Podcasts about so richard

Opening song: “Kung Fu Cowboy 2” by Kung Fu Cowboy from upcoming album, SCORPION RESURRECTION, produced by Richard Del Connor for Shaolin Records. https://www.ScorpionResurrection.com Kung Fu Cowboy talks about his union memberships since 1971: Musician’s Union 1971 Laborer’s Union 1972 Teamster’s Union 1973 Newspaper Guild #69 1985 to 1989 Carpenter’s Union 1973 to 1993. AFL-CIO Delegate of Carpenter’s Union 1984 to 1987 Kung Fu Cowboy talks about financing the Kung Fu Cowboy MOVIES with money that was “laundered” so he returned $19M from Panamanian bank. Homeland Security tells Richard Del Connor not to write his book about being a human trafficking victim. So Richard is hoping to sell a million records so he can make his movies with the royalties he’ll receive. KFC begins reading the Supersoul 13 book about making the Kung Fu Cowboy that he authored under another of his synonyms, Buddha Z. “I was born from a demon…” the book begins. The song “Kung Fu Cowboy 2” has its FIRST trombones added. Richard Del Connor, the record producer of Shaolin Records, is using Logic Pro for the first time to produce this SCORPION RESURRECTION album. Supersoul 13 - Discovering the Soul of God by Buddha Z is available as a KINDLE book from Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IRRF12U OR: a PDF book directly from the publisher, Shaolin Communications at: https://www.shaolincom.com/Products-S/Book-Supersoul13.html The song, “Kung Fu Cowboy 2” is from the upcoming album by Kung Fu Cowboy: Scorpion Resurrection on Shaolin Records. https://www.ScorpionResurrection.com — Kung Fu Cowboy FACEBOOK page: https://www.facebook.com/kungfucowboy1 — Kung Fu Cowboy WEBSITE: https://www.KungFuCowboy.com — Produced by Richard Del Connor for Shaolin Records. https://www.ShaolinRecords.com — Copyright 1984-2021 Shaolin Communications https://www.ShaolinCOM.com Music used by permission of Shaolin Records and licensed by Shaolin Music. ASCAP https://www.ShaolinMusic.com

Melbourne has been in pandemic lockdown. So Richard and Greg record their first distanced podcast (socially, not emotionally). They start this series by reviewing three films that regularly appear on Bad Movie lists. Can their scores rival their lowest yet – half a point for “Showgirls” in Series 2? Tune in and find out… Battlefield Earth (2000) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-04-01-earth Howard the Duck (1986) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-04-01-duck Gigli (2003) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-04-01-gigli

A beloved cultural artifact has disappeared. The only way to find it, of course, is through podcasting. So Richard embarks on a journey to uncover the whereabouts of a long-lost pizzeria commercial from the 1990s known as “The Last Mojo.”   +++   Richard’s Famous Food Podcast is made by Richard Parks III.   Voices in the episode, in order of appearance: Fernando Lopez, Oscar Rodriguez Zapata, Xitlalic Guijosa-Osuna, Patrick Lowry, Kenneth Gal, Alan Stamm, and Cindy Staats. Special thanks to Collette Brooks from Big Imagination Group, Dai from Shakey’s, and all at Univision and The University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection.   Our logo is by James Braithwaite. Most of the music and underscore in this episode is by Jonathan Snipes of clipping. The riff from “Enter Sandman” by Metallica is by Metallica. The Serial theme song is by Nick Thorburn. Orchestral cues, and ad music, by Van Dyke Parks. Our theme song is by Bobby Halvorson.   The Peeklay would like to thank the following members of the RFFP Slow Crewe for their help with this episode: Caitlin Esch, David Weinberg, Ian Chillag, Eli Horowitz, Russell Quinn, Benjamin Riskin, Cesar Hernandez, Tom Gorman, and Gab Chabran.   Richard’s Famous Food Podcast is supported by Podchaser, the IMDB of podcasting. You can check out Podchaser, and sign up to rate and review this episode, plus and others from Richard’s Famous Food Podcast and all your other favorite podcasts, at www.podchaser.com/rffp.   If you like the show, please consider sharing it, rating and reviewing it, and discussing it with friends in rare moments of conversation. Leave us a voicemail at 323-813-6634. You can follow along on social media @richardsfamous.

