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"Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth." (says Rumi) "You have ignored the Living One who is in your presence and you have spoken only of the dead." "Look to the Living One while you are alive, otherwise, you might die and seek to see him and will be unable to find him." "Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become that person, and the Hidden Things will be revealed to that one." "I will give to you what eye has not seen, what ear has not heard, what hand has not touched, and what has not occurred to the mind of man." (selections from the Gospel of Thomas) "It is the mercy of my Satguru that has made me to know the Unknown. I have learned from Him how to walk without feet, to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to drink without mouth, to fly without wings." (Kabir)   Today I begin with some key verses from the Gospel of Thomas (making use of both Greek and Coptic translations) on the Need for a Living Master (a Living One), and not just solely relying upon old writings from the past focused on those who are no longer with us. With old writings of saints, mystics and scriptures, as wonderful as they might be, the danger and likelihood is we remain stuck, trapped in our cultural bias, blind spots and filters never seeing beyond the horizons of our limited understanding tethered to past learning only. If we have contact with a living teacher (a Living One) and spiritual community, we can have our beliefs challenged, our horizons expanded, spiritual breakthroughs, find out the vitally important things we've been missing out on as we interface with an ancient wisdom tradition communicating to us an Initiation into the Mysteries of the Kingdom of the Heavens, introducing to us the complete methods of spiritual practice we need to travel upon this Path of the Masters. We can experience for ourselves our own Living Gnosis Now, a 21st Century version of the spiritual path described in the Gospel of Thomas, Nag Hammadi Library, Adi Granth and countless other sacred texts of the ages. "Masters come here to give Their Satsang and awaken the soul and then They initiate the soul and help the soul go back to God Almighty. So, that is how They work towards the salvation of the soul. All other worldly people do things to tie themselves and entangle themselves into this world again. Therefore, we should have love and affection for the Master and we should follow His Teachings of doing our meditations on a daily basis. We should have compassion on ourselves and this is work that is given to us to do. It is not going to be done by anybody else." (Baba Ram Singh, from a recent spiritual discourse)   In Divine Love (Bhakti), Light, and Sound, At the Feet of the Masters, Radhasoami James Bean Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcasts Sant Mat Satsang Podcasts Sant Mat Radhasoami A Satsang Without Walls Spiritual Awakening Radio Website: https://www.SpiritualAwakeningRadio.com    

God has sent (t)His Love for us to follow out of the illusion. So don't let anything distract you from this Love. Not yourself, not your thoughts, or anyone else. Nothing is worth it. Nothing, this No Thing, this Silence is worth it. It's worth your attention. It made you worthy. It made you Holy. It has given you a Purpose. And right now It looks like whatever you are called to do 'today'. The pressure is not on you, the Presence is on you.* Affirm: The Presence is on me, in me, for me. And then just do it. Don't think about it. Just do it. Just watch It accomplish everything. I Love you, Nik nikki@curlynikki.com Support the show: ▶▶https://www.patreon.com/goodmornings __________________________________________ Today's Quotes:    "Pressure on you, Presence on me." -Gabriel Lopez @gods.best.friend "I have been asked many times, "How do you stop thinking?" And I have found one way. The minute I can look at any person or condition and know that it is neither good nor evil, my thought stops, and my mind becomes quiet. That is the end of it because then there are no thoughts left for me to think about it: I do not think good of it and I do not think evil of it. All I know is that it is, and then I am back at the center of my being where all power is." -Joel S Goldsmith "Unless you give up the idea that the world is real, then your mind will always be after it." -Sri Ramana Maharshi "The kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth but people don't see it." -The Gospel of Thomas “It seemed as if Maharaj-ji was about to answer, but instead his eyes closed and he sat there completely still, completely silent. It felt like he'd totally disappeared. In all the time I'd been with him, I'd only seen him sitting motionless like this a couple of times before. It was extraordinarily powerful, as if the whole universe had become silent. Then a tear came down his cheek. We were in awe. After a couple of minutes, his eyes half opened and, with great emotion, he quietly said, 'He lost himself in love, that's how he meditated. He was one with all beings. He loved everyone, even the people who crucified him. He never died. He is the atman [soul]. He lives in the hearts of all. He lost himself in love." -Krishna Das  "God is in me, God is with me. God is for me." -@Sardinebread 

Thomas Manuel of the Indie RPG Newsletter and the Yes Indie'd podcast joins me to talk about Secondary Missions, a mechanic from Band of Blades by Off Guard Games.In Band of Blades, a grim military fantasy forged in the dark game, you and your party go off and do missions. Meanwhile, there's a whole other squad out there doing a whole other mission! What's up with them? This mechanic tells us. It's such a change in the mouthfeel of Band of Blades compare to other forged in the dark games.We get into how it supports the genre and themes of the game, all the tough choices it puts in front of players, and how mechanics like this one that couldn't exist in any other game are often our favorites.It's a classic Dice Exploder deep dive this week. Enjoy.Further reading:* Blades in the Dark* Malazan Book of the Fallen* Band of Brothers* Darkest Dungeon* The Watch* Dream Askew // Dream ApartSocials:Thomas on itch and Twitter.Sam on Bluesky, Twitter, dice.camp, and itch.Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!Transcript:Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and have its back as we head behind enemy lines. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and my co host is Thomas Manuel. Oh, so exciting. Thomas is an Indian playwright, journalist, and game designer. He runs the Indie RPG Newsletter, for my money one of the best sources of IndyRPG news on the internet and an easy subscribe. Plus he's the current host of the excellent Yes Indeed podcast. He's also the designer of This Ship is No Mother, a card based take on the kind of Mothership genre that's very much worth your time. Thomas is great, And he brought on a mechanic from Band of Blades, a grim military fantasy forged in the dark game from Off Guard Games and Evil Hat. Specifically, Thomas brought secondary missions.In Band of Blades, while you and your party are off doing one mission, there's a whole other squad over there doing a whole other mission's worth of stuff. What's up with them? This mechanic tells us.Secondary missions, have a deceptively big impact on the mouthfeel of Band of Blades. We get into how it supports the genre and themes of the game, all the tough choices it puts in front of players, and how mechanics like this one, that couldn't exist in any other game, are often at least my favorites. It's a classic Dice Exploder this week, a deep dive at its very best. Here is Thomas Manuel with Secondary Missions.Thomas, thanks for being here.Thomas: Thank you for inviting me. I'm so excited to talk about Band of Blades.Sam: Hell yeah. What is Band Blades?Thomas: Band of Blades is a sort of dark fantasy military take on the forge in the dark framework. Sam: Yeah. A band of Blades kind of play on Band of Brothers is where the name is coming from. Right?Thomas: Yeah, I, I assume it is a play on that, but it is also different enough from that show that I don't think people should use it as a touchstone. The premise of the game is that you play The Legion, which is an army that has just lost the decisive battle for the fate of humanity.There is an undead horde that is an existential threat to humanity. And we fought that battle and we lost it. And now the legion is in retreat. And it ends up being a kind of a point crawl where you're retreating from the location of the battle to a fort where you hope you can hold up there and figure things out and, you know, other pockets of the legion might end up there as well and that could be the last stand.Sam: Yeah. So we, before we get into specifics of what mechanic you brought from this I just wanna say, first of all, this game has like six different mechanics in it that I would be excited to do episodes on. Like truly there's so much innovative design in this game.And also I. I, I think it's okay. Like, I think it's a great game that was like an okay experience for me. It was like a little dark, like parts of it didn't quite, quite fit with me. Like, my experience with Band of Blades was that I'd started running a campaign in January of 2020 and it was going okay. We were like, kind of getting a feel for it when you know uh, March happened of 2020 and we were all like, this might be a little crunchier and darker than like, we wanna play right now.And I, I never really felt like it was something I was super drawn back to because I prefer a little bit more at that like minimalism level and there's, there's just so much game in this game but I, I really love so much of, of the innovation that went into this game.Thomas: I, I also think that this game is extremely innovative, like has, really interesting design. I think Off Guard Games, uh, Stras and John kind of have done so many interesting things that I am constantly coming back to it and learning stuff about design and like getting inspired by it. I ran, I think this is probably 2021. I, I ran the whole campaign uh, sort of reskinned for Malazan: Book of the Fallen and kinda set in that world if that, which, you know, I'm a big fan of that series. It's also sort of military fantasy and we ran the whole campaign and I, I really enjoyed it. I think it is, yeah, it does have some crunch. It does have some darkness, but I think it kind of balances it out really well for me. And yeah. I'm, glad we picked this one because this is in the spirit of taking something small that is not particularly discussed in the text and then kind of exploding it like, this is a great choice. Sam: Yeah, totally. So let's get into it. So what mechanic specifically did you bring?Thomas: So, yeah, we are gonna talk about secondary missions which I think in the text might be, you know, a page at most. And the idea is that like Blades or other games, one of the phases of play is a mission phase where you are going to take your player character and go out and do a mission that is going to help the legion.And then you come back and there's a second mission. There's a second mission that is other members of the Legion people you aren't controlling, what they did while you were out. And that is resolved with one dice roll. It's basically just the engagement roll. It's the same procedure as the engagement roll for the primary mission. You're gonna roll that engagement role and then just based on the result of that, of that one role, you're going to narrate how the secondary mission went. And yeah, it often goes really badly.Sam: Yeah, I mean, you have to do really well for like many people to not die. And band of Blades like has troupe play, so you're constantly rotating between characters. So you're often like sending out some of your faves onto this secondary mission. And whether or not they fucking die is gonna be determined by a single die roll.It's, it's hardcore.Thomas: It is. It is. And you know, I think it brings in that... like a war game needs to have a certain level of gravitas. And I think that's what the secondary mission is, is bringing.Sam: Yeah, totally. So, yeah, why did you bring this? Like what is it specifically about this that really made you wanna bring it on the show to talk?Thomas: Okay. So I have not seen a mechanic like this in another game. That isn't to say that it doesn't exist, but my experience of the secondary mission was that we would go on this primary mission ,and because this is a forged in the dark game, like our characters are awesome. We are going to go up against impossible odds and we are going to somehow, pull success out of the jaws of victory. And we are going to come home battered and bruised, but triumphant.And then we come back. And then we'd roll the secondary mission and we'd be like, fuck. War is hell. War is hell, and we can't save everybody. And it was often really powerful moments that led to things like, people like talking about like mourning and like how, you know, a character just died. Like how do we, how do we respond to that? Like what are the traditions around that stuff? Like in the Legion, it led to some really great moments. Yeah.Sam: Yeah. Another thing that it does with that sort of, you go off and like kick ass, then you come back to camp, is it gives you that feeling of you can't be everywhere at once. Like the Legion is bigger than just your playgroup. Like what? Any four of you, they're out on a mission or whatever. That there's all of these other people, like both doing their best and succeeding at times away from you and coming back victorious, but also often failing without you, and you just have to... it, it makes you feel small in this way that I think is really appropriate to that war setting.Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I think through play is again, one of those other things that we could have been talking about today. And this is, yeah, it, it slots into troupe play like really well. And what it does and what true play really does is it makes this the story of the Legion.Sam: Yeah,Thomas: Like every individual character is, their own saga, living and dying. They have all the humanity that we associate, you know, that we want to inject into them and all of that stuff. But the story is the story of this Legion, which is, something greater than any individual.Sam: Yeah. You know, I was just in the Dice Exploder discord, hashtag Dice Exploder discord, this afternoon. We were having this like long conversation about the crew sheet in Blades and whether or not it's effective at what it's doing. Because a lot of people I think feel like the idea of the cruise sheet is really great and also people get attached to their own characters and don't want to... like you're focused on your character. You're not focused on the crew in the way that like Blades, I think, wants you to focus more on the crew at least according to my reading of the text.And I think Band of Blades really succeeds through troupe play explicitly and through mechanics like secondary missions at really doing the thing you're saying at, at foregrounding the story of the legion of the crew more than any individual in it.And that's really impressive.Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. I think that sort of gentle confusion about Blades as priorities is a part of the text. I think John Harper leaves the door open for troupe play but is also like, you know, people like to play their characters. So I'm gonna, I'm not gonna take a strong stance on that.But Band of Blades is like, there's a role called the Marshall, and they decide who goes on the mission, and they decide who's playing who.And I'm like, amazing.Sam: Well, it's, another thread from this conversation from this afternoon was like, a lot of people feeling like a lot of the mechanics on the Blades crew sheet are a bit unnecessary or just like not their favorite or a little bit more like paperwork like, as opposed to the mechanics on the playbooks. And band of Blades actually, like this is another mechanic from this game we could have spent a whole episode on like it's dividing up like the GM role in some ways and like all of this paperwork stuff among different roles at camp that all the players get to play like the Marshall, like you're saying. But somehow like bringing in even more crunch to that the, that crew role basically it, instead of feeling like, oh my God, I'm like drowning in the crunch, it, it really does pull you up into that Marshall level, that bird's eye view of the legion as a whole, as opposed to being down with your individual guy or, or whoever.Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, in terms of GM load, Band of Blades is doing something amazing with that restructuring that we're talking about. And in that sense, the secondary mission roll is also a part of that because what, what the secondary mission does, it takes the pressure off you as the GM to drive home a kind of misery in the primary mission.Like if you as the GM are like, I'm playing a war story. I need to bring these elements of tragedy into it, like the primary mission, players should and can succeed. And because the secondary mission and the design of the game is going to help you hit those notes and that is such a huge relief that the game allows you to simultaneously be a generous and a fan of the players while still still able to experience those themes, you know.Sam: yeah, yeah. Yeah. Another thing I like about it is how the choice of what mission is going to be the primary mission, what mission is going to be the secondary mission. And sometimes you have like a third mission that you just can't do because you don't have the people and you automatically fail it.And that choice of which of these are we gonna prioritize is a really interesting choice every time. I think a lot of that theme that we've been talking about of this being a game of is clearly a game about war and making almost like resource choices almost that like the kind of cold math you have to do in war with human life, I think it, is really highlighted every time you have to choose what mission is gonna be primary and what's gonna be secondary.Thomas: Yeah, I think there are a series of games, especially video games that have this trend of what you're actually doing is you're playing the world's worst HR manager. You know what I mean? Like, like Darkest Dungeon is a good example, right? Like, you are just sending these folks into a bad situation and then you're like, putting them in a, in a bar a church and saying, deal with your stress and come out and then you go back in.And there is a certain kind of inhumanity in that, that that cold calculating thing that you're doing. And I think Band of Blades for me specifically does a better job of that than those games. Like there is in some sense because it's a role playing game. Like you are never really treating anybody as a pawn, like you're feeling their feelings. And it is always like this hard choice to be like, Um, the most common result of the secondary mission roll is the four to five, right? Like that is, you know, it's very common to get one to three, but maybe six. And the critical result is the only result in which nothing bad happens. So, on the four to five, you are given this difficult choice of saying either fail the mission and all the troops return unharmed, or you succeed the mission, two squad members die and all the specialists take some harm. Which are wounds.And what is interesting is while so much of the game is very clear about who makes what call - Commander, you decide whether the Legion moves. Marshall, you decide who goes on the mission - the question of how the table decides this call is not explicit. The only way for us to decide, you know, it isn't the Marsh's decision, it's we all sit and we go like, oh my God, if we succeed, who is dying? And everyone has to kind of like have that thing of like, I don't, I, I don't know. And sometimes it's fine. Like it's a really important mission. You're like, we have to succeed. But sometimes you are like, nah, let's, let's fail this. Like we can eat the failure, but you know, we can't lose people.Sam: I will not have my wonderful bug man die. Like I'm too in love. Like... and no, that's, that's a great observation about Not having a specific person make this choice, unlike a lot of the rest of the game. It almost feels like you all have to get your hands bloody in this choice. Like, it's not letting anyone off the hook. You all have to put your stab into the murder victim's back, like,Thomas: Oh, that is so good. Yeah.Sam: It's, yeah, no one gets to sit this one out.Thomas: Yeah. And yeah, often you fail and then you just feel that failure. And that's, in some sense, that's easier. It's, it's simpler. It's simpler than the four to five, likeSam: If everyone is just sad, at least they're alive. But like sometimes, sometimes also the mission is like save a small town from being eaten by zombies and you're like I mean, they're probably gonna die when the zombies get here anyway. We'll save our two guys. Let's, let's move on. Let's move on. And it's, it's like, it's hard. It's hard choices.Thomas: Yeah, it is. It is. I think that is... a lot of this game is supposed to be hard choices, but I think there are various kinds of hard choices. There's the tactical choices, which is, you know, a lot of the crunch of the game is like, let's make cool tactical decisions about, you know, setting us up for success when we reach our, our destination, which is Skydagger Keep.But a lot of the, the decisions are also just emotional you know, just in terms of like what narrative we want and we've talked about like not letting people die. There's also this moment of your like, I think it's this character dies and I think that is appropriate. I think there's a moment in the Band of Blades actual play on the Actual Play channel where I think they fail a secondary roll or they get a four, five or whatever and they, two, two characters just had a fight in the, in the previous session, in, in the downtime phase or whatever, and they're like one of them died and the other person is going to have to live with the fact that the last thing that they interacted with this person was a fight. Sam: Yeah. Thomas: You know, and I'm like, awesome.Sam: We touched on this, but I really wanna highlight explicitly how this mechanic forces you into the position of doing the math with human life, but it does it without dehumanizing people. That the exact moment you just described is always the thing that you're thinking about as you make this decision that largely comes down to numbers.I, I also wanna say like, I think fundamentally the most interesting part of roleplaying games, oh, story games for me is characters making hard decisions. And not just this mechanic, but this game is absolutely riddled with hard decisions. You also were just saying that, but I, I just think it's so cool to see a mechanic that is so explicitly and reliably, that's the other thing, reliably putting a hard decision in front of people.Thomas: Yeah. You can play Band of Blades and you will have the experience that this game wants if you're willing to engage with the game on its terms and like treat these characters like as people and all this stuff, which most people playing this game will do.But that hard decision stuff, like, yeah, I think it's perfectly fine to flag that that can become grinding down. Like I know some people, Paul Beakley, I think on the Indie Game Reading Club has an article about Band of Blades. He describes how at the end of the campaign, everyone was kind of tired. And that was not my experience, but I, I get it. Like, I guess, you know, that is something that can happen both thematically and mechanically Sam: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. That's like in a lot of ways that exhaustion I think is part of what the game is about.Thomas: But I, I mean, I think it's still supposed to be fun.Sam: Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is. And we did a whole episode in season one on The Watch. Right? Which is also, I think a lot about not like, can you win the war. But what is the cost of war? How do you live with the cost of war? And, and this is another game that is even more explicit about that, I think, than The Watch is, which is already pretty explicit about it.Like, you, you're not winning. You lost, like, what, cost are you gonna pay?Thomas: Yeah, I think if you are making a war game, you have to be really conscious about, you know, what you're saying about war. And yeah, both of these games, I think The Watch is, kind of using war as, as metaphor and Band of Blades is again, sort of like, very consciously stripping the glory out of this.Like, this is not that game. Which Band of brothers to some extent does have, right? It's, it's a show that it know, you know, war is awful, but like these characters are, are noble and brave and righteous and all of that to some extent. And this game is like, if we focus on the fact that it's a retreat, we can tell an interesting and sometimes under explored facet of war stories.Sam: Yeah, I should state for the record, I've never actually seen Band of Brothers, so I, I, I cannot actually speak to it, but but the, the other thing I wanted to just touch on in all that is just how brutal this game can be and like, very clearly and, and intentionally. And this particular mechanic as we've kind of discussed, I think is especially about brutality. Like when you fail, just three people die. And like several more are like critically wounded. Like you could just wipe out and every person who dies like Thomas: half a squad. Sam: And like the morale is hard to keep up in this game. And you fail one secondary mission and you're just, the whole legion is in so much trouble.It's a hard game. There's a, but you know what? You know what rule we really should have done a whole episode on is the single sentence in Band of Blades "this is a game you can lose." Like it's, yeah, it's a lot.Thomas: Again, like why is that sentence there? Why is this game that you can lose when role playing games usually aren't? And I think, again, that all flows from the decision to make a game about war. And you touched upon this adjacent mechanic, which is morale, which we should clarify that. Like, anytime a member of the legion dies, the legion loses morale and, you lose enough morale, you lose the game.Sam: Yeah. Yeah.Thomas: And other things also, but like yeah. Worse situation. Yeah. The game's over. And yeah, one failure can demoralize the squad in a huge way. And also like if you lose three squad members, a, a squad is like five people. They've lost more than half your squad. All your specialists are, you know, who went on the mission are beaten up. Yeah, it is. It is awful. And so what usually happens is that people will look at the primary mission and say, okay, we are going on this, so we failed the resource here. The fact that we are awesome and we can do stuff, let's load out the secondary mission with the best, best, you know, assets we can give it like Quartermaster, can we send them with like extra supplies? Like, you know what, what do we have to like, increase the odds there? And, and I think that is also like a kind of fun and meaningful choice. Yeah.Sam: There's something really nice in that, about how this mechanic is sort of indirectly encouraging you to be empathetic to that secondary squad. It's like, don't you love them? Don't you like feel for what they're about to go through? Like you should care about them, you should give them the extra ammo.Yeah, Is there anything about this mechanic that you have trouble with or that bumps you?Thomas: It can, if your primary mission has gone badly, it can be a second punch in the face. Like, I think, I think that is that is a thing. But otherwise nothing specifically that I can, that I can think of that is like an issue I have with it or I will change the design or something. Sam: Yeah. Thomas: Yeah. Sam: Another thing, look, one of the first things you said on this episode was that you've never seen another mechanic like this one. And I think that's a testament to how specific to the setting and genre and story that Band of Blades is telling this mechanic is.And I always love it. I love it when I see mechanics like that because I literally just before this recording, moments before this recording, wrapped up a forged in the dark Pirates campaign with one of my home groups where we just weren't using an established setting. We just like have played a lot of Blades and we were like, eh, I'll make up some special abilities and go. And it worked totally fine and for a lot of ideas I can just do that.But it, it takes. Like the new systems, the new games that are really interesting to me are the games that have mechanics like this one that are so bespoke, so tailor made to what this game is doing. And I really love that. I really really respect mechanics like that.Thomas: Yeah, and it is again a testament to band Blades, good design, and why I want to talk about, 'cause I think it's completely like under-discussed. I think we should all be talking about it all the time, is the fact that all of this is so like, enmeshed together. Right? In some sense the secondary roll is necessitated because forged in the dark is such an empowering framework for players.Right. Like, how do I tell a war story with this? And you, and you started that question and then something like this is almost, almost required. I would, I wouldn't have thought of it, but it does, it does like something like this is needed once you decide to go with this framework. And I think, yeah, it is, It does feel like something bespoke and tailor made that has then through play testing kind of integrated into everything smoothly and perfectly.Sam: Yeah. So after you've made the secondary mission roll and you've kind of determined the results of it, there's then this moment that the book encourages of you to sit at the table and sort of flesh out the story of what happened on that secondary mission. Like, you know what the goal of the mission was and you know how many people got fucked up and or died on the mission.But there's a lot between point A and point B there. So it kind of sets you up to devise this short story together of what happened on this secondary mission.And I think it does a good job of giving you enough handholds of what was the beginning and what was the end of that story, to kind of flesh it out such that it doesn't really need a framework of doing that in between. And that in itself is like pretty impressive to me.Sometimes you'll be given a mechanic as you're playing a game, like the game will present you with a mechanic where it, it has a little bit of that, like now draw the rest of the owl feeling to it. Where, where it's asking you to, fill in the blanks on something that it has not set you up well enough to fill in the blanks on. And this moment of fleshing out what happened on the secondary mission in some ways feels like drawing the rest of the owl, but in a way where like I feel empowered to draw the rest of the owl. And that's, that's cool.Thomas: And you know, one reason is that as a GM, before the Commander makes the decision of which is the primary and secondary mission, you fleshed out both equally, right? Like you have as much information on one than the other. So you're starting off in a good place, you're not taking it lightly.And then, yeah, when we get to the result, like there is this question like immediately that comes to mind of like, how did this happen? Like, you know we chose that as a secondary mission 'cause maybe we thought it was safer. And you know, we have to now, now sort of at the table discuss and figure it out because also we might be in the next primary mission playing the people who went on this mission, right?Like, we want to, we want to reflect the fact that, you know, I just broke my shoulder like last time and I'm coming like half patched up into this one. Stuff like that, like, yeah.Sam: Maybe we encountered like a new type of zombie for the first time. And so Thomas: Mm. Sam: that specialist is the only one who's seen that type of zombie before and that's gonna come up next time. They can be the person who's like Uhoh on the next mission and, and do that foreshadowing, but all that, all that.And they can also be like the person telling the horrible war story, like around the campfire, like the ghost story almost of what happened. That can be in itself, a cool downtime scene.Thomas: Yeah, I think that is actually a thing that comes up regularly often where you want to contextualize what happened on a mission to the other characters, not necessarily the players. So you wanna see it through one character's eye, like what they experienced and stuff like that. 'cause if you're going to limp home limp back to camp, you know, half your squad gone, people know it went horribly wrong. And you know, there is like, there is just this sense of like, you know, at some point we need to know why. And often it's at like the Commander Marshall level where, you know, you might role play like having a character debrief the senior officers going like, this is, this is what happened. And the senior officers had to sit around going, Yeah, it's our fault, you know, like, we made that call and we have to settle with it. Yeah.Sam: Yeah. Or like maybe you decide that one person who came back alive really was at fault and you hold a disciplinary meeting for them. Right? Like Thomas: Oh, wow. Yeah. Sam: Um, a specialist who comes back injured and carrying tons of guilt, like, yikes, I, let's do it.There's another line at the end of the procedure here that is, if any squad members died, ask someone what they remember most about one of them, which is really just like sticking a finger in the wound. Right. It, it, it's making sure if it wasn't clear enough already, like you are supposed to feel these deaths.Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It is again, just and, and if people are sort of hearing this and going, oh, this is a bit, this is a bit much like I cannot overstate how much the primary missions can be just a joy, like a complete, like you can, you can be in this dark fantasy world of zombies. And you know, the humanity has lost the war.But like when you start a primary mission, like when I was playing it very often my players would absolutely flub the engagement roll. And they would start in like a desperate position and I'd really kind of revel in like, how screwed they were. And then they would just go, okay, flashback, this was the plan all along, this is the diversion. I'd be like, shut the.Sam: Flashback this, resist that. Yeah. I've got some explosives in my back pocket. It's all fine. There's, you, you say there's a broken themselves, one of the head zombies coming in to kill us? Like that's fine. We'll just collapse a church on their head. It'll be fine.Um, Thomas: We prepared for this all along.Sam: Yeah. Yeah. It's cool to have both of those dualities in the game, like to have the wild successes. 'cause that also feels like a part of war is like sometimes you do get those miraculous victories too.Thomas: Yeah, I will say that, and this is something that I'm still unpacking, but it can't be overstated how much culturally we have this fantasy, especially for young men of like the greatest destiny being that you gave your life on the battlefield, right? Like that you took a bullet for your comrade.Like that is such a powerful you know, cultural feeling, I think. So And it is hard to sort of have that feeling in games that don't, at the end of it, make you go, okay, yeah, I think we might have glorified war there.Sam: Yeah.Thomas: and it is this game this game lets you do that.So I am, I am going to unrelentingly recommend this to folks even though it can be dark. Like I think you have control of that dial to a huge extent. And you can You can make sure that this is a fun and pleasurable experience.Sam: All right. What mechanic from Band of Blades should I do an episode about next?Thomas: I mean, I think the immediate one that comes to mind is the idea of roles. That the one thing that players have continuity on is that they're either the Commander or the Marshal or the Quartermaster or optionally the spy or, and the Lorekeeper, I think.And yeah, they just, they just divide the GM role in a nice way. Primarily because like, those are now player responsibilities, right? It's the Marshal's responsibility to name every member in the squad as in when they need a name. It's not the GM's job, you know. And that you know, you might think that a small thing, but it's, it's a big thing.So I, I think that's an obvious other thing to kind of discuss all the ways in which Band of Blades gently and, sophisticatedly kind of divides that, GM experience.Sam: Yeah. It both distributes all the paperwork and bookkeeping that the GM or someone would have to be doing among several people so that no one person is fully responsible, and by doing so, it puts more hard choices into the hands of each player.Thomas: Yeah, and it also facilitates their mutual cooperation, right? Like when, when you have a sense of like, whose final call this is, like that doesn't mean you're not gonna discuss it. You're gonna discuss it and then someone has final call and you're going to respect that. And that does a lot for having straightforward and fluid like conversations.Sam: Yeah. Well maybe I'll have you back in a year or two uh, to do that one. Um, But uh, this was excellent. This was great. Thanks for for being here and talking about secondary missions with me.Thomas: Thanks so much. I am thinking about Band of Blades like all the time, you've just given me an opportunity to like talk about it, but if you had it, it'd just be me in my head thinking about it.Sam: Thanks again to Thomas for being here. You can find him on socials at chaibypost, C H A I B Y P O S T, but in my opinion, you're better off just subscribing to the Indie RPG Newsletter and the Yes Indie'd podcast. Links for all that in the show notes. As always, you can find me on socials at sdunnewold, bluesky, and itch preferred, and there's a Dice Exploder Discord! Come on by, talk about the show, and if you've backed the Kickstarter, claim your fancy pants roll. Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray.Thanks, as always, to you for listening. See ya next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit diceexploder.substack.com

