Podcasts about so sam

Jill Friday - Sellers Need to Like You and Your Dynamic Personality (LA 1553) Transcript: Steven J Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Happy Friday. Steven J Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from perfect Phoenix, Arizona. Steven J Butala: Today Jill and I talk about, well, it's Jill Friday, and how sellers need to like you and your dynamic personality. Jill DeWit: It kind of sounds funny when you say it like that. Steven J Butala: I never would have thought that this was important to get anything done. And now more than ever, I don't know if it's my age or sort of experience. Jill DeWit: Maybe it's me. Steven J Butala: It is you. It's the Jill effect. And being an experienced parent, I just know that you need to have a dynamic personality and present stuff to sellers to get a deal. Jill DeWit: It makes a difference. Steven J Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Well, and sellers and buyers, all of it, all of the above. And I can't wait to talk more about this. I was thinking about career path this week, actually the last week, and we were just talking... It comes up often, and I have to remind everyone, get the mail out. There's a lot of problems you can solve on the phone. And that ties into this. Steven J Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free, and if you're already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. I'm going to set this up. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven J Butala: This is Sam and Malita, Land Academy members, responding to a question that somebody else asked about should I send a mail to a low activity area? Meaning wow, there's just not a lot of comparison value. It's both sales and actively sold property. This is what they say. Jill DeWit: This is cool. Their take on it. So Sam and Malita wrote, for areas where I just don't see any activity or very little in the way of sold and for sale, I'm contacting agents that sell there and just getting them to give me the lowdown on the area. What's going on in this area conversation? I'm a broker and have listed a lot of land in an area where we have tons on the market and very little movement. I would always be upfront with my clients on what to expect when listing land in that area. I knew exactly why it was slow over there, and I knew what would sell and what would sit. So maybe find out what sells in that area and what sits. Love it. Steven J Butala: Well, let me tell you a story. A true story, and it's one that's recent. We sent a mailer out in a centrally located state and did very, very well. And Jill found the right real estate agent to deal with. And he sold the property quickly. And to which she said, "Well, should I buy more?" I'll tell you what she said in less than 30 seconds, "Boy, if I had properties anything in these three zip codes, I can sell it for $20,000 an acre." Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It was like, "This area, yes. This area, no. This area, maybe. This area..." That's the conversation you want to have. Steven J Butala: Is there data involved in that? No. And the reason I put that, I'm a data person. The reason I put this question in this episode is because we're going to talk about this is not all about data. It's hugely about... And so think about now, if you call six or seven good local land real estate agents, what kind of conversations you're going to have and how you can tailor a mailer around what they say without ever running any real data. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven J Butala: Today's topic is Jill Friday. And she talks about how sellers need to like you and your dynamic personality. This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: So I was thinking about this because I was watching Shark Tank the other day. I know I talk about that a lot. It's one of my favorite shows. When I'm on Hulu, it always just pops up,

Jeremy is again absent for this podcast (second time in three episodes, for those keeping track. We're not keeping track or anything, but maybe you are). So Sam and Deric do “dinner without Jer” on a Saturday night in Golden, Colorado, as they wait to enter the Adam Carolla standup show. They make many new … Continue reading An Evening in Golden → The post An Evening in Golden appeared first on Lunch with Jer.

In this episode of the Cody Cast podcast, Sam Hunt breaks down what is happening in his life, gives us an update on his marriage, reveals how they celebrated their anniversary, and shares how COVID-19 has improved his communication.  PLUS: What nostalgic thing from the 90s does the “Breaking Up Was Easy In The 90s” singer miss most? Sam tells all.  And, new music might be coming soon. Sam typically shares new music updates using social media, but being chained to the endless scrolls does take a toll. So Sam also takes a moment to reveal his favorite apps.  Listen to Sam and Cody Alan's full interview now. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become one what's up for, for me. Where should you go to door to door tour?Speaker 2 (00:45):Should you invest in this event, plus a full re recap of the event? Hey, we're going to get into it. I'm Taylor Armstrong here to help you close more deals, create more income in the solar industry, generate more leads and referrals and hopefully make it easier to be a solar pro in today's changing industry. So I want to talk about before I get into this event, recap and give you my recommendation. If you'll go before I get into that, I need to tell you guys about an app that if you are not using to take notes, you are killing yourself. Okay. This app it's called Notability. Okay. Write that down or download it right now. Um, I think it's cost like 10 bucks or something, but this app literally has been a game changer. In any event, I go to anything I need to take notes in, especially for solar specific things.Speaker 2 (01:48):And here's why the app, what it does. It lets you record, um, the presentations. So you're recording, which I know you can just use like a voice memo or other ways to record these apps, but what's super cool about it and was a game changer. Is it pairs the recording with the actual notes you're taking? So let's say you're at an event and you write down a really cool line. You heard, um, Hey, this person says, um, at a really cool line on how to get inside the home to book an appointment. Then as you write that, it'll pair it with the exact audio from that exact moment, you know, let you just click on that note and you'll get to hear what was happening at that precise moment. That was super cool because I go through, I take all these notes and then a lot of times it's like, I don't know exactly what the context was.Speaker 2 (02:46):Um, or there something that I want to hear, maybe their intonation, how they're saying a specific line and all you do. You click on the note and boom, it's going to take you to that exact moment where they said those things, even here are the, you can hear the line they're using, um, exact words they're using. So for example, this events that I just got done with the door-to-door tour, which I'm gonna talk about here in a second, but Sam Taggart, he had a lot of great lines that you used on, um, his closes on his solar closes and I'm not going to be able to write down word for word what he's saying. A lot of times he's seen these exact lines one time, but with this app, I can go back. I can click on the exact moment and I'm going to hear his word tracks.Speaker 2 (03:34):Now I can go back and review them and I can really get them into my brain and be able to implement them. So for those that are going to this event, or even for those that are just going to solar, I dunno, team meetings or events, um, you know, anything you go to where you are taking notes, get this app and it's going to change your life. Got to give a shout out to, uh, my boy, uh, Matt Romero. He's the one that pointed me, this my friend. Um, so thank you Matt, for showing me, tell me about this app and hit me up. If there's any other cool apps you guys are using to help you close more deals or to help you gain a better education at solar events or whatever it may be. So I just wanted to give you a heads up about that app before you go to an event.Speaker 2 (04:22):So let's dive into the episode, which is, should you go to door to door on tour? Hey, so this events put on by Sam Taggart and um, depending on when you're listening to this, if you're listening to this, when it came out, he's probably still on tour doing these events. Okay. So go, go get your ticket. You can go check it out. We can post a link to the actual website. Um, we had Sam on the, uh, podcasts, probably like five, six episodes ago at the time of this one. And he did share a little bit about the events, what was going to go on with it. Um, but I just got done attending the events, um, two days ago, the time of this recording. And I'm going to give you my honest, my real, my raw review on it and tell you if you should go, if you're on the fence.Speaker 2 (05:14):Okay. So here it is. I think you should go, okay. Probably not much of a surprise, but it's only like 50 bucks, which is insanely cheap. Okay. Probably one of the cheapest eventual ever get a go-to and it's only a half day, so it's not a long event, but he does pack some action into there. He give you some sweet solar content and what was really cool about them. And we went up in orange county here in California. And when he got there, I assume it will be the same at all the locations he's going to, but Sam gets up and he says, all right, how, uh, what different injury industry that we got here? Solar pest control, alarms, uh, meat and kid. You not, I think it was 99% of the room here in California was doing solar. So I'm like, yeah, that's what's up.Speaker 2 (06:08):Solar is the best. Yeah. Um, so it was super cool. Everyone made the right choice, everyone out here with someone solar, which is the right product, which is the best product, which is the gold rush right now. He gotta be in it. That was super cool to see. Yeah, there was only, I would say there's maybe, I don't know, 150 people, maybe 200 this event. Um, and yeah, almost everyone was in solar. So it was cool to see. So what Sam does really, he just, um, basically tailored, tailored to all the solar since we are all selling solar in the room. So that was nice. We talked about some specific things. So other stops on the tour, I don't know if there's a bunch of meat sells them in there. Maybe he's going to be talking about, um, how to sell your prime rib, better, how to describe meat, who knows, but chances are in all the stops.Speaker 2 (07:04):There's probably going to be a lot of solar guys. I would imagine it. So that's why I'm definitely going to recommend it. If you were in the solar industry, I think it's going to be an awesome event for you. And we're talking 50 bucks, come on. It's only a half a day, so you're not even needing to take a day off work. You can still be slinging your deals, just take the morning off and then go rush to the doors right after go hit your appointments. It's going to get you a refreshed hit. So let's jump into a little recap. Um, and I'll give you my opinion on a few of the topics. He covered, things like that. So I'm going to pull up my notes from Notability here. Hey, um, so I'll get you a little bit excited for it. Um, he gave the example of just how we should treat, um, solar, like riding a bike in a Peloton.Speaker 2 (07:54):So you say at Peloton. So if you think of these bikers that go out there in Peloton and they got their group of 10 different bikers and Sam, he just got done doing an Ironman. So he was sharing his experience with that. He gave the stats and everything, and he said it's 27 to 50% easier to ride with the pack. Very specific stat in there, um, takes away resistance, um, makes you have to show up, makes you have to show off and you take turns carrying the weight break in the wind, right? So he made a cool analogy that as we're out selling, this is the importance of having a team. And this is why I would recommend to everyone be on a team, okay, solar, you're going to perform better if you're in a team there's guys that go out and try and just be free riders.Speaker 2 (08:43):But I can tell you a hundred percent of the time you're going to perform better. You are going to push yourselves more. If you are on a team, if you're seeing guys out produce just today, we had my brother, that's our, he goes and closes three deals on the day and I'm like, dang, man, how do I catch up to you? I got one close on the day, but he got three. And just seeing those things, it motivates you. It motivates you to want to be better to improve. So Sam talked about that, just how it's, um, a vital importance to get on a team and then learn from it, learn from your team members and use them to push you. Hey, and then another thing he talked about is just 10 secrets that he's learned from dozens and dozens of interviews you've done on the podcast.Speaker 2 (09:30):And they're pretty similar to what I would say after interviewing dozens of the top solar pros on the Solarpreneur podcast. Okay. So you'll probably hear this, but number one was think bigger. Number two is win the morning. Number three, always get better. Number four, don't make excuses. Number five, work more number six, consistency, number seven efficiency slash time management. Number eight, don't take advice from bad reps. Number nine, compete, number 10, have a mentor. And so these are common correlations that's Sam has seen. And what I see too, as we interviewed these top guys, they all talk about these things. And so Sam broke it down in, I was honored to be on his podcasts a few weeks back as well. Um, so if you haven't heard that you can go check out Sam's PA uh, podcasts, the D2D podcast. Hey, and then there's a few financial guys that came Ed Kinsey, um, and tax guy, uh, Brady Slack, what she's been on this podcast.Speaker 2 (10:36):So that's cool. You get some financial training from it. Okay. But the majority of the day it's Sam just, um, really tailoring the specific solar secrets, specific things that are working out there. Okay. And the one downside of the event, Hey, maybe Sam's going to be mad that I'm giving the con of the Venter, but Hey, I'm going to get real. I'm going to get raw. I'm going to get honest. The Caren was the VIP lunch. They didn't have lunch for me. I show up and I'm like, where's my lunch, the hex. And I wanted my prime rib sitting on a plate here and I haven't gained anything. I think there's more people than he anticipated that signed up for the VIP lunch. So I guess they ran out of food. Um, so I guess my advice, if you bought the VIP ticket pack, your backup lunch, put your sandwich in your back pockets, your tater tots down there too, because there might not be enough food.Speaker 2 (11:33):I'm sure you learned from it, but Sam fearlessness, uh, send me some lunch or let's go, let's go grab some lunch. Since I didn't get lunch from my VIP ticket, by what I was honored to be on the, uh, experts panel at the VIP lunch. So I got to jam with some dudes up there and share some things that are helping my team and things that I've learned from Solarpreneurs that have been on the show. Hey, so that's just a little event teaser, a little recap of it. Hey, but it's worth your money guys. Go, go spend the 50 bucks or the 120, I think is the VIP package. Go check it out. Um, it's going to be great for your team. She'll try to get your team there. I think it's great for team building for networking. Go out and connect with people.Speaker 2 (12:23):Go out and add guys on Instagram and post your wins on Instagram. If you're listening to this podcast, golf, shoot me a fall on the gram. It's at Taylor J Armstrong. Okay. Cause I am trying to be a lot more consistent. I'm posting my wins on there and posts and tips and tricks that are working for our team. And I'm posting the highlights of what we're doing on the day-to-day behind the scenes. So shoot me a follow. Let me know you heard the podcast and let me know if you guys can think of anyone that is crushing it, that we haven't had on the show. We'd love to have him on Hey, so that's the event recap. It was a fun event and obviously we got a lot more notes, a lot more details that I didn't get into here. Sam went into more specific things and had some great lines for closing, um, for, uh, on the doors.Speaker 2 (13:12):So again, download the app and then you're going to be able to go listen to these notes and listen to the exact word checks, which is super important to actually digest the content. So that's the recap. Let me know if you guys have any feedback from going to the event. Let me know if you agree with my highlights of it, if you don't agree. And I'd be curious to know, did Sam cover the same topics when he went to your city? I went in California, but he's going all around the country doing this. Okay. So hope you enjoyed this. Let me know what your thoughts and we will see you on the next episode. Peace out.Speaker 1 (13:49):Hey Solarpreneurs. Quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.Speaker 3 (15:18):[inaudible]. 

Sam, Slim and DTE just finished watching Married at First Sight Season 12. So Sam has decided to list out the fuckboy playbook.... we will go more in depth Follow Sam on Instagram and Twitter @infamousblu5

Lisa has a tendency to over share and she does not disappoint! Her Urethra Franklin is under the weather and Lisa goes into more detail then Sam wants to hear! TMI!! Lisa’s pee is in training to fly to Toronto. So Sam suggests that she wear Depends on the flight because ewww peeing on a plane. Lisa wants none of that! Check in next week for the conclusion of Lisa's Urethra Franklin! The ladies try not to impart their wisdom but they do recommend that a bra and panties is necessary for travel outside the home, don't be a monsta! Lisa and Sam talk about the new croc styles of summer, skinny jeans, tablet vs bible, Josh Duggar, female slurpee cup the SMID, big pants vs baggy pants, Bennifer is back, FB Tuesday, new BBQ and its meaning, Kelly & Mark, hard tacos, salt and pepper, Disneyland, the HHG, Very Scary People, Fake Cat Maggie, things you hated as a kid, Lisa's question corner, French toast, old phrases, Billie Eilish, the Gates, chip flavours, hot goldfish, one hair product, and things Lisa oughta know! The I shake my heads are about jerks and eyebrows? It's just a bit of ridiculous chatter but it might just make you laugh! If you love what you hear you can support the podcast by following the links below! Podlink: https://pod.link/1232121527 (pod.link/ismh) Podbean: https://patron.podbean.com/ismhead Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/ishakemyhead You can also find us on: Twitter www.twitter.com/i_shakemyhead  Instagram www.instagram.com/ishakemyhead Buy our merchandise at www.ishakemyhead.threadless.com We are proud to be a part of www.podfixnetwork.com   

So Sam was right, Fran is haunted… or in other words, she's a seer! The beginning of this week's episode starts off with a good old ghost story and the little encounter Fran had with a shadow person. The girls then get to what they believe is a crucial three-step process to coping with a breakup whether your the breaker-upper or the breakup-ee... AKA the Ultimate Breakup Bible. Things get a little personal as they share their own experiences with how they've grown and what they've learned. They then get into an impromptu little this or that: cheating edition. Texting someone and hiding it from your partner, going to a strip club, and still lingering on dating apps while in a relationship. Cheating? Not cheating but f**k you? Not cheating at all? Tune in to see what the girls have to say about it! Follow us on Instagram: @keepingitcento @samcentofante | @francescaacento

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become what's up.Speaker 2 (00:44):We're back with another episode, we got familiar face on the show. If you've been a time listener, you have probably heard the episode with the man, the myth, the legend to Sam Taggart. And we're fortunate enough today to have him back on the show. So Sam, thanks for coming back. Once again, he must be doing something right for you to agree to come on the show again. No, I'm, I'm excited to hear, to spread the love, you know? Yeah. Well, you're doing awesome things, man. And, um, I'm just happy that you pull off a door to, to work on steel during COVID. I thought it was going to be canceled, but you were like the only events that I saw even still happens. I'm like, dang, she pulled this off. I better get to it. Yeah, it was, it was, we had to move venues two weeks before like really I was literally pulled out from under us and they're like, Hey, we're not gonna, we're not gonna be able to load your event.Speaker 2 (01:33):I'm like, Oh, what do you want me to do? Call like 600 people and just tell them, Hey, we're moving. Like not doing it. Like, like, what do you want me to do? So I'm like me and me door knock. And Sam, I just go start knocking on venues. I'm like, how about deer? How about here? How about here? And I just started calling. There's not a ton of options in Utah with like to fit that many people and vendors. And it was hard, but, uh, yeah. So, but yeah, kudos. You've pulled it off. I'm just, I was, I was sad that David Goggins didn't want to come anymore, get seatbelt. He got scared of COVID dude. Like he literally was like, Oh, I'm just nervous to travel with Kona. And I was like, you can't hurt me. What dad is doc. They're like, no iron cowboy. And he's doing his hundred Ironman right now in a hundred days. And there's anybody that James Lawrence was like, yeah, David Goggins a. And I was like, anybody can say that you got some balls to shake. I'll shut my mouth. They'll beat my, I thought it was funny that John Maxwell comes and he's like, what? 70, 80 years old? I literally tell John Maxwell. I was like, Hey, I was so shocked that you came David Goggins Belden. And John Maxor goes, Oh, COVID, it's a joke. It's not real.Speaker 2 (02:54):I was like, Oh, it's not even real. That's awesome. I didn't know.Speaker 3 (03:01):But he was so cool. I have so much more respect for Maxwell. Like just how he showed up and like just who he is. I mean, I'm excited. I'm excited for this next year. We're we're vetting some speakers right now. I'm not going to say, but, um, we're open to suggestions too. So if anybody's listening to this, like I'm friends with Mark Cuban, I'd be like, yes. So I am throwing that out to the universe. Um, so connect me if you guys know of any good keynotes, so,Speaker 2 (03:33):Okay, good, good. Oh, cool. Um, so hopefully you should all know who Sam is, but I guess if you don't, I mean, he's the door to door master. He's started door to door experts. He has the door to door podcasts. So I'm, unless it's like your first day or something, you probably should have heard of Sam by now. I would hope. Um, but yeah, that's what he's about. So if you haven't go subscribe to his podcasts, he's done a good ton of awesome stuff. And we'll talk about his event. He has coming up soon. Um, but Sam, what I kind of wanted to jam on today is just the first app, uh, podcast we did with you. We focus more on like the solar specific stuff. Like I think we did kind of like a live role play thing and, um, you know, broke down objections, things like that. So this time I kind of wanted to focus on what you've really just learned to views. You've consulted all these companies and you've been doing this for years. You've probably seen what works, what doesn't work now have a ton ideas on that. So I kind of wanted to see just kind of the broader, um, perspective, I guess now. So in all your consulting, what do you see that is making a big difference for the solar companies you work with? I guess what's, what's been helping the companies you work with.Speaker 3 (04:43):Um, it's everybody asks me like, what are the behaviors that I should be doing? Right. Like teach me the right pay skills, teach me the right. You know, knocking techniques teach me the right training. What they're not asking is then like I go to most companies and they'd never really understand why they're a company. Like what's their identity. And I'm finding the companies that really get clarity around their vision, their core values, their identity and, and anchoring in some sound foundational elements of like what our mission is. Then it's so much easier to couple on the, the, the behaviors and the structures and all the other things that follow up. Um, so a big piece of what we do a lot of times is just help realign them because even businesses that have been around for 10 years, I mean, we've consulted some, you know, billion dollar companies and it's like, we're just sitting here kind of like, you've lost your, your mojo.Speaker 3 (05:43):You've lost, like why you even exist. You're just like in this mud of like, we're just like rowing, but with no direction, like, so where are we going? I don't know, you know, another 10 million. And it's like, okay, where we go? And I'm like, you're people are losing a little bit of their love because they don't see the vision. They, they, they're not getting communicated with on the path. They're not getting in a role every week, every month, every year, why they should realist re-enlist in your company. Does that make sense? So like a lot of big problems in this industry is turnover. A lot of big problem in this industry is how do I avoid getting my reps to go start their own company or go to my, get poached or, or ask for more money or whatever that is. And I'm like, yeah, they got to understand like where you're going for sure. Driving themselves.Speaker 2 (06:38):Yeah. Yeah, no. And I know that was, that was a big problem. We had it's one of the previous companies I worked for is, um, we would hire, we, it was a setter closer model, so we would hire all these setters on, but then, um, you know, fast forward a few months, the setters started hearing how much like the closers can make and, you know, even reps from other companies and things like that. And then they want, they start asking how they can progress. And, um, the culture is basically you can't progress. We want you to just keep, you know, keep sending bills. Um, so just cause a ton of turnover. Yeah. We had some solid guys, but they wanted like, what's that next step? How can we progress into like closing the managing or whatever the next thing is. So yeah, I think that is super important and just creating that vision and just helping guys see what the next step step is, where they can go. So when you're consulting these companies, how do you get them to like, what are the steps you take them through to help them out with this and create like, I dunno that vision and keep their reps motivated and all that.Speaker 3 (07:37):Yeah. And every, every like, I mean the first thing is every company is unique. And so it's really understanding, like getting down to the root of what, what, what do you want? You know what I mean? It's like some companies, like we have a pest control company that we kept asking me like, well, are you building this to sell off your accounts? Are you building this to just keep building a reoccurring residual? Or are you building this to go and you know, build more in an empire all over. Do you want to stay at a local guy and lean and mean, and take big distributions? Do you want to keep reinvesting? Like, I don't know, you tell me. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to tell you what you want. Like that there'll be some purpose. If I just projected what I want on you in a week, you're going to be like, well, that's maybe not what I want.Speaker 3 (08:24):And I'm like, but the fact that you can't answer, what do you want? That's the impediment to your real growth and success. The clarity when you can understand what you want and, and define it and clarity and, and then go into why you want it, then it makes it easier to go and, and, and construct. So a lot of the things I start with is like, what do you want? Like, what do you want? Let's fast forward a year. What do you want to have happen? Let's fast forward five years. What would you want to have happen? Oh, I want to be selling off in an distance. So The Bahamas in Selma company, I'm like, okay, what assets do you have? What's the, what's the enterprise value. You're fricking sales, or you don't even install. Do you have any IP? Do you have any actual value located? And let's start putting some tracks down right now, putting some enterprise value to where somebody to actually transact, like you're going to sell to like a, I don't know, like, well, how do you, how do you, so when you don't even know what type of buyers are looking to buy you.Speaker 3 (09:22):Okay. And I'm like, okay, you're going to have to private equity and banks. Are you going after a bigger solar company acquire you? And why would you, why would a bigger solar company buy you if they're already there? Like, what is like, what value like, and so I just start quizzing them and they're just like, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, at least you've got your wheels turning. And so being a coach or a consultant, it's like, it's fun because I get to ask the questions. They're afraid to ask themselves, but they know deep down inside there should be asking themselves and they're just avoiding it.Speaker 2 (09:55):No, that's key. And I think, um, that's something that even just sells people can do too, is I think you talked about this just on your most recent episode is just that, like, why exercise, figuring out why you're trying to do the things that you do and like a, you know, Dean Grasiozi talks about like the seven whys and it's just digging super deep on the why. And most people I know when I did that exercise, I didn't know why I, I, I I'd tough time answering the questions of why I wanted to do anything. So when you take seven levels deep,Speaker 3 (10:26):It's hard. And another exercise that I didn't mention that podcast. That's a good one. It's like, okay. So where are you? You know, you're going to go build this solar company and then what, and then, you know, do it with me. So you, Taylor, you're running the solar company. So, so you build this solar company and then what?Speaker 2 (10:48):Um, I, um, I sell it and, or sell the solar company. So, um, make tons of money retire and yeah, just vacation the rest of the time.Speaker 3 (11:06):So you would make tons of money, you vacation and then, and then what?Speaker 2 (11:13):Um, yeah, just spend time with my kids, help them with soccer practice andSpeaker 3 (11:20):You go skiing. And then one,Speaker 2 (11:23):Um, then I bias, uh, I started doing some real estates by some houses. Um, andSpeaker 3 (11:34):So you buy some real estate, you buy some houses.Speaker 2 (11:39):Um, and then I start buying some commercial, commercial, real estate, some apartment units. Um, and then I, um, yeah, I don't know. I buy an Island. You bought some on the Island? Um, I, yeah, I dunno. Just relax on the islands. Just hang out there. It's my life.Speaker 3 (12:10):You've got these cars, properties. You're relaxing on an Island and then we'll,Speaker 2 (12:15):Um, I,Speaker 3 (12:19):You can't think so. You're just now trying to answer, right. But you're trying to give me an answer just to give you an answer. I get it. The point is, and then you die.Speaker 2 (12:29):Yeah. Okay. Eventually you're going to die out of that,Speaker 3 (12:34):But most people never even think they, like, I challenge them like this. And then what, and then what, and I'm like, so where are you going? And then they're like, Oh, then I do this. And then I do this. And I'm like, okay. And then, but then you die. And what happens is so many people are so preoccupied about like this life after death or there's, where do we come from? And what's the purpose. And I'm like, we need to preoccupied more about, is there life before death? Is there life now? Is there happiness? Like we chased this whole, like, I'm going to be a $10 million company one day. Okay. And then it's like, where are you going? And I think I watched these businesses. They just, like, I literally just had this tech company in here. They're like, we're going to do this thing.Speaker 3 (13:14):We're gonna do this. And then we're going to sell in three years. And then, and then, and then, and I'm like, you know, is it like, is this going to kill us and make us terribly unsatisfied trying to do it? Or are we going to be happy doing this? Is it fun? Are we aligned? Is it is what's now like, I love looking in the future and I love living in taking risks, but I think so often businesses, they they're so focused sometimes on an exit. They're so focused on the life after death. Once I'm done knocking doors, life will be good. I'm done running the solar company in the mud and the chaos I'll then be in the sunset. And I'm like, really what happened?Speaker 2 (13:59):Yeah.Speaker 3 (14:01):Hold on. Let's reevaluate who you are and how you're living. And nine times out of 10, it switches to more of a personal development leadership conversation because I go, you're chasing something. That's just not even really something you need to cling to. And you're disappointed because you're not selling or making enough, or you're super satisfied because you're making more than you ever thought. But you're clinging to this expectation, this ideal that you've created somehow in your mind. And we need to deconstruct that sometimes and say, let's get to the roots.Speaker 2 (14:36):Yeah, for sure. And I think it's, yeah, to that point, all the people that are knocking, especially in solar, we hear that all the time is like, Oh, I'm just going to get, uh, online needs now, because now I don't have to knock anymore. Or I start managing, then I don't have to like knock anymoreSpeaker 3 (14:57):Managing, like I can only babysit now know these crazy hours for X amount of years. And then they're like, Oh, then what? I just am like, how about you just love what you do now.Speaker 2 (15:07):Yeah. That's huge. So yeah, something that comes to mind. Um, I know you helped Mo fall on those boys. Simple solar. Um, I was talking to him, he was telling me that you guys helped, uh, you know, their company out a lot, probably on some of these same things. Um, but I don't know. Do you have any stories around that or any, any companies that you've helped them kind of identify those big things to turn them around? Yeah.Speaker 3 (15:31):Yeah. I like take Mo perfect case study doing 30 a month. Com brings a bunch of sales guys to our sales summit last year. So we just had our sales summit last week in Nashville last year, we did it in Vegas. You know, it's just a new company, young entrepreneurs, 24, 25 years old is saying, okay, I'm going to do this. And he's hungry. He's ambitious. He's got swaggers is the right profile. If I could go recruit a guy like that, you're like, like he's, he's a step. It's not just Mo it's. Josh has his VP. It's John it's Anthony it's it's. They have a lot of good reps that are young, hungry and ambitious. And it was really easy for a guy like him to get caught up in the I'm happy selling my 50 deals, 30 deals a month making a fat override and let's just be okay.Speaker 3 (16:14):And he took a big plunge. He joined my mastermind, even though he was the youngest dude in my mastermind group. Most of these guys are big CEOs. And, um, he then hires us to consultant and which is a six figure dollar amount. I mean, and when we consult a company it's like deep, deep, we recruit for you. And we recruited probably 30, 40% of his people up to Matt, a bunch of bodies. We helped them put a bunch of his sales systems together as training platforms, his strategy, his areas, his schedule, how he runs his meetings, how he runs his competitions, how he does like all of that. Like we just said, let him lay this out there. We call it the unfair advantage. And um, I mean, that's what we really do. We have a bunch of experts and, um, Brandon was their expert and he's a stead.Speaker 3 (16:57):And, um, what he came to summit, he says, all right, I'm in, let's do this. And we add a compete against another one of our clients. It's also another fat success story of voltaic, right? In the same backyard. We said, let's compete them against each other because too often companies don't have an act antagonist to fight. So we just launched this national knocking league amongst all of our consulting clients to facilitate something similar. Um, but what it is is we said, okay, let's put this in place. And last month in March, he just did 300 solar deals. So it's like, he went, he 10 Xed, his whole company over the last 12 months. And that we've been working with them. And it's been really fun to watch him develop as a leader because speed of the leader should be the team he was in pouring into himself to say, and he was that squeaky wheel.Speaker 3 (17:46):We have a lot of clients, some of them never talked to us that, you know, they only raised their hand when we asked them to raise their hand. But Mo is the type that milk probably out of what he paid us three times out of what he paid us. Does that make sense? Like we have agreed to doing this for him. And we ended up doing this because he was always calling us always. I mean, he came on our company triumph and he was like, how do I hang out with you guys? Way more? Like, how do I be more and more and more and more and more and more involved so that I can get more and more and more and more out of understanding what the collective of solar, what the collective of door to door sales reps with the collective of the network and what you guys bring to the table. And he did it right. Like I, uh, I applauded like, literally I was like, you don't need me anymore. Like I literally, it was like, you fly little birdie. I got like a bunch of little companies that are trying to freaking figure what you just did out and I need to go help them. You know? So for me, it's, it's, uh, it's really fun. I could give you 20 use cases like that over the last 12 months that we have, he's just really loud about it. But, um, he's a dude, what a studSpeaker 2 (18:51):Heritable. I know, I couldn't believe it. I gone on the state. Yeah. I mean at door to door con, um, he hopped on the stage and like, I thought it was other guys winning awards, but his entire team up there on the stage when I can't, what, what word did he win up there? Is that like just the biggest growth or something you guys grow with someone? Yeah.Speaker 3 (19:10):So anyway, we have the duty industry awards we launched this year because I felt like, you know, he didn't win a golden door award because he didn't sell that much, but it's impressive what he did as far as growth. And I think having those industry awards is kind of cool this year, just having top management top recruiter or talk, you know, company growth. And I'm excited to see how that progressed for regresses. And the hall of fame was a cool one this year. And new people being inducted into the hall of fame will be exciting. And every year the event just gets cooler and go on like that.Speaker 2 (19:45):Yeah. No, no doubt. So yeah. Super cool success story. Um, yeah, we've interviewed Mo on the podcasts of you didn't hear that. You can go check it out for all our listeners. Um, yeah, I'll send it to you. But yeah, the last thing I kind of wanted to touch on Sam is just, I know you probably had a lot of experience in your consulting. Other companies too, is just helping them get that good culture. And it's something that, um, yeah, I've, you know, companies I'm with, we struggle with it all the time, just building like that working culture, especially in solar, like we were talking about just a lot of easy guys and not wanting to put on like the minimum amount of time to get their results. So what do you do? How did you help Moe and these other companies you work with, what do you do to help them get that good culture and just get these guys to stick?Speaker 3 (20:29):Well, it's cool. I went to lunch yesterday with a guy named Steven, a buddy of mine. He was in charge of the culture department of vivid Inc in alarm. Um, there's a guy named Kevin Swiss. He worked under him. He assumed he has now left. He works for a restaurant company. Um, this other guy Damon just left and went to work for similar silicones. So there's probably like four or five key players discussion was there. Video Damon was designed and we call it sales and sales marketing department. And these guys were all in charge of their events, their design, their videos, but not for the customer or most people spend so much money and time developing that for the customer where they're too cheap because they don't see the ROI spending money and time putting a sales marketing department. It's all for internal. And the companies that are winning are investing more money to market to their salespeople than they do to their customer base because they see an immediate ROI.Speaker 3 (21:25):They say, Oh, I get one lead. I close one lead that equals X dollars, but they don't compute is the value of a good events team, a good marketing team, internal design video clout scoreboards because of the culture. So like Viven solar, Alex COO. She also worked on the sales marketing team of Bindman solar, but she had about a $5 million budget. I did a year just in swag. And you say, okay, why did they make money on these competitions with the prizes and this and that? No, they actually broke even. But what they wanted to do is elevate the waterline by showing their reps a new level of personal performance through competition. So a good culture, isn't just designed by con competition. It's by vision it's by relationships. You know, a lot of people, they don't take the meaningful time to build a relationship with their people.Speaker 3 (22:23):So they just hire bodies and say, good luck. Here's your pay scale. Go make it happen. Um, it's by app innovation and showing uniqueness and competitive advantage. If I'm just one company amongst the mixed of all the other same company, he's using the same stuff, doing the same thing, but it makes me interesting. Um, you know, so, so you, culture is created by design, not by default. And what most people end up doing is they just have a default culture that they fall into based on their competency to orchestrate culture. You look at, and I'm not trying to toot my horn, but we've created, we said, DDD is going to become a culture. Like you're you have that plaque behind you with pride. You're like, look, I was a golden door winner and it means something. And we made it mean something and we highlight it and we say this, it is a big deal.Speaker 3 (23:10):We talk about it, everybody listening, you, we do 130. We upped the ante. It's 130 installs 2021. And that means I'm one of the elite of the elite. And, you know, is there anything meaningful in your company that looks like that? Um, you know, we do community type stuff where it's like, we have a nonprofit, we're doing ways that people can participate. We're highlighting certain people. We're, we're collectively saying let's, let's create value. And, um, we're, we're associating with cool influences like John Maxwell's and Jordan Belfort's and people like that. Like, so what are we doing as a company to make us interesting and cool. What are the relationships that we're building? I mean, me and you, we've created a relationship over the few years, even though it's not like we hang out and go to dinner every night. It's just like, we still talk on Instagram.Speaker 3 (24:03):We still, you know, there's still like an association of like, cool. And are you doing that with your sales people? Or is it kind of like, yeah, I don't want to talk to them. They don't matter to me. Like all those things create culture. And my question is what is the systems that you're intentional around implementing your core values to create a culture so that everybody in uniforming uniformally? Oh my gosh. My first manager is calling me the dude, that management alarms, my very first year, I haven't talked to him 10 years. Um, what are we doing to create that culture? And I think people are just trying to think that by having, I don't know, by being a company, that means they have a culture.Speaker 2 (24:50):That's no, that's yeah. I love those points. And it's funny you say all these things, you're saying I it's some of the exact same things that Moe was talking about. Like, I know he's doing those same things. He has like a marketing department, basically marketing to his reps right now. He's paying a social media guy, like thousands and thousands to create like, you know, social media content for his reps and like the leaderboards and all those things.Speaker 3 (25:15):We said, you have to do that in order to be play in the big leagues, smell like you want to play in the big leagues. That's what makes this company a retainable leader influence in the space. And he is just milking it and killing it. Yeah.Speaker 2 (25:33):That's incredible. But no, yeah. That's huge. And um, yeah, some good things to think about. For sure for me is we're trying to build the culture. I love doing the podcast. Cause I can ask about a lot of other things that like, like I'm struggling myself with, on the teams. So I go out and find the best and the best of that. I'm just gonna ask them my questions.Speaker 3 (25:52):My guess. I'm like, I get it. I get paid for people. Realize I literally had like a culture reset meeting this morning with my recruiting department. And I was like, guys, let's like revamp this thing and let's have a heart to heart. And I, I mean, I'm, I'm literally like finding opportunities to implement the same stuff. I preach just like anybody else, guys, like it's people think on the outside, like, Oh, they must have it all together. I'm like, no, it's not easy. I'm like, no we don't. But we're trying and getting the right people empowered in the right positions is so important to getting the culture bought in. But you need like, all I did today was like, guys, this is where we're going as a company, guys, this is what's happening, guys. This is like, where what's next? And they were all like, Oh, I needed that. You haven't told us that in the last week. Like, it's just crazy how often you have to remind people to be like, this is what we're about.Speaker 2 (26:49):Yeah, no, yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. Well Sam, thanks for sharing these things with us. Yeah. Super important for our listeners create that culture, create the vision, create the relationships. And then, um, also you mentioned just being part of something bigger. Um, Moto, I don't know if Moe is doing this anymore, but he was, um, when I had him on the show, he was talking about doing a sales competition where it was a thousand dollar buy-in and then all the money that's people bought in with the winner got to donate it to a charity of their choice. So things like that, I'm like, wow, that's super cool, man. Like you're not just winning something. You can donate your thousand dollar buy in. Whoever wins the competition to something bigger, you know, something that you can stand behind. So I think that's another thing that companies miss is, um, you know, create that vision behind the scenes and make it more than just money. As you talked about competitions and other meaningful things you can do. So say I'm I know we got to wrap up pretty quick. Let you get to your, uh, call with your, your first manager there.Speaker 3 (27:48):That's exciting. It's so fun. I'm like really?Speaker 2 (27:53):That's awesome. Um, but yeah, before we wrap up here, can you tell people about the event you have coming up, you're doing some event on the road and then just maybe where people can find you and reach out to you.Speaker 3 (28:04):So the D tour is coming up, we're going May 17th to LA. Then like the 19th to Phoenix. Then we go to Dallas. Then we go to Atlanta. Then we go to Orlando, Charlotte, Newark, New Jersey, Chicago, Denver, and salt Lake city. So we're hosting 10 events in 10 States and driving around the country where you can for 40 bucks, bring your whole sales team per ticket and come and do a half day sales training. It's like people are sick of hearing tailoring this correlation meeting, teaching the same crap. Let's be like, just run a better cooler sales meeting where I train and we've got a tax and a finance and a real estate and you know, kind of some other cool speakers that are going to be doing some panels. And um, in each of these markets and I'm really just training on, um, really cool sales techniques and, and getting your people some new relevant stuff and fired up to give them some juice to go into the next couple of weeks. You know,Speaker 2 (29:02):See, I guess I guy that blew my mind 40 bucks if you're not there. I mean, you're not going to find it cheaper than that.Speaker 3 (29:08):Yeah. I've never, I literally, I, my whole team. So like we have a sales bootcamp next week, so anybody that's injured. I mean, you're probably wanting to hear this by the time it's out. But like we host a sales bootcamp is a thousand bucks. It's two day event. We host a business bootcamp, 2,500 bucks. Um, and then everyone's like in 2000 bucks last year for door-to-door cotton bucks. And people were like, I literally was like, I'm not even doing it to make money. Like I just want to pay for the venue guys. I'm doing it because I want to get out on the streets. So I'm going to go knock in each of these markets. And I was like, this is my way of getting out of my comfort zone and giving back. And really we're actually just promoting the DDD association. The certification is coming out next week.Speaker 3 (29:51):So level one, not non-profits, it's a, it's a certification that the door to door association is launched that will educate on sales practices, licensing terms, things like that for door to door, people to be validated by a third party and gain credibility in the streets. So it's a passion project that I've been pushing and really that's the big push. So that's awesome. We're doing incredible things. So we salute you, Sam, we appreciate you for the value you're adding to the industry, change, changing the lives of the solar professionals, professionals, our solar printers. So thanks again for coming on the show and guys we'll hope we hope to see you at the next event Sam's doing. It's going to be awesome. 40 bucks. You can't beat it. So be there. And, uh, Sam, thanks for coming on the show today. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. We'll talk soon.Speaker 1 (30:46):Hey Solarpreneurs. Quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode. 

