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Best podcasts about tim it

Latest podcast episodes about tim it

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: October 30, 2024 - Hour 3

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 30, 2024 51:07


Patrick answers a caller's question about the differences between Catholicism and Christianity. He explains Jesus' Jewish roots and the continuous history of the Catholic Church. Patrick also discusses how Protestantism separated from Catholic beliefs during the Reformation. This episode will help you understand your spiritual journey and where you truly belong.   Annie - What is the difference between Catholic, Christian and Jewish? (00:36) Cesar (email) – What are your thoughts on multigenerational households and how it aligns with our Catholic faith? (17:30) Martin - My daughter and son have fallen away from the Church and are now voting Democratic. How do I ask them if they support abortion? (20:52) Daniel – Can you explain Papal Infallibility and the misconceptions around it.  (30:40) Ruben - I was a protestant most of life.  I came back to Church 5 years ago.  It was an easy decision after listening to your show (40:32) Tom - What if two baptized people who are not practicing their faith get married? Are you using a biblical term of what sacramental means? (44:05) Tim - It's even more important to bring children into the world during times of strife and war (48:13)

23min of Ska
Episode 539: Halloween Ska Vol. III: Season of the Skank

23min of Ska

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2024 92:10


Boo! Look who scared up a new long form special spooky episode for you...00:00:00 - the Dead 60s - Ghostfaced Killer (the Dead 60s '02)00:02:08 - Dr. Ring Ding - the Exorcist (Ska Vaganza: Bingo Bongo '15)00:06:15 - Courtesy of Tim - It's Just a Curse (Tomorrow Again '21)00:09:49 - BAD OPERATION - Stay Inside (Wavebreak #4 '23)00:12:53 - Alex Dominish & Carlos Morales - In Defense of Candy Corn ('Tis the Spooky Season, Vol. 3 '24)00:15:56 - the What Nows?! - When Will You Die? (GIANTS - A Ska Punk Tribute to They Might Be Giants comp '22)00:18:07 - Catbite - Creepin (Nice One '21)00:20:57 - Matamoska! - I Turned into a Martian (Skalluminati '17)00:22:55 - Skaos - Frankenstein's Party (Beware! Skaos ...is Approaching! '88)00:25:50 - Mento Buru - Goo Goo Muck (Skalloween '21)00:29:05 - the Slackers - Munsters Theme (Oi!/SKAPILATION Vol. #2 comp '96)00:30:14 - The SKAMOTTS - the Adams Family (FILMSKA '24)00:33:36 - Boss Capone & Patsy - Voodoo (Kings & Queens '23)00:36:06 - the Prizefighters - the Hand at the Door (Punch Up '23)00:40:01 - INSPECTER 7 - the Shape (the Infamous '97)00:42:25 - Grave Danger - Undead End Job (Tomb it May Concern '19)00:46:03 - Skatune Network - Spooky Scary Skeletons (SKALLOWEEN '21)00:48:18 - Half Dizzy ft. Vic Ruggiero - the Faceless (the Faceless '23)00:51:14 - Smoke Like a Fish - Poison (Survival of the Hip'est '04)00:54:50 - the Liptones - Vampyria (In English '09)00:58:38 - Save Ferris - Lights Out in the Reptile House (Lights Out in the Reptile House '24)01:01:37 - Millington - the Halloween Song (the Halloween Song '18)01:04:06 - Barbicide - Bloodfall (Songs About Heartbreak & Nazis '23)01:08:54 - Left Hand Hotdog - Lily's Lament (Left Hand Hotdog Radio '24)01:12:52 - the Simulators - Terrorizor (the Simulators '24)01:18:50 - Monster Island - Monster Rock (Monster Island '98)01:21:38 - the Closers - Zombie Ska (the Closers '10)01:24:16 - the Holophonics - Bark at the Moon (MaSKArades Vol. 7: SKAlloween '14)01:27:57 - Aurelio Voltaire - the Last Halloween Party (the Last Halloween Party '23)

Mark Collins - All Things Soulful
Episode 229: All Things Soulful on Stomp Radio 14-6-24

Mark Collins - All Things Soulful

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2024 110:32


Angela Bofill - People Make the World Go RoundDee Dee Sharp Gamble - Easy MoneyArchie Bell & The Drells - Old PeopleBasic Black and Pearl - There'll Come A Time, There'll Come A DayCitrus Sun - HoneyChina Charmeleon, Sio, Kaidi Tatham - Little Me (Kaidi Tatham Remix)Temzar, Donald Sheffey - I'll Do The Things (Harley&Muscle Caio Deep Mix)Nathan Haines, La Coco - Come Into The LightMiranda Nicole, Just One - Love Song (Just One Jazz Out Mix)Soul Magic, Ebony Soul, Ann Nesby - Get Your Thing Together (City Soul Project , Pat Bedeau and Man Go Funk 2024 Remix)Terry Dexter, Wez Whynt - Renegade (Main Vocal)Luciano Gioia, Poetic Leestar - Time is Reference (Trinidadian Deep Naples Bush Remix)Jon Lucien - My Special FriendFreddie Hubbard - Little SunflowerAllysha Joy - Raise UpThe Regime & Pro Uno - Something In the WaterEmilia Sisco, Cold Diamond & Mink - Let Me InQuinn Deveaux - Very Best ThingThe Isley Brothers - Harvest for the WorldMichael Wycoff - Looking Up to YouThe Live Band - A Chance For HopeLamont Dozier - We Don't Want Nobody To Come Between UsBobby Hutton - Watch Where You're GoingMel & Tim - It's Those Little Things That CountGloria Scott - Love Me, Love Me, Love Me Or Leave Me, Leave Me, Leave Me

soulful stomp sio pat bedeau tim it ebony soul cold diamond love me or leave me
Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
Episode 246: The Deconstruction of Christianity: Alisa Childers & Tim Barnett

Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2024 58:26


Sit down with Jonathan Youssef for a compelling conversation with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, authors of The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is. Why It's Destructive. How to Respond. This discussion examines the pervasive and unsettling movement of faith deconstruction sweeping churches today. Whether it's affecting your loved ones, straining relationships, or stirring doubts within you, this episode provides crucial understanding and guidance.Together, we will try to understand the core aspects of the Christian deconstruction movement, its origins, the meaning of deconstruction hashtags like #exvangelical, and why it attracts so many people, particularly those disenchanted with traditional church teachings.Alisa and Tim offer strategies for thoughtfully and empathetically engaging with those questioning or abandoning their faith in Christ, emphasizing responses grounded in a biblical worldview.Whether you are seeking to support a loved one in turmoil, understand the dramatic spiritual changes around you, or find answers to your spiritual doubts, Alisa and Tim provide valuable insights and answers that promise to enlighten, challenge, and encourage.Listen and gain tools and confidence to address deconstruction with clarity and love, ensuring your faith and relationships can withstand the challenges of these transformative times.ALISA CHILDERS is a popular speaker and the author of Another Gospel? and Live Your Truth and Other Lies. She has been published at the Gospel Coalition, Crosswalk, the Stream, For Every Mom, Decision magazine, and the Christian Post.TIM BARNETT is a speaker and apologist for Stand to Reason (STR). His online presence on Red Pen Logic with Mr. B helps people assess flawed thinking using good thinking, reaching millions monthly through multiple social media platforms.After you listen to this episode, you may have questions. We would love to hear from you! To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidAlso, join the conversation on our social media pages:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpodTRANSCRIPT:This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 246: The Deconstruction of Christianity with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett.Jonathan: Today, we have quite a special situation. We have two of my favorite guests that we've had in the past, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. And they have teamed up and have written a book together, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive and How To Respond. Thank you guys so much for taking the time. We're all across the nation and different nations here. Thank y'all for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.Alisa: It's great to be back with you.Tim: Yeah, it's good to see you.Jonathan: Well, I think before we jump in we've Alisa and I and Tim and I, we've separately had conversations around this area, but I love the way you break down your book into these three parts: Exvangelical, Deconstruction, and Hope. But just again for those who are new to the terminology, let's define deconstruction and separate it and define exvangelical, and then we'll talk about the reasons for the writing of the book.Alisa: Which one you want to take, Tim, exvangelical or deconstruction?Jonathan: You each get one.Tim: All right. I'll start with deconstruction. You know this is a tough definition to nail down. In fact, this took quite some research and quite some time. In fact, I actually changed my mind on how I was using the term. At least initially when I started teaching in deconstruction a few years ago, I thought there was a way that we could use the word deconstruction in a healthy way and there was a way we could use it in an unhealthy way. And we were seeing this kind of thing happening, especially on social media. You'd have people like Lecrae or John Mark Holmer or other notable evangelicals using deconstruction as a healthy way, here's a good way to do deconstruction.Tim: That's right. And on the other hand, there's a whole lot of this other stuff that's very unhealthy. That's how we originally thought until we did serious research into what's going on in this deconstruction space, especially on social media where we're seeing a movement or an explosion. And what we saw there was that there isn't anything healthy. In fact, there are defining characteristics of the deconstruction explosion that are unbiblical and just completely wrongheaded.So at the end of the day, where we landed on this—and again, we say this is the hardest sentence we wrote in the book, but here's where we landed on our definition of deconstruction: It's a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring Scripture as a standard. And all those words are important in that sentence. So it's a process, but it's a very specific kind of process. It's a postmodern process. Whereas where you would think (this is what many claim) is that they are on a search for truth, what we're finding is that it's not really about truth—in fact, by postmodern we mean that there isn't a goal of truth; there's actually a denial of objective truth, that objective truth cannot be known. And so there's that on the one hand. On the other hand, you have this rejection of Scripture as an authority. And so when we put those things together, we think these are the defining characteristics of what deconstruction is all about. And we can kind of go into more detail and give some examples of where we've seen that, but that's a starting point.Alisa: Right and then the exvangelical hashtag is often used synonymously with and at least in conjunction with that deconstruction hashtag. And it's a little bit of a tricky hashtag because it doesn't simply mean, at face value, no longer evangelical. But it's not like you have people who were raised Presbyterian and they become some kind of more liturgical Anglican or something and they use the ex. They are not using the exvangelical hashtag for that. What we're seeing with the exvangelical hashtag is that, first of all, it's very difficult to define what evangelical is. And that's kind of a word like deconstruction that's defined in a hundred different ways. So there's the Bevington's Quadrilateral that characterizes the evangelical movement under four pillars of personal conversion, emphasis on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, biblical authority, and evangelism. And yet, if you ask people in the deconstruction hashtag what is evangelical, those beliefs are in the background for sure, but what they primarily see is God, guns and Trump. It's what is perceived in their minds to be this unholy alliance between evangelicals and the political right. And so it's all kind of mashed together, along with things like spiritual abuse and purity culture and conservative politics. It's all kind of this ball that all gets kind of mixed together and then it all gets thrown out as exvangelical. And so in some cases they're conflating evangelical with the historic Christian gospel, and in other cases, they might actually be throwing out some cultural things that are Americanized that aren't necessarily a part of the gospel. And it can be kind of like a mix of both. But it's important like when Tim talked about the shift of authority, its' like the only thing that matters for the exvangelical and deconstruction is that they are leaving behind what they perceive to be toxic beliefs. And so as best as I can analyze are it's any belief outside of yourself that you would be asked to submit to, surrender to, kneel to that is not necessarily something that resonates with you inside.Jonathan: Interesting. So you're the ultimate authority, which goes to the deconstruction definition of Scripture being the authority.Alisa: I do think it boils down to that, yes. Jonathan: Do you find this is a uniquely American phenomenon? I don't even know if phenomenon is the right word to use there.Tim: That's a really good question. I think that there's a few reasons why we're seeing this in particular in North America. It's happening in Canada, too, not just the U.S. I think that we're seeing a culture that's dominated by a philosophy of relativism on the one hand and then on the other you have this kind of explosion of social media within the last decade or so. And I think bringing those two things together in particular—And then maybe a third thing, and that is the American church and how we have, I think, neglected the life of the Christian mind. We used to say the church teaches what we believe really well but not why we believe it. So us apologists, we're trying to train up the church in why we believe these things. But to be honest, when you look at the research now that's coming out in the last couple of years, people who identify as evangelical, I think it was in our book we say 42 or 43 percent of U.S., so Americans, who identify as evangelical do not believe that Jesus is god. They think He's just a good moral teacher. Hold on a second! So these people identify as evangelical but they're not Christian. I mean, this is crazy! So you have, on the one hand, Christians, people who are professing to be Christians because, hey, I was born in America or I was born in Canada. That's the default, right. It's like in your genetics or something. Yeah, so you have that on the one hand, so there's no real understanding or foundation for what real, orthodox Christianity is. Then you have this dominant culture, I mean, it's coming from every direction, this idea of relativism. It's literally the water that many of your young people especially are swimming in, and they don't even know they're wet. And then of course you have social media, this platform now, where I have access to, I mean, the world. I have access to memes and TikToks and these, for many, they think these are compelling arguments. I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting here at my desk and I get a message coming in. It's a meme or a TikTok video that someone sends me and says, “Hey, can you respond to this? I don't know what to say. I don't know how to respond.”And I watch the video or I read the meme and I think, Really? This is not a good argument. It's not even close. Usually, it's not even an argument. And so when you bring all those things together, I think that makes America susceptible to the deconstruction movement for sure.Alisa: there's also the Trump element in the American version of deconstruction. It's just such a huge part of that that is so uniquely American. But as Tim said, I think deconstruction is happening everywhere. I know progressive Christianity is happening. Even in the Middle East I've gotten emails of people wanting my book to be translated into Farsi because it's even coming into the Middle East. So where there is progressive Christianity, there is dn. But I suppose it's just taking on maybe a different type of flavor here in America.Jonathan: Well, and even the Trump effect has ripple effects around the world to where people in foreign nations see Trump and think, Oh, well, he's their definition of Christian. Let's talk about the prevalence. Because I think there are some who think this is just happening out in large cities or this is not affecting everyday people. There can be a disconnect to just how much influence this is having. And it can be people who are watching and consuming these things that aren't even talking about it with their family because they know how the family will react when there's genuine questions and doubt. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing with the prevalence of both of these concepts entering into homes.Alisa: Well, I think we're in a different world now, so this is an interesting anecdotal piece to this. When I go out and speak I'll often ask an audience, “How many of you have heard the word deconstruction in the context of faith?” And the older the audience, the fewer the people have even heard of it. And yet, when I go speak to students it's 90 percent. But it blows my mind. Even at women's conferences where women … the ages are 20 to maybe 60, 70, you might have 20 percent raise their hand that they've even heard of the concept.And so what I mean by we're in a different world is decades ago you had to get a book deal. There was major exposure with ideas. And so I think that there are some of us who are still living in that world and don't realize the prevalence of some of these ideas on social media. For example, we have many posts documented in our book where it's somebody that nobody's ever heard of an probably never will know their name, but their video has millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and if you think about the reach of that versus somebody that you might have seen on TV decades ago or maybe in a Christian bookstore even or in the catalog that they would send out, that's a lot of people. But social media can reach so many people with a message where it's not even necessarily surrounding a particular personality.And so I think the prevalence of it is on social media, so someone's exposure to it is probably going to be directly related to what types of social media they have and how often they engaging with it. Tim: And the other element to this, the older folks who have exposure to it, is because they have a loved one, usually a younger loved one, who is going through it and now we're just, as we label it, this is what it is, deconstruction, they say—it clicks. Oh, that's what my nephew is going through, or my grandchild or my son or my daughter or whatever. So it does kind of filter up to that older generation. They're seeing the aftermath usually. It's like why is my grandson no longer following the Lord? Well, it turns out they went through a process called deconstruction. Jonathan: Well, and I imagine some of the reactions can be unhelpful, and that's why, again, I think it's important that books like yours are out there and podcasts and stuff that you guys are producing is out there, so that there's a heightened awareness but also a helpful response. Because we do have a response and a calling, but we need to make sure we're doing it in a right and biblical way.I wonder if we could come to the origins of this. I know Carl Lawson writes in the foreword in your book about technically the beginning is, when Demas, who fell in love with the world, abandoned Paul and the ministry and the faith. But I mean in this particular area, is it with social media? Was there a particular person or is it just postmodernism in general? Where do you find your origins to these movements?Tim: Well, it's true that we could trace this thing past Demas. We can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, always. But just more recently in the 1960s we see postmodern philosophers like Derrida in particular, who is the father of deconstruction. Now of course, his application of deconstruction was to textbook religion. He argued that objective meaning, objective truth, could not be known, and that there was no actual truth, so the reader could import just as much meaning as an author of a text. And what we traced in our research is we saw there is a connection here. In fact, we discovered a book by John Caputo, who is a scholar and actually follows Derrida and applies Derrida's philosophy not just to textbook religion in general, but in fact, to Christianity. And he wants to do this postmodern move even on the words of Jesus. And so he gives application in his book. What would Jesus think about, say, homosexuality today? Well, He would look around the world and see loving, monogamous relationships and He would be affirming. Even though Derrida says, yet, in the first century, no, Paul and Jesus, they had a certain view on this, but we're going to bring new meaning to the text. In fact, the way Derrida describes this is Derrida says the text actually never arrives at a meaning. In fact, he has this analogy of a postman delivering a letter, and it's like the letter never arrives at its destination, and in that sense, Christianity has not arrived. There is no set fundamental beliefs that you need to hold to—in fact, they are always changing, never arriving.So this is kind of the history, and of course there's lots of people who don't know who Derrida is, they don't know who John Caputo is, and yet, they are taking a page out of his playbook. They are thinking in terms of that kind of postmodern philosophy as they look out at religion. It's not what is actually true corresponds to reality; instead, it's there is something else going on. Oftentimes, it's personal preferences are the authority, or maybe they're looking at the culture and saying, “Yeah, look, the culture is more accepting of sexuality and so we ought to be too.”Jonathan: Yeah, just like in the days of Noah. Help us understand who are some of the primary voices behind this today? I know we talked about how when you're on social media it can be a lot of nameless, faceless people who just have an opinion and they want to create an argument or a non-argument that has an effect on people with their emotions. Are there any that are writing or have some influence as, you know, even by way of warning people, hey, be careful of so-and-so because it tends towards this trajectory?[24:42] Alisa: Well, I would say there's, in my mind, and Tim might have some others, but in my mind there's one figure in particular that is, in my view, the most influential, although he's not primarily promoting quote/unquote “deconstruction,” is Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr, his ideas, his universal Christ worldview, is—Interestingly, when I was researching the coaching and therapy sites, I found all the ones I could find online of people offering services to coach you through deconstruction or even offer you therapy through your deconstruction—and by the way, these therapy and coaching sites are not helping you to remain a Christian; they are not interested in where you land, they just want to help you along your subjective journey.But even the ones that aren't claiming to be Christians, there's always this recommendation—I looked at all the book recommendations, and there is a Richard Rohr book there every single time, even among those that don't claim to be Christians. And so what Rohr has done, I think, is, especially among people who want to retain the title Christian but might be more spiritual but not religious, or some sort of a New Age-y kind of Jesus is more of a mascot kind of thing, Rohr has really given them a worldview to put in place of what they've turned down. And he does talk about deconstruction in his book, Universal Christ, and he says it's like the process of order, disorder, and then reorder. Well, that sounds good at face value. You're taught a certain thing, and then something messes it up and as an adult you have to do some digging and some work and then you reorder. But that's not exactly what he's talking about. His order stage is what he calls “private salvation,” your private salvation project. In other words, Rohr doesn't believe in personal salvation, he believes in universal salvation, he's a universalist. So he's saying that's like the kindergarten version of faith, this kind of Christianity where you have personal faith and you have this God of wrath and judgment. All of that just needs to be disordered so that ultimately you can reorder according to his worldview.Now I bring up Rohr because he's so influential. I mean, he makes his way into so many of the deconstruction conversations. But beyond Rohr, it's tough because there can be platforms that swell up and get really big, and then I've seen them shut down after they have maybe 20,000, 30,000 followers, even up to hundreds of thousands of followers. I've seen several of these platforms just kind of get burned out and they shut down. So it's hard to say, but I would say Derek Webb, Caedmon's Call, is an important voice in there. You've got—Well, Jon Steingard was for a while when he ended up shutting down his YouTube, but he was the lead singer of Hawk Nelson. He was commenting for quite a while. Jo Luehmann is pretty influential. Who else, Tim?Tim: Well, there's—I put them in different categories.Alisa: The NakedPastor.Tim: The NakedPastor for sure. So there's guys who, and gals who have deconstructed and posted that they've deconstructed online. So that would be someone like a Rhett McLaughlin, who 3 million people watched his video four years ago. He's been keeping people updated every year; they do kind of an anniversary thing. That sparked so many people on their own deconstruction. Now what's interesting about Rhett is he didn't necessarily tell you how toTim: Yeah. And that was enough for some people to say, “Maybe I should do this too.” Now there's other platforms out there, and all they do is criticize Christianity, or they mock Christianity. Those are big on TikTok. I mean, there are massive platforms that have half a million followers and millions of views, okay, and I could go down and list some of those for you. But the point is they're not necessarily talking about deconstruction and the process, but they're just saying, “Hey, here's what you guys believe, but here's my mocking, here's my criticism.” Then there's this other stream, and this is the NakedPastor or Jo Luehmann and others who aren't just mocking Christianity or criticizing Christianity but they're trying to advocate for a certain kind of process, okay, and that's where you're going to get a little more detail on how this deconstruction thing works out. And so they've been, in fact, Jo Luehmann and the NakedPastor, David Hayward, and—Jonathan: Joshua Harris. Didn't he do a course through that?Tim: That's right. Joshua Harris, when he—again, on Instagram. That blew up. There were like 7,000 comments in response to him just posting, “I'm no longer a Christian.” And you could see the responses, and I'm telling you, there were many who said, “This post is what set me on my deconstruction journey.” So there's at least three different categories of influencers out there, and they're all playing into the same thing, deconstruction, but they all are coming at it from a different angle.Jonathan: Alisa, for those who are familiar with your story, how is this movement different from the path that you were on?Alisa: This is a great question because I've actually changed my mind on how I talk about this. So over ten years ago I had a faith crisis that was really agonizing. It was years long. I landed fairly quickly in going through some apologetics arguments, knowing that God existed, but just the doubts that would nag at me were just years of this agonizing research, reading thousands of pages of scholarship, just trying to figure out if what I believed was actually true. And it was propelled by a progressive pastor. I didn't know he was progressive at the time, but I was in a church where there was this class going on and it set my friends, a bunch of my friends, into deconstruction. And so when I wrote my first book about my journey, I actually called the process that I went through deconstruction because it was horrible, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It was agonizing and I had to kind of de-con-struct. If you just take the word at face value, and then build back from the beginning.But interestingly, when I would go online and I would talk about my deconstruction, deconstructionists would come on and say, “No, you didn't deconstruct.” At first, that was so confusing to me. I was like, “Well, were you there?” I mean, it was like this horrible, agonizing process.Jonathan: I'm the ultimate authority here.Alisa: Yeah, right, I know. And they said, “Well, you didn't deconstruct because you still hold to toxic theology. You still have toxic theological beliefs.” And that's when I realized, oh, okay, so this isn't just—even though I knew it wasn't a good thing, I knew it was a horrible thing because, again, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but it wasn't about truth. It's actually about leaving behind these beliefs that they think are toxic. And let's say you completely do hard work of years of studying and you decide that you are a sinner and that Jesus did die on the cross for your sins, that the Bible is God's Word and that what Jesus claimed about Himself is true and that He proved it by resurrecting from the dead, if you hold to those beliefs, along with the biblical sexual ethic, you have toxic theology and you've got to go back to the drawing board and start over.So that's when I realized, okay, there's more to this. And so I actually correct myself—Jonathan: There's a goal.Alisa: Yeah. I correct myself in the new book and say I don't actually use the language of deconstruction to describe what I went through because I was on a truth quest. I wanted to know what was true, whether I liked it or not, whether it resonated with me or not. In fact, what was interesting in the class I was in where all my friends ended up deconstructing, and I mean all that I know of, there might be two that I lost touch with that maybe didn't, but most of the people that I know of did. And everything in that class was all about what resonates with me. I mean, we would … they would talk about Bible verses and say, “Well, that just doesn't resonate with me,” and they would toss it aside. And I was like, “You can't just do that.”And so I didn't deconstruct, and so I corrected my language on that and really changed my mind about what I think it is. And I think what I'm hoping to set the example for others is people who are wanting to use the word because it was trendy—because I really had a thing about that. Why am I using the word? Why am I hanging onto the word? And I had to realize there's no reason for me to use that word. Because what I did was search for truth. I tested all things, held fast to what is good—that's biblical. I don't need a postmodern word to describe that. And so that would be my journey with this word and kind of my relationship with it is that I've changed my mind; I didn't deconstruct. It was—Jonathan: You re-entrenched.Alisa: Yeah, they just think I circled some wagons and found some people to agree with me. Which is so interesting to me, because they weren't there. And that's the thing. Pete Ens, I've seen the comment from him, “Oh, Alisa doesn't know … she doesn't understand deconstruction, she doesn't get it.”And I'm just like, “Were you there? You weren't there. You have no idea what I went through.” But it's like they're so quick to say, “You have to respect my lived experience,” but they are the first ones that will not respect your lived experience if you land at historic Christianity for sure.Jonathan: That makes sense. You guys have spent hours on places like TikTok researching what leads people to deconstruct and what they all have in common. What are the common threads that you've noticed through that?Tim: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, some of the factors that we've noticed that kind of launch people into a deconstruction are things like doubts, unanswered questions. Virtually all these stories have some instance of suffering or pain, and we've all been through that. There's church hurt, there's spiritual abuse. Now we've got to be careful about that a little bit, because sometimes it's a real abuse that happens, of course, we would all want to say that is horrible and we stand against that. That is not of God. And so when a pastor engaged in that kind of thing, he needs to be held accountable for it.But then on the other hand there is what we might call perceived abuse or perceived harm. And this is where things like teaching the doctrine of hell. In our research, we found that that's called, you know, teaching your kids, it's child abuse. If you say that Jesus died for your sins, that's considered toxic and abusive to tell someone that, yet that's the gospel message. So we want to make sure that we distinguish between those things.Of course, we just mentioned earlier about politics and Trump and all that stuff. So there's these different elements that you'll see peppered within these stories. Now we want to be quick to say that not all deconstruction stories are alike. In fact, they are often very unique, and that's because every single person is unique. So if you've heard one deconstruction story, then you've only heard one, you haven't heard them all. But there are these common threads.One question that we asked when we were doing our research is why is it that two people can grow up in the same house, they can go to the same church, the same youth group, they have the same parents, they experience some of the same trauma, suffering, whatever, and yet one will deconstruct and the other maybe becomes an even more faithful believer. What's going on there?And what we found is it comes down to—at least one element—a faith foundation. What is it, what is your faith foundation? And of course, this is going to be different for different people, and what we need to be asking, we're challenging the church to ask, is what does it mean to be a Christian? Oftentimes, you know—and this is a question I was asked when I was in university by my friends who were not believers, “Tim, why are you a Christian?” And I honestly shot back, “Because my parents are Christians.” That was my first response. I knew that ain't right. That was embarrassing. I'd grown up in the church. I'd done all the church stuff, and yet I did not have a strong Christian foundation and a strong Christian faith. And so I, at that point, was very susceptible to this kind of deconstruction, right, because I could—if TikTok was big at that time, I could have watched a video and, “Okay, I'm outta here. This has been refuted.”So I think that all those things that I mentioned earlier can make you a good candidate for deconstruction, but they don't have to lead you down the path of deconstruction. This is why it's really, really important that the church needs to be helping to develop and disciple Christians so they have a strong foundation so when that crisis hits, they are able to stand firm in their faith. So let me ask this question. There may be a simple answer. Is the faulty foundations that people are building on essentially, I mean, is the answer anything but Christ? Is it in the institution of the church or in the leadership in the church or your favorite Christian singer? Is it … do you find those the main threads that came back?Alisa: That's an interesting question. I think, you know, when I think about foundation … Because I was trying to think through this question even within my own context. So one of my sisters was not a Christian until she was an adult, and she would say that openly; that's part of her testimony. She grew up in church. We grew up in the same home, we had the same discipleship, the same youth pastors, pretty much the same experiences growing up, same environment, and yet our foundation was different because I was a devoted Christian as far back as I can remember. I mean, I don't even remember a time where I didn't absolutely know that the Bible was God's Word and Jesus was who He said He was. And yet, for my sister, she grew up in the same environment but had a totally different foundation. she did all the things, she cooperated with it, but She never personally trusted in Christ.Jonathan: Going through the motions, yeah, okay.Alisa: Yeah. And she may not have even realized that. You might have asked her at 12 years old, “Are you a Christian,” she might have said, “Well, yeah,” but she didn't know that she wasn't until she actually got saved as an adult. And so I think the foundation is more of a personal thing. The way I see it is the level of understanding you  might have had. We have a lot of this sort of seeker-sensitive model that's over the past few decades has gotten really big. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a large church or try to be sensitive to people who are seeking, of course. But some of those seeker-sensitive and megachurch models really watered-down the gospel, really sacrificed discipleship for numbers. And I think that that has resulted in a lot of people growing up in churches that maybe—And I'm not … We don't speculate on this question in the book, were they really saved, were they not because we don't know the end of their story either, but I do think even right now we have a lot of people in our churches who maybe may not be Christians because they may not be getting the gospel, they're not getting Bible teaching. And they might like the community and even like and believe certain things about it, but everybody's foundation is maybe going to be a little bit different. That's kind of how I see it.Jonathan: Well, I mean, not to steer us theologically, but I mean it has to be the work of the Spirit in the life of a person, and that's all in the sovereign timing of the Lord. I wonder if sometimes in this American evangelical mindset from an older-generation perspective we have this understanding that my children should be Christians and they should be following the ways that I direct. And then I should start seeing spiritual fruit in their life. Like, well, I don't know. I mean, is there something wrong with that happening at a later point? Just thinking from a parental, a parent's perspective. Maybe I've gone into the weeds there a little bit.Alisa: Like Tim said, each deconstruction story is unique. I would say it like this. Every deconstruction story is unique and yet they're kind of all the same, too, in certain points. I know we're getting in the weeds a little bit, but as a parent, I wouldn't want to push my kid to say they believe something they don't really believe. I'd want them to come to that on their own. And that might come later, certainly, yeah.Jonathan: And there's a level of you want your child to be honest with you, and I think sometimes we can put a false expectation on your child to be going to be at a certain place when they're just not ready for that yet. And so what they're actually deconstructing is deconstructing whatever that false view—again, as you said, there's different stories of deconstruction. But ultimately, if you deconstruct and never return back, to your point, there was never faith to begin with. You experienced the benefits of a covenant community or whatever it is. As Hebrews says, you were tasting but you weren't of that, you know … not all Israel is Israel.Do you think it's potentially because parents are unwilling to engage in the hard questions of the faith? Or do you think perhaps there is always just people who are going to rebel against Christ? Is it all of the above? In your research, I don't know if you're working with people who have gone through it and then interviewing them. Are you tracing things back to a particular point? I think we all want to say, “Where does the blame lie?” Are you finding that?Tim: I think it's all of the above. A lot of these stories have unanswered questions. In fact, Alisa did a debate on Unbelievable with Lisa Gunger, and she makes this really tragic statement where she said, “Questioning was equivalent to sinning in our church. If you questioned the pastor, you questioned his teaching, whatever, you were in essence sinning.”So confessing to your questions is confessing your sins. And that mentality, I mean, we wrote a whole chapter called “Questions,” In that chapter, what we're trying to do is a little bit of a wake-up call. We're trying to rattle the church a little bit and say, “Hey, we can do better. We ought to be the place where people feel safe to ask their questions and express their doubts.” And I hope that everyone listening to this hears that. Tim and Alisa are not against questions—in fact, we're apologists. We travel around and we're doing our best to answer questions, so we're not against that, and we want the church to be a safe place.And I mean we give an example of Tim Keller. At the end of his sermons, his services, he would do like a 40-, 45-minute Q&A time where he would just stick around and, okay, come on up. And in New York City, where you have like diversity of people, diversity of views coming in, you're going to have skeptics, you're going to have atheists, you're going to have whatever coming in, asking their hard questions. And when you think about it, the way we have our churches structured, at least most of them, there isn't really a Q&A time. That would be like a very special thing. Maybe every few months the pastor will take questions or something. Jonathan: A special treat. Yeah, yeah.Tim: That's right. But for the most part, that's not there, and that can give a lot of people the impression that questions aren't allowed here. You just listen to what's spoken, do what you're told, and that's the end of it. So I think that's part of it. But you also mentioned, yeah, maybe there's a rebellious heart, too. You can't read the Bible very far without seeing someone who has a rebellious heart. So we—Tim: That's right. Just a couple of pages in. And so you end up seeing that this is a realistic element that we need to be talking about, too, and that's why we devoted an entire chapter to the deconstructor, because there are things about the deconstructor that are important to be aware of from a biblical anthropology perspective. And so there certainly are people who are seeking answers, and we want to be there to provide answers. But then there's also these questions out there that are seeking exits. And you see lots of those. You see them in Scripture and we see—When you've got Richard Dawkins saying, “Well, who made God?” Richard Dawkins should know better, you know. When my four-year-old asks that question, okay, fair enough. But when you have an academic from Oxford asking that question as if it's legitimate of the Christian God, something else is going on.Jonathan: I remember Keller teaching on Job, and he says Job is filled with questions, right, but the issue was that he never left God. He didn't say, “I have questions and now I'm going to go over here and ask them.: But he kept asking the questions of the Lord in his particular situation. And he was saying that questioning can be a good thing because it's, as we talked earlier, all truth is Christ's truth, so there's nothing to be afraid of. You're not going to get an answer where it should cause difficulty. But rather, you're sticking close to the source and you're going to get your answers within reason. But rather than going—And it's interesting, because that's what these TikToks and all these things are creating is new avenues for you to go and ask questions and find a story that resonates with you, right, that's the big terminology that we were using earlier. So that resonates with your story and how you feel, and then where did they land? How do we invite this sort of cultivating an openness for asking of questions? Is it let's have a Q&A session at the end of church? Is it, you know, we need to start training our parents to have them understand that your kids asking questions is a good thing because they're coming to you versus no, everything is fine and I'm going to go to YouTube and find the answer because I think you're going to be mad at me or whatever it is. Help us think through that from a church perspective. Alisa: Well, I think starting with the parents is a great place to start because if we can train parents to be the first person to introduce some of these difficult topics to their kids, we know statistically the first person to introduce the topic will be viewed as an expert in the eyes of the child. So when we as parents are the first people to talk to our kids about gender and sexuality and all of these different things—and promoting an environment where we're not weird about it, we're not acting awkward about it, then we want to be the Google. I want to be Google for my kids. And that means I'm going to be really honest when they ask their questions and sometimes give more information than they wanted.My daughter, she jokes with me like “I know I'll get a straight answer from you with whatever I ask.” And so maybe even training parents to ask your kids questions like “Hey, what's your biggest question about God?”And parents don't need to be afraid of what their kids say, because it's perfectly fine to say, “Wow, I've never really thought about that. Let's think that through together,” and then go do some research and continue to engage with your kid about it. But I think in the home, if we can start there, that's a great place. And then the church can help come around parents with even youth groups doing Q&As and pastors doing Q&As. I think that's a huge way to promote that environment from the home, all the way through the church culture.Jonathan: Okay, let's do a little sort of engaging with others segment here. What would you say to those who are seeing their loved ones go through deconstruction or exvangelical. What would you say to them? Buy our book.Tim: Yeah, that. And I mean the first thing that I would say is stay calm. It can be not just earthshattering for the person going through deconstruction, but the loved ones of those deconstructors it's often earthshattering. We talk about this in the book, actually. To find out that my kids who I've raised in the church come to me and say, “Dad, I don't believe any of this stuff anymore, I'm out,” that would be crushing.And I would want to remind myself: stay calm. I've heard so many stories, and they're actually horror stories, where a child comes to a parent and says, “I'm deconstructing” and the parent just loses it. “How could you do that?” And they overreact, and of course that's not going to help. That's the first thing.I would want my kids right away to know that they are loved, period. That this doesn't change my love for them. It's not “I love you, but let me fix your theology.” It's “I love you, period. You're still my daughter. I'm still your dad. That's not going to change.”And then another thing just to add is say thank you. It must have taken a lot for that individual, if they come to you and share that they've deconstructed, it must have been a big deal to do that. So I would say, “Thanks for sharing that with me and me being the person that can be there for you.” So those are introductory things. Obviously, relationship is going to be so important. It's not necessarily that you're going to be able to maintain the relationship. We've heard stories of people getting no-contact letters from their loved one saying, “Your theology is toxic. I don't want anything to do with you and so we're done. Here's my no-contact letter.”But if they're willing to stay in your life, then we want to do whatever is possible to  maintain that relationship without compromising truth. Truth is absolutely necessary. But you want to be in that relationship as long as possible, because that's where you're going to be able to have probably the best impact.Its' interesting you brought up Job earlier. And Job's comforters started on the right track. They were there and they sat with Job—Jonathan: Silent.Tim: Silently for seven days. And then it was when they started to open their mouths they got themselves into trouble, and I think we can learn something from that. So we want to hear, “Hey, tell me your story.”One of the first questions I would want to know is, “What do you mean by deconstruction?” If they're using that word, I want to know if they just mean, “Hey, I'm asking some questions. Hey, I don't know if I believe in this view of creation, baptism, and maybe I'm changing.”Okay, that's different than what we're seeing online, okay, this idea of a postmodern process. So I want to nail down, okay, what are you going through and what kind of process or methodology are you using to go through it? I want to be able to identify those things.And of course, in the book we talk about this idea of triage. If you have a gunshot wound to the head but a broken finger, they're treating the gunshot wound to the head, right, the thing that's more serious. And in a similar way, once you understand where this person's coming from, you've heard their story, you're going to be able to do some triage. Okay, what's the most important thing in this moment? Is it that I answer all these questions that I'm having? Is it that they just need me to be with them because they are going through something? And I think that's important because sometimes we miss the mark. Especially as apologists, oh, let me answer that question. Let's go for coffee. I'm going to fix your theology and then we'll be back on track.Jonathan: We're going to fix the problem, yeah.Tim: That's likely not going to happen. And then finally, I would just say continue to pray. We cannot underestimate the power of prayer. If someone is going through deconstruction, what they need is God. They need the Holy Spirit. And so let's petition God on their behalf. Let's pray that God does whatever is necessary to draw that person back to Himself.Jonathan: All right, now thinking for the person who is considering deconstructing their faith. And again, that could be a myriad of different positions along that path, but what are the things you would want them to know?Alisa: Well, so here's what I would say. If someone is considering deconstruction as if it's like an option, “Oh, maybe I'll deconstruct my faith,” and there's no crisis that's actually throwing you in deconstruction, I would say you don't need to do that. There's no biblical command to get saved, get baptized, and then deconstruct your faith. You don't need to do that. If there are some incorrect theological views that you—maybe you grew up in a very legalistic stream of Christianity. Maybe you grew up in the Mormon church. Maybe you grew up as  Jehovah's Witness and you need to go to Scripture, make Scripture your authority, and then get rid of beliefs that were taught to you that are not biblical. I want you to know that that is a biblical process and that is what you should do.Jonathan: This is what we call disentangling, right, that we were talking about.Alisa: Yes. In our book, we would call it reformation. But yeah, Jinger Duggar calls it disentangling. I don't care what you call it. I would just really encourage you to not use the word deconstruction, because deconstruction is a very specific thing that isn't about getting your theological beliefs corrected according to the Bible, and so we want to be reforming our faith according to Scripture. And so if you need to disentangle, as Jinger would say, or reform beliefs that were unbiblical, please do that. And that can be a very long process. It can be a difficult process. But if someone is listening who's maybe propelled into deconstruction through some church abuse or whatever it might be, my encouragement would sort  of be the same. It's actually good for you to get rid of beliefs that led to abuse, that Jesus stands against abuse as well. But I would just encourage you not to get sucked into this sort of deconstruction movement, because it's not based on absolute truth. It's not based on Scripture. And it's not going to lead you to any sort of healing and wholeness spiritually. And so whether you're just considering it intellectually or you're just interested, I would resist it. And that's … There's going to be well-meaning evangelical leaders that will tell you you can deconstruct according to the bible, but I don't think you can. And so let's keep our language and the way we think about this biblical rather than bringing in a postmodern concept that just clouds the … muddies the water and causes confusion.Jonathan: All right, this is good because this goes to the next level. What do you say to those who believe that Christianity is toxic or patriarchal? What's your word to them? And then the follow-up to that would be for believers. When do we engage and when do we not engage with people who are kind of promoting that sort of ideology?Tim: I would want to ask some questions, like what do they mean by toxic, what do they do they mean by patriarchal, to nail down those definitions. Are they appealing to something objective or are they appealing to something subjective based on their own personal preferences? I think it's really important that we start with what's true before we can look at whether or not something is toxic, or harmful, or whatever. In the book, we give the example of you stumble upon someone who's kind of beating on someone's chest, and in that moment it may look like they're being abused, but you come to find out that actually they've had a heart attack, and that person is not beating on their chest, they're doing chest compressions, doing CPR. That totally changes how you see that action, right? It goes from being, hey, that's harmful and toxic to, wait, this is lifesaving, this is lifegiving. So I think that's really important, when I see a deconstructionist talk about how hell is causing child abuse, I want to know, first of all, if there is such a place as hell. For them, it's not even on the table; it's not even the question, right, because it's a totally different philosophy, a totally different worldview. I want to look at is this true?I give the example of I told my kids not to jam a knife into the wall socket. Well, why not? Because there's electricity in there and it could electrocute you and kill you. So any good parent warns their kids about that. Or touching the hot stove, these kinds of things. Is it harmful for me to tell them not to do that? Everyone agrees, no, that's not harmful; it's not toxic. Now, it would be toxic if there was no such thing as electricity. If I'm just playing these games where I'm trying to torment my kids so they're scared to do whatever, to actually make them terrified of the stove or something. No. Okay, the reason that they need to be careful around this hot stove or not stuck, stick stuff in the wall outlet is because there are dangers. And if hell really is this kind of danger, then we ought to appropriately talk about this issue. Look, I'm not talking to my three-year-old about eternal conscious torment. You know what I'm saying? Obviously, there is some appropriate when the time is right. Sexuality, we appropriately talk with those … about those issues with our kids. But we do talk about those things, and that's because they're true, and that's were we start.Jonathan: That sort of answers a little bit of the next question, which is that you both dedicated the book to your children. And we're, I think, we've kind of addressed it in terms of being available. But in light of everything that you know and all that is going on with deconstruction and the questions and the struggles of the next generation, how are you taking this and applying this as you raise your children?Alisa: Well, I know that this research has definitely affected how I parent. In fact, I went through a phase in the early stages of the research where I would hear myself saying things, and I was like, “That's going to end up in their deconstruction struggle.” And I found myself almost becoming way too passive for it was probably just a couple of months when the research was so intense, and it was new. And it was like, oh my gosh, all these things i'm saying to my children is what people say they think is toxic and that's what they're deconstructing from.And then I swung back around and I'm like, no, it's my job as a parent to teach my kids what's true about reality. Just because maybe culture things that 2 + 2 = 5 now doesn't mean that I need to cower and say, “Well, you know, I'm not going to be too legalistic about 2 + 2 + 4.” No. 2 + 2 = 4. You can believe what you want, but this is what's true. And so I actually, you know, what I've started to do is tell my kids “Look, it's my job as your mom to teach you what's true about reality. And what you believe about God and what you believe about morality is in the same category of science, math, logic. These are facts about reality. It's my job to teach you. Now, you are the person who chooses to believe it or not.”And so what I've tried to do is really engage my kids in conversations, but knowing also that statistically they might deconstruct one day. I have to leave a lot of that to the Holy Spirit, and also to try to model to my children what a real believer looks like. I think that's a huge, a huge element in parenting is letting our kids see us repent to them if we sin against them, in front of them. Reading our Bibles on a regular basis together, praying together as a family. Not just being Sunday Christians. Here in the South it's real easy to just be that Sunday Christian and then—Jonathan: Haunted by the ghost of Christ.Alisa: That's right. And then you just live like He doesn't exist the rest of the week. And that's the thing about the Bible Belt. Certainly, people aren't acting  … like doing pagan sacrifices during the week. They are pretty much good people. But it's just not relevant to their lives until Sunday comes around. And just being different from that in front of our kids is something I've really tried to engage. And just engaging their questions without pushing them, I think, is a huge thing. Like you mentioned earlier, is letting them have their own story and their own journey. And even as my sons wrestled with the problem of evil for about two years really intensely, I really didn't want to push him. And I just validated that that's a good question, that's an honest question to ask, and let's talk to the Lord about it, let's think through some things. But trying not to push him to just settle really quickly so that he can work this out for himself, with discipleship and the guidance of parents. But that's one of the ways it's really affected my parenting.Tim: That's so good. Yes and amen to all of that. Jonathan: Okay, I second that. All right, give us some hope. This is your part three. Part three. This can all sound pretty scary and off-putting and you need to block it out.Tim: It really really does seem hopeless, especially if you spend any time kind of typing in hashtag deconstruction or hashtag exvangelical. I mean, I would go into my office here and start working and writing and I'd come out and I'd just be like … my mood has changed.Jonathan: Spiritual warfare, for sure.Tim: My wife knew it, oh yeah, my wife saw it and my kids could see it. It was really discouraging. And so I feel for those parents who have that loved one who's going through this, and many do, so we wanted to make sure we end the book on a hopeful note. And one of the things that we were thinking about—in fact, I think it started with a phone call. I called Alisa, and I remember I was sitting at my dining-room table and I had a sermon that I was going to give on deconstruction. And I'm like, Alisa, I need to end this thing with something hopeful because it is so … And I had, actually, a parent reach out to me before I gave the sermon, saying, “I really hope that you're going to give us some hope.” Because they have a child themselves, a young adult, who's deconstructing. I'm thinking, okay, what is it Alisa? Help me out here.And we just started talking back and forth and so I don't know how this came up, but eventually we started thinking about Easter weekend, right, we're coming up to it. Of course, you think about what was going on Friday night. It's like Peter's there; he's seen his Savior, his Messiah being crucified, and his world is turned upside down. We could just imagine what that was like to go through this traumatic experience. And then, of course, it jumps to Sunday and Sunday brings with it resurrected hope, right? And you have the angel shows up, tells the women, you know, go and tell His disciples AND Peter. Like Peter really needs to hear this. Friday night, he denied the Lord three times. It was a bad night for Peter. But he's going to receive this resurrection hope on Sunday.Well, we actually titled the last chapter “Saturday” because we think that a lot of people are living in what could be described as a Saturday. Now again, we're not told much about that particular Easter Saturday, so we can only speculate, but really, I mean, what kind of questions were the disciples, in particular, Peter, asking? Were they starting to doubt some of the things that they had been taught, maybe like trying to explain away some of the miracles they had seen? It wasn't supposed to happen this way, was it? And so there's self-doubt, there's all this trauma that they've experienced. Now of course, Sunday was just around the corner. We think that, look, if that hope can come for Peter, then it can come for you and your loved one, too, right? We don't know what that Saturday looks like. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be just one 24-hour day. It could be months down the road; it could be years down the road; but we think this is a message. Because if it can happen for Peter, it can happen for your loved one. And I think that can move us from a state of “This is completely hopeless, what good can come from this? How can this be undone,” to a state where, no, we can be hopeful. Jesus rose from the grave after being dead. And when that happened, Peter's faith is restored. “Do you love me?” He says, “Yeah, I love you.” Three times, kind of like paralleling the three denials.Jonathan: Exactly.Tim: And then the Church is built on this confession. So I mean that brings me hope, and hopefully it brings hope to others who are going through this.Jonathan: Just one final question. Have you seen anyone who's been restored out of this?Alisa: You know what? I have heard a few stories, but these are people that have platforms. So I have several people that are part of my Facebook community who have said they deconstructed into progressive Christianity but have been brought back. I have had a couple of people on my personal podcast who had deconstructed. One is a guy name Dave Stovall. We actually tell his story in the book. He was in the band Audio Adrenaline, and he deconstructed into progressive Christianity and then a local pastor here in town discipled him back to the historic Christian faith and had all these difficult conversations with him and engaged him in conversation. So I think we are seeing some. We're not seeing a lot yet, but I think a lot of the stories maybe are just more private, where people aren't necessarily shouting it on social media. But yeah, the Lord's at work, absolutely.Jonathan: That's good.Tim: Yeah, I can echo that, too. We've been … A I travel around teaching and speaking, I'll have people come up to me and usually you get a lot of people saying, “Thanks for hits information. I had no idea this was going on.” But this one guy, he said, “I went through deconstruction.” And he said, “It was when you put up your definition of deconstruction that you had me because that”—Alisa: Wow!Tim: I thought he was going to push back and be like, “But that's not how you define it. Instead, he said, “You had me as soon as you put up your definition.” Why? “Because,” he said, “that exactly described the process that I was going through.” And yet, here he was on that Sunday morning at church kind of completely kind of turning a corner and willing to say, “No, I'm willing to follow the truth wherever it leads.”And that led him to affirming that the Bible is God's Word, and now he's trying to align his beliefs. And of course, that's a journey we're all on. I have false beliefs right now; I just don't know which ones are false, right? I'm always trying to correct my mistaken beliefs and make them align with Scripture. And praise the Lord, that was the journey he was on.Jonathan: Oh, amen. Well, the book is The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive and How To Respond. Alisa Childers, Tim Barnett, thank you, guys, so much for being on Candid Conversations. I've really enjoyed our talk today.Alisa: Me, too. Thanks so much.Tim: Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us.Jonathan: God bless.

Woodland Walks - The Woodland Trust Podcast
2. Frodsham Woods, Cheshire: a new lease of life

Woodland Walks - The Woodland Trust Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2024 36:17


Join us for a jam-packed visit to Frodsham Woods, Cheshire, where 80 volunteers were planting thousands of trees to help transform a former golf course into a fantastic new space for wildlife and people. We visit the neighbouring ancient woodland and admire hilltop views with site manager Neil and chat to Tim, supervisor of this army of tree planters, about how the new wood will develop. We also meet Esther, lead designer of the project, hear from comms guru Paul about the Trust's #plantmoretrees climate campaign, and speak to the volunteers about what the day means to them. Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. Adam: Well, today's podcast is a bit of an unusual one because I'm off to an abandoned golf course in Cheshire, overlooking Liverpool. Not far away, in fact. And the vision is to create this once golf course into a thriving mosaic of habitats, including lush broadleaved woodland, grassland meadows and wooded glades dotted with wildflowers. Throughout the site, they're creating a network of grassy paths so people can walk through them and get far-reaching views of the Welsh borders, the western Pennines and the Bowland Fells, along with, of course, Liverpool and the Mersey Estuary. And very excitingly, the man actually who's running all the tree planting there is also in a band, and it's his music and his band's music you can hear in the background. More about that a little later. It's called Frodsham Woods, and it's near the Frodsham train station. Guess where? In Frodsham. Well, today we are starting, I'm starting sitting down with Neil Oxley, who's the site manager here. Hi Neil. Neil: Good morning, Adam. Adam: Good morning. So, just explain where we are because we are, well, I'm not gonna take away your thunder. Explain. It's an unusual location. Neil: So, we're sat on a bench overlooking the River Mersey and Liverpool. We're on the old golf course that was closed about three years ago. Adam: Yeah, well that's what I think is unusual – sitting on a golf course. I gotta take, it doesn't look like a golf course. They, the greenkeeper would have had a heart attack seeing the state of this place. But what's amazing is, well, I'm looking over a forest of planted trees. I mean, just within 10 yards, probably a couple of hundred of them, just been planted. So, this has got to be unusual. Take buying a golf course, turning it into a forest? Neil: It is, yeah. I think it's probably the first golf course that the Woodland Trust has taken on and it's just a great opportunity, though, that when it became available, it's adjoining some of our existing woodlands, including ancient woodland. And it's given us an opportunity to plant lots of trees and work with local people and engage the community in doing something good for the climate. Adam: And we're sitting down, looking over what might be, I don't know. Is that a bunker? Do you think that's a bunker? Neil: It is, yep. So, there there's probably about 40 bunkers on the golf course and we've kept them all, so some of those old features are still here. Adam: And I saw one, some gorse growing, just naturally growing in the bunker there. Neil: There is. Just in the two or three years since it stopped being maintained. There's gorse, there's silver birch, there's all sorts of trees and plants that are now appearing. Adam: I love the gorse. It's bright. It comes out early. Bright yellow. Real splash of colour in early spring. It's really. Neil: It is, yeah, it's lovely and colourful. Adam: And we're looking over a range of wind turbines. And is that the Mersey ahead? Neil: That is, that's the River Mersey. Adam: Although there's not much river, it looks, it looks like it's out. It's mainly mud. Neil: It's probably low tide at the moment. Yeah, and Liverpool just beyond the other side. Adam: Very nice. So, you're going to be my main guide today. We've got lots of people to meet, I know. Alright. Brilliant. So, explain to me the plan for the day. Neil: So, we're gonna have a walk round and look at some of the tree planting that we've already done here. We've got some groups of corporate volunteers and Woodland Trust staff here today also who are planting trees. So, we'll go and see them later on. But I thought maybe to start off with we could go and visit some of the ancient woodland that borders the site and show you sort of why it's important that we're doing what we're doing today. Adam: Brilliant. I'm of an age where sitting down is quite nice, but that's not going to get, that's not gonna get nothing made, is it? It's alright. We better get up and you lead on. Neil: OK, let's go. This lady, by the way, coming with the pug. She's up here all the time. She's really lovely, friendly, always talks to me and Paul. And we've already said hello to her, but he... Adam: Oh, this dog wants a lot of attention. Neil: He loves that. He loves that, yeah. Adam: We'll let the rest of the team pet the dog. You know, you've paused here for a special reason. Why? Neil: Yeah. So, this area, we're on the edge of the ancient woodland now and the part of the site in front of us is going to be left for what's called natural regeneration to develop. So, that will be where trees can self-seed and set and grow naturally. So, we're not actually planting any trees in this area in front of us. And you can see there's some silver birch trees there that probably self-seeded five or 10 years ago on the edge of the golf course. And they're growing quite well already. Adam: So, and what's the advantage of that? There's a big debate about rewilding and all of that. So, why has that become an important issue? Neil: It is, I mean to different people it can mean slightly different things as well. But basically it's leaving the land to develop and rewild itself, you know, for nature to colonise it. It's a slower process. Adam: So, because if you're planting them yourself, you're planting all the trees at the same time. They're all the same age, so they get wiped out. Everything gets wiped out. Neil: Potentially yes. You could lose a lot more. Adam: Actually, I'm surprised those are natural regeneration because they've, it's very regimented. Those silver birch, they've all come up in exactly the same space, very close together. It looks like there's been some thought behind that. Neil: It does. It does and again nature can do things very similar to how people plant trees. You know, you often can end up with them very densely packed, more densely packed than we're planting them, actually. Adam: Yeah, OK. Well, we're still surrounded by these young, young trees. So, you lead on. Where are we heading off to? Neil: So, we're just walking into, towards the ancient woodland area. So, this this is called Woodhouse Hill and it's mostly oak and some silver birch, some holly growing in here, plus a few other species as well. Adam: And wonderfully of you, you've taken me to the muddiest bit of land there is. Are we going through this? Neil: This, well, we can do. It's unfortunately because of the winter we've had, some of the paths are very wet and muddy around here now. Adam: So, I have my walking boots on. You squelch ahead and I'll squelch behind you. Neil: OK. We'll carry on then. Adam: So, we're heading up, give us a better view of the Mersey, a better view of Liverpool. Neil: That's right. Just around the corner, there's a really good viewpoint where the view will open up and a sunny day like today get quite good views. Adam: And is it used by the locals a lot? I mean, it's relatively new then. I mean, presumably a lot of locals don't know about it. Neil: Well, I mean since, the golf course was closed down during the pandemic, and at the time the owner allowed the public to come and walk on the site. So, suddenly from people being not allowed to use it unless they were playing golf, local people were allowed to come and walk the dogs or just walk themselves around with the family. So, people did get to know the site and start using it, but it also borders some existing woodlands with footpaths, which is where we are now. So, these existing woodlands were already well-used. Adam: Right. And what's the reaction of the locals been to the development here? Neil: Very positive. Yeah. I mean obviously there's always a fear when a piece of land is up for sale that it might go for some sort of development, housing or be sold to a private landowner who fences it off and stops people using it. So, people have been, yeah, really positive, really supportive. The consultation that we did before we started anything was all very much in favour of creating woodland and allowing public access. Adam: I think we're coming up to a viewpoint here where there's a bench. Neil: There is, we should have another sit down. Adam: And it's very steep here. You wouldn't want to be falling off that, but this is a beautiful view. Neil: Yeah. The weather today is just great for the view. Adam: We've been blessed. Look at this. And then you look across a sort of flat valley floor with some wind turbines, which some don't like but I always think they're really majestic. And beyond the wind turbines, the Mersey, where the tide is out. And beyond that, that's Liverpool. And is that Liverpool Cathedral? The grey building in the sort of middle there. Neil: That's the main Anglican cathedral, and then the Catholic cathedral is just off to the right and beyond in the far distance is North Wales, so that low line of hills you can see is just within North Wales. Adam: Oh, that's, those hills over there, beyond the chimneys, that's Wales. Neil: Beyond the chimneys, yeah. Adam: And some other lovely gorse and, whoops don't fall over, I thought it was going to be me that would be falling over, not the site manager. Neil: Mind the rock. Adam: Ice and sea. So, we've come to the sign. ‘The view from Woodhouse Hill holds clues to the distant past, the Mersey Basin and Cheshire's sandstone hills were both shaped by advancing ice sheets during the last Ice Age.' Do you know what? I wanted to say that because I remember from O-level geography, I think a flat-bottomed valley is a glacier-made valley. But I was, I didn't want to appear idiotic, so I didn't say that and I should have had the courage of my convictions. So, this is an ice-formed landscape. Neil: It is. It is. I understand that the ice sheets came down to this part of the north of England back in the Ice Age. And there's some interesting features that are found here called glacial erratics. Adam: Right. Neil: Which is rocks from other parts of the north of England and Scotland that were brought down on the ice sheets. And then when the ice sheets melted, those rocks were left behind. But they're from a different geological area. Adam: Right. Amazing. Neil: So, around here it's sandstone. The erratics are all kind of volcanic rocks. Adam: Brought down from the north, from Scotland. Neil: Lake District and Scotland. That's right. Adam: Beautiful. We were with a few other people. Neil: I think they couldn't be bothered to come through the mud, could they? Yeah. Adam: We seem to have lost them. OK, alright. Well, maybe we'll have to, we've lost our team, our support team. Neil: We'll head back, but yeah, no, this was the view I thought we'd come to. Yeah, because it is a nice view. Adam: Well, I'll tell you what. Let me take a photo of you, for the Woodland Trust social media. Neil: Thought you were gonna say falling over the rock again. No, no, I'll try not to. Adam: Yeah, let's not do that. Yeah, so to explain, you're running me across the field for some... Neil: Walking fast. Adam: Well, for you walking fast. I've got short legs. Why? Neil: Well, we've walked over now to where we've got the people who are helping plant trees today with us. So, we've got a mix of corporate volunteers, Woodland Trust staff and some of our volunteers here to help us and we're gonna go over and meet Tim Kerwin, who's in charge of the tree planting and supervising the tree planting with us today. Adam: Oh right, so these are, this is his army of tree planters. Neil: It is, yes. Tim keeps things in check and makes sure they're doing the right thing. Adam: OK. I mean, let's just look, there's scores of people I've no idea of who Tim is. Neil: Tim? Tim, can we get your attention for a few minutes? Tim: Yes. Adam: Hi, nice to see you, Tim. Tim: I've seen you on telly. Adam: Have you? Adam: Well, Tim, as well as being in charge of everyone planting the trees today is also the sax player in a band. And of course we have to talk about that first and he very kindly gave me one of his original tracks, which is what you can hear right now. A first for the podcast. *song plays* Tim: You know, you know what? We probably do about eight gigs a year, right? But we're trying to find venues where people like jazz. We don't want to, you know, we don't want to do Oasis. That's not what we're about. There's plenty of bands like that. We play music for ourselves, and if people turn up and appreciate it, those are the people we want. I'll play for one person. Adam: You know, I was in a wood a few years ago and, can't remember where it was, and we just came across a violinist, just playing to herself. And it was just like can I record it? And it's like, just playing amongst the trees, and I thought it was really lovely. Tim: You know what? I would, I would do the same. I mean, the places I like to play, like churches are fantastic because of the acoustics. Adam: So, you might play that under this chat and what's the name of the band? Tim: The Kraken. Adam: The Kraken? Tim: Yeah. Adam: OK. Alright, The Kraken *laughs* So, all of which is a bit of a divergence. Tim: I know, sorry *laughs* Adam: So, I'm told you're in charge of this army of tree planters you can see over here. Three men having their sandwich break there. So, you've been working them hard. Tim: We have been working them hard, indeed. Adam: So, just explain to me a little bit about what's going on here. Tim: So, today we can almost see the finishing line for our 30,000 trees. So, this morning we've actually planted just shy of 2,000 trees with the group that we've had, of which there's about 80 people. Adam: That's a lot of trees. People always talk about how long does it take to plant a tree? It's not that big a thing is it? Tim: No, but what we're keen about is it's not about necessarily speed, it's about accuracy. We want quality. So, what we're asking people to do is plant each tree really well. So, today I have to say the standard of planting has been amazing. From the first to the last, I haven't found one that I'm not happy with. Adam: So, explain to me, and we're standing by a tree that's just been planted. It looks like they've scraped a bit of the grass away. So, explain to me, how should you plant a tree and what goes wrong? Tim: OK, so what we've done here, we took the grass off before the guys came, so that's called scriefing. So, the purpose of that is the tree needs water. And this grass also needs water. So, we take that grass away, and the competition's gone away for the tree. So, it won't be forever, because within two years, that grass will have grown around that tree. But those first two years are quite critical. So, if we can get the new roots from, so those trees and little plugs, new roots which are going to come out in the next couple of weeks because the soil's warming up. I mean, the air's warming up, but the soil's warming up. Those will send out shoots. They're already starting to come in to leaf, which is why the urgency to get these trees in now. They will take in the water around them and then keep on spreading with that root system. Enough root system will go out there and it will then not be competing with the grass because in fact the tree will be competing with the grass and actually taking over. So, eventually that grass will probably die because it will be shaded out in the future. Adam: And talking about shade, I'm surprised how closely planted these are, about five foot apart or thereabouts. If this was a forest in 20 years', 30 years' time, it's exceptionally dense. Or are you expecting a lot of them to fail? Tim: So, imagine you've got an oak tree and that throws down 40,000 acorns in usually every four years. So, it doubles its weight above ground. Adam: Sorry, 40,000? Tim: 40,000. A mature oak, yeah. Adam: It's worth pausing on that *laughs* A mature oak drops 40,000 acorns a year? Tim: Every four years, roughly. Adam: Because it doesn't do it every year, do they? Tim: No. So, it has what they call a mast year, which is the year when everything's come together. It's usually based on the previous weather, weather conditions. So, that doubles the weight of the tree above ground, that throws all those acorns. Now you imagine they're gonna be a couple of centimetres apart on the ground. They're not all going to make it. What they're hoping is that something will take those away. So, a jay or a squirrel, they'll move those acorns away. Not all of them will get eaten. In fact, jays let the acorn germinate, and then they eat the remains. So, they wait to see where the oak tree comes up and then they come back and eat the remains of the cotyledon. So, you imagine if all those were going to germinate, there'd be a mass rush, and what they're waiting for is for the parent plant to die. And if that falls over, then they can all shoot up, but they're not all going to survive. So maybe only one, maybe two will survive out of those 40,000 if they're close to the tree. Now, what we're doing here is, imagine there's the parent plant, the parent plant's not here. We've already spaced these out by this distance already. So, we've given them a better chance. So, they can now flourish. In time, so within sort of 10 to 12 years, we're going to start to be sending this out. So, you won't see this line. There are other parts on this site, 23 years old, and we've done a lot of filling through that. You wouldn't know it's been planted by, in a plantation. Adam: So, what would you, what's the failure rate? What's a good failure rate to stay with? Tim: It can really, really vary. I have to say that the soil here is tremendous. It's very rich. I'd be very surprised if we have a high failure rate. It could be 95% take. Adam: So, that's really interesting. And what are you planting then? I've seen some oak. I've seen some silver birch. What are you planting? Tim: So, Cheshire is all about oak and birch. So, 25% of these trees, so 7,500 are oak. And then 10% are silver birch. So that's 3,000. And then there's another 18 species that are all native to the UK that we're planting in here. So, things like rowan, holly, Scots pine and then we've got hazel, some large areas of hazel on this site that we've put in and then we've got hawthorn, blackthorn, couple of types of cherry, and then some interesting ones as well. So, we're putting some elm in and, specifically for a butterfly. So, there's a butterfly called white letter hairstreak. And the caterpillar feeds on the leaves of that tree. So, we've got those in Cheshire, but we're trying to expand it. And we've been working with the Butterfly Conservation group to get it right. So, they've given us some advice. Adam: I thought elm was a real problem with the Dutch elm disease? Tim: It still is. It still is. Adam: There was some talk that maybe some had found some natural resistance to Dutch elm disease. Tim: There are some resistant elm. And so, the plantings that we've done on here are what's classed as wych elm. It will still get Dutch elm disease, but it can last up to 16 years. And then there's always the opportunity to replant so we can get elm established. Then we can carry on spreading that through the site, so it's a starting point for that species we have. So again, we're trying to increase the biodiversity of the site by having specific trees for specific species. So, it's exciting. I mean, a lot's been lost and it won't become a beautiful wildflower meadow, although we are going to be doing some wildflower planting. We've already bought the seed. And in the next couple of weeks as it gets a little bit drier and a little bit warm, we're going to be, we're going to be sowing that in and that will come through the spring and summer. So, we've got lots to happen here as well. Adam: Oh brilliant. Well, it's so nice to see it at an early stage. I'll come back in a couple of years. Tim: It's probably one of the most exciting projects, tree wise, in Cheshire in a long time, because I've been doing this for a long, long time and these opportunities don't come up. So, for this to happen. And for the size of it as well. I mean, you're talking about a huge area of woodland now, over 180 acres. So, the second biggest area of woodland in Cheshire, so it's amazing. It truly is amazing. Adam: Well, I'm walking away. In fact, all tree planting has stopped for lunch. What is the time? Yeah, it's 12:45. So, everyone has stopped for sandwiches and teas, and they're spreading branches of some trees. And while they're doing that, two people are still working. That's me. And Paul? Hi. Paul: Hi. Adam: So, just explain to me what you do, Paul? Paul: I work as the comms and engagement manager for the north of England, so this is one of the best tree planting games we have had in a long time. Adam: And the people we've got here today, they're just locals? They from any particular groups? Paul: No, the Woodland Trust staff as part of our climate campaign now get a day to come out and we've got various corporate volunteering groups out also planters. We've got about 80 people out planting today. Adam: Well, that's amazing and we've just paused by this gorse bush. I'm rather partial to the gorse, so we'll take some shelter there. So, you talked about that this is part of a bigger campaign. What is that campaign? Paul: It's our climate campaign. And very simple hashtag plant more trees. So, trees are one, probably one of the best things we've got in the battle against climate change to help. And they have the added benefit that also they're good for biodiversity as well. So, twin track approach if you plant a tree. Obviously they're not the solution to everything, but we're hoping, as the Woodland Trust just to get more people planting trees. Adam: What is the target then? The sort of tree planting target you have? Paul: Well we have a target to get 50 million trees planted by 2030. Across all of the UK, so quite, quite a number. Adam: 50 million trees by 2030, so six years? Paul: Yeah, yeah. And we've, I think we've planted 6 million trees, 2023, yeah. Adam: Why is everyone taking a break? They've got millions to get in. That's quite an ambitious thing to get done, isn't it? Paul: Yeah. And we need, we need to plant billions of trees longer term. So, it's really important we get everyone planting trees, but it's all that message as well, right tree in the right place, and get trees planted where they're needed. Adam: And this is an unusual project, not least cause it's on an old golf course, which I've never heard of before. Has it attracted much interest? Is there a lot of engagement from the media and the public? Paul: Yeah, this site has had a remarkable amount of attention from the press. It started with local radio, then regional TV and then we've had things like Sky News Climate Show out here and then even international press coverage looking at rewilding of golf courses. CNN covered it alongside international golf courses and here in the UK, Frodsham. So, it's been amazing how it's captured everyone's imagination and it's been such a really positive good news story. It's a site that's a key site within the Northern Forest. So, the Northern Forest is another project that I'm involved with in the north of England, but. Adam: Did you say a little project? *laughs* Paul: Another, another project. Adam: Oh sorry. I was gonna say, a massive project. Paul: That's a massive project, which is again stretching, looking to plant 50 million trees from Liverpool to Hull and we're working with the Community Forests in each area, in this case the Mersey Forest and again just promoting grants and support to landowners and communities to get more, more trees planted and to help acquire land for tree planting and give the grants for tree planting. Adam: It must give you a warm feeling that your communications are actually being so well received that there is, it's not just you pushing out a message, that people want to hear this message. Paul: Yeah, it's really, really good to not have a negative message. Generally it's a really, really positive message that people wanted to hear because it's great for the community. They're getting some amazing green space with stunning views of the Mersey on the doorstep. It's interesting story about how we're changing from a golf course to a woodland site. We've got the ancient woodland, got natural regeneration. And just the fact that everyone's smiling, everyone's really happy and just so pleased that they're playing their small part in helping us create this new woodland site. Just great to be part of that, that positive good news story. Adam: Well, I'm going over to a group of people who have been busy planting all day but are now on their lunch break, just to bother them and ask them how their day has been and why they got involved in this. Adam: OK, well, you can, first of all, you can just shout out so, well we've, you all are hard at work I hear, but I've seen very little evidence of it cause everyone's sat down for lunch now. Have you all had a good day? Everyone: Yes. Adam: That would have been awful had they said no. Anyway, they all had a good day. So, I mean, it's lovely that you're out. You're all out here doing, I mean, very serious work. You've all got smiles on your face and everything. But this is important. I wonder why anyone's getting involved, what it means to you. Anyone got a view or get a microphone to you? Adam: So, what's your name? Volunteer 1: Rodon. Adam: Rodon. So, why are you here? Rodon: Well, nature, wildlife, planting, and I know the area quite well, so it's nice to see being developed in a sustainable way and being something for nature. It's a great place to come and visit, not far from the sandstone trail. I visit lots of Woodland Trust sites. I live in Warrington so it's sort of down the road, and it's, as I say, with the old wood over there that's quite an adventurous path. It's got lots of like sandstone sort of steps and little caves, and it's on the side of a cliff. So, this has kind of extended that over here as well. Adam: It would be a lovely thing to return to in a few years. Rodon: Well, it's a nice place now to be honest. Adam: Brilliant. Volunteer 2: My name is David Mays. I'm also from the from the town of Warrington as well. I'm an MSC and BSc student from local Hope University. I've finished both of them now, thankfully. I'm trying to get a job in the ecological management sector and I feel doing this working with people like Tim and Neil will help me massively get a, you know, it looks good on my CV. Most importantly, I really enjoy being out here and getting to know how the areas of ecological development, particularly in the woodland industry, is developing over the past few years and what are the plans for the future and what they hope to achieve in the long term and short term. Adam: That's very good. So, it's also very innovative of you putting out your CV live on air there. Good. Hopefully someone needing a job, with a job to offer will contact us. Good luck with that. So, oh yeah, we've come under another lovely tree. I mean it looks set. I was just saying to Kerry, it's so beautiful here. It looks like we've set this shot up. Really, you know? But here you are with your spades behind you taking a break from the trunk. So, first of all, have you, has it been a good day? Volunteer 3: Yeah. Yeah, it has been. It's been dry. Adam: It's been dry. OK. Alright. Well, let's get, so, the best thing about today is that it was dry. Volunteer 3: It's one of the positive points. Definitely. Yeah, after the trees. Adam: Yeah, with experience. So, why did you want to come out? What made you want to be part of this? Volunteer 3: Well, I think it's because we are having a bit of a push with the climate change agenda at the moment, so it's, working for the Woodland Trust it's just a nice opportunity to get away from the sort of the day job for me and get out into the field and actually do something practical and help towards that. Adam: Yeah. Did, I mean, has it been very physical for you today, has it? Volunteer 3: It's not been too bad, actually. It's been fine. Yeah. No, it's been OK. Ask me tomorrow, but yeah *laughs* Adam: Have you done this sort of stuff before? Volunteer 3: No, this is my first, this is my first planting day with the Trust. Adam: Yeah, and your last? Volunteer 3: No, no, I'll definitely no, it hasn't put me off. We'll definitely, definitely be back out again when I get the opportunity. It's been great. Adam: So, go on. Tell me what's all been like for you today? Volunteer 4: It's been really good. Yeah. I just can't believe we've covered so much ground in so little time, really. Seems we've only been here a few hours and because it's, I've been quite remote working from home, so it's quite nice kind of seeing some people I've met on screen, so it's nice to now, yeah, meet people in the real world and yeah, give back. I've never, I've not done anything like this before. Adam: So yeah, so is this your first time planting trees? Volunteer 5: It's not my first time planting trees, but it's my first time planting with the Trust. I was planting trees in my garden on the weekend, so I've done my back in. So, I've not quite got the planting rate of everyone else today I don't think, but you know, as the other guys were saying, we work office jobs really rather than on the front line of the Trust. So, it is good to get our hands dirty and to get involved with what we're supposed to be all about and contribute to our climate change campaign. So, hashtag plant more trees. Adam: Yeah. There we are, on message as well. Volunteer 5: I work in the brand team *laughs* Adam: There we are. There we are. Thank you. That's excellent. Adam: Now, really I should have started with this because we're nearing the end of my morning in the forest. But I've come to meet Esther, who's really one of the big brains behind the planting scheme. I know a bit modest about that, but tell me a little bit about what your involvement has been with this project. Esther: I've been a lead designer on this project, so I've been putting together the planting plans and lots of maps and really working with Neil, he's the site manager, to make sure that we make this the best scheme that we can make it. We've included coppice coupes for biodiversity and. Adam: Right, what's a coppice coupe? Esther: A coppice coupe is just an area of where you're planning to coppice. So, cut a tree down to its very base and then it grows back up as shoots. So, it only works with a few species and the species that we've chosen is hazel. So, those areas are 100% hazel. And it's great for biodiversity because you sort of go in a rotational like a 10-year cycle or something like that and you cut back say 10% of your trees in that year and then you get a lot of light to the ground and then you get hopefully a lot of floristic diversity coming through. Adam: And so, is that a job that, it sounds terrible the way I'm saying it – is that a job? Is it a job that you sit down and you go, you have a piece of paper or computer and you go, this is where we're, how we're gonna design the forest. We're gonna put ash over there. We're gonna put oak over there. Is that what you do? Esther: Yeah. Yeah. So, we use something called GIS. So, geographical information systems which basically let you draw shapes on a map and then you can colour code it and basically make a really coherent design of something to tell people, you know, what you're trying to achieve. What's gonna go where. Adam: And it's not every, it's not like building an extension to a house where you go well, there's probably thousands and going on all the time. There can't be that many forests being planted each day, so this must be a significant thing in your career I would have thought. Esther: Oh yeah, this is my first woodland creation scheme that I've seen from pretty much the start to the finish, so I've been working on it for 18 months and then an awful lot of hours gone into it. It's been really enjoyable and it's just a wonderful, wonderful to see it coming together. And yeah, and we're nearly finished now, so. Adam: And I know people often think, oh well, I'll come back in 100 years' time and you know, my great grandchildren might see these trees. But actually, within your career, you will see a forest here won't you. Esther: Yeah. So, I think within 10 years it will look like a woodland. It's had, this site has a history of agriculture, so it should in theory have a lot of nutrients in the soil. So, the trees should grow really well. So yeah, I would say within 10 to 15 years, it should look like fully fledged woodland, if not a bit young, but yeah. Adam: And are you optimistic about really the change that you and your colleagues can make? Cause there's a lot of pessimism around. What's your view? Esther: I think it's a really exciting time to be working in the environment sector and there's a lot of enthusiasm for making big changes in our lives and big changes in our landscape. I think there's a lot of hope to be had. And yeah, just seeing like the amount of enthusiasm on a planting day like this really fills me with a great deal of hope, yeah. Adam: Yeah. Have you planted any trees yourself? Esther: I have, yeah. Adam: How many of these have been yours, you reckon? Esther: We have 15, probably not that many *laughs* Adam: Oh, that's not bad. I thought you were gonna be like The Queen. I planted one. There was a round of applause and I went home *laughs* Esther: No, I put a lot of guards on, but yeah, not planting that many trees myself. Adam: Fantastic. Well, it's been a great day for me. Our half day out here and I'll definitely return. It's amazing, amazing, positive place. Esther: Wonderful, yeah. Adam: And the sun has shone on us. Metaphorical smile from the sun. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Esther: Thank you so much. *song plays* Adam: Well, if you want to find a wood near you, you can do so by going to The Woodland Trust website which is www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Until next time, happy wandering. Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special. Or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk

Count Me In®
Ep. 242: Tim Hedley and Shari Littan - Building Trust in Sustainability Reporting

Count Me In®

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2023 31:41


Welcome to Count Me In, with your host, Adam Larson. In this episode, Adam is joined by Tim Hedley, the Executive in Residence at Fordham University and Shari Littan, Director, Corporate Reporting Research & Thought Leadership at IMA.  Join this thought-provoking discussion as they delve into the importance of internal controls, the evolving landscape of sustainability reporting, and the challenges and benefits organizations face in adopting sustainable business practices.Discover how the COSO framework, the gold standard for reliable reporting, has been adapted to include non-financial reporting objectives, aligning with the rise of sustainability and ESG reporting. Explore critical trends in the world of ESG reporting, from increasing regulations to stakeholder engagement and supply chain transparency.Learn from Tim and Shari as they share their insights on the challenges organizations face in implementing sustainable practices and balancing short-term profits with long-term sustainability goals. Understand the significance of internal controls in providing a basis for external assurance and building stakeholder trust in reported information.Join Tim and Shari for a live event Nov 30 - Dec 1 in NYC. Register todayFull Episode Transcript:< Intro > Adam:            Welcome to another episode of Count Me In. In today's episode, joining us are two guest experts. Tim Hedley, who is Executive-in-Residence at Fordham University, and Shari Littan, Director, Corporate Reporting, Research and Thought Leadership at IMA. Our discussion revolves around the importance of internal controls and sustainability reporting. And how they enhance trust, accountability, and reliability of the reported information.  Tim and Shari share insights from the COSO framework. Which was developed to help improve confidence in all types of data and information. The landscape of sustainability reporting is constantly evolving, with shifting regulatory requirements and increased stakeholder expectations. We explore crucial trends; such as the focus on materiality and risk assessments, stakeholder engagement, supply chain transparency, and evolving reporting metrics. Let's get started, with this enlightening conversation.  < Music > Adam:            Shari, Tim, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We're really excited to be talking about COSO, internal control, and everything in that whole ESG world. But just for our listeners, who may be unfamiliar, you could've, probably, have heard the term COSO, or ICSR, and those things before, but maybe you're not familiar with those terms. Maybe, Shari, you could take a little bit of time and define, maybe, a high-level overview of what COSO is, the significant, internal control framework, and the purpose of the new documents. Shari:             I'd be happy to, thanks, Adam, it's great to be here. So COSO stands for Committee of Sponsoring Organizations and it came about in the late 1980s. It is a collaboration of five accountancy and auditing organizations. There's the American Accounting Association, which is an academic organization, primarily. AICPA, everyone is familiar. IMA, where we sit, and we primarily focus on the accountants and finance professionals in business, the in-house folks are ours. Institute of Internal Auditors, and FEI, Financial Executives International. So those five organizations make up COSO. COSO came about in the late 1980s, amid what was then the savings and loans crisis, and there was concern that the profession needed to do better. That we were starting to see major accounting failures, disclosure, litigation, regulation, questions. Are we doing the right things in the profession?" So the five accountancy organizations got together, and they said, "How are we going to resolve this? How are we going to promote trust and accountability in what we do, as a profession?" The focus became on this concept of internal controls, which we'll get to.  So in '92, after that, the COSO, as an organization, produced its first internal control framework. And then we can move forward to 1990s, late 1990s, 2000, the Enron, WorldCom's era, which led to Sarbanes-Oxley. And Sarbanes-Oxley, rather than looking at the substance of what a company needs to disclose, again, looked at the idea of governance process, auditing, and said, "In order to produce financial reports to the markets, you need to focus on your systems and your controls. You need management to speak to it, in your reporting system. You need auditors to address controls." We had the PCAOP. So we have this Sarbanes-Oxley, which created this idea of internal controls over financial reporting. And, although, Sarbanes Oxley didn't specifically say, "You must use the COSO framework." It was considered the best thing around, and it's become the gold standard in how to produce reliable financial or corporate reporting in more general. Now, in 2013, the framework was refreshed, we got a new internal control framework. And what it did, in the 2013 refresh, is it added the idea of non-financial reporting objectives. That was around the same time, about 10 years ago, when we started to see all kinds of sustainability integrated, ESG, reporting frameworks. And, so, though not express, what the framework did, in its refresh, was say "Yes, this is completely applicable to these types of activities and reporting." And, so, that leads us to where we are, today. Where, earlier, in 2023 we issued the internal control over sustainability reporting publication. And what the authors did, in that publication, was we looked at the existing internal control framework and said, "Okay, now we're seeing an acceleration of ESG or sustainability reporting and activities, performance and activities.  And that means we need good information, and that means we need quality information and transparency. Let's look at the COSO Internal Control Framework, and see how we can interpret it and apply it to these new forms of reporting. Adam:            Shari, I think that's a great overview. And, as you mentioned, there's the ever evolving nature of this new type of non-financial reporting, ESG reporting. There are shifts in regulatory compliance. We were just speaking before we started recording how this could change, or that could change, or this regulatory body can make a statement, at this moment, at this time, how this is constantly changing.  And, Tim, maybe, I'll ask you, how do you see this landscape changing? And what should organizations be, particularly, aware of, especially, with the ever evolving nature and things constantly moving? Tim:               Well, Adam, thank you, and thank you for having me here. The sustainability reporting landscape has rapidly changed, particularly, recently, to meet stakeholder expectation, and government regulations. And, Adam, your question could be an entire podcast, or a big section of this podcast if we had that kind of time, but I do see some critical trends, just some of the ones, from my perspective.  I mean, many people are out there, I'm sure Shari's got all kinds of ideas of what those trends might be. But there are some that just come to mind, for me. I think the biggest one that I think about a lot, and certainly what I experience in the classroom, and then talking to people who are in the field of sustainability reporting, some of the people I work with in different contexts, I think the first one is increasing regulation.Regulatory bodies, worldwide, are increasing their focus on sustainability reporting. And, personally, I think we should expect ever more stringent reporting requirements. And an interesting case in point, I think, is under the new California Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act. U.S. companies with annual revenues of $1 billion or more, in the State of California, for report both their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, in the next few years. I think that's a huge change and really indicative of the kinds of things that we can expect going forward.  I think next is, probably, increased investor pressure, I have no doubt about that. Institutional investors are placing more emphasis on sustainability factors, while making investment decisions. And, actually, I just saw an actual run of this, recently, last month, actually, they are employing very structured analysis using very detailed sustainability factors. So I think there's going to be more and more demand for increased disclosures, and that's not going to go away anytime soon. I think we're going to see more focus on meaningful materiality and risk assessments. People are paying a lot of attention to ensuring there are robust materiality and risk assessments, that identify and prioritize issues that are most relevant to businesses and to stakeholders. Stakeholder engagement will increasingly be more important.  Engaging with stakeholders now is critical, but, I think, it's only going to become ever more so, as we move through this process. There appears to be a much keener focus on greenwashing, and I, personally, think this is a huge problem for us. I think it's actually gotten to the point, where it seems that the perception of greenwashing is causing some pushback in this space and, actually, almost threatening the integrity of the effort. I think we're going to have to think a lot more about honest transparency, in this process. Do we want people to actually buy into this and trust the process, and the kinds of things, this year, I was just talking about? I think I'm leaning directly toward that notion of more honest transparency. I think there's going to be a greater focus on supply chain transparency. Particularly around human rights, DEI, environmental impact, all these kinds of things. I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in this space. I think reporting, metrics will continue to change. The metrics that investors and stakeholders focus on are changing really fast. We are seeing a great deal of movement in the EU, in particular. For example, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which went into effect this past January, it's extending the requirement to report on sustainability management from a select number of companies in the EU to nearly all companies in the EU. Except these little micro companies, I guess. So, again, a lot of movement here, a lot of stuff is changing. My bottom line, I mean, I could keep listing these things. But my bottom line is that sustainable reporting is dynamic, it's always changing, and, as professionals, we must stay informed about changes in regulations, investor perceptions, and societal expectations.Shari:             Can I add just one thing to what Tim said, and that is we tend to focus, or we have tended to focus, when we think about corporate reporting on public companies. Because naturally there are securities regulations both in the U.S. and in various jurisdictions around the world. But one thing that we are seeing in the world of sustainability, or ESG information, is that it is going to affect small and medium-sized companies. Maybe not direct corporate disclosure, but to their commercial customers into supply chain. We're actually seeing where a large public company, for example, has made net-zero commitments or other kind of commitments. And they talk about that in their public materials, and it goes into their ratings, et cetera. Well, they turn around and turn to their suppliers and say, "If you want to sell to us, we want your carbon footprint data. We want your modern slavery DE&I data. And we're seeing, in a positive way, in certain places, where the large commercial buyer is working along with the smaller suppliers. The component, the agricultural companies, to say, "Let's find ways that we can work together."  And it has become a competitive advantage for non-public companies to be able to say, "Not only can I deliver your components, but I can deliver your components along with quality information." We're seeing supplier audits in this area starting to come up, or industry collaborations where they're setting standards. So it's not only public companies to think about. Tim:               It's not just the public companies, because I've had conversations with a lot of organizations, they're asking for my help in responding to their customers. And if they're part of the supply chain, they will, certainly, have to disclose Scope 1, 2, & 3 emissions. Shari:             Exactly. Tim:               And one of the problems they have is they have no clue, what in the world that company is talking about. They don't even know what the starting point is. We're talking about internal controls over sustainability reporting, this is wonderful stuff. But if you're a small organization, that's never even heard of this space, that has no idea how to report. A lot more education is going to be necessary for that upstream and downstream indirect emissions providers. I've had people call me up and say, "They're asking, now, my employees, how far do they drive to work? What kind of a car do they drive?" And all of these kinds of things, and it's very confusing for, in particular Scope 1, Scope 3, emissions information providers. Like "How in the world do I capture this stuff?" And, Shari, you're absolutely right, large organizations can't get where they want to get to with their reporting, unless the entire value chain comes on board. Adam:            That makes a lot of sense, and there's going to be so much pressure from the consumers and regulatory bodies. And I can imagine it's overwhelming for any organization. Maybe somebody is listening to this and saying, "I know I need to do something." And, so, maybe, we can define what some of the benefits are to organizations and some advantages, if they can apply the sustainability business, the internal control integrated framework, to their organization.Shari:             Well, I will say that, first of all, one of the great benefits of looking to the COSO framework, or ICSR as we're referring to it in shorthand, is that we already know how to do a lot of this. We have the ability to leverage what we already know about building good governance systems, and controls, and processes, and oversight into our company systems, and looking at the information flow. We can train, think about training our board, and our members, but we already have a lot of the tools, and the know-how to address the concerns. It's not as esoteric or new, it really can be rooted in what we already do. Second, another great benefit is that, although, we think about COSO Internal Control with respect to external financial reporting. When you actually get into the framework, it is enterprise wide, it is holistic.  If you want good reporting, well, then, you need good information, and that means you are tracking your activities, and what your company is doing. And if the company is taking steps to actually become more sustainable in their performance. Of how they source energy, and how they human resources, and take care of waste, and all of those things. So it runs throughout an entire organization.  And the thing that I find is that when you think about it holistically, you start with the concept of purpose. So if you look at the publication, you look at the framework, you look at principle one, a commitment to ethical behavior, of being a good corporate citizen. And what is your purpose?  Why does your company or organization exist in the world?  What are you aiming to achieve? Why should all of your investors, and stakeholders, and employees, stay with you?  What are they going to get out of this; with respect to performance, and activities, and returns? So it leverages a reexamination, it leads to a reexamination, I should say. Why does our organization exist?  What are we doing, and are we doing these things efficiently? Are we doing them effectively? When I first started writing this publication, when I was tapped to become part of the authorship team. I said, "Internal controls and sustainability, well, that feels a little apples and oranges, to me." But, in fact, it's really about focusing on goals. It's focusing on purpose, and objectives, and how the company achieves those, and the information that it uses to decide how it's going to use these resources. Tim:               And I think I'll add something because I thought that was a great explanation by Shari. The bottom line is, from my perspective, I think the framework we're dancing or advocating and what has been put together with respect to internal control and sustainable reporting, it's comprehensive. It has widespread acceptance, it focuses correctly, in my belief, on risk management. It's very adaptable. When I read the publication that Shari co-authored, it's absolutely adaptable. We had with the internal control, the Internal Control Integrated Framework, absolutely adaptable, and it works perfectly here. And, really, most importantly, it has absolute global applicability Shari:             Yes, when I hear Tim say that global applicability is that there are so many regulators, and policymakers, and standard setters, and all sorts of organizations that are saying, "Here's what you need to report." It's a lot on the what to report, but this gives a framework of method of how. Tim:               Yes, and it does a good job with that. Adam:            I think you've given a great explanation about all the advantages and how it benefits. But I can't imagine that it's an easy process, and there are got to be challenges that people can encounter along the way. Maybe we can discuss a few of those challenges, to help people feel at ease. Tim:               When I was thinking through this, you can talk about some of the challenges. But, I think, it might make sense to talk about what some of the benefits are before we got to the challenges, perhaps, because I found that significant. I think the first, at least, from my perspective, the first benefit is enhanced reputation. A commitment to a purpose-driven business can enhance an organization's reputation, there's very little doubt about that. And there's a fair amount to thought leadership research, and surveys, and what have you, that support what I just said. If you look at GM, you look at Procter & Gamble, those are great examples of companies, in their sustainability report that have detailed their corporate purpose in very explicit ways, and easy to read, and make a lot of sense. And really I tell you in this space, there's been a paradigm shift. From just being a shareholder-first mentality, to say, "Hey, well, you know what, there are a lot of stakeholders." I think through this process you can gain a competitive advantage. Gain business practices, it can help recruit, and retain talent, just for one example. They can foster innovation. They can lead to development of new products and services. Think about electric vehicles, think about solar, think about power storage. These are all kinds of industries that we were not even really thinking much about not that many years ago, at least, not in a serious way. They can provide access to new markets and opportunities. And one thing I found very important, certainly, as my work over the last 25 years in the governance space and what have you, I can go a long way to increasing stakeholder trust and engagements. It can also have significant cost savings. Case in point is 3M's, 3Ps-Pollution Prevention Pays.And if you look at a sustainability report you'll see that, "Hey, this has saved billions of dollars since its inception." And they do a good job now of highlighting it, even though this was before we were really talking about sustainability, and ESG, and these things, and they were on top of some of the stuff. Risk mitigation, sustainable practice if well executed, it can mitigate environmental, social, and governance risk, ESG risks. It can help avoid costly reputational damage, integrity breakdowns, governmental scrutiny, fines and penalties, all kinds of benefits. Help provide access to capital, companies that demonstrate strong sustainable performance. Can often find it easier to access capital from socially responsible investors and from institutions that prioritize sustainable investments. Can lead to long-term value creation by producing a more stable and sustainable business model, less risk, and what I would say are higher valuations. And I think that's the greatest selling point for, actually, doing this stuff in a very serious way. It really is all about long-term value creation. And, of course, finally, I would say it can differentiate your brand. If you embrace sustainability and corporate purpose, you can distinguish yourself from competitors and build a brand that resonates with your consumers. Remember, it's all about the consumers in the end. There are some challenges which you had mentioned earlier, when we talked about it earlier. I think one of the biggest ones, the initial investment costs for sustainable products and efforts can be very expensive. Perhaps beyond the grasp of some, but well worth the investment for many. Understanding shifting consumer preferences is not always straightforward. Encouraging consumers to choose sustainable options over conventional ones can be slow and a challenging journey. Sometimes these sustainable options are perceived, sometimes, as being more expensive. Regulatory compliance can be demanding. It may require continuous adjustments to business operations. Clients with changing environmental regulations and standards can require continuous adjustments to your business operations. Which may pose significant operational challenges. Another big one is balancing short-term and long-term objectives it's often tricky. Organizations may, counter a lot of pressure to prioritize immediate profits over long-term sustainability, creating both internal and external pressure. And some may, I'm afraid, think you have to sacrifice one for the other. And, Adam, I don't buy into that, I don't believe that. But a lot of people do believe that, it's an either/or kind of thing. There are significant resource limitations above and beyond the budget I mentioned earlier. Things like renewable energy sources, sometimes, are hard to find. Sourcing sustainable materials can be really difficult, not to mention human resources and talent acquisition can be very difficult. Complex global operations are challenging. Multinationals might face headwinds in implementing uniform sustainability standards across diverse regulatory environments, cultural norms, socio-economic situations. Further global supply chains are incredibly complex. Much more so than domestic organizations, and requires a great deal of collaboration to make this work. And, then, finally, in this area, I would say the greenwashing concerns, we kind of touched upon it earlier. But with the focus on sustainability, there is a risk of an organization engaging in greenwashing. Where they make misleading claims about the environmental benefits of their products or operations. Such practices can lead to reputational damage and loss of trust among stakeholders.  I know I've talked twice about greenwashing, but it is a huge problem. And it really is undermining a lot of the good efforts taking place in this area. So to help ensure long-term viability and success, I think it's important to develop a comprehensive strategy that aligns sustainability goals with the overall corporate purpose. Shari:             Listening to Tim, I'm reminded of a story that was shared with me a few years ago, now. It was my colleague in an agricultural company. And, of course, the questions came to them about carbon footprint, "Are you measuring greenhouse gases, et cetera?"  And, so, they started to do that measurement, the inventory, instituting their processes. And in doing that what they discovered is a huge waste of water because they were looking at how they produce and operate in a more holistic, as you say, totality.  And, so, in trying to quantify and measure their carbon footprint they ended up changing their entire system of water and reduced it by a lot. So they ended up having gains, by extension, to new streams of information, that they hadn't been looking at before. Tim:               It really is an exercise in navel-gazing, looking deep inside yourself, to actually do this stuff. And it's not an easy process, but that's a great example of where there are all kinds of benefits, well, and it's unintended benefits, from actually going through this process, and a lot of discovery takes place. You learn a lot about yourself. Adam:            It really sounds like you can learn a lot. And I think you've kind of illustrated, my last question was going to be around, how does this framework play a crucial role in ensuring effective governance, and rules, and internal control systems. Especially, concerning sustainable business practices, and what you just displayed there, Shari, for us, was a great example of that. And if there are any other examples you guys can share, I think that would be really helpful, and encouraging as people are thinking about this and looking at it. Because it's inevitable that it will be affecting every organization. Shari:             Yes, here's another example that I thought of, when you're getting more into the risk and the overall reasons, to think about sustainable business. But I do remember if you drive along highways now, how often do you see charging stations. In fact, I saw, not far from where I live, a former gas station had completely changed into an electric vehicle station. And I thought somebody else in that supply chain, if you create fuel pumps, you might want to think about changing that business model, and that's what the information can bring forward. Tim:               Yes, earlier I had mentioned that notion of a robust, risk, and materiality assessment. And just adding on to what Shari was saying, I had a conversation not long ago with a tire manufacturer. So they were doing deep dives and taking it very seriously. But they started understanding things that were hugely important and material, they'd never thought about before. For example, when you drive down the road, your tread wears out of your tire. You don't think about, "Where does that rubber go?" Maybe it goes in the atmosphere, it goes on the street, it goes on the side of the road. And suddenly, wow, they're materiality mapping and that process is hugely dynamic. The risk assessment is dynamic, and I think people are looking for that dynamic approach to these kinds of things. You can be an energy company just delivering electricity for a municipality, and suddenly you start getting into solar panels. And, suddenly, "Wow, we got new risk, where are they sourced? Where is this stuff coming from? What does that supply chain look like?" So a lot of interesting things that actually pop out of going through this process. And a lot of it leads to much better decisions and also uncovering important things and cost savings, it's all there. Adam:            Tim, Shari, do you have any final thoughts for our audience? Shari:             Well, as we wrap up, I want to just bring it back to why the internal control, and the COSO framework, and that publication, in thinking about all these new types of activities and new types of information, that has risk associated with it. And there are business risks, but there are also risks in the information. For example, we talk about supply chain, so in order to account for Scope 1, not Scope 1 because that's your data. But Scope 2 and Scope 3, you, by definition, need to get information that doesn't come from your system that you're responsible for, it has to come from a third party. So there's risk in that information. So we need to think about other controls. We need to think about affiliates, or other investees, or companies that we outsource to, that we used to consider immaterial for financial reporting purposes, but now we need their information. Green Bonds, is another, where we're affirming to our lender that we are in compliance with certain ESG metrics and then they lower our interest rate, that's informational risk.  We also have the risk of estimation and expectations, and how we measure prospective assumptions and leads to that kind of reporting. I think that's really huge because so much of sustainability reporting, including some of the mandatory disclosure requirements coming out of Europe, double materiality, impact accounting, it means estimating the future. That's what sustainability is all about. Do we have the resources made available to us in the future? Can we count on that?  Are stakeholders willing to make those available? So, anyway, it goes to the question of estimating the future, which makes many, in traditional accounting, uncomfortable. They don't like to disclose and report on the future and our assumptions. But that's a necessary part of creating the measurement techniques in order to effectuate all these new demands, for reporting all these new KPIs. What I'm saying is that by following what we already know how to do, By leveraging the frameworks that we already have, it can highlight and help direct us address the innovative areas, the information, the use of digital technology, perhaps, to bring this about in a reliable way, and avoid the greenwashing that Tim has highlighted for us. Tim:               Yes, I think the things that you talked about resonate with a lot of things we talked about earlier. Those things are all about long-term value creation. Shari:             Agreed, absolutely. Tim:               You got to be thinking about the future. And, also, one of the things that I see from the work you've done here and the internal controls of sustainability reporting. I think it's going to go a long way to helping with the notion of external assurance of this information. Because now we'll have internal controls in place that make some sense, that can be tested in and of themselves, it gives a lot more confidence in what's being reported. Because stakeholders are going to take some of this stuff with a grain of salt. Unless someone actually opines it, "Hey, wow, you know what they're telling you it seems accurate enough. It's doing what it's supposed to do."  I think that's going to be a huge underpinning for the document we've been discussing here. Because I think it's going to go a long way to enabling that. And unless you have that third-party attestation, the trust may not be there until we get to that point. I don't know, that's just my prediction. Adam:            Well, I appreciate you guys sharing your final thoughts and sharing all your insights with our audience, today. And thanks so much, again, for coming on the podcast. Shari:             Thanks so much, Adam. Tim, it's been a pleasure.  < Outro > Announcer:    This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast, providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders, from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting in finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imainet.org.

Brief Talk Podcast by Underwear News Briefs
Brief Talk Podcast – Brief Tale Dio

Brief Talk Podcast by Underwear News Briefs

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2023 29:00


In this episode of the Brief Talk Podcast, Tim welcomes Dio, an Irish go-go dancer currently residing in Seoul, South Korea. Dio shares his intriguing journey into the world of underwear, revealing how it has played a significant role in his personal transformation. Previously lacking confidence due to weight concerns, Dio recalls his first purchase of a daring harness and thong from AliExpress, which sparked his interest in the power of underwear. He specifically expresses his fondness for Calvin Klein underwear, particularly the grey designs that effortlessly blend comfort and sexiness. Despite evolving trends, Dio has remained true to the underwear styles that make him feel special. Tim delves into the influence of the Asian market on Dio's underwear choices, given his relocation to Korea and involvement in go-go dancing. Dio acknowledges the distinct characteristics of Asian underwear designs, highlighting their silkier material and smaller, more revealing cuts. He finds the sexier fit of Asian underwear, particularly briefs, visually appealing, although they may not provide as much room as some may desire. Dio's recent experience as a model for grey Calvin Klein underwear reinforces the subconscious draw towards familiar and comfortable choices. Throughout the conversation, the hosts celebrate the diverse options available in the world of underwear, emphasizing the importance of personal comfort and confidence when selecting underwear. Follow DioInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/dio.xTwitter - https://twitter.com/ginger_muscle_ Brands MentionedUCSD SceneNPNC Follow me on all social media as: @unbtim www.twitter.com/unbtim www.instagram.com/unbtim unbtim@kinky.business on Mastadon
Support UNBFor on going support join our Patreon - www.patreon.com/unbblogFor one time support  visit our support page - https://www.underwearnewsbriefs.com/about/support-unb/ You can donate by Ko-fi or Paypal Read more at unbblog.com Follow unb on Twitter and IG @UNBBlog Tim:Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of the Brief Talk Podcast. We're back with you. We have someone I ran across on Instagram through Cy. It is Dio. Welcome. Dio:Hello, thank you very much for having me. Tim:And if you noticed, he is not American by his Dio:No, Tim:accent. Dio:I am not. Ha ha ha. Tim:He is from Ireland, but that's not the interesting part. Well, it is interesting, but the real interesting part, he's in South Korea. Dio:Yes, I am currently in Seoul, South Korea. Tim:So, that's a travel for ya, but yay, we got him on the podcast. I met him through Sy, who was wonderful, and he was in a picture with Sy, and I'm like, who is Dio:Hahaha Tim:this person? Where is this Irish guy in Seoul, South Korea, but he's in Tokyo? Let's find out Dio:Haha Tim:more about this. So we started talking, and bam, here he is. He's on the show. Welcome! Dio:Thank you very much. Yes, it does sound about chaotic when you say it like that. But, it's the most honest. Tim:It was just combinations I was not Dio:Yeah Tim:ready for, but it's like, you know, that's not a bad thing after Dio:No, that's Tim:all. Dio:not… Tim:I kind of Dio:Yeah, Tim:like that. Dio:I'm here for a tea. Tim:It's one of those words like, you know, I never would have thought of that combination, but yeah. Dio:Hmm. Tim:Yeah, that works. So, yes. So tell our listeners a little bit about you if they don't follow you on social media or know who you are, which they will after this podcast, but… Dio:Well, I am currently, as they said there, I'm Irish and I'm actually from a city called Derry in the north. And I moved to Korea about five years ago and I've been living in Seoul for the last three years. And then, yeah, I've just kind of been traveling around Asia for a while. I'm 30 years old and I'm currently working in education but I'm also part-time model and go-go dancer.

Fully & Completely
5. The math works out!