伴随益康糯米和朋友理查德在伦敦的小书店项目 Hoxton Books 的启动，文化土豆决定尝试在未来几个月尝试每月录制一期慢速简单英语的节目，记录书店的成长，也希望大部分文化土豆的听众能够跟上。这期节目是我们第一次录制，希望大家多提意见。节目中提到的作品信息：Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Vervehttps://youtu.be/1lyu1KKwC74为了帮助部分听众的理解，下面是 Otter.ai 制作的文字整理。（两人同时说话时错误比较多，但是基本够用！）Yifan 0:00 Welcome to culture potato, a new hope this is a brand new, slow English speaking podcast where my friend Richard and I are going to talk about our brand new project a bookshop in London. Yay, Hi Richard!Richard 0:19 HelloYifan 0:20 Could you introduce yourself to our listeners, and maybe say one interesting thing about our friendship. Richard 0:28 So Hello, everyone. My name is Richard. I've been a friend of the fans for about 15 years. He described me as bookish because I grew up amongst lots of books. My father's in the book business. I've worked in bookshops, I've worked in publishing companies. I've even worked for my father. And I'm always always wanting to buy books and reading them. So that's roughly why I'm here. Yifan 1:05 And I just want to add until very recently, because we have to work on this bookshop project. Richard had no internet at home. Yeah, that's right. Indeed.No Internet how hardcore?Richard? Richard 1:26 Yeah, sceptical of all the inventions after the book. So if and what's the what's the latest? Or at least how, how is the bookshop looking? How are the how's the the site progressing towards completion? Yifan 1:43 So, I have been in this project, our division of labour or what each of us do is I have been taking charge on the decoration, buildings work of the bookshop, while Richard is preparing on the content and what books to choose. So in the last month, I have been working with builders and interior designer on the site, our bookshop is tiny, it's about 25 or 30 at a push maybe 25 square metres somewhere in England, it's probably in square feet have no idea what what that is.We currently have strengthened all the walls to make it stronger because we have some hanging bookshops. So we have one bookshelf that's freestanding, and two shelves are hanging so screwed on to the war. So the war needs to be able to bear heavy weight strong. Yeah, yeah. The builders have put plaster on the war now so it's now painted white. But we are going to paint it give it another coat of paint. So we have been choosing paint colours over the last week. I forget what colour we have settled on.Richard 3:11 I think it was called something like ash grey. And what was it? Yifan 3:15 No that's for the floor. Richard 3:17 No. As Gray 's for the wall and for the full floor was a good lightCree or somethingYifan 3:24 screeRichard 3:24 scree.Yifan 3:25 Okay, so we have a concrete looking floor and we have a bluish I think it's not is it gray to me Yes. blueish wall anyway. Yeah. yet to be done are lights, installing spotlights and a hanging pendant light in the middle. That looks like a book actually. You haven't seen them.Richard 3:51 I've only seen photos. Okay, it was very nice. very tasteful. Yifan 3:56 That's half of our budget Richard 3:57 as as as is to be expected from you.Yifan 4:00 And then I have ordered the checkout machine. So it's like an iPod iPad? No, it's like an iPhone thing where people can swipe their credit card or contactless card and I'm hoping to get alipay and WeChat pay a machine to do that as well because there are a lot of Chinese students in London who may benefit from that or we may benefit from that. Richard 4:24 We may right. Yifan 4:27 What else is to be done? I think the toilet Yeah, we have a small toilet and the toilet needs to beRichard 4:34 very important. Especially with Coronavirus with water. There are no public glues, no public toilets,Yifan 4:42 but maybe we shouldn't say that we have a toilet. It's not a public toilet.Richard 4:46 There's no McDonald's but otherwise we can't.Yifan 4:48 When people ask we have no toilet.Richard 4:50 People ask us, we have no toilets, but we definitely needYifan 4:53 your listener for culture potato Okay, so this Is our shop our shop is in an in an area called Hoxton. That's h o x to n. Hoxton. That's in East London. So Richard, why don't you you are a West Londoner, tell us about an East London and Hoxton.Richard 5:15 Yeah, I was actually born not very far from the shot but by the time I was four years old, my parents moved west. But yeah, it was the West London is where, you know, typically is thought of more affluent than the east and so forth. So East London, Hoxton, traditionally a working class part of London. Nowadays, like with all these, like a lot of former working class areas in major European cities, they're undergoing a lot of change a lot of what people call gentrification and Hoxton is not immune to that. It's also one thing. It'sYifan 5:59 a pioneer ofRichard 6:01 Yeah, could even be considered a pioneer. Definitely. And yeah, probably in London, it would be a pioneer. Of course, in the 90s, late 90s, when Britpop was all the rage, the famous clip, the video clip of the Verves, unfinished sin, no, not unfinished with any, a bittersweet Symphony. Sorry, a bittersweet Symphony by the verb. Were you land that's a band, right? And this singer is walking down Hoxton Street, barging into people. But at least he's not making way for anybody else. He's just walking down in the straight line. Anyway, that's that's a link to that video, I'll post a link I definitely will post a link to the video. And that is Hoxton. And that street probably not changed that much. So just a few more hipster new places. hipster new I don't know. Yeah, they hit the places I don't know. Definitely weren't there when the video was shot. But otherwise, it probably retains a similar feel.Yifan 7:09 There's a very famous British person laying rest nearby our bookshop. Our address is 99 East road about five minutes walk up, say 10 minutes walk at most. We haveRichard 7:23 we have the bunhill is it bunhill Cemetery. Yes. Or bunhill fields where William Blake is buried. And is that Daniel Defoe as well?Yifan 7:38 of Treasure Island.Richard 7:40 No he's of Robinson Robinson Crusoe. Yes. Different Island. Yeah. Yeah, and I feel like there's somebody else we're missing out. Anyway, Daniel Defoe, and obviously William Blake will do for for a bookshop.Yifan 7:57 That's where we will be having our sandwiches during lunchRichard 8:00 break. Exactly. That's where we'll be. lunch breaks. Look forward to look forward to at one point so at one point, we you thought of calling or referring to it as the podcast bookshop, can you elucidateYifan 8:20 it is the date that was my idea. And nobody understood the idea. It was a much misunderstood idea. I might still launch a campaign to to make it our tagline, the podcast bookshop,Richard 8:35 Hoxton books, the podcast bookshop,Yifan 8:37 okay, because I think there is a idea that people who love the internet and social media who stay on Weibo WeChat all the time they don't read books. And books is for bookish people who are you know, who have no internet had home here?Richard 8:54 no internet, no to sceptical of everything that was invented after the book.Yifan 8:59 Yeah. And that concept is very strange to me. Because I have in obviously been the next journalist or somewhat, probably still working in the field that's related to journalism. I love books and social media, because our job is essentially transferring knowledge from books to social media. And in in Chinese, we call this brick carrying, right so a lot of marketing people and journalists writers, their job is essentially book carry a brick carrying, carrying but either from the English speaking world to the Chinese world, or from the book to more popular fields. Yeah. And also, I think podcast is a medium where you really engage with the content like you do with a book. You spend hours on it.Richard 9:53 That's it. It's sort of like an individual.Yifan 9:55 Yes. Yeah. Very private.Richard 9:58 Yeah, private thing. Exactly.Yifan 10:00 And so I think they, they go together. And I take book recommendations from a lot of podcasters. So I thought, you know, why don't we use this as an angle for our book, bookshop? And because you need a unique selling point nowadays? Well, yeah.Richard 10:18 What's the last book you? You read for, or at least the last book you opened that was recommended to you by, by podcast?Yifan 10:28 Um, can I talk about the next one? So the next. The next one is, it's a very, it's a cookbook by Ottolenghi and his collaborator, one of his collaboratorsRichard 10:40 here. Is is his husband, the Palestinian? Yeah. Was he called cesifo? Sami?Yifan 10:47 No. So it's someone else. Maybe someone I need to meet me, but it's like it's it's about vegetarian cooking and vegetables. Okay. And I heard it on kcrw the goodfood. Bought it yesterday. And I thought, well, Okay, very good. That so that was the next one. previous one. The thing is, since I started the book club project for cultural potatoes, and my nonfiction project, unpack. I have no time to read other. I have no,Richard 11:20 so a lot of projects you've got going on.Yifan 11:23 No, it's just with this A New Hope it's just four because they are financing the bookshop? Yeah, so each each week I do a different thing. That is to say so my podcast listening has decreased the time I spent on podcast. Sure, we have opportunities to recommend other podcasts plenty. The next question I want to ask you is obviously you know, London's bookshops the best So looking at our competitors are not necessarily competitors. tell our listeners or three independent bookshops that you love.Richard 12:03 Okay, so first of all, we're selling starting we'll start with Daunt's that's the most obvious one because they're almost like I mean, they are independent but they're like a mini chain as well because they got quite a few they were four or five bookshops in London, mostly in the West and the North. The the the flagship shop in Marylebone is essentially based on well essentially grew out of a travel bookshop and they still categorise their books by countryYifan 12:38 like a Lonely Planet? travel books or travel literature.Richard 12:42 Well travel literature, so they've Yeah, they do in the sense that under each country, you find guides, like you know, Lonely Planet, etc, you'll have books about the history of that place, and writers from there or when he's in translation, but the major writers from that place, so in a way you'd have History Fiction, and guidebooks or all mixed together by country, if that makes sense.Yifan 13:18 I love Daunt's, but somehow they are the least, they are almost the opposite to the way I would imagine our shop. I don't know why.Richard 13:28 Yes, we're definitely probably wouldn't be doing much by country. I don't know. Unless...,Yifan 13:35 but also they have a very English cottage.Richard 13:39 Yeah, there's something quite Yeah, there's something quite traditional or exactly quite cottagey very English. Maybe what we could say a bit. how likely are you?Yifan 13:49 I like how you said your English your French accent surfaced. Richard is half FrenchRichard 14:01 I'm half French? But um yeah, it feels quite quiteYifan 14:07 safe maybe twee is theRichard 14:10 yeah tweet by twee at an effort Yeah, how how accurate what it's great though it's great if obviously like you know people who come from abroad love going then it's because it's it's very I don't know if pittoresque is the word but probably have the most visible tote bag Oh, yeah. They've got the they got the whole they got the pioneers they send throughout the world with their tote bags. Yeah. Referencing themselves. Yeah. They you know, people buy the travel books that they get the tote bag, they travel elsewhere. bag.Yifan 14:50 So it's a long standing tradition. Richard 14:53 Exactly. Yeah. Must be.Yifan 14:57 Okay, number two, choice number twoRichard 14:59 Probably a bookshop that's not very far from where, from where Hoxton books is, and that's the Broadway bookshop on Broadway market. And that said, I mean, that's a, you know, relatively small shop. But with the space they have, they do very well with filling it with books, or at least books that I would love to read. And there's not much you know, when we talk about separating the wheat from the chaff. I'd say there's not, there isn't much chaff in that bookshop. Um,Yifan 15:39 why is this so many agricultural metaphors in English and separating the sheep from The what?Richard 15:49 The wheat from the chaff?Yifan 15:50 Yeah, but also people say,Richard 15:52 separating sheep and white sheep and black sheep.Yifan 15:55 No man from the sheep. I don't know. Yes, yes.Richard 15:59 Yes. Lamb dressed as mutton.Yifan 16:02 Is that all yours? No, never mind Skinner. Forward, but I would recommend, you know, like, visitors to London to check out Broadway market. It's probably not in any guidebook. And yet, it's probably the most London in a way. I don't know, young London, hipster.Richard 16:23 Young London is very young. Do you want to seeYifan 16:26 how young people in London liveRichard 16:30 and get a Broadway market? In a idealised? Yeah.Yifan 16:34 I mean, it's true. There's a lot of self love is definitely a lot of self love.Richard 16:40 Yeah, there's Yeah, they Yeah. Yeah. They're very pleased with themselves. Yes. But definitely the bookshop is great. And the bookshop has been there a while. Yeah, I really don't have a bad word to say about them. Another bookshop I find interesting is in Chelsea, in West London, you know, very affluent area. And that's Sandoe's. Then, like, the ceilings are so low, there's maybe two floors. Yeah, there's two floors, low ceilings, books stacked everywhere. except they're all new books. So you could you know, you imagine that kind of bookshop, imagine selling secondhand books, where they've just have all these secondhand books, and I don't know where to put them. Here. It's all new books. They're all stacked everywhere. Lots of art books. You know, big, big expensive art books that people in Chelsea will buy coffee table books, coffee table books. Yeah, but not too not too frivolous coffee table books like serious coffee table books, okay. And and then they like to you they stack so on their tables, they like stacking books by author. So for instance, you might have like, you might have Philip Roth and all his books are on top of each other on a table. Okay. So different titles they mix them up. So you'd like you unwind the pie or to find the entire oevre the particular writer.Yifan 18:14 So how is Broadway because you mentioned don'ts in their flagship travel shop. Things are organised by country right like the geography department. And then in in Sandoe's, Sanders is is called Sandel's or Sandoe's. Sandoe.Richard 18:32 the with an apostrophe s at the end. Sandoe's?Yifan 18:36 Yeah, they are organised by author.Richard 18:40 Yes. And then but they have a more traditional way of running things by sort of, you know, fiction, and fiction A to Zed, but then when you look on the tables, they'll have like, it's a bit like I'm not saying it's messy. But they can also like, yeah, you might find fit on the shelf and Philip Roth, it might be one or two books, but then if you look on the table, there might be more there. So it's a bit random says maybe a bit random. Yifan 19:07 Yeah, and what about in Broadway, but books, Richard 19:10 Broadway bookshop is oh? Yeah, no, they also like the country thing, where if you look under France, you have find books about France, as well as books by French writers. Yeah, which is how it should have described don't earlier, and how are you going to organise boxing our bookshop? So how we're going to organise them? Well, either by service, all sorts of I think there are sorts of all sorts of ways and they might intersect in different ways. So we might have a shelf with books recommended by certain people. Books might also figure in so we're talking about Obama's reading list. Yeah, so we could talk about Obama's reading list. But that Like, you know, there might be one or two things there that double up with, say, a shelf full of books by people who write for The New Yorker. Yeah. As well as maybe we'd have books on certain topics there might intersect with the book kinda know to do with to do with black lives matter for instance. Okay.Yifan 20:20 No podcast. Sorry. No.Richard 20:24 Yeah, of course. Yeah. podcast. podcasts are your thing the podcasts?Yifan 20:29 Right, soRichard 20:30 yeah, definitely like yeah, for instance. I mean, it start the week is the the obvious one when it comes to at least nonfiction books.Yifan 20:38 Yeah, that's a popular UK BBC Radio Show. That's also a podcast. Yeah. Anyway, right. Okay.Richard 20:47 You've stopped me there.Yifan 20:48 But one night, we might talk about you know, this more in detail in in a future episodes. Yes, exactly. That'sRichard 20:55 Yeah, exactly. How are we going to how we're going to categorise and now we're going to shelve everything is by almost recommendations, different products from different places. Yeah, exactly. recommendations, but yeah, from different sources. See how that pans out? How see how how we manage that?Yifan 21:17 Yeah. Okay, more More on that in a future episode. And also, I think our listeners, this is going to be a simple English slow English, a shorter programme that we're hoping to. So in future episodes of A New Hope. One week we might talk about our bookshelves and other week we might talk about our book lists, whatever you want to hear about our Hoxton books, bookshop, let us know and then we'll try to talk about it. And lastly, for today, can you that is Richard recommend a podcast and perhaps in English podcast you like?Richard 22:01 Okay, so thinking about this I'm going to go for a podcast which is completely just different. In fact, maybe a lot of people who are into books or read books are not necessarily interested in, ie football so this is a podcast about English football where these various supporters mostly younger I mean, youngest guys you support different team gather around the television watching a premier league game, but they end up just talking about football so they don't they comment on the game a bit. So last Sunday, it was the North London Derby between Arsenal and Tottenham, but most of the time they're just Yeah, they're just talking to each other about various things going on in in with football, and it lasts for about three hours or something. You can think you can even catch him on Twitch live but then they also release a podcastYifan 23:07 that's a highly technical term coming from someone who is not very technical twitchRichard 23:11 twitch yeah twitch I'm yeah, I'm with I'm with the twitch kids, except that to them. My understanding is twitches, just people playing video games. In this case, they're watching football, and they're just reacting to what's going on. Either during the match or, or more widely. And they're the fun bunch. They're their ragtag collection. So different supporters. So there's one guy you know, who support Liverpool and other guys supports Chelsea, then they have a guest on depending on the one of the teams that's playing. And yeah, they they joke around and, and they kind of like kind of people I don't hear about my life. I don't really know many people who support football, even though I live in England. So it's just it's just refreshing. Basically. Okay, so you're up to date with what's going on in world of football.Yifan 24:07 Okay, and very Lastly, Richard before we say goodbye, this month. The new word A New Hope. Okay, this is our finishing segment. tell our listeners a fun English word that they may not know.Richard 24:28 Okay, sure. So we have a word, which is probably the informal to mean food.Yifan 24:35 Like,do you want food?Richard 24:37 Like I'm starving? Let's have some grub. grub grub said that spelled GRUB grub? Not sure what the origin is but definitely loads a lot at least London term understood by all have some grasp, but it's also at the If you combine it with the word street grub Street, the grub street refers to aspiring writers, poets trying to make a living in the 19th century. And grub Street was a street not very far from our bookshop, in fact, also close to where William Blake and Daniel differ we mentioned we're buried. So this street no longer exists, but it was around there. And it was just a sort of bohemian place where where writers poets, aspiring journalistsYifan 25:44 lived or so some general term you can say grubstreet to refer to them collectively Yeah, like toRichard 25:51 Yeah, that is a column I think in pro in the satirical magazine Private Eye This is a comment column about sort of the world of journalists and basic facts Yeah. And the the column is called grubstreet. That's too many words hacks.Yifan 26:07 Okay. Let's Let's hit stop and have some takeaway grub, does it even work? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Richard Moore originally worked 60 hour weeks in the city of London before deciding to build his own businesses and help others do the same. After building companies from the trenches up by taking ownership of sales teams, coaching leadership roles and consulting with multi hundred million pound organizations, Richard created his own company to help others get massive traction as they launched their businesses.                      As he did this, Richard invested in many of the companies he helped to create and shared with the world his views on business through the weekly live Q&A’s he runs online, to speaking gigs in front of business owners in his space and his weekly blog. Richard also created products such as the Monetize You Course, the Basics of Sales course and direct mentoring of established businesses using his 16+ years of experience in the space. Questions Could you maybe just share with us just a little bit about how it is that your journey went? Maybe talk about one or two experiences that you had that has brought you to where you are today, where you are king of sales on LinkedIn. Let's say you're not accustomed to selling in a digital space and this is something that you're going to have to take on now, what kind of mindset shift you need to have in place to ensure that you are successful at selling in a digital space? And so, what are your thoughts as a sales person getting to know your clients before you actually interface with them, like doing your research? Could you give us one or two virtual selling strategies that maybe that were not used as much before, or even if a new one, maybe through innovation or new design, people are actually selling differently in a virtual space? Could you share with us what's one online resource, tool, website, or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? What's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can listeners find you online? During times of adversity or challenge, do you have a quote or a saying that you’ll tend to revert to this quote or this saying to kind of carry you through, keep your focus, kind of just get you back on that track to achieve whatever it is that you're working on? Highlights Richard’s Journey Richard shared that there's only been a couple of particularly interesting moments that have made him the person he is or taken him in the direction he has been given. And it’s interesting because he thinks the person who set him on the particular rails to be this kind of person was his mother to start with. And she was very much the person who drove himself, his two sisters, to be as best as they could at whatever they did. And she very, very much was behind them as a motivator and he really appreciated that.   It’s interesting, when he went to university and both his degrees are in history and kind of the first real big pivot point into the world. When he was 21, 22, he wanted to stay on and do his Ph.D. and basically become an academic, write books, become a lecturer. And it's interesting because coaching and teaching was always there in a way.   But basically, he didn't get funding for the Ph.D. so he had to get a job because he couldn't get any more bank loans. So, he had to go and get a job. And his mother said, “You're not going to come home.” And she didn’t say in a nice way, but was really good, “So, you’re not coming home, you’re going to fend for yourself now, come on. So you’re out of University, go and find a way.”   So, he slept on his sister’s sofa the two weeks and he went for a job interview and he took literally that first job, which was cold calling and selling internet marketing back in 2002. So it's like 17 ½ years now. So was a very difficult time selling internet marketing because people were like, “Are you serious?” Back then people were spending lots of money in print ads, in magazines, they weren't really doing so much of what we see today. So this is pre Facebook, this is pre LinkedIn, this is pre a lot of stuff and so it was very new and he’s thrilled he started there.   And his mom, if she drove one thing into him was that you really can't quit because it's hard. And so that was really good, he learnt that from her. They never had any money, she couldn't drive, she was a single mom with three children and she never complained. She just focused on making it happen and so he’s really pleased, he’s very lucky in a way that he has that from her.   And so, he learned very early on that if you just cold call managing directors and CEO’s and try and sell them stuff, they don't really like it much. So, you have to learn a way to be a bit more elegant about it. And so, by having the phone put down on me a lot, he started to learn like the basics that he really needed to be half decent at it. But then if you jump ahead a good 10 years or so of corporate work in the city, ultimately he was at a headhunting company, as their sales director, and he really had a kind of tough moment like this was 2012 or so on.   The really big pivot point for him was that he was doing well at his job, it wasn't like he was kind of he'd had enough or anything like that, he was doing very well. But he had a very bad year. His grandmother who he was very close to passed away, his first daughter was born and was born without an oesophagus, so she went straight to surgery. She spent the whole of her first year almost dying a lot and having loads of surgery and that’s 3 months after she was born. So he was commuting to London from the hospital. His mother then died, she'd had 2 years of cancer. So, it's been a tremendously difficult time. And when you have that kind of adversity, you end up going through it and you just have to.   But it was the following year where he really kind of imploded because it kind of hits you when you've gone through it. So, a huge amount of difficult times and he had very understanding boss, he was a family man as well, he understood that he had a lot on his plate. But basically, he hit this point and his wonderful wife said, “You know what you need to do? You need to understand you don't have to work in this kind of job. There's one thing you can do is sell, which means, you know you're going to be all right. Go and start something else.”   And so, he started his own business and so many people were like, “It's irresponsible, you have a child and a wife not working, what are you doing?" And he was like, “But I've got this. I know there's one thing I can do is at least make money.” And he started two taekwondo academies actually, but he also did a bit of consulting as well, just something different. And since then, honestly, it's been his therapy, growing the business from there and helping others grow theirs.   And then, 2 ½ years ago, LinkedIn has really jump forward in terms of being a serious player for doing business online. And he’s really, really enjoying not just what he does, but who he is now. It's been an interesting route, always around, like driving yourself in the right way, coaching and teaching. But it's been really interesting milestones that have pushed him in particular directions. And as you probably experience from other guests, when you have those moments of adversity, perversely, really great things can come of them eventually.   Me: I totally agree. So, Richard, you shared a lot about your experience on adversity and some of the challenges that have clearly made you stronger, has propelled you to achieve great things, things that a lot of people around you would have not seen the potential, they are trying to be very practical, think they're giving you good advice, but they're actually not giving you good advice.   And we're in a time now globally where we have to be doing a lot of things differently. And, of course, there's a new coined term, the new normal. What kind of mindset shift do business owners, I think at the end of the day; we're all sellers, regardless of what role you play in your organization, because at some point you have to be operating in a selling role.   What Kind of Mindset Shift to Selling Should We Be Embracing Richard stated that this is such a good question. And he did learn back in 2008 in the recession then. They're very lucky that they have a CEO who he remembered addressed all of them. And it was very much when he started learning about the right kind of mindset, he said, “The majority of businesses now will go into scarcity. They're going to hibernate, they'll tighten their belts, they will freeze everything. This is the time when you push yourself.” Recession is a time when you grow more because that's when you can land grab when you really need to push yourself.   And he said, “So, for many, there is no substitution for volume.” And what that means is there's no substitution for just grind. And it's still funny because there's a lot of people who haven't been through a hard recession that was a big one. Arguably, we're about to hit an even bigger one. And what's interesting is that you get some people saying, “Oh, man, it's really tough out there.” It's like, yes, it's meant to be. This will be the biggest recession since 1930. So it'll be hard.   And if you ask about mindset, what matters is that you understand that you have to have huge empathy for what the person you want to speak to and work with is going through right now, and everyone is equipped to be able to do that. So we all are able, if we dare to stop for a minute, think what would someone else be thinking about right now? They're probably thinking to themselves, “I'm worried because I don't know if my business can survive. And in addition to that, I don't want to probably spend too much; I need to make sure I’m making the right decisions.”   So, there’s a bit of fear in terms of executing on buying things. So if we are in a selling kind of role, or we need to appeal to people to buy our thing, we need to be way more aware that people need to absolutely feel they're going to get great returns. So waffling on about how our product works and things like that is far less effective than sharing the top wins for someone. He may have mentioned in the previous time they spoke, but the four top wins are that you help them look good, so you improve their visibility, help their ego, whatever variation that you want, you help them make money, you saved them money or, and, or the other one is that you save them time or giving them convenience, such as, you are the outsourced solution to a problem.   Some or one of those particular wins is so essential to convey because that's what they really need to know, “Am I going to say time? Am I going to need to hold this person's hand? Has Richard got this? When I give him the money, is he going to do what he needs to do? And so I can crack on knowing that that particular problem is solved.” So that's one key part of it. But when you also need to be really clear on is that in 2020, we're all tremendously used to being sold to. No one likes to be sold to that's never changed, but the way you sell should never come across as desperate of course. But the way you sell now has to be in tune with the way in which people want to be approached, sending someone a direct message on LinkedIn thinking you're giving them in inverted commas “great value” because you invite them to your webinar because you know it's free.   And they want that, is missing the point completely. No one has time; they’re not interested unless they warmed up enough. And you have to spend more time with people showing that you're trustworthy and authentic rather than just trying to gain them. So unless you're doing very high volume sales, in which case you probably should be thinking about automation through adverts and so on, you really should be working manually.   Now is the time to appreciate that there's great automation tools out there, but understand that what buyers want, if they're going to buy, is this feeling that they're being looked after more than ever before. So, building true relationships where there's a real level of genuine curiosity in them and an interest in building a relationship first is something that we all know would work, but so many companies don't want to do it because it feels like it's taking too long.   But the truth is, it is a shorter term way to make more money for your business and get more satisfied customers because even though each transaction takes a bit longer, you're not getting the phone slammed down on you, the door slammed in your face or people not even responding to the direct messages, take your time, engage with people on a human level first because people buy people is this cliché. But really, it goes deeper, it's people buy people they want to buy from, or people buy people that they like or who are like them.   So you need to show that you are open and approachable, you need to show that you resonate with them, and that you care enough to want to hear them out. That's what makes someone want to buy from you, not how good your proposition is and that is where everyone can sell, because we are all capable of that kind of empathy. This isn't about manipulative sales tricks that you would learn from a book, those days are passed because we all see right through it. And if you wouldn't respond to a message or a phone call like that, then why on earth would someone else, that's much more about feel and it's about being really human and we all do it so well in real life with friends and meeting new people. And that's just what we have to do in the sales space as well.   Me: I like that. So, basically you're saying you have to take time to get to know people. And you mentioned that at the end of the day, yes, it might take longer. The sales cycle might take longer, but in the long term it will actually save you because now, you actually have a client who is more likely to be loyal, which will definitely impact your customer experience and your customer lifetime cycle.   Richard also stated that he can speak in authority on this because he did it for years. You will be more fulfilled too, because it's far better to speak with 8 or 10 people across a couple of weeks and get closed deals in a fulfilling way for both sides where they don't feel pressure, but actually wants to buy as opposed to smashing your way through hundreds of phone calls and possibly get a similar number of sales, but ones that don't feel great. They feel like a number, now is the time for real organic process because nothing beats having a happy customer that lasts, it's no good getting a deal if they're then going to leave because they didn't feel like they were loved or looked after. You want someone pumping their fist in the air, thanking you that you're selling them something and that genuinely comes from you looking at the relationship first and the product that you're selling them as purely a device through which they can consume you more.   Me: Brilliant. So Richard, I was having a conversation with a client recently and one of the things that we're talking about is actually doing research on your customers, just to get an idea of who they are, what they're about, what they like, what kind of associations they're attached to, what are their preferences, that way when you go in as a sales person, whether you're the business owner, you're the sales rep or you're the marketing person, you have a better understanding of the individual with whom you're speaking to. Is it that they're a family person? Is it that they have kids? Is it that they have a sick child or they have a parent who they're taking care of.   How You Should Approach Selling Richard shared that it's a great question. Firstly, the short answer is yes, you should. And the reason why is because most people selling can't be bothered because there's volume. There are so many people you could contact. There's this feeling of this everlasting front of leads, so you might as well just keep going who cares if it doesn't work, you will find a yes eventually, actually is far more fulfilling, but far more effective to say, well, “If all of this information is public and online anyway, why wouldn't I make use of it?” But more importantly, you're going to get some feel like you actually have paid attention and that you're interested in, it's back to this thing of you just get people feeling like your well-meaning and that you care.   And there's a saying he has always had which is, “You shouldn't just research the company, you should research the person.” Because what you're really showing is that you understanding them on a deeper level and that will affect what how you interact with people and so on. And if you look at the sales, he tends to make that with people who have found him online, that maybe looked at some of the content and so on. And so, he can see what they're about and he can have a sense of who they were. There's a call he did just before this, which was the sales call and the guy he knew has spent time around the content he has, Richard is aware of what he does. So when they go into the call, it's already warmed up any kind of awkwardness or trying to understand who the person is, is gone.   They can really get on with it as though they're already kind of friends or connected. And he really thinks that short circuits the scary bit or the awkward bit and you have a really fulfilling relationship. But one thing you can do is obviously researching the person helps you show that you have spent time showing an interest in them. And that allows the barriers to go down a bit, but you can actually go a step further.   And if you researched where there might be a mutual connection. So for instance, if he was approaching you and you didn't know each other at all, but you had a mutual connection, then that would actually lubricate the whole process so well because by proxy you kind of know each other. And an example he uses a lot of is if you and him sat next to each other at a wedding, then the first thing they'd say, of course is, “So how do you know the bride or groom?” And you'd say, “Oh, I work with the bride.” and he’d be like, “Oh, cool. I went to university with them. Or I know them, they live on our street” or something. You would get on like a house on fire because you have the commonality even though you know nothing about each other.   So, when he was selling in corporate, he was always looking, where's that point of connection. And in fact, Yanique and Richard connected through their mutual friend, Paul Brunson. So there's the perfect example, “Hey Richard, I know you're connected to Paul.” and it's like, “Well, I think Paul's a good guy. So if you are friends with him too, then it means that you must be good enough.” Because he's validated for you for him. So that's so powerful because that's essentially saying we're all part of the same tribe in a way. And it hacks away so quickly at any kind of fears or anxieties people have and you end up with often a cold prospect being quite welcoming.   Me: Excellent. So, research is important, but to take it a step further, if you could find one person that you are maybe connected through, it kind of breaks that down, that initial interaction down.   Richard agreed but verify as well, because as you can imagine, when you look at like LinkedIn or Facebook, there'll be 500 mutual connections and you will have a lot of connections these days. So, it's a case of saying, well, let me look at perhaps some of your content and who's showing up a couple of times and are you speaking to them? It looks like you're close enough or have you done a collaboration with them like that, that's a better way of verifying it. Because not every connection is of course, someone  that they might not even remember they're connected to.   Me: And it goes back into research as well because you have to take time to sit down and kind of scroll through their posts, look who is commenting and look at the responses that they're giving to each person. Because somebody posts that I look at on LinkedIn, I see people comment, you can tell the comments that the person actually sat down and gave intentional thought to responding to that particular person versus a copy and paste kind of comment where all of the comments that are on the post, they're responding in the same way to each person's comment and it's not specific to an individual. So then, in your mind, you're like, do they really know this person? Or are they just responding in a general way? It doesn't seem very personalized.   Richard shared that the truth is if you've got a community, if you've got a bunch of friends, you may well be commenting really great posts, purely because you've got no time, but you're just showing, you know what, “I'm here for you and I'm supporting you as a friend.” But when you would both know that normally you would write more. It's the people who write paragraphs just to be validated you're doing great content, but also who are like, “Hey, I'm going to stop and show up properly here.”   And he’s finding this is valuable and never before is there such a wonderful lead generation opportunity as when you get people stopping by or even sticking around and like getting into orbit around you over time because they love the content you produce and sharing like really spending time, you are their Netflix in a way and that is really powerful.   And it's a very done well, good content that's related to the ecosystem within which your proposition sits is really powerful at attracting people who find it fascinating and they warm themselves up just by virtue of the fact that they're checking out. But if you can stimulate proper conversation through content as an example, it's a wonderful way to kind of really accelerate that first part of a relationship.   Me: So, as it relates to virtual selling strategies, so if you are face to face, some of the selling strategies that you would probably use would include, I imagine probably taking your prospect out for lunch or maybe visiting, if they're having a promotion or a campaign at their organization, you would support it.   Virtual Selling Strategies Richard Recommends to be used in the “New Normal” Richard shared that there's quite a few new, interesting tools. One thing that you can definitely take from the offline world is that people actually aren't necessarily interested in the pitch at the start; they're interested in if you're a good guy or a good woman. And if you're fun to hang out with and there's longer play, but he feels a really good tool is just to hang out with their content and if you do that enough, then they start to convert, like be an interesting person, have some banter and good jokes in that. And it's very practical to be social because that warms people up, it also shows the network effect, it shows people online, a wider network, “Hey, there’s this person who seems quite good fun” that's very attractive because humans revere someone who's confident and social, so something to think about.   There's also some really great tools right now, one of his favourites at the moment is on LinkedIn is a reasonably recent feature, which is polls. And a lot of people would like just doing, what do you prefer? Chips or bacon or something like that, which is silly, it's just to drive engagement. But we really can do is ask questions where the voting options relate to the problems that you can solve for people. So, if someone's says, like putting their hand up and saying, “Yeah, I have a problem with this particular issue.”   What you've got there is someone stepping forward and saying, I have a problem here. And the nice thing about the polls is completely anonymous except to the author of the poll itself. So, it allows you to go in and say, I've got 350 people who have voted, 207 have voted on this particular option that directly relates to what I help them with and now because they came, they stepped forward, they basically have validated or this sense of you being able to engage with them and ask something.   And so, because you've earned the right to speak to them purely because they've voted on your poll, you can simply send a message and say, “Hey, Yanique, thank you so much for voting in the poll.” If there’s a second connection, he'd add, how are you and take it from there or their first connection, or after a couple of messages with the second connection, he would then add, “Thank you so much for voting in the poll. Why do you think you're finding that particular thing, such a challenge?”   And he does that to all of these people, why would he do that to cold people who've never heard of him when he can get people to step forward in a nice little simple way and say, I actually have this problem because now you've got context, now you're completely within your rights to say, “Why is this a problem for you?” And getting them to open up because why would they not want to answer that when they've just said on your very post that they have an issue and the conversion's crazy off that, it's a really wonderful organic way of doing it.   And most people are like, “Yeah, absolutely. I have this problem. And we're talking about it because I just put my hand up and said I have an issue.” So for him, that's a huge win, it’s a massive thing people can be doing. And you just got to think to yourself, what's going to get people to not have to think too hard and simply like, say, “Oh, that's an easy poll, just click on the one, that’s the answer.” And it's simplicity. Just keep it simple question and simple answers and they will want to show up and answer it. And his wonderful way of starting a sales process he has found.   App, Website or Tool that Richard Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Richard shared that this is going to make him feel really old or sound really old and he’s not, it just works so well. It's actually Google Drive. You would think he would probably say some kind of high tech app or something. Sure he has used Trello and Zapier and things like that are really cool and Zapier is amazing for automation. And he would add before he goes into drive and why he uses it.   But he would add something like Stripe is amazing too, it's as good as a tool to kind of put all of your customers and invoicing that's a piece of cake from it. But Google Drive is brilliant because it’s got a team and anyone around the world, at any given time can log in and see what's going on. They can all access stuff together. His clients can access their own folder; see the content they're building with them. They can edit and add to it and it’s the transparency is amazing and he really, really liked that.   But what he will add to this because the question is about apps and things like that, or things that might help with productivity perhaps, don't ever discount the value of a really reliable person. So, like, a VA or someone who's assisting you, they are like Gold. So, if you can find someone who is reliable, so shout out to Mona who works on his newsletter every week. She's a phenomenal person who is there every day when he needs her and that in itself; she in itself is way more productive than any app could be.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Richard When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Richard stated that that's a great question. Everyone's going to expect him to say business books now he suppose. And he’s going to say three, actually. So if everyone wants a reading list of absolute must reads one by a guy called Mark McCormack who founded IMGs like a sports agency who looked after like Jack Nicholas, the golfer, and people like that. He wrote a book called What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive, he loves this book. He (Mark) actually went to Harvard, but he was a superstar in business. And what he's showing in this book is all the soft stuff. So what shaking a hand really should look like? What it's meant when someone's got no time, how to close the deal, or what are the nuances of communication really meaning? all that soft stuff is absolutely amazing in that book, he really loves it.   Another one by Douglas Atkin is The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers into True Believers. This guy's a genius. What he's done is, it's like science and research, behind cults. It's funny because his intro’s like, “Hear me out here, just give me a chance.” And he's like, it's the science and the practical and mechanics about around cults and branding side by side. So, what he's done is work very hard to remove all of the negative connotations and biases around cults and look at why, because for right or for wrong, they are able to attract a lot of people. And the myth is that cults, for instance, are about a bunch of losers getting together. It's quite the opposite. You have to have socially, very bright people doing certain things very well in order to get kind of the ball rolling and arguably the root of the success of the major religions out there is in these practical ways in which they kind of started as something of a cult, then ended up being these great worldwide religions, but he applies it then to how you build your brand and your tribe.   And it's phenomenal, very relevant books. He'd really recommend that as well. He can definitely go on all night. He would say the closest person to his philosophy on selling or like neurological selling and understanding with empathy, how people would buy is Oren Klaff. So, he's just released a new book called Flip The Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea is Their Idea, but he's original one called Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal is amazing on understanding the dynamics between buyers and sellers. Really great stuff. The audible is awesome.   The most important book anyone should read is not a business book. It's by a stoic philosopher called Seneca, he dip into it at least once a month; it's been his favourite book for 6 or 7 years now. His book called On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (Penguin Great Ideas). So Seneca wrote thousands of years ago, and it is tiny, it's like this little pamphlet, it's 90 pages or something. And what it does in such a short space of time, honestly, you put it down after a few pages going like, “Wow, it's blowing my mind.” That book, single handedly really gave him this sense of perspective on time and what we really don't have and about being intentional and meaningful with it. And you got to understand, he read that a few years after his mother died at 60. So she was just about to hit retirement.   She worked so hard and then it was taken from her. So when you combine that, like the tragedy of her first granddaughter, first granddaughter by his sister just being born, his just being born as well and that was all gone. It really reinforces it, but just not in that book, it doesn't talk about it in like a misty eyed, emotional sense. It's really hard hitting about how people view their time. And interestingly against how they view their money, people hoard their money, they are that tight with their money as though there's a finite amount and you can always go and get more, but they're very liberal with their time. And in the words of Seneca as though they're immortal and just talking about it now, it gets him pumped.   Especially as a father now, he has two children. He turns 40 in 10 weeks time. So, that’s in October, but that's another milestone, it really drives home, do great things, make the most of it and, you know, but make sure you’re intentional with every moment as well, including being spontaneous, being intentional about wanting to do that as well. So, he couldn't recommend it more as you've probably sensed.   Me: I love spontaneity. I think life is very short. We're here for a very short space of time, the people that we connect with, I don't think it's by chance. I think it is very much intentional, the people who we meet and the people who we're connected to. And I think it's important for us to really try to just really get to know the people who you're talking to. Don't just let it be, as you said about a sale or because you're trying to capitalize on them or you're trying to steal something from them, but just really have meaningful conversations with people.   Richard agreed and shared that it's no kind of legacy when you're done. It's no kind of legacy to have all of these people buy from you, but none of them will remember you.   Richard was asked when his birthday is, and he shared that it’s the 8th of October. So, it's weird. It's like end of an era. I loved being in his twenties. He learned to be a grownup in his thirties. He is really pleased to be arriving at this age. Very, very happy with everything he has around him. He thinks mostly because he kind of built it all himself and designed it himself, he’s very pleased with that. So, he’s excited about the decade ahead, he knows it's just a number, but you can't help seeing something of a milestone.   What Richard is Really Excited About Now! Richard shared that he don't want to be too promotional, so, he'll just say that the big flagship product at the moment he’s working on is his LinkedIn program and he’s helping a lot of business owners do some really wonderful things, and it's so lovely when you have this community of people you work with every week and he knew he wanted to do that because he coaches one on one a lot. And he also has his courses online where people buy them and they watch them and it's very kind that they do, but he wanted something where it's a combination of the two. So, group coaching specifically on how to convert and sell in an elegant way through LinkedIn. And it's just so nice to be there and it's not just a nice get together, it's practical to these people. There's one the other day saying, “I just got two new clients this week.” that's changing him.   And these people saying that is really making a difference is huge. But one of the other things he has been doing as well, which is completely far removed from what you'd expect is for the past two and a half to three months now, he has been getting up at 5:00 am every morning and doing yoga and then focusing on building his day in a really strong, structured way and getting early nights, exercising loads. And it's been such a game changer. So, that's personally, if someone said to him a year ago, he'll be doing yoga and getting up 5:00 am in the morning, but honestly, it's really changed. So, rather than going to bed at like 1:00 am, 2:00 am in the morning, getting out of bed at 7:30 am, 8:00 am and feeling tired, he has pulled those 3 hours back, lights out by 11:00 pm, getting up at 5:00 am and the productivity and also the clarity in his mind and is huge.   And he’s really thrilled, he has been doing that. He always thought he was an evening person or a night person, a lot of people feel they are because it's quiet back then, but shifting to a morning person, and by the way, it's not DNA, we can all do it. The difference between night and morning is yes, both are quiet, but in the morning you have a full battery of willpower that you can use against any distractions. So, within the first 2 hours every morning, he gets so much done because he has all of that energy to avoid looking at notifications on his phone. So, he doesn't look at his phone until like 10:00 in the morning and he blasts the work. And it's lovely because when his girls come down at like 7:50 in the morning for breakfast, he have blasted so much of his day, he urges people to try it out, it's so fulfilling, you feel really strong with it and present rather than this zombie, who's like burning the midnight oil. So, yoga is cool, he’s really impressed with himself with what he can do now, it's nice to get the stretch back and all that kind of things.   Where Can We Find Richard Online Richard shared listeners can find him at – LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.cn/in/richardjamesmoore/             Website – www.therichardmoore.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/the.richard.moore/   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Richard Uses When asked about a saying or quote then he tends to revert to in times of adversity, Richard shared that there's one he was told he has to bring up, there is a CEO of the last employed job he had, he was like a self-made millionaire and he really paid attention to him. And for all his faults, he also taught him a lot. And one of the things he always said was, “No one will stop you, but no one will help you.” And what's interesting about that is, is that, yes, people will support you and stand by you and things like that.   But you can't rely, it sounds really negative but if you look at it in the right way, it's almost like a call for you to not rely on people to do things for you, be the responsible person. No one will stop you doing that and you are in control of the influence over whatever outcome you really want.   He will add to that his own kind of quote that he used to say to himself, especially when things were really hard, he still uses it now but he really uses it whenever there's something new or difficult or challenging. And he'd simply say, “I can handle this.” And it would ground him and would make him think to previous instances of doing something similar and allow him to say to myself, remember how I did this before, I can handle this. And if you look back, no matter how old you are, look back at all the things you've done, there's almost nothing you weren't able to overcome, you did so much hard stuff.   So now, there's not really anything he can't handle. It might be ugly, but the truth is, he knows he can do it so he can handle this, is something of an affirmation that you should be saying, especially in those harder moments, and say it with conviction, you tend to believe it. And that's that voice, your own voice, the most persuasive voice you know on your shoulder, cheering you on. It's really valuable.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners Links What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive by Mark McCormack The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers into True Believers by Douglas Atkin Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea Is Their Idea by Oren Klaff Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal by Oren Klaff On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (Penguin Great Ideas) by Seneca The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