What if I told you that you didn’t need to use influencers to grow your brand? At least not the way we often think of influencers. Imagine you could get people to endorse and post about your brand online without spending a dime and without giving away product? Sam Malone has figured out how to do that. He is the founder and CEO of Guru Club. It started out as an exclusive, invite only influencer marketing network. A marketplace of sorts. But Sam and his team quickly figured out that traditional celebrity and celebrity wanna be influencers were both riddled with fraudulent followers, but also over-saturated with brand deals. What Guru Club’s customers really wanted were actual customers posting about them to spark word of mouth about the brand. So Sam and Guru Club pivoted.  Now the app tells people who are already buying your product that if they post an Instagram story and tag your brand, they’ll get a rebate of sorts -- an instant refund of a portion of their purchase price.  Let that sink in. You already have their money. You offer a 10 or 20 percent refund or rebate if they tag you in an Instagram story. Their friends and followers see they’ve purchased your product in a snackable medium that is highly engaging and relevant. You get exposure and third party validation without having to pay for it. Guru Club make sure the person is real, their engagement is real, the story stays live for 24 hours and then a rebate is triggered and returned to the person’s credit card.  You’ve made money, earned third party endorsement of your product to the customer’s friends, sparking word of mouth for your brand, the customer is happy they feel valued and given an extra financial break for simply sharing about their purchase. Oh … and you get the customer’s social connection to see if you might have a real influencer with a large audience on your hands.  Guru Club is currently only available as a Shopify add-on, but is coming soon to non-Shopify customers with a new feature Sam actually announces during the interview for the first time. We sat down last week -- literally … he came by my office -- to chat about Guru Club and what being an influence marketer without the need for influencers in the traditional sense, looks like.  By way of disclosure, after our conversation, I was asked to serve on an advisory board for Guru Club. I gladly accepted. So I have some modest formal involvement with the company. But I didn’t know that when we talked, so I think the conversation is still very relevant. And I think you’ll agree, this is a clever approach to spreading the word about your brand in an efficient way. This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve depended on Julius for influencer discovery and campaign management for some time now. When I’m looking for the right influencer for my clients, Julius allows me to search across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and more. When I click into an influencer’s profile, I can see their audience demographics, what other networks they have reach through and quickly scan their recent posts to decide if they’re a right influencer for my brand. All the pieces of campaign management are there, too. Julius allows you to reach out, document contracts, share and approve influencer content and, of course, measure the ROI of each campaign, influencer or post. You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jason.online/julius and request one. That’s jason.online/julius. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brewing Beer with Sam Kellie The First and Last Brewery is an independent micro brewery in North Cumberland. So, in the middle of nowhere really! Sam and his wife set up the brewery in 2006. They mainly do cask beer for trade as well as bottle and can beer. The business mainly concentrates in the north-east but do bits across the UK as well. What Made You Start Brewing? Sam spent 10 years as a secondary school teacher and then spent 7 years working for a national youth charity. With them both being Newcastle based, Sam was spending too many hours in a day commuting. Working for such a big charity made him very weary of that world anyways. The politics (as there is with any large organisation),  bureaucracy. By this point, Sam had a family and start thinking about what else he could be doing. He'd always been a keen home brewer and had some really good feedback from friends about his home brew. This desire gripped him to be his own boss. To escape the bureaucracy, to escape the politics. As the confidence slowly grew, he decided to make the leap and do it. They started by dipping their toes in the water, and then their ankles, and then their knees, and then their waist. A couple years later Steve was neck deep and hasn't looked back since. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Start-brewing.mp4 Going From Idea to Business With having a young family, it was a big risk going self employed and even more with his wife joining too. It took a lot of thinking through things carefully. They started doing internet research and passing round some beer for people to try ad get feedback from. Sam was fortunate enough to go part time so that he wasn't cutting off any income. Working at Newcastle university at the time, a sustainability project came about and he was asked to set up a brewery as part of the university which was fantastic. It was a great test bed. So Sam set up Europes first student run brewery which is still running and has been incredibly successful. The idea behind the project was to set up a brewery focused on sustainability issues and that's an ongoing process. The brewery carries to different research projects that partners such as Brew Dog  and Heineken use. Sam was approached by a man setting up his own brewery in Northumberland who heard he'd had some experience and wanted to recruit him. He was really keen to have Sam help him for the first couple of years of the brewery being set up. This was ideal because it was another test bed for Sam. This opportunity enabled him to do a fair bit of research and planning. Ultimately, it was useful when it came to Sam setting up his own brewery. It took around 2-3 years to get his own brewery up and running. The usual Finance and finding a suitable site. Eventually bit by bit it all came together and before he knew it, he had his very own brewery and selling his beer to pubs http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/early-career.mp4   Business through Lockdown Sam explains it's been a dynamic change certainly for the hospitality sector since covid. He's not allowed to sell out of the brewery at the moment due to COVID restrictions., Their responses to the situation was to open up free delivery across the North East which was a gamble at the time but proved to pay off really well. That's been very much Sams business model throughout the year. 12 months ago First & Last would brew 3 times a week which is around 2700 litres in a week with 90%. going into casks for pubs. This year with pubs being closed, they've changed their focus to bottled beers and cans. Once brewed, its taken to a professional bottler who bottles them all up, which takes around 3-4 weeks. http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/brew.mp4    

What impresses me the most about Sam Vaghar is that he was so young and he saw such a better world in front of him. He was 20 years old when he thought that young leaders of our time could go out and do more. So Sam brought together people of influence and young student leaders of influence and got to work on what he could go out and do to make a difference. What Sam has found is that to make a difference you need to be able to convene people, connect to people, share ideas and then rally people around ideas to get them to spread. One of my takeaways from my recording with Sam was just how humble he was. I think Sam is going to be someone to watch and follow for the next decade or two decades and really see the impact that he makes across communities, across the world, across borders about the mission that he cares so deeply about. Sam Vaghar: https://bwmissions.com/sam-vaghar-one-cold-call-to-jeff-sachs-away-from-fighting-against-poverty/ Follow Bryan Wish on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/bryanwish/ Follow Bryan Wish on Twitter: twitter.com/bryanwish_?s=11 Follow Bryan Wish on Instagram: www.instagram.com/bryanwish_/ Join our Mission: bwmissions.com/join/ Join our Community: my.community.com/bwmissions

Thank you so much for tuning in for another episode of Tin Foil Hat with Sam Tripoli. This episode we welcome Local Celebrity Amy Says WTF to discuss her research into the Black Nobility and the even more powerful Great White Brotherhood! Thank you so much for your support. So Sam had internet issues so sorry the connection get weird in a couple of places. See Sam Tripoli Live:St. Louis: Dec 3rd-5th St. Louis Heliumhttps://st-louis.heliumcomedy.com/eve...Please check out Amy Says WTF's internet:Instagram: https://instagram.com/amysayswtf/Twitter: https://twitter.com/amysayswtfYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCluT5LWbyPdEBSrjlFv_jhQ?view_as=subscriberTin Foil Hat Social Media:Tin Foil Hat Podcast:Instagram: Instagram.com/TinFoilHatCastSam Tripoli:Insta: @SamTripoliTwitter: @RoninSamTripoliXG:Twitter: twitter.com/xgmarksthespotInstagram: instagram.com/xgmarksthespot/Podcast: George Perez Stories podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/geor…es/id1517740242We Don't Smoke The Same: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt2REu6BgMyEtk1OLiXWzPQJohnny Woodard:twitter: twitter.com/JohnnyWoodardinstagram: instagram.com/johnnyawoodardPodcast: Broken Simulationpodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/brok…li/id1506303807Patreon:Patreon.com/TinFoilHatPatreon.com/BryanCallenCheck out my new spiritual podcast called Zero on Rokfin:Rokfin.com/zeroTshirts:TinFoilHattshirts.comCoffee Cups:TinFoilHatswag.comSUBSCRIBE: https://bit.ly/2Sr53bTThank you to our sponsors:Headspace: Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app.
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Sam Knoll: [00:00:00] Cool. Well, let's see. I just wanted to get you on and go through a little of your story, a little of our history, you know, Kind of get the, uh, the Rick Marcel background here. Rick Mersel: [00:00:17] Yes. Sam, I'm telling you what happened. Okay. Sam Knoll: [00:00:22] You still there? Yeah. How many years have we known each other now? We're 35. So Sam, Rick Mersel: [00:00:27] when did, how long, when did you start off the Academy? Sam Knoll: [00:00:30] I started in eighth grade. So that was what? 80. Two 83, I think Rick Mersel: [00:00:39] 74. Sam Knoll: [00:00:42] No, that's not right. Yeah. Rick Mersel: [00:00:45] Yeah. So I know you're for about 39 years. Sam Knoll: [00:00:47] 39 years. Yeah. Can you, we're coming up on 40 years. I didn't. Rick Mersel: [00:00:53] God, wait a minute. All right. That's it. We're done. Sam Knoll: [00:00:55] I know. Geez. [00:01:00] Rick Mersel: [00:00:59] Almost 40 years. Sam Knoll: [00:01:01] Yeah. Rick Mersel: [00:01:03] Yep. Sam Knoll: [00:01:04] Yep. So it's a, you're smart. You got out of hat. Well, you don't have as much gray as I do. Um, you know, yeah. Here's, this is, uh, this is a Rick Mersel: [00:01:15] haircut. Thanks to my wife. Sam Knoll: [00:01:17] There you go. Cool dude. Well, you know, I'm, I'm doing this book, which is. I'm going to break into to our thing here. But, um, um, I had this idea to do a book that was kind of sharing stories from friends who worked in restaurants, bars, and food service. And I know it's not what you're doing now, but I know you worked in restaurants, you ran a nightclub. You, you know, you've, you've had numerous businesses and even your current business that you run now. You know, as has got the nightclub element. Rick Mersel: [00:01:58] Yeah. I've always been surrounded [00:02:00] by food. Never really involved in food directly except. Sam Knoll: [00:02:03] The South Rick Mersel: [00:02:04] Carrollton deli in new Orleans where I was head sandwich. Boy, I could definitely tell you stories about Sam Knoll: [00:02:10] that. That's why I pulled you in. Okay. What do you want Rick Mersel: [00:02:14] to hear a couple of those stories right now? Sam Knoll: [00:02:16] Yeah. All right. So, Rick Mersel: [00:02:18] so, so I was, I was in new Orleans. Um, it was, it was towards, I guess the end of the, the, uh, end of the summer and I was bored, so I figured I needed to get a job. So they had the South Carrollton deli. Uh, which is located at the end of st. Charles, uh, at uptown square, I believe it was, or there was another, it was next to chameleon grill, which is a, uh, which is an institution in new Orleans anyway. So I told the guy I had experience, um, my experience was eating deli sandwiches. Yeah, exactly. Not, not making them, but, uh, the head sandwich, boy, it was my job to steam, the [00:03:00] meat. So, so I was gonna take the meat, take it over to the steamer, put it on the steamer, close the lid. The meat would be steamed. I'd put it on a sandwich and then I'd throw the cheese on. Which would slowly melt and then all the condiments and lettuce and all that stuff. Well, my big breakthrough moment was I decided I was going to put the cheese in the steamer with the meat so they could meld together. So I think I invented that also Sam Knoll: [00:03:30] would have all the restaurants do that now. You know, Rick Mersel: [00:03:33] I think that was me. The other thing I invented was, so we had this guy who was from California. So you had avocado, he had sprouts, he had eggs. This is stuff that was not typically on sandwiches back then. Now it's totally standard stuff, but no one saw an avocado in the eighties. Um, they just didn't exist. There were only in Mexico. So this guy had avocado sprouts, eggs and stuff. So I decided [00:04:00] I'm going to put all this stuff together in a pita. So it was sprouts. It was avocado, it was egg, it was onions. It was cheese. So I think I had been at... Support this podcast

*Premium Content Preview Patreon.com/360Vegas Sam Boyd was a gambler at heart.  Once he discovered his passion for games of chance, he studied them feverously, learning that in every game, the advantage was always in the houses favor.  So Sam decided the best way to gamble was to be the house.  And that’s how his career in gaming began.  Sam’s son Bill was encouraged from a young age to get an education.  So he did and became a lawyer but eventually the father and son would join forces and become a team that grew into one of the most respected gaming companies in the world.  Factor in their inherent desire to do the right thing and give back to the community, and you instantly start to suspect there’s more to the story than what you’re being told.  But dig as deep as you like, there’s no more.  The story of Sam, Bill and Boyd Gaming may be one of the greatest American success stories in history and overwhelming proof that sometimes, nice guys finish first.

So Sam declined to read this chapter, and with good reason. It was a tough one and we struggled through it, by the time we had finished, she was exhausted and had to go for a lie down on the bed.I didn't warn her.Anyway, in the this episode, we see Broc meet Ng in the South of France hide out, and Ng has a gift for Broc, a gift that requires his surgical touch and the body of a hapless victim. Enjoy. Dont forget to check out Patreon for some lovely stuff - short stories and much more.Also hit the other links for Amazon, website and newsletter. Have. great week.jbThis is a podcast created in extraordinary circumstances ...I am a thriller/action writer, she, is a cozy mystery and fantasy reader.We find ourselves together, isolated during lockdown and so I have challenged my wife Sam, to sit and listen to every tawdry sentence of my thriller/horror book, The Harvester. From every cut of the knife, to the seedy sex clubs that my killer frequents. She will be free to gasp, giggle, comment in the only way I know she will, with her own brutal honesty and I will record every moment for you. This podcast is less a book read and a more enlightening and humorous exercise. I fear this may be as much of a challenge for me, as it is for her.Sit back, pin your ears, maybe have a stiff drink with me and listen to my podcast “I hate this book”Patreon link https://www.patreon.com/ihatethisbookFind the podcast chapters here at https://jonbiddle.uk/i-hate-this-book-podcast/Amazon Link https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jon-Biddle/e/B07MYKR2SV?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1589739509&sr=8-1Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/SamandJonBiddle/FREE BOOK and Subscribe to all sort of other goodies, such as short stories and blog post, click here

Sam loved going to the hospital. There was just something about it. The floors were always clean. The care and attention was always lovely. And you could get room service at almost any time. So Sam devised a plan. He would move into the hospital. One day he showed up at the emergency room and said he had a lot of pain in his side. They wheeled him in for an exam and battery of tests, but they couldn't find

After seeing the misogynistic crap from Cardi B announcing her divorce, we were super pissed off about it. So Sam did a bunch of research about this and surprised Nancy with her findings. Tune in to learn more!