Thomas LaRock, Principal Developer Evangelist at Selector AI, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss why he loves having a career in data and his most recent undertaking at Selector AI. Thomas explains how his new role aligned perfectly with his career goals in his recent job search, and why Selector AI is not in competition with other data analysis tools. Corey and Thomas discuss the benefits and drawbacks to going back to school for additional degrees, and why it's important to maintain a healthy balance of education and practical experience. Thomas also highlights the impact that data can have on peoples' lives, and why he finds his career in data so meaningful. About ThomasThomas' career and life experiences are best described as follows: he takes things that are hard and makes them simple for others to understand. Thomas is a highly experienced data professional with over 25 years of expertise in diverse roles, from individual contributor to team lead. He is passionate about simplifying complex challenges for others and leading with empathy, challenging assumptions, and embracing a systems-thinking approach. Thomas has strong analytical reasoning skills and expertise to identify trends and opportunities for significant impact, and is a builder of cohesive teams by breaking down silos resulting in increased efficiencies and collective success. He has a track record of driving revenue growth, spearheading industry-leading events, and fostering valuable relationships with major tech players like Microsoft and VMware. Links Referenced: Selector: https://www.selector.ai/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sqlrockstar/ 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: Do you wish there were cheat codes for database optimization? Well, there are – no seriously. If you're using Postgres or MySQL on Amazon Aurora or RDS, OtterTune uses AI to automatically optimize your knobs and indexes and queries and other bits and bobs in databases. OtterTune applies optimal settings and recommendations in the background or surfaces them to you and allows you to do it. The best part is that there's no cost to try it. Get a free, thirty-day trial to take it for a test drive. Go to ottertune dot com to learn more. That's O-T-T-E-R-T-U-N-E dot com.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. There are some guests I have been nagging-slash-angling to have on this show for years on end, and that you almost give up, until they wind up having a job change. At which point, there's no better opportunity to pounce like some sort of scavenger or hyena or whatnot in order to get them on before their new employer understands what I am, and out of an overabundance of caution, decides not to talk with me. Thomas LaRock is a recently minted Principal Developer Evangelist at Selector. Thomas, thank you for finally deigning to appear on the show. It is deeply appreciated.Thomas: Oh, thanks for having me. Thanks for extending invitation. I'm sorry. It's my fault I haven't come here before now; it's just been one of those scheduling things. And I always think I'm going to see you. Like, I'll go to re:Invent, and I'm like, “I'll see Corey there.” And then, nah, Corey is a little busy.Corey: Yeah, I have no recollection of basically anything that ever happens at re:Invent, just because it is eight days of ridiculous Cloud Chanukah and thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. It's just overload and I wind up effectively blocking all of it out. You are one of those very interesting people where, depending upon the context in which someone encounters you, it's difficult to actually put a finger on where you start and where you stop. You are, for example, a Microsoft MVP, which means you presumably have a fair depth of experience with at least some subset of Microsoft products. You have been working at SolarWinds for a while now, and you also have the username of SQLRockstar on a number of social media environments, which leads me to think, oh, you're a database person. What are you exactly? Where do you start? Where do you stop?Thomas: Yeah, in my heart-of-hearts, a data professional. And that can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. My latest thing I've taken from a friend where I just call myself a data janitor because that's pretty much what I do all day, right? I'll clean data up, I'll move it around, it's a pile here and a pile there. But that's my heart of hearts. I've been a database administrator, I've been the data advocate. I've done a lot of roles, but it's always been heavily focused on data.Corey: So, these days, your new role—let's start at the present and see if we work our way backwards or not—you've been, at the time of this recording, in your role for a week where you are a principal developer evangelist at Selector, which to my understanding, is an AIOps or MLOps or whatever buzzword that we're sprinkling on top of things today is, which of course presupposes having some amount of data to wind up operating on. What do you folks do over there?Thomas: That's a great question. I'm hoping to figure that out eventually. No. So, here's the thing, Corey. So, when I started my unforced sabbatical this past June, I was, of course, doing what everybody does: panicking. And I was looking for job opportunities just about anywhere.But I, again, data professional. I really wanted a role that would allow me to use my math skills—I have a master's in mathematics—I wanted to use those math and analytical skills and go beyond the data into the application of the data. So, in the past five, six years, I've been earning a lot of data science certifications, I've been just getting back into my roots, right, statistical analysis, even my Six Sigma training is suddenly relevant again. So, what happened was I was on LinkedIn and friend had posted a note and mentioned Selector. I clicked on the link, and [all of sudden 00:04:17] I read, I go, “So, here's a company that is literally building new tools and it's data-science-centric. Is data-science-first.”It is, “We are going to find a way to go through your data and truly build out a better set of correlations to get you a signal through the noise.” Traditional monitoring tools, you know, collect a lot of things and then they kind of tell you what's wrong. Or you're collecting a lot of different things, so they slap, like, I don't know, timestamps in there and they guess at correlations. And these people are like, “No, no, no. We're going to go through everything and we will tell you what the data really says about your environment.”And I thought it was crazy how at the moment I was looking for a role that involve data and advocacy, the moment I'm looking for that role, that company was looking for someone like me. And so, I reached out immediately. They wanted not just a resume, but they're like, where's your portfolio? Have you spoken before? I'm like, “Yeah, I've spoken in a couple places,” right?So, I gave them everything, I reached right out to the recruiter. I said, “In case it doesn't arrive, let me know. I'll send it again. But this sounds very interesting.” And it didn't take more than—Corey: Exactly. [unintelligible 00:05:24] delivery remains hard.Thomas: Yeah. And it didn't take more than a couple of weeks. And I had gone through four or five interviews, they said that they were going to probably fly me out to Santa Clara to do, like, a last round or whatever. That got changed at some point and we went from, “Hey, we'll have you fly out,” to, “Hey, here's the offer. Why don't you just sign?” And I'm like, “Yeah, I'll start Monday. Let's go.”Corey: Fantastic. I imagine at some point, you'll be out in this neck of the woods just for an off-site or an all-hands or basically to stare someone down when you have a sufficiently large disagreement.Thomas: Yes, I do expect to be out there at some point. Matter of fact, I think one of my trips coming up might be to San Diego if you happen to head down south.Corey: Oh, I find myself all over the place these days, which is frankly, a welcome change after a few years of seclusion during the glorious pandemic years. What I like about Selector's approach, from what I can tell at least, is that it doesn't ask all of its customers to, “Hey, you know, all that stuff that you've instrumented over the last 20 years with a variety of different tools in the observability pipeline? Yeah, rip them all out and replace them with our new shiny thing.” Which never freaking happens. It feels like it's a better step toward meeting folks where they are.Thomas: Yeah. So, we're finding—I talk like I've been there forever: “What we're finding,”—in the past 40 hours of my work experience there, what we're finding, if you just look at the companies that are listed on the website, you'll get an idea for the scale that we're talking about. So no, we're not there to rip and replace. We're not going to show up and tell you, “Yeah, get rid of everything. We're going to do that for you.”Matter of fact, we think it's great you have all of those different things because it just reflects the complexity of your environment right now, is that you've grown, you've got so many disparate systems, you've got some of the technologies trying to monitor it all, and you're really hoping to have everything rolled into one big dashboard, right? Instead of right now, you've got to go through three, four, or five dashboards, to even think you have an idea of the problem. And you never really—you guess. We all guess. We think we know where it is, and you start looking and then you figure it out.But yeah, we take kind of a different approach right from the start, and we say, “Great, you've got all that data? Ingest it. Bring it right to us, okay? We don't care where it comes from, we can bring it in, and we can start going through it and start giving you true actionable insights.” We can filter out the noise, right, instead of one node going down, triggering a thousand alerts, we can just filter all of that out for you and just let you focus on the things that you need to be looking at right now.Corey: One of the things that I think gets overlooked in this space a lot is, “Well, we have this tool that does way better than that legacy tool that you're using right now and it's super easy to do a just drop-in replacement with our new awesomeness.” Great. What that completely misses is that there are other business units who perhaps care about data interchange and the idea that yeah, thing's a legacy piece of junk and replacing it would take an afternoon. And then it would take 14 years to wind up redoing all the other reports that other things are generating downstream of that because they integrate with that thing. So yeah, it's easy to replace the thing itself, but not in a way that anything else can take advantage of it.Thomas: Right.Corey: And when it turns out also when you sit there making fun of people's historical technological decisions, they don't really like becoming customers as it turns out. This was something of a shock for an awful lot of very self-assured startup founders in the early days.Thomas: Yeah. And again, you're talking about how, you know some of the companies we're looking at, it's y—we don't want to rip and replace things. Like you just said, you've got an ecosystem. It's a delicate ecosystem that has [laugh] developed over time. We aren't interested in replacing all that. We want to enhance it, we want to be on top of it and amplify what's in there for you.So yeah, we're not interested in coming in and say, “Yeah, rip every tool out.” And in some ways, when somebody will ask, you know, “Who do you compete with?” I'll go, “Nobody.” Because I'm not looking to replace anybody. I'm looking to go on top.And again, the companies we're dealing with have lots of data. We're talking very large companies. Some of these are the backbone of the internet. They just have way too much data for any of these legacy tools to help with, you know? They can help with, like, little things, but in terms of making sense of it all, in terms of doing the real big data analytics, yeah, that's where our tool comes in and it really shines.Corey: Yeah, it turns out that is not a really compelling sales pitch to walk it and say, “Hey, listen up, idiots, you all are doing it wrong. Now, pay me and we'll do it right.” Yeah, even if you're completely right, you've already lost the room at that point.Thomas: Exactly.Corey: People make decisions based upon human aspects, not about arithmetic, in most cases. I will say, taking a glance at the website, a couple of things are very promising. One, your picture and profile are already up there, which is good. No one is still on the fence about that, and further as a bonus, they've taken your job role down off the website, which is always disconcerting when you're there and, “Why is that job still open?” “Oh, we're preserving optionality. Don't you worry your head about that. We've got it.” No one finds that a reassuring story when it's about the role that they're in. So, good selection.Thomas: I went to—after I signed, it was within the day, I went to send somebody the link to the job req. Like, they're like, “What are”—I go, “Here, let me show you.” It was already down. The ink was even dry on the DocuSign and it was already down. So, I thought that—Corey: Good on them.Thomas: —was a good sign, too.Corey: Oh, yeah. Now, looking at the rest of your website, I do see a couple of things that lead to natural questions. One of the first things I look at on a web page is, okay, how is this thing priced? Because you always want to see the free tier option when I'm trying to solve a problem the middle of the night that I can just sign up for and see if it works for a small use case, but you also, in a big company definitely want to have the ‘Contact Us' option because we're procurement and we don't know how to sign a deal that doesn't have two commas in it with a bunch of special terms that ride along with it. Selector does not at the time of this recording, have a pricing page at all, which usually indicates if you have to ask, it might not be for you.Then I look at your customer case studies and they talk about very large enterprises, such as a major cable operator, for example, or TracFone. And oh okay, yeah, that is probably not the scale that I tend to be operating at. So, if I were to envision this as a carnival ride and there's a sign next to it, “You must be at least this tall to ride,” how tall should someone be?Thomas: That is a great way of putting it and I would—I can't really go into specifics because I'm still kind of new. But my understanding—Corey: Oh yeah. Make sweeping policy statements about your new employer 40 hours in. What could possibly go wrong?Thomas: My understanding is the companies that we—that are our target market today are fairly large enterprises with real data challenges, real monitoring data challenges. And so no, we're not doing—it's not transactional. You can't just come to our website and say, “Here, click this, you'll be up and running.” Because the volumes of data we're talking about, this requires a little bit of specialty in helping make sure that things are getting set up and correct.Think of it this way. Like if somebody said, “Here, do the statistical analysis on whatever, and here's Excel and go at it and get me that report by the end of the day and tell me how we're doing,” most people would be like, “I don't have enough information on that. Can you help me?” So, we're still at that, hey, we're going to need to help you through this and make sure it's correctly configured. And it's doing what you expect. So, how tall are you? I think that goes both ways. I think you're at a height where you still need some supervision [laugh]. Does that make sense?Corey: I think that's probably a good way of framing it. It's a—again, I'm not saying that you should never ever, ever, ever have a ‘you must contact us to get started.' There are a bunch of products like that out there. It turns out that even at The Duckbill Group here, we always want to have a series of conversations first. We don't have a shopping cart that's, “One consulting, please,” just because we'll get into trouble with that.Though I think our first pass offering of a two-day engagement might have one of those somewhere still lurking around. Don't quote me on that. Hell is other people's websites. It's great. But your own yeah, whoever reads that thing“. Wait, we're saying what?” Don't quote me on any of that, my God.Thomas: But I think that's a good way of putting it. Like, you want to have some conversations first. Yeah, so you—and again, we're still, we're fairly young. We've only—we're Series A, so we've been around 16 months, like… you know, the other website you're looking at is probably going to change within the next six or eight weeks just because information gets outdated—Corey: It already has. It put your picture on it.Thomas: Right. But I mean, things are going to things move pretty fast with startups, especially this one. So, I just expect that over time, I envision some type of a free tier, but we're not there yet.Corey: That's one of those challenges as far as in some cases moving down market. I found that anything that acts like a security tool, for example, has to, on some level, charge enough to be worth the squeeze. One of the challenges there is, I'm either limited for anything that does CloudTrail analysis over in AWS-land, for example. I can either find a bunch of janky things off GitHub or I can spend what starts at $1,000 a month and increases rapidly from there, which is about twice the actual AWS bill that it would wind up alerting on. Not that the business value isn't there, but because a complex sale is, in many cases, always going to be attendant with some of these products, so why not go after the larger companies where the juice is worth the squeeze rather than the folks who are not going to see the value and it'd be just as challenging to wind up launching a sale into?The corollary, of course, is that some of those small companies do in fact, grow meteorically. But it's a bit of a lottery.Thomas: Yep.Corey: Ugh. So, I have to ask as well, while we're talking about strange decisions that people might have made, in the world of tech, in many cases, when someone gets promoted—like, “So, does that mean extra money?” “No, not really. We just get extra adjectives added to our job title.” Good for us. You have decided to add letters in a different way, by going back for a second master's degree. What on earth would possess you to do such a thing?Thomas: I—man, that is—you know, so I got my first master's degree because I thought I was going to, I thought I was be a math teacher and basketball coach. And I had a master's degree in math and I thought that was going to be a thing. I'll get a job, you know, coaching and teaching at some small school somewhere. But then I realized that I enjoyed things like eating and keeping the wind off me, and so I realized I had to go get a jobby-job. And so, I took my masters in math, I ended—I got a job as a software analyst, and just rolled that from one thing to another until where I am today.But about four years ago, when I started falling back in love with my roots in math, and statistical analysis became a real easy thing for people to really start doing for themselves—well actually, that was about eight years ago—but the past four or five years, I've been earning more certifications in data science technologies. And then I found this program at Georgia Tech. So, Georgia Tech has an online masters of science and data analytics. And it's extremely affordable. So, I looked at a lot of programs, Corey, over the past few years, especially during the pandemic.I had some free time, so I browsed the love these places, and they were charging 50, $60,000 and you had to do it within two, three years. And in one case, the last class you had to take, your practicum, had to be all done on campus. So, you had to go, like, live somewhere. And I'm looking at all—none of that was practical. And all of a sudden, somebody shows up and goes, “So, you can go online, fully online, Georgia Tech, $275 a credit. Costs ten grand for the entire program.”And you can—it's geared towards a working professional and you can take anywhere from two to six years. So, you take, like, one class a semester if you want, or two or even three if they allow you, but they usually restrict you. So, it just blew my mind. Like, this exists today that I can start earning another Master's degree in data analytics and I'll say, be… classically trained in how—it's funny because when I learn things in class, I'm like, I feel like I'm Thornton Melon in Back to School, and I'm just like, “Oh, you left out a bunch of stuff. That isn't how you do it all,” right?That's kind of my reaction. I'm like, “Calm down. I'm sure the professor has point. I'll hear [laugh] him out.” But to me, you asked why, and I just the challenge. Am I really good at what I do? Like, I feel I am. I already have a master's degree. I'm not worried about the level of work and the commitment involved in earning another one.I just wanted to show to myself that could—I want to learn and make sure I can do things like code in Python. If anybody has a chance to take a programming class, a graduate-level programming classes at Georgia Tech, you should do it. You should see where your skills rate at that level, right? So, it was for the challenge. I want to know if I can do it. I'm three classes in. I just started my fourth, actually, today was the start of the fall semester.And so, I'm about halfway through, and I'm loving it. It's not too taxing. It's just the right speed for me. I get to do it in my leisure hours as they were. Yeah, so I did it for the challenge. I'm really glad I'm doing it. I encourage anybody interested in obtaining a degree in data analytics to look at the Georgia Tech program. It's well worth it. Georgia Tech's not a bad school. Like, if you had to go to school in the South, it's all right.Corey: I always find it odd, just, you had your first master's degree in, you know, mathematics, and now you're going for data analytics, which sounds like mathematics with extra steps.Thomas: It is.Corey: Were there opportunities that you were hoping to pursue that were not available to you with just the one master's degree?Thomas: So, it's interesting you say that because I'm so old that when I went to school, all we had was math, that was it. It was pure mathematics. I could have been a statistics major, I think, and computer science was a thing. And one day I met a guy who transferred into math from computer science. I'm like, “Why would you do that? What are you going to do with the degree in math?”And his response is, “What am I going to do with a degree in computer science?” And I look back and I realized how we were both right. So, I think at the time if there had been a course in applied mathematics, that would have piqued my interest. Like, what am I going to do with this math degree other than become an actuary because that was about all I knew at the time. You were a teacher or an actuary, and that was about it.So, the idea now that they have these programs in data analytics or data science that are little more narrow of focus, like, “This is what we're going to do: we're going to apply a little bit of math, some calculus, some stats; we're going to show you how to build your own simulations; we're going to show you how to ask the right questions of the data.” To give you a little bit of training. Because they can't teach you everything. You really have to have real-world experience in whatever domain you're going to focus on, be it finance or marketing or whatever. All these bright financial operations, that's just analytics for finance, marketing operations, that's analytics for marketing. It's just, to me, I think just the opportunity to have that focus would have been great back then and it didn't exist. And I want to take advantage of it now.Corey: I've always been a fan of advising people who ask me, “Should I go back to school,” because usually, there's something else driving that. Like, I am honestly not much of a career mentor. My value basically comes in as being a horrible warning to others. On paper, I have an eighth-grade education. I am not someone to follow for academic approaches.But when someone early or mid-career asks, “Should I get another degree?” Unpacking that is always a bit of a fun direction for me to go in. Because at some level, we've sold entire generations a bill of goods, where oh, if you don't know what to do, just get more credentials and then your path will be open to you in a bunch of new and exciting ways. Okay, great. I'm not saying that's inherently wrong, but talk to people doing the thing you'd want to do after you have that degree, maybe, you know, five or six years down the professional line from where you are and get their take on it.Because in some cases, yeah, there are definite credentials you're going to need—I don't want you to be a self-taught surgeon, for example—but there are other things where it doesn't necessarily open doors. People are just reflexively deciding that I'm going to go after that instead. And then you can start doing the math of, okay, assume that you have whatever the cost of the degree is in terms of actual cost and opportunity cost. Is this the best path forward for you to wind up getting where you want to go? It sounds like in your particular case, this is almost a labor of love or a hobby style of approach, as opposed to, “Well, I really want Job X, but I just can't get it without the right letters after my name.” Is that a fair assessment?Thomas: It's not unfair. It is definitely fair, but I would also say, you know, if somebody came and said, “Hey Tom, we need somebody to run our data science team or our data engineering team,” I've got the experience for—the only thing I would be lacking is, you know, production experience, like, with machine-learning pipelines or something. I don't have that today.Corey: Which is basically everyone else, too, but that's a little—bit of a quiet secret in the industry.Thomas: Yeah, that's—okay. Bad example. But you know what I'm saying is that the only thing I'd be lacking would be that practical experience, so this is one way that—to at least start that little bit of experience, especially with the end result being the practicum that we'll be doing. It's, like, six credits at the very end. So yes, it's a fair thing.I wouldn't—hobby isn't really the right—this is really something that makes me get out of bed in the morning. I get to work with data today and I'm going to get—I'm going to tell a great story using data today. I really do enjoy those things. But then at the tail end of this, if it happens to lead to a position that somebody says, “Hey, we need somebody, vice president of data engineering. This a really good”—honestly, the things I look for are the roles and the roles I want are to have a role that allows me to really have an impact on other people's lives.And that's one of the things about Selector. The things that we're able to do for these admins that are just drowning in data, the data is just in their way, and that we can help them make sense of it all, to me, that's impactful. So, those are the types of roles that I will be looking for as well in the future, especially at the high level of something data science-y.Corey: I think that that is a terrific example of what I'm talking about. Because I've met a number of folks, especially very early-20s range where, okay, they've gotten the degree, but now they don't know what to do because every time they're applying for jobs, it doesn't seem to work for them. You've been around this industry for 25 years. Everyone needs a piece of paper that says they know certain things, and in your case, it long ago transitioned into being—I would assume—your resumé, the history of things you have done that look equivalent. Part of me, on some level, wonders if there isn't an academic snobbery going on at some level, where a number of teams are, “Oh, we'd love to have you in, but you don't have a PhD.”And then people get the PhD. “From the right school, in the right area of concentration.” It's like, you just keep moving these very expensive goalposts super quickly. Remember, I have an eighth-grade education. I'm not coming at this from a place of snobbery and I'm also not one of those folks who's well it didn't work for me, therefore, it won't work for anyone else either because that's equally terrible in a different direction.It's just making sure that people are going into these things with their eyes open. With you, it's never been a concern. You've been around this industry so long that it is extremely unlikely to me [laugh] that you, “Oh, wait. You mean a degree won't magically solve all of my problems and regrow some of my hair and make me two inches taller, et cetera, et cetera?” But yeah, do I remember in the early days just how insipid and how omnipresent that pressure was.Thomas: Yeah. I've been at companies where we've brought in people because of the education and—or I'm sorry. Let's be more specific. I've been at companies where we've sent current employees—as we used to call it—off the charm school, which is basically [MBA 00:25:44].Corey: [laugh].Thomas: And I swear, so many of them came back and they just forgot how to think, how to have common sense. Like, they were very much focused on one particular thing and this is just it, and they forgot there were maybe humans involved, and maybe look for a human answer instead of the statistically correct one. So, I think that was a good thing for me as well to be around that because, yeah, somebody put it me best years ago: “Education by itself isn't enough. If you combine education with motivation, now you've really got something.” And your case, I don't know where you went for eighth grade, it could have been the best eighth-grade program ever, but you definitely have the motivation through the years to overcome anything that might have been lacking in the form of education. So, it's really the combination—Corey: Oh, you'd be surprised. A lot of those things are still readily apparent to people who work with me, so I've done a good job of camouflaging them. Hazzah.Thomas: Just it's, you got to have both. You can't just rely on one or the other.Corey: So, last question, given that you are the data guy and SQLRockstar is your username in a bunch of places. What's the best database? I mean, I would always say it's Route 53, but I understand that can be controversial for some folks, given that their SQL implementation is not yet complete. What's your take?Thomas: So clearly, I'm partial to anything inside the Microsoft data platform, with the exception being Access. I think if Access disappeared from the universe… society might be better off. But that's for a different day, I think the best database is the one that does the job you need it to do. Honestly, the database shouldn't really matter. It's just an abstraction. The database engine is just something in between you and the data you need, right?So, whatever you're using, if it's doing the job that you need it to do, then that's the best database you could have. I learned a long time ago to not pick sides, choose fiefdoms. Like, it just didn't matter. It's all kind of the same. And in a lot of cases, if you go to, like, the DB-Engines Rankings, you'll see how many of these systems these days, there's a lot of overlap. They offer all the same features and the differences between them are getting smaller and smaller in a lot of cases. So yeah, it's… you got to database, it does what you need to do? That's great. That's the best database.Corey: Especially since any database, I suspect, can be made to perform a given task, even if sub-optimally. Which states back to my core ethos of, quite frankly, anything is a database if you hold it wrong.Thomas: Yeah, it really is. I mean, we've had those discussions. I kid about Access because it's just a painful thing for a lot of different reasons. But is Excel a database? And I would say no but, you know—because it can't do certain things that I would expect a relational engine to do. And then you find out, well, I can make it do those things. So, now is it a database? And, yeah…Corey: [laugh]. Yeah. Well, what if I apply some brute force? Will it count then? Like, you have information, Thomas. Can I query you?Thomas: Yes. Yes, yes, [laugh] you can. I also have latency.Corey: Exactly. That means you are a suboptimal database.Thomas: [laugh].Corey: Good job. I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk about what you're up to these days and finally coming on the show. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?Thomas: Well, I'm becoming more active on LinkedIn. So, it's linkedin/in/sqlrockstar. Just search for SQLRockstar, you'll find me everywhere. I mean, I do have a blog. I rarely blog these days. Most of the posts I do is over at LinkedIn.And you might find me at some networking events coming up since Selector really does focus on network observability. So, you could see me there. And you know what? I'm also going to have an appearance on the Screaming in the Cloud podcast, so you can listen to me there.Corey: Excellent. And I imagine that's the one we don't have to put into these [show notes. 00:29:44]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really do appreciate it.Thomas: Thanks for having me, Corey. I look forward to coming back.Corey: As I look forward to seeing you again over here. Thomas LaRock, Principal Developer Evangelist at Selector. 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 insulting comment because then we're going to use all those together as a distributed database.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.

When someone passes away, the loss can bring us to our knees metaphorically - and sometimes literally. When it's literal, that's the body talking, echoing the heart. Crying can be like that too. Today we look at intention, death, and tears.   Music by Terry Hughes   Links: Married & Manifesting   Rate This Podcast     Also Check Out: Surviving a Recent Loss The Un-Baby Shower     Full Transcript   Kluttz: I just feel so at peace with what happened now and I just think that some of my family members are not there yet, and so I try to be careful about what I say because I don't want to dishonor their grief if it's taking them, you know, longer than it took me because everybody has their own journey in it.   When someone passes away, the loss can bring us to our knees - metaphorically  and sometimes literally. When it's literal, that's the body talking, echoing the heart. Crying can be like that too. Today we look at intention, death, and tears.   This is Shame Piñata. I'm Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today I would like to introduce you to Ryan Klutz, a Women's Marriage Coach based in Southern California. Ryan's work was recommended to me by a friend who really admires how intentional she is.    Kluttz: I get up at about 5:15 so that I can have a solid hour, hour and a half to myself because I don't like to talk when I wake up and I don't want anyone talking to me either. So instead of forcing my family to be silent when they wake up, I get up early so that I can have that time and space to myself. And then I get to journal and meditate and drink my tea and then I take our puppy for a walk. And by then I'm ready to function on some level and, you know, if we run into someone who wants to interact with her or has a dog, you know, I'm fully ready to have a conversation with another human being. And then I come inside and everybody is starting to get up. And that's definitely the most important piece for me. So yeah, starting off the morning, doing journaling and meditating and then making sure that I have little bits of mindfulness throughout the day to keep it going.   Thomas: Do you have lists or things put around the house to remind you to drop into that place?   Kluttz: I put it in my list of things to do for my daily tasks for work because I've… Yeah, someone pointed out to me that because if I do struggle with that, then the place where I don't struggle is my to do list. And so if it's on my list, I'll do it. And that's what's been happening. [LAUGHS]   Thomas: Nice, nice. I just had this random memory pop in my mind of when I was working at a new job and I had a big list of things to do to remember how to do everything as I was being trained and I was very nervous. I stepped away from the desk, and I came back and somebody had written… somebody had seen my list, which I felt a little bit embarrassed about that somebody had seen that I had this list, and they wrote, “Do a little dance” at the end of it. [LAUGHS] So I did a dance and I checked it off. And I yelled, “I did a little dance!”   Kluttz: That's great. Yeah, that's, that's kind of the types of pushes that I need. You know, my husband will sometimes come out of the bedroom and see me hunched over my desk, and he'll try to gently say, “Maybe you should take a break. Maybe you should go meditate or something.” And normally what I was doing before was brushing it off and, you know, kind of feeling like “Don't boss me around.” Even though he wasn't, you know, he wasn't bossing me around. He was making a suggestion and trying… because he could see that that could be something that would be helpful for me in the moment. But I get… I would get tunnel vision on what I was doing. And so now, and this is just really within the last couple of weeks, because my grandpa passed away at the end of February. And it really… as difficult as it was to deal with at first. I mean, he was 96, so it wasn't like we were completely shocked about it, you know, we were just sort of enjoying the time that we had with him while he was still here. But when he actually passed away, it allowed me to see things differently. And to start recognizing that as much as I love to check off boxes and complete tasks, is that what I want to be able to be to say that I did when I potentially reach 96 years old? Or do I want to have, you know, I really enjoyed myself. And that was one of those things that I've read and seen… that list of the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. I'm fully aware of the idea of enjoying your life and I do implement a lot of pieces of those ideas but it just sunk in on a deeper level.   So when Ryan and I first met to chat and get to know each other before the interview, we thought it would be wonderful to have her come on Shame Piñata and speak about rite of passage she had been through with her husband and offer some perspective in the realm of conscious marriage. However, during the interview when she shared about the loss of her grandpa, the energy just kind of changed and I think we both knew that that was what needed to be spoken about that day. So you're going to hear more about Ryan's Ryan's grandpa Jack. And I want to give you a heads up that her grandpa passed in kind of a sudden and kind of a sad way.    Kluttz: He was still skiing at 93. My dad actually had to go visit him in Maine where he lived by himself in the middle of the woods with just his dog and say, you know, “Hey, I think it might be time for you to not ski anymore given your age and, you know, the fragility of your bones possibly …” And I thought that was funny. And I know at 94, he learned to ride a snowmobile… And he was just constantly doing things. And one of the things… my husband and I asked him what the secret to life was, and he said, “Never sit down.” And, you know, we took that to mean exactly how he was - he was always doing activities and enjoying himself, you know, because he talks about how other people who were also WWII vets, they passed away sooner because once they retired, they just stopped doing anything, because they felt for some reason that, you know, retirement meant doing nothing. And he was still driving, still plowing other people's driveways for them when it would snow because he lived in Maine and snows a lot. Winter is very long in Maine. So yeah, he was just a really incredible human being and for me to have... As sad as I can get that he's gone, the ability to use that grief to change my own behavioral patterns has been really, really powerful. And so I'm grateful for that. And I'm also grateful that he gets to be with my grandma now, because she passed away almost 12 years ago, and he really, really missed her still. So it's just sort of like a completion and I've become accustomed to grief and so I just wanted to start to sort of use it instead of fight it.   Thomas: Hmm. Can you say more about that, about using it?   Kluttz: Yeah, I mean, I definitely, you know, when I found out… it wasn't… It was an accident, actually. He had been plowing people's driveways and he pulled his truck into the garage, shut the garage door, went in the house, and went about his evening, had dinner and everything and then went to bed. He never turned his truck off.    Thomas: Oh, wow.    Kluttz: And so his… his bedroom was right beside the garage, basically just down a little hallway. And so carbon monoxide got into the house. And so he did go peacefully in his sleep. He blocked… the dog past as well. She was a very sweet dog. And so I allowed myself to have that time of just feeling the grief, just allowing the sadness to come out however it wanted to come out. I took off a few days and let myself just do whatever I felt like doing which ended up being part of the way that I saw I could be allowing myself to be doing way more of what I want to do on top of building the career that I'm working on. And so once I was able to let that part pass, it became, you know, the sort of the things I mentioned earlier of how do I want to feel about my life if I reach 96? Or, you know, whenever it's the end for me, how do I want to feel? And I don't think that I would be proud of myself to say, “Well, I checked off all my boxes”, you know… So I just started to sort of pivot and and be inspired by his life instead of being… instead of continuing to be sad, you know. I'll always miss him. But I felt like, for the first time, in losing someone, I really felt like I could ask myself the question, “How can this serve me?” Because going forward, you know, we all lose people in our lives and I can fully sit with the idea that you have to let the emotions pass, but I also want to learn from it. So that was a way for me to learn from the grief itself, what can I pull into my life that I loved about him? And that way, he, you know, continues to live on.   Thomas: Definitely. That's so beautiful.    [MUSIC]   If you enjoy Shame Piñata, consider checking out Daily Magic for Peace. Daily Magic for Peace is a totally different kind of show that invites you to grab an item and do a simple ritual for peace in Ukraine. Episodes are less than 10 minutes long with a focus on calming the nervous system and keeping your heart open. You can find Daily Magic for Peace wherever you're listening to this podcast.   Thomas: It's so rare for people to give themselves permission to feel the grief when they lose somebody and especially what we've been experiencing with COVID, I think we've all become sort of extra numb to… It's been so overwhelming and it's been difficult. And then there's the personal and there's the collective and there's the global and there's so many layers to it. So I think even now, it's even more amazing when people can give themselves the time to really feel. So healthy.   Kluttz: Yeah. I mean, within the last year, I think people either were forced to feel, or, you know, just tried even harder to push it down, which is super difficult when you're stuck at home and you don't get to see anybody. But yeah, that's part of what I teach is letting your emotions out. Because someone once said to me, “What comes up must come out.” And if we don't address it… and I think people get scared when they think of, “Oh, I'm going to address my emotions.” And I learned several years ago that our emotions are really just feedback about how we're feeling. And it's not, I think we tend to feel like, the way I feel right now is I'm going to feel for the rest of my life, if I let it out. I'm scared of letting it out. And if we do let it out, it passes so much more quickly. It's been a week and a half and I really miss him, but I don't get choked up when I talk about him anymore. And you know, a few days ago, I still was, so I just give myself the time and space to let it out. And now I can feel the acceptance and the peace and the joy of who he was and the connection that we had. And I'm also really happy with the relationship that we had. Because, you know, sometimes when someone passes away, you immediately think of all the things that you should have done or that you wish you had more time for. And I felt completely at peace with the fact that we visited him, I called him, we emailed, and I texted him pictures of our daughters and our dog because he really loved dogs. And so I didn't have that feeling of, “Oh, I wish we would have, you know, seen him more.” You know, we did a lot and we actually were planning on seeing him this summer. So there was a part of me that was missing that and was, you know, because… even though he was 96, I really hadn't even thought about the possibility of not seeing him this summer. And so that was actually probably one of the hardest parts of the grief for me was accepting that. But yeah, I agree that a lot of people don't allow them to sit…   don't allow themselves to sit with their emotions and I think it's just kind of a societal norm that you need to just suck it up. Keep on going.   As the interview went on, our conversation turned to the power of tears, how they help us, cleanse us, rebirth us. How they are a physical process highlighting our body's innate ability to heal and self-regulate. And we both acknowledged times when we didn't want to cry out of a desire to protect someone else.    Kluttz: Actually just… four days after I found out, I was listening to soothing music laying on the couch and like going in and out of crying as my, my girls were sitting on the couch watching a movie. And I wanted to be able to let it out but I didn't want to…. I didn't really want to talk to them about it in the moment. So I was, you know, sort of in this in-between place where I know, it's okay for me to cry in front of them, but I just kind of want to lay here and let it out. And as you know, the tears were coming out, it felt like, I had this thought of, “This as a physical manifestation of just my body needing to release these emotions.” And it's really powerful.   Thomas: And then if we follow it and let it happen, you know, if it's a safe enough place, or we're just able to go there, let ourselves just drop into that, it can really just do what it needs to do.    Kluttz: Yeah, it's just it feels counterintuitive to do that. Thomas: Yeah. Have you noticed your tears being different for different kinds of crying ever?   Kluttz: Actually, no. I have not noticed that. But I feel like the next time I cry about something, I will start to pay attention. Like, you know, how it feels when they're when they're coming out. That's very interesting.   Thomas: When I'm really emotionally attached to something, and I'm really like, “This is unfair!” … and I'm creating, like a lot of content, that my tears are sort of small and hot. But then I had this other experience where it's some… I don't remember what even what it was, but a couple of times something was just breaking my heart that was just… it sort of had a beautiful quality to it. It wasn't like tears of joy, but it was just… there was a lot of selfless feeling to it…. an innocence. I don't know how to explain it, but the tears were, like, cool and large. And they just had such a different feeling to them. And I was like, “Wow, this is crazy! My body creates…. I cry different apparently depending on, like, what I'm processing.”   Kluttz: I've never noticed the difference in temperature. But I guess the amount that comes out sometimes can differ. I actually… when I watched a live stream of the funeral and you know, I have… I had already allowed so much of my grief to come out that when other people were speaking and crying… especially my dad when he was speaking, because he was the second oldest but my uncle that was the oldest died in a plane crash, gosh, almost 20 years ago now. So he's been the oldest for a while and so he spoke and it was a good mix of sad and then light things that made people chuckle. And I had my husband makes fun of it when they show it in movies, but I'd had one single tear went down! And then other times, it's like across your whole bottom of your eye and it feels like it's just like gushing, but I don't know what the difference is as far as how I'm feeling when those things happen or when other things happen. So I'm gonna definitely watch out for that.   I'm glad that you got to spend this time with us and that you got to meet Ryan and hear a bit of her story. And I hope that your relationship with your own tears is a connected and loving one. The people we love are such a gift and losing them can be so very hard, like a hole ripped into the tapestry that is us. I encourage you to be as gentle as you can with yourself today if you are going through a recent loss and know you're not alone.    Ryan Kluttz is a marriage advocate teaching women to empower themselves in their own marriages. She has been married herself for 16 years and knows what it takes to make it amazing. Ryan currently lives in Southern California with her husband, two daughters, and their puppy. Find her work at https://www.marriedandmanifesting.com    Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata, reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. I'm Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

God has sent (t)His Lovefor us to followout of the illusion.So don't let anything distract you from this Love.  Not yourself, not your thoughts, or anyone else. Nothing is worth it. Nothing, this No Thing, this Silence is worth it.  It's worth your attention.  It made you worthy. It made you Holy.  It has given you a Purpose. And right now It looks like whatever you are called to do 'today'. The pressure is not on you, the Presence is on you.* Affirm: The Presence is on me, in me, for me.And then just do it. Don't think about it. Just do it. Just watch It accomplish everything.   I Love you, Niknikki@curlynikki.com

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Wentworth and Larsen on buying time, published by Akash on January 9, 2023 on LessWrong. This post summarizes a discussion between Thomas Larsen and John Wentworth. They discuss efforts to buy time, outreach to AGI labs, models of institutional change, and other ideas relating to a post that Thomas, Olivia Jimenez, and I released: Instead of technical research, more people should focus on buying time. I moderated the discussion and prepared a transcript with some of the key parts of the conversation. On the value of specific outreach to lab decision-makers vs. general outreach to lab employees John: When thinking about "social" strategies in general, a key question/heuristic is "which specific people do you want to take which specific actions?" For instance, imagine I have a start-up building software for hospitals, and I'm thinking about marketing/sales. Then an example of what not to do (under this heuristic) would be "Buy google ads, banner ads in medical industry magazines, etc". That strategy would not identify the specific people who I want to take a specific action (i.e. make the decision to purchase my software for a hospital). An example of what to do instead would be "Make a list of hospitals, then go to the website of each hospital one-by-one and look at their staff to figure out who would probably make the decision to purchase/not purchase my software. Then, go market to those people specifically - cold call/email them, track them down at conferences, set up a folding chair on the sidewalk outside their house and talk to them when they get home, etc. Applying that to e.g. efforts to regulate AI development, the heuristic would say to not try to start some giant political movement. Instead, identify which specific people you need to write a law (e.g. judges or congressional staff), which specific people will decide whether it goes into effect (e.g. judges or swing votes in congress), which specific people will implement/enforce it (e.g. specific bureaucrats, who may be sufficient on their own if we don't need to create new law). Applying it to e.g. efforts to convince AI labs to stop publishing advances or shift their research projects, the heuristic would say to not just go convincing random ML researchers. Instead, identify which specific people at the major labs are de-facto responsible for the decisions you're interested in (like e.g. decisions about whether to publish some advancement), and then go talk to those people specifically. Also, make sure to walk them through the reasoning enough that they can see why the decisions you want them to make are right; a vague acknowledgement that AI X-risk is a thing doesn't cut it. Thomas: It seems like we're on a similar page here. I do think that on current margins, if typical OpenAI employees become more concerned about x-risk, this will likely have positive follow through effects on general OpenAI epistemics. And I expect this will likely lead to improved decisions. Perhaps you disagree with that? John: Making random OpenAI (or Deepmind, or Anthropic, or ...) employees more concerned about X-risk is plausibly net-positive value in expectation; I'm unsure about that. But more importantly, it is not plausibly high value in expectation. When I read your post on time-buying, the main picture I end up with is a bunch of people running around randomly spreading the gospel of AI X-risk. More generally, that seems-to-me to be the sort of thing most people jump to when they think about "time-buying". In my mind, 80% of the value is in identifying which specific people we want to make which specific decisions, and then getting in contact with those specific people. And I usually don't see people thinking about that very much, when they talk about "time-buying" interventions. Thomas: Fully agree with this [the last tw...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Wentworth and Larsen on buying time, published by Akash on January 9, 2023 on LessWrong. This post summarizes a discussion between Thomas Larsen and John Wentworth. They discuss efforts to buy time, outreach to AGI labs, models of institutional change, and other ideas relating to a post that Thomas, Olivia Jimenez, and I released: Instead of technical research, more people should focus on buying time. I moderated the discussion and prepared a transcript with some of the key parts of the conversation. On the value of specific outreach to lab decision-makers vs. general outreach to lab employees John: When thinking about "social" strategies in general, a key question/heuristic is "which specific people do you want to take which specific actions?" For instance, imagine I have a start-up building software for hospitals, and I'm thinking about marketing/sales. Then an example of what not to do (under this heuristic) would be "Buy google ads, banner ads in medical industry magazines, etc". That strategy would not identify the specific people who I want to take a specific action (i.e. make the decision to purchase my software for a hospital). An example of what to do instead would be "Make a list of hospitals, then go to the website of each hospital one-by-one and look at their staff to figure out who would probably make the decision to purchase/not purchase my software. Then, go market to those people specifically - cold call/email them, track them down at conferences, set up a folding chair on the sidewalk outside their house and talk to them when they get home, etc. Applying that to e.g. efforts to regulate AI development, the heuristic would say to not try to start some giant political movement. Instead, identify which specific people you need to write a law (e.g. judges or congressional staff), which specific people will decide whether it goes into effect (e.g. judges or swing votes in congress), which specific people will implement/enforce it (e.g. specific bureaucrats, who may be sufficient on their own if we don't need to create new law). Applying it to e.g. efforts to convince AI labs to stop publishing advances or shift their research projects, the heuristic would say to not just go convincing random ML researchers. Instead, identify which specific people at the major labs are de-facto responsible for the decisions you're interested in (like e.g. decisions about whether to publish some advancement), and then go talk to those people specifically. Also, make sure to walk them through the reasoning enough that they can see why the decisions you want them to make are right; a vague acknowledgement that AI X-risk is a thing doesn't cut it. Thomas: It seems like we're on a similar page here. I do think that on current margins, if typical OpenAI employees become more concerned about x-risk, this will likely have positive follow through effects on general OpenAI epistemics. And I expect this will likely lead to improved decisions. Perhaps you disagree with that? John: Making random OpenAI (or Deepmind, or Anthropic, or ...) employees more concerned about X-risk is plausibly net-positive value in expectation; I'm unsure about that. But more importantly, it is not plausibly high value in expectation. When I read your post on time-buying, the main picture I end up with is a bunch of people running around randomly spreading the gospel of AI X-risk. More generally, that seems-to-me to be the sort of thing most people jump to when they think about "time-buying". In my mind, 80% of the value is in identifying which specific people we want to make which specific decisions, and then getting in contact with those specific people. And I usually don't see people thinking about that very much, when they talk about "time-buying" interventions. Thomas: Fully agree with this [the last tw...

Émission menschpower, caves et jambes en l'air. On ne veut pas fermer nos yeux, on ne veut pas s'endormir, parce que vous nous manqueriez et on ne veut rien louper. Parce que même quand l'on rêve de vous, le plus doux des rêves n'arrangera rien, vous nous manquerez toujours bébé, et on ne veut rien rater.et sur le tube:Au programme cette semaine:* Armageddon Time, de James Gray. Nouvel avatar filmique du "cinéaste cainri indé révélé dans les 90's", catégorie "j'ai plus de 50 ans et je fais un film sur ma jeunesse et / ou son environnement avec une vibe nostalgique".* Barbarian, de Zach Cregger. Horreur à la page.Et contrairement à ce qui a été annoncé, nous ne parlerons pas de X ce soir - le direct, à la bourre, tout ça - mais dans deux semaines (normalement, on sait jamais).PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Le Film du Dimanche Soir, 18 décembre: ALIEN$. Coups de cœurs:THOMAS: It felt like a kiss (Adam Curtis)THIBAUT: La Féline (Tourneur)DOC ERWAN: Federico Fellini - Je suis un grand menteurJUSTEEN: Severance (Dan Erickson) + Don't Cry (MorMor) + A 1000 Times (Hamilton Leithauser et Rostam) JB: Demon (Jason Shiga) + Top Gun: Maverick (Kosinsiki et Tom) PLAYLISTPrégénérique / Extrait d'un entretien avec James Gray pour FilmoTV au moment de la sortie de The ImmigrantThe Clash / Armagideon TimeLitige / Sortir du passé