Fully & Completely

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2023 109:36


Hey everyone, it's JD here with Pete and Tim, and we've got an exciting episode for you as we explore the Tragically Hip's 1994 album, Day for Night. This record holds a special place in my heart, and I can't wait to share my memories with Pete and Tim. Listen in as we discuss the album's unique nuances.As we examine the tracks on Day for Night, we also dive into the powerful lyricism of songs like Greasy Jungle and Nautical Disaster, uncovering the stories behind them. Our discussion also touches on the impact of the album's intro song, Grace, Too, setting the tone for the record and leaving a lasting impression on listeners.Join us as we reminisce about the days of midnight album releases and the significance of this record in the Tragically Hip's discography. Through our conversation, Pete and Tim share their first experiences with the band's music. So, whether you're a longtime fan or discovering the Tragically Hip for the first time, this episode is sure to be a nostalgic and enlightening journey through the world of Canadian rock history.0:00:00 - Speaker 1Hey, it's JD here and I'm with Pete and Tim and we have a really big announcement we want to make. Are you strapped in Good? Mark your calendars for Friday, september 1st, as long-sliced brewery brings to you getting hip to the hip on evening for the Downey Wend Jack Fund. 0:00:22 - Speaker 2Join us at the Rec Room in Toronto for a night of music, unity and making a meaningful impact. This event is dedicated to honoring the legacy of the tragically hip, while supporting the Downey Wend Jack Fund. 0:00:32 - Speaker 3Immerse yourself in a powerful tribute performance by 50 Mission, celebrating timeless classics that have shaped Canadian rock history. We'll also wrap up the podcast in a memorable way by doing our finale live that evening, but it doesn't stop there. 0:00:48 - Speaker 1This event is all about making a difference. So we've got a silent auction with prizes. you've got to see, from Blue Jays tickets to tragically hip ephemera to kitchen appliances. If you're looking for something cool, chances are you'll find it at our silent auction. 0:01:05 - Speaker 2All proceeds for the evening will go directly to the Downey Wend Jack Fund supporting healing, reconciliation and positive changes for Indigenous communities. 0:01:13 - Speaker 3Tickets are on sale June 1st and can be picked up by visiting gettinghippetothehipcom and clicking on finale. 0:01:21 - Speaker 1By attending Getting Hip to the Hip, you're not only enjoying a night of incredible music and comedy, but also contributing to a brighter future. Join a community of like-minded individuals who believe in the power of music and unity. 0:01:35 - Speaker 2Tickets are only $40, so mark your calendars and visit our webpage to secure your spot at this unforgettable event to celebrate the hip with fellow hip fans. 0:01:45 - Speaker 3Getting Hip to the Hip. An evening for the Downey Wend Jack Fund promises to be an experience that leaves a lasting impact. Please join us at the Rec Room in Toronto on September 1st and be part of something truly meaningful. We'd love to see you there. 0:02:11 - Speaker 1It's nearly 10.30 pm on September 23rd 1994. I'm on the 106 bus riding from York University to Wilson Station. during my first year at the institution, i was on a mission to pick up the latest effort by my favourite band, the highly anticipated Day for Night. Since mid-summer of 1993, i'd been going bananas over the song Nautical Disaster, first introduced to me during my 19th birthday. It was at another roadside attraction, and as the band launched into New Orleans as Syncon they jammed through the now classic cut in spectacular fashion. However, it wasn't until the Kumbaya Festival early in September of that same year that I finally heard the track on tape. My friend Heather had come home from university having recorded the festival on DHS. We quickly dubbed the video to cassette and now I was off to the races From there. it took until Canada Day of 1994 before I heard anything else from the record. The hip played the gig with a chip on their shoulder, as many of the fans had acted brorish and disrespectful towards many of the opening acts, including Daniel and Locke. The set was heavily peppered with songs from Day for Night and I liked what I heard. As I got off the subway and approached HMV, it was nearing midnight. The new album would be in my hands soon and I could listen without the distraction of frapples throwing bottles towards the stage. From the first notes of Grace II, this one felt different, especially after the slick polish of fully completely or the bar blues of the prior two records. This was a band hitting its stride and understanding exactly where it fit into the fabric of the rock and roll paradigm. But that was then. Today I'm tasked with taking Pete and Tim into my memories and hoping to goodness this one sticks the landing for them. We'll soon find out on this episode of Getting Hip to the Hip. Long Sliced Brewery Presents Getting Hip to the Hip. Hey, it's JD here and welcome to Getting Hip to the Hip, a Tragically Hip podcast where we go through the discography of the hip with two folks who have never heard of the band before. So, while they're having their first experience listening to the music, you can revisit yours. Send me an email, jd, at GettingHipToTheHipcom, with your first experience with the Tragically Hip. It would be great to hear those, as we listen to Pete and Tim, describe theirs. Speaking of Pete and Tim, they are most certainly ready to be released from their protective hatches. I will push the button now and they are there. They are on their platforms. they're they're levitating platforms. How are you doing, fellas? 0:05:22 - Speaker 2Hey guys, Oh sorry. 0:05:26 - Speaker 1He nodded his head. 0:05:29 - Speaker 2I nodded my head for all you out there in radio land. 0:05:32 - Speaker 3That's my favorite aspect of podcasts. 0:05:35 - Speaker 1He loves theater of the mind. Sorry about that. Yeah, that's great. What's new? 0:05:42 - Speaker 2Oh man, it's new. Back in the saddle, man, you know. back to work today, like I said, struggling with a little bit of jet lag, but other than that, i mean I, i how much time we got JD. I could. Could tell you a lot of what's going on, but I don't know. Put you guys to sleep, tim. What's going on with you man? 0:06:08 - Speaker 3Oh, just cranking on. the week getting started here And last week was, to be honest, kind of rough, so I'm hoping this week's good. That's. that's what I'm counting on. 0:06:18 - Speaker 1Fingers across for you, fellas, both of you, to avail yourself from the. Jag, the Jag lat the jet lag and for you to feel better this week. 0:06:29 - Speaker 2Did you try to? did you try to call me a jackoff right now? 0:06:33 - Speaker 1Is that what you're trying to call me? No, i said jet lag, but I said it wrong. Jag lift, jag off. Yeah, i'm all right, i can't complain. We've got a new puppy dog and she's pretty awesome So far. She's having a nap on the bed right now. She spent the morning in her crate, so you know, we've been letting her run free this afternoon, or I have been letting her run free this afternoon. So, yeah, that's really irrespective of nothing. But Who named her? I did. 0:07:09 - Speaker 2Nice. 0:07:10 - Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, that's my last naming job that I get to do, though. 0:07:15 - Speaker 2I gotta ask you, michael Keaton, george Clooney, val Kilmer, christian Bale, robert Pattinson- I guess I'm a bailperson at this point. I would have. I would have also. The judges would have also accepted Adam West Michael. 0:07:34 - Speaker 1Keaton. Oh, adam West, yeah, sure, sure, yeah. 0:07:39 - Speaker 2Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton was great, but yeah, christian Bale was. Those movies were so amazing. 0:07:43 - Speaker 1Oh, it was Batmania, just Batmania, when Keaton and Tim Burton put that whole thing together. 0:07:52 - Speaker 2Oh yeah, Tim, were you a fan. 0:07:54 - Speaker 3No opinion. 0:07:55 - Speaker 2Okay, you're fleeting the fifth on this one. 0:07:59 - Speaker 1Yeah, no opinion, okay. So we're here today to talk about the fourth long play from the Tragically HIP, their fifth output at this point. This came out in 1994, to be exact, it came out the third week of my first year of university and they did a midnight album release. So, like all the record stores were open, they would be open all day and then they would close at nine and then they would reopen at midnight so they could sell the record, because it was the next day, it was Tuesday, so it was like Monday night at midnight you would go and get the record before anybody else. 0:08:42 - Speaker 2I remember that Tower used to do that too. 0:08:44 - Speaker 1Right, it was a cool fad and it's just. 0:08:48 - Speaker 2you know it's got like It was Tuesday you said right, That's right. 0:08:51 - Speaker 1Records always came out on Tuesdays. 0:08:53 - Speaker 2And there's a reason for that, and somebody told me the reason. I can't remember, but there was a reason. There's a distinct reason why that was the case, right. 0:09:01 - Speaker 1Okay. Well, if you out there know what it is, use social and let us know. Or shoot us an email at JD, pete or Tim at getting hip to the hipcom. This record means a lot to me. So you know, i'm not going to. I'm not going to beat around the bush this time. Or I am going to no, i'm not going to beat around the bush this time, i'm going to lay it all out right now and say I fucking love this record. So you know, let that not impact your scores. But there may be some arguments because it's just got the, it's got the crisscross of hitting a sweet spot for me with my favorite band at the time and coming out temporarily at just the right time you know to to build a culture around. you know it was produced by the hip with assistance from Howard and Freakin I believe it's Mark Howard and Mark Freakin. Freakin I want to say sound guy for the hip You can listen to fully and completely to get the all, the, all, the detailed information. We always went through that stuff in a big way on that show And this is not what this one's about. This is an addendum. So the label was MCA. This is again another MCA release for the hip Looks in at a record 59 minutes 26 seconds, you know, just a almost an hour. Singles It had six singles. Grace, two was a single, it was the first. One came out right before the record dropped. Greasy jungle was the second one. Nautical disaster was the third one. So hard done by then scared, and then thugs, and I believe that thugs was almost, you know, a full year after the record came out. So this one had legs. All music rated this record a 3.5 or part of me a three out of five, much lower than fully completely, which was the record before this, which got a 4.5 out of five. So a three. Very interesting, very, very interesting, grace. Start off the top with your initial thoughts on this record, mr Leiden. 0:11:32 - Speaker 3I felt it was long, you know, and realize pretty quickly that we were getting some extra songs. What else about it? I did notice some recording kind of changes or uplifts as far as production value goes, which is cool. What else about it? There are some certain songs on there which I absolutely dug. I ended up listening to the first half of the album several times I want to say struggled through to get through the whole album in a sitting, but I just kept finding myself starting over at certain points. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we can talk about that more. 0:12:16 - Speaker 1I mean, it's definitely a long record, And could I edit this record? Sure, i could. I'm not going to ever say which songs I would potentially edit out, because they're all my babies and I just couldn't say it, but I secretly know which ones I'd get rid of. Tim, you have been looking for an album. You've been searching for an album throughout this podcast. You know you've talked about Pizza with the Works, you've talked about Mishmash's and collections of songs produced together to round out an album, but it seems to me as though you are seeking not necessarily a concept, but a conceit, and I would have thought that paid off with fully, completely. It didn't. So how about this record? I? 0:13:06 - Speaker 3don't think I'm quite there yet, but I'm close. Okay, i was expecting this album to be maybe more, maybe more concise, since they were driving and had more control, i don't know. I think that just the fact that it was a couple songs longer in the cadence of all the songs and really looking at where their place and all those things that I like to do, you know, it checked a lot of boxes for me, but I didn't. I didn't finish listening to it in a take and go oh yeah, now I'm here. Pretty close though, but I'm pretty close, jd, tell us, tell us, you know, when it came out at 12.01, were you in line buying it, or when did you listen to it? Like, what do you recall from your first listen to this album and how you felt and why it's your fave? 0:14:00 - Speaker 1Well, again, it's got that crossroads right of like culture and time and place And they were my favorite band so it was like so exciting to be in Toronto and buying it right away, because before I would have had to buy it the next day, there had been some concerts leading up to the release of this record where they had dribbled some breadcrumbs of what this record was going to entail And it was so cool to hear it And, more importantly for me, after the very slick sounding fully, completely, i love the. Well, you guys both know that I'm into lo-fi music and this isn't necessarily lo-fi, but this sounds much more self-produced, right Like. It sounds like it's recorded by people who are making their first record in a good way, in a really good way, like it's so fresh sounding after what. The last group of records that we heard were more slick and polished and that sort of bar rock thing. I've always said. This was the record where the Tragically Hip revealed that it hasn't been beer that's been fueling them all these years. It's weed, like they're a total weed band, and this record was the first one that reminded me of that. The rest of the records are sort of beer Okay okay, you know. Yeah, i've had 30 years to gestate on that, though, so bear that in mind. Now Pete has blood pouring out of his mouth right now. He's chewing his tongue off. You know He's dying to jump in here. What does he have to say about all this hullabaloo? 0:15:43 - Speaker 2Well, real quick. You mentioned that this was three out of five, and fully and completely was 4.5 out of five. Who's the company? 0:15:55 - Speaker 1I always use all music. I always use all music, all music, yeah. 0:15:59 - Speaker 2Yeah, they got their heads up their asses, because I don't even remotely see how this is less on the point scale than fully and completely, because I thought this record was fucking awesome. I agree that I felt the same way. That kind of Tim felt that it was a bit lengthy. I felt myself starting at a number of times and struggling a little bit to get through some ladder parts. There's certainly some areas where they could trim the fat, if you will. I'm not going to say which ones they are, but it was like for a band that's producing their first. It's their first go at producing a record themselves. It's kind of like it's just a little too much. It's like going out on a great first date, dinner's great, movie's great go back to the house. Sex is great. Oh, first date That your date's like hey, do you ever want to have kids? You know, it's like. It's like totally could've just done without saying that and the night would've been perfect. Like they just say that, they just ask that. Like on their way out It's like, oh, okay, doesn't mean you're not going to go out with them again, but it's, you know, i love it. I love it. 0:17:30 - Speaker 3I'll leave it there for now to let you say You know, i'll just quickly add on that very you know, very similar token that I had with it. I'm curious to hear the next albums And then to again look back at specific albums to see how I feel about them, because this is probably one. You know you are so excited. You know there's a trilogy of movies coming out on something that you love And you see the first one and you're like God, i hope the next two movies are just as good. Maybe the next one is pretty good or better, and you're like, oh shit, this is going to be great. You know, it's kind of I'm leaning towards that. I'm excited to revisit some of these to see how I feel in a couple of months. Hopefully I won't be like dude, i'm done you guys. No, that's not going to be the case. But yeah, i'm anxious to revisit the future for sure, because this is probably one of those albums. 0:18:30 - Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, i'll be interested to see that too. Maybe again we will have like a 10 year reunion. Pete mentioned that in the last episode. You know we should go back 10 years. Oh, we might. So who knows, maybe we will revisit this on whatever platform the kids are listening to in the future. I'm sure they'll be nuclear powered or something OK. So here's something new An intro song that doesn't just like open with a kick to your ass. It opens in a much different way. It still manages to kick your ass, but in a much different way. It doesn't have like a lick off the top like little bones or courage for human clenin, you know. It just doesn't have or blow a high dough. It doesn't have that same sort of whoop in the butt. It's a taste of like this is what you're going to get. I think You know it's a little bit of like setting the table. It's because you're listening to it and you're like whoa, this isn't the hip that I left behind a year and a half ago. 0:20:08 - Speaker 6Come on, just let's go. She kind of bit her left Geez, I don't know. But I can guarantee That we're now not gonna do. I'm told no proof That we're not gonna do. That's what I'm here for. I come from downtown. I'm already familiar. I'm with the low and weaks of our nation. That's what I'm here for. 0:21:46 - Speaker 7The secret rules of engagement are hard to endure. 0:21:57 - Speaker 6When the appearance of conflict again surrender means the appearance of force. Uncle, uncle, i can guarantee, i can guarantee There'll be no knock on the door. I can guarantee. I'm total proud. That's what I'm prepared for. Yeah, i've come from downtown. I'm ready for you. I'm ready to scale. And it's frustration. I'm ready to scale. And it's frustration. I'm ready to scale. And it's frustration. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 0:25:07 - Speaker 7No, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you, music lovers. On behalf of our crew the finest crew in the business, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Robbie Gordy, johnny Paul, mr Jim Bryson on Keys, us musicians and the crew and everybody here tonight, we want to thank you. Thank you, music lovers. Thank you and Merci beaucoup. Summer on. Summer on take care of each other, drive the speed limit, wear a life jacket. 0:26:24 - Speaker 2Summer on you mentioned setting the table and I agree. And it's saying that it's a different band. That's like the one of the first things that wrote down. I feel like to be honest with you. I like this song so much. I feel like kind of it's just stupid even talking about it like it's such an honestly, it's a fucking banger. And I think I had sent to you guys in the group text like the SNL performance of this song. Yeah, it's just, it's jaw-dropping. Yeah, it's. It's the line about just. I looked at the phrasing, i looked at the lyrics and the way he did he wrote the lyrics and it's just so cool. Sorry, i wish I could articulate it better, but the rules of engagement are hard to endorse. Yeah, like is this I read a little bit online that it was you know about like a man propositioning a prostitute or a young girl. But I'm also like, is this a song about war? is this like an anti-war line that he's throwing in there? is it a double and tongue girl? I don't know, but I don't know. I could say a million things about this song, but I'll hand it over to to mr Leiden. 0:27:54 - Speaker 3I'm. I'm pretty much in the same boat. I heard this song and I immediately thought this is a stellar hip song. I can't wait to hear the rest of the album. But instead of like really going to the rest of the album, i immediately found the first live version I could find on a Google search, because I thought this song is, is gotta be, you know, quintessential live hip song and that's that's kind of where I went and I ended up finding the, the Woodstock 99. If you guys haven't watched any of the documentary about Woodstock 99, please do. It was a just the demise of Western North America, usa culture right there. But anyways, this recording, this video recording of the band at Woodstock 99, is so good, like chills on my arms, like Goose Pimples, it was just fucking amazing. This, this song. You know, i was basically like okay, that's, that's my single. Should I listen to the rest of the album? I'm pretty happy right now didn't they do. 0:29:12 - Speaker 2What did they do? a 94 and a 99, or did they just do 99 just? 0:29:19 - Speaker 3I think the documentary it's a 99 one, where they set everything on fire and tore down all the stages and rated the food trucks and 99 all those things. And then, you know, with this song in particular, i was anxious to hear the band doing their own thing without, you know, managers or producers looming over them. And there were a couple different things I heard, which are even more so on certain songs. But the drums sounded a little different, a little bigger. Maybe the bass was a little bit more engaged with drumming. And there's there's been some times when the bass is kind of funky feeling, just like really in it there was some kind of I don't know, pete, you might know, but there was some echo, really echoey guitar effects. 0:30:12 - Speaker 2I got, i got that written which were pretty cool. 0:30:15 - Speaker 3Yeah, it was kind of the song just hit all the boxes had kind of this transcendental gonna take you on a journey. You know, i liked it so much I was like I don't even care what it's about, this is just a great listen yeah. 0:30:32 - Speaker 1Tim you talking about. You know the drums being bigger and you know the production just sounding. You know bigger and you know with with some of the guitar effects a lot of it has to do with. They went back to New Orleans but this time they went to that Daniel Inwas studio and the Kingsway studio, which is just a big old house and you know they would do stuff like bedsheets over the stairwells and you know, just like like home studio tricker, but on a bigger, bolder scale, because this house has so many nooks and crannies that you can get different sounds of the different spaces. And they took advantage of that, which is very different from the, the path they took on the record prior. 0:31:22 - Speaker 2Okay, daredevil so daredevil this, the skipping start that they did. Yeah, i feel like that was. So this was. What year was this? again? GD 94, 94. So I feel like I mean that was the height of like CDs like were where literally everybody had a CD player, wasn't like the early days. So I feel like maybe it was a. It was a joke to to make people think their CD was skipped, because if you ever bought a CD and you were unfortunate to buy a scratch CD that was brand new and it skipped, you were fucking pissed. Oh yeah, so that was cool, that was unique. This song certainly does sound way better in the car. I don't know if it's just specifically my car, because I have a pretty good sounds. 0:32:26 - Speaker 3It's the premium audio system. Is that what you guys kept saying? 0:32:30 - Speaker 6premium audio. 0:32:31 - Speaker 3I think we're at a point for an acronym for pass sound system everybody everybody listening. 0:32:37 - Speaker 1How about a? 0:32:38 - Speaker 3t-shirt yeah, if I get, if I get through this. 0:32:41 - Speaker 1Okay, these guys only a ride in Pete's car, the big that dooby or there should be a bingo card where the you know, every time you hear Pete say premium audio sound system, you tick the box, or and then there's of course the free square, and then, if you hear me say so, there's that geez, we're going to Malaga. 0:33:15 - Speaker 3There's this guy there with this premium audio system and he gives people rides. 0:33:22 - Speaker 2I'm just saying that because I'm due you're doing yeah, for sure $25 a song I'm good I think that'd be cool. I think a job this no, this song. Tim mentioned something about the, this bass. You were JD, you were talking about the, the studio and all the trickery. But yeah, this is the first one where I write down the like the guitar solos, for example. They seem way less defined on this record, and I don't mean it in a bad way, i mean it in a way that and then there was a really cool oscillation effect maybe a little more jam. 0:34:13 - Speaker 3I don't know if you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, i think the flavor is kind of gelled together more the oscillation effect. 0:34:24 - Speaker 2If you've ever heard the the song real emotional trash on the album, real emotional trash yeah, that Steve Malkomis song I know this came before that, but whatever he's using on that guitar solo is exactly the same effect they're using on their level because that oscillation of the guitar is just. It's so cool. I wish I was cool enough to know what it was to ever be able to use myself, because it's fucking rad. Anyway, i dug this song a lot. I really liked it. 0:34:59 - Speaker 1What do you think? what do you think they're damn? 0:35:03 - Speaker 3I did too. I think, yeah, i love the drummer just counting it off at the beginning. That that made it feel like maybe more home recording type scenario. This song, this song, like I was wishing I was in a bar, just like sitting at the bar pull-up and just I felt like I could be watching the band, you know. But it was like the barkeep and the kitchen people and I don't know. This, this one, this one kind of took me in a different direction than than many. After the one minute mark maybe this is kind of what you're talking about, pete like with the guitar and drums it gets kind of heavier or more layer layered. It felt like locomotive, like this train's just really going story wise, i mean, that's probably a podcast itself to talk about Annie Edison Taylor and going over the falls aspect of this one I love. The line in the real wonder of the world is that we don't jump to. Yes, you know, that's. That to me is like it delivers something inspiring. The song is like get out and get after it. Step out, you know, jump off that cliff, you have 50% chance of surviving if you survive. It's gonna be awesome and if you die, it'll be awesome. You know, this sounds really. It really is really cool. 0:36:40 - Speaker 1Where do we go next? we hit track three, and that's greasy jungle. Take it, tim greasy jungle. 0:36:48 - Speaker 3This one, the snares really snappy. I felt like this is where you're kind of hearing different recording, maybe aspects. When I say snappy snare, it's like tuned tighter. Maybe you know there's lots of film references here in this song which we've gotten before. There's congas, like. There's some hand drumming at some point in the song, i believe, which is. I was just like kind of tuned into the drums on this one. Obviously that's a background effect, but a new layer. There's a definitely a new crash cymbal, like there was some new drum gear right on this album. There's a new crash cymbal that's really bright. That's always kind of gets my attention. I didn't realize first few listens that it was like dirty streets, metropolis, correlation with greasy jungle. I didn't know what the heck it was about. You know I didn't for a song three. I always like hope that this is the one that's gonna get maybe somebody around the bases at bat. You know that they're gonna push, push it through and this one didn't do it as much for me. I was more kind of like okay, what's, what's next with. 0:38:21 - Speaker 1This one didn't grab me so much one of the cool little Gord Downey stories is the lyric that you're just talking about metropolis noir. It sounds so elegant and mysterious at the same time. But metropolis noir is a name he saw on a bag of coffee, it's. It's like French roasts, but in French it wasn't French roasts, it was a dark roast or something, or Italian roast. 0:39:00 - Speaker 3Dark roasts. Dark roasts, italian roasts. 0:39:02 - Speaker 1I forget which one it was, but it translated, because everything in Canada has to have a French label and a Canadian label. It translated to matropolis noir. So that's just one of those little things he stuck in his notebook. and then he's writing this greasy jungle, matropolis noir. And all of a sudden you've got this setting and then it takes you on that little story for funeral home sandwiches and coffee. Oh delicious Yeah. 0:39:33 - Speaker 3Yeah, i think that I also read that it maybe referenced a diner that he worked at that had the same name. Oh really, did you guys know that? Yeah, yeah, greasy jungle. Greasy jungle Sounds like a good diner though. 0:39:48 - Speaker 2Yeah, jd, you said French roasts, and it's funny because I always think I don't remember the name of the comedian, but in France they just call it roast, just like Tim and I's definition of Canadian bacon is actually just bacon for you right, JD, No I can't remember the comedian who did that bit, but, tim, i couldn't disagree with you more on this one. However, i will tell you. 0:40:25 - Speaker 1Tim, you're ignorant slut. 0:40:30 - Speaker 3Yes. 0:40:31 - Speaker 2I'm done. I sort of felt like that the first time I heard it And the more I. This was one where I kept digging Actually I didn't really have to do much work, but just the more I listened to it the more I was like okay, i get it. I get why this was a single. This is a banger on the phrasing on it. The vocal phrasing absolute A. Plus another great car song on the solos, super experimental, like again. It's cool, because it's not. Most of the guitar on this record is not like this. It's not a producer going. 0:41:11 - Speaker 1Okay, boys, let's lay down the solo. This is where we're going to put the solo here. Give me 32 bars, let's go. 0:41:18 - Speaker 232 bars, yeah, like it just it's so cool and it's not like that. And this song is the first although not as much, because there's another one we'll bring up and I'm sure you guys know which one it is But this is the first song where I really hear that the influence this band had on a Linus Morrisette. Oh wow, Oh yeah, There's another song on this record that we'll get to. That is clearly. It's clearly. She was sitting in her room listening to this record prior to recording Jagged Little Pill, like which I can't remember what year that came out. 0:42:04 - Speaker 1What year did that come out? It came out, i want to say the summer of 95 was when the was when she broke, when she exploded. 0:42:13 - Speaker 3Yeah, is she a fan? Is she a fan? 0:42:16 - Speaker 2She's a great musician and she's Canadian, so I would be hard pressed to think she's not. At least, i didn't mind. Oh yeah, she's Canadian. Yeah, you fuck her, stick together. So I saw her live in 2018 in LA and she just, i mean, fucking blew the roof off the place. Oh man, it was, it was, it was insane. 0:42:40 - Speaker 1Anyway, my wife had tickets to the 25th anniversary tour of Jagged Little Pill and it got canceled due to COVID. So, yeah, total drag. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, i'm, i'm on your side there, pete. As far as Greasy Jungle goes, next one is a cool thing that I don't know if this is something that pre-existed. You know, i don't know if somebody had taken a photograph and of a dog, you know, with its teeth bared, and wondered aloud if it had been yawning or snarling. Because, like, since that time, i've seen so many photos that I say that line in my head. You know, there's so many photos that they're captured and we feel something right away, but then you have to sort of open your mind and go well, wait a minute, maybe that feeling that I'm feeling isn't the right feeling. You know, it was just the way the photo was captured. It could have been yawning or snarling, and that sort of kicks us off. 0:44:08 - Speaker 5The cops go into the crowd under a glaring platter of light and the music's just so loud and the tourists take their t-shirts off and a bus load of kids and gifts to the finger Afternoon, when the sidewalk's hot and the shadows too chilly to linger. 0:44:50 - Speaker 6Both we're in the escuchians and at the bar, and people are helming Downtown. Never, ever been. 0:45:06 - Speaker 5Now just wait for me, I'm gonna resurface. 0:45:17 - Speaker 6I take a look at this photo girl. I don't know how clearly it's taken away. 0:45:28 - Speaker 5I'm gonna get out of here. I never saw it. The picture is never clear. 0:45:41 - Speaker 6I'm gonna make a decision. I mean an incarceration, i mean so much. One night in El Paso, the cops fall into the crowd Under a throbbing bladder of light And the music is just so loud And the tourists turn their TVs off. The box is apart with the sound of a linger Night time when the shadows come And you tilt to the tips of your fingers. But that's the way it goes in our region. I'm so strong, i'm making a chance Downtown, never ever been. Now just wait for you to resurface. Take a look at this photograph. How clearly it's taken away. He could have been the artist, not an artist. This picture is never clear. I'm so good at this photo, girl. How clearly it's taken away. I'm gonna get out of here. 0:47:48 - Speaker 5I'm in a slumber. The story is never clear. Walks right into a Mardi Gras parade. We're touring the south at the bottom of the beard. 0:48:28 - Speaker 2Yonnie and Snarling I first listened to. This record was my favorite song And that was, with my, everything I love about Grace too, it starts out very mad season. I don't know if you know that band. 0:48:52 - Speaker 1Yeah, that was the supergroup right. 0:48:54 - Speaker 2Yeah, that was the supergroup of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains And that record. When did that record come out? Did it come out in 1993? Maybe, so they were active in 1994 to 1996, So maybe it's the same time, I don't know. Anyway, it starts out like the first and it builds. I don't know. I just loved it. I could say so much about the instrumentation, But lyrically, I don't know if you've got a line on exactly what it's about JD, But there's some historical references in there And talking about El Paso, he brings up the Mexican US border there. I'm pretty sure that runs through the 100th Meridian, Oh wow now, i know that. I could be wrong, but it just kind of feels like it's going, like Cordoni's really going in. He's a big fan of these historical references. I don't know, i dug it. What's saying you, tim? 0:50:11 - Speaker 3I dug it. I think when I first heard it started up I was thinking Okay, here's the spooky, sinister Pipps song of the album Which we often get. You know, if any song that I hear I hear a reference about El Paso or the Rio Grande, it's usually something heavy. It's not about going tubing and fishing and having fun. So yeah, there's a line in there about the cops go into the crowd Throbbing bladder of light. You know, i'd love that phrase, throbbing bladder of light. The music is so loud nighttime when the shadows cough Like this. Lyrically, the song's loaded, it's just it's really really big. I just, you know, somebody beat up and throw it in the river. This is an early song there's a moody guitar ending, i think throughout the song. The bass to me I'm always kind of honing in. It's funny because Pete's on guitar and I'm on bass and drums, which is cool, but the bass is a little punchier, like it's tuned up or I don't know. This one had definitely some home, you know, if they recorded it in the house. I'm just gonna call it home production because it's basically what it was, even if it was like Super Pro Studio, like there's some little things in there that I heard for sure. It's an interesting song. It's pretty cool It was. It's kind of an early song to me. I stuck with it a few times. 0:51:58 - Speaker 1Cool. What's next? It's number five. We're at five. Fire in the hole. 0:52:07 - Speaker 3Yeah, let's fire. Fire in the hole is fucking cool. And I say that because I heard kind of this 90s grungy punk influence with this one, even though it's not like super fast or anything. But then when I started reading into it, you know, because I figured it had something to do with fascism and Nazis And I don't know. There's something you know angry here. There's some different ties to Sonic Youth's Youth, sonic Youth's Youth Against Fascism song. It's very I don't want to say very similar, but there's definitely some things shared. You know, that was a time for me. It was a time of really getting into, like crunchy guitars, a little bit more experimentation, faster rhythms. You know this song, for a hip song maybe, is like a little bit tougher. It's a little bit tougher. And I also just thought you know by its own name and chorus that this one is probably ruckus live. It's probably just fun and, you know, fist in the air. 0:53:30 - Speaker 2Yeah, i agree, i agree, this is a banger for sure. The guitar work on it I definitely. I mean it's weird, i don't know because I'm not the biggest Guns N' Roses fan, but you know, slash's Les Paul guitar tone is pretty distinct, you know, when you hear it, and the guitar tone on this song that he's playing some lines sounds, i mean, identical. It doesn't sound like Guns N' Roses, of course the song doesn't, but that guitar tone just was so reminiscent of that And it kind of made me think, okay, so they're like trying to, they're trying to shed some older skin from the previous records, but you know, it's sort of like you can take the. You know, take the what out of the what, but you can't take the what out of the what. They still got it in their roots. You know what I mean. 0:54:35 - Speaker 1Yeah. 0:54:38 - Speaker 2So that's definitely there. And then, yeah, this is one like the obviously Grace too. I mean that's sort of like the flagship of this record. But this is another song where you're like, okay, gord's found his voice. He's really, you know, If the band is his recliner, like whenever he gets up, you can see his ass imprint. It is always there. He's found his voice. The chair is sunk. It's sunk in. Does that make sense What I'm trying to say? Yeah, he's. Yeah, he's been in that chair so long now for a number of records that it's just comforts Like he's found it. 0:55:29 - Speaker 1He knows where he's at. He's in the groove. He's in the groove Like he's absolutely. And to me, guys, isn't this the heaviest that we've ever heard them. Or is there something on Foley that might be? No, i think you're right, i do. 0:55:46 - Speaker 3I think it's up there. I think it's up there. 0:55:48 - Speaker 1Yeah, because you were saying fast and I was thinking to my head, I was like yeah, it is fast. It's fast and heavy, Like this is a great song alive. 0:55:54 - Speaker 2This is like Foo Fighters, Fast Like I was like whoa. 0:55:59 - Speaker 1Yeah, because it's still, it's still. 0:56:05 - Speaker 3It's interesting. You went to guns and roses. I don't know why I didn't go there Like I. Just I didn't hear that reference, but I want to go back. 0:56:14 - Speaker 2Just the guitar, just the guitar time. 0:56:17 - Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:56:19 - Speaker 2For me oftentimes that doesn't mean something positive, Just yeah you know, outside of them anybody else I hear sounding like remotely like guns and roses. You just kind of go, eh you know. But I think it was just weird that Tom was there because coming up the hip I feel were such a that was. That was what most bands were sounding like back then. 0:56:49 - Speaker 3I don't know. Yeah, maybe 50 mission cap or something. Oh yeah, yeah, this one, you know. 0:56:56 - Speaker 1Yeah, you might be right, You might be and you might be so hard done by. 0:57:00 - Speaker 2So hard done by. To be honest with you, this is probably my least favorite of the of the record. Hey, we're in the break. Yeah, i just didn't. Yeah, i thought it was, i thought it was a cool chorus, but I just I kept thinking about, like, what would I say about the song? And it's just, you know, maybe in the 10 year reunion by then I'll have something. but this song, sorry, i wish I had I had more for it, but I really just don't. 0:57:42 - Speaker 3I'm with you a bit. I heard Allison Chains right away And I don't think it's like it's not like 100% Allison Chains. That's who I thought of And I'm starting to hear, you know, and occasional references to bands that we're doing well during this time And I'm not a big Allison Chains fan by any means, but it's. you know, there's still some lyric nuggets in here I love. you'll have to wait a minute. It's an en somatic Like. that to me is kind of a phrase of if you want, you know, beauty in life, it's not going to come to you right away. You got to, you got to deal. The ending is kind of rough. You know the yeah, i'm with you, pete. The ending is kind of rough. The snare is too snappy. The snare is like so snappy that it's like that's how you tune a snare for fucking punk rock songs with a high beat per minute. You know it just didn't. it just didn't. 0:58:45 - Speaker 1It's funny that you say that, because the original, like the demo version of this song is totally up tempo. Well so it's. It's a completely different song Me I. I think this is, i think it's fine, i think it's harkens back to like, like it could be on up to here, it could be on road apples. To me it's got that sleazy, not quite stone Z vibe. So I was really surprised to hear you say Alison chains, because I'm I'm going more of like the roots. You know, okay, that's, that's my vibe of John, but but that's, you know, this one, that's just how it was for sure. 0:59:30 - Speaker 3More filler had a rough ending and I was kind of glad it was like, okay, what's next? You want to? you want to add something, pete. 0:59:37 - Speaker 2Oh, all I was going to say was You know, that'd be cool if it was. I mean, maybe it is cool live. And I just just to comment that I always hate when you hear a band play a live version of a song and it's just fucking killer And that's the first way you hear it. And then you hear the studio version and it just absolutely blows. 0:59:59 - Speaker 3So yeah, i'm, i'm with you, I'm with you. Maybe this is that? 1:00:03 - Speaker 2But to answer your question, JD, what's next is not cool. I've actually heard JD sing this song. 1:00:12 - Speaker 1Oh, that's right, I did it. I did it for a, i did it for a hip podcast, like I do a pod list, just like I do for medium alchemists And I sang it. Is that that was right? Yeah, yeah. 1:00:27 - Speaker 3I dug it, I thought it. I thought it was what's, what's that pod JD had that he took off. It was like JD sings in the shower, Was it that one? 1:00:36 - Speaker 2That's what I wanted. Jd sings in the shower. There was a. There was a. There was a video version of the podcast too, but that was yeah that was that, the lovely fans. No, i remember hearing this and the first time you sent it to me I think I was already living in Malaga. But great tune, i, you know this, and JD, you, you, you explained to me what this song was about and I've since forgotten because my brain doesn't work anymore at my age, but I did get. I think the reason why we started talking about it in the first place was because we I mentioned to you the another great Canadian singer, gordon Lightfoot's Right, ricky Deven, if it's Gerald. And so you, you brought this song up and that's kind of how it came into my, my atmosphere, my airspace if you will. 1:01:44 - Speaker 1Well, those are forever linked for me, because the first time I saw this song played live Gordon, he introduced it live as a Canadian musician, would be complete without a song about a nautical disaster. 1:02:04 - Speaker 5This song is called nautical disaster. These are the Dh과a stations for brokers. 1:02:36 - Speaker 6NotOf cybersecurity. This is Darryl, i don't wanna sweat. Ha. What's wrong? What's going on? Can't tell yourself I'm a foreign team. He said hang on, just stop, shut your big mouth and gotta do what you feel is real. He got no peace and false gods Got no Sunni, my baby. She won't know me when I'm thinking about music. I'm a foreign team. Keep it going, man. 1:04:11 - Speaker 7Let's keep the wagon wheel going. Alright, i had this dream where I relished the fray And the screaming filled my head all day. I felt as though I'd been spinned here, Settled in into the pocket. 1:04:44 - Speaker 6In a lighthouse on some rocky socket Of the coast of France, dear One afternoon. Four thousand men died in the water Here And five hundred more repression, matthew, is parasite's life In your blood. Now I'm in a lifeboat Designed for ten. Ten on me. Anything that's systematic Would get you hated. It's not a deal, nor a test, Nor a love of something stated. The selection was quick, the crew was in order And those left in the water Got kicked off the padlock And we headed home. 1:06:24 - Speaker 7And in the dream and when the phone rings, we're doing alright. 1:06:30 - Speaker 6I set it out there Those days and nights, but only a fool would complain. Anyway, susan, if you'd like A conversation To say myself, in my memory Is those fingertips Scratching on my heart, and I'm in a lifeboat Designed for ten. Ten on me. 1:07:41 - Speaker 7Anything that's systematic Would get you hated. It's not a deal, nor a test, nor a love of something stated, no matter how hard it is. You see how hard it is, it's real hard. 1:08:27 - Speaker 5There's a lifeboat Hanging on a wire Sucking up to someone, just a stoke of fire. 1:08:35 - Speaker 7Picking up the highlights of the scenery, saw some little clouds. 1:08:50 - Speaker 5They looked a little like me. I had my hands in the river, my feet back up from banks, looked up to the Lord above, said he'd call me thanks. Some times I feel so good I've got to scream. Said 40 baby, i know exactly what you mean, he said. He said I swear to God. He said Now, now. 1:09:27 - Speaker 6Now, okay, my memory Was my dear watch's river that I nailed. If near or leave a sink in there, then I don't wanna swear Swag, swag, swag, swag. 1:10:42 - Speaker 1Swag, swag, and then they launch into New Orleans' sinking. Oh my gosh, and you're sorta like what? What's going on? And then, in the middle of New Orleans' sinking, is this brand new song, fully fleshed out, not a? 1:11:00 - Speaker 3good one. You know, i read about this And it's fucking holy crap. 1:11:07 - Speaker 1It is a tornado Like it is, so destructive. 1:11:14 - Speaker 3And you know, there's not many bands Who perform live that do Extremely intentional things like that For the audience. There's not many bands that do that Doing something like that, mixing in a new song in the middle of a song People know And then did they circle back? 1:11:31 - Speaker 1Yeah, They finished, then they finished all of these things. 1:11:34 - Speaker 3That's just insane to me. I just love, i just love, love, love that. I just love that. If any, if any songwriters are out there, do that for me. When I come here you live, mix me in a new one. It's a treat, right? Yeah, because it's the opposite of going to a show And hearing a band play Like their album. You know, i've walked out of shows Because it's just boring as fuck. You know, i'll say this about In 18. I believe it was built to spill. Oh my gosh, it was like I could have just put on One of their records and sat at home. So, yeah, to be able to split in another song And keep going and mix it up And do all these things that are so creative And have the confidence to do that, and phew. 1:12:30 - Speaker 2The only thing I'll say in defensive built to spill Is there's always. 1:12:34 - Speaker 3Oh, everybody defends. Built to spill. 1:12:36 - Speaker 2No, no, i'm only saying it live I've never seen them live. Only because they always have a new line up. It's only a singer They do. They do. So if I'm a guy sitting in And part of the band this time around, the only thing I know is the record, because that's probably how they play together, which that's uh. Yeah, my buddy's seen them live And he kind of had the same feeling as you did. 1:13:01 - Speaker 1Same feeling as you did, i'm just starting to get into built. 1:13:04 - Speaker 3Yeah, sorry, bds fans. There you have it. There's another fan that wants to punch me in the gut. Not a cool disaster, i think it's fucking cool. Like my sentiment right away was like Here's the epic storytelling TH song. Here The drums it was like beating. Like we're charging into war Lifeboat designed for ten and ten. Only You know. There's just all these Great metaphors in there for like I don't know. 1:13:34 - Speaker 1Oh, i love the line about getting The remaining people in the water Getting kicked off at Antler. Oh man, i don't know why. Yeah, and this song, there's no structure, there's no verse, there's no chorus, it's just literally Like you said, tim, it's like a story. 1:13:51 - Speaker 3Yeah yeah, i don't know who the Susan reference is. I didn't look too much into that part, like, towards the end there's something about Susan Which I don't know why. With this band, whenever they mention a woman I'm always like. 1:14:03 - Speaker 1She's Evelyn's sister. 1:14:04 - Speaker 3Because it's often something grim. But you know this song there's. There's lots of data in there. This could be a rabbit hole song. It wasn't so much for me, just because I thought it was awesome. 1:14:19 - Speaker 1You're right, it is awesome. It's fucking awesome. Maybe I'm out and we're actually more song for the band. Where do we go next? Um Thugs? 1:14:28 - Speaker 2This is gonna sound really strange, but first of all, i love the chorus on this song. That's fantastic. I really dug this song a lot. It's ironic that it's called thugs and the baseline is a slowed-down version of Grandmaster flashes a message yes or yes? 1:14:54 - Speaker 3Whoa, I didn't go that deep, but I knew it was something like I. I felt there was something go out on in this song And I didn't know what I was you know, i didn't know what it was, but Uh, you keep going it's a deep, deep. 1:15:09 - Speaker 2There's clearly a deep admiration for Grandmaster flash Going on here and The. this the we reference to JD. You mentioned that this is the song where, or this is the record where, you realized they're actually a wee band out of your band. 1:15:30 - Speaker 1Um, yeah, it sort of. It sort of happened at the same time to me as well, no, but you know, there's the reference about All roll or rolling. I'll do the details, you do the roll and I'll do the details. I'm sorry about that. That's all right. 1:15:48 - Speaker 2Yeah, that's, that's kind of where. That's kind of Where I thought on that, the Again the chorus awesome, uh, there's. He keeps doing this high, are you know? it doesn't a couple times and on the record but he does like a high-pitched whoo And this song, that's really cool. And The spacey reverb Guitar is just like. I couldn't think of the song that it reminded me of or the artist, but it's, there's so much reverb on this on that guitar, it's like It's insane. 1:16:26 - Speaker 1Love it, love love, love this one. Yes, it's, yeah, you can swim in it Well said. Yeah, yeah. Where are you on thugs? 1:16:34 - Speaker 3You know I I Felt it was a little bit filler. You know I I didn't get a whole lot from this one I when I Started looking into kind of the movie references or what they get up trying to figure out When I was trying to figure out. You know any details About this song that could make me get into it more? I read and I've read this before, the quote from gourd, that if that's what you think it's about, then that's what it's about Sure, which made me think for this song. Okay, if it's. You know if I think gourd would tell me hey man, if you, if you don't dig this song, then maybe you should try Inevitability of death. You know, if you want to get heavier, then go here. If you don't, you don't get heavy with thugs and let's give you a song about struggling with cancer, which is, i think, inevitability of death. You know, there's what I enjoyed about this song is they mix it up a little bit. You know there's a Chorus singing without drums. You know they're starting to do little creative things on this album That I think help make it stand out and keep my interests more. That's kind of what I, yeah, that's kind of what I've noticed. But then you know, i think everybody probably knows anybody, or sorry, anyone knows someone is diet of cancer and maybe that's what this is about about and living life. You know, trying to Do everything to your fullest. I'm not sure about this. The song was, it was a good jam, it was it was. 1:18:17 - Speaker 1You know what you're not. You're not Far off the track. I don't think, though, when, when you say that about cancer but that would be just so terribly ironic you know Writing a song about that and then succumbing to that illness. You know all those. 1:18:38 - Speaker 3Yeah, exactly. 1:18:40 - Speaker 1Because it came on suddenly. It wasn't something he battled with for very long. It came on suddenly and he was gone, wow, other than a other than a cross-canada tour. But well, you just think, puffy lips, glistening skin, yeah, everything comes rushing in. That could be like reference to, like the chemotherapy you know, like rushing into your body. You know We don't go to hell, just yeah. I love the. I also just love the word play. I thought you'd be the death of inevitability to death just a little bit. I thought you'd be the inevitability of death to death just a little bit like. I love how it's inverted Mm-hmm, very cool, very cool. 1:19:21 - Speaker 2And he makes it work it's crazy that you say like puffy lips and glistening skin. I'm thinking of a. I'm thinking of like Scarlett Johansson and in a bikini like that's who. I'm like. That's right where I went when I heard that. That's so. I'm not even joking. 1:19:43 - Speaker 1That's like what I thought say, could have been yonder somebody somebody just came from LA, i think. 1:19:51 - Speaker 2It's been any time with Scarlett, though The I dig this song It's. It's not one of my favorites, but this was the song that Clearly did the one I mentioned earlier that that Alanis drew a lot of The word play and the way he phrases it is It's. It's exactly what she does in the song. You ought to know like it's. It's 100%. You can't Can't deny it. I'm sure if you had a gun to read she'd say yes, of course It's worth it. She's got the inspiration on. I. 1:20:33 - Speaker 1Don't think it would go that far, just just for the record. No, yeah, if you were interviewing her you would probably, i probably, i probably just ask her. 1:20:39 - Speaker 2Yeah, she seems like a nice person. 1:20:43 - Speaker 3Let's, let's, let's have her guest on the next one. 1:20:45 - Speaker 1He's gonna you have. You have that up, jady Yeah. 1:20:47 - Speaker 3Yeah. 1:20:48 - Speaker 1Yeah, I like the bass that. 1:20:49 - Speaker 2I think the chords are a little bit more. I think the chords are a little bit monotonous. The line if you go to hell, i'll still remember you, that's just. That's a really fucking cool line. But The bass starts to shine at the end, which is cool because because the chords are so I guess I've been honest the bass really isn't doing much, but then it does something that that only Tim Hates is more than I do. It's just faith. 1:21:27 - Speaker 3You know, i will say some of the hip, some of the hips, fadeouts are better than others. Okay, they've had they've had some oh dare I tragic fadeouts oh. I use that because I hate fade out so much. 1:21:47 - Speaker 2Jady, can you, can you You edit this in? can you, can you do that? 1:21:55 - Speaker 3That's funny. You mentioned that cuz a couple weeks ago, jd. I said to JD you know, sometimes I just want to add in a sound effect, like You know, and he's like you do not do that on my podcast, i hate sound effects, because I'm even thinking. 1:22:14 - Speaker 1You know, when you were talking earlier, you were talking about The bass being slowed down from Grandmaster Flash, like, oh, i could intercut. I could intercut like the Grandmaster Flash song so people could hear it. 1:22:27 - Speaker 2But then it's like It's so noticeable man, i mean it's it's so noticeable. It's exact same bass line, but anyway. 1:22:37 - Speaker 1Next song, though. So then we slow it down with scared. 1:22:41 - Speaker 3This that's so scared for me is it's like a. I instantly went to. This song would be an amazing concert concert closer. You know it's. It comes on, you know the night's finishing, it might be the what else? songs. You close your eyes at some point and just listen and get in deep. You know it's, there's, it's layered and story from I don't know Russia and the Germans and Stalin and Trying to make culture and art disappeared and like housekeepers and all these different things. It's like it's. It's. It's a sad kind of beautiful song that It's a little bit of a usual makeup for them with this kind of section of the album, but I thought it was, you know, on that note, kind of dark and lovely overall. 1:23:37 - Speaker 1What do you think, sir? 1:23:39 - Speaker 2I wasn't. I thought this was kind of like just a token. If you will token slow tune like It didn't do it for me, like When it comes to like softer hip songs, like it didn't give me the same Warm, fuzzy feeling is like fiddler's green did. 1:24:02 - Speaker 1Sure, okay, yeah, i mean, fiddler's green is a knockout pie. It is, but my god scared. I love this song really good. 1:24:10 - Speaker 2Maybe it's just positioning on the record, i don't know. I've got a Spend some more time with it and in this was actually one song. There's a couple of tunes. I didn't Get to hear the car, yeah, towards the end, because my car rides weren't as long and they started the record. I would put the first song on when I got in the car, so if I wasn't driving for a long time, obviously the song story the other record didn't didn't didn't make it in the in the car, but there was something really weird on this song. There was a Spacey sort of keyboard sound that kept going off. You know I'm talking about. 1:24:54 - Speaker 3I know, now I don't really yeah, the only thing that certainly stood out to me was the use of acoustic guitars. There's, you know that's. That was a little unusual. I don't remember keyboards. 1:25:05 - Speaker 2There's some sort of keyboard effect going on in there. That is Like the only thing I can equate it to is like you know the. It's like an oscillated version of. You know the sound of the, the metal hitting the, the track on the song. It's a sound of the men working on the chain game. Yeah, it's like it. It's like an echoey, delayed, oscillated, real subtle Vert Sample of that or something, something similar to that, and it's done with the keyboards and said it's on the song 100%. 1:25:46 - Speaker 1Huh, i've got to listen with these headphones. 1:25:49 - Speaker 2But yeah it's. It was a cool song. I dug it and I kind of wish I had more of a feeling the way you guys do about it. But you know it's okay there just hope for you. 1:25:59 - Speaker 1There's hope for you, peter. From there we go to an inch an hour, and this song always impressed me, because the math works out an In an hour today the same way, an inch an hour to feed a day, to moan tonight in this most professional way. 1:26:57 - Speaker 5There's this fucking band. You gotta see they used to care about living shit. I see no profit in talk. No food in town, no rock and roll, no bestiality. 1:27:10 - Speaker 6Makes me feel the same way. An inch an hour to feed a day, to moan tonight with their little mouth to say But our health is best with the people in the space. No stuff of town, no feed you through, no salt on the tev. It works through Making lots and moogs. 1:27:49 - Speaker 5Tonight I'm gonna win and make this gift heart. I want you to see your breath in the spring side. Heart, coffee colors, ice and feeling. First part Sound. The rushing water in the dark Makes me feel the same way. 1:28:06 - Speaker 6An inch an hour to feed a day, to moan tonight with their little mouth to say But our health is best with the people in the space. I mean our health is best with the people in the space. You see, i don't know me. I don't know me at all, i don't know myself. 1:28:47 - Speaker 1I don't know myself. I don't know myself. What did you think of this? 1:29:06 - Speaker 2one. I love the. I don't know if I paid attention to it in the other records, or I'm just hearing this now, or this is the first time they're really doing it, but I feel like the guitar is falling the vocal line, or the vocal line is falling the guitar a little bit more, which is cool, like the melody of what Gord's singing. I thought it was a fucking banger. Again, this is another one where he's like yelping. I can only say yelping because he's not screaming but he's saying oh, oh, like really multiple times during the song. Anyway, i love it. I thought this song would probably be a really good opener. I don't know if they ever opened with it, but Definitely thought it would be a good opener. 1:30:07 - Speaker 3I think this one I was anticipating, without even knowing it, after listening to Scared. Scared was like this epic kind of novel, three-part novel to get through And when an inch and hour came on in the car, within seconds was turning it way up Like. This is one that I kind of needed. With the placement in the album, it truly so. I read that it's potentially, or possibly, if it's about a fan who wrote a fan letter to the band. Supposedly this guy claims to come home at the end of his night shift every day. He would go buy some beer and sit on the stoop of his apartment And just crank tragically hip and drink beers. And he was thumbing through one of their albums and saw an address to write letters into

Getting Hip to The Hip
5. The math works out!

Getting Hip to The Hip

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2023 109:36


Hey everyone, it's JD here with Pete and Tim, and we've got an exciting episode for you as we explore the Tragically Hip's 1994 album, Day for Night. This record holds a special place in my heart, and I can't wait to share my memories with Pete and Tim. Listen in as we discuss the album's unique nuances.As we examine the tracks on Day for Night, we also dive into the powerful lyricism of songs like Greasy Jungle and Nautical Disaster, uncovering the stories behind them. Our discussion also touches on the impact of the album's intro song, Grace, Too, setting the tone for the record and leaving a lasting impression on listeners.Join us as we reminisce about the days of midnight album releases and the significance of this record in the Tragically Hip's discography. Through our conversation, Pete and Tim share their first experiences with the band's music. So, whether you're a longtime fan or discovering the Tragically Hip for the first time, this episode is sure to be a nostalgic and enlightening journey through the world of Canadian rock history.0:00:00 - Speaker 1Hey, it's JD here and I'm with Pete and Tim and we have a really big announcement we want to make. Are you strapped in Good? Mark your calendars for Friday, september 1st, as long-sliced brewery brings to you getting hip to the hip on evening for the Downey Wend Jack Fund. 0:00:22 - Speaker 2Join us at the Rec Room in Toronto for a night of music, unity and making a meaningful impact. This event is dedicated to honoring the legacy of the tragically hip, while supporting the Downey Wend Jack Fund. 0:00:32 - Speaker 3Immerse yourself in a powerful tribute performance by 50 Mission, celebrating timeless classics that have shaped Canadian rock history. We'll also wrap up the podcast in a memorable way by doing our finale live that evening, but it doesn't stop there. 0:00:48 - Speaker 1This event is all about making a difference. So we've got a silent auction with prizes. you've got to see, from Blue Jays tickets to tragically hip ephemera to kitchen appliances. If you're looking for something cool, chances are you'll find it at our silent auction. 0:01:05 - Speaker 2All proceeds for the evening will go directly to the Downey Wend Jack Fund supporting healing, reconciliation and positive changes for Indigenous communities. 0:01:13 - Speaker 3Tickets are on sale June 1st and can be picked up by visiting gettinghippetothehipcom and clicking on finale. 0:01:21 - Speaker 1By attending Getting Hip to the Hip, you're not only enjoying a night of incredible music and comedy, but also contributing to a brighter future. Join a community of like-minded individuals who believe in the power of music and unity. 0:01:35 - Speaker 2Tickets are only $40, so mark your calendars and visit our webpage to secure your spot at this unforgettable event to celebrate the hip with fellow hip fans. 0:01:45 - Speaker 3Getting Hip to the Hip. An evening for the Downey Wend Jack Fund promises to be an experience that leaves a lasting impact. Please join us at the Rec Room in Toronto on September 1st and be part of something truly meaningful. We'd love to see you there. 0:02:11 - Speaker 1It's nearly 10.30 pm on September 23rd 1994. I'm on the 106 bus riding from York University to Wilson Station. during my first year at the institution, i was on a mission to pick up the latest effort by my favourite band, the highly anticipated Day for Night. Since mid-summer of 1993, i'd been going bananas over the song Nautical Disaster, first introduced to me during my 19th birthday. It was at another roadside attraction, and as the band launched into New Orleans as Syncon they jammed through the now classic cut in spectacular fashion. However, it wasn't until the Kumbaya Festival early in September of that same year that I finally heard the track on tape. My friend Heather had come home from university having recorded the festival on DHS. We quickly dubbed the video to cassette and now I was off to the races From there. it took until Canada Day of 1994 before I heard anything else from the record. The hip played the gig with a chip on their shoulder, as many of the fans had acted brorish and disrespectful towards many of the opening acts, including Daniel and Locke. The set was heavily peppered with songs from Day for Night and I liked what I heard. As I got off the subway and approached HMV, it was nearing midnight. The new album would be in my hands soon and I could listen without the distraction of frapples throwing bottles towards the stage. From the first notes of Grace II, this one felt different, especially after the slick polish of fully completely or the bar blues of the prior two records. This was a band hitting its stride and understanding exactly where it fit into the fabric of the rock and roll paradigm. But that was then. Today I'm tasked with taking Pete and Tim into my memories and hoping to goodness this one sticks the landing for them. We'll soon find out on this episode of Getting Hip to the Hip. Long Sliced Brewery Presents Getting Hip to the Hip. Hey, it's JD here and welcome to Getting Hip to the Hip, a Tragically Hip podcast where we go through the discography of the hip with two folks who have never heard of the band before. So, while they're having their first experience listening to the music, you can revisit yours. Send me an email, jd, at GettingHipToTheHipcom, with your first experience with the Tragically Hip. It would be great to hear those, as we listen to Pete and Tim, describe theirs. Speaking of Pete and Tim, they are most certainly ready to be released from their protective hatches. I will push the button now and they are there. They are on their platforms. they're they're levitating platforms. How are you doing, fellas? 0:05:22 - Speaker 2Hey guys, Oh sorry. 0:05:26 - Speaker 1He nodded his head. 0:05:29 - Speaker 2I nodded my head for all you out there in radio land. 0:05:32 - Speaker 3That's my favorite aspect of podcasts. 0:05:35 - Speaker 1He loves theater of the mind. Sorry about that. Yeah, that's great. What's new? 0:05:42 - Speaker 2Oh man, it's new. Back in the saddle, man, you know. back to work today, like I said, struggling with a little bit of jet lag, but other than that, i mean I, i how much time we got JD. I could. Could tell you a lot of what's going on, but I don't know. Put you guys to sleep, tim. What's going on with you man? 0:06:08 - Speaker 3Oh, just cranking on. the week getting started here And last week was, to be honest, kind of rough, so I'm hoping this week's good. That's. that's what I'm counting on. 0:06:18 - Speaker 1Fingers across for you, fellas, both of you, to avail yourself from the. Jag, the Jag lat the jet lag and for you to feel better this week. 0:06:29 - Speaker 2Did you try to? did you try to call me a jackoff right now? 0:06:33 - Speaker 1Is that what you're trying to call me? No, i said jet lag, but I said it wrong. Jag lift, jag off. Yeah, i'm all right, i can't complain. We've got a new puppy dog and she's pretty awesome So far. She's having a nap on the bed right now. She spent the morning in her crate, so you know, we've been letting her run free this afternoon, or I have been letting her run free this afternoon. So, yeah, that's really irrespective of nothing. But Who named her? I did. 0:07:09 - Speaker 2Nice. 0:07:10 - Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, that's my last naming job that I get to do, though. 0:07:15 - Speaker 2I gotta ask you, michael Keaton, george Clooney, val Kilmer, christian Bale, robert Pattinson- I guess I'm a bailperson at this point. I would have. I would have also. The judges would have also accepted Adam West Michael. 0:07:34 - Speaker 1Keaton. Oh, adam West, yeah, sure, sure, yeah. 0:07:39 - Speaker 2Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton was great, but yeah, christian Bale was. Those movies were so amazing. 0:07:43 - Speaker 1Oh, it was Batmania, just Batmania, when Keaton and Tim Burton put that whole thing together. 0:07:52 - Speaker 2Oh yeah, Tim, were you a fan. 0:07:54 - Speaker 3No opinion. 0:07:55 - Speaker 2Okay, you're fleeting the fifth on this one. 0:07:59 - Speaker 1Yeah, no opinion, okay. So we're here today to talk about the fourth long play from the Tragically HIP, their fifth output at this point. This came out in 1994, to be exact, it came out the third week of my first year of university and they did a midnight album release. So, like all the record stores were open, they would be open all day and then they would close at nine and then they would reopen at midnight so they could sell the record, because it was the next day, it was Tuesday, so it was like Monday night at midnight you would go and get the record before anybody else. 0:08:42 - Speaker 2I remember that Tower used to do that too. 0:08:44 - Speaker 1Right, it was a cool fad and it's just. 0:08:48 - Speaker 2you know it's got like It was Tuesday you said right, That's right. 0:08:51 - Speaker 1Records always came out on Tuesdays. 0:08:53 - Speaker 2And there's a reason for that, and somebody told me the reason. I can't remember, but there was a reason. There's a distinct reason why that was the case, right. 0:09:01 - Speaker 1Okay. Well, if you out there know what it is, use social and let us know. Or shoot us an email at JD, pete or Tim at getting hip to the hipcom. This record means a lot to me. So you know, i'm not going to. I'm not going to beat around the bush this time. Or I am going to no, i'm not going to beat around the bush this time, i'm going to lay it all out right now and say I fucking love this record. So you know, let that not impact your scores. But there may be some arguments because it's just got the, it's got the crisscross of hitting a sweet spot for me with my favorite band at the time and coming out temporarily at just the right time you know to to build a culture around. you know it was produced by the hip with assistance from Howard and Freakin I believe it's Mark Howard and Mark Freakin. Freakin I want to say sound guy for the hip You can listen to fully and completely to get the all, the, all, the detailed information. We always went through that stuff in a big way on that show And this is not what this one's about. This is an addendum. So the label was MCA. This is again another MCA release for the hip Looks in at a record 59 minutes 26 seconds, you know, just a almost an hour. Singles It had six singles. Grace, two was a single, it was the first. One came out right before the record dropped. Greasy jungle was the second one. Nautical disaster was the third one. So hard done by then scared, and then thugs, and I believe that thugs was almost, you know, a full year after the record came out. So this one had legs. All music rated this record a 3.5 or part of me a three out of five, much lower than fully completely, which was the record before this, which got a 4.5 out of five. So a three. Very interesting, very, very interesting, grace. Start off the top with your initial thoughts on this record, mr Leiden. 0:11:32 - Speaker 3I felt it was long, you know, and realize pretty quickly that we were getting some extra songs. What else about it? I did notice some recording kind of changes or uplifts as far as production value goes, which is cool. What else about it? There are some certain songs on there which I absolutely dug. I ended up listening to the first half of the album several times I want to say struggled through to get through the whole album in a sitting, but I just kept finding myself starting over at certain points. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we can talk about that more. 0:12:16 - Speaker 1I mean, it's definitely a long record, And could I edit this record? Sure, i could. I'm not going to ever say which songs I would potentially edit out, because they're all my babies and I just couldn't say it, but I secretly know which ones I'd get rid of. Tim, you have been looking for an album. You've been searching for an album throughout this podcast. You know you've talked about Pizza with the Works, you've talked about Mishmash's and collections of songs produced together to round out an album, but it seems to me as though you are seeking not necessarily a concept, but a conceit, and I would have thought that paid off with fully, completely. It didn't. So how about this record? I? 0:13:06 - Speaker 3don't think I'm quite there yet, but I'm close. Okay, i was expecting this album to be maybe more, maybe more concise, since they were driving and had more control, i don't know. I think that just the fact that it was a couple songs longer in the cadence of all the songs and really looking at where their place and all those things that I like to do, you know, it checked a lot of boxes for me, but I didn't. I didn't finish listening to it in a take and go oh yeah, now I'm here. Pretty close though, but I'm pretty close, jd, tell us, tell us, you know, when it came out at 12.01, were you in line buying it, or when did you listen to it? Like, what do you recall from your first listen to this album and how you felt and why it's your fave? 0:14:00 - Speaker 1Well, again, it's got that crossroads right of like culture and time and place And they were my favorite band so it was like so exciting to be in Toronto and buying it right away, because before I would have had to buy it the next day, there had been some concerts leading up to the release of this record where they had dribbled some breadcrumbs of what this record was going to entail And it was so cool to hear it And, more importantly for me, after the very slick sounding fully, completely, i love the. Well, you guys both know that I'm into lo-fi music and this isn't necessarily lo-fi, but this sounds much more self-produced, right Like. It sounds like it's recorded by people who are making their first record in a good way, in a really good way, like it's so fresh sounding after what. The last group of records that we heard were more slick and polished and that sort of bar rock thing. I've always said. This was the record where the Tragically Hip revealed that it hasn't been beer that's been fueling them all these years. It's weed, like they're a total weed band, and this record was the first one that reminded me of that. The rest of the records are sort of beer Okay okay, you know. Yeah, i've had 30 years to gestate on that, though, so bear that in mind. Now Pete has blood pouring out of his mouth right now. He's chewing his tongue off. You know He's dying to jump in here. What does he have to say about all this hullabaloo? 0:15:43 - Speaker 2Well, real quick. You mentioned that this was three out of five, and fully and completely was 4.5 out of five. Who's the company? 0:15:55 - Speaker 1I always use all music. I always use all music, all music, yeah. 0:15:59 - Speaker 2Yeah, they got their heads up their asses, because I don't even remotely see how this is less on the point scale than fully and completely, because I thought this record was fucking awesome. I agree that I felt the same way. That kind of Tim felt that it was a bit lengthy. I felt myself starting at a number of times and struggling a little bit to get through some ladder parts. There's certainly some areas where they could trim the fat, if you will. I'm not going to say which ones they are, but it was like for a band that's producing their first. It's their first go at producing a record themselves. It's kind of like it's just a little too much. It's like going out on a great first date, dinner's great, movie's great go back to the house. Sex is great. Oh, first date That your date's like hey, do you ever want to have kids? You know, it's like. It's like totally could've just done without saying that and the night would've been perfect. Like they just say that, they just ask that. Like on their way out It's like, oh, okay, doesn't mean you're not going to go out with them again, but it's, you know, i love it. I love it. 0:17:30 - Speaker 3I'll leave it there for now to let you say You know, i'll just quickly add on that very you know, very similar token that I had with it. I'm curious to hear the next albums And then to again look back at specific albums to see how I feel about them, because this is probably one. You know you are so excited. You know there's a trilogy of movies coming out on something that you love And you see the first one and you're like God, i hope the next two movies are just as good. Maybe the next one is pretty good or better, and you're like, oh shit, this is going to be great. You know, it's kind of I'm leaning towards that. I'm excited to revisit some of these to see how I feel in a couple of months. Hopefully I won't be like dude, i'm done you guys. No, that's not going to be the case. But yeah, i'm anxious to revisit the future for sure, because this is probably one of those albums. 0:18:30 - Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, i'll be interested to see that too. Maybe again we will have like a 10 year reunion. Pete mentioned that in the last episode. You know we should go back 10 years. Oh, we might. So who knows, maybe we will revisit this on whatever platform the kids are listening to in the future. I'm sure they'll be nuclear powered or something OK. So here's something new An intro song that doesn't just like open with a kick to your ass. It opens in a much different way. It still manages to kick your ass, but in a much different way. It doesn't have like a lick off the top like little bones or courage for human clenin, you know. It just doesn't have or blow a high dough. It doesn't have that same sort of whoop in the butt. It's a taste of like this is what you're going to get. I think You know it's a little bit of like setting the table. It's because you're listening to it and you're like whoa, this isn't the hip that I left behind a year and a half ago. 0:20:08 - Speaker 6Come on, just let's go. She kind of bit her left Geez, I don't know. But I can guarantee That we're now not gonna do. I'm told no proof That we're not gonna do. That's what I'm here for. I come from downtown. I'm already familiar. I'm with the low and weaks of our nation. That's what I'm here for. 0:21:46 - Speaker 7The secret rules of engagement are hard to endure. 0:21:57 - Speaker 6When the appearance of conflict again surrender means the appearance of force. Uncle, uncle, i can guarantee, i can guarantee There'll be no knock on the door. I can guarantee. I'm total proud. That's what I'm prepared for. Yeah, i've come from downtown. I'm ready for you. I'm ready to scale. And it's frustration. I'm ready to scale. And it's frustration. I'm ready to scale. And it's frustration. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 0:25:07 - Speaker 7No, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you, music lovers. On behalf of our crew the finest crew in the business, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Robbie Gordy, johnny Paul, mr Jim Bryson on Keys, us musicians and the crew and everybody here tonight, we want to thank you. Thank you, music lovers. Thank you and Merci beaucoup. Summer on. Summer on take care of each other, drive the speed limit, wear a life jacket. 0:26:24 - Speaker 2Summer on you mentioned setting the table and I agree. And it's saying that it's a different band. That's like the one of the first things that wrote down. I feel like to be honest with you. I like this song so much. I feel like kind of it's just stupid even talking about it like it's such an honestly, it's a fucking banger. And I think I had sent to you guys in the group text like the SNL performance of this song. Yeah, it's just, it's jaw-dropping. Yeah, it's. It's the line about just. I looked at the phrasing, i looked at the lyrics and the way he did he wrote the lyrics and it's just so cool. Sorry, i wish I could articulate it better, but the rules of engagement are hard to endorse. Yeah, like is this I read a little bit online that it was you know about like a man propositioning a prostitute or a young girl. But I'm also like, is this a song about war? is this like an anti-war line that he's throwing in there? is it a double and tongue girl? I don't know, but I don't know. I could say a million things about this song, but I'll hand it over to to mr Leiden. 0:27:54 - Speaker 3I'm. I'm pretty much in the same boat. I heard this song and I immediately thought this is a stellar hip song. I can't wait to hear the rest of the album. But instead of like really going to the rest of the album, i immediately found the first live version I could find on a Google search, because I thought this song is, is gotta be, you know, quintessential live hip song and that's that's kind of where I went and I ended up finding the, the Woodstock 99. If you guys haven't watched any of the documentary about Woodstock 99, please do. It was a just the demise of Western North America, usa culture right there. But anyways, this recording, this video recording of the band at Woodstock 99, is so good, like chills on my arms, like Goose Pimples, it was just fucking amazing. This, this song. You know, i was basically like okay, that's, that's my single. Should I listen to the rest of the album? I'm pretty happy right now didn't they do. 0:29:12 - Speaker 2What did they do? a 94 and a 99, or did they just do 99 just? 0:29:19 - Speaker 3I think the documentary it's a 99 one, where they set everything on fire and tore down all the stages and rated the food trucks and 99 all those things. And then, you know, with this song in particular, i was anxious to hear the band doing their own thing without, you know, managers or producers looming over them. And there were a couple different things I heard, which are even more so on certain songs. But the drums sounded a little different, a little bigger. Maybe the bass was a little bit more engaged with drumming. And there's there's been some times when the bass is kind of funky feeling, just like really in it there was some kind of I don't know, pete, you might know, but there was some echo, really echoey guitar effects. 0:30:12 - Speaker 2I got, i got that written which were pretty cool. 0:30:15 - Speaker 3Yeah, it was kind of the song just hit all the boxes had kind of this transcendental gonna take you on a journey. You know, i liked it so much I was like I don't even care what it's about, this is just a great listen yeah. 0:30:32 - Speaker 1Tim you talking about. You know the drums being bigger and you know the production just sounding. You know bigger and you know with with some of the guitar effects a lot of it has to do with. They went back to New Orleans but this time they went to that Daniel Inwas studio and the Kingsway studio, which is just a big old house and you know they would do stuff like bedsheets over the stairwells and you know, just like like home studio tricker, but on a bigger, bolder scale, because this house has so many nooks and crannies that you can get different sounds of the different spaces. And they took advantage of that, which is very different from the, the path they took on the record prior. 0:31:22 - Speaker 2Okay, daredevil so daredevil this, the skipping start that they did. Yeah, i feel like that was. So this was. What year was this? again? GD 94, 94. So I feel like I mean that was the height of like CDs like were where literally everybody had a CD player, wasn't like the early days. So I feel like maybe it was a. It was a joke to to make people think their CD was skipped, because if you ever bought a CD and you were unfortunate to buy a scratch CD that was brand new and it skipped, you were fucking pissed. Oh yeah, so that was cool, that was unique. This song certainly does sound way better in the car. I don't know if it's just specifically my car, because I have a pretty good sounds. 0:32:26 - Speaker 3It's the premium audio system. Is that what you guys kept saying? 0:32:30 - Speaker 6premium audio. 0:32:31 - Speaker 3I think we're at a point for an acronym for pass sound system everybody everybody listening. 0:32:37 - Speaker 1How about a? 0:32:38 - Speaker 3t-shirt yeah, if I get, if I get through this. 0:32:41 - Speaker 1Okay, these guys only a ride in Pete's car, the big that dooby or there should be a bingo card where the you know, every time you hear Pete say premium audio sound system, you tick the box, or and then there's of course the free square, and then, if you hear me say so, there's that geez, we're going to Malaga. 0:33:15 - Speaker 3There's this guy there with this premium audio system and he gives people rides. 0:33:22 - Speaker 2I'm just saying that because I'm due you're doing yeah, for sure $25 a song I'm good I think that'd be cool. I think a job this no, this song. Tim mentioned something about the, this bass. You were JD, you were talking about the, the studio and all the trickery. But yeah, this is the first one where I write down the like the guitar solos, for example. They seem way less defined on this record, and I don't mean it in a bad way, i mean it in a way that and then there was a really cool oscillation effect maybe a little more jam. 0:34:13 - Speaker 3I don't know if you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, i think the flavor is kind of gelled together more the oscillation effect. 0:34:24 - Speaker 2If you've ever heard the the song real emotional trash on the album, real emotional trash yeah, that Steve Malkomis song I know this came before that, but whatever he's using on that guitar solo is exactly the same effect they're using on their level because that oscillation of the guitar is just. It's so cool. I wish I was cool enough to know what it was to ever be able to use myself, because it's fucking rad. Anyway, i dug this song a lot. I really liked it. 0:34:59 - Speaker 1What do you think? what do you think they're damn? 0:35:03 - Speaker 3I did too. I think, yeah, i love the drummer just counting it off at the beginning. That that made it feel like maybe more home recording type scenario. This song, this song, like I was wishing I was in a bar, just like sitting at the bar pull-up and just I felt like I could be watching the band, you know. But it was like the barkeep and the kitchen people and I don't know. This, this one, this one kind of took me in a different direction than than many. After the one minute mark maybe this is kind of what you're talking about, pete like with the guitar and drums it gets kind of heavier or more layer layered. It felt like locomotive, like this train's just really going story wise, i mean, that's probably a podcast itself to talk about Annie Edison Taylor and going over the falls aspect of this one I love. The line in the real wonder of the world is that we don't jump to. Yes, you know, that's. That to me is like it delivers something inspiring. The song is like get out and get after it. Step out, you know, jump off that cliff, you have 50% chance of surviving if you survive. It's gonna be awesome and if you die, it'll be awesome. You know, this sounds really. It really is really cool. 0:36:40 - Speaker 1Where do we go next? we hit track three, and that's greasy jungle. Take it, tim greasy jungle. 0:36:48 - Speaker 3This one, the snares really snappy. I felt like this is where you're kind of hearing different recording, maybe aspects. When I say snappy snare, it's like tuned tighter. Maybe you know there's lots of film references here in this song which we've gotten before. There's congas, like. There's some hand drumming at some point in the song, i believe, which is. I was just like kind of tuned into the drums on this one. Obviously that's a background effect, but a new layer. There's a definitely a new crash cymbal, like there was some new drum gear right on this album. There's a new crash cymbal that's really bright. That's always kind of gets my attention. I didn't realize first few listens that it was like dirty streets, metropolis, correlation with greasy jungle. I didn't know what the heck it was about. You know I didn't for a song three. I always like hope that this is the one that's gonna get maybe somebody around the bases at bat. You know that they're gonna push, push it through and this one didn't do it as much for me. I was more kind of like okay, what's, what's next with. 0:38:21 - Speaker 1This one didn't grab me so much one of the cool little Gord Downey stories is the lyric that you're just talking about metropolis noir. It sounds so elegant and mysterious at the same time. But metropolis noir is a name he saw on a bag of coffee, it's. It's like French roasts, but in French it wasn't French roasts, it was a dark roast or something, or Italian roast. 0:39:00 - Speaker 3Dark roasts. Dark roasts, italian roasts. 0:39:02 - Speaker 1I forget which one it was, but it translated, because everything in Canada has to have a French label and a Canadian label. It translated to matropolis noir. So that's just one of those little things he stuck in his notebook. and then he's writing this greasy jungle, matropolis noir. And all of a sudden you've got this setting and then it takes you on that little story for funeral home sandwiches and coffee. Oh delicious Yeah. 0:39:33 - Speaker 3Yeah, i think that I also read that it maybe referenced a diner that he worked at that had the same name. Oh really, did you guys know that? Yeah, yeah, greasy jungle. Greasy jungle Sounds like a good diner though. 0:39:48 - Speaker 2Yeah, jd, you said French roasts, and it's funny because I always think I don't remember the name of the comedian, but in France they just call it roast, just like Tim and I's definition of Canadian bacon is actually just bacon for you right, JD, No I can't remember the comedian who did that bit, but, tim, i couldn't disagree with you more on this one. However, i will tell you. 0:40:25 - Speaker 1Tim, you're ignorant slut. 0:40:30 - Speaker 3Yes. 0:40:31 - Speaker 2I'm done. I sort of felt like that the first time I heard it And the more I. This was one where I kept digging Actually I didn't really have to do much work, but just the more I listened to it the more I was like okay, i get it. I get why this was a single. This is a banger on the phrasing on it. The vocal phrasing absolute A. Plus another great car song on the solos, super experimental, like again. It's cool, because it's not. Most of the guitar on this record is not like this. It's not a producer going. 0:41:11 - Speaker 1Okay, boys, let's lay down the solo. This is where we're going to put the solo here. Give me 32 bars, let's go. 0:41:18 - Speaker 232 bars, yeah, like it just it's so cool and it's not like that. And this song is the first although not as much, because there's another one we'll bring up and I'm sure you guys know which one it is But this is the first song where I really hear that the influence this band had on a Linus Morrisette. Oh wow, Oh yeah, There's another song on this record that we'll get to. That is clearly. It's clearly. She was sitting in her room listening to this record prior to recording Jagged Little Pill, like which I can't remember what year that came out. 0:42:04 - Speaker 1What year did that come out? It came out, i want to say the summer of 95 was when the was when she broke, when she exploded. 0:42:13 - Speaker 3Yeah, is she a fan? Is she a fan? 0:42:16 - Speaker 2She's a great musician and she's Canadian, so I would be hard pressed to think she's not. At least, i didn't mind. Oh yeah, she's Canadian. Yeah, you fuck her, stick together. So I saw her live in 2018 in LA and she just, i mean, fucking blew the roof off the place. Oh man, it was, it was, it was insane. 0:42:40 - Speaker 1Anyway, my wife had tickets to the 25th anniversary tour of Jagged Little Pill and it got canceled due to COVID. So, yeah, total drag. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, i'm, i'm on your side there, pete. As far as Greasy Jungle goes, next one is a cool thing that I don't know if this is something that pre-existed. You know, i don't know if somebody had taken a photograph and of a dog, you know, with its teeth bared, and wondered aloud if it had been yawning or snarling. Because, like, since that time, i've seen so many photos that I say that line in my head. You know, there's so many photos that they're captured and we feel something right away, but then you have to sort of open your mind and go well, wait a minute, maybe that feeling that I'm feeling isn't the right feeling. You know, it was just the way the photo was captured. It could have been yawning or snarling, and that sort of kicks us off. 0:44:08 - Speaker 5The cops go into the crowd under a glaring platter of light and the music's just so loud and the tourists take their t-shirts off and a bus load of kids and gifts to the finger Afternoon, when the sidewalk's hot and the shadows too chilly to linger. 0:44:50 - Speaker 6Both we're in the escuchians and at the bar, and people are helming Downtown. Never, ever been. 0:45:06 - Speaker 5Now just wait for me, I'm gonna resurface. 0:45:17 - Speaker 6I take a look at this photo girl. I don't know how clearly it's taken away. 0:45:28 - Speaker 5I'm gonna get out of here. I never saw it. The picture is never clear. 0:45:41 - Speaker 6I'm gonna make a decision. I mean an incarceration, i mean so much. One night in El Paso, the cops fall into the crowd Under a throbbing bladder of light And the music is just so loud And the tourists turn their TVs off. The box is apart with the sound of a linger Night time when the shadows come And you tilt to the tips of your fingers. But that's the way it goes in our region. I'm so strong, i'm making a chance Downtown, never ever been. Now just wait for you to resurface. Take a look at this photograph. How clearly it's taken away. He could have been the artist, not an artist. This picture is never clear. I'm so good at this photo, girl. How clearly it's taken away. I'm gonna get out of here. 0:47:48 - Speaker 5I'm in a slumber. The story is never clear. Walks right into a Mardi Gras parade. We're touring the south at the bottom of the beard. 0:48:28 - Speaker 2Yonnie and Snarling I first listened to. This record was my favorite song And that was, with my, everything I love about Grace too, it starts out very mad season. I don't know if you know that band. 0:48:52 - Speaker 1Yeah, that was the supergroup right. 0:48:54 - Speaker 2Yeah, that was the supergroup of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains And that record. When did that record come out? Did it come out in 1993? Maybe, so they were active in 1994 to 1996, So maybe it's the same time, I don't know. Anyway, it starts out like the first and it builds. I don't know. I just loved it. I could say so much about the instrumentation, But lyrically, I don't know if you've got a line on exactly what it's about JD, But there's some historical references in there And talking about El Paso, he brings up the Mexican US border there. I'm pretty sure that runs through the 100th Meridian, Oh wow now, i know that. I could be wrong, but it just kind of feels like it's going, like Cordoni's really going in. He's a big fan of these historical references. I don't know, i dug it. What's saying you, tim? 0:50:11 - Speaker 3I dug it. I think when I first heard it started up I was thinking Okay, here's the spooky, sinister Pipps song of the album Which we often get. You know, if any song that I hear I hear a reference about El Paso or the Rio Grande, it's usually something heavy. It's not about going tubing and fishing and having fun. So yeah, there's a line in there about the cops go into the crowd Throbbing bladder of light. You know, i'd love that phrase, throbbing bladder of light. The music is so loud nighttime when the shadows cough Like this. Lyrically, the song's loaded, it's just it's really really big. I just, you know, somebody beat up and throw it in the river. This is an early song there's a moody guitar ending, i think throughout the song. The bass to me I'm always kind of honing in. It's funny because Pete's on guitar and I'm on bass and drums, which is cool, but the bass is a little punchier, like it's tuned up or I don't know. This one had definitely some home, you know, if they recorded it in the house. I'm just gonna call it home production because it's basically what it was, even if it was like Super Pro Studio, like there's some little things in there that I heard for sure. It's an interesting song. It's pretty cool It was. It's kind of an early song to me. I stuck with it a few times. 0:51:58 - Speaker 1Cool. What's next? It's number five. We're at five. Fire in the hole. 0:52:07 - Speaker 3Yeah, let's fire. Fire in the hole is fucking cool. And I say that because I heard kind of this 90s grungy punk influence with this one, even though it's not like super fast or anything. But then when I started reading into it, you know, because I figured it had something to do with fascism and Nazis And I don't know. There's something you know angry here. There's some different ties to Sonic Youth's Youth, sonic Youth's Youth Against Fascism song. It's very I don't want to say very similar, but there's definitely some things shared. You know, that was a time for me. It was a time of really getting into, like crunchy guitars, a little bit more experimentation, faster rhythms. You know this song, for a hip song maybe, is like a little bit tougher. It's a little bit tougher. And I also just thought you know by its own name and chorus that this one is probably ruckus live. It's probably just fun and, you know, fist in the air. 0:53:30 - Speaker 2Yeah, i agree, i agree, this is a banger for sure. The guitar work on it I definitely. I mean it's weird, i don't know because I'm not the biggest Guns N' Roses fan, but you know, slash's Les Paul guitar tone is pretty distinct, you know, when you hear it, and the guitar tone on this song that he's playing some lines sounds, i mean, identical. It doesn't sound like Guns N' Roses, of course the song doesn't, but that guitar tone just was so reminiscent of that And it kind of made me think, okay, so they're like trying to, they're trying to shed some older skin from the previous records, but you know, it's sort of like you can take the. You know, take the what out of the what, but you can't take the what out of the what. They still got it in their roots. You know what I mean. 0:54:35 - Speaker 1Yeah. 0:54:38 - Speaker 2So that's definitely there. And then, yeah, this is one like the obviously Grace too. I mean that's sort of like the flagship of this record. But this is another song where you're like, okay, gord's found his voice. He's really, you know, If the band is his recliner, like whenever he gets up, you can see his ass imprint. It is always there. He's found his voice. The chair is sunk. It's sunk in. Does that make sense What I'm trying to say? Yeah, he's. Yeah, he's been in that chair so long now for a number of records that it's just comforts Like he's found it. 0:55:29 - Speaker 1He knows where he's at. He's in the groove. He's in the groove Like he's absolutely. And to me, guys, isn't this the heaviest that we've ever heard them. Or is there something on Foley that might be? No, i think you're right, i do. 0:55:46 - Speaker 3I think it's up there. I think it's up there. 0:55:48 - Speaker 1Yeah, because you were saying fast and I was thinking to my head, I was like yeah, it is fast. It's fast and heavy, Like this is a great song alive. 0:55:54 - Speaker 2This is like Foo Fighters, Fast Like I was like whoa. 0:55:59 - Speaker 1Yeah, because it's still, it's still. 0:56:05 - Speaker 3It's interesting. You went to guns and roses. I don't know why I didn't go there Like I. Just I didn't hear that reference, but I want to go back. 0:56:14 - Speaker 2Just the guitar, just the guitar time. 0:56:17 - Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:56:19 - Speaker 2For me oftentimes that doesn't mean something positive, Just yeah you know, outside of them anybody else I hear sounding like remotely like guns and roses. You just kind of go, eh you know. But I think it was just weird that Tom was there because coming up the hip I feel were such a that was. That was what most bands were sounding like back then. 0:56:49 - Speaker 3I don't know. Yeah, maybe 50 mission cap or something. Oh yeah, yeah, this one, you know. 0:56:56 - Speaker 1Yeah, you might be right, You might be and you might be so hard done by. 0:57:00 - Speaker 2So hard done by. To be honest with you, this is probably my least favorite of the of the record. Hey, we're in the break. Yeah, i just didn't. Yeah, i thought it was, i thought it was a cool chorus, but I just I kept thinking about, like, what would I say about the song? And it's just, you know, maybe in the 10 year reunion by then I'll have something. but this song, sorry, i wish I had I had more for it, but I really just don't. 0:57:42 - Speaker 3I'm with you a bit. I heard Allison Chains right away And I don't think it's like it's not like 100% Allison Chains. That's who I thought of And I'm starting to hear, you know, and occasional references to bands that we're doing well during this time And I'm not a big Allison Chains fan by any means, but it's. you know, there's still some lyric nuggets in here I love. you'll have to wait a minute. It's an en somatic Like. that to me is kind of a phrase of if you want, you know, beauty in life, it's not going to come to you right away. You got to, you got to deal. The ending is kind of rough. You know the yeah, i'm with you, pete. The ending is kind of rough. The snare is too snappy. The snare is like so snappy that it's like that's how you tune a snare for fucking punk rock songs with a high beat per minute. You know it just didn't. it just didn't. 0:58:45 - Speaker 1It's funny that you say that, because the original, like the demo version of this song is totally up tempo. Well so it's. It's a completely different song Me I. I think this is, i think it's fine, i think it's harkens back to like, like it could be on up to here, it could be on road apples. To me it's got that sleazy, not quite stone Z vibe. So I was really surprised to hear you say Alison chains, because I'm I'm going more of like the roots. You know, okay, that's, that's my vibe of John, but but that's, you know, this one, that's just how it was for sure. 0:59:30 - Speaker 3More filler had a rough ending and I was kind of glad it was like, okay, what's next? You want to? you want to add something, pete. 0:59:37 - Speaker 2Oh, all I was going to say was You know, that'd be cool if it was. I mean, maybe it is cool live. And I just just to comment that I always hate when you hear a band play a live version of a song and it's just fucking killer And that's the first way you hear it. And then you hear the studio version and it just absolutely blows. 0:59:59 - Speaker 3So yeah, i'm, i'm with you, I'm with you. Maybe this is that? 1:00:03 - Speaker 2But to answer your question, JD, what's next is not cool. I've actually heard JD sing this song. 1:00:12 - Speaker 1Oh, that's right, I did it. I did it for a, i did it for a hip podcast, like I do a pod list, just like I do for medium alchemists And I sang it. Is that that was right? Yeah, yeah. 1:00:27 - Speaker 3I dug it, I thought it. I thought it was what's, what's that pod JD had that he took off. It was like JD sings in the shower, Was it that one? 1:00:36 - Speaker 2That's what I wanted. Jd sings in the shower. There was a. There was a. There was a video version of the podcast too, but that was yeah that was that, the lovely fans. No, i remember hearing this and the first time you sent it to me I think I was already living in Malaga. But great tune, i, you know this, and JD, you, you, you explained to me what this song was about and I've since forgotten because my brain doesn't work anymore at my age, but I did get. I think the reason why we started talking about it in the first place was because we I mentioned to you the another great Canadian singer, gordon Lightfoot's Right, ricky Deven, if it's Gerald. And so you, you brought this song up and that's kind of how it came into my, my atmosphere, my airspace if you will. 1:01:44 - Speaker 1Well, those are forever linked for me, because the first time I saw this song played live Gordon, he introduced it live as a Canadian musician, would be complete without a song about a nautical disaster. 1:02:04 - Speaker 5This song is called nautical disaster. These are the Dh과a stations for brokers. 1:02:36 - Speaker 6NotOf cybersecurity. This is Darryl, i don't wanna sweat. Ha. What's wrong? What's going on? Can't tell yourself I'm a foreign team. He said hang on, just stop, shut your big mouth and gotta do what you feel is real. He got no peace and false gods Got no Sunni, my baby. She won't know me when I'm thinking about music. I'm a foreign team. Keep it going, man. 1:04:11 - Speaker 7Let's keep the wagon wheel going. Alright, i had this dream where I relished the fray And the screaming filled my head all day. I felt as though I'd been spinned here, Settled in into the pocket. 1:04:44 - Speaker 6In a lighthouse on some rocky socket Of the coast of France, dear One afternoon. Four thousand men died in the water Here And five hundred more repression, matthew, is parasite's life In your blood. Now I'm in a lifeboat Designed for ten. Ten on me. Anything that's systematic Would get you hated. It's not a deal, nor a test, Nor a love of something stated. The selection was quick, the crew was in order And those left in the water Got kicked off the padlock And we headed home. 1:06:24 - Speaker 7And in the dream and when the phone rings, we're doing alright. 1:06:30 - Speaker 6I set it out there Those days and nights, but only a fool would complain. Anyway, susan, if you'd like A conversation To say myself, in my memory Is those fingertips Scratching on my heart, and I'm in a lifeboat Designed for ten. Ten on me. 1:07:41 - Speaker 7Anything that's systematic Would get you hated. It's not a deal, nor a test, nor a love of something stated, no matter how hard it is. You see how hard it is, it's real hard. 1:08:27 - Speaker 5There's a lifeboat Hanging on a wire Sucking up to someone, just a stoke of fire. 1:08:35 - Speaker 7Picking up the highlights of the scenery, saw some little clouds. 1:08:50 - Speaker 5They looked a little like me. I had my hands in the river, my feet back up from banks, looked up to the Lord above, said he'd call me thanks. Some times I feel so good I've got to scream. Said 40 baby, i know exactly what you mean, he said. He said I swear to God. He said Now, now. 1:09:27 - Speaker 6Now, okay, my memory Was my dear watch's river that I nailed. If near or leave a sink in there, then I don't wanna swear Swag, swag, swag, swag. 1:10:42 - Speaker 1Swag, swag, and then they launch into New Orleans' sinking. Oh my gosh, and you're sorta like what? What's going on? And then, in the middle of New Orleans' sinking, is this brand new song, fully fleshed out, not a? 1:11:00 - Speaker 3good one. You know, i read about this And it's fucking holy crap. 1:11:07 - Speaker 1It is a tornado Like it is, so destructive. 1:11:14 - Speaker 3And you know, there's not many bands Who perform live that do Extremely intentional things like that For the audience. There's not many bands that do that Doing something like that, mixing in a new song in the middle of a song People know And then did they circle back? 1:11:31 - Speaker 1Yeah, They finished, then they finished all of these things. 1:11:34 - Speaker 3That's just insane to me. I just love, i just love, love, love that. I just love that. If any, if any songwriters are out there, do that for me. When I come here you live, mix me in a new one. It's a treat, right? Yeah, because it's the opposite of going to a show And hearing a band play Like their album. You know, i've walked out of shows Because it's just boring as fuck. You know, i'll say this about In 18. I believe it was built to spill. Oh my gosh, it was like I could have just put on One of their records and sat at home. So, yeah, to be able to split in another song And keep going and mix it up And do all these things that are so creative And have the confidence to do that, and phew. 1:12:30 - Speaker 2The only thing I'll say in defensive built to spill Is there's always. 1:12:34 - Speaker 3Oh, everybody defends. Built to spill. 1:12:36 - Speaker 2No, no, i'm only saying it live I've never seen them live. Only because they always have a new line up. It's only a singer They do. They do. So if I'm a guy sitting in And part of the band this time around, the only thing I know is the record, because that's probably how they play together, which that's uh. Yeah, my buddy's seen them live And he kind of had the same feeling as you did. 1:13:01 - Speaker 1Same feeling as you did, i'm just starting to get into built. 1:13:04 - Speaker 3Yeah, sorry, bds fans. There you have it. There's another fan that wants to punch me in the gut. Not a cool disaster, i think it's fucking cool. Like my sentiment right away was like Here's the epic storytelling TH song. Here The drums it was like beating. Like we're charging into war Lifeboat designed for ten and ten. Only You know. There's just all these Great metaphors in there for like I don't know. 1:13:34 - Speaker 1Oh, i love the line about getting The remaining people in the water Getting kicked off at Antler. Oh man, i don't know why. Yeah, and this song, there's no structure, there's no verse, there's no chorus, it's just literally Like you said, tim, it's like a story. 1:13:51 - Speaker 3Yeah yeah, i don't know who the Susan reference is. I didn't look too much into that part, like, towards the end there's something about Susan Which I don't know why. With this band, whenever they mention a woman I'm always like. 1:14:03 - Speaker 1She's Evelyn's sister. 1:14:04 - Speaker 3Because it's often something grim. But you know this song there's. There's lots of data in there. This could be a rabbit hole song. It wasn't so much for me, just because I thought it was awesome. 1:14:19 - Speaker 1You're right, it is awesome. It's fucking awesome. Maybe I'm out and we're actually more song for the band. Where do we go next? Um Thugs? 1:14:28 - Speaker 2This is gonna sound really strange, but first of all, i love the chorus on this song. That's fantastic. I really dug this song a lot. It's ironic that it's called thugs and the baseline is a slowed-down version of Grandmaster flashes a message yes or yes? 1:14:54 - Speaker 3Whoa, I didn't go that deep, but I knew it was something like I. I felt there was something go out on in this song And I didn't know what I was you know, i didn't know what it was, but Uh, you keep going it's a deep, deep. 1:15:09 - Speaker 2There's clearly a deep admiration for Grandmaster flash Going on here and The. this the we reference to JD. You mentioned that this is the song where, or this is the record where, you realized they're actually a wee band out of your band. 1:15:30 - Speaker 1Um, yeah, it sort of. It sort of happened at the same time to me as well, no, but you know, there's the reference about All roll or rolling. I'll do the details, you do the roll and I'll do the details. I'm sorry about that. That's all right. 1:15:48 - Speaker 2Yeah, that's, that's kind of where. That's kind of Where I thought on that, the Again the chorus awesome, uh, there's. He keeps doing this high, are you know? it doesn't a couple times and on the record but he does like a high-pitched whoo And this song, that's really cool. And The spacey reverb Guitar is just like. I couldn't think of the song that it reminded me of or the artist, but it's, there's so much reverb on this on that guitar, it's like It's insane. 1:16:26 - Speaker 1Love it, love love, love this one. Yes, it's, yeah, you can swim in it Well said. Yeah, yeah. Where are you on thugs? 1:16:34 - Speaker 3You know I I Felt it was a little bit filler. You know I I didn't get a whole lot from this one I when I Started looking into kind of the movie references or what they get up trying to figure out When I was trying to figure out. You know any details About this song that could make me get into it more? I read and I've read this before, the quote from gourd, that if that's what you think it's about, then that's what it's about Sure, which made me think for this song. Okay, if it's. You know if I think gourd would tell me hey man, if you, if you don't dig this song, then maybe you should try Inevitability of death. You know, if you want to get heavier, then go here. If you don't, you don't get heavy with thugs and let's give you a song about struggling with cancer, which is, i think, inevitability of death. You know, there's what I enjoyed about this song is they mix it up a little bit. You know there's a Chorus singing without drums. You know they're starting to do little creative things on this album That I think help make it stand out and keep my interests more. That's kind of what I, yeah, that's kind of what I've noticed. But then you know, i think everybody probably knows anybody, or sorry, anyone knows someone is diet of cancer and maybe that's what this is about about and living life. You know, trying to Do everything to your fullest. I'm not sure about this. The song was, it was a good jam, it was it was. 1:18:17 - Speaker 1You know what you're not. You're not Far off the track. I don't think, though, when, when you say that about cancer but that would be just so terribly ironic you know Writing a song about that and then succumbing to that illness. You know all those. 1:18:38 - Speaker 3Yeah, exactly. 1:18:40 - Speaker 1Because it came on suddenly. It wasn't something he battled with for very long. It came on suddenly and he was gone, wow, other than a other than a cross-canada tour. But well, you just think, puffy lips, glistening skin, yeah, everything comes rushing in. That could be like reference to, like the chemotherapy you know, like rushing into your body. You know We don't go to hell, just yeah. I love the. I also just love the word play. I thought you'd be the death of inevitability to death just a little bit. I thought you'd be the inevitability of death to death just a little bit like. I love how it's inverted Mm-hmm, very cool, very cool. 1:19:21 - Speaker 2And he makes it work it's crazy that you say like puffy lips and glistening skin. I'm thinking of a. I'm thinking of like Scarlett Johansson and in a bikini like that's who. I'm like. That's right where I went when I heard that. That's so. I'm not even joking. 1:19:43 - Speaker 1That's like what I thought say, could have been yonder somebody somebody just came from LA, i think. 1:19:51 - Speaker 2It's been any time with Scarlett, though The I dig this song It's. It's not one of my favorites, but this was the song that Clearly did the one I mentioned earlier that that Alanis drew a lot of The word play and the way he phrases it is It's. It's exactly what she does in the song. You ought to know like it's. It's 100%. You can't Can't deny it. I'm sure if you had a gun to read she'd say yes, of course It's worth it. She's got the inspiration on. I. 1:20:33 - Speaker 1Don't think it would go that far, just just for the record. No, yeah, if you were interviewing her you would probably, i probably, i probably just ask her. 1:20:39 - Speaker 2Yeah, she seems like a nice person. 1:20:43 - Speaker 3Let's, let's, let's have her guest on the next one. 1:20:45 - Speaker 1He's gonna you have. You have that up, jady Yeah. 1:20:47 - Speaker 3Yeah. 1:20:48 - Speaker 1Yeah, I like the bass that. 1:20:49 - Speaker 2I think the chords are a little bit more. I think the chords are a little bit monotonous. The line if you go to hell, i'll still remember you, that's just. That's a really fucking cool line. But The bass starts to shine at the end, which is cool because because the chords are so I guess I've been honest the bass really isn't doing much, but then it does something that that only Tim Hates is more than I do. It's just faith. 1:21:27 - Speaker 3You know, i will say some of the hip, some of the hips, fadeouts are better than others. Okay, they've had they've had some oh dare I tragic fadeouts oh. I use that because I hate fade out so much. 1:21:47 - Speaker 2Jady, can you, can you You edit this in? can you, can you do that? 1:21:55 - Speaker 3That's funny. You mentioned that cuz a couple weeks ago, jd. I said to JD you know, sometimes I just want to add in a sound effect, like You know, and he's like you do not do that on my podcast, i hate sound effects, because I'm even thinking. 1:22:14 - Speaker 1You know, when you were talking earlier, you were talking about The bass being slowed down from Grandmaster Flash, like, oh, i could intercut. I could intercut like the Grandmaster Flash song so people could hear it. 1:22:27 - Speaker 2But then it's like It's so noticeable man, i mean it's it's so noticeable. It's exact same bass line, but anyway. 1:22:37 - Speaker 1Next song, though. So then we slow it down with scared. 1:22:41 - Speaker 3This that's so scared for me is it's like a. I instantly went to. This song would be an amazing concert concert closer. You know it's. It comes on, you know the night's finishing, it might be the what else? songs. You close your eyes at some point and just listen and get in deep. You know it's, there's, it's layered and story from I don't know Russia and the Germans and Stalin and Trying to make culture and art disappeared and like housekeepers and all these different things. It's like it's. It's. It's a sad kind of beautiful song that It's a little bit of a usual makeup for them with this kind of section of the album, but I thought it was, you know, on that note, kind of dark and lovely overall. 1:23:37 - Speaker 1What do you think, sir? 1:23:39 - Speaker 2I wasn't. I thought this was kind of like just a token. If you will token slow tune like It didn't do it for me, like When it comes to like softer hip songs, like it didn't give me the same Warm, fuzzy feeling is like fiddler's green did. 1:24:02 - Speaker 1Sure, okay, yeah, i mean, fiddler's green is a knockout pie. It is, but my god scared. I love this song really good. 1:24:10 - Speaker 2Maybe it's just positioning on the record, i don't know. I've got a Spend some more time with it and in this was actually one song. There's a couple of tunes. I didn't Get to hear the car, yeah, towards the end, because my car rides weren't as long and they started the record. I would put the first song on when I got in the car, so if I wasn't driving for a long time, obviously the song story the other record didn't didn't didn't make it in the in the car, but there was something really weird on this song. There was a Spacey sort of keyboard sound that kept going off. You know I'm talking about. 1:24:54 - Speaker 3I know, now I don't really yeah, the only thing that certainly stood out to me was the use of acoustic guitars. There's, you know that's. That was a little unusual. I don't remember keyboards. 1:25:05 - Speaker 2There's some sort of keyboard effect going on in there. That is Like the only thing I can equate it to is like you know the. It's like an oscillated version of. You know the sound of the, the metal hitting the, the track on the song. It's a sound of the men working on the chain game. Yeah, it's like it. It's like an echoey, delayed, oscillated, real subtle Vert Sample of that or something, something similar to that, and it's done with the keyboards and said it's on the song 100%. 1:25:46 - Speaker 1Huh, i've got to listen with these headphones. 1:25:49 - Speaker 2But yeah it's. It was a cool song. I dug it and I kind of wish I had more of a feeling the way you guys do about it. But you know it's okay there just hope for you. 1:25:59 - Speaker 1There's hope for you, peter. From there we go to an inch an hour, and this song always impressed me, because the math works out an In an hour today the same way, an inch an hour to feed a day, to moan tonight in this most professional way. 1:26:57 - Speaker 5There's this fucking band. You gotta see they used to care about living shit. I see no profit in talk. No food in town, no rock and roll, no bestiality. 1:27:10 - Speaker 6Makes me feel the same way. An inch an hour to feed a day, to moan tonight with their little mouth to say But our health is best with the people in the space. No stuff of town, no feed you through, no salt on the tev. It works through Making lots and moogs. 1:27:49 - Speaker 5Tonight I'm gonna win and make this gift heart. I want you to see your breath in the spring side. Heart, coffee colors, ice and feeling. First part Sound. The rushing water in the dark Makes me feel the same way. 1:28:06 - Speaker 6An inch an hour to feed a day, to moan tonight with their little mouth to say But our health is best with the people in the space. I mean our health is best with the people in the space. You see, i don't know me. I don't know me at all, i don't know myself. 1:28:47 - Speaker 1I don't know myself. I don't know myself. What did you think of this? 1:29:06 - Speaker 2one. I love the. I don't know if I paid attention to it in the other records, or I'm just hearing this now, or this is the first time they're really doing it, but I feel like the guitar is falling the vocal line, or the vocal line is falling the guitar a little bit more, which is cool, like the melody of what Gord's singing. I thought it was a fucking banger. Again, this is another one where he's like yelping. I can only say yelping because he's not screaming but he's saying oh, oh, like really multiple times during the song. Anyway, i love it. I thought this song would probably be a really good opener. I don't know if they ever opened with it, but Definitely thought it would be a good opener. 1:30:07 - Speaker 3I think this one I was anticipating, without even knowing it, after listening to Scared. Scared was like this epic kind of novel, three-part novel to get through And when an inch and hour came on in the car, within seconds was turning it way up Like. This is one that I kind of needed. With the placement in the album, it truly so. I read that it's potentially, or possibly, if it's about a fan who wrote a fan letter to the band. Supposedly this guy claims to come home at the end of his night shift every day. He would go buy some beer and sit on the stoop of his apartment And just crank tragically hip and drink beers. And he was thumbing through one of their albums and saw an address to write letters into

The Move Forward Anyway Podcast
Fall in Love With the Grow Rather Than the Show

The Move Forward Anyway Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2023 41:43


“I think pastors have been removed from leadership development all the way up to ordination, and I think that grieves the heart of God,” shares Pastor Tim Ahlman with the Christ Greenfield church. Tim is a third generation pastor and leader with the Unite Leadership Collective. His dream is to unite congregations and work together to multiply disciples as a collective. Leadership development and discipleship are two sides of the same coin and without strong leaders, the church will not be able to spread the message of God to as many people.    Many pastors make the mistake of getting more caught up in the show and in being a big personality rather than actually growing the church. As a pastoral leader, you need to fall in love with development and bringing more people to Jesus' table. Without strong leadership, the collective will fall apart and the mission of spreading God's love to as many people as possible before Jesus returns will fail. Pastors may face internal and external resistance when presented with the idea of change, but it is important to push through that and recognize that fear and resistance as the voice of Satan. Ministry often feels isolating as pastors have been wrongly led to believe that it is wrong for them to have friends. However, no one can do everything alone, even Jesus had friends. Find people who can be your safety net and work together to reach your dreams.   If you feel the calling to pastoral leadership, do not let fear stop you from spreading the message of God's love. It takes time to build trust between congregations, but coming together allows for a greater multiplication of discipleship.    Quotes • “Discipleship is more caught than taught.” (5:52-5:54 | Tim) • “Everything rises and falls on leadership. And by the grace of God, I am in a very healthy circuit and a very healthy district.” (12:03-12:12 | Tim) • “It's a slow go in building trust between congregations. It does not happen overnight.” (16:45-16:49 | Tim)  • “This is not about me. This is about Him, and then it's about our work together.” (23:43-23:49 | Tim) • “My desire is not to win. My desire is simply to stay in the game and run with perseverance the race set out for me.” (24:47-24:55 | Tim) • “I see leadership development and discipleship as two sides of the same coin.” (30:36-30:41 | Tim)  • “I think pastors have been removed from leadership development all the way up to ordination, and I think that grieves the heart of God.” (35:49-34:56 | Tim) • “Fear is from Satan, and I'm not bringing shame here. It should have no place in the heart of the follower of Jesus.” (38:23-38:31 | Tim)   Links Get in touch with Tim Ahlman: Website: https://christgreenfield.church/ Email: tahlman@cglchurch.org Email: info@cglchurch.org Phone: 480.892.8521 Uniteleadership.org   Lead Time podcasts:    https://www.uniteleadership.org/lead-time-podcast   American Reformation podcasts:  https://https://american reformation.buzzsprout.com   United Leadership Collective: https://www.uniteleadership.org/   Christ Greenfield Church:   https://christgreenfield.church/ Get in touch with host Jeff Meyer: www.jeffmeyercoaching.com Book a FREE 30-Minute Dream Discovery Call with Jeff: https://calendly.com/d/dk6-mzr-dsq Schedule a Discovery Call with Jeff: https://go.oncehub.com/DreamAcceleratorDiscoveryCall   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Screaming in the Cloud
Exposing Vulnerabilities in the World of Cloud Security with Tim Gonda

Screaming in the Cloud

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2023 33:23


About TimTim Gonda is a Cloud Security professional who has spent the last eight years securing and building Cloud workloads for commercial, non-profit, government, and national defense organizations. Tim currently serves as the Technical Director of Cloud at Praetorian, influencing the direction of its offensive-security-focused Cloud Security practice and the Cloud features of Praetorian's flagship product, Chariot. He considers himself lucky to have the privilege of working with the talented cyber operators at Praetorian and considers it the highlight of his career.Tim is highly passionate about helping organizations fix Cloud Security problems, as they are found, the first time, and most importantly, the People/Process/Technology challenges that cause them in the first place. In his spare time, he embarks on adventures with his wife and ensures that their two feline bundles of joy have the best playtime and dining experiences possible.Links Referenced: Praetorian: https://www.praetorian.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timgondajr/ Praetorian Blog: https://www.praetorian.com/blog/ 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 Thinkst Canary. Most Companies find out way too late that they've been breached. Thinkst Canary changes this. Deploy Canaries and Canarytokens in minutes and then forget about them. Attackers tip their hand by touching 'em giving you the one alert, when it matters. With 0 admin overhead and almost no false-positives, Canaries are deployed (and loved) on all 7 continents. Check out what people are saying at canary.love today!Corey: Kentik provides Cloud and NetOps teams with complete visibility into hybrid and multi-cloud networks. Ensure an amazing customer experience, reduce cloud and network costs, and optimize performance at scale — from internet to data center to container to cloud. Learn how you can get control of complex cloud networks at www.kentik.com, and see why companies like Zoom, Twitch, New Relic, Box, Ebay, Viasat, GoDaddy, booking.com, and many, many more choose Kentik as their network observability platform. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Every once in a while, I like to branch out into new and exciting territory that I've never visited before. But today, no, I'd much rather go back to complaining about cloud security, something that I tend to do an awful lot about. Here to do it with me is Tim Gonda, Technical Director of Cloud at Praetorian. Tim, thank you for joining me on this sojourn down what feels like an increasingly well-worn path.Tim: Thank you, Corey, for having me today.Corey: So, you are the Technical Director of Cloud, which I'm sort of short-handing to okay, everything that happens on the computer is henceforth going to be your fault. How accurate is that in the grand scheme of things?Tim: It's not too far off. But we like to call it Praetorian for nebula. The nebula meaning that it's Schrödinger's problem: it both is and is not the problem. Here's why. We have a couple key focuses at Praetorian, some of them focusing on more traditional pen testing, where we're looking at hardware, hit System A, hit System B, branch out, get to goal.On the other side, we have hitting web applications and [unintelligible 00:01:40]. This insecure app leads to this XYZ vulnerability, or this medical appliance is insecure and therefore we're able to do XYZ item. One of the things that frequently comes up is that more and more organizations are no longer putting their applications or infrastructure on-prem anymore, so therefore, some part of the assessment ends up being in the cloud. And that is the unique rub that I'm in. And that I'm responsible for leading the direction of the cloud security focus group, who may not dive into a specific specialty that some of these other teams might dig into, but may have similar responsibilities or similar engagement style.And in this case, if we discover something in the cloud as an issue, or even in your own organization where you have a cloud security team, you'll have a web application security team, you'll have your core information security team that defends your environment in many different methods, many different means, you'll frequently find that the cloud security team is the hot button for hey, the server was misconfigured at one certain level, however the cloud security team didn't quite know that this web application was vulnerable. We did know that it was exposed to the internet but we can't necessarily turn off all web applications from the internet because that would no longer serve the purpose of a web application. And we also may not know that a particular underlying host's patch is out of date. Because technically, that would be siloed off into another problem.So, what ends up happening is that on almost every single incident that involves a cloud infrastructure item, you might find that cloud security will be right there alongside the incident responders. And yep, this [unintelligible 00:03:20] is here, it's exposed to the internet via here, and it might have the following application on it. And they get cross-exposure with other teams that say, “Hey, your web application is vulnerable. We didn't quite inform the cloud security team about it, otherwise this wouldn't be allowed to go to the public internet,” or on the infrastructure side, “Yeah, we didn't know that there was a patch underneath it, we figured that we would let the team handle it at a later date, and therefore this is also vulnerable.” And what ends up happening sometimes, is that the cloud security team might be the onus or might be the hot button in the room of saying, “Hey, it's broken. This is now your problem. Please fix it with changing cloud configurations or directing a team to make this change on our behalf.”So, in essence, sometimes cloud becomes—it both is and is not your problem when a system is either vulnerable or exposed or at some point, worst case scenario, ends up being breached and you're performing incident response. That's one of the cases why it's important to know—or important to involve others in the cloud security problem, or to be very specific about what the role of a cloud security team is, or where cloud security has to have certain boundaries or has to involve certain extra parties have to be involved in the process. Or when it does its own threat modeling process, say that, okay, we have to take a look at certain cloud findings or findings that's within our security realm and say that these misconfigurations or these items, we have to treat the underlying components as if they are vulnerable, whether or not they are and we have to report on them as if they are vulnerable, even if it means that a certain component of the infrastructure has to already be assumed to either have a vulnerability, have some sort of misconfiguration that allows an outside attacker to execute attacks against whatever the [unintelligible 00:05:06] is. And we have to treat and respond our security posture accordingly.Corey: One of the problems that I keep running into, and I swear it's not intentional, but people would be forgiven for understanding or believing otherwise, is that I will periodically inadvertently point out security problems via Twitter. And that was never my intention because, “Huh, that's funny, this thing isn't working the way that I would expect that it would,” or, “I'm seeing something weird in the logs in my test account. What is that?” And, “Oh, you found a security vulnerability or something akin to one in our environment. Oops. Next time, just reach out to us directly at the security contact form.” That's great. If I'd known I was stumbling blindly into a security approach, but it feels like the discovery of these things is not heralded by an, “Aha, I found it.” But, “Huh, that's funny.”Tim: Of course. Absolutely. And that's where some of the best vulnerabilities come where you accidentally stumble on something that says, “Wait, does this work how—what I think it is?” Click click. Like, “Oh, boy, it does.”Now, I will admit that certain cloud providers are really great about with proactive security reach outs. If you either just file a ticket or file some other form of notification, just even flag your account rep and say, “Hey, when I was working on this particular cloud environment, the following occurred. Does this work the way I think it is? Is this is a problem?” And they usually get back to you with reporting it to their internal team, so on and so forth. But let's say applications are open-source frameworks or even just organizations at large where you might have stumbled upon something, the best thing to do was either look up, do they have a public bug bounty program, do they have a security contact or form reach out that you can email them, or do you know, someone that the organization that you just send a quick email saying, “Hey, I found this.”And through some combination of those is usually the best way to go. And to be able to provide context of the organization being, “Hey, the following exists.” And the most important things to consider when you're sending this sort of information is that they get these sorts of emails almost daily.Corey: One of my favorite genre of tweet is when Tavis Ormandy and Google's Project Zero winds up doing a tweet like, “Hey, do I know anyone over at the security apparatus at insert company here?” It's like, “All right. I'm sure people are shorting stocks now [laugh], based upon whatever he winds up doing that.”Tim: Of course.Corey: It's kind of fun to watch. But there's no cohesive way of getting in touch with companies on these things because as soon as you'd have something like that, it feels like it's subject to abuse, where Comcast hasn't fixed my internet for three days, now I'm going to email their security contact, instead of going through the normal preferred process of wait in the customer queue so they can ignore you.Tim: Of course. And that's something else you want to consider. If you broadcast that a security vulnerability exists without letting the entity or company know, you're also almost causing a green light, where other security researchers are going to go dive in on this and see, like, one, does this work how you described. But that actually is a positive thing at some point, where either you're unable to get the company's attention, or maybe it's an open-source organization, or maybe you're not being fully sure that something is the case. However, when you do submit something to the customer and you want it to take it seriously, here's a couple of key things that you should consider.One, provide evidence that whatever you're talking about has actually occurred, two, provide repeatable steps that the layman's term, even IT support person can attempt to follow in your process, that they can repeat the same vulnerability or repeat the same security condition, and three, most importantly, detail why this matters. Is this something where I can adjust a user's password? Is this something where I can extract data? Is this something where I'm able to extract content from your website I otherwise shouldn't be able to? And that's important for the following reason.You need to inform the business what is the financial value of why leaving this unpatched becomes an issue for them. And if you do that, that's how those security vulnerabilities get prioritized. It's not necessarily because the coolest vulnerability exists, it's because it costs the company money, and therefore the security team is going to immediately jump on it and try to contain it before it costs them any more.Corey: One of my least favorite genres of security report are the ones that I get where I found a vulnerability. It's like, that's interesting. I wasn't aware that I read any public-facing services, but all right, I'm game; what have you got? And it's usually something along the lines of, “You haven't enabled SPF to hard fail an email that doesn't wind up originating explicitly from this list of IP addresses. Bug bounty, please.” And it's, “No genius. That is very much an intentional choice. Thank you for playing.”It comes down to also an idea of whenever I have reported security vulnerabilities in the past, the pattern I always take is, “I'm seeing something that I don't fully understand. I suspect this might have security implications, but I'm also more than willing to be proven wrong.” Because showing up with, “You folks are idiots and have a security problem,” is a terrific invitation to be proven wrong and look like an idiot. Because the first time you get that wrong, no one will take you seriously again.Tim: Of course. And as you'll find that most bug bounty programs are, if you participate in those, the first couple that you might have submitted, the customer might even tell you, “Yeah, we're aware that that vulnerability exists, however, we don't view it as a core issue and it cannot affect the functionality of our site in any meaningful way, therefore we're electing to ignore it.” Fair.Corey: Very fair. But then when people write up about those things, well, they've they decided this is not an issue, so I'm going to do a write-up on it. Like, “You can't do that. The NDA doesn't let you expose that.” “Really? Because you just said it's a non-issue. Which is it?”Tim: And the key to that, I guess, would also be that is there an underlying technology that doesn't necessarily have to be attributed to said organization? Can you also say that, if I provide a write-up or if I put up my own personal blog post—let's say, we go back to some of the OpenSSL vulnerabilities including OpenSSL 3.0, that came out not too long ago, but since that's an open-source project, it's fair game—let's just say that if there was a technology such as that, or maybe there's a wrapper around it that another organization could be using or could be implementing a certain way, you don't necessarily have to call the company up by name, or rather just say, here's the core technology reason, and here's the core technology risk, and here's the way I've demoed exploiting this. And if you publish an open-source blog like that and then you tweet about that, you can actually gain security support around such issue and then fight for the research.An example would be that I know a couple of pen testers who have reported things in the past, and while the first time they reported it, the company was like, “Yeah, we'll fix it eventually.” But later, when another researcher report this exact same finding, the company is like, “We should probably take this seriously and jump on it.” It sometimes it's just getting in front of that and providing frequency or providing enough people around to say that, “Hey, this really is an issue in the security community and we should probably fix this item,” and keep pushing others organizations on it. A lot of times, they just need additional feedback. Because as you said, somebody runs an automated scanner against your email and says that, “Oh, you're not checking SPF as strictly as the scanner would have liked because it's a benchmarking tool.” It's not necessarily a security vulnerability rather than it's just how you've chosen to configure something and if it works for you, it works for you.Corey: How does cloud change this? Because a lot of what we talked about so far could apply to anything. Go back in time to 1995 and a lot of what we're talking about mostly holds true. It feels like cloud acts as a significant level of complexity on top of all of this. How do you view the differentiation there?Tim: So, I think it differentiated two things. One, certain services or certain vulnerability classes that are handled by the shared service model—for the most part—are probably secure better than you might be able to do yourself. Just because there's a lot of research, the team is [experimented 00:13:03] a lot of time on this. An example of if there's a particular, like, spoofing or network interception vulnerability that you might see on a local LAN network, you probably are not going to have the same level access to be able to execute that on a virtual private cloud or VNet, or some other virtual network within cloud environment. Now, something that does change with the paradigm of cloud is the fact that if you accidentally publicly expose something or something that you've created expo—or don't set a setting to be private or only specific to your resources, there is a couple of things that could happen. The vulnerabilities exploitability based on where increases to something that used to be just, “Hey, I left a port open on my own network. Somebody from HR or somebody from it could possibly interact with it.”However, in the cloud, you've now set this up to the entire world with people that might have resources or motivations to go after this product, and using services like Shodan—which are continually mapping the internet for open resources—and they can quickly grab that, say, “Okay, I'm going to attack these targets today,” might continue to poke a little bit further, maybe an internal person that might be bored at work or a pen tester just on one specific engagement. Especially in the case of let's say, what you're working on has sparked the interest of a nation-state and they want to dig into a little bit further, they have the resources to be able to dedicate time, people, and maybe tools and tactics against whatever this vulnerability that you've given previously the example of—maybe there's a specific ID and a URL that just needs to be guessed right to give them access to something—they might spend the time trying to brute force that URL, brute force that value, and eventually try to go after what you have.The main paradigm shift here is that there are certain things that we might consider less of a priority because the cloud has already taken care of them with the shared service model, and rightfully so, and there's other times that we have to take heightened awareness on is, one, we either dispose something to the entire internet or all cloud accounts within creations. And that's actually something that we see commonly. In fact, one thing I would like to say we see very common is, all AWS users, regardless if it's in your account or somewhere else, might have access to your SNS topic or SQS Queue. Which doesn't seem like that big of vulnerability, but I changed the messages, I delete messages, I viewed your messages, but rather what's connected to those? Let's talk database Lambda functions where I've got source code that a developer has written to handle that source code and may not have built in logic to handle—maybe there was a piece of code that could be abused as part of this message that might allow an attacker to send something to your Lambda function and then execute something on that attacker's behalf.You weren't aware of it, you weren't thinking about it, and now you've exposed it to almost the entire internet. And since anyone can go sign up for an AWS account—or Azure or GCP account—and then they're able to start poking at that same piece of code that you might have developed thinking, “Well, this is just for internal use. It's not a big deal. That one static code analysis tool isn't probably too relevant.” Now, it becomes hyper-relevant and something you have to consider with a little more attention and dedicated time to making sure that these things that you've written or deploying, are in fact, safe because misconfigured or mis-exposed, and suddenly the entire world is starts knocking at it, and increases the risk of, it may really well be a problem. The severity of that issue could increase dramatically.Corey: As you take a look across, let's call it the hyperscale clouds, the big three—which presumably I don't need to define out—how do you wind up ranking them in terms of security from top to bottom? I have my own rankings that I like to dole out and basically, this is the, let's offend someone at every one of these companies, no matter how we wind up playing it. Because I will argue with you just on principle on them. How do you view them stacking up against each other?Tim: So, an interesting view on that is based on who's been around longest and who is encountered of the most technical debt. A lot of these security vulnerabilities or security concerns may have had to deal with a decision made long ago that might have made sense at the time and now the company has kind of stuck with that particular technology or decision or framework, and are now having to build or apply security Band-Aids to that process until it gets resolved. I would say, ironically, AWS is actually at the top of having that technical debt, and actually has so many different types of access policies that are very complex to configure and not very user intuitive unless you speak intuitively JSON or YAML or some other markdown language, to be able to tell you whether or not something was actually set up correctly. Now, there are a lot of security experts who make their money based on knowing how to configure or be able to assess whether or not these are actually the issue. I would actually bring them as, by default, by design, between the big three, they're actually on the lower end of certain—based on complexity and easy-to-configure-wise.The next one that would also go into that pile, I would say is probably Microsoft Azure, who [sigh] admittedly, decided to say that, “Okay, let's take something that was very complicated and everyone really loved to use as an identity provider, Active Directory, and try to use that as a model for.” Even though they made it extensively different. It is not the same as on-prem directory, but use that as the framework for how people wanted to configure their identity provider for a new cloud provider. The one that actually I would say, comes out on top, just based on use and based on complexity might be Google Cloud. They came to a lot of these security features first.They're acquiring new companies on a regular basis with the acquisition of Mandiant, the creation of their own security tooling, their own unique security approaches. In fact, they probably wrote the book on Kubernetes Security. Would be on top, I guess, from usability, such as saying that I don't want to have to manage all these different types of policies. Here are some buttons I would like to flip and I'd like my resources, for the most part by default, to be configured correctly. And Google does a pretty good job of that.Also, one of the things they do really well is entity-based role assumption, which inside of AWS, you can provide access keys by default or I have to provide a role ID after—or in Azure, I'm going to say, “Here's a [unintelligible 00:19:34] policy for something specific that I want to grant access to a specific resource.” Google does a pretty good job of saying that okay, everything is treated as an email address. This email address can be associated in a couple of different ways. It can be given the following permissions, it can have access to the following things, but for example, if I want to remove access to something, I just take that email address off of whatever access policy I had somewhere, and then it's taken care of. But they do have some other items such as their design of least privilege is something to be expected when you consider their hierarchy.I'm not going to say that they're not without fault in that area—in case—until they had something more recently, as far as finding certain key pieces of, like say, tags or something within a specific sub-project or in our hierarchy, there were cases where you might have granted access at a higher level and that same level of access came all the way down. And where at least privilege is required to be enforced, otherwise, you break their security model. So, I like them for how simple it is to set up security at times, however, they've also made it unnecessarily complex at other times so they don't have the flexibility that the other cloud service providers have. On the flip side of that, the level of flexibility also leads to complexity at times, which I also view as a problem where customers think they've done something correctly based on their best knowledge, the best of documentation, the best and Medium articles they've been researching, and what they have done is they've inadvertently made assumptions that led to core anti-patterns, like, [unintelligible 00:21:06] what they've deployed.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Uptycs, because they believe that many of you are looking to bolster your security posture with CNAPP and XDR solutions. They offer both cloud and endpoint security in a single UI and data model. Listeners can get Uptycs for up to 1,000 assets through the end of 2023 (that is next year) for $1. But this offer is only available for a limited time on UptycsSecretMenu.com. That's U-P-T-Y-C-S Secret Menu dot com.Corey: I think you're onto something here, specifically in—well, when I've been asked historically and personally to rank security, I have viewed Google Cloud as number one, and AWS is number two. And my reasoning behind that has been from an absolute security of their platform and a pure, let's call it math perspective, it really comes down to which of the two of them had what for breakfast on any given day there, they're so close on there. But in a project that I spin up in Google Cloud, everything inside of it can talk to each other by default and I can scope that down relatively easily, whereas over an AWS land, by default, nothing can talk to anything. And that means that every permission needs to be explicitly granted, which in an absolutist sense and in a vacuum, yeah, that makes sense, but here in reality, people don't do that. We've seen a number of AWS blog posts over the last 15 years—they don't do this anymore—but it started off with, “Oh, yeah, we're just going to grant [* on * 00:22:04] for the purposes of this demo.”“Well, that's horrible. Why would you do that?” “Well, if we wanted to specify the IAM policy, it would take up the first third of the blog post.” How about that? Because customers go through that exact same thing. I'm trying to build something and ship.I mean, the biggest lie in any environment or any codebase ever, is the comment that starts with, “To do.” Yeah, that is load-bearing. You will retire with that to do still exactly where it is. You have to make doing things the right way at least the least frictionful path because no one is ever going to come back and fix this after the fact. It's never going to happen, as much as we wish that it did.Tim: At least until after the week of the breach when it was highlighted by the security team to say that, “Hey, this was the core issue.” Then it will be fixed in short order. Usually. Or a Band-Aid is applied to say that this can no longer be exploited in this specific way again.Corey: My personal favorite thing that, like, I wouldn't say it's a lie. But the favorite thing that I see in all of these announcements right after the, “Your security is very important to us,” right after it very clearly has not been sufficiently important to them, and they say, “We show no signs of this data being accessed.” Well, that can mean a couple different things. It can mean, “We have looked through the audit logs for a service going back to its launch and have verified that nothing has ever done this except the security researcher who found it.” Great. Or it can mean, “What even are logs, exactly? We're just going to close our eyes and assume things are great.” No, no.Tim: So, one thing to consider there is in that communication, that entire communication has probably been vetted by the legal department to make sure that the company is not opening itself up for liability. I can say from personal experience, when that usually has occurred, unless it can be proven that breach was attributable to your user specifically, the default response is, “We have determined that the security response of XYZ item or XYZ organization has determined that your data was not at risk at any point during this incident.” Which might be true—and we're quoting Star Wars on this one—from a certain point of view. And unfortunately, in the case of a post-breach, their security, at least from a regulation standpoint where they might be facing a really large fine, is absolutely probably their top priority at this very moment, but has not come to surface because, for most organizations, until this becomes something that is a financial reason to where they have to act, where their reputation is on the line, they're not necessarily incentivized to fix it. They're incentivized to push more products, push more features, keep the clients happy.And a lot of the time going back and saying, “Hey, we have this piece of technical debt,” it doesn't really excite our user base or doesn't really help us gain a competitive edge in the market is considered an afterthought until the crisis occurs and the information security team rejoices because this is the time they actually get to see their stuff fixed, even though it might be a super painful time for them in the short run because they get to see these things fixed, they get to see it put to bed. And if there's ever a happy medium, where, hey, maybe there was a legacy feature that wasn't being very well taken care of, or maybe this feature was also causing the security team a lot of pain, we get to see both that feature, that item, that service, get better, as well as security teams not have to be woken up on a regular basis because XYZ incident happened, XYZ item keeps coming up in a vulnerability scan. If it finally is put to bed, we consider that a win for all. And one thing to consider in security as well as kind of, like, we talk about the relationship between the developers and security and/or product managers and security is if we can make it a win, win, win situation for all, that's the happy path that we really want to be getting to. If there's a way that we can make sure that experience is better for customers, the security team doesn't have to be broken up on a regular basis because an incident happened, and the developers receive less friction when they want to go implement something, you find that that secure feature, function, whatever tends to be the happy path forward and the path of least resistance for everyone around it. And those are sometimes the happiest stories that can come out of some of these incidents.Corey: It's weird to think of there being any happy stories coming out of these things, but it's definitely one of those areas that there are learnings there to be had if we're willing to examine them. The biggest problem I see so often is that so many companies just try and hide these things. They give the minimum possible amount of information so the rest of us can't learn by it. Honestly, some of the moments where I've gained the most respect for the technical prowess of some of these cloud providers has been after there's been a security issue and they have disclosed either their response or why it was a non-issue because they took a defense-in-depth approach. It's really one of those transformative moments that I think is an opportunity if companies are bold enough to chase them down.Tim: Absolutely. And in a similar vein, when we think of certain cloud providers outages and we're exposed, like, the major core flaw of their design, and if it kept happening—and again, these outages could be similar and analogous to an incident or a security flaw, meaning that it affected us. It was something that actually happened. In the case of let's say, the S3 outage of, I don't know, it was like 2017, 2018, where it turns out that there was a core DNS system that inside of us-east-1, which is actually very close to where I live, apparently was the core crux of, for whatever reason, the system malfunctioned and caused a major outage. Outside of that, in this specific example, they had to look at ways of how do we not have a single point of failure, even if it is a very robust system, to make sure this doesn't happen again.And there was a lot of learnings to be had, a lot of in-depth investigation that happened, probably a lot of development, a lot of research, and sometimes on the outside of an incident, you really get to understand why a system was built a certain way or why a condition exists in the first place. And it sometimes can be fascinating to kind of dig into that very deeper and really understand what the core problem is. And now that we know what's an issue, we can actually really work to address it. And sometimes that's actually one of the best parts about working at Praetorian in some cases is that a lot of the items we find, we get to find them early before it becomes one of these issues, but the most important thing is we get to learn so much about, like, why a particular issue is such a big problem. And you have to really solve the core business problem, or maybe even help inform, “Hey, this is an issue for it like this.”However, this isn't necessarily all bad in that if you make these adjustments of these items, you get to retain this really cool feature, this really cool thing that you built, but also, you have to say like, here's some extra, added benefits to the customers that you weren't really there. And—such as the old adage of, “It's not a bug, it's a feature,” sometimes it's exactly what you pointed out. It's not necessarily all bad in an incident. It's also a learning experience.Corey: Ideally, we can all learn from these things. I want to thank you for being so generous with your time and talking about how you view this increasingly complicated emerging space. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Tim: You can find me on LinkedIn which will be included in this podcast description. You can also go look at articles that the team is putting together at praetorian.com. Unfortunately, I'm not very big on Twitter.Corey: Oh, well, you must be so happy. My God, what a better decision you're making than the rest of us.Tim: Well, I like to, like, run a little bit under the radar, except on opportunities like this where I can talk about something I'm truly passionate about. But I try not to pollute the airwaves too much, but LinkedIn is a great place to find me. Praetorian blog for stuff the team is building. And if anyone wants to reach out, feel free to hit the contact page up in praetorian.com. That's one of the best places to get my attention.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:30:19]. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Tim Gonda, Technical Director of Cloud at Praetorian. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment talking about how no one disagrees with you based upon a careful examination of your logs.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.

