Podcasts about steve it

Pierre's Glass Door Disaster and Steve It definitely making IT ?Huge thanks to our top tier PatreonsChris @back.to.the.workshop. Mat Melleor @Makermellor, André Jørassen, Toni Kaic @oringe_finsnickeri, Thor Halvor @thwoodandleather, Neil Hislop @hbrwoodworksuk, Mike Eddington @geo.ply, @jespermakes both on YouTube and instagram, Tor @lofotenwoodworks, Thomas Angel @verkstedsloggbok. Jason Grissom @jgrissom and also on Youtube . P-A Jakobson @pasfinsnickeri Tim @turgworks, John Mason @jm_woodcraft_scotland, Martin Berg @makermartinberg, Nick James @nickjamesdesign and and on YouTube at  Nick James Furniture Maker. Preston Blackie @urbanshopworks and also on YouTube at Urban Shop Works, Kåre Möller @kare_m, Arne @mangesysleren, Marius Bodvin @mariusbodvin & @arendalleather, Richard Salvesen @salvesendesign, Bjorn from @interiormaker.b.hagen. Roger Anderson @rvadesign182. And  Ola Skytteren @olaskytterenAnd a big thank you to all our other patreons If you want to support  the Show and listen to the aftershow we have a Patreon page please click the link https://www.patreon.com/user?u=81984524We also have a discord channel that you can join for free the link is in our instagram Bio. We would love to see you there.Our Obsessions this weekSteve @stevebellcreates obsession this week. Steve is obsesses Two International shows on Netflix the First is a Swedish Crime Drama called The Breakthrough  a true story of one of Swedens famous murders. The second is an Argentinian series called The Eternaught  a drama about a group of friends and some strange snow that kills people@theswedishmaker Pierres obsession this week is a pottery Youtube Channel called Florian Gadsby after watching his videos Pierre thought it would be easy to make a mug !!!!!If you have any questions or comments please email the show at threenorthernmakers@gmail.com

This week's episode comes from Steve's recent appearance on The Tracy Show, where he was invited to talk about MMT with host Tracy Carson, who had some questions. Tracy: Okay, I'm going to tell you what I think I understand about Modern Monetary Theory or MMT. I'm just going to go with MMT. The federal government can pretty much generate money out of thin air.  Steve: It does. It's the only way it works. Yes. Tracy: Okay. Okay, so I got that part right. [pause] Basically, that's pretty much where I'm at in terms of my understanding. Actually, it wasn't the only thing Tracy understood. She knew that states rely on taxes, unlike the federal government. She knew that federal budget deficits are not a crisis. And she knew that those simple facts have huge implications for the government's ability to provide national health care, for example, while state-based health care is virtually impossible and propels a race to the bottom. In a nation that has spent $8 trillion on war, post 9/11, there is no excuse for poverty. There's an explanation, but no excuse. The conversation covers the destruction of essential services through deliberate under-funding, with austerity as a policy choice. They look at the illusion of the “national debt” at home as well as IMF manipulation of the global South. Many of us have experienced moments when we clearly recognize the truth yet lack the knowledge or language to explain it. In seeking the tools to fully articulate it, Tracy is actively moving herself beyond those moments. We should all be so motivated. Learning MMT is a process. Others will hear about it from her and begin their own journey. When it comes to knowledge, there are no resource constraints. #EachOneTeachOne Tracy Carson is the host of The Tracy Show and an organizer of the March for Medicare for All in her home state of Indiana.

Brandon pitches an idea for a new #dating app. Steve actually gets out of the house. Unlucky Charms: A bunch of models are trying out, in gameshow format, to be a spokesmodel for some lingerie line. The woman running the show has a charm bracelet that allows her to control some mythical creatures. She uses them to kill people. The creatures are actually good guys, though, so they don't want to do it. The bad guy is hoisted by her own petard. The End. Unlucky Charms final grade: Steve: It was OK. Lighting was good. There were some bits that entertained a bit or were ripe for mockery. Overall, not worth the watch. 1.75/5.0Brandon: This one was disappointing. Not scary and no one tried to do anything really funny. Writing wasn't great. Acting was sub-par. Roughly the quality of Ahockalypse with a much larger budget. Terrible bang for your buck. 1.7/5.0Cocktail of the Week:County Clare/Dublin Cooler2 oz Irish Whiskey3/4 oz Unfiltered Apple Cider/Juice3/4 oz Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice1/4 oz Benedictine1 oz Ginger BeerPour ginger beer into a glass over ice. Put the rest of the ingredients into a cocktail shaker and shake to combine. Strain over the ginger beer.Cocktail Grade: The kind of cocktail that will tickle your sweet tooth. Tastes good and sneaks up on you. 4.0/5.0------------------Contact us with feedback or cocktail/movie recommendations to:boozeandbmovies@gmail.comX: @boozeandbmoviesInstagram: @boozeandbmoviesThreads: @boozeandbmovieswww.facebook.com/boozeandbmovies

A follow-up to last week's Hockey Update. Not all the news is good. This week's movie is based on a true story, a first for this podcast. As such, Steve dives into the real history of Alfred (Alferd) Packer.Cannibal! The Musical: A musical bit of fan fic surrounding the real life "adventures" of Alfred Packer, a 19th Century American who served in the Civil War, became a wilderness guide and gold miner, then ate a bunch of guys. That escalated quickly, huh? The movie might just be a vehicle to mock a woman Trey Parker was in a relationship with at one time, as her namesake in the movie is Packer's fictional horse, Lianne, aka The Horse Who Would Let Anybody Ride Her. He may have made this entire movie just to talk about her.Yor, The Movie with the Wordy Title final grade: Steve: It was entertaining. If you're a fan of South Park or Team America: World Police, you'll like this as a kind of origin story for Trey and Matt. Their restaurant doesn't have very good food, FYI. The local twist of this movie makes it interesting to us. 2.75/5.0Brandon: This one was a little shpadoinkle, but not all the way shpadoinkle. You could see bits and pieces of things that would later become the kind of humor that would make these guys boatloads of cash with South Park and other stuff. 2.5/5.0Cocktail of the Week:The Cannibal Reviver1 oz Gin1/2 oz Lemon Juice1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse or Genepy de Chamois1/2 oz Dolin Sweet White VermouthPeychaud BittersCombine everything in a cocktail shaker. Shake to combine and chill, then strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with a lemon wedge/wheel. Cocktail Grade: Maybe it's the fact that we're not popping the $80 for a bottle of Chartreuse, and the Genepy stuff messes it up, but this one was just OK. A bit of an anise flavor that will turn off black licorice haters. Better than ChatGPT creations, at least. 2.0/5.0------------------Contact us with feedback or cocktail/movie recommendations to:boozeandbmovies@gmail.comX: @boozeandbmoviesInstagram: @boozeandbmoviesThreads: @boozeandbmovieswww.facebook.com/boozeandbmovies

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with serial entrepreneur Steve Reynolds for his perspectives on innovation in corporate travel tech. As CSO of Embers Inc., Steve shares his journey developing TripBam, an early pioneer utilizing algorithms and robotics to optimize hotel rates. He explains TripBam's strategic transformation from consumer to enterprise software, strengthening the company and positioning it for seamless integration under Embers. Steve offers valuable lessons on championing passion within high-performing teams. The importance of actively engaging customers and development staff to creativity solve problems is emphasized. We discuss the challenges of maintaining innovation at scale versus smaller startups. Steve's experiences navigating acquisitions and a turbulent industry offer cautionary advice. A theme emerges—embracing flexibility positions leaders to overcome challenges and achieve lasting impact. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In this episode, I spoke with Steve Reynolds, Chief Strategy Officer at Emburse Inc., about his journey in corporate travel technology and entrepreneurship. Steve discussed the origins and evolution of TripBam, a platform he founded that uses algorithms and robotics for hotel rate monitoring, which eventually pivoted from a consumer-focused to a B2B model. Steve shared insights on navigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the strategic decisions that helped TripBam emerge stronger, including cost optimizations and product enhancements. We explored the importance of fostering a passionate and innovative team, highlighting the value of listening to customers and involving development teams directly in problem-solving. Steve explained the critical difference between passionate programmers and those who are merely formally trained, and how assembling a team that shares the company's vision and offering equity can drive success. The episode delved into strategies for managing company growth and financial stability, such as quick decision-making in right-sizing staff and optimizing operational costs through cloud environments. We discussed the benefits of subscription-based pricing models over transaction-based ones, particularly during economic downturns, and how this approach helped maintain cash flow during the pandemic. Steve reflected on the evolution of workplace environments and leadership styles, noting the shift from rigid, traditional settings to more flexible, results-oriented cultures. We talked about the challenges of maintaining innovation in large companies, contrasting startup environments with big company mindsets, and the importance of hiring the right people for each setting. Finally, Steve shared his thoughts on the future of the travel industry and the innovative approaches that have set new standards in modern practices. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Emburse GUESTS Steve ReynoldsAbout Steve TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Steve Reynolds, chief Strategy Officer for Emburse Inc. Steve has built his career in corporate travel technology and in starting various companies over the four-decade career. Steve looks for opportunities to be disruptive. Steve, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure to meet you and appreciate you taking the time. Steve: You bet Chris Glad to be here. Chris: So you know there's a lot that I'd love to get into with you. I know that you know currently you're with a company called M-Burst Travel, but that you started a company before that called TripBam. Tell us a little bit about, I guess, those companies and what they do. What is the business they're known for? Steve: Okay, and just to back up a little bit further, I guess what you could call a serial entrepreneur. Tripbam was my third or fourth venture kind of lost count, but I've been in the corporate travel tech space for 40 some odd years. And TripBam when we started 10 years ago, we recognized that hotel rates change a lot more often than people actually realize. If you were to create some robotics that went out and grabbed the rate at a particular hotel for a certain date in the future, you'd see that rate changes just about every hour and what we found is if you just keep watching it, eventually it's going to drop, especially as you get closer to check-in. So we created some algorithms, robotics, whatever you want to call it that said okay, I've got a rate of $2.99 at the Grand Hyatt in New York. I'm arriving on the first and departing on the third. I want you to just let me know when it drops and if it does, I want you to rebook it for me If everything is the same room, same bed, same cancel policy, blah, blah, blah. So that's what we did. We originally invented it for the consumer market. We put out a website and we got mentions in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today and so on. But sort of my corporate travel buddies called up and said, hey, Steve, we really need you to apply this to corporate travel. And they started writing some pretty significant checks. We followed the money, we pivoted and went all B2B at that point. And so the company grew 40% year over year for the first six years, cashflow positive within just a couple of months. I mean it was great. It was great. And then COVID came along and kind of took our knees out from under us for a bit. Chris: COVID kind of wiped out the fundamental business model for at least a little bit. Steve: At least for a little bit. But fortunately a lot of our customers were paying us subscription fees rather than transaction fees, so we were to stay afloat. We got through COVID and we actually came out on the backside of COVID in a much stronger position, both financially and you name it, because we were able to do a lot of just cost improvements, right-sizing the organization. We kind of got a little bit ahead of our skis, I think, in some areas and created some new products, just all kinds of things, pushed everything out to the cloud and such that dramatically reduced our costs and just were firing all cylinders. Chris: And then we worked out a deal with Emburse in July last year to buy the company. Okay, how does I guess what TripBand does fit within the Emburse excuse me, overall, maybe suite of products or company strategy. Steve: Yeah. So Emburse provides travel and expense to the largest of companies, to the smallest of companies, and what I mean by that? Everybody. When you go, you have kind of a booking tool to start with. Most folks are familiar with Concur. We have our own. The reservation gets created. It then needs to be watched, monitored, audited, improved upon. That's kind of where we fit in. So before the money is spent we actually see if we can actually do better than what the traveler did on their own. Travelers are not going to check the hotel rate every day. They're not going to check their airfare every hour. They're not potentially going to book the preferred property within a particular city. We fix all that before the money's actually spent. We then push all that to mobile. So you've got a companion app in your pocket where the traveler gets a ton of destination content specific to that company. So I'm going to New York, I'm staying at headquarters, what hotel should I stay in? I need to go take a client to dinner, what restaurants do you recommend? All kinds of other stuff, including safety and security perspective and so on. Then the data is all captured and fed into an expense report so that your expense report if the traveler is compliant. It's kind of pre-created and pre-approved, so the traveler in a lot of cases doesn't have to do anything and if they're compliant all the way throughout, they could actually kind of be paid as soon as their plane hits the ground. Then it all feeds into reporting and analytics so that we can improve your travel program, identify additional savings opportunities, find some fraud issues, detect all kinds of other stuff that might be a problem. We also offer a card product if you don't have one, and that's kind of the travel plus expense ecosystem that we provide. Chris: That's fascinating. I obviously wasn't aware that something like that existed, but I can see how large companies with a lot of employees traveling could see the benefit and realize a lot of savings from those services. Steve: Yeah, when you combine travel with expense, some kind of magic happens in that we have enough data and insight to be able to start pre-filling out that expense report. Otherwise, all we're counting on is card transactions and receipts, and that's really not going to do the trick. But if we can get that card information augmented with the receipt scanning and everything else that we do now, we can really do a nice job of pre-filling out that expense report. So really all you have to do is add mileage, hit, click and you're submitted. Chris: So you mentioned that you've been in this industry for 40 plus years. I'm curious how did you first get started in the corporate travel tech space 40 years ago? Steve: It was just by happenstance, I guess you could say. I was originally started as a programmer for Texas Instruments, got accepted into their executive program, which meant I could go off and get an MBA and then come back to TI, but quickly realized that the consulting firms were paying a lot more. So I ended up with Ernst Winnie, at the time with Ernst Young and my first assignment was with a travel agency in Houston, Texas, called LifeGo Travel, which doesn't exist anymore. The owner of that company hired us to come in and build some technology. It really put him on the map and he got tired of paying the bills and seeing the hourly checks that we were charging. And so he approached and said, hey, you know, do you want to come work for us? And I'm like, well, that never thought about working for a travel agency. That doesn't sound all that exciting. But he said look what if we created a company, We'll spin it off and we'll give you some equity. And I'm like, okay, now you're talking. So we left, we started up a company called Competitive Technologies and all of it was bought by American Express Travel two years later. Chris: Oh, wow. So unquestionably you had a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit going way back then to see an opportunity. Put you in it. Steve: And a lot of it is just kind of, I guess, my personal. I don't do well at big companies. I really struggle because I get so frustrated at just the lack of progress or the lack of innovation or the speed at which things happen, so I tend to sort of find an excuse to hit the exit button, usually within a year or two. Chris: Right. So you said something in that response that I want to talk to you about, and that's innovation. I think that's there's such a common theme, I think, with entrepreneurs about. You know, and innovation can mean so many things. What do you think that you've done, as you've built several companies, as you mentioned, to create or foster and nurture a spirit and environment of innovation? Steve: You know a lot of it is just becoming a really good listener to the buyer, to whoever the customer is. And then when they say things, there are certain kernels that are aspects of what they say that you just go oh, wait a minute, okay, can we go back to that? That sounds important. You know this level of frustration. Why does that frustrate you? And if you have engineering and development in the room when those things are said, oftentimes some real magic starts to happen and we just the creativity, the innovation just comes out naturally as wow, we can solve that problem. That's not that hard, you know, let's go do that. So that's on the B2B side. That's kind of the formula, that conversation. Something falls out as far as a new feature, product, something like that, that we can start working on the B2C side. Chris: Go ahead. Well, it sounds like there's a function there of asking the right questions and really listening. Steve: Well, and just most big companies or companies they try to protect the dev engineering. They're like oh, we're not going to let you talk to customers. You guys sit over here in the back room and we'll come to you with sort of a priority or roadmap of what we think is needed. And I feel like that's just the wrong way to do it. You've got to get the dev and the engineers and the programmers in the room to hear the story, otherwise you get this telephone tag of what actually gets built isn't quite what the customer wants or was even asking for. And for most companies that's really hard. I don't know why, but they just. It's like we can't allow that to happen, but that's just not the way I operate. Chris: Well, I mean, it makes sense that people you're asking to solve the problem probably need to hear what the problem is firsthand, right? Steve: Exactly. And then it's oftentimes the dev guys are like they're coming up with much more creative solutions. If you just hand them a requirement sheet or spec sheet, they're like, oh okay, this is going to take a month. But when they're involved with the client and they actually hear what the true problem is, oftentimes they're like, oh, I can knock this out overnight, I'll have a solution to you by tomorrow. It's just a night and day sort of sense of urgency or sort of the emotion around creating the solution. They're bought in. At that point, when they hear it directly from the client, they can be the hero. Chris: Well, when you think about kind of that and getting the right developers and the right kind of team together, what have you found to be successful as far as what to look for in building the right team and then keeping the team together? Steve: Yeah. So fortunately for me I mean through all of these different companies that I've started I've been able to kind of get the band back together multiple times. A because I, you know, I'm a big believer in sharing the equity. You know, let's get everybody, if not equity, at least options, so that when there is an exit, everybody benefits, and they've all seen that so far today, knock on wood, I haven't had an unsuccessful exit where we've had to, you know, turn out the lights or whatever. My shareholders have all made money, you know, typically around 5x to 10x on their investment, which has been great. So it's easy to get the bad back together. But what I also have found out is there are certain programmers that are passionate about programming and others that are just taught programming, and there's a night and day difference on the result. If they're passionate about it, the results come out quick. I get creative solutions that nobody would think of. They're usually extremely low cost and it's just so much better than if I have someone that's college taught. I'm doing this because it's a paycheck and I took this degree because that's what somebody told me to and I was good enough to get a B in college on all my programming courses, but at the end of the day, if their heart's not in it and they're spending their time, you know, just on the side weekends and nights learning new stuff, they're not going to be very good. So give me one or two of those that are passionate and I'll put them against 10 to 20 of those that are school taught and will kick their ass every time. Chris: So yeah, well again, I think that transcends all industries and disciplines, the key being passion. Right, I think you, as the leader, are the one that has to start with the passion and then find people that share that passion to get to where you're talking about, where there's that flow within the organization. Steve: Yeah, I think development's a little bit different. I mean, you're not going to find anybody super excited about accounting or I don't know the other aspects of it, but with development there's guys that just get so into it. You know they're programming on the side. They get into hackathons, they want to prove that you know they're smarter than the guy next to them and just constantly looking for the next challenge and just coming up with those creative solutions. I don't know of any other discipline that really has that level of it, but there might be. I mean, I could be wrong. Chris: So, just going back and maybe not the first venture where you and the travel agency in Houston started, but maybe I'm just curious to know as you began some of these startups, maybe sharing some of the lessons learned through some of the challenges you found in starting that venture, whether it be raising capital as an example, or any other challenges that may come about, but I think that capital raise can be one in the startup that some entrepreneurs find daunting and maybe can't solve and never get anything off the ground. Steve: Yeah Well, I think, first off, just wait as long as possible to raise capital. You know most of them kind of build an MVP which just kind of barely works and then go out and try to raise money on it. And whenever you go down that path you just end up way undervaluing what you have. And I know people get in certain situations where they just need to have a check, you know, or it's you know, lights out. But if you can wait until you actually have a client actually generating revenue, actually having positive cash flow, whatever, and then you can show someone, look, we just need to add fuel to the fire here. This is not about keeping the lights on, this is about generating growth You're going to have a dramatically better outcome. The other thing I found out is when you take the big check too early, you start making really stupid decisions. You start hiring attorneys that are expensive, you hire a CFO before you need it, you have a head of HR, all kinds of stuff and overhead that's just not necessary and over time it makes you less and less nimble because you're so worried about payroll, you know, and less focused on just delivering a product that has a you know, a bunch of value. Keep your day job, keep working nights and weekends, wait as long as possible. I mean, I always said, look, cash is like oxygen. If you run out you're going to die. So hang on to it with both hands first. I mean beg, borrow and steal from friends and family and whatever to just get stuff. If you need a contract, go out on the web and search for a capolar plate contract. It'll be good enough to get you started. Or find someone that's a buddy, that's a lawyer, that's willing to do some pro bono work in return, maybe for a little bit of equity stuff like that. Just hang on to that cash as much as you can, for as long as you can. Chris: Well, I think there's a lot there that someone can learn from. Obviously, speaking as a chairman of a law firm, I can't endorse legal Zoom for the startup, but I understand your point. We talk to clients a lot about especially know, especially in the startup phase. Maybe you know helping them get going, but you know and being smart about how they spend their money. But make it an investment in getting at least a sound structure and they may not need right the full-blown set of legal documents, but I can promise you I've seen people start on legal Zoom and wish they hadn't, you know, a couple of years later when things were getting a little tight. But I understand your point there. But conserving cash is important to get off the ground. Steve: Yeah, I mean you don't need to come right out of the gate being in an Inc. You know and incorporated in Delaware and pay all the fees, whatever to make that happen. I mean, just start out as a low-cost LLC and then, when you're ready to sort of raise capital and become a real company, you know you use part of that capital to convert at that time. Chris: So you had mentioned earlier, you know just, I guess, going back to kind of trip BAM COVID having, at least initially, a pretty profound impact but then turning it into a positive, and I'm kind of want to take you back to that time and you maybe dig in a little bit deeper. I think it's a beautiful lesson of something where you know a lot of people just throwing up their hands because travel stopped, et cetera, which decimates your business specifically to you. But then you said we actually learned from that and became a better, stronger company because of it. And you've mentioned right-sizing, the organization stuff. But could you share a little more detail and some stories from that our listeners can learn from if and when their business faces something similar? Steve: Yeah, I think, first off, being fairly quick. You know you can always hire people back, you know. But if you keep them on the payroll and you start burning up cash just way too fast or you're starting to trend towards in the red, you just got to pull the trigger. Nobody wants to, nobody likes to do it, but it's really nobody's fault. It's just something as an executive or CEO you have to do, or a founder. So that's one. Second is, as companies grow, you kind of make stupid mistakes along the way. You get kind of inefficient. You don't anticipate the level of growth that might have been reality. So going back and saying, all right, take a step back, let's catch our breath. You know, what should we have done to kind of handle the scale better? And so, for example, just moving everything to a cloud environment, you know, putting it out to bid, switching from one cloud provider to another, whatever it is, you know you can just generate or reduce your costs dramatically. You know, rather quickly, if you just focus the time on it. Everybody gets so white hot, focused on growth and the next client and the revenue they forget to look at the rear view mirror about. You know there was a lot of costs we could have taken out, you know, which could generate even more cash going forward. Advert: Hello friends. This is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at BoyerMiller. com and thanks for listening to the show. So we pulled the trigger pretty quick. We right-sized the staff. We had a pretty good and, fortunately for us, this is the other. We kind of lucked into this. Our customers, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to pay a subscription fee rather than maybe a percentage of the savings or a transaction fee, to where what they were going to spend would fluctuate month over month. By paying a subscription fee, they could budget it and they were going to get a better return on investment. So we did most of our deals that way and thank God we did, because when COVID and everything went into toilet in April of 2020, we still had cash coming in the door. So we were actually stayed cashflow positive because we kind of right-sized the staff fairly quickly. And then, coming out of COVID, as the revenue started to ramp back up and our sales started to continue, we were just on a much better platform that would scale after it because it was just all right-sized and efficient and whatever, and at the same time we added new products. So we had a two-year kind of all right, just keep the lights on, market will come back around. We added an air reshopping solution. We added a bunch of analytics to audit contracts and to benchmark performance, so that we had a whole bunch more to sell coming out of COVID than going in, and so that caused another year of kind of explosive growth as a result. Chris: That's great. So, yeah, obviously part of that is give some deep thought to how you price what your product right. So that subscription-based versus transaction for you sounds like a very. Maybe it didn't seem as meaningful at the time you made it, but it turned out to be. Steve: You know that's a tough one If the ROI of your product is pretty clear, like reshopping. If you've got a rate of $2.99, I drop it to $ to $250. I've got $49 per night in savings If you pay me a couple of bucks. Okay, here's the ROI. And we could run some pilots and all kinds of stuff to prove that out. So that makes it really simple and we try to hit look, I need a ROI that when they take it to their boss the guy that's doing the budgets, you know, won't cause all kinds of frustration and concern. So four to one is usually the minimum. A lot of our customers, the larger ones, are getting eight to one, 10 to one, you know. So you could say like you've probably underpriced it. But that's okay, you know we'll claw back some of that. You know, over time when it's a product that's the ROI is a bit fuzzier. You just got to somehow convince the client that this is the potential savings. They're going to guesstimate and then from there work backwards to a price which kind of gets you back to that four to one ROI. So if I think I'm going to save you five bucks a transaction, I'm probably going to charge you a dollar to $1.50 is what I'm going to aim for. Again, to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate for Relagate. Again to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate. Chris: So part of that goes, I think, in building that customer base, really focusing on strong relationships. Talk a little bit about that and what you've done, because it sounds like over the course of the various businesses, you've done a good job of creating some very good partnerships and alliances. What are some of the things you think that have helped you foster that and keep those for so many years? Steve: I think one is you know you got to under promise and over deliver. So if they're going to sign up, you know, don't make them look bad or stupid to their boss. The other one is identifying the influencers in the market. So I'm sure every industry has some individuals that are kind of on the bleeding edge, willing to try new things. And if they do and it works, they've got the microphone or the megaphone to tell a whole bunch of others. So fortunately for me, I've been able to identify who those influencers are. I've got a reputation for just delivering as promised. So when they sign up they have confidence and then they tell their peers and a lot of our sales in the large enterprise market are peer-to-peer networking. It's not from email campaigns or other stuff that we do. Chris: The kind of part of that, the old adage of just do what you say you committed to do when you said you committed to do it right. Steve: It's just delivering as promised. Don't sell me a can of goods and all this great wonderful thing. And then when the reality is just not there, you know, don't make them look stupid. You know that's the key one. I mean, these are after 40 years they become. We have some pretty tight relationships with these folks and I want them to keep their job and we want them all promoted and moving on to the next big role, because when that happens they just take us with them and we just keep getting bigger and bigger. Chris: So you mentioned that about kind of keeping this, your words, the band back together. You've been able to do that, hiring some of the right people and incentivizing the right way. Any insights into. You know what people could think about when they're looking at their team one, trying to, I guess, evaluate whether they have the right people and then finding the right ways to incentivize them to kind of keep that core group together. Steve: To me it's if they feel like they're a part of a team and they understand the value they're providing to the customer and they see that customer's appreciation. You know they're in the conversation with the client, you know, and that's easy to do at a small company, because who else are they going to talk to? Right, you got to bring the dev and engineering. But when you start layering and bifurcating and have people you know in engineering back there in the back room, kind of stuff that don't talk to clients, that's when it gets a lot harder. But when you get them into the conversation and that sense of this is my company, this is my reputation. I'm a part of something here, you know, that's growing and doing well and whatever. It's not that hard, it's really not that difficult at all. It's just everybody wants to be appreciated and feel like they're, you know, part of a team. So that's the formula, right, I mean I could throw money at them. But I ask my employees I mean I am not the guy that's writing big checks to hire people right? I'm like look, we're going to pay a reasonable salary. You know this is not, you're not going to be broke, but you know we're in it for the long term game, and so we want to keep the cash in the company so that we don't have to go do another capital raise which is going to dilute all of us, and so your equity just keeps getting smaller, you know, over time, and the guys that actually make the money, or the investors this needs to be a collaborative team effort so they get that. Chris: I think that transparent communications is key right. So they again they understand their role on the team, they understand what the goal of the organization is and how they can help further that. Steve: You know it's always been kind of fire slow, fire quick as well. You know the people, everybody makes hiring mistakes. It happens all the time. And you know when you hire someone within like a couple of days you're like this is not feeling right. You know, don't let it just sit, don't let it be two years later when you actually kind of work them out. You have to kind of pull the trigger fairly quick because it messes up the whole culture of the company. Oftentimes, especially at a small company, it can create some real problems. Chris: Yeah, I mean that may be the most sage advice and, I think, maybe the most consistent that I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners. It's been my own experience too, that that kind of fire, you know, don't be slow to fire when you know you made a mistake and it's the hardest, maybe one of the hardest ones to do because you're dealing with people. I spoke to someone yesterday and they were like hired, someone had some uncertainty and literally what I learned was to trust my gut because on day one that they started in a conversation went oh my God, this is a huge mistake. Tried to play it out, tried to make it work and guess what? It didn't. Steve: Yeah, the thing is I don't believe resumes anymore and I don't believe LinkedIn pages at all, especially when it comes to higher dev and engineering. It's just anybody can put whatever language they want and say they've got a ton of experience. You've got to figure out a way to validate Most of our hires. There's kind of referrals and peer-to-peer sort of networking. If I find someone, I can usually find someone they know, especially in the Dallas market where we are, that's worked with them at a prior company. That sort of thing and do some back-channel checking is what really pays off for us. And we know the rock stars. We know the rock stars. We know the rock stars, but they're not that hard to kind of pick out. It's the ones that are kind of questionable. That you know. You just got to do your homework and don't count on the resume. Chris: That's a really good point. It's a hard thing to do, though, and it may be easier in programmers. But, to you know, I totally agree with resumes, and profiles can be, you know, massaged, but it's sifting through and kind of through the smoke to really get to what's behind the curtain. Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean. And Zoom calls, I mean people hire on Zoom calls or whatever. Like dude, you got to get them in the office face to face, go to lunch, have a couple of face to face interactions before you actually bring this person on board. You know, make them pass a coding test or something. You know something tangible. Don't just look, they're very nice people. You know they all have a. You know look great on a phone call or Zoom call, whatever, but that doesn't cut it. Chris: Yeah, I mean no substitute for personal interaction and seeing how people show up. Right. Steve: Yeah, the other thing is, since we're, you know, on a startup mode where everybody's looking at kind of the potential for equity, I'm like, look, if you're as great as you are, why don't you come on board for a month on a contract basis? Let's see how it works out, you know, and we'll go from there All right, and you really get a feel for someone and how well they're going to. We try it, we like to try it, before we buy. Let's put it that way. That's one way to do it. Chris: just talk about you know specific kind of leadership styles and and how you would describe your leadership style, and maybe how you would describe it today versus maybe 20 years ago as you you were emerging as a leader, and how you think it's changed oh, my god, it's night and day. Steve: so first company way back when. Maybe it comes as a surprise or not, but it was a coat and tie environment. Okay, guys, we've got to put on the ties and whatever. That was just so stupid. Checking office hours and all that crap and tracking vacation time just seems so silly. Now, if you can get the job done, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care where you do the work, I don't care if you have to take vacation on a pretty regular basis for whatever reason. I don't care if you're going off and disappearing to watch your kid play soccer, I do not care anymore. Just here's the job. Here's kind of an expectation. You know, as long as I understand, you're trying hard to get it done as quick as possible. We are good. You know, it's kind of a thing. So all that other stuff was just noise. That was just stupid, anyway it's. I mean back when I started in this, I mean programming and development and all that and the whole tech world was fairly new, so nobody knew what they were doing or how to manage these folks and it evolved over time, but fairly quickly. I mean, by company two, ties were gone. By company three, office was gone. I mean I've been virtual for 25 years. Unfortunately, we had offices but we just I think they were a waste of money but we did it for optics more than anything. Chris: Yeah, so it sounds like more kind of a traditional and somewhat of a command and control, starting out to now a little more, much more flexible and providing autonomy as long as people deliver on the expectations that they're communicated with. Steve: Which comes down to you just hire the right people, right, if you can get kind of get that sense for what the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see, if you can get kind of get that sense for what are the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see that you've got you spent 20 years at a really big company, you are not going to do well at a startup. I could guarantee you You're used to other people doing work for you. You know you're just kind of the sit back in your office and sort of you know, tell folks what to do. That ain't going to happen. You need to get your hands dirty. You might have to write code. You got to do PowerPoints, you got to do Word docs all that stuff yourself. Big company folks just tend to lose that ability, let's say, or it's beneath them and that's not going to work. Chris: Yeah, I mean it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality, right, it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality right, it's about getting a job done, no matter what it takes. Steve: And I think that drives me crazy at a big company because, you know, unfortunately for others, I tend to poke my nose into others' lanes and I get told a lot Steve, stay in your lane. Nothing bugs me more, you know, than to hear that. But that's the big company way. Chris: So you've gone through a few companies and you're now, I guess, inside of a larger company. Now Are you finding it easy to kind of have that mentality of flexible leadership and innovative environment? Steve: In the new company? Yes, I would have to say no, it's kind of as I expected. You know, with other acquisitions you start. You know, this kind of here's how it happens. However, embers, I believe, is trying hard to carve out a role where I can exist, let's put it that way. So my title right now is Chief Strategy Officer, and it's a bit nebulous, kind of by design. I can sort of make it what I want and as a result of being chief strategy officer, I can get outside of my lane and people can question it. I'm like everybody needs strategy. That's my title, I'm going to get in your lane, kind of stuff you know. So I tend to kind of bounce around to lots of different projects, objectives so on. I kind of help make sure that it's cohesive, you know, across this travel and expense story, you know. But at the same time I don't have a lot of direct reports, which is great. That usually doesn't go too well either. So so far, so good. Chris: Fingers crossed, that's great, yeah, we we kind of covered kind of the challenges of COVID If you think back prior to that, any other challenges along the way with the first two or three companies, everybody, yeah, yeah, I think people some of those are the best lessons we learned or some of the challenges we go through. I'm just curious to know any kind of lessons from a challenge that you could share with the listeners that might help them when they face something similar. Steve: Oh my God. I mean everybody's made mistakes and if they got lucky along the way and if they don't admit that they're lying, I mean some of the bigger ones. 9-11, we had a solution that was processing about 80% of all corporate travel reservations made in the US. 9-11 hit and we went to zero within about 24 hours, so that was kind of a gut check. Fortunately, travel bounced back fairly quickly, but it made us take a step back and realize how nimble we were If something like that were going to happen again. So that's one, and you know, and there's all the kind of day-to-day stuff. I mean there's fraud, there's employee HR issues that happen. You know there's. I'm not going to get into details on that, but you know you just kind of all right, let's deal with this. You know, don't just look the other way and take care of it. I think the latest I mean the big one right now is just, you know, the whole third party hacking and getting into your network and holding you hostage, stuff like that. You know that's made everybody just super anxious and nervous and to the point where companies are kind of shutting down their network so much that individuals can't do the job. You know, which is causing concern and it's what else are you going to do? I mean, if some employee can click on a link and bring down your network, do? Chris: you just turn off email. You're right, it's creating such a challenge. Everybody, all companies, are being attacked every day from all kinds of angles, and it just takes one and but you also? You can't operate out of fear and you can't let it stop you from doing your business. Steve: Well, they say there's two kinds of companies out there. There's those that have been hacked and those that don't know they've been hacked. So just kind of keep that in mind and I think it's fairly true. I think, you know, it's just almost too easy to get into someone's network and poke around and kind of see what's going on these days. Chris: It's so scary, but I thought you were going to say those who have been hacked and those that will be hacked, but I guess already have you, just don't know it. Well, see, I really loved hearing your story. It's a fascinating industry, and one that you don't really hear much about, but you definitely. It sounds like for 40 years you've been crushing it at it, so congratulations to that. Well, thanks for that. Steve: But also the one thing people don't know about corporate travel is that it sits on a backbone of legacy technology that's probably 40 years old. That has not changed. The GDSs are antiquated, the travel agency systems are antiquated. It's not that hard to come up with something innovative and new in this environment. So I just got lucky to where I got into it and I'm like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems and it just kept evolving from there. Like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems, and it just kept evolving from there. Chris: Yeah, that's really. You know so many entrepreneurs I've talked to. It's what you just said solving the customer or client's problem. Because what I said earlier, it goes back to asking the questions and listening and then trying to solve that problem. Steve: So many great ideas that come from that across so many industries. Yeah, and just to set up a little process to where you talk with your customers on a regular basis or a group of clients or people you trust and it just happens naturally, it's really not that difficult. Chris: Well, let's turn to a little bit on the lighter side before we wrap this up. I always like to ask people like yourself what was your first job? Steve: oh, my first job, let's see. Uh, I worked at a pet store at junior high. Well, actually first job was mowing yards, right? So everybody every kid did that just to get my allowance money. Then I worked at a pet store in junior high for a short period but fairly quickly realized waiting tables made a lot more money. So I told a guy I was 18, when actually I was 16, and they never really checked. They hired me as a waiter. I was actually kind of a part-time bartender, so I was serving liquor in Houston the strawberry patch I'll probably get them in trouble back when I was 16 years old and just made a ton of money as a, you know, a high schooler. So that was kind of the first. And then, you know, got into computers and writing code at a very early age. I was part of a program at Shell where they gave us mainframe time to go in and kind of play around and then went off to Baylor for computer science and then went to TI and then went to A&M for grad school. Very good, very good. Chris: So okay. So, being a native Texan, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Steve: That is not a fair question, because both are pretty dang awesome, but, being in Texas, I think we've got some of the best barbecue on the planet. So Pecan Lodge here in Dallas is, I think, kind of the best, and there's a lot of Tex-Mex, though that's really good as well, yeah, I agree on all points. Chris: I haven't heard of Pecan Lodge before, so I'll have to check that one out. Steve: Yeah, it's in Deep Ellum, so next time you fly in, go in out of Love Field, and it's not too far, it's a 10-minute drive from there. Chris: Deal Noted. And then last thing is you know you've made early in the career, probably never did this and maybe have done since. But if you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Steve: I actually got a 30 day sabbatical. So a guy hired me or not hired me, but when he brought me on board to run a company he said hey, you know, I threw in there. Just, I read it in a magazine that it was the hot thing for techies to ask for, so I threw it in there and they accepted it. I guess they thought I'd never make it to my five-year anniversary. Anyway, I did and I took the kids and family, went all the way throughout through Europe. So we went to Italy, paris, france, austria, switzerland, whatever you know, just really unplugged for that 30 days. Actually it was a 90 day sabbatical. That's what I took. Wow, so I got a little bit more time. Yeah, it was great, it was great. So if that were to happen today, I'd probably look to do something similar, but nowadays if I want to take 90 days, I probably could just got to ask for it. Chris: Very good, very good. Well, steve, thanks again for taking the time to come on and love hearing your story and all the innovation you brought to the travel industry. Steve: All right. Well, thanks for having me, chris, I really enjoyed it. Good conversation. Chris: Thanks, well, we'll talk soon. Steve: Okay, you bet. Special Guest: Steve Reynolds.

Join Steve Ramona as he demystifies networking, focusing on creating meaningful connections that go beyond just swapping business cards. Through personal anecdotes and actionable tips, Steve highlights how everyday encounters and local events can spur professional growth. Learn to value quality over quantity in interactions, embracing open-mindedness and active listening to foster genuine relationships. This episode emphasizes building a network where each connection has the potential to boost your career and income.In this masterclass, we explore how strategic networking can elevate your income, featuring real-life success stories of individuals who've boosted their earnings by leveraging their connections. Discover how combining financial management with community-building can streamline your workload and amplify your business potential. With Steve's insights, you'll gain the tools and mindset to enhance your networking skills, turning chance meetings into profitable opportunities.NOTABLE QUOTES"When you start an enterprise or project or have a philanthropic opportunity, you've got that network of hundreds or thousands of people that you can reach back to and communicate with because you've built a great relationship." – Steve"One person can lead to hundreds of connections." – Steve"It's always about the quality of the network. Find those people [who] are a fit. It's not everybody." – Steve"When the opportunity door opens, you can walk through it and if it doesn't work, you open the door and walk back out. That's what networking is about." – Steve“You've got to say no." – Steve"Your mindset should be of value to people." – Steve“It's okay to fail.” – Steve“Shut up and listen.” – Steve“I took notes so I can go back and learn about what and how I can help.” – Steve“Think of value as you're listening to the person you're talking to.” – Steve“People love to talk about themselves so the more that you can get them to open up and talk about themselves, we start to like that person a lot more.” – Philip“On that initial connection call, if you can try and make it more them than you are talking, It allows you to get to know them, and learn how to support them, and connect them with the people.” – Philip“No relationship is equal. There are times [when] my wife does so much more for me than I do for her, and [there are] times where I do way more for her than she does for me. And that's okay because that's a marriage, that's a true relationship.” – Philip“Your number one asset is people. You need to build your network with people.” – Steve“Practice serving or bringing value.” – SteveRESOURCESSteveWebsite: https://www.servinginbusinesspodcast.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveramona/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgN4ZO83lPjCJtuv0LeOJw PhilipDigital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-courseInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=enTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessionsLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions Support the Show.

Join us in an exciting episode where Steve Govel shares his remarkable journey from New Jersey to Sydney, and how he founded Rising Tide Film. Discover the challenges and triumphs of changing careers, finding a niche, and turning a passion for the ocean into a successful business. Steve's story is a testament to the power of adaptability, vision, and passion in entrepreneurship. Key Takeaways Learn how to pivot careers and thrive in a new industry. Discover the power of niche specialization in video production. Gain insights into leveraging personal passions for professional success. About Steve Govel Steve Govel owns Rising Tide Film, a content production business based in Sydney that creates story-driven films and photographs for marine businesses. Steve started his career as a wedding and portrait photographer in New Jersey and now spends his days on the water, telling stories for boat brands and cleaning his gear from saltwater daily. In This Episode [00:00] Welcome to the show! [04:14] Meet Steve Govel [07:07] Learn while you earn [14:00] Caring about client success [19:09] Niching [21:37] Starting a podcast [37:59] Aligning with others [39:52] Connect with Steve [42:13] Outro Quotes "I always search for something I love - that led me to Rising Tide Film." - Steve Govel "The marine industry was a perfect blend of my passion and profession." - Steve "Embracing change and adapting to new environments was key to my success." - Steve "It's about finding the right people and business that align with your vision." - Steve Guest Links  Find Steve Govel online Follow Rising Tide on Instagram | YouTube | TikTok Links FREE Workshop Available "How to Consistently Earn Over $100k Per Year in Video Production While Working Less Than 40 Hours Per Week" Join the Grow Your Video Business Facebook Group  Follow Ryan Koral on Instagram Follow Grow Your Video Business on Instagram Check out the full show notes

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Steve Brobeck served as the executive director of the Consumer Federation of America from 1980 to mid 2018. Steve now holds the position of senior fellow where he has researched real estate issues since the 1990s.Victoria Ray Henderson is the owner and broker of HomeBuyer Brokerage in the Washington D.C. area. Victoria is the producer and host of the podcast, Listen Up Home Buyers! with the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents Victoria: Hello and welcome to the podcast, Listen Up Home Buyers. I'm Victoria Ray Henderson, and today's guest is Steve Brobeck. Mr. Brobeck served as the Executive Director of the Consumer Federation of America from 1980 to mid-2018, and he now holds the position of Senior Fellow, where he has researched real estate issues since the 1990s. Steve, welcome to Listen Up Home Buyers.Steve:  It's great to join you, Vic.Victoria:  Yeah, thank you. So we have so many things that we could talk about and that we have talked…But the one thing I'd love to talk about today is the Real Estate Agent Commissions, and specifically that recent verdict by the Federal Jury in Missouri, which ruled that the National Association of Realtors and several brokerages had conspired to fix prices by setting a standard where seller pays the listing agent a commission. And that is split with the buyer's agent. And that decision found the defendants liable for $1.8 billion in damages. And of course, this verdict is just sweeping through the country, could dramatically change the real estate industry. So, I'll start with what are your thoughts on the verdict?Steve:  Well I'm not surprised at all; the jury hardly deliberated at all. When they went into that jury room, they had made up their mind. They spent a couple of hours deciding on the damages. Yes, they decided on 1.8 billion, but in fact, with the trouble damages, the cost to the industry could be over $5 billion. And that is just essentially in the State of Missouri, if you project it out to the whole country, you're looking at awards that would bankrupt the industry two or three times over. But that is not what the industry eventually is going to have to pay.Victoria:  Yeah. When you heard about this verdict, what did you hope would come from it?Steve:  Well, essentially, prices have been set by the industry for 80 to 90 years. And what we'd like to see, and what we believe in at CFA is price competition. And we believe that if there were effective price competition, you would see a much more diverse marketplace. The commissions on average would come down. We predicted 3 to 4%, but just as importantly, there would be different rates for different agents. Those that are really good at what they do, have a lot of experience would be able to charge more than those who just received their license. I just in fact, received a sales license in DC, and I do not deserve 3%, you know, for facilitating a sale.Victoria:  Congratulations. And you're always welcome to join my brokerage if you…We offer a great training program. But the reason that I bring that point up is because you mentioned that 3%, or whatever the commission would be. And you know that you as a newbie; newbies never make their full commission, they're always either working on the team, under the tutelage of, you know, somebody and they should be supervised and should be getting some training.Steve:  Well, the thing is, yes, maybe they're only receiving one and a half percent. Two reports on this whole problem of training. It's very easy in almost every state for someone to get a real estate license. Yet, this is actually…Practicing brokerage is complicated or it should be complicated and demands a lot of skill and knowledge. And unfortunately, one of our reports documented how incompetent so many agents are. They're often bailed out either by their broker or in many cases they're bailed out by the agent for the other party in the sale. That's just not the way an industry should function. You have to go back historically. Back in the 1920s, even earlier, the industry tried to set prices and force all members of the industry to charge the same price. The Department of Justice in the 1940s sued them about that, and they retreated and they made those price schedules voluntary. The Department of Justice sued them again, and they backtracked again. Then they engaged the industry in widespread collusion. Discounters have tried to offer lower rates and they failed. What the litigation tries to do, and what the jury clearly understood the industry is trying to do is, or should do, is to completely separate the listing agent and the buyer agent commissions. And if that's done, there actually is a chance for there to be real price competition, which by the way we believe would help the most confident agents. Right now, there's a glut of agents. Our current research shows that nearly half of all agents sold no or one property in the last year, and that essentially then puts huge pressure on the successful agents to continue and maintain the 5 to 6% rates.Victoria:  I often find, and the reason that many of these newbies don't have sales is because they're working as secretarial duties. They're on teams where they're following people around, and so they won't have a lot of sales. Now, I'm not arguing for…You know, I agree with you there are a lot of agents, and too many, but so many of them are used as support staff. So, I think, you know…Steve:  That's right. But remember, their aspiration is to be an agent; to sell property and collect commissions. And when they can, yes, some of them, and we've actually documented in the study that we're going to release early next year, but they end up working as admin staff to successful brokers. That's true.Victoria:  Yeah. Just in the beginning of the month, The Association of Independent Mortgage Experts, they release this open letter, and they're really concerned about the decoupling of the commissions. And the main reason is, you and I have discussed this before about putting additional finances onto the buyer, and specifically they're talking about vets; veterans, and first time home buyers, and they're saying that they could be adversely affected. VA guidelines, they prevent people from being able to finance a buyer's agent. So what we would end up doing in that situation, if it was decoupled, is asking the seller for a credit to pay the cooperative commission or the commission for the buyer's agent. And then there's the issue of the appraisal. What happens if to the appraisal when, you know, if the mortgage industry did end up being able to do this, which I don't think that they're going to agree to, the home value would then be impacted. So what are your thoughts on that?Steve:  If the industry decided that they wanted to remove those barriers, and I've talked to many people in the industry about this, it could get fixed and it could get fixed without even going to Congress. If, in fact, the real estate industry, and I think the mortgage industry and the consumer groups and housing groups would join them as well and go to the regulators and said, look, you've got to tweak these regulations to allow essentially a price competitive market to take place lowering the costs for buyers and sellers that would occur. Vic, I have talked to hundreds of realtors over the last 30 years, all of whom I consider to be professionals; they're the full-timers with experience. And quite a few of them complain that the industry will never be a profession until you have professional standards, which would greatly reduce the number of agents and give exclusive buyers like yourself a better opportunity to recruit clients.Victoria:  I agree with you that real estate standards need to be higher. And I will say that the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents, are specific real estate brokers and agents who are consumer oriented with a focus only working with buyers. What is your opinion of exclusive buyer brokerage in general?Steve:  Well, I'm glad you asked me that question because I am a strong believer in exclusive buyer brokerage. What the exclusive buyer brokers recognize, and I understood this when I first started to study the industry back in the nineties, is they recognize there's a fundamental conflict of interest in the industry. You basically cannot, without exposing that conflict of interest, list properties and sell properties. So you list properties and then you have a buyer. Now, who's your obligation to, is it to the, the sellers whose properties you've listed to show them the properties first? If not, then you are actually violating your fiduciary duty to the buyer. And if, in fact, you just honor that fiduciary ability and you ignore all of your listings and look for the property that would best suit the buyer, you're then violating your fiduciary responsibilities to the seller. Exclusive buyer brokerage has recognized that conflict of interest. And so people like yourself  who said, look, we can't really represent both, so we're just going to represent buyers. And I very much hope that in the future, exclusive buyer brokerage will stabilize and grow, and that buyers end up routinely using exclusive buyer brokers. That's my hope.Victoria:  Yeah, and I appreciate that. With the decoupling of commissions, I am really worried about a couple of people that I'm thinking of that I helped this year. She was scraping money together, borrowing money from parents, and pulling it together. And I got, you know, a condo for her under list price with a 3% seller subsidy to help with closing costs. And I was overjoyed, you know, I was just so elated to be able to do this. This woman would not have been able to pay my co-op, my commission out of pocket. My concern is that, you know, that the unintended consequences of decoupling the commissions could have ramifications that could impact the industry for decades.Steve:  I think that to preserve exclusive buyer brokerage and to rationalize the market, you're going to have to allow the buyers to finance the buyer agent commission. But what people are talking about right now, and you actually alluded to it ear early in our discussion, is a concession by the seller. And I think that that's what we're going to see as a transitional stage. And that eventually will lead to the mortgage financing of the commission. But that's the way to basically ease this transition.Victoria:  How is what you're suggesting different from what's already in play? How is it that in this whole scenario the person who, or the real estate agent, and in my case, the exclusive buyer broker who is essentially doing, I think it's well understood that the person who represents the buyer is doing a lot of work. How is it that this person has become the bad guy in this whole scenario? Steve:  They're not. Well, they're not the bad guy. I mean, the listing agent is really the one who was discussing the compensation and justifying the 5 to 6%. It's not the buyer agents because we're, with a few exceptions, the buyers and the buyer agents aren't having that conversation. You know, it's true. The system has existed basically for 80 to 90 years, and it functions to the extent that homes get sold and purchase. But the problem is the industry is very inefficient; consumers overpay, or at least quite a few of them, overpay. There's no relationship between agent compensation, or very little relationship between agent compensation and the services that they provide.Victoria:  As an exclusive buyer broker, I want people to be educated. I want buyers to understand this whole process. And I also know that I can speak for the members of Neva in saying that, you know, we advocate for buyers a hundred percent, we could probably be making double what we make if we did listings and if we worked for buyers, and if we did dual agency and designated agency, but we drew a line in the sand and said, we're not functioning that way.Steve:  Well, CFA has recognized that for decades, and we commend exclusive buyer brokers who really are trying to offer good value to consumers without the kind of conflicts of interest that exists throughout the rest of the industry. So, more power to exclusive buyer brokers.Victoria:  Yeah. We appreciate your support. Steve Brobeck, has served as the Executive Director of the Consumer Federation of America from 1980 to mid-2018, and now he holds the position of Senior Fellow at CFA and he's been researching real estate issues since the 1990s. Steve, you know, it's such a pleasure to always talk to you, and I'm inviting you back because we've only scratched the surface in this particular podcast.Steve:  Well, thank you, Vic. Victoria:  Thank you. Listen Up, Home Buyers! The podcast offering advice and tips from true buyer agents. Host and Producer, Victoria Ray Henderson is the owner and broker of HomeBuyer Brokerage in the Washington D.C. area. Victoria is and a member of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents.

We are running an end of year survey for our listeners. Let us know any feedback you have for us, what episodes resonated with you the most, and guest requests for 2024! RAG has emerged as one of the key pieces of the AI Engineer stack. Jerry from LlamaIndex called it a “hack”, Bryan from Hex compared it to “a recommendation system from LLMs”, and even LangChain started with it. RAG is crucial in any AI coding workflow. We talked about context quality for code in our Phind episode. Today's guests, Beyang Liu and Steve Yegge from SourceGraph, have been focused on code indexing and retrieval for over 15 years. We locked them in our new studio to record a 1.5 hours masterclass on the history of code search, retrieval interfaces for code, and how they get SOTA 30% completion acceptance rate in their Cody product by being better at the “bin packing problem” of LLM context generation. Google Grok → SourceGraph → CodyWhile at Google in 2008, Steve built Grok, which lives on today as Google Kythe. It allowed engineers to do code parsing and searching across different codebases and programming languages. (You might remember this blog post from Steve's time at Google) Beyang was an intern at Google at the same time, and Grok became the inspiration to start SourceGraph in 2013. The two didn't know eachother personally until Beyang brought Steve out of retirement 9 years later to join him as VP Engineering. Fast forward 10 years, SourceGraph has become to best code search tool out there and raised $223M along the way. Nine months ago, they open sourced SourceGraph Cody, their AI coding assistant. All their code indexing and search infrastructure allows them to get SOTA results by having better RAG than competitors:* Code completions as you type that achieve an industry-best Completion Acceptance Rate (CAR) as high as 30% using a context-enhanced open-source LLM (StarCoder)* Context-aware chat that provides the option of using GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 2, GPT-3.5 Turbo, Mistral 7x8B, or Claude Instant, with more model integrations planned* Doc and unit test generation, along with AI quick fixes for common coding errors* AI-enhanced natural language code search, powered by a hybrid dense/sparse vector search engine There are a few pieces of infrastructure that helped Cody achieve these results:Dense-sparse vector retrieval system For many people, RAG = vector similarity search, but there's a lot more that you can do to get the best possible results. From their release:"Sparse vector search" is a fancy name for keyword search that potentially incorporates LLMs for things like ranking and term expansion (e.g., "k8s" expands to "Kubernetes container orchestration", possibly weighted as in SPLADE): * Dense vector retrieval makes use of embeddings, the internal representation that LLMs use to represent text. Dense vector retrieval provides recall over a broader set of results that may have no exact keyword matches but are still semantically similar. * Sparse vector retrieval is very fast, human-understandable, and yields high recall of results that closely match the user query. * We've found the approaches to be complementary.There's a very good blog post by Pinecone on SPLADE for sparse vector search if you're interested in diving in. If you're building RAG applications in areas that have a lot of industry-specific nomenclature, acronyms, etc, this is a good approach to getting better results.SCIPIn 2016, Microsoft announced the Language Server Protocol (LSP) and the Language Server Index Format (LSIF). This protocol makes it easy for IDEs to get all the context they need from a codebase to get things like file search, references, “go to definition”, etc. SourceGraph developed SCIP, “a better code indexing format than LSIF”:* Simpler and More Efficient Format: SCIP utilizes Protobuf instead of JSON, which is used by LSIF. Protobuf is more space-efficient, simpler, and more suitable for systems programming. * Better Performance and Smaller Index Sizes: SCIP indexers, such as scip-clang, show enhanced performance and reduced index file sizes compared to LSIF indexers (10%-20% smaller)* Easier to Develop and Debug: SCIP's design, centered around human-readable string IDs for symbols, makes it faster and more straightforward to develop new language indexers. Having more efficient indexing is key to more performant RAG on code. Show Notes* Sourcegraph* Cody* Copilot vs Cody* Steve's Stanford seminar on Grok* Steve's blog* Grab* Fireworks* Peter Norvig* Noam Chomsky* Code search* Kelly Norton* Zoekt* v0.devSee also our past episodes on Cursor, Phind, Codeium and Codium as well as the GitHub Copilot keynote at AI Engineer Summit.Timestamps* [00:00:00] Intros & Backgrounds* [00:05:20] How Steve's work on Grok inspired SourceGraph for Beyang* [00:08:10] What's Cody?* [00:11:22] Comparison of coding assistants and the capabilities of Cody* [00:16:00] The importance of context (RAG) in AI coding tools* [00:21:33] The debate between Chomsky and Norvig approaches in AI* [00:30:06] Normsky: the Norvig + Chomsky models collision* [00:36:00] The death of the DSL?* [00:40:00] LSP, Skip, Kythe, BFG, and all that fun stuff* [00:53:00] The SourceGraph internal stack* [00:58:46] Building on open source models* [01:02:00] SourceGraph for engineering managers?* [01:12:00] Lightning RoundTranscriptAlessio: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO-in-Residence at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol AI. [00:00:16]Swyx: Hey, and today we're christening our new podcast studio in the Newton, and we have Beyang and Steve from Sourcegraph. Welcome. [00:00:25]Beyang: Hey, thanks for having us. [00:00:26]Swyx: So this has been a long time coming. I'm very excited to have you. We also are just celebrating the one year anniversary of ChatGPT yesterday, but also we'll be talking about the GA of Cody later on today. We'll just do a quick intros of both of you. Obviously, people can research you and check the show notes for more. Beyang, you worked in computer vision at Stanford and then you worked at Palantir. I did, yeah. You also interned at Google. [00:00:48]Beyang: I did back in the day where I get to use Steve's system, DevTool. [00:00:53]Swyx: Right. What was it called? [00:00:55]Beyang: It was called Grok. Well, the end user thing was Google Code Search. That's what everyone called it, or just like CS. But the brains of it were really the kind of like Trigram index and then Grok, which provided the reference graph. [00:01:07]Steve: Today it's called Kythe, the open source Google one. It's sort of like Grok v3. [00:01:11]Swyx: On your podcast, which you've had me on, you've interviewed a bunch of other code search developers, including the current developer of Kythe, right? [00:01:19]Beyang: No, we didn't have any Kythe people on, although we would love to if they're up for it. We had Kelly Norton, who built a similar system at Etsy, it's an open source project called Hound. We also had Han-Wen Nienhuys, who created Zoekt, which is, I think, heavily inspired by the Trigram index that powered Google's original code search and that we also now use at Sourcegraph. Yeah. [00:01:45]Swyx: So you teamed up with Quinn over 10 years ago to start Sourcegraph and you were indexing all code on the internet. And now you're in a perfect spot to create a code intelligence startup. Yeah, yeah. [00:01:56]Beyang: I guess the backstory was, I used Google Code Search while I was an intern. And then after I left that internship and worked elsewhere, it was the single dev tool that I missed the most. I felt like my job was just a lot more tedious and much more of a hassle without it. And so when Quinn and I started working together at Palantir, he had also used various code search engines in open source over the years. And it was just a pain point that we both felt, both working on code at Palantir and also working within Palantir's clients, which were a lot of Fortune 500 companies, large financial institutions, folks like that. And if anything, the pains they felt in dealing with large complex code bases made our pain points feel small by comparison. So that was really the impetus for starting Sourcegraph. [00:02:42]Swyx: Yeah, excellent. Steve, you famously worked at Amazon. And you've told many, many stories. I want every single listener of Latent Space to check out Steve's YouTube because he effectively had a podcast that you didn't tell anyone about or something. You just hit record and just went on a few rants. I'm always here for your Stevie rants. And then you moved to Google, where you also had some interesting thoughts on just the overall Google culture versus Amazon. You joined Grab as head of eng for a couple of years. I'm from Singapore, so I have actually personally used a lot of Grab's features. And it was very interesting to see you talk so highly of Grab's engineering and sort of overall prospects. [00:03:21]Steve: Because as a customer, it sucked? [00:03:22]Swyx: Yeah, no, it's just like, being from a smaller country, you never see anyone from our home country being on a global stage or talked about as a startup that people admire or look up to, like on the league that you, with all your legendary experience, would consider equivalent. Yeah. [00:03:41]Steve: Yeah, no, absolutely. They actually, they didn't even know that they were as good as they were, in a sense. They started hiring a bunch of people from Silicon Valley to come in and sort of like fix it. And we came in and we were like, Oh, we could have been a little better operational excellence and stuff. But by and large, they're really sharp. The only thing about Grab is that they get criticized a lot for being too westernized. Oh, by who? By Singaporeans who don't want to work there. [00:04:06]Swyx: Okay. I guess I'm biased because I'm here, but I don't see that as a problem. If anything, they've had their success because they were more westernized than the Sanders Singaporean tech company. [00:04:15]Steve: I mean, they had their success because they are laser focused. They copy to Amazon. I mean, they're executing really, really, really well for a giant. I was on a slack with 2,500 engineers. It was like this giant waterfall that you could dip your toe into. You'd never catch up. Actually, the AI summarizers would have been really helpful there. But yeah, no, I think Grab is successful because they're just out there with their sleeves rolled up, just making it happen. [00:04:43]Swyx: And for those who don't know, it's not just like Uber of Southeast Asia, it's also a super app. PayPal Plus. [00:04:48]Steve: Yeah. [00:04:49]Swyx: In the way that super apps don't exist in the West. It's one of the enduring mysteries of B2C that super apps work in the East and don't work in the West. We just don't understand it. [00:04:57]Beyang: Yeah. [00:04:58]Steve: It's just kind of curious. They didn't work in India either. And it was primarily because of bandwidth reasons and smaller phones. [00:05:03]Swyx: That should change now. It should. [00:05:05]Steve: And maybe we'll see a super app here. [00:05:08]Swyx: You retired-ish? I did. You retired-ish on your own video game? Mm-hmm. Any fun stories about that? And that's also where you discovered some need for code search, right? Mm-hmm. [00:05:16]Steve: Sure. A need for a lot of stuff. Better programming languages, better databases. Better everything. I mean, I started in like 95, right? Where there was kind of nothing. Yeah. Yeah. [00:05:24]Beyang: I just want to say, I remember when you first went to Grab because you wrote that blog post talking about why you were excited about it, about like the expanding Asian market. And our reaction was like, oh, man, how did we miss stealing it with you? [00:05:36]Swyx: Hiring you. [00:05:37]Beyang: Yeah. [00:05:38]Steve: I was like, miss that. [00:05:39]Swyx: Tell that story. So how did this happen? Right? So you were inspired by Grok. [00:05:44]Beyang: I guess the backstory from my point of view is I had used code search and Grok while at Google, but I didn't actually know that it was connected to you, Steve. I knew you from your blog posts, which were always excellent, kind of like inside, very thoughtful takes from an engineer's perspective on some of the challenges facing tech companies and tech culture and that sort of thing. But my first introduction to you within the context of code intelligence, code understanding was I watched a talk that you gave, I think at Stanford, about Grok when you're first building it. And that was very eye opening. I was like, oh, like that guy, like the guy who, you know, writes the extremely thoughtful ranty like blog posts also built that system. And so that's how I knew, you know, you were involved in that. And then, you know, we always wanted to hire you, but never knew quite how to approach you or, you know, get that conversation started. [00:06:34]Steve: Well, we got introduced by Max, right? Yeah. It was temporal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a no brainer. They called me up and I had noticed when Sourcegraph had come out. Of course, when they first came out, I had this dagger of jealousy stabbed through me piercingly, which I remember because I am not a jealous person by any means, ever. But boy, I was like, but I was kind of busy, right? And just one thing led to another. I got sucked back into the ads vortex and whatever. So thank God Sourcegraph actually kind of rescued me. [00:07:05]Swyx: Here's a chance to build DevTools. Yeah. [00:07:08]Steve: That's the best. DevTools are the best. [00:07:10]Swyx: Cool. Well, so that's the overall intro. I guess we can get into Cody. Is there anything else that like people should know about you before we get started? [00:07:18]Steve: I mean, everybody knows I'm a musician. I can juggle five balls. [00:07:24]Swyx: Five is good. Five is good. I've only ever managed three. [00:07:27]Steve: Five is hard. Yeah. And six, a little bit. [00:07:30]Swyx: Wow. [00:07:31]Beyang: That's impressive. [00:07:32]Alessio: So yeah, to jump into Sourcegraph, this has been a company 10 years in the making. And as Sean said, now you're at the right place. Phase two. Now, exactly. You spent 10 years collecting all this code, indexing, making it easy to surface it. Yeah. [00:07:47]Swyx: And also learning how to work with enterprises and having them trust you with their code bases. Yeah. [00:07:52]Alessio: Because initially you were only doing on-prem, right? Like a lot of like VPC deployments. [00:07:55]Beyang: So in the very early days, we're cloud only. But the first major customers we landed were all on-prem, self-hosted. And that was, I think, related to the nature of the problem that we're solving, which becomes just like a critical, unignorable pain point once you're above like 100 devs or so. [00:08:11]Alessio: Yeah. And now Cody is going to be GA by the time this releases. So congrats to your future self for launching this in two weeks. Can you give a quick overview of just what Cody is? I think everybody understands that it's a AI coding agent, but a lot of companies say they have a AI coding agent. So yeah, what does Cody do? How do people interface with it? [00:08:32]Beyang: Yeah. So how is it different from the like several dozen other AI coding agents that exist in the market now? When we thought about building a coding assistant that would do things like code generation and question answering about your code base, I think we came at it from the perspective of, you know, we've spent the past decade building the world's best code understanding engine for human developers, right? So like it's kind of your guide as a human dev if you want to go and dive into a large complex code base. And so our intuition was that a lot of the context that we're providing to human developers would also be useful context for AI developers to consume. And so in terms of the feature set, Cody is very similar to a lot of other assistants. It does inline autocompletion. It does code base aware chat. It does specific commands that automate, you know, tasks that you might rather not want to do like generating unit tests or adding detailed documentation. But we think the core differentiator is really the quality of the context, which is hard to kind of describe succinctly. It's a bit like saying, you know, what's the difference between Google and Alta Vista? There's not like a quick checkbox list of features that you can rattle off, but it really just comes down to all the attention and detail that we've paid to making that context work well and be high quality and fast for human devs. We're now kind of plugging into the AI coding assistant as well. Yeah. [00:09:53]Steve: I mean, just to add my own perspective on to what Beyang just described, RAG is kind of like a consultant that the LLM has available, right, that knows about your code. RAG provides basically a bridge to a lookup system for the LLM, right? Whereas fine tuning would be more like on the job training for somebody. If the LLM is a person, you know, and you send them to a new job and you do on the job training, that's what fine tuning is like, right? So tuned to our specific task. You're always going to need that expert, even if you get the on the job training, because the expert knows your particular code base, your task, right? That expert has to know your code. And there's a chicken and egg problem because, right, you know, we're like, well, I'm going to ask the LLM about my code, but first I have to explain it, right? It's this chicken and egg problem. That's where RAG comes in. And we have the best consultants, right? The best assistant who knows your code. And so when you sit down with Cody, right, what Beyang said earlier about going to Google and using code search and then starting to feel like without it, his job was super tedious. Once you start using these, do you guys use coding assistants? [00:10:53]Swyx: Yeah, right. [00:10:54]Steve: I mean, like we're getting to the point very quickly, right? Where you feel like almost like you're programming without the internet, right? Or something, you know, it's like you're programming back in the nineties without the coding assistant. Yeah. Hopefully that helps for people who have like no idea about coding systems, what they are. [00:11:09]Swyx: Yeah. [00:11:10]Alessio: I mean, going back to using them, we had a lot of them on the podcast already. We had Cursor, we have Codium and Codium, very similar names. [00:11:18]Swyx: Yeah. Find, and then of course there's Copilot. [00:11:22]Alessio: You had a Copilot versus Cody blog post, and I think it really shows the context improvement. So you had two examples that stuck with me. One was, what does this application do? And the Copilot answer was like, oh, it uses JavaScript and NPM and this. And it's like, but that's not what it does. You know, that's what it's built with. Versus Cody was like, oh, these are like the major functions. And like, these are the functionalities and things like that. And then the other one was, how do I start this up? And Copilot just said NPM start, even though there was like no start command in the package JSON, but you know, most collapse, right? Most projects use NPM start. So maybe this does too. How do you think about open source models? Because Copilot has their own private thing. And I think you guys use Starcoder, if I remember right. Yeah, that's correct. [00:12:09]Beyang: I think Copilot uses some variant of Codex. They're kind of cagey about it. I don't think they've like officially announced what model they use. [00:12:16]Swyx: And I think they use a range of models based on what you're doing. Yeah. [00:12:19]Beyang: So everyone uses a range of model. Like no one uses the same model for like inline completion versus like chat because the latency requirements for. Oh, okay. Well, there's fill in the middle. There's also like what the model's trained on. So like we actually had completions powered by Claude Instant for a while. And but you had to kind of like prompt hack your way to get it to output just the code and not like, hey, you know, here's the code you asked for, like that sort of text. So like everyone uses a range of models. We've kind of designed Cody to be like especially model, not agnostic, but like pluggable. So one of our kind of design considerations was like as the ecosystem evolves, we want to be able to integrate the best in class models, whether they're proprietary or open source into Cody because the pace of innovation in the space is just so quick. And I think that's been to our advantage. Like today, Cody uses Starcoder for inline completions. And with the benefit of the context that we provide, we actually show comparable completion acceptance rate metrics. It's kind of like the standard metric that folks use to evaluate inline completion quality. It's like if I show you a completion, what's the chance that you actually accept the completion versus you reject it? And so we're at par with Copilot, which is at the head of that industry right now. And we've been able to do that with the Starcoder model, which is open source and the benefit of the context fetching stuff that we provide. And of course, a lot of like prompt engineering and other stuff along the way. [00:13:40]Alessio: And Steve, you wrote a post called cheating is all you need about what you're building. And one of the points you made is that everybody's fighting on the same axis, which is better UI and the IDE, maybe like a better chat response. But data modes are kind of the most important thing. And you guys have like a 10 year old mode with all the data you've been collecting. How do you kind of think about what other companies are doing wrong, right? Like, why is nobody doing this in terms of like really focusing on RAG? I feel like you see so many people. Oh, we just got a new model. It's like a bit human eval. And it's like, well, but maybe like that's not what we should really be doing, you know? Like, do you think most people underestimate the importance of like the actual RAG in code? [00:14:21]Steve: I think that people weren't doing it much. It wasn't. It's kind of at the edges of AI. It's not in the center. I know that when ChatGPT launched, so within the last year, I've heard a lot of rumblings from inside of Google, right? Because they're undergoing a huge transformation to try to, you know, of course, get into the new world. And I heard that they told, you know, a bunch of teams to go and train their own models or fine tune their own models, right? [00:14:43]Swyx: Both. [00:14:43]Steve: And, you know, it was a s**t show. Nobody knew how to do it. They launched two coding assistants. One was called Code D with an EY. And then there was, I don't know what happened in that one. And then there's Duet, right? Google loves to compete with themselves, right? They do this all the time. And they had a paper on Duet like from a year ago. And they were doing exactly what Copilot was doing, which was just pulling in the local context, right? But fundamentally, I thought of this because we were talking about the splitting of the [00:15:10]Swyx: models. [00:15:10]Steve: In the early days, it was the LLM did everything. And then we realized that for certain use cases, like completions, that a different, smaller, faster model would be better. And that fragmentation of models, actually, we expected to continue and proliferate, right? Because we are fundamentally, we're a recommender engine right now. Yeah, we're recommending code to the LLM. We're saying, may I interest you in this code right here so that you can answer my question? [00:15:34]Swyx: Yeah? [00:15:34]Steve: And being good at recommender engine, I mean, who are the best recommenders, right? There's YouTube and Spotify and, you know, Amazon or whatever, right? Yeah. [00:15:41]Swyx: Yeah. [00:15:41]Steve: And they all have many, many, many, many, many models, right? For all fine-tuned for very specific, you know. And that's where we're heading in code, too. Absolutely. [00:15:50]Swyx: Yeah. [00:15:50]Alessio: We just did an episode we released on Wednesday, which we said RAG is like Rexis or like LLMs. You're basically just suggesting good content. [00:15:58]Swyx: It's like what? Recommendations. [00:15:59]Beyang: Recommendations. [00:16:00]Alessio: Oh, got it. [00:16:01]Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:16:02]Swyx: So like the naive implementation of RAG is you embed everything, throw it in a vector database, you embed your query, and then you find the nearest neighbors, and that's your RAG. But actually, you need to rank it. And actually, you need to make sure there's sample diversity and that kind of stuff. And then you're like slowly gradient dissenting yourself towards rediscovering proper Rexis, which has been traditional ML for a long time. But like approaching it from an LLM perspective. Yeah. [00:16:24]Beyang: I almost think of it as like a generalized search problem because it's a lot of the same things. Like you want your layer one to have high recall and get all the potential things that could be relevant. And then there's typically like a layer two re-ranking mechanism that bumps up the precision and tries to get the relevant stuff to the top of the results list. [00:16:43]Swyx: Have you discovered that ranking matters a lot? Oh, yeah. So the context is that I think a lot of research shows that like one, context utilization matters based on model. Like GPT uses the top of the context window, and then apparently Claude uses the bottom better. And it's lossy in the middle. Yeah. So ranking matters. No, it really does. [00:17:01]Beyang: The skill with which models are able to take advantage of context is always going to be dependent on how that factors into the impact on the training loss. [00:17:10]Swyx: Right? [00:17:10]Beyang: So like if you want long context window models to work well, then you have to have a ton of data where it's like, here's like a billion lines of text. And I'm going to ask a question about like something that's like, you know, embedded deeply into it and like, give me the right answer. And unless you have that training set, then of course, you're going to have variability in terms of like where it attends to. And in most kind of like naturally occurring data, the thing that you're talking about right now, the thing I'm asking you about is going to be something that we talked about recently. [00:17:36]Swyx: Yeah. [00:17:36]Steve: Did you really just say gradient dissenting yourself? Actually, I love that it's entered the casual lexicon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:17:44]Swyx: My favorite version of that is, you know, how we have to p-hack papers. So, you know, when you throw humans at the problem, that's called graduate student dissent. That's great. It's really awesome. [00:17:54]Alessio: I think the other interesting thing that you have is this inline assist UX that I wouldn't say async, but like it works while you can also do work. So you can ask Cody to make changes on a code block and you can still edit the same file at the same time. [00:18:07]Swyx: Yeah. [00:18:07]Alessio: How do you see that in the future? Like, do you see a lot of Cody's running together at the same time? Like, how do you validate also that they're not messing each other up as they make changes in the code? And maybe what are the limitations today? And what do you think about where the attack is going? [00:18:21]Steve: I want to start with a little history and then I'm going to turn it over to Bian, all right? So we actually had this feature in the very first launch back in June. Dominic wrote it. It was called nonstop Cody. And you could have multiple, basically, LLM requests in parallel modifying your source [00:18:37]Swyx: file. [00:18:37]Steve: And he wrote a bunch of code to handle all of the diffing logic. And you could see the regions of code that the LLM was going to change, right? And he was showing me demos of it. And it just felt like it was just a little before its time, you know? But a bunch of that stuff, that scaffolding was able to be reused for where we're inline [00:18:56]Swyx: sitting today. [00:18:56]Steve: How would you characterize it today? [00:18:58]Beyang: Yeah, so that interface has really evolved from a, like, hey, general purpose, like, request anything inline in the code and have the code update to really, like, targeted features, like, you know, fix the bug that exists at this line or request a very specific [00:19:13]Swyx: change. [00:19:13]Beyang: And the reason for that is, I think, the challenge that we ran into with inline fixes, and we do want to get to the point where you could just fire and forget and have, you know, half a dozen of these running in parallel. But I think we ran into the challenge early on that a lot of people are running into now when they're trying to construct agents, which is the reliability of, you know, working code generation is just not quite there yet in today's language models. And so that kind of constrains you to an interaction where the human is always, like, in the inner loop, like, checking the output of each response. And if you want that to work in a way where you can be asynchronous, you kind of have to constrain it to a domain where today's language models can generate reliable code well enough. So, you know, generating unit tests, that's, like, a well-constrained problem. Or fixing a bug that shows up as, like, a compiler error or a test error, that's a well-constrained problem. But the more general, like, hey, write me this class that does X, Y, and Z using the libraries that I have, that is not quite there yet, even with the benefit of really good context. Like, it definitely moves the needle a lot, but we're not quite there yet to the point where you can just fire and forget. And I actually think that this is something that people don't broadly appreciate yet, because I think that, like, everyone's chasing this dream of agentic execution. And if we're to really define that down, I think it implies a couple things. You have, like, a multi-step process where each step is fully automated. We don't have to have a human in the loop every time. And there's also kind of like an LM call at each stage or nearly every stage in that [00:20:45]Swyx: chain. [00:20:45]Beyang: Based on all the work that we've done, you know, with the inline interactions, with kind of like general Codyfeatures for implementing longer chains of thought, we're actually a little bit more bearish than the average, you know, AI hypefluencer out there on the feasibility of agents with purely kind of like transformer-based models. To your original question, like, the inline interactions with CODI, we actually constrained it to be more targeted, like, you know, fix the current error or make this quick fix. I think that that does differentiate us from a lot of the other tools on the market, because a lot of people are going after this, like, shnazzy, like, inline edit interaction, whereas I think where we've moved, and this is based on the user feedback that we've gotten, it's like that sort of thing, it demos well, but when you're actually coding day to day, you don't want to have, like, a long chat conversation inline with the code base. That's a waste of time. You'd rather just have it write the right thing and then move on with your life or not have to think about it. And that's what we're trying to work towards. [00:21:37]Steve: I mean, yeah, we're not going in the agent direction, right? I mean, I'll believe in agents when somebody shows me one that works. Yeah. Instead, we're working on, you know, sort of solidifying our strength, which is bringing the right context in. So new context sources, ways for you to plug in your own context, ways for you to control or influence the context, you know, the mixing that happens before the request goes out, etc. And there's just so much low-hanging fruit left in that space that, you know, agents seems like a little bit of a boondoggle. [00:22:03]Beyang: Just to dive into that a little bit further, like, I think, you know, at a very high level, what do people mean when they say agents? They really mean, like, greater automation, fully automated, like, the dream is, like, here's an issue, go implement that. And I don't have to think about it as a human. And I think we are working towards that. Like, that is the eventual goal. I think it's specifically the approach of, like, hey, can we have a transformer-based LM alone be the kind of, like, backbone or the orchestrator of these agentic flows? Where we're a little bit more bearish today. [00:22:31]Swyx: You want the human in the loop. [00:22:32]Beyang: I mean, you kind of have to. It's just a reality of the behavior of language models that are purely, like, transformer-based. And I think that's just like a reflection of reality. And I don't think people realize that yet. Because if you look at the way that a lot of other AI tools have implemented context fetching, for instance, like, you see this in the Copilot approach, where if you use, like, the at-workspace thing that supposedly provides, like, code-based level context, it has, like, an agentic approach where you kind of look at how it's behaving. And it feels like they're making multiple requests to the LM being like, what would you do in this case? Would you search for stuff? What sort of files would you gather? Go and read those files. And it's like a multi-hop step, so it takes a long while. It's also non-deterministic. Because any sort of, like, LM invocation, it's like a dice roll. And then at the end of the day, the context it fetches is not that good. Whereas our approach is just like, OK, let's do some code searches that make sense. And then maybe, like, crawl through the reference graph a little bit. That is fast. That doesn't require any sort of LM invocation at all. And we can pull in much better context, you know, very quickly. So it's faster. [00:23:37]Swyx: It's more reliable. [00:23:37]Beyang: It's deterministic. And it yields better context quality. And so that's what we think. We just don't think you should cargo cult or naively go like, you know, agents are the [00:23:46]Swyx: future. [00:23:46]Beyang: Let's just try to, like, implement agents on top of the LM that exists today. I think there are a couple of other technologies or approaches that need to be refined first before we can get into these kind of, like, multi-stage, fully automated workflows. [00:24:00]Swyx: It makes sense. You know, we're very much focused on developer inner loop right now. But you do see things eventually moving towards developer outer loop. Yeah. So would you basically say that they're tackling the agent's problem that you don't want to tackle? [00:24:11]Beyang: No, I would say at a high level, we are after maybe, like, the same high level problem, which is like, hey, I want some code written. I want to develop some software and can automate a system. Go build that software for me. I think the approaches might be different. So I think the analogy in my mind is, I think about, like, the AI chess players. Coding, in some senses, I mean, it's similar and dissimilar to chess. I think one question I ask is, like, do you think producing code is more difficult than playing chess or less difficult than playing chess? More. [00:24:41]Swyx: I think more. [00:24:41]Beyang: Right. And if you look at the best AI chess players, like, yes, you can use an LLM to play chess. Like, people have showed demos where it's like, oh, like, yeah, GPT-4 is actually a pretty decent, like, chess move suggester. Right. But you would never build, like, a best in class chess player off of GPT-4 alone. [00:24:57]Swyx: Right. [00:24:57]Beyang: Like, the way that people design chess players is that you have kind of like a search space and then you have a way to explore that search space efficiently. There's a bunch of search algorithms, essentially. We were doing tree search in various ways. And you can have heuristic functions, which might be powered by an LLM. [00:25:12]Swyx: Right. [00:25:12]Beyang: Like, you might use an LLM to generate proposals in that space that you can efficiently explore. But the backbone is still this kind of more formalized tree search based approach rather than the LLM itself. And so I think my high level intuition is that, like, the way that we get to more reliable multi-step workflows that do things beyond, you know, generate unit test, it's really going to be like a search based approach where you use an LLM as kind of like an advisor or a proposal function, sort of your heuristic function, like the ASTAR search algorithm. But it's probably not going to be the thing that is the backbone, because I guess it's not the right tool for that. Yeah. [00:25:50]Swyx: I can see yourself kind of thinking through this, but not saying the words, the sort of philosophical Peter Norvig type discussion. Maybe you want to sort of introduce that in software. Yeah, definitely. [00:25:59]Beyang: So your listeners are savvy. They're probably familiar with the classic like Chomsky versus Norvig debate. [00:26:04]Swyx: No, actually, I wanted, I was prompting you to introduce that. Oh, got it. [00:26:08]Beyang: So, I mean, if you look at the history of artificial intelligence, right, you know, it goes way back to, I don't know, it's probably as old as modern computers, like 50s, 60s, 70s. People are debating on like, what is the path to producing a sort of like general human level of intelligence? And kind of two schools of thought that emerged. One is the Norvig school of thought, which roughly speaking includes large language models, you know, regression, SVN, basically any model that you kind of like learn from data. And it's like data driven. Most of machine learning would fall under this umbrella. And that school of thought says like, you know, just learn from the data. That's the approach to reaching intelligence. And then the Chomsky approach is more things like compilers and parsers and formal systems. So basically like, let's think very carefully about how to construct a formal, precise system. And that will be the approach to how we build a truly intelligent system. I think Lisp was invented so that you could create like rules-based systems that you would call AI. As a language. Yeah. And for a long time, there was like this debate, like there's certain like AI research labs that were more like, you know, in the Chomsky camp and others that were more in the Norvig camp. It's a debate that rages on today. And I feel like the consensus right now is that, you know, Norvig definitely has the upper hand right now with the advent of LMs and diffusion models and all the other recent progress in machine learning. But the Chomsky-based stuff is still really useful in my view. I mean, it's like parsers, compilers, basically a lot of the stuff that provides really good context. It provides kind of like the knowledge graph backbone that you want to explore with your AI dev tool. Like that will come from kind of like Chomsky-based tools like compilers and parsers. It's a lot of what we've invested in in the past decade at Sourcegraph and what you build with Grok. Basically like these formal systems that construct these very precise knowledge graphs that are great context providers and great kind of guard rails enforcers and kind of like safety checkers for the output of a more kind of like data-driven, fuzzier system that uses like the Norvig-based models. [00:28:03]Steve: Jang was talking about this stuff like it happened in the middle ages. Like, okay, so when I was in college, I was in college learning Lisp and prologue and planning and all the deterministic Chomsky approaches to AI. And I was there when Norvig basically declared it dead. I was there 3,000 years ago when Norvig and Chomsky fought on the volcano. When did he declare it dead? [00:28:26]Swyx: What do you mean he declared it dead? [00:28:27]Steve: It was like late 90s. [00:28:29]Swyx: Yeah. [00:28:29]Steve: When I went to Google, Peter Norvig was already there. He had basically like, I forget exactly where. It was some, he's got so many famous short posts, you know, amazing. [00:28:38]Swyx: He had a famous talk, the unreasonable effectiveness of data. Yeah. [00:28:41]Steve: Maybe that was it. But at some point, basically, he basically convinced everybody that deterministic approaches had failed and that heuristic-based, you know, data-driven statistical approaches, stochastic were better. [00:28:52]Swyx: Yeah. [00:28:52]Steve: The primary reason I can tell you this, because I was there, was that, was that, well, the steam-powered engine, no. The reason was that the deterministic stuff didn't scale. [00:29:06]Swyx: Yeah. Right. [00:29:06]Steve: They're using prologue, man, constraint systems and stuff like that. Well, that was a long time ago, right? Today, actually, these Chomsky-style systems do scale. And that's, in fact, exactly what Sourcegraph has built. Yeah. And so we have a very unique, I love the framing that Bjong's made, that the marriage of the Chomsky and the Norvig, you know, sort of models, you know, conceptual models, because we, you know, we have both of them and they're both really important. And in fact, there, there's this really interesting, like, kind of overlap between them, right? Where like the AI or our graph or our search engine could potentially provide the right context for any given query, which is, of course, why ranking is important. But what we've really signed ourselves up for is an extraordinary amount of testing. [00:29:45]Swyx: Yeah. [00:29:45]Steve: Because in SWIGs, you were saying that, you know, GPT-4 tends to the front of the context window and maybe other LLMs to the back and maybe, maybe the LLM in the middle. [00:29:53]Swyx: Yeah. [00:29:53]Steve: And so that means that, you know, if we're actually like, you know, verifying whether we, you know, some change we've made has improved things, we're going to have to test putting it at the beginning of the window and at the end of the window, you know, and maybe make the right decision based on the LLM that you've chosen. Which some of our competitors, that's a problem that they don't have, but we meet you, you know, where you are. Yeah. And we're, just to finish, we're writing tens of thousands. We're generating tests, you know, fill in the middle type tests and things. And then using our graph to basically sort of fine tune Cody's behavior there. [00:30:20]Swyx: Yeah. [00:30:21]Beyang: I also want to add, like, I have like an internal pet name for this, like kind of hybrid architecture that I'm trying to make catch on. Maybe I'll just say it here. Just saying it publicly kind of makes it more real. But like, I call the architecture that we've developed the Normsky architecture. [00:30:36]Swyx: Yeah. [00:30:36]Beyang: I mean, it's obviously a portmanteau of Norvig and Chomsky, but the acronym, it stands for non-agentic, rapid, multi-source code intelligence. So non-agentic because... Rolls right off the tongue. And Normsky. But it's non-agentic in the sense that like, we're not trying to like pitch you on kind of like agent hype, right? Like it's the things it does are really just developer tools developers have been using for decades now, like parsers and really good search indexes and things like that. Rapid because we place an emphasis on speed. We don't want to sit there waiting for kind of like multiple LLM requests to return to complete a simple user request. Multi-source because we're thinking broadly about what pieces of information and knowledge are useful context. So obviously starting with things that you can search in your code base, and then you add in the reference graph, which kind of like allows you to crawl outward from those initial results. But then even beyond that, you know, sources of information, like there's a lot of knowledge that's embedded in docs, in PRDs or product specs, in your production logging system, in your chat, in your Slack channel, right? Like there's so much context is embedded there. And when you're a human developer, and you're trying to like be productive in your code base, you're going to go to all these different systems to collect the context that you need to figure out what code you need to write. And I don't think the AI developer will be any different. It will need to pull context from all these different sources. So we're thinking broadly about how to integrate these into Codi. We hope through kind of like an open protocol that like others can extend and implement. And this is something else that should be accessible by December 14th in kind of like a preview stage. But that's really about like broadening this notion of the code graph beyond your Git repository to all the other sources where technical knowledge and valuable context can live. [00:32:21]Steve: Yeah, it becomes an artifact graph, right? It can link into your logs and your wikis and any data source, right? [00:32:27]Alessio: How do you guys think about the importance of, it's almost like data pre-processing in a way, which is bring it all together, tie it together, make it ready. Any thoughts on how to actually make that good? Some of the innovation you guys have made. [00:32:40]Steve: We talk a lot about the context fetching, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways you could answer this question. But, you know, we've spent a lot of time just in this podcast here talking about context fetching. But stuffing the context into the window is, you know, the bin packing problem, right? Because the window is not big enough, and you've got more context than you can fit. You've got a ranker maybe. But what is that context? Is it a function that was returned by an embedding or a graph call or something? Do you need the whole function? Or do you just need, you know, the top part of the function, this expression here, right? You know, so that art, the golf game of trying to, you know, get each piece of context down into its smallest state, possibly even summarized by another model, right, before it even goes to the LLM, becomes this is the game that we're in, yeah? And so, you know, recursive summarization and all the other techniques that you got to use to like stuff stuff into that context window become, you know, critically important. And you have to test them across every configuration of models that you could possibly need. [00:33:32]Beyang: I think data preprocessing is probably the like unsexy, way underappreciated secret to a lot of the cool stuff that people are shipping today. Whether you're doing like RAG or fine tuning or pre-training, like the preprocessing step matters so much because it's basically garbage in, garbage out, right? Like if you're feeding in garbage to the model, then it's going to output garbage. Concretely, you know, for code RAG, if you're not doing some sort of like preprocessing that takes advantage of a parser and is able to like extract the key components of a particular file of code, you know, separate the function signature from the body, from the doc string, what are you even doing? Like that's like table stakes. It opens up so much more possibilities with which you can kind of like tune your system to take advantage of the signals that come from those different parts of the code. Like we've had a tool, you know, since computers were invented that understands the structure of source code to a hundred percent precision. The compiler knows everything there is to know about the code in terms of like structure. Like why would you not want to use that in a system that's trying to generate code, answer questions about code? You shouldn't throw that out the window just because now we have really good, you know, data-driven models that can do other things. [00:34:44]Steve: Yeah. When I called it a data moat, you know, in my cheating post, a lot of people were confused, you know, because data moat sort of sounds like data lake because there's data and water and stuff. I don't know. And so they thought that we were sitting on this giant mountain of data that we had collected, but that's not what our data moat is. It's really a data pre-processing engine that can very quickly and scalably, like basically dissect your entire code base in a very small, fine-grained, you know, semantic unit and then serve it up. Yeah. And so it's really, it's not a data moat. It's a data pre-processing moat, I guess. [00:35:15]Beyang: Yeah. If anything, we're like hypersensitive to customer data privacy requirements. So it's not like we've taken a bunch of private data and like, you know, trained a generally available model. In fact, exactly the opposite. A lot of our customers are choosing Cody over Copilot and other competitors because we have an explicit guarantee that we don't do any of that. And that we've done that from day one. Yeah. I think that's a very real concern in today's day and age, because like if your proprietary IP finds its way into the training set of any model, it's very easy both to like extract that knowledge from the model and also use it to, you know, build systems that kind of work on top of the institutional knowledge that you've built up. [00:35:52]Alessio: About a year ago, I wrote a post on LLMs for developers. And one of the points I had was maybe the depth of like the DSL. I spent most of my career writing Ruby and I love Ruby. It's so nice to use, but you know, it's not as performant, but it's really easy to read, right? And then you look at other languages, maybe they're faster, but like they're more verbose, you know? And when you think about efficiency of the context window, that actually matters. [00:36:15]Swyx: Yeah. [00:36:15]Alessio: But I haven't really seen a DSL for models, you know? I haven't seen like code being optimized to like be easier to put in a model context. And it seems like your pre-processing is kind of doing that. Do you see in the future, like the way we think about the DSL and APIs and kind of like service interfaces be more focused on being context friendly, where it's like maybe it's harder to read for the human, but like the human is never going to write it anyway. We were talking on the Hacks podcast. There are like some data science things like spin up the spandex, like humans are never going to write again because the models can just do very easily. Yeah, curious to hear your thoughts. [00:36:51]Steve: Well, so DSLs, they involve, you know, writing a grammar and a parser and they're like little languages, right? We do them that way because, you know, we need them to compile and humans need to be able to read them and so on. The LLMs don't need that level of structure. You can throw any pile of crap at them, you know, more or less unstructured and they'll deal with it. So I think that's why a DSL hasn't emerged for sort of like communicating with the LLM or packaging up the context or anything. Maybe it will at some point, right? We've got, you know, tagging of context and things like that that are sort of peeking into DSL territory, right? But your point on do users, you know, do people have to learn DSLs like regular expressions or, you know, pick your favorite, right? XPath. I think you're absolutely right that the LLMs are really, really good at that. And I think you're going to see a lot less of people having to slave away learning these things. They just have to know the broad capabilities and the LLM will take care of the rest. [00:37:42]Swyx: Yeah, I'd agree with that. [00:37:43]Beyang: I think basically like the value profit of DSL is that it makes it easier to work with a lower level language, but at the expense of introducing an abstraction layer. And in many cases today, you know, without the benefit of AI cogeneration, like that totally worth it, right? With the benefit of AI cogeneration, I mean, I don't think all DSLs will go away. I think there's still, you know, places where that trade-off is going to be worthwhile. But it's kind of like how much of source code do you think is going to be generated through natural language prompting in the future? Because in a way, like any programming language is just a DSL on top of assembly, right? And so if people can do that, then yeah, like maybe for a large portion of the code [00:38:21]Swyx: that's written, [00:38:21]Beyang: people don't actually have to understand the DSL that is Ruby or Python or basically any other programming language that exists. [00:38:28]Steve: I mean, seriously, do you guys ever write SQL queries now without using a model of some sort? At least a draft. [00:38:34]Swyx: Yeah, right. [00:38:36]Steve: And so we have kind of like, you know, past that bridge, right? [00:38:39]Alessio: Yeah, I think like to me, the long-term thing is like, is there ever going to be, you don't actually see the code, you know? It's like, hey, the basic thing is like, hey, I need a function to some two numbers and that's it. I don't need you to generate the code. [00:38:53]Steve: And the following question, do you need the engineer or the paycheck? [00:38:56]Swyx: I mean, right? [00:38:58]Alessio: That's kind of the agent's discussion in a way where like you cannot automate the agents, but like slowly you're getting more of the atomic units of the work kind of like done. I kind of think of it as like, you know, [00:39:09]Beyang: do you need a punch card operator to answer that for you? And so like, I think we're still going to have people in the role of a software engineer, but the portion of time they spend on these kinds of like low-level, tedious tasks versus the higher level, more creative tasks is going to shift. [00:39:23]Steve: No, I haven't used punch cards. [00:39:25]Swyx: Yeah, I've been talking about like, so we kind of made this podcast about the sort of rise of the AI engineer. And like the first step is the AI enhanced engineer. That is that software developer that is no longer doing these routine, boilerplate-y type tasks, because they're just enhanced by tools like yours. So you mentioned OpenCodeGraph. I mean, that is a kind of DSL maybe, and because we're releasing this as you go GA, you hope for other people to take advantage of that? [00:39:52]Beyang: Oh yeah, I would say so OpenCodeGraph is not a DSL. It's more of a protocol. It's basically like, hey, if you want to make your system, whether it's, you know, chat or logging or whatever accessible to an AI developer tool like Cody, here's kind of like the schema by which you can provide that context and offer hints. So I would, you know, comparisons like LSP obviously did this for kind of like standard code intelligence. It's kind of like a lingua franca for providing fine references and codefinition. There's kind of like analogs to that. There might be also analogs to kind of the original OpenAI, kind of like plugins, API. There's all this like context out there that might be useful for an LM-based system to consume. And so at a high level, what we're trying to do is define a common language for context providers to provide context to other tools in the software development lifecycle. Yeah. Do you have any critiques of LSP, by the way, [00:40:42]Swyx: since like this is very much, very close to home? [00:40:45]Steve: One of the authors wrote a really good critique recently. Yeah. I don't think I saw that. Yeah, yeah. LSP could have been better. It just came out a couple of weeks ago. It was a good article. [00:40:54]Beyang: Yeah. I think LSP is great. Like for what it did for the developer ecosystem, it was absolutely fantastic. Like nowadays, like it's much easier now to get code navigation up and running in a bunch of editors by speaking this protocol. I think maybe the interesting question is like looking at the different design decisions comparing LSP basically with Kythe. Because Kythe has more of a... How would you describe it? [00:41:18]Steve: A storage format. [00:41:20]Beyang: I think the critique of LSP from a Kythe point of view would be like with LSP, you don't actually have an actual symbolic model of the code. It's not like LSP models like, hey, this function calls this other function. LSP is all like range-based. Like, hey, your cursor's at line 32, column 1. [00:41:35]Swyx: Yeah. [00:41:35]Beyang: And that's the thing you feed into the language server. And then it's like, okay, here's the range that you should jump to if you click on that range. So it kind of is intentionally ignorant of the fact that there's a thing called a reference underneath your cursor, and that's linked to a symbol definition. [00:41:49]Steve: Well, actually, that's the worst example you could have used. You're right. But that's the one thing that it actually did bake in is following references. [00:41:56]Swyx: Sure. [00:41:56]Steve: But it's sort of hardwired. [00:41:58]Swyx: Yeah. [00:41:58]Steve: Whereas Kythe attempts to model [00:42:00]Beyang: like all these things explicitly. [00:42:02]Swyx: And so... [00:42:02]Steve: Well, so LSP is a protocol, right? And so Google's internal protocol is gRPC-based. And it's a different approach than LSP. It's basically you make a heavy query to the back end, and you get a lot of data back, and then you render the whole page, you know? So we've looked at LSP, and we think that it's a little long in the tooth, right? I mean, it's a great protocol, lots and lots of support for it. But we need to push into the domain of exposing the intelligence through the protocol. Yeah. [00:42:29]Beyang: And so I would say we've developed a protocol of our own called Skip, which is at a very high level trying to take some of the good ideas from LSP and from Kythe and merge that into a system that in the near term is useful for Sourcegraph, but I think in the long term, we hope will be useful for the ecosystem. Okay, so here's what LSP did well. LSP, by virtue of being like intentionally dumb, dumb in air quotes, because I'm not like ragging on it, allowed language servers developers to kind of like bypass the hard problem of like modeling language semantics precisely. So like if all you want to do is jump to definition, you don't have to come up with like a universally unique naming scheme for each symbol, which is actually quite challenging because you have to think about like, okay, what's the top scope of this name? Is it the source code repository? Is it the package? Does it depend on like what package server you're fetching this from? Like whether it's the public one or the one inside your... Anyways, like naming is hard, right? And by just going from kind of like a location to location based approach, you basically just like throw that out the window. All I care about is jumping definition, just make that work. And you can make that work without having to deal with like all the complex global naming things. The limitation of that approach is that it's harder to build on top of that to build like a true knowledge graph. Like if you actually want a system that says like, okay, here's the web of functions and here's how they reference each other. And I want to incorporate that like semantic model of how the code operates or how the code relates to each other at like a static level. You can't do that with LSP because you have to deal with line ranges. And like concretely the pain point that we found in using LSP for source graph is like in order to do like a find references [00:44:04]Swyx: and then jump definitions, [00:44:04]Beyang: it's like a multi-hop process because like you have to jump to the range and then you have to find the symbol at that range. And it just adds a lot of latency and complexity of these operations where as a human, you're like, well, this thing clearly references this other thing. Why can't you just jump me to that? And I think that's the thing that Kaith does well. But then I think the issue that Kaith has had with adoption is because it is more sophisticated schema, I think. And so there's basically more things that you have to implement to get like a Kaith implementation up and running. I hope I'm not like, correct me if I'm wrong about any of this. [00:44:35]Steve: 100%, 100%. Kaith also has a problem, all these systems have the problem, even skip, or at least the way that we implemented the indexers, that they have to integrate with your build system in order to build that knowledge graph, right? Because you have to basically compile the code in a special mode to generate artifacts instead of binaries. And I would say, by the way, earlier I was saying that XREFs were in LSP, but it's actually, I was thinking of LSP plus LSIF. [00:44:58]Swyx: Yeah. That's another. [00:45:01]Steve: Which is actually bad. We can say that it's bad, right? [00:45:04]Steve: It's like skip or Kaith, it's supposed to be sort of a model serialization, you know, for the code graph, but it basically just does what LSP needs, the bare minimum. LSIF is basically if you took LSP [00:45:16]Beyang: and turned that into a serialization format. So like you build an index for language servers to kind of like quickly bootstrap from cold start. But it's a graph model [00:45:23]Steve: with all of the inconvenience of the API without an actual graph. And so, yeah. [00:45:29]Beyang: So like one of the things that we try to do with skip is try to capture the best of both worlds. So like make it easy to write an indexer, make the schema simple, but also model some of the more symbolic characteristics of the code that would allow us to essentially construct this knowledge graph that we can then make useful for both the human developer through SourceGraph and through the AI developer through Cody. [00:45:49]Steve: So anyway, just to finish off the graph comment, we've got a new graph, yeah, that's skip based. We call it BFG internally, right? It's a beautiful something graph. A big friendly graph. [00:46:00]Swyx: A big friendly graph. [00:46:01]Beyang: It's a blazing fast. [00:46:02]Steve: Blazing fast. [00:46:03]Swyx: Blazing fast graph. [00:46:04]Steve: And it is blazing fast, actually. It's really, really interesting. I should probably have to do a blog post about it to walk you through exactly how they're doing it. Oh, please. But it's a very AI-like iterative, you know, experimentation sort of approach. We're building a code graph based on all of our 10 years of knowledge about building code graphs, yeah? But we're building it quickly with zero configuration, and it doesn't have to integrate with your build. And through some magic tricks that we have. And so what just happens when you install the plugin, that it'll be there and indexing your code and providing that knowledge graph in the background without all that build system integration. This is a bit of secret sauce that we haven't really like advertised it very much lately. But I am super excited about it because what they do is they say, all right, you know, let's tackle function parameters today. Cody's not doing a very good job of completing function call arguments or function parameters in the definition, right? Yeah, we generate those thousands of tests, and then we can actually reuse those tests for the AI context as well. So fortunately, things are kind of converging on, we have, you know, half a dozen really, really good context sources, and we mix them all together. So anyway, BFG, you're going to hear more about it probably in the holidays? [00:47:12]Beyang: I think it'll be online for December 14th. We'll probably mention it. BFG is probably not the public name we're going to go with. I think we might call it like Graph Context or something like that. [00:47:20]Steve: We're officially calling it BFG. [00:47:22]Swyx: You heard it here first. [00:47:24]Beyang: BFG is just kind of like the working name. And so the impetus for BFG was like, if you look at like current AI inline code completion tools and the errors that they make, a lot of the errors that they make, even in kind of like the easy, like single line case, are essentially like type errors, right? Like you're trying to complete a function call and it suggests a variable that you defined earlier, but that variable is the wrong type. [00:47:47]Swyx: And that's the sort of thing [00:47:47]Beyang: where it's like a first year, like freshman CS student would not make that error, right? So like, why does the AI make that error? And the reason is, I mean, the AI is just suggesting things that are plausible without the context of the types or any other like broader files in the code. And so the kind of intuition here is like, why don't we just do the basic thing that like any baseline intelligent human developer would do, which is like click jump to definition, click some fine references and pull in that like Graph Context into the context window and then have it generate the completion. So like that's sort of like the MVP of what BFG was. And turns out that works really well. Like you can eliminate a lot of type errors that AI coding tools make just by pulling in that context. Yeah, but the graph is definitely [00:48:32]Steve: our Chomsky side. [00:48:33]Swyx: Yeah, exactly. [00:48:34]Beyang: So like this like Chomsky-Norvig thing, I think pops up in a bunch of differ

