Podcast appearances and mentions of steve yes

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

Steve Tuck, Co-Founder & CEO of Oxide Computer Company, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his work to make modern computers cloud-friendly. Steve describes what it was like going through early investment rounds, and the difficult but important decision he and his co-founder made to build their own switch. Corey and Steve discuss the demand for on-prem computers that are built for cloud capability, and Steve reveals how Oxide approaches their product builds to ensure the masses can adopt their technology wherever they are. About SteveSteve is the Co-founder & CEO of Oxide Computer Company.  He previously was President & COO of Joyent, a cloud computing company acquired by Samsung.  Before that, he spent 10 years at Dell in a number of different roles. Links Referenced: Oxide Computer Company: https://oxide.computer/ On The Metal Podcast: https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is brought to us in part by our friends at RedHat. As your organization grows, so does the complexity of your IT resources. You need a flexible solution that lets you deploy, manage, and scale workloads throughout your entire ecosystem. The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform simplifies the management of applications and services across your hybrid infrastructure with one platform. Look for it on the AWS Marketplace.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. You know, I often say it—but not usually on the show—that Screaming in the Cloud is a podcast about the business of cloud, which is intentionally overbroad so that I can talk about basically whatever the hell I want to with whoever the hell I'd like. Today's guest is, in some ways of thinking, about as far in the opposite direction from Cloud as it's possible to go and still be involved in the digital world. Steve Tuck is the CEO at Oxide Computer Company. You know, computers, the things we all pretend aren't underpinning those clouds out there that we all use and pay by the hour, gigabyte, second-month-pound or whatever it works out to. Steve, thank you for agreeing to come back on the show after a couple years, and once again suffer my slings and arrows.Steve: Much appreciated. Great to be here. It has been a while. I was looking back, I think three years. This was like, pre-pandemic, pre-interest rates, pre… Twitter going totally sideways.Corey: And I have to ask to start with that, it feels, on some level, like toward the start of the pandemic, when everything was flying high and we'd had low interest rates for a decade, that there was a lot of… well, lunacy lurking around in the industry, my own business saw it, too. It turns out that not giving a shit about the AWS bill is in fact a zero interest rate phenomenon. And with all that money or concentrated capital sloshing around, people decided to do ridiculous things with it. I would have thought, on some level, that, “We're going to start a computer company in the Bay Area making computers,” would have been one of those, but given that we are a year into the correction, and things seem to be heading up into the right for you folks, that take was wrong. How'd I get it wrong?Steve: Well, I mean, first of all, you got part of it right, which is there were just a litany of ridiculous companies and projects and money being thrown in all directions at that time.Corey: An NFT of a computer. We're going to have one of those. That's what you're selling, right? Then you had to actually hard pivot to making the real thing.Steve: That's it. So, we might as well cut right to it, you know. This is—we went through the crypto phase. But you know, our—when we started the company, it was yes, a computer company. It's on the tin. It's definitely kind of the foundation of what we're building. But you know, we think about what a modern computer looks like through the lens of cloud.I was at a cloud computing company for ten years prior to us founding Oxide, so was Bryan Cantrill, CTO, co-founder. And, you know, we are huge, huge fans of cloud computing, which was an interesting kind of dichotomy. Instead of conversations when we were raising for Oxide—because of course, Sand Hill is terrified of hardware. And when we think about what modern computers need to look like, they need to be in support of the characteristics of cloud, and cloud computing being not that you're renting someone else's computers, but that you have fully programmable infrastructure that allows you to slice and dice, you know, compute and storage and networking however software needs. And so, what we set out to go build was a way for the companies that are running on-premises infrastructure—which, by the way, is almost everyone and will continue to be so for a very long time—access to the benefits of cloud computing. And to do that, you need to build a different kind of computing infrastructure and architecture, and you need to plumb the whole thing with software.Corey: There are a number of different ways to view cloud computing. And I think that a lot of the, shall we say, incumbent vendors over in the computer manufacturing world tend to sound kind of like dinosaurs, on some level, where they're always talking in terms of, you're a giant company and you already have a whole bunch of data centers out there. But one of the magical pieces of cloud is you can have a ridiculous idea at nine o'clock tonight and by morning, you'll have a prototype, if you're of that bent. And if it turns out it doesn't work, you're out, you know, 27 cents. And if it does work, you can keep going and not have to stop and rebuild on something enterprise-grade.So, for the small-scale stuff and rapid iteration, cloud providers are terrific. Conversely, when you wind up in the giant fleets of millions of computers, in some cases, there begin to be economic factors that weigh in, and for some on workloads—yes, I know it's true—going to a data center is the economical choice. But my question is, is starting a new company in the direction of building these things, is it purely about economics or is there a capability story tied in there somewhere, too?Steve: Yeah, it's actually economics ends up being a distant third, fourth, in the list of needs and priorities from the companies that we're working with. When we talk about—and just to be clear we're—our demographic, that kind of the part of the market that we are focused on are large enterprises, like, folks that are spending, you know, half a billion, billion dollars a year in IT infrastructure, they, over the last five years, have moved a lot of the use cases that are great for public cloud out to the public cloud, and who still have this very, very large need, be it for latency reasons or cost reasons, security reasons, regulatory reasons, where they need on-premises infrastructure in their own data centers and colo facilities, et cetera. And it is for those workloads in that part of their infrastructure that they are forced to live with enterprise technologies that are 10, 20, 30 years old, you know, that haven't evolved much since I left Dell in 2009. And, you know, when you think about, like, what are the capabilities that are so compelling about cloud computing, one of them is yes, what you mentioned, which is you have an idea at nine o'clock at night and swipe a credit card, and you're off and running. And that is not the case for an idea that someone has who is going to use the on-premises infrastructure of their company. And this is where you get shadow IT and 16 digits to freedom and all the like.Corey: Yeah, everyone with a corporate credit card winds up being a shadow IT source in many cases. If your processes as a company don't make it easier to proceed rather than doing it the wrong way, people are going to be fighting against you every step of the way. Sometimes the only stick you've got is that of regulation, which in some industries, great, but in other cases, no, you get to play Whack-a-Mole. I've talked to too many companies that have specific scanners built into their mail system every month looking for things that look like AWS invoices.Steve: [laugh]. Right, exactly. And so, you know, but if you flip it around, and you say, well, what if the experience for all of my infrastructure that I am running, or that I want to provide to my software development teams, be it rented through AWS, GCP, Azure, or owned for economic reasons or latency reasons, I had a similar set of characteristics where my development team could hit an API endpoint and provision instances in a matter of seconds when they had an idea and only pay for what they use, back to kind of corporate IT. And what if they were able to use the same kind of developer tools they've become accustomed to using, be it Terraform scripts and the kinds of access that they are accustomed to using? How do you make those developers just as productive across the business, instead of just through public cloud infrastructure?At that point, then you are in a much stronger position where you can say, you know, for a portion of things that are, as you pointed out, you know, more unpredictable, and where I want to leverage a bunch of additional services that a particular cloud provider has, I can rent that. And where I've got more persistent workloads or where I want a different economic profile or I need to have something in a very low latency manner to another set of services, I can own it. And that's where I think the real chasm is because today, you just don't—we take for granted the basic plumbing of cloud computing, you know? Elastic Compute, Elastic Storage, you know, networking and security services. And us in the cloud industry end up wanting to talk a lot more about exotic services and, sort of, higher-up stack capabilities. None of that basic plumbing is accessible on-prem.Corey: I also am curious as to where exactly Oxide lives in the stack because I used to build computers for myself in 2000, and it seems like having gone down that path a bit recently, yeah, that process hasn't really improved all that much. The same off-the-shelf components still exist and that's great. We always used to disparagingly call spinning hard drives as spinning rust in racks. You named the company Oxide; you're talking an awful lot about the Rust programming language in public a fair bit of the time, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe words don't mean what I thought they meant anymore. Where do you folks start and stop, exactly?Steve: Yeah, that's a good question. And when we started, we sort of thought the scope of what we were going to do and then what we were going to leverage was smaller than it has turned out to be. And by that I mean, man, over the last three years, we have hit a bunch of forks in the road where we had questions about do we take something off the shelf or do we build it ourselves. And we did not try to build everything ourselves. So, to give you a sense of kind of where the dotted line is, around the Oxide product, what we're delivering to customers is a rack-level computer. So, the minimum size comes in rack form. And I think your listeners are probably pretty familiar with this. But, you know, a rack is—Corey: You would be surprised. It's basically, what are they about seven feet tall?Steve: Yeah, about eight feet tall.Corey: Yeah, yeah. Seven, eight feet, weighs a couple 1000 pounds, you know, make an insulting joke about—Steve: Two feet wide.Corey: —NBA players here. Yeah, all kinds of these things.Steve: Yeah. And big hunk of metal. And in the cases of on-premises infrastructure, it's kind of a big hunk of metal hole, and then a bunch of 1U and 2U boxes crammed into it. What the hyperscalers have done is something very different. They started looking at, you know, at the rack level, how can you get much more dense, power-efficient designs, doing things like using a DC bus bar down the back, instead of having 64 power supplies with cables hanging all over the place in a rack, which I'm sure is what you're more familiar with.Corey: Tremendous amount of weight as well because you have the metal chassis for all of those 1U things, which in some cases, you wind up with, what, 46U in a rack, assuming you can even handle the cooling needs of all that.Steve: That's right.Corey: You have so much duplication, and so much of the weight is just metal separating one thing from the next thing down below it. And there are opportunities for massive improvement, but you need to be at a certain point of scale to get there.Steve: You do. You do. And you also have to be taking on the entire problem. You can't pick at parts of these things. And that's really what we found. So, we started at this sort of—the rack level as sort of the design principle for the product itself and found that that gave us the ability to get to the right geometry, to get as much CPU horsepower and storage and throughput and networking into that kind of chassis for the least amount of wattage required, kind of the most power-efficient design possible.So, it ships at the rack level and it ships complete with both our server sled systems in Oxide, a pair of Oxide switches. This is—when I talk about, like, design decisions, you know, do we build our own switch, it was a big, big, big question early on. We were fortunate even though we were leaning towards thinking we needed to go do that, we had this prospective early investor who was early at AWS and he had asked a very tough question that none of our other investors had asked to this point, which is, “What are you going to do about the switch?”And we knew that the right answer to an investor is like, “No. We're already taking on too much.” We're redesigning a server from scratch in, kind of, the mold of what some of the hyperscalers have learned, doing our own Root of Trust, we're doing our own operating system, hypervisor control plane, et cetera. Taking on the switch could be seen as too much, but we told them, you know, we think that to be able to pull through all of the value of the security benefits and the performance and observability benefits, we can't have then this [laugh], like, obscure third-party switch rammed into this rack.Corey: It's one of those things that people don't think about, but it's the magic of cloud with AWS's network, for example, it's magic. You can get line rate—or damn near it—between any two points, sustained.Steve: That's right.Corey: Try that in the data center, you wind into massive congestion with top-of-rack switches, where, okay, we're going to parallelize this stuff out over, you know, two dozen racks and we're all going to have them seamlessly transfer information between each other at line rate. It's like, “[laugh] no, you're not because those top-of-rack switches will melt and become side-of-rack switches, and then bottom-puddle-of-rack switches. It doesn't work that way.”Steve: That's right.Corey: And you have to put a lot of thought and planning into it. That is something that I've not heard a traditional networking vendor addressing because everyone loves to hand-wave over it.Steve: Well so, and this particular prospective investor, we told him, “We think we have to go build our own switch.” And he said, “Great.” And we said, “You know, we think we're going to lose you as an investor as a result, but this is what we're doing.” And he said, “If you're building your own switch, I want to invest.” And his comment really stuck with us, which is AWS did not stand on their own two feet until they threw out their proprietary switch vendor and built their own.And that really unlocked, like you've just mentioned, like, their ability, both in hardware and software to tune and optimize to deliver that kind of line rate capability. And that is one of the big findings for us as we got into it. Yes, it was really, really hard, but based on a couple of design decisions, P4 being the programming language that we are using as the surround for our silicon, tons of opportunities opened up for us to be able to do similar kinds of optimization and observability. And that has been a big, big win.But to your question of, like, where does it stop? So, we are delivering this complete with a baked-in operating system, hypervisor, control plane. And so, the endpoint of the system, where the customer meets is either hitting an API or a CLI or a console that delivers and kind of gives you the ability to spin up projects. And, you know, if one is familiar with EC2 and EBS and VPC, that VM level of abstraction is where we stop.Corey: That, I think, is a fair way of thinking about it. And a lot of cloud folks are going to pooh-pooh it as far as saying, “Oh well, just virtual machines. That's old cloud. That just treats the cloud like a data center.” And in many cases, yes, it does because there are ways to build modern architectures that are event-driven on top of things like Lambda, and API Gateway, and the rest, but you take a look at what my customers are doing and what drives the spend, it is invariably virtual machines that are largely persistent.Sometimes they scale up, sometimes they scale down, but there's always a baseline level of load that people like to hand-wave away the fact that what they're fundamentally doing in a lot of these cases, is paying the cloud provider to handle the care and feeding of those systems, which can be expensive, yes, but also delivers significant innovation beyond what almost any company is going to be able to deliver in-house. There is no way around it. AWS is better than you are—whoever you happen to—be at replacing failed hard drives. That is a simple fact. They have teams of people who are the best in the world of replacing failed hard drives. You generally do not. They are going to be better at that than you. But that's not the only axis. There's not one calculus that leads to, is cloud a scam or is cloud a great value proposition for us? The answer is always a deeply nuanced, “It depends.”Steve: Yeah, I mean, I think cloud is a great value proposition for most and a growing amount of software that's being developed and deployed and operated. And I think, you know, one of the myths that is out there is, hey, turn over your IT to AWS because we have or you know, a cloud provider—because we have such higher caliber personnel that are really good at swapping hard drives and dealing with networks and operationally keeping this thing running in a highly available manner that delivers good performance. That is certainly true, but a lot of the operational value in an AWS is been delivered via software, the automation, the observability, and not actual people putting hands on things. And it's an important point because that's been a big part of what we're building into the product. You know, just because you're running infrastructure in your own data center, it does not mean that you should have to spend, you know, 1000 hours a month across a big team to maintain and operate it. And so, part of that, kind of, cloud, hyperscaler innovation that we're baking into this product is so that it is easier to operate with much, much, much lower overhead in a highly available, resilient manner.Corey: So, I've worked in a number of data center facilities, but the companies I was working with, were always at a scale where these were co-locations, where they would, in some cases, rent out a rack or two, in other cases, they'd rent out a cage and fill it with their own racks. They didn't own the facilities themselves. Those were always handled by other companies. So, my question for you is, if I want to get a pile of Oxide racks into my environment in a data center, what has to change? What are the expectations?I mean, yes, there's obviously going to be power and requirements at the data center colocation is very conversant with, but Open Compute, for example, had very specific requirements—to my understanding—around things like the airflow construction of the environment that they're placed within. How prescriptive is what you've built, in terms of doing a building retrofit to start using you folks?Steve: Yeah, definitely not. And this was one of the tensions that we had to balance as we were designing the product. For all of the benefits of hyperscaler computing, some of the design center for you know, the kinds of racks that run in Google and Amazon and elsewhere are hyperscaler-focused, which is unlimited power, in some cases, data centers designed around the equipment itself. And where we were headed, which was basically making hyperscaler infrastructure available to, kind of, the masses, the rest of the market, these folks don't have unlimited power and they aren't going to go be able to go redesign data centers. And so no, the experience should be—with exceptions for folks maybe that have very, very limited access to power—that you roll this rack into your existing data center. It's on standard floor tile, that you give it power, and give it networking and go.And we've spent a lot of time thinking about how we can operate in the wide-ranging environmental characteristics that are commonplace in data centers that focus on themselves, colo facilities, and the like. So, that's really on us so that the customer is not having to go to much work at all to kind of prepare and be ready for it.Corey: One of the challenges I have is how to think about what you've done because you are rack-sized. But what that means is that my own experimentation at home recently with on-prem stuff for smart home stuff involves a bunch of Raspberries Pi and a [unintelligible 00:19:42], but I tend to more or less categorize you the same way that I do AWS Outposts, as well as mythical creatures, like unicorns or giraffes, where I don't believe that all these things actually exist because I haven't seen them. And in fact, to get them in my house, all four of those things would theoretically require a loading dock if they existed, and that's a hard thing to fake on a demo signup form, as it turns out. How vaporware is what you've built? Is this all on paper and you're telling amazing stories or do they exist in the wild?Steve: So, last time we were on, it was all vaporware. It was a couple of napkin drawings and a seed round of funding.Corey: I do recall you not using that description at the time, for what it's worth. Good job.Steve: [laugh]. Yeah, well, at least we were transparent where we were going through the race. We had some napkin drawings and we had some good ideas—we thought—and—Corey: You formalize those and that's called Microsoft PowerPoint.Steve: That's it. A hundred percent.Corey: The next generative AI play is take the scrunched-up, stained napkin drawing, take a picture of it, and convert it to a slide.Steve: Google Docs, you know, one of those. But no, it's got a lot of scars from the build and it is real. In fact, next week, we are going to be shipping our first commercial systems. So, we have got a line of racks out in our manufacturing facility in lovely Rochester, Minnesota. Fun fact: Rochester, Minnesota, is where the IBM AS/400s were built.Corey: I used to work in that market, of all things.Steve: Really?Corey: Selling tape drives in the AS/400. I mean, I still maintain there's no real mainframe migration to the cloud play because there's no AWS/400. A joke that tends to sail over an awful lot of people's heads because, you know, most people aren't as miserable in their career choices as I am.Steve: Okay, that reminds me. So, when we were originally pitching Oxide and we were fundraising, we [laugh]—in a particular investor meeting, they asked, you know, “What would be a good comp? Like how should we think about what you are doing?” And fortunately, we had about 20 investor meetings to go through, so burning one on this was probably okay, but we may have used the AS/400 as a comp, talking about how [laugh] mainframe systems did such a good job of building hardware and software together. And as you can imagine, there were some blank stares in that room.But you know, there are some good analogs to historically in the computing industry, when you know, the industry, the major players in the industry, were thinking about how to deliver holistic systems to support end customers. And, you know, we see this in the what Apple has done with the iPhone, and you're seeing this as a lot of stuff in the automotive industry is being pulled in-house. I was listening to a good podcast. Jim Farley from Ford was talking about how the automotive industry historically outsourced all of the software that controls cars, right? So, like, Bosch would write the software for the controls for your seats.And they had all these suppliers that were writing the software, and what it meant was that innovation was not possible because you'd have to go out to suppliers to get software changes for any little change you wanted to make. And in the computing industry, in the 80s, you saw this blow apart where, like, firmware got outsourced. In the IBM and the clones, kind of, race, everyone started outsourcing firmware and outsourcing software. Microsoft started taking over operating systems. And then VMware emerged and was doing a virtualization layer.And this, kind of, fragmented ecosystem is the landscape today that every single on-premises infrastructure operator has to struggle with. It's a kit car. And so, pulling it back together, designing things in a vertically integrated manner is what the hyperscalers have done. And so, you mentioned Outposts. And, like, it's a good example of—I mean, the most public cloud of public cloud companies created a way for folks to get their system on-prem.I mean, if you need anything to underscore the draw and the demand for cloud computing-like, infrastructure on-prem, just the fact that that emerged at all tells you that there is this big need. Because you've got, you know, I don't know, a trillion dollars worth of IT infrastructure out there and you have maybe 10% of it in the public cloud. And that's up from 5% when Jassy was on stage in '21, talking about 95% of stuff living outside of AWS, but there's going to be a giant market of customers that need to own and operate infrastructure. And again, things have not improved much in the last 10 or 20 years for them.Corey: They have taken a tone onstage about how, “Oh, those workloads that aren't in the cloud, yet, yeah, those people are legacy idiots.” And I don't buy that for a second because believe it or not—I know that this cuts against what people commonly believe in public—but company execs are generally not morons, and they make decisions with context and constraints that we don't see. Things are the way they are for a reason. And I promise that 90% of corporate IT workloads that still live on-prem are not being managed or run by people who've never heard of the cloud. There was a decision made when some other things were migrating of, do we move this thing to the cloud or don't we? And the answer at the time was no, we're going to keep this thing on-prem where it is now for a variety of reasons of varying validity. But I don't view that as a bug. I also, frankly, don't want to live in a world where all the computers are basically run by three different companies.Steve: You're spot on, which is, like, it does a total disservice to these smart and forward-thinking teams in every one of the Fortune 1000-plus companies who are taking the constraints that they have—and some of those constraints are not monetary or entirely workload-based. If you want to flip it around, we were talking to a large cloud SaaS company and their reason for wanting to extend it beyond the public cloud is because they want to improve latency for their e-commerce platform. And navigating their way through the complex layers of the networking stack at GCP to get to where the customer assets are that are in colo facilities, adds lag time on the platform that can cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. And so, we need to think behind this notion of, like, “Oh, well, the dark ages are for software that can't run in the cloud, and that's on-prem. And it's just a matter of time until everything moves to the cloud.”In the forward-thinking models of public cloud, it should be both. I mean, you should have a consistent experience, from a certain level of the stack down, everywhere. And then it's like, do I want to rent or do I want to own for this particular use case? In my vast set of infrastructure needs, do I want this to run in a data center that Amazon runs or do I want this to run in a facility that is close to this other provider of mine? And I think that's best for all. And then it's not this kind of false dichotomy of quality infrastructure or ownership.Corey: I find that there are also workloads where people will come to me and say, “Well, we don't think this is going to be economical in the cloud”—because again, I focus on AWS bills. That is the lens I view things through, and—“The AWS sales rep says it will be. What do you think?” And I look at what they're doing and especially if involves high volumes of data transfer, I laugh a good hearty laugh and say, “Yeah, keep that thing in the data center where it is right now. You will thank me for it later.”It's, “Well, can we run this in an economical way in AWS?” As long as you're okay with economical meaning six times what you're paying a year right now for the same thing, yeah, you can. I wouldn't recommend it. And the numbers sort of speak for themselves. But it's not just an economic play.There's also the story of, does this increase their capability? Does it let them move faster toward their business goals? And in a lot of cases, the answer is no, it doesn't. It's one of those business process things that has to exist for a variety of reasons. You don't get to reimagine it for funsies and even if you did, it doesn't advance the company in what they're trying to do any, so focus on something that differentiates as opposed to this thing that you're stuck on.Steve: That's right. And what we see today is, it is easy to be in that mindset of running things on-premises is kind of backwards-facing because the experience of it is today still very, very difficult. I mean, talking to folks and they're sharing with us that it takes a hundred days from the time all the different boxes land in their warehouse to actually having usable infrastructure that developers can use. And our goal and what we intend to go hit with Oxide as you can roll in this complete rack-level system, plug it in, within an hour, you have developers that are accessing cloud-like services out of the infrastructure. And that—God, countless stories of firmware bugs that would send all the fans in the data center nonlinear and soak up 100 kW of power.Corey: Oh, God. And the problems that you had with the out-of-band management systems. For a long time, I thought Drax stood for, “Dell, RMA Another Computer.” It was awful having to deal with those things. There was so much room for innovation in that space, which no one really grabbed onto.Steve: There was a really, really interesting talk at DEFCON that we just stumbled upon yesterday. The NVIDIA folks are giving a talk on BMC exploits… and like, a very, very serious BMC exploit. And again, it's what most people don't know is, like, first of all, the BMC, the Baseboard Management Controller, is like the brainstem of the computer. It has access to—it's a backdoor into all of your infrastructure. It's a computer inside a computer and it's got software and hardware that your server OEM didn't build and doesn't understand very well.And firmware is even worse because you know, firmware written by you know, an American Megatrends or other is a big blob of software that gets loaded into these systems that is very hard to audit and very hard to ascertain what's happening. And it's no surprise when, you know, back when we were running all the data centers at a cloud computing company, that you'd run into these issues, and you'd go to the server OEM and they'd kind of throw their hands up. Well, first they'd gaslight you and say, “We've never seen this problem before,” but when you thought you've root-caused something down to firmware, it was anyone's guess. And this is kind of the current condition today. And back to, like, the journey to get here, we kind of realized that you had to blow away that old extant firmware layer, and we rewrote our own firmware in Rust. Yes [laugh], I've done a lot in Rust.Corey: No, it was in Rust, but, on some level, that's what Nitro is, as best I can tell, on the AWS side. But it turns out that you don't tend to have the same resources as a one-and-a-quarter—at the moment—trillion-dollar company. That keeps [valuing 00:30:53]. At one point, they lost a comma and that was sad and broke all my logic for that and I haven't fixed it since. Unfortunate stuff.Steve: Totally. I think that was another, kind of, question early on from certainly a lot of investors was like, “Hey, how are you going to pull this off with a smaller team and there's a lot of surface area here?” Certainly a reasonable question. Definitely was hard. The one advantage—among others—is, when you are designing something kind of in a vertical holistic manner, those design integration points are narrowed down to just your equipment.And when someone's writing firmware, when AMI is writing firmware, they're trying to do it to cover hundreds and hundreds of components across dozens and dozens of vendors. And we have the advantage of having this, like, purpose-built system, kind of, end-to-end from the lowest level from first boot instruction, all the way up through the control plane and from rack to switch to server. That definitely helped narrow the scope.Corey: This episode has been fake sponsored by our friends at AWS with the following message: Graviton Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton. Thank you for your l-, lack of support for this show. Now, AWS has been talking about Graviton an awful lot, which is their custom in-house ARM processor. Apple moved over to ARM and instead of talking about benchmarks they won't publish and marketing campaigns with words that don't mean anything, they've let the results speak for themselves. In time, I found that almost all of my workloads have moved over to ARM architecture for a variety of reason, and my laptop now gets 15 hours of battery life when all is said and done. You're building these things on top of x86. What is the deal there? I do not accept that if that you hadn't heard of ARM until just now because, as mentioned, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton.Steve: That's right. Well, so why x86, to start? And I say to start because we have just launched our first generation products. And our first-generation or second-generation products that we are now underway working on are going to be x86 as well. We've built this system on AMD Milan silicon; we are going to be launching a Genoa sled.But when you're thinking about what silicon to use, obviously, there's a bunch of parts that go into the decision. You're looking at the kind of applicability to workload, performance, power management, for sure, and if you carve up what you are trying to achieve, x86 is still a terrific fit for the broadest set of workloads that our customers are trying to solve for. And choosing which x86 architecture was certainly an easier choice, come 2019. At this point, AMD had made a bunch of improvements in performance and energy efficiency in the chip itself. We've looked at other architectures and I think as we are incorporating those in the future roadmap, it's just going to be a question of what are you trying to solve for.You mentioned power management, and that is kind of commonly been a, you know, low power systems is where folks have gone beyond x86. Is we're looking forward to hardware acceleration products and future products, we'll certainly look beyond x86, but x86 has a long, long road to go. It still is kind of the foundation for what, again, is a general-purpose cloud infrastructure for being able to slice and dice for a variety of workloads.Corey: True. I have to look around my environment and realize that Intel is not going anywhere. And that's not just an insult to their lack of progress on committed roadmaps that they consistently miss. But—Steve: [sigh].Corey: Enough on that particular topic because we want to keep this, you know, polite.Steve: Intel has definitely had some struggles for sure. They're very public ones, I think. We were really excited and continue to be very excited about their Tofino silicon line. And this came by way of the Barefoot networks acquisition. I don't know how much you had paid attention to Tofino, but what was really, really compelling about Tofino is the focus on both hardware and software and programmability.So, great chip. And P4 is the programming language that surrounds that. And we have gotten very, very deep on P4, and that is some of the best tech to come out of Intel lately. But from a core silicon perspective for the rack, we went with AMD. And again, that was a pretty straightforward decision at the time. And we're planning on having this anchored around AMD silicon for a while now.Corey: One last question I have before we wind up calling it an episode, it seems—at least as of this recording, it's still embargoed, but we're not releasing this until that winds up changing—you folks have just raised another round, which means that your napkin doodles have apparently drawn more folks in, and now that you're shipping, you're also not just bringing in customers, but also additional investor money. Tell me about that.Steve: Yes, we just completed our Series A. So, when we last spoke three years ago, we had just raised our seed and had raised $20 million at the time, and we had expected that it was going to take about that to be able to build the team and build the product and be able to get to market, and [unintelligible 00:36:14] tons of technical risk along the way. I mean, there was technical risk up and down the stack around this [De Novo 00:36:21] server design, this the switch design. And software is still the kind of disproportionate majority of what this product is, from hypervisor up through kind of control plane, the cloud services, et cetera. So—Corey: We just view it as software with a really, really confusing hardware dongle.Steve: [laugh]. Yeah. Yes.Corey: Super heavy. We're talking enterprise and government-grade here.Steve: That's right. There's a lot of software to write. And so, we had a bunch of milestones that as we got through them, one of the big ones was getting Milan silicon booting on our firmware. It was funny it was—this was the thing that clearly, like, the industry was most suspicious of, us doing our own firmware, and you could see it when we demonstrated booting this, like, a year-and-a-half ago, and AMD all of a sudden just lit up, from kind of arm's length to, like, “How can we help? This is amazing.” You know? And they could start to see the benefits of when you can tie low-level silicon intelligence up through a hypervisor there's just—Corey: No I love the existing firmware I have. Looks like it was written in 1984 and winds up having terrible user ergonomics that hasn't been updated at all, and every time something comes through, it's a 50/50 shot as whether it fries the box or not. Yeah. No, I want that.Steve: That's right. And you look at these hyperscale data centers, and it's like, no. I mean, you've got intelligence from that first boot instruction through a Root of Trust, up through the software of the hyperscaler, and up to the user level. And so, as we were going through and kind of knocking down each one of these layers of the stack, doing our own firmware, doing our own hardware Root of Trust, getting that all the way plumbed up into the hypervisor and the control plane, number one on the customer side, folks moved from, “This is really interesting. We need to figure out how we can bring cloud capabilities to our data centers. Talk to us when you have something,” to, “Okay. We actually”—back to the earlier question on vaporware, you know, it was great having customers out here to Emeryville where they can put their hands on the rack and they can, you know, put your hands on software, but being able to, like, look at real running software and that end cloud experience.And that led to getting our first couple of commercial contracts. So, we've got some great first customers, including a large department of the government, of the federal government, and a leading firm on Wall Street that we're going to be shipping systems to in a matter of weeks. And as you can imagine, along with that, that drew a bunch of renewed interest from the investor community. Certainly, a different climate today than it was back in 2019, but what was great to see is, you still have great investors that understand the importance of making bets in the hard tech space and in companies that are looking to reinvent certain industries. And so, we added—our existing investors all participated. We added a bunch of terrific new investors, both strategic and institutional.And you know, this capital is going to be super important now that we are headed into market and we are beginning to scale up the business and make sure that we have a long road to go. And of course, maybe as importantly, this was a real confidence boost for our customers. They're excited to see that Oxide is going to be around for a long time and that they can invest in this technology as an important part of their infrastructure strategy.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me about, well, how far you've come in a few years. If people want to learn more and have the requisite loading dock, where should they go to find you?Steve: So, we try to put everything up on the site. So, oxidecomputer.com or oxide.computer. We also, if you remember, we did [On the Metal 00:40:07]. So, we had a Tales from the Hardware-Software Interface podcast that we did when we started. We have shifted that to Oxide and Friends, which the shift there is we're spending a little bit more time talking about the guts of what we built and why. So, if folks are interested in, like, why the heck did you build a switch and what does it look like to build a switch, we actually go to depth on that. And you know, what does bring-up on a new server motherboard look like? And it's got some episodes out there that might be worth checking out.Corey: We will definitely include a link to that in the [show notes 00:40:36]. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.Steve: Yeah, Corey. Thanks for having me on.Corey: Steve Tuck, CEO at Oxide Computer Company. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this episode, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry ranting comment because you are in fact a zoology major, and you're telling me that some animals do in fact exist. But I'm pretty sure of the two of them, it's the unicorn.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