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan
The secret of getting cheap veggies from expensive technology

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2022 29:49


The way we get our food is changing. Many are discussing how to make modern farming more sustainable, but this startup working to end it entirely. Ikuo Hiraishi is a serial entrepreneur and the Japan head of Infarm Japan, an urban-farming startup growing food at supermarkets. In fact, as Ikuo explains, a lot more of your food is grown indoors than you probably imagine. The future of food will look nothing like its past. t's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes What is Urban framing, and why do it? Why Japanese consumer's first resisted urban farming The true value proposition for the supermarkets. The biggest costs in indoor farming are not what you think. Why, after 40-years. urban farming is finally taking off in Japan The two challenges to scaling indoor agriculture Three reasons Japan might be the perfect market for urban farming and one reason it may not be Why it's better to grow cheep veggies with expensive tech Is it better to be a founder or a VC? Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Infarm METI visiting the Infarm Growing Center in Berlin Follow Ikuo on Twitter @ikuoch Friend him on Facebook Check out Ikuo's article about the Japan startup & VC landscape More about Ikuo Ikuo's consulting company Dreamvision and blog He's also a Professor at Entrepreneurship Department, Musashino University ... and an AsiaBerlin ambassador Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Food is complicated. That's why successful food related startups are so rare and so important when we do find them. Today, we sit down with an old friend after almost eight years. Ikuo Hiraishi is running Infarm Japan, an urban farming startup that is actually growing vegetables in supermarkets. Now, indoor farming or hydroponics has been fairly common since the 1980s, but the combination of rising global cost of food and the plummeting cost of technology and some innovative machine learning has resulted in urban farming not only becoming commercially viable today, but providing a very interesting value proposition for the supermarkets. And a pretty interesting value proposition for you and me as well.  We talk about the future of food, why you need expensive technology to grow cheap vegetables, and whether it's better to be a founder or VC in today's world. But, you know, Ikuo tells that story much better than I can. So, let's get right to the interview. Interview Ikuo: Cheers. Very nice to see you. Tim: I'm sitting here with Ikuo Hiraishi, a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and new urban farmer. Ikuo: Thank you. Tim: So, thanks for sitting down with us. Ikuo: It's honor to be back here, to have a chat with you. Tim: It's been a while. It's been around eight years. Ikuo: Yes. I was kind of like test interviewee of Disrupting Japan. That was eight years ago. Tim: I think you were episode number four. Ikuo: Yes. A very early episode.  Tim: Very early. And we're closing in on episode 200 now.  Ikuo: Oh, cool. Congrats. Tim: But yeah, we're here to talk about urban farming. So, just so I can make sure I understand it correctly. So, the types of farming we have, like rural farming, which is just vegetables out in the field, like just farming. Ikuo: Yes. Soiled based farming. Tim: And then we have indoor farming, which is like plants and warehouses and things that are usually in the suburbs or in the outskirts of cities. And then we have what you and Infarm are doing, which is urban farming, where the veggies are grown like in the supermarkets themselves. So, what's the big advantage of urban farming overall, the other types of farming? Ikuo: So, of course there are lots of advantages, but so we can minimize the food mileage meaning delivery distance. So,

Screaming in the Cloud
Empathy Driven Management and Engagement with Tim Banks

Screaming in the Cloud

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2022 36:25


About TimTim's tech career spans over 20 years through various sectors. Tim's initial journey into tech started as a US Marine. Later, he left government contracting for the private sector, working both in large corporate environments and in small startups. While working in the private sector, he honed his skills in systems administration and operations for large Unix-based datastores.Today, Tim leverages his years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with clients in his current role. Tim is also a father of five children, as well as a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. Currently, he is the reigning American National and 3-time Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion in his division.Links Referenced:Twitter: https://twitter.com/elchefe 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 Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate. Is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other; which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability: it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: I come bearing ill tidings. Developers are responsible for more than ever these days. Not just the code that they write, but also the containers and the cloud infrastructure that their apps run on. Because serverless means it's still somebody's problem. And a big part of that responsibility is app security from code to cloud. And that's where our friend Snyk comes in. Snyk is a frictionless security platform that meets developers where they are - Finding and fixing vulnerabilities right from the CLI, IDEs, Repos, and Pipelines. Snyk integrates seamlessly with AWS offerings like code pipeline, EKS, ECR, and more! As well as things you're actually likely to be using. Deploy on AWS, secure with Snyk. Learn more at Snyk.co/scream That's S-N-Y-K.co/screamCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. A bit of a sad episode Today. I am joined by Duckbill Group principal cloud economist, Tim Banks, but by the time this publishes, he will have left the Duckbill nest, as it were. Tim, thank you for joining me, and can I just start by saying, this is sad?Tim: It is. I have really enjoyed being with Duckbill and I will never forget that message you sent me. It's like, “Hey, would you like to do this?” And I was like, “Boy would I.” It's been a fantastic ride and I have enjoyed working with a friend. And I'm glad that we remain friends to this day and always will be, so far as I can tell.Corey: Yes, yes. What you can't see while recording this, I'm actually sitting in the same room as Tim with a weapon pointed at him to make sure that he stays exactly on message. Yeah, I kid. There's been a lot that's happened over the last year. We only got to spend time together in person once at re:Invent. I think because re:Invent is such a blur for me, I don't remember who the hell I talk to.Someone can walk up and say, “Oh yeah, we met at re:Invent,” and I'll nod and say, “Oh yeah,” and I will have no recollection of that whatsoever. But you don't argue with people. But I do distinctly remember hanging out with you there. But since then, it's been a purely distributed company, purely distributed work.Tim: Yeah, that's the only time I've seen you since I've worked here. It's the only time I met Mike. But it's weird because it's like, someone you work with you see every day virtually and talk to, and then you actually get to, like, IRL them and like, “Oh, wow. I had all these, kind of, conceptions of, you know, what you are or who you are as a person, and then you get to, like, check yourself. Was I right? Was I wrong?” I was like, “Oh, you're taller than I thought; you're shorter than I thought,” you know, whatever it was.But I think the fun part about it was we all end up being so close by the nature of how we work that it was just like going back and seeing family after a while; you already know who they are and how they are and about them. So, it felt good, but it felt familiar. That's a great feeling to have. To me, that's a sign of a very successful distributed culture.Corey: Yeah, it's weird the kinds of friendships we've built during the pandemic. When I was in New York for the summit, I got to meet Linda Haviv at AWS for the first time, despite spending the past year or so talking to her repeatedly. As I referred to her the entire time I was in New York, this is Linda, my new old friend because that is exactly how it felt. It's the idea of meeting someone in person that you've had a long-term ongoing friendship with. It's just a really—it's a strange way Everything's new but it's not, all at the same time.It reminds me of the early days of the internet culture where I had more friends online than off, which in my case was not hard. And finally meeting them, some people were exactly like they were described and others were nothing at all like they presented. Now that we have Zoom and this constant level of Slack chatter and whatnot, it's become a lot easier to get a read on what someone is like, I think.Tim: I think so too, you know, we've gotten away—and I think largely because of the pandemic—of just talking about work at work, right? The idea of embracing, you know, almost a cliche of the whole person. But it's become a very necessary thing as people have dealt with pandemic, social upheaval, political climates, and whatever, while they're working from home. You can't compartmentalize that safely in perpetuity, right? So, you do end up getting to know people very well, especially in what their concerns are, what their anxieties are, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, things that go on in their lives.You bring all that to your distributed culture because it's not like you leave it at the door, when you walk out. You're not walking out anymore; you're walking to another room, and it's hard to walk away from those things in this day and age. And we shouldn't have to, right? I feel like for a successful and nurturing culture—whatever it is, whether it's tech culture, whether it's whatever kind of work culture—you can't say, “I only want your productivity and nothing else about you,” and expect people to sustain that. So, you see these companies are, like, you know, “We don't have political discussions. We don't have personal discussions. We're just about the work.” I'm like, “All right, well, that's not going to last.” A person cannot just be an automaton in perpetuity and expect them to grow and thrive.Corey: And this is why you're leaving. And I want to give that a little context because without, sounds absolutely freaking horrifying. You've been a strong advocate for an awful lot of bringing the human to work, on your philosophy around leadership, around management. And you've often been acting in that capacity throughout, I would say, the majority of your career. But here at The Duckbill Group, we don't have a scale of team where you being the director of the team or leader of the team is going to happen in anything approaching the near or mid-term.And so, much of your philosophy is great and all because it's easy to sit here at a small company and start talking about, “Oh, this is how you should be doing it.” You have the opportunity to wind up making a much deeper impact on a lot more people from a management perspective, but you do in fact, need a team to manage as opposed to sitting around there, “Oh, yeah. Who do you manage?” “This one person and I'm doing all of these things to make their life and job awesome.” It's like, “Yeah, how many hours a week are you spending in one-on-ones?” “20 to 25.”Okay, maybe you need a slightly larger team so you can diffuse that out a little bit. And we are definitely sad to be losing you; super excited to see where you wind up going next. This has been a long time coming where there are things that you have absolutely knocked out of the park here at The Duckbill Group, but you also have that growing—from what I picked up on anyway—need to set a good management example. And lord knows this industry needs more of those. So first, sad to lose you. Secondly, very excited for where you wind up next and what they're in for, even though it has a strong likelihood that they don't know the half of it yet.Tim: One of the things that I like about The Duckbill Group and how my time here has been is the first thing that I was asked in the interview was very sincere, like, “Well, what's your next job?” And I was very clear. It's like, “After this, I want to be a director or VP of engineering because I would like to be a force multiplier, right?” I would like to make engineering orgs better. I would like to make engineering practices better. I want to make the engineers better, right?And not by driving KPIs and not by management, right, not administrative functions. I want to do it via leadership. I want to do it by setting examples, making safe places for people, making people feel like they're important and invested in, nurturing them, right? I've said this before I—this analogy was getting me somewhere else and I love, it's like, if I plant a tree and I want it to grow apples, right, I'm not going to sit there and put a number down of apples it's expected to produce, and then put it on a performance plan if it doesn't get that number of apples, right? I need to nurture the tree, I need to fertilize it, I need to protect it, I need to keep it safe, I need to keep it safe from the elements, I need to make sure that it doesn't have parasites, I need to take care of that tree.And if that tree grows and it's healthy and it's thriving, it will produce, right? But I'm not—I can't just expect apples if I'm not taking care of the tree. Now, people are not trees, but you still have to take care of the people if you want them to do things. And if you can't take care of the people, if you can't manage the environment that they're in to make it safe, if you can't give them the things they need to be successful, then you're just going to be holding numbers over someone and expecting to hit them.And that doesn't work. That's not something that's sustainable. And it doesn't really—it's not even about how much you pay them. You must pay them well, right, but it has to be more than just that if you want people to succeed. And that doesn't necessarily mean—like, one thing is at the Duckbill Group I love, succeeding doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to stay at—or your engineer is going to stay at one place in perpetuity. If you mentor and train and coach and give an engineer opportunity to grow and thrive and what they do is they go to another job for a title increase and a pay increase or something like that, you did your job.Corey: A lot of companies love to tell that lie and they almost convince themselves of it where I look at your resume, and great you have not generally crossed the two-year mark at companies for the last decade. I never did until I started at this place. But we magically always liked to pretend in job interviews that, “Oh yeah, this is my forever job—” like you're a rescue dog getting adopted or something, “—and I'm going to work here for 25 years and get a gold watch and a pension at the end of it.” It's lunacy. I have never seen the value in lying to ourselves like that, which is why we start our interviews with, “What's the job after this and how do we help you get there?”It's important that we ask those questions and acknowledge that reality. And the downside to it—if you can call it a downside—is you've got to live by it. It's not just words, you can slop onto an interview questionnaire; you actually have to mean it. People can see through insincerity.Tim: And it's one of the things, like, if you run an org and you grow your people and you don't have a place for them to grow into, you should expect and encourage them to find those opportunities elsewhere. It is not reasonable, I feel like, as a leader for you expect people to stay in a place where they have grown past or grown out of. You need to either need to give them a new pot to grow into or you need to let them move elsewhere and thrive and grow. And moving elsewhere—like, if you have a retention problem where you can't retain anybody, that's a problem, but if you have your junior engineers who become senior engineers at other places, right, and everyone leaves on good terms, and they got the role and you gave them a great recommendation and they give glowing recommendations to you, there's nothing wrong with that. That's not a failure; that's success.Corey: One bit of I would say pushback that I suspect you might get when talking to people about what's next is that, “Well, you are just a consultant, on some level, for a year.” You always know that someone is really arguing in good faith when they describe what you did with the word ‘just,' but we'll skip past that part. And it's, “You're just a consultant. What would you possibly know about team management and team dynamics?” And there is a little bit of truth to that insofar as the worst place in the world to get management advice is very clearly on Twitter.It turns out that most interpersonal scenarios are, one, far too personal to wind up tweeting about, and two, do not lend themselves to easy solutions that succinctly fit within 280 characters. Imagine that. The counter-argument though, is that you have—correctly from where I sit—identified a number of recurring dynamics on teams that you have encountered and worked with deeply as a large number of engagements. And these are recurring things, I want to be clear. So, I'm not talking about one particular client. If you're one of our clients and listen to this thinking that we're somehow subtweeting you with our voices—I don't know what that is; subwoofing, maybe?Tim: [crosstalk 00:12:05]—Corey: Is that what a subwoofer is? I'm not an audio person.Tim: Throwing shade, we'll just say—call it throwing shade.Corey: Yeah, we're not throwing shade at any one person, team, or group in particular; these are recurring things. Tim, what have you seen?Tim: And so, I think the biggest thing I see is folks that are on the precipice of a big technological change, right, and there is an extraordinary amount of anxiety, right? I've seen a number of customers through our engagements that, “We are moving away from this legacy platform,” or from this thing that we have been doing for X amount of time. And everyone has staked the other domains, staked out their areas of expertise and control and we're going to change that. And the solution to that is not a technical solution. You don't fix that by Helm charts, or Terraform, or CloudFormation. You fix that by conversations, and you fix that by listening. You fix that by finding ways to reassure folks and giving them confidence in their ability to adjust and thrive in a new environment.If you take somebody who's been, you know, an Oracle admin for 20 years, and you going to say, “Great. Now, you're going to learn, you're going to do this an RDS,” that's a whole new animal, and folks feel like, well, you know, I can't learn something new like that? Well, yeah you can. If you can learn Oracle, you can learn anything. I firmly believe that.But that's one of the conversations we have, it's never, almost never a technical problem folks have. We need to reassure people, right? And so, folks who reach out to us, it's typically folks who are trying to get their organizations in that direction. Another thing we see sometimes is that we find that there's a disconnect between leadership and the engineers. They have either different priorities or different understandings of what's going on. And we come in to solve a problem, which may be cost but that's not the problem we actually solve. The problem we actually solve is fixing this communication bridges between management and leadership.And that's almost an every time occurred. At some point or another, there's some disconnect there. And that's the best part of the job. Like, the reason I do this consulting gig is not because I want to bang away at code. If I've had to do that, that's an anomaly for sure because I want to have these conversations.And people want to have these conversations; they want to get these problems solved and sometimes they don't know how to. And that is the common thing, I think, through all of our customers. Like, we need some amount of expertise to help us find solutions to these things that aren't necessarily technical problems. And I think that's where we run into problems as an industry, right, where we think a lot of things are technical problems or have technical solutions, and they don't. There are people problems. They're—Corey: Here at The Duckbill Group, we're basically marriage counseling for engineering and finance in many cases.Tim: We really are.Corey: This is why were people not software.Tim: Yeah. And I will say this very firmly and you can quote me on this: like, you cannot replace us. You cannot replace the kind of engagements we do with software. You can't. Can't be done, right? Software is not empathetic.Corey: There are a whole series of questions we ask our clients at the start of an engagement and the answers to those questions change what we ask them going forward. In fact, even the level-setting in the conversation that we have at the start of that changes the nature of those. We're not reading from a list; we're trying to build an understanding. There is a process around what we do, but it's not process that can ever be scoped down to the point where it's just a list of questions or a questionnaire that isn't maddening for people to fill out because it's so deeply and clearly misses the mark around context of what they're actually doing.Tim: Mm-hm. Our engaged with their conversations. That's all they are. They're really in-depth conversations where we're going to start asking questions and we're going to ask questions about those answers. We're start pulling out strings and kicking over rocks and seeing what we find.And that's the kind of thing that, you know, you would expect anyone to do who's coming in and saying, “Okay, we have a problem. Now, let's figure it out.” Right? Well, you can't just look at something on the surface, and say, “Oh, I know what this is.” Right? You know, for someone to say, “Oh, I know how to fix this,” when they walk in is the surest way to know that someone doesn't know what they're talking about, right?Corey: Oh, easiest thing in the world is to walk in and say, “This is broken and wrong.” That can translate directly to, “Hi, I am very junior. Please feed my own ass to me.” Because no one shows up at work thinking they're going to do a crap job today on purpose. There's a reason things are the way that they are.Tim: Mm-hm. And that's the biggest piece of context we get from our customers is we can understand what the best practices are. You can go Google them right now and say, “This is the ten things you're supposed to do all the time,” right? And we would be really, really crappy consultants if we just read off that list, right? We need to have context: does this thing make sense? Is this the best practice? Maybe, but we want to know why you did it this way.And after you tell us that way, I'm like, “You know what? I would do it the exact same way for this use case.” And that's great. We can say like, “This is the best way to do that. Good job.” It's atypical; it's unusual, but it solves the problems that you need solving.And that's where I think a lot of people miss. Like, you know, you can go—and not to throw shade at AWS's Trusted Advisor, but we're going to throw shade at AWS's Trusted Advisor—and the fact that it will give you—Corey: It is Plausible Advisor at absolute best.Tim: [laugh]. It will give you suggestions that have no context. And a lot of the automated AI things that will recommend that you do this and this and this and this are pretty much all the same. And they have no context because they don't understand what you're trying to do. And that's what makes the difference between people. There's these people problems.And so, one of the things that I think is really interesting is that we have moved into doing a shorter engagement style that is very short. It's very quick, it's very kind of almost tactical, but we go in, we look at your bill, we ask you some questions, and we're going to give you a list of suggestions that are going to save you a significant amount of money right away, right? So, a lot of times, folks when they need quick wins, or they don't really need us to deep-dive into all their DynamoDB access patterns, right? They just want like, “Hey, what are the five things we can do to save us some money?” And we're like, “Well, here they are. And here's what we think they're going to save you.” And folks who really enjoyed that type of engagement. And it's one of my favorite ones to do.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Corey: I can also predict that people are going to have questions for you—probably inane—of, well, you were a consultant, how are your actual technical chops? And I love answering these questions with data. So, I have here pulled up the last six months of The Duckbill Group's AWS bills. And for those who are unaware, every cloud economist has their own dedicated test account for testing out strange things that we come across. And again, can the correct answer in many consulting engagements is, “I don't know, but I'll find out.”Well, this is how we find out. We run tests and learn these things ourselves. I suppose we could extend this benefit, if you want to call it that, to people who aren't cloud economists but I'm not entirely sure what, I don't know, an audio engineer is going to do with an AWS account that isn't, you know, kind of horrifying. To the audio engineer that is editing this podcast, my condolences if you take that as a slight, and if there is something you would use an AWS account for, please let me know. We'll come talk about it here.But back to topic, looking at the last six months of your bill for your account—that's right, a ritualistic shaming of the AWS bill—in January you spent $16.06. In February, you spent 44 cents. And you realized that was too high, so back in March, you then spent 19 cents. And then $3.01 back in April. May wound up $10.02, and now you're $9.84 as of June. July has not yet finalized as of this recording.And what I want to highlight—and what that tells me when I look at these types of bills—and I assure you as the world's leading self-described expert in AWS billing, I'm right; listening to me is a best practice on these things—that shows the exact opposite of a steady-state workload. There's a lot of dynamism to those giant swings because we don't have cloud economists who are going to just run these things steady-state for the rest of our lives. Those are experiments of building and testing out new and exciting things in a whole bunch of very weird, very strange ways. Whenever I wind up talking to someone in one of the overarching AWS services at AWS and I pull up my account, a common refrain is, “Wow, you use an awful lot of services.” Right. I'm not just sitting here run and EC2 instances forever. Imagine that. And your account is a perfect microcosm of that entire philosophy.Tim: Well, I don't know all the answers, right? And I will never profess all the answers. And before I say, “You should do this—” or maybe I will say, “You might be able to do this. Let me go save as possible.” [laugh]. Right? And so, just let me just see, can you do this? Does this work? No, I guess it doesn't. Or AWS docu—especially, “The AWS documentation says this. Let me see if that's actually the case.”Corey: I don't believe that they intend to lie, but—Tim: No.Corey: —they also certainly don't get it correct all the time.Tim: And to be fair, they have, what, 728 services by this point, and that's a lot of documentation you're not going to get—Corey: Three more have launched since the start of this recording.Tim: I—yeah, actually—well, by the time this hits, they're probably going to have 22. But we'll [laugh] see. But yeah, no. And that's fine. And they're not going to have every use case, and every edge, kind of like, concern handled, and so that's why we need to kick the tires a little bit.And what I think more than anything else is, you know, sometimes we just do things out of convenience. Like, “Well, I don't want to run this on this; let me just fire it up because it's not my money.” [laugh]. But we also want to be fairly concerned about you know, how we do things. You don't want to run a fleet of z1ds, obviously.But there is a certain amount of tire-kicking and infrastructure spinning up that you have to do in order to maintain freshness, right? And it's not a thing where I'm going to say, “Oh, I know YAML off the top of my head, and I need to do—you know, I'm up to speed on every single possible API call that you can make.” No. My technical prowess has always been in architecture and operations. So, I think when we have these conversations, folks mostly tend to be impressed by not only business acumen and strategy, but also being able to get down to the weeds and talking with the developers and the engineers about the minutia. And you will have seen you know, the feedback that I've gotten about my technical prowess has always been good. You know, I can hang with anybody, I feel like.Corey: I would agree wholeheartedly. It's been really interesting watching you in conversations, internally and with our clients, where you will just idly bust out something fricking brilliant out of left field. And most of the time, I don't think you even realize it. It's just one of those things that makes intuitive and instinctive sense to you. And you basically just leave people stunned and their scribbling notes and trying to wrap their heads around what you just said.And it's adorable because sometimes you wind up almost, like, looking embarrassed, like, “Did I say something rude and not realize it? Like, I wasn't trying to be insulting.” It's like, “Nope, nope. You're just doing your thing, Tim. Just keep on doing it. That's fine.”Tim: Yeah, it's funny because, like you, one of the things that I've really enjoyed about it is, like, we'll just start bouncing ideas off of each other and come up with something brilliant. “Yeah, let's do that.” And then, “Okay, this is now a thing.” And it's like, you know, there's something to be said about being around smart people. So, it's not just me coming up with something brilliant; these are almost always fruits of a conversation and discussion being had, and then you formulate something great in your head.But again, this is why I love the aspect of talking and having conversations with people, so that way you can come up with something kind of brilliant. None of this is done in a silo. Like we're not really, really good at what we do because we don't rely or talk to or have conversations with other people.Corey: One thing that you did that I think is one of the most transformative things that has happened in company history in some respects has been when you started, and for the first half of your tenure here, we had two engagement types that we would wind up giving our consulting clients. There's contract negotiation, where we help companies negotiate their long-term commitment contracts with AWS—and we're effective at it and that's fun; that's basically what you would more or less expected to be—and the other is our cost optimization project engagements. And those tend to look six to eight weeks where we wind up going in deep-dives into the intricacies of an organization's AWS accounts, bills, strategy, growth plan, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to an exhaustive level of detail. And in an interest of being probably overly transparent here, I didn't like working on those engagements myself. I like coming in, finding the big things that will be transformative to reduce the bills—it's like solving a puzzle—and then the relatively in-depth analysis for things that are a relatively paltry portion of the AWS bill does not really lead me to enjoying the work very much.And I beat my head against that one for years. And you busted out one day with an idea that became our third type of engagement, which is the first pass, where we charge significantly less for the engagement and it essentially distills down into you get us to talk to your engineering teams for a day. Bring us any questions, give us access in advance to these things, and we will basically go on a whirlwind guided tour and lay waste to your AWS bill and highlight different opportunities that we see to optimize these things. And it has been an absolute smash success. People love the engagements.Very often, it leads to that second full-bore engagement that I was describing earlier, but it also aligns very well with the way that I like to think about these things. I'm a great consultant, specifically because once I've delivered the value, I like to leave. Whereas as an employee, I just sort of linger around, and then I go cause problems and other people's departments—ideally, not on purpose, but you know, I am me—and this really emphasizes that and keeps me moving quickly. I really, really like that engagement style and I have you to thank for coming up with the idea and finding a way to do it that didn't either not resonate with the market—in which case, we're not selling a damn thing—or wound up completely eviscerating the value of the longer-term deep-dive engagements, and you threaded that needle perfectly.Tim: I thank you; I appreciate that. There was this kind of vacuum that I saw where, both from a cost and from a resource point where six to eight weeks is a long time for an engineering org to dedicate to any one thing, especially if that one thing isn't directly making money. But engineering orgs are also very interested in saving money. But it's especially in smaller orgs where that velocity is very important, they don't have six to eight weeks for that. They can't dedicate the resources to those deep-dives all the time, and all the conversations we—and when we do a COP, it is exhaustive. We are exploring every avenue to almost an absurd level, right?And that's not the right engagement for a lot of orgs, right? So, coming in and saying, “Hey, you know, this is a quick one; these are the things that you can do. This is 90% of the savings you're going to realize. These things: bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.” Right?And then we give it to the folks and we let them work on it, and then they're like, “Hey, we need this because we want to negotiate EDP,” or, “We need this because, you know, we're just trying to make sure that our costs are in line so we can be more agile, so we can do this project, or whatever.” Right? And then there are a lot of other orgs that do need that exhaustive kind of thing, larger orgs especially, right? Larger, more complex orgs, orgs that are trying to maybe—like, if you're trying to make a play to get acquired, you want to get this very, very in-depth study so you know all your liabilities and all your assets, so that way you can fix those problems and make it very attractive for someone to buy you, right? Or orgs that just have, like, we are not having an impending EDP; we have a lot of time to be able to focus on these things, and we can build this into the roadmap, right?Then we can do a very exhaustive study of those things. But for a lot of times, people are just like, “Look, I just need to save X amount of money on my AWS bill and can you do that?” Well, sure. We can go in there and have those conversations and give you a lot of savings. And I'm very much in the camp of, you know, ‘perfect is the enemy of good.' I don't have to save down to the nth penny on your DynamoDB bill. But if I can, shave—cut it in half, that's great. Most people are very happy about those kinds of things. And that's a very routine finding for us.Corey: One other aspect that I really liked about it, too, is that it let us move down market a bit, away from companies that are spending millions of dollars a month. Because yeah, the ROI for those customers is a slam dunk on virtually any engagement that we could put together, but what about the smaller companies, the ones that are not spending that much money, yet? They've never felt great talk to them and say, “Oh, just go screw up your AWS bill some more. Then, then you will absolutely be able to generate some value. Maybe turn off MFA and post your credentials to GitHub or something. That'll speed up the process nicely.”That's terrible advice and we can't do it. But this enables us to move down to smaller companies that are earlier in their cloud estate build-out or are growing organically rather than trying to do a giant migration as sort of greenfield growth approach. I really, really like our ability to help companies that are a bit earlier in their cloud journey, as well as in smaller environments, just because I guess, on some level, for me, at least, when you see enormous multimillion-dollar levels of spend, the misconfigurations are generally less fun to find; they're less exciting. Because, yeah at a small scale, you can screw up and your Managed NAT Gateway bill is a third of your spend. When you're spending $80 million a year, you're not wasting that kind of money on Managed NAT Gateways because that misconfiguration becomes visible from frickin' orbit.So, someone has already found that stuff. And it's always then it's almost certainly EC2, RDS, and storage. Great. Then there's some weird data transfer stuff and it starts to look a lot more identical. Smaller accounts, at least from my perspective, tend to have a lot more of interesting things to learn hiding in the shadows.Tim: Oh, absolutely. And I think the impact that you make for the future for small companies much higher, right? You go in there and you have an engagement, you can say, “Okay, I understand the business reason why you did this here, but if you make these changes—bam, bam, bam—12 to 18 months and on, right, this is going to make a huge difference in your business. You're going to save a tremendous amount of money and you're going to be much more agile.”You did this thing because it worked for the POC, it worked for the MVP, right? That's great, but before it gets too big and becomes load-bearing technical debt, let's make some changes to put you in a better position, both for cost optimization and an architectural future that you don't have to then break a bone that's already set to try and fix it. So, getting in there before there's a tremendous load on their architecture—or rather on their infrastructure, it's super, super fun because you know that when you've done this, you have given that company more runway, or you've given them the things they need to actually be more successful, and so they can focus their time and efforts on growth and not on trying to stop the bleeding with their AWS bill.Corey: Tim, it's been an absolute pleasure to work with you. I'm going to miss working with you, but we are definitely going to remain in touch. Where can people find you to follow along with your continuing adventures?Tim: The best way to find me is on Twitter, I am @elchefe—E-L-C-H-E-F-E. And yeah, I will definitely keep in touch with you, Corey. Again, you have been a tremendous friend and I really appreciate you, your insights, and your honesty. Our partners are friends with each other and I do not think that they will let us ever drift too far apart. So.Corey: No, I think it is pretty clear that we are basically going to be both of their plus-ones forever.Tim: [laugh]. I think so.Corey: I'm just waiting for them when they pulled the prank of dressing us the exact same way because our styles are somewhat different, and I'm pretty sure that there's not a whole lot of convergence where we both wind up looking great. So, it's going to be hilarious regardless of what direction it goes in.Tim: Well, you do have velour tracksuits too, right?Corey: Not yet, but please don't tell that to Bethany.Tim: [laugh].Corey: Tim, it has been an absolute pleasure.Tim: The pleasure has been all mine, Corey. I really appreciate it.Corey: Tim Banks, for one last time, principal cloud economist at The Duckbill Group. I am 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 and an insulting comment that says that we are completely wrong in our approach to management and the real answer is as follows, making sure to keep that answer less than 280 characters.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.

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan
The dangerous defect in most SaaS startups

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2022 42:24


You never hear the names of some of the world's best SaaS startups. Why waste money building awareness among consumers when you can quickly and steadily grow your B2B business across Japan then across Asia? Today Yu Taniguchi founder of TableCheck returns to the show and answers that question. TableCheck is rapidly expanding their table-management system business by throwing out a lot of the traditional SaaS playbook, and Yu lays out a model for sustainable, scalable SaaS startups. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes How the TMS market has changed in the last five years Why the first mover advantage is not really an advantage Maintaining differentiation in an increasingly competitive market The huge flaw in the current generation of SaaS "best practices" Demand-side vs supply-side startups Why you should only take the VC investment that you actually (desperately) need Why Japanese (and otter) startups need to be thinking about global markets from day 1 Concrete (and sad) examples of what's wrong with Japan's education system Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about TableCheck TableCheck Twitter @tablecheck LinkedIn Page TableCheck on Facebook Follow Yu on Instagram Friend him on Facebook Connect on LinkedIn Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Some of the most important and successful B2B startups fly under the radar. And that makes sense when you think about it.  When success depends on dominating a specific business niche, who really cares if most consumers have never heard of you? In fact, as we'll see, that can actually put your whole startup at risk. Today, Yu Taniguchi, old friend and founder of TableCheck joins us again on Disrupting Japan.  Now, TableCheck makes a table management solution for restaurants, and Yu and the team have taken a very different approach than most of the competition in this space.  The last time Yu came on the show, we talked about his business model and how to expand globally with very little capital. There's a link to the episode in the show notes, and I strongly recommend you listen to it because it was really a good one and we'll be covering a hundred percent new ground today. Today, as we catch up with Yu, we find his strategy has worked with some refinements, and TableCheck is expanding rapidly across APAC.  This is a great real world case study of how Japanese startups can go global. Yu and I also talk about how the current generation of SaaS business models is broken, how to protect your startup from market downturns, and some really good advice about the two kinds of fundraising plans you need to have to survive.  But you know, Yu tells that story much better than I can, so let's get right to the interview.  Interview  Tim: We're sitting here with Yu Taniguchi of TableCheck, who is making integrated reservations, CRM billing and more for restaurants. Yu, it is so good to have you back again. Thanks for sitting down with us. Yu: Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very honored and excited to be here. Tim: It's been four and a half years since you were last on the show and so much has changed since then. You were growing fast then, you've continued to, so tell me about your customers today. Who's using TableCheck and how many are there now? Yu: We have roughly 7,000 restaurants using our solution both in Japan and overseas. Back then when we did the interview, I think it was around 2,000 restaurants. Roughly we've more than tripled since then and taking in consideration that out of the four years, two years have been during the COVID. Tim: Let's talk about what's changed in the market. Four and a half years ago, you were saying that your biggest competition was paper and pencil. Most of your customers were using these manual processes,

Public Defenseless
16: South Dakota Public Defense with Tim Rensch & Bob Pesall

Public Defenseless

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2022 55:08


16: South Dakota Public Defense w/ Tim Rensch & Bob Pesall   South Dakota is like many states around the country in that there are some public defender offices in the “cities,” but the rest of the state is served through an assigned council system.   Today, I talk to two incredibly experienced and knowledgeable assigned councils in the state: Tim Rensch and Bob Pesall.   Each shares a different perspective on public defense in South Dakota, Tim being in an urban area and Bob being in a rural one.    With few outside evaluations of public defense in the state, we go through the nuances and strengths of the system in South Dakota.   Tim and Bob are two extraordinary examples of assigned councils that go above and beyond for their clients and truly care about the quality of the system.    Key Topics and Takeaways:   How Tim and Bob got into public defense & their roles. [5:49] The number of assigned councils in the state. [12:54] The Catastrophic Legal Expense Relief Program. [17:43] The importance of expert witnesses. [22:02] The struggles of those who suffer from addiction and mental illness in the system. [28:54] How the debt of cycle perpetuates criminality. [47:02] The future direction of public defense in South Dakota. [50:18]   Guests: Tim Rensch, President Rensch Law Corporation, South Dakota Assigned Counsel,  Bob Pesall, Assigned Counsel, Flanders South Dakota Resources:   Rensch Law Corporation    Pesall Law Firm   Memorable Quotes:   “I've never called myself a public defender. I always have said I'm a court-appointed lawyer and I've always had great admiration for the public defenders who work the ins and outs of the court system every day.” (7:21, Tim)   “It can be a little tricky when you try and weigh the cost-benefit of getting lawyers on board versus the actual seriousness of the case.” (17:11, Bob)   “So the judges really, truly want to get people what they need. They just don't want to be burning money on experts that are useless.” (25:44, Bob)   “I think meth is a horrible drug. It's the only drug for which you've never heard anybody advocate socially about any useful benefit whatsoever. And it's a shame what happens.” (34:25, Tim)   “I think people are indigent. That means that they don't have the money to hire a lawyer. And to me, it does seem unfair to take somebody who is defined as indigent and then force them to pay these attorney's fees. No matter the outcome.” (39:47, Tim)   “I think that there are good experiences and bad experiences. The experiences that I've had, and that I'm aware of are mostly good. People want defendants to be represented. They want them to be represented by good lawyers. They don't want to have to redo things three times. And generally, the thought is, is that the system wants to be fair and be good to people.” (51:14, Tim)   Contact Hunter Parnell:   hwparnell@publicdefenseless.com Instagram www.publicdefenseless.com

BlueBay Insights
Global high yield update - Tim Leary

BlueBay Insights

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2022 4:44


Tim Leary joins the BlueBay Insights podcast to give a 5min update on global high yield markets.We asked Tim:It's been volatile start to the year – how much has come from interest rate moves and how much is risk-premium driven?Can you take us through the performance of leveraged loans relative to high yield bonds so far this year – are you seeing any mispricing opportunities here? With defaults picking up, are there any safe havens in high yield?Now we're well into Q1, have you seen any clear trends in flows?We've seen green and ESG stocks suffer heavy sell-offs over the past few months. Have ESG-related credits suffered the same fate?How are you positioning as we shift into spring?

Create Art Podcast
Conversation on Replenishing Your Creative Energy with Emile Pandolphi

Create Art Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2022 31:30


Replenishing with Emile Pandolphi Do you sometimes suffer from low level creative energy? In this episode, I'll be talking with Emile Pandolphi about his approach to keeping his creative energy at a high level to fuel his professional career. Now, even if you are not a professional. This conversation is going to help you maintain and improve your creative energy by taking note of what a professional does to maintain their output. Biography Emile Pondolphi Emile Pandolfi is a professional pianist and entertainer with over 40 years of performance experience. One of the top-selling pianists in the music industry, he has recorded and released over 30 albums, including one with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra (Czech Republic). Since his first release in 1991, Emile has sold over 4.5 million copies nationally and reached more than 750 million collective streams online. Throughout his career, Emile has performed hundreds of concerts with thousands of fans in attendance, including performances at St. Mark's Square in Venice, the Catherine Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Liverpool Cathedral, and Sydney Opera House in Australia. While intricate arrangements of Broadway and pop standards make up the majority of his performance repertoire, his influences remain more classical than pop. It is his subjective layering of classical style, which he infuses into the broad palette of his performance selections, that continues to resonate with audiences everywhere. Although serious about his playing, Emile is never serious about himself and believes that every moment at the piano should be one of joy. While his audience is treated to a brilliant musical performance, they are also entertained by Emile's charming, light-hearted sense of humor and outgoing personality. From his early performances on cruise ships, in piano lounges, and in the recording studio to his current solo performance career in concert halls, Emile has used his music to create an intimate and powerful emotional connection for those listening. Today, Emile continues to write original songs and arrangements for his fans to stream. He lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with his wife Judy. Topics Covered Knowing When to Replenish Your Creative Energy Why it is important to replace your creative energy The Impact of using negative sources for creative energy Taming inner critic Links To Emile Pandolphi Emile Pandolphi Website Emile Pandolphi YouTube Site Reaching Out To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation. Email: timothy@createartpodcast.com YouTube Channel: Create Art Podcast YT Channel IG: @createartpodcast Twitter: @createartpod Transcripts of the Show CAP Conversation Replenishing Your Creative Energy with Emile Pandolphi Tim: Create art podcast conversations, replenishing your creative energy with a Emile Pandolphi hello friends. This is Timothy Kimo. Brian, your head instigator for create art podcast where I use my 20 years of experience in the arts and education world. To help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. Do you sometimes suffer from low level creative energy? In this episode, I'll be talking with Emile Pandolphi about his approach to keeping his creative energy at a high level to fuel his professional career. Now, even if you are not a professional. This conversation is going to help you maintain and improve your creative energy by taking note of what a professional does to maintain their output. Now, as an amateur artist, like many of you will listen to this podcast life, get in the way of my practice. Now you couple that with my recent diagnosis of Ms. In 2021 and being a father of twins and having a full time job energy is at a premium. So how do you refuel your creative tank and create the art that you were meant to create? Well, for Marie, for me, I read a lot of magazines and newsletters to get inspired for projects. I listened to podcasts about art that I've shared with you in previous episodes. And on Friday nights after I put my girls to sleep, I go out to local poetry readings and occasionally read poems, but mostly I go there to support other artists on their journey, which reminds me of my journey. Now, sometimes you must expend energy to get energy. And that's how I maintain my energy levels. Does it always work? And then not every time. Like you, my life has different poles on my energy and different priorities demand my attention. Let's talk about my guest this week for a moment before we go into the conversation now in meal with more than a half billion streams across platforms, including Pandora, Spotify, and apple. Is among America's most popular piano artists. Although majority of his performance performance rep RT are lush, intricate arrangements of Broadway and pop standards. His influences are in fact more classical than pop. It is this subjective layering of classical style, which pen Dolphy infuses into the broad palette of his performance selections that continues to resonate with audiences everywhere. Recording since 1991, the pianist's albums of familiar music have sold over three and a half million seats. Nationally, this has earned a meal. The distinction of being one of the top selling pianists in the music industry distributed online as well as in specialty. Gifts and bookshops across the nation. Now with 30 plus albums, most major online retailers also carry a meals, music for download, and it's streamed to thousands of times daily on Spotify, Pandora and other streaming platforms. Now I present to you, the conversation that we had about replenishing your creative energy. So, thank you all for listening into CRE podcast, where today we're going to be talking about replenishing your creative energy. And with me today you heard the intro before we started this conversation. I do have a meal with me here to give me the professional view of what that looks like for us and mail. How are you doing today? Emile: Great. Oh, we had here in South Carolina and we had some chilly weather and it's a nice change. Tim: Absolutely. It is. Absolutely. And I know it's taken us a little time to get together because I had a power outage Emile: for five days. It's Tim: okay. It was nice, quiet time away from podcasting, away from everything, you know, when your kids, kids Emile: like the hotel, kids love Tim: the hotel. Absolute. Absolutely. And, and I'm glad I have you on here today because you know, you're a professional. You do this for a living and I think it's going to be really important for our listeners. That are, you know, delving into, you know, making art either on a professional level or, you know, as their side hustle, but for you as a professional, how do you know when that creative energy needs to be replaced? Emile: Okay. To be honest, it almost, I almost never deal with that. It's because I love every time I get up in the morning and go to the studio and I start playing something or other, but if it does need to be replenished, let's say I have a deadline of playing these particular pieces of music. I just go to something that I already liked to play. What I do. I try to surround myself with beautiful things artwork. I'm not an artist. I'm not a visual artist, but I, I love paintings and I love watching a ballet. If I need to get inspired, I might turn on river dance and watch these amazing athletes dancers do what they do. And it doesn't take long before something kind of. Just clicks. In, in my case, I often have deadlines. I have to do a particular piece of music, whether I want to or not, but I take some, I think that it's worthwhile for me to take some time away from that and play. I feel like playing some Chopin or something that inspires me and I just get all excited about it. And then I say, okay, I'll go over here and do what I need to do again, because I'm doing it for a profession. But I think if you just. Go to other forms of artwork, literature, or poetry, or a famous paintings, or go to a museum. I think all those things seep into your consciousness. You don't do it with the, with the desire to be inspired. You just do it and then you get inspired Tim: and that's true. And it's really enjoyable to go through an art gallery and, you know, to take that time away from everything else and let that subconscious part of your mind. Figure out whatever issue that you're having, you know, we'll say you're working on a piece by Chopin and you just can't quite get that certain section step away. Go look at some art. Emile: Yeah. It's it has always worked for me. It's odd to discuss how to do it when you're in the doldrums, because I'm almost never there. I'm happy to say it's just part of my personality. It's just unlike you. I'm a one trick pony. I play piano and that's it. But I surround myself with other, other kinds of art. I love seeing people do I, it could be, it could be athletes or gymnasts or circus performers who do amazing things. And you say, oh my gosh, how did they do it? And that kind of gives it a. Good deal. Good deal. There's a silly country song title. It's I see something like that, that somebody does something extraordinary. And the guy says, I don't know whether to kill myself or go bowling. I always choose bowling. Tim: And today's brought to you by. So what bill you've talked about, you know, how do different ways that you, you know, you replenish that, that inspiration and and, and that energy for yourself, how important is it for you to have the, the, the high level of creative energy that you have in your profession? Emile: Well, I think the most important thing in for any artist is authenticity. And so rather than now you do your studying and you get your technique and the discipline that you're in, whether it be dancing or playing the piano or singing or whatever it is. So you have to. Given that you have your technique to whatever degree it is. That's a separate thing. But as far as having that creative energy going, I think if. If you were, if you were stuck and don't know what to do, I say, step outside yourself and look at yourself. What is your default place like? Who are you actually artistically when from a piano's viewpoint. If I am going in and I'm in a piano shop or I was in a place and there has a piano there and I have to touch it, what do I do? Do I start in the middle? Do I start at both ends? Do I play. Just junk things or play melodious things, because my default is what I just naturally default to tells me who I am musically and all of my piano in my profession. They're all piano arrangements, solo, piano arrangements of tunes that have been written by somebody else. They're all cover tunes. So why do they sound like me? Because I'm authentically me. I mean, whether people like it or not, I can't, I have no control over, but. I don't do something that is not authentically me and some people sometimes I think people are not sure how to find. What's authentically, then we'll look at yourself, see what you do. How do you like living with me? I talk with my hands all the time. Some people don't, some people I I talk enthusiastically, maybe some people are very slow talking and that's who you are. And that's what you should do with your art. Tim: I agree entirely. Absolutely. Now I was going to ask you about what's the overall impact for replenishing your creative energy from negative sources. Cause I, I read your book on play it, like you mean it and you had talked about you know, you had overcome smoking, which is something that I'm overcoming right now to get that out of my my thing. And now, you know, I I'm talking with my hands too with my, you know, famous quotes, but I've relied on that as a in the past, as a creative energy source. What's the impact of, you know, those negative. Sources of creative energy. Emile: Well, I think that what I have done over time is remove from my day, those things that I don't like, you can't remove everything, but removing those things that I don't like to do and I'm left with what I do want to do. And as far as the the, I'm not exactly sure what the question is, how do I use negative things to, to turn it to a positive. Well, Tim: actually what, what's the impact of using negative sources of energy on on your craft, maybe that you, you know, not that you do, but maybe that you've seen other people. Emile: Okay. I can say there, there are many times in my career where I'm doing, I'll just call it, work for hire. I have to play a certain song for a certain event. Right. And I don't even like the song. I don't want to do it, you know, and I keep finding other things to do besides work. Thanks. But then I think it comes down to, in my book, I call it digging a ditch. You start working on like, just disinterest in thinking about your day at the beach, but you're playing the notes and you're reading the notes on the page and you got to go through humdrum. I think, and because at sometime this has happened to me many times I was a piece of music that I didn't. I could even do like maybe a Michael Jackson tune or something that is not me at all. Even though, even if I love the song or, or I admire the artist. I discover, wow. I actually could do something with that. And because the work, the job has made me do it, otherwise I wouldn't have touched it, but because which is, to me, that's a kind of a negative, I, I, I avoid music that I don't like, but if I have to play it for a deadline, because it's my profession, it shows me. You know, you got to think outside your box and we all know that as a phrase, but you actually have to do it. And the more, excuse me, the more I do the busy work of going through it while I'm thinking about being at the beach, all of a sudden something clicks. And I say, so that's how they get that sound. And, and I've discovered something new that I never would have discovered if I had my druthers. Tim: Absolutely. Now my tagline for create art podcast. As everyone knows, is taming your inner critics in creating more than you consume? Emile: love that. Tim: Well, I got to credit my wife for that cause she's she's fantastic with one-liners she's married to me. So obviously she has to be good with one-liners, but for you, how do you. How do you tame that inner critic that we all have? You know, obviously we don't necessarily want to get rid of it because it does have some benefit to us, but how do you tame that inner critic in your practice? Emile: That's a good one. I guess I don't, I don't, it's a funny, I'm not having an answer for that. How do I tame that inner critic? I guess I don't, I just, I leave it. I let it be. And I, and I it's part of my process of learning. It's I say, okay. If I really don't like that. Meticulously looking at it. Just take it apart. What is it? I really don't like, because I think the inner critic says you don't play Michael Jackson tunes because that's not who you are. Well, okay. That's a big generality. So what part of it is actually happening? It's kind of like, I can't play. Piece of Chopin, but what I really can't play is those two bars, the rest of it I could get away with or I could play. And so I think when I Michael Jackson is a good example because I love his music, but it's nothing, whatever, like me is not in my background. My whole background is classical. It's just completely different and he's a wonderful artist, but I start examining it closely, closely. How did he get that sound? What, and I, it becomes a detective work. Did it and, and I come away learning some technique in my case, F the piano to imitate. The rhythm that he has in that piece of music I'm working on, on his tune bad right now. And it's not, it's not a penalty in any way, but it's, but you can do it. And I will have to discover how they it's just like when I'm playing my classical, I'm used to really intensely looking at how did they make that sound? I mean, from nothing, they got that. And so I, I do the same with. Pieces of music that I'm not familiar with or that I feel like I cannot do. And I think, I think meticulous investigation is what works for me. So Tim: for you, what's the next thing coming up for you? I obviously you are an accomplished And you have this wonderful book out, which everyone should go grab a copy of. I know I got a copy of it. I'm very happy that I did play it. Like you mean it, and it's not just for folks that are, are musicians. I found a lot of things that I could relate to other art forms with that book, but for you, what's next on the road for. Emile: For me I'm I have been kind of away from, I've never stepped away from classical music, but I haven't done classical performances in a very, very long time. My whole career is my arrangements of movie themes and musicals and that's, that's my, that's my thrust. That's what I love doing. And it's also. My career, but for now I'm backing off on public concerts to like put together a classical performance. That for me, I'm always, I always have the listener in mind, so I'm not trying to play for the Juilliard crowd. I'm trying to play for you and me and plays on the classical pieces that I'm playing or those that are probably like Clair de Lune a constellation by list trauma. I mean, I think there are things that. Even if people don't know them there, pop songs has some things, you know, that you can do excuse me. And it for me, because I don't do classical on a regular basis, it's going to take a lot of months. So that's my next goal. And it's just for my own pleasure, really. I'll keep doing my other things. Tim: Gotcha. And for those for our listeners out there, You know it might be a good idea. It let's say you're a painter or a dancer or something like that to pick up a meals book and take a look through it because I found I've got three pages of notes. I, I gotta say single-spaced times new Roman eight point font from from from. Where you do talk a lot about creativity. You do, you, yes. Your main thrust is the piano, but you do talk a lot about our creativity and, and how we can do better with it. And one of the things that I really liked, and that was back in chapter 19 when you're talking about the doldrums and the whole the whole ditch digging candidate. And can you elaborate a little bit more on that? Because that's, that's one of the things that really resounded with me is you know, when we're doing the things that we have to do for for money for pay, but then, you know, I putting it into that whole ditch story that, Emile: yeah, for me that that's a very accurate metaphor because and, and by the way, Elaborate on what's in the book. I say, you, you, you've got this hundred foot ditch to dig, but you've, you've got a dull shovel and you're starting on a hard ground and you just give up, you've got a dent going and, and so it can be very frustrating and disappointing and everything else when I have. Do that with music. I put the sheet music in front of me. I on purpose that's one time I do not play it. Like, I mean, it, I don't be authentic. I don't be anything I'm just saying, oh, that notes to see that notes would be, this is or whatever. I'm honestly, I could be daydreaming, but part of my attention has to be looking at the sheet so that I can play the notes there on the sheet. I'm just going through it mindlessly like a robot. And I do that through the entire piece of music and I go back and do it some more. And I still, and I don't judge myself. That's what inner critic. That's not a no time for judging. This is a time for letting some of these notes get into. Consciousness. And before long I have I find something about it, one measure or a couple of measures or phrase that appeals to me and I can I can say, oh, that's kinda cool. I wonder what that's about it. And it, it actually gets my interest going. I actually think. Oh, that's fascinating. The way they did that. I mean, that's, this is a real process. Would that really happens? I'm not, it's not a theoretical thing. You have to do it. So you start by first. You have to get rid of that. Oh God, I have to do this and get rid of that. And you just say, just do it mindlessly, just mindlessly. Do it. Eventually some part of it is going to strike a cord to use a metaphor. And and you'll say that was that interested me, or may not even like it, but I think this is music that I've never liked. It sure is interesting how they create it because every artist is different. And, and I know my, I know myself really well. I know what I do artistically. I, I know I sit at the piano instantly. I come out cause that's who I am and I've known that most of my life pardon me, but so anyway, that's, that's my, as much as I can think of at the moment about that. You start doing it and eventually it takes hold. Tim: Excellent. Excellent. And everybody go at it's chapter 19, marketing the book, get the highlighter out for them. Cause that's a really important chapter. Give me, was there anything that I haven't asked you yet that you really wanted me to dive into with you today? Emile: I think I would like to elaborate a little bit more on an artist, particularly an artists who are beginning. Career, not about the business end of it yet, but not knowing some people say, I don't know who I am artistically or what are they try this, they try that. And that's fun. This is great. Try all these different things. But I really think that something that the most. Obvious thing is to watch yourself how you interact with people at a party. Are you the life of the party? Are you the wallflower? What are you? And if you're here's a good one, if your friends were going to impersonate you, what would they do with these start shouting and ranting? Or would they be very quiet? Would they be a good listener? Would they be, would they make fun of how you always do this thing with your head? I mean, you know, If you really, really look at it, it's easy to find out who you are, artistically and then whatever your discipline is, whether it be painting or music or dancing, you go for that. Either you go for ballet or you go for modern, you go for Rafael or you go for Jackson, Pollock. It's just, what are you drawn to? And I think, I think in art, you have to find your default place and that is who you are. You may think I want to play jazz? Well, if you're not a jazz, if that's not, what a, if that's not your authentic thrust, then that's probably not for you. Tim: It's new. One thing that I, I I've noticed is that because I have kids and I have a 20 21 year old steps on is that, you know, with, with people's day jobs, careers, stuff like that. And a lot of people are focused on, okay, what's going to get me the most fans. What's going to get me the most money, but the most successful artists. They take the risks. I'm thinking of Bob Dylan, when he went electric you brought up oh, the the, a painter polling Jackson, Pollock Jackson, Pollock, you know, he didn't start with the drip paintings. He started a different way, and then he decided to change and you know, and we're still talking about him today, here in 2020. Not the works that he does. And you know, I, I think it's important what you said about being your authentic self, and that will come across to the audience naturally. You won't have to force it. And like me, I love jazz. Don't think I can play it to save my soul, but I enjoy supporting new jazz musicians, you know, buying their records. And attending their concerts. For me to go and pick up a jazz bass, not going to happen today. Emile: You know, it's interesting because all my life I've been surrounded by classical music. I have sisters who are in classical and it is the most natural thing in the world. Part of it is being Italian because I grew up in an Italian household and every male Italian thinks he's Pavarotti and opera music is like pop tunes and it it's, it was the most natural, comfortable thing. And, and if I were, if I were painting, I would try to paint like the the rough, the Raphael's. I would not try to paint like Jackson Pollock. I would end up being a very poor Jackson Pollock. But if I were, if I were to if I were a dancer, I've always, as a matter of fact, I've played for ballet classes in the past. I would take ballet if I had any gift for it, which I do not, but I wouldn't take it. I might even take ballroom dancing, but I mean, those are the things I'm drawn to naturally. And and I, and I think, I think it's a very simple thing. If you just really look at yourself and don't go into a lot of psychology things psychological down a rabbit hole, I think you just. Look at me. Well, this is what do I do? What do I do all day? Do I sit in front of a computer? Do I let my active? And, and I think sometimes the most obvious things elude us just because we didn't take the trouble to have a look. Tim: That's true. That's true. Well, thank you so much for that. Is there one thought you'd like to leave the listeners with. You know, replenishing their creative energy or just creativity in general. Emile: Yeah. Every single person is creative. I mean, there, from the time you were a little tiny child, you made a bracelet out of grass or you played dandelions and you tried to catch the dental. Fluff the freeway and you did it your way. And if you look at how you approach the simplest tasks, when you, when you're doing the dishes, do you do them a very orderly way or do you do very chaotic? And I think that you find a, a discipline that appeals to you again, whether it be visual arts or music or dancing or gymnastics or whatever I think you've actually, you shouldn't, you shouldn't think of that. Some people are creative and I'm not, no, everybody is some it's just like everybody. Excuse me. Everybody can write a sentence, but some of us are great authors. So it's, I think it has to be taken out of the special category and put it in the normal category. Everyone is an artist to some degree and some are good and some suck. Tim: Well, I've done. I paint like a four-year-old on crack. I can tell you that, but it's, it's the enjoyment of doing it. And it's one of my ways to, you know, get that creative energy, you know, replenish that when, you know, I work nine to five with the federal government and that can get to be a whole lot of fun, but then I can, you know, sit back with with my kids. Do some crazy paintings and put them up on the wall, on them. You laugh at them years later. Emile: Yeah, I think, I think by the way, the creative, sometimes things to be creative, you have to be really good at it. No, no, you're just creative. I mean, I can just do a stick drawing of something and it gives me pleasure. It's never going to be in an art gallery, but it's, it's a creative impulse and I can do it. No, but don't stop yourself because you're not the best. Tim: Exactly. We, you know, we, we, we, you know, we need our, you know, number one folks to up there and to be up there and do their do their do their art. But we also need everybody to feel comfortable in, in doing that. Maybe you make a career out of it, maybe you don't. But I know at the end of the day you know, the bookcases that I had behind me, it have a lot of authors behind them then have, you know, thousands of years of experience. But I also have four of my books up on there to go. I can do that too. Maybe not with the success that they've had, but I can put something out into the world like that. And it does my heart. Emile: Good. Tim: Excellent. Well, again, thank you so much for joining us here today on a create our podcast. And we definitely are going to look forward to new things coming out by you and everyone should go grab the book and go on to YouTube and watch this fine gentleman. Tickle those Ivory's. Thank you so much for joining Emile: us. I mean, as a guest, I really appreciate it's Timothy, you got it. Tim: Thank you for listening to create art podcast and this episode on how to replenish your creative energy. You know, it was a real pleasure talking with a meal about his practice. And understanding his approach to replenishing his creative energy. Take a look at his book and look him up on his website and musical platforms. I'd like to hear from you on how you replenish your creative energy. Or if you have questions on how you can add this to your practice, reach out to. Timothy@createartpodcast.com and let's have that conversation. Now, if you've got something under this episode, I'd like you to share it with a friend as fellow artists, when we sometimes need to help each other out and share the information we find and incorporate it into our practice, you can subscribe to this podcast at the website, create art podcast.com and links to this discussion will be in the show notes. So you can learn from. Now go out there and tame that inner critic and create more than you consume. Go out there and make art for somebody you love yourself. This has been a production of gaggle pod, east studios at gaggle pod. We have been helping creatives tell their story through podcasting since 2017, go to gaggle pod.com to listen to all of our network shows and reach out to us so we can help you tell your story through podcasting.

Create Art Podcast
Conversations On Community with Mike Porter

Create Art Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2022 55:13


Community Support and Building In this episode, I speak with Mike Porter, my comic book store guy about how community impacts artists and the need to build a community around yourself. Although Mike didn't think of himself as an artist, I thought it was important to have him speak about the impact of community on his business and practice as a shop owner and burgeoning writer. Hello friend, this is Timothy Kimo Brien your head instigator at Create Art Podcast where I bring my 20 years in art and education to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. In 2022 I am rebroadcasting my former podcast KDOI Podcast here so you can catch up on what we have been doing for the past 4 years. KDOI Podcast was my first serious attempt at podcasting after spending many years just creating content without regard to the final product. KDOI started in 2016 and had 3 seasons until I closed it down in 2019. I wanted to make sure that these gems didn't get relegated to my external hard drives, so here you go, there will be interviews, commentary, and projects that you can do for yourself. Enjoy these rebroadcasts and Create More Than You Consume. This episode is about the novel, so enjoy. Topics Discussed   Definition of Community : a unified body of individuals, the people with common interests living in a particular area. A group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society, a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered throughout a larger society, a body of persons or nations having a common history or a common social economic and political interests. A group linked by a common policy, joint ownership, or participation social activity, Quote from Gothe on Community : The world is so empty. If one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities, but to know someone who thinks feels with us and who through distance and who though distance is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us and in the inhabited. Quote From Fred Rogers on community : Reaching Out To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation. Email: timothy@createartpodcast.com YouTube Channel: Create Art Podcast YT Channel IG: @createartpodcast Twitter: @createartpod   Transcripts of the show KDOI Rebroadcast Conversations On Community with Mike Porter Tim: Create art podcast. KDOI rebroadcast conversations on community with like Porter. Hello friends. This is Timothy Kimo. Brian, your head instigator for create art podcast where I use my twenty years. Plus. From my experiences in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. Now, a few years ago, I used to run a podcast called K D O I podcasts, which stood for Kimo's den of iniquity. I closed down that podcast and started up create art podcast because I felt. That is a better way to communicate to you what this podcast is about. So in 2022, I'll be rebroadcasting season three of Katie or podcasting. Now for this episode, I'll be talking with Mike Porter and we're going to be discussing community. And in each of these episodes, I start off with the definition of community and then two quotes. And then I talked to my guest to see what their opinion is on that topic. So I hope you enjoy. Welcome back friends. Welcome to KDOI podcasting Kimo's den of iniquity, where we create more than we consume. I am your head instigator, Timothy Kimo, Brian, many times creating art is done in an imposed isolation or away from our audience. When we do that, we can often feel like we're the only person doing the art we are doing. And we may never find our intended audience. It's important to find our community, to learn, to challenge and to inspire our creativity. I never went to conferences while in college, but since I left academia, I've gone to three conferences in two years about podcasting. Now, each time. The other weirdos that do what I do. I have a sense of family that I'm not the only crazy one out there doing this. It makes me want to push through blockages and create more. Now let's listen to what Merriam Webster says, a unified body of individuals, the people with common interests living in a particular area. A group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society, a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered throughout a larger society, a body of persons or nations having a common history or a common social economic and political interests. A group linked by a common policy, joint ownership, or participation social activity, our quotes come from Goethe or girthy. However, you'd like to pronounce his name. The world is so empty. If one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities, but to know someone who thinks feels with us and who through distance and who though distance is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us and in the inhabited. We also have Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers, to the most of us, we live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It is easy to say it's not my child at my community, not my world, not my problem. Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people. My heroes Guthy was a German writer in state. Is works, include four novels, epic and lyric poetry, prose, verse dramas, memoirs, autobiography, literary, and aesthetic criticism, and true to seize on botany and anatomy and color. Fred Rogers, otherwise known as Mr. Rogers was an American television personality, musician, puppeteer writer, producer, and I didn't know this Presbyterian minister. Dictionary definition was very long-winded. But what really spoke to me was body of persons of common and a specifically professional interests scattered throughout through a larger society. You know, we have shared interest in our exploration in inter interpretation of art. Yes, we are all over the world and we can always find a kindred soul that. For me, you can't go wrong with Fred Rogers. We do have a shared responsibility and isn't it great to know that we can help each other out. In fact, many artists I know are only too happy to help other artists out with supplies or a space to express themselves. Just like I'm doing here today. So let's get this conversation started. Mike Porter: making off of your art. Do you consider yourself a professional artist? Tim: All right, so it's $400. $400 a year. Is it 400 American or 400 Canadian or 400 Australian? It's $400 American Mike Porter: wise, unless you're a dual citizen and you're living in Australia, in which case it's whatever their tax codes is. Tim: Well, why does it have to be 400 Mike Porter: American? Because that is the amount Tim: that, but who determines that it has to be American, who is the determining factor who was saying that it has to be 400. Who says that the government they get, what, which government, the American government, why is Mike Porter: there an American government? There is definitely an off and on occasionally, Tim: every four years might be an American government. We get an extra day. If we want to be open. I like being open. I'm all about giving and being open Mike Porter: and honest. Tim: Oh no, I don't know. I didn't say that. No, Mike Porter: no, no, no. So open and dishonest, ask me anything. I'll tell you anything. Not necessarily the truth openly Tim: dishonest is a beautiful thing. Openly dishonest. That's that's the way I like to be. That's that's what I'm going to run my platform on that you are going to be the head Mike Porter: off, right? Except that can't be because I'm a Canadian citizen. Tim: That's. That's okay. We're going to run you for president. I'll be your vice president. And when you are elected, then you can just kind of go. I Mike Porter: don't, I don't even think I Tim: can run. Sure. You care. Anybody can run. No, Mike Porter: I think you have to be with the 35 years old and an American citizen Tim: technicalities, or you can run, you just can't win. Mike Porter: I don't think that's true. I think this is one of those openly dishonest. It sounds good. Tim: And folks, you have tuned into another episode of K D O I podcast, where we create more than we consume. And as you know, I'm Timothy Kimo. Brian and I have with me here are wonderful merchants of mercy, our purveyor of books of glean and happiness. Mr. Mike Porter with now is little fish, still an official thing, or is it not Mike Porter: a little fish? Comics died? Sasha's dead. I do have a secret nerd Panda, which is up and running. It is doing okay. But you can find me in person at Sage manages game evening, Tim: which we just came from this very afternoon before we recorded this podcast. And it was a very mirthful place. It, it, there's a lot of happiness in that place Mike Porter: For the people coming in. Yes. For the employees, not so much. Tim: See folks. That's why, when you go into these places, you need to provide either mirth or leave the employees. Don't feed the employees, help Mike Porter: feed Tim: what kind of food. Provide you with a sustainable amount of happiness for about two hours. Mike Porter: We do have a one customer who is a professional chef and he brings me pastries, apple pastries all the time. And I appreciate him very much. Tim: You know, so folks pastries, if you go into Sage manners, pastries is the way to go. Mike Porter: Now I am Canadian. So a. Donuts. They're an official food group in Canada. Oh, I did Tim: not know that I'm shocked being parked Canadian myself. I was not aware of that. Now. It doesn't have to be a certain type of donut. Mike Porter: Now us personally, I personally prefer jelly donuts, but jellies are great. Tim: What type of deal they needs to be in that donut? It Mike Porter: doesn't matter. It can be, it can be a custard, it can be a jelly. It can be they're all Tim: jellies. So a filling of some sort that is not cream, or it can even be a cream, like a Boston cream, Mike Porter: like a Boston cream is a jelly Tim: donuts. All right, fantastic. So folks, you know, Some donuts stacked. He needs them. He is not happy. He's happy where he's at and he's happy to serve the public and customers, but in order to get them even more happy, which I believe you could be more happy who couldn't be more happy. One of there's a few people that couldn't be more happy. Name one. One of my daughters, I'm sure couldn't be more happy. She could not be more happy. Cause she's my daughter. Oh, how could you be more happy than being. You would not know that you're not know Mike Porter: the answer to that. Tim: I do not have the answer to that, but you don't even a few years you could interview one of my daughters. It doesn't matter either one, they're both interchangeable and you can see, you know, what it takes to be more happy than what they are. Teenagers. Yeah, that's not loud then we'll get it out now. We're not missing. No, no, no, no, no. Don't curse me like that. That's just that's mean that's growing for Canadian kind of shocked and in awe that, I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. That's what we're looking for here today, folks. So how Mike Porter: many apologies will you get out of me? Tim: In this episode? Okay. And we already got one 11 to go 11 to go. Let's see if we can do it. All right. So today's topic that we're going to be discussing today. Here is a community, right? So in the pre-show I've already read the definition of community and given the the two quotes that we're using today, one from Fred Rogers and one from Guthy or Gerta. So SuperNet people pronounce it, correct though. Healthy. My first question, he likes, how do you pronounce his narrative? Mike Porter: It's definitely Gurtis anyone who pronounces it go theme. You get to punch. Tim: Really? It's true. You get the punch that in my philosophy class. Okay. So the reason why he pronounced it, go for it. He is because some people do pronounce it that way before you go ahead and strike me down. Right. But I just, you know, for some of the folks out there, they, they want to pronounce it that way you prefer Gerta and that's. And that's okay. I Mike Porter: appreciate you allowing me to be right. Well, I Tim: like it when you're right, because then that means that I'm right. And you know, couldn't you be more happier if you were more right? I don't think you could be Mike Porter: many things would make me happier pronunciation of people's names. Probably not high on that list. Not high on the Tim: list. Okay. What do you think about the quotes that we had from from Gerta and from Fred Rogers? Okay. So Fred Rogers quote is and I have it right here. If you'd like to take a look at it again. Oh no, no. It is tattooed on your chest. I did see a tattooed on your chest. I don't know why you showing me his chest areas, but he is doing that right now. As we're sitting in this coffee shop for the Mike Porter: folks at home, the, just for the Tim: quote. Mike Porter: Him and talking about how the people that actually are involved in the community or the people that he sees as being heroes, that there are people that walk by or somebody is in trouble. They don't feel invested in that person, right. As, as part of a community and the people that stop and help that person or the people that fed Rogers consider as a hero, Tim: remembering the program. You want to remember this correctly. So you enjoy that E that really spoke to you. Right? My, Mike Porter: my rebuilt, I think that there's a lot of. Sidelines people and more now, I mean, it's weird to give an example when we moved into the neighborhood that we're currently in I went with home-baked goods to the neighbors and introduced myself and he was like, Hey, we're neighbors. We're just moving in. And they looked at me like I was insane. Because he was a stranger coming over and knocking on the door and, and introducing themselves, you only go to people's houses if there's an emergency, not a Tim: fear. Now let me ask you a question on this, because I've known you now for about five years. What color was your hair when you did that? Like the color of my hair was probably brown. It was brown. Okay. So it was a natural color, right. Okay. That's fine. Nevermind. Nevermind. Go ahead. The reason why that's, because I've had purple Mohawks and I can understand if somebody was a little. For clubs, shall we say a little bit alarmed. If I came up with baked goods to their house and said, hi, I'm your neighbor. Right. Mike Porter: But the point I, well, I don't know if this is a 409, but what, I'm, what I'm trying to move, maneuver myself towards. Is that the idea of what is a community it's changed in that? The face-to-face. Sort of interactions with people that, that community I think has drifted apart, but it's sort of been replaced with a digital community now, like the online people, you have the GoFund me's and the. Hey, help me out two pages and people will give money to the people in need and that's fantastic. But if they saw them on the street, wouldn't, wouldn't stop in and help. Wouldn't, you know, they look at the person who's homeless is an inconvenience when they're walking, but that same person will give money to somebody they don't know to have their window fixed or to help them get into college or to. So the idea of community, the what, what is the community has changed in that re in some ways it's a lot broader because we live in this digital world, but at the same time, the interpersonal in-person community is, has suffered, Tim: I think. And I can't Verify the information that I'm going to share with you. So I'm gonna share it with you anyways, right? Because just making this up because that's what we do know. I actually heard it someplace. I, I heard it on NPR and like they're very reliable, more reliable than my shell. I don't know. Okay. But certainly more viewers. Well, just three more viewers, three, just three more, you know, and that's, that's on statistics that I have created, right. And I don't have any viewers. I have listeners, but that's okay. I've got, you know, they've got three more than I do. So, but they were saying with the go fund me accounts that well, over half are dedicated to people's medical bills. So they're like one of the largest insurers in the country. Right. That doesn't surprise me at all. You know? So, you know, w we, we have a tendency to develop the community around us to better ourselves, well, to, you know, for an emerging. If we need it, but in order to enrich and enliven ourselves, we need to have the community around us. Right. Mike Porter: When, when I had little fish comics, at one point, there was. Vandalism incident with involving a what do you call them? Slingshots. And somebody broke the window in Tim: the front. It wasn't me. I know. I'm not saying it was just because I'm from Chicago. The way we don't use slingshots in Chicago, by the way, Mike Porter: that would be an amazing town. If it was a city, if it was Tim: just all slingshots, there would be, Hey, you know what? It'd be a lot nicer place to leave. Zack a lot nicer, fewer rocks, fewer rocks would be new. That's true. But somebody, one of our customers set up a GoFundMe for a little fish comics. Didn't didn't talk to me about it. Just set it up that, that day. And the community of people that were coming to the store donated enough to have the window repaired within 24 hours. Mike Porter: So that was crazy. And that's like, that's a cool way that the digital world can interact with. The actual sort of meat Tim: world, the meat world, as in like cow ham, Limburger cheese. Yep. Physical world, the physical world. Okay. I got you. As opposed to digital well understood digital meat I hear is making a breakthrough. Mike Porter: It's not as filling Tim: it really. Isn't looking at Mike Porter: pictures of cows. Tim: It's just not the same. And it's, you know, it's, it's satisfying yet. Not fulfilling. And I'll give you that, but in a satisfying to look at pictures of cows, I often look at videos of cows myself, but that's what I do, Mike Porter: nothing to say to that, Tim: nor am I looking for you to say anything to that? You know, what more can you say after that? So now Gerta is a thing is the world is empty. If one things only of mountains, rivers, and cities, but to know someone who thinks and feels with us and who through though distant is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth. And inhabited garden. How does that make you feel? Do you have a community now? You know, there's an arts program. We would talk a lot about arts here, obviously. And, and we had our I don't really want to call it a disagreement. We had our miscommunication we define words different. In our last conversation. Okay. Mike Porter: I have to refresh me in, what Tim: were your artists, the term artist, right. You were referring to a professional artist. I was referring to ameture artistry as, as being an artist. So for this, your community, do they provide you an inhabited. Artistically Mike Porter: artistic. Well, here's the thing that I think is kind of interesting about artistic community. I think that up to a certain point, they're incredibly helpful that they, they can inspire you to continue. They can push you to, to create when a community is made up of the same sort of. I'm going to use, let's say podcasting as an example, my impression of having listened to several people, talking about making podcasts and how to make podcasts. Up to the inception point of creating the podcast incredibly helpful and wonderful to each other. Once you actually have that podcast up and running, and it becomes a competitive competition, the community sort of doesn't help as much right now. That they're up and running. Now that you've gotten them creatively going now, you don't want them to have viewers because, or listeners, because you want those listeners for yourself. If they're talking about the same sorts of things, there's a a measure of where the pendulum is going to go and you want it to go towards you rather than towards them. Kind Tim: of like a territorial kind of thing, what you're saying. Right. Mike Porter: I've I've experienced it with writing in the sense of once as when you're a struggling writer. Professional writers will give you a lot of advice. Well, I'll give you a lot of helpful advice. As soon as you are a published author and you're interacting with another published author, it becomes weird because they, they're not talking to you like Like a mentor mentee. Not even at a, as peers, like getting equals you're, you're more guarded because if I have a story idea and I'm trying to flush it out or flesh it out I might not talk to somebody that I know has published a book because I'm worried that they will take that idea and publish it, because I know that they have the ability to do that because they've published before. Whereas somebody who is struggling as a writer, I might be, feel more free to talk about an idea in front of it and workshop an idea because I'm not as concerned that it's going to be stolen. So there's, there's a. Among communities of the same sort of art, art history. There's a guardedness. I think that happens at after a certain point at a certain level that doesn't help. Yeah. And I don't know if there's any way to get past that beyond. Proprietary thinking of that idea as being yours and getting to where I think is a more evolved state of, Hey, here's an idea. And even if they do something with that idea, it doesn't diminish what you're doing with the idea at all. So I think that's the sort of the next level of community is where, where you can get to that point. Openly discussing things without the fear, but generally speaking in, in sort of a consumer capitalist kind of, kind of base where you're chasing that the monetary value of things there's always going to be a guardedness that we're getting in the way of producing a creative idea in a community, in a group because who owns that idea? Tim: Exactly exactly who does own that idea. If a bunch of people developing it, if you workshop an idea, if you bring a short story to. And they toss him, their critiques windows become theirs when he does come. When does it become the communities and see speaking to yours. Right. You know and that, that can be a, a downfall of communities as well. Folks that are in the same disciplines, you know, a group of writers or group of podcasters. Absolutely. I've witnessed that too. You know, you get. You, you, you know what you're saying? That, that certain level of force no longer your amateur doing it for fun, doing it for a hobby it's Ooh. I just, you know with podcasting it's I scored my first advertiser. And then that was that next phase. How do I get my next advertiser on here? How do I get, you know, a beeline beeline B-level celebrities on my show, right. And there's really no way of going about doing it. Three conferences and it's all be pushed on monetization, monetization, monetization, and then they're going to show you how to do that, but you gotta pay a little, you gotta pay, you know, 40 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month for that. Right. And so it's no longer mentor mentee. The business, providing Mike Porter: a service at that point. It's not a, it's not that mentoring you they're, they're offering their expertise as a service to be mine and the fear and the, the, at least for me, like my still discomfort, when we go back to that idea of workshopping an idea. If I put, put forward a short story in a group and they add things in and I, I make use of that. There comes a point where you're. You have to give credit, right. And it's never clear at what that level is at what point you, you say, thank you for lying to the group for helping me workshop this, versus giving somebody an author credit versus, you know, the different levels of, of contribution. And then at the expectation of Reimbursement. If, if you say, well, this person did a lot of editing on, on my, my story. I'm going to give them a, a writing credit on it and being nice about it. Nice being, just being honest in saying, Hey X person helped the lawn experts and given, then go look at my, my name is on this too. I should be getting 50% of whatever. Exactly. So it becomes how much credit can you give and still make money with what you're doing. Tim: You kind of lose the the, the, the giving aspect of a community. Versus the what's in it for me. Right. Mike Porter: And that's, that goes to the Fred Rogers quote, actually, if you're, I think that that's sort of the fear of giving a credit or helping out. You're not going to get any, anything out of it. That's the person that Mr. Rogers is saying, isn't that isn't their hero. The person that's, that's volunteering, their, their expertise and help to solve. Is the person that he's looking at as Tim: being easier. Fantastic, fantastic thoughts there. Do you think and I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here and that's not just because that, you know, the drink that I have has a is an ex gold cup in the most of my tattoos have skulls on them. You get to keep that. No, I do not. As far as well, I don't know. I might, I could fit my bag nicely and I would assume, no, I wouldn't want to do that. I like these people here at this coffee shop that were fantastic, Mike Porter: but I'm Tim: going to play the devil's advocate here with that. And could it be that that what you, you know, published that first book once you get that first sponsor once you get that first a thousand dollars on Patrion. Sure. The other people that have. Guided you, mentored you at that point, then they kind of go, okay, well you've made it over that hurdle. You've made it over that goal. Fly be free. Now, now it's up to you to do that. Now it's up to you to repeat Mike Porter: that. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a, there comes a point when mentors become peers. And that that fits into community somewhere. I mean, you can have a community of peers, you can never I'm not sure. I'm not sure what your, your, your point is to it. Other than, other than just say that. Yes. I think that at some point you know, the student has become the master grasshopper that you've learned as much. Ken from somebody in a practical sense, but at least artistically since it's a creative endeavor, there's no limit on creativity. So you can keep learning from the same person and seeing how they create things and learn something new from them. As long as they're willing to let you observe or interact In terms of a community it, it becomes more difficult for peers in a competitive industry to help each other out Tim: their world is a very competitive thing. And there's Mike Porter: only so much wall space for your, for who gets to hang their P their paintings. Right. So that's true. If, if you get that, that showing, that means somebody else is, and I don't, I get, I think that goes to that, that idea that The more involved, artistic ideal would be congratulations. You've gotten this space and I will get my space. And it's, it's not a competition. But as long as we're looking at trying to make a living at it, we're going to be the professional versus the amateur. I mean, that's it, that's when it, when you can. You can't be as altruistic as you might want to be because you're going for a limited Tim: resource. So it basically, once you hit that point of you no longer to have that, your, your professional, then you don't necessarily. Cutthroat about it, but you have to you you've taken on a new master per se, instead of the the inspiration ferry that, you know, flies around that, you know, it's everybody, you have to think of it as a business. You have to go on that left side of the brain. Right? Mike Porter: I think, I think that the community is a lot more willing to help you out on the creative end of things, and a lot less willing to help you out on the business. End of things, because creative. We helping you develop an idea that you've come up with and right. That you, or tell your, your own or whatever that doesn't cost me anything. Right. Getting you to the, so once you have that idea and develop, once you have that painting done, once you have that story. And you're trying to get it published. That's where we start getting into competition. And that's where the community, I think, breaks down in the sense that we can work very well together on workshopping an idea. But as soon as you're trying to get it published, and if you're wearing the same art form, I'm writing a science fiction stories and you're writing science fiction stories. There's only so many places that are accepting science fiction stories. And I might not want to tell you that about an idea where you could actually sell that idea if I'm intending to submit something to that place, to And that doesn't make you a bad person, as I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking that it's also misguided in the sense that while you and I are both submitting something to the same people, we're not in competition with each other, we're in competition for their attention. My, you, you putting in. A great story. Isn't stopping me from putting in a great story and both of us feel accepted, but it's hard to get past that idea that it is a competition that even. I guess a more involved. I think you, you don't look at it as being in competition with each other. When you're living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck, it, I'm going to stop hitting the table because of you get Tim: the typical questions you want me to focus? He's about ready to flip over the table because he knows that if we were to go ahead in the science fiction, writing contest, he would beat the crap out of me. He's a better writer than. Mike Porter: It is very kind of you to Tim: say, well, I try to be kind like that because you know, I, I do fear you. I just, I thought I should let everyone know. I do. I do fear Mr. Porter here light mighty brain hit his mommy brain and is something that I have been eating all of ever since I lived in Chicago and he actually reviewed some of my work a long time ago in a galaxy. And provided some good criticism for me. And this was a long time ago. You may or may not remember it. Mike Porter: I think that you gave it to me at one of these spoken word. Open mics. Tim: I'm remembering correctly. I saw, and I give it to you when I lived in Chicago and we in tele my wife passed about two and that he can help me. I don't. Am I a minute spoken when I could be, you know, there's been many, you know, it serves so much time has passed. We've known each other for so long. Excellent. So with this community idea here do you think you would be better to have a community of different disciplines? W would you be more willing to do it? I think we need different disciplines. So let's say you wanted to do some writing and then you were in a group of painters, podcasters dancers. No, that congestion Mike Porter: first, first we have to overcome the idea that one discipline is better than another. No, I'm not. I'm not just, just trying to think of, of how that community would work because you would tend to. Collaboration. Because as a writer, I can sit in this coffee shop that we're in right now, and I can look at the paintings on the wall. Tim: It'd be inspired to write something because of that painting. I've my, one of my books of poetry wisdom from the it was 60 pounds, 30 poems in 30 days. I did it twice, you know, so I had 60 poems in 60 days. And I give it to my good friend, Heather, and I said, I need some illustrations paintings. What have you, anything grabbed me? And she did all the illustrations for it. And she did the editing on that poetry book. So I think. Our forms can influence and inspire each other. She's also a writer. She's also a poet and musician and all that kind of jazz. You know, she's got a lot like me, which is scary. She's the female version of me. Mike Porter: Well, do you think that makes it easier when you're a Jack of all trades like that? You can put a master of none you can look at at how other disciplines can interact in, you know, when you, when you're painting. And that inspires you to write a poem about that piece. Well, and good. You're you you've worked those two disciplines together. But if you're only. Tim: Oh, you're just a writer, just a lowly writer. Cause you know, we all know that the writers are the lowest ones on the totem pole. There are, what do they got a piece of paper and something to put it on. You don't even need a pen. You, you know, you can take a mark who decides example and be in the insane asylum and write a whole book with poop. I don't, I don't think that's true. That is true. I saw it on a movie once. Mike Porter: I don't think he wrote a book in feces. I think that's a great story. Tim: That's true. We will put it in the show notes. We will find out we'll do some investigative journalism here with all the money that you guys are putting in my patriotic. Oh, what, Mike Porter: what I think with a community of a diverse community of different art artists, artists, and artistic types. First you'd have to overcome the, the tendency for groups to come together. And that's where people who are like yourself that are able to bring together a diverse set of skills and different forms of artistry to bridge that gap because. Wow most, well, not most, but a lot. A lot of artists tend to be insular creatures. They live inside their own heads. And so when you get a group of artists together, it's usually a very quiet sort of, or it's incredibly Rawkus and has nothing to do with art. So in order to facilitate a productive community, you would have to have people that are able to bring up, bring people into the conversation. Okay. If you leave things to their own devices, I think that the painters would clump with Peters, right? As you'd pump with writers, and then they would maybe wave at each other across the room and say, your thing really inspired me. Thank you. And you're welcome sort of thing. But in order to actually get collaborations, you would need somebody to say, Hey, Hey, come in, Kevin, come into this conversation. What do you think. About X and, and make that that person share. And once you get those, those boundaries down, I think you would have an amazing group that that would fire off of each other. But until you have those, those facilitators in inside of a community of artists, I think it's, it's just going to be a lot of so quiet introspection and every so often, very hesitantly showing something to somebody else. Tim: So what's stopping you from creating this. Me, you might stopping you from this. Yes. It's Mike Porter: all your fault. Usually it's my fault for myself. Tim: Why would you want to partaking up the cup? You're picking up the cup now. He is, you know, deep in thought and he's being very contemplated here, folks. But my question to him is going to be, you know, would, do you feel yourself or would thrive if that community was presented to you? No. No. You don't think you would thrive that. Mike Porter: I, I think I can see how other people would thrive in that and how beneficial it would be. But I am, you're very handsome. I'm crazy shy. And I don't like groups of people and I would much rather, you know, My wife has said in the past, we'll go have fun and going into, into groups and we have very different, different definitions for fun in those things. I, I sort of at any gathering and up against a wall. Sort of watching and then every so often I'll make the effort to dive back in like one of those Valiant sea turtles, just sort of pushing, it's trying to get given the tide of the party will push me back up against the wall and get my breath back. Kind of get that energy back up being by myself and then I'll dive back into the party, but I'm Tim: telling you, it's not for you. Yeah. I'm not, Mike Porter: I'm not a big sharing kind of kind of person. Tim: Do you think that that would it's not for you, but do you, would you get benefit from it? Do you feel you would get benefit from it? Mike Porter: The. Brutal honesty of, of self-reflection reflection. I would probably benefit very much from it. I'm not sure anybody would benefit from me being there because I would not be sharing as much as I wouldn't be sort of quietly in the corner, listening and taking notes and bettering myself because I just, I don't deal with groups very well. Just not extroverted enough. Tim: Okay. We're not, we're not, we don't have the couch here today, so we're not going to psychoanalyze. I hope you're okay with that. Sure. Okay. Good. I mean, I, if you want to, we can go to my house in the man cave in the studio. I have a couch there with a vibrating chair. It doesn't have heat, but I do have a little, a little, a little firebox there that we can turn on and have some heat pour on us. And we can say, I call the sideline long as you, if you like. Mike Porter: Well, I'm just saying that right now. There's two of us. Tim: Yeah. Well, there's, there's three. There's you and me and the listener. Right. Mike Porter: But they're not Tim: interacting. Sure. They are. They're judging us as we're talking over Mike Porter: there quietly, what is he talking to him? He does not know what we're up. He speaks, but I don't know what they're thinking. So their judgment of me has no impact on me talking to you. I feel no. Wait. I have people around me judging what I'm saying. I feel a little bit because I'm in a coffee shop and I'm sure that other people can hear me and then feeling a little nervous, more nervous now that I'm thinking about that, Tim: but you're here with me. Right. And I'm a very, yeah, you can take, you can take them a very extroverts. I've been known to be that way on occasion. Okay. So I'll take them on for you. If anyone, everyone harasses you, Chicago Tims. But, but the point being that Mike Porter: There was a point something oh, that I, that I don't mind the, the, the idea of the listener, because I, it's not going to effect what I'm saying right now. On the other hand, if I was in a, in a room. With the expressed purpose of us as a group, doing something together, I would feel a great deal of weight in expressing my, my opinion to a bunch of people that would be judging that opinion in real time. In front of me, which again goes back to that idea of digital community. I'm a lot more comfortable sharing stuff on a, on a forum than I am in in person. Tim: So maybe what we need to do is to set up a community where you can be cloistered in a room where you can view what's going on, and then you provide your feedback without having. Actually be in the physical presence of the people that would be in the room and then they could get a read out of it, you know, that you could write your paragraph or whatever it is and say what you liked and what you didn't like about it. And then, and just leave it at that. And then that way you don't have to interact with these. Yeah, that's weird. Okay. We won't do that for you kind of prompt. So this idea of community things that the artists communities are not necessarily your cup of tea and it's understandable. It's understandable. You've explained yourself. Mike Porter: I love the idea of You know, that the artists, community of painters that are off and they all have the same thing that they're painting and PG moves around and looks at their stuff and it gives them pointers in that you're there to develop your skill at painting. And I'm sure the same thing can work for, for almost any artistic endeavor. But when it's more. Interactive when it's more on the level of peers, that's where I get really nervous. So that's comfortable. And I don't think I would be the hero that Mr. Rogers would want me to be. Tim: And you need to be the hero, Mr. Rogers, much. Mike Porter: Everybody should be the hero that Mr. Rogers minds, Tim: folks, you heard it here for student Mr. Rogers. She's going to move you coming out here Mike Porter: on Netflix and Tim: it's fantastic. It is on Netflix. Did I miss it in the theater? Yeah. I Mike Porter: don't know if it was released in theaters. I'm not sure Tim: Tom Hanks, right. It was a play Mr. Mike Porter: Rogers. Oh. And we're thinking of something else. There's a movie coming out with Tom Hanks. I wasn't aware of, but there is a biography of Mr. Rogers there on Netflix currently. And it was really good. Tim: I know. I was actually talking there is. From what I understand now, again, you know, NPR has better information than I do because they have three more listeners than I do through our viewers than not listeners, but viewers. But yeah, there's a movie that's supposed to come out with Tom Hanks being, playing a part of. Mike Porter: But you're listening to a higher caliber. Tim: They're they're they're they're very good looking folks. More discerning. They are more discerning they're way more intelligent. That's what I heard. That's Mike Porter: that's what I know. I heard that recently, Tim: I, I know that they are way more intelligent, way more. They're nicer people. There are people that you want to, you know, bring over to your house. And have a wonderful conversation with, well, bring over to your house. I'll bring over to my house. Absolutely. I'd love to bring all the people that listen to this podcast over to my house. Right. And you know, I, I would cook some poutine for some of them, man, that would be enjoyable. And for the other people, I would you know, bust out my grill in a grilled from steaks. Some asparagus grilled asparagus is very tasty and the the the little dish that I made last night for my wife, with the Alfredo sauce, the pasta shells asparagus, and we had not scaling. Scallops scallops. Thank you. You're welcome. Oh my gosh. The scalps animated that my wife and I had three bowls off in less than 24 hours and she thoroughly enjoyed. She's probably going to have some more tonight. Mike Porter: We'll see. Before this is a community. You can define the community by what foods you do. Okay. Tim: And you really can't, you really can't, you know, there's, there's people that like the. The farm farm to table stuff. There's people that are you know, raw they like nothing cooked, vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, pescatarians, peanut, the buck Tarion's, you know, all that kind of good stuff and the omnivores. And of course the carnivores, which they'd all the carnivores have tiny little arms just saying, all right. Well, Mike, thank you so much for this conversation with us here on community. You provided a lot of great insights, I think. And you know, folks community is out there for you. I think you can create community if you really want to, they might bring up some fantastic points about once it comes from a mentor mentees situation to a appear situation. I think he made some great points with that. Is there anything else that you'd like to leave us with with community? I think that the only other thing that I would say about community is that almost by definition, it's an investment. You have to be willing to invest time and effort in order to build community communities. Mike Porter: Don't just happen if they did, when I brought Cookie's over to the neighbors. They would have just been, Hey neighbor, thank you. Sort of thing. You, you have to continually reinforce the idea that the people that you want to be in a community with are important to you, that they have value and that you have. Insight or value for them. And that's what keeps the community together. I think the idea that you're in something together, or you have something to share with each other in common. Excellent. Tim: Excellent. And yeah, just like we're building this community with you, our listeners. He must end up iniquity where we create more than we consume. Can't wait for y'all to listen to this episode and the rest of our episodes. Go back through our catalog. You can always reach out to us at kdoipodcastingatgmail.com. Let us know if you would like to get involved in this. We have 11 topics for you to choose from Mike here. He chose this topic. I well, you chose two topics. And I we picked this one. We may get him to talk on the other topic at a later time. But that's how easy it is. Mike did was this pretty easy? This was Mike Porter: fantastic. I love doing this. This is a painless way of expressing opinion. It's like, if you don't like, I, everybody likes talking about themselves. And an extension of that. I think it's you asking? I think about X. Well, let me tell you about and why I think that my opinion, why my opinion matters. Tim: So next episode with Mike here, we are going to ask him when he thinks about the letter X. That's right. We'll probably use the capital X versus the lowercase X because you know, Mike has a lot of thoughts about the I believe it's true. He had more thoughts about the upper case versus the lower case. So again, thank you for gratuity. We will see your next episode. Remember you consume All right. Well, thank you for joining me. As I go down memory lane in discussing community with Mike Porter, he was my cartoon, not my comic book guy, not my cartoon guy, but he was my comic book. Way back in the day. Unfortunately he had closed his shop, but it was a fantastic conversation that we had at a local coffee shop here in town. So you got to hear a little bit of the ambiance as it were. I really enjoyed doing these conversations on specific topics with a lot of my artistic friends. And I hope you got something on. Now I would ask you if you did get something out of it, go ahead and subscribe or follow on your podcast app of choice. Or you can go right ahead to the website, create art podcast.com and subscribe right there in 2022, we're going to be doing these KDOI rebroadcasts there'll be 10 episodes. This is the first one and we'll have our regular episodes. And I also want it. Remind you that I run another podcast called find a podcast about, and that's where we help you find your next spring, where the podcast and outsmart the algorithm. And you can find that at find a podcast about dot X, Y, Z. For creating art podcast, you can email me timothy@createartpodcast.com. Twitter and a Instagram account and a YouTube page for you as well. All the links will be in the show notes. So it's been my pleasure to help you team your inner critic and create more than you consume. Now. Go out there and create some art for somebody you love yourself. We'll see you next. This has been a gaggle pod, east studio production gagglepod pod, where we've been helping creatives tell their story through podcasting. Since 2017, you can find all of our network shows at gagglepod.com. You can contact with. We want to help you tell your story to the world through .

Sales Hustle
#219 S2 Episode 88 - Overcoming Personal Struggles to Helping Sellers become Uncrushed with Tim Clarke

Sales Hustle

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 27, 2021 29:55


Book Your Free Revenue First Podcast Strategy here!Get Your Free Dial Session here!Claim Your Free 200 Leads here!HIGHLIGHTSEarly career in sales and marketingPressures of a new role plus dealing with the loss of a fatherWork and personal lives have become more intertwined Taking care of your mental health should be normalizedCreating an environment of vulnerability and courage Leaders need to step up in advocating for their employees' mental health Dealing with substance abuse and taking time off workQUOTESTim: “Drugs and alcohol they're just the surface level things. My core issue is that I didn't know how to handle my emotions or process them healthily.”Tim: “Addiction doesn't discriminate. It can just come up in many forms whether it's pills, or dugs, or alcohol, sex, love, social media, work, I believe that everyone has some form of hook or addiction challenge.”Collin: “It's so common that in a sales organization, it's like, leave your personal stuff at home. When you're here, you need to focus, you need to hit your activities, you need to build your pipeline, you need to hit your quota.”Tim: “It's one thing for two people in the US to speak openly about mental health. But when you start looking at cultures in Asia and India, it's like we don't speak about this.”Tim: “It's never been about me or whoever's representing Uncrushed. We share our stories to create a space of vulnerability. Really when we create the events it's about holding space for other employees to share their stories. And it just normalizes it.”Tim: “The whole point of Uncrushed is not from the point of view of someone who's already asked for help. It's before that. The whole point that we're trying to do is hopefully you'll connect with the story. You'll hear not only what they struggled but what they did to navigate those challenges and find the light.”Learn more about Tim in the links below:Website: https://www.uncrushed.org/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timclarke/Learn more about Collin in the link below: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/collin-saleshustle/Also, you can join our community by checking out @salescast.community. If you're a sales professional looking to take your career to greater heights, please visit us at https://salescast.co/ and set a call with Collin and Chris.