Access our training - $200K and 300 Leads in 15 Days for Woodpreneurs here: https://go.buildergrowth.io/optin-wms “ It was basically just sitting in front of computers doing some concepts for Chinese companies, which usually we're going just to the bean, and you just do it do it. “ -Filip Winiewicz Welcome to a brand-new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today, your host Steve Larosiliere is joined by Filip Winiewicz from Romero Hardwood HK Ltd.  Living in various countries, including islands, Beijing, and Malaysia, Filip eventually landed in Hong Kong, where he got married to his Korean wife. Dissatisfied with the architectural work in Hong Kong, which he found lacking in the creative and hands-on aspects, Filip sought an alternative. Intrigued by woodworking as a smaller scale of architecture, he saw it as an opportunity to have more control over his ideas and faster results. Without any formal training, he relied on YouTube to acquire woodworking skills. Starting a woodworking venture in Hong Kong presented challenges, considering the exorbitant rent and tough market competition from China, the world's largest furniture manufacturing country, located just across the border. Listen now and get the whole story! “ My knowledge was like, mainly YouTube. And, and probably Hong Kong is the worst place to start woodworking but yeah, and it's hard to Okay, now we can call it business, but I just decided to do something I want to do.” - Filip Winiewicz Evolution of Projects: Starting with live-edge slab tables, Filip's business evolved from competing with China on slab tables to specializing in custom, high-end furniture for residential projects. He emphasizes the challenging nature of these projects, often involving intricate details and solid wood. Clients opt for Filip's craftsmanship, trusting his expertise over mass-produced alternatives from China. Steve: "Your work is truly remarkable, Filip. How did you navigate the initial stages of your business and establish your presence in such a competitive market?" Building Presence and Overcoming Challenges: Filip shares his early strategy of leveraging Instagram for marketing. Recognizing the rarity and appeal of wood products in Hong Kong, he strategically built a significant Instagram following by targeting potential customers interested in unique, high-quality furniture. This, coupled with a smart pricing approach, allowed him to gain a foothold in the market. Filip also emphasizes the challenges he faces, particularly in sourcing wood from China, where quality control is limited. The discrepancies in wood quality and the constraints of Hong Kong's small workshop spaces pose ongoing challenges. Steve: "It's fascinating to hear about your journey, Filip. As you've grown, what are the key tools and investments that have played a crucial role in your woodworking business?" Key Tools and Investments: While Filip's workshop may seem basic compared to American standards, he highlights essential tools like the Felder combination jointer and planer thicknesser as his significant investments. Acquiring a secondhand CNC machine at a bargain further expanded the business's capabilities, allowing for more intricate projects. Want to get in touch with Jesus Romero? Contact him through: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hardwood_hk/

Rose Plate Special: Charity, Week 9 Here's what we'll say about the finale: Kudos to the producers for faking out Sammi fairly effectively, but is it even a fakeout when she was operating on little sleep and lots of pinball on the brain? Hard to say. See you all for a bonus episode of Jilly Box opening before Season 16 of our podcast launches at the end of September! Transcription Please forgive minor typos! Sammi: And you're listening to Rose Plate Special, the most dramatic googly eyeingist I have nothing for this because everything we said. Steve: Was going to happen, happened. Sammi: Paradise promoing us recap podcast of The Bachelorette ever. Sammi: Yeah, it was so bad. Steve: Ever. Steve: Sammi. Steve: Are you the bachelorette? Steve: Nostradamus perhaps. Sammi: Maybe. Sammi: But here's the thing that's interesting. Sammi: So first of all, sorry this is late everyone. Sammi: I was on vacation and I actually took a break, which I never do, and so you should all be proud of me. Sammi: But here we are also. Sammi: Okay, so a couple of pieces of news. Sammi: So yes, I was on vacation and that was fun. Sammi: That's not really news. Sammi: Second piece of news that is news. Sammi: The jilly box is coming probably in the next day or two. Sammi: So if you are interested, we can do another special we'll do between now and like The Golden Bachelor. Sammi: We can do a special jilly unboxing for. Sammi: Oh, and then yeah, here's what's interesting about this. Sammi: Also, my notes are a little spotty, so I may need you to fill in because I watched this. Sammi: So I was just telling Steve that one of the things that we did on vacation is we went to this retrocade and we played all you can play Pinball until like, I don't know, almost two in the morning. Sammi: And we got home and we started talking about the top 100 pinball games and we were talking about what we would want in our basement and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sammi: And then I was like, oh s***, I got to start watching The Bachelorete in case we decide we want to record. Sammi: So I went to bed at four in the morning. Sammi: This is not like me. Steve: And we're recording late anyways. Sammi: Yeah, I was up until four in the morning watching it and then I woke up the next day and finished it. Sammi: So I might have missed some key things because I was all jacked up about pinball. Sammi: Like I literally had maybe two drinks the whole night. Sammi: It wasn't like, oh, it's partying hard. Sammi: I was like really trying to crack the game. Sammi: Barbed wire. Sammi: Could not get it. Sammi: Oh wow, not get it. Sammi: But medieval madness. Sammi: I had a really good round. Sammi: Yeah, it's one of my favorites. Sammi: Anyway, so that's what I was doing when I was taking notes. Sammi: But yeah, so what's interesting though is despite knowing everything that happened, they tricked me. Sammi: I got tricked because I was like, oh my God, maybe it is going to be Joey. Sammi: And I was like, wow, everything I thought was wrong. Sammi: And I was like so shocked. Sammi: And I was like, no way. Sammi: So they fooled me hard. Sammi: I really just was like, oh, this is how everyone's leaning and this is what's going to happen. Sammi: And last week I was like, datten is a sure thing, he is a sure thing. Sammi: And then I was like, I'm just not so sure. Steve: So we've been in this game long enough. Steve: Sammi, this is the trickery. Steve: Because they knew that we knew that to was going to run away with this thing, so they had to throw us some swerves. Sammi: I got so fooled. Steve: Well, one thing's for sure, because this episode starts off on Aaron, nobody in the entire universe thought that Aaron was going to be sticking don. Steve: I don't think they do Vegas odds for the Bachelor or the Bachelorete. Steve: But if they did, you wouldn't even be allowed to bet on Aaron because that's how bad of a shot he. Sammi: So yeah, it was just so basically and also they do this thing at the very beginning and, like, dawn gets claps and Joey gets claps and Aaron got nothing. Steve: No, and it's not because he's a bad guy. Steve: He's the most uninteresting man in the world. Sammi: They were just did something. Sammi: Did you just say Aaron? Sammi: Oh, I missed it. Sammi: I was thinking about something. Sammi: So and then when they're like, we're going to do a thing that's never happened. Sammi: Okay, this was my guess, which I think is funny. Sammi: Like Charity's brother is going to come on and propose to a long term partner on the show. Sammi: But that didn't happen. Sammi: But that's what I thought because I was like, bring nehemiah back. Sammi: But that's not what happened. Sammi: So this is the best part, too, is Aaron. Sammi: So she's like, obviously this is what was going through Charity's mind. Sammi: I'm thinking is she was probably like, he came all the way to Fiji. Sammi: What am I going to do, say go home? Sammi: She's like, I have to make it feel like he has somewhat of a shot or like something could happen. Sammi: But I love that she was like, this is giving me acid reflux. Steve: Yeah, it's like, bro, you flew probably like 14 hours just to get dumped, which is real sad. Steve: And if someone in production had half a heart, they would have told you to stay at home, but they didn't. Steve: And then it's also sad because it's like, I mean, we all knew you had to know deep down that she didn't have a shot. Steve: And then when she's finally and you know, she walks about and everything, he's just like, well, it's okay. Steve: I'm still in your corner. Steve: It's like, dude, she doesn't need you and you don't need to be here. Steve: What are you doing here? Steve: What's going on, Aaron? Sammi: Come on. Steve: Come on. Steve: I don't know. Steve: And then he's such a dork and not in the fun way. Steve: It's just uninteresting. Steve: And then he's going to be on paradise and I could not find a shred of anything inside of myself that got excited for Aaron on. Sammi: Feel like I feel like you just like Aaron a lot more than I do. Sammi: But I just felt really bad for like I was just I mean, maybe this was something that raised his stock enough to make it worth it for him to be on paradise. Sammi: It gave him more of a story that's something that some of the women on the beach might be like, wow, that's so romantic. Sammi: You flew all the way to Fiji. Sammi: It could work in his favor, for sure. Sammi: But yeah, I was mean, I don't know. Sammi: And then he was like, the emotions I've always felt it's good to feel again. Sammi: And I was like, it's been like two days, Aaron. Sammi: I mean, it's not like it's been so long. Sammi: It's like maybe been a couple days. Sammi: But the best part about this whole thing was they get to the rose ceremony and Joey's like, am I on drugs? Sammi: He's like, blinking. Sammi: I don't have glasses to clean. Sammi: What's happening? Sammi: Wait, Aaron's here and Xavier isn't? Sammi: It was so sweet that he was like, what? Sammi: I don't even know. Sammi: And then as soon as she gave Joey a rose, I was like, well, Erin is going home because obviously Dotton's getting the other one. Sammi: That was really obvious. Sammi: And then she's like, Erin, can you come with me? Sammi: And he knew. Sammi: Then he's like, okay, yeah, Aaron is. Steve: In the top three because technically you have to have a top three. Steve: So what are you going to do? Sammi: I don't know. Sammi: I guess at the end I feel like at the end that we've had it before, where it's just like two of them, where one of them goes home early and then it's just the two of them at the rose ceremony. Sammi: It's like, well, you both get the roses. Sammi: No drama there. Sammi: Goodbye. Sammi: Yeah, but yeah, so that was inevitable. Sammi: It was just inevitable. Sammi: All my notes about Erin talking with Jesse afterwards were just that it was a generic talk and he's going to be in paradise. Sammi: And when they announced he was in paradise, I was like, that means he's not the bachelor. Sammi: And that's good. Sammi: Yeah, because that wouldn't be interesting unless they gave him his own camera. Sammi: Because I do think his insecurities would be interesting to watch. Sammi: His internal monologue would be interesting to watch. Sammi: But now we get the time with Charity's family and Joey is first. Sammi: And Joey had a terrible hometown date. Sammi: I mean, it wasn't like the worst hometown date, but it was just like awkward and lacking and he had the worst out of the four. Steve: I shouldn't say it was a B minus. Steve: It was not like a colossal faceplant like in the past. Steve: And many a man has gotten farther or as far as Joey with a worse hometown, but it was not yeah, yeah. Sammi: It just was like, oh, wow. Sammi: And so of course, then, so what's interesting is what I'm trying to say is Joey's hometown date was not very good. Sammi: But with Charity's family, it was like, he's the one and he's the best one, and don't let him slip away. Sammi: He's perfect. Sammi: And then, you know, Dalton's hometown, it was like, you are our family now. Sammi: You are stuck with us. Sammi: You two are soulmates. Sammi: This is happening. Sammi: And then yeah, it's like I can't really talk about this without comparing these right away. Sammi: But then Dalton's time with Charity's family was just kind of like I don't know, I mean like he's fine or whatever. Sammi: He's just familiar and he's just kind of like who she always goes for. Steve: And that's interesting too. Sammi: We want to see her shake it up a little bit. Sammi: And I was like, is this really the time to be like rolling the dice? Sammi: I don't know, it was just kind of a weird yeah, anyway just try. Steve: To commit to marriage. Steve: Yeah right. Steve: But like I don't like I like Joey. Steve: I don't think he's particularly interesting but he's a very nice young man. Sammi: I think he's very sweet. Steve: Yeah, but the thing that really stuck out to me, Dotton also very sweet guy. Sammi: Oh yeah. Steve: But when Charity was know, both these guys meet with her parents and they like both of them but they like Joey Moore. Steve: And her mom made the comment that Dotton was kind of like the guy she had dated in the past. Steve: Which is weird because she said that about Xavier. Steve: And I feel like in my head, aside from them being like African American men in their mid to late twenty s, I don't see a lot of similarities between Xavier. Sammi: They're very different I will say. Sammi: I mean they both have interest in the health fields. Sammi: I guess that would be a commonality but Dotton's coming at it from more of a coachee integrative health personal trainer. Steve: And that kind of an interest. Steve: It doesn't really inform their vibes or their personality. Sammi: Personalities are very different. Sammi: But that's the only other thing that at least what I could see. Sammi: They have that in common. Sammi: But Xavier's in a lab and datten's more like with so that's very mean. Sammi: Like their families were pretty mean. Sammi: I just don't get the think and maybe I could be wrong. Sammi: I don't feel like dunn's one of those go out with the boys kind of guys like oh well, if I'm out with my boys and something like I just would be surprised if he but I was surprised when Xavier said it, so who the h*** knows. Sammi: But I just don't get that feeling from him that that's something that's super important to him to be out with a bunch of toxic dudes. Sammi: I don't that's but it could just be know a first impression thing where it's like oh, this seems similar or whatever because Joey is so different that it's just like that's the only way she could compare it. Sammi: I have no like it's like who knows? Sammi: But I think they're both really good dudes. Sammi: But it was interesting and even though it's like I know what happens with production and editing and how they choose the stuff and whatever but still even though I know all that and I've been watching this show for 20 plus years, I was still like, oh, no, this is not good. Sammi: And I was like, maybe Danton's not as good as I thought he was. Sammi: Because also last week we were thrown for a loop. Sammi: So I was like, oh, maybe all the things that I was feeling about how good they were together are wrong. Sammi: And then they, of course, did stuff where it's like she's saying I love you to Joey, and then Dotton says I love you to her and she doesn't say it back, and you're like, oh, God. Sammi: Oh, no, what's happening? Sammi: This is so bad. Steve: I like a season designed around just, like, emotionally messing with basically well, that's how I felt. Sammi: I was like, what is going on? Sammi: And it's like, late at night and I'm tired and I'm watching this episode and I'm like, what is happening? Sammi: And then, yeah, gosh. Sammi: I don't mean I will say because I feel like the other thing that Charity's mom seemed to focus on was just like, how Joey is just googly eyed all the time. Sammi: But I feel like his I don't think he would ever be like, he is affectionate and whatever, but he's more like, I don't know, kind of secure and solid and whatever. Sammi: So I think the way they just look at someone they're interested in is different. Sammi: But anyway, it was an interesting juxtaposition, and I wrote wow a lot on my notes, apparently. Sammi: I'm like, wow, family thinks he's the one. Steve: Wow. Sammi: Okay. Sammi: And then this whole thing is, like, interspersed with this whole oh, well, one of you is going to date the bachelor, but you don't know which one of you it is. Sammi: But we invited you all here, so it's one of the people we invited here. Sammi: It's obviously not going to be some random person from the audience. Steve: Yeah. Sammi: And I was like, everybody stand up if you would like to date the Bachelor, like, what the h***? Sammi: This is not how this works. Sammi: And he interviews all these people. Sammi: This was one thing that I thought was weird, and I was trying to find some conversation about it online, and I could not because they had someone from Oahu get interviewed. Sammi: Right. Sammi: And Joey lives in Hawaii and everything and everything that happened in Lahaina. Sammi: Which happened in my family's neighborhood. Sammi: And luckily their house is still okay, but I don't know if they even know if some of their friends are alive. Sammi: It was very strange that they didn't did I miss it? Sammi: Because I'm like, I was tired and I did not watch this live. Sammi: They didn't say anything about what happened in Lahaina. Sammi: Did they? Sammi: I mean, I know it's a different island, but a lot of people got moved to, um, for safety and because of capacity and all that stuff. Sammi: And I was like, this is strange. Sammi: This is live. Sammi: So this already happened. Steve: Yeah. Steve: That you'd think that they would make some mention of it. Steve: Now, it was really entirely possible that I got up to get another slice of pizza or grab a drink or go to the bathroom or whatever. Steve: I have zero recollection of them saying anything. Steve: So if they said it, it wasn't a prominent point in the episode. Sammi: It was just weird that they focused so much on Oahu and where Joey's living, right? Sammi: Like, it's just so strange. Sammi: And I'm confused that they didn't mention anything. Sammi: And I feel like they've gotten better about stuff like that, where it's like, oh, this is something, even if the conversation is a little put on, where they're like, we're going to have a serious talk, and then they kind of talk about something, then they're like, we're glad we had this serious talk. Sammi: But I was like, this is weird that you're focusing extra on it, that you're bringing in somebody to be on the show who lives on Oahu, and then you don't bring it. Sammi: I don't know. Sammi: Anyway, if anybody else feels the same way, let me know. Sammi: But I thought that was OD. Sammi: That's all. Sammi: Totally. Sammi: Not that I think The Bachelor is great for that stuff in general, but it's like if you want to start changing your image and gearing towards a younger audience, you might want to, I don't know, be in touch with reality anyway, especially something like that, where it's. Steve: Like the thing dominating the news cycle. Steve: It's like, hey, you want an easy layup? Steve: Guys just say anything? Steve: Apparently not. Sammi: Oh, well, yeah, it's just really strange. Sammi: Anyway, I'll let you know if I find any conversations about it. Sammi: But I was, like, trying to Google it. Sammi: I was like, is anybody else frustrated about this? Sammi: But I didn't see anything. Sammi: But I also wasn't looking super duper hard. Sammi: I was looking half. Sammi: So charity's, mom. Sammi: Okay, so with datten yes. Sammi: She's like, he checks the boxes, right? Sammi: He's familiar. Sammi: Familiar is easy. Sammi: She wants Charity to have a hard time, I guess I don't. Sammi: And I wrote, well, maybe Joey Winston dotten's the obvious Bachelor, but that wouldn't necessarily make sense. Sammi: Dot, dot, dot. Sammi: I'm like, this is where I start to question myself. Sammi: Yeah, and Charity is having a hard time, too, because she's like, I just want to push. Sammi: I just want a little just a little nudge and like, a direct just tell me how you're feeling. Sammi: And, okay, this is the part where I felt like I was getting tired and I was getting confused, but I know at the very least, she asked her mom, tell me what you think. Sammi: And her mom's like, I'm not going to do that. Sammi: And she's like, why? Sammi: And she's like, I don't know. Sammi: I'm direct. Sammi: And she's like, but you're not being direct right now. Sammi: That's what I gathered out of it. Sammi: It was like her mom was like, well, you know, I'm direct, but I'm not going to do that for you at this moment. Steve: Yeah. Sammi: And she's like, don't you know what you want? Sammi: And Charity is like, no, that's why I am asking you. Sammi: And she's like, come on, you know. Sammi: Right. Sammi: You know, you know, she's like and then yeah. Sammi: So she goes so she's confused, whatever. Sammi: She has a date with Joey and he brought a very cute gift for Charity. Sammi: They both did a good job with the gifts. Sammi: And he gives her the poem that they got in New Orleans and that's very oh, she mentioned how the poem made the hairs on her arms stand up and they made the hairs on my arm stand up too. Sammi: So whoever's putting this season together, good job. Sammi: I was like, wow. Sammi: And then I was fully sold on at this point. Sammi: I was like, well, if Joey ends up with Charity, I'm okay with that. Sammi: That's good, I'm happy, that's fine. Steve: This is totally mission accomplished, right? Steve: What is the purpose of this episode? Steve: The purpose of this episode is twofold. Steve: One, to make us question what we know to be absolute reality, which is down, it's going to win. Steve: And two, to make us like Joey as much as humanly possible and potentially make him slightly more interesting than he is. Steve: So that when he is announced as the bachelor, we go, okay, I'm fine with that. Steve: I think they pretty much did it. Steve: And honestly, I don't know when Charity was announced. Steve: I'm sure you can go back to an old episode. Steve: I'll just be like, I don't know, no personality, didn't see anything, whatever. Steve: And she's amazing. Steve: She's like the greatest Bachelorete of all time, practically. Steve: Maybe, maybe this will work out. Steve: Maybe I've been selling Joey short. Sammi: Yeah, I mean that's what always I mean outside of like I feel like I always liked Katie before it was Katie's season, you know what mean? Sammi: Like that was kind of an obvious, like Ashley long time. Sammi: Like there's a few people that and I liked, you know, there's like a few people that I was always like, oh yeah, they're going to be good. Sammi: But there's some people we didn't see until the very end. Sammi: Their know, you get like little glimpses of, um, yeah, I think Joey could definitely be a good mean out of what happened. Sammi: Like everything that happened at the end, I was like, well, he's the only obvious choice. Sammi: Like if you don't choose him, you're going into a different season. Sammi: There's no way. Sammi: And anyway, I'm just like looking through the vulture recap to see if there's anything yeah, if there's any notes in there because I just saw something. Sammi: Sorry. Sammi: We're waiting to see if she's going to pick Joey or Don. Sammi: Right. Sammi: We obviously know what uh, and then we get into the then. Sammi: So Brooklyn and Kat are going to be in paradise and Braden's in the audience and they do this paradise promo and they're like four former bachelorettes are crashing the party. Sammi: There's a medical emergency I'm actually really excited about the nine days of no pooping. Steve: Yeah. Steve: I'm also excited about that because we got to hear the word poop baby. Sammi: On national television and a truth box. Sammi: I'm like, all right, okay, cool. Sammi: This sounds great. Sammi: And then there's someone getting married in paradise, and it's probably like an already engaged couple that comes down, like, has happened before, I would assume. Sammi: And then they're like, oh, are Rachel and Brayden going to get together? Sammi: And I got very upset. Sammi: Oh, my God, you better not. Sammi: That sucks. Sammi: And I was looking through this Vulture recap. Sammi: It says, Brayden is here sitting right next to Rachel rechia. Sammi: Get a job. Sammi: Stay away from her et. Sammi: Wait, hold on. Sammi: Wait, what? Sammi: Hold on 1 second. Sammi: Oh, my gosh. Sammi: How did I not know who Gabby was dating? Steve: Oh, yeah, so oh, my is this is something that I was hoping to bring up? Steve: Because I guess I'm dense and I didn't really understand or process or notice it, but it's like, oh, Gabby's dating a woman. Steve: I didn't know that. Sammi: H***. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: Gabby. Steve: Good job, Gabby. Sammi: Yes. Steve: We love I had I had no idea. Steve: And then I was just like, who's that? Steve: I was, oh, that's so cute. Sammi: And she even posted, told you I'm a girls girl. Sammi: Yes. Sammi: Gabby ayo so that's awesome. Sammi: And now I want to rewatch the finale because I was tired and I did not even oh, apparently. Sammi: Okay, so she was on The View, and in an Instagram post yeah. Sammi: She wrote, told you I'm a girls girl. Sammi: And yeah. Sammi: So it's Robbie Hoffman. Steve: He's a comedian, right? Sammi: Yes. Sammi: Comedians. Sammi: You should know, apparently. Sammi: And yeah, this was announced on August 2, but I didn't see it because I don't pay attention to this stuff. Sammi: But that's super great. Sammi: And yeah, I'm so happy. Sammi: So one of the things that this Vulture article talks about is, uh, they wanted to see, like, a Robbie cam the whole time, mic her up and then let's the whole the whole gimmick of, like, who's the bachelor and who's going to date him. Sammi: And also, maybe Rachel likes Braden. Sammi: I was like, I can't handle all this stuff right now, okay? Sammi: I'm tired, and I want to know what's in that truth box, and I want to talk more about that poop baby. Sammi: Those are the things I want to talk about. Steve: Yeah. Steve: Very interested in a poop baby. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: And then we find out. Sammi: September 20. Sammi: Eigth. Sammi: We're going to be playing double duty, so I don't know what we're going to do. Sammi: We'll have to see if we want to do extra long episodes or two separate Bachelor in paradise and Golden Bachelor episodes. Steve: We're going to figure it out. Sammi: We'll have to figure it out. Sammi: Stay tuned. Sammi: I'm thinking we'll do each one because some people might be interested in one and not the other. Sammi: Otherwise, we'll do, like, a little time stampy in the description. Sammi: So stay tuned for that, obviously. Sammi: Let's see. Sammi: Okay, so we have the last date with Don, and he's so sweet, and it was so cute, and he was like, I'm going to win over your mom. Sammi: Just don't even worry about it. Sammi: And it's like, he's a great guy. Sammi: He can definitely win over moms, so I totally believe that. Sammi: And his gift was very cute. Sammi: He was like, I made a treasure hunt, so how about that? Sammi: And I was like, that's pretty cute. Sammi: And he was like, here's my card, my resident alien card, like the s'mores and little memories of events that they did on their dates. Sammi: And then at the end, it was a locket with their baby faces. Sammi: And he's like, you are my treasure. Sammi: And that was very then. Sammi: But the thing that's weird is we see her. Sammi: Yeah, they really freaking tricked me because she's, like, bringing up Joey on this date, and he says, I love you, and she doesn't say it back. Sammi: And I was like, okay. Sammi: Then we get the Neil Lane scene, which wasn't like, that excessive this time. Sammi: Sometimes it's like, really long Neil Lane stuff. Steve: It's always weird to me because I feel like sometimes we get a lot of Neil Lane the man, and not just Neil Lane, the know, and other times you don't see Neil at. Steve: And this this was a Neil appearance season. Sammi: Yeah, it was a Neil appearance, but it was not as major. Sammi: I mean, usually I would say with The Bachelor, Neil is around more, but he was in the audience. Steve: It's just so funny to me because I'm sure in the jewelry world, he's a big deal, but if you're like, who's Neil Lane? Steve: I'm like, oh, that's the guy who gives the rings on The Bachelor. Sammi: I actually think that is the biggest deal. Sammi: Well, I think but I don't know. Sammi: Let's see if we can figure this out. Sammi: Hold on. Sammi: I feel like I looked this up before, and it was kind of like I thought that that was kind of the biggest thing. Sammi: I thought his name recognition did get bigger because of The Bachelor, and that propelled some of his career. Sammi: Oh, here we go. Sammi: Here we go. Sammi: Okay. Sammi: Reddit is all over. Steve: Always. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: But yeah, okay. Sammi: Apparently oh, interesting. Sammi: He turned them down for a while, and he doesn't watch The Bachelor, which I think we found out recently that he didn't watch The Bachelor, which I think is very funny. Sammi: So it's like his only frame of reference is getting flown in for these moments and these live appearances, and that's it. Sammi: And he doesn't watch the show. Sammi: That's kind of awesome. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: So someone said, okay, yeah, I think it's kind of like a Vera Wang type of thing at this point, you. Steve: Know what I mean? Sammi: Where it's like there is a prestige brand and then you can also go to Kohl's. Steve: Exactly. Sammi: You know what I mean? Sammi: I think it was kind of like and yeah, someone said, I went into Kate and his rings are ugly. Sammi: Lol. Sammi: I'm sorry. Sammi: Yeah, it's like, if you're going to get Neil Lane from K, I would assume that that's not the same as the other stuff he yeah, yeah. Steve: I would imagine he's got his higher tier stuff. Steve: I like the Vera Wang comparison. Sammi: That's the way I kind of always thought about Neil Lane. Sammi: And from these comments on Reddit, that's the impression I'm getting. Sammi: As I say about Kay, every kiss begins at the mall. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: And apparently oh, gosh, I didn't even realize that. Sammi: So this was like 2009. Sammi: Neil Lane feels so omnipresent that I did not realize it's only been Neil Lane for like, 14 years. Steve: Wow. Sammi: Yeah. Steve: Before that he was day one guy. Sammi: I know. Sammi: Before that it was Harry Winston. Sammi: Sorry. Sammi: There's a comment on Reddit that says, in the industry, neil Lane is considered to be a little goblin character. Sammi: And someone said, how so? Sammi: And then there's like some deleted stuff, so I don't know about that. Sammi: Anyway, yeah, someone said, okay, yeah. Sammi: Neil Lane for Celebs is high end. Sammi: Neil Lane at K is mediocre. Sammi: Yeah, same as Verawing. Sammi: I would yeah. Sammi: Very interesting. Sammi: He used to design customs for A list celebrities like Barbara Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, and Angelina Jolie. Sammi: Interesting. Sammi: He's like mid tier, they say. Steve: Oh, man. Steve: You hear that? Steve: Neil Lane. Steve: You're just mid, baby. Sammi: You're mid. Sammi: You're mid, Neil. Sammi: Well, he's never going to listen to this. Sammi: He doesn't watch the show. Sammi: He's not going to listen to a random sorry, Neil, but yeah. Sammi: So very interesting. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: So we had a Neil Lane scene, and then Charity comes out in her dress and I started tearing up. Sammi: So again, I was tired, but I don't know, this finale really did a number on me. Sammi: And then she started to cry or almost cried. Sammi: And I was like, don't cry. Sammi: Your makeup's so pretty. Sammi: And then as soon as Joey gets out of the car, my stomach dropped and so do the audiences. Sammi: And I was like, you tricked me. Sammi: You tricked me, you tricked me. Sammi: And I was like, well, he's going to be a great bachelor. Sammi: And I cried so much during this whole interaction. Sammi: It was awful. Sammi: I was like, not okay. Steve: So emotion. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: The dogs came over. Sammi: They were like, do you need some support? Sammi: And I was like, I am not. Sammi: And like, Tuck was sleeping, obviously. Sammi: Well, this was like yeah, because this was in the morning by the time I watched this. Sammi: But he was like, in the other room with the dogs, and I'm like, crying. Sammi: And they come over and they're like, what do you need, mom? Sammi: And I was like, I am just not okay. Sammi: But what was really sweet was she did not cut him off, which was nice because I feel like a lot of the times the bacheloretes cut the men off. Sammi: Don't propose yet, but he kind of waited for a second anyway, like, should I keep going? Sammi: And then she did a little I thought it was nice that she had a speech for him because I don't feel like they always do that or it doesn't feel prepared or whatever. Sammi: And he was just like, It's okay. Sammi: He knew it was hard, and she's trying to get all this out, and she's upset. Sammi: And he was like, It's okay. Sammi: And she's like, Well, I got to do this. Sammi: I want to do the whole thing. Sammi: I want you to hear this whole thing. Sammi: It's important to me. Sammi: And then she's like, I found love that's deeper with someone else, and I'm crying. Sammi: I think she wins for the best goodbye speech ever to yeah, I was just, like, a f** mess. Sammi: And then Joey's in the audience, and then he gives the best bachelor audition in the car, and the audience is silent, and I'm just is really this is really great. Sammi: I don't know. Sammi: That whole moment was really awesome. Sammi: And then Zach's in the right, so, like, they go through this whole thing. Sammi: Like, Joey leaves, he's in the car, whatever, and at some point they pan to Zach, and I'm like, God, both of these guys are so much better than Zach. Sammi: And so really, there wasn't a bad direction for her to go, I don't think. Sammi: It's like she's just got to decide how she feels, and she's got to make that choice, which is always nice. Steve: Too, because sometimes I'm like, no, not him, and this time you're good. Steve: Anybody's fine. Steve: Well, not Aaron. Steve: And even Aaron. Steve: There's nothing wrong with him. Sammi: With Aaron. Sammi: If she liked Aaron the most, I'd be like, that's fine. Steve: That's okay. Steve: Some people have no taste, but that's all you. Steve: You do. Steve: You it's not harmful. Sammi: That just reminded me of I don't know why. Sammi: I'm, like, thinking about classic York. Sammi: Like, even Louis Vuitton makes so Joey is going to see Charity now. Sammi: He gives his little spiel with Jessie. Sammi: It's like all kind of the normal the. Sammi: I've done a lot of thinking and healing, and I'm on the other side, and I understand, and I just love and support her, and I just want her to be happy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sammi: And this is, like one of the most amicable reuniting moments, too, that I remember on the show, where it's just like, she looks sparkly and beautiful, and he's, like, giving her the biggest hug, and it was really sweet. Sammi: And he's still kind of, you can tell, emotional about it. Sammi: He's getting all twisty faced about it. Sammi: He's like, AW, shucks OD golly g whiz whatever. Sammi: They made him very likable. Sammi: They did a really good job because I was, like, a mess, and it was good, and then it's like, okay, now it's time for Dotton. Sammi: And I was so emotional about the Joey thing. Sammi: I was just kind of like, well, I knew this was going to happen, they tricked me, now I feel indignant and this all turned out just fine. Sammi: I think what it is, is they are both very comfortable with each other and that's like what you need for a normal relationship. Sammi: You should feel very comfortable with each other. Sammi: And so I think the familiarity is good here. Sammi: And it didn't feel like this with her and Joey. Sammi: I feel like it's a little more I don't know, there was more chemistry and an explosive exciting way. Sammi: But with her and Datten, it just feels very safe and comfortable in a very good way. Sammi: That's important. Steve: Yeah, she made the right call and it's the difference between maybe a sprint and a marathon here. Steve: And it's not to say that both these men would have provided her with plenty of happiness, but I think Datten is probably the better choice for something that you see as a long term relationship. Steve: And Charity was super smart about it and she dumped Joey in the best way possible. Steve: I don't know how she does it. Steve: It exceeds even the abilities of the editing on The Bachelor and the just she's got it down. Sammi: She handled everything perfectly the whole season. Sammi: I feel like we've watched so many seasons of Bachelors and Bacheloretes kind of like step in it and yeah, not a single flub. Sammi: Perfect season. Steve: It's kind of mind boggling, too, because it can be so stressful and emotional and god, breakups are f** messy. Steve: They're so messy. Steve: And the fact that she was able to not only every single guy leading up to Joey and those are probably easier because some of those guys were you get you get down to Joey who is a man that you could probably marry and probably be pretty happy with and to just let him down like that, it was like a master class. Steve: It was incredible. Steve: Never seen anything like ten out of ten. Sammi: Charity, yeah, she's extremely emotionally mature. Sammi: This is obvious, we know this. Sammi: And yeah, she did awesome. Sammi: Chef's kiss. Sammi: What a great season. Sammi: Very happy about it. Sammi: I thought it was really cute at the end that they showed that she was standing on a box. Sammi: I thought that was adorable. Sammi: I love little behind the scenes things like that. Sammi: And she's like, yeah, love just makes you so happy. Sammi: You get taller and then they just show the box. Sammi: I was like, that's adorable. Sammi: They're just very cute together. Sammi: And yeah, he can keep her safe from lizards or whatever. Sammi: It's good. Sammi: And his family is like, that's like winning the Jackpot. Sammi: They're a really cool family. Sammi: That's one of the best families I've ever seen be on the show. Sammi: And his mom being someone who's really hard to win over and going, yeah, you're my family now. Sammi: And Grandma being like, these two are joined at the soul, or whatever the h*** she said. Sammi: I'm like, yeah, I mean, I just feel like you can't get better than that. Sammi: As long as you like the family and you like him, you're in. Sammi: That's very easy. Sammi: Then some life coach started talking, and I was like, oh, god, I need food. Sammi: I need breakfast, because it was late in the day, and I just did not want to hear this. Sammi: Life coach chuck. Sammi: And then this was like one of the people. Sammi: I was like, are you going to date the bears? Sammi: And then mom we get to see charity's mom, and they're like, okay, how are you feeling? Sammi: She's like, I'm happy now. Sammi: Yeah, he's good. Sammi: I like him. Sammi: He's pretty good. Sammi: Or was. Sammi: She wasn't like, oh, my god, he's the like, yeah, I really like him. Sammi: I think at some point and again, I was tired. Sammi: Didn't we see Danton's family and his mom in the audience getting emotional over everything? Steve: I thought this audience was they were put through the wringer. Steve: I'm pretty sure they were there, too, but yeah, everyone was super emotion, including datten's people. Sammi: I was so emotional, I just stopped paying attention. Sammi: Yeah, it was so then and then she shows off her find that, personally, this is just personal. Sammi: I find the rings kind of boring. Sammi: They're just like one big rock. Sammi: Okay. Sammi: But I'm glad she likes it. Sammi: Okay. Sammi: This was interesting. Sammi: Do you think they're going to shoot the golden bachelor different the whole time? Sammi: Do you think the style of shooting is going to be different? Sammi: Because did you notice how soft they made it and the camera work was all different. Sammi: Is it just for the promo, you think, or what do you think? Steve: I think that is just for the promo, but it definitely has a softer, different look to it. Steve: It's almost like soap opera esque in its presentation, which I guess is appropriate. Steve: It is somewhat reminiscent of very early seasons of the bachelor. Steve: So if you go back to the first three seasons yeah. Sammi: Where it's like a little more like romanticy. Steve: Yeah. Steve: And I don't know if that is intentional or if I'm just like my brain has been permanently poisoned by watching the show for so many years. Steve: But I think based on the previews alone, it looks like it's going to have a slightly different aesthetic, and I am perfectly fine and open with that. Steve: Because if there's one thing that you can criticize about the Bachelor and honestly don't make it one thing, make it a million things, because there's plenty. Steve: But if there's one thing you can consistently criticize, is that they recycle the same ideas and visual cues and everything over and over and over and over again, so anything that can push them out of their comfort zone. Steve: And I do think that old people are going to help with this because, oh, my god, the kinds of problems and emotional issues and things that they're going to have to deal with are going to be totally different from the normal crap that comes up on the bachelor to bachelorette. Steve: And when it's not different, when it's like, oh, and so and so has an 80 year old husband back home, that's going to be even funnier and crazier, so bring it on. Steve: I'm here for it, whatever it is. Sammi: So and so has an 80 year old husband back home. Sammi: I like that idea. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: I'm kind of wondering if it's going to be messy in any way or if it is just going to be kind of like sweet and sentimental the whole time. Steve: I hope not. Sammi: I know you hope not, but I'm just kind of like not totally sure anymore. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: I'm interested to see what happens. Sammi: We don't have to wait super long. Sammi: We've got about a month and you'll hear from us at least one time in between then. Sammi: Do you think they're going to let the dog stay with him? Sammi: Because that dog is obsessed. Sammi: That was the cutest dog. Sammi: Oh, my god, don't tell me. Steve: In my heart, yes, but in reality, I think they're probably going to have. Sammi: To say no because who had their dog? Sammi: One of the bachelorettes, right. Sammi: Had their dog with them or bachelors. Steve: It just seems like a nightmare, like all the traveling they do and it's just stressful for the dog, too. Sammi: I think it was just domestic. Sammi: Do you remember wait, hold on. Sammi: Okay, let's see. Sammi: Golly, I don't remember. Sammi: There was one now. Sammi: I just found the rambo thing, but yeah, there was one where it was like, oh, my dog came with me. Sammi: Do you remember talking about anyway, whatever. Steve: Well, rachel lindsay's dog cooper appeared alongside her on the Bachelorete season 13. Sammi: I just tried to that's what it was. Sammi: Okay. Sammi: God, I mean, so much happened on rachel's season. Sammi: I forgot it was yeah. Sammi: Oh, my gosh. Steve: I had tried to forget rambo dog guy, but unfortunately rambo dog guy has now been brought back into my memory bank. Steve: So thank you, Sammi. Sammi: Yeah, I think it was just local, right? Sammi: It was just like when they were in the states, the dog was there, so I was just like, maybe that would be a thing that would happen again. Sammi: Because that was very cute and I really liked that. Sammi: That's all. Sammi: And then, okay, so there's no set date. Sammi: So we see charity and Dotton and of mean, I don't think there's ever at least I don't remember in the history of the show them being like, oh, and it's probably, are joe and serena married yet? Sammi: Because otherwise they'll be the ones I. Steve: Don'T know if they're married, but they did a commercial for concealer or something together. Sammi: They've been doing that a lot. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: Mark my words, they're going to be the couple in paradise that gets married. Steve: It seems. Steve: So their star is rising. Steve: Grocery store joe is the international commercial superstar. Steve: Honestly, grocery store joe, you're acting in these commercials. Steve: You got speaking lines. Steve: Are you SAG brother? Steve: Like, should you be on the picket line? Steve: Maybe, I don't know. Sammi: Oh, interesting. Sammi: Didn't think about that. Sammi: Anyway, so yeah, I think they're going to get married in paradise. Sammi: That's my I don't I can't remember any time where they're like, oh, yeah, we have a set know. Sammi: But they're like, we're enjoying the season of our she's going they're going to Greece. Sammi: She's always wanted to go to Greece. Sammi: And so she's going to get to go to Greece, which is sweet. Sammi: And then she's also going to be on Dancing with the Stars, which is like not shocking but cool. Sammi: And then Joey gets announced as the new bachelor and we kind of knew that. Sammi: And the first woman that we meet who lives on Oahu or well, she moved to La. Sammi: But she's from Oahu. Sammi: She's joining Joey. Sammi: And then yeah, so they're excited. Sammi: But then she gets an envelope. Sammi: It's not a date card, but we don't know what it is until night one. Sammi: And that's as much surprise as they can know because Jesse is like, well, you've never seen anything like this. Sammi: And I'm like, this is like a pretty normal season. Sammi: But you were like, we're going to give you a trip so we can say it was a surprise. Sammi: We're not going to tell you about Dancing with the Stars until here. Sammi: So it's a surprise. Sammi: Charity has got to be getting tired of surprises at this point because they also surprise her with a Bachelorete. Steve: Remember that's the theme for her series. Sammi: She's like, okay, here it goes. Steve: Boys under pressure. Steve: The charity story. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: I mean, for real. Sammi: She's like always handles surprises well but I don't know if she actually likes them. Sammi: We'll see. Sammi: Okay, let's see. Sammi: I'm looking through to see if there's anything else I missed. Sammi: That was kind of the big stuff. Sammi: I don't feel like there was just not a lot to say. Sammi: Somehow we filled 45 minutes, but there wasn't a lot to say about this episode except I cried a lot and it was good. Sammi: And I'm excited for the Golden Bachelor. Sammi: I'm excited for Bachelor in paradise and I'm excited for Joey being the bachelor. Sammi: And that's fun because when's the last time I got excited about a bachelor? Sammi: I don't know. Sammi: It's been a really long time. Steve: Yeah, it's been a while. Steve: But yeah. Steve: Kudos to production for, again, taking a foregone conclusion, making it dramatic and selling me on someone that I thought was fine but boring. Steve: So just high marks all around. Steve: Charity's great. Steve: Everything's great. Steve: Sammi stayed up too late, got super emotional. Steve: It's okay. Steve: Nothing wrong with that. Steve: There's nothing wrong with it. Sammi: I'm excited all of you. Sammi: I did it for all of you. Sammi: And then we got home last night at like 10:00 and I mentioned this off recording. Sammi: We played pinball until I don't know. Sammi: This is a problem. Sammi: We played pinball until bar closed and so, yeah, my mind's kind of fresh, but I'm just coming off vacation, so if I repeated myself a lot, you knew what you were getting into. Sammi: Okay. Sammi: You knew what this was also. Sammi: You're welcome. Sammi: I hope you got your dishes done or got to your workplace or cleaned your office or whatever it is you're doing right now. Sammi: And I'm so excited. Sammi: Yeah. Sammi: The jilly box has made it through customs. Sammi: It should be here in a day or two. Sammi: And the grand reveal is coming soon, so you'll get to enjoy that shortly. Sammi: And it'll be a nice break. Sammi: Hopefully we can get it done before school starts. Sammi: And then once I'm in the swing of things for school, we'll have the golden bachelor and bachelor in paradise to record. Steve: Love. Sammi: It's going to be great. Sammi: It's going to be great. Sammi: If you want to see my slow decline into madness, come back on or before the last week of September, and I'm sure that's what you're going to get to see. Steve: That's right. Steve: We're making q four. Steve: Every month of Q four is mental health awareness month on our podcast. Sammi: It's going to be like, why did I decide to do biostatistics and biochemistry in the same semester? Sammi: Why? Sammi: Anyway, so take care of yourselves, friends. Sammi: Take care of each other if you haven't had a chance. Sammi: I mean, we are in the last moments of summer. Sammi: I know a lot of us had a heat wave recently. Sammi: At least here it's broken. Sammi: Make sure you're getting outside. Sammi: Enjoy that weather. Sammi: Go for a nice long walk. Sammi: That's what I'm about to do when I get off of here and make jam as well. Sammi: And, yeah, just enjoy those last moments that you have before it gets cold and dark, if you're in a part of the world where that happens. Steve: Yeah. Steve: And you know what? Steve: I'm going down to the lake as soon as this call is done. Steve: I'm going to walk around. Steve: I'm going to probably eat a snack. Steve: I'm going to watch the sunset. Steve: It's going to be beautiful. Steve: You know what I'm not going to do? Steve: I'm not going to do needle drugs, because you shouldn't do needle drugs. Steve: Don't do needle drugs. Steve: You got to hit them with the triple because they going to hear from us for a little while. Sammi: We'll be back with a jilly box. Steve: And a double bachelor experience. Steve: Oh, lordy.

Steve Lloyd is a Founder and Managing Partner of several real estate development companies. He is responsible for investor relations, specifically securing capital from private sources for placement into acquisition, rehab, and development activities. Steve is well-known for his abilities to identify real estate market opportunities, and he is nationally recognized as an expert in raising and investing private capital. Today, Tom and Steve engage in a rich discussion on building a real estate portfolio, the power of cash flow and compound interest, and traits to look for in a good business partner.Key Takeaways00:45 – Tom introduces today's guest, Steve Lloyd, who joins the show to discuss Covid, his decision to create a new lifestyle for himself, and how real estate played a big role 07:50 – How Steve went from 2.5 million dollars in debt to living his best life 09:59 – The importance of balance when building your real estate portfolio 16:49 – What to look for in a good business partner 23:19 – Steve points out his strengths and weaknesses when it comes to real estate 25:18 – Rule 72 and the power of compound interest 31:39 – Fighting through trials and Steve's five year plan 36:01 – The power of cash flow 40:02 – Advice Steve would give to younger people looking to get over their own egos 45:25 – Steve's morning gratitude routine 50:09 – The dangers of holding on for too long and final thoughts from SteveTweetable Quotes“I wanted to create a new lifestyle. I sold a big portion of my real estate and I went to the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show, and I came back with a 52 foot Horizon Motor Cap.” (04:09) (Steve) “I think there needs to be a balance. The wealth is created by the real estate that you hold, because with flipping you're paying the highest taxes because it's all short-term capital gains. There's no tax benefit to it. So, I say everything in life is balance. So, maybe flip two, wholesale two, and keep one. You've got to build up that real estate portfolio over time.” (09:59) (Steve) “To me, you have to keep progressing. You have to better yourself physically, mentally, with your real estate. You have to go to these real estate meetings and learn and network.” (15:27) (Steve) “To me, there's many things that I know and I could talk about, but I really hope people in their late twenties and early thirties are maxing out that self-directed 401(k).” (25:18) (Steve) “It's really not hard to build a real estate portfolio.” (36:01) (Steve) “Once you get the money - the cash flow - then you can invest in other things, I believe. That's how it's worked for me.” (38:13) (Steve) “If something is burning you up in your life and it's not working out, let it go.” (50:26) (Steve)Guest ResourcesSteve's LinkedInThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

          Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Katie Strong and I'm a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources. I'm today's host for an episode that will feature Dr. Debra Meyerson and Steve Zuckerman. We'll be talking about their bike ride across the country, Stroke Across America, as well as the importance of identity and storytelling in a person's journey with aphasia. Before we get into the conversation, let me tell you a bit about our guests. Debra Meyerson was, until her stroke in 2010, a tenured professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's School of Education.  Debra's most significant contribution from that period was Tempered Radicals:  How Everyday Leaders Inspire Change at Work (HBS Press, 2001). More recently, she authored  Identity Theft: Rediscovering Ourselves After Stroke (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2019) and is co-founder and co-chair, with her husband Steve Zuckerman, of Stroke Onward, a nonprofit working to ensure stroke survivors and their supporters have the resources needed to rebuild identities and rewarding lives.    Steve Zuckerman is, along with Debra, co-founder and co-chair of Stroke Onward; he has been Debra's care partner since her stroke in 2010.  He has held leadership roles at Self-Help, a nationally recognized economic justice nonprofit, since 2006 and still serves part time as a Senior Advisor.  Before that, he was a managing director at a private equity firm.      In the summer of 2022, Debra and Steve led Stroke Across America – a 100-day cross country bike ride, from Oregon to Boston, to raise awareness for stroke, aphasia, and the importance of the emotional journey in recovery.   In this episode you will: be inspired learning about the bike ride, Stroke Across America, and its effort to raise awareness about the emotional journal of living with stroke and aphasia. learn about the power of story in reconstructing identity in people living with aphasia. become aware of Stroke Onward's mission to support the emotional journey of rebuilding identities and rewarding lives.   Katie: Welcome Debra and Steve. I'm so happy that you are here with me today. Debra: Thank you so much, Katie. Steve: It's great to be here. Katie: Well, I'm just so excited for our listeners to be able to hear about what you've got going on, and I'd love to start with what you were up to last summer. You did an amazing bike ride across the U.S. called Stroke Across America. Congratulations! I mean it was a big deal! Can you tell us about it? Debra: Sure. Stroke Across America was a bike ride across the US and Canada to raise awareness about stroke, brain injury and aphasia. We wanted to spotlight the emotional journey after stroke. How do we rebuild our identities and live meaningful lives? We rode 4,500 miles over 100 days, traveling from Oregon to Boston. There was a core team of six riders and others who joined us for portions of the ride. We became a family. I didn't expect that. Katie: That's fantastic. Tell me about who rode with you and became family. Steve: As Deb said, we had six core riders most of the way across the country. In addition to the two of us, a woman named Whitney Hardy, who's actually a close family friend. She's a young woman in her thirties who unfortunately suffered a traumatic brain injury about four years after she graduated from college and suffers no ongoing physical disabilities but has some cognitive issues and memory issues. She rode with us from the beginning to the end. Another stroke survivor was Michael Obel-Omia, who I know is an active participant in Aphasia Access. Michael is a stroke survivor who also lives with aphasia. He joined us about 15 days late because his son was graduating from college, so he joined us in Missoula, Montana. We had two wonderful summer interns, Emily and Alex. We met Emily through her grandfather, who was a stroke survivor and hoped to ride with us but didn't end up riding with us. Emily and Alex are both students at Washington University, St. Louis. They traded off, one rode and one worked, every other day. We can't say enough about the wonderful, not just competent and great work they did, but the energy they brought. They really helped make it special. I guess our seventh team member was our then roughly one-and-a-half-year-old golden doodle named Rusty who was along for the ride. Sometimes she rode in a trailer behind our bike and sometimes in one of the support vehicles. We had a group called Bike Eternity, a gentleman named Arlen Hall, who really arranged all the on-road logistics and the route. He and his team were just fabulous in terms of just making everything work. That was our family. Katie: It's quite a crew. Fantastic. I was wondering if you could tell us about a favorite experience from the ride. Debra: We hosted sixteen community events across the country. They brought together survivors, families, friends, stroke care professionals, and more. It was really inspiring to be with all these people. Building community and collaborating with others is the only path to real change. And you were at the Ann Arbor event? Katie: Absolutely. Yeah. My friend Becca and I came down to the Ann Arbor event. I think it was Dexter or something. Debra: Yeah Katie: Boy, did we show you how we can have rain in Michigan! Debra: I know. Oh, yeah. Katie: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it was great. Even though we had rain, there was so much great energy around the event. I can feel what you're talking about. Steve: I think the events were kind of really the most powerful experience. But Deb, you were going to talk about one particular ride you loved. Debra: I loved riding past Cameron Pass in Colorado for 30 miles up and 40 miles down. Katie: Wow! Steve: Yeah, so just to add a little bit to that, because I think that one day of riding really, I mean, every day was fantastic. We just loved the riding. But this one stood out for all of us. It was from a town called Walden in Colorado, a bit east of Fort Collins to a campground called Stove Prairie Landing. The pass we rode over was about 10,276 feet, so we were up there. And as Deb said, we rode up for 30 Miles about 2000 feet, but then got to come down 4000 feet. The whole ride was in a canyon with dramatic mountains and a river that we happened to catch at the right time of the year because the snow was melting. So, it was just a rushing river where we got the sound, the sights, and sometimes the spray of rapids as we're cruising downhill. And then there was just a perfect riverside campground at the end. It was just sort of a magical day. Katie: Yeah. As you were describing it, I wanted to use the word magical! So, I agree. Yeah. Fantastic. I'm sure it wasn't all easy street. I was wondering if you could tell us one of the hardest things about planning such a big activity. I mean, this was a big event. You had several events along the way, but you know, tell us a little bit about the planning. Debra: Organizing this event was so hard, but it was so important and so impactful. We had sixteen events: three events before we started riding in Palo Alto, Bend, and Portland, eleven along the way, and two in Boston after we finished. We had so much to do after the rides and after dinner, such as PR, social media, Stroke Onward, events, and a documentary film. There was so much to do! We are really tired. Steve: Yeah, I think the biking certainly was a lot, but we weren't trying to ride fast. You know, one thing I say about biking is, if you want to ride long distances, you just have to ride long distances. You get used to it. So, that didn't really feel like a strain for us. And the organizing of the route, particularly with the help of Arlen, kind of got done ahead of time. It was a lot of work, but he's a pro and we put it together. But it was really, I guess we're “Type As” who can't get out of our own way. We built so much into the trip that it really was those evenings and our theoretical “rest days,” which were nonriding days. We renamed them “stress days.” We felt like we had to get everything done. So, you know, that was the hardest part of the trip. It was just how much we packed in. We jokingly say, but it may not be a joke, “that someday we want to ride across the country where we have absolutely nothing to do but ride across the country.” That way, we can enjoy the evenings and the rest days, do a little more touristing, and spend time meeting people along the way. Katie: Yeah, it was very focused. You were very intentional about gaining awareness and supporting community. And I'm sure that it sounds like there was lots to do beyond just pedaling. You mentioned earlier about a campground, but I'm curious, where did you stay along the way? Steve: Our main support vehicle was an RV, pulling a trailer with a lot of gear. We organized mostly around staying in campgrounds. Partly to keep the cost down and partly because we didn't want to have to stay rooted to where the hotels and motels were. And so, Deb and I got the privilege of sleeping in the RV. It was a small RV, but very comfortable. And the rest of the group was camping, so we had tents and cots, and all you would need for relatively comfortable camping. About one or two nights a week, we would end up staying in a motel, partly just to give the folks who are camping a little bit of a break. We actually came to enjoy the RV so much; we almost preferred it to the hotels. Then, one of the real highlights of the trip was we were able to see a lot of friends going across the country. Particularly in the cities where we held events. We almost, with maybe one exception, always had a rest day connected to the event. Probably at about half of those we ended up staying with friends. That was really special to be able to involve more people in our lives in the journey. Katie: Yeah, I was thinking when you were in Ann Arbor. Deb, you had a number of colleagues and friends that came to the Dexter event. Debra: Yes, in Detroit, two days later, we met with my middle school buddies, Debbie and Debbie and Debbie. Katie: I love that, fantastic! That's great! Well, riding across the country is a huge endeavor. What made you decide to do it? Debra: Steve. Steve: Deb would say, “Steve made me decide to do it.” Well, actually, it is true. I had a close friend from college who rode across the country right after we graduated from college. From that day, I always said, “that's something I want to do”. As I got older and older and hadn't done it, it was kind of rising to the top of the proverbial bucket list. But cycling really has been a huge part of our recovery from Deb's stroke. It has been the best way that we can continue to do a lot of the things we love - exercise, adventuring, seeing new places, and spending time with friends. We had never ridden a tandem before Deb's stroke, we rode individual bikes. It was a bit of a challenge for Deb to give up control, understandably. But when we saw the opportunity to do it with a purpose, that's what kind of got us really excited. We were just starting to build Stroke Onward, we wanted to build awareness for the importance of the emotional journey, and events create good opportunities to attract attention. So, what better thing than to do something you've always wanted to do and do it with a purpose? That's kind of how we got going. Katie: Well, it is inspirational, and I know a big focus of the trip was to raise awareness about stroke and aphasia. Debra, for people who might not know, could you share a little bit about your life story. Debra: Of course. My life story started earlier. In 2010, I was a professor at Stanford. I studied, taught, and wrote about feminism, diversity, and identity. Then, I had a severe stroke. For three years, I did therapy almost full time. I had to get my old life back, but I couldn't. My disabilities, especially aphasia, forced me to leave my job at Stanford. Giving up tenure was like a second punch in the gut. It was a huge trauma on top of my stroke trauma that started my identity crisis. Who am I now? Katie: So, Debra, I think that's what sparked you writing a book called Identity Theft. Can you tell us a little more about that? Debra: I had written two books before my stroke. I decided to write another book after my stroke, Identity Theft. Writing Identity Theft became my learning journey. It has helped me rebuild my identity. It took me five years, and I learned to accept lots of help. No one told me rebuilding identity is so central to recovery. I learned firsthand that it's so important. While researching Identity Theft, I learned that other survivors think so too. They had no advice and support for this.  Steve: Maybe I'll add. Deb mentioned doing research for Identity Theft. From the very beginning when Deb decided to write a book, she didn't just want to write about her story. She was an academic, she wanted to bring in other people's points of view. And so, Deb interviewed twenty-five other survivors and probably another thirty-five people who were care partners, friends, families, and professional caregivers. Kind of the idea being that she wanted to be able to write about a diversity of people and stroke experiences because that would make the book more relatable and more accessible to more people. And that really kind of gets at one of the things that really struck me about Deb writing Identity Theft. In many ways, the writing of the book really reflected her personal journey. That at the beginning, she was kind of writing it to prove she could, she didn't want to let go of that identity as an academic. But very quickly, she realized that the process of writing it, as Deb said, was kind of her journey. She was able to turn her knowledge of identity and the lens on herself to really help rebuild her identity and her life. But along the way, she realized, “Man, there are so many other people out there who aren't being told about this and need resources.” I say this all the time, choosing to write a book when you have aphasia has got to be one of the bravest decisions because it puts you face to face with your frustrating disability every day. And there were a few times when Deb came downstairs and said, “I'm done,” “I'm not finishing the book,” “This is too frustrating,” and “I can't stand it”. But it was that knowledge that it could help other people that got her to push through that frustration. And that gets to kind of one of the big themes of our work, which is about finding purpose and having purpose and how that's often our biggest motivator in life, what we can give. So, that's kind of a little bit of the history of the book. Katie: I appreciate you sharing that. And as you were both talking, you were talking about this journey. And you know, thinking about the story and the writing and the rewriting of your identity. It really isn't about the product, not necessarily the book, which maybe initially that's what you were interested in Deb. But really, the journey is where all the work and the reintegration of who you are and who you're going to be is. very powerful. Very powerful. It's such a great read. I've enjoyed the book very much. So, you have even moved forward beyond a book, and you've started a nonprofit. It's been established for a little bit now. Can you tell us about your nonprofit, Stroke Onward? Debra: Yes. I created it three, no, four years ago? Our mission is to ensure stroke survivors and their supporters have those tools necessary to rebuild identities and rewarding lives. The vision is a stroke system of care that fully supports every survivor's emotional journey and recovery. Steve: Maybe I'll add. I think, clearly, the issues of critical care and helping people survive a stroke, and then all the work on rehabilitation is critical. What we saw is that a lot of people don't get all their capabilities back. It's almost like, well, if recovery means rehabilitation, then does that mean everybody who doesn't fully recover their capabilities, has a failed recovery? And we were just unwilling to accept that. Recovery had to mean more than just capabilities. That's why we decided to really focus on that next step in recovery, which is the emotional journey. So, we really think about our work around three areas. One is raising awareness, just that this whole issue of the emotional journey is really important and doesn't get enough attention. Even if people realize it's important and say, “Well, gosh, where can I get help with this?” There aren't enough resources out there. You know, at the end of the day, as Deb said, “it's about system change.” That we would hope that 10 years from now, a person who suffers a stroke and their family enters a system that not only provides good critical care and points them in the direction of good rehab, but also creates a framework and resources for this part of recovery, for the emotional journey. I won't go through all the actual things we do. Hopefully, you'll be able to post the website and people can go and see more about stroke onward, www.strokeonward.org, easy to remember. Katie: Absolutely.  Debra: And there's the book discussion guides. Steve: Yeah, well, one of the places in that the speech therapy community has been so supportive and such a wonderful partner is with the creation of our book discussion guides. Our colleague, Jodi Kravitz, led the creation so that the book can be more accessible. There's a guide, you know, with the idea being a group of people with aphasia can read the book together and have a facilitated discussion with a guide. But also, we created separate guides for families, speech therapists, and other health care workers. Just again, the whole idea of trying to make the material accessible, digestible, and useful for people who are going through what we went through, which was the identity crisis and having to rebuild our lives. Katie: Absolutely, we use the resources for our local book club here at Central Michigan University and our Lansing Area Aphasia Support Group. The materials were great, but the book just brought forth so much rich discussion. Debra: Yeah. Katie: You know, not all of it was easy to read. There is some tough stuff; you don't skirt the issues. I think it really was a very meaningful experience for our members and the students that were a part of the group to be able to hear the journey, to hear what maybe hadn't been addressed, to hear how people had moved forward with things, and the areas where we really do need to be thinking more about as healthcare providers. It is important that we can support the whole person and not just fix the physical or the language. It's a whole emotional journey that you're moving forward with, which in Stroke Onward is really important. Well, as you know, a lot of my work is about the importance of storytelling. Deb, I was wondering if you could talk about how storytelling impacts your work. Maybe even share a few stories from your work. Debra: Sure. Storytelling is so important. We are always changing, and our stories evolve over time. Storytelling helps us navigate the emotional journey after a stroke. And in my book, Identity Theft, I share my story and the stories of others so that survivors don't feel alone. I would like to share one story that helped me recognize that life could be good after my stroke. Seven months after my stroke, my friend Ann invited me to her 50th birthday weekend in Palm Springs with tennis, hiking, talking, and biking. I said, “No...no, no, no.” I would need so much help, and most of all, I could barely talk at all. Conversations would be loud and lively. I would feel frustrated, jealous, and sad. Kim, my friend, said she would help with everything. She said she would help me have fun. She was there for me. I was nervous, but I decided to give it a try. At first, I was determined to be the “old Deb” at the party, but the frustrations were constant. Conversations were too fast, and the friends trying to help did not give me time to find the words. I was frustrated constantly, but I decided to enjoy myself anyway. The night of the birthday party, I danced a lot! Great music, so fun. I was not the “old Deb” anymore, I was a newer version of myself. I could spend my time with my friends dancing, laughing, and enjoying what is essential in my life: friends, community, and fun. It is so hard, but it is so important. Pushing myself to be social and telling stories about it has been so important to my recovery. Katie: Thanks for sharing, it's a great story. And well, I mean, you sound like you have fabulous friends, but it sounds like Kim really was one that stuck around and was willing to help you through some of that change. Steve: And if I can add one other story, which kind of gets to how Deb reclaimed some of her old identity. In this case, her identity as a mom, and Deb tells the story in the book. When our daughter Sarah, who at the time of Deb's stroke was 15 and was not a big dater in high school. But about a year and a half after Deb's stroke, she got invited to the prom her senior year and she started going out with this guy. And I kind of said to Deb, you know, you never had that mother daughter talk with Sarah. And Deb hadn't been too active in parenting for that year, year and a half because she was you know, fighting for her recovery. I said, “You know, maybe you should be the one, as her mom, to have the talk.” And so, we kind of told Sarah that we wanted to talk to her. We were all standing around the island in the kitchen. Sarah kind of knew something was coming but didn't quite know what. And you know Deb's speech was nothing like as good as it is now back then. You could just see the concentration on her face trying to figure out what she was going to say. And she kind of slowly said, “Boyfriend? Yes. Pregnant, no!” And that has been dubbed by all of our friends for the world's most efficient and effective mother daughter talk. It was funny; we all just burst out laughing. It was really a great kind of wake up for us that Deb could reclaim a lot of aspects of her identity, but she would just have to live them out differently. And that just because they had to be different didn't mean she couldn't live them out. That was one of our favorites. Katie: That is a good story. What I love about your sharing of the stories and where your work brings storytelling to life. One of the things that's happening in the literature that's coming into practice, particularly in the UK, and over in Australia, and hopefully maybe over here in the U.S. sometime, is this idea of step psychological care for aphasia. We'll put something in the show notes if listeners want to check this out a little bit more. This idea consists of different tiers to support mental health and particularly depression in people with stroke and aphasia. At that bottom tier, which is supposed to be accessible to every stroke survivor, one of the level one interventions is storytelling. So, it's that powerful, you know. It's not just fun to tell stories; it's very important to who we are as people and integrating our mental and emotional health into who we are. Steve: Deb, did you want to mention somebody you interviewed for the book that particularly talked about storytelling? Debra: Yes. Randy enjoys storytelling, and he is a stroke survivor from St. Louis who I interviewed for the book. Randy and his wife, Rose, started their own aphasia meetup group. Social connections were really important to him. Steve: And he talked a lot about how he gradually got more and more comfortable telling his story and how much that helped him. He spoke at our community event in St. Louis, and I thought he kind of stole the show when he said, “My stroke changed my life, but it will not hold me back.” I just kind of well up because that's what it's all about. And he said it so eloquently. Katie: Powerful, powerful. Well, Debra, can you tell us a little more about this idea of identity? Debra: Sure. Barbara Shadden and you, Katie Strong, I am so thankful. Identity is our narrative about ourselves over time. We have not one static identity, we have multiple identities. We are always changing. Relationships like friends, family, colleagues, and others are a big part of making who we are. Identity is a choice. Instead of asking, “Who am I now?” ask “Who do I want to be now?”. Katie: Powerful. I like it. Debra, could you talk about aphasia specifically, and how that plays into your views on identity and your recovery? Debra: Yeah. Communication is so central to everything we do and to my identity. Having communication challenges just makes everything harder. Steve: And I'll just add that sometimes in recovery, the physical stuff, you know, trying to walk better or get use of a right arm back, would tend to be the focus. But in reality, the aphasia is really the thing that has challenged her identity the most because it was the communication that forced her from a career she worked so hard to achieve. Also, friends and interaction are so central to who Deb is, and that has just gotten so much more challenging. So, not to diminish the impact of physical disabilities, but aphasia is big and really central to the recovery process. Katie: And I think you know, you mentioned Barbara Shadden earlier, but you know her idea of identity theft. We are the stories that we tell and when we have trouble with the that one thing that we use for story, that tool of language that is impaired, or changed or broken, or, you know, smaller, or however we want to view it with having aphasia, it really makes a significant impact on how you view yourself and how you can connect with other people that are important to you. Debra: Yeah. I agree completely, and I am so lucky to have friends and family to support me. Steve: And I think what you said, Katie, is so powerful, and it's why we talk a lot about how few people really know and understand what aphasia is. I think that's because there's this, whatever the opposite of a virtual cycle is, it's the doom loop cycle of aphasia. Aphasia impacts people's identity so that they don't want to speak if they have aphasia because it's not consistent with who they think they are. But because people don't want to speak with aphasia, nobody knows what it is. And so that, you know, makes it that much harder to speak with aphasia. And I think, you know, that gets to this notion of purpose sometimes driving people through what's hard and what's uncomfortable. That was true for Deb and played a role in making a decision that “Yeah, I really wish I could speak the same way I used to.” We've had so many arguments about Deb saying, “I was terrible," because she was evaluating her speaking performance against the way she would have done it before her stroke. Yet, Deb's been willing to push through that, to be out there. You know, that's part of our work of trying to network with other people and encourage people to get out there and tell their stories because that's the only way the world is going to learn. Katie: And that you're doing, which is so appreciated and inspirational. Steve, I know your work is as much about supporting care partners and other family members as it is about supporting survivors. Can you share a bit about your journey through all of this? Steve: Oof, it feels like that could be a podcast in and of itself. But you know, I think maybe the nugget that I'll share is it's pretty obvious that people who are close to somebody who has a stroke or aphasia, our lives are going to change. Things we used to do; we can't do. Help we didn't used to have to provide, we do have to provide. I think the real “aha” for me personally, was that I needed to focus on my identity change as well. It wasn't just Deb's identity. And for me personally, and I've talked to a lot of care partners about this, really embracing “care partner” as part of my identity. Not just something I had to do to support Deb, but part of who I now am. This was really important to me because that mind shift actually helped me resent some of the changes in my life less. It was just, like Deb said, our identities change, our lives change, this is just another change. If I can embrace that as a change in who I am, then those just become part of life. Not that they're not frustrating sometimes, but it's a lot better. So I think, you know, Sarah, our daughter, is when you talk about the impact on family. And again, this story is in the book as well. But again, not just the impact on her life, but the impact on her and who she was. About two years after Deb's stroke, she gave a talk to her whole school community. Sarah talked about the experience of watching her mom have a stroke, and how she wanted to be like her mother and be strong and tough it out. People were offering to help, and she said “No.” She was going to soccer practice, she was doing all of her assignments, and she was visiting Deb in the hospital; she was going to tough it out because she wanted to be strong. Then, she started to see Deb accept more help and she started wondering, well, maybe I can accept some help. She started to let her friends in and let herself be vulnerable. She kind of realized that real strength isn't about toughing it out, real strength is about being vulnerable and using your relationships. Sarah's an athlete, and she ended the talk with, “Even the world's strongest person needs a spotter.” I well up just telling the story. When she told it, we went through boxes of tissues. But that changed her as a person in ways that actually, you know, maybe she would have gotten there eventually, but not when she was 17. I think that's what we talked to a lot of the families and care partners about. Allow yourself to think about how this experience can change you as a person and try to embrace some of that change where you can. Katie: Powerful. Debra: And the families, Danny, Adam, and Sarah. The families are affected. Katie: Yeah. Aphasia just doesn't happen to the person who has it. Well, Deb, you mentioned that there is one part in your book that sums up a lot of what you were trying to share with other survivors and their families. Maybe we can end with you reading from that paragraph. Deb: Faced with a trauma like stroke, the opportunities for both challenge and growth are great. We can clarify what we value most in life, set goals that will help us meet them, and achieve repeated small wins in pursuit of them. In this way, we can achieve not just recovery, but satisfying growth and fundamental meanings in our lives. Katie: I love it. Yeah. Challenge and adversity, thinking forward into the future, and having goals, purpose, and meaning. It's what life is about. Well, this has just been a fabulous conversation. Thank you both for taking time to share with us a little bit about what you've been up to over the summer and inspire us with some of your stories. Debra: Thank you. Steve: Thank you. Well, that wraps up this episode. Thank you for listening. For references and resources mentioned in today's show, please see our show notes. They're available on our website, www.aphasiaaccess.org. There you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials, and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. If you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org. For Aphasia Access Conversations, I'm Katie Strong. Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access.   Information about Stroke Onward   https://strokeonward.org/  Stroke Onward website Instagram Facebook Twitter YouTube Identity Theft Book Club Materials developed by Jodi Kravitz, Ellen Bernstein-Ellis, Liz Hoover and Stroke Onward https://strokeonward.org/bookguides/   Resources Related to Identity and Aphasia   Meyerson, D., E., (2003). Tempered Radicals: How Everyday Leaders Inspire Change at Work. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Meyerson, D. & Zuckerman, D. (2019). Identity theft: Rediscovering Ourselves After Stroke. Andrews McMeel Publishing. www.identitytheftbook.org Shadden, B. (2005). Aphasia as identity theft: Theory and practice. Aphasiology, 19(3-5), 211-223. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687930444000697 Strong, K., & Shadden, B. (2020). The power of story in identity renegotiation: Clinical approaches to supporting persons living with aphasia. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_PERSP-19-00145 Listen to Episode #5 of Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast featuring a conversation between Katie Strong and Barbara Shadden about the important role story has in supporting identity in people who are impacted by living with aphasia. https://aphasiaaccess.libsyn.com/insights-and-aha-moments-about-aphasia-care-with-professor-emeriti-barbara-shadden   Resources Related to Stepped Psychological Care Listen to Episode #34 of Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast featuring a conversation between Jerry Hoepner and Ian Kneebone about stepped psychological care and other research related to supporting the emotional journey of living with stroke and aphasia. https://aphasiaaccess.libsyn.com/34-in-conversation-with-ian-keebone Kneebone, I. I. (2016). A framework to support Cognitive Behavior Therapy for emotional disorder after stroke. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 23(1), 99-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2015.02.001 Ryan, B., Worrall, L., Sekhon, J., Baker, C., Carragher, M., Bohan, J., Power, E., Rose, M., Simmons-Mackie, N., Togher, L., & Kneebone, I. (2020). Time to step up: A call for the speech pathology profession to utilise stepped psychological care for people with aphasia post stroke. In K. H. Meredith & G. N. Yeates (Eds.), Psychotherapy and aphasia: Interventions for emotional wellbeing and relationships (pp. 1-16). Routledge.    Acknowledgements – A special thank you to Amanda Zalucki and Emma Keilen from the Strong Story Lab at Central Michigan University for their assistance in the transcription of this episode. Cite as: Bertram, M., Isaksen, J., Toft, L. E., Olsen, A. M., & Breckling, M. (2021). Evaluering af projekt Forløb for borgere med afasi samt afrapportering af implementeringsopfølgningen KomTil – fra udvikling til drift. Unpublished report from University of Southern Denmark.