Sometimes the cultural limits we grow up with can become our norms. Like the water we swim in, we forget to question them. What happens when we notice them and push back? Today Grace Chon shares her story of what happened when she dedicated a few moments a day to creative expression as a new mom and the photo series that went viral.   Grace Chon Creativity School Podcast Grace's Photo Series   Shelter in Place Podcast Labs Weekender   Music by Terry Hughes   Rate This Podcast Also Check Out: S2 E5 The Unbaby Shower (Tristy Taylor) S2 E10 Finding Your Own Magic (Erica Sodos) Full Transcript   Chon: I'm just really glad that I, you know, didn't buy into the stories of what's possible as a mother, what's possible as a working mother, and that I've really been able to experience that like, you can be all all of you!   Sometimes the cultural limits we grow up with can become our norms. Like the water we swim in, we forget to question them. What happens when we notice them and push back? Today Grace Chon shares her story of what happened when she dedicated a few moments a day to creative expression as a new mom and the photo series that went viral. This is Shame Piñata. I'm Colleen Thomas.    Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Several years ago when I was considering starting this podcast, I stumbled upon a show called “Creativity School with Grace Chon”. My husband and I listened regularly on our way to the train station each morning and then I continued to listen as I walked from one foggy bus stop to the next in downtown Oakland. Grace was just starting Creativity School then, and she regularly shared what a scary journey it was for her: putting herself out there, being bold enough to think she had something relevant to say, worrying no one would listen. I could relate to all of that! And yet, she did it and she modeled for me and all her listeners how to just go for it, believe it yourself, and make it happen. But not just simply to “go for it, believe in yourself, and make it happen” - but to really get on a deep level that starting a new project is a hugely vulnerable thing. It takes deep courage and chutzpah and there's a simple reason for that. Our creative projects are actually little bits of our souls. In creating them we are letting a bit of our soul-essence come into a form that can be shared with our world. That sounds completely safe and easy, right?   Grace and I recently sat down to talk through another transition in her life - becoming a mom for the first time. We focused on what that huge transition was like for her, how she took care of herself throughout it, and how she found time to keep expressing her creative self.    Thomas: So take us to that time in your life, what was what was going on? How did it feel to be there?   Chon: Ah, gosh, it was a really hard time in my life. Nothing can prepare you for motherhood. And I think, in hindsight, it's easy for me to see what was so hard about all of it. Aside from it just being a brand new experience, you're doing something you've never done before, the lack of sleep, the postpartum depression, all of that. But I think what I've realized is also being a type A workaholic overachiever where I prepare myself as much as I can by reading all the things. You can't do that with motherhood at all. Like nothing you read, nothing you try to prepare yourself with can prepare you for this moment and for this experience. And so I was just grappling with a lot, I think, not just physically, like, literally not sleeping, trying to take care of a baby, but emotionally, mentally… All while trying to juggle that with a career too. Because I was, you know, self-employed career as a photographer, and I only did a three month maternity leave and then I just jumped right back into work. And so it was a lot going on and I kind of felt sometimes, like I was losing myself, losing my identity as just Grace. But also, who am I as a photographer now? Where does this put my career? And it was just a lot of struggling. It was hard trying to find myself in where I fit where, you know, I fit in with this whole new role I have now as a mother,   Thomas: Totally, and I have to imagine that because I haven't been through that transition for myself. But I imagine it's got to be like… I mean of everything we could do in life, right? It's gotta be like one of the biggest transitions, especially for a first time mom.   Chon: Huge transition that you just cannot ever prepare for. Nothing can prepare you for it. And it's interesting, because I had another baby a year and a half ago and it was a completely different experience because I'd been through everything before I knew what to expect. Even just the lack of sleep didn't impact me as much as it did the first time because I knew what was coming. But when you really don't know what's ahead, transitions can be really… like when you're in that it can be so hard and challenging.   Thomas: Was there a bigger sense of need… of like faith and support and whatever faith might mean the first time through?   Chon: Yeah. [SIGHS.] What's so interesting is I am a very deeply spiritual person. And I have been my whole life, but I really dug deep into it probably five years before my son was born. And, you know, I think when things get really challenging and hard, that's really when one would think that's when you need your spiritual practice or your faith the most. And that's actually in my time when I completely just forgot it, because I was so… Oh, gosh, I was in a really dark place and I just didn't even have the time to meditate, you know… And you know, what's interesting, again, I keep comparing it to now my second child, because I had the wisdom and the experience of having gone through it, you know, I went through some very hard times with my second child as well but this time, that's when I leaned in purposefully, even more into my spirituality, leaned in even more into the meditation and leaned in even more into the faith and the trust and all of that, but it was a lesson learned with my first one because again, like I said, that's really when I wish I had been able to go more into my own faith and my own inner knowing and I just don't even think I had the bandwidth to do to do that.   Thomas: So tell me about the photos of the baby and your dog and how that… How did that happen?   Chon: So my son's name is Jasper, my dog's name is Zoey. And Zoey is a rescue dog from Taiwan. I adopted her in 2007. It's so funny because she's 15 now and things have changed so much in 15 years, because now it's pretty well known, especially in the rescue community about rescue groups that go to other countries where animal welfare is just not as sophisticated or even as top-of-mind as it is here. And so they'll bring the dogs from those countries to adopters in the United States. It's very common, you know, from Iran or other places in Asia, Korea. But in 2007, it was considered very weird. And I did not do it on purpose but I went on petfinder.com to adopt a dog and I came across this puppy staring at me, that was just the cutest thing. And it turned out she was from Taiwan and they had a volunteer and they flew her over here and so she was looking for a home. So that was Zoey. Turns out, she's like this shyest thing you'll ever meet and when we had Jasper, she wanted nothing to do with him, like at all. And so over a period of I want to say by… it took seven months for her to allow him to even touch her. And then once that happened, it was like, “Oh, this kid is really interesting. I like him.” Like, “I'm into him.” And so that was going on, and like I said, I had gone back to work when he was only three months. And I just started feeling like, really like that longing have like, my creative self. And when he was sleeping, I had this idea for taking a photo of them side by side wearing the same hat just because I thought it was cute. And so I took one when he woke up, and I put it on my Facebook page, and my sister was like, “Oh, my God, like, this is so cute. You have to shoot more of them!” And so I did, I ended up shooting 23 of them. I would work on it whenever Jasper went down for his nap. So I just get little spurts of really just getting to do whatever it is that I wanted. Because it was… I was shooting it for myself. It's not client work. It's not for anyone other than me… and it was my space and time to just be me and be as creative as I wanted. And the images just took off. They went viral. They ended up all over the world. I remember in one day I was getting interviewed on the Colombian radio and just interview after interview from websites… like on the phone, from email. And so I'm just doing this all while Jasper was I think nine or 10 months old and just juggling all the media. They were on the Today Show with Kathie Lee and Hoda. I mean, no, it was just crazy. It was… it was amazing. It was an amazing experience for me, because I felt almost like, “You're still in their Grace. You know, like you… you had the seed of an idea that spoke to you. You somehow found the time to get it out of you and just express yourself and shared it and it resonated with people and see like you're still there. You can still do all these things. It's just… it's coming from a different place now.”   This kind of self-talk is one of the things I love to see Grace model. This caring voice within her that cheers her on. Along with her vulnerability, I love this glimpse into a very simple but  profound way that Grace takes care of herself and honors where she is on her journey. We'll be right back.    [SHELTER IN PLACE PROMO]   Grace and I spoke about the freedom that she gave herself in being creative for a few minutes while Jasper took his nap. She was just being herself and it was fun. I asked Grace if she thought it was the energy of that freedom, that fun, that drew people to the photo series.    Chon: That was there and that's what people were responding to. I mean, it's really cute. Right? It's like a little, what's so cute about it is that Zoey looks exactly the same in every single photo. And then Jasper is the most sparkly little rascal you'll ever meet. And so every photo, his smile and his expression is slightly different. And then all the different hats are just different accessories, you know, and I think it was just all these pieces came together and it was just really whimsical. It was really cute. It purposefully was not… what's the word I want to use? It wasn't like cloyingly sweet, you know, it was minimalist. It was, in my opinion, like I wanted it to be very well designed and thoughtful. And so I think a lot of these pieces sort of came together in a way people hadn't seen before and they were really responding to that.   Thomas: That's a huge thing that happened. So how did that impact your experience of becoming a mom?   Chon: You know, what's interesting is that if I'm completely honest, there were times in my darkness where I really thought, “I've ruined my life.” Like, “This is it. This is the end.” I think a lot of this was probably my postpartum depression speaking. But there were times where I was just like, “What did I do? Like I ruined my life.” Like, “My life is gonna be struggle and hardship from here on out.” I think a lot of moms and parents who have been through especially those very hard initial three months know what I'm talking about. I think we've probably all had a moment where like, we're questioning our life decisions and like, “What did I just do?” but it's completely added this richness to my life that has changed everything. Like it hasn't just changed me as a human being, that informs me as an artist, me as a photographer, me as an entrepreneur, me as a business person. And I can't remember… I feel like at one point, someone said this to me, and I wish I remember who it was and when it was. But they said that your work is only gonna get better because you're a mom and they were absolutely right. And it's not that it's like I'm specifically making work about motherhood now or anything like that, but it's better because I just have much so much more access to my emotions and my feelings, and I have a richer experience of like, just, it's - I have this whole layer of life that I've never experienced before, I think anytime you can add more experiences, to you know, all the things you've been through, you bring that with you, it becomes just a new part of you. And so I think, having gone through motherhood and transitioning to that has just made me a better artist. And I also think, you know, talking about spirituality, becoming a parent is a pathway to really healing yourself. You know, I mean, I have encountered things in me that I never would have had to access, you know, as far as wounds and healing myself, I never would have had to go there, if I never became a parent. You know, there they are mirrors. And it's been really revealing to me on exactly the places that I needed to go and heal myself so that I could show up and be the best mom that I can be. And in doing that, that's only made my work better, too. So it's just been a really interesting. I mean, interesting is not even quite… I don't even know what word to describe the journey of parenthood, and now it's informed everything that I am now, but it's been very deep and it's been very illuminating and it's been very healing.   Thomas: It kind of sounds like maybe there was a point in time when when you're when your brain was like, "Oh, I'm either a creative or a mom." Like, “There's not room for both.” And then there was sort of this bright light of, "Oh, wait, I can do both! And it can be even better. At, you know… at both”.   Chon: Yes, you just said it so perfectly. That's exactly… yes! Yes, I think it's so easy to get into very black and white thinking. You're and it's exactly what you just said it was… it was me learning that process and, and going through this realization that I can absolutely be both that both are so beautiful and so valuable. And it's like, the totality of me is what makes everything I do. Because me being a great artist is me being who I am and being authentic and expressing myself and bringing that with me into my mothering. And my mothering is about love and unconditional love and service and all these things and I bring it into my art, right? And so it was really learning how they coexist and how they really help each other. It's like a synergistic relationship.   Thomas: And it's like, it's that idea of being our fullest selves and all the realms that we're in and that not hiding our light. But that's easier said than done. Right? Am I saying that right... yeah, it's easier said than done. Because it's so there's so many things in our minds, especially as women we get socialized that being a mother has to be a certain thing we get told you can't possibly make money in being an artist or creative. Like there's just all of this, like background noise that I know in my life, I've felt like I've overcome a lot of limiting thoughts only to realize that they're actually running through my system and affecting me at a deeper level. It's like a constant dropping, "Oh, it's still there." "Oh, it's still there." You know, because it's like the water we swim in and we're raised with so it's an I think it's a… kind of an ongoing process.   Chon: It is. I've experienced the same. I think it's really becoming aware of what you're thinking and how you're feeling and exposing what those very limiting beliefs are. And I think for me every time I have tried to expand what's possible for myself I just find more of them you know, that's what I just feel like it's an ongoing thing but I enjoy this process. I love this process. I love getting to know who I am. I love finding where I'm holding myself back and I love knowing that all of it's an illusion like I can be anything and anyone that I want to be and it's the only thing that's really stopping me is my own limiting thoughts of what I think is possible. And like you said we're swimming it in and and so cultivating the awareness to even know what you're swimming in and knowing you have the power and the choice to change what that is. I think it's fun. I love you know, I say like I really… I have no desire to do things like bungee jumping and skydiving because I think going within myself is so much more exciting. It's… I really enjoy it.   Thomas: I think an important piece of my life I think But I've learned to do is to is to create a, an atmosphere for myself that counterbalances the water I swim in. So I try to surround myself by things that are very meaningful to me. And people that speak in ways that inspire me and you and your show and having you in my life through listening to your show is just been one of those things. It's like a pillar of… you're just so positive. And so just everything I just, I just love you and your work!   Chon: Thank you! Oh, you just made my day! Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah, I think that specific to the creative journey, it is so unknown, it's like motherhood, it's like, you can't plan for you. You're so purposefully putting yourself on a path where everyone has told you it's not possible. We have so much surrounding us, the water around us tells us that the life of creativity is so not possible. And as if it is possible, and it's worked out for people, it's because they're really special. And it's so not true and so that's… I'm so happy to hear that this show speaks to you. Because that's just what I want people to realize. It's all not true. They're all just stories, and we can change them.   Thomas: Yeah, and there are so many ways that we can be creative in life, like it doesn't creativity doesn't have to be, you know, writing or drawing or singing, or… it's just astonishing to me how creative people are, in general. And then we… somehow it's become like a thing that we're not supposed to own or I don't know, it's just but it feels like it's almost like our, our soul essence. It's like, it's like, you know, because we're all going to create what we're going to create and if we're bold enough, we're going to create great stuff, and it's going to be unique, it's gonna be like our soul speaking.   Chon: 1,000% agree with you! I'm like nodding my head so hard. Yeah, I really think, again, it's like we've limited what that is. And I agree with you. I think it is the energetic imprint that we put on the world and it's our very own unique energetic imprint. And really another way of saying that it is our soul's expression. And I think the reason why people who want to be creative, and just for some reason feel like they can't be the reason why it is such a wound, it's painful, is because we are all creative. Literally, we all have this soul, we all have this energy that wants to self-express and to hold back something so… it's the foundation of being human. How wounded are we to say that we're not creative when that is what we're here to do? We are here to self-express and be unique. And, and then suddenly people are saying, “Oh no, but that's not valuable. You can't make money doing it. It's only a hobby. And only special people can do it anyway…” Like you're denying something so basic and foundational to every single human being out there.   Thomas: Well, it's so it's such a treat to have you here and to hear you tell the story in real time and to get to talk to you in real time.   Chon: Oh, it's such a delight to be on your show. I love your show. I love everything you're doing. I love, you know, your heart for everything. I can feel it and I can see it and so it's just such a delight to connect with you and be on your podcast. Thank you so much.    Creativity School with Grace Chon is a wonderfully self-reflective exploration of Grace's journey as a photographer, bridging into being a podcaster and more recently bridging into being a creative coach. What I love about Creativity School is how transparent Grace is on the show, how she talks herself through each transition and lets us in on all of the vulnerability and the uncertainty. Recent episodes touch on when people don't like your work and releasing the fear of failure. There's a link to Creativity School in the show notes. Check it out. You'll be glad you did.    Grace Chon is a commercial animal photographer, recognized for the highly expressive portraits of animals she shoots for ad agencies, pet brands, magazines and more. She's also the author of two books, a Creative Transformation Coach, and the host of Creativity School podcast, where she guides people on how to share their unique gifts and talents with others. Our music is by Terry Hughes. You can follow us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata. You can reach us through the contact page at our website, shamepinata.com. And you can subscribe to the podcast on Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite player. I'm Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

Today we dive into the sacred blood rites of menarche and menopause in a conversation with Magician and Menstrual Educator Erica Sodos.    Links: Crimson Wisdom (Colleen's book on the power of the blood!)   Erica Sodos   Erica's Show 3/5/22 Show in Castle Rock, CO   Susun Weed's Book: New Menopausal Years: Alternative Approaches for Women 30-90   Music by Terry Hughes   Rate This Podcast   On an Android Device?   Also Check Out: Welcome to Womanhood   Finding Your Own Magic (also w/Erica Sodos) Before we start today's episode, I'd like to place us in time for a moment. Today is March 3, 2022. It's been seven days since Russia launched a full-scale assault on Ukraine. I just want to acknowledge that this is a lot. It's a lot of heartbreak. It's a lot of feeling helpless. And it's a lot of fear. What you are feeling matters. So I invite you to pause for a second and notice what you are feeling. Notice your body, your breath, your heart. And I invite you to join me as I ring a bell for everything that is happening [RINGS BELL]. Thanks and now here's today's show.    The culture we are born into hands us a template for what it means to be human, what it means to progress through the various stages of life. This template may tell us that some transitions are good and some are bad, but what if everything is mutable? What happens when we feel empowered to name our own reality?   This is Shame Piñata. I'm Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.    When you hear the phrase “rites of passage” what do you picture? A bunch of people gathered together, maybe outdoors? Is there a fire? Is there a ceremonial feel? Is the concept of anthropology lurking around somewhere perhaps? This might be what you see and it also might totally NOT be what you see, but it's interesting, isn't it, that phrase rites of passage evokes a certain something.   Today we're going talk about one of the things it most commonly evokes, the idea of coming of age. We're also going to talk about another rite of passage that doesn't always get spoken about about in a positive way, the time of menopause.    The coming-of-age time when we're anywhere from 9-13 brings physical changes and hormonal changes and brings on the start of menstruation for some of us. And some number of years later that menstruation will stop. It might stop naturally or through surgery or illness. These are two points in life that we're going to talk about today: the beginning of bleeding which is sometimes called menarche and the end of bleeding which is usually called menopause. These are potent times in our lives and they are worthy points to stop and reflect on the full-body changes they bring - and perhaps even identity changes they bring.   These are life changes that are often associated with women's bodies and women's experience. However, many people with menstrual cycles do not identify as women. They might identify as trans men, transgender masculine, gender fluid, or not identify with any gender at all. This arena of talking about the blood is one I have worked in for many years and I am constantly striving to open the circle and welcome more people into the rites of passage we can build around the blood. I think it's really important as well to broaden the education of the non-bleeding people around us to what happens during the moontime, what happens during the bleeding part of the cycle both physiologically and energetically and all the ways we can celebrate and honor that.     The format of today's episode is a conversation I had with Erica Sodos. Erica was on the show last season speaking about the magic of everyday life, which makes sense because Erica is a magician. Erica is also a menstrual educator. She published a zine for many years called Moonflow, which included thoughtful articles, tips, and even a comic strip about the power of the blood. I call Erica my blood sister because she's been right there along my own journey to learn to love my menstrual cycle and to deepen into the power and mystery it afforded me.    These days we're both nearing or in menopause, so our conversation about the blood was held within that context. It was also held within the framework of the NeoPagan tradition of honoring the Triple Goddess, commonly known as Maiden, Mother, Crone - each of which symbolizes a phase in the life cycle. If you've never understood what could be useful, important, or even good about the menstrual cycle, I invite you to give today's episode a listen.   Thomas: I wanted to ask you what's a rite of passage you wish you'd had.   Sodos: So I wish I had a ton of rite of passages and I wish I learned that concept when I was younger. But as you could probably guess, the rite of passage I really wish I had was my first moontime! Definitely. I think it would have shaped me as a… almost like a different person. I mean, it would have taught me to love my body and my blood and I wouldn't have had to figure that out decades later. You know? So, I'd say it's my moontime. That's such a… that could be such a beautiful ritual.   Thomas: Have you gone back to do any kind of retroactive anything about that?   Sodos: I have done it on my own but not to the extent that I know you have because I love how you'll actually like, recreate it with your friends and community. You're amazing with your right of passages. But I think a number of years ago I did something. But now I'm in perimenopause and so at this point, I'm entering a whole new phase and my age. It's scary. It's different.   Thomas: I think it's never too late to go back and do the the first ones, the older ones.   Sodos: Say a woman is seventy so she hasn't bled for a while. She could still celebrate her first moon time?    Thomas: Yeah, sure…   Sodos: Really? Even though she's already been through all these different cycles in her life. And I guess, I guess you're saying you can do it, you feel that you can do a rite of passage whenever, like even if it was a while ago?   Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it has a different effect, I think, than doing it at the moment. But I believe that ritual transcends space and time and I've been in a post… a retroactive menarche ceremony with one of my blood mothers who got a big room of 30 women together who were all, you know, in their 30s 40s 50s… I don't know how old everybody was… But we went and we did a meditation… we went back… we met somebody… I don't know, it was a long time ago, we just… it was like shamanic meditation when we went back and we got the teaching and we experienced sort of a, generic version of like, “This is how it could have been when you got your blood”. And we had this incredible teaching and learning and then we had… the woman who led it, her mother was… They did like a… what I've heard called an angel tunnel, where everybody one at a time walked down, a passageway made by the women. The women were standing in two lines and you walked through the two lines and it was kind of like being birthed and once you came out, you were… that was your transformation you came out in you were a woman and you were welcomed to womanhood by the Grandmother, who is the facilitator's mother who was just amazing and she gave us like a red necklace and she gave us this incredible hug. And she was like, “Welcome to womanhood!” It was so… it was so amazing, because the way… It was Georgette Star who who did it, and the way that she held it all together, and it was… she made it such a sacred experience. And it was all for women who, you know, were not 12 or 13, it was all for grown women to go back and connect to the moment of the, you know, the Maiden. And it was, it was just transformational and so I know that it can transcend space and time. It helps if you have a really good ritual practitioner can who can run it for you.   Sodos: That sounds like magic, like talk about magic. Like I'm feeling that… that you… Well, that's the same idea like when I was in therapy and the therapist would have me go back to an experience from when I was little and say, you know, I was attacked, or my parents were out of control or whatever and then she would be like, “Who would protect you?” And then I did all these meditations where there was this bear… this mama bear would come and like took me away until all the fighting was still going on, but the mother was… And I think that that's that same idea. It's like almost like neural… changing the neuroplasticity in the brain, right?    Thomas: Right.   Sodos: I mean, you're going back. And you're reclaiming this experience, whether it's trauma, or a rite of passage, which couldn't be trauma if it's meant a certain way. [LAUGHS] And like getting your moontime and then you kind of recreated it and then in a way the timeline changes. Right? Did you feel for you and other women like the timeline changes?   Thomas: Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Like the historical events that happened in my life when I did really get my blood when I was 12 didn't change but yet the part of me… the 12 year-old who's always living in me now has had a very different experience… had like the original experience and then had this other amazing experience which kind of weaves together.   Sodos: So you became more whole, in a way.    Thomas: Exactly.   Sodos: Because that 12 year-old who grew up who was fractured or whatever you want to say never truly connected to her power or whatever it was. But now she's had a different timeline within you, so it makes you different now, is that kind of…   Thomas: Exactly. Yeah, that's a good way to put it.    Sodos: And that was the idea of what the therapist was doing with me.    Thomas: Right.   Sodos: Right? Taking me back to the wounding and then… God,  it'd be kind of amazing, wouldn't it, to just do that…I mean, it takes a long time to just go through your life and try to reclaim all those bad experiences?   Thomas: Heal each thing…   Sodos: Be like, “Okay, this one was last week…” No, just kidding.   [MUSIC]    Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day with us! If you'd like to learn more about this whole blood as sacred thing, check out my book “Crimson Wisdom”. It's available now on Kindle and tells the story of what a modern day Red Tent can look like.  Check the show notes for a link.    Thomas: I'm in menopause… I'm postmenopausal now so it's like I'm in that phase and that's a whole other rite of passage that I'm… I don't know that I'm ready to honor that yet. [LAUGHS]   Sodos: How long has it been since you've bled?    Thomas: Almost two years.   Sodos: You haven't bled at all, not even spotting? And you're younger than me. How old are you?   Thomas: Yeah, I know I stopped when I was 48. And I'm almost 50.   Sodos: Wow. I was getting mine like every… constantly… like bleeding all the time like, like just tons of… like a lot of blood. But I think that's… they say you could either get non or get a lot and wow, two years… you, have you done a Crone ceremony yet?   Thomas: No, I just haven't felt ready. I haven't felt like I'm still grieving - and I'm not actively grieving, that's why it's taking so long - grieving that not having the blood time and not having the, you know, that deep pull, that richness. Even though a lot of times when it came when I had it, I was like, “Yeah, okay, I don't really want to go there.” And I was like, “It's gonna go away, you're gonna really miss it, you're gonna be really sad, you better do it!” And so I would fight it, you know, a lot, then. And then it was like, okay, now it's gone and I'm in that bitter place where I don't want to hear people talking about how great it is, because I'm angry I don't have it.    Sodos: …how great menstruating is?    Thomas: Yeah, which a lot of people don't say that, but sometimes people do say that.    Sodos: Most people hate it. Yeah. As you know, hence the magazine.   Thomas: Or I'll say, “I'm postmenopausal”, or, you know, and they'll be like, “Oh, thank God”. And I'm like, “No, actually, my story is really different and…” But so I'm still processing, I'm still processing it. But I'm going to have a Croning ceremony or something of that nature at some point.   Sodos: I think, like… I hear what you're saying, because for people like us who worked, would it be inaccurate… I mean I don't want to like speak for you, but like, I'll just say we and tell me if I'm projecting. We worked to honor our blood. Like it was something that we wanted to be sacred. So when I say I'm scared, I'm scared to lose my blood. I think that's what you're saying. Like… Now did you have side effects and stuff? Did you have…   Thomas: Yeah, I've had a lot. I've had a really hard time with hot flashes. They're… I think they're getting better. They're getting better or I'm getting more used to them.   Sodos: Still?   Thomas: Yeah, I'm still getting them. And the worst part, gosh.. I would get these really bad ones for I'd be on transit because I used to commute an hour and a half to work and I would have, you know, my clothes, and then a sweater and then a jacket and then like a hat and whatever and then my bag and my you know, and I'm on BART or crammed in a bus or whatever, crammed on BART, whatever. Then I'd have a hot flash in the middle of all that and it was like…and  sometimes I thought I was going to pass out or throw up or something.    Sodos: Have you read books about menopause like to help you?   Thomas: Yes, I… I… yes. Before I was postmenopausal, I read a lot of books and then when I was actually on my honeymoon, I was reading a book about menopause.    Sodos: So you were still bleeding.    Thomas: I was still bleeding then, yeah.   Sodos: It's funny that you read them so early and now you're in it and you're going, “No” The only one I have is about a year ago, I bought the Susun Weed book. Yeah, she's so cool, Susun Weed, and I like that book. She talks about the Croning. I wonder too… even for someone like you who works on this stuff, the word Crone is very loaded. Do you think… do you not …do you like the word Crone? Like, do you feel like a Crone? Because you don't look like a Crone… stereotypically.   Thomas: It's interesting because… So when I was first into the blood mysteries, I started… I got really fascinated with the idea of the Crone and I started offering classes for women who were much older than me to tell them how much to love the Crone time.    Sodos: [LAUGHS]    Thomas: And I knew that I was like, really in a weird place teaching that, right? Because I was just like, “I can't tell you anything about it obviously, but I'm going to get you together, I'm going to tell you what I've read about how great it is and then you're going to, you know, tell me, you know, insane or whatever… And the women would get really inspired by what I would say. But what I realized was that, because I was in like my 30s, I thought that postmenopausal was like, “a group of women”. And so and as I worked with them, I had women of all ages coming to these workshops, and I realized I had women who are 50 or 40. Well, maybe 50, late 40s, early 50s… and I had women who were 80, and they were in a completely different phase of life and they were all in one bucket in my head because I was naive enough to not understand any nuance about this yet. So when I hear the word Crone I always think of it of course, as an old woman, and I don't feel like I'm there yet. But then it's like, there's lots of stages in life. Right? And there's the menopause and post menopause. But I don't know that it has to be the Crone right, then. I mean, it could be. I don't know that I'm ready. I think I will probably call it a Croning ceremony when I do it, but I don't feel like I'm worthy of being a Crone yet. I haven't earned that yet.   Sodos: I think yeah, I'm also afraid for my blood to stop. And it kind of reminds me of a relationship. Like, I used to do this thing where when I was in a relationship I would only focus on what was wrong… when I was younger… what was wrong with the person and then when I was out of it, I would focus on what was good. So it was like a way to be miserable as much as I could. You know what I'm saying? I don't know if you ever did that, but… So, but like it's like with our menstruation… it's like… because we've worked hard to focus on what we love. Yeah, it's like, but now it might be a good time to focus on what you didn't like about it because then you can…you know what I mean? It's like a relationship like, “You're gone. I'm not getting you back in this life. So you were kind of annoying. Remember those cramps I used to have… and all the time?” and I don't know…   Thomas: Well, I am really grateful that I've had, I call them my blood sisters and my blood mothers and my blood grandmothers. You've been an incredible blood sister for me all this time and then I've had women who've been older than me who've been, you know, in more of the teacher role than like the companion role and, and their teachers have been my blood grandmothers . I've just been so blessed to have had this amazing group of women around me. So… and those are the women I will turn to as I go to celebrate my Croning whenever I do that.    Sodos: Yay!   Thomas: Oh, my goodness. It's been so amazing to talk to you. I'm so glad we got to do this. Thank you so much.    Whether the concept of the blood as sacred and important is part of your everyday life or something you hold a little ways away from yourself and look at with suspicion, I am so glad you joined us today.    What's a rite of passage you wish you'd had? What's a hard experience you'd like to reclaim? As the author of your own story, you have the power to name, rename, and even reimagine the events of your past. Ritual, ceremony, and community are tools that can help you with this important work.    Erica Sodos is a magician, speaker, emcee, psychic entertainer, one of only a handful of female mentalists in the world. She is an avid lover of nature, a dedicated vegan, an environmentalist, and an activist and tour guide at an animal sanctuary. You can find out more about Erica and see examples of her magic at ericasodos.com.    Our music is by Terry Hughes. You can follow us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata. You can reach us through the contact page at our website, shamepinata.com. And you can subscribe to the podcast on Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite player. I'm Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