This weeks episode is a few days late because it follows on so well with last week's John Little Podcast that I wanted it to jump the queue.This week I'm talking to the bee man Kim Burnham, who began bee keeping with his son Sam as a way of bonding but it has now become a way of life.“Sam and Kim, have worked together since 2012. Learning their craft separately - Kim (as a young man in the United States), Sam (as a Bee Keeping Apprentice). Their first apiary sites were located within local Essex country parks e.g. (Langdon Hills and Wat Tyler). They both realised very early on that they needed to bridge the gaps between current bee farming techniques and not impactIng the other wild pollinators. The answer was to find a balance and actively maintain it, hence adopting and embracing fully a holistic approach with a test and measure capability.As a business Sam and Kim realised they would have to do more than just the seasonality of honey. So Sam began researching bee venom (apitoxin) and later other honey bee products and through discussion and more focused research they pieced together what was required to purify each to cosmetic grade. They then began looking at serums as they wanted to differentiate from their competitors e.g. (creams all contain up to 60% water (H2O) and legally require biocides for safe use). “.... Kim and Sam BurnhamPlease enjoy.Websites: https://porchhoney.com/ https://beemetics.com/Socials - https://www.facebook.com/PorchHoneyContent/ https://www.instagram.com/reimaginedselfcare/ https://www.facebook.com/WeAreBeeMeticshttps://www.instagram.com/reimaginedselfcare/Haircuts4Homeless : https://www.haircuts4homeless.com/Produced by : https://svnty6production.com/Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/hear-me-see-me. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Hayes interviews Dr. Bruce Chabner on his experience with cancer drug discovery and development, phase I trials and pharmacology.   The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.   Welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology, brought to you by the ASCO podcast network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content and offering enriching insight into the role of cancer care. You can find all of the shows, including this one, at podcast.ASCO.org. Today my guest on this podcast is Dr. Bruce Chabner. Dr. Chabner's is widely considered one, or frankly if not the father, of our understanding of the pharmacology principles of anti-neoplastic drugs.   And probably more importantly, the translation of these principles to the intelligent application of the agents we use in clinic every day. Among the many accomplishments that Dr. Chabner has had working with his mentor, Dr. Joseph Bertino at Yale, who developed the concept of high dose methotrexate leucovorin rescue, that was completely based on their preclinical understandings of the mechanism of action, and more importantly, resistance to this agent. Dr. Chabner was also instrumental in the development of paclitaxel when he was at the National Cancer Institute, and he was intimately involved in many of the early studies that led to better understanding of AIDS and the ways to treat it.   Dr. Chabner was raised in Shelbyville, Illinois, and I'm going to digress for a moment, because I've always had a very special soft spot in my own heart for Bruce Chabner. A, because of his science, but more importantly, because I was raised in Shelbyville, Indiana. Both of these towns were named after Colonel Isaac Shelby, who was a hero in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. By the way, Dr. Chabner, I know you were a big student of history when you were in college, so I thought you'd like this.   Dr. Shelby became the first and then the fifth governor of Kentucky, and as a citizen he was a land surveyor. There were actually nine counties and 11 cities and towns spread around the Eastern and Midwest regions that are named after Colonel Shelby. And I don't know about you, Bruce, but I had this drilled into my brain in eighth grade history class. I had to learn all about Colonel Shelby.   Anyway, so he and I are brothers in Shelbyville. Dr. Chabner received his undergraduate degree of Yale, where again, he spent a lot of his time in the history department but also in the biology department. And then he got his medical degree at Harvard, where he stayed to complete his residency in internal medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital before it became the Brigham Women's Hospital.   In 1967, Dr. Chabner became a clinical associate in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute, where he was, in succession, a senior investigator in the laboratory of clinical pharmacology, chief of the clinical branch of the clinical oncology program, associate director of the clinical oncology program, and then he succeeded Dr. Ben [? Stabida, ?] someone I have previously interviewed for this series, as director of the division of cancer therapy.   In 1995, after 25 years at the NCI, he moved to Boston as the chief of the division of hematology oncology and the clinical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center, where he is now the clinical director emeritus. Dr. Chabner has authored, I counted, over 500 peer reviewed papers. I think even more than that. By the way, his first was in 1969, a case report of shaking chills related to occult lymphoma, authored with Drs. DeVita and the [INAUDIBLE] of the [INAUDIBLE] syndrome. Bruce, that really shows how old you are.   He's been the editor of all five editions of the Principles and Practice of Cancer Chemotherapy and Biologic Response Modifiers, which I consider the bible of cancer pharmacology. And I'm looking at my fifth edition on my bookshelf right now. He's trained too many Fellows for me to name, but numerous of them have gone on to be cancer center directors, chiefs of division, department chairs, and other leaders of oncology in the world. He's won way too many awards me to go through, but he received a Karnofsky award from ASCO, and he served on the ASCO board of directors.   Dr. Chabner, welcome to our program.   Nice, that's a lot of history. It speaks to my name.   Well, that's the problem of interviewing all of you folks. It takes a long time to get through all the things you've done. It's a good problem to have, though. First, I want to start out, I understand you carry the flag rank of rear admiral. And I want to know, have you ever even been on a ship? And more importantly, did you and Dr. Shelby actually serve together in the Revolutionary War? I couldn't figure that out.   You know, I never bumped into him when I was on the battleship Shelbyville, but who knows. He seemed to be what I call a name dropper. He left his name on so many different things, and I think there's a Shelby County, Tennessee, which is Memphis. Plus I think the smallest thing that he ever created was Shelbyville, Illinois, which was even smaller than your hometown.   Yep, that's true. All right, that's the last joke I'm going to tell in this interview, but I like that connection. Anyway, so how did a guy from Shelbyville, Illinois get to Yale and then Harvard and NCI? And more importantly, what made you decide to be an oncologist? I know your father was a general practitioner, but at that time the field barely existed. What was your motivation?   Well, OK, I'll tell you a bit of a story. My mother came from Chicago and she had a brother who was pretty smart. And he went to Harvard. And he used to come down to Shelbyville because he liked the pies that she made. And we were 200 miles south, so it was a trip for a pie, but anyway we used to play chess together. And when he was a college student and I was like in fourth grade, I beat him in chess and he said, Jesus, you ought to go to an Ivy League school. So that put the idea in my mind.   And then my parents were not really happy with that. They wanted me to go to Washington University or University of Illinois, but I wanted to get away from home. It was a little bit confining to be around my parents for the rest of my life. So I applied to Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, and the deal was I could go to school if I got a scholarship. So I got a scholarship to Yale, so I went there. I was happy with that choice. I really-- it was sort of, you know, life changing, actually. Stayed on the east coast.   But I still have many good friends from my Shelbyville days. We all get together once a year to play golf and poker and tell life stories.   So I have to interject. My father told me I could go to any college in the United States as long as the tuition was the same as in-state tuition of Indiana University, which at the time was $400 a year. So I ended up going to Indiana University. So how did you--   That was such a great deal. Yeah, that was my--   How did you get into oncology?   Well, when I was at the Brigham, I got interested in cancer. There was not much going on there, but one of my residents was a guy named Jack [? Moxley, ?] who had been a part of the initial study with DeVita and others, George [? Kinellas, ?] of the mop treatment for Hodgkin's disease. And I got really interested in that. And actually during my internship my sister got an immediate stromal tumor during her pregnancy, and it turned out to be a thymoma. But cancer really intrigued me at that point.   And we all had to apply for positions at NIH as a way to get out of the draft, and I wanted to do research, so that really appealed to me. And I actually applied for cardiology and cancer, and I was interviewed by Gene Brown for cardiology, and he didn't seem very impressed. But the cancer people did like me, particularly George and Vince, who had come back there. And they were young and energetic and they had interesting ideas about combination therapy, so I ended up in oncology.   Yeah, I talked with some of the other people I've interviewed about the so-called era of the yellow berets and how that really transformed medicine, in my opinion. Because so many smart people went to the NIH to stay out of Vietnam. It's probably the only good thing that came out the Vietnamese war, as far as I can see, and especially the NCI. So when you went to the NCI, [? Harlan ?] and Frye and [? Freirach, ?] I believe, were gone. So you've already started to say, it sounds like Dr. DeVita and Dr. [? Kinellas ?] were the movers and shakers at the time. Is that fair, or?   Yeah, well they were really young. I mean, it was like working for, you know, contemporaries. There were no old people there. And Frye and [? Freirach ?] weren't that old at that time. They were in their 40s with Vince and George, who were in their mid 30s. And I was 28 years old, I guess, when I went down there. I loved it. We had laboratory opportunities, we had patients, we had people that believed that they could change the way cancer was treated. George and Vince, particularly Vince, were so energetic and so committed to the idea of changing therapy, and particularly combination therapy.   And then the other thing that made it such a great experience were the colleagues that I had in my first group of clinical Fellows. Bob Young was part of it, and I became very close friends with Bob Young. And in the same group, David Livingston was my next door neighbor, and we had interned together and been arrested together. So we had just constant stimulation from a lot of different people, all of them energetic and interested in research.   Who else was in your class besides Dr. Livingston and Young, then?   Phil Shine, who made a name for himself in toxicology and then in industry. And let's see--   He was director at the cancer center at Georgetown for a while.   Georgetown, right. Subsequently, there was just a long list of wonderful Fellows. When I came back, I actually spent two years at Yale between my NCI time and then coming back to NCI. And I had a wonderful time with Joe Bertino. He was, I think, very important to me, because he was really a great scientist. And I learned a lot about biochemistry enzyme purification and working in the lab.   And so when I came back to NCI I had sort of converted to being an anti-folate person from being interested in alkylating agents. And so I was always interested, I guess, in anti-metabolites. But that was a great anti-folate experience with Joe, high dose methotrexate. It was really his idea, not mine. But the thing I worked on was the clinical pharmacology and trying to figure out why it was so toxic to kidneys. So we actually did some really interesting experiments.   We gave high dose methotrexate to monkeys, and then when they died, we took the kidneys out and looked at them. And we were doing it because we thought we would see interesting pathology. What we saw were a bunch of yellow gravel in their tubules. And it turned out it was methotrexate, and it became obvious what was happening. The drug was precipitating in the acid urine environment. But that was sort of the beginning of the methotrexate studies.   And personally, I don't think we teach pharmacology very well anymore. What made you want to go to high dose methotrexate?   Well, interestingly, I was particularly interested in-- Joe was trying head and neck cancer. There was almost simultaneously an article from Frye and Isaac [? Jurassi ?] about adjuvant therapy of osteogenic sarcoma. And there were several interesting things about that. One is that it turned out that 12 patients weren't all patients with osteogenic sarcoma. But prognosis of those patients wasn't apparently obvious.   But there seemed to be some success with it, and there was a lot of toxicity that they didn't really know how to deal with. And so I started doing pharmacokinetic monitoring in patients that we had that were on the treatment. And then when they went into renal failure, they just didn't clear the drug. The drug was hanging around for many days and they were getting this horrible toxicity. So we got into this business of why the renal toxicity and the need for hydration and alkylization, particularly.   And so first of all, I have to tell you I blamed you for much of my first year as a Fellow, because we had to draw the blood. So there were no study coordinators. Dr. Frye would just run around at all times of day and night drawing blood on patients for getting high dose methotrexate. And I still mumble under my breath when I hear your name.   Well, you don't have to do all of that now, but you know, in those days we were trying to get a more complete profile, so we did. There was a woman there at the Farber that was doing similar work. I can't remember her name.   Sue Pittman I think, right?   Yeah, Sue Pittman. That's right, that's right, that's right. But that was certainly the introduction to the anti-folate. And then I got into a very interesting area of polyglutamation and how it changed the potency of the drug and led to retention, and it was an important determinant of response. That was quite an interesting area of research.   Were you the first to report amplification of DHFR? No, that happened in 1978. I was working on MTX at the time and we had noticed that you could select highly resistant cells in culture. But then we were interested in knowing why, and Joe and Joe Bertino had described the fact that increased dihydrofolate reductase activity was found in this circumstance. But the actual demonstration of amplification in mammalian cells was done by Bob [? Shimke ?] when Joe was on a sabbatical with him.   And they had a medical student working in the lab on that on that paper, and that was Dan [? Haber ?] actually. Who came back to--   Who is now the cancer center director [INAUDIBLE], right?   Yeah, he wrote a key paper. So we had, at the time when that came out, we got interested in that. And we stuck radiolabeled methotrexate in the culture with some tumor cells and found these odd migrating entities that turned out to be polyglutamate. So that led to the whole issue of what were polyglutamates and how did they change the biochemistry? And that was quite interesting, and then actually at the same time we saw a patient.   It was a young man who came to NIH with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and was treated with high dose methotrexate. I can't remember. I think he had CNS involvement or something like this. We found evidence of gene amplification in this patient. So it was actually the first demonstration that gene amplification occurs in people on the drug. There are a lot of interesting things that were happening at that time.   How was translational medicine before it was called translational medicine?   That was the nice part of NIH, you know? The emphasis was on the labs working with the clinics, and particularly with physician scientists. So, you know, we were one of the few places where our Fellows were expected to work in labs in their second and third years, and they did, and we had a wonderful group of Fellows that came through. The first guy that worked on polyglutamation of MTX was Rich [? Shilske. ?]   Who is now the chief medical officer of ASCO, and many, many other accomplishments after that.   Right. But many--   Actually, I'd like to change gears for a minute, because I know you had a lot to do with the development of paclitaxel. And I always found that story interesting that, you know, it was in the bark of the Japanese yew tree, which had to do with ultimate supplies. But also the first phase one trials, which some of that was done at the Dana Farber when I was there. Can you just walk through the history of paclitaxel? I think our listeners would love to hear this.   Well, it was an accident of history. Believe me. The thing started in 1964, when a group at the research triangle, a chemist, isolated this compound from the yew tree. And they didn't actually know what it was, but it was cytotoxic. And it was an anti-mitotic, and it took him seven years to figure out the structure. So finally in 1971 a guy named Ronnie from that group published the structure. It was a ridiculously complicated structure, And nobody could synthesize it, at least at that point.   It hung around in the lab and nobody was interested in developing it, because it was such an odd molecule. It was insoluble. Nobody can put it in solution. So it really wasn't an attractive pharmaceutical. And the thing that happened was, in 1978 or 1979, we had a very hot drug that was called maitansine. And we were very eager to put this into the clinic. And it was an anti-mitotic also, and very, very potent drug.   And so Dr. DeVita asked me to personally shepherd this thing and he told me that he didn't want it to fail. And so I put it into patients and it was terrible. And I kept telling him, this is not going to work. He said, it's got to work. He was pretty persistent. Well, it didn't, and he was very disappointed. So was I. And the fact is, we had nothing else to put in the clinic at that time except for paclitaxel. So we said, oh, well, we'll try it.   And we put it in a lipid emulsion. It was like putting it in engine oil or something, but it went into the clinic in several places. Peter [? Wernick ?] did it. Einstein. I guess you guys did it at the Farber. And it was causing all sorts of hypersensitivity responses. It looked impossible. And it took about, I don't know, four or five years to get it into a regimen that was tolerable. And there had been responses. The first response was in melanoma, so we were all excited about that.   That was the usual circumstance in those days that, when you took a drug into the clinic, melanoma would be the first response. And no one else from melanoma. Everywhere was-- and so but then Peter began noticing responses in ovarian cancer. And a regimen was worked out with antihistamines so it was reasonably tolerable. And finally in 1991, which was eight years after it went into the clinic, we finally decided, well, it was time to license it to industry. There was no patent, but we did it under a co-operative research and development agreement.   And the only company that was interested in the US was Bristol-Myers. Everybody else said, this is ridiculous. Nobody wants this drug. And it was too hard to make it. You had to make it from the bark of plants and it was insoluble and it caused hypersensitivity. So they took it. And about a month afterward there was a report from M.D. Anderson saying that it was active in breast cancer. And at that point it just took off like a rocket. And, you know, tried in all sorts of different diseases. Was active in lung and bladder and-- I can't remember all the other things. Head and neck.   Anyway, it became the first billion dollar drug in the cancer drug industry. And I think, you know, there are two things that really set off industry to be interested in cancer. One was that, the fact that you could actually make money on it. And the second was the notion of targeted therapies, which was growing at that time.   So to my knowledge, this is the only time somebody at the NCI had to work with the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management regarding a new drug. Can you tell that story?   Well, yes. The only place where you get the raw material for the drug was from the US Forest Service. And so Texas plants were being sort of cut and burned because they were considered scrub and not worth anything as lumber. So they were cooperating. And finally when we licensed it, Senator Ron Wyden, who's still in the Senate from Oregon, got interested in this whole thing. He said, why isn't the government making money on this license? Why did you license it to Bristol-Myers and you didn't you didn't ask for anything back?   And we said, well, you know, that's not the function of NIH. We didn't have a patent. I guess we could have asked for a slice of the pie, but we didn't because no one else wanted it. We really were trying to give it away. And he was giving us a really hard time at this hearing. And then the key thing that happened was a woman who was a forest ranger with ovarian cancer, we found this woman, and she testified to how much good it did for her. And that sort of stopped all the fuss about the license.   And we actually, it was the first drug where as part of the licensing agreement we had the chance to fix the price or agree to the price that Bristol-Myers fixed. And the government never has done that since that time. Of course, this was a circumstance where we sort of owned the information, so they had to listen to it. But they set the price at $2,000 a course. And we consider that pretty high, but it was sort of equivalent to what other drugs were costing at the time, so we let that go by. But ever since then, the price of drugs has just escalated remarkably.   I hope there are some young people listening, because this story, in my opinion, the story of trastuzumab again, I think people think that these things just happen because the system makes them. And my experience is they happen because the drug or the treatment gets a hero, gets a champion. Ultimately the science has to prove it works, but I'm sure lots of people wanted to walk from Taxol.   You know, everybody thought it was a dog. Because it was, you know, caused hypersensitivity, it wasn't all that active in the initial testing, and it was really hard to make the stuff.   Well, the same thing is true with platinum I did my residency at UT Southwestern with Donald Sullivan, who's the chair of medicine. He was a renal guy, and a patient with metastatic-- and I had gone to Indiana. So Dr. [? Einhardt ?] taught me how to give it. So I had a patient come in with widespread testicular cancer, I wanted to give him cisplatin, and Dr. Sullivan wouldn't let me do it because it would hurt his kidneys. I said, Dr. Sullivan, he's going to die if we don't do this. And he said, he'll die anyway.   And so I did it behind Dr. Sullivan's back and I got a complete response. Fortunately in those days the residents didn't have a lot of oversight so I could do what I wanted to do. There were a lot of people that thought these drugs should be shut down, and it took the courage that you guys had back at the NCI and other places to push them out.   Don Sullivan was very anti cancer chemotherapy for the rest of his life. And it was odd for me, because I actually had a relative who was on his faculty and I went down there a couple times to talk. And I always felt very uncomfortable telling him that we were accomplishing something. Because his concept of success in science was getting an RO1 in your lab.   Yeah. He finally came to terms because [? Shelfke, ?] myself, Fred [? Lemaitre, ?] and a number of us went into oncology and had been reasonably successful. And I think he decided that it was worthwhile after all. But it wasn't easy for him. We lost him a year ago. I still miss him.   Yeah, he was an amazing guy, but he really did have a hard time believing in cancer.   So the other question, I wanted to change gears a little bit, because I know just about the time you became the director of the DCT was when the AIDS epidemic was exploding in the early 1980s. That must have been a very confusing situation about who should be in charge of this at the NIH, which institute, and how you approach it. Can you give us some background on that?   Again, it was really a crazy time. Because I remember one of the first patients that was identified as having AIDS was a person admitted to the immunology branch at the NCI. Not the medicine branch or the clinical branches. It was a patient who had disseminated tuberculosis and it had no CD4 cells. And, you know, everybody said, oh my god, what is this? This is really a weird, weird circumstance. And then other people began reporting this from San Francisco and New York.   So we actually, DCT, the reason we got involved was because of Bob Gallo. Bob Gallo had discovered the HTLV1 virus, which was causing this lymphoma in T cells. And we suspected that this might be a syndrome caused by a T cell virus. So in 1981, really quite early, we convened I think the first meeting about the biology of what was called HTLV2, I think, at the time, or three. I can't remember which one it was. But at any rate, there were a cadre of people at NIH that felt that it was caused by inhaling gases or, I don't know, their various weird theories about it.   But this theory that made sense to us was that it was caused by a virus. So Sam [? Brodeur ?] was collecting samples from patients and brought them over to Gallo's lab. And of course Gallo mixed those samples with the French sample and found virus and then made a test kit for the virus, which was really a key event in beginning to control the epidemic. And because of all that work going on at NCI at the time, we were asked-- we had the only drug development system at NIH.   We were asked to, well, look, can you set up a drug development system for this? And Sam [? Brodeur ?] set up assays in infected T cells and showed that certain nucleocyte analogs could stop the virus from replicating. The first one was ADT. And his first study was, I think, was 16 patients with AIDS in which he showed that the T cell counts recovered and people didn't die. And from that point on, we were getting significant funding for doing research on treatment development. And it was it was done in conjunction with NIAID and Tony Fauci.   What Tony did is he delegated a fellow to work with us and sort of be the liaison. And the first fellow that did that was Margaret Hamburger, who became [INAUDIBLE] FDA subsequently. And, you know, subsequently, four other people from our division-- well, actually one from NGH, became directors of FDA. Ned Sharpless most recently, and then Steve Hahn, who was a Fellow in the medical oncology group at NCI.   Yeah, he's just been named.   It was, you know, an unusual breeding ground for people interested in therapeutics.   That's interesting. You know, I was a third year resident at UT Southwestern. I was at the VA in March and a young man was admitted to our service. He had been a Vietnam veteran and he had red splotches all over him, so I called a dermatologist who biopsied it. And I got a page from the pathologist and I called him back and he said, you have mislabeled the samples. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, this says it's a 37-year-old man. This is something I've never seen before, but I looked it up and it's called Kaposi sarcoma, and that only happens in old men or people from Africa.   And I said, I don't think we mislabeled things. And I think he was probably the first man in Dallas to be diagnosed with this. Because just as the MWR and the new journal paper came out a few months after that. So again, for the young folks listening to this, and we've already hit this a couple of times, it's one or two patients that pique your interest that often change the world in terms of, gee, I wonder why that happened.   Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, a lot of this is an outcome of the fact that you have research people as physicians who are working with patients, and then they ask questions.   Yeah. One of the things I've carried forward, Dr. Frye used to always say, think like a scientist. Think like a doctor. And ask yourself, so what? And I know you do that, because again, you've already told us today and I've seen you do that in other places. You know, so what? Why did this happen to this patient?   Why did that happen, yeah.   What in my lab actually will change that? And you guys did that in spades, I think, 40, 50 years ago. It's pretty amazing.   Yeah. Well, I [INAUDIBLE].   [INAUDIBLE]. Go ahead. Go ahead.   No, it's really happening a lot now, you know, in terms of recognizing subsets of diseases. We used to think that non-small cell lung cancer was just one disease. Now it's 20 diseases. It's amazing, you know? It's amazing, you know, as science progresses, you begin to understand the complexity of cancer. And then therapies become meaningful.   Yes, I agree.   It's so nice. And so I wish, you know, we were curing people. But we are making a difference, and least we're understanding it a little.   I agree. Anyone who has not heard or read Bruce Johnston's ASCO presidential address should do so. Because he did point out exactly what you just said. He had a pie chart, and 10 years ago the entire pie chart was chemotherapy for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer with little or no success. And now the pie chart is well over half the patients getting some kind of targeted or immunotherapy. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.   It is quite [INAUDIBLE] for young people that are listening to this, is that there are enormous opportunities for doing even better than we did. So we just made a start in this whole thing.   OK. With that inspiring message, which I'm glad you said it, we've run out of time. Actually we come at the end of our time. But Dr. Chabner, I want to thank you on behalf of all of us who trained after you, who've learned so much from what you've done, and more importantly, the patients who have benefited from the stuff that you've contributed to the field. It's pretty remarkable and inspiring. I don't use that word too often, but it is. So thank you, and thank you for taking time today. I hope folks listen to this and say, I'm going to go back and make a difference here.   Thank you, Dan. I have enjoyed it. It's been a wonderful time in this career.   Yeah. Well, my pleasure. Until next time, thank you for listening to this JCO's Cancer Story, the Art of Oncology Podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. While you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology podcast is just one of ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all the shows at podcast.ASCO.org.