How to Make a Million Dollars a Year is the Career Path Number 5 Number One Request (LA 1875) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hi. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the natural springs area of Arkansas. Yes, Eureka Springs right now and we are loving it. Steve: Can't say enough positive stuff about this area, with the state and the country. Jill: You know what's funny, we had a day this last week where it was like, started off, it got sunny but it started off kind of dark and weird and it rained a little bit and it was, you know the show the Ozarks, how we all know it has that funky tint. They make the, there's like a filter on the cameras or something and make it kind of a dark, interesting blue? Would you call it blue background kind of thing? I swear it felt like that. Steve: It was that color. Jill: I was running around taking pictures, I'm like, "That's real." Now I get the Ozarks show and I always thought, why do they make it look so dark? But by the way, right now we're sitting in a beautiful, sunny day. Blue sky, it's gorgeous so it's not always like that, but I get it. It was really cool. Steve: Today Jill and I are going to talk about how making a million dollars a year is the number one discussion point and request for this new career path class. Jill: There's kind of two things that came up because I want to share, to tell you, there's one other thing that everybody asks for. So it's important to know. I want leave a little teaser here. So when we went around the room the other day, everybody brought up two things and one is the money and I'll tell you the other one in a minute. Steve: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the land investors.com online community. It's free. And last year a ton of people came to us, came to Jill and I requesting for help getting their first mailer out or just getting consistency in doing mailers or mailer type stuff. Well enough people came to us. Jill and I decided to turn over our own mailer department to our employees to allow them to do that. So we call it concierge data and now it's called concierge data plus, you can completely and entirely outsource doing a mailer to this department and it's a subdepartment of offers2owners.com. Or if you're having trouble getting the first one out, check it out. It's very, very efficient. And now we process a ton of orders, more and more every single month. Jill: All right, Chief wrote, "As a seller, how do you ask a buyer, how do you ask a buyer close, as a seller how do you ask a buyer to close through your selected title company? Or is it just customary for the seller to choose? It's a little late for me to be inquiring about this, but I've been letting, or should I say making the buyer's agent find one. Now that I say it out loud pretty sure I'm doing it completely wrong. I need to be sending them somewhere specific, right? My thought was it doesn't really matter to me and it's all about the same price so let them have it in case they have people they like to close through. It was one less thing I had to set up. Now I see why all the buyer's agents attitude seemed to change a little bit after their clients have signed. I'm making them do my job accidentally but sure enough, they'd sign and I'd been letting them take it from there. I'd been asking them where they want to close and wait for an email. How messy. This must be what Jack means by being able to, by doing it all wrong and still being able to pull it off. Embarrassing but enlightening." All right, so let me back up here. Steve: Embarrassing but enlightening. Jill: So here's what I do, Chief, and this, I'm going to make it easy. This will be make it easy for you actually, because I bet you putting it on them could slow you down too. I want you to stay in control for the whole transaction. Steve: Yeah,

How to Make a Million Dollars a Year is the Career Path Number 5 Number One Request (LA 1875) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hi. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the natural springs area of Arkansas. Yes, Eureka Springs right now and we are loving it. Steve: Can't say enough positive stuff about this area, with the state and the country. Jill: You know what's funny, we had a day this last week where it was like, started off, it got sunny but it started off kind of dark and weird and it rained a little bit and it was, you know the show the Ozarks, how we all know it has that funky tint. They make the, there's like a filter on the cameras or something and make it kind of a dark, interesting blue? Would you call it blue background kind of thing? I swear it felt like that. Steve: It was that color. Jill: I was running around taking pictures, I'm like, "That's real." Now I get the Ozarks show and I always thought, why do they make it look so dark? But by the way, right now we're sitting in a beautiful, sunny day. Blue sky, it's gorgeous so it's not always like that, but I get it. It was really cool. Steve: Today Jill and I are going to talk about how making a million dollars a year is the number one discussion point and request for this new career path class. Jill: There's kind of two things that came up because I want to share, to tell you, there's one other thing that everybody asks for. So it's important to know. I want leave a little teaser here. So when we went around the room the other day, everybody brought up two things and one is the money and I'll tell you the other one in a minute. Steve: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the land investors.com online community. It's free. And last year a ton of people came to us, came to Jill and I requesting for help getting their first mailer out or just getting consistency in doing mailers or mailer type stuff. Well enough people came to us. Jill and I decided to turn over our own mailer department to our employees to allow them to do that. So we call it concierge data and now it's called concierge data plus, you can completely and entirely outsource doing a mailer to this department and it's a subdepartment of offers2owners.com. Or if you're having trouble getting the first one out, check it out. It's very, very efficient. And now we process a ton of orders, more and more every single month. Jill: All right, Chief wrote, "As a seller, how do you ask a buyer, how do you ask a buyer close, as a seller how do you ask a buyer to close through your selected title company? Or is it just customary for the seller to choose? It's a little late for me to be inquiring about this, but I've been letting, or should I say making the buyer's agent find one. Now that I say it out loud pretty sure I'm doing it completely wrong. I need to be sending them somewhere specific, right? My thought was it doesn't really matter to me and it's all about the same price so let them have it in case they have people they like to close through. It was one less thing I had to set up. Now I see why all the buyer's agents attitude seemed to change a little bit after their clients have signed. I'm making them do my job accidentally but sure enough, they'd sign and I'd been letting them take it from there. I'd been asking them where they want to close and wait for an email. How messy. This must be what Jack means by being able to, by doing it all wrong and still being able to pull it off. Embarrassing but enlightening." All right, so let me back up here. Steve: Embarrassing but enlightening. Jill: So here's what I do, Chief, and this, I'm going to make it easy. This will be make it easy for you actually, because I bet you putting it on them could slow you down too. I want you to stay in control for the whole transaction. Steve: Yeah,

How to Make a Million Dollars a Year is the Career Path Number 5 Number One Request (LA 1875) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hi. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the natural springs area of Arkansas. Yes, Eureka Springs right now and we are loving it. Steve: Can't say enough positive stuff about this area, with the state and the country. Jill: You know what's funny, we had a day this last week where it was like, started off, it got sunny but it started off kind of dark and weird and it rained a little bit and it was, you know the show the Ozarks, how we all know it has that funky tint. They make the, there's like a filter on the cameras or something and make it kind of a dark, interesting blue? Would you call it blue background kind of thing? I swear it felt like that. Steve: It was that color. Jill: I was running around taking pictures, I'm like, "That's real." Now I get the Ozarks show and I always thought, why do they make it look so dark? But by the way, right now we're sitting in a beautiful, sunny day. Blue sky, it's gorgeous so it's not always like that, but I get it. It was really cool. Steve: Today Jill and I are going to talk about how making a million dollars a year is the number one discussion point and request for this new career path class. Jill: There's kind of two things that came up because I want to share, to tell you, there's one other thing that everybody asks for. So it's important to know. I want leave a little teaser here. So when we went around the room the other day, everybody brought up two things and one is the money and I'll tell you the other one in a minute. Steve: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the land investors.com online community. It's free. And last year a ton of people came to us, came to Jill and I requesting for help getting their first mailer out or just getting consistency in doing mailers or mailer type stuff. Well enough people came to us. Jill and I decided to turn over our own mailer department to our employees to allow them to do that. So we call it concierge data and now it's called concierge data plus, you can completely and entirely outsource doing a mailer to this department and it's a subdepartment of offers2owners.com. Or if you're having trouble getting the first one out, check it out. It's very, very efficient. And now we process a ton of orders, more and more every single month. Jill: All right, Chief wrote, "As a seller, how do you ask a buyer, how do you ask a buyer close, as a seller how do you ask a buyer to close through your selected title company? Or is it just customary for the seller to choose? It's a little late for me to be inquiring about this, but I've been letting, or should I say making the buyer's agent find one. Now that I say it out loud pretty sure I'm doing it completely wrong. I need to be sending them somewhere specific, right? My thought was it doesn't really matter to me and it's all about the same price so let them have it in case they have people they like to close through. It was one less thing I had to set up. Now I see why all the buyer's agents attitude seemed to change a little bit after their clients have signed. I'm making them do my job accidentally but sure enough, they'd sign and I'd been letting them take it from there. I'd been asking them where they want to close and wait for an email. How messy. This must be what Jack means by being able to, by doing it all wrong and still being able to pull it off. Embarrassing but enlightening." All right, so let me back up here. Steve: Embarrassing but enlightening. Jill: So here's what I do, Chief, and this, I'm going to make it easy. This will be make it easy for you actually, because I bet you putting it on them could slow you down too. I want you to stay in control for the whole transaction. Steve: Yeah,

Steve: “It was Sunday 17th July 1994 when I saw the strange wildman creature. I am a DJ and ex radio host and I consider myself a very confident person. This event is one I struggle to explain. I was hosting a disco that night at the Hibaldstow club and everything went as normal and it was after packing up and leaving that things went strange. I drove on to the B1207 road when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was a figure stooped in the road examining something in the road way. Then I saw it walk out onto the road. It then crossed the road and went off into the field. It was going left to right across the road. My first thought was that there must have been somebody injured in an accident laying out on the road and that's why this figure was stooped looking over the road. And then I saw it was covered in hair, matted bedraggled hair. I would describe it's build as almost like a bodybuilder. And I am almost certain it was holding something in its right hand.The red light at the back of my car then shone on the fur on the left hand side of its face. It seemed to be looking back at me as I moved past it and caught it in the red glow of my lights. That was it for me, I put my foot down and drove home.DEBORAH'S EMAIL - debbiehatswell@gmail.comFACEBOOK - Deborah Hatswell BBR - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063604569253BBR Website - Deborah Hatswell - Being Believed Research & Investigations - https://wordpress.com/view/debhatswell.wordpress.comTWITTER - @BbrDeborah - https://twitter.com/BbrDeborahPATREON - Deborah Hatswell BBR Being Believed Research & Investigation - https://www.patreon.com/DeborahHatswellBigfootReportsYOUTUBE - Deborah Hatswell - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYGn8pR90PO_oBzOjiZ23tA/SPREAKER - Deborah Hatswell. BBR Investigations. Cryptid Creatures, Mystery and Unexplained Events - https://www.spreaker.com/show/british-bigfootAPPLE PODCASTS & ALL PODCASTS SITES - Deborah Hatswell. BBR Investigations. Cryptid Creatures, Mystery and Unexplained Events - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/british-bigfoot-dogman/id1480592906?uo=4MAP OF REPORTS - Deborah Hatswell. BBR Investigations. Investigations Map - https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1s1zOmmdM216PMftPUM9K1qqGrFg&usp=sharing

Episode Summary:  Today, we sit down once again with AquaStar Pool Products COO Todd Pieri and Director of Science and Compliance Steve Barnes.  In our previous conversation, Todd and Steve gave us a deep dive into their newly launched Pipeline Filters and how its intuitive design sets it apart from the competition. Today, they do the same with another new product, their Pipeline Pumps.  Listen in as Todd and Steve explain how two years of development has resulted in a pump that maximizes user-friendliness and efficiency for the benefit of service trades, installers, and homeowners.  Here's a Glimpse of What You'll Learn:  01:42 - Why AquaStar developed its Pipeline Pumps  03:47 - What went into the pump's development  09:48 - Version 2.0 is a vast improvement over 1.0  15:23 - How AquaStar's team goes above and beyond  21:04 - The pump's permanent magnet motor  24:25 - The pump's replaceable noncorrosive seal  24:50 - The pump's four programmable speeds  29:00 - The pump's WiFi compatibility  31:08 - The two sizes offered  Sponsors:  AquaStar Pool Products  Leslie's  Primate Pool Tools  Connect with Guest:  Website  Instagram  Facebook  Twitter  YouTube  Connect with Pool Chasers:  Website  Instagram  Facebook  Facebook Group  Twitter  YouTube  Patreon  Key Quotes from Episode:  With AquaStar, we really have the service trade in mind. From the get-go, we were looking at making our products more user-friendly and efficient for the service trade, which at the end of the day makes them more user-friendly and efficient for the homeowner as well. ~Steve  It's a testament to our staff that everything is a challenge, and is personal to them. They want to make the best product they possibly can. ~Todd 

Episode Highlights, Links and Resources:In the introduction, Jeremie mentions that he has been working with the University of Oklahoma Athletic Department. He says that they are learning about their Leadership Voices and the Know Yourself to Lead Yourself tool.  If you want to take the 5 Voices Assessment, do that here.Our guest on this episode is Maria Guy, Guardian/Nurturer. To contact Maria Guy: See her GiANT Storefront here. There you can find the 5 Voices Pro Assessment. Purchase licenses for all of your people so your team can begin to know themselves and each other.Thank you to Dwayne from Jacksonville, Florida for this episode's audience question:"I'm a manager. How do I get my people engaged? When I try to be intentional, it feels like I can't get them engaged? Maria's answer: Give yourself an opportunity to implement your learning for yourself first before sharing with your people. Let them see you apply things first. Jeremie's answer: Let your journey of growth do the heavy work so that trust and relationships are built. Then it will be natural for people to want to follow you.Our favorite episode quotes: Jeremie, "Very few leaders do a good job of transferring the magic they have. So when the leader leaves, all of that wisdom, background, connections and history goes out the door."Steve, "Go slower and deeper which means you go further and you end up doing it for longer." "If I died tomorrow, how much of my magic would go with you?"Maria,  "People don't think that multiplying is part of their job, but when they grasp it and make room for it, it transforms teams and organizations."If you want to become a GiANT Certified Coach,  go to giantworldwide.com and watch the video, then sign up and join the next certifiaiton cohort.Episode Takeaway from Steve:  It always starts with you. You never graduate from the school of self-awareness. I wish we could get to a certain level and then be done, but that's not the way it is. Ask yourself this: "how do I be the best version of me? How do I be intentional?"Episode Takeaway from Jeremie: The world needs better leaders. Leaders, it's the perseverance and the tenacity that builds unbelievable character. Be encouraged, if you are a leader working hard at it every day, we need you.If you'd like Steve or Jeremie to speak at your next event, either live or remote, inquire here:  https://giantspeakers.com

  I had a chance to sneak up on Vahe Torossian, a Microsoft Corporate Vice President and the man in charge of Sales for Microsoft Business Applications. While Vahe has been with Microsoft for 30 years, many of you may not know him, so I wanted to fix that. Vahe is no ordinary Seller; he's the “Top” guy who sets the sales strategy and motions for the entire global team. Vahe is also the guy who runs the really big enterprise customer meetings, and he's super-friendly, as you would expect for the Chief Rainmaker. We covered a lot of ground in this one, so enjoy! Transcript Below: Vahe: Hey, Vahe Torossian speaking. Steve: Vahe, Steve Mordue, how are you? Vahe: Hey Steve. In fairness let's say Charles mentioned that somehow you were going to call me. I didn't know when, but it's great to talk to you. Steve: After I interviewed him, I asked him who would be a good person to talk to? And he dropped your name. So it doesn't surprise me that he gave you a little heads up. Have you got a few minutes to chat? Vahe: Yeah, of course. Thanks Steve. Steve: Oh, perfect, perfect. So before we get into it, maybe we can tell the listeners a little bit about what your role is. I know you've been at Microsoft forever, I think like 30 years or something like that, and you've held a lot of different positions. But now you're in the business application space and that's been fairly recent. So there's probably a lot of folks that might not be familiar with you, who should be. Vahe: Oh yeah, thanks Steve. You're right. I've been celebrating my 30 years anniversary at Microsoft in April in 2022. I actually took the helm of the Biz Apps sales organization globally in late 2020. So basically I took my one way ticket to Redmond in December 2020. And the plane was almost empty, it was during the pandemic. And it was kind of a strange feeling for someone who has been traveling so much in the past. And of course, let's say I came with the lens of the business application, of course. Having led let's say Western Europe in my past role, having all the businesses of Microsoft. And I think Western Europe was quite successful on Biz Apps, our trajectory growth. And I guess that was also in fact the good match to some degree to try to take it at the global level. Steve: So is it a little easier to think about a smaller segment of the product mix, now really being able to focus like a business application? So I think before you were looking over all sorts of different things, weren't you? Vahe: Yeah, actually it's a great question. Because I think it's very different way of looking at the business. When you are, let's say almost you are the CEO of Microsoft in the countries that you are, let's say leading. You have all the levers to engage customers, partners, government, in different circumstances. And you try to leverage as much as you can the portfolio that you have to maximize the value. In the context of let's say the business application. I think it was, the interesting bet to some degree Steve, was to say, Hey, this has been a portfolio at Microsoft, whether you call it Dynamics 365 or Dynamics only as a brand in the past. And if you go back 20 years, let's say almost, with the Navision and Axapta, and Solomon Software and Great Plains. All these stories, all these product came together. And 20 years later, I think it has been part of a portfolio somewhere. Vahe: And you had almost what I will call the strong, let's say, portfolio of Microsoft, the platform, the modern workplace and environment. And I felt the work that James Phillips in the past, and with Alyssa, and Charles, and Amy here now on the marketing side. Have been a strong inflection point to bring together both the technology in the cloud environment. But at the same time, a market environment that requires very different, let's say tools to make the most of this transformation. And I felt that there's one piece at Microsoft that requires a huge catalyst leveraging the innovation. But responding as much as we can to what the customer need or even don't know yet what they need. And I think that's what I think to me was almost a bet. It's almost like all of a sudden you move to the little dog, if I may say. But with a huge potential of transforming something with great asset for Microsoft, and the customers and partners. Steve: Well I have to say, having been involved with Microsoft for a while, we have a phrase over here called redheaded stepchild, which is kind of what Dynamics was for many, many years. It was off campus, it was just this thing out there and under Satya, when Satya came in, he's the first one that I think came into the position that recognized this should be another leg on the stool, not some remote thing out there. And I think that's made a huge. Difference because I was involved in the years before Satya with business applications and they were not just something over here on the back shelf, and now they're right front and center. I think that between Dynamics and what's happened with the power platform, cloud in general. Microsoft's ability to get into and help customers is massively different than it used to be. And in your role now, you're dealing with a lot different type of customer. You're talking about Office 365 or Azure, you're dealing with IT. And now you're mostly dealing with business users. It's a completely different audience you're having to work with today, isn't it? Vahe: Absolutely. I think also you're right since Satya took the helm of the company, to some degree you of course we have seen how we tackle the cloud computing hyper-scale environment. But at the same time, in fact what happened with the Covid in the last two years, have seen an acceleration of what we call in the past, the productivity tools to become more and more collaboration environment. And from almost an application or a set of application, it became more and more a platform on its own. And so it's almost like when you think about where we are today and we were talking about the Covid, I don't think the Covid is yet over fully everywhere. But now everybody's talking about recession, right? And there's no one headline that you look, you say, oh my goodness, what's going to happen? Which just means in terms of planning for 22, 23. Vahe: So I think the assets that is now quite unique to some degree, or differentiated as you said, between the Dynamics 365 platform components and the Power Platform, it's almost bringing together. But I think, I don't remember Steve, in a few years back, I think Satya was talking about the mobility of the experience. And that was more from a device perspective initially. But actually what you see now is that with Teams as a platform, the system of productivity almost connect with the system of record more and more. And it's re-transforming the way you are thinking. It's almost like, you think about, you don't have to go to a CRM environment or ERP environment to get access to the data. It's almost like wherever you work, if you use an Excel or if you use Teams or whatever, you get access naturally, almost intuitively to your data set. And the data set are that's almost fulfilled naturally. And so we have no additional task. Vahe: And so I think that's the transformation world in which we are. Which connects cheaper well. We almost do more with less, right? And that's going to be almost the conversation we're going to have in the coming month. And it started already with many customers and partners. How we can optimize the assets that they have, how they can let's say increase the deep provisioning of some assets that they have. They are paying too much to concentrate a bit more, to get more agility. And I think this is where also, from a partner perspective, Steve, I see a lot of potential. You are referring to Power Platform, it's fascinating to see what it was in the very beginning, this notion of citizens developer, what does it mean? Vahe: People didn't know exactly what it is, we're quite afraid to touch it. But now when you see the shortage of developers in the market in general. And how you can make the most of some absolutely topnotch people who are not developer, touching the last mile execution challenges. Have been facing crazy environment and situation that they say, I can't believe how my IT guide doesn't solve these things. I've been telling them the customer pain point for so many years. And now with some, let's say [inaudible 00:08:45] place, let's say available for them, along with some let's say technical assets, you can really make the magic in the very, very, very time. Steve: Charles came up with a term on the fly, ambient CRM. Kind of where we're heading here when you talk about things like Viva Sales and some of these pieces that are really wiring all these components together. Covid was a terrible thing, but it certainly was a perfect storm for pushing the technology forward into a place that it's been fighting to get to, it's really been fighting to get to that point. And Teams was a great product. But certainly Covid created the perfect environment where Teams made insane sense for companies that were maybe just thinking about it or dabbling with it, and suddenly they're all diving into it. And you guys of course poured the investment on top of that. And I think that the silver lining of Covid, for technology, is how far it really allowed it to advance in that period of time. Maybe we just need a pandemic every five years to push a technology forward. I don't know. Vahe: No, but I have to say that even in my previous role when I was running Western Europe. Even the most skeptical people in regard to the cloud or the transition to a cloud environment. Having the one that rushed in the first, almost to a cloud environment, once the pandemic has been a bit of a real situation to face, and to drive the economy or the public services let's say on. So I think you're right, so you don't want to wish for another pandemic or whatever, but it has been absolutely a forcing function in many domains. And that's true. Steve: I think the challenge we have is particularly in the business application space. You guys have launched so many things in such a short period of time. And as you mentioned before, Power Apps, people picking it with a stick, they don't even know what it is. And there's also this first mover fear, I think. Microsoft has been, in my mind, kind of famous for coming to the game late and then just taking over the game. We were very late to the cloud, but once we got there we just took over the cloud, and it seems to be a pattern. But when you look back at the early days of cloud before you guys stepped into it, it was wild west. And all sorts of challenges with cloud. And I think that that gave a lot of people fear about, I remember I moved into cloud early and we got destroyed. Steve: And so I think there's a lot of folks out there, just from a technology standpoint, that have gotten their hands burnt by moving too quickly. And we're at that point with the platform and dynamics, where these are not new anymore. Relatively in history, they're new. But they're not new products and they're not built by some garage shop somewhere with a couple of developers. This is what 15,000 people building this stuff back there. This is professionally built, well built stuff, that is ready for prime time. So the first movers have already come through and they all survived. So I really feel like we're at that point where it should just take off now, it should just absolutely take off. And I'm sure you guys are seeing this. Vahe: Yeah. And Steve, I think one thing also is that you're right, there's a usual thing about let's say the first mover advantage. At the same time from a customer perspective, you don't want to be the Guinea pig, right? On any situation, especially from the technology standpoint. I think that increasingly what I see in the conversation is that there's almost now, because of the quality of the native integration of the several different applications. Whether you are in the customer experience environment, on the service side, on the supply chain, on the finance or the local no code or app. All these components are absolutely connected to each other. And basically whether you have Teams as a platform in your company, or Azure in environment, all these component are connected very, very easily to each other. Vahe: And so I would say that the beauty of it now is that you have all almost the notion of marginal cost. If you really want to leverage many of the assets that we can bring, and you don't have to take all of them at once, of course it has to be matching what you need now. But the right is that, let's say there's an almost fully integrated benefit all the connectors with the rest of the world outside of Microsoft environment, which is a great value for the partners, ISV and [inaudible 00:13:58], and at the same time to the customers. Who think now, hey I should do more with less. How should I think about my investments for the next, let's say five years? Most of the customers now are really thinking about the longer term relationship. And defining what's the value SLA almost that you're expecting both from the partner of the vendor and the vendor itself. Vahe: And so it's almost like, you remember when we transition from a world of build revenue and licensing, to now more consumption and usage. It's almost the user and consumption discussion is a forcing function about the customer success, how we align on the same definition of the customer success. And what's the time to value that you committed? What are the key milestones, in full transparency, that you need to bring in? And I think that's where we are now. And because Microsoft, I think overall as a company, have been increasing tremendously the level of trust. From the security standpoint, the compliance components, and so on, and the scalability. Vahe: I think that's the great leverage for us now in terms of the conversation and making sure that the customers are getting the value that we have been selling to them. How we show how much skin in the game we have to make them successful. And then it's a flying wheel. It's almost like the innovation will help you to bring new things, respond, anticipate, take the feedback of the customer to the engineering, develop new stuff quickly to the market. So I think it's what we are heading to now, Steve. And I think from a partner perspective you might even see and feel it, right, more and more. Steve: Oh yeah, I mean I think the sales motion has changed completely. Only a few years ago we go into a customer and try and convince them to replace Salesforce with Dynamics. And they'd say no, and we were done. We'd say okay, well we'll come back in a couple years and ask again. We had nothing else to sell them. And now today, I mean if they have Salesforce, fine that's great, keep Salesforce, let's add some things around it. Salesforce will work with Viva Sales, Salesforce will work with Power Platform. Steve: There's so many doors now, I think, for a seller to be able to get into a customer and solve problems for that customer without having to do the one big yank and replace. Which is very difficult to do, it's difficult to do on opposite as well. I mean once a customer gets a big solution like Salesforce or Dynamics 365 installed, those are very difficult to uproot, it takes a very long time. And you guys have created now, this product mix, where we don't have to uproot something to sell that customer and to get engaged with that customer. We can go all over that business without having to uproot something. And I think that's huge. Vahe: I agree Steve. And I think that it's almost this notion of rip and replace type of strategy, right? In some cases it works because this is what the customer wants. They are fed up about let's say competitive environment that didn't deliver on the expectation. And we should be ready to cope with that and respond, and we have a lot of this. But at the same time as you said, what we call the strategy of having a hub and spoke, let's say, almost environment, gives us for every line of business. That we decided as a company to go and have a significant acceleration of growth and market share, is very much to give that option to say, Hey, you know what, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer, you decide to be on that type of environment, who we are to ask you to change? Vahe: If you are happy that's fine. But what we can bring you is almost to enhance what you have with some component that absolutely will be transparently integrated to what you're using. And it's a great circuit, an additional circuit for the partner, it's a great value for the customer. We don't feel harassed to change something because we know the cost of transitioning from one to another one. And then it's up to us to demonstrate the value we can bring and eventually we can take from there to the next level in the future. Steve: It's got to put some pressure on the competitors also. I if think of, I might just use Salesforce because they've always been the big competitor. I'm sure that they were confident sitting there at their large customer when all we had was trying to replace their instance that was going to be difficult to do and then we'd go away and they didn't have to worry about us. Now we're coming in and we're circling around, and we're solving problems in this department, and we're building apps in this department, and we're literally bolting into Salesforce. And one potential outcome is that the customer decides over time that wow, all of this Microsoft stuff that we've brought in works really, really well. Steve: That's gotta put some pressure on the incumbent big application in there that hey, you're surrounded by a bunch of stuff the customer is very happy with, you better make sure they're happy with your stuff and they don't reach that point. Cause like you say, oftentimes when you see those rip and replace, it's because the product, or the company, or something hasn't met the expectation. And to be fair, that could actually happen with any of us, right? It has a lot to do with implementation, design, how thing was put together. Less to do with the application itself, that could happen to any vendor. But certainly raises the bar to some of these competitors when they're surrounded by well performing Microsoft products that are satisfying customers. Would you think? Vahe: Yes. Absolutely. And that's why there's a continuity between what we sell, how we sell, to who we sell, and how we drive the implementation. It's an ongoing wheel that is a very different mindset that we all learn in the transition to the cloud, let's say, environment. But absolutely. I think it's a good forcing function to raise the bar to some degree, raise the bar for the benefit of the customer. You mentioned the competitiveness of what this type of hub and spoke strategy can create. You're right. But in the end, the biggest, let's say winner, will be the customer, right? Which I think is always and should always be the north star for us and our partners. Vahe: And I would say the relevance of the innovation should be in fact the pressure that we put to each other to make sure that say we listen carefully to what the customer is facing as a challenge, but potentially to translate their current challenge into the future challenge, to push them also to think differently. Because I think the notion of rip and replace [inaudible 00:21:06] One of the thing was, I don't know if you remember that the initial issue and worry was that people were saying Oh, we are moving to the cloud, therefore we are transforming. Well it was not that tried and true. People were just keeping the same processes in the cloud and the one that they had on premise. Which was not benefiting at all of the scalability and the agility of the cloud environment. Yeah, you remember that right? Yeah. Steve: They just changed the way they were paying for it. Vahe: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think that's what we have seen on this application modernization, on some of the enterprise wide innovation also opportunities that we had discussed, is how much you can really say, in this new world of competitiveness, of un-expected challenges. How you can, let's say, keep your applications fitting always in fact proactively the challenges that you're going to have too. As opposed to keep going with a quite heavy code to maintain, with people who leave that cost you a fortune to maintain. So I think this agility that the power apps, [inaudible 00:22:22] to made, have been bringing I think is the reason why we have seen this huge acceleration of growth, which is today is six, seven times faster than the market growth of local no code. Vahe: So I think it's a great, let's say indication, of what people start to realize. And I think in the conversation that you had with Charles when he was referring to, hey some of the AI capability have been slower to be picked up by the vast majority of customers. And it's true because there's a level of, let's say, can I trust this thing? Am I going to lose completely ground and control of what I'm doing? All these natural thing. I think as we bring more and more, let's say tools, are manageable. The Power Platform environment, or let's say the device sales capability on top of the teams or Salesforce environment. That people will start to test this. Vahe: And I think we're going to be more and more advocate about Hey, what are the benefits of the organization that are using this technology and how we can trust them lean forward. And I think Charles was referring to our digital sellers. Their daily life is very much, let's say, using all these AI lead capabilities in terms of reporting, in terms of let's say incident management, in terms of even coaching for themselves to do a better call next time, is just fascinating to see. Maybe we should even do a kind of, let's say talk on this, once we have a bit more, let's say after the GA, maybe a few months after, we should have, let's say what the key learnings and [inaudible 00:24:00] from a customer standpoint. Steve: Yeah, it always makes a customer confident when they know that the vendor is using the product that they're trying to sell them. It's interesting, everything moving to a subscription has changed kind of the mindset, not just of you guys obviously, where there's no big sale. There's a sale of a big subscription, the revenue of which will come over a long period of time. But the customer has this option every month to say, you know what, I'm not happy, you're not solving my problem. In the old days they were kind of stuck, they bought all this stuff and they had to make it work. Now they don't have to make it work, we have to make it work, we have to keep them happy enough. Steve: We recently launched a professional services on a subscription, which is an interesting model, that I lay awake at night thinking about that same thing. That before a customer would pay you a bunch of money to a bunch of stuff and now they're paying you a little bit of money every month for as long as you keep them happy. And this bar of, I mean we've always wanted to keep customers happy. But it's never had the impact or importance that it does when you're on a subscription with that customer who can just any time say, “I'm not happy, goodbye.” It raises the bar I think for you guys to have to continuously innovate, what do you done for me lately? You got to continuously innovate and bring new things. And you've got more motivation probably than the company's ever had in history because of the subscription model. Do you feel that internally? Vahe: Yes, yes. As I said, it has been a great enabler to raise the bar. And it's almost like you know can have a beautiful slide deck and saying the right things, but the execution doesn't match what you are saying somehow, that you don't walk the talk. I think you could have been in that situation in a kind of on-premise environment. I think the cloud has been a forcing function to say, hey you know what, you can claim you are customer success, or you are customer first, or you are customer obsessed. But the reality is that if you don't deliver the service properly, if you are not as responsive timely, if you're not proactive, customer will say enough is enough, I can stop my subscription. Steve: I have options. Vahe: I have options. So I think it's a good hygiene, how it makes you having an embracing habits, that I would say are the natural thing when you engage with customer. But I think it's almost, let's say, for the one who might have forgotten that basics, it has been a great, let's say, opportunity to bring back the roots of what is it to satisfy a customer, right? And I think that's what the cloud licensing model helped put together. And I think there are still always room for improvement. Vahe: And similarly I would say, what you have seen on the collaborative applications, what we have seen on the low-code, no-code, you are going to see it now, also I would say on the supply chain environment, which is shipper, shipper at stress because of what we have seen on the Covid, but also in fact on the geopolitical aspect and some of the recession discussion. And also, on the overall, what I would say the contact center in our environment at large. How this world is going to change is going to be led a lot by the capability that technology can bring, and the ability to listen carefully to the strategies and the challenges of the corporation that are involved in. So it's quite exciting actually. Steve: I don't get involved a lot with the call center operations. But I picture the old call center is this massive building full of cubicles and people with headphones. And I picture that now that most of those people are probably working remote. A call center now could operate at my desk, just about, and have thousands of people all working from their home. So, that whole industry feels like it's changed significantly. And yes, I'm sure they're starving for the technology that fits the model that they're being pushed to adopt. Vahe: Yeah, yeah absolutely. I mean it's interesting, if you summarize some of the business challenges or the things that are coming from multiple conversation. We had the nuanced [inaudible 00:29:04] a few months back. And so it's almost the first fiscal year where we're going to be able to strategize, operate together as one organization. And it's great because somehow you take their own experience in terms of conversational AI and what they have been leading in for many years. And at the same time you hear both, let's say, the customer feedback when it comes to, as you said, the traditional contact center or call center evolution. How to translate this into a modern service experience, right? Vahe: And how AI can contribute to that on the seamless integrated way. How to think about customer retention in this world where people are a bit more struggling with their bottom line. How to protect the customer privacy as well. Because you talk about voice capability and recording, but how you cope with the privacy and the security during this service journey. So all these are absolutely great opportunities for us to combine what we're hearing, the technology and the acquisition that we did a few months back, to put that into a great component. And I would say the data analytics that the power Platform Power BI gives us on the back end, is going to be a great platform for us again to differentiate from the rest of the world. Steve: Well and it'll also help kind offset the fact that these people are all remote now, right? They used all be sitting in this big room. And people were standing up there looking over a rail at them making sure they were doing what they were doing and available. And you can't lose any of the customer service quality just because you've moved everybody out of the building and nobody can physically see them anymore. AI is the only way to plug that hole really of being able to know what's going on in this organization with all those people remote. In your day-to-day activities, I'm assuming that since you're head of sales that you get engaged with all of the big opportunities that come to Microsoft. And you're in there leading the charge to get them to make a decision for the services. What are the areas that you're seeing among those larger customers that they're really excited about? Is it the low-code stuff, is that very exciting to them? Or are they still wrapping their arms around that? Vahe: No, no. I would say that the notion of, let's say, application modernization, which doesn't mean I do the same thing I was doing before in the cloud. Really thinking about, what do I want to fix? And how much I can include some perspective about what could happen in some, let's say options or scenario? That capability that Power Apps has been giving them. And now we see that the corporations who are the most successful are the one who are almost creating a center of excellence within their own organization, that let's say help the IT to monitor someone, in fact the usage rate. But also to amplify the user experience and to spread it across the organization. And the ability to almost measure the positive impact. Vahe: The second thing I've seen is on the low-code, no-code, is the time to value. It's almost like you can almost now, and when I say “we,” it's almost we with the partners. We can almost say for this type of let's say expectation, or application, or challenge, it will take three month to be ready, not three years, two years. Or we have a heavy development environment. And so this center of excellence, let's say mindset or framework, is a very powerful one. Because it helps to almost create a concentration of hey, what are the most critical things to fix and how long it's going to take? Vahe: And people are almost, let's say very impressed, about how quickly you can have great quality because you bring both the expertise of, as I said, almost the person who is facing the challenge every single day. Being non-technical guy, we have in fact the support of IT. And I think that's the business decision makers along with the IT. I think to me, that's why we have been on this six, seven times faster than the market rate. We have huge ambition there. And be aware that we have also 20 million of users of Power Apps today that came from the city campaigns. So people are actively using it, not yet paying it. So that means that it's great, it's the future almost by, for us to go after. Because people are starting to use in fact at least the basic functions to get adjusted customers to and so on. Vahe: The second thing I would say is that people have realized how easy it is, and recognizing that Teams became a platform close to 300 million users. It started at 25 or 30 million almost pre-pandemic. And so that became, almost as you said, you are at home, or you are wherever you are and that's the interaction that you have with your customers, partners, ecosystem and employees. And so now it's a marginal component to say hey, can I have one tab that is going to do that type of task? My forecasting, my thing. So this is again the connection between what you use every single day at scale, and the marginal cost of bringing a component of Dynamics 365, a component of the application that you create quickly for Power Apps or Power Automate from the process, implementation, and automation. So I think that's what I see the two biggest part of the customer reaction, and I would say feedback for us. And encouragement to be fair, to keep going in that direction. Steve: We've got lots of examples that you guys have got out on the case studies of large companies that have really got in head first. And just thousands of apps in the organization solving thousands of problems. And just excellent, I mean you just have to almost grin when you look and hear about these things. But for every one of those there's still a bunch of them out there where, I don't know, IT maybe is still an obstacle. I mean IT has been, it's interesting because IT's been a friend of Microsoft for a long time because a lot of the products that they have engaged with were Microsoft products, servers, et cetera. They've had to make this transition to cloud, which was scary for them. But they ultimately did it for the most part, not all of them, did it. And now here comes low-code, no-code that's got to scare the bejesus out of a lot of IT folks. And how are you at that company size? Because frankly, we struggle with the same thing in the mid-market. How, at that big company size, do you deal with that occasional obstinance from it? Vahe: Yeah, it's a great point. You're right. I think Microsoft in general, I don't want to generalize, but in general have been for the last four years, very, very close to the IT decision makers. And rightfully so, because there were so many and still so many things to achieve in partnership with the IT and CIO environment. At the same time, when it comes to business applications or business process, I would say that you need to find the balance between the business decision makers, who are the ultimate decision makers when it comes to what is going to affect their business, or the way they work from a Salesforce perspective, or the way the marketing leaders wants to automate some of the processes that they believe is important. Vahe: And so that we probably are in a unique business case at Microsoft, where you have to talk to both. And the learning is that in the very beginning where you were only talking to IT, for example in the low-code, no-code, you could have signed a deal with IT, but then you know almost had to start to sell it again internally. Because you had to knock to all the doors of the business decision makers to say, Hey, do you know that you have this thing in your corporation, and anyway this is the thing that you can do, do you mind starting over there? Vahe: And so that was basically almost a waste of cycle. And so we said we have to do these two things together. We need to be able to articulate what is the value of low-code, no-code, maybe in FSI, financial service, or manufacturing, or in retail. And of course there's a strong common denominator. But there are some specifics that may resonate more for some industries more than others, and therefore the decision makers. And we have seen that when we do these things well together in parallel, when you sign the contract, or the deal, or the agreement, the time to move to usage or the business case implementation is much faster. Basically you bring more value both to IT and the business, and for Microsoft. And so I think that's the piece where I think it evolved on low-code, no-code, from being afraid in the beginning or skeptical, to a place where they are increasingly embracing this center of excellence environment. Where they own it as [inaudible 00:38:55]. It is connected to the business decision makers, therefore it brings value. Vahe: And so IT brings value to the business decisions or the business unit and the line of business. And then what was missing so far was, how can we give them the monitoring environment, almost the control board to manage the budget, to manage let's say, or having warning to say, hey, business A, you know are over consuming. Should we lower the investment or should we accelerate because of what you are doing? So I think that the kind of tools that we are bringing now to the IT, so that they are absolutely part of the success of the company and they are connected to the business decision makers. I think that's the best way for us to demonstrate value and keep it completely aligned with the business directions. Steve: And the opposite would be true also if you're going in trying to sell the line of business owner without talking to IT. And you convince the, now you got to go sell IT. So it's two cycles. Vahe: Absolutely. Steve: You have to somehow get them both in the same room and do it at once. So we've got so many products coming, we've got so many products here. And if you imagine a generic customer of a large size that you're going to be going to talk to next week about all the Microsoft has to offer. What are a couple of the key products that you're going to want to make sure you land in their head, that you feel across all companies are extremely high value or differentiators? The thing you don't want to walk out of that room without mentioning? Vahe: Yeah, I would say, and somehow you touch on it Steve, earlier on. As part of the transition that we are driving, one of the thing is also to simplify. To simplify the portfolio, to simplify the go-to market, to simplify the strategy. We discussed the hub and spoke, let's say strategy. And so I would say at the very beginning, what we said is that instead of saying, hey, there's a proliferation of products. And every year we add more and more and more. And at some point you confuse your own sellers, you confuse the customer, you confuse the product, it's super tough to digest everything, and even understanding what's the hierarchy across all these things? Steve: For licensing Vahe: And licensing on top all this complexity, right? I mean we have gone through it, and it's still not perfect. But at the same time I think what we said is that there are the categories, or the line of business, that we want to go in. We want to have a fair shot to take a leadership position in the next let's say years. And what it takes to get to that point, from an innovation perspective, from a go-to market perspective, from a part program perspective, from a sales and seller investment capacity perspective. And so on. And so I would say that's more the starting point Steve, where we say we define five categories, a fine line of business, where we believe we have a shot to become a leader. And these categories we need to be able to be clear on where the value that we bring. Vahe: For example, if you take the customer experience, let's say OLAP, which is more the connected sales and marketing, if I may summarize at the high level. It's going to be all the conversation about the collaborative apps, the customer experience transformation. You have already Teams for the vast batch of you, hey that's what you want to achieve. The Dynamic 65 sales is going to give you that capability, or the LinkedIn Sales Navigator on top of it is going to give you that type of insight. You know are not touching about AI, you think about almost sales automation, Salesforce automation. Let's show you how the AI infused capability within Dynamics 365 sales and marketing, give you that asset absolutely naturally integrated on your team's environment. Vahe: And same thing on Viva Sales, the sales productivity, we can measure it the way you want, and you're on control of that. And by the way, if it works on the environment that you are working, could be Microsoft, could not be as we discussed, that's more the conversation that we want to have. And of course on the back end you are going to have Dynamics 365 sales, and marketing, and Viva sales, most of the time for that line of business. If you think about let's say low-code no-code, I would say you will have probably three type of conversations. You know will have a conversation about hey, you're a large enterprise, multi-deals coverage. And basically the benefit of having an enterprise wide, let's say engagement, what does it mean? What's the framework for you to make the most of it? And how we commit with our partners to deliver you the value. Vahe: And so you can commit on five years maybe with Microsoft and how much value we can bring already to you. Or it's purely an application modernization. You move to a hyper-scale environment, but you have all these old fashioned applications. So basically, you are a platform that is modern but all your application are still old fashioned. How low-code, no-code is going to help you to accelerate that transition. And let's start with one company, one app. Pick one and let's do it right, and then replicate from there. And then potentially, in fact, the last one which I think is going to be the biggest one potentially, is the business process automation. Think about the forecasting process. I have to say that when I was running my business in Western Europe, we have been doing this traditional forecasting process, which in every company when we talk with business leaders or CFOs, that's the same thing. You ask the forecast at the lowest level of the organization, then the manager of that organization, do a judgment. That judgment moves to the next level of management. The management do another judgment. Vahe: So all the way up to the top level, who does a judgment anyway on top of it. Or they find, depending on who is doing the forecast, almost let's say a coefficient of let's say correction based on who is doing the forecast. When you start to do that thing into AI and you say what, we know the behavior of people [inaudible 00:45:26] potentially, you come after 18 months or one year to a trend of forecast that is so close to in fact what you were getting before. That you say how many hours, thousands and thousands of hours of productivity saving I'm going to have just because of this AI forecasting capability? That's the kind of example of it, for say an application for low-code, no-code, that is just checking in fact the behavior or the intelligence so far to help you to drive your business. Vahe: And so we have been running that internally as well and it's quite impressive. And so that's the kind of conversation that you want to have both with the IT, but you see this perfect example of hey, having that conversation with the CFO, or the sales leader, is a great one. Because it's a marginal cost again, to what you are using already. And the same thing happened on finance, and supply chain, and service when it comes to, all right so where you, what are you using? Are you still on-prem? The vast majority of ERP, the vast majority of contact center and call center are still on-prem. So you can think about hey, what does it take to move to a cloud and more agile environment? What are the best that you want to do? Which is the strategic partner or vendor, who are going to take this? Because you're not going to change this environment every two years. It's a 5 year, 10 year bets, right? Steve: The marriage. Vahe: It's a marriage. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean does it help Steve? Steve: Yeah. And I think interesting, one of the things I think about AI in forecasting, is it doesn't have any personal bias. And obviously in larger companies I'm sure there's a lot of checking and cross checking. In the middle market it's a bunch of optimistic sales people coming up with optimistic projections that have no basis in history or anything else that's going on, of what's going on. And I've been in meetings where we've been displaying some AI facts, or figures, or forecasts, or projections. And listen to senior people just adamantly disagree. That number is absolutely not correct. And I've had them tell me I've been doing this for 30 years, I know, I know. And then here comes next month and guess what was right? The AI model was right and the guy who's been doing it for 30 years is making up some excuses. Steve: So I think that the world right now is fraught with bad projections on everything. Cost projections, sales projections, there's too much personal bias involved in the process of creating those things. And as leadership of a company, you're relying on these things. They're going to drive you right over a cliff potentially, if you're not careful, if you don't have good information, if you can't get the bias out of it. And I think that's one of the big things that AI brings that I've found resonates with leadership sometimes, is kind of remove all the bias. I mean it's just removing all the bias. You don't want to hear smoke, you know want to hear reality so you can act accordingly. You're surrounded by a bunch of people who want to make you feel good, but AI doesn't care how you feel. It's going to tell you the truth, doesn't care if you get mad. Vahe: Steve also, it's interesting because sometime, you point to this that sometime when you are too early on the innovation, some people might be again scared or skeptical as we said. But I remember we were looking at let's say some numbers when it comes to, are we operating consistency, for example, in the world? Or there are some that say practices that are bringing more growth or more relevant than other places. And so, one thing was interesting was in the services line of business or category, you think of case management. And it's one of the opportunities. And you might say well case management is not super innovative. Well, it's something that is quite well known. But case management was one of the fastest growth in majors. And that was because it was responding to the fact that vast majority of the case management processes are still on-prem today. Vahe: And the one we're moving to the cloud, especially in public sector, to make sure that the queuing system is working, you have a full up, let's say email to tell you and tracing where you are on the request that you put in place. All these things we believe is generic everywhere, but it's not, it's by far not. And across mid-market, and large corporation, and private sector, and public sector. So it's not always innovation that drives in fact the next generation of work. It's also in fact the basics that are not fulfilled today and that create a bad customer experience. And that's interesting, in a way, to keep very humble about let's say what we still have on our plate. Steve: I can remember not that long ago, when you talk about customer service, the goal of many companies was to provide as bad as service as possible so they didn't have to do it. I mean it was a cost center for them. They hadn't come to the realization yet, this is decades, but hadn't come to realization yet that customer service is what drives future revenue. They just looked at as a cost center and figured the worst it is, the less people will use it and it'll cost us less, so that mindset has changed. You talk about fears that people have of technology. And so a lot of this is people self preservation fears. They see something coming, we saw it even in the partner channel, uh-oh here comes low-code, no-code, customers are going to be doing all the work themselves, they're not going to need us partners anymore. And it's like this first reaction that people have about anything new, is how's that going to affect me? And generally they're going to assume negatively. Steve: Our business is busier than we've ever been as a result of low-code. So it's actually been the opposite. But partners, and just like people, you know need to be prepared to pivot into that wind. If you're just going to stand there with your arms crossed and not move, yeah low-code's going to hurt you. You know need to lean into that. And the same thing with individuals that are looking at new technology. It's coming and you can either stand there with your arms crossed and let it knock you down, which is a foregone conclusion. Or you can bend with it. And to be honest, the younger folks are more flexible than us older folks. So they're not having any trouble with this technology at all. We recently signed a new customer, it's all young people and man they just get it. I mean there's no explaining anything. They understand every single thing you're talking about, why and what. And I mean they're born with a cell phone in their hand. None of this is foreign, but we still got to get rid of all of us old guys. Vahe: I agree, I agree. And time flies. And it's almost like, often, let's say, you need read to embrace that. Always a zero regret strategy in this type of, let's say, evolving environment. Anything that you postpone, to some degree, is almost let say a loss. And that has been proven in the technology run. And when I look at, we always have to be humble. It's a highly competitive market, and people are smart, and that's great. Cause as we discussed, it's all good for the customer. But I think that when I look back to the commitment of the company, the investment that we put in place last year with the support of Satya, Amy Hood, [inaudible 00:53:27]. With more than 1000 sellers injected in the marketplace, we keep going on the investment on the local no-code, even more so to drive the acceleration of the growth in addition to the Dynamic 365. Vahe: When I look at every category that we are in now, and I think it's a good confidence level that we on the path here. That first of all, we are between two times and three times the growth of the market for each of these category, that's a good indication. And I think that also raise the confidence level of the product sellers at Microsoft. To bring these different components together and add more value to the customer. So look, it's a journey Steve, and it's quite exciting to be on this. And people like yourself because we have been there also for a long time, and you know what it takes to transition. And you never fail, you learn always. And everything that you learn and that works, it's almost to think how we can scale and bring that to the mass as quick as we can so that people can benefit from it. Steve: Well success breeds success. And you know guys have got it going right now. I've taken up enough of your time. Anything that you want to get out there that I didn't ask or we didn't talk about? Vahe: No, I think, Steve, you did a good overview of let's say where we are, how we think. Again, I think that the simplification, the portfolio, the much more focused approach, the category, and more consistent execution on the go-to market is really the next level for us. And the hub and spoke strategy across all these categories gives much more room to increase the business opportunity for us and the partners. Steve: Yep, I think so, I think so. All right, listen, it was great talking to you, I'm glad you made the time. And I definitely hope to able to talk to you again in the future, get something new to talk about. Any time you want to reach out, and jump on, and talk about some stuff, let me know. We're happy to get you on. Vahe: We are all, let's say reading all these, let's say headlines on the recession. In a few months from now, between now and then of calendar year, we're to see a bit more clarity on how the planning is happening for the mid-market, large corporation, how the public sector is evolving in this dimension. And also, we'll have a few, let's say product launched that we talked about, Viva Sales, any learning from that, let's say maybe the first two, three months, would be interesting to see how people react. And maybe that could be a great opportunity for us to chat. Also what's going on the [inaudible 00:56:17] Steve: Yeah, yeah. Vahe: Plenty of things to talk, I guess. Steve: Sounds good. All right, well hey, thanks again for your time. Vahe: Thank you. Take care Steve, have a great day.

It is ok to be an optimist! John's guest today is Steve Ody, creator of The Travelling Optimist podcast in which he meets incredible people from all walks of life from all over the world, offering stories and advice on how optimism can be the driving force towards your goals and happiness. With a background in the travel business and currently a Mortgage Advisor, Steve is no stranger to motivation and advising people on moving towards their dreams.    John and Steve discuss his early influences, his career and family life, his COVID experience and his childhood's influence on his own parenting and life choices.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Steve inherited his outlook from his paternal grandparents who showed optimism even in the face of disadvantage and serious illness. Starting his own travel business freed him from long hours which allowed him to spend more time with his family. When COVID destroyed the travel business Steve used his optimism to create new opportunities for himself as a Mortgage Advisor and to start The Travelling Optimist podcast. Steve has found his childhood has influenced him to approach parenting in a different way to give his own children a different experience.    BEST MOMENTS ‘She was just generally such a happy person. She realised that life is short and she was one person that I always used to go to whenever I had issues at school when I was younger for being bullied.' - Steve ‘Basically, travel hit a brick wall. No one was going anywhere and it's been a complete nightmare for most of my friends in the industry.' – Steve ‘It seems really interesting what you said about not sitting back because my question was going to be ‘how was your optimism when the travel industry just completely disappeared?'' - John ‘I speak to people and try to go into a little bit of depth into their lives and their backgrounds and their backstory and add some context to what they're doing now, talk about insight.' – Steve ‘There are so many people out there with fabulous stories and incredible insight.' – Steve   GUEST RESOURCES Listen to The Travelling Optimist podcast  https://www.deezer.com/en/show/1057392 Steve's LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/thetravellingoptimist   VALUABLE RESOURCES   To get in touch - email –  john@johnkennycoaching.com  or book a complimentary call –  https://calendly.com/johnkennycoaching/30min If people want to order a copy of the book then they can just pay postage of £4.95 (RRP £8.99) - www.johnkennycoaching.com/podcast-book-offer Want to be able to address the relationship issues in your life? - Why not book in for a complimentary call and we can discuss how you can get the new started with some new types of relationships - https://calendly.com/johnkennycoaching/30min The Relationship Guy Podcast - https://omny.fm/shows/the-relationship-guy           ABOUT THE HOST I am John Kenny, The Relationship Guy - Coaching people to experience healthy loving relationships.  Having spent a life choosing unhealthy relationships and self sabotaging my own success, I now coach people to live a life they choose. www.therelationshipguy.co.uk   CONTACT METHOD Facebook –  https://www.facebook.com/johnkennycoaching LinkedIn –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-kenny-coaching Insta –  https://www.instagram.com/johnkennycoaching/ Twitter –  https://www.twitter.com/johnkennycoach} 
YouTube -  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHTj9x6Tlo7lcIJITyx-tgQ Clubhouse - @relationshipguySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Joël's first episode as host of The Bike Shed!

Steve interviews Andy Gaught, a property investor, mentor and coach who has been running his own property investment business, Asset Living, for the past seven years.   Andy has been interested in technology from an early age, from upgrading computers in his teenage years to studying mechanical engineering at Southampton University. In 2014, after a couple of years working for TV post-production companies, he joined the 2-year Sky TV technology graduate programme. Then, he became a project manager for Sky's online TV services, Sky Go and Now TV, where he was responsible for delivering technology change projects.   He is now a full-time property investor with a portfolio of single lets and HMOs across the South. He continues to invest in high-quality rental accommodation.   KEY TAKEAWAYS  Andy has built a portfolio and outsourced and systemized his business Asset Living for the past seven years. Outsourcing and systemizing can improve speed and efficiency and reduce errors. Once you've captured and documented a task, you are then free to improve its process. It doesn't have to be complicated to make significant differences. It can be small systems where you store or save files or a simple checklist. Systemizing and outsourcing repeated tasks frees up your creativity. When sourcing Virtual Assistants, be very clear and specific about the role you are offering. Don't rush the process of finding a VA. Make sure you get the right person the first time. Be wary of app recommendations because people have different tastes in what they like to use, and what suits them may not appeal to you.      BEST MOMENTS  ‘By using technology or other people, it frees up your time, it enables you to scale, it enables you to do so much more in your business.' – Andy ‘It doesn't matter how complex the stuff gets, the simplicity of just noting down “this is what I am doing today”. Because it's just the act of documenting the thing that I'm doing, the steps involved.' – Steve ‘It was simply a checklist, my first system. This is what I do once a year, so I don't forget to do anything important.' – Steve ‘People may sometimes think that systems are restrictive or that they prevent creativity but by having systems in place it, then gives you structure and you can be more creative and have more inspiration than other times.' – Andy ‘I think also, don't rush into it. You want it to be a long-term relationship, and it's such a painful process and time-consuming process to find people, you don't want to onboard them, spend a couple of weeks and realize that it's not right.' – Andy ‘Seek out help so that you can do the right thing for your business, and then you'll wonder why you didn't do it so much earlier.' - Andy GUEST RESOURCES Website: ► www.asset-living.com ► Instagram:  @andy_gaught ► LinkedIn:  Www.linkedin.com/in/andy-gaught/   VALUABLE RESOURCES Facebook: Facebook.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing/ Website:www.SystemizeYourSuccess.comLinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing/Instagram: @systems_and_outsourcing YouTube: YouTube.com/DrSteveDay ABOUT THE HOST Steve used to be a slave to his business, but when he moved to Sweden in 2015, he was forced to change the way he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely, and after totally nailing this concept, he decided to spend his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve's been investing in property since 2002, has a degree in Computing, and worked as a doctor in the NHS before quitting to focus full-time on sharing his systems and outsourcing Methodology with the world. He now lives in Sweden and runs his UK-based businesses remotely with the help of his team of Filipino and UK-based Virtual Assistants. Most business owners are overwhelmed because they don't know how to create systems or get the right help. Our systems and outsourcing Courses and coaching programme will help you automate your business and work effectively with affordable virtual assistants. That way, you will stop feeling overwhelmed and start making more money.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine a world where there's no LSAT [Show Summary] With talk of testing becoming an optional step when applying to law school, LSAT expert Steve Schwartz, discusses how test optionality would change admissions. What would it mean for applicants? Should applicants still plan to take the test? Interview with Steve Schwartz, Founder and CEO of LSAT Unplugged [Show Notes] Welcome to the 477th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for joining me. Before we meet our guest, I'd like to highlight the featured resource for today's show. It is Accepted's Law School Admissions Quiz. Are you ready to apply to your dream law school? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted's Law School Admissions Quiz can give you a quick reality check. Just go to accepted.com/law-quiz, complete the quiz, and you'll not only get an assessment of your chances but actionable tips on how to improve your qualifications. Plus, it's all free.  hbspt.cta.load(58291, 'c5572014-0b54-4e12-acd9-91a66e31a013', {}); Our guest today is Steve Schwartz of the LSAT Blog and the LSAT Unplugged podcast and YouTube channel, which we're going to link to from the show notes at accepted.com/477. Steve graduated from Columbia University in 2008. In high school and college, he tutored students in a variety of subjects and also helped prep test takers for standardized tests, including the LSAT. However, he really began to focus on the LSAT when he was applying to law school. He founded the LSAT Blog in 2008 and never looked back. Today, 14 years later, he has helped thousands master the LSAT, get into law school, and sometimes secure scholarships worth tens of thousands of dollars.  Linda: Today, we're discussing a possible LSAT-optional world. Can you give us context for something that a few years ago neither of us would've imagined possible? [2:25] Steve: It is quite a surprise. The general trend has been for more and more of higher education to go test-optional. We've seen this in a number of undergraduate institutions, but at the graduate level, they seem to rely quite a bit more on standardized tests. Overall, I think some of this comes from the fact that there's a lot of grade inflation in colleges and universities. If everyone has a high GPA, then how are schools going to distinguish between different applicants? I think that's part of the reason for the change. Linda: I certainly agree with you. I think that the focus on the test score increased because the GPA was a less valuable signal. Steve: That's why they say that they might need exams like the LSAT for admissions purposes, but at the same time, there are concerns around the equity involved in members of different groups having different test scores and concerns over access. These two issues - on the one hand, grade inflation and on the other hand, issues of access - are seemingly at odds with each other. That poses a problem and a debate that all of higher ed is trying to untangle. hbspt.cta.load(58291, 'f5545361-1ed4-49ea-b537-3ac1931c8064', {}); Linda: We've also seen really different trends. The undergrad world has really embraced test-optionality. A few weeks ago, MIT, which embraced test-optionality as a whole, suddenly announced the undergraduate school will be requiring a test once again because they felt it actually enhanced access and equity. Obviously, nobody in undergraduate or graduate levels wants to admit people who aren't going to succeed.  At this point in time, what do you think LSAC is going to do? What actually is the issue? Is it schools making a choice? Is it LSAC imposing a policy? [5:05] Steve: That's a fantastic question. Just to backpedal a little bit, you mentioned COVID and how schools were going test-optional. Because of the American Bar Association's requirement that law schools use a valid and reliable admission test like the LSAT, law schools could not do that in March 2020 when the pandemic hit North America.

I have had my head down working on some big things since RapidStart CRM growth exploded, and it has been a while since you heard from me. Well, I'm getting back to it with a follow-up chat with Charles Lamanna who recently took over for James Phillips as head of Business Applications for Microsoft. This was my fourth chat with Charles, and it was interesting to back listen to them in order. It really gives you a sense of where Microsoft has come. I managed to catch him in his office having just wrapped up their year-end. Enjoy! If you want to listen to my chats with Charles in order, The first one was October of 2018, the second one was September of 2019, the third one was March of 2020. Transcript Below: Steve: Welcome to the Steve Has a Chat Podcast. Where I call someone out of the blue with a record button on, and hope to have an unscripted conversation about Microsoft business applications. Let's see how it goes. Enjoy. Charles: Hey, this is Charles Lamanna. Steve: Charles. Steve Mordue. How are you doing? Charles: Good. Great to hear from you, Steve. It's been a long time. Steve: It has been a while. Have you got some time for a chat? Charles: For you, anytime. Steve: I appreciate it. Well, I guess the big news for you obviously is putting on the big boy hat, huh? Charles: Yes. I moved up an extra floor in the Advanta building in the Microsoft Campus. Steve: Oh did you? Charles: No, I'm just kidding. But metaphorically speaking at least. Because for folks that don't know, James Phillips leaving in March of this year, I kinda stepped in across all aspects of business applications of Microsoft. And, over the last four years, I've gotten to know the place, know the people, know the business and I'm super excited about the opportunity. And I think the future has never been brighter for business at Microsoft. Steve: Well, I never got the feeling that James held you back, or any of the folks on your team back, but he certainly, we have to give him a lot of credit for really taking this thing to a whole nother level. You weren't here before, I don't think, at least with the business apps, but it was really run by morons before he took over. And he completely turned that thing around and turned it in a whole nother business. And now with you taking over, I'm expecting that to continue. I don't know if there's been some things that have been in your bag that you've wanted to do that James was keeping you from, that you're going to pull out, or if you're just going to continue the path, or what's your thinking now that you've got that gavel? Charles: So definitely not held back. I would say I was super fortunate I worked for James for, I think seven, eight years in total. So I was able to learn a bunch and he was without a doubt, the most supportive manager I've ever had in my career, in terms of both enabling and clearing paths for what we wanted to do from a vision and dreaming perspective. And if it weren't for his support, things like Power Apps would have never gotten off the ground. So, definitely. And I think as we go to the future, we have this amazing foundation. I mean, BizApps is a major and key component and pillar of the Microsoft Cloud. Charles: 10 years ago, you probably would've thought that impossible. Right. To have Dynamics and Power Platform alongside Azure and Office. Now that we're here, let's go take it to the next level. And that's the push, and it's continuing a lot of the great innovation we've already done from a data-first, AI-first approach. Kind of sprinkling in some more collaboration with teams, and really revisiting the end-user experience, the platform, to go increasingly modernize and scale it and make sure that all our components from CRM, to ERP, to Power Platform work great together. Steve: I don't think it could have achieved that status with Dynamics 365 alone. It really took the Power Platform coming into being, I think, to give it the breadth that it needed to be able to get there. With Dynamics 365, we didn't have apps for users to do small things, there was no way it was going to permeate an organization the way the Power Apps do. Charles: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I say two things are interesting. The first is, Power Platform has allowed us to help more users and more customers with business process transformation, which is what BizApps are all about. Right? Steve: Yeah. Charles: How do you make your sales processes better, your financial processes better, and Power Platform really turbocharged that. And that earned us credibility in a lot of those departments and with a lot of those users, and we have some great data about every user who adopts Power Platform is significantly more likely to adopt Dynamics within the next year or two. So we see that symbiosis working in a way which is incredibly customer-friendly, and it helps our business. Second thing is Power Platform has even helped us reimagine parts of the Dynamics apps themselves. And I think probably two of the best examples are the connectors, which are key to the Power Platform. Charles: You see the connectors starting to show up inside all these Dynamics apps, like Customer Insights uses Power Query for data ingestion, or Viva Sales even connects to Salesforce. So there's this amazing interoperability that we have, and also enabling the end-user. Our team built Viva Sales, even though it's not in the Dynamics or Power Platform brand. But it's this idea of having an integrated experience in Office for sellers, built on connectors and built on the Office integration. So it's changed the way you think about some products, and it's also helped us go expand our user base. Steve: Yeah. I saw I was on a PGI call with that yesterday. Very, very cool stuff. At the last PAC meeting, I was supposed to be on the Viva Sales round table, but I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds boring. I think I'm going to go to this one." And I really, I went to the wrong one, I missed a good one. But you know where I am, right? I'm on the platform. Charles: Yep. Steve: And we're exploding. Our app is continuing to grow on the platform as a low-cost simpler alternative to Dynamics 365 for companies that aren't ready for that. And I'm always bugging you about, "Hey, that cool new feature you guys got in the first-party. When are we going to get that at the platform level? So ISVs, and people that are just building their own stuff from scratch, could take advantage of some of the syncs." We got the Outlook app a while ago, we've been getting some things. And when I saw Viva Sales, that was probably my only disappointment was that, at least as I understand it, it's hardwired to Dynamics or hardwired to Salesforce. And I get that trying to play those two against each other, but it's leaving guys like me out in the cold. Charles: Well, I'd say for Viva Sales, the intent is to support any CRM, and I really do mean that generally. And even customers, because there are customers out there that we talked to today who have homegrown CRMs, they coded 15 years ago. They have a whole dev team still working on it. The idea is to support interoperability with your account records, your lead records, your opportunity records, standard pipeline data. And to do that in a way which works through the connector. So today it'll earn V1, it'll only be Dynamics in Salesforce, but the intent is to make that be a general purpose adapter. And you could have a RapidStart CRM connector, which shows up and supports the contacts the way we want, and it would be connectable. That's not going to happen in the next three months, but that's the ambition. Steve: I can call you in four. Charles: I go down and said... What was that, in four Months? Steve: I can call you in four months. Charles: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I might not pick up the phone then in four months, no I'm just kidding. Because even talking about, if people are even on Seibal. We should be able to support them with their sales. Because the idea is, you shouldn't have to transform the seller experience at the same pace that you transform your core CRM, your core system of record, and that's just the way the world's moving. Steve: Well, I love the idea that one of the challenges that CRM has always had, of course, is user adoption. It's one more place they need to go to do something. Outlook app helped with that, getting data into CRM without them having to actually go to it. It seems like yet another way for people to engage with their CRM without actually realizing they're engaging with their CRM. Charles: Exactly. Yeah. It's almost like ambient... Yeah for sure. Sorry. Yeah. I say it's almost like ambient CRM basically. How do you make it so that, instead of the user goes to your CRM, the CRM goes to the user where they are. And the outlook app was the beginnings of that. Some of the Team's integrations we've done are the beginnings of that. And that Viva Sales and that whole Viva idea is how do you elevate it? So anywhere you go, your CRM data is accessible without you having to go to a different user interface. Steve: Very cool. Very cool. So I ask you every time we get on a call about exciting features that are coming up. And in particular, maybe even some features that have launched, that didn't take off the way you thought they would and people are just missing something. We have this problem with our app sometimes, people don't understand and so they don't move forward, and it would be perfect for them. And I'm sure there's lots of features and capabilities that you guys broke a sweat building, and know in your heart, this would be awesome, but people don't seem to be getting that. What's a good example of one of those? Charles: I'd say a product which we've had a capability, where we've had a lot of customer usage from a small number of customers, but very deeply and with huge impact, and we wish were with more customers, is probably Conversation Intelligence. I'm not sure if you've seen that around the Sales app, and where that actually will sit in inside of say a phone call or a meeting and help you generate action items, and summaries, and coaching, and help you understand sentiment, and listening and talk ratio. We've used that internally at Microsoft with great success. So our digital sales reps and the folks who work our phones, they are diehard fans. We have this amazing video we released a couple months ago where we actually went out and interviewed these digital sales reps and their managers, and they just were going on and on about how great it is. Charles: And that's rare where you hear that about a piece of technology for a seller. And we have a few other external customers that have gone through that same journey, where they have a thousand digital reps, 2000 digital reps using this and just in love with it. But it's not as pervasive as we thought it would be at this point. And it's one of those things where, it's a product discovery, and easing people into the capability, because then you got to go out of your way to enable it and configure it. So we're doing work now to simplify it, and make it more accessible to more users. And we're doing that partly through Viva Sales, like conversation intelligence, the major capability of Viva Sales. Charles: And the second thing is also, there's even some culture aspects to it. Because if you use it, it's generating transcripts and recordings of a call, and not everyone's necessarily super comfortable with that. So we're even working about how do you enable more features without having to record the call, and how do you enable capabilities without having to get a transcript? Or how do you make it more natural to say, "Hey, I have a sales co-pilot thing. Are you okay if I enable it?" So there's a lot of interesting things, it's never just a technology problem. It's also a discovery and a, I'd say, change culture management problem. Steve: Yeah. I think that's been the challenge with anything AI really. A lot of people, it seem to think it might be a little too futuristic. They look at the benefit and think that's really cool, but they have no idea how to get it. And AI just in general, doesn't feel that approachable to people, even though in certain cases, it's extremely approachable. You don't have to do anything, it's approaching you. So it's a learning curve, you got to wait until my generation dies off and then you guys will see. Charles: I don't have as myopic of you, as you Steve. But I would say that, the big thing that we have to do is, there's been this evolution of AI where the AI is going to be something that automates away what humans do. And what we've realized is, AI is not even remotely close to being able to do that. But what AI can do, is it can turbocharge the people that use it. And so what we're trying to do is, how do we go expose these AI capabilities in a way where you or anyone else who uses them feels so much more productive. And just like when you first got the ability to use PC or a spreadsheet, you're like, "How did I exist before?" We're hoping we'll get to the point where, once you start using some of these AI assistive capabilities, like we've done in Conversation Intelligence, you'll be like, "How did I ever do a customer call before? And I had to take notes on paper while listening as opposed to having the AI take notes for me?" Yeah, exactly. Steve: I'm terrible about that. I'll be chicken scratching over here while I'm talking to people, and then we get off the phone I look at and I can't understand a word I wrote. Charles: Yeah. I like post-it notes next to my desk where I'm always writing stuff down. Steve: Yeah. So what else cool's coming on the horizon that we should be... That sounds like the Conversational Intelligence has been around. Sounds like Viva Sales is going to really bring that to the masses, so that one's on a path. What are some other new things that we should pay attention to that you're able to talk about? Charles: Yeah. Another one of my favorite things, which we've started to reveal some capabilities going back to last Ignite, so November of 2021. And we have some big announcements planned for the second half of 2022, is the new Contact Center related capabilities inside of Dynamics Customer Service. We have Omnichannel, we announced integrated voice, the Nuance acquisition closed, and the Nuance contact center AI team joined my group to align with customer service and contact center. So there's a lot of really exciting innovation happening there. And I'm really excited about the potential to make it super easy to get a comprehensive customer engagement story, without having to wire up eight different pieces of technology and do a ton of different complex integrations. So that's a place where there's a lot of innovation, there's new capabilities, Omnichannel, Power Virtual Agent, even the same type of conversation intelligence applied to support cases, Nuance for their Gatekeeper, which is identity and authentication verification based on voice and biometrics. Charles: There's a lot of cool stuff in that space. And that's one of the places where so many of the customers we work with are trying to improve the customer experience, and to go reduce costs. So I say that's a place where we've had a lot of exciting announcements over the last six to nine months, and we have a whole bunch more planned for the next six to nine months. So I say, stay tuned. And I won't say more than that to avoid getting in trouble by leaking information. But I just say, that's a place to really pay close attention. Steve: Who knew call centers could be cool? Charles: Yeah, exactly. Who would have thought that I'd be talking about contact centers, and how it's the next generation or next frontier of AI applications in 2022. Steve: Oh, well. Well I do have to thank you guys for the low-code advances you've continued to make in that platform. It actually allowed us to launch a, I think we're the first ones to try this, a new Service as a Subscription. Which includes awesome includes deployment, customization, training, everything except development code, which as you know today in so many of these projects, there's so little, if any of that. Charles: Yeah. Steve: Just a few years ago, if you tried to offer something like this, it really would be little more than a support agreement. But now, we're deploying, we're building, we're customizing, we're building entire things for customers all on a monthly subscription. It's an interesting concept, and hopefully I don't go broke, but... Charles: But you know what, it's fascinating. I literally was talking about this with the Power Platform team this morning. About a future where we'll have more partners who are able to sell a comprehensive service agreement, which includes the cloud hosting licenses, but also some incremental custom development and also ongoing maintenance and support. And it'll be almost this whole new industry, which will push a lot of innovation to the edges of the ecosystem, right? Steve: Yep. Charles: Not built by Microsoft, built by partners who really understand particular regions, particular industries, or particular segments. Like y'all are targeting a space where we're not trying to go take Dynamics, CRM, and go bring it down there. You can go build a world-class experience on top of our platform and provide a very much all-in-one, which exactly serves the needs of that audience and that market. And we can stay focused on building the super horizontal platform, which has great performance, great usability, incredible power, those types of things. Steve: Yeah, it sounds great. I'm glad that we had the same idea you guys did. I'll let you know, in a few months, if it was a smart one. Time will tell. Charles: Yes. Yeah. Steve: So, how are the rest of the team doing? It seems like some folks have moved around a little bit in the org, who's moved where? Charles: Yeah. So one of the big things we've been really focused on the engineering side, for the engineering organization, is bringing together strength from a product perspective that target the same type of user. And for example, we have a new customer experience platform team underneath Lori Lamkin, who leads all of our Dynamic Sales apps. So the Core Sales and Viva Sales, as well as commerce, as well as marketing, as well as customer insights. And it's very much focused on revenue generation, customer journeys, customer experiences. And what's great is by bringing those assets together, we have a great answer for B2B customers, as well as B2C. Like if you want to have self service, no touch eCommerce experience with lightweight telesales, you can do that all with those sets of applications. If you want to do a high relationship, high touch B2B sales process, you can do all of that. You're not going to use commerce, but you're probably going to use customer insights and sales, and maybe a little bit of account-based marketing. So we brought together these things, which are solving similar problems under a single leader. And that way the engineering teams can go back and forth between these different places to finish out full end-to-end customer journeys. And so that's a big area that we've spent a lot of time on, and that's a place where it's really the biggest and fastest growing category for us in the Dynamics 365 application portfolio. So that's one interesting example. Jeff Comstock, folks may know him. He's been around Dynamics 365 for a while. He continues customer service, he leads omnichannel, he's done some of this great expansion around the contact center for us. Ray Smith leads our supply chain team. So that includes things like more supply chain. Steve: So Ray moved? Charles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He by way of acquisition to SAP then moved. He worked in Dynamic Sales for a bit, where people may have known him. And now the supply chain, and really helping us be this new data driven, AI powered, supply chain story for core supply chain execution. Then we also had some exciting announcements around process advisor and the minor acquisition to help turbocharge that. Or Georg Glantschnig who leads our finance room of the house. And basically we call the room of the house, is the collection of products which focus on serving the CFO and the finance department. And that includes the Suplari acquisition, which we had done a couple years ago, as well as the Core Dynamics, 365 finance, HR, and project operations products. Charles: So you can see how we started to build these critical paths around particular departments and particular lines of businesses with our products. And in addition to that, we also of course have Power Platform to support all of it. So it's amazing to see these things come together and converge. And we've been on this incredible run of innovation around Dynamics. I was counting it earlier this year, 29 different products in Dynamics, and really coalesced around these specific areas where we have a lot of energy, and also very well understood. I'd say synergies between the products that we have. So I'd say exciting times. Very exciting times. Steve: Customers are starting to understand it better also. Business Applications was the same thing for a long time. Then it spent the last five years reinventing itself every month, and new things exploding out of Advanta. And I think a lot of customers were having trouble just keeping up with... It's like little whackamole for them. And it takes a little time for customers to absorb what's happening, and what it's for, or what it does, and then to adopt it. And we're seeing that now. We used to have to go out and promote Power Apps to people who didn't understand what this was, or why it was. And now it's the opposite. They always come to us, looking for Power Apps, looking at those sorts of things. So that understanding seems to have finally permeated down to the customer level. But boy, it took a while. Charles: Yeah. It warms my heart. And I would say one of my favorite books is by Jim Collins, 'Good to great.' I always recommend it to folks on my team to read it. And he talks about this idea of the flywheel. It takes time to get a flywheel spinning, for the first period of time it looks like it's barely moving, but then eventually it's going super fast and it's just a blur. And you need to be consistent, and convicted, and believe in the strategy and the approach. And what's amazing about BizApps is for the last four years, we've been on the same mission, the same vision, the same ambition. And we just spend all the folks in advance at turning that flywheel, turning that flywheel. And it's started to reach that blur phase where it's spinning so fast, you can't even see it. Charles: And this, this all started years and years ago with a ton of work, but we're really at that magical moment where customers know what Power Platform is. Customers know that Microsoft gets customer experience and customer engagement. They know that Microsoft can help them optimize their supply chain. And what the good news is once that thing is going, it really builds upon itself, and I think it'll only continue that momentum further. And my favorite story is, I used to always do these executive briefings at Microsoft where we have executives come in from our customers to Redmond and we have a briefing center. It's very nice. And I would always say, let me talk about Power Apps and low-code. Charles: And everybody gives me a blank stare like, "What the heck is Power Apps? What the heck is low-code?" I go in those meetings now, and people know what Power Apps is, and they know the low-code strategy. And the only question is, "how?". Not, "should I?" Or "if?" "How do I do it with you, Microsoft?" And so different from three years ago. So anyway, so you're exactly right. A long winded answer, but I'd say it's exciting to see all of these things come together, and the benefits of just consistently repeating a message that resonates with customers. Steve: I would say at least three quarters of my customer calls today, they're bringing up right out of the gate, "We don't want any development. We want to do everything low-code, no code." So this is coming from the customer side where we used to have to explain to them what low-code, no code meant. Now they're coming demanding, "I only want low-code, no code." I think that they've come to this realization that, while low-code, no code might not be easy enough for your mom to do, it doesn't require a developer, and code does require developer. And once you've got this little blob of code in your environment, it's a black box for you. And so they don't want any of these black boxes. They want everything to be accessible. Steve: Use your knowledge to build us something complex out of low-code, but then I can still go back in there later and manipulate it, adjust it myself, or our team. So they have absolutely bought into that. And I know we originally, a lot of us partners were concerned early on that this was going to reduce the workload for partners, while our workload is more than it has ever been. Although the developers on the bench don't stay as busy as they used to. We've completely pivoted the team from developer heavy to now, we haven't even got a good title for them. A citizen developer doesn't sound right. We tell customers that, but citizen developers is what we've got so... Charles: This guy we found on the street, or gal found on the street, we just asked them to start building out. But no, it makes sense. There is almost this new role which is, it's not just pure coding expertise, it's technical development concept expertise. But even more importantly is business process and solution expertise. And that fusion of those two skill sets, that's the magic. That's what makes it special, because you understand it. Steve: Yeah. The challenge that we have with this brand new model that we just launched, because, first of all, being the first one out there is not always good because people have no idea what you're talking about. They're trying to compare it to other things. But we've got this little caveat that it's all you can eat, everything, except development code. And trying to define what that is hasn't been easy, and you get these customers coming in, "Oh, we're going to need a lot of customization. So this isn't going to work for us." And so you may need a lot of customizations, but you don't need any "development code". Charles: Yeah. Steve: And getting them to grasp that development code and customization are not synonymous, not even close. Charles: Exactly. Steve: Development code is a very small component today of customization. And once I think that they understand that, then we'll probably see more partners coming into a model like this. Because it makes a lot of sense for customers, makes a lot of sense for partners. Charles: Yeah. And if you go look at building solutions that last a decade, this is to your point, code is this little black box opaque thing, which is hard to maintain over time. If it's no code, low-code, it's easy to open it up and reconfigure as business requirements change. And it's how you build solutions that last. And I think we're getting to the phase with business software where customers are expecting to make long term technology bets. You're not going to replace your CRM every five years from now on. It's like building manufacturing plants and warehouses. These are big investments that you need to be able to amortize over a long time, to justify. And so I think to your point, no code doesn't mean no flexibility, no customization, also doesn't mean no agility. It just means you're doing it in a different way. Couldn't say it better myself. Steve: All right. Cool. Hey, listen, I'm going to let you go. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day here when I caught you, to chat with me about this stuff, always fun talking to you Charles. I'm going to call you in four months and ask you about Viva Sales for the platform. Charles: Sounds good. Sounds good. Steve: I've got you on record there. Charles: So really appreciate you taking the time, giving me a ring, Steve. Hope you have a great rest of the summer. Steve: All right, man. Have a good one. Charles: Yep. You too.  

Oh, look: ANOTHER DINOSAUR MOVIE. It's time for "Jurassic World Dominion," the sixth movie in the franchise and the final of the Trevorrow Trilogy. (Do people call it that?) One of us likes it more than the other. But neither of us likes it. Then we look at the Netflix Adam Sandler basketball film "Hustle." It has the OTHER Anthony Edwards. Then it's reboot time, shoutout to Steve: It's the Fritz Lang classic "M." Timestamps: 16:33 "Jurassic World Dominion" 48:22 "Hustle" 1:11:11 "M" Thanks to Dylan Mayer and My Friend Mary, both of which are wonderful, for the music. We hope you enjoy. Let us know what you think @griersonleitch on Twitter, or griersonleitch@gmail.com. As always, give us a review on iTunes with the name of a movie you'd like us to review, and we'll discuss it on a later podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reflections on Episode 3, The Map Is Not The TerritoryJason : I reflected mostly on the map of “career”. All the beliefs that go into this map and how profoundly and insidiously it has affected my own life. Maybe we can talk about this in this fourth episode???About a myopic focus on outcomes and mistaking the map for the territory…I need to clean this up. It is kind of a brain dump.We talked about how humans like to be predictive. More specifically, we like to think we can control and manipulate variables in our environment in order to achieve certain outcomes. This may be true, to an extent, under certain conditions–such as a low variable set–or when one only considers limited influence over outcomes. For example, trying to manipulate or control general or specific physiological outcomes through the structure of workouts in a training plan focuses on a (relatively) narrow variable set and yields limited control.Where we get in trouble with problematic thinking around outcomes and control is when we think we can predict and control multi-variate outcomes like races.  In fact, I believe we over-invest our energy in focusing on things we can't really control. Too many things are outside of our control on race day. Our outcome expectations often subsume so many of these variables that are out of our control and this sets us up for disappointment. We'd do better to focus on the variables we can control and then construct our outcome goals around those variables.Steve: I concur whole-heartedly. I feel like we covered the basics pretty well.If you want we can add the following:One of my athletes, Alex Brenner, added a comment to the new community space dedicated to this podcast. If you want to access that site, just subscribe at rungnosis.com & we'll add you to the community.Alex:Great episode! I thought it was funny when you guys started talking about consciousness and riffing on the fact that it's hard to define what is "conscious" let alone what consciousness itself is or how it's produced by the human brain. Steve says something about how the different theories of consciousness would "blow your mind," and how we shouldn't trust anybody who claims to know anything about it with certainty.That all hit close to home for me because it's the reason why I quit neuroscience!

Are you having effective conversations with your clients? To say that the Arizona real estate market has been evolving over the last few years would be an understatement. For agents, it's a huge part of our job just keeping up with the trends and changes that are happening on a sometimes-weekly basis. If things are that difficult for those of us inside the business, how difficult must it be for our clients, who might be getting bad information to begin with?   It's our job to be experts in the real estate market and in turn to be having the necessary conversations with our clients about their best options moving forward. Our clients are coming to us with the hopes of getting into a new home that's going to meet all their expectations, and sometimes this will be an easy task. But most of the time compromises will need to be met depending on their price, location, etc., and that is where we as their representatives can do the best service for them as real estate experts.   “I think that the business right now should change into conversations with your clients on helping them strategize and really understanding the long term.” – Steve   Anyone who is looking to get into a new home, whether it be through renting or buying, is investing in the market. The difference between the two right now is whether you're investing in your own future through buying or helping to invest in somebody else's future by renting. We're in the business of helping people invest in their future, to help them create legacy and build wealth.   “A different way to look at it is if you had two different parties, one decided to wait (and rent) and one decided to buy, the person who decided buy has earned over $100,000 in equity in a year on that property and the other person is renting and continues to make somebody else that money.” – Bernie   When we best serve our clients, we do good by ourselves both professionally and personally. Having those conversations with our clients about what is in their best interests given how the market is behaving is the necessary step to being the best possible representative for our client's future.   “If you can plant that seed and say, ‘This is what it would look like if we follow this plan. You want $5,000 A month in passive income? Well, here's the steps we need to take to get there, and here's how we're going to refinance it, here's how we're going to utilize it.' There's so many variables to the plan, but those are the conversations that are going to bring you to the surface, and they're also going to create more referrals, more business because you didn't just go in for the sale.” – Steve   “It's so important not to underestimate our consumers today. Don't underestimate them, don't make assumptions about what they do and don't know, right? And really, truly try to understand what matters to them.” – Bernie   Hey you! You're a long-time listener, time to be a first-time caller! Have a question or topic you'd like us to cover? Drop a line in our DM's at: Steve's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevedvalentine/ Bernie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bernzpix/   You can find us on all the major Podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are live and leave us a review and 5-star rating to help the show grow!  

Jason talks to Steve Sanduski, Co-founder of ROL Advisor. ROL Advisor is an online platform that helps advisors or helps coach advisors through a process to help clients focus on return on life as opposed to returning on their investments.Episode Highlights:0.54: Steve explains that they decided to create a new legal entity, hired some developers, and created digital tools that they call the ROL advisor, which stands for return on life. And the focus is really on helping financial advisors become life advisors essentially.1.50: Jason says that the returns are one thing, but at the end of the day, one thing matters are getting what you want out of life.2.13: What we are doing here at ROL advisor revolves around the discovery process. We think of discovery not as a one-and-done process but as an ongoing process throughout the life of the relationship, says Steve. 7.06: There is a series of 20 statements in the ROL index. These twenty statements are divided into ten categories, such as whether or not a person is getting a return on his/her schooling, housing, or accomplishments.8.20: The ten aspects are broken down into three categories, and then we give a score on a scale of 1 to 100 for each of those three categories, well-being, progress, and freedom, says Steve. 10.19: When advisors are working with a client not as an asset under management or not as dollar signs but working with them one on one as a human being for whom you can add some value and for someone that you care about, and at the end of the day that is what the client's going to remember, says Steve. 12.07: We have six broad categories of life transitions, and within each of these six categories, we have anywhere from maybe five to ten life transitions related to each of those categories, explains Steve.26.32: Steve wants to have a superpower of taking in all of the information from many different areas and sources so that he can synthesize and reconfigure it and communicate it back out in such a way that many people can understand it and benefit from it. 3 Key PointsOften, financial advisors get a little frustrated when they see the behavior of their client, and they can't understand why the client is doing this thing or why they are not doing something that they know is good for them, says Steve.Technology can augment the conversation like our tools are doing, but ultimately it is about the advisor and the depth of the connection, empathy, and understanding they have with clients, says Steve.Most financial advisors have been successful over the past few years because the markets have been good, so getting them to try and adopt a new way of doing business has been a little bit difficult because they are happy with what they are doing.Tweetable Quotes“So much of our current behavior is influenced and derived from our formative years' experiences.” – Steve“It is just human nature that we want to keep doing what we are doing, particularly if we are successful.” - SteveResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorSteve Sanduski – Linkedin | Website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We're rounding out the year here at the Thinking OTB studios by bringing you the story of Bernie and her journey to finding a new home. Luckily, she has a real estate powerhouse in her corner to help her build upon the buying power that she already has as well as helping her to get into a home for her and her family of pups! But it also was an opportunity to showcase what we've been preaching here at OTB about a different way of helping your clients because at the end of the day this is a business about helping people.   Be a Beacon of Light in Stressful Times   If you've been able to achieve a level of success in this business, it can be easy to fall into a mindset where you separate the client from the people they are. This is a business where legwork is required, showing houses and keeping in contact with buyers and sellers through the process. It can be tedious sometimes, so to stop yourself from losing sight of what's important you need to remember that we're working with people's dreams for a new future, whether that dream is for a family or for a valued friend and her pups.   As a person's agent and representative, you can position yourself as the expert in the field and help them through the stress of trying to find the home they need to start building the wealth and legacy that seems so hard to find. It may be tempting to pass off some of your interactions on your team that you may not want to do yourself, but you better believe your clients will notice. If you're not invested in your client's, don't expect them to be invested in referring you in the future.   It's all about those little moments, those small bits of personal attention that go so far in creating those lasting relationships. Always keep in mind who we're working for, and what kind of impact a transaction like this has on a person or a family's future and where you want to fit in that story. Are you the hero, or just the salesperson?   “People don't work through the monetary cost of not doing something the right way. And what I mean is that they won't put an extra $10,000 into a master bathroom or move the kitchen or something of that nature, thinking that's just going to cost too much, we're not going to get it back out. What they don't see is the cost that is equated to how long it was on the market and the reductions, or that it didn't sell right away.” – Steve   “It was so fun being your client. One of the coolest things for me is I've been in this business for a long time and I've gotten a chance to work with a few clients, and it's really cool when from the title partner side of things that you've worked with them on all their systems and strategies, marketing and whatnot. To really get to experience their processes because you've never been a buyer or seller. You don't do that very often.” – Bernie   We're ready to hear from you! Have a question or topic you'd like us to cover? Send us a message at: Steve's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevedvalentine/ Bernie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bernzpix/   You can find us on all the major Podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are live and leave us a review and 5-star rating to help the show grow!

