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Podcast: Emerson Automation Experts (LS 23 · TOP 10% what is this?)Episode: Building Cybersecurity Robustness in Pipeline Operations PodcastPub date: 2024-07-25Manufacturers and producers across all industries know the challenges in keeping their operations cyber-secure. Industries such as pipeline transportation and electrical & gas distribution networks face additional challenges in the wide geographic spread of their operations and the need for reliance on public communications networks. In this podcast, I'm joined by Emerson cybersecurity expert Steve Hill to discuss these additional challenges and ways the companies in these industries, suppliers, and federal regulators are collaborating to develop and implement best practices for strong cyber resiliency. Give the podcast a listen and visit the SCADA Solutions & Software for Energy Logistics on Emerson.com and the AspenTech Digital Grid Management page for methods and solutions to improve your cybersecurity defenses and ongoing programs. Transcript Jim: Hi, everyone. This is Jim Cahill with another “Emerson Automation Experts” podcast. Pipelines cover a wide geographic area and require continuous monitoring for safe, efficient, and reliable operations. Today, I’m joined by Steve Hill to discuss the challenges pipeline operators face in keeping their pipeline networks cybersecure. Welcome to the podcast, Steve. Steve: Thanks, Jim. Pleasure to be here. Jim: Well, it’s great to have you. I guess, let’s get started by asking you to share your background and path to your current role here with us at Emerson. Steve: Thanks, yeah. I’ve been in the automation and SCADA industry for about 40 years, started on the hardware design and communications that then moved over to software. And it’s nearly 20 years I’ve been with Emerson. I joined as part of the Bristol Babcock acquisition. My main focus now is working in wide-area SCADA as the director of SCADA Solutions for Emerson, and most of that’s working in the oil and gas industry, working with Emerson sales and the engineering teams and our customers as they design systems and products for the industry. And also, alongside that, for the last few years, I’ve been collaborating with CISA. That’s the U.S. government Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as part of the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative. Jim: Okay. That’s a nice, varied background. That’s really good for our discussion. So, what exactly do you mean by wide-area SCADA? Steve: That’s a great question. There’s a SCADA system where the software is monitoring equipment across a very wide area. It might be a very large geographic area, like a pipeline or gas, or water distribution network, or perhaps a well field. I mean, some of the systems, for example, I was speaking to a customer last week who is monitoring an entire pipeline across Peru, and yet, their control centers are actually in Mexico. So, to do that kind of thing, the equipment is usually connected via public networks. You know, private networks don’t extend that far, and even the control centers may be widely distributed. And as part of that, compared to in-plant control, there’s an assumption that your communications are clearly not gonna be 100% perfect. You’re gonna lose communications either momentarily, like with cellular networks, and when, for example, like we’ve got in Texas this week, with natural events like hurricanes can cut communications for hours. But because these systems are all critical infrastructure, such as pipelines or electrical distribution, the actual operations, the process, must never be interrupted. Today, we’re talking about cybersecurity, and that same sensitivity is why these systems are now the target to some of the most sophisticated cyberattacks. Jim: Okay, that gives a picture of the breadth of these types of SCADA systems, and you had mentioned you’d work with CISA, the cybersecurity infrastructure defense agency, and the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, which I’ll just call JCDC for short. Can you give some more examples on that work? Steve: Yeah. Really, I could give you a bit of background. Probably many of our listeners know that there’s been several successful cyberattacks against critical infrastructure over the last few years. Probably the most famous in the pipeline industry was an attack that’s referred to as the Colonial Pipeline attack. That was actually a criminal ransomware attack that resulted in gasoline and jet fuel shortage across the Eastern U.S. for several days, and that was criminals basically trying to get money. And it was almost a random attack, it wasn’t targeted. However, there have been actual state-sponsored attacks, and probably the one that was most successful was prior to the Russian military attack against Ukraine. They actually instituted several successful cyberattacks against the Ukrainian power grid. And very concerning is, in recent months, the U.S. infrastructure, including pipelines, have been successfully infiltrated by a group that are called Volt Typhoon, who are thought to be from the People’s Republic of China. So JCDC and CISA are working hard to really counter and protect against these threats. Jim: Wow. Well, that’s clearly a huge concern. What is the JCDC doing to address these challenges? Steve: Well, in 2023, so last year, JCDC facilitated the development of something called the Pipeline Reference Architecture. Basically, Emerson, alongside other industry vendors and also pipeline operators, participated in the development of this Pipeline Reference Architecture, which I’ll refer to as the PRA. It’s a fairly short document that outlines the design and operating principles for SCADA systems in the pipeline industry. And one thing the government is keen to point out, it’s not a regulatory document, but it does set out the best principles and is intended as guidance for the industry. Really, they want to work with the industry to come up with best practices. Jim: Well, it sounds like this PRA is another set of standards to address cybersecurity. Why is another document needed in the industry where a bunch of standards exist now? Steve: Yeah, that’s a question I and other members get asked quite a lot. The main reason is that wide-area SCADA represents a very different set of challenges to traditional SCADA, which we refer to as inside the wire. So for example, a refinery or a manufacturing plant, everything is in one location. But as I mentioned before, wide-area SCADA has got a very wide displacement, physically. It also actually has a lot of remote field workers. There may be folks working on that system hundreds of miles from base, and you’re also using communications networks that are not even owned or operated by the owners of the pipeline. Though this PRA is really intended for the pipeline industry, clearly, it’s applicable to almost any wide-area SCADA, that’s water or electrical industry as well. Jim: Okay, that makes sense. So those are definitely challenges that don’t exist for more automation systems, as you say, inside the wire. Tell us more about how the PRA addresses these. Steve: Well, the big thing is segmentation, basically, taking the network and splitting it into different levels that represent different areas of the operation. For example, the internet would be what’s referred to as level zero, and moving all the way down to the bottom of the network, that’s level nine. And the levels in between that represent different levels of trust. Now, those who are familiar with cybersecurity and SCADA are probably familiar with something that is called the Purdue model, which I think first came out in the late 1980s, and that also splits up SCADA and control networks and actually business networks into different levels. However, when that came out, the internet was in its infancy. No one would ever have used the internet or even really public IP networks for their connectivity. So it doesn’t really take into account many of the things we take for granted today in these systems. So the PRA is intended to expand and take into account the reality that, for example, some of this critical data will actually be transiting across a public network, right? And in order to achieve that with this segmentation, we’re using a concept called Defense in Depth, right? And as you go down the different levels of the network, the assumption is you can trust each item on that network better. So, for example, on the internet, you don’t trust anything, but when you get down, let’s say, to the communications between an RTU [remote terminal unit] and a gas chromatograph on a local serial link, you might completely trust that. Now, it’s interesting, although that’s part of the PRA model, that does actually conflict with a security concept called Zero Trust, which is something that Emerson has really based our products on. But both zero trust and defense in depth are valid. Jim: Now, you had mentioned a couple of concepts I’d like to explore a little bit more in there, and let’s start with zero trust. Can you explain that concept to us? Steve: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Zero trust is a concept where any piece of equipment or software should trust nothing. Don’t trust anything else on the network, don’t trust the network to be safe, and it should not rely on anything else for protection. And historically, SCADA was protected, for example, by firewalls. You would use insecure products that were known to not be secure because they were developed perhaps 20 or 30 years ago and hide them behind firewalls, and that’s really how we’ve handled security today. But there’s a realization you can’t do that. So we now need to design products so that they don’t trust anything. But the reality is many of our customers, Emerson’s customers and pipeline operators, have devices that were installed perhaps 30 years ago. That’s the typical lifespan of some RTUs and controllers in this industry. So as a result, when you get down to the lower levels of the network, zero trust doesn’t work. So you do have to have levels of additional protection. So for example, if you had a Modbus link, which is basically insecure almost by design, that should be protected by additional levels of firewalls and so on. But if you’re designing a modern product, it should be designed so it doesn’t rely on anything else. And that’s the concept of zero trust. Jim: Okay, got it. So don’t trust anything. Everything must be proven out. And the other concept you talked about was defense in depth. So, what does that mean? Steve: Well, the phrase is most commonly used where we’re talking about a network with multiple levels in. So when you come from, for example, the internet into your business network, you would have a set of firewalls and what’s called the demilitarized zone. And then when you go from your business network down to your controls network, you’d have another set of firewalls. So it’s multiple levels of protection. However, that same concept should be used actually within products as well. And, in fact, Emerson takes that very seriously with our secure development lifecycle certifications, IEC 62443, and how we design those products. Jim: Well, that’s good. As you get those two and as you put in more modern technology, that it complies and has that cybersecurity built into mind there. So, can you give us an example of how it’s built in? Steve: Yeah. That great one. If I take, for example, the Emerson FB3000 RTU, that’s a flow computer and a controller device that’s designed specifically for the oil and gas industry, especially for pipelines, an obvious concern is that that may be attacked externally to modify the firmware. Now, at the first level, the RTU itself has secure protocols. It uses something called DNP3, which would, in theory, provide access to the device. But then the firmware, when we issue new firmware, we put it on a website so we have protection of the website, we also publish a hash, which is basically a unique key that the customer downloading the firmware can check. It hasn’t been modified by anyone attacking the website. But then, when they actually put it into the RTU, so they’re updating firmware, the RTU will check that that firmware was developed by Emerson and was intended for that device. It does that by certifying certificates on the load. Now, once it’s in the device and it’s running in the field, you might say, “Well, the task is done,” but there’s an additional level of protection. It will continually and on boot, check that firmware, make sure the certificate still matches, it’s not being changed. And if it has been changed, it will actually revert to a known good factory firmware that’s basically embedded in the device. So you can see that there’s really five or six different things all checking and ensuring that firmware in that device was not compromised. So basically, multiple levels within the device, and in addition, there’s multiple levels on the network. So the bad guys have to get through a lot of different levels to damage or compromise the device. And we’re trying to do that with everything we design today. Jim: Yeah. And with modern cryptography and making any change completely will change that hash and everything and make it impossible to slip something in without it being noticed. So that’s really a nice thing. Steve: Yeah. And the fact that even if it detects it, it then goes back to factory firmware, which may be a slightly older version, but your operation will keep running. It will keep controlling, which is a very nice feature. Jim: Yeah, that’s a great example there. I guess, going back to the PRA, what else does it include other than the segmentation that you discussed? Steve: There’s about 10 high-level principles that cover aspects of the design and operation of the SCADA system. And for each of these, there’s various examples and guidance on how to actually follow the principle in a real-world system. So, for example, there was a whole section on how to manage third-party devices in the contractors, because on a pipeline system, you’re almost certainly gonna have, for example, engineers from Emerson coming in from third parties. So it gives examples on the real-world aspects of operating the system. Jim: Are there other examples from it you can share? Steve: Yeah. One important one is when you’re designing the system, you should identify and document all of the different data flows that occur. And that’s, when I say data flow, communications or conversation between different pieces of equipment. So, for example, this RTU may communicate with that SCADA platform on this particular machine and may communicate with a measurement system on another machine, document all of those data flows, and then deny all other data flows by default. Then, after the system is running, continually monitor it passively. And if you see an additional communication, say, between two pieces of equipment that normally never communicated or didn’t communicate on a particular IP socket, flag that immediately, because it may be something that’s going on that was unexpected. It certainly was outside the original design of the system. Jim: This has been very educational. Thank you so much, Steve. Where can our listeners go to learn more? Steve: Well, really a couple of places. If you go to the CISA blog, which is at www.cisa.gov/news-events, there’s details there. The actual PRA was published on March the 26th of this year. And also, if you want to discover more about Emerson’s involvement in wide-area SCADA and the cybersecurity associated with it, if you go to Emerson.com/SCADAforEnergy, you’ll find some information there. Jim: Okay, great. And I’ll add some links to that and to some of the other things we discussed in the transcript. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Steve. Steve: Not a problem. It’s a pleasure. -End of transcript-The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Emerson Team, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

In this episode, Brian is joined by Steve Palmer, Founder & Managing Partner of The Indigo Road Hospitality Group. In addition to being a best-selling author, TEDx speaker, James Beard semifinalist, mental health advocate, and restaurateur, Steve is also the CVO (Chief Vision Officer) of Indigo. The Charleston based hospitality company has thoughtfully grown from one restaurant to more than thirty across the country, along with a growing portfolio of independent hotels. Tune in to hear who Steve Thanks for helping him along the way.

**Hosts:** Steve and Hallie---**Episode Summary:**Join Steve and Hallie on today's special solar eclipse edition of Astronomy Daily, as we embark on a celestial journey filled with interstellar insights and astronomical amazement. We celebrate the return of three cosmonauts from the ISS, marvel at the first-ever observation of a glory on an exoplanet, and delve into the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's mission to demystify stellar ages. Plus, we discuss the significance of the April 8th total solar eclipse, the wonders of space weather, and how you can participate in citizen science projects with NASA. Strap in for an episode that's out of this world, and remember to protect your eyes while witnessing the eclipse!---**Featured Topics:**1. **Cosmonauts' Safe Return:** Welcome home the three cosmonauts from their International Space Station mission, touching down in Kazakhstan with stories from the stars.2. **Exoplanetary Glories Revealed:** Discover the phenomenon of glories on WASP-76 b, an exoplanet where this light effect has been observed for the first time, challenging our understanding of atmospheric dynamics.3. **Aging Stars and the Nancy Grace Telescope:** Explore how the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will enhance our ability to measure the ages of stars through their rotation rates, refining our cosmic chronology.4. **The Solar Eclipse Spectacle:** Prepare for the awe-inspiring total solar eclipse sweeping across North America, a rare opportunity for scientists and stargazers alike to observe the sun's elusive corona.5. **Citizen Science with NASA:** Learn how you can contribute to space science from your backyard, as NASA invites everyone to participate in their citizen science projects during the heliophysics big year.---**Additional Information:**For daily updates on the mysteries of the cosmos, head over to astronomydaily.io and subscribe to our newsletter. Connect with us and fellow astronomy enthusiasts on the Space Nuts podcast group on Facebook and @astrodailypod on X. Your journey through the universe continues with us.---**Closing Remarks:**As we wrap up this episode under the shadow of the solar eclipse, we thank you for joining us on this cosmic adventure. Remember, safety first – protect your eyes and avoid standing in harm's way while enjoying the eclipse. Until next time, this is Steve and Hallie, signing off. Stay curious and keep your gaze skyward!---**Host Sign-off:** Steve: "Thanks for tuning in to Astronomy Daily. Keep looking up, and we'll catch you next time on this intergalactic ride. Clear skies, everyone!"Hallie: "See you in the funny pages, and remember, Steve really prefers 'weirdo'.

