Facebook's a bad thing, but I don't know how to drive ads. Like I don't want to go learn that stuff. I feel like Dream 100 is so much more long term sustainable, higher leverage sources of eyeballs than going and ... Anyway. And learning that stuff. So you mentioned real fast, you said, "Okay. I went and I ..." It's funny because Russell was number one on mine also, and I was like, "Eh, we'll see. I don't know." How did you make your list? I feel like that's the ... Do you feel like that's the reason people actually never do this? Like one of the choke points? Or how do you actually put it together? Dana Derricks: I think that's a big one. And that's probably the most common question I'm asked when I'm talking about it. Yeah. It's like, "Who was my Dream 100? Who was it?" And I'm like, "Well ..." So finally I came up with a very simplistic equation I can give you and your listeners if you want it. Steve Larsen: Yeah. I'd love that. Dana Derricks: So basically it starts ... It doesn't start with your Dream 100, it starts with you and then your customer avatar. So it's literally this simple. Who is your customer avatar? And that to me is a function of who do you want, as well as who do you not want? So it's who you want, minus who you don't want, equals your customer avatar. Right? And then so I've got my customer avatar, because if you don't have that then the Dream 100 is a very complex, difficult thing because you don't know. Right? So all right. The next question is, where are your customer avatar? Like where do they hang out? Right? Is it certain Facebook groups? Is it associations they're in? Is it ... Are they buying the same book? Are they all subscribed to the same software? Do they listen to the same podcast? Like if you can figure out who your avatar is, figuring out where they are is not that hard, and then wherever they are, whoever owns and controls the group that they're in, the groups I should say, or the audiences, that right there is your Dream 100. Steve Larsen: Interesting. So you go from your customer avatar meaning who you want and don't want, and then you go from where they are, and then who already has them. Dana Derricks: Exactly. Boom. Done. Steve Larsen: Who has them. I'm just taking notes. Dana Derricks: Sure. Steve Larsen: Who has them. Okay, so then from that point, like ... So I'm just ... From when I've launched a lot of stuff and I've got Dream 100 stuff all over my office right now. What ... Huge believer. Huge believer. So I'm excited I get to - Dana Derricks: Yeah man... Steve Larsen: I feel like ... I mean I like to sit down and start creating somewhat of a campaign for each one of these people with a blend of personalization, but also my ability to do it kind of en masse. You know what I mean? To each one of these people. I don't know if that makes sense. But what do you do next to actually get a hold of them? Are you going one by one for each of them? Are you doing something mass that kind of blankets all 100? Dana Derricks: Great questions. So I actually, gosh this is just a little bit off topic but it helps to kind of illustrate this. So how build my system around what's working is I do everything the hardest, longest way possible and then that becomes my system. So for example, if I launch a new offer for something, like if I have a ... If I come out with a new $2000 book right? I will find the person who is absolutely unqualified to buy it, who might want it, but who's totally ... Like for example, maybe they're totally broke. Right? And I will literally go through and answer every single question for them, and have 1500 back and forths if I have to, to then have basically, after the point of first contact to the point where they actually buy the thing, which is like a humongously long duration of time and effort. That is my system. Right? So that is now my system because very single objection basically has already been taken care of, and those are now all scripts that I can use for the next person. So I do the basically ... That's how I look at everything. So for my Dream 100, like let's say I have a target. And I'll use more of a short term target. So like a smaller kind of, more accessible one. Because Russell, that's a long term play. Right? But like a smaller one that you could start the conversation with already is like ... You definitely have the elements of personalization, so figuring out ... And this all comes obviously from ... So for those of you that are Dream 100'ing Stephen, you're in the right place because listening to his podcast is a great way to get his attention and get to know him, and the second secret sauce I'll tell you is, buy all of his stuff. Okay? So there's a correlation usually between how much access you get to someone, and how much money you've spent with them. So - Steve Larsen: That is fascinating actually. Dana Derricks: Right? Steve Larsen: Man. You say too much good stuff man. You got to slow down. I can't write that fast. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So for me it's like, I'll just pick ... So when you're starting out, it's really critically important to just pick one that isn't years down the road, so don't go after Tony Robbins on your first one. But also don't go after somebody that is already in your network that you could get a yes from without even having to go through all the hoops of all the other stuff right? And then just figure out what it is that can just showcase to them that you care about what they say, and you listen, and you consume their stuff, and you buy their stuff. Right? So I've had people ... I learned this myself, they're like, "Well are you ..." I wanted to partner with software companies before and they asked, "Well are you a subscriber of the software?" And I'm like, "Good question." Right? Like, "I should probably get an account and get to know it really well before I should expect them to want to do anything with me." Right? So that's the beginning. If you're not already doing that, then it's going to be really really difficult. But once you are, then ... Because it's like you're part of the community right? And - Steve Larsen: It's funny that ... There's a few times I've tried to reach out, or someone reached out to me, and they're like, "How do I learn this?" I'm like, "You serious? I have a course on this." They're like ... You know there's been times when ... Anyway. I don't know how else to say yes, amen, ahh, little hallelujah, lights coming down. What he's saying right now, please visualize bright shiny objects and things in the sky because that is so gold. Dana Derricks: That's funny man. But yeah, like if you think about it, makes total sense too. Like, if you're already ... And the other ... To take that a step further, is if you can contribute value to their community, right? So like for me with Russell, I have intentionally ... I don't ... I love helping people, but like I'm not getting paid and I'll go into the ClickFunnels community, the Facebook group or whatever, and I just go help people. I'm not there, I don't have an agenda. I don't have ... I'm not selling them. I'm just going in there and helping. So if they have a question to something that I know the answer to, I'll spend five, ten minutes helping them. Steve Larsen: Which you're so good at man. I've seen you pop around all over the place doing that. Like I watch you do that all the time. You're such a ... Ah, it's awesome. Okay cool. Yeah. Dana Derricks: Thanks man. Well hey, see I'm glad somebody notices. Steve Larsen: I do man. Yeah I turn back around I'm like, "Man this group doesn't even ... It's not even active anymore. Or this." I'm like, "Man, Dana wrote a long incredible response to that. This is cool. He spent a lot of time on this." Dana Derricks: So yeah. Because if you think about it, who's the perfect person for a guy like Russell to put on stage at his live event? Somebody that the community already knows, likes, and trusts. Right? Somebody that has invested in him and what he's building. And then, not only like monetarily. Yeah I gave him a lot of money to get into his inner circle, right? But also like, I spend quite a bit of time, and energy, and effort on helping his people for free. I don't ask for anything in return you know? So it's like ... That's a deadly combination for anybody to ... How can you say no? Right? Steve Larsen: Right. Oh interesting. Dana Derricks: So if somebody's saying no to you, ask yourself those three things. Am I already buying their stuff and consuming their stuff, and in the community? Am I contributing to the community? And have I ... What was the last one? Oh. I think, have I given them a lot of money? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay okay. So once ... Let's say ... Let's say ... Right. Because there was some point when Russell's like, "Wow. I'm now aware of Dana," and you realize that he is. How do you move forward? I feel like that's one of the other major questions kind of from the community that happens. They'll be like, "What do I say to him next?" You know, "When do I drop, 'Hey we need stuff?'" What's the steps forward after you've gotten their attention? Dana Derricks: This is like the second most frequently asked question is like, "I don't know what to say to him" or "I just feel like ..." Whatever. And I'll share quick like ... So Lady Boss, Brandon and Kaelin Poulin, amazing human beings, I work with them. They're in my intensive I call it. It's kind of like a course mastermind blend. And they build a $10 million company off of paid ads. And I'm just thinking to myself, "Holy crap. If I could make $10 off paid ads I'd be thrilled," right? And they're like, "We should probably try this Dream 100 thing." And I'm like, "Yeah you probably should. Good idea." So three days before Funnel Hacking Live, Brandon the action taker he is, he enrolled in my course and then he's like, "You know what? I got a guy I think I'm going to put in this spot." So because they're a big company, they can just by having a full-time affiliate partnership management person. Right? So he ends up being Brandon's brother, and his name's Jeff. He's awesome. And Jeff asked me three days before the event this exact question right? Because Kaelin was going to be on stage, which is an amazing opportunity for people to know Lady Boss, and I'm sure there are people in the sea of the 3000 plus that they could potentially work with somehow right? Or they know somebody that they could. So Jeff's like, "Dana," he's like, "I'm really new to this. What do I say to people?" And I'm like, "Jeff, this is the only thing you have to make sure you say. Everything else just be yourself, but this is what you have to say. Before you end any conversation, just ask the question, 'How can we help each other?'" That's it. If you can just get that question out there, they may not have the answer immediately, but at least it gets their mind going, and number one it like tells them what your agenda is. It's not, "Hey can you do Lady Boss?" No. It's like, "Hey. We want to help each other," and that's kind of how it was for me as well with Russell is I got on his radar, and then you know it's like, "How can I help you with what you're doing? How can I help ClickFunnels?" Right? And then that's how it came to, "Hey. You could probably help me by coming out here and knocking this copy for the homepage." Right? So a really long winded way of saying like, if you can just always have that question in your mind, "How can we help each other," then it just takes care of the rest. Steve Larsen: You know, it's interesting, with that approach, which I absolutely love because it comes from a place of friendship, and adding value, I mean you think about Dream 100 ... I mean, doing that 100 times, I mean it's easy to see how ... You easily could have a full-time position with somebody just doing that alone. Managing those relationships, working on the next pieces. Is there ever ... What's the point in the relationship after you've been adding value, because I'm sure it's different for everybody. We're all different, but is there a time where ... Because some of them probably come up and go, "Hey. Let me promote your stuff." But then there's probably other times you have to come back out and say, "Oh my gosh, he's not getting it, or maybe I do have to be a little more forward." Like how do you approach somebody and say that without sounding ... After you've given value, they know you're there, they know you're there to help, you've clearly developed a relationship. What's the way that you approach them and say, "Promote my stuff?" Dana Derricks: Love it. So I basically relate it to marriage. So me personally I would never get down on a knee if I didn't know the gal was going to say yes. I just don't want to be the next YouTube marriage proposal fail video. Right? Steve Larsen: Which are great to watch. Dana Derricks: Oh yeah. As a viewer. Yeah. So I look at it the same way as like ... Like I ask myself, "Have I built up enough goodwill with this person," whether that's buying their stuff, consuming their stuff, being in their community, contributing to their community, or whatever. Contributing directly to them. "Have I done enough of that for them to say yes to what I'm going to ask?" And if the answer isn't a clear yes, I just keep giving value. And usually for me, it's get to the point where people will ask me, "How can I help you?" Like all the time. That's one of the most common asked questions I have is from people just when I see them at events and stuff, and it's like, "How can we help you?" And then I'm like, "Hm. Well let me think about that for a second..." And then it's just the perfect ... So that's the thing is like, can you confidently say yes you've built enough goodwill up for them to say yes. And then number two, if not just continue to give them more value somehow. Steve Larsen: That makes total sense. Okay okay. So we've gone through ... Okay. Gone through how you make the list, psychology of ... I love your approach by the way. That is just pure gold. Choose the hardest way possible because that becomes a system. That way all the objections popup and you can address those in scripts. Things like that. Just brilliant. How to actually ... What do you do with the Dream 100 next? How can we help each other? On to promoting. Okay. You are notoriously known in the inner circle, in pretty much everywhere who's ever come in contact with you, for your incredible packages that you do send. Dana Derricks: Oh man. Steve Larsen: Could you talk a little bit about the way that you do that? I know that Dream 100 itself is not packages, but obviously that is a strategy and a method. Could you tell us a little bit about what it is that you're sending out and what you're working through as you go through each person? Because I've heard some pretty amazing stuff get sent around from you. Dana Derricks: Oh man. Well do I have your address? I'll have to get it. So yeah. Russell talks about ... Because somebody asked him this once, and he had a great response. He said that he likes to theme things. And I didn't even realize that I was doing it, but he mentioned me as well. But he does superheroes. You know. So that kind of takes some of the question out of what you should be sending is if you can latch onto a theme. So for me, obviously goats. So I've got ... Let's see if I have one. Oh I must have sent it out. Oh no I have one. Hold on, wait for it. Steve Larsen: Is that the screaming goat thing? Dana Derricks: That's the screaming goat. Steve Larsen: Nice. Dana Derricks: Oh I got to get you one man. Oh my gosh. That's the best way to crush any awkward silence ever right there. Steve Larsen: Just play that. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So my stuff is really goat related. And then the other thing that I look at is ... And the other thing, if you're creative you don't have to spend a lot of money. I know that's a concern for people, and at the end of the day though this stuff is so valuable, as soon as you get one, yes everything's paid for. So I keep that in the back of my mind. That keeps me going. But as far as like making it stand out and be cool, because I get stuff ... People send me stuff and I hope ... I don't care if they're listening or not. Steve Larsen: It's a lesson. It's a lesson. We're all good. Dana Derricks: Yeah. Like I love you guys. Keep sending me stuff. There is a difference though between something that somebody personally put together in a box, and somebody that just sends me a gift from Amazon with like a gift card, or the typed out thing from Amazon. Like both are cool, and you doing just the Amazon thing is better than 99% of people. But like there's something to be said about that hand touch and stuff. So for me like, I guess my creativity comes out because one of the things I sent to everybody in the inner circle that kind of got everybody kind of, I don't know, in a frenzy was - Steve Larsen: Yeah.. Dana Derricks: Yeah. Was a wizard stick. So long story short, my dad lives in Texas, I'm in Wisconsin and I like to send to his Christmas gifts. So a couple years ago I bought this weird like weed puller thing where it's like you don't have to bend over to pull weeds out. It's like ... You know what I'm talking about? Steve Larsen: Yeah yeah. Totally. Dana Derricks: And I open it up from Amazon or whatever, and then I forgot. Threw the box away and then I was like, "Oh man. It's like 4:50 PM on a Friday. I need to get this out to my dad." So I went to the post office and I'm like, "Do you have a box that this would maybe fit in?" And they're like, "No not at all." And I'm like, "Oh crap." But he's like, the post master was like, "But we could send it like that." I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah." Like picture basically like a shovel. Essentially a shovel. He's like, "We could send it just like that." I'm like, "Wait what? You don't have to put in a box?" He's like, "No." So basically, picture the shovel. They just printed off the label, and then like stuck it to the handle of the shovel, and then the shovel got sent in the mail just like that. Like no box. And so I'm like, "Huh. You don't have to put things in boxes. That's amazing." So I sent out these wizard staffs or whatever, and I zip tied a wizard hat on top, and didn't put it in a box, and all these sticks essentially showed up at people's mailboxes and it was just this big crazy viral thing. And stuff like that that's just way more memorable and exciting when stuff like that shows up than just a box from Amazon. You know? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Let's say ... Okay. So I've identified my Dream 100, I've contributed some things to the community, I really want to do things to grab their attention, what are some of the ... I mean, how much money are you spending on each one of these packages? You mentioned it could be cheap, and sometimes that's better, but how much money per package do you expect, or ... I guess that's the question. How much money do you expect to be spending on each one of them? Dana Derricks: If I can keep it under ... So depends on the target too. I segment my Dream 100 with A, B, and C. Steve Larsen: Oh really? Dana Derricks: Yeah. A is being like the top, B is being like middle, and then C is being like quick wins. Reason for that is because another things that people ask is like, "Well how high should I shoot?" And if you have all like, Russell, Gary V., Grant Cardone's on your list, like it's not that it won't happen, it's just that's not going to happen any time soon. You know? So I learned an expensive lesson from my football scholarship. And that was I ended up playing in a division two school, which they still give great football scholarships, and mine was a huge one, but wasn't a D one school because I listened to the doubt in my head that I was never good enough to play D one so I didn't even print off any D one schools. I really regret that to this day. So I just had B's on the list. And so if I'm looking at ... Typically for a B campaign, or even some C's, if I can keep my packages between $20 and $40 a piece, I'm pretty happy with that. But again, there come ... It comes with like, pretty relentless followup. Because if you just sent the box to somebody, good luck. But you got to do more than that. You know? Steve Larsen: Right. Right right. Followup process. What does your followup process typically look like? Dana Derricks: Oh man. So - Steve Larsen: Because you're a beast at this man. I'm pumped to hear this. Dana Derricks: It's very extensive. So ... Oh man. Do you want the whole ... Not like the whole thing, but do you want to know the extent I go? Steve Larsen: Yeah, totally. I do. Because I feel like what people do is, let's say I go put the package together, I go to the mailbox, I drop the thing off. Boom. I've now done Dream 100. You know? That's kind of it, and people kind of like rinse their hands. "Yes, I get my success cookie for the day." But it's really not over... Dana Derricks: No. It's just beginning. Steve Larsen: You're brilliant at this part. I'm so pumped. Dana Derricks: Thanks man. So that's like ... If you're running a marathon, that's the gun that just started the marathon. But you can go home with your marathon number on, and you've dressed up, and congrats you participated, but you didn't finish. Right? So for me it's like, I'll send them ... For me really the lumpy mail is permission to follow up with them. That's all it is. Because if I send somebody a gift card, or I don't care, wizard stick in the mail, like I have the right to follow up with you now. Right? I've spent money, invested time and money into you, now you don't have to work with me, or say yes to what I'm asking, but you do have to reply. Like that's the decent thing to do. So I will then send them an email followup, and it's never like, "Hey did you get my email?" Like have you ever had somebody message you 17 times on 17 platforms saying, "Did you see my email?" Steve Larsen: Yeah. "I called you. I called you. I called you. I called you." You're like, "Oh my. I know. I saw it, okay?" Dana Derricks: Dude. Yeah. Like we saw it. Like - Steve Larsen: It drives me nuts. Dana Derricks: Right. But if it's like, "Hey did you see the package I sent?" That's a different ball game. That's like, "Whoa you spent money on me, and you took the time and energy to cut through and go to me in the mail." Right? So I'm always like, "Hey did you get the box yet that I sent," or whatever. And I'm not like ... I'm never annoying about it because like, I'll look at the tracking and make sure the thing was delivered before I'm like, "Hey did you get the box?" And they're like, "No, what box?" Right? It's like ... So that ... So it's basically multi-channel followup. It's really ... It's extensive. So it'll go from emails and Facebook messages and whatever they are on, and then if I get no response from them, and I know that they're potentially seeing my messages and I've gone to the extent of like, two, three, four weeks of followups, next is a dodge ball in the mail. Steve Larsen: Wait you send them an actual dodge ball in the mail? Dana Derricks: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Steve Larsen: So you're calling them out? Dana Derricks: Oh yeah. If I have their address, they're so screwed man. Steve Larsen: I didn't know you do that. That's funny man. Dana Derricks: Oh yeah. Well that's because you've replied to me. Steve Larsen: Oh that's funny. Dana Derricks: So dodge ball. Rubber snakes work really well. It's literally ... And it's always ... Here's a thing. It's always got to be around humor though, and sarcastic, otherwise it's just ... It wouldn't work. So like the dodge ball's like, "Come on man. You're dodging me." And they know I'm not going to stop at this point. And the rubber snake, I think it's just to hilarious to think of the thought of them opening a box to see a snake inside. Like, it's just so funny. So I've never had to go past the snake, but the next one ... This is kind of naughty, but I will, I am prepared to send a certified with like a W9 inside that basically says, "All right man, have it your way. If you don't want to reply, then I guess you can pay the taxes on all this stuff I sent you." It's all a big joke, but that's the extent. Like people don't see ... They think you ... Like you said, they just send something and then all these good things happen and it's not. You have to really work. Steve Larsen: You have to really keep going on them. Dana Derricks: Yeah. And just be ... But being like ... Not badgering them though either. Steve Larsen: There's a line. Dana Derricks: Value. Yeah. For sure. Steve Larsen: Okay, so someone ... Is the package ... I've heard you say this before, but just for everyone listening. Is the package the first thing you send to them? Dana Derricks: No. So what I've found is ... I'm not sure the number, like the percentage. I'd say it's close to half. Probably close to half the Dream 100 deals I've made, I've never had to send anything in the mail. Steve Larsen: Wow. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So that's more of like, it's in the tool belt, it's like a special kind of like drill. Right? You can use it when you need to, but you don't have to use it. So for me it's like more so cutting through the noise, and then giving me permission to continue to followup. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Okay. You just turn up the heat when you get to packages. Dana Derricks: For sure. And then also though, it's also about nurturing too. So I send my existing affiliate Dream 100 people, like my number one affiliate last year, I sent him ... I think I probably told you this before, but I sent him a big screen TV and surround sound just out of the blue. Right? Just to keep him happy and yeah. So that's when it comes back in is really just spoiling people and giving them gifts and all that good stuff. Steve Larsen: So ... Okay. So I mean you've given a lot of ways to actually pull this off, to get attention. As far as like pulling off a JV with them, and them ... Could you go through some of the practices that you have when someone says yes. Like, "Yeah I'm super super excited to dropout." You know, my people [ Dana. I've heard a lot of people that go by ... I don't know. They'll pull like a URL up. There's a whole lot of like small little isms and little practices that are out there. Do you mind going through just a few of those? Dana Derricks: Yeah, sure. So is this ... What's the goal? To get them to promote? Steve Larsen: Yeah. I guess as far as like they've said yes. As far as pulling off the JV with them. What are some of the things that you do to make that go smoothly? Dana Derricks: Sure. Great question. So the number one hurdle that you'll have to get through first is getting them to actually do it. Because all these people will tell you yes because they don't want to disappoint you or whatever. But few will actually follow through and do the promotion. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Dana Derricks: Yeah. And Russell talked about this too. He said ... I don't know if he's faxed me this or where I heard it but, he said for every hundred people you target, you'll probably only end up with maybe about six that actually do the promotion with you. And of those six probably only about three will actually be worth all that time and energy. Steve Larsen: Totally believe that. Dana Derricks: Yeah. Right? So I break it down like this for ... And my students do it this way. So it's like, first things first. Once we're to the point where we think we can ask, we do. And then when they say yes, we're always selling the thing that sells the thing. So it's not like ... It's getting the calendar. Getting it penciled in on the calendar. That is like the next win we need. That's what we're trying to sell. If we can get that dang spot locked up, I can remember there were ... I was on the phone with the CEO of very well known company in our space, and he's just like, "Yeah we're booked through whatever." And I'm just like, "Dude. You know what? That's totally cool. Let's just do October. Right? How's that? Like, October clean for you?