Welcome back to the next episode of Music Crush Monday! You miss us? Hopefully you are excited to get another band to check out and hear Steve and Kevin do what they do best. Hang out and talk about some music! This week Kevin is on the hot seat and wasted no time at all to bring this episode straight into 4th gear and bringing another band that has put in some time and is respected for their sound and what they have accomplished. When it's necessary this is a band that Kevin will put on nice and loud and suggests you do the same. This episode also has another Steve It Or Leave It segment, what will Kevin decide this week? What did you decide? Did you Steve It? Or Leave It? See the links below to find more about this week's featured band as well as Steve's chosen band for Steve It Or Leave It. You can also find multiple ways to contact us with the links below. Do not hesitate to do so, and do not be shy! We would LOVE to hear from you. Thank you again for joining us this week, and as always, we'll see you…...when the next episode is released! Support us on Patreon! If you want to listen to the episode as intended, please do not look at the featured band links beforehand if at all possible. Check out our Spotify playlist for more of their music and please reach out to us via the links below. We'll see you next Monday! Website EmailPatreonFacebookInstagramTwitter Intro/Outro music: “The Breakdown” by At The Wayside *** WARNING! *** *** WARNING! *** *** SPOILER ALERT! *** *** SPOILER ALERT! *** *** Disclaimer: We at the Music Crush Monday Podcast would like for our listeners to listen to the bands blind with us but we also want you to check out the band further if they were interesting to you. Please review the links below to find more on today's featured band. *** Band: Lamb Of GodSocials:Official WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramSongs Played:Set To Fail off of the album Wrath11th Hour off of the album As The Palaces BurnSteve It Or Leave ItBand: The Hush SoundSocials: Official WebsiteFacebookTwitterSong Played:Wine Red off of the album Like Vines

In this episode, we cover:00:00:00 - Reflections on the Episode/Introduction 00:03:06 - Steve's Bio00:07:30 - The 5 W's of Servers and their Future00:14:00 - Hardware and Software00:21:00 - Oxide Computer 00:30:00 - Investing in Oxide and the Public Cloud00:36:20 - Oxide's Offerings to Customers 00:43:30 - Continious Improvement00:49:00 - Oxide's Future and OutroLinks: Oxide Computer: https://oxide.computer Perfectlyboring.com: https://perfectlyboring.com TranscriptJason: Welcome to the Perfectly Boring podcast, a show where we talk to the people transforming the world's most boring industries. I'm Jason Black, general partner at RRE ventures.Will: And I'm Will Coffield, general partner at Riot Ventures.Jason: Today's boring topic of the day: servers.Will: Today, we've got Steve Tuck, the co-founder and CEO of Oxide Computer, on the podcast. Oxide is on a mission to fundamentally transform the private cloud and on-premise data center so that companies that are not Google, or Microsoft, or Amazon can have hyper scalable, ultra performant infrastructure at their beck and call. I've been an investor in the company for the last two or three years at this point, but Jason, this is your first time hearing the story from Steve and really going deep on Oxide's mission and place in the market. Curious what your initial thoughts are.Jason: At first glance, Oxide feels like a faster horse approach to an industry buying cars left and right. But the shift in the cloud will add $140 billion in new spend every year over the next five years. But one of the big things that was really interesting in the conversation was that it's actually the overarching pie that's expanding, not just demand for cloud but at the same rate, a demand for on-premise infrastructure that's largely been stagnant over the years. One of the interesting pivot points was when hardware and software were integrated back in the mainframe era, and then virtual machines kind of divorced hardware and software at the server level. Opening up the opportunity for a public cloud that reunified those two things where your software and hardware ran together, but the on-premises never really recaptured that software layer and have historically struggled to innovate on that domain.Will: Yeah, it's an interesting inflection point for the enterprise, and for basically any company that is operating digitally at this point, is that you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. You can scale infinitely on the public cloud but you make certain sacrifices from a performance security and certainly from an expense standpoint, or you can go to what is available commercially right now and you can cobble together a Frankenstein-esque solution from a bunch of legacy providers like HP, and Dell, and SolarWinds, and VMware into a MacGyvered together on-premise data center that is difficult to operate for companies where infrastructure isn't, and they don't want it to be, their core competency. Oxide is looking to step into that void and provide a infinitely scalable, ultra-high-performance, plug-and-play rack-scale server for everybody to be able to own and operate without needing to rent it from Google, or AWS, or Microsoft.Jason: Well, it doesn't sound very fun, and it definitely sounds [laugh] very boring. So, before we go too deep, let's jump into the interview with Steve.Will: Steve Tuck, founder and CEO of Oxide Computer. Thank you for joining us today.Steve: Yeah, thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.Will: And I think maybe a great way to kick things off here for listeners would be to give folks a baseline of your background, sort of your bio, leading up to founding Oxide.Steve: Sure. Born and raised in the Bay Area. Grew up in a family business that was and has been focused on heating and air conditioning over the last 100-plus years, Atlas. And went to school and then straight out of school, went into the computer space. Joined Dell computer company in 1999, which was a pretty fun and exciting time at Dell.I think that Dell had just crossed over to being the number one PC manufacturer in the US. I think number two worldwide at Compaq. Really just got to take in and appreciate the direct approach that Dell had taken in a market to stand apart, working directly with customers not pushing everything to the channel, which was customary for a lot of the PC vendors at the time. And while I was there, you had the emergence of—in the enterprise—hardware virtualization company called VMware that at the time, had a product that allowed one to drive a lot more density on their servers by way of virtualizing the hardware that people were running. And watching that become much more pervasive, and working with companies as they began to shift from single system, single app to virtualized environments.And then at the tail end, just watching large tech companies emerge and demand a lot different style computers than those that we had been customarily making at Dell. And kind of fascinated with just what these companies like Facebook, and Google, and Amazon, and others were doing to reimagine what systems needed to look like in their hyperscale environments. One of the companies that was in the tech space, Joyent, a cloud computing company, is where I went next. Was really drawn in just to velocity and the innovation that was taking place with these companies that were providing abstractions on top of hardware to make it much easier for customers to get access to the compute, and the storage, and the networking that they needed to build and deploy software. So, spent—after ten years at Dell, I was at Joyent for ten years. That is where I met my future co-founders, Bryan Cantrill who was at Joyent, and then also Jess Frazelle who we knew working closely while she was at Docker and other stops.But spent ten years as a public cloud infrastructure operator, and we built that service out to support workloads that ran the gamut from small game developers up to very large enterprises, and it was really interesting to learn about and appreciate what this infrastructure utility business looked like in public cloud. And that was also kind of where I got my first realization of just how hard it was to run large fleets of the systems that I had been responsible for providing back at Dell for ten years. We were obviously a large customer of Dell, and Supermicro, and a number of switch manufacturers. It was eye-opening just how much was lacking in the remaining software to bind together hundreds or thousands of these machines.A lot of the operational tooling that I wished had been there and how much we were living at spreadsheets to manage and organize and deploy this infrastructure. While there, also got to kind of see firsthand what happened as customers got really, really big in the public cloud. And one of those was Samsung, who was a very large AWS customer, got so large that they needed to figure out what their path on-premise would look like. And after going through the landscape of all the legacy enterprise solutions, deemed that they had to go buy a cloud company to complete that journey. And they bought Joyent. Spent three years operating the Samsung cloud, and then that brings us to two years ago, when Jess, Bryan, and I started Oxide Computer.Will: I think maybe for the benefit of our listeners, it would be interesting to have you define—and what we're talking about today is the server industry—and to maybe take a step back and in your own words, define what a server is. And then it would be really interesting to jump into a high-level history of the server up until today, and maybe within that, where the emergence of the public cloud came from.Steve: You know, you'll probably get different definitions of what a server is depending on who you ask, but at the highest level, a server differs from a typical PC that you would have in your home in a couple of ways, and more about what it is being asked to do that drives the requirements of what one would deem a server. But if you think about a basic PC that you're running in your home, a laptop, a desktop, a server has a lot of the same components: they have CPUs, and DRAM memory that is for non-volatile storage, and disks that are storing things in a persistent way when you shut off your computer that actually store and retain the data, and a network card so that you can connect to either other machines or to the internet. But where servers start to take on a little bit different shape and a little bit different set of responsibilities is the workloads that they're supporting. Servers, the expectations are that they are going to be running 24/7 in a highly reliable and highly available manner. And so there are technologies that have gone into servers, that ECC memory to ensure that you do not have memory faults that lose data, more robust components internally, ways to manage these things remotely, and ways to connect these to other servers, other computers.Servers, when running well, are things you don't really need to think about, are doing that, are running in a resilient, highly available manner. In terms of the arc of the server industry, if you go back—I mean, there's been servers for many, many, many, many decades. Some of the earlier commercially available servers were called mainframes, and these were big monolithic systems that had a lot of hardware resources at the time, and then were combined with a lot of operational and utilization software to be able to run a variety of tasks. These were giant, giant machines; these were extraordinarily expensive; you would typically find them only running in universities or government projects, maybe some very, very large enterprises in the'60s and'70s. As more and more software was being built and developed and run, the market demand and need for smaller, more accessible servers that were going to be running this common software, were driving machines that were coming out—still hardware plus software—from the likes of IBM and DEC and others.Then you broke into this period in the '80s where, with the advent of x86 and the rise of these PC manufacturers—the Dells and Compaqs and others—this transition to more commodity server systems. A focus, really a focus on hardware only, and building these commodity x86 servers that were less expensive, that were more accessible from an economics perspective, and then ultimately that would be able to run arbitrary software, so one could run any operating system or any body of software that they wanted on these commodity servers. When I got to Dell in 1999, this is several years into Dell's foray into the server market, and you would buy a server from Dell, or from HP, or from Compaq, or IBM, then you would go find your software that you were going to run on top of that to stitch these machines together. That was, kind of, that server virtualization era, in the '90s, 2000s. As I mentioned, technology companies were looking at building more scalable systems that were aggregating resources together and making it much easier for their customers to access the storage, the networking that they needed, that period of time in which the commodity servers and the software industry diverged, and you had a bunch of different companies that were responsible for either hardware or the software that would bring these computers together, these large hyperscalers said, “Well, we're building purpose-built infrastructure services for our constituents at, like, a Facebook. That means we really need to bind this hardware and software together in a single product so that our software teams can go very quickly and they can programmatically access the resources that they need to deploy software.”So, they began to develop systems that looked more monolithic, kind of, rack-level systems that were driving much better efficiency from a power and density perspective, and hydrating it with software to provide infrastructure services to their businesses. And so you saw, what started out in the computer industry is these monolithic hardware plus software products that were not very accessible because they were so expensive and so large, but real products that were much easier to do real work on, to this period where you had a disaggregation of hardware and software where the end-user bore the responsibility of tying these things together and binding these into those infrastructure products, to today, where the largest hyperscalers in the market have come to the realization that building hardware and software together and designing and developing what modern computers should look like, is commonplace, and we all know that well or can access that as public cloud computing.Jason: And what was the driving force behind that decoupling? Was it the actual hardware vendors that didn't want to have to deal with the software? Or is that more from a customer-facing perspective where the customers themselves felt that they could eke out the best advantage by developing their own software stack on top of a relatively commodity unopinionated hardware stack that they could buy from a Dell or an HP?Steve: Yeah, I think probably both, but one thing that was a driver is that these were PC companies. So, coming out of the'80s companies that were considered, quote-unquote, “The IBM clones,” Dell, and Compaq, and HP, and others that were building personal computers and saw an opportunity to build more robust personal computers that could be sold to customers who were running, again, just arbitrary software. There wasn't the desire nor the DNA to go build that full software stack and provide that out as an opinionated appliance or product. And I think then, part of it was also like, hey, if we just focus on the hardware, then got this high utility artifact that we can go sell into all sorts of arbitrary software use cases. You know, whether this is going to be a single server or three servers that's going to go run in a closet of cafe, or it's going to be a thousand servers that are running in one of these large enterprise data centers, we get to build the same box, and that box can run underneath any different type of software. By way of that, what you ultimately get in that scenario is you do have to boil things down to the lowest common denominators to make sure that you've got that compatibility across all the different software types.Will: Who were the primary software vendors that were helping those companies take commodity servers and specialize into particular areas? And what's their role now and how has that transformed in light of the public cloud and the offerings that are once again generalized, but also reintegrated from a hardware and software perspective, just not maybe in your own server room, but in AWS, or Azure, or GCP?Steve: Yeah, so you have a couple layers of software that are required in the operation of hardware, and then all the way up through what we would think about as running in a rack, a full rack system today. You've first got firmware, and this is the software that runs on the hardware to be able to connect the different hardware components, to boot the system, to make sure that the CPU can talk to its memory, and storage, and the network. That software may be a surprise to some, but that firmware that is essential to the hardware itself is not made by the server manufacturer themselves. That was part of this outsourcing exercise in the '80s where not only the upstack software that runs on server systems but actually some of the lower-level downstack software was outsourced to these third-party firmware shops that would write that software. And at the time, probably made a lot of sense and made things a lot easier for the entire ecosystem.You know, the fact that's the same model today, and given how proprietary that is and, you know, where that can actually lead to some vulnerabilities and security issues is more problematic. You've got firmware, then you've got the operating system that runs on top of the server. You have a hypervisor, which is the emulation layer that translates that lower-level hardware into a number of virtual machines that applications can run in. You have control plane software that connects multiple systems together so that you can have five or ten or a hundred, or a thousand servers working in a pool, in a fleet. And then you've got higher-level software that allows a user to carve up the resources that they need to identify the amount of compute, and memory, and storage that they want to spin up.And that is exposed to the end-user by way of APIs and/or a user interface. And so you've got many layers of software that are running on top of hardware, and the two in conjunction are all there to provide infrastructure services to the end-user. And so when you're going to the public cloud today, you don't have to worry about any of that, right? Both of you have probably spun up infrastructure on the public cloud, but they call it 16 digits to freedom because you just swipe a credit card and hit an API, and within seconds, certainly within a minute, you've got readily available virtual servers and services that allow you to deploy software quickly and manage a project with team members. And the kinds of things that used to take days, weeks, or even months inside an enterprise can be done now in a matter of minutes, and that's extraordinarily powerful.But what you don't see is all the integration of these different components running, very well stitched together under the hood. Now, for someone who's deploying their own infrastructure in their own data center today, that sausage-making is very evident. Today, if you're not a cloud hyperscaler, you are having to go pick a hardware vendor and then figure out your operating system and your control plane and your hypervisor, and you have to bind all those things together to create a rack-level system. And it might have three or four different vendors and three or four different products inside of it, and ultimately, you have to bear the responsibility of knitting all that together.Will: Because those products were developed in silos from each other?Steve: Yeah.Will: They were not co-developed. You've got hardware that was designed in a silo separate from oftentimes it sounds like the firmware and all of the software for operating those resources.Steve: Yeah. The hardware has a certain set of market user requirements, and then if you're a Red Hat or you're a VMware, you're talking to your customers about what they need and you're thinking at the software layer. And then you yourself are trying to make it such that it can run across ten or twenty different types of hardware, which means that you cannot do things that bind or provide hooks into that underlying hardware which, unfortunately, is where a ton of value comes from. You can see an analog to this in thinking about the Android ecosystem compared to the Apple ecosystem and what that experience is like when all that hardware and software is integrated together, co-designed together, and you have that iPhone experience. Plenty of other analogs in the automotive industry, with Tesla, and health equipment, and Peloton and others, but when hardware and software—we believe certainly—when hardware and software is co-designed together, you get a better artifact and you get a much, much better user experience. Unfortunately, that is just not the case today in on-prem computing.Jason: So, this is probably a great time to transition to Oxide. Maybe to keep the analogy going, the public cloud is that iPhone experience, but it's just running in somebody else's data center, whether that's AWS, Azure, or one of the other public clouds. You're developing iOS for on-prem, for the people who want to run their own servers, which seems like kind of a countertrend. Maybe you can talk us through the dynamics in that market as it stands today, and how that's growing and evolving, and what role Oxide Computer plays in that, going forward.Steve: You've got this what my co-founder Jess affectionately refers to as ‘infrastructure privilege' in the hyperscalers, where they have been able to apply the money, and the time, and the resources to develop this, kind of, iPhone stack, instead of thinking about a server as a single 1U unit, or single machine, had looked at, well, what does a rack—which is the case that servers are slotted into in these large data centers—what does rack-level computing look like and where can we drive better power efficiency? Where can we drive better density? How can we drive much better security at scale than the commodity server market today? And doing things like implementing hardware Roots of Trust and Chain of Trust, so that you can ensure the software that is running on your machines is what is intended to be running there. The blessing is that we all—the market—gets access to that modern infrastructure, but you can only rent it.The only way you can access it is to rent, and that means that you need to run in one of the three mega cloud providers' data centers in those locations, that you are having to operate in a rental fee model, which at scale can become very, very prohibitively expensive. Our fundamental belief is that the way that these hyperscale data centers have been designed and these products have been designed certainly looks a lot more like what modern computers should look like, but the rest of the market should have access to the same thing. You should be able to buy and own and deploy that same product that runs inside a Facebook data center, or Apple data center, or Amazon, or a Google data center, you should be able to take that product with you wherever your business needs to run. A bit intimidating at the top because what we signed up for was building hardware, and taking a clean sheet paper approach to what a modern server could look like. There's a lot of good hardware innovation that the hyperscalers have helped drive; if you go back to 2010, Facebook pioneered being a lot more open about these modern open hardware systems that they were developing, and the Open Compute Project, OCP, has been a great collection point for these hyperscalers investing in these modern rack-level systems and doing it in the open, thinking about what the software is that is required to operate modern machines, importantly, in a way that does not sink the operations teams of the enterprises that are running them.Again, I think one of the things that was just so stunning to me, when I was at Joyent—we were running these machines, these commodity machines, and stitching together the software at scale—was how much of the organization's time was tied up in the deployment, and the integration, and the operation of this. And not just the organization's time, but actually our most precious resource, our engineering team, was having to spend so much time figuring out where a performance problem was coming from. For example in [clear throat], man, those are the times in which you really are pounding your fist on the table because you will try and go downstack to figure out, is this in the control plane? Is this in the firmware? Is this in the hardware?And commodity systems of today make it extremely, extremely difficult to figure that out. But what we set out to do was build same rack-level system that you might find in a hyperscaler data center, complete with all the software that you need to operate it with the automation required for high availability and low operational overhead, and then with a CloudFront end, with a set of services on the front end of that rack-level system that delight developers, that look like the cloud experience that developers have come to love and depend on in the public cloud. And that means everything is programmable, API-driven services, all the hardware resources that you need—compute, memory, and storage—are actually a pool of resources that you can carve up and get access to and use in a very developer-friendly way. And the developer tools that your software teams have come to depend on just work and all the tooling that these developers have invested so much time in over the last several years, to be able to automate things, to be able to deploy software faster are resident in that product. And so it is definitely kind of hardware and software co-designed, much like some of the original servers long, long, long ago, but modernized with the hardware innovation and open software approach that the cloud has ushered in.Jason: And give us a sense of scale; I think we're so used to seeing the headline numbers of the public cloud, you know, $300-and-some billion dollars today, adding $740-some billion over the next five years in public cloud spend. It's obviously a massive transformation, huge amount of green space up for grabs. What's happening in the on-prem market where your Oxide Computer is playing and how do you think about the growth in that market relative to a public cloud?Steve: It's funny because as Will can attest, as we were going through and fundraising, the prevalent sentiment was, like, everything's going to the public cloud. As we're talking to the folks in the VC community, it was Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are going to own the entirety of compute. We fundamentally disagreed because, A, we've lived it, and b, we went out as we were starting out and talked to dozens and dozens of our peers in the enterprise, who said, “Our cloud ambitions are to be able to get 20, 30, 40% of our workloads out there, and then we still have 60, 70% of our infrastructure that is going to continue to run in our own data centers for reasons including regulatory compliance, latency, security, and in a lot of cases, cost.” It's not possible for these enterprises that are spending half a billion, a billion dollars a year to run all of their infrastructure in the public cloud. What you've seen on-premises, and it depends on who you're turning to, what sort of poll and research you're turning to, but the on-prem market, one is growing, which I think surprises a lot of folks; the public cloud market, of course, it's growing like gangbusters, and that does not surprise a lot of folks, but what we see is that the combined market of on-prem and cloud, you can call it—if on-premise on the order of $100 billion and cloud is on the order of $150 billion, you are going to see enormous growth in both places over the next 10, 15 years.These markets are going to look very, very small compared to where they will be because one of the biggest drivers of whether it's public cloud or on-prem infrastructure, is everything shifting to digital formats. The digitalization that is just all too commonplace, described everywhere. But we're still very, very early in that journey. I think that if you look at the global GDP, less than 10% of the global GDP is on the internet, is online. Over the coming 10, 20 years, as that shifts to 20%, 30%, you're seeing exponential growth. And again, we believe and we have heard from the market that is representative of that $100 billion that investments in the public cloud and on-prem is going to continue to grow much, much more as we look forward.Will: Steve, I really appreciate you letting listeners know how special a VC I am.Steve: [laugh].Will: [laugh]. It was really important point that I wanted to make sure we hit on.Steve: Yeah, should we come back to that?Will: Yeah, yeah yeah—Steve: Yeah, let's spend another five or ten minutes on that.Will: —we'll revisit that. We'll revisit that later. But when we're talking about the market here, one of the things that got us so excited about investing in Oxide is looking at the existing ecosystem of on-prem commercial providers. I think if you look at the public cloud, there are fierce competitors there, with unbelievably sophisticated operations and product development. When you look at the on-prem ecosystem and who you would go to if you were going to build your own data center today, it's a lot of legacy companies that have started to optimize more for, I would say, profitability over the last couple of years than they have for really continuing to drive forward from an R&D and product standpoint.Would love maybe for you to touch on briefly, what does competition for you look like in the on-prem ecosystem? I think it's very clear who you're competing with, from a public cloud perspective, right? It's Microsoft, Google, Amazon, but who are you going up against in the on-prem ecosystem?Steve: Yeah. And just one note on that. We don't view ourselves as competing with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. In fact, we are ardent supporters of cloud in the format, namely this kind of programmable API-fronted infrastructure as being the path of the future of compute and storage and networking. That is the way that, in the future, most software should be deployed to, and operated on, and run.We just view the opportunity for, and what customers are really, really excited about is having those same benefits of public cloud, but in a format in which they can own it and being able to have access to that everywhere their business needs to run, so that it's not, you know, do I get all this velocity, and this innovation, and this simplicity when I rent public cloud, or do I own my infrastructure and have to give up a lot of that? But to the first part of your question, I think the first issue is that it isn't one vendor that you are talking about what is the collection of vendors that I go to to get servers, software to make my servers talk to each other, switches to network together these servers, and additional software to operate, and manage, and monitor, and update. And there's a lot of complexity there. And then when you take apart each one of those different sets of vendors in the ecosystem, they're not designing together, so you've got these kind of data boundaries and these product boundaries that start to become really, really real when you're operating at scale, and when you're running critical applications to your business on these machines. And you find yourself spending an enormous amount of the company's time just knitting this stuff together and operating it, which is all time lost that could be spent adding additional features to your own product and better competing with your competitors.And so I think that you have a couple of things in play that make it hard for customers running infrastructure on-premises, you've got that dynamic that it's a fractured ecosystem, that these things are not designed together, that you have this kit car that you have to assemble yourself and it doesn't even come with a blueprint of the particular car design that you're building. I think that you do have some profit-taking in that it is very monopolized, especially on the software side where you've only got a couple of large players that know that there are few alternatives for companies. And so you are seeing these ELAs balloon, and you are seeing practices that look a lot like Oracle Enterprise software sales that are really making this on-prem experience not very economically attractive. And so our approach is, hardware should come with all the software required to operate it, it should be tightly integrated, the software should be all open-source. Something we haven't talked about.I think open-source is playing an enormous role in accelerating the cloud landscape and the technology landscapes. We are going to be developing our software in an open manner, and truly believe whether it's from a security view through to the open ecosystem, that it is imperative that software be open. And then we are integrating the switch into that rack-level product so that you've got networking baked in. By doing that, it opens up a whole new vector of value to the customer where, for example, you can see for the first time what is the path of traffic from my virtual machine to a switchboard? Or when things are not performing well, being able to look into that path, and the health, and see where things are not performing as well as they should, and being able to mitigate those sorts of issues.It does turn out if you are able to get rid of a lot of the old, crufty artifacts that have built up inside even these commodity system servers, and you are able to start designing at a rack level where you can drive much better power efficiency and density, and you bake in the software to effectively make this modern rack-level server look like a cloud in a box, and ensure these things can snap together in a grid, where in that larger fleet, operational management is easy because you've got the same automation capabilities that the big cloud hyperscalers have today. It can really simplify life. It ends up being an economic win and maybe most importantly, presents the infrastructure in a way that the developers love. And so there's not this view of the public cloud being the fast, innovative path for developers and on-prem being this, submit a trouble ticket and try and get access to a VM in six days, which sadly is the experience that we hear a lot of companies are still struggling with in on-prem computing.Jason: Practically, when you're going out and talking to customers, you're going to be a heterogeneous environment where presumably they already have their own on-prem infrastructure and they'll start to plug in—Steve: Yeah.Jason: —Oxide Computer alongside of it. And presumably, they're also to some degree in the public cloud. It's a fairly complex environment that you're trying to insert yourself into. How are your customers thinking about building on top of Oxide Computer in that heterogeneous environment? And how do you see Oxide Computer expanding within these enterprises, given that there's a huge amount of existing capital that's gone into building out their data centers that are already operating today, and the public cloud deployments that they have?Steve: As customers are starting to adopt Oxide rack-level computing, they are certainly going to be going into environments where they've got multiple generations of multiple different types of infrastructure. First, the discussions that we're having are around what are the points of data exfiltration, of data access that one needs to operate their broader environment. You can think about handoff points like the network where you want to make sure you've got a consistent protocol to, like, BGP or other, to be able to speak from your layer 2 networks to your layer 3 networks; you've got operational software that is doing monitoring and alerting and rolling up for service for your SRE teams, your operations teams, and we are making sure that Oxide's endpoint—the front end of the Oxide product—will integrate well, will provide the data required for those systems to run well. Another thorny issue for a lot of companies is identity and access management, controlling the authentication and the access for users of their infrastructure systems, and that's another area where we are making sure that the interface from Oxide to the systems they use today, and also resident in the Oxide product such as one wants to use it directly, has a clean cloud-like identity and access management construct for one to use. But at the highest level it is, make sure that you can get out of the Oxide infrastructure, the kind of data and tooling required to incorporate into management of your overall fleet.Over time, I think customers are going to experience a much simpler and much more automated world inside of the Oxide ecosystem; I think they're going to find that there are exponentially fewer hours required to manage that environment and that is going to inevitably just lead to wanting to replace a hundred racks of the extant commodity stack with, you know, sixty racks of Oxide that provide much better density, smaller footprint in the data center, and again, software-driven in the way that these folks are looking for.Jason: And in that answer, you alluded to a lot of the specialization and features that you guys can offer. I've always loved Alan Kay's quote, “People who are really serious about software make their own hardware.”Steve: Yeah.Jason: Obviously, you've got some things in here that only Oxide Computer can do. What are some of those features that traditional vendors can't even touch or deliver that you'll be able to, given your hardware-software integration?Steve: Maybe not the most exciting example, but I think one that is extremely important to a lot of the large enterprise company that we're working with, and that is at a station, being able to attest to the software that is running on your hardware. And why is that important? Well, as we've talked about, you've got a lot of different vendors that are participating in that system that you're deploying in your data center. And today, a lot of that software is proprietary and opaque and it is very difficult to know what versions of things you are running, or what was qualified inside that package that was delivered in the firmware. We were talking to a large financial institution, and they said their teams are spending two weeks a month just doing, kind of a proof of trust in their infrastructure that their customer's data is running on, and how cumbersome and hard it is because of how murky and opaque those lower-level system software world is.What do the hyperscalers do? They have incorporated hardware Root of Trust, which ensures from that first boot instruction, from that first instruction on the microprocessor, that you have a trusted and verifiable path, from the system booting all the way up through the control plane software to, say, a provisioned VM. And so what this does is it allows the rest of the market access to a bunch of security innovation that has gone on where these hyperscalers would never run without this. Again, having the hardware Root of Trust anchored at a station process, the way to attest all that software running is going to be really, really impactful for more than just security-conscious customers, but certainly, those that are investing more in that are really, really excited. If you move upstack a little bit, when you co-design the hardware with the control plane, both the server and the switch hardware with the control plane, it opens up a whole bunch of opportunity to improve performance, improve availability because you now have systems that are designed to work together very, very well.You can now see from the networking of a system through to the resources that are being allocated on a particular machine, and when things are slow, when things are broken, you are able to identify and drive those fixes, in some cases that you could not do before, in much, much, much faster time, which allows you to start driving infrastructure that looks a lot more like the five nines environment that we expect out of the public cloud.Jason: A lot of what you just mentioned, actually, once again, ties back to that analogy to the iPhone, and having that kind of secure enclave that powers Touch ID and Face ID—Steve: Yep.Jason: —kind of a server equivalent, and once again, optimization around particular workflows, the iPhone knows exactly how many photos every [laugh] iOS user takes, and therefore they have a custom chip dedicated specifically to processing images. I think that tight coupling, just relating it back to that iOS and iPhone integration, is really exciting.Steve: Well, and the feedback loop is so important because, you know, like iPhone, we're going to be able to understand where there are rough edges and where things are—where improvements can even can continue to be made. And because this is software-driven hardware, you get an opportunity to continuously improve that artifact over time. It now stops looking like the old, your car loses 30% of the value when you drive it off the lot. Because there's so much intelligent software baked into the hardware, and there's an opportunity to update and add features, and take the learnings from that hardware-software interaction and feed that back into an improving product over time, you can start to see the actual hardware itself have a much longer useful life. And that's one of the things we're really excited about is that we don't think servers should be commodities that the vendors are trying to push you to replace every 36 months.One of the things that is important to keep in mind is as Moore's laws is starting to slow or starting to hit some of the limitations, you won't have CPU density and some of these things, driving the need to replace hardware as quickly. So, with software that helps you drive better utilization and create a better-combined product in that rack-level system, we think we're going to see customers that can start getting five, six, seven years of useful life out of the product, not the typical two, or three, or maybe four that customers are seeing today in the commodity systems.Will: Steve, that's one of the challenges for Oxide is that you're taking on excellence in a bunch of interdisciplinary sciences here, between the hardware, the software, the firmware, the security; this is a monster engineering undertaking. One of the things that I've seen as an investor is how dedicated you have got to be to hiring, to build basically the Avengers team here to go after such a big mission. Maybe you could touch on just how you've thought about architecting a team here. And it's certainly very different than what the legacy providers from an on-prem ecosystem perspective have taken on.Steve: I think one of the things that has been so important is before we even set out on what we were going to build, the three of us spent time and focused on what kind of company we wanted to build, what kind of company that we wanted to work at for the next long chunk of our careers. And it's certainly drawing on experiences that we had in the past. Plenty of positives, but also making sure to keep in mind the negatives and some of the patterns we did not want to repeat in where we were working next. And so we spent a lot of time just first getting the principles and the values of the company down, which was pretty easy because the three of us shared these values. And thinking about all the headwinds, just all the foot faults that hurt startups and even big companies, all the time, whether it be the subjectivity and obscurity of compensation or how folks in some of these large tech companies doing performance management and things, and just thinking about how we could start from a point of building a company that people really want to work for and work with.And I think then layering on top of that, setting out on a mission to go build the next great computer company and build computers for the cloud era, for the cloud generation, that is, as you say, it's a big swing. And it's ambitious, and exhilarating and terrifying, and I think with that foundation of focusing first on the fundamentals of the business regardless of what the business is, and then layering on top of it the mission that we are taking on, that has been appealing, that's been exciting for folks. And it has given us the great opportunity of having terrific technologists from all over the world that have come inbound and have wanted to be a part of this. And we, kind of, will joke internally that we've got eight or nine startups instead of a startup because we're building hardware, and we're taking on developing open-source firmware, and a control plane, and a switch, and hardware Root of Trust, and in all of these elements. And just finding folks that are excited about the mission, that share our values, and that are great technologists, but also have the versatility to work up and down the stack has been really, really key.So far, so great. We've been very fortunate to build a terrific, terrific team. Shameless plug: we are definitely still hiring all over the company. So, from hardware engineering, software engineering, operations, support, sales, we're continuing to add to the team, and that is definitely what is going to make this company great.Will: Maybe just kind of a wrap-up question here. One of the things Jason and I always like to ask folks is, if you succeed over the next five years, how have you changed the market that you're operating in, and what does the company look like in five years? And I want you to know as an investor, I'm holding you to this. Um, so—Steve: Yeah, get your pen ready. Yeah.Will: Yeah, yeah. [laugh].Steve: Definitely. Expect to hear about that in the next board meeting. When we get this product in the market and five years from now, as that has expanded and we've done our jobs, then I think one of the most important things is we will see an incredible amount of time given back to these companies, time that is wasted today having to stitch together a fractured ecosystem of products that were not designed to work together, were not designed with each other in mind. And in some cases, this can be 20, 30, 40% of an organization's time. That is something you can't get back.You know, you can get more money, you can—there's a lot that folks can control, but that loss of time, that inefficiency in DIY your own cloud infrastructure on-premises, will be a big boon. Because that means now you've got the ability for these companies to capitalize on digitalizing their businesses, and just the velocity of their ability to go improve their own products, that just will have a flywheel effect. So, that great simplification where you don't even consider having to go through and do these low-level updates, and having to debug and deal with performance issues that are impossible to sort out, this—aggregation just goes away. This system comes complete and you wouldn't think anything else, just like an iPhone. I think the other thing that I would hope to see is that we have made a huge dent in the efficiency of computing systems on-premises, that the amount of power required to power your applications today has fallen by a significant amount because of the ability to instrument the system, from a hardware and software perspective, to understand where power is being used, where it is being wasted.And I think that can have some big implications, both to just economics, to the climate, to a number of things, by building and people using smarter systems that are more efficient. I think generally just making it commonplace that you have a programmable infrastructure that is great for developers everywhere, that is no longer restricted to a rental-only model. Is that enough for five years?Will: Yeah, I think I think democratizing access to hyperscale infrastructure for everybody else sounds about right.Steve: All right. I'm glad you wrote that down.Jason: Well, once again, Steve, thanks for coming on. Really exciting, I think, in this conversation, talking about the server market as being a fairly dynamic market still, that has a great growth path, and we're really excited to see Oxide Computer succeed, so thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us.Steve: Yeah, thank you both. It was a lot of fun.Will: Thank you for listening to Perfectly Boring. You can keep up the latest on the podcast at perfectlyboring.com, and follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll see you next time.

I have had my head down working on some big things, and it has been a while since you heard from me. Well, I'm getting back to it with a follow-up chat with Toby Bowers, the Leader of the Microsoft Bizapps ISV Program. I managed to catch him in his car, and got a great update on some new things happening in the ISV arena. Enjoy! Transcript Below: Toby: Hi, this is Toby. Steve: Hey Toby, Steve Mordue, how's it going? Toby: Hey, Steve. I'm doing well. Thanks. How are you? Steve: Not too bad. I catch you at a decent time? Toby: You've caught me at a fine time. I'm actually in the car at the moment. I'm just taking my team out for a little celebratory launch after our big Inspire event and also our Ready event earlier this week. So it's actually a good time. Let me just pull over so we can have a chat. Steve: It's Been a pretty frantic couple of weeks for you guys. Toby: Frantic, but good. Yeah. Yeah. We had a great showing at Inspire. We made some exciting announcements across the business applications business, but especially around our ISV program, ISV Connect, as you and I have chatted about before. So, it's been good. Steve: Well that's [crosstalk 00:00:50]- Toby: How about you [crosstalk 00:00:51]. Steve: [crosstalk 00:00:51] the reason for my call is to try and catch up on ISV Connect. We talked some time ago about some things that you kind of had just inherited this role from Googs who moved on and were kind of getting your feet wet. Now you've had a close to a year in this position, right? Toby: Yeah, that's right. That's right. I remember our initial chat and I think in fact I'm guilty, Steve, because we agreed to speak a little bit more often, but it's been an interesting year this past year, as we all know, but yeah, it's been almost a full year of execution since we last spoke and I even remember Steve, the nice article you wrote with some suggestions for me as I sort of took over. Toby: Yeah, I'd love to actually go back to that. We can talk about a little bit about some of the enhancements and announcements that we made last week. Steve: Yeah. I mean last week, I think for a lot of the ISV's that they weren't thrilled with some things as the program got launched, they were starting to kind of get their arms around it. But some of these announcements that I was hearing and hopefully we can talk about today, anything of course isn't NDA, I think should make the ISV community pretty happy. It's making me pretty happy. And really kind of throw some gas on that fire. Toby: Yeah. Well, absolutely. I'd love to reinforce it. I know, I know you get a lot of people listening to your impromptu calls here. So why don't I do this? Let me maybe just set a little bit of context, just kind of where we left off Steve, and then I can hit on the high notes of what we announced and then we can dive into any particular areas. That sound all right? Steve: Yeah. You are pulled over, right? Toby: I am pulled over now, yes. Steve: Okay. Toby: You got my full attention. Steve: All right sure, kind of hit some of the highlights. Toby: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, for those who don't know, we originally set out with the ISV Connect program a couple of years ago to attract ISV's to our platform, building and extending upon it. That platform being both Dynamics 365 and the power platform with a specific focus on partners who had great industry or vertical IP to enhance the portfolio and delivering better value to our joint customers. So through the program itself, it's a revenue share program and we reinvest back in the ecosystem in the form of platform benefits, go to market benefits, co-selling with our field. Toby: So when I sort of took over Steve, I wanted to sort of get a full year of execution in place. And in that first year we were pretty happy with the numbers. We have over 700 ISV's enrolled in the program. Now we use AppSource as sort of the cornerstone of the program. We have, we have 1400 apps or more certified in AppSource. But after that first year, I really with the team wanted to understand how things were landing, and I think your feedback was good Steve. We did a bunch of research. We do partner satisfaction surveys. I of course talked to a lot of partners in my travels. Steve: [crosstalk 00:03:59] in a year's time, you can kind of get a pretty good gauge on what was working well? What could work better? What wasn't working well? What do we need to just abandon? What do we need to step on? And I kind of got the feeling that was this readjustment that we just saw was kind of bringing some of those things to light. Toby: That's exactly right Steve. I mean, it's such a diverse ecosystem of emerging partners to large mature partners across a pretty vast portfolio. So, it was a diverse set of feedback, but you're spot on. We wanted to give it a little bit of time, but then check in and listen and make some adjustments. So that's what we did, based on a lot of the feedback we got. Toby: I'd sort of summarize what we changed in three big areas Steve, the first is that the business model itself, the fee structure, and we talked about this last time, but not only having an investible model where you can reinvest, but actually investing in the ecosystem, especially as it's growing like this business is growing. Toby: The second thing was a lot of feedback around the go to market, whether it was the marketing benefits, the co-selling with our field, really just getting that value proposition right Steve, and really delivering on the promise we made. We needed to balance that equation a little bit and equalize the effort. Toby: And then the third piece is really around the platform itself. And again, we've talked about this in the past, but just the platform, the tooling, dev test environments, app sources, and marketplace itself. Toby: So those were the three key areas that we sort of listened and got a lot of good feedback around. So with that in mind, what we actually announced at the event is that first of all, back on the business model we're significantly reducing the rev share fees down from 10 and 20%, which you might recall, we had a standard tier and a premium tier. So we were bringing those fees down from 10 and 20% to 3%, just a flat 3% going forward. Steve: That's across the board? Toby: That's across the board. And in fact, it was part of a broader announcement we made as Microsoft, Steve, where we're also bringing our commercial marketplace fees, so that's both Azure Marketplace and app sources. We get transact capabilities down to that same flat 3%. Steve: So what's the motivation behind that? I mean, what is it that they're hoping that will accomplish for Microsoft? Toby: Yeah, it's interesting. If you catch any of the sessions, even starting with Satya, he really talks about Microsoft wanting to be the platform for platform creators. And then if you parlay that into what Nick Parker said and Charlotte Marconi around being the best platform for partners to do business on, it really just came down to helping the partners keep more of their margin to invest in their growth. Toby: So it's not a P&L, a profit center for Microsoft. It's a way to deliver benefits. We think it's pretty differentiated in the market compared to some of our peers. And it was sort of interesting to see, because we were planning on bringing the fees down for ISV Connect specifically, and then we started to align across the organization and just thought, gosh, we should just do this in a very consistent way across the entire Microsoft Cloud with that one flat 3%. Steve: So the math equation had to work out something like, if we dropped this to 3%, that's going to grow that side of the business significantly, which is going to increase platform sales, right? There has to be an up for the down. And I guess maybe... I mean, not that the platform wasn't already growing by leaps and bounds, but somebody must've been thinking this thing can grow a lot faster if we get rid of some of these hurdles. Toby: You're exactly right. I mean, it's kind of what we've talked about in the past. Just the value that an ISV ecosystem brings to Microsoft with that, whether it's the industry relevance, industry specific IP, or just a growing ecosystem in general. I don't know if you'd caught what we just did, our earnings earlier this week, but Dynamics 365 is growing 43% year over year, we doubled our power apps customer base. And so to your point, the business is growing, the platform is growing, and we want the ecosystem to grow and we want to attract as many partners to do that as possible. Steve: So, I mean, you can't reduce fees and increase the benefit, you have to have taken some things away or maybe gotten rid of some things that weren't being utilized, or how did that kind of offset? Toby: Yeah. Great question. Yeah, so we are investing deliberately to build this out and kind of putting our money where our mouth is, but we did, you're spot on. We learned a lot around the benefits, the go to market benefits in particular, the second key thing we announced is that we are reducing just down to one tier at that flat 3%. So no more 10% and 20% or a standard and a premium tier. And we're reducing the thresholds within that one tier for partners to unlock those go to market benefits and those marketing benefits. And then what I heard, especially from partners, again, to my point around, you've got some mature partners and some emerging partners, it's not a one size fits all. And so we've got an option sort of an, a lA carte, option for partners to choose marketing benefits that make the most sense for their business. So we just tried to simplify things and streamline things a little bit. Steve: You know, I talked to a lot of partners. We're, kind of unique in that our application is free. So, the revenue shared didn't really come into play for what we were doing because there wasn't a fee for our app or any recurring services with it. But you know, a lot of these ISV's their business is significantly different. They've got revenue generating applications that run on top of your platform. Many of them that kind of told me in confidence that they just weren't paying the fees. They were getting the notice from Microsoft saying, "Hey, please do us a favor and tell us how much money you've made and what you owe us." And many of them were just kind of ignoring that. Steve: I guess if we're getting down into a 3% range, it'd probably make it a little easier for some people to be more honest about things too you think? Toby: Yeah. Well, yeah we hope so. Again, that was kind of my point around balancing the equation and making sure that we're delivering on the promise that we set out with the program itself. And I talked to a lot of partners as well, and there's definitely benefit being realized, whether it's from a marketing perspective or co-selling with our field, again, based on what's important to their business, but you're right, we do think by reducing it to this level and also just getting better at delivering the benefits in a consistent way, we'll have more partners participating in the program. Toby: The one thing I would say, Steve, that I was just going to close off on with this sort of consistency across Microsoft is we also realized that's our value proposition. If we can not only have a similar model with the 3% marketplace fee and ISV Connect fees across Microsoft, but a similar model to the way we deliver those benefits, to the way we engage with technical resources or engage from a co-selling perspective across Azure Teams and 365 Dynamics Power Platform, that's kind of how we differentiate ourselves versus, the rest of the players out in the market. Toby: So we made a bunch of enhancements and announcements across the business Azure teams, ISV Connect obviously, and you'll see us continue to sort of work towards a much more consistent approach from a Microsoft Cloud perspective, because obviously we'd love it if partners were integrating with Teams. We have over 250 million monthly active users with Teams now driving dynamics integrations all the way through to CDM and Dataverse and integration into Azure Synapse. Those are the partners we want to work with and the type of partners we want to support and go to market with. Steve: Well, I'll tell you, I think the 3% has probably eliminated a hurdle for a partner, certainly I remember at the time a lot of partners complaining about the 10 and 20 saying things like, "If it was like three." Okay, well it's three now, so shut up and move forward. Toby: Yeah. We've had a lot of- Steve: And it's interesting, because it's kind of the way we sell is I guess for an industry ISV who built something specifically for Dynamics 365, maybe they approach things a little different. Our approach is more, we really try and sell the potential of the platform because we've got a simple CRM. So we're up against a lot of competing simple CRMs. And when you open one of their CRMs and open, rapid start, for example, they look very similar and do very similar things. So for us, we really have to sell the value proposition of, hey, behind that little CRM that you're using from Acme Cloud CRM company is really nothing. You've got the extent of what you can do with that right there in front of you and there's nothing more that can be done, and we really lean in hard on the potential for things like integration with Teams, with things like integration with Azure. Steve: Obviously the integration with Microsoft 365, all of the pieces that are available in the power platform that we haven't enabled in our app that are there to be enabled, you like the forums and some of the AI stuff, it definitely seems to be a huge differentiator in that sales conversation. Toby: Yeah. Well, that's great to hear that's really what we're trying to get right and stitch together the teams if they exist across Microsoft and iron those out. I think your company is a great example of that Steve, and I know you talked to a bunch of our partners and sort of as an independent third party, we had a few partners join us at inspire. Icertis has been a longstanding partner of ours. They're a similar story from, from Azure Dynamics Teams really across the board, and getting more and more focused on industry solutions with their particular IP. Toby: And then we had more emerging partners like Karma, Frank at Karma talked to us about some of the benefits we're building into the platform, specifically license management, and now he's taken advantage of that. And we have big partners like Sycor, that's been working with us for a long time on the Azure side of the business and is doing some really interesting things now on the dynamic side and sees value in that co-sell motion. Toby: So I think that value prop is what we're trying to land, and then we're seeing lots of different types of partners take advantage of it in different ways, which is great to see. Steve: Yeah, it's not often that you see both a cost of participation come down and the value of the benefits go up. And when we talk about benefits, and before, you and I have talked about some of these go to market benefits, there's a segment of ISV's that could make use of those probably mostly new ISV's that don't really understand that system. Steve: But for a lot of the ISV's, they really didn't see value there, but in the meantime they're maintaining their own licensing systems and their own transaction systems and things like that, which as an ISV, that's just like a tax. You're building your solution to solve a particular problem, but you can't just stop after you built this wonderful solution, you got to protect it, you got to monetize it. So those things ended up being just kind of attacks. Steve: And, every ISV out there has had to kind of build their own system for licensing and transacting. And you guys coming through now recently here would be with the licensing capability we were in that pilot, and that thing's got some great potential, a couple of things left for them to do on that to get that really where it's going to solve a lot of problems that ISV's have had, even with their own licensing. Steve: Because with your own external licensing system, you can only do so much, but working with one that's on the platform, that's essentially the same one you guys are utilizing, is going to be huge for ISV's, and then we'll get to transactability, that's just going to close another piece that ISV's have had to deal with, especially when you talk about those startup ISV's, they know an industry and they can build an app, but when it comes to licensing and transacting, and if they can just tick a button and plug right into a couple of those things, that's going to lower the bar to entry and make it a lot easier for some of those folks to get in I think. Toby: Yeah, I hope that you're right Steve, in fact, I didn't know you were working with Julian Payor and the team on piloting the license management stuff. It's great to hear your feedback. That was kind of the whole intent with the journey. If I rewind a bit with AppSource itself, you'll recall we had to do quite a bit of work on the overall user experience for AppSource. We worked hard with the engineering team to improve that, improve discoverability and search capabilities and just sort of the plumbing underneath. And then the next step was, was licensed management, which we've just GA'd working again with the engineering team, and then from there, to your point, the value proposition, a lot of ISV's put all this together and then you add transactability and the ability to actually sell your stuff on our marketplace to what's now more than 4 million monthly shoppers, going to that destination is it is definitely a point of value that I've heard positive feedback from ISV's on. Toby: So that's why we really invested there. I know it's taking us a little bit of time to get there, but that was another key announcement. We announced license management later in the fiscal year. We'll have translatability and AppSource for our customer engagement apps, for power apps, and then we'll continue to roll out a roadmap from there. Toby: And then the other piece I forgot to mention Steve, we made some noise about as well, was these new sandbox environments. And I know you've given me this feedback before, but you know, sort of in the broader internal use rights world, the value in having sandbox environments for our partners to do dev tests and do customer demos around, I heard loud and clear from you and from other partners. And so that's the other thing we announced. We have these new discounted skews, which are basically just at cost skews across the business for those dev test environments. And then for partners who are participating in ISV Connect and hitting those new lower reduced rev share thresholds, we'll provide those licenses for free. Toby: So we think that's going to be a great new benefit for partners as well, more on that technical and platform side of things. Steve: Yeah. Particularly for the ISV's, because ISV's don't necessarily see a lot of value or need to get Microsoft competencies. Competencies are definitely, as a program that was designed for resellers to demonstrate their competence. But a lot of ISV's don't want to have a need for that. And that's where [inaudible 00:19:22] had historically kind of been tied was to those competencies. Steve: So is there any talk about any sort of... I mean, they did do that kind of short-lived ISV competency, which was primarily around, hey, if you've got an app in AppSource you qualify. Here's some IUR. Steve: So this new program will replace that, but are they going to be revisiting any sort ISV competencies or need? Toby: Yeah, well I won't say too much as far as future plans are concerned, but what I can say Steve is that we did this for biz apps, we did it for ISV Connect because that's our program and we got feedback and we think there's value in that. Toby: I did mention that going forward we'll have a more consistent approach across Microsoft Cloud. There's lots of different benefits out there. Azure Credits, we announced some new things around Teams. And so we just need to, as one Microsoft, provide that to our partners in a consistent delivery through these benefits so that we can support that kind of value proposition we talked about earlier. So look for more from us in that area. You're spot on, on the competency side. And I wouldn't even say resellers, I'd say more SI, system integrators services partners. Steve: Yeah. Toby: The key difference there is, we want those guys to be able to differentiate their organization. As a company, you can say, "I've got 15 certified individuals in this role-based certification. And I've got this many credits to my business that make me a gold partner at an organization level"- Steve: Which is something a customer looking at SI would be looking for. Toby: Right. Steve: But when you're looking at an ISV solution, they're really just looking at the functionality. Toby: It's the app, right? You would want to badge in app versus badge and organization. And so that's the key difference there. And I think we've kind of figured that out and again, you'll see us do more in that space going forward. Steve: Yeah. I just want to mention, just go back for a second to make sure everybody is aware that the transactability and the licensing are optional. These are things that you can take advantage of if you spend a ton of money on your own systems, nobody's going to expect you to rip and replace. These are really designed for... I mean when I think of a partner like myself, if I can get out of the license management and have transactability just be automatic, where all I really have to do is focus on building my IP, getting it in AppSource, hopefully promoting it properly, but then the licensing becomes automatic and the transactability becomes automatic, and I'm just getting money coming into my account. Of course, you guys are scraping your 3%, which I don't begrudge because your given me those tools. That just makes things a lot easier. Toby: That's right. And you're right, it's not mandatory. It's again what makes sense for the partner. And so, you can do business with us and ISV Connect outside of the marketplace and work with us on the new 3%, get those benefits, or you can transact in the marketplace, it's that same 3%. And it's a different benefit. You get that whole commerce system, you get that whole billing engine. You don't have to worry about that. And there's a lot of ISV's out there that see value in that. So yeah, you're spot on. Steve: Yeah. I remember Goose had kind of recharacterized the revenue share after the kind of flap up from some of the ISV's about the benefits and stuff and he recharacterized it as a cost for the use of the platform that you're building on top of a platform that Microsoft has built, Microsoft maintains, Microsoft advances. So look at that as a cost for that. And I think you still kind of need to look at that as a cost for that. It's not 3% for licensing and transactability, it's a cost for maintaining the platform, there's these pieces you can take advantage of or not. But if you're not taking advantage of license management, transactability, it doesn't mean you don't have to pay the fee. You're paying the fee for something else. Toby: Yeah. Steve: I'm trying to head off some things I know I may hear from some folks [inaudible 00:23:24] licensing. No, no, no. Toby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. You're right, Steve, and again, to zoom back out again, I mean, it's not about the 3%, it's about attracting partners to build on the broader Microsoft Cloud and supporting their business in a way that works for them. And you're right, there is a cost of doing that, but we want to invest, and I think we just sent a message hopefully to the market that we want to be aggressive in this space, we think we're well positioned, we've got a great value proposition with this broader Microsoft Cloud thing that we're just seeing incredible growth across the business. Toby: And I guess most importantly, we're listening back to that, after a full year, really sort of staying in tune to feedback from partners like yourself, that [inaudible 00:24:07] at large to make sure that we're doing the right thing and delivering, that's kind of what was most important to me. Steve: So those discounted skews for ISV's, in order to qualify for that, what do they need to do? They need to join ISV Connect? Toby: Yeah. So the discounted licenses, which are again, just basically at cost for us, are available to anyone who's enrolled in ISV Connect. All you need to do is enroll in the program, but then if you hit the new reduced rev share threshold that sort of unlocks additional benefits, then we'll give those licenses to you for free. And I can't here in the car, remember all the details of the numbers and stuff like that, I think, and you probably have it. I think aka.ms.bizapp.ISV connect, I think that's a link to our website that has all the benefit details and stuff, but that's basically the way it works. Steve: Are those available today? Toby: They are. There's a whole bunch of them available today and there's more coming. I know that the sales service, field service, marketing, I think the customer insights products, maybe commerce, I might be forgetting a few others and then there's more coming down the pike shortly. Steve: All right. So a good reason for people to go back to revisit ISV Connect site if they haven't in a while. Toby: I would love that. Yeah, I think so. If we can get people to go back and like you said, revisit, just get educated, hopefully get re-engaged and then keep the feedback coming. That's a great outcome. Steve: So I've had a few ISV's asking me about what's the future of ISV Embed, and maybe you can speak to that because that one's kind of a little vague, I think, for a lot of folks right now. Toby: Yeah. It's a great question Steve, that's kind of next, next on our list. And again, today I can't share a lot of specifics, but this is a good topic for us to come back to probably in our regular chats. Toby: As you know, Cloud Embed is a model that supports kind of like an OEM like model where a partner's just packaging their IP directly on the underlying license and selling it together through our ISV Cloud Embed program, which leverages our CSP vehicle as a way to transact. And so we've had it out there for a couple of years. And I may have mentioned before that we're sort of modernizing a whole bunch of our commerce capabilities and new business models and so we're working on a few different options still to support that embed scenario where things like co-selling with our field or certain other marketing benefits aren't the most important thing for a particular ISV in a particular scenario, they don't want to have to mess with reselling the underlying dynamics license. They're not resellers. They just want to sell their IP. Steve: Yeah. Toby: So we're working on some stuff there, especially, on both the core dynamics business and the power platform business. So we can stay in touch and I can come back to you for some feedback once we have more to share. Steve: Yeah. That, I mean, that program worked for a particular kind of an ISV. Toby: Yeah. Steve: A lot of the ISV's that have add on solutions that are not SI's, there's a partner already involved with a customer and they just want to sell their add on solution. Steve: Yeah. Licenses have probably already been sold by that partner. They don't want or need to get involved in that management of that sort of stuff. They just want to sell their IP. And then there's some ISV's that the customer is actually buying, which I think we're starting to see now. And I think I told you this before, one of the things that Salesforce had going for them with their ISV's was there were a lot of very robust ISV's that did a lot of direct marketing to customers about their solution and less so about the fact that it ran on Salesforce. Steve: Salesforce is this platform in the background, but this is what we're selling is this ISV solution, and in that scenario they own the customer because the customer wasn't buying Salesforce, they really were buying the solution to their problem for this ISV, and we hadn't seen as much of that on the dynamic side for a long time. It was definitely, you start with dynamics and then you add on ISV features and capabilities. But I think we're starting to see more of that, that holistic ISV solution that a customer is buying the solution that happens to run on the power platform or on dynamics. Toby: Totally. That's the scenario we see mutual opportunity in. That example, you said where the ISV owns the partner or the customer, the relationship with the customer, frankly that helps us reach more customers as Microsoft. And then if we provide that ISV still the underlying technology and the right business model to support their business, then that's goodness on both sides. So, that's exactly [crosstalk 00:29:10]. Steve: So that's the one where ISV Embed probably makes the most sense, , that type of partner. So we're starting to see more of them. Toby: That's great. That's great. Well, I always appreciate the feedback if you have any. So I'd love you to go through these new things in a bit more detail, and then send me your feedback and we can continue to keep the lines of communication open as always. Steve: I'm not letting you off just yet. I'm keeping you for a couple more. Toby: Oh man, I've got my team waiting, I'm hungry Steve. Steve: I just want to ask, "What is the most exciting thing you're seeing in the space coming soon that people should really be paying attention to?" I know we've got some things happening that aren't so much related to ISV, like the power platform pricing coming down, but what are some of the things that you're seeing in your group, or maybe some things that are already out there that you're feeling like ISV's are not understanding what this is obviously or they'd be all over it? Toby: Hmm. That's a great question. I'd say probably two things. One is, again, one of the big announcements we made at Inspire that wasn't necessarily related to ISV's or ISV Connect specifically, but what we announced with Teams where Teams users will now be able to sort of view and collaborate on Dynamics 365 records from directly within Teams. Toby: So this concept of collaborative apps you'll see, and that's at no additional cost. Obviously that concept you'll see us continue to do more around to bring that again, pretty large install base of Teams users that are out there, 250-million now, together with Dynamics, we think is sort of unique to our value proposition. So there was [crosstalk 00:30:58]- Steve: So this is somebody you think ISV's out there should definitely go do a little bit of investigating into the Team story? Toby: Yes, yes. Teams on the front end, it's such a large install base that we can take advantage of as partners. And then on the backend, I mentioned that again, power platform, Dataverse, leveraging our data services like Azure Synapse Analytics, again, stitching that all the way from the front end of the backend. We as Microsoft, we're really focused on that combined Microsoft Cloud story. And I think the partners that are recognizing that and investing in that with their own IP are the ones we're going to engage with and hopefully generate some good opportunity around. Toby: The second one, in that vein Steve, the second one I was going to say is just what we continue to do with our industry clouds. So we have cloud for healthcare out there at the moment, we've got financial services, manufacturing, retail, we announced the cloud for sustainability, we've got not-for-profit. So, these things continue to roll off the conveyor belt, but it's such a great opportunity. I was sort of surprised with how much interest we had from the ISV ecosystem around these industry clouds. Obviously as we build more industry IP, we need to sort of adjust our relationship with our partners who serve those industries, but there's still so much space to add, specific IP to that industry and work with some of those very credible industry partners that we were sort of talking about just a moment ago is a big place that we're going to invest going forward. So, that's an area I'd encourage people to keep a close eye on. Steve: Are you satisfied with the level of ISV engagement with the accelerators? Are they still kind of too many of them on the sidelines kicking or poking it with a stick or have we got enough of them actually coming in now that you're happy with that velocity? Or are you feeling like there's a bunch more that need to get in there? Toby: I think, first of all, we've evolved a bit from that original industry accelerator approach to now just real industry IP that we're building first party in these verticals that I mentioned. Obviously there's great partners out there that can work with us with those solutions to, like I said, have their IP built on that broader Microsoft Cloud. Industry clouds are just a great example of a Microsoft Cloud solution, frankly. And so to your question of, do we have enough partners there? You want to obviously get it right when you launch an offering like that with the right, frankly, small number of partners to complete the solution and have it be good and relevant and useful for customers, but the more the merrier around that investment. Toby: And so it's early days, Steve, we only have one industry cloud in market GA'd at the moment, but as I said, there's a lot more coming. So we want to make sure we're building the ecosystem around it pretty aggressively. Steve: Yeah. I mean, we've got partners of all sizes, so we got some big healthcare ISV's I'm sure engaged in some of the heavy lifting, but healthcare is an awfully big market, awfully big field, and there is spot, point solutions kind of across the healthcare organization that need to be filled by probably a smaller ISV's. So it seems like there's stuff across that whole thing. Toby: Yeah. Totally. There's plenty of opportunity and plenty of space around that. And even from a geographic perspective, I mean, different parts of the world have different regulatory requirements and are different, and so there's yeah, to your point, and that's what I was trying to articulate earlier. I think there's still just a massive opportunity for partners to work with us around those new offerings. Steve: Well, I know you've got to get to your thing. You've told me twice in the call, I appreciate you pulling the car over to chat with me to catch up. I just wanted to get some of this stuff out to the listeners about some of these changes that just occurred. Steve: And I'm definitely going to go through, like you said, and study it a little more closely and I'll reach out to you directly with some feedback and some thoughts and see if we keep this thing moving. Toby: Awesome. Well, Hey, I'm so glad you caught me, Steve. It's always a pleasure to catch up and have a chat, and yeah, please do go through it in some detail. Again, your feedback is important. Whole ecosystems feedback is super important to me, so I appreciate it. And yeah, it was great to catch up. Steve: All right man, talk to you soon. Toby: All right. Take care, Steve.

Connect with Steven Canyon: Text “KINETIC" to 844-844-0049  Website - https://stevencanyon.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/stevencanyon/ Clubhouse - @stevencanyon and @megancanyon Facebook - https://facebook.com/stevencanyonco =========================================== Podcast Notes Meg: Relationships, they can be so complicated, but things as a kinetic believer aren't supposed to be. So I think that's why, like you just said, it's one of the most difficult aspects of living from the higher self because if you have anything really hanging on, it's probably a person, it's probably a relationship that can't transition with you, but the love and the connection makes you want to bring them along to such a deep level. Steve: Well, the word force is interesting because force, yes, so the kinetic believer is using the power and authority of force, but towards self. Force being the determining factor for creating your own expectations. For again, celebration and being championed, and edified, and loved unconditionally. But the pressure of the expectation is put on self, and then therefore on all others and all things to conform respectfully, to the force that's being self-inflicted. And then the infliction of the force is an affliction toward all others.  If it's not something that they wish to conform with. Meg: When you approach, when you have the opportunity to enter into a new relationship, what are your requirements? When you think about your standards, what you require to form a new relationship, or to assess one that has been hanging around, what goes through your mind? What are the requirements for you to connect with people in that way? Steve: Well, the first thing to do is to recognize, first of all, we are all energy. Your energy, energetics, there is an energy to your form. In fact, what we see is not what really is. And so I protect energy, and you think in terms of being a higher form of energy, vibrating on a high level of energetics, which is positive energy. And in that we are all energy, energetics of a vibrational frequency, we can either increase in intensity of that vibrational frequency, or we are depleted. And you can feel that. When somebody is depleting the virtue of your energy because they're negative, and you feel weakened, and tired, and fatigued after spending time with them. So know that you're commuting energetically with, in other words, you're sharing the feelings, you're sharing emotionally with someone else when you befriend them, you spend time with them as a friend. It becomes imperative to myself and should all others that you choose wisely, people that are positive and encouraging, and celebrating, and championing, and edifying, you and themself. It first begins with the sense of self-love. If somebody is not unconditionally loving themself from this higher perspective, energetically, then it's impossible for them to do that for you as well. The person that shows up, "Hey, I've got to talk to you about all these problems," that's a negative ball of energy that's going to deplete the virtue of your energetics. Meg: Well, I feel like you just brought us across the finish line. And we got there because the idea of approaching this from the perspective and from the posture of energy, energetics, it cuts through all the nuance that we began by discussing. So yes, it is complicated, and yes, it is nuanced, if you're down there, in there, in the muck of it, micromanaging what he said, what she said, what they did. Did they return the phone call? All this mess, clear all that out with the concept you just gave us of energetics, approach it from that perspective, all your questions will be answered. Steve: It's only complicated when you are tempted to do the wrong thing. It's very easy to do the right thing. Say this out loud.  I'm living dreams with enthusiasm. The  little things in life are my satisfaction. I enjoy being surrounded by positive people. I love being surrounded by others who champion and encourage and celebrate themself. I am fearless. As I live my life with courage. I'm following after my best life.  And it is right now. I am not responsible for the world.  I am responsible to me and for me and my choices. I choose life and all that is good. Therefore, all that is good belongs to me. I am in love with me.  Because I've chosen to be.

My conversation with Steve Sims is a testament of what someone can do if they put their mind to it. He has created an incredible company, TheBluefish.com by literally making what would appear to most as impossible, a reality, hence the title of his book - "Bluefishing: The Art Of Making Things Happen" He ever says during our conversation that he hopes the fact that a brick layer from London could accomplish all of this, that you too can accomplish whatever you set out to do. You're going to love his sincerity and how "real" of a person he is. Literally what you hear and what you get and no bullshit! Enjoy!!! Joe Steve Sims: Founder and CEO Bluefish The Man Behind All Things Steve Sims Website: https://www.stevedsims.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevedsims/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stevedsims/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevedsims LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdsims/ Email: ask@stevedsims.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Today, my guest is Steve Sims. Steve, welcome to the show.   Steve: Now, thanks for having me.   Joe: Very excited man, I I've been following you for quite some time now. Do you like the title, The Real Life Wizard of Oz? This do you like that? I just want to know because I don't.   Steve: Now, when it came out, when when folks wrote a big article on me and they named like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, the article was fantastic. You know, the article I couldn't have done a better puff piece in a show of piece if I had done it myself. But then then they came up with the idea of Titli Me as Steve Sims, the real life Wizard of Oz. Now, this got a lot of people's attention, but at the end of the day, he was some dodgy pervert that didn't do anything to hide it behind a curtain. So I thought to myself, I'm not quite sure I like that. But, you know, people people I'm proud to say see to the essence of the imagination and the creativity and not the fact that he was a big forward.   Joe: Right. I want to go back a little bit, if you don't mind, I know there's so much I have to ask you, but I also wanted to lay the groundwork. So when anyone listens to this, they understand who you are and what you're about, where you came from. So it can you give how you became who you are today and what you do.   Steve: Yeah, very simply, I'm the same as everyone else, every entrepreneur in the planet started off by being pissed off about something, whether it be their finances, their life or something, the way it was being done. But I believe the entrepreneurs were kind of aggravation and it's aggravated oysters to make pose with. First of all, got to be pissed off about something. I was kicked out of school at 15 straight onto the building site in London, and that was my life. And I thought, really, you know, this is my dad, my uncle, my cousins, even my granddad in his 80s was on this building site. And I thought, this is my life now. Of course, I didn't have Instagram to tell me how inadequate my life was at the time, so I had nothing to gauge myself by. But, you know, I just thought there's got to be something else. And so, like every entrepreneur, we jump out of the frying pan into the volcano, you know, we just like, well, let's try it. And then we fail. And then we try something else and we fail at that. We gain all this education. I realized one thing that was my my my true north is a site. I was in the wrong room now as a as a bold bloke, British biker, all those bees. I was in a room with all of those people. You know, I remember going into into the pub at night and throwing the money on the table, knowing exactly how many babies you could afford to.   Steve: And maybe if you scratch get hold, you got two pennies, get one more on each hand out between everyone else. And I said to myself, is this it? And so I had to change the way I had to go into a room where people would demand themselves demanding more impact, demanding more income. And so I didn't know how to do it, but I ended up building up this Trojan horse. I ended up as a doorman of the nightclub, knowing where all the nightclubs were. Then I started to own my own parties. Then I started throwing parties for other people. Then I started managing other people's parties. And I went from closing down clubs in Hong Kong to working with someone on his Oscar party, the Kentucky Derby, the New York Fashion Week, the Palm Beach Polo. I ended up working for the biggest events in the planet, and one single film I always had was I would only ever invite rich people to these events. Why? Because I knew what people were like, because I was broke and broke. People can't afford shit. So I only I would only invite millionaires and billionaires. So I changed the room I was in. And the only reason I did it was because I wanted to walk up to someone rich and go, Hey, how come your filthy rich and I'm not. So I created my own firm in order to be able to ask that question.   Joe: It's so cold, before we go any further, I have to tell you, now that I'm sitting here across from you even virtually, that I love the way you express yourself and I love dealing with people who are down to earth and honest and say what's on their mind. And as you know, and you even have some of this on your website, there's so much fluff in the world today and there's so much of the facade of I am this person and I do all of this and I do all of that. And it's just nice to sit with a successful real person. And I really mean that. It just it's it's truly an honor to be sitting here talking with you.   Steve: Isn't that a shame, isn't   Joe: It   Steve: It?   Joe: Is,   Steve: Now,   Joe: It is.   Steve: Really, isn't it a shame that if you if you if you rewind and listen to it, don't thank me for being real? And therefore, all you're doing is validating that the rest of the planet is not. So it should be it should be something we take for granted, we should make someone go. Well, I know what that is all about, but we don't because people spend so much energy trying to be someone that not you never get to meet them. You go of these shields and as you say, there's these facades to navigate through all of these Almaz. And you're like, well, what's really about I made it. I made a decision very early on and I will get experience three seconds after we needed it. But I remember there was one point in my life that I woke up and like all entrepreneurs, we had that little nagging doubt, oh, should I really be doing this? Should I really look like this? Should I really sound like this and like a moron? I listen to it. And so I changed my persona and she tried to use big words. You know, I, I wore suits. I took my earrings out. I covered my tattoos. I became someone that I thought would be easier for you. What I ended up doing was I made it harder for you to understand me. But he was the weird thing. I had an expensive watch. And if anyone knows me, I'm in a black T-shirt and jeans. Every single time in my life, I ride motorcycles. I do not own a car. I collect motorcycles. I bought a collar this time, I bought a car, I bought made suits, I bought an expensive watch, and then I realized these will for you, I was trying to impress you and all of those trappings and trinkets of, wow, look at me, I've got money gained me.   Steve: And this is the doll thing. A lot of clients. And I was making more money with a lot of people I didn't like, I didn't like and I couldn't connect with. So I realized very early on that and this put me actually on a serious note, put me into a mass depression. Thankfully, I came out of the other side so to watch, got rid of the suit, got rid of the car on motorbikes ever since. I want to make it impossible for me to be misunderstood by you. OK, I want you to never be able to sit on a fence and go, well, what's this Steve Sims about? I want to make it so simple that you can go like some people. I would imagine some people on this podcast have gone down on that guy. I'm gone. And that's fine with billions of people in the planet. If a few bugger off after 30 seconds, Mumolo, could you still. Fine, but I want to make it very easy for you to know what side of the fence you want to jump on my side, be part of family and community and grow and get uncomfortable or go go about your way. Either way, fine. But there's nothing in the planet today where some fence sitters and I decided I'm going to make it very easy for you to make sure you know which side of the fence to be on.   Joe: Yeah, and it's true, I know where I stand with you, I can make a comment on your social media that you always write back. You always say thank you. You always say whatever you whatever. It's just it feels like a real relationship and it's and it's awesome. And that's the way it should be,   Steve: It   Joe: I   Steve: Should   Joe: Think   Steve: Be, yes,   Joe: Should be.   Steve: And go good, so everyone out that all you can with your people is you are you connecting with people as the person you think they want to see? It's a deep question, but stop spending any effort on trying to be someone you know.   Joe: I love it. Perfect. OK, so I know this is going to sound like rush to the audience, but I have you for such a little bit of time and I have a huge sheet of notes and things, and I have to ask you. So the book deal, so blue fishing, the art of making things happen. How did that deal come about? Like you said, and I think 20, 16 is when that book deal happened. How did they come to you and say, hey, why don't you take all your experiences and what you do and write a book? Is that what they basically said?   Steve: No,   Joe: Ok.   Steve: When when you actually start hanging around with people, different people that do things differently and opportunities come at you, OK? And I was at a party up in New York and I'm at the bar doing what I do, drink in old fashions and telling stories. And this this woman was introduced to me and it was a case of Steve telling the story about you. But you and Alan Jonel when you did this with the pope. So I just told a few stories and she came back to me and she said, you know, you should buy a book. Now, we've all heard that before. And I'm like a few days later, she actually contacted me. She was part of Simon and Schuster, one of the largest publishing houses in the planet. And she said, no, Susie, we want you to buy a book. We want you to buy a book on all the rich and powerful people all over the planet you deal with and what you do. And I said, do you mind if I did that? I'd be dead by cocktail hour. So I can't do that. So then we got chatting and I did I did a speech for a friend of mine called Joe Polish at the Genius Network event, and it was like, hey, I got kicked out of school. But this is how I did this with the pope and Elon Musk. And they got wind of this this talk that I gave and came back to me about a week, like went, oh, hang on a minute.   Steve: We don't want you naming people. We want to know how a bricklayer from East London managed to do this, you know, and so was OK. That makes sense. So I did the book for a variety of reasons. One of them. Actually, both of them were completely selfish. Now that I think about it. Your kids are never impressed with you. It doesn't matter who you are. Your kids are never impressed with me being able to write a book. I'll be like, hey, kid, your dad's an author now, you know? And I just wanted to warn to book. So one of them was personal satisfaction to imitate the crap out of my three kids. The other selfish reason was to get people to stop thinking. Now, that seems the opposite of what everyone's trying to do. But haven't you noticed when someone said, hey, we should do this and they go, yeah, that's brilliant, let's build a business plan, let's do a vivid vision and let's do a forecast. Let's get an analytical survey. Let's do a crowdsourced. Shut up. Try it, see if you like it, see if someone wants to buy it. See if someone's got a problem that your mouth to try something. So I've always said, forget about you. I can't focus on you.   Steve: I can. And I thought to myself, if I can demonstrate in this book that a great line from London is doing this, then you're already out of excuses. So selfishly, I wanted to create a world that there were more doers than who is in the planet. There's a lot of who is out there. There's no substance. So selfishly, I wanted to piss the kids off on. I wanted to create more people to be aggravated enough to go. Well, I have it's dark. I can do it. And it came out, as you say, I got the deal in twenty sixteen book, came out in seventeen and I thought to myself, well and I got paid nicely so I thought, I don't know if anyone's going to believe it, I got to buy it. Because when you look at the industry of books, there's thousands of books coming out every week. And I thought and I know this is really going to appeal to anyone so suddenly. Schuster, they send me, which was weird because I'd always wired me my Bothaina, but they posted me a two and a half gram check and they said, we want you to go to Barnes and Noble and we want you to sit there with a pile of books and a couple of bottles of champagne and signed books. Now, is this is this a video podcast was just an audio podcast about.   Joe: It's both.   Steve: Ok, so for those people that don't have the pleasure of seeing me. Let's let's be honest, a Saturday afternoon when you're walking around with your kids, there is no way in God's green earth you're going to go, well, he looks nice and friendly. Let's go and find out while you're   Joe: The.   Steve: Going to avoid me like the plague. So I thought, I can't do that. I'm going to end up drinking. Champagne is all going to go well. So I thought to myself, no, not doing that. So I went down to a local whiskey bar and that that I happened to have frequented a couple of times. And I said, look, here you go. I'm going to sign this, check over to you and turn the lights on when we run out of money. And they went and saw I invited a bunch of my friends again, if you demand of you and your circle, you end up with pretty good friends so that everyone from like Jim Quico had a son and had a great, great and all. But Jesse and I had a whole bunch of really cool people that were in there that also have big followings and pretty well not invited to Lewis House, a whole bunch of people from there. And we literally just stuck a pile of books at the end of the bar because we were told we had to be a book launch and just basically go home for the night. And here's the funny thing. I never even had a website announced in this book, you know, because I've never done a book but called Insomnia Hotta, Sneaky Little Buggers that they are. They did a secret video of the night, which I was told was to get Bilo footage for a new video for Kolhatkar. They did this incredible, unbelievable video of my book launch and put into the music of Dreman by Eversmann is one of the best tunes in the planet and gave it to me. And it was tremendous. And what they did was they went around all of these people going, hey, what do you think of Steve doing this book? Now, if you go to Steve de Sims, don't come, you know, not trying to sell you anything.   Steve: But if you go to our website, we put the video on the front page of the website because Simon Schuster said you're not even not even promoting the book. You have to promote the book. So I went, oh, I'll stick this video up. Now, the video at the beginning, everyone's like, oh, it's such an honor to be here. Steve's done really well. He's what? It's all bullshit. It's all kind of like I'm sober and I'm on film, so I'm going to say something nice about him. And then as the video gets old, obviously the night gets old on the old fashions get going on and like with that bleep bleep bleep. Oh, bleep. And he's just to use it. And I just tell myself that's real. That's that's low people about a couple of drinks in him. And now that just kind of like screaming at me and swearing and I just thought, that's Leo. So I put that up. And the funny thing is that video. Launched it, people suddenly saw I wasn't trying to hide behind any kind of misconception of perfection, that this was as good as it gets. And now the book's been released and translated into Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Mandarin, Chinese, Korean. It's now Polish and it's now being translated into Russian. And it's called World Wide as a best seller. It's in credible how this is taken off and what it's done for me and for those people that I'm now able to communicate with, shake him up a little bit, get them uncomfortable, and then spit them out into the world to be more impactful.   Joe: Yeah, it's it's great and it's truly a Steve Sims book launch, like people should take note that that's why it's so cool to meet you and to be talking with you. It's like this real, real, real thing. And that's what I love. It's just it's completely refreshing. So ask why three times what does that mean?   Steve: We're in a world today where we're very scared of telling you what we want, you know, if you say to someone, hey, you win a million dollars this weekend, what are you going to do? They're going to go, oh, I'm going to get a Ferrari and I'm going to get a hot tub. And all of the Hawaiian Tropic goes are going to come and sit in the hot tub with me. And you gotta scrape. But three months down the line, what are you going to do? And then it's going to be things like, well, you know, my school, my kids school does no basketball court. I'd really like to help them. You see, people have a knee jerk answer and then they have the real core and people don't want to tell you what the core is. So this is what I do. People will say to me, and he's a chip on a trick for everyone out there, basic communication and in fact, is heavily used by the FBI. I know it sounds funny, but it is just the basics of communication. And when anyone ever says to you what they want, respond in the same right and tonality and speed that they've said. Now, let me give you an example. I really want to do this. And you go, oh, that's really fantastic. And then you drop it. You go, Oh, that's really fantastic. But why? And when you drop that tone.   Steve: They in their head, they go, oh, they recently bodily wise, if I sat in front of you, you know, the body language, you can see them like sink down a little bit more because the gods know up when the chest is out and it's all raw. But then they sink back and they go, oh, that's a good question. And they they then go, well, actually this happened. And in fact, probably rather than going on about that, I'll give you a story as an example, if I might. So I was working with John for about eight years, and we had an office at the time in Palm Beach and I wasn't in the office and I get this call come through to me from one of the team and they said, hey, Steve, we've got a guy on the phone from New York and he wants to meet some Elton John. You know, you need to speak to him because you're the one that's going over to be without one on that time. And I just found out what he wants. Right. So I answer the phone and I said, hey, hey, hey, hey. I want to get a picture out of John. Match the technology. Oh, that's fantastic, that's great. Why? So then he comes back with well, he's you know, he's one of the last living legends, he's an icon, he's brilliant. I want to get a photograph with him off my desk.   Steve: He's going to die soon. And, yeah, that's two things. One, there was no direct response to my question of why. And secondly, if, you know, if he never matched my knowledge, well, he carried on with his excitement. So I said to him, oh, that's fantastic. I'll come back to you. Let me see what I could do. And I hung up, never got his email, never got his phone number. There was no real driving call. It was all very superficial. OK, so then about a month later and we're about a month and a half away from the party now, one of the girls at the office contacted me. She said, hey, we got this guy from New York on the phone, wants to meet Elton John. I don't think it's the same guy as the other one because I already contacted him and said, we don't touch this guy. But I'm wondering if this is might this charter can I do it because you wouldn't respond to it? So in my head, I'm like, oh, well, I've got to get rid of this guy as well when I put me through New York and comes on the phone. Hey, how are you doing? I said, all right. You know, I hear you want to meet sound, John. He went, Yeah. What mean? So I want to have a chat with him. So I said, Oh, that's fantastic.   Steve: Brilliant. I said, Why? And he went, oh, and he had to think about it, but still had a bit of bravado about it, is that all? Well, he's a he's an iconic he's a legend. I want to meet him and have a chat. Going to get a picture with him. There's things. Now, I could see he was stumbling. So I said to him very quietly, and as Chris Voss says, you've midnight boys, I said to him. What things? And just shut up. And a different man came back on the phone. And this is all he said. So when I was a kid, my dad used to take me to school and he used to bring me back from school whenever my mom, it was always my dad, he'd take me to bring me back. Now, the car, we had a cassette player in it and the cassette was jammed and it was Elton John's greatest could play, but it couldn't eject. So all the way to school. We would be singing our lungs out to Elton John on the way back from school, we'd be singing our lungs out of Elton John now. Then he got a new column. This car had this CD player in it. So he bought Elton John's greatest hits. And again, we would sing our lungs out all the way to school and sing our lungs out on the way back. And then I started to get into high school for the first couple of years, he still had to take me and pick me up.   Steve: And I used to jump into that car so fast because he would have one job blaming before it even got in the car and I would stare out the window with mass embarrassment as my dad some his lungs out all the way home. And I would say to my mom, can you make you stop singing anyone jump a Clydeside just like she's thing and all the way to high school and all the way back, you will be like by sunlight, slam the door quickly so no one else can hear Elton John coming out of the door. He said that my dad died about twenty five years ago. I've got kids, I'm married, and I'll be traveling to work where we're going on a vacation, going down to take my wife out for dinner one night. He said the radio will be on, he said, and Elton John to come on the radio. You sit in for the next three and a half minutes, my dad is sat in the seat next to me blaring his lungs out to John. I want to thank him for bringing my dad back to me every now and then for three minutes at a time. That was it, there was the why, there was the call, he was too embarrassed to tell me that story at the beginning, so he hid behind the always great bring in all the bravado.   Steve: But you'd have never got to it if you hadn't have used you in a Sherlock and gone. Why what why is also the most aggressive, combative word out there? For some reason it pisses people off. I get people text me and DM me and Facebook message me and they go Sim's. I see you in L.A. I'm going to be in L.A. next week. We should get together for a beer. I want to buy you a steak and all I will respond with is why. And the amount of people get, well, I heard you acculturate the dick, you know, and they will get offensive and right. And then I'll get other people going. Good question. I wanted to discuss it. I want to talk about this. I wanted to bring this. I wanted to say thanks. And that is my wife. The older you get, the more you need the why. This guy was a perfect example without a job of what he's true. Why? What is true call was now with that. I was able to go to Elton John telling the story and got them to meet, and it was a very Tavey wonderful moment, this very powerful moment. But that was that was a perfect example of how the wide drives to the core. Without the coal, you haven't got a connection. It's all superficial.   Joe: Yeah, that's a great story. Gosh, the next one never be the first call.   Steve: Yeah, I'm really crappy introducing myself, and I also think it's pointless, so what I'll do is if I need to get in touch with you and I come in and I say, hey, you know, hey, how are you? My name's my name's Steve Sims. You know, we got a chat. I know the Pope and Elon Musk. Richard Branson. I'm a big deal. Can I be on your podcast? You're going to be like, this guy's a dick, you know, I want nothing to do with this guy, you're going to go straight past any of the information I've given you and just come to the assumption of a self promoting full of himself. Egotistical prick. Now, let's change it, let's say like next week, you're talking with one of your buddies and your buddy says, oh, have you heard about this guy called Steve Sims? He's worked with John Elon Musk. And the guy is a big deal. He says word for word what I said. But all of a sudden, you're now interested, you're kind of like, oh, you know, can you make an intro? And then when you do get to speak with me, I've already got all this credibility. So I haven't got to so much so I can be humble and sit and go, yeah, what do you want? Oh, I've got to focus. Well, let me see if I can do all of that shit, because I've already got the credibility. So I noticed years ago there is much more powerful and it's much more brief of a conversation if you're riding on someone else's credibility and connection and introduction.   Steve: So if I want to meet someone, I'll look at whoever else is in that circle, who do they respect and get them to make the introduction and then they will contact me. Oh, yeah. You know, Jimmy, tell me to call. You got you've done some weird things, though. Yeah, I have. But I want to do my next weird thing with you. I tell you what, so you can have that kind of conversation. If I'm at a party and someone stood next to me and they say, hey, what are you doing? Based on that body language, based on how they're asking the question will be based on how I respond. So I've said to people before, I own the valet company in this park and all the cars here, oh, I to work for the security. I'm undercover. I own a petrol station just down the road. I'll come up with all of those kind of things to find out. So did I want to stay there and still have a conversation? If they do, great. You know, but then is it something that I think I want to do business? I want to say actually, do you know the best thing? You know what? You over there. I'll get you a drink, you go nostalgia what I did. And then I'll get a job and of course, I want to be like, oh my God. And then of course, they'll be back down. Oh, yeah. And you'll have that kind of thing that I'm always very careful to be very calculated on how I get introduced and who introduces me.   Joe: Yeah, it's that theory of the circle of influence type thing, right, that for four, then three, then two, then one. And so the more you can have those people talk about you. By the time you reach the person in the middle that you eventually wanted to be, maybe introduced to or do business with you, you've been built up so big you don't have to say a word.   Steve: You have to say nothing. I've had people literally phone me going, Oh, Billy, Billy told me to give you a call and I'll be honest. How can I help you? And I haven't had to sell myself. I haven't had to talk about. I've had to do none of that. So if you become the solution to someone else's problem, you ain't got to worry about any of the shine.   Joe: Yeah, all right, so this is the last one of those three bullet points that I when I they caught my eye, I wanted to make sure I asked and you already alluded to this one, but you said, don't be easy to understand. Be impossible to misunderstand.   Steve: There's a confused client will never give you his checkbook, and so I noticed years ago that anyone that's ever heard the term, the big C. knows it stands for cancer. OK, the big C in business is confusion. So you say I alluded to earlier, you alluded it to even earlier than that.   Joe: Ok.   Steve: When you actually remove all the confusion with what it is you do and who you are. You make it very easy for the other person to now make an educated decision on whether or not you're the person they want to do business with, hang out with whatever. OK, so stop trying to confuse your clients. Here's the classic mistake. Hey, I've got a new business. Let me get a website. Let me get a guy to buy all the copy for the website with words that I could not even spell. I could not even say. But hey, they make me look smart and the person who reads it goes OK with this person's obviously ex a dictionary or, you know, was was was an English major in Oxford. And then they get you on the phone. You're like, Hello, Bob, how can I help you? And they go, well, hang on. I mean, there's a disconnect. And that's the problem. You want to make sure that you have full transparency, who you are, what do you stand for? What do you do? What is the solution that you provide to whose problem? So if you've got all of that transparency, you are impossible to misunderstand. But people try to be something they lean against cos they don't own. They take photographs on jets that have not left the runway. They talk a good talk of bullshit and bollocks and a distortion. And people look at you and here's the thing. You're never, never going to get someone phone you up. Hey, Steve, I was looking at your website. I'm really confused what it is you do. What is it you do? You're never going to get that.   Steve: People are going to they've got a problem. They need a solution. That's what being an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur. It's for people to outsource their problems to. And you then send them an invoice to do so. It's complicated, but that's the world of an entrepreneur. So if you make it very confusing as to who you are, what problems you solve, then you're not in business. And so that's why I'm a great believer that you've really got to focus on the clouting. I'll give you a classic one. People, if you if you open up your social pages, link to Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, whatever, and you look on there, you look on LinkedIn and you've got to you're going to sue on and you're all looking smart and debonair. And then you go over to Facebook and it's Girls Gone Wild, just sitting there with a mix on the edge of the beach. And, you know, your confusion people. And you never want to confuse people. And there's a lot of people out there I like to call them idiots. They look at LinkedIn and they go, well, you have to do that LinkedIn because it's more professional than Facebook. Facebook is the largest business advertising platform in the planet. So why is linked in the business, want to not know Facebook, that's the first thing. Secondly, because you are a genius and you think you have to be buttoned up on LinkedIn, but you can be in real bad Bahama shorts on Facebook. Why is it that Apple is not why is it that Nike is not, why is it the Samsung Chevrolet? Any brand out there is the exact same on thing as they are on Facebook as they are on Snapchat, as they are on Twitter? Why? Because you are who you are, why start confusing your clients by being two different people if you love wearing suits? I wear suits on all platforms.   Steve: If you love when Bahama shorts web Howard Schultz on a new platform, but don't be two different people. It breeds confusion and understand the social is nothing more than a platform of consumption. If I don't want to get too deep into it. But if you got 10 people together and you said, hey, what's the news tonight? And then we're going to talk about nine o'clock tomorrow. And nine o'clock tomorrow, you would still be talking about coronaviruses, potential riots. New laws coming in, you know, stimulus packages, the news would be exactly the same. But then if you ask those 10 people what news station did you look at that would go well, KTLA, ABC, CNN, BBC, these are all points of consumption for the same news as for social platforms or whatever you post on Facebook, post on LinkedIn, whatever is posted on LinkedIn, post on Twitter. This is nothing more than points of consumption. I know people that go, I don't want to watch Facebook, OK, whatever I'm posting on Facebook, I'm going to post on Twitter, so I'm still going to get you so. Don't change to be anybody, they're not the big brands don't do it, so why did your smart arse tell you that it's a good idea to do it makes   Joe: Right,   Steve: Them say.   Joe: And for everybody that's listening to this or eventually watching the YouTube video, the prime example is just go to your website, go to go to Steve's website, and you'll see that exactly the person you're seeing hearing here is exactly who's on that website. The tone of the copy that's on the website is you throughout the entire Web site.   Steve: And that's that's there's a lot of people that go and get copyright is OK. They miss the point and again, I don't want to get too deep into this, but they miss the point of what social and websites are for. That's a generally and ignite a conversation. So I thought I'd come to you and I start speaking Japanese to you, and you don't speak Japanese. End of conversation, if I get somebody to put together a copy onto my website that makes me sound articulate and overly smart and overly iino on everything, you may go or don't like the sound of this guy or worse, you might go. I like the sound of this guy. And then you reach out to me and you suddenly find that I am nothing like that person. So what you should do is download a copy, and I love copy, copyright is a great we going to copyright is not the time. I think everyone should look at copyrights in the future. But when you're doing basic critical copy for, like, your website. Puke, count your thoughts and then get somebody to tweak your thoughts, don't impose it, just correct the grammar, correct terminology, maybe reframing a bit, but that's what I did. I call it verbal puke. I will literally I'm one of the ways that I do it is I've got this thing like a smart phone, like everyone in the planet has one foot away from them. I record, I push the cord and I go, hey, welcome to the world of Steve Sims. I'm here to tell you about this. And I will talk it through and then I will send it over to one of my assistants to get it translated and then to adjust it for grammar and correction and flow that you should always leave your website, your most important initial point of conversation with words that came from your head, not somebody else.   Joe: Yeah, and your website is exactly the perfect example of that, so everyone has to go look at your website because I think it's refreshing. Again, everything about you is refreshing. So I have less than 15 minutes with you. So I want to just talk about a few things on your Web site so that the audience understands. So Sims distillery is the first thing, which is your online community, right?   Steve: It's my community, I wanted to build a community for people that wanted to ask me questions, ask a private community questions, we do live Facebook Amma's where people come in to answer that question. So if you're a member of seems to still be and you go, hey, I'm having a problem with problem of finding a good copywriter or what's been a tick tock of Instagram, or should I be doing more videos or should I be doing more static postings? I will literally bring one of my friends in and will do a forty five minute live AMA where you and the other seems to still be members can physically ask these people questions and get results out of your answers.   Joe: Awesome. OK, we don't have to go into this, but I know that you're a keynote speaker. I've seen different things for you, but I just want the audience to know everything about you. You also offer private coaching, OK? And then you also offer this private 30 minute phone call that you'll do with people. Right? OK, and then you have the same speakeasy, which is the thing that I think is really interesting, which to me it's like a two day roundtable mastermind. Is that a good description of it?   Steve: Now, how much do you know about it?   Joe: Well, I just I you know, from when I was going to maybe a 10 to one here in Scottsdale, that happened not too long ago, sort of looking at it, it was me. It felt like a master mastermind, like you were going to go around and everyone   Steve: But   Joe: Was   Steve: What   Joe: Going to   Steve: Information   Joe: Sort of.   Steve: Did you actually know about Scotsdale? And   Joe: Oh,   Steve: I'm putting you on the spot here, so   Joe: God,   Steve: Get   Joe: I.   Steve: All of the information and you knew for a fact about Scotsdale.   Joe: I think the only time when I looked at it, I just potentially knew the dates and the cost and that it was going to be capped, that I don't know if it was at the time that one might have been capped at like twenty five people or something like that. I don't think it was 40, but I don't remember.   Steve: So the point is that we actually we run these speakeasies as a reverse mastermind, so what we do is we tell you the city, as we did Scotsdale, we didn't tell you where it was going to be. We tell you it's two thousand dollars and we give you the dates.   Joe: Right. OK,   Steve: Then   Joe: Good.   Steve: We'll   Joe: So   Steve: Give   Joe: I passed because   Steve: You   Joe: That's   Steve: Pass.   Joe: All I knew. OK.   Steve: Yeah. And but we don't tell you who's going to turn out. We don't tell you what you're going to learn. We don't tell you any of those things. And the reason is because everyone signs up, we reach out to them and we would go, hey, thanks for joining up. Thanks for with the speakeasy. What's your problem? And we want to know what our problem is and if they come back and they go, well, I'm having a problem gaining credibility or I want to get more viewers or I want to, can I go into coach? You know, I want to do more speaking gigs. I want to when we can find out what our problem is, then I know who to bring in to actually teach and train Joe in that two day event to physically answer the problems they have. So I work in reverse. There's no point in me saying, hey, come to my event. I've got this person, this person, this person, because you may go, well, I like those too, but I have no idea who those three. I want to know your problem and then I'm going to bring people in. And by not telling anybody what who's going to be there, even the attendees. The whole speakeasy mentality is that you don't know what's going on, you just know that the people in there both teach in training and attend these. I've got to be creative disruptors of rock stars because it takes that mentality to come along to one of my events and we cap them all at 40. We capture one in Scottsdale at 40, although we only had thirty six turn up because there was some flight issues, because I think we had that big Texas storm coming through at the time. So sadly we lost about four people, but we capable of 40 next ones in San Diego, the 19th and the 20th of July. And that's all, you know. You know, that's that is literally a.   Joe: All right, cool, the deep dive is when you would come to somebody's organization and do a full day of onsite consulted,   Steve: Yeah,   Joe: Correct?   Steve: That's that's that's the that's the call where we actually go in and find out what's going on, it's very shaky, you know, it's very disruptive. It gets a lot of people uncomfortable because we really go in there and try and tear down, you know, why people are doing things, what they're looking for as an outcome and usually to see where the disconnect is on those.   Joe: Great, and then you also have your own podcast, which is the art of making things happen. And do you is most of the people, from what I can see in the sort of entrepreneurial space.   Steve: Yes, but not somehow you think you see, I've had priests, I've had gang members, I've had lifers, I've had prostitutes, I've had Fortune 500, I've had rocket scientists. I have many, many different range of people on there. But as I said at the beginning of the show, at one point or time, they were pissed off and they were aggravated and that's what caused them to then go into a different world. So, you know, we're all entrepreneurial, but I'm not running Fortune 500 companies or CEOs. They come from very, very wide and almost ran on. Something will happen to me. I saw that Megan Merkl interview recently a while ago, and I did a deconstructs on the power of branding that could have been done if we'd have had and still in the royal family and how brand wise it was a for and again with her leave in the royal family. So I'll often just go in there and spout about things that I'm up to that have come to my mind, of course, to piss me off. And I need to vent.   Joe: And then on top of everything else is if you didn't have enough to do you have Sim's media, which to me looks like you're basically helping anybody, any entrepreneur or any person with their branding, the PR, their marketing podcast book launches product launches. Right. So you because you've done all of this stuff, you're like, hey, I can help. So you have Sim's   Steve: Yeah,   Joe: Media as well.   Steve: I've done it for everyone from Piaget to Ferrari to major events to major influences, and I find the way people work media quite often is wrong. They have a Field of Dreams moment. Hey, I'm going to pay for an article in Forbes. They get the article in Forbes and then they sit there by the phone thinking, OK, Reinier, bugger. And it doesn't work like that. So I'm a great believe. Again, media is one thing, but what you do with it is everything. So the way I work kind of works. So now what we did was about three years ago, we started allowing clients to actually operate under the way that we worked. And then it was about six months ago that we physically launched Tim's media and able to get you to where you wanted to be given the message you want to be given.   Joe: Awesome. I love it. OK, Henry, your son, does he work with. Is he part of your team?   Steve: Yes, and he's branching out to a new thing, and I laugh because, again, your kids grow up going, Oh, Dad, you don't know day, you don't know I want to follow you. Yeah. And they love you. And then they go to school where for eight hours the school teaches them. There's only one answer. And if you don't get this answer and you don't take the white box, you failed. And then they come home to an entrepreneur who doesn't even know where the box is. And there's 20 different answers and each one of them is making them half a million dollars, you know, so it's a real disconnect. And he had trouble with that. And he was studying engineering, which was a very analytical profession. And then he would come on to his dad, who Cyprien old fashioned talking to someone in Korea and suddenly getting wired one point to be able to do something. He's like, how can this be? You know? So eventually he actually said he wanted to just flow around to a couple of the events that I was speaking at. And then he suddenly sort to see the world of entrepreneurial being a lot more challenging to him. And now he's actually gone out. And it's it's beautiful to see how he's come from the analytical world. And he's now taking what he knows about that. And he's very driven, focused on results. And he works in Sim's media and he's launching his own group. So I'm very proud of it.   Joe: Ok, so he's actually doing some of his own things. He's not just   Steve: He is, he   Joe: Got   Steve: Is   Joe: It, OK,   Steve: You   Joe: Call.   Steve: Want to you want to you want to basically build people up to be good enough that they can leave but treat them so well they don't want to. So it's good to see him out on his own. I'm   Joe: Perfect.   Steve: Happy with that.   Joe: Awesome. OK, so we're out of time. One quick question. If you only had one motorcycle, which brand would you choose?   Steve: Oh, that's the nastiest question   Joe: I   Steve: In.   Joe: Know, I knew I knew it was going to   Steve: Oh.   Joe: Because I see all your bikes lined up, I see because I see your Harley Norton, I'm like, Oh man, what's your what's his favorite?   Steve: Oh, this is kind of weird because if anything, it's probably the least exclusive exclusive of my bikes, but I bought a Harley Street glide about a year ago and it's the only comfortable to up bike. I've got Zoom. My others are single seat is all that will Elbaum comfortable. So this is the only one that my wife can come on. So I would probably say that one because it's the only one that me and her can actually get out and do. Our tacker runs up to Santa Barbara or.   Joe: Perfect. OK.   Steve: Tough question, tough   Joe: Hey,   Steve: Olival question.   Joe: I will I would have had another eight of those like I already you've already explained your favorite drink. It sounds like it's an old fashioned but   Steve: Yeah, it is.   Joe: But I would have a ton of I wish I had more time with you. I so enjoy this. I'm going to put all your links in the show notes so that anyone listening to the podcast will see them in the show notes and on YouTube. And I will make sure they know where to find you. This has been a complete honor for me. I again, to meet you even virtually, and to have a real person who's doing real things at a real honest level and not leaning against a Lamborghini that you don't own are sitting in a shell of a fuselage of a plane that doesn't even fly for photos. It just means a lot to me. There's something about it. And I hope to meet you in person sooner than later. I hope to attend one of your events, and I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for being here.   Steve: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

