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Geoff Thomas: The Holy Spirit – Chapter 15: “The gifts of the Holy Spirit”Opening verses – 1 Corinthians 12:1-3, 7“Judging by the amount of space Paul devoted to the use of spiritual gifts, it seems to have been a critical issue in the church at Corinth.” pg. 165What has been your experience with the topic of spiritual gifts in the local church? Is this still a critical issue?  What are some of the critical questions around spiritual gifts? (See the list on Pg. 165) Definition by Thomas “So a spiritual gift is divine empowering from our heavenly Father to enable us to work sacrificially, lovingly, patiently, and to keep going, no matter what the challenge” Pg. 169THE TRULY SPIRITUAL PERSON FOCUSES ON CHRIST (pages 165-167)The true mark of the presence and operation of the Holy Spirt is the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. The essential proof of the Spirit's presence in someone is his confession that Jesus is Lord “Rather, true spirituality is shown by talking about Jesus Christ and confessing that He is your Lord and your God, then changing how you live in response to this truth.” Pg. 167SPIRITUAL GIFTS ARE GIVEN TO SERVE OTHERS (pg. 167 - 1 Corinthians 12:4-7“The Corinthians were trying to bring the legacy of their previous spiritualism—the numinous, the exotic, the spooky, and the ecstatic—into the church of Jesus Christ. But Paul asked for something different. He stressed the gifts of charismata, meaning “graces,” or “a present of grace,” or “grace things.” The Spirit creates new dimension and power in our lives through God's grace” Pg. 167“We see how different those services are by considering passages that tell us to love one another, be devoted to one another, give preference to one another, be like-minded with one another, refrain from judging one another, build up one another, accept one another, greet one another, wait for one another, care for one another, refrain from challenging one another or from envying one another, bear the burdens of one another, bear with one another, speak to one another, be subject to one another, highly regard one another, be truthful with one another, forgive one another, comfort one another, encourage one another, live in peace with one another, seek good for one another, exhort one another, stimulate one another, refrain from speaking against one another or complaining to one another, confess your sins to one another, pray for one another, be hospitable to oneanother, and serve one another.” pg. 168We will continue thinking about the person and work of the Holy Spirit utilizing the book by Geoff Thomas simply entitled, The Holy Spirit. Conference speaker and theme September 27-28 @ Living Hope Bible Church; register and information at reformationboise.comTwo talks:“The Holy Spirit: His Divinity and Personhood”“Asking for the Holy Spirit”Quote from Geoff Thomas' book: “Many people today are ignorant about the person and work of the Holy Spirit,both theologically and experientially”For more information about this group, please visit their website at reformationboise.com. Every weekday at 8:00am you can listen to The Gospel for Life on 94.1 The Voice in the Treasure Valley, Idaho, USA. If you have a question, comment, or even a topic suggestion for the Pastors, you can email them. There is only one rule: Be Kind! Phone: (208) 991-3526E-mail: thegospelforlifeidaho@gmail.comPodcast website: https://941thevoice.com/podcasts/gospel-for-life/

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.