The Nazi Lies Podcast
The Nazi Lies Podcast Ep. 12: Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin Cure COVID

The Nazi Lies Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 25, 2021 27:23


Mike Isaacson: Now when you say recommended dose… [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome to another episode of the Nazi Lies Podcast. Subscribe to our Patreon to get access to early episodes and membership in our book club and Discord. Today we are joined by Dr. Tim Geary, a pharmacoparasitologist or parasitopharmacologist… He studies parasites and makes drugs. He's a professor emeritus at McGill University and still teaches courses at Queen's University Belfast. He's here to talk to us about hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and why they probably won't neutralize Coronavirus. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Geary. Tim Geary: You're welcome, Mike. Please call me Tim. Mike: Okay, Tim. Before we get into all the science, tell our audience a little bit about what you've done professionally, because you have a very extensive list of bona fides, and I don't really know where to start. [laughs] Tim: That's quite all right. Yes, I have been working on the study of drugs, pharmacology, for about 45 years, and most of that time I've been working on chemotherapy of infectious diseases, primarily parasites. This includes work in Africa. Most of my career has been on veterinary parasites or human neglected tropical diseases caused by parasites. During the course of my career I have worked on malaria, and that's where chloroquine and its derivative hydroxychloroquine come from, and also ivermectin, which I have studied for many, many years, both in animals and people. In full disclosure, Mike, I once did work for the pharmaceutical industry, the animal health arm of a company called up Upjohn that is now known as Zoetis in Kalamazoo, Michigan. [ed. It's now part of Viatris.] I also consulted and worked with the World Health Organization, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and with the Carter Center on various problems of tropical diseases, and I continue to be a consultant for some animal health companies. That's who I am. Mike: Very good. All right. Now you've done some research on both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, correct? Tim: I have, indeed. I worked on both how they work to kill parasites and also how parasites become resistant to them. I have studied them in clinical settings as well as in the laboratory, and I think I qualify as an expert in both medicines in the indications for which they are used, which is essentially tropical medicine and veterinary parasitology. Mike: Very good. And you've also been following the misinformation surrounding these two drugs too, right? Tim: I have, with great interest and concern. There aren't very many people in the world who are experts at drug discovery and drug development for these kinds of conditions. That's unfortunate. But yes, I have followed that, Mike, and I certainly have opinions about where the misinformation came from. It was not a malintention, it was just wrong interpretation and wrong design of some initial experiments that led to inappropriate conclusions in a rush to clinical use. Mike: Okay, so let's talk about each of these medications and then we'll talk about where the rumors started. So let's start with hydroxychloroquine. Since the beginning of the pandemic almost, it was heralded as a miracle COVID cure but was quickly discovered not to be that. What were its recognised clinical uses? Tim: So hydroxychloroquine is a derivative of a drug called chloroquine, which was also touted initially as a possible solution to COVID. Chloroquine was a miracle drug for the treatment of malaria. It saved, oh my gosh, millions and millions of lives over the course of its use. It's relatively cheap, it's reasonably safe and it was highly effective against malaria parasites until they evolved resistance to it. It's use for malaria has now diminished remarkably. Hydroxychloroquine was thought to be a safer alternative with a better sort of safety profile. But it never was really used for malaria. It just never displaced chloroquine. Instead, it found use as kind of an immunomodulator compound for people with systemic lupus erythematosus or lupus as it's commonly known, an autoimmune condition. So hydroxychloroquine for people with lupus does help to reduce symptoms, to reduce worsening of the disease, and it is a valuable drug for that purpose. Mike: Okay, and how safe is it to experiment with? Tim: Not very. I mean, it does have side effects, especially when you go over recommended dosing. We'll talk, I think Mike, in a little bit about how that relates to potential uses against COVID, if you like, but it's normal use in lupus patients, it's pretty well tolerated. But the doses are quite specific for that, and as with most medicines, it's safe when used appropriately. Mike: And what happens when it's not used appropriately? What kinds of symptoms can you... Tim: There are a variety; hearing loss is one that kind of stands out, but you can get imbalances, a sort of dizziness, classic nausea, vomiting, things like that. It's not a drug to be taken lightly. It's not as safe as many of the medicines that we use. But again, when it's used appropriately, it's fine. Mike: Okay, and how did the rumors start that this could be used to be COVID. Tim: So it's a classic story, Mike. So whenever a new condition surfaces, like COVID, there's a rush to test all the– what are known as the FDA registered medicines. These are medicines that have been approved for one use or another either by the US government or by the European agencies. It's always easier to adapt an approved drug for new indication than to register a completely new medicine. It's just way cheaper, way faster. So everyone turns to “What have we already approved just to see if by some unexpected chance it would also work in this new condition?” And that's what happened here. People can grow the SARS-CoV-2 virus in cell culture. So we grow it in cell culture and throw every compound that is registered and approved into those cultures to see, “Does any of them work?” And hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which we'll talk about, they came out of that effort. There's a serious flaw with the strategy in this case. I will say, Mike, sometimes it works. Sometimes you find something you didn't expect. I don't think we'll have time to go into those exceptions but there are some. So a key-- and this is sort of basic science and I hope it's okay for everybody-- but a big factor is the kind of cell that you use to grow the virus to test it. Scientists typically use for viral diseases, a cell called the vero cell, which was derived from an African Green Monkey kidney. The reason they use this cell is because most viruses grow really well in it, so it's quite easy to adapt a new virus to that system. The problem is, it's not representative of the kinds of cells that say SARS-CoV-2, the COVID virus infect. Those would be human lung cells, if you will. So yes, hydroxychloroquine works at relatively high concentrations against the virus in vero cells. But it turns out if you do the same experiment with cultures of human lung cells, it really doesn't work at all, because the virus enters those cells in a way that's different than how it infects vero cells. Had we done the experiment properly, which is to use cultures of human lung cells, we wouldn't be having this conversation, Mike, because no one would have advanced hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure. I hope that answers okay, and I hope it's clear. It's not that the scientists who did this work had evil intentions, they did not. It's just that they used the wrong cell type, and people drew inappropriate conclusions from the result. Mike: Okay, let's switch gears to ivermectin. There's actually been a lot of misinformation about ivermectin on both sides of the don't-try-this-at-home debate. So in addition to the people on one side claiming that ivermectin can cure COVID, on the other side, you have people who are reducing ivermectin to just a horse dewormer. Tim: [laughs] Yeah. Well, ivermectin, like chloroquine is a wonder drug. Okay? First of all, ivermectin has revolutionized the treatment of parasites in animals, and we should not discount it. So maybe its primary use is actually in the prevention of heartworm infections in people's pets. It revolutionized the treatment of this. It's an important and extremely useful drug, but it also is very useful in people. It has been donated– More than a billion doses have been donated by Merck for the treatment of individuals infected with a couple of parasites in poor areas of the world, one is onchocerciasis or river blindness and the other is lymphatic filariasis or elephantiasis. So we have a huge history of use of the drug. It can be given once a year for these infections or twice a year. It's enormously important in tropical medicine. It is a human medicine. It is very safe as used. It's also extremely potent. So it takes very little of the drug to have a beneficial therapeutic effect. Mike: And how safe is it to experiment with? Tim: At the use doses, it's quite safe. There are isolated incidences which would never happen to people in the United States, for instance, or in regions that don't suffer from parasitic infections like this. It's very safe, but it can be overdosed. It's possible. One of the things that's really important to know, and I mentioned that it's very potent, right? So you give tiny doses to people who suffer from these parasitic infections, but the solutions that we use to treat animals, because animals are so much bigger than people, like horses or cows, for instance, they contain much higher amounts of the drug. And inappropriately taking those medicines you can get an overdose that has serious lethal concentrations and lethal implications, for instance. I think there have been a couple of fatalities in the US. So it should never be taken outside of a prescription by a physician. Mike: Okay. And where did the rumors about this one start from? Tim: [laughs] Exactly the same place, Mike. Ivermectin works against the virus in cell cultures, in vero cell cultures. It does not work in cultures of human lung cells, so there's no basis to presume that either of these drugs act by inhibiting the virus. I will also say that the concentrations of ivermectin that are required to be active even in the vero cells are 100 times higher than what you would see in a human dosed with a therapeutic amount of the drug. It's not even clear to me that even massive overdoses would give you enough of the drug in your blood to actually have this beneficial effect. The other problem, of course, that happened is people said, "Well, it's doing other things,” same with hydroxychloroquine, that maybe it's not inhibiting the virus but it has an immunosuppressive or some beneficial effect on immunity to the virus. That's unproven. I know of no real evidence that therapeutic doses of ivermectin for sure have this effect. Hydroxychloroquine is a kind of immunosuppressant and that is certainly not an effect you would like to see in acute infection, initial infection, because you need the immune system to combat the virus. It's possible that at later stages of more serious infections, when sometimes the human immune response can be over aggressive and cause pathology. That's why dexamethasone, which is a steroid that's used to suppress the immune system, has therapeutic benefit. But there's no reason to think that hydroxychloroquine will have any benefit over and above dexamethasone. And in fact, as you know, clinical trials in hospitalized patients showed no benefit whatsoever from hydroxychloroquine. Mike: And I would assume it's the same for ivermectin. Tim: It is. I'm sorry. It is. It's the same for ivermectin that we have treated hundreds of millions of people and literally billions of animals with this drug. No one has ever reported an antiviral effect or an immunosuppressive effect in these individuals. So we don't really have a mechanism that would explain either one. This becomes very important. I'm going to take a segue here if you don't mind. Mike: Hey, go for it. Tim: So right now ivermectin is undergoing clinical trials, not because of science but because of sort of public demand. These include several trials in the United States. The problem with a clinical trial like this is we have no hypothesized mechanism. So we don't have any way to judge, “How much ivermectin should we give to these people? What dose do we use? How frequently do we give it?” We have no idea what the target plasma concentration or blood concentration of the drug should be to have a beneficial effect on COVID. This makes the trial design extremely difficult. And it's going to complicate the interpretation. Right now some people think you have to take ivermectin all the time, other people think, “No, no, you just take it when you get sick.” We don't have a theoretical or any basis in theory to account for any of these outcomes. Mike: Okay. Switching gears again, I imagine in your relief work, you've encountered a bit of treatment and vaccine hesitancy, right? Tim: I think, Mike, just as a citizen, not necessarily have I sought it out. [laughs] I will say I have given a couple of other interviews about this and at least one of them generated a lot of negative feedback on my character because clearly ivermectin is a lifesaver and I'm doing a disservice. But in terms of vaccine hesitancy, I think it's coupled with enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. It's a rather bizarre demonstration of human susceptibility to anecdote and conspiracy. I will say, look, a lot of people that advocate either one of these drugs are not evil. I think they're misguided. I'm looking forward to the results of the clinical trials on ivermectin that I hope will quell some of this over-enthusiasm. I don't believe they are malicious actors, they just are misinformed. There is no scientific rationale to advocate either of them. Vaccine hesitancy is a bit different. It's grounded in ignorance. There's a political component to it, which is difficult for me to accept, that somehow it threatens individual liberty to require people to protect each other. I find that a bizarre and unhealthy development in our society. I suppose it's always been there. There is no reason to fear the vaccine. They're well-grounded in science, all of the various pipes that have been advanced. They have all been approved after regular rigorous study. None of them has nefarious intent. There is no conspiracy among major pharma companies about this. I'm a little bit concerned that the medicines that have recently been approved, I think, one from Merck and one from Pfizer as antivirals, I think they're valuable. But it also gives people an opt-out for the vaccine to say, "Well, if I get sick I can get cured." That's unfortunate. I probably haven't answered your question, have I? Mike: Well, I was gonna ask what you find motivates the vaccine hesitancy and what motivates the hesitancy to believe medical professionals, if you've encountered that in your personal interaction with patients. Tim: I have. I mean, I don't treat patients. I want to be clear about that. I'm just a scientist. But of course I have lots of conversations in my life with some people who don't agree that vaccines are important. Some people don't agree that the virus is actually real. They think it's a hoax perpetrated, somehow, I don't know how. I'm gonna-- not being a sociologist, I'm not sure how valid my opinion is, but I think one of the factors is that most people don't know any scientists. They don't really know their physicians as people. We've become a customer-client medical system. You're probably too young to remember sort of the family doctor that would sit and chat. I know there's still some GPs that do that, but a lot of this is now assembly line. You show up, you don't even get 10 minutes, and you're on to the next patient. Right? People don't know physicians as people, they don't know scientists at all. The demise of the public school system in the US and the advance of private schools means that people who are scientifically literate often send their kids to private schools, and they don't get a chance to interact with, I'm just gonna say, non-scientists very much. They don't coach softball or baseball or football teams, they don't go to PTA meetings. Our dependence on electronic communications, as you and I are now doing, diminishes the opportunity for interpersonal interaction or casual just to say, "Hey, I do this for a living and you shouldn't be afraid of me and the people like me." But there is a distrust, especially in the Western countries-- actually, it's global. In the so-called elite, there is this distrust of intellectual output. I gotta tell you, just recently, the National Science Foundation released survey data of 30% of the scientists and engineers in the US are foreign born. And that's another barrier to communication; people tend to view foreigners with suspicion. So there's been a disconnect in American society between this incredible technology that drives our society and the people who benefit from it, or participate in it almost as unwitting, unwilling guinea pigs, right? That's a long winded answer, I hope it's okay. Mike: [laughs] Well, it's a good one. So what research are you working on now? Tim: One of the things that I have become fascinated by is how parasites manipulate their hosts. So a lot of my work is how the molecules that parasites release into their hosts affect the host response to allow them to succeed. Some of the parasites I studied live for many, many years in the host, large kind of parasites, and you'd think we should be really good at getting rid of them. And we are, in fact, really good at getting rid of almost every parasite, but some few species have figured out how to 'live long and prosper' as Mr. Spock would say, in our bodies. So I'm really curious about how they accomplish that. The other project I'm involved with at the moment is with the Carter Center, and it's about a worm, a parasite called guinea worm in Africa, which has nearly been eradicated, but it has recently been found to not only infect people but dogs, and so we're trying to come up with a medicine that can be used to treat the parasite in dogs so that eventually we can eradicate it. This is a parasite that Jimmy Carter has said, "I hope the last guinea worm dies before I do." Mike: And what does a guinea worm do? Tim: Oh my gosh, you want to really get grossed out? Your listeners, go look it up. It's a parasite called Dracunculus medinensis. It's the little dragon of Medina. It lives beneath the skin. The females get to be at least half a meter long or even longer, and they burrow out of the skin, and lay their eggs basically in water. It's disfiguring. It's very painful. It's an example of a gross parasite, I will say. But it can be cured or can be prevented if you keep people from going into the water. So this is kind of a behavioral solution that the Carter Center has really promoted. Or if you use filtered straws to drink. It infects people by drinking water that's contaminated with parasites. It's a lovely story. It would be a wonderful thing to eradicate, and I hope we can do it. Mike: Oh, really important work, Tim. Thank you so much for coming on the Nazi Lies podcast to teach us about drugs. This was fun. Tim: It's a pleasure. I think it's important to recognise, Mike, that people involved in fighting this virus are not motivated by malicious intent. They really are working to benefit people to try to get control of the epidemic, and they want everyone to get vaccinated. But thank you for inviting me, I sincerely appreciate the opportunity. Mike: Well, thank you so much. Tim: And another time perhaps, my friend. Mike: Absolutely. If you liked what you heard and want to support the Nazi Lies podcast, consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. Patrons get access to early episodes and membership in our book club. The early episodes can come in on any podcast app, and the book club is on Discord. Come join us as we read the books of our upcoming guests. It's a good conversation; your question may even end up on the show. Check us out at patreon.com/nazilies. [Theme song]

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan
Passion alone can’t make cars fly

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2021 33:55


We have been dreaming about flying cars (and startups have been promising them!) for over 70 years, and it looks like we might almost be there. Orders have been placed, and delivery schedules set. Today we sit down with Tom Fukuzawa of SkyDrive, and we talk about the development of their flying car and their recent contract with the city of Osaka for air-taxi services. However, we also talk about the real difficulties of turning a group of passionate volunteers into a passionate startup. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but it did not turn out like it was supposed to. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Why the word is experiencing a boom in flying car research and prototypes The cool concept vehicles of the Carivator project How to bing young innovators in an industry together Why driven, committed people rarely "volunteer" Why just asking for money can be easier than getting investment. Why aircraft innovation is slow and why aircraft startups are rare The size of the future flying car market How we will integrate flying cars and traditional infrastructure Why the enterprise to startup revolving door is so important Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about SkyDrive Friend them on Facebook Follow them on Twitter @Skydrive_Global Check out SkyDrive's LandCare Robot SkyDrive's Vision Video Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. You know, we seem to be in a bit of a flying car startup boom right now. Of course, the flying car has been a symbol of the future for over 70 years now. And for that whole time, we've always been just 10 years away from saying goodbye to traffic and taking to the skies.  Well, today we sit down with Tomo Fukuzawa, founder of SkyDrive. And he explains how he plans to have his flying cars on the road or rather in the skies in three years.  And while there are many startups making such claims today, SkyDrive recently signed contracts with the City of Osaka to deliver an air taxi service. And last month SkyDrive began the final stage of government certification for their vehicle. So yeah, there's something here that deserves a closer look.  Oh, and by the way, Tomo was at their testing facility so there's some background noise in this interview. The drones and flying cars themselves weren't flying around so just some cars passing by. It's not too bad. But at one point, it sounds like a tractor trailer drives between us and knocks over our table. You'll know it when you hear it, trust me.  Anyway, Tomo shares some really important lessons about running a moonshot startup, how partners and collaborators and people you've known for years begin to treat you differently. Many of these lessons apply to anyone following their dreams, but the startup experience makes everything so much more intense.  But you know, Tomo tells that story much better than I can. So let's get right to the interview.   Interview  Tim: So we're sitting here with Tomo Fukuzawa of SkyDrive, who is making flying cars and cargo drones. And thanks for meeting with us today. Tomo: Thank you very much for inviting me. Tim: It's my pleasure. I love the whole aerospace and aviation sector. I love what startups are doing in here. I want flying cars to be real so badly. Tomo: Thank you. Tim: So tell us a bit about your current prototype. It's currently a one-seater model, right? Tomo: We started SkyDrive three years ago. And last summer, we studied manned test flight of a flying car or eVTOL. And this was the first time in Japan to show manned flying car, and we have one-seater and eight propellers. And now we are flying 5 to 10 minutes by one charge. Tim: I want to get into the details of the technology in the future in just a minute. But it seems like in the last, let's say,

Board Game Hot Takes
Let it Go - 5 Board Games Leaving our Collections

Board Game Hot Takes

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 29, 2021 72:54


In Episode 68 we discuss some of the reasons we cull board games from our collections and list 5 games that are leaving and why they aren't going to be sticking around. We also discuss poll results on how frequently board games are culled. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:39 Poll discussion around culling games 9:17 #5 Adam - Space Corp - 2025-2300AD 12:35 #5 Chris - Calico 15:15 #5 Tim - Wingspan 20:41 #4 Adam - Irish Gauge 22:35 #4 Chris - Lords of Hellas 26:27 #4 Tim - It's a Wonderful World / Maracaibo 29:36 #3 Adam - Android: Netrunner 33:48 #3 Chris - This War of Mine 35:54 #3 Tim - Empires of the Void II 39:02 #2 Adam - On Mars 43:11 #2 Chris - Marvel United 47:10 #2 Tim - Paper Dungeon 49:40 #1 Adam - Spirit Island 54:15 #1 Chris - Twisted Fables 58:20 #1 Tim - Fort 59:43 Culling Final Thoughts

Screaming in the Cloud
The “Banksgiving” Special with Tim Banks

Screaming in the Cloud

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2021 34:54


About TimTim's tech career spans over 20 years through various sectors. Tim's initial journey into tech started as a US Marine. Later, he left government contracting for the private sector, working both in large corporate environments and in small startups. While working in the private sector, he honed his skills in systems administration and operations for large Unix-based datastores. Today, Tim leverages his years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with clients in his current role. Tim is also a father of five children, as well as a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. Currently, he is the reigning American National and 3-time Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion in his division.TranscriptCorey: 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 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: This episode is sponsored in part by something new. Cloud Academy is a training platform built on two primary goals. Having the highest quality content in tech and cloud skills, and building a good community the is rich and full of IT and engineering professionals. You wouldn't think those things go together, but sometimes they do. Its both useful for individuals and large enterprises, but here's what makes it new. I don't use that term lightly. Cloud Academy invites you to showcase just how good your AWS skills are. For the next four weeks you'll have a chance to prove yourself. Compete in four unique lab challenges, where they'll be awarding more than $2000 in cash and prizes. I'm not kidding, first place is a thousand bucks. Pre-register for the first challenge now, one that I picked out myself on Amazon SNS image resizing, by visiting cloudacademy.com/corey. C-O-R-E-Y. That's cloudacademy.com/corey. We're gonna have some fun with this one!Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I am Cloud Economist Corey Quinn joined by Principal Cloud Economist here at The Duckbill Group Tim Banks. Tim, how are you?Tim: I'm doing great, Corey. How about yourself?Corey: I am tickled pink that we are able to record this not for the usual reasons you would expect, but because of the glorious pun in calling this our Banksgiving episode. I have a hard and fast rule of, I don't play pun games or make jokes about people's names because that can be an incredibly offensive thing. “And oh, you're making jokes about my name? I've never heard that one before.” It's not that I can't do it—I play games with language all the time—but it makes people feel crappy. So, when you suggested this out of the blue, it was yes, we're doing it. But I want to be clear, I did not inflict this on you. This is your own choice; arguably a poor one. We're going to find out.Tim: 1000% my idea.Corey: So, this is your show. It's a holiday week. So, what do you want to do with our Banksgiving episode?Tim: I want to give thanks for the folks who don't normally get acknowledged through the year. Like you know, we do a lot of thanking the rock stars, we do a lot of thanking the big names, right, we also do a lot of, you know, some snarky jabs at some folks. Deservingly—not folks, but groups and stuff like that; some folks deserve it, and we won't be giving them thanks—but some orgs and some groups and stuff like that. And I do think with that all said, we should acknowledge and thank the folks that we normally don't get to, folks who've done some great contributions this year, folks who have helped us, helped the industry, and help services that go unsung, I think a great one that you brought up, it's not the engineers, right? It's the people that make sure we get paid. Because I don't work for charity. And I don't know about you, Corey. I haven't seen the books yet, but I'm pretty sure none of us here do and so how do we get paid? Like I don't know.Corey: Oh, sure you have. We had a show on a somewhat simplified P&L during the all hands meeting because, you know, transparency matters. But you're right, those are numbers there and none of that is what we could have charged but didn't because we decided to do more volunteer work for AWS. If we were going to go down that path, we would just be Community Heroes and be done with it.Tim: That's true. But you know, it's like, I do my thing and then, you know, I get a paycheck every now and then. And so, as far as I know, I think most of that happens because of Dan.Corey: Dan is a perfect example. He's been a guest on this show, I don't know it has as aired at the time that this goes out because I don't have to think about that, which is kind of the point. Dan's our CFO and makes sure that a lot of the financial trains keep running on time. But let's also be clear, the fact that I can make predictions about what the business is going to be doing by a metric other than how much cash is in the bank account at this very moment really freed up some opportunity for us. It turned into adult supervision for folks who, when I started this place and then Mike joined, and it was very much not an area that either one of us was super familiar with. Which is odd given what we do here, but we learned quickly.The understanding not just how these things work—which we had an academic understanding of—but why it mattered and how that applies to real life. Finance is one of those great organizations that doesn't get a lot of attention or respect outside of finance itself. Because it's, “Oh, well they just control the money. How hard could it be?” Really, really hard.Tim: It really is. And when we dig into some of these things and some of the math that goes and some of what the concerns are that, you know, a lot of engineers don't really have a good grasp on, and it's eye opening to understand some of the concerns. At least some of the concerns at least from an engineering aspect. And I really don't give much consideration day to day about the things that go on behind the scenes to make sure that I get paid.But you look at this throughout the industry, like, how many of the folks that we work with, how many folks out there doing this great work for the industry, do they know who their payroll person is? Do they know who their accountant team is? Do they know who their CFO or the other people out there that are doing the work and making sure the lights stay on, that people get paid and all the other things that happen, right? You know, people take that for granted. And it's a huge work and those people really don't get the appreciation that I think they deserve. And I think it's about time we did that.Corey: It's often surprising to me how many people that I encounter, once they learn that there are 12 employees here, automatically assume that it's you, me, and maybe occasionally Mike doing all the work, and the other nine people just sort of sit here and clap when I tell a funny joke, and… well, yes, that is, of course, a job duty, but that's not the entire purpose of why people are here.Natalie in marketing is a great example. “Well, Corey, I thought you did the marketing. You go and post on Twitter and that's where business comes from.” Well, kind of. But let's be clear, when I do that, and people go to the website to figure out what the hell I'm talking about.Well, that website has words on it. I didn't put those words on that site. It directs people to contact us forms, and there are automations behind that that make sure they go to the proper place because back before I started this place and I was independent, people would email me asking for help with their bill and I would just never respond to them. It's the baseline adult supervision level of competence that I keep aspiring to. We have a sales team that does fantastic work.And that often is one of those things that'll get engineering hackles up, but they're not out there cold-calling people to bug them about AWS bills. It's when someone reaches out saying we have a problem with our AWS spend, can you help us? The answer is invariably, “Let's talk about that.” It's a consultative discussion about why do you care about the bill, what does success look like, how do you know this will be a success, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that make sure that we're aimed at the right part of the problem. That's incredibly challenging work and I am grateful beyond words, I don't have to be involved with the day-in, day-out of any of those things.Tim: I think even beyond just that handling, like, the contracts and the NDAs, and the various assets that have to be exchanged just to get us virtually on site, I've [unintelligible 00:06:46] a couple of these things, I'm glad it's not my job. It is, for me, overwhelmingly difficult for me to really get a grasp and all that kind of stuff. And I am grateful that we do have a staff that does that. You've heard me, you see me, you know, kind of like, sales need to do better, and a lot of times I do but I do want to make sure we are appreciating them for the work that they do to make sure that we have work to do. Their contribution cannot be underestimated.Corey: And I think that's something that we could all be a little more thankful for in the industry. And I see this on Twitter sometimes, and it's probably my least favorite genre of tweet, where someone will wind up screenshotting some naive recruiter outreach to them, and just start basically putting the poor person on blast. I assure you, I occasionally get notices like that. The most recent example of that was, I got an email to my work email address from an associate account exec at AWS asking what projects I have going on, how my work in the cloud is going, and I can talk to them about if I want to help with cost optimization of my AWS spend and the rest. And at first, it's one of those, I could ruin this person's entire month, but I don't want to be that person.And I did a little LinkedIn stalking and it turns out, this looks like this person's first job that they've been in for three months. And I've worked in jobs like that very early in my career; it is a numbers game. When you're trying to reach out to 1000 people a month or whatnot, you aren't sitting there googling what every one of them is, does, et cetera. It's something that I've learned, that is annoying, sure. But I'm in an incredibly privileged position here and dunking on someone who's doing what they are told by an existing sales apparatus and crapping on them is not fair.That is not the same thing as these passive-aggressive [shit-tier 00:08:38] drip campaigns of, “I feel like I'm starting to stalk you.” Then don't send the message, jackhole. It's about empathy and not crapping on people who are trying to find their own path in this ridiculous industry.Tim: I think you brought up recruiters, and, you know, we here at The Duckbill Group are currently recruiting for a senior cloud economist and we don't actually have a recruiter on staff. So, we're going through various ways to find this work and it has really made me appreciate the work that recruiters in the past that I've worked with have done. Some of the ones out there are doing really fantastic work, especially sourcing good candidates, vetting good candidates, making sure that the job descriptions are inclusive, making sure that the whole recruitment process is as smooth as it can be. And it can't always be. Having to deal with all the spinning plates of getting interviews with folks who have production workloads, it is pretty impressive to me to see how a lot of these folks get—pull it off and it just seems so smooth. Again, like having to actually wade through some of this stuff, it's given me a true appreciation for the work that good recruiters do.Corey: We don't have automated systems that disqualify folks based on keyword matches—I've never been a fan of that—but we do get applicants that are completely unsuitable. We've had a few come in that are actual economists who clearly did not read the job description; they're spraying their resume everywhere. And the answer is you smile, you decline it and you move on. That is the price you pay of attempting to hire people. You don't put them on blast, you don't go and yell at an entire ecosystem of people because looking for jobs sucks. It's hard work.Back when I was in my employee days, I worked harder finding new jobs than I often did in the jobs themselves. This may be related to why I get fired as much, but I had to be good at finding new work. I am, for better or worse, in a situation where I don't have to do that anymore because once again, we have people here who do the various moving parts. Plus, let's be clear here, if I'm out there interviewing at other companies for jobs, I feel like that sends a message to you and the rest of the team that isn't terrific.Tim: We might bring that up. [laugh].Corey: “Why are you interviewing for a job over there?” It's like, “Because they have free doughnuts in the office. Later, jackholes.” It—I don't think that is necessarily the culture we're building here.Tim: No, no, it's not. Specially—you know, we're more of a cinnamon roll culture anyways.Corey: No. In my case, it's one of those, “Corey, why are you interviewing for a job at AWS?” And the answer is, “Oh, it's going to be an amazing shitpost. Just wait and watch.”Tim: [laugh]. Now, speaking of AWS, I have to absolutely shout out to Emily Freeman over there who has done some fantastic work this year. It's great when you see a person get matched up with the right environment with the right team in the right role, and Emily has just been hitting out of the park ever since he got there, so I'm super, super happy to see her there.Corey: Every time I get to collaborate with her on something, I come away from the experience even more impressed. It's one of those phenomenal collaborations. I just—I love working with her. She's human, she's empathetic, she gets it. She remains, as of this recording, the only person who has ever given a talk that I have heard on ML Ops, and come away with a better impression of that space and thinking maybe it's not complete nonsense.And that is not just because it's Emily, so I—because—I'm predisposed to believe her, though I am, it's because of how she frames it, how she views these things, and let's be clear, the content that she says. And that in turn makes me question my preconceptions on this, and that is why she has that I will listen and pay attention when she speaks. So yeah, if Emily's going to try and make a point, there's always going to be something behind it. Her authenticity is unimpeachable.Tim: Absolutely. I do take my hat's off to everyone who's been doing DevRel and evangelism and those type of roles during pandemics. And we just, you know, as the past few months, I've started back to in-person events. But the folks who've been out there finding new way to do those jobs, finding a way to [crosstalk 00:12:50]—Corey: Oh, staff at re:Invent next week. Oh, my God.Tim: Yeah. Those folks, I don't know how they're being rewarded for their work, but I can assure you, they probably need to be [unintelligible 00:12:57] better than they are. So, if you are staff at re:Invent, and you see Corey and I, next week when we're there—if you're listening to this in time—we would love to shake your hand, elbow bump you, whatever it is you're comfortable with, and laud you for the work you're doing. Because it is not easy work under the best of circumstances, and we are certainly not under the best of circumstances.Corey: I also want to call out specific thanks to a group that might take some people aback. But that group is AWS marketing, which given how much grief I give them seems like an odd thing for me to say, but let's be clear, I don't have any giant companies whose ability to continue as a going concern is dependent upon my keeping systems up and running. AWS does. They have to market and tell stories to everyone because that is generally who their customers are: they round to everyone. And an awful lot of those companies have unofficial mottos of, “That's not funny.” I'm amazed that they can say anything at all, given how incredibly varied their customer base is, I could get away with saying whatever I want solely because I just don't care. They have to care.Tim: They do. And it's not only that they have to care, they're in a difficult situation. It's like, you know, they—every company that sizes is, you know, they are image conscious, and they have things that say what like, “Look, this is the deal. This is the scenario. This is how it went down, but you can still maintain your faith and confidence in us.” And people do when AWS services, they have problems, if anything comes out like that, it does make the news and the reason it doesn't make the news is because it is so rare. And when they can remind us of that in a very effective way, like, I appreciate that. You know, people say if anything happens to S3, everybody knows because everyone depends on it and that's for good reason.Corey: And let's not forget that I run The Duckbill Group. You know, the company we work for. I have the Last Week in AWS newsletter and blog. I have my aggressive shitposting Twitter feed. I host the AWS Morning Brief podcast, and I host this Screaming in the Cloud. And it's challenging for me to figure out how to message all of those things because when people ask what you do, they don't want to hear a litany that goes on for 25 seconds, they want a sentence.I feel like I've spread in too many directions and I want to narrow that down. And where do I drive people to and that was a bit of a marketing challenge that Natalie in our marketing department really cut through super well. Now, pretend I work in AWS. The way that I check this based upon a public list of parameters they stub into Systems Manager Parameter Store, there are right now 291 services that they offer. That is well beyond any one person's ability to keep in their head. I can talk incredibly convincingly now about AWS services that don't exist and people who work in AWS on messaging, marketing, engineering, et cetera, will not call me out on it because who can provably say that ‘AWS Strangle Pony' isn't a real service.Tim: I do want to call out the DevOps—shout out I should say, the DevOps term community for AWS Infinidash because that was just so well done, and AWS took that with just the right amount of tongue in cheek, and a wink and a nod and let us have our fun. And that was a good time. It was a great exercise in improv.Corey: That was Joe Nash out of Twilio who just absolutely nailed it with his tweet, “I am convinced that a small and dedicated group of Twitter devs could tweet hot takes about a completely made up AWS product—I don't know AWS Infinidash or something—and it would appear as a requirement on job specs within a week.” And he was right.Tim: [laugh]. Speaking of Twitter, I want to shout out Twitter as a company or whoever does a product management over there for Twitter Spaces. I remember when Twitter Spaces first came out, everyone was dubious of its effect, of it's impact. They were calling it, you know, a Periscope clone or whatever it was, and there was a lot of sneering and snarking at it. But Twitter Spaces has become very, very effective in having good conversations in the group and the community of folks that have just open questions, and then to speak to folks that they probably wouldn't only get to speak to about this questions and get answers, and have really helpful, uplifting and difficult conversations that you wouldn't otherwise really have a medium for. And I'm super, super happy that whoever that product manager was, hats off to you, my friend.Corey: One group you're never going to hear me say a negative word about is AWS support. Also, their training and certification group. I know that are technically different orgs, but it often doesn't feel that way. Their job is basically impossible. They have to teach people—even on the support side, you're still teaching people—how to use all of these different varied services in different ways, and you have to do it in the face of what can only really be described as abuse from a number of folks on Twitter.When someone is having trouble with an AWS service, they can turn into shitheads, I've got to be honest with you. And berating the poor schmuck who has to handle the AWS support Twitter feed, or answer your insulting ticket or whatnot, they are not empowered to actually fix the underlying problem with a service. They are effectively a traffic router to get the message to someone who can, in a format that is understood internally. And I want to be very clear that if you insult people who are in customer service roles and blame them for it, you're just being a jerk.Tim: No, it really is because I'm pretty sure a significant amount of your listeners and people initially started off working in tech support, or customer service, or help desk or something like that, and you really do become the dumping ground for the customers' frustrations because you are the only person they get to talk to. And you have to not only take that, but you have to try and do the emotional labor behind soothing them as well as fixing the actual problem. And it's really, really difficult. I feel like the people who have that in their background are some of the best consultants, some of the best DevRel folks, and the best at talking to people because they're used to being able to get some technical details out of folks who may not be very technical, who may be under emotional distress, and certainly in high stress situations. So yeah, AWS support, really anybody who has support, especially paid support—phone or chat otherwise—hats off again. That is a service that is thankless, it is a service that is almost always underpaid, and is almost always under appreciated.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle HeatWave is a new high-performance accelerator for the Oracle MySQL Database Service. Although I insist on calling it “my squirrel.” While MySQL has long been the worlds most popular open source database, shifting from transacting to analytics required way too much overhead and, ya know, work. With HeatWave you can run your OLTP and OLAP, don't ask me to ever say those acronyms again, workloads directly from your MySQL database and eliminate the time consuming data movement and integration work, while also performing 1100X faster than Amazon Aurora, and 2.5X faster than Amazon Redshift, at a third of the cost. My thanks again to Oracle Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: I'll take another team that's similar to that respect: Commerce Platform. That is the team that runs all of AWS billing. And you would be surprised that I'm thanking them, but no, it's not the cynical approach of, “Thanks for making it so complicated so I could have a business.” No, I would love it if it were so simple that I had to go find something else to do because the problem was that easy for customers to solve. That is the ideal and I hope, sincerely, that we can get there.But everything that happens in AWS has to be metered and understood as far as who has done what, and charge people appropriately for it. It is also generally invisible; people don't understand anything approaching the scale of that, and what makes it worst of all, is that if suddenly what they were doing broke and customers weren't built for their usage, not a single one of them would complain about it because, “All right, I'll take it.” It's a thankless job that is incredibly key and central to making the cloud work at all, but it's a hard job.Tim: It really is. And is a lot of black magic and voodoo to really try and understand how this thing works. There's no simple way to explain it. I imagine if they were going to give you the index overview of how it works with a 10,000 feet, that alone would be, like, a 300 page document. It is a gigantic moving beast.And it is one of those things where scale will show all the flaws. And no one has scale I think like AWS does. So, the folks that have to work and maintain that are just really, again, they're under appreciated for all that they do. I also think that—you know, you talk about the same thing in other orgs, as we talked about the folks that handle the billing and stuff like that, but you mentioned AWS, and I was thinking the other day how it's really awesome that I've got my AWS driver. I have the same, like, group of three or four folks that do all my deliveries for AWS.And they have been inundated over this past year-and-a-half with more and more and more stuff. And yet, I've still managed—my stuff is always put down nicely on my doorstep. It's never thrown, it's not damaged. I'm not saying it's never been damaged, but it's not damaged, like, maybe FedEx I've [laugh] had or some other delivery services where it's just, kind of, carelessly done. They still maintain efficiency, they maintain professionalism [unintelligible 00:21:45] talking to folks.What they've had to do at their scale and at that the amount of stuff they've had to do for deliveries over this past year-and-a-half has just been incredible. So, I want to extend it also to, like, the folks who are working in the distribution centers. Like, a lot of us here talk about AWS as if that's Amazon, but in essence, it is those folks that are working those more thankless and invisible jobs in the warehouses and fulfillment centers, under really bad conditions sometimes, who's still plug away at it. I'm glad that Amazon is at least saying they're making efforts to improve the conditions there and improve the pay there, things like that, but those folks have enabled a lot of us to work during this pandemic with a lot of conveniences that they themselves would never be able to enjoy.Corey: Yeah. It's bad for society, but I'm glad it exists, obviously. The thing is, I would love it if things showed up a little more slowly if it meant that people could be treated humanely along the process. That said, I don't have any conception of what it takes to run a company with 1.2 million people.I have learned that as you start managing groups and managing managers of groups, it's counterintuitive, but so much of what you do is no longer you doing the actual work. It is solely through influence and delegation. You own all of the responsibility but no direct put-finger-on-problem capability of contributing to the fix. It takes time at that scale, which is why I think one of the dumbest series of questions from, again, another group that deserves a fair bit of credit which is journalists because this stuff is hard, but a naive question I hear a lot is, “Well, okay. It's been 100 days. What has Adam Selipsky slash Andy Jassy changed completely about the company?”It's, yeah, it's a $1.6 trillion company. They are not going to suddenly grab the steering wheel and yank. It's going to take years for shifts that they do to start manifesting in serious ways that are externally visible. That is how big companies work. You don't want to see a complete change in direction from large blue chip companies that run things. Like, again, everyone's production infrastructure. You want it to be predictable, you want it to be boring, and you want shifts to be gradual course corrections, not vast swings.Tim: I mean, Amazon is a company with a population of a medium to medium-large sized city and a market cap of the GDP of several countries. So, it is not a plucky startup; it is not this small little tech company. It is a vast enterprise that's distributed all over the world with a lot of folks doing a lot of different jobs. You cannot, as you said, steer that ship quickly.Corey: I grew up in Maine and Amazon has roughly the same number employees as live in Maine. It is hard to contextualize how all of that works. There are people who work there that even now don't always know who Andy Jassy is. Okay, fine, but I'm not talking about don't know him on site or whatever. I'm saying they do not recognize the name. That's a very big company.Tim: “Andy who?”Corey: Exactly. “Oh, is that the guy that Corey makes fun of all the time?” Like, there we go. That's what I tend to live for.Tim: I thought that was Werner.Corey: It's sort of every one, though I want to be clear, I make it a very key point. I do not make fun of people personally because it—even if they're crap, which I do not believe to be the case in any of the names we've mentioned so far, they have friends and family who love and care about them. You don't want someone to go on the internet and Google their parent's name or something, and then just see people crapping all over. That's got to hurt. Let people be people. And, on some level, when you become the CEO of a company of that scale, you're stepping out of reality and into the pages of legend slash history, at some point. 200 years from now, people will read about you in history books, that's a wild concept.Tim: It is I think you mentioned something important that we would be remiss—especially Duckbill Group—to mention is that we're very thankful for our families, partners, et cetera, for putting up with us, pets, everybody. As part of our jobs, we invite strangers from the internet into our homes virtually to see behind us what is going on, and for those of us that have kids, that involves a lot of patience on their part, a lot of patients on our partners' parts, and other folks that are doing those kind of nurturing roles. You know, our pets who want to play with us are sitting there and not able to. It has not been easy for all of us, even though we're a remote company, but to work under these conditions that we have been over the past year-and-a-half. And I think that goes for a lot of the folks in industry where now all of a sudden, you've been occupying a room in the house or space in the house for some 18-plus months, where before you're always at work or something like that. And that's been a hell of an adjustment. And so we talk about that for us folks that are here pontificating on podcasts, or banging out code, but the adjustments and the things our families have had to go through and do to tolerate us being there cannot be overstated how important that is.Corey: Anyone else that's on your list of people to thank? And this is the problem because you're always going to forget people. I mean, the podcast production crew: the folks that turn our ramblings into a podcast, the editing, the transcription, all of it; the folks that HumblePod are just amazing. The fact that I don't have to worry about any of this stuff as if by magic, means that you're sort of insulated from it. But it's amazing to watch that happen.Tim: You know, honestly, I super want to thank just all the folks that take the time to interact with us. We do this job and Corey shitposts, and I shitpost and we talk, but we really do this and rely on the folks that do take the time to DM us, or tweet us, or mention us in the thread, or reach out in any way to ask us questions, or have a discussion with us on something we said, those folks encourage us, they keep us accountable, and they give us opportunities to learn to be better. And so I'm grateful for that. It would be—this role, this job, the thing we do where we're viewable and seen by the public would be a lot less pleasant if it wasn't for y'all. So, it's too many to name, but I do appreciate you.Corey: Well, thank you, I do my best. I find this stuff to be so boring if you couldn't have fun with it. And so many people can't have fun with it, so it feels like I found a cheat code for making enterprise software solutions interesting. Which even saying that out loud sounds like I'm shitposting. But here we are.Tim: Here we are. And of course, my thanks to you, Corey, for reaching out to me one day and saying, “Hey, what are you doing? Would you want to come interview with us at The Duckbill Group?”Corey: And it was great because, like, “Well, I did leave AWS within the last 18 months, so there might be a non-compete issue.” Like, “Oh, please, I hope so. Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please. I would love to pick that fight publicly.” But sadly, no one is quite foolish enough to take me up on it.Don't worry. That's enough of a sappy episode, I think. I am convinced that our next encounter on this podcast will be our usual aggressive self. But every once in a while it's nice to break the act and express honest and heartfelt appreciation. I'm really looking forward to next week with all of the various announcements that are coming out.I know people have worked extremely hard on them, and I want them to know that despite the fact that I will be making fun of everything that they have done, there's a tremendous amount of respect that goes into it. The fact that I can make fun of the stuff that you've done without any fear that I'm punching down somehow because, you know it is at least above a baseline level of good speaks volumes. There are providers I absolutely do not have that confidence towards them.Tim: [laugh]. Yeah, AWS, as the enterprise level service provider is an easy target for a lot of stuff. The people that work there are not. They do great work. They've got amazing people in all kinds of roles there. And they're often unseen for the stuff they do. So yeah, for all the folks who have contributed to what we're going to partake in at re:Invent—and it's a lot and I understand from having worked there, the pressure that's put on you for this—I'm super stoked about it and I'm grateful.Corey: Same here. If I didn't like this company, I would not have devoted years to making fun of it. Because that requires a diagnosis, not a newsletter, podcast, or shitposting Twitter feed. Tim, thank you so much for, I guess, giving me the impetus and, of course, the amazing name of the show to wind up just saying thank you, which I think is something that we could all stand to do just a little bit more of.Tim: My pleasure, Corey. I'm glad we could run with this. I'm, as always, happy to be on Screaming in the Cloud with you. I think now I get a vest and a sleeve. Is that how that works now?Corey: Exactly. Once you get on five episodes, then you end up getting the dinner jacket, just, like, hosting SNL. Same story. More on that to come in the new year. Thanks, Tim. I appreciate it.Tim: Thank you, Corey.Corey: Tim Banks, principal cloud economist here at The Duckbill Group. I am, of course, Corey Quinn, and thank you for listening.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.

Screaming in the Cloud
Working on the Whiteboard from the Start with Tim Banks

Screaming in the Cloud

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2021 44:10


About TimTim's tech career spans over 20 years through various sectors. Tim's initial journey into tech started as a US Marine. Later, he left government contracting for the private sector, working both in large corporate environments and in small startups. While working in the private sector, he honed his skills in systems administration and operations for largeUnix-based datastores.Today, Tim leverages his years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with clients in his current role. Tim is also a father of five children, as well as a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. Currently, he is the reigning American National and 3-time Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion in his division.Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/elchefe The Duckbill Group: https://duckbillgroup.com 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 Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate: is it your application code, users, or the underlying systems? I've got five bucks on DNS, personally. Why scroll through endless dashboards, while dealing with alert floods, going from tool to tool to tool that you employ, guessing at which puzzle pieces matter? Context switching and tool sprawl are slowly killing both your team and your business. You should care more about one of those than the other, which one is up to you. Drop the separate pillars and enter a world of getting one unified understanding of the one thing driving your business: production. With Honeycomb, you guess less and know more. Try it for free at Honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. Observability, it's more than just hipster monitoring.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Periodically, I have a whole bunch of guests come on up, second time. Now, it's easy to take the naive approach of assuming that it's because it's easier for me to find a guest if I know them and don't have to reach out to brand new people all the time. This is absolutely correct; I'm exceedingly lazy. But I don't have too many folks on a third time, but that changes today.My guest is Tim Banks. I've had him on the show twice before, both times it led to really interesting conversations around a wide variety of things. Since those episodes, Tim has taken the job as a principal cloud economist here at The Duckbill Group. Yes, that is probably the strangest interview process you can imagine, but here we are. Tim, thank you so much for joining me both on the show and in the business.Tim: My pleasure, Corey. It was definitely an interesting interview process, you know, but I was glad to be here. So, I'm happy to be here a third time. I don't know if you get a jacket like you do in Saturday Night Live, if you host, like, a fifth time, but we'll see. Maybe it's a vest. A cool vest would be nice.Corey: We can come up with something.[ effectively, it can be like reverse hangman where you wind up getting a vest and every time you come on after that you get a sleeve, then you get a second sleeve, and then you get a collar, and we can do all kinds of neat stuff.Tim: I actually like that idea a lot.Corey: So, I'm super excited to be able to have this conversation with you because I don't normally talk a lot on this show about what cloud economics is because my guest usually is not as deep into the space as I am, and that's fine; people should never be as deep into this space as I am, in the general sense, unless they work here. Awesome. But I do guest on other shows, and people ask me all kinds of questions about AWS billing and cloud economics, and that's fine, it's great, but they don't ask the questions about the space in the same way that I would and the way that I think about it. So, it's hard for me to interview myself. Now, I'm not saying I won't try it someday, but it's challenging. But today, I get to take the easy path out and talk to you about it. So Tim, what the hell is a principal cloud economist?Tim: So, a principal cloud economist, is a cloud computing expert, both in architecture and practice, who looks at cloud cost in the same way that a lot of folks look at cloud security, or cloud resilience, or cloud performance. So, the same engineering concerns you have about making sure that your API stays up all the time, or to make sure that you don't have people that are able to escape containers or to make sure that you can have super, super low response times, is the same engineering fundamentals that I look at when I'm trying to find a way to reduce your AWS bill.Corey: Okay. When we say cloud cost and cloud economics, the natural picture that leads to mind is, “Oh, I get it. You're an Excel jockey.” And sometimes, yeah, we all kind of play those roles, but what you're talking about is something else entirely. You're talking about engineering expertise.And sure enough, if you look at the job postings we have for roles on the team from time to time, we have not yet hired anyone who does not have an engineering and architecture background. That seems odd to folks who do not spend a lot of time thinking about the AWS bill. I'm told those people are what is known as ‘happy.' But here we are. Why do we care about the engineering aspect of any of this?Tim: Well, I think first and foremost because what we're doing in essence, is still engineering. People aren't putting construction paper up on [laugh] AWS; sometimes they do put recipes up on there, but it still involves working on a computer, and writing code, and deploying it somewhere. So, to have that basic understanding of what it is that folks are doing on the platform, you have to have some engineering experience, first and foremost. Secondly, the fact of the matter is that most cost optimization, in my opinion, can be done on the whiteboard, before anything else, and really I think should be done on the whiteboard before anything else. And so the Excel aspect of it is always reactive. “We have now spent this much. How much was it? Where did it go?” And now we have to figure out where it went.I like to figure out and get a ballpark on how much something is going to cost before I write the first line of code. I want to know, hey, we have a tier here, we're using this kind of storage, it's going to take this kind of instance types. Okay, well, I've got an idea of how much it's going to cost. And I was like, “You know, that's going to be expensive. Before we do anything, is there a way that we can reduce costs there?”And so I'm reverse engineering that on already deployed workloads. Or when customers want to say, “Hey, we were thinking about doing this, and this is our proposed architecture,” I'm going to look at it and say, “Well, if you do this and this and this and this, you can save money.”Corey: So, it sounds like you and I have a bit of a philosophical disagreement in some ways. One of my recurring talking points has always been that, “Oh, by and large, application developers don't need to think overly much about cloud cost. What they need to know generally fits on an index card.” It's, okay, big things cost more than small things; if you turn something on, it will never get turned off and will bill you in perpetuity; data transfer has some weird stuff; and if you store data, you pay for data, like, that level of baseline understanding. When I'm trying to build something out my immediate thought is, great, is this thing possible?Because A, I don't always know that it is, and B, I'm super bad at computers so for me, it may absolutely not be, whereas you're talking about baking cost assessments into the architecture as a day one type of approach, even when sketching ideas out on the whiteboard. I'm curious as to how we diverge there. Can you talk more about your philosophy?Tim: Sure. And the reason I do that is because, as most folks that have an engineering background in cloud infrastructure will tell you, you want to build resilience in, on the whiteboard. You certainly want to build performance in, on the whiteboard, right? And security folks will tell you you want to do security on the whiteboard. Because those things are hard to fix after they're deployed.As soon as they're deployed, without that, you now have technical debt. If you don't consider cost optimization and cost efficiency on the whiteboard, and then you try and do it after it's deployed, you not only have technical debt, you may have actual real debt.Corey: One of the comments I tend to give a lot is that architecture and cost are the same thing in the world of cloud. And I think that we might be in violent agreement, as Liz Fong-Jones is fond of framing it, where I am acutely aware of aspects of cost and that does factor into how I build things on the whiteboard—let's also be very clear, most of the things that I build are very small scale; the largest cost by a landslide is the time I spend building it—in practice, that's an awful lot of environments; people are always more expensive than the AWS environment they're working on. But instead, it's about baking in the assumptions and making sure you're not coming up with something that is going to just be wasteful and horrible out of the gate, and I guess part of that also is the fact that I am at a level of billing understanding that I sort of absorbed these concepts intrinsically. Because to me, there is no difference between cost and architecture in an environment like this. You're right, there's always an inherent trade-off between cost and durability. On the one hand, I don't like that. On the other, it feels like it's been true forever and I don't see a way out of it.Tim: It is inescapable. And it's interesting because you talk about the level of an application developer or something like that, like what is your level of concern, but retroactively, we'll go in for cost optimization houses—and I've done this as far back as when I was working at AWS has a TAM—and I'll ask the question to an application developer or database administrator, and I'm like, “Why do you do this? What do you have a string value for something that could be a Boolean?” And you'll ask, “Well, what difference does that make?” Well, it makes a big difference when you're talking about cycles for CPU.You can reduce your CPU consumption on a database instance by changing a string to a Boolean, you need fewer instances, or you need a less powerful instance, or you need less memory. And now you can run a less expensive instance for your database architecture. Well, maybe for one node it's not that biggest difference, but if you're talking about something that's multi-AZ and multi-node, I mean, that can be a significant amount of savings just by making one simple change.Corey: And that might be the difference right there. I didn't realize that, offhand. It makes sense if you think about it, but just realizing that I've made that mistake on one of my DynamoDB tables. It costs something like seven cents a month right now, so it's not something I'm rushing to optimize, but you're right, expand that out by a factor of a million or so, and we're talking serious money, and then that sort of optimization makes an awful lot of sense. I think that my position on it is that when you're building out something small scale as a demo or a proof of concept, spending time on optimizations like this is not the best use of anyone's time or brain sweat, for lack of a better term. How do you wind up deciding when it's time to focus on stuff like that?Tim: Well, first, I will say that—I daresay that somewhere in the 80% of production workloads are just—were the POC, [laugh] right? Because, like, “It worked for this to get funding, let's run it,” right?Corey: Let they who does not have a DynamoDB table in production with the word ‘test' or ‘dev' in it cast the first stone.Tim: It's certainly not me. So, I understand how some of those decisions get made. And that's why I think it's better to think about it early. Because as I mentioned before, when you start something and say, “Hey, this works for now,” and you don't give consideration to that in the future, or consideration for what it's going to be like in the future, and when you start doing it, you'll paint yourself into corners. That's how you get something like static values put in somewhere, or that's how you get something like, well, “We have to run this instance type because we didn't build in the ability to be more microservice-based or stateless or anything like that.”You've seen people that say, “Hey, we could save you a lot of money if you can move this thing off to a different tier.” And it's like, “Well, that would be an extensive rewrite of code; that'd be very expensive.” I daresay that's the main reason why most AS/400s are still being used right now is because it's too expensive to rewrite the code.Corey: Yeah, and there's no AWS/400 that they can migrate to. Yet. Re:Invent is nigh.Tim: So, I think that's why, even at the very beginning, even if you were saying, “Well, this is something we will do later.” Don't make it impossible for you to do later in your code. Don't make it impossible for you to do later in your architecture. Make things as modular as possible, so that way you can say, “Hey”—later on down the road—“Oh, we can switch this instance type.” Or, “Here's a new managed service that we can maybe save money on doing this.”And you allow yourself to switch things out, or turn different knobs, or change the way you do things, and give yourself more options in the future, whether those options are for resilience, or those options or for security, or those options are for performance, or they're for cost optimizations. If you make binding decisions earlier on, you're going to have debt that's going to build up at some point in the future, and then you're going to have to pay the piper. Sometimes that piper is going to be AWS.Corey: One thing that I think gets lost in a lot of conversations about cloud economics—because I know that it happened to me when I first started this place—where I am planning to basically go out and be the world's leading expert in AWS cost analysis and understanding and optimization. Great. Then I went out into the world and started doing some of my first engagements, and they looked a lot less like far-future cost attribution projections and a lot more like, “What's a reserved instance?” And, “We haven't bought any of those in 18 months.” And, “Oh, yeah, we shut down an entire project six months ago. We should probably delete all the resources, huh?”The stuff that I was preparing for at the high end of the maturity curve are great and useful and terrific to have conversations about in some very nuanced depth, but very often there's a walk before you can run style of conversation where, okay, let's do the easy stuff first before we start writing a whole bunch of bespoke internal stuff that maps your business needs to the AWS bill. How do you, I guess, reconcile those things where you're on the one hand, you see the easy stuff and on the other, you see some of the just the absolutely challenging, very hard, five-years-of-engineering-effort-style problems on the other?Tim: Well, it's interesting because I've seen one customer very recently who has brilliant analyses as to their cost; just well-charted, well-tagged, well-documented, well—you know, everything is diagrammed quite nicely and everything like that, and they're very, very aware of their costs, but they leave test instances running all weekend, you know, and their associated volumes and things like that. And that's a very easy thing to fix. That is a very, very low-hanging fruit. And so sometimes, you just have to look at where they're spending their efforts where sometimes they do spend so much time chasing those hard to do things because they are hard to do and they're exciting in an engineering aspect, and then something as simple as, “Hey, how about we delete these old volumes?” It just isn't there.Or, “How about we switch to your S3 bucket storage type?” Those are easy, low-hanging fruits, and you would be surprised how sometimes they just don't get that. But at the same time, sometimes customers have, like, “Hey, we could knock this thing out, we knock this thing out,” because it's Trusted Advisor. Every AI cost optimization recommendation you can get will tell you these five things to do, no matter who you are or where you are, but they don't do the conceptual things like understanding some of the principles behind cost optimization and cost optimization architecture, and proactive cost optimization versus react with cost optimizations. So, you're doing very conceptual education and conversations with folks rather than the, “Do these five things.” And I've not often found a customer that you have to do both on; it's usually one or the other.Corey: It's funny that you made that specific reference to that example. One of my very first projects—not naming names. Generally, when it comes to things like this, you can tell stories or you can name names; I bias for stories—I was talking to a company who was convinced that their developer environments were incredibly overwrought, expensive, et cetera, and burning money. Okay, great. So, I talked about the idea of turning those things off at night or between test runs, deleting volumes to snapshot, and restore them on a schedule when people come in in the morning because all your developers sit in the same building in the same time zones. Great. They were super on board with the idea, and it was going to be a little bit of work, but all right, this was in the days before the EC2 Instance Scheduler, for example.But first, let's go ahead and do some analysis. This is one of those early engagements that really reinforced my idea of, yeah, before we start going too far down the rabbit hole, let's double-check what's going on in the account. Because periodically you encounter things that surprise people. Like, “What's up with those Australia instances?” “Oh, we don't have anything in that region.” “I believe you're being sincere when you say this, however, the API generally doesn't tell lies.”So, that becomes a, oh, security incident time. But looking at this, they were right; they had some fairly sizable developer instances that were running all the time, but doing some analysis, their developer environment was 3% of their bill at the time and they hadn't bought RIs in a year-and-a-half. And looking at what they were doing, there was so much easier stuff that they could do to generate significant savings without running the potential of turning a developer environment off at night in the middle of an incident or something like that. The risk factor and effort were easier just do the easy stuff, then do another pass and look at the deep stuff. And to be clear, they weren't lying to me; they weren't wrong.Back when they started building this stuff out, their developer environments were significantly large and were a significant portion of their spend. And then they hit product-market fit, and suddenly their production environment had to scale significantly in a short period of time. Which, yay, cloud. It's good at that. Then it just became such a small portion that developer environments weren't really a thing. But the narrative internally doesn't get updated very often because once people learn something, they don't go back to relearn whether or not it's still true. It's a constant mistake; I make it myself frequently.Tim: I think it's interesting, there are things that we really need to put into buckets as far as what's an engineering effort and what's an administrative effort. And when I say ‘administrative effort,' I mean if I can save money with a stroke of a pen, well, that's going to be pretty easy, and that's usually going to be RIs; that's going to be EDPs, or PPAs or something like that, that don't require engineering effort. It just requires administrative effort, I think RIs being the simplest ones. Like, “Oh, all I have to do is go in here and click these things four times and I'm going to save money?” “Well, let's do that.”And it's surprising how often people don't do that. But you still have to understand that, and whether it's RIs or whether it's a savings plan, it's still a commitment of some kind, but if you are willing to make that commitment, you can save money with no engineering effort whatsoever. That's almost free money.Corey: So, much of what we do here comes down to psychology, in many ways, more than it does math. And a lot of times you're right, everything you say is right, but in a large-scale environment, go ahead and click that button to buy the savings plan or the reserved instance, and that's a $20 million purchase. And companies will stall for months trying to run a different series of analyses on this and what if this happens, what if that happens, and I get it because, “Yeah, I'm going to click this button that's going to cost more money than I'll make in my lifetime,” that's a scary thing to do; I get it. But you're going to spend the money, one way or the other, with the provider, and if you believe that number is too high, I get it; I am right there with you. Buy half of them right now and then you can talk about the rest until you get to a point of being comfortable with it.Do it incrementally; it's not all or nothing, you have one shot to make the buy. Take pieces out of it that makes sense. You know you're probably not going to turn off your database cluster that handles all of production in the next year, so go ahead and go for it; it saves some money. Do the thing that makes sense. And that doesn't require deep-dive analytics that requires, on some level, someone who's seen a lot of these before who gets what customers are going through. And honestly, it's empathy in many respects, becomes one of those powerful things that we can apply to our customer accounts.Tim: Absolutely. I mean, people don't understand that decision paralysis, about making those commitments costs you money. You can spend months doing analysis, but those months doing analysis, you're going to spend 30, 40, 50, 60, 70% more on your EC2 instances or other compute than you would otherwise, and that can be quite significant. But it's one of those cases where we talk about psychology around perfect being the enemy of good. You don't have to make the perfect purchase of RIs or savings plans and have that so tuned perfectly that you're going to get one hundred percent utilization and zero—like, you don't have to do that.Just do something. Do a little bit. Like you said, buy half; buy anything; just something, and you're going to save money. And then you can run analysis later on, while you're saving money [laugh] and get a little better and tune it up a little more and get more analysis on and maybe fine-tune it, but you don't actually ever need to have it down to the penny. Like, it never has to be that good.Corey: At some point, one of the value propositions we have for our customers has always been that we tell you when to stop focusing on saving money because there's a theoretical cap of a hundred percent of the cloud bill that you can save, but you can make so much more than that by launching the right feature to the right market a little sooner; focus on that. Be responsible stewards of the money that's invested with you, but by and large, as a general piece of guidance, at some point, stop cutting and go back to doing the thing that makes your company work. It's not all about saving money at all costs for almost all of us. It is for us, but we're sort of a special case.Tim: Well, it's a conversation I often have. It's like, all right, are you trying to save money on AWS or are you trying to save money overall? So, if you're going to spend $400,000 worth of engineering effort to save $10,000 on your AWS bill, that doesn't make no sense. So—[laugh]—Corey: Right. There has to be a strategic reason to do things like that—Tim: Exactly.Corey: —and make sure you understand the value of what you're getting for this. One reason that we wind up charging the way that we do—and we've gotten questions on this for a while—has been that we charge a fixed fee for what we do on engagements. And similarly—people have asked this, but haven't tied the two things together—you talk about cost optimization, but never cost-cutting. Why is that? Is that just a negative term?And the answer has been no, they're aligned. What we do focuses on what is best for the customer. Once that fixed fee is decided upon, every single thing that we say is what we would do if we were in the customer's position. There are times we'll look at what they have going on and say, “Ah, you really should spend more money here for resiliency, or durability,” or, “Okay, that is critical data that's not being backed up. You should consider doing that.”It's why we don't take percentages of things because, at that point, we're not just going with the useful stuff, it's, well we're going to basically throw the entire kitchen sink at you. We had an early customer and I was talking to their AWS account manager about what we were going to be doing and their comment was, “Oh, saving money on AWS bills is great, make sure you check the EBS snapshots.” Yeah, I did that. They were spending 150 bucks a month on EBS snapshots, which is basically nothing. It's one of those stories where if, in the course of an hour-long meeting, I can pay for that entire service, by putting a quarter on the table, I'm probably not going to talk about it barring [laugh] some extenuating circumstances.Focus on the big things, not the things that worked in a different environment with a different account and different constraints. It's hard to context switch like that, but it gets a lot easier when it is basically the entirety of what we do all day.Tim: The difference I draw between cost optimization and cost-cutting is that cost optimization is ensuring that you're not spending money unnecessarily, or that you're maximizing your dollar. And so sometimes we get called in there, and we're just validation for the measures they've already done. Like, “Your team is doing this exactly right. You're doing the things you should be doing. We can nitpick if you want to; we're going to save you $7 a year, but who cares about that? But y'all are doing what you should be doing. This is great. Going forward, you want to look for these things and look for these things and look for these things. We're going to give you some more concepts so that you are cost-optimized in the future.” But it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to cut your bill. Because if you're already spending efficiently, you don't need your bill cut; you're already cost-optimized.Corey: Oh, we're not going to nitpick on that, you're mostly optimized there. It's like, “Yeah, that workload's $140 million a year and rising; please, pick nits.” At which point? “Okay, great.” That's the strategic reason to focus on something. But by and large, it comes down to understanding what the goals of clients are. I think that is widely misunderstood about what we do and how we do it.The first question I always ask when someone does outreach of, “Hey, we'd like to talk about coming in here and doing a consulting engagement with us.” “Great.” I always like to ask the quote-unquote, “Foolish question” of, “Why do you care about the AWS bill?” And occasionally I'll get people who look at me like I have two heads of, “Why wouldn't I care about the AWS bill?” Because there are more important things to care about for the business, almost certainly.Tim: One of the things I try and do, especially when we're talking about cost optimization, especially trying to do something for the right now so they can do things going forward, it's like, you know, all right, so if we cut this much from your bill—if you just do nothing else, but do reserved instances or buy a savings plan, right, you're going to save enough money to hire four engineers. Think about what four engineers would do for your overall business? And that's how I want you to frame it; I want you to look at what cost optimization is going to allow you to do in the future without costing you any more money. Or maybe you save a little more money and you can shift it; instead of paying for your AWS bill, maybe you can train your developers, maybe you can get more developers, maybe you can get some ProServ, maybe you can do whatever, buy newer computers for your people so they can do—whatever it is, right? We're not saying that you no longer have to spend this money, but saying, “You can use this money to do something other than give it to Jeff Bezos.”Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Liquibase. If you're anything like me, you've screwed up the database part of a deployment so severely that you've been banned from touching every anything that remotely sounds like SQL, at at least three different companies. We've mostly got code deployments solved for, but when it comes to databases we basically rely on desperate hope, with a roll back plan of keeping our resumes up to date. It doesn't have to be that way. Meet Liquibase. It is both an open source project and a commercial offering. Liquibase lets you track, modify, and automate database schema changes across almost any database, with guardrails to ensure you'll still have a company left after you deploy the change. No matter where your database lives, Liquibase can help you solve your database deployment issues. Check them out today at liquibase.com. Offer does not apply to Route 53.Corey: There was an article recently, as of the time of this recording, where Pinterest discussed what they had disclosed in one of their regulatory filings which was, over the next eight years, they have committed to pay AWS $3.2 billion. And in this article, they have the head of engineering talking to the reporter about how they're thinking about these things, how they're looking at things that are relevant to their business, and they're talking about having a dedicated team that winds up doing a whole bunch of data analysis and running some analytics on all of these things, from piece to piece to piece. And that's great. And I worry, on some level, that other companies are saying, “Oh, Pinterest is doing that. We should, too.” Yeah, for the course of this commitment, a 1% improvement is $32 million, so yeah, at that scale I'm going to hire a team of data scientists, too, look at these things. Your bill is $50,000 a month. Perhaps that's not worth the effort you're going to put into it, barring other things that contribute to it.Tim: It's interesting because we will get folks that will approach us that have small accounts—very small, small spend—and like, “Hey, can you come in and talk to us about this whatever.” And we can say very honestly, “Look, we could, but the amount of money we're going to charge you is going to—it's not going to be worth your while right now. You could probably get by on the automated recommendations, on the things that already out there on the internet that everybody can do to optimize their bill, and then when you grow to a point where now saving 10% is somebody's salary, that's when it, kind of, becomes more critical.” And it's hard to say what point that is in anyone's business, but I can say sometimes, “Hey, you know what? That's not really what you need to focus on.” If you need to save $100 a month on your AWS bill, and that's critical, you've got other concerns that are not your AWS bill.Corey: So, back when you were interviewing to work here, one of the areas of focus that you kept bringing up was the concept of observability, and my response to this was, “Ah, hell. Another one.” Because let's be clear, Mike Julian—my business partner and our CEO—has written a book called Practical Monitoring, and apparently what we learned from this is as soon as you finish writing a book on the topic, you never want to talk about that topic ever again, which yeah, in hindsight makes sense. Why do you care about observability when you're here to look at cloud costs?Tim: Because cloud costs is another metric, just like you would use for performance, or resilience, or security. You do real-time monitoring to see if somebody has compromised the system, you do real-time monitoring to see if you have bad performance, if response times are too slow. You do real-time monitoring to know if something has gone down and then you need to make adjustments, or that the automated responses you have in response to that downtime are working. But cloud costs, you send somebody a report at the end of the month. Can you imagine, if you will—just for a second—if you got a downtime report at the end of month, and then you can react to something that has gone down?Or if you get a security report at the end of the month, and then you can react to the fact that somebody has your root keys? Or if you get [laugh] a report at the end of month, this said, “Hey, the CPU on this one was pegged. You should probably scale up.” That's outrageous to anybody in this industry right now. But why do we accept that for cloud cost?Corey: It's worse than that. There are a number of startups that talk about, “Oh, real-time cloud cost monitoring. Okay, the only way you're going to achieve such a thing is if you build an API shim that interprets everything that you're telling your cloud control plane to do, taking cost metrics out of it, and then passing it on to the actual cloud control plane.” Otherwise, you're talking about it showing up in the billing record in—ideally, eight hours; in practice, several days, or you're talking about the CloudTrail events, which is not holistic but gives you some rough idea, but it's also in some cases, 5 to 20 minutes delayed. There's no real-time way to do this without significant disruption to what's going on in your environment.So, when I hear about, “Oh, we do real-time bill analysis.” Yeah, it feels—to be very direct—you don't know enough about the problem space you're working within to speak intelligently about it because anyone who's played in this space for a while knows exactly how hard it is to get there. Now, I've talked to companies that have built real-time-ish systems that take that shim approach and acts sort of as a metadata sidecar ersatz billing system that tracks all of this so they can wind up intercepting potentially very expensive configuration mistakes. And that's great. That's also a bit beyond for a lot of folks today, but it's where the industry is going. But there is no way to get there today, short of effectively intercepting all of those calls, in a way that is cohesive and makes sense. How do you square that circle given the complete lack of effective tooling?Tim: Honestly, I'm going to point that right back at the cloud provider because they know how much you're spending, real-time. They know exactly how much you spend in real-time. They've figured it out. They have the buckets, they have APIs for it internally. I'm sure they do; it would make no sense for them not to. Without giving anything anyway, I know that when I was at AWS, I knew how much they were spending, almost real-time.Corey: That's impressive. I wish that existed. My never having worked at AWS perspective on it is that they, of course, have the raw data effective immediately, or damn close to it, but the challenge for the billing system is distilling and summarizing and attributing all of that in a reasonable timeframe; it is an exabyte-scale problem. I've talked to folks there who have indicated it is comfortably north of a petabyte in raw data per day. And that was a couple of years ago, so one can only imagine as the footprint has increased, so has all of this.I mean, the billing system is fundamentally magic from the outside. I'm not saying it's good magic, but it is magic, and it's something that is unappreciated, that every customer uses, and is one of those areas that doesn't get the attention it deserves. Because, let's be clear, here, we talk about observability; the bill is still the only thing that AWS offers that gives you a holistic overview of everything running in your account, in one place.Tim: What I think is interesting is that you talk about this, the scale of the problem and that it makes it difficult to solve. At the same time, I can have a conversation with my partner about kitty litter, and then all of a sudden, I'm going to start getting ads about kitty litter within minutes. So, I feel like it's possible to emit cost as a metric like you would CPU or disk. And if I'm going to look at who's going to do that, I'm going to look right back at AWS. The fun part about that, though, is I know from AWS's business model, that if that's something they were to emit, it would also cost you, like, 25 cents per call, and then you would actually, like, triple your cloud costs just trying to figure out how much it costs you.Corey: Only with 16 other billing dimensions because of course it would. And again, I'm talking about stuff, because of how I operate and how I think about this stuff, that is inherently corner case, or [vertex 00:31:39] case in many cases. But for the vast majority of folks, it's not the, “Oh, you have this really weird data transfer paradigm between these two resources,” which yeah, that's a problem that needs to be addressed in an awful lot of cases because data transfer pricing is bonkers, but instead it's the, “Huh. You just spun up a big cluster that's going to cost $20,000 a month.” You probably don't need to wait a full day to flag that.And you also can't put this on the customer in the sense of, “Oh, just set some budget alarms, that's great. That's the first thing you should do in a new AWS account.” “Well, jackhole, I've done an awful lot of first things I'm supposed to do in an AWS account, in my dedicated test account for these sorts of things. It's been four months, I'm not done yet with all of those first things I'm supposed to do.” It's incredibly secure, increasingly expensive, and so far all it runs is a single EC2 instance that is mostly there just so that everything else doesn't error out trying to divide by zero.Tim: There are some things that are built-in. If I stand up an EC2 instance and it goes down, I'm going to get an alert that this instance terminated for some reason. It's just going to show up informationally.Corey: In the console. You're not going to get called about it or paged about it, unless—Tim: Right.Corey: —you have something else in the business that will, like a boss that screams at you two o'clock in the morning. This is why we have very little that's production-facing here.Tim: But if I know that alert exists somewhere in the console, that's easy for me to write a trap for. That's easy for me to write, say hey, I'm going to respond to that because this call is going to come out somewhere; it's going to get emitted somewhere. I can now, as an engineer, write a very easy trap that says, “Hey, pop this in the Slack. Send an alert. Send a page.”So, if I could emit a cost metric, and I could say, “Wow. Somebody has spun up this thing that's going to cost X amount of money. Someone should get paged about this.” Because if they don't page about this and we wait eight hours, that's my month's salary. And you would do that if your database server went down; you would do that if someone rooted that database server; you would do that if the database server was [bogging 00:33:48] you to scale up another one. So, why can't you do that if that database server was all of sudden costing you way more than you had calculated?Corey: And there's a lot of nuance here because what you're talking about makes perfect sense for smaller-scale accounts, but even some of the very large accounts where we're talking hundreds of millions a year in spend, you can set compromised keys up on GitHub, put them in Payspin, whatever, and then people start spinning up Bitcoin miners everywhere. Great. It takes a long time to materially move the needle on that level of spend; it gets lost in the background noise. I lose my mind when I wind up leaving a managed NAT gateway running and it cost me 70 bucks a month in my $5 a month test account. Yeah, but you realize you could basically buy an island and it gets lost in the AWS bill at some of the high watermarks for some of these larger accounts.“Oh, someone spun up a cluster that's going to cost $400,000 a year?” Yeah, do I need to re-explain to you what a data science team does? They light money on fire in return for questionable returns, as a general rule. You knew that when you hired them; leave them alone. Whereas someone in their developer account does this, yeah, you kind of want to flag that immediately.It always comes down to rules and context. But I'd love to have some templates ready to go of, “I'm a starving student, please alert me anytime it looks like I might possibly exceed the free tier,” or better yet, “Don't let me, and if I do, it's on you and you eat the cost.” Conversely, it's, “Yeah, this is a Netflix sub-account or whatnot. Maybe don't bother me for anything whatsoever because freedom and responsibility is how we roll.” I imagine that's what they do internally on a lot of their cloud costing stuff because freedom and responsibility is ingrained in their culture. It's great. It's the freedom from having to think about cloud bills and the responsibility for paying it, of the cloud bill.Tim: Yeah, we will get internally alerted if things are [laugh] up too long, and then we will actually get paged, and then our manager would get paged, [laugh] and it would go up the line. If you leave something that's running too expensive, too long. So, there is a system there for it.Corey: Oh, yeah. The internal AWS systems for employees are probably my least favorite AWS service, full stop. And I've seen things posted about it; I believe it's called Isengard, for spinning up internal accounts and the rest—there's a separate one, I think, called Conduit, but I digress—that you spin something up, and apparently if it doesn't wind up—I don't need you to comment on this because you worked there and confidentiality is super important, but to my understanding it's, great, it has a whole bunch of formalized stuff like that and it solves for a whole lot of nifty features that bias for the way that AWS focuses on accounts and how they've view security and the rest. And, “Oh, well, we couldn't possibly ship this to customers because it's not how they operate.” And that's great.My problem with this internal provisioning system is it isolates and insulates AWS employees from the real pain of working with multiple accounts as a customer. You don't have to deal with the provisioning process of Control Tower or whatnot; you have your own internal thing. Eat your own dog food, gargle your own champagne, whatever it takes to wind up getting exposure to the pain that hits customers and suddenly you'll see those things improve. I find that the best way to improve a product is to make the people building it live with the painful parts.Tim: I think it's interesting that the stance is, “Well, it's not how the customers operate, and we wouldn't want the customers to have to deal with this.” But at the same time, you have to open up, like, 100 accounts if you need more than a certain number of S3 buckets. So, they are very comfortable with burdening the customer with a lot of constraints, and they say, “Well, constraints drive innovation.” Certainly, this is a constraint that you could at least offer and let the customers innovate around that.Corey: And at least define who the customer is. Because yeah, “I'm a Netflix sub-account is one story,” “I'm a regulated bank,” is another story, and, “I'm a student in my dorm room, trying to learn how this whole cloud thing works,” is another story. From risk tolerance, from a data protection story, from a billing surprise story, from a, “I'm trying to learn what the hell this is, and all these other service offerings you keep talking to me about confuse the hell out of me; please streamline the experience.” There's a whole universe of options and opportunity that isn't being addressed here.Tim: Well, I will say it very simply like this: we're talking about a multi-trillion dollar company versus someone who, if their AWS bill is too high, they don't pay rent; maybe they don't eat; maybe they have other issues, they don't—medical bill doesn't get paid; child care doesn't get paid. And if you're going to tell me that this multi-trillion dollar company can't solve for that so that doesn't happen to that person and tells them, “Well, if you come in afterwards, after your bill gets there, maybe we can do something about it, but in the meantime, suffer through this.” That's not ethical. Full stop.Corey: There are a lot of things that AWS gets right, and I want to be clear that I'm not sitting here trying to cast blame and say that everything they're doing is terrible. I feel like every time I talk about billing in any depth, I have to throw this disclaimer in. Ninety to ninety-five percent of what they do is awesome. It's just the missing piece that is incredibly painful for customers, and that's what I spend most of my time focusing on. It should not be interpreted to think that I hate the company.I just want them to do better than they are, and what they're doing now is pretty decent in most respects. I just want to fix the painful parts. Tim, thank you for joining me for a third time here. I'm certain I'll have you back in the somewhat near future to talk about more aspects of this, but until then, where can people find you slash retain your services?Tim: Well, you can find me on Twitter at @elchefe. If you want to retain my services for which you would be very, very happy to have, you can go to duckbillgroup.com and fill out a little questionnaire, and I will magically appear after an exchange of goods and services.Corey: Make sure to reference Tim by name just so that we can make our sales team facepalm because they know what's coming next. Tim, thank you so much for your time; it's appreciated.Tim: Thank you so much, Corey. I loved it.Corey: Principal cloud economist here at The Duckbill Group, Tim Banks. 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, wait at least eight hours—possibly as many as 48 to 72—and then leave a comment explaining what you didn't like.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.

Board Game Hot Takes
Top 5 Incoming Kickstarters 2021

Board Game Hot Takes

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2021 85:22


In Episode 58 we discuss our top 5 incoming board game Kickstarters. First, we discuss poll results on board game Kickstarters that haven't been delivered yet. Then we take a look at our top 5 incoming Kickstarters from last year (discussed in episode 6) and score them with a VERY SCIENTIFIC scoring method. Finally, we look at our current top 5 incoming Kickstarters and discuss why we backed them and why we're excited about them. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:57 Poll: Undelivered Crowdfunded Game Count 7:06 2020 Kickstarter Scorecard 10:05 #5 Adam - High Frontier 4 All 11:09 #5 Chris - Star Realms: Deluxe Nova Collection 14:23 #5 Tim - It's a Wonderful World: Ascension 16:22 #4 Adam - Valhallamas 17:20 #4 Chris and Tim - Terraforming Mars: Big Box 18:42 #3 Adam - Imperium: The Contention 19:10 #3 Fossilis 20:09 #3 Frosthaven 21:33 #2 Adam - Capital Lux 2 23:09 #2 Chris - Return to Dark Tower 25:30 #2 Tim - Glen More II: The Highland Games 26:13 #1 Adam - Canvas 27:05 #1 Chris - Dawn of Madness 29:03 #1 Tim - Dwellings of Eldervale 30:37 2020 Scorecard Final Results 33:31 2021 Top 5 Incoming Board Game Kickstarters 33:57 #5 Chris - Hyperspace 36:14 #5 Tim - Artisans of Splendent Vale 40:32 #5 Adam - Cora Quest 41:36 #4 Chris - Canvas 43:20 #4 Tim - One Deck Galaxy 45:45 #4 Adam - They Live: Assault on Cable 54 48:03 #3 Chris - Distilled 49:38 #3 Tim - Paperback Adventures 51:45 #3 Adam - Chaosmos: The Temple 55:53 #2 Chris - Robot Quest: Arena 58:48 #2 Tim - Now or Never 1:00:33 #2 Adam - SHASN: AZADI 1:04:20 #1 Chris - The Great Wall 1:07:28 #1 Tim - Everdell: Newleaf and Mistwood and Complete Collection 1:12:20 #1 Adam - Fractal: Beyond the Void 1:18:39 Random Segue - Unconscious Mind 1:19:10 Kickstarter Final Thoughts

VO BOSS Podcast
Voice and AI: The Voice Creation Experience with Tim Heller

VO BOSS Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2021 22:15


This week, Anne's guest is Tim Heller, who's currently recording his vocal clone.  Ready to evolve with AI? Lots of doom & gloom out there lately about AI “stealing” voice acting jobs, which means now's the time to get educated and learn to evolve with new technology. In this episode, voice actor Tim Heller shares his AI experience - choosing an ethical company, the benefits of creating a clone, the role of human voice actors, the importance of emotion, and more…  Find out how AI can help rock your business #VOBOSS style! About Tim Tim Heller is an actor and voice actor based in Austin, TX. He's voiced VR trainings for the Air Force, commercials for Fox Sports, ads for Spotify, ADR and dubbing for international cartoons & animated features, corporate narration projects, and eLearning modules around the globe. Recently, Tim was interviewed in the BBC article “Voice Cloning of Growing Interest to Actors and CyberCriminals.” Top 10 Takeaways An AI voice clone could be a way for talent to increase passive income streams. Voice actors must properly record an AI voice for it to be successful. Look for a company that has a clear and fair user agreement and offers licensing opportunities. Don't know who to trust? Seek companies that provide an open communication flow and opportunities to ask questions. Get it in writing - all agreements between you and the company should be part of a contract before recording. An ethical company will give you control over how your voice clone is used. The actual process of creating a voice clone is very expensive, so expect the company you are working with to take a portion of your AI earnings. Avoid fear in the AI sphere. Stay curious and ask questions so you and the companies you work with can learn together. AI voices aren't meant to replace humans, but should allow for quicker turnarounds and greater content accessibility options. Being human is your job security - clones can't fabricate emotion, so use yours to its best advantage! References in this episode Learn more about VocalID >> Visit Tim's website at TimHellerVO.com >> Recorded on ipDTL >> Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast, the AI and Voice series. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm excited to have special guest Tim Heller, who is an actor and voice actor based out of Austin, Texas. Tim has a long line of credits here and has voiced VR trainings for the Air Force, TV commercials for Fox Sports, podcast advertisements for Spotify, ADR and dubbing for international cartoons and animated features. And he's also voiced, of course, my favorite, corporate narrations, children's English e-learning modules in Korea and done local commercials and more. And so he also, before he got into VO was in musical theater and plays in New York City and around the world with some on-camera jobs mixed in there as well. Hoo, wow. Tim: Hoo. Anne: A multitalented [laughs] guest. Thank you so much for joining me, Tim. It's wonderful to have you here today. Tim: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on, Anne. I'm excited to be here. Anne: Well, you have been in the news lately. I've read quite a bit of press with you in the news. And at first, I guess, saw and met you. And I'm not quite sure how I don't know you already, what with that long list of credits, but I saw you in the article from the BBC news that was en- -- it was a great article, but it was entitled "Voice Cloning of Growing Interest to Actors and CyberCriminals." Always -- Tim: Yes. Not -- not scary -- Anne: -- a little bit of click bait there. Tim: -- at all, right? Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Anne: But the article I thought had a really positive spin on it, but yet they put that title on there to associate, I feel like, oh, are you associating voice actors and cyber criminals? Like in the same -- Tim: Yeah, I got, you know, I had a lot of people reaching out to me afterwards saying, you know, are you, so which one are you? Are you a cyber criminal or a voice actor? I said, well, guess you're just going to have to find out, huh? Anne: Oh gosh. So, you know, I've interviewed quite a few people already for this Voice and AI series, and I've noticed a kind of a trend with what a lot of people will say as a pro of having an AI voice. And they use the argument that it's all about adding work for the voice actor. So I guess I'd like to ask you, first of all, how do you feel about that? What do you feel is the benefit of having an AI voice in your repertoire of talents and skills? Tim: Yeah, so initially I, like, I thought that it would be a great tool to have just to future-proof my job. I sought out more information and tried speaking with lots of different people and ultimately ended up meeting Rupal Patel with VocalID, just because I was curious about like where things were going, and where people thought they were going, and hearing Jim Connelly talk about -- like, he's always thinking about what's next. And so through my experience with Rupal and VocalID, I feel like it is, it is potentially adding more work, work that I wouldn't necessarily have to book a session out in my studio, for which believe me never upset to book my studio up for a session. And I, and I love my job. And so I'm not trying to work less or get rid of any work that could potentially come in. But -- Anne: Well, I think that's a good clarification because I think if I talk to many voice actors, they would say, well, I don't think it's a matter of getting more work, I don't have a problem handling more work. But I don't think that it, it really grabs voice actors in the way that people are trying to sell it. You know, like, oh, you can do more work. And I don't know really many voice actors that say, well, I'm really, I can't handle the amount of work I'm getting. So -- Tim: Yeah, oh gosh, I'm just double-booked all the time. Poor me. Anne: Yeah, that's, that's a very interesting spin on it, but I will say that, I think that it's really good for us to hear these things because there are perceptions out there, right? And these perceptions come from people who we sell our voices to. Tim: Yeah. Anne: So I think it's good for us to really get an idea as to like what their perception is and what their ideas are about voicing, and you know, what it takes to voice and what our job really entails. Tim: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And it's, you know, like, so many people have said before on your series, which also thank you so much for doing this whole series on voice and AI with so many different perspectives. Anne: Thank you. Tim: It's so diverse, and educational, and fascinating just to hear like how different companies are approaching all of this, you know? But so many people have said too, that you can't just take like our conversation that we're having right now, rip my voice, and then have a, like a beautiful clone of, of me or -- and you can also just do like five minutes of like the "Cat in the Hat," you know. It's, it is, it takes a voice actor to properly take direction to, you know, recite these prompts that they have in the VocalID interface. And it's still a skill to have. And so I think it's -- Anne: So anybody off the street, if we had hours, and if we had -- I'm just going to say, I know that there are some companies out there that might have a lot of media, a lot of media, of people, of celebrities, of, you know, people in the entertainment industry. And they theoretically don't need a whole lot of additional material in order to create a voice. However, I think the big thing, and I want to get into a discussion about ethics with you, the big thing is the licensing, right? Tim: Yeah, absolutely. Anne: And how can we protect, you know -- we might have audio out there. As a matter of fact, I have a ton of podcasts out there, and who's to say that somebody isn't going to go download those MP3s and create a voice. Tim: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. The ethical side of all of this is fascinating as well, because it is kind of still the wild west with, especially, I feel like between everything that happened with, like starting with Bev Standing and TikTok, and then from that point, it seems like every couple days, there's something new and fire and brimstone about AI coming out. Anne: But I think that could be good. Tim: Yeah. I think, I mean, it's, it's getting people talking, right? Anne: Right. Tim: It's, and it's -- Anne: And it's getting people in action, right? In, in action -- Tim: Exactly, yes. Anne: -- to get something done, to get laws enacted. Tim: Yes. And it's, and so, and it's unfortunate, and I wouldn't wish this on anybody, for anybody to have to go through any of that, but now we're talking about it. Now, we're like, when you work with people doing AI clones and stuff, you know, I've said this before is that you really need to make sure you're vetting who you're working with. Anne: Yeah. Tim: And I got very, very lucky that Rupal was already working with a couple of colleagues of mine in the VO world and with Jim and Sam at Lotas, like, and people who are incredibly trustworthy and, you know, really forward-thinking and trying to protect everybody involved. So. Anne: Mm-hmm. Tim: Yeah. Anne: I think that's a very, very important point. And I actually, one of my questions was going to be, what was your process in selecting VocalID and the people that you work with? What was your process in selecting them? Because I think that is now become a factor for people that might be considering having their voice cloned or having a voice dub, is working with a company because obviously we can't do it. We have to hire a company that can do that for us. And so I think that there's something to be said for vetting the company that you work with. What are the qualities of the company that you think voice talent should look for in regards to when they want to create an AI voice? Tim: In terms of my process with finding a VocalID, it started off as just kind of like a conversation with -- a check-in with a voice actor friend of mine when I was still in New York City. And I was hearing him talk about, you know, recording these prompts for this, like, AI clone voice that he was doing with Jim and Sam. And I was fascinated by it. And then a couple months went by, the pandemic started, and I kind of forgot about it. And then when we moved down to Texas, through like an entrepreneur group that I'm in, got connected to Rupal in a completely different way. And so through that conversation, finding out that we had all these mutual connections and stuff like that -- and it was a face-to-face conversation too, at least through Zoom. And that's something that's important to me. I love when I'm able to like, especially in a business setting, be able to have -- like look at somebody and really talk with them and not just communicate through email for something that's really felt as high stakes as this could potentially be. So with Rupal, she started off the meeting with just kind of the backstory of why VocalID was initially created. And I think she mentioned on, on her episode on your podcast, that it initially was created to help people who lost their power of speech. And so that was something that spoke to me as well, that like, okay, this isn't a company that's just like -- Anne: Yes. Tim: -- okay, where is that cash cow? How can we milk it and, and move on? Anne: Well, and she's been around too a little bit longer than -- it just seems like lately, there's just a ton of that have sprung up out of nowhere -- Tim: Yeah. Anne: -- creating AI voices. And so I think she's got some longevity to her having started, I think it was back in -- what was it? 2014. I'm not sure when she started. Tim: I'm not sure either. Anne: It's been a while though. Tim: But it's also coming from like an academic background too, like really having, like, I think -- something I always try to do is surround myself with people who are a lot smarter and better than I am. And so I think meeting Rupal really knocked that out of the park. And so really focusing on like the ethical side of things and she -- we have a contract that, you know, for the, for recording my dub, and I didn't even have to ask the questions of, okay, well, what if I don't want to do a project? Or how is this protected? She had everything laid out already. And, and the fact that she was working with Lotas, you know, like if you can really vet somebody by finding out who you know in common or asking people in the industry -- like for instance, I had another company reach out to me that was interested in cloning my voice again. And so like reaching out to the people that I know now through all of this and, and really trying to figure out who they are, and what they're doing, and making sure you're not stepping on anybody's toes. But does that kind of answer the question? Anne: And looking at every contract. Tim: Yes. Oh my gosh, contracts, contracts. Anne: You know, I actually have employed the services of my lawyer more than once in terms of looking at a contract. And I think that for today, it is so important that when we're talking about AI voices that maybe a lawyer get involved. I think it's a worthy investment to really check out those contracts. Tim: I agree. And you know, I've only been doing voiceover for three and a half years and full-time for the last year and a half. And so I haven't really needed a lawyer for any of this yet, but now that I've got my -- my dub has been fully created and I got my first job request today for it -- Anne: Ooh, congratulations. Tim: Thanks. I was, I was like, whoa, this is kind of cool. I don't know what to do next, but we're going to figure it out together. But it's definitely at the point where I do think that it is necessary to bring a lawyer into make sure that like everything going forward is protected for, for me and for VocalID, but -- Anne: Absolutely. Tim: -- yeah. Anne: And that you're fairly compensated. Tim: Exactly. Anne: Yes. Tim: And that's a whole other thing too, that I've gotten a lot of questions about since the BBC stuff came out, is that, like, can you charge the same amount? And it's right now, the answer is, is no, right? Yeah, because it's, I'm not the one that's going to be spending an hour or 20 minutes or whatever it is to book out my studio and do it. Anne: Your time is not necessarily required at this point. Tim: Right. Anne: To create that. Tim: And it costs a lot of money to create this dub. And so I'm not the one who has that machine learning and that computer who's running everything. Anne: Sure. Tim: I provided my voice, and I was able to build this for free because they're working on building it up and really polishing it to turn it into something that's more commercially friendly. Anne: Well, I, I should make note that companies are now charging to have your AI voice be created. Tim: Wow. Anne: And so it's absolutely, that's going to be -- Tim: Yeah. Anne: -- you know, that's going to be an industry there. So I don't necessarily want the BOSS listeners out there to think that they may necessarily have their voice just created. As a matter of fact, there have been some auditions that I've seen out there for TTS projects where I think they may or may not state that it's going to be used for creating a, a dub after that. But there has been some low pay per hour I've seen, and everybody's like run, don't, you know, don't audition for that. And it's interesting because I guess you have to figure out really, who is this company vet that company. And if you can, like you mentioned, meet face to face with the people from that company, are they transparent about the usage and what's going to be happening? And, and I of course would say to everybody at this point, I think it's great to get a lawyer involved. Even if the contract seems like it's got everything specked out, I would suggest that that would be a good thing to do. Tim: Yeah. It can't hurt. And, and with the vetting of the companies too, like I find that if you are just curious and really honestly, anything around AI is just -- with all the fire and brimstone posts that I've been seeing all over social media and in the news about all of this and like kind of damning those who are involved in it from other industry professionals, it's like, if we can just like, stay curious, ask questions and be kind, just like, just seek that understanding out. I think that's, like, the most important thing is that don't just take anybody else's word for it. Anne: Sure. Tim: Don't just believe like one article you read, but really like ask those questions. Anne: Sure. Tim: And so trying to make myself available to those who are curious or who are upset and afraid, and it's like, it's totally fine to be either/or. Anne: And, and understand that there will be clickbait [laughs] Tim: Oh yes. Anne: in terms of the publicity around this. There's going to be a lot of clickbait just because it is a very current, relevant topic of today. And it's not just people in the voiceover industry that are afraid of the robots or AI taking their jobs away. So there's going to be a lot of, I'm going to say, a lot of that going on. And so I think we just need to make educated decisions. So let's talk a little bit about how you've actually created the voice. Let's talk about that process. What did that involve? Tim: Yeah. So the way that VocalID works is that once you are brought on and sign the contract and everything is squared away, legally you get login information for their own interface online. So it's not me recording prompts into Logic on my own system. I'm actually recording directly into their interface, and it goes kind of line by line, and it's like different speeches or children's books just to capture all those individual phonemes that we create with speech, where I think with traditional text-to-speech modules like Siri or Google or any of those assistants, you record those prompts, and then it pieces those exact prompts together, where with this, it's really building it from scratch completely. And then you can manipulate it phonetically or modulate the pitch or change inflections on things. And it's, it's really, it's wild technology. It's really cool. Anne: So I've seen some of the technologies now that say that they can literally change emotion. I mean, have you seen that? I mean, what are your thoughts about that? I think that's a, I don't know. It's, there's so many nuances of human emotion, and to me -- Tim: Yeah. Anne: -- and I'm a tech girl, and I'm trying to envision and understand because that's what I always do. I mean, I was in technology for 20 years, so I'm trying to understand the process. And is it possible -- you know, we have, I want to say infinite amount of nuances as a human -- Tim: Yeah. Anne: -- and I don't know how possible that is to dial that emotion in like a straight, linear fashion, right? Like, oh, let's do -- Tim: It's hard because -- Anne: 20% happy. Let's do 40% happy. Tim: Yeah, exactly, 'cause like, what is that 20%? The 20% happy is going to be different for every person and different for every subject that you're talking about. So I think that alone, like having emotion and being human is our job security in the industry, right? Anne: Yeah. Tim: Like computers will not do stuff that we don't explicitly tell them to do. And so it's, you know, with the emotion side of things, I think it's, it has potential, but I think that it's hard to get it to really convey sadness. 'Cause then you have to like, you have to break down sadness then into code, into an equation. Okay. It's like -- Anne: Into an algorithm. Tim: Yes, exactly. So it's fascinating and wild to play around with, but I don't think like that true human emotion is there yet. And it might not be like what the point of having an AI voice is. Anne: Oh, I'm so glad you said that. It's exactly, it may not be the point. And I think a lot of people are just so afraid of, like, the ultimate, oh my God, it's bad. It's going to replace us. But I think that there's going to, in, in a few years, there's going to be like, it'll settle, it'll evolve into here's where it belongs or here's where it fits best. And it may not be -- I mean, I still believe that there's always going to be room for humans. Tim: Yeah. Anne: And I don't know if they'll try to develop the technology to make it sound completely human. I don't know if it's even possible. And again, humans are the ones that are creating the technology. Tim: Yeah. Yeah. And the company that just came out with the, they did the audio for the DLC, for The Witcher 3 expansion. Anne: Mm-hmm, yeah. Tim: I listened to some of their samples on their site. And in that sounds like pretty realistic, but that's also like that character is -- it's old right here and it's all very upset. Anne: Yeah. Tim: And it's like, it's very, it's not incredibly dynamic. That voice actor who voices him is dynamic and gives the dynamic performance. But like for, for that kind of stuff, like that can come in handy. That's where an AI voice is great because then they can just pick that up and it's quick. But right now I feel like it's more so along the lines of that e-learning, the traditional text-to-speech stuff, IVR, and it's not -- we're not looking to replace the human experience or the human emotion, right? It's just something to kind of augment -- Anne: Well, we aren't. [laughs] Tim: We aren't. I'm sure that there are companies that are working towards that. And I'm sure we'll see that at some point, right? Anne: Yeah, but you're right. There's going to be an attempt. I'm sure there's going to be attempts. Tim: Yeah. Anne: And it's, I think that's just the evolution. And again, it's not just affecting the voiceover industry. I think we're just here in a little bubble sometimes, and we need to really try to -- well, we really need to really try to, to see AI for what it is and try to evolve along with it. So let me ask you a question. How are you intending or how are you marketing your AI voice? Tim: That's something I'm still working on. It's a great question. So Rupal asked if I'd be interested in putting my AI profile on Voice123, and Rolf and their team has been working on putting these profiles on there just to try to get ahead of things and stay with the movement of AI. And so I agreed to do that, and I've got a profile on there, and then trying to figure out like what samples, like I have some samples I'm going to put on my website, and a little like VocalID badge, but it's going to be, it's still kind of in process of like, okay, how do I pitch this to clients too, or to potential new clients? And so I think it's going to be reaching out to those people like that you've brought onto your podcast, like Hugh -- Anne: Sure. Tim: -- that would have a better idea of like, okay, well, if you pitch it to this company for this reason, then that would be best case scenario, you know? But I think it's going to change a lot. Anne: This is great. I'm thinking so if you have it marketed through a pay-to-play, I think we need to make sure how are we being protected legally? How are our voices being protected? Are their usage -- is there something that's going to be put in place that will protect us if we sell it through that? Or if you sell it on your own, how are you negotiating that -- you creating a contract, I would think, I would hope, that you would create a contract that would -- and well, normally, I think in our emails, we specify usage and, and all of that. And I think that the same thing absolutely has to be for your AI voice. And again, I'm at this point, because of the newness of it all and the wild, wild west of it all, I'm always happy to have somebody consult with me that's in the legal field -- Tim: Totally. Anne: -- just to make sure that when I'm first starting to negotiate that voice, I wouldn't want that voice to be used for any purpose other than what it was intended. I would not want it to be sold. I would not want to say things that I didn't agree to with that voice. Tim: Yeah. Anne: And so I think that that's very important. So I commend you [laughs] for going ahead and, and delving into the new world of technology here, and kind of really you're, you're testing the waters. You're on the, I always call it the bleeding edge of technology. Tim: I love that. Anne: There has to be, you know, we have our trials, we have our, our successes and our failures, and that's how we all evolve and move forward and learn. And so I wish you all the luck with your AI voice and congrats on your job [laughs] on your first job. Tim: Thanks. We'll see how it goes. Anne: Yeah, absolutely. And we'll, we'll keep in touch with you. And so I thank you so much for spending time with us this morning and sharing your story with the BOSSes. And I am excited to hear about where your voice will go. Tim: Thank you so much, Anne. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on and give me the opportunity to speak on this. And if any of the VO BOSSes out there have any questions, I'm, I'm here. Anne: Yes. Tim: You know, I'm easy to find. Anne: Absolutely, how can they get in touch with you? Tim: You can either reach me through my website TimHellerVO.com or @TimHellerVO on all the social platforms. So. Anne: Perfect. Tim: Yeah. Anne: Awesome. Well, thanks again. I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect to like BOSSes and learn more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week, and we'll see you next week. Bye! Tim: Bye! >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voBOSS.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to Coast connectivity via ipDTL. 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AWS Morning Brief
Optimize Yourself Before You Invest Yourself

AWS Morning Brief

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2021 13:35


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 Klarna, 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.Jesse: Hello, and welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I'm Jesse DeRose.Amy: I'm Amy Negrette.Tim: And I'm Tim Banks.Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways that we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild. Today, we're going to be talking about the relationship between cost optimization work and investing in reservations or private pricing with AWS. This is kind of a situation conversation. Let's say you've got three months left on your EDP, or maybe your spend is reaching the point where you're starting to think about investing in, or signing an EDP. But you've also got some cost optimization opportunities that you want to work on. How do you prioritize those two ideas?Tim: I think when we're talking about this, first it's important to talk about what goes into an EDP, like, what it is and what it involves. So, EDP for AWS is Enterprise Discount Program, and what it involves is you making a monetary commitment to AWS to spend a certain amount over a certain amount of time. So, a three year EDP, you're going to spend X amount in one year, X amount the next year, and X amount the third year for a total of whatever you decide on. So, you know, AWS typically going to want 20% year-over-year growth, so you're going to say—you're going to spend a million dollars, and then a million dollars plus 20% is something like $1.2 million; then, you know, 20% of that and so forth and so on.And then so your total commit will be somewhere around, like, $3.6, $3.7 million, we'll say, right? Once you signed the EDP, that's how much you're going to get billed for, minimum. So, it's important to cost optimize before you make that commitment because if AWS is expecting you and you're on the hook to make 20% year-over-year growth, but then you optimize and you save 20% of your bill, it won't matter because you're still going to owe AWS the same amount of money even if you cost-optimize.Jesse: Yeah, I want to take a step back and talk about EDP—as we mentioned, Enterprise Discount Program—also has—there's a couple other flavors that give you a variety of different types of discounts. EDP generally focuses on a cross-service discount for a certain annual commit, but there are also private pricing agreements or private pricing addendums, and other private pricing, generally speaking, offered by AWS. All of those basically expect some amount of either spend on a yearly basis or some amount of usage on a yearly basis, in exchange for discounts on that usage. And really, that is something that, broadly speaking, we do recommend you focus on, we do recommend that you invest in those reservations, but it is important to think about that—I agree—I would say after cost optimization work.Amy: The thing is that AWS also provides discounts that are commandment required, that you don't need an EDP for, namely in reservations and savings plans. So, you would similarly be on the hook if you decide, “I have this much traffic, and I want to savings plan or reservation for it.” And then suddenly you don't have that requirement anymore, but you still have to make up that commitment.Tim: I'll say, I think too, that also matters when you're looking at things like reservations. If you're going to reserve instances, you're going to get an idea of how many you're specifically going to need, so that way you're not reserving too many, and then you optimize, you downsize, and all of a sudden, now you have all these reservations that you're not going to use.Jesse: One thing to also call out: when renewing an EDP, or private pricing, or when entering into a new agreement for any kind of private pricing with AWS, they will generally look at the last six months of your usage—either broadly speaking if it's an EDP, or specifically within a specific AWS service if it's private pricing for a specific service—and they will double, basically, that spend over the last six months and expect you to continue spending that. So, if you spent a high amount of money over the last six months, they're going to expect that kind of trend to continue, and if you enter into an agreement with that 12-month spend, essentially, going forward, and then make cost optimization changes, you're ultimately going to be on the hook for this higher level of spending you're not spending any more. So, if you focus on that cost optimization work first, it will ultimately give you the opportunity to approach AWS with a lower commit level, which may ultimately mean a lower tier of percentage discount, but ultimately, then you're not on the hook for spend that you wouldn't otherwise be spending.Tim: I think one of the main things people see, too, is when they've looked at, like, oh, what's the low hanging fruit for me to get lower the cost? They'll think, “Oh, well, I can do EDP,” because AWS is going to want you to sign on; they would love to have that guaranteed money, right? And a lot of times, that's going to be a much easier thing to do, organizationally, than the work of cost optimization because almost always, that involves engineering hours, it involves planning, it involves some changes that are going to have to be made that's probably going to be harder than just signing a contract. But again, it's super necessary because you really need to know, have eyes open, when you're going to go, and figure out what you're going to commit, whether it's private pricing agreement, or an EDP, or reservations. You want to go in there and at least decide what you want to do, what it should look like, get as optimized and as lean as you can, then make your commitments. And then once you get to an EDP, that's when you're going to want to do your reservation or savings plans purchases and things like that, so you do that with a discount across those.Jesse: Yeah, that's another important thing to point out: focus on the cost optimization work first. Get your architecture, your workloads, as optimized as possible, or as optimized as you can within the given timeframe, then focus on the investment because then you'll be able to have a much better idea of what your growth is going to look like year-over-year for an EDP or any kind of private pricing. And then after that, purchase any reservations, like reserved instances or savings plans because ultimately, then you get not only the discount from the EDP that you just signed, but any upfront payments that you make, or partial upfront payments that you make for those reservations applied towards your first year EDP. So ultimately, not only are you getting a discount on that, but you are also able to put money towards that first-year commit; you're essentially giving yourself a little bit more wiggle room by purchasing reservations after you've signed an EDP.Tim: And another way to game that system is if you know that you're going to be undertaking some projects, especially that you want to get discounts around, and you're going to need to utilize software or service or anything like that involves an AWS partner on the AWS marketplace, you're going to want to do that after you sign your EDP, too, because even though you may not get a discount on it, that money will still count towards your commit.Corey: I really love installing, upgrading, and fixing security agents in my cloud estate. Why do I say that? Because I sell things for a company that deploys an agent. There's no other reason. Because let's face it; agents can be a real headache. Well, Orca Security now gives you a single tool to detect basically every risk in your cloud environment that's as easy to install and maintain as a smartphone app. It is agentless—or my intro would have gotten me in trouble here—but it can still see deep into your AWS workloads while guaranteeing 100% coverage. With Orca Security there are no overlooked assets, no DevOps headaches—and believe me, you will hear from those people if you cause them headaches—and no performance hits on live environment. Connect your first cloud account in minutes and see for yourself at orca dot security. That's orca—as in whale—dot security as in that thing your company claims to care about but doesn't until right after it really should have.Tim: It is important to talk about the future goals for your company, from a financial perspective, both at an architectural level but also at a strategic level, so you can make good quality decisions. And, you know, to toot our own horn, that's a lot of where our expertise comes in, where we can say, “These are the order you're going to do these things in, and these are what you should prioritize.” I mean, everyone knows that in the end, the net result should still be the same. You're going to have to do the engineering and architecture work to optimize; you're going to have to do the administrative stuff to sign these agreements to get discounts, but you need to know what to prioritize and what's going to be most important, and sometimes you don't have the insight on that. And that's where if you don't, get someone in there to help you figure out what's what, what's going to give you the best, most bang for your buck, but also what's going to make the most sense for you going forward, six months, a year, two years, three years, and so forth and so on. So, it is okay to not know these things. Nobody's an expert on everything, but it behooves you to rely on the people who are experts when it's a blind spot for you.Jesse: I think that's a really good point that you make, Tim. One of the things that we see in a number of organizations that we work with is essentially a disconnect between the folks who are—well, two disconnects really: one between the folks who are doing the work day-to-day, and another between the folks who are purchasing reservations. But that also a disconnect between the people who are purchasing the reservations and potentially the people who are purchasing or investing in some kind of Enterprise Discount Program or private pricing. And to Tim's point, it's really important to get all of those people in a conversation together, get everybody in a room together, so to speak, to make sure that everybody understands what everybody else is doing so that finance and engineering and product and leadership all understand together that the cost optimization work is going on, that reservations are being purchased, that we're having a conversation about investing in some kind of private pricing with AWS. So collaboratively, collectively, everybody can make a decision together, make a data-driven decision together, that's going to ultimately help everybody, essentially, win and accomplish their goals.Amy: Speaking of collaboration, we often talk about having a good relationship with your AWS account manager, and this is one of those places that having a good rapport really works in your favor because if you are in a lot of communications with your account manager, and you know each other well, and you have a good working relationship, and they are good at their job, then they'll know that you are using XYZ service, and you're using at a high volume, they will be able to tell you, it's like, “Hey, you hit a threshold. Let's see if we can get you some extra discounts.” They'll be the ones who can actually know what those discount programs are and be able to facilitate them.Jesse: All right, well, that will do it for us this week, folks. If you've got questions you'd like us to answer please go to lastweekinaws.com/QA; fill out the form and we'll answer those questions on a future episode of the show. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review, give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us how you would cost-optimize your organization.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