The pressure to live in a certain way can feel oppressive. Many can cope, but for people like Emma and Richard - at some point it has to give. The expectation to have a certain career, status and path through life all felt like too much, especially as they’re young children were looking to them for guidance in an ever more complicated world.So Richard and Emma crafted a plan to step away for as long as they could. A year sabbatical in an RV granted them the freedom they desired without having to commit to an entire new approach to life. Whlle the decision may have been swift, the planning was meticulous, including their capacity to work throughout the year ahead of them, ensuring their ability to earn a living while living the lifestyle they wanted.They drove north through Sweden in the winter, skiing and pushing their little RV through conditions few vehicles or families would want to endure. They share stories of the heater freezing and staying wrapped in sleeping bags to stay warm. Right out of the gates they got a taste of what life on the road could deliver, but didn’t let the unavoidable problems step in the way of the experience they were living together.Emma and Richard have since sold their RV and returned to Sweden after fully embodying a lifestyle that they always dreamed about. They return changed, not knowing what will await them, but with a capacity to choose the direction they seek to head.Check out some of the photos from their trip @ADreamWorthChasing.ABOUT THE PODCASTRewilding Parenthood is a podcast featuring families leading bold and courageous lifestyles. It is told in 5 episode thematic based seasons - the purpose being that we want families interested in a certain subject matter to get a holistic look at the lifestyle they seek to pursue and most importantly highlighting paths to achieving this life. Of the five episodes per season, four will be hosted by Colin Boyd, in English and the fifth in Spanish and hosted by Sofi Aldinio. So whether you are seeking a life on the road, on the water or just an alternative approach to the 9-5, join us to find inspiration and connection to many others leading the way.Rewilding Parenthood was produced by Afuera Vida and hosted by Colin Boyd & Sofi Aldinio. Follow the journey, and podcast highlights on instagram @afueravida.Sound Design & Editing by Mercedes RivaMusic by Thomas Tyrel

Our guest today is psychotherapist and author Dr Paul Leslie who has written a number of books on the topic of therapy and healing, the latest of which is all about the art of creating a magical session. Sounds like fun! So Richard and Matt head down to Aiken in South Carolina (well not really, we were in the comfort of our offices in Australia, but it's nice to imagine that we did the trip!) to quiz Paul on what he knows about the science and art of psychotherapy. You can find out about Paul Leslie and his books at his website https://drpaulleslie.com/   Please leave a review! (Reviews are fabulously important to us! On your podcast player you should find an option to review at the bottom of the main page for the podcast - after the list of available episodes) - Here's a link for iTunes.   Thanks for listening! Support this show by subscribing to The Science of Psychotherapy (You can support us by subscribing to our magazine for less than a $1/week) Please leave an honest review on iTunes and please subscribe to our show.  You can also find our podcast at: The Science of Psychotherapy Podcast Homepage If you want more great science of Psychotherapy please visit our website thescienceofpsychotherapy.com

Welcome to episode 17 of Chattin Flicks - the Movie and TV Podcast. This week, we have a change to our scheduled review of 'The Irishman' due to James not watching it yet. So Richard, James, Carl and Lee discuss some controversial opinions from our listeners and tackle them head on. In other news, Carl hasn't got a clue what episode number it is. We've all been there. Follow us @ChattinFlicks on all major social media outlets and podcasting services. Send any comments or questions to ChattinFlicks@hotmail.com, use #ChattinFlicks

Richard interviews high tech companies but his newest venture is a custom pillow to help us all sleep better. Richard was tired of waking up tired and 25% of couples are loosing intimacy because someones sleeping on the couch. Many of us know there are so many reasons why we have a poor sleep. But insomnia is intensified by other conditions like restless leg, sleep apnea and even bed wetting! And it could be that our body is tried to all kind of phenomena in our bodies to get and keep our airways open. Richard describes our throat as a water hose. And that hose can collapse if our heads and body are not aligned. Imagine the perfect pillow created with the latest tech. That's right, a custom thickness created personally for you. Check it out, our health relies on a good nights sleep! BIO: The Good night's sleep project features a custom-tailored pillow. After interviewing 110 sleep professionals and dealing with his own sleep issues for twenty years, Richard launched his custom made pillow. In 2016 Richard started the future tech podcast and has interviewed 1800 plus companies in artificial intelligence, stem cells, 3D printing, gene editing, bitcoin block chain and microbiome and quantum computing. he talks about virtual reality and space exploration and more.  Richard also has ten years of experience as CMO of speakeasy marketing inc. A firm that has helped over nine hundred businesses nationwide to improve their practices.  Jacobs and Whitehall, a wholly-owned subsidiary has helped over 310 professionals, lawyers, doctors, veterinarians, chiropractors and real estate agents author their own practice area book and become the authority expert in their industry. Richard has also authored five books. Including Secrets of Attorney Marketing law school dare Not teach.The ultimate guide to local business marketing, ultimate series co-author. And Bitcoin and Block chain: Lessons from two hundred interviews of block chain companies.  Phone: 1-484-713-9276 Email: lucian@futuretechpodcast.com https://www.futuretechpodcast.com The good night sleep project You already know the importance of sleep. However did you know that, from a medical and evolutionary perspective, quality sleep is not only important, but vital to our long term health and well being. Without it, we simply can not function.  According to the Harvard medical school's division of sleep medicine, sleep is one of the three pillars of health. Alongside exercise and nutrition; when we don't get enough of it, we increase our risk of developing all kinds of chronic conditions like: Diabetes, hypertension, depression, anxiety and other long term mood disorders. Plus reduced immune function, alcoholism and obesity. So Richard started learning about sleep. He read books. He sought out and interviewed recognized sleep experts and paid for consulting time with them. Six months of research became an obsession, as through this process Richard talked with friends and family that also struggled with sleep. The result became a movement and he called it the good night sleep project. https://www.lifecoachadele.com https://www.facebook.com/Iamyourdestinycoach https:/twitter.com/NlpAdele https:/www.Linkedin.com/in/adeleandersondch https://www.instagram.com/lifecoachadele/   Adele's bio: I live through passion and purpose. In love with neuroscience, drawn to the power of the mind; as a survivor of a plane that crashed and flipped in water. What I experienced while drowning. The stuff I now know to be true. I consciously live my values. Being clear about what I do and don;t want. Living a life I love waking up to every day.  I thrive on learning, growing and expanding my awareness so I can embrace all that life has to offer. My clients are successful professionals looking for or going through change. They want to be listened to and are looking for a personalized caring approach. If you are tired of repeating old patterns of behavior. Feel stuck.  Experience uncomfortable or imbalanced feelings in your body. Wake up feeling dis-satisfied. Are living under stress or simply looking for a new beginning that fulfills your inner purpose. Then you have found your safe haven. As a NLP trainer, I create perceptual shifts, teach and provide life skills. Plus install the neuro-networking necessary fro transformation. My multi-dynamic and personalized approach includes a deep sense of intuition, natural medicine, neuroscience, integrity and care. Clients report that they feel happier, sleep ,ore soundly and experience feelings of deep satisfaction knowing they are living the purposeful life they have been wanting. Natural health: Improving and balancing your body, mind and soul NLP Trainer: empowerment, behavioral change, accelerate and motivate learning, install excellence, improve communication and removing stress. Service: Deeply devoted to creating the environment where you can move towards a life you desire and deserve.          