My guest today is Steve Schildwachter, former CMO of Museum of the Bible. Steve started his career working at advertising agencies before moving to the client side. In the interview we explore that transition, and his later transition from for-profit to non-profit.This is the free edition of Marketing BS. Premium subscribers get access to part 2 of Steve's interview tomorrow where we dive into marketing a non-profit museum (and twice the content every week).You can also listen to these interviews in your podcast player of choice: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed (for premium episodes).Today's essay is sponsored byTurn your audience into a businessIndependent content creators are generating more than $2M per year using this open source, customizable publishing platform. All of the features you need to launch a new blog, newsletter and membership site are built-in — with proper SEO, a clean editor and paid subscriptions with 0% fees.TranscriptEdward: This is Marketing BS. My guest is Steve Schildwachter. Today, we cover Steve's career and path to CMO, Leo Burnett, DMB&B, FCB Global, rVue, and BrightStar. Steve was, until recently, the CMO of Museum of the Bible, and I'm excited to have him here. Steve, by 2013, you'd risen in the ranks of advertising agencies to become an Executive Vice President at FCB. You oversaw brands like Raid, Pledge, and Windex but then you left to join the client-side as a CMO of rVue. Why did you do that?Steve: First of all, Ed, thank you very much for having me on the show today. It's a great honor to be here. I pretty much came to the end of the road in the advertising agency business. The business had changed a lot during the time that I was there, having started at Leo Burnett, brief time at DMB&B, and then many years at FCB. Very, very valuable experiences, I wouldn't trade them for anything. During that time however, the advertising agency business has become much more commoditized. There are a number of pieces to that but it became apparent to me that if I needed to innovate, I needed, at least for me, to go somewhere else. I had been keeping my eye for a long time on the media technology startup sector, a lot of exciting things happening there. When an opportunity came up to make that jump, I did it. Edward: Why did they hire you? At that point, you had no experience on the client-side, you always used to do advertising. Why take a risk to bring you on as a CMO?Steve: It was not that big of a risk for a couple of reasons. It was probably more of a risk for me because I was leaping into something that at that time was completely unknown for me. It was essentially an advertising concept, rVue was a media technology company that networked together about 150+ digital out of home networks. The clients for rVue were effectively advertising agencies and their clients who were trying to decide how to divide their media budgets. It was definitely a world that I understood very, very well. In that sense, it was a pretty natural transition. The other thing was that at least one of the participants was very known to me. I was being brought in as part of a new management team. The CEO who was hired is somebody that I had worked with in the past. Another is a Chief Technology Officer who I've met for the first time but we jived very quickly as a leadership team. We had a great experience there for a couple of years. Edward: What important skills did you take with you from your ad agency work into that job?Steve: I would say for sure, the knowledge of the change in media landscape. One of the things that I had made a point of in my last several years at FCB was to stay on top of the media portion.FCB at the time was running the few agencies that still had a media department inside. They had a separate media agency, all the agencies had split off, Leo Burnett, we got Starcom, and all the other ones out there. But FCB, even though we had a media buying partner within our holding company, we still have a media department inside because we had to be on top of that for our clients. The media landscape, having stayed on top of that was a skill that was very required for me going into that job.Edward: What skills were you missing? What did you not have that you had to develop on that job?Steve: That's a great question. I would say two things come to mind. One is I needed to get back into a ninja action figure stance like I was when I was coming up as an Account Executive, because in a startup, you don't have all of the supporting functions around you that you have at a large company like an ad agency or any large company. I found that I was pretty comfortable with that. I had always been doing my own PowerPoint presentations and that type of thing. Making travel arrangements for myself was not hard but it was something time-consuming that I never had to do before. You think differently, you have to renew in a startup. There's very few people in the company, you have to completely change the way that you work and the way that you're productive. That was one thing that I was missing. Another thing was understanding and really appreciating the sales function. There were some things that I knew about it intuitively. As an advertising person, I would try to understand who I was approaching and make sure that I was bringing something that was relevant to them versus relevant to me. But having had to hire a sales staff, manage them, and keep track of them was completely new to me. It was a great learning experience. Edward: Steve, I want to go back a little bit and talk about the path that got you there. I'm a big believer that the experiences we have when we're 12–14 affect our entire lives. What were you passionate about at that age?Steve: I was passionate about a lot of things. I was passionate about baseball, I was passionate about different things that interested me. But from a professional development standpoint, let's say it was really writing and communication. I had a teacher when I was around that age who saw that I had an ability to write, an ability to communicate, and he nurtured that. It was really a foundational experience for me. It taught me that writing, for me at least, is fun, it's something that I like to do. It led me to some insights about how communication works, what makes communication effective. I couldn't possibly learn all those lessons at the age of 14, but I learned to appreciate them. I was always that kid, even in college, who would much rather write a 10-page paper than take a Bluebook task because I liked the process of writing.Edward: What about that teacher experience, the fact that you had somebody who could develop you that way, did that affect your later career at all?Steve: Yes, definitely it did, it taught the importance of mentorship. Not just that teacher, I was surrounded by teachers. I had two uncles and one aunt who were teachers, and I talked to them a lot about what do you do, what is your experience, what is that like? I very nearly went into that as a career. It was one of the things I was thinking about doing was going into teaching. Eventually, I ended up choosing advertising and marketing. I don't regret that at all, but along the way, that appreciation for teaching has stimulated my curiosity and made me a self-learner. It has also inspired me at certain times to take somebody aside, somebody that I'm managing or somebody that I'm working with that there's maybe a requirement or an opportunity to teach them on the job and coach them along. I've mentored a lot of people through the process and it's really, really fun to see them now in leadership positions later. That's very, very satisfying. Edward: I want to jump ahead a bit, you're at FCB for about three years and then you moved to Latin America. What drove that decision?Steve: That was a really wonderful confluence of personal and professional. My first job at FCB was actually with a below the line division they had at the time. I got hired there to work on the Wendy's hamburger account because I had previous experience in the same category with another brand. I had a great time there and everything but meanwhile, the so-called main agency for Cone & Belding was taking on the global business of S.C. Johnson and they realized they needed somebody to run the Latin America division. I speak Spanish and my bosses observed that while I was in this first role that I adopted my oldest child who's now 25, she's from Paraguay. My second child is from Venezuela, we did those two adoptions. They thought, well, we need somebody to run the Latin America portion of this global account, maybe Steve is the guy. I took that role and moved to Buenos Aires as a result.Edward: How did that affect you? If you hadn't done that, how would your career be different today?Steve: I have to tell you, not only what I lament not having done, I lament having come back after just a few years. The reason I didn't stay down there was because the Argentine economy collapsed. There was this so-called Tango Effect that essentially made it necessary for us to come back because the currency collapsed and there was not much happening there. To your question, what it did do for me is it completely opened my horizons in terms of how I interacted with people, how I conducted myself as a global executive. Having to speak a language in a foreign culture, be a part of that culture on a day-to-day basis, and just deal with all the people that you deal with is an incredibly mind-opening experience. Most Americans don't have that opportunity. I say this not as a criticism or an insular country because we're very self-sufficient or very large or within practically our own continent. Not many people would get the opportunity so I feel very blessed to have worked abroad. It opened my eyes in so many ways, helped me be a better colleague, and also helped me be a better listener to people. You have to listen harder when you're listening in a second language, trying to understand. Then you have to start saying, oh, they think about this completely different than I've ever thought about it before. That really helps you to be, like they say, a better colleague but also maybe more innovative.Edward: That's an interesting thing too as an agency. When you're at an agency, you're a step removed from the business. In fact, as a business person in general, you're a step removed from the business from what your consumers are experiencing. You often have to really work to figure out how your consumers feel about your product. In an agency, you're a step removed from that because you're dealing with the business, who then deals with the consumer. How do you go about understanding a business when you're a step removed like that in your agency?Steve: Somebody that I respect very much is the head of CMO recruiting at Spencer Stuart, told me that he thinks that advertising agency executives have a leg up because of all the different kinds of businesses that they're exposed to. If you think about it, I spent probably half my career in franchise brands, half of it in consumer-packaged goods with the smothering of some other things. But you're exposed to all these different experiences and all these different ways of working that help you see the possibilities of how things can be. I would also say that working in an agency, if you do your job right, you can be as close to the consumer, if not closer than your clients. One of the things that clients always told me is they said, wow, we really appreciate how you get into the milieu of the clients, you talk to clients. Of course, we conduct the research on their behalf so that's a little hygienic sometimes. Just going to the store on a Saturday, seeing what products are moving, asking people why they buy what they buy, and just getting a sense of the category is something that any good advertising agency person should be doing, or at least that historically was the case in the places where I worked. Edward: You got pretty deep. When you were working with S.C. Johnson, you filed your own patent.Steve: That was a funny story because I learned more about entomology and pesticides than I ever imagined that I would know. That's not something I ever imagined at age 12 and 13 is that I would be an expert at bugs and how to kill them. It was really interesting to me.My client, S.C. Johnson, had the largest private entomology lab in North America so you could go there, you could work with the scientists, you can understand. It was necessary because the kind of advertising they were doing at that time at least required powerful demonstrations of efficacy. Before, I went to my Creative Director and said, here's what we're trying to sell, I had the very understanding of why should people buy it. Working in the lab with the scientists would help me understand what worked and what didn't. In the process of that, I got friendly with a number of scientists and I brought to one of them this observation. In South America, consumers down the trade in some of the more outlined retail locations were buying some of our more expensive products that frankly didn't sell well. One of them was a little cardboard square that you would put in a device, like an electric air freshener, but it was an electric mosquito repeller that people would use at night. These were more expensive than most people in that socioeconomic level could afford, so what they would do is they would cut them in order to get more use out of the ones that they bought. We thought, maybe there's a way that we can dosify them a little bit and make them perforated or segmentable so that people could get more use out of it. We essentially created a new kind of skew that could only be distributed down the trade and it basically facilitated the consumer behavior that we already observed. We applied for a patent on that and got it.Edward: I want to jump ahead a little bit. You left rVue to join Bright Care as CMO, but then about two years in, you just kept the CMO title but your job role expanded dramatically. Can you talk a little bit about that?Steve: BrightStar Care is a great company. I would say that is definitely to me the most superior brand in that home health care category right now. It's a very entrepreneurial atmosphere, and I had some good success in my first couple of years with marketing and things related to marketing. I was asked by my boss to take on some other things. I found myself, like at rVue, I was back in charge of some sales teams and everything so I was still learning some of that. My boss was very patient with me on that score. I was assigned to a lot of different things just based on the success that I had in the first couple of years in marketing. Edward: Then what happened? You take on all these additional responsibilities. How do you divide your time now between your old responsibilities and these new ones, and still achieve what you want to achieve?Steve: It was really challenging because as I said, a very entrepreneurial environment, a lot of things happening very quickly. It's a much bigger company than a startup but behaves like a startup, and that's a good thing. That company in particular, the founder and CEO has an unbelievable work ethic, strong accountability. I loved it, but it was a challenge. I would say anybody who goes through a similar transformation at a company, expanding their responsibilities, needs to make sure that they have strong lieutenants in charge of each of the areas that they're overseeing. Someone that they can be accountable to, someone they can rely on, and not incidentally somebody who's going to push you as a manager. Lieutenants should be coming to you and saying I think we need to be doing this, I think we need to innovate in this area.Edward: Steve, what were the biggest failure points in your career? Where did things not go as expected?Steve: On what we were just discussing, I think it was a mistake for me to accept one of the roles that I had. To me, the very soul of BrightStar's point of difference is its registered nurses. There was a department that had orders of registered nurses who would liaise with the nurses of each of our franchises. They were excellent, they were amazing in gerontology, they were amazing at working with clients and everything, but fundamentally, their role was not so much commercial as it was operational. If I could've turned down one department in retrospect, it would've been that one. I loved them, I thought they were excellent, but it was just not something that I had the wherewithal to manage. I would say that's something where I probably should've said, are we sure about this, I'm not sure if maybe that's something that I should take on. Edward: How did that learning affect later in your career, if at all? Did it change your perspective on taking on responsibilities in other places along the way? Steve: Yes. I'd still consider myself somebody who wants to contribute in any way that my contributions would be welcome. I'm definitely not somebody who goes out to seek, build an empire, expand, and everything. The responsibilities that I was given at BrightStar were not ones that I asked for, but I am willing to help out. That hasn't changed. If I'm ever in this situation like that going forward, I'm going to be a lot more discriminating and just really think through, is this something that I can succeed at, is this something that's good for the organization to have me oversee?Edward: Steve, what are your productivity tricks? What do you do to be productive that most people don't do?Steve: There are a number of things. Years ago, I did what a lot of people did at the time, I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That helped codify for me a lot of things I was somewhat doing naturally, but I really got focused on those things that we call big rocks. You've heard this analogy before. You've got a container full of big rocks, sand, some gravel, and this type of thing. The big rocks represent those priorities that are most important that are going to move the ball downfield for the organization. You got to focus on those first because if you focus on all the less meaningful stuff that's the sand, you'll fill up your container with things that now don't allow you to fit in the big rocks. You always start with that.I would say that I went through a period where I got way too fascinated with planning ahead like that. What I've learned more recently is to leverage coincidences, things that happen. Call them coincidences, call them happenstance, call them divine appointments, whatever you wish. Things will pop up and you have to have the awareness in the moment, and the full vision in order to be able to take advantage of those things when they arise. There may be something that comes up and you think, wow, this is a quick easy win, if I jump on this right now, I can really do something great for the organization so let's get a team together and address it.Planning ahead is great, but you've also got to be willing to look for those coincidences when they come up.Edward: How do you differentiate between a coincidence that's an opportunity you should jump on, and a coincidence that's a distraction from the plan that you were trying to work on?Steve: This I will mention in not a positive but not a negative way, just a more discriminating way. This Art of War by Sun Tzu, it was a thing years ago to quote that book. I would say take a step back, look at all the different maxims listed on that book. What it's really about is fortune favors the prepared. You have to have a certain ripeness about you and a certain handle on what all's going on in order to succeed. It's not about doing something machiavellian like under-cutting a competitor or that type of thing, it's just paying attention a lot and being aware of what's happening around you. That's how you distinguish one coincidence, a coincidence that's productive versus a coincidence that is a distraction. If you've got a sense of what's going on, you can make those judgments right in the moment and be able to decide, yes, this is something I should chase for a day, or no, this is something I should just let go.Edward: Thank you, Steve. We're going to wrap it with that and we'll come back tomorrow to talk about your experience at the Museum of the Bible.Steve: Thanks so much, Ed. Great speaking with you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Jolie speaks with Dr. Steven Cady, the Director of the Institute for Organizational Effectiveness at BGSU, and Professor Charles Kanwischer, Director of the School of Art. They discuss collaborative leadership during times of crisis and the lessons we’ve learned about adaptive teaching, effective communication, and more.   Announcer: From Bowling Green State University and The Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie: Welcome to the BiG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American Culture Studies and Director of the ICS. Due to the ongoing pandemic, we're not in studio, but are recording remotely via phone and computer. As always, the opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees. Jolie: Bowling Green State University is located in the Great Black Swamp, long a meeting place of the Wyandotte, Shawnee, Lenape, Ottawa, Kickapoo, Fox, Pottawatomie, Erie, Miami, Peoria, Chippewa, and Seneca Indian tribes. We honor the rich history of this land and its indigenous inhabitants past and present. Jolie: Today, I have the pleasure of being joined by two guests, Dr. Steve Cady and Professor Charlie Kanwischer. Steve is the director of the Institute for Organizational Effectiveness at BGSU. He's world-renowned for his expertise in organizational behavior and development, specifically with the focus on whole system change. His current work involves collaborating with others to develop the best of both online and in-person learning environments. Jolie: Charlie is the director of the School of Art and a professor of drawing at BGSU. He's a six time recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. In his administrative role, Charlie studies data to determine what students need to succeed in online learning environments. Steve and Charlie, thank you for joining me today to talk about leadership. Well, the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly exemplified the need for the kind of work you do to model collaborative leadership and meet the needs of students, faculty, and staff to deal with this swiftly changing academic landscape. Steve, could you start us off by talking about how your work was immediately impacted in March when the university moved to distance learning and what changes you made? Steve: So my work is on two levels, one is in the classroom with my students and then on the second level is my work with my colleagues, you two, and others at BGSU and beyond. On the first level, I immediately talked with my students and when I saw what was coming on the horizon, that we'd likely close down and we'd likely shut classes or go into a online setting, I talked with my students and I talked to them about various scenarios. I talked with him about scenarios in the class, "If we go online, this is what's going to happen. This is what we're going to meet online. This is how we're going to make it work. And this is how I'm going to handle the class, how we're going to handle your learning as well as your grading." And those kinds of things, and really made sure they had their questions answered. I also encouraged them to think about how they were going to handle it, what their scenarios were and what they were going to do. Steve: And I gave that advice to some other faculty that I was talking to, and they did that. And they said that it was pretty amazing that all of the sudden, when it happened, their students knew what to do, where to go. It's kind of like that emergency, like in a fire or whatever, where do we meet? Where do we regroup? That kind of thing. So that was number one, that was really important. Steve: And the second thing is I sent a note out to my friends and my colleagues and people and said, "Let's get together and support each other. What can we do to help each other? What can we learn from each other? How can we help each other and get better ideas on what to do in this moment?" What emerged from that was 170 people instantly showing up, signing up. We met on a Wednesday, over a hundred people showed up, I said, "You want to meet on Friday?" Another a hundred people showed up. "You want to meet on Saturday?" Another a hundred and something showed up. "Want to meet on Sunday?" Another a hundred and something showed up, and we were meeting almost every day, and then we started meeting weekly. And what came out of that is the importance of community and the importance of supporting each other. And the use of Zoom and the use of video conferencing to be able to see each other, while not ideal, it does work. Jolie: How about you, Charlie? How did that transition play out both in your role as a professor and as Director of the School of Art? Charlie: Well, it was on us so suddenly, that's what I remember. We were face to face one week... I guess we were reading news reports, we were sort of seeing, sensing this freight train coming at us, but then it was us in a rush. And I can specifically remember a faculty meeting, we called an emergency faculty meeting, when we understood that we would be closing down for what I remember was presented to us as two weeks. We were going to take a two week pause, we were going to suspend face to face classes for two weeks. And I remember really the sense of disbelief and the sense of trepidation that the faculty expressed in this meeting that we conducted to sort of figure out where we were going with the reaction to the initial shutdown. Charlie: And then it was an issue of, well, two weeks became a month, right? A month became the rest of the semester, the rest of the semester shaded into getting ready for the fall and knowing that we would have to prepare over the course of the summer. So a big part, I think, of my relationship with the faculty that I'm directing, the faculty that I'm working with, it was kind of leading them through the gradual amplification of the situation, sort of approaching it in stages. And I can remember faculty talking about, "What, if this happens, what if that happens? Have you read this article? It's telling us we can't engage in this set of behaviors anymore, we can't engage in these kinds of teaching practices anymore." And I remember going back again and again to the ideas, here's what we know now, here's what we can put in the firm column. This is something that we have a little bit of certainty about, it's not a whole lot, but we have to use that to begin to project into the future. Charlie: So what I found, I guess, was that leading the school at that moment was not just about the moment, it wasn't just about the situation we were in, in that particular moment. It was trying to create, I guess, the right kind of mental attitude, the right kind of response toward an inevitably shifting unfolding future, if that makes sense? Jolie: When you are dealing with a moment of such profound uncertainty and constant change, right? That the information, the decisions were not being made once and then decided for a semester, but that week by week, day by day, there might be changes needing to be made, that a big piece of what was effective was actually being really transparent with students and with colleagues about what is known, what isn't, and the fact that there are going to be lots of things the answer is, "I don't know, great question. Let's figure it out. Let's talk about it." Jolie: I think it's interesting that that's so important because the tendency, I think a lot of folks have during a time of crisis is to feel like what is demanded of them when in leadership positions is to be decisive and create structure and to be sort of rigid, and that, that is going to be more comforting to people. Could you talk, Steve, maybe a bit about what your own research interests in change management reveals about how people actually best respond to stress and change? Steve: Yeah, people support and defend that which they helped to create. And what's interesting is when we're in a learning environment, learning by its nature is about failure. It's about trying, taking risks in a safe space and learning at a deep level. And so when you look at collaboration and you look at leadership, we have spent how many centuries in rows and aisles in classrooms, where you sit and you're talked at, you raise your hand when you're talked to and you rewire the neural pathways in the brain to learn to be very much a linear, responsive thinker in which you don't think for yourself. Yet, the core value of education is we want to empower and inspire students to be leaders, to go out in the world and to be thinkers and to solve problems. Steve: So tell me one organization that you go in and sit in rows and aisles, when you go out and work? Show me one place where you're going to sit and be talked at and only speak and answer questions and regurgitate or repeat what you've been taught, so prove that you know what I'm talking about by repeating it back. Give me one example where that's life, it's not. Steve: And yet we spend from early childhood, all the way through college, and what's changing now, active learning, engaged learning is really... the flipped classroom, it's all coming back. But for years, and we're just now starting to get to it, for years that's all we've done. So now we create conditions where people go into the work, they sit and they say, "Tell me what to think. Tell me what to do. Where do I go? And what can I do?" And it's like automate. It's appalling to be honest with you. Steve: So change, if you want to teach people and you want to lead truly innovative, exciting places where people are joyful, wrestling with ideas, bringing their whole self into a situation. Bringing their mind, their body, their spirit and emotion, they don't just check their brain at the door and be told what to do, and don't share their emotions because it's not an appropriate and they can't be themselves, and they're taught that at school. And before you know what they go home and they have relationship problems because there's emotionally detachment from their kids, from their wives, from their husbands or partners, whatever it might be. And we have created an instructional education system that I think teaches us to be half-brained and half-human. And I think that we are now on the cusp, on the edge of a renaissance in terms of unleashing the whole human being into what is possible. And that is being advocated by all the learning and so forth. Steve: So collaborative leadership or leaders who are in environments and changing environments, they've been taught they have to have the answer because everybody keeps telling them to have the answer. It's not their fault and it's not.... And people might say, "Well, you should be transparent. You should be..." Well when they're transparent then the people that are followers take it out on them, passive aggressively, use the information against them, say that they're weak. It's just feeding into the same formula. Steve: Then there's a few brave, wise leaders, and it's beginning to emerge and it's coming out in the science and the research that the whole brain is necessary for great leadership. And you get leaders that then step out and step into that space. And they lead and they engage people and they let them fail and learn, they call it fail forward now, they call it the training, letting people fail forward into new learning and innovation. Bringing diverse groups together, it's easy to collaborate when you're with the homogeneous group, but you take a diverse group, it takes a lot longer to get to a place of functioning. Who wants to take the time to get there when you're in a hurry to show results. So leaders have got to be willing to step out and allow followers to push on them, to test them, to see if they really believe in this new kind of leadership that they're bringing forward. Charlie: Yeah, I think that's a really good answer, identifying creativity as an integral element in leadership. But from our point of view in the school of art, it kind of goes without saying, our issues are a little bit different. We are a collection of makers, studio practitioners, and our practices are based on trial and error and adaptivity and iterative, and we're used to work arounds and coming up with alternative solutions when one solution isn't working. We have that culture, we're in possession of a culture, in lots of ways has stood as well in this crisis, going back to the pasta makers and the glass pipes and all the at-home kits that faculty were putting together for students so they could work away from our studios. That creativity was in abundance. Charlie: Where maybe we face a little bit of a different problem than what Steve might be referring to or what might be going on in the more traditional academic areas on campus is our need is to harness that creativity in some way, to take all those people flying in different directions and help them establish a sense of collectivity, of collective purpose, of collective response to the situation that we were facing in the spring and that's ongoing. Charlie: Not that we want everyone to be on the same page, we embraced that variety is a strength, that diversity as a strength. That diversity not just of media and all the different things that we teach in the school, but diversity of intellectual approach, conceptual approach. It stood us very well but the difficulty as a leader, the challenge as a leader has been to arrive at consensus in the midst of all that diversity. Consensus on certain policies about how we're going to conduct our classes, consensus about the most effective modality for teaching a given discipline. It's been interesting. I've never believed more strongly that the culture that you move into the crisis with is the culture that sort of determines the response to the crisis. If we have a strong sense of community, if we have good communication, if we have a sense of transparency and fairness in the school moving into the difficult situation, then it seems like we're much better prepared for the unforeseen, the sorts of things that a crisis like this is going to throw at you. Jolie: I think one of the things you're both talking about is in some ways, and this has come up in other conversations this season in talking about the pandemic, is that it has created certain opportunities by throwing us off our well entrenched habits, right? And it's forced those in positions of authority, teachers in classrooms, directors of departments or schools to acknowledge and to have to model adaptability, creativity, a willingness to say, "Yep, I got that wrong. Okay, let's regroup." And then that becomes empowering for those, whether your students or it's the members of that department, school community to say, "Oh, I see my leader modeling this thing, okay, I can try and fail too." Because I think a lot of times what happens is we say we want our students to be creative, to take risks, but then we, in the position of authority, actually don't really demonstrate our own flexibility and willingness to take risks. It's like, "Well, I've had this assignment, I know how it works, I'm going to keep doing it this way." And this moment has made that really impossible in ways that are kind of freeing at times. Steve: I'll just say what's empowering in that is when a faculty member partners with the students and intentionally invites the students to partner with them in finding a new solution and saying, "Let's figure this out together." Students have been super helpful. Jolie: Yeah, they know things that we don't, right? And they often really do have an understanding of how to make better use of digital environments, of other ways of communicating and connecting. That can be really transformative. Steve: You start a class, you open a Zoom and you say, "Who can help me monitor the chat room?" And so if someone says, "Oh, I'll do that." And so they help you monitor the chat room and then I'll say, "Can you all summarize what's going on in the chat?" And then I say, "Can someone else do this here, and kind of help us pull up a screen and we'll create a collective document that we're going to work in." And someone will say, "I'll do that." And then so while they're doing that I'm focusing on this and we together are doing the class. Charlie: It's almost a cliche by now that we're not going back to the way things were before the pandemic, but we're also recognizing a lot of opportunity in that. The adaptations we've made, the flexibility we've demonstrated, the fact that we can offer content now in multiple modalities with different kinds of tools that faculty don't necessarily have to be present on campus, that they can be at home in a more flexible environment. Some of our faculty are actually in other countries, we have one faculty member teaching full-time from Canada right now, and another faculty member teaching full-time from Italy. They're both engaged in research projects at the same time that they're teaching and doing service. The kinds of technological bridges that we've been able to make, the kinds of technological structures we've been able to make are allowing a kind of flexibility and fluidity on the part of faculty that is unprecedented, we've never been in this kind of situation before. Charlie: We've also found that students who maybe are shy when they're in face-to-face critiques, unwilling to talk because one or two people are taking over conversations, we're finding it's much more democratic when they're online, that some of those shy students are speaking up. And actually some of the conversations that we're having around the work are more engaged, more robust than what we experienced in the face-to-face classrooms. Jolie: Yeah, there really is. In some ways there's a kind of leveling of some of those power dynamics in that move to the two dimensional screen where everyone could be a stakeholder and they can choose what kind of role that is, whether it's through the chat or speaking. I have a question for you, Charlie, about kind of your own work as an artist. How have you been impacted by this move and what is your working life like? Charlie: Like every artist I know, I've had shows canceled, opportunities that would have happened are not going to happen. In some cases canceled, in some cases postponed. So on a professional level, the pandemic's had a big impact just on the art world and the number of shows that are taking place, and the attendance at exhibitions, and galleries have had to close, museums have had to close. This sort of circulation that we take for granted in the art world has really been impaired, really been reduced. But when it comes to sort of daily working practice, and I try to work in my studio just about every day, when it comes to that, that has really been a source of strength through all of this. The idea that I'm going and doing this thing, making my work, even making progress in my work, feeling like the work has a different kind of meaning, a different kind of importance even due to the pandemic, due to the situation that's created by it, that's been really important. That's been really important. Charlie: That's been a source of, I don't know if it sounds like the right word, but solace or comfort, or maybe a better way to say it is centering. It's giving me a kind of a kind of groundedness that allows me to deal with the hyper fluidity of the situation. And I've talked to other studio artists, studio based artists who have said the same thing, that they've never felt more connected to their practice. I'm talking about the actual going to the studio, make the work, the actual execution of the work. They've never felt more connected to that than they have during this situation. Steve: And I would that for me, it's kind of interesting, I've yearned for that more because in my position and some of the things I've chosen to do, I have spent more time really busily holding the huddles and the other types of things. And I've noticed some of my friends have had that ability like you're talking about, and I've kind of yearned for that. I almost want to take some time to not be doing all these collaborative things. Charlie: That is your craft though, right Steve? You're a facilitator. You're a conversation sponsor. You're an expert at it, that's what you do. So in a way, you're exercising your craft, you're practicing your craft in a similar sort of way. Jolie: Well, and I think what that also points out too, is this moment makes in some ways more visible, all of the different human needs we have. This gets back to your point earlier, Steve, about kind of the whole student, right? We have to understand their material needs. We have to understand their spiritual needs. We have to understand all of that before we could really get to the intellectual. But it also, I think, for us as professionals, this has sort of made us realize, "Oh, I need more alone time." Or, "I desperately need more connection, that I'm feeling very alone and I need my colleagues. I need my relationships." And sort of forcing all of us to kind of identify, what are our individual needs for success? And if we recognize that, then we're in a better position to actually help our students and those we work with to similarly say, "Okay, what do you need to really feel successful, centered, balanced, able to do your best work?" Charlie: I guess what I would try to connect what we've just talked about to is the notion that, I see as one of my responsibilities is leader of the School of Art is to remind people, to urge people, to do everything I can to assist people in finding a sense of, I don't know if this is a word, but purposefulness, purpose in what they're doing. Because the pandemic has shifted, in all kinds of ways, not least of which is traditional outcomes for our work. For my studio practice, the places that I would normally be showing it. It's availability to people, and true for all the faculty. A lot of that has been taken away, and we don't know when it's going to come back and it's certainly not going to come back in the manner that it existed before. Charlie: But if you think about how that impacts students, we have students who are aspiring to be artists, students who are learning to be creators who want to succeed on a professional level. They're looking at the radical restructuring of the world that they thought they were entering, right? And it may even mean that some professional opportunities are closed off temporarily or shifted in different directions. So in the face of that sort of chaotic situation right now, the face of that unsettledness, it's more important than ever for students and faculty to remind themselves, what is this really about? What is this about at a deeper level? Why are you making work? Why are you putting so much effort into something that doesn't have the obvious outcomes anymore, and may not have the professional visibility that it had before? It really becomes about the work, I guess is what I'm saying. Jolie: About process, right? But it's about the process, right? Rather than the outcome. Jolie: What were you going to say, Steve? Steve: It's both in the sense that, there's a great book you may be aware of it's, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Charlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative), of course. Steve: And in that he describes people in Nazi war camps, completely healthy people died. Yet there were these other folks in the camps that weren't healthy, that were injured, and they survived. And he was trying to figure out as a medical doctor, how to help more people survive. And he said, one of the telltale signs that people were about to die was that they gave away their cigarettes, which was their currency in the camp. And what he found was that the people that survived regardless of their physical condition were the ones that had purpose, they had some work to continue. In the arts, they had an artistic project or book to write or something to complete, or they had something that they were living for, that they still had... They were yearning for, something that they yearned to complete and finish. Steve: And it was people who had that. So switch it to this. So I, with my students always ask them, "What difference do you yearn to make in the world? What is your profession, your career, your job that you're going to go after that matters to you, where you're going to feel a sense of purpose? How is this class and how is what we're doing going to serve you in going for that?" And I find that in this situation, if I can keep my students focused on the prize on the thing that they yearn for, in the midst of this it helps them to deal with the pressures. And if they're in community sharing that, that's the other piece, it's this community of support is critical. If anything I learned in this is that we have got to create small communities of learning, communities of support, build them, create them, start them amongst the faculty, amongst the students, amongst students and faculty, administrators, but we need to be in communities supporting each other. Jolie: We're going to take a quick break. Thanks for listening to the BiG Ideas podcast. Musical Interlude: Question, answer, discussion. Announcer: If you are passionate about BiG Ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie: Hello, welcome back to the BiG Ideas podcast. Today I'm talking to Dr. Steve Cady and Professor Charlie Kanwischer about leadership during crisis, and what we've learned about online instruction and communication. We've been talking about the importance of communication and collaboration, what are some of the factors you see that impede true collaborative leadership at the university level or in large organizations and institutions? Charlie: Well, the first words that popped into my mind were bureaucracy and budget. I don't know, the interrelatedness of those two things. Sponsoring interdisciplinary work, sponsoring collaborative work, it can be expensive. Asking the university to allow two faculty members to teach a single class and not simply double up the class, there's a cost to that. And you have all these sort of administrative structures and disciplinary structures that they just function better when everybody stays between the lines. When you're trying to cross over, when you're trying to work in between, lots of times the bureaucracy doesn't know how to categorize it, it doesn't know how to evaluate it, it doesn't know how to measure the outcomes that emerged from it. Most of the structures we have at the university are set up for measuring discrete things, categorizable things, and anything that seems to want to resist that or move outside of that. It can be difficult to do that if not even opposed. Steve: Yeah, and I would offer... My favorite African proverb is, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others." And there's a really good book out that's called Going Fast and Slow, and it talks about the brain and the brain science of decision-making and how people think. And you got your executive function, and then you got your instinctive portion of your brain, instinctive function, and the fight and flight, and those kinds of things. They call it system one and system two in this particular book. Actually it's interesting, you got the left and the right and the front and the back of the brain. And if you think about it, the back is about instinct, the front is about thinking and reflection and so forth, and slowing down. The left side of the brain is about order, logic, and the right side is about creativity. Steve: And so now you've got all these different parts of the brain that are engaged, and the biggest impediment is that people sometimes don't want to engage the whole brain. So they don't want to take the time, they want to go fast and therefore people want to go alone. Yet in order to go fast and to go with others, but to go alone, the only way you can go alone with others fast is through dictation, to dictate, to direct, to force, to coerce, to make the decision and put in place the mechanisms to force people to do it. That's the only way you can do that. And then you can maybe get people to move fast because we're in that school system structure that we've trained people for many, many years to sit in rows and aisles, listen when talked to, and move quickly based on the edict that has been given out. There's a lot of other impediments, but I would describe that as a core impediment that gets in the way of true collaboration. Jolie: Well, and that's the thing, that there are certain things that are happening fast, right? That we may have to react quickly, but what you're suggesting is if we really want to make these changes transformative and meaningful, then you're going to have to be willing to slow down, to listen to other people, to take time, to try and adjust. And it's going to be less linear, and that may be in the short-term frustrating, but in the long-term, you'll get further with it. Steve: What does slowing down mean? I'm slowing down right now. I'm only taking five seconds. I take a breath, I've slowed down. I can slow down in a half hour. It doesn't mean slowing down for months. It's painful to slow down. So if I move and act quickly, it's like, "Let's get this over with, let's get this over with..." And you watch a brilliant athlete who can just move and you think, "How do they do that so elegantly?" So I think there's a notion that fast means everything's right now and slow means everything's way out there. But actually you can move too fast in one day or too fast in five seconds. It's about how we slow down our thinking, slow down our presence, presencing and noticing, and slowing ourselves down for that situation as appropriate and moving at a pace that still keeps us moving forward. Jolie: One of the things we've seen with the pandemic is that existing socioeconomic and racial disparities have gotten much worse, right? And this is on the economic front, on the health front and the infection rates, death rates and the economic impact. So it can be hard to sort of talk about those intersectional dimensions in the work that we do, but how do you address the ways in which not only are some communities more impacted, but also some have greater voice? How do you ensure everyone gets a say and is heard, and that decisions are made with them in mind and with their shaping that, again, getting back to the fast and slow, when not everyone even has equal access to the conversation? Charlie: Well, that's been a hard problem because you're caught in this bind. You don't want to overburden people with communication. You have to know when to communicate and when not to communicate, and you have to have some discernment about what's important enough to communicate and what might not be so important that you might just be bothering people with too much communication. So I view it as one of the most important characteristics you can have as a leader is that sense of proportionality, what I called discernment a moment ago. When is it necessary, and in the interest of the people you're communicating with, to communicate with them? And what can I take on? What can I relieve them of? What sort of burden can I take off of them? Charlie: I think it goes back to the notion too, that inside of a entity, an organization like a school of art, you have to have pretty good governance structures and that means we have an advisory council of the leadership in the school that meets with me every week. And then we have regular faculty meetings and the separate divisions in the side of the school are required to meet regularly. So that throughout these governance structures, people feel free to share and to speak up and not only do ideas flow up to me, but they also flow down from me to everybody in the school. Charlie: I feel pretty good about the way that we've communicated with faculty. Of course, it's students, I think, that are more difficult to communicate with in this situation. We don't have good communication channels in the school right now for getting information out to students collectively. At the height of the pandemic back in spring, I was making fairly regular, consistent messages to the students through email, and even through video, trying to let them know what was going on. That's tapered off though through the summer and into the fall, I was getting feedback from students that email isn't really an effective way to communicate. Some of those emails had to be long, almost by necessity. And that certainly tuned students out pretty quickly when they see a long email, they're already ready to delete it. I had some experiments with putting together a sort of student council, a representative group from across the school that I would meet with regularly, but that was kind of sidetracked by the pandemic and the inability to get together. Charlie: So that remains a challenge, how we communicate with students, how we let them know what's going on inside the school. And then more to the point that you we're making, how we recognize who in our communities, of both students, faculty, and staff too, who's vulnerable, who needs that extra communication, who needs that reach out, that extra level of connection? Maybe it's not going to everybody, it doesn't have to be a blanket email, but I'm finding ways to have regular meetings with people who I know are at some sort of risk. And I am, by the way... See, I am seeing that, I am seeing the stress take different kinds of forms for faculty and staff that are really having an impact on their health. Jolie: Yeah, and I think, by the same token, figuring out how to build processes, not only to communicate to those communities, but also for them to learn from them, right? So my final question for each of you is, what bit of advice, or what would you like to see around thinking differently about practices and principles of leadership learning from this moment? Charlie, what do you want to take away? What have you learned or what do you want others in leadership positions to learn from this moment about how to better lead? Charlie: It's a great question and a very hard question to answer. I guess I would begin with... What you want to recognize, I think in any communication that comes from leadership is a kind of empathy, a kind of acknowledgement of the difficulty of the situation that you're in. But it has to be empathy that's based on particularity, if it's so generalized and if it's repetitive, if it's always the same phrasing, if it's always the same points being made, if you're always using the same vocabulary, what that's signaling to me is that you're not thinking about the particular qualities of your audience, the particular lived experience of your audience. That might require extra communication or more customized communication, sort of what we were just talking about with Steve, but I think it actually goes in the opposite direction if you don't engage in that sort of thing. It becomes a kind of perception that the leadership that's communicating with you is, it was kind of communicating through a template. Charlie: We talked about industrial scaled education, industrial scaled content delivery, there's industrial scale communication as well. And I think when you're communicating to a diverse community, a very heterogeneous community, everybody doing something different, having different sorts of experiences, that kind of more homogenous communication is off-putting, it can actually do more damage, I think, than benefit. Jolie: What about for you, Steve? What would you like listeners to take away when they think about leadership roles and how to be more effective? Steve: I think believe in the power and the wisdom of the group, individually and collectively to trust and believe that people will make better decisions together than you can. If you think you can make a better decision than the group you've lost your group. Charlie: I think that's a nice, succinct way of really describing what I was trying to get at in my statement, Steve. I think out of empathy is an acknowledgement of solidarity and an acknowledgement that you're all in it together and that others may have ideas that benefit the collective. And if you imagine that you've got all the answers or that this is all on you to solve, you lose the group right away. Jolie: I think that's a great place to end. So thank you both so much for this conversation. Listeners can keep up with ICS by following us on Twitter and Instagram @icsbgsu and on our Facebook page. You can listen to BiG Ideas wherever you find your favorite podcasts, please subscribe and rate us on your preferred platform. Our producers are Chris Cavera and Marco Mendoza, with sound editing by Marco Mendoza. Research assistance was provided by Kari Hanlin. Musical Outro: Discussion.

Social Scientist and Comedian Tenola Oliver is having a digital come to Jesus moment with Steve "It's The Money Game" Harvey! For alerts text LAFF to 77948. Follow us on twitter and IG To Book Comedian Tenola Oliver of to be guest on the podcasts show email laughteriscathartic@gmail.com Home | Tenola Oliver --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/tenola-oliver/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tenola-oliver/support

Franciscan Spirituality Center920 Market StreetLa Crosse, WI 54601608-791-5295Steve Spilde: Welcome. Today it is my pleasure to introduce Marcia Bentley. This is a pleasure for me because Marcia is a teammate. She serves as one of the leaders for the Spiritual Direction Preparation Program. Marcia is also a personal friend, and so it is a joy to talk to her. And beyond that, I’m excited because Marcia is one of the wisest and spiritually deep individuals that I know. She comes with a great deal of wisdom, and it’s a pleasure to make that wisdom available to a larger audience. Welcome, Marcia.Marcia Bentley: Thank you, Steve. What a wonderful introduction.Steve: As I often begin these conversations, I’m interested to hear you describe your family’s religious tradition.Marcia: Good place to start. My family had a very strong Catholic identity. Both of my parents were born and raised Catholic, went to Catholic schools, never dreamed of marrying anyone other than another Catholic. That was the tradition we were raised in, so we went to Catholic schools. My parents were both very involved with the church. My mom was an organist. Both of my parents taught religious education, so it was really the culture of our family, an identity – even to the point, for instance, Sundays we would get up, have a big breakfast, go to Mass together. Then, Sunday afternoons … Sunday was a family day. We would do thing together. My dad owned a business, so he was busy six days a week. But on Sunday, he would spend time with us, and [those were] some of my most fun memories of childhood of coming home from Mass and deciding what we would do for the day, whether it would be something as simple as going to visit my grandparents or whether we’d go to the swimming pool or maybe parks, or even just sit around the living room and divide up the newspaper, and whoever got the comics first was the winner. It was just a friendly and happy and very nurturing upbringing in the Catholic Church.Steve: It sounds very traditional, kind of like the image of what people would expect of a Catholic upbringing.Marcia: Absolutely. And we lived in a neighborhood where so many of our neighbors were Catholic too, that it was just kind of reinforced in an unspoken kind of way. We were Catholics. We had Catholic friends, Catholic neighbors. It’s really its own subculture.Steve: When you were young, how would you have described your image of God? There probably isn’t another word you would have used as a young person, but looking back at that age, how would you have described that image?Marcia: Very much how God was taught to us in church and in school from a child’s viewpoint that God was this all-powerful man who lived in heaven, which was above the clouds. We would look up when we prayed to God. But for me, I guess a difference that I hear compared sometimes to other people’s perspective is that God was very loving. God was powerful, but God was loving as well. I think that was an underlying factor for my whole life, that I just trusted in this loving, wonderful God who was always with us.Steve: What sort of situations would you feel particularly close to God at that stage in your life? Or do you have any particular memories of feeling particularly close to that sense of God?Marcia: Good question. I guess I just felt close to God all the time. It was just this constant feeling of trust and love. But when I was a young child, I don’t remember this, but I was told that I used to write letters to God and then hide them under my bed because I knew God could see everywhere. So God would read those letters under my bed and no one else would find those. But when you talk about a particular experience, when I was in high school, it was during Lent and there was a tradition in the church where, on Holy Thursday, families would sign up to come to church all night long for a particular hour – kind of like the Hour of Perpetual Adoration that the sisters do. I just remember this one particular time where my dad signed us up for like three in the morning or something like that. We were all roused out of our sleep and had to get dressed and go to church and keep Jesus company for an hour in the middle of the night. It was something new and kind of exciting, and you also had to make sure you didn’t fall asleep in church. I was the first one to walk outside after that experience. I walked out and it was still pretty cold weather, and it was just a clear night. After that wonderful feeling of peace of just being in silence and being close to Jesus, walking outside church and looking up at the sky and seeing these stars, I just had this moment of connection with everything. At the time, I don’t know that I called that “God,” but looking back on it, I would call that just a real experience of being one with God, which was awesome.

Land Academy 1000 Free Record a Month Giveaway (LA 1424) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Howdy. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from awesome, cool Arizona. Steve: Rainy Arizona today. Jill DeWit: It is, a little bit. Steve: Today, Jill and I talk about Land Academy's 1000 Free Record-a-Month Giveaway. I was just informed, it's not a giveaway at all. Jill DeWit: It's not a giveaway. It's a new thing. It's not like it's a special thing right now. It's the way we roll, and I'll explain it. Steve: 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 a Land Academy member already, please check us out or join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: David wrote, "My latest mailer had sites zip code- Steve: Situs. Jill DeWit: Situs, excuse me. It was not spelled the right- Steve: I know. It's not you. Jill DeWit: Okay, got it. Steve: It's David. Jill DeWit: S-I-T-U-S zip code for about half of the 1000 records I downloaded. I got those all priced by zip code. Then there's the other 4000, and I don't know where they are in the county, unless I put them into ParcelFact. Pricing by zip code or subdivisions, always how I do it, but on this other half of the [inaudible 00:01:15], that that doesn't seem to have those. How would you price them? I have them priced by school district right now, which looks to be a reliable data set for the properties. But I haven't sent them out. My gut is that this won't be perfect, but the county's good enough that I think I'm willing to risk my mailer costs on pricing that may not be exact. Take it away, Jack. Steve: It's never perfect. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steve: Jill and I went to a dinner with a bunch of our years and years friends last night. And one guy's a government contractor. And he owns a manufacturing company. They do all kinds of stuff, from jet engine parts to whatever. And we're going down the path, starting a company with him, which we will market some very specialty items that he will manufacture. And there was a guy there that has been in that business for a lot of years, but he's never been an entrepreneur. He's been a friend of mine for 25 years. And so, I started down the path with the entrepreneur buddy. And the guy who's a former CEO of a company, a government contracting company, couldn't keep up and didn't understand us. And I love these guys. I love them equally. But there's entrepreneurs who just won't take no for an answer. And then, there's former CEOs or former W2 employees that have never been truly through a startup, so they don't get it. So on my left, is this guy saying, "We're going to do this and we're going to probably fail at it 50 times before we get it right," which I'm saying, "Exactly. Is there another way?" And my former CEO buddy's just horrified. And he doesn't understand why. So look, so my point is here, yeah, it's not going to be perfect. The mailers I do are not perfect. I'm going to talk about failing all this week. Because we have a lot of new people, and there's a material percentage of these people... I'm not sure if David is one or not. I don't think so. He's not actually, now that I'm thinking about it, that haven't wrapped their head around the fact that they're going to fail a few times. Jill DeWit: What do you think about his thought process here? I think that was scrappy. Steve: I do too. Jill DeWit: I'm really impressed. You're like, "Okay, what else can I use?" Steve: That's geographic specific. Jill DeWit: School district is great. Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Jill DeWit: That's a great way to do this. I love it. Steve: Here's what I'd do- Jill DeWit: I'd love to... you can't... what David said in the beginning, I'm just going to explain real quick. There's no way, nor should anyone ever sit and one-by-one look up things.

Land Academy 1000 Free Record a Month Giveaway (LA 1424) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Howdy. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from awesome, cool Arizona. Steve: Rainy Arizona today. Jill DeWit: It is, a little bit. Steve: Today, Jill and I talk about Land Academy's 1000 Free Record-a-Month Giveaway. I was just informed, it's not a giveaway at all. Jill DeWit: It's not a giveaway. It's a new thing. It's not like it's a special thing right now. It's the way we roll, and I'll explain it. Steve: 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 a Land Academy member already, please check us out or join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: David wrote, "My latest mailer had sites zip code- Steve: Situs. Jill DeWit: Situs, excuse me. It was not spelled the right- Steve: I know. It's not you. Jill DeWit: Okay, got it. Steve: It's David. Jill DeWit: S-I-T-U-S zip code for about half of the 1000 records I downloaded. I got those all priced by zip code. Then there's the other 4000, and I don't know where they are in the county, unless I put them into ParcelFact. Pricing by zip code or subdivisions, always how I do it, but on this other half of the [inaudible 00:01:15], that that doesn't seem to have those. How would you price them? I have them priced by school district right now, which looks to be a reliable data set for the properties. But I haven't sent them out. My gut is that this won't be perfect, but the county's good enough that I think I'm willing to risk my mailer costs on pricing that may not be exact. Take it away, Jack. Steve: It's never perfect. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steve: Jill and I went to a dinner with a bunch of our years and years friends last night. And one guy's a government contractor. And he owns a manufacturing company. They do all kinds of stuff, from jet engine parts to whatever. And we're going down the path, starting a company with him, which we will market some very specialty items that he will manufacture. And there was a guy there that has been in that business for a lot of years, but he's never been an entrepreneur. He's been a friend of mine for 25 years. And so, I started down the path with the entrepreneur buddy. And the guy who's a former CEO of a company, a government contracting company, couldn't keep up and didn't understand us. And I love these guys. I love them equally. But there's entrepreneurs who just won't take no for an answer. And then, there's former CEOs or former W2 employees that have never been truly through a startup, so they don't get it. So on my left, is this guy saying, "We're going to do this and we're going to probably fail at it 50 times before we get it right," which I'm saying, "Exactly. Is there another way?" And my former CEO buddy's just horrified. And he doesn't understand why. So look, so my point is here, yeah, it's not going to be perfect. The mailers I do are not perfect. I'm going to talk about failing all this week. Because we have a lot of new people, and there's a material percentage of these people... I'm not sure if David is one or not. I don't think so. He's not actually, now that I'm thinking about it, that haven't wrapped their head around the fact that they're going to fail a few times. Jill DeWit: What do you think about his thought process here? I think that was scrappy. Steve: I do too. Jill DeWit: I'm really impressed. You're like, "Okay, what else can I use?" Steve: That's geographic specific. Jill DeWit: School district is great. Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Jill DeWit: That's a great way to do this. I love it. Steve: Here's what I'd do- Jill DeWit: I'd love to... you can't... what David said in the beginning, I'm just going to explain real quick. There's no way, nor should anyone ever sit and one-by-one look up things.

How Land Academy Deal Funding Works (LA 1380) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hallo. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. Jill: And I'm Jill. And I am broadcasting from Sunny Southern California. Steve: I'm actually in Sunny Central Scottsdale, Arizona. Today Jill and I talk about how Land Academy Deal Funding works. We get these show topics from our customer service, Volume. And so these are many. Many people were asking about this last week, so we decided to do yet another show on how Deal Funding works. But before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill: Thomas wrote, I've got a couple of thousand mailers out and looking for my first deal. An investor friend of mine who flips houses recommended Blueprint Title. They are an online title company. I called them and they said the only thing they cannot do with land transactions is the new deed and its recording. Isn't that the only thing we really kinda need, but we won't go there. Steve: I put this in here for you. Jill: This is hilarious. Steve: Just when you think it can't get any worse, they say, "Oh no, we can't do the deed." Why would they do that? Jill: I'm gonna start a company like this, it's hilarious. [inaudible 00:01:23] can handle is you give me a check and I'll make sure it gets to them. And then everything else you got to do. Steve: Which is Escrow, that's the definition of Escrow. It's not- Jill: What the heck? Steve: It's classic. I would run away from this. Go ahead. Jill: This is so funny. This made me ask the question. If I close a deal through a conventional title company, like First American, do they take care of the new deed and then the recording? Thanks. Oh yes, heck they do. Oh my goodness. Okay, let's back up right now, everyone. First of all, every real title slash Escrow, it's the same thing, Escrow company out there is online. I'm gonna just say it right now. Everything you can do with a phone call and submitting documents with DocuSign, except for the majority of the states that wanna wet signature on a deed, okay. We got that. So how do you get around that? No big deal, it's called a mobile notary. And they come to your house, they come to your office. If you're the person who's buying it, they'll come to your house, [inaudible 00:02:38] office, whatever they prefer, know that's very, very easy and that's it. So nobody has to walk into a title company and do all that anymore, it'd be right there. This whole notion of not doing, I can't believe they even call themselves a title company when they say, "I'll take care of the money, but am not gonna put the deed in the recording." For a renter, that's why you're paying them to do the deed. I mean, maybe they're just saying... maybe they're doing money and title policy, but man, that's only getting me 50% of the way there. I need the other 50%. So I don't know who that is, but I would pick up the phone and call somebody else. And then, don't even have to go with a biggie, Thomas. Don't think that you have to, that it's only a first American or something like that can do a big close like that. There's a lot of great mom and pop title companies. I would argue they're even better, 'cause I would argue they care more. That can do the whole thing for you. And what I do is an attorney too by the way. There's a lot of attorneys out there that can do every title, that can do it cheaper and faster. So call around. I have two questions for title people, and this is what I do. How fast can we do it? How much do you cost? And I'm looking for an investor rate, because if this works out between the two of us, as you talking to them, Thomas, you're gonna do ten more maybe this month or this year, 'cause you just blasted that area to try and find someone with a good relationship. And you wanna tell them that. Steve: This is like taking your [inaudible 00:04:24] o...

Still no haircut.  Yesterday, leg cramps were minor, but they were there, so I chose to go nowhere and do nothing as to not overdo anything!  The pain is GONE, the numbness is gone, the nerve buzzies are gone...now if the cramps can get gone all will be well!  No cramps last night or this morning.  Gotta run to post office, maybe the haircut today.  Neighbor is smoking pork butts and making coleslaw, dinner is planned!  The Music Authority LIVE STREAM Show & Podcast...listen, like, comment, download, share, repeat daily on Mixcloud, Player FM, Stitcher, Tune In, Podcast Addict, Cast Box, Radio Public, and Pocket Cast, and APPLE iTunes! AND NOW ON MORNINGS IN CANADA!  https://s1.citrus3.com:2000/public/HCRRadio Hamilton Co-Op Radio! Follow the show on TWITTER JimPrell@TMusicAuthority! Are you listening? How does and can one listen in? Let me list the ways...Listen LIVE here - https://fastcast4u.com/player/jamprell/ Podcast recorded here - https://themusicauthority.transistor.fm/ Take a moment and share this post! Share it! Share it!! Share It!!! SHARED! The Music Authority LIVE STREAM Show & Podcast! Please check out my shows special recorded hour, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7PM UK time, 2PM ET, 11AM PT Now Rocking The KOR! www.koradio.rocks ALSO! Hear a completely different recorded hour of Power Pop, Rock, Soul, Rhythm & Blues...NO TWO LIVE SHOWS THE SAME, Friday, Saturday and Sunday on Pop Radio UK 6PM UK, 1PM ET, 10AM PT! October 15, 2020, Thursday, for the week, hour ten…Orbis Max - TMA SHOW OPEN THEMEAthanor - 06 Autumn Slipping Away [Hills Of The Universe] (koolkatmusik.com)Chuck Schiele's Quatro - Sixteen SecondsTank Top - 02 FurtherThe Turnback - 1. Beyond Belief [Drawn In Chalk]Calneva Spaceboy - Waking Up [Spaceboy]Ruby The Rabbit Foot - 02 Faucet LoveThe Toms - 06 - Later Than Now [Simplicity]Ben Harper - Give A Man A HomeJamie & Steve - It's All Because Of You [Sub Textural]A Bunch Of Jerks - 09 Pretty Low [Anguish As A Second Language] (Rum Bar Records)Los Pepes - 07 This Love's WarThe Kite Collectors - 02 Let Me Use Up My Time [Clockface]Private Lightning - Physical SpeedSlumberjet - (Theme From) Our Street [World Of Sound]The Junior League - 9 No More [Adventureland](koolkatmusik.com)The Newds- 11 Hope Comes Calling [Drawing A Line]True Love - 03 - How Does It Feel [Wings]Big Lazy – Just Plain Scared

Show notes & links available here. In this episode, I'm talking to Steve Baskin about raising strong, anti-fragile kids. Steve and his wife, Susie, are the owners and directors of Camp Champions in Marble Falls, Texas. For over 27 years, Steve has studied the camp experience and how to make it the best possible growth opportunity for kids. In his new essay, A Manifesto to Strength (published below for the first time) and in this interview, Steve shares his thoughts on what we can do as parents to raise kids who aren't so fragile. Big Ideas The summer camp experience offers kids so many benefits and opportunities for education and development. Avoid over-parenting and preparing the road for your child. Instead, prepare your child for the road by doing less for them as they get older. Kids who are allowed to experience life's ups and downs, learn to advocate for themselves and who learn from their mistakes are more equipped for adulthood. Protecting kids from discomfort is not the same thing as protecting our kids from danger. It does more harm than good in the long run. Camp is a powerful place to build internal strength. Resilience means you are worse after a challenge, whereas if we are anti-fragile, we should emerge from a challenging situation stronger. An example is a child who overcomes homesickness at summer camp and then has an easier time going away from home when it's time for college. It can be hard for parents to see their kids for the age they truly are. Instead, they see the "weighted average of all their memories." Quotes Audrey: "We have a lot in common in that we take this camp thing very seriously and are always thinking about how we can better deliver the social-emotional life skills growth that kids need at camp." Steve: "One of the things I began to see early on was over-parenting, first the helicopter parenting and then the snowplow or lawnmower parenting. One is watching your child's emotion and then trying to manage your child's experience and prepare the road for your child, instead of your child for the road, and I saw that as problematic." Steve: "We joke that we have a rule of parenting through laziness. If you think your child can do it, let them. If you suspect they might be able to do it, let them. If you think there's an off-chance, let them." Steve: "College campuses are responding to what they're getting. I think the horse is already out of the barn. The kids get there and they have had their parents get on the phone and talk to the teachers. They've had parents adjudicate their friendships. They've had their college applications coauthored.  They've been used to having someone say, 'If it's too much for you, sweetheart, your mom and dad are here, we're going to protect you. And it sends a really deleterious signal." Steve: "It's one of the saddest ironies that we, in our unbelievably, almost overwhelming love of our children and in an attempt to create some sort of advantage for them, we're baking in longterm disadvantage." Steve: "We think we need to protect our children. And the answer to that is yes, of course, from starvation and moving cars and juggling chainsaws. There are things that are legitimately dangerous. But we are not there to protect them from any discomfort or any pain or any sadness. What we need to do is not protect but prepare." Steve: "When you're handed that delicate baby on day one, you'd better be in the protect and provide business. You'll make sure they're not hurt and they're fed. But every day after that, we ought to be protecting and providing just a little bit less and preparing a little bit more." Steve: "There's a general parenting trend that equates protection from discomfort with protection from danger and it makes loving parents create fragile children." Audrey: "In general, the kids we see at our camps are less fragile than the general population. Parents who are willing to let their kids go to camp are already ahead of the game." Steve: "Parents tend to think in binary terms: I don't want a fragile child; I want a resilient child. And that misses a third, much more ambitious and exciting axis. Fragile is what happens if you drop a crystal glass on the ground. It breaks. If you drop a Solo cup, nothing happens. It's not better, it's not worse. It's the same. It's resilient. Anti-fragile is something that, when exposed to stress, challenge or difficulty, actually becomes stronger. So your immune system is anti-fragile. You get exposed to a disease and you're less likely to get it in the future." Steve: "We need to experience challenges and get through them to know that we're capable of it and just to build those psychic muscles." Steve: "I want (kids) to fail at something and then know through perseverance and try, try again that they can overcome that failure." Audrey: "(When kids forget their homework) people overestimate the importance of grades and underestimate the importance of getting the zero and realizing that the world doesn't end. And remembering it the next day." Steve: "We want our children to avoid any short term discomfort but at the cost of long term capability." Steve: "I'd rather have kids think the world is an adventure and know that everything's not going to be perfect. If you constantly send a (fearful) message, you make fragile children who are scared of the world. When it comes time for them to go into the workplace or go into college or go do something bold and exciting, they're going into a world that's scary. They're going into a world that they're not prepared for." Audrey: "Some parents have almost zero risk tolerance. They'll think about all the things that could possibly go wrong instead of all the learning and growth that could go right." Audrey: "We have a lot of fears that are unfounded. We've been inundated with scary, sad stories in the media but the chances of those happening to your child are very small." Steve: "My struggle with social media is that it has hacked our evolutionary wiring in the same way that Haagen Daaz or Pringles have hacked our wiring for fats, sugars, and salts so that we won't eat foods we were evolved to want. We want human connection. I think that Snapchat is to human connection what Pringles is to nutrition. It feels almost like food, and then you do a whole lot of it and you feel bad afterward." Audrey: "Teach them to be discerning. It's not like you send them out with no guidance...We're showing them, we're watching them do it, we're feeling comfortable with them doing it and then we're letting them do it." Steve: "If a parent were to say, 'What can I do?' my first answer is always, 'Less.'" Steve: "Always work off the assumption that they're okay. 'You've got this, I believe in you. You're strong.'" A Manifesto to Strength by Steve Baskin In recent years, we have read a great deal about grit and resilience. We have also seen studies about emotional fragility in our young people.  Even beyond the studies, I have personally seen a rise in young people (often first-time campers) who struggle with overcoming adversity and bouncing back from failure. But we know that life will have its challenges.  Our children will experience failures. They will experience loss and potentially even tragedy. I can think of no greater task as a parent or an educator than to help prepare our children to overcome these future struggles. But in order to do so, we must face an important realization. Doing so will be hard for us. As parents, we want to protect our children from dangers and hardships.  Our desire to protect them from real threats can also lead us to going too far.  In our love, we can find ourselves striving to protect them from discomfort, embarrassment, sadness, or boredom.  Their pain or discomfort becomes ours and we often do everything we can to eliminate it. But this does not serve them.  Our children need to learn how to cope with disappointment, heartache, sadness, and failure. They need to learn how to deal with an awkward social situation and social break-ups. We should not be absent: we should be there to let them know that we have experienced similar challenges and that we are available to help them. But we need to let them have these experiences themselves now.  Learning to cope with challenge is like developing resistance to diseases.  You become better at it through exposure to the challenges. Children are “anti-fragile”, which is to say that they become more capable through challenge.  [I recently wrote an article explicitly on this topic.] I share this because it deeply influences how camp benefits your child. We want camp to be full of friendships, laughter, fun, and activities.  But we also know it is a powerful place to build internal strength. I use “strength” rather than “resilience” for a reason.  “Resilience” simply means that you are no worse after a challenge. If we are indeed anti-fragile, we should emerge from a challenging situation stronger.  With that in mind, I hope some of the following happens to every camper: They are homesick and overcome it so that they will know they can thrive outside of their parents’ shadows.  This will be critical when they go to college. They have a heated dispute with a friend, are upset, and eventually, find a resolution. They try something new and fail.  And fail a few more times.  And then succeed through perseverance. They try something and fail without an eventual triumph.  We will not always win or succeed.  Children should know that they can survive those situations, too. I want counselors to be there to support our campers after these challenges, but not to prevent them from ever happening. One of the odd gifts of camp is that it is fun and joyful enough to allow these growth moments to happen and still feel like a positive experience. I once thought that the challenges (homesickness, cabin squabbles, struggles to learn a new skill) were the price you paid for the joys.  As the cliché says, “No pain, no gain.” “Into every life, some rain must fall.” But now I know that the pain IS the gain.  These challenges and struggles are building capabilities and capacities in your child that will bear fruit later in life.  When other 18 year-olds are suffering from homesickness as college Freshmen, your child will be there to comfort them. When a friend gets fired from a job or suffers from a break-up, your child will understand the disappointment and provide empathy.  And when your child has his or her own troubles, they will know they have overcome issues in the past. Here’s to strong children! Steve Sir About Steve Baskin Steve Baskin is the executive director of the boys’ side of Camp Champions. In addition, he is a partner at Camp Pinnacle and Everwood Day Camp. Steve is a lifelong camper. He first attended camp when he was 8 and he continued for 11 years. In his years as a camper and a counselor, he discovered the power of the camp experience to develop confidence, social skills, and joy. He even wrote about camp in his college applications as one of the defining experiences of his life. After graduating with honors from Davidson College, he got off the camp track for a few years during which he was an investment banker with Goldman Sachs in New York and Simmons & Company in Houston. He then went to Harvard Business School, where he decided to pursue his true passion: summer camp. He and Susie have been full-time camp owners since 1993. Steve is lucky to have the pleasure of partnering with his wife (and best friend) and raising their 4 kids. Steve has been featured in articles in the Wall Street Journal, American Way magazine, the Houston Chronicle and the Austin-American Statesman. He has written for Psychology Today on youth development, education, and parenting. Steve chaired the Tri-State Camp Conference (the largest camp conference in the world) from 2008-2010. In 2009, he received the National Service Award from the American Camp Association(ACA). In 2010, he was appointed Treasurer of the ACA and serves on its Executive Committee and on the National Board. He is currently the chair of the American Camping Foundation. In 2013, Steve was asked to speak at his 20th Harvard reunion as an expert on parenting. WATCH STEVE’S HARVARD TALK: PLAY ► About Camp Champions Camp Champions is a 2-3 week overnight camp in Marble Falls, Texas for girls and boys. It is on beautiful Lake LBJ and offers over 50 different activities. They are all about the 4 Rs: respect, responsibility, reaching out to others and taking reasonable risks. Resources Campchampions.com Julie Lythcott-Haim's Ted Talk, How to Raise Successful Kids without over-parenting Related Ep. 128: “America’s Worst Mom” Lenore Skenazy talks about Letting our Kids Grow Ep. 101: Entitlemania with Richard Watts 5 Steps to Raising a Problem Solver 5 Ways Camp Grows Grit Be a Better Parent by Doing Less Ready for Adulthood Check-List for Kids Ep. 85: Grit is Grown Outside the Comfort Zone (PEGtalk)

ROCK TALK WITH MITCH LAFON presents Grim Reaper's Steve Grimmett. In this very candid conversation, Steve discusses the band's latest album At The Gates, lawsuits over the band's name & past material, regaining control of the band's past catalogue, quitting the industry, re-recording the first three albums, his health struggles including PTSD & depression and the importance of his fans. Quote from Steve: "It was a red hot poker up the butt, really" Get your MITCH MERCH here: https://loudtrax.com/Mitch  Twitter: @mitchlafon Instagram: @mitch_lafon The only way to get all my interviews and content is to subscribe to Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon Support the show.

Land Academy Members Self Start Accountability Metric to Insure Success (LA 1097) Transcript: Steve:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill:                          Hi. Steve:                   Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill:                          And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steve:                   Today Jill and I talk about how Land Academy members have self-started an accountability metric to ensure their own success. Jill:                          I love it. Steve:                   Who the heck wrote that title? Jill:                          Wasn't me, because the word metric was in it. Steve:                   What does it mean? What it means is some smart person in our group started a Facebook group called accountability, Land Academy accountability. And the people that join it, you know it's an invite only or it's like requests only, how that works. Jill:                          It's a secret group. Steve:                   And they- Jill:                          It's not secret now, sorry. Steve:                   It's not secret anymore. When certain people start off on stuff like this, everybody knows this. It's hard to stay on track. Stuff happens. Like you got to pick up your kids from school or whatever. Your job gets in the way. So this is an accountability group to make sure that if you commit to sending out, it's kind of like Weight Watchers, you are going to get weighed in ... I don't even know how the Weight Watchers works. Jill:                          I can tell you. Steve:                   How does Weight Watchers work? Jill:                          There is a weekly weigh in. It's true. It's actually funny. Steve:                   I'm choking myself laughing. Jill:                          Why Weight Watchers came from, but okay. Steve:                   So what happens in Weight Watchers? Do you say I'm going to lose a pound or I'm going to stay on this diet? Is it like, let's see how this goes next week on the scale or I have a goal in losing a pound? Jill:                          Well you have a goal. Well, in the old days when I did Weight Watchers way back when, like you kept track, it wasn't on our phones back then and you kept track of it, you had points and you could eat so many points a day. And then once we could go to meeting and you'd weigh in and meet with your person, they say yay and you'd sit down and someone would talk and then you go home with a bunch of recipes. Steve:                   So does everybody like not eat the day before? Jill:                          Oh, I'm sure. Oh yeah. And they like drink a lot of coffee. Try to get things going before you go to the meeting. And like were your thinnest, lightest weight clothes, like don't wear a sweatshirt that might weigh something. It's so funny. Take your shoes off. Steve:                   So I don't, I'm not a member of this group. I think you are though. Jill:                          Oh, I was. Weight Watchers way back when. Steve:                   No, no. This accountability group. Sorry, I changed gear. Jill:                          No, no. Steven. I am actually not currently a Weight Watchers member. I do however support, always support Weight Watchers. I am not a Weight Watchers member at the time. Are you telling me I should? Steve:                   No. It has nothing do do with- Jill:                          Is this about the chump? Steve:                   No. Yeah. You don't ever want to talk about any woman's weight. Jill:                          That should be the stump the chump, like do you bring up Weight Watchers with a woman? Steve:                   Sitting next to a woman on your own show, do you even bring up Weight Watchers. What kind of idiot would bring up Weight Watchers? Jill:                          And then ask me questions about it. Like,

How did Steve Sheinkopf and the team at Yale Appliance use blogging to grow the company's website traffic from 30,000 visits a month to one million visits a month while increasing revenues by 350%? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Yale Appliance and Lighting CEO Steve Sheinkopf shares his company's journey from a small Boston-based lighting and appliance store that relied heavily on advertising for business, to the world's most trafficked appliance website and a business in the process of adding its third store. Central to Yale's success was Steve himself, who blogged five times a week in the early day's of the company's content marketing efforts and continues to create key blog posts to this day. Highlights from my conversation with Steve include: Yale Appliance is the most trafficked appliance website in the world Steve started blogging in 2007 and at the time, Yale Appliance was spending around three quarters of a million dollars on radio ads. From 2007 to 2011, Steve blogged five times a week, but despite the volume of content he was publishing he wasn't seeing any results.  In 2011, Yale was getting 30,000 visitors a month to its website and today, it gets close to a million a month - all due to the shift that Steve and his team made in the way they undertake content marketing. Yale doesn't talk about itself on its blog - it talks about statistics and facts relating to its products, and that is what makes readers trust them. Steve says blogging is all about building domain authority and to that requires a sustained and consistent effort when it comes to content creation. Steve sees blogging as a core competency of his business at Yale and as such believes strongly that it shouldn't be outsourced. Steve still writes blogs for Yale, but today, the company's sales people blog as well. The company tracks the ROI of its content marketing efforts and can show, using data from HubSpot, that views of its blog and buyers guide have driven millions of dollars in business. Steve writes all of the posts relating to reliability, "best of" lists, and articles detailing problems that frequently occur with certain brands. One of the biggest benefits of Yale's content marketing efforts is that the leads it generates are very high intent. His team can see the content they've consumed on the website and it shows exactly what they are interested in. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained probably 15 to 20% in revenue. We've, increased our revenue probably 350% in the same time. 37 about 122 million in a 10 year period. So that certainly plays a part of that in terms of stores. We've gone from one store to we're adding our third in November which will be our biggest store. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained approximately 15 to 20% in revenue. In that time, Yale has increased its revenue by 350%, from 37 to about 122 million in a 10 year period. They have also gone from one store to adding their third in November which will be the company's biggest store. Resources from this episode: Visit the Yale Appliance and Lighting Website Follow Steve on Twitter Connect with Steve on LinkedIn Email Steve at steve.sheinkopf@yaleappliance.com  Listen to the podcast to get learn how Steve Sheinkopf and the team at Yale Appliance and Lighting used content to drive traffic, leads and sales. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week my guest is Steve Sheinkopf who is the CEO of Yale Appliance and Lighting. Welcome, Steve. Steve Sheinkopf (Guest): Good to be here Kathleen. How are you? Steve and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I'm great. I am excited to have you on and I can't wait to dig into our topic. But, not everybody who's listening may know who you are, so can you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and your business? About Steve Sheinkopf and Yale Appliance and Lighting Steve: Sure. We're a 97 year old appliance company located in Boston Massachusetts. We sell appliances, lights, we do a lot of service work, and our company's powered by really content marketing and not advertising. That's pretty much what we do. We sell all brands of different appliances, from Sub-Zero down to Samsung and we compete against pretty much 60 Brick and mortar competitors in a 20 mile area plus Online plus Amazon, Wayfair and all the people, Home Depot, that sort of thing. Kathleen: You're being very humble and so I'm going to toot your horn for you because this is like a David and Goliath story. You guys do compete against 800 pound gorillas with huge budgets. If I understand correctly you also in some respects, at least for content and search engine share, you compete against the manufacturers of the appliances that you sell. So on paper this story shouldn't be possible which is what I love about it. But you guys have one of the most trafficked, if not the most traffic to appliance websites in the world. Correct? Steve: Yeah. I think so. Kathleen: It's amazing. So all right, for people who are listening, I have been bugging Steve and his team to try and get one of them on this podcast for about two years now because I first started hearing this story of Yale Appliance a couple of years back. It was before I joined IMPACT I had heard about it from Marcus Sheridan, who plays a role in the story. And then I had the opportunity to get to know these guys better through IMPACT and all along I've just been so impressed. The reason, and it is a classic content marketing story, and I say classic because it's the things we're all told to do. Only you guys actually went and did them which is the big differentiator. But the reason I was so excited to have you particularly on is that most of my guests are marketers and they're already drinking the Kool-Aid. The biggest challenge they tend to have, is getting the C-suite not only to buy-in, but my gosh for them The Holy Grail is to actually participate in the process. And you've been doing this all along. So that's really what I want to talk about. But let's kind of rewind the clock if you would and start back from when you first began. I've heard the story a couple of times but I'm sure everybody hasn't. So maybe you could just tell the tale of how did you guys first travel down this path? Because you're a 90 year old company and you were not always the most trafficked website for appliances in the world. How Yale Appliance discovered content marketing Steve: Oh, clearly not, clearly not. It's a long story but really it starts in 2004. I went to this thing called The In-Planet and it was absolute genius. There's a bunch of it was I think Boston visors or the Bain or McKinsey guys, they were talking about the future of marketing and they were talking about how digital one day overtake outbound and to prepare for it, it wasn't happening yet. And they said. "The least you can do is get on the whole review side, that reviews are going to play a big part of how people are going to purchase from your company." So that's the first thing we did is we got on with all the yelpers and instead of berating them for giving you bad views, we looked inside ourselves to say. " Maybe we're really disappointing people organically." So we started in 2007 blogging. And at the same time it was doubling down on radio. We did a lot of radio at that time I think it was the final number was somewhere around three quarters of a million dollars. And we doubled down during the recession and the more we advertise it was like diminishing returns. I used to ask the phone people anybody called them radio ads. When we started doing it in 2000 it was popular by 2010 no one really seemed interested. So we started blogging in 2007. It was 2011 when I met Marcus Sheridan and I thought it was going to teach Marcus something. The first conversation we have, everybody loves Marcus. He's like a folksy guy and back if we rewind the clock in 2011, at that time I was blogging every day but I wasn't blogging by keyword. I wasn't- Why the CEO of Yale Appliance dedicated himself to blogging Kathleen: Now you yourself were blogging? Steve: Yeah, I was. Kathleen: I just want to clarify that. Steve: I did that five days a week. Kathleen: That's amazing. Did you publish, was it five blogs or was it? Steve: Five posts a week. Kathleen: That's great. Steve: Well it's great when it's good stuff, not so great. And it was well-meaning, but it wasn't... Even when it answered the question I never titled it right, I didn't met a tag it. So our first conversation was just absolute beat down. It was pretty bad, but he was right. At that time we have 30,000 people a month going into our site, which on paper doesn't seem bad but we started blogging strategically and now we expect a million visitors a month, we were busy and somewhere out six, 700,000, we're not. And with that comes certainly more leads, more traffic, more business and that's what this is about. And I can't believe that, I can't believe. But if you were to say to a CEO, look we're going to start this program that's not going to be effective in six months, then you probably not going get much buy-in on the C-suite. But if you say to somebody, I'm going to reduce ad spend to zero and increase revenues disproportionately to your market share - I mean, what does the bottom line look like? And it's a great learning tool and it creates trust and it creates distrust for your competitors that aren't doing this. They're selling products that maybe they shouldn't be. That's a pretty compelling case so if you structure like that, I think people get more buy-in from the people that need to buy in to say this is a revenue expense game and it's what, how people really want to consume stuff. Because nobody really wants to listen to me say how great I am. In fact, we never talk about ourselves. We talk about statistics and facts and helping people make purchases because you go to all these content marketing seminars they talk about trust and that's how you really trying to do. If they trust you and your pricing is good and your execution which is the back half of what I really work on is are we executing to, what our value proposition is? Because blogging without execution is just bad. Work on execution first then blog. So that's the whole story. Kathleen: You raise a really interesting point and I've been in this inbound or content marketing game a long time. I had an agency for 11 years. Something that you said really struck me because you talked about if you say to a CEO, we're going to create blogs and you're not going to see any results for six months, that is what I would say the disproportionate percentage of people in this space say it when somebody says, how long will it take for me to get results? Which everybody wants to know, right? Because that's what it's all about is the results people will always answer with, well it takes time. Six months to a year you'll start to see something. And while there are aspects of content marketing that that is true for, there are also aspects of it that that is absolutely not true. Where you can see some sorts of results right away. And I think you're right when you set that expectation that's going take a while. That's not exactly the best way to sell it. Steve: Well, I mean, blogging is about domain authority. Strictly we use words to cover up what we really mean and you don't become an authority figure with one or two posts. You need to show over a long period of time that you know what you're doing, whether it's getting a client, business, life, whatever it is. You don't become an authority with one good post. That said, if you write about something that's brand new that nobody else's, you could probably rank high pretty quickly. Kathleen: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I've always said that the best moments in my content marketing career have been when I googled a question and didn't find an answer for it and I was like, ha ha, I'm right that answer. So what I'm curious about is you actually were convinced even before you met Marcus, that just that blogging in and of itself had value now obviously there was a better way to do it. Why you should insource content creation Kathleen: But what I'm really interested in understanding from you is when you first had this realization that hey, we might need to blog as part of our corporate strategy. What was it that convinced you personally to write? Because I think most of the CEOs I know who have that Aha moment and realized blogging is important. Their first thought is, I'm going to assign that to somebody or we're going to outsource it. Very few think I'm going to do it. Steve: Well, it's like anything else. You want to outsource things that either you're not good at or someone can do cheaper. If you want something to be a core competency you have to do it yourself, right? You can't be good at something, outsource it and then hope it gets better. Right? If you want it to be a core competency where every year, like every month, every week, every, if you're part of it and you're interested in it and intrigues you and it touches the customer it's important. That's something you don't outsource. So it's a matter of I think people that are outsourcing, the losing the whole kind of how do we get better? How do we read, what are customers asking and how are we better solve the problem? Goes into merchandising, it goes into everything we do, what lines we sell, what lines we don't sell. Because we have the finger on the pulse of what we think the customer reacts to. But you're never going to get good at it... Let's forget about if we call it something else, like social media or writing or customer outreach. If you're outsourcing it as a methodology, nobody's going to know your business better than you do. And it doesn't matter which content conference we go to whether it's Impact or Inbound or HubSpot or whatever those. Anybody that's outsourcing with writers from whatever, what Fiverr from Indiana they're just not getting the results they could if they did it themselves and treat it like a crucial pillar of our business of ,your business which it could be, which it should be. Who creates content at Yale Appliance Kathleen: Now in the beginning you were writing five articles a week. What does that look like today? Are you still actively writing or are there other folks in the company that are primarily doing it? Steve: Well, it really depends, but the sales people. Sales people write blogs to varying degrees. I still edit most of them and I still write the important ones. And again, some of the ones I've written have, there are two that are over 2 million, 20 million views. But forget about the views, we have a report that shows people that go into our buyers guide from blogs and how much money we derive from that on a monthly, yearly basis. It's certainly well worth doing financially to do that, be part of it. And again my time spent at the CEO and culture and metrics and enforcing standards, after that really social outreach which I can reach a whole market of people by writing a blog. It's just so worth my time I think. Kathleen: And you mentioned that you write the important posts and that there are certain posts that really take off. What are the topics that you feel like best come from you? Steve: Well, the ones that resonate are the ones that are reliability posts that we were ranked manufacturers based on a service in the first year. I think some industry problem ones, are best from me, I think some of the comparisons other people can do. Again, when you look at blogging, if you want to figure out if your sales people know what they're talking about, you read their blogs. And if they can't tell you what the five best gas range tops are and in a blog they probably won't be able to sell if the customer comes into the store. So is a good learning tool for new people to just read Wiskott-Aldrich. So the time to get a new person up is much quicker. But I write reliability, best and problems ones. Kathleen: Were you always just really comfortable with writing? Is that a format that you gravitate to? Steve: Not initially, I realized the value of it but if you look at what I wrote back in 2007 versus what we write now, it's much better, much different. And that's true of anything. Everyone always says. "I'm an awful writer." Everybody is awful. This saying that every expert starts as a beginner. If you stick with it and you write three articles a week every week, if you're new, by the time one year rolls around, you've written 152 articles. That's enough for authority, but you're going to be much better after a year than you are in the beginning. Everything you do that you practice you work hard on you're going to get better at. Whether it's blogging or anything else in business. Kathleen: Now, do you find that you've gotten faster also? Steve: Yes. I think in blogs now. I've been doing it for since 2007 .I think in blog posts like comparisons and invest because I've been doing it for that long. Kathleen: How long does it take you to produce a blog? Steve: Me? Kathleen: Yeah. Steve: I can produce a blog in probably a couple of hours. The ROI of Yale's content marketing efforts Kathleen: That's great. I think it's interesting because a lot of CEOs would hear a couple of hours and think there's no way. My time is too valuable for that. So you mentioned that you guys have systems put in place to track how he is this content turns into revenue. Can you give me a sense of what that looks like and what that's produced? I don't even know if you can get it down to like what is a blog worth? I'm sure each of them is worth a different amount, but I'd love to understand better what kind of ROI you're seeing. Steve: Well, let's forget the fact that basically the path to purchase goes to the Internet. It has since probably 2005. Alright? So but the way we do, we use a very crude metric. I have Google analytics where I can... that our time on site jumps when you talk about a blog posts really, time on site pages views equal to consumers. But we can talk about store visits, but in terms of share revenue the number that we look at over a 12 month period is anybody that's downloaded a buyer's guide. So let's say you download a buyer's Guide and get 20th. If you come into the store buy with that same email address, we track them and let's just say your friend, partners, significant other, spouse buys under theirs, that's not tracked. So just from the people that download buyers guide, they buy it comes out to be about a million or a million and half per month in revenue. Yeah, that's just that not including... What we tried to do when you look at when anybody looks at Google analytics, typically Marcus said for his pool company, once they hit pages 30, his conversion goes up. For us I think it's seven minutes or 10 and a half pages and blogs play a big part of that. You want to get trust and then you want to execute. And that's kind of how businesses and the blogging is in marketing is half that or say a third of it, the sales and execution, delivery, install, all that stuff has to be in order for this to work. Certainly the articles have to be good, but the delivery experience, the installation experience and the service experience of what we do, which is our differentiating factors have to be as good if not better. Kathleen: So this has had a major implication for your overall business. Obviously it's not just revenue, clearly you're getting a lot of traffic and that's turning into business for you. But can you talk a little bit about some of the new directions that you're thinking of heading in as a result of this? What Yale's success with content marketing has meant for its business Steve: What we've been able to do certainly on the revenue side. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained probably 15 to 20% in revenue. We've, increased our revenue probably 350% in the same time. 37 about 122 million in a 10 year period. So that certainly plays a part of that in terms of stores. We've gone from one store to we're adding our third in November which will be our biggest store. But really what we've done is we've taken that 2% that we normally two or 3%, we normally take in marketing and we put it in customer touchpoints and really the customer touchpoints, are systems and people. We've been able to keep good people because instead of blowing it on $3 million worth of say, Glow Buds or radio spots or something, we have a better medical, we have 401k matching. To me that's... You market to your people first and those people market to your customers. So we've been able to take that wasted spend and put it into areas that people really appreciate. And that's people, systems, displays, warehousing, all that stuff, that's the other half of it. Is to take that money you would have spent and put it where people really want it. The first thing during the recession when we change management, first thing I said is we're going to answer the phone, right? We're going to answer the phone and we're going to be good on the execution side. And we put our money towards that rather than putting money on marketing. And it wouldn't take off if we didn't have some kind of social profile, which that whole blogging is a part of really, if blogging is a core competence that helps people come into the stores and then it's the execution side. It's two parts to this it's not just blogging that drives the revenue. It's the execution that keeps the revenue. Kathleen: It's funny because there's lots of buzz that I hear at least that we could be due for another recession sometime in the next couple of years. When you think about the evolution of the company and how you've done marketing and consider that there is this prospect that we may get hit again with another recession. How do you think the company will fare given your new marketing approach? Because it's very different than what you did the last time around. Steve: I think we'll do a lot better again because one of the things is we're not wasting money. We all know that outbound marketing is a negative ROI deal. I think as long as you understand who your customer is and you're straight and transparent with them, I think you have a leg up over people who do not do that. And that's pretty much everybody in our space. There's some people that are doing it, some people that are doing well, but they don't understand the whole execution side. Kathleen: Now the other thing that I think is interesting is historically you've been a local business. You're in the Boston area and well that's a big local market. It's still a local market and now you're getting all this traffic. I have to imagine a considerable amount of that traffic is not from the Boston area. Some people might hear that and think, well that's great that you have more traffic, but it's not really, that's not valuable traffic because they're not going to be able to walk in the door and buy from you. How do you look at that? Steve: Oh that's very true. 88% of our traffic we cannot sell to. Because delivering an appliance it's not like delivering Sharmane tissues.Especially in Boston because we got brownstones and walk-ups you need very specialized delivery people. That's why we pay the delivery people well because we're not spending it on marketing. But the worst thing you can do is ruin your reputation by not execute. It's a fair question a lot of this traffic is not really valid traffic. Let's take a million people say that we got last month on the blog or 800,000 or whatever it was, say it's 800,000 we'll minimize that means 12% of 800,000 in your market. How many people... We write to a specific audience. So how many people? 12% of a million or 800,000 it's still a lot of people that's still you're writing to 70,000 people. They're not reading your blog because they want to get to something else. It's still a significant amount of people in the market. There's no way to hit, it's like the old days they talked about radio ads. It's like they sold it to you. There's 100,000 home owners but only 2% of them are in the market and only 2% of those will listen to ad. The people that are clicking on a blog posts are showing intent, right? So those are 70,000 people showing you intent because they're clicking on something. It's not like the old radio or TV metrics. So that's still a lot of people looking to buy from you. Kathleen: Do you ever foresee that there might be an opportunity for you to somehow monetize that other 80%? Steve: No, unless we're directly involved in the actual fulfillment of the order. I don't want to be involved. If we look at... There's a lot of really good online appliance stores that have really good interfaces. They put their money on the front end, but if you look at the reviews on Yelp or Google, they're so bad and over time that'll catch up to you. Right? Because really, the one thing that I always tell the people in the marketing department is don't forget that your consumer and the path to purchase is okay, you'll read a blog everyone talks about what's the one thing, it's all about attribution. You'll read a blog post, you'll go online and you're mobile, you'll sit on your tablet, but somewhere down the line you're going to read reviews before you decide to purchase from that company or not. And you don't want everybody loves Impact because you guys do good work. But if you had a two star reputation on like Yelp or Google, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Right. So, I'm willing to... First of all, there's enough business in a local market. I want more, it's cheaper in, and easier and better to be in the Boston market. Than being partly in Boston, in somewhere in L.A. which is actually our biggest market for the blog, New York. I think it's better logistically to stay where you are. Kathleen: I was going to say maybe someday you'll have... You have three stores now maybe you'll someday have 30. Steve: The way it works from a business standpoint, this goes a little bit back to blogging is you have a warehouse. You want to maximize that warehouse, then in a third store you need a bigger warehouse and you want to maximize that warehouse and then you run stores up that warehouse, that's where it becomes the most efficient to do business. Going to L.A and having logistics there and hiring and hiring service people in a whole new network is much more difficult. Steve's advice to other CEOs Kathleen: It's a good problem to have too much traffic and more than you can sell to. I want to go back to this issue of most CEOs don't necessarily see the justification for being personally involved in this. If somebody is listening and they are a Content Manager or the Head of Marketing and they're passionate about creating content for the company and they want the CEO to be involved, As a CEO yourself, do you have any advice for the best way for that person to approach the CEO and get them excited about taking part in this process? Steve: It's like we said in the beginning, there aren't too many opportunities to increase your brand in the profile of that brand. There's not too many ways to create trust and there's not too many ways to raise revenue and reduce expenses at the same time. What is your bottom line look like by raising revenue and reducing expenses? And that's really my job is to... We used to be happy if we reduced expenses by 30, 50, 60,000. Well now we're talking about reducing expenses at our level 700, a million, $2 million in increasing the top line revenues by since we'll be doing it anywhere from eight to 15% a year in a highly competitive market. There aren't too many opportunities to do that. In fact, there aren't any opportunities to do that. And if you're a CEO and your other face of the brand of the company and it comes from you and you're answering people's questions and handling people's problems, that goes a long way in building your brand there. If it isn't that, what else would you be doing? I could sit there and run the warehouse, but there are people that run the warehouse better than me. I could sit on Ops, the people that run operations better than me. It's important for a CEO to understand the metrics of success in the company, but terms of really the overall of really the fundamentals of a P&L we have revenues, we have expenses. If you raise one and lower the other one, that's what we're paid to do. And this is a unique opportunity to do it. Now, do you have to do it to my extreme? No, clearly not. I got involved 12 years ago but if you were to do a post or two a week and maybe handle a couple of dicey problems and show that you have kind of deep seated knowledge of the industry. Especially if you're selling services, which many people do and you show that you handled that problem, a person with that problem is probably going to give you due consideration. Right. That's the way it works. Kathleen: It's very interesting that you brought up the thing about personal brand because that's something that I've been giving a lot of thought to lately. There are so many companies creating content now. You were fortunate or had the incredible foresight to start doing this very early when this wasn't as ubiquitous. I just went to HubSpot's Inbound event there were 26,000 people there who are all drinking the Kool-Aid of content marketing. And you look at crowds like that and you think, wow, all these people are bought in. It's getting harder to stand out and I really believe that one very effective way to stand out is through personal branding. Because anybody can kind of copy generic content, but you can't copy a personal brand that is inherently individual. So I'm curious in your experience for you personally, aside from the business results, what have you experienced as you've put your personal brand behind the content? Like has that resulted in anything for you? Steve: First of all let's not give me so much credit. I ran out of money. I didn't have a choice. Most good content marketers will tell you during the recession, we all ran out at doe. That's why- Kathleen: I owned a business in the recession. And I can definitely second that. That's why I started blogging too. I was like, I have all this time and no money. I'll write. Steve: Exactly. I could've just as easily destroyed a 90 year old company, which I was very close to doing. That's it I'm not really interested in my own personal brand. Really having gone through the recession as both of us have, it's more important for the company to have a strong balance sheet than it is for me to build a personal brand. And personal branding is, brands are like sponges. They can't they get everything, they keep everything that's good and bad about the brand. And the fact that my personal brand, your personal brand impact Yale, we don't know own the brands anyway. It's what's being said out there that really shapes what the brand is. Kathleen: Don't they say that your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room? Steve: Your brand is what other people say. We've lost control of our brand when the Internet became popular. So, really personal branding... I think people appreciate I still answer most of the questions on the blog and I think people appreciate the fact that it's not me I'm not building my personal brand. I think a lot of people need help they're not getting in other places. And what I do is just, I give them the what to do and how to do it. And it's not about building a personal brand at all. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: So interesting. I love your story and it's unbelievable what you guys have done. We don't have too much more time, so I want to make sure before we wrap up that I asked you the two questions I ask all of my guests. The first one being we're all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you know, who you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now? Steve: Obviously great adversary Marcus Sheridan his killing it. I think back to our first conversation, there were two thoughts and went through my head as A. I need to do this B. I want him to eat his words. And you know the funny thing is it's like I want it to be better than him. But it never worked out that way because he was on other things it's almost like you go into the battlefield and you get a note from guys saying. "Hey, the land is yours and by the way I love what you're doing and all the rest of it, but I'm busy taking over France or whatever." His journey into his personal brand of videos is really compelling and I think his role with the pool company. I think they do a great job. The person that I liked the most in this space is a Crystal Cornea and what she did at Block Imaging I thought was fantastic. She made buying refurbs cool. She made people in that company feel cool writing about it. For me, I tell people it's good to do because it's good for your personal brand that I shouldn't control your brand. But she made it cool to do that. I've kind of lost touch with Block and what they've done since but I know she's left and she works as a consultant for other people, but I really love the way she goes about it. She's very inclusive and she did a great job with Block. Kathleen: Yeah, she's really impressive and you know, Marcus is, you're right. I interviewed him I think he was my first episode of this year. And the thing that I love about Marcus and you totally hit the nail on the head. He's constantly evolving. And the reason to me is that he's such a student of human nature, which is what makes him great at content marketing. He is not a marketer. He is a student of human nature. And so that is what led him to realize that, hey, we just have to answer people's questions. Right. This isn't super scientific it's almost once you tell somebody they sh they're like, Duh. But it took somebody who wasn't a marketer to figure it out. And somebody who's a keen observer of people. And that's the same thing that he's doing with video. He's a very keen observer of people and how they interact and communicate and so it makes them incredibly successful. Steve: Oh yeah. I think I the fundamentals to content marketing is the same fundamentals of everything else is. A. Do know what you're doing? B. Can you communicate it? And that'll come if you know what you're doing and C. And this is the really important part, this is like the C-level stuff is, are you executed once you've said that? And those three, if you put those three together, you have some special. Kathleen: And I always say also, can you get out of your own way? Because often marketers are their own worst enemies and they take their human hat off and put their marketing hat on and they write like robots and it's just, it's interesting. Steve: So they write and a lot more people are starting to write for search engines and that's troubling too. And they can't basically answer the question. There's so many people that... Everyone talks about tips, hacks, it's got to be 2000 words now or whatever it is. But the person that answers the question that best will get ranked because Google's not stupid they'll give the best experience wins. And if you can answer the question on a 1,000 words and is more compelling than the person writing 2000 words and you'll win. Kathleen: Right. The only correct answer to how long does an article need to be is as long as is required to answer the question. Second question is, the world of digital marketing is changing really quickly. And obviously your a CEO, you're not wearing the marketing hat in the company, but you're somebody who is keenly aware of marketing. How do you stay up to date and make sure that you're not falling behind the times with marketing? Steve: That's a great question now that I'm in Boston now I've commuted to stores. I actually have a commute. So I podcast a lot and there's some good marketing podcast. Patel has a very good one, Tony Robbins has a good one, some of the paid search guys have good ones. There's five or six, I'll listen to I'll read blog post and then I'll go to some conferences. Impact has become important over the last couple of years.Certainly HubSpot, we've been going to HubSpot they used to have it at the, at the Hilton hotel and [Copley 00:37:51] two rooms. When I was there initially I think it was 400 people in two tracks. And RF, which is the Retail Foundation in January they put a good one in New York, such marketing conferences and other one I'll go to like four or five conferences a year. If there's a good class I'll do that, Linkedin learning is apart, Social Media Examiner, they have to get some good stuff too. So it's a constant because everything changes and you want to be on top of that certainly. Kathleen: It Can be very tough to keep up with but I do think it's a matter of picking your five or six sources that you really love and just sticking with those and you've got anything else on top of it. That's gravy. Steve: The one thing is it's you can only be especially if you're a small team and I think this is geared more to a small business maybe, but you've got a small team or if you're a single person, like me and Pat were initially. You can only be very good in it one or two aspects. You can't be great at blogging, great at Instagram, great at Pinterest, great at Google ads. You can't be great at like there are 10 things that you can be really great in marketing that can move the needle, but pick one or two. That A. Figured out where customers are and you learned Google analytics for that. And two figure out what your passions are. If your passions with photography, like I'm not, Instagram would be a good one for you, Pinterest would be a good one for you. Wherever you think you can really dominate a certain aspect, rather be just mediocre at everything. You do not need to everything you needed to one or two things really, really well. Kathleen: Right. That's the old Jack of all trades, master of none problem. Right? Steve: Very true. How to connect with Steve Kathleen: This has been so great if somebody wants to learn more about Yale Appliance or connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Steve: I don't really know. Kathleen: Visit your website I would assume, right? Steve: Yeah. I'm on Twitter I guess like everybody else. I've got 3000 followers. I have no idea who they are. Certainly LinkedIn, my email address, you can certainly give steve.sheinkopf@yaleappliance.com. This community it's been really good to me and I'm happy to really answer any questions that anybody has. About marketing or inbound marketing or anything else. So email, Linkedin. My name is Steve Sheinkopf obviously, Twitter that type of stuff. I'll get back to you eventually. Kathleen: Great. Well, I will put the links to all those things in the short notes. And of course you already said that you answer all the questions on the blog. So I would think that people could go there and if they have questions about appliances, they know who to ask. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you're listening and you learnt something new, or you liked what you heard, of course, please leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That's how we get funds. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thanks Steve. Steve: Alright. Thank you Kathleen.