About ThomasThomas Hazel is Founder, CTO, and Chief Scientist of ChaosSearch. He is a serial entrepreneur at the forefront of communication, virtualization, and database technology and the inventor of ChaosSearch's patented IP. Thomas has also patented several other technologies in the areas of distributed algorithms, virtualization and database science. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University of New Hampshire, Hall of Fame Alumni Inductee, and founded both student & professional chapters of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).Links:ChaosSearch: https://www.chaossearch.io 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 my friends at ThinkstCanary. Most companies find out way too late that they've been breached. ThinksCanary changes this and I love how they do it. Deploy canaries and canary tokens in minutes and then forget about them. What's great is the attackers tip their hand by touching them, giving you one alert, when it matters. I use it myself and I only remember this when I get the weekly update with a “we're still here, so you're aware” from them. It's glorious! There is zero admin overhead  to this, there are effectively no false positives unless I do something foolish. Canaries are deployed and loved on all seven continents. You can check out what people are saying at canary.love. And, their Kub config canary token is new and completely free as well. You can do an awful lot without paying them a dime, which is one of the things I love about them. It is useful stuff and not an, “ohh, I wish I had money.” It is speculator! Take a look; that's canary.love because it's genuinely rare to find a security product that people talk about in terms of love. It really is a unique thing to see. Canary.love. Thank you to ThinkstCanary for their support of my ridiculous, ridiculous non-sense.   Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Spelled V-U-L-T-R because they're all about helping save money, including on things like, you know, vowels. So, what they do is they are a cloud provider that provides surprisingly high performance cloud compute at a price that—while sure they claim its better than AWS pricing—and when they say that they mean it is less money. Sure, I don't dispute that but what I find interesting is that it's predictable. They tell you in advance on a monthly basis what it's going to going to cost. They have a bunch of advanced networking features. They have nineteen global locations and scale things elastically. Not to be confused with openly, because apparently elastic and open can mean the same thing sometimes. They have had over a million users. Deployments take less that sixty seconds across twelve pre-selected operating systems. Or, if you're one of those nutters like me, you can bring your own ISO and install basically any operating system you want. Starting with pricing as low as $2.50 a month for Vultr cloud compute they have plans for developers and businesses of all sizes, except maybe Amazon, who stubbornly insists on having something to scale all on their own. Try Vultr today for free by visiting: vultr.com/screaming, and you'll receive a $100 in credit. Thats v-u-l-t-r.com slash screaming.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted episode is brought to us by our friends at ChaosSearch.We've been working with them for a long time; they've sponsored a bunch of our nonsense, and it turns out that we've been talking about them to our clients since long before they were a sponsor because it actually does what it says on the tin. Here to talk to us about that in a few minutes is Thomas Hazel, ChaosSearch's CTO and founder. First, Thomas, nice to talk to you again, and as always, thanks for humoring me.Thomas: [laugh]. Hi, Corey. Always great to talk to you. And I enjoy these conversations that sometimes go up and down, left and right, but I look forward to all the fun we're going to have.Corey: So, my understanding of ChaosSearch is probably a few years old because it turns out, I don't spend a whole lot of time meticulously studying your company's roadmap in the same way that you presumably do. When last we checked in with what the service did-slash-does, you are effectively solving the problem of data movement and querying that data. The idea behind data warehouses is generally something that's shoved onto us by cloud providers where, “Hey, this data is going to be valuable to you someday.” Data science teams are big proponents of this because when you're storing that much data, their salaries look relatively reasonable by comparison. And the ChaosSearch vision was, instead of copying all this data out of an object store and storing it on expensive disks, and replicating it, et cetera, what if we queried it in place in a somewhat intelligent manner?So, you take the data and you store it, in this case, in S3 or equivalent, and then just query it there, rather than having to move it around all over the place, which of course, then incurs data transfer fees, you're storing it multiple times, and it's never in quite the format that you want it. That was the breakthrough revelation, you were Elasticsearch—now OpenSearch—API compatible, which was great. And that was, sort of, a state of the art a year or two ago. Is that generally correct?Thomas: No, you nailed our mission statement. No, you're exactly right. You know, the value of cloud object stores, S3, the elasticity, the durability, all these wonderful things, the problem was you couldn't get any value out of it, and you had to move it out to these siloed solutions, as you indicated. So, you know, our mission was exactly that, transformed customers' cloud storage into an analytical database, a multi-model analytical database, where our first use case was search and log analytics, replacing the ELK stack and also replacing the data pipeline, the schema management, et cetera. We automate the entire step, raw data to insights.Corey: It's funny we're having this conversation today. Earlier, today, I was trying to get rid of a relatively paltry 200 gigs or so of small files on an EFS volume—you know, Amazon's version of NFS; it's like an NFS volume except you're paying Amazon for the privilege—great. And it turns out that it's a whole bunch of operations across a network on a whole bunch of tiny files, so I had to spin up other instances that were not getting backed by spot terminations, and just firing up a whole bunch of threads. So, now the load average on that box is approaching 300, but it's plowing through, getting rid of that data finally.And I'm looking at this saying this is a quarter of a terabyte. Data warehouses are in the petabyte range. Oh, I begin to see aspects of the problem. Even searching that kind of data using traditional tooling starts to break down, which is sort of the revelation that Google had 20-some-odd years ago, and other folks have since solved for, but this is the first time I've had significant data that wasn't just easily searched with a grep. For those of you in the Unix world who understand what that means, condolences. We're having a support group meeting at the bar.Thomas: Yeah. And you know, I always thought, what if you could make cloud object storage like S3 high performance and really transform it into a database? And so that warehouse capability, that's great. We like that. However to manage it, to scale it, to configure it, to get the data into that, was the problem.That was the promise of a data lake, right? This simple in, and then this arbitrary schema on read generic out. The problem next came, it became swampy, it was really hard, and that promise was not delivered. And so what we're trying to do is get all the benefits of the data lake: simple in, so many services naturally stream to cloud storage. Shoot, I would say every one of our customers are putting their data in cloud storage because their data pipeline to their warehousing solution or Elasticsearch may go down and they're worried they'll lose the data.So, what we say is what if you just said activate that data lake and get that ELK use case, get that BI use case without that data movement, as you indicated, without that ETL-ing, without that data pipeline that you're worried is going to fall over. So, that vision has been Chaos. Now, we haven't talked in, you know, a few years, but this idea that we're growing beyond what we are just going after logs, we're going into new use cases, new opportunities, and I'm looking forward to discussing with you.Corey: It's a great answer that—though I have to call out that I am right there with you as far as inappropriately using things as databases. I know that someone is going to come back and say, “Oh, S3 is a database. You're dancing around it. Isn't that what Athena is?” Which is named, of course, after the Greek Goddess of spending money on AWS? And that is a fair question, but to my understanding, there's a schema story behind that does not apply to what you're doing.Thomas: Yeah, and that is so crucial is that we like the relational access. The time-cost complexity to get it into that, as you mentioned, scaled access, I mean, it could take weeks, months to test it, to configure it, to provision it, and imagine if you got it wrong; you got to redo it again. And so our unique service removes all that data pipeline schema management. And because of our innovation because of our service, you do all schema definition, on the fly, virtually, what we call views on your index data, that you can publish an elastic index pattern for that consumption, or a relational table for that consumption. And that's kind of leading the witness into things that we're coming out with this quarter into 2022.Corey: I have to deal with a little bit of, I guess, a shame here because yeah, I'm doing exactly what you just described. I'm using Athena to wind up querying our customers' Cost and Usage Reports, and we spend a couple hundred bucks a month on AWS Glue to wind up massaging those into the way that they expect it to be. And it's great. Ish. We hook it up to Tableau and can make those queries from it, and all right, it's great.It just, burrr goes the money printer, and we somehow get access and insight to a lot of valuable data. But even that is knowing exactly what the format is going to look like. Ish. I mean, Cost and Usage Reports from Amazon are sort of aspirational when it comes to schema sometimes, but here we are. And that's been all well and good.But now the idea of log files, even looking at the base case of sending logs from an application, great. Nginx, or Apache, or [unintelligible 00:07:24], or any of the various web servers out there all tend to use different logging formats just to describe the same exact things, start spreading that across custom in-house applications and getting signal from that is almost impossible. “Oh,” people say, “So, we'll use a structured data format.” Now, you're putting log and structuring requirements on application developers who don't care in the first place, and now you have a mess on your hands.Thomas: And it really is a mess. And that challenge is, it's so problematic. And schemas changing. You know, we have customers and one reasons why they go with us is their log data is changing; they didn't expect it. Well, in your data pipeline, and your Athena database, that breaks. That brings the system down.And so our system uniquely detects that and manages that for you and then you can pick and choose how you want to export in these views dynamically. So, you know, it's really not rocket science, but the problem is, a lot of the technology that we're using is designed for static, fixed thinking. And then to scale it is problematic and time-consuming. So, you know, Glue is a great idea, but it has a lot of sharp [pebbles 00:08:26]. Athena is a great idea but also has a lot of problems.And so that data pipeline, you know, it's not for digitally native, active, new use cases, new workloads coming up hourly, daily. You think about this long-term; so a lot of that data prep pipelining is something we address so uniquely, but really where the customer cares is the value of that data, right? And so if you're spending toils trying to get the data into a database, you're not answering the questions, whether it's for security, for performance, for your business needs. That's the problem. And you know, that agility, that time-to-value is where we're very uniquely coming in because we start where your data is raw and we automate the process all the way through.Corey: So, when I look at the things that I have stuffed into S3, they generally fall into a couple of categories. There are a bunch of logs for things I never asked for nor particularly wanted, but AWS is aggressive about that, first routing through CloudTrail so you can get charged 50-cent per gigabyte ingested. Awesome. And of course, large static assets, images I have done something to enter colloquially now known as shitposts, which is great. Other than logs, what could you possibly be storing in S3 that lends itself to, effectively, the type of analysis that you built around this?Thomas: Well, our first use case was the classic log use cases, app logs, web service logs. I mean, CloudTrail, it's famous; we had customers that gave up on elastic, and definitely gave up on relational where you can do a couple changes and your permutation of attributes for CloudTrail is going to put you to your knees. And people just say, “I give up.” Same thing with Kubernetes logs. And so it's the classic—whether it's CSV, where it's JSON, where it's log types, we auto-discover all that.We also allow you, if you want to override that and change the parsing capabilities through a UI wizard, we do discover what's in your buckets. That term data swamp, and not knowing what's in your bucket, we do a facility that will index that data, actually create a report for you for knowing what's in. Now, if you have text data, if you have log data, if you have BI data, we can bring it all together, but the real pain is at the scale. So classically, app logs, system logs, many devices sending IoT-type streams is where we really come in—Kubernetes—where they're dealing with terabytes of data per day, and managing an ELK cluster at that scale. Particularly on a Black Friday.Shoot, some of our customers like—Klarna is one of them; credit card payment—they're ramping up for Black Friday, and one of the reasons why they chose us is our ability to scale when maybe you're doing a terabyte or two a day and then it goes up to twenty, twenty-five. How do you test that scale? How do you manage that scale? And so for us, the data streams are, traditionally with our customers, the well-known log types, at least in the log use cases. And the challenge is scaling it, is getting access to it, and that's where we come in.Corey: I will say the last time you were on the show a couple of years ago, you were talking about the initial logging use case and you were speaking, in many cases aspirationally, about where things were going. What a difference a couple years is made. Instead of talking about what hypothetical customers might want, or what—might be able to do, you're just able to name-drop them off the top of your head, you have scaled to approximately ten times the number of employees you had back then. You've—Thomas: Yep. Yep.Corey: —raised, I think, a total of—what, 50 million?—since then.Thomas: Uh, 60 now. Yeah.Corey: Oh, 60? Fantastic.Thomas: Yeah, yeah.Corey: Congrats. And of course, how do you do it? By sponsoring Last Week in AWS, as everyone should. I'm taking clear credit for that every time someone announces around, that's the game. But no, there is validity to it because telling fun stories and sponsoring exciting things like this only carry you so far. At some point, customers have to say, yeah, this is solving a pain that I have; I'm willing to pay you money to solve it.And you've clearly gotten to a point where you are addressing the needs of those customers at a pretty fascinating clip. It's bittersweet from my perspective because it seems like the majority of your customers have not come from my nonsense anymore. They're finding you through word of mouth, they're finding through more traditional—read as boring—ad campaigns, et cetera, et cetera. But you've built a brand that extends beyond just me. I'm no longer viewed as the de facto ombudsperson for any issue someone might have with ChaosSearch on Twitters. It's kind of, “Aww, the company grew up. What happened there?”Thomas: No, [laugh] listen, this you were great. We reached out to you to tell our story, and I got to be honest. A lot of people came by, said, “I heard something on Corey Quinn's podcasts,” or et cetera. And it came a long way now. Now, we have, you know, companies like Equifax, multi-cloud—Amazon and Google.They love the data lake philosophy, the centralized, where use cases are now available within days, not weeks and months. Whether it's logs and BI. Correlating across all those data streams, it's huge. We mentioned Klarna, [APM Performance 00:13:19], and, you know, we have Armor for SIEM, and Blackboard for [Observers 00:13:24].So, it's funny—yeah, it's funny, when I first was talking to you, I was like, “What if? What if we had this customer, that customer?” And we were building the capabilities, but now that we have it, now that we have customers, yeah, I guess, maybe we've grown up a little bit. But hey, listen to you're always near and dear to our heart because we remember, you know, when you stop[ed by our booth at re:Invent several times. And we're coming to re:Invent this year, and I believe you are as well.Corey: Oh, yeah. But people listening to this, it's if they're listening the day it's released, this will be during re:Invent. So, by all means, come by the ChaosSearch booth, and see what they have to say. For once they have people who aren't me who are going to be telling stories about these things. And it's fun. Like, I joke, it's nothing but positive here.It's interesting from where I sit seeing the parallels here. For example, we have both had—how we say—adult supervision come in. You have a CEO, Ed, who came over from IBM Storage. I have Mike Julian, whose first love language is of course spreadsheets. And it's great, on some level, realizing that, wow, this company has eclipsed my ability to manage these things myself and put my hands-on everything. And eventually, you have to start letting go. It's a weird growth stage, and it's a heck of a transition. But—Thomas: No, I love it. You know, I mean, I think when we were talking, we were maybe 15 employees. Now, we're pushing 100. We brought on Ed Walsh, who's an amazing CEO. It's funny, I told him about this idea, I invented this technology roughly eight years ago, and he's like, “I love it. Let's do it.” And I wasn't ready to do it.So, you know, five, six years ago, I started the company always knowing that, you know, I'd give him a call once we got the plane up in the air. And it's been great to have him here because the next level up, right, of execution and growth and business development and sales and marketing. So, you're exactly right. I mean, we were a young pup several years ago, when we were talking to you and, you know, we're a little bit older, a little bit wiser. But no, it's great to have Ed here. And just the leadership in general; we've grown immensely.Corey: Now, we are recording this in advance of re:Invent, so there's always the question of, “Wow, are we going to look really silly based upon what is being announced when this airs?” Because it's very hard to predict some things that AWS does. And let's be clear, I always stay away from predictions, just because first, I have a bit of a knack for being right. But also, when I'm right, people will think, “Oh, Corey must have known about that and is leaking,” whereas if I get it wrong, I just look like a fool. There's no win for me if I start doing the predictive dance on stuff like that.But I have to level with you, I have been somewhat surprised that, at least as of this recording, AWS has not moved more in your direction because storing data in S3 is kind of their whole thing, and querying that data through something that isn't Athena has been a bit of a reach for them that they're slowly starting to wrap their heads around. But their UltraWarm nonsense—which is just, okay, great naming there—what is the point of continually having a model where oh, yeah, we're going to just age it out, the stuff that isn't actively being used into S3, rather than coming up with a way to query it there. Because you've done exactly that, and please don't take this as anything other than a statement of fact, they have better access to what S3 is doing than you do. You're forced to deal with this thing entirely from a public API standpoint, which is fine. They can theoretically change the behavior of aspects of S3 to unlock these use cases if they chose to do so. And they haven't. Why is it that you're the only folks that are doing this?Thomas: No, it's a great question, and I'll give them props for continuing to push the data lake [unintelligible 00:17:09] to the cloud providers' S3 because it was really where I saw the world. Lakes, I believe in. I love them. They love them. However, they promote the move the data out to get access, and it seems so counterintuitive on why wouldn't you leave it in and put these services, make them more intelligent? So, it's funny, I've trademark ‘Smart Object Storage,' I actually trademarked—I think you [laugh] were a part of this—‘UltraHot,' right? Because why would you want UltraWarm when you can have UltraHot?And the reason, I feel, is that if you're using Parquet for Athena [unintelligible 00:17:40] store, or Lucene for Elasticsearch, these two index technologies were not designed for cloud storage, for real-time streaming off of cloud storage. So, the trick is, you have to build UltraWarm, get it off of what they consider cold S3 into a more warmer memory or SSD type access. What we did, what the invention I created was, that first read is hot. That first read is fast.Snowflake is a good example. They give you a ten terabyte demo example, and if you have a big instance and you do that first query, maybe several orders or groups, it could take an hour to warm up. The second query is fast. Well, what if the first query is in seconds as well? And that's where we really spent the last five, six years building out the tech and the vision behind this because I like to say you go to a doctor and say, “Hey, Doc, every single time I move my arm, it hurts.” And the doctor says, “Well, don't move your arm.”It's things like that, to your point, it's like, why wouldn't they? I would argue, one, you have to believe it's possible—we're proving that it is—and two, you have to have the technology to do it. Not just the index, but the architecture. So, I believe they will go this direction. You know, little birdies always say that all these companies understand this need.Shoot, Snowflake is trying to be lake-y; Databricks is trying to really bring this warehouse lake concept. But you still do all the pipelining; you still have to do all the data management the way that you don't want to do. It's not a lake. And so my argument is that it's innovation on why. Now, they have money; they have time, but, you know, we have a big head start.Corey: I remembered last year at re:Invent they released a, shall we say, significant change to S3 that it enabled read after write consistency, which is awesome, for again, those of us in the business of misusing things as databases. But for some folks, the majority of folks I would say, it was a, “I don't know what that means and therefore I don't care.” And that's fine. I have no issue with that. There are other folks, some of my customers for example, who are suddenly, “Wait a minute. This means I can sunset this entire janky sidecar metadata system that is designed to make sure that we are consistent in our use of S3 because it now does it automatically under the hood?” And that's awesome. Does that change mean anything for ChaosSearch?Thomas: It doesn't because of our architecture. We're append-only, write-once scenario, so a lot of update-in-place viewpoints. My viewpoint is that if you're seeing S3 as the database and you need that type of consistency, it make sense of why you'd want it, but because of our distributive fabric, our stateless architecture, our append-only nature, it really doesn't affect us.Now, I talked to the S3 team, I said, “Please if you're coming up with this feature, it better not be slower.” I want S3 to be fast, right? And they said, “No, no. It won't affect performance.” I'm like, “Okay. Let's keep that up.”And so to us, any type of S3 capability, we'll take advantage of it if benefits us, whether it's consistency as you indicated, performance, functionality. But we really keep the constructs of S3 access to really limited features: list, put, get. [roll-on 00:20:49] policies to give us read-only access to your data, and a location to write our indices into your account, and then are distributed fabric, our service, acts as those indices and query them or searches them to resolve whatever analytics you need. So, we made it pretty simple, and that is allowed us to make it high performance.Corey: I'll take it a step further because you want to talk about changes since the last time we spoke, it used to be that this was on top of S3, you can store your data anywhere you want, as long as it's S3 in the customer's account. Now, you're also supporting one-click integration with Google Cloud's object storage, which, great. That does mean though, that you're not dependent upon provider-specific implementations of things like a consistency model for how you've built things. It really does use the lowest common denominator—to my understanding—of object stores. Is that something that you're seeing broad adoption of, or is this one of those areas where, well, you have one customer on a different provider, but almost everything lives on the primary? I'm curious what you're seeing for adoption models across multiple providers?Thomas: It's a great question. We built an architecture purposely to be cloud-agnostic. I mean, we use compute in a containerized way, we use object storage in a very simple construct—put, get, list—and we went over to Google because that made sense, right? We have customers on both sides. I would say Amazon is the gorilla, but Google's trying to get there and growing.We had a big customer, Equifax, that's on both Amazon and Google, but we offer the same service. To be frank, it looks like the exact same product. And it should, right? Whether it's Amazon Cloud, or Google Cloud, multi-select and I want to choose either one and get the other one. I would say that different business types are using each one, but our bulk of the business isn't Amazon, but we just this summer released our SaaS offerings, so it's growing.And you know, it's funny, you never know where it comes from. So, we have one customer—actually DigitalRiver—as one of our customers on Amazon for logs, but we're growing in working together to do a BI on GCP or on Google. And so it's kind of funny; they have two departments on two different clouds with two different use cases. And so do they want unification? I'm not sure, but they definitely have their BI on Google and their operations in Amazon. It's interesting.Corey: You know its important to me that people learn how to use the cloud effectively. Thats why I'm so glad that Cloud Academy is sponsoring my ridiculous non-sense. They're a great way to build in demand tech skills the way that, well personally, I learn best which I learn by doing not by reading. They have live cloud labs that you can run in real environments that aren't going to blow up your own bill—I can't stress how important that is. Visit cloudacademy.com/corey. Thats C-O-R-E-Y, don't drop the “E.” Use Corey as a promo-code as well. You're going to get a bunch of discounts on it with a lifetime deal—the price will not go up. It is limited time, they assured me this is not one of those things that is going to wind up being a rug pull scenario, oh no no. Talk to them, tell me what you think. Visit: cloudacademy.com/corey,  C-O-R-E-Y and tell them that I sent you!Corey: I know that I'm going to get letters for this. So, let me just call it out right now. Because I've been a big advocate of pick a provider—I care not which one—and go all-in on it. And I'm sitting here congratulating you on extending to another provider, and people are going to say, “Ah, you're being inconsistent.”No. I'm suggesting that you as a provider have to meet your customers where they are because if someone is sitting in GCP and your entire approach is, “Step one, migrate those four petabytes of data right on over here to AWS,” they're going to call you that jackhole that you would be by making that suggestion and go immediately for option B, which is literally anything that is not ChaosSearch, just based upon that core misunderstanding of their business constraints. That is the way to think about these things. For a vendor position that you are in as an ISV—Independent Software Vendor for those not up on the lingo of this ridiculous industry—you have to meet customers where they are. And it's the right move.Thomas: Well, you just said it. Imagine moving terabytes and petabytes of data.Corey: It sounds terrific if I'm a salesperson for one of these companies working on commission, but for the rest of us, it sounds awful.Thomas: We really are a data fabric across clouds, within clouds. We're going to go where the data is and we're going to provide access to where that data lives. Our whole philosophy is the no-movement movement, right? Don't move your data. Leave it where it is and provide access at scale.And so you may have services in Google that naturally stream to GCS; let's do it there. Imagine moving that amount of data over to Amazon to analyze it, and vice versa. 2020, we're going to be in Azure. They're a totally different type of business, users, and personas, but you're getting asked, “Can you support Azure?” And the answer is, “Yes,” and, “We will in 2022.”So, to us, if you have cloud storage, if you have compute, and it's a big enough business opportunity in the market, we're there. We're going there. When we first started, we were talking to MinIO—remember that open-source, object storage platform?—We've run on our laptops, we run—this [unintelligible 00:25:04] Dr. Seuss thing—“We run over here; we run over there; we run everywhere.”But the honest truth is, you're going to go with the big cloud providers where the business opportunity is, and offer the same solution because the same solution is valued everywhere: simple in; value out; cost-effective; long retention; flexibility. That sounds so basic, but you mentioned this all the time with our Rube Goldberg, Amazon diagrams we see time and time again. It's like, if you looked at that and you were from an alien planet, you'd be like, “These people don't know what they're doing. Why is it so complicated?” And the simple answer is, I don't know why people think it's complicated.To your point about Amazon, why won't they do it? I don't know, but if they did, things would be different. And being honest, I think people are catching on. We do talk to Amazon and others. They see the need, but they also have to build it; they have to invent technology to address it. And using Parquet and Lucene are not the answer.Corey: Yeah, it's too much of a demand on the producers of that data rather than the consumer. And yeah, I would love to be able to go upstream to application developers and demand they do things in certain ways. It turns out as a consultant, you have zero authority to do that. As a DevOps team member, you have limited ability to influence it, but it turns out that being the ‘department of no' quickly turns into being the ‘department of unemployment insurance' because no one wants to work with you. And collaboration—contrary to what people wish to believe—is a key part of working in a modern workplace.Thomas: Absolutely. And it's funny, the demands of IT are getting harder; the actual getting the employees to build out the solutions are getting harder. And so a lot of that time is in the pipeline, is the prep, is the schema, the sharding, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. My viewpoint is that should be automated away. More and more databases are being autotune, right?This whole knobs and this and that, to me, Glue is a means to an end. I mean, let's get rid of it. Why can't Athena know what to do? Why can't object storage be Athena and vice versa? I mean, to me, it seems like all this moving through all these services, the classic Amazon viewpoint, even their diagrams of having this centralized repository of S3, move it all out to your services, get results, put it back in, then take it back out again, move it around, it just doesn't make much sense. And so to us, I love S3, love the service. I think it's brilliant—Amazon's first service, right?—but from there get a little smarter. That's where ChaosSearch comes in.Corey: I would argue that S3 is in fact, a modern miracle. And one of those companies saying, “Oh, we have an object store; it's S3 compatible.” It's like, “Yeah. We have S3 at home.” Look at S3 at home, and it's just basically a series of failing Raspberry Pis.But you have this whole ecosystem of things that have built up and sprung up around S3. It is wildly understated just how scalable and massive it is. There was an academic paper recently that won an award on how they use automated reasoning to validate what is going on in the S3 environment, and they talked about hundreds of petabytes in some cases. And folks are saying, ah, S3 is hundreds of petabytes. Yeah, I have clients storing hundreds of petabytes.There are larger companies out there. Steve Schmidt, Amazon's CISO, was recently at a Splunk keynote where he mentioned that in security info alone, AWS itself generates 500 petabytes a day that then gets reduced down to a bunch of stuff, and some of it gets loaded into Splunk. I think. I couldn't really hear the second half of that sentence because of the sound of all of the Splunk salespeople in that room becoming excited so quickly you could hear it.Thomas: [laugh]. I love it. If I could be so bold, those S3 team, they're gods. They are amazing. They created such an amazing service, and when I started playing with S3 now, I guess, 2006 or 7, I mean, we were using for a repository, URL access to get images, I was doing a virtualization [unintelligible 00:29:05] at the time—Corey: Oh, the first time I played with it, “This seems ridiculous and kind of dumb. Why would anyone use this?” Yeah, yeah. It turns out I'm really bad at predicting the future. Another reason I don't do the prediction thing.Thomas: Yeah. And when I started this company officially, five, six years ago, I was thinking about S3 and I was thinking about HDFS not being a good answer. And I said, “I think S3 will actually achieve the goals and performance we need.” It's a distributed file system. You can run parallel puts and parallel gets. And the performance that I was seeing when the data was a certain way, certain size, “Wait, you can get high performance.”And you know, when I first turned on the engine, now four or five years ago, I was like, “Wow. This is going to work. We're off to the races.” And now obviously, we're more than just an idea when we first talked to you. We're a service.We deliver benefits to our customers both in logs. And shoot, this quarter alone we're coming out with new features not just in the logs, which I'll talk about second, but in a direct SQL access. But you know, one thing that you hear time and time again, we talked about it—JSON, CloudTrail, and Kubernetes; this is a real nightmare, and so one thing that we've come out with this quarter is the ability to virtually flatten. Now, you heard time and time again, where, “Okay. I'm going to pick and choose my data because my database can't handle whether it's elastic, or say, relational.” And all of a sudden, “Shoot, I don't have that. I got to reindex that.”And so what we've done is we've created a index technology that we're always planning to come out with that indexes the JSON raw blob, but in the data refinery have, post-index you can select how to unflatten it. Why is that important? Because all that tooling, whether it's elastic or SQL, is now available. You don't have to change anything. Why is Snowflake and BigQuery has these proprietary JSON APIs that none of these tools know how to use to get access to the data?Or you pick and choose. And so when you have a CloudTrail, and you need to know what's going on, if you picked wrong, you're in trouble. So, this new feature we're calling ‘Virtual Flattening'—or I don't know what we're—we have to work with the marketing team on it. And we're also bringing—this is where I get kind of excited where the elastic world, the ELK world, we're bringing correlations into Elasticsearch. And like, how do you do that? They don't have the APIs?Well, our data refinery, again, has the ability to correlate index patterns into one view. A view is an index pattern, so all those same constructs that you had in Kibana, or Grafana, or Elastic API still work. And so, no more denormalizing, no more trying to hodgepodge query over here, query over there. You're actually going to have correlations in Elastic, natively. And we're excited about that.And one more push on the future, Q4 into 2022; we have been given early access to S3 SQL access. And, you know, as I mentioned, correlations in Elastic, but we're going full in on publishing our [TPCH 00:31:56] report, we're excited about publishing those numbers, as well as not just giving early access, but going GA in the first of the year, next year.Corey: I look forward to it. This is also, I guess, it's impossible to have a conversation with you, even now, where you're not still forward-looking about what comes next. Which is natural; that is how we get excited about the things that we're building. But so much less of what you're doing now in our conversations have focused around what's coming, as opposed to the neat stuff you're already doing. I had to double-check when we were talking just now about oh, yeah, is that Google cloud object store support still something that is roadmapped, or is that out in the real world?No, it's very much here in the real world, available today. You can use it. Go click the button, have fun. It's neat to see at least some evidence that not all roadmaps are wishes and pixie dust. The things that you were talking to me about years ago are established parts of ChaosSearch now. It hasn't been just, sort of, frozen in amber for years, or months, or these giant periods of time. Because, again, there's—yeah, don't sell me vaporware; I know how this works. The things you have promised have come to fruition. It's nice to see that.Thomas: No, I appreciate it. We talked a little while ago, now a few years ago, and it was a bit of aspirational, right? We had a lot to do, we had more to do. But now when we have big customers using our product, solving their problems, whether it's security, performance, operation, again—at scale, right? The real pain is, sure you have a small ELK cluster or small Athena use case, but when you're dealing with terabytes to petabytes, trillions of rows, right—billions—when you were dealing trillions, billions are now small. Millions don't even exist, right?And you're graduating from computer science in college and you say the word, “Trillion,” they're like, “Nah. No one does that.” And like you were saying, people do petabytes and exabytes. That's the world we're living in, and that's something that we really went hard at because these are challenging data problems and this is where we feel we uniquely sit. And again, we don't have to break the bank while doing it.Corey: Oh, yeah. Or at least as of this recording, there's a meme going around, again, from an old internal Google Video, of, “I just want to serve five terabytes of traffic,” and it's an internal Google discussion of, “I don't know how to count that low.” And, yeah.Thomas: [laugh].Corey: But there's also value in being able to address things at much larger volume. I would love to see better responsiveness options around things like Deep Archive because the idea of being able to query that—even if you can wait a day or two—becomes really interesting just from the perspective of, at that point, current cost for one petabyte of data in Glacier Deep Archive is 1000 bucks a month. That is ‘why would I ever delete data again?' Pricing.Thomas: Yeah. You said it. And what's interesting about our technology is unlike, let's say Lucene, when you index it, it could be 3, 4, or 5x the raw size, our representation is smaller than gzip. So, it is a full representation, so why don't you store it efficiently long-term in S3? Oh, by the way, with the Glacier; we support Glacier too.And so, I mean, it's amazing the cost of data with cloud storage is dramatic, and if you can make it hot and activated, that's the real promise of a data lake. And, you know, it's funny, we use our own service to run our SaaS—we log our own data, we monitor, we alert, have dashboards—and I can't tell you how cheap our service is to ourselves, right? Because it's so cost-effective for long-tail, not just, oh, a few weeks; we store a whole year's worth of our operational data so we can go back in time to debug something or figure something out. And a lot of that's savings. Actually, huge savings is cloud storage with a distributed elastic compute fabric that is serverless. These are things that seem so obvious now, but if you have SSDs, and you're moving things around, you know, a team of IT professionals trying to manage it, it's not cheap.Corey: Oh, yeah, that's the story. It's like, “Step one, start paying for using things in cloud.” “Okay, great. When do I stop paying?” “That's the neat part. You don't.” And it continues to grow and build.And again, this is the thing I learned running a business that focuses on this, the people working on this, in almost every case, are more expensive than the infrastructure they're working on. And that's fine. I'd rather pay people than technologies. And it does help reaffirm, on some level, that—people don't like this reminder—but you have to generate more value than you cost. So, when you're sitting there spending all your time trying to avoid saving money on, “Oh, I've listened to ChaosSearch talk about what they do a few times. I can probably build my own and roll it at home.”It's, I've seen the kind of work that you folks have put into this—again, you have something like 100 employees now; it is not just you building this—my belief has always been that if you can buy something that gets you 90, 95% of where you are, great. Buy it, and then yell at whoever selling it to you for the rest of it, and that'll get you a lot further than, “We're going to do this ourselves from first principles.” Which is great for a weekend project for just something that you have a passion for, but in production mistakes show. I've always been a big proponent of buying wherever you can. It's cheaper, which sounds weird, but it's true.Thomas: And we do the same thing. We have single-sign-on support; we didn't build that ourselves, we use a service now. Auth0 is one of our providers now that owns that [crosstalk 00:37:12]—Corey: Oh, you didn't roll your own authentication layer? Why ever not? Next, you're going to tell me that you didn't roll your own payment gateway when you wound up charging people on your website to sign up?Thomas: You got it. And so, I mean, do what you do well. Focus on what you do well. If you're repeating what everyone seems to do over and over again, time, costs, complexity, and… service, it makes sense. You know, I'm not trying to build storage; I'm using storage. I'm using a great, wonderful service, cloud object storage.Use whats works, whats works well, and do what you do well. And what we do well is make cloud object storage analytical and fast. So, call us up and we'll take away that 2 a.m. call you have when your cluster falls down, or you have a new workload that you are going to go to the—I don't know, the beach house, and now the weekend shot, right? Spin it up, stream it in. We'll take over.Corey: Yeah. So, if you're listening to this and you happen to be at re:Invent, which is sort of an open question: why would you be at re:Invent while listening to a podcast? And then I remember how long the shuttle lines are likely to be, and yeah. So, if you're at re:Invent, make it on down to the show floor, visit the ChaosSearch booth, tell them I sent you, watch for the wince, that's always worth doing. Thomas, if people have better decision-making capability than the two of us do, where can they find you if they're not in Las Vegas this week?Thomas: So, you find us online chaossearch.io. We have so much material, videos, use cases, testimonials. You can reach out to us, get a free trial. We have a self-service experience where connect to your S3 bucket and you're up and running within five minutes.So, definitely chaossearch.io. Reach out if you want a hand-held, white-glove experience POV. If you have those type of needs, we can do that with you as well. But we booth on re:Invent and I don't know the booth number, but I'm sure either we've assigned it or we'll find it out.Corey: Don't worry. This year, it is a low enough attendance rate that I'm projecting that you will not be as hard to find in recent years. For example, there's only one expo hall this year. What a concept. If only it hadn't taken a deadly pandemic to get us here.Thomas: Yeah. But you know, we'll have the ability to demonstrate Chaos at the booth, and really, within a few minutes, you'll say, “Wow. How come I never heard of doing it this way?” Because it just makes so much sense on why you do it this way versus the merry-go-round of data movement, and transformation, and schema management, let alone all the sharding that I know is a nightmare, more often than not.Corey: And we'll, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:39:40]. Thomas, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. As always, it's appreciated.Thomas: Corey, thank you. Let's do this again.Corey: We absolutely will. Thomas Hazel, CTO and Founder of ChaosSearch. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast episode, 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 comment because I have dared to besmirch the honor of your homebrewed object store, running on top of some trusty and reliable Raspberries Pie.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.

The best way to learn something is by doing, which is a lesson that Thomas Lotrecchiano's father taught him early on. Thomas and his father started Omigo together in 2018 as an alternate route to Thomas going to school for an MBA, and in the years since, that lesson keeps cropping up. Omigo is a DTC bidet company, and like many industry disruptors, its biggest challenge is educating the consumer base and converting skeptics into loyal customers. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Thomas explains how they have done exactly that by blending humor and educational content, building an infrastructure that allows them to ride the changing tides of demand, and by betting big on TV moving forward. Plus, Thomas shares some of the lessons he has learned from his father, who is an ecommerce gamechanger in his own right, having grown a small online business from a modest five employees to 250 in the early days of the industry.. Enjoy this episode! Main Takeaways:How Long Will It Take?: Getting consumers to adopt a new product, especially an intimate one, requires a great deal of education, patience, and listening. Just because your product works flawlessly and it has certain innate benefits doesn't mean that it will immediately be a hit. You have to invest in educating the consumer base and then listening to and incorporating their feedback into your products and messaging.Don't Overlook the Obvious: It's easy to fall in love with your product and spend time and money selling its unique features, but what actually makes people convert is if you can show them how to use it, how to install it, and lastly the value that can be derived from it. Those are the conversion areas that you should be laser-focused on, and highlighting any of the superfluous features can come later.Basic Building Blocks: There are three fundamental elements that DTC businesses need to start with before getting their company off the ground. They are: customer service, fulfillment, and a functioning, lead-generating website that has the ability to scale. Without these building blocks, your company is not ready to scale.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we're ready for what's next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder and CEO at Mission.org. Today on the show, we have Thomas Lotrecchiano, the co-founder of Omigo. How's it going, Thomas?Thomas:It is great. You nailed the last name. Perfect.Stephanie:Yes. I'm so happy. I was looking at that like, "Oh, can I do this one?" So many tricky names on this show, but I'm like a 50/50 shot at getting them right, so it's all right. So I'd love to hear a bit about Omigo. I saw it's a bidet company, which was very exciting to me, surprisingly, because I've been to Japan before, and I remember entering the airport and going into one of the stalls, and it closed and music started playing. They had this beautiful toilet. I couldn't hear anything. I was in my own little spaceship. And the toilet was obviously a great bidet, and so I'm very excited about the world of bidets, but I want to hear a bit about how you guys even got into this.Thomas:I love hearing about people's first bidet stories, and they're always so different. A lot of people talk about Japan. Some people talk about [inaudible] or having to use their hand, or bum guns in Southeast Asia, or the traditional ones in Italy, and not having any clue how to use them. Bidets, bidets. So it started when my dad rented a new apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina, and they had an electric bidet seat there, and it was just like the ones that we're selling now. Very similar. So it was his first bidet experience, besides the ancient extra fixtures you see in European bathrooms that you might want to wash your feet in.Thomas:And he didn't use it for a month. Wouldn't touch it. My mom loved it immediately. And so, after some time, he warmed up and he sat down, used it. Basically, I like to imagine an epiphany where he sat down and some angelic music played and lights lit up around him and his life was changed forever. He wouldn't stop talking about it. I had been exposed to bidets in Southeast Asia. A little bit different than what we're selling now. But that's how both of us kind of got our start with a bidet, but the company came from when my dad just would not stop talking about these Japanese toilet seats every family gathering, whenever I was with him, I lived in the same city as him, and it just wouldn't wouldn't end.Stephanie:Yeah. Yep. Once you get that experience, I feel like it's hard to go back. I know when I worked at the main campus at Google, they were everywhere, in every bathroom. And to me, that's such a foreign concept, but there's so many different people there, that was just part of the norm. And I would always have friends come and visit me and family come on campus, and after just me being like, "Go try it. Don't be scared. You're going to love it," it's like it was a conversation for the entire week afterwards. So it was very life-changing. I mean, what's interesting, too, about your guys' company is that you co-founded it with your dad. Which I think is a very fun story and I want to hear a bit about that, because I see he has a big background in ecommerce, as well, and had a company that went from 5 to 250 employees, which you were working at as a teenager. So I'd love to hear a bit of the background there and what it's like working with your dad.Thomas:Yeah, absolutely. Super accomplished guy. Really happy to be working with him now. So just kind of how he and I got started, I'll fast forward to. There was a time where I was choosing a career path after I had done two years of service in AmeriCorps, which is a nonprofit, national organization: NCCC. And we had known we'd always wanted to work together. We're very similar people and we get along. We have a lot of the same thought processes. And so, it came a time where this bidet epiphany had happened, and he said, "Hey, I know that you're thinking about going to school for an MBA. Instead of getting an MBA, we're going to start this business together. You're going to learn more. You're going to actually get paid instead of paying. And it's going to start a new career for you." And I was game-Stephanie:Smart dad.Thomas:Right? Very smart dad. I trusted him, I believed what he was saying, and I knew from all of those years' experience, like you mentioned, that I was going to learn a ton. And so, the business that you referred to that he took from five to... I forget how many hundreds of employees, was called Canvas On Demand. And so, it is a digital or physical image-to-canvas art company, and when he started it, you only really found that in Walgreens. And so, he took it to the ecommerce space, which was... In 2005, selling stuff online was weird. It wasn't huge yet. You were still going to the store, picking things up. But I want to reel back just a little bit more. He started Art.com. He purchased the Art.com domain-Stephanie:Domain?Thomas:And started selling... Yeah, selling posters in 2001 with a different company. And that kind of set him on this online trajectory. Then, he launched into this Canvas On Demand company, which yes, I worked at as a teenager every summer, every holiday, I was probably the eighth employee, technically. From the beginning, I've been working with my dad, and I've definitely watched him run his companies and I've admired what he's done from afar and up close for years now, so it's great to work with him.Stephanie:Yeah. Very cool. So what does the separation of roles look like for what your dad does and when he's like, "And this is for you to run on your own"?Thomas:Yeah, so I would say that my dad is the big picture guy. He is really good at thinking outside the box, pushing the brand, and making sure that everything is in the right place, and then my job is running the day-to-day. So running the store, managing all of our agencies and merchants, and working on [inaudible]. And I'm really in the day-to-day of Omigo.Stephanie:Cool. And how challenging has it been to bring this product to the US, sell people on the benefits? How do you even approach that marketing? Because I feel like unless you've really tried it, it's pretty hard to convince someone who's never even thought about it to be sold on a product like that. So how do you think about introducing people to this kind of new product? At least in the US still feels kind of new.Thomas:Yeah, it's shocking. I still have to convince my friends to try it. I run a bidet brand and it's still work to get people that know and trust me to sit down and wash their butts. Washing your butt is such a foreign concept here and it is maddening, because, like you said, once you try it, it's almost impossible to go back. You have to get some sort of bidet in your home. And we knew it was going to be a challenge, but we know that that fact I just stated, once you try it, you'll never go back, and it's such a better way, cleaner way to go to the bathroom, that it's just a matter of time before it catches on in the United States.Stephanie:But it's been a long time. That's my thing. These have been around for [inaudible]. How much more time do we need? What kind of [inaudible] are you going to get yourself out there? What kind of marketing are you going to use? Are you going to pull a Poo-Pourri and really go hard with the unicorn type of stuff? Or how are you guys thinking about educating and selling this idea?Thomas:Yeah. Well, you need multiple people in the space to start disrupting and pushing this kind of taboo idea in people's faces, and what we've done is we took an educational approach. No one knows what Japanese bidet toilet seats are, and so we have this awesome product that does all these great things, makes you feel amazing, super easy to install, and that's the tactic that we went with was letting people know that it's not intimidating. So we use plain language to describe the installation. We let you know exactly how it functions. And then, along the way, we're using a little bit of humor and that expressive "how it makes you feel" experience, and try to get that across in our visual and audio cues.Stephanie:Yeah. And what kind of formats have you seen do best? Where you're like, "Oh, this one video that centered around humor did better than a pure educational one." What are you seeing connect with people, especially in the marketing campaigns that you're running?Thomas:Yeah. So humor has been a big one for us. We have one called "Bidet, Mate," and it's an Australian man and he talks about if you stepped in a lot of dingo dung, you wouldn't wipe it off, you'd wash it. So use a little bit of humor there, but he's also explaining exactly how this great product works, so it breaks down that wall of, "This is gross. I'm not talking about poop. But poop is funny, so let's make jokes about it." And then it says, "Okay, we're here. We're talking about it. Now, look at this awesome thing. Toilet paper is disgusting. You're reaching down and you're wiping yourself, so why don't you wash instead?" And so, [crosstalk] a good one. And an accent.Stephanie:Any accents you can get into marketing I feel like will probably have a good ROI. I don't know. Don't measure me on that, but it seems like it would. All right, so you're using humor. I sometimes feel like humor can go both ways though. You've got one side that can work really well, like I was saying, like Poo-Pourri and then the Harmon Brothers do a bunch of ad campaigns all around humor and a lot of them have done really well. But then, it also seems like it can be like a short blip of people are excited about the Squatty Potty, and then it's like, "Is anyone still using that thing? What happened to it?" So how are you approaching that balance between funny but then also, "This is something that you're going to keep for a long time"?Thomas:Yeah. So humor's a great attention-grabber. So I make you laugh. It's a little bit funny. You're interested in the product, and then we also have educational, but kind of... So I'll say I am in a video with my dad on YouTube and it is called, "Our Founder Spot and Why We Founded Omigo," and it tells you basically this story, and then, it lets us explain the product without being funny. And we think it's approachable and educational and real, coming from real people, not actors, and that seems to do extremely well combined with that humor. So I agree. It could definitely be flash in the pan and we've done funny stuff that hasn't worked, but on that front end, getting people's attention, humor does seem to work really well for bidets, specifically.Stephanie:Yeah, and I think that authenticity is definitely key, especially around a product that people don't really understand. And yeah, I'm even thinking, how do you guys lean into maybe user-generated content? Which to me, if you see someone using it that is like you, you're like instantly, "I'll probably give it a try, because you're like me and if you like it, I probably would, too." But for something like this, are your customers even willing to talk about it and get the word out there and help spread the message?Thomas:Yeah, so we have seen a steady increase in our post-purchase survey for friends and family, word of mouth. And that's exactly where it comes from: people that you trust talking about such an intimate topic. So UGC isn't always something that I'm going to be showing on my website, because it's true, I'm not going to be able to get the everyday consumer to send me a video while they're on their bidet, talking about how awesome it is. But when we do use that approach, it's been in the influencer space. A lot of people look at influencers as people they trust, guides in their lives, people they aspire to live like. Whether you agree or disagree with how people portray themselves on Instagram or social media, it's still a place for aspirational content and to look at people and see what they're doing. And we've seen some very good traction there, utilizing that influencer content elsewhere on our marketing channels.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative). What platforms are you working with alongside these influencers?Thomas:Yeah, so they post on Instagram and then we use whitelisting on Facebook and Instagram.Stephanie:Got it. Okay. And then, what are the results for that when it comes to conversions, and what does that funnel look like versus maybe just a typical ad out in the world or on YouTube, maybe running it against your video with your dad, like a very authentic company story. How do those two perform side-by-side?Thomas:Yeah. So we typically don't run those side-by-side or A/B test them. We kind of keep them separate. The best thing about whitelisting... Are you familiar with the concept?Stephanie:Yeah. Go into the detail, because I'm not...Thomas:Yeah, sure. So whitelisting content is working with an influencer where you get them to create some awesome content around your brand. You guide them and let them do their own thing, but then you technically have access to their account, and from there-Stephanie:Oh, got it. Yeah.Thomas:Yeah, you can use their audience and create a lookalike from it on Facebook and Instagram, and then re-target them with that content from the actual influencer. So that's where a lot of the power comes from is building those audiences on Facebook and showing them these people that look and think and talk like them, and then getting them to look at this product and say, "Oh, I've never heard of it. These people are using it. Hmm." It's kind of like that "this is everywhere" approach. You're going to get hit with a funny ad, you'll see my dad and I, and then you'll see an influencer with it. So breaking down those walls and making it normal is a big thing in the customer acquisition.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah. Completely agree. So how do you even garner... I'm thinking about like, you have this product, and do customers give you feedback and do you let that influence the product? Or are you more kind of like tunnel vision? "We know it's good. We've been to Japan. We know what it needs to be like." How do you think about that product development cycle?Thomas:Yeah. The product is what the product is right now. We know that we have a great bidet seat, and we know that we have great bidet attachments, and we have faith in these products to perform extremely well. They're super high quality. A lot of people love them. When you're working with a product that 98% of Americans don't have in their homes, you're going to get a lot of feedback about that product in particular. We are always listening, though. It's not to say we turn a deaf ear to what people are coming back and mentioning about the product, because there are things you can change down the road. So it takes a long time to develop. Years and years. So being able to hear what people are saying, seeing patterns in their responses, will definitely be guiding our product development. But for me, listening to our customers at the beginning was more about why they decided to try the product, what they like about it, and what they were skeptical about, and then taking that feedback and putting it back into our messaging. So that was super important to me.Stephanie:Yeah. That's a really good way to view feedback, from all angles. What are some of the most surprising pieces of feedback, either before the sale or after, that you've received where you're like, "Oh, that's very interesting"? Where you actually maybe implemented it into your copy, your language, the way you educate people? What was something surprising, or more than one thing, that actually helped influence how you talked about it or sold it?Thomas:Yeah, so one thing that we hear a lot, and I love to hear it, is: "Why didn't I do this sooner?" And it's that sentiment where it's like, "Ugh, I've been living my entire life wiping with dry paper, and these bidets have been around. What was I doing before?" And so, we take that sentiment into our marketing now. And then, on the pre-purchase side, it really came down to listening the frustration points of what we weren't showing and telling people on our website.Thomas:So there are little complications with your seat size and shape and your plumbing fixtures, and it's a complicated world down there by the toilet. And I was looking at it from a world of head down in bidets and toilets, and I knew too much about toilets than I ever needed to, and to be able to hear a customer pick your head up and say, "Oh, well, I obviously need to show this information. Why wasn't I doing that before? It doesn't matter. Put it on there now." That always has been a winning tactic for us.Stephanie:Yeah. I mean, it also seems like a good way, even around customer acquisition, building a piece of content of just, "How do I even hook this thing up?" I mean, even if they've bought it from a different brand or they're even considering it, I mean, that'd be my first question is, "Can I even do this myself? Do I need someone to come and install it for me? And what kind of things should I think about before buying something brand-new?" So it seems like a good content angle, too, to attract customers that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise.Thomas:Yeah. We put installation in a lot of our videos, and it's simple language, it's DIY, self-install, no special tools, no plumber required. Right? And that's kind of all you need to know. "Oh. I can handle it," is basically the message.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah. That's great. So earlier, you mentioned working with agencies was a piece of your world, and that's a topic that... We've had many founders on here where some are excited about it, some are like, "It didn't go well." How do you view working with agencies? What things did you choose to maybe hire out? What did you keep in-house? And how do you keep a good working relationship there?Thomas:Yeah, so the agency battle is: it seems incessant, until you find an amazing partner. And we've really settled into a couple of great partnerships, and those are the ones that we work harder at because we like the people internally and the work that they do. We get along with them. We have similar values when it comes to business, and so we put in extra time and effort say, "Hey, we don't really like this right now. We would like to change it this way," or, "We would like to see more of this." And the ones that take your feedback and change are the ones that you're going to stay with, and those are the people that we continue to work with.Thomas:So it's not easy finding a good agency, and we've had agency turnover multiple times with Omigo so far, but settling into a great relationship is extremely fruitful; and it's still going to be work, but that's the approach that we've taken. And to answer what we have kept in-house versus kind of farmed out, we keep customer service and product development in-house. Super important to keep that close to home, understand that feedback loop of what are people saying, how can we answer their questions more efficiently, and making sure that when it comes to a plumbing product, they have a great experience talking to someone and getting their questions answered. So keeping that close to home is super important.Stephanie:Yeah, it definitely seems like a high-touch customer service experience that, once you get past that point, it can be an instant sale as long as you have a good lead in and know everything and their questions are all answered from the start much easier, and you have to kind of keep that in-house. I can see why. So getting back to you working with your dad, and he's done a bunch of cool things before, what are some of the lessons and insights he brought into the company that you're like, "Wow, that really helped get it off the ground," or, "These insights here or his experience here really helped kind of get it going"? What kind of things did he bring to this company today that helped you guys lead it to where it is?Thomas:Yeah, so after he sold and exited Canvas On Demand, he started to consult with other ecommerce brands. So he is the friendliest person I know probably, and loves being around people, talking with them, listening to them, helping them, so it was a natural fit for him to take this... How many years was it? Seven or eight years at Canvas On Demand, where ecommerce was changing. It was in such a growth stage. Everything was different year after year, and so he had to adapt constantly. And I think that really shaped his way of thinking about ecommerce and allowed him to go past this legacy concept of ecommerce, that you might get stuck if you started in 2001, and really grow with that channel.Thomas:So he took that into his consulting career, and so, for the six years in between his sale and Omigo, he was consulting with ecommerce brands of all sizes: $5 million a year to $120-150 million a year and everywhere in between. So what we took from his experience into Omigo was what he calls his "ecommerce playbook," and it was the fundamentals of where you need to start with a direct-to-consumer business. And the basics of that were: great customer service, like I mentioned, solid fulfillment,Thomas:And the fundamentals of a website, so that being: something simple and functional, having a great hero and landing page, having solid email capture, having all of your email flows built and all of your knowledge base in place and everything ready to scale, because something could happen overnight like it did with Omigo, and you have to be ready to go from 10 orders a day to 150. So he brought this ecommerce playbook and this really rich knowledge base and a lot of connections to the start of Omigo.Stephanie:Nice. And so, how many orders are you guys at today? You just talked about going from like 10 a day to a hundred. What does it look like today, and what did that process look like scaling to where you are now?Thomas:Yeah, it fluctuates. So it's been a funny year-and-a-half for Omigo, because at the beginning of the pandemic, the toilet paper shortage hit.Stephanie:Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.Thomas:Right? Forgot about that.Stephanie:Yeah.Thomas:What a crazy time.Stephanie:I like to forget about dumb things like that. We didn't actually have a toilet paper shortage, we just had a logistics problem. But okay. Carry on.Thomas:We had a hoarding problem and a logistics problem. Either way, it was great for the bidet industry. It was an odd time to prosper, when you had a lot of people going through hardships and a lot of unknown in the future, but we couldn't look at that in the moment because people needed a solution to the toilet paper shortage. And bidets are the best answer, so, "Hello. We're Omigo. We've been here. Welcome." And during that time, it was Black Friday every day for a week. And then, that lasted about a month and a half. We sold out. Sales tapered back down in the summer, picked back up during holiday paper shortage, and then kind of continued into the new year. And we're seeing kind of a mini decline right now, and a steadying out of how many purchases we get. So still trying to figure it out. We haven't cracked the code 100% and we're working at it constantly, but definitely going with the flow as far as when orders are coming in and when they're not.Stephanie:So what are some lessons or things that you're adjusting going forward now that you've kind of seen these fluctuations of demand and Black Friday every day for a week, and then tapering down again? What kind of things are you maybe adjusting going forward to kind of future-proof the back end as well to make sure that you can keep up with it when it's there and then still have your suppliers and manufacturers when it's not Black Friday levels? How are you guys thinking about that now?Thomas:Yeah. Well, after we sold out, we realized this could happen again, especially during the pandemic. It was super unsure times. So we really shored up our supply chain. We ordered a lot of product, and we have a lot of product, and we are continually ordering it. Because we know it's a matter of time until bidets are ubiquitous. I mean, I am confident in that. It may take five more years. It may take 20 more years, but there's going to be one day where bidets are everywhere. And our products, they're shelf stable. It's not like they're going to be going bad, so having that on hand, being ready for a boom, is one way that we're future-proofing ourselves.Thomas:And another way is just keeping everything tight on our website. We are constantly A/B testing and trying out new copy or new design to optimize how customers are coming in, learning about our product, and finally purchasing. So keeping everything tight on the website keeps us future-proof. And being direct to consumer, we have a great relationship with our distribution centers, so always knowing that we're going to have a distribution relationship where, "Hey, yeah, we're at X amount of orders today, but that could double in the next three weeks and we need to make sure that you're ready." So having the infrastructure there, as well.Stephanie:So where are you most excited to take Omigo over the next maybe three to five years? What are you guys working towards? What are you most excited about right now?Thomas:Yeah, I'm really excited about television.Stephanie:Yeah?Thomas:I think that it's funny, because you think TV five years ago, you're like, "Oh, TV is dying. It's all going to be streaming." And yeah, it is a lot of streaming, but it's still a traditional marketing platform. There are still ads on every streaming platform and cable is still a booming industry. It is a gigantic industry. A lot of people have cable, Dish, and the like, and I think that for a young direct-to-consumer brand, getting in front of that many eyeballs is really exciting for us. So it's not a new channel; it's just new to us.Thomas:We are going to be launching soon. Yeah, we're going to be launching soon and are excited about the results. We have some people that we know that are doing well on TV and we think that we're going to do well, also.Stephanie:Cool. And is it specifically focusing on cable? Which I do feel like a lot of people are kind of sleeping on that, but I also wonder if maybe it's a generational thing, where it depends on who your target audience is that you're trying to get in front of; where maybe people closer to our age, they might not have cable. They're probably Netflix, Hulu, everywhere else, YouTube. But then, when I about maybe my parents, for sure they still have cable, and they're probably not going to get rid of it for a long time. So which areas... Or are you exploring all of that?Thomas:Yeah, we'll definitely explore all of it. Streaming is great. We have those low-price bidet attachments at Omigo that start at $89. So great entry-level, great price for anyone that wants a bidet. And then, our top-of-the-line bidet is at $649, and we do see the demographic there swing older. And that's a demographic that is humongous in this country. A lot of them are still watching cable, like you said, so they don't know about these luxury bidet toilet seats. And if they see it on TV, I think that kind of awareness is just going to do good things for every bidet company out there.Stephanie:Cool. Yeah, we'll have to circle back once you guys are live and [crosstalk] see you out there in the world on one of the channels.Thomas:You will.Stephanie:That'd be fun to hear the results and how it's going.Thomas:Yeah, so excited.Stephanie:All right. Well, let's shift over to the lightning round. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Thomas?Thomas:Yes.Stephanie:Cool. What ecommerce tool or piece of technology are you most excited about right now that you guys are maybe experimenting with?Thomas:So we've been on SMS for awhile, but SMS has just been a great platform for us. Being able to get into people's pockets and the open rate and click-through rate has been awesome. So SMS is a killer. It's not going anywhere and we're super excited about it.Stephanie:Awesome. What's up next on your reading list or your podcast queue?Thomas:Let's see. Guiltily been learning more about crypto lately on my podcast queue, so trying to educate myself on not just kind of what's booming and busting, but the inner workings and how to actually invest longterm into that world. So definitely a little bit of crypto podcasts in there.Stephanie:Nice. Yeah. There's some good ones out there. Personal favorites.Thomas:I'll have to ask. Yeah.Stephanie:I'll just send some episodes your way that are good ones. When you want to get creative, what do you do to get into that headspace?Thomas:I turn off everything around me, because I'm a very distractible person, and I really put myself into the place of who this creative project is for. Put on a little different hat for email, put on a different hat for Facebook, and if I'm stuck, I leave. Wherever I am. I go outside and move my body. I'm a very active person, so being able to get some blood flow gets my creative juices going, too.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, same. Cool. All right. And the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Thomas:The next year: the continued at-home life. People are not going to go back to the office full-time. A lot of people are going to keep spending time at home. People are buying houses. So this at-home goods and everything that you can use around the house is going to be huge, because people are still shopping online. People are still getting everything shipped to their door. We're not going to go back to retail yet. I think that's going to be in the next year. A big one.Stephanie:Cool. All right, Thomas, thanks so much for coming on the show and talking about bidets and the fun world. Where can people find out more about you and Omigo?Thomas:Yep, so if you want to find out about me, you can find me on LinkedIn: Thomas Lotrecchiano. And if you want to find out about Omigo, you can go to Myomigo.com. That's M-Y-O-M-I-G-O dot com. We have all of your butt washing needs. Stop wiping, people. Wash your butt.Stephanie:Do it the right way. Come on. All right. Thanks so much, Thomas.Thomas:Thank you, Stephanie. It's been a lot of fun.