On this week's show, Adam Leventhal posed questions from Hacker News (mostly) to Oxide founders Bryan Cantrill and Steve Tuck. Stick around until the end to hear about the hardest parts of building Oxide--great, surprising answers from both Bryan and Steve.They were also joined by Steve Klabnik.Questions for Steve and Bryan:[@6:38] Q:Congrats to the team, but after hearing about Oxide for literal years since the beginning of the company and repeatedly reading different iterations of their landing page, I still don't know what their product actually is. It's a hypervisor host? Maybe? So I can host VMs on it? And a network switch? So I can....switch stuff? (*)A:Steve: A rack-scale computer; "A product that allows the rest of the market that runs on-premises IT access to cloud computing."Bryan: agrees[@8:46] Q:It's like an on prem AWS for devs. I don't understand the use case but the hardware is cool. (*)I didn't understand the business opportunity of Oxide at all. Didn't make sense to me.However if they're aiming at the companies parachuting out of the cloud back to data centers and on prem then it makes a lot of sense.It's possible that the price comparison is not with comparable computing devices, but simply with the 9 cents per gigabyte egress fee from major clouds. (*)A:Bryan: "Elastic infrastructure is great and shouldn't be cloistered to the public cloud"; Good reasons to run on-prem: compliance, security, risk management, latency, economics; "Once you get to a certain size, it really makes sense to own"Steve: As more things move onto the internet, need for on-prem is going to grow; you should have the freedom to own[@13:31] Q:Somebody help me understand the business value. All the tech is cool but I don't get the business model, it seems deeply impractical. You buy your own servers instead of renting, which is what most people are doing now. They argue there's a case for this, but it seems like a shrinking market. Everything has gone cloud. Even if there are lots of people who want to leave the cloud, all their data is there. That's how they get you -- it costs nothing to bring data in and a lot to transfer it out. So high cost to switch. AWS and others provide tons of other services in their clouds, which if you depend on you'll have to build out on top of Oxide. So even higher cost to switch. Even though you bought your own servers, you still have to run everything inside VMs, which introduce the sort of issues you would hope to avoid by buying your own servers! Why is this? Because they're building everything on Illumos (Solaris) which is for all practical purposes is dead outside Oxide and delivering questionable value here. Based on blogs/twitter/mastodon they have put a lot of effort into perfecting these weird EE side quests, but they're not making real new hardware (no new CPU, no new fabric, etc). I am skeptical any customers will notice or care and would have not noticed had they used off the shelf hardware/power setups. So you have to be this ultra-bizarre customer, somebody who wants their own servers, but doesn't mind VMs, doesn't need to migrate out of the cloud but wants this instead of whatever hardware they manage themselves now, who will buy a rack at a time, who doesn't need any custom hardware, and is willing to put up with whatever off-the-beaten path difficulties are going to occur because of the custom stuff they've done that's AFAICT is very low value for the customer. Who is this? Even the poster child for needing on prem, the CIA is on AWS now.I don't get it, it just seems like a bunch of geeks playing with VC money?(*)A:Bryan: "EE side quests" rant; you can't build robust, elastic infrastructure on commodity hardware at scale; "The minimum viable product is really, really big"; Example: monitoring fan power draw, tweaking reference desgins doesn't cut it Example: eliminating redundant AC power suppliesSteve: "Feels like I'm dealing with my divorced parents" post[@32:24] Q (Chat):It would be nice to see what this thing is like before having to write a big checkSteve: We are striving to have lab infrastructure available for test drives[@32:56] Q (Chat):I want to know about shipping insurance, logistics, who does the install, ...Bryan: "Next week we'll be joined by the operations team" we want to have an indepth conversation about those topics[@34:40] Q:Seems like Oxide is aiming to be the Apple of the enterprise hardware (which isn't too surprising given the background of the people involved - Sun used to be something like that as were other fully-integrated providers, though granted that Sun didn't write Unix from scratch). Almost like coming to a full circle from the days where the hardware and the software was all done in an integrated fashion before Linux turned-up and started to run on your toaster. (*)A:Bryan: We find things to emulate in both Apple and Sun, e.g., integrated hard- and software; AS/400Steve: "It's not hardware and software together for integration sake", it's required to deliver what the customer wants; "You can't control that experience when you only do half the equation"[@42:38] Q:I truly and honestly hope you succeed. I know for certain that the market for on-prem will remain large for certain sectors for the forseeable future. However. The kind of customer who spends this type of money can be conservative. They already have to go with on an unknown vendor, and rely on unknown hardware. Then they end up with a hypervisor virtually no one else in the same market segment uses.Would you say that KVM or ESXi would be an easier or harder sell here?Innovation budget can be a useful concept. And I'm afraid it's being stretched a lot. (*)A:Bryan: We can deliver more value with our own hypervisor; we've had a lot of experience in that domain from Joyent. There are a lot of reasons that VMware et al. are not popular with their own customers; Intel vs. AMDSteve: "We think it's super important that we're very transparent with what we're building"[@56:05] Q:what is the interface I get when I turn this $$$ computer on? What is the zero to first value when I buy this hardware? (*)A:Steve: "You roll the rack in, you have to give it power, and you have give it networking [...] and you are then off on starting the software experience"; Large pool of infrastructure reosources for customers/devs/SREs/... in a day or less; Similar experience to public cloud providers[@01:02:06] Q:One of my concerns when buying a complete solution like an iPhone (or an Oxide rack

About Steve:Steve Rice is Principal Product Manager for AWS AppConfig. He is surprisingly passionate about feature flags and continuous configuration. He lives in the Washington DC area with his wife, 3 kids, and 2 incontinent dogs.Links Referenced:AWS AppConfig: https://go.aws/awsappconfig TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at AWS AppConfig. Engineers love to solve, and occasionally create, problems. But not when it's an on-call fire-drill at 4 in the morning. Software problems should drive innovation and collaboration, NOT stress, and sleeplessness, and threats of violence. That's why so many developers are realizing the value of AWS AppConfig Feature Flags. Feature Flags let developers push code to production, but hide that that feature from customers so that the developers can release their feature when it's ready. This practice allows for safe, fast, and convenient software development. You can seamlessly incorporate AppConfig Feature Flags into your AWS or cloud environment and ship your Features with excitement, not trepidation and fear. To get started, go to snark.cloud/appconfig. That's snark.cloud/appconfig.Corey: Forget everything you know about SSH and try Tailscale. Imagine if you didn't need to manage PKI or rotate SSH keys every time someone leaves. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? With tail scale, ssh, you can do exactly that. Tail scale gives each server and user device a node key to connect to its VPN, and it uses the same node key to authorize and authenticate.S. Basically you're SSHing the same way you manage access to your app. What's the benefit here? Built in key rotation permissions is code connectivity between any two devices, reduce latency and there's a lot more, but there's a time limit here. You can also ask users to reauthenticate for that extra bit of security. Sounds expensive?Nope, I wish it were. tail scales. Completely free for personal use on up to 20 devices. To learn more, visit snark.cloud/tailscale. Again, that's snark.cloud/tailscaleCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This is a promoted guest episode. What does that mean? Well, it means that some people don't just want me to sit here and throw slings and arrows their way, they would prefer to send me a guest specifically, and they do pay for that privilege, which I appreciate. Paying me is absolutely a behavior I wish to endorse.Today's victim who has decided to contribute to slash sponsor my ongoing ridiculous nonsense is, of all companies, AWS. And today I'm talking to Steve Rice, who's the principal product manager on AWS AppConfig. Steve, thank you for joining me.Steve: Hey, Corey, great to see you. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to a conversation.Corey: As am I. Now, AppConfig does something super interesting, which I'm not aware of any other service or sub-service doing. You are under the umbrella of AWS Systems Manager, but you're not going to market with Systems Manager AppConfig. You're just AWS AppConfig. Why?Steve: So, AppConfig is part of AWS Systems Manager. Systems Manager has, I think, 17 different features associated with it. Some of them have an individual name that is associated with Systems Manager, some of them don't. We just happen to be one that doesn't. AppConfig is a service that's been around for a while internally before it was launched externally a couple years ago, so I'd say that's probably the origin of the name and the service. I can tell you more about the origin of the service if you're curious.Corey: Oh, I absolutely am. But I just want to take a bit of a detour here and point out that I make fun of the sub-service names in Systems Manager an awful lot, like Systems Manager Session Manager and Systems Manager Change Manager. And part of the reason I do that is not just because it's funny, but because almost everything I found so far within the Systems Manager umbrella is pretty awesome. It aligns with how I tend to think about the world in a bunch of different ways. I have yet to see anything lurking within the Systems Manager umbrella that has led to a tee-hee-hee bill surprise level that rivals, you know, the GDP of Guam. So, I'm a big fan of the entire suite of services. But yes, how did AppConfig get its name?Steve: [laugh]. So, AppConfig started about six years ago, now, internally. So, we actually were part of the region services department inside of Amazon, which is in charge of launching new services around the world. We found that a centralized tool for configuration associated with each service launching was really helpful. So, a service might be launching in a new region and have to enable and disable things as it moved along.And so, the tool was sort of built for that, turning on and off things as the region developed and was ready to launch publicly; then the regions launch publicly. It turned out that our internal customers, which are a lot of AWS services and then some Amazon services as well, started to use us beyond launching new regions, and started to use us for feature flagging. Again, turning on and off capabilities, launching things safely. And so, it became massively popular; we were actually a top 30 service internally in terms of usage. And two years ago, we thought we really should launch this externally and let our customers benefit from some of the goodness that we put in there, and some of—those all come from the mistakes we've made internally. And so, it became AppConfig. In terms of the name itself, we specialize in application configuration, so that's kind of a mouthful, so we just changed it to AppConfig.Corey: Earlier this year, there was a vulnerability reported around I believe it was AWS Glue, but please don't quote me on that. And as part of its excellent response that AWS put out, they said that from the time that it was disclosed to them, they had patched the service and rolled it out to every AWS region in which Glue existed in a little under 29 hours, which at scale is absolutely magic fast. That is superhero speed and then some because you generally don't just throw something over the wall, regardless of how small it is when we're talking about something at the scale of AWS. I mean, look at who your customers are; mistakes will show. This also got me thinking that when you have Adam, or previously Andy, on stage giving a keynote announcement and then they mention something on stage, like, “Congratulations. It's now a very complicated service with 14 adjectives in his name because someone's paid by the syllable. Great.”Suddenly, the marketing pages are up, the APIs are working, it's showing up in the console, and it occurs to me only somewhat recently to think about all of the moving parts that go on behind this. That is far faster than even the improved speed of CloudFront distribution updates. There's very clearly something going on there. So, I've got to ask, is that you?Steve: Yes, a lot of that is us. I can't take credit for a hundred percent of what you're talking about, but that's how we are used. We're essentially used as a feature-flagging service. And I can talk generically about feature flagging. Feature flagging allows you to push code out to production, but it's hidden behind a configuration switch: a feature toggle or a feature flag. And that code can be sitting out there, nobody can access it until somebody flips that toggle. Now, the smart way to do it is to flip that toggle on for a small set of users. Maybe it's just internal users, maybe it's 1% of your users. And so, the features available, you can—Corey: It's your best slash worst customers [laugh] in that 1%, in some cases.Steve: Yeah, you want to stress test the system with them and you want to be able to look and see what's going to break before it breaks for everybody. So, you release us to a small cohort, you measure your operations, you measure your application health, you measure your reputational concerns, and then if everything goes well, then you maybe bump it up to 2%, and then 10%, and then 20%. So, feature flags allow you to slowly release features, and you know what you're releasing by the time it's at a hundred percent. It's tempting for teams to want to, like, have everybody access it at the same time; you've been working hard on this feature for a long time. But again, that's kind of an anti-pattern. You want to make sure that on production, it behaves the way you expect it to behave.Corey: I have to ask what is the fundamental difference between feature flags and/or dynamic configuration. Because to my mind, one of them is a means of achieving the other, but I could also see very easily using the terms interchangeably. Given that in some of our conversations, you have corrected me which, first, how dare you? Secondly, okay, there's probably a reason here. What is that point of distinction?Steve: Yeah. Typically for those that are not eat, sleep, and breathing dynamic configuration—which I do—and most people are not obsessed with this kind of thing, feature flags is kind of a shorthand for dynamic configuration. It allows you to turn on and off things without pushing out any new code. So, your application code's running, it's pulling its configuration data, say every five seconds, every ten seconds, something like that, and when that configuration data changes, then that app changes its behavior, again, without a code push or without restarting the app.So, dynamic configuration is maybe a superset of feature flags. Typically, when people think feature flags, they're thinking of, “Oh, I'm going to release a new feature, so it's almost like an on-off switch.” But we see customers using feature flags—and we use this internally—for things like throttling limits. Let's say you want to be able to throttle TPS transactions per second. Or let's say you want to throttle the number of simultaneous background tasks, and say, you know, I just really don't want this creeping above 50; bad things can start to happen.But in a period of stress, you might want to actually bring that number down. Well, you can push out these changes with dynamic configuration—which is, again, any type of configuration, not just an on-off switch—you can push this out and adjust the behavior and see what happens. Again, I'd recommend pushing it out to 1% of your users, and then 10%. But it allows you to have these dials and switches to do that. And, again, generically, that's dynamic configuration. It's not as fun to term as feature flags; feature flags is sort of a good mental picture, so I do use them interchangeably, but if you're really into the whole world of this dynamic configuration, then you probably will care about the difference.Corey: Which makes a fair bit of sense. It's the question of what are you talking about high level versus what are you talking about implementation detail-wise.Steve: Yep. Yep.Corey: And on some level, I used to get… well, we'll call it angsty—because I can't think of a better adjective right now—about how AWS was reluctant to disclose implementation details behind what it did. And in the fullness of time, it's made a lot more sense to me, specifically through a lens of, you want to be able to have the freedom to change how something works under the hood. And if you've made no particular guarantee about the implementation detail, you can do that without potentially worrying about breaking a whole bunch of customer expectations that you've inadvertently set. And that makes an awful lot of sense.The idea of rolling out changes to your infrastructure has evolved over the last decade. Once upon a time you'd have EC2 instances, and great, you want to go ahead and make a change there—or this actually predates EC2 instances. Virtual machines in a data center or heaven forbid, bare metal servers, you're not going to deploy a whole new server because there's a new version of the code out, so you separate out your infrastructure from the code that it runs. And that worked out well. And increasingly, we started to see ways of okay, if we want to change the behavior of the application, we'll just push out new environment variables to that thing and restart the service so it winds up consuming those.And that's great. You've rolled it out throughout your fleet. With containers, which is sort of the next logical step, well, okay, this stuff gets baked in, we'll just restart containers with a new version of code because that takes less than a second each and you're fine. And then Lambda functions, it's okay, we'll just change the deployment option and the next invocation will wind up taking the brand new environment variables passed out to it. How do feature flags feature into those, I guess, three evolving methods of running applications in anger, by which I mean, of course, production?Steve: [laugh]. Good question. And I think you really articulated that well.Corey: Well, thank you. I should hope so. I'm a storyteller. At least I fancy myself one.Steve: [laugh]. Yes, you are. Really what you talked about is the evolution of you know, at the beginning, people were—well, first of all, people probably were embedding their variables deep in their code and then they realized, “Oh, I want to change this,” and now you have to find where in my code that is. And so, it became a pattern. Why don't we separate everything that's a configuration data into its own file? But it'll get compiled at build time and sent out all at once.There was kind of this breakthrough that was, why don't we actually separate out the deployment of this? We can separate the deployment from code from the deployment of configuration data, and have the code be reading that configuration data on a regular interval, as I already said. So now, as the environments have changed—like you said, containers and Lambda—that ability to make tweaks at microsecond intervals is more important and more powerful. So, there certainly is still value in having things like environment variables that get read at startup. We call that static configuration as opposed to dynamic configuration.And that's a very important element in the world of containers that you talked about. Containers are a bit ephemeral, and so they kind of come and go, and you can restart things, or you might spin up new containers that are slightly different config and have them operate in a certain way. And again, Lambda takes that to the next level. I'm really excited where people are going to take feature flags to the next level because already today we have people just fine-tuning to very targeted small subsets, different configuration data, different feature flag data, and allows them to do this like at we've never seen before scale of turning this on, seeing how it reacts, seeing how the application behaves, and then being able to roll that out to all of your audience.Now, you got to be careful, you really don't want to have completely different configurations out there and have 10 different, or you know, 100 different configurations out there. That makes it really tough to debug. So, you want to think of this as I want to roll this out gradually over time, but eventually, you want to have this sort of state where everything is somewhat consistent.Corey: That, on some level, speaks to a level of operational maturity that my current deployment adventures generally don't have. A common reference I make is to my lasttweetinaws.com Twitter threading app. And anyone can visit it, use it however they want.And it uses a Route 53 latency record to figure out, ah, which is the closest region to you because I've deployed it to 20 different regions. Now, if this were a paid service, or I had people using this in large volume and I had to worry about that sort of thing, I would probably approach something that is very close to what you describe. In practice, I pick a devoted region that I deploy something to, and cool, that's sort of my canary where I get things working the way I would expect. And when that works the way I want it to I then just push it to everything else automatically. Given that I've put significant effort into getting deployments down to approximately two minutes to deploy to everything, it feels like that's a reasonable amount of time to push something out.Whereas if I were, I don't know, running a bank, for example, I would probably have an incredibly heavy process around things that make changes to things like payment or whatnot. Because despite the lies, we all like to tell both to ourselves and in public, anything that touches payments does go through waterfall, not agile iterative development because that mistake tends to show up on your customer's credit card bills, and then they're also angry. I think that there's a certain point of maturity you need to be at as either an organization or possibly as a software technology stack before something like feature flags even becomes available to you. Would you agree with that, or is this something everyone should use?Steve: I would agree with that. Definitely, a small team that has communication flowing between the two probably won't get as much value out of a gradual release process because everybody kind of knows what's going on inside of the team. Once your team scales, or maybe your audience scales, that's when it matters more. You really don't want to have something blow up with your users. You really don't want to have people getting paged in the middle of the night because of a change that was made. And so, feature flags do help with that.So typically, the journey we see is people start off in a maybe very small startup. They're releasing features at a very fast pace. They grow and they start to build their own feature flagging solution—again, at companies I've been at previously have done that—and you start using feature flags and you see the power of it. Oh, my gosh, this is great. I can release something when I want without doing a big code push. I can just do a small little change, and if something goes wrong, I can roll it back instantly. That's really handy.And so, the basics of feature flagging might be a homegrown solution that you all have built. If you really lean into that and start to use it more, then you probably want to look at a third-party solution because there's so many features out there that you might want. A lot of them are around safeguards that makes sure that releasing a new feature is safe. You know, again, pushing out a new feature to everybody could be similar to pushing out untested code to production. You don't want to do that, so you need to have, you know, some checks and balances in your release process of your feature flags, and that's what a lot of third parties do.It really depends—to get back to your question about who needs feature flags—it depends on your audience size. You know, if you have enough audience out there to want to do a small rollout to a small set first and then have everybody hit it, that's great. Also, if you just have, you know, one or two developers, then feature flags are probably something that you're just kind of, you're doing yourself, you're pushing out this thing anyway on your own, but you don't need it coordinated across your team.Corey: I think that there's also a bit of—how to frame this—misunderstanding on someone's part about where AppConfig starts and where it stops. When it was first announced, feature flags were one of the things that it did. And that was talked about on stage, I believe in re:Invent, but please don't quote me on that, when it wound up getting announced. And then in the fullness of time, there was another announcement of AppConfig now supports feature flags, which I'm sitting there and I had to go back to my old notes. Like, did I hallucinate this? Which again, would not be the first time I'd imagine such a thing. But no, it was originally how the service was described, but now it's extra feature flags, almost like someone would, I don't know, flip on a feature-flag toggle for the service and now it does a different thing. What changed? What was it that was misunderstood about the service initially versus what it became?Steve: Yeah, I wouldn't say it was a misunderstanding. I think what happened was we launched it, guessing what our customers were going to use it as. We had done plenty of research on that, and as I mentioned before we had—Corey: Please tell me someone used it as a database. Or am I the only nutter that does stuff like that?Steve: We have seen that before. We have seen something like that before.Corey: Excellent. Excellent, excellent. I approve.Steve: And so, we had done our due diligence ahead of time about how we thought people were going to use it. We were right about a lot of it. I mentioned before that we have a lot of usage internally, so you know, that was kind of maybe cheating even for us to be able to sort of see how this is going to evolve. What we did announce, I guess it was last November, was an opinionated version of feature flags. So, we had people using us for feature flags, but they were building their own structure, their own JSON, and there was not a dedicated console experience for feature flags.What we announced last November was an opinionated version that structured the JSON in a way that we think is the right way, and that afforded us the ability to have a smooth console experience. So, if we know what the structure of the JSON is, we can have things like toggles and validations in there that really specifically look at some of the data points. So, that's really what happened. We're just making it easier for our customers to use us for feature flags. We still have some customers that are kind of building their own solution, but we're seeing a lot of them move over to our opinionated version.Corey: This episode is brought to us in part by our friends at Datadog. Datadog's SaaS monitoring and security platform that enables full stack observability for developers, IT operations, security, and business teams in the cloud age. Datadog's platform, along with 500 plus vendor integrations, allows you to correlate metrics, traces, logs, and security signals across your applications, infrastructure, and third party services in a single pane of glass.Combine these with drag and drop dashboards and machine learning based alerts to help teams troubleshoot and collaborate more effectively, prevent downtime, and enhance performance and reliability. Try Datadog in your environment today with a free 14 day trial and get a complimentary T-shirt when you install the agent.To learn more, visit datadoghq/screaminginthecloud to get. That's www.datadoghq/screaminginthecloudCorey: Part of the problem I have when I look at what it is you folks do, and your use cases, and how you structure it is, it's similar in some respects to how folks perceive things like FIS, the fault injection service, or chaos engineering, as is commonly known, which is, “We can't even get the service to stay up on its own for any [unintelligible 00:18:35] period of time. What do you mean, now let's intentionally degrade it and make it work?” There needs to be a certain level of operational stability or operational maturity. When you're still building a service before it's up and running, feature flags seem awfully premature because there's no one depending on it. You can change configuration however your little heart desires. In most cases. I'm sure at certain points of scale of development teams, you have a communications problem internally, but it's not aimed at me trying to get something working at 2 a.m. in the middle of the night.Whereas by the time folks are ready for what you're doing, they clearly have that level of operational maturity established. So, I have to guess on some level, that your typical adopter of AppConfig feature flags isn't in fact, someone who is, “Well, we're ready for feature flags; let's go,” but rather someone who's come up with something else as a stopgap as they've been iterating forward. Usually something homebuilt. And it might very well be you have the exact same biggest competitor that I do in my consulting work, which is of course, Microsoft Excel as people try to build their own thing that works in their own way.Steve: Yeah, so definitely a very common customer of ours is somebody that is using a homegrown solution for turning on and off things. And they really feel like I'm using the heck out of these feature flags. I'm using them on a daily or weekly basis. I would like to have some enhancements to how my feature flags work, but I have limited resources and I'm not sure that my resources should be building enhancements to a feature-flagging service, but instead, I'd rather have them focusing on something, you know, directly for our customers, some of the core features of whatever your company does. And so, that's when people sort of look around externally and say, “Oh, let me see if there's some other third-party service or something built into AWS like AWS AppConfig that can meet those needs.”And so absolutely, the workflows get more sophisticated, the ability to move forward faster becomes more important, and do so in a safe way. I used to work at a cybersecurity company and we would kind of joke that the security budget of the company is relatively low until something bad happens, and then it's, you know, whatever you need to spend on it. It's not quite the same with feature flags, but you do see when somebody has a problem on production, and they want to be able to turn something off right away or make an adjustment right away, then the ability to do that in a measured way becomes incredibly important. And so, that's when, again, you'll see customers starting to feel like they're outgrowing their homegrown solution and moving to something that's a third-party solution.Corey: Honestly, I feel like so many tools exist in this space, where, “Oh, yeah, you should definitely use this tool.” And most people will use that tool. The second time. Because the first time, it's one of those, “How hard could that be out? I can build something like that in a weekend.” Which is sort of the rallying cry of doomed engineers who are bad at scoping.And by the time that they figure out why, they have to backtrack significantly. There's a whole bunch of stuff that I have built that people look at and say, “Wow, that's a really great design. What inspired you to do that?” And the absolute honest answer to all of it is simply, “Yeah, I worked in roles for the first time I did it the way you would think I would do it and it didn't go well.” Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted, and this is one of those areas where it tends to manifest in reasonable ways.Steve: Absolutely, absolutely.Corey: So, give me an example here, if you don't mind, about how feature flags can improve the day-to-day experience of an engineering team or an engineer themselves. Because we've been down this path enough, in some cases, to know the failure modes, but for folks who haven't been there that's trying to shave a little bit off of their journey of, “I'm going to learn from my own mistakes.” Eh, learn from someone else's. What are the benefits that accrue and are felt immediately?Steve: Yeah. So, we kind of have a policy that the very first commit of any new feature ought to be the feature flag. That's that sort of on-off switch that you want to put there so that you can start to deploy your code and not have a long-lived branch in your source code. But you can have your code there, it reads whether that configuration is on or off. You start with it off.And so, it really helps just while developing these things about keeping your branches short. And you can push the mainline, as long as the feature flag is off and the feature is hidden to production, which is great. So, that helps with the mess of doing big code merges. The other part is around the launch of a feature.So, you talked about Andy Jassy being on stage to launch a new feature. Sort of the old way of doing this, Corey, was that you would need to look at your pipelines and see how long it might take for you to push out your code with any sort of code change in it. And let's say that was an hour-and-a-half process and let's say your CEO is on stage at eight o'clock on a Friday. And as much as you like to say it, “Oh, I'm never pushing out code on a Friday,” sometimes you have to. The old way—Corey: Yeah, that week, yes you are, whether you want to or not.Steve: [laugh]. Exactly, exactly. The old way was this idea that I'm going to time my release, and it takes an hour-and-a-half; I'm going to push it out, and I'll do my best, but hopefully, when the CEO raises her arm or his arm up and points to a screen that everything's lit up. Well, let's say you're doing that and something goes wrong and you have to start over again. Well, oh, my goodness, we're 15 minutes behind, can you accelerate things? And then you start to pull away some of these blockers to accelerate your pipeline or you start editing it right in the console of your application, which is generally not a good idea right before a really big launch.So, the new way is, I'm going to have that code already out there on a Wednesday [laugh] before this big thing on a Friday, but it's hidden behind this feature flag, I've already turned it on and off for internals, and it's just waiting there. And so, then when the CEO points to the big screen, you can just flip that one small little configuration change—and that can be almost instantaneous—and people can access it. So, that just reduces the amount of stress, reduces the amount of risk in pushing out your code.Another thing is—we've heard this from customers—customers are increasing the number of deploys that they can do per week by a very large percentage because they're deploying with confidence. They know that I can push out this code and it's off by default, then I can turn it on whenever I feel like it, and then I can turn it off if something goes wrong. So, if you're into CI/CD, you can actually just move a lot faster with a number of pushes to production each week, which again, I think really helps engineers on their day-to-day lives. The final thing I'm going to talk about is that let's say you did push out something, and for whatever reason, that following weekend, something's going wrong. The old way was oop, you're going to get a page, I'm going to have to get on my computer and go and debug things and fix things, and then push out a new code change.And this could be late on a Saturday evening when you're out with friends. If there's a feature flag there that can turn it off and if this feature is not critical to the operation of your product, you can actually just go in and flip that feature flag off until the next morning or maybe even Monday morning. So, in theory, you kind of get your free time back when you are implementing feature flags. So, I think those are the big benefits for engineers in using feature flags.Corey: And the best way to figure out whether someone is speaking from a position of experience or is simply a raving zealot when they're in a position where they are incentivized to advocate for a particular way of doing things or a particular product, as—let's be clear—you are in that position, is to ask a form of the following question. Let's turn it around for a second. In what scenarios would you absolutely not want to use feature flags? What problems arise? When do you take a look at a situation and say, “Oh, yeah, feature flags will make things worse, instead of better. Don't do it.”Steve: I'm not sure I wouldn't necessarily don't do it—maybe I am that zealot—but you got to do it carefully.Corey: [laugh].Steve: You really got to do things carefully because as I said before, flipping on a feature flag for everybody is similar to pushing out untested code to production. So, you want to do that in a measured way. So, you need to make sure that you do a couple of things. One, there should be some way to measure what the system behavior is for a small set of users with that feature flag flipped to on first. And it could be some canaries that you're using for that.You can also—there's other mechanisms you can do that to: set up cohorts and beta testers and those kinds of things. But I would say the gradual rollout and the targeted rollout of a feature flag is critical. You know, again, it sounds easy, “I'll just turn it on later,” but you ideally don't want to do that. The second thing you want to do is, if you can, is there some sort of validation that the feature flag is what you expect? So, I was talking about on-off feature flags; there are things, as when I was talking about dynamic configuration, that are things like throttling limits, that you actually want to make sure that you put in some other safeguards that say, “I never want my TPS to go above 1200 and never want to set it below 800,” for whatever reason, for example. Well, you want to have some sort of validation of that data before the feature flag gets pushed out. Inside Amazon, we actually have the policy that every single flag needs to have some sort of validation around it so that we don't accidentally fat-finger something out before it goes out there. And we have fat-fingered things.Corey: Typing the wrong thing into a command structure into a tool? “Who would ever do something like that?” He says, remembering times he's taken production down himself, exactly that way.Steve: Exactly, exactly, yeah. And we've done it at Amazon and AWS, for sure. And so yeah, if you have some sort of structure or process to validate that—because oftentimes, what you're doing is you're trying to remediate something in production. Stress levels are high, it is especially easy to fat-finger there. So, that check-and-balance of a validation is important.And then ideally, you have something to automatically roll back whatever change that you made, very quickly. So AppConfig, for example, hooks up to CloudWatch alarms. If an alarm goes off, we're actually going to roll back instantly whatever that feature flag was to its previous state so that you don't even need to really worry about validating against your CloudWatch. It'll just automatically do that against whatever alarms you have.Corey: One of the interesting parts about working at Amazon and seeing things in Amazonian scale is that one in a million events happen thousands of times every second for you folks. What lessons have you learned by deploying feature flags at that kind of scale? Because one of my problems and challenges with deploying feature flags myself is that in some cases, we're talking about three to five users a day for some of these things. That's not really enough usage to get insights into various cohort analyses or A/B tests.Steve: Yeah. As I mentioned before, we build these things as features into our product. So, I just talked about the CloudWatch alarms. That wasn't there originally. Originally, you know, if something went wrong, you would observe a CloudWatch alarm and then you decide what to do, and one of those things might be that I'm going to roll back my configuration.So, a lot of the mistakes that we made that caused alarms to go off necessitated us building some automatic mechanisms. And you know, a human being can only react so fast, but an automated system there is going to be able to roll things back very, very quickly. So, that came from some specific mistakes that we had made inside of AWS. The validation that I was talking about as well. We have a couple of ways of validating things.You might want to do a syntactic validation, which really you're validating—as I was saying—the range between 100 and 1000, but you also might want to have sort of a functional validation, or we call it a semantic validation so that you can make sure that, for example, if you're switching to a new database, that you're going to flip over to your new database, you can have a validation there that says, “This database is ready, I can write to this table, it's truly ready for me to switch.” Instead of just updating some config data, you're actually going to be validating that the new target is ready for you. So, those are a couple of things that we've learned from some of the mistakes we made. And again, not saying we aren't making mistakes still, but we always look at these things inside of AWS and figure out how we can benefit from them and how our customers, more importantly, can benefit from these mistakes.Corey: I would say that I agree. I think that you have threaded the needle of not talking smack about your own product, while also presenting it as not the global panacea that everyone should roll out, willy-nilly. That's a good balance to strike. And frankly, I'd also say it's probably a good point to park the episode. If people want to learn more about AppConfig, how you view these challenges, or even potentially want to get started using it themselves, what should they do?Steve: We have an informational page at go.aws/awsappconfig. That will tell you the high-level overview. You can search for our documentation and we have a lot of blog posts to help you get started there.Corey: And links to that will, of course, go into the [show notes 00:31:21]. Thank you so much for suffering my slings, arrows, and other assorted nonsense on this. I really appreciate your taking the time.Steve: Corey thank you for the time. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Really appreciate your insights.Corey: You're too kind. Steve Rice, principal product manager for AWS AppConfig. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment. But before you do, just try clearing your cookies and downloading the episode again. You might be in the 3% cohort for an A/B test, and you [want to 00:32:01] listen to the good one instead.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