How Much We Really Need to Be On the Phone (1088) Transcript: Steve:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill:                          Hi. Steve:                   Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill:                          I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steve:                   Today Jill and I talk about how much do we really actually all need to be on the phone in this business. Jill:                          A lot. Steve:                   What are you looking at back here? Jill:                          I don't know. I thought I was ... I'm expecting people to walk by that we might recognize and so I was just kind of keeping an eye out. Steve:                   Why isn't that, Jill? Jill:                          I don't know. Anyway ... Steve:                   Before we get into the topic, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill:                          Kyler asks, "Does anyone have experience with quiet titling a property in Texas? There are no other persons claiming ownership. There's just a cloud in the title because the property was owned in a DBA. Debt Doing Business As of a husband that is deceased. The title company instructed us to quite title the property into the wife's name. Never done this before and would love specific input and steps on how to take the process." Thank you. I love that. [crosstalk 00:01:11]. Steve:                   Kevin answers this perfectly. Kevin, our moderator on land investors and then I'll have a couple of comments right after. Jill:                          Thank you for sharing. Steve:                   What does that mean? Jill:                          I don't know. I just think silly. Steve:                   What does that mean? Jill:                          I don't know. Steve:                   Thank you for sharing. This is what the show is. I share some stuff. You share some stuff. Jill:                          Just the way you interjected there. I thought it was funny. Kevin, our moderator is going to answer this perfectly and we're going to get right back to you in a moment. Steve:                   You know why I said it that way? I had to get it in there quickly because I think you're ready to just jump in. Jill:                          I was. That's usually what I do. Steve:                   Sometimes Kevin answers. Sometimes not. Sometimes Kevin answers perfect. Perfectly, and I just throw it in here. You were about to go off the teleprompter again. Jill:                          No, I wasn't. I was continuing to read. I can [inaudible 00:02:01]. Steve:                   Jill's famous for going off script. Jill:                          Really? Steve:                   Yeah. Jill:                          I don't think it's me. Steve:                   Famously. Jill:                          All right. Anyway, Kyler, I would not pay for quiet title and put the property in the wife's name. You could lose control of it. This is good advice. She might sell it to your friend after you've paid for the quiet title. Quiet title can take about three months and will cost some money, maybe two to $3,000. if you go this route, you can get an attorney to help you make the agreement with the wife to accept the purchase amount and make no claim on the quiet title. Bottom line is talk to an attorney on this one if it's worth it. That's such good advice. Steve:                   It's great advice and what he's talking about. What this whole topic is is called equitable title. It's everywhere in the whole country. Equitable title means you don't own the property but you have an interest in it. This is what actually foreclosing on a tax lien is. You have a an interest in the property because you own that tax lien. Let's say you bought the tax lien from the country.

How to Make a Good Land Posting (LA 1082) Transcript: Steve:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill:                          Good day. Steve:                   Welcome to The Land Academy Show, Entertaining Land Investment Talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill:                          And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steve:                   Today, Jill and I talk about how a good- how to make a good land posting. Sorry. I got a little confused there for a second. Jill:                          Okay. What is a good land posting? Steve:                   What is a land posting? Jill:                          What? Steve:                   What's a land posting? Jill:                          Wait a minute. Steve:                   Wait, don't I just call my real estate agent and say, "Hey, I've got a piece of property. How about you sell it?" Jill:                          Can I just put a for sale sign on it, and just walk away? Put my phone number? Steve:                   This has got off to a good start. Jill:                          Oh, good. Steve:                   Because that's what I think the whole world thinks. Jill:                          I want to think. Okay, let's think of all the things you would just [inaudible 00:00:43] like. Steve:                   My sister in-law is a real estate agent [inaudible] last Christmas she was talking about a piece of land that this she looked at. Let's call her. Jill:                          Yeah. Steve:                   Shell get solved, it'll be fine. Jill:                          Well, how about the girl that we bought our house from? Let's just call her. Steve:                   So it turns out it 21st century, almost a quarter of the way through the 21st century, we are think about that and the internet and how we do stuff with computers is so dramatically changed. This industry since it was kind of the whole concept of it, the modern day real estate industry was started in the forties and fifties 1940s and fifties for some reason there's lingering real estate agents still. Jill:                          Yep. Steve:                   If you want the answer to that question, go see who the number two lobbyist group is in Washington for the last 35 years. Jill:                          That's interesting. Steve:                   It's the national association of realtors anyway. Jill:                          Who are they? Who are they behind? I hate to guess, does it start with an N? Jill:                          [inaudible 00:01:41]. Jill:                          Is it? is it, is is number one the, is it the NRA is number one? Steve:                   NRA, up there, it's top five. Jill:                          Okay, I would guess. Steve:                   That's a good question. Jill:                          We should look this up. Steve:                   I only ever looked. I look up, I obsess on this stuff. Jill:                          I know. Steve:                   And all five of them or if you just, they're propping themselves up, falsely. Like it removes ironically removes the raw supply and demand of capitalism. But wow that went sideways fast. Steve:                   Turns out... Jill:                          You're getting a lecture from dad right now or professor Steve pick one. Steve:                   Jill and I are in the pre development of a show called the Jack and Jill show about relationships and working together and you know, kind of like couples therapy and, and a non real estate show for is what Jill wants to do and I and I completely agree with her. Jill:                          It's going to happen. Steve:                   So what we're practicing that was a... [Inaudible 00:02:42]. Jill:                          There we go. Perfect. Thank you. Professor Butala. Steve:                   It'll launch out in October and I'm sure it'll fail.

Freedom of time, money, relationships, and purpose is what we all want. Property managers, realtors, and investors help clients build wealth through real estate.  Today, I am talking to Steve Welty, owner of Good Life Property Management business and podcast. He enjoys meeting amazing people and indoctrinating listeners with his philosophies.  You’ll Learn... [03:23] Stop whining about solvable issues, such as online reviews to get warm leads.  [04:41] Steve surfs to success with Good Life Property Management.  [06:43] Podcast Passion Project: Do content for content's sake; add value to people's lives for opportunities and connections to come your way. [10:19] Don’t lose focus on why and what fires you up; limit time and effort spent on your business to achieve outcomes. [15:00] Purpose of Business: Not to make money; build a business that makes money.  [16:25] How to be happy: Create momentum for other people to gain momentum. If you wish to become great, learn to become the servant of many. [18:12] Zig when they Zag: Success outside outsource sandbox to reduce costs.  [18:55] Results-based Biz: Hire young, smart, motivated people and leave them alone.  [19:31] Big Issues, Big Success: More people can lead to more problems; paint a compelling vision to keep good people and let them do what they want to do.  [20:10] Move Out and Outwork Others: Create freedom of time and money by hiring CFO or profit first coach/accountant to offer advice, not control over finances.  [26:10] Value-add Revenue Sources: If you don't charge for it, you're doing it poorly.  [28:25] Opportunities in Other States/Markets: Pop-up shops to buy cash flow property.  [29:05] To Die List and Time Study: Procrastination problem property managers and owners experience.  [35:00] Barriers/Protections: Teach team and customers how to treat and reach you.  [37:35] Opinions vs. Observations: Co-creation/coaching is transformational and transactional superpower that changes lives.  [46:45] Give up control and allow people to fail, or you create an unsafe business.  [52:30] What Matters: Million ways to get to end results and outcomes.  [54:05] Hire and Fire: Center on core values; be reliable, positive, and go-giver (RPG). [57:10] Epiphany: Everything worthwhile lives on the other side of fear.  [1:03:05] Money is one side of it. Easiest decision to make is to be a different person.  Tweetables Do content for content's sake. Limit time in your business; achieve outcomes with least amount of effort. Add limitations or constraints to create a necessity for innovation. First key to greater time, money, and purpose is to create space for yourself. Resources Steve Welty’s Email Good Life Property Management Good Life Property Management Podcast Steve Welty on Spotify Steve Welty on Apple PM Grow Orange Tree Property Management GatherKudos National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) Brad Larson Gary Vaynerchuk The 4-hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss Todd Breen Making Money is Killing Your Business by Chuck Blakeman How I Built This with Guy Raz Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard  Voxer Jason Goldberg (Strategic Coach) Extreme Ownership Book E-Myth Book The Go-Giver  KingJasonHull’s Whimple on SoundCloud DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you're open to doing things a little bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners, we want to change the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull. The founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's guest, I’m really excited, we’re hanging out with Steve Welty. Steve, welcome to the DoorGrow show. Steve: What’s up Jason? Good to be here. Jason: Steve and I were reminiscing. I saw Steve at a broker owner conference, the very first one I went to several years ago and we were sitting at the same table and I guess I said hi to you and we were chatting it up. Steve: Yeah. It's funny, I remember that day very vividly and it's interesting because I have a very poor memory. You were the mysterious man behind me and you were dressed really nice. Jason: I don't dress nice anymore. I'm too lazy now. Steve: Yeah, you're just soaking it all, but we were talking before the show, was that really one of your first conferences? Jason: That was the first conference I'd gone to, yeah. My dad had just started property management business. He's got maybe about 200 doors now, but he had just started a property management business. He had been a hospital administrator for 30 years or something and he said, “I'm going to do what Bryan’s doing and start a property management business.” My brother has got maybe 1000 doors or something like that and he is out of Orange County. Not too far from you down San Diego. He thought, “Bryan’s doing it, maybe I could do this too.” He decided to become an entrepreneur. Caught the bug. It's been fun to watch that, but I was like, “Dad, let's go do this. I want to see what happens there. The only way I can go is if I'm with you, you're a broker owner.” I was his director of marketing and I was just the fly on the wall for Orange Tree Property Management, just checking out what goes on a broker owner. I just want to see what happened there. It was challenging for me though because the entire time I'm hearing people talk about problems, and challenges, and I'm just biting my tongue the whole time. I’m like, “I could solve that challenge. I can help with that.” I just had to sit there and be quiet. I've even got a text message from one of my clients that was sitting in the room and he said, “I'll bet this is just killing you right now,” I texted him back, “You have no idea.” It was just really funny to hear people whining about stuff that I think is solvable. Steve: What was something out of all those issues you're biting your tongue about that you can reflect on today. Jason: Now you’re interviewing me. Steve: I'm interested to hear that. Jason: I remember one of the things that really killed me was people were like, “How do you deal with your online reviews? How do you get more positive online reviews?” We have our system GatherKudos, and we have coaching material around that that we’d go through with clients to figure out how to identify peak happiness, leverage a lot of reciprocity, how to get more reviews, how to build a system in your business as part of your onboarding process with new tenants so you get more reviews. I think that's a better system to have than even most marketing systems, because that creates warm leads. I was just sitting there listening to them talk and some of the ideas were, “We're okay, we're good,” but I was like, “This is so solvable.” Steve: Reviews are still a big issue, six years later or whatever it is. Jason: Correct. Steve: People still can’t figure it out. It’s tough. I still try to figure it out on a daily basis. Jason. Yeah. Cool. Steve, you've got an awesome property management business. You've got your own podcast that you do. You've got a lot of stuff going on. Help my audience understand who you are and give us a little bit of background on Steve, your adventures in property management, and how you got into it. Steve: For sure. I graduated from San Diego State 2005 and stayed in construction for a little while. I was working with constructions in college, just bumming around, surfing, and doing whatever I was doing. Got my real estate license finally and did some deals 2006-2007. I hear a lot of stories like this, it’s like 2006-2007 sales, all of our sales, we should start a Facebook group for sales guys that flamed out, well I think it is, it’s probably called than NARPM of Facebook group. It seemed like everyone has that story. I made some nice checks in sales and I thought I was great, and then I became broke very fast. I was 26-27 and I was broke. I was applying for any job that I could get and I went to work for a French entrepreneur in Carlsbad as a personal assistant. He wanted someone to manage his property manager that had a real estate license because he didn't trust his property manager. Jason: Okay, so you were the spy that was going to monitor whether he was doing his job or not. Steve: Yeah, most managers hate it when the owner micromanages you. Imagine a realtor micromanaging you. I was like, “Yeah, I can do that,” I never managed anything in my life, but I figured it out and worked with him. He actually taught me some great business lessons looking back, but two years in, it was very stressful working for him. He was not the nicest guy, but he did teach me a lot and then I went out on my own with a business partner at the time. We decided, “Hey, let's start our own management company and just got it enough off the ground to allow me to quit my job, be on property management with my partner I think in 2008. We grew that until about 2012 and then we decided to part ways. I started Good Life in 2013 and then been doing Good Life ever since. I started the Good Life Property Management podcast which has nothing to do with clients, nothing to do with getting new customers. It was really a passion project and something I learned out of that was that I encourage people to do content for content's sake if their heart tells them to do that. A lot of times we try to figure out, “Well, how am I going to monetize that?” I remember when I asked Brad Larson, I think he was one of the first people to do a podcast that was a property manager. I was like, “What are you doing this for?” and he was like, “Oh, it's fun,” I was like, “It didn’t make any sense, you're wasting time.” When you add value, like Gary V—a lot of people have really put this in the forefront—when you add value to people's lives, opportunities come your way, connections come your way. I have so much fun doing the Good Life Property Management podcast and we serve the same community you serve which is property management entrepreneurs. I don't run ads. I have ran ads in the past, but I don't anymore. I don't necessarily get anything out of it other than just meeting cool people and getting to indoctrinate my listeners with my philosophies which are really along the same lines in a lot of ways as you, Jason. I really resonate with your manifesto in a lot of ways, so that's cool. That's it. I'm big into music. I do a lot of music. Steve Welty, I’m on Spotify and Apple, and that's my passion. I'm going more and more into that. Also, we have tried mastermind for property management entrepreneurs to max out their business and life. That's what's up for me. Jason: Cool stuff. I think we have a lot in common. Not only are we both California guys. A lot of people listening may not know this, but I had a band in college. I wrote all the music, I played guitar. I didn’t know I was an entrepreneur then. I didn't know that was in my blood, but I was the guy going door-to-door with a guitar and a clipboard pre selling CDs at girl’s dorms that I could fund to self-produce an album, and I was playing music. Steve: That’s [...]. Jason: I know, it was pretty crazy. The album is on SoundCloud if people are searching for it. Steve: Let’s check it out, what’s it called, how can we find it? Jason: My username on SoundCloud is my username everywhere, which is KingJasonHull, and the album is called Whimple, that was the name of my band. Steve: I love it. I think you told me that a while back, but I forgot, but I'm really fascinated with that because that was my story, too. I was a songwriter. That was hustle. I give you street credit like going dorm-to-dorm, playing for chicks, that's pretty cool. I thought I was going to be a rock star. That was my deal, but it's so funny looking back. I didn’t even practice. I just thought I have the natural talent and I used to drink a lot so I was probably delusional. I had this moment, this crossroads where I was like, “Okay, you're not going make it,” I'm not going to be okay being older and broke, so I'm going to go on a business route. I just gave up music completely, and then I was in a strategic coach workshop. I have given it up five or six years and I met this entrepreneur. I was telling him about my story. I was like, “I don't really play music anymore,” and he's like, “Oh, that sucks.” I’m like, “Yeah, it does suck.” Then he’s like, “Well, you have a guitar in your office don’t you?” and I was like, “No.” He’s like, “Well you’re the boss, aren’t you?” Jason: I can see it right behind you. Steve: Yeah, right now I do it. He’s like, “You’re the boss.” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Well, why don’t you try this, try just putting a guitar in your office. Just make a commitment to picking it up once a day even if it's for one second.” It really resonated with me because I had given up a part of myself that was really important because I think a lot of time as business owners, we just get so focused on like, “We got to make this company work,” and we’d lose focus of why and what fires us up on an internal level. I did that and that about two years ago, fast forward to today, I'm putting many hours a day into music, into song writing, into recording, into building my audience and it's helped my business so much because when you limit the amount of time that you're in your business, you can only do the things that you're really good at and so that's what I'm really passionate about, is figuring out how can I achieve an outcome with the least amount of effort possible. Jason: Yeah, because when we add limitation or constraint, it creates the byproduct of limitation or creating a constraint is it creates a necessity for innovation. If you have unlimited amounts of time, unlimited amounts of money, unlimited whatever, there's no innovation because it's so easy to be lazy. It's so easy to just let things unfold in a different way, but when we have some time constraints or we have some financial constraints, we have to get creative and that's where the genius starts to come out, that's where new ideas start to come out. I've noticed that even with team members, if I say “I need this done by this time,” they get creative or if I need this done under this budget, they get creative, then they start to innovate. If I say, “Yeah, do it whenever, take as much time as you want, spend as much money as you want,” there's no innovation. They're just going to go towards whatever seems easiest, which is the status quo. Steve: Yeah, you nailed it. I've been really interested in constraints. I had a son, my first child, he’s six months old, Myles, and I was encouraged by a friend of mine. He said “Take 30 days off, Steve,” he's like “It'll be the best thing you ever did for your business. Don't check in, don't do anything. Take 30 days off. Be with your son.” It was in December, so it was like the perfect time and so I did that, and man he was right. It really levelled up my business, my team got way better. They were already good, but just putting these things into place that force you to grow. That 30 days off was huge. Next year I'm planning a 60-day trip to another country that I’m really passionate about using that. I even got my operations manager. He doesn't work out of the office anymore. I moved out of my office a long time ago because when you're in the office, you are often the bottleneck for your company and everyone comes to you for the answers and the solutions. I really grabbed on to that concept and constantly looking for new ways to use constraints to my advantage. Jason: I love it. It's been awhile since I've told the client to do this, but a lot of clients will ask questions like, “How do I become a business owner instead of my own best employee?” I would tell them, “You just start doing it. You take a vacation.” If you schedule a week-long vacation, if you're not taking vacations, for those listening, you schedule week long vacation and you can't take off a week, you're going to have to figure out how to make everything not fall apart for that week. To go 30 days, that's incredible, 60 days is ridiculous, that's pretty awesome. At that point, you've arrived as owner of the company instead of being your own best employee. I noticed when I would take off time or vacation, I would be surprised by how my team would step up. I'd be surprised by the things leading up to that vacation, more would get done than would get done sometimes in months. There are so many little things that you need to get dialed in. “Oh my gosh, they’re going to be gone for a week. How are we going to live without Jason? We got to get this.” My team would say, “Hey Jason, I need this,” or, “I need to access to this,” or, “I need to know how to do this.” Suddenly everybody's rallying around this idea of taking some stuff off your plate because they need to be able to make sure things don't break and it creates the possibility for you to do that more or forever. Steve: Yeah, and I think its baby steps. I remember when I first read the four-hour work week. I thought Tim Ferriss was a god. I was like, that makes no sense. Jason: Did you almost move to Thailand? Steve: Close, but no, it was just really interesting. I guess from a personal level, having time was even more appealing than being a billionaire I guess to me personally. When I see people like Todd Breen and other people talk at NARPM that would talk about running your business from the beach or not is just very appealing to me. I wanted to grow a self-managing company and it was baby steps. There's this book called Making Money is Killing Your Business and they say it really why. It says the purpose of the business is not to make money, it's to build a business that makes money, like time and money equals wealth. Your business should throw off time and money. Now, if you want to then use that extra time to just pour more time in your business, doesn't mean you got to go live on a beach. You could do other adventures. For me, what's really worked and what I'm super blessed to have now is that it's created space in my life to actually start cultivating the other things that light me up, like music, other things. It gives you those options, but that's what I think in our industry especially in a lot of industries, we want to help people, help them anyway we can to experience that. Jason: They say, “What the world needs is people that are alive” I think as entrepreneurs that's where we feel. We want momentum. That's what we crave. The rest of the world, they're just trying to figure out how to be happy. “If I could just be happy then everything would be great.” It's whether they're happy or sad, depressed or excited, but for entrepreneurs, I feel like our two speeds are momentum or stuck, that's it. It’s momentum or overwhelm. We either feel like we're in complete overwhelm, we’re stuck, we can't move forward or we’re frustrated, or were on fire and alive. That's my version of happy or sad. I want to feel like I'm in momentum and I feel like as entrepreneurs, we get momentum when we give it away. When we create momentum for other people, whether it's our clients or the people in our family, the people around us, when we're creating momentum for other people, we get that sense of momentum, too. Steve: Yeah, and that's something I resonate with and I’ve heard you talk about it Jason. I love that message. I really think that the blue ocean is caring about people more than anyone else, like proactively putting the people in your life in the forefront, figuring out, “Who do I want to be a hero to?” and being a hero is usually used in a reactive way. Jason: Right, like there's a crisis or a problem, now you're going to be a hero. Steve: Right, as opposed to being a proactive hero like spending time and saying, “Okay, who are the most essential people or buckets or groups of people in my life and how can I serve them more deeply and impactfully today,” because the best quote of success I've ever heard is something like become a servant of many. If you wish to become great, learn to become the servant of many. I sometimes get a little jaded in certain groups because you constantly hear the feedbacks, the reduce the cost, the get it all out sourced. I use VAs, I look to reduce cost, I look to get fair fees, so I'm not knocking that, but everyone's playing in that sandbox. I'm very interested in seeing what is everyone else doing and how can I do the opposite because that's one of the ways to become successful that I've learned is that you go zig when they zag. That’s cliché. You can't do that when you're buried in tenant complaints and one-star reviews and a team you have to micromanage. I'm a big believer in hiring young, smart, motivated people and leaving them alone. We're a results-based company at Good Life. You can work from home, you could bring your dog, although actually our manager of our building said we can't anymore. I don't really care, with the exception of a couple like the front desk needs to be there in case someone walks in and things like that, but do your thing. There's a great podcast I heard yesterday on how I built this with Guy Raz where the owner of Patagonia wrote this book called “Let Them Go Surfing” and it's all about that. I think our biggest issues once we get to a certain size is people problems, and then we don't know why we can't keep good people, it’s because we don't paint it in a compelling vision. We micromanage. We don't let them do what they want to do. We try to fit corporate bureaucracies into the more entrepreneurial company that people want to be a part of these days. Would you rather follow just checklists and not have a future or would you rather be able to create your own future? Like I tell my team, “You can become anything with me. The sky's the limit wherever you want to go.” So, I think those are big parts of success. Jason: That's really what we're talking about today. The topic is freedom of time, money, and relationships through better business practices. What are some of the practices that you've implemented at Good Life that you feel like you've created more freedom of time and money? Steve: It starts with the business owner and probably a series of game changers. The first was moving out of my office. I had this epiphany and I was taught this by someone and I told the team, we had a meeting, I said, “I apologize. I've stood in the way of you guy’s future and I apologize for it. When I'm here, I'm the bottle neck. I'm stunting your growth. You can come to me for all the answers,” and the fact is as entrepreneurs if you serve 100 people and say, “Where do you do your best work?” nobody says at their office, who does the best work at their office? Why are we working out of our offices? It's just because that's how it's always been done. I kicked myself out. I don't have a desk at my office on purpose. I used to have the stereotypical nicest office in the corner with the best view, and then it freed up so much space, it helped my team grow. Once I created that space, now I work out of my home, and the first key to greater time, money, and purpose is to create space I believe, for yourself. I came from a place where three or four years ago, my dad always taught me outwork everyone else. I remember one time he came to visit me at a college and he asked me how much I was working, I said about 60 hours a week. He’s like, “60 hours? I work 60 hours, I'm retired. What the hell is wrong with you?” Jason: Step it up Steve. Steve: Yeah, and it's great. I love my dad. His work ethic was the reason I'm here today, because it got me to that. There are seasons of life. I knew there had to be a better way, so when I'd made that decision to move out of my office, I said, “Hey, you guys are going to have a bigger opportunity to move up now.” Some of the other things we did was hiring an operations manager. That was huge. That created space and that was something I look forward, and it took me probably eight or nine months to pull the trigger on that, but the operations manager was huge. Slowly but surely, I went from just being stressed out all the time, not having any space in my life. An over-scheduled entrepreneur has no time to transform. I said, “Alright, I'm going to create some space,” and then all the ideas and all the answers start bubbling to the surface because spiritually we all have all the answers inside of us, just we’re so distracted and so just going that we don't allow it. Jason: We’re preloaded, we're in fight or flight, we're up in our monkey brain, and all the great things, our greatest geniuses as an entrepreneur can't bubble up or can't come through when we're in that state. Steve: Exactly, and so that's time that just forced me to get more time because as an entrepreneur, you can make that decision. Jason: We’re buying time. Every person that we pay on our team, we’re buying time. That's what we're buying. I think the mistake we make as entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs I see, they go hire based on an org chart. They don't hire based on what they personally need in order to off load or get themselves out of the things that they don't really energetically enjoy. You getting an operations manager if you're a visionary entrepreneur is brilliant, because that's like the yin to the yang. It's the exact opposite personality type of the driven entrepreneur is to have somebody that is systems-minded, process-minded, and that can make sure everything's running. Generally, us entrepreneurs, we’re terrible managers. We think we're great at everything, but we're really terrible managers and usually the operations manager is much better at making sure everything runs smoothly. Steve: It's hard to take off or get more time initially if you don't have the money. The money component is important. I went on a Mastermind trip to Mexico a few years back with a handful of people and we looked at everyone's P&L and that was one of the biggest game changers for me was not only understanding my numbers. I think everyone needs a CFO at least part time or at least some outside eyes on the business is so important. Jason: I have a profit first coach and accountant. I'm not really a big fan of having a CFO in a business. Usually, my take on it is every story I've heard of embezzlement or of challenges it's always like the CFOs, and so they're also the crusher of all hopes and dreams. I don't want somebody making too big of decisions there personally, but I want to be coached, and I want to have input and I want to have insight from a third-party perspective, but I don't want them to have control over my stuff. Steve: Totally. I get that. I don't have a CFO, we use a profit coach. Jason: Yeah, similar thing. Steve: Right, but I found that I wasn't going to build a business I thought I was going to build because I'm a feel guy. Like I learn by doing. Does this feel right and I’ll make a decision, but I make decisions very quickly. I'm a high quick start, so I'll make 10 decisions, eight will be bad, two will be great but in the same time that someone else makes one decision. I sometimes can stay a step ahead, but I had to add some revenues and I wanted them to be value-added revenue sources where everyone was a win-win-win, so things like doing inspections better in charging for them. When you don't charge for something, you usually do them poorly. Every manager that doesn't charge for inspections, I guarantee 90% of you are behind on your inspections. Jason: Let's say that again. I like that concept. If you don't charge for it, you're probably doing it poorly. Steve: Right. I'm a believer in this. Just take inspections for example. You go survey people around NARPM or any property management group and everyone's behind on their inspections so they don't do them right. We send a letter to our clients. We said, “Hey, inspections are actually really important. This is when we identify how well the tenant is taking care of the place is when we get out in front of preventive maintenance and it needs to be done well, so we need to hire someone to do this full time and we want to invest in this X amount we charge. It’s going to probably save you three times at least that amount by getting out in front of some of this stuff,” so that was a win-win and our clients loved it. Maybe they didn't want to get charged initially, but once they saw the improved inspection, once they saw the improved communication and results, that was a big win. Then just some other ones that we added in. I think you got to keep the investor fees-friendly. The worst thing we can do as managers is fee our owners to death and they’d get out of the business. Ultimately, the freedom of time, money, relationships, and purpose is what we want, but it's a human need. It's what your clients want, too. So, we have a unique position as property managers, realtors, and investors ourselves in a lot of cases to help people build wealth through real estate. You're a manager and you make it easy, because if you don't make it easy, they burn out and they sell, but if they hold that house specially in San Diego for 30 years, that’s all you have to do and you've set your family up for life. They burn out, so we have a big position, a big part to play here. Jason: I love it, and I love that it’s like a mantra, having others build through real estate, and ultimately what property managers could be allowed towards doing. It’s not just managing a property. If your interests are in line with theirs, which that's their goal. Their goal is to build some wealth, otherwise, why would they be holding on to that property. Steve: Exactly. There's different ways to do that. Right now, we're looking at some other states to buy cash flow property and figure out how to have our owners follow us into some of these other markets. I think with technology these days, that's what all the venture people are doing, how to just pop up shops anywhere. That's something that's exciting to me right now because in San Diego it doesn't make sense to buy an $800,000 house that rents for $2800. We're sitting on some stuff when the market turns for San Diego, but yeah, there's different opportunities out there. Jason: Alright, cool. What should we talk about next? Steve: You know what I'm interested in? I actually thought of this today, and there's some things I've been thinking about doing that I procrastinate on. You know the saying… Jason: I think every business owner can say that. Steve: I know right? Jason: I call it the to-die list. We all have to do list of stuff. Just last week, I have my weekly commitments and I realized I was carrying all of these things over from week-to-week. I'm the guy that says to my clients, “If there's anything on your to do list for more than two weeks, you're not the person that should be doing it.” That's the problem. Yes, we all tend to do that as entrepreneurs. We tend to hold on to things instead of finding the right person to do them or giving it up somebody else. Steve: That’s so true. Jason: Talk about the to die list. Steve: Yeah, the to die list. I was thinking about this today. Two examples of things I have been procrastinating on. One, I don't want to answer email, anymore. I literally want to have email leave my life. I have gotten email down to just like 10 minutes a day at the end of the day, have an assistant, but literally that is still bugging me. I once got this really inspiring auto responder from this really smart cool guy, let’s see if I can find it. Jason: I don't deal with email anymore? Steve: He said, “Thank you for your message. Perhaps you are overwhelmed by email. In fact, last year I sent 43,742 emails, read and review countless more so in order to serve our stakeholders much more efficiently, I have asked my highly capable assistant that’s in New York to review, assign and reply all my email request moving forward,” and then it says some other stuff. That's something I want to do, but it's big and scary, and yeah, I know I'll probably have to respond to some emails, but I'm talking about eliminating it more. I'm like, “Why don’t I just try that? Why do I have to make this decision I procrastinate on forever? Why don't I just try that?” I think it comes back to we don't want to fail like that, we're always raised with, “There is no try, it's to do or die,” or whatever. You don't try, you either do it or you don't, but it's like, “Why can't I just try that? I have an assistant. Why don’t I run that for two or three weeks and see how it goes?” The other thing and I'm sure you've probably thought of this, Jason, is like Gary V, having maybe a semi full-time person doing vlogs, recording not just every few days, like every day. I'm just sitting on that and I'm like, “Well, why don't I just try it for like a freaking month?” I think there's so much possibility with that and I wanted to see what you thought because I'm like, “I don't have to commit to it.” There's so much stuff. Even hiring someone. I was thinking about hiring a GM or an operations manager for eight or nine months. What if I just said, “Hey, let's try it.” I mean this isn’t Canada or some other places where I don't think you can fire people. Try it, hire the person, and if it doesn't work out, let them go. Jason: Yeah. Let's go back to the email and then we can go the other thing. Here's how I identify stuff. I mentioned this on the previous episode, but I personally will do a time study probably about once a quarter and if I bring on a new team member that takes something off my plate, because how I identify what I need to get off my plate is by doing a time study. I have to be accountable. Where's my time actually going and which things are low dollar an hour work, which things are things that I don't enjoy. I actually write a plus or minus sign next to each thing that I'm doing, whether it energizes me or it drains me, and then identify the things that are tactical or strategic, things that are self-care versus family time. I have a whole system, I take clients through for doing time studies. When I do this, that helps me get clarity for what I need to get rid of. I gave up email a long time ago because I hated email. It was always a minus sign, it was always tactical, it was never like my hopes and dreams were coming true when I was writing an email. I don't even look at my email. So, if you've emailed me, I'm sorry, I don't look at it. My assistant will take care of the email. She reads it. If she has any questions, she sends me a message through a walkie talkie app, because I don't want to type to her. She'll send me a voice message through Voxer. We use Voxer and I use it with coaching clients, she will send me a Voxer voice message and say “Jason, what do you think, how should we respond to this email. They're asking this.” I say, “Just tell them this, this and this, but say it nicer than I just said.” Then she’ll take care of it, and she's asking me questions throughout the day. We also do daily huddles as a team and that's usually where she gets most of her questions in. I say, “Is anybody stuck on anything?” She's like, “Yeah, did you get my message about this?” “No, I wasn't paying attention.” “Okay, what do you need?” I answer it and she can respond to the email for me. She's gotten really good at understanding over time, she gets better and better at knowing my voice, knowing what I would say and she takes care of more and more and more. Every day she'll give me a short list, “Here are the emails I don't know what to do with. You need to take care of these,” and I begrudgingly will deal with them within a day or two. That's how it works. [...] then I’ll talk with them and move them forward, but outside of that, usually she hands it off to my team or has somebody else in the team deal with it. If it's support-related, I think most of my clients have learned that they're not getting a fast response by coming to me directly. They get their best response by emailing our support email address or system and so I think every property manager needs to do the same. Initially, when you're small you're the guy. They probably have your cell phone number. Tenants owners, everybody, and eventually you change your phone number and you create some barriers and protections, you have to educate and teach people how you want them to treat you, and you’re going to teach your customers what are the right channels and you have to teach your team what are the right channels. My days are pretty quiet. Steve: I love that. That's super inspiring. You fired me up even more and I love how you said it's tactical. It's very transactional-tactical. I want to be playing in the sandbox of transformational. I feel like I'm retired now because I do what I want and I'm blessed to say that. There's been a lot of hard work behind that, but I'm to the point to where I'm not going to do stuff that doesn't light me up and there's a small subset of tasks like creating content—podcast is one of them—that I could do all day and I have endless energy for. That's where I add the most value. So, the bigger the impact on people that I can have is going to be when I'm fired up and passionate and not dragging off of email, but I think we don't give ourselves permission to do that. You saying that, I'm all in now. I was 80% in, Jason, now I'm all in. I hope some listeners are all in to move forward. That's what I love about podcasts and other things with so much being shared these days. A lot of times we think things, or we know things internally, or we feel things a certain way, but we don't give ourselves permission to actually say that or feel that in public because sometimes we just need someone else to say it to give us the courage. I've noticed that happening so much lately that I finally got pissed, and I'm like, “You know what? I'm making a list of everything that I believe in whole-heartedly, that I think is a little off mainstream maybe.” That way I can have it in writing and I'm just going to start saying these things because I'm tired of being, “Oh yeah, and I felt that way, too,” but I never said anything. Jason: I mention this on the previous episode, too, that I've been really opinionated in the past and I've realized that I think I'm a little more humble now that I realized my way isn't always the exact right way for everyone, so I'm learning. I was just in Columbus for a week and one of the things that really hit me hard is that I've been really opinionated and I think it's important to put out things more as observations rather than gospel truth. Somebody may love email or somebody may hate doing podcast stuff. Everybody is different and I think everybody's perception is different, everybody's experiences as to what works or doesn't work in marketing could be different, their market might be different. There are so many variables involved, so I think moving forward, my content is a lot more observational because I've realized I was attracting clients or creating monsters in the industry that are hyper-opinionated and the hyper-opinionated people become like, “Oh my God, [...],” but the problem is they create a lot of negativity in the industry. They become the rampant [...] guys that are heartless, that want to crush all the hopes and dreams of every tenant on the planet. We need to be careful in any business or any industry in being too opinionated because what ends up happening is we end up attracting most opinionated people. Those are the people that turn on you. Those are the owners you don't want eventually. Those are the people that give you the negative reviews when one little thing goes wrong. I want open minded people, and these are the clients that I’ve loved the most, but I was attracting less of them per capita because of the message that was so in your face. “This is the [...], do this,” and I was just so strong willed that way and I realize now that that creates its own monster. I think it's important to share though, honestly, these little things that we have, that are weird about is or that are woo-woo that we feel like the rest of the world will judge. To say. “This is me, this is how I am, this is my experience,” and yeah I think you when we let our freak flag fly, so to speak, there are people that run with it. As long as we're not, “Hey, this is the gospel truth. This is the only way to do it,” we're not going to turn off so much so many of the people that don't resonate. They might go, “You know, Jason, that’s cool that you're into that weird stuff, but I'm more of a practical guy and I don’t resonate with that, but I like a lot of the stuff you say.” If I say, “This is the only way to do it,” I'm forcing them to make a choice to go all in and do everything my way or the highway. Steve: Your coach helped you nail that idea. I had that opposite issue. I think the issue for me was that I didn't want to ever come off as opinionated. I'm scared almost having an opinion because I'm like, “Do your thing, man,” so I’m always quick to anything I believe in. I'm quick to say, “Do what works for you. This is just my journey. Do what works for you.” I think like attracts like and that's a really cool observation that you started attracting all these opinionated people. The coaching thing, I love that you have coaches and you’re a coach yourself because the power of coaching has changed my life. Strategic coach, I work with Jason Goldberg. Every time I have a call with him, I transform. It's really crazy. If there's one thing I'm super high on right now, it's co-creation. Co-creation is the super power that nobody's talking about and I've experienced it in many ways. First through music. Although I normally do music on my own and I'll just write songs. When I get in the room with the right people, they don't even have to be a great musician, it's just that the energy. If we’re vibrating on the same frequency, things just come out so great. I played with this rapper the other day. Two of our new songs are two of my favorite songs I've recorded in the past year. Back when I had a casual mastermind that we used to do, helping each other co-create, kick this process back to you, now you kick it back to me and blah, blah, blah, everything just accelerated. So, I think outside eyes on the business, coaches, casual masterminds, paid masterminds, whatever it is, I think the more we're interacting with others and having a sounding board, the faster we're going to get to where we're going and the more transformative the experience will be. Jason: I agree. To touch on that, every single person you'll notice, everybody listening will know this is true. You can talk about it in terms of inner energy or spirituality or whatever, but every single person that you’re around brings out a different side of you. There are people that when I'm around them, I feel I'm freaking hilarious, I’m the funniest guy on the planet. They’re laughing at everything I say. It's awesome. Then there's people that I'm around that I feel I'm super mental, analytical, and logical. That's how they perceive me and that's what they bring out in me. And there are people that feel I'm this emotional sensitive person. My kids would probably say, “No, he’s Mr. Analytical.” There are different people that bring out a different side to us. This is also why I have a strong introverted side. I need space away from people to reconnect with who I am and to make I'm me. I feel when we're around other people, part of it is how they perceive and see us, brings that out in us, it allows us to be [...] energy and yes absolutely there's this connection and a certain combination of different people, or different energies, or different whatever that will create a different music. You've got the Beatles, for example. These four guys came together and they created all kinds of interesting sounds and music that had a really strong impact and all them wrote songs [...], but on their own, none of them really created as strong of a situation without the others. Just the energy between Paul McCartney and John Lennon was pretty magical. Steve: Totally, and country artists or country songwriters write typically with at least two but usually three or four people in the same room. I think there's parallels because I can speak from experience. I was constantly, with the exception of going to maybe two conferences a year, I was at the desk in my office, head down, genius with 1000 helpers, although I wasn't a genius that is just a saying I’ve heard by any stretch of the imagination. Jason: The emperor with no clothes. Steve: Right, the fool with too much control, and that’s the thing now. I'm in charge, but I'm not in control and that’s self-freeing. It's the people, my people that are awesome are in control and the cool thing now to get to the impact or the purpose part that is super firing me up these days is that I've gotten to a point now to where my job with Good Life is to take care of my team. It's to figure out how can I make their lives better. How can I figure out, what are their dangers, their opportunities, their strengths? Where do they want to be in three years? How can I cultivate that? How can I make it so all of them would run through a wall for me and take a bullet for me because if they would do that, they will treat my money like their money, my company like their company. The reason I started really researching how, I was like how does the military sail hundreds of 18-year-olds across the sea and set up forward military bases. It's just mind boggling, and I read Extreme Ownership. It’s a great book, some other books, but you talk about decentralized command. The top gives them the mission and then that leader gives them the mission and then the lieutenant, I’m butchering correct words. Jason: The hierarchy? Steve: Yeah, the hierarchy, but they are allowed to come up with the game plan and the battle plan. One of my jobs at Good Life is to make it okay to fail. To be okay to test things and screw things up and get beat up over it. Jason: Because if they're afraid to fail, guess what happens? They start hiding crap from you. Then there's all the secret stuff going on then there’s interoffice politics, there’s backbiting. People have to be allowed to fail and not feel they're going to have their head chopped off. Otherwise, you have a business that’s unsafe for you. I love the idea of you giving up control, I've given up control over my email. I don't even know what's getting sent out half the time, but I've created trust and I trust her. She's very cautious in how she does it. I've given up my schedule. I was in Vegas last week, the week before that I think it was in Columbus, a week before that I was I think in Phoenix. I don't choose anymore. My assistant, she's like, “Here’s a speaking opportunity. You're going to go speak here.” She sets up these podcast episodes, everything I've given up autonomy on my time, but I still blackout Mondays and Fridays so I can do some of the things I want and then I have my weekends, but you give up control. The higher you move up in your business, the less control you have and the more you give to the people around you. I just do what they tell me to do. I show up. My job is to support them. I love what you were saying that you've transitioned because I think as we start out as entrepreneurs and we get our first few team members. We’re always asking the question and frustrated why can't my team just do what I say. Then eventually we transition and we transform and evolve and realizing they are some of our best assets, they're supporting us, they're better at us in things that they do, they love their areas of expertise and now it's, how can I support them? How can I help them get ahead? How can I make it easier? How can I help them avoid burnout? You also threw out the words transformational and transactional, and I think those are two very different leadership styles that I think are important to point out. I think what you’ve just been describing is you're trying to create a team that is transformational. Transformational leadership is where you give them an outcome and say, “That's where I want to go,” and they say, “Great,. We'll figure it out, we'll help you get there.” Transactional leadership is, “We're going to go here and here's exactly how we’re going to do it and we’ll do it my way,” and then there's no buy-in, there’s no ownership, they don't get to fail because if they do what you tell them to do and it doesn't work, whose fault is it? It’s mine, but that means they can't win too. If they can't fail, they can never win, and you're never going to keep A players on your team that never get to win. This is why people get so frustrated by millennials, because they're dinosaur business owners, they're running their business like assholes, they're tyrants, they're trying to micromanage their team, tell everybody to do it, and it’s transactional. They're saying, “I'm giving you money, just do what I tell you to do. I paid you, do it.” Millennials don't stand for that. They value themselves more. They want something beyond just being told what to do and getting a paycheck. Believe me, I have team members on my team that would just be there to show up and [...] and get their check. They don't believe in you, they don’t believe in the company, they're hypers, and they go home and complain about you, and the job, and they live for the weekends. But if team members enjoy the work and they feel they have freedom and they have autonomy, you have their discretionary time. They're thinking about you after work. “How can we make this better?” They’re thinking about you on the weekends. They do extra stuff because they're in love with what they're doing. Steve: Totally. Now, you said that really well and I think what comes up for me as the EMyth, which was a very transformational book to use that word for me. Checklist, at certain points at Good Life, we are a results based company, but a lot of times I get pulled to these meetings it’s like this person is not… they checked the box and they didn't do it or they didn't check the box and they should have, you know I mean? What's the results? Is the days on market good? Where is his KPIs? Although they’re good, we have this back and forth. So, here's something that I want to stick my flag in the sand as something that's not conventional and goes away from my instinct which is let them figure it out. I don't care about the checklist. We're not all going to be McDonald's. Honestly, I'm not trying to scale my business across the whole country, if I was, I probably would have to make sure everybody checks that box, but I'm really interested in the small giants approach, where it's going deep with the smaller amount of people, still having a big business that makes a big impact. I say, “Hey, look at the results. Make it a results-based company because they can own it. They have more ownership in that regard.” Something else that comes to mind was, I remember I used to walk into the office when I used to go to the office every day and people would be on YouTube and I would freaking be so mad. They're watching some videos, I would stew about, I wouldn’t say anything right away. I would go in my office and fume. Then I remember I talked to a friend about it, someone I respect, a mentor. He's like, “Man, you got to let that go. If they get the results, who cares how many cat videos they're watching. You want a fun environment. If you go lay the hammer down on that, you're going to not have the team that you need to have to make your dreams come true.” Someone I respected telling me that was me letting go of a helium balloon. All this weight was just lifted and I was free. I didn't have to micromanage. Jason: I think it's interesting because sometimes usually the person or the team that gets really caught up on the checklist and everything being done a certain way, that's usually the operations person. They love that stuff, and it needs to be done this way, but I think that's our job as the visionaries to remind them it's the outcome that matters. It's the end result that matters. The end result is making sure we have a profitable business. The end result is to make sure that we're honoring our customers and we're treating people well. These sort of things, if we want to get to the outcome. How we get to that outcome, there's probably a million ways we can do it, and whether a certain box wasn't checked or certain thing didn't end up happening. Well, maybe that process is too cumbersome. Maybe it needs to be supplied, as long as getting a result. There’s always this balance. You can have a 30-point checklist that somebody has to complete, but if you can get it down to 10 steps and they can actually do it every time and it doesn't feel it’s in the way, then you're better off than the people that are operating without looking at a process document because most people don’t. They'll do it once and then just skip it. You need something that they can live with on an ongoing basis. I think that's really important to point out what you said is that it's the results, that results don't lie, it's the outcome that really matters. So, I think if you take a step back and say, “Well, what outcome are we going to achieve? Somebody's talking about checklist not being done well. What was the outcome we were trying to achieve? What's the outcome? Okay, did we achieve it? Who was responsible for it and how do we know whether it got done or not? Okay great, well then we're good, maybe we should change the process.” Steve: Exactly. Those are some things, but the exciting part is having freedom of time, money, relationships, the people you work with, the people you get to do business with, I know you talk a lot about firing the bad clients. That was an amazing experience, our profit went way up when we fired the wrong types of clients and getting really centered on our core values because then it's easy to hire and fire people and hire clients based on your core values. Ours are really simple. It’s RPG: be reliable, be positive, and be a go giver. It's based off that book, The Go Giver, and it's just simple. We used to have seven or eight, but then I couldn't even remember what they were and they felt weird, so we made it really simple. Now, my business development manager just goes down the list, like, “Are they reliable? Were they at the appointment on time? Did they send you the thing they said they were going to send you?” It just makes this compass of how to do business with the type of people that are going to make you successful. Jason: That's one of the things that coach clients through is to get clear on their three, maybe four core values because you can have a list to 10, you can have 20, but really your team aren’t going to remember all of those and you can usually boil it down to three core things. For us, ours are a little bit different. One of my core values is just transparency. That's originally why I call my company Open Potion and in just creating transparency I think in the industry has created some various significant shifts. I think also for [...] just how I operate. That's a value that is central to me and I want my team to espouse and really our companies are just extensions of us. It's my Iron Man suit that I get the strap on every day, that's my team and everything around me. It increases my capacity. It makes me feel a super human. I'm getting more done. I've got India handling my email and Adam handing fulfillment. I feel like I’m a superhuman. Steve: He’s awesome, by the way. Jason: Thank you. I think of other things I'm really big on is just eliminating constraints and looking for the big constraints that are preventing momentum, so that I can create momentum. It’s all about creating momentum for my clients and for myself. I think it's going to be different for everybody. With all the different things that we are inspired or that resonates with us and I think every business owner needs to get clear on really what their values are because you can't have it. There are only two types of team members. There are hiders we talked about that are hiding and they are living for the weekend and they show up for paycheck or there's believers. The only way you can have believers is if you have something for them to believe in. If you want believers on your team and you want clients that believe in you, you have to have values that you make transparent or clear to the marketplace or to your team so that they can they can buy in to them. It's amazing to see companies get to a large size without even having that in place. Once you get it in place, I imagine the shift is traumatic for the culture. Steve: And if there's one last thing I would leave the listeners with that’s going to be probably the most impactful thing for me in the last 24 months was, I had this epiphany that everything worthwhile lives on the other side of fear. I knew that instinctually and I've been told that before. You know how you can read a book, that's why they say re-read the books that you love because you read it four times and then you'll start to actually really get it. I knew that, but I didn't really get it and it hit me, it became crystal clear. I was like, “Okay, if I want my dreams to happen and be fulfilled and live a life that I want, I have to figure out what scares me and do that.” I have a two-part test. Does it scare me, part one. Part two, does my heart tell me to do it? If the answer to both of those is yes, you do it. I even made a wristband that says, “What scares you, do that.” I don't have it on me right now, I took it off. Just to remind me and it goes back to the try thing. All my biggest leaps came after I did something I wasn't prepared for and I was scared to do, like going to that mastermind. I couldn’t afford it, it was really expensive. Hiring my operations manager, hiring a marketing manager. I gave a talk recently at PM Grow that I thought I was going to be broke after I hired my marketing person because I didn't think I have the margin and we ended up having our best year ever. It comes back to the try thing. Figure out what scares you, do that, try it, whatever it is. I think that's where we make our biggest leaps and that's what sets people apart from living a life that they intended to having regrets, which is the number one regrets of the dying is that they didn't live a life true to themselves, instead they lived a life other people expected them to live. That's the thing that scares me more than anything in the world and so I’m passionate about sharing that message. Jason: Steve, it’s been awesome having you on the show. I'll second that. It really is that voice deep down that is that voice of truth, and also you can ask yourself deep down, “Do I really want to be doing this?” Deep down, “Should I be doing this thing?” Deep down, “Does this really resonates with me,” and if the answer isn't a, “Hell yes,” then there's a lack of congruency and I think that's where you're saying your heart is yes. I think [...] of something that isn't working is the death of something inside you. It means change, something has to die. You want to know what's really interesting? I've noticed a lot of this on [...]. The scariest thing to kill or to allow to die is the fantasy of something great. I’ll explain this, I've noticed this a lot lately with business owners. They have this fantasy of having a really healthy business, or having a business that is growing, or a business that they contribute, or they get to do great things, and that fantasy is so exciting to them and juicy to them that they don't want to take action on it, because to take action on it means they have to kill it. They have the brutally pull out the knife and slaughter their fantasy the second they start taking action towards it, because now reality sets in. Reality is never going to be at that level that the fantasy was, but it's better because it's real. I usually use the example of my friend in high school that wanted to be a rock star, which sounds like you. You had to eventually give up the fantasy of being a rock star or you have to choose into it fully. He had this fantasy of being a rock star and he would buy expensive guitars and amplifiers, and he wouldn't take guitar lessons. He won’t love the fantasy of having this fantasy of being a rock star and as long as he can buy cool guitars and keep imagining this future that would never happen, he was happy, but he didn't want to go sleep in his car and do gigs, tour round, work his butt off, and practice nine hours a day. He didn’t want to do any of that. That's reality. Reality means some work. Initially, if you're listening to this and you’re like, “This is great. Jason and Steve have these companies and making all this money, they've got their assistants. It must be so nice for them.” They're probably listening and going, “I don't get it. I'm not there.” You may have to be the person listening that you right now, it's time for you to double down. It's time for you to hustle. It's time for you to do stuff that scares you. It's time for you to get off of the fantasy of whatever you're hoping of doing or hoping of starting to really get out there and do the work, the hard work to make it happen and you listen to that voice, you get to that place. You get to that place eventually where you're now are able to focus on your team. You're able to be a coach and a mentor to people around you instead of the person trying to figure out how to get everybody to do everything. I think that transition really involves taking those scary leaps. I think every coach that I've hired was a leap. None of them were cheap. Every coach I've hired, every program or training I bought into, some of them I couldn't even afford at the time. They were risks, but I knew deep down it was a yes. I just knew it was a yes and it terrified me. I think for those that are really analytical and logical, they're like, “I don't get it Jason,” but for anybody else listening. If you have that voice deep down inside that is saying, “Hey, this is what's next for you. You've known it. You've been avoiding it and you're trying to figure out how to make it all feel safe, take the leap, and jump and do it. Worst case scenario, you're going to learn some powerful lessons.” I had lessons where I spent a lot of money and it didn't work out. A lot of money. I've probably lots of money making some bad choices, but I wouldn't trade those lessons and I've learned from them. Steve: Yeah, and money is just one side of it. Making a decision to be a different person, or to take more time off, or to go into a completely different field, that's probably the easiest one to do is scratch a check for something. Sometimes our way of being is probably what gets in the way of most of our issues because you can't solve the problem with the same mind that created it. Creating some space and getting clear always helps, getting clear on what you're trying to do and the life you're trying to live. At the end of the day, we’re the writer, director, producer of our own store and I love how you said, you kill off the fantasy because that's true. It's scary. I think that's why a lot of people don't delegate it or it takes so long to delegate because it's scary. If you give that up, what are you going to do? Then you actually might have to sit with yourself and figure out what's next and nobody wants to be alone with themselves. That's a scary place. It's through the work, it's through conquering those demons slowly over time that I've seen good results, so it's a process. Take it easy on yourself and do what's doable. I beat myself up a lot over the years and it's I think we're all pretty ambitious. Don't kill yourself. Life's too short. Just have fun with. Do what’s doable. Jason: Well, Steve, it’s been awesome having on the

He’s invited by some of the world's top salesmen to help them sell more.    He’s incredible...and amazing at it - I’ve learned SO much from him.    Every time he speaks, I take out a pen and paper...    (Hint, hint...cue, cue...to everybody here!)   Please take out a piece of paper and take notes!    This is a man who’s likely to make MORE money arrive in your pocket just by listening to him... ;-)   Mr. Myron Golden. Myron: Hey, Steve. How are you doing, man?    Steve: Fantastic. Thanks for being on here, man.   Myron: Absolutely my pleasure to be on Sales Funnel Radio, talking to one of my favorite trainers...teachers… ‘OfferMinds…’   Ooh, did you see what I did there?! ;-)   Steve: That's good!     Honestly, thanks so much for taking the time. The feeling is mutual.    I have notebooks upon notebooks from your things.    Every time you come speak...or anytime I’m at Inner Circle or one of Russell's events, I’d fill a WHOLE legal pad.    And thinking…     "Oh, man, that was amazing."       "No, that was better than the last."        "Oh, my gosh, they're getting better…”      Myron: You're kind, thank you.   Steve: You are just an incredible salesperson.    You have so much skill and so much knowledge...    I've watched you unplanned…    (...and I know you've done this multiple times!)    ….get up and pitch someone's product better than they pitch it to an audience that doesn't know you…   AND you'll make MORE sales than the actual owner of the product!   How do you do that?! I know that's a huge question, but that's amazing…   HAVING NO INHIBITIONS   Myron: First of all, how I do that in particular, is how I sell.    First and foremost, I have to believe in the thing that I'm selling. If I believe in the thing that I'm selling, then it's easy for me to sell it.    What I mean by that is...   Most salespeople don't even realize that they haven't gotten out of their own way yet.    Most people who sell things, whether they sell cars, or sell shoes, or sell online courses… or whatever...     … they believe that selling is doing something ‘TO’ people not doing something *FOR* them.    So first and foremost, I look at selling as a service.    I look at it as something that I do *FOR* people’ that makes their lives better. It makes the world a better place because people like me are selling.   So I don't have ANY inhibitions.    For example...a pitcher will have pain in his shoulder, and he can't throw the ball as fast, or a golfer will have pain in his back and he can't swing.    Because subconsciously, his body knows that, “This movement is gonna hurt me or hurt someone.”    Right?    When we are incongruent or when we have incongruence about selling in general, that makes it hard for us to sell things.    I think the thing that I have going for me when it comes to selling is that I have *NO* incongruence in me whatsoever.    If I feel like a product isn’t good, then I wouldn't sell it to somebody in the first place!    Does that make sense?    Steve: Yeah, that makes sense.   Myron: I get out of my own way.   Steve: And I mean, you've done that multiple times.    I saw you do that at Dream 100 Con.    I mean, you're the guy that Russell Brunson asks to come re-pitch ClickFunnels' amazing offer after he's pitched!   Myron: Yeah.   Steve: It's impressive.   Myron: I'm honored. I'm honored by Russell. I appreciate him more than I can say...  I've got so much belief in what he offers, that selling a Russell Brunson coaching program is easy for me to sell.   (...even though he doesn't consider himself a guru, okay? I'm gonna call him my bounce-back guru.)    Because I went out, made a fortune and had a lot of great things happen in my life.    And then…    I went through seven years of life devastation.   Like every year, major tragedy after major tragedy, of some kind, happened in my life.    ...from 2007 through 2013.    I signed up for another coaching program in 2014 and I just didn't like that kind of work.    I don't believe that the key to success is to find something you're passionate about and the money will follow.’’   I DON’T believe that's true.   Steve: I don't either.   Myron: But I do believe that…    If the work that you’re doing doesn’t match the person that you are, you will never create wealth or massive world change in that arena - because your ‘doing’ has to match your ‘being’.  Right?    The coaching program was great; they had a lot of people making A LOT of money...it just wasn't the kind of work that suited me.    After that in 2015, I joined Russell's Inner Circle and my life has been on an upward trajectory financially, ever since then.    Selling a Russell Brunson coaching program? That's like the easiest thing in the world for me to sell!    Because he is the one person who I can point at and say, incontrovertibly, has helped more people to become millionaires in a shorter period of time than ANY other human being I've ever known of.   Steve: Yeah, not even just “known of”. I've never heard of anyone doing that!   Myron: Exactly.    And he's not an MLM guy. He's just a guy who teaches you frameworks that work.    So standing up and selling his product is easy because…    I wasn't selling the product I was selling the payoff   ...and I know what the payoff is because I get paid from that payoff all the time!   So that's why, if I can look at something and it makes sense, then it's easy for me to see how it makes sense...    ...then it's easy for me to say HOW it makes sense in a way that's easy for people to receive.   Steve: It's powerful stuff! And you know what's funny?   I feel like there's a lot of people who are jumping in entrepreneurship…   (which is great!)   ….but they do it under this notion that it's NOT sales, it's “entrepreneurship”.    But  like,  “ Eh, entrepreneurship IS sales. It's a sales role."   Myron: Yeah, exactly.   Steve: And if you're lying to yourself about that, you're already a bad entrepreneur!   To be an entrepreneur is to be a salesperson.   Myron: Exactly.   Steve: How can people be better?    How can they get rid of the inhibitions around selling?   Myron: Let's start with this.    So as you just said…   The reason that people say, “I'm an entrepreneur, I'm not a salesman,"    (What does that even mean?)    ...that is because they think there's something inherently wrong with sales!    But I'm gonna fix that right now.    BLOOD & SALES   …. the people reading right now - they can agree or disagree.    If you disagree ...here's what I'm gonna say to you…   ”You've been wrong before… congratulations, it's happening again!”   So I happen to have some money in my pocket….   ….if you take some money out of your pocket, any amount of money… and you look at that money - just check it out - and you’ll realize that:    All of the money that you have...    All of the money you will ever have...   To do the things…    You desire to do for yourself...   For the people that you love...   The causes that you care about...   The only reason it's possible for me, you, or anyone else to ever have money is because somebody somewhere sold something to someone for a profit.    PERIOD.   (I wasn’t gonna go here, but I will…)   Money is like blood, right?    Money is like blood, in that, money is stored in a bank.    Where's blood stored?    Steve: In your body.   Myron: Well, no, it's stored in a blood bank.    Money is stored in a money bank, right?    Steve: Oh, I get what you're saying.   Myron: Blood is stored in a blood bank.    Blood has to be in circulation in order to give life to your body and money has to be in circulation in order to give life to the economy.   Steve: I love that.    Myron: Right? So money is very much like blood.  Blood carries oxygen to every part of your body.    Money doesn't really carry oxygen, but it does help you breathe.    … because when you don't have any money, you feel like you can't breathe.   Steve: That's true.   Myron: Right?    But also…    Money is a mass noun, just like blood is a mass noun.    Yesterday, I went and got some blood drawn - I didn't go get ‘A blood’ drawn, I got SOME blood drawn.    … even though it's singular, it's a mass noun.    So you have to put “some” (which is plural) in front of a singular word.    You'd never say "I gave A blood," because that doesn't make any sense.    I gave SOME blood. Well, guess what?    When it comes to money, you wouldn't say, "I gave A money..."   It's SOME money.    Money and blood are both mass nouns.    Money and blood are both fungible.    Q: Now, what does fungible mean?    Well, you drove my car when you were in Tampa.   Steve: Yeah, great car, beautiful car.   Myron: With my name on the floor mat.   Steve: On the floor mats right there, that was...wooooo!   Myron: I drive a Bentley Continental GT.    If I let Steve borrow my car, when he brings my car back, my car is NOT fungible.    It's a car, but he can't bring me back a Volkswagen Jetta and say, "Here Myron, here's a car."    You have to bring back the same car!    ...or at least the same kind of car in, at least the same kind of condition.   (Preferably my car, right?)   So if somebody borrows a car, a car is NOT fungible.    If somebody borrows my golf clubs...    (… I wouldn't let somebody borrow my golf clubs 'cause those are my babies!)      But if I did, it's like, "No, you can't bring me back some other golf clubs."    "Well, they're golf clubs! What difference does it make?"    No! Golf clubs are NOT fungible.    If you give blood at a blood bank and then get in a car accident, you need to go get some blood… they don't have to search through millions of pints of blood to find the exact blood you gave!   Steve: "Oh, here are your cells!"    Myron: Exactly.    They just have to find the same blood type.    It's like with money.    Money is fungible.    If you loan me $5, you don't care if I pay you back the same bill.    Or if you owe me $50 then you don't care if I pay you back a $50 bill. Or two $20s and a $10 or five $10s or 10 $5s.    You don't care.    Q: Why?    A: Because money is fungible.    As long as it's the same currency type (#American dollars), you don't care.    You don't wanna loan me $50 in American dollars and I give you back Costa Rican dollars.    That wouldn't work.    So…    Money and blood are very much alike.   So here's what you gotta realize.    The only reason any of us EVER have any money in our pocket to do…   The things we wanna do    The things we desire for ourselves    The things we desire for people we love or the causes that we care about    … is because somebody somewhere sold something to someone for a profit.    Here's what that means:    Just like money is the blood, it keeps the economy alive, money is the lifeblood of the economy.    Salespeople are the heart of the economy that keeps the blood flowing.    If you are in sales, free yourself from the idea…from this ridiculous Hollywood notion that selling is somehow doing evil in the world.    Hollywood does way more evil in the world than salespeople!   The government tries to demonize business and salesmen and entrepreneurs while they do WAY more evil in the world.     Here's what you gotta realize...    Being a person who is in sales (a salesman or saleswoman) is one of the most noble, honorable positions and vocations in the world.     You make the world go ‘round.   Once you realize how essential salespeople are in the world and how much joy they bring into the world?   Salespeople bring joy into the world!    Remember how good you felt last time somebody sold you a new car? Or somebody sold you a new house? You felt great!   Why?    Because they sold you something that made your life better.    Salespeople bring more joy into the world than almost any other profession.    So once you wrap your mind around what selling really is…   … that FREES you up from all those internal conflicts and incongruencies that create the cognitive dissonance that restrict you from going out and making your offers boldly.   Steve: I 100% believe that.   Myron: That was a long answer.   Steve: But it's an amazing answer.    It drives me crazy…. "Money's evil."    Money is NOT evil, money is an amplifier.    I feel like (most of the time) when someone is NOT good at sales, usually they need to redefine their relationship with money.    They have so many *false beliefs* around money.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Do you find that to be true?    Myron: Absolutely.    I'm gonna say, money IS an amplifier, but I'm gonna add a caveat.   Because money IS an amplifier…    If you're bad, money will make you a worse person, or give you the opportunity to do more evil in the world.    If you're a good person, money will give you the opportunity to do more good in the world   HOWEVER…   Money itself is NOT bad, nor is it neutral. Money itself is good. Money is a good thing.   Steve: Right.   Myron: How can you say money is a good thing?    Q: What is the substance that represents wealth around the world since the beginning of time?    What's that substance?    Steve: Gold.   Myron: Gold, that's right.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Gold is the substance that represents wealth.    The first time gold is mentioned in Scripture is in the Garden of Eden.    Here's what God said, "And there was gold in that land, and the gold of that land is good."    Now, wait a minute, wait a minute!    Help me understand something here.    The Garden of Eden is a place where all the food is free.    The Garden of Eden is a place where there were only two people who ever lived there, Adam and Eve, (last I checked, they were married to each other).    There were no stores, there was nothing for sale, and yet God put gold in the Garden of Eden and then, He made sure He told us it was good.   Money is good. It's not neutral. It's not bad. It is inherently good.    You can do bad things with money, but it’s inherently good.    A car is inherently good - it's not bad to not have to walk everywhere you go!    It's good to be able to get places faster and it gives you the ability to save time and put more experiences in your life.    But people have run over people intentionally with cars!   You can do something bad with something that's good but it doesn't make the good thing bad - it just means that a person did a bad thing with it.   Steve: And the person did it, NOT the car, or the gold, or the object!   Myron: You know how you talk about the Capitalist Pig it really irritates people?    THIS MAY OFFEND YOUI'm gonna say something that really irritates people.   Steve: Yeah.    Myron: I'm not attempting intentionally to offend anybody (that's not my intention) but if they get offended…. they should probably grow up a little bit!    So the government talks about gun violence, right?    Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Oh, there's no such thing as gun violence.    I know, I just lost a bunch of people....but I lost the ones I wanted to lose.   Steve: Sure.   Myron: Okay?    There's no such thing as gun violence. I have a whole bunch of guns, not one of them is violent.   (I know I just lost a bunch of people… but I lost the ones I wanted to lose)   Steve: Me too. It's so funny, they're just sitting there and they never harmed anyone.      Myron: They don't do anything to anybody.   They just mind their own business!   In fact, they don't even mind their own business ...because they don't do anything.    They just sit there until I go to the range and I practice.    There's no such thing as gun violence, it's people violence and some of those people use guns.    Nobody talks about...   Steve: Car violence.   Myron: Car violence.    Nobody talks about fist violence.    It's stupid, it's like saying, "My stupid pencil failed that test."    *Your pencil didn't take the test*    Steve: I'm gonna use that one!    I wish I would have known that when I was in elementary school, hah.    “My pencil's broken!”   Myron: "My pencil...I can't believe this... What kind of pencil is this?!”   Steve: So we've gone through and said, “Okay, in order to get better at sales, you really need to embody…” Myron: You have to fall in love with it.   Steve: Sales are incredible.   Myron: You have to fall in love with it.   I love sales and salespeople.    Pray for salespeople every night when you go to bed. Thank God for them every morning when you wake up.    Stop being, "I can't believe that person tried to sell me something."    When somebody tries to sell something to you, get excited about it and watch their process and see what you can learn.   Instead of , "I can't stand these stupid infomercials. I can't stand these stupid commercials….”    I like infomercials… I really love them!    Steve: Me too! I watch them for fun.    Myron: Goodness, they're so entertaining!   I'm like, "Ooh, that is such a great idea!"    Steve: Oh man! So we’re saying …   THE STRUGGLE IS NOT REAL!   Number one: You can't even learn any of the skills or real tactics that you teach if you can't even accept the fact that…    Sales ARE good.   That money IS good.   Myron: Absolutely, absolutely!    And that you are doing good in the world when you sell things to people.    Do you understand that people only buy something because they value the thing they're buying more than they value the money?    It's kind of amazing when you think about it.   Steve: Yeah, money is GOOD. Sales are GOOD.    I'm writing down some of the notes here...    What else would somebody need to do?    I mean these are all major foundational pieces before you even get into tactics…   (or even things that you'll be speaking at OfferMind about)   So what else can somebody do to just increase their sales?    They're like, "Hey, I've got those things, I know sales are GOOD. I know money is GOOD."    What would be the next step?    Myron:    Realize that the struggle is not real, it's imagined.    “But sales are SO hard!”    No, no, no, no, that's just a story you tell yourself.    Sales are NOT hard, you're just NOT good at it.    I love what Jim Rohn said his mentor told him.    He said, "Mr. Rohn, Mr. Rohn. Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better."   Steve: Ohhhhh...there's some zing on that!   Myron: That's juicy, ain't it?    Steve: It's a little sting, there. A little spicy.   Myron: Yeah, he was like, "Sales is hard."    No, no, no, no. It ain't the problem.    Sales are not hard. Sales are really, really easy! You just don't know how to do it.    Jim Rohn said his mentor, Mr. Earl Shoaff asked him, “So how much money do you make?"    He said, “Well, I don't make that much. I'm broke.”    His mentor said, “How is it that you, being 26 years old and a healthy American male...and you're broke?”    He said, “Well, I can't help it. This is the job I have. This is all they pay.”   His mentor said, “Well, now Mr. Rohn that's not true. Let me ask you a question. Are there people who work for your company that get paid more than you get paid?"    He said, "Yes."    His mentor said, "Well then, that's not all they pay. That's just all they pay YOU."   And I said, "That is so good!"   Steve: I totally I can hear his voice as you say that. You do it well!   Myron: That's all they pay *YOU*    So what we have to realize is…    Mr. Rohn said, "It's too expensive."    "No, Mr. Rohn. The problem is not that it's too expensive. The problem is that you can't afford it."    We always wanna blame it on something outside of ourselves.    We always wanna relieve ourselves from the responsibility to do the thing, but the reality is... the reality is that sales ISN’T hard…   “…I just haven't learned how to do it yet!”   I'm gonna tell you something, Steve.    I have NOT always been good at sales.    When I got started in sales in 1985 selling insurance and investments through a company called AL Williams, I was not even good enough to be bad yet.    I was so bad, I was worse than bad!    I got started in October of 1985 and I did not make my first sale until April of 1987.    I was working and doing presentations... and I was woefully awful.    See, here's what happens.    Most people are not willing to be bad long enough to get good.   I was making offers and doing presentations from October of 1985 to April of 1987.    (By the way, if you're counting that's 18 months before I made a single, solitary sale.)   Shortly after I made that first sale, I became the top salesperson in our office month after month after month after month.    Some of you will say, "Well, Myron. How did you do that? What was it that changed for you, that took you from not being able to make the sale, to being the top salesperson in your office?"    *EASY*    I ran out of all the ways that wouldn't work.   Steve: Mat time!   Myron: The only thing I had left? The ways that it WOULD work.    It's so amazing, Steve.    People resist the only activity that can help them get better at the thing they are desiring to do.   They'll create all kinds of creative avoidance around not doing the one thing, i.e.,    Making offers   Doing presentations.   DON’T HIDE   I'm gonna tell you something, I've got a young lady who's in one of my high-end coaching programs.    Her name's Eileen, I think you met her.    This particular coaching program is $40,000 and they have to put at least half down and then they get on weekly bank drafts, right?    So she's like, "Myron, I really wanna get in this and I don't have the money. I don't know what to do."    First of all, she came to me and she didn't hide from me.    She came to me and said, "I don't have the money. I don't know what to do. What should I do?"    I'm like, "This person's gonna be awesome."    … because when they didn't have the answer, they knew there was an answer…   ... and so they ASKED for the answer instead of avoiding the place where they could get the answer.   Steve: Yes. I'm a student of exceptions.    If you don't have the means, or you don't have whatever...    JUST FIND ANOTHER WAY.    It doesn't mean that you're blocked!   You keep moving!   Myron: Yeah, exactly.   Here's what I told her:    "Eileen, you already have a $4000 offer. Raise the price to six and make more offers.    In fact, take the people who are in your current database right now and give them a date at which you're gonna raise your price to $6000 and give them an opportunity to get it now for only $4000.    Raise your prices."    I said, "Then the second thing you wanna do, raise your prices and make more offers."    Now, here's what make more offers means to me: *Collapsed timeframe*.    Take the number of offers you would do in the next year and do that in the next month!   Take the number of offers you'd do in the next month and do that in the next week!   Take the number of offers you'd do in the next seven days and do that many offers today!    You will have the money in less than 30 days.    She called me a week later, "Myron, I have the money."   Steve: That's SO cool.   Myron: It’s something as simple as “make more offers”.    I can tell you story after story. That's not unusual, but it is unusual to find people who are willing...   To make an offer!    Adjust the offer and then make that offer to another person when somebody says no to their offer   Make that offer just the way it is to 10 more people just to see if the problem is the offer... OR if it’s just the way they're offering it.   Steve: Right, right.   Myron:    Most people won't allow themselves to stay in the game long enough to figure out how to win the game.   Steve: You know, it's funny. I went back and I recounted how many tries it took me... and it was 33 failures over six years!    It was painful...   Myron: Well, why didn't you quit?    Steve: Right? Yeah, I know.    Someone was like, "Why did you think you could keep going like that?"    I was like…   I realized that failure is largely made up. You just learn. Everything is progression. It's not win-lose, it's just progression.   Man, I had a lot of garbage in my own head around the beliefs in money that I had to overcome.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Before I could even sell what I was making in the first place.   ALL WORK *WORKS*   Myron: Absolutely.    What's really interesting that a lot of people don't realize?    They'll say, "But Steve, it's not working! But Myron, it's not working!"    I say, "Okay, first of all, let me help you understand something. All work WORKS."   Steve: I'm gonna put that on my ceiling!   Myron: All work works. There's no such thing as, "I did that thing, and it didn't work."    Oh, it worked.    "No, no, but I made the offer and nobody bought."    It still worked.    "Well, if I made the offer and nobody bought, how can you say it worked?"    See, work is a two-sided coin.    Q: What are the two sides of the coin?    There's the work I do on it    There's work it does on me.    When the work I do on it doesn't do what I thought it would do...then the work it does on me ALWAYS does what it's supposed to do!   I know all work works.    So when I'm working on something that seems like it's NOT working, it's still working on me.    It's so interesting, we were talking about how you had six years... six years you tried all these different things and none of them "worked."    You had six years of failure, about 30-some odd failures but here's what we as human beings fail to realize.    Repetitive use of a limited ability will always produce an increased capacity.    What do I mean?    If I wanna get in shape and started doing push-ups, and I wanna do 30 push-ups, but I can only do five, here's what happens initially after I do five.    The next day I can only do three, right?    Because push-ups, in the beginning, don't make you stronger at first, they make you weaker because of fatigue.    So people think when they become fatigued from the activity that they wanna get good at, they think that means it's NOT working.    But you have to do it over and over again.    Repetitive use of a limited ability will ALWAYS produce an increased capacity.    Unless you do the activity repetitively, it cannot increase your capacity to do that thing.    Eventually, if you do five push-ups today, and three tomorrow, and then five the next day, and then three the next day, and five the next day... all of a sudden, you get down one time and then it’s 21.    Where did that come from?    Repetitive use of a limited ability will ALWAYS produce an increased capacity.    Over that year and a half when I was making presentations and nobody bought, what I didn't realize I was learning two very valuable lessons.    I was learning how to NOT work for money.    I was learning how to hone my message and how to adjust my approach and then go back and do it again.   And that's what I mean when I say I literally became the top seller.    Went from a year and a half no sales...to making a sale...to top salesperson.    “How did you do that?”    I ran out of all the ways that wouldn't work. The only thing I had left were ways that would work.   Steve: I totally get it.    It's kind of the same thing for me... after a while, I was like, "I don't know how else to be bad, or make it not produce cash.”   Myron: Exactly.   Steve: So just so everyone else can see, I've taken so many notes that I even turned the page…   ….now I'm going down this side of the page with notes!   I have so many notes and what's funny is that I've listened to you speak so many times...    Every time I hear you speak, more and more comes out!    I have a greater understanding of why I behave the way I do.    Not just, "How do I sell more?"    It's, "How do I actually behave better?"    It's really fascinating and I want to thank you for that.   Myron: Absolutely, my pleasure bro.   Steve: So you're gonna be teaching a lot of stuff at OfferMind and you're gonna come speak...   Myron: Yes.   Steve: And at the point where you're gonna come speak, people should have a great idea of what their offer actually is.    The core offer, what they should be doing.    Horse blinders on about everything else and just hyper-focused on that one core offer…which is what I'll be doing on the first day.    But you're gonna come in and teach them how to offer the offer.   Myron: How to offer the offer in a way that people expect it.    So many people make the mistake of thinking that the offer is their person.    What do I mean by that?    What they'll do is say, "Well you'll get so many hours of my time."    I say, "How many hours of your time?”    What I want less than hours of your time is for you to have hours of my time!   Steve: Right.   Myron: Okay? So they'll sell their person.    They'll sell their pieces, "Well, this has got five books, 17 videos and 47 audios."    Well, nobody cares about the pieces.   Steve: No, I don't want that.   Myron: Nobody cares about the pieces.    They'll sell their process.    It's fine to teach people the process after they've taken advantage of your offer, but don't sell them the process!    If you sell them the process then they're not gonna buy it.    I'm gonna teach you how to offer the offer...    Q: ...and so how do you offer the offer?    When you're selling to somebody you don’t sell them the process, you only sell them the payoff.    You don't sell them your person, you don't sell them the pieces, you don't sell them the process.    Q: What do you sell them?    You sell them the payoff and you use a concept that I call Emotional Cooperation.    After you use Emotional Cooperation… (and I'll teach you what that means when I get there - at OfferMind…)    ...then you use what I call Logical Justification.    When you combine Emotional Cooperation with Logical Justification, you become what I call a Psychological Artist.    You can hang pictures in people's minds for them to refer to that help them see your offer in a more favorable light. OFFERMIND???Steve: That is powerful stuff and I’m taking notes like CRAZY.    If anyone's watching or listening to this now, and they're like, "Will OfferMind be worth it?"    ...first of all, if you're NOT convinced by now… I don't know what to tell you!    What would you say to somebody who's like, "You know what, I don't know if I should show up to OfferMind?"   Myron: What does that mean?    Steve: Right.   Myron: No, no, I know what you mean.    I'm like, "I don't know if I should show up for OfferMind?"    Some of the greatest marketing and sales minds in the world alive today are gonna be there teaching you how to get BETTER at creating offers, and offering those offers…   ...if you don't know if you should be there…? Perhaps we should come get your family and take them to safety!?!   It's that kind of deal.  THE TWO THINGS...One of my old mentors, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones... I love that man and he was so amazing.    He changed my life in so many ways.   Steve: Oh, I didn't know he was! Oh, that's cool. Wow.   Myron: Oh yeah, I knew Charlie.   Steve: Oh, that's amazing.   Myron: Yeah, I knew Charlie.   Steve: Cool.   Myron: He lived in the same town as me. I used to go visit him.   Steve: That's amazing.   Myron: Like, I would go hang out with him.    Charlie used to say:    Your life would be the same 10 years from now as it is today, except for two things, the books you read and the people you meet.   When he said, "The people you meet", he is talking about the people you associate with.    I have found that NOTHING in this world ... in this life...changes your life for the better like going to live events.    Live events are my vibe.    I get to meet people and interact with people.    If I had never gone to Funnel Hacking Live, I wouldn't even know you and we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now.   Steve: No, definitely not.   Myron: When you were at Funnel Hacking Live in San Diego, 2016 and I was at Funnel Hacking Live 2016... I don't even know if I remember meeting you.    Do you remember meeting me?    Steve: No.   Myron: Probably not. No.   Steve: No, no.   Myron: Probably not, right?    We were both there, just as attendees.     And now you're having your event, and I'm coming to speak at your event!   You learn from me, I learn from you.    We make each other's lives better and we help each other's students, it's like...    ...does it get any better than that?!    Steve: I don't know?!   Myron: You will meet joint venture partners and they can open doors for you that you can't open for yourself just by going to live events in general...    But OfferMind! Like really?!!    I mean where will an assembly (other than at Funnel Hacking Live) of this level of marketing and sales genius be converged in ONE place at the same time other than OfferMind?    If you're not there ...where else would you be?!    Steve: I don't know? I've asked the same question.    I'm like, “I don't know why you wouldn't show up to this, it's pretty ridiculous…”   Myron: Your life will change.    I love what JR Ridinger used to say, he is a guy who is the president of a network marketing company I used to be a part of.    He said, "You can change your life in two days."    How long is OfferMind? Two days or three days? Two days?    Steve: Two days.   Myron:    You can change your life in two days. You can get more accomplished in two days than you get accomplished in a whole year by being smart enough to get yourself to that next event. Steve: There’s something about it...   Myron:    It collapses timeframes   It gives you a synergy    It gives you a level of focus that you can't get...that's diffused when you're out here doing your own thing in the workaday world.    When you come into a space where there are that many people focused on sales, focused on marketing, focused on offer creation, dude, it changes everything.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Yeah, I'm speaking at OfferMind.    But I'm not just going to OfferMind 'cause I'm speaking, I'd be going to OfferMind if I wasn't speaking.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Let's not get it twisted, ladies and gentleman.    Steve needs to go to events, I need to go to events, Russell needs to go to events.    The teacher who has stopped learning has lost his right to teach.   Steve: Okay, amen.    I think about like wings on a plane.    I tell everyone, if you're being coached by someone who's not also being coached, stop listening to them!   They're not practicing the very thing they're teaching you.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Get away from them.     Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Oh man.   Myron: Don't get stuck like Chuck in a pick-up truck.   Steve: Well hey thanks so much for being on here, thanks for being in Sales Funnel Radio.   I'm just incredibly excited to have you on.   Myron: Me too.   Steve: Guys, go to OfferMind.com and grab your ticket.      By the time while I'm saying this right now, we're pretty much out of VIP seating -  stuff is filling up very quickly.    Go get your ticket and we'll see you September 2nd and 3rd!   You’ll get to listen to Mr. Myron Golden teach you how to offer the offer that I'm gonna teach you how to build on day one.   Myron: May I borrow one of your words?    Steve: Yes.   Myron: BOOM!   Steve: BOOM!   BOOM!    If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?    That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.    So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.    Wanna come?    There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.    You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.    Again, that's OfferMind.com.