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah okay." And then I'm like, "All right cool. How about the 12th?" And then just getting it on there because if they're going to be like, "Oh I want to look at my schedule, I have to view calendar, I'll have to get back to you," or whatever. But more friction right? Steve Larsen: Sidestep. Yeah. Dana Derricks: Yeah. So I found too like where it was ... Excuse the sirens this is a big deal for a town of 1000. Steve Larsen: You're good. No worries. Dana Derricks: So like, also I've been surprised too where like I had it penciled in, I'm thinking, "Yeah they just told me that so I would keep them happy, or keep me happy." And then they actually did do it on that date and time. So it was like, "Wow, this is awesome." So that's the first big thing. And then making sure that you take everything off their plate. Because the minute they thing that they're going to have to lift a finger for this, they don't want to do it. Right? So from beginning to end, we do every single thing. We will create all the swipe files for them to send out. We'll create all the affiliate ... I call them co-branded funnels. So if we're pushing a webinar for example, it'll be a co-branded webinar funnel. We'll offer to host a webinar if they are cool with that. And then we deliver everything to them about like two weeks in advance just so that everything's done. And then we followup and make sure. That's what's really cool about having an affiliate manager is that they kind of take care of all that, but like we'll make sure that every step of the way is covered so they don't - Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. Oh man that's super ... Okay wow. That's crazy cool. And what do you when you ... Because I mean, I'm sure it happens right? You go out and you're getting ... I mean I've had those people ...I've had this happen also. Like you go out and someone says yes. You get the few yes's. Six say yes, three actually do it. What do you do with those other three? Dana Derricks: Good question. So - Steve Larsen: Is that when you send them the W9? Dana Derricks: So if they've said yes but you just haven't got it scheduled yet, right? So I would try, just throw it way out in the future, and if you still don't then there's something there they want to do something with you, but apparently the way that it presented was ... That might not be what they're actually going to be comfortable doing. So I would like at trying to down sell it somehow. So if it was originally, "We're going to do a, you know, a joint venture webinar together," maybe starting out with a Facebook live might be better right? Something that's a little bit easier them to not have to fully commit to, or even just like doing an email to their list or something like that. Because even that's going to be better than nothing, and if you look at ... That's another thing that we ... Is pretty cool. So if you can do something successful with them, even if it's something small, you can go back to them and do something big. So you know, look at Russell with Grant Cardone. He went to 10X last year, and basically wasn't given ... He got on stage, and he was allowed to pitch kind of, but he wasn't allowed to do half of what he asked to do. Steve Larsen: Right. The true Russell style. Dana Derricks: Exactly right. Grant's like, "We're going to do it my way." He's like, "Okay, fine." And Russell did it Grant's way, got some wins out of it, but then look what happened the next year. Russell go to to go there and call the shots. He said, "I want this. I need that." Grant and his team said, "Okay. Whatever. You proved yourself last time." And then boom. Closes $3 million in an hour and a half. Right? But he would have never been able to do that had it not been the year before doing it Grant's way, doing it smaller, doing it in a way that Grant was more comfortable with. Steve Larsen: That's cool. That's cool. Okay. I know I'm just pounding you man. I got one more question for you. Scenario is, right, you go off, you've done the successful ones with the three, you're obviously continuing to work and warm up the leads for the other 97 as you go through. With the ones that you have done it with though, what's kind of your play as you move forward? Are you hitting them again for the next promo? Are you ... I guess post successful campaign, what kind of actions do you take with that person? Dana Derricks: Yeah. So for me, especially like once you've figured out who's good, for me it's like how can we integrate? So I just want to turn and take it to the next level. So for me personally, like let's say that I'm JVing with somebody from my course, and we do a webinar together, kill it. We do five, six figures together, whatever. I want to work with that person. I don't want to just do once a year, once a quarter. I want like full on, how can we work together. So I always offer ... What I've been doing a lot is I'll create a bonus module for whatever their thing is, if they've got a course. I'll come in there and basically teach a bonus module, or I will throw in my book in their value stack, or whatever just so that I can get not just access to their audience, on the one off promotions, but for every single buyer that comes into their world, they see me and the affiliate doesn't have to do a thing. Right? And it comes back to value. Like this module I make, it's not like a pitch necessarily. There might be call to action. There is a call to action of course, but this is value, value, value and it's always enhancing the thing that they already sold. That's kind of the secret there. So I look at integration after a successful one. Steve Larsen: Oh man, that's interesting. That's so cool. Man you have just like, just divulged. I have a full page of notes. Just given so much. I just appreciate that like crazy. I mean right, there's only a few people that ever really even written about this topic. The Chet Holmes. Amazing Chet Holmes, Russell himself, and you. That's it man. Like those are the options. I know you have a book that has come out and is amazing. You have a lot of people ... I have a lot people who'd come and ... The book's incredible. And I'm very very excited for it. Where can people go get the book? How do they find out more about you and follow you? Dana Derricks: Yeah. For sure. For anybody that's kind of vibing with this, and you're like, "Oh man, that sounds a lot better than running Facebook ads or running after the next shiny object," Stephen and I are totally Dream 100 junkies, and I'd love for you guys to do the same. So it's called The Dream 100 Book. Actually had the foreword written by Russell. It's pretty cool. I think Stephen's read it. Steve Larsen: Woo-hoo. Yeah. Dana Derricks: There is a caveat. Actually listen to Stephen's advice. So one of things you have really made famous Stephen is the concept of sell it before you make it. Right? Which I love by the way. I actually did that. Stephen said to do that - Steve Larsen: No way. Dana Derricks: Yeah dude. So I sold a copy of The Dream 100 Book, my first copy, for $2000 before I wrote one page of it. Steve Larsen: No way. I didn't know that. Dana Derricks: Yeah dude. Because Russell says writing a book is similar to giving childbirth. Which is...None of us know, but it's probably true. And so there was no better incentive to write a book than to have somebody on the hook for two grand that's waiting for it. Right? So anyway, that's the caveat. It is $2000. However, because Stephen was so gracious to put on a chicken suit and drive around on a motorcycle in Boise, Idaho - Steve Larsen: I secretly just loved it. I was excited. Dana Derricks: Yeah. I mean if he didn't like it, he was putting on a good show. So for you guys listening, if you're vibing with this, I'm actually going to let you guys get a copy of it for free. Steve Larsen: Holy crap. Dana Derricks: I don't do this really for money that much anymore, so I'm cool with that as long as you guys don't share this with the rest of the world. [inaudible 00:48:48] The mad buyers that paid two grand for it. So the link is going to be ListentoStephen.com. ListentoStephen.com. Steve Larsen: That's cool man. Appreciate that. It's S-T-E-P-H-E-N. Yeah? Dana Derricks: Correct. The good spelling. Steve Larsen: Yeah, the good spelling. The biblical way. No but seriously, just echo what Dana's saying here like I ... Funnel's nothing without traffic. And especially as an entrepreneur and those of you guys who were listening. I know you guys are go getters. This podcast is getting a significant amount of downloads daily now and I thank you all for listening, but what I want you to know ... And that's the way that I think about it too. Russell thinks about it, Dana thinks about it. Like all these top guys, they're not out looking usually for like this little tiny trick insight of a platform. Right? A Facebook trick. A Twitter trick. They're not looking ... That's not how they do it. Instead, they outsource that piece of it, because we all know it's still important, and they go focus 100% of the time on developing these kinds of relationships. So anyway, I'm super excited. That was very very generous of you give that Dana. So it's ListentoStephen.com. Dana Derricks: Totally. And you all should listen to Stephen. Keep listening to him. Steve Larsen: I appreciate that. Well thanks for being on the show man, and where can everyone go to follow you as well? Dana Derricks: So being the farmer I am, I don't think I'm on instant grams. I'm over on Facebook, or DanaDerricks.com, or just keep listening to Stephen, and every once in a while I'll probably pop up. Steve Larsen: Absolutely. All right. Hey, thanks so much for being on the show. And everyone go to ListentoStephen.com and get the free copy of ... It's literally called Dream 100. Was two grand, for this audience it's free. Dana Derricks: Go get it. Steve Larsen: Boom. Just try to tell me you didn't like that. Hey whoever controls content controls the game. Want to interview or get interviewed yourself? Grab a time now at SteveJLarsen.com.

After a short discussion of the history of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (and to a much larger extent, She-Ra) it becomes instantly apparent that strong women hold pretty much every major plot point of the story together. Whether it's Queen Veena preserving the power of King Grayskull, the Sorceress keeping Castle Grayskull guarded, or Teela keeping Adam from falling into a tar pit, it's pretty plain to see that the ladies keep things on Eternia from falling apart. So Jeff and Eddie wanted to discuss some of the female characters of the Masters of the Universe as a starting point to begin to discuss the characters individually! Also, keep an ear out from Eternia's only cowboy, Rio Blast!