This episode is brought to you by our brilliant sponsor, XDEEP and the patrons of Speaking Sidemount. Huge thanks to both for their support that makes this podcast possible.  In this episode, I catch up for the third time with Thorsten Waelde or Toddy as he is known. I first met Toddy in Episode 24 when we did a deep dive into Toddy Style Sidemount. We caught up again in episode 44 to talk about his Utopia Exploration project in Sardinia only a few months after I had returned from my trip there. I've since been following Toddy's exploits with interest and when I saw the stunning work he was doing on the Bel Torrente exploration via a video on Toddy's YouTube channel (See link below), it was time to catch up and hear more. The amazing part of this project is that it is a multi-sump or siphon project where the cave under exploration has dry sections connected by flooded passages. The penetration length requires the exploration team to live underground for several days, staying at base camps in the dry sections as they progress further into the cave. This creates massive complications to the project, especially the logistics of moving the equipment required and the physical and mental application required is immense. In this episode, Toddy gives us an overview of the Bel Torrente project. He talks of the team he has assembled, the skills required before we get into the logistics of this project, the equipment, and the evolution of their procedures as they encountered new challenges and requirements at each section. We talk cave geology and the risk and danger of an accident deep in the cave before Toddy explains how he uses Seacraft Dive Propulsion vehicles and the new lightweight Seacraft GO that is easier to carry across the dry sections. We finish discussing the Cave Camps that Toddy runs at Protec Sardinia, where qualified cave divers can experience aspects of these projects by diving into a cave and spending a night at a base camp. The Cave Camps include workshops on how to use dry tubes to take equipment into the cave and a heap of time exploring the beautiful dry sections of the caves in Sardinia. I am super excited to check these out. Enjoy, cheers!! Steve Thanks to: Our Sponsor - XDEEP Thorsten "Toddy" Waelde - Protec Sardinia YouTube Video - Follow the Conger: Exploring the Bel Torrente Cave 

With August's milk production report in mind, the trading team gathered for another monthly mass balance and charting meeting. This month, though, we were blessed by two special guests: Steve Spencer and Vuko Karov from Freshagenda. Don kicked the meeting off by modeling domestic milk production and mass balance expectations for the rest of the year, with special focus on Q4. Then, we handed the reigns over to Steve and Vuko, who guided us through a workshopping version of their Dairy Trade Simulator (DTS). The Freshagenda team tested some ‘What if?' questions on their model and argued that market fundamentals suggest that we should see cheese futures over $2 soon. T3 countered with some points about difficult domestic freight and contractual obligations forcing cheese from high-growth areas. Then, to shift perspective entirely, Jacob suggested that historic correlations driving market fundamentals could break, and that there may be reason to feel bullish Class IV and bearish Class III after all. T3: Welcome back to The Milk Check. This month we return to our mass balance discussion with Don Street and the rest of the trading gang, and this time we have a couple of special guests: Steve Spencer and Vuko Karov from Freshagenda, an Australia-based supply chain and market analysis firm with some great data about how milk production and pricing may evolve in 2023. Welcome to this discussion, let's get started. Steve: Thank you. Vuko: Thanks so much. Steve: Thanks for having us in your meeting. We appreciate the opportunity to join the discussion, let's have some fun and see what it brings. T3: That sounds great. So Don, why don't you go ahead and lead us off. Don: All right, here we go. Balance update, August, 2022. So in spite of Ted being more accurate than I am on these projections and winning bourbon from me, I just want to say that if USDA would get the cow numbers right the first time, I'd be much more accurate. But June was revised downwards to where it was flat. I had actually had a negative 0.02 prediction, so I think that's reasonably close. And for Q2, which we finished down an average of 4/10 for a percent on milk. July finally goes positive. If that holds through the revision, when August is announced again, I was 2/10 of a percent over the 3/10 that was actually reported. Steve and Vuko, these are all 24 state numbers, not national numbers. I think I'm reasonably dialed in spite of the revisions, which brings us to August. I'm, at this point, thinking we'll be up 1% on milk, but the bottom line is that the cow herd will, in the couple of months, be higher than prior year instead of lower than prior year. Instead of being 60 or 78,000 cows below a year ago in August, when we see the numbers, we're going to be 25 to 30,000 cows below a year ago. And in September, we're going to more or less be equal. And then we start to see whether this grows or not. We're going to have more cows than we did in the prior year, which will contribute to higher milk production numbers. I've tried to recast this a little bit to just show you the impact, because June, July, we're up 8/10, one full percent on milk per cow, but fewer cows is the offset. In August, I think we'll be a little bit higher, mostly because of the poor performance of August '21. So I think we'll be up 1% on milk for August, but then I don't want to say that we're just going to continue to move higher but these changes in milk per cow are going to be 1.2, 1.3, maybe 1.4, but we're going to be something over 1%. And then you start to add more cows. And this is of whole certainty, unless we all of a sudden see a shrink in the herd that we don't anticipate because slaughter rates still seem to be lower, not higher. You're going to wind up with 1.4% more milk, maybe as much as 1.8 but somewhere in that range, but it'll be a marked difference than what we've experienced so far this year. Maybe just to take a look at components.

Summary On this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, Steve Kremer, Director of Sales in the Payments division at Diebold Nixdorf, and Sarah Grotta, Director of Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group, sat down with PaymentsJournal to discuss the most popular payment method, both in the United States and globally: Debit.  Listen in for a  discussion of why modernizing debit payments is crucial in both the banking and retail sectors. Related Content:  https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/banking/insights/blog/get-your-message-out https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/-/media/diebold/files/banking/insights/qa-faq/mindshare-payments-innovation.pdf Related Links: https://www.paymentsjournal.com/the-time-to-revitalize-debit-rails-is-now/ LinkedIn Profiles - Steve Kremer Sarah Grotta Transcription:  Speaker 1: On this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, DN Steve Creamer, Director of Sales in the Payments Division joins the PaymentsJournal's, Ryan Mac, for a discussion on why modernizing debit payments is crucial in both the banking and retail sectors. Speaker 2: Welcome to the PaymentsJournal Podcast. In here is your host, Ryan Mac Ryan: Welcome to the PaymentsJournal Podcast, I'm your host Ryan Mac. Now, debit is the most popular form of payment in the US and globally and it is influenced by the growing popularity of digital payments and preferences of millennials. Now, it is projected that debit transactions will continue to grow and remain the highest transaction type of consumer payment. Now, modernizing these payment systems will become table stakes. And solutions that have reusable technology that can support multiple channels are key when implemented in phases, especially when starting with one that has the high rewards and low risks, AKA debit. To unpack this further, I'm joined by Steve Creamer, who is the Director of Sales for the Payments Division at Diebold Nixdorf and Sarah Grotta who is the Director of the Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisor Group. So, there's certainly a lot of information to unpack on today's episode. Ryan: So, without any further delays, let's start the show. So, Steve and Sarah, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on today's episode. And I'm really excited to talk about our subject to hear today that's really focusing around debit because of all of the interesting news and statistics that we've started to see come out of just the debit side of the paintings' ecosystem here. Now, to get our conversation started here today, we've got this fantastic chart provided to us by Mercator Advisor Group that's taking a look at MasterCard and Visa Debit and prepaid volumes versus credit and charge card volumes in the United States. So, Steven, if you could, maybe you could kind of unpack this chart for our audience here today and maybe pull out some of the kind of the key highlights or what you find interesting of what this data is representing. Steve: Thanks, Ryan. In seeing this data, I really had to pause for a moment and let this information sink in. It certainly is very interesting that in United States, the dollar amount spent with debit cards increased by 14% in 2020, and also that debit card transactions continued to outpace credit cards two to one, the terms of number of transactions. We may all have our own personal bias on preference between debit and credit and some of us may have a preference for using credit over debit for certain types of transactions, but we need to be careful not to our own views, to administer relevance of the data on the continued strong debit usage. Steve: Did the impact of the pandemic and stimulus money have some impact on increase of debit usage in 2020? I think it did, but I also think that the pandemic also accelerated the consumer migration to digital payment channels and debit is still the most popular form of retail payment, and it's not going away at any time soon. Once you really look at the information that Sarah summarized so well, it really makes a lot of sense, especially when including the influence of younger generations that are growing in importance and how debit is leveraged on a global basis. Close to 83% of younger consumers use a debit card and not credit and that's understandable at their age. Many may have not had the ability to obtain credit, and they also seen or heard so many negative stories about how credit card debt that they formulate a consumer behavior outside of credit usage. Steve: Given the high percentage use of debit now, and with the ever-growing payment e-commerce options, we can really see why debit usage continues to grow. An important note is that the continued popular debit is by no means unique to United States. For instance, in India, I think there are 900 million debit cards versus only 55 million credit cards. And in Europe it varies by country, but debit continues to make a very, very strong showing. From a consumer convenience standpoint, we can see the advantages of using debit over other payment rails. And then finally for the retailer, there are real economic advantages of debit based processing solutions as debit interchange fees are typically much lower than for credit cards. I think at this point, it probably be good to turn over to Sarah and allow her to provide some additional insights into her report. Sarah: Yeah. Thanks so much for that. And really, I liked your overview, particularly the comparison with other countries. Certainly, I think the US is somewhat unique in its history, its legacy of being very credit card-focused that isn't necessarily the case around the world. And certainly, things like the economics play into that. The fact that particularly in the US, we really, really love those credit card rewards. So, it was kind of interesting, I agree, I think this was really pushed by the pandemic when we saw the debit card volumes for the first time tip over in above the credit card numbers. And let me clarify, looking at this chart, that we are looking at debit card purchases. We did make some calculations to extract some of the debit push payments, right? So, that would be MasterCard send or Visa Direct. Sarah: So, we're really looking at something closer to an apples-apples comparison of just debit card purchases from MasterCard and Visa in comparison to what's happening on the credit card side. So, I think as we look forward and as we start to see purchasing habits maybe coming back to something that looked a little bit more like pre-pandemic patterns, so more things like purchases for eating out purchases, for travel in particular, I think that we'll start to see the credit card numbers start to come back up again. But I do think for many of the reasons that you pointed out Steve, I think that we will still continue to see very, very strong debit card growth for the foreseeable future. Ryan: Steven and Sarah, thank you so much for that. Now, to kind of just recap a lot of what was said there, obviously historically, in the US we have seen debit cards outpace credit in terms of transaction volumes. But also, then as we were kind of pointing out, in 2020, we did see that percentage gap changed dramatically with debit card volume seeing that 14% growth over 2019 numbers. Now, Steven, as you pointed out, I think that there's a fair amount of that double digit growth was related and due to the pandemic. And as Sarah kind of stated there at the end that she foresees this growth in debit being a continuing trend. But beyond the pandemic, are there other reasons that you could kind of sight or maybe glean to, of why it is that debit may remain a preferred payment method of choice for consumers? Steve: Yeah. Ryan, I think that's a great question. And in that, I think it's always important to keep the customer experience in the forefront. And the thing about debit is that it's a 24/7 always-on experience. Consumers expect to seamlessly get cash out of, if they're using an ATM or if they're making a purchase, they expect it to be approved right away. And that's true if it's in-person or if it's a debit being used online. As noted in Sarah's report, 40% of debit transactions, I think in US were made in a card-not-present mode. So, consumers want to make sure their cards and data are safe and that they can quickly pay for what they want. But what we're hearing from our customers, both banks and retailers, but primarily the banks, are that the debit networks are being challenged with new payment types and they're spending a lot of time and money on the overall upkeep and maintenance of their debit networks. Steve: As you know, the debit system has been around since the early 1970s and many of the systems that are used to process these cards have really not changed since, or if they have, it's been for band aid updates for their old technology. Legacy debit payment platforms were designed to quickly and securely approve and process of payment or withdrawal, which has always been authenticated with a card. The future payments is not so straightforward. The method of authentication may be different based on the channel, for example, tokens, biometrics, things like that. And the funding could combine payment methods including 'buy now pay later', or other variations. Modernizing this payment infrastructure, and not necessarily just the debit side, is really the key for banks to remain relevant. Steve: Diebold Nixdorf has been a global leader in the processing of debit-based solutions for the last 40 years. And now we're leveraging this experience with our Vynamics payment solution. Vynamics payments is a modern system that it's built using cloud-native technology and microservices architecture that allows banks and processors to not only improve their debit channel, but quickly and efficiently handle other newer payment types and innovations like request to pay and buy now pay later. Which is where we see things moving, will help kind of perpetuate the predominance of debit going forward. Just time out. I'll turn it back over to Sarah for her insights on that same question. Sarah: Yeah. I think that the whole idea of core and payment modernization is really very interesting. And sort of tying that back to debit, it is kind of interesting even though to your point, debit has been around for a really long time. There are still things that we can do as an industry to improve that user-experience, that kind of dovetails into the ideas and concepts around modernizing the infrastructure. So, I talk to issuers about things like making sure that they can digitally issue debit cards as an example, so that they could really make that seamless transition for immediate account acquisition or provide a really great experience should a debit card ever get lost or stolen, or for whatever reason needs to be replaced. So, I think that's a very interesting part of the payment ecosystem right now, is sort of the intersection of things like debit cards and more modern infrastructure. Ryan: Yeah. So, I think that it's really interesting. And one of the keywords that I kind of hear a lot is that the modernization side of things here, and obviously as we continue to look as Sarah pointed out to kind of add enhancements to kind of really improve that consumer experience here. And then Steven, at the end of your commentary, you had broadened up a little bit about your organization, Diebold Nixdorf here, and how it's kind of going through a little bit of modernization here and what it's doing to help their consumers. So, I want to dive into that a little bit more because I think it's certainly fine to talk about it at a high level, but I really kind of want to get into some specifics. And with your insight into the industry, maybe you can give us a few more examples of what you're seeing that your customers are doing to revitalize kind of their debit rails, so to speak. Steve: Yeah, that's a great point, Ryan. Thank you for asking. Really when, when Diebold Nixdorf set out to develop our next generation payments platform, we try to approach payments with a fresh perspective. We ask where would it make the biggest impact and provide the greatest opportunities for our clients? And as you ask, as an example, we recently began a multi-year, multi-phase implementation with a top 10 US bank. This bank is using Vynamic payments to deliver substantial TCO benefits to their organization. They are currently using our terminal software as well as our device handling in the Vynamic's platform for approximately 16,000 ATM's. And the bank has also started to deliver on their roadmap to provide switching and cloud processing as the next phase in their migration to Vynamic payments. Steve: And by doing this, they're taking a modular multi-phase approach and we have successfully maximized their greatest opportunity, which in their case started with the debit rails. And now, we have laid a foundation to scale for the future. In the age of technology, limitations on handling the current demand of transactions and the expense for trying to keep it up-to-date has oftentimes made the debit network the best place to start. And at Diebold Nixdorf, our cloud-native microservices architecture has enabled new functionality, such as handling the card-not-present transactions and digital wallet-based transactions. Steve: We also add the ability to reuse certain components or services such as authorization, routing, and authentication, that provides a single platform that can easily transition to credit or real-time payments or other payment rails. It's truly a build once but use often design that will reduce over-operational costs and pre-speeder market for alternative payment methods. And I'll turn over to Sarah for her perspective on that. Sarah: Yeah, actually, I think I've got another question for you given those comments, if you don't mind. I hear a lot of financial institutions in particular, talking about the need to modernize their technology infrastructure so that they can be more responsive, particularly at the user-experience layer, thinking about things like breaking down silos to better manage data and better manage data for fraud. But when financial institutions are thinking about modernizing their infrastructure, do you see that payments is often an instigator for a lot of these modernization demands or the idea that financial institution wants to move forward with a modernization project? Steve: Sarah, I think it does. And I know I threw on this term 'build once, use often' is kind of a code word for modernization, and it does sound simple enough to build once and use often. However, really the benefits are very, very powerful and widespread. As we talked about with mobile and contact-less payments, continuing to grow and support for QR codes, digital currencies, request to pay and peer to peer payment applications are added, many larger banks are opting to build separate in-house silos to process these new payment types. And given the large number of dedicated channels that are required to process this vast array of payments, it quickly becomes a very complex undertaking that generates significant cost to support. Steve: Meanwhile, smaller banks are tackling the same challenge by outsourcing services to vendors. While this may work in a short term, it too, can become very expensive and really stifles differentiation and creates barriers to innovation with this 'build once, use often' as the goal to consolidate these single use channels by deploying a payments platform, it is built with the microservice architecture and API connectivity. These platforms really do enable banks to realize the desired end state of building once, but using across multiple payment rails. And to be a bit more specific, if a bank's priority is to start with the modernization of their debit platform, which is part of our topic today, and by the way, often is a logical place to start given that 1st Generation debit payment platforms are quite cumbersome and channel specific. Steve: And really these older debit platforms are edging closer to critical [Inaudible], and effectively the end of life. There are many ways that 'build once, use often' methodology yields significant benefits to the deploying institution. And some examples of that is to add credit to the same system that's used for debit, the settlement and clearing services can really be reused. Another example is in the fraud area where fraud mitigation and some of the limiting safeguards can be implemented once and then used often across multiple channels. Steve: So, with Vynamic payments, we're able to later on the promise of 'build once, use often'. And Diebold Nixdorf is really kind of moving digital payments processing to a new era, introducing an open APIs integrating with best of breed FinTech solutions across banking and retail, and really delivering seamless customer-centric journeys on a state of the art platform. So, quite simply, it is a great time to speak with Diebold Nixdorf about the future of retail payments. Ryan: Excellent Steven, I think that was absolutely fantastic. And I think we'll end it there on that note. Oh, so, Steven, Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time today for speaking to us about the debit rail here and also the very interesting consumer changes that we've seen in the industry of the debit versus credit. And I hope to have you both back on the podcast real soon. Steve: Pleasure. Sarah: Thanks Ryan.