In the words of Nick Venegoni, “Initiation is a moment when you can step into the next level of power.” Nick compares initiation to leveling up, like in gaming. You gain a new power. What if this is true? What if we can reframe the challenges in our lives as initiations that not only help us get through the hard moments but also help us to level up?   Links: The Queer Spirit Podcast Website Facebook Twitter Instagram Rate This Podcast Music by Terry Hughes   Full Transcript In the words of Nick Venegoni, “Initiation is a moment when you can step into the next level of power.” Nick compares initiation to leveling up, like in gaming. You gain a new power. What if this is true? What if we can reframe the challenges in our lives as initiations that not only help us get through the hard moments but also help us to level up? This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today we are going to explore a recent conversation I had with Nick Venegoni. Nick has been a guest on Shame Piñata and hosts his own show called The Queer Spirit Podcast. The Queer Spirit Podcast highlights conversations with artists, healers & activists who enliven, heal & empower the LGBTQ+ communities. In the following episode of The Queer Spirit Podcast you will hear a discussion focusing on ritual, initiation and change. Topics covered include the ritual I created to honor the 10 year anniversary of my father's passing, the first ritual I ever did, how rituals help us make sense of change and the power of initiation. We will also touch on coming out as one of the biggest queer initiations, my own coming out story and also, the story behind the name of the Shame Pinata podcast. Stay tuned through the end of Nick's show for a preview of what's coming on Shame Piñata this summer. And now, The Queer Spirit Podcast. Venegoni: Welcome to The Queer Spirit Podcast. I'm your host, Nick Venegoni. Here we have conversations with artists, healers, and activists who enliven the LGBTQ+ communities, and who empower our queer spirits to flourish. Before we get started with the interview, if you haven't heard, I've started a Patreon account for the podcast. Patreon is a way for you to help support the show and get special rewards in return such as a thank you shout out on the show, and an enameled button with the queer spirit logo. This year, I've also added access to videos of the podcast interviews and a free monthly live virtual sound bath. If you'd like to join in supporting the show, just go to patreon.com/queerspirit. You can also find the link in the show notes. Any Patreon funds remaining after the basic production costs will be donated to nonprofit supporting diverse queer communities. Once again that link is patreon.com/queerspirit. Thanks for your consideration. Venegoni: My guest today is Colleen Thomas. Colleen is a ritual artist and independent audio producer her podcast Shame Piñata focuses on creating rites of passage for real life transitions. Today we talk about the importance of ritual as a container and support for big and small changes in our lives. Colleen shares how she discovered the power of ritual to help her feel supported through life's challenges. She also shares some examples of the ways people have honored their relationships from the stories heard on her podcast. Find Colleen and her show at shamepinata.com. Venegoni: Hi, Colleen, welcome to the show. Thomas: Hi, Nick, it's so good to be here with you. Venegoni: Yeah, I'm excited to talk a little bit more about your podcast, having recently been a guest on it myself and share a little bit more about the vision that you're bringing out into the world. But before we do that, I wonder if you can just tell us a little bit about what inspired you to start a podcast about rites of passage? Thomas: Sure. Well, I guess it's sort of a roundabout answer. I have a very strong interest in radio and working in radio in some capacity, which there's a story around that too. But I'll just stick with this story. I was offered an internship with a local radio station and was so excited about it. But then I also started a new day job that exact same moment and I couldn't do both because one was 40 hours a week, and one was 20 hours a week and I was going to have a three hour a day commute so there's no way it was gonna fit! And so after about a year of getting my feet settled at the new job and learning all the new things with the commute and all the changes, life change, I found an audio coach and she helped me figure out a podcast project because I just wanted to be doing something. And I really wanted it to be about performance art, because I'm very interested in performance art and developing myself as a performance artist. But she said, “You keep telling me amazing stories about ritual.” And I decided… first I was like, “No… ritual... yeah, I do that all the time. I want to do this new thing.” And she's like, “No, no, I really think about it.” And then I thought about it and then I decided, “Yes, this is a thing. This is an important piece of my life. I have a master's degree in spirituality, I've put a lot of thought and energy into it. And I love to design ritual,” so I decided to make that the focus of the show. Venegoni: Great. So what is your history and your background with… or your just... your relationship with a ritual in general? Thomas: Well, I was an only child, I am an only child, so when I was a kid, I did a lot of things on my own. So I think a lot of my creativity comes from that. My friends say that I'm like, the most creative person they know. I'm like, sort of... that's like, “Oh, you're so creative.” They always say that. So I think I kind of had that already. And make believe it's been a really big part of my life, you know, I can see... I can entertain myself, I'm fine on my own. And I was religious when I was a kid but I wasn't... I guess really wasn't spiritual until I had sort of an awakening after college when I realized that my moon flow was a very sacred thing for me. And the time of the menstruation became a very big spiritual practice for me. And that led me to a school in Oakland, California, Matthew Fox's University of Creation Spirituality... well, that sort of spiritual, that awakening spirituality and me led me there. And then I got to focus on the blood mysteries for my master's thesis. So I got to really delve into the concept of the Red Tent during that time. And just sort of around that time, I just started, you know, honoring the new moon and the full moon and creating ritual for this and that and I just began to realize that rites of passage are super important, like whenever anything is going on in my life that you know is a little difficult or challenging, or I want my community around me... or it's usually for me, always things that nobody would understand. So like there's no ceremony for this weird thing is happening in my life, so I'm gonna have to create it. So that's kind of what prompted creating ceremony. Venegoni: Yeah. And for you what is important about creating some kind of ritual or ceremony for these strange or unique or significant things that are happening in your life? Thomas: Well, they're important, and they're usually scary and new, and I don't want to be alone in them. And they're all really important moments. And I guess it's basically I don't want to be alone. Venegoni: And even if it's something that's just happening to you, can you just share like how, by doing ritual, you don't feel alone? Thomas: Well, I usually do it in community. So that's kind of a built-in way. I do ritual by myself but lately, it's been more in community. I guess, what I do mostly when I'm alone, is I'm often planning something that I'm doing in community. So bringing people together... I just had a big ritual for myself about a month ago on the anniversary of my father's death, the 10 year anniversary of my father's death, honoring another step I felt I had taken in my own healing from that relationship. And it was really healing for me to plan it and to sense into what was changing exactly, and it was several things. And to honor... to figure out where those things wanted to go and exactly what would honor them. And exactly, then how would I bring community into that? And like, what would that look like? And it involved some jewelry, presenting myself with jewelry [LAUGHS] This is a typical theme for me - I have a whole bunch of significant jewelry. And I picked people to present me with the pieces. And those people, I gave them the full lowdown, “This is exactly what this means, and let's work together on how you will present this to me, you know, in ritual space.” And then I had... I also invited everybody to that particular ritual to bring something. So it's very important for me to have everybody's voice in the circle. And so everybody brought some kind of reading. Everybody got involved in some way. And the beauty of that is that at first I thought, “Oh, I'll just send out… please read that.” And then I was getting some… “Oh, that doesn't resonate with me... that doesn't… that feels weird”, or, you know, or “Can I read this?” and that was kind of I didn't want that. But then it actually turned into this really much deeper and richer involvement of each person so that they really showed up with this thing that meant something to them and then they contributed. So then it was like we were weaving, constantly weaving, this circle deeper and stronger with all of us. And it ultimately helped me achieve one of my big goals with ceremony, which is even if it's for me, for everybody to get something out of it as much as that's possible. And everybody always says things like, “Oh, you did this for us. This isn't for you, you engineered this for us” you know… It's like I'm always really happy when they they feel that way about it. Yeah, Venegoni: Yeah. Yeah. And you've used a word that I really resonate with when I think about ritual, which is weaving. You know, in pagan communities, when we talk about spellcrafting, we talk about weaving a spell. But even for those who don't resonate with the word spell, I do think even in ritual, particularly with other people, that there's this way that it feels woven together, like we all have a little a part of it, you know. I think about this idea of like the maypole at Beltane when people... everyone's holding on to a ribbon and they're all dancing together, and they're weaving this beautiful pattern around the pole. Or even if you're alone, and you are working with Spirit or other Deities, there's a way in which they are working with you and they're weaving this ritual with you together. And it could be the image I'm getting right now is, you know, weaving a blanket of protection or comfort around you if there's grief or sorrow, or some challenge happening. But the.. I really like that image and that sense of weaving. Do you have a special memory of one of your own rites of passage? I mean, you just mentioned this one about the anniversary of your father's death. But I wonder if there's something in particular maybe even like the first one that felt significant to you that really felt like, “Oh, this is for me, I'm really, you know, this works for me better than, you know, maybe this other religion that I was raised”? Thomas: Hmm. Well, I had a period of my life when I was just first in college, I met a woman who was a bi witch. And those both were new concepts to me - like as them as being legitimate was new to me. Like I had heard of bisexual people in my life, but it was always with, “Oh, yeah, that person is a little confused...” You know, like, it was never like, “Oh, that person's bi and they're cool.” or, “They're just a person”, you know, like, it was always like, there was a caveat that it was like - bad. And even from my gay friends that's what I was hearing. And later when I came out to some of my gay friends as bi, they were kind of like, “Oh, I'm sorry.” and I was like, “Just stop it!” So... but she was bi and so that was a little challenge for me, too. Like, you know, like, “Oh wait, she's really amazing” reprogramming you know, my brain. And then she was a witch and something about her being both challenged me in those ways at the same time. And I think I was always a witch and just didn't know it. When I was six or four or something like that, my mom made me a bad witch costume. The Wizard of Oz was big in our house. So she made me the bad witch costume. And the next year, she made me the Good Witch costume. And then I just, I literally wore them every year. I rotated the Good Witch, Bad Witch, Good Witch, just like and… I liked the Good Witch costume a little bit better because it had a like a princess... the hat was turned into like a princess hat and it had like a big piece of taffeta hanging down off the point, you know, so it sort of swirled around me. And so that felt very pretty to me, and soft, and blue was very blue. But other than that I didn't have a preference of the Good Witch, Bad Witch. And so I just feel like then later meeting this woman in college and realizing what being a witch meant to her being a pagan, earth based spirituality and learning what that was, that just felt like, wow, that makes so much more sense than, you know, the way I was trained to learn all the Christian things I was raised with. Those always felt very important to me, but I've never understood them and spent a fair amount of time banging my head against the wall trying to get them in. And it just never really it never fit. It never exactly made sense to me. And so then I met her and then I sort of moved into that space. And so that freshman year, I remember the spring of my freshman year in college, I remember, that was like a real time of awakening. And I was surrounding myself with pagan learnings and pagan experiences. And I had one, I don't usually refer to them as spells. Now, like you mentioned that word, I don't really resonate with that word. But when I first came to it, that word was used a lot. And so I was sort of involved in that word. And my first spell I did was it was this, like, “Let me be healthy and green. Love myself. Love the planet…” It was very, like, very, it was very good witchy! under a tree. And I just sort of like I read something out of a book, which is totally not the way I operate. Now, like I would never read something out of a book or a spell now, because it's like, “Wait, now what does that mean? And what was the intention behind that?” and I'm not going to read out of a book unless I really love it. But I was, you know, under this tree reading this spell, and it was something about having a green cord and tying it on a tree or something. And it was just basically a prayer. It was very simple. But I remember that as being a very profound moment of me moving into this nature-based place that felt so empowering and so lush and so real and immediate. Venegoni: So one of the things that you sort of tagline in your podcast as you want to talk to people about how rituals help us make a sense of change. And we sort of touched on that a little bit. But I'm curious, both through your own experience, and through the interviews you've had with people, like, how do rituals help us make sense of change? Thomas: Well, early on in my show, one of my guests, Betty Ray, she said, “Rituals help us create a container to hold the powerful emotions that come with change.” And that really, like I was like, Yeah. Like all my guests have been putting words to these things I've been feeling all this time and that is exactly… to me... that resonates for me. Because... if the other thing that I've been noticing is like if I'm developing this theory that we can handle change, and change is a very constant thing, but we don't like it. And we like to just tick tick tick tick along like normal and like, “Okay, I'm good if this like, you know, all these things in my life stay the same, and it's good, I'm good.” But then like something happens, then I go into this place of, “Oh!” and upset and fear. And it's like strong emotions. Basically like boom, strong emotions! So then maybe that's a situation... problems, not all of them. But maybe that's a situation where a ritual could help. You know, I was brainstorming last night, my next episode, which I'm thinking about calling, like, Do you need a ceremony? Or is it time for ceremony? Or how do you know you need to ceremony or something like that. And I was thinking about all the changes in our lives that happened, and maybe which ones of them, you know, how do we know if we want to ceremony around this or not? Like, like, if I need to move, maybe I don't have time for a ceremony because I'm busy moving so like, sorry, you know. But if somebody is that I love is sick and I can't be with them, maybe that's a perfect time for ceremony for myself, or to gather people around me to sit with me while I hold space for them, you know, across the miles or whatever is challenging. We can feel into like, “Would something be helpful? Would it be helpful to create a container for these emotions? Or would it just be helpful to like, write them all down in a journal and like, just put them somewhere?” You know, like, it doesn't have to be, you know, a zoom call with friends or people in my living room or you know, it doesn't have to be a big thing. It could be a very small, intentional act to help deal with a situation. Yeah. Venegoni: And I know that something You and I had discussed on your show a little bit was the concept of initiation. And I'm curious, you know, what sort of your ideas are about initiation, what initiation means, particularly in the construct of a ritual? Thomas: Well, you were the one who said that on my show, I thought it was Thom, but it was you. And it was really a magical moment for me when you said that I was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is that's exactly…” Like I had been framing it like that, like, when I think of initiation, I tend to think of, you know, Imbolc, or, you know, joining a group and, you know, going through something... being initiated into, like, a coven or something official like that, like… Not just like, “Oh, I'm going into phase 27A of my life now” You know, and, or my relationship now, right? And so that's an initiation. So like that, that just struck me as like, wow, that's beautiful way to put it, because, especially if something is coming up that I don't want, you know, like, this thing is like, “Oh god, this horrible thing is happening in my life!” Like, you know, how, yes, I'm changing, I'm being forced to change in this moment. How can I reframe this as an initiation? Or how is it initiation, or what I want to claim and is one now, like, and what's being ignited in me what's being birthed in me and needing to deal with this change, right? And then, of course, the we can, you know, becoming 40, becoming 50, becoming 60, getting married, having a baby, all those things, you know, initiations into a new phase of life, it just seems to me like using that word initiation makes it, it just feels really different than saying, “I'm going into a hard thing or changing in some way.” Venegoni: Well, what I'm thinking about right now, as we talked about, is if you just take the word initiate, usually to initiate something means that you are doing it of your own volition. You know, you've talked about some of these other things that just kind of happen that we don't have control over like death, or the cycles of our body… you know, those kinds of things that often we know that they're going to come but we have to just prepare and deal with it and so let's just create this container to have to work through it more easily. But to initiate something means that you are doing it because you have to. So that was just something I just thought of now is like that's a way to sort of take the power back. And that's also the way that I think about initiation. So it's a moment when you can step into the next level of power. You know, if you think about it from a sort of gaming perspective, it's a level up. You gain a new power, and what is that power? And how do you really sink into that and hold that? Or what is that new tool that you may acquire through this process of the ritual and what comes after that? Thomas: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think so too. It's like a choice. Yeah. Venegoni: And in our culture, you know, there are certain things especially from a religious perspective that we do initiate ourselves, you know, as you've talked... mentioned, and you talk about on your podcast is weddings and baptism and other things. But, you know, I also talked to people about like an initiation, like a graduation as an initiation. Thomas: Definitely. Venegoni: You know, you are completing something, you are gaining this certificate or this diploma, that's gonna give you power and allow you to, you know, level up in your career or in your work or whatever it is that you do, and you can bring that out into the world. Thomas: Yeah, they often call it matriculation. You know, I had a situation in my school where somebody didn't have a diploma because they had matriculated; they were in a different system. They were like, “Well, you didn't graduate.” It's like... it’s the same thing! Yeah, but that word has like going on, that means going on finishing. So it's like it's a different way of... we call it graduation, but it's really matriculation, which is going on. Venegoni: Yeah, yeah. And as I think I talked about on your show, and I'll just mention it again here for folks, as I think one of the biggest initiations that queer folks go through is coming out, you know, coming out in terms of your sexuality or your gender identity. And it's also something that, you know, a lot of queer people... we have to continue to come out to more and more people as we move on and, and that there is a way in which it's looked at as something scary, or, you know, because it can be a significant change for people if their family or their community or their loved ones are not accepting that, they could be rejected or abandoned. But there's also a claiming of power that can happen with that too, like I'm stepping more fully into my truth and who I am. And there may be some big changes that happen that I don't have control over. But what are the ways that I can take this forward with more power and feel more solid and myself? Thomas: Definitely. Definitely. I feel like the coming out stories are very powerful to hear. And when we go to that place and queer community where people share their coming out stories, it's like... it's that deep, powerful sharing that happens within a group where everybody in the group, you know, gets it. And they've all got their own, like really deep well from it. And there's just a very personal place. And so obviously, hearing coming out stories for anybody would be powerful, hopefully. But within the community, it's like... it's all kind of like... it's just so much. It's so powerful. Venegoni: Yeah. Now, I've noticed that on your podcast, you've had a fair number of episodes where you talk about weddings. And I understand because that's probably the most common, you know, whether or not people are spiritual or religious, they still go through that ritual of a wedding, even if it's just going to the courthouse and signing a document. There's still something ritualistic about it. But I'm curious to know, like, if you've learned anything interesting or unique by talking to so many different people about their weddings, or, you know, if weddings have taken on a new meaning for you, now that you've heard so many different stories about it? Thomas: Well, I chose weddings as a focus for season one, because I thought, just like you said, it could be a good entry point for folks and I thought I might stick with a theme for each season going forward. And then I decided that I didn't know I could get enough stories about like coming of age for season two, or whatever. So maybe I just needed to kind of go generic, but I wanted that to be an entry point for people. And I talked about two different sorts of ideas behind rites of passage on the show. One is the ones that there are and there aren't party decorations for. That’s kind of the way I see it, like, there are party decorations for weddings, and graduations, and well... not exactly funerals, but that's accepted as like, you know, a rite of passage or community time around a significant change. And then there's the personal ones, like the one I'm talking with my father, you know, the 10 year anniversary of my father’s passing, like, there’s no party decorations for that, right? So I got to create it myself. So I sort of want to have those two branches constantly in the show, right? So… but to your question about learning about weddings, I've just been inspired by people who have done it their way, which is kind of... and I have sought out those people. “You did it your way. Come talk to me!” you know… And your handfasting with Thom resonated so much with what I did, in my own experience, with my husband. It was like pretty much... we did a very similar thing of involving the community, being married by everybody. We invited, you know, big, huge ritual, you know, in a big space, big… nobody's sitting in chairs, everybody's super involved the entire two hours, you know, like so it was a really... it was a joy to speak with the two of you, because it resonated so strongly with my experience which I still have so much good feeling about. You know, and there was one interview with Betsy Weiss, she and her partner, Brandon, they had not gotten married, they had a ceremony which was not a marriage. And that was so she could be connected with her family before her mother passed. So it was as if they were getting married - it was sort of hard to conceptualize. And her aunts like had to make centerpieces because they didn't know what to do. They were like, “We're gonna make centerpieces!” you know, we're just like… “Okay, you're not getting married, but we're gonna make centerpieces…” because it was such a hard time for the family and her mother was passing away. But it was like... they did a wedding right before her mother died but they consciously did not get married. And they had one everybody understand that, and everybody was really confused. But like, they did exactly what they wanted. In the end, everybody kind of got it, you know, and they had this lovely... different levels of the ceremony where the deeper ceremony was very intimate, it was just the family. And then they had like, another level where they had was sort of like a reception, but it was like a gathering of more people. And then another gathering of more people, like sequentially throughout the day not like another day. And it was just really beautiful, the way that they involved everybody at different levels, you know, in different ways around the ceremony that was super meaningful to them that people really didn't get, but they showed up for anyway. And they were just kind of trusting, “I think this is what you want…” you know, like… So it was just … that was the most unique one. But they've all been super inspiring in terms of everybody doing it their own way. And really, it's kind of soul searching in the process, because a lot of people in the interview share their process with me, you know, how did you get from here to there, you know, and taking it apart and really finding what sparked for them, you know, what does this need to be for us? How do we make it happen? Venegoni: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I like about that, and what you've sort of mentioned before, is that with ritual, it can usually be a lot more, a lot richer and more special if you are making it your own. You know, you talked about the first ritual that you did that you just kind of read out of the book, and you're like, “I don't really know, but I don't know how to do this. I'm just going to read something out of a book”, but now you only create it yourself. And that's one of the things that I talked to a lot of queer folks About especially queer couples or people who are in any kind of relationship, and they're like, “Well, I don't know if I want to get married…” or even if they do get married, like how they structure their relationship itself. It's like, you get to make it what you want. And I think that that something's unique that straight people can do too and they just don't think about it or know it. They just feel like, “Oh, I have to follow this formula,” you know? But you can make the ritual what you want it to be. It doesn't have to look like it looks in the wedding magazines or on TV, or that you can make your relationship look how you want it to look. And so, you know, that's just one of the things I think is really important to get across to all people, you know, just to keep sharing that. So I really like that, you know, that they created this unique thing for themselves. And like, this is not a wedding. I mean, it sounds kind of like a loosely, maybe a commitment ceremony. Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I don't think they would have used that word for some reason, but I think you could, it was like an acknowledgement of their relationship. Yeah. Venegoni: It's an announcement of like, this is who we are, Thomas: What you just said, was making me think that telling people you can do... I do that a lot, you can do anything. You know, out of the box, it’s up to you. And yet people like, “Okay, if I can do anything, then what does that mean?” Like I mean that's like, “Jump off a cliff!” You know? There's like, you know… anything's possible and so it can be helpful to have, I guess that's kind of another thing I'm hoping maybe my show would fill or things like my show, it's like, here's a bunch of examples of things people have done. And like when I work with people to help them create a ceremony, I'll sort of feel into… “Okay, exactly, what are you looking for here?” and then like, then I'll just start throwing out… “Listen, I'm just going to dump a bunch of ideas out and you're going to maybe like a couple, you're maybe not going to hate a couple, whatever, I'm just dumping them on the table, and then you can just sort of flip through them. And if anything resonates, you know…” Then, because we need like some building blocks, when we go from a total structure to total nothingness, that doesn't work unless you really like... you've got a thread to build on, or you've already kind of picturing something, you’ve got a felt sense of what you want, and brainstorm. And all that… it kinda doesn't come out of nowhere. Like it has to be built. So... or has that you have to let it build, right? So it's like, we all need examples, like we all need that. Like, as a woman, I would say, we need that strong woman that we're like, that's a woman who's married, and she's still completely in herself. That... I like that and I want to build on that idea. Like, I did that in my life, you know? And so, like, we need examples, and we need ideas to kick around. Venegoni: Yeah, yeah, and that's, you know, one of the things I think is really great about your show, that it helps people hear, oh, this is something different and that's possible. And maybe I want to do something kind of like that, but maybe not exactly the same and I'll take a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I mean, to me, that's also a ritual is a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. Throw it all together, and you see what happens. Thomas: Exactly and then you mix it all the people and yeah… Venegoni: And then the day of, you know, the magic comes together, and you're like, Oh, it's created something completely different. The alchemy of the ritual. Thomas: Exactly, yeah. You never know what's gonna happen. Venegoni: So Colleen, before we wrap up, can you share with us a personal practice or experience that has supported your career spiritual flourish? Thomas: You know, really, I would say, my mom. She... the short version of my coming out story is that my dad laughed, and my mom cried. And it was, you know, a hard moment. But then over the years, she became an advocate. It was like, extremely slow, from my perspective. You know, I would be at pride and I would see a PFLAG contingent and I would cry. I would always cry when I saw PFLAG because I just thought, “Oh my god, I'm so lost. My parents will never ever, ever, ever, ever be there.” And I just was just such a devastating to me that I mean, they hadn't been mean, they hadn't been cruel, but they were just never going to go there is what it felt like. And it mailed my mom one of the PFLAG books and I told her, “Listen, you got to find people to process with because I can't process this with you because I'm the problem in this, you know, equation for you.” And I sent it to her work because I didn't want like my dad to see it at the house. And she said she kept it in a drawer for a couple of years, I think. And then she read it. And then she found a PFLAG group in our town, which... Our town is very small so the PFLAG group was also like the gay group. So it was like both supporters and queer people. And there she met a woman who ran the Unitarian Church, and she was the pastor of the... minister of the Unitarian Church. She was a lesbian, and she thought she was amazing. And so then she joined the Unitarian Church... anyway, all this snowball effect, right? And that she was around a lot of queer people and, and then it... you know, years later, she sent me this picture of herself standing in front of the television. So my dad had taken it because my dad just watched TV 24/7 after he retired and, well that's not true but he was often watching TV. And so she stood in front of the TV. And she said, “Take a picture of me!” And she was wearing a like a sandwich board, like an advertising sandwich board that said, “I love my bisexual daughter”. And she was headed off to pride in some city nearby. And she said… she told me that she said to him, “There are five phases in, I don't know, acceptance or something”, you know. “The first is denial, that's where you are. The last one is advocacy, that's where I am!” And then she walked out of the room with her her sandwich board. You know, now she's still a big advocate when she can get out, she’ll go to pride stuff. And so she's jus... and she says to me, you know, it's really sad that my dad never really changed at all. And she said, “You know, it's really sad that your dad never really moved,” but she was just so… And, you know, and just knowing that when I was back at this Pride Parade, seeing the PFLAG, and it was just devastating to me, like, never ever imagining that she would end that there'd be any movement with them. It was just, she was really… She became a lot more comfortable with the witch thing too, eventually. So that was really scary, too. Of course, you know, we get it, we get a lot of messages about about witches that are bad. So she's continuing on an ongoing basis, being a very supportive person in my life. Venegoni: So one last question. Your show is called shame pan, yada. Can you help us understand what that's about? Thomas: Yeah, sure. So when I was coming up with names for the show, I was trying to think of like descriptive names, like, you know, reinventing ritual, things like that. And I was brainstorming with my husband, and he said, “Well, you could call it like blue dog. And it won't matter what you call it, as long as you then you know, put out your message and people associate your message with the words blue dog.” So he said, “So, you know, maybe think about that.” So I was thinking about that, and brainstorming with a friend at work. And I said, “Well, I don't know, like this blue dog idea. I don't know if I want to do that.” And she said, ”Well, okay, if you looked around, like what you do when you do ritual, and what do you see? You know, we don't see a blue dog, what do you see?” And I said, “Oh, I see a shame piñata because I had just done a ritual recently, which is how I had that job where I was with this new coworker on lunch talking about this, where I had been at my old job (and I'm going to do an episode on this, but I haven't yet) I had... I was at a job for 14 years and I stayed like 10 years longer than I probably should have. And each of those years, I ended up sort of dying inside and sort of a way, right? This happens. And when I didn't make the change I needed to make. And it got to a really critical moment and I needed to leave. And I had so many, so many, so many hard feelings. There were like 10 years of hard feelings about myself being at this job, which was crazy. And I decided that shame exposure was a tool I wanted to use, which is something I had learned about in therapy, where we talk about something we feel deeply shameful about in a safe place, with people who will be kind and not, you know, laugh and stuff. And so I created a ritual around... it was shame I was feeling about staying in this job. And I did a ritual around it and with some friends on on zoom. This was before the pandemic, but they were remote friends, I wanted to have them involved, just my like four closest friends in the world and... because I feel like, “I'm not gonna tell too many people about all this shame!” And so part of the ritual involves piñata that I bought on Amazon, that I put sort of the negative self talk... I just kind of let it all come out of my head and I pasted it all over this piñata and it was just all these awful words on this piñata. And I decided it was my shame piñata and part of the ritual involved finding it in myself to be ready to shift to like, “Let's make this change now!” And being not just an idea. It started with the idea, “Oh, I should go break the shame piñata.” And then it was like standing in front of the shame piñatawith a stick going, “I'm just… I want to die. I don't have any desire to actually do this.” And it was like, “Just let the ground open up and swallow me now. Whatever it is watching me like I'm still in it.” But then waiting, just waiting, just waiting and starting to hear this little voice say, “No.” It was very quiet. And then it got louder. And I just let it organically grow. And then pretty soon it was like “No!” and it moved into my arms. And then it was like smashing the piñata and then that magic happened, right? And then it like changed and shifted and a few other things in the ceremony facilitated that as well. But it was the like the moments, the ceremony was like the breaking of the shame piñata and it really worked. It worked. It got me like boom! out of that job boom! into another one really quickly. Everything just like lined up. It was one of those work rituals that like ended up working really well with the intention. So when I had that conversation with her, she said, “What do you see” and I said I see a shame piñata…” and nobody's gonna have that podcast name. Venegoni: That's true. It's a very unique and memorable name. Yeah. Was there anything inside the shame piñata? Thomas: Yeah, I had filled it with my favorite candy. And just as a side note on that was that I had, in my spirit of wanting everybody to get something out of their ritual, I had bought a separate set of little tabletop piñatas, these little tiny ones and I had asked my four friends who were participating in the ritual… I didn't want to tell them I was sending them a piñata, but I said, “What small thing do you like? What would be a nice small thing for you?” And one person wanted like bubbles that you blow out of a little tiny, you know, like in a wedding bubbles? One person wanted puzzle pieces. One person had told me some candy. So I stuffed these tiny little piñatas with whatever they wanted and I sent them off to them. And then I said, “Listen, you're getting this piñata, here’s this piñata. Everybody was to write something on their piñata that they want to let go of. And so then after I did my piñata, everybody did their own piñata. Venegoni: Nice. Thomas: We got to witness everybody you know, release a little something... because there's always something to release! Venegoni: So where can listeners find the Shame Piñata Podcast? Thomas: Anyplace you get your podcasts, it should be there. Very, very wide distribution, and definitely iTunes, Spotify, and then you can go to shamepinata.com Venegoni: And they can also find you on Instagram, right? Thomas: Yes, thank you Instagram and Facebook, mostly Instagram. And Twitter. Venegoni: Yeah. Well, we'll have those links in the show notes. Well, Colleen, thank you for being here and chatting about ritual and initiation and change and release and power with me. It's been a pleasure. Thomas: It has been Thank you so much, Nick. Venegoni: To find the resources we discussed today, find the show notes at the queer spirit.com and if you enjoyed the show, remember to subscribe rate and review on iTunes. This will help us reach and support more queer people all over. Thanks for listening and see you next time. You’re listening to a special edition of the Shame Piñata podcast featuring a recent episode of The Queer Spirit Podcast. I'm very happy to have the opportunity to share this conversation with you. If you are not already subscribed to The Queer Spirit Podcast, you can find it on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts. You can also find the show on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. See the show notes for links. And now, as promised, here’s a quick preview of what’s coming up on Shame Piñata in the next few months. Upcoming episodes will focus on reinventing ourselves, going deeper, everyday magic, releasing cords with a parent, and disability as initiation. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please visit https://ratethispodcast.com/shamepinata. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.  