TVI Toolbox: Success Stories, Tools for Success - #BeMyEyes App, Meet Jeff Mihiletch  Blind Abilities presents the TVI Toolbox. Where the collaboration between Teachers, Counselors, Parents, Agencies and the Students themselves help enhance the opportunities for success. Transitioning from high school to college and the workplace is  a major step and the beginning of lifetime goals and aspirations. As Jeff Mihiletch, this month’s featured interview in the Success Stories portion of this podcast, puts it, “Braille is a tool he wished he would have given a better chance.”    From the TVI’s to the Agency counselor’s and program specialist, working together along with parents as well, is creating more opportunities and successes for Transition age students. Sharing experiences through Success Stories, sharing programs that make a positive impact, sharing ideas, findings, upcoming events and the Tools for Success all play a part in making the transition process a natural progression and better understood by all.     On The Horizon is a bulletin space for upcoming events, information and resources submitted by listeners and our staff. You can submit to On the Horizon by emailing Jessica Hodges. The Success Stories feature an experience of a Transition Student, whether they are attending college, preparing for college or are now employed, the Success Stories brings a positive and a sharing of the experience of transitioning from high school to college and the work place.   Here are the links to the information we bring to this episode.   Scholarships from the National Federation of the Blind   Perkins Program for Students   Blind, Inc Summer Programs   Summer Transition Program (STP) Extended School Year Program Deb Peterson at DPeterson@916schools.org     Check out your State Services by searching the Services Directory on the AFB.org web site.   State Services for the Blind of Minnesota   We offer tools and training for employment and for helping seniors remain independent and active. As Minnesota’s accessible reading source we also transcribe books and other materials into alternative formats, including audio and braille. We assist Minnesotans who are blind, DeafBlind, losing vision, or who have another disability that makes it difficult to read print. I hope you find what you need here. We've also created a Tips for Using Our New Website page. If you’d like to apply for services, learn more, or have more questions, just give us a call. You’ll find contact information for all of our offices on our contact page, or you can call our main office at 651-539-2300.   You can submit to the On The Horizons segment by email to jessica.Hodges@state.mn.us Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.   Full Transcript:   TVI Toolbox: Success Stories, Tools for Success - #BeMyEyes App, Meet Jeff Mihiletch (Music)     Dacia: It's your job, disability or not, to know what you bring to the table, and sell that. That's your job.   Narrator: Welcome to the blind abilities TVI Toolbox. I'm Jeff Thompson.   Dacia: Because they don't have any experience with vision loss, so they're thinking to themselves, "I don't know if I could do that if I couldn't see right. I'm not sure that they're going to be able to do that." That's what... there inner monologue isn't about you, it's about what they think that you can't do, and their bias.   Narrator: TVI toolbox is a tool for teachers, for agencies, for clients to enhance the opportunity and the understanding of transition services. Professionals talking about the services they provide. Teachers of the visually impaired talking about topics of transitioning from high school, to college, to the work place. Students talking about their journeys, there successes, and some of the barricades and brick walls that were in there way, and solutions, tips, and tricks on how they got through it.   Dasha: We try to help them develop resumes right from the beginning. We would like some body that even as young as fifteen sixteen to have a resume that they can continuously add to, to build on. It really puts in front of them a more realistic view of "Ok, well I can add this to my resume. I can do this because I can add that. This is going to bring value." It kind of gives them more of an ownership of there experience.   Narrator: That's (probable spelling mistake here,) Dasha van Alstine. She's an employment program specialist at state services for the blind, working with clients, counselors, and employees, to optimize the opportunities for successful employment.   Dasha: I always tell people, if you go into an interview, and you're thinking that you're not the best candidate, you're probably not.   Narrator: On this episode of TVI Toolbox, we'll be talking about employment. We'll be hearing more from Dasha van Alstine, and the success story today features Jeff Mihiletch, with A BS degree in Business Administration. And Jessica Hodges with On the Horizon, where she brings you recent news and events with particular interest in the transition process with a blindness perspective. And the tools for success spotlight is Be My Eyes. It's an ap that, well, kind of speaks for itself. Now, here's employment program specialist Dasha van Alstine. Dasha, welcome to blind abilities. Can you tell our listeners what your roll is at state services?   Dasha: Hi Jeff. I am a program specialist for the employment team at state services for the blind.   Narrator: Tell us a little more about the employment team.   Dasha: The employment team works with various counselors and customers on anything from the very beginning of how to choose a job goal, all the way up to when it's time to close your case. So are you ready, do you have everything you need, do you need additional training, we're there all along the way. Whereas a counselor looks at an entire situation, we look at everything from absolute employment   Narrator: Dasha, for a transition student, what would a first meeting with the employment team look like?   Dasha: That can be at any type of stage, it depends on... if somebody has done a lot of research various...market information on their own, we might not meet with any of us until later. Someone who really needs some help and some direction with trying to figure out what they want to be, and what that's going to look like, and where the doors are going to open, they might meet with us right away.   Narrator: So first they work with state services, then when it comes time to think about employment, that's when they get handed off to the employment team?   Dasha: Well, preferably, they wouldn't just get handed off to our team. We would want to have some sort of relationship with them from the beginning. I'll give you an example. A college student, someone who knows that they're college bound know they want to go to college to get to a career, we'll look at them right before it happens and say, "Ok, what is your job goal? What do you want to do? What are the various avenues to get there." We'll work on what is the most appropriate way from point A to point B, for you, with college in the middle there. And then, in college, a lot of times there will be some check ins. We'll check on them, hey, how's it going? Have you thought about an internship yet? Are you working during school? Do you need help finding something. You know, what can we do to assist you?" We make connections for them, and sometimes we help them find part time employment, or find there internship. A lot of times, we'll work with the school to try to figure that out with them, to try to get them more independent and not depending on us. And then, when they're getting ready to graduate, sometime before the last semester, we help the figure out, you know, it's time to start looking. Because ideally, you want a job before you graduate, you want that job to be ready for you.   Narrator: Dasha: With the age of transition students, I imagine that a lot of them have not had too much job experience. Does the employment team have a component for people to learn about job interviews and filling out resumes?   Dasha: It's different for each person. That begins whenever appropriate. Some people, especially our young people, We try to help them develop resumes right from the beginning. We would like some body that even as young as fifteen sixteen to have a resume that they can continuously add to, to build on. It really puts in front of them a more realistic view of "Ok, well I can add this to my resume. I can do this because I can add that. This is going to bring value." It kind of gives them more of an ownership of there experience. Every aspect of every case is so different. There are some people that need us to do the resume and then walk them through what we did. There's other people that we just give some guidance to, and they do it. you know, everything is so individualized, it's wherever it's appropriate for each individual case.   Narrator: That's great. Dasha, there's a saying, don't judge a book by it's cover, but in the employment situation, in job interviews, can you tell us a little bit about first impressions?   Dasha: First impressions are really important, especially if you have a vision loss, because there's a really good chance that whoever you're meeting has never met someone with a vision loss before. There's no back ground there. They're going to base whatever experience they have with you, and project that onto every other person that they ever meet in the future who has a vision loss. When you meet somebody, especially if you're going in for an interview, you want to make sure that first of all, you're nice to the receptionist, because if you're not nice to the receptionist, the person interviewing you is going to find out, and you're not going to get that job. Just saying, the receptionist, that's the barrier there. Be nice to them. And second of all, once you do meet somebody, and if you have to follow them, make sure that you're comfortable, and don't be afraid to ask for information. Left or right? Where's the room? Don't be afraid to ask those kinds of directions.. With first impressions, you want to make sure that you are well put together. You want to make sure that you don't go into a business with saggy clothes, or with dirty clothes. You want to make sure that your hair is, you know, presentable, that you're not wearing baseball caps. You also want to make sure that you can speak clearly, concisely, have some confidence, that's going to be really important to an employer. Even if you're just walking in to pick up an application. Just go to the receptionist, be nice, "Hi, you know, my name is so and so. I was wondering if you're hiring. Can I get an application? Even something as simple as that. That goes a a long way. You also want to make sure that when you do talk to somebody, especially if it's an interview, you're going to get that, "Tell me about yourself." You could even get that when you meet an employer at a job fair, or an internship fair. Tell me about yourself. You want to make sure, especially if you have more of an obvious disability, you want to make sure that you kind of address that in a way that makes it so they're not thinking about that, they're thinking about your skills. A lot of people make the mistake of never saying anything, and then an employer, the whole time that they're talking is thinking well... Because they don't have any experience with vision loss, so they're thinking to themselves, "I don't know if I could do that if I couldn't see right. I'm not sure that they're going to be able to do that." That's what... there inner monologue isn't about you, it's about what they think that you can't do, and their bias.  