Steve Denker, most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies, chats with Rob at the virtual 2021 South by Southwest. In this interview, he gives his perspective on what he looks for when “working with agencies.”  In the mid-90s, Steve worked for Aramark at Fulton County Stadium/Turner Field, managing relationships with the brands and products that were part of that stadium experience. He observed how fans interacted with Coca-Cola and highlighted opportunities for Coke to increase sales and strengthen the link between the experience and the product. Coca-Cola liked his approach and brought him onboard to develop the experiential look and feel of Coca-Cola in a wide variety of venues.  After a while, Steve understood that Coca-Cola was large enough that it would be a long time before he would have the opportunity to manage people, explore the emerging field of digital marketing, and gain product sales experience.  He took a position with RentPath, leading the marketing and advertising outreach for apartment guide publications at Apartment.com. From 2001 to 2008, Steve worked directly with companies that “touched” the rental process . . . selling digital advertising to utilities, renters' insurance companies, and movers and helping people find the right place to live. “Moving is an incredibly stressful time,” Steve says. In 2011, Steve joined Relocation.com, doing lead generation and business development out of New York. He connected with an individual who owned the Beach.com domain. Together, they planned to build the world's largest and most comprehensive database of beach and beach destination information. When heavy competition from Travelocity and Expedia prevented Beach.com from getting the desired level of traffic and sales, Steve decided it was time to move again. He values his involvement in this “failed venture.” “I can't tell you the lessons learned from that experience I have taken through everything else I've done, both personally and professionally.” All that “good stuff” found its place when Steve joined a consulting firm in Atlanta. (Steve's Beach.com partner still manages the reimagined site.) In 2016, an old buddy from his Coca-Cola days invited him to build a marketing department at Turner Classic Movies. Steve was at TCM for 4-1/2 years. Outsiders may think large organizations have such a wealth of internal resources that they don't need help from agencies. Far from the truth, Steve says. Agencies are important for their unique talents, expertise, efficiencies, and ability to help “execute the vision.” Steve describes what he looks for in agencies. Once agencies get past the first cut of “Do they have the ability to do what we need them to do?”, he needs to know that they “either already understand our business and who our customers are or have the capacity to understand that in a very short period of time.” He thinks organizational leaders need to have a laser focus on what they are trying to accomplish and understand both functional and emotional business priorities. Steve recently started thefasttimes.net, a weekly culture e-zine for Gen-Xers and wannabes, and reaching out on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and continuing in our South by Southwest series, I am speaking today with a friend, a friend of the podcast, and not an agency owner but a marketer with a tremendous history that I think we will all benefit greatly from. My guest is Steve Denker. Steve was most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies. He's based in Atlanta like me, but we are still in COVID quarantine, talking online. Welcome to the podcast, Steve. STEVE: Thank you, Rob. Thanks for having me. It's been great running into you at local marketing and industry events over the past probably 8+ years, and at South by. Hopefully I'll have a chance to work with Converge and/or Bellwood Labs in the future. ROB: I appreciate that. I think I met you one fine day when you wandered into the Flashpoint Startup Accelerator here in Atlanta in the season of Beach.com. At least, that's a memorable moment in your career. But you've done a great deal of things. Why don't you start off by running through your journey and path in marketing, to give us an idea of the context you come to us from? STEVE: Sure, thank you. And I do remember that day when we met downtown. I started out – I'll back the train up a couple of stops. I grew up in Philadelphia and went to school in New York and came down to Atlanta in the mid-90s for a company called Aramark that was responsible for the concessions, the merchandise, and general operations at stadiums and arenas around the country, among some other businesses that they're in. I started working at Fulton County Stadium and eventually what became the new Turner Field. My position really was more in an operations role, but I was responsible for the relationships with all of the brands and products that were part of that stadium experience. I was working with the Budweisers and Starbucks and Bluebell Ice Cream, Coca-Colas of the world. Any product that was looking to get in front of those fans. It's interesting how I eventually used that relationship to transition to a role at Coca-Cola because I was watching the fans and seeing what they were doing at every game. I had the opportunity to watch their behaviors and see their traffic paths and their buying habits and so forth. So when Coca-Cola brought a team down once or twice a season to take a look at their assets, I had the opportunity not just to nod my head and say, “Yeah, the umbrellas are faded” or “We need new menu boards,” but really share with them what was going on and how the fans were interacting with Coca-Cola and how it was part of the experience to watch a Braves game. By putting together some plans and sharing with them where I thought they could not only accelerate sales, but also make the brand more part of the experience, I caught the attention of a few folks within that sports and marketing group, at the time called Presence Marketing. Not long after the Olympics, I transitioned over to that group at Coca-Cola and was then part of that experiential look and feel of Coca-Cola at stadiums and arenas, Disney, Universal, and so forth, in a creative capacity. It was a terrific move. The group was run by Steve Koonin, who is just Atlanta royalty and the CEO of the Hawks and State Farm Arena. He really was bringing so many innovations to this group and to the way that Coke was marketed. I was really fortunate to be part of that team and that group. From there, a couple of years later, I had an opportunity to go to a company most recently called RentPath. At the time it was called PriMedia. Also here in Buckhead. What was missing at Coke at that time when I left – I think there were three things I was really looking for that were going to take a while. I was looking to manage people and learn how to do that. I felt that was a good next step for my career. That would've taken a while within that multinational structure. Digital was something that, in the early 2000s, was really the forefront of what the next part of marketing was. Coke wasn't paying as much attention to it as other companies were. Then finally, I was looking for something that would give me real sales experience, not just internally and working with other groups, but actually selling products. Again, I thought that would be something at the early stage of my career that I would learn and use for the rest of my days in terms of working in any capacity. So RentPath offered those and more, and I went over and led the marketing and advertising for the apartment guide publications at Apartment.com. This was early on lead gen and getting folks into and around their apartments, their living situations. It was really interesting, because it was working directly with any company that has to do with that process, whether it's your utilities and your phone, renter's insurance, physically moving – anything like that were opportunities for myself and my team to sell advertising to. These were the early days of digital advertising, if you can imagine: banner ads with CPMs of $60-75 and relatively no accountability. Not even serving accountability. Forget about click-through rates; did you actually serve the ads I just paid for? That was even, at the time, a little murky. Companies just wanted to be part of it. As long as they went onto the website and saw their ad, they said, “Keep serving it.” It was really interesting to see the growth of the industry from, again, banner ads and text ads to what it is today – particularly at that time of 2001 through 2008, when it really exploded into the framework of what we see today with data and analytics and accountability. It was exciting to see that grow. I left for a company called Relocation.com, which was lead generation and business development out of New York. I'd spend a week a month in New York and then back to Atlanta again. I connected with someone in New York who owned the Beach.com domain, and we had plans to build the world's largest database of beach information. Not just every beach in the world, but hotels, vacation rentals, restaurants, activities, local information, local concierge services – really anything that would have to do with a beach destination or vacation, and build out this massive portal. At the time in 2011, this is when people really were using Travelocity and Expedia. There was heavy competition from these other sites. We went ahead and raised some money, built a plan, and it just didn't take off. It didn't get to the level in terms of traffic and converting users into revenue and sales that we had hoped for. All shook hands a few years later, back in 2013, and the site is still live right now. My partner at the time is still running it with a couple of different objectives. But I can't tell you the amount lessons learned from that experience I have taken through everything else I've done, both personally and professionally. I look back at that and have no regrets on taking that business risk. I think if we had done a couple of things differently – many things differently – we would've had a different outcome. But again, we pivoted. A lot of key learnings from that that I've been fortunate enough to share with other folks. That's what I did after that at a consulting firm here in Atlanta and had some great client relationships with companies like PDS and a company called AGRO Merchants Group, a healthcare company, we did some work with Blackstone. Eventually, one of my earliest relationships from Coca-Cola, a woman named Jennifer Dorian, who is a mentor and a friend and could not be a bigger rock star – she's now the CEO over at Atlanta Public Broadcasting & Radio. She was on Steve Koonin's team as well. I worked with her in the Coca-Cola days and had stayed in touch with her really for 20 years. We were having coffee or lunch once or twice a year just to catch up and so forth. She at the time was general manager of Turner Classic Movies and gave me a call and said, “Hey, we're looking to build a marketing department and expand what we've been doing.” This was in late 2016. She said, “Would you like to come over and interview with a bunch of people?” I did that, and a couple of months later I had moved over to Turner and had an amazing four and a half years there. ROB: It's quite a journey. I think it's interesting to point out that all the way through Beach.com, and probably a little bit after that as well, you were in early on the customer journey. Moving, to an extent, is kind of the ultimate customer journey. You combined that in the digital space. You mentioned the high CPM, but the customer lifetime value is also quite high if you can get somebody into an apartment for a couple of years. STEVE: Absolutely. That's a great point. Not only is it part of that initial customer journey – wherever that came from and whatever company claimed to own that verbiage and so forth, it was the beginning of that – but it was also, I think, a very critical time when working with customers. I was working in industries where you really can't screw it up. In other words, moving is an incredibly stressful time. If someone doesn't find the right apartment, if you haven't given them all the information – and again, we were the connector. We weren't the apartment complex, but we were certainly helping them find that right place. But if they didn't move into the right place, if they found out it was an hour commute from where they worked and they didn't realize that, or if they moved into a place in Alpharetta and their friends were all in Buckhead and they didn't realize it was a 45-minute drive, not 10 – all of these different things, they looked back and they were upset with us and the recommendations we made. And on the moving side, same thing. Again, it's very stressful. If that moving truck doesn't show up on time – think about all the things physically connected to moving your stuff. You're trying to time everything out on a particular moving day. It could be hooking up utilities or having to be out of one place and into another. If something isn't right and you realize that all of your possessions are now on an 18-foot U-Haul and that is broken down on the side of a road, it's not good. So I think it's understanding how important it is to take care of the customer and really understand what it is emotionally they're going through when they're finding a place to live, when they're physically moving. At Beach.com, it was your vacation. Most people have two weeks a year, and that vacation is very important for them to recharge and connect with family or friends. It's an important part of your life. If somehow I was part of an organization that screwed that up, it was on me, and it was something that I took very seriously. ROB: Definitely a lot at stake there. Steve, one thing I think you can shed particularly interesting light on is maybe your time at TCM. You have a unique perspective for a guest on this podcast. You're kind of on the other side of the table from the marketing agency, so I think it would be interesting to explore TCM through the lens of what that brand–agency relationship can look like. STEVE: Sure. Absolutely, I'd love to do that. At TCM, we really looked at ourselves as part of the larger Warner Media portfolio. I think every brand looks at themselves as their own business, and we were certainly no different in that we had a very clear set of objectives and goals in terms of growing our brand to the audience, making sure that people not only tuned in and watched, but also couple participate in other ways if they didn't have TCM on cable. Now there's HBO Max and ways to watch, but also, there are a lot of other events and other enterprise businesses that TCM was a part of. Running all these events, I think some people from the outside may look at a company like Warner Media, AT&T being the parent, and say, “Oh, there's got to be so many resources within the company that there wouldn't be a need to tap into agencies.” That couldn't be further from the reality. I've worked with agencies for a very long time; they bring unique talent to a company like Warner Media and particularly TCM. We would work with agencies for their expertise, for their efficiencies, and for them to help us execute the vision. They were a very important part of what we did. We had a couple of different ways we could structure relationships. Certainly, there were some contractors or freelancers that could come in for some very small projects or very specific projects that maybe had to do with production or one part of a creative execution. But for the most part, working with agencies was something that we did, and we worked with a couple of Atlanta agencies that really knocked it out of the park for us. On the TCM side, early on when I started, we had a product called FilmStruck, which was this amazing streaming service of independent, foreign, and arthouse films. It was the first streaming service that Turner had launched, and eventually it was shut down to make way for HBO Max. But as we launched it, we worked with Nebo here in Atlanta. This team really dove into that customer journey and what the needs were, really end-to-end, of generating subscriptions and long-term value from those users, and ways to distribute and share what we were offering and get it out there. Again, these were not things that internally we had access to. I think a lot of us had pieces of the puzzle in our backgrounds and we had some very good folks internally that had acquisition experience, subscription acquisition experience even. But tying it all together – if you think about every customer touchpoint from copy for the website, both the frontend and the backend, things like thank you emails, things like the weekly newsletters and drip campaigns to get people excited about new content and new programming coming, ways to reengage folks, knowing how much time they're spending on the service and ways to get them excited about spending more time, sharing with friends, seasonal deals like “Hey, get this for someone for Mother's or Father's Day or a holiday subscription” – all of these different occasions to buy and reasons to stay are things that they helped us with in terms of those campaigns. ROB: How did you think about the agency selection process? Did you have a bake-off of some sort? Did you know what direction you were leaning? Because knowing the Turner/Warner Media ecosystem – I know local shops who have built web games for Falling Skies; I know global agencies on the PR side who've done analytics work for TBS and TNT. So you could really run the spectrum. How did you approach that selection process? STEVE: Right now – and this wasn't available for a couple of years while I was there, but has come on – there's now a database within Warner Media. Folks that work with agencies all around the country or international ones put in – it's not a scoring process and you look for the 90s or above, but it's more or less, “Hey, I had an experiential agency work on a large outdoor event with us. They did an amazing job. Here's the contact information, here's what they did, here are some pictures.” That exists now. So that's certainly a tool that I think some folks at Warner Media are using. When we selected Nebo – and more recently 9Rooftops, which has a great office here in Atlanta, that did some great work for us as well – so much of it is word of mouth and being in the Atlanta community, being part of AMA. That's exactly what I did. I reached out to a good friend of mine, Joe Koufman, at a company called Setup, and said to Joe, “Listen, I'm looking for an agency. This is what we need them to do. This is an outline of the project. What do you recommend?” He came back with three or four really strong recommendations, and that's where I started. Then from that, we sat down with the agencies – and I'm not a fan of having agencies do work for free. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's a way to start the relationship. So we didn't ask any agency to produce work; we really just had conversations with them to share ideas. We said, “Here's what we're looking to do. Come with some ideas.” Each of them got a time slot, and we, again, just had a conversation with them. For Turner Classic Movies – and I imagine this is the case with a lot of either networks or other brands – the number one thing that I look for in an agency is that they either already understand our business and who our customers are or have the capacity to understand that in a very short period of time. Certainly the agencies that I spoke with all got it. They came to the table with ideas around that. Now, they don't know all of our business, and that's completely to be expected. We didn't expect anyone to understand some of the internal ways that we connect with our audience. Those are things that as soon as we awarded the business, very early on we sat down and shared that. It may have even been at a late stage pitch that we shared it. But we're looking for an understanding of what we do and why we do it. If an agency gets that – because every agency we're talking to already has the technical capabilities. There's no doubt. There's a ton of talent. But it's a matter of, do you understand what we're trying to do? And then really understanding the logistics of who's going to be working on this and your process, the best way to establish how we communicate together, how we discuss the deliverables together, and who leads that on each side. ROB: That's a great client-side perspective. The empathy required, the value of reputation, the value of community engagement. It's so interesting. I'm in this mode now where people we're talking about working with – people still want to get together for lunch. In spite of, and maybe especially because we've all been in our houses for the most part for the past year, people are like “Let's catch lunch outdoors.” That's in bounds for me right now; some people are holed up. But geography, it seems, is still going to matter quite a lot. At least people will say, “I want a company with a local presence.” Nobody really even knows what that means sometimes, but it's what we want. STEVE: Again, there's so much talent in Atlanta. I think looking outside of Atlanta in most cases is really not necessary. The talent is here. It is really nice to have face-to-face meetings. We all know they'll be coming back. Even now, I've had several meetings outside at large picnic tables at a park or a restaurant with folks. That's really how you get to connect with people you're working with, especially on these types of relationships where it's really important that everyone understands what the objectives are together. I'm just a believer in face-to-face when it comes to things like that. I know certainly working remote right now has worked for many people, and even if agencies are local, they may have folks on your account that are in other cities. We worked with a company and that was the case; someone happened to be very talented on the digital team that worked out of South Carolina. And that worked out fine as well, but it was still nice to be able to have some reviews together in person. Again, I'm such a believer in Atlanta being this epicenter of culture and talent and tech, and that's who I want to work with. ROB: That's something for us all to think about as we start to emerge. Steve, you had some thoughts on some key lessons you've learned along your journey as a leader, as a marketer, as an executive. What would you reflect on if you could talk to your younger self about what to think about as you develop? STEVE: [laughs] I don't know where I'd start. That's funny. I think looking back, Rob – and it's such a great thing to do every once in a while, even if you're not talking about it to other people, but just to reflect on things you've learned. I can think of several in particular, and a lot of them are coming out of the Beach.com experience I had, but I think some of these apply throughout my career. Certainly engaging with customers to understand what it is they want, how they want to receive your information, when they want to receive it – you remember the beginning of that whole integrated marketing push? That's what people said integrated was. I think there's a through-line to everything we do now. There are so many different ways to receive information, so many platforms. But at the end of the day, if you don't understand what your customer wants and how they're going to react to what you're sharing with them, what that call to action is, then I think there's always going to be a miss. That's something I've learned that I took with me from those days on throughout the consulting and throughout my time understanding our audience at Turner Classic Movies and HBO Max. Next, I would say having someone that has either domain or IP expertise on your team or advising your team is so critical because again, that's the type of experience – when I was at Beach, we really would've benefited from having someone in the travel and hospitality business being a close advisor to us. I think we all thought because we were customers, we knew what other customers wanted, but we weren't seeing the big picture. I was just seeing it at the time for myself, married and two young kids, “This is how I vacation so everyone probably vacations like this. This is how we plan,” not knowing that that's a very small segment of how it's done. So I think having that advisor or having someone baked into the company that really understands – that domain expertise is critical. I would say probably the most important thing I've learned over time is just having a laser focus on what it is you're working on and really understanding both the functional and the emotional priorities of the business. And that focus isn't just for entrepreneurs; I think it's just as important in mid-size and large multinational companies. It's a challenge when you manage high-achieving and creative people. They always want to bring new ideas and new innovations to the table, and that's a great thing. That's what you look for as a leader. But I can't tell you how many times I said to my manager at Turner, “Look, this is only going to take 5 minutes” when nothing takes 5 minutes. What a lot of people don't realize, and it took a while for me to learn, is that it doesn't just take time away from what you're currently working on; there's an opportunity cost as well when you try to veer off the course – even to do something that wasn't necessarily in your plans, but eleventh hour, something popped up and you thought to yourself, “We should add this in.” Sometimes you need to make concessions and figure out a way to make it work, but I would say most of the time, all it's going to do is create a distraction. It's easy for that to happen. You could have marketing plans and then something like Clubhouse pops up and you're like, “We need to be on Clubhouse. We should create a room and get some experts to join us and talk about our product or service.” That might be a great part of the strategy, but if that's not what you were initially planning to do, then 9 times out of 10, it's better to continue to focus on what it is you were doing and then work that in as your next objective. I think that focus – I had on a whiteboard in my office at Turner the word “focus” for all 4 years before we got shut down and everyone worked from home. The word “focus” was in my office, and I saw that word every single day. Of everything that was written and erased and written and erased on the whiteboard, that was the one consistent thing. Never erased it. That was my constant reminder that nothing takes 5 minutes and that you've got to really keep driving those clear objectives and deliverables and not create unnecessary distractions. ROB: Right. It's such a good practice to, number one, not do something that's going to blow up in your face, and number two, not discard the thing you've already been very intentional about putting together. Steve, we normally wrap these conversations with a couple of different questions. I think they tie together for you. Number one is typically “Where should people connect with you?”; number two is “What are you excited about that's coming up marketing-wise?” I think you have those things linked together where we can get a much bigger dive into your mind and connect with you as well. STEVE: Sure. Again, this has been such a fun conversation. I would say in terms of the future and what I see, I don't think marketers should be thinking about things ever going back to normal. I think how we play and consume media, entertainment, food, healthcare, all of this, this whole sense of community is being redefined in front of our eyes. It's a generational opportunity that's going to impact customer behaviors from now on. It's not a trend; it's really a seismic shift that's going to resonate across the culture and economy and all of our personal and professional relationships. It opens up an opportunity to be more creative and more innovative than ever before, and I think there's going to be some things we've done in the past that we're going to have to decide to let go. Other things we're going to hold on to. Those are some of the things that excite me right now. I do think as a society, we need to get a little bit higher up right now. I think we need to work on making people feel less isolated and part of a community. I don't think that's going to go away when people can start gathering in small groups. The pandemic has exposed a real ripple in people feeling alone, and that's something that I think marketing can play a big role in: really helping people find their community or communities. Personally, I've had a lot of meaningful conversations since I left TCM and Warner Media, exploring high growth in entrepreneurial opportunities, looking to where I can create long-term value at scale and really do good. So that's what's on the horizon for me in terms of what I'm looking for. And then on the side, I started something really fun with my wife and some good friends of ours. We started an e-zine called The Fast Times. We always talk about how Generation X, which I'm a part of, sometimes gets the short end of the stick. We weren't born with a cellphone in our hands, and we certainly didn't save the world like the Greatest Generation. We just listened to really cool music and watched really fun movies and were latchkeys and came home to an empty house and made the microwave dinners and so forth. So we thought, what could we do to really have some fun with Gen X and the fringe on each side of younger Boomers or older Millennials? So we created this e-zine. We're sending it out once a week, and then a special edition on Mondays. It's taking a look at culture and how it intersects with both nostalgia from the '80s and early '90s and having this modern lens on things that are happening today. It's kind of with this smart snark, I would call it. It's the fun voice of the '80s, voice of that Gen X. Lots of sections in it like “We Got the Beat” and “Channel Z” and “Parents Just Don't Understand,” all very brand-driven throughout it. Ultimately, this may be a vehicle for sponsors and advertisers as our subscription base grows. But right now, we're doing it – I love reading. I read probably at least an hour a day and love writing, and it's a fun way to stay sharp and create something. Again, we'll see where it goes. ROB: Congratulations on that launch. Where do we go to find that? STEVE: You can sign up for that at thefasttimes.net. Even the address is nostalgic, the .net. Go ahead and sign up and give it a shot. We also are having a little bit of fun on social platforms, on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. We hope you like it. ROB: That's excellent. Steve, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing. I certainly look forward to connecting back in person. I look forward to seeing what else you take on next. It seems like it'll be a natural continuation of a really good story, so thank you for sharing with us. STEVE: Thanks again, Rob, for having me. As I said, I really believe you're the epitome of this. Everything that people are reading about in terms of the surge in Atlanta, in the tech space, in the companies interested in coming to Atlanta, you're the epitome of this. You started Converge bringing in outside investment and then growing it here in Atlanta and being part of the innovative labs and teams here. This is exactly what it's all about and what everyone is hoping this unwritten story of Atlanta is, and you are a very early author of it. Thanks for having me. ROB: I appreciate that. You're very kind. There is a lot of good stuff going on here in Atlanta, and we'll keep on sharing it. Thanks so much for coming on, Steve. STEVE: Thank you. ROB: Take care. Bye. STEVE: Bye. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

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

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.

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.

Steve is joined by Miss Beka Sue, Bo, Susie & Tom as he thanks the top 10 markets for The Bourbon Daily. Today’s show was sponsored by Steve Akley’s new book on classic bourbon cocktails: (https://goo.gl/J2d5Jt), Stovepipe Soaps (etsy.com/shop/stovepipesoaps) and the 2019 New Orleans Bourbon Festival. Get your tickets at: neworleansbourbonfestival.com. The Bourbon Daily intro music (Welcome to the Show) and outro music (That’s A Wrap) are both by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. Join the ABV Network Revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Boom, what's going on, everyone?   Steve Larsen from Sales Funnel Radio, today I'm gonna teach you guys my event teaching template.   I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.   The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.   Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels.   My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.   What's up, guys? Hey, I'm excited for today. I wanna share with you guys kind of a cool little thing here.   I’ve been teaching at events for a number of years now. I’ve taught everyone, from people who are brand new to people who are extremely experienced and very wealthy, and there is a format that I teach in.   One of the things that I get asked, actually more and more frequently this has been happening, is, “Stephen, how can you get up and riff for two hours?”   The answer is, I'm not just like talking, I'm actually following a format in my head.   There's been a few people have reached out and said, “Stephen, I wish you'd just get straight to the principle.” But there's reasons why I'm doing what I'm doing with this.   Right after my OfferMind event in 20218, I had the opportunity to go in and teach Russell Brunson's new speaker team for about half a day. He's got a new traveling team and they travel around on small stages that he can't get to, 'cause of who he is - which totally makes sense.   This team pitches ClickFunnels and content around the world, which is awesome. It's super cool.   So I was asked to come in and teach some of my methods and how I do what I do. I walked up and there wasn't really much of a framework, I had an idea…   I was watching and observing like crazy before it was my turn to go up, 'cause I wanted to see where they were. So I had an idea of what to actually talk about… But guys, I'll be honest with you, sometimes as I'm talking, especially on stage, (I'm always extremely prepared, especially when I get on stage), but there's always a little bit of playroom.   One of my favorite things to do when I'm talking and going through a principle or whatever is to watch, I don't know how else to describe it, other than watching the eyes of the people to see:   #: Do I have them?   If I'm losing them, I've got to tell a story.  I've got to just do something that's high drama or drop some more gold, something a little more valuable. I've got to do something to get 'em back; whether that's an engagement, or  sometimes I'll do a random Q&A.   Half of a being speaker is being able to deliver cool stuff; the other half is being able to read the audience.   I’ve done a lot of three-day events, tons of them and I have slides, but not every group that comes into the room is the exact same, so I've got to be able to adjust based on what they're doing.   So what I've done, especially over the last two years, I've been developing kind of my own pattern for how I do stage stuff.  Those of you guys who are coming to Funnel Hacking Live, you’ll see me do this.   I'll be extremely prepared, however I'm also gonna leave a little bit of room. I'm gonna watch how people are reacting.   There's been some stages that I've spoken on and like every audience is different, there's nothing to really prepare you for it, other than just doing it.   There’ve been some audiences that I've spoken to that were just the driest, dry, most unfun group to talk to ever, I'm not gonna say who it was, but it was a few events in Vegas and Texas and these other areas. I just talked to them and like, “Man, are you guys dead?”   Anyway, before I say anything offensive, I'm gonna move on, but like, “MAN!”   Then some of the most fun stages are not necessarily always the most educated in what I do, so I've got to start at a different level. You've got to be really fluid as a stage talker.   Now there's a difference between stage teaching and stage pitching - huge difference, monumental difference.   Every time I'm doing a stage pitch, I will follow a webinar script.   Teaching from stage, it's kind of that, but not really, there's a lot more that goes into it.   So my wife and I, we're both geeks now and she and I were talking late about stage and we were talking about the different formats of being able to present on stage, and so I thought it'd be kind of cool to share with you guys some of what I do, and how I'm actually able to pull that off…   I'm not just riffing, although it may look like that.   Let me just pull this whiteboard in here. If you guys are on ITunes, no sweat, I'm gonna walk through, you guys won't miss anything out. Drawing just helps me explain, so that's half the reason I draw so much.   Okay, so the first thing that I do is I go in and I draw a big old framework picture. It's a massive framework picture right here up at the top and it's a picture that represents the all the content.   One of the major reasons that I do this is because it helps me stay focused on what I need to produce, but also it helps me stay focused on what I should NOT get distracted by. There are squirrels!   As a speaker, you're like, “Oh man, you, one person in the audience, you think that's cool? Why don't I go on a massive tangent and teach you some other cool things, 'cause you think that's cool?”  No! I'm sticking to a framework.   There was an event I was speaking at early on, one of the first stages I ever spoke on, and it was really valuable, but I stopped teaching and started Q&A-ing.   Stage pitching, totally different than stage teaching, which is totally different than Q&A, which is totally different than workshop. They're not all the same thing. They're the little tools that I pull out of my pocket when I need to to keep:   Things interesting   The learning up and high   The energy high   People engaged   ... 'cause some of the principles I go through... man, they're freaking boring. I know they're boring! I hate listening to boring speakers. Hate it, hate it, hate it.   I don't really watch so much football. I like the Denver Broncos, they're my team, but I don't really watch that much of it, but when I do…   I'm not really an armchair quarterback, but I am TOTALLY an armchair quarterback when I am watching other people on stage. I’m nitpicking the crap out of 'em, I can't help it. I'm like:   Oh, I would have done that different   I would have pointed differently there   What's with the stature of that person?   