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

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

So You Made 100K on a Land Deal Now What (LA 1302) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hey. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala Jill: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California Steve: Today Jill and I talk about, so you made a hundred grand on that last land deal, now what? Jill: I know what. Steve: Well. Jill: Do it again. Steve: Celebrate. Yes, first you need to take 10 minutes and celebrate. Maybe do shot of tequila or something. Jill: Yeah, tens good. Ten minutes is good. Steve: Whatever works for you. Eat a piece of chocolate cake, I don't know whatever works for you. Jill: What is yours? Steve: And that's the whole show. Jill: Quick. You want to celebrate? What? Can I have a budget? I made a hundred thousand dollars. How much money can I spend from my separation? Steve: You know, Jill and I made a huge amount of money one time on a real estate deal. You know what we did? Bought new computers. Jill: Yeah. It went to the business and it made us more effective and it, and I was just so happy. Yep. All right. Quick, you give yourself $500. What are you going to do? Steve: God, I haven't thought about something like this in a long time. Because usually I just go do whatever I want. Jill: I know but- Steve: For 500 bucks, what would I do? You know what I would do? Call up my buddies, probably bring you and your friends, girlfriends, and just pay for everybody's night out. Jill: That's very sweet. Well, now I feel like a little bit like a heel because mine's different. Mine is I call no one. Steve: Oh my God. Is this a spa day at that MZ diamond acquisitions? Jill: No because I have $500, it's just a spa day. That's it. I call no one, I turn off my phone, I leave it in the car and I'm gone for several hours. That's how I celebrate. Steve: Jill, I speak frankly, here. You should be doing that once a week anyway. Jill: I know. I should but spa's are kind of closed right now. Steve: Why don't you schedule that? Jill: Because the spa's are closed right now. That's, trust me, don't you, don't think I'm not, that's not on my list. Steve: Can't you have like a masseuse come to the house? Jill: I haven't really tried that hard but I could probably work on that. So, but thank you, that's not what this show's about. Thank you. Steve: Yes it is. This is about a hundred grand. It's totally about this. Jill: Okay, I guess so. Okay, yes because I just learned, I didn't know of any that would come to the house. And I just heard from somebody recently that they know someone. So that's in the works. But do you know what? I still don't want to do it in my own house. I have to go somewhere because I don't want to have to hide. And you know, I want to just, I'd like to go and be treated. Steve: You want to go somewhere and do that? Huh? What if I leave the house? And then- Jill: It's still not that great. I want to go be treated. Steve: This is interesting. Jill: You know what I want to do? Steve: You learn new stuff about your mate every day. Jill: I want to go to Terranea, or something equivalent, and just really have a nice, nice time. Thank you. Steve: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill: Okay. Mohad wrote, I've been practicing using Real Quest Pro to pull data in an area I'm looking to send my first mailer. Once I enter all the criteria and submit, it seems like a lot of the data I pull has some sort of housing on it. I'm entering in zero to 0% improvement and I'm still getting many buildings slash houses. I don't want to waste money on records with houses. I've gone through each land use to figure out which is pulling the records with the houses, but it looks like they are just blended in with several uses. Any suggestions on how to get rid of the houses, to be sure I'm doing something wrong? Steve:

So You Made 100K on a Land Deal Now What (LA 1302) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hey. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala Jill: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California Steve: Today Jill and I talk about, so you made a hundred grand on that last land deal, now what? Jill: I know what. Steve: Well. Jill: Do it again. Steve: Celebrate. Yes, first you need to take 10 minutes and celebrate. Maybe do shot of tequila or something. Jill: Yeah, tens good. Ten minutes is good. Steve: Whatever works for you. Eat a piece of chocolate cake, I don't know whatever works for you. Jill: What is yours? Steve: And that's the whole show. Jill: Quick. You want to celebrate? What? Can I have a budget? I made a hundred thousand dollars. How much money can I spend from my separation? Steve: You know, Jill and I made a huge amount of money one time on a real estate deal. You know what we did? Bought new computers. Jill: Yeah. It went to the business and it made us more effective and it, and I was just so happy. Yep. All right. Quick, you give yourself $500. What are you going to do? Steve: God, I haven't thought about something like this in a long time. Because usually I just go do whatever I want. Jill: I know but- Steve: For 500 bucks, what would I do? You know what I would do? Call up my buddies, probably bring you and your friends, girlfriends, and just pay for everybody's night out. Jill: That's very sweet. Well, now I feel like a little bit like a heel because mine's different. Mine is I call no one. Steve: Oh my God. Is this a spa day at that MZ diamond acquisitions? Jill: No because I have $500, it's just a spa day. That's it. I call no one, I turn off my phone, I leave it in the car and I'm gone for several hours. That's how I celebrate. Steve: Jill, I speak frankly, here. You should be doing that once a week anyway. Jill: I know. I should but spa's are kind of closed right now. Steve: Why don't you schedule that? Jill: Because the spa's are closed right now. That's, trust me, don't you, don't think I'm not, that's not on my list. Steve: Can't you have like a masseuse come to the house? Jill: I haven't really tried that hard but I could probably work on that. So, but thank you, that's not what this show's about. Thank you. Steve: Yes it is. This is about a hundred grand. It's totally about this. Jill: Okay, I guess so. Okay, yes because I just learned, I didn't know of any that would come to the house. And I just heard from somebody recently that they know someone. So that's in the works. But do you know what? I still don't want to do it in my own house. I have to go somewhere because I don't want to have to hide. And you know, I want to just, I'd like to go and be treated. Steve: You want to go somewhere and do that? Huh? What if I leave the house? And then- Jill: It's still not that great. I want to go be treated. Steve: This is interesting. Jill: You know what I want to do? Steve: You learn new stuff about your mate every day. Jill: I want to go to Terranea, or something equivalent, and just really have a nice, nice time. Thank you. Steve: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill: Okay. Mohad wrote, I've been practicing using Real Quest Pro to pull data in an area I'm looking to send my first mailer. Once I enter all the criteria and submit, it seems like a lot of the data I pull has some sort of housing on it. I'm entering in zero to 0% improvement and I'm still getting many buildings slash houses. I don't want to waste money on records with houses. I've gone through each land use to figure out which is pulling the records with the houses, but it looks like they are just blended in with several uses. Any suggestions on how to get rid of the houses, to be sure I'm doing something wrong? Steve:

Is it possible to harness your subconscious mind to better fight chronic pain? Suggestion Healing provides the missing link between allopathic and holistic medicine. Learn more with my guest, Dr. Steve Taubman. Suggestion Healing - How Does it Work? Uniting Hypnosis, Mindfulness and NLP the Autonomic nervous system can be manipulated with a variety of techniques to help change the image of a patient's disease and activate their own immune systems. - Can Type 2 Diabetes be reversed? According to Dr. Steve - YES! - Learn the impact of Power of Imagination on healing. - Seizures - how a golden horse stopped seizures in a young teenager. - PTSD - wait until you hear the 5 words Dr. Steve used to transform this veteran instantly. - Is frost bite a limiting belief? Learn the surprising answer with my next guest, Dr. Steve Taubman on Self Talk Radio Show. suggestionhealing.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

John: "Steve, does everyone need a Life Coach?" Steve: "Yes, I believe they do." What is a Life Coach? In this edition of the John G. Moore Podcast, Texas-based Steve Strauss is the guest. He's been a life coach for many years, and helped people of all walks of life find their paths. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-g-moore/support

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

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

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

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.

It’s no secret that a lot of strategies in MLM are broken and outdated...   The MLM model has undoubtedly changed over time…     In fact, I just spoke about this in an interview I did with Lynn Thomas from Create Your Dream Life…   The Internet became publicly available in 1991…   Over 10 years ago!    A lot of the tactics in MLM were developed BEFORE the Internet…    And a lot of MLM companies are moving forward as if that's not a reality...    Which I frankly think is STUPID.    I chat with Lynn about my approach to MLM and WHY it's so different and so unique...    And why this has been such a BIG BUZZ…   It's been such a disruptive thing!   Jump in a discussion I had with Lynn Thomas about how MLM has changed and what to do about it to stay on top…   *how MLM has changed, how to stay on top, Secret MLM Hacks, MLM is broken*   Jump in a discussion I had with Lynn Thomas about how MLM has changed and what to do about it to stay on top…   HOW MLM HAS CHANGED     The MLM model has undoubtedly changed over time.    I talked about this in an interview I did with Lynn Thomas from Create Your Dream Life.   Lynn Thomas is awesome.    If you don't know, interviewsteve.com is how you can jump on my calendar. It's pretty full. I'll try and figure out a way to open it up a little bit.    Lynn asked me some cool questions that I haven't really been asked that frequently.   In the episode, we were able to dive a little more deeply into how MLM has changed and shifted in the last 10 years.    The Internet became publicly available in 1991.    A lot of what is being done now in the MLM space are tactics that were developed before the Internet was around or publicly available.    A lot of MLM companies tend to move forward as if that's not a reality... Which I frankly think is STUPID.    I chat with Lynn about my approach to MLM and why it's so different and so unique... And why this has been such a big buzz.    Whole MLMs have been reaching out, asking us to build funnels for them!   I've been able to take the MLM model and flip it on its head. Rather than me going out and talking to all these people to deliver a message, I can automate the message!    I can track it because it's the same message every time.    That means I can make tweaks and adjustments and target people who are likely to want to:    Be in my downline Buy whatever my team is selling    That's a big, big deal, and that's why it's been such a disruptive thing.   HOW TO STAY ON TOP IN MLM   We have a book that we're writing about this. There are three levers you can go turn in your MLM business.    You don't own anything in MLM.   You don't own anything. What is it that you can create that you do own? So you can out leverage the game?    This is super blue ocean stuff right now, which is exciting.    Lynn: Steve, how did you get started? Where did you start in this journey? And why did you start Secret MLM Hacks?   Steve: Why did I start Secret MLM Hacks? Well the first time I tried to get in MLM, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed, I was in college. We had hardly any money and had just found out that we were expecting our first kid, which is very exciting.   I wanted to make a little bit of extra cash in college to pay some of those expenses. One of my buddies called me and said, "Hey, I don't know what this guy's talking about but he's going to help us make a lot of money. Can I three way him in?"   I was totally new and I had no idea what that meant or that I was on a classic MLM pitch.    So I said, "Sure, dude. Sounds good." He calls and I literally said, “Is this one of those pyramid schemes?”   I was the worst buyer ever.   He goes, "No, no, no, it's not, No, no, no."    And I was like, "Why do I need to pay money to get started selling things for you? That doesn't make any sense."    I was the worst. When I got off the phone my buddy called me right back and he goes, "Come on, you would be great at this. Come on, man."    And I was like, "No."   REALIZING HOW MLM HAS CHANGED   After some resistance I said, “Sure. Well, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go both feet in and I'm going to run as hard as I can.”    So I went and I met with a guy in my upline. I don't even know what it was called… I was so green to the MLM network marketing, direct sales space. I didn't know anything about that.   And I went and drove to go meet him. When I pulled up it was this like, super old, warehouse looking thing. It was kind of sketchy.    I walked in and there was this table in the center, and nothing else was in this big massive room. It's like the out of a scene from Hollywood.    It was dark with a single light hanging over the table. I sat down, and he goes, "Well, hey, you want to be successful? Right?"   I said, "Well, yeah."   And he goes, "Well, you gotta do what everyone else does when they're successful. Let's take out your phone. Are you willing to do that?"    I said, "Sure".   “Take your phone out. Let's walk through your contacts and see who would be good.”    And I was like, that makes sense. We made a huge list of people. Right there, we started calling people. I was not prepared for that.    If that's your thing, good on you. But for me that was weird.   I still have relationships that have been soured to this day because of that.    MLM IS BROKEN BUT I KEPT GOING   But I was not willing to give up. I went and started walking down Main Street, literally recruiting people right off the street. People in businesses, and I was just hustling.    I’d worked super hard for the first four or five weeks and I recruited 13 people.    And I was like, "This is awesome." I started doing the thing that they all do…    … “If those 13 get 13 and if they get 13 each, the next problem I have to solve as what island will I buy!”   Then none of them did anything.   I'd counting the chips before I have them and none of them did anything… So I stopped doing anything in MLM.    About a year later I realized that the problem wasn't, does MLM work?    The problem was that I was approaching it with very outdated tactics.   There are people out there who legitimately wanted to find a good opportunity.   I started learning how to attract the good people.    In the past I was looking across the street and being like, "Oh, it's Mr. Johnson. He really could use this opportunity right now, he needs this opportunity."   I realized anytime I have to say that about somebody, they are the wrong person to recruit. They're not learners or business builders.    I started getting better and better at that whole system and automating it on the internet, using ClickFunnels.    To this day, still, we get about two, three, sometimes four people a day asking to draw my down-line who I've never met.   We cut half of them out easily right off the get go and find those who are truly excited to build it.    That's what we've been doing and Secret of MLM Hacks is just the program that teaches that.   HOW MLM HAS CHANGED THE OFFER   Lynn: Yeah, it's an awesome thing that you've built. The thing that I'm struggling with and that the people that I've interviewed are struggling with is THE OFFER.   Can you explain a little bit about offer creation?   Steve: The way I realized this was kind of backwards and weird.    I was knocking doors as a door to door salesman. We were driving out to one of our areas, and I was in a bad mood. I was having the grumpies, sorry.   I remember looking up at these billboards, and I had this phrase come to my head.    And I was like, man, I'm getting up every day trying to sell things to people who are not planning on spending money.   But everybody calling these billboards are calling asking to be sold.    It was the first time in my life I've ever considered that.   There was already this momentum going around sales, and I needed to learn how to capture it.    I was selling pest control at the time and I put up these ads on classified sites for pest control.    I didn't realize that was totally illegal because you’re supposed to put all these credentials and stuff up.    My phone started blowing up! People are like, “I've got ants in my pants” or whatever. There's people begging for the service rather than me selling them on the service.   I couldn't knock any more doors because there's a better way. So I started approaching MLM differently.   HOW TO STAY ON TOP WITH YOUR OFFER   When it comes to offers, people want what you've got.   You have to realize that anytime we sell a product, it is solving a problem. It's easier to sell it if they really do have a problem. You don't have to create the problem then sell them the solution.    Let's say I'm selling Trident gum. Anytime we sell a product, we solve a problem but we also create problems that were not there before we bought.    This is where the offer, in any business not just MLM, comes around.   I call these follow up problems.    If the opportunity presents itself to be an Olympic skier... Someone offered it to me and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I could be in the Olympics!"    I’ve got to solve a lot of problems that were never there before.    What skis will I wear? Who's my coach going to be now? What's my eating like? Who am I going to hang out with? What's my sleep schedule? What mountains am I going to train on?   All the things that were never there until that opportunity presented itself.    That is the exact same thing and where the opportunity lies in MLM when you realize that.   As soon as I sell my gum to somebody, or whatever your product is, what are the follow up problems and issues that are there now that they bought from you?    These are called follow up problems.    Maybe I don't like the flavor. Maybe there's certain things that you eat or drink with or after it.   Lynn: Or maybe there's an aftertaste...   Steve: Yeah, maybe there's an aftertaste. Maybe your mouth might get a little dry.    MLM IS BROKEN BECAUSE IT DOESN’T DEAL WITH FOLLOW UP PROBLEMS   If you don't know what the follow up problems are, go to anybody who's ever bought your product ever and say, "Hey, what do you wish was a little bit different with this product?"   Shut up and take out a piece of paper.    This is when the market starts guiding the offer that they want from you.    This is very key and it's one of the major reasons why I love MLM so much.   You don't have to make this initial product to get those questions out, it's already made for you.    I go out and I share it with people and I say, "Hey, here's this thing. What are the issues you have?"    And I start writing and writing and writing and writing. Then I look for the top two or three most commonly said things.   The magic is here.    I create a product to solve that follow up problem that the majority seem to be having…   And I give it away for FREE with this product when they buy it through me.    Now I've out valued everybody my upline... Everyone in my downline and I am the most attractive person to come buy through.   My upline is my competition. My down-line is my competition.    WHAT IS SECRET MLM HACKS FOR?   Lynn: So is Secret MLM Hacks a thing that is attracting people to you? And then eventually, they ask to join you?   Steve: Sometimes...   Lynn: Not all the time?   Steve: Well, I don't ever tell anyone what I'm in. I kept it very third party.    Secret MLM Hacks  is meant to educate the MLM space because no one has really been approaching MLM this way.    If I can become the category king in this space with MLM funnels, it can't be a pitch fest.    Lynn: You're breaking the old paradigm.   Steve: Some MLM’s really don't like it.   Lynn: I imagine, because you were saying that MLM is broken.   Steve: Yeah, I believe that.   Lynn: And it's been broken for a long time. We have the internet and new ways of reaching out to people yet they're still saying, “Let's call 100 more contacts from your phone.”    Steve: Why don’t we talk to those who are actually wanting to buy. People who want the solution.   Let's just give a lot of value and then they'll come buy from us instead of everyone else.   Lynn: So there are a lot of people out there that are looking for and wanting an opportunity, and you're just opening the door so that they can find you?   Steve: Yeah.   If you compare brand new people who sell on the internet in general and brand new people who sell in the MLM space, there's far more education that is much better suited to the general internet marketer.   EDUCATION IN MLM IS BROKEN   I started looking at what education is available in the MLM space and the quality of it.    So I went in and I started buying all of the top books, courses and CD’s in the MLM industry.   I started consuming them, and almost all of them have the same ideas...   “Simple things to say to people to get them to jump into your down-line”.   Why don’t we just skip all of that and talk to those who actually want the product and automate the interaction with them.    Then let's elevate the quality of education so people can have a lot of stature in the MLM space.   Go buy all the top books, go see what they're talking about. It's kind of garbage.    It's really, really old when you compare it to what is actually already working in other industries.    All I've been doing is taking this education and telling it to a new industry that's never heard it before.   Lynn: Can you explain to me why you killed yourself?   Steve: So what Lynn's referring to is, I say Steve killed Stephen.   In high school, I…   Was 35% body fat (I was a big boy) Had a huge amount of shyness Had a very rough time speaking with anybody    I'd see an adult and literally walk the other way.    It was a near clinical fear of adults for a while there.    HOW MLM HAS CHANGED SINCE I WAS IN COLLEGE   I'm just going to say it... I was dumb.   I got kicked out of college my first semester because I got pretty much straight F's and they told me to leave.    I had to wait four years to go back and reapply. I'm the least likely success story.   Stephen is a great guy. His natural state is ‘nice guy’.   It was no longer, "Hey, I'm not making any money because the opportunity I'm in is bad."   What I realized is, "Hey, I'm not making any money because I'm a terrible delivery system of it.”   I don't qualify for what the market is requiring for me to go out and be the person that sells and is aggressive to the right degree.    So I created Steve.   I just did this at Funnel Hacking Live. Something freaked me out and I started getting nervous in the negative sense (not the positive nervous).   I went to the speaker room, shut off all the lights and put on some pretty aggressive motivational videos.    There was 30 minutes till I had to get on stage.   I just did planks, sit ups and push ups because I was trying to bring Steve out.    That sounds schizophrenic... I promise it isn't.   Steve's a killer. Steve gets on stage and he cracks mics and break stages. He is the attractive character that his market needs him to be.    SECRET MLM HACKS STEVE VS STEPHEN   Lynn: You’re not dead all the time?   Steve: I'm not, no. It is a learned trait.    I was so scared for launching my podcast for the first time. I think I recorded 17 episodes before ever releasing it, because I was nervous.    Every single step of the way has been a self doctoring move.   Everyone asks, "How do you keep so much energy?" I don't.   No one's that way all the time. Everyone gets nervous.   Steve killed Stephen and it doesn't feel fake… It's very genuine. It's just a new side of me that I started learning.   Lynn: You talk about getting uncomfortable every day.    Be uncomfortable every day, step out of your zone. Learn something new, do something you haven't done before.   Steve: Yeah. Not all stress is negative.    There's de-stress, which is destructive. That's not good stress.    Then there's eu-stress, as in euphoria. Eustress is really good for you. It's like going to the gym and it’s good for your brain.    Doing something hard as early in the day as you possibly can is so good for you.   Lynn: Are you doing triathlons? I seem to recall that you're doing something like that?   Steve: I'm about to get back into it. It's been a solid year since I've really done anything like that.    I started signing up for some stuff so that I could hold my feet to the fire and get into it again.   Lynn: Is it kind of a balance thing?   Steve: Yeah, a little bit.    I think life balance is kind a facade.    It's hard to define it so you don't really know if you've reached it.    I feel like it's a weird thing to compare ourselves to something that's kind of unattainable.   HOW MLM HAS CHANGED WITH THE INTERNET   Lynn: Do you any parting words of wisdom for my listeners?   Steve: The MLM space is most easily sold when you couple it with the info product industry.    What I do is I create these products that teach ANY MLMer. I'm not pitching them at all. But they're not free.   And that's for a reason. It filters and brings people to me who have a different mentality.    If somebody can't even spend a little bit of money for some MLM education, they're not a good fit for my down-line.    I'm not trying to recruit everyone and their mom.    That's totally the opposite of what most MLMs teach. I'm actually very picky on who I let in my down lines.    If you are having a hard time recruiting, one of the easiest things you can do is create something in the front and stop recruiting everybody.    I don't get on the phone, I don't go to hotels or malls, I don't do any of this traditional MLM stuff.   Lynn: You don't do meetings?   Steve: I don't do any of that. None of it.   The only thing that I do is keep selling this front end program. It's not really meant to make money.    Any money we make, we just dump it back in ads. The people who are buying it are basically funding the ads.    Most MLM don't know how to drive ads. That program is louder than most MLM companies, which is crazy.    If they can spend $15 on ads, and I can spend $50, I'm going to crush them.   That front end thing is just meant to liquidate my ad cost and bring good people to me, who would be a great fit for my team.   RECRUITING IN MLM IS BROKEN   I NEVER approach someone. I make people apply. They go through an application process and we filter out another half of them easily.   Lynn: All the people that you're recruiting are people that are ready to run, and they're all using the internet to grow.   Steve: Yes. That's what's crazy.    I just hand off the same systems when they join my team. That's what's so mind blowing, because a funnel builder is what my profession is. I make good ones. When they come in, they get these professional funnels.    Lynn: BOOM!   Steve: Yeah, BOOM!   When you flip the whole model on its head and stop doing, frankly, really old tactics, MLM becomes fun again.    The people on my down-line are my closers. They're the ones who call the people who apply. I don't even do that.    Then we automated our onboarding process, which is actually about launch in a week or two.   We automated all the onboarding which walks them through how to:   Set up their back office Get ads Set up the funnels Take advantage of our teams bonuses   It takes them through their first 30 days in my downline. It's super turnkey.   ONBOARDING IN MLM IS BROKEN   Lynn: Wow, that's awesome. Steve also has an affiliate program for ClickFunnels.   Steve: If you're watching or listening to this and you want to learn how to do this stuff on the internet, one of the easiest places to learn these principles is in affiliate marketing.    The model for affiliate marketing is the exact same model for MLM on the internet. If you go to affiliateoutrage.com, that's the program.   Affiliateoutrage.com walks you through how to market.   Lynn: He's got unbelievable training in there… UNBELIEVABLE.    Part of today's challenge in MLM is knowing how to teach your downline all of the ‘stuff’, right?    Would you like me to help you teach your own downline five simple recruiting tips for free?    If so, go download the FREE MLM Masters Package by subscribing to my podcast at SecretMLMHacksRadio.com   The course is FREE and it'll help explain to your team what I'm doing on, what you're learning. It also gets sent straight to your inbox.    Just go download it at SecretMLMHacksRadio.com