Join Thomas and Jamie as they toast the comedic giants who have shaped the legacy of Saturday Night Live! Don't miss out on this fantastic opportunity to celebrate the Class of Season Three and all of the talented individuals who have tickled our funny bones and made staying in on Saturday Night a right of passage. We also take a moment to analyze future classes by looking at the voting records of several candidates that missed the mark this season. We're so grateful to all of our listeners but especially the ones that stepped up to vote this season, we had a record number of ballots cast.!So grab your favourite snack and settle in for a conversation that is sure to raise some eyebrows and fuel water cooler debate. It's the SNL Hall of Fame: Class of Season Three!Transcript0:00:42 - JDAll right, thank you so much, Doug. This is JD here and you are about to enter the SNL Hall of Fame. Please wipe your feet before you come inside, as we don't want any filth in the Hall of Fame. The SNL Hall of Fame podcast is a weekly affair. In each episode, we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest or writer and add them to the ballot for your consideration. Once the nominees have been announced, we turn to you, the listener, to vote for the most deserving and help determine who will be enshrined for perpetuity in the hall. And that day has come. I am joined by Thomas Senna and we are going to go down the results and take a look at who has made it into the Hall of Fame and who missed the cut this year, who will be eliminated from the ballot and all sorts of other good stuff. So, before I go any further with this information dump, I'm going to say hi to my friend here, Thomas, how are you doing? 0:01:49 - ThomasHello Jamie, I'm doing very well. This is a special occasion. I got my tucks on and my bow tie. Let's announce some inductees. 0:01:57 - JDWell, before we do that, we'll just quickly go through the parameters that people had to cut through to make it. You need 66.6% of the ballot to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. If you don't get at least 10% of the ballot, you are eliminated from the Hall of Fame And, of course, you stay on the ballot for 10 seasons. So we're only in season three. We don't have any jeopardy of that happening thus far, so that's good. That's good news. What are you most excited about today, Thomas? 0:02:35 - ThomasSeeing if some of the people who I thought deserved to be in the Hall of Fame if they actually make it. So one group in particular, one writing group in particular, has been a sticking point with me as far as not making the Hall of Fame. So I was going into this reveal just super curious to see if they would make it, if the Lonely Island, let's say it if the Lonely Island would finally make the SNL Hall of Fame. I think they've been deserving since they were on the ballot in season one, that's right. So that was my main thing going into it. this is where the hell is the Lonely Island? So I don't know. We'll see if they're in this time around. 0:03:16 - JDYeah, we definitely will. Okay, well, I can tell you off the top we have the biggest Hall of Fame class, the largest Hall of Fame class that we've ever had, the most members inducted into the Hall of Fame that we've ever had, which is staggering. We had a record number of voters turn out, like over 100 more than last year. We finished with 297 different voters. That's pretty impressive to me that you all came out and exercised your comedic franchise. That's just wonderful news. So I don't know, do we just go right into it? Let's get into it. All right, who is our headliner this year? Thomas, who made it with the most. 0:03:58 - ThomasSo with the most votes this season, at 83.2% of the vote we have, mr Dana Carvey is an SNL Hall of Famer. No surprise, i don't know about you, Jamie, but I thought this was a slam dunk Dana's in the conversation for greatest of all time. 0:04:17 - JDI think Absolutely. 0:04:18 - ThomasHe's like a great of all time Mount Rushmore. Those are the conversations that Dana is in. So Dana Carvey in with 83.2% of the vote. Congratulations, Dana. 0:04:31 - JDYeah, a cast member with the most percentage this year. Just a machine really. I mean, if you listen to Fly on the Wall now, it's aggravating to a certain degree because everything that somebody says spawns a bit. but I just think that's how his brain works. He's just always on. He's always thinking about how to make people laugh and how to leverage the different characters and impressions that he's been able to harness over the years and be fresh with them. He's truly a great, great SNL great. 0:05:09 - ThomasYeah, i don't know if it's cliche to say, but he's one of those guys where if you were going to go into a lab and build an SNL cast member, it might come out exactly like Dana Carvey. Yeah, and that was such a good point that you mentioned. Like he's just, he's all about the bit, he's all about what's going to serve the comedy, and you can hear it in his podcast and he'll even tell you that he might do it a little too much. Like he's said that maybe he steps on the guests a little bit, but that's because that's how his mind works. He's trying to. He's trying to find the bit in everything that he's talking about, and sometimes he doesn't have that thing where it's just like well, maybe, maybe I'll just wait my turn or whatever. I'll tell you that. But I think that served him so well when he was an SNL cast member, so deserving to be an SNL Hall of Famer. 0:05:56 - JDAbsolutely, Dana. The plaque is in the mail. Next on the list is another cast member and another first-ballot Hall of Famer, and that is Amy Poehler, with 75.1% of the ballot. What do you think about Amy Poehler, Thomas? 0:06:15 - ThomasYeah, I think another very deserving one. I think she was arguably maybe the face before Kristen Wigg got there. Maybe there was a little overlap, but I think Amy was arguably the face of her era of SNL. I think she was very beloved in her era. I know Jon Schneider had told us some crazy stats about Amy Poehler as far as just the sheer amount of sketches and the percentage of sketches that she was in when she was a cast member at SNL. But I think man, 75%, three forwards, that's probably about what I thought Amy would get, and rightfully so. I mean she was just a fantastic sketch performer. What do you think, Jamie? 0:06:59 - JDI think she did it all Like she really was a five-tool player when you think about it because she started out as a sketch performer. She started out as a featured player and sketch performer, and then she had a second life as a weekend update anchor she was tremendous at that as well. You know, working both with Seth and Tina Fey. She did it all Like she did it all, Like she is somebody who did it all and excelled, Like she did it all at a very high level, I guess I should say. And to me, I thought for sure she would make it. But the SNL Hall of Fame is tricky sometimes. Sometimes you don't get what you think. 0:07:42 - ThomasThe will of the people, man, that's right What this is. 0:07:46 - JDIn this case, it turned out in favour, So that's good Yeah. 0:07:50 - ThomasCongratulations to Amy Poehler for making it. So the next person, the next inductee that we have, also the first time on the ballot, with 74. 74.4% of the vote we have, but maybe not. Maybe not an original cast member, but pretty darn close to an original cast member. It's Bill Murray getting 74% of the vote on his first time on the ballot. Bill Murray, SNL Hall of Famer and you, Bill Murray fan, Jamie. 0:08:22 - JDI'm a huge Bill Murray fan. I had a renaissance with him, i think, when a lot of people did from his role in Rushmore. So that really got me back into him and it made me go back and look at the Saturday Night Live stuff. And if you think about it, he was really in a tough, tough position replacing Chevy Chase who was doing feature films and on the cover of magazines. Chevy Chase was, you know, it, it boy, and Bill Murray had some big shoes to fill And I think he did a great job. He became, you know, a leading man ask because Acroyd stayed in a sort of a glue role And Murray ended up getting a lot of you know, a lot of the male-centric parts and Did a fantastic job with it just fantastic. 0:09:14 - ThomasYeah, I think Bill would even tell you or admit that he Was having trouble in his mind gaining traction initially. That's why he did the whole plea to the audience sketch where he sat down and said hello, I'm Bill Murray. I'm not quite hitting on the show and here's why I think I'm not. And here, trust me, i am funny. Regardless of what you've seen on the show. I am a funny person. I'm just not funny on the show. So he was. So I think you know a lot of that was a great bit. But I think a lot of that was rooted in maybe something real that he thought like why am I not connecting? like why are you know? and, ironically, like his first show ever that he did was he was in a lot and he did a really great job. But maybe he had a string of shows where he Felt like he wasn't in much and he did that, that plea to the audience, that just really propelled him and then he had, you know, we ended up seeing Nick the lounge singer and Just so many of the nerds. There are so many memorable characters and he was just so Magnetic. He knew how to just grab the audience and take them whatever Bill wanted to take them. 0:10:22 - JDYeah, yeah, and he's continued to do so in his post-signal career as well. So, really wonderful, I'm, I'm, I'm so happy that Bill Murray made it on the first ballot because it would have been a tough one, like the next one, to explain to people No, no, he didn't make it on the first ballot. The next one we go to is Another cast member, another first ballot, Hall of Famer with seventy-three point seven percent, and that's John Belushi. Belushi, of course, little divisive in, you know, in our, in our current era, that we are in because we, we we've just got access to so much more information than we've ever had before. And There was a little bit of misogyny there. You know there were a lot of drugs, but he had a way of peeling through all of that and Making himself very magnetic on the screen. Very funny, very funny. I was never a giant blue she fan, i was a Murray guy. But there's no doubt that blue she belongs. There's no doubt in my mind. 0:11:29 - ThomasYeah, there's no doubt for me either in the seventy-three point seven percent, maybe a little lower than I would expect, but that, like you mentioned, you few factors in some of the things like the misogyny. A lot of times he didn't treat his Cohorts on the show as well. I maybe look down on them because of some misogyny that he had and that's factored in and as it should be, I think. If, if somebody values that and wants to keep Belushi off because of that, then I Absolutely agree with that. But his, since I've been doing this show and kind of getting in more to maybe the Original cast and watching sketches more in-depth, I've come to really appreciate some of the subtlety that Belushi brought to the screen, especially with the samurai. I just his, with his just facial expressions, with the samurai and his movements, and he could do it all as a sketch comedian. He wasn't. He wasn't just on the guy who yells a lot or on the guy who does pratfalls, as Belushi could do, could do everything he can. He can play it really straight and subtly He can. Only he can act with his eyes. He could be funny with just his movements. He could say clever things. So I think just all around what a sketch performer Belushi was has really I've really taken notice of that since I've been going back and watching a lot of the original cast, so I think I think Belushi definitely deserving. 0:12:56 - JDWell, drum roll. Can we get a drum roll for our fifth nominee? 0:13:05 - ThomasThe lonely island is in the SNL Hall of Fame With seventy-three point four percent of the vote. We have the lonely island Third time on the ballot. So they went up from fifty-two point nine to sixty-two to seventy-three percent of the vote. So I think I've been banging this drum hard. I know, Jamie, you've been, you've been kind of wondering, you've been Extolling the virtues of the Lonely Island. I know our buddy, Jon Schneider, has been confused as to why the lonely island is not in the SNL Hall of Fame. But they finally are the lonely island Well deserving. You could still feel their impact, almost what. Now, 17 years, 18 years After they started doing their thing on SNL, they changed the structure of the show in a lot of ways, the presentation of the show. That's still felt today as far as pre-tapes and expectations of pre-tapes, and just iconic, just Influential. I'm so happy about this.0:14:08 - JDYeah, me too. I really only have a three-word Response, and that is lonely no more. They are on an island of Hall of Famers, and they rightfully are on that island. So Really glad to see that we don't have to have this debate with people anymore. 0:14:28 - ThomasYes, I know exactly, I don't have to get frustrated anymore. So congratulations, Andy and Akiva and Jorma, you three are SNL Hall of Famers. 0:14:37 - JDAll right, our first host, this fellow, made a tremendous jump. I'm not even sure it's Mathematically possible the jump that he made, going from 47.4% last year to 73%, and that is the store of the 90s, John Goodman. I have no issues with John Goodman being in the Hall of Fame whatsoever. He was there when I was there. I got to watch him every year. You know he's been a great friend of the show in terms of guest spots and You know if you were to write a guidebook of What what a good guest looks like, i think there'd be a chapter in that book that would be called John Goodman. 0:15:25 - ThomasYeah, he said. He said in the archetype for what a great SNL host is, he was on, I believe, 11 or 12 seasons in a row as Homes, from last 89 to 2001 or something. So he spanned the entire 90s And beyond. I think it was 11 or 12 Episodes and or seasons in a row. Because he was old, reliable, because he was so good, like if he was one of those were the cast when they, when Lorne would be in the office and say, well, we have John Goodman coming in in March to host, and the cast would be like wonderful like it's not that the cast could take The show off, but they knew that they would have somebody to play with and it would ease a lot of The burden that was put on the cast to put on a great show. They knew that they had somebody coming in who could live up to putting on a great show with them. Goodman was just in so a lot of good one-offs I don't know if you remember the sketch where he played the referee and he was. They were doing the show, the talk show, and it was fans asking the referee. Yes, this is basically just berating the, berating him the whole time.0:16:30 - JDThat's a one-off sketch Yeah yeah, he was. 0:16:35 - ThomasHe was a Cajun chef with, when he was on with the Phil Hartman, that recurring sketch, the anal retentive chef and John Goodman came in and played a Cajun chef and they were playing off each other Really well. He's one of the Braske guys, the Bill Braske guys absolutely so many Iconic things that Goodman came in and did. Whether it was recurring or one-off, goodman brought so much to the table and, yeah, 47% in season two. I think maybe some of the seas parted maybe after season two as far as who got in, and maybe a lot of voters felt that Now's the time that I can put Goodman on my ballot since I already took care of business with some other people. So yeah, I was a healthy jump with Goodman, and it's deservedly so. He's an I don't even know 12 timers, 13 times. I'm not good. Yeah, I'm not sure. 0:17:30 - JDYeah, I know that it's 11 in a row. This is where we need a chief statistician, all right. Next on the docket we have, another writer, and this one is equally interesting to me in the sense that They made a tremendous jump from season one to season two, and that is, of course, everyone's favourite late-night talk show host, Conan O'Brien. Thomas, I Want to let you go first, son, on Conan. 0:18:03 - ThomasSo this is the only one. No offence to Conan. He's honestly my favourite. He and Letterman are my two favourite late-night talk show hosts of all time. Like I'm a huge Conan fan, I listened to his podcast. Conan O'Brien needs a friend and he's wonderful at that He's. I love Conan and everything that I've seen him in. I just don't know that he's an SNL Hall of Famer specifically, right? if you just look at Conan's work on SNL, he was behind some good stuff, I think I remember I don't think this is him or Jack handy, but there was a skeleton sketch where John with Gal played, an Anatomy professor he was a professor and he was, and the skeleton would scare him every time he would look at it. And I've heard Conan talk about maybe he was, had had a little bit to do with that And so. But it's hard to think back at Conan's time at SNL and say, yes, he definitely put a stamp on the show. To me, It was more so. Other writers, like I said, like Jack Handy, maybe somebody else who we might talk about on this episode, but there are James Downey, there are other writers that were just more so influential on that era than Conan was and I don't think he would take Umbridge With with me saying that honestly and it's no offence to him, he's a genius Comedically, but if you just look at his time on SNL I had this is one of the ones that I don't quite agree with the voters here. I'm happy for Conan, but it's something where I'm just I'm not quite in alignment on this one. 0:19:30 - JDThis one, to me, screams like name recognition. You know, it's like We know who Conan is, above a lot of the other writers, even the Lonely Island. I changed the ballot from the first season to the second season to add their names on the ballot, just to make sure that everybody knew that the Lonely Island was Andy, Akiva and Jorma. You know, Conan is a writer. That is a name commodity and It would be interesting to know, to dig in if there was a way to do that, to find out, you know, if that's Where that came from, because it was surprising to me as well, especially, you know, in light of somebody else we're gonna mention. 0:20:15 - ThomasYeah, I think Conan's just lovable and People respect his overall talent and I think that bled in, bled into this for sure. 0:20:24 - JDIt's definitely. It's definitely tough to get people to restrict their votes. You know the conversation that you have with the guest That is so SNL-specific. You know it really is tough to sort of Separate that from. Oh my gosh, He was the talk show host that I grew up with, the late-night talk show host that I grew up with and I loved him and, And, oh my gosh, I listened to the podcast the other day and heard them doing the girly man dilemma you know, And right. So he's a writer, so you know he belongs, or whatever. 0:20:57 - ThomasYeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, and the. So the next inductee into the SNL Hall of Fame is. I'm very much surprised by this in a good way, in a positive way, because I didn't know if this person Was gonna have a chance on their first ballot and I'm pleasantly surprised that they're actually in on their first ballot. So another host, and it's Christopher Walken. With 69.7% of the vote, Christopher Walken and Jamie Burwood did this episode with me on Christopher Walken. It was so much fun to go rewatch his episodes and Just just bathe, in the oddness and silliness that was Christopher Walken on SNL, and the more I thought about it because I was unsure. Even going into that episode. I'm like I think he's a good nominee but I don't know that he's a Hall of Famer. But after rewatching his sketches and Talking to Jamie Burwood about this, I'm so happy that Christopher Walken is in the SNL Hall of Fame Such a unique presence on the show. 0:22:03 - JDThat was a great episode, Thomas, that was a great conversation. 0:22:06 - ThomasYeah, Jamie was awesome She came She really came through there. 0:22:12 - JDYeah, walk into me. He was a, you know, a host that brought silliness. And For a serious actor, for somebody that is known as, like you know, he was a freaking deer hunter for heaven's sake, such an intense movie and to see this guy come on and just Be silly and have fun and get his hands dirty, you know, that is Just a lot of fun and I'm thrilled that he's in. I'm, I'm absolutely thrilled. 0:22:45 - ThomasYeah, he was possibly the most iconic sketch of that era, one of the most iconic sketches ever with the cowbell sketch, Christopher. Walken I mean, yeah, people know Will Ferrell killed it in that sketch, But Christopher Walken was his equal, in my opinion, in that sketch, like Christopher Walken's Delivery and his funny lines, balanced out Will Ferrell's, a lot of will Ferrell's more physical, comedic style in that sketch. And Walken also had the continental, which people loved. Yeah, a recurring sketch for a host that you know. Christopher Walken was announced as host and people knew like, ooh, we're probably gonna get a continental. This will be great and just his, yes, Walken was just such an odd Duck and that served him so well on this show. Just such a unique flavour to hosting SNL. So I'm very happy about that. Christopher Walken is in. 0:23:36 - JDNext up. Cut the ribbon, and queue the band, because we have our first musical guest. Wow, as A Hall of Famer, it should come as no surprise. 0:23:49 - ThomasIt only took three voting cycles to have a musical guest cheese. 0:23:55 - JDBut I would say Paul Simon is, you know, quintessential. He's been there from the, you know, almost day one, day two, you could say, or week two, right through to Gosh. When was his last appearance in 2018? yeah, that sounds about right. 0:24:15 - ThomasYeah, that was his final performance. 0:24:19 - JDLike ever, Oh really. 0:24:19 - ThomasYeah, on SNL, no, just yeah. His final performance on SNL was actually his final performance. His final performance, yeah, as a musician. Yeah. 0:24:28 - JDWell, that's iconic Yeah. 0:24:30 - ThomasThat's enormous. 0:24:31 - JDYeah, yeah, I think, well-deserved. You could argue or nitpick if you wanted how many times he was actually the musical guest versus, you know, just having the show be a variety show based around him. But I think when you think of no matter what area you think of and you think of him, you have a good, good vibe, good memories. I mean the turkey suit, the boxer. I remember when he was on when he was touring Graceland and he had all the African dancers and band and that was so spectacular to see as, like a small town kid, you know, I saw that and it was like revolutionary. It was like, wow, this is so cool. I guess this is what world music is, but it was poppy and fun And, yeah, I think, well-deserved, yeah. 0:25:24 - ThomasAnd he 68.7% he finished with Yeah, Paul Simon got 68.7% of the vote and he reunited with Art Garfunkel on SNL. That's enormous. Yeah, that's huge After six years of them not performing together. He and Garfunkel reunited on SNL. And I know on this show we try to have categories, so we have our cast member, host, musical guest, and writer categories right, Paul Simon. I even told my guest for that episode, Matti. I said we're going to have to play fast and loose with the musical guest criteria with Paul Simon because he performed music on 15 episodes of SNL. Whether he was actually officially billed as a musical guest, maybe what was that? Eight times or so, but he performed music in 15 separate episodes on SNL And he's just. You can't argue that. His fingerprints were all over the show And that had a lot to do with his talent. I know he was Lorne and he are damn near best friends, but he was just always a guy who was called upon in big moments too. In the first episode after 9-11, who was there performing? It was Paul Simon. So, yeah, fingerprints all over the show. I'm happy we have a musical guest in. We needed some representation. So there you go, Paul Simon. 0:26:55 - JDThe next one I'm really excited about, and this is what I was talking about when we talked about Conan. I almost wish their voting numbers could have switched, because this person actually acknowledged our show, so that gives them extra points. As far as I'm concerned, this is another writer with 68% of the vote, and that's Robert Smigel. 0:27:20 - ThomasYes, Robert Smigel. I'll give a little context behind that. So Bill Kenney was my guest the great Bill Kenney for the Robert Smigel episode, And Bill actually reached out to Robert Smigel on Twitter. He DM'd him and said I'm on this podcast, SNL Hall of Fame, And I was wondering if you could give me some sketches that you wrote and some of your memories or whatever. And Bill just thought he would take a shot. He didn't think Robert would reply. But, Robert replied to Bill and gave him this nice comprehensive list of sketches that he was in And Bill said thank you. So Robert helped with research for his own episode, which I thought was wonderful, and I was surprised too by he wrote a lot of things that I didn't know that he had a hand in. Phil Hartman did a famous Ronald Reagan mastermind sketch early on, great sketch, wonderful sketch. I think that was the sketch that we played in full at the end of Smigel's episode. It was. I didn't know Smigel was behind that until he told Bill Kenny that he was. He just said so many classics. I talked about Conan O'Brien and his era, how Conan wasn't the guy that you thought about. As far as writers go, I think Smigel was the guy in that era. 0:28:44 - JDI agree. I agree Just that category of Smigel and Odenkirk and you know, as you said earlier, Jack Handy as well. I don't know that they hung out, but Odenkirk and Smigel did for sure, and just great sensibility, some different looks, comedically, yeah, I think I think well deserved, so happy to see writers being three writers, three writers in this class like that's enormous. 0:29:17 - ThomasYep, and if you look at Smigel's tenure, okay, so so he was. Just, you know, he wrote sketches early on, from like 86, 85, 86 until maybe the mid-90s. Smigel wrote all these classic sketches to Bears, he wrote the Kleck and Chicken, and he wrote Schmitz Gay. So he wrote all these classic sketches right, and then he left, came back and he did TV Fun House. So I think I think he was an SNL Hall of Famer before TV Fun House. If you only included his pre TV Fun House, I think he's still an SNL Hall of Famer. If you only included TV Fun House, by itself he might be an SNL Hall of Famer. You combine those. It's just incredible. Like Smigel, his fingerprints. As far as a writer, I don't think other than maybe James Downey I don't think it could be topped by Robert Smigel of what he delivered as a writer to the show. 0:30:12 - JDI tend to agree with him. One more, we got one more. 0:30:17 - ThomasWe've announced 10 so far, So we have a recap. So we have Dana Carvey, Amy Poehler, Bill Murray, John Belushi, The Lonely Island, John Goodman, Conan O'Brien, Christopher Walken, Paul Simon, Robert Smigel and this next person. this is the last on the list of inductees this season. Their first time on the ballot, So a first-timer from the original cast. an amazing glue person, wonderful, and one of the first great weekend update anchors. I'm talking about Jane Curtin. With 67.3% of the vote, Jane Curtin made the SNL Hall of Fame. This means a lot to me. We love Jane. 0:31:10 - JDI went back recently and listened to the episode you did with Andrew Dick. and just a phenomenal episode, maybe a Hall of Fame episode. It was tremendous, Andrew made a great case. Yeah, I listened to that before I cast my votes. I did cast a vote for Jane Curtin. To me, she's very deserving, but that solidified it. I think that's the resonant detra of this show. You listen to these great conversations and you're reminded. It's almost like poking a fire that is out, but the embers are still there and you poke away and then next thing you know you have another roaring fire. That's what our show intends to do, and when it works, it works. I have no doubt that Curtin made it in part because of that episode, but the largest part that she made it in was her body of work. She's got a tremendous body of work. 0:32:08 - ThomasYeah, she, she again. Weekend update. She was, she pioneered. I know Chevy Chase was the first weekend update anchor but I think Jane really grabbed the reins and made it her own she was the weekend update anchor after Chevy left until seeing at the end of season five And she and she and Murray co-co-anchored here and there But Jane was like the face of that And then she was like the greatest talk show host Absolutely And maybe an SNL history And that's a thankless role as a sketch performer. But Jane, Jane cause, because Jane was the straight person in those situations and played so well off whatever crazy guests that she had on her talk shows, like the Dan Aykroyd Irwin main way character. Jane played so well off of that Irwin main way character. And that's just what she did every time And she was really good when they gave her, you know, more straight like comedic sketches to work with. She could play that. She's just so darn likable and so darn talented. 0:33:14 - JDYeah, yeah, absolutely. So that is your class of season three, Really proud of everybody for coming out and voting. Again, we had more votes than we've ever had before. Let's look at the unfortunate side of things. Now We'll spend less time, you know, with these, with these nominees, for sure, but these are the ones that didn't make the cut. They fell under 10% this time around and they will be off the ballot next time. And we're going to start at the bottom. Unfortunately, the writing was on the wall with Lily Tomlin when she went from 15.5% to 13.5%, going from season one to two. Whenever you see that sort of shrink down, you do sort of get concerned that it's not going to work out. And sure enough, Lily Tomlin fell under 10% this time, so she is off the ballot. 0:34:13 - ThomasThink about Lily Tomlin's hosting gigs. I think a lot of her work was on the Lily Tomlin show. Yes, she was very talented, but she was I think she was so isolated in what she did on the show in many ways And just even compared to hosts from that era, I don't think she necessarily stood out or had any sketches that you think back You're like, yeah, that Lily Tomlin sketch, like you think about Steve Martin, for instance. 0:34:45 - JDYou can come up with a dozen. 0:34:47 - ThomasYou can come up with the Fair Strunk Brothers, but you think back to Lily Tomlin. I think she just sort of washes over people And that's probably what happened here with the voters in your right. The writing was on the wall. 0:35:01 - JDYeah, I think if we were, I'll have this vote in 1983 instead of 2023, she's likely in because, people, she was still a named commodity And unfortunately she you know she won't be a vote in Hall of Famer. There are other ways that potential voter nominees will get into the Hall of Fame that we'll deal with in the future, but for now, she is off the ballot. Thomas, you want to just run through the next three because they're all first-timers. 0:35:31 - ThomasYeah, yeah, so also off the ballot. Beyonce is off. She only got 4.9% of the vote in her first time on the ballot. Rihanna got 5.4% of the vote. She's off the ballot. And Elliot Gould also got 5.4% of the vote and he's off the ballot. So Elliot Gould, Rihanna, and Beyonce are all first-timers and all already off the ballot And I don't have a huge problem. Necessarily, Beyonce especially. She's probably so famous for her work outside of SNL that she's just not associated with SNL. She's had some great performances. Will Norman and I had a great time going through Beyonce's SNL appearances, but definitely not surprised. I mean Beyonce's just so Beyonce that it's not a surprise And we couldn't get it. Apparently, the Beehive didn't crash the party and vote for this, because she probably would have made it if that was the case Last year we lost Taylor Swift, so the Swifties didn't help her, and this year the Beehive didn't help Beyonce. Yeah, and I think Taylor Swift is a good comp to Beyonce. I think they're just so famous outside of SNL that it's hard to associate them with SNL for a lot of people. Yeah, what do you make of itd? 0:36:49 - JDElliot. Gould. Oh sorry. Yeah, Elliot Gould. I'm a little disappointed because he was correcting me if I'm wrong, but I think he's a five-timer. He's definitely a five-timer because he's in the new five-time sketches, so he's one of the first five-timers after Buck Henry. But I think he's too closely associated with the early part of the 70s when he was a raging movie star. He was a giant movie star And people think of him now as Mr. Geller People, my age thinks of him as Mr. Geller from Friends which is a little less prestigious. So I'm not shocked. In the same way, I'm not shocked with Lily Tomlin, but I'm maybe a bit disappointed because he is a five-timer. So that might be something we have to revisit. Rihanna, I think, has the same sort of thing as Beyonce, like she's giant, but I do think that she participated in some sketches And I think she, you know, I think of Shy Ronny off the top of my head And maybe it's too close to what she does normally like it was a song, it was a hip-hop song, so maybe that sealed her fate. I'm not sure. 0:38:06 - ThomasYeah, as far as Elliot Gould goes, he is a five-timer But I actually think I'm actually happy that that's not the end-all, be-all of getting into the Esna Hall of Fame. You know what I'm saying. Like I'm glad there's some subjectivity to it and people aren't just getting in because they're a five-timer. I mean, John Goodman is a ten-timer plus and he had to wait a couple of seasons, a couple, two or three voting cycles And so I'm glad that there's some subjectivity to it. Like the Baseball Hall of Fame, like the 3,000 hits I guess, is an unofficial kind of mark, but still, I mean you could get over 500 home runs, over 3,000 hits, and still not be voted into the Hall of Fame. Whether you know, when baseball there are some performance-enhancing drug issues that play there. But I'm glad there's not like a threshold to where if you've hosted a certain amount of times then you're just in, like there needs to be some subjectivity, because like a three-time host could have more of an impact on the show than a like a six or seven-time host. 0:39:11 - JDWell, I look at Adam Driver at this point. Adam Driver, to me, is amazing as a host, and I've watched a couple of the other Gold episodes. You know, I know it's different, I know it's from a bygone era, but it didn't resonate with me, you know. 0:39:27 - ThomasYeah, exactly Now, that's a good example, Adam Driver. I think John Hamm as a host was far, far better than somebody like Elliot Golden. So I hosted three times. So, yeah, I'm actually as far as I like Elliot Gold, but he wasn't necessarily one of the hosts that totally stood out to me even from that era. 0:39:47 - JDWell, we lost three others. I'll go in reverse order. At 8.4%, Elvis Costello. He went down from 8.2%, or actually, he went up, but not enough. Miley Cyrus has been on the ballot for all three cycles. She went from 7.1 to 7.6 to 8.1. So she was growing, but at this rate, she would have had to be on for like 15 election cycles to hit the 66.7 if she grew at that rate. And then Drew Barrymore went from 9.9 to 7.7. I think that's again. You know, she was an interesting choice for a nominee and it made for a good episode, but I definitely don't think of Drew Barrymore as synonymous in any way with SNL. 0:40:36 - ThomasI agree with that. I enjoy talking to Nicole Robine about Drew Barrymore and it was fun to re-explore Drew Barrymore's work, but I agree, I think I don't have a problem with her, same with Miley Cyrus. Elvis Costello is an interesting example to me of somebody who had a memorable moment on SNL, but it was a moment And he had other pretty good performances and whatnot. He was on the 25th anniversary with Beastie Boys, but really with Elvis Costello. it was that moment, in 1977 or whenever, that ended up getting him banned from the show, or I see you. so I say banned in quotes because who the heck knows if that was an official ban from Lorne, but it was an infest When we get Lorne on, we'll ask. 0:41:23 - JDWe'll ask him, that'll be one of the first things that we'll ask Lorne when he's on the show. 0:41:28 - ThomasYeah, so that's an example to me of like it was a memorable, infamous moment. Yes, But does Elvis Costello's appearances in his work on SNL warrant a Hall of Fame selection? Our voters said no. I agree with the voters. 0:41:42 - JDYeah, I think our voters I think, by and large, the voters got it right this time. Maybe, you know, maybe the Conan one is a little tenuous, but I'm certainly not angry that Conan O'Brien is in our Hall of Fame like I think. I think he will add some name recognition. I'm angry. 0:42:00 - ThomasWhat the hell, Conan, are you kidding me? No, i. 0:42:06 - JDThink that The voters did a great job. Now We'll wrap up here, just going over Anybody that you want to sort of discuss, so that you can see a pathway for season four. Obviously, the ballot will be restocked with 15 new names next year, but it's definitely peeled down from what it has been, so it won't be as monstrous next year when you vote. Is there anybody that you see that has a path to next year, or is there anybody you see that you're worried about Sliding out of contention? 0:42:41 - ThomasSo the person who I'm interested in is their path. So we had we have our first musical guest Paul Simon and the SNL Hall of Fame well deserved. This next person is another musical guest who I believe should be a lock. Snl Hall of Famer Voters haven't quite agreed yet, but Dave Grohl. So Dave Grohl was on the ballot in season two and received 32.2% of the vote. He jumped to 54% of the vote. So I see a path to where we can get in another Musical guest, a deserving musical guest, in Dave Grohl, and I think Anybody who's curious about Dave Grohl in SNL go Relisten to the episode that I did on him with Ryan McNeil. That was, I think. I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I absolutely loved that episode that Ryan and I did. 0:43:36 - JDthat's the episode that we're gonna submit for the potties. 0:43:39 - ThomasYes, Yes episode, because I think you know there was a lot of meat on that bone. Dave Grohl loves the show and has had so many memorable performances on the show in my opinion He jumped from 32 to 54 and I think there's a path to make the next leap for Dave Grohl and I expect, I hope and expect Dave Grohl to be an SNL Hall of Famer sooner rather than later. 0:44:08 - JDNice little rhyme there for me. I am looking at it Right now. I'm looking at James Downey, because James Downey, I feel, belongs in the Hall of Fame and one way or another we're gonna get him in there. But I would love to see him get in through the traditional process of voting. And so far, well, he didn't go up as much as he went up from season one to season two. He went from 30.3 to 44.4. He still managed to slide upward and He finished that just under 50% with 49.5. I think there's a path for him, maybe not season four, but definitely season five If he can continue this growth. But I'd love to see him go in in season four and get his due for sure. 0:44:53 - ThomasYeah, definitely. We have a cluster of writers there that Conan got voted in. Maybe that'll open things up for people to consider other writers. So we had Jack handy, who got 52% of the vote this year. We had James Downey at 49, and Franken and Davis at about 47%. Even Paul Appel got 34% of the vote. So there's like a cluster of writers that I'm interested to see what happens with them If they get, if they start losing steam or if they gain steam, and we all of a sudden look up and there's like Two or three writers, maybe at this time next year. Yeah, that's no Hall of Fame. So that whole writing category is gonna be interesting to me. 0:45:35 - JDThat's name one more that I'll highlight that I'm Really intrigued by, and that's John Mulaney went from 47.7 to 43.3 and then this year fell to 27.3. I don't know what I can attribute that to other than We got two hosts in, so maybe he lost some hosts there because we elected two hosts. Maybe it's because he didn't show up this year. Maybe some people are taking, you know, his, his time away. Maybe they didn't like Baby J. I don't, I don't know, I don't know. It's fascinating to me. 0:46:13 - ThomasI thought Baby J was fantastic for the. I do the record turning his intervention and Stay at the rehab facility into the material and a John Mulaney-type way. I thought I thought that was great. Maybe I don't, maybe he would. They held against quote-unquote off-the-field issues. I don't know, maybe people held that against him or maybe he's they. For me, the thing with Mulaney is I still view him as a Current, I guess. Performer, so maybe that you know, maybe people against him. 0:46:45 - ThomasHe's still an active part of SNL, so that could work against him. So so, yeah, that's an interesting one. Falling 16% from the prior vote is pretty alarming. Actually, that's, that's in. That's a steep fall For for John Mulaney. And I should say to the person who received the highest percentage of the vote without getting in Was Maya Rudolph. Maya Rudolph got 58.3% of the vote, only up from 57.9. Maybe it was just a crowded field as far as cast members, like new cast members coming in Your Dana Carvey's and Jane Jane Curtin's, John Belushi's Maybe that's what stifled a rise for Maya Rudolph. But Maya Rudolph, 58.3% of the vote, the most for anybody who did not get inducted into the SNL Hall of Fame, probably a path for Maya. I think Maya is gonna be in at some point. 0:47:46 - JDYeah, me too. It's too talented to not get the votes needed. 0:47:50 - ThomasToo beloved too, yeah, fan favourite. 0:47:53 - JDAbsolutely Well, Thomas. It's been great going through this with you today and to listeners of the show, it's been great doing this with you again this season. We will return in September and With it with a brand new set of nominees and some great new conversations. Thomas, is there anything you want to wrap on? 0:48:15 - ThomasDo you want me to actually rap? No, I can't. I think it is Thomas Our listenership would drop if I pulled out some of my rhymes. But No, I'm just excited for season four. I'm excited for people to find out kind of how we chose the nominees and who the nominees are. Just the whole process was was very fun for me and, yeah, just looking forward to another season. I want to thank everybody who listens and votes and just doing this podcast means the world to me. I was telling Jamie, this is like this is my number one hobby is doing research and talking to the guests and Editing and pulling it, putting out these shows. So it's just been a wonderful, wonderful thing. So I'm excited to keep going, excited for a brand new season. And the seas parted, we had 11 inductees and we had some people drop off the ballot So we have like, kind of the ballots gonna look a lot different. It's in a lot of ways next time around, so that'll be fascinating. But I just want to thank everybody for listening and voting. 0:49:21 - JDWell, on behalf of Matt, then, Thomas, we bid you adieu as you're leaving today. Please do me a favour and, as you walk past the weekend update exhibit, turn out the lights, because the SNL Hall of Fame is now closed. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/snlhof/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Title: SNL Hall of Fame: Celebrating the Life and Laughs of John BelushiIntroduction:Join us as we take an unforgettable journey through the life and career of legendary comedian John Belushi. With our insightful guest, Justin Renwick, we explore Belushi's early beginnings, his rise to fame with Second City and the National Lampoon, and his undeniable charisma that made him one of the most iconic comedians of all time.Chapters:- (0:00:08) SNL Hall of Fame Podcast: Introduction and overview of the episode, including John Belushi's early beginnings and his rise to fame.- (0:12:44) John Belushi's Career and Charisma: Exploring Belushi's journey to Second City, his success with the National Lampoon, and his charismatic stage presence.- (0:17:12) The Brilliance of John Belushi: Examining Belushi's confidence, his ability to immerse himself in characters, and his incredible comedic timing.- (0:24:37) Belushi's Impact on SNL and Comedy: Reflecting on Belushi's unforgettable performances, including his iconic Samurai character and the chemistry he shared with fellow castmates.- (0:34:24) Remembering John Belushi's SNL Sketches: Diving into Belushi's memorable sketches, his impersonations, and the impact of his comedic skills.- (0:46:42) John Belushi's Legacy: Discussing Belushi's influence on future comedians and whether he is the greatest SNL actor of all time.Keywords:- John Belushi- SNL- Second City- National Lampoon- Comedy- Chevy Chase- Samurai character- Animal HouseTranscript0:00:08 - AnnouncerIt's the SNL Hall of Fame podcast with your host, jamie Dube, chief Librarian Thomas Senna, and featuring Matt Bardille And now Curator of the Hall, jamie Dube. 0:00:42 - jDAll right, thank you so much, doug Denats. It's JD here, and welcome to the SNL Hall of Fame podcast. It's a weekly affair where each episode, we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest or writer and add them to the ballot for your consideration. Once the nominees have all been announced, we turn to you, the listener, to vote for the most deserving and help determine who will be enshrined for perpetuity inside these hallowed halls. You won in and I can let you in, but not until you wipe your goddamn feet. That's right. Wipe your feet at the door, you filthy animal. How are you doing today? I am, i'm actually really great. Thanks for asking. We've got a barn burner of a show today. It is Justin Renwick joining Thomas Senna in conversation about the very intriguing John Belushi. This should be a good one. I can tell you that the conversations I've had on Reddit, this is probably the most anticipated episode of the season, based on feedback that I've been getting about who we haven't seen nominated in the hall. Now, in case you're curious the way things work, we work together with a committee and choose who will be nominated each year from a pool based on the parameters that have been outlined by the SNL Hall of Fame. Once those selections are made, we sort of piece them together and produce a podcast and we make that show and we put them out every week and you get to listen And that's great. But the real key here is the voting, and the voting is coming up real soon. In fact, next week we are nominating Amy Poehler on the show and then Tuesday, the 23rd of May, voting will begin and it will run through to June 17th. So you will have from May 23rd to June 17th to cast your votes, to cast 15 votes, 15 votes up to 15 votes, i should say, for the SNL Hall of Fame. It's exciting. After Amy Poehler we'll do a few roundtables and then we'll do the reveal, and the reveal is quite exciting. I'm really curious to see if any of our legacy holdovers make it this year. There's Dave Grohl is really close. Lonely Island is super close and Lonely Island should be on. It should have been, you know, a first ballot Hall of Famer as far as I'm concerned, but I don't control the vote. So there's that If you're looking to register to vote, what you want to do is you want to go to SNLHofcom and click on the voting tab and click register to vote. You can do that right there and you will get a ballot on the 23rd emailed to you and Bob's, your uncle, from there. So there's that. Let's go over and talk to our friend Matt in his minutiae minute corner and learn a little bit more about Mr John Belushi. Oh, matthew, hey, hi, jimmy, how are you doing? 0:04:21 - MattI'm great. How about you, matt? I'm good. Thanks, i'm good. Really excited to talk about one of the classic cast members here today, john Belushi, the one and only five. Five foot eight, born January 24th 1949. He credit his grandmother, his Albanian grandmother, for getting him into show business. She didn't understand English, so she would have him act things out for her which made her laugh, and thus a career was born. He actually had very humble beginnings in the start of his career, which was as a youth instructor at a theater camp, the Shawnee Summer Theater of Green County. But from there he went on to become a member of the West Compass Trio, second city in the National Lampoon Lemmings. Prior to joining SNL, he attended the Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, which is where he actually got the college shirt, as seen in Animal House. There's a gift shop there in an area known as the Strip, which is still operating today if you wanted to go and get one for yourself. So while living in New York, he was next door neighbor to SNL fixture Elliot Gould, who we've talked about in the past. He is a huge nerd, or he was a huge nerd. He was a fan of many things, from Lucille Ball, whose entire career he committed to memory And this is something that actually seems to come up a bit. He had a razor sharp memory. He was also a Star Trek fan and with Kirk in particular, to the point Shatner said he preferred Belushi's take on Kirk And he was a big Marvel fan. On one visit to their offices in New York He could summarize any specific issue. Just by looking at the cover. He could people say, well, that's this one. He's like oh, this is the issue where Spider-Man is fighting the Green Goblin and so on and so dies, which must have made him really happy when he and the not ready for primetime players were featured in a Spider-Man comic And he ends up having stolen the Silver Samurai sword and used it in the sketch, so that my wife got that for me, actually that issue. It was shockingly inexpensive for a double memorabilia whammy, but she got that for me from our anniversary last year. That's very cool. Now he was well known for being very judgmental. One of the ways he would evaluate people is by borrowing $20 and seeing how they reacted, so you know if they're kind of a jerk about it. You knew, oh, they were a jerk, but he just gauged how they behaved, that's a good trick. Yeah, yeah, it was an interesting one. I have to remember that Now he was a heavy metal fan, which I did not realize. But when he met Dan Ackroyd, having performed together, dan tried to entice him onto the SNL cast At a Speak Easy, because of course, with those two is at a Speak Easy. Dan put on a blues album which stirred a fascination in John that became career defining, because he had never listened to blues before that meeting and then went on to create the Blues Brothers together. Now he was such a huge star. There were a bunch of roles that he was supposed to be a part of in films. Peter Venkman was originally written for him. He was replaced by James Woods in Once Upon a Time in America on his passing and was to appear in an adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with Ackroyd. Many more projects, but one of the more interesting, given it kind of ties back to his time on SNL. Harold Ramis was guest hosting an episode of Siskel and Ebert and discussed how it was John's dream to play Ludwig von Beethoven in a film, which is a weird one, but given he played him on the show, i guess that could have been a technically SNL spin-off. Now, sorry, go ahead. So he had the nickname of America's guest, as he had a habit of knocking on strangers' doors, entering their homes and eating things from their refrigerator and then crashing out on their couch. This never resulted in any problems because he was so well known, but speaks to how different the 70s were from today. Now he required an income of between $500,000 and a million dollars a year to maintain his lifestyle and his entourage. Now, while he would often make use of strangers' generosity, he himself was also very generous, lending large sums of money to friends and family Towards the end of his life. His manager pushed him to start collecting on these debts, but John refused. Now he is buried in Martha's Vineyard, where his epitaph reads he made us laugh and now he can make us think, but his grave was so popular with visitors, they moved his casket to an unmarked grave in a quiet corner of the cemetery, after which his fans posted a new epitaph based on his catchphrase. He could have given us a lot more laughs, but no, that is John Belushi. 0:10:21 - jDThat's great. Take it away, Thomas. 0:10:48 - ThomasAlright, Justin Renwick is joining me today. Thank you so much for joining me here on the SNL Hall of Fame. 0:10:54 - JustinIt's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. 0:10:56 - ThomasYeah, so this one is a big one to me. This is probably to a lot of people The legendary John Belushi will be talking about. So he was on SNL 1975 to 1980, part of the original cast. He seemed to be made for sketch comedy and had a lot of reps before he started at Saturday Night Live. So you talk about his path to SNL and his prior work in sketch comedy. 0:11:23 - JustinSo we could go way back to high school, which is where he caught the acting bug. He was a very accomplished athlete. He was a football player, he was a drummer, he was in a band that actually released a single believe it or not And to show what a small world Chicago and the greater Chicago area is, because he grew up. He was born in Chicago but he grew up in Wheaton, illinois. He knew Dick Lesucci, who was somebody he would also work with at Second City, and Dick Lesucci went on to SCTV as a writer, which I think he formed an alliance with Joe Flaherty at some point, which is how that came about, but we're getting a little bit off topic. So yeah, john, when he was in high school, did drama and his drama teacher noticed something. He's like there's something special about this kid And if anyone's read the book Wired this is where I know this story from. Apparently, this teacher took him to. If I'm remembering correctly, he took him to. I know it was Indiana, but I don't know if he went and auditioned somewhere else, but basically he got into summer stock in Indiana a year before most people were eligible when he was 17. Like that's how preternaturally talented he was And they did a whole series of plays there That went very well. He enrolled in when he graduated from high school, enrolled at the University of Wisconsin And I was doing drama there, but left after a year and then wound up going to the College of DuPage in West Chicago. Somewhere along that period he went to see Second City and had an epiphany, just realized this is what I was put on earth to do and formed the West Compass Players, which was a reference to the pre-Second City Compass Players, with his friends Tino Insana and Steve Bachecas who people that watch John Belushi on Saturday Night Live will be very familiar with that name because he brought it up a lot in his vits. So the three of them were able to audition en masse for Second City And I think it was Bernie Salons that auditioned them And he saw John's potential right away, saw something in Tino Insana. Well, i think Tino was put in the touring company or asked to take some more classes, but he wound up joining as well. But yeah, john went into Second City. I believe he went right into the main stage cast, which at the time had Brian Doyle, murray, harold Ramis, joe Flaherty, so he was punching well above his weight. I don't know if that's the right term to use, because that sounds more like he was not very good, but was somehow anyway he did very well, but he was young at the time. 0:13:51 - ThomasSo, like you know, being able to be in that company at his age says a lot about it. I think, it's fair to say, at that time punching up above his weight. 0:14:00 - JustinYeah, you're right. Yeah, he wouldn't have been around 22. Joe Flaherty was. I think he was in his late 20s at that point. He was a good 10 years older than the STTV cast, but anyway, that obviously went very well. He made a real reputation for himself there And through that got involved with the national ampoon, so much so that he moved to New York after he'd been in the Lemmings review with Chevy Chase and Christopher Gast, which is one of my favorite comedy albums of all time National Ampoon's Lemmings, which was a takeoff on Woodstock and was where he did Joe Cocker among. he also played the, the MC. But then, yeah, through that world of national ampoon and then writing, producing and performing for the radio hour, that's what brought him to the attention of Lauren Michaels through Chevy Chase and Michael O'Donoghue when they were putting Saturday Night Live together. 0:14:47 - ThomasEven at the National Ampoon's radio hour. that's where he came across with Bill Murray, gilda Radner, some of his future SNL cohorts, just a who's who working on that show at the time. Richard Belzer was even part of that. So it was just a really, really talented cast And, would you say I know a lot of them had their gifts and talents, but there was something magnetic about Belushi that even stood out amongst that type of talent. 0:15:14 - JustinBelushi has that thing like. The charisma is just unbelievable. But he has that mischievous glint. Jimmy Fallon has it as well. Many other people do where you're even if you know not only his stage presence. Right Just the minute John Belushi walked on to stage, eyes were drawn to him. John Candy had the same thing. Anyone that's tall I mean, john Belushi wasn't tall, but anyone that has a big presence and can exude that kind of charisma right away stills focused. But he always wanted to see what he was going to do next. Same thing with Jimmy Fallon When he was fucking around in a sketch and messing up. You wanted to know, oh, you know what's. He got up his sleeve What's going to happen next? And that was very much John Belushi too. This electric performer is the word that comes to mind. 0:15:53 - ThomasThat's why a lot of us watch live sketch and SNL in particular is because there's I mean there's that element of you don't know it's going to be a live show, you don't know what's going to happen. There's almost that danger involved in. Belushi really did personify. He did bring that energy to the show. Yeah. 0:16:11 - JustinAnd he has like Kate McKinnon is the same Melissa McCarthy just fearless performers that you can throw anything at them And they'll. You know, like even something as simple. I'm sure the tomato was cut beforehand, but like the samurai deli, when he throws the tomato up in the air and chops it with no-transcript, there's a million ways that can go wrong on a live TV show. But I don't think it bothered him at all, he just knew. 0:16:35 - ThomasSo he, like I said, he started with. You know he was an original cast member at SNL. They started in 1975. Where did you become familiar with Belushi's work and kind of what stood out to you? 0:16:46 - JustinNot to get too deep into the archives, but my introduction to Saturday Night Live was a friend's Mr Bill t-shirt in 1979. I'm like what's Mr Bill? Oh it's this thing that's on Saturday Night Live. It's really funny. Oh, it's this show, it's on Saturday nights, it's live, ha ha. Anyway, i asked my mom about it. She knew she was a big Second City fan so she'd been watching Saturday Night Live since day one And yeah, they let me stay up and Mr Bill was the gateway. But then in between the sketches I'm trying to think the first thing that really stood out with me, stood out for me with John Belushi, was probably I'm going to say the Bs, because this was 1979. So they were still back then. The reruns weren't just shows from the current season, they were showing shows from the first season on. So I got to sort of catch up over that season. That's probably the first thing that stood out. But it's just, it's that confidence. He was so confident. It's really magnetic, like it really draws you in. I mean, to be a performer on Saturday Night Live you have to have a certain degree of confidence. But there's different levels. Like if you look at somebody like Dan Ackroyd, who was incredibly talented, really funny and just able to like rattle off details. You know, at a moment's notice there's a difference between sort of him and Belushi, which I think is why they complimented each other so well. Dan Ackroyd is more of a technical actor, whereas to me anyway, john Belushi is a little more instinctive. 0:18:06 - ThomasYeah, what stood out to me a lot, when you know rewatching a lot of his sketches and everything, was just how he would dissolve into a character And then he just gave off this. Really, the audience knew that they were in good hands with him up there because he exuded just like you know, i'm supposed to be here, i'm doing Don Corleone impression and I'm the one who's supposed to be doing this and I'm good enough. And he did have that confidence, definitely, and his relationship with some of his castmates, from what I've read, really played into that, especially his relationship with Chevy Chase. 0:18:42 - Speaker 1Yeah, And how he viewed. 0:18:43 - ThomasChevy Chase, getting attention early on. 0:18:46 - JustinIt's funny that they weren't. you know, they didn't get along very well, even in the lampoon days, And when Chevy was still smart enough and got over his own ego, it was him and Michael O'Donoghue that suggested him. I think I mentioned that before to Lauren. But yeah, that of course, when Chevy took off in the first few episodes of Saturday Night Live, yeah, John Belushi was not happy about it. 0:19:07 - ThomasNo, i think maybe John looked at Chevy is getting you know, maybe I don't know if it's cheap laughs, but he's certainly got a lot of mileage off falling prat falls. And I think what Belushi felt that he did was maybe more elevated than what Chevy did. So I think each Belushi thought, from what I've read, belushi thought that he was supposed he was the star of the of the cast. Yeah, not Absolutely. 0:19:30 - JustinChevy Chase is. That's a whole lot of problems to unpack that that guy has, but let's just suffice it to say I he is, is incredible at what he does. You know what I mean? Like to you were saying the falling, the falling down, like the mimicking people behind their back, just the, the sort of boyish humor and the looks. The looks helped as well, the dimple chin and the sort of he had a glint in his eye as well. But yeah, he's miles away And I'm pretty sure Chevy Chase will be the first one to tell you that in the acting realm from John Belushi. 0:20:02 - ThomasWhen Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford, he didn't sink into Gerald Ford. That was Chevy Chase just calling himself Gerald. 0:20:09 - JustinFord, which made it even funnier for some reason. 0:20:12 - ThomasYeah, it definitely worked for sure, but then, if you know, belushi played a character, belushi just really transformed into that character And I think that that was a lot of acting chops, like you mentioned. 0:20:25 - JustinI think the other amazing thing about Belushi and another reason, a big reason that would put him in the the Hall of Fame is not only could he, he's an incredible mimic, He has a great comic timing, like Jackie Gleason is one of his heroes, and it really shows. And, yeah, he can sink into a character and become somebody else, But at the same time you put him on update as himself and it's unbelievable, Like he's still amazing Just playing. You know, as a comedian's play slightly heightened versions of themselves. He was comfortable playing himself as well as playing other characters which we're going to. We'll use the same analogy. Dan Ackroyd was more comfortable sinking into characters. You saw his season on Weekend Update with Jane Curtin. He never looked very comfortable playing himself. 0:21:09 - ThomasBelushi on those update pieces. It was incredible He would. He would start off, just, you know, even kill. I think that was the most Belushi, the most human, for lack of a better term that I would see Belushi on the show. But then he would go from zero to a hundred and like two seconds The whole. The luck of the Irish rant, the famous one that he had on Weekend. 0:21:29 - Speaker 3Update. 0:21:30 - ThomasAnd you know it starts off level headed. 0:21:33 - Speaker 8Well, it's that time again. St Patrick's Day has come and gone, and well, the sons of Ireland are basking in the globe. You know, when I think of Ireland I think of a lot of colorful Irish expressions like top of the morning to you, kiss the Blarney stone. May the road rise to meet you. May you be in heaven. An hour before the devil knows you're dead, i'd like to smash you in the face with my shillelie Danny boy begora. Whale of the banshee. Whiskey for the leprechauns, whiskey for the leprechauns. But the expression I think most people identify with the Irish is, of course, the luck of the Irish. 0:22:09 - ThomasAnd Beluce, he's just kind of this nice guy just saying what he has to say and then he just, he just is like a bull in a china shop. 0:22:15 - Speaker 9I said bye man. I said hey man. I never even seen $5,000 in my life. So don't ask me for it Now watch, ask your mother which is a dumb thing for me to say, because his mother just died. Now I got, right now I got this drunken Irish junkie who wants to kill me because of what I said about his mother being in terminal dreamland. You know, one thing would just get me out One thing They love their mothers, boy. Oh, they love their mothers. It's Mama Diff and Mama Dan. Oh, my Irish mother. I really must be heaven because my mother comes up there. Ah, ah, ah. 0:23:01 - ThomasHe would do like a, like an army, roll off the desk and then you would never see him after that, until the next sketch. Yeah, yeah. 0:23:10 - JustinAnd again that's on. That's on live TV again. There's so many ways that could go wrong. 0:23:14 - ThomasJust don't no fear no fear, yeah, totally fearless, i think. I think that's such a great way to put it. An element of Belushi that I love too was that he reminded me of like a Charlie Chaplin or a Buster Keaton in a lot of ways, and one of the examples, one of, yeah, just a very expressive face and he didn't have to have any lines necessarily to convey something to do really great sketch work. And one of the things that really pops out to me, his most famous character, the samurai, is like the perfect example. John reminded me of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Like I said, in those sketches It just really was striking, just like the physical ability of him to convey something. 0:23:56 - Speaker 3All I know is that the third quarter net of Kentucky Mines was up 6.2%. 0:24:00 - Speaker 1Look at this graph. 0:24:02 - Speaker 3Look, it went right up here And what happened September, October, November into the well-known toilet. 0:24:09 - Speaker 9I love her over there. 0:24:10 - Speaker 10Who's here? Who? Who Did Who Who? I don't know what you mean, but I need security. 0:24:23 - Speaker 9That's the point. 0:24:23 - JustinI'm sure you're aware of this, and other listeners maybe as well that that was based on Toshiro Mifuni, his character in Yojimbo, and they called his name with samurai futaba And that was his audition piece for Saturday Night Live. The Samurai Pool Hustler I don't know if it was his, probably his wife and it remembers was saying that yeah right, he was in the apartment messing around with that character for a while with a bathrobe and he'd grab the dowel from the like the clothes rod, from the closet, use it as a sword And, if I'm not mistaken in the audition he used that obviously as a pool cue. 0:24:55 - ThomasWell, i could see why he got the job then. I mean, that's such a Got the gig. yeah, i think I underestimated how much I enjoyed the Samurai until I took a deep dive into Belushi over the last few weeks And I could see why it was held in such high regard. I mean those facial expressions, the interplay he had, mostly with Buck Henry but with a few other hosts. it was just incredible to watch. I couldn't take my eyes off of Belushi during those sketches. 0:25:23 - JustinI just read today. apparently it was Buck Henry who turned it into a recurring character because he first played the Samurai with Richard Pryor. Apparently, when Buck Henry came in, it was his request to be in a sketch with the Samurai, And it went so well that every time Buck came back they would bust out another Samurai sketch with Buck playing the same character. 0:25:42 - ThomasThey had such good chemistry. I think, belushi, he had good chemistry with some of the other, the hosts that did the Samurai with him. Oh, samurai Hotel, that's what it was. It was the Samurai Hotel, okay. 0:25:54 - JustinYo. 0:25:54 - ThomasMama-san. Yes, he and Richard Pryor. Yeah, that was awesome. Another example that I had just about Belushi being a great silent actor like just he didn't have to speak one word was he and Gilda had this sketch where they met in the laundromat and they share a washer at the laundromat and they begin to flirt, and that was just all the no dialogue. They share a cigarette at the end They share a cigarette at Belushi's pouring champagne. At one point That was just such great comedic acting without having to say one word. 0:26:26 - JustinI don't have any proof of this, but that kind of strikes me as what's known as a trunk piece. I would imagine and again, i could be very wrong. I would imagine either Gilda or John may have brought that from Second City, so there was a few of those in the first season. like there's a Dan Aykroyd Gilda Radner sketch where Dan Aykroyd plays a mechanic and he's putting his daughter to bed and she wants to hear a story and he's tired and wants her to go to bed, so he just makes up a story that involves all these car parts or whatever. That was definitely something that two of them had done in Toronto. But yeah, i'm getting a little ahead of myself here. It's speculation. 0:27:00 - ThomasYeah, no, that definitely makes sense. I think when they were doing Second City stuff and it's a lot like SNL in that they have to come up with idea after idea after idea, And a lot of it tends to be slice of life kind of things, Like you find the funny bits in these seemingly ordinary slice of life kind of things. So in this example they were at the laundromat and they want to both use the same washer, the work. Can we go from there? That does strike me as an idea that they would have used at Second. 0:27:26 - JustinCity. It feels very much like, yeah, it feels a lot like a Second City or a Groundling sketch. I mean they still do that today Not, i doubt, as often. but I know Melissa McCarthy the first time she hosted when they did the Focus Group on the Hidden Valley Ranch. I didn't know it at the time. I only learned this about a year ago that that was a sketch she was doing every night at the Groundlings that she'd written. So shout out to Melissa. 0:27:47 - ThomasThis isn't about Melissa. Yeah, she finds it. She finds it, though I think there's a lot of Belushi spirit in Melissa as a performer. 0:27:55 - JustinOh, 100%, yeah, definitely She's also fearless and she's also a really good actor. Yeah, And that's John. like John Belushi's secret sauce is what a great actor he was. Being funny is one thing, but being a good actor is like 70, 80% of it. 0:28:10 - ThomasHe was an animal house and he wasn't the lead. I think hindsight tells people that Belushi was the lead in that film but he wasn't. 0:28:18 - JustinOh yeah, But he totally commanded attention in that movie, even the first scene when he's holding the beer and he pisses on Thomas Hulse's leg. It's like I want to know what this guy's doing next. I know the food scene in Animal House where he's stealing all the stuff out of the cafeteria. John Landis has said he was off camera like guiding him and saying, like I want you to be Cookie Monster, basically. 0:28:43 - ThomasWhen you're watching that movie. You got excited when Belushi would get on the screen. I mean when the hippie guy was kind of playing the guitar on the stairwell and Belushi just takes the guitar Poor Steve Ambition, Yeah. He takes the guitar and smashes it against the wall And then he just kind of looks at him and goes, sorry, And then walks away. 0:29:03 - JustinI mean, He doesn't even say it like, it's not even snide, it's like sorry, it's like it's this thing I had to do. It's not personal, yeah. 0:29:12 - ThomasYeah, nothing against you, It was just I had to do this. Yeah, yeah. So people I think, looking back at Animal House, think that that was a Belushi vehicle And it kind of wasn't. I mean, it was very much an ensemble but there were definitely leads that weren't Belushi in the movie, but that just speaks to the presence that he had about him. 0:29:29 - JustinWell, to speak again to the Chevy, John Dilemma, let's call it. You probably know they wanted Chevy Chase to play Eric Stratton, which was Tim, Tim, what's his last name? Anyway, the guy that played Eric Stratton, it was Otter and, yeah, Otter was the character's nickname, I think. Anyway, that was supposed to be Chevy And he didn't want to be second fiddle to John Belushi again, even though technically, yeah, he would have been. I guess you'd say he was the lead and they wanted Dan Ackroyd as D-Day, but Dan apparently was not ready. He felt he wasn't ready to make movies yet, which is weird because he'd made them in Canada. 0:30:04 - Thomasbut be that as it may, Yeah, that would have been such a perfect role for Ackroyd too. He would have just slid right in. 0:30:11 - JustinWell, the guy that I can't remember the actor's name, but the guy that played D-Day did a great job, bruce, yeah. 0:30:15 - ThomasBruce McGill. Yeah, he was really good in that. Belushi set a template too for we were talking about. I see a lot of him in Melissa McCarthy. I see a lot of him, of course, the comparison when Chris Farley got on the show that comparison was just out there for the taking and Chris Farley idolized John Belushi as well. He wanted to be Belushi We'll get to this but unfortunately he was like Belushi in a lot of ways good and bad, but Belushi, yeah, but Belushi, just he definitely set a template for a lot of performers as far as how they performed and as far as also what SNL was looking for in cast members going forward. I think a lot of times they were trying to find a Belushi sort of role when they were trying to feel a cast going forward. 0:31:00 - JustinWell, there's a through line with John Belushi and a lot of the other similar actors. I mean Bill Murray sort of has that kamikaze kind of go for it, fearless attitude as well. John Candy and Bill Murray and John Candy are also both incredible actors, and even Chris Farley, the through line. There is a guy named Del Close who was in the Compass Players. I think he was in the St Louis. There was an offshoot in St Louis And then eventually everything morphed into Second City And Del also worked with Second City for quite some time And then years later, when often started in Provolympic with so Sharna Halpern, they all received the tutelage of Del Close And I think he helped. I mean, stuff is there, but I think he helped bring that out in them as well. 0:31:44 - ThomasYeah, for sure, del Close, like a lot of people look at him as the godfather of improv, especially he worked with so many great improv and sketch actors. So a lot of these conversations point back to Del Close in a lot of ways, for sure. And I think you know, when they hired Farley, of course everybody said you know, they found their Belushi When the Horatio Sands started on the show. I think people made a lot of those comparisons And even Bobby Moynihan they said, oh, that's the Belushi or Farley archetype. So that's just, you know, john Belushi setting a template and just an example for the show, as far as what works on the show and what Lorne was trying to find. So what are some other characters or sketches or performances on SNL that you think our listeners should familiarize themselves with when discussing Belushi? 0:32:37 - JustinSo, getting back to the bees, i mean the bees weren't a great sketch, they were just stupid. But it was just funny seeing everybody dressed up in bees costumes. But the good thing that I think that came out of the bees was King Bee, john Belushi and Dan Ackroyd is a. You know, it was kind of a proto-Bloose brothers. They're dressed up in the bees costumes. They got the shades on Dan's playing the harmonica. They're playing with the Howard Shore band It was a Saturday Night Live band at the time And they do Slim Harpo's King Bee, and you know, john in the middle starts doing cartwheels and all kinds of other acrobatics And then it ends with him doing that when your man is doomed, when you're about to do Getting crazier and crazier and then getting up and falling off the stool. 0:33:30 - Speaker 10Want you to be my queen. 0:33:35 - Speaker 8We are together, we can make honey baby, but we'll never see. Okay, let's buzz a while. 0:33:54 - JustinYes, that's the place to start. I think there's there's other sketches that are that are worth mentioning, where he would try to show off his acting, you know, in the early days of Saturday Night Live and even further along, but they don't really do them anymore. There were always these little almost one-act plays, you know. Some of them were dramatic, didn't even have any any comedy in them, and John seemed to be featured in a lot of those. He was. There's one he did on the Sissy's basic show, which I think was in the third season. That's worth watching when that didn't work, that didn't help you find your manly powers. 0:34:24 - Speaker 9I started thinking about dead people and And if dead people secretly watched to see if you go to their funeral, you looking at certain parts of my body and You thinking the word dead. 0:34:38 - Speaker 8Well, no wonder. If you're wondering why there is no wonder, well, there is no wonder. You know I have been with if you know what I mean a semi-professional singer. I've had adult relations with a semi-professional singer, not to mention many others. Only mention the one that proves to a man who has been to Houston and left behind a satisfied semi-professional. 0:35:11 - JustinHe goes toe-to-toe with with Sissy and they both come out looking very good. 0:35:15 - ThomasYou get the sense that John, you know, relished being able to play opposite those great actors. I'm reminded of the dueling Brando's one that he did with Peter Boyle, where they traded Brando impressions. 0:35:30 - SketchI could have been a contender, could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it, charlie. 0:35:40 - SketchI got him a son of the callion governor. 0:35:46 - ThomasAnd you can tell Belushi was probably just having such a good time trading those with Peter Boyle, peter. 0:35:51 - JustinBoyle, another second city, chicago, alum, yeah they're probably super comfortable working with each other and there's that, and Joe Cocker, of course, and especially the Joe Cocker he did to Joe Cocker. 0:36:04 - ThomasThat's right. Yeah, one of the first kind of celebrities who gets impersonated walk-ons In SNL. Yeah, that that kind of became a thing a lot in the 90s. Yeah, that Joe Cocker was great. He did that really early too. You said that he had auditioned with it. He did that first in the third episode of season one, yeah, the Rob Reiner episode. 0:36:24 - JustinAnd there's another thing I was just gonna bring up That's also from the Rob Reiner episode when they They're dressed up as the bees and Rob has to tell them the bee sketch has been cut. 0:36:32 - SketchI'm sorry if you think we're ruining your show, mr Reiner, but See, you don't understand. We didn't ask the Beebees, you see, you, you've got Norman Lear and a first-rate riding staff, but this is all they came up with for us. 0:37:01 - SketchDo you think we like this? 0:37:04 - SketchNo, no, mr Reiner, but we don't have any choice. 0:37:15 - JustinThat's one of the first time he did one of those. I don't. I don't think there was a but, no, in it, but there could have been. That was leading, you know, laying the groundwork for those care, for those bits that he would do where he'd become increasingly frustrated with somebody. I could have gone out and done this, but Yeah, oh my gosh. 0:37:34 - ThomasAnd there's also in season three, The Olympia Cafe. I think that's another one that one of his famous ones from SNL that we should probably hit it was him. Bill Murray Played a great role in that. What do you remember what watching him in the Olympia Cafe sketches? 0:37:51 - JustinI love the history of those sketches. I think it was not. Novello had come in as a writer in season three and he brought that idea because he and John were both Familiar with the, the tavern in Chicago that was based on I think it was the Billy Goat Tavern. That's basically what happened. You know, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, no, no, fries, chips, no, coke, pepsi, all that kind of stuff, and John could also draw on his Background because his father was a restaurant owner, so I'm sure a lot of it came from that as well. But even the, the decision to make the owner Greek, and he appeared in a season two sketch as That character on one of those Jane Curtin talk shows. Even before they did those sketches and, yeah, i know in the history of the family they were Albanian and apparently in you know, chicago in the 40s or 50s That was still considered too ethnic, so they would often poses Greek to avoid, to avoid trouble. Yeah, i didn't know that. Guess that's where that comes from. Yeah, yeah, the only sketches were very, very ambitious, like to have a working grill and that you've ever been a studio 8h like it's? it's not huge, no no, it's not. 0:38:56 - ThomasYeah, rewatching those because I was fortunate enough to be able to, in the spring of 2022, go see SNL in person for the first time, and so it's kind of you? 0:39:05 - Justindid you dress for the or the or the? 0:39:07 - ThomasWe saw a dress rehearsal, getting a perspective of actually how small that studio is and then going back to watch sketches and, like you said, with the Olympia cafe, for example, they've put a working grill, they had, you know, it seems like elaborate for how small that studio is for sure. And John, in those sketches He seemed to me like he was the run, the one who was anchoring the sketch and kind of running things and taking it. Oh for sure, you're to there, you know, and he would interact with maybe Jane Curtin as an annoyed customer or Bill Murray is the sheepish Worker, but it was John sketch that he was just controlling. 0:39:43 - ThomasI'm sure he's playing a version of his father there. 0:39:46 - JustinOh yeah, Absolutely you can tell that's, that's just effortless. 0:40:11 - ThomasAnother sketch that it's a pre-tape. That's just lived in my brain since I was a kid. Inside that sort of showed Belushi's more kind of human relatable side was the little chocolate donuts. 0:40:30 - SketchA lot of miles training for that day and I'm down a lot of donuts. It tastes good and they've got the sugar I need to get me going in the morning. That's why a little chocolate don'ts have been on my training table since I was a kid. 0:40:48 - SketchLittle chocolate donuts, the donuts of champions. 0:40:55 - ThomasAnd that was more so because I don't feel as a viewer and this is a compliment to Belushi because, like I said, he would sink into his characters but I never felt totally like I knew who he was as a human being in a lot of ways Contrast that with Chris Farley, whose human nature just oozed out, but with little chocolate donuts. That was one of the times where I kind of saw relatability in Belushi. 0:41:20 - JustinYeah, i think my first was I think it's during the first season. They would do bits sometimes, i guess, maybe to fill time, like they'd have Gilda Radner do her You know what Gilda ate segment. Or just say, you know, hey, ma'am, you can go to bed. I'm not in the show this week, but there was one where John Belushi came out and tried to sell a bunch of his old records. Yes yes, but it was just him playing himself honestly with, i'm sure, albums that he owned, yeah, and that's yeah. I kind of got a better sense of him from that. 0:41:48 - ThomasRe-watching a lot of his stuff. I love getting those, those moments here and there of like, oh, i think that's Belushi, i think, yeah, i think that's hit, who he really is kind of coming through. But he was think he was Consciously, didn't. You know? I think he liked to play characters rather than I'm gonna play a version of myself, which is a testament to him. My gosh, like we said, he was so, so great at that. So unfortunately, after SNL he didn't have much time. He had two movies that came out after SNL that he starred in. It was continental divide and neighbors. I don't know if you've ever seen either of those. 0:42:23 - JustinI've seen neighbors. I've never seen continental divide. I've always wanted to but just haven't got around to it. But I only recently saw, even to go back, old boyfriends from 1978 where he plays Basically a more spiffed-up version of of Jake blues. He's just this guy that works for the local. I think it's the local flower shop that tell you Shire, who's the lead was. You know, she knew him back in high school, yeah, and he's got this band that he fronts at nights. But anyway, it's a shame that Him and Don Avello's movie noble rot didn't get made. 0:42:54 - ThomasDo you know what? what was the premise behind the movie with the that Don Avello was working on with him? 0:42:59 - Justinnoble rot It had something to do with. It wasn't abscam, but it was something like that. It was a, not a Ponzi scheme, but something along those lines. Reading a fuller outline of the of the premise, it sounded like it was gonna be a really good movie. But I think the film company was forcing John to be in the national ampoune's joy of sex. But she didn't want to do and they said well, if you don't do this, you don't get to make noble rot. But unfortunately none of it came to pass anyway, sadly. Cuz cuz of a speedball. 0:43:30 - ThomasSo yeah, march 5th 1982 he unfortunately passed away only 33 years old, gosh, i mean that I'm yeah. That must have sent shockwaves through the comedy world and through Hollywood in general. 0:43:43 - JustinI can't imagine. And even the people like the people that were there that day, like Robert De Niro was there, robin Williams was there. Robin Williams credits it with helping him stop taking cocaine, so at least something good came out of it But yeah, you can only imagine. And also the guilt like somebody like Lauren Michaels. How would you feel? See, i should have intervened, i should have helped. I'm just using his and him as an example. I'm not trying to put any guilt on him or anything, but yeah, like, not only is it a warning sign, maybe you should Curb your lifestyle a little bit, but also you should also try to help people that are, that are in trouble. But in the 70s, 70s and 80s, you know, people didn't really do that, we didn't have the equipment. It even happened to. You know, ten years later, with Kurt Cobain, nobody knew to just put the brakes on and say just stop for a while, go away, get your head together. See somebody talk about your feelings, whatever. 0:44:36 - ThomasBut yeah, it was just go, go, go And it was so prevalent around that time too. There's always stories about how SNL in the late 70s, there was a lot of cocaine, everything like that. So it must have been hard to tell somebody like Belushi that they have a problem, when he could just look and say, well, i've done this with you. Like, who are you to tell me? 0:44:57 - Justinthat I have a problem. It's a little different from the same bowl here, buddy. Yeah, so it must have been hard to intervene with somebody back then when it was just so prevalent. Nobody wants to be the parent right. 0:45:09 - ThomasYeah, yeah, exactly. And you know what's interesting to me? He was going to be in Ghostbusters And that was so unfortunate that we didn't get to see him in that form in Ghostbusters. But the monster Slimer, I believe, was modeled after Belushi. I don't know if that's apocryphal. 0:45:27 - JustinNow that you say that it sure looks like him. 0:45:30 - ThomasYeah. I think I believe that I've read that they kind of modeled Slimer after Belushi, And when you look at Slimer you can maybe see a nod to Belushi. What kind of career do you think that Belushi could have had had he? 0:45:44 - Justinkept clean. I think it would have been very similar to Bill Murray's. Oh, yeah, i think he would have continued doing comedy, obviously Like who's not going to hire him to be in a comedy. But even with Continental Divide, which is sort of a again, i haven't seen it, but from what I know it's sort of a comedy drama almost. You know what I mean. It's not balls to the wall, animal house or Blues Brothers with jokes and explosions and gags and everything. But yeah, i could see him doing a lot more dramatic roles And then maybe being like what happened with Bill Murray being taken on by somebody like Sophia Coppola who would bring him in every time because she knows he can deliver. 0:46:19 - ThomasOr somebody like Wes Anderson. Maybe there could have been a cool partnership with someone like Wes Anderson, like, yeah, belushi was that talented He could have. I think I could have seen him in more dramatic roles like Lost in Translation or something like that, like Murray got to do for sure. That's definitely not a stretch. So what is your final case if you had to sum it up, for John Belushi to be inducted into the SNL Hall of Fame. 0:46:42 - JustinTotal commitment. Larger than life persona, hugely talented actor, The first major star to emerge from the show post Chevy. Natural charisma, being a member of the first cast ever, I think, puts him above a lot of people, setting a template for many to follow, Best example being Chris Farley that we've discussed. But unfortunately, some of those habits also bled in The ability to upstage others with his mere presence on stage, the eyebrow cocking the one eyebrow. It's amazing what he could do with that. Unbelievable comic timing, preter natural talent, given that at the age of 16 or 17, a drama teacher at a high school was like there's something here That's very rare. Being a great actor and having it serve comedy, which doesn't happen, is a hard thing to do And it's more than half. The battle really is being a good actor, as we mentioned earlier, And I'd say a lot of people have come close to his level, like we said earlier Kate McKinnon on another area of the spectrum, Somebody like Dan Ackroyd, But I don't think anyone's reached that height yet. I think he is the greatest Saturday Night Live actor of all time. 0:48:06 - jDSo there's that. I want to thank Justin Renwick, i want to thank Thomas Senna, i want to thank Matt Ardill. I want to thank you for listening, but before we go any further, i want to listen to a sketch. I want to listen to something that Belushi did that seals the deal, that makes me feel that he is a legit, absolute Hall of Famer. I think that Justin's comment that he's the greatest SNL actor of all time is a bold statement. A bold statement There have been a lot. One who joined just three years after Belushi left is Eddie Murphy, and I don't know how you get bigger than Eddie Murphy. So is Belushi a Hall of Famer? Yeah, i think so. Is he a first ballot Hall of Famer? Likely, like, very likely. Is he the greatest of all time? I don't know, maybe that's another podcast for another time, but let's listen to this sketch now and get a better sense of what Mr Belushi brought to the table. 0:49:28 - SketchI guess this is my style. Well, they all thought I'd be the first to go. I was one of those live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse type, you know. Well, i guess they were wrong. There they are, all my friends. This is a not ready for prime time cemetery. Come on up. Well, here's Gilda Radner. She had her own show on Canadian television for years and years the Gilda Radner show. At least now I can see her on reruns. Here's a button. God bless her. Here's what Lorraine is, they say. She murdered her DJ husband and moved to the valley in California and had a pecan farm. She was this big when she died Jane Curtin. She married a stockbroker, had two children, moved upstate New York. She died of complications during cosmetic surgery. Here's Eric Morris. Eric went to the show and worked in the black theater for years And he died of an overdose of heroin. Here's Bill Murray. He lived the longest, 38 years. He was happy when he died, though He just grown his mustache back, probably still growing. Here's Chevy Chase. He died when that was first movie with Goldie Haan. Over here is Danny Ackroyd. I guess he loved his Harley too much. It clocked him at 175 miles an hour before the crash. It was a blur. I had to be called in to identify his body. I recognized him by his web toes. Well. Saturday Night Show was the best experience of my life. Now they're all gone. I miss every one of them. Why me? Why did I live so long? They're all dead. I'll tell you why Because I'm a dancer. 0:53:10 - jDThat was Don't Look Back in Anger, directed by Tom Schiller. You didn't get to see it, but it features an old John Belushi. If you're listening to this podcast, you're a big enough fan of SNL that you've seen the sketch, but if you haven't check it out, it's worth watching as well. It works on an audio level but it certainly is worth watching to see Belushi's chops as he is dressed up as an old man. It's very eerie. It's a great place to see that old man come Here. He is lamenting his deceased co-workers and reminiscing that it was the best time of his life. We never got to experience that old man Belushi and get to hear that from his lips. Schiller created a premonition. In a sense It's a wonderful piece of art. You can check it out for sure. That, my friends, is what I have for you this week. Make sure to register to vote. S and l h o f dot com. Click on the voting tab, click register to vote and you'll be in. Voting begins the 23rd of May, wraps up the 17th of June And on the 19th of June we will induct the class of season three. So on your way out, if you do me a favor, as you're walking past the weekend update exhibit turn out the lights, because the s and l hall of fame is now closed. 0:54:56 - AnnouncerThanks for listening to the s and l hall of fame podcast. Make sure to rate, review, share and subscribe to the show. Wherever you get your podcasts, follow us on social media at s and l h o f. This is Doug Denance saying. This is Doug Denance saying see you next week. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/snlhof/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A good night in with a classic movie, a nice way to end the day. www.cocktailnation.net James Spencer -Three coins in the Fountain. Beegie Adair-Senza Fine Chet Baker -Street of Dreams. Roger Williams-Oh My Beloved Daddy Three Sons- Volare Jackie Gleason -Speak Low Jack Jezzro -Sangiovese Rose Sinclair-Black Orpheus Linda Carone-Aged And Mellow Bradley Young Laguna breeze. The Royal Philarmonic Ettore Stratta- Like a Lover Stan Getz & João Gilberto- Dreamer BJ, Thomas-So many stars. Doris Day- meditation Bill Evans-Tenderly André Previn Blame it on my youth Johnny Crawford- Moon River 