Sometimes a business can go through the acquisition cycle once, twice, or even more. A deal that was pivotal to our development back 2011 came back through Quiet Light this year and our very own Brad Wayland is here talking to the buyer, Richard Bell, about his recent purchase of a business we originally sold 8 years ago. Throughout his career, Richard Bell has mostly been in the high tech world. He's worked in sales, product development, marketing, business development, and mergers and acquisitions. He stayed mainly on the strategic side of running a business before deciding to make a purchase of his own last year. He started off small, looking to take his breadth of behind-the-scenes knowledge to bat with YUGSTER, the e-commerce business he bought. While Richard's thorough due diligence process may have initially overwhelmed the seller, the two worked well together in the end. Richard did a lot of the work up front, showed the seller he was serious, and greatly reduced the risk for problems once the deal was done. Episode Highlights: How Richard went about the search process and decided to buy this business. Factors that made the purchase good a fit. Who YUGSTER sells to. How the office and staff structure has changed since Richard took over. Richard's SBA purchase choice and how he navigated the process. Advice for anyone considering an SBA purchase. The rebrand and other changes that Richard made with Yugster, now called Until Gone. Successes and growth he's seen since the changes to the site. The software and the technology he's using and how he's are taking advantage of modern applications and platforms. Ways shopify has become the go to e-commerce cart choice for vendors. The biggest challenge Richard has encountered since the acquisition. Words of advice for others looking to delve into the purchase process. Transcription: Mark: One of the darkest periods in the history of Quiet Light Brokerage happened around 2011. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with Quiet Light at that time. And due to some personal situations going on with health issues with a family member of mine I took my eye off the ball of Quiet Light for a little bit of time and found ourselves in a position where frankly we didn't have a lot of money coming in. We had a lot more money going out and not a lot of deal flow at the same time. It was at that point in time when a great listing, a great business literally just fell on my lap and I was able to get that listing on the market, get it sold within a few days or at least found a buyer within a few days and it really represented kind of a life vest for me which really helped in bringing Quiet Light Brokerage profits back off the brink of extinction. One of the great things about this business that I love is seeing some of the companies that we touch early on grow and sometimes come back to us. When I originally started Quiet Light Brokerage my previous company that I'd sold came back through Quiet Light. I sold it again. I actually ended up selling that company a total of three times which was pretty fascinating to do. Today we don't have Joe on the introduction. We have Brad because Brad talked to one of his previous clients; a buyer that just closed an acquisition and they bought the business that served as a life vest for me back in 2011. Brad, how was the conversation with Richard? Brad: You know it's really great. I didn't actually know that background. I think he sent me an email and said hey I've got a lot on my plate. This is a good listing. Do you want to take a peek at it and see if you can put a value on it and help them get it sold? So I didn't know that backstory I just knew that you had sold it once previously. So it's one of those situations where we had a guy that was in Richard the buyer; we had a guy that was looking for an investment. He had inquired on a little tiny listing that I had out at the time it's like a hundred thousand dollars and came to the conclusion that it wasn't a good fit. But I had picked up on that this guy was like a serious M&A guy. I could already tell from the get-go like why is this guy looking at a hundred thousand dollar listing? This guy supposed must be looking at much larger listings than this. So I was a little surprised and ended up floating in the details of this listing that we had for a daily deal site that kind of needed someone with the ability to kind of handle a lot of moving parts. I felt like he seemed like the perfect personality for it. And so I floated it his way and the next day he sent me an LOI and it was just really smooth sailing from there on out from his side of things. He just was a really great buyer to work with and so I wanted to bring him on the podcast. I think he's done several things that have been really interesting with that company. Mark: How is this due diligence process different than say your average buyer out there? Brad: Yes. So when we do these deals they always look a little bit different. After we get an LOI why we are involved sometimes a lot in the due diligence process. Sometimes we're not involved very much at all. We have kind of standard folders and things that people want to look at; bank statements or proofs out of PayPal or your credit card provider. Things like that where people can kind of verify the numbers. In the case with Richard I found out after he got under LOI he had done like 200 million dollars in acquisitions in the corporate world. He was a very seasoned and experienced M&A guy. I can't remember how many transactions he had done but he had been responsible for some very large deals for I think a publicly-traded company. And so he put his diligence request together and he said hey I'm working on my diligence request and I sent them over to the seller. I think the seller about passed out. It was just; there was nothing wrong with it. It was very thorough but when you get these really experienced guys sometimes you think that means it's going to be a piece of cake for the seller but it doesn't always mean that. Sometimes if you've got a seller that's really done it's kind of like hey I'm just ready to move on and I don't want to look at it anymore. It can be a little bit of a challenge. And so we definitely dealt with that a little bit on this one where we've got a really seasoned buyer who had a very nice thorough package of diligence information that he wanted gathered. And then we had a seller that was really ready to be finished. And when he got the packet I think he felt like oh my goodness I just put all this work into getting the listing ready now we're going to go through this diligence process that is way more exhausting than what I did whenever I bought it on the front end. But honestly it was two great guys; the seller was a great seller, the buyer was a great buyer and they worked very well together and I think they've continued to be friends post-transaction. Mark: That the seller that you worked with was the buyer when I sold this business, and he still remains one of my favorite people that I've worked with out at Quiet Light. He is a fantastic guy. I think people sometimes get intimidated especially in the sell-side when they see these really long due diligence lists. But I've learned over the years, and I don't know how you feel about this Brad, but I've learned over the years that a thorough due diligence list is a good sign. It's usually a sign that the buyer is extraordinarily serious because look you have to generate all the information the buyer has to digest that information and that's really tough. And it also reduces the risk after the sale. Because if they're doing a thorough due diligence the chances of something coming back on you after are pretty small because they've done their homework. Brad: Yeah I totally agree with that. I actually tell my sellers all the time if they are complaining about the due diligence process I always tell them the work you're putting in now is saving you headache later. If you're going to go ahead and give them all the things that they need today they're not going to be the type of buyer that's coming back to you and saying hey man I really need you to help me with this or that I need to take advantage of these hours that we carved into the APA and train me on these different things. And I definitely have seen the transactions where they don't ask for much and then I find out later that the buyers had to come back to the seller several times asking for things and it seems like it is a better situation to just kind of lay all the cards on the table and do the work upfront and kind of have the ability to be done with the business and kind of transition to your next thing. Mark: That's a lot of chitchat on our part let's go ahead and listen to the interview. Brad: Welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. I'm your host today Brad Wayland and we are joined today by Richard Bell. Hey Richard how are you today? Richard: I'm doing great, thanks. Nice to see you. Brad: Good. Yeah. So we've been doing this series of podcasts on folks that have bought something from Quiet Light and now we're kind of following up with them; seeing how things went, learning about why they bought, what they learned early on, what the challenges are and so today's kind of one of those profiles. And this one has a really unique kind of proposition that I want to kind of get into later but we usually start off by just getting some background. We don't do like these fancy intros. We let our guests kind of describe themselves. So Richard give the profile of what your career has looked like and tell me kind of where you've been. Richard: Sure, I'm happy to. I've done a variety of different roles which I think is one of the reasons that set me up well to do or set me up to do well with this job of running this business. I mostly worked in the high tech world with one particular company called Akamai Technologies. And within that company, I had spent time in sales roles, technical roles, product development, marketing, a lot of time in business development, and mergers and acquisitions with business development side and really partnership focused. And the roles I had after I left Akamai were very similar positions where I had a chance to really look at strategic issues, touch on a lot of different things across the whole breadth of running a business so it set me up well for the position I'm in now. Brad: Yeah that's great. I remember; I think you had inquired on another listing that I had. I think it was a pretty small listing and we got talking about it and you gave me some background I think in the time you told me like hey I ran M&A for a big corporation for a long time and gave me some pretty staggering numbers in terms of the dollars of deals you had helped close for your business. And when I heard it I was thinking about this potential listing it was coming up for this business called Yugster which I thought was the strangest name. I was not familiar with it even though we had sold it in the past but Yugster was Yours Until Gone and it was Yugster.com. And Mark Daoust the founder of Quiet Light called me and said hey we sold this business like years and years ago and now the guy that we sold it to is interested in selling it again and asked me if I would like to take a look at it. So when you started talking and I could hear your operational background I thought this might be a good fit for you and I think I just said hey I've got an idea I want to kind of float to you and I feel like that's kind of how we started it. Is that what you remember? Richard: Absolutely. I mean I started looking for a business probably six or nine months before you and I ever even touched base. Part of that was me doing homework on sort of what was out there and how to look at these businesses that were a lot smaller than the kinds of things that I'd looked at before where we're talking sale prices in the nine figures; so very large businesses, large multiples is in stack. And so I wasn't quite sure how to go about buying frankly a smaller business. And there's a lot of chat out there. I mean you know that and you know there's a lot of brokers out there who would just put a listing out for anything. So you end up learning quite a bit about what's really there and what's meaningful just by going through that process. And we did look at a business for another e-com site that you had posted up there and I think we had decided it was a little bit too seasonal for what we were doing. And then you threw the Yugster thing out there. I think it hadn't even gone public and I'm like Yugster? As a marketing guy that was like just you know what that is. But yeah that's exactly the story and so I think when I got my teeth around that one it actually made a lot of sense for me. I was kind of excited about it. Brad: Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong but so the business model was it had been a drop shipping business I think since day one and it still had a very impressive; you're looking at it and I'm looking at the sign and I'm thinking this looks kind of antiquated. It looks a little bit like it's seen its better days. But when I looked at the results and we're talking about a low eight-figure business that was on some slightly declining trends and I could just tell that the light bulb kind of went off for you about like I think I might better inject some life into this and I clearly could see that you'd be able to handle the size of a business that was from what you had done before. But what specifically about Yugster was interesting to you? Like when you first looked at it what were you thinking like this is a good fit for me because of what? Richard: Like I said I went through this process where I started talking to some different brokers about a variety of different businesses to help me get educated about what's out there. There are a lot of businesses out there especially in the e-commerce space that are really it is an Amazon store. Somebody who is importing some private label from China and then they're essentially listing it on Amazon and having Amazon do fulfillment and so forth. It doesn't, and the issue I got to is that it doesn't really leverage my skills. There is not a lot of value that you can add to some of those kinds of businesses. Maybe you get a few more distribution channels or what have you. What I saw with Yugster was really interesting to me that it was a fully operating business. Yes, it was drop ship but they had relationships with a sizable number of vendors. They had a functioning platform. They were not dependent on other marketplaces like Amazon which could be all over the place or eBay or whatever. They had their own storefront. It had been established I think in 2005 or early 2006 when it went live. So it had a long life which is really important in terms of longevity and the brand and so forth. And the other thing that I; the two other things that I really looked at and I liked about it, one was it had a core staff. There were talented people that had a good resume and seem to know what they were doing. And it also had a really solid customer base. They had a loyalty program they've run for many years. These were customers that had been buying from Yugster repeatedly and they had it tiered up and they were kind of passionate about the business. And these sort of strong customer base, loyal customer base that's established, the staff is there and a technology platform that I thought I could really make a difference with because I do have a strong tech background; all of those things kind of came together for me and made me want to dive in with Yugster. Brad: Yeah that's interesting. So of course as just kind of a layperson when I go to the site I think of it as like a daily discount kind of idea. I see like maybe a generation ago iPad or MacBook or something like that. Is it retail-focused folks like me or is it more like small businesses that are like hey we need iPads for our production floor? We don't need the latest and greatest we need to get 10 of this. Is it a mix of those types of customers or who really is the customer that comes to this place? Richard: A really good question and it's changed a bit. So the business model just to kind of flesh that out a little bit more for the audience it is a daily deal site. And what that mostly involves is sort of inventory end so people might have a couple hundred or something left and they just want to get rid of it. It could be there's a lot of refurbished product out there that like you're saying is a year or two behind and for most people you need the latest and greatest Apple MacBook Pro or is one that's two or three years old is going to work just fine for you even the things like vacuums and what have you. And so there's a range of products but we get them; we typically really focus on running them for a period of a few days. We sell out the inventory and then we move on to the next product and cycle through it. Our customers have; we're historically very male. So 70, 80% male buyers; the profile would be sort of bargain hunters, people that are somewhat shopaholic shows up in the mix as well. Since we've moved the business over to; I took it over last year and we kind of modified the site and the product mix and we're actually closer to 50-50 male-female at this point because we have a lot more home goods than we used to. And one of the things so your point about selling to businesses I've actually noticed a significant increase in the number of orders from businesses. We really used to have only a small handful but now I've seen things like schools. I've seen a school order like 20 Chrome books from us. They're going to use them with smaller kids and they just don't need the latest and greatest. They just need a laptop. Ipads, as you suggested, is another great example, I've seen a bunch of those go out for businesses that are needing it but the latest and greatest current generation isn't required for what they're doing. They're doing order entry or checking people out kind of thing. Yeah but it's definitely shifted and I think some of that is the changes that we've made in the site and the business as well which I think we'll get into this. Brad: Yeah. You mentioned the staff I kind of want to jump to that. So from what I recall you're in Washington are you in the Seattle area? Richard: I am yeah. Brad: And then this business was in Salt Lake I believe and there was a physical office there. And how many employees were in that office? Richard: There was about nine. Brad: Okay, and so what have you done with that? Have you kept that office there, did you retain that staff, what have you done in terms of changing that since you bought the business? Richard: Great question; so because of my background being in tech most of my career the majority of the people that I manage were actually remote, some as far away as China or India in different roles that I have. And so I'm very personally very comfortable running a remote staff. And so one of the things that we did is actually close that office because it wasn't adding much in the way of value and home office everybody. So the whole organization now is based out of their own homes and we use a lot of EG Suite technologies or a lot of video meetings, audio calls, whatever, Slack to communicate and stay very, very highly interactive between us. But everybody just works from home in their jammies or sweats or whatever [inaudible 00:18:56.1] worked. So I think you asked about did we keep the staff and we kept 100% of the employees. We gave everybody a job offer as they came over because we wanted to really evaluate what they could do with different leadership and sort of reenergizing the business. And we made some with that some staffing turnover since people that pursued other opportunities or maybe weren't the right fit for us where we were going. But I'd say about 80% of the staff is the same as what it was when I acquired the business. Brad: Yeah that's really interesting you know at Quiet Light we run a distributed team as well and so we've got eight brokers in the States, we've got two overseas, but it is an interesting timeframe that we live in where I actually go to an office. If you see behind me my house is not behind me but I have five children at home so that can be challenging at the house. I choose to rent an office but I do think it is interesting in this day and age that remote works so well and I feel like as a general rule people are happier when they can choose where they go to work. Richard: And I will actually tell you that the last round of hiring we did was for some new buyers that we brought into the business and the ability for both of them to work from home was actually a big competitive advantage in getting them to come on board. Brad: Yeah, that's really interesting. So we don't really use this as like a sales pitch but as you're sitting there talking about what you guys do; I mean our listeners, we have a lot of listeners to this podcast and a lot of them are small entrepreneurial shops, some are like PE firms and you've got your like solo entrepreneurs so I'm just kind of curious where do our listeners kind of fit in to the kind of product mix that you guys offer at your business? Like what are the types of things that they might be most interested in that you sell on a daily basis now? Richard: Sure. I mean I would say for that kind of audience you're probably looking at mostly the technology and maybe some of the home goods for example. So on the tech side, we sell all kinds of computers; Windows and Macs, desktops, laptops, Chrome books, iPads, even phones. Obviously, that technology suite is something that just about every entrepreneur or business will need to some degree. If you're somebody who's looking for like I said the absolute latest and greatest it's not going to be on our side and I'll be upfront like we don't sell the latest Mac books at all. Almost all of our tech in that sense is refurbished and you pay for what you get. I mean if you're buying a refurbished laptop and you're buying 300 bucks for a Mac Book it's going to be older. But for an awful lot of people that are simply doing email that kind of thing that works just fine. And we also have a range where we go from let's say a Mac Book at 300 all the way up for a Mac Book at 1,200. So you get to choose sort of what level you want and what you really need. But there are generally some pretty good bargain prices in terms of the type of technology and look that people are after. On good side, I mean coffee bar if you've got a home office everybody needs coffee. You can't function without it. So one of our vendors; an awesome vendor is the exclusive factory refurbished provider for Ninja products. Ninja makes some incredible home appliances. There was this great little ninja coffee bar that's sort of a single serving fresh ground coffee maker and they sell like crazy. People love them. And so yeah I think there are some tech products and some home products that would be a good fit for any business person. Brad: Yeah that's great. I want to get into some of the changes that you've made but one thing I want to kind of back up to that kind of struck me and not something I've seen that often was your deal structure. I remember talking to you and kind of floating you the price and you said yeah I'm a cash buyer so we can leverage that; no problem. And then when we got to LOI and you called me and said hey I think I'm going to utilize some SBA on this and I'm going to put down way more than what they'll require but I've got an SBA lender that I want to tap into. I just kind of like for you to explain to our listeners kind of as much as you're willing to share about that process what you're thinking was and like basically how you kind of navigated that SBA process? Richard: Yeah actually that's a really good question because I guess it is a little bit unique. I did have the cash going in to pay 100% of it down, the issue for me really was just in one-word flexibility; being able to conserve my capital, put down enough to be meaningful so the SBA approval process was a no brainer. But not be running really tight on sort of the amount of down payment I did but keeping and a good chunk of reserve capital because there's always been sort of a possibility that I might acquire other businesses that I would add on to this as well and you want to have that flexibility in place. And I also wanted to make sure that once I had acquired the business I didn't want to have to use all the capital for the acquisition. Obviously, you need operating capital and you would build that into any plan. But I also wanted to be in a situation where I had enough investment capital inside the business that I could invest in the company and make the changes that I wanted. And so when I looked at the overall sort of combination of things it made a lot of sense to sort of mix us up a little bit and take; I would have to look at the paperwork again but I think we did something like 40% down cash and 60% finance. And what that essentially did for me is mean that within the business I had a good chunk of capital available to pay for all the technology changes and enhancements that I wanted to make to move the business forward because we knew we would need to do that going. Brad: Yeah I found it very interesting; so SBA we have just a massive number of people reaching out to us looking for SBA eligible businesses and wanting to talk to us about it. And I will say that one of the common pitfalls that I think that our buyers kind of find themselves in is trying to maximize the SBA situation for themselves. So a person thinks okay on the high-level point an SBA loan can be a 10% down kind of situation. That's in the absolute most ideal scenario would be a 10% down. So someone has $250,000 in capital that they can put down on a business and so their mind immediately goes to okay then I'll buy a 2 ½ million dollar business. And what I've kind of found over time doing these SBA deals is that those end up being a tough deal. If anything goes even remotely wrong then now all of a sudden the deal is falling apart; maybe the valuation doesn't come back high enough, maybe there's more inventory than was expected and SBA can't cover the inventory. So actually you were the first person that I've had to do that and I've had a couple of people do it since but you're the first person that came and said hey I can pay cash but I'm going to go ahead and use SBA. And honestly, I think SBA has a lot of advantages and a lot of disadvantages. The advantages are from a broker standpoint it really opens up our buying pool. We can offer something as an SBA. We really open up the number of buyers that can come in. But for the seller, SBA can be a grind to get through especially in these situations where people are putting down the minimum amount. I think with what you did was interesting because I never got a single phone call from the SBA lender in your deal. I never heard anything about it. You kept me updated on kind of where things are going and that is not typical for what we do with at Quiet Light. A lot of times we're introducing them to an SBA lender and then we're getting the play by play and we're delivering information back to the sellers about what's going on. In your case you said I'm going to use SBA. I thought you put down 50%; maybe you put down 40% I can't remember, but you put down a big chunk and just said I want the flexibility and I think that really proved to show just a really wise move on your part from a business decision and it didn't hold us up at all. We literally got that thing closed right on time where we were expecting in terms of timing at least the way that I'd kind of set the expectations for our seller. Richard: I would just add to that Brad. I think the advice I'd give anyone considering buying a business is get your house in order. One of the reasons the SBA process on our side went smoothly was because our finances and sort of our credit rating; everything was cleaned up so that there was nothing weird on our credit reports. It was all sort of looking pretty and accounts that needed to be closed or resolved were done. So when the bank looked at things; they look at your credit report, they look at your house, they look at your mortgage, your payment histories you want to be able to give them a very clean robust picture and be able to give it to them boom here it is. And then we also had a very clear picture of the financials and what we were going to do with the business. We gave them a 30-page business plan that essentially laid out here's the financials, here's what we're going to invest in, here's the changes we're going to make, here's the timeline, here's the results and they were conservative. They weren't sort of wild willy-nilly captain. And so between getting our own personal numbers kind of cleaned up; and this is everything just from credit numbers to even just having a nice clean resume. I mean you're applying to SBA and they want to see your business history and what you've done. So you can't take the resume that you use for your job five years ago and just slap it down. It's got to show the bank that you know how to run a business. And so there's a lot of little things that you can do to get ready and so we had those in place before you and I even got into this acquisition process. The other comment I would add about doing the sort of 10% down, I mean we could have gotten approved on a bigger deal at 10% down. I would never have done it in a million years. And part of this maybe comes from my M&A experience which is obviously a lot larger kind of mix. But one thing I learned is that no matter how good you are at diligence, no matter what you know about this particular industry, any business you have is going to have some surprises and it's going to have some ups and downs. And so one of the problems I see with people that would be doing sort of this 10% in sort of right on the bleeding edge you're not going to have enough capital to be really flexible. You're going to struggle with investments and here's, and this is maybe not something that people don't really think about that much but buying a business is stressful. You're running a new business. You're investing. This is potentially your whole income, your life, what you're doing, a good chunk of your personal assets are going to get tied up and it's stressful even if you have tons of money to play with. Putting yourself right on the edge where your finances are squeezed that tight where you're doing 10% down and that's everything that you've got it just adds to the stress level in a way that's not good for running the business. It's not good for you personally on a health basis. So I think if I can look back at it and say what's my advice to people to get through an acquisition process using SBA prepare; good credit cleaned up, get all your documentation in order, get your resume pretty and all that stuff but don't squeeze yourself so tight that you don't have flexibility, you don't have capital to invest, you're going to panic if you have any ups and downs. It's not worth it. That's too much stress when you really want to be thinking clearly, being able to make smart decisions with some perspective on it. You for sure know this Brad it's really hard to make perspective when you're tight on the finances and you're panicking. So all those things factored in sort of where I went to. But I would definitely encourage people to make sure they've got enough of a cushion and flexibility to run their business confidently. Brad: Now I totally share your thoughts on that. And in my operating days that is really exactly how we tried to run the business. If you don't have a good amount of cash on hand it just makes something that's already difficult to do running a business that much more difficult and puts additional strain on you whenever you get some of those unknown kinds of problems that come up. One of the things I remember about you; I actually don't refer to you by name I tell people one time I sold a business to this M&A guy that had done a lot of corporate deals and let me tell you something if you think that diligence folder that you saw today is involved I should show you his because I remember it was a thorough deck of information. You had that thing all laid out perfectly. It was like okay one of the things I think I learned there is the pros have seen everything. So when you laid out that diligence folder and I saw it I was like it was organized, it was great, there was nothing wrong with but it was lot. It was a lot of information. You're very thorough, very detailed, and it kind of makes sense to me that it's gone well for you doing this business. Okay, I want to get into; so I was thinking about doing some podcast episodes and I think I emailed you maybe a month ago and said hey I went to a Yugster and there's no more Yugster. So talk about the rebrand and then let's talk about some other changes that you made. Richard: Yugster had a cult following behind it. And cult followings are great. There's a lot of loyalty that goes into that. But it was not a brand that was going to work well to sort of reach out to a larger audience. And so we, the team; I got the leadership team that was in place one of the first things we did was restructure internally to kind of give them really clean roles and responsibilities in purchasing and marketing because it had all been sort of blurred before. And what we then took off and did is really sit down and think about the kinds of changes we wanted to make in the business. The brand was a big piece of it. And we did really dig in on the idea of keeping the extra brand but we also knew that we needed to give it a refresh, improve the look and feel of the website, and sort of get it to a healthier sort of message and make it more attractive to people. In the end, when we kind of dug through it Yugster as a brand itself wasn't going to scale for us. It wasn't going to bring in a larger audience that we were sort of now starting to pursue and chase. So we spent some time doing; figure out what brands you want to work with, see what domain names are out there. We knew we wanted a dot com. We also knew that we wanted to keep a little synergy with the Yugster. We didn't want to go too far away from it and so as you mentioned, in the beginning, Yugster had become Yours Until Gone and YUG would show up throughout the branding of the site. The loyalty program was called YUG points. There was a lot of YUG that showed up. And so we figured if we kept the Until Gone piece of it that would be a nice connection. And so it turned out that that brand or that domain was actually available for purchase. This is where we made some of our capital investment; it was actually buying that domain name. And it's worked out great. I would say that the marketing team did; it could be a case study frankly in the rebranding going from Yugster to Until Gone. I won't say everything was perfect but it was as good as I've ever seen it done. And what the team put together and it was fantastic. We had a few customers that didn't make it over but the vast majority did. And we went live with the new Until Gone site which we can talk about some of the software stuff we did here in a second on September 1st. And I can tell you, Brad, if I showed you the detailed financials you'll see them start to grow through December and then there's this inflection point September 1st where they just kicked up and you start seeing this nice steady growth curve. And I think a lot of it had to do with we made changes over the summer to the Yugster's site to clean it up, make it a little bit more polished, but there's only so much that we were able to do. Once we went to the new site which was a completely revamped look and feel and brand I think it; for all the customers that we were bringing in, it just gave them confidence. That look and feel was a lot more professional; a lot more polished than the old site had been. And while we lost some of the cult kinkiness that was tied in with Yugster I think the more professional side appealed to a much larger group who were more willing to buy and make purchases through the site. And that's why we see the growth and that's continued to accelerate as we came into 2019. Brad: Yeah when I saw it actually; so I was kind of going through my list of deals and I've closed 20 deals at Quiet Light since I've been here and so I was kind of just looking at it and trying to think about what would be good podcast episodes. So I'd gone through 14 of them or so when I hit Yugster and as soon as I hit it and I went to the site I was like I know there's a story here because I mean it looks fantastic. I remembered what the old site looked like. I see what the new one looks like. It's like I could totally get that you were very thoughtful about how you approached it and how you kind of kept that Until Gone. I think that was really smart. So I totally could see the thought process from a marketer's standpoint of what you were doing and it seems to me like it did go really well just from an optics standpoint on my part. So it doesn't surprise me that your trends are good. We're getting somewhat short on time let's get into the software a little bit. I want to know what kinds of changes you've made to the stack and just kind of go wherever you want with that but I kind of want to know what you've been doing there? Richard: You know we can make a podcast about that in and of itself. There were some really interesting lessons learned I guess but I'll try to keep it focused for the group because not everyone's a techie. But basically, we have replaced 100% of the stack at this point. The original plan had been to upgrade the existing stack and put a new front end on it the new Until Gone front end basically and then do a bunch of workarounds creating APIs. And what APIs are for anyone who's not familiar with it they are programmatic interfaces that allow third parties to engage with your site. And so, for example, we wanted our vendors, our partners who were doing shipping to be able to work with us via API rather than exchanging text file CSVs for example. And the reason for that is just sort of accuracy, the time to market, and so forth. And there were lots of opportunities to do that to help our vendor and ourselves frankly work better together. Once we got into the details and we started looking at the Until Gone site design and what we wanted to do it would have required too many changes to the existing platform that would have left behind, in all honesty, a lot of stuff that we still needed to change. And so I think we closed the deal the first week of May last year; May 7th, 2018, by the end of June we had made the decision to do a full stack replacement top to bottom. And so we sourced a company actually here in Seattle to do a new website front end design and to then actually do the implementation on Shopify. We're on Shopify plus because we're large enough that we need to be on the bigger platform with the capabilities that they give us. And then that meant that we had to build a new back end because with the number of vendors we work with, with the way we work, with the flexibility we wanted to do it would not have been possible for us to just rely on Shopify. Now that won't be the case for a lot of e-commerce vendors but we operate more like a marketplace and we need to process a lot of purchase orders out to our vendors and take products in and not every product goes on-site and so forth. So we had to have control over that back end and so essentially we built out a completely new platform stack that operates; there's an admin portal, there was a huge amount of infrastructure for integrating with Shopify and providing all the APIs that we essentially built out. And what we've done since then is build some custom APIs. We've integrated with ShipStation which is a shipping management tool that a lot of our vendors utilize. We've integrated with ChannelAdvisor. We've integrated with a great company called Quitch just similar to ChannelAdvisor but a little bit more technology-focused. We're finalizing an integration with Celera Cloud which is another one of these integrator platforms that a lot of vendors and suppliers utilize. And so that's given us just a huge amount of flexibility because it was sort of getting rid of a lot of the deadwood that had existed previously. We've been able to do things that we weren't able to do previously and really take advantage of technology to reach our customers better. And so some examples of that we actually built a little ad engine so that we could serve our own products as ads to our customers and notification emails. We've done things with targeting where we've essentially built kind of a; think of it as a mini CRM, customer relationship management platform where the marketing emails that we send to them are fully targeted to their interests, their likes, what they prefer. Each of these changes as we've gone into the stack had given us sort of an incremental growth and helped us improve that curve, show better metrics, and have better control. It's also allowed us to really tightly integrate with our vendors and we continue to invest in it. We have some new capabilities coming out this week frankly that we want to get in place before Q4 that will allow us to do some things that will really improve our shipping and our customer service related to that because that's always a big issue with customers. So I'm happy to get into more it detailed Brad but I don't want to take up the time just talking about coding and Google Cloud and what we did. That's not our focus here. Brad: No, I think you hit some great highlights there and actually it's been interesting to watch Shopify and it's kind of dominance really in the kind of hosted stores platform. I think WordPress as a CMS is now like 35% of the world's websites and I can tell you from my perspective of operating for many years and kind of coming from that custom website world where we built everything from scratch because it gave us more flexibility and then seeing the kind of out of the box solutions come on the scene and then seeing Shopify and Volusion and WiX and these other players come on the scene. But it really seems like Shopify has asserted some dominance in the space at this point or just I mean there's entire; I'll be speaking at an event in San Diego next month and at that event, it's Shopify sellers. I'm going on a podcast in two weeks. It's just Shopify folks that work with Shopify every day. And we find a lot of our sellers now when they have high margin products are really utilizing the Facebook Pixel for marketing and for some reason Shopify plus the Facebook Pixel is just the combo that everyone wants to use. It's just Shopify is just kind of become this I think of it became kind of like WordPress for the CMS. I feel like Shopify is kind of becoming the e-commerce shopping cart or store hosted platform for the e-com side. Did you have any struggle with choosing to go with Shopify? Was that a tough decision for you? Richard: No, not really I mean I think we really looked at Shopify and BigCommerce. They're really the sort of two that we were down to at that point. We did look at Magento which is both a platform that you can just open source and build your own but they also have a hosted option. That was much more complicated and had a tech stack that we weren't sure we really wanted to work with. So it really came down to Shopify versus BigCommerce. And honestly, it was a combination of the partner we ended up wanting to work with was more comfortable with Shopify. And we also looked at Shopify and felt like you were saying given their market share and their size it was a good fit and I think it made sense to do that. I will say I came from a platform world so I'm very comfortable with using these kinds of platforms and I will say there are tradeoffs. There are huge positives; as an example of a positive, when I wanted to implement Apple Pay on the site and our payment processor already supported it. So I did all the things I needed to do with Apple, I hooked it up with my payment processor, went into Shopify, one checkmark and it's live and ready to go. The Facebook Pixel is another one. You configure the Facebook stuff in Shopify, it's done like that. Google Analytics is the same thing and so there's a lot of functionality that's built into the platform that you don't have to customize; that you don't have to tweak but you can still change things like your notification emails to make them personalized for your look and feel. So I think there are some really great things there in working with a platform. The flip side there is some loss of control. You don't have necessarily quite the same flexibility. There was a feature we were talking about the other day in my management team's meeting. The reality was if it was on our platform we could do it in a minute. It's just on Shopify it's going to be difficult to get it live and implemented not because of anything I say it would be a real flaw with Shopify but just because when someone else is running a platform there's sort of some constraints that you get into it. But I'm comfortable with the Shopify decision. I think I'd make the same one again. I think given their size, given the number of big brands that are using them now it's a good solid fit. So yeah I would go there again. Brad: Okay. And one of the things I kind of wanted to at least ask was the biggest challenge; what's been the biggest unforeseen kind of thing that you have had to tackle at least that you're comfortable sharing? Richard: Sure. I mean there are always surprises in acquiring any business and challenges are going to come up. You end up having to do more of something than you expected and so forth and it kind of throws you. I would say in this case I was actually; probably the biggest challenge was the technology side. Not because it was inherently a bad decision or difficult to rebuild the platform and do what we did; it was absolutely the right decision. I guess the point I would make is we weren't expecting to make that decision for 12 months. It was kind of something we were looking at as a 2019 project and it ended up being a 2018 project. And so what I had actually hoped to do was use the existing platform and like I said give it a facelift; redo the front end, make it into Until Gone but rely on the same core operational platform and just maybe do a few extensions. And it didn't end up being possible to get where I knew that we needed to be. From a marketing; branding capability perspective we had to make the changes. And so basically from July through the end of September, it was heads down coding. I wrote more code in those two months than I think I had in the previous 10, 20 years. Brad: Wow. Richard: My career has not been as a coder I've been in sort of management but we had to build a completely new platform from scratch and so it was a lot of stuff that we were putting together to make it work. And that continued through Q4 and even into this year as we add new features. And like I said earlier now we're at a point where we're really adding some really unique distinctive capabilities. We've even thought about spinning out some businesses to take the stuff that we've built and Shopify has this huge app ecosystem; apps that you can plug into Shopify and extend its core capabilities. A lot of what we've now built are things that are unique and not available within that ecosystem and so we think there are some opportunities just to extend that and make that sort of additional part of the business. But I would say that was my number one sort of challenge or I guess surprise and sort of what we did. And at times it's taken me away from running the business in a way that I wanted to. But I think it's ended up like I said being in a good place at this point. Brad: And it's really interesting and I do think the Shopify kind of app marketplace is pretty vibrant. We had a lead come through a couple of weeks ago that we were discussing among the team, it was a collection of some apps and I think it was bringing in about $80,000 a month and recurring revenue from a group that had built several apps in the space. So I do think that there's a pretty large market there to tap into. Well, I really want to thank you for coming on the show today. It's really helpful to our audience. I hope it ends up being helpful to you. People reach out to me all the time when I'm on these podcasts so I hope that you get to make some good connections from coming on and giving us some of your time. Do you have any parting pieces of advice for those looking to buy or sell an online-based business? Richard: I guess since I haven't sold a business of this size I'll maybe not give advice on that just yet but as a buyer, I would say don't sit on the fence. It's one of the best things you can possibly do. Get out of your corporate life. Find a broker that you trust, that you like, that you can build a relationship with and tell them what you're looking for. Don't make stuff up or blow smoke or try to sound bigger than you are. Be honest with them. Tell the broker what you're looking for, what your strengths are, what kind of things would keep you engaged and challenged so that they have a good idea because their job is to connect you. So if you don't give them the honest picture they can't help you. But don't hesitate. Owning your own business, running your own destiny I think is something that's just fantastic. It's challenging. It can be scary at times but if you're thinking about it go for it. And I've definitely liked working with Brad. He was always a straight shooter and honest and I'm not saying this just because you're on. I'd say this to anybody but finding a broker that is a straight shooter that's honest and upfront that makes it easy; that's huge. And I loved working with Quiet Light and Brad and I would definitely do it again if I had another business to go after. Brad: I appreciate that and honestly, you were one of the easiest buyers that I've ever worked with. I mean you brought all this experience to the table and honestly that is what we do, we're matching people up a lot of times. That's the game that we're playing and we may or may not be helpful in the other aspects of it but really to do well as a business adviser in Quiet Light we really need to be able to listen to what people are telling us they want and then pair that up with things that we have that are for sale. And I don't know that I'd take a whole lot of credit for it but I do think that you were the perfect person to take over this business and I'm really glad to hear that it's going really well for you and I hope that you continue to have success in the future. Richard: Thank you, Brad. I think it was a good fit and I hope the improvement we're seeing continues. It's a great course we're on and I appreciate your help making this connection happen. Brad: Thanks a lot for coming on today Richard. We really appreciate it. For the listeners, we will see you the next time. Thank you. Links and Resources: Richard's Business