Why is every one of their sentences going down? They should be going up.   ...you know, it's like I can't help it. This is my craft, this is what I do, I can't help but watch what people are doing on stage.   So anyway, there's different mechanisms and frameworks and patterns that I'm using throughout. Specifically for this episode, I'm gonna walk through how I handle teaching on stage in a way that’s:   Interesting   Interactive   Captivating and brings the minds of the audience with you   If I just pop right out and say, “Here's the framework!”   The audience will: Look at it   Finds something on there that they have seen before   Thinks that they understand the rest of it immediately - when they don't.   I can't just walk up and be like, “Here's the framework.” So what I do first of all is I go in and I draw a framework picture, then what I do is I break up the picture into chunks, three, four, five, six, seven chunks.   This is exactly what I did for OfferMind   This is exactly what I did for all of the FHAT events that I used to run   It's exactly what I do for OfferLab, which is coming up for those of you guys that are coming to it.   ...Does that make sense? There's a lot of what I do that comes from just this piece alone.   I got to hang out with Russell when he was drafting a lot of the Traffic Secrets book which he's been working on. He's writing it right now, but the actual ideation of the principles, he does the exact same thing... Where do you think I learned it? ;-)   When I first got to ClickFunnels and he started drafting the Expert Secrets Book, this is exactly what we did.   There was a picture that represented all of it and then the picture was broken up into four or five different pieces, and those are the major sections of the book.   So I do this the exact same way when I'm doing a teaching-based event. When I go into pitching, that's a different activity and a different pattern. But specifically this is how to teach at events. Okay, just making that clear, so that no one thinks that's how you pitch!   The first thing I do is I draw a picture…   If I can explain a complex principle with a doodle, it means it’s simple enough for the masses to understand. Most people are on a third grade reading level,and I can't stand up and use complex vocabulary.   The point is to not make me look smart, the point is to educate the audience.   It drives me nuts when you can tell someone wrote a speech to make 'em look smart, rather than to connect with the audience.   I'm not gonna name any names, but man, there was an event that I went to, (this happened like three times last year), where I got to speak at an event or I went to one that I just kind of wanted to go to… and there would be one or two speeches specifically you could just tell that were created to just remind everyone how cool the speaker was.   ...That's awesome, but I believe that if you want credit, don't seek it. If you want stature, don't seek it. You're gonna look like you are and you distance yourself from the listeners, 'cause you're like:   “Will you remind me again of how awesome I am, please? Remind me how much of a pedestal I'm on. Raise me up, please, audience, following.”   ...You distance yourself from the audience in that one move. Stupid, don't do it! okay.   So anyways,I draw a picture (for a lot of reasons), but it's so that I understand it in a simple way to teach it and so it's a simple to deliver the principle at the same time.   So I draw a smaller picture of a chunk of the major framework picture and I do it again, and then I do it again.   Let's say that there are four major principles, that are distinct from each other inside of this major picture. So then I draw another picture. Then there's a pattern inside each one of these that I'm pulling off.   When I'm doing a lot of Facebook Lives, or even sometimes in these episodes, I don't always do this in these episodes, but a lot of times I'll follow kind of a version of this a little bit.   There's really two phases to this:   #1: Is Preparing: so, first,  I'm gonna walk through the preparing phase, which is what we're doing right now.   This is how I prepare all the content ahead of time to make sure that I am ready to over deliver on stage. Is it a brain jog? Yes, it’s mentally exhausting. It’s so challenging.   I'm going through the exact same process for my book right now. Ha, right! It's not easy, guys. It's NOT easy at all.   Realistically, if you're doing something that's gonna be a little more permanent like a book…   I don't write the book to make money, it's gonna make some, but I'm making the book to make sure it’s easily transferable information to the masses. It's a low ticket thing = low cost + high circulation product.   So these are the stages I’m gonna go through with you:   1. Preparation 2. Delivery   So the first thing I do is I come up a big picture represents all of it and then there's four major principles - they're like little breakouts of the major framework. So now let's get down to each one of these levels. I draw the major, overarching principle pictures and I will usually use blue.   The next color I use for the actual content itself is typically green.I hope it shows up well on the camera here. Then I draw a smaller picture, yeah, that shows up alright, I draw a smaller picture and inside of that, I'm coming up with:   A quote, A story The actual concept itself A ‘So What?’   You’ll see Russell do this in several places as well, I do this in a lot of spots: “Oh, cool quote about this. By the way, here's a really cool story that's gonna set you up to understand the concept when I drop it.” Which is why I always tell a lot of stories on this show and anywhere.   Then, the “So what?” Meaning; “Who freaking cares?”   If I teach you something cool and you can't use it,  then who cares? I'm not here to say, “Oh, look how cool I am. So what? Who cares?   I hate my time being wasted. I do my best NOT to waste you guy's time, so I do what's called a “So What?”   I this at OfferMind; meaning: I teach you the principle Here's what you should be able to do with it now that you've learned it.   It's like the deliverables, the thing that they should be able to go do afterwards.   And frankly, this is a small picture... and then I do it again. We do a smaller picture, a quote.. and these are all little, tiny micro stories that teach the bigger concept. There'll be a bunch of 'em, boom, boom, small, small pictures. However many I need, in order to actually accurately show the BIG concept.   Does that make sense so far?   Then what I do is I typically, not always, it depends on how much time I have...   So then I grab a red pen and red to me is the “So whats?”  If you don't have red, you're dead... meaning this is the applicable area of what I'm teaching here.   So then, I usually do somewhat of a workshop/Q&A, not always. One or the other, sometimes both, it’s very time dependent. These usually end out the principle that I’ve taught.   For those of you guys who have got tickets to the next OfferMind, you got the replays from last year, watch me doing this.   Each session is is usually about an hour and a half to two hours,and then we usually need a break, and that's fine, but I usually end with a workshop/Q&A section or session.   I do the exact same thing for every single one of those major pictures and frameworks moving forward. Does that kind of make sense?   That's how I prepare, but that's NOT actually how I teach it. That’s NOT how I teach it at all.   Now I'm gonna erase the bottom of this right here, just so that I can draw how I actually toss it out, okay.   So that's why I lace it all out on my floor. I just got another 12 legal pads from Amazon Basics, because I'm running out. I use a lot of legal pads because I'm literally drawing pictures and writing the quotes on all these sheets on my floor and stuff - because then I can visually see:   “Crap, I'm missing a story on picture number two, section one, right, oh, dang, I'm need to find a quote, that backs up what I've been saying, I know this is a true principle, who else talks about that?”   That's why I buy so many books, I don't necessarily read that many books from cover to cover, I don't. What I do is I hunt answers. If I know I'm missing a quote from section one, picture number three, I'm like, “Crap, who talked about that again?”   Then what I do is I walk through my bookshelves and I grab out all the books,that look like they're about that topic and I will rifle through and speed read like crazy.   In fact, on the other side of this camera is where I usually put all that stuff. I had stacks of books next to each principle: “Oh man, this stack of books is really about that one principle. This stack of books is really about that principle.” And I rifle through them to make sure.   That's why OfferMind was so good, guys, I did my freaking homework.   Let me grab another color here. Yeah, let's grab black…   So that's how I prepare, but the way I actually deliver is, I always start with a story. A story at a place of high drama. Sometimes I will start also with a quote; sometimes those are interchangeable. It's not always in that order, but these are always at the beginning at least.   So it's a story at a  place of high drama, and a quote. I never just present the picture. This is one of the reasons why so many of us use whiteboards on stage is we are drawing the picture in front of the audience. If you have to go fast, that's fine, but it actually creates a deeper understanding for the audience if you draw and explain at the same time ...and then show them the finalized picture that you prepared ahead of time.   Russell does this at Traffic Secrets. I do this all the time like at the FHAT Events.I did this several times at OfferMind, time depending, based on where I was.   What I do is I draw a story to place high drama, then I go through a quote and then I'm drawing the picture in front of them on a clean whiteboard or a clean piece of paper.   I'm saying the steps that they need to take in order to to do that principle, but I'm also visually writing down those steps. That's why in my slides, a lot of times, you'll see I'm drawing the picture even though it's already done on the next slide.   This works so freaking good.   I've used this many times on a lot of stages, a lot of stages, okay. I've an abnormal amount of stage time for someone my age and I know that, and I'm just saying, okay.   So then I'm gonna number the steps out, audibly and written and then finally I press the slide button, 'cause I go make all these pictures. I have an artist go in and they will actually make a rendering of each one of these pictures. But if I just show it, it's not nearly as effective. Then I go through my “So Whats?” and then leave off with the Q&A/workshop. Does that make sense?   Sorry for the reflection there, guys, I'm trying to get that off there. Anyways, cool, that's how I do it.   First, I prepare it in the order I’ve shown you, but then I deliver it in this order.   I DON’T just:   Show the picture Use a quote Tell a story Reveal a concept Add the “So Whats?”   BECAUSE… it's better if the audience discovers the picture with you as you're drawing it. Man, that's so much more effective. The learning's a lot deeper.   Anyways, I just wanna share that with you guys. Some of you have been asking about this and I'm stoked to be able to share it with you.   So if you guys are doing events - which are amazing. I believe everybody should do an event. Events are incredible whether it’s virtual or in person.   Marketers are event creators.   When you go in, especially in a teaching event. I'm speaking in a lot of places already in 2019, I'm really stoked about it.   I got a lot of offers, I'm going a lot of places and I'm excited about that. I'm saying no to most of 'em, 'cause I'm really focused on my goal for this year. Thank you, I don’t want to offend anyone.   If I’m  gonna do any kind of stage speech at all, if I have an hour, if I have 30 minutes, if I have three days, this is how I do it.   You'll see a lot of times, when I'm trying to over deliver content, in my head, I'm following this format.   What's the story format I'm using? Epiphany Bridge Script.   What's the quote I'm using? Someone who's influential, that  the audience all know about.   I'm drawing the picture in front of 'em. I suck at drawing, whatever!   Next I walk through and number the steps out: it's the same exact thing I would do in a webinar script, but in this format, it's a little different.   Then I go in and write the “So Whats?” Finally; Q&A/workshop at the end, time dependent. I love that one, it helps 'em really feel like they've gotten a lot.   Anyway, that's the format that I use both in creating and in delivering.   What I want to do real fast is cut over to one other video real fast…   When I was at OfferMind, I ended the event. I was done, I was excited, I was like man, I knew that it had been awesome. A lot of money has been made from that event already; meaning the people in the audience applied everything and made a lot of cash, which is awesome and very validating…   But I was getting down and guys, I was tired, okay, I was about to go get in the car and continue to teach the speaker team. I was exhausted, man. I had really not slept in a while, and if you've ever been on stage, like you should be freaking tired.   The photographer came up to me afterwards and she goes, "You move more on stage than anybody I've ever seen ever," and I said “Yeah, well, number one, I hate bad speakers who are boring and number two, if I don't keep things interesting it's gonna suck.”   I don't know if you guys have heard the saying or the stat. I don’t know if it’s a stat or a saying, whatever... but I believe it's true, 'cause it seems true every time I do it…   90 minutes on stage is the equivalent in energy to a full eight-hour workday   ...And so to go for two straight days, man, you're wrecked, you are so freaking tired.   Whenever I'm doing a webinar, it's an hour and a half, I'm acting like I'm on stage. I’m exhausted after I do a webinar. I’m putting out energy, I’m working hard. They will NOT exceed my energy level.   I set the pace, so I've got to come in high and hard, so that I can bring everybody up because that brings them in a better place to be engaged and learn,   I pre-bought caffeine for the tables.   Anyway, so I did all this stuff, and then the event ended, and as I was about to walk off, Colton runs up and he goes, "Hey, wait everyone, don't move, don't move, don't move."   I didn't know he had a mic in his hand and he invited John Ferguson up and they gave me the Statue of Responsibility Award which had a hard time not breaking down and kind of crying over, guys.   The only reason I'm showing you guys this, it's not to pat my back, it's to pat my wife's for what she does to support everything that I'm doing. It's pretty intense.   So I just wanna give a little shout out to my wife here.   We're gonna cut over here, so you guys can watch US get that award and the amazing compliment that he gave her at the end of this video.   So anyways, let's cut over real quick here:   Coulton: We have something pretty special planned for Steve right now.   He has no idea.   So you guys are gonna be part of this, but in order to, like, explain it a little bit more, we're gonna roll a video, so if you guys wanna kinda sit back and watch a quick video with us, that would be awesome.   VIDEO: Viktor Frankl, the author of Man's Search for Meaning and a Holocaust survivor, he firmly believed that if we don't act responsibly with our freedoms, we will lose those, and now we're able to create his vision. His vision was to create a Statue of Responsibility. Bookend the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast with a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.   "Freedom threatens to degenerate into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsiveness. And that is why now it's for ten years that I've been teaching my American audiences they should see to it that the Statue of Liberty on the Atlantic Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the Pacific Coast." -Viktor Frankl   SCULPTOR OF THE STATUE: "Everyday we make decisions. We can think about what defines us. Is it our past, or is it where we're going? Is it what we want to do, or what's happened to us? We have the ability. We decide what we're going to create each and every day."   Coulton: I'm now gonna invite Mr. John Ferguson up to the stage real quick.   John Ferguson: So Stephen knows what this is, but a lot of you didn't, so we wanted to share the video.   On my way out here, I had an opportunity to talk to the sculptor of The Statue of Responsibility.   Two years ago, we were on a mission to find entrepreneurs, influencers, people who are looking to change other people's lives.   Viktor Frankl had in his study in Vienna, a sculpture with a man called The Suffering Man who reaches up to the sky looking for help. He always used to say, before he passed away, is "Where is the hand reaching down?"   Being a Holocaust survivor, he talked about responsibility on the West Coast to bookend liberty and freedom on the East Coast, and so we said:   "Look, we have to find individuals who are the hand reaching down to others in our world."   Don't you think Stephen is one of those people? Yeah, totally!   I think I've known Stephen about three years, first Funnel Hacking live event. We talked about that, and he is a different dude. He is awesome, right? I mean, phenomenal.   And so I talked to the sculptor, and I had him sign one of the statues, and it’s numbered, and we're only giving away a few of these to individuals in the country.   These individuals will have their names in a special place at the statue that will be built in Southern California, 305 feet tall, just like The Statue of Liberty. You'll be able to go inside and visit it.   Because of what he's done, not only for this community, but for all of your communities, do you understand that? Now you can get your message put in a way, you guys are all a part of this.   To Steve:  so would you accept the Statue of Responsibility as a gift for what you've given all of us?   Steve: Absolutely, man. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that a lot. That's huge. Thanks, man, thank you.   John Ferguson: And one last thing here with Alyssa, the reason why I wanted her on the stage was she's the hand reaching down at home while Stephen's here with us.   So thank you for giving us Stephen while you're having to take care of the home. Appreciate it.   Steve: Thanks. It means a lot. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Well, you guys are, you guys are gonna see my tears flex in a second.   Hey, guys thank you so much for being here. We love you, we appreciate you a lot. This is totally a family endeavor. Hope you guys know that and feel that from us, and go change the world. We'll see you guys. Thank you, thank you very much. Thanks for watching this episode, please rate and subscribe at ITunes, I would really appreciate it if you guys rated it. That means a lot.   Guys, thanks so much. Let's cut over to the video and see us getting that award. Bye.   Boom, just try to tell me you didn't like that!   Hey, whoever controls content controls the game. Wanna interview me or get interviewed yourself, grab a time now at stevejlarsen.com.