The Joe Costello Show
Tim O'Brien from The Healthy Place

The Joe Costello Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2021 56:01


  Tim O'Brien along with his wife Becki, have created a unique vitamin, supplement and nutrition store that is more about helping people than it is about margins and commissions. As Tim says" Souls before sales!"   It was a pleasure sitting down with Tim to learn more about The Healthy Place and what products and services they have to offer.   After Tim educated me, I'm definitely going to lean on him and his team in the future, to help me make better and more educated decisions when it comes to my health.   I hope you enjoy this episode and you walk away with at least one snippet that either helps you in your entrepreneurial journey or with you health in general.   For 30% off, please use our affiliate link as it helps us to generate a little income to produce this podcast...thx so much!   https://findyourhealthyplace.com/?rfsn=5901087.08b0f6   Thanks for listening!   Joe   Tim O'Brien Founder - The Healthy Place Website: https://findyourhealthyplace.com/ Website: https://livelyvitaminco.com/ Website: https://wildtheory.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/applewellness/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehealthyplaceTHP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYQVVKB58mGd_YgxAL0LMGA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/apple-wellness-the-healthy-place/about/ Email: tim@findyourhealthyplace.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Tim: My guest today is Tim O'Brien, the founder of The Healthy Place, an e-commerce store for healthy products. They also have for brick and mortar locations, one in Madison, Wisconsin, one in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, one in Middleton, Wisconsin, and one in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Tim's passion is health and wellness, and he has spent the last decade sharing his passion with the world on a personal side. He is married to Becky and together they have three children. In this conversation with Tim, I expressed how much health and wellness is important to myself and how convoluted the marketplace is and very difficult to trust who you buy from and which products you buy. I was excited to have Tim on the show so that I could learn more about the difference in what the healthy place offers over buying products at other places like GNC, Walgreens, the vitamin shop and obviously Amazon.com. So sit back and listen to the education that we get from Tim on how to buy better and healthier products in the health and wellness space. Joe: Hey, Tim, welcome to the show. Tim: Hey, hey, how you doing, buddy? Joe: I'm doing great, man, happy, what is it? Wednesday, I lost track, I just got Tim: Yeah, Joe: Back into Tim: It's Joe: Town. Tim: Hump hump day of the week, man, and Joe: Beautiful. Tim: I'm doing this to say thank you for giving me a chance to be on your show. Man, this is cool. Joe: Yeah, no, that's my pleasure, as as I mentioned before, we actually started this that I have, you know, I know that literally health is everything. Like you can have everything in the world that you ever, ever wanted. And without your health, it's just, you know, it's it's unfortunate because I know people go through things that had nothing to do with them not being healthy. They just got delivered a bad hand, Tim: Yahav. Joe: You know, so that's a different story. But those of us Tim: Jerome. Joe: That can make sure we stay healthy, there are things that we can do. But before we get into all of that, and as a lot of my listeners for the podcast and the viewers of a YouTube channel, now, I'd like to get the back story because a lot of the people who listen to the show are my hope is that these entrepreneurial spirits that are trying to figure out what they want to do are there in the midst of doing it. And they they need ideas from people that are being successful doing it. So I would like to go back as far as you're willing to go back to allow myself and the viewers to understand how you got into what you're doing today. What Tim: I love Joe: For? Tim: To share that. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, like what triggered the fact that you're now in this world of, you know, Tim: Supplements, Joe: The health world Tim: Natural Joe: And. Tim: Alternatives, Joe: Yeah, Tim: Yeah. Joe: Yeah, yeah. So I'd love to hear that and then we'll get in, Tim: I'd love to. It's Joe: Ok. Tim: A cool story, I kind of like telling it because it's just cool to see how things can work together to sort of bring you to the place that you're at. And it's sort of confirmation in some different ways. So I love to share it, man. I'd be happy to do so when my when I was like five or six years old, my mom fought through thyroid cancer. And I remember her like going through the chemo radiation and losing the hair, like seeing her at the hospital. I have four siblings, so just a lot of fear in the home, worried about mom. And then I remember this time where she came home and she was sort of like excited and sort of like filled with a little bit of hope because she had gone into this health food store in a little town called Muskego, Wisconsin, just this tiny little town that had a health food store. And she talked to this guy named John for like an hour and a half. And John shared with her all these natural alternatives that had some good science and some good reason to believe that it could help her in her process recovery, treatment of the thyroid cancer. And so she would like go in there like once a week, whether it was a refill for some supplements or whether it was some more education, because there was a lot of literature that this guy handed out as well, like books that he gave her. Tim: And I would go with her. And through this whole process, she she was benefited quite a bit from these natural alternatives that helped her and her recovery process. So I remember hearing about that as a little guy. And through that process, she got a job as a manager at this health food store. And she was there all the time, 40, 50 hours a week kind of thing. And us kids were home schooled. So we would go with mom often sitting in this back room of this health food store, doing our math problems, doing our schoolwork. And I watched over the years these testimonies produced of people coming in with chronic pain, depression, sleep issues, other folks that battled cancer, that my mom held their hand through the process, educating them. And so that was like my whole upbringing. And it really got into my DNA that there is natural alternatives out there that work and the general population just doesn't know about them, because the way our medical system set up pharmaceutical medications, you know, we have some of the best doctors in the world. And, you know, you go to them, you get a prescription, you don't Joe: Mm Tim: Necessarily Joe: Hmm. Tim: Get a natural alternative recommendation. So I got a bit passionate about that in my late teen years. So I got a job at a GNC franchise and worked for the owner who invited me to move out to Madison, Wisconsin, to manage some of his GNC stores after a little while. So I was like, man, OK, my boss thinks I'm good at this. I really enjoy helping people, encouraging people. I just happen to like like people in general. So it was it was sort of a fit. Like I got this passion for this natural alternative thing. I feel like I'm helping people. I'm impacting the world. I want to make a difference. And I was managing these GNC franchises in Madison, Wisconsin. Well, there was a corporate takeover, dude, in twenty seven where everybody lost their jobs, like corporate took over these six franchises that my boss owned. And it was like, OMG, like, what am I going to do now? And so I determined, you know, hey, I want to do something. And that's natural alternative space. I have always been sort of passionate about business in general. I had like three paper routes when I was 11 and I hired my sisters for a quarter a day. I was making bank Joe: Right. Tim: And I was so I tried a network marketing business for a little while that was suppliments and that was brutal. Multi-level marketing can be really hard. And I was like, OK, I don't want to go that route. Maybe I should open my own health food store. And at that time I had just met dating, married Becky, my wife. So we're prayerfully like thinking through this. Should we do this, put the house on the line, open up our own health food store and risk everything. And we decided to take the plunge. So our first brick and mortar store, 2010, was in a town called Fitchburg, Wisconsin, which is right outside of Madison, Wisconsin. And then twenty fifteen, it was store number two in the Madison area and then twenty nineteen with stores three and four. So that was going well. We then moved towards ecommerce where like, hey, if we're making an impact and a difference here locally, which is really exciting, we really enjoy it together. We work as a team like let's let's hit the nation. That sounds fun. And so we started to see a little bit of success there, especially ones covid hit of last year because our in-store traffic took a hit. So our pivot as a company, like a lot of smart companies, was, let's focus on e-commerce. And so that really helped us talk about a blessing in disguise, really helped Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Us figure out the e-commerce space a little bit. So really exciting. In December, January of this last year, we got our little warehouse. So now we have a warehouse in Madison and we're shipping packages out all over the United States. And that's the story. And the mission is about impacting, empowering and educating as many people as we can to just like, learn, grow and create a lifelong foundation of health and wellness. It's like a fanning a flame. You know, somebody already just has a little spark. You know, they're putting the cigarette out outside my store, throwing the McDonald's bag in the trash and like, I need something for my chronic pain all the way up to the health enthusiasts. And no matter what, to me, it's so encouraging to just fan the flame of someone's health and wellness. Because you said it earlier, life is a gift and people need to remember that. Joe: Yeah, and so have you always, based on the background of sitting in that store with your mother and seeing what the proper nutrition and supplements and things like that did for her? Did you always pretty much lead a healthy lifestyle? Tim: Funny is Joe: Don't Tim: No. Joe: Tell me you're a fast food junkie. Tim: No, I wasn't. Yeah, I was, and I always felt very bad if I was going through that fast food line, but my diet really didn't really take a huge impact until I married Becky. So for whatever reason, I would I knew a lot about supplements, really passionate about natural alternatives. But I was I was not the guy who is eating ultra clean, raw, organic, clean. I was like, OK, I'm going to eat a basic diet cleaner than most know what kind of excuses that. And then I'd lean on supplements for nutrition. And so when I met Vecchi, this is two thousand eight, she's like, wow, this doesn't even make sense. Like you can't go eat at pizza, frozen pizza, you know, and then go take your supplements. And so she really convicted me. And it's been a pretty cool team because that's always been her passion is very clean eating. And she didn't understand or know about the supplement natural alternative thing. And my passion has always been for my mom's story of natural alternatives and supplements can change a life. And so then getting married and working together as a team to educate Madison and our social media platforms and on YouTube, it's like there has to be a marriage between nutritional deficiencies, making sure we don't have them eating well, eating clean exercise. So we should work together. And I've improved since meeting, Becky. Joe: Wow, so are you actually telling me that she was already before you guys even met, she was interested in this sort of thing or she was she was Tim: Yeah. Joe: A healthy, clean eating person. Tim: Yes, she was Joe: Wow. Tim: A health enthusiast, yeah, I mean, just health, and that's part of what drew me to her is like, man, this girl's got discipline, like extreme self-control. For me, that's been an area of struggle, just like in general, like discipline waking up early. I'm the guy that would, before I met Becky, like stay up till one and then sleep till nine till I had to quit, get to work. And, you know, he's like, man, we got some work to do. But, yeah, she sure inspired me and a few of those areas. Joe: Ok, so without prying too deeply then, because now you're really piqued, my interest is the fact that you guys are lying so well. How did you meet? Tim: Yeah, so we there was like a young adults meeting through it, through church called Metro Believers Church in Madison, Wisconsin, you know, I'm a Christian, she's a Christian, and in my early twenties, it was like, hey, I really enjoyed finding people like minded. And I think in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm searching for a life, you know? So I would go to a couple of these different churches, young adult ministry meetings, whatever, 20 something groups. And we just started hanging out. So it was like a group of like six or seven of us. And I was about six months in. I pulled her aside one day after church and said, I still laugh at what I said. I said, Hey, Becky, I've taken a shining to you and I'd like to continue on to marriage. And she's like, oh my gosh. Like, OK, I'm kind of like you, too. It was weird way to ask, but OK. Joe: It's also that's Tim: Yeah, Joe: Old school, Tim: I don't do it right. Oh, yeah. Joe: But also Tim: Oh. Joe: All right, cool, well, that's that's great. So how did you change or why did you change the name from Apple Wellness to the healthy place? Tim: Yeah, really good question, you know, Apple Wellness was a good name, you know, in the sense of like Apple a day keeps the doctor away and we just had too many people thinking we are the Mac Apple store. So I literally get calls, at least weekly, Joe: Wow, Tim: And Joe: That's so subtle. Tim: At least I know, and then I'd see my employee across the way and he'd be talking to somebody and he'd be like, well, try turning the phone off and then turn it back on, you know? Joe: Oh, my Tim: So Joe: God. Tim: Especially after he got the e commerce thing going, I started, Becky, as the graphic designer and kind of branding expert within our company for a long time. She's like the Apple word's taken. That's just gone. And I should have consulted with her a little bit more before we chose the name. Joe: Uh huh. Tim: And so she's always kind of wanted it changed. But then I found out that Apple, the company, has an Apple wellness program Joe: Oh, Tim: For employees Joe: Of. Tim: Like it's trademarked. I mean, so I figured it was just a matter of time before I end up getting some sort of litigation letter from Joe: Yeah, Tim: Apple. Joe: Yeah, well, OK, that's interesting. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So you stole one of my questions, but it was perfect because it was actually in line with what you were talking about. But I want to go back to it because Tim: Sure. Joe: It's important, again, for like the entrepreneurs that are listening to this and what we just went through with covid, you talked about shifting. They're not shifting, but literally adding to what you've already established. Right. So you were Tim: You. Joe: You were a retail store, people walking in foot traffic. That's what you counted on to make a living. Right. So when covid hit, obviously, everyone stayed home. So there goes all the foot traffic. So did you already have the e commerce portion of this set up before this happened when you said it was a blessing in disguise? Were you already ready to go the moment like that? Tim: Really Joe: The Tim: Good. Joe: You know, Tim: Yes, Joe: The doors. Tim: Yes and no, I Joe: Ok. Tim: Mean, it's like we had the website, we had the ability to set up ship products out. We had maybe three hundred out of the four thousand products that we have in our stores on the site. So we were ready in certain ways and then not ready for a lot of things. And we had no idea on the digital side of marketing, Google ads, Facebook ads, SEO optimization, email marketing. We hadn't done text messaging. We hadn't done very much of that, very basic and each one of those areas. So it was all of a sudden like pedal to the metal once March hit, where it was like, OK, we have some of these basic fundamentals. And I always tell a business owner like you, if you don't already, you have to have a website like I mean, covid showed us all that pretty quick, like Joe: Yeah. Tim: Have to have a website and you can get free ones are very inexpensive. Wick's dotcom. I'll tell business owners, like even if you're not a photographer, don't don't try to be don't don't get some real basic a white posterboard. Put the product right over it. Just take a picture by a window. Don't don't try to get real clever with it because Vecchi tells me that it can end up looking really bad if Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: You're trying to do so. Basic things like get a website, get a social media, you know, ask your grandkid if you don't know how to set one up sort of thing. So we had all the basics, but then for us it was like, OK. Let's get live chat on our website, because we are one of our difference makers, is consultations Joe: Huh? Tim: With we change lives because we ask questions and we figure out the best products and forms and brands for their specific issues, problems. So let's get a live chat on our website so we can have those conversations. Let's get free shipping. Let's make it really easy. Even if we lose money on maybe one out of five orders, let's just like make it easy, reduce friction in any way that we can. Let's get on Google ads and Facebook ads. So we hired a digital agency for that and it's pretty cool. A year later, we had 30 percent overnight of our foot traffic was just gone once we were able to stay open, thankfully. But that 30 percent in one year's time, we were able to build that on our e-commerce platforms. We were able to replace what was lost. So I'm still head spinning, so thankful for my team able to bring that together because it's quite the operation and it takes a lot of work. Joe: Yeah, did you did you keep the stores open themselves or did you? Tim: We did Joe: You did OK. Tim: Not. Joe: Ok, Tim: We Joe: And Tim: Were Joe: Was it. Tim: Scrambling in the beginning of if we could be classified as essential or not, and my belief is that the immune system is something that can really be strengthened. I'm more passionate about terrain versus the germs so we can strengthen our terrain, strengthen our immune systems, both defense and offense. I mean, there's incredible science behind simple nutrients like sand, mucus from elderberry. The University of Sydney showing the prevention which with elderberry prevention of viruses entering the cell. I mean, it's some pretty cool science. So at the beginning of the covid thing, it was like, OK, I'm not going to tell anybody I can cure or prevent Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Whatever, but I'm sure as heck going to yell it from the rooftop that you can strengthen your immune system and a strong immune system. Strong health is the best defense against any disease, virus, sickness anywhere. So I got pretty passionate about that a year ago. Joe: Cool. Yeah, that's great. So I'm normally pretty good at not bouncing around, but in this case, I want to go back to when you decided to do this. You know, obviously when when someone gets released from a corporate environment and they're like, oh, my gosh, I don't have control over my own destiny because these people Tim: The. Joe: Just literally rip the rug out from underneath me, which is another thing that a lot of entrepreneurs know because this is how they got to where they are there that happen to them. Like I'm not letting someone else dictate how my life is going to turn out. Right. So Tim: Yeah. Joe: But what's really crazy is I don't know if it if in Wisconsin or the places where you have these stores, obviously we know that you already brought it up at GNC is a big brand around the country. There's also where we are. There's the vitamin store. Right. Are the stuff that one of those Tim: Yeah, Joe: Is a vitamin Tim: Yeah, Joe: Shopper. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So there's a lot of these places. So it's almost like you saying you and Becky going, oh, yeah, we're going to create the next pizza delivery like pizza Tim: Now, Joe: Delivery Tim: There's already Joe: Franchise. Tim: 10 right around Joe: Yeah, Tim: The corner, Joe: Right. Tim: So let's see number 11, yeah. Joe: Right. It's we're going to be the next Pizza Hut or Papa John's or whatever. It's just like that that industry Tim: Yes, Joe: That's it takes a lot Tim: It's Joe: Of guts. Tim: So competitive. Joe: Yeah. So when you thought about it, as all entrepreneurs, do, we always come up with these ideas and then we sometimes will kill our own ideas without our spouse or partner or someone will say they'll be the sensible one and say Tim: Right, Joe: That's Tim: Right, Joe: Never Tim: Yeah. Joe: Right. But then you have all these outside influences of of friends and things. And, you know, at any moment, if you would have said, hey, we're thinking of opening up a vitamin supplement, healthy sort of Tim: John. Joe: That people would look at you. But what about all of these major brands? So tell me about how you got over the hump to make to pull the trigger. Tim: Yeah, do that's such a good question and, you know, to identify and I had some friends who opened a coffee shop, you know, and a year later, you know, the coffee shops not doing so well is unfortunate with covid timing and everything. And it's like the supplement thing where you, like, hear this and you're like, oh, I don't know, you know, I wish him well, but I don't know if that's going to work because it's just like there's a hundred of them, you know. Joe: Right. Tim: So I think for me what happened was I worked for GNC for, I don't know, five years. And you start to see good stuff. You start to see bad stuff, you start to see their model. They were purchased by China a while back. So, OK, it's all sourced from China. Forms of nutrients are in their synthetic forms or not so absorbable forms. And you start to learn like, OK, a better product would help this person more than this form of curcumin that's not absorbing into their system from China or wherever, you know, so you start to see where you could make a difference and you sort of start to see your difference makers. So in the supplement world, there's two veins of supplement stores. There's the type of stores that are all about muscle gain and weight loss, you know, weight loss, thermogenic high caffeine, ephedra, and then trim and tracks Hydroxycut. And a lot of that isn't super healthy for Joe: Hmm. Tim: People to be taking steroids or pro hormones, you know, not super healthy. So that's like one vein of supplement stores. And then there's another vein of supplement stores that just they sourced from China. They use synthetic nutrients. It's a little bit more about margin and profit than it is about quality and making a difference. And so that is something I realized pretty early on. And there's not too many supplement health food stores that have a lot of knowledge where you walk in. And there's not just like a high schooler selling the huge jug of protein because it gets a two dollar commission on it, you know. Joe: Yes, I do know. Tim: Yeah, yeah. And there's just not a lot of those out there. So then all of a sudden starting to dream about, you know, originating from my mom's story where somebody really helped her out, where I can really make a difference, because if I open my own stores or store at the time, I can bring in some of the best brands in the world. And pretty quick, in any industry, you find out, good, better, best. And I want to be in that best category. And all of a sudden you're working with some of the best brands in the world and you have the knowledge to be a to guide somebody with Crohn's disease. Let's just Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Talk over asthma on natural alternatives that really work. And if you impact them, if you help them, if you change their life a little bit for the better, now they're going to keep coming back forever. And they tell everybody they know because there's such a vacuum, such a desperate need in this day and age for knowledgeable resources in the natural alternative space. We have a ton of medical, we have a ton of pharmaceutical drugs. We just don't have information coming to the general public on natural alternatives that work. And I get to be that resource in Madison, Wisconsin. So I think that's why we have done well in our brick and mortar stores. And I think that's probably why our attention is higher for our e-commerce is because of that customer service, that knowledgeable resource, that going the extra mile to impact their lives. And I'll give you an example. A lady might hit our live chat from California and say, hey, I'm looking for a V12. Can you give me a recommendation? And then we might ask the question like, absolutely. Here's a couple of options. Do you mind if I ask while you're while you're taking V12? Oh, my doctor said because I have really low energy, I have nerve pain and my mental clarity and focus, I get like foggy brain all the time. So then all of a sudden we say, awesome, OK, I'm actually going to encourage the method in form of V12 because it absorbs much better than this sign form that I first sent you, because I really want you to feel the difference. And since you're feeling fatigued, a little brain fog, I'd love for you to consider this adrenal boost product that has adapted genic herbs in there, like Atul Gawande wrote Rodeo Mocca because ninety two percent of fatigue is related to your adrenal glands. So then you recommend that product. They get it. And this lady two months later goes, Oh my gosh, my energy is a little better, my focus is better, my stress is reduced, which I didn't even bring up. But that adrenal product helps with stress, too, I guess. Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Then all of a sudden they're leaving a review like, wow, that wellness consultant, Ryan, he's one of our our wellness consultants. He really helped me out. And so it's a very different sort of dynamic than a typical GNC store, health food store, vitamin shop type experience. They're Joe: Huh? Tim: All great stores. I mean, I love Natural. Anywhere you can get them. So that was like our difference maker and that's why I thought I could make a go out of it. Joe: Ok, cool. I have so much to ask you now, because you keep opening up like Kansas. So. So before again, I, I want this stuff to be helpful for the entrepreneur. And then then we're going to help the consumers that listen to this. So how when you decided on doing this and said, OK, and let's pull the trigger, how did you figure out the place where you're going to open up store number one, that you do all that extensive, Tim: Oh, Joe: You know, Tim: Good question, yes. Joe: Traffic, you know, what's going to pop up around us? What Tim: You know, Joe: Is, you Tim: Find Joe: Know? Tim: Find a good broker, a real estate broker that can find you spaces. So I had a guy named Kent in Madison, Wisconsin, and he you don't have to pay these guys. You know, it's the landlord that pays them. Joe: Right. Tim: And so as a young entrepreneur about to, like, risk everything you had, that was really important for me to know. Like, I I still am shocked by that. Like, you can just call one of these guys, try to find a reputable one, find somebody that trusts that can make a good referral. And they do all this scouting for you. They send you all the reports and you don't pay a penny. You know, I am a bottom line at the end or something, but you don't pay a penny for this. They get paid from the landlord. So he was bringing me idea after idea after idea. And he had been in the industry for a long time. So he knew the city really, really well. And he was able to guide me through, hey, this has a really strong anchor. The anchor in Fitchburg was Joe: Yeah, Tim: Target. Joe: Yeah. Tim: It was a super, super target. So I was like, oh, learning about anchors are important, Joe: Yeah. Tim: Really important. So I tell you, if you're listening, like, look for some strong anchors, because that's really going to help you for traffic. Joe: And just for the listeners and the people that don't like it, like when they talk about like a small strip mall or a plaza or something like that or even in a in a mall small, an anchor is an anchor store. That is when they go in, there's a really good chance they're not going away like they are a big thing like Target or Wal-Mart Tim: Exactly. Joe: Or Nordstrom or whatever. So I just wanted to clear that up because I didn't know at one point. But I know when you're looking at retail space like that, you want to be surrounded by an anchor store that has been around forever and is not going away. Tim: Yes, and just to further drive that point home, we have for brick and mortar stores and the one that's doing like the worst is the one that doesn't have a strong anchor by it. So just get one with a strong anchor and then look at price points and definitely negotiate. So we had that broker that was able to help us out. He was able to negotiate tenant improvement. Our big deal when you're opening a store, because you you could use money towards the build out and you can ask landlords for that. So if, again, if you have a good broker and you tell them your story, what you're trying to build out, a lot of times you can get a number of things paid for by the landlord because they're about to ask you to sign a five year lease. Joe: Mm hmm. OK. So at this point, the four locations that you have, you are in a lease situation Tim: Yes, all for you Joe: At Tim: And I've Joe: Any Tim: Looked into purchasing. Joe: Ok, so there is yeah, that's my question. It's like when do you pull the trigger on saying, OK, I want to actually start to own some of these buildings are these spaces. And that's a huge job. That's that's really put your Tim: Yeah, Joe: Neck out. Right. Tim: So in all four, I looked at them and each one has a different story, the first one I looked into though, at the Fitchburg location, the buildings were not for sale. So I was like, all this is so cool. So I looked into it and it was seven million dollars for these two buildings because it's in a strong anchor, high traffic area. So it is difficult to buy the spot by the strong anchor Joe: Maha. Tim: Because it really it would have been risking I couldn't I couldn't do it. But then the idea next idea is like, well, maybe I should move locations now that my name is established, if I can buy a strip mall down the way or something like that. So that Joe: Te. Tim: Idea is in the back of my head. But then you move away from the strong anchors. That's Joe: Right. Tim: Been called me back. Joe: Right, cool. See, that was perfect because that was like all of the things that you have to consider and Tim: Right. Joe: It's yeah, that's a tough decision, man. That's a lot of money. Tim: It is, Joe: Yeah. Tim: Dude, I Joe: Yeah. Tim: Know and I have a buddy who owns a dentistry office and he Joe: We. Tim: Was able to purchase his location and it's awesome. He's about to pay it off after ten years. And I'm super excited. So Joe: Yeah. Tim: It is depends on the situation. Joe: Yeah, OK, so now let's get into what I consider in the world that you're in and I'm a huge fan of natural like I is, it's a there's a difference between naturopathic or is. Right. Is that pronounced correctly? Is that they say it Tim: Yeah, Joe: Now Tim: Naturopathic Joe: Or Tim: Medicine Joe: Or homoeopathic. Tim: Homoeopathy yupp homoeopathy Joe: Right. OK. Tim: And integrative medicine is kind of like medical and naturopathy together. Joe: Yep, yep, so Joel and my life partner went through a battle of breast cancer where she had some lymph nodes and luckily, you know, Tim: Giese. Joe: Through through chemo and radiation, she came out on the other side and everything's great. But Tim: Good. Joe: The big thing that she also had was she had a naturopathic doctor Tim: Hmm. Joe: That went that came from the cancer world. So the advantages is that he understood the treatment that was happening with the normal medicine and he knew what to give her to not take away from what she was doing with the chemo and radiation, but at the same time helped to keep her system built up and not offset any of that. So there was a perfect marriage between the two. And Tim: That's. Joe: I swear to this day, I feel like that was the reason that she was Tim: Wow. Joe: Fairly, fairly normal through the process, like we were doing 90 X and she was in the middle Tim: That's Joe: Of chemo Tim: All Joe: And radiation. Tim: Right. Joe: Yeah, it was ridiculous. So Tim: Dude, that's Joe: So Tim: Awesome. Joe: I'm a big fan of the naturopathic side of things and natural remedies and all of that. So Tim: Not the. Joe: So that's why this was a cool episode for me, because it's hard to talk with somebody that is in this niche that you're in without it being the big stores. And so my first question, because I got so many of them Tim: I Joe: First question and the first Tim: Love Joe: Question Tim: It. Joe: Is how do you become with all of the misinformation that's out Tim: The. Joe: In the world? Right. And this is what confuses all of us as consumers. You go to Amazon and you say, I need a B vitamin of Tim: Right Joe: Some B supplement. Tim: Now. Joe: And the habit is you you click on the five star rating, things that you want. You think that's going to be the best because people are taking their time to read it, which Tim: Yeah. Joe: I think there's enough Tim: What Joe: Conversation Tim: Did he. Joe: In the world that says that's not necessarily true. Tim: Right. Joe: And then you literally are just like throwing darts at a dartboard with Tim: I Joe: A blindfold Tim: Know that, Joe: On. So. Tim: I know. Joe: So how do you get through all the misinformation that you feel so confident enough that when you when you suggest something to a client that you haven't been taken advantage of by the misinformation, like Tim: Yeah, Joe: How do you get through Tim: Because. Joe: All of that stuff? Tim: A great question and even the reviews, if a company markets really well and they're incredible at marketing, they can get a billion, five star reviews and they can be like synthetic sourced from China, not NSF certification. So over the years, you start to be able to read between the lines and you start to be able to say, hey, this is B.S. over here. This is marketing. Only not met with quality. And like any industry, you start to learn the good, better and best. So there's a few things. So first and foremost, I think everybody needs somebody on their team. Like your wife has that naturopathic doctor now as a resource that she can probably shoot an email to or make an appointment with and ask these questions. I think everybody needs somebody on their team because most people have a medical doctor and beyond that and they might have a pharmacist. Right. And they're good to have on your team, but we need somebody with. Expertise, knowledge, history in the supplement space, because even a naturopathic doctor, they know way more than I do about the human body, about maybe. Yeah, just just how to treat maybe disease. Tim: Right. When you're in the supplement space, there is you get to deal with hundreds and hundreds of brands. And over the decades, which I think 18 years now, you start to find out what brands are good and trustworthy and which ones aren't because the FDA doesn't regulate all the supplements. So you can say whatever you want on the label about me, your romantic drink here, but you can say whatever you want and. FDA isn't going to necessarily nail you if you're lying, if your label is making false label claims and this happens, there was a clinic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where not real clinical, but where they took products from a number of stores, GNC, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and Target. They took supplements from those four stores and then they had them tested at Chavannes and it was Chavannes Labs. And all four of them had discrepancies with what the label said and what was actually in the capsule. And one product was an Asia product, which is good for the immune system. And it had zero percent echinacea in there and a little bit of garlic like Joe: Oh, Tim: What Joe: My Tim: The H Joe: Gosh. Tim: Now? Yeah. So that exactly what you said. It's shooting in the dark. Is it marketing that's producing these reviews? Is it quality? Is it going to help me? Is it a waste of my money? Am I being sold. Right. So there's all those questions and the privilege that I'm so thankful for is just being submersed in the supplement world long enough. You learn a couple of things. So sourcing is vital. Where is it coming from? There is vitamin C that you can get our China, that there's some concerns there with chemicals, heavy metals, arsenic, or you can get vitamin C from Scallan, which happens to have a really rich ascorbic acid form of vitamin C clean, great place to source it from. So where a product is sourced from is really important. Number two is does the brand have NSF certification? So NZDF C, GMP grade facilities that they work with, which they're paying money to NSF to a third party test and ensure that they're having all of these practices that are healthy for supplements, they're sourcing their cleanliness. Has it been tested? Is it clean? Those questions? And NSF doesn't care about the company. They care about the reputation. So there sure as heck going to just that's a good certification is trusted in the supplement world to ensure that what's on the label is actually in the product. Tim: So sourcing No. One, NSF, GMP certification, number two and number three, which all of these take some sort of expertise or having somebody on your your team. You know, that's why I say to have somebody on your team first. But number three is the forms of nutrients. So E 12, which I gave the example earlier, Psion Kabalan and B 12 is synthetic. So your body has to convert it and you lose a lot of the content in that conversion versus a methyl form B 12, which is the natural form that your body absorbs really, really well. So four items, number one and two, saucing and NSF, you can have a very clean form of sign Kabalan and B 12 source, very clean. You could have NSF facility ensuring that you have that 50 micrograms of cyanide Kabalan B 12 in the B complex. But then it would take some expertise to know, like, OK, that's fine, that's good. But we would prefer a methyl form would be 12 because it absorbs so much better Joe: Mr.. Tim: And every single nutrient. This blows my mind because every single nutrient has good, better, best. You know, whether you're talking about vitamin C, ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbic calcium ascorbic B 12, which I'm talking about the six paroxetine hydrochloride versus toxified phosphate turmeric. You can get the the turmeric that colors your Indian curry orange and you can take that capsule and it's good for you. It just doesn't do very much for inflammation unless you extract the curcumin out and then even that doesn't have a good absorption rate. So blending it with the turmeric, essential oils and the sunflower lecithin launch the absorption where it's literally absorbing two hundred to five hundred times better than the turmeric Indian spice that you started with. And that's the form of ninety five. That's the form that Baylor University of Texas is using to literally treat cancer and chronic pain with incredible results. I mean, the cancer story is very cool. Inflammation is the root of the root system of cancer. Joe: Mm, huh. Tim: So that's an example where it's like oh man form so saucing, NZDF, GMP, great facility forms of nutrients. Those are the big three that you want to look at to know quality. Right. So that's what I always tell somebody, find somebody that you can trust. So for you guys, it might be your your doctor that your wife worked with for in Madison, Wisconsin. A lot of people trust the healthy place to help guide them, know we don't do commission so that we can just recommend what's best so Joe: Right. Tim: People can use that live chat feature on our website to just ask those questions. But find a health food store maybe that is trustworthy in your home town, that you do meet a job like my mom met John Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Or find a store like mine that you can connect with and you can go to when health strikes, health problems strike because everybody has some conditions, some problem, something, even if it's something as simple as fatigue, you know. Ninety two percent of fatigue is related to your adrenal glands. You can strengthen your adrenal glands and you can have more vibrant energy every day. And people just don't know that. So they keep reaching for the coffee or the soda or the caffeine pills, what have you. So get somebody on your team that you can trust. Joe: So go. So you said at one point in this conversation that do you have over 4000 Tim: Products, yeah. Joe: Excuse now, right? OK, so let's just take that as an example. It's a full time job for someone like you to be the Tim: Yes. Joe: Gatekeeper Tim: Yeah. Joe: Of your of the healthy place. You have to be the gatekeeper to say, yes, this comes into our door and gets put on ourselves or in our e-commerce store or Tim: The. Joe: No, this doesn't meet the criteria. So to me, it feels like it's continuing education and literally a full time job for whoever that person. Let's just say it's you at the moment that Tim: Yeah. Joe: Is the person that says yay or nay on these products. So it's just mind boggling what is out there and what you have to do to sort of educate yourself to to say, yes, this makes the cut, not only doesn't make the cut, but it's in a product. It's not a product and not a C product, you Tim: Yeah, Joe: Know what I mean? Tim: You're Joe: So. Tim: Absolutely right. And it's like reading a book, though, you don't want to minimize what I do, it's like it's not hard for you to read English, you know, after you've learned it. But if you're learning a new language, it looks like totally confusing. Overwhelming can take me forever to learn this language. And it might take some years to learn it. Once you have that language mastered, it's just like reading a book, you know, Joe: Yeah. Tim: You just check the boxes, right. OK, where is the source from NSF? GMP, what's the forms of these nutrients? Because you start to learn and then you have experts that you follow. A lot of people smarter than me that I follow. Dr. X, Dr. While, Dr. Whitaker, Dr. Northrup. And you start Terry Lambrew and you start to follow these gurus in the southern industry that have been there for 40 years, that know so much more than you. And you're reading their literature, listening to their podcasts. They're the symposiums around the planet that are going on for this breakthrough, that breakthrough. You get the subscriptions right to the. So I just tell everyone, get plugged in at least where you're getting encouraged on a regular basis to own your health, build your terrane strength in your health and all the ways that you can inspire yourself on a regular basis and then get somebody on your team that you can trust to help guide you in the space, because it is a new language, right? Joe: It's nuts, it's just it's so frustrating. Did a three month vegan plan Tim: Nice. Joe: Because Tim: Yeah. Joe: I'm not vegan, but I loved it like it was good for me. But I Tim: Yeah. Joe: Actually I actually, in the process, lost a lot of muscle mass because I was also going always going to the gym. But all of a sudden I started to shrink both, Tim: Right, Joe: You Tim: Like, Joe: Know. Tim: No. Joe: So, yes, I'm like, I'm doing all this hard work. And it's just I needed to get on a B 12 vitamin of something. And it's funny because I don't even know what I'm taking, but it's something that I got from Amazon and Tim: Your Joe: I Tim: I can do it. I've been assigned to general Joe: I'm sure. Tim: Check that Joe: So Tim: After Joe: I'm going Tim: The program. Joe: To look when yeah. When we're done, I'm going to look and then I'm going to and then I'm going to say I need a direct line to Tim in Tim: There Joe: The Tim: We Joe: Chat Tim: Go. Joe: Room. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So have you ever thought of franchises? Tim: I have, I Joe: And Tim: Have. Joe: And I'm Tim: You Joe: Just interested you don't have to you don't have to Tim: Know, Joe: Say to. Tim: I'm so I am very interested and I have been kicking that ball around in my head for a long time because we are we specialize in education, right. So you got to find ways to duplicate yourself in a franchise. And so we created a three month curriculum that our wellness consultants have to go through. They have to pass quizzes and tests and they have to get certifications from this company, this company and MKB certification, all the enzyme certifications to understand the industry, know what questions to ask customers and how to make recommendations. So that's one of the hardest things that we've done that would make it more easy to duplicate the knowledge side of our company and our brand. And as I've talked to people who have created franchises, the the legal side to it is one hurdle and then enforcing them to actually maintain your model as representing the healthy place. What we have created is the two big unknowns for me as far as difficulty. So then the choice came, should we just keep adding brick and mortars in our own territory? Right, right. In the Madison area and then put all of our energy and focus into our brands that we've created and our website because there's infinite you can do in the business world and you kind Joe: Mm Tim: Of Joe: Hmm. Tim: Have to choose. Joe: Yeah. Tim: So we decided to park the franchise idea for now and really go after lively vitamin CO. This is one of the brands that have been borne out of our brick and mortar stores. So now we're selling that to other health food stores around the country. And the number two is build find your healthy place dotcom, because just like Amazon is a freakin mammoth, there's so much opportunity to impact and power and educate everything that I'm passionate about on that website. So currently with four kids, we are chilling on the franchise idea. But I think it's brilliant because there's not there's not the option out there, which is why it keeps coming back to me Joe: Yeah, Tim: Like Joe: Yeah. Tim: There's not that many health food stores out there that really care. Soulsby for sales. You know, as one of my Joe: Mm Tim: Saying Joe: Hmm. Tim: That, Joe: I Tim: I really Joe: Love that, by the way, I love that. Tim: Thank you. Thank you. There is a time I was praying and it was like not I it going to make my friggin mortgage. When I first opened the store, I was praying to God for sales and I was like, God to declare bankruptcy here is brutal. And it was like an arrow is like, do you care about their soul as much as you care about the sales? Joe: Yeah. Tim: And it was kind of striking. So, yeah, there's not that many stores out there that really care about the human that have knowledge to help guide them and a model that works to help people, you know. So it's still an idea that keeps coming back to me. So Joe: Right. Tim: We'll see. Joe: Yeah, well, good luck if it happens, I'm sure it'll be great. Tim: Thank you. You see one popping up next door, you'll know where to get your V12. Joe: There you go. So you hit upon this a moment ago with the whole franchising thing of how to actually create this template and create a strict thing where where the people that are talking to your customers are very educated and they're giving the right information and asking the right questions. So how have you done that with the people that are at your current stores and how have you done that with the people that are on the other end of the chat? When somebody files in to ask these questions, Tim: Yeah, so. Joe: How do you get something like when is somebody OK? You're ready to take a call, you're ready to be on the chat, you're ready to to advise a customer in the store, like, what's that process? Tim: Yeah, Joe: And you don't Tim: So. Joe: Have to go too deep. I just Tim: No, Joe: I Tim: No, Joe: But Tim: That. Joe: I'm sure somebody is going to say, like, hey, Tim, super educated on this. So every time I talk, like I just said, you know what I call him on the chat, I want him, you Tim: Right. Joe: Know. So Tim: Right. Joe: How to how do you duplicate Tim so that everyone that's coming in on the chat or walking in the store says this is just a clone of Tim like he may. He's already run them through the ringer, you know? Tim: Yeah, that's so the three month curriculum that we created is our pride and joy. I'm so thankful for that. It was brutal to create. So I created one hundred videos, having a five minute conversation where I'm explaining different parts of the world and explaining brands and what to look for and how to explain it. And then we'll go through they'll have to pass quizzes and tests based on each module. So there's nine different modules to this curriculum. They have to go through trainings with specific companies. They have to do a number of roleplaying activities with our managers where they pretend to be the customer Joe: Mm Tim: And Joe: Hmm. Tim: Coming in, hey, I'm looking for some CBDs. What do you got? And so they get tested there and they have to get these certifications from each of these brands, so they have to pass it. So there's one guy who got to the end and he is like, OK, dude, we got to rewind because you're not retaining this stuff. So either you did the last minute cramming for this quiz the night before. And like I didn't I did that in high school. Joe: Ok. Tim: And then you don't retain it, right. Joe: Yeah. Tim: So do you really care about this or not? So he had to start over. He had to go through it again. So it's a team. We have a leadership team of five. And so we have these nine modules, the quizzes, the tests. They have to pass them. They have to do the role playing. And then the leadership team of five will say, OK, this person's ready or they're really not ready. And there's still a couple of parts of our team where we're like, OK, where they can be a wellness consultant in the store, but we don't think they're ready to be on live chat. So then we'll wait maybe six months until they have a little bit more experience, because where our team learns the most is from the customers coming in asking the questions and they don't know the answers of how to treat colitis Joe: Mm Tim: With Joe: Hmm. Tim: Whatever. So then they have to go find out to get back to that customer and then they learn something. So right now, I'm proud to say our live chat feature on our website, if you go to find your other place, dotcom lower, right. You get that little live chat bubble, the seven different consultants that you might run into over there are, I wouldn't say clones of Tim because I think they're smarter than me, but they are really well equipped and able to match, kind of hit the mark of where they need to be. And they all know and are passionate enough about helping people to not. One of the first things that I'll tell them is, dude, never bullshit. Joe: Yeah, yeah. Tim: That's a real thing. And I came from a I won't say anything negative where it's just more about getting the sale, about getting that commission. And and that's part of why we don't do commissions. So it's a fun process for intense. Joe: Well, that's great, man. Yeah, so I want to respect your time. We're down to the wire. I want to make sure I didn't miss anything that you want to talk about. So you have four stores in Wisconsin. Tim: Madison, Joe: Correct. Tim: Wisconsin, the. Joe: Ok, and you have the website Tim: Find your healthy place, Dotcom. Joe: Buying your healthy place, Dotcom. Anything else that I missed that is important that we talk about? Tim: You know, dude, I mean, as I was thinking about this program and your followers, like what your mission is, you're trying to encourage entrepreneurs, trying to encourage people to be thankful for life. You don't Joe: Mm Tim: Take Joe: Hmm. Tim: To treat life like the gift it is, you Joe: Yep. Tim: Know? So I did want to offer your followers a coupon code. If they don't have you know, if you have a health food store in your own home town, that's great sport. Those guys, if you have somebody on your team, that's awesome. That's my main passion. And if you need a resource that you can trust, if you go to find your healthy place dotcom and you get something type in coupon code, Castelo, and that'll give 30 percent off the full price on anything on our whole website, we have thousands of products. So anything from V12 to something more intense. And regardless if you buy something or not, use that live chat feature to ask questions. You know, I've had people call my cell phone bill. Hey, Jim, you know, I'm in Wholefoods right now and I'm looking at three different multivitamins. Like which one do you think I should get? You know, and I get to tell them and it's fun and you can share the love. And so use that live chat feature as a resource, because more than ever, dude, we need natural alternatives. We need some education we at least need to know about, like Joel and your Joe: Yeah, Tim: Life partner. Dude, Joe: Yeah. Tim: What if she didn't have that naturopathic doctor that gave her some natural supplements through one of the most intensive crisis's that she ever faced in her life? Like, you know, in your gut that that helped her in a dramatic way because you watched her do P ninety three, the cancer experience. Joe: Yeah. Tim: I mean, that's a miracle, dude. And it took somebody reaching out and it took a resource being willing to respond to create that miracle, you know. And so that's what I want for people. Joe: Yeah, it's I can't stress it enough that Tim: Right. Joe: What I saw before my very eyes every single Tim: Right. Joe: Day and it would and then I see people that are going through cancer of some type and they're only being treated, Tim: As Joe: You know, Tim: A medical doctor, yeah. Joe: And they're their body is just being crushed. Tim: Yes. Joe: And there's and there's nothing, no nothing helping to offset the chemicals and all of the harshness Tim: Know. Joe: Of that treatment. And so. Tim: Right, and let me say, you know, you saw it with somebody you loved very much, I saw it with my mom when I was five or six. And since then, I'm getting goosebumps. I have seen it for thousands of people through the last 11 years that the healthy place has been a company, thousands of people, not always cancer, but but we're talking depression, chronic pain, Crohn's disease, asthma, like people suffering like megacorp. There's so much suffering going on Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: In the world and there is natural alternatives that people literally don't know about. They have nobody in their world telling them. So they just listen to whatever mainstream media or their medical doctor Joe: Yeah. Tim: Or their pharmacist. And there's a lot of good people with good intent in those areas. It's just there's not the voice of natural alternatives. So we need to know about this stuff. We've got to get the word out. Joe: Yeah, it's great, man, I love what you're doing, and this Tim: Think. Joe: Was exciting for me and and I think I actually have your personal email, so I'm just going Tim: That's Joe: To I'm Tim: Awesome. Joe: Going to go I'm going to go ten. I need Tim: You Joe: More Tim: Should. Joe: Energy, Tim. I think I think I have inflammation. And I'm going Tim: Yeah, Joe: To be like. Tim: I know you should, and if anyone's listening to and they because sometimes, you know, they just have a trust factor or whatever, Tim at Find Your Healthy Place Dotcom. I am happy to take emails. This what I get to do all day, dude, and it's just fun. It's so rewarding. You just get to point people in the right direction and help them out. So I love it. Joe: I wish you all the luck in the world, this is a Tim: Thank you. Joe: This is a great thing that you're doing. It's nice to have somebody who is, like you said, it's it's Soulsby before sales. It's a great it's a great way to do it. And I think Tim: Thank Joe: You'll be Tim: You. Joe: Rewarded continually be rewarded for doing Tim: Thank Joe: It that Tim: You. Joe: Way. I'll put everything in the show notes. Thank you for the coupon for the listeners Tim: Now. Joe: And I'll make sure I have all the correct links. So find your healthy place. Dotcom is the website. The company's name is the Healthy Place for locations in Madison, Wisconsin. You eventually might franchise someday, Tim: Yes, Joe: But Tim: And people on Facebook, you know, Joe: Yeah. Tim: The healthy people on Facebook, my wife's a genius as far as really caring for our community there. So you'll find a lot of good content and Instagram as well. So thank you, dear. This Joe: Yeah, Tim: Is. Joe: Tim, thanks so much, man, I really appreciate your time today and thanks for all the insight and I really do wish you the best of luck. Tim: Any time, brother, and wish the same to you. Joe: Thank you, Matt. Tim: I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I want to thank you for listening to my podcast. I know you have many options to listen to various podcasts, and I'm honored that you chose to listen to mine. I would love it if you were to rate my podcast Five Stars and write a nice review. It really helps to bring up the rankings of the podcast. Other listeners, once again, thank you so much for listening to the Joe Costello show. I appreciate you very much.  

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan
One way that AI is transforming family farms

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2021 33:38


Some of Japan's innovations are going to have a much bigger impact outside of Japan. Like most startups, most AgTech startups sensibly tend to focus on their own markets. While this makes things easier at first, it tends to overlook the huge challenges -- and potentially huge profits -- that exist in the developing world. Today we talk with Shunsuke Tsuboi of Sagri, and he explains how Sagri started life as a satellite -imaging startup focused on incremental innovation in Japan, but then quickly transformed itself into a disruptive FinTech startup serving India and Southeast Asia. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The truth about university startup support in Japan Why India is a better target for this Japanese startup Why selling to family farms is harder than selling to industrial farms Why sustainable business models are hard for agriculture startups The challenges for market entry in any agriculture startup Three reasons there are so few agriculture startups in Japan Why most Japanese VCs don't invest in AgTech What Japanese universities can do to improve creativity Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Sagri Friend Shun on Facebook TV Interview about Sagri. (Japanese) Nikkei interview with Shun  (Japanese) Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Today, we're going to about agricultural startups in Japan.  You know, it's interesting, with Japan's high food prices, the financial support for farmers, and the strong system of university agricultural research, I've always been a bit surprised that we don't see more AgTech startups in Japan.  Well, today's conversation goes a long way to explaining exactly why that is, it's both fascinating and a little frustrating.  Today we sit down with Shunsuke Tsuboi of Sagri, who is using satellite imaging and AI to help small-scale farmers, some in Japan but mostly in the developing world. Shunsuke explains the challenges of launching a startup from universities without specific startup support, why going global often has nothing to do with the US or Europe, and why the world is a better place when there are tens of millions of small family farms in it and why those are worth preserving.  But you know, Shunsuke tells that story much better than I can, so let's get right to the interview. Interview Tim: I'm sitting here with Shun Tsuboi of Sagri, who is using satellites and artificial intelligence to solve agricultural problems. Thanks for joining us today. Shun: Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you for this time. Tim: It's great to have you, and I mean, agriculture tech, AgTech is something that's it's interesting in Japan, and people don't talk about it enough, so I'm really glad you're on the show. So can you explain a little bit more about what Sagri does, what is the service you're offering? Shun: Sagri company is based in Japan and India. So we are using satellite data to checking the each of the farmland and also the food of farmers we get using satellite data for smartphone, such as when is the best harvesting time and also which is a good soil situation, we can check it. Tim: The soil analysis, is that done by satellite or do you have people on the ground checking? Shun: They're using satellite, yes. Tim: Really? Shun: Yeah, along the 1,000 farmland, checking just 10 farmland detail, we can spreading the satellite information. Tim: So from satellite imaging, you can tell soil composition, you can tell farmers when the ideal time to apply pesticides, when to harvest. How do your customers interact with this? Is there a smartphone app? How does it work? Shun: So using satellite data checking through the application, they can connect it that mechanical, so this machine is automatically do that.

Business Built Freedom
184|Becoming a Leader With Tim Stokes

Business Built Freedom

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2021 27:05


Becoming a Leader With Tim Stokes G'day everyone, I'm sure we've all been in a spot that we've thought about how do we become a leader, are we already a leader, what is a leader anyway? And ultimately in being a leader, is that going to be something that's going to leverage your ability to achieve business freedom? Today, we've got Tim Stokes here, and he's going to be talking about exactly that. How do you achieve business freedom and how do you make sure that you are a leader, and you are a developing leader, and you are continuing your skills, etc. He's from a company named Profit Transformations. Tell me, Tim, in your opinion, what is a leader?   The Qualities of a Leader Tim: I've got a great answer to that one. You're a leader when someone is following you because if there's no one following you, then you're just a dictator going for a walk on your own. That's the simple definition for it. It's the effect that you have on other people. If you're inspiring people to follow your words willingly, that's what I would call a leader. If people are regretfully, resentfully, slowly or not very effectively following your words, then that's the sign that the leadership skills could be improved. I think it's as simple as that. It's the difference you're making to other people. I believe leadership is one word: servitude. You're there to serve...serve your followers. It's about redundancy. You're aiming to make yourself redundant through the people that are following you, not rule them, if you like, not dictate to them, but empower them to be like you, to give power to them, to increase their confidence, and to be able to do what it is that you are doing yourself.  Ultimately, anyone can be a leader, but it's also very field specific. You could be a leader at home, but not necessarily be a leader at work. Do you think that leadership can be taught or is it something that you are or you're not? We’re All Leaders Tim: I think we're all leaders. We just probably don't recognise that we are because we all influence other people. As a parent, you're a leader because your children are watching you, scrutinising everything that you do, copying you, mirroring you, following you, saying what you say, doing what you do and copying your body language. I remember watching my daughter look at me when she was about three and she looked at me, saw it on, and then she adjusted her posture and I said, don't do that. She just copied my posture from just watching me without saying a word, and I watched her do it and then I watched her adjust and I was like, 'Oh, don't do that. Have your own, not mine.' We're always being watched. Employees are always watching their bosses. If the bosses aren't punctual, the employees think, 'Oh, punctuality doesn't really matter here. That's great. I don't need to be that punctual.' So we're leading whether we like it or not. I think everything is co-leadership. Sometimes other people lead, sometimes you lead. We probably have a prioritised role of leadership in business, but definitely, leaders are always leaders. I believe selling is leadership because you're leading people from doubt and potentially resistance or a bit of fear into making a confident decision. So when people are in doubt, they need leadership. So selling is leadership to take people from 'I'm not sure what I need to buy,' 'I'm not sure of the price, so I don't have my decision-making criteria,' 'I'm a bit ignorant of what I'm buying. Someone guide me to making a confident decision and buying.' That is a leadership opportunity. Every sales phone call, every sales opportunity is leadership. That's exactly what it is, so I think it's everywhere. Everywhere in business is leadership. At home, you're in leadership mode. Sometimes I say the wife wears the pants, but that's not true all the time. It'd be alternating leadership because that tends to be how relationships work. We call it co-leadership. I completely agree with everything you've just said. I think it's important to make sure that you are walking your best step forward for everyone else to follow suit. With punctuality, as you said, it is important making sure that you are punctual at work. With situations like remote workforces and even workforces that haven't ever met in person, I guess this is coming more and more common, you're very disciplined, very passionate, and you've got all those traits and the business is going absolutely gangbusters. Maybe you're a solo entrepreneur and you're doing that and you decide I'm going to outsource some of these roles and grow a bit bigger. How do you make sure that some of the good traits that you have when you're not necessarily in the office and they're not seeing everything that you're doing and it's not being completely obvious to them because you might only be seen for a couple of hours in a Zoom meeting a week or something like that. Support Your Employees Tim: I believe that the emotions that you share with your employees is what they pass on to their customers. It's about being there for them. It's about supporting them. It's about constantly being in touch to show that you care about them and care about the work they're doing. It's recognising the work they're doing, appreciating the work they're doing. They actually work for you. So even though they might not be in eyesight, they still work for you. I have clients, and their business has grown and grown and they're in other states and have employees in other states and even other countries. I've got a client who took his business into four countries, and it's just a regular contact. Those clients are always talking to their people wherever they are, touching base with them, seeing how they're going, making sure they're happy, making sure their needs are met, etc. It's not assuming that they are okay on their own. It's actually finding out all the time. 'How's it going? How did you go with the job? Do you need any help? Yeah. Great. Could you do this? Fantastic. Great. Sounds like it went great.' So it's just those regular conversations that I think are crucial. In having those regular conversations, how do you make sure that you come across as someone who's appreciative and not necessarily someone that's micromanaging? Tim: That's really getting the context of what they went through, not just the content. When you start saying, 'Did you do this? Did you do this? Did you make sure you did this?' That's micromanaging. I love introducing numbers into businesses, the eight ingredients that achieve business freedom for business owners. One of them is KPIs and having numbers for the person to see themselves that they're doing a great job because the numbers don't lie. The numbers help people to see that they're doing a great job. The regular communication is great, but when you back it up with the numbers and say, 'Hey, you did an excellent job. You're on that job for two hours. I estimated it to be two and a half. Well done. That's excellent.' And the number backslap. And I'll find that over time that the numbers can fulfil a person with a couple of other ingredients. Then that way, when an employee's fulfilled, they need far less supervision. But it's getting them to that stage is what takes a lot of work.  Quit Micromanaging and Being a Business Dictator You said earlier that everyone's a leader in some way, shape or form. But I'm sure that there is people that we've all worked for or worked with and we've seen that they're not people that would like to follow. You've come across someone that isn't necessarily willing to step away from the dictatorship role. Is that still going to be a successful business or is it just not as successful? I'm sure there's been some famous dictators in that time that have done well. Tim: Well, Steve Jobs is a bit of a dictator, for example. He's controlling everything in a way because no one in any department knew what they were working on until the launch of the product. And then he went, 'Oh, is that what I was making?' I mean, when it all comes together, they finally figure out what they're making, but it's like everyone's sort of locked in a little area. Don't talk to anyone in any other department. It's all secret stuff. That's how that business was run, but it became the most successful company in the world, whereas Google is the opposite. It's like I have half a day off with pay. Just mingle here. Here is a community area. Everyone go and play pool and play video games and everyone talks to everyone from every department all the time. Yeah, you can be very successful if you're a dictator. I've had clients that it's like, why did my staff keep leaving? I can't stand staff leaving. I've got to build in some penalties and get better contracts. I'm like, 'Well, maybe you need to improve your leadership skills.' So I'm subtly trying to say, 'Well, they're leaving because of you and how you treat them.' But he's looking for tighter contracts because he's too much of a dictator, not enough of a leader. Still had a successful business, very successful business. However, if he wasn't there, they used to complain. If he's not cracking the whip, then they're not going to do it. So, yes, businesses can definitely be successful without great leadership. However, I'm about the word optimising and efficiency and taking businesses to an extremely high level. That's a very important ingredient. We're not born leaders. Some people are, but the rest of us are going to figure it out by trial and error of what leadership is by the results that we have and the effect that we have on people. We go 'Oh, okay, let's not say that next time.' You slowly improve your leadership skills from the experience. But we can take a proactive approach to learning this thing called leadership. It's like most people in sales don't know they're in a leadership role. Give them the good news and say, 'You understand you're in the leadership role.' 'What's leadership got to do with sales?' They're in doubt and they need to go from doubt to confidence. There's a leadership opportunity, the leadership journey, to facilitate and take them from their doubt to the confidence of saying to you, 'Oh, this is exactly what I want.' Getting people to that state of mind where they're so confident that they're asking to buy from you is good sales, and it's actually good leadership. Stopping Your Bad Business Owner Habits As a generalisation, if there's a problem in your business and it seems to be consistently happening, chances are it's the business owner that's causing that problem. If you find that people are leaving or that people aren't answering the phone or aren't doing things in a suitable amount of time, even if it comes down to people having more sick leave than usual, it can be something that they might not even consciously be doing. But that does boil down to something that needs to be corrected. The ship needs to be steered in the best direction or a better direction to what it's currently going. If that is something that you're wanting to do, this is all about leveraging and achieving business freedom. If you're trying to teach your staff how to be minions of yourself, mini-mes, so to speak, what is the best way to step away from a bad habit and towards something that's going to be closer to leadership can be a gift or a developed skill. What's the best way to make sure that you identify and then correct? Tim: I think a really good thing to do as a touchstone before is understand that it's about context. It's not about content. As a leader, you want to create the context. And it's like saying there's a soccer field, there's boundaries, here are some rules. Don't play the game. It's defining the rules and the parameters with which to play the game or how an employee can occupy the role in the business by knowing the parameters and knowing what the expectations are, which is sort of KPI can kick in. 'Here's a performance guide. Hit this number and you're doing a great job.' Run Your Business By The Numbers It's about getting from Point A to Point B. The road that you follow is not critical, but it's getting to a Point B. Your Point A gets you to Point B, and leadership is about defining Point B so that the person can figure out their way of getting there by using the parameters which you set and that's where policy is. The policy is like a rule or guideline that an employee follows. A simple one is answer the phone two and a half rings. That's a policy. So it's a parameter with which to perform well in your role. So when a business owner gives the clear parameters, which are systems, when you digitise the roll with the parameters and the policies, the procedures are not as important. It's clarifying what the outcome looks like because in the end, that's all that really matters. I was fortunate in about 1999 to look at the business reports that Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire, wanted from his newspaper every week, sent to him by fax by his general manager. And the guy, the general manager, was showing me this. We got on really well. He said, 'Hey, come and check out the office.' He's got like 50 staff in there. And he said, 'This is all the salespeople over here, the production people over here, all the journalists that are doing all the writing, and then we have the finance people, admin people, etc. These are the reports I have to fax Rupert Murdoch every single week or I don't have a job.' I started to realise that billionaires run their businesses remotely by numbers, straight numbers. He said there are 23 offices faxing the same reports, so 23 separate businesses every Monday seeing the same reports. And he said we don't talk too much because the numbers tell the story. And that insight was great for me to understand that when you set the parameters up, which is a lot of work, and then you introduce the KPIs that show the outcome that they're aiming to hit from that role, and you have the systems in place for them to follow as guidelines, you don't need to micromanage. That's when you achieve business freedom, where you don't have to work in your business, because if you set it up correctly or at a very high level, then that's the outcome that you can achieve. Well, I can say that I wish I knew you were around when I started business because back in 2007, when Dorks Delivered was in its infancy and I started off as the cowboy who just went around doing everything that he read online once or had the trial and error and worked out that was the best way to do it. And then I went down a path and hand over fist loads of coin, but went to a spot where I thought, 'Okay, this is fantastic. I got to bring someone else on board. Brought David on at the time. He was going really, really well. He was working 80 hours, I was working 80 hours. We're both going gangbusters, loving it. The family wasn't as keen on it, but everyone else says you got to balance these things until they had a stroke and end up in hospital. And then I can't do 160 hours in a week. So I went, 'Okay, what can I do here to make sure this doesn't happen again.' And removing onboarding times and things like that and started systematising and putting in processes, practices, operating procedures, KPIs, I got to get our business running to a spot where I could step away. His heart attack happened in 2012. It took me until 2016 to be pretty confident in my systems. It was 2018 I was able to step away for 3 months and not do anything in the business and I thought, 'Okay, sweet.' but it took time.  Tim: Oh yeah. It takes a lot of work. I can shortcut that for a lot of businesses but you know what it's like. I was talking to a client yesterday about that exact thing and we were just guesstimating that it's probably at least 500 hours' work on your business that you got to do to get to that level. It's a lot of extra work, and if you can shortcut it, excellent.  The way I did it I looked at the different things that I do in the business, and I just started writing a list of absolutely everything. I got about 500 different things on a list, and then I was categorising them so you could see was it an accounting role, was it an administration role, was it a technical role, was it on the tools? Where was my time going? That was eye-opening. I saw where my time was going and then speeding up all the different processes, and I love it. You've got to be passionate about it to be able to move it away from a job into an investment. Remove Repetition   Tim: Absolutely. I found that one of the reasons business owners go into business is they just want a change from doing the same stuff all the time as an employee. I think it's a mixture of ingredients. One of the most rewarding roles that you can have in a business is being in a non-repetitious space. You set your business up so that you're not dealing with the same customers, which is the production, you're not doing with sales, which is the same stuff. Same problem, same sort of stuff. And you move into that non-repetitious stage and that's where you can occupy different roles. If you're the business development manager for your own business, that could mean a few things. You could be the product innovator, researching to find new products to introduce into your business that can sell them as line extensions, or you could be going in a state meeting people in your same industry that you're not competing with having lunches and dinners with them and sharing ideas and swapping ideas. You can travel around tax deductible and have this great lifestyle and choose when you turn up for work and when you're travelling and having fun and staying home, researching kind of thing. And that's I think a great role to strive for as a business owner, to be in a creative, non-repetitious space, then life's just fun. It's just enjoyable.  Well, the terrible thing is while most people are being rewarded by being paid per hour, most people aren't looking at faster, more effective ways to do things. That is something that I'm really happy that we step away and help other businesses step away from that and make sure that they and their staff are doing things that are speeding up their processes. We don't charge our customers per hour for the work that we do unless we absolutely have to. We normally try and scope it all out and then have a set rate that we're charging them to achieve certain key objectives, and if we don't, then we don't get that money. It's very important that we set up ourselves like that, and I think other businesses should be doing the same thing. That ultimately has everyone strive towards the same common good. You don't want to have people in monotonous, repetitious work for lots more reasons than just it's boring. If they're doing something that's repetitious, it's something that we'll be able to automate. If it's not us doing it, it'll be someone else doing it. If no one's doing it for them, then it'll be their competitors that are doing it and then they'll be out of business. Any job that is repetitious can be automated. Tim: Yeah, that time's coming. We'll definitely move in that direction.  Always be learning, and that's the great thing with the BDM role. You're always learning new things about the industry, new ways to talk to people, new ways to become a better version of you and ultimately I guess become a better leader in doing that sort of research. If you had to pick just three effective leadership qualities, what would you say is the three main things that people should make sure they're doing? Consider Weekly Meetings Tim: I think it's really good to set up a weekly team meeting in businesses. When you set up a weekly team meeting, then you get the collective but you also get the individual at the same time. That's an example of something to be doing, is listening to a collective and instructing a collective instead of just instructing people one on one or communicating with people one on one. I think that is a huge ingredient that moves people towards that business freedom stage. And people like getting together and hearing from other people's point of view. That's a method of redundancy. I found that clients that I've set up the weekly team meetings with and then introduce numbers to employees use the word 'love' like say, 'I love working here since these meetings have happened and we're talking about numbers and all that.' We might think it's a bit scary to do all that sort of stuff initially, and sometimes there is a little bit of resistance from the business owners to do it as well as when trying to get the employees to do it. It takes a few months, but about Month 3, 4 or 5, often employees use the word 'love.' I think that's about as good as it gets kind of thing. 'I love working here. I want to work here until I retire. It's the best job we've ever had.' It's not changing the type of work they do, but just the environment that you create, the culture that you create from that weekly team meeting, getting together. And then I work for the team that doesn't work for you, and that makes a huge difference. They don't care if you're there or not because if a person is happy and fulfilled, they don't care what you're doing. If your employees are not happy and you go, 'I'm taking two months off.' They go, 'Why am I still working here?' They have a grudge about it. If you make your employees happy and fulfilled in their roles, they don't care what you do. You can do whatever you like. You can turn up for work or not, and they really don't care because they're not working for you. They're working because they're a significant part of the team. I think a leader can set that up and then create that redundancy, which I think is an essential ingredient of leadership: to figure out how to make yourself redundant in the role.  You've got to make sure you're redundant. We do our best to have a weekly team meeting. I have spoken to other people that have daily huddles to talk, and the staff said that they would love a weekly meeting, but it just becomes too much having daily meetings. Can you overdo it? Tim: Absolutely. Weekly is a magical timeframe. I've had hundreds of businesses that I've introduced team meetings to. Those that strive fortnightly don't make much progress. Those that meet monthly don't make any progress, but the ones that do it more often than weekly doesn't achieve a lot. A week is a magical timeframe. That's what I've found. It's a different day name for every week. And it's just a really good time trying to get your head around so you can say, 'Okay, last Tuesday, remember when this happened.' So they have a good memory for the events of those five days in that week kind of thing. So a week is just a great timeframe. You don't need to be more often because you're trying to review how you went for the week. Reviewing how you went for the day is not going to motivate you, but reviewing how you went for a week, it's a significant amount of effort to review how you went from that week's effort. It averages out some of the bumps as well. You have a great day one day, not so good next day, average day the next day. When you look at the average of the week, 'That's good. I averaged well.' The Meaning of Business Freedom What does business freedom mean to you or what should that mean to everyone else?  Tim: I think business freedom is a state of mind. It can be a physical thing. I like saying to business owners: would you like to have a business where you can go holidaying wherever you like? I got a client who goes surfing in Indonesia in a remote place for two months, sometimes three. That's business for you. That's great. As you said, it's different things for different people. But I think most people, as you said, 19 out of 20 would relate to that: wanting to be able to spend time on the things that they care about, be it surfing, painting, hanging out with snotty kids or whatever else that you're doing. Tim: It's the choices to do what you want, when you want, with whoever you want, wherever you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Final Word That sounds awesome. I'd love to go surfing for that length of time. I think I'd finally learn how to stand on the board properly. One last question before we head off. What is your favourite book on business and leadership and why?  Tim: The E-Myth Revisited  I love it. Michael Gerber. He's great. Tim: Yeah, I discovered that when I've been in business for seven years, and then I read the book. I was actually really absolutely shocked and stunned that there's this subject called business and it has got nothing to do with an industry. And that's what the realisation was. Because I was like the typical person. I've got to be really good at my job. I was in a trade service business. I was a fantastic climber, great at destroying trees and turning them into mulch. However, I didn't know how to run a business, so that's seven years of struggle and then I realised there's this thing called business. You can learn about this topic. Then I did the Michael Gerber two-day workshop and that was just life-changing. It changed my whole philosophy, everything about business, because he'd say, why do you work? That's what your business is meant to do. Business works hard so you don't have to. I think that's the best book. It should be compulsory for business owners to read that book when they start a business.   I read it in 2007 and loved it. I've since read it again, and just on 'McDonaldising' your business is a big part of that. I think we'll leave it there unless there's anything else you'd like to add for our listeners? I know that there is one thing that I wanted to go through with you, particularly understand that if you are struggling in business, you have some options for people to have a bit of a review and you've got a book that you have on offer at the moment, is that right?   Tim: Yeah, I have a book called Eight Ways to Improve Your Business in Five Days. It's got eight strategies to implement to improve your business in eight different areas like employees, profitability, cash flow, marketing, etc. It gives you eight strategies to implement. They don't cost anything to implement them, but all of them will make a difference to your business. That's my challenge for business owners. If you're willing to put eight new strategies in your business, I challenge you to make a difference in your business within a week.   It sounds like something no one can lose with. That sounds awesome. If anyone else out there has any questions for Tim, we'll have him part of our Facebook group so you can jump on there, ask any questions that you have for him. Actually, what is the best website to go to? That's going to be easy to say.   Tim: Just go to https://www.profittrans4mations.com.au/    Thank you for your time, and everyone out there, stay good.    

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Todd: OK. Hey, hello!Tim: Hey, how's it going?Todd: Doing pretty good. Could you introduce yourself, please?Tim: Yeah, I'm Tim Peterson. I'm from Oregon in the United States.Todd: Oh, nice. You're from Oregon.Tim: Yeah.Todd: OK, and were you born there?Tim: Yes, I was born there.Todd: Oh, really? Did you ever live in any other states or..?Tim: I lived in Wyoming for a really short time.Todd: Oh, really?Tim: And, I've lived in California for a short time too.Todd: OK. Of those three states, which one is the best?Tim: Oregon.Todd: Really? Why?Tim: It's got lots of nature. It's really beautiful, I think in the United States probably Oregon and Washington's state are the most beautiful.Todd: Oh, OK.Tim: Lots, lots of green stuff and lots of nature. Good mountains, good streams, good water.Todd: Wow! Well, what about Wyoming?Tim: Wyoming is nice but it is really dry. And it's really sort of dark.Todd: Oh. OK. Wow, so when you grow old and retire someday, you're a very young guy but when you grow old, would you like to live in Oregon?Tim: Ah, Oregon or Washington probably. Maybe Alaska.Todd: Yeah. Not California?Tim: No!Todd: Man, the Golden State.Tim: Yeah, too many people.Todd: All right, Yeah. OK. Thanks a lot.

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Todd: OK. Hey, hello!Tim: Hey, how's it going?Todd: Doing pretty good. Could you introduce yourself, please?Tim: Yeah, I'm Tim Peterson. I'm from Oregon in the United States.Todd: Oh, nice. You're from Oregon.Tim: Yeah.Todd: OK, and were you born there?Tim: Yes, I was born there.Todd: Oh, really? Did you ever live in any other states or..?Tim: I lived in Wyoming for a really short time.Todd: Oh, really?Tim: And, I've lived in California for a short time too.Todd: OK. Of those three states, which one is the best?Tim: Oregon.Todd: Really? Why?Tim: It's got lots of nature. It's really beautiful, I think in the United States probably Oregon and Washington's state are the most beautiful.Todd: Oh, OK.Tim: Lots, lots of green stuff and lots of nature. Good mountains, good streams, good water.Todd: Wow! Well, what about Wyoming?Tim: Wyoming is nice but it is really dry. And it's really sort of dark.Todd: Oh. OK. Wow, so when you grow old and retire someday, you're a very young guy but when you grow old, would you like to live in Oregon?Tim: Ah, Oregon or Washington probably. Maybe Alaska.Todd: Yeah. Not California?Tim: No!Todd: Man, the Golden State.Tim: Yeah, too many people.Todd: All right, Yeah. OK. Thanks a lot.

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan
What you can learn from this “PoopTech” startup 

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2021 33:30


The bacteria in our gut affect our lives and our health in ways we are just starting to fully realize, and mapping this biome is expected to advance medical science and pharmacology as mapping the human genome. However, our gut biota is not a mappable sequence, but a complex ecosystem, and one that may be unique to each individual. In our conversation, Shinji Fukuda, founder of Metabologenomic (aka Metagen), explains how the science is advancing, what kinds of consumer devices we are likely to see first, the importance of global expansion, and the challenges of being a deep-tech startup in Japan. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes What Metagen is really trying to do Fecal transplants in Japan Japan's Gut design project - a database of poop The biggest business model challenge for Japan's deep-tech startuups Smart toilets and other consumer products Why Metagen has been turning down VC money Why global expansion is critical for both business and scientific reasons Some advice for Japanese deep-tech startups Why academics need startup founders Why Japanese startups need to stop playing defense Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Metagen Metagen on LinkedIn Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Today, we're going to talk about the future of poop, and I promise you that it is both a lot more interesting and also a lot less, well, strange than you might think.  Shinji Fukuda is the founder and CEO of Metabologenomics, a startup which is usually, and thankfully, referred to as Metagen. Shinji and Metagen are mapping out the complex biome of the human digestive tract.  Our gut biome is an incredibly complex ecosystem that exists within all of us, and it is an ecosystem. These bacteria don't share our DNA and they're not simply along for the ride. We couldn't function without them, and there's a lot of variation between cultures and between individuals.  Metagen is now working with some of Japan's largest healthcare, pharmaceutical, and chemical companies to commercialize this research. Of course, Metagen is not the only startup in this space, and Shinji and I talk a lot about when and how this tech is going to roll out to consumers, some of the scam startups that are already trying to get into this bandwagon, and we dive deep into one of the biggest problems facing deep tech startups in Japan.  But you know, Shinji tells that story much better than I can, so let's get right to the interview. Interview Tim: So, I'm sitting here with Shinji Fukuda of Metabologenomic who's researching and monetizing the gut biota, so thanks for sitting down with us. Shinji: Hi. Tim: And by the way, is it okay if we call the company Metagen the way people tend to do in Japanese? Shinji: Yeah, Metagen. Tim: Okay, good. So, listen, I think you can explain this much better than I can, so what exactly does Metagen do? Shinji: Our goal is to create the digital society, so we have a huge number of microbes in the gut and the gut microbiota has a lot of function, and maybe you know it's very important that the imbalance in the gut microbiota are related to some disorders like colon cancer, inflammatory bio-disorders, and also, the microbiota induce some systemic disorders like metabolic disorders and also meta-disease. That's why gut microbiota is really important to keep our health. Tim: It's amazing the amount of research that's being done on this right now and it's still a relatively new field. So, for Metagen, what is the main goal of the company? Are you trying to develop more targeted medicine? Is it better food? Is it a healthier population? What is it that the company is focused on? Shinji: Here, actually, everything, but we have a priority. Our goal is healthcare, to develop the technology to keep our health,

ceo japan japanese dna smart vc gut fecal shinji tim it japan japan disrupting japan tim romero
英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Todd: So Tim, you want to talk about road trips?Tim: Yeah, I wanna talk about road trips.Me and my friends when we were in high school we took a lot of road trips to lots of different places.Todd: OK.Tim: We would go down to California sometimes Mexico. One time when I was living in Wyoming, in one weekend we drove from Wyoming through Colorado, New Mexico, and Mexico and back in the same weekend.Todd: Wow! Well, actually for people who are not familiar with the United States how far is that?Tim: It's a long way. I don't know. It took.. I don't know, it took probably about 15 hours one way.Todd: Wow!Tim: So, thirty hours altogether. But it was fun. We drove down to Mexico had a good night a good meal, a little bit of drinksand drove back the next day.Todd: So you went to Tijuana?Tim: No, we went to Ciudad Juarez.Todd: OK. Nice.Tim: That was really fun and a lot of other trips we took when I lived in Oregon when we'd go down to California and we'd surf.Todd: Oh, really?Tim: Yeah!Todd: Oh, you're a surfer?Tim: A little bit, a little bit of surfer.Todd: OK. What kind of car do you drive? What do you use for this road trip?Tim: Well, typical American a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Big vehicle, lots of gas but a lot of fun.Todd: Oh man, you're from Oregon you're supposed to be a tree-hugger!Tim: I know. I know. But they're good. One rule we had on our road trips was any lake or big body of water we had to stop and swim in. It was a good thing to do.Todd: Well, you live in Japan now. Do you ever do road trips in Japan?Tim: I took a road trip from Niigata up around Hokkaido and back, so it was a long road trip actually.Todd: OK. Wow! What's the difference between a road trip in Japan and a road trip in America?Tim: Well, a road trip in Japan..it's a little bit more difficult to get around, it's a little bit more expensive. In America, road tripping is sort of.. something a lot of people do.Todd: Yeah.Tim: And in Japan, when we do that it is a little bit strange, a little bit different, not very normal.Todd: Yeah, that's true. OK. Great, thanks a lot Tim.Tim: All right.

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Todd: So Tim, you want to talk about road trips?Tim: Yeah, I wanna talk about road trips.Me and my friends when we were in high school we took a lot of road trips to lots of different places.Todd: OK.Tim: We would go down to California sometimes Mexico. One time when I was living in Wyoming, in one weekend we drove from Wyoming through Colorado, New Mexico, and Mexico and back in the same weekend.Todd: Wow! Well, actually for people who are not familiar with the United States how far is that?Tim: It's a long way. I don't know. It took.. I don't know, it took probably about 15 hours one way.Todd: Wow!Tim: So, thirty hours altogether. But it was fun. We drove down to Mexico had a good night a good meal, a little bit of drinksand drove back the next day.Todd: So you went to Tijuana?Tim: No, we went to Ciudad Juarez.Todd: OK. Nice.Tim: That was really fun and a lot of other trips we took when I lived in Oregon when we'd go down to California and we'd surf.Todd: Oh, really?Tim: Yeah!Todd: Oh, you're a surfer?Tim: A little bit, a little bit of surfer.Todd: OK. What kind of car do you drive? What do you use for this road trip?Tim: Well, typical American a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Big vehicle, lots of gas but a lot of fun.Todd: Oh man, you're from Oregon you're supposed to be a tree-hugger!Tim: I know. I know. But they're good. One rule we had on our road trips was any lake or big body of water we had to stop and swim in. It was a good thing to do.Todd: Well, you live in Japan now. Do you ever do road trips in Japan?Tim: I took a road trip from Niigata up around Hokkaido and back, so it was a long road trip actually.Todd: OK. Wow! What's the difference between a road trip in Japan and a road trip in America?Tim: Well, a road trip in Japan..it's a little bit more difficult to get around, it's a little bit more expensive. In America, road tripping is sort of.. something a lot of people do.Todd: Yeah.Tim: And in Japan, when we do that it is a little bit strange, a little bit different, not very normal.Todd: Yeah, that's true. OK. Great, thanks a lot Tim.Tim: All right.

Greater Than Code
228: Career Snarkiness – Words Hold Weight with Corey Quinn

Greater Than Code

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2021 68:50


02:21 - Corey’s Superpower: Reading 3,400 WPM * Increasing Reading Speed 05:35 - Keeping Up w/ AWS * Last Week in AWS (https://www.lastweekinaws.com/) * AWS Morning Brief (https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/aws-morning-brief/) * Screaming in the Cloud (https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/) 08:45 - Delivering Corey Quinn – Personal Evolution * Speaking Truth to Power (Kindly, but Snarkily) * Privilege * Sonia Gupta and Corey Quinn - Embarrassingly Large Numbers: Salary Negotiation for Humans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK6yrvsSaFs&list=PLK3MtoG6xjv_eLXKEVKG_uuYCZWqKfAaa&index=101) * Holding Yourself Accountable * Defensiveness * This Cloud Computing Billing Expert Is Very Funny. Seriously. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/technology/corey-quinn-amazon-aws.html) (NYT Article) * Intentionality 25:51 - Career Snarkiness * @SimpsonsOps (https://twitter.com/SimpsonsOps) * @killedbygoogle (https://twitter.com/killedbygoogle) 28:05 - Approaching and Handling D&I as a Business Owner * Discussing Salary Compensation 43:44 - Making and Delivering Jokes 45:08 - The Prospect of Being a Public Figure 50:03 - Recognizing Your Own Failure Mode * The Art of Delegation 54:32 - Approachability * Admitting Mistakes * What’s the point? Reflections: Rein: Systems derive their purpose from how they relate to larger systems. Tim: Iterating on oneself to become a better person. Becoming a human optimized. Arty: Holding yourself accountable. Taking responsibility for how other people see you in a public context. Mando: There’s a power in not hiding who you are. Apologizing for not letting people know what’s going on. Corey: Words are loud. Words are heavy. Words carry weight. Words carry impact. There is a balance. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: PRE-ROLL: Whether you're working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure, you deserve simple, affordable, and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to take your project to the next level. Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode's Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier. Get started on Linode today with $100 in free credit for listeners of Greater Than Code. You can find all the details at linode.com/greaterthancode. Linode has 11 global data centers and provides 24/7/365 human support with no tiers or hand-offs regardless of your plan size. In addition to shared and dedicated compute instances, you can use your $100 in credit on S3-compatible object storage, Managed Kubernetes, and more. Visit linode.com/greaterthancode and click on the "Create Free Account" button to get started. ARTY: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode 228 of Greater Than Code. I am Artemis Starr and I am here with my fabulous co-host, Mando Escamilla. MANDO: Thank you, Artemis. I'm delighted to be here with my good friend, Rein Henrichs. REIN: Thanks, Mando and I'm here with my friend and brand-new co-host, Tim Banks. TIM: Thanks, Rein. I am Tim Banks and I am delighted to have our guest for this show, Corey Quinn. COREY: Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure to be here to once again, indulge my ongoing love affair with the sound of my own voice. TIM: Just so everyone knows, Corey is the Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, where he specializes in helping companies improve their AWS bills by making them smaller and somewhat less horrifying. He also hosts the Screaming in the Cloud and AWS Morning Brief podcasts; and curates Last Week in AWS, a weekly newsletter summarizing the latest in AWS news, blogs, and tools, sprinkled with snark and thoughtful analysis in roughly equal measure. COREY: I would agree that that is a fair characterization of what I do. Excellent work. Thank you. MANDO: Corey, we like to start off every podcast with asking our guests kind of the same question and that question is what do you consider your superpower to be and how did you get it? COREY: I would consider my superpower to be the fact that as tested and certified by some random site on the internet, I read 3,400 words a minute and the way that I got there was growing up, most people have friends, I had books because of the wonderful thing that happens in my world namely, having a personality that is pretty obvious to anyone who's spoken for more than 30 seconds. In my early phases of my life, this didn't resonate super well so I turned to escapism in the form of reading. Later in life, this turned into something of a superpower when you're trying to do something like, I don't know, read every release that comes out of AWS in a given afternoon. MANDO: Yeah, that'll do it. [laughs] REIN: There are so many. MANDO: I went to a private elementary school for a year and one of the less weird things that they had us do was do speed reading training. They had this little cylinder and you would feed in a piece of paper and the cylinder had room for, I don't know, 8 to 10 lines of the paper and it would scroll automatically at a certain rate and you would read the story and then take a test afterwards and then as you pass the tests, they would both speed up the cylinder and then also shrink the amount you could see at one time to point where it got to just reading line by line and this thing's scrolling superfast. It was really weird and really struck my competitive juices like, I really wanted to show the teachers that I could read as fast as possible. So that's the one thing from that weird private school that I went to that I think has had any sort of payoff in my adult life. COREY: There are a bunch of tools and techniques that people can use to increase reading speed, and I've never done any of them. I don't know how I do it, I just do it. It's easy to sit here and think that, “Oh, I'm going to read super quickly. That's a superpower. That's something I can use and leverage, too,” and then what? The skill, or the talent is necessary, but not sufficient the way that I do things and you have to refine it and apply it in different ways. Sitting here and doing it as a spectacle or sport on a conference panel or something and look at how fast I can consume information, not much of a party trick. Using that and applying it to something that for, in my case, distilling vast quantities information down in an understandable and meaningful way, that was the outcome. It was never about just “being smart,” which is how I often hear other folks talking about various superpowers. “Oh, I have a natural innate intelligence.” Great, what do you do with it? How do you apply that? That's the thing that often gets overlooked; at least by folks in a somewhat early stage of the development that they're dealing with professionally. REIN: So let me ask, you do the Last Week in AWS podcast, why do you give a shit about that stuff? COREY: Functionally, what I do and what I started doing when I started The Duckbill Group, it was understanding the AWS bill so that I can reduce it. Sure, it's easy to do that from a pure numerical analysis perspective and figure out oh, what reservations, or commitments you can use. But a lot of it required insight into what the application was doing because the worst consultants in the world are the ones that walk in, look around, have no idea what they're looking at, and then start telling you that you screwed everything up. That's not helpful, it's not compelling, and it's the sign of a terrifically awful consultant, in most cases. I see something that looks like it's ridiculous, my first question is: great, can you help me understand this? I don't tend to, by default, assume the person I'm talking to is a moron and similarly, I had to understand the various economic impacts of different capabilities, features, and services. They're changing all the time. I had to keep up with this stuff so I shoved a bunch of things into my RSS feed and I was tracking this because there was nowhere else to do it. That got me 80% of the way there to being able to share this with the rest of the world. I figured, ah, I can make other people do my work for me. I figured I would launch a newsletter, run it for a few weeks, someone would chime in, “Well, why don't you just read, insert other thing here?” and then great. I can turn off the newsletter. I found the thing that does this for me and I can focus on other things. Instead, 550 people signed up for the first issue and it's been growing ever since and it turns out that thing that people should read to solve this problem is the thing that I built. It still surprises me and the reason I care about it all is because my customers need to know these are the things, but they don't want to read all of it. They don't want to know all of these things. They want to solve their problem. REIN: It seems relatively easy for a consultant to go in and say, cut here, trim there, and then you'll get 20, 50% off of your AWS bill. But isn't the thing that you want for the people who will be there long after you're gone to be able to make better decisions about their own spend? COREY: One of the nuanced areas of what I do is this idea that, “Oh, I'm going to come in and lower your bill,” That virtually always happens, but that's not the actual goal. The goal is to inform the business so that they can make decisions around managing spend, managing capability, and managing risk. In some cases, we suggest spending more on certain areas such as, “Huh, you claim that that thing is an incredibly critical to your business set of data and you're not backing it up anywhere. Perhaps, you should consider doing that.” It's the idea of doing the right thing, not the cheap thing. It's we don't ever charge for example, by percentage of savings, or percentage of bill, it's flat rate only because once that's done and we agree on what that rate is, there's no other conflict of interest. I'm not trying to rack up savings to claim a percentage of it. I have no partnerships with any vendor in the space, so I'm not getting a kickback if I say, “Oh, use this tool or that tool or that service.” Instead, it purely reduces me down to, “This is what I would do if I were in your position, take it or leave it.” TIM: So I think Corey, it's fair to say that people recognize your expertise, both in optimizing of costs and optimizing the practice. Writing good tools, adopting best practices, having sound resilient architectures, and saving money. But it's also fair to say that that's not why people follow you. You have a voice and a particular way of analyzing things that appeals to people. Snark has its place and it's very well-placed in your commentary, but what it mostly involves is true insight. So can you give me the story behind what really empowered you and made you comfortable in delivering your full Corey Quinn to people in an industry where maybe people aren't really supposed to be their whole selves? COREY: My entire career, I had a core competency that I was always the absolute best in the room at, across the board and no one could step to me as far as being good at that thing and that thing was getting myself fired because of the things that I said. My entire career, every boss, every mentor, every teacher, every family member, every vague acquaintance that I pass on the street has given me the same advice: “Your sense of humor/personality is going to hold you back in your career.” When I started this place, I was so tired and beaten down from hearing that, that I figured that either everyone I've ever spoken to is right and I'm wrong, or I'm right and they're all wrong. And with the confidence born of being a mediocre white man in tech, I figured let's try it and see. Because worst-case, if the whole thing blows up in my face, well, I can go back to using my maiden name professionally. I can effectively shove the Corey Quinn identity as it is down the memory hole and I can go back to being an unhappy employee somewhere else. It started to resonate and it took on a life of its own and for the first time in my entire career, I don't feel like I have to hide who and what I am and that is a powerful thing. TIM: So one of the things that I think people appreciate, especially in your very active and humorous Twitter feed, is saying the things that everyone is thinking about the Giants. You speak truth to power, but you do so in a manner that does not insult nor mischaracterize the people who make the technology, who make the decisions. Can you talk to us a little bit about how being kind while still being somewhat snarky guides – what's your thought processes and how does that guide your commentary? COREY: You say this like it's a done deal, but it's very much not. Earlier, the week that we're having this recording, I wound up doing a snarky, sarcastic rebuttal of the profile of me that appeared in the New York Times in the voice of AWS. I made some snarky offhanded comments that implied basically that AWS marketing was crap and I heard from several people inside that team that, that they thought that hurt them and to be very direct, I got that wrong. If people are hearing what I have to say and feeling bad about themselves, about their work, then I've gone in a wrong direction. It's a very fine line to walk, given who and what I am, but when people see what I have to say and hear it and they walk away hurt, I failed. I don't always get it right, clearly. All I can strive to do is be better and not make the same mistake twice. It's a constant process of evolution and learning. And to be very direct, I am incredibly grateful by people feeling that they have the psychological safety to reach out to me and say, “That hurt my feelings.” MANDO: One thing that I've seen you do, Corey, as an accessory to that is be on the lookout for people who maybe don't feel that same kind of psychological security, but also feel some, or have some negative impact, or connotation with what you said. I've seen this a couple of times. I saw it once this week, when you were talking about – you had a Twitter thread talking about how to find a job in tech, how to negotiate salaries and stuff like that. And then there was a Slack group that we're both involved in and someone made a comment saying that they felt put out a little bit by the tone of what you had said and I personally found it impressive and a little bit inspirin, the way that you responded to that individual. Would you mind building on that a little bit, why you think that's so important and then how you address and maybe manage those kinds of situations? COREY: Sure. Privilege is a funny thing because we all swim in it in various ways, no matter who you are or what you do, there are elements of privilege that are inherent to you based upon aspects of your life and to you. That's not something that you're generally aware of in a conscious sense. Instead, it's very much a part of the background of your own lived experience and it's difficult, at times, to put yourself in the shoes of people who have different stories. The natural response, in some cases, when being told about privilege is to push back, “Excuse me, nothing was handed to me. I had to work and build this thing and sure, maybe that's true on some level, but you did not have to deal with a headwinds against you that a lot of other people did.” And there is an element of, “Well, I was born on third base. I didn't hit a triple.” Yes, that's true. It absolutely is. But you still got to go from third base to home on some level. It's easier than someone who's starting off on home and having to round all of the bases and there's still work that has to be put in. But it's important to understand that this is an important thing and a lot of people struggle with it because our society is inherently unjust. There is no way around that. The differences is that I'm not sitting here when I have these conversations, talking about how I wish the world was, or how it should be. I'm one of those people that sees the world as it is, or as I assume, as I interpret it to be, and I speak from a position of this is how I function in the environment in which I find myself. Now, some aspects of what I do, do not apply to people who don't look like I do. I generally go out of my way to avoid airing those things. I don't want to build a conference talk on how to handle job interviews for white guys, because that's awful. It's about getting interesting perspectives on this one. I did that actual talk, or something close to it back in 2016, or so and when I realized what I'd built, I was horrified and didn't give it again for a couple of years and then I gave it as a keynote at devopsdays Charlotte. I did that with my co-speaker, Sonia Gupta, who she and I sat there and gave the talk called Embarrassingly Large Numbers: Salary Negotiation for Humans. Her background is as an attorney. She also doesn't look like I do. And it became a much more equitable talk, it became a much more universal talk, it was better in every respect, and it remains one of the talks I'm proudest of giving. It's a matter of when you realize that you have done something that inadvertently causes harm, or perpetuate some of the inequality that is rampant around us, it's incumbent on you, if you want to continue to be a good person, even if nowhere else other than you're in your own mind, to correct the misbehavior, say, “I'm sorry about that,” and then this is the key part, strive not to do it again. We're all works in progress. TIM: I think that notion of us all being a works in progress rings more true than I think most people like to admit. We constantly iterate on ourselves as we should be doing to find our mistakes, correct them, and then implement those corrections as we go forward. The thing that I think most people miss is the fact that they have to admit the fact that they did something wrong in the first place, especially in the form of public opinion. In a very public place like Twitter, Corey, you have done really well at that and I think there's a lot of wisdom that people can gain just by watching how you say, “Hey, this was not right,” or “I can do better,” and holding yourself accountable when especially other people hold themselves accountable. How do you think that we can promote this type of behavior in our culture and in our industry? COREY: Okay. Let me tell you a dark secret then because I don't want people to get an unrealistic expectation of who I am, or what I do. When I get it wrong, very often someone will either say something on Twitter or DM me with a, “This isn't a great take,” and every time like clockwork, my immediate response is to get defensive because no one likes being called out. What I learned I going by through the process is when I feel that flash of defensiveness: shut up. I do not respond. I step back for a minute. I go for a walk. I think. I wait for that reaction to subside and then really think about the feedback that I'm given from a place that is not in the moment, fraught with emotion. There are times that I can do that in seconds. There are times it takes me days. Usually, what happens is I realize that they have a point. Very occasionally, I disagree with what they're saying either because I didn't communicate clearly, or they misunderstood, or on some level, past a certain point, it is so far below even the level of rising to microaggression that it's one of those. Yeah, I have a bit of a hard time accepting that feedback where easy example of this is, I wound up having a gag recently called AWS Hambone, where they had some line art drawings in some of the AWS stuff that was put out, and I wound up having an event called AWS Hambone. Twitter Safety blocks someone who tweeted the phrase at one point, it was, “What is this?” Someone said, “Ah. Well, on Urban Dictionary, if you look up the word Hambone and scroll down a few things,” and of course, it's something horrific. There's always something horrific for three quarters of the words in the English language and at that point, you're so far into the weeds that I don't know that I necessarily would agree with that in that sense, but it's also not going to be a recurring gag that I use all the time. When I named my company, The Duckbill Group, and slapped a platypus up on as our mascot, I spent a week researching is there anything problematic on any aspect of the platypus and every bit of research I could do was no and here we are and no one has ever told me, the platypus is problematic. At this stage, that offer has expired. Please don't email me. But it's about doing your best to make these things right when you get it wrong, taking people's advice seriously and again, I don't do this in a vacuum. I have a number of people whose insight I trust and with whom I have a sense of psychological safety that I can reach out to and ask them, “Is this too far afield or not?” I want to be very clear, the majority of those people that I reach out to look an awful lot like me, because I'm not asking folks who are not overrepresented to do additional on paid free labor. REIN: I’d really liked to dig in a little bit more deeply to the part where you said you get defensive and then you take a moment because that seems like the key to me and it also seems like something that's really, really hard in the moment to do. Virginia Satir says that the problem isn't the problem, how we cope as the problem and that these emotions come unbidden to our consciousness, and then we get to decide, we have an opportunity to decide what we do with them. So what I'm hearing you say is you make a conscious effort to decide what to do. You feel defensive. You don't have control over that. What you have control over is what you do with it and so, my question is how do you create the space for yourself to cope? COREY: It helps tremendously in that the most common form that I use for my aggressive shitposting, hot takes, et cetera, et cetera, but also testing new things out is Twitter. There is no SLA around responses on Twitter. I don't need to respond within 30 seconds or so. Right now, we're having a conversation, if I stop for 2 minutes to really think something through, you're going to wonder if the call dropped. Twitter doesn't have that problem and from where I sit, it's a place of, I don't believe that I can control my own emotions to the point where I don't that defensive flare, but that's on me. That's something I need to think through. I don't wind up turning aside and kicking the dog, or punching a hole in the wall. I sit there because it never feels great, but it's where growth comes from. If you've doubled down on being wrong when people whose lived experience are actively telling you that what you're saying or doing causes harm, I don't believe that you are being the kind of person that in your heart of hearts, you wish you were. Now, some people want to be shitheads and that's fine. Good for you. I don't want to be around you. REIN: I want to make it possible to say your real yeses and your real nos. COREY: Yes, absolutely. Punch up. It's hilarious. I mean, I'm a hell of a cyber bully to a company that's worth $1.6 trillion, the last time I checked. If they can't take it on the chin, they need to deal with it. But there are individual people who work there and they don't deserve getting dragged. As I mentioned previously and repeatedly, the single exception to this is of course, Oracle co-founder, Larry Ellison. Because even if someone's garbage, they have friends and family who love and care for them and Larry Ellison is an asshole who does not. Nobody likes Larry Ellison and the best part of that is I got a lot of pushback and a lot of feedback on that article in the New York Times and the one thing that I thought was notable is not a single person defended Larry, or said that I was wrong because I'm right. He's an who has no friends QED, but everyone else, off the table. REIN: You're obviously very intentional about this. So what do you do intentionally to stay on the right side of that line? COREY: The honest and easy way is I talk to people. I fall into the trap personally of forgetting people behind things. To my worldview, a big company is one that has 200 people and when I don't know anyone on a service team at AWS who is involved in building a project, or launching a service, I just view it as this thing, this enormous behemoth thing and then I make fun of it. As soon as I talked to someone who was involved with that it's, “Oh crap, I need to understand who these people are.” Honestly, one of the reasons I've been so rough on Amazon Marketing is that no one in that group talks to me. It's basically a void so it becomes almost a punchline and then I have to be reminded from time to time that there are people there. That's an area I get it wrong in. Now on some level, the Amazon corporate posture is if we ignore Corey, he'll probably go away, which is absolutely the wrong direction to go in. It's akin to, “Well, if we kidnap the bear cubs, then may be that grizzly will let me pet her.” It doesn't work. [laughter] It's like smacking an alligator over the snout with a rock in the hopes it'll make him friendlier. Don't do that. I guess, I'm saying I crave attention. Well, roll with it. REIN: I think you compared yourself to an alligator. COREY: Oh, absolutely. TIM: Oh, that sounded deliberate. [overtalk] REIN: It’s fair. TIM: Alligators, to my recollection, do not have bills, correct? COREY: No, no. Those are reserved for generally ducks, geese, and platypuses. TIM: Is it platypus or platypi? COREY: Platypi is a myth. It's platypoes, if you want to go down that particular Latin root. TIM: I don't know if there's a witty monotremes joke in general so, I'll just let that go. COREY: Exactly. There are, but you have to look for them. That's why my mascot is an extreme monotreme. REIN: I like that you explicitly tried to avoid being [inaudible] platypus. COREY: There is always that aspect of things. REIN: All right, so I can tell you that platypus is actually extremely racist! [laughs] COREY: Exactly. No, no. The platypus for the mascot that we have is not racist. Well, insofar as other than the [inaudible], we are all racist to some extent, which is problematic but it is a thing to say in some quarters, but let's be a little more intentional of how we say it. The platypus isn't a bigot. The platypus isn't even usually angry most of the time. The platypus is just disappointed in all of us, because realistically, we could be doing better than we are. REIN: Do you have any advice for any of our listeners who might want to make a career out of being snarky? COREY: Quite honestly, don't do it. I'm serious. They're either a number of folks who try it periodically because they see what I'm doing, or they reach out to me and ask for advice and the advice is the same: don't do it. The reason is that with almost anything else that you're trying to do, the failure mode is just, okay, no one cares. It doesn't make a splash. It doesn't work. Okay, great. The problem with being snarky is the failure mode isn't obscurity, it's being an asshole and that failure mode is potentially very damaging. To that extent, when I see various parody accounts on Twitter, the novelty accounts that are doing snarky, or sarcastic things, I generally don't engage for a while. I want to get a read on them. Two of the parody accounts that absolutely nail it are, what is it? @SimpsonsOps is the parody account there. MANDO: Oh god, that’s fantastic. COREY: And @killedbygoogle. Both are phenomenal. They get it. I talk with the people behind those accounts regularly and I learn from them. There are times, I get it wrong and they correct me and very occasionally, I will give feedback to them when I think they've gone in a different direction and we all sort of make each other better for it as a result. But most folks do it. It doesn't end super well. There's an Andy Jassy parody account and has been for years and it's just mean. It's just mean, I'm sorry. One of the most distressing things I ever heard, that got to me through the grapevine. was that some exec at AWS was convinced for a little while that it was me and that hurt because to be very honest, I don't operate like that. I'm not here crapping on people individually, with a remarkably small subset of exceptions to that and those exceptions universally have something in common and that is that they punched down, they drive good people away, and they're small people in positions of inflated importance. Think the corporate equivalent of a number of senators that I'm sure already leaped to mind when I say that. TIM: So Corey, I'd like to ask—we talked about how you handle things on Twitter, we talked about your personal evolution—now as a business owner in the tech industry, a small business owner, B2B, not a large trillion-dollar company yet. But how are you approaching in handling diversity inclusion, especially around hiring and retention and salary equity in your own company? Q: Fair question and no one has ever asked me that, if you can believe that. The answer is that in order to build and hire diverse teams, it takes effort. The easiest thing in the world to do is to reach out to the people you know from your background. Well, that's not generally hugely diverse because regardless of what we look like, you're generally encountering them in the same types of environments, doing the same kinds of things, and you basically wind up accidentally hiring half your fraternity or whatnot for those who went to college and that's a bit of a challenge. So you have to be intentional about it, for one. You have to be prepared to expand your hiring pool. Do things that don't necessarily come naturally. There are folks who specialize in diversity, equity, and inclusion who have tremendous advice on how to do this, pay them for it. Advice is worth what you pay for it and have them assist and then from there, it's do your best. Have a way to measure what you're trying to achieve and whether you get there or not. As far as salary goes, that's relatively straightforward for us because we publish the ranges when we put the job position up and the ranges are relatively narrow and we stick to them. We are very transparent internally with what our structure is and how we approach these things and to be very direct, the delta between the highest and lowest paid employee is smaller than people would expect. MANDO: I've got a question about salary ranges. I have a hard time understanding what good reasons a company might have for not making their pay scales and salary ranges transparent, at least within the company. I've worked at several places where if you're lucky, your manager may know what the salary ranges are, but as an individual contributor, you're not supposed to find out and I have a hard time coming up. Are there any good reasons why, other than exploitation? COREY: There are a bunch of bad reasons, but not many good ones, but here's one that we can try on for size. If you and I have the same job and we work at the same company and I discover that you make $20,000 more than I do, there are a few different ways that I can react. I can get angry at the company, which is not generally constructive in that context. I can ask what I would need to do to get to a similar level of compensation. If I want to be nosy, I can start digging into well, why do you get more? And there are a bunch of answers to that. Maybe you've been doing this for a longer and a better experience. Maybe you have a skillset that was challenging. Maybe it's competitive bid situation. Maybe it's an accident of fate. Maybe you asked for it and I didn't. But there is a very common mode where now that I know that you're making $20,000 more than I am, I'm going to be a shit heel to you. I am going to hold it against you personally, because I'm envious and jealous and instead of asking how I can get up to your level, my immediate response is how to drag you down to mine. That can be a subtle and pernicious thing and if I look like I do and you don't, then that manifests in a whole bunch of other ways that are reinforced by systemic biases and as a result, it winds up impacting some of the folks that that transparency would be designed to help. That is one expression of a good reason. Is that outweighed otherwise? I don't know. I really don't. We speak in generalities and total budget. We don't disclose individual's compensation internally because that is not – MANDO: True. COREY: Again, it's a weird thing if I tell your coworker how much you make and then they're mad at you. Same type of problem. We strive very hard not to have that culture and I don't believe that we do, but I'm not willing to risk someone's psychological safety on that. MANDO: Yeah, no, I get that. I think in my experience, it's been a little more, I can't find out what the top and bottom band is for this role, unless I have people working for me in those roles and that's where, at least for me, it makes it difficult to understand why that's the case. It's hard to talk to people who you're managing about moving in different directions, moving possibly to other areas of the company, or even up and down the ladder without being able to say, “Here are the numbers that you could be looking at.” COREY: I'm also coming at this from a different/possibly privileged position where we do not offer equity in The Duckbill Group. The way we're structured, it doesn't support that. We're a services company that does not have anything approaching an exit strategy. I'm not looking sell the company to the very types of companies I energetically and enthusiastically insult. So we're not offering the brass ring of equity because there's no expectation of ever turn into anything. Instead, we offer cash comp and we have a bonus structure that is tied to what the company does. It becomes very easy for you to look at what we're doing and if you're toying with a role here, we have those conversations and figure out what your compensation is going to look like. Is it comparable to Netflix pay? Of course not. They pay top of market and tend to, but that's okay. We also don't have you on edge every day, wondering if you're about to get fired. So there are benefits to the way we approach things. There are drawbacks as well. Again, it's different people want different things and that's okay. At a company that has a significant equity component to compensation, that usually is removed entirely from transparency in compensation, unless you're a named executive. How many shares have you been granted? Are there options? What was the strike price? How is the vesting work? Did you come aboard as part of an acquihire? In which case, there was a very distinct compensation structure, that was almost certainly set up for you, that does not apply to other people. Do you have a particular rare skillset that was incredibly valuable? Let's be direct here, is your cousin the CEO of a target customer and having you there has that nice, quiet benefit that no one is ever going to dare whisper out loud? There are a whole bunch of reasons that compensation will vary, that companies don't necessarily want to explain to each other. When I worked at an agency consultancy, they would periodically have a consultant/engineer who would discover one day that the company was billing it out for roughly twice what they were being paid, which is a fairly standard and reasonable structure given the overhead cost, and they would be incensed by this because well, sales and marketing, how hard could that be? I should just go direct and wind up making all that extra margin myself. It is never that simple. If you can do it, good luck. It's a near certainty you can't because no one can, not at any step and that's scale. There is the lack of maturity that is understood, or not understood by folks you're dealing with and especially as you grow beyond a certain size, you can't expect everyone you're talking to in your company that you hire, or potentially hiring to come in with that level of maturity. So it's far easier just to avoid the topic altogether and then of course, there's a nefarious thing if we want to see how much we can rip people off. I have a hard time accepting that as being a genuine reaction, because for example, from a company perspective, the difference of a $10,000 or $20,000 to make someone happy versus angry, your payroll costs at a certain point of scale is never going to notice or feel that you don't want to waste money. But if that's all it takes to make someone happy, why wouldn't you spend it? MANDO: Has anyone here worked at a place where payroll numbers accidentally got sent out to the entire company, or is that just me? TIM: I have not worked at a place like that, but I wish that had happened. MANDO: It happened to me super early on in my career. I've been doing this professionally for maybe 2, or 3 years and it was a small little dev shop here in Austin and it was, you had your classic accidental reply all situation from whoever's in charge of keeping the books and the next day, like 8 people out of the 30 who worked there just walked out. It was kind of bad and ugly, yeah. COREY: One of the things that I find the most interesting about that type of story is that when those things come out and half the company is in flames over it, this was preventable. When we started The Duckbill Group, we did the exact same thing. We have always operated in such a way that if our internal documents and chats and everything else were to become public, there would be some missing context we'd have to fill in, but there's no one that would, or at least no one who has understanding of the relevant issues would look at this and say, “Well, that's just not fair, or just.” That even goes down to our pricing structure with our clients. Like we don't disclose what our margins are on certain things, but if they were to see that they would look at that, understand the value of that process of how we got to those price points and say, “Yes, that is fair.” That has always been our objective and it's one of those if you act as if it's going to be made public, it turns out that no one can really hold things over anymore, which is interesting because given the nature of what we do with AWS bills, confidentiality is super important. It's critical because some of our largest customers do not let us admit to anyone that they are in fact, our customers and I get that; there's a strong sensitivity around that. Other customers are, “Yeah, by all means, please talk about us all you want. Put us on the website.” I mean, the New York Times mentioned that Epic Games, Ticketmaster, and The Washington Post were customers of ours. Yes, we have logo rights. We are very clear in whether or not we're allowed to talk about folks publicly. It's great. We love our customers, but what are the tricks to getting there incidentally is if you don't respect a company's business, you probably shouldn't do business with them. We're not sitting here making massive value judgements about various companies that we look at. But when it's one of those, you make landmines, not so much. Whereas, I noticed, I was like, “Okay, you’re ad tech, do I love it? Not usually, but I also understand how the world works. It's fine. Don't worry about it.” Unless, you're into truly egregious territory, there's never one of those, “Do we work with them or don't we work with them?” The “Do we work with them or don't we work with them?” question honestly distills down to, “Can we actually help them get to where they need to go/think they need to go and is it the right thing for them?” If the answer that's no, then all we're going to do is have an unhappy customer story out there in the world. We don't want that. It's not that hard to act ethically, as it turns out. REIN: There is an interesting contrast between Corey, your story about salary disclosure and Mando's, which is you made the point of that it could be in your employee's best interest to not disclose. I don't think you're lying, but I bet if you had asked Mando's company's executives, they could have very well may have given the exact same story. The thing that, I think is difficult is when you have to trust in the benevolence of capitalists to figure this thing out. COREY: Absolutely and from my perspective, again, I have this position that I'm coming from, which is, I assume good faith. From my position, if our salary compensation numbers were to be exposed internally, the external is a whole separate thing. Because honestly, if there's a certain implicit expectation of privacy, if you work at my company and suddenly without warning you, I tell the world how much you're being paid. That's not necessarily a situation you would be thrilled to find yourself in. So let's remove that from the table entirely. When we speak internally about what you're making, I have always operated with the expectation that you will exercise, in the US, your federally protected to discuss your compensation with your coworkers, because not discussing your compensation with your coworkers only really helps those capitalists, as you put it, who run companies themselves. If I want to exploit people, yes. Step one, make sure that they're all scared to talk about how much they're making with each other. That doesn't align with anything I ever want to see myself doing. So from my perspective, why would I not disclose salary information? The only reason I can think of that would really matter is that, does it make it harder either first, most importantly, for my employees to operate as they want to operate and two, does it do any harm to my business in any meaningful way and that is a nuanced and challenging thing to figure out. I don't know the answer is the short response to it. I don't think there'd be anything necessarily good that would accelerate my business if we're suddenly talking about compensation numbers publicly. I don't know that necessarily anything bad would happen either, but it's not the story that I want people telling about the company. We're small. We don't have a marketing budget. We have a spite budget. So when people bring us up, I don't want it to be in the context of compensating employees. I want it to be in the context of fixing the AWS bills since that's the thing that lets us compensate those employees, [laughs] It's a fun and interesting nuanced issue and it's easy to take a singular position from all of the different stakeholders that are involved in something like that and make strong pro, or con arguments from that person's position. But one of the weird things about running a company that I discovered is you have to put yourself in multiple shoes simultaneously all the time, where you have to weigh the opinions and perspectives of various stakeholders. You ask someone in engineering what they think we should be focusing on strategically, the answer is probably going to align around engineering, but is engineering going to align with what the company needs to do? If you're getting no sales coming in, is engineering going to be the way you fix that? Maybe not. Maybe you invest in marketing or sales as a result and it's always about trade-offs and no one's perfectly happy with what you decide. The world is complicated and for better or worse, one of the bad tendencies of Twitter is to distill these principles down to pithy soundbites that fit 280 characters and the world doesn't lend itself to that. REIN: Okay. Let's try to distill this down into a pithy soundbite. COREY: By all means. REIN: No, I was just kidding. COREY: And I'm sure someone's going to be pithed. It'll be fine. MANDO: Hey! TIM: I was waiting. Took longer than I expected. [laughter] COREY: Latency. REIN: What's the most important thing in comedy? TIM: It's timing. COREY: Timing. REIN: Timing! [laughter] It’s easier to love that joke in-person. TIM: It is. COREY: Or if you’re going to put that in, just make sure you insert a bunch of time before audio engineer can wind up doing that. [laughter] TIM: Right. I was going to ask if an audio engineer can actually make that joke funny, or is that? [laughter] COREY: Yeah. Or it’ll just come off as corny. So many jokes work super well when you deliver them in-person or face-to-face with a small group, but then you deliver into, to an audience of 5,000 people and they fall completely flat because the energy is different. That observation right there is why so many corporate keynotes are full of jokes that bomb horribly, because with the 20 people who were in there and have context and nuance, it's great in the rehearsal, but then you have a bunch of people and it just feels lame. TIM: Yeah, I thought the corporate keynote jokes, they failed because the 20-person focus group was a bunch of sycophants ready to laugh at anything they said. Whereas, the audience, maybe not so much. COREY: Yes. Do you end up with the entire executive committee watching it? They're just a bunch of yes men and the one token yes woman, but diversity is important to them. Just look at their website. No, no, the point that makes the statement about diversity being important, not the pictures of their team. MANDO: That part. One of my favorite speakers in the technical circuit is Aaron Patterson and I think part of the reason why I love his delivery so much is that he himself personally laughs at all his jokes. Like it really [laughs] like he cracks himself up and so you just can't help, but get pulled along with him. COREY: I find that most of my jokes that I put in my talks and whatnot are for me, because without it, I get bored and I lose interest and have other people come along for the joke, great. And if not, well, that's okay, I'm still laughing. MANDO: [laughs] Yeah. TIM: So Corey that I have a question that I had wondered and then never got to ask out loud. But seeing as how, although we pretty much knew that Andy Jassy was going to be the new CEO of Amazon, would obviously need someone to replace him at AWS. What would you say to the AWS recruiter when they offered you the job and why? COREY: Directly, that would be one of the most thankless jobs I can possibly imagine for the way I see the world and how that job has to be done, in all seriousness. It is the ultimate expression of responsibility without the ability to directly impact an outcome. You will have to delegate absolutely everything and it's paradoxical, but the higher you rise in a role like that, the less you're able to say. Every time Jeff Bezos makes a comment in public, it hits the news. He doesn't get to go effectively shitposting on Twitter. How Elon Musk manages to do it, couldn't tell you, but his random jokes move markets and that's why he's constantly in trouble with the SEC. The reason that I enjoy the latitude and the freedom that I do is that I am functionally, a nobody and that's okay. As soon as I start becoming someone who is under global public scrutiny, then that entire thing becomes incredibly misaligned. Every time there's a controversy or a scandal, I would never be allowed to sit down and be directly and completely honest about what I think about those things because you can't in those roles. These things are always nuanced and public messaging is a problem. I do firmly believe. For example, the reason I don't weigh in very often on a lot of the labor relations issues, for example, that Amazon winds up finding itself confronted with is, I believe firmly that there is a choice that I get to make as part of my expression of privilege. Here, I can be part of the mob on Twitter, yelling at them over these things, or I can have conversations directly with people who you are in a much better position to influence these things internally. I do not believe you can do both, simultaneously. We pick and choose our battles sometimes and I can't wind up going off about every outrage, real, or perceived, that accompany does, or I simply look like an endless litany of complaints. You have to find the things that make an impact and there's always a price to that. An example of a fight that I do go to bat for is Amazon's position on non-competes for their employees and their decision to pursue them after they leave Amazon. I think it has beneath them, I think it makes the entire industry poorer for it, and it's one of the areas in which I do not respect Amazon's position, full stop. Their employees are better than that and deserve more. That's an issue that I feel profoundly about and I'm willing to go to the mat on that one, but when I do it, it comes with a price. It makes them look at me like a little bit of a, “Oh, is he going to be one of those?” whatever those happen to be and maybe. There's a reason I don't bring it up casually. There's a reason I don't drag them with that in casual joke threads, but it's there and that's what one of those issues I'm willing to be known for. Now, labor organizing and the rest. There's an entire universe of people paying better attention to a segment of their business that I don't talk about, or know about and who are well-suited to lead a public opinion, to have conversations internally. I don't know about a lot of those things and this is why I've never cut out to be a VC either, by the way, where when I don't know something, I don't feel that I should be sounding off about that thing on Twitter. Apparently, that is not normal in D.C. land, but here we are. The beautiful part about being me is that I'm fundamentally in possession of a platform I can use to broadcast every harebrained idea that crosses my mind out to an audience to test it. So I don't feel constrained in what I can say. In fact, that's the reason that I am what I am is that no one can fire me. I'm an AWS customer, but I have no client that is a significant percentage of our revenue base, which means I can't get fired. The only real risk is something either systemic that happens globally, in which case, all bets are off, or we're at a scenario where I have surprise, become a secret dumpster goblin and no one is going to want to do business with me anymore and everyone abandons me. But that doesn't seem likely because that is not my failure mode. REIN: Do you know what your failure mode is? COREY: Oh, absolutely. I sometimes, as I mentioned, go too far. I find that things that are funny, just wind up being mean at times. A joke wasn't that great there. I mean, my entire company is fundamentally built around aspects of my own failures. I am possessed of a profound case of ADHD that manifests in a bunch of interesting ways. A lot of the company is functionally scaffolding around me and picking up the things that I am not good at and will not be successful at if left to my own devices. I feel bad about it on some level, but on the other, it frees me up to do the things I am great at. It's an area of being able to take the things that make me, for better or worse, borderline unique and really focus on those because I don't have to continue to wrestle with things like making sure that JIRA tickets get done for us to use an example from my engineering days. We tend to have this bias when hiring people to optimize for hiring folks who have no weaknesses rather than hiring for strengths. Yeah, there are a lot of things I'm crap at, but I'd rather be very, very good at the subset of things that are intensely valuable and that means that okay, maybe someone else can handle making sure my expense report gets filed, if you want to use a banal example. REIN: One of the first things that you talked about was sometimes to improve the way a customer uses AWS; they have to spend more money in one area rather than less. There's an interesting property of systems, which is that you can't improve a system just by making each individual part better and actually, sometimes you have to make some parts worse to make the system better. So I'm hearing a little bit of that here as well, which is you want to build a system that works well and takes advantage of the parts that you have, the people you have, their relationships, their strengths, how they work together, and you're not interested in everyone having to be perfect. You're okay with parts that work in different ways and accounting for that and focus. So the other thing is that a system is not the sum of its parts. It's the product of its interactions and what I'm getting is that you care about those interactions. COREY: Very much so. It's hard to build things in isolation. It's hard to wind up treating everyone as interchangeable components that you can shuffle up and have them do different things. You don't want to know what would happen if you put me in charge of accounting, for example. There's this also this idea as well that is endemic, particularly to the world of developers and software engineers in the context of – I saw this most prominently with a number of professors in my first job, as a Unix systems administrator at a university, where I have a Ph.D., I am a world leading expert in this very narrow field of knowledge and I am brilliant in it, which means I'm very good at everything else, too, ha, Getting the computer to work. Oh, they don't even offer Ph.Ds. in that so how hard could it really be? This idea that, “Oh, I am terrific at this one very valuable, highly advanced skill; I should be good at everything else.” Well, not really. It doesn't work that way and is there even value in you learning that particular skill? Let's use an example that's germane to what we're doing right now. When I record podcasts, I'm good at having the conversations. I'm good at making the word noises come out of my mouth to varying degrees of good and then we're done with the recording and what tends to happen next? Well, it has to get edited, put together, and the rest, and I don't know how to do that. Now, do I go and spend a year learning how audio engineering works and then spend my time doing the audio engineering piece, or do I find someone who lives in that world, who loves it, who they are great at it, and they want to do it and they want to do it more and wind-up paying people for their expertise and let them come out with a far better product than I'm ever going to be able to deliver? If it doesn't need to be me doing a thing, I might want to tag someone else in to do it instead. That's the art of delegation and increasingly, I have to be more and more comfortable with letting more and more things go as our company continues to grow. It's a hard lesson to learn. I mean, the biggest challenge of running a business bar, none, I don't care what anyone else tells you, it's always the same and it is managing your own psychology. ARTY: So you mentioned earlier with you were talking about psychological safety and people being able to give you feedback about when their feelings were hurt, or things that are challenging to talk about. What factors do you think contribute to your approachability when you have the stance of being this kind of snarky identity? What makes you approachable still? COREY: I think it's that when I get it wrong, I'm very vocal at apologizing. Let me use an example of the time I got it spectacularly wrong. A while back, I did a parody video of Hitler Reacts, the Downfall parody thing that everyone's doing and it was Hitler receives his AWS bill was my entire shtick. I did a whole dialogue thing for it, as one does. There's generators for it—this was not an artistic endeavor whatsoever—and one line I have in there is one woman turns to the other and says, “Yeah, I get gigabytes and terabytes confused, too,” and it goes on. People started liking it on Twitter and I went to bed. The next day, I get a message from someone that a number of women were having a thread somewhere else that they thought it was offensive because that was the only speaking line women had and it was admitting that math is hard, more or less and when I heard that my response was, “Holy shit.” I took the video down and did a whole thread about here's how I fucked up and some people were saying, “Oh, it wasn't that big of a deal. It's fine.” You are wrong. I'm sorry. People felt shitty because of what I said and that's not okay and just deleting it, or not talking about it again is a response, but it's not an instructive one and what I did ideally, will help people avoid making similar mistakes in the future. Again, this stuff is not easy. We're all learning. I've made jokes when I was – if I go back in time 10 years, I made a whole bunch of jokes and had a sense of humor of now I look back and I am very honestly ashamed of them and I'm not talking about things that the kind of joke we have to look over your shoulders before you tell anyone to make sure that someone doesn't look like you isn't within earshot. No, I'm just talking about shitty jokes that punch down. I don't make those jokes anymore because guess what? They're just not that funny and that's important. We all evolve. So that's part of it is I vocally critical of myself when I get it wrong. I also have DMs open for this specific reason. Again, I am not in the demographic people going to harass me by a DM. Not everyone has that privilege so people can reach out to me when they think I get something wrong, or they just want to talk and I view confidentiality as sacrosanct. If someone says that wasn't funny, I always thank them first off and then I try and dig deeper into what it is that they're saying. If someone says it on Twitter, because they don't feel that a call-in is warranted—no one knows you would call-in—a callout is fine, too. I try to engage in the same behavior just because if nothing else, I can set an example. I don't know if people feel they have a sense of psychological safety in approaching me, to be perfectly honest. No one knows their own reputation. But the fact that people continue to and I have never once broken the faith and thrown someone out under a bus publicly, or even mentioned who they were without their permission first, that's powerful and I hope anyway. I mean, again, no one knows their own reputation. For all I know, there are whisper networks out there that are convinced that I'm a complete piece of crap and if that's true, I'm not going to inherently say that they're wrong. I would be honored if someone would tell me and would let me know what I'm doing that has caused that opinion to form, because if possible, I'd like to fix it. If not, I at least want to hear the perspective. But feedback is an opinion and not everyone's opinion carries equal weight and I don't agree with everyone's opinion, but I would like to know how I'm being perceived. The biggest problem I get is with all the podcasts, with all of the tweets, with all of the newsletters, that most common response by landslide is silence. There are days I wonder I remember to turn the microphone on. There are other days where oh, I get emails and I love those days because I at least get to learn how I'm coming across. ARTY: I can imagine just seeing someone having a history of admitting when they make a mistake and trying to correct it and fixing it, turning you into someone that if you have feedback that feeling like you'd be heard, that your feedback would be listened to and taken seriously, I can see that really making a difference. I also really appreciate you modeling that kind of behavior, too because I think it is important. We are human. We make mistakes and having models to follow of what it looks like to be confident enough in ourselves that we can screw up publicly, I think is really important. COREY: I have the privilege and audience and at least apparently public reputation to be allowed to fail, to be allowed to mess these things up and if I can't own those things that I get wrong and what's the point, really. The honest way that I feel about all of this is I just recently crossed 50,000 Twitter followers, which is a weird, trippy, and humbling experience. But if I can't use that vast audience to help people, then what the fuck was the point of it all? Why did I do it? It's not just for my own self-aggrandizement, or trying to sell consulting projects. If I can't leave a little bit of a dent in the universe in the sense of helping people become better than they are then what was the point? Spoiler, the answer to what was the point never starts with a dollar sign. REIN: What do you think is the point? COREY: I think it has to be different for other folks. For me, the point has always been about helping people and I have a sense of indebtedness that I have my entire career because early on in my career and consistently throughout, people have done me favors and there's no way for me to repay them for the kindness that they have shown and the help that they've given. All you can ever do is pay it forward. But I help people with an introduction. It doesn't take much from me. You two people have problems that would be a solved by having an introduction between the two of you? Wonderful. Go ahead and talk. Let me know how I can help and it costs me nothing and when people are like, “How can I thank you for this?” Help someone else. It's always the same answer. It's a someday, you're going to be in a position to help someone else, do it. Don't think about how it's going to come back and help you. Maybe I will, maybe it won't. Cosmically, I found it always does somehow, but again, you don't have to take that on faith. Just assume it doesn't help you in the least. The more you help people, the more you wind up doing favors for people, the more it comes back around and that is something that opens up a tremendous level of, I guess, leverage. I guess, it makes sense of being able to make a difference in the world. Now, please, don't misunderstand what I've just said as, “Oh, you should do a bunch of uncompensated work for anyone who demands a moment of your time.” That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not suggesting you let people take advantage of you, but when you find someone who's struggling at something that you know would approach it, it really doesn't cost you much to reach out and ask if they need a hand. ARTY: That seems like a good note to switch to reflections. REIN: I think that's great. I was thinking about Corey, how you look at mistakes as opportunities to get better, not just for yourself, but also for how you participate in communities that matter to you. One of the interesting things about systems is that systems derive their purpose from how they relate to larger systems. So an engine drives its purpose from how it relates to the other parts of the car. If you take the engine out of the car, the car doesn't move, but neither does the engine. So I think that the best communities, whether they're basketball teams, or software development teams, whatever they are, are communities that make each person better and that we derive our purpose and our meaning from our relationship with other people. TIM: I can offer my reflection on this. I've often been either disappointed with, or very impressed by people's ability to learn about themselves and about the impact that they have on the world. I have observed in Corey and have been inspired to do self-optimization, where I have a course of action or behavior, or a line of thinking or reasoning presented into the ether and then based upon the feedback in whatever other means of observability, I amend and iterate on myself to become better. Never perfect—perfect is the enemy of good—but just to be better, to be continually improving. If I were going to find a term to describe Corey and the term that I would ascribe to myself to become a human optimist. I think if we take some of those examples that Corey has discussed and apply them, we can all reach that point to where we'll always know that there's always ways to improve and if we listen to those around us and we study the impact that we have on those people that we can do that. ARTY: It's been interesting listening to you talk and have this description of you in my head of this kind plus snarky being and what does that look like. One of the things I've seen you model repeatedly as I've listened to you talk is holding yourself accountable. In one context, being able to take in one-on-one reflections from other people and really take it in and think about what people say. But two, also taking responsibility for how other people see you and your position in the world and how those things you do end up affecting other people. So, I really appreciate your