I have a very special guest for you today! Frankly, I'm very shocked that we are able to get someone with such incredible stature in this show. SHE’S AMAZING! She's an incredible individual and we're all very lucky to have her here. I'm not gonna say the name of her MLM. I wanna keep it very company neutral so this remains a PURE marketing knowledge place. She… Has helped open 40 countries for the network marketing company she's a part of. Has a downline of over FOUR AND A HALF MILLION people! Is an INCREDIBLE person and she has a podcast called MLM Game Changer. We're VERY privileged to have her on here today. Teresa, welcome to the show. THE QUEEN OF OFFLINE RECRUITING Teresa Harding: Thank you! I am REALLY excited to be here and I honestly feel really honored because you’ve been a mentor for a lot of the things that I've learned. Thank you for having me! Steve: That's awesome, thanks so much. People may not know you yet or have listened to your podcast yet… How did you get started in this game? Teresa: Oh, my goodness, I HATED network marketing. I thought it was almost EVIL. There were experiences where people tricked you into coming to a meeting at their house… They invite you to dinner, that whole thing, and I couldn't stand it! I was not interested AT ALL. https://youtu.be/aqn-PxmrYGE My sister invited me to a class, and I love my sister. We're very close. I knew I was going to go support her but I told my husband, "Look, would you please come with me? I have to go to this thing because I have to support her." So I went and I was SURPRISED by the product. As you guys all know… Network marketing companies often have pretty amazing products. Steve: Amazing products! Teresa: I didn't know that at the time… Ours is a health product. My niece at the time was two years old… She started having some pretty serious neurological problems that were pretty scary, and someone told my sister, "Oh, you should try this product"... And I thought, "Oh, brother, are you kidding me?" The support and what I saw was actually UNBELIEVABLE… So I started researching and looking into it and ended up WANTING the product but NOT gonna the business. I started using the product and helping people with the product and I started getting a little paycheck but I WASN’T trying to build. BUILDING AN OFFLINE RECRUITING BUSINESS So, I thought, "Fine. I'll do this for three months. I am not talking to my friend and I am not talking to my family." Steve: Right! Teresa: In that, I think we're kindred spirits. I have heard SO MANY of your trainings! That's how I got involved, fell in love with it and now, LOVE… Helping people Network marketing Steve: When did it start becoming a REAL thing for you? You're like, "Man, this is actually something that I wanna go full-time into and get four and a half million people"? Obviously, it didn't happen all at once… But what did that look like? Teresa: And of course, it doesn't happen by yourself. It really takes A LOT of people working hard together and I have a lot of amazing leaders on my team, as you can imagine. Once I decided I'm gonna do this for three months… I'm kind of a go-getter and I always reach my goals. My goals are always crazy high where I constantly have naysayers telling me it can't be done, and I just go ahead and do it anyway… I don't always reach them as soon as I want. I decided to try it for 3 months and then I went after it… It was working and it was UNBELIEVABLE! NETWORK MARKETING IS HELPING PEOPLE I quickly discovered that it really IS about helping people. I built mine offline at first and it's just been amazing. And I absolutely that you don't pressure people. It's not about chasing, hunting people down. We are not the hunter and they are not the target. Steve: Yeah, absolutely. One of the biggest questions I get, and I'm sure you get it all the time, is… “How long have you been at it?” And I feel like the thing that they're asking is, “Is it really worth it for me to go after that?” And they're trying to find some logical reason to release themselves from the pressure of moving forward. With that backdrop, and everyone now knowing how I feel about that… How long have you been at it? Teresa: I've been doing this for 11 years. At first, I was doing it part-time because I was a stay-at-home mom. I'd never really been involved in business before. Of course, I had skills and I had been to college… But I wanted to raise my own kids. So, I did that and this came about right as my kids were getting a little bit older. I would only do it part-time while they were at school or at their sports practices and things like that. NETWORK MARKETING PART TIME For the first several years, it was very part-time… But I'm an overachiever, which is fun for me. I would get A LOT done in the time that I had but then… As it got to a point where I could spend more time on it and I was able to do it full-time, I remember the day thinking, "Okay. Now, let's see what we can do." At that point, I was a pretty high rank (third from the highest rank that you could achieve in the company). I'd achieved A LOT… Steve: That's so awesome. Teresa is 100% the queen of offline building. You have this down to a SCIENCE. You're so good at it, you're known for it. You have your own programs on that as well! Did you learn those things? I'm sure some of it was discovered along the way… Better tactics and methods on recruiting... How do you start getting really good at that? Because MOST don't. Teresa: First of all, you have to know… I am EXTREMELY opinionated about how it should be done. The way that people pressure and try to approach all their friends and family… I did not agree with that AT ALL! We DO have people make their list… But the way they approach is absolutely about WHAT they know that person actually NEEDS. The thing I fell in love with when I found your online stuff was that we had been trying to figure out online for the last four years and we HAD figured it out… But not to the extent that you had. NETWORK MARKETING ONLINE When I found your stuff I freaked out because I was like, "Oh, my goodness." We HAD figured it out, but that was the icing on the cake! We've geeked out over you… Over ClickFunnels… All of that. The way that you teach online, that's exactly how you should be doing it offline. All the things that you do… Attract the people who are interested Don't go after the people who are not interested Not trying to get every single person on your team If you're worrying more about the other person than yourself… You're meeting their needs and solving their problems. If you can solve their problems, you'll continue that journey together. But if you CAN’T, you can still be friends. You don't need to bring up that stuff all the time. The best compliment I ever got was when a neighbor of mine came to me needing something for a health situation. She didn't use our product, but she knew of our product. She needed to find something for her daughter and asked if we had anything. I told her “Yes”, I was HELPING her. She said, "There are a lot of people in our neighborhood who do your business… My husband said, I don't want you talking to anyone else, I want you talking to Teresa because she won't hound us, and she won't bug us." Steve: WOW! Teresa: That's probably the most powerful compliment because that is EXACTLY how you build offline… NETWORK MARKETING ONLINE VS OFFLINE You do the same things that we do ONLINE… There are just some tricks to figuring out how to do it online, in the same way there are some tricks to figuring out how to do it offline… It's just it's faster online, which is so exciting as we've gotten into that! Steve: It's funny because the way I think about the Internet… There are a few very easy plays (like little football plays) that I think about. "I'm gonna run that play, I'm gonna run that play." And I just know it just works because it adds value before you go follow up with asking them to actually join. What's one of your favorite methods for offline growth? Teresa: We actually have some scripts that we give people for different types of situations… So many people say too much, or say it wrong… The nice thing about online is you write it in the funnel, then it's there and you don't mess up. The hard part about offline is you need to LEARN how to say things… Ultimately it’s about: Asking them questions Finding out what it is that they need In the online space, we try to touch those emotions that make them feel like we are talking to them… That's the exact same thing we're doing OFFLINE where we're finding out WHAT their needs are. That's ONE thing that we do… OFFLINE RECRUITING TECHNIQUES The second thing we do is, any time I meet someone… I am not trying to bring up my MLM. I am trying to get to know them, making new friends… It's fun for me! I make new friends! I travel a lot internationally and I make new friends. When we're talking, two things ALWAYS come up… Your business or what you do for work Health If I saw a movie that I wanted to tell you about… I'm not gonna make any money off that movie. But if it was so awesome, I'm going to want to tell you about it. "Steve, oh, my God, have you seen that movie? It's awesome, you have to go and see that movie." I would do it the same way whether or not I'm gonna make money off of that. If it's really something that I feel that way about and I could help people with, then that's how we approach it. Steve: That makes total sense, it is very natural with that approach. That's very cool. One of the reasons why I started doing MLM on the Internet is because I was so afraid to talk face-to-face with people. In that four and a half million you must have someone who's fearful of talking face-to-face? So I was like, "Well, I'm kind of a nerd. I'll go create a system, but that's really nerdy and most don't go do that." For all the people who are like, "Alright, Teresa, how do I go do it? I've got Steven's stuff but I still wanna talk face-to-face." What do you say to those people who are just super scared of talking face-to-face, how do you get over that fear? OFFLINE RECRUITING = FACE-TO-FACE Teresa: There's at least ONE person in four million… Probably every single one has been there… Even when I was super confident and had been presenting in front of tens of thousands of people… I would still get in front of someone on the airplane and all of a sudden something would happen and I would wanna be careful not to make it awkward. Steve: Yeah, just clam up in the air… Teresa: That's ALWAYS a thing… We: Teach people Do role Have a script that is super simple and not awkward, that anybody can use … You could totally use it for your company. It says HOW to offer the sample (or whatever you're gonna do) and it's so powerful. IT WORKS. Our numbers increase significantly when we use this script. It tells you what to say to them if they had a: BAD experience GOOD experience We have spent so many marketing dollars on figuring out HOW soon should you respond to someone. For example, with your email sequence, you know EXACTLY what days you're sending those out. Steve: Boom, BOOM, BOOM! Teresa: It's the EXACT same thing! You give them the sample, and three days is waaay too long. If you do it the next day, they feel like you're hounding them. They're like, "Why won't you leave me alone now?" FOLLOWING UP WITH PEOPLE IN NETWORK MARKETING TWO DAYS is perfect, and you warn them ahead of time. For example, I always tell them I’m going to contact them, tell them why, and tell them how. That sounds like it can be so dramatic, but listen to this, it's super simple… So if I said, "Hey, Steve, you've got this thing, okay? Try it like this and I'll give you a call in a couple of days to see how it's going." Steve: So it's seeded… I don't feel pressure. Teresa: Now when I do call you, you're not going. "Why is she calling me again?" You're going, "She is taking such awesome care of me. I can't believe she's taking the time to do this with me." Just little things like that. I've seen your trainings on sales pages and the wording that you do. It's exactly the same thing, it really is. Steve: That's so cool! Yeah, many people have asked how do they do offline. It's the same... I'm not going to build a funnel, I'm just gonna do it my way. That IS a funnel. It doesn't matter whether it's online or offline. Funnels existed when the first caveman traded a rock for a piece of whatever. Teresa: That's why I was so excited when I found your stuff. You took the real way to do network marketing that is truly helpful, not pressure… And you put it online. You didn't change it and mess up the system. THE BEAUTY OF ONLINE RECRUITING The beauty of online is you can do it faster and reach more people. If you can spend ad dollars, that's even better. I have made more stupid mistakes than anybody network marketing… I am quite sure. So I know my stuff inside and out. I was learning the online stuff and digging even deeper, and going, “How fun to connect the two, how fun to put it together and go, wow, this is honestly moving into the 21st century!” Steve: It's taken FOREVER! We’VE got a lot of up-lines that are AFRAID of it… When did you start reaching out for assistance and help and growth? Were you consuming books and CDs and courses? What kind of training did you consume at the beginning? Teresa: When we first started, I'd never done this before… I didn't have any connections in the industry and I had not had any success myself because I was BRAND NEW… So I went to the owners of our company (who are pretty renowned) they're amazing in the industry. But they're not used to doing what we do... But they were EXTREMELY helpful. I learned as much as I could and I basically went to them and said, "Okay, you tell me who's making the most in network marketing and you tell me what they're doing, and then I will try to mimic that." NETWORK MARKETING BOOKS Then started reading tons of business books, tons of network marketing books… I can't even share my gratitude enough for the people who come before who spent their lifetime learning all these things so that I can learn in a book what it took them years and years to learn. There's always great information… But I'm pretty opinionated about that whole pushy network marketing attitude. And there are some books out there that are very much that way. You will NEVER hear me advocating that. I absolutely don't think it's necessary. Obviously, it's not. I believe that that's ONE of the reasons our team is so massive… Because it doesn't feel that way. I devour books and I read like crazy. I was on Goodreads, and they had this reading challenge last year where they said, "How many books do you wanna read?" We were living in China and I thought, “This is a busy year, so I probably better just say one book a month, even though I know I read a lot.” By the end of the year, I had read 40 books. Steve: What happened to your team growth when you started consuming all that training? Teresa: Oh, my goodness! What happens is, your team grows exponentially! OFFLINE RECRUITING TO ONLINE RECRUITING Not just in relation to how much you're learning, because you know what it's like… The more you grow your business, the more you have to face things about yourself that you didn't necessarily wanna face. Steve: And it sucks. Teresa: It's weird… It's like you hit these lids that you don't realize you're hitting until you up-level your skill in that area… You become a better leader, you learn something more that allows you to lead better, grow bigger, and progress more. Steve: I think of it like those rock tumblers that we used to have growing up… Did you ever have those? You put all those rocks in and it’s super loud, really annoying… Then you pull it out and you're like, “Oh, that was awesome.” The nastier the rock, the more beautiful at the end. Teresa: Smooth and gorgeous and a color that you didn't even know. Steve: So you started building and building and building offline (obviously) and then… And then did you start taking that offline-to-online growth? Teresa: It's never perfect… You always have things to learn but we knew how to do that offline building, no problem. I started trying to do live seminars about six or seven years ago because I thought, “We know how to do this, we are good at this.” If we can get MORE people in the room, we go BIGGER, we can go FASTER. It worked and we were starting to figure it out… I actually partnered with some people who had run massive events for people like Zig Ziglar… But it takes A LOT of capital and you're flying the whole team out to the area, going to Colorado and all of a sudden, it hit me… FIGURING OUT ONLINE NETWORK MARKETING You think I'd have figured this out sooner, but I was like, “Duh, if we're gonna do this, why do it live? Why not do it online?" That's when I started going, "Dude, we figured this out online and then, of course, we can go do live events and people will come," It has been so fun and so expensive until I found you guys. We had gotten the cost per acquisition down pretty low… Lower than anyone I know aside from the people that you train. AND THEN, I found your stuff and it was so exciting. And in fact, we brought a little gift for you. Steve: Oh, yeah? Teresa: Can I share this little surprise? Steve: Absolutely. Teresa: We made this for you. Steve: Oh, yeah? Teresa: I just have to tell you that my office team, my employees have been really excited about this and they've been sharing this all over the office over and over again. We have a segment… I won't share the whole thing here because it's too long. The one that we're going to give you is four minutes long, but this one is just 15 seconds… Steve: I'm so excited! NETWORK MARKETING MAGNET Teresa: That's part of what draws people to you and to what makes you a magnet. We have a four-minute segment that is just super-fun and I'll just tell you… We didn't have time. We're gonna give you this and you can use it for however you see fit. It might just be fun to have as a sound on your phone. I'm gonna turn that into my ringtone for you. Steve: Oh, it sounds good. That's awesome! I was speaking at an event once and there's a Q&A section at the end… This lady stood up and she said, "I know you're thinking about apps. Will you ever make an app for all the sound effects you make?" And I was like, "I think I'm flattered." Teresa: That was awesome! Steve: It's so funny 'cause I never realized I was doing it! Teresa: It's what makes it engaging because you're so fun. You're so YOU and you just draw people in! Steve: That means a lot. I'm very excited about it. Teresa: It's really fun. I hope you like and I hope you take it as a compliment. Steve: It's a huge compliment, totally. I will take that and blast it EVERYWHERE! Thank you SO MUCH for being on the show and thanks for walking through this. OFFLINE RECRUITING ADVICE Could you just give ONE MORE piece of advice for somebody who is just starting out and they're seeing this road and they're like, "Oh, man, she's been doing this for 11 years." Teresa: I would absolutely look to the masters WHO knows what they're doing and do what they do. Steve's trainings are phenomenal, that MLM Hacks… Oh my goodness! The thing I love about your training is people can do this very low level. You DON’T have to be techy and you DON’T have to be a coder. You have trainings that allow you to go slow, but then, you take people up the ladder to go into something that is bigger. The people who wanna go deeper, like me… It allows us to geek out over that stuff and you guide us through the process to make sure that we do it right. NETWORK MARKETING FRONT LINE I've done this for 11 years, and I have people who wanna be on my front line… I say, "Okay. So, if you're serious about this, I gotta know," and we go through the requirements. The requirements are basically... You do it the way that I teach until you hit *THIS* rank Once you're that rank, you do whatever you want because I've seen it, I've done it, I know what works I love the Secret MLM Hacks because you take people through the process without them having to go figure it all out for 10 years by themselves. You've been doing this for a long time, you truly are the guru. You deserve kudos for that, because you are helping people all across the industry and I know that this is starting a wave that is changing the MLM industry. In answer to your question, I would say If you only wanna build online, build online. If you only wanna build offline, build offline. But if you wanna do both, I would recommend that you build the way you want, but make sure you incorporate the best pieces of BOTH of those sides so that you can reach ANYBODY. NETWORK MARKETING GAME CHANGER You're gonna come across people who simply say, "I wanna be on your team." Steve: Yeah, a lot. Teresa: You don't build offline because you build online… But you end up having to handle it offline and you're just good at it. This might sound weird but… One of my tricks is to belittle the goal so that it's not so massive in my mind that I'm like, "There's no way I can go pull that off." If I try to consume and understand and plan for all of it at the same time, there's no way! You get stressed out. At the beginning, when I first started this, there were no podcasts. No one was talking about this angle of it and it's cool to see how 180 degrees that is now. I have bought your packages, I know your stuff and I'll just tell you… It changes the game. Steve: That's awesome, thank you so much. Thanks for being on here! Where can people find you? Besides MLM Game Changers ←- Everyone go look at the podcast. Teresa: The podcast, MLM Game Changers and we also have teresahardingmasterclass.com. We have pre-registration there for a FREE Master Class that we do, teaching people how to combine the online with the offline. I give shout-outs to Steve all the time. There are certain people online that are THE BEST OF THE BEST. Steve is one of them. Steve: Thanks so much! Teresa: Thank you for having me on. Steve: Thanks for being on the show! Everyone go check out and follow Teresa Harding. She's amazing! She's the Queen of the offline bill. TO RECRUIT ONLINE OR TO RECRUIT OFFLINE… To recruit online or to recruit offline… That is the question. By now if you listen to the show at all, you know I focus heavily on methods to recruit online in largely automated ways. But what if you don't know what to do with speaking to somebody face-to-face who's actually interested? What do you do? What do you say? How do you keep the conversation moving? When should you follow-up and how often? Who should you pursue and who should you move on from? Frankly, and totally honest, I'm good at all that online stuff. But if you're like me, you might be a little bit of an introvert in the real world. Whilst sales and marketing online is still sales and marketing offline, the mechanics are a little bit different. I'll be an expert in what I am loudly, but I can't pretend to know all of these offline methods because I don't. Who better to introduce you to, than the Queen of offline recruiting herself, Teresa Harding. Teresa literally has MILLIONS of people in her downline as you listened to this. She's an offline recruiting EXPERT. However, several months ago, she ran into my programs online and said exactly what you heard in my interview with her. "Steve, you did what we've been trying to do for 10 years." If you wanna check out the same programs Teresa Harding has, go to listentoteresa.com and watch the free web class now. Kind of like salt and pepper, Teresa and I are excited to finally collaborate a little to show you your individual strengths. She'll teach you OFFLINE recruiting, I'll teach you ONLINE recruiting. If you're ready to learn more of what Teresa did from my programs just type in, listentoteresa.com.

Planning for Your Family Legacy Like Saras Farm (LA 1035) Transcript: Steve:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill:                          Good day. Steve:                   Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Steve:                   and I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Jill:                          Today. Jill and I talk about planning for your family legacy, like Sarah's farm. Steve:                   Who The heck is Sarah? Jill:                          Sarah is our niece and this is because of a story that I heard, and I was talking to your sister yesterday and she was sharing with me Sarah's farm, one of their properties that they purchased, and I thought this was really, really cool and I want to talk about it more. Steve:                   If you're a regular listener, you know this, but my middle sister is... It lives in Trevor City, Michigan, and she's extremely successful residential real estate agent. She's actually the single only residential real estate agent that I enjoy spending time with. Jill:                          That is true, well hey wait, there's two. Steve:                   Oh yeah. Jill:                          Well we have two, we have one more local. Steve:                   Yeah, and so she's been accumulating property. She pours a lot of her money, the commission money that she earns ,into buying properties, and I think she's up to what, 20 or 30 or something? Jill:                          20 doors. Steve:                   And so one of them is Sarah's farm, which I think... Tell the story. Oh no, okay wait... Jill:                          We'll save it for the show. Steve:                   Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill:                          Mike L. asks, "Hi Steve and Jill, I recently sent out a mailer and have been getting calls back. It's exciting, but everyone wants more than we are offering. I'm okay with that, but I'm having trouble properly assessing the true market value against the land flippers on LandWatch who are properly following your advice and to price less than the cheapest listed seller to move land fast. We have no seller lists yet and we have priced well enough it seems, but we can't move much higher if I'm basing the sales price off the lowest seller. I can find... The lowest one I can find on LandWatch. Have you or others had any experience with this? Is it worth acquiring with the expectation that the sales price will fall more towards the average low? Steve:                   Yes. Jill:                          Usually other flippers or the one or two that are viciously low. Please help. I've got an example below if my question didn't make sense. Steve:                   It makes complete sense. Jill:                          I'm sorry. I'm going to say what he put in here too? This is so cute. Oh, this is a good... hey, good way to do this. This is how you get on this show. He put hashtag podcast question, hashtag love the show hashtag. I'll put whatever I have to put here to get on this show, hashtag you just told us to do something like this to get your question on the show. Mike. Hashtag Mike, you did great. Steve:                   That was hilarious, Actually. Jill:                          Perfect. Steve:                   I didn't even realize that when I put this question in here. Jill:                          That was so good. Alright. Do you want me to read the example? Steve:                   He says, "For example, we listed a property for $750 and they made an offer for $750 and the guy wants four grants. So the cheapest on LandWatch is 2,500 everybody else falls into the four to $5,000 range for the same property that's in a planned urban development. That's east coast, east coast speak for mash plan community.

A marketing campaign is nothing more than orchestrated noise around your product.    Here's an example of how to keep a campaign going when everything is going well…   A campaign is about creating orchestrated noise   … that's my definition, but really that's all a campaign is.    Running Facebook ads,  that's NOT really a campaign. It can be part of a campaign, but it’s NOT a campaign on its own…   Marketing campaigns are a dying art… which means MOST people are leaving money on the table.   Think about this...   We're no longer just in the information age, we're in the attention age where the loudest, not the best, is more likely to get paid.   HOW TO TURBOCHARGE YOUR MARKETING CAMPAIGN   Recently, one of my good friends, Josh Forti, did a cool launch, and he had me come on to promo this product.    After our interview was done for the launch, he asked if he could get on my Facebook page to chit chat about the interview and do a little MORE promo around it.    I swear one of the major reasons that people don’t do very well in this game is simply because they don't know how to do the second step that Josh took…   ...which is why I thought it'd be cool to share the interview with you…   I chopped it in different places and such, but you’ll see Josh ask some very general questions…   Then kind of after each of my answers, he'd go back to, "Hey, we covered that in the playbook, click here."    That skill is a very learnable thing, and it’s one of the easiest ways to get better results in your marketing campaigns…   Because, here’s the thing…   I see people with a...   Great Product   Excellent Funnel   Good Launch   ... but then they don't follow through all the way, and it cuts their launches down.    Campaigns are broken up into a lot of parts. I plan and put all the pieces together, and then, I ask...    How am I gonna get tension?    How am I gonna leverage the followings of other people to get attention?    Once it's in the middle of a launch, how do I keep the momentum going?    Once it's done, how do I keep that pressure moving as well?    And, so I thought this interview with Josh was a great example of how to keep the pressure moving...    So, when you launch your product, or whenever you're putting your stuff out; *REMEMBER*  it's NOT just about the product or the funnel…   It's about the noise.    So you need to ask, “How am I creating that noise?”    The success of your product is just as dependent on the noise you orchestrate as the product and the offer and the sales message itself.   If no one knows about your offer, you're NOT making any money anyway.    If you can't get anyone to even go look at your sales message, your product is already dead... so why did you make it?     So I'm just giving this to you as an idea, so you can see like, "Oh, man, I should go do that."    A follow-up interview whenever you interview somebody for a product you're putting out is NOT abnormal at all.  Let’s cut over right now…   JOSH FORTI’S MASTER MOVE   Steve: On the other side of this wall here, there’s a whiteboard and I call it my "questions whiteboard."    I believe that questions invite revelation, and that's good and bad...    So…    I have to focus on answering rich people questions instead of poor people questions.    Because whatever I ask, I will likely answer.    The purpose of the board is NOT for me to answer the questions.    The purpose of the board is me to figure out which question to focus on answering.    ...because I shouldn't try and answer EVERYTHING.    It's funny you asked that;  I don't know why, but it happens in the morning….    I'm getting ready in the morning and my brain turns on, and  I'm like, "Whoa, what about this idea?”   Man, I'm not going to lie, I've run out in a towel before to write stuff down... like, “That's such a sick idea!  Oh my gosh! I should try to answer that…”   And I put it on my questions board... and I write, and write, and write…   I have a BIG list of unanswered questions that I want to pursue.    It's NOT that I'll sit down always and be like, "I have to answer this now," and just dive into my books…    But, on interviews, because it's on my mind, I'll continue to clarify the answer to that question…    I'll be like, "I think it's this."    One of my favorite things is to go back and listen to those interviews and hear myself, and be like, "...that was probably the coolest I've ever explained an answer to the question on my whiteboard.”    And so I go back a lot, and it's one of the coolest ways I figure out like, “Okay, that made sense, that didn't make sense. This was helpful, that was confusing.”    And it's only honed me in what I do more and more.   FINDING WHAT RESONATED?   Josh: It's interesting how much you can learn about certain things that you say when there are clips of the crowd, (and they get the back angle)...   ... and you watch everybody's heads go down and start writing all at once.    And you're like, "Oh my gosh, they all really liked that point."    And so it's ALWAYS interesting for me to kinda go back and listen to old interviews, speeches, or things that I've done... that got A LOT of really good engagement...   ‘Cuz I feel like you can learn so much about what people really like, what resonated and what didn't resonate.    Steve: Well, it's funny 'cuz the market literally votes, (they don't know they're doing that a lot of times), and it's NOT just with products, but even with content, (you know that)…   It's cool to see that reaction when you say something and you know it's right, you know it's helpful…   ... but you said it differently that time, and suddenly it’s the click… and you're like, "Oh, that's what you mean!"    And then you see all the heads go down, and you're like, “Okay, note to self, say it that way next time because it's more impactful than last time.”   ARE YOU ASKING POOR PERSON’S QUESTIONS?   Josh: I believe that the key to thinking different…    The key to getting, basically, anything that you want out of life is asking the right questions.   If you know how to ask good questions, you can ultimately go out and find answers, have a good perspective, and get what you want out of life.    But how did *you* learn, like...    How does one go and actually learn good questions?   How do you determine what questions you're actually gonna ask, and what's worthwhile to go study or not?   Steve:    One of the biggest filters I run things through is, does that sound like a rich person question or a broke person question?   Josh: Hmm.   Steve:    A lot of times, people try to answer broke people questions just out of habit.    For example:   I don't clip coupons. I'm not against coupon-clipping. Well, actually I am… ;-)   One of the issues is…    If I spend my time and my attention and my focus on how to save money, I will find out how to do it…    ...but I also didn't learn how to make MORE money!   I'd rather learn how to make more money and who cares how much something costs at that point?     The one thing everybody has when they start this game is a buttload of questions.  … and it makes sense why they would. Just EVERYONE has tons and tons of questions.   Josh: Right.   Steve: That's natural… but, like start writing them down. I challenge everybody to do that…    And…   Before you seek to answer the question, seek if it's worth answering at all.   Josh: Yeah. That's huge.   Steve: It will pay you in time or money.   Josh: I love that.    One of the things you said is interesting because we mention it in The Mindshift Playbook, is the habit thing…   You said, ‘Often times we just do it out of habit,’ right?   Steve: You know what's funny, I'll go teach these models, “Hey, this is a cash flow model. This is a cash flow model. This is a cash flow model…”   And what's funny is, the very first reaction people have is, “Is that gonna work for me? Am I in the right spot to do this?”    And I'm like, “Oh, my gosh, are you kidding?”     ... it ticks me off so bad. Josh: It’s like, “Does ClickFunnels work for -----?”   Steve: You know what? Of the hundred thousand monthly subscribers, you're right, you're the one it's NOT gonna work for.  It's like, “Come on! Just do it."    People set a goal, "I'm going to go do this, and I'm going to use ClickFunnels to do whatever,” and they don't allow *themselves* to break on the goal.    That's the key…   You have to break *you* on the goal instead of change the goal.    Robert Kiyosaki says that as well…    As you start moving towards any goal, you’ll have these character flaws that explode in your face.    I was probably, you could say…    Addicted to video games in high school.    I was very overweight.    I got kicked out of college.    I barely graduated high school.    I couldn't speak.    I had major anxiety issues.    I am literally the opposite of everything that I was back then because I started realizing that,    I needed to allow myself to feel some pain on the way to the goal. Pain does not mean bad, and pain does NOT mean the wrong choice. Most of the time, pain means growth.   Josh: Yeah.   FAIL FAST   Steve: When you realize, “Oh my gosh, failure is really kind of a made-up principle. It's not even a principle, it's made up...    As I start to feel that pain, I start to feel the progression of moving towards things.   I went back and counted how many times it actually took me to make one of these funnel things work, and it was actually 17 funnel tries and 17 before that…   It was actually my 34th thing that actually blew up (from age 20 until now).   Josh: That's crazy.   Steve: That's A LOT of freaking failures.    ...and most of the time, people aren't going to be able to go through that.     About 1/3 into those tries, I became cognizant that…    I was changing at a speed faster than any personal development course could ever hope to give me. Josh: Ever! And you mentioned that in the interview too. You say like,    Entrepreneurship is the best personal development course you NEVER signed up for.   I mean, like it just is, and I 100% agree with that.    ...and it's interesting what you say about pain and struggle.    I think the one thing that we both agree upon is that the struggle is there for a reason. The struggle is a good thing.    The struggle is absolutely needed to develop you into who it is that you say. So it's interesting that like, they're saying it, you're saying it. Like, it's there…   I think in today's society, we're just trained to want to avoid struggle.    Everything is convenient.    Everything is now.    Everything is easy.    Like, “Avoid this!” (Thank you, marketers, right?), but like, you know what I mean?    I feel like we're trained as a society to avoid struggle, which I think is why it's so hard for so many people.    Steve: Yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of it, (and I'm never gonna be the one that just like slams and bad mouths school and all that stuff)...   ... but you think about it, you get punished for doing something wrong in school.    But like, man…    I do stuff wrong, all the time, in business, and that's actually the thing that accelerates me.   Josh: Right   Steve: “You can't do that here, or you can't do that here.”    Or…    “What if I fail?”  *Plan on it* And then you just move forward.   Josh: Write it in.   Steve:    I find that failing ends up being an accelerant to everything else that you do   I've gone through that many failures, and because it sucked for so long, it's NOT that hard to make cash now.    I'm like, “Okay, well, I solved that problem.”   And what I've learned is that while I teach these models, and then people feel this first sense of personal development requirement that comes like…    “Oh, man, I don't actually qualify to be running my dream in the first place.”    ...as they start moving, they start to gain this self-confidence. And then, they move faster and faster and faster…   I almost want them to hit some major speed bump quickly and then see if they can pick themselves back up.    That kind of person, I love working with them.   Josh: Yeah, because people don't know how to fail. Sorry. Go ahead. DO YOU QUALIFY?   Steve: I was chatting with Russell about this a little while ago…   I was like, "Dude, when I met you and started working for you in the same room, you were totally a different person a year and a half later by the time I left."    The Russell Brunson of 3 or 4 years ago, could NOT handle what he's doing right now.    But too many times we're like, “I want my dream with the million-dollar business now.”    Man, *You don't qualify* You've gotta get some personal development going down!   Josh: What would your advice to me be, if I were to go down that route and be like,    "Yeah, I'm gonna open up a talk show where we bring on interesting guests. Maybe we talk politics. Maybe we talk about business. Maybe we talk, whatever.”    What's your advice to me when it comes to doing those interviews or creating concepts around that?   Steve: Okay, so I'll tell you one of the reasons why Sales Funnel Radio has been so successful and “The Capitalist Pig” is such a big deal to people…  It's because it actively throws rocks around mainstream ideas that others believe.    So, I was in the Army, (and y'all know that if you’re on here, right?)    I was in the Army, I enlisted and I went to become an ammunition specialist, (which I didn't know at the time meant "fancy warehouse guy." )   I was like, “Crap, I wish I would have chosen something a little different."    Anyway, a little bit through that, I was like, "I'm going to go be an officer."    So, in the middle of my officer trainer, one of the things that they do is they make you study wars, battles, lots of strategy and movements... things like that.    So you study these HUGE battles, and it's a ton of fun. I really enjoyed it.    The guy who was teaching us was ridiculously smart. He's a historian that they brought in just for officer training.   It was a whole semester of just studying wars.    What's interesting is that he taught us that wars are started over usually pretty much always out of rights...   States' right   Human rights   ... that's what wars start over.  The Civil War was NOT started because of slavery. We did NOT leave Europe because of religious oppression, but that's how we romanticize the past…   What's funny is that in the middle of a war, a lot of times, a social issue will piggyback on the war.    So slavery becomes part of the Civil War, (like right towards the last hour)...    And that's when Lincoln said, "Hey, The Emancipation Proclamation, let's go dump it in there."    The same thing with like leaving Europe, as Americans, we're gonna go in and you know what… ‘it's about religious freedom now.”    It was NOT at first. We were Britains!    And the reason I bring this up is that from a marketing standpoint, when it comes to the way I treat a message, (this is not something I normally would talk about either), but …    I look to piggyback a message on the back of a social issue.    (Not a human rights issue... because then you're seen as political)    But when it comes to really disruptive messages in the marketplace, Socialism right now is getting a lot of attention…    So one of the easiest ways for me to get a lot of attention on a show is to become the anti-something major in a social issue that's currently got momentum.    It takes a lifetime to create momentum, but I don't have to do that if I piggyback on a social issue that I'm passionate about in the opposite way.   Josh: That's super good advice.   Steve: Yeah, I would figure out what big things to talk about. I find that themed shows always do better than a general, let's just...   Josh: Let's just talk.   Steve: Yeah.    So I would find something that you find and throw rocks at it like that, and then it's very natural to find those people who are for or against to hear both sides.   You'll get as many people who listen to you and love you, as hate your guts.   Josh: Yeah, well, I think this entrepreneurship like micro-influencer game has prepared me for the hate. Holy cow, dude!   Steve: Yeah, it only gets louder.   Josh: Aww, man, I tell you what! But I've learned to tune it out.   Steve: Well, thanks for listening and thanks for jumping on here.   Josh: Absolutely, man. Thanks so much.   WHOA!    If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?    That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.    So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.    Wanna come?    There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.  You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.    Again, that's OfferMind.com.  

In this interview, I get to chat with the winner of my 3-day design challenge, Sal Peer... AND review his funnel. He did an epic job in this challenge…   Here’s the backstory…    Recently, I reached out to a bunch of designers and said, “Hey, I really need to create some Facebook profile frames…”   You know when there are these massive events or movements where people put frames over the top of their Facebook profiles...    I thought, “Why don't I do that for my groups!”    So I reached out to all these designers and asked, “Hey, could you design some FB frames?”    In full disclosure, when those designs came back, I did NOT like any of them.    So I thought why not ask my actual audience design the frames instead, so I reached out …    And it was *INCREDIBLE*   We ran a 3-Day Design Challenge, and the prize was that I'd critique the winner's stuff on an episode of Sales Funnel Radio…   ... thus, here we are!   INTRODUCING SAL PEER   I'm with the incredible Sal Peer,  and I'm very excited that you’re here.    Super excited that you won, (by A LOT). Thank you!   You're clearly a very talented designer. It's been awesome having you on here.    You run a company called Funnel Chefs.   Anyway, I just want to thank you for being on here; welcome to the show.   Sal: Thank you so much for having me, it's a real honor. I've been following your stuff. Amazing!    Just the amount and your presentation. Like, literally, in the last year, it's just gotten better. Like, you've gotten better and I see it.   Steve: Thanks, man.   Sal: So it's amazing to be here with you. The Design Challenge was so much fun.    It was a challenge to design five frames with no direction. You're like, “Just do it, I trust you. Just do what you can. If you win, you win.”    I'm like, “Holy shit, there's no direction here.”    So I dug into all your stuff.    I went into the MLM Hacks Groups, the Sales Funnel Radio...    I went into EVERYTHING, and I was like, “Okay, what is he talking about?” And then, I was like, “Oh the cube. He's talking about putting stuff together correctly.”    I was like, “Well, why don't we get a Rubik's cube and kinda put the frame around that...    ...and whoever's in there has kind of figured out the Rubik's cube for OfferMind and Sales Funnel Radio.”   ...it was a lot of fun, man.   Steve: Dude you're so cool.    It was funny because I remember we were scrolling through all of them, (and thank you, first of all, to everyone who did do it - it was great).   Sal: There was some awesome stuff on there, by the way.   Steve: Really cool stuff on there.    But there were ones that really caught my eye, and I was like, “Who? Oh Sal, Sal, Sal, Sal, Sal, Sal….”   Sal: I hacked it though!  I've got to say, I hacked it.   Steve: Good.   Sal: I submitted my first drafts, which I never submit.    I was like:    “Oh, let's just stick that out there, and create some traction, I'll see what people are doing, and then I'll come over the top like a minute before the competition ends and just be like, BOOM!”    That was so much fun.   Steve: That's funny because I've noticed a lot of the best people on Freelancer, (where I go run contests on there a lot), do the same thing. They just toss something out and then they see, “Yeah!”   Sal: Yeah, because you want to see, “Oh, wow, he liked this one so how do I make that better?”    … that's what we look for, and the branding.    I really wanted the branding to be strong.    When somebody puts it on the frame, they recognize the colors, they recognize the kind of thing - that was very important.   Steve: So the intent was for my social agents and our community ambassadors to be able to have those frames on their profile, so then people knew, “Hey, this is legit.”   Sal: Yeah, it gives them status too. It's a really solid idea.   Steve: Yeah, it's been awesome. How did you become a designer?   Sal: So it's funny, let's just go back to like four or five years ago. I was out of work. I was living retired or my mom would say, “retarded life,” and I was just hanging out…   Then, my wife got pregnant and we bought a house... and I had no money left.  I had eight and a half grand, (which is three months of paying the mortgage, but NOT the bills, the hospital bills, the insurance, the cars - all the stuff).    I was like, “I got to do something,” and I didn't know what to do.    And it's like you said…    You test your market by presenting offers and seeing who reacts to it,  and I did, basically, the same thing.    I owned computer stores a long time ago, and I started them with classified sections, so I was like:    “Why don't we just put out a bunch of ads and see if there's a market?”   My wife and I were talking, and I decided, “Well, I don't want to do that because it will get me traveling everywhere and I want to kind of stay put and maybe do one or two events a year.”   And so she's like, “Well why don't you do marketing? You know websites, you know marketing. You did it for your computer stores in '98. You get this stuff.”    And I was like, “Well, I don't know…”    I don't know if there's a market?    I don't know where I'm gonna get clients from?    I don't know…?   It's gonna cost me three grand in Google ads... or 30 grand in Google ads to get clients!   And all these excuses just start piling up.    Then I'm like, “Alright, well let's do all the Google testing because I need to know Google back in and out.”    So I got eight certifications from Google and I went and opened up a marketing agency by putting FREE classifieds out EVERYWHERE - even long ones.    I got the real estate ones, (where they have the lawn thing), and stuck that in the ground.    I got fined by the city, by the way -  so I'm NOT recommending to do that, but it worked.    That weekend, (the ad was $197 for a basic website, five pages, and then, I up-charged throughout), I sold like six of them.    I was like,  “Dude, I made $1200 bucks this weekend.”  I was like, “Hmm, there's something here…”    SELLING CANDY   I look at myself as an Entrepreneur, and I've been at this working for myself since I was like five.    My dad was a tour guide and I sold candy that I would get as a kickback, (from places he would take tourists), back to the tourists on the bus to make money.   So entrepreneurship was kind of in my genes.   I just saw a huge opportunity and I was like,  “Yeah, I got to get into it.”    I was watching Russell's stuff and I was like, “Oh, I don't know, it's another marketing guy with the same old stuff.”    I worked with Mike Long...    Frank Kern was part of a project that we launched a while back, and I was like, “Oh, well you know what, I gotta do it.”   A bunch of my marketing buddies started coming in. I was, “I'm gonna pick up the book...”    And then, I just said, “You know what, the book is so good. It's like ‘Inception’ for real!”   … there are ONLY a few books in my life that did that, and it got me integrated into this.    My mom was an interior designer, so I have taste.    Sometimes, “Yeah you can do stuff on Canva or stuff, but it's the creation and the creative that goes behind it (before it gets touched up), that's the gold.   That's what makes everything else work.   Steve: That's so awesome, man.   Sal: Because basic Photoshop skills are easy.   Steve: It's super cool, yeah.   Sal: But coming up with creatives, (just like you come up with offers), it's difficult.    You're like, “Well, why do you need that? Well, we have to do all this research first,” and stuff like that - so it's been amazing.   Steve: That's so awesome, man... and again, thank you, you clearly won.    And guys, just so you know…    My offer to whoever won was to go through their funnel.    And so which funnel do I get to go through?   Sal: So, obviously, I've been following you closely for a while now and I built this funnel with you in the OFA Challenge...   Steve: Sweet.   Sal: If you guys haven't taken his OFA and haven't signed up through his affiliate link, do it because the bonuses are AMAZING.   Steve: Thanks, man.   Sal: So that's how I built it.    It's actually converting on the front end really well - it's like 37% conversion on the front end.   Steve: That's awesome.   Sal: And then once they're in, maybe my email follow up isn't on point or maybe the sales page isn't on point... because it's NOT converting there. That's the problem.    So it could be the offer?    I'm open to EVERYTHING.   Literally, because I've listened to you, I went and recorded this live -  I streamed it live and then I turned it into a masterclass.   Steve: Sweet. That's awesome. That's super cool. I'm really excited about it... and we'll cut over now, and I'll start diving through your pages man.    This is awesome, and again thanks for putting all the effort in to do the design... because I know it's a lot of work. It's a ton of work.    Design is its own beast.    I mean, holy smokes!    So it's A LOT on your end as well, so it means a ton...    And where can everyone go to learn more from you?   Sal: To get a free discovery call with me, go to cfchefsal.com.    That's cfchefsal.com   SAL’S FUNNEL REVIEW   This is the funnel Sal built during the One Funnel Way Challenge - the One Funnel Way Coach, I’m excited go through to see what he created...    The purpose of that challenge is to get your first funnel out the door.    So if you've NOT had the chance to go through the One Funnel Way Challenge, ofasignup.com is where you can go sign up for the challenge and get a whole bunch of extra stuff that I give you - which is super awesome.   If we had a live audience right now, I'd say let's give Sal a round of applause…    ...because what he's doing right now, (letting me go critique his baby), that's kind of a freaky thing in and of itself.    Usually, I do these sessions with people one-on-one or privately, not on a big old radio show.    So anyway, let's go to this next piece right here…   So I'm gonna walk through Sal’s Funnel, but before I do, I just want to tell to go over to YouTube, so you can watch me do the review, (I cover a ton of stuff)...   I'm a really visual learner and a very visual teacher.    I'm actually gonna share my screen and walk through some stats that I'm seeing,  and I want to share some of the epiphanies that I'm having...    Well, in order to do that, it's gonna be really easier if you watch.    So, head over to YouTube and you’ll  learn:       Why even Russell Brunson's guessing without the 1000/1000 Rule...    How to find out where your funnel is clogged...   How to avoid a mismatch in messaging that can destroy your sales...   The *OBJECTIONS* you unconsciously create in your customer's minds that prevent them clicking your button...   How to get sales psychology on your side and sell MORE...   Why Urgency and Scarcity matter...   A simple tweak that makes your sales page waaay sexier…     easy way to create *ULTRA* clarity that gets your customer’s brain ready for the sale...   Where in your funnel you need to have an offer…   What % of story you need to add to your funnel to make your customers care…   The details I’d LEAVE OFF an order page...   Why you should NEVER rent a Cadillac Escalade in a big city … and how Enterprise got it right!   The ONE principle that will make all of your funnels convert waaay better...   … and a TON more *TRUTH NUKES* that’ll help your funnel to convert   #GetRichGiveBack .  The most common question I get is, “Steve, will you look at my funnel?”    Of course!    If you want me to do this kind of review on a funnel of yours, go to coachmesteve.com.  It's the notification list that I have, so whenever I do have an opening, I just drop an email straight to that list…    I'm just like, “Hey, here you go, first come, first served. Here's the time I have and here's a little order page so you can grab some of my time.”   So if you want to be notified the next time I have an opening, just go to coachmesteve.com, and I can dive through your funnel, your offer, and your message with you.   Whether you want me to coach you, give some handholding and guidance during your funnel build…    Or simply, review the one you have…    Head over to coachmesteve.com,  and book your session now.  

Alex Charfen is one of the very select few coaches I continually plug into...    I have wanted to get this individual on here for quite some time, and Alex Charfen has been one of the reasons why my stuff is blowing up so much.    I have learned that I need to listen to less people, and I'm very, very picky on those that I choose to dive deeply with…   So for marketing and sales, I've really dove deep with Russell, (obviously) and you all know that.    For systems and business systems, I've dove very deeply with Alex Charfen... he's the other coach that I pay a lot to and listen to as well.    ...and I have other various ones that are very carefully selected... and I don't listen to ANYBODY else!    I'm extremely careful about the content that I consume - so that I can spend most of my time just moving, rather than gathering MORE information…   ... which I don't think many of us need more of.    So anyway, I'm excited for you guys to understand more of why Alex Charfen, for me, has been so key…   So I asked him to come on the show and to teach a little bit more about the systems that all businesses need, regardless of whatever you're in.    A lot of these are the systems that a brand new entrepreneur needs when they finally get that revenue coming in.    ...and then there are systems that he creates for those who have an existing business and are ready to scale.    Alex answers the questions…     How do you know if you should be scaling or not?        What are the five reasons why most companies fail to scale?     If you guys like this interview, please reach out to him, (he did not need to do this) and say “Thank You!”    At the very end, we have a special little thing for you, and so we're excited!    Boom, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, welcome back to Sales Funnel Radio - we're really excited to have you guys here.    I'm with one of my good friends, who's become an amazing friend and definitely a mentor... I would call and consider him a brother as well.    I want to introduce everybody to Alex Charfen.   Before I really bring Alex on, I just want you all to understand, Alex Charfen was one of the guys that helped me understand why I am who I am... and that, it’s okay… and helped me lean into that.    I talk to you a lot about leaning into your obstacles, leaning into those things that have been crappy in your life…    … because they end up becoming your superpower.    You all know my story of going to the first Funnel Hacking Live, Alex Charfen was one of the first speakers, and I took so many notes…    I ran back home, I showed my wife and she goes "That's why you act the way you do?" And I was like "YES, it's because of this guy!”    He had a crazy deep gravelly voice and I loved it. He was the man!" ...and I'm so excited to bring him on the show here:   Guys, please welcome Alex Charfen, “How you doing, man?”   ALEX: Steve, it is so good to be here with you, man. Thank you, and I echo your sentiments completely, and I consider you a brother as well, man.   STEVE: Oh thank you so much, thank you so much.    You know it was like two weeks ago;  me and my wife were chatting about your material and going on through it, and she goes "Oh yeah, I have to remember this is how your brain kind of works."    I was like, "Really naturally, yeah! You should really know that" so we'll go back through your stuff.   You know, I've got that Capitalist Pig shirt that I wear all the time, but I really want one that just says, "Charfen will explain," or something like that, you know what I mean?    That should be the next shirt…   So much of what I do in this world just is NOT explainable without you.   ALEX: Yeah, it's unique, you know, Stephen…    I think when you characterize it that way, so much of what you do is different than what anybody in the world would ever expect... and that's what I've found from the day I met you.    I think I walked up to you and said something like:    "Hey man, I think we should talk. You're a really unique entrepreneur and I don't think you understand just how unique."   STEVE: I remember you said that.   ALEX: Or something like that.   STEVE: Yeah I remember, and I felt like, you know in the Matrix when he's talking to that lady with the spoon bend... I felt like I was talking to her, and I was like:    "What does he see in me? What are you looking at?" You know, and "Please dissect me!"    So anyway, I really am pumped for you to be here and just massive incredible love.    You have to understand, your name; it's NOT just a noun, it’s a verb in my vocabulary.    People are like "How did you do that?” "I just Charfenized it, baby!"    I say ‘Charfenation’ all the time.    I was hanging out with the other ‘Charfenites.’    I'm going over the ‘Charfenation.’    "How did you do that?" “Oh, I ‘Charfenized’ it, baby!”   Anyways, you're very much a verb in my vocabulary, and with my family... so it's really quite an honor to have you on, it really is.   ALEX: Thank you Stephen, it's an honor to be here man, this is awesome.   STEVE: This is really cool. Well hey, I wanna just start right out and just, I wanted to ask…    My audience has heard a lot about you. I've talked about you a lot because there’s so much that ‘veI learned.   Just recently, I was going through some of my old notes, from two years ago, from one of your events, and I was like "Gosh, you're so right, this is so cool!"    It really has created additional leverage for what I'm trying to do.   It works, it's real, and I want everyone to listen to this and listen to what Alex has to say here.   Understand that *this* is how I've been doing what I’m doing.   I learned marketing and a lot of sales from Russell... but how to have a life, systemize, and make my business an asset from Alex Charfen.    So, anyway, could you just tell us how you got into this? 'Cause I know you weren't always…   I mean I call  it entrepreneurial optimization, I mean it's really what you do - it's not just the systems, but like:    I'm wearing glasses now   I'm drinking more water than I ever have in my life    I'm doing all sorts of stuff I never would do, because of you    How did you get into this?   ALEX: - You know Stephen, I think if the question is, "How did I become an entrepreneur?”    I didn't find entrepreneurship, it found me.    This was really the only thing I ever felt comfortable doing in my life.    Ever since I was a little kid, I was always the kid that was different than everybody else, crazy socially awkward, like what you see today…    I don't try to be socially awkward, it's just natural.    I was always different than the other kids   I didn't really get along   I had trouble in school   All the systems in the world told me I was broken.    … and then, when I was eight years old, my family went through kind of a financial downturn; my father lost a company.    He didn't go bankrupt, but he went really close, and to make money for the family we were selling stuff in a swap meet on the weekends.    I remember going to the swap meet for the first time and standing behind a folding card table, and a woman walked up, and I sold her a pen that had an LCD clock in it…    (Like that was big time for 1981 or whatever or '78 or '79, or whatever it was).   Stephen I can remember thinking at that moment, "Holy crap, I'm good at this. This is something I'm NOT terrible at."    … because up until that point, I really hadn't found anything where it was like, "Hey, that was good."  It was always’ "Almost got it, kid. You don't suck as bad as you did yesterday."    I was the kid who consistently got *MOST IMPROVED* all the time, 'cause it's the award you give to ‘the kid who sucked the worst!’   And when that woman walked up, it was like "Hey, this is something I can do over and over again."    And the more that I worked with my Dad, and the more that I experienced business, I loved it.   The world is so random, but when you get into the world of business there are rules.   …. there's an outcome.    People are in it together, and you actually have to work together to accomplish and achieve.   …  if everybody cares about the outcome, it'll happen.    And so *this* is where I feel comfortable.    You know, it's funny, when I was a kid I used to create businesses, create business plans,  write out time cards and all this other stuff, and as an adult, I thought that was like ‘the weirdest thing.’    I would reflect back and think like, "Man, I was such a weird kid."    Now, that's exactly what my daughters do.    My daughter this morning was at the kitchen table for three hours writing out a schematic for a water park she wants to build one day.   STEVE: Wow!   ALEX: And you are who you are, and I think, from the very beginning, this is who I've been.   STEVE: That's amazing, and when did you decide to make a business around this and go actually help other entrepreneurs, like myself, who need these systems?   ALEX: Well, the business that I have today, we started…    So let me give you a little brief history.   So in my twenties, I was a consultant, and you know, a lot of people ask about that.    I did some consulting at a very high level at the Fortune 500 level...    I built a very large business that almost killed me.    And so I can tell the story really good...    I can give you all the highlights and make it sound great:   $250,000,000 company   I've worked with Fuji and TDK and Memorex and Logitech, and all international business.    Or I can tell you the other side of that coin…    I had a $250,000,000 company   I made less than $2,000,000 a year    my margins were razor thin   I had a bleeding ulcer   I was probably over 300 pounds    STEVE: Wow.   ALEX: And so when I got out of that business, I wanted to do something completely different.    So in my early thirties, I got into real estate, and we were taken out by the real estate market in 2007.    Cadey and I introduced our first information product, and that's how we got into this world.   We created a product called the Certified Distressed Property Expert Designation.    In 2007 we were bankrupt, we introduced our product at the end of the year:  In 2008 we did $500,000 in sales   The next year we did $7,000,000   The next year we did $10,000,000   Over the course of the life of that product, we did about $70,000,000    We went from bankruptcy to liquid millionaires in a year.    In 2013, the US Treasury came to our office and did a broadcast with us, where they said that, according to their research…    Our company had pulled forward the foreclosure crisis five to seven years   ….so it was intense.   STEVE: Oh, yeah...   ALEX: Really intense!   And what happened was, right around 2011…    A lot of our clients who were buying our product wanted help growing their business; so I took all of the stuff that I used to use as a consultant; the systems and structure Cadey and I used to run our business, and we started training it.    And so since 2011, we've been training it in classes/ courses.   In 2017, we started the products that we have today. So now we have :   An entry-level coaching program called Billionaire Code Accelerator - for people who are doing over 300k a year   A high-level coaching program called The Billionaire Code Grow and Scale - for people doing over 3,000,000 a year.    STEVE: That's awesome! That's so cool.   ALEX: Yeah it is the most fun I've ever had, Stephen…   It's like every day, I wake up and here's what I get to do:    I get to play in this playground with game-changing entrepreneurs that are starting businesses that are doing things that are just unreal.    ...and our systems, our structures are kind of the backbone for how they're doing things.    So on a daily basis, me and everyone on my team, wake up knowing that we are helping the game-changers change the world, and we recruit people who want to do that…    We recruit for people who are passionate about our mission…   Everyone on my team feels like their life's mission is being fulfilled through being in this business right now.    It's the greatest thing I've ever done.   STEVE: That's incredible, and I can tell everyone else who's listening and watching this now, it's exactly as he says it.    I think I've been to three of your events now, and they have just been life-changing.    I go through and it gives structure to the idea, but then, also, how I behave against the idea. So I can actually go in and breathe; I can live.    I watched my Dad create this awesome company when I was a young boy, but it took him too.   But everyone does that, it's super natural - so you to go in and…    Remove the entrepreneur   Create systems    Create processes and procedures, and people that actually push forward their vision even further.   ... it's incredible.    I know it's not magical, but it feels magical, to me! I'm like "Oh my gosh!"    I've actually had a tab open with your course open for like the last month and I'll just dive into another video, and I'm like "Oh my gosh! Back to the drawing board, that was so good!"    And I go back to it again and again and again... it's just always up, everybody who's listening to me, it's always up.    That's really what's teaching me how to run a company, rather than ‘me’ being the company, and I've loved that.    *Just so powerful*    I wanted to ask you kind of a key question here, and it's a question that I get asked a lot...    People come through my programs, I'll help them make money. They go and make a lot of cash, and it's awesome... but then after that, like what do you do?   What are the first systems that you find that new entrepreneurs with a sizeable amount of cash should actually go create first?    What are those first few moves?   ALEX: You know I think I definitely want to share a couple of systems Stephen, but first, I want to just share a thought process. ..and this is a tough thought process for most entrepreneurs to take on, and it's interesting 'cause I've watched you go through this shift too, right? '   Cause at the beginning, (and I just want everyone to know)...    When I met Stephen Larsen, he was ready to take on the entire world solo!   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: Like all alone, right?    And here's the thought process…    After you start making money, the next thing to ask yourself is:    How do I sustain this?    How do I make it real?    How do I make it last a long time?   How do I make it so that I'm not the only driver here?   when you get to the point where the momentum you're creating on your own isn't enough, and believe me, we all get there...    Like I know that if you're watching me, watching Stephen, you're one of those entrepreneurs... and in the back of your mind, you have this crazy voice that has always told you:    You're meant for more   You're gonna do more   You're gonna change the world   You're gonna make a massive impact   ... and if you've always felt that, then there's a shift you have to make in your thinking.    Because here's the issue for people like us; I call it the Entrepreneurs Dilemma.    For people like us…    We need far more help than the average person to reach our full destination, but any request for help or support that we have to make, leaves us feeling vulnerable and exposed.    Stephen, you with me?   STEVE: Yes, yes, yes, yes, 100%!   ALEX: And so here's the shift…   We have to realize that if we're gonna change the world, that is a group activity, and leadership's a contact sport.    So we have to wake up to the fact that when we start to:    Build a team   Create a structure   Pour into the people around us    Invest in those people   Make them important   Build relationships with them   …. we will build the company that we have always wanted.    That's the only way it's ever been done.  The myth of the solopreneur who's changed the world is a myth - it's a joke.   STEVE: So true   ALEX: It's one of the most damaging things out there in the entrepreneurial world today.    Because the fact is…    Show me anyone that looks like they changed the world on their own, and I will show you a massive team behind them.   STEVE: So true!    There's this idea that gets pushed around now, and it's like, “I'm gonna go and be this person that does all this stuff. I'm the gift to the world...”   ...and it's like “Okay….” but you can't do that on your own.    In the last six months, I have begun to experience and feel burn-out.   ALEX: Yeah.   STEVE: I have never in my life experienced that, and it's been hard.  The only way I've been able to create leverage is by listening to what you say and create those teams.   ALEX: Yeah. Well then, Stephen, that's the thing…    Here's the deal I want everybody to understand this:   If you're an entrepreneur, you have a job, and that job is to…    Stay out of burn-out   Lower pressure and noise in your life   Increase the protection and support that you have around you.    Because if you don't work with that equation to constantly lower the noise and increase the support, lower the noise, increase the support…    Here's what ends up happening…     You are in an equation that doesn't work.    … and it's not like anyone can come and argue against me here because this is like gravity.    This is like you know the facts of life, this is like taxes. We're all gonna pay 'em. There's no way to argue against this, you're going to lose.    And so in that situation, as an entrepreneur, you have to be really cautious about doing too much yourself, and about loading yourself up, because here's our instinct…    (You know you have this, I have this, we all have it.)    If there's something to be done, the first thought we have is, “How do I just get it done without telling anyone else,” right? Oh yeah!   STEVE: Yeah   ALEX: And it's like "I'm gonna conquer!"   STEVE: Freedom baby!   ALEX: We forget that humans are tribal animals, man.    We are all terrible at most things. Let's get real…    If you're good at a lot of things then you have a liability because you're not gonna be able to choose what you shouldn't do.    I'm very fortunate, I suck at most everything, and that's like an honest reality.    Anyone on my team will tell you like "Oh man, don't let Alex fill out a form, use the calendar, "send emails. We keep him out of all of our systems."    Seriously my team actually knows when I have a password for a system and they monitor me using it, 'cause I'm so bad at that stuff.    But on that same token, I know what I'm good at.    I'm good at vision    I'm good at where we're gonna go   I'm good at putting the frameworks together    I'm good at assembling a team   … and by doing those things, we can grow a massive organization and have a massive impact.   So for every entrepreneur, the key is to figure out what you're good at and do that to the exception of everything else   ... and it's the hardest thing you'll ever do as an entrepreneur.    Here's why…   The second you start doing that you feel like you're being egotistical. You feel like you're being self-serving.    But here's the fact:    When you drive your business to get easier for you it will grow like crazy.   But driving your business to get easier for you will feel like you're doing the wrong thing.    It happens all the time.   There's a discussion right now on our Facebook group, one of the CEOs in our group made a post, and I'm paraphrasing, but she said something like :   "As I offload and reduce discomfort and get a team around me, I'm feeling less and less significant, am I doing this right?"   And my answer was "Yes! You're absolutely doing this right. That's exactly how it's gonna feel!"    Because we need to attach significance to the total contribution, NOT to your day-to-day activities.   STEVE: Mmmm, that's powerful.    You know it's funny I was It reminds me of …   You know when I first got to ClickFunnels, it was just he and I. There wasn't like a copywriter, a videographer... it was just he and I!    So we did every single role in getting these funnels out, occasionally there was an exception where he'd go "Oh someone's really good at X, Y, and Z,"  but then, by the time I left...   ALEX: - Probably design or something… but everything else was you guys?   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right! I knew enough Indesign and Photoshop, I was the one doing it most of the time... and doing first copy rounds, and it like, it was nuts!    But by the time I left, it was funny because he had started implementing these types of things.    I remember watching him during these funnel launches just laying on the floor, bored out of his mind.    I've never seen him like that in my life, and he was almost going to a state of depression. He was like "I'm not needed in my own thing now. Ah no-one needs me anymore."    It's a funny thing to realize, we're just the orchestrators. We don't play all the instruments.   ALEX: We shouldn't, we shouldn't.    And so, you know, back to your question about what systems should an entrepreneur start looking at?   Now, I'm gonna talk high level, and I wanna share...    You and I are really close friends, and I wanna share the most critical content we have for entrepreneurs with your group.   STEVE: I appreciate that.   ALEX: This is what we normally share internally once somebody joins our program…    We share the five things that keep companies from scaling.    The reality is, there are really five things that keep companies that should scale, from scaling.    And here's what I mean ‘companies that should scale…’    You know, if you go talk to most consultants, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers, whatever, they'll give you this laundry list of why companies don't scale:    They didn't have enough money   They didn't have the right people   They didn't do all of these things   The reality is, if you look at most companies that should scale, there are five clear reasons why they don't…    So let me share them with you, but let me give you this caveat…    Here's what I mean by "should scale..."    If you've got a market    If you're capable of selling   If you could do more    If you know you're leaving money on the table   …. you should be scaling.   If those things aren't there for you right now, go resolve that and then start scaling.  Far too many people try and scale before they actually have all the steps in place.    Then you just build infrastructure that does nothing.   So let me tell you what the five things are...    #1: So number one, first and foremost, absolutely most crucial, is…      Most businesses don't have any type of strategic plan.     So as a result, there's no go-forward strategy, and here's what happens in a business when you don't have a go-forward strategy.    If you don't know where you're going, neither does your team   ... neither does anybody around you   And so you will, by virtue of math, become the biggest bottleneck in the company.    Here's why…    If there's no forward plan where all of us can point at and go get it and help you chase it down, every time we want to know what to do we have to ask you, and we have to go to you... and it's a death of a thousand paper cuts.    You're literally in a place where you're:    Telling people what to do   Checking that it got done   Telling them what to do again.    And if you've ever been in that situation as an entrepreneur, you know that somebody only has to ask you twice before you're ready to flip out and lose it.    Am I right Stephen?   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, usually once.   ALEX: Once, right, right, but by the second time you're like "Are you kidding me?"    And so the way we get past that is we create a clear strategic plan, we share it with our entire team…   ... and if the team knows where they're going, here's what happens.    I want you to understand something about the people coming to work for you.  If you're in a small business, you're hiring entrepreneurs.   I know that there's this saying in the market, "You're either an entrepreneur or you work for one."    I call complete and total BS - don't even bring that crap around me.   STEVE: Yeah!   ALEX:    Every person on my team is an incredibly talented, hyper-motivated, world-changing entrepreneur, they just choose to be part of a team.   And so you're gonna hire entrepreneurs, and the way you keep entrepreneurs absolutely and totally focused and excited, is you show them what they're hunting, you give them the kill.    You say:    Here's our plan   This is what we're doing   This is how you win.    And if you hire the right people, they will walk over hot glass to get to that destination for you.   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: But if they don't know where it is, you're gonna demotivate them and completely de-leverage them.    So number one, you have to have a strategic plan.    In my experience, less than 1% of businesses do. Also, less than 1% of businesses ever hit $100,000,000. In fact only 3% ever hit 1,000,000.   STEVE: Jesus. ALEX: So when you look at that, it's not 1% of businesses that hit 100,000,000, 0.01% of businesses ever hit 100,000,000,  and the reason is...    Most businesses don't know where they're going.    And Stephen, by you having the tools to build a strategic plan in your business, hasn't it changed how you approach things?   STEVE: Oh gosh, you guys remember when I tell you those stories of I left my job...    I created 200 grand of revenue really quick but there were no systems   I was the…    Support guy    Fulfillment guy   Sales guy.    I did every role, and I voluntarily, very painfully, had to turn down revenue to go build these structures.    And I want you all to know, it was Alex Charfen's stuff that helped me go in and actually set those systems in place... and so, please understand my affinity for this man and what he does.   About halfway through the year, I was only at like 300 - 400 grand, which is pretty good, but that last huge sprint came in because of the things that Alex Charfen and his team were teaching me.    All those planning things that I use, and all the things that I've just lightly mentioned, they've all come from Alex Charfen, and it helped scale me.   ALEX: That's awesome Stephen... Man, that makes me so proud.   This is so cool! Like there's only one Stephen Larsen in the world, and I told you that the first day I met you…    I'm like, "Dude you are completely and totally unique and I think I can help you build the company you really want."   STEVE: Yeah, you said   ALEX: And for us to be sitting here, and for you to say that, I got chills Stephen, that's so awesome. Thank you, man!   STEVE: Oh man, I'm so jazzed about what we do, but it's because of what you teach I'm like "I can do it... "    The first time I ever saw Stephen at an event, I did not leave the event until I'd cornered him and told him what I needed to tell him... because I knew you were gonna be exactly that type of person.    ...and here's why it's so important to me, Stephen.    I could tell the first time I saw you,  that you were gonna have a massive effect on the world.    But here's what I know about entrepreneurs; you're gonna have the biggest effect on the people closest to you - the people who are most proximal, your team.   And when I see an entrepreneur like you Stephen, I'm like:    "Man, if that guy builds a team he's gonna change hundreds of lives internally in his company. They're gonna change millions of lives externally, and I know those hundreds of people will build your legacy."    And when I see somebody like you, I'm like, “Man! That is the path, let me show you how to do this.”    The fact that it's working, is like, “Ah, it makes me so excited every day.”    This is why I get up out of bed every morning and do what I do.     STEVE: Ah, it's so fun man, feeling's mutual. You walked up, it was from that FHAT event that you were at.   ALEX: Ah ha.   STEVE: And you walked up and said, "There's a huge company in you and I don't think you know it, and I'm gonna help you pull it out of you."    I remember when you said that, I was so scared. I was like, "There's no way that this is real! I know who you are, are you kidding me?"    It freaked me out, and I had to own my own vision for a while. It actually took me a while to practice that.    Anyway, so much has gone on in mental clarity and development from what you've taught, not just these systems and things around, it's really cool.   ALEX: - So let's give the second one, Stephen   STEVE: Yeah, sorry, sorry.    ALEX: oh don't apologize, shit I love this part.    So first you have a strategic plan…    #2: Second, the thing that you need to have is      A system to communicate that plan.        Let me tell you something about us as entrepreneurs…    We think we're good communicators, but we're lying to ourselves.    The fact is, we are haphazard and emotional, and we're pumped one second and we're not the next, and we're all over the place…    Here's what happens…    When we have a team that has to deal with a personality like ours, and there's NOT a system for communication, it's random and haphazard and overwhelming... and it comes from all angles, and they're waiting for word from on high. Here's the fact, if you're the entrepreneur in charge, you're the MOST important person in the building all the time.    You're the most important person on the team, in the tribe, in the group, and they're all waiting to see what you say.    And if they're waiting for days and nothing's happened, they start thinking:    Is something wrong?    Did something go bad?    Did we do something wrong?    So you need a system.   As an example:    My team knows every Monday at 4:00, we're all gonna be on a weekly meeting together.  They also know every day at 9:27 a.m. we're gonna be on a daily huddle, and I'll be there.    They know that once a month we're gonna have a meeting where we show our strategic plan.    They know once a month we're gonna have a meeting where they all get the results.    So they all know when they're gonna communicate with me and how.    From the first day you're on our team there's a system that  controls how you hear from me.    Not just me pumping stuff out there haphazardly.    As a result, my team knows they're gonna hear from me, they trust it and here's what happens.    I set the expectations, I meet the expectations, we create trust. I create trust with my team every time I do that.    And here's the fact:   If your team trusts you, you get way more out of them.   If your team trusts you, they will do more for you.    If your team trusts you, you'll get discretionary effort   ... which means when they're driving, when they're showering, when they're doing something else, they're gonna be thinking about your business.  Why?    ...because it gives them momentum.    So if you have a strategic plan and a system to communicate it, you're ahead of 99% of companies out there.   And Stephen, same thing for you with the system, the structure?    Like…    We all fight structure, but once you put it in place, isn't it incredible?   STEVE: Oh, it's amazing! Stuff's getting done right now, that we set in place once. and then, I'll be like "Oh, podcast episode just launched,!Oh, what day is it? Oh, that's sweet! Everyone just put it out, all right, cool!"   ALEX: Right, I remember when I started getting messages like, "Hey, I love the new podcast!" And I'm like "Oh, we put a podcast out? Nice!"       STEVE: I didn't do that, what are you talking about?   ALEX: So you have  #1: a strategic plan, then #2: a system to communicate.    #3: Here's the third one, now this is BIG, really big, and most business owners just, they don't look at this ever and it's the biggest struggle is, or one of the biggest struggles is;      You have to have a system to consistently document the right processes in your business.     And by documentation, I mean having:    A flowchart   A process document   A checklist   Something that shows you how the important things in your business are done over and over again.    For example:    If you walk into a McDonald's, and you look above the fry cooker, there is a process to cook fries above that fry cooker.    Anything that happens in that McDonald's, there's a process for literally every single thing, including:    Unlocking the door   Turning off the alarm   Sweeping the floor   That's why there's a consistent experience at McDonald's; I'm not saying it's a good experience, I'm saying it's consistent.   In most businesses, in most entrepreneurial businesses, there's no process.    In fact, it's even scarier than that...    The process lives either in the owner's head or in an individual's head - so you lose a person, you lose the company.    You lose a person, you lose a big chunk of what you're doing.   STEVE: Hmm.   ALEX: So you have to have a system in a business to consistently evaluate what processes are in the company, and then on a monthly and weekly basis document the right ones.    The way that I would suggest you start, is you look at your customer experience:    What is the customer experience in your company?   What process documentation do you have to back it up to make sure that is completely consistent?    If you do that, you're gonna beat most people out there...   99% of entrepreneurial companies have little to nothing documented in any type of process.   STEVE: They're just shooting in random spots 24/7.   ALEX: Or they're doing stuff like, "Here's how we do our customer on-boarding…”    I trained Suzy   Suzy trained Annie   Annie trained Bob     John does it now   ...and you're like "Oh, cool! Let's go and see what John's doing?"    Well, John's doing nothing close to what Suzy and Bob and everybody else was originally doing, and so you have these degrading processes in your business.    And here's what happens…    When you look at entrepreneurial businesses, they tend to…    Go up in revenue   Come back down in revenue   Go up in revenue   Come back down.    If you're inside those companies, hundreds of times like I have been, here's what I can tell you…    Revenue goes up as the process is working, and then when it breaks, it comes back down.    *PERIOD*    That's why businesses don't continue to go forward - there are processes breaking in the business.    Whether it's marketing, sales, delivery, whatever it is there's a process breaking.    When you document your proceses, you make them bulletproof.    So in our business, we actually use:    Lucidchart Flowcharts   Sheets in Google Sheets    A new product called Process Street  -  a distributed, automated process document system, which is incredible.    So we have all of our processes in Process Street, and we have a distributed team around the world.   We have somebody in Ireland who can do their part of the process, as soon as they hit the last button it transfers to somebody here in the US who can do their part of the process.   STEVE: That's awesome.   ALEX:    Documenting your processes + Putting them in place = Game-changing   STEVE: Holy cow, okay I wrote that down.    I'm taking tons of notes so everyone knows, I hope they are as well…. And I'm not sharing! ;-) Process.st is the company, and we are so happy with it because... Stephen, here's what I want everyone to know,...   Cadey and I have had five businesses get over $10,000,000 a year, and all five of them ran them with paper checklists.   This is the first time we have automated checklists in Process Street.    The last information products business that we had, we literally had three-ring binders that we would carry around the office and check stuff off.    Having a three-ring binder with a process was so much better than having somebody trying to do it from memory.    Now with Process Street, we can distribute that three-ring binder, and I can get reporting on who's doing what.   STEVE: That's amazing.    Yeah, I've actually seen the three-ring binder and I've thought, "Holy crap, that really is how he's doing it.”    You would teach it and then I watched you actually do it.. 'cause you would record your stand up meeting calls in the morning   ALEX: Yeah.   STEVE: And I was, "Oh my gosh, that's so cool! I'm NOT doing that, interesting."    Then I’d go back and take notes and start it.   ALEX: And then implement.    Well, and you know, there's this phrase in the entrepreneurial world. Ah... I kind of get a little triggered, right!   STEVE: Let it out, baby!   ALEX: You know the thing that people say from stage:   "Here's what I want all of you to know. All you have to do is stop working in your business and start working on your business."    And I'm always like:    "Oh, good, thanks. Thanks for solving it all for us dude, that was awesome. You just solved all my problems with that really cliched BS thing that everybody tells entrepreneurs."     When I was in my twenties, my instant thought was like, "How do I get on stage to punch that guy in the face?"    And my then my second thought was like, "What a load of crap!  If I don't work in the business nobody's answering the phones, sucker."    Like, what's going on here? I don't know how to make that change.    And so the way you make that change is…    Working on the business means documenting processes.    By making it:    Clear   Repeatable   Real   And so you have…    A strategic plan that everyone understands   A communication system everyone knows is gonna happen    A system for documenting processes so everyone can repeat what's going on with your clients   #4: The next step,(and this is BIG), is..    A consistent system for identifying, documenting, and then prioritizing the right project in the business.   STEVE: Ah, this changed my life. *HARDCORE*   ALEX: Whoa, Stephen, you know how game-changing this is because, here's the problem in most businesses…    Projects are selected emotionally.    Period, I can't tell you that they're done any other way - they're emotional.    You go to an event and somebody says "I'm doing this thing," and then, the next day, you're doing that thing.    You listen to a podcast or you hear a webinar, and the person says "Hey, I added this thing to my business," and the next day, you're trying to do that thing.    In our business, if I have a really great idea that I want to implement today…    If I'm like, "Man, this is a really high sense of urgency, we should get this implemented."    It'll probably be somewhere around 45 days, and I'm totally okay with that.    That's the timing it should be in my business.    Now if there's an emergency we're gonna fix it that day, but if I'm like, "Hey, I see an opportunity here with something," it's probably a 45-day event…    Why?    I have a team and a structure, and a plan, and we have a system that's moving forward. We're already hitting our numbers, why would I mess with anything?    I actually protect what's going on in the business   I add things gently   I add things carefully   I make sure my team's into it too    I make sure we have consensus    In just in the last 60 days, we've gone from two million recurring to two point three million recurring,   STEVE: That's awesome!   ALEX: So why would I mess with what we're doing?   STEVE: Yeah.   ALEX: Yeah, so when somebody's like "Hey Alex, I got this "great idea for your business." I'm like "Awesome, get in line."    And we'll put it into our system to see if we want to actually do this…   Because the fact is…    If you're getting sold as an entrepreneur on what your next project should be, you're probably in the wrong place.    STEVE: Yeah, that's fascinating. I really agree with that.    It was your planning system for figuring out which projects, I still do it.    Top of every three months and it has guided everything we do.    And while I do follow a few rabbits and I'm practicing bringing it back in, we still largely follow the plan as to what the business needs, and that's ‘grow and scale’ rather than this impulse of like:    "Yeah, oh shiny object, shiny object, "that looks good, that looks good!"    And it's been that discipline, that's the other thing that's always up is my waterfall...   ALEX: Yeah, yeah, always! I mean mine's up right now. I mean I could share it right now.   And the reason is I always have my strategic plan pulled up in front of me, I'm looking at it every single day.    I'm asking myself:   Is the team doing what we need to do here?   How do I support people more?    How do I help them do this more?   Because when you look at our strategic plan, here's what it's made up of.    Our one-year outcomes   Our client-centric mission - which is our Superbowl, our hall of fame, the long term   The 90-day projects we're focusing on right now    What we're doing this month to hit those targets . So that waterfall of long term, to one year, to 90 days, to 30 days, I can see it all on one document and it tells me EXACTLY where I should be supporting the team and what we're getting done.    And so here's what happens…   I went to an event a couple of weeks ago, and I had an idea that was like "Oh man, we have to do this."    Then I come back to the office, I look at the waterfall and I'm like "What do I want to kill in order to do this thing over here?"    And you know what the evaluation was? *NOTHING* I'm not going to take anything off this, that would be crazy.   There's no way I'm gonna go to my team and say, "Hey guys, in addition to all the other stuff you're committed to, here's a hot potato."    I just backed down and I waited till the next time we had a planning meeting and I said, "Hey, there's this thing I think we should do."    We evaluated it   It went into the system   It went into the plan    There is very little knee-jerk reaction in our company because we are going so fast in a forward direction, that for me to challenge that in any way it has to be game-changing at a different level - so it rarely even happens.   STEVE: Yeah, black-ops right? Call them black-ops?   ALEX: Black-ops.   STEVE: No black-ops!   ALEX: No black-ops, baby!  If it's NOT on the plan, you don't do it... or it's black-ops.    And usually, the biggest creators of black-ops are guys like Stephen and I.    So my team has an open license to tell me if I'm doing black-ops.    They will actually call me out in a huddle, in a meeting, they'll be like "Ah, this sounds like black-ops," and then we'll make a note, we'll put it in a parking lot and do it later.    STEVE: Oh, that's so cool, okay.   ALEX: Yeah,  that's one of the most important things you can do when you have a team Stephen…    You train your team to criticize you and then you congratulate them when they do.   STEVE: That's really cool, then they have a license to actually flex their brain instead of feeling like they're in a box.   ALEX: Absolutely. You know I heard a story once about Larry Page, who runs Google,   He was in a meeting and he really strongly stated a point. and one of the team members got emotional about it and started yelling at him.    She was like, "I think you're wrong and this is why you're wrong," and Page was smiling…   Afterward, she asked somebody "Hey why was he smiling?"    ‘Cause she backed him down, and he actually said "You know what, I think this deserves more investigation. Let's do this."    She walked out and she was shaking and all adrenalized up, she had just yelled at the CEO of Google, like, “What the heck's gonna happen to me?”   She turned to somebody next to her, and was like "He was smiling, is that because he's gonna come down hard on me?"    And the person was like, "No, he was smiling because you confronted him, he loves it, he wants it.”    He knows that if people aren't confronting him, he's in a bad place.   So I look at it in my team and I'm like, "Hey, if my team's not challenging me a little bit, then we're all just marching behind a duck."    You know, I don't wanna have ducklings behind me. I want people who are saying:    Hey, this might work   This might not work   We might have a better idea   So you give your team license to criticize and license to call you on stuff.   STEVE:  Gosh, I love that.   #5: So here's the fifth one...    So we have:    Strategic plan   Communication system   Selecting and documenting the right processes   Selecting and achieving the right projects,   ….and then, this is *BIG*   Finding the right people     It's NOT just finding the right people, its…    Evaluating the company   Understanding what the company needs right now    What can you offload that is going to create the most momentum, not just for you, but for the team, for everything that you're doing together?    What is the position that you need to put in place next - so that the company moves forward the fastest?    And unfortunately, just like everything else I've named, planning, projects, process, all of those... people also become emotional.    An entrepreneur wakes up one morning and says, "I'm doing too much, I'm gonna hire an assistant."    Then they have the assistant sit next to them for three weeks, and they wonder why this doesn't work out?    It's because you had the thought to get help, (which by the way I congratulate you on), but there was no process there to actually make it work.    And so here's the process you need…   Evaluate what's going on in the company   Understand what the company needs   Turn it into a job description    Then you use it to recruit   You do tons of interviewing   You drive it until you have three people that you can select from    You hire one of them and then you do at least a 90-day onboarding, high-intensity onboarding.    When I'm onboarding an executive team member, I meet with them every day for the first month, three times a week for the second month, and two times a week for the third month.    People tell me, "Hey man, doesn't that "feel like overkill?"    I'm like:    You don't understand what it means to have an executive team. Your job is to build relationships with those people.    You want to know how you build relationships?    There's one commodity that builds relationships. One!    *TIME* - that's it.    And so when I'm onboarding, when I'm bringing somebody on, (whether it's on my executive team or anywhere in the business), somebody is doing that high-intensity onboarding with them…    Up close and personal every single day for the first 30 days making sure we have no drift.    And so, when you have a system to select the right people, bring them on and then onboard them the right way…    Here's what you avoid, (and Stephen this is like, Ah, this statistic drives me crazy)...    In corporate America, I know because I used to be a consultant there.    In corporate America, they would say things like, "Well we just hired so-and-so in that position so they'll probably be productive in four to six months."   The first time I heard that I was like "Did he just say four to six months? Does he mean four to six days, or does he really mean four to six months?"    Because in my business, even way back then), if I had to wait four months for somebody to be productive I would have been, “They're gone”!   STEVE: Yeah, yeah, they're gone!   ALEX: And so in our business, we actually have this experience right now.    We recently brought on somebody else, a new person to help us in marketing, and with our onboarding process, he was actually achieving products within the first five days of his first week.   STEVE: That's so cool!   ALEX: And that's how it should be.    You want somebody to come in, be effective and start contributing and creating momentum.    Because here's what will happen…    As an entrepreneur, if you're wired anything like I am, (and I know Stephen is), if you have somebody on your team that starts to feel like they're not carrying their own weight, you won't sleep.    You won't sleep, it will rip you apart, Stephen am I right?   STEVE: Yeah! ALEX: It will destroy you…    And so here's the question though…   Are they not carrying their own weight because:   They're lazy? They don't want to?   They aren't the right person?    Or is it because it's not clear what they’re doing?   STEVE: They have no idea what they're doing. They don't have confidence...I didn't help them!    ALEX: Right, 'cause here's the thing.    Your team needs three things in order to ultimately be effective and to be the type of team you want.    And here's what I mean by that…    As an entrepreneur here's what you want, you want a team that just does stuff and asks permission later.    You want a team that achieves and lets you know how things worked out.    That's it!  I just know this is how entrepreneurs work.    You want people who make really good decisions.    You want people who move things forward.    You want people who don't stand around waiting for stuff.    And if you want to have a team that actually moves things forward as an entrepreneur…    You gotta spend the time with them and let 'em know what your ethos is, and let 'em know how you make decisions…   That's how you duplicate decision making.   STEVE: Hm, gosh I love that. Okay, so…   Strategic plan   System to communicate   System to document processes that can be shared inside the whole biz    Documenting projects and the ones you're gonna work on   Finding the right people   ...and I actually personally just went through your onboarding training and it's so awesome!    'Cause it goes through and it's like this, you basically create a runway for 'em, right?   And if they don't land, don't worry you've got parachutes and there are jumpy cords all over the place...   - you're doing everything you can to help 'em win fast and lots of small tiny wins that build that confidence, and I was like:    "That is brilliant. 'Cause that is not the way you're taught anywhere else.”   ALEX: So Stephen, check this out, man.    We recently fell out of the lucky tree on recruiting and we hired this guy named Greg Duby and he is, ah, amazing.    He's like, he's just one of the most exciting guys I've ever worked with because he's so solid and so centered, and just so good at what he does.    Greg is a former nuclear propulsion tech in the Navy, so you know what that is, that's the guy who rides the bomb around in the submarine, okay?   STEVE: Yeah, that's amazing!   ALEX: Yeah, you have to have advanced degrees in Physics, advanced degrees in Math.   He's literally a rocket scientist.    So he worked in the Navy, then he worked at NASA, then he worked for some of the larger consulting firms out there…    I mean, he's done incredible stuff in his career.    He's just one of the most solid people I've ever worked with, and within about two or three weeks into our company, in one of our daily huddles, we said, "Who got caught being awesome?"    It's where we call each other out, and he said:    You know, I just wanna call this company out for being awesome.   “ I've been here for three weeks, I've never had an experience like this getting on-boarded anywhere...    I'm up and running, I'm excited. I feel like I'm really part of the team. I feel like I've worked here forever and I'm three weeks in."    And this is somebody who worked at some of the best consulting firms in the world, NASA and the Navy!    And our little tiny company has impressed him so much because we did onboarding because he knew what he was supposed to do.    And as a result, Greg, I think we're about three months in with him, and dude, there are projects that I thought were gonna take a year or two that are getting done this week.   STEVE: That's so cool!   ALEX: It's crazy.   STEVE: It's just a completely different way to do it. One thing I hated in the military, I love the military, but you know, some things that are rough and that is that there are no clear guidelines on how to win ahead of time.   The way you're instructed is by hitting barriers and then you get punished for it, and you're like:    "Just tell me ahead of time and I wouldn't do it! But all right, let's do more push-ups."    Anyway...   ALEX: Something tells me you did a lot of push-ups, Steve!   STEVE: I just want to say thank you so much for being on here.    I asked for 30 minutes and you just completely over-delivered, and I just really want to say thank you to you.    My audience already knows very well of you.    Where can people go to learn more about you but specifically also get your help inside the business?   ALEX: So the best place to learn more about us is to go to our podcast.    I publish a podcast four days a week, which is essentially a one-on-one conversation with an entrepreneur growing a business.    And the way that I create each one of those episodes is when a question or issue comes up in our coaching groups, I create an episode around it, we distribute it to the group.    But then also we distribute it to anybody who's listening, so you can get the same coaching that I'm giving my high-level clients right on our podcast…    It's called Momentum for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type, and you can check it out at momentumpodcast.com.    And then, if you want to understand more about our products, about our coaching groups you can go to our website charfen.com, but better is to just reach out to me or to one of my team members through Facebook.    The easiest thing, is just reach out to me, and I'll connect you with the right person in our company, and we'll go through a process with you to help you understand if we can help you.    You know Stephen, we're pretty neat, we don't sell everybody. We actually get on the phone with a lot of people who we sell later, but we won't sell you unless it's time.    We know exactly what solutions we provide, and if you have those issues and they link up, then we'll work together... but we go through a personal inventory in order to help you do that.    So if anybody's interested in getting on a call with a member of my team, you can also shortcut the entire process by going to billionairecode.com…    Answer a few questions and you can just set up a call link and you'll be on a call with one of my team members and they'll help you qualify and understand where you are.    And just so you know, we don't do sales calls, they are all consulting calls.    When you get on a call with my team, you won't ever feel like you're being sold, you'll feel like you're being helped.   STEVE: Which is exactly what I have felt when I started doing that as well.    Just so you all know he's very serious about that - that's very real.    I always feel like I'm being helped by anyone on his team.    ...and come to find out later, "Oh that was the sales guy!"    ...You know what I mean?    They dare to go in and actually they want to change the world and they're very serious about it.    So thank you so much, appreciate it.    Check out Billionaire Code.    The Momentum podcast is a goldmine, it is one of those gems on the internet that is actually worth all of your time and attention.    Thanks so much for being on here, Alex, I really appreciate you and love you, and thank you for being on here.   ALEX: Stephen, dude, this has been an honor.    I hope to be able to get invited back again, and as a Sales Funnel Radio listener, this is really cool. I appreciate you, man!   STEVE: Thanks, I appreciate it!    Hey, awesome episode right?    Hey, once I figured out the simple patterns and formulas that make this game work, I had a new problem…    Back when I eventually left my job and launched my personal business, I sold about $200,000 of product in around three months-ish…    And while I thought I was King Kong, a new problem started.    I was the business, there weren't any systems...   I was support   I was fulfillment    I was the one in charge of getting the ads around   I was the sales department    I was the marketing department    And I knew I wouldn't survive it alone…    Better yet, I knew I'd never seen a rich solopreneur.    This game takes a team.    Contrast that to now, and my company does tons of stuff that I don't know how to do...    What changed?    His name is Alex Charfen, check him out at charfenrocks.com.     So I usually don't bring tons of people on Sales Funnel Radio, but you should know that his programs, combined with my marketing skills, are why my business is killing it in revenue today, and NOT killing me personally.    Alex Charfen's programs and training have been life-changing for me and my family... and taught me who I really am and what I'm meant to be.    So when you're ready to build an actual business, an actual asset and NOT just make this another job…    When you're ready to keep the role of entrepreneur but learn the role of CEO, go get started with Alex Charfen at charfenrocks.com. That's C-H-A-R-F-E-N rocks.com.