Episode fifty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Keep A Knockin'” by Little Richard, the long history of the song, and the tension between its performer’s faith and sexuality. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “At the Hop” by Danny and the Juniors.   —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Most of the information used here comes from The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Authorised Biography by Charles White, which is to all intents and purposes Richard’s autobiography, as much of the text is in his own words. A warning for those who might be considering buying this though — it contains descriptions of his abuse as a child, and is also full of internalised homo- bi- and trans-phobia. This collection contains everything Richard released before 1962, from his early blues singles through to his gospel albums from after he temporarily gave up rock and roll for the church. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum In the podcast I refer to a jazz band as “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group”. Their name is actually “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band”.   Transcript When last we looked at Little Richard properly, he had just had a hit with “Long Tall Sally”, and was at the peak of his career. Since then, we’ve seen that he had become big enough that he was chosen over Fats Domino to record the theme tune to “The Girl Can’t Help It”, and that he was the inspiration for James Brown. But today we’re going to look in more detail at Little Richard’s career in the mid fifties, and at how he threw away that career for his beliefs. [Excerpt: Little Richard with his Band, “Keep A Knockin'”] Richard’s immediate follow-up to “Long Tall Sally” was another of his most successful records, a double-sided hit with both songs credited to John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell — “Rip it Up” backed with “Ready Teddy”. These both went to number one on the R&B charts, but they possibly didn’t have quite the same power as RIchard’s first two singles. Where the earlier singles had been truly unique artefacts, songs that didn’t sound like anything else out there, “Rip it Up” and “Ready Teddy” were both much closer to the typical songs of the time — the lyrics were about going out and having a party and rocking and rolling, rather than about sex with men or cross-dressing sex workers. But this didn’t make Richard any less successful, and throughout 1956 and 57 he kept releasing more hits, often releasing singles where both the A and B side became classics — we’ve discussed “The Girl Can’t Help It” and “She’s Got It” in the episode on “Twenty Flight Rock”, but there was also “Jenny Jenny”, “Send Me Some Lovin'”, and possibly the greatest of them all, “Lucille”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Lucille”] But Richard was getting annoyed at the routine of recording — or more precisely, he was getting annoyed at the musicians he was having to work with in the studio. He was convinced that his own backing band, the Upsetters, were at least as good as the studio musicians, and he was pushing for Specialty to let him use them in the studio. And when they finally let him use the Upsetters in the studio, he recorded a song which had roots which go much further back than you might imagine. “Keep A Knockin'” had a long, long, history. It derives originally from a piece called “A Bunch of Blues”, written by J. Paul Wyer and Alf Kelly in 1915. Wyer was a violin player with W.C. Handy’s band, and Handy recorded the tune in 1917: [Excerpt: W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band, “A Bunch of Blues”] That itself, though, may derive from another song, “My Bucket’s Got A Hole in It”, which is an old jazz standard. There are claims that it was originally played by the great jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden around the turn of the twentieth century. No recordings survive of Bolden playing the song, but a group called “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group” have put together what, other than the use of modern recording, seems a reasonable facsimile of how Bolden would have played the song: [Excerpt: “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it”, the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band] If Bolden did play that, then the melody dates back to around 1906 at the latest, as from 1907 on Bolden was in a psychiatric hospital with schizophrenia, but the 1915 date for “A Bunch of Blues” is the earliest definite date we have for the melody. “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it” would later be recorded by everyone from Hank Williams to Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. It was particularly popular among country singers: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, “My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It”] But the song took another turn in 1928, when it was recorded by Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band. This group featured Tampa Red, who would later go on to be a blues legend in his own right, and “Georgia Tom”, who as Thomas Dorsey would later be best known as the writer of much of the core repertoire of gospel music. You might remember us talking about Dorsey in the episode on Rosetta Tharpe. He’s someone who wrote dirty, funny, blues songs until he had a religious experience while on stage, and instead became a writer of religious music, writing songs like “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and “Peace in the Valley”. But in 1928, he was still Georgia Tom and still recording hokum songs. We talked about hokum music right back in the earliest episodes of the podcast, but as a reminder, hokum music is a form which is now usually lumped into the blues by most of the few people who come across it, but which actually comes from vaudeville and especially from minstrel shows, and was hugely popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. It usually involved simple songs with a verse/chorus structure, and with lyrics that were an extended comedy metaphor, usually some form of innuendo about sex, with titles like “Meat Balls” and “Banana in Your Fruit Basket”. As you can imagine, this kind of music is one that influenced a lot of people who went on to influence Little Richard, and it’s in this crossover genre which had elements of country, blues, and pop that we find “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it” turning into the song that would later be known as “Keep A Knockin'”. Tampa Red’s version was titled “You Can’t Come In”, and seems to have been the origin not only of “Keep A Knockin'” but also of the Lead Belly song “Midnight Special” — you can hear the similarity in the guitar melody: [Excerpt: Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band, “You Can’t Come In”] The version by Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band wasn’t the first recording to combine the “Keep a Knockin'” lyrics with the “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” melody — the piano player Bert Mays recorded a version a month earlier, and Mays and his producer Mayo Williams, one of the first black record producers, are usually credited as the songwriters as a result (with Little Richard also being credited on his version). Mays was in turn probably inspired by an earlier recording by James “Boodle It” Wiggins, but Wiggins had a different melody — Mays seems to be the one who first combined the lyrics with the “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” melody on a recording. But the idea was probably one that had been knocking around for a while in various forms, given the number of different variations of the melody that turn up, and Tampa Red’s version inspired all the future recordings. As hokum music lies at the roots of both blues and country, it’s not surprising that “You Can’t Come in” was picked up by both country and blues musicians. A version of the song, for example, was recorded by, among others, Milton Brown — who had been an early musical partner of Bob Wills and one of the people who helped create Western Swing. [Excerpt: Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies: “Keep A Knockin'”] But the version that Little Richard recorded was most likely inspired by Louis Jordan’s version. Jordan was, of course, Richard’s single biggest musical inspiration, so we can reasonably assume that the record by Jordan was the one that pushed him to record the song. [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Keep A Knockin'”] The Jordan record was probably brought to mind in 1955 when Smiley Lewis had a hit with Dave Bartholomew’s take on the idea. “I Hear You Knockin'” only bears a slight melodic resemblance to “Keep A Knockin'”, but the lyrics are so obviously inspired by the earlier song that it would have brought it to mind for anyone who had heard any of the earlier versions: [Excerpt: Smiley Lewis, “I Hear You Knockin'”] That was also recorded by Fats Domino, one of Little Richard’s favourite musicians, so we can be sure that Richard had heard it. So by the time Little Richard came to record “Keep A Knockin'” in very early 1957, he had a host of different versions he could draw on for inspiration. But what we ended up with is something that’s uniquely Little Richard — something that was altogether wilder: [Excerpt: Little Richard and his band, “Keep A Knockin'”] In some takes of the song, Richard also sang a verse about drinking gin, which was based on Louis Jordan’s version which had a similar verse: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Keep A Knockin'”, “drinking gin” verse from take three] But in the end, what they ended up with was only about fifty-seven seconds worth of usable recording. Listening to the session recording, it seems that Grady Gaines kept trying different things with his saxophone solo, and not all of them quite worked as well as might be hoped — there are a few infelicities in most of his solos, though not anything that you wouldn’t expect from a good player trying new things. To get it to a usable length, they copied and pasted the whole song from the start of Richard’s vocal through to the end of the saxophone solo, and almost doubled the length of the song — the third and fourth verses, and the second saxophone solo, are the same recording as the first and second verses and the first sax solo. If you want to try this yourself, it seems that the “whoo” after the first “keep a knockin’ but you can’t come in” after the second sax solo is the point where the copy/pasting ends. But even though the recording ended up being a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, it remains one of Little Richard’s greatest tracks. At the same session, he also recorded another of his very best records, “Ooh! My Soul!”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Ooh! My Soul!”] That session also produced a single for Richard’s chauffeur, with Richard on the piano, released under the name “Pretty Boy”: [Excerpt: Pretty Boy, “Bip Bop Bip”] “Pretty Boy” would later go on to be better known as Don Covay, and would have great success as a soul singer and songwriter. He’s now probably best known for writing “Chain of Fools” for Aretha Franklin. That session was a productive one, but other than one final session in October 1957, in which he knocked out a couple of blues songs as album fillers, it would be Little Richard’s last rock and roll recording session for several years. Richard had always been deeply conflicted about… well, about everything, really. He was attracted to men as well as women, he loved rock and roll and rhythm and blues music, loved eating chitlins and pork chops, drinking, and taking drugs, and was unsure about his own gender identity. He was also deeply, deeply, religious, and a believer in the Seventh Day Adventist church, which believed that same-sex attraction, trans identities, and secular music were the work of the Devil, and that one should keep a vegetarian and kosher diet, and avoid all drugs, even caffeine. This came to a head in October 1957. Richard was on a tour of Australia with Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Alis Lesley, who was another of the many singers billed as “the female Elvis Presley”: [Excerpt: Alis Lesley, “He Will Come Back To Me”] Vincent actually had to miss the first couple of shows on the tour, as he and the Blue Caps got held up in Honolulu, apparently due to visa issues, and couldn’t continue on to Australia with the rest of the tour until that was sorted out. They were replaced on those early shows by a local group, Johnny O’Keefe and the Dee Jays, who performed some of Vincent’s songs as well as their own material, and who managed to win the audiences round even though they were irritated at Vincent’s absence. O’Keefe isn’t someone we’re going to be able to discuss in much detail in this series, because he had very little impact outside of Australia. But within Australia, he’s something of a legend as their first home-grown rock and roll star. And he did make one record which people outside of Australia have heard of — his biggest hit, from 1958, “Wild One”, which has since been covered by, amongst others, Jerry Lee Lewis and Iggy Pop: [Excerpt: Johnny O’Keefe, “Wild One”] The flight to Australia was longer and more difficult than any Richard had experienced before, and at one point he looked out of the window and saw the engines glowing red. He became convinced that the plane was on fire, and being held up by angels. He became even more worried a couple of days later when Russia launched their first satellite, Sputnik, and it passed low over Australia — low enough that he claimed he could see it, like a fireball in the sky, while he was performing. He decided this was a sign, and that he was being told by God that he needed to give up his life of sin and devote himself to religion. He told the other people on the tour this, but they didn’t believe him — until he threw all his rings into the ocean to prove it. He insisted on cancelling his appearances with ten days of the tour left to go and travelling back to the US with his band. He has often also claimed that the plane they were originally scheduled to fly back on crashed in the Pacific on the flight he would have been on — I’ve seen no evidence anywhere else of this, and I have looked. When he got back, he cut one final session for Specialty, and then went into a seminary to start studying for the ministry. While his religious belief is genuine, there has been some suggestion that this move wasn’t solely motivated by his conversion. Rather, John Marascalco has often claimed that Richard’s real reason for his conversion was based on more worldly considerations. Richard’s contract with Specialty was only paying him half a cent per record sold, which he considered far too low, and the wording of the contract only let him end it on either his own death or an act of god. He was trying — according to Marascalco — to claim that his religious awakening was an act of God, and so he should be allowed to break his contract and sign with another label. Whatever the truth, Specialty had enough of a backlog of Little Richard recordings that they could keep issuing them for the next couple of years. Some of those, like “Good Golly Miss Molly” were as good as anything he had ever recorded. and rightly became big hits: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Many others, though, were substandard recordings that they originally had no plans to release — but with Richard effectively on strike and the demand for his recordings undiminished, they put out whatever they had. Richard went out on the road as an evangelist, but also went to study to become a priest. He changed his whole lifestyle — he married a woman, although they would later divorce as, among other things, they weren’t sexually compatible. He stopped drinking and taking drugs, stopped even drinking coffee, and started eating only vegetables cooked in vegetable oil. After the lawsuits over him quitting Specialty records were finally settled, he started recording again, but only gospel songs: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”] And that was how things stood for several years. The tension between Richard’s sexuality and his religion continued to torment him — he dropped out of the seminary after propositioning another male student, and he was arrested in a public toilet — but he continued his evangelism and gospel singing until October 1962, when he went on tour in the UK. Just like the previous tour which had been a turning point in his life, this one featured Gene Vincent, but was also affected by Vincent’s work permit problems. This time, Vincent was allowed in the country but wasn’t allowed to perform on stage — so he appeared only as the compere, at least at the start of the tour — later on, he would sing “Be Bop A Lula” from offstage as well. Vincent wasn’t the only one to have problems, either. Sam Cooke, who was the second-billed star for the show, was delayed and couldn’t make the first show, which was a bit of a disaster. Richard was accompanied by a young gospel organ player named Billy Preston, and he’d agreed to the tour under the impression that he was going to be performing only his gospel music. Don Arden, the promoter, had been promoting it as Richard’s first rock and roll tour in five years, and the audience were very far from impressed when Richard came on stage in flowing white robes and started singing “Peace in the Valley” and other gospel songs. Arden was apoplectic. If Richard didn’t start performing rock and roll songs soon, he would have to cancel the whole tour — an audience that wanted “Rip it Up” and “Long Tall Sally” and “Tutti Frutti” wasn’t going to put up with being preached at. Arden didn’t know what to do, and when Sam Cooke and his manager J.W. Alexander turned up to the second show, Arden had a talk with Alexander about it. Alexander told Arden he had nothing to worry about — he knew Little Richard of old, and knew that Richard couldn’t stand to be upstaged. He also knew how good Sam Cooke was. Cooke was at the height of his success at this point, and he was an astonishing live performer, and so when he went out on stage and closed the first half, including an incendiary performance of “Twistin’ the Night Away” that left the audience applauding through the intermission, Richard knew he had to up his game. While he’d not been performing rock and roll in public, he had been tempted back into the studio to record in his old style at least once before, when he’d joined his old group to record Fats Domino’s “I’m In Love Again”, for a single that didn’t get released until December 1962. The single was released as by “the World Famous Upsetters”, but the vocalist on the record was very recognisable: [Excerpt: The World Famous Upsetters, “I’m In Love Again”] So Richard’s willpower had been slowly bending, and Sam Cooke’s performance was the final straw. Little Richard was going to show everyone what star power really was. When Richard came out on stage, he spent a whole minute in pitch darkness, with the band vamping, before a spotlight suddenly picked him out, in an all-white suit, and he launched into “Long Tall Sally”. The British tour was a massive success, and Richard kept becoming wilder and more frantic on stage, as five years of pent up rock and roll burst out of him. Many shows he’d pull off most of his clothes and throw them into the audience, ending up dressed in just a bathrobe, on his knees. He would jump on the piano, and one night he even faked his own death, collapsing off the piano and lying still on the stage in the middle of a song, just to create a tension in the audience for when he suddenly jumped up and started singing “Tutti Frutti”. The tour was successful enough, and Richard’s performances created such a buzz, that when the package tour itself finished Richard was booked for a few extra gigs, including one at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton where he headlined a bill of local bands from around Merseyside, including one who had released their first single a few weeks earlier. He then went to Hamburg with that group, and spent two months hanging out with them and performing in the same kinds of clubs, and teaching their bass player how he made his “whoo” sounds when singing. Richard was impressed enough by them that he got in touch with Art Rupe, who still had some contractual claim over Richard’s own recordings, to tell him about them, but Rupe said that he wasn’t interested in some English group, he just wanted Little Richard to go back into the studio and make more records for him. Richard headed back to the US, leaving Billy Preston stranded in Hamburg with his new friends, the Beatles. At first, he still wouldn’t record any rock and roll music, other than one song that Sam Cooke wrote for him, “Well Alright”, but after another UK tour he started to see that people who had been inspired by him were having the kind of success he thought he was due himself. He went back into the studio, backed by a group including Don and Dewey, who had been performing with him in the UK, and recorded what was meant to be his comeback single, “Bama Lama Bama Loo”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Bama Lama Bama Loo”] Unfortunately, great as it was, that single didn’t do anything in the charts, and Richard spent the rest of the sixties making record after record that failed to chart. Some of them were as good as anything he’d done in his fifties heyday, but his five years away from rock and roll music had killed his career as a recording artist. They hadn’t, though, killed him as a live performer, and he would spend the next fifty years touring, playing the hits he had recorded during that classic period from 1955 through 1957, with occasional breaks where he would be overcome by remorse, give up rock and roll music forever, and try to work as an evangelist and gospel singer, before the lure of material success and audience response brought him back to the world of sex and drugs and rock and roll. He eventually gave up performing live a few years ago, as decades of outrageous stage performances had exacerbated his disabilities. His last public performance was in 2013, in Las Vegas, and he was in a wheelchair — but because he’s Little Richard, the wheelchair was made to look like a golden throne.