When Reverend Tristy Taylor and her husband decided to stop trying to have a baby, she honored that loss with a special ceremony. During her time sitting shiva, "grief first" was her mantra. Then a dream inspired her to create a celebration of her decision to not become a mother.   Links: Tristy's Blog Post on The UnBaby Shower Video Tour of Grief Ritual Art Journal Tristy Taylor  The UnBaby Shower (KPFA International Women's Day Edit) Rate This Podcast Music by Terry Hughes   Full Transcript   Taylor: Yeah, it's a major life transition for women that's not acknowledged, you know, or talked about really.   Thomas: It's just like a failing, or a loss, or a...   Taylor: A giving up.   Thomas: Yeah, exactly.   On our journey through life, we will come upon moments that invite us to reinvent ourselves. Big changes can do this like moving away from home, getting married, starting a family or choosing not to start a family. How can we slow down in these moments and really honor what’s changing, really honor how we’re changing?   This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today we’re going to go deep. Are you ready? We’re going to dive into one of those moments that’s really a rite of passage, an initiation, a change. One of those moments that ceremony is perfect for because it invites us to use all of our creativity and all of our heart. And what’s more, it invites us to use ceremony for what ceremony does best, to create the container to hold the strong emotions that come up with big changes.    Tristy Taylor joins us today to share the story of her unbaby shower, a three-part ceremony she designed when she and her husband decided to stop trying to conceive. She took her time. She followed the threads of what was changing in her and she ended up creating a beautiful ceremony that both honored her grief and was also a celebration.    Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I think... It does start with the journey my husband and I were on to make a baby together. And after trying the usual routes and discovering that nothing was happening, we entered the world of fertility treatments, medical intervention and started down that road, which included some pretty powerful hormone therapy that was... quite a journey to be on that. Basically, all my emotions were at 11 all the time. [LAUGHS] So like, you know, small inconveniences became like fiery, mountainous, rage-fueled tirades. [LAUGHS] And eventually did end up having a pregnancy, but then that pregnancy was... the pregnancy ended up being ectopic. So the fertilized egg and embedded in my fallopian tube. And, you know, we didn't know that and I ended up going to the emergency room one night with just intensive abdominal pain and they took one look at me and said, "You're bleeding internally, and we need to open you up immediately." And then that's when they discovered that... that my tube had ruptured... my fallopian tube had ruptured. And after that experience, we kept trying but it started to... all signs started to point to this was gonna be painful and challenging and not really get us where we wanted to be. And my husband and I talked for a long time about what that choice meant to be child-free. And he kind of took it in stride and sort of said, "Well,I'm gonna use that energy to do other things." And he, like started his own business and, you know, spent a lot of time away from me and away from home kind of diving into almost a little bit avoidant perhaps of his own feelings. But building this business that he'd always wanted to create and felt free to create now that we weren't trying to create a family and all the sort of pressures that might have come with being a parent. It kind of freed him up. And kind of the opposite happened to me where I just felt like my life had been pressed pause... like the pause button had been pressed on my life and I didn't know what happened next. And being someone who really tries to show up to what's happening in my life, regardless whether or not I understand it, I realized that I needed to honor this loss. So... and to really allow some space and time to feel the grief of the loss of being a mother and and even this particular pregnancy loss with the ectopic pregnancy. And being an interfaith minister, I read a lot about all sorts of rituals and I had recently read a really beautiful piece about the modern day of sitting shiva for someone who had passed away from the Jewish tradition. And, knowing that shiva means seven, seven days and I really like felt the like ritual power behind that. I mean, it's a ritual... but that seven days like I really felt how... to devote seven straight days to my grief where grief came first and nothing else had precedence over my sitting inside of my grief... My whole body just resonated with that. I just was like, Yes, that's what we're gonna do! And that's what I did. And I didn't, really... Other than my husband, I didn't talk to anybody. I ended up doing a lot of crafting, which felt really good. I ended up making these kind of heartfelt... heart-shaped sachets with like lavender and different herbs in them... calm... these sort of calming craft/sewing kind of stuff that would that was very focused, but I was also kind of putting my grief into these pieces that I was making. And yeah, it was... it was very powerful time and spent a lot of time in nature and just cried a lot. And didn't think about the future or what my life would look like, I just really tried to focus on the moment, which is challenging, you know. Our Western culture really pushes us to get over our grief as soon as possible and not to dwell and like... all of that stuff... When really, I think the more we can show up for our grief, the more can beautifully move through us. And we can truly let it go. We have to feel it first.    During the time of sitting shiva with her grief, Tristy had a dream. In the dream, she was out in the snow looking into a kind of hut, a hut that felt very ancient. Inside the hut women dressed in animal skins were gathered around a very, very pregnant woman, putting oils on her and celebrating her. There was a fire in the hut but Tristy was outside in the cold and she knew through the knowledge that comes in dreams that she was not allowed into the ritual because she was not fertile and she would be bad energy for the pregnant space.    Taylor: And I woke up crying, and hurt very hurt by the dream. And I also know from doing dream work all my life that no dream ever comes to hurt us and be like, "Look at you, you know, you're stuck, Haha!" You know... Our dreams always come for health and wholeness. And so I really sat with the dream. I drew pictures from the dream... I felt into it. And and the gift that came out of the dream, cause I do think all nightmares have a gift. The gift that came out of the dream was this idea for an unbaby shower. Because it didn't feel fair to me that I should be left out in the cold. And this transition that I was making is just as valuable as the transition of becoming a mother, the transition to not be a mother. And so I connected with two very good friends who are great ritual-makers and we started to piece together this whole ceremonial ritual around having this unbaby shower. And it started with the grief. It started with doing a grief ritual with these two women and really having their support and being in nature together, and making food together. And then that transitioned into this more celebratory shower-space where about 18 women came to my house and painted my body with body paints and gave me blessings. And it was so interesting because it was raining at the beginning of the shower ("the shower"). So we all had to like jam into my little, you know, 700 square-foot house. And then by the afternoon the sun had come up and then I was all like covered in body paint and we just went outside and we're just running around and it was so joyful. There was so much joy. And the way I kind of completed the ritual was making this dedication to being a creator, being a spiritual guide, being... offering my gifts to the world. If I wasn't going to be mothering a new life, then I would be holding this spiritual, creative space for others. And it always makes me think of that Dolly Parton quote, because she also couldn't have children. She tried and she couldn't have them and she just said, "Well, God just decided that I'm gonna be mom to everybody kids." You know, like, I just love that. And I love being, you know, an auntie to my friends', kids. And that feels really like a powerful and important role as as my auntie's were to me as a kid. So that's how that all came about.   Thomas: I love... I love that. I love... I love the way that you love ritual, and you lean into it and into your dreams. And I love your stories, because I love to hear you listening. The layers at which you listen inspire me. And remind me what you discovered about your grandmother and your great grandmother.   Taylor: Yeah. So my... my ruptured tubal pregnancy where I had to have emergency surgery was on March 3. And my... my mother told me that her mother, my grandmother, was born on March 3. And I remembered that her mother, my great-grandmother, died giving birth to her. So my great grandmother died on March 3 giving birth. And I had this emergency surgery that saved my life and I would have died through trying to become a mother. So there was this fascinating karmic Ancestral wound being healed, I believe. I didn't die, I survived. And I really do... from the ancestral work that I've done in my life, I've had visceral experiences. Because time is not linear in that world, like time is a spiral. It's past. It's present. It's future all at once. And so the healing that I did on that day and continue to do ripples back to my Ancestors. You know, and that's my female line. It's my mother's mother's mother, you know, that... all of that is relevant to my experience, you know. And of course, none of that was planned, it's just how it unfolded. It's one of those kind of magic, unexplainable moments, you know, where we've kind of put the pieces together afterwards. And it's like, oh, that seems significant! [LAUGHS]   Thomas: I've always loved the physiological connection that we have to our grandmothers, because... I always have trouble saying it... I... the egg that became me in my mother's ovary... that...   Taylor: ...was in your grandmother.   Thomas: ...was in my grandmother's body - yes!   Taylor: Isn't that amazing?   Thomas: It's so crazy!   Taylor: Yeah. Incredible. And the work they've done about how, like, the stress and trauma of our grandmothers are in those eggs within eggs, like we're literally physically inheriting that trauma. You know, which is, you know, powerful healing work that we all can do as women.   Thomas: Mm hmm. Absolutely.    Tristy's story inspired me so deeply because of the depth of her commitment to the process. Letting the grief ritual come to her, sitting shiva for the 7 days, then creating the unbaby shower to return to her society as a woman who will not be having children. Listening to her story reminded me of my own journey on the road to motherhood and my ultimate decision not to go there.    Thomas: I so appreciate hearing the story of the baby shower because I went through my own process of figuring out... of having a moment in time in my life when I needed to decide which way am I going to go - towards somebody who might want to have a baby or stay with somebody I really like a lot who's very clear they don't want a baby. And I was at the age where I had to pick. And it was a little hard, you know, because I had... You know, I felt like I was losing a lot. But then when I sat with it, and sort of took apart all the pieces of being a mom, I realized that I only wanted certain pieces that were definitely not... didn't equate with having a child or trying to have a child... it just was like, not my thing, even though I felt so much pressure to be a woman in that way. And a lot of, like, legitimate grief and loss when I when I walked away from it, which isn't something I ever thought I would feel but it was there. It was like, wow, okay, to go through these feelings. And my partner was, really, really there for me. And I sought out community, I put an ad on Craigslist for women who had chosen not to have a child who wanted to chat with me about it and I had like four or five women have conversations with me.    Taylor: Oh, I love that!   Thomas: You know, there's nowhere to go to find those women. So I found a few and that really helped me feel like okay, I'm not alone. And then I asked my mom, you know, what do you think? And she said, "You never wanted kids, even when you were a little." And I was like, "Oh, okay, that helps. Thanks." [LAUGHS] Because you know, figure there was some wisdom there that she might be able to give me, plus she never pressured me to have kids, which was immensely helpful on the journey to decide, you know, what was right for me. So I... I know a little bit about I didn't go through the journey of trying, but I went through the journey of deciding, you know, deciding to walk away. Actually, I just had a flash... My parents loved antiques and they had this antique cradle. And my mom lived in Italy before I was born and she kept beer in it and she said the Italian neighbor would always come in and... I guess he'd bring her beer... I don't know... he would come in the house and he would say, "Where is the baby?" And she'd be like, "It's the beer goes in the cradle." Because at that point in her life, she didn't think she was going have a baby because they had tried and tried and tried and tried and given up and then they had beer in the cradle.   Taylor: And then you're all, "Surprise!" [LAUGHS]   Thomas: TYeah. Hi. Move the beer, there's a baby now.    Taylor: That's amazing!   Thomas: Oh, thank you so much for sharing this story with me and with us. And I look forward to sharing out your blog posts with which has the some of the images from your journal and you have the video walkthrough of your journal that you kept during that time.    Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad to share it with you and anyone who resonates or is inspired to create their own ritual. And, you know, I mentioned the blog post, that part of it was inspired by a woman who had a ritual around starting menopause and what that meant to her so I really, I really love to encourage others to think about those major life transitions, like even like leaving a job and starting a new one or moving to another state, which I'm about to do, like, I've been thinking about, like, "Oh, I'm gonna be letting go of California, you know, and what does that mean, to me is born in San Francisco, and, you know, born and raised here. So I think there's lots of space for ritual in our lives if we make it. Yeah. If we have that conversation, we listen and respond.   Tristy Taylor is an Interfaith Minister and Ritualist, providing support and companionship to those that live on the fringes beyond traditional religion. She firmly believes that ALL people deserve to have rituals and ceremonies that honor life’s transitions, regardless of their spiritual beliefs. She has had major personal life experiences around grief and death and is comfortable supporting others during these very human experiences. You can find out more about her work at www.createwithspirit.com.   You can hear a longer version of this same interview where Tristy shares more about what her time sitting shiva looked like on the KPFA Women's Magazine Archives.  Look for the link in the show notes. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

What if you could find the most amazing partner in the world, someone who loves you unconditionally, who respects you, admires you, and has your back through thick and thin? What if that person was you? Links: Self Marriage Photos: https://ever-changing.net/#/self-commitment/ Pretty Little Foot - Rising Appalachia & The Human Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPyHS4d-I5o Chakra 101: https://blog.mindvalley.com/7-chakras/ Tria Chang: http://triachang.com/ #ritual #selfcommitment #womenswisdom #wedding #selfmarriage #marriage Thomas: It's the transition of me from little girl who wants to get married and wants to be the bride in the big white wedding dress to me as the grown woman who stands in her power, who knows who she is, who knows that she's complete with or without a partner, and is connected most deeply with the sacred inside of herself. What if I told you that you could find the most amazing partner in the world, someone who loves you unconditionally, who respects you, admires you, and has your back through thick and thin. A person who really understands you and gets it. In fact, a person that knows you so well, being with them is just like being home. Where could you find this person? Just look in the mirror. This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today we're going to switch things up a little bit. My good friend Tria Chang is going to interview me about a ceremony from my life, a ceremony I held about 5 years ago in which I married myself. If self-marriage is new to you, I invite you to give it a listen. Chang: So hello, Colleen. Thomas: Hi Tria. Chang: It's so nice to talk to you about your ceremony because it is the reason that we met in the first place or not, actually the reason we met with Shame Piñata, but I think what made me feel really connected to you was hearing about your own ritual and how you have created something that I think a lot of people could take into their own lives. So I'm excited to talk to you about that today. And as we mentioned, there's a lot going on in the world right now and it's... it can be hard to be centered and present. So if you don't mind, I thought we could do a little exercise to start off before I start asking you questions and that is just to kind of put yourself in the place of your self-commitment ceremony. And I'm going to ask you questions in the present tense as if we're there. And if you don't mind answering the questions in the present tense as well just to like, help bring us there and I might go ahead and close my eyes while we do this, just so I can really be there with you. So, it's the day yourself commitment ceremony. And you wake up in the morning. How are you feeling? Thomas: Nervous about the details coming together because there's a lot of details and really excited that the day is finally here. Chang: And what time of the day did the ceremony begin? Thomas: It begins... I think... I forget... I think it begins around noon or two in the afternoon. Chang: Okay, perfect. So let's put ourselves in that space in the afternoon. And how are you opening the ceremony? What do you hear and who is there? What do you see? Thomas: Well, it takes a while for us to get ready and it takes a while for everybody to arrive. And we have I think we have 13 women in person attending... we have 13 women in person attending and we have three additional women attend on Skype. They think it's cute and fun that I'm wearing a big old wedding dress that I got to Goodwill. It doesn't fit me and it's pinned closed in the back because it's way too big. Chang: And how do you open the ceremony? Thomas: I brought in an officiant so that I wouldn't have to officiate it myself. So how we open it is that she does a welcome and an introduction. She introduces everybody, everybody to themselves and to each other. And then she leads us in a meditation, a short meditation just to arrive. And then I chose to cast a circle because that's the tradition that I come from to create sacred space, to open it into a ceremonial space. And then we invited in Spirit and we began doing... I think we had one reading in the beginning... oh, yes, a friend of mine read the Charge of the Goddess and then we went into check-ins... The ceremony began with casting the circle, calling the directions and inviting in Spirit and then moved into readings, check-in and a circle dance. After the circle dance, we went into a performance art piece that I created specially for the ceremony, which was kind of the heart of the ritual. It symbolized my transition from the little girl who wanted the fairytale wedding to the grown woman standing in her power. The performance art piece was comprised of many elements woven together, visual, auditory and movement. But at its heart it was basically me taking off the froofy wedding dress and stepping into a more earthy, Goddess dress while a modern rendition of Woodie Guthrie's 1944 song "Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?" playing in the background. The lyrics of that song are: Who's gonna shoe your pretty little foot? Who's gonna glove your hand? Who's gonna kiss your red ruby lips? Who's gonna be your man? Tria asked me about the significance of that song in the context of a self-commitment ceremony. Thomas: For me, I chose to do the self-commitment ceremony when I was just about to get married to a person... to a man. And I had always wanted to do a self-commitment ceremony and had done some small things, but it felt really important to me before marrying somebody else to marry myself first, because I've had a tendency to give myself away and to sort of run roughshod over myself and not pay attention to what I needed, but to become what I thought I was supposed to be for somebody else... which maybe sounds like a good idea, but really, ultimately, it ends up with me being kind of a shell person for that other person and not somebody they can really rely on and trust in, because I'm not being authentic to myself. So I took the opportunity of using the self-commitment ceremony as a time to shed a little bit more of that because I knew that I could say, "Oh, I'm going to be my full self, I'm going to marry you, I'm going to be my full self." But yet there was going to be some residue of the old ways and the old beliefs in me. So the performance art piece was a chance to enact taking off the dress, setting it aside, honoring it, and just being like, yeah, and I'm me. And this is who I'm connecting with and this is who I'm going to walk out of the ceremony being so that I can walk into the next ceremony as that person. Chang: Yes, that really resonates with me. Yeah. Thomas: And having it witnessed was extremely powerful. Chang: That's beautiful. Yeah, that resonates with me and I think so many other people, and perhaps women especially feel a great sense of loss during a relationship or a marriage especially. And I think that's so powerful to commit to yourself before doing that. So, my particular self marriage ceremony was focused heavily on the concept of the Chakras, which are energy centers in the body. As you’ll hear in the next section of the interview, the chakras are important to me, so I wove them into my ceremony. For reference, if you’re not already familiar with them, the chakras run in a line near the spine beginning with the 1st chakra at the base of the spine and extending up to the 7th chakra at the crown of the head, with a few additional chakras above that. Each chakra is correlated to a particular energy such as safety, love or intuition. Chang: What was the importance of the chakras in your ceremony and how did you represent each? Thomas: My spiritual practice at that time was slowly going through each chakra. So, I had a daily meditation practice where I was working on whichever one. I started with the first chakra and I worked through them all. And I worked through them... I spend about three months on each or longer... So I would... every morning I would have a meditation where I would just sit with like the concept of the first chakra, say, and I would just sort of notice if I could feel it in my body, and I would just sort of sense into it. And I had lots of different things that I did around staying focused on the chakra. So I was... basically over a long period of time, I was learning myself deeply at each level, and each chakra level. So I thought a rainbow in the ring would be perfectly aligned to my spiritual practice and it would bring me home to me, which is what I wanted the ring to ultimately do is when I look at it, "Oh yeah, that's me. I got this." And the ring I ended up with does have rainbow sapphires in it and I wrote several vows for each chakra that I took in the ceremony, but I have sort of one master vow for each chakra. And it's a very nice meditation. When I look at the ring, I can actually just go through and I can look at the red stone and say the first chakra vow, and look at the orange stone and say, the second chakra vow and I can just do them really quickly... and I just remember boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. "Okay, those are my eight ways that I am me now," and then I can go back to what I'm doing. Chang: Wonderful. And can you tell me a little bit about how you represented that in your ceremony. Thomas: Mostly through the ring and through the vows. And as prep work for the ceremony, once I finished my... I was calling it a self guided tour of my chakras, which took about two years... once I was finished, once I had finished that process, that was about the time I was beginning to plan the self-commitment ceremony and I reached out and found one woman each in my life, who could be a guide at the level of the chakra. So for example, I thought, "Who's my most grounded friend who's just grounded, it's effortless. She's just there," "Who's my friend who's just in her heart It's, you know, it's simple for her. That's just how she, how she is." And so I found these eight women, and I asked them each to meet with me twice, once just to have a conversation about like, "Wow, you really are amazing at this level and I want to get amazing at that level and how do you do it? And you know, what does it feel like to you and here's my issues... and help me..." You know, and, and so, the first meeting gave us a chance to talk and plan a little they gave me like an assignment. So my first chakra goddess had me map out some things about being grounded and finances and safety and I did some I did some writing on that and some graphing and we came back and we visited it together. My third chakra goddess, which is all about being bold and brave, she sent me to a Bikram yoga class, which was really intense. And my heart chakra Goddess talked a lot about fears, the way our fears come up and get in our way. So I started doing a video journal for her about whenever I noticed fears were really getting in my way during the day, I was moving into noticing those a lot more clearly. So, each woman met with me twice and helped me kind of deepen into myself at that level. And then each one of those women attended the ceremony either in person or on Skype and they were the ones who asked me, you know, "Do you take yourself with this? Do you this? Do you do that?" with my vows. And I said, "Yes, I this, I that," with my vows. So my first chakra goddess let me take my first chakra vows and then put a red ribbon around my neck... and... around my shoulders. And my second chakra goddess, same thing... second chakra vows. And it was interesting that it turned out that the upper chakra vow goddesses were on Skype - those were all on Skype and the eighth chakra one, the highest one, she was on a video. She didn't even show up on Skype. So it's kind of got more ethereal as you went up, which is funny. Chang: That's great. I also love hearing how you incorporated the women into your life in the process leading up to it because it sounds like it was so fortifying for you and also probably felt really nice for them to feel recognized for that quality that you saw in them. Are you standing in front of everyone for the vows or maybe just take me through where you are in the room and how you were feeling at each vow. Thomas: I was standing with sort of the women in sort of, I'm sorry, I am standing in a... against the wall with the altar behind me and the sort of a horseshoe shape of women in front of me. And the officiant calls each chakra one by one and then each chakra goddess comes up to have me take the vows and the chakra goddesses are wearing stoles that I made for them in the color that they're representing of the chakra, and I made them on my my grandmother's sewing machine while I was visiting my mom, which was really nice. And so there's somebody in each of the colors and the goddesses who couldn't be there for the ceremony, I mailed them their stoles, so they were on Skype wearing their stoles. And the officiant... I was just looking at the pictures this morning of the stoles and the officiant had a white stole that had rainbow... it had a little piece of the fabric from each of the other stoles so had like rainbows on either side on her stole. And yeah, one by one the the chakra goddesses came up and they said, "Do you promise to this or that" and then I responded and then they had a cord that they put over my shoulders to signify that I had taken the vows. And my friend who was the first darker goddess did the physical filling in for the people who were on Skype who couldn't physically put a cord around my neck. Chang: Wonderful. So by the end of the vow piece of the ceremony, you have all these cords to symbolize the vows that you've taken on. Thomas: Yes. After I took my vows, the ring was passed around for all of the women to bless. It was in a little pouch and I hadn't seen it yet. When it came to me, the officiant removed it from the pouch and handed it to me. I shared with Tria the words I said as I put it on my finger. Thomas: I said, "As a sign of love and respect for myself, I give myself this ring. I wear it as a reminder of my enoughness. In flowing times and in moments of stillness, in fullness and an emptiness, in fear and in courage with all that I am and all that I will become, and so it is." And then I put the ring on. Chang: That's lovely. Did you write that? Thomas: I think I did. Yeah, I think so. Chang: So you're putting the ring on? What shifts in you or what do you feel? Thomas: Just just crazy gratitude to be manifesting it because it's something I've been wanting to do for a very long time. And I just feel really excited and happy to have the ring on and that everything went really well and that I'm finally at this moment. And then she says to me, "With a sense of abundant joy that you have found your way to this moment. I now pronounce you married to yourself." Chang: And then did everyone cheer? Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was a lot of cheering and I was jumping around and we're super happy, just super happy. I think the next thing we we do is we have some sharing, and there's another poem, and then we have just, you know, the closing and releasing of the directions and opening of a circle and then we had rainbow cupcakes. Chang: Delicious. Do you feel like years later that you pick the right vows? Thomas: Yes I do. I do. I really love my vows still. I have them on my wall and I recite them when I look at my ring and they're very much... I probably had too many for each chakra really, but I tried to narrow it down and there were just so many aspects of each chakra that felt important. So I think in the end, they were perfect. Chang: And just to go back a little bit, we talked about the importance of the chakras and then I heard you mentioning your grandmothers and mothers and friends and it sounds like it was all women that were part of the ceremony. Is that right? Thomas: That's right. Chang: And what was the significance of that for you? Thomas: Well, it feels to me that there's a thing about being a woman where we're expected to, I suppose if we're straight, we're expected to give up our, you know, our autonomy to a man and to marriage at a certain point in our lives. And that if we don't do that, it means that we couldn't get it together or we failed, or, you know, we didn't do it right or whatever. And I did a lot of thinking and feeling into how much the institution of marriage was a survival tool for women. And for me, it really wasn't so much because my partner and I were happy together, we didn't need to get married, I would have been fine... I could be fine as a woman in this society without a partner because things have evolved so much for women. But, I mean, in my mom's era, you know, it would have been a lot different and my grandmother's, way different. And so, looking back through my ancestry, it just feels like so many women maybe relied on it as a survival tool. And that felt very heavy to me. So with this ceremony, as with a lot of things that I do, I kind of dedicated my work to shift an old paradigm in me to go back as possible, right, through time to heal my Ancestors, to help heal my line. So, so that, you know, as I liberate myself from these old beliefs that are limiting, it helps to liberate them. So that was a big part for me... and in fact, when I started in the very beginning of the performance art piece, during the musical beginning, before the lyrics started, I had a picture come up on the screen because there was a visual piece to it as well, each one of my grandmother's, and I think there were about maybe 13 or 14 of them that I have pictures of who were on there who showed up one after another. And while I was sitting there watching that during the beginning of the performance art piece, I just felt the power of each... it was like... because we were in ritual space... and it was just like... Boom, there's that grandmother. Boom, there's that grandmother. Boom... and it was like they were showing up. They were walking in the door. They were coming into the space. Chang: Wow. really powerful. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, that there's even more depth and power in that answer than I was expecting. So thank you for sharing that. How are you feeling after the ceremony compared to before? Thomas: I felt so different inside me. I felt like a lot more grounded in myself and who I was and a lot more sure of myself and just like something really important and momentous that happened in me and I shifted, I just felt like I shifted, a different person. Chang: Thank you so much for sharing all of that with me. And I'm sure the listeners will love hearing about self-commitment ceremonies through your eyes because it's certainly something that I never really considered or thought about before meeting you. So I'm grateful for the introduction through you. I hope that after hearing this story, you feel inspired to create something for yourself. I chose to go pretty much all out, but there are many ways to do self marriage, even down to simply choosing a special ring that you know is YOUR ring. If you create your own ceremony, let us know. We’re available at shamepinata.com. Tria Chang is a writer based in San Francisco whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the NYT Now app, and Narratively. When not writing, she co-runs Make America Dinner Again, and has spoken on NPR, BBC, and at SXSW to discuss and model how to build understanding across political lines. She is working on her first book. Learn more at http://triachang.com/ Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