Show Resources: LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox: LinkedIn Advertising Course COVID-19 insights and resources for advertisers The digital advertiser’s guide to COVID-19 Bidding Budgeting Episode Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover. Show Transcript: How much money should you budget for your LinkedIn ads? We'll break it down cleanly so you know exactly how much to dedicate. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. 0:20 Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics, I get asked a lot about how much advertisers need to budget for their LinkedIn Ads. It's usually prefaced by, "Hey, I know you're gonna say it depends, but I'm gonna ask anyway". Well, the truth is, I love this question, because I actually have a straightforward answer to it. And I'm eager to teach you all about it. We'll be covering in this episode, specifically, how much on average you'll need to spend to get the results you're looking for, as well as how long you'll need to actually spend this budget over. Okay, jumping into the news. Last week, I gave you some really cool stats about what's changing from LinkedIn's perspective during this whole COVID situation. And I was going through that material trying to find some new insight. And what I found was LinkedIn gave me access to something that Microsoft put out, which was their resource for COVID-19 insights and resources for advertisers. So I decided to take a peek through there and see if there was anything of value. What I found was a document entitled The Digital Advertisers Guide to COVID-19. And I got really excited. This is right up my alley. And so I started reading and what occurred to me is that it definitely came from Microsoft. It said exactly what you expect it to say, from a company who makes a lot of money from paid search. They talk about how paid search is the most profitable channel, blahdy, blahdy, blah. And while I do agree that capturing the bottom of the funnel through search intent is extremely valuable. As you'll know if you listen to episode nine of this podcast about Google versus LinkedIn. I would say though, that during the whole COVID panic, there's been panic that has caused budgets to get pulled back. And so while people are still exploring purchase decisions, there is some reticence or some hesitancy to sign contracts right now. So search channels that are bringing people in right now who you're assuming are ready to buy is probably going to result in a high cost per opportunity or a high cost per closed deal. And as you know from Episode 19 search tends to bring in lower quality leads for a product or service that tends to be high cost. You'll get a lot of people acting like tire kickers and mom and pops who can't afford you. So even though Microsoft published this, and probably a lot of it is accurate during a non-COVID time. I personally think that LinkedIn is the channel that you want to invest in now to fill your sales pipeline amidst the current uncertainty. Now is the right time to be starting those relationships that weren't going to close for 3, 6, 9 months anyway. And you're filling them with exactly the right people who are going to be able to buy Okay, as a quick review, highlight, I wanted to highlight the next three reviews here that were left on the podcast. just.zee from Spain said "This one is a must. I'm truly enjoying listening to this show. Each episode is packed with tips. No BS pure gold." Thank you so much just.zee, that's exactly what we're aiming for here. Then a Mr. Bradshaw from the US says "soothing voice, better than calm. AJ's voice is buttery smooth. I used to pay for a subscription to calm but now I listened to AJ as his voice is sooth me into deep, deep sleep." John Bradshaw is actually a good friend of mine who left that as a joke. So John, I'm still shouting you out. But you know, I've listened to my voice. I know it's not buttery smooth. So I hope I'm not breaking your senses of pitch or good vocal practices. Then Sam McRoberts of the US says "AJ is a LinkedIn Ads wizard. This podcast is chock full of LinkedIn advertising wisdom from a guy who knows more about the platform than any other advertiser. Hands down, highly recommended." Sam is a another friend of mine. And he actually runs his own podcast and he's one of the worldwide SEO experts that I learned from. So Sam, thanks so much for leaving the review. Your review means so much to me, because I know your status in the industry as an SEO Pro. And I would love to feature you in this section, feel free and please go and leave a review so I can shout you out. And with that being said, let's hit it. 4:29 Now when we talk about budgeting, there are two different kinds of budgeting that that might bring to mind. There's the kind that's like, over a specific amount of time, this is how much budget you have to allocate to a channel. And then you have the daily budgets, like the platform you might enter in and how much you are only going to allow the platform to spend per day. If you're hoping to learn what you should be spending per day, we covered that pretty well in Episode Six, the bidding and budgeting section. So we're not going to be covering that here. Instead We're going to be talking about how much money you need to dedicate on usually a monthly basis. But some people plan their their budgets by quarter or maybe even by two weeks sprint, by year, etc. And for most performance advertisers we are interested in how much do we have to spend on a platform to really invest and learn something and evaluate whether the platform should receive more of our future budget or not. But at the same time, not spending so much that we're spending inefficiently. So there's a little bit of a range here, and I like to call it the Goldilocks zone, spending enough to learn and test and optimize properly, but don't spend too much that you wasted money. You want to spend just enough right in the middle of that Goldilocks zone. And of course many of you know the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears where Goldilocks comes in and finds that the Papas porridge is too hot. The baby's porridge is too cold and the mother's is just right in the middle. So that's where we want to be with advertising. And we are going to talk specifically about amounts that you should spend based on averages. And of course, this means you'll want to spend thoughtfully and with an efficient strategy, which is why even advanced PPC pros end up hiring us. I mean, anyone can do this themselves. But there's a lot of value in bringing on someone who can cut past that learning curve and ensure that every dollar is spent properly. So any spend spent on inefficiencies is wasted and it won't teach you anything. I'm going to mention statistical significance quite a bit through here. And I really just want to spend a moment and define why it is and what it means. So statistical significance in advertising to me is looking at results and being able to trust the outcomes as being something that I can predict to continue happening in the future. And there are lots of different percentages of statistical significance. In digital marketing. I've been taught to hold everything to a 95% confidence interval. But it's important to know that if you're only being held to a 90%, or maybe an 82%, or something like that, that's okay. That just means that your numbers will all shift lower. And you may be able to make decisions a little bit faster than what I suggest. I also want to mention something about outliers, because there are some outliers with extreme performance that you can spot very quickly. And so when you've spent $200 at the very beginning of your platform spend, and you have a ton of opt ins and conversions. That's an outlier. That's a really good thing. But it also means that you don't necessarily have to spend what I'm telling you to spend to finish evaluating the platform. You struck gold already. And then conversely, if you've spent $1,000, and you don't have a single opt in yet, you don't have to continue spending more and more and more to try to get statistical significance, because your performance is so poor that chances are even if your performance did increase significantly, you would probably still be paying too much per opt in. But most of your tests are going to land in between somewhere not an outlier. Even if performance looks a little bit good or a little bit poor, you'll need a lot more data gathering. So if something is very wrong or very right, you can get your answer a lot more quickly than here. And you probably don't need to wait for significance. Or maybe you could test it, you already have significance, especially if performance is great. Everything here I'm going to be sharing with you is based on benchmarks. So if you haven't listened to Episode 15, all about benchmarking, you'll want to make sure you go and do that. And the reason why is everything here is based off of averages. And so if you're paying more than the baseline, $8 to $11 per click, it means you'll have to spend significantly more to get the same level of data that I'm talking about. And of course, if you're paying less per click because of advantages that you learned from episode six of this podcast or maybe your advertising in a location like outside of North America, or in different languages where LinkedIn charges significantly less, then that means that you can spend significantly less budget to still reach the same levels. Also, if you are pushing people towards a high friction offer, like talk to my sales team, get a demo, buy something, you'll need to spend much more than what I recommend to get statistical significance because you need a large volume of conversions coming in. And when you have an offer that has a low conversion rate, then of course, you'll need a lot more of them. Conversely, if you have a conversion rate that's significantly higher than 15%, then you'll reach significance much faster and you can also spend less to hit the same level of significance. And then finally, if your sales team isn't as buttoned up, or your nurture sales process isn't as efficient, you will need to spend more because you won't have as many Sales qualified leads or proposals or closes the steps deeper in your sales process to figure out how you're going to get to a return on your investment. 10:10 Okay, so let's jump into what spending on LinkedIn actually gets you. Because here's where I get to get really concrete with numbers, and why I love the question about how much should you budget for LinkedIn. And of course, there are a lot of nuances like you've already heard before. And of course, we'll say a lot of ways that it depends, but we'll get to all of those shortly. And let's get into the concrete numbers here. Okay, so if your goal is to get statistical significance around your click through rates, you can usually get that in North America across all of my benchmarks with about $1,000 in ad spend. What you'll learn here is you'll figure out which messaging or motivation gets people to take action, it gets them to click. And so let's say your ad copy. You have one version that is aspirational. It makes people feel like the Hiro, and another one that's fear based telling them that if they don't use your product or service that something bad's going to happen, they'll lose their job, or they'll look dumb in a board meeting. Within about $1,000 in ad spend, you'll find out how your precise audience relates to those motivations. And this can be really helpful if you're just testing. What does my ideal audience like? What are they willing to click on? What are they curious about. Then yeah, you really don't have to spend that much. 1,000 total dollars gets you that. And then, of course, depending on what kind of offer and how you're bidding, it will likely get you some leads along the way as well. But I wouldn't worry too much about leads at this low spend stage. Now we get to what I really recommend for a new advertiser coming into the platform, I recommend spending $5,000. What this is going to get you is statistical significance around your conversion rates, as long as you're starting with assets that convert between about 10 to 15%, which is actually average for gated content offers. What $5,000 in ad spend is going to get you on average is somewhere between about 45 to 93 opt ins. Now, if you are splitting this between either two separate offers, or maybe it's the same offer, but you have two different motivations on ad copy, what you will likely get is 95% statistical significance on which of these offers or which of these ads converts better. You'll also get enough leads to actually see the impact on the business. This isn't two or three, onesy, twosies coming through. This is enough leads that you can actually look at and evaluate at some scale. And of course, a certain percentage of those are going to turn into marketing qualified leads or sales qualified leads, which will start to give you an idea of how these leads are quality wise and how they're going to start moving through the funnel. And when you go and talk to your sales team or you talk to the owner, you'll see that you're getting enough leads to actually get anecdotal Feedback from those teams or from the owner on lead quality. It's not all just about the actual numbers. It's about the perception of them by the sales team as well. You need their buy in to realize, yes, LinkedIn ads are amazing. And we should continue to fund this. Because most of the business to business that we run on LinkedIn Ads has longer sales cycles. Statistically, you won't have a closed deal in your first month. But you will statistically end up closing at least one of the leads you generated during month one. But just realize, you know, these long sales cycles, if it usually takes you 6, 8, 12, 15 months to close a deal, you can't expect LinkedIn to be magical and close deals faster than they usually close. In fact, it's a social platform, meaning that they weren't already at the bottom of the funnel. So the sales cycle traditionally takes a little bit longer. So give yourself a little bit of space and set those expectations properly internally, so that no one's expecting LinkedIn ads to be turn it on. Get instant ROI. And be a silver bullet. Okay, so what if you're saying, Oh, AJ, you're talking about 1000 $5,000 budgets, those are tiny, we have a much larger budget to work with. Well, this is fantastic because what you'll get is a statistically significant test every $5,000 in spend that you do. And it means that you can test much faster, you can run multiple tests at a time, you can actually run tests over a 2, 3, 4 day period. And keep seasonality, keep your timeline really tight, so that seasonality can't creep in and ruin or spoil some of your results. So use that as an opportunity to test more, test faster. Okay, here's a quick sponsor break, and then we'll get to dive into the timeframe over which you actually spend this budget. 14:47 The LinkedIn Ads show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. 14:56 If the performance of your LinkedIn Ads is important to you B2Linked is the agency you'll want to work with, we manage LinkedIn's largest accounts. We're the only media buying agency to be official LinkedIn partners, and performance to your goals is our only priority. So fill out the contact form on any page of B2Linked.com to get in touch, and we'd love to help you absolutely demolish your goals. 15:19 Okay, let's jump into timeframes here. So what I have been talking about here in the past is spending $1,000 to get significance around conversion rates and cost per conversion. But you might be asking yourself, Well, maybe I don't have that level of spend on a monthly basis. How long do I have to actually spend? Now, I do recommend this on a monthly basis for a lot of different reasons. But it's important to understand that when we're looking at statistical significance, we're looking only for a collection, a pool of data. We're not taking into account necessarily timeline. So if you are patient, if you have executive buy in to run that $5,000 budget Over the course of five months, feel free. But my warning to you is that when we've worked with clients doing this, even when they say they get executive buy in, inevitably, someone will get impatient. Your boss will come to you, the business owner will come asking during month one and say, "hey, how is LinkedIn ads looking?" And of course, the proper answer is quit asking you moron. This is we need a lot more data here before we actually call it. But some people tend to let their their pride their ego and shoot from the hip a little bit. And a lot of times, they'll come and say, well, it doesn't look like it's working. Let's cut budget and push it to somewhere else. So if you can speed it up, if you can even save your monthly budget up until you have a, let's say $5,000 for a month. What it's going to do is allow you to avoid those seasonality sways and not allow anyone to get impatient. All right. So let me give you an example here on seasonality sways. If you are spending over For a five month period for a test, and you happen to go over the month of December, which for B2B is terrible, or maybe you're going over the summer. The summer usually has a pretty significant lull. Or what if you were advertising from February on. And it just so happened that your tests landed in the middle of the COVID panic, these are all things that would really significantly sway your data and make it so your data is going to be a little bit messier, or you may not be able to rely on it. So if you can force all of this into a single month, do it. And what I also like about this is that you'll be getting statistical significance monthly. So that means a new test every single month, so that you're learning. And of course, if you do this for one month, and you get enough data to say that, wow, LinkedIn ads is not working well, for us. It's a poor performer. If I'm paying an agency to manage it, I would sure love to know by the end of month one, but the channel isn't for me. So I can quit and not pay another month of management fee just to draw that out. Now, we've worked with a lot of different advertisers. And of course, they are all over the board, all different offers all different industries, all different sales cycles, and all different lifetime values. But what we find is, on average, our clients are spending between about $1,000 to $4,000 in ad spend to close a deal. And of course, it does take testing and optimization to get to that point. So maybe starting out, they were trending for 2, 3 times higher than that. So that's why I told you in Episode One, that I recommend LinkedIn Ads only for those with a high lifetime value for prospecting a new customer. But once you've optimized a little bit. Once you've found the formula that works and we'll talk about ammo alignment here in just a minute. Once you've found that formula, you'll really start to feel like your LinkedIn Ads are working for you not working against you. Because we work with so many different accounts and we work when we find what the averages are. I'm very sensitive to when, quote unquote growth hackers come in and talk about, hey, on LinkedIn ads, I put 30 cents into it, and I generated millions of dollars in revenue. So while yes, maybe they are telling you the truth, maybe they're not just blowing smoke, I want to suggest that you don't expect the same outcome for you. Be realistic. And that's why I've given you the benchmarking episode. So you can approach this thoughtfully and not just expect that tomorrow, you're going to close a multi million dollar deal. There certainly is a level of serendipity and luck associated with advertising on any channel, really. You may accidentally get lucky on your very first ad launch and get 7% click through rates on your first ad, and it got you cost per click under 50 cents. We've had several clients do this. And then conversely, you are statistically just as likely to totally bomb and do really poorly. So you do want to set proper action. Don't set the expectation that it's going to be like the growth hackers talk about how someone found a hack somewhere and you can replicate exactly the same thing. The rules to LinkedIn ads are exactly the same as every other social platform, you need to get alignment in your AMO. That is my acronym for the three things that you need for a successful social campaign. This is AMO, it stands for your audience, your message and your offer. Episode 14 goes more into depth on ammo alignment. But here's the basics. Your audience is who it is you're targeting. So you start by going for the very most core of people who are feeling the pain that your product or service solves. The error message is how people actually see your ad. What's the ad format? Which imagery are you using? What ad copy are you using to try to motivate them to get interested? And then O is your offer. This is what you're actually asking people to do, your call to action A lot of times this will be a piece of gated content on LinkedIn. And so what we're really testing for in the early stages of testing LinkedIn as a platform, we're trying to find where your audience, your message and your offer are aligned. Because when they are in alignment, you'll see crazy results. And LinkedIn becomes something that is predictable. It's a lead generation machine. And when you're not in alignment, it feels like you're pulling teeth to try to make the platform work. It feels difficult to get LinkedIn to give you traffic, or you just have to spend money endlessly to try to coerce people into converting. So I've shared a few warnings here before, but I want to just re emphasize this, because I want everyone listening to this podcast to look extremely successful and look like the heroes in your either agencies or in house role. So first off, don't spend a few hundred dollars and then make a determination on the channel. Because the real value of LinkedIn is not in the cost per click. If you're trying to get the lowest cost per lead, go to Facebook, if you're measuring your channels just on cost per lead, or just on cost per opt in, LinkedIn will always look extremely expensive. But the real value in LinkedIn is the targeting to make sure you're hitting exactly the right people who are likely and able to purchase from you. So the real value is tracking all the way down to the cost per sales qualified lead or some kind of qualified stage. Because when you're tracking all the way to cost per sales, qualified lead, that's when LinkedIn starts looking really good compared to other platforms, Facebook and Google included. So be realistic until you've spent thousands of dollars you likely won't have enough data to make the call about conversions unless you have a runaway success with 65% conversion rates, which we've seen before, but certainly not often. Another word of warning here is don't cheap out on the platform. If you stand to make $50,000 off of a closed deal, don't approach it. LinkedIn with a few hundred dollars, and then assume it's not a good channel when it didn't make you money. Realize that a deal that is worth $50,000 over the lifetime is a much higher consideration type of offer. And it's going to take more time. And it's going to take more deliberation on your clients perspective to decide to close that deal. So the higher your lifetime value, the more you will have to invest in LinkedIn ads to make it work. So if you're doing what I recommend, and you're budgeting $5,000 a month for LinkedIn ads, and you're seeing a lot of opt ins come in and then quite a few of those turn into marketing qualified leads, and then maybe 20%, 30% of those turning into sales qualified leads. If you see this progression, you won't need a close deal to tell you that this is a good channel, you'll see the data accumulating and starting to graduate through the stages and that will tell you that yes, even though I'm not closing deals right now even though we are not revenue net positive here. We feel comfortable continuing to invest in LinkedIn Ads. It's producing, it's likely to be a good channel for us. If you are extremely limited on budget, let's say you have a very small budget that you have to spend over a long period of time, and you want to maximize that. Make sure to listen to Episode 14 of this podcast because we go specifically into small budget strategies on how to make sure every dollar is spent efficiently so that you get the best chance of success on the platform. Okay, I've got the episode resources coming right up. So stick around. 24:38 Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. 24:46 Okay, those resources I talked about in the news. Microsoft has their COVID-19 insights and resources for advertisers. It's broken down actually by industry. So depending on what industry you are, you can go and look and see what But some of the effects that they've measured are. And do keep in mind that the majority of their insights come from a search perspective, so they may not be as valuable to you as a social marketer. But I know many of us here in social marketing came from a search background. And so it might still be interesting to peruse, over. And of course, the digital advertisers guide to COVID-19, the ebook, I've linked to that here in the show notes below. So check that out. And of course, if you are new to LinkedIn advertising, the best course I have for you is the LinkedIn Learning course on LinkedIn Advertising, I happen to be the author, so I've put the link to the course down here below. But what I want you to understand is right around an hour, this course teaches you what I would teach you if I were doing a one to one training over the course of about an hour and a half. And in person, I'm charging $500 an hour, the course only charges $25 for the whole course. Or if you're a LinkedIn premium member, it's free to watch those. So Highly recommend, check out that course. And please, whatever podcast player you're on, do subscribe to this podcast. If LinkedIn Ads is important to you as a channel in your digital marketing, then I want you to have every leg up possible. So do subscribe, make sure you catch all of our future episodes. And please do rate and review the podcast I would especially love to see your reviews and I don't mind if they're critical, feel free to write it down on me. I want to improve this podcast. So if you have any ways to to improve, maybe still leave a top notch review, but reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with any critical feedback, anything you'd recommend, anything you'd like to see or hear. Okay, I'll see you back here next week. I'm cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

It's hard being isolated from jobs, friends and family. So Sam is changing up this week's show with guests who have ideas on how to cope with the quarantine. Superstar chef Samin Nosrat of Netflix's "Salt Fat Acid Heat" and Tucker Shaw of "America's Test Kitchen" talk about cooking for neighbors, helping laid-off restaurant workers, and making better meals out of the stuff you've got at hand. Comedian Iliza Schlesinger talks about what she's getting done during her time at home, and we hear from a Stanford psychologist about creating "distant socializing" to keep ourselves connected.

Welcome back, folks! I hope you all enjoyed last week's episode with Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Jacob Hornberger (I know I certainly did!). Keeping up with phenomenal guests, I am today joined by Ammo.com's Lead Writer and Chief Historian, Sam Jacobs! Sam joins the show today to discuss one of his recent article over at Ammo.com, titled "Deplatformed: How Big Tech Companies & Corporate America Subvert the Second Amendment". Sam, a self identified "Jacksonian-Conservative", takes a different approach to the tech censorship and deplatforming that has taken place in the past few years when compared to the traditional libertarian's perspective. Listen as Sam and I have a fun back-and-forth discussion where we volley our differing takes to one another, leaving the conversation on a solid ground of understanding each other's position, and more importantly, that we were able to find some, gasp, COMMON GROUND! Read Sam's Article: https://ammo.com/articles/deplatformed-big-tech-companies-subvert-second-amendment-social-media-guns Find Sam Online: https://ammo.com/our-team#sam-jacobs Some More Awesome Articles!: https://ammo.com/articles/founding-fathers-quotes-central-banking-americas-economy https://ammo.com/articles/founding-fathers-quotes-second-amendment-guns-keep-and-bear-arms The Ammo.com Podcast: https://ammo.com/podcast Ammo.com's Twitter: twitter.com/ammodotcom/ Sam's Bio: Sam Jacobs grew up in Southern New England, probably the part of the country with the weakest gun culture. However, from a young age he believed firmly in the right of self defense and the right to keep and bear arms. This, coupled with 12 years of education in public schools and an argumentative nature, meant that he was frequently getting into debates with his teachers about the virtue of the Second Amendment. A precocious student of history and the Constitution, Jacobs became interested in both the practice of armed self defense throughout history as well as the philosophical underpinnings of the Second Amendment. Jacobs has an affinity for the individual and the common man against centralized forms of power and elites, whether they be in the government or the private sector. In particular, he is interested in the ways in which private companies work to subvert the legislative process and to undermine American freedoms outside of normal legal channels. He considers the resolution of how corporate power can hem in Constitutional freedoms to be the most pressing political question of our age. The private sector and the public sector are increasingly indistinguishable from one another, both because of behind-the-scenes corporate chicanery that undermines the legislative process and because private companies are rapidly becoming far more powerful than the federal government. Thus, it is more important than ever to both fight the incursion of private companies into our government and to become independent and self-reliant enough to make it difficult for private companies to hem in your rights. So Sam believes. Jacobs is the lead writer and chief historian with Ammo.com, and is the driving intellectual force behind the content in the Resistance Library. He is proud to see his work name-checked in places like Bloomberg, USA Today and National Review, but he is far more proud to see his work republished on websites like ZeroHedge, Lew Rockwell and Sons of Liberty Media. How many firearms does Sam own and what's his everyday carry? That's between him and the NSA. Support The Brian Nichols Show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Unpopular Opinion: "Motivation Is Garbage" For some weird reason, people see me as a motivational speaker. I've received a sea of "thank yous" from listeners of the Arisen Podcast on how I motivated them to chase their dreams and goals... So I guess I should be the last person talking ill about motivation... It doesn't make sense, does it? I don't know about you but if you want six packs, the only way to get it is through actually putting in the plancks, and push ups, right? You can read or listen or watch on how to get six packs and then you wake up with it Same goes with how you handle your finances, dating life, personal development, and career "So Sam, if motivation is garbage, what should I do instead?" I've decoded the art and science of accomplishment that has nothing to do with motivation. As a matter of fact, how many times have you been pumped up at an event, a conference, a book, a quote and you went all in from there and crushing all your goals? As always, don't forget to stay Arisen!

Their bellies are full and Sam's patience is low! She is convinced that Lisa is being affected by the full moon and Friday the 13th!! Lisa thinks her cardio group is wary of her because she's too young! She feels snubbed because they didn't invite her to the Christmas party. FOMO!! They move past this and focus on the Golden Globe nominations. Go Meryl and JLO! There is so much to cover as they discuss RuPaul, weighted blankets, self heating lunch boxes, Christmas letters, Oreos, rink burgers, soup, bread bowls, Dollar store cards, Finland, Walmart sweaters, Toffifee, gingerbread and Hershey kisses! Sam starts off the game 2 Truths and a Lie. Lisa's truth sounded like a lie and Sam's truth sounded like a lie! So Sam is getting better at lying and Lisa sucks at telling the truth?! Either way fun was had and we hope you laughed along with us!   If you love what you hear you can support the podcast by following the links below!   Podbean:https://patron.podbean.com/ismhead Patron:https://www.patreon.com/join/ishakemyhead You can also find us on  Twitter www.twitter.com/i_shakemyhead  Instagram www.instagram.com/ishakemyhead Buy our merchandise at www.ishakemyhead.threadless.com We are proud to be a part of The Podfix Network www.podfixnetwork.com Editing and Audio by John Bukenas at john@audioeditingsolutions.com

With the Election just around the corner, we decided that considerable expertise would be required to unpick the web that is politics, both nationally and in Southampton. So Sam, from Surge News Team. interviewed Dr Charlotte Lydia of the University of Southampton's history department. Up for discussion was the nature of British politics, the nature of its media, and how this election shapes up to its historical forbears.