Today we revisit one of our most popular episodes, an early interview with Sheryl Paul, author of "The Conscious Bride". Sheryl's work allows us to reflect on how the pain, grief, discomfort, and vulnerability that can arise throughout the wedding process can actually be doorways into joy if we are willing to let them in.    Music by Terry Hughes   Links: Sheryl Paul's work The Conscious Bride Shelter in Place Podcast   Also Check Out: Inviting Grief to the Wedding My Self-Marriage Story   Rate This Podcast Full Transcript   Paul: I'm always interested in what's not being talked about what people are experiencing, but are trying to stuff away, trying to sequester, trying to sweep into the corner under the rug... when all that does is create shame and all that does is create anxiety.   Sheryl Paul has a unique ability to see the invisible, to see what has been silenced. Her book "The Conscious Bride" has been helping couples prepare for marriage for 20 years - and prepare in a very specific way. Her work helps couples create room for all of the emotions that come with transition, not just the picture perfect ones. Funny thing is, that allows for even more joy. Join me for a conversation with Sheryl Paul.   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 I got engaged six years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a book called "The Conscious Bride". Now, I'm not a reader, as my husband will tell you, but I devoured this book. I loved it because it touched on the shadow, the stuff we don't talk about, the stuff that gets in our way when we want to feel one way but actually feel a myriad of other ways all at the same time. It named the shadow that hovers over the wedding: the attachment, the fear, the uncertainty, the hidden power-struggles and the grief that lies beneath them, and that a big part of stepping into a new life is letting go of the old one - and not just for the couple. The Conscious Bride gave me permission to feel all the ways, and it helped me create room for everyone else to feel all the ways too, so ultimately, we could all process the transition without getting into weird fights about random things. I was so happy to have a chance to speak with Sheryl Paul.    Thomas: So what led you to write this book?   Paul: So, I was in a master's program around that time. I was at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it has a very strong Jungian focus. And I had always been interested in rites of passages and I had a deep sense that there was a lot that was not being talked about around the wedding. And I started to interview women and I did a lot of interviews, especially when it came time to write the book, which came from my master's thesis. So it started out as as a thesis and then evolve into a book. And I started to see that there was a big gap in the cultural conversation around around transitions in general. All transitions are bypassed and overlooked, but particularly the wedding and then in particular, how much focus there is on the joy and the perfection and everything has to be blissful and ecstatic from the moment of the proposal into the first year of the wedding, and there was just no conversation happening about the shadow, about the death experience, about what women (and men) are actually experiencing quite a bit of a time. And, you know, the more I researched and the more I looked and the more I spoke, the more it became quite clear to me that just that again, that there was a real gap in the conversation around this pivotal rite of passage, one of our few ceremonies that we still invoke in the culture. And yet it's done in such a way where we really gloss over the element of a transition, of the reality that when you are in transition, you are in a death experience, you are in a liminal zone, you are between identities, you are letting go, you are grieving. And we only expect people to feel joyful. It creates a lot of anxiety and it creates even more chaos than there naturally would be around an event like this. Because I'm feeling sad, because I have a sense of loss, because I feel like a part of me is dying, because I'm not over-the-moon ecstatic... something must be wrong with me, or with my partner, or with the decision to get married - something's wrong. And it's an incredibly deep sigh of relief to the soul to know that nothing is wrong. In fact, the more you let those difficult feelings in, the more you will open to the joy; that the pain and the grief and the discomfort and vulnerability are the doorways into the joy, into what we are expected to see all and into what we hope to feel. And what I started to say earlier was that that the wedding more than any other transition, I think, has (probably being pregnant becoming a mother comes close) carries a very strong cultural expectation of unilateral joy and it is supported in a big way by the wedding industry that sells perfection and sells joy. So it's a it's very big money behind selling us the bill of goods by selling us this message that you are supposed to be joyful and the way to do that is to create a perfect event.   Thomas: How do you work with someone if they're just starting to realize that they don't have to only feel joyful?   Paul: So, I tell them to read my book. And, you know, it's really the first part it's about re educating people to understand all of the normal and necessary feelings that accompany this transition. And once they understand that everything they're feeling is normal and necessary, they can start to let it in and and feel it, feel the grief, feel the loss, feel the vulnerability, feel the loneliness. These are all normal feelings that accompany transitions. So once we give ourselves permission to feel without that overlay of "because I'm feeling this it means there's something wrong" everything changes from there. We don't then have to misassign meaning to the feelings and to think, "Because I'm feeling sad, it means I'm making mistake." No, it has nothing to do with that. You're feeling sad because you are in a rite of passage. You're feeling sad because you are in the death experience, letting go of this identity, this primary identity as single person, as daughter, and shifting into an entirely new stage of life, a new identity. And there is no way to go through that without feeling grief.   Thomas: You spend a good portion of the book talking about how the bride is separating from the father/father figure and the mother/mother figure and the friends. Can you say more about that process?   Paul: Yes, so it can go a few different ways. If the bride is very close to her father, that's one set of emotions and experiences where there is tends to be a lot of grief, a lot of crying, really good, medicinal, necessary crying to make that separation process... and to make it more effective to make it more complete to make it more conscious. Again, in the naming, to say, I am separating from my dad, I am no longer going to be... Yes, I'm his daughter, but not in the same way, not as my primary identity. That my new partner is going to be number one and I'm transferring allegiance. So, that's one example of one way that it can go if if someone's very close to their father. If somebody doesn't have a close relationship with their father or there is no father figure in their life, that's a different kind of grief of the loss of not having had that or never having had that. The same as somebody has passed away. If somebody who's getting married and their mother's no longer alive. You know, that's, that's one way that grief can come through, as opposed to a mother who is very much alive and very much involved. And then there's a separation. There's… there's a loosening of cords that is required.    Thomas: I'm curious as you're speaking how this applies, I'm sure it's very different, but how it applies to folks who were older when they get married, or maybe a second marriage.   Paul: It can be different, it can be similar. It depends. It depends on a lot of factors. But regardless of the age, especially if it's a first marriage and you're getting married at 40, you're still letting go of a massive identity. And in some ways, it's even more of a letting go because of all of those years that you spent as a non-married person. And so there's a lot of grieving, a lot of shedding of the independence, the separateness, all of the control that you have when you are a non-married person, that every inch of your life is your own: your home, your space, how you spend your time, how you organize your weekend, it's all yours. And so that is its own massive death experience for somebody who marries later, you know, and who has had that many more years than someone who's 22 if you're 42, that's a lot of years of being the sole architect of your life.   Thomas: So you work with people around transitions, all kinds of transitions now, and I'm curious if ceremony plays a part in that with them.   Paul: I'm a big fan of ceremony. Because my work is largely over the internet. I'm not the one doing the ceremony with them. I would love to be that person, but I'm not. But I always encourage people to create ceremony and create rituals. And so, you know, if it's somebody getting married... and I've had a lot more men come my way, by the way, since I wrote The Conscious Bride. And I'm thinking of some right now who are in one of my small coaching groups. And he's getting married on Saturday, and I won't, I won't share the specifics, but it's... because it's his story. But it's really beautiful to witness men in their transitional process and the rituals that they come up with because I encourage people to find their own rituals that are meaningful to them. Ways to acknowledge the end of you know, in his sake, his bachelorhood that that time in his life is over. And so he has been sharing these incredibly potent rituals that have come to him for ways of recognizing that that time in his life is over. And what ritual does is, as you know, is it, it concretizes, it makes it and embodies what's happening, so that it brings it out of just that realm of talking about it and it sends it into a realm that we can't see with our five senses, but very much exists and yet calls on the five senses to help transmute the experience into another form. And so rituals help us cross over that sometimes very scary divide that just looks like a big, cavernous, empty space, crossing from one identity to a new identity, from one stage of life to the next. And without the rituals we are... we're pretty lost and so, you know, again, as I, as I said earlier, the wedding is one of the few ceremonies that we have, which comes with ritual. A lot of people tend to minimize or diminish the ceremonial aspect because they're so focused on the party and the reception, you know, that's where all of the energy goes. When really, it's the ceremony that has so much power to carry us over the divide between one stage and the next.   Thomas: And that's something I'm trying to encourage and put seeds out in the world for as well, that people take that the ritual, the ceremony of the marriage, the wedding and they, they feel free to do it their way so that it's powerful and is as powerful and meaningful for the couple as possible.   Paul: Yes, yes! And I think we are at this extraordinary time in our world where we have freedom to do that, where we are breaking out of the traditions that have gone stale and revitalizing them with personal meaning of what is meaningful for you. And there may be long-standing time-honored traditions that are still meaningful. And I'm by no means one to throw everything out that we've come from, because many of those rituals are gorgeous and meaningful - but only if they're meaningful for the individual, right? Only if they land in a place where something inside of you says yes, right? That helps me, that bolsters me, that comforts me. Right? So, you know, whether it's at a Jewish wedding standing under the Chuppah, you know, it's just this beautiful symbol of, of our new home and and this, you know, long standing tradition... if that's meaningful to somebody great. If it's not, then it really.. it's not going to do anything for you on a spiritual level.   I shared with Sheryl that before my wedding, I created a self-commitment ceremony for myself. And in that ceremony I presenced all of my Ancestral grandmothers with the acknowledgement of how important marriage might have been for them, how much of a survival tool. I did this because women's  standing in society has evolved so much even since my mother's generation, but yet we are still connected to our Ancestral legacy and felt like a really important thing to me.    Paul: That's incredibly beautiful that you did that and so powerful and it's probably the number one fear that comes up for women that I'm working with in their pre-wedding time in their engagement, is the fear of what does marriage mean? And does it mean that I am beholden to this person now and I lose all sense of self and I become boring and frumpy and... This is the legacy. This is what we've been handed, right? This is what it has meant for thousands and thousands of years is that for women, marriage has meant really the death of self: I exist, to take care of the man and to take care of the children and that's it. And so there's this very deep ancestral legacy that we have to consciously break with and recognize that we are so lucky and we are so blessed to be on this new threshold, that we get to redefine what marriage means for us. And we only can really know that after we've taken the leap, because on the other side, on the first side, on the engagement side, it just all looks and sounds so scary to most women. And you know, that's why I have so many exercises in The Conscious Bride, more-so I think in The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner, on what does it mean to be a wife? What does that mean to you? What does the word wife connote? When you think of wife, what is the connotation for you? And it's very rare that someone's going to say, "Oh, I see this rad, sexy woman, you know, like, doing like, the dance on the rooftops." Like, no, that's not usually what we think of when we hear the word wife. But it could be. More and more we are redefining that. And we are seeing that. And so I tell people, but look out into the world today and find those those models of marriage where you see a woman who is doing her life fully, you know, and yes, maybe she's also a mother and she's, you know, loves being married and she's fully committed to her path and and making her offerings, and doing her work in the world. Right? Separate from wife and mother. So, yeah, I love, I love that I love what you share. I love what you did. I think that is not only powerful, but essential on that ceremonial ritual level to recognize what we've come from.   Thomas: I'm just so happy and honored to have the chance to talk to you after, after all this time of really, really, really appreciating your book and your wisdom.   Paul: Yeah, thank you, Colleen.   It means a great deal to me to have the opportunity to share Sheryl's wisdom with you. I hope that you are able to use it or pass it along to a friend. Here's one final bit of wisdom, a quote from The Conscious Bride. "A marriage is a rite of passage no matter when it occurs, and the woman must still pass through the phases of her transformation. She must die, she must sit in the unknown, and then she will be reborn."   Sheryl Paul is the author of The Conscious Bride and The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner. Her website contains a plethora of resources for addressing life transitions. Learn more about Sheryl and her work at https://conscious-transitions.com. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. 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 Referenced: ChaosSearch: https://www.chaossearch.io/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChaosSearch Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CHAOSSEARCH/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at AWS AppConfig. Engineers love to solve, and occasionally create, problems. But not when it's an on-call fire-drill at 4 in the morning. Software problems should drive innovation and collaboration, NOT stress, and sleeplessness, and threats of violence. That's why so many developers are realizing the value of AWS AppConfig Feature Flags. Feature Flags let developers push code to production, but hide that that feature from customers so that the developers can release their feature when it's ready. This practice allows for safe, fast, and convenient software development. You can seamlessly incorporate AppConfig Feature Flags into your AWS or cloud environment and ship your Features with excitement, not trepidation and fear. To get started, go to snark.cloud/appconfig. That's snark.cloud/appconfig.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted episode is brought to us by our returning sponsor and friend, ChaosSearch. And once again, the fine folks at ChaosSearch has seen fit to basically subject their CTO and Founder, Thomas Hazel, to my slings and arrows. Thomas, thank you for joining me. It feels like it's been a hot minute since we last caught up.Thomas: Yeah, Corey. Great to be on the program again, then. I think it's been almost a year. So, I look forward to these. They're fun, they're interesting, and you know, always a good time.Corey: It's always fun to just take a look at companies' web pages in the Wayback Machine, archive.org, where you can see snapshots of them at various points in time. Usually, it feels like this is either used for long-gone things and people want to remember the internet of yesteryear, or alternately to deliver sick burns with retorting a “This you,” when someone winds up making an unpopular statement. One of the approaches I like to use it for, which is significantly less nefarious—usually—is looking back in time at companies' websites, just to see how the positioning of the product evolves over time.And ChaosSearch has had an interesting evolution in that direction. But before we get into that, assuming that there might actually be people listening who do not know the intimate details of exactly what it is you folks do, what is ChaosSearch, and what might you folks do?Thomas: Yeah, well said, and I look forward to [laugh] doing the Wayback Time because some of our ideas, way back when, seemed crazy, but now they make a lot of sense. So, what ChaosSearch is all about is transforming customers' cloud object stores like Amazon S3 into an analytical database that supports search and SQL-type use cases. Now, where's that apply? In log analytics, observability, security, security data lakes, operational data, particularly at scale, where you just stream your data into your data lake, connect our service, our SaaS service, to that lake and automagically we index it and provide well-known APIs like Elasticsearch and integrate with Kibana or Grafana, and SQL APIs, something like, say, a Superset or Tableau or Looker into your data. So, you stream it in and you get analytics out. And the key thing is the time-cost complexity that we all know that operational data, particularly at scale, like terabytes and a day and up causes challenges, and we all know how much it costs.Corey: They certainly do. One of the things that I found interesting is that, as I've mentioned before, when I do consulting work at The Duckbill Group, we have absolutely no partners in the entire space. That includes AWS, incidentally. But it was easy in the beginning because I was well aware of what you folks were up to, and it was great when there was a use case that matched of you're spending an awful lot of money on Elasticsearch; consider perhaps migrating some of that—if it makes sense—to ChaosSearch. Ironically, when you started sponsoring some of my nonsense, that conversation got slightly trickier where I had to disclose, yeah our media arm is does have sponsorships going on with them, but that has no bearing on what I'm saying.And if they take their sponsorships away—please don't—then we would still be recommending them because it's the right answer, and it's what we would use if we were in your position. We receive no kickbacks or partner deal or any sort of reseller arrangement because it just clouds the whole conflict of interest perception. But you folks have been fantastic for a long time in a bunch of different ways.Thomas: Well, you know, I would say that what you thought made a lot of sense made a lot of sense to us as well. So, the ChaosSearch idea just makes sense. Now, you had to crack some code, solve some problems, invent some technology, and create some new architecture, but the idea that Elasticsearch is a useful solution with all the tooling, the visualization, the wonderful community around that, was a good place to start, but here's the problem: setting it up, scaling it out, keep it up, when things are happening, things go bump in the night. All those are real challenges, and one of them was just the storaging of the data. Well, what if you could make S3 the back-end store? One hundred percent; no SSDs or HDDs. Makes a lot of sense.And then support the APIs that your tooling uses. So, it just made a lot of sense on what we were trying to do, just no one thought of it. Now, if you think about the Northstar you were talking about, you know, five, six years ago, when I said, transforming cloud storage into an analytical database for search and SQL, people thought that was crazy and mad. Well, now everyone's using Cloud Storage, everyone's using S3 as a data lake. That's not in question anymore.But it was a question five, six, you know, years ago. So, when we met up, you're like, “Well, that makes sense.” It always made sense, but people either didn't think was possible, or were worried, you know, I'll just try to set up an Elastic cluster and deal with it. Because that's what happens when you particularly deal with large-scale implementations. So, you know, to us, we would love the Elastic API, the tooling around it, but what we all know is the cost, the time the complexity, to manage it, to scale it out, just almost want to pull your hair out. And so, that's where we come in is, don't change what you do, just change how you do it.Corey: Every once in a while, I'll talk to a client who's running an Amazon Elasticsearch cluster, and they have nothing but good things to say about it. Which, awesome. On the one hand, part of me wishes that I had some of their secrets, but often what's happened is that they have this down to a science, they have a data lifecycle that's clearly defined and implemented, the cluster is relatively static, so resizes aren't really a thing, and it just works for their use cases. And in those scenarios, like, “Do you care about the bill?” “Not overly. We don't have to think about it.”Great. Then why change? If there's no pain, you're not going to sell someone something, especially when we're talking, this tends to be relatively smaller-scale as well. It's okay, great, they're spending $5,000 a month on it. It doesn't necessarily justify the engineering effort to move off.Now, when you start looking at this, and, “Huh, that's a quarter million bucks a month we're spending on this nonsense, and it goes down all the time,” yeah, that's when it starts to be one of those logical areas to start picking apart and diving into. What's also muddied the waters since the last time we really went in-depth on any of this was it used to be we would be talking about it exactly like we are right now, about how it's Elasticsearch-compatible. Technically, these days, we probably shouldn't be saying it is OpenSearch compatible because of the trademark issues between Elastic and AWS and the Schism of the OpenSearch fork of the Elasticsearch project. And now it feels like when you start putting random words in front of the word search, ChaosSearch fits right in. It feels like your star is rising.Thomas: Yeah, no, well said. I appreciate that. You know, it's funny when Elastic changed our license, we all didn't know what was going to happen. We knew something was going to happen, but we didn't know what was going to happen. And Amazon, I say ironically, or, more importantly, decided they'll take up the open mantle of keeping an open, free solution.Now, obviously, they recommend running that in their cloud. Fair enough. But I would say we don't hear as much Elastic replacement, as much as OpenSearch replacement with our solution because of all the benefits that we talked about. Because the trigger points for when folks have an issue with the OpenSearch or Elastic stack is got too expensive, or it was changing so much and it was falling over, or the complexity of the schema changing, or all the above. The pipelines were complex, particularly at scale.That's both for Elasticsearch, as well as OpenSearch. And so, to us, we want either to win, but we want to be the replacement because, you know, at scale is where we shine. But we have seen a real trend where we see less Elasticsearch and more OpenSearch because the community is worried about the rules that were changed, right? You see it day in, day out, where you have a community that was built around open and fair and free, and because of business models not working or the big bad so-and-so is taking advantage of it better, there's a license change. And that's a trust change.And to us, we're following the OpenSearch path because it's still open. The 600-pound gorilla or 900-pound gorilla of Amazon. But they really held the mantle, saying, “We're going to stay open, we assume for as long as we know, and we'll follow that path. But again, at that scale, the time, the costs, we're here to help solve those problems.” Again, whether it's on Amazon or, you know, Google et cetera.Corey: I want to go back to what I mentioned at the start of this with the Wayback Machine and looking at how things wound up unfolding in the fullness of time. The first time that it snapshotted your site was way back in the year 2018, which—Thomas: Nice. [laugh].Corey: Some of us may remember, and at that point, like, I wasn't doing any work with you, and later in time I would make fun of you folks for this, but back then your brand name was in all caps, so I would periodically say things like this episode is sponsored by our friends at [loudly] CHAOSSEARCH.Thomas: [laugh].Corey: And once you stopped capitalizing it and that had faded from the common awareness, it just started to look like I had the inability to control the volume of my own voice. Which, fair, but generally not mid-sentence. So, I remember those early days, but the positioning of it was, “The future of log management and analytics,” back in 2018. Skipping forward a year later, you changed this because apparently in 2019, the future was already here. And you were talking about, “Log search analytics, purpose-built for Amazon S3. Store everything, ask anything all on your Amazon S3.”Which is awesome. You were still—unfortunately—going by the all caps thing, but by 2020, that wound up changing somewhat significantly. You were at that point, talking for it as, “The data platform for scalable log analytics.” Okay, it's clearly heading in a log direction, and that made a whole bunch of sense. And now today, you are, “The data lake platform for analytics at scale.” So, good for you, first off. You found a voice?Thomas: [laugh]. Well, you know, it's funny, as a product mining person—I'll take my marketing hat off—we've been building the same solution with the same value points and benefits as we mentioned earlier, but the market resonates with different terminology. When we said something like, “Transforming your Cloud Object Storage like S3 into an analytical database,” people were just were like, blown away. Is that even possible? Right? And so, that got some eyes.Corey: Oh, anything is a database if you hold that wrong. Absolutely.Thomas: [laugh]. Yeah, yeah. And then you're saying log analytics really resonated for a few years. Data platform, you know, is more broader because we do more broader things. And now we see over the last few years, observability, right? How do you fit in the observability viewpoint, the stack where log analytics is one aspect to it?Some of our customers use Grafana on us for that lens, and then for the analysis, alerting, dashboarding. You can say that Kibana in the hunting aspect, the log aspects. So, you know, to us, we're going to put a message out there that resonates with what we're hearing from our customers. For instance, we hear things like, “I need a security data lake. I need that. I need to stream all my data. I need to have all the data because what happens today that now, I need to know a week, two weeks, 90 days.”We constantly hear, “I need at least 90 days forensics on that data.” And it happens time and time again. We hear in the observability stack where, “Hey, I love Datadog, but I can't afford it more than a week or two.” Well, that's where we come in. And we either replace Datadog for the use cases that we support, or we're auxiliary to it.Sometimes we have an existing Grafana implementation, and then they store data in us for the long tail. That could be the scenario. So, to us, the message is around what resonates with our customers, but in the end, it's operational data, whether you want to call it observability, log analytics, security analytics, like the data lake, to us, it's just access to your data, all your data, all the time, and supporting the APIs and the tooling that you're using. And so, to me, it's the same product, but the market changes with messaging and requirements. And this is why we always felt that having a search and SQL platform is so key because what you'll see in Elastic or OpenSearch is, “Well, I only support the Elastic API. I can't do correlations. I can't do this. I can't do that. I'm going to move it over to say, maybe Athena but not so much. Maybe a Snowflake or something else.”Corey: “Well, Thomas, it's very simple. Once you learn our own purpose-built, domain-specific language, specifically for our product, well, why are you still sitting here, go learn that thing.” People aren't going to do that.Thomas: And that's what we hear. It was funny, I won't say what the company was, a big banking company that we're talking to, and we hear time and time again, “I only want to do it via the Elastic tooling,” or, “I only want to do it via the BI tooling.” I hear it time and time again. Both of these people are in the same company.Corey: And that's legitimate as well because there's a bunch of pre-existing processes pointing at things and we're not going to change 200 different applications in their data model just because you want to replace a back-end system. I also want to correct myself. I was one tab behind. This year's branding is slightly different: “Search and analyze unlimited log data in your cloud object storage.” Which is, I really like the evolution on this.Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And I love it. And what was interesting is the moving, the setting up, the doubling of your costs, let's say you have—I mean, we deal with some big customers that have petabytes of data; doubling your petabytes, that means, if your Elastic environment is costing you tens of millions and then you put into Snowflake, that's also going to be tens of millions. And with a solution like ours, you have really cost-effective storage, right? Your cloud storage, it's secure, it's reliable, it's Elastic, and you attach Chaos to get the well-known APIs that your well-known tooling can analyze.So, to us, our evolution has been really being the end viewpoint where we started early, where the search and SQL isn't here today—and you know, in the future, we'll be coming out with more ML type tooling—but we have two sides: we have the operational, security, observability. And a lot of the business side wants access to that data as well. Maybe it's app data that they need to do analysis on their shopping cart website, for instance.Corey: The thing that I find curious is, the entire space has been iterating forward on trying to define observability, generally, as whatever people are already trying to sell in many cases. And that has seemed to be a bit of a stumbling block for a lot of folks. I figured this out somewhat recently because I've built the—free for everyone to use—the lasttweetinaws.com, Twitter threading client.That's deployed to 20 different AWS regions because it's go—the idea is that should be snappy for people, no matter where they happen to be on the planet, and I use it for conferences when I travel, so great, let's get ahead of it. But that also means I've got 20 different sources of logs. And given that it's an omnibus Lambda function, it's very hard to correlate that to users, or user sessions, or even figure out where it's going. The problem I've had is, “Oh, well, this seems like something I could instrument to spray logs somewhere pretty easily, but I don't want to instrument it for 15 different observability vendors. Why don't I just use otel—or Open Telemetry—and then tell that to throw whatever I care about to various vendors and do a bit of a bake-off?” The problem, of course, is that open telemetry and Lambda seem to be in just the absolute wrong directions. A lot.Thomas: So, we see the same trend of otel coming out, and you know, this is another API that I'm sure we're going to go all-in on because it's getting more and more talked about. I won't say it's the standard that I think is trending to all your points about I need to normalize a process. But as you mentioned, we also need to correlate across the data. And this is where, you know, there are times where search and hunting and alerting is awesome and wonderful and solves all your needs, and sometimes correlation. Imagine trying to denormalize all those logs, set up a pipeline, put it into some database, or just do a SELECT *, you know, join this to that to that, and get your answers.And so, I think both OpenTelemetry and SQL and search all need to be played into one solution, or at least one capability because if you're not doing that, you're creating some hodgepodge pipeline to move it around and ultimately get your questions answered. And if it takes weeks—maybe even months, depending on the scale—you may sometimes not choose to do it.Corey: One other aspect that has always annoyed me about more or less every analytics company out there—and you folks are no exception to this—is the idea of charging per gigabyte ingested because that inherently sets up a weird dichotomy of, well, this is costing a lot, so I should strive to log less. And that is sort of the exact opposite, not just of the direction you folks want customers to go in, but also where customers themselves should be going in. Where you diverge from an awful lot of those other companies because of the nature of how you work, is that you don't charge them again for retention. And the idea that, yeah, the fact that anything stored in ChaosSearch lives in your own S3 buckets, you can set your own lifecycle policies and do whatever you want to do with that is a phenomenal benefit, just because I've always had a dim view of short-lived retention periods around logs, especially around things like audit logs. And these days, I would consider getting rid of audit logging data and application logging data—especially if there's a correlation story—any sooner than three years feels like borderline malpractice.Thomas: [laugh]. We—how many times—I mean, we've heard it time and time again is, “I don't have access to that data because it was too costly.” No one says they don't want the data. They just can't afford the data. And one of the key premises that if you don't have all the data, you're at risk, particularly in security—I mean, even audits. I mean, so many times our customers ask us, you know, “Hey, what was this going on? What was that go on?” And because we can so cost-effectively monitor our own service, we can provide that information for them. And we hear this time and time again.And retention is not a very sexy aspect, but it's so crucial. Anytime you look in problems with X solution or Y solution, it's the cost of the data. And this is something that we wanted to address, officially. And why do we make it so cost-effective and free after you ingest it was because we were using cloud storage. And it was just a great place to land the data cost-effective, securely.Now, with that said, there are two types of companies I've seen. Everybody needs at least 90 days. I see time and time again. Sure, maybe daily, in a weeks, they do a lot of their operation, but 90 days is where it lands. But there's also a bunch of companies that need it for years, for compliance, for audit reasons.And imagine trying to rehydrate, trying to rebuild—we have one customer—again I won't say who—has two petabytes of data that they rehydrate when they need it. And they say it's a nightmare. And it's growing. What if you just had it always alive, always accessible? Now, as we move from search to SQL, there are use cases where in the log world, they just want to pay upfront, fixed fee, this many dollars per terabyte, but as we get into the more ad hoc side of it, more and more folks are asking for, “Can I pay per query?”And so, you'll see coming out soon, about scenarios where we have a different pricing model. For logs, typically, you want to pay very consistent, you know, predetermined cost structure, but in the case of more security data lakes, where you want to go in the past and not really pay for something until you use it, that's going to be an option as well coming out soon. So, I would say you need both in the pricing models, but you need the data to have either side, right?Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at ChaosSearch. You could run Elasticsearch or Elastic Cloud—or OpenSearch as they're calling it now—or a self-hosted ELK stack. But why? ChaosSearch gives you the same API you've come to know and tolerate, along with unlimited data retention and no data movement. Just throw your data into S3 and proceed from there as you would expect. This is great for IT operations folks, for app performance monitoring, cybersecurity. If you're using Elasticsearch, consider not running Elasticsearch. They're also available now in the AWS marketplace if you'd prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count towards your EDB commitment. Discover what companies like Equifax, Armor Security, and Blackboard already have. To learn more, visit chaossearch.io and tell them I sent you just so you can see them facepalm, yet again.Corey: You'd like to hope. I mean, you could always theoretically wind up just pulling what Ubiquiti apparently did—where this came out in an indictment that was unsealed against an insider—but apparently one of their employees wound up attempting to extort them—which again, that's not their fault, to be clear—but what came out was that this person then wound up setting the CloudTrail audit log retention to one day, so there were no logs available. And then as a customer, I got an email from them saying there was no evidence that any customer data had been accessed. I mean, yeah, if you want, like, the world's most horrifyingly devilish best practice, go ahead and set your log retention to nothing, and then you too can confidently state that you have no evidence of anything untoward happening.Contrast this with what AWS did when there was a vulnerability reported in AWS Glue. Their analysis of it stated explicitly, “We have looked at our audit logs going back to the launch of the service and have conclusively proven that the only time this has ever happened was in the security researcher who reported the vulnerability to us, in their own account.” Yeah, one of those statements breeds an awful lot of confidence. The other one makes me think that you're basically being run by clowns.Thomas: You know what? CloudTrail is such a crucial—particularly Amazon, right—crucial service because of that, we see time and time again. And the challenge of CloudTrail is that storing a long period of time is costly and the messiness the JSON complexity, every company struggles with it. And this is how uniquely—how we represent information, we can model it in all its permutations—but the key thing is we can store it forever, or you can store forever. And time and time again, CloudTrail is a key aspect to correlate—to your question—correlate this happened to that. Or do an audit on two years ago, this happened.And I got to tell you, to all our listeners out there, please store your CloudTrail data—ideally in ChaosSearch—because you're going to need it. Everyone always needs that. And I know it's hard. CloudTrail data is messy, nested JSON data that can explode; I get it. You know, there's tricks to do it manually, although quite painful. But CloudTrail, every one of our customers is indexing with us in CloudTrail because of stories like that, as well as the correlation across what maybe their application log data is saying.Corey: I really have never regretted having extra logs lying around, especially with, to be very direct, the almost ridiculously inexpensive storage classes that S3 offers, especially since you can wind up having some of the offline retrieval stuff as part of a lifecycle policy now with intelligent tiering. I'm a big believer in just—again—the Glacier Deep Archive I've at the cost of $1,000 a month per petabyte, with admittedly up to 12 hours of calling that as a latency. But that's still, for audit logs and stuff like that, why would I ever want to delete things ever again?Thomas: You're exactly right. And we have a bunch of customers that do exactly that. And we automate the entire process with you. Obviously, it's your S3 account, but we can manage across those tiers. And it's just to a point where, why wouldn't you? It's so cost-effective.And the moments where you don't have that information, you're at risk, whether it's internal audits, or you're providing a service for somebody, it's critical data. With CloudTrail, it's critical data. And if you're not storing it and if you're not making it accessible through some tool like an Elastic API or Chaos, it's not worth it. I think, to your point about your story, it's epically not worth it.Corey: It's really not. It's one of those areas where that is not a place to overly cost optimize. This is—I mean we talked earlier about my business and perceptions of conflict of interest. There's a reason that I only ever charge fixed-fee and not percentage of savings or whatnot because, at some point, I'll be placed in a position of having to say nonsense, like, “Do you really need all of these backups?” That doesn't make sense at that point.I do point out things like you have hourly disk snapshots of your entire web fleet, which has no irreplaceable data on them dating back five years. Maybe cleaning some of that up might be the right answer. The happy answer is somewhere in between those two, and it's a business decision around exactly where that line lies. But I'm a believer in never regretting having kept logs almost into perpetuity. Until and unless I start getting more or less pillaged by some particularly rapacious vendor that's oh, yeah, we're going to charge you not just for ingest, but also for retention. And for how long you want to keep it, we're going to treat it like we're carving it into platinum tablets. No. Stop that.Thomas: [laugh]. Well, you know, it's funny, when we first came out, we were hearing stories that vendors were telling customers why they didn't need their data, to your point, like, “Oh, you don't need that,” or, “Don't worry about that.” And time and time again, they said, “Well, turns out we didn't need that.” You know, “Oh, don't index all your data because you just know what you know.” And the problem is that life doesn't work out that way business doesn't work out that way.And now what I see in the market is everyone's got tiering scenarios, but the accessibility of that data takes some time to get access to. And these are all workarounds and bandaids to what fundamentally is if you design an architecture and a solution is such a way, maybe it's just always hot; maybe it's just always available. Now, we talked about tiering off to something very, very cheap, then it's like virtually free. But you know, our solution was, whether it's ultra warm, or this tiering that takes hours to rehydrate—hours—no one wants to live in that world, right? They just want to say, “Hey, on this date on this year, what was happening? And let me go look, and I want to do it now.”And it has to be part of the exact same system that I was using already. I didn't have to call up IT to say, “Hey, can you rehydrate this?” Or, “Can I go back to the archive and look at it?” Although I guess we're talking about archiving with your website, viewing from days of old, I think that's kind of funny. I should do that more often myself.Corey: I really wish that more companies would put themselves in the customers' shoes. And for what it's worth, periodically, I've spoken to a number of very happy ChaosSearch customers. I haven't spoken to any angry ones yet, which tells me you're either terrific at crisis comms, or the product itself functions as intended. So, either way, excellent job. Now, which team of yours is doing that excellent job, of course, is going to depend on which one of those outcomes it is. But I'm pretty good at ferreting out stories on those things.Thomas: Well, you know, it's funny, being a company that's driven by customer ask, it's so easy build what the customer wants. And so, we really take every input of what the customer needs and wants—now, there are cases where we relace Splunk. They're the Cadillac, they have all the bells and whistles, and there's times where we'll say, “Listen, that's not what we're going to do. We're going to solve these problems in this vector.” But they always keep on asking, right? You know, “I want this, I want that.”But most of the feedback we get is exactly what we should be building. People need their answers and how they get it. It's really helped us grow as a company, grow as a product. And I will say ever since we went live now many, many years ago, all our roadmap—other than our Northstar of transforming cloud storage into a search SQL big data analytics database has been customer-driven, market customer-driven, like what our customer is asking for, whether it's observability and integrating with Grafana and Kibana or, you know, security data lakes. It's just a huge theme that we're going to make sure that we provide a solution that meets those needs.So, I love when customers ask for stuff because the product just gets better. I mean, yeah, sometimes you have to have a thick skin, like, “Why don't you have this?” Or, “Why don't you have that?” Or we have customers—and not to complain about customers; I love our customers—but they sometimes do crazy things that we have to help them on crazy-ify. [laugh]. I'll leave it at that. But customers do silly things and you have to help them out. I hope they remember that, so when they ask for a feature that maybe takes a month to make available, they're patient with us.Corey: We sure can hope. I really want to thank you for taking so much time to once again suffer all of my criticisms, slings and arrows, blithe market observations, et cetera, et cetera. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Thomas: Well, of course, chaossearch.io. There's tons of material about what we do, use cases, case studies; we just published a big case study with Equifax recently. We're in Gartner and a whole bunch of Hype Cycles that you can pull down to see how we fit in the market.Reach out to us. You can set up a trial, kick the tires, again, on your cloud storage like S3. And ChaosSearch on Twitter, we have a Facebook, we have all this classic social medias. But our website is really where all the good content and whether you want to learn about the architecture and how we've done it, and use cases; people who want to say, “Hey, I have a problem. How do you solve it? How do I learn more?”Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the show notes. For my own purposes, you could also just search for the term ChaosSearch in your email inbox and find one of their sponsored ads in my newsletter and click that link, but that's a little self-serving as we do it. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. There's no need to do that. That is not how we ever evaluate these things. But it is funny to tell that story. Thomas, thank you so much for your time. As always, it's appreciated.Thomas: Corey Quinn, I truly enjoyed this time. And I look forward to upcoming re:Invent. I'm assuming it's going to be live like last year, and this is where we have a lot of fun with the community.Corey: Oh, I have no doubt that we're about to go through that particular path very soon. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.Thomas: Thank you.Corey: 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, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry, insulting comment that I will then set to have a retention period of one day, and then go on to claim that I have received no negative feedback.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.