Zach has the honor of having a conversation with Dr. Erin L. Thomas, Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Upwork, about organizational equity during the COVID-19 pandemic. She graciously shares some advice regarding what organizations can do during this time to at the very least reduce harm for their black and brown employees and talks a bit about how her perspective and focuses at work have shifted as this pandemic has continued. Check the links in the show notes to connect with Dr. Thomas!Link up with Dr. Thomas on Twitter! She's also on LinkedIn. Links in order:https://bit.ly/3c0BXKhhttps://bit.ly/3c7qhFELearn more about Upwork on their website. You can view their open positions by clicking here. Links in order:https://bit.ly/2TEC8Vnhttps://bit.ly/2A5X00WFind out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here or below.https://bit.ly/2Ug4l5KHelp food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.https://bit.ly/2WD73UkCheck out our website.https://bit.ly/living-corporateTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, everybody? It's Zach, and you know what? I'ma just go ahead and say it right now. It's also Emory. Emory, say something. [Emory breathes] That's just her breathing. Emory is, at the time of this recording, six weeks old. So we're here because I'm on daddy duty and my wife has to get some sleep. That's right. Husbands, help your wives, or partners rather, excuse me - not to be overly gendered on a podcast all focused on inclusion, equity and diversity. Help your partners, you know what I'm saying? Everybody, you know, they--one person can't do it all. Sometimes you gotta step in, and this podcast is great, and I love y'all, but of course I love my daughter the most. Well, I love my wife also. Let me not do any type of weird hierarchy right now live, like, a live-streaming conscience of thought on the podcast, but the point is you have responsibilities. There are things that take precedent. And look, we're in a new normal, so I'm just here. Where was I? Right, Living Corporate. So look, Living Corporate amplifies and centers black and brown voices at work. Why do I say black and brown and not, like, people of color? Because I want to be very explicit, we want to be very explicit, with what our mission is. So we aim to center and amplify black and brown identities, marginalized folks, folks on the periphery, in the workplace, and we do that how? We do that by having real talk in a corporate world. Now how do we do that? We do that by interviewing incredible leaders cut from all type of cloth. And, you know, we've had executives. We've had professors, entrepreneurs, public servants, activists, civil leaders, elected officials. We've had all types of people, artists, and today is no different. Today we have Dr. Erin L. Thomas. Dr. Thomas is the head of diversity, inclusion and belonging at Upwork where she leads diversity, inclusion and belonging, or DIBs. She leads the strategy implementation and coaching for all of Upwork. Prior to Upwork though, Dr. Thomas was a managing director at Paradigm, a diversity and inclusion strategy firm where she partnered with companies to embed DIBs into organizations through culture transformation and people development. Prior to Paradigm, Erin held positions at Grant Thornton LLP, Argonne National Laboratory developing D&I strategies, programming and metrics. Her work has been featured in Fast Company and the New York Times and recognized by Forbes, Human Rights Campaign, the National Association for Female Executives and the Equal Opportunity Magazine. She holds a PhD in social psychology, a Master of Philosophy in social psychology; a Master of Science in social psychology; and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and international studies from Yale University. She is accredited, y'all. Okay? Don't question us, okay? We're coming to y'all. We bring y'all heat rock every single week, and the heat rock we bring is because we have guests that have heat rock. I'ma say heat rock again just so y'all get the point. Yes, I'm turnt up. Yes, it's a Tuesday. Who cares? Erin, what's up? Welcome to the show. How are you doing?Erin: I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. Hi, little baby Emory. I am so excited to be here, and I want to give you a number. So I'm really into, during COVID times, anchoring, you know, "How are you doing?" on a scale. 1 is, you know, "We've got to get out of here and get some more support." Like, "We're not doing well." 10 is, you know, "COVID what? COVID who?" But I think, like, if you're a 10, you also probably need some external support. Zach: Facts. [laughs]Erin: And I think today I am... I'm, like, a 7, 8. I'm very excited to be chatting with you. What's your number?Zach: That's a really good question. You know, I don't know. So it's interesting because your scale, I don't know how it accounts for, like, other things, right? So, like, I'm also here with, like, a six-week-old baby. So maybe I'm, like, a--so, like, coronavirus is not, like, at the top of my mind because I'm trying to focus on keeping this thing that looks like me alive. Maybe I'm, like, a--I'd probably say I'm, like, a 7, 8. Like, I'm pretty good. I'm happy, right? Like, I mean, life is good. The new Drake album--well, not the album, but a little collection of loosies came out recently that was very good, that I enjoyed. You know, my favorite shows are still coming on. I've caught up on some anime. So I'm keeping myself well-distracted.Erin: [laughs] That's good. I think distracted is good. I think--I don't know, I think in the beginning days of all of this it felt, for me at least, a little weird to compartmentalize, or I felt a little guilty, but I actually think that's incredibly healthy, you know, to find moments of just pleasure and delight. That's all we got, right? That's all we got.Zach: I mean, this--the reality is that before this pandemic, like, I was already a homebody. Now, people at work--like, people who know me from work would--they may not know that, because, like, in person, like, I'm a fairly gregarious guy. But, like, you know, people are complex, right? I think, like, we create a lot of these terms and things that aren't really academic or scientific just to kind of better compartmentalize people, like, "You're an extrovert, you're an introvert." It's like, "I mean, I enjoy people, but I also enjoy being alone." Like, I enjoy being at home, being with my wife and now my kid. Like, I'm fine with that. But I'm glad, I'm glad that you're excited. I'm excited and in a good place as well. You know, this would be interesting to do again, like, if our numbers were wildly different, right? So, like, you're a 7, 8, I'm a 7, 8, but if I was, like, a 2, then, like, I wonder how the dynamics of this discussion would look, especially considering what we're talking about.Dr. Thomas: Yeah. I mean, I think then--and this has happened to me at work, right? Like, I come in low and someone else is high or vice versa. I think then that's the--I mean, that's the point of it, right? It's a moment of pause to figure out what do you need to put aside or do you need to get off this call or how can I support you and give that person who's lower an opportunity to either just share or not or articulate more. I just think it's a great window into "How can we work together towards whatever it is that we need to achieve?" And if now's not the time, fair. You know? We gotta go and come back together when we're both in the right space. I think that happens all the time, we just don't often put numbers to it, right?Zach: I agree, I agree. So look, that actually is a really good segue for us to get into this. Like, this pandemic, it continues to expose and exacerbate all types of inequities, from social to governmental and of course workplace, just all across the board, and I'll tell you, frankly it just feels overwhelming for me to think about holistically, let alone try to address, and so I'm really curious about just, like, considering your role with Upwork, I'd love to hear how your perspective and focuses have shifted as this pandemic has continued, and considering your level within Upwork and, like, the organizational power that you wield by way of your level, I'd love to hear about how power and influence has shaped your praxis.Dr. Thomas: Yeah. Whoo, this could take the whole hour, which, you know, happy, happy to unpack it for that long, 'cause it's deep. It's deep and very real. Like, the quickest answer for me is not that much has actually changed about the objectives that we set out to achieve for this year. How we go about them certainly has had to stay agile and nimble, but in the work that I do that's always the case. I always like to be super responsive to context and not get so [prescriptive?] about how we execute but to kind of keep our eyes on the prize, and so from my personal vantage point, I--especially during the beginning days of this--have never felt more critical than I do right now. You know, I think there's so many external conversations and great thought leaders who have articulated this better, what this crisis has really done, like most crises, is magnify fractures, gaps, inequities, that already existed, and so I've used this really as an opening to accelerate my platform and the work that I'm doing for marginalized folks at our company. So just to dig into it, you know, I did a couple of tactical things once it became clear to me that, you know, "This is serious. This is not the flu. This is gonna change everyone's lives forever," and I don't think that's an overstatement. So once that reality sort of set in, the first thing I did was I revisited these operating principles that I had crafted when I started at Upwork. So I joined the company in December of 2019. I'm only about weeks in, and there's been a lot of change since then, internally and obviously externally, but as a team of one and as the first DIB leader in our organization, I thought it was really important for me to just get anchored on what [?] and, you know, use that decision framework for really [advertising?] how I [fell?] in my role. I think, especially when a role like this is new or especially when someone comes in with a multi-disciplinary background [or] a very strategic lens, folks don't necessarily know what the role is and they kind of fill in their own blanks and make their own stories. So that was important to me, and I revisited those once we started quarantining just to make sure that they were evergreen and [stood up?] in this crisis, and they did, thankfully, and I can put [?] on my name. There's only four, and everything we do is, you know, it's systemic, so #1 is account for the systems and structures we're operating in, and that's, you know, systems and structures within our company and certainly externally as well. So that's #1, definitely holds true today. #2 is everything we do is tailored to the most specific population or the most specific point in the employee experience as possible, and so it kind of goes back to how you introduce the podcast, which is it's basically about centering. We have to get specific. We have to get articulate and discrete about what problem we're trying to solve or what opportunity we're trying to seize, and certainly during public times that's been really critical, and I think that principle holds up. The third is active. So I really wanted to mark that for myself and for others. You know, there's no passive way to do this work. Like, we're gonna have to change some things, and, you know, I think that's intuitive, but also [?] to declare. And then the fourth thing which is super critical for me, and this is where I see a lot of DIBs or DEI, whatever acronym you want to use, professionals flounder a little bit, is being pragmatic and being compelling and cohesive and telling, you know, one story that folks can get behind that also makes sense in the context of the day-to-day decisions and work that they're doing, and I think too often DIBs work kind of exists in a bit of a vacuum, right? It's a little bit of a tag-along or an extra-curricular, and I think that's the piece, you know, during corona times, that I've had to really get critical, even more so with myself, about "[?]," right? Like, do people have the capacity for this new thing or this new structure or this new effort and just really kind of giving grace to the folks who have to carry forward on the strategies, who have to, you know, change their behaviors, because it's a lot to ask even in the best of times, and I want to push and, again, lean into this comfort, but also be gracious with the fact that folks are dealing with a lot right now. So that's one of the things I did, was just, like, double-check on the way that we're going about this work. So relevant during this time. Another thing was just re-prioritizing some of those actual objectives. There were just, like, a couple that, even before corona, were nicer to have, but now it's clear that this is not the year to be working on the frills. It's really--we gotta stick to the essentials in terms of our strategic goals. And then the last thing I'll quickly say is I actually really leveraged the fact that it seems like most folks are becoming kind of armchair experts in academiology these days, right? Like, I'm learning more, more about viruses and how they spread, and I think there's some really interesting--and if I thought about it hard enough there could be a poem out of this, but, you know, I think there's some really interesting overlays between what we're seeing with the virus [Emory makes some noise] and how I think about people and the fact that--hey, Emory! The fact that we are all connected, we're all inter-dependent, and we need to center the most vulnerable. I think, as a society, that's becoming more and more clear, just with the true facts that are coming out from COVID, but it also I think has been what activists and DIBs practitioners have been saying for, you know, decades, and so I think, at least in my company, it sort of seems like there's this window of opportunity to seize on this understanding of centering and equity and disproportionate impact that folks are getting externally and [?] that same framework and understanding through the work that I do internally. I just think folks are grasping it a little bit more easily now than they might have been before this. So that, for me, has been exciting.Zach: That's awesome. And yes, hello, Emory. But no, you're absolutely right. [laughs] You know, what I find curious about this time, or intriguing even, is that because of the real impacts that this pandemic is having with folks that look like us and that don't look like us and the frustrations that come along with that, it's creating avenues for people to have even more frank conversations and to really kind of, like, get past some of the jargon and, like, these super long monologues about whatever and really get into, "No, how can we actually create impact and change and help? Because there are people who actively need help," and I think that's--and I try to be, like, a silver lining type of person, so, like, that's--so I would say that is something that is a positive out of all of this. I do think also, to your point around DEI practitioners, I do think that there's a bit of a gap when it comes to, "Okay, how do we transition from--" And I've talked about this with some other folks in the past. I think we're now doing a decent job of, like, talking about the historicity of oppression, or we'll talk about systemic inequities in, like, these very, like, high level systems that almost seem--like, we speak about them almost, like, in the abstract, right? So we'll say, like, "Well, you know, black men, they have disproportionate--they're targeted by police and da-da-da," and it's like, "Okay, that's true," and I'm not being dismissive of that. "Let's talk a little bit more about the systemic inequities in your workplace though," right? Like, "How can we transition these conversations to be a bit more practical and targeted to the reality of your employees?" And, like, that's--and I get why, you know, there's a variety of reasons why we don't necessarily have those conversations when I don't think we necessarily know how, but then two, like, it's increasingly uncomfortable to have conversations about actual power in your workplace, because then we start looking at individuals, right?Dr. Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it's hard, or maybe impossible, not to take, you know, a conversation about power and privilege personally, but at the same time I think where I've seen the most effective work, where I've done the most effective work, is where we actually sort of meet somewhere in the middle. It's about what roles or positions do we hold, how are those products of a greater societal system, and given the seat we're in--it's not really about us. I think it's really about the position. But given that we fill it, you know, what is our responsibility? To disrupt things that before now we weren't aware, you know, we were products of, or now that we are we realize we have a bit of an urgency to leave a legacy or leave things better than where we found them, and I think that's where the activation can happen. That's where we can get [?] without guilting people, right? Without making them defensive. I think it's just the reality of, "Oh, this is all by design, and we're sort of products of this greater architecture. So now what are we gonna do about it?" And if we're not gonna do anything, that's fine too, but then we should stop talking about it. Right? So, like, that's fine. I don't--[laughs] I want to be clear that I don't judge or begrudge that. It's fine. You know, companies and leaders can make those choices, but then stop talking about it. That's where--right?Zach: Yes. That's my rub too. At a certain point it's like, "Look, I'm tired of us talking about diversity being our strength and there not being anybody that looks like me that actually has any type of authority or power." You know, "I'm tired of us always--" Like, not shoehorning in, because no disrespect. We talk about gender in these very, like, binary, exclusionary ways without being intersectional at all with race or sexual identity. We talk about sexual identity in these binary ways without including race. We ignore any race trans identities, particularly trans black female identities. So, like, if we're gonna do this, let's do it. If we're not gonna do it, let's not. It's 2020. Rona or no rona, let's just--let's just be honest. [both laugh]Dr. Thomas: I agree. I mean, you know, that's where folks get disillusioned. That's where, you know, when the word doesn't match the deed, it reads as inauthentic because it frankly is, and I think most companies or leaders within them would be honestly better served to talk a little less about diversity, about inclusion, about equity, [then keep on?], or to raise--you know, raise the bar for themselves, but this weird in-between is just not working, right? It's not working. It's frustrating the folks who are most impacted. And then we see the results, which is very minimal quantitative gains when it comes to actual representation within the workforce. So these things all [?] together. They all relate, so yeah.Zach: They do. Now this is me going off the chart, but it just popped in my--not popped in my head, 'cause I think about it a lot, but we didn't talk about it for this interview. We gotta have you back, Erin, 'cause I really want to talk about in group, out group dynamics and the pressures that marginalized people in positions of authority have to, like, toe the line in that regard or how much they push against to then create inclusive workplaces for people who look like them. 'Cause, like--no, and I recognize that's a big topic, but, like, I just want to say this 'cause it's on the top of my heart and my mind. Like, I've noticed--and I've had these conversations, like, with black folks, like, off the record, right? So, like, in consulting, you know, there's all these different tracks of leadership, and, you know, the highest up is typically managing director or partner, and I've talked to some black partners who I really respect and everything, and I'm like, "Look, how many of you do you meet?" 'Cause the people that I talk to, like, they're with it. Like, they're conscious. They genuinely care. They try to use their access, power and privilege, relative power and privilege, to help other folks that look like them--and I'm talking, like, two people, right? [both laugh] And I asked them like, "Yo, what's going on? Like, why are the rest of y'all a bunch of Clarence Thomases up here? Like, what is this?" And so we had this whole frank discussion about it, but I really want to have you back on, because, like--I don't know. I feel like you and I could have that conversation, but I want to have it because, like--and I had this very... it was not uncomfortable. Wait, let's pause. Everybody stop, everybody. Y'all should know by now. This is, like--we're a couple hundred episodes in, hundreds of episodes in actually of Living Corporate. Y'all know I enjoy awkward conversations, so this exchange I'm about to explain to y'all was not awkward for me. It was awkward for them, okay? It was not awkward for me. So, you know, I had this conversation, and--[Emory makes noise] Oh, goodness, my daughter is loud. Hey, y'all. Y'all, check it out. Y'all hear these vocals by Emory. Don't play. No labels, but, you know, we'll make a SoundCloud soon. So anyway, I was talking to this person and I was like, "Look, the reality is the folks in power only let a certain amount of us in these spaces, okay, and when you see us in these spaces high up, like, to find somebody that looks like us in those spaces who genuinely care, who are not closing doors behind and who are speaking truth to power--" Again, I'm not asking you to come show up in a Kunta Kinte shirt. I'm just saying if you could just--[Dr. Thomas laughs] Okay? If you could just, you know, act like you're black, act like you recognize, you know, experiences. To find those types of people, it's like finding a unicorn with gold teeth, you know what I mean? It's crazy. Dr. Thomas: Yeah, and it's hard for me to speak to personally simply because my role is diversity, right? [both laugh] I'm not here as a [?] professional, I am a diversity expert and researcher. So that's, I guess, a privilege if you will that I hold as a leader in my company, and I recognize that. It was true in my last role too. I was in a consulting firm, and I was on the leadership team, but we were a diversity consulting firm, right? And so even in there you see some of that where, yeah, I had to really reconcile with the fact that I was doing this work and certainly had more latitude to, you know, speak that truth to power than I would if I were in another profession, and at the same time even I find myself vigilant, of course, and protective, of course, of how much is too much, you know? Where do I strike that balance of advocating in ways that people can hear versus that active, you know, operating principle that I called out earlier, you know, [?] folks that healthy discomfort. It's tough. It's a whole level of calculus that I have become I think decent at. I think also though I always--and, you know, we should talk about this another time because we can go real deep into this, right? I always view this dance of, like, on the one hand, any professional--especially any leader--is context switching and code switching all the time, right? Like, that is effective leadership, right? That's effective, but yet when you're a person of color, when you are black--which I can speak to--when you're brown, I think it creates some compunction of, like, "How much of this is playing the game that anyone would play and how much of this is selling out?" And I don't have an answer. I think everyone has their own barometer for that, but it's something I challenge myself on all the time. Like, "What of this feels like me and what of this feels like I'm becoming complicit in something that I don't subscribe to?" And, you know, sometimes I can't really codify when I'm feeling uncomfortable, but I know what I'm feeling, and that's when I have to really check myself and really examine if how I'm showing up or what I'm sharing or advocating is really serving my key audience, which is our marginalized folks at our company.Zach: Yo, so thank you for real. Sound Man, put a little round of applause in here for Erin answering this question off the fly, 'cause we did a pre-production. This was not part of the questions, but it was just something on top of my mind. Thank you so much. Now, look, let's get into this though, because we're just now really at the top of the conversation we planned on having. So look, at the time of us recording this, over 32 million folks have applied for unemployment benefits. At the same time, many companies are trying to retain their employees and keep them engaged in new working environments. I mean, there's even a lot of unofficial conversations happening on companies having pressure to not let go of too many minority employees in the name of just optics and potential legal ramifications. I'm curious, can we talk about this dynamic [?] where tensions may be, particularly for black and brown employees.Dr. Thomas: Sure. I mean, when I hear this question I'm really thinking about it as what are black and brown workers maybe thinking, feeling, [?] with individually if they are still employed, and I think I've seen both--at Upwork it's certainly [?] as well, 'cause obviously I consume research, I consume, you know, thought leadership externally, and I think there's a picture that's sort of forming for me in my head, which is there's a range I think of emotional reactions for folks who are still employed, and I think at its best folks are feeling really grateful of course. Right? It's sort of--going back to operating on a scale of 1 to 10, it's, like, yeah, a very compartmentalized 1 to 10, but, like, we're grateful for the blessings we have, and I think certainly that is true for folks who are in jobs with fair pay and fair benefits. They want to give their all to their employers because their circumstances could be so much worse. And I think especially in, you know, people work, in mission-driven organizations and purposeful organizations, that's incredibly true, you know? I'm seeing more and more come out, for instance, among mental health professionals who are burning out 'cause they're just giving it all. And I think, you know, in normal times it's hard to strike that balance of taking care of others versus yourself, and I think especially now, if folks are lucky to still have some semblance of job security, they're giving a lot, and they're very grateful. I think, towards the more extreme ends of this spectrum of reactions, I'm also seeing certainly some guilt, some comparative guilt, you know, around--there are folks out there who are on the front lines, who are essential workers, who have lost their jobs, and so "Maybe I'm not feeling great about what I'm doing or where I am, but, like, how could I complain?" Right? Like, "How can I explain when--maybe things aren't ideal, but I have so much," and so that's where I start to get--yeah, I get a little nervous about that, but I understand it, right? Like, you won't want to rock the boat right now when employment is so precarious. I think there is, you know, on this extreme end of the spectrum, a bit of grief happening, just--obviously black and brown folks are more likely to have people around them succumbing to this virus, falling ill, being unemployed themselves, and so, you know, folks are at work but breathing different losses that some of their counterparts may not be breathing as directly. And then there's backdrop of fear. Like, even if you feel secure in your job for now, this whole situation is obviously unprecedented. We don't know what will happen to the economy, we don't know what will happen to our companies. And again, the research shows that black and brown folks, and women, are the first to get furloughed, to get laid off, to your point, and we know in secure times black and brown folks are more heavily scrutinized, and I think folks who are still working feel a microscope that may or may not be on them, but it's impossible not to be vigilant about if you're gonna make it out of here with the job you went into this crisis with and if that job is actually the right job for you or if you're feeling beholden to, you know, a vulnerable time in your life. I think it's a very confusing time, but it all goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is that it's just magnifying some of the sentiments that folks are always feeling. I think there's an overlay of, like, true uncertainty that is pressing, but I think folks are really trying to just get through the day, trying to keep the jobs they have, and, you know, trying not to encounter some of the secondary traumas that come when you lose that job, that security that you have in place. So I'm seeing a whole swirl of things, and the way they look to me basically is people are tired. They are exhausted. They are burning out and, you know, I think they're taking care of themselves a little less than they used to because it feels a little risky to do that.Zach: You segued really well into my next question about, like, black and brown employees and their experience, and it's funny because I was talking to a colleague about this, talking to a workplace colleague about, like, my own experiences, and I was telling him about, like, you know, "I've had some stresses because I've had some friends who almost fell victim to COVID-19," and, you know, they recovered, you know, but I also have acquaintances whose family members have passed, right? So you're right, like, what's on my mind and the stresses and the drama is--just what's on my mind is different throughout the day, or maybe it's just a little more real. Let me not say that other folks--'cause there have been white folks dying from the coronavirus too. So it's like, you know, not about trying to dismiss one to uplift the other. It's just like, "Okay, this is real for you, and it's even more real for me." And so I'm curious, like, you know, can we talk a little bit about what organizations can do during this time to at the very least reduce harm for their black and brown employees?Dr. Thomas: For sure. I think, you know, first I want to say 1. thank goodness for your friends who have recovered, and 2. I'm very sorry for the losses that are close to you, and to your point, I'm sorry for that for everybody. This is--you know, the backdrop to all of this is just... it's really hard to fathom honestly. It's hard for me to, like, wrap my head around the devastation this has caused, and it's just--it's so painful, and I'm sorry that everyone is going through this in some way, 'cause everyone is affected and is going to be in some way by the physical toll that this is taking on people. To that point, you know, I think there's a few things that orgs can do kind of from the top down. I think there's also things certainly that any individual colleague or manager can do for the folks around them, but I'll talk about this on a couple of levels. Sidebar, I always think of the Nick Jonas song "Levels" whenever I'm thinking about how to approach this work. Zach: Now, hold on, what is the Nick Jonas song--'cause see, the only song I know by Nick Jonas is that "I still get jealous--" You know what I'm saying? "[continues singing]."Dr. Thomas: It's about--I'm trying to think of how it goes. It's about "love has levels." "Levels, levels." I don't know the words.Zach: Come on, Erin. Come on. I hear you with the vocals.Dr. Thomas: I know. I gotta find it, but I like him, and I know he has a song called Levels, and I always think about it. It's like, "Oh, levels, take me higher--" I don't know. Levels take me higher. I don't know. It's a terrible song.Zach: It's a terrible song? Okay. Did he have a black choir in the background? [both laugh] Yo, when Nick Jonas came out there, boy, he came out there and they was like, "I still get jealoous." I was like, "What is going on? Jesus ain't got nothing to do with this." I mean, he's a jealous guy. Anyway, moving forward... [both laughing] Dr. Thomas: I'm gonna have to find it, I'm gonna have to sing it and just send you a little audio clip, 'cause I can't even remember the tune, 'cause it's not a memorable song. Love you, Nick.Zach: Okay. [laughs]Dr. Thomas: You know? From the top down, companies, and really I'm talking about leaders, people leaders, diversity leaders, can take care to do a few things. One is--and I saw this during the earlier days of people sheltering in place. I think it's leveled out maybe a bit, at least from my vantage point, but in the beginning there was a lot of corporate messaging--and I think you even see this still in commercials--of, you know, "We're all in this together," and on its face, cool, cool, cool. Like, right, you want to build camaraderie, you want to cohere folks around a shared sense of community, but if you beat that drum a little too long, especially within your company, I think it can kind of err to the side of being colorblind, right, and really minimizing the disproportionate strain that there actually is on employees of color and on black and brown folks. So I think striking that balance of certainly we're all in this together, and also there are distinct experiences that we know folks are grappling with. It's an important sort of dual approach to make sure that your folks who are black and brown know that they're seen, know that they're recognized for their unique experiences through this and the unique impacts that they're encountering. So that's one thing, just sort of take that multicultural lens to those company communications that you're sending out. I think another thing is, you know, wherever you can creating space for employees to uncover and share more about their specific experiences. So, you know, we did this back in April at Upwork. We partnered with Michelle Kim, who I know is a friend of the pod.Zach: Come on. What's up, Michelle J. Kim? Shout-out to Awaken Co. What's up? [imitating air horns]Dr. Thomas: [joins in, Zach laughs] She's awesome, and we sort of co-facilitated I think a 75-minute conversation with leaders of our Asian ERG(s)--and this is before the data about [?] were coming out with regards to black and brown folks, and the conversation was mostly around--in terms of the media--anti-Asian bias and discrimination and racism, so we seized on the timeliness of that conversation and built out, you know, a virtual forum for our employees to share what they were concerned about, what they were hearing in their day-to-day lives and interactions, and to scale out from that, from those stories to give more context to, you know, why are we seeing this, what is this. This is not unique to this moment in time. This is, you know, a pattern repeating, and really come from a place of urgency to educate our folks a little bit more about historical context and why it matters now and certainly what they can do to disrupt and call out bias in themselves and discriminations they're seeing externally. A third thing is certainly around mental health and benefits and resources to aid folks, you know, who are experiencing trauma and grief. And I don't think this just has to be if you've lost someone close to me. I think in general folks are really struggling obviously with anxiety and insomnia, and there's data coming in on that, and so making sure that your company has the right level and amount of bereavement and [leave?] policies, but also just coaching and support with your EAP if you have one or your [?] and getting them at least to a basic level [?] of providing that 1:1 support for folks and hopefully referring them out to medical providers if they need, you know, more professional coaching. And then the last thing, you know, is related to what you were saying about terminations and lay-offs and all that. Every company should be auditing the decisions they're making this time when it comes to furloughs and risks, making sure that they're looking at that through an equity lens, making sure that they're not just focusing on people's kind of positions in the company or tenure, because black and brown folks tend to sit lower in the org and tend to be earlier in their tenure, so really taking a performance-based approach to that analysis can be helpful in getting out of that sort of hamster wheel of, you know, first in first out when it comes to black and brown folks. So those are, you know, top-down, structural considerations that companies can be taking every day. I think on the ground, peers and managers can be doing some of what we've already role modeled in this conversation. Check in with people, my goodness. Just think about who you haven't spoken to in a while. Think about who you might normally pass at, you know, the water cooler or the coffee station, and if you haven't chatted with that person 1:1 in a minute, you know, Slack them, ping them, whatever you've got in terms of internal messaging systems, call them, pick up the phone and check in. Just see how people are doing, and make sure you create, you know, space to actually hear their answer and to actually respond. So, you know, as opposed to the normal "How's it going?" Like, really ask the question and really wait for the answer and be with that person with whatever they share, you know? I think it's really about those personal connections that we probably took for granted when we were back in an office setting, for those of us who were in offices, and that are harder to actualize now, right? Like, we're all home. We're all behind screens, and so there is no organic water cooler conversation. That means we have to make a little bit more effort to reach out to folks and to show them that we care about them, that we're connected to them and that we're a resource, or that the company has resources, for them whenever they need.Zach: I love it, I love it. Now, Erin, you know that we're about real talk in a corporate world like I said at the top of the show. For the executive leader to this and perhaps rolling their eyes or maybe, like, speed listening and being like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know this. Yeah, yeah, yeah," like, you know, just kind of being dismissive as to the gravity of this and why this matters. Why should folks have an inclusive and equitable lens during this time, and then what's the potential fallout in your mind if they don't?Dr. Thomas: I have so many reactions to this question. I think, first, if someone's rolling their eyes to this, which... yeah, could be true, I'll just, like, emphatically say that's not my key audience. Like, I'm just not--you know, I'm really not, and I'm just not. That's not my sweet spot. There were times earlier in my career where that was, where I found it fun to really push the business case for equity, business case for diversity. I am not interested in that anymore, and thankfully I'm in an org where I don't have to do that. Like, kudos to those of you who are doing that. Frankly, for me personally, that's ineffective, right? You know, people do not make decisions based on facts or data. So, you know, I could stand here and talk about the research that's been done. You know, Great Place to Work just did a study around [?], right, and they showed that those who focused on inclusion did better during the recession and saw more returns. So, like, I could share all those stats and all that, but it doesn't matter. Like, if you're rolling your eyes, if you are asking why or if, like, it's probably not gonna happen for you. Just call it, you know--because you can Google it, you can ask Siri, you can ask Jeeves, you can do whatever you want to do, but, like--Zach: [laughing] Not ask Jeeves.Dr. Thomas: [laughing] You can go back to Jeeves if you have to, but my point is that this is not how people make decisions. People make decisions emotionally. They do what they want to do and then they rationalize it later. That is a fact. Zach: That is a fact.Dr. Thomas: You know, it is. And that's science. [laughs] And so if you're not in any way emotionally inclined to care, nothing I say, no data point is gonna make you care. So I think that's one thing. Like, I am impatient and frankly, especially with, you know, decades of research that I think has really caught on in industry, we're just past the point of denying the value proposition of diversity. I think it wastes calories. I think it distracts from the meaningful question, which is, like, how we can go about it during this time or, you know, what we should be prioritizing. I think those are fair questions, but if you're, for whatever strange reason, listening to this podcast and rolling your eyes, like, I don't have time for it. I just don't. I don't. And already that was too much time explaining how I don't have time for it. So that's my quick reaction to that. [both laughing] I think those who are kind of, you know, struggling with how to go about this or where to maybe invest less or more, that's incredibly fair. I think that is incredibly challenging. So what I would say there is just--it goes back to what we talking about earlier. I mean, this is life and death, right? It does not get more real in terms of a call to action than this moment in time, and I think every leader should sit themselves down and critically examine what legacy they want to leave, you know? This is the time for companies to demonstrate what living values, living their values actually looks like. It's their time to pressure test, you know, different mantras that companies love to share around, you know, authentic selves at work, or "Bring your whole selves to work," because you saying--it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. You're saying those things... well, here's your moment. Here's your moment to [know?] what it really means, and that's true at the company level, it's true at that personal level. Hopefully you're inclined to want to dig more deeply into what actualizing on your commitments actually could mean right now, and I think that's the place to get really serious about where are the potential gaps between what you're saying and doing. And as we said earlier, you know, if you realize "Huh, even in these most dire circumstances, we're maybe not really ready to make the investment that we might need to actually move the needle or create the environment that our people need." Okay. That's a tough conclusion to come to, but okay.Zach: That's responsible though, right?Dr. Thomas: Right. Yeah. I mean, and then okay, well, then you have to communicate that back, but if you have been talking a game for a while and are realizing you want to step it up, that's amazing, and I think from there what you can be doing is really leveraging external leaders--I mean, there's a lot of information, tools that are free. You could certainly and should be always leveraging your internal employees or workers however they want to be leveraged to help you reveal your blind spots. But this is it. Like, this is the moment, and hopefully orgs will really step it up and leave a footprint that I think can last for generations. You know, what companies do now I think is going to reset how people see them in the public light, how people see them as an employer of choice or not, and so it's a critical kind of come to Jesus moment hopefully for leaders and orgs to double down or to de-emphasize the things that we've been talking about for a while.Zach: Yo. Man, I mean this has just been an incredible conversation. I would be remiss not to drop a Flex bomb right here, and then also some air horns, put 'em in right here. Okay, there we go. Erin, before we let you go--before Emory and I, excuse me, let you go, any parting words or shout-outs? I know you've been dropping wild gems this entire time, but I just want to give you one last--you know, where they can find you, what you're excited about with Upwork, anything. Give you time to plug.Dr. Thomas: Oh, goodness. Okay, I did not prepare for this. I have so many people to thank. I would say find me on Twitter. That's it. Please don't try to find me on LinkedIn. I don't respond on LinkedIn. Real talk. It's just too cluttered. So ErinLThomasPhD is my Twitter handle. I would say check out Upwork. I have been a lot of places. I have led diversity within two other organizations before now. I've been an expert consultant. I've seen a lot of what companies are doing, and I wouldn't be at Upwork if I weren't rabidly passionate about what we're doing and about all of the magic ingredients that attracted me to our company. So I'd love for folks to check us out. Come work with us. We're a great, amazing, purposeful company doing great work, with cool leaders like me, so come on through.Zach: I mean, this is the best ad I could imagine. [both laugh] All right, y'all, you know what it is. We're having real talk in a corporate world. I'm saying it, like, three times this time, but you know we amplify and center marginalized, underappreciated, underrepresented, undersupported, underestimated voices at work, and look, you can check us out anywhere, okay? Look, we're all over Barack Obama's internet. You just Google Living Corporate, okay? We're gonna pop up. We're there, okay? We're all over. Check us out on Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, @LivingCorporate on Instagram. Shoot, if you old school and you're like, "Nah, Zach. I gotta go in the browser and type in the domain like a true OG," then I'ma say, "Okay, cool," and I'ma tell you www.living-corporate.com, please say the dash, or livingcorporate.co, livingcorporate.us, livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.org, livingcorporate.net. We got all of the Living Corporates except livingcorporate.com, so if you type in livingcorporate.com and Living Corporate does not pop up do not be mad at me, 'cause I told you already we don't got that one. We got all the other livingcorporates, or living-corporate.com--please say the dash, all right? You can also email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can also DM us, okay? DMs are wide open. We are not afraid of the random DM. Just hit us up. We'll make sure we hit you back. If you have a listener letter, you know, you could submit it right there. We'll answer it on the show. We got a decent number. We try to get to a critical mass so we can answer a few, and then we kind of make that an episode. Just so y'all you know. It's, like, a peek behind the curtain. Until next time, y'all. This has been Zach, and you've been listenimg to Dr. Erin Thomas of Upwork. Me and Emory are gonna catch y'all later. Emory, you got anything to say? [Emory's silent] Nope? All right, y'all. Peace.

A big challenge facing any team trying to deal with OT and ICS cyber risk is getting executive leadership and the Board of Directors support and leadership on this issue. The problems that arise tend to be related to communication styles, understanding of what is truly important to the company, and reducing business risk as determined by the executives and Board. In this podcast I talk with Thomas Parenty of the Archefact Group about the Board of Directors' responsibility in business risk management. Thomas works with Boards for a living and has written the book, A Leaders Guide To Cybersecurity. This podcast includes discussions on: Key Item - Approach the Board with a Business Risk approach rather than a technical approach. (with how to know Business Risk, examples and discussion on how to do this) Board addressing risk of reputation damage due to a cyber attack. How much cybersecurity expertise does the Board need? Should there be a "Cybersecurity Director"? What level of detail does the Board need related to cyber security controls? How does one deal with the Board Member who has locked in to a specific control, product or solution that didn't make sense for the company? Could the SEC requiring specific cybersecurity disclosures create regulatory risk that would force the companies subject to these disclosures to take action? How is and should a Board of Directors act to deal with COVID-19? I do chime in with my views more often than a typical podcast as dealing with Executive Management and Boards is something I've been doing quite a bit the last five years. My favorite quote from Thomas: It is so easy to do good things, but there not the most important things. Or there not the most effective things. Or the money is being spent, but not on reducing the most material risks in the business. Links Thomas Parenty's book: A Leaders Guide To Cybersecurity Thomas Parenty's session video from S4x19 Patrick Miller video clip on Executive Communication Subscribe to Dale's ICS Security: Friday News & Notes

Podcast: Unsolicited Response PodcastEpisode: Board of Directors Role in ICS Security with Thomas ParentyPub date: 2020-03-31A big challenge facing any team trying to deal with OT and ICS cyber risk is getting executive leadership and the Board of Directors support and leadership on this issue. The problems that arise tend to be related to communication styles, understanding of what is truly important to the company, and reducing business risk as determined by the executives and Board. In this podcast I talk with Thomas Parenty of the Archefact Group about the Board of Directors' responsibility in business risk management. Thomas works with Boards for a living and has written the book, A Leaders Guide To Cybersecurity. This podcast includes discussions on: Key Item - Approach the Board with a Business Risk approach rather than a technical approach. (with how to know Business Risk, examples and discussion on how to do this) Board addressing risk of reputation damage due to a cyber attack. How much cybersecurity expertise does the Board need? Should there be a "Cybersecurity Director"? What level of detail does the Board need related to cyber security controls? How does one deal with the Board Member who has locked in to a specific control, product or solution that didn't make sense for the company? Could the SEC requiring specific cybersecurity disclosures create regulatory risk that would force the companies subject to these disclosures to take action? How is and should a Board of Directors act to deal with COVID-19? I do chime in with my views more often than a typical podcast as dealing with Executive Management and Boards is something I've been doing quite a bit the last five years. My favorite quote from Thomas: It is so easy to do good things, but there not the most important things. Or there not the most effective things. Or the money is being spent, but not on reducing the most material risks in the business. Links Thomas Parenty's book: A Leaders Guide To Cybersecurity Thomas Parenty's session video from S4x19 Patrick Miller video clip on Executive Communication Subscribe to Dale's ICS Security: Friday News & NotesThe podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dale Peterson: ICS Security Catalyst and S4 Conference Chair, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

DE 26: Tax Strategies and Real Estate Investments with Thomas Castelli   Thomas Castelli is a licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in New York. He is certified in Real Estate Financial Modeling and Tax Strategist. He comprehends that putting resources into real estate, joined with tax strategies and arranging are critical to limiting the taxes and building long term riches. He holds equity positions in several multifamily properties and participated in the syndication of an 82 unit apartment complex as a general partner. All his experience in investing and tax strategies are really helping him in finances. Highlights: Difference Between GP and LP Thomas’ First Investment How Much Money Is Needed To Invest In Real Estate How Many Partners A Partnership Should Contain And How Should The Partnership Split Be.   Connect with Thomas: Email: ThomasCastelli@NewBabyloncapital.com or Thomas.Castelli@WholeCPALLC.com Podcast: Real Estate CPA   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hey guys! Today I'm going to interview Thomas Castelli, Thomas is a real estate investor. And I think the most interesting thing about him is that he invested in his first real estate deal as a limited partner and that is something that we haven't discussed yet. A lot of people here don't know the difference between a limited partner and a general partner, also known as the sponsor or the syndicator. And today we're going to talk a lot about the difference between these two types of investments and how you can get into real estate as a passive investor with not a whole lot of money and learn a lot about real estate in the process also, while you make money, so that's a great opportunity. And I think it's a very important episode for everybody who is considering to invest in real estate. So, let's get started. Lady: Welcome to the Commercial Real Estate Investing podcast with Don and Eden, where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to off-market strategies. Don: Hey, Thomas, welcome to the show. Thomas: Hey, Don, thanks so much for having me on today. Happy to be here.  Don: Of course. How's your day going so far? Thomas: It's going great. The weather's not too great here in New York. It's been raining for the last few days. But other than that, I can't complain. It's a good day. Don: Yeah. Well, you know, it's only going to get colder from now on, right? Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this the one bad thing about living in New York is it could be really hot in the summer and the nineties, and then go all the way down to the teens if not lower, when you move into the winter months.  Don: Well, you know, I live in Florida, we have warm weather all year round. But then in the summer, you got the hurricanes and you got the rain. That's just non stop, and you can't plan anything. And so, you can't go out and do anything because whatever it is you're trying to do. There's going to be rain, and there's going to be sun and there's going to be rain and there's going to be Sun. It's just super annoying. But yeah, I'll take that over New York every day of the week.  Don: Yeah, well, I would too. I don't blame me. Okay, so, tell us a little bit about who you are, how you got into real estate and then what you're doing currently. Thomas: My name is Tom Castelli. I'm a CPA. I work for a company called the Real Estate CPA as a tax strategist and I primarily do tax consulting for real estate investors. So, I help them come up with a plan to minimize their tax liability each year. The super exciting job keeps me really in touch with real estate investors and what's currently going on. Outside of that, I am an investor myself. I got started as an investor on the LP side back in 2015 when I started to make a few Limited Partnership investments with someone who basically would become my mentor. I made my first LP investment in a 48 unit apartment building Class D apartment building and got full renovation in Columbus, Ohio. That was pretty exciting. And from there, I started learning more and more about syndications. That ultimately culminated in me participating as a general partner in the syndication of an 82 unit apartment complex in Jacksonville, Florida, actually down in your state.  On the Investment side what led me to syndication though was when I was in college, I was pretty much saying, ‘Oh, I don't want to like live the normal nine to five life.’ I need a way out of this and start researching real estate, you know, the Rich Dad, Poor Dad, all that. And then eventually it led me to a meeting of RIA meeting out here on Long Island, and I met a syndication group and I went to their three-day seminar where they went through syndication A to Z, and I fell in love with syndication. That's where I met my mentor. And that's the person who I started investing with on the LP side, and it all led up to that eight units GP. Since that point, I haven't been too active. I've made a few investments in LP since then, but at this point, just kind of waiting for us to be putting this property on the market. Don: I know we already discussed that on previous shows. You know the difference between LP and GP, but I'm sure some people are going to listen to that, and they're not going to understand really what we're talking about if they're new to all the terms. First of all, I like it that your first deal was an LP so you invested with somebody else, and then we're going to talk about that, but first, how about you give us a brief explanation about the difference between limited partner and a general partner and then the way that a syndication process works. Thomas: Yeah. So, the limited partner and investment, you're the passive investor, you're the silent partner or the money partner some different terms people say. You're investing with the general partner, and you're not taking an active role in the business or the investment. You're just kind of sitting back and collecting your check. I think the biggest aspect for a limited partner when you are investing is to understand who the general partner is, what their track record is, do they have experience with the assets and just have an overall idea of what market you're investing in that can be pretty important. But for the general partner side, the general partner to deal they are responsible for putting the entire deal together from A to Z.  So, it's finding the property, going through the acquisition process, including due diligence, and then ultimately overseeing the property management than any renovation plans you have for the property, that entire processes and ultimately selling it. They're also responsible for raising the capital from investors, the LP’s and making sure that they are handling Investor Relations properly communicating with their investors. They're also responsible for getting the debt financing working with a bank or perhaps to Fannie/Freddie or mortgage brokers, however, we're going to go about getting that loan, that is their role. They're pretty much responsible for the entire thing, which is why as a limited partner, when you don't have that control when you don't have that management, say, it's very important to know who you're dealing with on the general partnership side. Don: Yeah. And I would like to add a few things. So as a limited partner, the advantage is that you're passive and so you don't have to worry about too many things. So, the only time you have to worry about is when you're getting into the deal. You have to do some research, you have to know the market, just like you said, that's pretty much it. You invest the money and you should be getting some nice returns. I always say that if I wanted to retire, I would just invest all my money as a limited partner with other people that I trust and just go to a cruise or something and just have fun forever because you get good returns. You could get, I would say 15%. It's pretty normal to get on a yearly basis. If you know who you're investing with, and you have experienced and you could even get a 20% return on an IRR based on for five years. So that's the advantage as a limited partner.  The advantage for the general partners, also known as the sponsors of the deal, is that essentially, they collect money from investors. So, they raise capital, just like you said. Typically, they have to raise about 30% of the purchase price of 20% for a down payment, and then 10%, for CapX, what is known as the repairs, or the implementing of the value add plants or the property. And so, what happens is that they raise the 30% from other people, and they get a split of 30% of the entire deal. So, let's say that they improve the building that's worth 10 million to a point where it's worth 13 million, so they would make 1 million in profit if they get 30%, roughly 1 million, so 900,000. Yeah, you are a CPA. And then that is the reason why you decided to invest as a limited partner because you wanted to keep your day job, right? You wanted to be a passive investor. And you also wanted to get into investing in syndications, right? And learn as much as you can. Thomas: Yeah. One of the things is like when you're first I guess, taking on this investing adventure that some investors go on is it's good to have the experience on the LP side first, because you kind of get to see it from the back end angle, and you experience the entire process from A to Z as an investor from the investor's perspective and you ultimately learn a lot about how to do it if you're looking to be a general partner. So, that's one of the reasons why I started there. Don: Okay, great. So, let's talk about your first investment. The LP. So, the limited partner investment. So how much money did you invest in that deal and how many units was it? Thomas: 48 units in Columbus, Ohio. As an LP, I invested about $10,000 into a deal. It wasn't all that much, my parents invested a lot more but that was just the point where I got my foot in the door. On that deal got a lot of behind the scenes looks at what was going on. I was on a lot of property management calls. So, the property needed a gut renovation. I remember seeing pictures of this thing. It was like we went in there when we first acquired it. And there was, there's a lot of needles on the ground, bad things going on in there. So, pretty much had to vacate the majority of the property and go in there and do significant renovations to both the interior and the exterior of the property as well as new signage, print to reposition the property, and then leased it back up. And it was overall an exciting deal. We had some issues with the property manager, had to get rid of him and replace them. But overall, great deal, great return, I think we did 32% over 18 months.  Don: Wow!  Thomas: It was pretty solid. Don: Wow, that's nice. What I like about that is that you can get into a real estate deal with $10,000. So that's for everybody out there. Right? So, it's exactly what the message that all the internet gurus are trying to say like Grant Cardone and people trying to say just invest in real estate. It's that easy. So, all you need to have is $10,000 in savings. Even though I know a lot of our sponsors and general partners are trying to raise at least 25,000 typically. So that's what I see most of the time. Thomas: Yeah, you know, that's accurate. You know, at this point, I think it was the relationships I developed with the sponsor that allowed me to get into the deal at that level. I guess it partly depends on the relationships you have. You can build a relationship with people they might allow you to get in at a lower level. I could also look at crowdfunding. I think in crowdfunding thing with the Reg A offerings it is you can get in like with as low as $1,000 into some of these properties. Don: So, you invested in that LP you made some good money. And then how did you proceed with investing in real estate? Did you invest in it in another LP before you became a sponsor yourself? Thomas: Yeah, after that I invested in another Limited Partnership investment. It was eight units in Covington, Kentucky. That I was through a coaching program or a mock coaching program like the beta version of it. By investing in that property, I was able to go through the mock coaching program. And that's where I learned a lot about market research, learned a lot about the acquisitions process, how to underwrite deals, that side of things. And also, we worked very closely together after that, looking for new properties in that market. It was an exciting time building relationships with brokers. So that was my second LP investment. From there, I made another one. And that was in 17 units in Covington, Kentucky. We currently have a duplex left where we're looking to sell from now on. But then there was the general partnership was next. Don: Okay, so let's talk about that phase. I'm sure it's the most exciting phase of your life being a sponsor of a deal for the first time. So, I know you worked on the acquisition side, which means that you were the one who created the relationship with a broker, you were the one to do all the due diligence and get the deal. So, you got to deal with those are your part right? And that was in Jacksonville in Florida, which is an emerging market. Everybody's talking about Jacksonville for a while. I've looked in that market also myself. I was looking at 80 units over there at a time but then the numbers did not work. I know you did that back in '17, where it was a little bit easier to find something good in Jacksonville. So that's about, First of all, I want to know why you chose that market. So that's the most important thing. Because I know that everybody always says, the first thing you have to do is pick your market. So why, why Jacksonville? Thomas: There's a lot of reasons. It was at the time, it was one of the top growing cities. If you look at employment, which is pretty much one of the most important aspects. It had growing employment. It also had diverse employment through multiple sectors. So, it was not really at risk of anyone sector being damaged in the outlook for that was pretty strong. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted and we looked down there was for that, you know, that reason alone. The second reason was we had a contact with a very, very good property manager who's already in that market. It was a natural fit to start looking down there. This property manager was great at helping us on the due diligence side and connecting us with brokers. So those are some of the reasons that we started looking down there was primarily for those two reasons I'd say. Don: Okay, so you're looking into the deal and then you decide to create connections with brokers right in Jacksonville? So how did you go about that? How did you do that from New York? Thomas: At this point, I was pretty experienced that cold calling or cold calling basically brokers and sellers directly for other deals we're looking for in Covington, Kentucky prior, I called the property manager way to contact with and I said, ‘Hey, you know, we'd love to hear about what are the top brokers you're currently working within the market? Who should I contact if I'm looking to pick up some properties in Jacksonville?’ And she provided me with contact information. So, brokers and I contacted pretty much all of them and one of them we struck up a really good relationship right off the bat. And he started sending me a handful of properties. And from there a lot of the properties were not really what we're looking for. One of them was all right, but the value add component was completed already. So, it wasn't much meat on the bone but so he sent me one good property and that was the property with a pursuing. Don: Okay. So, what made you feel like this property was good? How did you see that? Thomas: So, the first thing was that it was being managed by this property manager already. So that was the first aspect because we felt very comfortable with this property manager and the level of expertise they had in the market. And because they already managing it, it was just favorable right off the bat to us.  Don: We also saw that they could tell you all the insights and tell you exactly what they see from the inside, right?  Thomas: 100%. That was one of the I would say, if not the primary reason for us going forward on the value add. So, I did see opportunities to fix up some of the exteriors of the property. There's some curb appeal, that could have been some re-signage and curb appeal that needed to be upgraded on the exteriors. The interiors, weren't all renovated to the same level at this point. So, there's a lot of opportunities to go in there. And as the units were turning naturally, it was already stabilized. Think it was 90% or 92% when we purchased it, so it was pretty much as units turned, we were able to go in there and renovate the units to the market standard raise the rents. And that was ultimately LOI driver for us. And one of the reasons why we liked it, we liked the upside potential. Don: Okay, so you renovated the entire 80 units? Thomas: Not the entire 80 units. I think it was about half the units needed the interior upgrades, the other half is already in pretty good shape. I walked about half the units on the due diligence side, one of the partners in the deal walked the other half. And overall, some of us were nice. The other ones not so much. So, the ones that weren't up to standards were the ones we renovated. I believe it was about half. Don: Okay, so you renovated about 40 units. How much money did you invest after you did all the work in every unit? Thomas: That is a great question. I don't have that number offhand. I think it came into a bit around for the unit very, because not all the units need. Don: You can say roughly. Nobody's going to check that. Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I think it was roughly between $3000 and $12,000 per unit. It just depends on how much work that particular unit needed. Don: Okay, so let's say that you invested $8000 in each unit. So that would bring us to around $320,000 in CapEx. Thomas: Yeah, that's very accurate for the number. Don: Okay, so you bought the property for how much? What was the purchase price? Thomas: The purchase price was $3,850,000. Don: Okay, and then you invest another $320,000. Right? Thomas: Correct. I think we're coming under budget with that. We have some CapEx, some money sitting in our CapEx account that we may end up just distributing back to our investors at this point. Don: Okay. And so, did you reduce the expenses too or just increase the NOI by raising the rents for these improved units? Thomas: The property on the expense side was pretty much being run pretty efficiently already.  Don: Your managers pretty good over there, right? Thomas: Yeah, there wasn't much to lower on the expense side, it was more or less work we did on the upside.  Don: Okay. So how much were you able to push the rents with improvements of the units? Thomas: Some were one unit, some that were two units, we had three units. Two units to the ones I know offhand was $650 when we got into it and were able to raise them anywhere from $750 to $825 is what we’re pushing right now.  Don: Wow. Okay. So, if you improve to $800, you improve 40 units by $150 Premium per unit, right? Thomas: Yeah, give or take. Don: Okay, so that would be $6,000 a month. Thomas: Okay. Don: Okay, so a year that would be $72,000 increase to the NOI. Now if you divide that just for the listeners to understand the value add here if you buy $6000 every month, that's the rent premium $150 for 40 units that they improved, times 12. That would be $72000. And then if you divide $72,000 by the cap rate, which is the formula to understand the value, you divide NOI, by the cap rate. So let's divide the NOI premium here which is $72,000, by the cap rate that you would buy a multifamily market cap rate, I would say 6%. Right? So that would bring an increase of about $1,200,000 to the property. So let's take out the CapEx, which we improve the property at $320. So, you got an increase of about $880,000, to the property, give or take, am I right? Thomas: Yeah, give or take. I think that the property being valued right now, around $6,000,000 is what we're getting some offers on. Don: Wow. Wow. How is that even possible? That's even more than... Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I think you know, what it comes down to is that the markets just so hot down there. Don: Yeah. Thomas: That people are willing, perhaps maybe overpay a little bit to get into some of these assets, which is, I guess, a horse of another color. Don: You know, when I think about that, I can say what I think about that because I've had this conversation with one of my friends just recently. So, I think something is going on because there are all these baby boomers now retiring, right, and then you have all these trusts and all these funds and all these institutions are just trying to preserve capital, and they just want to park money anywhere they can. They don't want to have dollars, they just want to have something real. Don: So Something is going to happen. But you must have heard it before. So that's why I think the cap rates are getting so compressed. And I think people are just, the larger institutions and the larger trusts are just buying everything for ridiculous prices. You said you bought this property for how much? Thomas: We bought it for $3.85. $3,850,000. Don: Somebody's overpaying you about $600,000. If you get offers for $6 million. Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I'd have to go back and check the exact numbers to see exactly where the rents are and everything where the NOI is today. Yeah, I know that we are getting offers that are right now above valuation would be so I just think it's because of the popularity of the Jacksonville market. Yeah, I mean, I when we're looking at these assets, we're looking at cap rates at 6.5% to 7%. Now the cap rates down there like 5% like 5.5%. Don: Oh it's 5%, that's why Yeah, that's why that makes sense. So, if you increase the NOI by $72,000, right, that's another $240,000. Yeah, I mean, that's crazy. But you know what, I think what you did right was the fact that you picked the right market at the right time. Thomas: Exactly. Don: That was the home run for you. Because when I heard about Jacksonville, and how much is booming that was already 2018, late 2018. And you picked it up in 2017. And so that's why you were able to strike such a good deal because it's just exploding over there. Thomas: Yeah. And you know, it's interesting. One of the reasons why Jacksonville is also our focus is some of our partners had investments in Jacksonville already from 2013. So, they were riding the market up since back then. So, they got in even earlier. And some people were saying that we at that point in 2017, had missed a big run-up, but that's not the case. It says continue to move up. Don: Nice. So as a general partner, how much money do you think you're going to be making on that deal? So just for somebody who's trying to get into that field, being a limited partner or a general partner, I want our listeners to understand how much money you could be made from just one deal. What're your estimates? Thomas: On the front end of the acquisition fee, we had a 1% acquisition fee. So, the acquisition fee came out to be $30,500 roughly, which wasn't all that much. But in this industry, I've always been told that the acquisition fee keeps the lights on, it's your fee for putting a deal together. But really where you make the most money is absolute pays the bills. And then on the back end is really where you make the most money and were projected, the deal is 80-20. So, we have 20%, the general partners of 20% of the profits on the back end. Don: So, investors must be very, very happy. Thomas: Oh, yeah, no, they are. So we had to use crowdfunding we use the crowdfunding site called Realty Shares. And they raised about 90% of the equity for the property. So, their investors are getting should be very happy with what they're getting from this property and at the act and we'll sell our management chunk is going to be anywhere from $350,000 to a little bit over $400,000 just estimating how much will be making as a general partnership team on the back end. Don: So how many partners are you? Thomas: Five partners. All roughly split the management side equally, so give or take there are some differences in there, but I mean, just for the sake of argument is roughly the same. So, let's just say we use a round number we make $400,000 each partner that we walk around with roughly $80,000 from one transaction. Don: Yeah. And that's at 20% split, which is below what a general partner is typically making. So right now, I know that it used to be 70-30. Those are the general split. So, 30% for the GP and then 70% for the LPs. And it's even going to the place where it's going to be 65-35 and 60-40 is what I'm hearing right now because the market is a little bit tighter. So, the sponsors of the deals, they want to make sure that they're making money because it's difficult. It's not easy to find a deal. It's not easy to find money. So yeah, they want to get paid. And so, I think if you were to do the same deal on a 65-35% you'd be making around 150,000. Right? Thomas: Sounds about right. Don: Nice. So that's great. I'm very happy for you that you struck your first deal. You were able to make a decent amount of money like that. Also, you had partners. Sometimes in a GP, you'd have two partners, three partners but five is a lot, I'll say. Thomas: Yeah, you know, the reason why we have along with this one, this is a big learning experience. So, one of the partners does this full time that has a very good business out of it. And the rest of the other four partners, myself included, were mostly in it for the learning experience. So that's why we were happy taking the lower amount on the general partnership side, just to make sure we saw the entire experience from A to Z, and that we'd be better equipped to do ones ourselves going forward with likely a smaller partnership, because like you said, when you're splitting that amount of money between five people, it's still a decent chunk of change, but it's nowhere near the amount of money you could be making two $300 off of one transaction. Yeah, a group with two people doing a deal. Don: Yeah, it gets two people doing that kind of deal and today's market on a 35% 65% split, I'd say that they'd be making about $300,000 each.  Thomas: That's significant. One of the things my mentor always says just do one of these deals a year, you're going to set yourself up nicely. Don: Good. Yeah, yeah, that's very nice. What are your plans for the future as far as your CPA in a Real Estate company, are you going to keep doing syndications or you're going to just keep your job and I know you're 28 years old, which is very young, so you got a whole lot of time. Thomas: That's a great question. After I did that deal, I was pretty much planning to go right back into syndication and do another one. But I decided it makes more sense for me to focus on as a CPA, I work directly with real estate investors. So, keeps me very in tune with what's going on, give me a chance to rebuild my savings basically, to invest in more syndications. And at this point, once we liquidate this building, once this building goes to market, it's closed down, I'm going to take whatever money I get from it, essentially, and start looking for another syndication. I'll probably do something smaller with one or two partners or I'm even open to doing JV with no investors if we find the right deal. So that's pretty much the future and be focused on that in 2020 & 2021. Don: Nice. So yeah, if you want to JV you're going to need to have some connections. So, what if people want to connect with you and get to know you, what would be the best way to do that? Thomas: The best way to get in touch with me would be to shoot me an email. You could reach me at ThomasCastelli@NewBabyloncapital.com -that's for the real estate side of things. If you're interested in connecting talking about the services of a CPA or real estate accounting and tax services, you can reach me by checking out the ‘Real Estate CPA’ podcast actually has a great podcast for real estate investors and then also can reach me at Thomas.Castelli@WholeCPALLC.com again, it's Thomas.Castelli@WholeCPALLC.com. Don: Nice. Okay, Tom. So, thank you very much for coming to the show today. I hope you're going to have a great day and good luck in the future. Thomas: Thanks. Lady: Thanks for listening to the Real Estate Investing Podcast with Don and Eden. Stay tuned for more episodes. Till next time!