I frequently get interviewed by new content creators. The purpose of this episode is that EVERYTHING I show you is completely learnable and doable by YOU… Every Tuesday, I leave my morning open to go on anyone's show.   So, once a week, I just wake up, get ready, and check my calendar to see who's scheduled time for me to get on their show. I typically do two-three interviews every Tuesday, and I don't even care who with. It helps me: Keep connected with the audience Understand what peoples' questions are Understand who the other influencers-to-be, or current influencer are My calendar is pretty packed up, but if you want to book a slot, then go to interviewsteve.com. Recently, I had an amazing person set up a time with me. It was her first EVER show… and she just jumped in and asked me the MOST amazing questions. THE POWER OF PUBLISHING If you've listened to my podcasts at all and you've NEVER heard me say, “Everyone should publish!” I think you're probably lying. I say that all the time, and it's something that’s changed my life. I am massively convinced that if you want to increase your income, especially on the internet... The checklist is very simple: Step number one: Create some content Step number two: Keep offering people stuff Step number three: Keep getting attention Step number four: ...I really don't know whatever the steps are beyond that…. It's super simple, okay? Step number five: Just go back to number one. Truly, that's it! On a daily basis:  I create content I make sure that I offer something to somebody  just kinda keep getting attention for my business and what I do. The thing that always makes me MOST pumped is when somebody who’s just starting out sets up a time for me to get on their show. Currently, I’m a 2 Comma Club X Coach and a One Funnel Away Coach; I'm the guy that yells at everybody every day! I also have my own program, Offer Lab, I have another program in the MLM space. I spend a lot of time coaching... A constant theme that I push in EVERYTHING I do is that EVERYONE NEEDS TO PUBLISH. I can tell who’s MOST likely to have a successful funnel by whether or not they start publishing. Publishing is the safety net. It's the parachute for all the stuff. Frankly, you can stop listening to 80% of the tactics I teach you and just publish consistently, then come back to me in a year... and tell me that your life's not different! Seriously, it's that powerful. HOW TO START PUBLISHING I’m ALWAYS really pumped whenever somebody who's brand new comes on to interview me.... Because they’re just doin’ it! #success Recently, an amazing lady called Angela Clark jumped in and booked me for the first episode of her show. She’s created a podcast called Side Hustle Strategies, (which I think is a great name). Now, I wanna turn your attention to two things. Number one: She's just doin' it! Number two: Check out the types of questions that she's asking me - notice their simplicity. Not all interviewers are good, and she was very, very good. It’s one of my favorites interviews that I've done recently. When we were done, I asked, “Do you mind if share this on Sales Funnel Radio?” She said, “Yes, absolutely. Go for it.” I want you to see how awesome it is that Angela is just doin' it. I want to show you that YOU can do it too! About half the time, the person interviewing me is a newbie. Whether it’s for a new show, a blog, or whatever... I thought it'd be kinda cool capture one of 'em, toss it out here.   MY PUBLISHING STRATEGY Now, I wouldn’t be Steve Larsen if there wasn’t a strategy underneath my Tuesday morning interview sessions ;-) It’s helpful because I get interviewed all over the place... I've noticed when I'm being interviewed, I tend to dive into topics,  teachings, and strategies that I have a hard time replicating without somebody asking me questions. Here's what I'm getting at… If you have a hard time creating content or teaching what you do, stop asking yourself for answers. Don't let EVERYTHING come from your own head. Instead, get someone to ask YOU a whole bunch of questions. Let them pull the answers out of you… Then all you have to do is delete all their questions and BOOM! You have a course… Or BOOM! You got the podcast. It's one of the reasons why I ask so many questions in my group, The Science of Selling Online; I'm trying to see where the holes are. In my head, there's a model, there's a picture, and a framework, but I need to know where the questions are.   DUPLICATE YOUR TIMEI'm super proud to just have a whole bunch of people who’ve actually started their shows. It doesn’t matter whether you’re publishing on a: Podcast Blog Facebook YouTube Whatever platform you publish on, I don't care, as long as you’re actively talking, because... If you're NOT speaking, no one knows you exist. You WILL BUY your customer, whether it's with your time or your money. If you're like, “Stephen, I don't have money for ads.” Well, then you better be willing to spend some time! One of the best ways I know to duplicate time is to create content. I have to do it once, and it lives on the internet forever. Between my two shows, I’ve got almost 400 episodes now... which is crazy! That's a lot of hooks pulling people into my world and adding value for my entire life. If you're NOT willing to spend money, BE willing to spend time. It would suck to walk around the street and be like, “Hey, can I tell you my recent podcast episode?”  I'd rather duplicate my time by creating content. One of the biggest hacks of the game, create content, make offers to people consistently, and that's kind of it. Gain attention, there you go, there's the hack, there's the BIG SECRET... and that's what I'm doing. One of the easiest ways to buy your customers and make a real asset on the internet is by consistently publishing. Now, let's cut over to Angela's interview with Side Hustle Strategies. If you like what she's asking, go say hi to her, and thank her as well. AND REMEMBER… you don’t need credentials to get started... Just a willingness to jump!   SIDE HUSTLE STRATEGIES Angela: Alright, so I know you from ClickFunnels fame, Sales Funnel Radio, Secret MLM Hacks. So, for those who don't know you, can you tell us a little bit about your story? Steve: Yeah, totally. I was newly married... seven years ago. I call myself the seven-year overnight success story.   I failed my face off in tons of business attempts. My wife and I could barely feed ourselves, and life was really intense for a while. I know a lot of people are still in that sort of scenario. It was a college town, so no one was getting jobs for more than like three dollars an hour. It was a new town we moved to, we didn't know many people. She didn't have a job, and I couldn't get a job. It was crazy. There were more students than there were jobs. I was like, “We're gonna die. I gotta figure out a way to make money.” I asked my dad to float us some cash while we waited for some student loans to come in... just so we could just have like a base, right? Then I was gonna go run hard and try and make some more money some other way and thankfully, he's on the phone and he goes, “Son, No. If I give you this money you will not exhaust the resources you didn't know you had.” It was really intense. It was very wise of him to say that to me, though. I had the fire in the gut to provide that I think most people just fail to ever light. And when you have that fire, little details that you otherwise get stuck on, they don't really matter as much. How am I gonna figure this out? Doesn't matter! Do I need to know that? No, run! And so, it gave me this lens of action of just move versus getting focused and distracted by all these other things. So, I started trying all these businesses and none of them were working. I was spending money, that frankly, we really didn't have trying to make something just kick off. Over three and a half years, four years, I went through 12 business attempts and they all failed or kinda broke even. Each time, though, I was learning some stuff. It was very valuable stuff. I was in college for marketing, business, and entrepreneurship... and I started learning MORE in these attempts than what I was learning in my classes. Because of this, I started getting into fights with my teachers over different principles. It was like, “No, I've tried what you just said and it doesn't work very well that way. I'm doing it right now. It doesn't work!” I'd be praying to God in the evenings, like, “Please, help me find a way. It's not that I'm not willing to go through pain, I am, I'm in it right now.” I believe he totally guided me through failures that were needed for my future success. That's really interesting to think about it that way. I started blowing up these different businesses, trying these different things, and running into ClickFunnels. If you guys don't know what ClickFunnels is, it's basically a way to sell things online or offline... but it allows you to have higher average cart values. Basically, meaning: People spend more money buying more of your things that they probably wouldn't have otherwise because you just didn't ask 'em... so you make more money. It's really cool! ...And you don't have to be a coder to put these things out on the internet. And I'm not, I don't know how to code. I have no idea how to do that stuff. I started making all these sales funnels. I still didn't have much money. And I was like, “Who made this software? Russell Brunson! Does he even shave? This guy looks freakin' young, should I even trust him?” You know what I mean? I was like, “Who is this guy?” And I had my own reservations because the first time I saw him, I was like, “This guy's 12.” You know? He's just a very young-looking guy. If you don't know who he is, we're good friends, so I can say that, and I don't think he'll get mad. Anyway, so I was like, “I gotta go to his event.” I was in college still, I was about to graduate. It's like, “I can't get to his event.” So, I started changing the question in my mind. This was towards the end of college for me. It was like, “What if I just get resourceful... 'cause I don't have resources?” And I was like, “Well, I could learn how to build one of these funnel things.” And I went and I started trading funnels for tickets to his next event; funnels for plane tickets and funnels for hotel nights. I bootstrapped my way to the event I was nerdy enough in their software that they knew who I was when I walked up to their event. They said, “What's your name?” I said, “Steve Larsen.” And the guy looked up and he goes, “You're the guy pulling off all that Star Wars ninja crap in our software, right?” That's exactly what he said. And I said, “I dunno.” He's like, “You are! I need you to apply to ClickFunnels.” ...And I ended up getting five job offers at their event, and one week later, I graduated, and three days later, I was sitting next to Russell as his funnel builder. It was just super fast. Really fast pace. Angela: Wow, great. Steve: That's kind of the quick and dirty. Angela: Alright, so now, today, what drives you to do the work that you do? Steve: Honestly, I felt so much shame, which is stupid. Maybe I shouldn't have, but the fact that I couldn't provide just destroyed all semblance of self-esteem for me. I started coming home right after we got married, and I'd walk into our little apartment... It was overpriced, we barely had any money, neither of us could get jobs, we really had no income, but I wasn't thinking about that. It was honeymoon phase, and I was mad in love… Anyway, I started coming home, my wife would still be in bed. She'd already graduated college and I was like, “Are you okay? We alright? You okay?” She's like, “Oh yeah.” So, I'd go back the next day to school, and come back home... *same thing* “You okay?” She's like, “Oh yeah, no, it's nothing, it's fine.” Same thing, same thing, day after day after day after day… I finally got her to admit to me, (and she didn't wanna tell me, 'cause she didn't wanna hurt my feelings), she’d only been eating one meal a day ‘cause we didn’t have money. Angela: Wow! Steve: She’d been doing that so long that she was physically weak. I had no idea. She was literally eating like, some beans… And all the while, still making my lunches so I could have energy in school, and she would just eat a scant meal of dinner with me in the evenings... and that was all she was eating. I am telling you, it destroyed me. A lot of men get their identity based on how well they provide or what they do, and I couldn't do it... and it rocked my world. Rocked everything. I can't describe the pain, and it didn't leave. That's when I called my dad and said, “Hey, will you give me some cash?” And he said “NO,” which is great, I'm glad he did. I went and just started running, just trying stuff. The pain, the level of shame I felt, I had to hide that from people. I was in classes trying to focus but knew my wife was starving at home. It was nuts. It was super nuts. That went on for a really long time… So what drives me today is, I'm a capitalist pig, right? I intend to make a lot of money, but do it in a way that provides a lot of value for the world. There's nothing wrong with that. What drives me is to help install that belief in people's brains, rather than this weird belief a lot of people have around cash. Make money, make a lot of it... because that lets you go help people at a faster pace than you could if you didn't have money. What drives me is that... and when I see people who are still in that zone I was at the beginning of our marriage, like that... Oh, my gosh. You can tell, even now, I'm NOT over it. That was very, very challenging. It was hard on me and I don't want people there either... Angela: What advice would you give to someone who's stuck, who's in that place, who maybe is discouraged, and not able to see the light at the end of the tunnel? What advice would you give to someone to kind of muster that energy to move on? Steve: Few things. It's a great question. The first thing I would tell you to do is, and I was doing this… A lot of these lessons I know because I was doing the exact opposite of it and that's why I learned the lesson. You want depression, here's how you get it... You CANNOT compare yourself to another person's success or the speed that they gained it. It was the fastest way for an entrepreneur (or somebody who's trying to make it) in this game to die. The only way. If you start comparing yourself to these ideals, “Oh, that guy did it at that speed,” I guarantee that's NOT true. Nor is it the first thing they tried… That's the visible side. All of us have years of just trying and trying and trying and beating and beating on our craft. What's interesting is ideals aren't measurable. Pop culture changes every second, and if I measure myself to an ideal, I will never hit it because I can't measure it. Therefore unattainable. You end up measuring your self-esteem, your self-worth, your value to yourself and others on something that is constantly shifting and fictitious. That's totally a huge thing in the entrepreneur world today. Entrepreneurship finally, thankfully, is cool now. It's awesome, it's super cool. It's like this big fad, it’s awesome. But what's funny is, if I go in and rent a freakin' Lambo to take a picture in front of and make on my Facebook profile picture, 'cause that's what I think causes success. That's the most jacked-up crap on the planet. It's NOT true. I've noticed that those types of people will ride this little high, but because it's based on things that are fake, they crash real hard.  All of their worth, all their business worth, all their sense of self is based on something that is constantly shifting. Sit around and be like, “Oh man, I'm a bad mamma jamma! Look what I did yesterday that I could not have done six months ago!” My level of opportunities changed based on how I changed. The whole game's a game of progression. Man, I got the nicest kid award in high school. It's not 'cause I was nice, it's because I was shy. No one knew that, and I had to overcome the fear of speaking. I had to overcome a fear of adults that was near clinical. I had to overcome a lot of stuff. I was dumb, I was kicked out of my first semester of college; I didn't know how to study. I am the least likely success story. The only way I got around it was by comparing me to me yesterday. In that way, I stopped comparing myself to others. I stopped looking at the clock of others, and I know totally ranting right now, but this is a HUGE thing I achieved in my life. Angela: No, but you touched on something important. I've seen lots of your videos and I've heard you tell a little bit of this story before about being very shy, so in my head... I've got two kids and I've got one that's really reserved with most people, but at home, she's a wild woman. Steve: Yes, exactly, at home, you would have no idea. Angela: Right, so my question for you is, ('cause I think that that's pretty important), there may be a lot of people out there who have a hard time putting themselves out there. Russell Brunson has said that he considers himself a more introverted person, but when you see him, he's like, “Wah!” So, where do you get that from? Where do you muster that energy to be on, like on demand? Steve: I think the biggest thing someone can do that will destroy them is starting to self-hate. That'll just wreck 'em. Instead, everything that I know that is NOT gonna be an aid in my business, his name is Stephen, and he's shy... and he's a little bit more reserved. I wouldn't say I'm shy, but I'm a little more reserved. Anyway, I would not be wearing shirts like this or like, “Bleh, Rah!” People ask all the time, “Stephen, how do you have so much energy all the time?” I have a lot of energy when I need to become Steve. Steve is a second person I created... and I know it's stupid, and this sounds really weird, but even Tony Robbins teaches that we all have multiple personalities inside of us. And so... there's Stephen... And Stephen, he's cool, he's the man. He's everything that I needed to be in order to learn the painful lessons I needed to create Steve. And most of the time, I'm Stephen. Steve, that dude's nuts. He is a killer on stage, oh my gosh. He is the one talking to you right now. He destroys the microphone. He tells Russell Brunson to get stage insurance, 'cause he's gonna try and crack it. He’s a deliverer. I love Steve. So, every time I'm about to go on a video, do an interview, or record a podcast, I take a moment to become Steve. ... And it sounds weird, but I had to do it that way... because otherwise, I would've just stayed reserved... kinda just like, “There's no way I'm gonna get on video.” I would NOT be doing this at all if I stayed Stephen 100% of the time. Angela: So, what does that transition look like? I mean, are you like amped up on music? Is there caffeine? Steve: It's a little bit. It's not much. When I do take a lot of caffeine, it jacks me up. But it's a little bit of caffeine. A lot of times though, it's the mentality that I'm taking on. This sounds kinda dark, but one of the things that I try to do is... Man, it's so funny… The moment you start trying to level up your game, you get a lot of lovers and haters. It's like you are the Red Sea. It's like the split, that's what you're walkin'. Both voices get louder. For quite a while, I cared too much about what people thought about me and so, what I decided to do, (and I didn't mean to make this a public thing, it was actually just for me.)   I went and bought this heavy punching bag that's shaped like a human, and I wrote Poverty on it... and I beat the crap out of that thing on a regular basis. It's like this little self-therapy that I will walk through if I need to become Steve. If that thing's not around, I'll imagine beating the snot out of it. But what I do is I write every single thing that's negative that I'm hearing from my audience, another audience, or online, I write it on the freakin' dummy. Most of the time, what I realize what I was trying to do is act like the negativity wasn't there. I would try to shield and shelter, and be like, “It's NOT there, No, no, no! I should just move forward.” Everyone says just to move forward. For me, that was cool, but it was like this weight. For me, in business, I compete on strengths. In my personal development though, I kinda have to work on my weaknesses in order to qualify for more business opportunities. So I write down all the negativity that I hear from the world... and people are really tough behind their computer screens. Some are just straight-up jerks… So, now, there are just tons of words all over it: Not enough Terrible Stutters Say too many “um’s” Big eyes You're not gonna make it Not sustainable Watch him fail and burn. ...Anything that's negative. They're just freakin' jerks! I write it down, I face it, and I consume it. I allow myself to feel it, and I accept it's there. Then I beat it up. Despite knowing the negativity is there, despite all that stuff, I just move forward. So, when I sit down in this chair, I am in a state of war. I am ready to deliver. I will provide and go to war for my family. I will make a lot of value out there, and I will make money while I do so... and that's totally awesome. But that transition zone was very practiced at first. I had to really work on that and meditate over it, and try to... Not that I'm downplaying who I am or who I was, but realizing that my business most likely needs somebody else besides me. A new me in order to actually run in the first place, am I willing to become that person? Not a fake me, but somebody else! So, anyways, music is definitely part of it. Angela: So, let me ask you this... I know a lot of entrepreneurs don't have the support of family and friends. Was that something you had and how did you find your tribe to sort of have those people that you could bounce ideas off or just be a sounding board for whatever your challenges were? Steve: Yeah, there's a lot of family and friends that are out there who, for all of us, it's not that they're trying to be negative, they just DON’T understand what we do and they don't get it at all. ...And frankly, the entrepreneur, for a long time, sucks at explaining what they do. So, you have these two differing angles, and most of the time, I found... What was that book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? Angela: Yeah, great one. Steve: Yeah, a super good book, right? He's like, most fights or little tiffs are a result of a misunderstanding of roles and goal.  So, if you start working under a different framework, your blueprint starts to change a little bit. That can be threatening to people. A lot of times, I remind people of the things that they didn't take risks on… they're not telling me I'm bad, or they're being mean… What they're doing is reacting to things they've tried to hide in themselves. That's a big thing that I noticed. I was the only person that I physically knew who was doing what I was trying to in my physical sphere. You know what I mean? No one else was building funnels. For years, it was that way. The reason I wanted to go to Russell Brunson's event so bad is that I wanted to be around, for the first time in my life, other people who knew what a sales funnel even was. Even though I was in sales. I was in my sales classes, I was in entrepreneurship classes, in marketing classes… we still weren't talking about how to actually make money. I I'd say, if any entrepreneur's experiencing kind of negativity with family, friends, or even just in general, don't act like it's not there, but just be patient with it... and understand that they're operating from a completely different mindset, and have no idea. They didn't have the same epiphanies you had in order to be doing the logical things that you’re doing, the things that you think are logical. Most of it's just a misunderstanding. Angela: Well, great, thanks. I think you've given some great nuggets for folks who are in the trenches or considering getting in the trenches. So, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today. Is there anything you wanna share about what you're working on or where people can go to find out more information about you or maybe some of your projects or products? Steve: Yeah, I think it was business 17 that actually worked. 17, right! That’s a crazy, crazy amount of failure. It was around business try number 12 though, where… Everything I was launching, I didn't get it. I thought I had to have a better product. I thought it was all about the product. I've realized, though, that's actually not true. I could sell any piece of junk. Most people believe that they need to have so much belief in their product. ...But I can sell things I don't believe in. I'm NOT telling anyone to go do that, but it's because of the principles I've learned about marketing and sales... and understanding that they're different. Understanding that closing and sales are different. Those are the things that have made all the difference in the world for me. So, it was around business try number 12 when I started learning what funnels even were, how to do them, how to use them.  That's when things started shifting up for me. I love affiliate marketing. I’ve found that most people get distracted by the creation of the product. They have no idea how to: Sell Position themselves Write copy to get attention So, if you don't have a product and you're trying to learn this game, I would actually tell you NOT to learn how to make a product. I would go do affiliate marketing. I created a program for this exact reason called Affiliate Outrage, affiliateoutrage.com. It's completely FREE, and it walks you through how to market other people’s products, and get paid for it. It's 30 days long, and I brought in all these other experts to teach all the stuff inside of it. What I like about affiliate marketing is that it lets you practice. Just because somebody else made the product, doesn't mean you don't need to make marketing. So it's like marketing training wheels. That's why I like it. So, I would go there. Angela: Okay, so affiliateoutrage.com, that's where we can get more info and step-by-step instructions from you. Steve: Yeah, definitely. Angela: Alright. Steve: Hey, thanks for listening. As you likely have heard in my podcast, I left my job in January 2018 to build my million dollar business completely from scratch without any funding or any help... AND I HIT IT, right on February 1, 2019... Just 13 months later, we actually grossed a million dollars, which is pretty awesome. Better yet, I got to keep a lot of the cash, just 'cause my costs are honestly NOT very high. That said, there are several tools, though, I use to automate vital pieces of my business and ClickFunnels is one of them. ClickFunnels lets me build automated sales machines all over the internet that are non-stop pitching people for me. It's ONLY $97 a month. Better yet, I don't need to be a coder. If you're asking yourself, “Stephen, are you giving me a blatant pitch for ClickFunnels right now?” YES, 100%! I think it's dumb when people don't use ClickFunnels. It makes you MORE and saves you MORE. Basically, I have the power of an entire tech team in my hand and I want you to have it. Go grab a free trial of ClickFunnels by going to freecftrial.com. I want EVERYONE to experience the power of ClickFunnels in their business, so they're letting me hook you up at freecftrial.com.

In this episode, Steve Shields and I discuss some of the larger and smaller Mormon groups: fundamentalists and Cutlerites. Many of these fundamentalists practice polygamy. https://youtu.be/N4q_namvQ5g Steve:  The FLDS has 8,000 to 10,000. The Apostolic United Brethren and has 8,000 to 10,000, somewhere in that range. Those are the two largest organized groups, organized structural institutions. I've heard numbers of 50 or 60,000 fundamentalist Mormons all told. There's either some smaller, like the Centennial Park--I don't want to call them a group because the Centennial Park priesthood affiliation, maybe as a way to talk about those. You've got Naylor and Nielsen. You've got the guy up in British Columbia, Winston Blackmore. He's actually incorporated as the Church of Jesus Christ (Original Doctrine). That's their corporate filing in Canada. He's got 500 or so. Nielson and Naylor and Blackmore have been kind of doing some, they've not merged per se, but some cross affiliation because Nielsen and Naylor's problem with the Jeffs family was very similar with Winston's. So frankly, in all of the fundamentalist Mormons, there's very little doctrinal difference, if any at all. It has to do with priesthood authority. Who has the legitimate line? GT: I talked with Anne Wilde and one things that she said was really the largest group are what she would call independent or unaffiliated. Steve: That's right. Most of them are unaffiliated but they do fellowship with each other. You've got a large following: Fred Collier, Tom Green and others who believe in what they called the patriarchal order. Every father is a patriarch over his own family and has full authority to ordain his children, the male children. We'll also discuss the only other Mormon group that has an endowment ceremony in the temple.  They are sometimes referred to as the Cutlerites, named after Alpheus Cutler. Steve: Alpheus Cutler's church has always been small, and they do not proselytize. They don't believe in that. Alpheus Cutler is said to have been given a revelation that in the last days there will only be two and from that small branch, God will redeem Zion. So, they don't worry too much about that. They're getting older. GT: They're the ones who still have a temple ceremony. Is that right? Steve: Yes, they do. The upper room work is conducted in their building in Independence. I'll say on a regular basis. That doesn't mean every day or every week necessarily. I don't know any more about it than that. Nobody does except them and I respect that. I'm very curious, of course. How big are they?  Check out our conversation…. Steve Shields discusses Mormon polygamists and Cutlerites, the only other Mormon group with a temple endowment ceremony. Check out our other conversations with Steve! 227: Conspiracy Theories:  William Smith, Samuel Smith, James Strang(Shields) 226: Sidney's Unsung Role in Restoration (Shields) 225: Steve's Shields Own Divergent Path 224: Who Owns the Temple Lot? (Shields)

How to Sell Millions on Amazon Using SEO and Marketing Tools Part 2 On this episode, we continue with Steve’s special guest Andy Arnott, Founder and CEO of SellerSEO. This is part of two of a three-part series. Here are some amazing insights from today’s episode: How Andy started his Android app business and his brush with Google. The story behind Andy’s decision to focus all his energy selling in the Amazon Marketplace. How Andy’s wife helps him do the Amazon side of the business while he does the SEO side. So put on your headphones and join us to learn more about Andy’s journey and success in Amazon. 05:00 (Andy shifts from being an air traffic controller to starting his Android apps business.) 10:42 (Andy starts to sell on Amazon Marketplace.) 16:53 (One of Andy’s weaknesses is delegating.) Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope you will join me on this Awesomer journey. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT If you're launching a new product manufactured in China, you will need professional high-resolution Amazon ready photographs. Because Symo Global has a team of professionals in China, you will oftentimes receive your listing photographs before your product even leaves the country. This streamlined process will save you the time, money and energy needed to concentrate on marketing and other creative content strategies before your item is in stock and ready for sale. Visit SymoGlobal.com to learn more. Because a picture should be worth one thousand keywords. You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. Steve: You are listening to Episode Number 84 in the Awesomers podcast series and all you need to do is run out over to Awesomers.com/84 to find today's show notes and details. Now, our special guest again continuing is Andy Arnott and Andy is joining us for three-part series. This is part two of the three-part series by the way and he's an Amazon seller and a software builder and has really done an awful lot and we're going to dive more to those details about his journey in this episode that you're listening to right now. So, back to the air traffic control. Now, was that high stress and was that something that that you thrived on or did you – did it start to wear on you? What was your experience with that? Andy: I actually worked at a smaller kind of regional airport and it wasn't like – I mean we still did shift work, but we didn't have to work overnight. But yes it was stressful and it was – the funny thing is I equated a lot to if you were ever a server or a bartender you know it's at least at our airport it was very much the same way where you'd be sitting there twiddling your thumbs for an hour and then all of a sudden you'd get 30 airplanes that show up at one time. You got to figure out how to get them on you know two runways, so that was – yes that was interesting. I kind of thrived on it for the most part though. I did a lot of training of the new people coming in once I kind of got established and so that was kind of fun for the most part. Steve: Yes, it comes and goes I'm sure. Andy: Right. Steve: Now, would you say that air traffic control is kind of your first proper job out of school? Andy: Yes, it was, it was. Yes. I stuck with it for a long time, which is kind of crazy in this day and age. Most people don't, but you know it was a solid job and it kind of enabled me to be

Selling on Amazon has become a popular hustle but building a seven-figure brand is no easy feat. On this episode, Steve’s special guest is Liran Hirschkorn. Liran has been in the online marketing space for the last 10 years and has built not one but two seven-figure brands on Amazon. He also helped built Amazing Freedom together with Andy and Nathan Slamans. Here are more valuable takeaways on today’s episode: Personal development as an intellectual equity. The key to success from Liran’s perspective. Liran’s prediction on the future of E-commerce and Amazon as a selling channel. So listen to today’s episode and learn more about E-commerce and building a successful Amazon brand. Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT If you're launching a new product manufactured in China, you will need professional high-resolution Amazon ready photographs. Because Symo Global has a team of professionals in China, you will oftentimes receive your listing photographs before your product even leaves the country. This streamlined process will save you the time, money and energy needed to concentrate on marketing and other creative content strategies before your item is in stock and ready for sale. Visit SymoGlobal.com to learn more. Because a picture should be worth one thousand keywords. You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. 1:15 (Steve introduces today’s guest, Liran Hirschkorn.) Steve: This is episode number 38 of the Awesomers.com Podcast and as the tradition has become clear for those avid listeners, all you have to do is go to Awesomers.com/38, that's Awesomers.com/38 to find relevant show notes and details. Now today my special guest is Liran Hirschkorn and he's been in the online marketing space for the last 10 years, that's a long time in the internet space. Before building brands on Amazon, Liran was a pioneer in selling life insurance online. We're going to talk a little bit about that in today's episode. Over the last four years, he successfully built not one but two seven-figure brands on Amazon by creating products that add more value to the customer and understanding keywords, search optimization, sponsored ads and all the little things that go into making an online business work on Amazon. Liran is also a partner with Amazing Freedom and The Amazing Seller Podcast, which provides training and services for Amazon brand owners. You can learn more about all of these great resources and ideas that Liran is involved in in today's episode. Steve: Welcome back awesomers. Here we are again, Steve Simonson bringing you another podcast and I'm pleased to report today Liran Hirschkorn is joining me today. How did I do on the pronunciation? Liran: Did great, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Steve: Yes, I'm betting about 50% and in baseball I'd be a genius, but when it comes to pronouncing names it's really, it’s not that good, so thank you for that. And thank you for joining us. I definitely - I have already kind of read the intro and kind of the bio to the folks so they know a little bit about you, but I always like to have the guest put in their own words kind of what they do today on a day-to-day basis and help everybody kind of hear from them directly. What can you tell us?