Episode fifty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Keep A Knockin'” by Little Richard, the long history of the song, and the tension between its performer’s faith and sexuality. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “At the Hop” by Danny and the Juniors.   —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Most of the information used here comes from The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Authorised Biography by Charles White, which is to all intents and purposes Richard’s autobiography, as much of the text is in his own words. A warning for those who might be considering buying this though — it contains descriptions of his abuse as a child, and is also full of internalised homo- bi- and trans-phobia. This collection contains everything Richard released before 1962, from his early blues singles through to his gospel albums from after he temporarily gave up rock and roll for the church. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum In the podcast I refer to a jazz band as “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group”. Their name is actually “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band”.   Transcript When last we looked at Little Richard properly, he had just had a hit with “Long Tall Sally”, and was at the peak of his career. Since then, we’ve seen that he had become big enough that he was chosen over Fats Domino to record the theme tune to “The Girl Can’t Help It”, and that he was the inspiration for James Brown. But today we’re going to look in more detail at Little Richard’s career in the mid fifties, and at how he threw away that career for his beliefs. [Excerpt: Little Richard with his Band, “Keep A Knockin'”] Richard’s immediate follow-up to “Long Tall Sally” was another of his most successful records, a double-sided hit with both songs credited to John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell — “Rip it Up” backed with “Ready Teddy”. These both went to number one on the R&B charts, but they possibly didn’t have quite the same power as RIchard’s first two singles. Where the earlier singles had been truly unique artefacts, songs that didn’t sound like anything else out there, “Rip it Up” and “Ready Teddy” were both much closer to the typical songs of the time — the lyrics were about going out and having a party and rocking and rolling, rather than about sex with men or cross-dressing sex workers. But this didn’t make Richard any less successful, and throughout 1956 and 57 he kept releasing more hits, often releasing singles where both the A and B side became classics — we’ve discussed “The Girl Can’t Help It” and “She’s Got It” in the episode on “Twenty Flight Rock”, but there was also “Jenny Jenny”, “Send Me Some Lovin'”, and possibly the greatest of them all, “Lucille”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Lucille”] But Richard was getting annoyed at the routine of recording — or more precisely, he was getting annoyed at the musicians he was having to work with in the studio. He was convinced that his own backing band, the Upsetters, were at least as good as the studio musicians, and he was pushing for Specialty to let him use them in the studio. And when they finally let him use the Upsetters in the studio, he recorded a song which had roots which go much further back than you might imagine. “Keep A Knockin'” had a long, long, history. It derives originally from a piece called “A Bunch of Blues”, written by J. Paul Wyer and Alf Kelly in 1915. Wyer was a violin player with W.C. Handy’s band, and Handy recorded the tune in 1917: [Excerpt: W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band, “A Bunch of Blues”] That itself, though, may derive from another song, “My Bucket’s Got A Hole in It”, which is an old jazz standard. There are claims that it was originally played by the great jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden around the turn of the twentieth century. No recordings survive of Bolden playing the song, but a group called “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group” have put together what, other than the use of modern recording, seems a reasonable facsimile of how Bolden would have played the song: [Excerpt: “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it”, the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band] If Bolden did play that, then the melody dates back to around 1906 at the latest, as from 1907 on Bolden was in a psychiatric hospital with schizophrenia, but the 1915 date for “A Bunch of Blues” is the earliest definite date we have for the melody. “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it” would later be recorded by everyone from Hank Williams to Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. It was particularly popular among country singers: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, “My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It”] But the song took another turn in 1928, when it was recorded by Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band. This group featured Tampa Red, who would later go on to be a blues legend in his own right, and “Georgia Tom”, who as Thomas Dorsey would later be best known as the writer of much of the core repertoire of gospel music. You might remember us talking about Dorsey in the episode on Rosetta Tharpe. He’s someone who wrote dirty, funny, blues songs until he had a religious experience while on stage, and instead became a writer of religious music, writing songs like “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and “Peace in the Valley”. But in 1928, he was still Georgia Tom and still recording hokum songs. We talked about hokum music right back in the earliest episodes of the podcast, but as a reminder, hokum music is a form which is now usually lumped into the blues by most of the few people who come across it, but which actually comes from vaudeville and especially from minstrel shows, and was hugely popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. It usually involved simple songs with a verse/chorus structure, and with lyrics that were an extended comedy metaphor, usually some form of innuendo about sex, with titles like “Meat Balls” and “Banana in Your Fruit Basket”. As you can imagine, this kind of music is one that influenced a lot of people who went on to influence Little Richard, and it’s in this crossover genre which had elements of country, blues, and pop that we find “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it” turning into the song that would later be known as “Keep A Knockin'”. Tampa Red’s version was titled “You Can’t Come In”, and seems to have been the origin not only of “Keep A Knockin'” but also of the Lead Belly song “Midnight Special” — you can hear the similarity in the guitar melody: [Excerpt: Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band, “You Can’t Come In”] The version by Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band wasn’t the first recording to combine the “Keep a Knockin'” lyrics with the “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” melody — the piano player Bert Mays recorded a version a month earlier, and Mays and his producer Mayo Williams, one of the first black record producers, are usually credited as the songwriters as a result (with Little Richard also being credited on his version). Mays was in turn probably inspired by an earlier recording by James “Boodle It” Wiggins, but Wiggins had a different melody — Mays seems to be the one who first combined the lyrics with the “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” melody on a recording. But the idea was probably one that had been knocking around for a while in various forms, given the number of different variations of the melody that turn up, and Tampa Red’s version inspired all the future recordings. As hokum music lies at the roots of both blues and country, it’s not surprising that “You Can’t Come in” was picked up by both country and blues musicians. A version of the song, for example, was recorded by, among others, Milton Brown — who had been an early musical partner of Bob Wills and one of the people who helped create Western Swing. [Excerpt: Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies: “Keep A Knockin'”] But the version that Little Richard recorded was most likely inspired by Louis Jordan’s version. Jordan was, of course, Richard’s single biggest musical inspiration, so we can reasonably assume that the record by Jordan was the one that pushed him to record the song. [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Keep A Knockin'”] The Jordan record was probably brought to mind in 1955 when Smiley Lewis had a hit with Dave Bartholomew’s take on the idea. “I Hear You Knockin'” only bears a slight melodic resemblance to “Keep A Knockin'”, but the lyrics are so obviously inspired by the earlier song that it would have brought it to mind for anyone who had heard any of the earlier versions: [Excerpt: Smiley Lewis, “I Hear You Knockin'”] That was also recorded by Fats Domino, one of Little Richard’s favourite musicians, so we can be sure that Richard had heard it. So by the time Little Richard came to record “Keep A Knockin'” in very early 1957, he had a host of different versions he could draw on for inspiration. But what we ended up with is something that’s uniquely Little Richard — something that was altogether wilder: [Excerpt: Little Richard and his band, “Keep A Knockin'”] In some takes of the song, Richard also sang a verse about drinking gin, which was based on Louis Jordan’s version which had a similar verse: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Keep A Knockin'”, “drinking gin” verse from take three] But in the end, what they ended up with was only about fifty-seven seconds worth of usable recording. Listening to the session recording, it seems that Grady Gaines kept trying different things with his saxophone solo, and not all of them quite worked as well as might be hoped — there are a few infelicities in most of his solos, though not anything that you wouldn’t expect from a good player trying new things. To get it to a usable length, they copied and pasted the whole song from the start of Richard’s vocal through to the end of the saxophone solo, and almost doubled the length of the song — the third and fourth verses, and the second saxophone solo, are the same recording as the first and second verses and the first sax solo. If you want to try this yourself, it seems that the “whoo” after the first “keep a knockin’ but you can’t come in” after the second sax solo is the point where the copy/pasting ends. But even though the recording ended up being a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, it remains one of Little Richard’s greatest tracks. At the same session, he also recorded another of his very best records, “Ooh! My Soul!”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Ooh! My Soul!”] That session also produced a single for Richard’s chauffeur, with Richard on the piano, released under the name “Pretty Boy”: [Excerpt: Pretty Boy, “Bip Bop Bip”] “Pretty Boy” would later go on to be better known as Don Covay, and would have great success as a soul singer and songwriter. He’s now probably best known for writing “Chain of Fools” for Aretha Franklin. That session was a productive one, but other than one final session in October 1957, in which he knocked out a couple of blues songs as album fillers, it would be Little Richard’s last rock and roll recording session for several years. Richard had always been deeply conflicted about… well, about everything, really. He was attracted to men as well as women, he loved rock and roll and rhythm and blues music, loved eating chitlins and pork chops, drinking, and taking drugs, and was unsure about his own gender identity. He was also deeply, deeply, religious, and a believer in the Seventh Day Adventist church, which believed that same-sex attraction, trans identities, and secular music were the work of the Devil, and that one should keep a vegetarian and kosher diet, and avoid all drugs, even caffeine. This came to a head in October 1957. Richard was on a tour of Australia with Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Alis Lesley, who was another of the many singers billed as “the female Elvis Presley”: [Excerpt: Alis Lesley, “He Will Come Back To Me”] Vincent actually had to miss the first couple of shows on the tour, as he and the Blue Caps got held up in Honolulu, apparently due to visa issues, and couldn’t continue on to Australia with the rest of the tour until that was sorted out. They were replaced on those early shows by a local group, Johnny O’Keefe and the Dee Jays, who performed some of Vincent’s songs as well as their own material, and who managed to win the audiences round even though they were irritated at Vincent’s absence. O’Keefe isn’t someone we’re going to be able to discuss in much detail in this series, because he had very little impact outside of Australia. But within Australia, he’s something of a legend as their first home-grown rock and roll star. And he did make one record which people outside of Australia have heard of — his biggest hit, from 1958, “Wild One”, which has since been covered by, amongst others, Jerry Lee Lewis and Iggy Pop: [Excerpt: Johnny O’Keefe, “Wild One”] The flight to Australia was longer and more difficult than any Richard had experienced before, and at one point he looked out of the window and saw the engines glowing red. He became convinced that the plane was on fire, and being held up by angels. He became even more worried a couple of days later when Russia launched their first satellite, Sputnik, and it passed low over Australia — low enough that he claimed he could see it, like a fireball in the sky, while he was performing. He decided this was a sign, and that he was being told by God that he needed to give up his life of sin and devote himself to religion. He told the other people on the tour this, but they didn’t believe him — until he threw all his rings into the ocean to prove it. He insisted on cancelling his appearances with ten days of the tour left to go and travelling back to the US with his band. He has often also claimed that the plane they were originally scheduled to fly back on crashed in the Pacific on the flight he would have been on — I’ve seen no evidence anywhere else of this, and I have looked. When he got back, he cut one final session for Specialty, and then went into a seminary to start studying for the ministry. While his religious belief is genuine, there has been some suggestion that this move wasn’t solely motivated by his conversion. Rather, John Marascalco has often claimed that Richard’s real reason for his conversion was based on more worldly considerations. Richard’s contract with Specialty was only paying him half a cent per record sold, which he considered far too low, and the wording of the contract only let him end it on either his own death or an act of god. He was trying — according to Marascalco — to claim that his religious awakening was an act of God, and so he should be allowed to break his contract and sign with another label. Whatever the truth, Specialty had enough of a backlog of Little Richard recordings that they could keep issuing them for the next couple of years. Some of those, like “Good Golly Miss Molly” were as good as anything he had ever recorded. and rightly became big hits: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Many others, though, were substandard recordings that they originally had no plans to release — but with Richard effectively on strike and the demand for his recordings undiminished, they put out whatever they had. Richard went out on the road as an evangelist, but also went to study to become a priest. He changed his whole lifestyle — he married a woman, although they would later divorce as, among other things, they weren’t sexually compatible. He stopped drinking and taking drugs, stopped even drinking coffee, and started eating only vegetables cooked in vegetable oil. After the lawsuits over him quitting Specialty records were finally settled, he started recording again, but only gospel songs: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”] And that was how things stood for several years. The tension between Richard’s sexuality and his religion continued to torment him — he dropped out of the seminary after propositioning another male student, and he was arrested in a public toilet — but he continued his evangelism and gospel singing until October 1962, when he went on tour in the UK. Just like the previous tour which had been a turning point in his life, this one featured Gene Vincent, but was also affected by Vincent’s work permit problems. This time, Vincent was allowed in the country but wasn’t allowed to perform on stage — so he appeared only as the compere, at least at the start of the tour — later on, he would sing “Be Bop A Lula” from offstage as well. Vincent wasn’t the only one to have problems, either. Sam Cooke, who was the second-billed star for the show, was delayed and couldn’t make the first show, which was a bit of a disaster. Richard was accompanied by a young gospel organ player named Billy Preston, and he’d agreed to the tour under the impression that he was going to be performing only his gospel music. Don Arden, the promoter, had been promoting it as Richard’s first rock and roll tour in five years, and the audience were very far from impressed when Richard came on stage in flowing white robes and started singing “Peace in the Valley” and other gospel songs. Arden was apoplectic. If Richard didn’t start performing rock and roll songs soon, he would have to cancel the whole tour — an audience that wanted “Rip it Up” and “Long Tall Sally” and “Tutti Frutti” wasn’t going to put up with being preached at. Arden didn’t know what to do, and when Sam Cooke and his manager J.W. Alexander turned up to the second show, Arden had a talk with Alexander about it. Alexander told Arden he had nothing to worry about — he knew Little Richard of old, and knew that Richard couldn’t stand to be upstaged. He also knew how good Sam Cooke was. Cooke was at the height of his success at this point, and he was an astonishing live performer, and so when he went out on stage and closed the first half, including an incendiary performance of “Twistin’ the Night Away” that left the audience applauding through the intermission, Richard knew he had to up his game. While he’d not been performing rock and roll in public, he had been tempted back into the studio to record in his old style at least once before, when he’d joined his old group to record Fats Domino’s “I’m In Love Again”, for a single that didn’t get released until December 1962. The single was released as by “the World Famous Upsetters”, but the vocalist on the record was very recognisable: [Excerpt: The World Famous Upsetters, “I’m In Love Again”] So Richard’s willpower had been slowly bending, and Sam Cooke’s performance was the final straw. Little Richard was going to show everyone what star power really was. When Richard came out on stage, he spent a whole minute in pitch darkness, with the band vamping, before a spotlight suddenly picked him out, in an all-white suit, and he launched into “Long Tall Sally”. The British tour was a massive success, and Richard kept becoming wilder and more frantic on stage, as five years of pent up rock and roll burst out of him. Many shows he’d pull off most of his clothes and throw them into the audience, ending up dressed in just a bathrobe, on his knees. He would jump on the piano, and one night he even faked his own death, collapsing off the piano and lying still on the stage in the middle of a song, just to create a tension in the audience for when he suddenly jumped up and started singing “Tutti Frutti”. The tour was successful enough, and Richard’s performances created such a buzz, that when the package tour itself finished Richard was booked for a few extra gigs, including one at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton where he headlined a bill of local bands from around Merseyside, including one who had released their first single a few weeks earlier. He then went to Hamburg with that group, and spent two months hanging out with them and performing in the same kinds of clubs, and teaching their bass player how he made his “whoo” sounds when singing. Richard was impressed enough by them that he got in touch with Art Rupe, who still had some contractual claim over Richard’s own recordings, to tell him about them, but Rupe said that he wasn’t interested in some English group, he just wanted Little Richard to go back into the studio and make more records for him. Richard headed back to the US, leaving Billy Preston stranded in Hamburg with his new friends, the Beatles. At first, he still wouldn’t record any rock and roll music, other than one song that Sam Cooke wrote for him, “Well Alright”, but after another UK tour he started to see that people who had been inspired by him were having the kind of success he thought he was due himself. He went back into the studio, backed by a group including Don and Dewey, who had been performing with him in the UK, and recorded what was meant to be his comeback single, “Bama Lama Bama Loo”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Bama Lama Bama Loo”] Unfortunately, great as it was, that single didn’t do anything in the charts, and Richard spent the rest of the sixties making record after record that failed to chart. Some of them were as good as anything he’d done in his fifties heyday, but his five years away from rock and roll music had killed his career as a recording artist. They hadn’t, though, killed him as a live performer, and he would spend the next fifty years touring, playing the hits he had recorded during that classic period from 1955 through 1957, with occasional breaks where he would be overcome by remorse, give up rock and roll music forever, and try to work as an evangelist and gospel singer, before the lure of material success and audience response brought him back to the world of sex and drugs and rock and roll. He eventually gave up performing live a few years ago, as decades of outrageous stage performances had exacerbated his disabilities. His last public performance was in 2013, in Las Vegas, and he was in a wheelchair — but because he’s Little Richard, the wheelchair was made to look like a golden throne.