So it's up to you to make sure that you sell yourself. Sell your skills. Tell how you do things. Go into it with confidence. Know what your skills are ahead of time. Know what you have to offer  the employer, and just go into it that way. And this is not just with employers. This is also useful with your professors.   Narrator: Dasha, I was just doing an interview with a business owner, Susan Robinson. She said that she'd never hired a person because they had sight. She always hired a person because she felt they could best do the job that she needed to get done   Dasha: Yes, it's all about the what can you do for me. Employers hire because they have a job that they have to get done. They don't hire because they want to feel good. They don't hire because they want to spend a bunch of money. They do it because they have a job, and they have to get it done. So your job is to make sure that they know you can do that job, and not only that, but you can bring stuff to the table so you're the person can help them get that done. You're the best candidate, and this is why I always tell people, if you go into an interview, and you're thinking that you're not the best candidate, you're probably not. If you're going into an interview, and you can't even think of what you bring to offer to the table, the employer's not going to know. It's your job, disability or not, to know what you bring to the table, and sell that. That's your job.   Narrator: Selling it!"   Dasha: "Selling it."   Narrator: "That's what it comes down to, selling yourself, letting the employer know that you have a set of abilities that will help their company succeed. Well, there's that sound, so let's turn it over to Jessica Hodges with On the Horizon.   Jessica: "Good day to you all. There are many, many lovely events coming up on the horizon. First of all, the national federation of the blind has some awesome scholarships for students both nationally and state wide. To find out more about scholarships both in your state and at the national level, you can visit www.nfb.org. On the subject of college, Perkins has a program for college students where you live on there campus for nine months, and attend school close to them. It's a good way for college students to kind of get there feet underneath them and make sure that they are really ready, and it's a great way to get started with college. You can visit there webcite to find out more. The national braille press has a guide for those who are interested in apple watches called, "You and Your Apple Watch," by Anna Dresner. You can find that on their webcite, nbp.org. Blind incorporated, the well renown training center for the national federation of the blind in Minnesota has there summer programs coming up, and that means they are looking for both students and counselors. For more information on those, you can go to their webcite, www.blindinc.org. For the style program, ,they're looking for people from July Tenth through August fifteenth, and the buddy program is also looking for people from July Tenth through August Fifteenth. For the prep counselor positions, they are looking for people from June Tenth, to August Fifteenth. The prep is the young adult program, the style is a young adult program here in Minnesota, and the buddy program is the younger children. So, if you would like to know more about that ,visit their webcite, www.blindinc.org. Minnesota has a lovely program for transition aged students called the STP program. An extended school year program, the STP, or summer transition program, is a program designed for students between tenth and eleventh grade who are planning on working competitively and working independently. To get a brochure or have paperwork sent to your school, contact Deb Peterson, dpeterson@916schools.org. If you have any events you'd like included on the next horizon, please email jessica.hodges@state.mn.us. Thank you for staying tuned, and please listen to next time, as we'll have more events on your horizon.   Narrator: Well thank you Jessica Hodges. And for more information on all the events mentioned, check the show notes. for the links. And now, our tools for success spotlight. We bring you Be My Eyes. It's an application that hooks the phone to a person that will see through your camera what you're looking at and describe it for you. It's a personal assistant. It's free from the app store, and on Android. So we're going to demonstrate the iOS device on Apple, here's Be My Eyes. Siri? Open be my eyes.   VoiceOver: Be My Eyes. Call first available volunteer, button.   Narrator: It's ready to go. With a single finger double tap, you're activated, and you're ready to call. But lets swipe right, single finger swipe left to right.   VoiceOver: Settings, button.   Narrator: Double tap here   VoiceOver: Settings, heading.   Narrator: Now a flick to the right.   VoiceOver: Done, button.  Profile, heading. Personal details, Jeff Thompson, button   Narrator: Swipe to the right.   VoiceOver: Change email, button. Password, button. Languages, heading. Primary language, English, button. Other languages, button. Send us feedback, button. Frequently asked questions, button. Terms and privacy policy, button. Share be my eyes, button. Rate be my eyes, button. Connect with us, heading. Facebook, button. Twitter, button. Instagram, button. Youtube, button. Version: 2.1   Narrator: So this is upgraded, and as you can see you can share this, you can go follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest of the stuffs there. But one important thing here is this.   VoiceOver: Send us feedback, button.   Narrator: Send us feedback. This allows you to connect up right with the developers of the app in case you have an issue. You don't have to tweet it out on Twitter and complain or anything like that on Facebook. You can just go here, and send it straight to the main office. There you go. So let's go back. I'm going to do a four finger single tap, near the top of the screen.   VoiceOver: Settings, heading.   Narrator: Swipe once to the right.   VoiceOver: Done, button.   Narrator: Single finger double tap.   VoiceOver: Call first available volunteer, button.   Narrator: All right, so at this point, if I single finger double tap, I'm getting online, so I'd better have something ready for them to do for this demonstration. I think it's coffee time.       VoiceOver Using the rear camera. Please wait. Finding the first available volunteer.   (ringing sounds)   Narrator: And this is where the be my eyes app. ..   VoiceOver: We are still trying to find an available volunteer.   Narrator: searches for someone that speaks English, someone that's in my time zone. So it searches the world basically, and tries to come up with someone who is best suited for answering my questions. Now this time varies. I've had people pick up in twelve seconds. I've had people pick up in... oh...two minutes. But typically, it's around that thirty second mark. And for privacy reasons, I've changed the voice of the volunteer so it's not detectible.   VoiceOver: Connected.   Volunteer: "Hello." (there was another word there but I couldn't for the life of me make it out.)   Narrator: Hello. Hi, how are you?   Volunteer: I'm all right, how about yourself?   Narrator: I'm all right. I have a question. I have a kurig machine here, this one.   Volunteer: Yep.   Narrator: And when I push this down, it's supposed to give me a choice here for ounces.   Volunteer: The light is hitting in a way I can't read. I think the... ok, that's better. You have... it says it's ten ounce, and there's an arrow at the top and an arrow at the bottom.   Narrator: So down here?   Volunteer: Up a little hire. Right there is where it says ten ounce, yep now it's at eight ounces. You're pushing the down button. How do you want it to be?   Narrator: I want it at eight. Is that it?   Volunteer: Ok.   Narrator: So then the other buttons up here, what are they?   Volunteer: Well, that would be increasing the amount,   Narrator: Ok,   Volunteer: and when you're ready, then you move your finger to the left   Narrator: Ok.   Volunteer: And use this button to make it go, let's see what happens.   (kurig noises)   Volunteer: It's brewing.   Narrator: Well there we go. Thank you very much.   Volunteer: You're very welcome.Have a good day."   Narrator: You too.   VoiceOver: End call, button. Alert. Are you sure you want to disconnect? No. Yes. Yes button.   Narrator: And that was a very nice volunteer. And it wasn't mini mouse, believe me. That voice was changed. And there we go. We got hot cocoa coming. All right, so after the experience is over, this is what we get.   VoiceOver: Review your experience, heading.. Thanks for your call. Please let us know if you had any problems during this call, be it either technical or personal. I experienced problems, button. I had a good call, button.   Narrator: And that's it. that's all there is to this free app. it's be my eyes in app store, and be my eyes on android in the google play store. And in this success story, we bring you Jeff Mihiletch, who has utilized the services of state services for the blind for many years, from elementary school, high school, college, and the work place. Jeff has found success, and is currently employed, and invited us down to his south Minneapolis office to chat with us. So please welcome Jeff Mihiletch. We hope you in joy.   Narrator: Welcome to blind abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson, and I'm downtown south Minneapolis with Jeff Mihiletch, and he is employed and has used state services for the blind before. How are you doing Jeff?   Jeff: Good morning, I'm doing good.   Narrator: Can you tell us a little bit about your job and what you do?   Narrator: I am Jeff Mihiletch. I work in the snap employment and training program, and that is about people that receive food support, snap benefits that they used to call food stamps. If you are an able bodied adult without dependants, it's mandatory now that you be job searching, and my team does the job searching orientation classes and case management for clients that are in that sector of the snap program. I was originally hired for data management, so my job is to look at the referrals every day of new clients coming in, all the different elements, who they are, nationality, when there orientation class is, location and time, and I put it all in a spreadsheet. Then I take that spread sheet, move it into a different spread sheet so it's statistically meant for the entire year, and that's my daily task that I do. I also have broadened my job duties a little bit. My team does orientation class three times a week for new people that are coming onto the snap EMt program. I help out here at the sabathanie center with the Tuesday morning orientation class. So it's a chance for me to get up in front of a group and talk, and move around, helps give my coworkers a little break, because they need to do that orientation class three times a week, and as you can imagine it gets a little repetitive, so they were totally thrilled when I decided to volunteer myself to help out with that orientation class.   Narrator: So Jeff, on a daily basis, what kind of accessible devices or tools do you utilize for your job?   Jeff: I use Jaws extensively. I have a little bit of vision, so I do use zoomtext sometimes, but only for spot reading, if I can't find a formula or something in my excel sheet with jaws. Primarily though, it is Jaws, almost probably ninety five, ninety eight percent of the time.   