Steve thanks the crew for their support and talks about tapping the last season of the TV Show. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Steve Klabnik @steveklabnik | Blog | GitHub Show Notes: 02:56 - Getting Into Rust 05:51 - Working on Rust for Mozilla 07:01 - Writing Documentation and Preventing Burnout 13:24 - The Rust Programming Language 18:45 - Rewriting Firefox in Rust 21:20 - High-level Functions 25:23 - Typesystem and Concurrency 36:35 - Rust and Web Developers; Digging Into Rust on a Deeper Level 43:46 - The Rust Ecosystem and Using Rust on a Day-to-Day Basis 48:38 - The Rust Book Resources: Rust For Rubyists Cargo Servo Application Binary Interface (ABI) MetaLanguage (ML) Tokio Systems Programming intermezzOS Steve Klabnik: Exploring Ruby Through Rust What's new with “The Rust Programming Language”? rustbook Transcript: CHARLES: Hello everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast episode 51. I'm here, my name is Charles Lowell. I'll be hosting today. With me is Chris Freeman, also of The Frontside and with us is Steve Klabnik. Now, most of you probably heard of Steve before. My first encounter with Steve was actually at the LoneStarRuby Conference back in... Gosh, I don't know. It was many, many years ago and he was giving a talk on Shoes, which I also had never heard of before. It was a wonderful story of a code archaeology project where he was kind of investigating, rehabilitating, and in carrying forward a project that the 'why the lucky stiff' had done. That was a wonderful introduction but it was certainly not the last time that I encountered him in his writings and in talks and stuff, mostly within the Ruby community. But it popped up again and again, talking about Rust APIs and always making a point to take a good knowledge that he'd learned and spread it around. Personally, I've lost track of Steve or hadn't really heard much of what he was doing for a while. But then Chris came into the office and he was always talking about this language called Rust. While I've heard Rust, Chris was just all about it and wanted to have Steve come on the show because it turns out that Steve, you've been really, really, really into Rust these last few years and sounds like concentrating most of your work there. STEVE: That is totally true and accurate. Also to go back a bit, that means that you are in attendance for my very first conference talk ever. CHARLES: Really? STEVE: That was literally the first one. CHARLES: Wow, it was a great start. That was a great story. It was educational and also touching. STEVE: Thank you. It's actually interesting because what happened was is that someone else who works on Shoes have encouraged me to submit to RubyConf and I was like, "Who would want to hear me talk at a conference?" I submitted the talk and RubyConf accepted it and I was really excited. Then a bunch of other conferences noticed and two other conferences had asked me to give a talk before RubyConf happens and LoneStar was one of them and it was the first one chronologically. That moment was also very special to me as well. CHARLES: Fantastic. What year was that? STEVE: I want to say it was like 2012 or 2011. It's really hard for me to pay attention to time and date. My history is so complicated that I often forget. I've literally told people that I'm 10 years old or younger than I am because I would like mess up to date on the things. It just happens. CHARLES: Yeah, but it was a while ago and it's been quite a journey, in between now and then. STEVE: Yeah, definitely and you're also definitely right. It is now literally my day job to work on Rust so it is definitely the focus of most of my efforts. Partly, why I made that happen was because it was the focus of all my hobby efforts before I made my job. It's definitely been a couple of years that I've been a full-time on all the Rust stuff. CHARLES: How was it that you actually got into Rust? How did you hear about it before everybody else and how did it capture your attention? STEVE: I've always liked programming languages and learning different programming languages. Ruby was sort of where I became known professionally. But it wasn't the first language that I knew and I knew it was never going to be the last. As much as I always loved Ruby and I'm like literally have a tattoo on my body so I will be with Ruby forever. I always try to learn new stuff and I find it exciting. I'm from middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania in the suburbs of Pittsburgh on a cattle farm and I was visiting my parents for Christmas one year. There's not really a whole lot to do out of the very small town so I was just reading the internet, as usual and it turns out that that was the day that Rust 0.5 had been released. I saw this release announcement go by and I was like, "I vaguely heard of this programming language once or twice maybe. I don't have anything to do. Let's give it a try." I downloaded and installed it. I looked at their tutorial and the tutorial has a problem that a lot of tutorials had, which is I read it, I said, "This all makes sense," I tried this down to write a program, and I had no idea how to actually write a program in it at all. I'm just completely confused. I couldn't actually apply the sort of syntax stuff that I learned. At the same time, I was going to be working on this hypermedia book -- that was my plans for that trip -- as always, you just rewrite your tooling over and over again. You [inaudible] like, "Just don't write the thing. Write the tools that make the thing," so I wanted to try out a new way to take mark down and generate PDFs in HTML, involving pandoc. I sort of had that all set up and I said, "Well, let me give this a try run. What I'm going to do is I'm going to write down what I learned in Rust as I learned it," and sort of from a Ruby programmers perspective, I'll use that and working with my new tooling to see if it works to actually work on the real book and it will also help me understand Rust better because one of the reasons why I do all this sort of teaching and advocacy is because I think it helps me learn. Just as much as I like helping other people learn stuff, I find that the repetition and being forced to explain something to someone else really make sure that I understand what I'm talking about. That's what the thing called Rust for Rubyist became boring. I'm a sucker for alliteration and that sort of became the first to tutorial for Rust from outside of the Rust projects proper. From there, I went on to submit some pull requests because everything's open source so I wrote some documentation and funny enough, my first ever pull request to Rust was actually rejected based on procedural grounds. At the time, they didn't actually accept pull request to master, they accept this other weird branch and GitHub don't have the ability to re-target the branch of the pull request. I also, always like this story because the thing that I now on the core team of, like my first attempt at getting involved was wrong and was turned down. But I'd fixed that pull request issue and got that in but it is kind of kept working on an open source capacity for a while and then decided to ask Mozilla if I can make it my job. Luckily they said yes. CHARLES: Wow, so what? Your job at Mozilla, like you just kind of showed up and said, "I would like to have a pretty cool, awesome job, working on this brand new language," and they were like, "Sure, come on in?" STEVE: To some degree, yes. That's one way of putting it. There is always the devil in these details. The first thing is that that wouldn't have worked if I had wanted a different kind of job. But when someone comes to you and says, "I would like to write documentation for you all day," you go, "Oh, my gosh. This literally never happens." If I had wanted to like work on the compiler, I'm pretty sure they would have said no. But because they knew documentation was important and they wanted documentation and because I had already been basically doing that job in an open source way, it's like I've had a year-long interview already. Then finally, they actually didn't have headcount at the time so I actually moved on as a contractor initially and had to do some freelance work and then eventually, once we were able to hire a new person kind of got it in. They're like a cool kid story. It's like, "Oh, yeah. I totally asked Mozilla for my perfect dream job and they just gave it to me," but like that's not really the way that it works. CHARLES: Got you. That actually leads me into a question that I have wanted to ask you. You write a very good documentation as your day job and documentation is extremely hard. For me, it is extremely hard to get and stay motivated to document something that I've worked on. I think that is probably a common enough experience for programmers. We don't recognize because we use documentation that it's extremely valuable and yet, it still this thing that is just a constant uphill battle. I'm curious, how do you manage to stay motivated to write documentation for an entire programming language over the span of years? STEVE: As I'm often want to do, this has like three or four different components. I guess, there's a couple of different things involved. The first one is that I actually got accepted to go to English grad school, although I ended up not pursuing that. Like writing, it's something I have just always enjoyed. I got a Bachelor in Computer Science but then I was going to go to grad school for English and due to university shenanigans, it didn't really work out. They told me I was going to get a free ride and then accepted me and then they were like, "Oh, wait sorry. You have to pay for this." And I was like, "Wait, sorry. No, I'm not doing this anymore. That's ridiculous." That's kind of always a predilection for writing and I think that the reason why that is because I grew up basically like on Slashdot and eventually then on Dig and Reddit and all these other things. I've kind of been writing a couple paragraphs a day, basically every day in my life since I was a little kid. I think that's something that's sort of like underappreciated. Documentation is hard but it's like a skill, like any other thing. Programmers will say, "I really want to learn TDD so I'm going to make myself do some TDD, I'm going to practice it, I'm going to focus on it and that's going to be a skill that I'm going to improve," and then they see documentation, and they kind of think it's this thing that you either have the skill or you don't. But writing is just another thing like anything else that you can practice at and get better. I think maybe it's because it's a little bit farther away from the wheel house of what you do day to day, that people aren't as interested in it but it is something you're truly interested in, I think the best way to get better is just to do it and do it a lot. I say this is I'm kind of in the middle of a little bit of writer's block at the moment to be honest. Then finally, I think the other reason that I'm motivated about docs is that I actually believe that documentation is an exercise in empathy. Like good documentation, the ideal as a programmer, the ideal thing that happens in documentation is I have a question about how to use something, I go to the documentation, and it says the exact sentence that answers my exact question. As those varying degrees of vaguely gives you the right idea, versus literally tells you exactly what to do. I think that the way that you can accomplish that excellent documentation is by understanding what your users need and then preemptively figuring it and/or writing that down. I think that that requires being able to put yourself in their shoes to some degree. I'm not going to say that that's a thing that I am perfect at but I think that a valuable skill when trying to improve docs's like figure out what they actually need and then give it to them. It's doesn't always have to be in that order, like sometimes people will fail to find the thing they need, tell you what you need, and then you give it to them. That's a strategy I've used a lot and that's one reason why I hang out in the Rust IRC all the time, helping people is for a very long time, I would like sit in IRC, someone would ask a question, I would answer the question, I'd go look in the docs and see if they could have figured out themselves. If they couldn't, that would be might next doc PR. It's just like even if it's just a couple sentences like add the question from IRC into the documentation and then just do that over and over and over again and then eventually, people start learning from the docs instead of actually ask questions because they already found what they needed. CHARLES: Right. I have a question about that because once you develop those skill, I think you also still run the risk of like burning out. I know that one of the reasons I tend to always fall back to like, "I'm going to spend my time doing coding instead of documentation," Or, "I'm going to spend my time --" Even with TDD is a great example is like with TDD you get to experience those short term wins. I think that kind of prevents you from burning out, where sometimes when I'm writing documentation, it feels like I'm screaming at the void. I might be screaming really loud and really, really well but I feel like a lot of times, I'm not experiencing those wins and I'm wondering if you have any tips for like experiencing those wins. Or getting that feedback to kind of keep you motivated and keep you doing the job. Also, trying to push the level of your own documentation skill and communications skill. STEVE: Yeah, experiencing the wins is definitely a part of it. But one of the other things that is sort of part of it is that like I do the opposite. I do a lot of coding but that's my side projects. When I get fed up with writing documentation, I maintain the [inaudible] implementation that Cargo uses to resolve Rust packages, for example. If I'm feeling a little stuck on docs, I'll go write some software and then come back to the docs so that kind of help with burnout. Another thing is that I think I'm just like perpetually in a state of just barely above burnout anyway so that also sort of factors in I guess. You know, it's like Bruce Banner. The secret is that I'm always angry so -- CHARLES: So you work on open source, is that what you're saying? STEVE: Yeah, exactly. We're working on open source all the time. I've been lucky enough to make open source as my job for, basically almost my entire professional career. Although not totally. You know, at some point, you just kind of get used to it. But in terms of experience and the wins, this is also one of the reasons why I like to teach beginners specifically is that beginners allow you to remember what it's like to be a beginner, which is also part of building the empathy. By interacting with beginners a lot, you also get a lot of those wins because beginners usually ask easy questions so it's easy to figure out the answer that stuff. Then you've got that positive feedback loop kind of going. To me it's maybe not IRC literally for every project but answering questions on Stack Overflow, or whatever message board forum you have, or Twitter, like actually interacting with other people. For me at least, that's how I get that kind of sense of not screaming into the void that you have to like go into the void and find the other people there, I guess, that I'm just like come to you necessarily. CHARLES: Speaking of empathy for beginners, it just occurred to me that we didn't actually talk about what Rust is. We probably should do that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the Rust, language, as well as, you've mentioned Cargo and [inaudible] ecosystem for us as well? Let's talk about that. STEVE: Yeah, totally. Basically, Rust is a new-ish. I should stop saying new because it's almost not really at this point. A kind of new-ish programming language, heavily sponsored by Mozilla in development. Its idea is to become a new low-level programming language. But I always hesitate when I say this because one of my old pitches for Rust used to be like, "Rust could be used anywhere. You can use C." Then people go, "I would never write, C is so cool. Rust is not for me." I'm like not do that. But the reason that people don't use C is a lot of the problems that we are also trying to fix. I guess the primary differentiator for Rust in terms of like programming languages theory is that it is safe and safety as they got specific meaning. But basically C is a very dangerous sharp tool and you can cut yourself and people who use those tools often do cut themselves, whereas Rust is like it's got a safety guard on it. It's a compiled language so its compiler actively prevents you from making some of the worst mistakes that you can make in a low-level programming language like C. It turns out that when you start building up these sort of safe abstractions on top of these really fundamentally low-level details, you actually end up with a relatively high-level programming language. I talked to a lot of people, for example from JavaScript or Ruby world or Python world who come to Rust that are modulus, some libraries, and other things. This is actually high-level enough that I feel like I could do this instead of review JavaScript all day and I would be just as comfortable. The other day, I did a little bit pair programming and we actually recreated a JavaScript library in Rust that had virtually the same interface because like you can actually build relatively high-level things so pass an enclosure to a function that does some stuff is totally normal and Rust world. That's also very familiar to people that come from the Ruby, JavaScript, Python background. Also then, as part of that is we also culturally like Rust the projects, not Rust the programming language, really, really cares about helping people understand what systems programming and like lower-level programming means. A lot of people will not program and in C or C++ because they have no idea how to get help or to learn because many people in the low-level space have this RTFM attitude or like, "If you don't know what you're doing, then get out of here," whereas in Rust world, if you ask an extremely basic question, we're like, "Welcome. We would love to have you. I would be very happy to like walk you through," like explaining how that works on these kind of low-level details. Part of the culture of Rust is to bring this sort of low-level programming to people that have rejected it before for various reasons. The reason that Mozilla cares and the reason Mozilla sponsored the project is that Firefox is written in C++, so like four million lines of C++ last I checked. Last time we did a security audit of a really pants-on-fire, terrible security bugs in Firefox, I go to this website and now they run arbitrary code on my machine kinds of terrifying bugs. Basically happened because C++ is dangerous and sharp. If you screw up, there's the kind of bad things that can happen. About 50% of those security issues in Firefox would be eliminated at compile time by the Rust compiler. That's a really huge win in general so the idea is that we are slowly rewriting Firefox and Rust over time. That's one angle of why Mozilla cares about Rust. The second part is Servo, which is a rendering engine that's built in Rust from the ground up. If you think about Firefox proper, it's got Gecko as the rendering engine inside that actually determines where things go on the page and stuff. We're also writing a new one of those from scratch called Servo in Rust. That was also to prove that the language was doing the kind of things that we need it to do. But also Servo is an impressive piece of technology in its own right so it might become its own thing and/or bits and pieces of it are already making their way into Firefox. It's kind of also a way to improve our core products. That's why Mozilla cares. CHRIS: I was curious with Servo and Servo is the layout engine. Do you know if there are any plans to write a JavaScript runtime in Rust? STEVE: That question is complicated. Sort of what it boils down to is that a Git is inherently kind of unsafe by Rust definition of unsafety. It's actually controversial like when I talk to people that work on JavaScript engines, they're pretty much 50/50 split between, "Oh, yeah. Totally Let's absolutely rewrite the whole thing in Rust because we rewrite it every two or three years anyway from scratch so why not use Rust next time," to, "Since it's massively unsafe anyway, I don't see what benefit I would actually get so why not just stick with what we know." It's like very extreme ends. It's definitely feasible but I don't know if it's going to happen and/or when exactly. CHARLES: There were two questions that I had kind of to unpack some of the things that you said in there that were just really interesting to me. You said Mozilla plans to incrementally rewrite Firefox in Rust, where it's currently four million lines of C++. Now, how does that actually work where you're talking about swapping out large parts of the runtime with something that's written in a completely separate language? How does that communication happen between those language boundaries? STEVE: There's this concept called an ABI, not API. It may sound very similar -- Application Binary Interface. What this really boils down to is assembly language does not have function calls. That's not a