Greater Than Code
225: Uncovering and Breaking Patterns with Tim Banks

Greater Than Code

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 10, 2021 63:03


03:31 - Uncovering Patterns * Making the Covert Overt * Reasons for Covertness 13:22 - Taking Care of People as Whole People * People Are Dynamic – Not Stagnant * Roles Are Constantly Changing * Iterating on Practices * William A. Kahn: Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work (https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/256287) * Financial Compensation * Metrics and Observability 28:43 - The Tech Industry: Now vs Then (aka we still have A LOT of work to do) * Gatekeeping * Accountability * Inclusivity * New Zealand Maori leader ejected from parliament for refusing to wear 'colonial noose' (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-politics-necktie/new-zealand-maori-leader-ejected-from-parliament-for-refusing-to-wear-colonial-noose-idUSKBN2A9329) * Whitewashing 45:59 - The Messaging Around Diversity and Inclusion * Doing the Right Thing 51:26 - Changing Mindsets * Using Privilege to Speak to Power Reflections: Rein: Capitalism and White Supremacy are the same thing. The Invention of the White Race (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Invention_of_the_White_Race_Racial_o/G4elgqb-MjwC?hl=en&gbpv=0). We have an obligation to not just make it possible for people to exist in the industry, but to also make it healthy. John: It’s always great to have these conversations as reminders. Tim: Figure out why something makes you uncomfortable. Look and uncover the pattern underneath that in yourself. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you run away, you’re never going to grow and things are never going to get better. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: PRE-ROLL: Whether you're working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure, you deserve simple, affordable, and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to take your project to the next level. Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode's Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier. Get started on Linode today with $100 in free credit for listeners of Greater Than Code. You can find all the details at linode.com/greaterthancode. Linode has 11 global data centers and provides 24/7/365 human support with no tiers or hand-offs regardless of your plan size. In addition to shared and dedicated compute instances, you can use your $100 in credit on S3-compatible object storage, Managed Kubernetes, and more. Visit linode.com/greaterthancode and click on the "Create Free Account" button to get started. JOHN: Hello, everybody. This is Greater Than Code, Episode 225. I’m John Sawers and I’m here with Rein Henrichs. REIN: And I’m here with our guest, my friend, and Dungeons & Dragons party member, Tim Banks. Tim Banks has a career spanning over 20 years through various sectors. Tim’s initial journey into tech started as a US Marine in avionics. Upon leaving the Marine Corps, he went on to work as a government contractor. He then went into the private sector, working both in large corporate environments and in small startups. While working in the private sector, he honed his skills in systems administration and operations for large Unix-based datastores. Today, Tim leverages his years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with engineering groups in his current role as a Principal Solutions Architect at Equinix Metal. Tim is also a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, having won American National and Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu championships in his division. Hi, Tim! TIM: Hi! Good to see everybody in here. REIN: Yeah, I did that on the first take and I'm very proud of myself. TIM: I am so, so proud of you. That was amazing. REIN: Tim, it's time for the question. TIM: Right. REIN: What is your superpower and how did you acquire it? TIM: So my superpower is using empathy to uncover patterns that people haven't seen in the past and I think that's a superpower because a lot of people can look at something, there's a lot of folks out there that can see a pattern just on the surface like this does that, this does that, this does that. But when you really talk to groups and you talk to people, you can see some common things that aren't necessarily things that are going to have an output or a metric, but you can see how people feel about a thing. And then when you get enough people who feel a certain way about a thing, that's not going to be a coincidence, it's going to be a pattern. So finding those patterns is my superpower. As far as how I acquired it, it's hard for me to say. The easy way to say is over time, but over time and myself being a person who necessarily wasn't listened to, or seen, or heard trying to explain how things are, why things are the way they are without having metrics. So having been on one side of that equation, I've been able to see people on the other side of it. REIN: So Tim, you said “to uncover patterns.” Can you say a bit more about the word uncover? Because I feel like that might've been a specific choice that you made to use. TIM: Yeah. There are typically, as we see with anything else, especially being tech or people that like to take things apart, I'm sure as we all did as kids, there are things that you see on the surface. There are things that you see, this pattern or this thing happening here, but you take the face plate off of something, or you delve down below the API, or you delve down below the operating system and there are so many other things that are happening beneath that. If you kick over amount of dirt and you see an ant hill, the ants have their own system, how they do things down there that you don't necessarily create, but you're just going to see it and you have to uncover a few things. You have to move things around. You have to look below the surface to see some of these patterns that happen just below the surface that bring the things at the surface to fruition. REIN: This reminds me a lot of I guess, it's a mantra that I learned from Virginia Satir, which drink if you're playing that game, make hidden things visible, make the covert overt and make the general specific and related to you, me, here, now, and the current situation. TIM: Yeah. I think that's actually a good – I had not heard of that one before, but I do like that a lot. REIN: So when you say uncover, that makes me think, make the covert over. TIM: Yeah, I think so. I like that. It's interesting because people sometimes think that things are covered up to make them hidden and it's not necessarily, they're hidden like someone has hidden them so you can't find them. A lot of times they're hidden in plain view. You don't find them because you're not looking for them and when you actually start to look for some of these things, some of the underlying causes, you'll be surprised what you find. It's like a lot of us here have done RCAs on things and oftentimes, if you do a good RCA, you're going to go through a few levels and different layers to find what the actual root cause. Like, most of the times the root of something is not at the surface, it's way down. So you actually have to go down and dig to uncover these things, to really find out what's at the base of something. REIN: So since this is the show where we talk about the social side of things, I want to ask you about these things that are covered that are maybe covered for a reason and maybe that the reason that they're covert is that people are trying to protect themselves and they don't feel safe to make them overt. So do you think about these situations and how do you go about making that safe to talk about? TIM: So I do think about these situations and there's a couple of reasons why. First, obviously, is in the professional world you can't always call people out immediately for things. Even if you know that there's something that's a lie or something that's not right, there are the political reasons why you have to be tactful or you have to be very deliberate and cautious about how you uncover these things because even if people aren't necessarily intentionally hiding things, or it is their mind that I must hide this as he'll feel safe, people's egos are the number one obstacle, I think to innovation. Someone has staked out a claim. Someone has a territory. Someone has some domain that they have, that they are a gatekeeper thereof and it is their ego that makes sure that you have to pay homage to them or to that ego in order to get anything done. So figuring out what they're protecting, whether they're protecting their job, whether they're protecting their ego, whether they're protecting levels of influence so that they can rise in their career. You have to figure out what that is, that what that thing is that is important to them so that way you can make sure that it's either protected, or you can make sure that there are more than one person that have access to that thing so you can make your way. At personal levels, there are things that people cover up because they don't feel safe and doing the work of trying to make them feel safe so you can talk about these things, I think that's the hardest thing that we do in the industry. Solving technical problems is easy compared to solving people problems, or cultural problems, or societal problems because those are the problems that we've had for millennia that we, collection of people in a common industry, are trying to figure out. Saying to somebody, “Hey, I see these patterns here of work, or absenteeism, or productivity, or whatever it is and I need to know what it is that's going on so that we can fix that,” and make them understand that you are there to help them and there to fix that problem, whatever it may be, that takes some work on the part of the person who's trying to uncover that pattern. It takes vulnerability and it takes confidentiality. It takes empathy. Especially if it's something that you've never dealt with before. Someone's going to tell you, “Hey, I have this problem,” and you're going to say, “All right, well, I know leadership or I know management or unknown this senior technical professional here, but I don't know the answer to this problem, but I can say that I will help you find it and then we can work together on it.” And a lot of people don't like to say, “I don't know the answer.” We see a lot of people that are very technically savvy and because they're very technically savvy, they are now considered to be experts in all kinds of domains. Nobody in particular—Elon Musk—but there are people that are looked to be some kind of great genius just because they happen to know how to code something, or architect something. I think when you display the vulnerability of saying, “I don't know.” Or you are upfront about your problems or upfront about your struggles, it makes people feel safer about being upfront about theirs and then you can go through the work of trying to solve those problems. Well, first of all, identifying if it's a pattern, and then solving the problem that's causing those patterns. JOHN: I like that you use the metaphor of anthill earlier on in this, because rather than when you describe something as pattern, it's very abstract and feels like an object. But when you talk about an anthill, it's individual entities working together in a system. It's something that exists on its own, made up of other individuals. It's not just some object that we can examine and I think that brings it into thinking about it in a different way and much like the way you've been describing how you talk about these things and how you work with people. Very humanizing and I like that. TIM: Yeah. I do think there's a lot of us when we're looking at an organization, whether we're looking at a society, or government, or whatever it is, a neighborhood even all of us have the role that we play whether we're aware of it or not. It's a role not necessarily either we're assigned, that we signed up for, or that we just have by nature of and by coincidence of our birth. But we all do something that contributes in some way to the organizations that we're in. When we look at that as that – okay, that role covers a lot of things. No one is just one thing; no one is just a software developer, or no one is just a cashier at a grocery store, or no one is just an artist. No person is monolithic. No one is defined by their job save except maybe the police and that's not a slam—they're always at work apparently. But there are all these things that we have that yes, as you look at an ant farm, this one ant does all these various things, but they have this contribution to the colony as a whole. And I do think that when we look at it as a pattern, if we look at one individual person and all the things that they do, it is important to see that they are more than just a worker. We are not ants. We're not that specialized. We have all kinds of things that we contribute to. So like the colony metaphor breaks down there just to understand that all of us have different things that we do outside of just what our role is to make money or to contribute. We all have dreams. We all have hopes. A lot of times, the fact that these dreams or hopes have been unrealized or worse yet, they have been forcefully deferred by the society as a whole affects that role that we have. It affects how we view ourselves. It affects how others view us. That's what we bring when we sit down at our desk every morning, that collection of all those things rides along with whatever your skills are, that is it's not compartmentalized. As much as people may want to say they can't compartmentalize these things, you can't. You can’t contain it forever. So when these things start to manifest themselves in different ways, we as people—whether we are neighbors, whether we are leaders in government, whether we are coworkers, whether we're management—need to do whatever we can to make sure that these people can become a whole and they can thrive. When people thrive on a personal level, they thrive on a professional level. Maybe not at the job that they're in, maybe not at the company that they're in, but wherever they end up, when they thrive as people, they are going to thrive as professionals. REIN: I also want to throw in another element of the ant colony metaphor, which is that ant colonies are dynamic. They're constantly changing. Tunnels are caving in, new ones are being constructed; the colony itself changes over time. You were talking about the complexity of a person in a given moment, but their roles within the company are also constantly shifting based on how they interact with other people. TIM: That's true; how they interact with other people and how the companies need change. I mean, no company is typically monolithic in and of themselves. They always have to be growing, they have to be thriving, and they have to be moving into different segments and as that happens, your roles change within that company. What's been being kicked around Twitter these past few weeks is people talking about like, “I don't understand why people leave jobs,” and I was like, “Well, yeah, they leave jobs because they want to go do other stuff.” People don't like to stagnate, typically and people who do like to stagnate, most companies don't want to keep them around. So stagnation is not really in human nature. As resistant as we are to change, we are all extremely adaptable. It's built into our damn DNA so we tend to do that well. I do like the fact that people are dynamic, or if you look at what maybe people had expectations of what 2021 was going to be in 2019, it's clear that a lot of things have changed due to the various circumstances around the world—pandemic, social uprising, Nazis, whatever it is. We've all had to make some big changes and even though it sucked and it has sucked, we're still here. We are in the new normal because we are adaptable and so are the dynamics of our existence lend ourselves to the fact that our roles are constantly changing. What does it look like when you were a working parent 2 years ago versus what does it look like you're a working parent now? What does it look like if you were a single person with a job 2 years ago versus if you're seeing a person with a job now? So many things have changed and it speaks to the fact that we are adaptable. That all said, if you're looking at how we can improve and make better for people, we can't look at the ideal state or the state we were in 2019 or whatever it was. We have to look at how things are now and then we had to look at what we have learned in the past year, year and a half will prepare us for what's yet to come because we know that shit is always going to roll downhill. So we have to figure out what have we learned here and what can we do next? I think a lot of the things that we still need to embrace is how to take care of our people as a whole people, and not just employees and not just take care of how they can contribute to us. How many commits can they do? How many tests can they write? Or anything like that. We need to take care of their needs as people and when we take care of their needs as people, they are more likely to be able to take care of us, our needs from them as companies and orgs. REIN: What Russell Ackoff always says when people talk to him about total quality management and all of these things about how to improve the quality of your business, what he always says is, “The quality that matters is quality of work life.” The quality of the lives of the people who are doing the work. TIM: That is absolutely true. It's absolutely true. Some of the worst cases of burnout that people ever have, some of the worst working environments, it's because they do not treat their people like people. They treat them like any other resource, like print, toner, cartridge, and the people personally as people cannot thrive and people burn out that way. People have a hard time setting and maintaining boundaries around their work life. Yay, capitalism. That's one of the things that we start from. It's like, if you want to get ahead, you’ve got to work real, real, real, real hard. Well, yes, to some extent, but the higher up you go, let's be honest that “hard work” looks way different. You're working hard on a yacht apparently, or you're working hard on a vacation to Paris apparently, but the people that are actually doing the labor to enrich the people higher up the chain, those basic human needs for rest, relaxation, recovery, they're oftentimes not being met and I think that's a fucking shame. REIN: Yeah, and if something is particularly incumbent upon leadership to show that by example and to encourage that behavior because I think lower down in the ranks, if they've probably been punished for any sort of thing like that, or they've seen people punished for that kind of thing, they're going to be highly resistant to doing that unless you can prove that it's safe for them to do so. TIM: Oh, absolutely. I think it's interesting when you talk about what it is for a person lower down in the rung and the common gatekeeping tactic you see is “Well, they've got to pay their dues.” They've got to suffer through this role so that way, they can make it for other people or they can be a better employee going forward. That is so horribly bassackwards. I mean, you really want to nurture junior folks. You want to nurture people coming into the industry. You want to nurture people who are just starting. You want to mentor them. You want to give them knowledge and guidance. You don't want to push their nose into the grindstone. I don't know what you're trying to accomplish there. That's fine if you're in the Marine Corps. That's fine if you're going into the military service. That's obviously, a consequence of the choice you made to join. But if you're not doing that, you don't need to punish people at the bottom ranks, really You should be, as a leader, like you said, modeling those behaviors, but you should also be making sure that they can thrive, whatever that looks like. Thriving for a junior person doesn't look like giving them a half hour lunch break and watching them clock in and clock out. It doesn't look like monitoring their bathroom breaks, or some of the stuff that I've seen the junior folks have to do. These people are whole people, they are not servers. They're not computers. They're not billed by the hour like that to perform X number of tasks. They really have to be nurtured and they have to be guided and mentored. The other thing we have to take into the fact is that not everybody learns the same. People are neurodivergent. So what productivity looks like for some persons, it’s going to look completely different for another person. For me, the worst thing I had as a senior person was to be expected to sit down and work 4 hours, take a half hour break, and then work another 4 hours straight. I have ADHD and anxiety and that is torturous for me. Now I did it and some people will turn around and say, “Well, I did it. So you can do it. too” like the motherfuckers that talk about student loans. But I would say, “I had to do it and it sucks. So I don't want anyone else to have to go through that.” That's what we should be doing. We should be iterating on our practices as an org, iterating our practices as a society to say that, “Oh, well, just because I had to suffer, that doesn't mean that you should have to as well. We should actually fix that so that you don't have to go through that.” Typically, in capitalism, that's how they say you're supposed to do. A 2021 Ferrari has more features than the Model T because you add features, and you add features, and you add features. So I don't see why we can't do that for the people that actually build these vehicles, or build anything else for that matter. REIN: There's a study that whenever this topic comes up, that I refer people to, because I think it's really, really good. It is from Kahn in 1990 and this is interesting because this is the study of the “Engagement of the Human Spirit at Work.” So even the idea that in a capitalist country, you could get a grant to study the engagement of the human spirit at work is amazing to me. But the idea is that there are three psychological conditions that relate to this. What I wanted to do was list them and then get your thoughts. TIM: Sure. REIN: Add them, change them, do they resonate with you? The conditions are meaningfulness. Do I find meaning in the work and my job title, my tasks, and so on? The second is psychological safety. And the third is the availability of emotional and psychological resources and this includes things like, am I emotionally drained at the end of the day? Do I wake up looking forward to going to work? Am I being supported by my manager or my supervisor? TIM: I like all of those. I think those are all really good, but I do think it overlooks the financial aspect and the reason why I say it overlooks the financial aspect is because those things are important for how you feel about your work. But if you are struggling financially, your ability to deal with the normal rigors of work are significantly decreased when you have to then go home and figure out how you're going to make the ends meet. Are you living paycheck to paycheck? Are you going to pay off debt? You're trying to figure out how to take care of your children. You're going to have to figure out how to do all these other things. Your overall capacity is reduced because you have these other concerns as well. So I think it cannot be overstated, the impact of making sure that people's needs outside of work are met to make sure they can also, you can also take care of the needs inside of work. But going back, I do think those are very, very important aspects of people feeling spiritual engagement at work. I think the meaningfulness and the psychological safety to me are the two most important. You can do meaningful work, but if you're getting harassed all the fucking time, it's not a great place. Or you can have a great loving and nurturing environment, but you're just toiling away in dumb anguish and it's like, “Oh, well, I don't know why I'm doing this job. Everyone's super happy and I'll stay here for a while because I really like everybody, but I don't really get any meaning out of what I do.” So I think I like that list. I would just add a fourth one talking about making sure people are financially compensated to make sure their needs are met plus, plus. REIN: And actually, the study doesn't consider that and I think you're right that that's a huge oversight. There's a second study that attempts to quantify these relationships to say how much each of these influence engagement and the result is that meaningfulness was the highest correlation, but the way they did this is interesting. They did a quantitative survey and the survey would include different sections with questions on for example, rewarding coworker relations with questions like, “I feel worthwhile when I am around my coworkers.” I think we should be asking questions like that more often. I think that the engagement surveys you get in the modern world are superficial. TIM: Oh, they absolutely are. They absolutely are. Well, I mean, it goes back to a lot of topics we have in observability. What are your metrics if whatever you measure is what you're going to do? I learned this lesson working in tech support call centers right out of the Marine Corps where if they're going to reward you for the number of calls or they're going to – the primary metric is the number of calls you took in a day. So people were going to do whatever they can do to take the most number of calls, then to like, “Oh, then we're going to do NPS scores after that.” But they set the NPS score pretty low and saying, “Well, we just need you to answer the calls. They don't have to be that good.” That's what you're going to get. If you were measuring things like, “Oh, did your manager make you feel good this month?” If you ask that and they answer honestly, maybe they made you feel good once a month or something like that since the last one, but primarily, they made you feel like crap. That's kind of what you need to ask. I do think the interpersonal relationship aspects, they're hard to quantify because it looks different for everybody and even the nature of the questions are different for everybody. What that question looks like to a cis, white, straight male is going to look way different to say, a queer Black woman. REIN: What if the question is: “I feel a real kinship with my coworkers and I'm like a little, eh about that one?” TIM: Yeah, that goes back to that we're a family thing and I don't necessarily like that at all because we aren't a family. You can't fire your family or lay your family off. REIN: But then there were questions like: “I believe that my coworkers appreciate who I am,” and I like that one a lot. TIM: That's a good one. The appreciates who I am, that speaks to being a whole person and the more that we can be whole people at our jobs, the better off we are going to be. If you have to bite your tongue, if you have to cover your tattoos, if you have to make sure your hair is undyed, or you have to wear clothes that you don't necessarily like because they’re considered “professional” whatever that means. That the more that a person has to distance themselves from who they are as a whole person, probably the less happy they're going to be in that environment. Less safe they're going to feel in that environment. JOHN: Yeah, I find that there is a gap between the rhetoric about bringing your whole self to work and the practice of building a space where it's safe to do that. Like I myself know some things that can lead us in that direction, but I don't feel like there's a great playbook on building that all out. TIM: There really isn't and part of the reason is that the tech industry started out, by and large, as an artifact of the US government, US military, which is never not really known for being very welcoming and safe for people outside of a certain demographic. You talk about what the industry looked like when I got in back in the late 90s, IBM had just stopped requiring people to wear suits to work and they were allowed to wear polo shirts and khakis. That look was what you had. It was the “business casual.” Couldn't have long hair, couldn't have accessed piercings, no visible tattoos; not unlike dress codes or appearance regs that you would see in the military. So you make everybody look like the stereotypical white guy, essentially, because this is what you have to wear because some old white guy said, “This is what people should look like.” Those things are hard to break because who still has power in those things and it's a self-perpetuating society. People that do not fit that mold do not last in that industry, or the people that do last in industry had to divorce themselves of who they are so much that it becomes hard to break that mold once you get into places of power, because you can very quickly be run out for rocking the boat too much and it was very, very self-standing. This is the one thing that I think came out of the .com bubble burst after Y2K and the early aughts was that it broke up a lot of these big companies, big old legacy companies and you saw a lot of smaller startups come out. A lot of these smaller startups that came out of it maybe had a different way of thinking because they weren't run by 70-year-old white guys who were defense contractors. But I do think, when we get into that, if you look at what a person in the tech industry looks like in 2021 versus what they look like in 2001 is dramatically different. I can have my hair long. I can expose my tattoos. I can have a beard. I can say, “I'm a queer, ADHD, Black-Mexican man,” whereas such a thing would be dangerous career-wise and maybe even personally, 20 years ago. I remember in the industry when the first person that I knew personally came out as being transgender and the harassment that she had to go through was horrifying, but it was considered perfectly normal in 2001. We have come a long way, but that just speaks to what a shitshow it was before. Not that we're doing great now, because we have so much farther to go and we are still here in 2021 seeing all white panels, all white male leadership, diversity being heralded when you bring a white woman onto a board or when you bring a gay white man onto a board. And that ain't it chief. That is not it. We have so much more to do and the hard part about that is convincing people that you can't rest on your laurels. Convincing people that you haven't done enough in the first place. Convincing people that there are still problems. That goes back to what you're saying about some of these questions, about some of these metrics that we have about people in the workplace. The questions that you have to ask on these to really get an idea of where you are, have to be uncomfortable. They have to be uncomfortable. They have to challenge people's safe spaces and not just a safe spaces of other people who are marginalized, but certainly, the safe space of the people who are overrepresented. It goes back to talking about, “Hey, do you realize that you have gotten where you are largely by privilege?” or that you've been able to fail up, or that doors have been opened to you that haven't been opened to others, or bars have been lowered for you that weren't as lower for others, or even at the bar wasn't lower, the bar was not raised for you like it was for others? People don't like to hear that. People get very upset when you challenge the notion that maybe they haven't had to work as hard as other people have to get where they have. If you tell somebody, “Well, you got here because you had a fair amount of pillars to help you along the way.” People don't like to hear that. Now I will very much, I've said in the past I may be Black and I may be queer but I'm still a man so I have some privilege that goes along with that that women and non-binary folks have not been able to enjoy. I typically don't have to go to a conference and worry about whether I'm going to be sexually assaulted. God help the person that tries at least with me. But that is a worry and a concern that people have to have going to a conference that's supposed to help their career and that's a big detractor. That is a big obstacle that people don't realize that they have and then worse. I mean, heaven forbid, we even talked about motherfuckers that actually do the harassing there that are still allowed to enjoy their place in the industry, that are still allowed to hold positions of power, positions of influence where they can continue to do this. Not even just keep their jobs, but they keep being by to back these places and they can continue to perpetuate that kind of harassment and making the industry hostile to brilliant people. But it's funny that I will say that here I am on a podcast and every podcast I've ever been on with the exception of one – well, no, all the podcasts I've ever been on hosted by all white people. Every last one. Some have had white women in them, but it's all white people. So when we talk about these subjects, it still comes from a certain perspective that white folks aren't going to have, or that men aren't going to have. It's good that we're talking about it, but we need to do something about it. We need to have more of these voices routinely, not just in our panels at tech conferences, but in our normal, everyday consumption and I think that's important. We talk about what do these things look like? What are the patterns we're seeing? If you look at a tech company, especially in Silicon Valley, tech companies look like the neighborhoods. It's not very diverse. People refer their friends, people refer their coworkers, or they have these things about what was that Google employee letter? “We only want people with Bachelor's from Stanford or Ph.Ds. from these places and no one else gets accepted.” Those places are already quite exclusionary in and of itself. They list no HBCUs on that piece of paper, because they don't value HBCUs. They don't value schools that allow people of lower economic or lower in the socioeconomic strata to attend. It's literally self-perpetuating, that kind of gatekeeping. These people who pass through these gates erect those exact same ones and only the people that fit that mold are going to go through it and you never fix the problem. We do not do enough to break those gates down. We don't do enough to model that kind of behavior that we should be expecting. It's good that we're talking about it, but we need to be more about doing it. REIN: Yeah, and our whole panel for this show is majority not white dude, but it might not surprise you that the people who most often have the spoons and the privilege to take time out of their workday to do this podcast are the white dudes. JOHN: Yeah. TIM: Yeah. But I think when we talk about going forward, it's one thing to see a pattern and I think people who, if they're looking, they can see what it is, but what do you do? Do you just throw up your hands, go, “We tried, it's hard to do, so we're not going to do”? “Ah, all right, we gave it a shot. We asked some folks, but they can’t do it.” Or what do you do? I've seen a couple of folks, to call out the good behavior when I see it, I know Ashley McNamara when she had said that she was going to step aside from doing conferences, she was like, “Don't talk to me about conferences. Go talk to underrepresented minorities about these roles. Don't talk to me. I'm not going to take it.” I've seen folks that will say, “I'm not going to speak at this thing if it's an all white panel or if it's all male panel.” “If you're not paying your speakers, especially of color, to come, I'm not going to do these things.” That's how we see it in action. Holding the people that build the platform accountable to make sure that everyone has access to it. I think the thing that the pandemic has taught me that I've seen, for the most part, is a lot of these conferences have become free or very, very low in price because there were virtual, a lot more people showed up. People that couldn't necessarily go before and sometimes, it was harder even for them like you mentioned before Rein, just to get off of work and now they can kind of manage to do it in between because they don't actually have to leave. So when we get to a point where we can have in-person conferences again, I think it behooves the organizer of these conferences that if they're really serious about doing something about being more inclusive about breaking these patterns, not to have them in Silicon Valley, in the most expensive real estate on earth. Have them someplace less expensive to lower the cost for people, if they charge it at all. If anything, you cannot tell me that AWS cannot put the cost of an entire – AWS, Microsoft, all these panels’ sponsors cannot put the cost such that you don't have to charge people for a standard price of admission. You can't tell me that they can't sponsor it to the level where you can pay your speakers, especially women, underrepresented minorities, people of color, like that to come in and appear and talk about these things. Especially if it's a topic on which they have to do the emotional labor for. That's what I want to see us do to break some of the patterns that we're seeing, to make things better for everyone else, and then once some start doing that, that is going to be it. Once you start modeling that behavior, you're going to see other conferences do the same, where these big trillion-dollar companies that are sponsoring these orgs or sponsoring these conferences can actually put some money into it so that more people can come. I don't really have a good understanding yet as of why that hasn't happened and I'm sure folks who organize conferences will probably have plethora of reasons. But I feel like the time has come to do these kinds of things and if it means we have fewer conferences, okay. Move them more virtual, it's fine. REIN: Yeah. I have liked that some conferences are starting to do two tier tickets where if the company's paying, you pay the higher price and if you're just an individual or whatever, then you're paying a much lower price, and then usually, there's also some sort of scholarship program again, to try and bring people in. But I think you're right. Especially if it's the much more company focused things like AWS re:Invent or whatever, why is there a cost to attend that? Even for the tickets, but on top of that, there's all the travel, there's taking time off work, there's childcare; there's so many other attendance costs to going to a conference at a place that even if the tickets were free, there's still a huge barrier there. TIM: You could even go as far as say some of these venue choices. You go to a place like D.C., or New York City, or someplace that have HBCUs, those HBCUs have [inaudible] and conference centers. You don't have to go to some Richie rich hotel. Why don’t you give Howard some money to use their facilities? Why don't you do it in the [inaudible] area? Why don't you give Home by the Sea Hampton University some money? Or Atlanta? Any of these places where you have – or some of these are just lower income schools that serve underprivileged communities, give them the money to host these conferences. Not some hotel. Have it catered by minority-owned businesses, have something, do some things to get more people in. Like, have scholarships for HBCUs CS students where if you're a student—junior, senior—looking for internships where they're like, “Hey man, you know what, come to this conference, we’re not going to charge you and we're actually going to give you a stipend for travel.” That's doing something and it is almost the peak of intellectual dishonesty for people to try and act like the money isn't there because it's there. We've seen time and time again, all these earnings calls coming out, all these market caps going up and up and up and up. The money is there; just people don't want to open up them purse strings, I guess. REIN: Before the moment passes, I do want to point out that you call this podcast out for not doing enough to schedule things so that all of the panel can attend. I gratefully appreciate the rebuke and we're going to go work on that. TIM: I appreciate that and I appreciate you for giving me a space that I feel safe to say that. That matters. Like, if you want to do something, give people space to talk about it and don't get butthurt when they say something. REIN: So when you were talking about white person dress codes and the need to assimilate into that, I was reminded of this thing that actually just was published by CNN about a Maori representative in New Zealand’s parliament who was objected for refusing to wear a tie. TIM: I think he called it a colonizer's noose? REIN: He did and when they changed the rule and he was allowed back in, I am still thinking about what he said, which is, “The noose has been taken off our necks and we are now able to sing our songs.” TIM: It's true and it's a big deal because I know for me as, especially as a young Black male, it is imperative for our survival to not be threatening and I'm not overstating that. It is imperative for our survival to not be deemed as threatening. If you go into a workplace and you don't have a comfortable appearance whether your hair's cut close, you can't have dreadlocks, you don't want to have anything that's let's say, too Black. You have to look a certain way. Your car has to look a certain way. You can't listen to certain music. Can't talk a certain way. Those are the guardrails which I had to perform under and I say perform early on when I was early in the industry, because that's what was expected. You would see when the few Black people in an org would get together and the white folks weren't around, we would relax and it looks a whole lot different. If you're a fly on that wall, you would look and sound a lot different because we could be who we were and the problem happened was that you would see, you'd have to go out there and you'd be like oh, man. “Hey, Tim you have a blah, blah. You don't really sound Black.” Hm, okay. REIN: You’re so articulate. TIM: Oh yeah, that's a good one. “You're so articulate,” “You know a lot of words,” and that kind of stuff. The problem with that is that in order to do that, in order to assimilate into that culture to make a living, you have to do that and then we have to go back to our communities and hear about it. Hear about selling out, hear about – and it's one thing to get a job. People like to see people succeed, but what they don't like people have to do is change who they are in order to succeed. But that's what was expected of us to fit into this predominantly white culture. White people didn't have to change. Not really. I can't recall how many dudes I saw walking around with mullets. Even to this day, you see guys walking around with khakis, the polo shirt tucked into the belt, the mullet, the wraparound sunglasses. That has been unchanged since like 1985. But Black people now are starting to be able to be our whole selves, but how many didn't last in the industry because they couldn't? There's a lot and that was just for being Black. Heaven forbid, people who are gay, people who are trans, people who were immigrants first generation, or immigrants that really had a hard time. It's not great. We have not done, this “progressive tech industry” has not done a lot. Did not do a lot early to be welcoming or to do anything, really towards inclusion. It had to be done kicking and screaming by people who have kicked down the doors and I think, honestly, we really need to be. I am grateful that you are kicking down the doors for me and I've done my best to kick down doors for people behind me, who've come after me. But we need to keep doing that and I don't think we acknowledge really, how bad it was because it's uncomfortable. Especially the folks who are still in the industry that were part of that. You catch a lot of these high-tech level CEOs, C-levels SVPs who say they've been in the industry 20 plus years. They were complicit. No one was talking about that. They want to talk about what they're doing now, but no one wants to come up front and be like, “Yeah, I actually participated in this. This is the things that I was doing back then.” Or “I didn't speak up for whoever, whoever.” I guarantee you, if people had an honest disclosure of all that, you're going to see that. It talks about what US history looks like if we don't whitewash it. If we're really honest about it. We can prevent making the same mistakes, hopefully because we don't have this narrative that we were great all the time. Companies are the same way, managers are the same way, people who are long in the tooth of this industry are the same way and I think it's important that we talk about that especially when we talk about even now. You take salespeople, that is a good foray into tech for people that don't have a technical background, especially people of color and women and they still have to look like they're fucking bankers to sell a SaaS to people who are wearing hoodies and boardshorts to work. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make a damn bit of sense. REIN: Can I share a hot take with you, Tim? TIM: The hottest of takes, please give me lava. REIN: I'm getting really frustrated with the messaging around diversity and inclusion that works and the fact that we have to use it, which is look how good this is for the business and I have a huge amount of respect for the people who do that work, sell that message. A lot of the people I've talked to who are doing this are Black women and they know how to get it done better than I do, but it must be grading to not be able to just say, “Look, we do this because it's right. We do it because it's just.” TIM: It's because the people that they have to placate in order to get this signed off on. Who are they? They are, by and large, white men and to try and give a message to them of doing it just because. People who are a hundred millionaires, billionaires sometimes, if you don't tell them it's going to be good for their bottom line, they're not going to do it. For the most part. Then there are some folks that I'm sure that wouldn't, but in the most part, you're talking about raging capitalists that will be glad to cut off. That would be the same people that didn't offer health insurance to their employees because they didn't have to. The same ones that give them shitty healthcare, but the executives get really, really nice healthcare. The stratification of the value that you hold to the companies is very apparent in the benefits package, pays, and other kinds of things they offer them. To expect them to do it for altruistic reasons is the peak of naivety. So yes, the people that can get those people to sign off on a diversity and inclusion program are fucking miracle workers. REIN: Yeah, and to be clear, I'm not mad at them for choosing that messaging. I have a huge amount of respect for their ability to be pragmatic and use the messaging that gets the job done. I mad that that's what they have to do because of how the system is. Because of how racism is. TIM: I wished we could live in a society where we can say, “This is the right thing to do so we're going to do it.” I've talked about this before, where you look at that AWS Leadership Principle of leaders are right. There's no impetus on doing the right thing. You can say, “Oh, I was right about this.” Well good, congrats on your fucking jeopardy win. But do you do the right thing? Doing the right thing is an ethical question. Do you do the right thing? Not for the business, right thing for the business. There's no parenthetical after that, there's no qualifying clause. If you are ethical, you will do the right thing and if that right thing isn't necessarily good for the business, okay. That's fine. All right. There's more money to be made and if your business cannot withstand you doing the right thing, then you're probably a shitty business in the first place. REIN: It’s not a means, it’s an end. TIM: Exactly. REIN: Okay. Well, there's my hot take for the episode. TIM: That was like medium hot. That was like jalapeno hot. JOHN: It's something we've all noticed, that language always comes up the moment you start talking about DE&I. TIM: What I think for me, the hurtful part is when I watch these things especially as you see these things like what you're seeing at Google because of fucking course, Google is that when people really start to move the needle, when people start to make a real impact, the powers that be get uncomfortable and then they start to let people go and they replace them with someone that they are more comfortable with. They don't realize that the discomfort that they feel is what's supposed to happen and you can make it very, very simple for them. If you were to talk about this as a digital transformation, as we say, it's like, “Oh, well, we're going to go from this monolithic gigantic system that we’re running on to microservices, cloud-based API, stuff like that,” and people say, “Well, these old school database administrators are very uncomfortable with it and they tell them.” It’s like, “Hey, well this is how it is now. You're going to have to deal with it, or you're going to probably have to find a different way to get the industry, because this is the way it's going and it's better for everyone involved.” They explain all these benefits and they tell people that discomfort is part of this journey. You're going to have to learn to swim in new waters and things are going to be different, but they're going to be better overall once you get on the other side of that, but they can't apply that to them fucking selves when it comes to about diversity and inclusion and I don't get it. JOHN: I mean, that's the privilege that they haven't had to be practiced at being uncomfortable in those situations, or even if it's a little bit of technical discomfort versus the much more impactful discomfort that comes when you start actually talking about race. TIM: Yeah, there's a level of introspection that they haven't had to do and they are seemingly unwilling to do. That's the part that's most frustrating; the people that have the least to lose in this are the most unwilling to change. REIN: Oh, do you think it's worthwhile if what we're talking about here is a change in mindset? It's a change in what these people strive for, what they want and I think that that change is incompatible with let’s call it, white supremacy and capitalism. So do you think that it's worthwhile to try to pursue that, or do you think we have to continue doing these pragmatic things? TIM: Well, first of all, I would say that white supremacy and capitalism are redundant, but I would say that we cannot change the minds of the people in power with anything other than pragmatic reasoning because if we could, they would have already. There has been more than enough reason, appeals to emotion, consequence, societal collapse, all these other things that we've seen, especially these past 18 months or so. A reasonable person would say like, “You know what,” or all the people who are reasonable about this and who are ethical about this have already changed their minds. At this point, anybody who doesn't see the need for it, the self-evident need for it without for the justification for business reasons, but the self-evident need for it will not be convinced. So you have to appeal to pragmatic reasons until they leave the industry. REIN: This is a Kuhnian paradigm shift: the people with the old views have to die or otherwise go away and be replaced. TIM: Essentially, that's it and so that's why it's so important for us to nurture the junior folks coming into the industry and the people who are mid-career to make sure that people who understand this, to make sure that the people who are underrepresented, and to make sure your LGBTQ, your people of color, any manner of folks that are not properly represented or that have been heretofore unsafe in this industry, stay in the industry by any means necessary. To make sure that the industry can change in the long run. It is incrementalism and as unpopular as it is in some circles to say, “Oh, we can't just change everything right now because we're inspired to do so.” I'm sorry, you don't steer a ship that quickly. This is a large thing we have to change. The industry is a lot of people and it's a lot of money. So you're going to have to change it a bit at a time and the only way to bring that change about is to bring and keep people in the industry that can affect that change. REIN: And for those of us who are more securely in the industry, whether it's because we're white dudes or we have experience, whatever it is, we have an obligation to do what it takes to keep them around you. TIM: You absolutely do and you also have an obligation to continue to push on the folks that don't see the value in keeping them around. Very openly. You have to use your privilege. You have to use your privilege to speak to power. You don't have to take anyone else's voices. You don't have to pick up someone else to sign a waiver on his own, certainly, but you have to keep them from being silenced and that is the important thing that we need to do. If you are a straight white male in this industry and you have seen the necessity of the industry being more inclusive, diverse, and to have a good sense of belonging, then what you have to do is you have to check your peers when people speak. REIN: And not just keep them around, but make it possible for them to thrive. TIM: Absolutely, absolutely. They have to have strong roots in the industry. They have to feel like they're safe here, that they can grow here, and that they belong here and then when they do that, that's when they can affect change. JOHN: Yeah. That is how you keep them around, either that, or you don't want to them to have to rely on just complete bloody mindedness to have the perseverance to go through all of the pain to stay in the industry. You want it to be them thriving in the industry. Like you said, they can be the tomorrow's leaders that can start that real change. TIM: The last thing I want to do is also say, I want to make sure that when we talk about doing that thriving, that again, we're talking about not just taking care of them in the workplace, but taking care of them as whole people. I will beat this drum every time I can get on, we cannot let, we cannot let women leave this industry. We cannot do it. We're losing too many women because they have to make the choice right now in 2021, in this pandemic, as to whether or not they have to be mothers or whether they have to be career professionals and it’s bullshit. It is bullshit and it goes two ways with that: we're not supporting mothers and we're not supporting our fathers. We can support our fathers, then they can play a more active role in raising their children and Mom doesn't have to take care of everything. Now obviously, work can't influence whether a father is a piece of shit father or not and there are a lot of them out there, I'm going to be honest about it, that won't change a diaper, that won't clean the house, shit like that. We can't do that, but we'll at least avail them the opportunity and not have them use work as an excuse. So we have to change the way we do business to make sure that working mothers can be whole people so they don't have to choose between raising their children and doing work. If we don't protect these women, and the reason I say that is because it is the women of color that are the most susceptible to having to make this choice, because they have fewer resources outside of that, typically. So we need to protect people. We need to protect these people so that they can stay in the industry and we need to do that now. Because we are bleeding off too many women as it is like way, way too much. And that goes beyond whether or not we're actually treating them as they should be treated like equals, like the brilliant engineers they are in the conference rooms. So that's a whole other problem. We need to tackle that too, but we need to at least keep them from saying, “Hey, I’ve got to leave the industry because I got to take care of my kids.” We should be fixing that and we should be fixing that yesterday. JOHN: Yeah, that’s part of bringing your whole self to work is the other selves that you're taking care of. Like, if you can't have that baby on your lap for the meeting, then you're not going be on the meeting and then it's snowballed from there. TIM: Absolutely. Absolutely. When we start coming back, whatever that looks like post-pandemic, think about what they did in World War II and beyond to keep women in working. They had daycares, like the companies had daycares. But why fuck can't we do that now? We have so much money. You mean to tell me Amazon can’t have a daycare at the facilities You mean to tell me that Microsoft can have a daycare facilities? You mean to tell me that fucking WeWork can't have WeWork fucking daycare that companies pay for? Like, there's no reason for it. People just don't want it and it comes down to greed and it’s bullshit. REIN: So maybe now is a good time for us to do reflections. I usually have two things, I guess, that's my pattern now. One is I wanted to point out that Tim said that capitalism and white supremacy are the same thing and I didn't want that one to go under the radar either. If you're a white person who doesn't know what Tim is talking about, I can recommend a book called The Invention of the White Race. Maybe Tim has some of his own recommendations. My reflection is that we have an obligation not just to make it possible for people to exist in the industry, but if we're dragging them through the barbed wire that is this toxic garbage industry, we're hurting them, too and so, our obligation is to make it healthy. JOHN: Yeah, I think that's really just been reinforcing a lot of my own thoughts on things like, I don't know if this is a reflection other than just it's always great to have these kinds of conversations as reminders. These are thoughts that happen, but sometimes they happen in the background or you're not quite sure to connect them to action and continuing to have these conversations to continually remind me what the priorities are and what the other perspectives are is incredibly useful to me. So Tim, if nothing else, I appreciate you spending the time talking with us, talking to me in specific about your perspective on this. So thank you. TIM: I want to take a moment again, to acknowledge and thank you all for giving me a space and a platform. I know it's difficult sometimes to hear criticism especially if you're doing what you think is right for someone to say, “Hey, well, you can do better.” It's hard, but I think it's important for us also acknowledge that growth is uncomfortable. Improvement is uncomfortable. One of the things that I learned in jujitsu, if it has taught me anything and it's something that I've reinforced in my life, is that adversity makes you thrive in some ways. Not adversity for adversity’s sake, but when you exercise harder, you get stronger. If you run faster, run harder to get faster. If you spend more time being crushed under a 300-pound man, you get better at jujitsu. In this context, the more time you spend listening to some of these things, the voice of the people that have been marginalized and it makes you uncomfortable, figure out why it makes you uncomfortable and don't figure out how to disqualify the person talking. Think about why you're uncomfortable, look and uncover the pattern underneath that in yourself and in your world and how you interact with it, and then once you find that pattern, fix the problem. Once you do that, you can then help others do it. But you have to at first be comfortable with being uncomfortable and to do, if there's maybe sound a little cliche, but it's true. If you just run away from that feeling, you're never going to grow, you're never going to improve, and things are never going to get better. JOHN: Thank you so much for coming on the show, Tim. TIM: I appreciate it, John. Thank you all for inviting me. I’m honored and humbled. Special Guest: Tim Banks.

The Zac Cupples Show
Can I Gain Muscle and Move Better? - Michelle Boland, Tim Richardt, Francis Hoare

The Zac Cupples Show

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2021 77:14


Are pursuing better movement and better physiology mutually exclusive? There appears to be a divide between performance and health. Many argue that you cannot get bigger, stronger, faster, while still moving like boss. Others fear pushing heavy weight, relegating their program to mostly ground-based breathing resets. But does it have to be this way? That's the question that Michelle Boland, Tim Richardt, Francis Hoare, and I wrestle with, proving several examples of how this dichotomy is more often than not FALSE! In this podcast, you'll learn: How Francis was able to put on 11 pounds in one year and have better range of motion throughout his body The false dichotomy between performance and health How to increase movement in those who already have lots of muscle mass, but seek to move better and have less pain How the general population can increase fitness, muscle growth, and movement all at once Getting a training effect to those who are in pain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for moving well Are basic resets necessary to maintain movement options? How to balance expansive vs compressive activities Pairing respiration with training How to balance client's wants and needs The big rocks to maximizing movement options How to decide what your body composition should be Ready to move better, get stronger, and become an absolute savage? Look below to watch the interview, listen to the podcast, get the show notes, and read the modified transcripts. Check the video here. Learn more about our guests More Train, Less Pain Podcast - A podcast specifically designed around engineering the adaptable athlete. Michelle Boland Michelle is the owner of Michelle Boland Training which provides many services including, in-person 1:1 training sessions, coaching people remotely, writing training programs, and educational content for fellow trainers and fitness professionals who want to take complex training concepts and turn them into real outcomes for clients. Michelle has a bachelor's degree in Nutrition, a master's degree in Strength and Conditioning, and a doctorate in Exercise Physiology. Michelle was previously a strength and conditioning coach at a Division 1 institution and Director of Education at a private training facility. Instagram: dr.michelleboland Work with Michelle: https://michelle-boland-training.mykajabi.com/Work_With_Me Tim Richardt Tim Richardt is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Strength and Conditioning Coach, and Owner of Richardt Performance and Rehabilitation located in Denver, CO. He specializes in the treatment and preparation of humans that like to run, lift, or play in the mountains. He currently offers personal training, physical therapy, and professional mentorship services.   His website Instagram: @Tim_Richardt_dpt Francs Hoare Francis Hoare is a Performance Coach and the Member Experience Director at Elevate Sports Performance & Healthcare in Las Vegas. He has helped hundreds of people of all ages and abilities improve their health, lives,l and athletic performance. Hitting the path to your goals efficiently requires being specific. Francis excels at creating programs tailored to your needs and goals. If you need someone to hold you accountable with high energy, Francis is one of the best in our industry. His motivational tactics ensure you both get challenged and succeed. When Francis is not coaching, he spends his time with his wife and two daughters, in the mountains or devouring a pint of Ben & Jerry's.   Instagram: @FrancisHoare and @ElevateSPH Show notes Here are links to things mentioned in the interview: Here is Francis' before and after pic [caption id="attachment_13492" align="aligncenter" width="500"] More gains AND better movement? Sold![/caption] Ben House - A master of science and training Mike Israetel - A bodybuilder with a unique approach to getting hyooge! Costa Rica Underground S&C 2018 Retreat Review -  This is what we reference on the bro retreat, where we discuss hypertrophy and more Peep the video below to see how my getting fat took away my squat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEZZEWyBN78 The drunken turtle is a great move to improve backside expansion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjmjUihXtrs Lucy Hendricks - An excellent coach who does a great job of pushing physiology while improving movement options. Bill Hartman - Daddy-O Pops, the godfather of many of the movement concepts we discuss. Georgie Fear - My nutrition coach, and a master of behavior change Modified Transcripts A hypertrophy and movement case study Zac Cupples: How can I get huge as all hell while still moving well? How can I preserve these two qualities? That's why I wanted to bring my boy Francis here. He is a very effective case study of how we were able to do merge these two goals. Here's his story: Francis Hoare:  The last six years, five or six years or so, been doing a lot of running, 35, 40 miles mostly, mostly trail running. I competed in Spartan races, couple 24-hour races in there as well just for fun. I would spend quite a bit of my vacation time, go into places like Yosemite or Glacier National Park and either getting a cabin and going into the parks and doing a lot of hiking and running or backpacking. Because of my exercise choices, I had a fair bit of strength, but more biased toward rock climbing, American Ninja Warrior type stuff, a few lifting sessions per week, and about 8-10 hours of running each week. The issue was this style of training led to my like calves constantly hurting, hips constantly hurting, stuff like that. I was getting burnt out from the running. I decided to take a break, then quarantine it. It was the perfect time to put on some weight! I just met Dr. Zac and instantly, the stuff that he was talking about just captivated me. This stuff was hard. It would torture you, yet at the same time I'd feel good afterwards. I had a pump and felt more mobile. That's where it started. Zac: We spent the first couple blocks testing you and trying a few different interventions just to see what would work. And then- Francis: There was a lot of learn by doing. Because we weren't working with clients during the quarantine, I was able to wrap my head around all this stuff that Zac was talking about. It helped me troubleshoot what areas to improve movement-wise. If there were times where Zac was giving me some high-level stuff, and it just wasn't connecting with me, so we could pull the ropes back and build from the ground up. It was super beneficial as a strength coach. Once our gym, our facility was able to open up, I had a whole new set of tools to work with my members with. Zac: After you built that foundation, you took the concepts and ran with it for yourself. With more of a hypertrophy-focus. Francis: This all started in April. So, I did not rush this process at all, which, which helped me immensely. I knew I wanted to put on weight but didn't have a specific number. I just wanted to feel better and move better. My first girl was learning the basics movement-wise; starting with squatting, tucking, etc. I paired all that with eating more. I was keeping things in the 8-12 rep range, and that's how the process started. Zac: Yeah. And so, I'd say, correct me if I'm wrong, we probably spent a couple months building the movement foundation, and then you just kind of made it more hypertrophy volumes and and intensities for the last four or five months. Francis: No, I think I'm about eight weeks in to, you know, what on paper would look more like a hypertrophy phase, I was able to put on some weight again, just by hitting reps of 8 to 12 and doing new stuff and not running. Zac: Always good. Always good to know. Francis: Late October we really buckled down. Holidays are coming out and I'm going to eat a lot. So, let me take that guilt away from eating a lot by going into an official hypertrophy phase and yeah, all we did was we picked up the movements that we liked, assess how progress was going, and kept it simple over a 4–5-week span. I kept the load down and switched to what I call the 2020 workout—two seconds on the eccentric, two seconds on the concentric, no pausing in between, always staying under tension, never going all the way down or all the way up. You do that for 10 reps, obviously the time should work out to 40 seconds, doing four sets in a row with little rest. I'd do that for my big lift, then do 10 reps of three accessory moves with 30 second's rest. Four more sets of that. So, I'm doing only one movement at a time, knocking out all the sets, then I move on to the next movement. It takes about 30 minutes, which is perfect for my busy work and life schedule. Zac: How much weight have you put on over the year? Francis: 11 pounds so, from 152 to 163. Zac: That's a pretty good change in a year! On my on my end, at least with the movement testing, we had some great changes movement-wise: Hip flexion improved from (left/right) 110 bilaterally to 125/140. Hip internal rotation improved from (left/right) 35/15 to 30/40. Which I'm cool with as it's more symmetrical. I think it was really cool to see because I think a lot of people see this false dichotomy between moving well and getting big. You can only gain muscle by using machines, back squatting, and deadlifting. Yet Francis didn't do a single back squat. Francis: I haven't squatted more than 100 pounds. Zac: But you're doing things well. You're getting tension where you need to get tension. You were able to pack on size without losing movement. In fact, across the board your table measures improved. There may be a path where movement and performance diverge, but not for the overwhelming majority of us. Most of us aren't the elite bodybuilder who is debating whether or not to start using gear. Pursuing hypertrophy and better movement is absolutely doable for the general population. How those with substantial muscle mass can improve movement options Michelle Boland: Why I wanted to jump in this conversation is I want to talk about tearing down vs building up. How do you deal with less loading. I struggle with this personally because of the deep held traditional beliefs and expectations of not only my role as a strength conditioning coach and the years I've spent training. This started with a same as a Francis. Quarantine hit, and I had to think about what my training needed to look like. Evaluate the good and bad. My body shape is closer to a female cross-country runner, I enjoy running, but I went big into the bilateral lifts. Consequently, I've probably kept 12-15 pounds of muscle mass on my frame, past the point of probably where my body wants to be. I shifted to running a bit more and working out from home during the quarantine. Because I didn't track too much, I dropped about 11-12 pounds pretty quickly, and probably all that was muscle mass. This led to feeling some fear of switching my training, but I recognized some mistakes that I've made. My question involves those who have a lot of muscle mass and are currently dealing with aches and pains. If you look at the long game, this may lead to major issues like joint replacements in the future. It's a difficult perspective, but many leaders in the field have been ex-powerlifters who've had a shift in perspective.  What are some strategies these people can employ? I'm sure some muscle mass will be lost in the process, but can they maintain some and move better? Zac: What does it take to grow muscles? The big hypertrophy keys are volume and mechanical tension. That's really it. Kudos to Ben House and Ryan L'Ecuyer for teaching me that. Not once did these two mention back squat or bench press being essential. Hell, even most elite bodybuilders are doing machine-based work. Volume and tension are the key, the modalities are likely irrelevant otherwise. Michelle: Yeah, 100%. Much of what we focus on is isolation exercise to alter position and shape change. One thing I definitely missed was something that Francis stated before, and that's tempos. I think that is a huge factor, especially with pairing movements, simply phases of movements with phases of respiration, the tempo, kind of prescription of exercises is, I think, something that would have maintained kind of gains in something that I'm trying to do now. Francis: And I think stacking helps target the muscles you want better. Squats for example. If you can shift to sandbags and still torch your quads and glutes without back tension, that's a win. Tim Richardt: Another thing that Francis mentioned with what you guys outlined earlier, which I thought was really interesting was just the skew towards higher rep ranges. People talk about getting big, getting strong. 5x5 doesn't quite produce as much of the volume and mechanical tension as the higher rep ranges do. Going after 10, 15, 20 rep maxes lets you maintain movement quality, maintain the stack, and get a lot more of a training stimulus with a lot less of those deleterious secondary consequences that we're trying to step around. Zac: If you don't consider body position, then your only option to create tension is heavy loads. When I was in Costa Rica, I was teaching some bigger dudes the way I coach squatting. Admittedly, I wasn't coaching the squat as well as I am now. I was overtucking and flexing, which led to some trepidation with them. Regardless, with very little weight, their quads were absolutely destroyed. The only other way that sensation could be recreated is through heavy weight. Conversely, we just don't have data to support it one way or another aside from anecdotes. Is the only reason that you got this tension is because it's a novel position that you're not normally in? Or is it we're actually targeting the quads more? That's just something I don't know or have an answer to. What I have seen is those who do a lot of hinge-based work (I consider a back squat along this line) lose movement options. I think to preserve health of the tissues and joints, probably worthwhile to throw in at least some type of stuff that contrasts that. Francis: Depending on the person, I don't think you need to go all one way. If buy-in is limited, then give them a couple breathing resets at the beginning, for their warm up, give them one or two movements to do throughout their set. And take it from there, especially if there's someone who refuses to give up something like deadlifting or back squatting. Try to offset that with their accessory work. Michelle: I think the best thing you can do is every coach needs a coach. My current coach is Eric Huddleston. He's done a great job putting programs together that feed into what I want to be doing and will do. I told him I'm not going to lie on the ground and do resets. Some clients will be that way. ] But he does an amazing, amazing job at creating exercises that just build those concepts in; using tempos paired with phases of respiration; almost like an active reset. With this, I've noticed muscles gains and better movement quality. And he only programs about six exercises per session. The false dichotomy between performance and health Tim: I just want to circle back to something Zac mentioned a couple minutes ago, we have two somewhat incomplete truths. On one hand, we have that being strong is absolutely badass and having some muscle and the ability to produce power is kind of the sign of a healthy human right? It's the strength training is good paradigm. And then there's a lot of people that just say, you know, strength training tightens up joints and muscles, and it leads to an achy, stiff human. And neither of those two statements is completely true nor completely false. It reminds of the interplay between bulking and cutting. For 99.99% of people, it's probably not a thing.  Most individuals tend to be so detrained that they don't need to worry about a specific bulking protocol or cutting protocol. You can do both with intelligent eating and intelligent training. And I think what you guys have outlined is sort of the intelligent eating, intelligent training approach to improving movement options and improving like muscle bulk strength power output concurrently, which is cool. Zac: Even this conversation to some degree is more focused on how coaches can get themselves as jacked as possible. For most of our clients, we are lucky to get them in the gym three times per week! Francis: You definitely have those less dedicated, but I also have people I've trained for years that I'm excited to implement some of this stuff. After the quarantine ended and our gym opened up, we started focusing on stacking; spending a few phases getting good at that. We built our initial phases on that, then were able to focus on more specific qualities. It's not necessarily the what? But the how? And why? And that's where you can get really deep in all this stuff. Tim: And Zac, I might respectfully disagree with the point that you made a couple minutes ago. I think that the people that come to see, you, Francis, Michelle, myself, they tend to be people that are either bad at exercise or just really beat up. If we take those people that have a limited movement option repertoire, and a lot of things are going to hurt, if we can get them a training effect while furthering their movement options, then they don't feel like they're bad at exercise anymore. As opposed to the typical gym where someone might be back squatting on the first day of their program, potentially experiencing pain associated with that.  That's not going to retain clients very effectively. So, I think this stuff really becomes paramount to ensuring a long-term positive client experience. Zac: I would agree with you. Back squats and similar moves have a much higher technical demand than say a goblet squat or a sandbag squat. Francis: You can hand someone a 50-pound sandbag on a ramp, and torch them. It makes your coaching job that much easier. Key performance indicators for better movement Tim: I think one big problem in our industry is not defining terms especially well, this is something that Doug Kechijian talks about all the time where we say things like we want to move well, we don't want to lose motion, but we don't really have a clear idea of what that means. Zac, Francis, what were some of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you tracked every few weeks as Francis was putting on muscle? And how would you recommend people approach that? Zac: Francis is so lucky because I can table test him on a fairly regular basis. The issue with Francis is many of the standing measures I normally recommend he was pretty good it. His toe touch and squat were full. But if you are limited in those moves, you can always pursue getting them better. They can also be a good gauge on if you are going in a good direction or not. Personally, if I get too fat, I lose my ability to squat and I got a really good video of that happening to me. In the video, I was 200 pounds. Fat as shit. It was a Herculean effort to squat below parallel, I just couldn't do it. But now that I'm leaner, I can squat fairly easily. The key KPI is you need to find stuff that you're limited in, and then just recheck that periodically to make sure that you still have that. That could be an Apley's Scratch test where you check shoulder internal and external rotation. If you get bigger and lose motion, that doesn't mean you need to stop pursuing hypertrophy. You just need to change something to restore some of that motion. It could be getting on the ground and doing a reset. Maybe it's re-evaluating your exercise selection. It's not a matter of maintaining certain movements at all times, but can you get into positions that you should be able to. For Francis in particular, we looked at hip and shoulder range of motion predominately. Francis: Trunk rotation was another thing we tracked. But I also didn't have the toe touch down pat. Zac: You didn't? Francis: No, not at first. But an exercise like drunken turtle cleaned most things up fast. It's easy as a coach to check range of motion, but don't be afraid to use your Coach's Eye too. It can be sometimes hard to describe or put KPIs to good movement, but you also kind of know when you see it. I think this better translates to stuff clients care about as well. Zac: Another example, Lucy Hendricks, she went through a phase where her clients were deadlifting a lot, and subsequently lost their ability to perform a loaded squat well. You could use that as a KPI for your clients. Basically, you have to find a movement that is on the cusp of your capabilities, and then you would just continue to recheck that. Tim, in your case, I think a toe touch is a really good move, because you are right on the edge of being able to get that. if you started severely losing that those gains, we might look at making small tweaks to your program to get that better. Pairing resets with heavy lifting Tim: Is there still a time in place for load it up, and then we'll reset it before you leave? Zac: For me, resets are basically regressed versions of positions that you are trying to get into. For example, Michelle is a good mover and well versed in the knowledge realm. She may be able to attain the positions she needs with loaded exercises. If you can stack and achieve a full squat position under load, I don't see a need to drill down to something less than that. Because you can attain the position that you need. But with the people we work with, they don't have that movement capability. So, we have to choose an activity that has more constraints to it, or get them on their back more, because they don't know how to get their bodies in the positions they need to. Francis: We do work with athletes too and sometimes they come to us on a much shorter timeline than we would want. We understand they have to perform. We can't put our vision ahead of them for that if they are close to in-season. Sometimes the priority is pain freedom. If we can get them out of pain, that can increase buy-in and allow us to do what we need them to do. For me, I didn't deadlift for three months. If you had asked me a year ago, what was my best lift? It would have been deadlift. Me stopping deadlifting was trusting my coach. We have to ask where does this person want to go? How quickly? What kind of trust can you build with them and take it from there. There's not necessarily a broad stroke answer there. It definitely needs to be individualized. Zac: it doesn't mean that a deadlift, back squat, and bench press are bad exercises. In fact, they're quite good if you are chasing force production. I'm currently working with an optometrist and in their field, they look at convergence and divergence. Convergence is really focusing in on a specific point, and then divergence would be looking further out. And it was interesting because she was talking about that, I saw a parallel in the movement realm. She noticed that people who are really good at converging have a tendency to sit with their knees together and be more perched and upright, which is, you know, extension, internal rotation, force production-based qualities. People who are better at diverging, looking further out and seeing large amount of space, sit more chill. Divergence is more expansion and external rotation. Vision drives many of our motor responses. When she's prescribing exercises, you can totally work on convergence-based activities. But these moves can be overdone, creating a loss of divergence in the process. I think the movement realm operates similarly. You can do back squat, and you can do deadlifts. And you can do these activities that drive more force production, more internal rotation, more compression, or whatever stuff you want to say. But if that's all that you focus on, you can potentially lose the other side of that equation. It doesn't seem to be the case where if you do a lot of stuff that is more expansion-based that you lose the ability to compress, because Francis can still deadlift a fair amount. We're tweaking some of your techniques, though. Programming improved movement options Tim: Would it be fair to say that if the goal is maintaining or improving movement options, your initial bias and program is going to be towards more squatting and counternutated-types of activities? Zac: Yeah. The only time I won't do that is if a client is pursuing a sport or thoroughly enjoys a bias towards force production For example, I have one guy right now who we're working through some shoulder pain with benching, but he wants to bench and back squat. Cool, you can keep doing that, I'll just tweak everything around that. Now if I have a situation where I have free rein with someone's program, they don't deadlift for the first couple blocks. The reason being is that most people have movement restrictions. My frame of mind is to first improve movement options as much as possible so their movement menu is larger. It seems like starting with a focus on front-loaded squatting, unilateral work, and considering ribcage structure helps with that. Tim: Branching off that topic. Something I've seen Michelle do a lot is pairing different phases of breathing with different phases of motion. Is that something that you've been utilizing with yourself and with clients recently? Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. That's something I've definitely been doing with my clients and also doing on my own training. It's made a dramatic impact in how I feel. I think the key with implementing is marketing appropriate expectations and linking these activities towards the client's goals and how it can benefit them. Zac: Could you expand upon that, Michelle? Michelle: It's not that we're doing it bad. We just have to indentify our ideal clientele, and make sure I provide a clear message on how I train and what people can expect from me. By doing that, the people who approach working with me have changed. I think I just got better at talking to people about reaching their goals, while also including maybe some other factors with that. Zac, I think you do probably one of the best jobs at that; talking to people who want performance gains but also addressing any nagging aches and pains. Being clear that training or lifting weights doesn't have to hurt. The mainstream fitness industry doesn't seem to think that way. Tim: I think, you know, I think it's really interesting because when I think when Zac and I first got into the field of physical therapy, what, six, seven years ago, there was still a pretty big bifurcation between strength coaches and therapists, there weren't a lot of therapists that were strength coaches or word trainers. I mean, one doesn't even come to mind. It's positive to see both of these fields merging together, and starting to view training and rehab as the same thing, just different points on the same exact continuum. We are less in silos. We don't worry about waiting until table tests are perfect before training, yet we also don't let people go back squat until their eyes bleed. I think everybody has a much better appreciation of what loaded activities might do to a person's range of motion, as well as what ranges a person might need in order to do the activities they want. Francis: We see a lot of people who had a coach or doctor say they can't do an activity. We rephrase that by saying we can help you get there. We may need to shelve it now and work on a few other things first, then go from there. Seeing the look of relief of rewarding. We are either here to help people enjoy their life better or perform better depending on what exactly they're after. For us at elevate, it's all about physical freedom, and not telling people no, but telling them Yes. Zac: if you can keep that end goal in mind and relate activities to that goal, then it's more likely that that person is going to be up to doing things that maybe aren't as sexy, like being on your back and doing breathing exercises, or not back squatting. Francis: Or just training more. I f we get you out of pain, your likelihood of training more goes through the roof, and then your likelihood of success of success goes through the roof. Zac: You can't hit volume and mechanical tension if you can't train. Michelle: Yeah, that's, that's a difficult one. If people aren't coming to see me, you know, they're probably not training. So, getting in people in the gym for training sessions, multiple times a week can be a big challenge with a lot of general population clients. I'll just talk about myself. if I go to a physical therapist, I have a certain expectation of what that session is going to be like, versus coming to see your strength conditioning coach, I personally get a lot of people who really hard workouts. There are different expectations in those realms. Zac: Francis does a really good job with classes and custom training of marrying those two things where you can give someone a really good training effect, while still helping them favorably movement-wise. Francis: Yeah, just if you communicate with them and check to make sure they're feeling the right things, you can make all this stuff incredibly taxing and difficult in the moment for sure. They might scoff at you because they're moving less weight than what they're used to, but wait to see how they feel with it. Conversely, if they come in and they're strong. Don't be so set in your ways that you don't give them heavier weight. But that's always our job's challenge; getting people to do the right things but be happy with what they're doing. You just have to be on top of it and have conversations with your clients. Explain the “why.” Though it can be hard in classes or small group sessions. The harder it can be explaining what's going on. If it's someone new, you might have to give him a call or text after the session. Finishers and conditioning sets at the end are always a good way to get them. A couple minutes on the assault bike does wonders. Michelle: I think that's a huge point. Clients remember what you sent them home with. Francis: It helps them walk out of your session with them feeling like they achieved something. Tim: It seems like the programming keys then include: Squats Unilateral activities Alternating activities Slower tempos The stack Are there any other major keys? Zac:  Ideally, with all of the tenants that Tim outlined so eloquently, you should be doing some type of breathing during specific components. Generally, that'll involve inhaling during the eccentric, and exhaling during the concentric. But you have to look at what you are specifically trying to make eccentric? What are you trying to make concentric? Suppose I'm doing a lat pulldown. Generally, we would exhale on the pull and inhale on the way up. Well, what if my predominant limitation is actually expansion on the opposite side? Well, I could totally inhale as I pull down to open that up. But for the overwhelming majority of people, that could be a little bit too into the weeds. I probably program that more with coaches than general population. For them, it's stack, full breath excursions during iso holds, then inhale on the eccentric, exhale on the concentric. But, Michelle, I'd be curious to hear how you're incorporating phases of respiration into some of the training stuff that that you're talking about? Michelle: You hit it on the head. I'm just making sure that people are going through phases of respiration that mimic their phases of movement. So, it's the eccentric concept that you just mentioned, and then have been messing around with a lot of inhaling the top position, holding my breath down, exhaling up, just kind of getting more into that and getting my clients used to it. So, adding more and more as I go and progressing with that stuff over time. Zac: How about yourself, Tim? Tim: I think that's a really interesting idea, Michelle. I so I guess the notion there would be that you're trying to create a bunch of expansion before you go into the range of motion that you're trying to load? Michelle: Yeah, I'll have to give my coach Eric credit for that. We do a lot of oscillating isometrics—dropping an object and going to the bottom catching it. And a lot of is inhaling on the top, holding my breath down, and then exhaling up and pausing at the bottom. So, I think it's finishing that yielding strategy. So, I'll definitely give him credit for introducing me to that. Tim: With my own training, I focus on getting full respiratory excursion through a range of motion. It seems most folks are just bracing and then like getting a little bit of airflow in whatever area we tend to be more hyper mobile at. So, slowing things down, which again, that tempo helps with and actually. Also focusing on global ribcage expansion with whatever you are doing. Zac: I think another thing that's vastly underutilized if you need to get extra volume, is machines and blood flow restriction training. Both are awesome ways to incorporate volume, especially if you get someone who has a low movement menu to choose from. This is especially true if you have someone post-op or morbidly obese. So, Tim, how are we going to get you huge? Tim: I think personally the passion lies in moving very quickly up mountains. So probably we're looking to keep me tiny yet powerful so that I can charge you up some tall stuff and hopefully not perish. Zac: That's reasonable. Well, that makes sense since you said that my 13,000-foot climb was nothing! Tim: And not to talk shit on your 13,000-foot climb. I think it's so complex man. Zac: Yeah, you totally talk shit. That's fine. Ask Francis, I'm probably one of the biggest shit talkers out there. Tim: Selfishly, I'm just trying to get you out to Colorado. Deciding on body composition goals Zac: When do you decide that you need to get bigger and when do you decide that you need to get leaner? I talked with my nutrition coach Georgie Fear. If you're not following her, you should, she's really intelligent. We got myself to a point where I'm fairly lean. And it's like, where do I go from here? And she had a really good point of does your body do all the things that you want it to do? Tim, in your case, if you're trying to climb mountains, do you need to put on more or less muscle mass to be able to do that and then just let the ascetics do what they need to do? I'd be curious to hear everyone's thoughts. Francis:  If I go back to running, I'll wonder how I'll feel about things body-wise. Michelle: Aesthetics really isn't my goal. It's more of how I feel and how I perform. I think it's just kind of what you're used to. You get used to certain body image looking at yourself. Since my frame is small, missing 11 pounds is a very noticeable difference. But I think that was because of my reduced fitness that happened over quarantine. I needed to get back on a training regimen. Surprisingly, I was still capable of moving a lot of weight. I think I just needed to build consistency. My bodyweight is back down to undergrad size, but I'm still capable of moving weight. But now, I can recover a lot faster compared to when I prioritized the barbell. Sum up Performance and health can be pursued simultaneously if you use volume, tension, and good exercise selection Intensity can help muscle-bound folks move better Pursue many expansive-based exercises to offset compressive-based exercises Emphasize stacking, single arms reaches, and more to preserve movement.

Access Points Podcast
Identifying and Resolving Problems: Default Aggressive

Access Points Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2021 29:24


Imagine getting a call in the middle of the night telling you that the hospital is going down because of your product, that’s a tough blow!    Although this type of scenario is the most terrifying for entrepreneurs, taking aggressive actions before any possible threat arises allows you to build the most robust and most trusted product the market has ever had.   In today’s episode of the ACCESS Points Podcast, Tim and Davin will talk about the default aggressive mindset that they had in 2020. Having the vision to see the potential of their product, they will discuss how their team at ACCESS has taken a proactive approach to identifying and resolving problems in 2020 - DEFAULT AGGRESSIVE.   Enjoy!   In This Episode   2:54 - How ACCESS EFM took advantage of the timeout in 2020   3:54 - A good analogy of effectively utilizing downtime   6:45 - Why looking back on the process of improving your operation is scary   9:57 - The mindset young entrepreneurs must have   14:44 - What makes Tim sleep better at night   17:13 - Why ACCESS’ cash flow has been performing well despite the unprecedented event such as the pandemic   19:04 - The difference between the income and the outgo it terms of budget   23:12 - Tim's advice to entrepreneurs on dealing with their operators     Favorite Quotes "To the entrepreneurs listening to me, it's important that you work so closely with your operators that they understand your vision, that you're in agreement of where you want to be a year, two years from now. If your operator does not understand the vision, clearly they can't do their job. And boy, from a financial standpoint, that can wreck you fast." - Tim   "It was a year and a half ago, we really ran some analysis on what the product needed. We did tons and tons of testing, load testing, and looked at bugs. We spent a lot of money, a lot of effort on trying to find out what that was. Then to be able to go through this last year and take this time of kind of downtime of really digging in and saying, “let's do some of the hard work and some of the heavy lifting now that we can take a breath and let's push a little bit." That's exactly what we did." - Tim   "As the operator for the company,  as the owner for the company, seeing that capital go out and not a whole lot of cash flow coming back in as we paid for these big endeavors with some of the partners that we were working with to assess stability, to assess bugs, to assess integration and security, it was scary." - Davin   "What's beautiful about it is when you finally get done, you're able to see things differently. When we talked specifically about the product, we now know that the base of this thing. The core of our product is probably the best it's ever been, the most stable and the most robust. It's got the building now to change so much in the future to be what we need to be." - Tim   "Being default aggressive, you can't rely on being scared. Once you decide to move forward, you can't be scared. You have to move forward and you have to do that with vigilance and you have to be smart about it. But at same time, sometimes you just have to go. And nine times out of 10, we've been successful doing that." - Tim   "Having the vision to know that all this work that our engineering team and our product manager were putting in all this work was going to pay off because we knew that there was demand for it. Our partner knew the demand for it. But to get the product where it needed to be both for our partner and for the customer, we knew that it was going to pay off. So as an entrepreneur, we’ve got a bunch of expenses coming out, but I know that there's a return coming.” - Tim   "The ability to pivot fast as a small organization is the lifeblood of who we are. The number one competitive edge we have, that is to see a market change, to see a need and a demand, and be able to pivot and meet that." -Tim   "My dad told me one time, Son cash flow first profitability second. They're not the same thing." - Tim   "Literally doing every single thing that we possibly can to be secure for ourselves and for our clients, makes me feel good about our company. It makes me feel good about myself. It makes me feel good about the product that we're putting out super important." - Tim   "Even in the best of economic conditions, understand your operating expenses, understand what cash do you need to come in in order to be able to meet that and what cash needs to come in to be able to hit your gross margin and understand that there are areas that you can trim, be it in technology, be it in platforms, be it maybe in people." - Davin   "There are a thousand different things that you can do to be able to get lean now. But budget heavy, put a lot of time and investment into understanding what your budget looks like for the year, understand what your expenses are going out, and understand the cash flow that you need to come in to break even and to meet that margin. Then just stay the path and operate to that." - Davin   Visit Access EFM: Website Facebook LinkedIn Twitter   Click here to listen with Access Points Podcast      

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan
How this silkworm startup is taking on the pandemic

Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2020 32:52


Bio-tech is messy because life is complicated. A lot of attention is given to computers sequencing genomes, but some of the most advanced and important work is done by studying and using other living things to make our own lives better. Kenta Yamato co-founded Kaico to commercialize a technique that uses silkworms to manufacture small-batch custom proteins. And Kico is involved with everything from veterinary medicine to Japan's search for a coronavirus vaccine. We also talk about the challenges or creating startups based on university technology and the one e-commerce model in Japan that just won't go away. I think you'll enjoy the conversation. Show Notes How to get proteins from a silkworm (It's not fun for the silkworm) Why silkworms, in particular, must be used The importance and uses of small-batch, custom proteins The start of a silkworm startup The most common (and least successful) Japanese e-commerce model Why it's so hard for Japanese universities to spin-out startups How Kaico silkworms are part of the fight against covid-19 How to scale a silkworm startup Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Kaico Friend Kenta on Facebook Connect with him on LinkedIn A Kaico video explainer Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Today, we're going to be talking about worms. No, no, wait, don't go, I promise this is going to be really interesting. Today, we're going to sit down and talk with Kenta Yamato of Kaico, a Kyushu-based startup that is using silkworms to rapidly produce custom small-batch innovative proteins that are used for bio-research, medicine, and they play a part in Japan's search for coronavirus vaccine. It's a fascinating process but admittedly one that's not particularly fun for the silkworms themselves. We also talk about the most popular and most unsuccessful e-commerce business model in Japan, the challenges Japanese universities in spinning out startups, and we even cover some practical solutions to that problem. But you know, Kenta tells that story much better than I can, so let's get right to the interview. Interview Tim: So I'm sitting here with Kenta Yamato of Kaico, a company that uses silkworm to produce specific protein used in medical tests and vaccine, and thank you for sitting down with me. Kenta: Yes, thank you for me and I have a very pleasure to explain our company's story. Yeah, thank you very much. Tim: It's great to have you on the show. I tried to explain very briefly what Kaico does, but I think you can explain it a lot better than I can, so at like a high level, what does Kaico do? Kenta: We started Kaico two years ago in 2018. Kaiko means silkworm in English. Maybe you know silkworm can make silk for clothes, but we will use this kaiko silkworm for making proteins. We are a startup company from Kyushu University and our products are many proteins, the protein the other companies cannot make because it is difficult to make it. We make this protein by silkworm. Tim: So if I understand the basic process, you inject the silkworm with a virus containing the target gene, and then it makes the proteins as part of its silk, and then you extract the proteins from the silk? Kenta: No, no. First, we'll incorporate the gene of target protein into baculovirus, so this baculovirus is safe for us humans and animals, but baculovirus damage to only silkworms and we will insert this recombinant baculovirus into silkworm and their body can make the specific protein in their cell, and finally, we'll collect and purify the body liquid from the silkworm. Tim: Okay, so it's not from the silk, it's from the silkworms themselves that you extract the proteins. Kenta: Yes, we don't use silk. Tim: Okay. So why silkworm? Is there something about silkworms that makes it easy to generate protein...

Find The Outside
2.20: Woven: Staying Interconnected

Find The Outside

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2020 31:31


In season two’s final episode, Tim and Tuesday wrap up by offering a piece of advice: stay woven! Stay woven with the people you care about, stay woven with the people you work with and pay attention to how woven and connected you are in your communities. And if you notice someone falling away, weave them back in! Keep weaving the world events into our everyday living. These times demand all of us together meeting these times.Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.2.20 — SHOW NOTESTues: This week on the podcast we are talking about being woven… being woven together as Outsiders, and as a team, being woven together with our clients a little bit in this changing context and then making sure our work is woven and meeting what is happening in the external world.Tues: I am feeling that Tim and I are quite well woven together. I am feeling good about where we are in partnership with this business and my experience of that is simply a re-weaving or re-knitting together, in the past couple weeks, that make us quite strong and smooth. Tim: This is our final podcast of this season… and I like the idea of woven as well as it brings together many of the topics we’ve been talking about over the last two seasons and that feels right - what’s happening between us, what’s happening in the world, what’s happening in our team and in relationship to the people we work with. It feels like a good way to end talking about things being woven, and how they are woven and how well they are woven and how we weave each other together and how important that is when you are working remotely. The quality of attention and alertness we need to have to our relationships so that we can deliver on the work that is at hand is heightened. We’ve always said that relationships equal results. I think that is even more true in terms of being able to deliver results when you are not able to take a walk that morning together or whatever else it might be that you need to do to sustain your relationships. It’s that intention and aspiration to pay attention to each other. Tues: I did this work to be in partnership with you and the work is better when we’re in it together. This idea of distance - we can’t in the same way know what is up for each other. I wonder if there is some inevitable moving apart in this remote way of working that then says what are your practices for coming back together?Tim: When we are working remotely, and in technical web-based spaces, we also need to pay attention to the conditions we put in place for people to connect and contribute. There is a personal reaching out and paying attention to relationship but a lot of what we are doing is tech upgrade. How do you create the ease between people of reaching out to each other to keep everyone connected in? Tues: We were able to get by on good equipment until that was “the way” of being together. We are making it possible for our physical bodies to connect more. Tim: Yeah, can you have a set-up that allows you to relax and be online? Find your techie mate and have them help you to set up an environment to be conducive to being relaxed into online spaces. It’s a big deal when running online meetings and to organize effectively. The other thing I am realizing is one-on-one conversations still need to happen to build the relationship. This also requires effort and planning and it is part of the work. Tim: It’s wild out there, mate and that’s another reason to stay woven. It feels stressful. Meg [Wheatley] also says when the shit hits the fan, “people turn to each other.” That is why this species has managed to evolve. When things get hard, we turn to each other. Tim: If there is one piece of advice in our final podcast episode, as all of us head through the summer and into the Fall and Autumn, it’s stay woven. Stay woven with the people you’re caring about, stay woven with the people you’re working with to deliver the things that matter to you in the world, pay attention not just to the inevitable pivot and thrust of energy we all need to create to get through re-entering our work spaces in new ways but also pay attention to how woven we are and how connected we are as teams and caring members of communities. Tues: This particular moment is calling for a re-weaving or different kinds of weaving that we haven’t had to access before. Most of us haven’t had to do this kind of online life before. There is also the larger movement of breaking down of systems and seeing the brokenness of systems that I think also will require a re-weaving. As you think about staying woven, find new ways to weave and then also look for opportunities to re-weave. Tues: My uncle Chucky was very active in SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), so I can go to historical news reels and find mention of him and what he did and read his story. This makes me think of what my grandkids will ask of this time and what we did and how we were and will I be proud of how we/I responded? Tim: There is something about looking back and understanding the complexity of our heritage and our lineage that contributes to our ability to be here now. Tues: I feel like we all have to do that. We all have to know where we’re coming from to point where we’re going. Tim: For those of you who dane to tune in to us, we are grateful. Thank you for joining us. We will continue thorough the summer through a vlog series. You will find us on Facebook and Instagram for that. You will get to meet the members of The Outside team. The podcast will start up again this Autumn - let us know if there are things you want to hear in Season 3 or things you want us to go deeper into. Song: “Abebrese” by Ebo Taylor.Poem: “Turning to One Another” by Margaret Wheatley, “Turning to One Another,” 2002There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about. Ask “What’s possible?” not “What’s wrong?” Keep asking.Notice what you care about.Assume that many others share your dreams.Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. Talk to people you know.Talk to people you don’t know.Talk to people you never talk to.Be intrigued by the differences you hear.Expect to be surprised.Treasure curiosity more than certainty.Invite in everybody who cares to work on what’s possible. Acknowledge that everyone is an expert about something. Know that creative solutions come from new connections.Remember, you don’t fear people whose story you know. Real listening always brings people closer together.Trust that meaningful conversations can change your world. Rely on human goodness. Stay together.Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com. Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.Duration: 31:31Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Business Built Freedom
148|How to Restructure Your Business With Tim Wilshire

Business Built Freedom

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2020 54:04


How to Restructure Your Business With Tim Wilshire Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. We've got an awesome guest for you, we've got Tim Wilshire here, who is a networking number cruncher who podcasts people's perspectives. We've got him on to talk about how to restructure your business and when the right time is to do that. So Tim, first question, how do you know when to do that? I know you've come across businesses that are started as sole traders and other businesses are looking for asset separation and all sorts of stuff. How do you know when the right time is? Tim: Okay. Thanks very much, Joshua and hello listeners. But as far as restructuring is concerned, obviously, one thing that I've done plenty of over the last 20 years at my business is restructuring our clients from one structure to another. I guess, like a lot of the answers to questions these days, the answer is, it depends. Okay? You're probably hearing that quite a lot, this is the new 2020 thing, it depends. So it depends on what the different situation is. So if they're in the wrong structure to begin with, and it's not expensive to change them into the correct structure, that's usually a good time to restructure. So let's say they're a sole trader, let's say they've been going in business for a very short space of time and income is starting to come in the door, something that may potentially sell one day, then you can no longer be a sole trader anymore. It doesn't make sense to stay being a sole trader because number one, you're not protecting your assets. If you've got assets in your own personal name, all of a sudden those assets are at risk and the more at risk, the more risky behaviour that you're doing, the more at risk those assets are when you're a sole trader, so that's definitely a time to look at structures. If you're not out of the sole trader structure, get out of that particular structure. And there are two alternatives that we sort of look at, whatever the structuring is, do you want to try it as a company or do you want to trade as a trading trust? Or a combination of both types of structure as well. So that's one, I guess, time where it's quite common when it comes to restructuring. Another time might be, okay, I'm in the trading trust at the moment, but I'm basically making too much money and it's no longer viable, unless I've got a company structure. A company structure meaning, I can type my money and I can grow the business. So, a trading trust structure may no longer be applicable to those circumstances because, selling the business because you have less options. If you're in a company structure, you've got more options, easier ways to add and subtract business partners, shareholders, et cetera. If it's a trading trust, usually good for a smaller operation, up to a couple hundred thousand dollars of profit. Once you get beyond that, a company is certainly worth considering. So that's another time to consider, okay, what's it going to cost to restructure from that structure to that? What are all the processes that I need to do? It doesn't make sense to do that. So that's probably the two main ones you're sort of looking at changing structure because of the circumstances, the current structure don't fit what you're currently doing, and your medium to long term objective. Josh: And when you say trading trust, a discretionary trust and trading trust are the same thing? Tim: Yep, yes, exactly. Josh: Cool. So, you then have cascading setups where you have trusts that own companies, which I think you touched on a little bit there. And then you have companies that are sitting by themself and then you have some people that have multiple companies and asset companies, asset protection. Why would you have that? Tim: The larger you get us as an operation, the more it makes sense to. I'm not saying complicate things, but the more it makes sense to just do things that are going to protect yourself in the best way, shape or form. What you do see from time to time, not for every client, obviously, but once the clients get big enough, they might have one entity that's the training entity and then they might have another entity that basically looks after all the assets. Those items also, you might be paying staff. How do you pay staff in the most tax effective manner? And why would you do it, not in the trading company? Separation, if you're big enough, certainly justifiable. You just got everything in one trading company basket and you're growing and growing and growing, to me, you need to review that structure and you need to say, okay, well, what can we do to better utilise what's going on there? So certainly if you've got clients that are big enough that are turning over more than a couple of million dollars a year, really need to review their structures and say, okay, well, are we in the right sort of structure? Is there something going on that we can do a bit more separation? Can we protect our assets better than what they are? The moment it's all in one basket, and that company goes down, then what? What's the plan of attack if that were to happen? If you've got another company over here doing something, important stuff, whatever, you might be able to drop one or the other. So it just gives you a few more options. Yes, it's more of a cost. Yes, it's more of an administration to be able to manage more than one, but at least you're doing things. Separating and separating the risks. Josh: Okay. And you've talked about going forward, bigger, better, or potentially more complication and more administrative overhead. Is there any times that you would be pulling that back in? Going from a company structure and then going back to a sole trader or something like that. Tim: You never go back to a sole trader, unless you're not really running a business anymore. But you may sort of downsize your operations in it, if you've got too many different structures. And I'm thinking of a client right now who had way too many different things going on, different trusts. Once you stop using that particular trust, you can close it down, sort of get rid of it. So obviously if it's not getting used, get rid of it. You should be able to probably get rid of the different things that aren't getting used properly. Obviously if your sales are coming down, you're sort of downsizing the business, getting rid of staff for whatever reason, because you're downsizing the business. And then do you need that if there's no staff? I mean, all of a sudden you don't necessarily need that. Josh: Who opens the conversation to the structure? Is this something that people should be already aware of themself, where they're talking to their accountant about it, or does the accountant say, "Hey, look, you've turned over a million dollars as a sole trader, something's not adding up here. Let's look to restructure this." Or is this something that they sort of need to jump on their own steam? Or maybe they're listening to the podcast to work out the answer. But who should be opening up that conversation? Tim: I think us, as accountants and advisors, should be opening up that conversation with our clients. We've got to be proactive, we've got to see where the opportunities exist for those clients to get things right. And we've got to take advantage of those opportunities. So get the clients to think that they need to take advantage to get those opportunities. Josh: For us, I started off as the transitioning periods, as you've said, is pretty much what we did. So when everyone was 14 and nine months old and they were off getting their McDonald's job, I was getting my tax file number and registering my first ABN number. So as a sole trader, I started off just on 15 and continued through as a sole trader for a few years until I had the trust and then the company trusts and then the company trusts and then another company, to have asset protection. And then another company again, which was around some of the different grants and advantages that you can have that are pushed out to companies that are not trading as a trust. You can optimise your tax with multiple businesses and structures, but what would be the reason you'd want to have more than one company? If not for asset protection or a government grant or something like that. Tim: Why would you have more than one? Obviously, if you've got more than one business operation actually going, you want to separate them in different trading locations. There might be one location here, there might be one location there, it doesn't always make sense to put them in the same envy. That way, if things can be sold separately, you want to be able to treat them separately. Every different division of the business, you probably should have it in its own entity. And you should try to steer away from grouping them together as well. The reason you don't want to group them together is, it's definitely more messy when it comes to returning your tax. Also, if you've tried to group GST, that's messy. And also if you're grouping them, then you're losing out on some benefits sometimes as well. A good example is the government's recent cash flow boost. If you've got just one company, then you're only going to get one lot of cashflow boosts. Whereas if you've got two companies, you're going to get more benefits rather than just one. Josh: Fair enough. And you did touch on something there about if it's being sold. So when it comes down to exit strategies, if people are looking to sell their business, when's the right time to restructure. When is the right time? You don't want it to look like you've cooked the books or changed the books around or done something funky. You want to make sure there's some historical evidence there that the business is profitable, that everything is going as you would expect it to be. When is the right time to restructure if you are looking towards an exit? Tim: You don't necessarily want to restructure until it's no longer useful. So it doesn't make sense to restructure too soon. So make sure you get to what you're trying to do before you make that choice cutting these off. Josh: So, the main reasons you'd restructure is risk mitigation, tax optimization, and to allow for things to be sold off more easily or divided out. Is that right? Tim: Yeah, I guess all the reasons that I've sort of gone through. Growing, make sure you're structuring correctly, protecting your assets. You need to minimise tax, exactly what you said. And when it comes to the next step, you get to another step, keep reviewing. What's the benefit of bringing in another entity? And everything else that we've sort of discussed there as well. Are we running more than one business operation and can we separate them out? I see clients that shove three different car washes into one entity. They're all at different locations, it doesn't make sense. Josh: I'm going to say something that I think a lot of people, maybe even yourself, are going to disagree with. Companies are generally pretty straightforward to set it up. There's not too many things you can stuff up. If there's one company and then there's another company, the company as the Pty LTD, decides the division of shares and the amount of directors, et cetera, et cetera. The actual company itself, is a reasonably straightforward container. Tim: Well, I guess it's very easy to set companies up, yes. Making sure that it's set up right still requires a bit of skill. Who are the shareholders? The shareholders are a very important part of the company and how those shares are owned are very, very important. Putting mum and dad as a shareholder is not always the best way to do it. So is setting up a trust to own the shares, a better option? That's usually what we'd recommend. We'd say, look, you should want more flexibility. It's not owned by you as an individual, it's in the trust. Then we're talking asset protection 101, as far as making sure that things are done right. Josh: When it comes down to a trust though, it seems like there's a bit more of a grey area than a company. It seems that whenever I've gone to a bank or any lending Institute, they hear that you're running under a trust, they seem to think there's more complication. How come trusts inherently appear to be more complicated than a company? Tim: I mean, with trusts, once you sort of whirl into it, it's probably not as common. To some, it may not be as complicated as what you may think. So obviously it's a great structure. We're talking about protecting assets, we're talking about planning the long term beneficiaries, kids, children, that all make sense to find out about what all the particular roles are. You just need to know what those roles actually are in a trust, and a lot of people don't know about that unless they read it. So once there's a bit of understanding, then you say, well, this is not as bad as what we thought. But again, it's complicated because it's obviously different to that of an individual sole trader, different to a partnership, different to a company. So I guess that's the stigma behind it, that it is more complicated. Just requires a bit of understanding in order to make it not feel as complicated as what its outward appearances would suggest. Josh: Were they more open to abuse in the past? Or has that been sort of tightened down a bit? Tim: Self-assessment is obviously huge. So, there's a lot of trust given to people to do the right thing. And when it comes to trust, there's no exception. So just because you set up a trust, doesn't mean you're going to get an audit or anything like that. Obviously, the audits flags are going to arise if things just don't match up or add up when the ATO are looking at the back system. The government from time to time, have said they don't want trusts, but they've never done anything about that. The labour government, before the last election, tried to make some fairly drastic changes. I guess that's where we are with that at the moment. It's not like it hasn't flown under the radar, but they haven't done anything about it. Josh: What would be the advantages to not having the structure, where you have a company and then a trust and instead, you're just running solely as a company? Tim: You're talking about the shareholder situation and also the difference between having a trust as a shareholder and having an individual as a shareholder. So, the biggest issue with having an individual as a shareholder is, company makes money, makes a lot of money, it pays all its tax, there's only one person that can actually end up with that dividend. If they want to declare a dividend or get forced to declare a dividend in some cases, then that goes to one person's particular taxable income. And that could really jump their income quite high, depending on when and how they have to deal with that situation and the profit and all that sort of stuff. Whereas a trust, at least you got more flexibility. You've got the flexibility to look at the rest of the family group. Can we allocate that dividend to somebody who's on a lower tax income? It makes sense. Three or $400 you spend extra to set up a trust. It's worth it because, yes, you might have to do some dividends and you might have to split that and do another tax return but at the end of the day, it will more than pay for itself. Josh: So if I was to be a single bachelor or bachelorette and have no one that I can distribute anything to, have no business partners, I own 100% of the shares, still having it through a discretionary trust, would still put an extra level of protection there. Tim: It does protect the amount of assets that are attributed to yourself because it's a trust that owns the company. That means that, that's not a personal asset that belongs to you. Whereas if you were the only shareholder, whatever the equity in that company, is effectively your asset. If the trust has that there, then if it's not your personal asset, so it usually can be helpful in things like bankruptcy. Josh: Okay, cool. Well, I think anyone out there that's still scratching their head and has a bit of confusion, definitely make sure to contact Tim Wilshire. He'll be able to bring some clarity and hopefully leave you with the aha moments on how things should be set up. If you want more information or want to hear more about what Tim's doing there, jump onto his podcast from the Valley. We're going to chuck some links in there so that you can check out the website, check out his podcasts and find out what you're doing wrong and how to restructure your business. Tim: Appreciate you doing this, Josh. There's something I just wanted to finish off with. In 2020, and as it was in 2014 or 2015, if you're going into business with somebody else, set it up as a company. Yes, the shares held 50/50 by different trusts or what have you, but if you go into business with somebody else, make sure it's a company. It just allows a lot more flexibility, allows a lot more growth. It sort of ticks off all the common goals that two partners going into business should be looking at when they go into business together. Josh: If you were having a Pty or LTD and you had a couple of business owners, is there a restriction or any complication if you had one of those business owners that were not from Australia? Tim: We have clients where company's are wholly owned by overseas companies, it's always possible. What's required is, the operation to be here at the central management. So the central management being in Australia, one of the directors must be an Australian resident. That's the requirement. The shares can be owned 100% by overseas entities, or 50/50 here. Josh: That's good to know. Hopefully anyone out there that is thinking about their structure, has had that aha moment and is thinking a little bit more about it, how to set it up properly and yeah, jump down to you guys to get it all sorted. Tim: Thank you very much. Josh: Cool. Well, anyone out there in podcast land, if you've enjoyed this, make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us a review, give us some love and stay healthy. Stay good in this COVID climate.

Hitting The Mark
Tim Dodd, Co-Founder & CEO, Sweet Flower

Hitting The Mark

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2020 53:24


Learn more about Sweet FlowerDue to COVID-19 we are no longer asking for financial support for the show, instead you can now join free mentorship group calls with Fabian to get through this together. Join here.Full Transcript:F Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Tim.T. Dodd:Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. First off, I hope you're safe during what is being seen as the peak week of the coronavirus here in LA, I guess. Thank you for taking time-T. Dodd:Yeah.F Geyrhalter:Yeah. It's crazy right now. It's crazy.T. Dodd:It's frightening. It's alarming for us all. We are safe. Thank you. As an essential business, we remain open, which has been great. We've done a lot of things in the store to make sure that people... In all of our stores that people are safe, and our customers and our team. We've gone through lots of different training. We've done lots of different things in terms of providing people with safe access to supplies, and gloves, and masks, and of course we were I think the first actually in Los Angeles, or even in southern California to instigate curbside pickup and contactless delivery.T. Dodd:We've been rolling that out, and it's been going very well. There's a strong demand for people. People are at home. They're stressed out. They're scared, et cetera, and they feel the need for the products that we offer, for cannabis, and so we're really trying to provide that in the safest and most responsible way that we can here until the social distancing guidelines, et cetera as well. It's been I'd say a pretty challenging few weeks, but I look at the good side here.T. Dodd:We are still open, which is great. We're still providing jobs for our team, and we're still providing an essential service to our customers. How crazy is it that this is now an essential service?F Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. Just think about that two years ago.T. Dodd:I've always thought that, but it's pretty cool that that's now part of this. It's interesting. It's been a really fast evolution in our customer behavior and our store behavior. We've pivoted really quickly, so my hat is off to our wonderful team of Sweet Florists in all the stores.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, absolutely. How difficult was it to fully embrace the home delivery system? Was that something that you already worked on prior? Being in LA, I'm pretty sure you're pretty tech forward.T. Dodd:Yeah, luckily we had. We had started delivery several months ago. It was not a core focus of our brand. Our brand is really about providing the high-touch service in-store, but we had decided luckily to move into delivery Q3 of last year, and really to have that as an expansion of our brand footprint beyond the stores to people's homes. It's asking the ultimate permission. You're coming to someone's house to provide them a service.T. Dodd:You're coming to their front door, and they're giving you their gate code, and all that stuff. Particularly in Los Angeles, we have all that stuff. We have a lot of things that are... There's a lot of permissions involved in that, social permission that's unusual. You're basically bringing drugs to someone's home. Obviously when you think about that, you're like, "Okay, we do really want to do with our best foot forward." We started that last year, at the back part of last year.F Geyrhalter:That's very forward thinking.T. Dodd:Yeah, and we had the tech tools in place. Most of us have got some tech backgrounds, either from the business side or from actually on the dev side. We worked with [inaudible 00:03:52]. Someone actually put a company called Onfleet in the middle of all that. Onfleet allowed us to... Which is an app that's used by lots of different delivery services, but it allowed us to provide a much higher touch.T. Dodd:Customers can text the driver anonymously, "Hey, I'm here. How far away are you?" Et cetera. The driver can text back or call back, even. Or people at home base can do that. We put that all together. It's a very good system. It's worked really well. Frankly, we were, I want to say prepared, but we obviously had a leg up as this all started to unfold the way it did. We quickly took everything that we had in place, and we simply amplified it. We brought on more drivers. Investing in the human capital here is really important.T. Dodd:We brought on more drivers. We made sure that the drivers were safe, first and foremost that they felt secure in what they were doing, provided them with gloves and masks and hand sanitizer inside the car. Hand sanitizer is still a really hard thing to get, so that was difficult.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, absolutely.T. Dodd:Just give me one second. Just [inaudible 00:05:09], okay? Matthew, I'm on a call, okay? Please. Thanks. Sorry. My son was [inaudible 00:05:20].F Geyrhalter:That's okay.T. Dodd:Those things are still difficult to get, so we did all those things. Then since then, we've seen a marked increase in delivery. We've probably seen a 500% increase during the surge of coronavirus panic buying that we saw. We accommodated those orders, and then since then it's fallen back somewhat, which is understandable, and I think frankly reflects people are now staying at home a lot more, but they're not panic buying or surge buying. They're thinking, "Okay, I've got a few days or weeks of supply left, and I'll go and get some more soon."T. Dodd:We see large basket sizes for delivery, and we also see the need to expand our zone, so we've done that. We've expanded our delivery zone from... Initially it was around a five-mile radius per store, but if you think of Los Angeles, we're well spread out. We've got Studio City, Melrose, and the arts district locations working right now. We were also about to open up the Westwood location. Obviously with COVID, we're going to push that back. It's very hard to launch a store in a pandemic, and very hard to know how that looks.T. Dodd:I think optically it also has some problems. I don't think s appropriate right now to do that, so we're looking at how to do that just as soon as it's safe, and we think we can market and launch the store correctly. Even with the current footprint, the five-mile radiuses that we had worked really well. We expanded those very quickly to ten-mile radius from each of the stores, and then we're now delivering basically to all of Los Angeles, so from the Palisades on the west side all the way to Pasadena, deep into the valley, and then deep into south LA.T. Dodd:We're looking at further expansion of that, as well. If there's a silver lining on this horrible situation, it is the fact that traffic has died down so we can now reliably service all of these large areas with more staff, obviously, and more drivers quickly. We can get around the freeways pretty quickly. We're averaging about 50-minute delivery times right now, despite wherever they are. At certain peak times, we might get up to about 80 minutes if we have to do a lot of deliveries around the same time.T. Dodd:We're able to now service a very large part of, almost all of Los Angeles from the stores that are open, all the stores in that time frame. That's been I think a benefit of this horrible situation.F Geyrhalter:Right, right. If one can say it that way, but it's true. People are creatures of habit, so I'm sure people will also get used to getting delivers from Sweet Flower now, and then once-T. Dodd:[inaudible 00:08:14].F Geyrhalter:Yep. Say again?T. Dodd:Okay. All right, I dropped you for a second there. I'm sorry.F Geyrhalter:Okay, okay. What I was saying is that people are creatures of habit, so I'm sure that they get used to during the pandemic to start ordering from Sweet Flower, and then later on they might just keep it up because it's already in the system, it's easy for them to get used to it. Some positive things are coming out of this, as well.T. Dodd:Yeah. I think we're seeing, it's always as I think someone else smarter than I said, necessity is the mother of invention. We're seeing that. We're really now, we're making sure that all the staff is safe. Business continuity, which is really staff and customer safety, has got to be first and foremost right now.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely.T. Dodd:These are really challenging times.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely.T. Dodd:Secondly, just remembering who we are as a company. One of our values is community engagement. Last week, after I made sure that... We made sure as a team that all their staff and team had gloves and masks and sanitizer. We had a number of supplies left over. We approached some of the teams that we work with, particularly in Culver City, where we're based. We went out to the local charities that are in need and donated masks and gloves to them.T. Dodd:We also made some charitable donations to local food banks. That's really important, because we're also moving into a... Right after this crisis, there's going to be, or there already is an economic crisis, and we need to be reflective of that, and thinking about how we fit our company in this emerging new new. This new, not normal situation that we're going to be in.F Geyrhalter:Right. Absolutely.T. Dodd:If food banks are getting hurt, everyone is getting hurt. We're trying to help out, and we're doing that with money, and also with some time. I was driving around on Friday afternoon basically seeing some people that we know around our neighborhoods who are elderly and vulnerable, and making sure that they were safe. Then as I said, we dropped off a bunch of different supplies to some of our local charities, as well, to help them out. We're trying to do our small bit as a local business.F Geyrhalter:Right, right. I think it's everyone's responsibility as a business to just start with community. Even the community is at the heart of your brand. Let's take a step back a little bit.T. Dodd:Sure, of course. Yeah.F Geyrhalter:You have a successful track record as a VC, as well. You're investing from C to series C stages, and you had acquisitions from the $100 to $600 million range. I could have actually had you on as a VC guest, because I only have founders and VCs. Today you're wearing your founder hat.T. Dodd:I am, yes.F Geyrhalter:When I first read about Sweet Flower, I was immediately attracted to it because there is one and a million cannabis shops that actually differentiate, and that create a brand atmosphere, as I like to call it, around them that is specific, that actually stands out, and that sets them apart. For Sweet Flower, it's about being curated by and for Los Angeles. Heritage and community is really your brand story. You were quoted in Forbes saying, and I quote you here, "Souther California brands are some of the most recognized in the world."F Geyrhalter:We're talking about obviously the Googles and the Apples. "Within cannabis, I believe that we can build a best in class retail experience and brand." Tell us a little bit about how you have no background in the cannabis business. How did this came about? How did you set out and say, "We're going to create this LA-first brand?"T. Dodd:While I don't sound like it, I call LA home. I'm from New Zealand, but I moved to the States 26 years ago. Now I've spent over half my life here, and most of that has been in LA. I've been lucky enough to live here for the last couple of decades. I'm really focused in this amazing part of the world that I've grown to love and call home. Beyond that, we take a very non-mythical approach to cannabis. We think it's an industry, it's a business. It's a highly-regulated business. My cofounder and I have got a lot of experience in dealing in high-regulated business environments.T. Dodd:We're both actually recovering attorneys. I haven't practiced for many, many years, since 2003, I believe. That training is still part of it, and we take compliance very seriously. We also are both from relatively humble backgrounds, and so we do believe in giving back. That's, as I mentioned, part of what we are about in terms of the company, and that's part of that our ethos. Beyond that, in terms of California, we believe that California is still the largest legal market in the world. Potential legal market.T. Dodd:There are lots of issues in California which I'm sure everyone's familiar about with respect to illegal operations, and over-taxation, and the complexity of the regulatory environment. I won't agree or disagree on those, but they are definitely things that people talk about. We looked at this and said, "Okay, is there a space here for us to participate in this market?" We looked at that as really taking a classic, I want to say McKenzie approach, because I don't have that background, but just looking as a straightforward business approach, strategy, et cetera.T. Dodd:What is the market size? What is our potential entry point? We decided there is a huge... There is a large amount of people going after a core demographic, the stereotypical cannabis user. A young male in a certain demographic in Los Angeles. There were very few brands, and there were really no retail brands other than potentially one that was out there that was focused anywhere else. In fact, that brand was really focused in lots of places.T. Dodd:We were like, "Okay, let's see what we can do in terms of focusing a brand on a customer that is cannabis curious, has not maybe got into cannabis, but is definitely leaning into trying to understand this." My own experience with this was I ride bikes. I cycled for charity. I had a really bad bike accident cycling, broke my pelvis in many places, and my head pretty well, and walked up... I was medevaced off the top of a mountain in a chopper, woke up in hospital, was released a few days later with a big jar of Oxycontin.T. Dodd:Didn't want to do that, decided to go down to get some cannabis, went to a store. I'm on crutches hobbling around with my head wrapped up. I look like a real mess. It was like, "Well, do you know the difference between Indica and Sativa?" I was like, "Well, sure, I do, but what is the point of that question?" Then I thought about the customer journey that I was having, which is a really bad experience. I was hoping for a wellness experience. What I received was basically a transaction.T. Dodd:Sweet Flower was based on the premise that we can provide a wellness experience to all of our customers, not just a transaction. We want our customers to come to be loyal, to enjoy the experience they're having in the store, to receiving very high service component, and to receive education and engagement. I think we're getting the feedback that I was hoping for. We're receiving extraordinarily high reviews, anecdotal and data-driven reviews that are saying, "Hey, we really enjoyed the experience we had at Sweet Flower."T. Dodd:"We really enjoyed the peace, the experience we had. The products were really good. The service was great. We will come back." Really moving away from deal-driven behavior, we are saying, "Hey, we still do deals." Moving away from people who are trying to sell product cheaply, whatever, and deal-driven behavior. Transactional-driven behavior to loyalty-driven behavior and service-driven behavior. That's really what we're doing.T. Dodd:I view our product, what we're offering is not cannabis. We're offering a wellness experience. I think what we're seeing today is actually some vindication of that. People are selecting us because they want to spend time with us, either on a website, or if they come into the store even today, they're coming into the store because they want to understand the effect they can get. Not just, "I want THC, whatever component percentage flower." What I'm looking for really is, "I can't sleep, or I'm really stressed, or I'm in pain, or I'm anxious, or I want to be social with either, given the constraints of the current environment. I want to enjoy myself."T. Dodd:That's important to people, and that's what we're providing. I've always viewed Sweet Flower as providing a wellness experience. That's what I was hoping for when I hobbled into the store on crutches. That's what I didn't get, and that was a big part of me and my partner in Sweet Flower deciding that we would build this company. In terms of LA, I just believe southern California has a certain creative spirit. I've been lucky enough to work in large, creative organizations in California most of my career.T. Dodd:Warner Brothers, and then Technicolor, and at both places I found a tremendous amount of people who had incredibly engaging careers that were driven from their creative spirit, their creativity. That's a big part of Sweet Flower. We celebrate where we're from. The Sweet Flower love mark, our logo is the California state golden poppy. We have the sun in our logo. People move to LA partly because of the weather. That's part of who we are. It drives our activities and drives all of our engagements with each other, because it's such a great place to live.T. Dodd:We wanted to celebrate that. Then last, the name. We deliberately didn't call it anything too heavy, too dank, too cush, too 420. We didn't really want to have really obvious callouts to cannabis. The flower is not a flower, it's a poppy. It's a golden poppy, but the name itself is Sweet. We're not saying this is a brand for women, but certainly I think a lot of our customer base are female, and enjoy that, and certainly I do think part of marketing is to...T. Dodd:You can put out your brand, you can put out your marketing material. It's how people receive that, and then feed it back to you that's important. You know if you've missed the mark if what you intend to do, your intended audience is not actually what you get.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Yep.T. Dodd:Yeah. I think in most cases, we've been very successful in terms of defining who we think our audience is, and having our audience say, "Yeah, this fits. This fits us." I think the biggest learning experience I had so far is the cannabis curious. People I think assume that they have a lot of knowledge, and it's been interesting. We've had a lot of people coming in with knowledge about some things, and actually we've educated them. We do have some extraordinarily experienced Sweet Florists, sales associates, in the stores.T. Dodd:That's been a very good experience for us. We're trying to just engage people as they are. When they walk in, they can have a lot of experience with cannabis or not. Initially we did call out the cannabis curious notion a bit more than we do now. We're I think... It doesn't really matter. People are super experienced with cannabis or not at all. There's always something to learn, and there's always new products in the market, particularly in California. Rather than talking about cannabis curious, we're really now talking about cannabis curated.T. Dodd:We have a fantastic buyer, Michelle Mendoza, who has been involved in cannabis here in Los Angeles for I think for two decades, and has ran the original California dispensary in West Hollywood way before any of these other stores came in. She has a tremendous background and a fantastic reputation in cannabis circles here in Los Angeles in particular. With Michelle's help, and then working with Kiana [inaudible 00:21:50] joined us as our CMO. Kiana also has a long history of engagement in cannabis, and before that in fashion.T. Dodd:Kiana and Michelle have really helpful us curate I think a fantastic selection of brands in-store, and then working with those brands, we've been able to curate... Sorry, to create a number of fantastic events and activations. Obviously now in this new engagement we have where we're socially distancing, a lot of it is influencer events that are happening online and on Instagram rather than elsewhere, but we're really doing that at the moment as a reaction to COVID.T. Dodd:With Michelle and Kiana, we're really now focusing on this cannabis curated moment. That, though, is congruent with the brand. It fits the brand. The notion of calling your customers cannabis curious, we backed off that a little bit. I think that that is... I don't really want to call our customers anything. I think all of my customers are fantastic. We're honored to have them in our store. We respect where they're all coming from, whether they have a lot of knowledge of cannabis or zero. Doesn't matter. We want to provide them with that same level of engagement and service.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, you meet them where they're at, right?T. Dodd:Yeah.F Geyrhalter:And people come in with different backgrounds, as you nicely stated. Talking about the community again, and you talked about these events, because to me it's super interesting to think about how you actually activate a community. Do you currently, or will you in the future when things go a little back to normal, or maybe like you said virally, how do you collaborate with other brands? Do you collaborate with other brands? What's in store for your community growth?T. Dodd:Yeah, so we've actually I think been at the forefront of brand retailer partnerships. I just think it's very interesting to have walked into the cannabis industry when we did. A lot of the foundational structure of the industry was getting set up, and some of it was antagonistic. There was a lot of, "You're going to have to pay for shelf space to be on my stores," and all this kind of stuff. We never did that. We never did that. We didn't think it was the right thing to do.T. Dodd:It might have provided us with some extra revenue, but the [foreign 00:24:23] of that is that we're now just leasing shelf space to brands. Instead, I think we actually got a lot more value, realizable value, not just soft dollars, but actually revenue from customers because we decided to partner with our brands. We see our brands, our core brands are partners. Obviously COVID versus pre-COVID, it's a hard cut, almost, because we have not had any events in the store, in any of the stores since this even became a potential threat.T. Dodd:Before that, before COVID, we were working very closely with brands big and small to do activations in the store. We launched a number of products in the store, particularly on our Melrose store, which is a great location, across the street for the Improv, and there's bars and restaurants all around there. We hope that neighborhood comes back quickly once this horrible situation is over. That said, at has always been a core part of our base. Frankly, that allows us to tag our brand's customers as our customers, or as our brands tag our customers as theirs.T. Dodd:It's collaborative, and that's the key here. I don't think anyone gets ahead of this by trying to get around each other. Post-CO, or now that I guess we're in COVID, we're not post-COVID, but in the current situation we are, we launched a very strong influencer engagement campaign with our brands to push delivery just last week. The week before, we had somewhere in the range of 45 to 50 different influencers all based here in Los Angeles that we worked with. All of them got a Sweet Flower branded bag that contained products from our core brands, our core brand partners.T. Dodd:Our brands and us worked together to do that. We worked with the influencers to do that. This is not a paid campaign. This was organic and really came from a similar point of entry, which is, "Let's make sure we do something responsible for push delivery as the new way of receiving and getting cannabis products." That was great. Through that campaign, 50 influencers with a total reach of around 20 million followers-F Geyrhalter:Wow. That's impressive.T. Dodd:A lot of whom... Yeah, obviously some of them around outside of our geographic reach. They're not here in southern California, but a lot of those people are. The ones that aren't are still now seeing Sweet Flower as a brand. They're seeing Sweet Flower as something that's enabling people to be safe at home, and it's also enabling their favorite brands to work with a delivery service like Sweet Flower to drive traffic and engagement, and frankly sales, which is fantastic.T. Dodd:We're now pivoting from being a dispensary that offers delivery to being both, to being just a chain of dispensaries, a chain of retail stores, and also a very robust delivery service. That campaign we did really was all about delivering, and it was all about working with these brands. That was great. That I think will continue. We see a lot of demand for that. On our delivery service, we currently offer everything. Everything in the store is available for delivery. That's really important, so people can get the same products they could-F Geyrhalter:Totally. Yeah.T. Dodd:If they walk in and they can get that to their home, and that's super important. I think going forward, we want to expand that. We want to expand the reach of the delivery. We want to expand obviously its robustness in terms of the tech underneath it. Then if we have more brands to work with, because I worry a little bit about what's going to happen in the brand space given COVID, and given California overall, even before COVID. We want our brands, our core brand partners to have a good foundational business.T. Dodd:We believe that we remain the best channel for them to do that. We're really looking forward to working with some brands on some exclusive launches, some more exclusive promotions, et cetera, yeah, in the coming months.F Geyrhalter:We talked about expansion for a second with the potential... Well, with the Westwood location when the time is right. What are the plans, and how would a brand that is positioned so uniquely for LA ever expand outside greater Los Angeles without losing its authenticity? Would it be online? How do you see that? Or would you ever go outside of LA?T. Dodd:We've already announced we've got Westwood coming, Culver City next, and then we also were a successful applicant... We're one of the top six applicants in Pasadena. That's the current forefront. Beyond that, obviously we are looking at new opportunities outside Los Angeles, but probably staying in southern California for the moment. That's probably not a brand decision. It's more a decision around capital allocation. Where is it smart to allocate capital? I think that those are more at the moment, more about capital allocation and brand fit.T. Dodd:I think California brands play really well everywhere. I look at Vans, Levi's. I look at some of the really strong retail brands that we have here, and frankly the California lifestyle-F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Absolutely.T. Dodd:Seems somewhat universal, so I think our brand plays well in northern California. I think our brand could play well in neighboring states. I don't have an aspiration at the moment to go beyond or out of state too much. I think when we started this journey, what seems like a long time ago, it was all about being a multi-state operator. That time has changed in the industry. Investors were asking, "When are you guys going to go out of state? You need to be in different states." My pushback was always, "Why?"T. Dodd:LA county is 26% of the population of California, and by far away the most cannabis-leaning and attending population of California. Los Angeles County, if it were to be a state, is the eighth largest state in the country.F Geyrhalter:Plenty of opportunity within, yeah.T. Dodd:It's like saying, "Well, I can see that if I was starting someplace else, you'd be asking that questions, but I'm not. I'm starting here." What's the rationale for that? Is that just a canned question? Lots of people are asking these kinds of... Investors and et cetera.F Geyrhalter:It's a typical question, right?T. Dodd:Yeah, sure.F Geyrhalter:The reason why I ask it was because Sweet Flower, the entire tagline is it's curated by and for Los Angeles. It seems to me like it is so positioned to be not only an LA brand, but also only for LA, right?T. Dodd:Sure.F Geyrhalter:Which obviously you can pivot the brand whenever you start reaching outside of LA and more into southern California, but that's where I was heading with that question, because it has LA at its heart, and right now it is catering specifically to LA. Which I think a lot of people in LA love that, because quite frankly, there is not much in LA that is born in LA for LA, because everything is very global, and everyone in LA is an immigrant. You're from New Zealand, I'm from Australia.F Geyrhalter:We both lived here for half of our lives or however long. I think that there is something really special about a brand that is positioned from a brand positioning point of view just for Los Angeles.T. Dodd:Yeah. I lost you there for a second, so I apologize. I'm not sure what happened. [inaudible 00:32:54] came back on. It's an interesting challenge I think for us to think about it. I do think that there's a great New York City surf wear brand called Saturdays.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know them. Yeah.T. Dodd:It opened up in New York, and now LA, and now everywhere. Still very much a New York City brand.F Geyrhalter:True.T. Dodd:That's the kind of stuff where I think we're not a clothing brand. We're a retailer. I think New York City, where I lived for quite some time before I moved to LA, same thing. Wide acceptance of core brands from other places. I think we're a core brand. You can define a core lots of different ways, but I think we fit. I think we play well in different parts of the states. I don't know where this goes, if we're ever going to be in a shopping mall in the midwest. I don't know.T. Dodd:I think the idea, it would really be that this brand is for now, at the moment, for the next foreseeable, the near future, and frankly prognosticating about the near future is probably really silly given what's going on. The idea is we are a really strong fit for what our vision is for a cannabis retail here in California. I think we fit well elsewhere, but we'll be selective. We'll have to make decisions about... Just I've been very selective, we as a team have been very selective about our locations.T. Dodd:Where we are set up in Los Angeles. I spent a little bit of time in commercial real estate when I was at Warner Brothers, looking at at the time the Warner Brothers real estate portfolio. We looked at 100 locations for these stores. There are six stores currently, and we passed on most of them. Some of them would have been cheaper, and some of them would have been different. Obviously different. A different vibe, a different location. We weren't just going, doing it based on scarcity or density.T. Dodd:We were also doing it based on what we felt was the right building to have, the right province for the brand. Some of these buildings that we've got required a lot of TI, tenent improvement, but they're also really good branding opportunities. They're big with big locations, good locations. We can put the flower on the front of the store, and it's cool. That was really part of it. We've been very selective about these things.F Geyrhalter:Design is super important for you guys, right? The store layout, how it feels, how people enter it, entire customer journey.T. Dodd:Yeah.F Geyrhalter:Overall, your brand design and language, it feels very authentic, down to Earth. It's balanced. It's also gender neutral, even though you hinted at the idea that it's female forward, in a way, but it feels very neutral. You've got this highly curated custom photography, you've got these pastel colors, and that's all key to a very specific visual language for Sweet Flower. All of that is underlining your mission to set a new standard for modern cannabis retail that is inclusive, diversive, and approachable by all.F Geyrhalter:I know branding was super important for you guys from the get-go, but how early on did you invest in branding? How was that journey when you said, "Okay, we got to start thinking about the visual and verbal aspect of our brand at this point?"T. Dodd:That's a very straightforward question to answer. It was immediate. The first thing we did was, "Okay, so who are we? What do we stand for? What's our brand? What does our brand... ?" Once we decided to do this, and then decided roughly, a rough sketch of what Sweet Flower could become, and before we really had the name, and it locked in our heads, I sat down with a design team that I had worked with previously a little bit in a prior career, and came up with who is our customer?T. Dodd:We started with that. Who is our customer? Then what do we offer that customer? Then why does that customer want to come to see us? Simple, basic questions. That helped us frame the central question, who are we? I think we did that, if we started on a Sunday, we did that on a Monday. It was basically the next thing that we did. We invested in the brand, and we invested in the logo, the water marking, the brand ethos, the design, the look and feel of the stores. It's all congruent. The door has to be congruent.T. Dodd:We did not want to do anything that was going to turn off, because we're also in a really interesting situation because we were applying for different licenses in different cities. Some of those cities didn't really, like Culver City for instance, which has been fantastic. That is a forward leaning, thorough application process run by I think a very sophisticated group of people. Again, you're applying for the permission to basically sell a drug in someone's neighborhood. You have to be thinking about that.T. Dodd:You don't want to come in and say, "Okay, this is a right. California has adopted this, and you guys have to do it." That isn't the case. Anyway, it's always the local municipality gets to decide. We've always been focused on who we are, where we're from, and where we fit in that community.F Geyrhalter:That's part of your audience, right? You have to cater to all your different customers, and you wouldn't have the customers if you wouldn't get licensed within a certain city. That is important.T. Dodd:Yeah. You want to have your customers feel comfortable going to see you. If I think of the over... If I could sum up Sweet Flower in one word, it's trust. We want to grant people the right to trust us. We want to have people feel that they feel... To feel good about going to see us, that we're going to provide them with a good experience. They're not going to pay some crazy ripoff prices to staff. They're going to feel good about leaving the store, and going home, and trying these products.T. Dodd:If they don't like them, they can come back, and we can... Obviously, there's certain regs about returns, but we can always work with people about other things. We want to provide them with their trust, and extend that trust to delivery, extend that trust to our community, extend that trust to our drivers, and our delivery people, and our staff in the store, and our store managers. That's really important. I think that's where we want to come to. It's a trusted environment. Safe.T. Dodd:Beyond just being safe, it is an element of trust. That's hard to do. It's really hard to get people to trust you.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Especially in that space, yeah.T. Dodd:Yeah. You start frankly in cannabis with three or four feet back from anywhere else, right?F Geyrhalter:Yeah.T. Dodd:It's a stigmatized business still, and probably rightly so. We just to have decide that it's not a right, it's a privilege to operate a store in these communities, and you've got to build that trust. If we've messed up, we want to fix things up quickly. I'm not aware of anywhere we have, but people often... These people just stigmatized bad cannabis operators, so they all think we've got green hair and piercings, and we get high all day. That's not who we are. A lot of that is just being visible.T. Dodd:Frankly, when we went to Culver City, the first thing we did was put our corporate office in Culver City. I work out of Culver City, at least I did until just recently.F Geyrhalter:Yeah.T. Dodd:Yeah, every day. We're around. You go, "Okay, there's the... " I'd go to the Starbucks and meet the, you run into the cops. They'd say, "Oh, are you the weed guy?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'm your friendly neighborhood drug dealer," and they're all going to crack up. If you do that 100 times over the course of a few months, I guess, people are like, "Okay." It becomes a little bit more normalized, and you're approachable, and not from some... What they think of as a cannabis person is not who you reflect, and that's important, too.T. Dodd:I think it comes down to trust. That's, like I said, you don't get that overnight. You don't get that over a year. You need to just work at that all the time, and it's super easy to lose, too. We just want to make sure we're that we're always trying [inaudible 00:42:09] as best we can.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. No, and that is the number one thing that people seek for these days in cannabis stores, anyways, is trust. If you amplify it the way that you do it as a brand, it makes a whole lot of sense. Usually as an investor, when you had your investor hat on, let's switch your hat for a second, how early on did you ask startups to invest in branding? Because usually for startups, it's all product, product, product, right?T. Dodd:Yeah.F Geyrhalter:For you, because you're a knowledgeable industry veteran, you understand what it takes. You started with asking all these right questions. Most cannabis businesses never do that, they don't even know what they're about. They just want to sell product.T. Dodd:For a second there. Can you hear me?F Geyrhalter:Okay. Yeah, I can hear you. Shall I repeat this?T. Dodd:Yeah. Sorry. It just dropped for a second. Not sure why.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. No worry. Look, the Internet, there's...T. Dodd:Yeah. There's ten million more people using it.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, exactly. Exactly.T. Dodd:It's probably not built for this, yeah.F Geyrhalter:Let's put on your investor hat for a second. When you as an investor, how early on did you tell your startups to invest in branding? Because most startup founders think it's a ginormous waste of time, because for them it's all product, product, product. Most investors, for them it's a ginormous waste of money because for them it's all about speed to market, and let's keep the money for the product for later on, and for marketing. How did you advise your startups?T. Dodd:Most of the startups I was working with were tech, and so it was product oriented. There wasn't a significant amount of focus on branding. Some of the companies I was working with or looking at were creative services companies that was more of a B2B player than a B2C player like Sweet Flower. The B2B players did require branding. A lot of that was built around talent. It was their own talent, and so they did invest early in branding.T. Dodd:Particularly when you're dealing with creative services, creative people, you can't stop them. They're very focused on that. I think for us, we had to invest in branding early, because one, we wanted to differentiate ourselves from the pack, and I think we've done that very well. Secondly, we were also in the middle of... We quickly started to apply for licenses in competitive license markets. Having a branding pack, having a design pack, having the look and feel that distinguished us from everyone else is, in those markets, in those races super important.T. Dodd:Now we've gotten not just the branding. We also now have a very strong operational backbone. We feel good about that decision. I think branding is critical for a retail outlet. A lot of people say, "Why do you guys have to brand these stores at all? Why don't you just take whatever name they had originally, and when you move them, just reopen them as that?" My philosophy here was really simple. You follow what works. What works for people is a very, again, building trust.T. Dodd:You have to have a common backbone. You have to have a standard look and feel. When you go to a Starbucks, or an Alfred Coffee, or a Sephora, or a Lay Labo, those are the brands that we were looking at. Analog brands in different sectors. It's very important to say, "Those brands have a common look and feel." We felt the same way about cannabis retail. No different. That was a core part of it, so we invested in branding early. I would not change that decision. I think it was the right thing to do.F Geyrhalter:What does branding mean to you now, now that you've gone through this process yourself? What does branding mean to you, Tim? It's a big question. Big loaded question to finish things off.T. Dodd:Yeah. I'll try and give the simplest answer. I think we're all... I'm not a Jungian psychologist, but we're all kind of powered by iconography. We're all powered by things we see that basically make us reflect on who we are and the situation that we're in. Branding to me is assembling those icons, color, logos. A flower, the sun. Simple things, and assembling those in a way that makes you think, "Okay, that's reflective of something that I like, that I want to engage with." It's possibly just that simple.T. Dodd:We're all basically fairly limbic. You can take away a lot of the cerebral cortex, but really at the end of the day, we're fairly basic animals. I think we reflect and response to things that are appealing to us different ways, right? For us, it was like, "Let's have a very simple brand. Let's use a cool gray palette. Let's apply a little bit of navy for bold." Nothing too shocking. We didn't want to be some super-dynamic motif. We wanted to be very straightforward. Let's use powerful iconography, powerful typography, good fonts, big fonts, and just keep it simple.T. Dodd:That allows people to apply their own feelings to the brand, I think. The brand icons are important, and the love mark that we have with the flower and the poppy... Sorry, the sun and the poppy are really important. I love that. I like seeing it. Every time I see that in a different way, that people are thinking about it, to me, it feels good. There's just something I like about it.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, it's so simple, but yet it tells a story, right? It also tells the story of what you actually want to feel, and that relief, and that kind of a space.T. Dodd:Yeah. Just selling wellness. Yeah. We're selling wellness. We're selling something. It has to stand out a little bit because it's a commercial brand. We're obviously, as you drive down the street, we want to make sure that you see Sweet Flower's logo, and our bold icons on the side of the stores. Yeah. I think it really just comes down to that trust, and that this is about wellness. Beyond that, I think people apply whatever they want to the brand. That's the cool part.T. Dodd:It's like, having people tell you what it means to them when they come into Sweet Flower. We've had some really amazing feedback and testimonials from people. That's really nice to see.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Where can listeners get to know your brand? Mainly online, because there's a small, small, small part of our listeners from LA, but a lot of international listeners. Where can they get to know you?T. Dodd:SweetFlower.com is the website. We're constantly retooling the website. It also has a transactional component, ecommerce platform on the back of it. The website itself tells a story. I think the best way to think about us, though, for people who are outside of our community is on Sweet Flower Shops on Instagram. Sweet Flower Shops is really a nice component of that. That's non-transactional, obviously, and that really is much more about our brand story.F Geyrhalter:Totally agreed. Yeah.T. Dodd:And our partnerships and other things. That's where we see [inaudible 00:50:25]. I think Sweet Flower Shops is a really nice way for us to get our brand messaging and story out there, as well.F Geyrhalter:Awesome, Tim. Listen, I'm looking forward to following the journey. It's really-T. Dodd:Thank you, Fabian.F Geyrhalter:It's crazy times right now, but it's amazing how you guys are dealing with it, and how you're pushing forward, and how it is all about your community first, your employees, and then the people that you can currently help. Really, really appreciate you taking the time in these busy times. Stay safe out there-T. Dodd:Of course, yeah.F Geyrhalter:For most, be healthy, right?T. Dodd:Yeah, you, too. Stay safe, be well, and we'll see you soon, I'm sure. I much appreciate the time today. It's been great. Thank you so much.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Thanks, Tim.