Narrator: What about in your personal life. Do you use a smart phone with access to it?   Jeff: Yeah, in my personal life I have an iPhone seven. I use VoiceOver, a couple different voices, one for Siri, one for the VoiceOver functionality of it. My work, I have a phone for my work, because the phone that is in everyone's laptops, the soft phone from Sisco, is not screen reader accessible, and so that's a reasonable accommodation, my employer provides me an iPhone for my work. So I feel kind of a little geekish, because I walk around with two phones when I'm at work, my personal phone and my work phone.   Narrator: that's status isn't it?   Jeff: I'm glad that they were able to make that accommodation and provide an iPhone for my work phone calling.   Narrator: Now Jeff, when you applied here, how did you  get the job? how did accommodations work for you and what was that process like?   Jeff: The way I found the job was I had a friend of mien who was blind who works for the county, has been with the county for almost thirty years, and he got a phone call from someone, my boss, who was looking to fill a position, a newly created position. My job did not exist before. And she specifically was looking for someone that had a visual disability. And so she reached out to my friend who was blind and worked for the company to find out and assess any barriers that their were, to see how successful he was at doing his job, and to see how many barriers there were, and from there, he told me about the fact that she was looking for someone who was visually impaired to take this new job. I kind of jumped on that band wagon, and followed up with her, and long story short had an interview, and was hired. My job is not a permanent job. It's a two year contract. I'm a limited duration person, and the snap program, the food stamp program is federal funded. So the county writes my check, but salary comes from the feds, from the agricultural program.   Narrator: So Jeff, in your career, education, did you utilize state services for the blind?   Jeff: Yeah, I did. All through my education. Elementary school I had a rehab counselor that used state services for the blind all the way through that, through college went to (spelling) babija university, BS in business administration, and minor in psychology and chemical dependency. And state services for the blind helped me out with tuition and books, and that type of thing.   Narrator: Great. What is transportation like for you, working in south Minneapolis here?   Jeff: In he morning to go into work, I take metro mobility, because it's a relatively direct shot, although sometimes I can get to work in ten minutes, and sometimes two hours, so that's the downside of metro mobility. Going home at night, I do take a city bus. I have to go downtown, and transfer to an express. That's how I do transportation. Not looking forward to winter time, I will say.   Narrator: Great. So Jeff, Being someone that has used state services, who has transferred from high school to college to the work place, what suggestions would you have for someone who is in those shoes today looking towards there future?   Jeff: I would say if you are a braille user, or have the potential to be a braille user, but also use screen readers, I would really highly recommend still doing the braille thing.   Narrator: You said you use Jaws and PC. Now, in the workplace, there's always the debate, you know, should people have a PC or a Mack, and I found out myself that most businesses are Microsoft based, so what would you suggest for someone who's learning technology?   Jeff: The county uses PCs, HP brand. Actually, we just rolled out new laptops and we moved to Microsoft 2010 and office 2016. I mean it all depends on the work environment, but you are correct most of the time that it's PC based.   Narrator: Jeff, do you want to talk about some of your past jobs?   Jeff: Sure. A lot of my job history is kind of broken into clumps. The first is social service, working with developmentally delayed adults, and the second chunk of job history is kind of more customer service type. So the first part, the social service, I kind of fell into that. I moved to Minneapolis after finishing my degree at Bemidji state university, and was really-really desperate for a job, couldn't find one, and it was to the point that I couldn't afford my apartment. I took a job as a live in in a group home for developmentally delayed adults. A good chunk is a little more customer service related, I worked in a large call center for computer hardware dispatch, so I was doing in bound calls with customers and technicians out in the field. Some other jobs I had over the years. I had a really really short gig. I was a very small commodities broker. I found the job through one of the venders that state services for the blind hires. They were looking for someone to do phone work and I was hired and given the job. But the screen reader didn't work at all with their customer management web page that they had. We tried to make it work. After six weeks they let me go, just because it wasn't working out. I also worked for a guy who ran one of the vending stands in saintpaul, and I would fill in for him in the concessions stand while he was out in the field filling vending machines. Did that for a while, and some other kind of odd jobs. I actually at one time was self employed. I went to massage school, became a massage therapist, and tried to do that to make a living. It's a really hard field. It's very seasonal. So that's a little overview of some of my job history.   Narrator: Sounds like you're a real go getter. people feel insecure about going into job interviews and that process. And it can be daunting to someone that hasn't done it before. What's your experience like when you go into a job interview?   Jeff: The interview process itself, I mean, I'm a partial vision, and it's always difficult to know whether to disclose that up front or not. And though there were times in my life when I would disclose that on the phone up front, and then there were other times when I did not. And it's hard to know if disclosing it up front would automatically disqualify me even before I walked in, or if walking in with a white cane and bumping against a desk or a coffee table or something would have disqualified me. It's always a big debate when you're a partial whether or not to disclose it. that was the one nice thing about my current job. My boss is aware of my current disability and I did not have to deal with that disclosure type thing. I had to deal with coworkers a little bit, and that was a challenge. Again, because I'm partial, I can see to navigate a little bit, but you know, I can't figure out who people are until they say something. When you're a partial, it's harder for other people to grasp of what you can and can't see.   Narrator: Jeff, did you ever go through a training center?   Jeff: I did. When I was in seventh grade I did a summer school thing at fairbolt. As an adult I did a couple different stints at VLR, adjustment to blindness training program. The focus for both of those times when I went was Jaws and screen readers. But I also did cooking class, the independent skills, worked in the wood shop, which was a really eye opening experience so to speak. I'd never used a table saw. I'd never used a router, that kind of thing. And it was so cool to actually create something myself out of a chunk of wood and have the skill set to do that. Yeah, I've been to VLR a couple times, they do really good stuff. I highly recommend them. And they were the ones the second time through. They were the ones that got me to Jaws. Because before, I would really try to use zoomtext as much as I could, and it was causing headaches and back strain, because I was leaning forward too much. So the second time I went through, I said, "I really want to get to the point where I can faze out magnification and just do jaws mostly. And so they got me to the point where I could use it exclusively and functionally. Yeah, the adjustment to blindness centers were very helpful.   Narrator: That's vision loss resources on Franklin and Lyndale down in Minneapolis. Well, I want to thank you for coming on to blind abilities and sharing your story, your journey, thank you very much.   Jeff: You are welcome. Hopefully my perspective is useful and helpful for you young people out there, you know, in the path of education and early job searching. Good luck to you, and I wish I would have had this technology when I was going to college. It would have made my college experience much easier, much less stressful, maybe a few less gray hairs.   Narrator: I don't think we can get around the hairs, we can blame it on whatever we want but... well thank you very much Jeff.   Jeff: Thank you very much   Narrator: It was a real pleasure talking to Jeff Mihiletch and learning about his transitional journey from high school to college to the workplace, and his experiences job to job. And you can find out more about state services for the blind and the services they can offer you on the web at https://mn.gov/deed/ssb. And in other states, be sure to contact your state services, and see what services they have for you. And be sure to check the show notes for the American foundation of the blind. They have a link to all the state services in all the states. Stay tuned next month where we bring you episode three of TVI toolbox. And a big thank you goes out to CheeChau for his beautiful music that we use for the podcast. Thank you CheeChau. You can follow Cheechau on Twitter @lcheechau. Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time, by by.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Since you mentioned compensation. How are boards of directors and advisory boards, let’s start with advisory boards first, how will they compensate it? Everyone think that you either give them stock or have to pay them a huge amount of money. What is it in reality? Merissa:               So for advisory boards in my book, what I did was I interviewed a long-standing attorney that I’ve known for 15 years who is also a CPA and he is a compensation expert. And in there everything is transcribed. And the way I broke it down was monetary compensation, non-monetary compensation – because there’s creative ways to actually compensate your advisory board — and then also with equity. So what weighs out is that the person that I interviewed, he broke it out in 4 different ways that you can compensate with equity but his main role was that you never give more than one quarter to one half of one percent to each board member that you have. And you basically put in a 1 year agreement that with a restricted stock agreement that allows you to buy back that stock, basically at a penny, in the event that you roll off that board member. Because the last thing that you want to do is that you want to give a large chunk to somebody who’s working very part-time for you and if they don’t work out what happens is you’ve got someone who’s walking around out there that owns stock within your, you know, of your company. And getting back to the point that was made earlier about startups. They might have nothing. They might literally be under a million dollars in revenue and they think ‘oh, I’ll just give this person 5% or 6%’. Well 6% of nothing is nothing. But if you build a company to 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 million dollars, that’s a lot of money to be giving to