I'd like to introduce Steve Mayfield.  We'll talk about Mormon involvement in the Patty Hearst kidnapping case.  Steve talks about his involvment in the Patty Hearst kidnapping case. https://youtu.be/8EkPgx_kRDE Steve:  I was there during a very well-known case, this little kidnap case you might have heard of Patty Hearst. I wasn't an agent, but I was involved in that in the fact that I was assigned to the Berkeley Office of the FBI where the kidnapping occurred for about three or four months. Then I came back to San Francisco. I was there the day she was arrested and brought in. ... After she was arrested, myself and other clerks spent a whole week booking in all the evidence and all the materials they picked up and I had an opportunity on two occasions to go out up sit in on the trial. And I sat a couple of rows right behind Patty and her attorney F. Lee Bailey. GT: Oh really? Steve:  Yes. GT: The O.J. lawyer. Did you know that it was a Mormon FBI agent that arrested Patty? Steve:  The supervisor of the squad that handled bank robberies and kidnapping was a guy named Brian Wheeler, who at the time of the kidnapping was a member of the San Francisco Sunset Ward bishopric. When they divided, and made a special squad of agents just to work on that case, one of the agents was a guy named Jason Moulton. He is LDS and he is one of the agents that arrested Patty Hearst and on the CNN special, he's the FBI agent they interview on it. Jason retired about 15 years ago. [He] was the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI in Seattle. Check out our conversation… FBI Wanted poster. The Patty Hearst kidnapping morphed into a bank robbery where she was the robber!