Big data sounds great, but how can marketers extract insights and put together reports without spending all of their time crunching numbers? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Anna Shutko of Supermetrics talks about how marketers today are dealing with data. From juggling data from 5+ sources, to wrangling spreadsheets and figuring out how to continuously monitor your data pipeline, Anna shares how Supermetrics clients are taking on these challenges while saving themselves considerable time - and how you can, too. Highlights from my conversation with Anna include: Supermetrics is a marketing automation tool that transfers data from a variety of sources to the marketer's destination of choice. In addition, Supermetrics offers data warehousing through Supermetrics for BigQuery. Supermetrics' goal is to make marketers' lives better and easier so they can focus on what actually matters. Anna says that marketers today need to be technologists who know their business, know their platforms, know at which stage of the funnel they want to use the platforms, and know how to use data from all those platforms together to create a comprehensive narrative from their data. According to Anna, the best KPI for any marketer is revenue. If revenue is growing, then marketing is doing its job. One of Supermetrics' customers was able to cut the time they spend on reporting down from three to four days a week to a few hours. With a platform like Supermetrics, which allows you to continuously keep your data updated in real time, you can simply check the data once a day, knowing that its up to date, and then go about your business. You can also simply provide your stakeholders (ex. board) with a link to view your data at their convenience. Anna says that the biggest mistake marketers make is to focus on vanity metrics like impressions. Resources from this episode: Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic  Supermetrics Reporting Template Gallery  Supermetrics Customer Success Stories Sleeping Giant Media Success Story Supermetrics HubSpot connector Supermetrics for BigQuery  Inbound Success Podcast episode 111 with Jake Neill  This Won't Scale playbook by Drift SaaStr Podcast for all things SaaS The Growth Hub Podcast for marketing topics Julian Shapiro's guides Listen to the podcast to learn more about how marketers are cutting their time spent on reporting using Supermetrics. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And Today my guest is Anna Shutko, who is a product marketing manager with Supermetrics. Welcome, Anna. Anna: Hey, Kathleen, and thank you so much for having me on the show. It's such a pleasure to be here. Kathleen: Yeah. And I think you might actually qualify as my guest, one of the guests who is coming from the furthest away because you are in Finland right now. Correct? Anna: Correct. Yes, we are based in Helsinki, Finland. And yeah, so originally from Russia, and I moved to Finland and I've been living here for about seven years now. Kathleen: All right, and how -- just because the weather is changing here, so I'm currently kind of obsessed with weather -- how cold is it where you are? Anna: Basically, it's plus seven degrees Celsius. I'm sorry, I don't know what it's like in Fahrenheit. Kathleen: Cold, cold. I know that's cold. Anna: Kind of cold yeah. It usually drops to minus 20. So it's- Kathleen: Oh my gosh. I don't know how you do it, I would not survive in that climate. Well, it is getting colder here and the seasons are changing. But I'm so excited to have you on and to pick your brain because we're going to talk a little bit about analytics, which is something that's very near and dear to my heart. But it's one of those topics I think people talk a lot about, but they don't get very specific on and so I am actually really excited to get specific with you. Anna: Yes please. About Anna and Supermetrics Kathleen: So before we dive into this, though, can you just talk a little bit about, first of all, yourself and what you do and also what Supermetrics does? Anna: Yeah, sure. So I'm Anna Shutko and I've been working in Supermetrics for three years now. So I am one of the first employees of the company, I joined as employee number seven in 2016. And since then we've had a really, really rapid growth. So it's indeed an exciting journey. And I'm still continuing as you can imagine, the company is not the same as it was, not the same at all. Now we're hitting 70 like headcount. So it's been quite a wild ride. And I started as a marketing generalist, because as you can imagine, we're a team of seven, and everybody was doing everything, I was the second employee on the marketing team. And as the company grew I realized that product that's Supermetrics does is my passion and I want to devote more and more time to it. Now as we are hiring more people, I'm actually able to concentrate in product more and more as we go so I'm very excited about it. And in the future, I will be leading integrations marketing, which means, and I will explain everything how Supermetrics works and what integrations are in a minute, like integrations as their own stream as their own branch of marketing, so to say, so yeah, pretty excited about it. And like I mentioned, I fell in love with the product from day one. I remember how I was applying to Supermetrics, and I opened the website, and I saw this amazing product in the website was look really, really bad, but the idea was there. And yeah, since then, we changed the website and we added many more new and far more amazing products but I'm continuously in love with the company and products that we do so this is where my passion as a product marketing comes from. Kathleen: I have to just say, as a marketer, I have to laugh when I hear you say that you came in and you had a bad website because this -- I have experienced that in my career. And I never know whether to be excited or sad, because sad that you're coming in and the website stinks but excited that you get to come in and like change it and immediately show such big results of your marketing efforts. Like a website redesign is an awesome opportunity to just make a huge impact on a company's marketing so there's great opportunity there as a marketer, but it's also like "aargh." Anna: Yeah, I totally feel you on that we had a huge redesign project, but actually now the website really matches the company's identity of the company's products and shows how amazing they are. So I would prefer to see it as an opportunity. Kathleen: Yeah, you guys have a great website. So if you're listening and you have not checked out the Supermetrics site, definitely take a look at it. It's really well done and very cohesive from a visual branding standpoint. I've always liked your site. Anna: Thank you so much. Yeah, so a couple of words on what is Supermetrics and what do we actually do in this little red box. So, Supermetrics is a marketing automation tool and we started by developing a tool, which transfers data from different data sources, or as we call them "Integrations", those things, which transfer data from different APIs to different data destinations. So we transfer data from platforms like Google Ads, Google Analytics, Facebook ads, Twitter Ads, and now new ones for example Quora Ads, name it to spreadsheet tools and we started from transferring all this data to Excel then we move into G Suite. So next product was Supermetrics for Google Sheets aka transferring data from now it's 50 plus sources to Google Sheets. Then as Data Studio got rolled out, we partnered up with Google and we're actually the first ones to develop Connectors, which work entirely in Google Data Studios UI. So transferring all these different data to Google Data Studio. And now we enter the data warehousing space with our newest product Supermetrics for BigQuery and this is a completely new product game changer. So marketers can take advantage of BigQuery and store a lot of historical data there without necessarily learning how to code, really like hardcore, so everything is pretty intuitive. You can set transfers, and then visualize the data in big powerhouses that we're calling Tableau, Power BI for example. So that's the evolution of Supermetrics. In short, I love to describe it as a data pipeline, just easy to imagine, right, pipeline, we transfer data as if it's like water, for example, to all those different data destinations, and keep the work flowing. So previously, without Supermetrics marketers had to copy, paste, or download CSVs. So imagine, if you need a report for your client tomorrow, you have to go to every single platform like Facebook ads, Google Ads like I mentioned, ecetera, copy, paste, or then download all those different CSVs and compile them into one file. Edit every single data type and make sense out of the data and it was nightmare. I cannot even imagine how people did it without Supermetrics before. So we basically automate the whole thing so there is a really smooth sidebar or engage Google Data Studio there is this selection tool where you can very easily connect to all the sources you need. And you can select, which data do I want. For example, I want clicks from yesterday's clicked by campaigning for example, I want Facebook ads campaigns. And boom, this data just appears in your spreadsheet. It's really easy. I think it's the easiest if you watch the video, and I will add all the links to the video. So then people can pause the podcast, follow along or check our site out if they want to. So yeah, you will just really see how easy it is to create a marketing report and our motto, so our idea is to make marketers' life better and easier so they can focus on what actually matters like talking to the client, analyzing this data, spotting trends, sharing this report with their colleagues. If it's a collaborative tool, like Data Studio, it's super easy to do. And because we're a data pipeline, it gives us this flexibility. So we don't really have a fixed data destination where we transfer everything. People already know how to use Excel, so they can just transfer their data there and just go ahead and continue their work. So that's who we are. How marketers are taking on big data Kathleen: I love that. This whole topic is so interesting to me, and I was just having this conversation with somebody the other day, because my company is also in the data space, but we just happened to be in cyber security but there's a similar problem with marketing and with cyber security, namely that, there's all this sort of excitement around the availability of big data. And data is wonderful but what winds up happening I think, a lot of the time is there's a lot of noise and not a lot of signal. And meaning there's a ton of data, but you don't necessarily need to look at all data, right? You need to get to the data that matters the most. And the most important thing isn't the data itself it's the insights you source from it. And so, I would love to just kind of get your thoughts on especially for marketers. Do you see marketers successfully dealing with that challenge right now and how do they do that? It is such a big, hairy kind of area of I could be measuring all the things and tracking all the things. I guess this is like 10 questions in one I want to ask you so many things, like what are the most important metrics? How are marketers winnowing it down to what matters the most? Like, you guys work with a lot of companies, how many exactly is it? Anna: So yeah, indeed we do and I think I already previously mentioned to you, so it's 400k, 400,000 people who've tried or are using Supermetrics across all the different products, so huge numbers. Kathleen: That's interesting, it must give you some pretty fascinating insight into what information marketers are tracking and what they're looking at and what sources they're drawing data from. So let's start out actually by a lot of the people who are listening to this podcast, a lot of them tend to be practicing marketers and they're senior enough that they deal with strategy, but they're also kind of deep in the weeds with some tactical execution. And if somebody is listening and thinking I need to set up a reporting framework and I need to decide what are the most important KPIs to track? Can you share a little bit of, through what you see in the platform, like, what are those top KPIs that you tend to see marketers looking at? Anna: Yeah, so of course every single marketing reporting framework is unique and it depends on the company, there is no right or wrong, there is no one framework or one approach I could share and then everybody would apply it and then I would be in a very happy place. I wish that would be possible. But it's an art, it's science and everybody has to use their own judgment. Of course, I can pinpoint some things for example, nowadays you're completely right -- marketing is becoming more and more and more data driven. And marketing is actually becoming more and more technical. So there was this one chart I love referring to which is called the MarTech 5000. Not sure if you've heard of it. And it just shows on a larger scale, how the MarTech space has transformed over the years. So in 2011, there were something about, if I remember correctly, 150 solutions. And right now there are over 7,000 solutions. So imagine all those platforms and every single marketer is using maybe in their own platform, or some unique custom setups in the same HubSpot or Salesforce in the same platform everybody's using. So like I mentioned, is becoming more data driven, it's becoming more unique and is becoming increasingly complex. And what I see is that the profession is changing so we're not just more curious anymore, we have to be marketing technologists to successfully implement all those strategies. So knowing the platform and knowing at which stages of your funnel, you should use a particular platform, maybe it's a new platform, like Quora Ads for example. And it's an entirely new set of metrics because the nature of platform is different. You also have to take that into consideration. So basically to sum it up, knowing your business, knowing the platform, knowing at which stage of the funnel you want to use this platform, and knowing -- and this is where Supermetrics comes into play very nicely -- how we can use data from all those platforms together to create a comprehensive narrative from your data. Say you want to use, for example, Search Ads as top of the funnel, this is what we see commonly happening, people using Search Ads, maybe display ads to attract attention so they will be metrics like impressions, to impact your further questions like impressions clicks, in a way micro conversions or conversions as in their positioning to the website or going into down the funnel. Then in the bottom of the funnel, people are already more familiar with the company. So there can be many different other platforms coming into play that continue handling data so they can go on the website track. So then there is Google Analytics. They continue with another platform. Quora Ads again is a very good example because there you can have different targeting levels and you can target different questions now that people have already got their food for thought about your company. And in the end, you can, again, hammer them with more maybe brand-related content now that they're already familiar with your brand and then lead them gradually to closure. And again, this is where understanding of the product comes in handy. I will give our own Supermetrics example. So we have Supermetrics templates, basically, those are free to use files, which people can use and they work with our Connectors. So it works like this, you get this file, you click three buttons, and it all happens in Data Studio UI or, for example, Google Sheets UI and this is gets populated with your data as you use Supermetrics Connectors. But the trick is that you have to use Supermetrics Connectors to automate this dashboard. Of course, you can put your own numbers and the formulas would work, there is no problem with that you can also use it manually. But the beauty of those templates is to use them in an automated manner. So by knowing that those templates, activate trials, again, if we talking about SaaS, you know that in the bottom of your funnel, you can put this specific lead magnet, like in our case, this is the Landscape, there can be some our tool and then usually tracking through Custom Code or through Google Analytics, how those things convert and then afterwards I think that at this point, people start using more and more complicated platforms to track this post-purchase journey to accurately predict what kind of people convert? How do those people behave? And are there any like rookie purchases? So this is, again, where HubSpot comes in very handy. The platform has expanded a lot. Or Salesforce, then you can connect this data from Salesforce to top of the funnel, or middle of the funnel content data and then see how people who click on your ads and search literally through the whole journey have converted and what kind of people are there and based on that data, then you craft an improved marketing journey. Now that was a really long explanation but yeah, just hope to get the general idea out there so that you should know the business you're in. You should know the tool, you should know how to use those tools together, how to use this data together. And yeah, just focus on metrics like ROI that's my personal belief because marketing cannot function separately or completely separately from overall business, it has to bring results, it has to bring insights. So I think revenue is a very solid indicator of whether something working or not working, and in our case, this will be ROIs. Marketing tool sprawl Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense and you touched upon something I wanted to ask further about, which is you have to know your platforms and I think you said you need to be a technologist these days, which I think is really so accurate. There are so many different platforms and you can't just be a strategist anymore you have to know how to get in and make these software tools sing for you, because that's where a lot of the value gets unlocked. Do you have a sense? Well, let me back up how many different data sources or platforms does Supermetrics integrate with right now? Anna: It depends on the data destination. So for example, for BigQuery, it's far more complex to add a data source, so we have less of them there. But I would say that more than 50 if we don't count those in detail, or like early access, fully integrated, fully developed platforms, there are around 50 and I have to say that our engineers did a great job because not only do we provide the basic of I call them the basic metrics for some platforms like HubSpot, for example, or Adobe analytics, we also provide the Custom metrics. So if people have created their own metrics, they are also able to fish them out with our tool and like visualize them. Kathleen: So there's about 50 different fully integrated platforms and plenty more kind of in development. Do you have any sense from the way that you all have seen customers using Supermetrics of, on average, how many different sources the typical marketer is pulling in? I'm just curious. Anna: Yeah, of course, I will give you a very, very rough number because there is no generalization to be made. Some people prefer to use one platform very heavily others prefer to use a bundle. But I would say that around maybe like five would be something like an accurate number. Kathleen: Yeah, it's so interesting, because just from my own experience even in small organizations, like, my company is small and in early stage, hopefully will be very big in a year. But, we still, I feel like we have a lot of different platforms. We have marketing automation, we have our website, we have Google Analytics, we have our CRM, like our video marketing platform, our SEO add-ons, there's just so much and pulling it all together is a little bit of a nightmare. And I imagine without a tool like this is super time consuming, and I think that that's probably one of the biggest pain points marketers have, is the amount of time they spend on reporting. Like you said, you work with a lot of different companies I know you and I talked and you have some examples of companies that have used the platform and some stories about how it's helped them save time. Can you maybe share some of that with us? Supermetrics customer stories Anna: Yeah, definitely, and I love sharing those stories because the clients are amazing and some of them have been with us through like absolutely everything. So they started using Grabber, which is now our legacy product so the tool pulls data into Excel. And now they want to try or are already trying Supermetrics for BigQuery you can imagine some of them have used all five of our products, so definitely an evolution there. But coming back to your question one of my favorite client success stories is Sleeping Giant Media. These guys- Kathleen: It's a great name, side note, I just like the company name. Anna: Yeah, they're great and the people they're amazing. So the team is based in Britain, and they've been using Supermetrics like I mentioned for a while. They started with Supermetrics for Google Sheets and now they're looking into Supermetrics for BigQuery. So Sam, big shout out to Sam is our one big Supermetrics fan and he even talked about us at Brighton SEO, which was just amazing we never asked him to but he just went out there and spoke about us. It was really heartwarming. So he told a story that they used to spend around three to four days just on marketing reporting, aka copy, pasting numbers, collecting- Kathleen: Three to four days a month, right? Anna: Three to four days a week. Kathleen: Ah, oh my goodness. Anna: Imagine well, I guess they were not doing it exactly like every week, but maybe like every other week let's say. They are a fully functioning marketing agency providing a wide range of services. So he would get in Monday morning and start collecting data and then they're emailing all the cc's. By Wednesday evening, he would finish all reporting for one maybe two clients, depending on the scope of the project, of course. And then he had Thursday and Friday. So Thursday the client meeting to discuss how campaigns are going, whether there is some adjustments have to be made, et cetera, et cetera. And then it would just leave basically Friday and well, if he's not doing reporting next week, then the next week to implement all the changes. Which to me sounds crazy, because this is something you should not be spending that much time on. This is not a very highly intellectual job like copy, pasting numbers feels so basic -  people doing this and he's started using Supermetrics so he's time basically time he spent on reporting cut down to something like an hour or maybe like an hour and a half and if he needed to do a reporting for absolutely all the clients in the agency that would be in one day. Kathleen: So what does he do with all his newfound free time? Anna: Great question. So he's already talking, well, obviously you started sharing those results with the clients. So he started talking to the clients more and this I think even further reinforces the idea that we help inbound marketers because then we encourage with this free time you can have more human connection. You can ask more relevant questions, you have more time to even think or like process the client's needs. And, in addition to this, he was able to make more relevant analysis now that he had more time. So he could actually process the numbers in his head and think, "Aha, what would our next steps be?" And then react accordingly? So we usually have two types of reports people are doing with Supermetrics. So one type of reporting is this for example, monthly reports where people pull together numbers from all those different sources to assess their monthly progress to see what kind of plans do they have to make for the next month, and then so on and so forth. And the second type of reporting that we commonly see is the ad hoc reporting. So say, okay, this campaign, this bid is acting wild I did not know what happened. Some numbers are going down they're not normal compared to the benchmark or this is someone unusual behavior. Let me just quickly pull out a few numbers and compare them and figure out what's the root cause? Is it something seasonal or is some competitor in the picture, like to understand what's happening. And I really loved one comment, this is from a different client the agency is also based in the UK, they said that it's much, much faster and much easier to pull those numbers with Supermetrics rather than going through the whole Facebook ads UI trying to dig into campaigns and figure out what exactly went wrong. So there you go. So you can also do this ad hoc kind of very quick analysis to see whether some immediate action has to take it and I think this makes you very, very proactive versus being a reactive reporter. You look at the numbers, it's like, "Oh, my God." The moment is gone, things have already happened. But this way, you can very quickly act upon those changes and as a result make your clients happy and avoid some potential setbacks. If you for example, have Black Friday and say something's going wrong then you don't have much time to react. You're losing money basically. So yeah, it really is- Kathleen: Do you have any sense for how often, because Supermetrics really gives a continuous flow of data, correct? Anna: Yeah. How often are marketers reviewing data? Kathleen: And so you could theoretically be checking it all the time. But do you have a sense for how often at least in best practice cases, marketers are looking at that data? Anna: Yeah, so they can set triggers that would refresh data automatically. So I would say that people do so that they set up a reporting dashboard, then they set it up to refresh, so that the data is there for the next day, usually. Of course, they can do like hourly refresh again, if it's a fast pacing, budget campaign, but usually they you do this, I come in to the office, I see fresh data in my dashboard. So every morning, we can do a quick catch up with my colleagues, look at this internal report and see how all of our different clients are doing. If it's an agency, if it's an internal team, then just see how campaigns are performing and then see what we're doing during the day. So that's the usual, I would say, very typical scenario, or according to my experience. Kathleen: And then it seems like, for reporting, like if you're somebody like me, who has to put together a report once a month for your board of directors, you could just really kind of screenshot and paste the graphs into a PowerPoint or something along those lines if you wanted to, or you could distill the data in some other way for like a monthly report. Anna: Yeah, definitely, you can do this. What I would do personally, if I was the one doing this, I would use Google Data Studio because this way you don't have to copy paste anything and you can share this file with really nice dashboards they've updated their design and they're rolling out as far as I know, more comprehensive and even better looking design soon. So you can just connect all the sources put all the numbers and like I mentioned also provide those templates so you can get some inspiration from there. Our designers also do a very nice job creating those lovely designs. For example, we have some Supermetrics for HubSpot templates there in our gallery and I will also give the link to all the materials and the gallery so people can check them out or if they listen to the episodes and try everything themselves. Check out the Supermetrics reporting template gallery But yeah, I would do something like this. And then at the same time, you would not need to refresh the data because the data will be refreshed automatically there. And the board of directors can see new numbers and in addition, you can also connect your custom data source, aka if you have revenue numbers in a database, many companies do have those. So especially if it's a board of directors, they would be very interested in the impact marketing has made on their revenue and other business metrics. So you can pull this data from the database and you can show it side by side with the marketing spend, for example, to give them an even bigger picture. The biggest mistakes marketers are making with data Kathleen: That's great. So any thoughts on, you know, what you see the marketers doing as far as the biggest mistakes they're making with tracking data reporting on it, et cetera? Anna: That's an interesting one. I actually have never thought about this. Mistakes. Well, maybe one thing that comes to my mind is maybe like focusing too much on the vanity metrics as I call them, aka like a lot of clicks or like impressions or worse like it's a impressions. Metrics that give you ... I would say these are maybe like unrelated metrics in a way that they're not very directly related to the business metrics, because for example, in some cases, sales cycle can be quite long. So you cannot accurately assess how much the campaign will generate in the future just simply because people have to go through multiple steps and multiple touch points to even get to the discussion about purchasing your product or tool or license. And so yeah, focusing too much on impressions, focusing too much on metrics then, like I said, not maybe necessarily related. This comes back to the product. You should know your sales cycle and I would suggest breaking it down into different steps and basically monitoring and benchmarking each step and see the conversion rates. I don't exactly remember, a gentleman did an episode with you and he suggested a very good framework for this. There was even Excel spreadsheet. So this is maybe something we could also pulling back to this episode in the comments. Kathleen: I'll have to figure out which one that was. Anna: Yeah, unfortunately, I don't remember. Kathleen: We'll figure it out. Anna: We'll figure it out. Check out the episode Anna references here Kathleen: I know we can do it and we'll put the link in the show notes. Yeah, I know that I've had so many great guests it's interesting who've contributed so many great ideas that oftentimes I was thinking and in fact as I listened to you talk, that I need to go back and listen to some of my earlier episodes, because now I'm on I think I just published Episode Number 117 when we're talking about this, and there's so many earlier ones that are still great in terms of the information they deliver. Who is Supermetrics right for? Kathleen: I imagine that this type of reporting isn't right for everybody because some marketers might have much simpler platforms or maybe not. Maybe it is for everyone can you talk through who do you generally see using a solution like this? Anna: So our most common user personas, so to say, are marketing agencies, so somebody who is doing marketing reporting consecutively and then they have to do it almost every day or at least monthly to put together those good looking reports for their clients. But of course, those marketing agencies can be of different size. There can be a five person as we are now seeing with required there can be a five person very tech savvy small team, which focus on marketing technology and purely some maybe hardcore analytics with the elements of normal distribution and some predictive analytics even or they can be a very big marketing agency like TBWA who want to work client success stories. So yeah, agencies are very typical for us. Then we have internal teams so basically marketing departments, which want to monitor their own campaign, how they're progressing. Then even if they don't have a client, like you just mentioned, reporting to their board of directors and showing what impact marketing has made on their sales et cetera. And also, we've added HubSpot Connector, which is not only marketing, but it's also CRM. So then they connect their marketing data together with the CRM data to give more background information and make a 360 degree analysis. So these are very, very diverse I have to say. Kathleen: Great. So really it sounds like anybody, regardless of size, who has a strong focus on data, tracking data, analyzing data and reporting on data? Anna: Yeah, I would say so. Well maybe there is some categorization, I would say that smaller teams tend to use Google Sheets and Excel aka Spreadsheet tools. If the team is very tech savvy, or they have a lot of historical data, then I would straightaway advise them to use Google BigQuery because they would immediately otherwise hit that cell limit and the reports will be bulky, the reports will be slow. This is just not the right data destination, if you want to store terabytes and even more like 2, 3, 4 years of historical data to see different trends. So to summarize, bigger marketing agencies who have many clients, many big clients like big brands want to own their data because imagine those big brands spend a lot of dollars collecting this data, cleaning this data up. And they want a place where they can successfully store the older data so they can store data in BigQuery as their database and then they can instantly connect data from their Facebook ads, et cetera, to BigQuery through Supermetrics, and then visualize it, for example, in Tableau or Power BI to get the full picture of their marketing reporting. And yeah, smaller teams tend to use Data Studio, Google Sheets, which are completely free tools, so they are not paying per usage for them. So for them that would be cheaper and therefore more suitable option. How to learn more about marketing analytics Kathleen: Okay. Now I'm going to spring a question on you that I didn't tell you I was going to ask you and you may not have the answer because this is totally off the cuff. But as you spoke about this, you talked about, like, when you start to do more, you should move over to BigQuery. And I imagine for some marketers that could seem kind of intimidating, especially if they don't come from a highly analytical background. So are there certain places that you know of, or can recommend if somebody's listening, and they're thinking, "Oh, my God, that sounds really complicated." I need to get up to speed and learn more about analytics and how to use something like BigQuery. Is there somewhere online they can go to learn and become better at analytics? Anna: Yes, and I actually do have to say that we're working on this. We're very well aware of this worry that people have that, oh, I've been using maybe more simple UIs for my whole life. And now there was this whole like jobs and transfers and the whole different environment, which is coming with this BigQuery. So first of all, I do have to say that we're working on creating a bunch of materials for BigQuery specifically that will show how can use Supermetrics products if you're a marketer like videos, where do you click? How do you create different kind of transfers? How to use different kind of joins? So this is something that we're really hoping to provide and also we do have natively build Data Studio Connectors so after a marketer has gathered all the data in BigQuery, they can use our connector to visualize their data in just a few clicks. And, again, as we publish a video you'll see it's very, very simple and what I really love about BigQuery, although it does sound intimidating, but Google does provide learning resources for that as well. And if you look at the UI, you will notice that it's very, very intuitive. So to say, well at first it's maybe a little bit challenging, but once you get a hang of it, it's actually pretty nice, it's quite clear. From our side, we also provide this monitoring suite where you can see how your transfers are performing. Is your data flowing all in nicely? Is there something to worry about or not? Usually all our transfers are fine. So people have mentioned and you can also see from the client success stories that data flowing in nicely and we haven't experienced that much challenges with Supermetrics for BigQuery. But yeah, more resources coming up. Google does provide their own resources and I think it's important for marketers to at least look into this if it's relevant for them, because this is the general trend. This is where the world is going and you want to be ahead. You definitely want to at least understand what kind of technologies are there. I really liked the quote one of our clients have mentioned. So they said, "It feels like Google BigQuery compared with other providers is built with agencies and with marketers in mind." So that sounds reassuring to me at least that people do say that it's actually feels like it's built for marketers. So I would say, yeah, wait for ours resources and then go and explore on your own and try not to be intimidated by this very techie sounding word. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah it can be a lot to think about. But that's great that you guys are working on creating some resources. All right, we can talk about data forever but I have two questions I always ask all of my guests at the end of my interviews, and I would love to get your answers. The first one is, we talked about how the focus on this podcast is about inbound marketing. Who can you think of that whether it's a company or an individual who's just doing inbound marketing really well right now? Anna: Yeah, I will say quite a common answer and I'm pretty sure other guests have already mentioned this company. I think Drift is doing a fantastic job when it comes to inbound marketing, so they have not only created their own category, but when they interact with the people, with their clients, it feels very, very human, which I think they got this trend. This is something many of us need as marketing is becoming more and more techie. We need this kind of catalyst, we need this human connection to feel welcomed. And like I mentioned, they're doing a fantastic job there and one very good example is this one scale playbook, those 41 or 42 plays. As you read through this playbook, you can literally see that the company's trying show their best and make people feel welcomed and warm if they're using their product. Kathleen: Now, that's great. A lot of people have mentioned them, but that's because they're doing great things. Anna: Exactly. Kathleen: Second question is where do you personally go to learn and keep up so that you are able to stay abreast of the cutting edge developments in marketing? Anna: Yeah, so I prefer not to have a one stop shop. So depending on the topic I want to learn more about I go to a variety of different resources. So if I want to learn something more general about what's going on in the world of SaaS marketing, I listen to the SaaStr Podcast. Another amazing podcast I can recommend is the Growth Hub Podcast, and my colleague Edward is a proud host of this podcast. I really love his interviewing style and the guests, which have been on this podcast are simply amazing. So go check it out the Growth Hub Podcast, by Advanced B2B. A couple of other things. So of course I go to MarTech Today and SEJ if I want to learn about news and recent updates, and for us it's especially relevant, because we need to keep up what's going on with all the data source companies. Julian Shapiro, I'm not exactly sure if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, has a couple of fantastic guides on how to write a great copy, how to build a really nice landing page, how to A/B test. So one really good resource there as well and yeah. How to connect with Anna Kathleen: There's a couple new ones there that I haven't heard about. So we'll definitely check those out and put the links in the show notes. If someone wants to reach out to you, if they have a question about what you've talked about, or they want to learn more about Supermetrics, what is the best way for them to connect with you? Anna: Yeah, so definitely the best way is to reach out to me directly, maybe not through the company Twitter, but I'm @superpoweranna on Twitter. Kathleen: That's such a great handle. Anna: I love it as well. It's like Supermetrics plus me. So yeah, @superpoweranna on Twitter, and yeah, just hit me up with anything. And I also am very actively checking LinkedIn messages so Anna Shutko on LinkedIn, please don't hesitate to connect and I'm very happy to have discussions, answer the questions about anything there. So yeah, LinkedIn and Twitter, I would say, are the two go places. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Great. Well, I will put links to all of your various social accounts in the show notes so people can reach out to you and thank you so much for joining me. This was really fun just to talk about analytics and to geek out for a little bit. If you are listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new as always, I would love it if you would leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That is how people find us and hear about us. And of course if you know someone else who's doing kick ass in non-marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork and I would love to make them my next interview. Thanks, Anna. Anna: Thank you so much Kathleen. Kathleen: So fun.

[Fiction/Mystery] Ellie warns Michael that Laura may be stalking him. Is she stalking Michael or messing with Ellie? Matt's search for Alice on the web is not turning up a motive for murder. So Sam suggests he dive into the dark web. What nefarious denizens will he encounter there?

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/ Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/ Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com Aleksander: Hi, it's Aleksander Vitkin and I'm here with Sam, who's a member of the Business Mentor insiders. Now, Sam has been sitting down and getting some work done lately and his business has started to grow to the point where I'm quite happy about his results so I decided to get him on here to share his results, just tell us how he's doing and which results he's achieved and how you can potentially achieve the same results. So hopefully, we'll learn some stuff from Sam, welcome Sam. So Sam, what type of business do you run? Sam: I run an SEO agency, I have a bunch of different clients and I help them get their website higher in the Google results. Aleksander: What did you do before this business? So before you started the business, what were you doing? Sam:  I was still an SEO but I was working as a freelancer for a bigger agency just doing the work they wanted. Aleksander: So you went from working for an agency as a freelancer to starting your own agency essentially, is that right? Sam: Yeah that's true. Aleksander: How was it working for the agency? How did you like it? What were you getting out of it? What was it like? Sam: Well, on the one hand it was low stress they gave me a certain amount of work at the beginning of the week and as long as I did it by the end of the week and everything was fine. So, everything was remote so I could travel a little bit, it wasn't too bad to be honest with you, as far as jobs go. But the pay was pretty bad, it was like a little bit above minimum wage in the UK just because I took a pay cut in order to have it remote and it wasn't really a long term thing it was very much a temporary kind of a job. Aleksander: What is your business like now? Like, what are you getting out of your business? And what is it like running your business right now? Sam: What it's like running my business now is much more stress but much more reward. So the work I've got going on, there's you know, I'm doing a lot more than I was as a freelancer but because I own it everything I'm working on and building is something that I'm doing for me. So there's very much more of a sense of I guess pride and satisfaction from the work but yeah, no it's a lot higher stress. Aleksander: What's the trade off? So there is higher stress and okay, you're responsible for your own business and you're getting all the rewards what is that like? Sam: Pretty awesome, because you know, you're working on lead generation and you're working on sales and the more retainers I sell to people the higher my income goes, right? So it's not like you know, however much work I do I make the average UK wage or anything it's you know, if I sell another retainer then my income goes up by that retainer. It's very rewarding in that sense. Aleksander: How many clients are you working with right now? That pay retainers, essentially. Sam: Sure, so I currently have eleven clients. It's very difficult to manage but I've figured out how to do it I've hired an assistant and everything and yeah no everything is yeah, it's a lot of stress but a lot of rewards, like I say. One of the major benefits of having your source of income being completely online is that you can choose to travel and live wherever you want. You can't just like travel around because it takes away a lot of focus from your business but I, in January I'm moving to Taiwan just because yeah I have friends there and I want to learn the language but yeah so that's my plan at the moment. I'm just gonna be heading out to Barcelona and a couple of other places in Europe.

Pull up a cozy chair and join us as we chat about the works and Catholic faith of J.R.R. Tolkien, and strive to carry a little piece of Middle-Earth into our own daily lives.Tolkien Reading Day is celebrated on the 25th of March every year, in honor of the day on which the One Ring was destroyed. Since 2003, the Tolkien Society has celebrated this day by encouraging fans to read and share their favorite Tolkien passages, so I wanted to share five of mine. Share yours on social media using the #TolkienReadingDay hashtag, and tag me so I can see, too!I chose all of these from The Lord of the Rings, perhaps because it's most familiar to me of all Tolkien’s works, but also because it has had the biggest influence on my life and has meant the most to me. The more I read the Silmarillion, the more I fall in love with its depth, but I’m still not as familiar with it to be able to choose my favorite specific passages or chapters. So all of these are from The Lord of the Rings, and I didn’t realize this until now, but all of them are from The Return of the King at that.This first one is from Book Six, Chapter One. After he believed Frodo to be dead, Sam took the Ring and determined to finish Frodo’s quest for him. However, he learned that Frodo was not actually dead, and he had been taken by orcs and carried away. So Sam is following them now in an attempt to rescue him, but already he is being tempted by the Ring.“In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.” - The Return of the King, The Tower of Cirith UngolSam is strengthened by his realized, and continues on. After climbing to the top of the stairs in the Tower of Cirith Ungol and being unable to find Frodo, Sam sinks down and bows his head. However, he then begins to sing:In western lands beneath the Sunthe flowers may rise in Spring,the trees may bud, the waters run,the merry finches sing.Or there maybe 'tis cloudless nightand swaying beeches bearthe Elven-stars as jewels whiteamid their branching hair.Though here at journey's end I liein darkness buried deep,beyond all towers strong and high,beyond all mountains steep,above all shadows rides the Sunand Stars for ever dwell:I will not say the Day is done,nor bid the Stars farewell.Sam’s song draws the attention of an orc, thinking he’s hearing Frodo. The orc uses a ladder to access the final chamber above, and with that Sam is able to follow the orc up and rescue Frodo.In the next chapter, The Land of Shadow, Frodo and Sam scramble through Mordor, trying desperately to finish their quest. At one point, they find a place to hide and Sam tells Frodo to sleep while he keeps watch.“Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or foot. Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”After the Ring is ultimately destroyed, Frodo and Sam awake to find themselves in the Field of Cormallen. Aragorn is king; Gandalf is returned.; the Ring is gone. All is right with the world once again.“‘Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?’ he said.But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: ‘Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happening to the world?"‘A great Shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from his bed.‘How do I feel?’ he cried. ‘Well, I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel’ — he waved his arms in the air — ‘I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!’Later on, as the hobbits are brought out before the host of men and met with great praise, Tolkien writes:“And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all the men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.”So these are five of my favorite passages from The Lord of the Rings, quotes that have pierced my own heart and hopefully they will resonate with you a little bit, or at least inspire you to read a little or a lot of Tolkien. I’d love to hear about your favorites in the comments below, or you can send me a note on twitter or facebook or instagram!Also, on a quick final note, today is the opening of our spring pop-up shop! I have a limited selection of some of our most popular items from when our Etsy shop was open and I’m very excited to be able to offer some of them again. It was such a challenge to run our busy Etsy shop while also staying at home with my little hobbits, and so I made the difficult decision to close last December. However, this pop-up shop will be open from today until April 5th! We have a beautiful new design made for Tea with Tolkien by Ash of Daffodils and Ink, as well as our Rose Bookstack tee, our enamel Hobbit at Heart campfire mug, and our Little Hobbit baby onesie.I also wanted to mention, if you’re on instagram, I’m hosting a giveaway in celebration of Tolkien Reading day this week. The giveaway will close on March 30th and 10pm EST, and I hope it’s you that wins! You can visit my instagram feed, @teawithtolkien, for all of the details and how to enter.I will be back tomorrow to talk about one of my favorite quotes that I had mentioned in this episode, Sam’s “I feel like spring after winter and sun on the leaves”, as well as a little discussion of the significance of Spring in Tolkien’s writings, so make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast so you won’t miss an episode.I hope you have a beautiful day, and make sure to read more Tolkien! And drink more tea, too!Also, here’s the link to my piece about March 25.