Advertising expert Richard Lomax shares  key success factors to incorporate advertising into your marketing mix and how to leverage advertising to deepen your connections with influencers. Richard Lomax's Insights to Incorporate Ads in Your Marketing Mix During the conversation, Richard shares: The role that advertising plays in your marketing mix. How to leverage content marketing and influencer marketing when you advertise The main platforms to advertise online and key success factors to lower your ad cost and increase ROI The most important consideration to succeed with advertising About Richard Lomax After working for companies like BP Oil and HJ Heinz, and some of the largest advertising agencies in the world, Richard recognized that ‘big brand’ marketing is not relevant for the vast majority of companies. So Richard specializes in helping SMEs systematically generate quality leads, and profitable new clients on a consistent monthly basis Sign up for Richard's weekly live demo: - 'The 3 BIG SHIFTS To Fix Your Broken Lead Generation, And Deliver Quality Leads And Sales’ at https://www.slipstream-marketing.com/cloris Get Richard's e-Book, 'The 5 Big Shifts To Turn Your Broken Lead Generation Into A Simple, Repeatable Process, That Delivers Quality Leads And Sales Month After Month' https://www.slipstream-marketing.com/ebook

GUEST BIO: Richard Warburton is the co-founder of Opsian.com and maintainer of the Artio FIX Engine.  He’s worked as a developer in different areas including Developer Tools, HFT and Network Protocols. Richard wrote the book “Java 8 Lambdas” for O’Reilly and is also an experienced conference speaker, having spoken at dozens of events and sat on conference committees for some of the biggest conferences in Europe and the USA.   EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Richard Warburton. He is best known for his book “Java 8 Lambdas”, which was published by O’Reilly Media. Over the years, he has also spoken and numerous big tech conferences and sat on several conference committees. He is the co-founder of Opsian.com and maintainer of the Artio FIX Engine. His mainly freelance career has led to him working with numerous companies, in various roles. Richard has worked on HFT, Developer Tools and Network Protocols. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.03) – So Richard, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Richard starts by explaining that unlike most IT professionals he has always worked for himself or as a contractor. He enjoys the fact that working this way gives him more control over what he does and usually the direction of the projects he works on. For example, it has enabled him to run a company called Opsian with a friend. Their company helps people to understand and solve their performance problems by showing them what their software is actually doing. At the same time, he continues to work on various consulting engagements. Right now, a lot of his work is related to financial trading systems. (2.45) – Phil asks Richard what drew him to that particular area. Richard said that he had always been interested in working in sectors where he could push the technology envelope. That is certainly necessary for the financial trading sector. (3.48) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Richard’s advice is to always try to work with people who you can learn from. He has always tried to do that and has been lucky enough to work with and learn a lot from people like Martin Thompson, Martin Burgberg and Kirk Pepperdine. If you can’t work with great people you can learn from in your day job, just do it in the open source community instead. There are plenty of opportunities there. Richard has worked on a bunch of open source projects, which have really helped his career. Collaborating with others improves your habits, develops your philosophy and enables you to pick up new ways of working. You really grow as a professional when you work collaboratively. Phil agrees surrounding yourself with people who offer something different from you can be leveraged to move your career forward. (6.07) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. For Richard, that happened on the first day he started working for j.clarity. He wrote a piece of code, which looked fine and worked. But, when the CTO pulled it down and ran it on his laptop he got the blue screen of death, or at least the Mac OS equivalent. Not the first impression Richard had wanted to make. Fortunately, his CTO was very understanding about the situation. It was laughed off, solved and soon forgotten. That incident taught Richard how important it is to be working with supportive colleagues when things go wrong. They make sure that you are not overwhelmed by the problem, help you to resolve it, learn from it and move on to the next challenge. It also reminded him to bear in mind that code that works in one environment can easily fail in another one. You have to fully consider the other environments it may be run in before releasing it. Try to think about what can go wrong. Doing this enables you to produce a more robust piece of code. (10.56) – What was your best career moment? For Richard, getting his book published was definitely a highlight. Writing a book is a long-term project especially when you do it while working full-time as he did. At points, you lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. So, when you finally get it done it feels fantastic. (12.20) – Do people contact you a lot about your book? Richard says that when it was first published he did receive a fair amount of feedback both positive and negative. It always felt good when he heard from someone who had been able to use what they learned to solve a problem. (13.25) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that there are so many opportunities in the IT sector is something Richard enjoys. Someone once said “software is eating the world”, and they were right. In one way it is a scary time to be living in. But, if you are working in the IT industry, it is also an amazing time to live through. Things change fast, often without us realizing it. For example, recently he visited Vienna with his family. Just 10 years ago, a trip like that would have had to have been planned in detail, well in advance. You would have needed a guide book, reservations and a stack of maps. Today, all you need is your Smartphone. Plus, GPS means you can’t really get lost. The fact that everything you do in IT potentially has a huge impact on people’s lives is part of the reason it is so interesting. (15.36) – What drew you to a career in IT? Since Richard was a kid, he has been interested in the way things work. His theory is that a lot of people who are working in software development played with Lego bricks as kids. Richard was attracted to the fact that coding allows you to create things while tinkering around, playing and experimenting. Of course, this is true of other fields too, for example, engineering. But, computers had always fascinated him. Partly because what you can do with them is so varied, almost unlimited. So, that is the career path he followed. (17.00) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Richard says for him it was not advice, as such, that helped him the most. He found that encouragement was what moved him forward. For example, a guy called Ben Evans encouraged him to speak at software conferences. Public speaking has played a big role in moving his career forward. For a long time, he regularly ran training to help people to code better using Java. He was heavily involved in meetups and workshops. Doing all of this has really helped to open doors for him. But, to do it, he needed a bit of encouragement. (18.45) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Right now, artificial intelligence is hot, so he would probably get involved with that. It is certainly an interesting and challenging field. (19.41) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Right now, it is a business objective that Richard is focusing on. He wants to really grow his company and hire more people. So, he is currently honing some of the skills he already has and learning new ones. Including marketing skills, so he can better engage with the market place and share and explain what Opsian.com has to offer. (21.22) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Richard says public speaking has proved to be a very useful non-technical skill. It has put him in contact with a lot of people and helped him when he wanted to write, publish and market his book. (21.55) – Phil asks Richard to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Richard’s advice is to practice your writing skills. Written communication is still very important. You can’t achieve much on your own. So, you need to be able to communicate effectively. Written communication is still the main way we share complex information, so you need to be good at it. BEST MOMENTS: (3.32) RICHARD– "I've always been really keen on trying to find areas where you do get to push the envelope, technology wise" (3.52) RICHARD– "Try and work with people who you can learn things from.” (13.59) RICHARD– "It’s a scary time to be living through. But it's an amazing time to be living through if you're working in the IT industry." (15.58) RICHARD– “I have a big theory that a lot of people who are working in software played with Lego bricks when they were a kid." (23.01) RICHARD– "In order to achieve things with other people, you always need to be able to communicate with them. Written communication is such an underrated part of that skill” CONTACT RICHARD: Twitter: https://twitter.com/RichardWarburto LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-warburton-5b03613/ Website: https://www.opsian.com/  

Full Metal RPG is back, and down at least two hosts! So Richard from Arizona Game Fair and Darrell from the world famous Wrecking Crew step in to talk games and conventions! Get the scoop on what's happening at AZ Game Fair in Mesa Arizona this March. If you are local, come get tickets, if you are thinking about flying or driving in, it's the best time of year! http://www.arizonagamefair.com/ https://www.facebook.com/arizonagamefair/

Zane Lowe is one of the premier tastemakers on the international music scene. After leaving the BBC in 2015, Lowe became the face of Apple Music's Beats 1 radio station. He's been in Australia the last couple of Novembers doing his radio shows to coincide with the ARIA's. So Richard caught up with him again to talk about some of his new finds and favourite songs of 2018. They played songs by Dominic Fike, Hobo Johnson, Rosalia, half.alive, Lil Mosey, Bene, Conan Gray, Ashnikko, slowthai and Mura Masa, and Billie Eilish.

Zane Lowe is one of the premier tastemakers on the international music scene. After leaving the BBC in 2015, Lowe became the face of Apple Music's Beats 1 radio station. He's been in Australia the last couple of Novembers doing his radio shows to coincide with the ARIA's. So Richard caught up with him again to talk about some of his new finds and favourite songs of 2018. They played songs by Dominic Fike, Hobo Johnson, Rosalia, half.alive, Lil Mosey, Bene, Conan Gray, Ashnikko, slowthai and Mura Masa, and Billie Eilish.

The biggest Confession here is that Greg doesn’t typically watch Westerns – a confession, yes, but perhaps not a surprise. So Richard rides with him into the sunset on his white horse to save the townsfolk. (Also known as dragging him out of his comfort zone) Will Greg become a City Slicker? Yee-haw! Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-03-02-butch The Searchers (1956) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-03-02-searchers The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-03-02-ugly

Being a movie critic can be a lonely life – particularly if your life partner doesn’t want to see the film, and so you sit up alone. (sigh) So Richard and Greg begin this series by asking their life partners to choose a film that they would like to watch. And then Greg asks his Mum for a third film, just so they can keep up their triple-feature format. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-03-01-mockingbird Much Ado About Nothing (1993) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-03-01-ado Amélie (2001) http://tinyurl.com/fmfw-03-01-amelie