The Alamo Hour
Tim Maloney, Attorney, Reality TV Show Producer, and Friend

The Alamo Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2020 58:53


San Antonio's own, Tim Maloney, a son of personal injury lawyer legend Pat Maloney and personal injury attorney himself joins us to talk about his other interest. Tim is one of the producers of Southern Charm: New Orleans which is on Bravo. He has also produced movies, documentaries and is here to talk about that path and upcoming projects. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Today's guest is a movie producer, television reality show producer, former Riverwalk restaurant tour/bar owner, local injury attorney and one of my very best friends Tim Maloney. Tim, thank you for being here. Tim Maloney: I appreciate the opportunity, sir. Justin: Tim, we're not going to talk about the things- you and I like to talk about at bars, which is usually law and other high-minded things. I want to talk to you a little bit about some of your passions outside of the law. How did you get into television producing? Tim: Seventh grade Maria Fleming, I wanted to make out with her. The reason I got into it was I produced Charlie Brown Christmas show and I cast her. I injected a controversial scene to the seventh grade production, which of course got me suspended, and that was she actually kissed Snoopy. That's absolute true story. That's how I got started in production. Justin: It turns species love scene? Tim: Pretty much. By the way, very controversial, not only the kiss with the beagle, but the beagle was also a female in a costume. I was actually, shall we say, ahead of my time. Justin: You were definitely ahead of your time. For everybody to know, I have warned at Tim and let him know that this is a family friendly podcast, and we're only going to talk about family friendly things today. Tim: They were very friendly. Justin: Okay, well, Snoopy. Tim: They were lovable. You all love Snoopy. Justin: Tim, I want to talk to you more about the TV and stuff like that. We're probably not going to talk much about the law. I'm going to start with a top 10 for everybody because I think it's important to just get a little bit of a slice of who you are. You're never going to know what they but they're going to be pretty simple, okay. Tim: I'll give it my best shot. Justin: All right. I know the answers to a lot of these, but some I don't. First, do you have any pets? Tim: Yes, I do. Justin: Cats? Tim: Yes. Justin: Feral? Tim: Very feral. Justin: You got feral cats you feed, but you name them? Tim: They like Will Ferrell, but they're also like some of the other SNL characters do. Justin: All right. Cheri Oteri? Tim: Actually, they were more old school, Eddie Murphy in the day. Justin: What's your favorite restaurant right now? Tim: Boy, I would say the Palace at lunch. Justin: What's the buffet special there? Tim: Sushi. [laughs] Cut. You have to edit that out. Justin: What were going to try it again. What is your favorite restaurant eat-out right now? Tim: A signature I think right now is on top of their game. Justin: The [unintelligible 00:02:46] ridiculous? Tim: It's really good. I did not want to like it, and it's now my new go-to. Justin: I'm embarrassed that I know what that is, but it's pretty good. Tim: It's really tasty. Justin: I think I know the answer to this. What is your favorite go-to hidden gem in San Antonio? Tim: Boy, hidden gym. Justin: Doesn't have to be a bar, doesn't have to be restaurant, can be just anything in the city that you think, man if you want your PhD and know in San Antonio, you've got to know this place. Tim: I would say the library then in my street. Justin: I was going to say the Japanese tea garden for you because

Bro Down Podcast
Ep. 88 - CC - At Home Workouts

Bro Down Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2020 11:17


On this podcast, we take a break from UFC and other sports...because there's none going on....and come up with some great at home workout tips to keep you guys moving! Andy: No. This isn’t an excuse to not work out. Noooo. No. Get it done. Stay safe. Stay strong. Tim: It's time to get creative! Whatever you do, don't get use to a sedentary lifestyle. Just. Keep. Swimming.

Digital Marketing Property
Profil Singkat

Digital Marketing Property

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2019 0:36


Kami sudah membantu beberapa developer di Bogor, Bandung, Makassar,Sumatera Barat dengan total omzet lebih dari 500 M. Tim IT sampai handling buyer sudah terbentuk

Small Business Snippets
Tim Campbell: 'Only two of us knew what The Apprentice was!'

Small Business Snippets

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2019 19:57


In this episode I meet Tim Campbell, an entrepreneur and the first winner of The Apprentice back in 2005. We discuss his views on apprenticeships and the idea behind one of his more unusual business ventures. Be sure to visit SmallBusiness.co.uk for more articles on apprenticeships and grants.  Remember to like us on Facebook @SmallBusinessExperts and follow us on Twitter @smallbusinessuk, all lower case. Want to read the Tim Campbell's podcast interview instead? Hello and welcome to Small Business Snippets, the podcast from SmallBusiness.co.uk. I’m your host, Anna Jordan. Today we have Tim Campbell, an entrepreneur and the very first winner of The Apprentice back in 2005. Since working for Lord Sugar, Tim has launched Bright Ideas Trust, a charity for disadvantaged young entrepreneurs and Alexander Mann Solutions, a talent acquisition firm. We’ll be talking about what it was like to be in the first crop of candidates on The Apprentice and how to give interviewees useful, constructive feedback.   Anna: Hello Tim. Tim: Hi, how are you, Anna? Good? Anna: Yeah, very well, thanks. A bit of a grim day but doing alright. How are you?   Tim: Oh, if we didn’t have the weather to complain about, what would we have? Anna: Exactly! It’s the essence of being British. Tim: It is unfortunately, but let’s hope for better tidings to come. Anna: Awesome. Right, for a bit of context, we are recording in the Alexander Mann Solutions offices today – in a sound booth, which is very nice. Tim: It is indeed. But one of the interesting things that amazes me about London and is very exciting, is the juxtaposition between the old buildings we can see and the new cranes you can see everywhere.   Anna: Exactly, yeah. It’s wonderful seeing the architecture of the new vs the old. You wouldn’t think they work together, but they do. Tim: That’s the thing about London – we make it work. That sings to the essence and the entrepreneurial nature of individuals from the UK. My mum was an entrepreneur, but she didn’t call herself an entrepreneur. She was just making ends meet, as it were. A Jamaican immigrant to the country who had three children and brought them all up to be relatively successful. But she always underpinned that with working hard, going out and earning a living. And London has always facilitated that and I suppose the inspiration for me in a lot of the things I do is my mum in that she came over with all the skills and attributes but didn’t have the knowledge, contacts or mentors to be able to do that. Do you think your mum didn’t call herself an entrepreneur because she didn’t go through the formal avenues of having a grant or a mentor? Tim: Definitely. She just didn’t have time to worry about the nomenclature, she was just focused on the outputs and I think that one of the things we talk about with the people that we either mentor or support is to strip it down to its bare necessities. Lots of people are very interested in the successful outputs of getting in business. They want the money, they want the accolades, they want the title and we have to start at the very beginning: ‘What problem is it that you’re solving? What is your business? Then we get some blank looks and they say, ‘We just want the money at the end. Can’t you just give me that?’ And I say, ‘Well, no actually – there’s a process to it.’ I think with my mum and me and the people we try and support, we try and encourage them not to focus on what the title is because titles are for corporate environments, whereas when you’re a business owner it doesn’t matter, particularly when you run a micro or small business, you do everything. But essentially, you’re focused on the output and delighting the customer. As long as you keep that at the forefront of your mind, then you can enjoy the pats on the back and the celebrations of what you’ve done. But never lose sight of why you’re in this and that’s to delight a customer and make them happy, and then get them to give you money as a result.       The thing I’d like to talk about is your time on The Apprentice. You were on the very first series before anyone even knew what it was. Tim: A long time ago, neither did we! We didn’t know what it was. For the 14 contestants on the first show, there were probably only two people who did the investigation to find out exactly what The Apprentice was, which is a bit stupid to admit, but I’m going to be very honest. Anna: Was one of them you? Tim: Yeah. Anna: Oh really?! Tim: No, I didn’t. I was very naïve, I actually applied for a job with the main focus being to get the six-figure salary. That’s what I wanted. Because [the programme] wasn’t as popular as it is now and didn’t attract the millions of people watching every single episode, so it was a different beast. But when I applied, it was about securing a salary that would look after my family. And naïvely, I just applied thinking that 1) I was going to work with a great British entrepreneur in the then Sir Alan (as he is now Lord Sugar) and 2) it was a sizeable multiple on the money I was earning at the moment. I thought, ‘What could I lose?’ Little did I realise what you could actually lose, but that’s why I carried on with the application and thankfully it was a positive outcome. Yeah, that’s it – because people who apply now see it as a platform for a business idea that they might have and obviously you get the investment at the end. Tim: Correct. I suppose the thing for me is that the bigger opportunity for a show like that, apart from shouting and screaming at the contestants who don’t want to do the dreadful things they sometimes have to – or coming out with the ridiculous one-liners they seem to continually do every year without fail – is learning from Lord Sugar himself. He’s a brilliant entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word, in that he can spot problems, come up with solutions and deliver true value, not just to investors, but stakeholders, customers, in what he would be able to deliver. From what I’ve seen, there weren’t as many zingers in the first series as there were later on. What else is different between then and now? Tim: Probably because I was just boring. On the first series, I remember all of the contestants. All of us were really competitive – we just wanted to win. What we agreed on very early, was that the way we could secure victory was by not losing task and not falling out with each other. If we worked as a team, we’d actually do more. That must have been so annoying for the television producers because that’s not what they want to hear, but that’s what we had. When we went on task, we were going to be polite and civil. And when we were on task, we were going to be competitive, but not devious to the point where we would hurt other individuals. That wasn’t on our agenda. And that sung to our values – particularly me and Saira – who were project managers a number of times. Our values were that you could win without being negative to people. And I think that’s sometimes lost, particularly when people talk about business in general, where the image that people get is ruthless, belligerent character that kills everybody and steps on the heads of minor people to get to where they are. And there are some people who are like that in business, but the vast majority of people I’ve worked with – either on the show or in business in the real world – just want to survive. Anna: Those relationships are so important. Tim: It’s critical. What we took from our series was that the power of strong relationships helped you go further. As you said, the prize in the first series was a job with Sir Alan, back then. You set up his health and beauty division at Amstrad. Tim: It was a very interesting journey. You were asked on day one to come up with a health and beauty product. And I thought, ‘What is this?’ And what I saw it as was a test. What we were trying to do – and we did successfully, was replicate other multi-level marketing processes. We got other women to sell the products to other women. It was a very interesting two years I spent. The whole gambit of business was involved in that particular project. I look at it like it was a real-life MBA. It was phenomenal in terms of learning and experience. I still rub cream on the back of my hand now and say, ‘Ooo, isn’t that lovely?’ because I understand how it was all made. How was the reception of MLMs back then? Now we’re seeing a backlash, particularly with companies that don’t have a great reputation, make false promises, are quite exploitative. Tim: Yup, and I think people are right to see a backlash against those ones who don’t deliver against what they say they’re going to. The key thing that I learned from Lord Sugar was to deliver on your promises. The products that we put on were about empowering people to make a revenue from the products that we had already generated. But we had very clear outputs, a very clear rewards structure and had very clear marketing, which had no false pretence behind it. And the good thing about going on a television programme which had multi-million people viewing it is that you get held to account very quickly if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do. So thankfully, all of the work that we did was regulated, it was checked and verified by independent people and delivered against the promises. What we were really focused on was them learning about business while possibly generating some income for themselves as well as using a good, highly potent and effective product. If you were to go back on The Apprentice now and win the investment (£250,000) rather than the job, what would you do with it? Tim: Very interesting. I think if I were to do something today it’d be around artificial intelligence and some form of tech. You look at some of the industry sectors on a medium scale which are accelerating in excess of 20pc every single year and you’re immediately gravitating towards use of tech, particularly in the financial sectors. The fintech market has been amazing. I think there are some really interesting plays in the insuretech space and the edutech space. Education and people insuring against risk are never going to go away. If you look at some of the fast-growing businesses at the moment, they’re providing ancillary services behind businesses, so courier servicing, making sure that you can deliver consultancy advice and guidance into business. Or anywhere around tech in terms of promoting business propositions. Those are the areas I would’ve come up with a proposition for him to give me some money for.      I know you’re supportive of apprentices. From a small business owner’s perspective, we’ve seen that some are put off hiring apprentices because they don’t have time to train them or they can’t afford them. What would you like to see that would make things easier? Tim: I think for small businesses you’ve got to make the decisions which are really important to your company. You can’t just follow on. It’s got to be right for you as a business. The difficulty with a small company is if you make a mistake the impact is much bigger than in a bigger company where you make a mistake, it might not be right, but you can move around and you’ve got the resources to absorb that. Small businesses have to make really critical decisions around can they take on an additional wage because when you take on an apprentice, it’s not a free resource. In my opinion, you have to pay them the living wage – and the London wage if you’re in the capital. Then you’ve got to work into the equation how long the value add is to you as a business owner. They’re going to have to learn the ropes and get off the ground before they become of value to you as a small business. And the training that comes with an apprenticeship – how valuable could that be to an organisation in making an assessment? It’s not for every small company, with the amount of supervisory element to an apprenticeship programme, the resources may not be there for a small business to be able to go along that journey yet. But it’s something that should definitely be on the agenda and maybe for the smaller to medium-sized businesses that are growing, as opposed to the micro businesses who are at the beginning. I’m going to take what is typically seen as a more morbid turn here. I understand that you are the director of a company called death.io. Tim: Yes, I am indeed. And rather than scaring lots of people, it should fill them with joy. What we have done, and when I say we it’s me, my co-founder Paul Wiseall and our chairman, Tom Ilube, have come together to start a company which is using artificial intelligence to help people better prepare for the inevitable. And the rather shocking title of ‘Death’, similar to the likes of Virgin or Google, makes you wonder what this is about, where is it coming from and it’s a bit of a shock factor. We want it to stick in people’s minds that this is one of the last taboo areas that you should be talking about. Because the whole industry is a conversation which happens behind closed doors, in hushed tones, and no one really wants to speak about it. There are so many different ways to talk about death. What we at death.io have done is utilise technology to help you live forever. We are able to take the essential elements of you as an individual and tell your story, tell us the significant moments of your lives and utilise technology to create a virtual person out of those recollections, which others can interact with. Is that verbally or in writing? Tim: Both! At the moment, we have a platform which allows you to talk using typed words back and forward to your avatar. But the developments are quickly incorporating voice into that. So very much like you might like you might tell a speaker to turn the lights or the music on in your house, you will have the ability to talk to yourself via one of those devices as well. Anna: Oh, that’s kind of eerie. Tim: In one way, I can understand why people think, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t want that, where would that come from?’ But at the same time, bringing it to back business, I had the privilege of speaking to the head of the Chinese Takeaway Association. It was very interesting – I didn’t know one existed – but one does! What he said is that you’ve got a lot of people who have come over as immigrants to this country and worked really hard to build up fantastic businesses within every single major city in the world. They’ve done that to facilitate a better life for them and their children. What happens though is that these children go to fantastic schools, go off to university, and may decide that they don’t want to run Mum and Dad’s Chinese takeaway. What happens to all of that information? What happens to all of that insight around how you pick stock, how you purchase stuff, how you set up a marketing campaign to get people to do stuff? That information has to go somewhere otherwise it just passes with the individual. It’s also an opportunity for us to make sure people have their lives in order: have you got the right insurance in place? Have you got the right protection for your family going forward? We have the facility to let people do that in a nice, friendly, social way. Yeah, from what I saw I like the holistic approach of it, especially with the blog. It’s touched by so many of today’s topics like rapidly advancing technology, sustainability, gender identity. It’s fascinating. I like the tone as well – normally with traditional funeral care providers and planners there’s a formal and sombre tone where again, on the blog, it helps breaks the tension around, as you say, a taboo subject. Tim: We had a great conversation with a phenomenal agency called Ready Ten, started up by a very good friend of mine, David Fraser. He was the only agency that picked up the potential of this in terms of how you could turn this into a positive conversation. Their ideas around how you could really grasp a difficult subject like death – you have to talk about these things because they’re not going to go away. We want to take the stance of not making light of the conversation, but in lightening the conversation around subject matters that have to happen. Like, if you got sick, what would happen? What’s your blood type? I don’t know – most people don’t know! If you don’t know what your blood type is or you don’t know if you’ve got any hereditary diseases, we have a way to capture that and share the true essence of who you are rather than the curated bit that you might do through other social platforms.       I think there are some interesting ethical questions around grieving, the way that people’s memories are held. Because we touch so many people, you might want me to come back alive, but I might’ve been really horrible to someone else who doesn’t want me to continue on living. What are the ethical implications of all of those? But for us as a platform, we want to give that ownership and option over to the individual. Where you can sign up to have this delivered in any way, shape or form based on what you feel those around you need. It’s not for us to act as judge and jury around that, but it’s going to be a very interesting development to see how far people want to take it.      Well, I’d love to talk about this a bit more, but I must move onto our last topic. You’re an advocate of the Fight for Feedback campaign, encouraging employers to give interviewees good quality feedback. In your opinion, what makes quality, decent feedback from an employer? Tim: I think it’s incredibly important that employers to understand that they have a responsibility to leave candidates with a good candidate experience from their resource process. Why is that important? I was always told that it’s important to say goodbye in a nice way rather than just say hello in a positive way. Those people will tell another ten people exactly how you treated them. It’s very important from an employer brand perspective to make sure that employees – whether they’re successful or not in going through a process – leave with a good feeling. And the best way to leave with a good feeling is to be told ‘No, but this is how you could improve’. As employers, I think we all have a responsibility to raise the level of our candidates, and I think the only way you can do is alert them to what they can do better in the future. Let me make it clear, because there are lots of very big employers who are saying, ‘Hang on a second, Tim – we see hundreds of thousands of people every year for our placements.’ Yes, that’s true, there are a lot of people coming through. It would not be impossible to put a structure in place which says to individuals, ‘You might not get direct verbal feedback from every person you spoke to but we can at least highlight the areas that we didn’t select you on.’ There are so many candidates who talk about filling out an application, taking the time to nurture a CV and make it bespoke to that employer, write the covering letter, do everything necessary, and don’t hear anything – not even a ‘no’. That’s a very negative seed that’s been planted around that brand and the value that they place around the people who interact with them. And for me, just to be able to say, ‘No, but these are the areas you fell down’ is as powerful as a half-hour phone call with an individual to walk them through exactly what they could do to improve. Now, the scale of when you can do that may alter depending on how far they’ve gone through a process and how senior the actual role is. I don’t mind that. And the other thing to think about from an employer’s perspective is that it’s a two-way process. You could get some free marketing research from individuals who have interacted with you and they can tell you what they found and that can help you develop and get better as well. You can create a brilliant campaign, attract a fantastic funnel of talent, but you don’t know unless you’re asking them how they are receiving it. I think feedback is such a small thing to do which can have such a big impact on how people perceive that brand and how they will go and work in the future. So, if somebody has a big problem presenting information in a way, tell them, help them to be better and you never know, they might come and work for you in the future because of that feedback. Plant good seeds; give good feedback.            Anna: Well, that seems like the perfect place to end it on, so I’ll wrap up there. Thanks ever so much for coming on the show, Tim. Tim:  Thanks so much for having me, Anna. Let’s hope that the sun is shining now in London and elsewhere and that all of our businesses improve. Thank you very much for having me. Anna: It’s been a pleasure. You can find out more about Tim at timcampbellhq.com. You can also visit smallbusiness.co.uk for more information on apprenticeships and grants. Remember to like us on Facebook @SmallBusinessExperts and follow us on Twitter @smallbusinessuk, all lower case. Until next time, thank you for listening.     

Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast
Ep#30 Ultra Positive Mindset, Life’s Perspective and Multifamily Deep Value Add with Tim Bratz

Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2019 51:55


James: Okay. So let's get started.  Hey audience, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Podcast. Today, we have Tim Bratz from Legacy Wealth Holdings. Tim is a multi-family syndicator/sponsor who owns almost 3200 units almost valued at 250 million dollars in value. Hey Tim, welcome to the show. Tim: James, I appreciate you having me, buddy, thank you.  James: Absolutely. Happy to have you here. I've been trying to get you on the show for some time and we have been playing tag on the appointments. That's good. So, can you tell me which market are you focusing on right now?  Tim: I'm actually in six different markets, six different states. I'm pretty heavy in the Southeast. Majority of my property, about 70% of my properties are in South Carolina and Georgia, but I'm also in Ohio which is where I live. And then I'm also in Texas, Oklahoma and I got a couple of vacation rentals down in Florida as well. James: Okay. Without going too much into detail just quickly, how did you start? And then how did you scale to 3,200 units within how many years?  Tim: Yeah. Well, I mean, I was going through college when the last market cycle was going gangbusters. So 03 to 07, I'm going through college, everybody said if you wanna make money get involved in real estate. I ended up moving out to New York City because my brother was living out there. And I became a commercial real estate agent for businesses. You know, so I broker leases and I brokered a lease that was 400 square feet in Manhattan. It was $10,000 a month and so I was like the wrong side of the coin. I need to be owning real estate not brokering it. So I got into a lot of the residential stuff. I think a lot of investors get into real estate because of the lure of passive income and residual income, but then many of us get stuck doing this transactional stuff of flipping houses and wholesaling. And I went through that same phase, you know, I thought I had to stockpile my own cash. I didn't understand that you could syndicate, that you could raise private money and bring in equity partners and how your sponsors to then cosign on loans. I didn't know that that was possible.  So I went through the whole residential side of things and bought my first apartment building the end of 2012. So just like seven years ago. It was a little eighth unit building and I fixed it all up, put tenants in place and I was like man, I'm making better returns on this than I am flipping houses and it's way less headaches. And so I bought another eight-unit and kind of built up a portfolio about 150 units with some partners.           That partnership ended up going bad a few years later. In 2015, I ended up liquidating everything and then just going back out on my own. And so I started on my own and just kind of partnered up with a couple of people that they just started raising money for different projects and I partnered up with good operators and bring money to those projects and help sponsor those loans or I started buying my own properties here locally in Cleveland. And over the past four years, pretty much in August of 2015, I started buying my own stuff. So it's been right at four years now. I built up a little over 3200 units, 3207 units as of today, about 251 million dollars worth of property value and my model is based on the residential realm, actually. I buy properties and I got to be all in for 65% of the stabilized value because that's what the model was. I never read a book. I never went to a seminar before. I just kind of developed it myself and I started buying properties, apartment buildings, the exact same way.  So I have to be able to buy it, renovate it, be all in for 65% of that stabilized value. And so a lot of the buildings that I buy, you know, I'm into a building that's worth 10 million dollars for about six-six and a half million dollars. So on the 250 million dollars worth of property, I only owe to lenders and my equity investors, it's like right at 150 million dollars. So we have a lot of equity in our properties too.  James: Got it. Got it. So it's very interesting you bring up that 65% because that's the exact number that I had when I was doing my single-family for zero money down. So I counted if I get at 65% ARV, which is after repair value, you should be able to do a second load, which is I call it as a double closing of a loan. I have two loans; one loan is like you do like a short term loan and at 65%, you buy it, you take a rehab loan and then you flip it to the long term loan. Tim: Yes. That's my entire model. So I don't traditionally syndicate, I buy distressed assets. I'm bigger than some of the smaller investors but not quite a hedge fund or a Reit and I'm willing to get my hands dirty, I'm willing to actually do the work. So I take on a little bit more distressed type properties. I only buy in A and B Class areas, but the properties are typically C-Class type properties that need physical improvements, better management. Like really not just value-add but like a total repositioning a lot of times. We're remarketing, rebranding, all that. And so, we come in and we fix it all up and because we force appreciation because we can make it happen and really create the appreciation versus speculating on appreciation and hoping values go up over the next five years, we're able to create a lot of equity in that first 12 months and then we're able to turn around and refinance and cash out our investors.  So instead of selling, I just refinance at like a 70% loan to value that gives me enough money to then, pay off my bridge loan. Or that short-term construction loan is and it helps me pay off my investors and to me, it's more predictable. It's more predictable to know where interest rates and where the economy is going to be 12 months from now or 18 months from now than it is like maybe 5 or 7 years from now. Five or seven years from now, we could have a very different economy, very different political circumstances; could have three different presidents in the next five years, right? So we just don't know.  And for me, I like the predictability of buying at a wholesale price, creating an appreciation and then cashing out my investors. Now it's you know for lack of a better term house money in play, right? So now we can let the property ride and we can hit sit on it. It doesn't matter what happens to the economy for the next 10 years, I have a long-term, long amortization schedule fixed interest rate loan, non-recourse loan in place; where the market can go up it can go down, I still have tenants in place paying the debt service, paying the operating expenses, and putting cash in my pocket and I could ride this thing out because I don't owe any of my investors any more cash.  James: Got it. Got it. So yeah, that's exactly the deep value add, that's how I position it where you buy it at really good value; very, very low level.  You really put all your effort to push up the first appreciation and then you go and refi in 12 to 18 months, I guess right? Tim: And we built some new construction stuff too, down in the Southeast. We built some townhouses. Like we'll do new construction, it'll be like an A or B plus kind of an area but it's not luxury. We do only workforce type housing so we can build townhouses for about $85,000 per unit, 80 to 90,000 per unit and they'll rent for about 1,300 bucks a month for us. And so that allows us to get the values where we need it to then refinance and do the exact same thing just for new construction. So we do a little bit of that and more repositioning of existing assets though. James:  Yeah, very interesting. I really like the model. I was doing it like two-three years ago. I mean, for me, I got worried about the market and I start, not looking for deep value add and also deep value add is harder to find. Even though you find it, what happened the sellers are basically taking the value by pushing up the price on the deep value add and because of that, it's not a deep value add anymore. Tim: Right. I don't pay a seller for the value that I'm going to bring to the property, right? So there are some sellers that you know, they're like, oh, well, this could be worth this much. Yeah, but I have to create that value. You're not creating that value. So we find we're a lot of times direct to seller, off-market type property. You know, we're big enough now, especially in Georgia and South Carolina, we have the broker relationships where we're one of the top five buyers in town and you get those deals before they actually hit the market. But in a lot of other markets, I'm not, you know, the biggest buyer in town so I have to go off-market, direct to seller, kind of stuff. And we get a lot of our properties from Mom and Pops who have owned it for 20 30 years or inherited the property. They just didn't put any more money back into it. You know, the total debt on the property is very low if at all and they just don't want to put any more money into it. They don't want to do the work so we buy it from them. Or I buy a lot from smart entrepreneurs, really sharp people who make a lot of money in their traditional business and they just put their money in real estate and then they didn't have a joint venture partner. They never got educated. They don't know how to manage a management company or interview a management company and they just get abused in the business. So they're like I'm making too much money in my traditional business, this thing is going to sink me. Let me just fire sale this apartment building. So that's where we buy most of our properties from. And then again: we reposition it, we do the stuff that that hedge funds aren't willing to do, and we're qualified enough to take down a 200 unit building that needs a pretty heavy value-add. I do it that way. But like you said though, James, I'm starting to buy a little bit more stabilized assets, more like 85-90 percent occupied of just a little bit of tweaks in the common areas and amenities and then bumping up some rents. We're doing a little bit more of that right now just because of where we are in the market cycle.  James: Yeah, correct. But you gave a lot of details that I want to go a bit more detail into that. So you said you look for deals that are in class A and B, but more distress. And I mean you're basically shrinking your funnel as well because you're going for that... Tim:  Niche gets rich, right? James: Exactly. [11:02crosstalk] Tim: People say hey real estate's mine age. Now real estate's an industry, right? Apartments aren't even initial. You need to figure out what you are really, really good at. And one of the things that I'm really good at is 80 units to 100 units that are distress. It's bigger, it's too distressed for the small guys to get a loan on it because they don't have the background or the resume to go and take down that kind of stuff and the qualifications do that because they haven't done it before. It's a big project, big value add and at the same time, it's too distressed for the hedge funds because they just want to park money and let it sit, let it ride, and let it cash flow from day one. So this is my niche. It's A and B Class areas; good areas, desirable areas, just distressed kind of properties and we're able to get in there and we have all the financing, the relationships are all in place. We could raise the money pretty easily because we can cycle our money every 12 to 18 months. I don't have to wait five years to get my investors their money out; I can cycle at every 12 to 18 months. So as soon as I pay him back guess what they say, let's go do another one. And then they're involved in you know, three deals in five years versus one deal in five years and it makes my life easier because I don't have to go and raise money from new people all the time. James: Got it. Got it. That's a really good model. So that's the investors after you cash out when you pay them back, do they stay in the deal as well? Tim: Yep. So mine's a little bit different than traditional syndication. Usually me and my joint venture boots-on-the-ground partners, we keep 70 to 80% of the equity in the deal and then we pay a pref, a fixed pref to our investors regardless of the properties performance. So even if it's not cash flowing it's predictable because I know that if I'm borrowing 2 million bucks, I'm paying, let's say, 10% pref, I'm going to pay $200,000. That's just a cost of the deal. I got roofs, I got flooring, I got paint, I got cost of capital; it's an extra $200,000.  So I build that into my model and then I can make those payments to them. They feel more confident, more comfortable because now they have a predictable return on their investment. Then I refinance, they get all their money back off the table and then they still maintain 20-30% ownership without any money invested and we're able to do that again and again and again. And so, you know with traditional syndicators if I try raising money from somebody who's used to traditional syndication, they're like, why would I ever do that? Well, you get a predictable return and secondly, you get 30% ownership.  But if all your money is in three different deals, it's actually 90% ownership because 30% 30% 30%. And so overall, they're actually ahead of what they would do in traditional syndication where they might get 70 or 80% of the equity in one deal. So, it actually works out better for the investors, works out better for me but it's a lot of work on my part. We spend a lot of money.  Sometimes we spend a lot of money on advertising in new markets until we have those relationships built up and then, in order to find those off-market direct to seller deals and it's a lot of work. Like my business partner down in Georgia that I own a bunch of property with, he goes and sleeps at the properties for three nights a week. He spends four full days there, sleeps in a B-class apartment, you know, on a blow-up mattress, the guy is worth 25 million bucks. And then his brother who's our other partner is worth another 25 million and they're sleeping at the properties, doing the work, kicking the tables, making sure construction ends up on time, on budget and that's what you need to do man. I see a lot of people who are trying to be this puppet master and they're not willing to actually do the work of taking ownership over this thing. They just want to go and syndicate and then go back off to whatever they're doing. And to me, like there's something to be said about just having old school diligence and work mentality and what you can get done if you're willing to do that kind of stuff. James: Yeah, real estate is very, very powerful; especially commercial real estate where you can force appreciate. And especially if you are going to get the majority of the equity in the deal, why not I sleep, right?  In 12 months, 70 to 80% of this deal is going to be mine. Why not work hard, I'm with you. Tim: It's a season of your life. If you're putting your head down for a year or 18 months, but then you can generate millions of dollars of equity, why not do that? And so yeah, that's kind of the mentality that we take.  James: Correct. Yeah, it's very powerful to create wealth and I think the investors appreciate that as well because now you're able to give them back their money and all that. But your model is assuming that you are able to refi into a long term loan in the 12 to 18 months, right? So what happened if that model breaks? Tim: Yep, absolutely. So that's the inherent risk with our model is what happens if rates change, what happens? If banking tightens up, what does that all look like? So a couple of things. One, I don't think rates are going to change as much in 12 or 18 months as they would maybe in five or seven years. So to me, we underwrite the deal - like right now, I just closed on 500 units. I got 2 buildings, around 250 units each last month and I got a 3.83 and a 3.88 interest rate. Even right now, rates went up back; they're hovering around for four and a quarter right now for stabilized assets. We're underwriting the deals with 4.75 to five percent interest rate on the back end for a stabilized property. So we're taking on some of that, some of that, we're underwriting it for that. We also underwrite our rents very, very conservatively and we're at such a low basis in the property, usually around 60% of what that stabilized value is, we have options. So Fannie and Freddie are tightening up big time right now. That's okay because we're at such a low basis that we can still go over to CMBS - commercial mortgage-backed security - or a life insurance company and even though they offer a lower loan to value, I'm okay with that because I'm at a low enough basis. I can still cash out my investors.  So worst-case scenario, my investors still get their money back and we have a lower LTV loan. So maybe there's not some refi proceeds or anything like that that we can take off the table but at the end of the day, they're going to have more equity, you know, their equities gonna be worth more in the property and the cash flow is going to be more on a recurring basis for that. And the other thing is even when banks stopped lending to people in 2009-2010, guess what? They were still lending to somebody and it was the people with big balance sheets, with stabilized portfolios. And I have a big enough balance sheet and stable enough portfolio. I'll be able to get refinanced regardless of what happens in the next 12 to 18 months so I'm not that concerned about it. And again, because our basis is so low, we have such high cash flow on these properties. I have different options and have a good team of mortgage brokers. Who even if I had a slap another, you know three-year loan on there, even if it was at 6% interest rate or six and a half percent interest rate, I can still cash flow;  it's enough. It covers my operating expenses, it covers my debt service, still puts cash flow in the bank. You know, it's a crappy conversation that I have to have with my equity investors, but they keep on making ten percent on their money so they're happy.           You know, the worst-case scenario is they get their money back in 48 months; then, you know it is what it is. So I've taken a look at all the downside. I've talked to people with billion dollar portfolios and said, hey poke holes in my model. And that's the inherent risk is what if you can't refinance? So that's one of the things. The deals that I just closed last month, they were already in that 85-90 percent occupancy range. Like right at 90-91, I think is what they were. And so we got a Fannie Mae loan actually on it. That's a construction loan that we'll be able to put a supplemental debt on it. So, it's already a long term loan, 30-year amortization, couple years of interest only. And then, whenever we create the appreciation, 12 months 18 months from now, we'll be able to put supplemental debt, which is kind of like a second mortgage almost but through the same lender, so they're cool with it. And so the only real risk I'm taking is the interest rate on that portion of the debt. I owe 17 million dollar mortgage on it right now. And then the other will be about another 7 million dollars. So the only real rate risk is I'll get home at three point eight percent on 17 million dollars, even if the other 7 million goes a 5%, my blended cost of capital still four and a quarter or maybe a little less. So, you know, that's another way that we're reducing that ongoing risk.  James: It's very interesting. Now you're convincing me to do deep value add again. So because it's just so hard to mess up. Tim: I mean, the construction is where it all comes down to. I mean, if you stay on time and on budget, you're in good shape. But if you don't have a good construction partner like you can really get burn bad in the deep value add stuff. So you've got to understand what your team looks like, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. And for me, we're okay with it. We're pretty good at it and we have a really good construction team.  My partner in Georgia, man, I put him toe-to-toe against anybody in the country from a construction standpoint. He can build new construction, he can renovate existing units. And because he has the mentality of 'let me go and sleep at the property' three nights a week, away from his family, away from his five kids, you know, he's willing to take that on because it's again a season of his life. Like that's kind of partners that I like to partner up with. James: Yeah. Hustlers, they will go really far in life and that's what we need. It's very interesting. So I mean, is there any deal that you find that you didn't do? That you think you should have done and after you passed on it, you realized, ah, should have done that deal? Is there a deal that you look at...  Tim: That's a good question.  Let me think on this. We try to kill deals. I try to kill every deal that comes across my plate, especially right now. I try to look for every reason to walk away from every deal that comes across my desk. If I cannot kill the deal then I know it's a good deal. And so, you know, as soon as you're like, 'hey, well, I think I can scale back construction and make it work', wrong idea, wrong strategy. Because the last thing you want to scale back is the construction of the value-add process. Because then your rents aren't going to hit where you expect them to hit because you're not able to attract better tenants or higher quality tenants and they don't see the value that you're adding to the property. At the end of the day, like people like, 'oh, I think we can make this one work.' No. The only way you can make it work is if you go back to the seller and negotiate a lower purchase price because that's the only variable in this equation. You know, what rents are going to be is what rents are going to be; what the construction budget is, is what the construction budget is. The only variable here is the purchase price. And you know, you make your money on the buy side. So are there deals that I passed up on that I should have moved on? Maybe but for me, man, I don't have much of a risk tolerance. I only buy stuff that I know that is very predictable to me. That's why I don't play the stock market. I can't control if you know Volkswagen -  I can't control if Elon Musk smokes a joint on public television and the stock drops by 15%; you know, I can't control that. I like being able to control real estate and having very predictable returns for me and my investors. And sometimes it's a gut check, you know. Even if everything looks good on paper, but my gut doesn't feel good about it, I'll say no to a deal. It's just that I've seen enough deals go south. And as quickly as we can build our net worth, being in commercial real estate, one bad deal can take out your legs and wipe you out totally. So I'm just not willing to take on that risk, especially when it takes so much work in order to get to where we are.  James: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I want to touch on your gut check thing because I know numbers don't lie and we are numbers guys and when underwriting, we want to make sure things work on paper and all that. But I've walked out of a deal because everything works very well and the numbers look good, but there is something wrong in that deal that I didn't discover and I've walked out from that kind of deal as well. And that's very important. I mean, real estate is not only science where everybody says a numbers game and people that are good in numbers will do it but there's a lot of odd to it as well where it's just something wrong somewhere and it comes from experience. Tim:  That's the only way you get that, from experience and it's usually personnel kind of things that make me walk from a deal. I'm just not comfortable with that joint venture partner, with that management company or with whatever the seller is saying. You can kind of see through the lines once in a while, whatever that is. Yeah, I mean my model is I'm really good at raising money. I'm really good at sourcing deals. We're pretty good at creating - like we can handle a lot of the back office type stuff.  I'm back in Cleveland, Ohio now, is where I live, we can handle a lot of the management side of things; collecting of rents, work orders, telecommunication; all that kind of stuff, all the administrative side. From here in Cleveland, we just need a local boots-on-the-ground partner and some local property managers, maintenance personnel, and I always have a joint venture partner locally. And so if that joint venture partner isn't strong enough, then usually I'll walk away from the deal. Because man, I think it's important to have somebody with vested interest, with equitable interest in the deal; who's local to the property, who can go put their eyes on it a couple of times a month; to keep everybody honest, to keep the management company honest, to keep the local property manager, maintenance personnel, leasing agents and just come in and kick the tables once a month and just let people know that we're paying attention. Because if you don't pay attention, then they take advantage of you.  James: Yeah, it's hard work. I mean, I know exactly how you feel in terms of how much hustle and how much detail and how much you have to be on top of the property managers because it's not their baby, it's your baby. And there's so much of details that if you don't ask them, they're just going to slack off right?  Tim: Yes.   James: They are paid differently from what we have paid for and we are the owners and it's just completely different ownership level, right? So that's very interesting. Is there any deal that you think after you bought it didn't match from what you thought in the beginning. You thought this is how I'm going to execute it but once you buy, it's like, oh, it's completely different from what I thought and how did you overcome it? Tim: Yeah, I mean every deal is a learning experience and you to get punched in the gut enough times and eventually you learn. Fortunately, you know when I was growing my portfolio, I bought my first building in 2012 and I bought an eight-unit building for $30,000. So I'm in Cleveland, Ohio buying units for $4,000 a unit. I put another, I don't know, 50 grand into it. So I'm all in for $10,000 a unit. And it's hard to lose. And so in 2012 2013 2014 as I'm growing my portfolio, while I'm going through these learning curves, the market is getting better and that was able to absorb a lot of my screw-ups early on. So I still made money on every single deal that I did even though I was learning on a lot of these things. There's only one building, a 44 unit building, that I bought about 2-3 years ago maybe that I've lost money on. It was one of those things, hey, I saw the leases, I saw the rent roll. It was 80% occupied and I bought it from a guy that I know, somebody that I actually know. And so, I bought 44 units and he's like, "Yeah, man, 80% occupancy." "Great, man. I'm going to come in, I'm going to renovate the last whatever 9 units and turn those over. I got a local team." He was out of state.  "So like my team can come in clean it all up clean up the common areas. I think I can make $300,000 on this thing in the next 12 months pretty easily and it'll cash flow a little bit in the meantime." So I buy it and I find out it's only 25% economically occupied. So there are 35 tenants or something in place and only 11 of them are actually paying rent. And so I learned my lesson there, you know. It's not about occupancy, it's about collections.  And this is a buddy of mine. This is somebody I've known for many years and grabbed dinner with him, his wife, my wife and not a lot of times but a few times and close enough where I call him a buddy. And all of a sudden, he sells me a building, tells me it's 80% occupied, doesn't tell me it's only collecting 25%. And all of a sudden, I had to kick out 24 tenants and turn over 24 additional units.  So imagine what that cost does now to the $300,000 I thought I was going to make? And this was one of the only times I brought an investor in and he wanted 50/50 of the deal: "Let me bring the money, you do the deal."  "Okay, cool."  And I'm stroking a check for about 35 40 thousand dollars when it was all said and done. And I could have gone to that investor and said, "Hey, man, I need 20 grand from you. I'm putting up 20 grand of my money. We're selling this thing. It's a pain in the butt. We're gonna lose money on it. But, you know, we gotta get rid of it. And that's part of the deal."  Instead, I stroked the entire check, gave him 100% of his money back and because he didn't make a return, I gave him equity in another deal of mine, without him having to put up any money just to kind of soften that blow. And so I think when you do the right thing by your investors word spreads, you know, he says great things about me, he wants to invest in more deals with me and stuff now. It is, do the right thing knowing that there's always another deal. There's always another opportunity.  That one, we could have held on to the property long-term and let it cash flow. That's a cool thing about buying apartment buildings. You can really screw up and if you had to, you can hold on to it, manage it, let it cash flow for the next 10 years and eventually, you'll actually make money on these things even with that big of a screw-up. But for me and where my long-term vision is and my team and everything else, it was just more of a C-Class type property. It took up too much management and too many headaches. It wasn't big enough. We couldn't really scale it. So we made just a business decision to sell it and to eat that loss. But it's the only building I ever really ever lost money on. Now we've gone through pretty much everything and we've gotten kicked in the crotch enough times where we know what to look for across every building. Like it's very hard to pull the wool over our eyes unless it's like grossly fraudulent on the sellers part.  Another big thing that I didn't know early on that I wish I should have done that's always a consistent issue with every building we've ever bought is like the plumbing and the drain tiles leaving the building. It's always one of those unknowns. So now, we spend three to five thousand dollars to scope every single drain line, in every building that we put under contract to ensure that there's not going to be this massive plumbing bill, unexpected plumbing bill, once we buy the property. So that's one of the things that's been a big deal.           And then just verifying collections. Like those two things from a financial due diligence and a physical due diligence perspective like those two things that we've dialed in now and we always did everything else. We always inspected the rooms in every unit, the electrical panels. One of the other things that I didn't do early on that I do now, we've done for the many years now, is I used to only walk the vacant units and the common areas and the mechanical rooms. And then all of a sudden, you realize that they're not showing you all the vacant units. There are other vacant units that they're telling you that they're occupied, they just didn't want you to see them. And like I bought buildings where tenants were turning on and off their faucet with a wrench because there's no actual faucet. So you don't realize a lot of that stuff early on when you're a dumb kid. But I've been through all man. I've been everything. We walk every single unit on a 500 unit apartment building. We will walk every single unit and we'll put a report together on every single unit. It's a one-page, just kind of condition report. We'll take 30 pictures of every single unit. We put it all into like a Google Drive or Dropbox folder. In that way, we have all the information we could ever need on this property. We're not relying on our memory to look up all that stuff. It's all there. Our contractors can see it during the entire due diligence period, all that stuff. And so I think everything's a learning curve. I think you learn from everything. The thing in this business though is like if you can get past all those learning curves, if you can get past some of those losses and some of those getting punched in the stomach, eventually, you're process is so dialed in.  Like they can't pull the wool over your eyes that you cannot lose on deals. And that's why we walk away from a lot of deals that we do because they're waiting for somebody who's an idiot who doesn't know what they're doing to come in and buy their property and overpay for it or not do the due diligence that they're supposed to be doing and all these other things. But eventually, you know what you're doing enough, where your risk is so minimized because you've done all the due diligence on these things, it's a very predictable business at the end of the day. Like you said, it's all about numbers, right? James: Yeah, I mean, it's crazy nowadays, right? I mean with the market being as hot as it is right now, with so many people looking for deals and so many bidding war. So nowadays, the smarter thing that a lot of brokers and sellers are doing, they say day one hard money. Now, they lock you in. So you go into a bidding war, you pay this huge amount of hard money and sometimes they don't even give you early access., So now you're locked in. You can find a thousand and one things and yet we are locked in. Tim: No, I don't do that stuff. I don't play that game. You don't need to if your off-market direct to seller. If you're going through brokers, they're going to do that to you, you know. And there are some people who have crazy money and they're willing to risk that; I'm not willing to risk any of that stuff. A lot of people, they spend a lot of time on ROI - return on investment. I spend a lot of time on return on ROI - return of investment, you know, and making sure I get all my money back. I never ever want to risk principal.   I mean that deal, that's just too risky of a deal. If they want hard earnest money from day one and I haven't already walked the entire property, I'm not interested in doing it. I think once you get to a point where if you're partnered up with a great sponsor or you are a great sponsor yourself and you have the business acumen that like you have James or that I have like I'm able to posture up with these sellers now and kind of say, "Hey. Yeah, no problem. You can go steal somebody's earnest money. That's okay. You can go ahead and do that. But they're not gonna be able to close on this deal because you're lying about the condition of the property or the financials whatever. Or if you're willing to actually sell it to me, give me my opportunity to do my due diligence and shoot straight with me on everything, I promise you, I'm more capable of closing than any of the other people that you're getting bids from right now or you're getting offers from right now."  And so I've been able to kind of build up my credibility in that way where sellers are willing to take less money and offer me better terms than they would maybe with somebody else because they know that I can close on the property. They don't want to get dragged through the mud.  James: Correct. Yeah, this is very interesting, nowadays, the way the market is being played. They're putting all these handcuffs of hard money, day one. And there's another handcuffed where they said you must do lending with our own in-house lending. So that's another handcuff. There are two or three handcuffs that brokers are putting on sellers. And the third subtle handcuff that they do; nowadays, when they close, they send out an email saying that, oh, this buyer paid day one, you know huge amount of money $500,000. They're telling everybody else. Tim: They're trying to set that expectation.  James: If you want to come and buy deals nowadays, you better be ready. So many handcuffs are being put on buyers. But I think a lot of sellers, you know, if they want to work with a good buyer, people who want to really do business, they don't know want to just make the money on earnest money and waste a lot of time getting people to walk through all their units and getting their stuff all being nervous.  So just find a guy who's willing to do it and who is the true buyer. Who knows what he's doing and can close.  Tim: The good brokers with long-term visions and long-term goals, know how to find quality buyers and that's better than just anybody who raises their hand with earnest money, you know. In every hot market, there are people who are short-sighted, who got into real estate real quick just because they wanted to get rich quick, kind of a thing. And they'd rather just do it that way and then anybody who raises their hand, they're willing to go with and those aren't the brokers you want to work with. You want to work with the people who have been around the block a few times, who understand what a good buyer looks like, can build those ongoing relationships. Because as soon as the market shifts, if things cool off, it's going to clean out all the unqualified buyers and unqualified brokers as well. James: Correct. So, let's go to a bit more personal side of things. So what I like about you is you're very, very positive. So you like to look at life very positively and you know, it's hard to do because sometimes you always have something negative that comes in. So do you want to explain about in this business, yeah, you always want to say something negative that you always want to talk about but how do you maintain that positivity?  Tim: Yeah, I mean, you know, I told you the story when we met up a couple of weeks ago or a month ago. I mean, just less than 90 days ago, I was out golfing and I got rocketed to the face with a golf ball, 100 miles an hour from about 30 yards away. It shattered my upper maxilla bone. It knocked out four of my front teeth and shredded my gums. And my lip opened and I was bleeding like crazy. I look down. I'm like, oh, I feel my teeth dangling from my gums and I look down at the ground and I kind of took a knee to make sure I didn't pass out. I looked down at the grass, I'm like, "Man, this grass is really well-manicured; like beautiful grass here, on this golf course."  And I'm like, How the hell am I able to keep up such a positive attitude in this?" You know, I'm thinking about my thoughts. I'm very reflective in that regard. And I was like, "Well, here's why I can see it positive because I got hit my mouth and not in my eyeball or my temple. I could be blind or dead if this thing was an inch higher than where it was."           And so, man, I don't know if it's the law of attraction. You can call it God, you can call it, you know the universe and call it whatever but I think when you put the positivity out, it comes full circle. It's kind of like you reap what you sow kind of a thing and I sow seeds of positivity. And so, I jump in the golf cart and I get taken back to the clubhouse. You know, who's dining in the clubhouse? There are two dentists and an ER nurse having dinner in the clubhouse. They put me in there. They look at my teeth. They drop what they're doing. They take me to their dental office, 15 minutes down the road. They stitched me all up. They put my teeth back in and I'm able to save my teeth and 90 days later, you couldn't even tell that this whole thing happened. Like I'm still going through some cosmetic stuff, but overall like it was a terrible situation, but I think because I was positive it all just kind of came to fruition.  So, you know, one of the things I've always practiced is not saying I have to do something but saying I get to do something. When I go out to dinner with a bunch of my friends and I pick up the tab, they're like, "Dude, you don't have to do that." " No, I don't have to do it but I get to."  The reason that I do what I do is so that I can help people out and I can pay it forward. "Oh, hey, you don't have to cover that bill. You don't have to do this"  'No, but I get to."           I had to eat soup for about a month afterward, but I'm thinking you know, I'm eating a tomato bisque basil soup. I don't have to eat mud pies like people do on the other side of the earth. I don't have to walk two miles each way to go and get fresh water like people have to do on the other side of the earth and some people on this side of the earth. I get to eat soup, I get to eat something that's a bisque that has basil in it. Like are you kidding me? Like there are people who would kill to be able to eat that kind of stuff. I didn't have 14 teeth knocked out, I only had four teeth knocked out.  I think when you just compare it and you put it in that type of perspective of, man, it could have been way worse, you know, like the situation could have gone - and there are still people even with me with my teeth dangling from my mouth, being in that circumstance, I'm still in a better circumstance than a lot of other people who don't have any food, who don't have any shelter, who don't have any clothes, who don't have any support. They're being trafficked by like human trafficking like all that kind of crazy stuff.  Even when I have to go out and raise - I had to raise 7 million bucks for deals last month, and now I don't have to raise 7 million bucks. I get to raise 7 million bucks; that's a pretty awesome problem to have. And I think just putting it in that perspective of shifting your 'I-have-to' to 'I get to', will really make you more gratuitous or have more gratitude for life. James: Was it because of your parents or do you think because you just had some event in your life that you think now I have to change my time or it's just how you have been? Tim: That's a good question. My mom as always been very positive. My mom as always been, hey, you have something else to compare it to. Compare it to this, compare it to that. And I think that's probably what planted the seed of always looking at it from, "Yeah. You're right. I guess it could be way worse, right?" It could have been totally different circumstance. She always used to say, "Hey, if that's your biggest problem today, you've got a pretty good life, Tim." When I was growing up: "Ma, I don't know what I'm gonna do like my basketball just popped." "If that's your biggest problem today, it's a pretty good problem to have." You know, you're safe. You're secure, you're healthy, you have a family, you've got people who love you, you've got food with food on the table and clothes on your back and a roof over your head. Like all those kinds of things like you put in perspective. There's people dealing with a lot worse things. And yeah, I think my mom kind of rooted that into me maybe early on and it definitely stuck and man, I just show gratitude. Especially once you have kids, you know, and you realize man like all I want is their safety and their security and their healthiness and their happiness and as long as they're happy and I'm happy. That kind of a thing that's really amplified it over the past four years. I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old now. And so just putting things into in the perspective that way has been a big deal.  James: Awesome. Awesome. Is there one proud moment in your life that you think you will be remembering it for your entire life?  Tim: That's a good question, James. You've got some good questions there, buddy. James: I want you to think and answer.  Tim: Yeah, you know, I mean, is there one... James: One proud moment that at the end of your life, you're going to say that I'm really, really proud that I did that and it's going to be you know. Tim: Yeah, I don't know if it's one specific moment, but maybe just like kind of how I live my life. I try to do it on a daily basis and maybe it's not something profound. Maybe it's not something that's like one specific thing that was a catalyst. You know, I'm driving to the office today to come and talk to you and some dude cuts me off. Maybe he's got some priorities or something going on. I don't know what other people are going through, you know and for me to judge or get pissed off because somebody cut me off, why would I do that?   I'll tell you if there's a really proud moment, once my kids grow up to be decent human beings, you know, and making sure that I want to live my life as an example of what an exceptional life can look like. So I want people to be like, hey, if Tim Brax, some kid from a blue-collar family in a blue-collar town, outside of Cleveland, Ohio can build up a big portfolio and still maintain good health and still maintain positivity and still maintain great relationships with his wife and with his children, with his friends and still engage and and maybe not be balanced but have harmony in his life, like if this guy can do it, I know I could do it.  If I can inspire people, whether that be one moment in time by a Facebook post or an event that I host or being on a podcast, if I can inspire people to just be their best which is what I have on my wall here and that's not 'do' that's 'be' you know, that's like consumed that all together. It doesn't have to be the best. It would be your best. There's always gonna be somebody more capable, more resources, more whatever. You know, I don't think it's healthy to compare yourself to other people but to compare yourself to yourself and making sure that you're advancing on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis is a big deal. And so, I think I just try to make my kids proud, make my mom proud, make my wife proud, make my friends proud. Inspire other people and I try to do it more in the daily activity versus just do it one time and look at that one moment. I try to give back and try to - like I had suites to the Cavs games when LeBron was here in Cleveland. All right, and so when was that, two years year to go? Two years ago, I think. No, it was last year, I think. And so last year, I had a suite to the Cavs. I got the entire series for the first series. I figured who they're playing, but essentially when you buy a suite, you get it for the entire series, however many games they play at home and they played four games at home. And so, you know the first game I went to, I brought some business partners and was able to pay for the suite that way. And then, the second game I brought some family and the third game, I'm like, hey, I was excited to go but like I'm not as excited as I was maybe the first or second time and I'm like somebody else deserves this more than I do because I've already had this experience right? Like, how can I pay this forward?  And so I posted on social media, "I got a suite to the Cavs game. I have 18 tickets that I can give away, a couple of parking passes. It's stocked with food and drinks and whatever you guys want. Like does anybody know of a family or a few families that I can give these tickets to that maybe wouldn't have this experience on their own but really deserve because of how good of a people that they are?"  And man, like it got so much momentum and got so many shares and then the news picked it up and came and did a story on it. And I had about 5-600 applications that came through for people nominating other people to get tickets to this Cav suite. And so, it was actually really hard to break it down and essentially I found four or five families. I think five families that four tickets a piece that I gave the tickets to. And it was pretty easy to narrow it down to like 25 because I wanted somebody who had maybe faced adversity, overcame the diversity and then found a way to pay it forward; not just overcoming it but actually paying it forward and creating a difference.  So, you know, there was one girl whose sister died of an accidental overdose of drugs and now, this girl who's still alive, her younger sister goes around and speaks at different schools about opioid problems and drug problems and how to overcome that and different resources to plug into for that, you know. And so I'm like, wow, this girl, at the age of 16 years old is making an impact on the world; like she deserves some tickets. There was another gentleman who lost his daughter to a congenital heart defect. She was 3 years old, you know and loses his daughter to this congenital heart defect. And instead of like, I mean, I can only imagine how dark of a place he must have been in and he ends up opening up a nonprofit organization to help families with other kids with congenital heart defects to give them the support and help and the conversations and everything and making a massive impact up here in Cleveland, Ohio. This guy is such a good guy. I give him the tickets and he gives them to one of the people that are in his nonprofit, you know. And it's like, man, these people are just amazing individuals.           And so I found five awesome families like that, that we were able to give the tickets to and like doing stuff like that really makes me feel good. And what's even better is that there were 500 people who I was able to create a catalyst by doing this who now, 500 people are thinking in a positive way about people who make a positive impact on their life. And just that positive ripple effect that's created, I think is really, really powerful and it was really, really cool to see. James: Yeah. When I talk to you, I get very inspired because it's not about the portfolio of real estate or [49:17unintelligible]  rights, it's how you look at life and how you look at things. How you think positive and that's the most important when I look at a person. Tim: Yeah. And you do an awesome job with it, man. I mean, you realize that it's not the portfolio, it's not the money that's noble. It's what you can do with the money that's noble and utilizing it for good. I could afford a really expensive fancy exotic car and I drive a $20,000 Jeep just because I don't really care. I know that there's a bigger impact I can make by being a better steward of my Capital, putting it in more deals or paying it forward in ways like that. So I get more fulfillment from that than from maybe driving something fancy.  James: Yeah, even for me, I can't really imagine driving exotic car because, do I really need it?  Tim: At the end of the day, it'd be cool. I'd rather just go and rent one. I know I'd have buyer's remorse. I just know myself personally and I know that as soon as I bought it I'd be like, I don't really need this. And here's the thing. I like watches. I like clocks. I like taking nice vacations. I like traveling first class. I like that kind of stuff. I like making memories and traveling the world; I love all that. So that's where I get my drive from on making a lot of money. For other people, they like fancy cars, they like fancy houses; that's okay.  I got a good buddy, man, he drives a Rolls-Royce and has multiple hundred-thousand-dollar watches, you know. But I know he doesn't do it for flashed and to impress other people. He does it because when he looks down at his watch and when he gets in his car, he always sits back and he's like, "Man, I had to overcome some adversity, I had to go through some shit in order to get this watch. In order to be able to afford this car. And I've had to grow as an individual, as a person and make an impact on enough other people's lives, positively, that then the universe came back and gave me enough money to be able to afford this car and afford this watch." And so, I think it depends on perspective and that's how you look at it. Like I have nothing against people who have fancy nice things, material type things. Because I know he's one of the most giving people that I've ever met as well and so it's perspective.  James: Yeah, it's perspective. Yeah, awesome, Tim. So why don't you tell our audience how to get hold of you?  Tim: Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty active on social media; you can find me on Facebook Tim Bratz. I run my own Facebook account, you know, it's not somebody else running it. I do some education stuff on how to get involved in apartments and things but hit me up with a message there if you're looking for formal education. I give a lot of away a lot of free content, a lot of free insight and I try to provide a lot of value on social media and stuff so just connect with me on Facebook.  That's gonna be the best way and, yeah, man, James, I appreciate all the value that you give and all the value that you create and all the content that you put out there and, man, you're creating the ripple effect yourself on making a positive impact on people's lives. So appreciate you too, brother. James: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks for coming on the show. It was really a very inspiring show. I'm sure for me and for my listeners and everybody's going to be enjoying it.  Tim: Appreciate it, brother. Thank you so much. James: All right. Bye.

Social Capital
170: Be the catalyst of change - with Tim Manion & Kyle Baldwin

Social Capital

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2019 45:33


About Tim Manion & Kyle Baldwin Tim Manion - Director of Business Development  With a team of Account Executives, Tim curates, develops and manages relationships with potential clients, influencers and stakeholders. In his tenure he has had the opportunity to strategize across a diverse scope of industry and business models, ranging from fortune 50 companies to crowdsourced startups. Prior to joining the Catalyst team, Tim worked in medical sales and operations management.     Kyle Baldwin - Director of Design As the Director of Design at Catalyst, Kyle is responsible for creating meaningful engagements between people, brands, and places. He employs multi-disciplinary design methods to focus on the intersection of communication design and the built environment. Since joining in 2012, he has led some of the agency’s most unique, engaging, and interactive experiences for national brands such as RSA, FN America, GungHo Entertainment, Intel, CDW, and the Chicago Department of Aviation.   What is Catalyst Exhibits and what do you do? Tim: “We work with various clients in every industry too, um, in its simplest form, bring them to a trade show.”   Trade shows are built around networking, what kind of thought goes into designing exhibits to foster the most comfortable environment to network within? Kyle: “So, it's obviously becoming a much younger generation. The millennials are kind of driving a lot of different, uh, ways of selling and engaging with brands. And they're much better, much more educated about their products they're interested in because of the Internet.”   How do networking and social media affect business development and design, and what platforms do you see as the most influential? Tim: “It's interesting to watch how people use LinkedIn in my day today. Um, I use it as an opportunity to figure out who I'm talking to. A lot of people use it for networking to get in touch with people, but when I step into a room to pitch any sort of deal, I'm looking at who's in the room…” Kyle:” It’s an opportunity to have a more natural conversation with a company, with a person, with a brand…” Trade shows are chaotic, what do you do to balance that stress? Tim: “We get the opportunity to work with a lot of cool clients and they pulled back the curtain. Um, so half of it is just enjoying what you do and the natural curiosity to just figure out…”   Can you share with me your most successful or favorite networking story/experience that you’ve had? Tim: “I mean, the benefit of a trade show is the entire room is networking. Um, and I think the best experiences I've had is when a plan goes right, um, we put together pre-post-show marketing for any given client, um, and a client that's willing to listen…”   How do you stay in front of or best nurture your network community? Tim: “It's one thing at its very core on our end, you have to get, uh, a lot of trust from people. We're selling a picture really. Um, so it's being honest, upfront and sincere. Um, and then the follow-through, I'm on the show floor, sleeves rolled up, making sure everything happens…” Kyle: “I'd say we, we kind of keep up with just what's happening in the organization through obviously the, you know, Internet and social media and things like that. So, we're always…”   What advice do you have for the professional on growing their network? Tim: “You should value the people you bring into your fold. It shouldn't just be this person linked with me. You don't know what they do. You don't know who they like. If you're going to if I'm going to reach out to someone…” Kyle: “I would say really like define what you want and what you would like to do. Right. And like find people doing that and kind of echo that career path in some way.”   Digital networking or traditional networking? Tim: “I'll say that the folks I hire right out of college are the best-suited people in the world at getting a hold of people. Everything is done digitally. Every platform they know, LinkedIn, Instagram, I mean these things are taught in college now. And when I was there…”   If you could go back 20 years, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of regarding your career? Tim: “Don't get bogged down in the details. Just possible. Yeah. Yeah. That's fun to watch. When you do hire people who do it, it's like managers notice that and they'll help you and they'll give you every nugget along the way. But if you're in there asking for handouts…”   We’ve all heard of the 6 degrees of separation… Now, who would be the one person you’d love to connect with and do you think you could do it within the 6th degree? Kyle: “I'd say there's probably a few more up there like Polish share and you know, Stefan Sagmeister and things like that I would love the chance to meet...”   Any final words of advice for our listeners? Tim: “Just be honest.” Kyle: “I'd say be fearless then in it as well because you have nothing to lose and it's your career and your path and just own it and you know, don't tread lightly on it. Go and attack every opportunity…”   You can get in contact with Tim at: LinkedIn: Click Here Email: tmannion@catalystexhibit.com(link sends e-mail)(link sends e-mail)   You can get in contact with Kyle at: LinkedIn: Click Here

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更多英语知识,请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So where are you from?Tim: I'm from Oregon. It's right above California. It's on the West Coast of America.Jeff: So the State of Oregon.Tim: It's on the West Coast between California and Washington.Jeff: So you're neighbor states, say California in the south, do you guys get along? Are you good neighbors?Tim: Well, we get along a little bit with Northern California. They have similar thinking. But Southern California, they kind of have different thinking. They think a bit more about money. And also, they are moving a lot up into Oregon, and they have different thinking and they are moving into Oregon and they are kind of changing things.Jeff: So do you get a lot.... are you patriotic towards your own state of Oregon?Tim: A little bit. We just like to keep things the way they are just a little bit. Californians move up because they can sell their homes in California for a lot of money. They move up there and then they tend to be more conservative.Jeff: So, if I was to meet you and call you a Californian, would you get mad at me?Tim: I wouldn't get mad at you, no. I would think that he must think I was from Northern California.Jeff: So do the Californians feel the same way about the people from Oregon? Is that a mutual emotion to dislike the Oregon people as well?Tim: I don't think so because there's been a lot of them moving up. You know they move up there to retire and they move their kids up there, so I think they life Oregon and Oregonians tend to be pretty friendly.Jeff: And how about the North, your northern neighbor? Washington?Tim: Washington and Oregon are pretty similar as far a culturally.Jeff: So if I call you a Washington - if I say you are from Washington you don't mind as much as being called Californian?Tim: Ah, that's true. Yeah, that's for sure.

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

更多英语知识,请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So where are you from?Tim: I'm from Oregon.Jeff: Oregon.Tim: Yeah. It's on the West Coast of America, above California and below Washington. It has the coast. It has the mountains and a lot of different regions really.Jeff: Really, so which is your favorite of those for regions, which do you like the best?Tim: Well, that's difficult. I like the coast a lot. The coast of Oregon is really, really rocky. It's really natural. In Washington, it's really, really developed and in California as well, but in Oregon, it's really, really natural - really rocky. There's beaches and you go out there and it's just nature.Jeff: Swimming? Fishing?Tim: It's cold so there's not a lot of swimming. There's surfing. There's really good fishing. People fish. They take boats out. It's really nice, but...Jeff: Sounds good. So you have the ocean and then you can move inland to the woods.Tim: Yeah, from the ocean you move inland and you've got a real green area. In fact, it gets some of the most rain in all of America really.Jeff: So it is a rain forest.Tim: Well, there are areas that are considered a rain forest. One of the biggest rain forests in America is there, but it's real wet, real green and really mossy. There's moss hanging off the trees. It's beautiful. The greenest place you've ever seen.Jeff: And then, so you had the beach, the ocean. You had the woodland. Is there any other types of regions or landscapes?Tim: Well, you got the real green area I talked about and then from there you go to the mountains, and the mountain kind of traps all the rain. On the other side, it's really dry. It's called kind of a desert region. Lots of cattle ranchers. Real dry. It gets snow. It's good for outdoor sports, but hardly any rain really.Jeff: And that is mostly, you say farmland?Tim: Yes. It's farmland. Ranching land.Jeff: Are there any cowboys?Tim: There's lots of cowboys, actually. Lots of cowboys. Lots of people think of Oregon as a real liberal area but on the other side of the mountains, it's real conservative. So really two types of people.Jeff: So, you have those three regions. Do you have any big cities?Tim: We have Portland Oregon. It's a pretty big city. It's got a basketball team. It is a real nice city. It's got good public transportation.Jeff: So would you like to live in Portland?Tim: I'd like to live in Portland. It's be OK, but there's two college towns that I think would be really good: Corvallis, Oregon, and Eugene, Oregon. Real liberal college towns. They've got really good places to eat and friendly people. A little more liberal and laid-back, so it's my type of place.Jeff: So that sounds like a pretty good place to live. It has a little bit of everything.Tim: Yeah, I think so.Jeff: Maybe I'll move there.

reThink Real Estate Podcast
RTRE 49 - Tim Hur, Managing Real Estate Broker of Point Honors

reThink Real Estate Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2019 36:43


Tim Hur is the Managing Broker of Point Honors & Associates, a residential real estate firm in Duluth, GA. Tim has built a great firm and has also served on NAR's Fair Housing committee during 2018. Tim joins us to give life to the fair housing conversation and why it's important in our business. He also answers great questions around involvement in the industry and commitment to clients needs. Don't miss this episode. Tune in and listen to your favorite real estate podcast, reThink Real Estate. You can find Tim Hur at https://www.pointhonors.com The re:think real estate podcast is hosted by Chris Lazarus, Nathan White, and Christian Harris. Thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 36:42 RTRE 49 – Tim Hur, Managing Real Estate Broker of Point Honors [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris Lazarus here with Christian Harris and Nathan White. Guys what's going on? [Christian]: Not much. Talking to my favorite people.   [Nathan]: Speak for yourself. But I am glad to be here on recording so that's good. Excited we get to talk about some new stuff. For someone might be boring but I still find it interesting so I am excited about that. And this is about it. [Chris]: How is your CMA going? [Nathan]: My CRM…I am just slightly…I'm doing alright. [Chris]: CRM. I say CMA because Christian was just talking about could services and CRM. You know. [Nathan]: That is something I am still failing at. We won't talk about it. We have a guest and we don't want to bore people. [Chris]: We'll move on. We do. We do have a guest. We have great guest. His name is Tim Hur. For those of you who haven't seen him at NAR events, Tim is the managing broker of Point Honors. His bio is a freaking novel. So we're gonna let Tim. Tim thanks for joining us today.  [Tim]: No thank you so much for the invitation. I really appreciate it. It's a lot of fun.  [Chris]: It's great to have you on. So for…for our audience you have achieved quite a lot of honors. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? And what you're doing. [Tim]: Sure. Thank you so much for that [laughter]. I appreciate that. Well my name is Tim Hur. Unfortunate not related to the fictional character Ben Hur otherwise I would be not selling real estate. Of course. But no I am…I was your 2018 chair, national chair for diversity for NRA based here in Atlanta. And I have been rocking and rolling ever since, been a realtor for what 12,13 years now. Kind of have been doing this right after college.  [Chris]: Nice. So tell us your story. Did…Where did you grow up? How did you get into real estate? Where did you go to school? All the fun stuff. [Tim]: Sure. I was born in Huston. Moved to Atlanta than got too far away. You know, I went to high school here. I went to Georgia Tech right after that. And… [Chris]: [inaudible] [Tim]: I know. [laughter] Either you hate me or you love me. One or the other. But I had a really good opportunity going to real estate. So I got my license and got into real estate right before the crash. So it was really good. We all…I think a lot of us who have endured the pains of early real estate and have been in the industry at least for a while and everyone is complaining about interest rates right now but you know we started real estate when we were selling into it. It was 7,8,9,10,11,12%. So you know.  The market tanked so I moved over to commercial for a little bit. And sustained myself with Doreos [phonetics] and commercial and came right back swinging and we've been…You know we have a small team here. We have about 18 agents in our company and we operate pretty well. So… [Chris]: That's awesome so you were the 2018 national chair for Federal Fair Housing and implementing that. [Tim]: Well slightly. So yeah I was 2018 chair diversity.  [Chris]: Can you tell us on how that went on.  [Tim]: Yeah so the 2018 yeah chair for diversity. [Chris]: OK. [Tim]: So the diversity committee from the national association of realtors we were…one of our tasks was to make sure that we helped launch the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the fair housing act. So we were…we were very hands on on that last year.  [Chris]: So what was the…like how did that go? What did you do for the 50th anniversary? I know I saw you at several events. But what was the whole…What did NAR put together for that? [Tim]: Sure. So you know a lot of us you know we think of fair housing and fair housing violations more as…I mean this...It is obviously a very dry subject and a very boring subject at times but it is very instrumental and very important. But a lot of us put their housing as a risk. More than something that you can violate… [Christian]: You can't [laughter] [laughter].  [Tim]: …Trouble and then we learn about it. But really we were trying to take it different aspect of it and try show that fair housing really should be implemented in the beginning where you really should know about fair housing.  And the 50th anniversary was very, very instrumental and very…is very important because as realtors we are on the wrong side of the law. Back in 1924 our code of ethics actually said that we would not be instrumental in introducing members of the community that would actually bring down poppy values. It was a direct attack on you know Asians, Blacks, Hispanics. So there was actually red lining and we were instrumental in doing that. Obviously we…that's why it was very important. [Chris]: We as realtors, not… [Tim]: Right. Realtors [laughter]. Yeah that was in the code of ethics. And you know can you…Nobody really believes that 50 years ago that we were actually fighting against fair housing.  And you know obviously people don't know this as well but you know Atlanta has a very strong history with Dr. Martin Luther King and he actually was a very big pioneer in fair housing. And the day after the assassination of Dr. King, about a week later was when the fair housing act was signed.  So it kind of…you know it kind of…there was a lot of things that went out to it. And realtors got smart and the legal issues got smart and we started putting restrictions and covenants. And you know building you know, fair housing violations into them. But now it's obviously, it's all been taken away.  You know as realtors or you know, people that are in the real estate industry we are now looking beyond race and all the…classes at the fair housing act and trying to include LGBT queue housing rights and stuff like that. So we are looking at the future as well to make sure that stuff like this does not happen again.  [Nathan]: So question for you than Tim, and I don't want this to sound ignorant.  [Tim]: No no. It's OK.  [Nathan]: Right [laughter] you know, like fair housing you said it sounds boring but it's not but then again how big of an issue is it? Like it's not…Like I just don't…my mind doesn't think that way to say “Oh we can't take you here because of this, that or you know redlining as we talk” or steering. My mind does not work like that. Like it just… [Tim]: And that's like…that's the point. Right. So a lot of us…And that's why it was very important. Not a lot of us don't think to vio…Intentionally violate the fair housing act. Nobody goes out and says “I am gonna discriminate tomorrow” or “I am not gonna do this and that”.  We do it unintentionally and it brings up…that's why it was brought up to light. You know when we…for example you know there is issues such as you know I know that you know we as realtors and tidal companies you know there is a lot of D distinctions where it says “This property cannot be sold to somebody of black descend or Asian descent”. It is actually built into the legal description. [Chris]: I saw somebody post one of those online the other day. Yeah. [Tim]: Right isn't that crazy? [Chris]: Yeah and it's the first time I have been in real estate since 2010, that's the first time I have ever seen it. [Tim]: Yeah and you…it's still there. What people don't realize is that Tidal companies they assure over it because it is illegal. They don't really remove that portion where it says, this portion you know “This must sold…”.  So you know a lot of it is awareness but a lot of us don't go out and say “I am going to go and discriminate against you know, somebody in some, you know one of the protected classes.” We just don't think that way. That's why it's very important. That's why NAR really…and a lot of people took this as a moral of risk issue. Our committee was very…we were very adamant about you know rewriting the fair housing camp book. And making sure that everyone is tarter at the beginning. Yeah not to intentionally violate but a lot of us just don't know. And we just don't know. Sometimes you need a refresher.  [Christian]: So I have a question so if some would say, I have heard you know going back… [Chris]:[inaudible] [Christian]: Yes. And I am in Seattle. So you know it should be much more progressive and more focused on… [Tim]: Sure. [Christian]: …Discrimination. That sort of thing. You know I have heard you know very well articulated points that you know the history of real estate is reared with if not has a lot of racism and discrimination in history. And sounds like back in the day NAR and probably the whole real estate industry as a whole is on the wrong side of this issue. When did that change? Was that kind of the process of the civil right movement as society started shifting? Or.. [Tim]: Yeah I think…So I think you know I can't speak on behalf…I am not a history bud, but you know a portion of it you know when FHA started issuing loans. You know a lot of after World War 2 a lot of our veterans wanted to have the white big fences and to live in suburbs. And they were denied that because of FHA insurability and saying there whole fair housing violations here.  You know, as people came back and they were promised they could live in suburbs and they don't have to live in you know in the city limits sometimes and you know a lot of this stuff that were not allowed they weren't given the same rights so to speak. Some were African Americans but you know we also have to look at you know women. Women were not allowed to own real estate without the permission of their fathers or their husbands until certain parts of the country until the 70s or 80s. So you know, this is a very recent event. These are not stuff that again you know you talk about Seattle being very progressive and you know and California LA but you know fair housing violations come all the time.  [Chris]: Really? No way. [Tim]: I know that there are several instances where I have been, when I go around the country for renters. Renters they see an interracial couple. And the landlord is like “No not renting to you”. But in the beginning it was fine because they look at the last name and they were like “Sure sure sure”. And than they come and meet the tenant and they're like “I don't want to rent to you anymore”. Why? “So what's really the case. Why are you not renting to me?”  So you know there is a lot of those…there is instances and maybe there are one offs sometime but I think that if you talk to some of our women or if you talk to some of our multicultural clients or agents they may have a lot of different stories. And it was really interesting to hear a lot of stories.  You know there was one case in Chicago. There was one of the champions that I know. And he was talking about how he opened a real estate company and people just kept his phone lines busy so that he cannot sell real estate. So you know back in the day we didn't have email so you know all we did was we had a group of people keeping his phone lines constantly busy so that nobody could call his real estate office. [Christian]: Wow. [Chris]: Because he was black. [Christian]: That's messed up. [Tim]: That's crazy. Yeah it's crazy. You would never think that. That's just something they thought about. [Chris]: You know what year it was? What year was that? Do you know? [Tim]: This is right…I think this is…I don't know. He does speak often. He is at the VLNAIR [phonetics] conference. Well…But yeah it's crazy just to hear this. [Chris]: It's nuts.  [Christian]: That's in our generation. [laughter]. [Tim]: Yeah.  [Christian]: That's… [Tim]: It's only a few years. So what can we do? [Christian]: Yeah for like your situation you're talking about with the…the rental discrimination with like mixed race couple or whatever. I mean what sort of resort they have because I mean let's say “Why don't you rent to us?”. I would imagine most landlords aren't gonna be dumb enough to be like “Well because you're black”.  [Tim]: You actually would be surprised.  [Christian]: OK. [Tim]: Actually you would be surprised. So you would actually be very surprised. And a lot of realtors you have to be very careful as well.  [Christian]: Sure. [Tim]: Because you know and you know the way that you…You have to be puritan. If you report it you have a special dedicated line. You know you have to really be careful and they'll make the calls. [Christian]: Sure. [Tim]: You know if it's not any to you and they deny you. They may not sustain. They may not claim race or they may not claim sexual orientation or whatever the case is or classes. But they can…if you are denied they will call the landlord back and see if it is available for rent. And if it is they will try to go through the whole process you know with a very different case scenario. And see why they wouldn't rent. So you know if you don't report it, it doesn't get reported. So we encourage everyone. If you see violations, you have to report it. [Christian]: Sure. Now I would imagine that the violations, well I mean you know prior to the fair housing act you know it was just kind of part for the course. But I would imagine with those initially enacted those violations were much more obvious you know as they were struggling to civil rights and racial discrimination stuff. I would imagine it is much subtler these days. I mean what are you seeing as the most common violations you know and I would imagine a lot of those are even unknowing violations. What are you seeing now?  [Tim]: Yeah I don't know if there is any common violations. Right. And again nobody goes out there and says “I am going to discriminate against a certain race or you know religion.” It's you know…it may be more nuanced or a little more subtle than before. It may not be so plain. But you know it does exist and it does happen.  You know it depends…depending on what part of the country you may be in and if you're not aware or how to work with a certain culture you may…you may…you may be found in violation. Especially from the code of ethics not if you are a realtor. But you may be found guilty of violating their housing. And again it's a matter of reporting it. Rather than you know…And figuring out was it really a fair housing violation they really…”Are they doing something against me?”. [Christian]: Sure, do they take into account kind of intention versus ignorance or kind of just kind of if you were violated you violated it. [Tim]: That's…it depends on how that I guess would…how they want to…you know, how they want to approach it. You know I think a lot of the familiar status gets…gets you know found upon. You know being single versus with family right you know with 2,3 children,4 children, 5 children. You know what…I see that part often as well. You know, disability. You know, you have to make sure you don't discriminate on disability. So it's…I think some of the…You know…A lot of the stuff…some of this comes up especially during the rental process. No, I don't think you know someone says no to somebody when they buy or sell as much as you may see that in more of a lender, tenant sometimes. [Christian]: Sure. The ones I have seen…You own a brokerage, is that correct? [Tim]: I do. [Christian]: OK. As do I and Chris. And the thing I have seen most common that I had a couple of agents on would be like listing descriptions. Would be like “This is a perfect friendly house”. I am like “Yeah you can't say that”. You know, great for kids, you know.  And the other think I heard recently you know was an agent who was working with an Indian buyer and they were like “I want to live in a neighborhood hat is primarily Indian”. He is like “I can't tell you that. You do your research, you tell me where you are looking and I will support that”. But you know… [Tim]: Yeah if you say like “Oh yeah this is…you know…I think I know where you would like to live because there is a very big Chinese community”. You know that…that's…you're steering somebody so you have to be very careful how you do that. You know the next kind of the big one you know is schooling.  You know schools and how much is good schools. Is that also kind of rooted into fair housing right. Because sometimes some of the better schools will have certain races that would make them more predominant. And so people have been using sometimes, may be using schools for fair housing violations. So you have to be as an agent and as broker, be very careful of schools. Because they are looking at that now. [Christian]: So you're saying they're kind of using that as the avenue to be in a predominantly white neighborhood or something like that? [Tim]: Potentially yeah, potentially right. So you may need to be careful on how we present schools. You know if you're saying that this is a really good school it's very different form saying “Hey this school is predominantly white”. You know in a predominantly higher class subdivision, or a neighborhood so you have to be very careful of how you use school in it too because they can use that… You know it is interesting that you bring schools up too. Or I brought it up but you know the listing descriptions anyway. Because the other day I was browsing around and there is a couple of apps on…on target marketing. And some of the target marketing for properties I have seen clearly violates fair housing. And I brought it to their attention and they're like “Wow wow we don't do that”. But I am like “But you can click male or female and you can click how many children that they have and you can click you know…”Because the data is out there.  So you have to be very careful on how you do your advertising as well and this is why Facebook got sued. Because you know make sure that you're advertising when you do decide to purchase ad space, that it is open to all. Because you know in certain people…and this is another unintentional case.  So people have said “Hey this million-dollar house I envision this to be a certain client. You know it's gonna be someone with a certain amount of wealth. And you know a certain race and sex”. And so they target, hyper target it you know a certain demographics so to speak. And you know instead of targeting based upon salary they were doing it…you can literally click on the different options and I was telling them “This is very bad”.  And then of course they redid their algorithm and they took out some of the choices but that it happens. So again another unintentional violation. You're not going out there as an agent to intentionally say “Hey I am going to market this property only to white people or only to Asians in this market or only to certain you know, Chinese”. You know whatever the case may be. So unintentional. [Chris]: That's interesting that you…you know with the whole schools and how Christian you mentioned being a predominantly white neighborhood for a school with…you know Harvard was just recently sued by Asian students for… [Tim]: Right. [Chris]: For not being able to get in because they were too good. So I mean it…cultures are changing. The demographics are changing and you know us as agents…what are some things Tim that really brokers or agents should know? Brokers can train the agents or things that agents should know to be aware of outside of the normal like federal fair housing. Because you mentioned online with algorithms. [Tim]: Yeah. [Chris]: There really has not bene anything that comes down formally that says “This is how you can use demographics online to advertise”.  [Tim]: Right. [Chris]: In the past we've had…Say you're in the Buford Highway area and you're advertising in a Korean newspaper. In Korean. In…In my training it has been that if you were advertising that elsewhere in the general population that is sufficient but if you go online and you target that it's a completely different story.  [Tim]: Yeah I think the intent is always a key factor, right. So you know as brokers our jobs are getting much harder. You know as an agent it's very important to train them but you know we…they're independent agents. You know we don't…They're not employees of our companies. You know we do have to watch what they do and what they say and I have seen a lot of employment agreement or…You know not employment agreement. I have seen a lot of independent contractors in the game that are actually saying that they are able to monitor social media. Right? Because that's one of the places where a lot of people do market their properties now.  And it does get a little harder as our jobs you know, as you grow you firm and your brokerage firm gets bigger and bigger and bigger. You know, how do you control your 3000 agents in you know do not violate right and who is the one that gets the trouble the broker or the agent? Right? Who is the one that has to go through the whole process and who is the one that is gonna get fined?  So it is you know…It's hard to always…Our job is you know to not employ…not only to encourage our agents to make money but to help them you know elevate their business. But it is a harder job for us. You know you mentioned advertising in different languages. And yeah you know I always say make sure that you just don't advertise it just to 1 community or 1 avenue. Make sure it is available to everyone.  And I think just in general it's good practice anyway. You know, why would you put everything in all Chinese or in all you know or in Spanish. You're limiting your market sphere anyway so why would you do that? [Chris]: Yeah. [Tim]: You know it's good practice. [Chris]: So what got you involved with NAR? So you came into this before, divide, you got into commercial. What created your firm and why did you get involved on the level that you did? Let's steer a little bit off of fair housing. [Tim]: Yeah. It was fun stuff. NAR you know being a realtor, starting off in a realtor world, you know that is something that we kind of naturally gravitate towards. I was fortunate. I kind of took a different path. I went to NAR and started on committees at NAR first.  I am kind of a little bit of a goof ball and I was taking a…auditing a class. ABR class. And I just happened to be with a lot of the past presidents and future presidents of NAR in the class. And it was really cold and being from Georgia I am always cold. I don't like snow and I took…I was in a hotel room and me and the instructor were just fighting you know over the thermostat and I just eventually took the hotel robe and I just brought it to class. And the minute he started playing with the thermometer I was like “Done, can't do it anymore”. Just put on my robe. Out at the NAR building. All the along had no idea. I didn't even know who I was even talking to. I was just like “Oh I came to take a class”. And then everyone was like “Is that the robe from the hotel? Did you just steal a robe? We're paying for your class”. And I am like “Oh no no I will take it back, I will take it back”. Come to find out that was Ron Vapes and Steve Brown and those were all the future presidents and the past presidents of NAR. So I think I made a little bit of an interesting impact rather [laughter]… [Chris]: Yeah that's a little bit of an impact.  [Tim]: Yeah but and you know I started getting involved with the realtor world just because it's very important for us to really ensure that our business is sustainable. You know there's so many things that we do and one of the few plan to my president circle…planted our members in Georgia. And I just…you know. Right? [Chris]: Our Pack baby. [Tim]: Our Pack. Yes. I do believe in giving back. And so I do give quite a bit back just because I have seen the policy world. I am a policy wonk. I have you know as…I want to make sure that our housing rights are protected. And you know yours and my jobs are…you know we're not impacted every day and I see that. So I want to make sure that we give back. [Chris]: Well you know what Tim is a former Our Pact chair. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for your contribution. [Tim]: Of course. [Chris]: You did everything that Our Pact does. So what made you go out and start your own brokerage? How did you get back into residential? [Tim]: So I work with a lot of international clients. You know, the good thing about having a dip or diversifying in the real estate world, you know, when I jumped back into commercial I also started working with a lot of international clients and global clients.  And so you know our firm is a little unique. Most or our agents actually are bilingual. They do speak more than 1 language in our firm which is nice just because we do cater to a whole different demographics of clients at times. And we can help them.  So when I started working with a lot of international clients they weren't really affected a lot by the recession. So they were able to work with a lot more investment properties and stuff like that. So when I started coming back into the residential world they were looking for commercial and then they were looking for something to buy on the residential side. So I kind of put my foot back in and it was fun. I started my own firm because I wanted to have a little bit more flexibility you know. Back in the day I would have said that it was because of commissions but looking at it now as a broker you don't really make that much money. You…There is a lot more headache. But I wanted to… [Chris]: A headache [inaudible] changes [laughter]. Yeah. [Tim]: But I did want the autonomy. So I started the firm and ever since I did it has been going ever since out. You know there is a lot of changes going on in the industry and I hate the word “disruptor”, but there is a lot of change going on. But I think at the end of the day if you service your clients and you take care of your clients that's why they have always been with me and you know I think they will always come back. [Nathan]: A [censored] men to that. [laughter] [Tim]: Yeah so I just… [Christian]: Nathan said the first F bomb in the day. Ladies and gentlemen Nathan [censored]… [Nathan]: Well you know how I feel about that so you know you don't need a big name, you don't need a gigantic flag, you don't need to have all the tech in the world. Just need to take care of people.  [Tim]: Yeah absolutely. And you know in that thing that is you know going to independence or working in a mega firm there is always pros and cons. But people always go…they go back to you. They back to Nathan White because they know Nathan White is in real estate. They go back to Christopher because they know that Christopher is in real estate.  So I think that if you know…and that is what I try to teach my agents like “You guys can leave me any day, I mean I have to sign your release forms if you decide to leave tomorrow or today or within the hour. You know, I hope that you know, during the time that you were with me that you were able to build your own brand so they come back to you for ever and ever and ever for real estate purposes. And if you can't than tie yourselves with…if you're not gonna be in real estate than tie yourself with a referral company and make some money that way”.  There are so many different avenues in making money in real estate. And I have a top agent, a top agent in my office. I call her top just because she doesn't sell real estate. She refers. And it's funny because she works for a company that does a lot of relocations and if they don't offer real packages she's like “Where are you moving? I know where you're moving to. Let me find you an agent”. And she just collects a referral check all day long. And so in my world that's a top agent who doesn't sell real estate but is able to collect and really utilize her license. But it's funny how…I know when the checks come in. And I am like “These are yours”. I know exactly whose check it is. It's fun.  [Nathan]: So Tim I always like to ask some fun questions and I typically pluck them out of a great book by Tim Ferriss. [Tim]: So you're the one? [Nathan]: Yeah I am the one right. Tim Ferriss wrote a great book called “Tribe of mentors”. He asked everybody the same questions and I always like to ask guests a few of these questions that he asked people. So I will fire away with the first one. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it? What would it say?  [Tim]: A billboard with anything that I want on it? [Nathan]: Yeah what would that message be? [Tim]: [laughter] I think people very close to me would say…It would probably say “Leave me alone”.  [Nathan]: Really [laughter]. That's great. [Chris]: Tim Hur wants to be left alone.  [Tim]: You know when I am at home and I want to be by myself, I want to be by myself but you know you don't get that luxury as a broker and working with international clients. We're always…We're always doing something but you know just having the time alone to be like “Give me my 15 minutes”.  You know I try to turn off my phone when I am working out just because I am like “That's my 1 hour that I have, don't have to worry about clients. You can wait”. But yeah I think that's…you know that was the first thing that popped into my head. [Nathan]: That is fantastic. Might be the best answer that we've gotten for that one yet. I don't know. Leave me alone. [Tim]: I think that's the most truthful one you could get on the show. Right? [Nathan]: Yes and I appreciate that. So... [Chris]: That's good. [Nathan]: So number 2, what are some bad recommendations you hear in our profession? What are bad recommendations you hear all the time? [Tim]: Bad recommendations. You know I don't think anything is ever a bad recommendation. I think you just...you're just…you're just very misguided, right. You just…people don't realize all the ins and outs of how difficult it is to buy and sell a home.  Recommendations…Gosh I hear that every day. I hear bad recommendations every day. I will say that rather than giving examples you can probably tell by my face. My partner says that I have facial trots. And I can't hide it anymore. So when I hear something really weird or wonky my face just turns. So you know I don't say anything. You just kind of tell from my face. [Chris]: You just see the reaction.  [Tim]: You see the reaction. So I have been told that I need to really control my facial [laughter]… [Christian]: Start doing Botox. Just numb your face. [Chris]: Yeah it will tone it all down. Just nothing to worry. [Tim]: Yeah just gotta tone it down. That's probably you know sort of recommendations I hear all the time. I will tell you that. Just kind of be careful of that. [Nathan]: Got you. So 3rd one. What is a book that greatly influenced your life?  [Tim]: A book that greatly influenced…Who reads books? OK. [Nathan]: Audible counts. [Tim]: Yes I am a bad millennial. I like to have something in my hands. No this is… [Nathan]: I am a book nerd so… [Tim]: Oh you're a book nerd. You know I am a big fan of the Chronicles of Narnia and I do like reading a lot of of very you know I don't want to say Christiany but you know it's very interesting reads. You know things that are kind of up in the air and Scrutiny…One of my favorite books is the Scrutiny of Letters. It was…I re-read that book not long ago and it's a very good book. I would recommend it. [Christian]: Allegory. Allegory story. [Tim]: Yeah. I just like the title too. I mean Scrutiny of Letters. It's kind of like…you know. [Nathan]: I will tell you I like books. I do have to do a quick plug. For those that do listen and like to know what book…Right now I am reading a book called Men's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. If you haven't read great lately go grab this book. It's really interesting. He was an Auschwitz survivor. If you are having or struggling with your why in your life, go read this book. It will speak to you. Great book right now. This one right here. You can't see it because you're listening but those that are recording right now can, but an awesome book. So anyway, onto that. Well best answer ever. Leave me alone. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. [Tim]: [laughter]. [Christian]: I have a quick question as we're wrapping up here. So you own your own brokerage. So you're a managing agent. So are you selling real estate yourself? [Tim]: I am. I am a compete broker.  [Christian]: OK. So you're doing that [inaudible]. Whatever. We know what you mean. You're still involved in NAR? [Tim]: I am. [Christian]: Right you're still committee. So what's…What's…I mean I don't know how you find time for all of that. But what's kind of your next move? [Tim]: Mainly. [Christian]: Because of your involvement in the association. [Tim]: You know in this…as long as you can constantly serve and you know I don't mean that there is always ways to always get involved. You know I am a big Our Pack guy. I am a big global guy. Big diversity guy. You put your hands in a lot of business.  But the thing as…the important thing rather than what I want to do or what I see myself in 5 years with what the realtor world is really more of “Let's get everyone else involved too”. I think that's just really important on a local level. State level. International level. You know we hear all these different stories about “The realtor committee doesn't represent me” or certain things, “Certain communities don't represent me well”. We can find you a mission. We can find you a way to get involved. And I think that's the really more important story than trying to find where I really need to be plugged in the next life. We can all…We're all…We're realtors. We're selling real estate. We can bounce around. We can serve wherever we're asked. [Christian]: Yeah. Do you…Do you believe that non realtor, non-members have an ability to serve and make an impact without being a member of the NAR. Is there…is there diversity in that or… [Tim]: Yeah, so actually there's 4 multicultural associations that NAR recognizes rather. There is the agency of real estate association of America. There is a national association in… [Christian]: ARIA.  [Tim]: Yes ARIA. There is the national association of Gay and Lesbian in Real Estate professionals. NAGLREP. And National association of real estate brokers for the black community and the national association of real estate…of Hispanic real estate professional. NAHREP. So you know just because you're a realtor…You know if you're not a realtor and you want to get involved with some of our multicultural associations that's where to go.  And so they make an impact on their own communities itself. So yeah you don't have to be a realtor. We would always encourage you to be one but if you want to be one. But even if you're a part time or…you can still make an impact because there is so much to do in our world. And yes we don't have…There's only 24 hours in a day and we don't have a lot of time but you know there is always…You can shrug along and you can find something to do.  [Chris]: I couldn't agree more Tim. Thank you so much for joining us today. We got a lot of really great nuggets both on the fair housing side, both on your background and getting involved. For anybody who wants to reach out how can they find you? [Tim]: You can find me again…My name is really easy just think of the fictional American character of Charles Helson and think of Tim Hur. Other than that you can find me on Facebook. I am easily available on social media all summer. It's always nice when you get hacked and someone makes a fake profile of you which I found very recently but yeah you can't miss me.  But you can find me…the easiest way is just google me and find me. If you don't google yourself and do a vanity search of yourself I highly recommend it. [Chris]: Definitely. Awesome. Everybody thank you so much for tuning in for this episode of re:Think Real Estate. Catch us back next week as we celebrate our 50th anniversary…not anniversary. Our 50th episode.  [Tim]: Congrats you guys. [Chris]: Could be a long year. But thank you Tim for joining us. Everybody if you haven't go to rtrepodcast.com. Put in your email and name in the little subscription form and be alerted every time an episode drops. So you can hear great nuggets from guys like Tim Hur. Thank you and we'll see you next Monday.  [music] [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

IT Career Energizer
Puzzle Solving and Enjoying Your Development Work with Tim Warner

IT Career Energizer

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2018 17:01


KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­­­(1.02) – So Tim, can I ask you to expand on some of those things and tell us a little bit about yourself? Since Tim was a boy he has had a fascination with all things tech. This is part of the reason he is now a generalist with a deep understanding of everything from the hardware to the software. Over the past couple of years, he has focused on the public cloud, in particular Microsoft Azure. (1.50) – Phil asks Tim for a unique IT career tip. Tim explains that developing the ability to organize your thoughts and present them clearly is very important. Public speaking ensures that you learn and practice those critical skills. (3.06) –Tim is asked to share his worst career moment by Phil. Fortunately, Tim’s worst IT career moment has a silver lining. Tim has always been a teacher as well as an IT professional. So, when he was in the running for an IT directorship in a local private High School he focused on securing that role. But, the school changed its mind and decided not to go in that direction. This was a big blow and very depressing. But, the experience taught him the need to keep the prospect of a future position in context. IT moves at the speed of light, so you need to take a flexible and agile approach to your career. (6.00) – Phil asks Tim to tell everyone about his career highlight, his greatest success. That happened when Tim was speaking at a big conference about WireShark. The audience was a big one and they were eager. So, eager in fact that some of them were applying what he was telling them immediately. There was even a group of programmers from one company who were instant messaging his troubleshooting advice back to their datacenter. That experience demonstrated to Tim the importance and practical value of the technical education he was providing. It was great to see people developing their careers, live, right there in front of him. (7.50) – Phil wants to know what excites Tim about the future of the IT industry and careers. Tim loves the fact that industry work can now be done from anywhere. There is no longer to spend ages in a car traveling or to work in a data center. Cloud computing is definitely the future anyone involved in IT cannot avoid working with cloud computing. However, it is a little worrying that newcomers are not likely to be able to do any actual cabling. Tim’s experience of interfacing with the hardware has helped him to develop software-defined networks that work properly. (9.00) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Puzzle solving and the fact that you become a perpetual student, there is always something new to learn. Tim was inquisitive from an early age, so for him IT was the perfect fit. (9.55) – What is the best career advice you have been given? Tim said his grandfather told him “if you're doing work that you would do even if you weren't getting paid for it, then you found your right career.” It was a good piece of advice and one of the reasons Tim continues to work in tech and information. (11.38) - If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Tim says that is tricky because today’s IT industry is very different than when he started. He sometimes wishes he had majored in computer science. He advises someone entering the field today to survey as many different disciplines as possible. Then whittle down where their interests and aptitude lie. (12.20) – Phil asks Tim what he is currently focusing on. Tim is still creating Microsoft Azure training and doing consultancy work when he wants to do so. Tim is also doing his best to give back to the IT community, by talking at workshops, mentoring, teaching and attending meetups. (12.58) – What would you consider to be your most important non-technical skill? For Tim it is public speaking. There are plenty of ways to learn this skill and it is well worth taking the time to do so. Being confident and able to be concise and persuasive will help you with job interviews, pitching ideas and selling your case. (14.03) – Phil asks Tim to share a few final words of career advice. Unless you enjoy the work, Tim advises considering another career. IT requires a lot of time and effort, so it is not something you want to be doing if you do not enjoy it. BEST MOMENTS: (2.33) TIM – “The ability to organize your thoughts and present your thoughts clearly is going to carry your career.” (4.46) TIM – “It’s important to be that flexible and agile in your approach to your career.” (10.03) TIM – “If you're doing work that you would do even if you weren't getting paid for it, then you found your right career.” – Tim’s grandfather.” (14.00) TIM – “You really can't go wrong with by honing your public speaking skills.” (14.09) TIM – “In information technology careers, you're never going to be hurting for work.” CONTACT TIM WARNER: Website: https://www.techtrainertim.com Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/TechTrainerTim

All Comics Considered
Episode 135: Sister Maggie Approves

All Comics Considered

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2018 62:06


Good morning ACC-tion heroes. We recorded this episode before the passing of Stan Lee. While we will talk about the godfather of Marvel in an upcoming episode, today's show is all about the first three episodes of Daredevil Season 3, and then a dive into some of the books and shows we love this week, including: The Batwang, Juke Join, Sabrina, and the Haunting of Hill House. Daredevil: The first 3 episodes Marty: Y'all.... Nick Interesting new take on Bullseye - much creepier than in the comics Elden Hensen knocking it out of the park as Foggy The whole show should just be titled “You’re So Dumb, Matt!” Seeing more of the newspaper guy makes me think he’s gonna get killed this season Fisk’s white suit Dear lord the entire Catholic contingent was ordered from a catalogue  Tim It’s so good that I’m not even that mad that Luke Cage got cancelled. The black costume The Bullseye costume OMG THE FIGHT SCENES Pull Box Marty Juke Joint Writer: Tee Franklin Artist / Cover:Alitha Martinez Batman: Damned Art:Lee Bermejo Written:Brian Azzarello Nick Erased Haunting at Fucking Oh Shit I’ve Got to Close My Eyes Tim  Chilling Adventures of Sabrina-  Roberto Aguirre-Sacco Robert Hack TV show.