Season 5 Interlude 1A New Member Approaches? So Sam has been appointed captain. Everything is going to be ok...right?Special guest: @rollforalex Sponsored by Easy Roller Dice Co.Follow usMusic: David Fesliyan 

Sam Priestley makes a living by dressing up as a fireman then taking his clothes off in front of women. Yes, he's a stripper! Hannah Priestley, Sam's wife, runs the business. And it's a very successful business at that. So much so that Sam works just one day per week, and they both earn far more than they ever did in their previous full time jobs. Oh … and Sam's character name? Fireman Sam, of course!!   Sam & Hannah also share: Where's the idea for men On Fire come from? How Hannah feels about her husband being a male stripper How they managed to replace their full-time employment income in just 6-months How they make prospects feel comfortable about enquiring for their services How Google Adwords sky-rocketed their business And plenty more …   “We found our competition to not be very helpful. Just the simple things like getting back to emails or phone calls a week later. That's just too late for someone trying to book such an important event. So Sam suggested we start as a small side business and do it a whole lot better. ” - Hannah Priestley, Men On Fire   Here's what caught my attention from my chat with Men On Fire's Sam & Hannah Priestley: I love the fact that Sam and Hannah communicate constantly and clearly to one another. I love how they've taken a good look at their competitors, identified what's being done poorly and gone about addressing it in their own business. And I love clarity they have around who does what in the business.     Resources mentioned: Men On Fire's official website Men On Fire's official Facebook page   But the marketing gold doesn't stop there, in this episode: This week's winner of the Monster Prize Draw winner is: Anthony Spiteri of Pixel 3   Please support the following businesses who make this show possible:   American Express Business Explorer Credit Card Let your business expenses reward you. Every year.   Yellow Partner with Australia's #1 online business directory for all your digital marketing needs.   Switchnode Australia's Internet isn't great. That's why Switchnode exist. The solution is here and it's wireless.   If something in this episode of Australia's favourite marketing podcast peaked your interest, then let me know by leaving a comment below. May your marketing be the best marketing. [For more interviews with successful business owners visit Small Business Big Marketing] See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s episode features Sam Dogen from Financial Samurai. After one month working for a top investment firm, Sam knew 70-hour workweeks were not the life he wanted. So Sam took action immediately. Instead of fancy cars and dinners out, Sam shared a studio apartment with a friend and socked away HUGE sums of money—50% of mediocre starting salary. He invested in real estate (shocker), stocks, and bonds—and continued his massive savings rate. Taking advantage of the economic downturn, Sam engineered his layoff and an enormous payout. Sam now lives the life he wants, having set up multiple passive income streams during his working years. He spends time with his family every day and embodies the concept of financially free. He no longer trades his time for money; his money just simply reproduces itself and does all the heavy lifting. This episode is a great look at how a little upfront discomfort can lead the your best life. Links from the Show Craigslist PayPal BiggerPockets Jobs Why Households Need To Earn $300,000 A Year To Live A Middle Class Lifestyle Today (blog) Don't Quite, Get Laid Off Instead (blog)

Welcome to another fun festive Tin Foil Hat swapcast. So Monday, we were a suppose to do an episode on the Annnaki but our guest got ill during the taping and had to bow out a third of the way through. So Sam and Ryan decide to do a swapcast and join the host of "On The List," Bret Ernst and Pete Giovine, to discuss our 10 Ten Conspiracies of All Time. There is A LOT AND I MEAN A LOT of screaming and shouting on this podcast. So if you aren't into that this might not be the episode for you. Also we want to remind North California that the Tin Foil Hat Comedy Tour is coming to your area....San Fransisco: June 1st at the Cobbs Comedy Club. tickets available at CobbsComedyClub.comSacramento: June 2nd at the Sacramento Punchline tickets available at punchlinesac.comHope to see you there.

The Mistress Of Wine and The Thinking Drinkers are back for another wise and witty look at all things booze related. This week, there's love in the air as we approach Feb 14th. So Sam gets to Spit Or Swallow, with Valentine's Day very much in her bad and good books. Ben has a couple of beers for swinging lovers, which he's teamed up with asparagus. What says romance more than a hot, firm green shoot? And Tom's Legend Of Liquor absolutely god-like. Plus there's further banter about McMafia, oysters, beer goggles and the fine art of using a box of eggs as a seduction tool, See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

CW: Suicide and Drug Use This week Dawn and Rachel are joined by Susan J. E. Ritta, WHO IS AMAZING. We have made to the 1960’s! This episode is Goodbye Norma Jean, Season 5 Episode 18.  Season 5 really went big on famous icons. Marilyn Monroe, played by a striking look-a-like, holds our gaze during this performance. Fabulous guest Susan coins the Bakula-Boner phrase, which royalties due to her if that takes off. So Sam after 5 seasons still cannot read people. More importantly all three of us have lengthy dialogue on the sexplotation Marilyn Monroe experienced alive and in legacy. There is a lot of SWF, or Single White Female  nods for those too young for that film reference. Also can we cut the voice over, Sam! We love you but yeesh! Next week join us for Season 2, Episode 1, Honeymoon Express   Contribute to our Patreon: http://patreon.com/beckettfuture Or visit our website: http://beckettfuturepod.com Email us: beckettfuturepod@gmail.com Lastly, visit our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/beckettfuturepod/ Please like us and review us on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcatcher. We love you.

The weekend edition begins... • Jon and Arya. Family in arms! • The Little Murder Girl • No not Jamie!! • Jaime stands up... too late? • Benjen had to stay behind.. So Sam's story has more importance • Benjen had to go • Kingslayer’s place in the end • Undead Jamie theory • Undead Jaime • Jamie’s inner monologue • Jaime’s point of view • Undead Kingslayer Weekend • More on the Kingslayer • There just MIGHT be an "Undead Jamie Lannister"... • Hive Mind Army • Warg War One - Kingslayer a Secret Weapon? • Warg War One theories • Jaime Lannister’s Greatest Hits --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The Ask Sam hotline has been blowing up lately! Not like the Galaxy 7, no. In a good way! So Sam, along with a couple of producers from the Outside/In team, took a moment to answer your questions about tree killing, grass eating and the sound in the woods that scared the colonists away. And that's just to name a few. Somebody even gets a trail name out of this one.

This Episode’s Focus on Strengths This week Lisa speaks with Samantha Smith, who joins us to talk about what it's like to create an amazing culture at your company. She gives very specific examples of ideas you can implement, no matter what your current title is. Unlike our usual audio-only interviews, this one was onsite at the Jobs2Careers headquarters in Austin, Texas. You also get a bonus interview with Suong Luu. She gives the cultural overview from the employee perspective. Her first job out of college was with Jobs2Careers. She has already progressed through several roles from intern to marketing coordinator. And she has been able to experiment in functions from IT to marketing. Resources of the Episode If you go to the J2C homepage for job seekers you'll see roles in tons of industries, locations, and companies. Check out their careers page to explore their open positions inside of Jobs2Careers in Austin, TX. Keep in mind, even though they're a software company, their workforce is onsite in Central Texas. Working together in the same location is actually part of their secret-culture-sauce. Finally, if you're a hiring manager, you might be interested in the J2C For Employers page to check out their unique Pay Per Application model. Here's the live interview with Sam and Suong on camera.   Strengths Tools You'll also find lots of StrengthsFinder, leadership, and team tools on our Strengths Resources page. Subscribe To Lead Through Strengths To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from this website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published. Here's a Full Transcript of the Interview Lisa Cummings: [00:00:08] You’re listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you’ll apply your greatest strengths at work. I’m your host, Lisa Cummings, and I gotta tell you, whether you’re leading your team or leading yourself, it’s hard to find something more energizing and productive than using your natural talents every day at work. [00:00:27] And, just the other day I got a new idea for the show. I got in the mail this magazine that had the best places to work. And even though it’s an Austin, Texas publication, I’m thinking, “Oh, cool. Strengths and great company cultures and employee engagement, they’re all so intertwined so it’d be really cool to get some great ideas to share with listeners.” [00:00:50] And, you know, I was so disappointed. I opened this thing up and, as it describes each of these award-winning companies, it gives some bullet points on what they do to make their culture great. And do you know what the answers are? Oh, gosh, let me give you a sampling. Number one: generous retirement plan. Number two: charity involvement. Number three: rewards program. And number four of your sample: a health and wellness program. [00:01:19] Oh, my gosh, I was so bummed out when I read those, because I thought it would be full of inspiration and ideas, and although those bullet points are fine enough words, it’s just like when you see on a resume when someone says they’re a motivated team player. It’s like, “Well, yeah, that’s the same thing everyone else is saying. Give me something different. Give me something specific and inspirational.” It was lacking all of the telling details. And that led me to the idea of what the next couple of interviews are going to be about. [00:01:48] Today you’ll get one of several episodes I’ve recorded that gives you specific examples straight from leaders who have built an awesome company culture. There are so many direct ties between strengths and employee engagement on your team, so you’ll get this peak behind the curtain at workplace cultures that can give you an inspiration to come up with your own ideas that are riffing off of the one you’ll hear here. [00:02:14] The bulk of today’s interview was recorded on site at a company in Austin, Texas called Jobs2Careers. So you’ll hear us also refer to this company as J2C. Of course we’ll link J2C in the show notes so you can check them out all the way. [00:02:32] Now this show highlights Samantha Smith who runs their marketing team. And then in the next episode you’ll hear from their CEO and from their Head of HR. That way you’ll get specific examples that are unique from each angle inside of the business. And at the end of this episode, you’ll hear a recap about how Sam’s examples fit right into our RAMP model for nurturing team culture. [00:03:00] So as a quick teaser, the four RAMP factors to always be nurturing on your team are R relationship building, A accomplishment, M meaning and purpose, and P positive interactions. So RAMP makes it an easy acronym to think about your culture. [00:03:19] You’ll hear the tone of the audio change a bit as we move over because it was an onsite recording, so if you do want to see the full impact, with video, you can also watch this interview portion on the show notes page. Just go to LeadThroughStrengths/SamanthaSmith and it has everything except for that recap at the end. [00:03:38] So, with that, let’s jump over to the onsite interview. [00:03:43] We have Samantha Smith, you’ll hear me refer to her as Sam, and she runs their marketing team. And I thought it’d be fun to give you all of these different angles of people and different roles around the company because people start to say, “Oh, yeah. Culture, that’s an HR initiative,” or, “Culture has nothing to do with HR. That’s only what happens out in the business.” [00:04:07] So, no matter what side of that fence you’re on, you get to see lots of different angles at J2C. And I’ve been Jobs2Careers but J2C. Is that internally your name? Samantha Smith: [00:04:18] Internally that’s the slang. Lisa Cummings: [00:04:19] Yeah, that’s your slang. And you have to have team slang to have a team culture. Samantha Smith: [00:04:23] Yeah. Lisa Cummings: [00:04:24] So what’s your favorite thing about culture here? Samantha Smith: [00:04:26] I would say that we try and do things differently. We’re very opposed to, “Oh, we’ve always done it that way.” And one of the things I like is that Bruce (Ge), our CEO, and management team really want to hear what the employees have to say. I believe that Bruce’s philosophy would be that you hired good people and that the success of your company is mostly dependent on your team. [00:04:48] And one of the things that I like is Bruce does a CEO Circle program. And what that is, is every quarter he will give us a business challenge that he’s facing. It could be what to name a new product, or it could be how to brand us in a creative way, and it has to be easy to implement and inexpensive and solve a problem. [00:05:08] And every quarter somebody wins it. Three people, actually. And when you win it, you get to go to a family event with Bruce and his wife and two kids, you get a $1,000 bonus, and you get a chance to implement your program. And one of my favorite examples is our social ambassador program, and that was the answer to a question of, “How do we maintain our culture as we grow?” because we’ve just about doubled employee headcount year-over-year for the past four years. So how do you keep the culture of a small company when you get big? [00:05:41] And so the social ambassador program is run by one of our client success analysts, and basically when there’s a new person that starts, it’s you get a schedule to have lunch with a new person. So they get to have lunch with somebody from a different department every day so it’s not you’re just going to a lunch. Here’s there’s 80 people like that you don’t know exactly. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:01] It’s like high school again with a tray where you’re walking around going, “Where do I sit?” Samantha Smith: [00:06:06] Yeah, exactly. And so we don’t want anyone to feel that way, and we want them to know us, and we want engineers and marketing and sales and HR to all eat lunch together and not get too cliquey. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:16] Oh, I like. And when you first said it, I’m thinking, “Marketing,” I’m thinking, “Social,” as in social media, so I expected your answer to be about something to the external world. I love hearing that this is an internal, how you get to know each other and work with each other. Samantha Smith: [00:06:31] Definitely. One thing I thing is cool is that when I started with Jobs2Careers we had 40-some people, and now I think we’re 90 plus. And I think I still pretty much know everybody’s name, which I’ve worked with companies much smaller I can’t say that about. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:48] It says something about people really caring about each other and you can’t make somebody care about each other. What are the things that happen here that allow that environment to happen? Because I could certainly see that in a room of essentially every employee, there are really deep relationships that you can tell it’s different from those who, “Oh, that’s that guy in accounting who I don’t know.” Now how does that happen here? Samantha Smith: [00:07:14] It does feel different than other places, and I’ve thought about why. And I think a big factor is that we all eat together every day, and every afternoon at 3:30 we have tea time which is a 20-minute break to not let your blood sugar dip too much, and you have to mingle outside if it’s nice with people in other departments. [00:07:33] And so we really all do know a lot about each other and that helps when you need to ask for someone’s assistance with something, or somebody comes to you. And it also helps that we know what everybody does because sometimes we’ll talk about work at lunch and people know what everyone’s role is. It’s never like, “Oh, I don’t know who you are. What do you do?” That doesn’t really happen. Lisa Cummings: [00:07:54] “That’s just that lady with brown hair over there. I’ve seen her around but I have no idea.” Samantha Smith: [00:07:57] Right. Lisa Cummings: [00:07:58] Right. So when you were talking about the CEO Circle – did I get the terminology right? Samantha Smith: [00:08:02] Yes. Lisa Cummings: [00:08:03] Okay. You mentioned the brand as one of the examples of maybe how you bring the brand to life. I looked that there were constraints in it too. It’s cheap to implement those sorts of things, that’s cool. That made me think about branding and how many companies I work with are trying – I’m sure listeners are feeling this way – “Oh, we want to have an employment brand. We want to be known for something to candidates. We want to be an employer of choice. We want to be a place that people want to come work.” [00:08:31] Then there’s the other side of branding that the typical marketing person would be focused on – your company brand and the brand personality traits. They seem very aligned here. So how does that all come together from your perspective? Samantha Smith: [00:08:42] Well, our mission statement is, “Innovating the way employers effectively find talent, and the talent effectively find employers.” So, we’re helping both sides of the coin there. And there’s the key word of innovating, which is that we want to do employee branding differently and we also want to do searching for a job and hiring differently. [00:09:03] This company is only five years old, so it’s not a legacy brand that you have to give a facelift to. We could start something new and it wouldn’t affect any existing business. And even, for a simple example, expense reports, they’re really easy to do. We’ve got software to do them. It’s not a lot of cutting and pasting and it works quickly, and that’s just an example of something that doesn’t get bogged down in red tape. Lisa Cummings: [00:09:30] And if you’re going to make simplicity a key part of your mission statement you want to live it out and model in everything you do, and you really do it. Samantha Smith: [00:09:38] There is efficiency all the time. Even as simple as dishes are piling up next to the sink. Let’s put a basket there if the dishwasher is full. And it sounds silly but in a big office little things like that help. Lisa Cummings: [00:09:53] And I would imagine they would start to be the small things that create a culture because just like when you walk into a public restroom and you see trash all over the place, similarly if you start to see dishes all over the place then people don’t care about the space as much. And so coming up with solutions for things and being efficient and being simple, it does feel like it’s really built into what you do here. Samantha Smith: [00:10:16] It does. Lisa Cummings: [00:10:17] Another thing we’ve talked about outside of the interview is perks. Let’s actually talk about some of the perks you actually have, because this is a typical go-to for culture. People go, “Okay, it’s a tech company. Let’s make some cool company perks. Those do attract people, and it has to go beyond that.” So talk a little bit about what perks you do have. You’ve mentioned lunch every day. Samantha Smith: [00:10:40] Yeah, that’s pretty good. Lisa Cummings: [00:10:41] And tea time is pretty cool. What else, and then how do you go beyond that? Samantha Smith: [00:10:46] Well, we have everything we need here. We have lunch, we have tea time, we have coffee. Its purpose is to make us work more efficiently. So we have everything we need, and we don’t want for anything here. But I would say that beyond the perks, there’s the cultural perks too, like to always learn and to try new ideas and to communicate. [00:11:08] And one of my favorite things that Bruce says is to allow for interruptions. And so what that means to me is like a C-level officer, you can just go in her office and ask them something. And if somebody comes to you, it’s sort of the same expectation. So really being transparent, I think that says a lot about our culture beyond, you know, we have a ping pong table and we have a beautiful office space in the hill country, and we see rainbows out there. Lisa Cummings: [00:11:37] That’s a great view. Samantha Smith: [00:11:38] Yeah, and we grill steaks out there sometimes. And there’s these moments like, “Well, this is…” Lisa Cummings: [00:11:43] Like every Friday? Samantha Smith: [00:11:44] Yeah, mainly. And so there’s these moments, like, “Well, we’re really well taken care of.” But I think the part that I feel luckiest about, is that I work with such a smart group of people. I mean, the process is rigorous to be hired here, but it’s worth it because there are no weak links, and it’s really amazing to work that way. Lisa Cummings: [00:12:05] That makes a big difference in culture. Let’s end there with a little more specific look at people and how they come into the role that they’re doing, and even how work is assigned? So something I noticed, for example, working with Callie that she’s just so energetic. It seems like everybody I interact with, they love what they do. [00:12:28] And it’s not just I want to make the cliché comment about passion because I feel like there’s a lot of explanation that needs to happen beyond that, but the energy that people bring. What happens from you being a people manager when you’re trying to imagine, “How do I take this person, know their skills and interests, and align them to what puts them at their best so that kind of energy connection show up at work?” Because it’s showing up all over the building. Samantha Smith: [00:12:54] Well, one thing that’s neat about how fast we’re growing is it gives you room to change your job. For instance, we had an account executive who became a sales manager, who then became a sales operations manager; we’ve had people transfer departments. And so because we’re growing so quickly, these new avenues open up, and if you really jump on them and own them, then you can have that and then somebody else will do the other part. [00:13:20] So everyone is passionate because you’ve kind of get to choose your job to a certain extent. There’s always support from management, but there’s not necessarily, “Okay, this is what you need to do every day.” So when I started my job nobody told me, “Okay, so for marketing materials, we’re going to focus on doing case studies, and doing content marketing, and get our blog redesigned.” No one told me that. It’s just you see a need and you go for it and then you see that there’s value to it. If you go into your manager’s office and have an idea that’s going to bring value, they’ll let you do it. Lisa Cummings: [00:13:52] Yeah, I love it. We have a lot of listeners who are at tech companies and that’s an environment they’ll be able to really touch and feel. And then, I also have a lot of listeners who work for big companies and add maybe a couple or a few zeroes to the headcount. If, for that person, just to go out on an idea of what could they do so it’s going to feel more bureaucratic, a little less able to just say, “Oh, my gosh, I can craft my job”? What advice would you give for somebody who’s a manager at a company where they’re a little more mature in the business so things don’t change as fast and they’re trying to blaze a trail as a manager and create their own team culture? Samantha Smith: [00:14:34] I would say don’t underestimate the power of going out once a quarter for a department event. We just did that recently with marketing. We did a “Build your own terrarium,” which is a thing in Austin, and there were about 12 of us, and we built our own little plants in this jar. And we thought, “What an interesting idea, what’s that going to be like.” And it was so fun. [00:14:55] But that something that simple which just shows you care about getting people outside the office, and I think that really says it all, it’s just that you value somebody more than what they’re producing. One of, I think, the best benefits at Jobs2Careers is management training. It started with our CEO Bruce doing a management training session every two weeks and, of course, that’s how we met you. We have guest speakers once a month. [00:15:20] And there’s something about being in a room with all of your colleagues, during company time, where that’s an hour and a half or two hours where you’re not producing work for the company. There’s something about feeling that value that’s very flattering and very motivating. Lisa Cummings: [00:15:35] It really intrigued me. It’s the only company that I worked for where they call it management training. You use that terminology because you hear that, and any other company that means people managers only, and it gets referenced a lot by employees, by managers, and it really is like the personal leadership development that everybody here wants for everybody else. I love the tone that it sets, and it says, “This is an exclusive way of thinking. This is how we can all grow the company together.” Samantha Smith: [00:16:08] I think Bruce sees everybody as future managers. Lisa Cummings: [00:16:11] That’s a beautiful way of seeing people’s capabilities and then letting those programs start to bring that on people. Samantha Smith: [00:16:19] Definitely. Lisa Cummings: [00:16:20] Sam Smith, thank you for the backstage pass. Yes. So to all of you listeners, gosh, wasn’t it great for inspiring ideas that you can use at your company? I promised you a recap to align the interview to the RAMP model, so you can apply Sam’s examples to your company. So let’s jump into that. [00:16:43] First, the R in RAMP is for relationships. So her first example under the relationship category is her social ambassador program. So when you’re onboarding new employees, formally link them up with someone else from the company, so that there’s a comfortable lunch buddy, some built-in networking right from the very first day. So get inspired from her idea, and think about what your version of the company welcome wagon can be. [00:17:09] Now in another example, Sam mentioned hiring great people through a rigorous process so there are no weak links in the cultural fit. So find people who will love working at your company. So to apply this in your workplace specifically, be sure you spend as much time on cultural fit, and values fit, as you do on matching their past experiences and their past skills with the role. So usually people obsess over a candidate’s background during the hiring process, yet you can actually make a huge impact on your team culture if you’ll also obsess about the interpersonal fit. [00:17:50] All right. Next in the RAMP model we have A for accomplishment. So Sam told us about their CEO Circle Awards. That was a great example you could apply at your company by creating a competition for people to come up with an idea that solves a specific business challenge. I love the business relevance of this idea. So J2C gives a monetary award, and a social event out with the CEO, and the ability to actually implement their idea. So, of course, you can come up with your own awards, make them big or small, make them work for you, but that notion of the CEO Circle award is a great one. [00:18:27] Another example she gave under accomplishment is their monthly management training. So, for them, it’s open to every single employee. I had a great time being part of a delivery team offering this training to their employees and it was highly attended. They want to show that everybody can be a leader, and there’s a dedication there to nurturing that potential and helping people accomplish their big career goals. [00:18:50] So if you think about your company, you might already have an existing leadership development program that you can just open up to a wider audience as a way to show team members that they have the opportunity to make a big impact, regardless of what their current job title is. If you don’t have the budget or an existing program, you could even setup some sort of panel interviews where you take internal executives and team members who have success stories and case studies so that you can offer some level of inspiration around that future that they might have at your company. [00:19:28] So we’ve covered R for relationships, A for accomplishment, and now we’re at M for meaning and purpose. Sam’s first example was about simplicity and innovation being part of their company mission. So they live it out in the smallest daily actions and I thought that was great, how connected the big picture and the small picture were. She even mentioned things down to the detail of the basket that would contain messy dishes, or the streamlining of expense report processes so they could live it out. [00:20:01] So to implement this at your company, think about your mission statement or your vision statement. Then, challenge each person on the team to find one small process; I’m talking tiny. One small process or workflow that seems out of alignment with your mission or vision. Keep it super small so the changes isn’t daunting, it doesn’t require approvals and it doesn’t get all bogged down. And then get it aligned so that you’re modeling your mission through just the tiniest daily actions. [00:20:31] In her other example on meaning and purpose, I’m thinking she made everyone listening drool. Maybe you feel a little jealous about the fact that at J2C the job that you’re hired to do isn’t necessarily your job for long because if you have an idea, and it’s really using your strengths, you can contribute that to the company, then you can shape your job to make the most of your talents. [00:20:51] Well, I know not every corporate culture is that flexible, yet apply her idea at work by thinking of a task, or a responsibility, that you’ve really been drawn to, you’ve really been interested in or you thought, “Oh, I would like to try that out. I’d love to spend time doing that.” And then apply that interest by spotting a need in your actual business and filling that need. [00:21:13] So if you can solve a business problem while you’re also in your zone of genius, I’m talking your personal zone of genius, then you’ll become known for the thing you love working on. So even if it’s an act of voluntarism and it’s an extra duty you’re taking on, what a great thing to build a personal brand around the things you love doing because then they’ll become the core of your job. Even in the most rigid of workplaces I’ve found that people can shape their jobs this way over the long term. [00:21:44] Finally, in the RAMP model, we have P for positive interactions. You know, Sam said it so beautifully, that notion that if you value people more than the work product, value people more than the product, it will make the work product shine while people are also feeling valued for their contribution, so you actually get both by focusing through the people. [00:22:09] In her first example she talked about the value of communication. Now they live out their version of communication by just being so transparent and open that you can even interrupt a senior officer at the company just like you do to your buddy in the cube next to you. So, to apply these concepts to your company, think about behaviors or traditions that highlight the hierarchy in your organization, the things that build walls between people. Yes, I know this sounds like opposite world, and it is, because you’re going to do something that tears down those walls. [00:22:39] So, for example, if you’re a VP with a reserved parking spot, give it to the winner of your new CEO Circle Award for a month. Or if you usually only have one-on-ones with your direct reports, go on a listening tour by holding one-on-ones with every person in your department. It doesn’t cost money, it’s just time and interest and what makes them great. Just go out of your way to connect at a human level. You don’t even have to be a manager to do this. [00:23:05] So, for example, if you’re a marketing coordinator and you have a new intern on the team, offer your mentorship. Do something that makes the line of communication seem very open and natural regardless of level. [00:23:17] Now, other examples of positive interactions were just plain sprinkled all over the interview. You heard her talk about the “build your own terrarium day” in Austin. I’m sure those are around, lots of interesting ways to do team building. You heard how they eat lunch together every day. You heard about how they break at 3:00 p.m. for tea time. And this consistent interaction with different people around the company helps them know a lot about what makes the other person tick. That gets them business results because it makes it easier to collaborate when they actually need things from each other. [00:23:54] So, now, think about your team. Can you add a Taco Monday like Jobs2Careers? Will your team take plank breaks? Yeah, like workout planks. This is something else I learned about J2C later, that their customer support team does planks together so to get an energizer. So pick something that’s small and easy to start with, just something that does break the typical pattern of interaction even if it’s three minutes a day, just something that feels like it really jives with the groove of your team. [00:24:24] Okay, so with that, you’re off to the races. Now you have at least 10 inspirations for how you can use the idea of RAMP, relationship, accomplishment, meaning or positive interaction on your team. Just pick one. Do one thing this week to nurture your culture. And this is in perfect alignment with building a strengths-based culture or a strengths-focused team. If you’re noticing what works, you’re going to get more of what works. [00:24:56] So, like what we always say, using your strengths makes you a stronger performer at work. If you’re putting a lopsided focus on fixing your weaknesses, you’re choosing the path of most resistance. So claim your new work culture and share that positive result with the world.