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.

Remember what it felt like the first time you saw something truly amazing, something that blew your mind? Like the first time you saw a movie in the theater as a kid or someone showed you the constellations? Magician and mentalist Erica Sodos helps us learn to rediscover that sense of wonder, awe, and amazement.   Music by Terry Hughes   Links: Erica's Virtual Winter Show 12/26/21 (The Witch and Wizard)   Video Erica's Routine with Her Mom (Momma is Magic)   Erica's Public Psychic Show in Denver 12/18/21 (The Magic Within, Psychic Explorations with Erica Sodos)   Erica's Website   Also Check Out The Programming Language of the Soul   Rate This Podcast   Full Transcript Sodos: And literally, I swear, the tree was my bestie after that. And now… it's like, if I don't walk there... Today I didn't walk over there and I thought, “Oh, I haven't seen my friend!” You know? And I'm not just a tree hugger, I kiss them. I love to kiss them and get in there. Do you do that? Do you hug trees? I love it.    Remember what it felt like the first time you saw something truly amazing, something that blew your mind? Like the first time you saw a movie in the theater as a kid or someone showed you the constellations? Maybe when you discovered the best superhero ever? What if it could be possible to keep hold of that sense of wonder, awe, and amazement?   This is Shame Piñata. I'm Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Believe it or not, that sense of childlike wonder is a place we can still go, even as adults. It can be a little more complicated to get there (b/c adulting), but I'm a firm believer that joy, awe, and wonder are foundational components to living a healthy life. And what's more, they are essential skills if we want to build our own unique ceremonies to honor, appreciate and acknowledge the many ways we grow and change as we move through life. There are huge industries cashing in on our need for expansiveness and joy (think Disney, Hollywood, and gaming)and there are also simpler ways to find magic closer to home in everyday life. Slowing down, being alive to possibility, and noticing exquisite beauty in little moments are a few examples.   Today we will be talking magic. What is it? Where do we find it? And how do we spell it? We'll be focusing on many different types of magic, from stage magic to real magic and how they overlap. Our guide for this conversation is Erica Sodos, one of a small number of female stage magicians in the US who is also a mentalist. I've known Erica for almost 20 years and I can tell you that she truly walks her talk. She finds magic all around her in every moment and she's inspirational. I'd like to invite you to listen in on a conversation Erica and I recorded about a year ago, when we were all still in lockdown.   [MUSIC]   Thomas: You are somebody in my life who has helped me connect with magic like really nobody else in your own unique, totally unique way, and I've always wanted to ask you, and I'm glad to have on the chance, how do you find magic in life? Like, what's your thread? What's your connection? There's several kinds of magic that you're connected to. So I want to know, how are you connected? What is that like?   Sodos: First, I want to say that means so much to me, Colleen, for you to say that because as you know, I think you're one of my wisest friends. So that means a lot. Yes, so how do I find magic in my life? Well, you know, it's funny because I look for it, right? I look for magic. And so because I'm looking, I also find it. And I believe that everything has energy and everything is connected. I guess you could call me an animist, right? So everything is alive. I also like to sometimes call myself a biophiliac, which is a lover of life. So I find magic because I love all… everything that exists. And so being outside... and I understand that not everybody can get outside... so even looking outside or having houseplants. I counted recently. We have 39 houseplants and so… they are these beings are taking energy from the sun and they're living. And then of course, there's the spirits in our house, house spirits... and then, because I know we're all home a lot, and we feel kind of isolated, but I believe that life is all around us. So... and then animals of course.   Erica has a cat named Princess Patches Precious Poppycock McGee and at the time of our interview, Erica had a daily practice of drawing a sigil in her wet cat food every morning. A sigil is a symbol considered to have magical power. We recorded our interview on a Sunday.   Sodos: Like today I did a sun because it's Sunday that we're recording. I made a sun sigil, so everything can be fun and to me it's fun too to do that. What else do I do? Correspondences! So for people who want to get involved you know and find more magic, like learning correspondences. I mean, everyday like, is it like Monday… Oh and the moon cycles, of course we share that. You know, that's another way to harness magic. What sign is the moon in? What cycle is she in? But the correspondences: so Monday is the moon and Tuesday is Mars and Wednesday is Mercury and so that they're different deities and so you could get into that energy and learn the correspondences. And foods of correspondences! So what we eat has energy and what we wear. And, you know, it's…so that's another ways and that then you find meaning and like everything is connected. Oh, and then magic. I mean, I think working on magic alone, you know, that's how I connect to magic. And magic connects, performing magic connects me to real magic and ritual in so many ways. First of all, it's archetypal. So I mean, I have... I'm super into Tarot and I have like... but I put the cards everywhere. I don't look at them so much always, like telling the future but more as meditative tools, like I put them on altars and things. And the Magician archetype is so powerful. And a long time ago, the magicians would combine trickery with their performance to you know, to create change to help people believe, right? They... so they would combine trickery with real magic. And so I love that. So that helps me and also having an idea of something I want to do, like a magician goes, "Oh, I'd like to make that levitate." And then we have to think of how we're going to make that levitate. And so that's magic. And then the third most powerful is how it affects people, is when people see magic. They're in an altered space. And I didn't say that, Colleen, that's the biggest that's also another way I find magic is being present and meditating. And, like I have this…  every time I blow out a candle now by where we have all these plants, the smoke, the way it intermingles with the leaves of the - you know what I'm talking about, right - the way it intermingles with the leaves. I mean, it's pure magic.   Thomas: I want to go back for a second, you just said several kinds of magic. So I'm going to try to say them back and correct me because I'm thinking that you said that there's the magic of connecting to spirit. And then the magic of performing magic as being a magician. And the magic of how the receiving of the magician's work affects your audience, when their mind is blown and they're like, "Wow". And then a fourth kind where you're seeing magic in everyday life, like little magical moments that are just that just blow your mind.   Sodos: You know, it's funny, because... so I think there's a lot of overlap, because, and the first one, I might call it, I think it's cool. You said connection to spirit, but it's like... it could be connection to plants. So I guess you could say plants have spirit, not looking at it like there's one spirit, like, Great Spirit, but more like everything is alive. So you're saying like... it could be ghosts, you're connecting to it your Ancestors, or fairies or plants or a certain deity that you have a connection to or something? Yeah, I like that. And then there's actually performing magic which overlaps because there's that, and that of course, is about transcending having the person go into a magical moment, right? And then there's magic in the everyday. And then there's also magic, because, you know, like, if you look at the definition of magic, it's basically, you know, control over natural forces like supernatural powers. I mean, the dictionary will define only two of what you said they will define one, a magician, which I am like, who can do tricks and then two, extraordinary power. But I think when you're in a transcendent state watching a magician, you can do anything because inspiration moves, right? I mean, there's overlap.   Thomas: Tell me more about the magic with the C and the magic with the CK. I've never been very clear on that.   Sodos: I know that traditionally MAGIC is magic on stage. A magician is on stage performing a magic show. And then magic with an MAGICK is more real magic. Like if you look online, there's all these people who are into, you know, spells and rituals and that kind of thing and they would spell it with a CK like magickal living, you know, "how to infuse everything with real magick" with a CK. Unfortunately, I can't go into the minutiae of why but I know that the words actually have... sort of like faerie and fairy, FAERIE and FAIRY. They actually have different etymology, those two words. They come from different... and then they just got blended. And for me ferry AE is the authentic fairy and AIRY, is like Disney. And so like I like to say, my passion, my real deep passion is where real magick, like CK, meets performance magic. I mean, I have a lot of passions, but you know, where they blend.   [MUSIC]   It's great to have you with us today! Magical moments come in all shapes and sizes. They weave through our lives in predictable and not-so-predictable ways. If you're in a life transition right now (a magical moment or a not-so-magical moment) and would like some support, you can work with me to have a custom ceremony built just for you. Find out more at shamepinata.com.   Thomas: Has magic helped you deal with a life transition, with a hard life transition?   Sodos: I thought about this a lot and I'd say... what... you said helped me, has magic helped me with a life transition? And I think the biggest experience that I had of that specifically is when my mother died. I don't know if you're familiar with what I did with what my mother died. So I'm going to tell you,   Thomas: You did a show, right? And you had her join you in the show.   Sodos: When she was dead, yeah.   Thomas: Right   Sodos: So my mother was a performer when she was younger and had some mental illness. It was a challenging relationship but she was also very funny and dynamic and alive and alive... And she had a big shadow. And so she always wanted to perform with me, but it was… the relationship was challenging. And she was in nursing homes. This is so funny, funny and sad. I would do magic shows at the nursing home. And we'd practice like, "Oh, we could do routines together!" Her nursing home. And so I'd say, "When I hand you this cylinder, you do this." And so I… and we practice and I'd hand it to her... and she had dementia really bad so she couldn't remember what we were supposed to do. So when she died, when she was dying in hospice, I just knew, and I kept saying, "Mom, I'm going to make up a routine with you. I'm going to make up a routine with you, I promise." And I didn't know what it was. And a couple months after she died, I realized that I still had so many of her voice messages saved on my machine. So I edited them together and she was hilarious, like, and she would sing on my machine and she'd say things about how... how unhealthy she was. And so I edited them and then we perform... we... I put together this routine at her memorial, which we did at a theater where I before the pandemic was doing my monthly psychic show, although my mom has been dead for quite a while now. And I created this thing where we had a conversation and I put her ashes, her real ashes, in this box and I did a seance and we had this conversation. And I called on my mom's spirit. And it was funny, like, "Where are you?" And it was her actual voice saying, "Well, I think you know where I am." And I'm like, "Well, are you enjoying yourself?" And she goes, "Well, as usual, I'm eating too much." And because she was at times in her life very, very obese. And I had her say really funny things like we had a hilarious conversation. And then I said, "Show me a sign" and I put the box down on the table and it levitated all over the room. And to me that combines real magic and performance magic because it was a way to process her, my relationship with her, and grieve and not only grieve her death, but grieve the challenging relationship. And I mean, it's always layers of the onion, so I'm still doing that many years later. And it was amazing, Colleen, because many... because the next day I performed it in Vegas at this nightclub, the same routine. And every time I did it crazy things happened. Like three years later, I did it in Vegas and my sister called me the next day. And when my mom was admitted into the hospital before she died… like six months before she died we lost her wallet and everything and it was found the day after I did that routine three years later.   Thomas: Wow!   Sodos: It was hilarious, like... so it definitely tapped into some dimension of spirit.   Thomas: Wow, I was following along with you doing that work, but I've never heard you really describe all of it before. So I just feel so honored to be let into that time in your life. And to be aware of how amazingly embodied and empowered you are to… and creative you are, you're just so amazingly creative, to have to brought that together and to have shared that with the world your own processing of that really, really big loss.   Sodos: Thank you so much. That means a lot. That means a lot.   Thomas: Wow. Well, so… one thing I wanted to ask you, because I know that you are connected to magic in so many different ways and it's also your day job. So I wonder if it ever starts to be a little bit less than fun, or it starts to feel like work, or you need a break from it, or… does that ever happen?   Sodos: Yeah, so you mean... Right. So the performing magic, does that take away from my experience of magic as I...   Thomas: Because it's your job? Because you're in a half-to position with it to some extent?   Sodos: Well, I think it's actually the opposite. I think it deepens my connection to magic, because there's witchy people who are into real magic and then there's magicians and it's shocking how few magicians actually like real magic. Like they hate it. Like, like, some magicians actually dislike real magic. And I think, "Well, you're a magician. So I would hope that you would love real magic. You're pretending to do magic. So..." For me, as someone who loves real magic, I do my magic from that way. So I do many different kinds of magic. So I can do card magic with the rest of them and then I do this branch of magic called mentalism. If you're familiar, it's a psychic magic, so it's mind reading, and predictions. And when I do that, I'm combining all kinds of magic and people don't know what's going on. Like, they're just, "What the heck?!" And you know, so when I do that form of magic, feeling people's reaction to it and seeing it helps me believe in magic. So it actually deepens my connection to magic. Does that make sense?   Thomas: Yeah that does. Mm hmm.    Sodos: I think where it does limit my magic is, when I see a magic show, like most magicians want to know how everything's done. Like, that's all they care about. I mean, it's very male dominated, so you can imagine it's... that's a different conversation, but... They want to know how the trick is done and unless I'm going to do something I'd rather not know. So if I see a magic show where I know it's tricks, I don't want to know because that takes away the magic for me. I only want to know the magic that I'm going to do otherwise, I'm going to be enjoyed by what you're doing and to me, it's real magic. And not only that, but I do some magic effects that I literally don't know how they're done. I know that sounds weird. But there's a whole there's magic that it doesn't even make sense. That's why it's so cool, magic. [LAUGHES]   Thomas: You don't know how they happen, but they happen reliably enough that you can perform them and trust that they'll happen?   Sodos: Yeah, there's certain techniques in magic. There's different techniques… and you know, I was learning some card stuff and it's like, "How... How is that working? I... this is my card..." I practice myself.  And to me, that's magic. And I also think it's magical that people think of this stuff that like somebody makes up this stuff and then they sell it or whatever they write books. Yeah, it's very cool.   Thomas: So you just said, and I know from knowing you that a big part of your… a big part of your inspiration and your work is to inspire people to find their own magic. What advice do you have for helping people begin to open their eyes to the magic around them in everyday life?   Sodos: Yeah, that's a great question. So I'd say slowing down, paying attention, looking around them, utilizing all their senses. So again, I can just walk into a room and notice the sun coming through the window, and again... the highlight of my day. You know, you're transcended, even if it's just for a second. So I'd say one of the ways to experience more magic is to slow down, pay attention, and feel. Open to our feelings, connect to nature as best they can, you know, I know again, different bodies, but being outside and feeling the sun and the wind. And, you know, weather and the changes. Meditating, the old classic that's pretty much good for most things. Meditating is brilliant. And I even think altars, you know, just starting to create even if it's just a candle and a glass of water, you know, lighting a candle and sitting in front of the candle and make things fun. Cleaning. During the pandemic, I have gotten so into cleaning, it's actually weird and I make it a whole ritual, because you have to clean and it's… whether it's I'm listening to a podcast or to music to a mood and I think of intention and as I sweep by put the… So it's like, it's like infusing intention, you know, even if it's just when you wash your face and you say, “I open to magic and I'm going to see clearer” and paying attention to. If... if one lives with a companion animal, or a plant, you know, feeling the plant and sensing, I think opening up to subtler vibrations. It's really helpful.   [MUSIC]   Opening up to subtler vibrations, infusing intention into the things we do, and creating simple altars. These are three great ways to find our own magic. And it's important to find what sparks for each of us, right? I may miss the little things that jump out to you and you may miss the ones that appear to me. They're really reflections of the magic within us, of that space that is alive to awe, open to wonder, and willing to believe in magic.    We will hear more from Erica in season 3, but for now I invite you to consider how you might find more magic in your world. You might be like Erica and find yourself called to draw meaningful symbols in your cat's breakfast, maybe you'll have a conversation with a certain tree you pass on a walk, or see if you can hear the spiders laughing. Whatever you do, follow your intuition, as you continue to find your own magic.    Erica Sodos is a magician, speaker, emcee, psychic entertainer, one of only a handful of female mentalists in the world. An avid lover of nature, dedicated vegan, environmentalist, activist and tour guide at an animal sanctuary, Erica is committed to ending speciesism by creating a world that honors all beings. You can find out more about Erica and see examples of her magic at ericasodos.com. You can also find links to upcoming shows in the show notes.   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.

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.

Even with all of the progress we have made through COVID, somehow, time is still a spiral. Join us for a look back at the 1-year anniversary of the lockdown where we explore the concept of time and how it helps us make sense of life.    Links: What Happens When We Lose Our Social Rituals? The Liminal Space – Embracing the Mystery and Power of Transition from What Has Been to What Will Be Music by Terry Hughes Full Transcript   I was listening through the library of Shame Piñata shows recently, and was struck by how little has changed since our discussion of COVID time was released back in March of this year. That was the one year anniversary of when the pandemic really took hold in the US, when the lockdowns started.    Since March, things have opened up a bit more. Kids are back at school. Grocery stores are busier. And at the same time, that sense of liminality, that sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop still feels like it's here with us. So I invite you to join me in reflecting on that one-year out episode. I invite you to dive back in with me, into the spiral of time, into an exploration of what time give us, how it serves us, and what it means to us... all with the goal of finding our own center in the midst of continuing liminality.    Torres: First, I have to say, like, I don't... I know you were putting like the toilet paper tubes in a little area in the bathroom but I wasn't sure why and now you have them out on the table and I'm noticing they have like a... it's like a journal... it's really cool.    This is my husband Rodrigo sitting with me and 47 empty toilet paper rolls.    Torres: ...look, I have a collection of paper rolls with stuff written on them and I'm like...   I used them as a way to mark our progression through the pandemic.    Thomas: Here's the very first one.    Torres: Oh, wow. Yeah, and we're, we're about there. It's almost a year now.   Thomas: Yeah. It was March 18 I think when we went on lockdown.    Torres: Wow.    Thomas: So this is March 30 '20. And then there's a March from '21 there at that end.    Torres: 3/2/21. That was two days ago.   Thomas: So I dated them and I have them arranged them arranged by month so we can see how many we used each month.     Torres: Ok.   After a while of just dating them, I started also writing little journal entries on them.    Thomas: What do you got there?   Torres: Ah, let's see... let me grab one of these. 8/1/20: My podcast is...   Thomas: ...now...   Torres: ...now available on Alexa. And it's written around the tube so it's like, you have to turn the tube around to read it.   Thomas: Right. It's an interactive journal experience.   Torres: Yes. It's a spiral with time.   Time is a spiral - right now and always. And COVID time is a ride all its own. Whatever your experience of time has been in the past year, join me for a look at what time gives us and the benefits of letting go. We'll also explore our own personal connection to space and time so we're not so thrown by the world around us.    This is Shame Piñata. I'm Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.    So how are you doing with time right now? Do you have enough of it? Too much of it? Do you feel lost or are you right on track? Do you know what day of the week it is? How sure are you about that? I've been having a hard time telling which way is up for about a year now, and it's disconcerting and I know I'm not the only one. I've heard several people say in the past year that it's difficult to focus, it's difficult to keep track of what month it is, difficult to gauge the passage of time during the day. Was that 15 minutes? Was that only two weeks ago? COVID has really been messing with our ability to keep track of time, mostly because it's a completely liminal space that's asked us to give up the framework we've used our whole lives.   I found an article on liminality recently from Alan Seale, the Founder & Director of the Center for Transformational Presence. The piece was written in 2016. Seale, who could probably never have imagined how impactful his article would be in the early 2020's tells us that, "The word 'liminal' comes from the Latin root, limen, which means 'threshold.' The liminal space is the 'crossing over' space – a space where you have left something behind, yet you are not yet fully in something else. It's a transition space."    Time is a super interesting thing. We feel secure when we build routines and expectations based on its constant presence. We mark time with concepts like generations, lifetimes, stages of life, annual patterns, weekly schedules, daily routines. Let's take a moment to consider what COVID has done with these concepts. It's become difficult to connect across generations which has kind of separated us from that intergenerational space that's so rich an important. The National Academy of Sciences recently published a study showing that life expectancy in the US went down in 2020 due to the pandemic, so there's a hit to our concept of what constitutes a lifetime. Along with that, the life expectancy reduction for the Black and Latino communities is 3 to 4 times that for the white community. That very statistic threatens to erase any gains we've made in equity on its own. Stages of life and the ways we mark them have also been affected. Graduations, weddings and other gatherings designed to mark the stages of life largely abandoned for almost a year. We're missing those rituals, really missing them. And lastly, as you know, our annual, weekly and daily patterns have completely changed.    This is no small thing. I know you know this, and I just really want to say that whatever you're feeling right now, and whatever happened the last time you maybe suddenly just lost it over something small, you're not imagining things. This is weird. We didn't build our lives to make sense of this. An extended period of liminality with no warning and no psychological preparation is pretty brutal. COVID time to me feels like living inside a jar of sand and water that's being constantly shaken. Kinda like a snow globe, but without the pretty winter scene creating a calming sense of place.    What does time do for us? Or to be clear, what does an organized sense of time do for us? I think it gives us stability and maybe even sanity. At the very least, it provides a lay of the land, a framework, something to base our expectations on. But maybe we need to even be more fine-tuned in discussing this. It's not that time isn't flowing normally right now, right? Two weeks is still two weeks during COVID, but the thing that's weird is it doesn't feel like two weeks. I thought that I would get used to the flow of time in COVID and eventually it wouldn't be so disorienting, but that actually hasn't happened. I think that's because we're still in the liminal, threshold space, and the big question "When will this be over?" still can't be answered. So there has to be some benefit from this weird time we're in, some way we can grow from it. We'll be right back.    [MUSIC]   Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day with us! If you enjoy listening to Shame Piñata, you can support the show by sharing with a friend or co-worker. We're into our 2nd season now (yay!) so all of our first season episodes are available on your favorite player and there might be one there that would really call to someone you know. And thanks!   One thing we can definitely do is practice disconnecting from our attachments and embracing the feel of flow. We might realize we're already doing this multiple times a day once we start paying attention. We can also use this time to reframe our view of the world and how we show up in it. We can fight for making a better world, a more equitable world. I have a quote on my desk that I look at every morning from writer Roxane Gay, something she said a year ago when the pandemic started, "The rest of the world yearns to get back to normal. For Black people, normal is the very thing from which we yearn to be free." And this is a chance for all of us to change the way we live, who we connect with, what kind of media we consume, and whose words we surround ourselves with. We are being offered the chance to see things from a different angle.    And as Alan Seale says, "Herein lies the power and the gift of the liminal space. The liminal space shakes us out of our habitual lives. It draws us out of what we have known, yet does not allow us to know what is coming next, or when. It's the chrysalis stage for the caterpillar."   So how do we keep track of time within liminality? Here are a few ideas. First, routine events can help: A daily walk, a weekly lunch, a monthly treat. These are things our subconscious mind can begin to rely on for comfort and stability. And they can even weave in some connection if we want that. There's number two, regular social connections. I've been lucky enough to be part of a family that's held weekly Zoom calls for almost a year now. Before COVID, visits were few and far between, but we just celebrated our 50th call last week. (I know because my uncle keeps track and he held up a big 5-0 sign as we began the call).    If you don't have regular social connections in your life right now, consider looking online at the activities and groups you find interesting. So many things have moved online right now. It's possible to attend workshops and ceremonies on the other side of the world. And if you can't handle any more screen time, consider events that might allow you to call in rather than connect online and maybe take a walk while you listen.    Third, nature is still happening! The Earth still turns every 24 hours, bringing the steady rhythm of sunrises and sunsets which can be very potent times to observe the majesty of life on our planet. And the moon still pulls on the waters in our bodies just as much as she pulls on the waters of the Earth. You can mark the month by her changing light and if you choose to honor the new moon or the full moon, know that there is a very rich history in that tradition. And of course there are the many sabbats around the wheel of the year as celebrated by the earth-based religions throughout time. Here in the northern hemisphere we're coming up to Spring Equinox later this month which will of course be the Autumnal Equinox in the southern hemisphere. And that brings us to the mid point between emptiness and fullness, a moment of balance. And balance brings us to ritual.    [MUSIC]   We can create rituals to mark the significant moment in our lives. As social psychologist Shira Gabriel says, "Rituals mark the passage of time as sacred." We can also use ceremony to center ourselves when things are topsy-turvy. Here's a simple ritual sketch we might use to find ourselves even within the flow of COVID time.   So first we might create an intentional space by finding a still corner of the house or maybe taking a walk to find a quiet space in nature. Then we might take a few deep breaths and really feel into the body. What does it feel like to be sitting on this thing? What is the feeling of the air on my skin? How many sounds can I hear?   Next we might get in touch with any spiritual guides, Goddesses, Gods or entities we work with or connect to the numinous however we experience it with gratitude and humility. Connected to this greater force, we might notice that our breathing has softened a bit and that we feel just a little bit calmer.    We might then bring our focus to the wide field of time, seeing ourselves in the very center of it, complete and whole, grounded and calm. Noticing how it moves in spirals, how it dances around us and holds great complexity. And yet at the center of it, we are focused and deeply connected with our own self, our own presence. Sound healer Aleya Dao talks about the golden river of light that flows at our core. We might connect to that pure essence of self as we watch time go by like a movie.    We might begin to sense the many ways that our core essence transcends time, transcends the grids our mind creates to make sense of it. We might come up on a younger version of ourselves and feel moved to share something we've learned with them. We might seek out an older version of ourselves and ask for some wisdom to make this COVID time easier.    Mostly, we can rest in the deep knowing that all time is now and all space is here. This ceremonial experience of time transcends the limits we've known before, and allows us to heal in new ways. When we're ready, we can return to the space we're in, take a few deep breaths and maybe move our body around a little to come back to waking consciousness. And we might want to write down a thing or two of what we experienced in the open field of time.    So how are you keeping track of time right now? What's working for you? Drop us a note on the shamepinata.com website and we will share your tips in an upcoming show.    Our music is by Terry Hughes. You can follow us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata. You can support the show by subscribing on Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   I'm Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

Catherine Monahon (producer of the wonderful Material Feels Podcast) shares their journey from breakup to new home. At the start of the journey was heartbreak. At the end was a celebration of the love that had supported Catherine all along the way.    Music by Terry Hughes   Links: Material Feels Podcast Rate This Podcast CXM Designs   Other episodes about making it through a hard time: The Un-Baby Shower Inviting Grief to the Wedding Full Transcript Monahon: When I got there and people were helping me with all my stuff I looked at the bed and it's like a different size bed than I'm used to, you know, sharing a space with another person. I was used to a larger bed. And I just didn't even have sheets to put on it. And she was helping me move and she was just like, "Let me run down the street to my house. I have an extra set of sheets." And yes, I could have gone to Bed, Bath and Beyond or ordered some sheets online. But in that moment, it was so bleak. Looking at that mattress on the floor that was this... the wrong size for a single person, you know? Or the wrong size for what I was used to. And she went down the street with... like within 15 minutes... materialized with sheets that she... I still have them... they're these dark, velvety purple sheets that I associate with that time. They're really soft and I will forever be grateful to her for that. So just people showing up in different ways, small ways that they probably don't even realize still.... I still think about it today.   How do we create ways for the people who care about us to show when we need it? When is it okay to ask for help? Does asking for help mean we are weak? Does it make us needy? We'll speak today with Catherine Monahon who asked for help when things were hard, and whose community showed up in a big way.   This is Shame Piñata. I'm Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.   So today we have a great story to share with you. It's a story of loss, of heartbreak, of healing, of hope and of gratitude. And not only gratitude but a brave showing of gratitude, a public sharing of love and appreciation. A ritual of love and appreciation.    You know when you go through something really hard and you dare to be real about how hard it is with your friends? When you dare to ask for help? Today we'll talk with Catherine Monahon who produces and hosts the Material Feels podcast. Catherine and I met through radiogines, listserv for women, femmes and gender non-conforming folks in San Francisco Bay Area who work in audio.    When I asked Catherine if they might like to speak about a rite of passage they'd gone through on Shame Piñata, at first they couldn't think of anything, but then they realized that the brunch they organized to thank the friends who helped them get through a breakup was a significant moment. We'll get into why and it was significant in a bit.    First, though, the journey. Catherine was 28 and had just been through their first major breakup. It was a time of uncertainty and pain. Not wanting to stay in the home they had shared with their partner, they struck out looking for a new place to live in the Bay Area, which was hard because housing is hard to find and because they were heartbroken. Catherine placed an ad for housing and that ad was seen by two good friends, Amos and Eirik, who hadn't even heard about the breakup yet.    Monahon: And it was actually an amazing moment because I was sitting with my two friends watching some live music outdoors and I remember I had looked up at the sky, and I was like, “I just... I can't imagine trying to find the right home for me right now. I just need something to fall into my lap.” And then I looked at my phone, and Amos was like, “Hey, I saw your ad. Like oh, my gosh, what happened between you guys? Do you need a place to land? You can live in our living room.”    Thomas: Wow! That's magical.    Monahon: I responded within 30 seconds. I was like, “Yes, yes. And yes!” Yeah. So I... I had a handful of people help me move into that living room for the indefinite future, you know, a couple months. And then I had some people help me move from that living room to where I live now near Lake Merritt.   Thomas: Nice. So your community really showed up for you.   Monahon: Yeah. I also, like, emailed 15 people, and I was like, “I need support!” Maybe not 15, maybe like 11... but for the first couple weeks, while I was sort of in shock, I had, by just by chance, three of my very close friends checking on me everyday, in but they would... it was weird. It was like they were coordinating with each other but they weren't. The rhythm of those friendships sort of kept me going for the first month or two while I was looking... because I was looking for housing. I didn't hear from Amos and Eirik for the first month of that experience. I was like sleeping on couches and like, yeah, so… And then I did, I sent an email out once I realized I had a place to live temporarily and people helped me go through stuff. I mean, I couldn't even think about all the crap I had to look through, like. They and they took stuff. Like I had one friend who was really excited about all of these things that I had that I was like, “If I look at this, I'm gonna cry” like, “I don't want this anymore”.    Monahon: That was a relief that they... she found joy in that stuff. So one person just basically helped me get rid of all my stuff.   I didn't realize at first that Catherine was basically couch surfing for the first month after the breakup. It was only in the second month that they found a place to land in the living room with their two friends. Here is a quick description of what life was like those two months in Berkeley.   Monahon: My time with Amos and Eirik was very enriching. Even though I was sleeping in their living room, it was a very cozy space, there were plants everywhere. And they are both very into food. And I had a pretty bad relationship with food at that time. I hadn't been eating from grief, and just in general wasn't really eating fresh fruits or vegetables. And they are both vegans. And they sort of reintroduced like, fresh, delicious, seasonal food into my life just because it was all around me and they would share with me. They had plants that Eirik adored and cared for, and we always would talk about the plants and notice their growth. It was a very zen and peaceful place to be. And they're both super sensitive queers who are totally down to hold space or emotions, which was a major added bonus. So during that time, I was basically going to school doing homework, crying in the kitchen, eating fresh fruit, looking at plants and searching for housing.   That sounds like a pretty good place to be doing the liminal space dance in, doesn't it? I asked Catherine if receiving that support from Amos and Eirik helped them feel ready to put the word out to a wider crowd, if it helped them feel that support would be there if they reached out.   Monahon: Yeah, yeah. And I think also with moving, I don't know.. You've... there are literal things to do. You know, “Put this in a box. Move this up the stairs”. And I knew that people were probably worried about me. I mean, this was... I was in a relationship for six years and we... these were mutual friends that you know. So yeah, I knew people want... people  would check on me. And I'd be like, “I can't deal with you. I want... I want you to be able to help me…” So I was like, I was like, and also moving was gonna be I had a feeling it would be really upsetting. So I was like, well, at least I can try to turn it into some kind of like, party not even… maybe party's the wrong word, but barbecue vibe.   Thomas: Right. Right. As opposed to just heartbreak and tears and Kleenex boxes lining the walls and...   Monahon: Yeah, and and most of these people who ended up at that, at the brunch that we'll talk about, they saw me in the... in those stages, you know. They... we had all been connected in some way, whether it was my heartbreak or something that they were going through. And I kept track of it too. Like I journaled about how each person showed up for me, and I really internalized those memories, like they were so that I they're so fresh. I kind of wanted to celebrate them, those people I mean, yeah.   Thomas: Yeah. So was the brunch a celebration?   Monahon: It was part... it was part celebration of, like how I felt each person had brought such special gifts to my experience and so different. And it was part... like, I've had that experience before I went to boarding school at a very young age so I've moved a lot. And I've always... I know what it feels like to move into a room, and then suddenly be like, “Well, I'm here,” like, “It's over,” you know? And that's awkward, that waking up. So I...I kind of anticipated that that would be even worse. So it was it was like part celebration part.... I didn't... I wanted that day to be a good day. And then it was also like a closing, I was like, “That time... Although I loved living with Amos and Eirik, That time is over now. The time of feeling ungrounded not knowing what's going to happen. Feeling like, I'm falling apart. Like, these people saw me through it and I want us all to, to like, kind of kiss that time goodbye.”   Thomas: That's awesome because it's really insightful of you because all these people have been, like watching you and supporting you and keeping an eye on you probably and all these things and, and it's so it's kind of like I can see it. Like if it's my story. It's like I'm getting to this place and I'm like, “Okay, I'm good. And thank you and you know, you can tone it down like 90% of how much you're worried about me now like I got this,” to kind of let them, like disengage.   Monahon: Yeah. And just kind of it's almost like a performance too because it was like, “Okay, you're doing it. You woke up and your new apartment. And... and you're gonna say thank you to all your buds and then you're gonna move on.” Whether or not that really happened, that it was still it... I think it... it worked a little bit. But then I feel likeI would remember the brunch, I'd remember those people and those moments like, it I felt like it was creating something that I could almost like a worry stone where I could like, go back to it.   Thomas: Nice. Do you have any mementos that you physically have from that brunch or that time?   Monahon: No, I think other than that page of my journal. Because I invited... I actually wrote their names down. I'm just gonna count them real quick. So I invited nine people two weeks beforehand. And three of them couldn't come. So the people who couldn't come, I texted them a picture of their part of the map that I had made. And I still, like thanked them and told them why... I even invited my friend Liz, who lives in Philadelphia. I knew that they couldn't come. But the invitation they got it.    Thomas: So what was the map like?    Monahon: So the brunch was kind of like: I had moved twice. It had been three months. And so the map that I made was essentially just a list of memories. Everybody had, like, you know, a bunch of green dots of like, highlighted dates. You know, August 22, we went camping. August 3, I had that meltdown in public and my brother gave me an omelette, or something. And so... if like my three friends who couldn't come, I took a picture of their part of that list I had made and was like, “Hey, you know, you really showed up for me in these ways and I really appreciate that about you.”   Thomas: Wow. That would be such a nice thing to receive, to have somebody like, remember some random thing that I did, or that happened between us like writing it down and putting a date on it and sending it to me as part of like a thank you, or acknowledgement. That's so thoughtful.   Monahon: You just don't know how big of a deal it is when you do something like that. Like for you, it might be a couple hours of your morning on a Saturday and your friend's cat has died. And for them, it's like, I'll never forget that Colleen showed up on this made up scenario. [LAUGHS] But like, yeah, I think, yeah, what? They got me through it.   Welcome to today's show! Whether this is your first or your 25th episode, it's always wonderful to have you along. If there is something changing in your world right now, some shift you're going through, know you're not alone. Shame Piñata will continue bringing you stories to inspire your own creative response to a changing self. Subscribe today in your favorite player!   Thomas: You said that you felt like something that was wrapped up nice and tight at the brunch.   Monahon: Yeah, it was a very emotional… it was a very emotional day. And I wasn't expecting it to be. Like when I had prepared to, like appreciate everybody in front of everybody. And I just wanted everyone to see everyone, like to know how amazing everybody at that brunch was and how much they impacted me. And so I like made a... I set a couple... I made it short, too, because I had one I have one friend who really doesn't like to be appreciated in public. So I really tried to do it like just short Cliff Notes/spark notes and it was wild to see people who like aren't necessarily tight. They are not close friends necessarily. But because we, it created this really sort of this like little bubble of like, trust and love. And my brother who, you know, doesn't really know my chosen family that well. He got really emotional and he sort of gave this speech at the end where he... he like cried. We're both cryers and you know, he was just like, “It means the world to me that Catherine has this support network...” And then he said a bunch of nice stuff about me and I was like, “This is not why I'm throwing this brunch.” And everybody's all, “Oh, we love you.” I was very mushy and gushy. gushy and it's not something I normally do. So, I guess, feeling held by like, it just felt very safe and I felt very present.   Thomas: Did you have a little bit of trouble taking that in at the time? Was it too much or was it okay?   Monahon: It was okay. Because nobody tried to... everybody was just kind of sitting with it, you know? It was because I think it was a brunch to acknowledge heartbreak and my empty new apartment room. So I don't think I think there was no, like... I didn't have to worry that anybody was going to be uncomfortable at the brunch.   Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I love this story. Because I love how much you're obviously taking care of yourself in it, you know, it's... I can see that you're honoring the people who helped you. And also, it was so bold of you to ask for help and to accept it. And then you had this whole brunch, which you could have just written them all, like, notes or emails or said thanks for something that you call them together and you put, you know, energy into it is just inspiring. And it's another example of how we can take care of ourselves through little things that we could call ceremony or ritual, or we could just not. But they kind of serve a purpose of, you know, of intention. Everybody knew what the meaning was of that whole time for you.   Monahon: Yeah, and I didn't really think about it like that until I listened to your show. Like, listening to the way that you talk about ritual and ceremony. And I started thinking like, What does that apply to my life? You know, as someone who doesn't… I... other than my art practice and creative endeavors, I don't feel particularly connected to it. And then I realized that the brunch kind of kind of tapped on that, or edged up against that, and overlapped with a lot of what you've talked about on the show. I was like, “Oh, that's what that was.” [LAUGHS]    Catherine is the producer and host of Material Feels, a podcast that explores the intimate relationship between artists and their materials. This means that Catherine speaks with artists about watercolor and clay, glass and wax. Recently they have been musing on and speaking about ritual as an art form.   Thomas: I know, you've been exploring ritual a little bit yourself on Material Feels and I'm curious, what has been moving for you about that? Or what have you noticed? Or has it... has anything shifted for you as you played around with it a little?   Monahon: I think one thing that I have noticed about myself and the way, like, my sort of ritual personality is that I really like... I like tradition and I like anniversaries. So you know, the day I dropped my first episode was like Valentine's Day and that's like a big deal to me. Valentine's Day is now always going to be a big deal about the podcast, about my creative love for the world and myself.    Thomas: Nice.    Monahon: But then, like, also, what I've learned as I'm exploring ritual and ceremony is witnessing and including other people. So, I've made art my whole life, but I've never I never included anyone else in it. It's always been very personal and private. But now with the show... there's this, like, sacredness to the audience for me. Like, whenever I start, whenever I start thinking about the next episode, like, organically thinking about it, I'm... I'm talking to my listeners in my head. So I think the ceremony of producing a show where I… I really want my listeners to be like intimately with me. And I think learning more about... like creating the container, as you say, sonically... I mean, that's been really cool to think about and try to try to move forward with.   Thomas: Yeah and Material Feels has so much sound richness and playfulness and it's... it's got such a unique container. It's kind of like, I just thought this... it's kind of like a... like a stained glass prism that turns different ways that... it's like, yellow here, and then blue here, and then opaque here and translucent here. And it's just... it's always changing as I listen to it, like the episode. And it's... but it's not like discongruent or whatever the word would be, you know? It's not like, “All these things… What? What's going on?” But it's kind of like no, no, it's it's art. And it just keeps changing. And it's such a unique format and it's so you.   Monahon: Oh, thank you. Thank you for saying that about the prism. That is really cool. I like that.    Catherine's story illustrates how taking a risk and getting vulnerable can not only open opportunities to receive support ourselves, but can provide our friends and loved ones with a chance to show up for us. And that's what we really want to do, right, show up and love each other? Because it feels good, because the struggles of the folks we love touch our hearts, and because we're all human and we all have something to offer, from carrying away some heartbreak-soaked stuff to bringing a friend a set of sheets.   I am super grateful to Catherine for sharing the ups and downs of their breakup journey and giving us a look into the brunch itself. I am also thrilled to have had a lot of time lately to talk ritual with Catherine. If you'd like to hear more of this conversation, told through the Material Feels lens, check out the latest episode of the Material Feels podcast, called Emotion (Ritual and Ceremony). It explores the elements, storytelling, and finding what needs to be moved.   Catherine is an audio storyteller with a background in art. They facilitate workshops and create podcasts with a focus on creative practices and art materials. Their writing about art, illness and disability has been published in The New York Times, WIRED Magazine and the Leonardo Journal. Learn more about Catherine's work at www.cxmdesigns.com.   Our music is by Terry Hughes. Please follow us on IG at shamepinata. You can also follow us on Twitter at shamepinata. Reach out directly through the contact page at our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the podcast on Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite player. I'm Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

Join Mayer Brown partners Tamer Soliman, Thomas So and Duncan Abate as moderator as they discuss the Biden administration's impact on the vitally important US-Sino relationship. The discussion will consider changes in the ongoing trade war, political and human rights issues and other bilateral concerns.