concept, that's in assembly. People have come up with, "If I write a function and I map it to assembly code, what's the convention about how I do things like passing an argument and return values? How those all that stuff actually work?" Because assembly is so low-level, there are multiple different ways that you can make that happen. There's a number of different specifications how to make that work so C, the programming language, has a very straightforward ABI so any programming language that knows how to call C functions, uses these convention at the assembly level to do the function call. What you can do with Rust is you can say, "Please make this Rust function follow the C calling convention," in that way, any sort of thing that knows how to call C functions can call Rust functions directly. By doing that, you can sort of say like take a chunk of code, write it in Rust, expose a C interface, and then anything that knows how to talk to C, which is virtually everything, can talk to Rust equally as well. For example, one of the earliest production uses of Rust was actually inside of a Ruby gem because Ruby can be extended to C and Ruby knows how to have C extensions. It doesn't actually need to know that it's literally written in C. It just needs to know how to generate the assembly to call the correct functions. That's actually like a thing. Basically, the process is like write a component in Rust, expose this language independent wrapper, and then call into it like you would in C code. CHARLES: So it's really, just they're sharing memory and sharing is like right there in the process and there's no overhead for the intercommunication, it sounds like? STEVE: Yeah, exactly. You could also do all the regular things with JSON-RPC over a socket or whatever if you wanted to. The most efficient way is to literally include it as your binary just like anything else. CHARLES: Which kind of leads me into my next question, which is Rubyist and Pythonista people coming from JavaScript, one of the reasons we don't like to write in C is because, as you mentioned, they're so sharp so we have safety so that you don't have to worry about memory allocation for the most part, the garbage collector kind of has your back there. You access things by reference so you never have to worry about accessing memory. That's not there but kind of the conventional wisdom is that that all comes with a pretty big cost. It's like really, really expensive. I know when I was getting into Ruby and I was explaining a lot of the pushback I got from people doing C and even Java, it was like, "It's going to be super slow because all those high-level features that you love so much, you're paying a lot. A lot for them." My understanding is that's not really true with Rust. Is that fair to say? STEVE: Well, Rust does not have a garbage collector so, yes, it does not pay that cost because it doesn't exist. Now, that also raises a bunch of other interesting questions and basically what it boils down to is a compiler and especially one that has a typesystem, basically asks you to declare certain properties of your code like this function takes one argument only and it's always a string. That's sort of what type safety means. It kind of like a fundamental level. One of the ways that Rust uses type safety is to say, "This pointer to this memory always points to valid memory," and you have to be able to demonstrate that to me at compile time. From those couple of sentences, that sounds extremely complicated but it turns out that most programming code is written in a way that actually works this way. For example, like I'd talk to Yehuda Katz a number of times because we're friends, he also works on the Rust project and he's also well-known in JavaScript and to you all, I would assume. It turns out that the style of Rust code I write is actually extremely similar to the style of JavaScript code that I write is just sometimes there are some tweaks. It is true that those features often do take up a lot of memory and/or rely on any sort of expensive, from a low-level perspective, way of doing things. But it turns out that's actually more of a function of the way that the programming language is made in semantics. You could design a programming language that feels very similar but as very different underlying characteristics. For example, Closures in Rust, the compiler is smart enough to know that if you don't actually capture an environment. Say you're going to add one to every number in a list. You want to do like .map, pass in a closure that takes one argument X and adds one to every single X and then collect that up into like the map join kind of thing, to collect into a new array. That closure that you had passed a map, while it's a closure, it's taking that one argument X and doing X + 1, so it's not really capturing an environment at all. There's actually no reason to allocate a bunch of extra memory because it turns out, it's the same thing as a regular function. The compiler is able to optimize that call away completely to the same thing as if it was a normal function and not a closure, and therefore, you're paying no overhead. Even though, like syntactically, it looks kind of like a closure. Then you're kind of think of that applied to almost everything in Rust. For example, Rust has methods but almost all of them are actually statically dispatched at compile time, as supposed to dynamically dispatched, where you need to look through some sort of object hierarchy because we don't really have inheritance. There's no way to say like this might result to a colon, this class or this class is super class, or this class is super class so I have to do this runtime look up to call functions that just doesn't actually really exist. Part of it is through the fact that these coding patterns don't strictly require this stuff. It's just the way those languages are built and part of it is because as we were building a language, we were extremely sensitive to not include features that would require this really heavy overhead. In a language, that's like a low-level of focus on details, it's extremely hard to talk about the details without code. There's a lot of details, it turns out. CHRIS: One thing that I'm very curious about and one of the things that drew me to Rust actually is the fact that its typesystem is, I guess an ML typesystem. It is like much more [inaudible] to something that you would see in a functional programming language like Haskell, than you would like a regular C++ or Java. CHARLES: Now, a Chris-acronym alert. What is an ML-style typesystem? CHRIS: I'm sure Steve can answer this better than I can but it's a typesystem that uses the Hindley-Milner algorithm for type inference. It does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, in terms of correctness. Is that correct? STEVE: Yeah, I would say more accurately, ML is a programming language. It's the name of the language so by saying like an ML-like typesystem, he means like a Java-type typesystem. It's like a similar statement but about a different language. I always forget what ML stands for specifically but like OCaml has got ML at the end so like OCaml is one of the languages that sort of the family of ML. There's like two branches of functional programming, which of course everything is wrong when you try to organize things this way. Like you could also argue Lisp as a third but there's kind of like the Haskell-style and the ML-style are these two big pillars of functional language stuff and Rust tends to be in the ML sort of family. There's lots of common features between families of programming languages and all that kind of stuff. I think the ultimate point that Chris is trying to make is when I say that Rust is a typesystem, I do not mean it's like Java. There is a wide variety of typesystems and they do all sorts of different things and actually Java has been getting increasingly better over the years as well. But it is much more canned to a functional language in the typesystem, which I think is what you were getting at and serves the actual question, right? CHRIS: Yeah. Actually, I just looked it up and ML stands for MetaLanguage. It is actually is going to serve my question really well. ML was originally designed for theorem improving in math, which is part of why it works really well in functional programming languages. But it also makes sense if you use Rust, how the compiler work from the kinds of things that it catches, like a relatively low effort on your part because it is originally designed to completely prove out a theorem so the compiler is doing that to your program. That leads to my question which is I recently heard someone else on the Rust core team talk about one of the things that Rust really seeks to improve upon is concurrency and parallelism, which is historically very hard. To do that, you could use things like mutexes or reference counting, which Rust has. But they also lean extremely heavily on the typesystem itself to sort of guarantee that your concurrent code is actually going to run safely. On one hand, I'm interested in hearing you expound on that but I'm also really curious how the C, C++, Java programmers take to that sort of thing in Rust because as I understand it, that is a pretty novel approach to that kind of problem. I wonder if there's like pushback from the existing low-level systems community on that stuff. STEVE: I'll do the second part first because it's a little simpler. One thing that I will say is we sort of didn't appreciate over time because we were creating Rust for ourselves, roughly the C++ programmers are working on Firefox, which we had to say for ourselves because I was not literally one of those people but you get the idea, is like assuming that C++ people would be the primary audience. But it turns out that a lot of people that programming C or C++ are pretty happy with it and they like doing things that way. They're a lot smaller of a population than the number of programmers who do not program of those languages, which is true for any language, basically. The sum of all other people is bigger than your specific thing. What that means, I think that in retrospect this seems obvious but at the time, it was like hard to figure out or I definitely did not understand this at that time, that most people would come to Rust from not C or C++ than they would from C and C++, just even by virtue of numbers alone. A lot of the people who are not doing it are not doing it for reasons. They've already rejected it for some sort of purpose and the people who are still doing it often are like happy with what's going on. There's definitely a little skeptical at times of the kinds of things that we can accomplish. Also, our success has been pushing C++ specifically to grow a lot of safety things so we hear a lot of people say like, "In five years, C++ is going to have this tooling that's going to make it also pretty safe, even if it's not as safe as Rust. I'll just wait for that instead." Surprise, low-level programmers are extremely conservative bunch in many instances. The first part, which is the bigger and more interesting one, the typesystem is absolutely how concurrency works in Rust. This is extremely powerful for a number of different reasons. The first one, and I think the fundamental reason why it's done this way is that typesystems don't have any runtime overhead. When you're in a performance-heavy language, that's really the key. Originally, a long ago in Rust, we actually had a garbage collector even, like a very long time ago in Rust. The primary goal was always safety and we thought the only way to accomplish that was with lots of runtime checking, heavy runtime, and all these things. Over time, as the typesystem grew, we realized we could use more and more of a typesystem to eliminate more and more of the runtime because types are checked to compile time so they have no overhead cost, which is awesome. Like Rust references, doing this validation that they're always valid is completely a compile time construct that at runtime, they're literally the same thing as C pointers. That's one reason why the typesystem is really heavily useful for concurrency because you want things to be safe. We also don't want to slow them down. The whole point of concurrency in many instances is to get a speed up. If you introduce too many safety checks to make sure that your concurrency stuff works, you lose all the gains that you were trying to get from being concurrent in the first place. Having that like as low-cost as possible is extremely important. The second one is that concurrent problems are extremely difficult to debug because you need to recreate the exact set of circumstances under which the bug happens. If you have a bug because you have two threads that have a particular access pattern on a particular variable and that's where the bug is introduced, good luck coercing your operating system scheduler into scheduling those two threads at exactly the same way as when the bug happens. To some degree of the way that you fix a lot of concurrency bugs is by introducing an extreme amount of logging and then just kind of let it run and praying that you hit into the situation that causes the bug. That really brutal and doesn't really work. By using the typesystem and verifying it upfront, you just know it will work at runtime because you've already proved the concurrency property before your code even runs. It's also just like a better debugging experience, I think in general. The way that we accomplish this task is extremely novel. I guess I should also say extremely novel to working programmers, like almost all Rust is built off of existing research that has been known in academia for a relatively long time. That's actually one of the places where it gets the name from, it's like taking ten-year old ideas that have a little bit of rust on them, that have found usefulness and bringing them to [inaudible] research. Anyway, the way we accomplish this basically is the typesystem in the standard library, the way that you spin up a new thread, it has a particular type signature and the type signature says, "Only allow the types to be sent to this new thread. There are safe to pass between threads," and/or like, "Only allow references between this thread and that thread of types that are safe to use across thread." What that means is that when you try to spin up a thread and you passes a thing that doesn't work, you get a typesystem error. It turns out this is not concurrent safe collection so it does not have the prerequisite types so therefore, you cannot pass on this thread and you're done. That's sort of like at a core level of how these things work. Then for example, mutex is a type that does have that property so by sticking with non-concurrency thing into a mutex, now you can share it safely. That means we've guaranteed that the compile time that you'd safely done this transfer between threads and that kind of thing. It's not just about mutexes but that's sort of the general approach. The last thing I want to say briefly because I just said a whole bunch of things. I'm sure, I've raised a ton of questions here is that the other powerful thing about using the typesystem for concurrency guarantees is that other people can extend it. If you write a library in Rust, your library will be exactly as concurrency safe as the standard library and as the language itself. It's not like we provide the set of concurrent collections and then we vetted our own implementations and then you're kind of your own or building your own stuff. You can use those exact same types to help guarantee properties on your stuff. Also build alternate threading situations, as well that use the same things and the ecosystem all works together so everything is just concurrency safe by default because it's like a property of typesystems that are being built into the runtime or something. CHRIS: I know that recently, there's been a lot of, I guess excitement about this library called Tokio. It's not like there's future that kind of like promises in JavaScript, then there have been abstractions just kind of consistently being built up but it seems like Tokio is the next step and it's building towards a whole stack of higher-level concurrency things. Is what you just said enables that kind of thing to happen? STEVE: Yes. Tokio is using those exact same typesystem features in order to guarantee that when you have a chain of promises, to use the JavaScript terminology instead of future things, that you make sure that they're safe. This is not literally implemented yet but Tokio, for those who are not paid hyper attention to the Rust space because this is a cutting-edge, the library is gearing up for an initial release in the next week or two. Soon after you hear this or maybe right before you hear this, it's just going to be released. It's extremely cutting edge. But in some ways it follows sort of the node model of concurrency. There's event loops, you chained together, we call them futures, you call them promises together, you put that pile a future chain and do an event loop and watch the concurrency kind of go. One example of how Rust can do cool things is you could -- this is not implemented yet but it will be in the future -- run, let's say, five event loops on five different threads. Then you just tell the framework, "Please run this future chain onto one event loop. I don't care which one," and then it will automatically load balance across the five threads and five event loops because you've guaranteed the compile time that everything is safe to pass between threads so we know that that's just trivial to do and therefore it's like not a big deal. We can add those heavy duty features without worrying about introducing very subtle bugs, which is really cool. CHRIS: That kind of leads me to my next question, which is at The Frontside, we are pretty into web development, in case you didn't know. I am someone who follow Rust a lot and I find it very interesting. But for the most part, I don't have a need to do systems programming on a regular basis. I also wouldn't even really know where to start, if I wanted to do systems programming. As I learned Rust, I tend to always gravitate towards wanting to do things that I would probably do in Ruby or Python, like write the back-end for some web app or something. That goes okay but Rust is very much still in the process of building those abstractions to the point that it's relatively digestible. So I have a couple of questions. One is do you see Rust being a thing that would be used by web developers a lot more broadly and two, how would you recommend that people like me who aren't really familiar with systems programming start to really dig into Rust on a deeper level? STEVE: I would like to think that web programmers will use Rust more often and to be honest, originally, I was extremely skeptical of this. But it's been changing rapidly as time has gone on. Part of that is because as we've gained more experience, actually in programming in Rust, the fact is Rust used to be a lot less ergonomic than it is and now it's fairly ergonomic and will only get more so in the future. That's something that web people or at least, I come from Ruby so Rubyist care a lot about ergonomics, maybe more than anything else frankly. I'm not sure it's the first tool that you'll reach for but I do believe that sometimes, it makes a lot of sense. As one example that I will use, there's not a whole lot about this but basically, npm has started using Rust on the server side for powering the registry. They have three services in production now but they were basically like JavaScript as a language we all know what is the best language for doing this. We have a service that needs a little more oomph so maybe let's rewrite that in Rust instead and use it for those kind of things. I think that there's a lot of situations for web developers where they don't realize they have the power to make things faster without just adding on more servers. I think that's kind of like a compelling sort of [inaudible]. Any sort of background job like any sort of job queue thing is like often better written in a faster language but you would not reach for that faster language first because traditionally, those faster languages have been terrible to use. I think we continue to win on the ergonomics and continue to win the libraries that web developers will reach for Rust like more often than not. In terms of the learning rest on a deeper level, I think that one of the initial things and sounds like maybe you personally are a little past that but maybe not the people who listen this podcast is that I do think that sort of building the things that you would normally build in Ruby or JavaScript or Python is the good first step. For example, right now Advent of Code has been like a really fantastic way of having these little programming projects. If you haven't seen AdventOfCode.com, it's like every day in December up until Christmas, there's a new programming project that you can build the thing in. I've been doing those in Rust and that's a lot of fun and it's a good way to practice and gain some basic literacy. But after that moving at a low-level stuff, my personal thing and I know something you've expressed interest in the past is my side project is building an operating system in Rust. More so, than just that the pitch is, "You've written JavaScript before. Let's write an operating system together. Here is