Do you live by your emotions or your convictions?Do you live scared?Do you live like you trust/have faith?Are you living like Thomas? It's okay, Jesus came back just for Thomas.Proverbs 3:5-6 KJVLuke 18:26-27 MSG1 Corinthians 13:8-10 KJVLuke 17:3-6 MSGLuke 22:31-34 KJVJohn 20:19-28 KJV

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Thomas Moviel is the CEO of 50 USA Markets headquartered in Orlando, Florida and has a background in economic research and business consulting. His company has strategic alliances with trade consultants, international trade offices, economic development commissions, marketing channels, manufacturers and researchers throughout the USA, which gives clients a full-breadth of market entry services. Here's their website: http://www.50usamarkets.com The Interview Transcript Nonprofit Chat with Thomas Moviel Russell Dennis: This is Russ Dennis with the Nonprofit Chat for Tuesday, May 2. We have Thomas Moviel, CEO of 50 USA Markets, headquartered in Orlando, Florida. How is the weather down there, Thomas? Thomas Moviel: We are finally getting some rain today. We have been in a drought for the past month, which is very unlike Florida. For once, we are happy to see some rain. Russell: A drought is a way some nonprofits actually describe their funding. A big piece of that revolves around the fact that people don't know they are there or what it is they are trying to do. When we talk about marketing in a business sense, a lot of people cringe. But communicating what you're doing is pretty important. I know that you do a lot with all sorts of market research and helping people position themselves. Why would it be important for a nonprofit or people who are thinking about starting a nonprofit to do market research? Thomas: Know if there is a real need out there for their nonprofit and services and mission. There are tens of thousands of nonprofits out there already. Often people have a good idea and see a need and think it would be a great idea for a nonprofit. But maybe there are nonprofits out there doing that already. Maybe they are not serving your community or your school system or whatever it may be that you are focusing on. There might be that nonprofit out there doing very similar things to what you want to do who are already getting funding from somewhere. As all nonprofits know, funding is a scarce resource. I think when you are going to get up and get a nonprofit going, as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, but there are many ways of doing things. New strategies. But I think it's important to do your market research because you want to know is funding even viable? If there are dozens of nonprofits out there who you haven't heard of, or one huge mammoth of a nonprofit that has a monopoly on an entire area, maybe your chances of getting funding are going to be slim, or maybe instead your opportunity instead is going—I don't know how often they do this—to them and working as a subcontractor or talking to them about partnering. What are the areas they are focusing on and not focusing on? Market research is not just secondary research of pulling data. There will be a fair amount of data out there. But also doing primary research and not just on the Internet, but picking up the phone and making a lot of calls. That was a very long-winded answer, but I can talk about this for days. That is a start. Russell: There are lots of reasons to do that. When you came up with your concept of 50 USA Markets, when you were putting your business together, you did a lot of research. Talk about what that looked like and how your background played into that, how you built your team to fill in those areas you needed a bit of extra support in and so forth. Thomas: I hate to disappoint, but my business started overnight, and work fell into my lap. Once I got started, because I worked for more and more domestic companies and organizations nowadays, but I focus solely on the U.S. I started off working for foreign companies who were looking to enter the U.S. market. I have a strong international background that goes back to working in international development. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Carpathian Mountains for a couple years doing economic development work. Very grassroots stuff and working with a lot of nonprofits over there and local city councils and churches and city halls. Basically, once I started getting going, I knew I needed to expand my business. I was working for one trade office. How I started getting going was finding out- There are a ton of lists and information, so I found out who the other trade offices were, how they operated. I talked to more diplomats and people who I know who are working in the international field. I realized a lot of big countries that are big into trade like France or the UK have huge departments with people doing what I do. But it's a lot of the smaller companies, like Latvia, for example. I have been talking to them lately. They had a trading office until 2008, and then they closed it down, so their companies had no representation in the U.S. I talked to my friends and got an in with one of my Latvian friends from grad school who had contacts in the government. Because I live in Orlando, I tapped into- There is not a huge international community, but I looked at what is happening in Miami. I thought logically about where trade happens. Well, it happens in Miami. What trade offices are located in Miami? Then I looked at the websites, finding out who runs them. Literally sending out emails and follow-ups. Picking up the phone and cold-calling. Sharing with them, “This is what I do. This is how I can help you. What are your current needs? What are your current challenges?” Talking more and more and getting through the vetting process to become a vendor for them. That is a big way that I have done things. Word of mouth. I don't use a lot of social media. For a lot of people, it's a big thing. Maybe I am old-school, but I just find who those people are, and I pick up the phone and call or email. That is how I do things. Russell: I have an economic development background working with the tribal nation myself. Economic development is broad. It's about lifting all boats up, and you stepped in and filled a need that was there. That was critical. That has proven to be lucrative. There is so much international trade. But you turned your attention to domestic markets. To me, that you are focused on being at home and doing work that helps support nonprofits to educate them on some of the things they need to do to become more marketable. If you were talking to someone at a new nonprofit or a social entrepreneur that was thinking about starting a social enterprise as far as finding out what he needs to know, what would be some of the first steps you would give him/her to take in order to find out if their idea is viable? Thomas: I think a few things that I would do is obviously start with very basic research on nonprofits. It's going to depend on what your focus is. Are you national or local? If you are only local, focus on your local market. I know what nonprofits are out there. I used to live in Colorado, and there are a lot of nonprofits there. There was the Colorado Nonprofit Association or something, and they had lists of all the nonprofits and what they do. You can usually find a local resource. If you are in a remote area and can't find something, maybe call your local city hall or city councilman. Their office can often be helpful and let you know what nonprofits are out there. Especially if you are going to go more regional or national, there is a trade association for everything. I know I can find within a couple minutes some databases that are big proponents, and their job is propagating the general nonprofit industry and doing lobbying on a state level or national level. They will have databases and resources and find out who is doing this out there. You can find out who else is doing something similar to what you are doing. Or you might find they are doing the same thing, but then research the website and reach out to them. Talk to them. Hopefully they are not very controlling or competitive and will share what they do. Maybe you will find what they do is helpful but still doesn't fulfill needs you see. Another thing I would do is talk to people in the industry and find out what the trends are. One way you can find out what the trends are is who is funding the nonprofits who are similar to you, the start-ups? What types of projects or nonprofits are they funding? You might have something great for capacity building. You want to do capacity building for businesses, but that is not what is being funded right now. You might then need to find: If there is no funding for capacity building or my idea, what are other nonprofits that have that kind of interest and latch on to and do some volunteer work, maybe learn more about the industry or maybe you will see how you can take your vision and adapt it. Maybe there is funding going on for female teenage empowerment, something along those lines. I don't know how you can combine those two, but doing research on another topic that really interests you or what is being funded, you might begin to see the initial vision is not exactly what you thought it was going to be, and you might have to modify it where you can do some capacity building but in an area that is getting funded, which might increase your chances of getting funded. Does that make sense? Russell: It does. A lot of people *audio cut* important to look into there. I am in Colorado, and I am a member of the Colorado Nonprofit Association. They are members of the National Council of Nonprofits, which is where you can plug in and fan out and see other places. I am a firm believer in what you are talking about as far as finding other people who are doing the same thing. A big piece of market research is the competitive analysis, seeing the competition. Unfortunately, it can be a barrier to collaboration. Looking at that landscape, more than half the charities that are started fail. Why is understanding the competition important? What are some of the things you look for as far as somebody that might be a potential collaborator, as it were? Thomas: I think the biggest thing I look for in someone who might be a potential collaborator is someone who genuinely expresses interest in collaborating or just throwing it out there: Hey, do you see any collaborative opportunities or is there something you need help with? If you were in my position, what would you recommend I do? Don't rely on just necessarily one person's advice. Sometimes a person's advice could be golden, or it could just be rubbish and very biased and they might have their own agenda for why they tell you what they do. Getting on why to research competitors is saving time, effort, and money. If you think you have a great idea and spend all this time getting your 501(c)3 up and running, you try to convince your friends to join your board, then you find out you can't get any funding or you don't have time to write the grants or you don't know how to write the grants or you can't hire someone to write the grants for you. It goes a lot into strategic planning of course. You need to know again who else is out there, where are they getting their funding from? If you think there is room for you and your nonprofit in that segment, getting to know your competitors is very much what it is that you find that they do well and that they don't do well. Maybe you can see what they don't do well or at all, and that is your in. You can start with a mission. It may be a little different than what you originally wanted to do, but that doesn't mean you have to stick with that forever. It's just an in. I think many times people are too rigid. It's not just nonprofits, but it's in business. The universe can point you in a direction that may be different than your initial vision. Again, maybe you start off wanting to work with young girls, but the funding is for young boys or pre-teens. Then you get going and over time you get to learn the business, you get a good reputation, you learn who the funders are, and then you can get into the area you are most passionate about. Getting back to the competition: What is their operating efficiency? You see there are nonprofits out there that don't use the money that is donated to them very efficiently. That is something that when I am making a charitable donation, I don't care if it is $10, but I want to know how much of my $10 is actually going to good use. Maybe 95% of it is going to good use, but what are the results? Are people getting what they are supposed to be getting, or whatever the mission of your nonprofit is? Where you can learn about it is through talking to people, going to meetings, research, reading reviews, finding out your competitors can be a big part of when you are writing your grants, you can say, “Our operating efficiency is going to be high because we have such low overhead. We feel we have done the research, and this area has been neglected. It's an underserved population.” Your job of analyzing your competitors is not to put them down but to learn who they are and what their pros and cons are. That can only help you with positioning yourself, which will greatly increase the chances of your nonprofit being successful. A lot of being successful is getting the funding. Russell: Understanding the market. A nonprofit has a look and feel of a business. You are operating an organization that is there to deliver value. I don't think the people are worried about how much you spend as long as it's being spent in the way that is delivering impact that has been promised. I think that you have different people that define that value differently. It's going to be different for individual donors versus private foundations versus the government or any other number of people that you interact with. How many nonprofits, when you are sitting down talking with them about this research and the different audiences that are out there that interface with that nonprofit, how do you walk them through that and have that conversation around value and understanding all of the different people they come into contact with? Thomas: It depends on the flow of that conversation. Getting into what makes you unique or your idea unique. Who else out there is doing that? Have you done research on people or funds? These large grant funding agencies, are they funding these types of projects? Have you talked to them? Have you made phone calls? Why not call and ask about trends? They make the decisions on what the trends are going to be based on what they feel the needs are. I don't see anything wrong with that. Also getting down into funding. If you have a full-time job, do you have the time? If you don't have the time, how are you going to make the time? That may be hiring a team. That may be spending every weekend for the next year or two working real hard to get it up and running. I have been part of the grassroots nonprofits that I got involved with before as a 501(c)3, and then I was a board member and on the finance committee, so I got to see a lot of the tough dealings that it went through. It comes back again to what separates you from the pack. How do you know there will be funding for you? When you talk about impact, that's great, but what does impact mean? When I say you, I am speaking generically. Why do people care about what you do? You might think they need it, but do they think they need it? Is there a real clamoring in your community for this service? That can be a big tell-tale sign if this is something to pursue or to shut it down altogether. One of the danger points is getting so excited about your idea that seems amazing to you, and it's not to knock it, but you have to run it through the mill and let people give you feedback in the industry and through your secondary research, too, to find out if the world is ready for your great idea. Take your time. Do your due diligence. Don't rush things. You can file a 501(c)3 any day of the year. I think too often people get too far down the road before they find out it's not sustainable, even if the community needs it. There is no guarantee with doing competitive analysis and research that you will have success. But you can help to increase your odds and chances. I am a big proponent of being efficient. What is the most efficient way to build it and be successful and not waste our time or money? Russell: That is sage advice. It is thorough. Looking at that as we are talking about that, what are some of the most common mistakes you see people make in their analysis? When you pointed out that they get excited about an idea, everybody needs my idea, a lot of times they just run with it without analysis. Some people do some research and run off and get stuck. What are some of the most common oversights and errors that you see them make in the process? Thomas: Not researching their competition enough. You really got to know them. Don't be afraid to talk to them. With integrity, too. Maybe spy on them or go to one of their events or fundraisers. Find out how to do things because you can learn a ton. People only doing secondary research or only doing primary research. I talked to a friend and they said they don't know anybody else who does this so I think it's a good idea. Or people in my community are saying they want it. If you don't know what your competitors are up to next, they may be targeting that need. Or nobody may be targeting that need because the funding isn't there. Unless you have deep pockets yourself or have great relations with people with deep pockets, then that should be a concern of yours. If you are in a segment with a lot of players, only researching the two or three competitors, but there are a lot of other players there, too. If there are 100 different nonprofits, you don't need to spend days on each one, but you better pick some of the main frontrunners, more than two, and find out what they're doing. I build spreadsheets for my clients. Here is the organization, here is where their main location, any offshoots, who runs it, who is on their board, pros and cons, what are people saying, different programs they offer, funding, and funding sources. That is something people can be doing for themselves as well. Taking the time to build that database. Learning what your competitors' offerings are is one good way of learning what their pros and cons are. That is an upside of talking to people, too. I think that answers your question. Russell: I also think that people are afraid of data. Before, it was hard to know where to look, and now there is data everywhere, some of it free and some of it requiring an investment. How do you work with someone when they are very much intimidated by the data? How do you walk them through that? if they got enough fear, they won't bother to do it. Thomas: Data can be very intimidating. I even get intimidated by data sometimes, but you have to persist. One of the biggest ways that I work with data is being able to explain it in layman's terms, as much as understanding what it means. Sometimes data doesn't mean a whole lot. People think because I do market research that I am a marketing guy. I'm not. I am an economist by trade. That makes it different and gives me a different perspective in how I approach things. In economics, if at first the data doesn't produce the results you want, you massage the data. If massaging the data doesn't give it the results you want, you beat it into submission until it does what you want. You can get numbers to tell you anything you want. My point being make sure you are getting your data from a reputable source. It's usually best to get it from multiple sources. Try to verify it by talking to other experts in the industry. Often it's not hard to find someone on LinkedIn or through the trade associations or other people in the industry. Call the company and ask them how they come to the conclusions with the data because so much matters in terms of population size, where the data was extracted (if it was only the Northeast because if you follow any elections, you extract data from different parts of the country and get different results). None of it is right or wrong. It is what it is. Getting back to the point: I think there are a lot of paid services out there. I subscribe to a few. Some are incredibly expensive, so I don't bother with that, and I can usually get what I need through other methods. Another thing that people don't think about is there is a ton of databases out there that are free to the public through the library system. The data is mandated by law to be available for the public. The government gets it out through the public library system. Go talk to a librarian if you are looking for certain data. Another way is if you are by a local university, or call them if you're not near any, find out the department. If you are focusing on youth, you can talk to their education department or their mental health counselor. They can share or help you out with getting the data for free because universities have access to it as well. Those are a couple ways to get around the system. Russell: I love the public library. When I was growing up way back when, that was what we had. That was before the information age. The research librarians are good friends, and that is an excellent use of tax dollars. Now there is a flood of information. People can have all sorts of data. They get it from other sources. They have it, but they don't necessarily know how reliable each of the sources are. How do you help folks navigate some of the better places to look for data? When they come to you, how to interpret it and make sense of it? Thomas: I end up doing it for them often. The times that someone has come to me, depending on the situation, I dig through the data and figure out what it means. Sometimes some of the data is best left to experts in that industry. I might find a trade association and ask them to explain it to me. I used to work for an environmental economics firm before I started my own company. We were working on a very large project for the entire state of Florida. Universities were some of the best resources. I used to call all around the country. We were researching crops and pricing on crops, chemicals, all this other stuff. But some of these universities, especially at the university extension programs, collect the most abstract data. The department heads are right on the Internet. In seconds you can find it. I would call and talk to professors in the industry and ask them to explain the data to me. One thing we were looking at was the prices of sod. It doesn't sound very interesting, but it is to me, because I am a nerdy data guy. The prices on sod were flat for decades. All of a sudden, one year like five years ago, the price of sod doubled or tripled, and then it went flat again for the next year. When you are an economist and trying to make sense of trends and see a huge blip for no apparent reason, I am on the phone talking to professors and interviewing them as to what is going on, and what they told me was that after decades of the same flat price, the growers decided they deserved more. Within the year, they doubled the prices to reflect how they should be now. I asked him if this was going to happen again in the next year. His answer was, “No, that was a major one-time adjustment.” I know the prices of sod probably don't interest any nonprofit at all, but the point is that sometimes when you are looking at the data and something doesn't make sense, you can find out from the universities and professors who spend 80 hours a week researching and writing academic papers and have brilliant minds who can give you a ton of information that any expert working for a nonprofit might not know. Don't limit your options just to people in the industry on the street. Russell: Do you find that there is a great reluctance on the part of people coming to see you to actually go out and talk to people? They may rely on the Internet or other research. When you find that people are trying to put these ideas together that they are somewhat reluctant to talk to other people. Thomas: Sure. Or they don't know what questions to ask, which is another reason they hire me to do it. But I will work with clients to develop questions. I do a lot of structured interviews, where I have a set list of questions and will call that industry expert and ask for 5-10 minutes to run through specifically what we need. That way, we can look at the data and say we interviewed 20 people with all the same questions. Even if the answers aren't consistent, the questions were. That is what I do. I make sure that I'm getting the questions answered that matter to my clients. We brainstorm together. For people on their own who I give advice to, there is some reluctance to pick up the phone and talk to these people. It's not for everyone. But cold calling takes some time to get used to. Russell: A lot of people won't cold call. They don't always know. I had a consultation with a gentleman that was referred to me today who wanted to do some programs. Some questions I was asking he didn't quite have answers to. A lot of times people approach you and don't know what questions to ask. It's a huge advantage to work with you and 50 USA Markets. When you and your partners get that information. If they are not asking the right questions, they can come away with something that is completely off-center. It may be feasible when they are asking the wrong questions, but if they are asking the right questions, their idea might not be feasible. Thomas: Right. The wording on the questions that you ask matters. If you ask it in a certain way that will give you the intended result you want, or you can spend all this time asking all the wrong questions. That is more about thinking ahead and being smart and taking the time. Don't rush it. There is nothing wrong with taking baby steps. That doesn't mean you have to move slowly. That just means they are small, structured, disciplined, strategic steps and you are moving forward. I think people don't take the time to think through what you really want. When you take someone else's time and your own time, you have to be clear about what you want and what answers you want and why you want them. Russell: That is the value of having a trusted advisor like yourself. You get people to step back and take a breath. Social entrepreneurs are difference makers. They see a problem and want to get in there immediately and do something. They are excited about a large vision they have. They don't always think about that sequencing or who else is doing that, which is something we talked about at great length. When you talk about some of those problems that society has that are pretty broad-based like homelessness, when you have someone who has a nonprofit out there to combat that, how do they go about differentiating themselves by using that research? Thomas: Speaking in vague terms, it depends on what data you're getting. You might see a real need for it. People in your community are saying you need to start a nonprofit that will address this issue because this is big in our community, and I think it's a national problem. Then you find that nation-wide—you are creating this nonprofit that you want to be nationwide and you have this grand strategy and maybe you are researching your competitors in Oregon and Maine and wherever else—but then you look at the data and talk to people and realize that it's not an issue nationwide. But it is an issue to certain areas of the country. Or maybe it's something very unique to your community in itself. That is why I say there is nothing wrong with starting out with baby steps. Maybe there is nothing wrong with just targeting your community, your school, your neighborhood, whatever it may be. Start there. Get some systems and processes down. There will be learning. Then you will build some systems. See what works and what doesn't work. Then move on from there. When you start smaller, you don't need as much funding so it's a lot easier to get the funding you need to get going. Then when you want to look for those bigger investors, the donors, you will have a proven track record and references. You will have accomplishments. It depends on what you want to do, but it will be a smarter way to move. There is nothing wrong with starting small. No one gets into the nonprofit industry to make millions anyway. You're not in it for the money. You want to get into it to create some type of positive impact on the nation, the world, but just get up and get moving. There is nothing wrong with that. Maybe it's a year or five years down the road. You never know how fast you're going to grow. Just starting and moving. You look at companies like Uber or smaller mom and pop stores or Walmart. They just started. Walmart has its own location that wasn't big for many years, and then they hit a point where they were ready to expand. There is nothing wrong with that. Russell: *audio issue*Where you build on these successes by building step by step and having small successes and creating that track record. That is a cumulative impact. You become known for building *audio issue* Noble City Chamber of Commerce said, “We #thinknoble and we #takerisks.” That is what they do. They probably have a process for that. When you are working with someone who is not sure how to differentiate themselves, how do you guide them through that process? Thomas: It depends on a few things. First one being what are your competitors doing? Let's brainstorm some different ways of doing things. Then talk to the other people in your industry and ask them about your ideas. That seems to be an underserved area. Why is no one targeting that area? You might find a real good reason that no one is targeting it again, so you don't want to differentiate yourself that way. It's a lot of back and forth. A mentor of mine once told me many years ago, “Follow your heart and you will never go wrong.” I think that a lot of people who are in the nonprofit industry get into it because they are driven by their heart. I think that a lot of times your heart will tell you how you really feel you want to differentiate yourself because you are unique. Maybe it's best not to talk to other people and see what other people are saying you need to do, but you really need to know deep down. It depends on the situation, but those are a couple ways. Russell: We brought up the question of how competitors are getting funded. As an example, when you were looking at starting yours, how were your competitors getting funded? What were some of the steps you took to find out how your competitors were getting funded? Thomas: I found some of the companies who were competing with me were small person shops like myself. Now they are a company that I have a strategic partnership with and we are working on a big deal together right now, they do things with very low efficiency. They have offices all over the world, but they just keep one or two people in each country and everyone works remotely from home. They also have people that if they are working on a project and have someone whose office is in Shanghai, while they are sleeping, the person in Shanghai can take over. I have learned more about how they work and how they are more efficient just by talking to them and eventually getting in a deal with them. We jibed quite well, so we ended up going into business together, as far as strategic partners. I also researched people online and polled them, asked them questions. Pretend to be a potential client, or be honest about what you're doing. Some of these guys do what I do but they have their main focus of their company. When I was getting started, I was focusing on international. A lot of small low-cost operations. I want to build my company even more. I have a lot of connections. I used to live in New York and Colorado. Then I have been partnering with people in Chicago, too. That is how I knew I wanted to do it. I am on the business end, not the nonprofit end. As far as my company is structured. Just find other organizations that are similar to yours and start asking them questions. Call them or email them. See if you can set up a time. Even calling some of these nonprofit associations and ask them about the best way to get started. I remember from living in Colorado there is the YNP, Young Nonprofit Professionals Network. If you are below 35 or 40, they have events every month, I think. Go to those events. Go where people like you are or where people you want to emulate are. They will give you amazing, invaluable advice. You will find out how they built their businesses. Find out what they do. Find out ways that will work for you. I knew I didn't want to rent office space and start capital. That is not my style. For some people, it is. Seeing how other people operate in different business or nonprofit models is how you learn you want to run yours. Talk to people in your industry. Russell: That is pretty important. That is that first step to building a high-performance nonprofit is to build that solid foundation. It's being sure what it is you want to do, who you are trying to help, and what that looks like. What you have on hand and what you don't. Moving forward and finding out who is in your space. A lot of the market research also goes into board members, servant leaders, and volunteers, as well as donors. Your message has to resonate with all of the people who potentially impact it as well as the people who will be using the service. It's amazing to me how little time some folks spend talking to people that will actually use the service. This is notoriously true for the government. They build it and can't figure out why no one shows up. Thomas: Right. This brings me back to one of the very first nonprofits I was involved with. We created a nonprofit arts community. It was called Art House. I am originally from Cleveland. It was over by the Cleveland Zoo. It was very working-class to some borderline or below poverty people. Not the best schools in that area. We got funding from one of the councilwomen. Each ward got some funding to do what they wanted in the community. The director of the arts nonprofit convinced her this would be great for the community. They took that money and bought a foreclosed house, an old three-story house. How are you going to renovate it? They got together people from the community to volunteer. We were there on Saturdays spending time ripping up floors, ripping out walls. Everyone put their time in. That was a great way to do things and to save money. Then they renovated it. They brought local artists there to teach classes. They made a cut on what teachers charged to help the nonprofit, and they gave them the space as well. But also they developed a relationship with the local school where they would go to the students. I don't know if they didn't have an art studio or if there was an after-school program, but they would bring the students from the school to the arts community, which is a block or two away. The students there could do sculpting and bronzing and painting and jewelry making. Then they had an art show every few months where local artists could sell their art stuff. They could raise money, get the community involved, and target several segments at once for just the start-up money for buying that foreclosed house. In Cleveland, that's not a whole lot of money. Russell: I grew up there, too. They used to call it the best location in the nation. We are hometown boys. That is pretty important. With that group, they brought a lot of people together. I have seen some nonprofit leaders who don't necessarily have a lot of money but are great at mobilizing people. They have started to raise money over time because they are great and they do things with all volunteer staff. They don't take the check out of it but they are not pulling money out of their pockets to make it run. They have some powerful, sustainable stuff going. That is because they knew how to talk to different people. Travis Smith who runs Impact here in Denver, Colorado is one that comes to mind. We are coming to the top of the hour. Every week it's like this. We could go on for hours and I would be fascinated and learn to love more. But we have a limited time for our audience. What are some closing thoughts that you want to leave people with? Tell us how we can get in contact with you and work with you. Thomas: I guess a few parting thoughts: It certainly depends where you are in your development of your organization. I hate to beat a dead horse, but if you are in the beginning stages and have an idea, or if you have an idea and already have a 501(c)3 but haven't done your research on your competition and are having a hard time finding funding, do that market research. Go out and talk to people. Talk to your local places, state agencies. Talk to the national trade associations. Go to the local nonprofit networking events. Find people that you want to emulate. Don't be afraid to ask people for some of their time and be prepared at what you want to get out of a meeting. More often than not, I find people are more than happy to talk about themselves and their successes and help you out at the same time. If you haven't done the secondary data, start looking for it. If you can't find it, then find out where the people you are connecting with are getting their data. Start marking trends. Don't be afraid to call some of the donors and find out where they see the trends. Would they ever fund your project? Who would fund your project? Donor organizations know other donor organizations, and you may find it's a small world after all. If you are just starting with your idea, really try to think and start small. Don't be afraid to start small, and talk to people who are doing similar work to what you are doing. That is what I could say. You can go to my website, which is 50usamarkets.com. You can also email me at tmoviel@50usamarkets.com. Or pick up the phone and give me a call. I still have a Colorado number from a long time ago. Call me at 303-819-9847. I am more than happy to talk to you, listen to your idea, learn more about what you have going on, learn more about your challenges. If I can't help you out, I may very well know someone who can. Don't be afraid to reach out. There are a lot of exciting ideas and projects out there, but you have to be relentless and unwilling to compromise. If there is something you want, go get it. It takes a lot of time and effort and some good, rational thinking. Russell: Very good. Very sage advice. That is wonderful. We have lots of connections. Colorado and Cleveland. Thomas: I know. it's crazy. Russell: It's just crazy. Wonderful work you're doing out there. It's very useful. My best friend's dad was an agricultural economist. He taught at Oklahoma State. He retired about five years ago. When an economist approaches things, it's different, but it's thorough. Thomas, thank you very much for your hard work and all the great things you are doing out there. I look forward to talking to you again soon, Thomas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I had an interesting just a few weeks ago, met somebody, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, and it was interesting in what he was doing and how he was planning his future. I thought: “Wow, this would be a great example of what other people, as they’re thinking of another career, another job, or expanding their income some other way – they might have some ideas that they could do, too, from it, as well as they might even copy a little bit of what he did.” Let me get to that right away. We are on with Greg Motes. Greg, welcome. Greg: Hi. Thank you. Thomas: Tell me a little bit about what your life was like before you went in the military. I’m not thinking just in economic terms; I’m thinking in terms of you, your personality, etc. Greg: I grew up as a Military Brat. My dad was in the Army. We moved just a few times when I was growing up. I was lucky to be settled throughout most of my grade school and high school, which was fortunate, in the Midwest. From there, I had a typical Military Brat family lifestyle. I have two brothers, and we played sports, and we made our way through schooling. Thomas: Okay, that’s a little different because we don’t have many people who have been in that situation, a Military Brat, but I guess you couldn’t be so much of a brat, but when you get into the military and started out on your own. Did you find the military changed you at all? I ask that because the beginning of the military literally changed my life for the future tremendously. I could not even expound on how much. What about you? Greg: I very much enjoyed coming into the military. I was fortunate that when I came in, I went into the Armor Branch, and from Armor, I was out at Fort Irwin, California. Fort Irwin is a place where, every month, units from around the army would come to train against the opposing forces, and I was on the side of the opposing forces. It was a great environment to be in, because every month we got to go play on tanks and essentially play laser tag at 30 miles an hour across a playing field the size of Rhode Island. We would play four to six games a month. I say games, and obviously they were training, and it was very serious training, but at the same time, there was a mentality and an attitude about going out there and fighting to win and playing to win. I found a comradery that was very similar to what I had in high school, playing football and playing for state championship football teams, and then going into college and playing in intramural sports and things like that. The army, to me, I think at the onset was very much as an extension of that teamwork to be able to go there. Of course, coming in as a Lieutenant, I was put into a leadership role, and I very much enjoyed doing that. I think it was a lot of fun. Thomas: It’s interesting. Today, kids are playing video games; you guys play the real thing, which is really exciting. For all those kids, including myself, when we were younger and played army or cops and robbers, whatever you played, you didn’t have sticks or little plastic guns; you really had some good things to play with. One thing I find very interesting and it’s sometimes hard for people to know, realize, and understand is that word “teamwork.” One thing that really struck me in the military was that my friends came from some wide array of places. It turns out there was one guy whose father was the General Manager of IBM in the West Coast branch, so he had a tremendous life, all kinds of different things. Closer friends to me later on were actually one guy who was from Watts in L.A., another guy who was from the ghetto in Houston, and lots of places like that. What happened is you didn’t realize and know that until later on when you wanted to stay in touch or something, and you would get their information. The reason you didn’t know and understand that is because everybody’s dressed alike. There are no outfits, there are no funny costumes or anything else.

Drew Bledsoe, the top draft pick in the NFL, knew football doesn't last forever. How he transitioned to an entirely new occupation. Career change is a key to life today and must be planned ahead. Today, we have a very special guest and an exemplary position in life to give you a perspective that’s very different and something that we’ve talked about in other episodes, but here we have a real life example. Today we have Drew Bledsoe. If there’s anybody on the planet who doesn’t know or remember, he was drafted number one in the NFL, and then became a starting quarterback, etc. Extremely successful. We know that. I want to talk a little bit both about how he got there, what he went through, what he did, and then the new business he’s in, which is wine; how he did that, how he made the transition, because that’s what so many people have to do so many times in life. Almost nobody ends up in the same place, or the same job, or the same career that they started with. Welcome, Drew. Drew Bledsoe: Thanks for having me on. I’m really excited to visit with you, Thomas, and I welcome the opportunity. Thomas: Thank you. Thank you for coming on. You’re such a good example . Could you tell us a little bit about what it takes to attain the level in sports that you did? Drew:  There are a lot of things at work, there. First, you’ve got to program your mind. If somebody saw me in the seventh or eighth grade, I was not the guy that anybody was going to pick out as the guy who was going to go on to be a professional athlete. I was tall and skinny, and not very fast. I had really big feet; I just didn’t move very well. That didn’t change how I viewed myself in my mind. I really felt like I could be a great football player, and really programmed my mind so that I could never accept anything less than my very best effort, whether it came to training, practice, school – you name it. Because I had those high expectations and that view of myself as somebody that was going to be excellent, I wouldn’t accept less than my very best in anything that I did. That was really where it started. Thomas: It’s interesting, because so often so many people think that somebody has just got this natural ability, natural talent, and that’s why they are where they are. I know in college, etc., when I went to graduate school at Berkeley, my impression was: “Oh, gosh. I’m going to meet these professors, and they’re just these superhuman people.” Then, low and behold, I get in there and I find out they’re there early, they’re there late, they’re working on weekends. These are Nobel Prize winners. It wasn’t just a gift. It was also a dedication, effort, and fortitude. I am hearing you saying something of the same thing. Is that true? Drew: You’re 100% right. One of the advantages that I had, as I was growing up, my father and his good friend ran a football camp and I got a chance to be around very successful professional football players when I was growing up. I got a chance to see these guys and meet these guys, and I discovered that they’re not superheroes. They are regular guys that have athletic ability that obviously is outside the norm, but that’s not really what allowed them to be successful. What allowed them to be successful was the work they put in, and the continued work that they put in. Fred Biletnikoff, who was one of the great wide receivers ever to play professional football, and still, the best receiver in college football every year receives the Biletnikoff Award. I got to meet and be around Fred Biletnikoff when I was growing up, and the guy, I think he was probably 5’10-5’11, probably 180 pounds, and by the time I met him, slightly balding. He was not the guy that you looked at and said: “Man, that guy is an NFL wide receiver.” When I was around him, every time he was on the practice field just coaching kids up, he was always practicing running routes, and he was always practicing proper catching technique,

Downton Abbey, 5:1Season 5 is here! And the first episode did not disappoint! Here is a breakdown of the podcast episode we go over for episode 1.Secret MamaEdith visits her baby, MarigoldTim Drewe was asked to be chief fireman. Tim’s wife doesn’t know Marigold is Edith’s.Hughes found one of Gregson’s old booksEdith agrees to meet Mr. Drewe. He wants to propose something because his wife is getting suspicious of Edith having a crush on him. Margarie, Drewe’s wife - thinks Edith has a crush on Drewe. Drewe: We need a way for you to live the truth without telling the truth. Stop the World1924The king has to deal with a labor government - Mr. McDonald - the servants are glad he’s worked before - the prime minister is the son of a crofter.Robert: Government is committed to the destruction of people like us and everything we stand for. Mary: We should wait and see what happens.34th wedding anniversary  - tidbit - Robert’s working hard to keep his marriage together.Mr. Carson is asked to be chairman of the board by the village and want Robert to give them land for the site of the memorialCarson to Hughes: The nature of life is not permanence but fluxRobert tells Mary, they don’t want him for the school or the memorial. Would they have asked his grandfather’s butler to head something…?Robert okays Carson being the chair.Robert tells the girls to invite some young girls over.Slow LearnerDaisy’s upset because they didn’t replace Ivy.Daisy ordered books to learn math so she can run the farm. Has a hard time following.Match Making - or Breaking?Lord Diffy Murton asked DC to give another luncheon party so he can see Isobel.DC asks Dr. Clarkson about Murton. Tells him Murton and Isobel are friendly. She invites him to luncheon. Wants to matchmake him with Lady Shackleton. Cora tells Robert that DC would be jealous.Isobel is jealous of Lady Shackelton with Murton.MismatchedJimmy has a letter from Lady Anstrather… He sent her Valentines. Thomas: It’s pathetic for a lady to be pining over a footman. Jimmy: Excuse me. I think it’s in very good taste.Lady Anstrather invited herself over for tea. She is staying over because of car problems, but Tom couldn’t find anything wrong with it.Another ScandalTony Gillingham - coming to visit. Robert: That’s okay. I want to see him. In private to Cora: I want to inspire him with thoughts of marriage.Mary tells Anna she hasn’t made up her mind yet. We do these things so weirdly. You have to decide without having spent in real time with them much less the other thing.Mary: Do you dread the future?Gillingham: Only if I have to live it without you.Mary: I do love you in my cold and unfeeling way. I don’t want to get it wrong. I intend to be as happy with my next husband as I was with my first.Gillingham tells Mary he wants them to be lovers.Another prisonerThomas asks Baxter what she knows about Anna and Bates. Bullies her. Molesly is putting on fake hair paint.Baxter tells Molesly about a journey Bates took and something he did that he wouldn’t want known. He would deny the journey. Mosely tells her to report him. Baxter: I can’t. Molesly is tilting his head trying to get her to see his hair. How old do you think I am? Baxter: 52. Molesly: I’m 51.Baxter says to Molesly it’s ironic for Mr. Bates to dress Gillingham because she knows about the scandal. Thomas overhears.Thomas tells Baxter he’ll tell Lady Grantham her story if she doesn’t tell him the connection between Bates and Gillingham’s dead valet.Molesly tells Baxter to tell Cora her story. It will be worse if Mr. Barrow tells her first. (Would be the most nerdy (and uncomfortable) hookup on TV.)Baxter was a friend of his sister’s growing up. She stole from a previous employer. Went to prison for three years.Thomas goes to tell Cora about Baxter and it backfires. She asks why he let a convicted felon in her house, in her bedroom when he knew every detail of her past. If you’ve been using your knowledge against her, I’ll have to consider your future here, Mr. Barrow, whether indeed you have one at all.Baxter is a Bates - won’t give Cora all the details to exonerate herself.Carson to Molesly: I don’t know why you have treated your hair, but the effects are not what you wanted. Take steps, Mr. Molesly. Take steps. You will remain downstairs until you do.DC LinesDC: There’s nothing simpler than avoiding people you don’t like. Avoiding one’s friends - that’s the real test.DC: He just wants what all men want. Isobel: Don’t be ridiculous. DC: I was referring to companionship. As I hope you were.DC: You should write a book: Daughters in Law and How to Survive Them.DC: It’s time he decided whether he’s fish, flesh, fowl, or good red herring.Edith: Aren’t you being quite snobbish?DC: We’re being realistic. Something your generation has such trouble with.DC: Principles are like prayers: noble, of course - but awkward at a party.