GPF discusses what the novels-turned-hit-TV show tell us about geopolitics and apply GPF's methodology to the Game of Thrones universe. Read "The Geopolitics of Ice and Fire" here: hubs.ly/H06X1KN0 TRANSCRIPT: JS: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Geopolitical Futures Podcast. I am joined today by our marketing director, Sam Dube. Welcome, Sam. SD: Welcome, thank you for having me. JS: So we are doing something a little bit different for today. This will be publishing on April Fools' and it's going to accompany a special edition piece that we're doing for April Fools' on “Game of Thrones,” which has turned into a hit HBO series. Before it was an HBO series, it was a series of fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin. I know that some of our listeners will be completely uninterested in this, and for that, I apologize and you can just tune in next week for our regular turn at geopolitics. But I actually think that “Game of Thrones” itself is an interesting laboratory for thinking about geopolitics, and I think that the level of interest that it has spawned, particularly in the United States, but not just in the United States, is also interesting to talk about from a geopolitical perspective. And since it was April Fools', we wanted to have a little fun, so that's what we're going to do today. And Sam is joining me because she is a real fan and she is a true fan. She's been reading all the books for a long time. I am just somebody who has come a little late to the party and has been watching the television show. So Sam, thank you for lending us your expertise. I want to jump right into it, and people can read the piece that we wrote and stuff like that. But what I want to start off with rather than the actual content of “Game of Thrones” itself is a discussion of why you like it and why you think people are so drawn to it. I have my own answer, but maybe you can start us off by explaining to the audience why this is something that you gravitated to. SD: Well sure. I've always been a fan of fantasy and in general those sorts of novels. I am also a big reader, so having something with a lot to sink my teeth into was really attractive. But what really kept me into the novels is the number of characters that there are, how dynamic they are and how they change over time. Normally with a novel or with a TV show, there's one main character and you kind of follow them all the way through and you get one perspective. But this is such a multi-person perspective that your emotional reaction to the show changes as they want you to change by following different character's stories, having them meet different situations. It just really draws you in because there's so much going on, and you can adjust your reaction to different people and see the same situation from many different angles. JS: It's funny, so would you say then that for you it's more about the books, or is it more about the show itself? SD: Well, now that there's no more books coming before the shows, I would say now it's about the show. When he was releasing the books ahead of time, it was more about the books for me. Although I won't lie, I really do enjoy watching the shows quite a bit. JS: Well, and also I mean I guess I would ask you as someone who has been reading the books and following George R.R. Martin for a long time, a lot has been made about the current and domestic political overtones of some of his work. So when Daenerys gets stuck in Meereen, for example, people have described that as very similar to the second Iraq War, or the political statement about the United States being stuck in the Iraq War in particular, or in the Middle East in general. Is that something you line up with or do you think it's more abstract than that? SD: I don't know. I think so many of these themes were in play. I am really not sure about that. I haven't seen that myself and I haven't given that much thought. Usually when I am escaping into that, I am escaping into the fantasy of it and to tune everything else out. But I mean I could see it thinking back on many of the things that have happened. I can certainly see, you know, themes or thematically things that have happened in history kind of reappearing in the Westeros landscape. JS: Speaking as somebody who really wasn't into the books that much but is more into the TV show, but I am also somebody who is generally a fan of these types of things myself, and I have been asking myself why I am interested in these things and why I read these books. This is true of fantasy, it goes on down with “Lord of the Rings,” it goes on down to “The Chronicles of Narnia.” I would even extend it to science fiction. “Dune” is one of my favorite novels. Our founder, George Friedman, in our weekly reading lists will throw a science fiction novel in there every once in a while, and he explains why it's a really interesting way of thinking about the world. But one thing that's really struck me thinking about “Game of Thrones” in general, but also just the general trend towards blockbuster superhero movies and huge franchises and fantasy novels and splitting seasons into multiple things. I mean “Harry Potter,” they had seven books, but we're going to make nine different movies and a play and all this other stuff. I think part of the reason for that, and I am playing a little bit of armchair psychologist here, but I hope people will forgive me, because I think what I am going to say is actually a bit true, which is that, I think that we live in this time of fake news, and we live in this time of spin, and we live in this time of people really aren't sure what's going on. There's not a lot of clarity about what's going on in the world. During the Cold War, for both sides, whether you were in the Soviet Union or you were in the United States, there was a defined enemy, there was a defined conflict. You sort of knew what was happening in the world as a way to orient yourself. When people look back at the history of World War II, even World War I, it's very easy to sort of identify, OK, well this was the good side and this was the bad side, and this was my country's or my family's or my particular tribe's tie to that particular conflict. I don't think we live in a world that's like that anymore. It's become less clear what's going on in the world when we see these multinational institutions degrading and we see that there isn't just one conflict. The U.S. wars in the Middle East and with radical Islam is a really good example. Our founder, George Friedman, writes about this all the time. Most Muslims aren't blowing things up or aren't committing terrorist attacks in London. But some Muslims are, and it's impossible to separate those two things from each other. So you can't deny that you are in a war with radical Islam or with Islam itself, but then you also don't want that to make it such that every single Muslim you see you want to ascribe some kind of hateful feeling to. So for me, that's a really long way of saying, I think people, and when I say people, I am really talking about myself here, I gravitate towards “Game of Thrones” because it is a story that tells me something about good and evil. It is something I can sink my teeth into. And I think the thing that is particularly unique about “Game of Thrones” from that point of view, and what I argue in this piece would make it geopolitical, is that it's not clear, right? All of the different sides have some good things and some bad things, and there's very, very few sides that are actually just completely evil, who are horrible, who you can't relate to or understand at all. I think this gets back to your point, because when you are talking about your attachment to it, you are talking about the characters and the different narratives and stories, and for me as an analyst who spends a lot of time doing empathetic analysis of other countries, and especially other political leaders, I relate to that, because that's a lot of my job. A lot of my job is to put myself into the mindset of another person or another leader and try and see the constraints that are around them and see the things that they must do and then use that to analyze geopolitics. And I think that's something as a watcher of “Game of Thrones” that people have to do. As somebody who is a huge fan of this, does that sound sacrilegious to you, Sam, or do you feel like that gets along with the ethos of the general fandom of it? SD: I think that goes along with it well. When you were talking about the Middle East and the conflict going on there, and how we approach that and how it's not really clear who's the good guy and who's the bad guy, you can't lump them all together. I actually thought of Tyrion Lannister and Jamie Lannister and all of the Lannisters, and how evil they seem from the outside, and how evil Tywin was, and how evil Cersei is. I don't think that's changed much. But then you look at Tyrion Lannister, who's good pretty much for the start. He's a really snarky smart-ass, but he's really very smart. And you look at Jamie Lannister, who's gone from a king slayer to kind of almost an anti-hero. All those distinctions, good vs. evil, kind of get muddied in that. And then you look at the people who really are so good, like Ned Stark, who's almost a martyr, and he doesn't get anywhere with it. He's a perfect example of nice guys really do finish last – or headless. So, I think “Game of Thrones” does allow us to have that, you know that view of a world that's as muddy and as hard to understand as our own, but with characters who are as easy to understand as our own political leaders. I mean we have a pulse on what these characters are that are running these various things, and whether or not we argue that the leader of any particular country is very important at any given moment is kind of a separate debate. But in “Game of Thrones” you get that. It's real life. You get these strong political leaders, you can understand their personalities, you can understand their priorities, their backstory, but in this case, I am kind of using the families as political entities, which kind of works for “Game of Thrones,” kind of doesn't, because they shift so frequently. But it's hard to tell if one house is all good or all bad based on the people who make it up. JS: I think that's a really good point. It actually helps segue into a discussion of “Game of Thrones” itself, because you are right “Game of Thrones” doesn't really line up into our world in the sense that there aren't nations. I make this point in the April Fools' piece that we wrote. There really is no nationalism in “Game of Thrones.” There is no sense of national identity. Everything is really feudalistic. One of the things that I realized, and you know just a full confession, I wrote that piece around Christmas time when I was in my grandmother's house, and I had some time away from work, and I was just trying to relax. For fun, I was reading the first volume of Winston Churchill's “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.” When Churchill is writing that first volume of “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,” he goes through the way that the monarchy eventually emerges in England, and I was really, really struck by the way he described the transition from feudalism to monarchy and the differences between Britain and between the country in that regard. It really struck me that one of the things that Martin was really playing with was Europe. It's funny that United States has become so obsessed with “Game of Thrones.” And “Game of Thrones,” it's really a worldwide phenomenon. I travel a lot for work. I am in Budapest right now, actually. I find that a lot of people in the world have watched “Game of Thrones,” and know these strange words in English just because they were used in “Game of Thrones” and will talk to me about “Game of Thrones.” It becomes a point of common conversation. One of the things to me that is strange about that, in the United States I think people don't realize that the world that Martin is describing really is very similar to the Medieval or the Middle Ages in Europe. He's talking about a time where there's feudalism, there's monarchy. Religion still plays a great role and has a great deal of power throughout the “Game of Thrones” universe. And he's talking about the intersection of all these things. And for me one of the greater themes in “Game of Thrones” is the collapse of all these things. So the houses themselves are not nations, but you can see in them, in the fact that you know the houses become tied to particular geographies, you can sort of see the beginnings of what a nation might look like, even with the accents and the different faiths and different ethnicities that are attached with each region. So I think one of the reasons that America doesn't even realize that the show is so popular in other places around the world is that it really does, on a certain level, speak to a European audience. Sam, I was talking to you before, and one of the things that you wanted to touch on was the role of magic in “Game of Thrones.” And I think that for people who normally read our stuff, and people who normally are interested in international politics, magic is probably one of the things that turns them off the most about fantasy. You are either a person who likes magic and fantasy or you are a person who's like, you know what, give me the real world stuff, this is a load of garbage, I want to go learn about current things. But you had some interesting things to say about what magic actually represents in the universe. How about you tell me a little about that. SD: Sure. One of the things in the piece that you wrote for this is, you liken dragons to a technology that Valyrians had that allowed them to kind of take over and really dominate the whole world, and later the Targaryens once the Valyrians were wiped out. And I would say although it is fantasy, and I mean yeah, dragons are cool to talk about and of course they are completely unrealistic, there is something in the real world that we can liken magic to and that would be, hold on for this one, it's a microchip. So microchip is a new technology that really changed the world and it really revolutionized a lot of new technologies. I mean it's the grandfather of what I am talking on right now. Likewise, magic was that for the Valeyrians when they went and found the dragons, they just found them slumbering in a bunch of volcanoes. They just went and found them and they were like, oh we can train these dragons. Let's figure out some magic to do it. And it was that magic, it was them developing the magic or having the magic to be able to train those beasts, that allowed them to kind of turn dragons into the technology that made them great. I mean in addition to that, they also created some amazing roadways and Valyrian steel swords, which no one else has been able to match. So their true competitive advantage in the world was that technology, that magic which allowed them to tame things such as dragons which isn't that unlike computers, microchips, laser-guided missiles, all that stuff couldn't exist without the microchip. And all the things that the Valyrians, and later the Targaryens who came from the Valyrians, did to take over and to really force their way out into the world came from that one central thing, the magic that they were able to conjure that other groups of people in Westeros couldn't conquer. JS: It's interesting. I didn't think of this until you just said it just now, but for me, I always thought of the dragons as sort of the equivalent of a nuclear weapon. You know, like a weapon of mass destruction that makes one side completely invincible and makes other people bend to your will. But what you brought up about this, and this betrays that I watch the show and don't read the books, but you said that they found the dragons in a cave somewhere, and for me that immediately goes to the Comanche Indians on the American Continent before the United States has sort of moved out and added Texas and all these other colonial holdings. Because at the time in the West, there were a bunch of different Native American groups, and the Comanche were not the most dominant. What happened was the Comanche discovered the horse, and the Comanche interacted with the horse in a way that none of the other Native American tribes did, and they became the greatest cavalry archers that North America had ever seen and terrorized the Spanish to the point that the Spanish invited American settlers into Texas because they wanted some kind of buffer zone between the Spanish colonies and these Comanche Indians. And the Comanches ended up ruling a wide swath of the West, until eventually the Americans invented the six shooter, the Colt .45, and were able to develop the types of weapons that could neutralize them. But it's funny, it just occurs to me that that's another level in which the technology thing counts. SD: Yeah, imagine if Cersei can come up with a Colt .45 to get rid of those dragons? I don't know what that would look like. JS: Yeah. I'll throw another hard question at you, because I think the dragons are easy to explain in terms of technology. You can think in a religious world if somebody was making a myth that, OK, a weapon of mass destruction or some awesome weapon could totally be represented as a dragon mythically. What about the army of the dead? So you know we've got Daenerys Targaryen is coming back to Westeros with her dragons to conquer, which she sees as rightfully hers, but the other thing that is happening, and it's really going to pick up this season I think, is that this army of the dead, of these zombies, is marching from the north and is about to try and cross over this magic wall that's separating from the rest of Westeros. And they seem completely invincible. We know that they can be killed probably by dragon fire. I haven't confirmed that, but I feel like that seems like an obvious one. Or Valyrian steel, which you mentioned earlier. But when you are thinking about technology and you are thinking about realism, and I think Martin really is a realistic writer, how do you explain the army of the dead? What do you think is the closest analogy to that? SD: Well they're just technology gone wrong. If the dragons are technology gone right, which I think a lot of people would argue they weren't technology gone right, depends on what side you are on, so is the army of the dead. The army of the dead were created by the children of the forest when the First Men first invaded Westeros. Before any men went into Westeros, there was children of the forest, there were giants, there were other magical creatures. They were all over there having a grand old time, and then these First Men with their big swords of bronze and their armor came in, and this peaceful community wasn't ready for it. So they couldn't fight them, they just kept being dominated, dominated, dominated. So they created this army of the dead. They created that with magic. Now the problem with any technology is if you create something that big and that serious, you better be able to control it. I mean, liken it to a virus. Some kid in a classroom somewhere is playing around and sets off a virus that infects 20 million computers. He might have meant to do that. He might have just been screwing around with his computer with a virus program. But once it's out, it's out. And this is kind of like that technology. They use magic to turn a dead person into the first person in this army of the dead, and then it spreads because like a virus, they kind of self-create like create more of themselves. So that's how I would liken it to in terms of technology. JS: I hadn't thought of it that way. That's interesting. Another thing I would ask you, Sam, and it's been fun for me because we're a small team at Geopolitical Futures and we all work on basically all our pieces together. It's really a communal effort every piece that comes out. But, you know, you are a marketing director, and I am over here in analysis, and sometimes we don't get to talk as much about analysis, but this was a case where I think going into this you actually knew more than I did and we got to collaborate a little bit. One of the things you said to me was that you had never thought of the series from the point of view of geography in the way we sort of laid it out. So can you talk a little bit about as a fan of “Game of Thrones,” what it was sort of like to read through it, approach this way with this particular methodology, and whether you were skeptical it was going to work at first and whether you think it did? SD: I wasn't really skeptical of it. I was wondering how it was going to be different, because there's so much fan fiction out there. And I think the geographic approach that you took was really clever because you watch “Game of Thrones” and you don't really have a view of where these things are in your head. Like, where is King's Landing, where is The Reach, you know like where are all these things in relation to each other and it's just a concept you can't really grasp. So the fact that you created this analysis that actually has a map that shows it against Europe so you get a real idea of how far these things are from each other. Everything just makes a little bit more sense. I can see the path that the Valryians took when they were beginning to take over the world after they found their dragons. I can see the little island that the Targaryens went to when one of the children of a Targaryen leader had a vision that Valyria was going to be destroyed. I can even see the destruction on the new map of Valryia because they refer to it as a peninsula. It's not a peninsula. It's a series of islands. I can even see the path that the Valryians took up that push the Andals over into Westeros when they first invaded thousands of years before the television show happened. So it puts a completely different perspective on it all that makes it, I mean it's not real, it's obviously not real, but it makes it feel a little more real, feel a little more subjective and like something that you could actually step into because this is a real world. This is a real physical place and not just some abstract concept in my head. I really liked the fact that it pulls together a real understanding of the world that these people live in. I mean, you can say this army moved from point A to point B, but without seeing it on a map you really have no concept of that. And I think this analysis does a great job of putting that perspective into place. And I never had that before. It was really nice to see that. JS: I appreciate you saying that, and for me, also it drives home one of the things that I think makes “Game of Thrones” really interesting, and for me valuable as a resource. It's not just something I do to burn off time. For me, it's intellectually engaging on a certain level, and this is true of a lot of different fiction. I am a self-confessed nerd and I've already said some of the things that I've read. But I don't know that Martin worked it this way, but it seems to me that Martin must've started with a map and started writing his story after the map. I think the same thing about “Dune,” which is a story about a desert planet where geography plays a huge role. Something like “The Chronicles of Narnia” is very clearly to me about faith. It's very clearly to me about C.S. Lewis' interaction with faith and him dealing with that. “Lord of the Rings” is another one that always gets lopped into this stuff and that has something to do with faith, but Tolkien was a linguist at the end of the day, and he is famous for saying that the first thing that began the whole “Lord of the Rings” saga was he invented a language. And then came all the maps and the geography and all of this other stuff. So for me, approaching “Game of Thrones” for somebody who does geopolitics for a living, I think one of the reasons I gravitate towards “Game of Thrones” as much as I do is because it really is about a map. And I really do think that you can explain things through geography. And one of the things I am really curious about, and one of the reasons I indulged myself in this little exercise while I was on vacation to write this was that I really think this is an interesting laboratory for thinking about geopolitics. I think of “Game of Thrones” and George R.R. Martin in general as a very a realistic take on what politics looks like at a certain level and the way that people betray each other and make alliances and all these other things, and I am curious just how far it goes. I have a great deal of faith in the model that we use at Geopolitical Futures. It's been very good at predicting a lot of events. And for me it's kind of a litmus test, like just how realistic is George R.R. Martin going to be. Is it going to turn out to be just a fantasy series and something incredibly crazy that nobody could have predicted is going to happen, or can I use the same tools that I used to predict global geopolitics and think about this universe that Martin has created, which I think is much more realistic and much more based on geography than most of these types of universes are, and can I say something intelligent about what the future of this universe is going to be. So that's one of the reasons that I've sort of let myself go into that. But when you think about “Game of Thrones,” you think about other things that you've read. Harry Potter is another one in there. I don't know exactly what the genesis was for that in J.K. Rowling's mind, but do you think that Martin really was centered in geography, or do you think there's something else going on there that I am missing? SD: I feel like he couldn't have written it the way he did if he wasn't aware of the geography. I mean when you come at it from the story's angle and then you look at the geography of it, it has to be geographic based. It is too well written to the map to not have had that in his head. It would be too coincidental that the way all of these people moved over time with their geography, there's too many coincidences for him not to have done that on purpose. However, I do think that he is a huge fan of throwing curveballs, things that you don't expect and figures that people who have a lot of ability to change the scene of the world. There's no way to know for sure whether or not Cersei will come up with that Colt .45 that can kill these dragons or, it probably won't be Cersei, but there's no way to know that Aegon Targaryen isn't going to come back theoretically from the dead and claim his throne, and all of the sudden you have three dragons and three Targaryens. Like, who knows what is going to happen with that stuff. So I think he will create twists within the constraints of geopolitics, but I do think it's hard to predict just because he just really likes those twists. But I do think he will keep it constrained by the geography of the world he's created. JS: Well, thanks Sam. For our listeners, I hope you've enjoyed this. This was a little bit different than we normally do and we always appreciate your feedback. But if you liked this, we'd love to hear back from you with comments at www.geopoliticalfutures.com. If you didn't like it, we'd also love to hear from you, too. Don't worry, I promise we are not going to become a “Game of Thrones” website that is cataloging it all the time, and this was a special occasion for April Fools', and we thought we'd just try it. But so as always, appreciate your feedback. I am Jacob Shapiro, I am the director of analysis, this was Sam Dube, who is our marketing director, and we will see you next week for some more podcasting about geopolitics. Thanks.

Sam Barros came to the US to pursue a mechanical engineering degree at Michigan Tech University. During college, Sam interned at a nuclear power plant as a system engineer and loved the idea of working at a large engineering firm. But, when Sam graduate, he went a completely different direction. He moved to California and worked as a special effects engineer doing high-voltage special effects. One day, Sam got a random phone call from a very prominent businessman, Nermal Mouliea, who proposed that Sam come work for him on a new fuel efficiency project. Sam did a little research to find out if this was the real deal, and it turned out to be true. So Sam packed up his stuff and headed to New Jersey to head the project. The idea was to spray water directly into the combustion chamber to reduce heat losses within the engine. While the idea is similar to water/methanol injection of many forced induction applications, this idea took it to the next level and very accurately injected fine water particles into the cylinder. They were able to achieve 25% increase in fuel efficiency with this system. While this was an excellent result, the problem was implementation. It is very difficult to modify an existing engine and even more difficult to get an OEM manufacturer to implement it in a new engine. So, they took this technology and applied it to fuel injectors. While the OEM’s were coming out with Direct Injection (DI) engines, the aftermarket had not been able to keep up. They now manufacture and modify injectors for many engines to supply the aftermarket customers looking for more power in their DI engines. EFI University is teaching a class on DI tuning using Nostrum Energy’s Cadillac featuring their injectors. They work with companies such as Lingenfelter who provides a larger high pressure fuel pump for many applications. In addition to the DI applications, Nostrum Energy also manufactures their own Port Injection (PI) injectors. They are unique by integrating a divorced spray pattern to inject fuel directly down each port.

What follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Sam Hammond. Petersen: My guest today is Sam Hammond. He's a policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. Sam, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Hammond: Hi! Petersen: Our topic today is supersonic air travel. Sam has written an article titled "Make America Boom Again" along with co-author Eli Dourado which revisits the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's ban on supersonic flight over the United States. So Sam let's start at the very start. Let's start by talking about the history of flight. How do we get from the Wright brothers to supersonic flight? Hammond: Well I think the most notable thing about the early history of aviation is how quickly and how rapidly we innovated. So the Wright brothers flew their initial voyage, their milestone flight in 1903 at seven miles per hour and within forty years we were already breaking the speed of sound. And actually very shortly after that not only were we breaking the speed of sound within military jets but we were on the cusp of commercializing it through the Concorde. So, what characterizes the early history of aviation is really rapid innovation. Part of that was driven by obviously two world wars but also that trickled out and percolated into the commercial space. That brings us to today. So in the progress that we made in air speeds in the first say 40 to 50 years of manned flight, we've actually regressed since then. Petersen: Okay, so the Concorde starts flying in I believe it's 1969 and the subject of your paper---the ban brought in by the F.A.A. on supersonic travel over the United States---comes in just four years later in 1973. So what happened in that four-year period? How did we go from rapidly advancing to banning what was at the time the latest technology? Hammond: It really began in the 60's. Everyone was seeing the progress that was being made in supersonic aircraft. And it was widely appreciated that it was only a matter of time before it would be commercialized. And there was actually a bit of a race going on between European countries and America of who would develop the first and the best supersonic jet. Because at the time, you know, this is way before Reagan deregulated the airlines. So these were the national projects almost akin to the space race. So in the 60's the F.A.A. and NASA began investigating whether supersonic airplanes could fly overland, because obviously they had them already in the form of military jets. And so they conducted a number of tests. One of the most important and famous tests was the test over Oklahoma City. So in 1964 the F.A.A. began a test over Oklahoma City where supersonic jets---military jets---would fly over the city eight times per day for six months continuously. And these were just regular old military jets, nothing about them was designed to mitigate the sonic boom. So eight times a day people in Oklahoma were hearing the sonic boom. It was rattling their windows. And at the end of it---at the end of the six-month period---even though about 75% of the people they asked said that they could tolerate the booms indefinitely, there were tens of thousands of complaints. And that's when the F.A.A. examined the complaints and rejected the vast majority of them as spurious. And that led to this huge public backlash. And so that was picked up by a guy named Richard Wiggs who founded the Anti-Concorde project. So the Concorde was being developed in the 60's by a partnership between France and Britain and it sort of represented the frontier of technology---not just aviation technology but technology in total---and Richard Wiggs had this view of the environment and technology as being in conflict. So he believed that as technology advances, we lose touch with our natural environment. And he was actually one of the most innovative, maverick early environmental activists. They're commonplace today but he was actually a pioneer. And so he took the complaints that occurred in Oklahoma City and his philosophy of environment and technology in conflict and began one of the most successful environmental NIMBY campaigns in history. He organized academics, he organized the residential associations near airports. He took out full-page ads in The New York Times. He got people to call their congress people. And so even though this was all becoming organized even before the Concorde was in use in 1973, it persuaded the F.A.A. and Congress to institute a ban on supersonic flying overland. So there is no jurisdiction over the ocean of course, so when the Concorde eventually came out it was able to fly over the ocean. This was their attempt to handicap the Concorde's success. Petersen: It's so strange to me that the government would fly supersonic jets over one city eight times a day for six months as an experiment. I mean when you experiment, usually you have to get the consent of the people you're experimenting on and that's what I'm familiar with but it's so--- Hammond: This was a different time. Petersen: Yes, so 1960s! To just experiment on an entire city against their will and just see what happens. Hammond: Yeah, I mean, any student of US history knows that our toleration for human experimentation has gone down quite a bit from the 60's and 70's. And if anything, flying a supersonic plane over a city was probably one of the least egregious things that was going on at the time. Petersen: Yeah well, tell me about sonic booms. I'm not a physicist so use small words. Hammond: Okay. So, if you've ever seen a speedboat drive through the water, it creates a wake in its path. And the same thing happens with planes only it's air. And air is in three dimensions so there's a cone, a wave that goes past an airplane as it flies through the air displacing the air in front of it, pushing it aside. But of course the speed of sound---and we get the concept of the speed of sound because sound is moving through air and so sound can only move as fast as air can move---and so when you approach the speed of sound you're pushing the air in front of the plane. You're pushing it, basically compressing against the air that's already there and so you reach this thing called the sound barrier where upon crossing the sound barrier you produce a shock wave where the air is becoming compacted and compacted and compacted and basically it's like the waves are on top of each other. And that creates a shockwave which radiates around the airplane and will reach the ground as this loud booming noise. Petersen: So it's not only loud---I've noticed in your paper---some people said it could break windows or damage buildings. Hammond: Right. So a lot of this goes back to---again---the Oklahoma City experiments where the fighter jets were flown over the city eight times a day. Sonic booms are shockwaves. There is no limit to how powerful a shockwave can be. So in principle sonic booms can break windows. In practice, they are about two pounds per square foot. This is this what the Concorde was approximately. And two pounds per square foot of air pressure is pretty weak. There were studies done in the 70's when the Concorde became active. And they found that it could do damage to old Civil War architecture and stuff like that and if you already had a window that had damage it could crack that window. But for practical purposes, buildings can withstand up to 11 pounds per square foot pressure before experiencing damage---Nasa's tested that extensively. So nonetheless the myth propagated in part because there were people in Oklahoma who claimed that their plaster cracked or that their windows broke. And so when the F.A.A. investigated it and basically threw out most of the claims as not being credible, that caused a big backlash and also caused a huge public relations disaster for the F.A.A. and for supersonic overland more generally and created this myth that it's very easy for a sonic boom to break their window. It's just not. Petersen: So the ban applies just over the United States. How do we know that that is what has stopped the progress of supersonic flight? After all, you'd think that there's the whole rest of the world and maybe transatlantic or transpacific flights could sustain a supersonic aviation industry? Hammond: So, there's a lot of variables going on. First of all---as I mentioned earlier---all the supersonic projects up to this point---except the Concorde---were abject failures. The US had one called the Boeing 2707. It just never got off the ground, in fact, in the industry aerospace engineers have a term for this. It's called a "boomdoggle"---a play on boondoggle---because countries that tried to produce a supersonic jet just ended up pouring literally billions of dollars down the drain. And you can't blame that on supersonic per se. That's a failure of central planning. I would say the same thing with the Concorde. The Concorde flew for 27 years. And at times it made money but you have to remember it was never designed with any commercial intent. It was designed to be a commercial airplane but it had no market testing. It was mostly a piece of a diplomatic or political gambit that Britain was using to try to get into the European Common Market. And so when Kennedy proposed the 2707 as a competitor, he also didn't do market tests or see what the demand was, he looked at the Concorde which sat about 100 passengers and said we need to do better than France so let's make it 300 passengers. And instead of flying at Mach two---twice the speed of sound---let's fly at Mach three---three times the speed of sound---so it was just the one-upmanship of nations, had nothing to do with whether it was market viable. And so the case I make is that, if you had a private sector in airplanes---which at the time we didn't really, at least in supersonic, it was all government driven---the first entry point, the natural entry point would be some kind of smaller business-jet. Because frankly if you don't know which routes are going to demand the most passengers you want to start small. You don't want to jump right to a 300-seat passenger jet. The Concorde was only 100 seats, as I said, and it routinely had trouble filling its cabin. But the thing with business jets---and there have been about half a dozen rigorous market analyses done in the last ten years that have found there is a demand for supersonic business jets---the thing about business jets though is they fly overland about 75% of the time. You're going from regional airports to regional airports. And so if the natural entry point to sort of begin on the supersonic learning curve, learning which routes have the most to manned is a smaller business jet, you're going to have to begin by flying overland. And then once you discover which routes will bear more people you can expand the capacity of the airplane and ultimately I think a private sector would work its way up to having a 100- to 300-seat passenger jet once it had established that the demand existed. And also big part of that is driving down costs, of course. The Concorde was the Concorde it never iterated it. The first model was the last model. In commercial aviation more generally in subsonic aviation we've learned over time how to reduce costs. Even though we fly a slower today than we did 50 years ago, subsonic commercial airplanes are vastly more efficient and we've achieved that efficiency because we've learned over time. Petersen: Okay, so the natural entry point is maybe carrying businessmen between New York and L.A. say, but that's illegal. And so the industry isn't able to sort of clear that hurdle. Is that basically what you're saying? Hammond: Yeah, I mean if you have a 12-person business jet. First of all, it's difficult to get a jet that small to have the range to even go across the ocean. You know you wouldn't necessarily being going from coast to coast in a small business jet right away. You might be going from New York to Houston, or something like that. The point is that you don't know. You don't know which routes are going to bear fruit, a priori. The Concorde flew between France and Britain and the U.S., but It also had roots into the Caribbean and lot of those routes have ended up being canceled in the 80's in part because they just kept losing money, but it was because they had tried to plan it all out a priori, as if they could just deduce which routes would make money. I don't trust that model. I think you have to begin by building something small that you know will meet demand and then expanding from that. And the most important part about this is there's open a confluence of technology in just the last 20 years. I have no illusions that supersonic business jets would have been a thing, say, in 1990. I think a lot of this is a recent phenomenon that's why supersonic overland is an idea whose time has come. There's just been such a breakthrough in technology, in reducing the intensity of sonic booms. And that has been really the biggest hurdle is getting the intensity of sonic booms to a level where people will tolerate it. Petersen: Right. So it seems like the F.A.A., when they banned supersonic flight, the concern was noise but they banned speed as sort of a proxy for noise. But what you're saying is that's a bad proxy you can have the speed without the noise. Hammond: Exactly. So it was an overreaction. What we advocate in our paper and at supersonicmyths.com is to replace the ban with a reasonable noise standard. Subsonic airplanes already adhere to a variety of noise standards, noise rules. If the issue is really noise---and we believe the issue is basically noise---the F.A.A. should just set a noise standard, say, 80 decibels, something like that, that would be like a lawnmower going by your house. And then let the market try to get below that line. The F.A.A. stance right now is that it will set a noise rule once it sees a supersonic airplane demonstrate that it can go below the noise that it finds acceptable. But it has never stated what it will find acceptable. So it's a sort of reverse order of operations where the F.A.A. wants to hear something that is quiet enough before telling us what is quiet enough. Petersen: And if you're Boeing and you're going to invest millions of dollars building an aircraft that does 80 decibels and the F.A.A. says 'not quiet enough' you're out millions of dollars. Hammond: That's right. And so today the biggest and really only large quiet supersonic project is still within NASA. NASA has been working on quiet supersonic technology pretty much continuously since the mid 80's under a variety of different project titles. And they're the only ones who are able to do it because it's federal money. They have no skin in the game. They do use contracts with, say, Lockheed. But those are still federal contracts. We would like to see more competition in this space. NASA is firm in its belief that a quiet supersonic jet is possible as early as 2020. How much sooner would we have gotten to that if we had the private sector involved? Petersen: Almost certainly much sooner. If we look at private space companies like Space X, they're an order of magnitude cheaper than NASA. They're much more efficient and able to launch rockets into space for a fraction of the cost that NASA has. So, maybe if we use that as our model, then however much NASA has spent on developing supersonic, divide that by ten and maybe that's what the private sector might cost. Hammond: Could very well be. The other thing is that, even today, NASA's effort is directed at the big passenger jets. And part of that is out of this democratic aspiration. They're the government, so they're trying to build something that the everyman could ride. But it's pretty common in new technologies for the early additions or for the early adopters to be of a sort of luxury class. You can think about Tesla's business model where they begin with a roadster and a luxury car---which is really only affordable to millionaires and the very wealthy---with the game plan that they're going to have a low volume high profit or high revenue car and reinvest those profits back into developing cheaper and cheaper versions until they get to a mass market version. We argue that that's exactly how the supersonic learning curve probably works as well. You want to begin with business jets which will of course be a luxury flying supersonic getting from New York to L.A. in two hours instead of five or six. It is worth it to some people. But those early models will of course be expensive. It will be expensive to ride not just because it's new technology and we haven't figured out how to drive down costs, but because a lower capacity means you're dividing the cost by fewer people. But over time those companies can reinvest, build bigger designs and drive down costs until you get to the point where virtually anyone can afford it. The company Boom, which is developing a supersonic jet for over the ocean, is projecting to drive their costs down to about $5,000 a ticket to go across the Atlantic, which is on par with business-class and first-class tickets. So they're projecting that for their own costs. It could very well be the case that that technology and that those cost estimates are probably similar for first models in the over-land market as well. And that's a far cry from the Concorde which cost about $20,000 per flight. So going from $20,000 a ticket to $5,000, that's what this one company is projecting and it's only their first model. Petersen: Right. So if something like Tesla cars or cell phones had to get permission through the political process when they were being developed, then maybe someone in the 90's would have said "Why should we allow cell phones if only rich people are going to use them?" And in the 90's they might have been right. But of course now we all have cell phones, and I guess what you're saying is in the 2020s or the 2030s we might all be flying at supersonic speeds when we go on our vacation. Hammond: I believe that. Elon Musk, in his Hyperloop paper, discusses the most efficient way of getting from point A to point B. And he argues in that paper---it's sort of an offhand comment he makes---but he suspects that for any city pair that's over 900 miles apart the most efficient way of getting from that city to the other city is supersonic. Petersen: So that's most pairs of big cities. Hammond: Not just most pairs of big cities but the average flight distance, not from where the passenger is starting to where he's going, but the average takeoff to landing for a passenger plane is about 900 miles. So that suggests that if that is an efficient distance for supersonic, the average flight could be flown efficiently at supersonic. Petersen: One issue that your paper goes into is that some people have alleged that supersonic aircraft---because they fly very high---might damage the ozone layer. Is there anything to that? Hammond: I won't say there's nothing to it, but it's been vastly overstated. I'll put it that way. This goes back again to the Concorde and the early environmental movement's objections to it. At the time the understanding of atmospheric science was very very poor compared to today and there were concerns that because the emissions from an aircraft include nitrogen oxides---which are a class of molecules that will bind with oxygen in the atmosphere to destroy ozone---that because the Concorde flew so close to the stratosphere---which is where the ozone layer begins---that these emissions could lead to the depletion of ozone. That's been rejected. The most alarmist versions of it were rejected. In the 70's people were claiming that if the Concorde or a fleet of Concordes were permitted to fly that we'd see catastrophic ozone collapse. That did not come to fruition obviously, the Concorde flew for 27 years. More recent studies now that we have large models of the atmosphere, simulated models of the atmosphere, have determined that a supersonic aircraft flying within 50 to 60,000 feet should in theory be ozone neutral. The reason is because there's actually this countervailing effect where a little bit lower in the atmosphere the nitrogen oxides actually produce ozone, and a little bit above in the stratosphere it depletes ozone. And if you're flying right on that line they roughly cancel out. Petersen: Okay. There were some fears in the 80's and 90's of other things we're doing seriously damaging the ozone layer. But was that a much larger threat than supersonic flight? Hammond: Well it was just a different sort of threat. There are different emissions in aerosols and so forth, CFCs. But out of the concern for the ozone in the 90's we got the Montreal Protocol and the Montreal Protocol is an international agreement to control the emissions of things that will deplete ozone and as supersonic makes its comeback, they will have to be fully compliant with those protocols. I still recommend that going forward there should be more research into this. Even since the Concorde retired, we have better models of the atmosphere and I'm sure there's actually teams that NASA and MIT that are studying this right now. Petersen: It can't hurt to look into it. But it seems like once something is banned or, you know, once the government sort of gets its hands on it and says "we're not so sure about this" we become incredibly risk-averse, we look at every possible downside and ignore the huge upside of just having a whole other industry and all that consumer surplus that you get from having an entire market that wasn't there before. Hammond: What I would say is the state of knowledge right now with respect to supersonic and ozone is well established enough to not worry. The catastrophic versions of the concerns have been utterly rejected. Even the more modest versions of it are called into question by the fact that, there seems to be this band around the around 60,000 to 50,000 feet where supersonic emissions are ozone neutral. There, of course, should be more study but we don't have to wait for those studies. The studies we already have are sufficient to suggest that we shouldn't be waiting for more data. We already have enough data to begin today. Petersen: It seems like there are two models of innovation. At one extreme end is the development of new drugs, where we have years upon years of vetting and studies and you have to comply with many requirements before you can get your new drug on the market and it costs billions of dollars. Adds a lot to the price of developing new medicine. And then there's the other model where somebody just makes something and we start using it. And maybe we worry about the implications, but by the time anyone thinks that "hey maybe this is a bad idea" it's already been universally adopted. So something like Facebook, where we were all already on Facebook before people started complaining "Hey what if this is ruining our social interactions or something?" Hammond: Or maybe all the fake news sites. Destroying democracy. Petersen: Yeah that's topical right? Facebook is now worried about its role as one of the main places young people get their news, or a lot of people get their news, and some things go viral that are not true or and might be misleading and might affect, say, the outcome of elections. Hammond: Apropos of Facebook and that topic, myths and misconceptions and viral falsehoods and urban legends, those are not new phenomena. That's why I had to create supersonicmyths.com. Because around supersonic, there's just a lot of misconception because there are a lot of people who think they're experts on the Concorde and think that the Concorde proves that supersonic is not economically viable. But they don't really understand that well. Petersen: Right and you could use the same sort of logic to say, "Look how costly the moon landing was. It's clearly impossible at that cost for any kind of space tourism or space commerce to be economically viable." But the issue is that the moon landing was very very expensive, but it was run by the U.S. government which tends to make all its activities very expensive. A future space tourism company might be much much cheaper and we just don't know until we see it, how much cheaper. Hammond: So I guess I should just comment a little bit on what the new technologies are that have made supersonic overland viable. And they really break down to three: first engines---jet engines---have become a way more powerful, way more efficient. They're way more capable in every way. So, the Concorde used an afterburner on its engine, which means upon takeoff it basically dumped kerosene and lit it on fire and that's why if you watch old videos of the Concorde taking off you see this trail of black smoke coming up behind it. That's the afterburner. Incredibly fuel inefficient, you're just burning fuel. This is what it needed at the time to get the extra boost, to get into the air, because it had to climb to 60,000 feet---which takes quite a bit of energy. Today we have vastly superior engines. In fact, most subsonic aircraft, most passenger planes that you would fly in any consumer flight are capable of going supersonic. They have a top speed which is subsonic but if you put them in overdrive you can go supersonic and in fact, the company I mentioned earlier---Boom---is using off-the-shelf engines to reach its max speed. Second is carbon fiber. So, the shape and the aerodynamics of shape matter a whole lot to supersonic and supersonic overland. The way we reduce booms is by affecting or altering the airfoil around the airplane. So, essentially you can use the shape of the airplane to modify the waves and smooth the waves out. So you don't have this like sudden shock and sudden dip. Instead, you have sort of this gradual rise and fall. And mostly when the human ear detects loudness what it's detecting is suddenness. So you can dramatically reduce the perception of loudness by modifying that airwave and you do that by modifying shape. Most planes are constructed of aluminum, which you can shape reasonably, but not nearly as much as carbon fiber and carbon fiber has become basically a commodity in recent years. It means basically any shape you want is incredibly cheap and incredibly strong. The third and final, probably most important thing is the power of computers and computer simulation. So prior to the early 2000s, I would say, when what's called computational fluid dynamics was really coming up. These are computational simulations of how fluids waters and airs move around shapes. That requires a lot of computing power which we've only recently achieved. Prior to that, if you want to design and test a prototype for a supersonic aircraft you would have to literally build a model and rent a wind tunnel, and then you'd have to have instruments try to imperfectly measure how the wind is moving around the aircraft. That is incredibly costly. So, computer simulation has really democratized. Some of the researchers who've done work on this are just grad students. They have software engineering expertise and they construct algorithms that will search through the space of all possible aircraft designs and try to find the one shape that reduces the sonic boom the best. And then because we have carbon fiber we can go and pour that shape and have the exact shape we want. Petersen: So it used to be, not only did you need the air tunnel but you had to---if you wanted to test 100 wing shapes---you had to physically build 100 wings. Now you tell a computer "here's 100 wing shapes," hit compile, come back the next morning and you have your simulated sound profiles? Hammond: It's actually even cooler than that. Instead you tell the program what you're looking for, and what you're looking for is a shape that will reduce the sonic boom to whatever level you're aiming for. Basically you give it an objective and then instead of trying to design 100 designs and let it test 100 designs, you give it an objective and then it searches through literally hundreds of thousands of designs that it evolves on its own. Some of these algorithms are genetic in nature, so they evolve like biology evolves and they try to go down paths and try to find exactly what shape reduces or hits the objective. And you can have multiple objectives. You can even include the objective of low sonic boom, but you can also have that tempered by the objective of efficiency---fuel efficiency. Shape and size obviously you'd want to put into the objective function. We don't want this airplane to be ten miles long. It happened to be the case that the longer, more slender aircraft cut through the air better but a computer doesn't know on its own that a ten-mile long airplane is not feasible. So you basically give it multiple objectives and you hit play and you let the algorithm do its work. And it can literally iterate through hundreds and hundreds of thousands of designs. Petersen: And this is achievable by grad students just with software that is available, or you can get on a grad student budget? Hammond: Well, I imagine these are big research projects. They have university backing and industry does that too. But it's a single fixed cost instead of a repeated variable cost of having to rent a wind tunnel every single time you want to test. Petersen: So it sounds like despite the fact that there's been a supersonic ban and despite the fact that there is no supersonic industry, or no supersonic commercial flights going on in the world today, we still had advancement, but it's been mostly on the technology side, on the theoretical side. What we haven't seen is actual supersonic flights and testing the water, testing the market. I saw in your paper that you go through some estimates of the potential size of the supersonic market. Do you want to talk through some of those? Hammond: Sure. There has been by my count seven market analyses. Most of them from the mid-2000s till today. The estimates range from 180 supersonic business jets to over 600. So, these are companies like Gulfstream Aerospace, which is a leading business-jet manufacturer. They've done actually two or three of these market analyses. And they foresee up to 350 units for just themselves. So 350 business jets that they could produce over ten years. That is quite a demand. Petersen: And they're looking at things like whose opportunity cost of their time is high enough that they would pay maybe a few thousand extra dollars, maybe several thousand in order to save a few hours. And right now there are C.E.O.s, there are wealthy people who maybe live in the United Arab Emirates but want to commute to New York and right now that means sitting on a plane for---gosh I don't even know---it would be like 15 hours or something. If it could be six hours, for most of us, we might prefer to sit on a plane longer and pay significantly less. But if your time's really valuable, if you run a multi-million-dollar company, it really can be worth it to save some of your time, even at a high cost. Hammond: Of course it's possible if you had supersonic overland to leave New York and go to London and then come back to New York on the same day. There are people who would love to do that. I think what gets missed in this it's not just about going faster for its own sake. This makes the world smaller, it makes you rethink travel. So in addition to these American analyses, there have also been some surveys. One survey did a survey of business jet operators and importantly they asked them to basically state an estimate from zero to 100 what the likelihood is that they would buy a supersonic business jet if they could. When they asked that under the condition that there is still an overland ban the number was zero, so zero percent of people. The average person said that there was zero chance they'd buy a supersonic business jet if they can't fly overland but in the case that the ban is lifted, that number jumps to 50%. So half of the businesses that were surveyed would see a chance. Petersen: That's further evidence that it's not just that supersonic is unviable, it's that this legal restriction is in a very important market which is flying over the United States. That's what's killing the supersonic industry. One other the thing I saw on your website was, you talk about the tradeoff between noise and fuel efficiency in the context of airport noise restrictions. Could you tell me, how does that tradeoff work? Hammond: I think that one of the biggest barriers to the F.A.A. is the issue of airport noise. The F.A.A. has worked with I.K.O. and I.K.O is the UN's body who deals with aviation standards. They've worked for literally decades to try to ramp up the stringency of noise around airports and they're pretty proud of what they've accomplished. If you live near an airport today it's a much quieter experience than it would have been 20, 30, even 40 years ago. But this comes with a tradeoff. The way aircraft reduce noise is they have a bypass ratio. So at the extreme, you have a turbo-jet, which means all the air passes through the jet and then you have jets which bypass air around the jet. So, you have the jet in the center and that's what's pushing, propelling the plane forward. But then you also bypass air around the jet to basically insulate the noise. But that comes with a tradeoff. So the more air you bypass, the quieter it will be, but also the more fuel and the less thrust you get. And it happens with supersonic because you're going from sea level to 60,000 feet potentially, you actually have to really take off at a steep angle and you have to push up. You have to really get up high, basically, and so you could make the argument that we should tolerate slightly lower airport noise standards for supersonic at first, so they can use lower bypass ratio engines and therefore less fuel when they're making their incline. Petersen: So there's another paper from Mercatus, also written by your co-author Eli Dourado, and that one talks about the number of airport noise complaints that come from a really small concentrated number of households. I found that very funny. Just how concentrated are the airline airport noise complaints? Hammond: Let me say first that what we recommend for airport noise standards is stage three noise standards, which are what we currently use. So, currently if you live near an airport and you see a plane taking off and you can hear it slightly, that's the stage three noise standard. We're advocating that supersonic abide by that noise standard. That noise standard is being phased out for stage four and later stage five, which will be even stricter. So we're not saying anything like "Oh we should let planes be super noisy," we're saying "let supersonic planes be as noisy as the ones that we currently have taking off, and just give them a bit of a window before they're phased into these newer, more stringent noise standards that are coming down the pipeline." Eli's work with Raymond Russell, they found an amazing data set that includes records of who is making noise complaints, airport noise complaints. And they have them by airport and the astonishing thing they find is that these airports are getting sometimes tens of thousands of noise complaints every year but when they drill down into the data, it is just a handful of people making all the complaints. So a few examples. I live near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and in 2015 they had 8,760 noise complaints. Two individuals at one D.C. residents accounted for 6,852 of those complaints. So, two people in one building accounted for 78% of the complaints. They have a report called "Airport Noise NIMBYism: An Empirical Investigation" where they go through all the airports that have this data and they find evidence of the sort of concentration of complainers at every single airport. So, it's a pretty surprising thing and I think it's important to get this information out there because as we know from when the Concorde was banned overland, residents’ associations are a pretty powerful group to mobilize in opposition to something like this, and Congress people have the perception that---like San Francisco in 2015 had almost 900,000 those complaints to San Francisco International Airport. These are constituents, we want to reduce noise this is obviously something they care about. But in fact, in San Francisco's case, only 53 individuals accounted for 25,000 of the complaints. And those 25,000 were all during a single month---the month of October---which meant that the average person was making 477 calls per person. So, 30 days in a month, that's a lot of calls every single day. And this is San Francisco so wouldn't surprise me if there were some enterprising software developers who figured out a way to make complaints automatically. Petersen: So robot calls. It might be crazy people calling in a complaint every single time they hear an airplane, or it might be clever people robotically calling in a complaint every time there's an airplane. Except that I guess they didn't anticipate that someone would notice that all these calls were coming from the same location which kind of undermines their objective which would be to reduce noise in those areas. Of course, if you bought your house after the airport was already there making noise then economics says that that noise should already be priced into the value of the house. The person who loses is the person whose house is next to an empty lot and then the government announces "Hey we're going to build an airport here." You'd expect the change in home prices to happen immediately when that's announced and then every following owner has already accepted that cost and they've had cheaper real estate prices as a result. So, if you buy a house next to the airport and then try to pressure the airport to make less noise you're sort of trying to boost your property value when you already paid a discounted rate. You are already compensated for accepting that noise. Hammond: And not only that. But when people have done rigorous cost-benefit analyses of U.S. aviation noise standards and they consistently find that the costs of making airplanes less efficient on takeoff is greater than alternatives which include creative land use policies, like building in barriers that block sound near communities and stuff like that. So, if you have a community living very close to an airport, one alternative is to set global standards which say airplanes are to fly less efficiently and make less noise, or you build a wall. You build up a barrier or some insulation to protect the community from the noise. But the main point of this study that Eli and Raymond did---which by the way, if I remember this correct, is Mercatus's most downloaded paper in history---the main point is that we shouldn't be basing innovation policy, particularly something that can have very high impact, on a few crazy people and enterprising robot callers. Petersen: People who are affected by having less efficient aircraft, having slower aircraft, more expensive air travel just so outnumber the small number of people who live near airports. And you could get them all double-ply windows and help make their houses more soundproof. Probably much cheaper than hamstringing the entire airline industry. Hammond: Absolutely. I just want to recapitulate some things. Supersonic overland is today feasible. It can be economical, there are companies chomping at the bit to try to develop something that will be quiet and affordable. The only thing standing in their way is the F.A.A. and a public perception that the Concorde proved that supersonic is not viable. The F.A.A. could act today, it could issue a noise standard and allow developers to shoot for that standard. Even if a bill is passed today, what the F.A.A. wants to do is coordinate internationally with I.K.O. and I.K.O. is the UN body that---it's not a regulator---sets standards. The F.A.A. has a prominent role in guiding us towards standards, but it's an incredibly slow process. I.K.O meets every three years. If the F.A.A. were told to remove the ban tomorrow and they wanted to coordinate internationally, would mean we have to wait about three years. I.K.O. is meeting this year, obviously they're not going to talk about it this year---the agenda is all set. So they're going to be talking about it three years from now and then they'll be finalizing those rules three years from then. And then the F.A.A. will take those rules, propagate them globally and then we will have another two or three year regulating period where there's a notice and comment and everything else. So we're talking about ten years just to change this stupid ban that is obsolete and I think that speaks to a more fundamental problem in U.S. policy and regulation, which is, we create these massive bottlenecks. And it's no surprise that it happens to an idea that is such a no-brainer, like creating a noise rule for supersonic instead of a ban. You can find other examples in every other industry of every other emerging technology, where there are these obsolete rules that are getting in the way of better, more efficient, more affordable, faster technology. And even if they can be rolled out tomorrow, have to go through at times a decadal process of approval. So, I think it's no wonder that productivity innovation seems to be at a historical low. Petersen: My guest today has been Sam Hammond. Sam, thanks for being part of Economics Detective Radio. Hammond: Thank you.  

This weekend saw the release of Marvel’s 14th movie event, Doctor Strange! So Sam and DJ called in Marvel expert Dan Casey from Nerdist to help them review it, reveal Easter Eggs, discuss the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and much more!

Check out your favorite fly patterns here: http://bit.ly/2bkIZA0 #AskNorth40 - Episode 31 This week, Wesley (from Great Falls, MT) asked, "What are the best dry flies to use on the Missouri River in mid to late August?" So Sam, Fred and the camera guys set out after work to test our luck from Mid Canon to Pelican Point. We also got to talk to Rick to get some recommendations from his 40 years on the Mo. See our selection of fly rods here - http://bit.ly/1XSt1O5 NORTH40.com NORTH40FLYSHOP.com BLOG - bit.ly/1P3eyvb SHOP - bit.ly/1P3eqf6 SUBSCRIBE - goo.gl/4EMwE9 FACEBOOK - www.facebook.com/north40outfitters/?fref=ts INSTAGRAM - www.instagram.com/north40outfitters/ SNAPCHAT - north40life

EPISODE SIX It's the series final of Three Wicked Women! So Sam and Megan dedicate the entire episode to music, and 'consciously couple' with some amazing artists over their favorite passion. Sam speaks to New Zealand-born, Berlin-based percussionist, conductor and composer Takumi Motokawa about the fine art of conducting and composing film scores, while Megan [...] The post Side 1, Track 6 – Music appeared first on Megan Spencer.

EPISODE SIX It's the series final of Three Wicked Women! So Sam and Megan dedicate the entire episode to music, and 'consciously couple' with some amazing artists over their favorite passion. Sam speaks to New Zealand-born, Berlin-based percussionist, conductor and composer Takumi Motokawa about the fine art of conducting and composing film scores, while Megan [...] The post Side 1, Track 6 – Music appeared first on Megan Spencer.

Storytelling with Sam McClure of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Washington D.C. Links mentioned in the show: National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) NGLCC National Business & Leadership Conference But You Don’t Look Gay… Green Eggs & Ham Oh, the Places You’ll Go! https://twitter.com/SamNGLCC For more information on Supplier Diversity: #008: Expert Interview with Heather Cox of Certify My Company [Podcast] #011: Diversity & Inclusion and Business Opportunities, Oh My! [Podcast] Are there small business resources for LGBT business owners? Want to see who else is being interviewed for this Pride month project? Check it out here – 30 days – 30 voices – Stories from America’s LGBT Business Leaders Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE:  30 Days, 30 Voices – Sam McClure Jenn T Grace: Welcome to 30 Days, 30 Voices: Stories from America's LGBT business leaders. Intro: You are listening to a special edition of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Tune in for the next thirty days as we interview one business leader per day, each day in June to celebrate LGBT Pride Month. That's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride month. You'll learn insights around business and marketing from those who know it best. And now your host. She's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T Grace. Jenn T Grace: Hello and welcome. Thank you for tuning into this special Pride Month episode of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Information about today's guest and links mentioned in the show will be available on the website at www.JennTGrace.com/30days30voices. If you like what you hear in this interview, please be sure to tell a friend. And now, without further ado, let's dive into the interview. I am pleased to be talking with Sam McClure. She is the Director of Affiliate Relations and External Affairs for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Prior to this she was the Executive Director of Quorum, which is the Minneapolis, Saint Paul LGBT and Allied Chamber of Commerce. And in addition to these roles she has previous experience owning several small businesses. So Sam, I've given the listeners a brief overview of who you are, but why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what your path looked like that led you to where you are today. Sam McClure: Well thanks Jenn, and I just want to say thanks again for having me on your show, it's really a pleasure and looking forward to our interview. So a little more about me. I'm here in Washington D.C. at the headquarters of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, and I just moved to D.C. and joined the team here internally almost two years ago. But I've actually been with the NGLCC since really the very beginning. You know the organization just celebrated our tenth anniversary, and I was part of the earliest days when our co-founders created the NGLCC and came to one of the earliest conferences as a volunteer board member for a local chamber, Quorum, that you mentioned in the beginning. And you know I was quite taken with this whole concept of business equality as a movement and intentional inclusion of LGBT-owned businesses in the economy and the network of other LGBT chambers around the country. And also the corporate partners that were coming into the space to be part of this movement to leverage economic development opportunities specifically for people who are LGBT. I got really excited about the movement right away, I became a volunteer leader in the chamber council at that conference, and I served as the chair of the Midwest region and then after a few y...

=- HOT SAUCE WARNING LABEL - THIS PODCAST HAS CURSING IN IT=-The crew comes together to talk games, and the conversation takes a left turn, and then a right turn. Do you want to hear our impressions of the Vita. Ok, because we got you covered in that department. Well, except none of us have a Vita. Many games are based on stereotypical characters, but does the line cross over into racism. We cover many bases with this topic. So Sam is off the rails tonight, especially towards the end. Iphone gaming talk, Vita talk, and topic of the week where we read your comments. What if Microsoft blocks out used games in their next console.   Thank you everyone for all of your comments and support.