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.

Nick & Thom were married in a big, open field in Oakland California. This was right after same-sex marriage was legalized in the US and it was a huge celebration. Join us for a glimpse of their special day. Links: Queer Spirit Podcast Music by Terry Hughes   Full Transcript Thom: And it was funny when we were in - was it Nevada City? Venegoni: Nevada City. Thom: I was... went to this cafe and there's this woman we know from another witchcraft tradition and I hadn't seen her for years and I'm sitting there writing this ritual that we have been in ritual space creating and then she walks in. And she's like, "What are you doing," and it was actually somebody who I could tell her what I was actually doing, not just like, "Oh, I'm writing my wedding ceremony." And, but she really supported my flow at that moment. It was great. So random... It’s the little moments in our lives that can be so rich. Little moments when synchronicity pops and we are seen at a deep level. These moments can and will happen at random, and they can also be thoughtfully cultivated with patience and care through ceremony or ritual design. And it’s truly wonderful to go through that design process as part of a team. This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.  Thank you so much for joining us today. If you’ve listened to any of our episodes from season one, you know that we mostly focused stories about weddings. This season we will branch out to share stories of people using ritual to honor a myriad of life transitions. But we will still keep talking about weddings from time to time - including today! Today we will hear the story of the handfasting of my guest Nick Venegoni and his husband Thom. It happened in a big open field in Oakland California and we’d like to take you along and give you a glimpse into the day. Handfasting is an ancient Celtic ceremony in which the folks getting married or committing to each other have their hands tied together as a symbol of their connection. It is commonly associated with the Wiccan or Pagan traditions, however it is working its way into ceremonies in other traditions and even secular ceremonies. Here’s Thom. Thom: You can create any ceremony you want to make that handfasting happen. You know, there's a sort of a template for marriages in our society that everybody is very mapped to and a handfasting gave us the opportunity to step outside of that pre-scripted experience to make something that was more meaningful and important and reflective of who we are.  Thomas: So what was the setting for your handfasting? Venegoni: Well, we actually spent a lot of time trying to find a place that we wanted to hold it at because we wanted to have it in a space where we could be... have the ceremony outside and then depending on, you know, the weather possibly go inside if we needed to. But we had it in early May and so we were fairly lucky with weather and we ultimately landed at a park up in Oakland Hills called Joaquin Miller Park, which is a large park and there's lots of areas to it and this is a particular area. It's sort of you go up the hill and as you're driving in, you can actually look west and see all of the Bay Area and San Francisco from there. But then once you go in, it feels very secluded and like you're in the middle of nowhere in the woods in this big sort of field where we had it. So that's where it was. Thom: Yeah, we basically rented a giant field in the park from the city of Oakland for the day. Thomas: And they were 200 people at your ceremony? Venegoni: At least, yeah. Thomas: Yeah. I'm curious what the process was... that planning process, which is such a rich time for couples. Was it like a spark of idea for one of you and the other one was like, "Oh, yeah!" or would like... and what was the process you went through between, like the beginning and like getting to that day? Thom: The beginning, middle and end that led us to the beginning?  Thomas: Right! Thom: Act One, no... Well first, we used ceremony to create the ceremony. So there was actually more to it. We had created sacred space in a way that we do, and we invoked the Muse, you know, just the spirit of inspiration. And then we went into our own experience and just tapped into spirit and let that information flow through as like, what are you being drawn to? What feels important? What's gonna... you know... and we weren't judging or questioning anything that came up just like any good brainstorming session. But this was like spiritual brainstorming. So it was really about what is moving our energy and making us feel connected to the magic of this ceremony. So we... and then we wrote all that down and we use that as our blueprint to start to craft the ritual and incorporate those elements. Like, how do we get there? We now know where we kind of want to go, but then how do we get there? Venegoni: And then, a few weeks later, I think we ended up going to... we went out of town to go visit a friend of mine and in this little town up in the foothills. And I was hanging out with my friend, and Thom just took all those notes and went and sat in a cafe one day and sort of came up with the first draft I think... Thom: Well, not sort of. I did. Then I put all of those... that vision together into the beginning of a cohesive whole. You know, things were coming through, like we wanted song and community and we wanted people... everyone to be able to participate. And we didn't want like a... one person who stood in front of us and we really wanted, like a collaborative ceremony. And then we just like... ideas for, you know, like colors and props and ways to communicate with people and... Venegoni: And even elements like water, like we both got an impression of water. We're like, well, we don't know how we're going to bring water into it. We're not going to be near a body of water but we'll figure that out. And then I think there was something else about dancing, we wanted to have dancing be part of it. Thom: Mmm hmmm. Venegoni: And then we asked a friend of ours who we've known for a number of years to, not necessarily be the officiant, but we were calling her the priestess of ceremonies, to sort of be the ringleader. And so then we met with her I think, at least one or two times and got her feedback about what might need to be changed or adjusted from her perspective in terms of being the one who's going to be running the show most of the time. Thom: Yeah, the whole “how is this actually gonna work/boots on the ground?” So, yeah, there were a lot of phases to it, it was like a two hours ceremony that was just kind of non-stop.  What came through very clearly for Nick and Thom was that they wanted to have a ceremony that was about not only them but also about their community. They wanted to create a magical, transformative experience for everybody to be in a Love Spell together and for each person to weave their own love magic, for themselves, for Nick and Thom, and for the world.  Thom: It had a lot of layers, but we needed the, you know, sort of to “cast”, you know, put the right people in place, who would be able to, you know, hold it properly, witness it properly. Because we had a lot of, you know, in the lingo "unrehearsed participants". So there are people who we knew were familiar with various forms of this form of ritual... this type of ritual... like in general. And then we had, you know, people from like our family or friends of friends who this might have been the first time they've done something like this. So we couldn't let it be totally technical. But we had to move this... move the ceremony in a way to let people naturally invoke and fall into and create the energy as the spell was continually shaped until we kind of sort of sent it off as a prayer to the universe at the culmination of the spiral dance. Nick and Thom put most of their wedding gifts toward bringing in an art photographer they knew and loved to fully document the day in his own artistic style. As we talked, Nick and Thom looked through their wedding album and reflected on the day. Thomas: Can you describe one or two of those pictures for us? Thom: Sure. Well, on the cover is the actual... our hands fasted. You know, a lot of people even like gay men, we see a lot of like gay men's weddings and they look just like sort of straight people's weddings, but the gay version and two guys wearing tuxedos or whatever. But even like our clothes, we had somebody, like hand-make us these sort of like loose linen clothes so that we could be comfortable and I wore all yellow and Nick wore all red. So kind of like the Queen of England, you would know exactly where we were, right? Like we... Because it was a big crowd and a big space and so that was one way we drew attention to ourselves. So it's our hands and over the bowl of water. So water came into it  because we had this blessing. We had a big bowl of water and we didn't want one officiant... we had to explain what we had our mistress of ceremony... priestess of ceremonies explained that at some point in the ritual everybody was going to become our officiant. So we had this bowl of water and then like everybody lined up and we didn't want to sit there and have to talk to everybody like, "Oh, this is so beautiful, thank you," you know, blah, blah, blah... We didn't have time or space or energy for that. So we had somebody else come up with a simple song and we were like, "Everybody just sing this simple chant song while you're in line and when you while you come up to us..." Because it was also just part of the energy... And then they put their hands in the bowl and then they sort of said their silent blessing for us and then like poured... like sprinkled that water on our hands. So our hands were over the bowl of water and that was what was on the cover of the book is us with our hands fasted over the bowl of water during the part where everybody was coming up to us singing this lovely song about, "All life comes from the sea. Everything returns to the sea." And anyway, so that's the front cover of the book. You just see, like our hand... the hands fasted over the blessing bowl, which was actually the moment when in sort of a traditional ceremony they're like, "I now pronounce you," but like everybody was doing it. But we didn't want them to... they're not making our relationship, we're making our relationship, but we want their blessing. And also, it was very important for us and for the spell for the Love Spell and for the magic to have our community, like acknowledge, like two men making this, you know, commitment, this romantic commitment. Because we're creating like this energetic template of something that, you know, exists in the world in... like ambivalent, and sometimes controversial, and lots of times, invisible way. And we were, like, part of the magic was putting it right out there - not like once but you know, 200 times. Vengoni: And that part of the ceremony was actually for me one of the most magical things because this thing happened. And at one point, I'm like, why is this happening? So, Thom's cord was red, my card was green, and then they were sort of tied together over our hands. And about halfway through, I looked down and the water in the bowl is turning blue. And I'm like, "What is going on here? This is like... we are transforming water with the magic!" And it wasn't until about we almost got all the way through that my mind, because I was so in the moment, started thinking more analytically, "Oh, it's probably dye from the green cord was leaking from the water into the bowl, turning it blue." Thom: I could see that people really wanted that, that moment with us, and that we weren't going to be able to have that and so we had to like engineer that. We weren't going to have, like a reception line, you know that that whole thing. So um... So that was amazing to basically be married by every single person we invited.  We’re so glad you are here! If you enjoy the show, you can become part of the Shame Piñata community by sharing your story about how you marked an important life transition, either the kind they do or don't make party decorations for. Visit the contact page at shamepinata.com to get in touch. And if you have a friend who is in wedding planning mode, please share this episode with them.  I shared that a big focus of the Shame Piñata podcast is to encourage people do whatever they might want to do for their wedding instead of what might be expected of them and our conversation turned to the wedding industry and the pressure it can create for couples.  Thom: Well, that's commercialism and capitalism and you know... they want you to believe that the only way you're gonna get that meaningful experience is if your budget is at a certain level and you consume these things. And then your ceremony just becomes about whether... how good you feel about how close you came to that ideal, rather than that you just were witnessed by the people who love you making a commitment to somebody that you want to spend your life with. Venegoni: Well, I also think that's the the blessing of being queer, you know, not just around your wedding, but around anything is that, you know, there's a challenge that comes with it, because you have to create something new because it hasn't really existed before. Although we're getting far enough along now where things have existed before for younger queer people. But, you know, so the challenge is you have to create it. But the gift is that you get to create whatever you want. You don't have to do some predetermined thing. I mean, some people feel like they have to try to fit into this box that other straight people, things that other straight people have done before, but you have the chance to create something new that's going to be right for you, whether that's your wedding, or your relationship, or your job, or the way that you run your household, or who your family are, you know, any of those things... Thom: Yeah, and the rest of it is just pictures of, you know, various moments like drumming and spiral dance and... Thomas: Were the two of you in the center of the spiral dance, or were you n the spiral? Venegoni: Yeah, we ended up in the center. Yeah. Thom: And our friend Urania, who's a Reclaiming Tradition teacher and priestess, she's really good at leading spiral dances. So we had her... because there was no way we were going to be able to think at that point. We needed somebody who just knew... had done it so much, it was just in her body, you know. And so she was in the front and then it was Nick and then it was me. And so we wound in, we just ended up in the middle. So instead of like winding in, and then normally wind back out again. We just wound in and then stayed there. So then we were like in the center. So then when everybody was... let go of each other's hands, we were like in the center of this big onion, you know, of just love and power and getting to just take it all in. There was actually a funny part during the ritual. This is actually one of my favorite things. Right after we had our hands fasted, the priestess of ceremonies, Jenya, she had found like four plants in the group that she went to beforehand and was like, "Okay, there's a part of the ritual when this happens, I'm going to you and you need to do this." So they were going to call to us, and we had to then... but they were calling to us from like four different parts of the circle at one time. So obviously, if we're tied together, we can't just tear off willy-nilly. We have to figure out: What are we doing? What's our priority? Who... what direction are we going to go together? And it was like a challenge for us, like a spiritual challenge in the midst of the ceremony that was like an energetic template for what it's like to be married, you know, where it's like, "Oh, if we're going to... we're tied together, we have to kind of figure out like, when do we go in your direction? And when do we go my direction when there's not agreement" you know? So it was this funny moment. We were both like, like... a cartoonish moment where we just sort of took off, like, like... "I'm going this way," "I'm going that way," like, "Oh, wait, we're like, tied together. What are you going to do, tear my arm off?" You know, like, like a rubber band kind of thing where we sort of like popped away from each other and then sort of snapped back and kind of bonked heads. And you know... And then we had to sit and have a conversation in front of everybody... a quiet... they couldn't really hear what we were saying. We're like, "What do we... what do we do? Which way do we go?" Venegoni: "Where do you wanna go? Where do I wanna go?" Thom: ...you want to go? Yeah, I want to go... And so then we just made a decision and walked towards somebody. And everybody was like, "Yay, they figured out their first challenge as a married couple!" Because we've been together for like, 12 years already, you know?  Venegoni: No, it was... [COUNTS] nine years.  Thom: Nine years. So that was like, another way that the... our community was witnessing us behaving as a married couple and we were like normalizing. Like, yes. See, we're married. And this is what married people do. We're just, it's just like every other marriage where you have to figure it out. And this is not any different. And we just got, like, 200 people in one moment to go, "That's a marriage!" So it was just great. We were just built in a lot of that affirmation felt really, really important. Because, you know, the legal, the Supreme Court decision had only come down that July of 2013. And we actually got legally married at a courthouse with a friend of ours in August of 2013. Because we knew we were ready and we just did it. And then we then had this other ceremony in May, that was more of, like the public. Because, you know, legally we needed to just get the paper signed. You know, we already... everything else was in place, but then we had to have like, the big celebration. Venegoni: Yeah, we actually used our photo that we took of us the day we got legally married as our wedding announcement.  Thom: Yeah. But we didn't tell people, "We got married at the courthouse and now we're gonna... we're getting really married." We know it was all it was all... You know, we had been denied that we couldn't have gotten married any sooner, you know. We could do domestic partnership. We could do all these legal things. So um, so again, it was so new that we really wanted to like... There was a political element, a little bit of political theater involved, also, where we really were like, let's not just sort of like, hide and be quiet about this. Let's go, “ Okay, you know, like, no take backs. This is it. We're done. We're moving forward now.” This is the new beginning point for all of us. And of course there are still people who are resistant to that, but we're not... there's no... we're not going back. I am so grateful to Nick and Thom for sharing their planning and ritual process for such a large-scale event, and grateful to have had a peek into their special day. I want to encourage and remind you that if you ever find yourself in wedding planning mode, know that the sky is the limit in terms of your choices for ceremony creation. Of course there are financial realities and familial traditions will be part of the story, but your imagination and ability to step outside the box will always be there for you. Nick Venegoni & his husband Thom live in San Francisco, California and have been together for 15 years. Nick is the host of The Queer Spirit podcast and is a sound healer practitioner, who enjoys making home made pickles. Thom is a mystic and ritualist in the school of Natural and Ancestral Witchcraft and co-creator of the Trees and Stars open coven for the exploration of the Hidden Mysteries of Spirit, Nature, Self, and Cosmos.  Our music is by Terry Hughes. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast player to make sure you're notified when new episodes are released. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

Time is a spiral - right now and always. And COVID time is a ride all its own. Whatever your experience of time has been in the past year, join us for a look at what time gives us and the benefits of letting go. We'll also explore our own personal connection to space and time so we're not so thrown by the world around us. Links: - What Happens When We Lose Our Social Rituals? - The Liminal Space – Embracing the Mystery and Power of Transition from What Has Been to What Will Be - KPFA's 2021 International Women's Day Programming Music by Terry Hughes Full Transcript Torres: First, I have to say, like, I don't... I know you were putting like the toilet paper tubes in a little area in the bathroom but I wasn't sure why and now you have them out on the table and I'm noticing they have like a... it's like a journal... it's really cool. This is my husband Rodrigo sitting with me and 47 empty toilet paper rolls. Torres: ...look, I have a collection of paper rolls with stuff written on them and I'm like... I used them as a way to mark our progression through the pandemic. Thomas: Here's the very first one. Torres: Oh, wow. Yeah, and we're, we're about there. It's almost a year now. Thomas: Yeah. It was March 18 I think when we went on lockdown. Torres: Wow. Thomas: So this is March 30 '20. And then there's a March from '21 there at that end. Torres: 3/2/21. That was two days ago. Thomas: So I dated them and I have them arranged them arranged by month so we can see how many we used each month. Torres: Ok. After a while of just dating them, I started also writing little journal entries on them. Thomas: What do you got there? Torres: Ah, let's see... let me grab one of these. 8/1/20: My podcast is... Thomas: Now Torres: Now available on Alexa. And it's written around the tube so it's like, you have to turn the tube around to read it. Thomas: Right. It's an interactive journal experience. Torres: Yes. It's a spiral with time. Time is a spiral - right now and always. And COVID time is a ride all its own. Whatever your experience of time has been in the past year, join me for a look at what time gives us and the benefits of letting go. We'll also explore our own personal connection to space and time so we're not so thrown by the world around us. This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. So how are you doing with time right now? Do you have enough of it? Too much of it? Do you feel lost or are you right on track? Do you know what day of the week it is? How sure are you about that? I've been having a hard time telling which way is up for about a year now, and it's disconcerting and I know I'm not the only one. I've heard several people say in the past year that it's difficult to focus, it's difficult to keep track of what month it is, difficult to gauge the passage of time during the day. Was that 15 minutes? Was that only two weeks ago? COVID has really been messing with our ability to keep track of time, mostly because it's a completely liminal space that's asked us to give up the framework we've used our whole lives. I found an article on liminality recently from Alan Seale, the Founder & Director of the Center for Transformational Presence. The piece was written in 2016. Seale, who could probably never have imagined how impactful his article would be in the early 2020's tells us that, "The word 'liminal' comes from the Latin root, limen, which means 'threshold.' The liminal space is the 'crossing over' space – a space where you have left something behind, yet you are not yet fully in something else. It's a transition space." Time is a super interesting thing. We feel secure when we build routines and expectations based on its constant presence. We mark time with concepts like generations, lifetimes, stages of life, annual patterns, weekly schedules, daily routines. Let's take a moment to consider what COVID has done with these concepts. It's become difficult to connect across generations which has kind of separated us from that intergenerational space that's so rich an important. The National Academy of Sciences recently published a study showing that life expectancy in the US went down in 2020 due to the pandemic, so there's a hit to our concept of what constitutes a lifetime. Along with that, the life expectancy reduction for the Black and Latino communities is 3 to 4 times that for the white community. That very statistic threatens to erase any gains we've made in equity on its own. Stages of life and the ways we mark them have also been affected. Graduations, weddings and other gatherings designed to mark the stages of life largely abandoned for almost a year. We're missing those rituals, really missing them. And lastly, as you know, our annual, weekly and daily patterns have completely changed. This is no small thing. I know you know this, and I just really want to say that whatever you're feeling right now, and whatever happened the last time you maybe suddenly just lost it over something small, you're not imagining things. This is weird. We didn't build our lives to make sense of this. An extended period of liminality with no warning and no psychological preparation is pretty brutal. COVID time to me feels like living inside a jar of sand and water that's being constantly shaken. Kinda like a snow globe, but without the pretty winter scene creating a calming sense of place. What does time do for us? Or to be clear, what does an organized sense of time do for us? I think it gives us stability and maybe even sanity. At the very least, it provides a lay of the land, a framework, something to base our expectations on. But maybe we need to even be more fine-tuned in discussing this. It's not that time isn't flowing normally right now, right? Two weeks is still two weeks during COVID, but the thing that's weird is it doesn't feel like two weeks. I thought that I would get used to the flow of time in COVID and eventually it wouldn't be so disorienting, but that actually hasn't happened. I think that's because we're still in the liminal, threshold space, and the big question "When will this be over?" still can't be answered. So there has to be some benefit from this weird time we're in, some way we can grow from it. We'll be right back. [MUSIC] Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day with us! If you enjoy listening to Shame Piñata, you can support the show by sharing with a friend or co-worker. We're into our 2nd season now (yay!) so all of our first season episodes are available on your favorite player and there might be one there that would really call to someone you know. And thanks! One thing we can definitely do is practice disconnecting from our attachments and embracing the feel of flow. We might realize we're already doing this multiple times a day once we start paying attention. We can also use this time to reframe our view of the world and how we show up in it. We can fight for making a better world, a more equitable world. I have a quote on my desk that I look at every morning from writer Roxane Gay, something she said a year ago when the pandemic started, "The rest of the world yearns to get back to normal. For Black people, normal is the very thing from which we yearn to be free." And this is a chance for all of us to change the way we live, who we connect with, what kind of media we consume, and whose words we surround ourselves with. We are being offered the chance to see things from a different angle. And as Alan Seale says, "Herein lies the power and the gift of the liminal space. The liminal space shakes us out of our habitual lives. It draws us out of what we have known, yet does not allow us to know what is coming next, or when. It’s the chrysalis stage for the caterpillar." So how do we keep track of time within liminality? Here are a few ideas. First, routine events can help: A daily walk, a weekly lunch, a monthly treat. These are things our subconscious mind can begin to rely on for comfort and stability. And they can even weave in some connection if we want that. There's number two, regular social connections. I've been lucky enough to be part of a family that's held weekly Zoom calls for almost a year now. Before COVID, visits were few and far between, but we just celebrated our 50th call last week. (I know because my uncle keeps track and he held up a big 5-0 sign as we began the call). If you don't have regular social connections in your life right now, consider looking online at the activities and groups you find interesting. So many things have moved online right now. It's possible to attend workshops and ceremonies on the other side of the world. And if you can't handle any more screen time, consider events that might allow you to call in rather than connect online and maybe take a walk while you listen. Third, nature is still happening! The Earth still turns every 24 hours, bringing the steady rhythm of sunrises and sunsets which can be very potent times to observe the majesty of life on our planet. And the moon still pulls on the waters in our bodies just as much as she pulls on the waters of the Earth. You can mark the month by her changing light and if you choose to honor the new moon or the full moon, know that there is a very rich history in that tradition. And of course there are the many sabbats around the wheel of the year as celebrated by the earth-based religions throughout time. Here in the northern hemisphere we're coming up to Spring Equinox later this month which will of course be the Autumnal Equinox in the southern hemisphere. And that brings us to the mid point between emptiness and fullness, a moment of balance. And balance brings us to ritual. [MUSIC] We can create rituals to mark the significant moment in our lives. As social psychologist Shira Gabriel says, "Rituals mark the passage of time as sacred." We can also use ceremony to center ourselves when things are topsy-turvy. Here's a simple ritual sketch we might use to find ourselves even within the flow of COVID time. So first we might create an intentional space by finding a still corner of the house or maybe taking a walk to find a quiet space in nature. Then we might take a few deep breaths and really feel into the body. What does it feel like to be sitting on this thing? What is the feeling of the air on my skin? How many sounds can I hear? Next we might get in touch with any spiritual guides, Goddesses, Gods or entities we work with or connect to the numinous however we experience it with gratitude and humility. Connected to this greater force, we might notice that our breathing has softened a bit and that we feel just a little bit calmer. We might then bring our focus to the wide field of time, seeing ourselves in the very center of it, complete and whole, grounded and calm. Noticing how it moves in spirals, how it dances around us and holds great complexity. And yet at the center of it, we are focused and deeply connected with our own self, our own presence. Sound healer Aleya Dao talks about the golden river of light that flows at our core. We might connect to that pure essence of self as we watch time go by like a movie. We might begin to sense the many ways that our core essence transcends time, transcends the grids our mind creates to make sense of it. We might come up on a younger version of ourselves and feel moved to share something we've learned with them. We might seek out an older version of ourselves and ask for some wisdom to make this COVID time easier. Mostly, we can rest in the deep knowing that all time is now and all space is here. This ceremonial experience of time transcends the limits we've known before, and allows us to heal in new ways. When we're ready, we can return to the space we're in, take a few deep breaths and maybe move our body around a little to come back to waking consciousness. And we might want to write down a thing or two of what we experienced in the open field of time. So how are you keeping track of time right now? What's working for you? Drop us a note on the shamepinata.com website and we will share your tips in an upcoming show. Catch a special edition of Shame Piñata this Sunday March 7 on KPFA's International Women's Day Programming. Interfaith Minister Tristy Taylor will speak on the importance of ceremony in women's lives and The UnBaby Shower she designed when she and her husband stopped trying to have children. That's at 1:30pm Pacific this Sunday, March 7 on KPFA.org. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

In this week's episode, we will be discussing the surge of insomnia during the COVID-19 pandemic, also known as coronasomnia, with Thomas So, manager of the Meducation Group at First Databank. If you would like to nominate a pharmacist or pharmacy staff member as a Pharmacy Hero, email AAntrim@pharmacytimes.com!

This conversation covers: An average workday for Thomas as senior systems engineer at Systematic. How Systematic uses cross-functional collaboration to solve problems and produce high quality software. How security and data privacy relate to cloud-native technologies, and the challenges they present.  Systematic's journey to cloud native, and why the company decided it was a good idea.  Why it's important to consider the hidden costs and complexities of cloud-native before migrating. What makes an application appropriate for the cloud, and some tips to help with making that decision. The biggest surprises that Thomas has encountered when  moving applications to cloud-native technology.  Thomas's new book, Cloud Native Spring in Action, which is about designing and developing cloud-native applications using Spring Boot, Kubernetes, and other cloud-native technologies. Thomas also talks about who would benefit from his book. Thomas's background and experience using cloud-native technology. The biggest misconceptions about cloud-native, according to Thomas. Links Systematic Cloud Native Spring in Action book Thomas Vitale personal website Follow Thomas on Twitter Connect with Thomas on LinkedIn TranscriptEmily: Hi everyone. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product's value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn't talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I'm hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you'll join me.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm your host, Emily Omier, and today I'm chatting with Thomas Vitale. Thomas, thanks so much for joining us.Thomas: Hi, Emily. And thanks for having me on this podcast.Emily: Of course. I just like to start by asking everyone to introduce themselves. So, Thomas, can you tell us a little bit about what you do and where you work, and how you actually spend your day?Thomas: Yes, I work as a senior systems engineer at Systematic. That is a Danish company, where I design and develop software solutions in the healthcare sector. And I really like working with cloud-native technologies and, in particular, with Java frameworks, and with Kubernetes, and Docker. I'm particularly passionate about application security and data privacy. These are the two main things that I've been doing, also, in Systematic.Emily: And can you tell me a little bit about what a normal workday looks like for you?Thomas: That's a very interesting question. So, in my daily work, I work on features for our set of applications that are used in the healthcare sector. And I participate in requirements elicitation and goal clarification for all new features and new set of functionality that we'd like to introduce in our application. And I'm also involved in the deployment part, so I work on the full value stream, we could say. So, from the early design and development, and then deploying the result in production.Emily: And to what extent, at Systematic, do you have a division between application developers and platform engineers, or however else you want to call them—DevOps teams?Thomas: In my project, currently, we are going through what we can call as maybe a DevOps transformation, or cloud transformation because we started combining different responsibilities in the same team, so in a DevOps culture, where we have a full collaboration between people with different expertise, so not only developers but also operators, testers. And this is a very powerful collaboration because it means putting together different people in a team that can bring an idea to production in a very high-quality way because you have all the skills to actually address all the problems in advance, or to foresee, maybe, some difficulties, or how to better make a decision when there's different options because you have not only the point of view of a developer—so how is better the code—but also the effects that each option has in production because that is where the software will live. And that is the part that provides value to the customers. And I think it's a very important part. When I first started being responsible, also, for the next part, after developing features, I feel like I really started growing in my professional career because suddenly, you approach problems in a totally different way. You have full awareness of how each piece of a system will behave in production. And I just think it's, it's awesome. It's really powerful. And quality-wise, it's a win-win situation.Emily: And I wanted to ask also about security and data privacy that you mentioned being one of your interests. How do those two concepts relate to cloud-native technologies? And what are some of the challenges in being secure and managing data privacy specifically for cloud-native?Thomas: I think in general, security has always been a critical concern that sometimes is not considered at the very beginning of the development process, and that's a mistake. So, the same thing should happen in a cloud-native project. Security should be a concern from day one. And the specific case of the Cloud: if we are moving from a more traditional system and more traditional infrastructure, we have a set of new challenges that have to be solved because especially if we are going with a public cloud, starting from an on-premise solution, we start having challenges about how to manage data. So, from the data privacy point of view, we have—depending also on the country—different laws about how to manage data, and that is one of the critical concerns, I think, especially for organizations working in the healthcare domain, or finance—like banks. The data ownership and management can really differ depending on the domain. And in the Cloud, there's a risk if you're not managing your own infrastructure in specific cases. So, I think this is one of the aspects to consider when approaching a cloud-native migration: how your data should be managed, and if there is any law or particular regulation on how they should be managed.Emily: Excellent. And can you actually tell me a little bit about Systematic's journey to cloud-native and why the company decided that this was a good idea? What were some of the business goals in adopting things like Docker and Kubernetes?Thomas: Going to the Cloud, I think is a successful decision when an organization has those problems that the cloud-native technologies attempt to solve. And some goals that are commonly addressed by cloud-native technologies are, for example, scalability. We gain a lot of possibilities to scale our applications, not only in terms of computational resources, and leveraging the elasticity of the Cloud, so that we can have computational units enabled only when needed. So, if there is, for example, an high workload on the application, and then scale down if it's not needed anymore, and that also results in cost optimization, but also scaling geographically. So, with the Cloud, it's more approachable to start a business that has a target in different countries and different continents because the Cloud lets you use different technologies and features to reach the users in the best way possible, ensuring performance and high availability. Something else related to that is resilience. Using something like Kubernetes and proper design practices in the applications, we can achieve resiliency in our infrastructure at a level that is not possible with traditional technologies. And then we have speed. Usually, a cloud-native transformation is accompanied by starting using practices like continuous delivery and DevOps, that really focus on automating and putting together different skills so that we can go faster in a more agile way and reduce the time to market. That's also a very important point for organizations.Overall, I think there's a part of cost optimization, but at the same time, we should be careful because there are some hidden costs that sometimes are not considered fully. And that is about educating people to use new cloud-native technologies. We have some paradigm shift because some practices that were well-consolidated and used with traditional applications are now not used anymore, and it takes time to switch to a different point of view and acquire the skills required to operate cloud-native infrastructures and to design cloud-native applications. So, to make a decision about whether cloud-native migration is a good idea, I recommend to consider these hidden costs as well, not only the advantages but the hidden costs and the overall complexity, if you think about something like Kubernetes. For some applications, the Cloud is just not the right solution.Emily: What would you say is a type of application that is not appropriate for the Cloud?Thomas: As an application is not actively developed with new features, but it's in a pure maintenance phase and that is fully reaching the goals for its users. If it doesn't need to scale more than what it does today, if it doesn't need to be more resilient because maybe high availability is not that important or critical, then maybe going to the Cloud is not the right solution because you would add up complexity and make things actually harder to maintain. That is one scenario that I could think of.Emily: So, basically, if it's not broken, don't try to fix it.Thomas: Yes. So, cloud-native is the answer to a specific set of problems. So, if you don't have those problems, so maybe cloud-native is not for you because it's solving different problems.Emily: So, would you say, the problems are if you need to really iterate quickly, develop new features, ship them out to customers?Thomas: Yeah, if you don't need this agility because you're not actively developing features, or if it's small things that don't require so much speed or scalability power, then might not be a good idea. Or even if you don't have the resources, to acquire the skills required to design cloud-native applications and to manage cloud-native infrastructure.Emily: What have been the biggest surprises as you've been using cloud-native technology and moving applications to cloud-native technology?Thomas: So, I always think about how logging works. I think it's a fun anecdote that when you move to a cloud-native application, usually logging is managed through files in a traditional application where we set up rules to store those files. But usually in a cloud-native setting, like in a Kubernetes environment, we have the platform taking care of aggregating logs from different applications and systems. And these applications are providing these logs as events in the standard output. So, there's no files. So, one of the first questions for developers when moving to the Cloud is like, “Okay, now where's the log files?” Because when something goes wrong, the first thing is, “Let me check the log file.” But there's no log file anymore, and this is just a fun aspect. But in general, I think there's a whole new way of thinking about applications, especially if we're talking about containerized applications. So, considering Java applications, for example, they're traditionally packaged in a way that needs to be deployed on an application server like Tomcat. Now, we don't have that anymore, but we have a self-contained Java application packaged as JAR in a container. So, it's self-contained, it contains all the dependencies that are needed, and it can run on any environment where we have a container engine working, like Docker. So, developers take on more responsibilities than before because it's not only about the application itself, but it's also about the environment where the application needs to be deployed; that is actually part of the container now. So, we can see a flow of responsibilities that is different than before.Emily: And do you think that that surprises a lot of organizations, that having developers need to take on more responsibilities is something that's not anticipated?Thomas: Sometimes, maybe it's not anticipated. And usually, it's because when considering this migration, we don't consider those aspects of acquiring new skills, or bringing in, maybe, some consultants to help during the migration to help with all those practicalities, that from a high-level point of view, are not very visible.Emily: Excellent. Tell me a little bit—I know you just wrote a book, so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your book and what inspired you to write it.Thomas: The book is about designing and developing cloud-native applications using mainly Spring Boot, and Kubernetes, plus all the great cloud-native technologies that are available. The goal is to teach techniques that can be immediately applied to real projects, so to enterprise-grade applications, as much as possible. The cloud-native landscape is so complex, it's so huge that it's impossible to cover everything, but I made a selection of all the aspects that I consider important and my goal is to try as much as possible to do things like I would do in a real application. So, what I would do daily in my job, so considering all those aspects that sometimes are not considered when teaching new technologies or new features, like for example, security. By the end of the book, the reader will have deployed a cloud-native system composed of different applications and services on a real Kubernetes cluster in a public cloud service. And besides this, I also aim at navigating these cloud-native landscape because when we look at this famous landscape picture on the website from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, it can be really overwhelming, both for new developers, but also for experienced developers that are experiencing different techniques—maybe, you come from a more traditional practice and want to switch to cloud-native, it can be really overwhelming. So, I hope that with this book, I can also help the reader navigating this landscape. The idea for the book, I got it back in January, February have been conducted by the Manning publisher, and about spring, we started considering different ideas. And I was really researching into the cloud-native landscape, in particular, how to use Spring and all related technologies to build strong native applications, so I decided to propose a book about that, that have these two main characteristics of teaching, as much as possible, real-world examples and techniques, and also help the reader navigating the landscape. So, it will not contain everything about cloud-native because that would require several books, but I think it's a good primer for the field.Emily: Excellent. And just, actually, a couple, sort of, basic questions I forgot to ask at the beginning, like how long have you been working with cloud-native technology? When did Systematic start using it and moving applications to cloud-native?Thomas: In Systematic, we have different projects and products. So, depending on that, some teams have started even several years ago, and in my project right now, it's quite recent. But I've been working with Spring for, I think, five years; also with Docker. And it's my favorite set of technologies because I think provides a lot of features to solve many different problems. I also, in my spare time when I have time, I like to contribute to the Spring projects on GitHub. It's a great community, I think.Emily: Fabulous, and who do you think would benefit most from reading your book?Thomas: I think it would benefit experienced developers, back end developers with experience in developing web applications in a more traditional way that would like to move to cloud-native, either because their organizations are doing the migration, or because maybe they would like to understand more how it works, or they would like to find a job in that field. But also for junior developers that have some experience with application development, so some basic experience with Spring and Spring Boot, but would like to take the next step towards the cloud-native world also understanding what is that about, and what, actually, cloud-native means.Emily: What do you think is the biggest misconception about cloud-native?Thomas: I think there's two misconceptions that usually, I find that is… thinking that cloud-native is about containers and that cloud-native is about microservices. So, for the first case, containers are used a lot for cloud-native applications, of course. They're used directly when working at the Kubernetes level, for example, but are used also when leveraging platforms like Heroku, or CloudFoundry. In that case, it's not the developer building the container, but it's the platform itself, but still, they are used. But cloud-native can also be applied to other different technologies, like functions, for example, in the serverless world. So, functions are not containers. So, in that way, I think it's a bit misleading to define cloud-native as containers. I think that containers is one of the technologies and implementations used for developing large native applications. But it's not the definition of cloud-native.And microservices, also. I think it's wrong to imply that cloud-native means microservices because cloud-native applications are distributed systems. Of course, they can be microservices; it's a very used architectural style in the Cloud world, but I don't think that it's a definition. Also, the CNCF previously had a definition for cloud-native technologies that was actually based on containers and microservices, and then they changed that. So, now they are listed as examples exactly because that is not the definition.Emily: Fabulous. What about open-source, what do you think open-source and cloud-native's relationship is?Thomas: One example above all, like Kubernetes, that is open-source. It, I think, is the most popular project on GitHub with the highest number of contributions, if I'm not wrong. And I think that just explains everything about cloud-native because given that this is such a core project, and it's also the project that started all for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and it's a, now, very wide landscape of technologies. Open-source, I think it's a very important part of it because it allows contributions from people around the world with different set of skills. And we're not talking just about coding, but also other aspects, like, for example, technical documentation. I know that lately there have been several contributions, for example, to the technical documentation for Kubernetes to improve the documentations and help people approaching these technology and understand the more complex topics. And from a security point of view as well, from a testing point of view, I think that open-source technologies open many possibilities.Emily: Great. Well, I just have a couple last questions for you. The first one I like to ask all of my guests, what is a engineering tool that you can't do your job without?Thomas: That's a very difficult question because I use so many tools. But I will say if I had to choose one, I would probably say my terminal window.Emily: Excellent. And then, how can listeners connect with you or follow you? And in fact, where should they go to buy your book?Thomas: So, they can find me on my website, thomasvitale.com, where I also write blog post about Spring and security. I'm also active on Twitter. My handle is @vitalethomas and on LinkedIn. But on my website, they can find all my contacts there. I repeat, thomasvitale.com. And the book is available on manning.com. That is the name of the publisher, so they can find it there. The title of the book is Cloud Native Spring in Action: With Spring Boot and Kubernetes.Emily: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Thomas, for coming on the show and chatting.Thomas: Thank you.Emily: Thanks for listening. I hope you've learned just a little bit more about The Business of Cloud Native. If you'd like to connect with me or learn more about my positioning services, look me up on LinkedIn: I'm Emily Omier—that's O-M-I-E-R—or visit my website which is emilyomier.com. Thank you, and until next time.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