I have the incredible honor of speaking at Carnegie Hall in September with MARTHA STEWART, MICHAEL E GERBER, DAN KENNEDY, HAL ELROD, and other beasts. I'm beyond humbled by this. Here's the full scoop...   Frankly, I just love being on stage speaking and teaching.   Some of the early stages I got to talk on were Russell's - I did a lot of fulfillment for the original Two Comma Club program.   Back in the day, we did something called the FHAT Event which lasted for 3 awesome, intense days.   We’d go from:   Day #1:  9:00am to 6:00pm   Day #2: 9:00am - 1:00am(ish) - it was a long day.   Day #3 :9:00am - 6:00pm   By the end of the event, everyone was just exhausted.   Russell did the first event because he was testing materials and seeing where we needed to change things…   Then after that, he largely handed it over to me, and he just came in for a few one or two-hour guest speeches.   WHAT I LOVE ABOUT ENTREPRENEUR EVENTS   I remember there was this one particular FHAT event…   On the second day, I took a break to grab some food and went to Russell's office to sit down. Russell was like, "How are you doing?"   I was like, "Wheeew….”  I was just bringing it down... and trying to relax for a second…   ... THAT was a  very aggressive fast-paced stage for me - I loved it.   Russell goes, "How's everyone doing out there?"   We’d always talk about how the audience was responding:   Were they getting it?   Did they understand?   Which principles had tripped them up?   Had we managed to bridge the gap for them?   We’d chat back and forth exploring all the scenarios, but this time, when Russell asked, "So how are you doing?"   I kinda paused for a second…   https://media.giphy.com/media/1qXJDYI8lTG8SVhUZW/giphy.gif   Russell noticed and asked, "What is it?"   He may not remember this, but I said, "Dude, I can see those who are getting it and those who aren't. They're not telling me. I can see it."   And he goes, "You're getting that already, huh?"   I was like, "That's a thing?"   Russell said, "Yeah, yeah, I can stand up at any moment and, I've been doing it so long, I can see those who are with me and who it's clicking for and those who it’s not -  so I'll stop and I'll cater to those people who aren’t getting it."   https://media.giphy.com/media/7YCVWDMbIWTBNuTD9c/giphy.gif   I was like, "Okay, that's what that is. I'm starting to see that.”   MY FAVORITE MOMENT…   My favorite moment on stage, (and this may sound a little cheesy), is the moment when I see in somebody's eyes that they suddenly realize, "Oh my gosh, my capacity is greater than I thought it was and it's actually always been there."   It's funny to watch as people…   Have personal breakthrough moments   Suddenly see the road map and things start to click.   They're like, "Oh, that dream I've been going for all along is actually possible now."   I don't know. I don't know how else to describe it besides that…   But it's a thrill for me because you can see it happen in peoples' eyes as they listen to you.   Those of you guys who educate, teach or get on stage, you know what I'm talking about.   There's that moment where you can look at them, be like, "Bam, right there... I just caused the epiphany." About 6 months ago, during the Two Comma Club Cruise, I’d just finished a big session,  when a guy walked up to me and goes, "You're a really dynamic speaker."   People have told me that before,  and I still don't know what that means... So I said,  “Cool! Thank you,"  but what he said next made my jaw hit the ground…   He looked me straight in the eyes and asked "Do you want to come  speak at Carnegie Hall?"    I was like, "Are you completely serious right now?"   He said, "100%. We're going to see if we can get all these huge names," and I was like, "All right. Cool. Just keep me in the loop."   Six months later,  it's happening - it's in the bag -  it's an event called Living Legends, which is extremely honoring.   So I'm going to share an interview that explains EVERYTHING to you…   BECOMING A CELEBRITY ENTREPRENEUR I have a very special guest…   His name is Clint Arthur.   Clint and I, have frankly only known each other personally for probably six months, but I am blown away and just completely floored with what he does, his skill set, and who he helps.   What he does, when you're in a certain place, is completely magical and I'm very, very honored to have him on here.   So Clint, thank you so much -  welcome to the show.   Clint:       BOOM!   Steve:       In the middle of Carnegie Hall. What?   Clint:       Yeah.   Steve:       It's a proxy BOOM! Oh man.   Clint:       That's a Carnegie Hall ‘BOOM!’ for you - that's what that is.   Steve:       You're warming it up for us - thank you so much.   Clint:       Yeah, baby. Yeah, baby. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you... I met you on the cruise, I think.   Steve:       Yeah.   Clint:       The 2CCX Cruise - that was an amazing experience…   Really, the best part of the whole 2CCX program was the cruise.   I really believe that's because it was a special event.   When you participate in special events, it's not only great for the sales funnel… it's great for sales funnels for a reason...   It really does deepen the experience of the customer/client/ the person you're trying to transform their life... it opens up possibilities for people to have MORE community.   So as a result of that, here we are -  so great to be with you.   Steve:       That's so awesome. We're really honored, honestly.   Now just because some of my audience may not know who you are, which is baffling... but could you tell everybody what is it that you do?   Clint:       I am a celebrity entrepreneur -  which means:   I'm the MOST famous guy that nobody's ever heard of.   I’ve created systems, formulas and scientific methodology for creating celebrity positioning in the eyes of your customers and prospects.   So part of that is,  I have done 107 television appearances.   You might have seen me on FOX Business Channel, CNN, Headline News, or The Today Show with Brooke Shields… When Brooke Shields said, "Clint, you can have all of these plans and want to scale Mount Everest, but how do you keep from falling off the track?”   I said, "You've got to invest in mentors."   I said it then, and I meant it… and I mean it even more now.   Investing in mentors has been part of the reason why I have gotten to where I am.   Part of what I've done to become a celebrity entrepreneur is to become  Dan Kennedy's Info Marketer Of The Year - that's a great honor for me.   It’s something that really opened things up for me in my career and deepened my relationship with Dan Kennedy as my mentor.   So those are some of the things I've done.   I've also written a bunch of best-selling books...   My new book is called Celebrity Entrepreneurship.   Some of my other best sellers include:   What They Teach You At The Wharton Business School - I’m a graduate of the Wharton Business Schools entrepreneurship program.   The Greatest Book Of All Time...   I wrote this other book called The Last Year Of Your Life  - where you live as if you're going to die at the end of the year…   I told one of my friends, I'm going to add in videos and audios, it's going to be the greatest book of all time with those attached as links in the Kindle book, and he goes, "Why don't you just call it The Greatest Book of All Time?"   So I did, and that became my first real big selling book…   I sold 26,000 copies of that book.   Steve:       Wow. That's awesome. That's incredible.   Clint:       And it has contributed to …( I don't even think you know this…) Starting June 8th, I will be the host of a NEW talk radio show on WABC Radio in New York City called The Greatest Show of All Time.   Steve:       Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Just pushing straight on in there. That's incredible.   Now, actually, it was Peng Joon I started talking to about what it is that you do, and everything…   He was talking about just how incredible your stuff is and how amazing it is.   Why is it important to eventually become a celebrity entrepreneur for your audience?   Clint:       Well, I say on the back of my book that entrepreneurs struggle because they think that people are buying their products and services, but really people are buying you.   Who you are is more important than what you actually do.   ...especially if you're selling a product or service that's similar or equivalent to others that are in the marketplace...   The only difference is you.   If you're a financial advisor/  a realtor/ a doctor, or selling any kind of widget, there's a similar widget to what you sell - the main difference is who you are.   HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR…   What I do as a celebrity entrepreneur is help my clients position themselves as celebrities in the eyes of their customers and prospects.. and that's really using marketing on your personal brand.   That's what *this* is all about.   … and that makes all the difference in the world because people are NOT buying your widgets; they're buying you.   Steve:       Absolutely. I just so appreciate you taking that angle on it too.   There are a few places I've spoken at... where it's only been about getting authority for authority's sake, but you're saying let's get it so it pushes the message and the product more…   … because that's what they're gonna be buying anyway.   I love that. I'm very, very thankful for that. It's awesome.   How did you get started doing this?   There are gonna be a lot of questions revolving around ...   This is not something that my audience is gonna be very familiar with.   Clint:       Hey, I started out as an entrepreneur selling butter.   Steve:       Really?   Clint:       Yeah, really. That's really where this all began.   I was selling portion controlled butter in Las Vegas to hotels and casinos.   So if you've ever eaten bread and butter at Bellagio in Las Vegas, thank you for helping to put my daughter through the University of Southern California…   For a long time, pretty much every piece of bread at Bellagio was buttered with Five Star Butter, which is my company.   What happened was a lot of these celebrity chefs starting coming in: Bobby Flay, Gordon Ramsay, Emeril... and I wanted to get the celebrity chefs, so I came up with this idea…   What if I could be a judge on Iron Chef America and make myself a celebrity butter expert, not just the guy selling butter?   I talked the producers of Iron Chef America into making me the judge of Battle Butter... (you can watch that episode on my website, fivestarbutter.com and see me judging Battle Butter).   That was the beginning of my celebrity positioning as an expert.   Now, I tell you what, it changes things when you become a celebrity expert in what you do, it really does.   THIS WILL BLOW YOUR MIND   I heard a statistic that:   The number one top celebrity in the marketplace gets 50% of all the revenues.   The number two celebrity in the marketplace gets the next 25% of the revenues.   Number three, through infinity, split the remaining 25%.   That's why, if you're not the number one top celebrity, you are surviving on crumbs while everybody who you admire is feasting on giant pieces of pie.   For example, Tony Robbins, Date With Destiny…   Date With Destiny alone represents 10% of the entire live event seminar industry in its revenue.   Steve:       Oh my gosh.   Clint:       If you do the math, which I have, you will see that just that one event is 10% of all live seminar tickets.   Steve:       Geeze. I had no idea.   Clint:       Because he's the number one guy ... And here's the funny part…   Go into any bank in America and ask the teller, "Do you know who Tony Robbins is?"   … they're going to say ``No,” because he's NOT a real celebrity - He's a celebrity entrepreneur.   The same thing goes for Grant Cardone, who everybody worships…   I will show you videos where I'm doing seminars with financial advisors and I'd say, "Anybody recognize this guy?"   Not one hand goes up.   Nobody knows who he is because they're NOT his customers or prospects... and yet two months ago, he filled up Marlin Stadium...   And most of the people watching this video know exactly what I'm talking about.   Steve:       OH, YEAH.   Clint:       When you're a celebrity entrepreneur, (which is something that I pioneered, systematized and scientifically analyzed how do you do it), you're a god to your customers and prospects…   ... but the rest of the world doesn't know who you are.   And that's what I help my clients to do.   Steve:       It seems extremely magical sitting on this side of the screen listening to that. That's impressive. That’s so, so amazing.   Now, what should somebody do if they're trying to get started as celebrity entrepreneur?   Clint:       Okay. Well, the important thing to understand is that there's no time that’s too soon.   The sooner you start building your positioning as a celebrity in the eyes of your customers and prospects, the better off you are... because the product you're selling is irrelevant.   A lot of people come to me and say, "I don't have a product yet. I don't have a book yet. I don't have this data or anything yet, " and I just say;   “But you have you. You're already you. And you're always going to be you so you might as well start building your personal brand."   Really, there are five ways to do it.   Television is the most powerful way.   I'm not saying you have to go on Good Morning America first - that's a mistake. Don't go on Good Morning America first, go on little tiny local TV shows first.   Then the second great way to do it is by becoming a speaker.   I wanted to meet you, Steve, because you're such a great speaker…   I don't know if you've always been, but I doubt you've always been…   I’ve personally found that speaking is an acquired skill.   You have to learn how to be a great speaker - so there's no time that's too soon to start learning that, is there?   So go out there and start learning how to speak and start speaking in important places - the second part of my formula is to become a VIP speaker speaking in very important places.   The third part is one of my favorite things, celebrity attachment.   That's taking photos with famous people, and anybody who goes to my website will see I'm in photos with all kinds of famous people from Brooke Shields to Caitlin Jenner  - Ringo Star to Mike Tyson - Hilary and Donald Trump. I don't care.   I'm an equal opportunity celebrity selfie slut.   The more famous they are, the more I like it. That's it.   Part four my formula for celebrity entrepreneurship is to be a best selling author.   I've already dropped some of my best selling book titles on you guys. The fifth part is to be an award winner -  Win Awards!   I told you right in the beginning, I was Dan Kennedy's ‘Info Marketer of The Year,’ and you, as an entrepreneur, need to figure out how you can win awards too.   Steve:       That's amazing...   TV   Speaker   Celebrity Attachment   Best Selling Author   Award Winner   Clint:       Ideally you want to win an Academy Award, but if you don't have an Academy Award, then you've got to win something else.   You won a Two Comma Club X award, you won a Two Comma Club award -  whatever you can get!   The better it is, the better it's going to be…   You put all those steps together and you’ve radically transformed your positioning in the eyes of your customers and prospects.   Ultimately you want to accomplish each of those things.   Steve:       That is insanely valuable. I hope everyone's enjoying that. I can't put it off anymore… Where are you standing... and why are we talking about it right now?   I can't even hold it back…   CARNEGIE HALLClint:       Right now I'm in the lobby at Carnegie Hall in New York City.   Steve:       Oh!   Clint:       Yeah! And the reason why I'm in the lobby of Carnegie Hall in New York City is that I just finished my meeting with the production manager, the stage manager, the person who did all the contracts for my first of its kind entrepreneurial conference at Carnegie Hall.   They've never had an event like this before…   “It's so unique, Clint. We've never had anything like this, Clint. We're so excited. We can't wait to sit in on and see some of the people that are going to be ... You're really going to have Martha Stewart at your conference?"   Yes. I'm really having Martha Stewart at this conference.   "You're really going to have Coco and Ice-T?"   Yes. Ice-T and Coco are really going to be there.   "You're really going to have Scorpion -  the guy who produced five seasons of the TV show Scorpion for CBS? My dad loves Scorpion."   Steve:       That's a good show.   Clint:       That's what the lady said.   I'm like, “Yeah, Scorpion himself. You're going to be able to pick the brain of the smartest man on earth. Imagine what you're going to find in there.”   Albert Einstein previously spoke at Carnegie Hall. His IQ was 160. Scorpion's IQ is 197.   Steve:       Holy Cow!   Clint:       ...and who else is going to be speaking there?   Dan Kennedy will be speaking at this conference.   Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth, number one New York Times best-selling book for years and years and years   ….he’s changed so many entrepreneurs' lives.   Michael will be doing multiple days of speaking at this event, including the hot seats on the stage.   Amazing. Who else?   Jerry from Ben and Jerry's ice cream, the founder.   So look at this…   You've got Martha Stewart who turned herself into a household name...   Then you've got a guy who turned cream and sugar into a household product. Right?   Steve:       Yeah.   Clint:       Who else is going to be here?   Oh, Hal Elrod, ‘Miracle Morning’. Are you familiar with that book?   Steve:       Very. Yep. Got that and the journal right here.   Clint:       Right? Self-publishing phenomenon. By the way, he's one of my students.   Steve:       Oh, cool.   Clint:       He couldn't afford to come to my Celebrity Launch Pad TV Publicity Transformation Event.   He registered, and then he calls me the next day and goes, "Clint, I'm really sorry. I talked it over with Ursula and we really just can't afford it."   I'm like, "Wrong. I'm going to make it possible for you to do it. We're going to come up with a payment plan and you are coming on Celebrity Launch Pad."   He booked himself on 13 shows   I have the video of him, and he's like, "Any time I'm being considered for a speaking gig, I send them my TV appearances for them to evaluate me because it separates me so much from everybody else who's trying to get those same speaking gigs."   Anyway, he's one of my students and he will be speaking there.   Who else is going to be speaking there?   Princess Marianne Parker, another one of my students.   She transformed herself from a Bulgarian peasant to the princess of etiquette.   She's going to tell you how etiquette saved her life and made her wealthy.   And who else is going to be speaking there?   This guy named Steve.    Steve:          I heard he had big eyes and he’s probably gonna yell a lot. He's gonna drop a few ‘BOOMS!’ in the Carnegie Hall.   Oh!   Clint:       This event is called The Living Legends of Entrepreneurial Marketing.   This man, Steve, built 500+ funnels for Russell Brunson and ClickFunnels. How freaking legendary is that? Unbelievable.   I'm really excited to have you join us on the main stage for two sessions of dropping booms all over Carnegie Hall.   I'm really excited to share you with my audience because you're such an amazing speaker man.   Dude, you are an amazing speaker. I love you and I'm excited to share you with all of my friends who are going to be coming to this event.   HERE COMES THE SCARCITY & URGENCY   There are only 600 tickets total for this event.   Steve:       Holy smokes.   Clint:      Super special. Super special event. Tickets are available and people should be getting their tickets as soon as they can.   Steve:       That's awesome. Hey, so what are the dates so people know?   Clint:       September 26th/ 27th/ 28th in New York City at Carnegie Hall. Yeah, the one, the only Carnegie Hall. That's right.   Steve:       The actual Carnegie Hall.   Clint:       Yeah, the actual one!   You know who's spoken in here besides Albert Einstein? This is the coolest.   In 1906, Mark Twain gave his last lecture at Carnegie Hall.   I've asked Dan Kennedy to come and give his last lecture.   I said, "Dan, if you were going to die and you knew you were going to die and your kid came to you and said, ‘Dad, what should I do to thrive as an entrepreneur?’ that's what I want you to share with the audience."   That's what Michael Gerber is going to share.   That's what Martha Stewart's going to share, Ice-T, Coco, Scorpion, everybody. You too.   What is the magic sauce to thrive as an entrepreneur?   I'm so excited to hear what everybody has to say.   Steve:       Yeah. I just, I can't even tell you how stoked I am.   When you asked ... I was trying to ... “Oh, yeah, no, I'll be there, Clint. Yeah. Let me check. Yeah, no, I can be there.”   Then I hung up and I just started yelling.   I'm so excited, man.   Thank you so much. Very excited for it.   And you guys, you can go to seestevelive.com and it will take you over to the tickets - so you guys can go get booked up. Only 600 tickets, guys. That is NOT many. Go get one - especially for all those names.   Clint:       There's not 600 left... I've already been selling tickets.   Steve:       Oh, really?   Clint:       A lot of the VIP and Elite Tickets are already taken.   There are different levels…   There's general admission -  if you just want to come and you're scraping it together to make it.   Step up and show up for this thing - it will change your life. Going to events really does change you.   Steve:       Yeah, it does.   Clint:       You told the story of going to your first Russell Brunson's ClickFunnels Live and how that changed your whole freaking life.   Steve:       Yeah, everything.   Clint:       Well, that's what's going to happen here. Where was that ClickFunnels live? Somewhere in Orlando?   Steve:       Yeah. San Diego, actually. Yeah. Yeah. It's far.   Clint:       San Diego. Dude...   This event is at Carnegie Hall with Martha Stewart, Dan Kennedy, Michael Gerber, you and Scorpion, the smartest man in the world.   You see, what people don't understand is that the venue changes the event.   You can have the same performers, one of them performing, one time performing here and the next time performing at some arena someplace.   You're going to get a much more intense performance at Carnegie Hall because the venue brings out the power from the performer.   The performers rise up to the venue.   You know who else has spoken in Carnegie Hall? Aside from Albert Einstein and Mark Twain, we had…   Franklin Delano Roosevelt   Elenor Roosevelt   Teddy Roosevelt   Martin Luther King   Ernest Hemingway   Groucho Marx   Andy Kaufman   Jerry Seinfeld   The Beatles   Frank Sinatra   Liza Minnelli   If you have been a living legend, you've performed at this venue.   ...and that's why I selected it. That's why I'm paying the big money to get it.   That's why I'm paying the big money to have all these incredible names come and share their last lectures with my audience to change entrepreneurs' lives and their vision of what's possible in the future.   Steve:       Man. I'm not going to stop press and record. This is so awesome. Holy smokes!   I'm so psyched about it.   So September 26th through 28th. Literally Carnegie Hall! Obviously, New York City. 600 people.   Go to seestevelive.com.  and it’ll take you right over there.   Anyways, Clint, thank you so much for being on here. I really appreciate you being on. I can't even explain what kind of an honor this is.   Clint:       I'm so excited to be doing this. I have a testimony on my website from Peng Joon, because he came and spoke at one of my events at NASDAQ, and he said:   "Clint specializes in creating experiences."   That's really what I do... and that's what I've created here:   The experience of this unique first time ever entrepreneurial conference in this venue is going to be historical, life-changing, and career changing, and you don't want to miss it   I'm looking forward to sharing it with you, all of your friends and your audience; September 26th, 27th, and 28th. Thanks, Steve.   Steve:       Oh, sir, thank you so much. Appreciate it. We will see you there.   BOOM!   SEE STEVE LIVE   So several years ago, I walked by a stage in a basketball stadium.   It was my college campus and I was deeply concerned with what I wanted to do in my life.   For some reason, I looked at the stage and thought, "Huh, one day I wanna be on stage. I wanna be an entrepreneur and I wanna buy and sell companies."    Well, while the last one hasn't happened ... yet, Muahaha... stage and entrepreneurship have.   And as my business has grown and my message has spread, a frequent question I'm asked is, "Steve, what stage will you be on next?"   Now I totally get that this feels, maybe, a little conceited here...   But considering my childhood fear of speaking up, being heard, extreme lack of self-confidence, and getting in front of people, back in my growing up days, I feel satisfied.   I thought I'd tell you where I'll be in the world coming up.   And funny enough, just literally go over to seestevelive.com, and it'll forward you to the next place.   I love stage and it's one of my biggest things to look forward to in my current role in my business.   From little 10 person masterminds all the way to gigantic 5000 person events - from free seats to paid events - events have always been one of the ways I can deliver the MOST value and get the greatest “AHA’s” in the shortest amount of time.   Just come say hi, and go over to seestevelive.com.

I'm very excited today and I have a very special guest.   This is somebody who had been an extremely active participant in the community and, honestly, I get excited every time I see you comment.   I'm very, very pumped to have you on today. Please welcome to the show, Tricia Robino. Very excited to have you.   GUEST FROM THE SECRET MLM HACKS COMMUNITY   Tricia: Very excited to be here Steve. Thank you so much for having me.   Steve: This is going to be awesome.   A few weeks ago we were looking through and thinking “Now who would be really fun with a cool story to just bring on the show?” And immediately, Coulton was like, “Oh my gosh, you got to get Tricia on”.   That's exactly when I reached out and I’m so glad you that you could make it. Thanks for jumping on.   Tricia: Yeah, no problem.   Steve: Just so everyone gets to know you a little bit. How did you get started in MLM?   Tricia: Well that's a great story, because I'm in the wellness space just like you.   Steve: Nice.   Tricia: Just after my son was born, which was 40 years ago, I got out of shape. So I was trying to get back into shape.   I got really super hooked on the wellness industry. I was an aerobic instructor and then owned a health club.   What it came down to was, I really wanted to make money doing what I loved and so I thought it was going to be the health club.   I really wanted success and I really wanted to feel good and have people think I was doing something really, really cool. Because all my brothers and sisters, they're like CFOs, they're lawyers, they're dentists.   Steve: You have an unofficial bar, right?   Tricia: Exactly. I had this bar and so believe it or not, owning a health club was cool. And I actually was able to make money. At one point I made $10,000 a month.   Steve: Cool.   HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU’RE MAKING IT AS AN ENTREPRENEUR? Tricia: That's kind of how I was making it. But what happened was ... Have you ever heard of this big company called 24 Hour Fitness?   Steve: No.   Tricia: Yeah, right. They opened in San Leandro. I'm in Oakland, CA.   They opened 20 minutes away from me. It exploded and this space was very difficult to make money in. I mean it was super, super hard.   And so, I went bankrupt.   Steve: Sure.   Tricia: So like all good entrepreneurs, I filed my bankruptcy.   I had to do it, but it was pretty devastating.   It was embarrassing to be quite honest with you.   My son looked up to me, I was embarrassed. It pretty much devastated my life at that point. I got a divorce. I mean it was just like that whole story of everything just fell apart.   I had $267 in the bank. My dad had to bail me out. I had to write that letter to my sisters to see who could help me.   I mean it was just really, really, rally hard.   Steve: Oh man.   Tricia: But I didn't want to get a job. I quickly realized I loved working for myself and I did not want to get a job.   I would've rather lived underneath the bridge than have to work for somebody else.   But I needed to make money... And what did I know how to do? I knew how to grow a business. I had been growing business for 13 years.   So I worked as a business consultant. Which is another way of saying, “You know I don't have a job, I don't have anything, so I'm just going to help other people make money.”   I remember the day when I picked up this book called “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.”   DO YOU LOVE WORKING FOR YOURSELF?   Steve: It's the gateway drug for every entrepreneur.   Tricia: So I read this book called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" in about three trips to the bathroom. It was like I was glued to this.   I realized that I wasn't a gym owner. I wasn't an aerobic instructor, I was this thing called an entrepreneur.   And that's when it really sunk in that I was an entrepreneur and he talked about network marketing.   I'm one of those guys that literally started looking for a network marketing company. I've been in network marketing of 16 years.   I was looking for a network marketing company. I literally recruited my upline to get me into the business, and I was 53.   So side note, I did not quit my job, which is what I always recommend to everybody. Get excited, but don't quit your job yet.   So I didn't quit my job, I kept working, but I was just in love with the whole industry. I jumped in, hook line and sinker, worked part-time with a full-time attitude.   Back then we had this incredible system, which was about lead generation, and I really loved that system because we called it scrubbing the leads.   We would have a lead come in, but we had a system where they would get more and more interest. They had to jump through hoops to get to the next level, so I knew that they weren't just sort of kind of interested.   Steve: This person's actually serious versus kind of dabbling.   Tricia: Because of the system, I was able to move up our marketing plan really fast. Everybody has different levels in their marketing plan. In 4 years, I got to the 1%.   BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY   Steve: Oh wow.   Tricia: Yeah, through a system.   Steve: Wow.   Tricia: Which was great. It was fast, but really slow at the beginning.   Steve: Sure, it felt slow I'm sure.   Tricia: It felt like I couldn't get to making even $3,000 a month.   I couldn't get to that point where I really felt like I could quit my job and literally I didn't quit my job at the very beginning because I knew that I wanted to advertise.   I've always believed in advertising, I've been an entrepreneur for a very long time. So I wanted to make sure I had some wiggle room right there.   I was finally able to quit my job. We do a lot of personal development. I hear you, I was at Funnel Hacking Live 2 times, I've been to Offer Mind, I've been to Boise to see you, so I know that you're in to that too.   Jim Rome worked with our company for years and years. So I had a chance to meet him, get to know him, spend some weekends with him.   Personal development was another reason that I moved up the marketing plan. Then things changed, right?   I've been in this industry for 16 years. Here's the thing, if you don't expect it to change, you're not going to do very well.   I change all the time, right? And to be honest, that's what makes it fun for me.   Steve: Yeah, me too.   AN ENTREPRENEUR LOVES CHANGE   Tricia: If you're an entrepreneur and you like change, then just keep your eyes open. So that's what I've always done.   Our model kind of changed to the point where it was more face to face. People were starting to do lots of fit camps and opening up nutrition clubs and things like that. You know I did it, but I didn't love it.   Steve: Yeah, it bothered you a little.   Tricia: I do networking marketing because I like the time freedom, I want to work from home. I travel, that's one of my passions.   You know, I really want to be able to travel and do the things that I love. It's a great model, it really works, I love face to face.   I was hearing people from the stage, all these different network marketing companies and doing so much with social media and I'm like “This really sounds like fun.”   About a year and a half ago, I got my first ClickFunnels account and that's where I heard about you. When we had the round tables and I was trying to squeeze my way into your table.   Steve: That's right as I was standing on the chair screaming?   START WORKING ON YOUR BUSINESS!   Tricia: Yeah. But I still liked you anyway. I was like "He's my kind of guy."   I started to become acquainted with you and then as soon as I got home, I think pretty much after I got home is when you launched Secret MLM Hacks. And I was like, "Well, of course I've got to sign up for that”.   We completed the whole thing. I mean we were just like "Okay, let's do this, and we've got to do this, and he's closing it down." I can't remember what it was but-   I just have notes, upon notes, upon notes. I did it ALL.   Steve: So what's happened in your business as a result of it?   Tricia: As a result of it, I have been able to really focus on completely working online.   Steve: That's awesome.   Tricia: And I've been able to duplicate it too. I published a book and right now, I'm just finishing up. I hacked your funnel.   Steve: Good.   Tricia: So I'm just finishing up. The FREE plus shipping.   Steve: Nice.   Tricia: It's actually done. I have to just do the final touches.   Steve: Sure.   Tricia: I hooked up with Anchor and started a podcast.   Steve: Nice.   Tricia: I've done a 5 day workshop with a quiz and there’s a funnel for that.   Steve: Wow.   Tricia: I have almost finished a membership funnel. I'm working on my application funnel. I haven't completed that yet, but I have started on it. I'm doing monthly events.   WORKING ON YOUR SALES FUNNELS   Steve: For your team and such or is it for bringing in new people?   Tricia: It's to bring in new people.   Steve: That's awesome.   Tricia: I'm doing 5 day wellness workshops.   Steve: Oh cool.   Tricia: In fact this one workshop, this one group, I have over 1,100 people in it right  now.   Steve: Wow! Holy cow.   Tricia: Yeah, so that's good. I've been creating a community of brand new people. I have a community of product users. I've got a community of people who are moving up the marketing plan. I have a community of my builders. I’ve really focused and really heard you when you say it's not the WHAT, it's the WHO.   Steve: Yeah.   Tricia: So I've really been working on my WHO.   Steve: That's so cool. You've got more audiences that this has let you bring in. You can train them more. Has it helped you sell more product so far?   Tricia: Yeah, absolutely. But within the framework of how we can sell the product I have, that's going to be part of my free plus shipping for my book.   Steve: Nice. Yeah, okay. I love that. Put something in the front, you sell it all on the back anyway. Totally love that.   Tricia: Exactly. Yeah, so that's worked out really, really good.   ARE YOU NERVOUS ABOUT BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR?   Steve: What would you say to somebody then who's getting nervous about trying this?   This whole concept of the internet plus MLM is so foreign to so many people. What would you say to somebody who's nervous about that?   Tricia: About the internet?   Steve: Yeah, just about using it. All the tools we have, so many people are so scared of it.   Tricia: Here's my note. It works for me, and I've been able to validate those numbers and that is one of the things that I'm keeping close track of.   How much money do I spend, how many leads do I get, how many people go through my funnel, what's the end result, how much money am I making? We have people moving like they've never moved before, using social media tools.   Steve: Right, they're on fire.   Tricia: They're on fire and it's the next... I'm not even going to say it's the next new thing, it IS the new thing.   I would do it because you get everybody prepped for it. It's like you have to create the attractive character. People don't know that they're cool, you know? I didn't know I was cool until I put on my green glasses, was just myself, no apologies for anything, just have fun.   Steve: What does your upline think about all of this?   Tricia: I've got real supportive people in my organization. In fact, the person that first mentioned ClickFunnels to me, was my upline.   Steve: Oh that's awesome.   Tricia: That's never been an issue at all.   THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF ENTREPRENEUR   Steve: That's so awesome.   One of the big things that I hear from people when I'm talking to them about this or they're starting to see what it is that I'm proposing and they're like “What, this is so foreign.”   One of the biggest things that I hear from people, and you just kind of touched on it a little bit but they say things like “Steven, I'm nothing like you. I don't want to have to be like you in order to have success in this.”   I'm like “Whoa, that's not at all how this works, you know. You get to be you, LOUDLY"   Tricia: Not only do my clients need different personality types, and they are going to be different personality types, we all enhance each other.   In network marketing we work together and so therefore, if you have members of your team in there with new people, then the new people have everybody's story.   THE MOST VALUABLE PART OF THE SECRET MLM HACKS COMMUNITY   Steve: What would you say has been the most valuable thing so far that you've gotten from the program?   That you've actually been able to use and apply, and you're like, "Wow, that was good."   Tricia: I hear you in my head all the time. But this is something that you said at Funnel Hackers, because I was just in Nashville.   You said at Funnel Hackers and that is, “Just do the next thing.”   Just take the next step, and that is how you have set up the whole training. Especially after I have completed the program, it's like “Okay, just build one funnel. Make it good.”   Right? Then the next step is whatever that is. And when I think about “Oh Steve just says just take the next step,” I don't have to get this whole thing figured out. I just have to go to the next step, I have to get this funnel finished and launched.   I have to do the marketing for it. That's the next step and I think for me, especially as an entrepreneur, I just want to gobble up the whole horse, I think that's the thing that I hear you saying in my head the most.   Steve: Absolutely, well thank you so much and we really appreciate it. Any parting words?   Tricia: I do have one parting word, because we can make up stories about being too old or we can make up stories about not understanding technology and I just want people to understand that's just a story.   It's just a learning curve and there's so many people that are out there to help you, just dive in. Just dive in and have fun. That's the big thing, you know? Make it a fun experience.   JOIN THE SECRET MLM HACKS COMMUNITY   I know it's tough to find people to pitch after your warm market dries up, right?   That moment when you finally run out of family and friends to pitch. I don't see many up lines teaching legitimate lead strategies today.   After years of being a lead funnel builder online I got sick of the garbage strategies most MLMs have been teaching their recruits for decades.   Whether you simply want more leads to pitch or an automated MLM funnel, head over to secretmlmhacks.com and join the next FREE training.   There you're gonna learn the hidden revenue model that only the top MLMers have been using to get paid regardless if you join them.   Learn the 3-step system I use to auto recruit my downline of big producers WITHOUT friends or family even knowing that I'm in MLM.   If you want to do the same for yourself, head over to secretmlmhacks.com.   Again that’s secretmlmhacks.com.  

*increase team volume, secret mlm hacks, teach your downlines, the power of the internet   Listen to a recent Secret MLM Hacks course member, Nick Bradshaw, as he tells us how is team volume nearly 20X'd after using these modern MLM recruiting principles...   INSIDE SECRET MLM HACKS   This is an interview that I've done with one of my good, Nick Bradshaw. He's got his own show but he wouldn't tell me what it is. You should track him down and ask him.   We have about 500 people in the Secret MLM Hacks program. For the next few episodes, I'm actually going to share with you guys some of the interviews I've been doing with people who are in the program and share what's been happening.   Nick  has almost 20X-ed his team volume since using the Secret MLM Hacks methods, which is crazy. I didn't know it was that much! I thought it was just doubling, not 20X!   He's going to walk through and talk about how he's been using this stuff and teaching the same strategies to his downline, which is ultimately what's been my goal in creating this stuff.   It's not so that everybody has to join Steve Larsen. It's so that you can learn how to do this stuff on your own and then teach your downlines and explode stuff.   A lot of MLMs are refusing to be influenced from the top down on the strategies that I'm teaching. I'm just telling you… This is the landscape of the atmosphere that we're in around here.   A lot of big MLMs are not wanting to take on some of the strategies like the internet, which is ridiculous. It's because they don't know it themselves. They don't know how to train or teach on it.   The strategy I've been teaching is actually to go from the bottom up. It's for the little guy.   HOW TO TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES   Secret MLM Hacks has been focused on training from the ground up. I don't care what MLM in you're in. That's why I'm not here pitching you guys all the time. I'll drop every once in a while what I'm in if you guys are interested, but that's not the purpose of it.   The purpose of it is for me to go and influence MLM from the bottom up. To hand tools to people inside of MLMs from the bottom up who can go reteach it to their people and explode past their uplines.   That's been the point and it's been working. We've had a lot more MLMs reaching out, asking things like, "Would you come build funnels for us?" I'm like, "Where were you when I was talking about it earlier?" It's flipped the whole table on its head.   I have a very special guest today. Somebody I have been watching and seeing everything that has been going on... And I've been impressed.   There’s not many people in MLM who use the power of the internet. I've got a very special guest for you today. It's very easy to see who is in MLM online because there aren't that many. When I first saw other people doing it I was like, “Oh my gosh I'm not alone!” I was so excited about it.   I want to introduce you to and welcome Nick Bradshaw.   SECRET MLM HACKS INTERVIEW WITH NICK BRADSHAW   Steve: Hey man. Thank you so much for being on here.   Nick: Dude it's been absolutely my pleasure. It really really is.   Steve: It's gonna be awesome I'm pumped for it. Just so people understand more about what you do, tell me when you first got into MLM?   Nick: I've been in the MLM game myself about two and a half years. Funny enough, my wife is actually the one who started all of this and I jumped in halfway through. It's really skyrocketed and taken off from there.   My wife's been doing this for about five years. And during that time I was actually a car salesman. I was working 60 - 80 hour workweeks, every single week.   When I started in car sales I had one kid and then next thing I know, I had two kids. I blinked three times and next thing you know I'm sitting next to a six and four year old kid. I'm like, “Where did all the time go?”   I was burnt out on it. I had set all these goals and I had reached the goals. I had worked my way up the corporate ladder so I could provide for my family and let my wife be a stay at home wife.   I got to that roadblock that said, “Where do I draw the line of how much time I'm spending at work versus how much time I'm spending at home?”   From there it was like, “Alright, well what do I do? How do I remedy this, how do I fix it?”   Steve: Something's gotta change, right? We've gotta shake it up a bit.   WHAT IS INSIDE SECRET MLM HACKS?   Nick: How do I be a better father to my kids? How do I be the father that I want to be rather than just the provider and someone that my kids don't even know? I was literally leaving for work before they woke up and I was coming home two hours after they'd already been in bed.   That's where my journey started with MLM. My answer to all of that was, “I'm gonna jump on board and help my wife build this business”.   And so that's what I started doing. I've got all these sales skills. I've been doing this hardcore sales stuff for five years now. My wife was relatively well. She was a silver rank in her company which equated to $2,500 a month.   So I said, “Okay, if I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna do all of this, I’m gonna quit cold turkey”.   Steve: You just up and left?   Nick: Yeah, just up and left. I said, “I'm done”.   Here's the crazy part… We moved from Indianapolis to Austin, Texas two months afterwards. We completely restarted. Hit the reset button.     I've got all these sales skills and one of the things that I see really lacking inside of the MLM world was people knowing how to sell. So that was the problem that I said I can fix.   I jumped into our team trainings and I started doing all of these things. I started teaching them menu selling (which is a car world term) but it's just narrowing down the options.   Instead of giving them this huge, 16 page spreadsheet of all of these things that they can buy, you're gonna narrow it down and say, “Okay you have this option, this option or this option.”   HOW TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH SECRET MLM HACKS   I started doing that and in four months, our team volume jumped from $30,000 a month to $80,000 a month.   Steve: Wow, big jump.   Nick: Yeah big jump. Just within a couple of months of just getting people to understand how the sales process actually works and implementing those skills.   But then we really came to a plateau. You can only do so much to the customer base that you already have.   Steve: Right. You need some more people eventually.   Nick: Eventually you need more people. That was the brick wall that I ran into at that point. I was like “Okay, so how do I do this?”   Marketing, duh.   If sales pushes and marketing pulls, I need to pull more people into this business.   But I had no idea how to do it because I'm not a marketer. I've been doing sales my entire life. And honestly, that's when I found Steve Larsen. I started listening to Secret MLM Hacks and I signed up to ClickFunnels.   From there… I failed. Miserably. On my face.   Steve: Sure. We pretty much all do the first few rounds.   Nick: I jumped in and I'm like, “Oh this is gonna be awesome! I'm listening to you but I'm not really hearing you”, you know what I mean?   Steve: I always laugh when people are like, “I've heard this training before”, and I'm like, “No it takes a few rounds, go again.”   Nick: I jumped in and started building these funnels and I'm like, “This is going to be awesome” and then I hit launch...   And I launch that first funnel and nothing. It was just crickets and I'm like, “Alright, back to the drawing board”.   INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH CLICKFUNNELS   I paused my ClickFunnels account because I realized that I didn’t have the skills that I need to be successful doing what I'm doing.   Steve: Right.   Nick: That's when I really jumped into it and I remember the time specifically. I was at a leadership retreat which is an invite only retreat for a company. I had just gotten Expert Secrets and Dot Com Secrets. I bought the black book with the funnel hacker's cookbook and all of that. And I brought it with me.   I'm sitting in our hotel room and I started reading Expert Secrets and I didn't put it down. I went all through the night and the next morning. When it was time to get up and go to the retreat I was still sitting there with my book on page 240 or something like that.   All of these things just started hitting me and it was like the fire was lit. I started really consuming and I even started hacking Secret MLM Hacks.   Steve:  I noticed that's what you were doing. I watch a lot of people do that which is great and I think they should model it.   Nick: When I was hacking Secret MLM Hacks somehow, someway I ended up in the membership site and I hadn't paid for it. I messaged you and I'm like, “Dude, I have no idea how this happened but I'm here.”   Steve: We were in the middle of tweaking some stuff. Yeah, I remember that. It's not that way anymore.   Nick: It's not that way anymore. A whole new revamped course and everything. I got there and I started watching your videos, consuming and I implemented.   For my relaunch basically modeled exactly what you were doing. This was probably seven months ago, eight months ago?   HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME?   Steve: A while ago now, yeah.   Nick: Since then we went from$80,000 a month in volume to averaging about $150,000 a month in volume.   Steve: WHAT? I didn't know it was that big dude… Are you serious?   Nick: Yeah. In the past 12 months, we've done a little over $1.5 Million.   Steve: So you're saying it works?   Nick: I'm saying it works dude. That's probably about the time that you really started noticing me singing your praises. I'm sitting here inside of my own business and I'm watching these things grow and accumulate exponentially.   And I'm trying to teach this stuff to my team and get it through their heads… There's no other way!   Steve: I don't know another way either. I'm not making fun of you who are like, “I love talking to friends and family. I love going to home and hotel meetings”. Good on you. But you can only do that for so long.   It's so much better to have something automated.   Nick: Yeah, absolutely. I start learning more about marketing and it's a constant learning curve obviously.   But you know that? It’s so true that MLM is a personal growth opportunity with an income opportunity attached to it.   Steve: Right.   Nick: That's what it is. It's a great way to start for the traditional person who doesn't know anything about marketing or sales. You can start talking to family members and friends and doing all of that.   But the reason that 99% of us out there are failing is because we don't ever move past that portion of it.   The growth never happens and where we get into real marketing or real sales.   PERSONAL GROWTH WITH SECRET MLM HACKS   Steve: Reaching out to your network only gets you so far. After a while you have to learn how to attract more people, market to them, change beliefs, sell and close.   It's funny when people are like, “I'm just gonna treat this like a hobby.” You're not going anywhere then, sorry.   It's a business not a hobby.   Nick: That’s the way that I see this. We talked about this the other day. The way that I see MLM moving, the way that I see this momentum going... It's having a rebirth, almost.   If you've lived in our world, it's changing the way that it's happening. We're slowly moving out of those 1960's origins and moving to 2020.   You're seeing a lot more sales and marketing professionals get into the game. I'm trying to teach everybody that, I'm trying to show everybody that.   If you're not moving in the direction that things are going, you're going to become extinct.   You're going to have real professionals in this game, doing things, exploding and leaving everybody else in the dust.   Steve: There are social media platforms that were never around until 10 years ago. The distribution channels that exist now are massive and you can tap into them for near nothing.   Most MLMs are mad when you go do that kind of stuff. What is wrong with you? You could be selling so much more if you just use them! It doesn't mean you have to be on Facebook saying “MLM”.   What are you guys are doing right now that's working best for you? I'm just interested in that, because the course is big. Secret MLM Hacks is not a small course.   What is it in there that has been most helpful so far?   TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES WITH SECRET MLM HACKS STRATEGIES     Nick: The thing that I think that's been most helpful… It's just gotta be the confidence to go out and PUBLISH.   Steve: Oh yes.   Nick: The confidence to go out and publish and talk about what you're doing. It's one thing to sit there and learn it for yourself. It's another to go out and actually teach people what you're doing.   Steve: Sure.   Nick: Not only because, in my personal opinion, I think that you learn it better and but you learn how to communicate it better. The more that we've been publishing, the more that we've been putting it out there, the more that it attracts people.   Steve: Sure.   What's being published right now? Is it a podcast right now?   Nick: I've started a small little podcast at the moment.   Steve: What is it called? Feel free to shout it out.   Nick: I don't know if I want to at this point...   Steve: That's okay then, never mind.   Nick: I'm still trying to find my voice. My wife's Instagram account has been blowing up. She's got 42,000 followers right now.   Steve: That's big.   Nick: We do a lot of not direct marketing there. More like back page marketing.   Steve: Sure, that's one of my favorite kinds. Especially in MLM.   Nick: I modeled you and I set up my own little course. I started targeting people who want to make money online. The people who actually want to own a business. Not people who want to do a hobby.   Sending people through that mini-course has yielded great results.   THE POWER OF THE INTERNET AND MLM   Steve: That's awesome.   What does your funnel look like right now? I talk so much about funnels, and most of the MLM world is still very new to the funnel term and concept. But what is it that you guys are doing right now?   Nick: The big thing we're doing right now is the little mini course which basically teaches marketing for MLM.   Steve: Sure, that's awesome.   Nick: The big idea behind that is, if you want to recruit more people into MLM and you don't want to talk to your friends and family, then:     You have to target people who actually want to own a business but people who aren't necessarily getting the results that they want out of the current business that they're in.   Setting up this little mini course that teaches people how to market. People who actually want to learn how to market their MLM. Then we invite them to join the downline.   At the end of this course I affiliate for you and I say, “Hey, there's two ways that you can learn this…”   Steve: Which I see by the way, thank you.   Nick: “... You can either go join Steve's Secret MLM Hacks and learn it from the master. Or you can join my downline and I'm gonna teach you exactly what I'm doing to grow my downline to do $1.5 Million per year.”   You can say in your current business and learn from Steve or you can join me and learn from me.   Catching that low hanging fruit, I suppose. Taking advantage of the way that the current MLM system is.   You have so many people that are unsatisfied with the business that they have because they're not learning the things they need to run their business.   TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME   Steve: Which reeks of opportunity for the rest of us who actually know what the heck's up.   Nick: Exactly. That's exactly what it is. It's kind of like a smorgasbord of low hanging fruit.   Steve: It is, yeah.   Nick: As far as extra recruiting goes and getting new people, it's great when people actually want to use the product, they believe in the product, they love the product and all of those things.   That's an amplifier but it's not a requirement.   Steve: So you guys have a course, you're selling, you're driving traffic to the course and then on the back you’re saying, “Hey, if you want to come join, this is what we've got”.   Nick: Exactly.   Steve: That's awesome. I was filming some training for my own team three weeks ago now. And I just wrote RECRUITING.   That is what most MLMs teach you and the method for it is just walk around. Think about the power of what we're doing with this stuff.   We're taking the recruiting model and replacing something in front of it so that we're not actually promoting the MLM.   How long did it take you to create your course?   Nick: I created the course in about seven days.   Steve: RIGHT? It's not crazy, man. You create this course so then you're no longer promoting an MLM. So Facebook is okay with you suddenly.   You drive traffic to that and take the money to dump it right back into ads. It's amazing and it changes the whole model.   It's literally INFO PRODUCT + MLM. Mashing together two different industries.   Are you doing phones sales as well? Closing them on the phone?   TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES THE POWER OF THE INTERNET   Nick: To a degree yes. I will offer that to people and I have an application process (modeled after you).   Nine times out of 10 when someone goes through the application process, I set up my auto-responder. My email service will kickback a set of emails that walk them through the process of setting up their account.   Then I've done an automated overview. A business overview that teaches them about the company.   During this entire time, I never even mention my company's name.   Steve: This is the craziest part! Same thing!   Nick: I've literally modeled what you've done.   Steve: I LOVE IT!   Nick: For months my entire office was covered with print out after print out of exactly what you did.   Once I finally mapped it out in my head, it was more about the concepts at hand.   Another thing that I think a lot of people struggle with inside of the funnel world is that they think it's about pages.   Steve: Right yeah, it's not.   Nick: It about the framework. What is the state of mind that he's putting every single person in?   Once I finally understood the framework behind it, I knew that's why I failed the very first time that I tried ClickFunnels. Because I thought that it was just all about pages.   But once I understood the core framework and moving somebody through the funnel and how that's done, then all of a sudden it made sense.   Steve: Right.   INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFERS   Nick: One of the coolest things that happened out of all of this and how I feed this recruiting machine is by putting self-liquidating offers throughout the course.   The course is dripped out over five days and on each day there's a small self-liquidating offer.   Whatever I talk about that day, I then give them an offer to say, “Hey, if you want to learn this more in depth right now, click this”. Then it goes to a new page with a little sales video for an offer for $7.   Right now it's $1.50 per opt in on the front end and on the back end it's churning out $38.   Steve: You're speaking louder than whole MLMs even know how to!   Nick: Exactly and it pays for itself 17 times over. I'm paying myself to recruit people.   Steve: Last week on Secret MLM Hacks we put $1400 in and we got $20,000 back out (not including how many people got recruited and then they get handed the same recruiting systems). I don't know how it fails.   The biggest issue is the education. Most MLMs don't know how to do this which is understandable. It's a newish thing.   What would you tell to somebody who is on the fence about trying this?   ON THE FENCE ABOUT SECRET MLM HACKS?   Nick: The biggest thing that I would tell people is fail and fail fast. Just do it.   When we over think it, nothing ever gets done. I'm a perfectionist myself which is why I listened to Secret MLM Hacks 18 months ago and I just started doing this six to eight months ago. It wasn't really until the last three months that it really took off.   I’m still constantly tweaking and doing things to it but the fact is that I just did it.   I finally put down the pen, I finally put down the book and I went out there and I did it. Then I hit publish and I wasn't scared to feed the machine up front and put a little bit of money into it.   Nothing is ever gonna get done if I just sit here and read books. The knowledge is great...   Steve: But nothing happens.   Nick: You just gotta do it. Be active in your pursuit of what you want.   Steve: Be clear about the fact that this is not a hobby.   We've treated this like an actual business. We've got phone closers, we're talking to people and training.   I hate when someone joins because they're trying to do you a favor. Then they're wondering why they don't go build.   You recruited the wrong who! We gotta change your who altogether!   Nick: Every bum on the side of the street needs an opportunity.   Steve: Right!   Nick: I live in Austin and if you walk down downtown Austin you're guaranteed to see about 10 every 100 yards.   They might NEED an opportunity, but they don't' want it. You gotta find those people that actually WANT to succeed in whatever it is that you're doing.   DO YOU WANT THE SECRET MLM HACKS OPPORTUNITY?   Steve: Dude I am so thankful that you got on here. Thank you so much for sharing. I did want to ask one last question.   How many people have you been recruiting since you turned it on six months ago?   Nick: I would say we're probably getting five to seven a month.   Steve: That's awesome! On autopilot?   Nick: Yeah, on autopilot.   Steve: And the quality of person is really high which is awesome.   Nick: Five to seven a month is what we're recruiting into our organization and we get paid for a lot of people that say no to us as well.   Steve: Yeah, they bought the thing up front which is the beauty of it.   Nick: And I say five to seven, that's five to seven that we ACCEPT.   Steve: We get three to four applicants a day but I immediately cut out at least half off them because I can just tell…   Nick: Once you get to a certain point, you have to be able to say no. You have to self-select and be able to weed out people because otherwise it just becomes too overwhelming.   Steve: Then you turn into a life coach rather than a “Here’s what we're doing in our company this week” coach.   Nick: Exactly.   Steve: With love, I'll say that as tenderly as I can.   Nick, thank you so much for being on here, I really appreciate it. This was awesome, man. Really means a lot that you jumped on.   HEAD OVER TO SECRET MLM HACKS NOW   I know it's tough to find people to pitch after your warm market dries up, right? That moment when you finally run out of family and friends to pitch. I don't see many up lines teaching legitimate lead strategies today.   After years of being a lead funnel builder online I got sick of the garbage strategies most MLMs have been teaching their recruits for decades. Whether you simply want more leads to pitch or an automated MLM funnel, head over to secretmlmhacks.com and join the next free training.   There you're gonna learn the hidden revenue model that only the top MLMers have been using to get paid regardless if you join them. Learn the 3-step system I use to auto recruit my downline of big producers without friends or family even knowing that I'm in MLM.   If you want to do the same for yourself, head over to secretmlmhacks.com. Again that’s secretmlmhacks.com.

  Once you get clear on what you want as an entrepreneur, the rest is a lot of learnable formulas that you DO NOT have to be pro at...   Every once in a while when an interview is just so awesome, I ask:   “ Do you mind if I repost this on Sales Funnel Radio?”   ... and usually, they're very excited about that.   This interview was with Marian Esanu from the High Ticket Client Acquisition podcast.   Sometimes the right questions get me to teach something in a way that I haven't taught before.   Shout out to you, Marian, this was a great interview.   I’ve pulled out the BEST bits where Marian asks me about what I look for when I am trying to decide what to sell.    We talk about the whole red ocean analytics thing, (which by the way is a huge focus of the last OfferMind).   The next OfferMind is coming up September 2nd-3rd.     They’ll be a bunch of really cool speakers coming in and Russell's keynoting.   But back to the formulas…   Marian asks me:   What do you look for when you decide whether or not you should enter into a market. What do you look for when you're deciding what to sell? How do figure out what hooks to use?    You have to understand like I can close my eyes, and I can see the whole formula…   It's all a big pattern to me.    I know the formulas that cause success at each part of the value ladder. I know the formulas before we even choose or start brainstorming an offer to promote.    That should be really encouraging to everybody because that's what I teach:    That's the point of my OfferLab program That's the purpose of EVERYTHING I do...   The offer is part of the sales message. The sales message is part of the offer. They're separate, but they're combined in their purpose. They're equal but different.   FINDING YOUR VOICE   Marian:  What's your thought on somebody starting publishing for the first time? How do you find your voice?    Do you just talk about stuff that you're good at, even if you don't know if people are gonna respond to it? What do you think about that?   Steve: That is one of the most frequent questions. It’s also one of the questions where the answer is NOT inspiring.    We created this event called the Funnel Hackathon Event. We called it the FHAT event.   Russell's inner circle was there; these people were paying 25 - 50 grand to be in the room. The room was filled with very rich, very successful, smart people.   I had gone through the previous 12 years of Russell's content to organize it.    I thought through like,  “Hey, in order to know this, you really need to do that. In order to know this, you really need to do that.”    … and I put it in a digestible way...  and we launched the original Two Comma Club coaching program from that.    We decided to test the material against the inner circle, so it was a BIG event for me.   Russell was gonna teach, and so I was excited to see how he was gonna do it.    I was walking to the event room side-by-side with Russell, and he turns to me and goes, “Stephen, dude, do you want to introduce me on stage?”    Immediately, I was like, “No.”    I was so scared, like... there's no way.    I'm very formula oriented, and I was like, “What's the formula dude? What's the script? How do I MC? How do I bring somebody in?”   ...and Russell starts laughing. He's like, “Dude, no wait, wait. Okay, settle down.” I was freaking out, so he took me back out of the room, and we went to this little side conference room.    Russell said:   “Stephen, I got to tell you something... It’s impressive how well you model me... that's very rare, but dude, it’s time for you to find your own voice. Stop asking how would Russell Brunson introduce somebody on stage. How would YOU introduce somebody on stage?”   I focus so much on modeling success, it sounds stupid saying it, but it was the first time in my life where I found my voice.   It was the first time in my life that Steve Larsen was born on stage.   I was already podcasting... because I was listening to what he was saying... but Steve Larsen started becoming born on my podcast. Around episode 70 or 80, I felt it….   I started doing it the way I would do it.    I feel like a lot of the model's we follow will get you to 80%.   They'll jumpstart you and help shortcut decades, lots of pain and money that you otherwise would have to spend, but eventually the whole find your voice thing, in my opinion, is very unteachable.   I believe that there are things in this business that we can design, but there are other things that we have to discover... and your voice is one of them.    So you can follow some scripts and blueprints for a while, and then after a while, it's like: “Okay, how would you say it? Just okay say it that way.”   Marian: Got it. So it's more like practice, practice, practice, and then it would just come out at some point? Got it, awesome, and that's a hell of a story.   Steve: It's funny, man. It was sooo depressing for me to hear that. I was like, “Just tell me the script, dude. I want safety in the script.”   Marian: All right, awesome man. I think that will really help a lot of people that are listening to or watching this.    Now let's take it a step further, and let's say somebody has started to find their voice and find their message, and you know, model it and design it, and all that stuff…   The next part in there would be the offer, and that's where your entire expertise and all of these things come in, right?   Steve: Yeah.   THE BUSINESS OF PROBLEM SOLVING   Marian: What do you think is the next step would be, let’s say we're talking about a coach, a consultant, to design the best offer?   What do you think they lack... and how they can start looking at that process as being one of the most important?   I know you preach a lot on making sure that you work on your sales message and your sales process before you build your:    Product Course Anything that you want to build   What's your process so that somebody can implement that for themselves?   Steve: That's a very good question. It's interesting...   I believe the sales message and the offer are actually one and the same. They're very separate roles, but I don't think you can have a sales message without an offer, and vice versa.    There's no offer without a sales message. They support each other, but they're very different roles.    If you're gonna go create an offer, and let's say you're a coach or a consultant, or something like that…   I'm sure you've heard the saying that CEOs read a book a week…   So for a while, I was just consuming. consuming, consuming, because that's what successful people do, therefore I will do the same…   After about two years, I started asking myself questions like:   “I'm doing what successful people do, why am I still broke?”   ...and I realized several things.   #1: For the first time in my life, I started realizing the difference between marketing and sales and that they're very different.    Marketing changes people's beliefs so that they can buy something. That's what a sales message does. The act of selling is just presenting an offer and overcoming objections.   ...they work in tandem, but they are very distinct things.   So if somebody's trying to come up with an offer, you shouldn't be behaving as a CEO.    CEO's are in the business of running and tweaking systems. Entrepreneurs are in the business of solving problems.    If you're trying to come up with an offer for the first time, you’ve got to put on the entrepreneur hat and get rid of all the mainstream CEO junk. You're not a CEO, so stop acting like one.   I don't read a book a week. I'm NOT saying that you shouldn't learn, but…   I learn with the intent to solve problems. That's what entrepreneurs are in the business of doing.   So if you think about the way a customer is experiencing your product…   The Winter Olympics was a while ago, right. (Crap, it wasn't a while ago, it was like a year ago. Nevermind, time is going fast.)    So, for example:   If I'm gonna go be an Olympic skier, every single opportunity that's out there is guarded by a whole bunch of problems that you can't see…   My dad really wanted to go be an Olympic skier... if he’d the opportunity to be an Olympic skier, there's a whole bunch of follow-up problems that you have to solve.   Problems that you never knew you had to solve until you were given that opportunity.    Follow me for a second... I know I'm kind of going all over the place, let me tie it with a little bow in a second...   Marian: No, I get it.   Steve: Yeah, this is a HUGE deal to realize... I think most people that are in the business of selling anything, any kind of entrepreneurship, any kind of business… we forget this.   Your product is an opportunity, and there's a whole bunch of problems that you have to solve that show up after someone buys.   So, if I have the opportunity to become an Olympic skier, now that the opportunity's in front of me, I have to solve problems that weren't there before I had the opportunity:   Who's my coach gonna be? What kind of skis am I gonna use? Which mountains am I gonna practice on? Are my times fast enough? Did I study my competition enough?    Do you know what I mean?   Marion: Yep.   Steve: It happens to us when we buy any kind of product in our life. I'm trying to find something on my desk here. Okay, this gum...   SELLING GUM   There are follow-up problems that somebody has after they buy this gum that they did not have until they bought it. It's the same thing if you are a coach or a consultant…   When somebody buys your main product, there's a bunch of follow-up problems that you now have to solve that were NOT on your table ahead of time.    Like ClickFunnels, right?   It wasn't until I bought ClickFunnels that I realized:   I should learn how to write copy I should probably learn how to drive traffic   ...I didn't have that problem before I bought it, right? I didn't have that problem ahead of time.    You have to realize that every product you sell is a gift both to the buyer and to you.    For example:   When you sell gum, (or something else), there's a bunch of follow-up problems…   This is the easiest way to create an offer ever.   You ask: “What are the follow-up problems that my product creates for somebody after they buy it?”    Then you see what the majority are and you solve those problems with additional products. I just give those away for free when they buy the first thing.    Back to gum…   What kind of issues would somebody have?   Maybe they want more flavors They want teeth whitening Bad breath in general…   So you could go interview oral health doctors…   … and include that interview, (which is a digital thing, takes nothing to fulfill), with the original product that you sell and all these things that you go stack on there.    That's one of the easiest ways to create an offer ever. I hope that made sense?   Marian: Oh, it does.   Steve:    I figure out what the follow-up problems are, create a product to solve them and give them away for free with the original product.    Marian: That's INSANE!   I don't think I ever thought about the whole offer creation process the way that you said it.    That can be applied to any kind of industry regardless of what you sell, as long as you charge people for something, they'll have a question that they didn't have before they bought it.    I hope everybody's taking notes.   Steve: It drives me nuts when people are like, “...but in my industry’s different.” I'm like, “No, it's not. Do you sell anything? Sweet!”   Marian: Even if you sell a commodity, people will still have questions. Even if it's a t-shirt, “How can I wash this t-shirt so it's not getting all crappy?”   Steve: Exactly, yeah. “We'll give you a cool free PDF that shows cool fashion things to wear with the shirt when you buy.”    You're like, “Oh man, you just increased value without dropping the price.”    So there are a few ways to compete in this world...   If I’ve got a bunch of other people that are selling something similar to me:   Drop the price... that's one way to increase value. Don't drop the price and charge a little bit extra, but add more value... because price and value are not the same thing.    So I'm gonna bump the value up with mostly digital products that take nothing for me to fulfill, and boost the value like crazy.   Now I can sell for a premium, rather than fight to be the lowest price for what I sell.    That's terrible, it's a terrible way to do business.   Marian: That's super powerful.    I hope everybody's literally just taking this part here. This is worth a lot of money. Awesome, I love that.    CAMPAIGNS ARE DYING   So I listened to one of your episodes. I don't remember the name of it now, but you stressed a lot on this matter.    You have a different way of approaching a campaign. A campaign for you is NOT just driving traffic to a funnel, it's a whole different thing put on steroids.   Can you, can you talk about that? Because I really think that this can help a lot of our listeners.   Steve: Yeah, I think the term campaign is something that's actually dying. It's a dying art.    Before social media existed, all these marketers that were out there, how did they get such fast, big sales?   If you buy an ad on YouTube, or Facebook they call it a campaign.  I think what's killing it.   From a direct response marketer's viewpoint, ads are just part of a campaign. It's NOT the campaign itself. A campaign is pressure building up to a certain point.    One of my favorite things to go do if you're podcasting or publishing... (which is one of the easiest ways to get clients for life, it's ridiculous. It will change your life if you just publish), is to create episodes that lead up to an event.   So in the episodes, I'm like, “Hey, in two months from now, this cool thing is happening, and by the way here's a whole bunch of stories that are gonna break your beliefs.”   ... I'm not gonna say that, but that's what's happening.    I'm dripping out those pieces of content, and at the end of all of them, I'm saying, “Hey, go to this page and register so you guys get early bird access...  on the waiting list... or whatever.”   You build up all the pressure for this date, it's kind of what Hollywood does for movies.    THE HOLLYWOOD LAUNCH   Q: How much money do you think Hollywood would make if you didn't hear about the movie until the day it’s actually released?   A: They wouldn't make that much money.   They are masters at creating pressure to a date. They create pressure, “Here it comes... on this date, oh my gosh!” right?   ...and then tons of sales come in all over the place. Then they drive more ads… it's very much more like that. Ads are part of that…   A marketer, at the core, is an event thrower... meaning they build pressure to a certain date, and then using scarcity and urgency... and remove access to it after while to get a second bump in sales.   A campaign is much more, I don't even know what the word is….   Marian: Making them hungry for your product before it's launched, I guess?   Steve: Yeah, in my mind, there are two types of campaigns that I use:   #1: There's Launch Campaign for if I'm gonna introduce something to the market for the first time. There are several strategies for building pressure, noise, getting a big list and shoving them all to a certain date, so that there's lots of pressure out there.    #2: There's Evergreen Campaigns (it's my own definition), it is things like turning on Facebook ads, where I'm just gonna be tweaking the numbers, stuff like that…   You miss out on so much money if you start a funnel or a podcast.. and then just turn on ads.   Build Pressure!   ...I use the two campaigns together.    I build a launch campaign and build all this pressure, pressure, pressure, and because I have a podcast, I'll launch to my own audience. When they buy, I take all that money, (I don't take profit), I dump it right back into my Evergreen Campaign. So I never put a dollar of my own in my business because of that strategy.    That's how I launch everything. I launch with a lot of pressure and then I take that cash roll it into my ads... and now my customers are paying for my ads.   Marian: That's super smart, and I really love the way that you explained things, and the way that you put it out there to the public. It's super smart.    You are one of most in-demand funnel builders, so everything that you say, people will think, “Oh, I'll go and implement it,” but you have a complete in-depth process of things to do before you even touch your laptop to build a funnel.   Steve: Yeah.   Marian: And I think a lot of people would miss a lot of that stuff. Can you debate a little bit on that process? I know we're getting close to wrapping things up here.   Steve: That's fine. Yeah, I think the biggest issue, and I did the same thing, you know.  I can't blame anybody for doing this... but when I first got ClickFunnels, the first thing I did... (and this is what I did for a while), was log in and build the funnel…   ClickFunnels makes it so easy on the tech side to do stuff, it's attractive and it's sexy, and most people jump right to that…   They say, “Hey, let me go build this sweet thing.”   So they build it, this is literally how I did it.    I remember one of the first funnels, I built a free plus shipping thing, selling a CD. I wanted to have a free plus shipping thing, so I went and I rebuilt all of Russell Brunson's Dot Com Secrets book funnel…   I said, “What should I tell them on this page?”   I went through, and I came up with something to sell on that page.    I went to the next page, what should I sell on this page? What should I sell on this page?    Then after I had all the products in there, I was like, “How should I sell this?”   ...and I went and I wrote the sales message, and I put it all in there.   THAT is the exact opposite order to where you find success.   People need to get out of the mindset of testing products. You don't really test products. You test sales messages.    The role of the sales message is to cause the desire for purchase. The product just fulfills on the promise that your sales message made.    That's all the product does.    The product should be amazing, but you really don’t need to test a product. It's NOT about that.    What causes the purchase, is the sales message itself.    So, I gather all this data from my competitors in the red ocean. I want something that's crazy competitive... and then I'm gonna take all that data and craft my sales message for those people alone.    The worst thing ever is when someone walks up and they're like, “Stephen, I built this sweet thing, who should I sell it to?” I'm like, “Ah that is like square one. You jumped to 99…”   FINDING THE WHO   First, you start with the who. It's all about the who and understanding:   Where they are? What do they want? What they don't want? Their current desires? What they've already been buying to try and solve their problems? (So you don't go make that and it's a step backward in a customer journey)   You understand MORE about where these people are, and that creates your sales message.    You go test that to those people specifically, and then once people are buying, then I go create the product to fulfill on.    Super safe, completely the opposite order than what college taught me. A different way of thinking about it. Completely different than mainstream entrepreneurship out there.   Marian: I get it 100%. Julie Stoian shared the same type of thing... we were talking about an online course, and she broke it down in the same exact steps. So I can see why for sure.    Now you talk a lot about the red ocean, the blue ocean, and then you created something in the middle, the purple ocean.   I know, a lot of people will say, “Well, my industry's too crowded. I got to compete on price. I don't know how to build an offer, whatever… How are they starting?”   Let's say they do what you say, they start publishing, they find their voice, they create an offer, they create a sales message, all together. Are they testing that offer to the red ocean... and then they try to build their own type of blue ocean out of that? What's the best way to do that?   Steve: That's a lot of strategies involved in that.   Marian: Just the big picture.   THE BLOODY RED OCEAN   Steve: So this red ocean concept. You think back in the day where Al Gore created the internet, he didn't. He did NOT create the internet. But he claims he did.    ...but you think about when the internet became publicly available for everybody in 1991…   There was one internet service provider, that's it. You know? Straight up monopoly. You couldn't get the internet anywhere else.    Then suddenly, all these other tech companies say: “Look at that, and they're like we could be an internet provider,”   ...and someone else comes in, somebody else comes in, somebody else comes in.    They start driving the price down because of competition.    We actually want that. I want to have the most ridiculous red highly competitive, bloody ocean that is out there. I want it to be very bloody. I want it to be soooo competitive…   Because when it is competitive, it's actual security. If the market of internet service providers is lasting long enough, what's cool about that is that in order for the market to survive, they have to start learning how to create new customers.    They have to make customers out of people who are not planning on being customers. That is not easy, and most markets don't survive that.    Most of us would not go into the beanie babies accessories market. You know or Pogs or Kmart or Sears, all these things that are dying….they didn't learn how to make customers out of people who were NOT planning to be customers.   It's easy when a new thing comes out, they collect the easy people off the top who’d buy just because they're looking to buy something.    It’s hard after those people have dried up, for a market to move from customer collection to customer creation. That is challenging. Most markets die because of that.    I actually want a highly red ocean.    I want a lot of competition... because it's a sign that the market is surviving and growing.    Not all markets are red.  I want one that's red.   I want to be able to go in, (hopefully, this isn't too deep), and look at this really, really, really red, red ocean, and learn how to take a step out of it, and build a sales message that goes directly back into it.   ...because they figured out how to create customers.    It means I don't have to learn how to create customers. I just sell to those people and my sales message pulls people over to me.    I don't have to create customers, I just have to collect them. It's very, it's kind of a different way of thinking. I don't know. Hopefully, it makes sense but like,   Marian: It does.   Steve: I've coached 10x of thousands of people in this now, and the thing that's scary is they go do all this work, they create all these funnels, they make all the sales messages, they're making all the things that we tell them to go do…   BUT…   They go and they plug them into a market that's dying, and when the market leaves, they now have to go back to square one... the who.    “Crap, my who dried up. I don't know where they went.”   The market left. The market died... and so they have to find a NEW who and go back to square one to create a new sales message and make sure that offers something that's sexy and fulfills…   ...and make sure the funnel is something that is attractive for that market... and it's terrible, it sucks!   It's where the entrepreneur in this game, (especially online), feel like their wheels are spinning... it's because they chose the wrong who.   So I go in and say:   Let's choose something that's insanely competitive Figure out how to throw rocks into it Talk to those who are only in pain…   I'm NOT gonna talk to somebody in there and try to sell them if they're like a massive diehard, right. They're like, “I believe this stuff, this is my thing,” right?    That's like watching the Superbowl with opposing fans in the same room: “Well, this team's better, no that team's better.” No one wins, right! It's that exact same thing…   99% of sales copy that's written out there by somebody that's brand new, they're speaking to somebody in the red ocean who's a die hard. It's a dumb argument.   I don't speak to them at all. I find a market that's really, really, really red, and then I only talk to those people in there who are feeling pain and hate the market they're in. They just don't know anything different...   That’s a very easy person they go sell.   Marion: That's something that a lot of people just don't talk about…   You hear everybody being like, “Oh, I'm afraid to get into that market because it's so crowded. I'm not gonna be able to survive,” but no, you just said the opposite:   “No, go there because you don't need to create customers.. all of them  are over there, and it's so much easier for you to get them out.”    Awesome man, you’re literally just spitting fire here.   Last question before we wrap things up in here…   You're one of the few people that I know, (especially in this online game), that has two completely different audiences. You manage both of them so well in a way that you never like…    I don't know I mean like correct me if I'm wrong, but it's very rare when you cross-promote between the two... maybe I'm wrong, I don't know?   But I just, I'm so amazed by the fact that... I don't know how big both of them are, I know this one that I'm in, it's pretty large.   Steve: A little big.   Marian: Yeah. So then how do you manage to keep them you know not necessarily from a technical standpoint, but because you have to create offers for both of them.    You have to publish to both of them. How do you manage your time and your strategy behind that?   Steve: First of all I would just caveat everything right there by just saying please don't try that. It actually was NOT on purpose, but it worked for a few specific reasons…   So one of them is the MLM space, and when you think about that, the reason I went into that is because of the exact same principal I was just talking about. Like, that's an insanely red competitive ocean.   There was a lot of opinions around that industry, which is good. I actually want that. I don't want anything that's too blue. I want a lot of red... because then what I did, (and this is the reason why it sells so well, and why I don't actually have to manage it that much)...   This is one of the easiest ways to create a sales message, create hooks, create podcast content, is you become the anti-red in your messaging.   ...and my headlines in that space are:   How I'm auto recruiting a downline of big producers without my friends and family even knowing I'm in MLM.   ... and they're like what?    The whole industry is built around attacking your friends and family, and so when they read that headline, it is the anti-red... and because of that, it's talkable.    We drive ads, but on the ClickFunnels page, when everyone's like, “Who does MLM funnels?” Like, everyone says my stuff. I'm not doing any of that, and the reason is that I'm so strongly anti-red.   I'm like, “Yeah, do the MLM thing, but don't you dare do it in the way they're teaching you...” and who does that speak to?   It speaks to people who are doing it, who are in pain and hate it.   They just don't know another way.    Exactly as I was just saying. So it's talkable, and they do a lot of my selling for me because it's word of mouth.    It's very easy... because no one's doing that,  and then they can go, “Oh my gosh, have you seen this guy?”   I'm very careful about what I sell, NOT based on the product... I'm careful based on the sales message and how abrupt it is in the red ocean.    That's one of the biggest keys and one of the biggest misconceptions.    For years, I walked around asking myself the question, “What should I sell? What should I sell?”   … it's like paralysis.   If you're listening or watching this now, and you're like, “I don't know what to sell... I don't know what to do?” … the reason's that you're starting with the wrong question.    Instead of asking, “What do I sell?” … You ask, “Who should I sell?” And “Who do I want to sell? Who’s my dream customer?”... what should I sell gets really easy... because you just solve their problems and become the anti-red in your sales message.   It’s waaay easier after you do a little research like that.    Thanks so much for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe.    Hey,    I know this game can take a few tries to get the money flowing, especially the first time, right? And that can suck.    I also know from experience how frustrating it can be to know your business is just a few tweaks away from your next big payday, but you don't know what tweaks to make.   I've felt completely paralyzed by that in the past, and it sucks.    I've been blessed to work with thousands of new and successful businesses over the last three years, and two things have really shocked me.    #1: I began noticing the pattern to success is vastly the same, but everyone's spot on the path is obviously different.    #2: I've been shocked and overwhelmed by the number of people asking for my help, my systems, and funnels in their business.    Well, until now I've never had a system or product in my own business to help you build yours.    Now, I'm finally able to be public about all this...    If you'd like my help to build your offer or sales message funnel and even your content machine, go to myofferlab.com.   The path to online and offline success is 80 percent the same regardless of the product, price point or industry, and it works if you're new or already a killer in business.    You can get more details on how to get my personal attention and frameworks in your own business by going to myofferlab.com   In-person classes are limited to 60 people each, and frankly, I can only do about two of these a year. Get more details, and even jump on the phone with us for free at myofferlab.com

FunnelHub is kind of a new term, and it’s something that Mike and AJ Rivera are experts in.   A funnel is not a website… but sometimes people still get confused...   About a year ago, somebody reached out to me, and said, “Hey would you please take a look at our funnel it's not converting very well?”   They hired me to come in workout what was going on. I went to look at their funnel… I opened up all their URLs, and I immediately, off the bat, I could tell:   This is NOT a funnel. This is a website.   When I told them they were like, “No no, no, no, no, no. This is one hundred percent a funnel.”   I said: “No, one hundred percent, without a doubt, I swear on my life, this is NOT a funnel... because for starters, you’ve got exits all over the page.”   A funnel is a funnel because there's only one way to progress. You either have to purchase or opt-in. If you can exit in any other way, besides the one way forward, that's NOT a funnel. That by definition is a website.   They had exits in their headers all over the place. Exits the middle. You had to scroll down to the bottom to even opt into anything and move forward in the funnel they'd created. I was like,  “Guys!”   So we switched a few things up to make it a legitimate funnel, and just that one switch alone, BOOM!   WHAT THE FUNNELHUB???   This is the 228th episode of Sales Funnel Radio, and it's funny to me that a lot of people still have no idea about EVERYTHING that I offer…   And I get it…   It's for a lot of reasons:   I've focused on building a lot of stuff and linking it together. There have been little launch campaigns together to get noise around them. I've been working on fulfillment and systems for fulfillment. I've quietly launched some stuff to hyper-users just to see what would happen. Other stuff has made loud entrances with big old launch campaigns behind them.   … there's a lot of moving pieces.   However, there's gotta be a way to help everybody understand what it is you're selling at all times…   And that’s what I'm excited about what I’m gonna share with you next.   I have two very special guests today and they’ve created what they call a FunnelHub. It's NOT a website. It's almost like a directory.   A FunneHub looks very similar to a website but it has a different intent.   This is the official launch of my FunnelHub.   The old Steve J Larsen site is completely gone and SteveJLarsen.com has been TOTALLY REDESIGNED.   It's very exciting!   So now you're going to read an interview I did with my AMAZING FUNNELHUB creators so you can learn MORE about FunnelHubs and why your business needs one.   So let me introduce, Mike Schmidt and AJ Rivera...   WEBSITES ARE DEAD…?   Mike and AJ are members of the Inner Circle and they own an agency called they’re from AnchorWave…   Mike: Awesome, thanks so much Stephen for having us.   AJ: Super stoked, man.   Steve: Oh it's gonna be awesome. You guys approached me... when was this? It was a while ago.   Mike: It was in October, we were at the Traffic Seekers Events in Scottsdale.   Steve: That's right, yeah, yeah. And basically, they came to me and said something that would be very dumb for me to say no to: “Stephen can we build you something for free?” I said, sure!   … and as kind of a case study, we want to walk through what they built. because I believe that what they've got will revolutionize websites.   A lot of us make fun of websites. I make fun of websites. We all know that Russell in ClickFunnels' world definitely makes fun of websites.   Mike: Totally.   Steve: But you haven't built a website, you’ve built what you call a FunnelHub. We're definitely gonna get into that... but beforehand, we'd like to know about you guys.   What do you guys do?   Mike: So we have a web design digital marketing agency based in Tucson, Arizona. We have about a team of 20 people here. We started in 2003, so celebrated 16 years in business this year.   We've built A LOT of websites. More than 1300 by our closest count at this point.   Steve: Oh my gosh.   Mike: What's funny is we heard Russell recently renew his efforts around the death of a website.   Steve: He did.   Mike: And for those of you guys who were at Funnel Hacking Live, he enrolled us in the promotion of that message. I had to turn to Anthony here and say:   “I don't think that we can share that video for Russell, given what our company does.”    We have a lot of experience helping a lot of different types of clients build websites in order to build credibility and help them serve a local market.   We joined Russell's inner circle about four and a half, five years ago, before it was cool to be in the Inner Circle. It was just a bunch of nerds in a room giving Russell a lot of money to geek out on stuff.   And now, thanks to what he's done, and what you've done, it’s kind of elevated that status quite a bit… but originally, we joined in order to start our expert business.   Given our experience of running a sizable team, building websites, and doing digital marketing for a local type client, we just kind of understood inherently that there was something we needed to get out there and teach to:   Our marketplace WordPress developers Digital marketers   So about three years ago, we started something we call Agency Mastermind  - which is a group that's all about teaching the things that have helped us be successful in our world, to people out there.   We've just crossed the threshold, at the end of last year, to achieve our Two Comma Club Award.   Steve: Whoo! Nice!   Mike: We got to officially hang that on the wall not too long ago. So it's cool.   HOW TO INCREASE SALES   We live in a world where we are:   An agency of the traditional sort. A funnel business. An expert business. So things started to kind of collide for us, and especially with our proximity to a lot the people who are just doing some really, really amazing things with funnels, (yourself being one of them)...   We started to see this picture of how we could really redefine and bring our 16 years and 1300 websites of experience to something that Russell's currently saying is totally dead.   Steve: If Russell sees this, we still love ya. “Viva la funnels!”   Mike: Totally, and we get where that's coming from. There's parts of our bodies that feel that websites are dead for certain things and where the funnel makes more sense... and there's a lot of places it does. It’s the most amazing tool we've ever implemented for our expert business.   Steve: That's awesome, that's awesome.   So, obviously, we throw so many rocks at websites from a direct response marketers viewpoint.   I was looking at some stats just off Shopify; with like a single product on there, or multiple products... I mean they don't convert except for like maybe one to three percent (if you're good), you know.   From that standpoint, I can certainly see why Russell throws rocks at websites.   Mike: Totally.   Steve: But you guys, I mean, you're like scrapping that whole thing, and while it kind of looks like a website, you're calling this thing a FunnelHub...   Could you talk about that a little bit?   Mike: Yeah.   AJ: Yeah, so sure…   VIVA LA FUNNELHUB The idea behind the FunnelHub is really that, you know... Russell's right; the funnel's where the sales are going to happen.   We know that there's a lot of hot buyers that go through that process. When you're driving paid traffic, you're going to get them to a landing page, you're going to end up getting them to a webinar, or sell them something.   All your hot buyers are going to raise their hand and give you money. But what happens to everybody else that isn't in that bucket? They're gonna go, typically, and research your brand.   They're gonna do a search for you just to see if you're legit and they end up in the middle of nowhere. They're not sure what the message is.   Once you reach a certain level of status in doing this, (like yourself), a lot of people are coming to you and searching for your name because they have heard you on a podcast…   Or because someone told them, “Hey you gotta check out Stephen Larsen.”   So, of course, they're gonna Google that, and now they're kind of lost.   They didn't see your ad. They didn't get to your landing page. They didn’t see your videos that kind of explain everything.   ...they're having to piece all this together on their own.   So the FunnelHub is a spot where we can still guide them through that process.   We can still let them know everything that Stephen's about... and then get them right back into the sales funnel where we know that conversions are gonna happen.   That's the goal.   We want to communicate the movement, communicate the message, and then get them right back to where we know they're gonna actually give you some money.   Mike: Yeah, I think what's important…   If you figure that we're all high-fiving and celebrating the fact that we got three or five percent of the people that made it into our funnel to hand over cash...   Or three or five percent of the people who made it to a webinar to sign up for a course…   We're all really excited about that three-five percent who convert... but what about that other 95 percent?   What do they do? There's kind of a thought process that goes:   Those 95 percent of people, they're gonna buy sometime between three months and three years of interacting with you. The question is, are they going to buy from you? Or are they going to buy from somebody else?   CATCHING THE 95 PERCENT   The FunnelHub is about making sure there is a safe landing for that 95 percent of people, (by the way you probably paid for or earned them through your efforts)...   Giving them a place to get back into those funnels and really even cross-pollinate into things that they may not be ready for.   Steve: It's almost like a way to kind of turn them from warm and cold traffic to a little more hot before they re-enter your funnel.   Mike: And to think of it from a strategy that a lot of us look at in terms of our emails…   We hear about soap opera and Seinfeld emails that go out. For a lot of people, these may be the only other way that they're nurturing somebody along to build that relationship.   The FunnelHub is the only other platform, aside from email, that you can truly own.   At the end of the day, you're renting space on Facebook, you're renting time on YouTube.   Instagram is making it, (at the current moment), pretty easy for you to reach out to people... but those things change.   … but what won't change is:   You're going to own your customer database, and you're going to own your FunnelHub. And those are the two places that you can truly use in order to really nurture that 95 percent along.   Steve: Totally, and you know what's funny, everyone watching and listening to this, the thing that has made it so starkly real for me that I need this, is I actually have a lot of products that I sell…   But I know the majority of my audience has no idea what it is that I actually sell because they came in on one thing that was attractive to them…but I've been testing products and processes and things like that.   So, there isn't anything that's pushing them to the next thing... or saying, “By the way, I also have *these* things.”   Mike:  Right.   Steve: So when you guys first started talking about this, I was like:   “Oh my gosh, yes, it is the death of a website... but the birth of a FunnelHub.”   THE BIRTH OF A FUNNELHUB   When should somebody start looking to build a FunnelHub?   Mike: What we look at is if you're currently running a successful funnel that's getting you leads and sales every day, that means that you are building a mass of people who are going to be looking for you and going to be needing something like this.   So it's a wide spectrum because you could have just one funnel doing that, but many of us have built several funnels that are producing leads and opportunities.   Signs that I look for:   Are people confused about what you offer? They might think of you as the Sales Funnel Radio guy, but do they know that you have an event? Do they know about these other things? If you get the same questions over and over again, (especially easy ones like support questions). That's a key indicator. If there are things that you're trying to communicate to people that you just can't seem to get them to understand. If you feel like you're kind of shouting at a wall as a producer of this content.   How you organize that in a FunnelHub is a really, really key place for that.   AJ: - Yeah, I think I'd add to that:   If you're spending a lot of time getting some earned traffic, (appearing in a lot of podcasts, different publications or articles online where people are just being introduced to you)...   ...those are other indicators that you probably got the shadow traffic that's looking for your brand online.   Mike: And tell me if you think this sounds familiar?   You get introduced to someone, maybe through a Facebook ad or some kind of social post, and maybe you follow them a bit.   Maybe you opt into their funnel…   And then, one day you decide to look up something you saw them advertise…. you do a search for their name and their product…   And what comes up is their 25,000 dollar high ticket coaching application.   You're kind of brand new into this world, yet the thing they're leading with, (or Google's helping them lead with), is the funnel that's NOT appropriate for you at that point in time.   Steve: Straight to the 25 grand market.   Mike: If we could get those all day long without anything else   Steve: No one would build anything else!   Mike: Totally, but I think we can all relate to that scenario where it's like, this person has this really deep thing, but all I'm looking for is that thing, lead magnet, this thing they promised they could help me do…   ... and I can't find it anywhere! Right?   I'm ready to start dipping my toe in the water with you... and work my way towards that one-on-one 25,000 dollar Hawaiian vacation that we're gonna go on.   That's a scenario that I think a lot of us can relate to…   Where the FunnelHub comes in play to make sure it's very clear how your world and business works.   I think we see that happening more and more with a lot of people in this space. PUBLISH YOUR VALUE LADDER Russell, being a trailblazer that he is, at Funnel Hacking Live, what did he do? He did two things:   #1: He published his value ladder. First time ever.   Being in the inner circle, he had shared with us a number of months back…   About a year ago, he's like, “Guys, I'm working on my value ladder. I've promised the team that I will never change it for the foreseeable future.”   ...'Cause he's one of those guys, (just like a lot of us), that has a lot of good ideas... and he's constantly reorganizing what this means and looks like.   Steve: It took him like four months to get serious on that value ladder too. He changed it a million times.   Mike: Totally.   AJ:- All of us do, right?   Mike: It's a living breathing thing and that's a totally natural thing.   So the lesson isn't that you gotta lock it in place, but you do need to publish it... and you do need to help your people understand how they can move through your world.   They wanna know, they wanna buy, they want an offer, so making that clear is really key.   So we saw him put it on the screens and he published it. He printed 5000 plus versions of this thing, then distributed that to all of us so we could understand: How to live in his world. How to buy from him. How to associate ourselves with what he has to offer.   ...and that's really important for a lot of funnel hackers to pay attention to.   If you're not clearly communicating how to buy, people are going to make up their own story about what it is you do.   CLARITY EQUAL CASH   So the FunnelHub steps in place to really clarify what that is for people. So that way, they know how to move through your world.   Steve: Definitely! You know, there's a podcast episode I did a little while called Branding Comes Second. And I think when I said that, people heard, branding doesn't matter.   I was like, no, that's not what I said. It comes second. It comes way down the road…   In fact, there's a great book called Niche Down...   Once you have something that sells, once you have an amazing thing, you really should start looking at branding things.   I'm not throwing branding to the wind and saying it doesn't matter. I'm saying it's NOT what makes the sale…   But after the sale, it starts to matter for second and third sales.   One of the things that Russell taught me was that when people start saying cool things about you on Facebook or other places, start screenshotting it and keep a folder for it.   Start collecting those kinds of things for in the future, so you can go back and already have assets ready for essentially a FunnelHub.   What assets should somebody start collecting if they're not quite ready FunnelHub yet?   What should people be collecting along the way that makes it attractive and easy to build one?   Mike: Well the cool thing is that Russell's kind of outlined a lot of that in Expert Secrets.   AJ: Yeah, absolutely, that plan's already out there about establishing the attractive character, about creating the future-based cause, about creating new opportunities.   So what we find is a lot of people are aware of that, (and they might be communicating a lot that through their funnels), but for somebody that comes to their website... they're not seeing any of that.   They don't get that full picture.   So this is also helping people just do what Russell says and making sure that all of that stuff that they've worked hard on is put in a spot where people can actually see it, feel something for that movement... feel like they're part of that movement... and want to be part of it.   Mike: As you're working through those things and coming up with your:   Future-based cause Manifesto Value ladder False beliefs   … these are ALL the pieces that need to be represented there.   That's why this isn't just some fancy, “Oh, Russell killed websites, so let's call it something else,” type move.   Steve: No not at all.   Mike: This is very much about how do you align the important lessons from what we've learned in Expert Secrets and what we do as building an expert business and having that place where all this belongs.   This isn't just for the people who might land on that page and your audience.   It's for you as the expert to really have something to point at.   I know that there have been times where I've written my manifesto and re-wrote it. And I’d have like four or eight versions of it in my Google Drive…   Which one of them is the right one?   Being able to point to my FunnelHub and say:   This is the right one This is what I'm standing for This is who I'm throwing rocks at   … that's what takes that nebulous thing and really solidifies it … for not just the audience, but for the expert too.   Steve: Totally! So you're collecting those things along the way.   Again, a value ladder is a marketing idea and there are different products that represent that idea along this FunnelHub...   The FunnelHub is a representation of all the marketing idea that you have that's not just a value ladder... it's a manifesto and the title of liberty that you hold up and wave the flag around with. It's really such an awesome platform to do that on.   This is the unveiling of SteveJLarsen.com!   STEVE J LARSEN: THE ORIGIN STORY   The guy who owned SteveLarsen.com wanted like 30 grand, or whatever... and I was like, ‘There's no way!”   So Stephen Joseph Larsen was available, so I bought it and I built it … and it was terrible!   It's always poorly represented of what I do, and now it’s rebuilt. So do you want to walk us through it?   Mike: Yeah, we'd love to.   AJ: We're super proud of this, man.   Steve: It's incredible! I think I ran around the house a few times when I saw it the first time. Look at that!   Mike: Here we go. First things first, is I think we're going to have to get a picture of you with a proper beard here now.   AJ: Photoshop that in or something.   Steve: Yeah.   Mike: This FunnelHub is really designed to help guide people through the journey that they have with you.   A big part of that is helping them understand the programs and offerings that you have and really providing that piece.   So we've obviously got the events…   These are the things that people want to know about you:   They want to know who you are and what you stand for, and that's like one of the reasons we the manifesto that you've adopted here letting people know what you stand for. In programs, we've published your value ladder with this cool little graphic to help people see what steps someone can move through… being able to click on these things.   Steve: I'm so excited for people to see this. I guarantee most of them don't even know half that exists.   Mike: How many people listening to this knew you had, how many people knew about FunnelStache? They may have come in another funnel…   Obviously, a hundred percent of the people reading this right now know about Sales Funnel Radio, but there is an opportunity to ascend those people through the other things that you offer.   If you didn't know, Stephen is the offer creation king.   Clarify in your mind that he's the category king of helping someone clarify and launch an offer to the world…. And that's what this FunnelHub is really driving at.   As cool and as amazing as the podcast is, (and the stories that are told), at the end of the day, they're all in service to really building Stephen as the king of the offer creation.   It's NOT about funnels.   We use funnels, yes, but it's about, “How do we leverage the offer?” And that's really what this is doing.   AJ: Yeah, one thing I'd mention on this page is that this is a living breathing thing.   I feel like a lot of people feel like they can't get started with this unless they've got this all planned out and they know everything about their value ladder…   But this can change…   This is electronic. Unlike Russell printed 5,000 copies of his value ladder... this is just a graphic that we can update.   So if you have a smaller value ladder right now, and you know it's going to get bigger, give us what you've got and we can communicate that, and as it grows we can continue to add that later as well.   Steve: Yeah I'll say the thing that I was really kind of relieving to me was when you guys said that it could change. When we first started working together, I was feelin’ I can't ever change it! It's permanent. It's like a book, it will be printed... it cannot stop ever.   AJ: It's NOT a tattoo.   Mike: Absolutely, so one thing that we haven't touched much on is the media and speaking opportunities…   DO YOU HAVE A BLOG? One thing that I keep on hearing people say as it relates to their own website is they just call it a blog.   A blog is one component of a FunnelHub. It's one piece of that.   And so when you just reduce your web presence to just, “Hey it's where I publish my blog,” ...there's so much more that should be there.   We're not putting that there just for the just for fun, it's actually to help people understand:   What you do What you stand for   So our mission here with the FunnelHub is to help people understand that it's much more...   A FunnelHub is much more than a blog. It's much more than a website. It's really helping to help paint that entire picture that needs to be shown.   It’s even a big part of a traffic strategy and it's a big part of a Dream 100 Strategy. That it's NOT something that just kind of gets left off to the side.   AJ: - Yeah, I have an example of somebody in the Inner Circle, I'm not gonna mention her name, but she had an opportunity to appear on a pretty big podcast... and they went and searched for her name online, and they didn't like what came up. So they pulled that opportunity away from her.   So if she’d have had a FunnelHub that clearly outlined her movement, who she was, had all the credibility indicators that they were looking for to feel comfortable to welcome her on their show... then she would've been able to take advantage of the earned traffic there.   Steve:  So awesome. I love that you guys asked me, “What are all the questions that people ask you over and over and over again?”   You put that in there…   There's a FAQ…it's awesome. It helps support everything that I'm doing. Anyway, I'm excited.   Everything is going to have Steve J Larsen in it.   Mike: And kind of like to bring it full circle, what's cool about helping this audience, and coming from the point of view where we have our own expert business, is that we get that the experts are really busy and have a lot on their plate….   The fact that we got Stephen J. Larsen to dedicate some time to work on this project among all the other things you do, is amazing... But really, what we asked you to do is pretty minimal.   Steve: Oh, that's what was shocking to me. There's people who have asked stuff like that, and I'm like, “Ahhhh!”   I was excited to do this, but I think we had like three meetings and you just caught the vision and went and did it. It's rare.   Everybody listening and watching... it's rare to have somebody who clearly understands like FunnelHub/ websites, but then, also funnels and the funnel world and the roles between the two.   That’s rare. I don't see that often. So it was neat. You guys just took it and ran. It was really cool.   Mike: That's something we see as a unique aspect we provide:   Being in the Inner Circle Building our own funnels Having an agency that's done this for 16 years.   It's kind of an “Ah-ha,” and I almost feel guilty... or dumb, for not really thinking of this sooner.   They say there's a reason for everything... you know, some kids take the slow path through school, and that would be me.   Being in the inner circle as long as we have, the timing was just right around this.   AJ: For a long time, we never even talked about that side of the business. We just went to the inner circle asking for advice on our expert business and getting a lot of tips with that.   They didn't even know we had this agency.   So this is like a coming out for us, not only in the inner circle but everybody else in the Funnel Hacking community... like, “Hey, we've got an agency that can help you with all this stuff.”   Steve: Totally awesome. Where can people get information?   I know about half of my audience is already killin' it... and this actually would very much apply to them.   The other half, they're kind of brand new, which is great and “Welcomed,”  just know this is also what's in store.   ...where should people reach out?   Mike: Absolutely, so the best place to connect with us regarding this is FunnelHub.xyz. Yes, you can get an XYZ domain name!   Steve: I didn't know that.   Mike: And now we know that too…   But on that page, you'll find a lot of information about what we're talking about here today, also a little bit of video preview of Stephen's website.   You guys who are not watching the video, just head over to FunnelHub.xyz ...and you can kind of get the whole story there, as well.   Steve: Yeah, it's cool too, because they took the reins, they went and built it all out, and then I just did a critique... like, “Hey change this vernacular or whatever.”   They're always there, even on a monthly basis, for when I reach back out and say, “Hey, my product's changed... this has changed,” so nothing is cemented. That very much was like, “Ahh…” That helped me a lot.   Mike: As much as I would love to credit for the design or putting this whole thing together, it was absolutely our team here that helped out with that.   Jill one of our project coordinators played a major role in jockeying that. So, what's cool is, even though we're busy running our own expert business, you have access to the team that can make that happen.   Steve: You have a pretty big team too.   Mike: We have a team of 20 people here in Tucson, Arizona. So right outside this door right here, Jill's office is right there.   We've got the team that shows up to work every day to do this kind of stuff. That's something we're really proud of that and really proud of our team.   I hope that you guys can see the labor of love through the FunnelHub that was created for Stephen.   Steve: Totally! You all know that we focus heavily on hiring the who that knows the how.   Entrepreneurship is NOT about you learning how to play EVERY instrument in the orchestra. It's about you being the orchestrator. You're the conductor.   I want you to understand clearly that the who to FunnelHubs is definitely Mike and AJ.   Go to FunnelHub.xyz and check them out. They are the experts, they birthed a lot of this concept. You're getting it right from the horse's mouth.   Guys, thanks so much for being on with this. This was awesome.   BOOM!   If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?   That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.   So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.   Wanna come?   There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.   Again, that's OfferMind.com.