Interview with Steve Durie Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou. Another episode of The Nonprofit Exchange live, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis. Russell, how are you doing today out there in beautiful Colorado? Russell Dennis: After a snowfall last night, the sun has come back out. Everything is beautiful out here in Colorado. Hugh: Love it. People on the podcast can't see it, but you've got a shiny head. Is that part of the sign, or is that just the light over your head? Russell: All of this glare helps keep the focus off of the shadow here with all of the gray hair in it, so there is a method to my madness shining the light here. Hugh: I see that. Russell, the real person. We have a guest who is also a resident of Colorado, but he is a new resident of Florida. We are going to hear from him in just a minute. Today's topic is protecting your culture by doing effective vetting of the people you're bringing in, be it volunteers or paid staff. Steve Durie, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Steve Durie: Thank you, Hugh. It's good to be here. Hugh: So good to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, some background, and how did you arrive at what you're doing now? Why is it important to you? Steve: I have been doing this for 15 years. Where it started was when I was actually volunteering in youth organizations with my kids. My question was: Aren't you going to run a background check on me? They're like, No, we don't do that. We trust everyone. Previous to that, I had a lot of database experience in a consulting company in consulting on justice projects, that is, how to share criminal data. I took that knowledge about sharing criminal data and my passion for keeping my own kids safe and know that I was going to be working as a volunteer and turned it into a business 15 years ago. My kids are a little older now, and my wife Laura and I have a special needs son. He is an adult; he is 31. But he is also extremely vulnerable and needs protection. He doesn't live at home anymore. And that is a constant worry about Tommy, whether the people who are working alongside him are safe. It does transcend not just our children in their youth, but into any vulnerable population. That is a broad brushstroke is anybody who is vulnerable, and we can look at each group individually as to how to best screen someone and check them out if we are working with children, youth, or vulnerable adults, or elderly, or single people. There are a lot of different. Vulnerable populations who may need our work. Hugh: Absolutely. It's really good to know about people. In the work that Russell and I do through SynerVision, we help people build their strategy out. Part of that is competencies. We have created a new paradigm that replaces the position description, and the first of four colors is the competency. When you look at somebody's competency, you also want to do a background check so that you can validate what is on their resume, that they actually do that. Are there some hidden things in there? Finding out about the people. What is their performance going to be? Role and responsibility? If it's financial, there is another level of compliance. I used to live in a town of 30,000, and one year, there were two nonprofits that had treasurers make away with $750,000, trusted friends and community members. They didn't do an adequate background check or have safeguards in place. The third color is the culture fit. If somebody has a history of conflict or abuse, you don't really want them spoiling your culture. The fourth color is expectations, but the vetting the person, competency, not only are they clean, but they also fit the culture. There are lots of reasons in any kind of enterprise to do the background check. I think it's especially important when we are dealing with people who are compromised, like your son, like children, like older adults. There are lots of opportunities for people to abuse the system. You have worked with nonprofits so far, have you? Steve: Our focus of the company SecureSearch is with the nonprofit community. It's been over 15 years; we have served over 10,000 nonprofits as their partner for screening their staff, their volunteers, and their board of directors. We are a full-service company. We can do anything, from resume verification to child awareness for those who work with children. Hugh: Resume verification. I heard a guy one time, and his resume said he went to Yale and studied finance. I found out later he didn't graduate. People make up things on their resume. That's a new piece of data. Are nonprofits any more vulnerable than for-profits? Is there an attitude of difference there? You told a story about you being a volunteer, and you ask about the background check. They said we trust people. Do you find that to be more common than not? Steve: I find that to be pretty common in the nonprofit culture where they are really hungry for people to serve and to help. With that, sometimes they actually push aside the fact that these people may have a nefarious past. They are looking to quickly onboard them, get them into a position. They are happy to have a warm body. They are happy to have the skillset the individual brings to the table. Referred by a close friend or family member, so they are not even thinking about screening them, especially if they are not working directly with a child. When they are working with a child, it's more in our consciousness that we should put the best people with these kids to keep in faith. But what about people who are just working alongside one another? The workplace violence conflict. We need to focus on making all of our communities and all of the workplaces as safe as possible. It's the responsibility of the organization to do so. But nonprofits, because of their compromised budgets in some cases, they are spending their money elsewhere to maybe grow their projects and they are not really thinking about the people, if they are safe in the environment they are working in. In corporate America, it is common, and in the nonprofit arena, it is not as common. We are here as a voice to raise the awareness that everybody should be doing this, whether you have one employee or thousands. Hugh: You and I met at a conference last week, CEO Space. Had I met you—I came in late in the week because I had conflicts—and said, “Hey Steve, what is it that you do?” and you say, “I do background searches,” and I say, “I have a nonprofit. Why is it important for me to do that?” How would you respond to me? Steve: As a nonprofit? Hugh: If I say, “I have a nonprofit. Why is it important for me to do that?” Steve: You touched on this. It's about reducing risk and reducing liability. Liability is big. It all ties into the overall image in the community they're serving. It's protecting their image. It doesn't have to be their first priority. The first priority is protecting those who are part of their organization. You have to look at the entire hierarchy of your staff from your board of directors down to your volunteers. Oftentimes, there are people in between the upper board and the volunteers who are just coming on who get missed. They didn't think it was important to screen them. Really it's about lowering your liability and lowering your risk, or at least managing your risk. You can't be a risk-free organization; that doesn't exist. It's about, how do you take steps and utilize your budget dollars to minimize your risk as much as you possibly can? Hugh: Russell, you and I interface with a lot of nonprofit leaders and boards. I find there is a lot of boards that aren't up to speed on how to be the board. They think about being in charge of governance sometimes. They sometimes realize they are responsible for financial oversight. I don't think boards realize they have a liability whatever happens. Do you find, Russell, in your work that boards are blind to this element as well? Russell: I have talked to people who really don't have a core grasp of the notion of having liability insurance for the board of directors officers as they are putting these things together. They don't understand how critical that is and what risks are involved. A large part of the problem is people don't know what they don't know. Nonprofit leaders, these are people centered in the idea of making the world a better place and service to others. They are more prone to take people at their word as opposed to doing any sort of digging. They may not think there is a big risk associated with bringing a person on. It's nice to be able to take people at their word, but it depends on what kind of work you're doing, who you're serving, the assets of your organization you're protecting. It never occurs to people there may be a scurvy elephant roaming around the zoo. You have to have a look at who you're dealing with. People aren't always who they say they are. That is just the reality of it. It's important to look at these things up front because if you don't have a person who is not in integrity in there in the first place, you don't have to figure out how to get rid of them later on when you could have problems. The reputation of your organization could be at stake. You just have these horror stories. There was a veterans' organization a few years ago that saw their reputation fall apart because the CEO was playing games with the books. Always you have to think in terms of protecting yourself with your regulations, with internal controls, with the way money and other assets are handled. More important, how you deal with the people you serve. You can really get in a lot of trouble easily and quickly without in the least bit intending to. Hugh: Steve, did that shake loose any thoughts for you? Steve: Yeah, it actually did. I do believe that nonprofits feel that the people they bring in have the heart for what they do. If they have a heart for what they do, then they are probably good people. I really think that is a mistake a lot of them make. Taking that assumption because they say they believe in what you believe in, they have the passion for what you have a passion for, that doesn't mean they have the same background you have. A lot of people are trying to use their influence they currently have in the community, it could be a leader in the community, to find their way into a vulnerable group. That is the MO of a pedophile is to build up trust in everybody around them, including building themselves up to be leaders in the community so that everybody seems to trust them, and that is when they can get to the vulnerable children and build relationships without anybody thinking twice about it. Screening is not going to catch everybody, only if they have been arrested or convicted of something in the past. It's only one part of the puzzle for keeping not only your organization safe, but those that you serve. It goes much more beyond the background check. I don't think anyone can feel that they have that warm fuzzy feeling now that I have implemented background checks. I'm good, I got a green check mark for that person, I can just let them go. That is a wrong approach. You really need to have a conscious community around that everybody is the eyes and ears of the organization. We all have to keep our eyes on who we're working alongside. If they are doing something we believe is incorrect or harmful to the organization or to those who serve, to make sure we all feel empowered to report those things, especially for physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, whatever you might see. It's up to us to report it. Hugh: There is another realm that Russell talked about with having your policies and procedures up to date. You just pointed out, we have to pay attention. That is part of our responsibility as a leader to see what is in front of us. I never realized people who are—and it makes sense if you talk about it—a pedophile positions themselves in a place of trust and then continues to validate that, so they throw people off guard. No, it couldn't possibly be true. I have known people in that position before, and they were busted. Eventually you got caught. How long does it take and how many people do you hurt in the process? At least do your background check, which also helps relieve your liability. I'm sure some of the companies that Russell talked about that issue board insurance require a background check so they have less liability. I didn't warn you: When Russell comes in, he asks you the hard questions. I'll ask you easier ones first while he formulates the hard ones. Give us an example where people were trusting, and it really created damage. Then you came in and maybe you helped them get a process in place to prevent it in the future. Without naming names, what are the kinds of things that people should be alert to?   Steve: There are so many stories. Some have been recently in the news that everybody is aware of. One is USA Gymnastics with Dr. Nassau. Building trust, not only from the organization, but with the parents of these young children in the gymnastics program, and then going on to abuse them for years without ever getting caught. Sandusky at Penn State, same thing. He was able to testify with his peers that showering with young boys was just about cleanliness. They are always going to try to lie about who they are and have somebody believe it. They are masters at it. They never take any responsibility for their actions. It's that narcissistic behavior on the pedophile side. Another story has nothing to do with a criminal record. This was a nonprofit organization that had drivers and they were doing deliveries. One of the individuals when we met with them, and we were on site for this one, he was in the state of Colorado, but he had a Tennessee drivers' license. He said he had been here for four years. I asked him why didn't he have a Colorado license. He said that he lost his license in Colorado from too many speeding tickets, so he had to go to my parent's house in Tennessee to get a license. He is volunteering for an organization that drives one of their vehicles. People can get around from their past and get away from their past, whether it's criminal behavior or not. It could be resume fudging. That happens more than you know, especially for certain positions, for executive director positions, finance positions, COO type positions, where they can say they have a Master's degree in finance. They really just have a Bachelor's, or they never finished college. They put it on their resume for years, and nobody questioned it. There are stories where the CEO of RadioShack, and RadioShack is falling from grace, but the CEO never had his Master's degree in business, never had his MBA. It was a reporter who figured it out and started reporting on it. Then he resigned or got let go. Same thing with the president of the business school of Harvard. She had miscommunicated on her resume that she had a Ph. D, and she never did. Organizations that we all know about and have heard about, down to around the corner with businesses in your neighborhood or possibly even your organization. It's important to vet the higher-end positions in your organization. It's not just about the volunteers. I can go on forever about why it's important for the volunteers, but anybody working in your office, making sure you are looking at embezzlement or money laundering or anything that deals with your budget, your finances, your books, make sure those are always intact and that you are bringing on the best people. Background checks don't always catch everybody. They may never have been arrested before. I am going to go back to what Hugh was talking about with the pedophile. Eventually they get caught. That's not true. They never get caught, and they die with their secrets. The average pedophile molests 137 children in their lifetime without ever getting arrested for it. That is where the training is more important than the background check and being aware and keeping their eyes open. Hugh: Wow. I guess there is some people who will be polite and they think it's not polite to do a background check. Have you come across that? How do you respond to that? Steve: For the last 15 years, we have dealt with that. I don't know exactly where that really stems from other than they feel like it's unkind to ask someone to sign a consent form to do a background check. They are giving of their time, and I feel like I am invading their privacy if I ask them for this information. But you have to think about your organization and its reputation and why you have that organization set up in the first place. Then you have to make sure you bring on the best people. You just need to frame it differently: we are a culture of safety instead of just being haphazard about who we bring on. I think that everybody who comes on board would feel more confident with the person sitting next to them, with the person they are running an errand with to Office Depot if they are going in the same vehicle together. You will have a higher level of confidence that the organization did the right thing before you came. Hugh: Where is the person who said, “Oh, I don't want to be impolite to them,” so they back down from not realizing they are being impolite to everyone else in the culture. I don't want to make trouble, but if they don't do that, they will make trouble for everybody else. What about the person who says, “I don't have time for that?” That sounds like too much trouble. Steve: The one issue with nonprofits is wearing so many hats and being so busy. I think that sometimes the background check seems like a daunting task, especially if they have never done them. First, I have to vet a company. I don't know where to go to trust somebody. I don't want to do all the paperwork. I have enough things going on. I don't even understand background checks. How am I going to do this? I don't have a Human Resources background, nor do I have a HR director on staff. That is where SecureSearch makes it a little unique. We can come in understanding that that is one of your pain points on not having enough people to do all of the tasks you have to do. We made everything paperless. Not only are the consent forms, but also the entire process of signing up is paperless. Everything is the click of a button. The applicants, whether they be your board of directors, staff, or volunteers, they do all of the data entry. All you're doing is sending an email invitation. Simple as that. Hugh: Wow. If I came to you and said I have ten volunteers and I need to take them through a background check, then you'd give me a consent form for them to sign, with permission to do that. Steve: The way you phrased that is interesting, that you give them a consent form. It's actually against the law for us to provide a template consent form. We provide samples. All consent forms are the organization's form. It's not my form. We provide a sample, but it is really up to each organization to go through legal counsel and make sure everything is in there that needs to be in there and that it meets their federal and state laws. We try to do our best with our samples to make sure they are good, but you should only use that as a framework. Hugh: Before you can do the background check, I have to have them sign a form though. Steve: Yes. That form can be in paper, or it can be through our paperless volunteer and applicant portal that is called Search My Background that we have. If everything is in the portal electronically, and they sign a signature box either with their finger on a mobile device or the mouse of their computer. That signature will map to all the documents in the system so that everything is signed and everything is provided to the applicant. Hugh: Where I was headed with that, and I thank you for the clarification on the language, where I was headed with that is I would say I have my ten volunteers and I need to run them through the process. Would you suggest to me that I do it on myself as well? Steve: Well, somebody should run one on you. But if you want to at least have something in the “file,” whether it be a digital file or a file folder in a lockable filing cabinet, having your own in there is a good idea, especially to report to the board that if you are the executive director, it started with you. Sometimes you can be surprised on what you might see on your own. We had an executive director in Minnesota who had a small nonprofit. I think it was five or ten volunteers based on what he told me over the phone. This was quite a few years ago. When I was small enough and able to see the background checks coming in on a regular basis, I pulled it open and said, “Oh, I talked to that gentleman on the phone.” He signed up and ran his background check; he had three pages of felonies on his own. He never ran another background check with us. I think he was curious as to if his own background check would come up and expose him as a customer. There was nothing I could do to share it with the greater group of that organization. There is a lot of risk out there. It can start with that executive director. I don't think the executive director should be the one running the background check; it should be pushed by the board that the executive director have a background check. Hugh: Absolutely. Nobody should be exempt from it. Everybody should go through it. The founder, the executive director. Steve: Everybody. Hugh: Great. We are almost halfway through this interview. Russell, I'm sure that you have formulated a great question for our guest. Russell: As I was saying earlier, a lot of people don't know what they don't know. I think it starts with going from a place of what do I know, what have I been told, what don't I know, and where did the information I get come from? How do I know what I know? I think my first question would be all quality information. How can you get quality information to make sure that what you're hearing can be verified? Steve: That is a really good question. There are a lot of background screening companies in the U.S, thousands really. Everybody approaches business differently. Some are very small, that concept of working out of your garage, and they might not have a website. They might be in it just for the profit. There are lots of different data points to put together a good background check. The problem I see with the nonprofit side is they are learning on these database products to be the be-all end-all product because it's fast and it's inexpensive. They think because somebody might be calling it a national search that it truly is. But it isn't. I like to think of the database searches as a net. If you can picture the map of the United States and now you're casting this net across the United States, what is the net made up of? Holes strung together is the way I'd like to put it. I want you to remember that while it might be national—we call it multi-state—there are going to be holes. In some areas of this net there will be tears and huge holes versus tightly knit holes in other areas. You have this product that a lot of the nonprofits like to order because they think it's national, they think it's an easy, inexpensive way to launch into the background checks, and they don't realize the risks that are still going to be there. They are not conducting what we call a best-in-class background check. Nonprofits have to be careful. To answer your question about data, we take three different aggregation data points from the database and merge them together, eliminating the duplicate points. Other companies will buy data from these aggregate groups of data, and they will hang it on their own internal servers and ping against that data for months before they refresh it. That's how you get the $2 background checks for some of these large nonprofits. I'm not saying everybody does it, but in order to reduce the cost to meet what an expectation might be for a nonprofit, which is cheap, these organizations are going to give you bad and old data. We refresh our data every week, in some cases like the sex offender registries, for some every two weeks. But the oldest refresh we have is 30 days for our entire database. Again, it's a merge of three different data points coming together. We didn't get into this business primarily to make a profit; we got into this business to protect those who need to be protected. Russell: That's it. It's setting that intention right up front. When you talk to people, you have to set an intention up front about what it is you're doing. When you talk to people who might be new that we need to help, but understand we are going to be looking into some things, asking you questions for the sake of transparency, and direct about it. Who, what, when, where, why, and how? We keep our questions as open in that way as we can so that we get some meaningful information. I think that people who have things to hide may balk a little bit at this directness. Somebody is fidgeting, and they are talking about how much time this is taking, why you need to know that. In my head, that will be a red flag. What say you? Steve: A hidden benefit of the background check implementation is the bad ones kind of leave in the guise of night. They don't come back tomorrow. You actually said, “Hey, we take it seriously, we are going to have a consent form for you to sign. We will call your references. We will check in on who you say you are.” That's another thing, references. If you are not calling references, whether you outsource it to an organization, I recommend doing it internally so you can hear the nuance of the phone, the pregnant pauses of someone being asked, “Is this somebody you would bring back into your organization if you could?” and they go, “Hmm, well, I don't know about that.” If you outsource that, it's hard for somebody to put that into words on a report. I recommend if you have the time to do it yourself. If you have the money, you can outsource it. References are just as important as the background check. The background checks of course can be criminal. They can also verify your resume, education, employment. It's not always just looking at their criminal records, but making sure they are who they say they are. Hugh: While you are on that track, what kinds of background checks are there? Go over that again. Steve: There are lots of different types of background checks. We want to get nonprofit organizations to stop thinking about using the database just for looking for a criminal or a sex offender. Because of the analogy I used with the net with all the larger holes and tears, you need to look at each applicant holistically. Instead of where your organization is serving or based and the geography and how that might look in a database search, you need to look at the applicant. John could be a resident of one place for his whole life, and Mary has lived in seven different places in seven years. Mary, you are going to have to do more on because there are possibilities that the database has missed where Mary lives, they weren't up to date, and you are going to add a county courthouse search or a statewide repository search if it exists, like it does in Colorado. Other states have that, too. You are going to need to start with a foundation and then lay additional due diligence on top of that to get a good profile for each applicant instead of one size fits all. The criminal side, you break out into two different things. We have state and local crimes that you find in a database. You have the sex offender crimes that are in the sex offender registry. Then you will have crimes against the federal government or federal-related crimes. A lot of people think of these as the white-collar crimes, the Bernie Madoffs or the Martha Stewart crime where she got involved in the stocks. Yes, but inter-state kidnapping is also a federal crime. Money laundering and profiteering is a federal crime. Any building on federal lands. A lot of organizations and companies lately neglect ordering a federal criminal search. That can come back to bite them if they don't search it. There are a lot of other things, too. Motor vehicle searches, I mentioned. Credit reports we can do. You can do the education verification. International criminal and credit. Motor vehicles. We have 165 different services available to any organization, and most organizations look at about five. Russell:What are some of the training opportunities? Part of the challenge is training nonprofit leaders or other people about what the benefits are and the dangers of neglecting to do due diligence. In other words, what are the things that you're doing to assist people to understand the value of it so that they actually have this awareness? It's one thing to bring somebody in. Somebody could slide under the radar after you have done your search. Maybe something changes. People need to have an idea of what sort of things they need to look out for to make sure that everything is good. What training do you folks give nonprofits an opportunity to take advantage of so that they have a better sense of when they may need some help digging into something? Steve: We actually have a very specific training program that I actually founded. It's called Safeguard from Abuse. With a focus on the vulnerable populations that a lot of nonprofits focus their energy into those communities, it is a 75-minute online and also on a DVD training program with a certificate of understanding for those that pass the test on all of the different types of abuse, not just the sexual abuse, but neglect, physical, and emotional abuse, diving deep into what they are, diving deep into how to recognize when a child is being abused. So many organizations have that fear of having a sexual predator in their midst, so we do focus more time and attention in their personality traits, their grooming behaviors, understanding the personality of that pedophile. The most important thing is raising the awareness overall through the training, but empowering each person who goes through the video to be a mandated reporter and to understand that they can't help if they put their head in the sand. They have to be empowered to report, and they have to understand how to do so is very important. The awareness training is important. My example that I like to use is Russell, you want to buy a new car. You have a brand of car in mind, and you're getting in that car and heading down the road. All of a sudden, you start to see that car everywhere. It's now in your awareness. It's always been there, just like the characteristics of people who harm kids. They're still doing it in front of us; we're just not aware of it. We didn't raise our awareness level high enough to see what's always been there but invisible to the eye. It's really what we focus on is what we see. What we focus on we become as well. We want to make sure that we can train enough people to end child abuse, or at least if we can save one child, it's all worth it. Russell: Every time you buy a new car, everybody buys the same make, model, and color that very same day. I was thinking about all of these things. There are people who are listening to this, and they may be leaning back in their chairs thinking, No, I never did any of this stuff up front. Now I have 60 people. How do I know that I don't have somebody like this in my midst right now? Is there some type of organizational audit or assessment that you can do? Steve: We can definitely help. What you're saying is I gotta go retro. I have to go back to day one, and anybody who is still with me, screen them. That seems like an invasion maybe, or a daunting task, or maybe you're just thinking, I'll start with the next person. Now you will set yourself up for some difficulties being fair and equitable. If it's just Susan who just walked in the door but you did not go back five years ago and do this, once you implement the strategy, you have to implement it at any level and go back and do everybody. Starting top down is a good approach. Start at the top, and push down through the hierarchy of individuals in your organization. It's about resetting the reason for why you're doing it. You are resetting the fact that you have this new program that you're implementing. Our insurance company wants us to do it. Most insurance companies want you to do it anyway. If you have to put it on something else, you can just say it's a new requirement. It could be just your organization's requirement. Once it's a new requirement, it's a requirement. Everybody has to do it. Russell: Having everybody do it ensures that you don't have somebody out there who wants to take you to court saying they're being singled out because I'm a woman or I'm black or I'm over 50, or just anything they can pull out to say why it doesn't apply. We talked about that comfort level that people have. I don't want to offend or put anybody out. How do you help people who decide to do something like that do it in the face of the apprehension that they may have and the fear of offending somebody, implementing it seamlessly? What are some of the things you do to help people through that? Steve: That's a good question. We help organizations put together a background screening policy. It's all about policies. Sometimes you might have a policy- With those who work with kids, you might have a child protection policy, for example. But even in that child protection policy, they don't talk about background checks. So we need to weave in another layer of policy, and that is who do we screen, why do we screen them, how often do we screen them, and what do we order? Really it comes down to being comfortable enough with your organization and communicating that you do have policies. It's part of your mission and vision, wherever it is that it fits in, to make it that important. You can make it unimportant and be at risk and have everyone at risk, or you can make it important and be an advocate for safety and make your organization. It's all about preserving that organization. Amp up your image; it will help you and the community. Hugh: Both of you are talking about people not knowing what they don't know. There is a side that people are so close to it, you're so involved in it, that you're so blind to it because you are focusing on the day-to-day and the relationships. You're blind to all of the liabilities. Having someone like you that is skilled to discuss policy procedure with I think is really a high benefit. Is that part of your service that you offer? Steve: We offer that at no charge. Phone call conversations, any time someone wants to talk to me. It's very individual. Each organization is very individual, and I can't just say, Here is a template. We like to discuss what your organization looks like, the different roles and responsibilities you might have, the silos you may have, the offshoots of your organization you may have, and drill down. Like I mentioned, it's not a one-size-fits-all. Based on roles and responsibilities, you will be ordering different types of services. You may order motor vehicle for one, you may need to look at a credit report for one, but it won't be for all. We want to make sure that you understand that as an organization, what's available first of all, why you should order it, and then implement it. Now it's part of your policy manual, and now it can be handed off if you were to leave the organization. If you are in charge of this role, and now you are leaving or retiring to go do something else, you can now hand it off to someone else and they won't have to reinvent the wheel. It's important to do it on the front end, but we'll help. Hugh: Your link for people to find you is SecureSearch.com? Steve: It's actually not. I wish I had that. It's SecureSearchPro.com. Hugh: That's better. Steve: We have SafeguardfromAbuse.com. Hugh: You have been talking about databases, and people can do a database search. Say more about that for people who don't know what you mean by “database.” I think of a database as where I keep my CRM, where I keep my contacts. Say more about that and why it doesn't really cut the mustard. Steve: Okay. A lot of people think that there is one central place to go to do a background check in the United States. Just go to the FBI. They think there is something in some place to go. That is a fallacy. We are a disparate country. Our systems do not communicate with each other. What you have in Colorado doesn't communicate with what's in Virginia with what's in Florida, even though we think that's the case. Another fallacy is that a social security number is all you need to find a criminal record. We don't find any criminal records using a social security number. That's a myth. We use the social security number to find out what the person might be: what names they have used, what addresses they may have used, information sources. The databases, because we have this disparate system where counties don't communicate with states sometimes and counties don't even communicate with each other, all of these groups work in silos. Their information or their data is also stuck in that silo. You have to search that silo to find that information. In some cases, these silos of information raise their hands and say they will share. There are companies called data aggregators to say, I will pull from this county, I will pull from that county, and this department of corrections wants to give me that information. They compile it all together. They go out to my industry and say, “Do you want to buy my information?” I was talking about having three of these aggregators that I purchase information from and weave it all together because they will miss some in one and miss some in another and I am hoping I can fill in some of the gaps. This is not 100%. Again, it's that net with holes. It's as good as it gets. We search over a billion records, but there are so many holes and gaps in this data. That is where the database comes in; it's a base of data. There will be holes that you can't rely on as your only search. We can consult on the best approach. The best approach is you have to look at three different things. First, your due diligence, why you do what you do, why you want to screen in the first place. Do you want to protect the vulnerable? Is it because your insurance company made you do it? I don't care what it is. We have to understand what the impetus of your diligence is. Then we need to look at your organizational budget and say what budget dollars do you have to work with. Do you need to go find more budget dollars from another bucket in order to cover something like this? You want to implement it as soon as possible. The third is your comfort for risk, or your risk tolerance. That is already comfortable with your organization name being in a newspaper because you didn't do a background check, and now you brought in a pedophile into your organization. Or does that make you cringe and keep you awake at night? What does your legal counsel say? What does your insurance company say? We need to bring those three things together and create a unique, sustainable program for your organization. That may be very different from the organization I talk to tomorrow. That's okay. It's unique to you and sustainable and something you're comfortable with and can move forward with in your organization. A long answer for a simple question. Hugh: It's a complex question, a complex situation. I have met people who think they can just Google somebody's name and find out all kinds of things. What's the fallacy in that strategy? Steve: Did you have consent to do it, first of all? Every applicant has their legal rights. They have to provide you consent to really do a background check on them, especially if you want to use it. If you just want to be the armchair neighbor and check in on a neighbor, you have the legal right to do so. If you are going to bring this individual on board and have them fill out paperwork to be a volunteer or member of the staff, you have to get their consent. You can't just go to Google. The data out there is only as good as the data out there. If you're not buying it and it's free, there is a reason it's free. If you're spending $59.99 to get the rest of the report, they gave you a little bit, and the rest of it is behind the scenes, that is just database information, and that is way more than you ever need to pay. You need to do a database search for only $15. It's something you need, and something you need to build on, so you want to make sure you make it affordable on the database side so you can grow it and add the county courthouse searches as necessary. Russell: There are some things out there that are robust. I have probably used some of the things as a revenue agent for IRS. It's not off the shelf, and it's not cheap by any means, but it's good stuff. It's important to do that. You get what you pay for. A lot of these databases that you describe pop up if you do an online directory search for the Yellow Pages, or something like that. These things get offered to you all the time. Steve: It's the free data available to everyone that they compile. Not everything is going to be in there as I mentioned. It will be fraught with holes. They make it look good. They put a shiny website together, and you see moving parts. It's like they are searching as deep as they can go, and I will get every tidbit of information I need in seconds on one of these companies. You have to be careful with what you do. Everything needs to be validated at the local level. Anything from the database, any red flag, has to be validated at the court or the point of origin of the information to be accurate; otherwise, you are not supposed to see it anyway. That is why you want to work with a consumer reporting agency. SecureSearch is a consumer reporting agency. We are a member of concern consuming reporter agency, making sure we do it the right way and making sure we do validate everything at the local level before you as the customer gets to see that information. Hugh: We are coming to the last part of our interview, Steve. SecureSearchPro.com is where people can find out more. What is the differentiator? What makes this business different? You mentioned there are lots of others out there. Why are you different from them? Steve: That's a good question. The first thing is the information we have to share with you is through years of experience. We have veterans in the industry on staff who run our customer service department, who run our operations, and who run the executive office. That's number one, lots of experience. Two is we have a heart for the nonprofit sector because we understand you are wearing many hats. You don't have time, and you may not have the skillsets. You can feel comfortable with us. We are going to answer the phone. We will talk to you. You won't be alone in this process. We will be there to answer any questions you may have throughout the process, and you will have someone you can work with, whether it be me, you can always work with me directly, or anyone on my staff. We also don't have a single salesperson on staff, so you will never be “sold” anything. We only have consultants, so we will be asking you questions and making you recommendations for best practices. You won't hear from us five million times; we won't pound you until you buy. We wait to hear from you again if you'd like to do this with us. That is what makes us different. We have a heart for the nonprofit, the integrity of our data we are purchasing, and the integrity of the system we have and the compliance of our system and processes is what set us apart. Hugh: That's strong. It sounds like this service is incredibly expensive, thousands of dollars, to do a background check. Is that true? Steve: No, that's actually very far from true. Depends on the organization you're working with. Our pricing model is geared toward the nonprofit sector, so we are extremely affordable. We actually have scalable pricing for those who have high volume discount programs. A background check, I would say that a good budget, if you want to do it right, for the criminal and sex offender and fill in all the gaps, is budget for $50 a person. It doesn't mean it will always cost $50 a person; it may cost $15 for some, $22 for another, or $85 for another. It could be all over the board. But I would budget that to make sure you have enough allocated funds for a good solid program. A lot of people are going to ask if they need to do background checks through the fingerprint process, too. No, you don't. You can get good information that is disposition-based. Disposition is what happened in court, information from a secure search without ever having to do fingerprints. If you are getting government funding or state funding, they may make it mandatory, so you have to do it. But we can still make sure that the fingerprint arrest record—and that's all it is, an arrest information source with biometrics, and not everybody gets fingerprinted when they get arrested—that the courts dismissed it or said it was a guilty verdict and enhance the arrest record database you search. Hugh: Good. Thank you for that complete answer. This has been a very informative interview, and I'm sitting here thinking about all the organizations that I know about that have fallen short. We are going to make sure we will put a recommendation in our work that they do this early on. I think it's that important. As we are tying up this really good interview—Steve, thank you for the time today. It's been exceptional—what impression, what challenge, what thought do you want to leave in people's minds? Steve: I guess my question is: What image do you have of your own organization? How do you look at your own organization? Do your process and your people align with it? If you are worried about that and you want to lower your risk and your liabilities as an organization and maintain the image you want to have of your own organization, it doesn't cost a lot of money, it doesn't take a lot of time, you don't have to learn how to do it. We do everything for you. Just reach out to us. There is no charge to sign up or for a free consultation. Talk to one of our advocates. We're here to help; we're not here to sell. We hope to hear from you. It's something you should definitely take a look at. If you're doing the background checks now, we can talk about if you are doing them the right way. If you're not doing them, we can help you along the path. Hugh: Russell, thanks again for being here and being by my side. Steve, thank you for a wonderful interview. Thanks everyone for listening. Steve: Thank you very much. Learn more about your ad choices. 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EP21: Marc Miles Discusses 7 Things Every Painting Contractor Must Know To Protect Their Business SUMMARY: In this episode of DYB Podcast, Steve interviews Marc Miles, his business attorney based out of Venice, Florida specializing in defendign against IRS and state collections. Marc shares a plethora of useful knowledge about finding real solutions to the unknowns that could potentially hurt your business. From employee timesheets to written agreements, Marc talks in-depth about how to navigate the different undesirable situations you and your business may face. _______________ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: -How to protect yourself and your business from unknown factors -The legal standing of your business and your money -Understanding the goals of your business in advance _______________   QUOTES: "If you do have something in writing, you’re bound by it, so you need to make sure you’re comfortable with it." "If you’re going to form a business entity, 95% of the time, LLC is the way to go." "A written agreement isn’t ‘I don’t trust you,’ it’s clarifying expectations and giving yourself a chance to void if something unfortunate happens." "If you want just your books done right, and you have no worries, your EA is irrelevant." "When you form the business, think about what your succession plan is going forward." _______________ HIGHLIGHTS: [03:25] The big unknowns that can hurt your business and how to prepare for those unknowns [09:33] Proper ways to protect yourself from false claims from employees [15:14] What to stay on top of regarding the IRS and what to do when dealing with tax issues [26:16] The difference between sole-proprietors and corporations [34:15] Partnerships, establishing trust, and understanding what your expectations are from the beginning _______________ LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: [APPS] TSheets DYB App [GROUPS] BNI The Florida Bar DYB Coach Special Offer Contact Miles Join DYB ADDITIONAL FREE RESOURCES: DYB System PDF EP01 9 Steps to Doubling Your Business Part 1 52 Blog Post Ideas PDF YouCanBookMe VIDEO Pre-qualifying Questions PDF Video Testimonial Checklist PDF 3 Steps To Get Leads From FB PDF 11 Interview Questions PDF 9 Ways To Get HOA Work PDF  -------------- Connect with Marc Miles on Facebook here Connect with Steve on Facebook here  -------------- Press and hold to visit the page Show Page Notes -------------- Thank you very much for joining us today! If you received value, would you take a quick few seconds and leave us a review on iTunes, please? _________ STEVE: What happened? MARC: So, I had this client, he was behind on his IRS payments, he had an ex-wife and had some issues, things didn’t work out well, she left him high and dry, he was in another relationship, he was trying to make that relationship work, but the IRS kept following him, he had a car, he had a business he was trying to start and his soon-to-be wife was like, "I am not marrying you till you get this fixed, if you don’t get this fixed, I am leaving you," so he is like, you’ve got to help me, I said I can do that, so he comes to me, he said, where are you at, we took a look at this whole situation, we said no problem, we can do this, this and this, we set everything up, I talked to the revenue officer, she was fine, we submitted the paper work and he ended up paying about, maybe $8,000 on what had been a $110,000 liability… And his girlfriend at the time married him afterward, saying we got together and if it hadn’t been for you, while I was doing this, she would not have stopped there… STEVE: Woah, okay… Hello and welcome Marc Miles of the law offices of Marc J. Miles P.A, welcome to the show. MARC: Thank you, Steve. STEVE: Marc, what does P.A mean? MARC: P.A stands for Professional Association, and it’s a designation that is able to be used by individuals who are licensed by the county moral of the States, when they formed a business entity that says, they can only practice with the entity that which they are licensed for. So, if you see a lawyer with P.A or PLC, you know that is their business, all they do is the practice of law, they don’t serve Mc Donald’s fries on the side… STEVE: Ah… okay, glad to have you on the show. For everybody listening, Marc Miles is our business attorney, and he has been, for years, he helped us when we were at Burnett Painting, he wrote the agreement when we sold Burnett Painting and he has worked with us ever since, for everything we’ve done, without going in details… and Marc is outstanding keep him close cause he’s a great guy to know and I was kidding around with him before we get into this. Marc, you are too big to be an attorney… it’s not hard and I kind of wonder how you got into this industry… But, fortunately, he is really good at what he does and so I thought, Marc, we’ve got to get you on the show and let’s share somethings that some business owners, painting contractors out there need to know, to protect themselves, protect their businesses and the unknowns right, so we know, what we know and we don’t know what we don’t know, that’s really the dangerous part huh… MARC: And that’s what I try to help people to say, here’s what you are not aware of, let me ask these questions, you decide, but I hope you can get there so you can think about these things that you might not otherwise think of. STEVE: Hmm… Absolutely, so for example, what are some of the big unknowns? MARC: Okay, so the big unknown… the biggest thing especially with trade contractors and painters is, whether your clients are going to pay you or not, a lot of times whether or not you are having an agreement or non-agreement to sign, that states the payment terms and other terms of agreement, you have no idea what the client is going to go, are they going to try to want to stiff you, do they want to change? Do they say no? I am not paying until you repaint the whole thing? So, one of the biggest unknowns is try to eliminate the ways the client has not to pay you. STEVE: Uh… Okay, now this is really good, this is especially used for high contract or long contract work like commercial, industrial or even residential for your construction, absolutely… So, what are some ways? How can you…? MARC: The first is, you put the total price in the writing in the contract, not just a quote, the quote says, here’s my estimate, here’s your price, but when you have them in a contract say, this is the price and what’s paid, you are also saying what you do it for, and you haven’t signed, people don’t think an estimate is binding, people sees a paper says, estimate, sign, yeah, I agree to that amount, but they don’t see it as, this is a contract I am… subject to, there are legal remedies to it and that’s one of the easiest ways to sort of… that’s how you do it, so you have a little, it doesn’t have to be a 10-page contract, it can be a 1-page contract, but it looks like a contract, so it impresses upon them, the seriousness as opposed to, here is my quick book invoice, sign here, that says I agree… STEVE: Uh, woah. Okay, so this is a really good point is and I know opinions to this is very common practice, quick books, invoice, estimates, whether it’s an estimating program, they all say estimate stuff. If I heard you correctly, you were saying it should say, to set the it should say contract, what about agreement? Can it say agreement? MARC: Absolutely, you could say agreement, no problem. And then it should contain a couple other things that… you people have seen in contracts before, you’ve seen references to if the contract is breached or if not paid in x days or you know, choice of law, if we disagree, we go to court here, you know… throw some of those things in there, you know… Now, don’t be smart about it, don’t put something that is going to hurt you because you don’t really know what it is, but throw some other things in there, so it looks like an agreement or contract, more than just an estimate. STEVE: So, silly question here, I put this together when I was in L.A, is if we should have a lawyer take a look at it? MARC: Have someone take a look at it, over, just see it and ask some questions, yeah. Because every state is going to be different and some things you maybe find difficult to put in one state versus another, so… STEVE: Okay. Thank you. What are some ways that business owners… because you know, I mean you run your own practice, it’s a ton of work and you take all the risk? Now if something happens to you, you can sue them for free, and if something happens to us, the owner… how can business owners protect themselves against faulty claims. Like here is an example, I was talking to a friend of mine and he had paid on of his guys an extra day, it was a holiday or something and it ended up being 48 hours and he isn’t paying five and a half and there was a day he didn’t even work, he was just being generous and paying the next 8 hours, well he came back and sued him, ended up causing him $30,000, because he didn’t pay him five and a half for that extra 8 hours that he paid him… MARC: And he brought the state in as well, I am sure, because the state came in and probably said, let’s take a look at your records as well… Absolutely, so yes, so one of the things you want to do is, some people use independent contractors, while some people use employees, and there’s two different ways you have to handle it, you have an independent contractor, you need to clearly meet… First of all, if you are using an independent contractor, you need to have an agreement, end of story, why? Because if you have good insurance, your insurance might have clause for not having an agreement. I’ve got a situation right now, a client of mine that is relatively large painting company has got major insurance, that’s $100,000 job, $300,000 jobs, had a job where the sub he used, ended up screwing up, causing maybe $1,500 or $1,900 worth of damage, but if he wants to go through his insurance, they are like you didn’t use sub-contractor agreement, even though I drafted one for him. And now they are saying, if you are going to use the insurance, it’s going to cost you $15,000… So, now he is going to pay it out of the pocket or pay the $15,000. So, if you are going to use a contractor, make sure the insurance always have an agreement, even for that reason, but the agreement contains a schedule, the schedule says, here is how I pay you, and you will be specific in that schedule, this is how I get paid and then you only pay by that schedule… that’s for contractors STEVE: For sub-contractors, so if you are working with subs, you have subs, make sure you have a written agreement? MARC: Yes, absolutely… STEVE: Okay, what should be in that agreement? The schedule? The payment schedule? MARC: The schedule, their insurance and their compliance with the law basically says, you agree you have x amount insurance and your license etcetera, whatever you have with the state, failure to do so is a breach. As well as the fact that if you don’t get paid, they don’t get paid, so you want to make sure that if you are doing the job and your sub and you get stiffed by the owner, you are not going to have to pay your sub out of pocket or not. Now, some people, they say that’s a little hard to get, maybe fair, but if you take a look at almost every big GC contracts that’s out there, from the big players, I would guarantee you that is in there. STEVE: Hmm… I wouldn’t be surprised actually… So, what about employees, what are some proper things, what are some, things we need to be doing to protect ourselves, faulty claims against employees, just making sure all our basis are covered? MARC: The biggest thing to do is, the time-tracking of hours, you have to have a system where their hours are tracked and you can see that, relatively easily… STEVE: Okay… MARC: Then the best thing to do is, if you are doing payroll, maybe you have someone else doing payroll, maybe you are doing it yourself. If you have someone else doing payroll, they will automatically know the hours when you calculate to get to know, are we yet over-time? Is it a holiday? Do we pay 5 and a half? Now, if you use QuickBooks payroll, it will usually do the calculation for you, but if not, they will know, it will let you keep track, because once you get that 40 hours, the rules change, once you hit the holidays, the rules change, and they are different in every state, but wherever the state, you need to know that. So, you need to be able to keep track of hours because what happens if they put, we’ve worked this time and you are like, hey you’ve worked 42 hours already, based on this job in here, you only really worked 32 hours, you know, something… I don’t know, I mean God forbid… few hours here and there a day. Track hours to be able to track the hours consistently, that’s number one… STEVE: There is an app we like to… that we used with Burnette Painting and that many DYB use, we call it T-sheets, I don’t know if you are familiar with it, but… MARC: Not a lot but okay… as long as it is hours that are recorded and you can see those hours on a regular basis so that you can catch anything, you have to still review and catch everything at a time, because what a lot of people do is, they think overtime is time and a half, that’s the only thing they think of, they don’t think about, sick or vacation, whether it’s state mandate, certain things, and that should be talking to… even talking to a payroll person they know, you know good idea of that, if a not local attorney is what makes that. And that’s just actually a brief conversation just to get some conversations to help make sure that you don’t blow that. The other thing is don’t do a written agreement, depends on what state you are in, lots of state are at will, which means as long as you don’t have it written, you can sort of do what you like with their employment and how they are employed and how long they are employed. So, very few rules such as over-time, wages, etcetera, but if you do put something into writing, you are bound by it, so you need to make sure you are really comfortable with what you have, if you have something in writing. STEVE: Interesting, so you have more liability with the employee… MARC: Potentially it is because you can be held to everything that you held them to, you can be held if you don’t do it, so you have 6 employees, and the rule states that employees do not get vacation until they have worked at least 3 months and ask for two weeks in advance and you let one guy have his one week in advance, now everybody gets to have one week in advance because you let them do it, despite the fact that the agreement, Emmanuel or whatever says two weeks STEVE: Hmmm, now you mentioned at will, can you impact that for us please? MARC: Sure, absolutely I will… STEVE: Okay MARC: So, a lot of states… actually I am not sure, I think it’s less states… at will, which means, whenever you go to work for somebody, there are no set terms, there are no set agreements, you can work whatever you agree to, if it’s in written then it’s a great upon, if not, it’s really tough and you can let them go at any time for any reason, subject to of the course federal discrimination, you can’t let the person go because they are black, you can’t let them go because they are female, you know, those kind of stuff you can’t do, no matter what, that’s a federal law that overrides. But if you don’t like the way the person drives his car, you don’t like the way he looks on the job, done… goodbye… STEVE: About tattoos… MARC: Absolutely… Sorry, I don’t like tattoo, done… You don’t have to give him a chance to rectify, you are done, goodbye… STEVE: Okay… MARC: So, everybody needs to find if they are in at will state or not, so if you are, great, if not, then you need to check with the local attorney there, because I can’t tell you what some of the restrictions on firing somebody can be, sometimes you have to give them notice, you have to give them opportunity and it just depends on that state. STEVE: Okay, makes sense, interesting. So, how about IRS? What are some?… I don’t know if I can ask you this… MARC: You can ask whatever and I have to answer it… STEVE: How do you feel, like where does the IRS ranks and your Christmas card list? MARC: Actually, believe it or not, the IRS ranks decently, the problem is congress, they are the ones, that are so low, I am like don’t ever pay them in front of me when I have a baseball bat… Because all of these since about say 1999, most of the issues we really have with IRS, is really congress issues, it says, you know what, we have come up with this plan, we are not going to spend a lot of time specifics here, you, IRS, figure it out, if we don’t like it, we will tell you, you are wrong and then go implement it without any real guidance from us and then when people complain, deal with it until they complain too much then we will try to address it, and that brings the IRS into doing things that they really shouldn’t be involved in, and having to make decisions that really shouldn’t be made by them, but congress doesn’t do it, so… STEVE: So, IRS has been taking the wrap the whole time MARC: They take the wrap a lot of time. Now, back in the early 1990s and late 80s, IRS deserved the wrap, they were doing stuff, it was like, we don’t care about you, you aren’t human, done, done, done… Now, it’s a little better, I mean most of the people I work with at the IRS are very reasonable, they are not push-overs unfortunately, but they are reasonable, at least, so… STEVE: So, what are some things that we need to stay on top of, to protect ourselves with IRS? MARC: The biggest, most important is if you have employees, you need to make sure you are paying those payroll taxes on time. So quickly, when you have an employee, you pay them their wage, you withhold a certain amount based on their W4, plus you pay 7.65% of the social security at one point, something percent, whatever… 7.65% total between the two and social security, Medicare, that federal withholding plus the Medicare and social security withhold from the employee’s pay, is not your money, that’s their money that goes to the government, failure to pay that, and the government can come after you, personally for that amount, regardless of what you think you set up, business protection-wise. STEVE: So, are these the 941s that we file? MARC: Yes, everything you file, the 941, the payments you are making, the 941, you need to make sure you pay those employee taxes first and foremost, end of story, pay those, it’s not your money, people try to say, I won’t pay this week and I will try to do next week and catch up, they can still be very, very dangerous game, it’s sort of like gambling, like oops, I didn’t hit black this time, I will get black again, alright Mr. black, I will bet it one more time, maybe eventually I’ll get to black and try to win. You know… do you really want to take that risk? You probably don’t. Number two is, for those in some states… if you have sales tax, file and pay that sales tax as quickly as possible. In Florida, I tell people, if you are a Florida resident and you don’t pay your federal taxes, IRS can come after you and take 90-120 days, and they will start coming after you, Florida department revenue… 90 minutes if they get serious… the state can move like that, and most states can move like that, most states have far more strong to grab and attach to people, for non-payment of state taxes than the IRS does. So, whatever your state tax is, if you have sales tax and… or similar collection taxes, pay those, because they are the people that can go after you ASAP. IRS, you can buy time, you can do stuff, a lot more than you can with the state. STEVE: Okay, that is really good to know. Now, what’s the first thing somebody should do if they received one of those dreaded letters from the IRS? MARC: The one that says, we think you owe something? STEVE: Yes, that one… MARC: Okay, there is a lot of letters from the IRS that people dread… So, there’s two types of letters, there is the one that says that, excuse me, we want to look at your return, because we don’t like this $200,000 in supplies that you put and then we know you owe us money, now if you don’t do something within 30 days, we are going to take action. So, there’s two different letters, one is on one side and one is on the other, if you get that first letter that says, we don’t like this on your return, go back and make sure you check you have your receipt and your documents, in that statement. Once you have those, then decide, do I want to talk to my CPA if my CPA can help or if it is something simple. Sometimes it’s as simple as, we just need to see what your travel is, and your travel was, for example, that year was just twice as large, because you went to two more conferences and you’ve got plane tickets and the thing, you probably have to go and say, here, sure, no problem, plane ticket… here and as long as all your receipts match up to what’s on the return, you know, you are probably fine. Now if they go and say, we want to see your bank statement, everything on the return, now you probably need to talk to that CPA, because they need to know what limits there are, when they are doing this, not you. STEVE: So, that’s a great point, CPAs…  about Florida, that’s fantastic. What does somebody look for in a CPA? How would somebody know a great CPA from a forum floor? MARC: The first thing usually is to check whether they have the CPA designation, those that have CPA, which means they’ve got the license, have undergone a higher level, 99 times out of a 100, a higher level of training education to know what has to be done. Now, does that means they are going to form that they have education? No, obviously not, so the best thing to do is have an interview with them, phone or face, it doesn’t matter, and then ask them questions about your stuff. Say, what can I do about this? What can I do about that? And see how they answer, and if they are one of the people that goes, oh you can do A or B, and that’s it… and they are probably one of these people that is following up on the forum or it depends, like what are we looking for, or they can give you a little more and say, well, what are you trying to achieve? They will ask you, what are you trying to obtain? What are you trying to achieve? What’s the ultimate goal to fit it in, that’s one part, instead of saying, just oh, well, keep your receipts or make sure the mileage checks, those one line answers to three or four questions indicate the person is probably not, either is engaged and they are going to give you the time, or they are probably more about, here it is. STEVE: Okay, so this is really good, we are going to pause here for a moment, because… this is really good, if I heard you correctly, what you are saying is if they have a simple A or B answer, that’s no good? MARC: Usually, yes… STEVE: Okay, usually… these situations are dynamic… MARC: Yes, and they depend on the overall… So, obviously once have a CPA in your account say, hey, Marc, can I deduct this? And he goes, no, that’s okay, that happens, this time you are not asking stuff, the answer is simple, no you can’t, okay do this, yes you can. But when you are interviewing a CPA and in this interview, don’t just say, oh, I know somebody, okay, here you go, stuff… talk to them, interview them, so, I say interview attorneys too, don’t just… whenever you have a professional, especially a professional, interview them and talk to them, make sure you think that they can do it, they are engaged and you can work with them. STEVE: Fantastic. What about these small shops who… maybe just a couple of employees, but the and for one thing I know about myself and I know about most entrepreneurs is, we hate the books… MARC: Yes, so that is why you have a good CPA or a book keeper and ask them to do a monthly or quarterly book keeping and here is the thing, they are going to give you a quote, they are going to ask to see some stuff that can give you a valid quote of how much it is going to cost per month to do everything. And what you do when you get that quote and you shop around, you go to a couple of different accounts of CPAs and get quotes, then you ask yourself and you do an exam that I am sure you tell everybody to do, how much time does it take you, as the business owner to do this, this and this and you add up all these hours to do all these stuff that they are doing in this proposal. Now, ask yourself, how much money you could have earned with those hours in your business, which is what you are good at, as opposed to doing this and work it out. STEVE: Absolutely, we have a video, we have a link to it in the show notes called “Ownership Responsibility Value” and work through that exact formula. So, that’s great, how would… how does somebody know, so okay, find a couple of 2, 3 book keepers, how do you interview them and what do you do to open up your books... do you say what do you think? MARC: No, when you go to them, you talk to them, you ask them a little bit… hey Marc, how have you been down here, how long have you been doing this? You know if they are a CPA, you know how long they have been a CPA… and then they say, so, here is my situation, give a brief overview of my situation, I have this, I do that, and see what they say, some people may go straight to, hey, can I see the tax return? Some people may ask questions, there is really not a right or wrong there, because especially if you start getting a little long-winded, they are going to say, just give me the tax return, at this point you are explaining all that stuff and it’s like you are probably going to a little more extraneous details than they actually need… STEVE: Okay… MARC: But, bring the tax returns, bring the bank statements and you ask them questions about… do you feel comfortable with them? Ask them some basics, hey dude, do you… how many other painting companies do you deal with? How many of your clients are under 3 employees? How many of your practice is business versus personal? Because all CPAs do 10, 40 individual tax returns. So, how much individual do you do? If the person does 95% individual and has 3 businesses, maybe you say, okay, may we look at someone else, maybe you are like, hey I am going to be the forth, I don’t need a lot of handholding, okay, or you can go to someone who’s got 85% of the businesses and most of the individuals in the business. And then, the thing is more of a judgement at that point, how much does that matter to you? What’s the feeling you got from that? Because there is no right or wrong answer at that point, now you sort of feel, what are they doing in there, in their field and then how many employees they have, because if they’ve got several employees, the chances of you actually getting to them or them actually really looking at your stuff are probably slim than none and they may be awesome, the junior who they’ve hired, may not be at the same level that they are, and if you are going to get junior doing your tax return, do you have the same confidence that… you know… STEVE: And would you say it’s just as important to check and refer us as we would prior an employee? MARC: Absolutely… who we know, if you go find a CPA, have 2 or 3 people, that’s why I like BNIs, it’s a great resource, because most probably if someone isn’t BNI, they’ve got testimonials, hope… if nobody is giving testimonials then there should be a problem, they should begin there, that’s the start, so if you can get testimonials from people, ask people, if you know somebody says here, go and ask on… or do the whole Facebook recommendation thing, go and ask Facebook, what is recommended for CPA and see who comes up with it, if you got somebody come up with 6 names, then name 17 times out of 40, that’s probably a good one to start with… STEVE: Yeah, absolutely. Now, what is an EA? And how important is that a CPA is an EA? And I believe you are an EA MARC: No, I am not… An EA is an Enrolled Agent, and that is an individual who has taken the exam that the IRS puts out, to be able to practice before the Internal Revenue Service. Me, being an attorney and CPAs being the CPA are automatically granted that by right, nature of our license to do so as long as we are in good standing in A state. STEVE: Interesting, that’s why I though you are an EA MARC: Yeah, because I can do it. So, if you want just your books done right and you have no worries, your EA is irrelevant, because the EA is when you have tax issues and need them resolved. Hopefully you are not getting to that point… STEVE: Okay, absolutely… let’s circle back a little bit… we talked about corporations, what is the difference between sole proprietor, LLC, S-corp, C-corp and impact this slowly for us, for those who want to know if they are in the right one or they should make a shift MARC: Well, and that’s going to be after some consultation, that’s really hard to make, a sole proprietor is somebody who has nothing, but use their name… Steve Burnette painting, not Burnett 1800 painting, Steve Burnette painting, Donald Robert CPA, those are sole proprietors, they don’t have any requirements to deal with bank accounts or whatever, they do have to get an EIN, if they have employees, and everything they earned on their profit is subject to self-employment tax, which is an extra tax above income tax… On the net profit, corporations and LLCs are business entities, why do people say C-corps, S-corps… at the state level, it is a corporation, you form a corporation or you form a limited liability company, and people form these for two reasons, tax or protection, 99 times out of a 100, there are some exceptions to the rule and each day it is a little different, but a corporation is the vehicle designed for large companies, they are going to have public shareholders, make large amount of money, have a lot of certain deductions and have to pay out to the members and there was a way to keep the protection inside the company, so that members that were buying in weren’t at risk. The cost of that was paying an extra inside tax on the money, before the money got out to people, who received it and had to pay their tax, so S-corporation decided to say, we are going to make a difference, we are going to give you the corporation and give you the protection but the income will just flow out so you only pay tax once. But there are some restrictions on that, for example, you can’t have two different classes of stock when people invest, like you had a preferred shares, but you can’t have preferred shares in this corporation, you can’t have more than a hundred people, you can’t have a non-US resident, alien or citizen be a shareholder and the most important in an S corporation, if one partner takes money out, the other partner has to take their share out as well… STEVE: Interesting… MARC: Whether you like it or not… STEVE: What’s the difference in protection between S and an LLC? MARC: Okay, whether it is S or C, protection on the inside level doesn’t matter… so, corporation and LLCs, doesn’t… corporation… when you hear S or C, that’s a federal, sometimes state tax issue only, it has no effect on the protection of a corporation or not, whether it is C or S, the protection from the corporation, from a legal stand point is the same, no matter what… So, there’s two types of protection; inside and outside. Inside protection is simply that you are doing something on the job, within the job… something goes wrong and you get sued and that keeps your personal assets from being attached, you close down the business if you have to, but walk away, that’s within the business, no matter what, you are covered, you are protected, that’s what we call inside protection, there is no difference if you do it right between a corporation or an LLC, you get the same either or…. It’s the outside protection that there’s a huge difference, so outside protection is, something happens to you outside of the business, such as you many have back alimony you haven’t paid or child support that you haven’t paid, your behind done or you have a judgement from when you were trying to get your life together, say you have your house closed, they are not going to forgive the loan and they are still going to come after you for the money, it is outside your business, but they are going to come after you. A corporation does to protect you from that, your corporate shares are assets and they can attach those. STEVE: Okay, but how relevant are corporate shares to a painting company? MARC: Really, because most states require shares to be issued if you have a corporation and your share is your evidence of ownership, so if you are the 100% owner, you are supposed to have shares and if you have shares and they get attached, guess who owns the company, the corporation now, not you, your creditor… (After the Break) STEVE: How much protection does a sole proprietor have? MARC: None… Zilch in any which way he performs, no inside, no outside, end of story. STEVE: Okay, so if somebody started a painting company and maybe they are a sole proprietor, they are just getting going, should they go? What should they do? Should they… I heard you say it was dynamic… MARC: Yeah STEVE: So, any guidance what they should do? MARC: Yes, so basically, look about… first and foremost, if you are just starting, are you going to have employees and contractors or not? If you are going to have employees and contractors, most especially employees, form an entity, end of story. No matter what, form the entity, it’s not a question of anything else, because if that employee or that contractor does something wrong and you get sued, no entity, no protection… STEVE: Okay MARC: End of story, if you are not going to hire or use anybody else, it’s just you and your truck and your paint brush, your ladder, it’s probably cheaper to just get some insurance for what you are doing and make sure you have some decent insurance, and go forward… STEVE: So, just some liability or… MARC: Yeah, liability insurance, or if they don’t have an umbrella policy, if they are on the house, once they get an umbrella policy, because if you are just one person doing everything yourself, you don’t really get much protection from the company and what are you really going to do to cause the damage as obviously as the painter, I mean at what point are you going to cause more than two million dollars for the damage, it’s pretty hard, as a sole proprietor, just going around. Now, once you have contractors, a lot of the people, they are driving around or they are doing different things, and their effect is going to affect a whole lot more people rather than you, now you are going to get more risk. STEVE: Okay, you’ve mentioned partnerships a couple of times, so partnerships can be sticky for example… there is a common statistic that marriages will have 50% chance of ending up in divorce, what is it for partnership, do you know? MARC: No, I don’t have a number, sorry… STEVE: That’s okay, I was just curious, I didn’t think there might be one, but what are some things… I think it was just the last episode, we had four brothers on and they are partners, unfortunately they are brothers and they are just awesome Christian, so they’ve got a strong understanding and character and values, but that’s not the case for most partnerships, right? They all started off great, hey 50-50, it’s going to be awesome, we are going to make a ton of money, it’s will be great… MARC: Correct, so there’s two part to it, one, there is a part that is themselves and there is a part after… So, let’s take a part that is themselves, you are going to go into business with somebody, could be your wife, significant other, it could be your brother or somebody you have just known for 5 years that says, hey, let’s walk together, the biggest thing in the world is expectations. Before you can get started, what are your expectations for the company? And what are your expectations within this company, what are mine? What’s the work load split? How much work are we putting in? how much are we expecting? Can I afford to live on what we have as a budget while we are putting this together, before it grows to be the next billion-dollar company? Set those expectations down and talk about them, you don’t even need to get the attorney involved yet, because if you don’t agree that, hey, I thought you were going to put in 50% of the money and I am going to put in 50% of the money and you are now like, no you are going to put in 90% and I am going to put in 10% and I was going to work this amount. Well, that’s a direct split you can’t reconcile, end of story, you don’t even need the attorney, so expectations starting off, what are the expectations to find them? And then what’s the work load going to be? As an example, I had somebody call me, he was like, hey, my friend wants me to go and work for him, he wants me to be a partner in his business, and I would handle the finance and the contract etcetera and he would do the marketing and customer and actual web production, he was like, but I don’t trust him, he was like, because I don’t know if he is going to be straight with the money and I tell him to stop, my first response was, don’t go into business with him, he was like, no I want to do this and I said okay, fine, I will draft a disagreement, he is like, okay, no, change it, I want to do a new LLC and I am like, really? I am like, I can do this, but I am telling you, from your friend and as a client, it’s not a good idea, so I went and did it, he’s like, okay, let’s work on this, he comes back to me and says, no, I changed my mind, I am not going to, after realizing. You have to be able to trust this partner, I tell people all the time, you are going to business with this person, okay, do you trust them with the key to your house and with your wife and child? If the answer is no, you need to rethink this, or at least think it over seriously before you move forward… if you don’t trust this person, it’s ultimately a matter of trust in the beginning, do you really trust this person? Now, people change and you don’t know, but you ask that question, you could think you trust this person, but again, we don’t know what happens until the going gets rough sometimes, when people show what they are made of, that kind of stuff… STEVE: Absolutely, that’s really good… So, expectations, and do you trust them enough to keep them with your wife and children… MARC: Yes, once you’ve got to that point and you are sure, that’s when you go to the attorney and you say, we want this and we want this, in writing as to what we are going to do, well, is this a corporation which has a shareholder agreement or an LLC which has an operating agreement? You can put this stuff in there, now what people don’t realize is corporations, generally, people hear corporations, they hear bye-laws, bye-laws don’t address all these issues that I talked about and in an LLC, you have to do an operating agreement, that has addressed everything, you address those if you do it right. Of course if you don’t, if you put a trained monkey don’t do one, you basically got nothing, but if you put a you can do a shareholder agreement to address all these, an LLC will not need to address everything and if you don’t address it, I tell people, if you don’t address it with your business partner now, you are going to end up paying ten times what it would have cost you to have done this right in the first place, to have the courts tell you what you are going to be doing. And most people don’t usually like that, that’s not a win-win situation… STEVE: Speaking of win-wins, most partnerships start as 50-50, why might that be a really bad idea? MARC: One of the reasons is because a lot of partnerships are like 50-50, but at the end, we are going to go vote, and are going to try to make decisions, at 50-50, you are deadlocked, so how do you break that deadlock? And if you can’t break that deadlock you can’t move forward. So your company can stall without proper mechanism; 50-50. Second, a lot of people want to do something where they can get minority preferential treatment in bids and contracts, if it’s female or other minority owned, so all you can do is make a 51-49 or 60-40 split, but if you create an LLC, you can put all these protections in, just because you are the 40% person, you are not getting screwed by the person that has the majority votes, that’s one of the things that I love… I am doing that for a company right now, he’s got this product that he’s selling out, you know he wants to get the minority preference, he wants to put his wife as the majority owner, he wants to preferred himself in case of anything happens with him and his wife, that she runs the company and makes all the decisions, and she doesn’t really get the company. So, I as a good attorney can fix that, you can play with that, in an LLC, it’s a lot harder in a corporation. STEVE: So, somebody should have insured a majority, but just because you get the majority doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself. MARC: Correct. And sometimes you can say, you know what? There’s a majority for voting, there’s a majority for money, so in a corporation, you are sort of stuck, but in someone, especially if passed to an S-corporation, but in LLC, you could say, listen, you are going to put in more money in, fair enough, we will give you more money back out, ahead of me, but I want 50% control, so we have to agree, or 51-49 and I want the control, you can do that split. Now, a lot of times, what I do, I tell people, if you have the deadlock, I put in the agreement, you find the third party that knows that area and ask him, because people go, oh, let’s come to the attorney and I am like, well that’s all fine and good, but if you guys are discussing a painting issue or growing your painting company, why are you coming to me to ask for expert opinion? I don’t know, I don’t know about painting, like I am not going to help you out on that, go to somebody else that knows that and ask them. Now, legal stuff, yeah, come to me and ask, and say hey, we need financial advice? Come ask me, but… so, I say, find an expert and talk to them… but if you don’t put anything in, then you are going to be screwed, because then you can’t make a decision, and essentially if you don’t agree, you have no recourse but to go to court… STEVE: That’s awesome, that very helpful. Now, selling a company, what does somebody need to know, how do they prepare, what… so Marc I come to you, say Marc, we’ve got this… April and I had this weird idea, we are going to sell our company… MARC: Okay, so first thing I ask is, how much are you going to sell it for? Then I say, where did you come up with that number? Because, what’s going to happen is you need someone objective who knows what they are doing, to look at your books and say, this would merit a price increase of x or a price of y, to sell the business, all things been equal. Now there’s always certain things that are out of the box, that you have this unique packing system, that there is a big craze for? That hey, that has the value that you are buying the business for, for that, as opposed to the business, as a business-operating-bringing-cash. So, actually the first thing I do is, I tell people, when you formed the business, think about what your succession plan is, going forward, what’s your ultimate goal with this business, do you want to be a 100? Do you want to sell it out to somebody else? Do you want to give it to your kid? Because based on that you need to prep, I usually prefer, when people want to go sell their business, start prepping, a year to two years in advance, because as we know with a lot of the trades and restaurants, cash flows through, cash doesn’t always get recorded on the tax, right or wrong, we all know it happens, cash is king. Well if a lot of your cash is king, then you can be very hard to ask for a price on your business, because people look at your numbers and say, why do you want this? Well, I take $40,000 of cash in a year, well, okay, do you want me to believe that, I tell you one horrible story, one restaurant here in Venice, the individual who sold the restaurant was putting money in for fake sales, paying the sales tax on it, so the number looked higher for the buyers. And the buyers bought it and paid more because they thought the sales were higher than they actually were… STEVE: Oh no. That’s bad MARC: Yeah… So, that’s why you do your prep, you do your work, so you can be prepared to show, this is why I deserve what I am asking for… STEVE: Okay, NDA; how important is NDA, what is an NDA? MARC: So, an NDA is a Non-Disclosure Agreement, it’s different from a Non-Compete, which is different from a Non-Solicit, people use these terms interchangeably and they are not. One, Non-Compete, the person who works for you cannot work in the same field at a certain period of time, doing what you do, Non-Compete. Non-Solicit, whoever leaves you cannot come back and go after your clients. STEVE: Interesting, so that one is not very popular or common? MARC: No, not common and then Non-Disclosure means you cannot disclose any information you obtain for any reason, except for the purpose you’ve received it, this is used often when people are looking into buying or selling a business, you sign a Non-Disclosure, hey, let’s see the financial so we don’t use it, etcetera. But you can also use it, if you don’t have the proprietorial system, such as a DYB coaching for example and someone is interested in the coaching program, you want them to sign this Non-Disclosure because if they decide not to buy in, and they have gotten some information, you don’t want them going and taking it elsewhere. So that’s a Non-Disclosure, and so you can do an agreement that has all three, but sometimes you don’t need all three, I have had somebody say listen, if somebody comes work for me, I don’t care if he works in a set of shops next door, I just don’t want him to go after my clients, Non-Solicit, fine, Non-Compete, I don’t care if he works for another company, I don’t care if he dissolves the company up, I don’t care, I just don’t want him to go after my clients, that’s a Non-Solicit, so it depends on what you want, what are you concerned about? then you know, get that. STEVE: Awesome. Very good, so as we wrap this up, Marc, this has been awesome, is there a question I should have asked or another point or comment that you would like to share with me? MARC: Yes, two of them actually. One is that, if you are going to form a business entity, 95% of the time, an LLC is the way to go, so picture your state change and talk to somebody, but it’s going to give you more flexibility if you need it for what you want to do, because you can always choose to be treated like a corporation with an LLC, but you can use its flexibility for elsewhere. Two, if you do want to use an attorney, every attorney who is licensed to practice in the state you are in, has to have passed the bar and your local bar has a list of every attorney, so if someone says they are an attorney, or you are looking at an attorney, you can go to your local bar, in this case it is floridabar.gov, you can look up the person, it will tell you how long they have been practicing, if they are licensed to practice in that jurisdiction and it will show disciplinary history, if any. So, anytime somebody says, I am an attorney… look them up on Florida bar or the bar or maybe they were dis-barred and maybe they are retired, I can’t tell you when we looked through sometimes, and I hate to say this but… look through the disciplinary hearings for fun sometime, seeing what people are doing… and a lot of times, what it is, is people are practicing without license because they have been dis-barred and they still continue to take people’s money to quote and do work, they are not licensed anymore, so always go to your local bar, check out say, is this guy licensed? Is there a disciplinary history? What is his story? How long have they been working? And CPA is by the way the same thing, if they have a CPA designation, go check with the state, state has information for CPAs. STEVE: Okay, fantastic, very good. Anything else we should have asked or you like to share? MARC: Yes, last thing, sorry… STEVE: No, it’s good… MARC: License is an insurance, a lot of times, when you use a sub, they are going to ask… you are going to want to make sure they have an insurance, a certain type. Always understand that the first step is asking for a certificate of insurance and don’t let them give it to you, make sure it comes from the insurance agency who has their policy. People take it and modify it and play around with it, and you can’t trust it if it doesn’t come from the insurance agency. STEVE: So, the certificate must come from the insurance agency? MARC: Should come from the insurance agency and you have them send you the certs… STEVE: Become listed… MARC: Yeah, so list the person… so the agency says, here it is, here is the person, it’s valid. Now, again, could they have cancelled that insurance? Yes, they could have, afterwards, but at least it’s not fraudulent, it’s legitimate and a lot of time people don’t realize what it is, so they don’t even know how to give it, but that’s why this part two is have that written agreement, because if you get that insurance and you have agreement say they will keep your insurance and they violate it, now, A, potentially your insurance may say, screw you, but B, you now have them on hook of being in the wrong. STEVE: Okay, fantastic, if there could be one more things that you would have shared, what would it have been? MARC: The last thing I am going to say is, in general rule we all want to believe the good in people, so, we give people chances, we do things sometimes without as much structure, because we don’t think of the negatives and I want people to understand that the reason you go to an attorney or somebody is if something goes wrong, yes it may go bad, go well, nothing ever needs to be done, and that’s great, I hope so, but if it does and things happen, this is what you are trying to protect. So, as much as I like kelvin, the person I am sharing my office with and it might be compartments, our agreements in writing, as much as I like people or certain things, the agreement is in writing, it clarifies the expectations and just in case something happens… what happens if someone gets Alzheimer’s… this person will never betray me, no, now they got sick, now they have Alzheimer or something, now they are doing something that they wouldn’t have done, but they are, so now what? Didn’t expect that? Too bad. STEVE: So, written agreement is not, I don’t trust you, written agreement is clarifying expectations… MARC: And giving yourself a chance to avoid, when something unfortunate happens. STEVE: Okay, very good, that is awesome. So, Marc, I am going to share your contact information here in just a moment for those who would like to reach out to you… MARC: Okay STEVE: But first, how about some fun questions, because… MARC: Sure… STEVE: Alright, you are a dangerous, not just legally but physically and have a black belt in… MARC: …Taekwondo STEVE: How many countries have you lived in? MARC: Lived in? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… STEVE: Five, how many languages do you speak? MARC: How well do I speak them… I have studied six different languages… STEVE: Six different languages, which is the most difficult? MARC: German was the most difficult for me… STEVE: German, interesting… okay, and food. You are a food kind of… I have been trying to encourage you to start like a food blog… MARC: I know and I have been starting and I have… STEVE: You will be the ultimate ABA for Venice, Florida as far as food blogs, I mean like, anytime we have a question about food, I just call Marc, food this, food that… what are some of your favorite dishes or types or styles of food? MARC: Sushi… STEVE: Okay MARC: Duck… STEVE: What’s the strangest thing you have ever tried with all the different countries you have lived in? MARC: The strangest thing was probably eating a fish that’s still living and breathing as you pull the flesh off the bone. STEVE: Okay, that good… that’s awesome. So, what countries? Germany, Japan? MARC: No, Demark, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, United States. STEVE: Awesome, fantastic… Marc, it has been great to have you on... MARC: Thank you Steve… STEVE: For those who have been listening, more to value, we have tons of take away here and looking forward to hearing feedback from this episode, it has been very, very helpful, for those who like to follow up with you, how can they best reach you? MARC: Email is the best way to go, my email should be… I think marcmileslaw.com, that’s the best way, because I am running around, I am not always in the office and stuff… STEVE: So, I have that here, and that’s mmiles@marcmileslaw.com MARC: Yes, awesome STEVE: Fantastic. Marc, thank you so much my friend. MARC: No problem, my pleasure Steve, anytime, take care…