Highlights: Ask Alexa: “Play W W 1 Centennial News Podcast” |@ 01:00 Second Liberty Bond drive launches |@ 02:00 Spy ring in Palestine - Mike Shuster |@ 06:25 War In the Sky - RiesenFlugzeug - behemoths of the sky |@ 10:10 Great War Alliance Forum |@ 13:05 Follow up on Cardines Field rededication |@ 13:55 Holding talks about WWI in communities - Richard Rubin |@ 15:15 Speaking WWI -  This week: “Booby Trap” |@ 21:30 100C/100M in Ridgewood, NJ - Chris Stout |@ 23:10 “Rendezvous With Death” - David Hanna |@ 28:30 Pershing/Lafayette statues rededicated in Versaille |@ 34:40 Trek through the Dolomites - WWrtie Blog w Shannon Huffman Polson |@ 36:00 The Buzz on #CountdownToVeteransDay -Katherine Akey |@ 36:55----more---- Opening Welcome to World War 1 centennial News - It’s about WW1 THEN - what was happening 100 years ago this week  - and it’s about WW1 NOW - news and updates about the centennial and the commemoration. Today is October 4th, 2017 and our guests this week are: Mike Shuster from the great war project blog,    Richard Rubin, author of The Last of the Doughboys and Back Over There Chris Stout from the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project in Ridgewood, New Jersey And David Hanna, author of the WW1 book and now website - Rendezvous with Death   WW1 Centennial News is brought to you by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. I’m Theo Mayer - the Chief Technologist for the Commission and your host. Welcome to the show. Preface Before we get going today I wanted to let you know, especially all of you who own Amazon Echo or other Alexa enabled device, Alexa has a new skill. If you say “Alexa, play the “W” “W” one centennial news podcast” she will dutifully find the most current episode on the internet and play it for you. We are excited because that opens up WW1 Centennial News to 20 million new player and all you have to do is ask! Welcome to the future - but right now - let’s jump into our wayback machine and head 100 years into the past! World War One THEN 100 Year Ago This Week [MUSIC TRANSITION] Yes, we’ve gone back in time 100 years to explore the war that changed the world! And It’s the first week of October 1917. What’s on the US government’s mind this week? Raising money to pay for the war! [SOUND EFFECT] Dateline October 1st 1917 Headline: Secretary of the treasury - McAdoo begins Second Liberty Loan Drive... Five Billion Dollars from Ten Million Subscribers fixed as goal! So In 1917, financing a war with deficit spending is not at all the plan. The Wilson administration is determined to raise the money needed for this immense effort, and in part, by issuing of government backed war bonds. This is innovative… and it is interesting to note, that the same 1917 law that authorizes the war bonds will continue to be used to sell US treasury bonds 100 years later! Back in June (during our episode 24), we reported on the Wilson administration touting the first liberty loan drive was an unprecedented and huge success. In fact, they raised $2 billion dollars from five and one half million people! A century later that $2 billion is the equivalent of 38 billion dollars. So - not too bad! This Second Liberty Bond drive is targeting twice as much revenue from two times as many subscribers. Though there is a lot of controversy about how successful the liberty bond program is, with the government claiming HUGE success and other press of the time criticizing lackluster enthusiasm and talking about the discounting of the bonds,  anyone who has ever undertaken to raise substantial amounts of money KNOWS, it’s no cake walk! Focusing on participation by the general public as small investors -- Secretary  Mcadoo reaches out to the administration’s secret weapon --- their powerhouse of propaganda, their empresario of promo, their master of emotion, their superman of spin - George Creel’s Committee on Public Information! This is the same outfit that publishes the daily Official Bulletin that we use here on the podcast every week to tell you the story of WW1, and whose pages we re-publish daily on the centennial anniversary of their original publication at ww1cc.org/bulletin. Anyway, Creel is probably America’s first marketing genius. He shows up as the man behind the curtain all over the place during this period... And with outrageous but brilliant ideas - like in late May -- as the first Liberty loan drive wraps up, he gets all churches, schools and city halls around the country to ring their bells every night in a countdown to the end of the first drive! Talk about taking your promotion to the grassroots. Last week we reported on the massive national billboard campaign for “Food will win the war” including using electric lights to light up the billboards at night. We have not verified that Creel was the man behind this endeavor, but it has his style written all over it. He is also a multi-media and social media genius… and In 1917 that means the flaming hot new media of the MOVIES and the Phonograph. Before the 4th liberty bond sale is over, and there will be 4 of them - Creel will have recruited the biggest stars of the day including Al jolson, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and his premiere celebrity pitch man - Charlie Chaplin Creel doesn’t just go big, he also goes wide. George puts together a citizen army of 70,000 called “the 4 minute men”. He arms them with 4 minutes speeches - And in this case - on why buying Bonds is the key to Liberty and Freedom for Americans and why it is every citizens patriotic duty to participate He sends this army into every movie theater in the nation, arranging for them to make their presentation just before the features film. And so McAdoo launches his second liberty loan campaign 100 years ago this week! [SOUND EFFECT] Great War Project Now we are joined by Mike shuster, former NPR correspondent and curator for the Great War Project blog, to walk us through his fascinating post - A Ring of Spies in Palestine… all about a Jewish Spy ring assisting the british against the turks --- that gets busted by the turkish Secret Police... Welcome Mike! [Mike Shuster] Thank you Mike. That was Mike Shuster from the Great War Project blog. LINK: http://greatwarproject.org/2017/10/01/ring-of-spies-in-palestine/ War in the Sky This week in the Great War in the sky, there are two stories worth noting. The first involves a british Battle cruiser - The HMS Repulse. At the time, she is touted to be the fastest battle ship of the fleet. On October 1st 1917, having built a strange - slightly up-angled - platform on top of the turret of one of the big 15-inch guns  - her captain faces the Repulse into the wind --. Sitting atop the platform, Royal Naval Air Service Commander F.J. Rutland fires up the engine on his Sopwith Pup fighter plane. He cranks the RPM, higher, higher and higher still as the battle cruiser pushes into the wind - Finally he lets loose the brakes and his planes takes to the air making it the first fighter plane ever launched from such a ship! He, of course, does NOT attempt a landing on same! And we have a link in the podcast notes showing you a picture of the rig they used. Also this week, on October 5th, after a long period of unfavorable weather, the Germans finally send planes to the UK for a night raid on London. Nineteen Gotha bombers and two Reisenflugzeug bombers come at the brits in several waves causing quite a bit of damage but inflicting no casualties. Now… Reisenflugzeug literally means GIANT AIRPLANE in German… and they were. These multi-engine behemoths had wingspans of 100 feet or more and seemed more like an exercise in the art of the possible instead of the art of war. This was to be the last German raid against the UK until January of 1918 - the Gotha bombers and two of these behemoth flying machines let loose their payloads over the UK during the war in the sky - 100 years ago this week. We also have a link to a picture of a Reisenflugzeug in the podcast notes. Link: http://media.iwm.org.uk/ciim5/331/146/mid_000000.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Riesenflugzeug_Siemens_Schuckert_VIII_1918.jpg/1200px-Riesenflugzeug_Siemens_Schuckert_VIII_1918.jpg [SOUND EFFECT] The Great War Channel If you’d like to watch some videos about WW1, visit our friend at the Great War Channel on Youtube - They have well over 400 episodes about WW1 and from a more European perspective. New episodes for this week include: The Battle of Polygon Wood Recap of Our Trip to Italy and Slovenia And Denmark in WW1 Follow the link in the podcast notes or search for “the great war” on youtube. Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar World War One NOW [SOUND EFFECT] We have moved forward in time to the present… Welcome to WW1 Centennial News NOW  - This part of the program is not about history but how the centennial of the War that changed the world is being commemorated today. Commission News This week in Commission news, we highlight a panel discussion about the Origins of the Trilateral Alliance - The alliance between Britain, America and France during World War One, its difficult birth, and its enduring impact after the war. The event was part of the Great War Alliance Forum at the Meridian International Center, a premier nonprofit global leadership organization headquartered in Washington DC Our own Commissioner Monique Seefried was part of the team that explored the history of the trilateral alliance; societal changes and the future of global conflict. You can read more about the event and watch the videos of this insightful discussion by following the link in the podcast notes. Link:https://www.meridian.org/project/the-great-war-alliance-forum/ [Sound Effect] Activities and Events Cardines Field Next, in our Activities and Events Section, we wanted to follow up on our report about the Rededication of Cardines Baseball Field which took place on September 29th, US Centennial Commissioner Jack Monahan attended the event in Rhode island,  that included an Army-Navy baseball game played by students from the U.S. Naval War College dressed in period baseball uniforms. Thanks to Associated Press reporter Jennifer McDermott from Rhode Island, the story about this unique and fun WW1 commemoration event got picked up by newspapers, blogs and posts all around the country This includes the New York Times, the Washington Post and local papers in Washington State, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and more. Check out the articles from across the country in the podcast notes. We invite YOU to add your own event to the National U.S. WW1 Centennial Events Register. Go to ww1cc.org/events, click the big red button and post your WW1 commemoration event for all to discover. We just added a new category this week for Social Media Events - so if you are planning a Facebook Live, livestream, WW1 Hackathon or other online WW1 commemoration event - get it posted and let our community of interest know! links: http://ww1cc.org/events https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/09/29/us/ap-us-wwi-baseball-game.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/09/28/army-soldiers-and-navy-sailors-to-recreate-world-war-i-era-baseball-game/?utm_term=.aa623b76c64e http://www.thenewportbuzz.com/batter-up-naval-war-college-to-host-wwi-baseball-at-cardines-field-this-friday/12817 http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/article175660656.html http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article175660656.html http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Sailors-and-soldiers-to-recreate-World-War-I-12240885.php http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/sports/article_d3a6e966-fb51-5b87-8718-dc03ab061fae.html http://newsok.com/sailors-and-soldiers-to-recreate-world-war-i-baseball-game/article/feed/1435175 https://www.theet.com/web_exclusive/us/sailors-and-soldiers-recreate-world-war-i-baseball-game/article_3da2b656-0e29-5316-845e-0fa637e2e5d2.html http://www.phillytrib.com/news/state_and_region/sailors-and-soldiers-recreate-world-war-i-baseball-game/article_2bc1387a-441a-5107-a1b6-00254a8585a9.html [SOUND EFFECT] Richard Rubin Talks To Towns We are joined by our good friend Richard Rubin - author of the WWI books, The Last of the Doughboys and Back Over There. Richard is joining us today to talk to us about his experiences during speaking engagements across the country about World War One. Welcome, Richard! [exchange greetings] [So Richard, you have gone around the country to speak about your books, the research that went into them and World War 1 at large -  tell us a bit about these events?] [Richard, you mentioned that people often come with artifacts,  photos, mementos, and family histories. Why do you think people are so eager to share these with you? ] [-Is there one story or artifact that someone brought in that stands out in your mind?] [-If somebody wants to have hold one of these events, how do they get a hold of you?] Richard Rubin - Thank you very much for coming on! That was author Richard Rubin, we have links in the podcast notes to Richard’s website which is also a great way to contact him. link:https://www.richardrubinonline.com/ [SOUND EFFECT] Speaking WW1 And now for our feature “Speaking World War 1 - Where we  explore today’s words & phrases that are rooted in the war  --- First some background - In spanish, a bobo is a fool, a clown, or someone who is easily cheated" … in the late 1800’s the term was anglicised into “booby” for terms like Booby Prize - and Booby Trap… then, it signified a prank like a book, or water put atop a door left ajar - so when someone walked in - Sploosh! And a great big guffaw! In WWI the word ‘Booby Trap” this week’s speaking WW1 word - took on a whole new sinister meaning! The English journalist Sir Philip Gibbs wrote in his war memoir From Bapaume to Passchendaele: “the enemy left … slow-working fuses and ‘booby-traps’ to blow a man to bits or blind him for life if he touched a harmless looking stick or opened the lid of a box, or stumbled over an old boot.” So troops picked up the phrase to describe a myriad of explosive devices deliberately disguised as a harmless objects often left behind in territory that exchanged hands, hidden in doorways, set to go off when a curious soldier opened the lid to a box or rifled through abandoned equipment. In modern times with this tactic becoming a major tool in asymmetric warfare the term was updated to IED - Improvised Explosive Device. Booby-trap --- a fool’s trap - one more word that was altered forever during the War that Changed the World. See the podcast notes to learn more! link: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/28/first-world-war-one-soldiers-tommies-common-language-trenches http://joellambert.com/123/history-booby-traps/   [SOUND EFFECT] 100 Cities/100 Memorials Chris Stout - Ridgewood, NJ Next, we are going to profile another 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project. That is our $200,000 matching grant giveaway to rescue ailing WW1 memorials. Last week, we profiled a project from Swanton Ohio. This week, we head to Ridgewood, NJ. Joining us is Chris Stout, a member of Ridgewood’s American Legion Post 53 and a self-appointed amateur local historian. Welcome, Chris! [exchange greetings] [Chris.. The saying is “a man is not dead until he is forgotten” and that frames your 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project. Tell us about it.] [What was your reaction when you learned about being one of the awardees for a Matching Grant by the program?] [Can you tell us about the rededication that took place on Memorial day?] [Chris - What distinguishes your project - for me - is that it is a fairly small project that is righting a large issue… Congratulations to you and your whole post!] Thank you so much for being here with us today! That was Chris Stout, member of American Legion Post 53, local historian and resident of Ridgewood, New Jersey. We will continue to profile the submitting teams and their unique and amazing projects on the show over the coming months. Learn more about the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials program at ww1cc.org/100memorials or follow the link in the podcast notes. Link: www.ww1cc.org/100memorials http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/3166-first-50-official-wwi-centennial-memorials-to-be-announced.html   [SOUND EFFECT] Stories of Service Rendezvous With death - Interview with David Hanna In our “Remember the veterans” section, today we have David Hanna with us. David is a history teacher at Stuyvesant (Sty-ves-ant) High School in New York City and author of two books, Knights of the Sea about a naval battle that occurred off the coast of Maine in 1813; and Rendezvous with Death, about the original group of American volunteers in the French Army in 1914. Welcome, David! [exchange greetings] [David, how did you come to write a book about the American Volunteers of WW1?] [As you’ve noted, the dozens of Americans that volunteered in 1914 represented a cross-section of American society at the time. What common impulse made them volunteer for the war?] [There are many famous individuals who volunteered early on in the war: Ernest Hemingway, Alan Seeger, e. e. cummings, Walt Disney… but of all the many volunteers you’ve researched, does anyone stand out to you?] [David: How did you decide on the title “Rendezvous with Death”?] [David - put up a website on the Commissions server - what kinds of information can I find there?] Thank you so much for joining us! That was David Hanna, author of Rendezvous with Death and curator of the website at ww1cc.org/rendezvous The links are in the podcast notes. Link:http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/rendezvous-with-death-home-page.html https://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Death-Americans-Foreign-Civilization/dp/1621573966/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 International Report For our International Report, we head to France, to the town of Versaille for an interesting story about two companion statues one of General Pershing and the other of the Marquis de Lafayette The statues were recently restored and re-dedicated on October 6th 2017. The dual monuments to the generals were originally built in 1937, two equestrian statues of the generals on nine meter tall pedestals on either side of the road leading into the town of Versaille. The two statues were erected to commemorate the friendship between France and the United States and to pay tribute to the Americans troops for their significant contribution to the Allied victory in 1918. The statues were hastily built in plaster with a bronze patina (puh-tee-nuh) so they could be in place and on view for they’re inauguration, which took place with General Pershing present on a European tour. The plaster statues were quickly damaged by exposure and had never been replaced, until now. On October 6th 2017, exactly 80 years after the initial inauguration, permanent versions of the statues were re-dedicated.  Read more about the statues and the rededication at the links in the podcast notes. link:http://www.pershing-lafayette-versailles.org/ http://centenaire.org/fr/en-france/versailles-ceremonie-restauration-monument-pershing-la-fayette   WWrite Blog It’s time for an update for our WWRITE blog, which explores WWI’s Influence on contemporary writing and scholarship, this week's post is: “What the Mountains Hold: A Writer's Trek Through the Dolomites of Mark Helprin's WWI Italy” The post brings a fresh face to the WWI Italy described in  Hemingway's “A Farewell to Arms”. Author and veteran, Shannon Huffman Polson, takes us on a spellbinding trek through the Dolomites, where 689,000 Italians perished during the war. Following the footsteps of characters from Mark Helprin's novel, “A Soldier of the Great War”, Polson leads us through the stark, striking landscape of one of Italian-history's most indelible memories. A stunning narrative not to be missed! Read it by following the link in the podcast notes. Link: www.ww1cc.org.wwrite http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/3190-what-the-mountains-hold.html   The Buzz - WW1 in Social Media Posts That brings us to the buzz - the centennial of WW1 this week in social media with Katherine Akey - Katherine - You have two stories to share with us today - Take it away! Thanks Theo! Fort Riley and the 1st Division Museum Watch a great video series about the 1st division in WW1! link:https://www.facebook.com/FtRileyMuseums/ https://www.facebook.com/FtRileyMuseums/videos/1217575371721494/ Countdown to Veterans Day Follow us as we #countdowntoveteransday . You can join in, too! link:https://www.facebook.com/ww1centennial/photos/a.290566277785344.1073741829.185589304949709/845531832288783/?type=3&theater https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/countdowntoveteransday https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/countdowntoveteransday/?hl=en   Closing Well It’s time to wrap things up - and for those who listen through to the very end of the episode you know about the little treats we always put there. We want to thank our guests: Mike Shuster and his report on espionage in the middle east   Richard Rubin, telling us about his experiences speaking across the country Chris Stout from the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project in Ridgewood, New Jersey David Hanna giving us insight into the Americans who joined the war well before America did Katherine Akey the Commission’s social media director and also the line producer for the show. And I am Theo Mayer - your host.   The US World War One Centennial Commission was created by Congress to honor, commemorate and educate about WW1. Our programs are to-- inspire a national conversation and awareness about WW1; This program is a part of that…. We are bringing the lessons of the 100 years ago into today's classrooms; We are helping to restore WW1 memorials in communities of all sizes across our country; and of course we are building America’s National WW1 Memorial in Washington DC. If you like the work we are doing, please support it with a tax deductible donation at ww1cc.org/donate - all lower case Or if you are on your smart phone text  the word: WW1 to 41444. that's the letters ww the number 1 texted to 41444. Any amount is appreciated. We want to thank commission’s founding sponsor the Pritzker Military Museum and Library for their support. The podcast can be found on our website at ww1cc.org/cn   on  iTunes and google play ww1 Centennial News, and on Amazon Echo or other Alexa enabled devices. Our twitter and instagram handles are both @ww1cc and we are on facebook @ww1centennial. Thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to share the stories you are hearing here with someone about the war that changed the world! [music - The man behind the hammer and the plow - Arthur Fields - Edison Record] Alexa: Play the W W 1 Centennial News Podcast [Alexa response]   So long!

How's it going? Hoje eu falo sobre dois idioms com a palavra flag, incluindo "fazer sinal para o táxi/ônibus parar". Transcrição How's it going? You're listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Thank you for telling everyone you know about this podcast and, enjoy! So I'm wondering how you get to work or school every day. Do you drive, or do you take public transport? In case you take the bus, you know very well that if you're the only person standing at the bus stop, when you see your bus you have to raise your arm as a kind of signal to the driver that you want him to stop. What you're doing is, you're hailing down a bus. To hail down something or someone means exactly that: to signal or wave at someone to let them know they should stop. We do the same thing for a taxi, right? If I'm out in the street and need a cab to go somewhere, when I see one approaching I'll just raise my arm, maybe wave, and if the taxi is free the driver will stop and pick me up. Have you ever missed a bus because, although you were standing at the bus stop, you forgot to hail it down? It's happened to me. Actually, I'm not sure whether I was distracted or forgot to wave, or I just thought someone else was going to hail it down. Nobody did, and the bus just went right on past all of us. But that's pretty rare - that actually happened out here in London. In São Paulo it was usually the opposite: I don't think I ever had to worry about hailing down a bus because there were always so many people at the bus stop who were waiting for the same bus I was... So lots of hands went up as the buses approached. Here's a tweet I read the other day: https://twitter.com/iamlaurenhutton/status/849545339552112643 The woman who tweeted this is a former cast member on a reality show that I used to watch. Also, I didn't get the "magneto" reference... I only watched the first X-man movie so, if you know what she's talking about please let me know! We can also say flag down - it's the same thing as hail down. Sometimes you're driving a car and the police will flag you down, won't they? A police officer will sort of wave at you and you know you should immediately pull over. So police officers sometimes flag down cars. And here's another idiom with flag that you will hear a lot: red flag. I hear that one all the time. A red flag is a sign to you, or to someone else, that something is not right. Maybe you're interviewing someone to be your new assistant - let's say it's a guy called Richard. So Richard says "I've had three jobs so far, and all my bosses were awful people. They were really horrible." OK. So you hear Richard say that the last three bosses he had were awful people - really? That raises a red flag. That's a huge red flag to you. You keep going with the interview, but by now you've already made up your mind: either this guy has a problem with authority figures or he doesn't think twice about badmouthing other people. Either way, it's a no-go. Richard saying that all his previous bosses were awful people was a big red flag to you. Or let's say you're a girl and you've been dating a guy for a few months now but he still doesn't want you anywhere near his place. He's fine with coming round to yours, but whenever you suggest going round to his, he'll give you an excuse. That's a red flag to you. Something smells fishy... Maybe he's married? You end up breaking up with him because you can't ignore a red flag like that. OK, that's it for today! Tell me about your red flags in the comments, and talk to you next time! Key expressions flag or hail something/someone down red flag Vocabulary I didn't get the reference = não entendi a referência badmouth someone = falar mal de alguém either way = de qualquer uma das duas maneiras que você acabou de mencionar a no-go = uma situação que você não quer, que não vai acontecer, você não vai aprovar, etc

How's it going? Hoje eu falo sobre dois idioms com a palavra flag, incluindo "fazer sinal para o táxi/ônibus parar". Transcrição How's it going? You're listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Thank you for telling everyone you know about this podcast and, enjoy! So I'm wondering how you get to work or school every day. Do you drive, or do you take public transport? In case you take the bus, you know very well that if you're the only person standing at the bus stop, when you see your bus you have to raise your arm as a kind of signal to the driver that you want him to stop. What you're doing is, you're hailing down a bus. To hail down something or someone means exactly that: to signal or wave at someone to let them know they should stop. We do the same thing for a taxi, right? If I'm out in the street and need a cab to go somewhere, when I see one approaching I'll just raise my arm, maybe wave, and if the taxi is free the driver will stop and pick me up. Have you ever missed a bus because, although you were standing at the bus stop, you forgot to hail it down? It's happened to me. Actually, I'm not sure whether I was distracted or forgot to wave, or I just thought someone else was going to hail it down. Nobody did, and the bus just went right on past all of us. But that's pretty rare - that actually happened out here in London. In São Paulo it was usually the opposite: I don't think I ever had to worry about hailing down a bus because there were always so many people at the bus stop who were waiting for the same bus I was... So lots of hands went up as the buses approached. Here's a tweet I read the other day: https://twitter.com/iamlaurenhutton/status/849545339552112643 The woman who tweeted this is a former cast member on a reality show that I used to watch. Also, I didn't get the "magneto" reference... I only watched the first X-man movie so, if you know what she's talking about please let me know! We can also say flag down - it's the same thing as hail down. Sometimes you're driving a car and the police will flag you down, won't they? A police officer will sort of wave at you and you know you should immediately pull over. So police officers sometimes flag down cars. And here's another idiom with flag that you will hear a lot: red flag. I hear that one all the time. A red flag is a sign to you, or to someone else, that something is not right. Maybe you're interviewing someone to be your new assistant - let's say it's a guy called Richard. So Richard says "I've had three jobs so far, and all my bosses were awful people. They were really horrible." OK. So you hear Richard say that the last three bosses he had were awful people - really? That raises a red flag. That's a huge red flag to you. You keep going with the interview, but by now you've already made up your mind: either this guy has a problem with authority figures or he doesn't think twice about badmouthing other people. Either way, it's a no-go. Richard saying that all his previous bosses were awful people was a big red flag to you. Or let's say you're a girl and you've been dating a guy for a few months now but he still doesn't want you anywhere near his place. He's fine with coming round to yours, but whenever you suggest going round to his, he'll give you an excuse. That's a red flag to you. Something smells fishy... Maybe he's married? You end up breaking up with him because you can't ignore a red flag like that. OK, that's it for today! Tell me about your red flags in the comments, and talk to you next time! Key expressions flag or hail something/someone down red flag   Vocabulary I didn't get the reference = não entendi a referência badmouth someone = falar mal de alguém either way = de qualquer uma das duas maneiras que você acabou de mencionar a no-go = uma situação que você não quer, que não vai acontecer, você não vai aprovar, etc  

Richard Shelton was born and raised in southeast Oklahoma where he started working in his family’s grocery store at the age of 12. His grandpa started in the grocery business in 1936. His family continued his grandfather’s legacy until they sold the stores in 2014. During his 29 years in the business there were drastic changes in the grocery industry. So Richard decided to try his hand at real estate and he did a lot of research into several different coaching programs and was most impressed with Mitch Stephen’s program. What you’ll learn about in this episode: Richard’s background What he learned going through his first deal Richard’s goal of meeting both his and his wife’s freedom number so that she could retire from teaching What Richard’s typical deals look like today Why you need a mentor and an attorney very early on Why Richard is considering using LiveComm.com for his phone collection and answering needs Richard’s goals for next year and the years going forward Resources: REInvestorSummit.com/aof REInvestorSummit.com/coaching REInvestorSummit.com/Pro REInvestorSummit.com/101 REInvestorSummit.com/live REInvestorSummit.com/capital