this companion book and I'll show you how," and that's called intermezzOS. It's like I'm basically trying to rebuild an operating systems curriculum but in Rust instead from nothing, like we start off with assembly code and move up into Rust code. CHARLES: Now, you can't even use anything like all the things that we've been describing like threads, kernel level callbacks. You get none of that, right? You have to implement it all from scratch. You can't use POSIX or whatever. You know, 90% of your code ends up going through. STEVE: It turns out that and it's sort of like for reasons that hopefully I'll be able to fix in the future, you need about like 200 lines of assembly code before you get into Rust and then you basically don't need to use assembly again, really. It's not that big of a barrier in terms of [inaudible] things and its copy-paste stuff that I explained extremely heavily so it's like totally an accomplished real thing. Then you're in a real programming language and you can do more normal things on top of it. But one thing about that because it is my side project, the kernel is actually farther along than the tutorial is and I actually need to find some time to write more of the freaking tutorial but this is kind of my personal long-term project over the next, let's say, decade and to have a completely free and open source tutorial for you to learn about operating system developments. That's one of the things I've been doing. Another one that I think that is really extremely useful is once you gain some amount of literacy on this, you can actually start to learn more about how your regular programming language works. I've been giving this conference talk recently. It's called 'Exploring Ruby Through Rust', and I'm like, "Once you know this low-level stuff and you gain this literacy, you can look at the source code of your language as interpreter and learn stuff about it and you can contribute to it maybe even." Maybe that's not the most practical thing or whatever but now that I've spent a bunch of time with Rust, I understand Ruby on a far, deeper level than I ever did before because now I'm not afraid to go poke around in the internals and learn how it really works under the hood and I understand what those internals do far better. Maybe five years ago, I could have told you like, "Ruby is garbage collector. It's extremely basic. But I don't really know what that means." And now I can be like, "Ruby has this mark and sweep generational garbage collector. But it's not compacting or concurrent yet but maybe in a year or two. Now, that's not just a bunch of buzzwords because I have this low-level literacy." CHRIS: Yeah, that's definitely something. I forgot about but every time I go learn something in Rust and initially this happens a lot. Every time I do that and I go back to JavaScript or something else, I find that Rust inadvertently taught me something about the language that I actually work on every day. Especially, when it comes to things like references, values, and the difference between them and debugging weird prototype behavior in JavaScript became so much easier after I had spent some time working with Rust and had had to like actually deal with passing around references or dealing with life times or having the compiler yell at me for a lot of things that I thought were totally normal. Then I'm going back to JavaScript, it's like, "Wait a second --" Suddenly a lot of these pieces are starting to fit together and before what was just as weird mystery, now I can totally see what is happening and start to think about how to fix it. Even though I don't even have the same tools that I do with Rust, it still is extremely useful from that perspective. STEVE: That's awesome. I'm glad to hear it. That's how I definitely felt with Ruby for sure. CHARLES: You know, in terms of actually using it for day to day stuff, is there other plans, is the ecosystem already supporting things, say, a web framework? Like a low-level web framework like Sinatra or Express or even higher one like Rails. STEVE: I guess, like you've already qualified it as web stuff. But I would say, in a broader sense, whether or not Rust is ready today for you, it depends entirely on the ecosystem. I feel like 80% is productive in Rust as I did ever in Ruby. But that's only if there's a library that I don't have to rewrite myself because it doesn't exist yet. That number is actually growing rapidly so I just look because it's like the end of the year and our package ecosystem is actually doubles. This is a request from earlier. I didn't expect Cargo so Rust basically has bundler or yarn/npm built into the language itself. We distribute it with Rust and we have all that great package ecosystem shenanigans. Another great example of Rust over a language like C is the tooling. Basically, what happened was Yehuda and I kind of showed up in Rust world and we're like, "Why are you still using make files. We know a better way." And they're like, "Okay." Then he builds the equivalent of bundler for Rust. Then everyone's like, "Oh, yeah. This is way better. We're not using make files anymore." The tooling situation is very familiar to a dynamic programming language person because we literally had the same people write the tools. That also means you can share packages freely and briefly so operating system development thing is totally intense to be able to use your package manager to download packages to help you build an operating system. For example, X86 has custom assembly instructions that you need to use when interacting with the hardware and someone has already built a package on [inaudible] that wraps the inline assembly up in a nice to use Rust functions. I can just include that package and use it when building my operating system, which is totally mind-blowing. The npm is sort of feel into OS development is just real intense and cool. Back to the ecosystem thing, though. For web application specifically, it's good and also bad. There's actually multiple different web frameworks already at different levels of comparison. For example, you have Nickle which is kind of like Sinatra and you have Pencil, which is kind of like Flask and Python, which is also kind of like Sinatra. Then you have Iron, which is kind of like expressed in JavaScript. There's also like I know of at least two. One of is has been worked on but it's not been actually released. But the code is at least open source yet. I know a second that is being developed fully in private that has not had any public release yet. Then when the Tokio stuff comes out, People are going to be building new frameworks on top of the new async shenanigans and/or porting the async stuff into the existing frameworks. We kind of have a lot of options but there's also a lot of churn and activity and stuff going on in that space so that either terrifies you or makes you enthusiastic. They're basically is like that. We definitely don't have a Rails yet. I don't think that's because a Rails will never exist but because it's a much bigger project to build a Rails than to build a Sinatra. CHARLES: Yeah, and you just need those foundational pieces there in place before you really want to attempt that. STEVE: And I think Tokio is the real foundational piece and it's just taken us a long time to put it all together. The initial tests in Tokio, we could do a 'Hello, World' benchmark like the tech and power benchmark. Some of you are already familiar with those things, or not, they're like 'Hello, World' benchmark. We actually got faster than they are fat than all of them. It just edged out the fastest Java, which is currently the reigning benchmark on it. That's like extremely compelling. Even if after all this stuff is built on top of it but it's taken us a while to build those foundations and we're just getting that point like Tokio is going to have a release, hopefully before Christmas. I've been assured by the end of the year and then people are going to build stuff on top of it and it's just going to explode from there. Here's another little interesting pitch. I'll give you for this, is that one of the things I like about Rust on early ecosystem is it means that if you want to be that person who built the library that does X that everyone uses, there's lots of opportunity in Rust world right now. Where there's a lot of foundational libraries that you could be the person who wrote that thing when everyone knows and loves and uses. Like JavaScript is still kind of there. In Ruby, every library basically exists already so there's no more room to build a foundational thing. But if you're someone who likes working on open source and that story is compelling to you like getting involved in a younger ecosystem, it means that you can have a much larger impact. I maintained the [inaudible] library that things used. The only reason that's true is because I was around before we had one and then Yehuda wrote the initial version and now, I'm maintaining it. There's tons of space out there so if writing a web framework is the thing that's interesting to you, Rust is a great place to explore and actually doing that at the moment. CHARLES: Steve, one of the things that I know you do is you actually write the Rust Book. I heard that you're also in the process of rewriting it along with Carol Goulding, I believe. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that. STEVE: As part of this Steve getting the job right in the docs on Rust thing, I kind of working on lots of stuff so up to Rust 1.0, we knew we needed to have some long form explain all the things that Rust so that became what's called the Rust programming language which I named so because the C programming language and the C++ programming language, the names of the foundational books for those languages so I wanted to continue kind of in that tradition. But there is some problems with that which is I'll say that I'm a little harder on my own work than I think other people are so I hear people tell me all the time that they love the Rust Book and that it's like one of the best programming books that have ever written. But I think it's not that great. The reason why is also because I just know that the way in which I wrote it. You have to remember that Rust 1.0 happened in May of 2015. We were working on language for six or eight years before 1.0 happened so there was lots of changes, language is changing on a daily basis. Now, it's super stable like super, super, super stable. But what that also means is in some like deeper philosophical sense, nobody had had experience programming in what really was Rust yet because we were still like finishing building it's so like how do you write a book on a language that like the precursor language is what you're using and you're trying to see like what is it going to actually end up being like at 1.0. Because it's not like we can just say, "It's done. Now, go write a book, Steve and then we'll release it at that time." The circumstances in which I wrote the original book were I had a very intense deadline of this has to be done by the 15th of May. While the language was coming together, it takes a couple months to put together a book so I had to make sure that the stuff I was starting I would need to go back and re-fix. That also means that I was like much more vague in some places where pieces were still falling into place and you're like, "This is definitely going to be the same. But this might change so I'm going to leave that part off," and then I just have to plow through because the deadline. All those things coming together means that I kind of put together this book that while good and I'm proud of the work that I did, I can do much better. At this point in time, we now have a full year and a half after Rust 1.0 has come out. I know the struggles that people have when learning Rust. I know the ways in which they succeed or fail and I've talked to a lot of people so I'm sort of rewriting the book now, bringing that knowledge and understanding in as well as the fact that the language just been around for a minute so it's much easier. As part of that, I brought on Carol. She goes by Carol Nichols or Goulding. She both has her maiden name and her married name. She's been one of my best friends for a very long time so I'm extremely happy that she's my co-author on this book. The two of us together and working on doing the rewrite, I think that it is possibly the best thing I've ever done or worked on as far as books go, like I'm extremely happy with it and you can read it online right now, if you want to and see if I'm right or wrong about that. But I think it's a far better book than the original book was. It's actually going to publish at No Starch as well. We're donating all the proceeds to charities since we're being paid to actually write the book in the first place, like [inaudible]. It's going to be a much, much easier and better way to learn the language, I think as well. CHARLES: If we want to check that out, where can we find the new version? STEVE: I'll give you a link to put in show notes or whatever as well. But it's Rust-Lang.GitHub.io/book. There's also just like a book repo in the Rust Lang organization on GitHub. All things in Rust is being developed fully in the open so you can read the drafts and see what's been done where. We're getting towards the end, slowly but surely so I'm hoping that's going to be done relatively soon. CHRIS: Well, I'm looking forward to it. CHARLES: Fantastic. Sounds like the documentation is there. It's excellent. The community is there. It's excellent and from what I'm hearing like the kind of the tower of the ecosystem is really being built up. It's not as high as a bunch of other places but it's definitely high enough to jump in and get your feet wet. If you're you know coming from almost any walk of programming. STEVE: It's a lot of work but we seem to be doing good. CHARLES: All right. Well, thanks for stopping in and talking about this with us, Steve. STEVE: Thanks so much for having me. It's been a lot of fun. CHARLES: Yeah, and now Chris, we do need to kind of figure out what is going to be our Rust project here at The Frontside. CHRIS: I'm up for that challenge. CHARLES: Yeah, that'll be some Christmas homework. All right-y. Take care everybody and thanks, as always, for listening. We'll see you next week.

Coach Mary and her husband had a plan - even though they weren't sure exactly where that plan was taking them. They made the decision to forgo unnecessary vacations and spending their bonuses and lived on less than they earned. After a few years they paid off their last consumer debt and found financial freedom to do whatever they wanted.  Listen to the interview with Mary by clicking the play button above. Steve: Mary, you have a wonderful testimony that I would love to have you share with the audience. Before we get into all of that, tell people who is Mary Hayford. Mary: Thanks for having me, Steve. As a professional, I am a financial coach, and I also teach financial education. I not only do it for work, but we live it in our lives every day. Steve: How do you live it every day? Mary: The first thing we do is we live on less than what we earn; it’s a conscious choice and a conscious decision. This is contrary to what our society dictates to us, but we’ve found it to be a smart choice. Steve: And the reason you did this was to become a millionaire? Mary: I don’t know if it was that clear to us back then; it started when we were in our early 30’s. We had seen many people work for years and years at their jobs, make a lot of money, and be very successful. Unfortunately, these people made the decision to spend everything they made. They spent additional money they made, like bonus checks, raises through the years. They weren’t able to enjoy the fruit of their labors because they weren’t saving anything. They were living month to month, spending everything they earned. It became clear to use that this is not how we wanted to live our own lives; we didn’t want to feel that way after decades of working. Steve: That sounds like the typical American. So what was your end goal here? Mary: The end goal in making the decision to live on less than what we made, and save for our retirement, and have an emergency fund, was that I knew that my current career was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. This was the driving force of us getting focused. The first thing this afforded us was to give us options to look at. So many people are in what they consider “dead end” careers that they despise going to every day; once we got out of debt we were able to have the option for me to consider leaving my full time job. It was not possible for us to do this or think about it in a responsible way until we paid off everything. Steve: Most people would call that early retirement, but what you’re going to tell us about is the big life-changing event you guys are working on right now. By being debt free, you’re now about to adopt! Mary: It’s very exciting! I consider myself living out two dreams at once for our family: I stopped working my first career, but I never stopped working all together. My husband and I have always wanted to have children; we felt that somehow, someway it was going to be possible and become real for us. So we continued all throughout our 30s and 40s to search for God’s plan for us to have children. Lo and behold, at ages 51 and 52, we are in the process of adopting two beautiful children. They are sisters age 10 and age 15 Steve: That’s so great!! Would you say that five years ago you knew this was your plan? Mary: No, we didn’t know this was our plan. It was our desire; we are very goal oriented and very patient. We felt that if this was really the true plan that God laid out for our life, then somehow, as long as we kept working toward it in our home life, marriage, and finances, God would allow it to happen. Steve: The point I’m trying to lead to is that you didn’t know that this was your goal, but you continued just living on less than you make in order to get rid of that consumer debt. You’re actually consumer and mortgage debt free, is that correct? Mary: Yes, we are. What you just said is right on. At this stage of our life, in our early 50s, if we were saddled with a lifestyle that we spent everything we made, and if we didn’t have money for retirement, and if we had a big, hefty mortgage payment, bringing two children into our home would not have been a responsible decision that we would have considered. Steve: And your desire was to be able to be home with the kids as much as possible. Mary: I wanted to be able to position myself and our family, that if we were able to bring children into our home, that I was in a career that would allow me the flexibility to be here for the kids. Steve: And you did it!!! Mary: I feel 100% certain that people who are working two full times jobs can still adequately meet the needs of their children, but I am sure however, that without the financial strain of needing two full time incomes has made a difference for us. Steve: Would you caution a person, in their 30s with debt, against adoption? What would the roadblocks be for them? Mary: I wouldn’t caution or deter them, but I would say that some people have felt that adoption wasn’t an option because in many cases adoptions can cost $30K to $40K in a private placement. We are adopting two girls that are in the foster care system and it’s not costing us anything. For people that want to adopt, but are worried about the cost, there are options out there. I encourage people to consider all the options, and not to allow money to be the reason they stop dreaming of having a family of their own. Steve: I’m certainly not an expert on the adoption process, so can you give us an idea of what those options are that you were just referring to? Mary: There are two main ways that people choose to adopt. One would be through a private attorney, either a domestic or international adoption. When you do either of those through a private placement, that necessitates a lot of work on the part of the attorney. The rate for this is about $30K-$40K per child right now. For many families that is not an option; for those that would consider adoption, we have a system here in the US that does not have a good reputation. It is the foster care system. These children have been removed from their homes for one reason or another. When you choose to go this route, you can adopt these children at essentially no cost to you. And children are available from all ages newborn to teenager. I encourage people that if it is your hope and dream to adopt, do your homework and look at your options. Steve: Thanks for coming on to the show. Your testimony is wonderful; I love the idea that you didn’t exactly know what you were going to do, but by living on less than you make and paying off the debt, you have been able to make these choices. Adoption is a wonderful thing for those looking to increase the size of their family. Are there resources that you would like to direct our listeners to, that will help them discover their options? Mary: I tell people to start local. Every municipality has an agency to obtain where they can obtain more information. The second thing I tell people is to check online for the state agency. The third thing is to check online and look at national data base. Keep looking until you can connect with an agency and a child that you can work with and bring in as part of your family.