What’s Your Innovation Quotient? - Interview with Tamara Kleinberg Steve: Welcome to all of our "Becoming Your Best" podcast listeners, wherever you might be in the world today. This is your host, Steve Shallenberger. And we have a very interesting guest with us today. Our guest has helped and inspired many people on how to improve their lives and be more effective. Welcome, Tamara Kleinberg. Tamara: Thank you so much for having me. Steve: Oh, we're excited to have you. And before we get started today, I'd like to tell you a little about Tamara's background. First of all, this is fun. She's part of an elite group of TED speakers for completing three Tough Muddlers. Tell us what a Tough Muddler is, Tamara. Tamara: Oh, they are these...I don't know if you've done one yet...but they are these extreme sport events. It's usually 12 to 16 miles, 20 obstacle courses, and things like getting dumped in water so cold you can't breathe and electric shock wires. It just...it tests your limits, both physical and mental, every time you do it. Steve: Lovely. Well, we know what the Spartan event is. We've had a number of our family members that have participated in that. I think quite similar. Tamara: I love Spartan events. Steve: Yeah, they're great. And Tamara's life is about breaking through the status quo for game-changing results. And I'll just tell you a little bit more about her. She is the founder of LaunchStreet, an online innovation program, and the creator of a proprietary Innovation Quotient Edge, which we'll talk a little bit about later in the program. It's the only assessment able to help you discover your unique innovator archetype, and we'll talk about that, so that you can innovate on demand. She is a sought-after keynote speaker, CrossFit addict, and a knee-high sock lover. She lives in the Colorado area, has two young children, a husband, and they are rocking and rolling. Tamara: Don't forget my dog. My dog would be very upset if you didn't mention her. Her name is Zoe, and she's a 90-pound mastiff. So she's part of the family. Steve: Well, that's perfect. Okay, well, Tamara, what was life like growing up for you? And what experiences helped you to see that you could be successful? Tamara: Yeah, that's such a great question to open with, you know? So I was telling you a little bit offline that we moved every four years of my life. And the reason for that was my dad was an entrepreneur. So we basically bounced from business to business, and that required moving as well. And while that sounds horrible to a lot of people, what I will tell you is it taught me how to talk to everybody, because I had to start over every four years. I became the queen of reinvention I think before I was 18 years old because I always had to. And, you know, I kinda looked back on my life, and, you know, I realized that that entrepreneurial spirit was inside of me very early on. My very first business was when I was 14 years old. I turned my teenage girl's dream closet into a business of renting clothing, and keep in mind, just to date myself, it was the 80s. So the clothing was bad, and it was before the Internet and [inaudible 00:03:19] could rent everything. But, you know, I was always looking for opportunities to just do things a little bit differently. I think a lot of us have that inside of us, that little spark, and it ignites every now and again. And sometimes we shut it down. And sometimes we let it grow. But in that case, I let it grow. And that summer, I had a ton of money. It was great. But, you know, you would...one of the things that you would ask in a previous thing was, you know, kinda what are some of those defining moments in your childhood. And I would tell you a quick story, because I think this really kinda set up how I viewed life and how I ultimately was able to achieve success. When I was in third grade, I got the most awesome homework, which was, you know, come back on Monday morning and tell the class what you wanna be when you grow up. And I was so excited. And that's the best homework you can give a third grader ever because the possibilities at that point in your life are endless. So, you know, I spent all weekend. I really...I took it very seriously. And I got back to school, and I stood up there, and I was the first to raise my hand. So I got up, you know, in front of that dirty chalkboard. And to see if my...you know, kids in front of me in those low tables, and I said, you know, "I'm Tamara. And when I grow up, I wanna be president of the United States." Steve: Woo-hoo! Tamara: And, you know, then I waited... Yeah. Well, that's what I was hoping for. Thank you. You know, I put my head down waiting for the like obvious standing ovation that was coming. But instead, I got laughter. And it wasn't actually the other kids. It was the teacher. Yeah. She looked to me, and she said, "Tamara, don't be silly. You can't be president of the United States. You weren't born here. You need to come up with a new dream." So I wasn't born here. I was born in Israel. But I...I was born on dual citizenship. And it doesn't matter. In third grade, that's not the point, right? Steve: Right, right. Tamara: You know, I went home in tears, and I went into my dad's office because he's working from home at the time. And I said, you know, "I was told that those are the rules. So I can't be president." I was so upset and ready to be very dramatic. And my dad is very brass tacks about everything. And he looked up at me, and he just said, "Well, Tamara, then go change the rules." I was like "Oh my God." Like that opened my eyes to everything in life. So I can't change the rules to be president. Frankly, at this point, I'm really glad I never pursued that path because it looks like a really hard job. But what it did teach me in life and what I've always applied is how can you go around those brick walls and those rules? How do you go under them, over them, through them? There's always a different way to accomplish what you wanna accomplish. And when I was in third grade, what I was really saying was I wanna make an impact on the world. That's really what I wanted. So when I thought about that in a different way, I was able to do different things and get to that goal. Steve: Oh, I love it. Oh, thanks for that background. And this is a great reminder too. We who have the opportunity to work with others, to give them encouragement, to give them hope, to... I love the assignment. You know, to stoke that curiosity and creativity and... Well, great going! That's terrific. Now, how about...you've been moving along. That was a great setback right there, a little challenge. But what's been some of the biggest challenges in your life or a challenge, just pick one, whether personal life or professional, and how did you handle it, and what was the impact? Tamara: Yeah. So, you know, I think we all have a lot of challenges. And sometimes there are tiny little ones that seem to add up over time. And other times there are, you know, big ones that are slapping us around and leaving a little bit of a sting on our face. And I know...I think when I look back, the biggest challenges have been these tiny little things that constantly added up. And, you know, it really led to...it was me always trying to push the limits and always trying to do something different and getting pushed back. And, you know, when I was...and so when I left university...I graduated from UC Berkeley and went out to New York City because I wanted to be in advertising and on Madison Avenue, which in the '90s was a big deal, you know, different now, but it was then. And I remember getting my first job there. And I was an administrative assistant. And that's not what I wanted to be. I wanted to be in account management. But because I didn't have an in, a connection, a referral...I was new to New York. I moved there not knowing anybody. I mean it was me and my apartment for the first six months of my time in New York City. And I had to take the job that I was provided because that's all I could get. I couldn't get the one in accounts because, you know, I didn't know anyone. However, once I got in, I was able to make my imprint and get to where I wanted to be. So, you know, it seemed like a really big challenge, and I had to look at it and go, "Well, how do I do it differently so that I get to my goal, but do it in a different way, because that path I thought I would get is just not open to me?" The beauty of it, though, the thing I learned, not just that, is I learned how hard it is to be an administrative assistant and how that is they are the gatekeepers to everything. So not only did I learn, you know, what I needed to do to get to where I was trying to be, but I also learned what it really meant to take on that role, which was not easy. But that's really all the challenges...every moment that I remember another time I was working at this, you know, prestigious brand strategy and innovation firm. And I used to get in trouble for going home at four because I would be done with my work, and I would do it well, but I was done because I figured out a different way to prioritize my workflow and not do it like everybody else and get even more accomplished in a shorter period of time. But I got in trouble for it. So, you know, I kind of kept having to push boundaries and I kept... What I learned along the way is I had to keep pushing back. I had to keep pushing back. It was my job to keep that flame going, nobody else's, because they were not gonna do it for me. Steve: Okay. Well, now, I just love it. I love the fact that Tamara is out there pushing the horizons, thinking about possibilities. This is one of the things that we need to do to reach our fullest potential. We just gotta reach down inside and say, "Wow, what is it out there that...where can I make my contribution? Where is my area of interest?" and go for it. Don't let things hold us back. And that might be in the different roles that we have in life. And so great going, Tamara. Tamara: Well, thank you so much. You know, I think this is kinda how life works, isn't it? Like it's...I saw this great quote on Facebook from Sylvester Stallone in what...a movie he's I think recently in. I didn't get to see the whole thing, because, you know, you're on Facebook, you scroll through. But, basically, it's like "Look, life is gonna slap you around harder than anybody else. And it's our job to get back up." And I think that's really how I've tried to lead through life. And when you tap your innovative mind, which we all have the power of doing... I know we don't always feel that way. But it's true. We can talk a little bit about the research that led to that and kinda, you know, the assessment that goes along with it. But when we approach things in a more innovative way, we're able to make a greater impact and go around some of those big barriers that we face. Steve: Okay, good. Well, let's talk about innovation. This is one of your specialties. And it plays such a huge role in our success in life. And I was just reading through my personal vision this morning, which I've had for 25 years. It's been inspiring for me. And on the personal level, one of the aspects was when I have setbacks and challenges, I think of options, options, and options. And then I move again. Tamara: I love that. Steve: Well, this is kind of it, innovation. So what's the greatest barrier to innovation? Let's really help our listeners out today of how we can get to a better place. Tamara: Yeah. So there's a couple of barriers that I wanna talk about here. And let me just back up by sharing my definition of innovation so we're all on the same page because I think oftentimes we think of it as a new product, new technology, or, you know, relegated to a certain point in time, exercise, the brainstorm with scented markers, you know, and [inaudible 00:11:08]. But that's really not it. What innovation is and the definition that I'd like, you know, us to move forward with is people each thinking differently about what's right in front of them to create differentiated value. And that really ultimately comes back to us in how we view things and shifting our own perspective and trying out new things. I think that one of the greatest barriers to innovation is thinking that we're not capable of it and that, you know, Greg down the hall with his blue streak in his hair and his funky glasses and, you know, going the cafes to work. He is the innovative guy. But it's really not me, whether that's because of my, you know, how I've been trained over life or my job description or just how I view myself. And that couldn't be more wrong. I think what we've discovered in our 20-plus years of work and research over here at LaunchStreet is that being innovative is actually universal. We all do it. But how we innovate is unique to each of us. But we gotta own that we're innovative people. You now, we all go to the movies, and we suspend belief, and we watch these crazy sci-fi movies, and we think nothing of it. Yet, we come home, and when we ask ourselves to work and we ask ourselves how to think differently about something, and we shut down. We got to bring that back up. Steve: Okay. Well, that's great, yeah. And I love your definition, thinking differently to get better results to how do we be... As you know, one of the things we talk about a lot is helping people become their best. And this is the thinking is we can do it. We can come up with ideas, and we are capable of it. So as we get into this process, Tamara, why do most ideas die before they even have a chance to get going, before someone leaves the conference room? Tamara: Yeah. There's a couple of reasons for it, and it's so sad, isn't it? I mean even asking the question sounds sad, like "Oh, ideas die." It's so sad, but they do, and they do for a couple of reasons. One is we confuse collaboration and consensus. So if we're working in a team, you know, we would have an idea that we wanna either bring forward or we have a problem we're trying to solve and we get together to form a solution for that, what we do by accident, in an effort to create collaboration, is we pull everybody together at the table. Now we've got everybody's opinion. And frankly, it's too many. And we need to replace consensus with collaboration, real collaboration, which I would define as the right people sitting at the table at the right time discussing the right things. That's not everybody. That's the appropriate people together. So that's number one is, you know, we end up doing this consensus decision-making, and that just waters everything down to nothing. Nobody is excited about it, and we leave with this blah, wet clay-looking idea. That's number one. The second thing is...and this was a really painful lesson that I learned along the way from someone who I called Mr. Mustache, because I don't remember his name, but he had a really big mustache. It moved before he spoke. And he shut down every one of my ideas in this meeting where I was presenting ideas. It was actually to Johnson & Johnson baby care. He worked for them at the time. And what I learned that day was that most ideas die because we don't have the language to champion them and get other people along for the journey with us. We assume that the idea is gonna stand on its own, like "Oh my god, this water bottle is so amazing. How could they say no to this?" But they do say no because they weren't along for the journey of the creation of it. And now we're throwing this one-way tennis ball, you know, across the court expecting them to pick it up. And they don't. What I have discovered, and we have a lot of these tools on our LaunchStreet on demand...I think it's part of the reasons why our clients come back year after year for more and more tools. We have this whole language of innovation method because what we discovered is that when you change your language, you change your outcome. But it is just really unfortunate to think the number of ideas that never see the light of day because we just don't know how to champion them. Steve: Okay. Oh, those are good thoughts. I'd be interested in your thoughts about this. What role...I'm just thinking that sometimes people don't have confidence in their ability to innovate, to be a creative force, and so they're a little shy about it. Would that also be a reason that an idea dies that they don't have enough confidence? Tamara: Yeah, you know, it's so interesting, and it's great that you really kinda brought that up to the surface. We don't give ourselves permission to innovate. So oftentimes...we hear this all the time, don't we? Like "Oh, they don't get it. They don't understand. They're not innovative enough." But what we forget is that we don't even give ourselves permission to innovate. So we...before we ever even say an idea out loud, we put layers of judgment on it. We say, "Well, that's not good enough. I mean who am I to share this? I don't have the experience. They'll never go for it. It'll never work. I'll sound stupid. I'll sound like I don't know what I'm talking about. Obviously, if it was a good idea, somebody else would have said it." So we talk ourselves out of bringing those ideas forward. And in doing that, we're shutting down all of that innovative thinking and keeping it inside. Yet, the question we have to ask ourselves is how do we expect to get to those breakthrough ideas or results in our work and life if we're not even giving ourselves permission to innovate? And, you know, when I keynote, I talk a lot about...we do this exercise when we're together in keynote that really brings this to life about how... It's really incredible. We self-sabotage before we even get it to the world. Steve: Right. Now, that's a great insight. If you don't mind let's talk a little about your innovator profile. I've noticed that in your information you have a unique IQE. Tell us what that is. And how can a person use it to get good results, to get innovative results that are helpful? Tamara: So the Innovation Quotient Edge or the IQE, as we call it for short, is the only proprietary tool that helps you understand how you innovate so that you can innovate on demand, so basically so you can tap your greatest asset, which is your innovative mind, as we talked about, that we all have. And part of the reason we decided to create this tool over at LaunchStreet was because we were tired of seeing people say, "I'm not innovative." It's so and so down the hall. Or "I just don't have it in me," or "I want to. It's in me, but I don't know how." And what we realized is if we can help people understand how they innovate, they're more likely to do more of it. I mean we do more of what works for us and less of what doesn't. We wanna tap our strength. And that's what this allows us to do. So we discovered there's nine triggers of innovation, and it's the combination of the top two that make your unique innovator archetype. And here is kind of the cool thing, and I'll use myself as an example. I am a risk-taker and an experiential. Those are my two things to come together for an archetype. And what that means is that the experiential side of me is I have to learn in motion. I have to innovate by doing. So if you ask me to think in theory and hypothesize and leave things on PowerPoint presentation, I shut down. And the funny part is that's how I used to work because that's how you're expected to work. That's how we're trained in our nine to five jobs to get stuff done. But I was actually working against myself, and it was showing up in my work. It wasn't innovative. I wasn't getting recognized for the value I was bringing to the table. I didn't have a strong enough voice because I wasn't playing to my strength. And then I flipped it around. Now when I build an idea out, I build it out with duct tape and scented markers because I need to see it in real life to be able to innovate. And I can now take things to the finish line. So when you understand how you innovate...it's plain and simple...you work smarter, not harder. And the cool part is if you stay in that...you know that zone we always talk about, that flow, you get to stay there longer because you're bringing that innovation to life. Steve: Well, very good. Now I'm gonna put you on the spot here, Tamara. Tamara: Uh-oh. Steve: Yeah. So what's an example? Share an example of someone that used this and the result that they got. Tamara: Yeah. Ooh, oh, this is like the Oprah question. I'm sitting on a couch, okay. So I'll give you actually an example of a company and some of the people inside their company, because there's two great examples out of this. So the company is called Footers Catering. It's one of the largest catering companies in Colorado. So they do very well. The founder, the president, Anthony, had his team take it. And two really interesting things came out of it. First, I'm gonna talk about Kara. So Kara is...one of her archetype is inquisitive. So that means she innovates by asking questions. For her innovations and the questions is not the answer. And you know her archetype because they're the one... You know them. It's 11:30. You got a quick meeting, and you're dying to get to lunch, and they're over there with their hand up like "I just have 10 more questions, just 10, I swear." But that's because they go deep. They pull back the layers of the onion and challenge assumptions. That's how they innovate. So when Kara recognized this, her team understood this about her, because they talked about their result. And now she's able to leverage that. Where before people saw it as kind of an annoyance, like "She's got 10 more questions," now she understands that's how she innovates. So she's empowered to ask the hard question, and her team understands it and actually...and expecting her to ask questions and is okay with it. So it really opened up her ability to add value to the team in a way that she wasn't able to do before. The second one is named Stephanie. And she's a futuristic. That's one of her two power triggers, which means that she's always 10 steps ahead. She's envisioning what it could be, what the possibilities are. She's solving today's challenges by creating tomorrow's opportunities. So she was in a role that was purely administrative. And she was dying on the vine. It was so hard for her. When she realized this, she and the president, Anthony, got together, and they created a new role for her where she's creating themes for their clients when they bring food to their events, whatever it is. So now she's been put in a role that's all about creating the future versus managing the past. And she is doing incredibly well. And the last I'll share with you is an entrepreneur who is outside of that realm who is a collaborative, which is all about pulling disparate people and ideas and experiences together to create innovation. And so they're all about the conversation, the team dynamic. They're very magnetic in that way, but it's because that's how they pull the data pieces together to create innovation. She had this business. She had a product. It was online. It's doing incredibly well. And she was so frustrated because she felt like this wasn't her vision, her dream. She was stuck in a silo in her house with no one to talk to. So when she realized that she was missing the thing that was feeding her soul, this collaborative innovator, she actually created an entire feedback loop with her customers. When they buy the product, they now have this opportunity to engage with her on a regular basis. Because of that, she's able to bring more and more innovation to the table because she created a business that matched how she innovates. She created a collaborative business instead of a solo business, which is what she was doing in the past. Steve: Okay. So that's excellent. So it helps both the individual and it helps the team of how to work better together. Tamara: That's exactly right. That interplay is really interesting. And what we see is when you understand how you innovate, you bring more of that to the table. And we you understand how other people innovate, you respect and seek out their opinion because now you've got a 360-degree view, different ways to tackle a challenge. The results are 10 times better. Steve: Okay. So, Tamara, what's one thing that our listeners can do right now to up their innovation quotient? Tamara: Well, the first thing I do is say go take the assessment and find out what you are. Like I said, there's nine triggers. That means there's 35 different unique combinations that could be you. If you go to gotolaunchstreet.com, that's the way to do it. But let me give your listeners, if it's okay with you, just a little something they can do right away in their everyday life that's one of my favorite innovative exercises. Can I have a minute to do that? Steve: Yes, yes. Tamara: Okay, excellent. So it's what I call geek out. So you mentioned in the very beginning that I'm a CrossFit addict, which is totally true and a knee-high sock lover. I'm wearing knee-high socks right now. I'm very proud to say. So one of the things, the challenges we have with being innovative is we look in our center, you know, in that same box with the same information with the same people over and over again, and then we don't get any result, and we get frustrated. A great way to bring innovation to your world is to go wide, go far out, and then bring that information back. The easiest way to do that is to think about how the innovative brands and products you love...how they do things and how they might solve your challenges. So for example, for me, I always think about...because I love CrossFit...how would they solve the challenge I'm having with the usability of my website. How would Southwest engage with customers in this challenge? How would Trader Joe's bring this idea [inaudible 00:24:26]. Suddenly, it becomes so easy to think differently when you put yourself in the shoes of the brands and the businesses that you love for being innovative. I mean do you have a few that you absolutely love that you could talk my ear off about? Steve: Yeah, sure. Tamara: Yeah, we all have them, right? So when you do that, it becomes super easy to be innovative because you just put yourself in their shoes. Steve: Okay. Well, that's great. I'm always amazed at how fast time goes. Our time is up. And so how can our listeners learn more about what you're doing, and how can they find out about your information? Tamara: Yeah. So the best way is to go to our website, gotolaunchstreet.com. So it's gotolaunchstreet.com. Or you can find us on social media. We're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and it's all @LaunchStreet. Steve: Okay, that's terrific. Well, this is a great resource for people. Thank you, Tamara, for being part of our show today. Really excellent ideas. And you're just touching a lot of people. So we congratulate you on that and on making a difference in the world today. Tamara: Well, thank you for providing a platform to share with your listeners. It's a wonderful show. So I appreciate being on. Steve: Yeah, you bet. And to all of our listeners, never forget, you too make a difference every single day, your leadership, the light that you have as you work on these grows brighter and brighter, and it influences everyone around. So we congratulate you as you're in this journey as well. And I'm Steve Shallenberger with Becoming Your Best Global Leadership wishing you a great day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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.