somebody basically part blanch. And you’ve got think that you’ve got a board of 4, 5, 6 people, you have to make sure that you’re very judicious with the amount of stock that you’re going to want to give. You don’t know who you’re give stock to, whether you do like an ESOP, you want to give it to your employees, you want to give it partners, maybe you want to have an LTI, a long-term incentive agreement in place of your employees. So you have to be very, very judicious with the stock. So that’s kind of the, you know, the framework in a nutshell when you’re going to give equity. When you have money that’s involved- Pam:                      So just for clarification, so at the end of the year you have a buy back for that whole quarter to a half of one percent? You have a buyback of one penny? Merissa:               Yes. So the way, this what Wayne recommended in the book. Yeah, you put in a restricted stock agreement because in the event that it doesn’t work out and he recommends and I recommend that you basically do a 1 year agreement. Look, you know what, when you bring someone, when you bring anyone on whether it’s an employee or a partner or even a customer, a board member. Obviously when you first bring them on everybody gets along, everybody is, you know, happy and enamored with one another. You never know how a relationship is going to go. And so if you have an advisory board member that is not showing up and is not delivering, it’s important to get them out of your board because they’re taking up a seat that’s someone who actually could be delivering for you. And you want to make sure that you get them out and you get them out clean, so that they’re not walking around with your stock that you can give to somebody else. And also that they’re not a liability down the road when they actually own a piece of your company. So it’s really important to set that up with a restricted stock agreement and get them out cleanly if they decide to roll off. Pam:                      I can’t tell you Merissa how many CEO’s I’ve heard say ‘gosh, you know I’ve got this advisory board that’s just really not very good and I give them equity, and how do I get rid of them?’ I mean I can’t tell you- Merissa:               Well that’s how you get rid of them. Pam:                      [laughs] Too bad. Merissa:               And the thing is when you’re exactly right when you first get the group together, you got a vision and this is true for small family businesses as well that have been around for a long time and they first start to do it, they think they know what they’re looking for and then when the time comes that you’re in discussions and there’s significant issues that have to be addressed and conflict arises. Not everybody plays the same under conflict and stress that do when things are copasetic. So you just need to have some flexibility and for the long-term so that you’ve got options. Pam:                      I totally agree with that. Merissa:               But that is why you really have to let them upfront that is very specific selection model right. Because it isn’t just looking at the resume of the person or wondering you know what contacts they have, what experience they have. Like I said before, this is an extension of your brand and you’ve got to make sure that there’s a cultural fit. I know we had our advisory board. You know they were integrated into my company, my advisory board members I didn’t want them just showing up just once in a quarter, I wanted them to be accessible in between meetings and I wanted them accessible to my executive team. So that’s why putting all this out in front, you know, and really saying these are really the expectations, and this is the framework on how I want you to engage with my company. All that has to be decided and agreed to upfront and signed off on in a board agreement so that hopefully when you get to the end, everybody wants to continue. And you know at the E part of my phase which is evaluating all the exits, we, I actually have a full interview in there, an exit interview. You know I have the human capital background, and so when you’re rolling off an advisory board member the most important thing you want to do was keep the doors open and never burn any bridges because you don’t know if maybe you want them back or maybe they could lead you to another advisor. You want everybody to feel good about the experience so I have a full exit interview in there so that there’s closure in a very professional manner that makes everybody feel good about the experience and people aren’t left hanging, that’s the other thing. Pam:                      Perfect, perfect. Jeff, let’s go over to the public board. So give me your advice on compensation for public board of directors. Jeff:                       We did things a little bit differently. We paid every member a fee for the quarterly meeting. It wasn’t a large amount of money but there was a small fee. Plus, obviously we carried all their expenses. We had some people from the east coast and it’s good to have east coast and west coast kind of merged together to get different ideas and thoughts about business and regular trade environment, etc. And the last thing we did as an additional perk. We created a small pool, and it wasn’t a big amount like 1 or 2% of the company. And invested over 5 to 7 year period. So in order to earn that small amount, you had to have long-term plans and goals with the company. So if you left early, you didn’t get much of anything so the different aspect on the stock restricted plan we talked about earlier. Pam:                      So Jeff what if somebody got, ended up being there for 5 years and then they rolled off or they left good or bad. What do you do? Get that equity back? Do you get that percentage back? Or would they keep it? Jeff:                       No, they would earn that. They invested into it and they’d have the right to either take the stock or sell it back to the company. And again, it wasn’t 1 or 2% that was shared, wasn’t a total 1 or 2% per board members who wanted 2% put into a pool and was shared equally by the number of board members and it was just an idea. It was an additional perk outside the fee, paid you to come to meetings and be available and also to cover your expenses.

So Jeff just got back from the 24 Hours of LeMons, and it's safe to say it didn't go as he'd hoped. The car was running far stronger than it had in its first race, according to his teammates. That's great news!Unfortunately that pretty little car truck wouldn't stay pretty for long...

Needless to say ****SPOILERS*** for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Yes, we went there. If you've seen both Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens it is hard to deny the similarities. So Jeff, Jason, and Trish use the Force explore the similarities and differences between these two films. A stealth remake that still gives us new and amazing characters to explore in a galaxy far, far, away. Are the Skywalkers doomed to repeat past sins? Or can Rey, Finn, and Poe Dameron finally break the hold of the Dark Side? Listen to this week's episode and join the Invasion! If you like the podcast, show your support by telling your friends and rating & reviewing us on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio or where ever you listen to us. Follow us on Twitter: @InvasionRemake Like us on Facebook: Invasion of the Remake Email us: invasionoftheremake@gmail.com

Do people of color and low-income people ride bikes? Not as much as they could be, given all the great benefits biking offers, particularly to people without a lot of disposable cash. But yes, non-white and non-rich people ride bikes -- in many cases, more than rich and white people. But even if they're equally represented on the roads, people of color and low-income people are largely missing from the bicycle advocacy world. The League of American Bicyclists, along with countless other groups around the country, are out to change that. We covered their report on equity in the bicycling movement last week -- but there was still lots more to talk about. So Jeff and I called up Adonia Lugo, the League's Equity Initiative Manager. We talked about what groups can do if they want to reach out to new constituencies, whether infrastructure design really needs a multicultural perspective, and how the movement can start "seeing" bicyclists that don't fit the dominant stereotype.  We know you have strong feelings about these issues. Tell us all about 'em in the comments  -- after you listen. And find us on  iTunes, Stitcher, and the RSS feed.

We recorded as the Royals were trying to find their first win of the second half, and the month-long plummet from first place to below-.500 had taken its toll.So Jeff and Mike winged it, talking about player development, run scoring approaches, buying or selling at the deadline, the lineage of Royals GMs, and what kind of hope might remain for 2014.

So Jeff just realized that this episode was never released in a mad flurry of episodes in the past. So here you go. Our team of experts are looking at and reviewing the final play test packet for D&D Next. Enjoy! 

So Jeff just realized that this episode was never released in a mad flurry of episodes in the past. So here you go. Our team of experts are looking at and reviewing the final play test packet for D&D Next. Enjoy! 

So Jeff just realized that this episode was never released in a mad flurry of episodes in the past. So here you go. Our team of experts are looking at and reviewing the final play test packet for D&D Next. Enjoy! 

On Sunday November 7th at 9pm EST we will be speaking with Activist Jeff Allen on the POZ I AM Radio Show. Jeff Allen tested positive in 1985. He was a drug addict using heroin and cocaine and reckless in his behavior. Jeff was homeless and living in my car for more than two months. Jeff lived in Key west with his partner of 12 years where the HIV community was small and compact. When it came to the end of his life he wanted to leave and go where he was not so well known. After his passing Jeff moved to Deland Florida right outside the Daytona Beach area. He was very frail and weak, but needed a purpose in his life. This is when Jeff first started volunteering with HIV/AIDS in 1995. Living with no T-cells for 3 years and a viral load 1,650,000 Jeff contracted MAC (Mycobacterium avium complex) from potting plants in my yard. “MAC,” is the name of a group of germs. These germs can infect people who are living with HIV. Jeff had to go on an IV drip for 5 days. Then Jeff got involved with his local Ryan White consortium he ended up chairing the consortium for 7 years. He then decided he wanted to make a difference on the national level. Jeff knew he wanted to get involved with the homeless in some capacity since he was previous homeless. Jeff also knew that he wanted to help improve the quality of care that HIV/AIDS patients receive. So he applied and was accepted in several different positions Then in 2011 working with his consortium, they needed to address the out of care numbers of clients that they have in the local area. After conducting focus groups and soliciting surveys, it was decided that the real issue was the fear and stigma that is associated with HIV/AIDS. People did not want to get tested in areas know to treat or counsel HIV positive people for fear of being associate with having the disease or being gay. So Jeff created the Positive Champions Speakers Bureau to deal with fear and stigma. www.positivechampions.org