It's the big day and there's a lot going on. Relationships are being redefined. Power dynamics are actively shifting and yet, in the words of wedding planner Tria Chang, "It's taboo to acknowledge or to express anything but joy." What would it look like to make room for some of the more complex emotions? To let everyone acknowledge the effect a wedding has on their unique relationship to the couple? Music by Terry Hughes Image Credit Mercedes Bosquet Links: A Joyful Wedding Can Still Make Room for Grief The Cosmic Mass What is Creation Spirituality Full Transcript Chang: I was actually talking to a young woman the other day who is thinking about becoming a wedding planner. And she had one hesitation, she asked me, “I heard that people act irrational and crazy on wedding days, is that true?” And I had to be honest with her and tell her it's partly true. People behave in ways that seem bizarre and irrational on wedding days, but if you really strip away what's happening, to me it makes perfect sense the ways that they're acting out.  So it's the big day and there's a lot going on. Relationships are being redefined. Power dynamics are actively shifting and yet it’s taboo to feel anything but joy. What would it look like to make room for some of the more complex emotions? To acknowledge the effect a wedding has on their unique relationship everyone has with the couple? This is Shame Piñata. I'm Colleen Thomas. I'm so happy to welcome Tria Chang and her wisdom back on today’s show. Tria and I met last year when she was in the process of planning her second wedding. She was working through a rich and complicated experience of weddings, being a former wedding planner who had participated in over 100 ceremonies and who had gone through a divorce during those years. As she looked ahead to her second wedding, she wanted to create a unique ceremony that was a perfect fit for herself and her partner.  At the time we met, I shared with Tria some of the details of my own wedding, specifically how it was designed to make room for all of the feelings, both happy and other. Weddings bring up a myriad of feelings and yet we're taught that there is only room for joy on the day. There's no above-board acknowledgement of how the new union will shift the family dynamics or sometimes push friendships to the back seat. We are not encouraged to sit down and have meaningful conversations about these things with our friends and family, about how the new union will change things for everyone. And when something is not brought into the light or given room for expression, it can take on a life of its own. Think people behaving irrationally at weddings. Think Bridezillas.  Shortly after that first interview, Tria and I sat down again to explore what all is happening at a wedding - the many people, the many perspectives, the many feelings. The big mash up of everything happening at once and the things that may not get acknowledged. We typically think about the couple when we think of a wedding, but there are so many more people involved and each person brings their own perspective, expectations, and life experiences to that day. There's the couple, their parents and siblings and maybe even children, their friends and family who make up the wedding party, and the guests. In addition to people we could look around the room and see, there are also invisible forces that can influence the day. There's that phenomenon I call the female legacy, which women can be acutely attuned to by the mere fact that marriage has been a survival tool for women historically. I'm not sure how else to describe it other than to say weddings can be heavier for women. There also may be some acute losses going on, such as the loss of a father to give the bride away or the loss of a close friend missed by the entire community. And there's often this idea that it all happens in one moment, there's this wedding, and it happens in a day and boom, you're married and it's all transitions are finished.  Chang: To add the behind the scenes perspective even for the vendors, for most of the weddings that I planned, there were at least 8-12 different vendors working on things. And each of those vendors come in with their own goals and agendas. So for example, the makeup artist will of course be wanting to make the bride look beautiful because it's her day, but she also has her portfolio to think about. So she'll be wanting the photographer to get certain shots of the hair and makeup, be sending that to her or be recording it for herself for her own social media or website. The photographer's obviously working on a portfolio as well and they want to get a certain type of shot that can help them get on wedding blogs or gain the trust of other clients. And the planner or stylist has a certain look that they're trying to achieve so that they can also show their best work in their portfolio and attract future clients too. So there are a lot of desires going on on a wedding day, not just the personal, also the professional. And then there is that feeling of transition, as you said, and transitions don't happen in one moment that you're not a completely different person right after you have the ring on or right after you kiss. It's just part of the process. So there is a lot going on in the wedding day, and that you're supposed to pack all of these things in, and you're supposed to be thrilled about it the whole time. So everyone is really supposed to be on their best behavior, and it doesn't usually turn out that way. Thomas: Right. And we've had quite a few conversations about the other feelings, the feelings that are harder maybe, the feelings that don't fit in the pretty package, the feelings that we're not allowed to have at a wedding, they get discouraged, and maybe the even the unconscious losses that folks aren't even aware that they're feeling. What tensions have you seen come up at weddings? Chang: Yeah, there have been a lot of tensions that come up, I think the most common one I've seen is usually between the couple and their parents. So sometimes there are mothers of the bride who are feeling protective, or like they don't really want to let go. So they start trying to control small things like the way the bride is getting her makeup done, or trying to change menu items last minute. It can really come out in ways that seem unrelated, but are just things that catch their attention and show them a way of having more control in that moment. I also had a client who…  they were a slightly older couple and so they didn't have their parents involved in the planning at all. And when the mother of the groom showed up to the ceremony site, which was an art gallery, she was furious. She just hated the venue. She thought it was so ugly and she told me, “These pictures on the wall, they're awful. They have to go. There aren't enough flowers!” And, you know, in an art gallery you can't change the display. It's off limits. We did end up moving some flowers around for her. And she didn't like the concrete floor which was part of the modernist look. But I talked to the bride and groom and told them I think it would really help her if she could have some say. And so they were comfortable with us putting down an aisle runner, so at least having something cloth for them to walk down - f or whatever reason that became important to her in that moment. Thomas: Right. And would you say that with a lot of these people, that these attempts to regain a little bit of control, feeling uncomfortable, that it was unconscious? Chang: Yes, I definitely think it was unconscious, I think they were really focused on that tangible thing. Because that seemed rational to them that seemed like something they could handle. Whereas going within and taking those steps inside and recognizing I'm losing my son or my daughter in these small ways. That's a really daunting thing to look at. And you don't really want to look at that on a wedding day, because what if it breaks you? What if you break down and end up inconsolable? You don't want to be that person at a wedding. You want to be supportive and joyful. So yes, I definitely saw a lot of unconscious outbursts at things that were probably not the real problem. But after those outbursts, people did seem to be able to feel a little bit better or maybe they felt a little embarrassed about how they acted and were able to let go and get into the joy of it more. Thomas: How do you think it would have been different for those in those situations, if the couple had said, "We don't want you to hold it together. We want you to just be here and have all your feelings." Chang: I like that idea a lot. But I've also seen the dynamics between parents and their children can be so hard to change that even if their children tell them, “Be yourself, let go,” if that's not their personality, I'm not sure they would be able to do that. But maybe even just having that permission would have felt good. It's hard to say. Thomas: Right. Tria wrote an article for the Washington Post about the wedding my husband and I created, specifically how we worked in a section for grieving. To explain how our wedding came about, I need to take you back 20 years. In the year 2000, I moved to California to attend Matthew Fox's graduate program in Creation Spirituality. Fox is often described as a renegade theologian and it was his unique event called the Techno Cosmic Mass that drew me to his school. The Techno Cosmic Mass, or Cosmic Mass as it is now called, is a multimedia rave-like community worship experience that brings prayer and devotion off the pages of the hymnal and into the soles of the feet. During my years in school I attended almost every mass. One thing I didn't know was that my future husband was also attending those events. But we wouldn't even meet each other for another 5 years when the masses were no longer being produced. So we met. And then 10 years later, we decided to get married and began considering what kind of ceremony might be a good fit for us. We were actually kind of stuck because we come from different traditions and nothing seemed to come organically. But as synchronicity would have it, Matthew Fox and his team began producing the Cosmic Mass again right around that time. And on a Sunday night, in a room full of people sweating their prayers under flashing dance lights we realized we found it - we'd found the way we wanted to get married. We were going to create the first ever Techno Cosmic Wedding. The structure of the Cosmic Mass follows the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality. To give you some context, the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality are: The Via Positiva, a time of joy, awe and wonder; the Via Negativa, a time of darkness, letting go, and grieving; the Via Creativa, honoring ourselves as divinely creative beings; and lastly the Via Transformativa, a time of preparing ourselves to go forward as spiritual warriors. While we structured the entire wedding on these four paths, it was the Via Negativa that was most unusual to have in a wedding. Matthew Fox defines the Via Negativa as "a time of communal grieving for the suffering of the planet and all beings."  Here's how Tria described the Via Negativa section of our wedding ceremony in her article: "The room was dimly lit. Wedding guests were seated on the floor, eyes closed, some crying, some reaching out in comfort. Bodies swayed gently to a melancholic chorus, and a woman’s voice crescendoed with emotion... The speaker invited guests to summon feelings of loss - whether those be for the loss of loved ones, of faith, of youth, of passion - and to embrace feelings of fear, for the world or for themselves." It was important for us to include time for these harder emotions in our wedding ceremony because we wanted to make room for our full selves to show up both at the wedding in the marriage.  Thomas: And we've spent some time too talking about the idea of the Via Negativa which comes from the wedding that my husband and I had where we actually had a section of the wedding dedicated to grieving and we've talked about how that was very unusual. Chang: Yes, and wonderful, I think. Thomas: And you and your fiancé are planning something a little bit like that for your second wedding. Chang: Yes, so we have such a small wedding and I think our guests tend to be on the more conventional side. So instead of having it at the actual wedding and having an orchestrated section of going through Via Negativa like you did, we've been spreading it out over the months leading up to the wedding, and we plan to continue making space for it after the wedding even in the years to come. Because I think it's important to realize that negative feelings, especially grief, they don't go away after one session. They can't be addressed very quickly. But if you make space for them in an ongoing way, I think it makes it easier to make joy the forefront of a certain day, in this case the wedding day. So what we've been doing is having conversations with people close to us and asking them what kind of fears they might have about how our relationship going forward might be or any fears for us as a couple, or just anything on their mind really that may be different from the regular congratulations. And then inspired by you and Rodrigo, my fiancé and I did our own kind of private Via Negativa with the two of us. We did it last week and we lit candles and turned off the lights and played some music and then I asked us to write down in a notebook all the things that we were scared about or nervous about for the wedding day. And then all of the things that made us have those fear feelings for marriage in general. And so we wrote for a little while and then we took turns sharing things and it lasted about two hours actually. We really got to talk about a lot of things. Anything from just where would we spend Christmases, like which family gets us at which time of year, to how will the dynamic change when we have children, and what will happen if, you know, one of our parents passes away, how will we take care of the other one? So we really covered a lot of ground and I think felt a lot better afterwards. But we also recognize it's a conversation that will continue. And then we had a special song to us and did the eye contact for a while to kind of let it all settle in.  Thomas: That's wonderful. That's so wonderful. Chang: Yeah. Thomas: So you've really laid the groundwork, then for yourself, each of you individually plus you as a couple plus the people in your life, to have space to share any fears, any, any worries... Chang: Yes, yeah. Because we are both at a point in our lives where we recognize marriage is difficult, because life is difficult and you're attaching yourself to someone else's life. So you will get all their difficulties plus all your difficulties. And that is something to celebrate, because you'll have someone with you, but it's also something to be a little bit nervous about and having space for all of that really feels a lot better. And I do have you to thank for that because it kind of didn't click for me until I saw your wedding ceremony from the video you showed me. And seeing that Via Negativa and seeing the space you made made me realize that was what was missing in my wedding planning. Because I had been going to a bit of therapy and trying to deal with my own feelings of worry because I was married before and it didn't work out. And so I knew I had to do this second wedding and marriage differently. But I wasn't quite sure how. So seeing your experience really helped me. I asked Tria how she worked with couples around the loss of a loved one at the wedding.  Chang: With acute losses, or grief in general, that can be a really difficult thing to handle at a wedding because, as we talked about, a wedding is supposed to be all joy and it feels scary to invite something in that will bring you grief and sadness. But sometimes people are important to us and when they're not there, to kind of brush it under the rug, it doesn't really feel real. So I think, in some ways, it could be interesting to expand what happens at a wedding to include some of the things that happen at a memorial or a grief ritual. So we can look to other cultures, for example, like the Day of the Dead. You know, they have these beautiful altars and flowers and favorite foods of that loved one, and they really presence them. And at most weddings I've been to where they've lost a loved one, they either have a line about them in the program or a picture or two kind of on a shelf in a corner that you can easily bypass if you want to. And they are honoring them, but they're making it really kind of optional and something that's easy to ignore if you're not comfortable with that. But it could be really lovely to actually invite that deceased loved one in and really have them there with a favorite food or some tradition that they loved. At my little wedding ceremony, we are having our... instead of place cards with people's names, we're writing cards to everyone with our heartfelt sentiments to them and we're writing them on watercolor painted envelopes and cards. And my mom was a watercolor artist and a lot of weekends, we would spend painting big sheets of watercolor together and then cutting out envelopes. And in those days, people used to mail each other letters often. So we would use those envelopes. So I had my fiancé make these envelopes with me and I really felt her there with me. And he's never met my mom so it was a great way for me to introduce her to him and show him this is how I would spend my weekends with my mom. And I know that having those envelopes there on the day, it's small, it's not going to be very distracting for people who didn't know her. But I will make a mention of the meaning that they have to me. And I think I'll feel her there more in that way. Thomas: Hmm, that's a really beautiful way of including her.  As the interview came to a close, Tria and I touched on inclusivity at the wedding, how to include everyone even in a small ceremony.  Chang: We are actually having a very casual meetup at a cafe, the week after our wedding ceremony for all of those friends of ours who we didn't feel like we could accommodate at the ceremony because it's so small, but who we still wanted to celebrate with in some way. So we're just having some snacks at a cafe and a tarot card reader and a watercolor portrait artist. And that’s pretty much it we're just gonna hang out. For me, I'm so... I think I have a caregiving aspect to my personality that I have not been able to shake. So when I think about holding an event for people, I literally think of it from every single person's perspective and think of how to make it comfortable for them. So we're having 25 people at our wedding. And that's, you know, me thinking through the day 25 times and that seemed like my limit. I feel like I don't want to think through this in 125 ways, just 25. That's all I can manage. Thomas: Is that something that you ever recommended to your clients when you were a wedding planner? Chang: Oh, no. That's just a problem that I have. I don't recommend it at all. Yeah, I've even tried to imagine for my two year old niece, like, okay, she's gonna get bored around this time. So I'm like... put Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes on our playlist for the wedding. Like, make sure to have something for everybody. Thomas: Oh, wow. That is super personalized Chang: A little kid playlist just for the cute little ones.  Thomas: That’s so wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your inspiration and for sharing your story of your, your second wedding, and all that you're learning and doing and experiencing and all that you bring from everything you've done before. Chang: Thank you as well and, to use your term, for holding space for all of these conversations. And I think that there is such an automatic track that people get on when they wedding plan so I hope that hearing stories on your podcast will help people realize they don't have to follow an automatic track. They can do it as they want to. They can have a Via Negativa if they want to. Thomas: They can!  Thank you so much for joining us today for this conversation about making room for all of the emotions on the wedding day. To hear more in Tria's wonderful written words, check out her piece entitled, “A Joyful Wedding Can Still Make Room for Grief” listfed in the show notes. While you're there, check out some footage of the Cosmic Mass on the Cosmic Mass website.  Tria Chang is a writer and organizer. Follow her on Instagram @tria_chang. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you got something out of this episode, please share it with a friend. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.  

Show Notes:For comments, submissions or inquiries: TalesOfTheTribunal@Gmail.comNews11th Circuit Ruling, Here.Thomas So survives challenge, Here.Vodafone v. India dispute, Here.Pierre Mayer survives challenge, Here.Canadian construction company v. Ecuador, Here.Wales Roadwork Dispute, Here.Spanish Businessmen’s threat against Mexico, Here.Mauritius:Emmanuel Galliard Speech, Here.LCIA-MIAC Re-launch, Here.Raising Arbitrator Initiative, Here.Sir Nigel Teare’s retirement. Here. OpportunitiesILI Training, Here.New Zealand Arbitrator and Mediator training, Here.Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler, Here.Rocher, Attorneys, Here.Paralegal at World Bank, Here.PBA Recruiting, Here. Events/WebinarsConversation with Robert Campos, Here.NY Law School Conversation with Wang Fang, Here.European Arbitration Association Event, Here.Arbitration Ireland Presents Women in Leadership Event, Here.PRBA & JAMS event, Here.Latin Lawyer and GIR event, Here.SIAC event, Here.YSIAC event, Here.ICC event, Here.

A strict new national security law has arrived in Hong Kong, marking the most significant shakeup to the city's relationship with the mainland since the handover more than two decades ago. In this episode, three lawyers analyze the implications for businesses of the new law as well as the U.S. response in the form of sanctions and greater export control restrictions. Thomas So is a Hong Kong-based partner at Mayer Brown and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Wendy Wysong is Hong Kong managing partner at global law firm Steptoe & Johnson. She is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement in the Department of Commerce. Nick Turner is Hong Kong-based of counsel at Steptoe & Johnson. He was previously regional sanctions officer, senior vice president at Citibank in Hong Kong. The China Law Podcast is a weekly podcast exploring China's business and financial sectors from a legal perspective, hosted by Vincent Chow. Get in touch at vchow@alm.com with any feedback and ideas for future episodes. Episode outline 01:31 How companies are expected to comply with the new law 04:12 Companies' internal policies for staff behavior 06:09 Concerns about extraterritorial nature of the law and potential impact on business 11:08 What the Hong Kong Autonomy Act threatens to do 14:32 Scope of the sanctions bill and which financial institutions could be targeted 18:16 Why a new sanctions law is necessary for the U.S. response 20:17 New U.S. export control restrictions on Hong Kong 24:38 Revoking of Hong Kong's special export control privileges Related links Why the US Wants to Strip Hong Kong of its Special Trade Privileges Podcast #9: What Does Hong Kong's Special Trade Status Really Mean? Podcast #5: Discussing new US Controls on Tech Exports to China with Amanda DeBusk, Former Commerce Department Official

We hear all the time that we should love ourselves more, but what does that actually look like in real life? Can self-love be more than buying ourselves flowers? Jennie Taylor shares the tools in her self-love playbook and speaks honestly about loving herself through a deeply personal surrender. Music by Terry Hughes Inspired to create something for yourself? Visit https://ever-changing.net/ Links: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/the-self-love-playbook https://expand-coaching.com/ ---- Full Transcript Taylor: We all have that one thing. We all have that thing we think we're supposed to be, that we think will bring us happiness or will make us worthy of love and joy. What I've learned is that one of the deepest ways you can love yourself is just letting go of that thing. What does it mean to love ourselves? To have our own back and be on our own team as we make the tough decisions? Is self-love really just narcissism? Is it just a new age thing? We'll speak today with Jennie Taylor, who has been on a wide and deep journey to understand what self love means for her, and who will share with us how we can learn to actually do it. This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. As you know, in this first season on Shame Piñata we are focusing on weddings & commitment ceremonies, a type of ceremony we are all familiar with. And we've also touched just a bit on the idea of self-commitment ceremonies, where a person commits to being their own best partner. Today we're going to look at little more deeply into the idea of self love. I came across a wonderful article by Jennie Taylor which helped me understand that self love can be an action instead of a feeling and also that it's really a practice from moment to moment, ever-evolving as we learn to know and trust ourselves more. This idea of self love as an action reminds me of one of my favorite Mr. Rogers quotes, “Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like 'struggle'. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now – and to go on caring even through times that may bring us pain." So, self love can look like us accepting ourselves, no matter how we're feeling in the moment. And when you think about it, isn't that really the way you'd want someone to love you, to just accept you the way you are in this moment? I also learned from Jennie's article (and this shouldn't be a surprise) that our ability to be in our body and feel our feelings has a huge impact on our ability to accept ourselves and show up for ourselves in the moment. Because if I'm not in touch with my body, I won't be as able to identify my feelings and listen to what they're telling me. I'll be disconnected from the cues that help me make decisions like should I stay or do I want to leave? Is this job a good fit for me? Is this relationship meeting my needs? Jennie and I had a wonderful conversation a few months ago. We spoke about self love within the context of the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. Thomas: So what does self love mean to you? Taylor: So for me, self love has really been a journey of discovering that it's really a practice. When I first started out, I was looking for this feeling of self love. And what I've learned in going through so many layers of it is that it's a ritual, it's a habit, it's a practice. It's a way I show up for myself. Specifically, I'd say the most important thing is allowing myself to feel my feelings, setting boundaries with people. That practice, you know, includes being mindful of how I spend my time, how I talk to myself, how I care for my body, it's those... practicing compassion and acceptance. So all of those things are more doing rather than a feeling. Thomas: So I know that you've been on a journey to find self love and to concretize and weave it into your life. Can you tell us a little bit about what that journey looked like? Taylor: Yes. I feel like the word that comes up is resistance. It's just this big journey of resistance. And me like fighting it and then giving in and fighting and giving in... And so yeah, I mean, I think, for me, it's always peeling back new layers. It started with things like, you know, trying to really like myself in my 20s, buying myself flowers, allowing myself alone time, cooking myself a nice dinner. So there were these things that I was like, yes, this is a part of self care. And I'm just going to have a special time with myself. But then what I realized when I peel back that layer is like, I still had really harsh self talk and I still was really hard on myself if I would make a mistake, sort of beat myself up. And so that led me to this other layer of like doing the work on that part of me. What was driving the the negative self talk? How could I shift that, you know? So becoming conscious of that. And then once that shifted, it was like I stopped being overly critical of myself, I stopped doing things that were bad for me like, you know, drinking a decent amount or you know, eating badly, hanging out with people that were just blatantly not good for me. But then I really still was disconnected from my body. And so when I would be stressed, I wouldn't leave a situation, or when I would be feeling really not good physically, you know, sometimes you can get yourself in a situation and you're, you physically just feel like your energy is capped or it's being drained. And I realized I wasn't criticizing myself but I was also still putting myself in these situations where I didn't feel good about myself. So that was this whole 'nother you know, layer and I would say, where I am now is sort of... it’s feeling all of my feelings, the light, the dark, the things I'm nervous make me a bad person or make me unlovable. It's feeling all of that with a really deep level of acceptance and then checking in with my body on like, how well I'm doing. You know what I mean? So if I still feel anxiety, I know I'm not there. Because when I'm in my truth and when I'm in my aligned place of self love, my body feels free, it feels clear, it feels good. Did you get that? Jennie lets her body tell her how well she's taking care of herself. She makes the best decision she can from moment to moment and then checks in with how her body is feeling to see if her decision was a supportive one. Thomas: I love that idea, that metric, of listening to the body checking in with the body. How does my body feel? Because the body doesn't lie. Taylor: Absolutely. And your intuition speaks through your body. And it's funny because I actually run a triggers... like a workshop on triggers. So how to help people process these stuck beliefs and through the body. And one of the things coolest things is when you do the work, you can actually have a feeling that really triggers your body and it dissolves the more you work with it and dance with it and love it and play with it. So it's a check-in and you can sort of feel the progress within your body to over time. Thomas: Yeah, I was always taught that it was mind, body, heart, spirit, but I've only recently realized that the emotions in the body are and so much in the gut as well. Thomas: Yeah. When my father passed away, that was probably one of the biggest grieving times I had and, and a lot of times when I was crying, there was no content. I wasn't thinking about him. I wasn't missing him even I was just... my body needed to cry. And yes, and it was it was almost like, you know, throwing up or something. It was just like, I had to just stepped back and let the body do it. And it helped if somebody was there to hold space, so I didn't feel like I had to stop. And then I just would go and go and go and go and go and go and go and go, go, go, go go... just just let it go. And just until it was done, and like, okay, that had to happen. Taylor: Yes. What you're talking about is so helpful when we when we start talking about using the body to process emotion. When we're in our heads and we're creating story and we're crying and we're making it worse and making ourselves sad, that's a different type. What you're talking about is absolutely hands down the body just processing and moving on emotion when there's not a lot of thought, there's not a narrative. You're just getting it out. I felt like that with this virus as well going around. Have you? Thomas: No, I think I'm still in my head. Taylor: You're still in your head? Thomas: I'm still... I'm still making plans, making plays. Yeah, you know, worrying and calling people in the you know, I'm still in that place. Taylor: Right, right, right. Yeah, I have there been a couple of days where I am not sure what I'm crying it out, but I just have to release. It's like there's this collective angsty typing that is just heavy. We've got to get it out, you know? I think a big part of my practice has been is this useful for me to feel this or is this creating more of this negative energy? You know, so checking in on what the intention behind feeling the negative emotion is. Is it ego? Is it my body processing? Thomas: Nice. Yeah. And how do you how do you tell? Taylor: Usually it's a head versus - and a lot of thought - versus that body feeling that you're talking about. And for me, when I'm processing emotion, in my body, it feels like it sort of wells up and then I have to get it out, usually through tears, a lot of times breath or sound. Like if it's energy in my throat, that's usually not ego. But when it's my head sort of making me inferior making a victim, making me... you know, where there's like a strong narrative around it... Thomas: Yeah. Yep, I hear ya. Taylor: Yeah. So. And, and fear also, I think lives in our head when we're down that rabbit hole of like all the things that could happen. Yeah, we're in fear and fear is ego. So when we're scared and we have scary thoughts in our heads, maybe ones that keep us awake at night or steal our attention while we're at a stoplight, those moments can take us out of our body, into our head. And the weird thing is that we can't really release that tension or resolve the feelings when we're in our head, because the emotions are in the body. I asked Jennie what she discovered about herself over the years. Taylor: I mean, there's so many things what immediately came to mind was that I am lovable. I feel like that sounds very trite. I've also discovered just how hard on myself I was. But I think overall, which includes both of those things is that I'm human. You know, this is all part of it. And the ups and the downs and the dark and the light that's it's all safe. You know, and the truth is, it's between me and me. I don't need to expose it and to put it out there and make sure other people love my dark. I'm the only one that has to love that and accept that and explore it and so from that place, it's a lot safer and easier to explore. Because it's between me and you know, what I believe is my Creator source energy like the divine that's within me and in the universe. Thomas: Wow, that's the lesson right there. I love that. Thank you. Taylor: Yeah. Thomas: So you and I had spoken a little bit before that one of the things that you went through in your life was coming to terms with the reality of not having children. making peace with that, with that reality. And I'm curious how self love was part of that process what that process was like for you and how self love was part of it. Taylor: Yeah. So this was a big one in 2019 for me. I have always identified with being a mom, always. Like from the time I was six years old, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "A mom." That was me, you know? And so I had cultivated self love and I'll be honest with you, part of it was in preparing myself to be a better mom, a better wife a better you know, the head of the family. And so when you're when I was doing all these things, and I still wasn't feeling like I was any closer to becoming a mother, I started having a lot of suffering. And it was self inflicted. It wasn't because society was telling me I should have a baby because I'm a woman, you know. It just it wasn't that. I was genuinely... it was like a real internal identity and a pull of like, what am I, if I don't do this with my life? It feels like this is my purpose. I feel so called to do this and I can't... I felt like I can't create it. So that awareness of the suffering, and how much I was creating that for myself, I think, opened up this bigger discussion for me with myself around surrender. And it was this sort of come-to-Jesus moment of like, I cannot create this much suffering for myself and this much self judgment and love myself at the same time. And so what needs to happen is a place of total like radical acceptance and surrender, that my life has value and meaning even if I don't even know Know what it is yet? And that's profound. To sort of like yes, you love yourself for what you know of yourself but to then peel back this layer and have to love this part of yourself that you trust has value because, you know, if you have a spiritual practice you you believe that. But you don't even know what it looks like yet you don't know what your contribution is yet. And I feel like it really was a twofold practice of like A: noticing the shame and the suffering and the thoughts, and finally just getting a place of saying, "No, I will not treat myself like this anymore. I won't". And even though I want it so badly, and I feel so called, there's something else and I trust with I trust that divine within me that knows there's some purpose here, why this hasn't happened. Thomas: Right Taylor: And yeah, I mean, again, that's a practice, that's showing up every day for myself. And of course there are some bad days, you know, but in those moments, it's... it really is just a call back to trust and surrender. And knowing that that's the kindest, most loving thing I can do for myself. And I'm still obviously open to it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm... it's not too late. I certainly could still have children, but it's... there's no attachment to it anymore. There's no... there's not like that need to, to have me be worthy. That's sort of how I know that I've healed that part of me, is because I don't have a narrative anymore around how it's gonna go or like why it hasn't happened. You know, sometimes I think when we're insecure about things or we are resisting things, we have a narrative around why it hasn't happened to sort of cover up our shame. And for me right now, it's just, I don't know. I really have no story anymore. I have no... I have no ending one way or the other. It feels so good to be in this place of such tension and such pain and suffering right in my body to then move through it and claim this other part of my power. Thomas: Right. Taylor: And yeah, just feel sort of lighter and still open but not attached. Thomas: Right. Right. You've like moved beyond the story in the detachment. Taylor: Yes, yes. It's just... I'm very much in trust. And I think I think one common misconception or mistake is that people will surrender in order to get there. And there's still that attachment to... "Okay, but I have to let go of it all and then I'll get it!" You know, that's all I think it's common right now where there's a lot of talk around manifestation. And the purpose with the context of self love is: Do it because it's kind to yourself. Don't do it to get it. You know what I mean? Thomas: Well, thank you so much. It's been so awesome just getting to know you and absolutely continuing to have a conversation. Taylor: Back at you and I hope you know our conversations continue on and on. So yes, yes. I'm so grateful to Jennie for sharing her wisdom with us, not only on her ever-deepening explorations of self love, but also for her reminders on the wisdom our bodies offer us right now, in this moment. I hope you can take a minute today to take one or maybe even two deep breaths and notice how your body feels. You might even see if you can sense your body's response as you make decisions like working another few hours or taking a break, reading a book or taking a walk. Just noticing. You might notice if you can even feel your body today. And if you can't, it's okay. Your body is there, just waiting to connect. Waiting to accept you in this moment, no matter how you are. Jennie Taylor is a certified leadership coach and founder of Expand Coaching, an organization aimed at helping clients deepen connection and authenticity in the workplace and with oneself. Her Expand Within program focuses on the components of Self-Love and gives practical ways to cultivate it to impact all areas of life: career, relationships, purpose. Before coaching full-time, Jennie spent 16 years in the healthcare and technology industries as a sales leader. You can learn more about her and book a free session at www.expand-coaching.com Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

The pain, grief, discomfort, and vulnerability that can arise throughout the wedding process can actually be doorways into joy if we are willing to let them in. Sheryl Paul speaks about her book "The Conscious Bride" which addresses the MANY feelings that can arise around a wedding for everyone involved. Music by Terry Hughes Inspired to create something for yourself? Visit https://ever-changing.net/ Links: Sheryl Paul's work: https://conscious-transitions.com The Conscious Bride: https://conscious-transitions.com/books ---- Full Transcript Paul: I'm always interested in what's not being talked about what people are experiencing, but are trying to stuff away, trying to sequester, trying to sweep into the corner under the rug... when all that does is create shame and all that does is create anxiety. Sheryl Paul has a unique ability to see the invisible, to see what has been silenced. Her book "The Conscious Bride" has been helping couples prepare for marriage for 20 years - and prepare in a very specific way. Her work helps couples create room for all of the emotions that come with transition, not just the picture perfect ones. Funny thing is, that allows for even more joy. Join me for a conversation with Sheryl Paul. 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 I got engaged six years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a book called "The Conscious Bride". Now, I'm not a reader, as my husband will tell you, but I devoured this book. I loved it because it touched on the shadow, the stuff we don't talk about, the stuff that gets in our way when we want to feel one way but actually feel a myriad of other ways all at the same time. It named the shadow that hovers over the wedding: the attachment, the fear, the uncertainty, the hidden power-struggles and the grief that lies beneath them, and that a big part of stepping into a new life is letting go of the old one - and not just for the couple. The Conscious Bride gave me permission to feel all the ways, and it helped me create room for everyone else to feel all the ways too so, ultimately, we could all process the transition without getting into weird fights about random things. I was so happy to have a chance to speak with Sheryl Paul. Thomas: So what led you to write this book? Paul: So, I was in a master's program around that time. I was at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it has a very strong Jungian focus. And I had always been interested in rites of passages and I had a deep sense that there was a lot that was not being talked about around the wedding. And I started to interview women and I did a lot of interviews, especially when it came time to write the book, which came from my master's thesis. So it started out as as a thesis and then evolve into a book. And I started to see that there was a big gap in the cultural conversation around around transitions in general. All transitions are bypassed and overlooked, but particularly the wedding and then in particular, how much focus there is on the joy and the perfection and everything has to be blissful and ecstatic from the moment of the proposal into the first year of the wedding, and there was just no conversation happening about the shadow, about the death experience, about what women (and men) are actually experiencing quite a bit of a time. And, you know, the more I researched and the more I looked and the more I spoke, the more it became quite clear to me that just that again, that there was a real gap in the conversation around this pivotal rite of passage, one of our few ceremonies that we still invoke in the culture. And yet it's done in such a way where we really gloss over the element of a transition, of the reality that when you are in transition, you are in a death experience, you are in a liminal zone, you are between identities, you are letting go, you are grieving. And we only expect people to feel joyful. It creates a lot of anxiety and it creates even more chaos than there naturally would be around an event like this. Because I'm feeling sad, because I have a sense of loss, because I feel like a part of me is dying, because I'm not over-the-moon ecstatic... something must be wrong with me, or with my partner, or with the decision to get married - something's wrong. And it's an incredibly deep sigh of relief to the soul to know that nothing is wrong. In fact, the more you let those difficult feelings in, the more you will open to the joy; that the pain and the grief and the discomfort and vulnerability are the doorways into the joy, into what we are expected to see all and into what we hope to feel. And what I started to say earlier was that that the wedding more than any other transition, I think, has (probably being pregnant becoming a mother comes close) carries a very strong cultural expectation of unilateral joy and it is supported in a big way by the wedding industry that sells perfection and sells joy. So it's a it's very big money behind selling us the bill of goods by selling us this message that you are supposed to be joyful and the way to do that is to create a perfect event. Thomas: How do you work with someone if they're just starting to realize that they don't have to only feel joyful? Paul: So, I tell them to read my book. And, you know, it's really the first part it's about re educating people to understand all of the normal and necessary feelings that accompany this transition. And once they understand that everything they're feeling is normal and necessary, they can start to let it in and and feel it, feel the grief, feel the loss, feel the vulnerability, feel the loneliness. These are all normal feelings that accompany transitions. So once we give ourselves permission to feel without that overlay of "because I'm feeling this it means there's something wrong" everything changes from there. We don't then have to misassign meaning to the feelings and to think, "Because I'm feeling sad, it means I'm making mistake." No, it has nothing to do with that. You're feeling sad because you are in a rite of passage. You're feeling sad because you are in the death experience, letting go of this identity, this primary identity as single person, as daughter, and shifting into an entirely new stage of life, a new identity. And there is no way to go through that without feeling grief. Thomas: You spend a good portion of the book talking about how the bride is separating from the father/father figure and the mother/mother figure and the friends. Can you say more about that process? Paul: Yes, so it can go a few different ways. If the bride is very close to her father, that's one set of emotions and experiences where there is tends to be a lot of grief, a lot of crying, really good, medicinal, necessary crying to make that separation process... and to make it more effective to make it more complete to make it more conscious. Again, in the naming, to say, I am separating from my dad, I am no longer going to be... Yes, I'm his daughter, but not in the same way, not as my primary identity. That my new partner is going to be number one and I'm transferring allegiance. So, that's one example of one way that it can go if if someone's very close to their father. If somebody doesn't have a close relationship with their father or there is no father figure in their life, that's a different kind of grief of the loss of not having had that or never having had that. The same as somebody has passed away. If somebody who's getting married and their mother's no longer alive. You know, that's, that's one way that grief can come through, as opposed to a mother who is very much alive and very much involved. And then there's a separation. There's, there's a loosening of cords that is required. Thomas: I'm curious as you're speaking how this applies, I'm sure it's very different, but how it applies to folks who were older when they get married, or maybe a second marriage. Paul: It can be different, it can be similar. It depends. It depends on a lot of factors. But regardless of the age, especially if it's a first marriage and you're getting married at 40, you're still letting go of a massive identity. And in some ways, it's even more of a letting go because of all of those years that you spent as a non-married person. And so there's a lot of grieving, a lot of shedding of the independence, the separateness, all of the control that you have when you are a non-married person, that every inch of your life is your own: your home, your space, how you spend your time, how you organize your weekend, it's all yours. And so that is its own massive death experience for somebody who marries later, you know, and who has had that many more years than someone who's 22 if you're 42, that's a lot of years of being the sole architect of your life. Thomas: So you work with people around transitions, all kinds of transitions now, and I'm curious if ceremony plays a part in that with them. Paul: I'm a big fan of ceremony. Because my work is largely over the internet. I'm not the one doing the ceremony with them. I would love to be that person, but I'm not. But I always encourage people to create ceremony and create rituals. And so, you know, if it's somebody getting married... and I've had a lot more men come my way, by the way, since I wrote The Conscious Bride. And I'm thinking of some right now who are in one of my small coaching groups. And he's getting married on Saturday, and I won't, I won't share the specifics, but it's... because it's his story. But it's really beautiful to witness men in their transitional process and the rituals that they come up with because I encourage people to find their own rituals that are meaningful to them. Ways to acknowledge the end of you know, in his sake, his bachelorhood that that time in his life is over. And so he has been sharing these incredibly potent rituals that have come to him for ways of recognizing that that time in his life is over. And what ritual does is, as you know, is it, it concretizes, it makes it and embodies what's happening, so that it brings it out of just that realm of talking about it and it sends it into a realm that we can't see with our five senses, but very much exists and yet calls on the five senses to help transmute the experience into another form. And so rituals help us cross over that sometimes very scary divide that just looks like a big, cavernous, empty space, crossing from one identity to a new identity, from one stage of life to the next. And without the rituals we are... we're pretty lost and so, you know, again, as I, as I said earlier, the wedding is one of the few ceremonies that we have, which comes with ritual. A lot of people tend to minimize or diminish the ceremonial aspect because they're so focused on the party and the reception, you know, that's where all of the energy goes. When really, it's the ceremony that has so much power to carry us over the divide between one stage and the next. Thomas: And that's something I'm trying to encourage and put seeds out in the world for as well, that people take that the ritual, the ceremony of the marriage, the wedding and they, they feel free to do it their way so that it's powerful and is as powerful and meaningful for the couple as possible. Paul: Yes, yes! And I think we are at this extraordinary time in our world where we have freedom to do that, where we are breaking out of the traditions that have gone stale and revitalizing them with personal meaning of what is meaningful for you. And there may be long-standing time-honored traditions that are still meaningful. And I'm by no means one to throw everything out that we've come from, because many of those rituals are gorgeous and meaningful - but only if they're meaningful for the individual, right? Only if they land in a place where something inside of you says yes, right? That helps me, that bolsters me, that comforts me. Right? So, you know, whether it's at a Jewish wedding standing under the Chuppah, you know, it's just this beautiful symbol of, of our new home and and this, you know, long standing tradition... if that's meaningful to somebody great. If it's not, then it really.. it's not going to do anything for you on a spiritual level. I shared with Sheryl that before my wedding, I created self-commitment ceremony for myself. And in that ceremony I presenced all of my Ancestral grandmothers with the acknowledgement of how important marriage might have been for them, how much of a survival tool. I did this because women’s standing in society has evolved so much even since my mother's generation, but yet we are still connected to our Ancestral legacy and felt like a really important thing to me. Paul: That's incredibly beautiful that you did that and so powerful and it's probably the number one fear that comes up for women that I'm working with in their pre-wedding time in their engagement, is the fear of what does marriage mean? And does it mean that that I am beholden to this person now and I lose all sense of self and I become boring and frumpy and... This is this is the legacy. This is what we've been handed, right? This is what it has meant for thousands and thousands of years is that for women, marriage has meant really the death of self: I exist, to take care of the man and to take care of the children and that's it. And so there's this very deep ancestral legacy that we have to consciously break with and recognize that we are so lucky and we are so blessed to be on this new threshold, that we get to redefine what marriage means for us. And we only can really know that after we've taken the leap, because on the other side, on the first side, on the engagement side, it just all looks and sounds so scary to most women. And you know, that's why I have so many exercises in The Conscious Bride, more-so I think in The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner, on what does it mean to be a wife? What does that mean to you? What does the word wife connote? When you think of wife, what is the connotation for you? And it's very rare that someone's going to say, "Oh, I see this rad, sexy woman, you know, like, doing like, the dance on the rooftops." Like, no, that's not usually what we think of when we hear the word wife. But it could be. More and more we are redefining that. And we are seeing that. And so I tell people, but look out into the world today and find those those models of marriage where you see a woman who is doing her life fully, you know, and yes, maybe she's also a mother and she's, you know, loves being married and she's fully committed to her path and and making her offerings, and doing her work in the world. Right? Separate from wife and mother. So, yeah, I love, I love that I love what you share. I love what you did. I think that is not only powerful, but essential on that ceremonial ritual level to recognize what we've come from. Thomas: I'm just so happy and honored to have the chance to talk to you after, after all this time of really, really, really appreciating your book and your wisdom. Paul: Yeah, thank you, Colleen. It means a great deal to me to have the opportunity to share Sheryl's wisdom with you. I hope that you are able to use it or pass it along to a friend. Here's one final bit of wisdom, a quote from The Conscious Bride. "A marriage is a rite of passage no matter when it occurs, and the woman must still pass through the phases of her transformation. She must die, she must sit in the unknown, and then she will be reborn." Sheryl Paul is the author of The Conscious Bride and The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner. Her website contains a plethora of resources for addressing life transitions. Learn more about Sheryl and her work at https://conscious-transitions.com/ Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