Rules to Live By in the Land Business Jack Butala: Rules to Live By in the Land Business. Every Single month we give away a property for free. It's super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don't even have to read it. Thanks for listening. Steve: Jack Butala here, welcome to our Cash Flow From Land show. In this episode Jill and I talk about the rules to live by as a real estate investor. Specifically, when you're a new investor and when you become in-seasoned, like us, and you actually kind of make your own rules, or you can bend your own rules when you have enough deals under your belt, like us, I guess. Jill: We make our own rules. Steve: I was looking at this before we started and it's amazing how many the first, the basic, basic rules are just, you know, you start to live by them. Jill: Mm hm (affirmative). Steve: We'll get into that in a second. The show kind of has promise, actually. I just want to make sure it goes sideways. Let's take a call, Jill. Jill: Okay. Alisha from Killington, Vermont called in and asked, "Can you send out offers on houses like you guys do for land? Does it work?" Awesome question. Steve: Yes. Jill: Steven, take it away. Steve: That's the whole answer. Jill: Yeah, I know. Actually, it's two parts, yes and yes. Steve: Yeah. Just like land, you have to do it properly, get the right education. Jill: Price it properly, don't send out something silly. Steve: Yeah. Right, Jill. Jill: I'll buy your mansion for $10. No, come on. Steve: Although, now, here's a basic rule with houses, first of all, you want to send it to people who have no mortgage. You have to have the right data set for that. Oh, wait, we do have the right data set. We're a licensed provider of it. Jill: That's true. Steve: You want to make sure that you have rational offers with houses. You can send irrational offers with land and get away with it a lot of times, but houses, you want to price yourself around 40 or maybe up to $40,000 less than you think the finished retail value is, so ... Jill: Maybe a percentage, like how about a percentage? Steve: ... I like dollar amounts with houses because ... Jill: I mean, it's a huge range. Steve: ... Think of a master plan community that's got ... I only send letters to master plan communities where all the houses are built at one time. There are only three or four styles, and they have real predictable sales values that they give at a given time. Let's say you know that whoever gets done cleaning it up, the house is going to sell for 150,000 bucks. Jill: There we go. Steve: You want to be, it's not a percentage, you want to be ... Jill: I want to get an idea where the 40,000 comes in. Steve: ... You want to just send letters out for ... I would sent letters out for 100, 110, probably, I don't know, you'd probably send a letter out for $5,000. Knowing you, someone would call you and sell the house. Jill: Ninety. I might get it. Steve: Yeah, like 100,000, a $100,000, so you're $50,000 shy, and in the beginning you want to take ten grand. You want to get it to a guy who's is a known flipper or renovator in that area, and then he's going to help pay the, you know, he'll buy it from you for $10,000 more than you bought it, or he'll just take the deal off your hands and hand you $10,000, which is if you're new, is what you should do so it doesn't cost you any money to get into the business. Then, make sure that whoever that guy is that you're dealing with, or the three people that you choose in your A-list, they make more money than you do because it's a lot easier for you to find deals, deal after deal after deal. You want to keep those people happy. It's a lot harder for them to renovate. It's a lot of work and a lot of time. They will beg you. They will call you begging you. Trust me.

Rules to Live By in the Land Business Jack Butala: Rules to Live By in the Land Business. Every Single month we give away a property for free. It's super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don't even have to read it. Thanks for listening. Steve: Jack Butala here, welcome to our Cash Flow From Land show. In this episode Jill and I talk about the rules to live by as a real estate investor. Specifically, when you're a new investor and when you become in-seasoned, like us, and you actually kind of make your own rules, or you can bend your own rules when you have enough deals under your belt, like us, I guess. Jill: We make our own rules. Steve: I was looking at this before we started and it's amazing how many the first, the basic, basic rules are just, you know, you start to live by them. Jill: Mm hm (affirmative). Steve: We'll get into that in a second. The show kind of has promise, actually. I just want to make sure it goes sideways. Let's take a call, Jill. Jill: Okay. Alisha from Killington, Vermont called in and asked, "Can you send out offers on houses like you guys do for land? Does it work?" Awesome question. Steve: Yes. Jill: Steven, take it away. Steve: That's the whole answer. Jill: Yeah, I know. Actually, it's two parts, yes and yes. Steve: Yeah. Just like land, you have to do it properly, get the right education. Jill: Price it properly, don't send out something silly. Steve: Yeah. Right, Jill. Jill: I'll buy your mansion for $10. No, come on. Steve: Although, now, here's a basic rule with houses, first of all, you want to send it to people who have no mortgage. You have to have the right data set for that. Oh, wait, we do have the right data set. We're a licensed provider of it. Jill: That's true. Steve: You want to make sure that you have rational offers with houses. You can send irrational offers with land and get away with it a lot of times, but houses, you want to price yourself around 40 or maybe up to $40,000 less than you think the finished retail value is, so ... Jill: Maybe a percentage, like how about a percentage? Steve: ... I like dollar amounts with houses because ... Jill: I mean, it's a huge range. Steve: ... Think of a master plan community that's got ... I only send letters to master plan communities where all the houses are built at one time. There are only three or four styles, and they have real predictable sales values that they give at a given time. Let's say you know that whoever gets done cleaning it up, the house is going to sell for 150,000 bucks. Jill: There we go. Steve: You want to be, it's not a percentage, you want to be ... Jill: I want to get an idea where the 40,000 comes in. Steve: ... You want to just send letters out for ... I would sent letters out for 100, 110, probably, I don't know, you'd probably send a letter out for $5,000. Knowing you, someone would call you and sell the house. Jill: Ninety. I might get it. Steve: Yeah, like 100,000, a $100,000, so you're $50,000 shy, and in the beginning you want to take ten grand. You want to get it to a guy who's is a known flipper or renovator in that area, and then he's going to help pay the, you know, he'll buy it from you for $10,000 more than you bought it, or he'll just take the deal off your hands and hand you $10,000, which is if you're new, is what you should do so it doesn't cost you any money to get into the business. Then, make sure that whoever that guy is that you're dealing with, or the three people that you choose in your A-list, they make more money than you do because it's a lot easier for you to find deals, deal after deal after deal. You want to keep those people happy. It's a lot harder for them to renovate. It's a lot of work and a lot of time. They will beg you. They will call you begging you. Trust me.

Panel Steve Madsen (twitter github Light Year Software) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:45 - Going Rogue Video 01:21 - Steve Madsen Introduction Light Year Software 02:00 - Networking with iOS WiFi Connection Speedtest.net HTTP Live Streaming 07:58 - Bandwidth and Quality of Connection 12:23 - Network Link Conditioner 15:29 - Reachability 24:27 - Networking Gotchas 26:54 - NSOperation Dependency 29:41 - AFNetworking RestKit 33:54 - Logging of Networking Requests and Response Runscope 38:49 - Networking Technologies 41:27 - WebSockets faye SocketRocket 45:48 - Fallacies of Distributed Computing Picks ARC vs. MRC Performance (Andrew) Machine language: how Siri found its voice (Andrew) Philips hue (Ben) hue (Ben) CopyPasteCharacter.com (Ben) Glyphboard (Andrew) Lawyers (Jaim) Runscope (Pete) estimote (Pete) Acme Pale Ale from North Coast Brewing (Pete) XCOM Enemy Unknown (Pete) RubyConf (Chuck) Airbnb (Chuck) Platform University (Chuck) Little Snitch (Steve) Upton Tea (Steve) Clojure: Enemy of the State (Rod) Hire Rod (Rod) Next Week Build Automation with Patrick Burleson Transcript CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 22 of The iPhreaks Show! This week on our panel, we have Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hi! I'm not a robot; I'm just going to [unclear] [Laughter] CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello! I'm eagerly waiting of the arrival of GTA 5. So if the doorbell rings, I may run to go get it. CHUCK: Alright! Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Hello from Minneapolis! And also, not a robot. CHUCK: Pete Hodgson. PETE: Good morning from…I am not a robot. [Laughter] CHUCK: Rod Schmidt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. Before I introduce our guest, I just want to make a real quick announcement. This Friday, meaning last Friday when you get this episode, was my ‘Freedom Day'. It was the day I was laid off from my job 3 years ago and went freelance. I'm celebrating that by putting up a free video that kind of chronicles my journey through freelancing and going from laid off to actually making enough money to live on. I'm going to have a lot of lessons that I learned in there and stuff, so if you're interested, you can get that at GoingRogueVideo.com. BEN: Whoo-hoo! Congrats! CHUCK: Thanks! We also have a special guest, and that is Steve Madsen. STEVE: Hello from the Columbus, Ohio. CHUCK: Can we get you to introduce yourself real quick? STEVE: Sure! I own Light Year Software, which is a small consultancy here in Columbus specializing in Rails and iOS development. I've been doing that for about 7 years now since relocating back from the San Francisco Bay Area. CHUCK: Was it named after the unit of measure, or the cartoon character? STEVE: Unit of measure. CHUCK: Okay. STEVE: I was looking for something science-y. CHUCK: Awesome. PETE: What's the cartoon character? CHUCK: Toy Story. Buzz Lightyear. PETE: Oh! Oh, yeah. CHUCK: Alright, we brought you on to talk about “Networking”. STEVE: Yes! That's a big topic! CHUCK: I was going to say [laughs] it was kind of a broad topic. What in particular is interesting about networking with iOS or Cocoa? STEVE: Specifically about iOS, obviously, we're talking about mobile devices. I think it's safe to say that since mobile devices became as popular as they did with the introduction of the iPhone, the possibilities on how for us to build apps that communicate back to servers or communicate with people nearby have gone up a lot. CHUCK: Yeah, that makes sense.

Panel Steve Madsen (twitter github Light Year Software) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:45 - Going Rogue Video 01:21 - Steve Madsen Introduction Light Year Software 02:00 - Networking with iOS WiFi Connection Speedtest.net HTTP Live Streaming 07:58 - Bandwidth and Quality of Connection 12:23 - Network Link Conditioner 15:29 - Reachability 24:27 - Networking Gotchas 26:54 - NSOperation Dependency 29:41 - AFNetworking RestKit 33:54 - Logging of Networking Requests and Response Runscope 38:49 - Networking Technologies 41:27 - WebSockets faye SocketRocket 45:48 - Fallacies of Distributed Computing Picks ARC vs. MRC Performance (Andrew) Machine language: how Siri found its voice (Andrew) Philips hue (Ben) hue (Ben) CopyPasteCharacter.com (Ben) Glyphboard (Andrew) Lawyers (Jaim) Runscope (Pete) estimote (Pete) Acme Pale Ale from North Coast Brewing (Pete) XCOM Enemy Unknown (Pete) RubyConf (Chuck) Airbnb (Chuck) Platform University (Chuck) Little Snitch (Steve) Upton Tea (Steve) Clojure: Enemy of the State (Rod) Hire Rod (Rod) Next Week Build Automation with Patrick Burleson Transcript CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 22 of The iPhreaks Show! This week on our panel, we have Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hi! I’m not a robot; I’m just going to [unclear] [Laughter] CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello! I’m eagerly waiting of the arrival of GTA 5. So if the doorbell rings, I may run to go get it. CHUCK: Alright! Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Hello from Minneapolis! And also, not a robot. CHUCK: Pete Hodgson. PETE: Good morning from…I am not a robot. [Laughter] CHUCK: Rod Schmidt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake! CHUCK: I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. Before I introduce our guest, I just want to make a real quick announcement. This Friday, meaning last Friday when you get this episode, was my ‘Freedom Day’. It was the day I was laid off from my job 3 years ago and went freelance. I’m celebrating that by putting up a free video that kind of chronicles my journey through freelancing and going from laid off to actually making enough money to live on. I’m going to have a lot of lessons that I learned in there and stuff, so if you’re interested, you can get that at GoingRogueVideo.com. BEN: Whoo-hoo! Congrats! CHUCK: Thanks! We also have a special guest, and that is Steve Madsen. STEVE: Hello from the Columbus, Ohio. CHUCK: Can we get you to introduce yourself real quick? STEVE: Sure! I own Light Year Software, which is a small consultancy here in Columbus specializing in Rails and iOS development. I’ve been doing that for about 7 years now since relocating back from the San Francisco Bay Area. CHUCK: Was it named after the unit of measure, or the cartoon character? STEVE: Unit of measure. CHUCK: Okay. STEVE: I was looking for something science-y. CHUCK: Awesome. PETE: What’s the cartoon character? CHUCK: Toy Story. Buzz Lightyear. PETE: Oh! Oh, yeah. CHUCK: Alright, we brought you on to talk about “Networking”. STEVE: Yes! That’s a big topic! CHUCK: I was going to say [laughs] it was kind of a broad topic. What in particular is interesting about networking with iOS or Cocoa? STEVE: Specifically about iOS, obviously, we’re talking about mobile devices. I think it’s safe to say that since mobile devices became as popular as they did with the introduction of the iPhone, the possibilities on how for us to build apps that communicate back to servers or communicate with people nearby have gone up a lot. CHUCK: Yeah, that makes sense.

Today's topic is Working locally instead of cowboy coding where we will be discussing local web development utilizing tools such as XAMPP MAMP WAMP and other tools like DesktopServer, Vagrant or even Vagrantpress.BeginnersFor beginners Suzette suggests they use DesktopServer because it’s easy to install and you don’t have to ruin your server testing everything out and can test locally.Shooting from the hipCowboy Coding: is when you make live changes to a website everyone can see. If you do anything that might break your site, you’re cowboy coding. You’re pulling the trigger and hoping something doesn’t break.Local ServerSo why use a local server?* It’s too easy to make 1 little mistake and break everything. Doing it locally prevents you from taking the site down live. This way you’re making changes and testing it out on a local server and if something breaks, it won’t take down the entire website.* You get good speed because you aren’t waiting for the internet to load.* You can work with no internet connection at all.Test EnvironmentWhen is it necessary to make that test environment? Some sites are very small and don’t get a lot of traffic. So is it necessary to have a testing environment for those sites?* Steve: Yes you need a testing environment and you need it right away.* If the content is important to the user, then a test environment is very important.* Say something breaks, what good are backups if you can’t repair them locally?* It’s a good habit. Always do it the same way and you’ll be safer.From the local server you can send it to a staging server to test out before then moving on to a full deployment.Version ControlIs it always important to always have version control to roll back to previous versions?For “casual” sites, no. They can use something like DropBox and have the “poor man’s” version control. They can learn the ropes and then segue into a more mature solution such as Git or Subversion.DesktopServerAbout DesktopServer* It’s quick and simple to use. You can set up to 3 sites with the free version and have a local working environment right away. DesktopServer takes something that was really difficult and tedious to do, and makes is quick and simple.* Before going from local to deployment DesktopServer will go through and “scrub” the site to make sure the links have been changed before going live.Staging ServerIt’s really good to move from a local server to a staging server before deployment. It’s likely there will be issues moving from an Apache server to a server running Nginx. There are also PHP versions that aren’t compatible. MySQL may also cause problems.You don’t have to go with a company that provides staging, you can create your own with your host via sub domain. If you do this, make sure you block robots or set up a log in page or you might get an angry call from a client asking why your agency staging site ranking higher than their website.Hosts that provide staging servers:* WP Engine (1 click staging)* Site Ground See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Panel Steve Kloyda (twitter facebook linkedin youtube The Prospecting Expert) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:03 - Steve Kloyda Introduction The Prospecting Expert The Prospecting Minute 02:38 - Being a good prospector Never stop prospecting Passion 04:42 - Prospecting and Selling To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink 08:10 - Marketing and Sales Cliff Ravenscraft 12:05 - Prospecting Tools Email Text Messaging Video Social Media The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk 19:25 - Audience Connect Educate Engage 24:54 - The Wizard of Oz Purpose Who Game Plan Solution Next Step 34:03 - The Best Next Step 38:31 - Referrals Fear of rejection Psychology Centers of Influence 46:51 - Keeping the sales process simple Ask for the business Objections  Picks Indie Game: The Movie (Eric) Anker Battery Pack (Chuck) Parade of Homes (Chuck) Evernote (Steve) Evernote Hello (Steve) Evernote Food (Steve) Nozbe (Steve) How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger (Steve) The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin (Steve) Next Week Bookkeeping and Business Expenses with Scott Sweeney Transcript [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you'll get 50% off when it's released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 50 of The Ruby Freelancers Show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. I just want to remind you that you have one week left to go sign up for Rails Ramp Up at railsrampup.com. And we have a special guest and that is Steve Kloyda! STEVE: It's great to be here, thanks for having me. CHUCK: Oh it's great to have you! I met Steve at the New Media Expo. He was hanging out with the bunch of us from Cliff Ravenscraft's "Podcast Mastermind", and it turns out that he knows a lot about prospecting for potential clients. And it seems like that's one of the hard things that we have to do as programmers - to find new clients. So I invited him to the show and we are happy to have you. STEVE: It's really great to be here. And yes, we are all searching for new clients at point or another and it's probably one of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs, small business owners, and sales people face on a daily basis. So I'm really excited to be here to talk about it because this is my passion. CHUCK: Awesome! You're also the podcasting expert at thepodcastingexpert.com, correct? STEVE: Yes "theprospectingexpert".. CHUCK: [laughs] Sorry.. STEVE: It's alright. Theprospectingexpert.com is my website address and then I have a podcast that I do every week called "The Prospecting Minute" podcast. CHUCK: Is it longer than a minute, I take it? STEVE: Actually it's 3-5 minutes. Sales people tend to have a very short attention span, and some of my -- I do interview some people and sometimes I go 25 or 30 minutes, but the average show is between 5 and 7 minutes in length. That'll like to give them quick,

Panel Steve Kloyda (twitter facebook linkedin youtube The Prospecting Expert) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:03 - Steve Kloyda Introduction The Prospecting Expert The Prospecting Minute 02:38 - Being a good prospector Never stop prospecting Passion 04:42 - Prospecting and Selling To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink 08:10 - Marketing and Sales Cliff Ravenscraft 12:05 - Prospecting Tools Email Text Messaging Video Social Media The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk 19:25 - Audience Connect Educate Engage 24:54 - The Wizard of Oz Purpose Who Game Plan Solution Next Step 34:03 - The Best Next Step 38:31 - Referrals Fear of rejection Psychology Centers of Influence 46:51 - Keeping the sales process simple Ask for the business Objections  Picks Indie Game: The Movie (Eric) Anker Battery Pack (Chuck) Parade of Homes (Chuck) Evernote (Steve) Evernote Hello (Steve) Evernote Food (Steve) Nozbe (Steve) How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger (Steve) The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin (Steve) Next Week Bookkeeping and Business Expenses with Scott Sweeney Transcript [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 50 of The Ruby Freelancers Show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. I just want to remind you that you have one week left to go sign up for Rails Ramp Up at railsrampup.com. And we have a special guest and that is Steve Kloyda! STEVE: It's great to be here, thanks for having me. CHUCK: Oh it's great to have you! I met Steve at the New Media Expo. He was hanging out with the bunch of us from Cliff Ravenscraft's "Podcast Mastermind", and it turns out that he knows a lot about prospecting for potential clients. And it seems like that's one of the hard things that we have to do as programmers - to find new clients. So I invited him to the show and we are happy to have you. STEVE: It's really great to be here. And yes, we are all searching for new clients at point or another and it's probably one of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs, small business owners, and sales people face on a daily basis. So I'm really excited to be here to talk about it because this is my passion. CHUCK: Awesome! You're also the podcasting expert at thepodcastingexpert.com, correct? STEVE: Yes "theprospectingexpert".. CHUCK: [laughs] Sorry.. STEVE: It's alright. Theprospectingexpert.com is my website address and then I have a podcast that I do every week called "The Prospecting Minute" podcast. CHUCK: Is it longer than a minute, I take it? STEVE: Actually it's 3-5 minutes. Sales people tend to have a very short attention span, and some of my -- I do interview some people and sometimes I go 25 or 30 minutes, but the average show is between 5 and 7 minutes in length. That'll like to give them quick,