If you and your partner are arguing more as you approach your wedding, there’s nothing wrong with you. There's also nothing wrong with asking for support. Landis Bejar shares how Aisle Talk in New York City is making therapy a shame-free option for couples approaching the big day. Music by Terry Hughes Inspired to create something for yourself? Visit https://ever-changing.net/ Links: Aisle Talk: https://www.aisle-talk.com Why Stress When You Can See a Wedding Therapist (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/fashion/weddings/why-stress-when-you-can-see-a-wedding-therapist.html Growing in Faith Group to Celebrate B'Not Mitzvah (Augusta Chronicle): https://www.augustachronicle.com/lifestyle/20200214/growing-in-faith-group-to-celebrate-bnot-mitzvah ----------- Full Transcript Bejar: Why do we need this? We're getting married. We're... you know, it's so early for us to be reaching out for ... people think of couples therapy as being the last straw or the rock bottom or something like that Landis Bejar has a job you may not have ever heard of before. She is a wedding therapist. In her room, individuals and couples plan for the big day by setting goals and processing the experience of the transition. Her blog offers tips on wedding therapy themes such as defending something you never meant to defend. Join me for a conversation with Landis Bejar. 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 exploring the idea of wedding therapy. Did you know that wedding therapists are a thing? I had no idea until I read an article by Alyson Krueger in the The New York Times called "Why Stress When You Can See a Wedding Therapist." I learned that there are therapists who not only specialize in life transitions but that some specialize in weddings specifically. Landis Bejar is one of those therapists. She's a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and she started her own practice called Aisle Talk two years ago in New York City. In addition to the New York Times, Aisle Talk has been featured in Brides magazine, Business Insider and The Atlantic. Landis is super personable and passionate about her work. She walked me though how Aisle Talk came to be and answered my questions about what makes weddings such a potent time for everyone involved. She is also a big proponent of removing the stigma from therapy. She regularly attends bridal fairs to get her work out into the world, bring it out of the shadows, and make it a shame-free option for couples. She stresses that there's nothing wrong with you if you are your partner are arguing a bit more as you approach the wedding, or if you communication isn't quote-unquote perfect. You're actually doing a monumental thing in rearranging your own life and potentially the lives of your family. Landis shared with me the moment the idea for her practice was born. Bejar: The sort of aha moment came up in the midst of an argument in a bridal dress salon between my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law. My sister-in-law was trying on dresses. My mother-in-law was commenting on how she looked in them. And I was sort of there for moral support. And my mother-in-law said something that did not sit well with my sister in law about how a certain dress fit and that sparked an argument between the two of them. So I sort of as the, you know, off duty therapist in the room said something to sort of smooth things over and kind of join them together and let each, essentially let each of them feel heard, which is a lot of what we do and family therapy, and kind of realized that, you know, this was not intended to be hurtful It was not intended to, you know, be taken in the way that it was and sort of got everyone on the same page. And in the wake of that, my mother-in-law sort of jokingly commented, "Good thing that we brought the therapist along. How come you're not a bridal therapist?" Which I thought at first was very funny. And a lot of people have made comments like that to me over my career, with a different specialties, whatever it was I was doing at the time, whether it was I was, you know, holding a baby or playing with an animal or something like that. "You should be a baby therapist...You should be a dog therapist." different things of that nature. But there was something about this comment where I sort of did have one of those aha moments. And I said, wait a second, does that exist? Because I've been a bride before and I know that there's lots of psychological and dynamic pieces that are involved in planning a wedding and thinking about getting married and there should be bridal therapists. So that was kind of moment where I started thinking about this as an actual business and some work that I could be good at. Thomas: Why is it that the deep-rooted family problems can come out of the woodwork at weddings? Bejar: First of all, like weddings are not new, even though the way in which we might experience them feels like it's ever changing and ever evolving. It's a really long standing tradition. And so I think that with that comes lots of ways to interpret that tradition and that can be just very different in one family to another. It can be really different from one individual to another and it can be really, really different from one couple as compared to each of their family of origin. So we have this thing that like has been around for so long, but everybody interprets it differently. And so I think that that's one set of circumstances that sort of informs, you know, how that can cause some some family issues to arise along that, along that plain, you know, weddings are also culturally informed. So there's cultural expectations, there's generational expectations about how this milestone is recognized. And it's a milestone not only for an individual person, and not only for a couple, but many view it as a milestone for our family. So I'm kind of, you know, those I feel like those two things are like a venn diagram where there's separate things and then overlapping things. And then on top of that, it's a marker of time. You know, and with any sort of marker of time or what I call in my work, life transition, all kinds of stress comes up because as we mark time, and as we move from one life state to another through a life transition, we ostensibly are grieving the previous state in order to make space for the new state. And that can be challenging both for the person who's moving through it and the people surrounding that person. So if we remove ourselves from the wedding example, we have like a mom sending her five year old to kindergarten, a mom might cry. And it's not because she doesn't she's not happy that her child is ready for the next step in their life that she might be grieving those toddler years or those years where she spent more time with the child and now is kind of watching them gain their independence and moving into this next state. And same reason why we cry at graduations, you know, and you know all of those things, so that comes up during weddings as well. And the other thing that I would say is that like, there's a lot of pressure for this to be the happiest day of your life. And so when you have all of these other sort of variables coming up that would naturally challenge our emotions and psychological states and family dynamics, the first sign of distress feels really upsetting and maybe extra upsetting because of the pressure that we're all supposed to be so happy. And I think that that kind of creates a little bit of a pressure cooker for some of these things to come out in really aggressive ways that we're not expecting. Thomas: You had spoken before about the taboo of therapy. It sounds like you, you address that in your work. Bejar: I do try to address that in my work first by acknowledging how hard it might be for somebody to reach out to me. And also to make my practice one that is trying to sort of in its presentation and where we show up, whether it's a bridal show or a workshop or you know something like that, but just in by by showing up and not being sort of in the dark corners of the internet, we're modeling that it's okay to seek out therapy. It's okay to seek out therapy during this time, and things like that. Thomas: That's wonderful. And specifically, how does that taboo relate to folks are planning to get married? Bejar: Yeah, I think that I think it's like that image of like, if somebody is sort of operating either consciously or unconsciously from this place that there is a taboo around therapy, then people might relate to either themselves, or maybe the perception of others that if you're going to therapy, you have hit rock bottom or things are really dire or things are really terrible. So, if one or more of the partners is operating under that assumption or they feel like people around them are operating under that assumption, that can be really disheartening to think that you've hit rock bottom when you're just about to get married, which is certainly not true, not true most of the time, of course, could be true, I'm sure in many cases, but it's not a requisite to seeking out therapy. Thomas: Are you putting that message out there to help combat the taboo of therapy around the couples that are getting married in some way? Bejar: Yeah, I think that in a like you know wider brushstroke when we're talking to like more people like then we're doing it sort of inherently in our actions rather than our words, right? So like showing up at an expo and being like, you know, at a table in between your, you know, the personal trainers and the bridesmaids dresses and the make up artist, is like your wedding therapist. I think that showing up in that way is our sort of like walking the walk rather than talking the talk is like we don't feel ashamed about it. We want to tell you what we're here for. We want to tell you the things that are very common to experience during your wedding planning and if that relates to you, come on over like we are here to support you during this process. And I think that is sort of like our, our walking the walk of de-stigmatizing therapy to not sort of be in the closets and in the shadows and be very present amongst the people the other people who help you with your wedding planners or your you know, all the things that you do as you're preparing to get to get married. And then maybe more on a micro level is when we're working with people, that's the first thing that we're addressing. We're saying, you know, it's really hard, you know, we're seeing how hard it is in the midst of whether it's our own personal stigma that we carry, or just societal societal stigma, we're acknowledging how powerful it is that they're seeking, seeking support in spite of that and normalizing for so many people that this is so common, and it happens so often, and there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing pathological about you because you're arguing a little bit more during this time or you're having difficulty with communication. You're collaborating on a big event together, not just the two of you but also incorporating the needs and wishes of your two families and trying to strike a balance between that. And you're on the precipice of committing to a life together and there's a lot of pressure in that. You know, and you're mourning, maybe a loss of your singlehood, which nobody wants to talk about. So we're really doing a lot to sort of normalize that experience and the stress that inherently comes with that. Thomas: What is the experience like for you, when you're at the bridal fairs? How to couples relate to you? Bejar: It's interesting, I think that like I do notice a difference between... like kind of across generations. So I noticed that some of the moms in the group or some of the maybe older generations will have, will have like, definitely some humorous reactions. I've definitely had like some older folks come by and just say, you know, kind of like laugh or giggle or say, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe... They think of everything lately!" Which is totally true and I totally I acknowledge that but I also think that in that is maybe layered with some discomfort perhaps with the idea of seeking therapy for all of these different reasons. But by and large, the reaction is, "Oh my god that is so needed. What a great business!" A lot of times we have people who are stopping by who maybe are accompanying a bride and they say, "Oh my gosh, what I would have given for this during my wedding planning!" or "My family needed this so much," or reactions like that. And then the other reactions are from the other vendors who have probably subbed in as surrogate therapists or just support people as they've been closer to the stress up until this point and wedding history and have taken on the brunt of, you know, family feuds or emotional breakdowns or things like that. And they're oftentimes the most supportive of this mission because that's not what they are contracted to do necessarily, or what they feel comfortable with, or what they're trained for any of those things. Right. So how cool would it be to actually have a trained therapist on staff, if you will, to help you navigate the stresses of the ceremony - not only your stresses, but those that might be coming up from the folks around you? I'm hoping this wedding therapy idea is one that catches on. May we all have all the support and witnessing we need as we go through our life transitions. Thomas: So on the show, we talk a lot about life transitions, and we've been focused on creating rites of passage for those as, as we feel called to do that, whatever we feel that urgency when something is really intense, and we, we really want to honor a transition with ceremony. And we also talk about rites of passage that we had, that we had in our life or that we wished we'd had in our life. And so I'm curious if there are any transitions in your life that you wish you could have had a rite of passage for. Bejar: Yeah, I don't know if I've ever really like articulated this. But when I was in like, middle school time, so like seventh eighth grade, I had a lot of friends who were having Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. And I think, for me as someone who has one Jewish parent but wasn't raised with any sort of formal religion in my family growing up, it was a time where I sort of long to be part of something a little bit more structured and I saw my friends kind of going through that rite of passage and all that comes with it. It's not just a day but it's, you know, years of practice and study and understanding and sacrifice in terms of like, the time and the energy and when you're, you know, a really young person, and you're often working on like a special philanthropic project, you're learning a new language, you're sort of performing that new language in front of other people, you're interpreting it, you're doing a lot of things that probably at the time I was like, interested in certain aspects, but as I've gotten older, I'm think it's really interesting, sort of rite of passage for a very young person and like, tasked with a lot of responsibility. Then I guess 10-15 years later, I was, you know, thinking about getting married to my partner and my person who I found and I was marrying somebody who is Jewish and who longed for a partner who was Jewish and might have converted or being if they weren't already either converted, or in my case sort of affirm their Jewish identity and gone through a process of like, doing that so that we could, you know, raise a Jewish family and things that I probably wasn't able to do without having the Jewish upbringing and just having my one Jewish parent. So, I think that, you know, that was a very special time for me going through that process before getting married. And they think that it's really interesting that as you asked me this question, the rite of passage of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah that I am immediately think of feels very, feels like it fits really well because ultimately, like I did sort of go through this conversion or affirmation of my Jewish identity that has been very important to me. And I feel like as a part of that work that I did when I was an adult, I reflected on many moments in my life where I longed for like being more a part of that community and I feel like as a part of getting married, I got to do that in a more formal way that I had longed for as an individual and then kind of gone through a process in my, you know, planning to get married. Thomas: So you went through the Bat Mitzvah process, but when you were older? Bejar: It was a conversion process. It was different than the Bat Mitzvah, but it feels like it feels very relevant that I guess that was something that I longed for, and later sort of affirmed my Jewish identity in a different way and sort of this adult way, which you can have a Bar or Bat Mitzvah at any age, and it's something that I kind of think about but it is actually quite more involved than the conversion - which is are already very involved, it's like a year long process - but the Bat Mitzvah... which is like amazing, because this is something that I try to wrap my mind around doing now and and like, you know, 12 and 13 year-olds are doing it at that age and I feel even more impressed by it now as an adult. But yeah, it’s still something I think about doing today but haven't. But I feel like it just fits in with the sort of this path that I sort of took on a little bit later in life. Thomas: There was actually an article in the Austin Chronicle this week about women in the fullness of their womanhood, no longer, you know, pre-teens and teenagers who are going through kind of a Bat Mitzvah experience. They call it a B'Not Mitzvah. Bejar: Oh, that’s cute! That's so cute. Well, when I was doing my conversion classes, there was actually a class there was simultaneously going on in the synagogue which was women who were, you know, fully in their womanhood, not teenagers or pre-teens, and they were all doing a Bat Mitzvah class together. And so I was in my class over here which was different, but I would sort of look over and say that would be something that I do you later on down the road. Thomas: Yeah well, thank you so much for this conversation it’s been so inspiring to talk with you today. Bejar: Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about these things. I feel like things are all things that I love to talk about and I love to reflect on and are so important to me. And I love the kind of context of really focusing in on the transition of the ritual and how that is impacted by all things that, you know, my specific work is impacted by in terms of stigma and pressure and all of those things, so I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. Landis Bejar is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in private practice in New York City. Her practice is called Aisle Talk. Aisle talk focuses on helping individuals and couples cope through the stresses of planning a wedding and getting married through therapy and counseling. Learn more at https://www.aisle-talk.com. That's aisle DASH talk.com. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, we'd love it if you'd share it with a friend. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

San Francisco-based writer Tria Chang joins us for a conversation about getting remarried as a divorced wedding planner. Learn more about her work at triachang.com. Music by Terry Hughes Inspired to create something for yourself? Visit https://ever-changing.net/. ---- Full Transcript Chang: I think I’m a bit of an anxious person. We all have a little bit of anxiety in us, you know, even from children and just being nervous about the first day of school. And the way I’ve managed my anxiety over the years is to plan very carefully and plan well. And I feel like it’s a lesson in my life that I want to plan well still but also let go of expectations and detach myself from the outcome. Tria Chang knows a thing or two about letting go of expectations. She used to be a wedding planner who loved her job. The only hard part was the divorce. Her divorce. Now Tria is getting remarried. She and her fiancé want to create a unique wedding ceremony that is not only different from her first wedding, but also one that won’t give her any flashbacks to the many weddings she has planned. But how exactly does she do that? What are her options? Is the sky the limit, or is there a way to go too far and screw it up? Join me for a conversation with Tria Chang. This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to our first episode. I’m so glad you’re here! I want to take a few minutes to give you the lay of the land for this show. This mini-season will focus on weddings and commitment ceremonies. We’ll be speaking with guests who created unique, out-of-the-box events that allowed them to commit to their partners in the way that felt the most right, the most authentic. Some of the stories you will hear may sound familiar. Others may surprise you. We’ll touch on the idea of self-commitment as well as committing to partnership with another person. But first, let’s take a step back and look at the purpose of ceremony. Why do we engage together in this way? How does the tool of ceremony support us? In the words of psychologist Evan Imber-Black, "Rituals are a container for strong emotions and they help us to hold them. Whether that's joy or whether that's sadness." And emotions are a huge part of change, right? As we go through life we face transition after transition: Mom and dad bring home our new baby brother. Our family moves and we have to make friends at a new school. We get the call that our closest grandmother has passed. We go away to school and have to learn how to survive in a new climate in a different part of the country. We go through breakups and maybe divorce. We meet new people we like and maybe get married. Our parents grow older, maybe move into care and eventually pass away. We are unique in how we move through each of the transitions in our lives. Some may be easy and others not so easy. But at least we know we’re not alone. Transitions are such a known and expected part of life that certain ceremonies have been created to help us create the container for the emotions they bring up. Marriage itself can bring up a huge host of emotions, not only in the couple, but in those closest to them as well. We think of weddings as joyful occasions, but they’re not without their challenging emotions.  It is SO important to create room for all of the feelings that come up so that we can show up to the altar as our fullest selves ready to make the commitment at that deep level. How we structure our wedding ceremony can dramatically affect how much room there is for emotion and the change. We'll talk more about this throughout our first season. Now I would like to share a story with you about a divorced wedding planner planning her second wedding. While planning her first wedding, Tria Chang noticed that many successful businesses in the wedding industry were run by women. Inspired by this, she started her own wedding planning company in 2009. Starting a new business in this field allowed her to hold on to the sense of joy she felt from her own wedding and to begin her new career in a rose-colored garden (those are her words). In 2016, she sold the business. During that time she saw a lot of weddings. Chang: Yeah, I spent five years as a wedding planner. I’ve probably participated in or seen at least 100 weddings. 100 weddings? Wow, I could barely imagine that. I asked Tria about the range of traditions she had seen as a wedding planner over those 5 years. Chang: I should preface this by saying not everyone hires a planner. Those who do hire a planner tend to be people who want a little more guidance and a little more structure. So I would say these types of people tend to be a little bit more conventional in what they’re looking for for a wedding. At the same time, my business partner and I, we emphasized our company’s creativity and how we were more interested in providing couples a chance to bring their individual story to the forefront and their individual personalities as opposed to cookie-cutter weddings. So we got clients that had an interesting tension between traditional needs and wanting a little bit of individualism. So I would say the way that played out usually in terms of traditional things is, in the timeline, in the structure of the day, it was almost always a ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner with toasts, and then first dance, dancing, and some kind of grand exit. So people generally felt safer in a decided-upon format that was often dictated by their vendors because caterers, for example, have a flow that they’re very confident in executing and they will encourage couples in that direction. Photographers also have a set number of hours and different types of shots that they‘re used to providing so that kind of guides the couples as well. In terms of mixing other of the things into the creativity, people would draw from their cultural backgrounds or different religions, sometimes from their personalities or how they met. So a couple who met in law school might have pages from legal textbooks as part of their decoration or names of drinks like Liability Lemon Drop or something fun to bring that part of their story into it. But I do think there tends to be a little bit of anxiety or even fear around stepping too far outside of wedding boundaries because people would worry about, you know, is it still a wedding, are we really married after this? Most of my clients were getting married for the first time, so they more wanted to make sure they did things right, whatever that meant. So there was a lot of looking toward the vendors for guidance or trying to fit their special creativity into a set template. Thomas: So you mentioned people getting married for the first time. Did you also work with people getting married for the second or third time? Chang: That happened later on in my wedding planning career because in the beginning, when you’re just starting out as a planner, you can’t charge as much because you don’t have as much experience. So we often had younger clients who couldn’t pay as much. So that sort of shaped the types clients that we had. And then as we got more experienced as planners and were able to charge more and offer more in our planning services, we did start getting couples who were getting married for a second or third time, families who are blending, so people who had children as part of the ceremony and who had more complex family relationships. And yeah, that was actually very encouraging and inspiring for me because I went through a divorce during that five years as a wedding planner and in the beginning I was only seeing people getting married for the first time and hearing things like, “Oh! You only get married once, so better have a perfect day!” and just really feeling the pressure of that and then as I started getting these couples who were on their second marriages or who had children from a previous marriage, I saw how it was more complicated, but also more beautiful in a way. I remember seeing one ceremony where there was the couple at the altar as usual with the officiant. But they also had their two children, one who was an infant they were holding in their arms, and another little girl whose hand they were holding. And they just formed this really special circle and that was really inspiring for me. Thomas: That’s beautiful. I love that image. Chang: Yeah. The complications can be beautiful. Thomas: That’s so well put! I love that. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here, right? Contrasting the perfect wedding day where everything is perfect, and kind of simple maybe in the way it’s executed, to real life and the complication that we all each have in ourselves and so many feelings and with each other and the blending of families, my family, their family, everything is blending and there’s lots of complication and it’s supposed to all jam into the perfect day and somehow just be wonderful. Chang: Yeah absolutely, it is a little bit limiting in some ways. Thomas: And you are preparing for your second wedding right now. Chang: I am, I am. Yes, it’s a very different experience this time. Thomas: And you said to me that you’re looking, that you and your fiancé had been looking through all the wedding traditions and trying to pick only the ones that were the most meaningful to you. So I’m curious where you are in the process now and how you’re feeling as you’re approaching... Chang: Yeah, so I had advantage of expertise and of seeing many different kinds of weddings and in thinking about what really mattered. And I talk to my fiancé about it and luckily for me he’s really interested in exploring those things as well and questioning why do we do certain things and do we need to do those things. So for example, walking down the aisle is kind of a given. And having your father, as a bride, give you away it’s kind of a given for most people, unless your father passed away and there’s a strained relationship. The default is to have the groom already there at the end of the aisle waiting for you and then to have your father walk you down the aisle and essentially give you away, give responsibility to your husband of you. And I think, I did do that the first time. I was young and in my 20s. I wanted to, as I mentioned, just do right by wedding traditions and make sure I didn’t mess anything up or, you know, curse our wedding in some way. So I did have my father walk me down the aisle and I don’t regret it. It was really a special time for us and very beautiful and emotional. My mom had passed away just months before, so it felt particularly meaningful for me to be holding my father in this very emotional time. But at this point in my life and 35. I’ve lived across the country for my father for over a dozen years now. So the symbolism doesn’t quite make sense of him giving me away to someone else. And for my partner and I, it was also important for us to realize that this is a phase of our life that we’re going on together. It’s not him standing there waiting for me to join him and get on his journey. It’s really going on something together. So, one, we don’t have an aisle, we’re not getting married in a church, but we plan to just show up to our guests together at the same time. Thomas: That’s, that’s a nice example of how you’re reclaiming the tradition and make it your own. Chang: Yeah, and there are so many things that we do so automatically I think, without questioning or wondering about them and it was important for us to really pair down things and think, you know, do we even need this or that? Or, can we do this in a different way? How can we do something that has meaning in every step of it for us? My advice to that friend and to anyone who wants to make a wedding their own is, you are absolutely allowed to do that. You don’t have to follow someone else’s way even if they have more experience than you, or even if they care about typical wedding things more than you do. It’s really your day. But of course, if your family is important to you, there are ways to involve them in a way that will make them feel included and loved still. So, yeah it’s really different for everyone, but I do think conversations between the couple about priorities and what the core essence of their relationship is - I think that will really help determine what the day is. For my partner and I, we have a little story that is kind of our core essence. We were invited by his uncle to go crabbing in the Pacific ocean and I was very excited. So we were in his boat and it was speeding through the water and I was thinking in my head, “I think I’m going to do this every weekend, I love it so much!” But then when he stopped the boat it started moving in a way that my body did not like at all so I ended up, unfortunately, throwing up at least a couple times over the side of the boat. And my fiancé also was quite affected, so we ended up just kind of lying in the back of the boat and feeling really sick even though in our minds, we thought we would be great crabbers and really helpful in putting up the traps and getting everything set. We were very useless, useless to the point of only being able to look at each other and even though we have this desire to take care of each other and fix things for each other, all we could do was hold hands and look at each other and say, “We’re together”. And for us those two simple words and that sentiment of just recognizing that we’re together we really realized was the core of our relationship, just being together through times that are sickening, that are difficult, that are surprising, that are joyful as well. It’s really a very simple thing that our whole relationship is just about sticking through those times together. So that’s kind of the theme of our little wedding, and that’s why we wanted to have a wedding with fewer bells & whistles. We didn’t want to be kind of on stage. Like a lot of weddings feel like it’s a performance by the bride and groom and that you only get to wave at them from across the room or maybe have a quick couple words with them but we really wanted to feel together with there, so we paired it down to a very small guest list so that we can really just talk to people and we won’t be distracted by having to perform something or having to remember certain words or dance steps and just be with people. Thomas: Are you going to serve crab at the wedding? Chang: We are actually… let’s see, are we having crab? We are having a clambake. But I’m from Maryland so crab is very popular there and seafood in general. But I think there were a couple of allergies among the guests, so we’re having a clambake with some seafood items that avoid everyone’s allergies but it’s a very, yeah it’s a family-style, the chef described it as being a big vat that he’ll bring out and kind of dump on the table which is very exciting to us so yeah. That was one of the few vendors. We just sprung for a chef, because food is an important way for us to show love to people that we love them and feed them and nourish them, so our chef is the only main vendor and then we also have a photographer there for a few hours just to capture some of the moments together. Thomas: Wonderful. Well, thank you. Chang: Of course, thank you. Tria's story reminds us that beautiful things can happen when we allow ourselves to step outside the box and do things our own way. Sure, there might be friends or family who don't understand our choices, but truly, in the case of a wedding, this is the couple's day and the celebration is about the couple - who they are individually and who are they are together. And who is anyone to get in the way of that? Tria Chang is a writer working on a memoir about divorce as a wedding planner. You can read her work at triachang.com. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please share it with a friend and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. That is the very best way you can support this new baby show. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

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!

How did financial industry startup Rocket Dollar achieve double-digit month-over-month growth in the highly competitive financial services industry? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Rocket Dollar co-founder Thomas Young shares details on the marketing strategy that helped this scrappy startup take on the 800-pound gorillas of the financial industry and quickly grow into a household name within two years of the company's launch. The great thing about Thomas's approach is that it doesn't require a huge budget and is something that any company - in any industry - can use to get results.  Highlights from my conversation with Thomas include: Rocket Dollar sells self-directed 401(k) and IRA accounts for anyone that wants to invest their retirement savings outside of stocks and bonds. The biggest use case is investing in multifamily real estate, venture funds or directly into startups in a way that is tax-protected. The company is a startup in the financial services industry, which is highly competitive and has very large, established players with enormous marketing budgets. Rocket Dollar had to overcome several challenges, one of which was people concerned that the company would not be around in a few years. In addition, they had to fight the perception amongst their target audience that people should be very conservative with their retirement savings and invest only in the traditional, established brokerage houses. Thomas has found that the best medium through which Rocket Dollar can address the challenges it is facing is email, so Thomas's goal in the beginning was always to get someone's email address. One way the company got traction in the beginning was by building upon the personal brands of its founders and focusing specifically on winning its local market in Austin, TX. The team that founded Rocket Dollar knew that differentiation would be key to the company's success, so everything from the company name, to the colors used in the branding and the design of the website is deliberately different than the rest of the financial services industry. Another way they differentiated was through messaging. While the rest of the self directed investing community was using anti-Wall Street messaging, Rocket Dollar channeled a more positive outlook that resonated well with its audience. The Rocket Dollar team knew that it would be essential to build trust with their audience, so they made a concerted effort to personalize the way they marketed, from sending emails directly from a founder rather than a corporate catch-all address, to including their faces on the website, etc. When they were ready to really turn on lead generation, the team used paid search to connect with prospects who were ready to buy. They did this by purchasing ads targeting long tail, high intent keywords that the bigger industry players were ignoring. This approach resulted in approximately half of the company's new contacts coming from its paid search efforts. When a new contact lands on the website, the primary CTA they are faced with is "get started," which is basically an immediate sign up for the product. Anyone who doesn't complete the sign up process is put into a lead nurturing workflow and subscribed to the company's newsletter. They have found that staying top of mind works very well for them, whereas anything that smacks of a hard sell really backfires because it jeopardizes the trust they've built with their audience. The team has invested heavily in creating educational content that it can share via email, and the result is that the company's unsubscribe rate is below a half a percent. Whereas 50% of the company's business comes from its pay-per-click marketing efforts, the other 50% is split evenly between leads from channel partners and customer referrals. Rocket Dollar has grown considerably in the last two years and now has customers in all 50 states, $75 million worth of IRA assets in its accounts, and grow in the double digits month over month. Thomas's advice for other startups that are competing in crowded markets is to win your backyard first, focus on getting email addresses (so you don't have to pay for access to your audience), and pay attention to the little things (make sure your marketing is very buttoned-up). Thomas also recommends leveraging the personal brands of your leadership team.  Resources from this episode: Visit the Rocket Dollar website Connect with Thomas on LinkedIn Follow Thomas on Twitter Contact Thomas by email at thomas@rocketdollar.com Get $100 off the setup fee on a new Rocket Dollar account using the code INBOUNDSUCCESS100 Listen to the podcast to get all the details on how Thomas and the Rocket Dollar team structured a marketing plan that enabled them to take on the giants of the financial industry and achieve double-digit month over month growth. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Thomas Young, who's the co-founder and VP of marketing at Rocket Dollar. Welcome, Thomas. Thomas Young (Guest): Thanks, Kathleen. Thanks for having me. Thomas and Kathleen recording this episode together . Kathleen: You have an interesting background because you formerly were an agency guy that used to work with financial services firms, but now you're actually the co-founder and VP of marketing in-house at a financial services firm. Can you talk a little bit more about your journey and your story, and also Rocket Dollar and what it is? About Thomas and Rocket Dollar Thomas: Sure. Yeah. So, my journey, it's been pretty fun and pretty fast-paced. Just right out of college, I kind of jumped into the startup ecosystem here in Austin, and my natural focus just sort of shifted to marketing, sort of accidentally. It was kind of the area that resonated the most with me. I graduated from UT Austin with an economics degree that helps in what I do today, but really, my focus and my sort of passion is marketing. I was working full-time at another company where one of the partners of that company also ran a financial advisory business sort of on the side and asked me if I could help her with some just very basic funnel stuff, everything from running Facebook ads to email marketing, just sort of seeing if we could learn together. It turns out I really enjoyed my time doing that, and so through her network I started getting more and more freelance clients, to the point where I basically quit my day job and focused full-time on this agency freelancing, and what I would do is just kind of run the project and then hire other contractors on Upwork or Fiverr or whatever to sort of help me with the heavy lifting. I really enjoyed doing that, and it was fun to market challenging products, which financial products are always challenging to market, and they're expensive to market, and so you have to get really crafty and creative, which I really enjoyed. In the sort of process of doing that, I came across this product that Rocket Dollar sells, which I'll get into in a sec, and I really didn't like the way it was being done by other companies, and I knew that just being in Austin and being in this space, that there was tech play here, and that this was a product that I really liked, that resonates with not only me, but with a lot of people, a lot of different investors. When I met my co-founders, we kind of decided that it was kind of a no-brainer to do this, because I knew the product, I knew the marketing, and my co-founders know the tech. So, it was just a very natural fit, and it came together really fast. So, what Rocket Dollar does is we sell self-directed 401(k) and IRA accounts for basically anyone with an IRA or a 401(k) that wants to invest their retirement savings outside of stocks and bonds. So, the biggest sort of use case that we have is you set up a Rocket Dollar IRA, and then you can go invest in multifamily real estate, or you can invest in a venture fund or directly into a startup, and it's all tax-advantaged, all tax-protected. So, any gains, for example, if you invest in the next Facebook as an angel with your IRA, you'll never pay taxes on it. We simply set up the structure of the account. We help you track your investments across whatever asset class, and then we service the account on the reporting side to the IRS. So, in a nutshell, that's what Rocket Dollar does, and I've been fortunate enough to not only be in on the ground floor, but also continue marketing this product that I really enjoy. David v. Goliath: How Rocket Dollar tool on the big players in the financial services industry Kathleen: Interesting. So, you alluded to this when you were talking about what led you to Rocket Dollar. It's obviously in the financial services industry. I too have had some experience with that at the agency level and know that it's incredibly competitive. There are a bunch of 800-pound gorillas in the industry, and that have really deep pockets, that can throw a ton of money behind the keywords they want to get found for. There are a lot of players, sheer numbers. So, coming in as a relatively new player in the industry that has a business model that is intended to be a high-growth model, yes, it's a tech play, but it's SaaS, essentially. It just happens to be in financial services. How do you wrap your brain around... You're going to have to grow this company a lot, and a lot of that growth is going to have to come through marketing, because this isn't an enterprise sales team pounding the pavement. I mean, I don't even know where to start. Talk me through how you begin taking on those Goliaths. Thomas: Sure. Well, it is challenging, and it's a lot of fun, but basically, what we started at the beginning is we knew that we were going to have to overcome several things. One is we're asking people to trust us with their retirement savings as a startup. So, the question, what happens if you're not here in two years, or in three years, or in five years, that question came up a lot in the first year of Rocket Dollar, and it scared a lot of people. So, that was one that we had to overcome. The second one was it's a completely new way of thinking about your retirement savings, something that you've been learning about since you were probably... Most people hear the word IRA from their parents when they're growing up, and the indoctrination of Fidelity and Schwab and Vanguard is strong, that this is money that is completely sacred, that you can't touch, that you can't do anything with, so just give it to us and let us fee you from now until you're 60, and that's strong for a lot of people. So, you have to overcome that. Then yeah, just getting any sort of bandwidth in that space, we have to be really creative with our lead gen, and then also with how we approach, for example, paid search on Google. I mean, it's so expensive when you knock up against certain keywords, and then it just drops off on other ones. So, we've been really creative there. The way that I think about it is if I can get to an email, then I can build that trust, because now I can communicate sort of one-on-one with that potential customer, with that consumer in a really cheap way, and then take my time building that trust. I'm not trying to sell you today. I'm not trying to sell you tomorrow. I just want to make sure that this is a good fit, and the best medium for us to be able to do that has been email. Then the other thing that we did just from the very beginning was try to win Austin. We're based in Austin. Our founders are known here. So, we each had a personal brand, if you will, and we really leveraged that in order to get Rocket Dollar sort of off the ground, and then just letting that sort of goodwill that we built up in Austin spread organically throughout the state, and then traveling to different conferences, making sure that we were there, that we were very present, very available, and that helped us a lot in the first year. It was not a lot of digital marketing, and a lot of face-to-face interactions, which I think really helped us out. Kathleen: I can appreciate that, though. I used to have an agency, and I live in Annapolis, Maryland, which is not a huge market. This is where my agency was, and I remember any time there came an opportunity that involved doing marketing for one of the small number of really large companies here in Annapolis, I was like, "We have to win this, because it's in our backyard." You have to win your backyard first, first and second and last. Right? You have to win at home if you're going to have any hope of winning everywhere else, because it's the friendliest market, and it's a great place to test out and kind of hone your messaging and your strategy. So, I can very much appreciate that approach. Now, did it really start with how you positioned the brand? I mean, is that kind of the first step, given that you're in this crowded marketplace? Why differentiation was key Thomas: Well, yeah, and one of the things that we knew that we needed to do was be a little bit different. The name Rocket Dollar is, in and of itself, different from some of these agencies, or some of these companies, I'm sorry, that are named after these titans, J.P. Morgan and Charles Schwab and these... We knew we needed a little bit of a different angle, and we needed to be just interesting enough to pique a little bit of curiosity. So, we did that. So, just beginning from the name, beginning from our approach to how we build our website, and just the tone that we took, it all sort of came together pretty organically, just because of the way we are as the founding team, but it was very conscious to not be, for example, another blue and white or green financial services company. We threw out the purple, and everybody thought we were crazy, and we got a lot of pushback, and now it's kind of just our thing. Kathleen: Yeah, can you actually... I want to dig into that a little bit, because this is something that I've run into myself. I used to, for example, do a lot of work with law firms, and there was one law firm I worked with, and I was like, "Everybody else is going forest green. You need to go left when they go right." You do get a lot of pushback because it's like, well, everybody else is doing it this way. So, I don't know if it's a fear-based reaction or what, but can you talk me through that decision-making process, and how did you get consensus around that? Thomas: Well, luckily for us, there was only two of us in the room at the time when we decided, so it wasn't this big... We were sitting in a conference room of another startup that Henry, my co-founder, was a board member of, and so they used to lend us this conference room with a whiteboard so we could sort of sketch out our ideas. We were on, I think it was Fiverr or Upwork or something, getting our sort of first logo made after we decided on the name, and we got this huge swath of different ones and different logo. One of them was purple, and Henry was like, "That sort of speaks to me," and I saw it, and I was... "Well, it's the one that stands out the most. These other ones look like regular financial services' boring logos, and I really like that purple." , we kind of just decided right there in about 15 seconds that we were going to have purple as our primary color. Then when we went out to investors, and when we built our first pitch decks, and when we hired our first employees, everybody just... They didn't really like it, and then now it's just a thing, and everybody knows us as the purple guys in Austin, and it just very naturally became our thing. Kathleen: But how did you make the decision to stick with it in the face of VCs and others who were saying, "We don't like this purple. It doesn't work"? Thomas: Probably mostly sheer stubbornness, to be completely honest with you. I think we just got attached to it, and the pushback wasn't all negative. There were some people that really liked that approach. So, we heard both sides of it, and we just decided that we were going to stick with our guns. I liked it as a marketer because it would just let me be a little bit different. On every conference that we went to, our logo is going to be a little bit different than everybody else. Everything we sponsor, it's just going to pop a little bit more. So, from a branding angle it was really easy... I really liked it just because it was easy to see, quite simply. There wasn't a whole lot of extra thought, whether purple means anything, or whether it stands for anything. I mean, I know that it does, but- Kathleen: Yeah. I think it stands for royalty, so maybe that means that you guys will be the kings of the industry someday. Thomas: Well, that's what we're going for. That's what we should've told the VCs instead of the fact that- Kathleen: There you go. Thomas: But no, it just happened very sort of naturally. Kathleen: In hindsight, do you think that taking that deliberately kind of different approach to visual branding helped set you apart? Thomas: I think so. I think it got us just that first little bit of mind share. The name as well, Rocket Dollar doesn't really convey that we're in the retirement industry, that we're selling IRA and 401(k) accounts, so I think that sort of piqued curiosity at the beginning, too, and Henry, our CEO and my co-founder, he had a company prior that was sold to Goldman Sachs called Honest Dollar, and they did very small business... It was a tech play on small business retirement accounts for businesses with less than 10 employees, that getting a 401(k) plan is very expensive. It was that, and so they exited, and it was a good win for them. So, Rocket Dollar was just kind of the natural progression. Now you can take a little more risk with your money, and so rocket it. I think we decided at 2:00 in the morning that we liked that named and... Kathleen: When all great names are developed. Right? Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Kathleen: I think in the case of my business, it was very late at night over a bottle of wine. Thomas: Yeah. There was a couple of cocktails involved, and we bought the domain on his phone at 2:00 in the morning for like $1,800, and that was just it from that day forward. Audience research and product development Kathleen: Awesome. So, you established the name. You got the visual branding. What came next? Thomas: So, at that point we started really just focusing on product, and so we weren't really thinking about the marketing in a traditional sense. Even though I'm a marketer, I was pretty heads-down with our product team, just building what the MVP was going to look like. So, during that time, we also had the ability to sit down with a lot of people around Austin and sort of generate that first sort of list before we launched. So, we really just focused on product, and then on just communicating with our stakeholders, and we did the classic "download your email list off of LinkedIn," and just start communicating what you're doing, seeing if there's interest, asking questions, sitting down with a lot of potential customers in Austin. The coffee shop across the street, by the end of those two or three months, they already knew to have our coffees ready. So, we just talked to a lot of people and asked them what part of our product resonated, what part scared them, what part they were excited about, and really focused on getting our messaging through that, listening to people that I'd sold these accounts to prior, that I knew were customers of the last company that I worked for, and also people that just were interested in sitting down with us. So, it was just really kind of a month-long listening campaign, if you will, to sort of determine what our voice was going to be. For example, a lot of people in this specific niche are very anti-Wall Street, and so they take a very negative tone, a very anti-government tone, very fear-based tone that resonates with a certain audience, and it works because I've sold these accounts that way before. I didn't want to be that company with that tone and that negativity, and so it was really more about building an empowerment sort of message and sort of a... This is going to sound really cheesy, but a "reach for the stars with your retirement dollars" message, and that resonated really well with everyone I talked to, not just people that would've liked the anti-Wall Street or people that really thought that this was too risky, but they liked that tone. So, once I heard that enough, I knew that that was sort of going to be our voice for when we started going outside of our little bubble in Austin, and it's worked. We get really good feedback on how we approach our messaging. Kathleen: It's really interesting that you bring up that choice of taking a fear-based or a positive approach to messaging. I've done some research into this, and I've been fascinated by it, and there's a lot of data from particularly the public health space, that while fear-based messaging can work, positive messaging that taps into positive emotions is so much more effective, especially over the longterm. It goes back to antismoking campaigns, and I think it's really interesting because right now we're kind of coming full circle where they're using these pictures of people with tracheotomies and disfigured faces to try to convince people not to smoke. The most effective antismoking campaign was the Truth campaign, and it's because they realized that if you want to keep kids from starting to smoke, the whole reason they start to smoke has nothing to do with them not understanding the health implications. It has everything to do with them wanting to rebel against their parents. So, if you make it, "Hey, rebel against Big Tobacco that's trying to control you," then they're like, "Yeah, I'm going to stick it to Big Tobacco and not smoke." That actually worked, as opposed to, "You're going to get black lung disease. You're going to need to have surgery, et cetera." So, then they did the same thing with heart bypass patients, what got them to make healthy changes over the longterm, and it was all more positive messaging. So, it's just interesting from a marketing standpoint that so many industries continue to use the fear-based messaging, I think because it is kind of easier, but I don't know, what my observation has been, that the ones that tap into the more positive stuff, those are the companies and the brands that actually build the most loyal following over the longterm, because that's what people really climb onto, and they want to be a part of a movement. Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. Even at its most basic level, it's just who we are as people, the people that work at Rocket Dollar. So, I'm kind of Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. I come into the office with a big stupid smile on my face every day, and I'm not good at fear marketing because that's just not who I am. Building trust through personalization Thomas: So, it was also really easy for us to take this tone, just because it's our natural sort of way of existing, and I think that having that sort of authenticity early in our marketing, well, early and to this day, really helps us because it's very clear that there's people at the other end of our emails and of our messaging. I mean, I sign our emails. Our marketing emails, I sign them personally, or Henry does, or somebody does, because we want to make sure that there's people. We plaster our faces on our own website all over the place so that you can see who you're interacting with, who you're talking to on the phone, who is running the company that you're trusting with your retirement dollars. I mean, all of that is really important, especially in the retirement space when you're going up against these big brands like Fidelity or Charles Schwab or whatever. Kathleen: Yeah. I love that, that whole concept of personalizing it to transfer the trust. Getting into the audience's email inbox Kathleen: From what I understand, the company is under two years old, and it sounds like you spent the better part of the first year really developing the product, nailing down the messaging, et cetera, and then you talked about how then it became all about getting into somebody's email inbox. So, can you pick apart for me what approaches have you taken to that, what has worked really well? Because obviously, you're going after a big audience in the post-Austin kind of world. How do you go out to a cold audience and make it into their inbox? Thomas: Sure. Well, it's been fast. I mean, from when we sort of looked outside of Austin to having customers in all 50 states was a couple months. So, it went really fast. So, there is a natural sort of group of people looking for this product, and so at the beginning it was just capturing people that already knew that this was something they wanted to do, and it was going directly after our competitors on paid search, for example, and just capturing sort of the top of the funnel. Well, it would really be the middle of the funnel, because they already were aware. They were already educated. It was just a decision-making process. So, we were really good at capturing those people because the other people in this space, frankly, are just a little bit behind us on the tech and on the cost and all that, so it was pretty easy. Kathleen: Wait. Now, can you explain that a little bit? Because I think that's easy to say, but this is a challenge a lot of people have. This is an industry where your competitors are very well established. I'm sure the bid price for the keywords is really high. So, how exactly did you beat them at the paid search game? Thomas: Sure. Well, it was actually just going a little bit on longer-tail keywords, because the Charles Schwabs, the Fidelitys, they don't do exactly what we do, in that they don't sell you an account that allows you to invest in real estate or in stocks and bonds. So, whenever we go a little bit deeper into the keywords, the volume's actually much lower, and the keywords are much cheaper. So, if we were just bidding IRA, and then you're going to get all the big boys, and that's going to be a $15, $20 keyword. I mean, it's going to be ridiculous. Kathleen: Did you go after that at all, those short-tail keywords? Thomas: No, no. We couldn't afford it at all. The people that are searching for that are thinking about a Charles Schwab or a Fidelity account anyways. That's what they want. They want the stocks and bonds. But when you go a little bit further, then there's the people looking for, "Well, can I do real estate in an IRA? Can I do startups in an IRA, or investing in cryptocurrency through an IRA?" So, then you get to those, and yeah, the volume is lower, but the price is also lower, and frankly, it was more than we could handle. We weren't ready to scale and hit hundreds of accounts a month or thousands of accounts a month. So, it was good for us to be able to test that sort of slowly before really pouring gasoline on the fire. It was also a more educated audience because they knew that they wanted a self-directed account, and then we weren't going up against Charles Schwab. We were going up against Pensco Trust Company or Equity Trust, or some of these that as soon as you see their reviews online, it's pretty clear that we're going to just beat them on customer service, which is really where we do beat a lot of these people at, and our price point is significantly lower because, like you mentioned earlier, we're a SaaS play, not a service company. Kathleen: So, what percentage of your new contacts comes from paid search, roughly? Thomas: Probably about half. Kathleen: Okay. So, these people convert on an ad. They get into your database, and then you're putting them into email drip flows. Is that right? Thomas: Yeah. I mean, someone comes to our site, and we don't really have just plain lead captures. We really just have a signup button, and so that's our first lead gen, basically, tool. At that point, if they do not finish buying an account, then they come into sort of a short-term nurture that then turns into a long-term nurture after about a month, and then it goes into a newsletter list. So, we've found that if people... Because of the sort of mid-funnel group that we're really heavily going after in the paid search, they're already aware, they're already educated, if they don't convert within three days, it's going to be... They will convert. A percentage of them does convert, and it's a high percentage. It's going to be probably a month to three later, and that's simply because whenever you buy an account from us, you self-direct your money. So, if they don't have an investment in mind, they don't set up the account until they knew what they're going to do. So then really, it's just about staying top of mind in this space so that whenever something does come across that they want to do, it's just an automatic reaction that, "Hey, those Rocket Dollar guys, I'll just go set up my account there. It'll be easy, cheap, whatever, and then I'll make my investment." So, I'm really just more focused on staying sort of relevant, providing value, talking about the space, talking about different investment types, and then people convert naturally once they decide it's something to do. The thing that really does not work well for us is the hard sell, because people, the minute you start trying to do a hard sell on a retirement account, people lose trust, and then it's just very transactional, and it's not really... You lose, and we found that out pretty early. So, it's just providing content, being top of mind, staying in touch, and people convert naturally. Email lead nurturing Kathleen: Is there something you're doing in those email nurture sequences or in your newsletter to really keep people engaged? Because I do find for myself at least, if I show that initial interest, I convert on something, but if it is that two-to-three-month period, and I'm not ready to sign up, I get very highly likely to unsubscribe unless something is really, really delivering value, because I don't like my inbox being cluttered by things that are not really worth it. Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, and I'm the same way. One of the big investments that we've made is on educational content. So, we share a lot of blogs, a lot of webinars that we're on sometimes. We've launched our own podcast that's growing pretty quickly. So, I think as long as we provide educational content and really go for those light bulb moments with people where, "Oh, I didn't know that. That's cool. Let's see what comes next week or next month or whatever," as long as we share something that resonates and a little bit of a longer form, not just get a hundred dollars off emails. Those are really annoying. But we spend a lot of time and energy creating content that we think will resonate. Our unsubscribe rate is below half a percent, so it's really working, and we write about what we're reading or learning in that moment. So, it really kind of happens organically, what we choose to share, especially in our newsletters. Our nurture emails are a little bit more permanent. We don't edit them that much. But our newsletter and our blog is really just sort of what the team is interested in that week. So, that's worked, and I think we'll continue to do that. Channel marketing and referrals Kathleen: Now, you mentioned about half of your new contacts come from pay-per-click. Where does the other half come from? Thomas: Yeah. So, the other half, we spend a lot of time with partners, so people that are raising money for their own projects. So, it could be anybody from a real estate investor raising a small syndicate fund to an entrepreneur that's raising a fund, or that's raising money for their own startup, or there are some bigger partners. So, for example, Gemini in the crypto world, Fundrise, sort of these investment platforms, we go to them and say, "Hey, to tap into another pool of funds, did you know that people can invest in you through an IRA? Send them to us. We'll set up the account for them, and then you get their money as an investor." So, that's worked really well for us, too, on the brand-building side because these trusted sources are referring us business because we're taking care of their investors. As long as we continue to take care of other people's investors, we really win there. That, I would say, is about 25% of our business. Then the other 25% of our business is customer referrals. So, our own customers are telling people about us, and that's working really well. We do have a referral campaign that kicks off about 60 days after someone purchases, make sure that their account's funded, that they've made an investment, at which point we do circle back and say, "Hey, if there's anybody in your audience that you think would be interested in this, here's some material that you can share. We'd really appreciate it." The cool thing about these accounts is that it's, I think, the only retirement account that people talk about with their friends over the dinner table because they feel really smart when they bought a rental property with their IRA. So, it's natural that our customers share it, and it's... Yeah. That accounts for about 25% of our business, is just our referral campaign. Kathleen: Yeah. It's a lot more interesting than saying, "Yes, I am 30% invested in a low-risk bond fund." No, no, no. I don't want to hear about that. Customer Facebook group Thomas: Yeah. No, it's definitely something that people like to talk about. We have a really great customer-only Facebook group where people talk about what they're doing, where people share ideas, where people ask us questions. So, our team is in there moderating it all the time, and it's kind of the, "Oh, you don't have anything to do for an hour? Let's go check what's happening in the Facebook group." People are sharing some really cool stories. So, we market that a little bit, where you get access to this investor group. So, people like that education, and that group sort of sparks creativity for a lot of our customers, and I think that that really has been a good thing for us to do. Kathleen: That's interesting, because I guess... Correct me if I'm wrong, but are there many other companies like yours or in the industry that are tapping into Facebook groups? I don't get the sense that there are. Thomas: In my experience, no, and I've bought accounts from most of our competitors, just testing out their processes, seeing what's going on and what's not, what they're doing well, what they're not doing well, and then comparing it to what we're doing well and not well, and no, I've never been invited to a Facebook group. Kathleen: Yeah. It's also interesting, too, because... This could be my lack of knowledge speaking, but from the limited knowledge I have of marketing in the financial industry, you have FINRA and SEC guidance on what you can and cannot say yourself, but I imagine in the Facebook group your customers can say anything, pretty much. Is that right? Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, they can anything they'd like, and they do. But one of the advantages that we have is as a... I mean, technically we are a third-party administrator, so we are really handling paperwork. We're not advising. We're not investing. We're not touching money. So, we have a little bit more leeway in what we can say than a traditional financial services company. I mean, we cannot advise, but we can... Most of our customers aren't looking for us to advise. What they're looking for is if we come across a deal that we think they'd be interested in, a lot of times we'll share just if we have a personal relationship with that customer, which a lot of times we develop that relationship, and we can speak to the legality of whether it's an allowed transaction with the IRA, because that's a pretty clear yes/no. That's sort of where we keep it, but we'll talk about... If I make an investment through mine, I'll post it in the Facebook group and say, "Hey, I thought this was cool. I did it. If anybody else wants to participate, there it is." So, it's pretty crazy how much money moves around just off of those little posts that we put on that group. Our partners, luckily for us, are realizing that we're tapping into almost 10 trillion dollars worth of IRA money, and that there's some significant funds there for their projects. What makes Rocket Dollar's channel marketing strategy successful Kathleen: That's interesting. So, the partners interest me because I've talked with a number of different people on this podcast about channel marketing strategies, and I think this sounds like a channel marketing strategy, but with a twist. Fair to say that that's really what it is? Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we market directly to partners to try to get them in our... I mean, we have a whole separate funnel for partners and a whole separate section of the website for our partners where they can learn about raising money through IRAs with the goal really being of them referring us customers. What we tell them is, "Hey, look. It's available. You don't have to know all that much about it. You have to know that you can do it. Send them to us. We'll educate them. We'll let them know what needs to happen. You don't need to work that hard. Let us work hard, and then the end result is that you get your deals funded faster, and your investors will be taken care of." Kathleen: It's funny that you put it that way because I've been actually a reseller, a value-added reseller in a number of channel programs, and when I talk with people about what I think, at least from that side of the equation, makes a great reseller program, it is the programs that make your life really easy as the reseller. So, I was a HubSpot partner for 11 years, and they have an amazing partner program, and it's because they make your life so easy. They spoonfeed you white-labeled content. Here's 10 emails you can use to nurture people. They put you through sales training. Literally, you can't almost fail, and that makes it such an appealing program to be a part of, and it sounds kind of like that's the same approach you've taken here. Any thoughts on what it is that has made your partner program so successful? Thomas: Well, I think at the end of the day it's that it gets... I mean, they're not even resellers. It just gets their deals funded faster. So, it's a true win-win. We get a customer, and they get money into their deals. So, it's not even that... It's just a tool for them to make their life easier, so it's like... The easiest way to put it is if they have to work less and I'm saving them time, and they're just getting their money faster. I mean, it's just really that simple for us, and we're not paying our partners. Maybe we'll give them a discount, but it's really just... We'll make your life easier if you refer us business. Kathleen: Yeah, that is huge. Thomas: Yeah, yeah. It's pretty simple, but it's powerful. Rocket Dollar's growth Kathleen: So, can you share anything about the company's growth in the last two years, and kind of where you are right now as opposed to when you started? Thomas: Yeah. So, like I mentioned earlier, we've really sort of grown in 2019, is really when poured a little bit of fuel on the fire. We have customers in all 50 states now. We've got somewhere around $75 million worth of IRA assets in Rocket Dollar accounts. Right now, we're really sort of continuing to grow in the double digits month over month, so it's going really well. Then we're really focusing again on our channel partners, but some of the bigger ones. So, we're going after the big players, the YieldStreets of the world, the Crunchbases of the... Or Crunchbase. I'm sorry, Coinbase, the Coinbases of the world, where it's really a mega strategy where it's not five or 10 accounts. It's a thousand to 5,000 accounts, and really hooking in to their APIs with our own so that it's just a seamless experience for them and for their customers to get into their deals with IRA dollars. So, that's really sort of what's on the roadmap, and then we are also launching, about halfway through next year, a robo advisor so that if you don't know the alternative deal that you want to participate in, you can have your traditional stocks, bonds, mutual funds, inside of a Rocket Dollar account, so when you are ready to make that investment, your money's all right there, and you don't have to set up the account, or when you exit an investment, you don't have to transfer again to Vanguard or to Schwab. You can just do it all inside Rocket Dollar. So, we're really sort of pursuing the whole account versus just the amount that you're going to use to buy that rental house instead of transferring... If it's a hundred-thousand-dollar house, people are transferring a hundred-thousand dollars over to us, we'd rather them just bring over the whole thing and have everything in one account. So, that's really our product roadmap for the next six months to a year. What does it take for a startup to succeed in a highly competitive market? Kathleen: That makes sense. Now, if somebody is listening and they have a startup, and they're in the same situation you were two years ago, where they're entering a market that's very crowded, that has some very well funded incumbents, can you sort of boil down to two or three things that you think, based on your experience, are essential to do to be successful in that situation? Thomas: Yeah. I think number one is win your building, win your block, win your zip code, win your city slowly, and it's a lot of manual or in-person interactions. It's really getting yourself out there, and then your company sort of follows. I think that's number one, because you're not going to win on Google. You're not going to win on Facebook. You're not going to win on Instagram, because these guys are spending a day what you might raise for your entire seed round. I talk to people, I met with a company the other day, and they said that they haven't turned on their full digital spend. They're only spending $350,000 a month. Kathleen: Oh, amateur hour. Come on. Thomas: Yeah, and that's what I spend in a year. Kathleen: Right. Thomas: Right? You're not going to compete on their turf, so you got to be creative and come up with your own turf. For us, it was winning Austin, and your goal being not selling an account, but getting an email address, and that way we could continue to communicate with you without having to pay for it, if you will, because I can write copy, and I can write emails, and so it was really just finding the cheapest way to talk to people, and for us it was email. The other thing is we really focused on the little things, on appearing very buttoned up, on punctuation, on editing, on grammar, on spelling, everything that you don't really think about, but the minute someone sees a typo on an email from a financial services brand, you've lost because you can't be making those mistakes if you want to talk about someone's retirement. Kathleen: Right. If we can't trust you with our commas, how are we going to trust you with our dollars? Thomas: Exactly. Exactly. So, those two things for us were very sort of fundamental, is winning Austin, and then just focusing on the little things, like spending the extra hour to edit a blog post, or spending the extra 30 minutes to lay out the email perfect, and those little things really added up for us. We're still doing them. I mean, it's still a huge focus for us. We're still trying to win trust. We're still trying to win mind share. So, everything that we did in year one we're still doing. Kathleen: Now, just to digress for a second, you mentioned something that we really didn't touch on, which is putting yourself out there. I think you briefly mentioned it earlier, personal brands. I think there are probably a lot of founders who are technically very savvy about the product they're building. They're very passionate about it. But I've met many who are very reluctant to put themselves out there. Any advice as far as how to do it, why to do it, and what impact it's had on the business? Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. We've been lucky that two of our three founders are very extroverted. Henry and I are comfortable in front of crowds, and Rick, who's our third co-founder and our CTO, is also very comfortable with people, and he's very technical. So, we got very lucky that we have three founders that are very willing to grab a microphone. It really doesn't faze us all that much. Henry already had a pretty strong personal brand in Austin because of his prior exits, because of his work in the 401(k) space for... He set up probably a couple hundred 401(k)s for different businesses around Austin, so he was very well known. To be completely honest with you, I struggle with the whole concept of personal brands because it's not really my forte to really promote me. I'd rather promote the brand. So, it was something that I had to learn, but I think it's just practice and getting out there, and taking every opportunity that you can to grab a microphone, to speak, to talk about your company, and you don't even have to talk about yourself. Just talk about your company, because that's what you're passionate about, and that's what you know, and that's what resonates with people. Start with your audience. Start with your people. Right? If you're very technical, go to technical meetups and practice there, and then just grow slowly, and you'll get more and more comfortable just by sheer process of repetition. Kathleen: I love it. That's great advice for, I think, really anybody who's trying to build a company, whether they're the founder, the head of marketing, the head of sales, et cetera. Thomas: Absolutely. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Well, I don't want to finish without asking you the two questions that I always ask all my guests. Thomas: Sure. Kathleen: We talk a lot about inbound marketing on The Inbound Success Podcast, so is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with that? Thomas: You know, I hesitated to say this because we talk about them so much, but I was having a conversation with our account manager at HubSpot a couple months ago, and they really kill it. They've actually recently stopped having any sort of outbound sales at all. They are only inbound now, which I thought was risky and also amazing. I mean, they must be doing it so well to be able to take that big of a bet on- Kathleen: I'm convinced it's because their database has every single person on the planet earth in it. Thomas: Oh, yeah. No, they know... Kathleen: Yeah. Thomas: No, I think they're doing it really well, and it's obvious that they're still accelerating, and they're still growing. I mean, we're on HubSpot. I love HubSpot. I'm a huge fan. Their educational content, it's fantastic. I think that they really are doing a really good job. Kathleen: Okay, and then second question, one of the biggest things I hear from marketers that I speak to is that things are changing so quickly. Digital marketing is like drinking from a fire hose. How do you personally, as the head of marketing and a co-founder at Rocket Dollar, how do you stay up-to-date on everything? Thomas: Well, I'm sure like a lot of other guests, I read almost everything. I spend a lot of time... I love Medium.com. They have some really good publications. There's one called Better Marketing that is fantastic. It has really good content. So, I'm on Medium a lot. I read a lot of just news and a lot of sort of industry... The CMO section of The Wall Street Journal I think is fantastic, just because it's all relevant and timely. Then there's three books that have really spoken to me that have been fantastic, and one of them is called Don't Make Me Think, and it's all about user behavior online and why some things work and why some don't, and A/B testing and all that. It's pretty in the weeds, but it's fantastic. Another one is Lean Analytics. It's fantastic. It's very dense. It's like a textbook, but if you can get through that, you'll come out the other side just really able to sort of mix the creative and the analytical bit that's really important for marketers. I mean, the part that drew me to marketing was the numbers as much as the creativity, and I really like that balance. So, Lean Analytics is a great one if you're heavy creative and need some analytics help. Then there's a third that's really just a guide. It's called The Art of Digital Marketing. It's a big, thick book that's fantastic. So, those three, I think you could definitely get freelance clients just if you read those three. You could start working and marketing, and then just staying up-to-date with when Facebook changes their algorithms or when Google changes their bid process or whatever. That's just the sort of in the weeds stuff. But yeah, I would say Medium.com and those three books. Kathleen: I love those suggestions. Yeah. Those are three books that I have not heard people mention on here before, so I will definitely check those out. If you're listening and you want to find all those things, of course I'll put the links in the show notes, so head there to get ahold of those. How to connect with Thomas or learn more about Rocket Dollar Kathleen: If somebody wants to learn more about Rocket Dollar or wants to connect with you and ask a question, what's the best way for them to do that? Thomas: Yeah. So, I set this up for this podcast, but if you go to rocketdollar.com/inboundsuccess, we can talk there, and then also, I set it up, just if anybody is interested in one of these accounts, we'll knock a hundred bucks off the setup fee if you use INBOUNDSUCCESS100 at checkout. And then if you want to reach me personally, my email is thomas@rocketdollar.com. So, feel free to reach out. I mean, I stay on top of that, and I'm pretty open on it. So, that's really the easiest way to get to me. Kathleen: Great. Again, I'll put all those links in the show notes, so head there if you want to take advantage of any of those opportunities. You know what to do next... If you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, leave the podcast a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That helps us a lot get in front of new listeners. And of course, if you know somebody else doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because they could be my next interview. Thanks so much, Thomas. Thomas: Cool. Thank you, Kathleen. I really enjoyed it.

On the 1st hour we are showcasing tracks from MorningMaxwell, JONO TOSCANO, Jordan Burns, Matonii, EDX, Daniël Thomasso and more Our #chunkychoonchallenge for this month sees Hotfire battle it out against Holmes John (voting link will be up very shortly so make sure you get on board) Our Bayswater Files / #chunkchoonchampion for this month as voted is on Eat More Cake And to finish off the 1st hour, a huge throwback to the early 2000’s with a remix from Axwell The 2nd hour this month we are extremely grateful to have on our 1st international DJ / Producers - we caught up with the Badin Brothers, got to know more about them as producers and DJs, as well delivering the goods with an epic mix

On the 1st hour we are showcasing tracks from MorningMaxwell, JONO TOSCANO, Jordan Burns, Matonii, EDX, Daniël Thomasso and more Our #chunkychoonchallenge for this month sees Hotfire battle it out against Holmes John (voting link will be up very shortly so make sure you get on board) Our Bayswater Files / #chunkchoonchampion for this month as voted is on Eat More Cake And to finish off the 1st hour, a huge throwback to the early 2000’s with a remix from Axwell The 2nd hour this month we are extremely grateful to have on our 1st international DJ / Producers - we caught up with the Badin Brothers, got to know more about them as producers and DJs, as well delivering the goods with an epic mix

Ordinary Future Episode #7 Mixed by Jeroen van Beek Tracklist 00. Jeroen van Beek – Intro #7 01. Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding – Outside (Daniël Thomasso Remix) 02. Calvin Harris, John Newman – Blame (Tom & Jame Remix) 03. Don Diablo – Back To Life (Original Mix) 04. R3hab & Deorro – Flashlight (Original Mix) 05. Joel Fletcher & Reece Low – Back 2 Front (Original Mix) 06. Ziggy & Syzz – Lasers (Original Mix) 07. Ummet Ozcan – Raise Your Hands (Original Mix) 08. Oliver Heldens – 100 Percent VS. Gecko (Cobra Effect Biteleg) 09. Thomas Gold ft. Kate Elsworth – Colourblind (Original Mix) 10. Martin Garrix, Moti – Virus (How About Now) (Original Mix) 11. Major Lazer – Watch Out For This (Julian Calon Ambushin’ Bootleg) 12. Daniël Thomasso ft. Bataille – Moster Mashup 13. David Guetta ft. Sam Martin & Tom Swoon – Lovers On The Holika (Daniël Thomasso mashup) 14. The Chainsmokers - #Selfie (Jeroen van Beek SMASH-UP) 15. Deorro & J-Trick VS. Tiësto – Red Lights Rambo (Deviz Bang & Edshock mashup) 16. Dyro ft. Dynamite MC – Against All Odds (Original Mix) 17. DJ Snake & Lil Jon – Turn Down This Blazin’ (Dylan Stewart Edit) 18. Headhunterz, W&W – We Control The Sound (Original Mix) Welcome to a new episode of "Ordinary Future". In this podcast you will be taken to the future of House music. I'll let you hear the newest tracks, bootlegs, edits and mashups. Every month a new podcast will be available. Great news: my new website is finally online!! Check out: www.jeroenvanbeek.com. Keep an eye on Facebook page aswell. Because "Ordinary Future" is available as official podcast on iTunes!! Don't forget to like my Facebook page. I'll keep you up-to-date about every new podcast, upcoming tracks and gigs. Hope you enjoy this podcast and I hope to see you soon! Ciao,
 Jeroen van Beek

Ordinary Future Episode #6 Mixed by Jeroen van Beek Tracklist: 01. Swedish House Mafia – Leave The World Behind (Jeroen van Beek Intro Edit) 02. Rihanna feat. David Guetta – Right Now (Sick Individuals Remix) 03. DNMKG vs. Bright Lights – Tomahawk (She & Me Voacal Edit) 04. Armin van Buuren, Lauren Evans – Alone (Thomas Newson Remix) 05. Mark Benjamin feat. Ricky L & McK – Riser Again (Daniël Thomasso mashup) 06. Klauss Goulart & FTampa – Samba (Original Mix) 07. Jay Hardway – Bootcamp (Original Mix) 08. Jetfire & Happy Enemies – Brazil (Original Mix) 09. Martin Garrix – Animals (Botnek Edit) 10. FTampa – 5 Days (Original Mix) 11. Jordy Dazz, Jimi Frew – Vortex (Original Mix) 12. D-Wayne & Leon Bolier – Detonate (Original Mix) 13. Calvin Harris – Summer (Twoloud Remix) 14. Tom Swoon – Holika (Original Mix) 15. Swanky Tunes feat. C. Tod Nielsen – Fire In Our Hearts (Original Mix) 16. Michael Jackson, Justin Timerlake – Love Never Felt So Good (Fedde Le Grand Remix) 17. Flatdisk – One More Chance (Original Mix) 18. Cosmic Gate & Orjan Nilsen – Fair Game (Extended Mix) Welcome to a new episode of "Ordinary Future". In this podcast you will be taken to the future of House music. I'll let you hear the newest tracks, bootlegs, edits and mashups. Every month a new podcast will be available. Keep an eye on Facebook page aswell. Because "Ordinary Future" is available as official podcast on iTunes!! Don't forget to like my Facebook page. I'll keep you up-to-date about every new podcast, upcoming tracks and gigs. Hope you enjoy this podcast and I hope to see you soon! Ciao,
 Jeroen van Beek

For more information about his concept: www.facebook.com/Housewoodvol Official podcast on iTunes. Subscribe here: tinyurl.com/lpj69gs 01. House Wood intro 02. Luxury – J.A.W.S. (Original Mix) 03. Tchami x Janet Jackson – Go Deep (Tchami Bootleg) 04. Don Diablo, Cid – Got Me Thinking (Original Mix) 05. Chocolate Puma Ft. Kriss Kriss – Step Back (Original Mix) 06. Empire Of The Sun – Celebrate (Hook N Sling Remix) 07. Rihanna & Eminen feat. Icona Pop & Kryder – Monster All Night (Daniël Thomasso edit) 08. A-trak & Yeah Yeah Yeahs feat. Paul Mayson & Jasper Dietze - Heads Will Outback (Daniel Thomasso mashup) 09. Avicii - Addicted To You (Sick Individuals Remix) 10. Mako feat. U2 & Dannic - Ordinary Beam (Daniël Thomasso Edit) 11. Yellow Claw feat. Rochelle, Quintino & Merk & Kremont vs Toby Grean & Lenny Krevatiz – Are You Gonna Go My SHOTGUN (Daniel Thomasso mashup) 12. Markus Schossow & Michael Calfan feat. PH D, Merk & Kremmont - Won't let you down Reverie (Daniel Thomasso mashup) 13. Save The World There (Daniel Thomasso crowd tool) 14. Miley Cyrus feat. SYZZ - Wrecking Phunix (Daniel Thomasso mashup) 15. Sander van Doorn & Firebeatz – Guitar Track (Original Mix) 16. Coldplay vs Ummet Ozcan & R3hab - Revolution Paradise (Steve Lake Mashup) 17. Deniz Koyu Vs Coldplay – Ruby Talk (Juze and Miguel Guillen Edit) 18. Janelle Monae - Dance Apocalyptic (Chocolate Puma Remix) 19. Zedd - Find You ft. Matthew Koma, Miriam Bryant (Syn Cole Remix) 20. Calvin Harris & Alesso & Audien - Under Control Elysium (Teamworx Edit) 21. Merk & Kremont - Bigfoot Stellar Moloko Journey (W&W, Daddy's Groove, Skidka, HRS) 22. Katy Perry feat. Stadiumx & Taylr Renee, Elephante - Dark Horse At The Moon (Daniel Thomasso mashup)

Known for his powerful and progressive house style – Daniël Thomasso presents his mixtape concept: House Wood. House Wood stands for Progressive and Electro house music with love and feeling. The various elements come together in a great mix tape that will prepare you for every weekend. You will be taken to the one and only House Wood where Daniël Thomasso let you hear his own style and feeling. It is definitely worth paying this wood another visit, because every 2 months Daniël Thomasso will publish a new volume of House Wood. This time with some exclusive new tracks and lots of mashups and edits!

Welcome to another episode of Housepital takeover sessions. Only 2 more episodes before we hit the 50th one. This Episode is presented by Deex and Martin Dhamen is joining Deex in the studio for a special mix. A special selection of only Housepital tracks in the mix. The second hour the wheel will be handed over to Daniel Thomasso for the guest mix. Don’t forget to check out his debut “Bacon” on Housepital Records! 1. Deeplife - Strand (Original Mix) 2. Stereo Jackers - Latte (Original Mix) 3. JD Miller - 143 (Dirty Secretz Remix) 4. Mac Monroe - Specimen (Original Mix) 5. Jonas Hahn (DE) - Prism (Original Mix) 6. Jedi Jeri - Domino Effect (Original Mix) 7. AB&SO - MA33IVE (Original Mix) 8. Syskey & Monique Thomas - In Return (Original Mix) 9. ST. ELM8 - Squirt (Original Mix) 10. Protoxic & Tetra Ft. Starla Edney - Avalon (Vocal Mix) 11. Kriis Wide - Im On Fire (Helvetics & Julian Woods Remix) 12. Dean Anthony - Disco Lights (Original Mix) 13. Chris Ride - Swedish Night (NitroKIDD Remix) 1. David Guetta & Rihanna - Right Now (Sick Individuals remix) 2. Chuckie, Dzeko Torres - Down To This (HIIO Remix) 3. Hard Rock Sofa & Swanky Tunes feat. Nirvana - Stop In My Teen Spirit (Daniël Thomasso Mashup) 4. Mark Knight & Funkagenda - Man With The Red Face (Hardwell Remix) 5. Sick Individuals feat. Matthew Koma - Chase Spectrum (Daniël Thomasso vocal edit) 6. Kryder feat. John Newman & Gemini - Love Me Aprodite (Daniël Thomasso Mashup) 7. Dannic vs Red Hot Chili Peppers - Rocker Otherside (J.U.L.I.A.N Acapella Edit) 8. Daniël Thomasso - Challenge (Original Mix) 9. Sick Individuals & Axwell - I Am (Original Mix) 10. Deniz Koyu vs. Nicky Romero vs. Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano - Hertz Underground (AX Proper Reboot & Edit) 11. Avicii feat. Aloe Blacc & Jazz von D, Vigel - Wake Me Flash (Daniël Thomasso mashup) 12. Markus Schossow & Michael Calfan feat. Krewella - Reverie Alive (Daniël Thomasso vocal edit) 13. Axwell - Center Of The Universe (Original Mix) 14. Axwell - Center Of The Universe (Dyro Remix) 15. Avicii feat. Bobby Rock - You Make Me Blitz (Daniël Thomasso Mashup) 16. Daniël Thomasso - Bacon (Original Mix) - OUT OCTOBER 16 @ HOUSEPITAL RECORDS -