Software Defined Survival
Episode 1: Tim Albright On Recognizing Opportunity, AV as a Service And Being Competitive

Software Defined Survival

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2018 71:32


Tim Albright is arguably the most successful podcaster in AV. He started his career in radio, and somehow wound up becoming and AV consultant. He’s also worked as a control systems programmer and university technology manager before founding AVNation. AVNation is a network of AV professionals whose goal is to further the AV industry through education and knowledge. They do that through blog posts and covering industry events and they are most well known for podcasting. Their flagship podcast, AVWeek, was first recorded in 2011 and provides a weekly overview of the AV industry. Over the years they have launched several other podcasts like ResiWeek, EdTech and my personal favourite, A State Of Control. Transcript This transcription was created with IBM Watson's Speech To Text service. Computers aren't perfect. Please keep that in mind when reading the transcript. [spoiler title="Read More..."] Pat: Greetings everyone in AV lands my name is Patrick Murray and welcome to software defined survival, where we interview the people and companies in AV that you software to re invent themselves and the way they do business. We listen to their stories and asks for as for tactics and device on how to survive and even thrive in this software defines world.   I'm excited about our first guest on the show he is arguably the most successful podcaster in AV and before you run away saying what the heck does podcasting have to do with software, I kind of see podcasting and blogging as software defined media. Right? That the podcasts and the blogs and things like that, they don't care where you are and they don't care how you consume it. They don't care what time it is like a radio show and things like that so this is definitely a software defined solution and that's why I'm excited to have this guest.   He started his career in radio and somehow wound up becoming an AV consultant I'll have to ask how that happens and he also worked as a control system programmer and university technology manager before founding easy nation alienation is a network of AV professionals whose goal is to provide to further the AV industry through education and knowledge something that is near and dear to my heart and their flagship podcast TV week was first recorded in two thousand and eleven and it provides a weekly overview of the AV industry if you're in a movie you should definitely check out a few weeks it's a great way to get a a download of what's going on in the industry.   Now over the years they launched several other podcasts like crazy week ed tech and my personal favorite state of control if your navy programmer definitely check out a state of control well ladies and gentlemen Tim Albright.   Tim: Yeah, way too flowery.   Pat: Welcome to the show Tim. Is there anything about that introduction that you'd like to add or expand upon?   Tim: No you don't need me on the show now! Yeah yeah I'm good.   Pat: Nice.   Tim: How are you doing?   Pat: Yeah I'm good I'm good.   Tim: I'm excited for this dude.   Pat: Thank you I appreciate that. I got a couple questions lined up here. We could also let this meander and go wherever it takes us.   Tim: It probably will.   Pat: It probably will. So I know you have kids I have a couple kids myself and one thing you'll never hear a child say is when I grow up I want to be in AV. At least, I haven't heard that one yet. So there's usually a story behind how people wind up in this industry so tell us how did you get started in AV?   Tim: Why are you mention my broadcast and my broadcast background and I was working for radio stations and Lois and must show my my my wife and I Michelle had had had our first child and it was not conducive to having a child was not conducive to being on morning radio which is what I was because you know you get up at stupid o'clock in the morning and you go to bed at you know really early at night and just wasn't conducive for that and so I was starting to look around and the armada the college that I had had gone to school to school at was needing what they described as a in an engineer and somebody to take care of some projector installs once a month once a year and I was annoyed that day I'm, I'm somewhat technical and somewhat you know I can do that and I was already teaching already a production for them and so I was like sure I can do this and so they they they hired me on and what turned in what what started out as being do a couple of projector installs a year turned into holy cow we have no money and we have to upgrade all of these rooms and we have to adjust the programming in these rooms and we have to learn how to properly designed these these rooms so I quickly found myself taking Infocom classes and taking classes from various manufacturers and getting certified to program Sir your fax first and so I buy it we ended up having our own little small band of of designers and installers for our little college I mean we had a hundred ninety rooms which is not it's not small but it's not it's not the size of let's say young university of Illinois which is also listed above out for me but it was it was significant for us and so that got me only involved in AV almost from the get go. I mea, I went to my very first Infocomm shortly after starting there because of the lack of knowledge that I had and I need to get ramped up on so that's how I got involved was you need to do a career change and of finding myself you know in the ceiling trying to put together a five wire BNC and and getting a multi meter out to figure out why the heck my yellow look weird.   Pat: Exactly switching that the black and white wires.   Tim: Well, I started making cables with all kinds of short so that's why I that's what I used to multi meter is yeah every yeah eventually got better at it .   Pat : So you mentioned your first visit to Infocomm do you remember what your first impressions were kind of walking into that hall?   Tim: Holy crap, are you kidding me? I fell in love I honestly it well it wasn't the work and it was in the I love the work it was it was good work and I I still I still control is still my favorite part of of a B. and and probably always will be , but when I walked in the show floor this is this is back in the mid to late two thousands arm so wasn't the size it is now I was absolutely flabbergasted me, I had never been to anything like that like it before my life I'd never to the C. S. as as a as a journalist I'd been to a number of junk it's a movie junkets where they fight about interview people in this up now and go see movies and those are smaller by by a large margin but I never been to any be a detriment to CS and so this is my first trade show experience and I walked in the show for and I'm just awestruck and I'm like I don't want to do anything else I simply don't want to do anything else and I remember walking around and talking to folks and you know that was when I got to meet a lot of folks that I still you know consider friends today I mean I it was when when I will I met body mind his name is Kevin who happens to work for Crestron but you know met him there and I met them for the folks that just to kind of took me under their wing and said okay here's this here's as dumb kid that does not anything let's, let's show him a thing or two.   Pat: Yeah there's nothing like having a mentor in those first years to know an explain things that are that are now probably totally obvious to you.   Tim: And obsolete. Just for the record.   Pat: Well, Yeah, RGBHV byebye.   Pat: So everybody in AV usually has a at least one nightmare project under their belt. Let's not talk about that. Maybe you could tell me about your most rewarding AV projects and what made it special for you?   Tim: Oh wow, see that one is harder. I can tell you can tell you my nightmare story off the top of my head. So this is not one that I specifically did but I was in charge of I mention the fact that I work for college and the largest the largest construction project that we were a part of the college I where I went to over the cards that I've I worked at was a small community college and it was it was bigger than what it should have been. It's it's it has delusions of grandeur at time and it's a good thing right I'm not I'm not saying that as a negative I'm saying that they have delusions of grandeur and all the times they meet those right so this is a community college who reaches beyond what the normal community college to play does they wanted to do a research center right this organization called script switches scripts ocean Oceana ocean out ripple oceanography is that right oceanic scripts motioning research center are they study the ocean well I live in Illinois, I live in southwest Illinois just outside of Saint Louis. We live on the Mississippi, the biggest outside of the Amazon the biggest of fresh water longest waterway in the in the North America there's nothing like that. Right there's nothing and so they wanted to develop a research center I community college, building a research center for the for the rivers. And where Alton is which is the whole time I live and it actually happens to be right at the confluence between the Illinois Mississippi and the Missouri rivers so not only are you on the biggest river in North America you're also at this very unique place between where all these three rivers come togther, right. So that's kind of the backstory here, they have this this grand idea are they partner with a bunch of people I know like we're gonna build this, right? It is a platinum level or gold level LEED certified building, right. I think when they started out they were going platinum and I think eventually they got gold. And we were tasked with doing all the AV in this research facility. Now there have been a couple other projects where they they built this this four story twenty million dollar research facility a year or two earlier and we spec'd out right. That was you're talking about thirty or forty rooms I think , six lecture halls that was subbed out we helped with the design and we we assisted with some of the direction but we did not do that. We did this research facility and at the end of the day when we had the grand opening and and this that and the other, you walk through and everything's working and everything's exactly you know what kind of the way you envisioned it as a designer so it was the first project as as a AV person as an A. V. professional, as a programmer, as a designer, as an installer you could sit back and go: „yeah we did that and it freaking rocks“.   Pat: Nice! It does happen once in awhile. Has it ever happened again?   Tim: No, well like that, I mean we've had a couple others while we were there like I said we were there and had the AV because we had to.   Pat: Is that why you had that kind of success with it, because yeah because the control you have over the projects?   Tim: Yes,absolutely! No it was one of these things where we were actually brought in early enough and every AV person in the world will tell you, the earlier we can get brought in the more successful going to half and we were able to do things like you know have conversations about you know the network and have conversations and this is early on with video over IP and integrating we used a,video conferencing system it was like the second or third video conferencing system college never had. We had two of them in this building because they were visiting scientists from all over the world who had their own water ways that they were concerned with they would come to this resurfaced research facility, because it was one of a kind of I believe it still as it was, one of a kind and so you had folks from China on you had folks from our member Argentina and Venezuela coming here. And so they needed to talk to their compatriots in a secure manner so we had we were tasked with creating a secure BTC system and something that was easy for them to use and understand and you know this was back way before anybody considered you know one button usability we had a one button system where they all they had to do was you know come in and and we were working with the the scheduling software and they can hit a button and they were connected to their people. If it was the right time and the right schedule.     Pat: Very nice. There's a few things I want to impact there. Like somebody told me recently when a professor in a university for example. When they have a hard time with this technology, it kind of takes away from their credentials a bit. Right, if if they're like supposed to be this really smart person and they're fumbling around with the touch panel, it it kind of takes away from the authority that they have. So something like a one touch button, you know, where anybody could really use it, then they can get on with their own job.     Tim: So, so I have a story about that. I have over the years worked with a couple integrators in Saint Louis. I still do work for one group. Just because I've known him for twenty years and they're good friends. One of the first times I was on a significant ,college and university in Saint Louis .I'm not gonna say which one. We were replacing a touchpanel and we get there and this touchpanel is concaved,right and this is an old, if you're familiar with the old Crestron quick media systems, it was a seventeen inch quick media touch panel, so this was not a cheap device to replace. It was somewhere between fifteen and twenty grants and the the entire center of it is concave and I'm like „what in the world happened to this?“   Pat: I think, I know what happened.   Tim: There's this professor, who has like fifteen doctorates, probably like four or five, but still has a number of doctorates and is the first time using the system and just like any other good programmer you put in a cool down screen, when you're using a projector, especially back then right.   Pat: Sure.   Tim: And he said, how dare this thing tell me to wait two minutes so I can restart the system. And put his fist through it.   Pat: Wow, he actually punched the touch panel.   Tim: No, no he wailed on the touchpanel, to the point where it was busted.   Pat: Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this, or I hope there are. Thant wanted to do that themselves once or twice.   Tim: Oh, I'm certain.   Pat: I know a guy, who threw his laptop across the room once, programmer.   Tim: Laptop? I've done that too.   Pat: Yeah? I always wanted to, never had the guts to do it. I wanted to believe it, but never had the guts to actually do it. So the other thing I wanted to talk about on that story was. I always like it, because a lot of times we do these projects and we go away and we never see how the rooms are used and usually it's some generic thing that you know we never really can appreciate at all. So I like the fact that you actually knew about people using the room and how they're using it. Like scientists coming together from all over the world and actually using your technology to collaborate and really produce results. That’s something I think we don't get to see often enough.   Tim: Well especially folks like you, right. And you know folks, who are either independent programmers right. You guys are the mercenaries of the industry you get called in or subbed out and you don't. Alright, you go in and you know, I've talked about this before, you're kind of unique, because you're in Germany, you get to go around to different parts, different countries in you Amsterdam and done jobs. I've done jobs, not a whole lot of outside of Saint Louis but a couple of size and Louis. And you're right, if you are in this position, you're never going to go back to that job, hopefully. As long as everything worked correctly and see how they use it. Now being a tech manager, if you are a tech manager, yes, you get that you get that that ability you get that opportunity to do it on two different levels. First of all, if you're decent, if you are a tech manager worth their salt, you should at least be there or be available for folks especially new an incoming faculty to use your systems. Now you and I both know, that if you have to have instructions on how to use a touch panel the new done a poor job of designing the touch panel. But there are people with five doctor too that can't turn on a light switch successfully. Sometimes.   Pat: They've got their minds on other things.   Tim: Absolutely they do. So we actually developed a number of modules because we still had we're still going from one control system to another control system even when I left, because that we have had with at one standard we're moving to another so we had about three different, types of of control systems are at our college, so we had different models we had recorded them in and let met what made them available to new incoming faculty so I can get used to it right. If you're in this building with this is the type of system we have in this building this is how you access your but this building it's just a bunch of you know it's a it's a wall plate with a couple buttons this is how you do you you access it. And so, you would still be able to go and and and and walk through and and kind of be available the first couple weeks of of classes, to make sure that everything kind of works and and kind of comes off without a hitch. Pat: Very nice. Lets a shift gears for a minute and talk about AV Nation. Where did the...   Tim: Why? I'm not very serious Patrick, you should know by now.   Pat: Yeah I'm good I'm getting that, so I'll try to tone it down a little bit. Tim: No, you’re fine   Pat: It’s my first podcast , give me a break, I'll loosen up.   Tim: I have three hundred forty one AV weeks and I am not gonna count the other ones, so.   Pat: Nice, so where the original idea come from?   Tim: Oh Lord, so you mentioned very very nicely my broadcast background. I was weaned and kind of developed as a broadcast journalist at the the preeminent news talk stations at Lewis called KMOX. I had a job before I ever left college there and so I was able to rub shoulders with and learn from some of the best in the business it was it was owned by CBS at the time and so we were trained in the CBS way of of how to gather news. And said that that is my pedigree when it comes to the broadcast journalists part. And when I got involved in the AV industry and fell in love with it, that kind of put that down for a while I still taught on radio production in audio production, but actually since 2006, I was teaching students how to podcast I wasn't doing it myself, but I I saw it as an opportunity for up and coming broadcasters to cut their teeth and and and kind of stretch their legs and stretch their wings and see what's possible on in the realm of audio. And in 2005/2006 I was turned on to this week in tech by Leo Laporte. It's the twit network, yeah he has several podcasts, he's probably the most successful podcaster period. And possibly Adam Corolla has passed him at this point from a network standpoint I would say that Leo was probably up there. And so listening to that on a weekly basis, he does tech in general, right, so he does you know cell phones, computers and switches and all kind of stuff.   Pat: Everything.   Tim: Everything. And he also does for two hours a week which is way more than than I can I can do. So I was looking for something, right and, so there were a couple of people who have who have were already doing something not what I was looking for but they were doing something Essien at the time and that's when I see an atomic medications was doing a monthly video podcast are where they would bring people into a studio and they would talk about a specific project, right. So it was kind of white paper, a video version of a white paper.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: Wasn't what I was looking for. What I was looking for the twit version of the the AV version of twit, right. I want the news that I wanted it in a succinct way and I want it on a weekly basis. Nobody had it.   Pat: Right.   Tim: Right and I don't know that anybody's still does .   Pat: Maybe in prints, but certainly not weekly, right.   Tim: But not weekly, right. And so on it's one of these things where necessity breeds invention I didn't have what I wanted and so I made it.   Pat: Scratch your own itch.   Tim: Yeah, I mean I could see again I'm an old radio guy in and I've been in television as well and and I think that that medium has a lot to offer people. You get to learn people's voices and I don't mean that any any in the literal sense I mean, folks understand that I am as much, a lover of this industry, as I am not overly serious about it. And I was I don't take ourselves too seriously I've made the comment both on the air off the year it's our team and other people. If the projector doesn't work no one is going to die, right. You know it's not life and death and you have to understand kind of where your your places in the world. We make experiences. And I'm I'm gonna totally steal this line here, we make great experiences and our job as as a nation is kind of what we've developed into and what we were allies and and me still learning how to be a businessman, because I'm a producer that's my pedigree is, we speak directly to the integrators on a weekly basis, right. Way back when it when I was a radio we had, you will be called an avatar with this is the person that we're talking to. My avatar for AV nation specifically for a AV week are the folks the integrators who are are driving into their office on Monday morning: Why is it that they need to know for that week to be successful? Right? And that question has driven, darn near everything that we've done. It's driven the deep dive into the other, what I'll call niche podcast that we do on a monthly basis and that includes the state of control which is controlled automation that includes AV. social which is shell social media and marketing. Which is kind of developed into more marketing and social media because boxing in under understand how to talk to their clients, right. It drove a show actually from one of our underwriters, to look at the on the IT in A. V. and how they each influence each other. It drove a show that I developed probably a year ago with a consulting firm, called on the eighty profession. And that looks at you know ways to make your business better. Has nothing to do with the with the actual technology of AV, but it is about how to be better at your business. You know we've done everything from interview consultants who will help you with your business to interview business authors, on how to get consumer consumers. I'd just interviewed a guy who I was turned on to by a buddy of mine that I've developed a relationship with the Name Ian Altman. Ian is a fanstastic sales person to bend tastic sales consulting. He's spoken of a Bacchae spoke in other places you spoke with PSNI and super summit. Well, Ian turned me on this other guy by the name of Markus Sheridan. He is probably one of the best experts that I've ever read, when it comes to content marketing, he turned a like this closed bankrupt, swimming pool company in the middle of the recession, he turned around with about a year and a half through content marketing. And reading his story and reading his take on it, is fascinating and it's incredibly important to people in the A. V. industry. Title of his book is: „They asky you answer.“ It’s very simple.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: Your clients are going to ask you questions. Probably to the sales people, when they ask you questions, you answer it, in a not only obviously you know, Patrick is my client even assuming email say „Hey what about this and what what what's what's the steel with with HDMI to that on? How ist his gonna affect us?“ Okay, well first of all: Into the question to the client directly right now this is going to how it's going to do it this is this is what it's doing but then you send it to your marketing people and say „Hey we have a question, because, an old rule of thumb in broadcasting is that, between five and ten percent of your audience will ever ever contact you ever, I don't care if you're given a million million dollars will between five and ten percent of your of your audience will ever call and we'll ever email you ever contact you same is true in the business world. Between five and ten percent of your clients will ever ask you a question that is meaningful. You know, how they're going to be affected you take those nuggets, because I will guarantee you, that at least, twenty of the twenty other clients have the exact same question, they're just not gonna ask you.   Pat: Sure   Tim: Or potential clients may have that same question- they are not gonna ask you.   Pat: Trash.   Tim: But if you have this piece of content over here, right and they're searching how will HDMI two do affect me? Boom you have an article. Boom you have a video whatever, so it's stuff like this that has driven our content to say you know how it how can we best help integrators and in all honesty also tech managers do their job better and be more successful.   Pat: Great stuff. I mean really does a lot of stuff to tackle their. How do you know what to write? That's something I always come up against, because of course this idea of putting content out there, that's all people find you. It's basically SEO, which sounds a little fishy, if you ask me, but if you are just writing stuff that people want to know about and they do find you, nothing is better than that. And I know what you mean like I ask, I have my online courses and I ask students all the time. „Please tell me what's wrong?“ and they never answer me. It's like pulling teeth getting any kind of feedback- out of anybody. And blog posting it takes a lot of time. It's really time consuming. It's a lot of fun, because it really makes you dig deep into a subject and become more knowledgeable about it and really start to look at it from different angles that you might not have considered, but again that time investment how do you decide what to write about.   Tim: So we've done a couple different things. First of all we started taking our shows and regardless of the show there's going to be at least two or three different topics on each episode and and we've started pulling and culling information from there. But me personally, my personal blog it's what I'm interested in, right. It's what's hit me are within the last week or two weeks and right now this week I am formulating and doing some research for a blog about how the terrorists are going to impact the industry in North America large adversely beyond North America in the US our current president has put tariffs on steel, well let's not be silly a lot of our products are made with with feel , you know what the rack rack is a big giant piece of steel arm based metal and so I'm trying to do some research right now, because that to me is interesting and that's a question that nobody's asked yet. Is how are the how are the policies of not just this president every president, impacting our industry you know you look at what is it Brazil is one of the biggest exporters to us of steel. Guess what, they are also one of the biggest importer of what they are one of the biggest importers of US Cole. To make this deal.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: So you know, you're looking at stuff like this going, okay you know and at the end of the day whether it's you know Atlas or it's Middle Atlantic or its Chief and I'm just naming three you've got so many other people sure like a bank, that use steel every single day. And our listeners are users are clients or customers, how are they going to be impacted not today not tomorrow because they've already got a warehouse full of steel, but in six months or a year and then how do they decide whether or not to pass that shards alone? You know the first question is is there going to be an increase right. That's the number one question as you know this Atlas I eat is atlas and their racks had to they have to increase the price of middle when it comes to increase their price and if the question is yes it's almost like programming right, if yes then what's right and then you then the manufacturer has to make a decision without a past that that charge along most the time they have to, their business, they have to truck bass along the their their cost increases. And then okay so your you know H. B. can occasions are here city Iowa St Louis your rack price just went up ten percent okay you've designed a system you have a spec out will suddenly you're losing ten points right so how did you recoup that cost and hopefully you haven't done so are too far out right to where it's going to hurt you that much. But then how do you how do you adjust your prices again their business so they have to salute laces Hannah and so it just trickles on down to you know the final customer whether it's education reporter five hundred operation they've got to you know explain the situations I look you know. Our metal prices increased down the line, you know.   Pat: It could, putting my programmer hat on, use less hardware. It could cause people to, right?   Tim: That's actually a good point.   Pat: Just their system design, put less stuff in the rac, right? That big matrix switch can be compressed down to a network switch and maybe the numbers would work out that way. Could be an interesting angle for to solve that kind of issue.   Tim: Where people to more video over IP and not do it over a switcher. You'll also from a program from a control standpoint to you know move more toward software as opposed to you know a three to direct high, processor moved to software to where I somewhere in the cloud someone the network.   Pat: Now how about that all due to the price of steel you the way things are all kind of connected to each other. You were talking about how the business podcast and I think that's another great subject because there really is no how to. And in A.V. for a long time everybody's always been busy. But with things changing, I kind of wonder, if in a few years from now, the flow of projects will change, just a little bit, if things do become more software based. Right the whole integrators maybe to change their business model. I mean it there was talk of this years ago, as margin started to go down with with Amazon you could buy display on Amazon. But the model still doesn't seem to be service based for the most part at all. It's still his margin based model of selling hardware.   Tim: They trying.   Pat: Yeah, well that's exactly the point. That I'm trying to make is like, there's no how to, to make that jump. And have you bumped into any resources on on a podcast to try to just help us you know take this thing apart and and figure out a new way to put it back together.   Tim: Not on that possible broadcasters specifically. What I run into is some folks were doing it well. And I've run into those folks at different industry events. Two or three of my favorite events have nothing to do with the technology. They all had to do about the business of AV.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: And there's absolutely reasons to go to ISE, there's absolute reasons to go to Infocomm and all the other technology trade shows. Certainly you get to see cold things you get to do things you know it and and experience things, but what I would say is that there is more of a reason to go to these business centric our shows as well these business centric meetings.   Pat: Do you have any examples?   Tim: Well there's the three that I have is my super summit which that's only for PS my folks, in the CIA's BLC would stand for business leadership conference and then of ex is a back which is the A. B. executive conference. Is not taken out mean there's not there's not a technology showcase their. These are folks that are going to you're going to have a chance to talk with your peers, what other business owners.   Pat: Right     Tim: And find out what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong and how they can help you and honestly how you can help them. And in doing so, you know you're gonna be able to see what's worked in what's doesn't. You know we're obviously that there are regional differences in their cultural differences, not only across you know international borders but also on the scene in the US there's regional, cultural differences as big as we are. But the basics are the same, right and understanding that and it was it was actually at the BLC three years ago now, I ran into a young man who was in charge of emigration from up in Maine, which is singled out of the way. But but they were doing service and support, as a AV as a service and support through their clients right, they had they had taken the the sass model the software as a service model and convertible into AV rather successfully and they did it through number different ways number one was was the monitoring and maintaining of their systems. But that conversation and coupled with a couple different conversation with some other and integrators who had moved to AV as a service through not only monitoring but also leasing, the equipment.   Pat: The equipment, okay.   Tim: So it's not yellow you Patrick as the client you don't own anything, right. My contract with you says you're gonna have the latest greatest stuff within five years, every year, so it's my job to make sure that the system is up and running and maintained and that you have the latest greatest you don't have to worry about you know end of life for a projector or display or a control processor. Your stuff is just gonna work and it's my job to figure that out. Now you're going to pay me for that, right you gonna pay me for that, because suddenly you you don't have a need for a support team you know have a need for you know having somebody physically on site because I'm gonna come within and you know depending on base on the contract but within an hour five hours twenty four hours depending on what the contract says. I'm going to support you, to this to this degree.   Pat: Do those numbers work out?   Tim: It does for some people, it does for some organizations right for some for some clients they get, right.   Pat: Is it really just an understanding thing or because you could put this in black and white: over the next ten years, system it will cost you X. and doing that as a service option will cost also X.   Tim: X, plus some. Understand that, it's not, it's not the cheapest option, right.   Pat: But you are not laying out the money up front.   Tim: You’re not laying out the money up front: You're eliminating in you do you hate to talk about you know people line jobs for your limiting a jobber too are so your cost of off that. Number three you don't have to deal with the the half life of certain products of equipment and then you don't have to mess with what do you do with that product that that equipment once it's been taken out and that is actually one of the dirty little secrets of A V. Especially from a technology manager standpoint.   Pat: Sure.   Tim: What the heck do you do with this crap, once you've taken out of the rack.   Pat: It's useless.   Tim: Seriously I had the office I had it at Lewis and Clark, which is the college I worked at, it was, our head in for our master control for our our internal TV station, okay. So I had it you know five racks worth of equipment the set the other about time. I left there I had replaced everything in that rack, when I got there. It was all old CRTs and an old old analog equipment.   Pat: Big stuff too .   Tim: I all of my gosh I had, replaced everything in that rack to where it was down to two racks. I had a back room full of gear.   Pat: Yeah, try ebaying it.   Tim: Ebaying it is worth less right, because you you get five or ten Bucks. But then so we only end up doing electronic recycling our college had a green initiative in this and other once a year , we electronically cycle and that's where a lot of those old five wire switchers went right to a company that we knew that that are college had had bedded they knew what they did with the equipment once they got it and and they were responsible about the way that they dispose of it. But you know that's one of those things that folks don't really think about because you know I don't care what the VCR with the doc came from her years ago. This stuff has first of all has hazardous material and right now people think about that but you've got lead in there you've got ill do it like this electronics have got crap in it that probably shouldn't go into the ground how do you responsibly dispose of that and some companies absolutely do really good job of that they'll have a program to where the either get a credit to their their clients are the height say „Hey I'll take this off your hands and as we know how to properly dispose of it“. Absolutely there is that there's also I would say a large majority of folks we simply don't know what to do with you know a sixteen by sixteen BJ switcher, once they take it out and replaced it with the with a digital equipment.   Pat: Right, so that's like another bonus of that as a service modelle right, they would take care of that that final tasks. So it sounds like this is all as a service model is more about convenience it'll cost a little more but you get a ton of convenience it's like kind of like what Rich does as a white glove service. So what's the hold up?   Tim: Getting the AV sales people to wrap their head around it.   Pat: Are we, so we are our own worst enemy, kind of.   Tim: Absolutly, it’s just like every industry by way.   Pat: Yeah, okay, sure, but this is like a real opportunity to grow, because you know within a service model, you know how much is coming in every month for the next five years. These are contracts as opposed to the way we do things now, a project comes in, you get it done and then you basically start from zero again.   Tim: I think some of is also cultural, going back to that, but yet it's cultural as well, because you have a business that has a business plan. And it is in their business plan to sell ex amount in their hiring the salespeople to sell a system.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: I'm not so the contractor and some of that's it you know some that's also a cultural shift internally to say okay we're going to make the shift. I would say that the folks that I know they had gone to the service model alright there are sure to migrate to art are incredibly successful.   Pat: Yeah.   Tim: I am certain that there are failures out there. I have not heard of them, but I'm certain there are values out there, people who for whatever reason whether it's their market or their client base or whatever. Just couldn't get off the ground. Then gone back to to doing you know sales and and a service as a separate item.   Pat: Okay, so to shift to an end as a service model, is obviously a big investment, right. It would it completely changes everything. Is there a pass to do it incrementally?   Tim: That actually is how you almost have to do it, right? You can't exactly do on mass, you would have to take it , object right so you get an RFP, or you are selling to a client and you know you're listening to them and you're hearing their their big pain points. But that's the other part is this is not for everybody , there are some folks who eaten will never let you monitor their network okay ever let you monitor their system. So unless you can overcome that hurdle, it's not gonna be a very successful AV as in service installation. So that you use a limited arsenal system.   Pat: That could be handled with staffing no?   Tim: Yes and no. I mean yes, you can put somebody physically on on site, right. And then that's another cost.   Pat: Right.   Tim: Some cost, but yeah absolutely.   Pat: Okay, interesting stuff. Let's shift gears back again to....you know that kind of reminds me of, is like you were saying, to start incrementally like I tell programmers just do something small you know find your smallest projects, if you want to learn a new programming language and tried on that something that you know you could go back to your old language and do in just a few minutes. But just just try it on a really small project first. And that's how you that's a gain confidence with these things- that's how you start to that so you go from crawling to walking.   Tim: That's why the most famous phrase and all the programming is „hello world“.   Pat: Yeah, there you go.   Tim: Seriously, because that right there is you know if you can do „hello world“ in a language then you can go from there.   Pat: Yeah, definitely. So speaking of control, „state of control“, but I'm a big fan of it, obviously.   Tim: I am too.   Pat: It's actually, you know, hearing everybody, she knows that I respect, talk about the different ways to approach AV control it's it's kind of inspired me a bit to follow up on some of my own ideas and develop them and even try out a new product or so on the market. They don't know it, didn't always work but.   Tim: Oh they will.   Pat: Do you know of any similar stories on estate control or any other podcasts where somebody's been inspired to really take action and do something with the information that that you guys are providing?   Tim: There are a lot actually over the years.   Pat: Pick your favorite.   Tim: I'm trying to think, but I will probably will I'll stick with state control and the good lord this has been, two or three years ago now. I can't remember. Crestron came out with their diamond level programming. If you're not familiar with with Crestron sort of by programmers there are, number of years there was sweat three different metals and was bronze silver and gold and then they came out with platinum and then they came out with diamond. And we did a special episode with the first ever diamond programmers. Now two of them were Crestron employees but still there was there was four of them that were that were first ever and out of that Labadie Dave hats started talking about doing diamond and he became a diamond level year later the first ever diamond that I ever knew personally right. I knew the couple of the posters of the question that but I didn't know them really well the day was the incredible fantastic very talented diamond level programmerer.   Pat: But we should also point out that it's about three weeks of work to do that certification.   Tim: Well, more than that, because then you have to do it, you have to keep it you, have to teach every year.   Pat: So it's a real investment.   Tim: It's incredible investment and even with the one thing that I find fascinating, is you have to teach outside of your discipline and what I mean by that is, Dave is a network programmer, he could take you know network control and and and run with all day long he's a commercial programmer, he has done commercial programming for years, so the first class he did was buy a home.   Pat: Was resi.   Tim: Was residential automation. Fish out of water. As our water and that's with a duty right. That's what they do to you. To stretch your arms and to get you kind of on the path of making sure that you are not as a real well rounded, right. I'm obviously Hatz probably has you know, fifteen pro3's in this house and use fully automated the only service dog food every morning you know outlaw doc brown. But you know it it's, there is something where it's you're getting outside of your comfort zone and outside of what you do on a daily basis.   Pat: So, I've had to make his decision myself and I decided for the time being not to make that huge investment in the next level of Crestron programming just because, yeah, does it really make a difference? And you know, from what you're telling me, this guy was inspired to make this huge investment, from one of your shows. I don't know, what do you think, does it really? Maybe it's a country thing, here in Germany maybe they just don't look at certifications the same way. They all kind of look the same and blur, but is there, yeah.   Tim: This is why it depends: You're an independent programmer. I have been outside of the spec part of the AV industry for probably too long, so I understand that when I say what I'm gonna say. I have not yet run into a situation, where somebody has put on us back, that they want a diamond level programmer. It doesn't mean, that they're not out there. I'm just saying that I have not personally run into or heard about a spec I ate in our P. where somebody has put down but they want a diamond level I am certain that there is at least one or two out there that that they've asked for. And the other side of that is there very few situations where it be where it would be warranted.   Pat: Well, that's the other thing, yeah.   Tim: By and large most course for most programmers I know Crestron AMX external, most of them that are worth their salt and they get they get their certification, can handle a vast majority, of thrown at them. Yes, there are building automation's where you know what you're doing. right. And for that I would say a higher level of certification would be needed. And what you should be called out of respect, but if that's what your business is and that's what you talk about what you do on a daily basis a personal question then.   Pat: You know, sure sure, got to be decided on a case by case basis   Tim: Yep.   Pat: Alright shifting back TV nation. I remember running into you a few years ago and you quietly whispered to me in my ear that you were I'm gonna go a hundred percent all in with AV Nation. Do you remember that time?   Tim: I do.   Pat: So what was the biggest reason was the biggest thing that that gave me the confidence to make that jump?   Tim: Two things. First one the the support of my wife. Of any ship flight that you have to have the support of your partner, regardless of who that is.   Pat: Absolutely.   Tim: Certainly it was it was a weird combination. So we had just started monetizing aviation and and by what I said just I mean we had this was the first start, we had just started taking on money from other people up at that point it was completely financed by me. I was financing and by doing some outside jobs. We had just completed our first trip ISE, which was a can credibly successful Kickstarter for us. It was very humbling, because up to that point well Infocomm was a trip that almost went to anyway. So we were kinda able to kind of couple together and I could cover whatever nobody else could. But ISE was different, ISE was a big chunk of money. It was ten grand was our budget show and our listeners came through in our supporters came through in a huge winds quickly on more, but also prove something that we could do it and we could do it differently, than other people and that's kind of what our thing is. We cover the industry in a unique way because we're all in the industry. And so I wanted to finance it in a different way to kinda keep with with who we are. And so after I see that year was actually I was I is the twenty fifteen twenty fifteen to that I was looking around like, okay what's what makes sense to me and I'm a big fan of NPR and PBS and BBC in the UK and an image are an arcane and just the way they think their model is which is pretty much be a publicly financed but no undue influence, I guess the best way to put this.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: And so the way that we have our contracts with our underwriting structured is, there's no real influence. And you know that's just kind of the the way we we wanted to go. And so we were starting to take on some money, not a whole lot but enough to offset into where I didn't have to the side projects anymore. And the company that I worked for, was eighty eight, independent programming house. I was the they operate the ops manager for. We got sold to a local integration firm in Saint Louis of folks that I have a lot of respect for. Good friends with. They were one of our biggest clients at at the time. And some sitting in this meeting and not really knowing what to expect from them. They were very gracious, they had all these ideas for me. They wanted to do this and this and this and I'm sitting here in this meeting going „this is a unique place in my life, this is a unique time and I have an opportunity, I can absolutely take this job. I could take this job and I could work this job for a year two years five years whatever. But AN Nation at the time was in a unique spot that I was I it was it was when those moments where you either take it full bore and and and and take it out and spend it and take it out for a test drive and see what it's capable of. Or you just keep in the garage and it's something that you can tinker with on the weekend.   And in that moment I just kind of decided well this is this is my time to figure out whether or not this is something real or not. Without this is something that people can really honestly sustain or not.   And I told them that and I remember the owner, who's become a very good friend of mine and one of my business mentors, says „well it sounds like you're quitting, before you ever start“ and I said, „well I kind of am“ and so I left that meeting oddly on cloud nine. Not having a job. I was unemployed, thoroughly. And it has been the scariest and craziest two and a half years of my life and I would not do it differently.   Pat: Excellent. I like how you mentioned you had to recognize the opportunity, that was happening. It was the it was a special opportunity that came you had the Kickstarter you had maybe a few underwriters so you kind of proven that there was a need for it that it could become something and then the company getting sold was kind of a catalyst to to kind of snap your into reality and say „wait a minute, I can either do this or that“ and then you chose this road. So what was what was really your biggest concern at the time what what were you worried about?   Tim: Paying my bills.   Pat: Yeah obviously.   Tim: I mean so it's interesting, that when I tell people my story, they're the ones that one of the more common questions is „you have your wife“ and yet „you have kids right like „yeah yeah that I've a mortgage I have to to pay for in Ohio.   Pat: Are you mentally stable?   Tim: No, no I'm not. You know, but now that's that's the biggest concern every month you know and and you know there are months that are better than others. And well I have a really good friend, I have known Michael for over twenty years he has recently in the last year and a half he has gone out on his own is does he does IT consulting. And he will be on me the powerful, for advice and I'm you know is is one thing we were I'll tell him is like looking out there there are going to be days and they're gonna be months that are horrible, right where you are going to question your own sanity in question your own your own brains. But we've gotten to the point where we are are stable and we are solid. And I'm I'm happy with on or the underwriters that we have them happy with the group that we've got and so out of that stability you okay so what were stable now it's taken us two and a half years to get stable but were stable so okay so what does any good entrepreneur wants wants a stable, you try to grow right.   And so we're in the process of doing some things that were were assessing some things and going okay you know what can we do to be a silly bigger for her sake but what can we do better? Right? What what can we do better how can we do things are even more differently and how can we reach more people and how can we do it more efficiently and how can we make our underwriters lives easier and how can we connect with more integrators and and what are we not just covering and were we not doing and you know we we started doing adjustments expo last year twenty seventeen. For the first time and we are doing it again this year, because our integrators are telling us that deals digital signage as a particle is important to them, so okay so you spend two days in Vegas right honestly Patrick it's the cheapest show that I do , from a from a cost standpoint, so it is the least expensive show that we cover and it's you know I'm in Saint Louis so I tell people, I'm spoiled as far as he is whites it takes me I get any place in the country in three hours you know at the most and Vegas is among those and you know southwest being southwest you can get in a fight pretty cheaply and you know hotels in Vegas Sir you depends on where you stay obviously but you know those little relatively inexpensiveunless you go during CIS, which I've heard really horror stories about that, but that's a whole nother issue: But you know it's it to you you grow from a stability standpoint and a you stretch and you see what's possible and you know we're not perfect by any stretch the imagination we have our own issues and and we're still learning how to be a website as opposed to in in addition to being a podcast company and that comes with that with its own challenges, because it's something that we never had to worry about you know was a website traffic because our our podcasting traffic is is what it does. And so that comes with is its own set of challenges and trying to shore that up and and learn because as a business owner I have to make I have to make intelligent decisions so the way that I make decisions, I want to learn everything about right I'll be an expert but I had to have I have to know enough to make an informed decision, so you know learning about you know things like you mentioned SEO and learning about things like making sure things are in proper categories and making sure that your , you're promoting so proper and all this other „hoo hah“ that I never had to worry about you know five years ago. So that's a learning. It's a way that we can we're able to become better and and serve our clients in in our our listeners better is okay, we're good you know we're or stable now now let's start stretching.   Pat: Excellent, sounds great. Any plans for the future you'd care to share with us?   Tim: Take over the world.   Pat: Really? With a podcast?   Tim: Absolutly. Here’s the thing- we I see online media, as not just the future of media in general, but I see it as as kind of where we're going as a society and I do mean it is a global society. I still believe in print, I think print is a is a fantastic medium, I think the journalists that worked at The New York Times SEM are fantastic people. Right? I think they do an incredible job of what they do, but I also look at what time magazine is doing on time magazine, if you've never heard of them is little magazine right, but they start out being being a print magazine. If you go to Times website you're going to see as much video as you are written conduct and you take the flip side of that company that started out as being just as video on that CNN, CNN start out being just video right. It was the cables news network, well with the the onset of of the of the internet are there is much written as they are video on their website now so you've got you've got to be as a media company you have to be everything are you have to provide folks written content as well as video and I would argue also as well as audio all you have to give your audience what they want in the format that they wanted an you regardless of whether you're covering audio visual or you're covering politics you have to give folks what you what they want in the way that they want it. And it took us a long time to realize that it really really dead because I thought blocks right I thought blogs I thought press releases I fought you know written content I'll let them right on the folks that help me run AV Nation will tell you that but I finally realize that you know what yet not everybody likes listening to me talk right not everybody likes looking and looking and then when watching some people just simply like to read , okay so you gonna go down that road as well. But no I mean I am I am fully ensconced in my business owners share. !I wanna take over the world, I want to be the number one you know audio visual media platform, I want to be the number one audio visual media company out there I would be number one and I I say that very humbly and but very honestly you know I am also a competitor, as well as a broadcaster and so how you do that you listen to your people you listen to you you listen to people who give you feedback , you make adjustments and you say okay to that just don't work and if it didn't well then you go back to the drawing board okay what what what's next.   Pat: Excellent, excellent. Well, you're doing a great job you're definitely on the path. You know I'm a big fan. I remember the first time you called me for a programming job, that's the first time we met.   Tim: Yep.   Pat: And I was like holy crap, it's Tim, I heard your voice on the other side of a phone and not coming through my car speakers, so yeah there's a there's a lot about the power of you know audio and voice and things like that but but the other know die that you were mentioning it sounds a lot like the way people learn too. Like some people learn better with text, others with video and I guess the news is a form of of learning too. The next big change could be right, you're saying that there's this move to video. What happens when everybody has a pair of googles?   Tim: No, not everybody will have a pair of googles.   Pat: No, no, because then you're there, like it doesn't get more real.   Tim: Well, the reason I say that is because I am, objects are right I am that you know that that lost generation between the damn boomers in the damn memorials and yeah so we're we're you know we're that we are the forgotten generation at and you know there there is you know our our kids are kids may very well have goggles the more likely than not our grandkids or great grand grand kids may very well have the goggles but in the meantime it is the augmented reality of the cell phone right and you know it it's the reason I say that we we probably don't have goggles is is does he goes back you go back to 3D. one of the main reasons the three D. never really took off to the people who were in the glasses if they don't have to wear glasses.   Pat: Sure.   Tim: I'm thirty three years old and I don't have to wear glasses knock on wood right so do you think Zak like you know my dad was forty when he started wearing his readers and I'm forty three and I still don't have to so I and I will fight it tooth and nail but I I'm legitimately I'm not I'm not fighting and there's a there's a box over there with the small print I can still read it now you know once I get to that point with wearing glasses you know I I don't know that I'll feel differently but I would say that if you don't have to wear glasses you're probably not really apt to even if it's going to give you some weird experiences however okay if you are already looking at yourself or let's be very Frank about it we all are right arm then you you kind of lean towards that and there's there's where some of the the I a are going to come from in our years honestly there's some games out there and there's some programs out there with that I'll let you you know see stuff on your desk if you know if you look at it through the through your lands and I'll give you an augmented reality experience.   Pat: It's gonna be interesting however plays out. So given your background in the AV press do you have any ideas on for somebody if they're coming out with a new software based solution or even if it's hardware based something new and different approach to solving something in AV? Do you have any ideas or advice on how to raise awareness for something like?   Tim: Two things. First of all get yourself a couple integrators to buy into it, because here's the thing so regardless of what the press release says this is the this is the latest greatest thing in the history the world and it will change how everybody does business in a brief period in the sentence right, I just wrote somebody's press release with, it doesn't matter if you don't have somebody to sell it to and to give the people in the press, a use case because with very few exceptions, the vast majority of audiovisual press have never been in the back of Iraq pulling cable.   Pat: Okay.   Tim: And as much respect as I have for them and I have a lot of respect for for everybody that that I work alongside in the process of the AB industry that is one thing that that they don't have as they do they've never worked anywhere right so that you're gonna tell them its latest greatest thing I don't care what the display with its control program over to switcher. They're gonna look at the specs and their comparison up to an old the on the previous model and they're gonna say you know this does X. amount more or this does this and the other and number one the kind of had to take your word for it unless you're there physically going to get a hold a bit and I have the testing equipment to test your hypothesis in in your your marketing speak or they're gonna talk to any writers that they trust that they've developed relationships with. They all do you know they're out there they all do their job right they did they have any brothers that they trust that they can bring to other they can bring a product to and say what do you think about this and why. And then no cultivate you know I'll use their their opinions is as part of their of their coverage because these are the folks are using on a daily and weekly basis, so I would advise you to obviously connect with the press but also connect yourself with some integrators and that you can point the press two and say look here is Susie's AV emporium who's been using this product for six months and this is what they think.   Pat: All right. Great stuff, thanks for that. Tim, I think we can go on for a long time here, we're gonna have to do a part two some time   Tim: Ok, whatever. You're in Germany so you can stay up as late as you will.   Pat: Exactly, I think the kids will be knocking on the door here and running the podcast any minute so...   Tim: It wouldn't be the first time.   Pat: Exactly thank you so much for being on the show.   Tim: Absolutely.   Even with that shift in my head and and shipped in my philosophy, I sat there for probably, five minutes, yeah I'm wearing and blundering and just putting off quitting pressing record, before it will before we did our first show, once I pressed record and I started, it was down hill, but it was the active physically pressing record and saying what I had been trained to say which is three to one before ever start recording, it was that act that I was I was putting off right, I was it was that for whatever reason that pressing that record button was so difficult and in the moment. You know I had talked around I'd never met him before I had Linda from this who was a long time AV industry journalist, out her husband works for, okay booking audio and then I had my buddy Michael physically next to me right we're sitting in my college radio station that I top production and at the time and you know I've got things kind of Jerry rigged between two different computers and and a recording system and it's on the other, but it was until I hit record that it actually started doing anything in my head   Pat: Yeah, have you heard about the war of art?   Tim: No.   Pat: He talks about exactly that it calls it the resistance he gives it a name he calls it resistance and he goes into this whole book is explaining how the resistance is out to get you and prevent me from doing everything you're meant to do it's it's a great book, are the war of art tour of art and, it's a good one to read for ten minutes in the morning to then she did to fix your head right.   Tim: Okay. 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Becoming Your Best | The Principles of Highly Successful Leaders
Leading with Love - Interview with Tim Sanders

Becoming Your Best | The Principles of Highly Successful Leaders

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2017 35:14


Welcome to all of our Becoming Your Best podcast listeners wherever you might be in the world today. This is your host Steve Shallenberger. And we have a tremendously interesting guest today. Our guest is a successful business leader and has influenced many many people for good. Welcome to our show today, Tim Sanders. Tim: Hey great to be with you Steve. Steve: I've been looking forward to this. Tim: Me too. Steve: Well, good. All right. Now, before we get started, I'd like to tell you a little about Tim's background. He spent his early career on the cutting edge of innovation and change. He was an early stage member of Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com, which had the largest opening day IPO in history. After Yahoo acquired the company, Tim was tapped to lead their Value Lab, and by 2001 he rose to a Chief Solutions Officer. And today he's one of the top-rated speakers on the lecture circuit. Tim is also the author of four books including The New York Times best seller "Love is the Killer App," which is an awesome book, "How to Win Business and Influence Friends," I really enjoyed reading that. Tim's book has been featured in Fast Company, USA Today, The New York Times, Boston Globe, and so on. He is a master storyteller who offers his listeners actionable takeaways that produce results right away. So I have been looking forward to having Tim here in our interview today. And to get going, Tim, can you tell our listeners maybe a little about your background, your story? What was it like growing up? And maybe some experiences that helped you see that you could be successful? Tim: Thank you. I grew up in Clovis, New Mexico. It's a farming community just east of the West Texas border. I'm sorry, just west of the...West Texas border. And I was raised by my grandmother. I was a special education student from second to fifth grade, which really, you know, taught me a lot of things. It taught me how to bounce back. That's for sure. Taught me how to fit in when people didn't understand who I was. But most importantly, my childhood taught me that anything is possible if I'm willing to put the preparation work in and seize the opportunity. In my adult life I had a period of time, say 15 years or so, where I was gainfully employed and successful to some degree but just not laser-focused on what mattered. You might say I was in a mediocrity trap. In 1997, I went to work for Mark Cuban about a year after I had gotten out of that trap and had a real paradigm shift about what it was gonna take for me to be successful for my family. When I worked for Mark Cuban you can imagine 1997, the dawn of the internet explosion. It was such a breathtaking opportunity Steve. But I remember those times mostly as being a student of the game. Something I learned from him. And I was a voracious book reader. I was a mentor to anybody I did business with. And by 2001 after he'd sold the company to Yahoo, I became Yahoo's Chief Solutions Officer right after the dot-com crash of 2000. So my team and I went out to rebuild hundreds of millions of dollars of lost business because all of those companies, like eToys, our big advertisers, had gone caput. And through those experiences, I built up a perspective that if we commit ourselves to lifelong learning, and we lead with love in our hearts for other people and expect nothing in return other than that they improve and pay it forward, you can accomplish anything in this world we live in. Steve: Wow, what a rich background and then to be able to take that background and, like, Clovis, New Mexico? You mean you can be successful if you were born in Clovis, New Mexico? Tim: I'll tell you something. Let me tell you something about Clovis, New Mexico. Little town, 30,000 people. I was on the debate team in high school, Steve. And we wanted to be nationally ranked. Now, it was a real kind of a pork chop circuit, right. There was the Las Cruces tournament, the El Paso tournament, the Odessa tournament. We had to get in our cars and drive over two hours to Lubbock, Texas, to go to a decent library to research for our debate. And we had to compete with, you know, Houston's Bellaire and Dallas' St. Marks and all these great folks in New Mexico, and all the big schools from Albuquerque and Santa Fe. But I'll tell you something, my senior year, we won state championship, and we went to the national tournament, and we didn't have nearly the resources of anybody we competed with. But man, I gotta tell you, and I thank my coach for this, we had heart. Steve: Wow! Well, I'll tell you I can attest that people from the salt of the earth communities like this can have a big difference in the world. Tim: Yeah. And I think too Steve, is that there's something in our values raised in that environment that makes us really good connectors. And I also think it makes us hungrier to find some way to get back that edge. And to look for those invisible resources that are out there, like knowledge that can really give us a leg up. And it makes us wanna give back too when we become successful, you know, there's a natural, very deep set generosity. And I gotta tell you, I come from it very honestly. I mean, the patriarch of our family is my great-grandfather the late great Tommy King. And he was one of the founders of Clovis when it organized into a city back around it, you know, after the Great Depression. And he was a successful farmer. And one of the things he did before the Dust Bowl era, right before it, was he engaged with some agricultural technologist and became the first farmer in that part of the country to use a circular farming techniques, which when the Dust Bowl hit, helped his farms survive if not thrive while others withered away. And in our family, one of the most poignant stories about Tommy was how much he gave back to other farmers who were in crisis. The ones that bullheaded, they wouldn't try circular farming knowing that the science said there was something coming in a drought. He was happy to give them microloans. He never collected on them. He would just tell people, "When this happens in the future, you pay it forward." And I believe that his philosophy really represented, you know, small town America. Steve: Oh, that's a great story. And then to actually go from being a special ed student to being successful, that's got to give hope to special ed students anywhere because, you know, they're behind a gun. And so, is there hope? I mean, like, can we make it? Tim: It's tough. I mean, you know, more background here. So my grandmother raised me because my mother abandoned me when I was in four. And it manifest into tremendous depression when I was a little kid. And it exhibited itself in discipline issues. And during those days, Steve, they really didn't have much to do with a kid, you know, when you're seven. So, all they really can do is put you in special education. And that experience was really challenging because it's not just that you're taken out of school, that you're ostracized. And when you go to church you're treated differently because, you know, you go to the other school. And I picked up the nickname Shortbus, and I really didn't shake that nickname till junior high. But I think the thing that I got out of the whole situation is when they put me back into the general population in the sixth grade. I had to deal with bullies for the first time. You know, when you're different you're gonna deal with bullies. For parents, this is a great challenge when a child is singled out into a program like special ed or frankly like gifted for that matter. And I'll tell you, I think my point of view about how I dealt with that traumatic sixth and seventh-grade year had to do with how I felt about love. I'll give you a classic story. So, in the seventh grade, the day that you wear your nice clothes and your nice white shirt for the picture, you know, for the yearbook? Steve: Yup. Tim: I went in and this bully who went to church with us demanded my lunch money and I hesitated. So he punched me right in the nose and I bled all over my shirt. Not gory but I bled on my shirt. It ruined me for the picture that day. When Billy, my grandmother, came to pick me up, I thought she was gonna just, you know, have it out with that boy's mom, or at least give him a good talking to. So when Billy and I are sitting in the vice principal's office and we're alone for a second, she turns to me and she looks at me and she says, "You know the problem here is that you don't love those boys enough." I remember looking at her and I point at my shirt and I said, "What do you mean? He's mean. He's a mean boy." And she said, "In our family, you don't love people because of who they are. You love people because of who we are." And she goes, "That's gonna go a long way with you fitting in at the school." And so she said I should invite him over after church. Because she believed that people were inherently good and when they were mean, or when they were bad, there was something about the story that you don't know. And so he came over after church and stole some of my stuff and still kind of picked on me but he didn't punch me in the nose. And then I guess he felt the duty to invite me over to his house a few weeks later on the other side of the tracks where he lived. And when I visited his home that Sunday afternoon, I realized why he was a bully. His father, a drunk, swore at him coming in through the front door. His older brother whipped him with what, like a horse bridle, in front of me. Later, and I realized that this guy had been going through a lot more than I was. And that he was manifesting it. He was a big guy. He was manifesting it by picking on the only thing that he could get away with picking on, that's a little guy called Shortbus. And once I had that breakthrough, Steve, it really changed the way I thought about people. I truly began to understand that if we give someone our love and we care about them, whether it's on a personal level like this or on a professional level like say someone that I manage, you'd be surprised how many of their problems go away. And how you can convert a bully into a blocker. And I gotta say, that guy and I became good friends. And a little bit more than four years later, he put up posters for me when I successfully ran for senior class president and won. And I realized that for the rest of my life, I'm gonna go out into the market and love people because of who I am, and it's very easy to find things about them that are incredibly easy to love. And that I'm assuming when people don't give back, when they don't do the right thing, when they're mean spirited. I'm assuming that there's something about their story or struggle that I have no knowledge of. And it's made me a much deeper listener and a much more curious person in a good way. Steve: Well, that's a fantastic experience and thank you for sharing it. How grateful are we for the people in our backgrounds that help us grow and develop and overcome maybe some of the deficiencies that we might have that we may or even may not be aware of, that help us start becoming what we're capable of becoming. So that's really an inspirational story. And then love is so powerful and we may talk about it more after our interview but after...well, I was going through my college career I sold books back East. And one of the great books that I read was "The Greatest Salesman in the World", "About the Scrolls," and "I Will Greet This Day With Love In My Heart," and "How Will I Greet Those That Treat Me Poorly Love." And, oh, my goodness, you just fill this tremendous power that comes from it. So I'm so glad you shared that. Tim: Well, thank you. And I will tell you, there's real science or at least there is real psychological research behind this. And if you think about it, this is a manifestation of Maslow's hierarchy, right? Abraham Maslow studied something he called B-love, that is being love. That is a detached form of caring about another person, like I care about another person whether or not you care about me. I care about that person solely because I wanna help that person grow. I don't care about that person because I need a new friend. D-love, Maslow brought about this, a deficiency based love, says, "I need to be loved." So everything I do from being friendly to making, you know, advances, whatever you do to try to go out and help people, you're doing it to solve one of your problems. So, next we'll talk about the idea that when we feel fulfilled in terms of how much we think we're cared about, and that the way we think about love and other people, again, whether it's personal or professional, when we do that, we are making the leap to becoming like self-actualized, if you will. And that it's the most powerful way to think about loving other people because there's no anxiety in those relationships because you're not expecting anything in return. And that's what makes them so beautiful. And I found in my business life, that as a leader, as a manager, as a colleague, this works even more. Because, you know, we need people to encourage us at work. We need people to care about us as customers. And I believe too many people are just traders, transactionalists, and don't bring that Maslovian, you know, B-love to work every day. Steve: Okay. All right. Well, that's a powerful point of view and force in our work lives. Now talking about how to be successful in what we do in business, in our work, and in life generally, it does take work and effort and doing certain things that make a difference. So you shared earlier, that as we visited, that you had made a discovery in your mid-30s that led to ten promotions and helped you achieve a strong financial position and financial security. Can you talk a little about that? What was that? Tim: So this is like 1996, 1997. I had been coming back into my studentship, and I had gone from just need to know in terms of learning to being a voracious reader of books. And not just on stuff that mattered to my current job but anything that was adjacent to it. Anything that I thought was interesting to know in the future. I was at a point Steve, where I would read a book a week. I would burn through these books. I'm not talking novels either I'm talking about complex books in some situations. And what happened was I began to talk about different things with clients. So when I go to work for Cuban, I had this mentality kind of fed by Leo Buscaglia as love on one hand and Steven Covey on the other. I had this mentality that I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna promote other people's success during a time of great change. Because you know the internet was disrupting everything. So I worked a lot with the retailers. So I would go out and work with Neiman Marcus or Victoria's Secret or whomever. And I took it upon myself to learn everything I could about their business future and their business challenges, and then share that with them. And that's where I had the big aha. That if my business practice was to aggregate my intangibles, my knowledge, my network of relationships, my ability to care about people. If I build those up so I can give them away, and systematically help other people make the leap without expecting anything in return, that faith would repay me with endless referrals, a powerful brand, and a magnetic value proposition inside my company. Because I make decisions with Mark, I start to adopt the style. I was a sales person of service out in the community. We accomplished a lot of great things. He sells the company two years later to Yahoo if you remember back in those days. When I transfer out to the West Coast at Yahoo, I've really refined the system of building relationships by sharing my knowledge, and my network, and my compassion in every interaction. And it was like the doors swung wide open. Because now it's 2000, now it's right after the dot-com crash. This idea about helping people finds success during times of great change and expecting nothing in return. Boy, it worked crazy good in Silicon Valley and that's when I begin to train the young Yahoos on this philosophy and this set of values. And that's where I begin to write down the steps I was taking to really document you know how I read books and how I chose books, and why I read books instead of articles, and what I talked about when I was networking. And that's where "Love is The Killer App" came from a few years later. And since then, you know 15 years, I've been traveling around the world meeting people, comparing notes and really building upon that philosophy. Steve: Oh, that's great. And as we've talked about with our listeners the twelve principles of highly successful leaders, these are the things that are present across the board for high achievers. Also they were able to sustain, really, success over a long period of time, both personally and professionally. And one of those was applying the power of knowledge. In other words, gaining knowledge in the first place, and one of the primary ways is being a reader. And so this is a great reminder to every one of us listening here today of the power of reading good books on a regular basis because they're just totally stimulating, aren't they? They just fire... Tim: They are. Steve: ...your mind. Tim: And what I like about books is that books require you to take a deep dive into usually a narrow subject. And you don't just learn a couple of data points and one story, you learn a construct. It's got a thesis, and it's got supporting anecdotes, and it usually has research and it's really meaty. And you can deeply understand the topic so you can give it away, right? So the twist here Steve, is read good books but have a mix. And what I say about this is every third book you read, read for someone else's benefit. I call it prescriptive reading. Think about what... Steve: What's an example of that? Tim: Yeah. Think about information challenges that the people have and go study on their behalf because talk about expanding your resume. Steve: Right. It gives you a whole different perspective to maybe a different discipline. Tim: Absolutely. That's made a big difference for me. And that was another part of my turnaround in the late 1990s that really shifted me away from the idea that, you know, I read books to help myself. No, I read books to help the world, and sometimes it helped me too. And that philosophy will keep you from being too laser-focused on what's in front of you and not focused enough on what's coming in the future. Steve: Okay, great. That's a powerful influence on our success. And you told this wonderful experience that you had personally, this story about the bully and your grandmother saying, "Listen, we need to love him." Tim: That's right. Steve: See things from a different perspective. So you must have learned, Tim, somewhere along the line that love can be applied across the board, in business and as an entrepreneur. What have you found? Have you been able to make the jump of using that in your personal life to a professional life, and what's the experience? Tim: Yeah. I've made it my professional strategy, you know, for the last 20 years or so. I mean, when I say love in a professional sense, Steve, I mean, that I have a set of emotions about you. I care and I am now committed to promote your success by sharing my intangibles with you, my knowledge, my network, my compassion. I want you to think about, for those of you listening, I want you to think about the mentor in your life who's made the most difference to you. There's maybe one. There's maybe two. Maybe some of you might have three, but there's maybe one, right? And I want you to really think about how that person felt about you. And I want you to think about how open that person was to loving someone like you, not as a family but just as a person maybe at work or just a person maybe they did business with. I'm talking about unleashing the capacity to do this every day. I developed strong emotional aspect for almost every single person I do business with, and I don't make them earn it, Steve. It happens quick. Maybe I start out by liking him and I look for things that other people don't look for. I wanna hear their story so I can admire their values and understand their point of view. I find things that are familiar about them. I experience their passion so I can really understand what makes them a unique person. I think our capacity to care about people that work quickly and then maintain that over time. I think that is oxygen for leadership. Steve: Absolutely. That's so powerful. I mentioned the research that we've done for 40 years and these principles that are present, you're doing them? Tim: Well, you know, we're thinking alike buddy. Steve: We are thinking alike. I mean, one of those was living the golden rule, really exceptional leaders. I mean, you can have leaders that are good in different contexts but when you put these together, and exceptional leaders also one that really cares about people. And this is manifest in how they treat others, how they learn about others so that they can bring the best out within others. And this is what starts creating excellence, so great going on this. Tim: Thank you. Thank you so much, man. Steve: And by the way, Tim's book "Love is The Killer App." He talks about these three things, knowledge, networking, and compassion. Would you mind touching on the compassion part a little bit? And I'd like to go back to the networking because you said one thing that is important, and that is how a mentor maybe ought to perceive others with this love, learning what their story is? How do you bring out the best? And you'll find mentors that have done this the same way for you. So, how can you be a good mentor? That's one question. And then we'll hit this other one before we're done. Tim: Absolutely. So, the best way to be a mentor is to remember that the mentor is usually a benefactor, a teacher of sorts. And their job is to give the hero a gift that will enable the hero to make it to the next stage of her journey. When you think about Homer's Odyssey, with the character mentor, when you think about the archetype of mentorship stories in very modern culture, like, say, Star Wars, with, you know, Yoda, or with Karate Kid in Miyagi, that's what it's all about. It's about finding that person that has heroic qualities. That's going somewhere a little too fast. You've got a gift for them, maybe it's your personal experience. You've been where they've been. You have knowledge that they need and you give it to them. You expect nothing in return but that they apply that knowledge and learn and improve. All the mentors, they gain enthusiasm from the student learning. And when they need to, they go beyond just sharing information and perhaps make vital connections to create alliances, to help that hero deal with upcoming adversity. As a mentor I just want you to think a little bit like Yoda. And I want you to not really think so much like a person who's like a fire hose of information, a person who's gonna "Take somebody under their wing." I think you need to think about your role very transitionally. But most importantly, you need to expect nothing in return other than that they hero seizes the opportunity, right? I think that is what changes the game. And by the way, you know, I know you talk a lot about how to be successful over a long period of time. My philosophy that we give without expectation, this is not lip service, Steve. I literally expect them to pay it forward but I don't expect them to pay it back. And I'm telling you that is liberating, because when I meet leaders who were generous for years and years and years and then they "Burned out." This is why they got burned out. Because just enough people didn't pay them back or give them credit or whatever their reciprocity was supposed to be and they were disappointed. And I call it ego economics. And it sets in on a lot of people in their career. Super generous in their 30s, a little bit jaded in their 40s, super protected in their 50s. I'm 55 years old, I've never been more generous because I'm not disappointed in people. And I think that's what comes with being detached about what you get back. Steve: Oh, great. You know that's great. I think even the savior of mankind, Jesus Christ, if you...regardless of what you believe, as it was described when he healed the lepers, and he had one return and thanked him. Nine did not. And if your expectation is that people are gonna thank you, you're probably gonna be somewhat disappointed. Tim: Absolutely. You will. Steve: If that's your expectation. Tim: And it's interesting. So, you know, I love that story and I appreciate that example. I think that, for us, the secret to a long-term career is a very flexible perspective. And I think that if we're willing to go against the grain that there's a quid pro quo. I think we really open up our opportunities in life. You just continue to be great until the day we die. Steve: Wonderful. What a refreshing wonderful perspective. I had a friend, Tim, that I had lunch with last week. He is a facilitator for a very successful training company. He has been, really most of his career 30 years, he's gone all over the world. And one of the things he talked about was precisely this, is that his observation is one of the keys for companies to get ahead today to be able to be a best in class, be the best in their industry, is to have active healthy coaching program within the company where people are able to coach each other. And I think it's really these type of qualities you're talking that would help that be successful. Tim: Absolutely. And for leaders, whether it's a small business or an enterprise, you can create a culture of coaching. So even if there's not a funded program per se, it can be the habit inside that organization. So Tom Ward was brought into Barton protective in Atlanta to turn that company around several years ago and he created that culture. He had something called Vision Quest. These values cards everybody carried with them. It was a huge part of the cadence that he had in that company. And the third value was love. "Do you care about me as a person?" He hired based on it. He rewarded based on it. He promoted or did not promote based on it. It made a big deal to how people behaved, because culture at work, culture at work is a conversation that's led by leaders about how we do things here. And that's like software that runs a company, right? So, when you as a leader go to work and say, "We coach other people because of who we are as a company," then the habit sets in. And it's very attractive, Steve, to today's millennial, to have a reputation for a company where we bring each other up as opposed to where we internally compete. So I just want everybody listening to know this is within your power. And you don't need a big checkbook, but you do need to have consistent cadence because you need to manage that conversation about how we do things here successfully. Steve: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am, like, speechless that we are out of time. I can't believe it. Tim: It goes that quick, man. It goes that quick. Steve: It has been fast today. Now, any...what's one last bit of advice, or any tips you would like to give our listeners before we wrap it up today. It's been fun Tim. Tim: Hey, it's been fun buddy. So I'll tell you a place where you can get some stuff about me, but before that, I'll just give you one of my...it's kind of my new little piece of advice I like to give people. And I can't say that I came up with it but I can tell you I'm championing this idea. If you want to be a happier person in, life in traffic and in work, the next time somebody irritates you, does something that is seemingly rude to you, I want you to assume that that person is operating under the best intentions. I want you to assume that you don't know the whole story. Because more often than not, Steve, people are operating under the best intentions. It's just that their needs clash with our needs. And we spend a lot of our time judging those people instead of inquiring about the rest of the story. So like I said, next time somebody cuts you off in traffic, you might wanna consider that she's trying to get somebody to the hospital before you honk your horn and shake your fist. And this goes double for you as business owners and leaders. Steve: Oh, that's great advice. I hope I can get this right. This comes from an article I read yesterday and it really left a deep impression on me. It was given by the leader of a worldwide organization, a humanitarian service organization. And the fellow talked about 50 years ago, he had a mentor. And the mentor said, "Every time you meet somebody, if you'll say to yourself this person is dealing with a serious challenge," he said, "You're gonna be right 50% of the time." Tim: And guess what? Before, when you just reacted and judged that person, you were wrong 50% of the time. Steve: Exactly. Well, he said, "Man I thought my teacher, my professor was a pessimist," he said, "But I have come to learn what wise advice that was." Because indeed as we look around what's going on in the world, it is often true. And I love your comment that half the time we're wrong. So let's give everybody a lot of slack here, right? Tim: On that, you know, again, yeah, let's put our self in another person's shoes. And let's find out more. You can learn and grow so much more. You can expand your thrive so much more. And, again, you can just avoid those regrettable mistakes we all make. Steve: Yup. Well, these are some great things that we can do to make a difference, to lift others, to build others. Tim has done a great job in sharing these. What a tremendous background. And, Tim, if you'll share how our listeners can learn more about what you're doing, and which is tremendous? We'd love to hear about it. Tim: Absolutely. We've set up a special page for your listeners, Steve. It is timsanders.com/byb. That's timsanders.com/byb. I'll have a huge download excerpt of Love is The Killer App for you to read. I'll also have a way you can connect with me on LinkedIn, and find other resources like videos and other such content on my site. Steve: Well, that's terrific. Thank you Tim Sanders for being part of this show today. This has been enlightening. It's been wonderful. Tim: Oh, absolutely. It's been a pleasure Steve. I really enjoyed it. Steve: Well, you bet. We wish you all the best as you're making a difference in the world as well Tim. Tim: Thank you. Steve: And to all of our listeners, never forget, you are creating a ripple that can never be counted for good as we do the right things, good things. And they do make a difference. They lift our own lives and they lift others. And they help us be more successful, happier and have fuller lives. I'm Steve Shellenberger with Becoming Your Best Global Leadership wishing you a great day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The InForm Fitness Podcast
22 The Secret Life of Fat with Dr. Sylvia Tara

The InForm Fitness Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2017 33:09


The secret to losing 20 pounds? You have to work with your fat, not against it.  Here in Episode 22 on The Inform Fitness Podcast, Adam Zickerman and his team are joined by biochemist and author of The Secret Life of Fat, Dr. Sylvia Tara.Dr. Tara explains how you can outsmart your body fat, with cutting-edge research and historical perspectives to reveal fat's true identity.   Once you understand it…you can beat it. For The Secret Life of Fat audio book in Audible click here:  http://bit.ly/TheSecretLifeofFat_IFF_PodcastTo purchase The Secret Life of Fat in Amazon click here: http://bit.ly/TheSecretLifeofFat_AmazonDon't forget Adam's Zickerman's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution.  You can buy it from Amazon by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTenTo find an Inform Fitness location nearest you to give this workout a try, please visit www.InformFitness.com.  At the time of this recording, we have locations in Manhattan, Port Washington, Denville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg and RestenIf you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question.  The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. For information regarding the production of your own podcast just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.comThe Transcriptions for the entire episode is below:22 The Secret Life of FatTim: Hey InForm Nation, thanks for joining us once again here for episode 22 of the InForm  Fitness Podcast, twenty minutes with New York Times bestselling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting network, and a client of InForm Fitness, and after some time off, excited to finally get back behind the mic with our team. Let's start with Sheila Melody, the co-owner and general manager of the Burbank location. Sheila, nice to see you again.Sheila: Hey Tim, great to be back with everybody again!Tim: It's been a while, and the rest of our team as always, still joining us via Skype from the Manhattan location in New York City headquarters for the InForm fitness empire. General manager Mike Rogers and the founder of InForm Fitness, Adam Zickerman. What's up gents, good to see you again!Adam: Hey guys.Mike: All is good.Tim: Adam, in your book Power of Ten: The Once a Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, you described the three pillars necessary to achieve maximum success with the slow motion, high-intensity strength training system. For those who are just joining us for the first time, Adam please remind us of those three pillars.Adam: Exercise, rest, and nutrition.Tim: And nutrition. We spent a lot of time on this podcast discussing pillar one, exercise, and our special guest today also joining us via Skype, will allow us to dive deeper into pillar number two, which as you just mentioned Adam, is nutrition. We're pleased to welcome our guest who has a PhD in biochemistry and is the author of The Secret Life of Fat, Dr. Sylvia Tara. Glad to have you with us today.Sylvia: Great, thank you. It's terrific to be here.Tim: All four of us have spent the last couple of weeks digesting this book. I think Adam and Mike read the book, and Sheila, we listened to the book via Audible. It really helped us all change the way we look at fat, which I know is the point of the whole thing, but before we get started, Adam, I know you were the one who introduced this topic to the team here. What is it Adam that made you want to bring Sylvia on, to discuss The Secret Life of Fat?Adam: Well it was back in 2007 that I read this Scientific American article, that was called, if I remember correctly, What Fuels Fat, and it was then that I saw that Scientific American article that I realized how complicated fat is, and how complex it is. It was the first time that somebody had referred to fat as an organ, and then, recently, I'm listening to NPR and there's Dr. Tara talking about this book, which I thought the title was amazing. The Secret Life of Fat, and it reminded me of back in 2007, ten years ago, about this article I had read in Scientific American, and I was like oh my god. I had forgotten all about that, I've got to get this book and read it. You did such a great job, Dr. Tara, as far as breaking down such a complex subject and making us understand, quite honestly, how difficult it is to understand fat and we're in the personal training business, high-intensity exercise business, and all of our clients, most of them, are struggling with fat loss. I thought maybe we can use your book to prompt conversation and be honest with our clients and basically tell them what the facts are. What to expect when it comes to battling the bulge.Mike: What they're up against.Sylvia: That's a great idea, and that's also why I decided to go and do all this research, because I'm one of those people who has a lot of trouble managing weight. I always gain weight very easily, even as a child, I packed on pounds much easier than my friends who ate candy and ice cream all day long, and as I got older, it just got worse. Some of my old tricks stopped working, I had all these tricks in my twenties where I could take weight off pretty quickly if I had to, but then after having two kids, after launching a career and getting very busy, being stretched and traveling, my old tricks weren't working anymore. I went on a number of diets, there's always this new diet, and I tried a number of them every year, and sometimes they would work, they would work temporarily. Sometimes I could even gain weight on some of these diets, and I'd worked with personal trainers too, and they're all really — just [Inaudible: 00:03:59] their dogma, they have a certain philosophy they follow and one of them is you have to eat enough calories to lose weight. They were always stunned at how little I actually had to eat, and even then, I wasn't skinny, so I was about to go on yet another diet; I think paleo was all the rage and I said let me try this, and I started reading about just how complicated it was and I thought you know what, forget it. I said before I go on even one more diet, I'm going to understand everything there is to know about fat. I'm a biochemist by training, and if anyone can understand fat, I can. So I read everything, I think I pulled over a thousand articles out of the scientific literature, I read them all, and I talked to over fifty thought leaders, leading researchers around the world about this, their cutting edge research on fat. What I was finding out, which was so interesting, so astounding; it turned out that fat wasn't anything I thought it was, it's not just a reserve of calories, it's not just holding energy, waiting for us to use it. It has a whole life of its own underneath there. It can fight back when we try to lose it, it controls our thoughts about food, it controls metabolism. It can divert blood supply to itself, it's doing all these really strange things. It's as if it's another person inside of you, and if you're not equipped, if you don't understand what fat really is, you're just about bound to keep going on diets and regaining and regaining. The diet industry tends to make you think you're doing something wrong. If this diet doesn't work for you, it's really simple to follow, and then it's your fault; surely you're not staying on it, surely you're not adhering, and that's not the case. Having people feel that guilt isn't helping them, it's causing frustration and then it's leading to binging, it's leading to depressed feelings and things like that. So I think once we just educate ourselves on fat, what it is exactly, why it's so hard to lose, the better equipped we are to stay very persistent. So knowledge is power, and in this case in particular, I think just having that knowledge helped me stay on something. It also helped me not just follow siren songs, like with the new diet fad of the year, let me try that. It's like now I've got it, I know what works for me now, I can tailor my own diet. I really just felt empowered, and hopefully, some of that is what I'm trying to do with people. You don't have to follow my diet that worked for me, and I did something pretty extreme in my own experience to get off weight, but you can tailor something to work for you, depending on what you need psychologically, biologically, and for your lifestyle as well.Adam: That's a great introduction, and so while we're talking about your quest to find out exactly what fat is, why don't you explain what exactly is fat, and why is it called an organ?Sheila: Like I said, fat, the way we think of it is like this blubber. It's like this excess, greasy yellow stuff, and it's funny because I have this plastic model of fat, and when I show it to people, their first reaction is like ew, that's disgusting. We just have this whole image of what it is, but it's doing so much more tha n just sitting there as this greasy, yellow substance. It actually produces hormones that our body depends on, and these are hormones, mostly only produced by fat. So you can think of fat as not just a reserve of calories, it's an endocrine organ, like your adrenal cortex, it's like your thyroid gland, it's like any other endocrine organ we have. One of these hormones is leptin, and leptin has vast influence all over our body, I mean you'd be shocked at how much we defend on our fat for this hormone. Our brain size is linked to healthy fat, our brain size and the way we think, cognitive abilities even, is linked to an adequate supply of leptin which comes from fat. Our reproductive organs, particularly in women; if we get too low levels of fat, or if we have defective fat that's not producing leptin, we can't reproduce. Then there's bones, bone strength is reliant on fat as well. Even wound healing, this was really interesting, that leptin binds within our veins and so people that have anorexia or, again, defective fat, they don't heal as quickly. We're just at the tip of this, I think leptin was really in the 90s when it came out, and we're just discovering more and more how important it is in our body, and how much we're dependent on our fat for good health. One of the things too, is that leptin, because it does control our mind to some extent and it controls appetite, when we lose a lot of fat, like say 10% of our body weight, it has a big effect on us. Actually, our appetite will go through the roof, so leptin is released from fat cells, it goes into the blood, and it binds to the  hypothalamus region of our brain, and there's an appetite center there. So with lower levels of leptin after losing quite a bit of weight, we actually get very, very hungry, we're driven to eat. So our fat in a way is controlling itself, it's driving us to actually come back. It will also lower our metabolism, so skeletal muscle during exercise, 25% fewer calories is what we'll end up using, and 15% fewer during rest. So overall, you need 22% fewer calories after you've lost about 10% of your weight or more, compared to someone who has never lost weight. So to make that a little clearer for people, if someone is 150 pounds and they've been at that weight naturally for a good part of life, compared to someone who has lost 20 pounds, who was 170 pounds and lost 20 pounds to get to 150 pounds; the person who has lost weight to get to 150 will have 22% fewer calories than someone who is naturally there, and that's because of the effect of lowering leptin, and the reduction in metabolism we get. So a diet is not just for six months, this effect I just talked about, higher appetite and lower metabolism, it's been studied for six years, it's seemed to last for six years. I think it can even last longer, I've talked to some people who have lost weight and they say they still feel like this, they still have to eat a lot less. So don't pick a diet for six months, pick a diet that you're going to stay on for years and years, that you like. It works with you, works with your lifestyle, works with what you like to eat, and in having its effect, it's helping you lose weight. Just knowing that I think has helped people a lot. I know my editor, when he read my manuscript for the book, he actually lost 15 pounds because he actually understood fat. He knew what was going on, he understood why he was hungry at night and all these other things, biochemically what fat was doing, and it's just helped us all persist a little bit more.Tim: Dr. Tara, for our audience, of course, they're listening to the InForm Fitness Podcast because they participate with this high intensity, strength training system through Power of Ten. Let's talk about exercise for a minute, and tell us how fat is affected with high-intensity strength training, like we do at InForm Fitness.Sylvia: There's a bunch of things, so what we can do really to get smarter about fat and how we manage it, is it's one thing to not just manage it and be able to persist for long periods of time because we now understand fat, but you can start using hormones to your advantage. One of the hormones that's been talked about all the time is insulin, lots of books on insulin and fat, and making sure we have low sugar. We're not provoking too much insulin because insulin helps store calories into fat tissue, and that's all good and fine. Two other hormones to know about, one is growth hormone, that's a great fat burning hormone, and we get less of it, we have less of it as we age, and so one thing is that it peaks at night. So what you can do is extend that overnight fasting part, and that will actually extend the release of growth hormone, really important as we age. Testosterone is another great fat burning hormone, and that also decreases as we age. Now high intensity interval training is good for a number of things: one is that is associated, exercise in general is associated with the release of growth hormone and testosterone, so some strength building exercise is good for growth hormone and testosterone, and even jogging is good for both hormones. Then [Inaudible: 00:11:32] is another hormone fat releases, and this is a hormone made by fat, and it actually helps clear our blood of triglycerides and put fat, circulating fat into fat tissue where it belongs. High-intensity interval training three times a week is associated with some of these hormones as well, and it decreases visceral fat, and so how I think of it is that you're really affecting your hormones when you do HIIT. You're increasing some of these fat-busting hormones, you're helping get adiponectin, and you're reducing your visceral fat. I think it's one of the reasons that works very well, because when you think about it, you're not exercising for long, you're doing it for a short period of time but extremely intensely, and that's affecting your hormones and how your body is reacting to it. It's a great trick, I think, to just help remove stubborn fat.Sheila: I was so inspired by your book Dr. Tara because I totally related to your personal story, and I'm middle-aged, and I'm suddenly going what in the hell is going on here? So it was really nice, even being in the fitness business, being a personal trainer, being involved in all of this for my entire life basically, so I was very encouraged by your story, to make some changes and to understand why you want to add certain exercises in. The diet thing is one thing, but for me, what was a real a-ha moment was when you described why you would exercise. The hormones are listening, your fat is listening to you, so can you talk a little bit more about how your fat listens to you, and the messages you send to it. It's way more important than just the calories you're going to burn by doing that cardio or whatever exercise you're doing.Sylvia: That's exactly right. So your fat can talk and it can listen, so it'll talk by sending out hormones. It can talk to your brain and tell you how to think about food, and it can talk to your muscles and have it lower metabolism, so it's a way of communicating, and a lot of different organs in our body will emit hormones, and it has a whole communication system inside that you've never even considered and thought about. So it can talk by releasing leptin, adiponectin, and even other hormones. It can also listen, our fat, it can listen to other hormones coming from other organs. It has receptors for estrogen and testosterone on them, a number of other receptors too, so when other parts of our body starts releasing those hormones, our fat grabs it, it listens to it. It has ears if you will, and those hormones will tell fat what to do. So testosterone will help fat liquidate itself, even estrogen will, growth hormone certainly will. So when we're exercising, we're changing the communication signals in our body in a number of ways. Not only is our fat listening, but our muscles, our bones, we have a lot of different communications between these different organs, and so I think that's the smart way to fight fat. Calories do matter, I wouldn't say they don't, but more importantly is what are you doing with your hormone levels, and very small changes can actually have a pretty good effect. That's shown, I do a little writing about hormone replacement therapy which is really big here, especially in California, and it works wonders for people. I'm not ready for that yet, I wasn't ready to get external hormones injected in, but I did really work hard at ways to naturally increase some of these hormones that decline with age, including growth hormone and testosterone in particular, and adiponectin, just releasing that from fat. You did bring up women, and women in particular, we battle fat much more. I don't think there's a single woman in the world who wouldn't agree that men have an easier time losing weight than women do.Sheila: That's the other thing I got from this book, I was like oh my god, it's true! It's just the hard truth though, it's the way it is, and understanding that helps us to — what about even the way that we eat and the nutrition partitioning? Also if you could speak a little bit about the cardio, when you said women exercise and when it goes over beyond 4-600 calories, how it's different between men and women.Sylvia: Sure. Just to make everyone feel better, women are fatter, we think even in utero, compared to — from the time they exist, girl babies have more fat than boy babies, and the single best predictor is gender when it comes to fat in infants. It's not age, it's not length, not any of those things, it's gender, so many reasons for why women do gain more weight than men, but we can go over a few of them. One of them is nutrient partitioning, so when we eat something, say like a hundred calories or so, we'll actually partition more of those nutrients into fat, compared to what men will do. So as an example, if we eat about a hundred calories, we'll put about thirty calories say, for example, compared to men who might put 15 calories of those into their fat, compared to their lean tissue. So we put more in, and women actually utilize their fat differently as well. So after a time of energy depletion, like after an overnight fast, after we've slept for a long time, or after we've exercised intensely and we've depleted some energy, women's bodies will reach for fat as a source of energy, whereas men will reach more for glycogen and for protein. You would think this was a great thing because we're using our fat and we're going to lose all this weight now. The issue is that after we've replenished and after we went to energy depletion, we're actually storing fat much more efficiently than the men, two to three times more efficiently than men do. So for the one hour we're exercising or whatever, yeah, we're burning more fat off, but the rest of the day, we're packing more fat away. There's some good news for women in all of this, that even though we tend to be a little bit softer, a little bit fatter than men, the good part is that we are clearing those triglycerides out of our blood and putting it into some subcutaneous fat tissue where it belongs. So subcutaneous fat tissue is that fat tissue right underneath our skin, compared to visceral fat, which is fat underneath the stomach wall, which is less healthy. Women are very good at clearing triglycerides, fats, out of our blood and putting it into subcutaneous fat, and that keeps us more safe from cardiovascular disease, from metabolic issues, that tend to run a little bit higher in men. Men actually are not as efficient at this, and it's one of the reasons why they have more visceral fat, and more cardiac disease as well. So just take some solace in that, although we're softer, we don't fit into jeans as well, we can't eat as much, overall our bodies are doing what they're supposed to do, which is putting fat into our blood and storing it into safe deposits where it belongs. So when we burn off, say, around six hundred calories, so a really good bout of exercise, we release more ghrelin, 33% more ghrelin than men do, and ghrelin is a hunger hormone that comes out of the stomach. So we respond more to exercise, and then it also leads to more compensation. If you put a buffet out in front of us after we've done that exercise, we'll eat more than men do, and the interesting part is even after we eat more, we still have 25% higher ghrelin, and so that's a lesson learned for women I think. Either keep the exercise a little bit more moderate, or really distract yourself after you exercise. Go watch TV or go shopping, in fact go shopping for jeans and you'll see how much you don't want to eat. Just do something, be aware that you're hungrier and you have to really control the reaction to want to fill yourself up.Sheila: Does it pass after a certain amount of time?Sylvia: I haven't seen research on it but I can tell you my experience, no, it'll be all day. My own little trick is I exercise at night, so I'll exercise between 7, even up to 10 o'clock, and I'll just go to bed. If I sleep on it, it'll disappear, I'm not as hungry the next day as I am during the day.Adam: Dr. Tara, to change the subject a little bit, because there's so much in your book that you touch on, and one of the most fascinating things about fat and how we retain fat is this biome in our stomachs. It turns out, as you say, people have different biomes in their stomach, and depending upon their bacterial content if you will, the types of bacteria that make up their biome, that will depend on whether you're obese or not, or whether you're thin or not.Sylvia: That's a really interesting field, and a quickly changing field, I feel like they're learning new things all the time. The thinking, the standard thinking was that if you have a higher proportion of [Inaudible: 00:19:59] in your gut compared to [Inaudible: 00:20:02], that those people tended to extract more calories out of food, they tended to be heavier, and it's a cycle. So what we eat also affects the bacteria that we have, so people who are eating higher fats, higher carbohydrates, they were having the type of phyla associated more with extracting calories and having a heavier body type. People who were eating more fruits and vegetables had a different phyla, they had more diversity, and so I think what they're seeing now, there's a little bit of movement away from that type of thinking of [Inaudible: 00:20:33] and more thinking about diversity in our gut. People who have higher diversities of bacteria tend to have a leaner body type, and it's all really interesting because another observation was that the bacteria we have in our gut, it tends to run in families. So they're wondering if this is how obesity is growing, because once somebody has someone's bacteria that is associated with a thicker body type, is it spreading to children, is it having something to do with childhood obesity? This is moving, so there are things we can do though. One is what I just said, when you eat more fruits and vegetables, it's tougher to digest those. So one way bacteria works is that it helps us digest foods that our normal body could not, things like polysaccharides and fibrous foods, plants. It helps turn all those starches into glucose, something we can easily absorb. It also helps with fat storage as well, so the more we're giving our microbiome a run for the money, really nice tough salads and things like that, more is passing into waste than would be getting absorbed into our gut. Also just keeping your gut healthy, I think some of these probiotics and like artichokes, bananas, legumes, also keep a nice gut lining, a healthy mucous lining, that also fosters a good diversity of bacteria. So there's a lot of diet books on this in no field alone, but it is a quickly changing field scientifically. I think the best advice we can take from it right now is just try to eat more fruits and vegetables; it's very trite advice, I'm aware of that, but part of it is that I just wanted to understand how the microbiome was working. It's viruses too that do have an effect, and I write about being able to catch fat in a way. There's some viruses associated with higher weight gain and obesity, and I write about that pretty much at length in the book, but I think it's not all bad news. We just have to work harder, so if you have a microbiome that's tilted towards gaining weight, you will have to work harder, you'll have to eat a little less, you'll have to eat more salads versus more fats and high carbohydrates. If you have the virus, I mean that's tough too, and I write about one patient who did have the virus and he gained weight excessively easily. He just has to eat less, it's harder for him, he'll eat about 1200 calories a day and he's 6'1”, he's a big guy. It's just the way it is, and I think part of what I want to do in my book is let's just face facts. Let's not pretend this is easy, let's not say it's the simple diet of 1, 2, 3, and you'll lose weight. For some of us it's just harder, and at least know why it is harder, and then there are some small tweaks you can make that will help you fight your fat in a smarter way.Tim: Dr. Terra, I've got to tell you one of the many things I enjoyed about your book is how you not only provided all of us with a very detailed science lesson regarding fat, but how you describe both the harm fat can cause, and its usefulness in the form of the patient stories, one of which you just referred to right now. So it's a great read, it's very informative, I think it's changed the four of our lives in how we look at fat and it'll do the same thing for our audience as well too. I know we're short on time but I do want to, if we can, add one more element to this. You mentioned genetics. We're all victims of our genetics, but exercise can help us fight what we've inherited negatively through our genetics.Sylvia: That's right. So for genetics, what they do find is that exercise can attenuate some of the effect of these genetics, so if you increase exercise by six times or more over resting metabolism, which is achieved by running four to six miles an hour, or cycling about twelve to sixteen miles per hour, it actually attenuates some of the effects of those genes. It's like even at some point your genes have to just give up and give in, and admit that you're using a lot of energy and it can't hold on anymore. Again, it's one of these instances where we just have to work a little bit harder, there's one gene, FTO, that actually causes a higher desire to eat energy dense foods, so things like cookies and brownies, and with kids who have this variation, when we test them, they'll actually go to a buffet and compare them to normal kids who don't have this FTO variation, they found that kids with the FTO variation, they actually will load up much more on things like chips and cookies, compared to the other kids. It affects appetite as well, so it still gets down to the things that we can do, and that includes food, it includes eating smart, eating for your hormones, exercising for your hormones. Just being a little smarter about it, don't quite think of it as calorie in, calorie out. There's certain times of the day that you can eat or not eat and it'll help you release more of that growth hormone, more of those fat busting hormones. Certain types of things that you can eat that will affect your hormones, and I'm not just talking about insulin, but growth hormone and testosterone too. So think very holistically about it. There are some treatments coming out in the future that I'm hopeful will help people lose weight. One of them is leptin injections, if that will ever get approved. So like I said, we lose leptin when we lose fat, and what they've done is actually inject leptin back into people who have lost 10% of their fat or more, and they find that their metabolism improves, and their quest to eat is not as strong anymore. So it helps them maintain the lower weight, but that's way off in the future I'm sorry to say; that's going to be another ten years, minimum, before that would ever reach consumers. There's other things too, there's injecting brown fat, brown fat is a type of fat which will actually burn calories versus white fat, which the main function is to store, and that will is also far into the future. In the meantime what we can do is just be smart, customize a diet that works for you. Really keep a log of what you eat, when, what type of food it is, and then weigh yourself every day, and you'll start to see where the correlation is. Everybody is really different, and in The Secret Life of Fat, I write about this research from Israel actually, where they've studied a large number of people and they look at their blood sugar after they eat various foods. What they noticed is that some people can eat chocolate and they can have alcohol and they don't get a blood sugar spike; other people can't, they react, and so they're storing more fat as well because the blood sugar spike leads to insulin, that will help store all of that into fat. So we're all really different, and it varies based on a lot of things that we talked about, like the genetics, microbiome, gender, etc. So some things will work for you that don't work for your neighbor and vice versa, so just be very attentive. Watch what you can eat versus can't, I know there's some things I can't believe I can get away with, everyone will tell me I'm crazy for eating this but it doesn't make me gain weight. I can have small amounts of chocolate in the middle of the day, nothing bad happens to me, thank god because I really can't live without it.Tim: You just made a lot of people mad, Dr. Tara.Mike: And happy. They'll have to troubleshoot for themselves. I have one last quick question, Sylvia. We talked about nutrition, we talked about fitness and the troubleshooting processes with regulation of your fat, to either gain or to lose. I know you mentioned in your book a little bit about cortisol and stress management, and what we know about as far as weight gain or weight loss. I know we have a lot of clients who are under stressful times in their life, and I'm not sure if the correlation is directly related to that or other things or whatever, but I've seen people gain a lot of weight or lose a lot of weight as a result of stress.Sylvia: I know there's news about cortisol, I actually think too much might be made out of cortisol. Cortisol has a link to abdominal fat, so when we're stressed out, we have more cortisol which is linked to some amounts of fat. I think more the issue is how we psychologically react to stress. So being on a diet, maintaining a good, healthy regimen, it actually takes an application of willpower, and when people have stress in their lives, like even during the recession or a bad economic time, or they lose a job or are going through a divorce, they are less able to stay with something else that requires stress. It's like all the stress is being focused on this one event, and they can't absorb more. So in a way, our willpower is like a muscle and it can be depleted. In fact, in the recession that we had more recently around 2008, candy sales soared. So people didn't feel like being on a diet, they just want to indulge, they're stressed out, so I think psychological factors are more of it than even cortisol. Those are things that are important to note because we never get rid of stress in our lives, I mean I get stressed out just sitting in traffic. There's stress all around us, so one thing is if you're going through a really stressful time, it's not a great time to start a diet honestly. You'll just feel like a failure if you do try because it gets hard. So choose a diet at the right time and then manage to stay on it. Two important things to know when you're staying on a diet and really giving a good effort is that you actually need to reward yourself. Our willpower gets depleted at times, and they find that hospital workers who are told to wash their hands all day, towards the end of the day, they'll just stop. They just don't feel like doing it, but if they give them longer breaks between their shifts, they'll continue to wash their hands during the day. So there's something around being depleted, feeling like you've had enough of a break in between that you can stay on a regimen. So give yourself a break either by going off your diet every once in a while, or going off and doing something fun, but make sure that you're entering in some happiness. Another study I talk about is people who have a hand exerciser for a long time, a hand gripper, and they divide them into two: they have one watch a sad movie for a while and then another group watch a happy movie, and then they give them the hand exerciser back, the hand gripper back. They find the people who watched the happy movie can stick with that hand gripper a long time, so scientifically, you actually need to recharge, you need to come off and have some fun. The important thing is to get right back on, and this is where dichotomous thinking can come on. So people sometimes when they go off a diet, they go down this slippery slope where they can't get back on. Like I've had ice cream, I've completely failed, and now I'm just going to go off, it doesn't matter. That's called dichotomous thinking, and people who have that problem are actually more prone to depression, they're more prone to eating disorders, so it's a really bad thing to have, and women have it much more than men do. I've read about that in studies —Adam: Add that to the list.Sylvia: So the self love element is really important, and it's funny, I write it about in the book. There's one researcher from Mayo who said that women get something out of food that men don't; when men come off their diet, they're like yeah I had a beer, so what? I'm going to get back on and women are going to be like I had all these problems and I gave up, and I feel really badly now. The successful weight coaches or weight loss coaches, they're very good at coaching people back on. So if you can do that for yourself, you'll have so much more success than if you just beat yourself up every time you come off. You're going to have come off, you can't stay on, you need to recharge yourself, and then be forgiving. You came off, but you had 30 great days ahead of that, so now you're just going to have another 30 great days going forward. So tons of advice in the book, and as you can see from all my talking, there's a lot of research in it, a lot of points to know.Tim: The book is The Secret Life of Fat, it brings together cutting edge research with historical perspectives to reveal fat's true identity, and this episode, like you just said, we've just scratched the surface of all of the valuable information contained in this book, which is available Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Audible, and other locations as well. Dr. Sylvia Tara, thanks so much for joining us here at the InForm Fitness Podcast. We certainly wish you the best of luck with your book, and really appreciate you being with us, thank you.Sylvia: Great, thank you so much. It was great to be here.Tim: We'll include links in the show notes to Dr. Sylvia Tara's book, The Secret Life of Fat. Just scroll down past the description in your podcast app, and you'll find links to purchase the hard copy of her book in Amazon, or if you're like me and you like to listen to your books, we'll have a link to the book in Audible. You'll also find the link to pick up Adam's book, Power of Ten: The Once a Week, Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. Included in Adam's book are several exercises that support this protocol that you can actually perform on your own if you don't happen to live near an InForm Fitness location. For those that do live in Manhattan, Port Washington, Denville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg, and Reston, good news, there's an InForm Fitness to you. Pop on over to informfitness.com to get a glimpse of each location. Better yet, set up a consultation to begin your own journey with the Power of Ten. Be sure to join us next week, because Adam has a confession he would like to make to all of us who are a part of InForm Nation. I'll tell you this much, it's something that he's been struggling with most of his life, and something that a lot of us might have in common with him. To guarantee that you don't accidentally miss an upcoming episode of the InForm Fitness Podcast, just subscribe, it's very simple. Hit the subscribe button and every single Monday morning, we'll have a new episode waiting for you. For Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and Adam Zickerman of InForm Fitness, I'm Tim Edwards, with the InBound Podcasting network. 

Fish Nerds Fishing Podcast
Fish Nerds Podcast 148 Fly Fishing Lead Loons and Conservation

Fish Nerds Fishing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2017 69:08


What’s the worst fishing advice you’ve been given? Fish in the News! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gwyneth-paltrow-brings-up-a-good-point-about-not-eating-octopus_us_58d295fee4b0f838c62e7765? NH has some of the most restrictive lead bans in the country, but some say it’s too much! Here is what some folks are saying on facebook… Names have been altered! So when are WE fishermen going to push back against this lead law? I mean, maybe not get rid of it totally but have it rewritten... Shouldn’t be all lead... Should only be lead sinkers... Painted jigs, with hooks should be excluded! So many types of lures that aren't made without lead... Not to mention the price... Of the bird people can make the law, no reason why we can't get it rewritten to not COMPLETELY screw us... Mike Its the ones with the hooks that are the worse. Lead is bad for the environment and all health. Period. Yeah, its kind of annoying, but it would be better for the market in general to move away from lead. The last part is the real problem Ray The law should be like Maine's lead law... NH needs to stop trying to be so different from Maine and start looking toward them for guidance... Lol Steve Loons don't eat lead shot larger than #4 shot. Lead split sinkers are mostly bigger than that. Too many anti, loon lovers in NH F&G. Raymond Everything that is made of lead they make in tungsten or bismuth . Bismuth I'd the same price as lead .Lead free bass jigs.Com . And ray to your thoughts on getting it changed never ever going to happen . I don't care if you got every fisherman in the state it still isn't going to change. Now go check out ken's site and replace your equipment like I've had to do and everyone else has had to. I've easily got a $300 worth of lead I just use it when I go to fla. Only one I disagree with is spinnerbaits . Ain't no way in the world a loon is going to swallow a spinnerbaits . Besides a pelican there isn't a bird big enough to swallow one of those . Rich I get pissy too when I look at my lead tackle but think of the time and money spent on lead poisoning and pollution. It's an inconvenience but filling our waters regularly with a known toxin is just plain irresponsible. I fully support a lead ban, as does the research, so I am happy to see our New England states making smart decisions not moving backwards Raynor U say states... Only NH is so strict that it over does it... For example... Maine has a lead law. But it's directed toward lead sinkers... But painted jigs are ok... NH doesn't care that paint creates a border so if a bird were to eat it the fact of it Rich That's a fun argument but lead is dangerous when mixed with water, period. Might I remind you of this. And yes, I know, that was not caused by fishing tackle, but why should we fill our environment with a highly toxic substance if we don't have to? If we all chose to voluntarily reduce lead use, the nanny laws wouldn't exist. https://www.google.com/.../toxic-water-soaring-lead.../ |Chris Completely agree sucks cause tungsten jigs or tinget expensive but in the long run its a better decision Tim It's not about lead or loons. It's about the leftists showing they can push their agenda. Watermelons, green on the outside red on the inside. Steve . I have gone to tungsten, but this law was nothing more than an effort pushed thru by the loon preservation society. It's funny to me that 35 years ago if I saw a loon it was a real event something to talk about. My guess is that had something to do with DDT. Now they are in every waterbody in the state, and guess what? They made that comeback over the last 35 years with all of us using lead tackle! It's not like we stopped using lead last year and the loons all showed up. I think there could be some adjustments to the law that might be a good compromise Steve And don't tell me the costs are not a real difference. When I owned Upper Valley Outfitters, I could buy jigs for walleye fishing wholesale at about.35 cents each. Tungsten was .92 cents. That sounds trivial, but the Connecticut River tends to eat tackle so it got too expensive for some fishermen. That's just what I observed Travis The law is so stupid. I completely agree. I'm not paying 4 dollars more for jigs that are not lead. And the jigs I've trusted and used for years are lead. How about drop shot weights? They are so expensive if they aren't lead and you tend to lose them. So there's 14 bucks Every time you go out when they lead ones are a quarter of the cost. In the long run it will cost hundreds if not thousands more for gear. Which I simply cannot afford. Ted Williams I've fished in NH since the lead ban and have not suffered even a little. Good for NH for leading the way. No one's "screwing" anyone. Here's piece I did for TNC explaining what some anglers need to learn: http://blog.nature.org/science/2016/11/28/recovery-saving-common-loon-lead-fishing-tackle-poisoning-birds/ Denise Having managed a marina on Squam, I can tell you in just one summer on Little Squam we had 3 loons in our harbor that ingested lead we were able to capture because they were sick and 2 died. All were x-rayed and they had lead in their stomachs Kyle Loins is funny! David Just use tungsten Ted Williams Non-toxic metals including steel, bismuth, copper and tin are cheap and readily available. Tungsten is relatively expensive but weighs more than lead. Non-toxics hold up better than lead, don’t snag as easily, keep tackle boxes cleaner and are safe for humans. Now there are even ceramic and natural rock sinkers. Speak Up for the FN Blue with Andrew Lewin Promo Mystery Tackle Box code FISHNERDS to save 5 bucks

Outdoor Podcast Channel
Fish Nerds Podcast 148 Fly Fishing Lead Loons and Conservation

Outdoor Podcast Channel

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2017 69:08


What’s the worst fishing advice you’ve been given? Fish in the News! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gwyneth-paltrow-brings-up-a-good-point-about-not-eating-octopus_us_58d295fee4b0f838c62e7765? NH has some of the most restrictive lead bans in the country, but some say it’s too much! Here is what some folks are saying on facebook… Names have been altered! So when are WE fishermen going to push back against this lead law? I mean, maybe not get rid of it totally but have it rewritten... Shouldn’t be all lead... Should only be lead sinkers... Painted jigs, with hooks should be excluded! So many types of lures that aren't made without lead... Not to mention the price... Of the bird people can make the law, no reason why we can't get it rewritten to not COMPLETELY screw us... Mike Its the ones with the hooks that are the worse. Lead is bad for the environment and all health. Period. Yeah, its kind of annoying, but it would be better for the market in general to move away from lead. The last part is the real problem Ray The law should be like Maine's lead law... NH needs to stop trying to be so different from Maine and start looking toward them for guidance... Lol Steve Loons don't eat lead shot larger than #4 shot. Lead split sinkers are mostly bigger than that. Too many anti, loon lovers in NH F&G. Raymond Everything that is made of lead they make in tungsten or bismuth . Bismuth I'd the same price as lead .Lead free bass jigs.Com . And ray to your thoughts on getting it changed never ever going to happen . I don't care if you got every fisherman in the state it still isn't going to change. Now go check out ken's site and replace your equipment like I've had to do and everyone else has had to. I've easily got a $300 worth of lead I just use it when I go to fla. Only one I disagree with is spinnerbaits . Ain't no way in the world a loon is going to swallow a spinnerbaits . Besides a pelican there isn't a bird big enough to swallow one of those . Rich I get pissy too when I look at my lead tackle but think of the time and money spent on lead poisoning and pollution. It's an inconvenience but filling our waters regularly with a known toxin is just plain irresponsible. I fully support a lead ban, as does the research, so I am happy to see our New England states making smart decisions not moving backwards Raynor U say states... Only NH is so strict that it over does it... For example... Maine has a lead law. But it's directed toward lead sinkers... But painted jigs are ok... NH doesn't care that paint creates a border so if a bird were to eat it the fact of it Rich That's a fun argument but lead is dangerous when mixed with water, period. Might I remind you of this. And yes, I know, that was not caused by fishing tackle, but why should we fill our environment with a highly toxic substance if we don't have to? If we all chose to voluntarily reduce lead use, the nanny laws wouldn't exist. https://www.google.com/.../toxic-water-soaring-lead.../ |Chris Completely agree sucks cause tungsten jigs or tinget expensive but in the long run its a better decision Tim It's not about lead or loons. It's about the leftists showing they can push their agenda. Watermelons, green on the outside red on the inside. Steve . I have gone to tungsten, but this law was nothing more than an effort pushed thru by the loon preservation society. It's funny to me that 35 years ago if I saw a loon it was a real event something to talk about. My guess is that had something to do with DDT. Now they are in every waterbody in the state, and guess what? They made that comeback over the last 35 years with all of us using lead tackle! It's not like we stopped using lead last year and the loons all showed up. I think there could be some adjustments to the law that might be a good compromise Steve And don't tell me the costs are not a real difference. When I owned Upper Valley Outfitters, I could buy jigs for walleye fishing wholesale at about.35 cents each. Tungsten was .92 cents. That sounds trivial, but the Connecticut River tends to eat tackle so it got too expensive for some fishermen. That's just what I observed Travis The law is so stupid. I completely agree. I'm not paying 4 dollars more for jigs that are not lead. And the jigs I've trusted and used for years are lead. How about drop shot weights? They are so expensive if they aren't lead and you tend to lose them. So there's 14 bucks Every time you go out when they lead ones are a quarter of the cost. In the long run it will cost hundreds if not thousands more for gear. Which I simply cannot afford. Ted Williams I've fished in NH since the lead ban and have not suffered even a little. Good for NH for leading the way. No one's "screwing" anyone. Here's piece I did for TNC explaining what some anglers need to learn: http://blog.nature.org/science/2016/11/28/recovery-saving-common-loon-lead-fishing-tackle-poisoning-birds/ Denise Having managed a marina on Squam, I can tell you in just one summer on Little Squam we had 3 loons in our harbor that ingested lead we were able to capture because they were sick and 2 died. All were x-rayed and they had lead in their stomachs Kyle Loins is funny! David Just use tungsten Ted Williams Non-toxic metals including steel, bismuth, copper and tin are cheap and readily available. Tungsten is relatively expensive but weighs more than lead. Non-toxics hold up better than lead, don’t snag as easily, keep tackle boxes cleaner and are safe for humans. Now there are even ceramic and natural rock sinkers. Speak Up for the FN Blue with Andrew Lewin Promo Mystery Tackle Box code FISHNERDS to save 5 bucks

The InForm Fitness Podcast
11 Calm Down Ladies, You Won't Bulk Up!

The InForm Fitness Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2017 18:09


The number of women clients who express their fear of “bulking up” from doing strength training at Inform Fitness grows every day. Almost all the people who train at an Inform Fitness locations want to ‘tone up' and create “long and lean” muscles. The fact is most women won't “bulk up” from weight lifting. After listening to Episode 10 of the Inform Fitness Podcast visit Adam's blog for even more information to debunk the myth that women will 'bulk up" from weight training: https://informfitness.com/will-women-bulk-up-from-weight-training/ To find an Inform Fitness location nearest you visit www.InformFitness.com If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10, send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com.  Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question.  The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3.  To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Power-Once-Week-Revolution-Harperresource/dp/006000889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485469022&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+10+book If you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com The transcription to this episode is below: 11 Will Women Bulk Up with the Power of 10 - Transcript Intro: You're listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life-changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that's so effective, you'd get a week's worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high-intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1. Alright. Welcome back InForm Nation. Thanks again for joining us here on the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards with the Inbound Podcasting Network joined as always by Sheila Melody with the InForm Fitness Toluca Lake location here in Southern California with me. And across the country we have Mike Rogers from the Manhattan location and Adam Zickerman, the founder of InForm Fitness. This podcast is designed, created and produced to help you super-charge your metabolism and to increase cardiovascular endurance which will make you leaner and stronger. Just ask one of our founding members of InForm Nation, Susanne who feels that she's discovered the fountain of youth within the walls of the Toluca Lake InForm Fitness location. I'm in my early 60s and the workouts have made me feel a whole lot, like, younger. I've been coming here for a few months and I can already see the results. Not just in having more energy but I can see the results in muscle tone. Other people are like, “Wow, you look great.” And that obviously makes you feel good so you keep coming back but I can see it when I look in the mirror. I can see the muscle tone and that's one thing I wanted to get from this workout was not only to feel more healthy and more energetic, just to look better. I'm glad that she's looking better and aesthetics is obviously a very important thing to people but what really resonated with me was when she said she felt younger. And then went on to say that she felt stronger, improved endurance, more energy I think she used the word, energy. And that is markers of youth. In part of Susanne's interview that you'll see in later videos that we produced for InForm Fitness, she does mention the fact that she did want to work out. She did want muscle tone but she did not want to get that bulky buffed look. Is that something that you hear from a lot of your female clients when they come in for an intake? Are they concerned about bulking up? Every single one of them. [laughter] Really? Really?   Yeah. Exactly. I was going to say the same thing. Almost. Almost every single one. Unless they already have, you know, a lot of experience working out. Then they don't really ask that question but most women think that they're going to, if they're building muscle, they're going to get bigger, you know, and it's just not true. When a female tells me they're afraid to bulk up, I say, you should want to bulk up. But I don't want to bulk up, I said, you do want to bulk up. Says, but I really don't want to bulk up. No, you do want to bulk up. [laughter] We go back and forth and right before she's about to walk out of my office I finally come clean with her and I say look [laughs] you know, listen, you know, you have such little potential of getting bulky the way you're afraid of being bulky. But the reason I say you do want to bulk up because every muscle you do put on your frame is just going to be a huge benefit to you and it's not going to look bad and you really need it. So, let's hope that this will be too much for you where you bulk up so much that you don't even like all your muscles. That's a good prompt to have. We can just work out less at that point but -- Very hard to achieve. Especially for a woman. Yeah. It's like if you're going to be a bodybuilder and -- It's hard for guys for crying out loud. Yeah. It's hard for guys too. Crying out loud. Oh my gosh. I'm one of those guys. [laughter] It's one thing that I want to make clear too is just they say, “Oh, I want to be toned.” Well-toned is muscle. You know, when you're toning up that's what you're doing. You're building your muscle. So, what's the difference between toning and body building? Genetics. That's the difference. Hm [contemplative].     I mean the reason those women look the way they do is they have multiple genetic cards not just one genetic card but a combination of a bunch of genetic cards that just happen to go in that direction. It's rare. That's why it's so rare because that's like a royal flush of genetics as opposed to a straight or three of a kind. You know, it's not that hard to get three of a kind but to get the kind of genetic combination like these women have, it's like a royal flush. So many different factors have to be pointed in that direction on a genetic level. The way your body stores fat, the way your body builds muscle, the tendon lengths of your muscles, the muscle belly sizes. The list actually goes on and on. Your levels of other kinds of hormones. There's also a lot of supplement -- in body building and especially the competitive body building there's a lot of supplementation and a lot of hormone supplementation. And it's actually very hard to do that -- True. Naturally for a lot of the people who are involved in that. Well, yes and no. Yes, absolutely the steroids helped but there are a lot of natural body builder competitions and those people that win those competitions or even have the chutzpah to enter those competitions are still already blessed even without the drugs and they are much different from your average joe. Yeah. It's a genetic predisposition. Certainly. Yeah. It's like the question -- And we talk about genetics, it's also, you know, how they react to the way you eat. And we all say like, oh it's diet. It's diet. It's mostly diet. Well a lot of it is diet for them but even for them when they go on a low carb diet it works beautifully for them whereas some people that go on a low carb diet, which is supposed to work for everybody, and I say low carb loosely because I don't want to get into the whole, you know, philosophies of fat loss but, you know, the paleo type of diet has been shown to really work well for a lot of people. You know, it doesn't work well for everybody and it works particularly well for body builders for example. I mean, it's just they have all the genetic cards including how they metabolize glucose and sugar and all that stuff.     Tim: Well what about -- are the body builders are they working out more than once a week and perhaps rising injury by -- then that's how they're bulking up is because they're lifting three times a week or five times a week. Adam: No. Not necessarily. They could actually be inhibiting some of their progress. But again, those kind of guys, they just have to look at a weight and start getting bigger. I mean, it almost doesn't matter what they do. As long as they do something they're going to get big and they are getting hurt if by overtraining. A lot of them are getting hurt overtraining and they necessarily have to do that and that's -- I'm glad you brought that up because I'm interviewing tomorrow, a person that's going to be on one of our future podcasts, a fitness model who is essentially a body builder. He has entered some competitions but he's really on the cover of a lot of fitness magazines that you see without their shirts on and completely ripped and huge. And he's going to be talking about how he just does this type of workout and that the idea that bodybuilders have some kind of magical or special workout is a fallacy. And he's going to say I look the way I look not because I work out more or better. I look the way I look because I have these type of genetics. Tim: Alright. Certainly looking forward to hear that interview which will appear in future podcasts here at the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman. Speaking of which we're pretty close to that 20-minute mark. Any more thoughts that you'd like to add? Sheila, perhaps, being the lone female on the show [laughs] in terms of bulking up. Sheila: I just wanted to say, you know, I get this all the time obviously but one of the questions that we discuss in the certification Adam has on his questionnaire when we're practicing is, you know, what do you do when a client says, “I want to get Michelle Obama arms.” [laughter] And you're like well, that, those are her arms, you can't get her arms. You're going to get the best version of your arms because everybody's muscles are shaped differently and everybody, you know, my arms don't look the same as Ann, who's the other trainer in our studio, because our bodies are totally different. So, you know, be the best you and as Adam said, the muscle on your body is going to benefit you in so many ways. So, bulk up, ladies. Tim: Bulk up. Bulk up, ladies. It's a good thing. Again we invite you to head over to informfitness.com to review the blog post that we discussed today. Will women bulk up from weight training? And the answer is, of course,  Adam mentioned earlier and Sheila just alluded to it again, yes, you want to bulk up and I think we've answered those questions here today. In just about a minute we have a question from another member of our InForm Nation family. Aiden in Thornton,     Colorado shot us an email and asks how old is too old to participate with the slow motion high-intensity weight training system. Adam, Mike and Sheila will give us their two cents on that in just about 60 seconds. But right now I'd like to welcome a brand new sponsor to the InForm Fitness podcast. It's Thrive Market, wholesome products at wholesome prices. Thrive Market is an easy online shopping solution that will enable you to save some money while enjoying InForm Fitness friendly products. If you read Adam's book Power of 10, pay close attention to chapter three. It's all about the second of the three essential pillars necessary to supercharge your metabolism, burn fat and build muscle. Of course, I'm talking about nutrition. You'll be surprised at the variety of food, health and body and even baby and pet products available to keep you and your family healthy. You'll even be more surprised by the prices. Compare them for yourself at your local grocery store. I've been using several Thrive Market products for a few months now and my wife and I love it. Try it for yourself. Visit thrivemarket.com to register for free. Then you can start your 30- day free trial. If you love the convenience, the service and their products, then join us in the Thrive Market community. And it's only $59.95 to join. I saved way more than that in my first order. You can too and I'm going to save you even more money. Email me directly at tim@inboundpodcast.com and I'll send you a promo code that will cut an additional 15% off your first order. Thrive Market is on a mission to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone. Alright. In just a few minutes we'll get to that email from Aiden. But first let's hear from longtime InForm Nation member, Amir. I started with InForm Fitness about two years ago and I really love it. I mean, I actually live about an hour away. So, I drive an hour to come here. Honestly, it's amazing to me that in, you know, 20, 30 minutes, you can walk out of here and I can feel like, you know, some of the workouts I had where I was going for an hour. You know, here it's like I'm getting the benefits but I'm not just completely wiped out. I feel it but it feels good afterward. It's like it feels right. The thing I react to when I heard which is the very last thing he said, it feels right. I tell people that after a couple of workouts that they're not going to need me to sell them on this concept anymore. That's true. They're going to intuitively realize, “Ah, I get it.” Their body is going to understand. They're just going to intuitively understand that this is what they should be doing. And that's what I felt when he said, it just felt knew that the safety, the logic behind it, how they feel when they're done, the results later, it makes total complete sense. Tim: It does and that's my favorite part of Amir's comment. Appreciate him participating in the program. He attends the Toluca Lake location where Sheila trains and when he said it feels right as somebody who's been training there for several months, that's exactly how I feel. I'm not wiped out after the workout but I do feel like I did something really great for my body and that lasts for several days to where I can't wait to get back in the gym the following Sunday. So, you know, I think what he was comparing his workout that he has been doing now or has been doing for the last two years at InForm Fitness with the workouts he's been doing before, years before where he was there for an hour and it would just kill him, well, he's getting that workout now in 20 minutes and consolidating his time in the gym. Now, let's focus on those individuals who may be interested in starting the Power of 10 but have never really participated in any type of exercise regime of any kind. For instance, we have InForm Nation member, Aiden, who is in the Thornton, Colorado area, is concerned about his mother. It says: "Adam, thanks for your podcast. I'm very interested in learning more about your Power of 10 and just ordered your book from Amazon. My mother is severely overweight and in her late 60s. I'm considering visiting your location in Boulder and want to take her with me to check it out. She says though that she's too old and fat for a workout as intense as yours. I look forward to hearing from you, Aiden." So, here's a guy that's close to the Boulder location and wants to do it himself but Aiden wants to bring his mom in because she's overweight and in her 60s. Is she too old to start this workout and possibly a little bit too overweight, Adam? Adam: No. Tim: [laughs] Plain and simple. Sheila: Never too old. Tim: Do you suggest perhaps that she should maybe see a doctor prior to beginning her workout? Adam: Yes.     And that's it for today's episode. That's all -- [laughter] is that a concern do you think? Do you ever get that from people that think I'm too big to do this, severely obese people? No. It is a concern and the answer is that simple. Yes, you should check with your doctor or I'd want to know if there's any health problems associated with being obese. Some people don't have a lot of other associated health problems such as high blood pressure and things like that. It's actually amazing to me how many people can be pretty overweight and not have a lot of those dangerous markers. On the other hand, a lot of people do and we have to get clearance if they do, from a doctor, make sure that it's okay to do. On the other hand, the intensity in of itself because you're overweight or you're older, you build up the intensity to somebody that's severely out of shape. You know, you're conservative at the beginning but there's no reason why over time that somebody that hasn't been in shape and is overweight can't work out intensely. Sheila, don't you have a client that came to you a few years ago who was severely overweight did this protocol on their own and had some tremendous success? Well, I wouldn't say she was severely overweight. I would say she was, you know, definitely would be considered obese. She was probably over 200 pounds and you know just an average sized girl. She was very active though. You know, musician. Not active in sports or anything. She actually came into me, she hated going to the gym. She hated group classes. She was like, literally was like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do this. I said, good, you're going to love this workout and she was like intrigued by that. By my answer and my, you know, like I was confident she would love this. So, she went and tried it and I did work out with her for several months. I showed her. She absolutely loved it. Actually, she did put a yelp review several years ago when she started. She's continued to do the workout according to the book. She looks at the book. She goes to her gym and she does it. She said, everybody's looking at her and going why is she going so slow? And she's been doing it -- And why is she holding that book in her hand? [laughter] Well, I think she, like, took pictures of it with her phone and so she could know what she's doing. She really attributes her continued weight loss and her sticking to the program, she would not be exercising, if it wasn't for this workout. Well, the woman of which we speak will joining us in the next two episodes of the InForm Fitness podcast. Her name is Joanie Pimentel. She's also a member of the LA based band, No Small Children. Sheila just gave us a quick overview of what Joanie will be talking about but Joanie will go into great detail on how she shed about 118 pounds over the last two years with the Power of 10. If you're thinking about embarking on a weight loss journey, make sure you join us. I guarantee Joanie will inspire you. Plus, we might even turn you onto a great new band. Check out nosmallchildren.com to see their music videos including the one filmed at InForm Fitness in Toluca Lake. If you'd like to participate in the conversation here on the podcast and officially join InForm Nation with a comment or question, send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. You can even do it the old fashioned way by giving us a call at 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. That's 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. A few more reminders for you before we get out of here. If we've piqued your curiosity and you want to learn more about the Power of 10, click on the link in the show notes that will guide you to Adam's book. It's a nice easy read with a simple nutrition plan and all the exercises you need to lose fat, build muscle and supercharge your metabolism. If you want to try the workout for yourself with one of their many cool and certified trainers, bounce on over to informfitness.com to see if there is a location near you. And finally, please subscribe to the podcast here in iTunes. It's absolutely free to subscribe and all it takes are a few simple clicks. We would greatly appreciate it. Thanks again for listening to the InForm Fitness Podcast. For Adam, Mike and Sheila, I'm Tim Edwards with the Inbound Podcasting Network. SHOW NOTES: This following link leads to an InForm Fitness blog post that was mentioned during the podcast. http://informfitness.com/will-women-bulk-up-from-weight-training/          

Slave Stealer
006 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, C'MON NOW.

Slave Stealer

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 12, 2016 16:34


Tim takes on a recent initiative of Amnesty International to "Legalize" prostitution. His issue with their policy lies in the difference between "legalization" and "decriminalization". He argues that what they are proposing would endanger more children and ultimately undermine the efforts of many people to save kids from sex trafficking.   Tim: Hi! Thank you for joining us! This is a very special bonus edition of the Slave Stealer podcast. If you have been listening to us for a while, you know that there are a lot of aspects to human trafficking. So many drivers, so many factors. Sometimes we don’t always get the chance to elaborate within the context or whatever it is that we are talking about, but one big issue that deserves more treatment is this current push by Amnesty International to legalize all prostitution. What they are trying to do now is go out to all the countries and influence them to legalize this work. Now, there is some merit to parts of their argument, but I contend, and I contend passionately, that this legislation, if it got that far, would absolutely devastate millions of children who would be caught up in the wake of prostitution. They would be caught up in the wake... They would be caught up as victims, they would be rapedthemselves. So after we spoke with President Vicente Fox of Mexico, we got on the topic of Amnesty International’s plan, and I think I got a little fired up, so I want you to go ahead and hear what I had to say. So, let’s go and roll that.   Tim: And, people don’t believe us sometimes - "Oh bull crap, we don’t believe that"- or they will see a trafficking case, we will show footage and they see what looks like a victim going willingly into this place: "Well, they walked in. They weren’t dragged in by chains." And, I get it, but it is also very offensive because I know that these kids are slaves. I see them before and during and after. We could have Elizabeth Smart come in sometime and talk about that. Don’t say anything like that in her presence because she received that criticism: "When you were in captivity, why didn’t you just run away? Why didn’t you tell the policeman who you were when he confronted you with your captors in the library that day?" And she will tell you that a child’s mind doesn’t think like an adult’s mind, and it can be very easily manipulated and really brainwashed and rewired to the point that when Elizabeth was rescued, she didn’t even admit who she was. She was still denying who she was as she was even put into the police car and taken to her father, ok. And that’s the thing people don’t understand about human trafficking, and so they misidentify the victims. Police departments have been doing it for decades. I think...in the last decade or so, I think they are trying to get out of this where they treat all prostitutes as criminals. They didn’t even stop to ask the question, 'How did she get here?' Maybe she is 19 years old, but did you know that she was kidnapped at 12 and forced into this life? And yeah, now she is acting out, and she is yelling and cussing at you, and she "doesn’t want to be rescued." But she is a victim, and she needs to be treated as a victim until you figure out what is going on. And a lot more needs to be done there, but progress has been made where these women and children are not being seen as criminals anymore but as victims, but much more needs to be done in that area. Mark: That is a legislative issue, obviously. Are those national statutes that need to be passed or are they local? Explain prosecution of prostitutes. Explain that whole dilemma to me, I don’t get it. Tim: There is some legislative there, but there is also a lot of just how you administer or how the law enforcement administers or what questions they ask, right. Because to be prosecuted for say prostitution, requirements within that statutes have to be met. And part of that is willingly, and it was your intent to do these things. And it is easy just to make the assumption, 'that was your intent, you wanted to do this, and so you’re guilty.' So sometimes, it is not just the laws. The laws can be clarified, sure - you can always, you should add a requirement and say even if this prostitute, this person you have brought in...even if they are an adult, you have to prove that they meant to do this, that they wanted to do this, that this was the life that they chose. Mark: They weren’t coerced. Tim: They weren’t coerced into it. Mark: Ok. Tim: And so the questions, but the questions... The problem is, even when you have decent legislation and decent statutes, you don’t have law enforcement asking the questions, digging deeper: "Who are you? Where did you come from? How did you get into this? How old were you when you got into this?" And if they would ask that, then they would see that there is coercion here. They are not going to bust out their pimps.   Mark: No, they are scared to death. Tim: They are scared to death. Their pimps have been beating them for ten years, since they were ten years old. So, you have got to stop and ask the question. You need experts in the field - social workers, psychologists in the field - to be able to be there and take this victim aside and talk to them. Frankly, in my mind, every country, every jurisdiction - whether it is federal, state, whatever - they all need to have legislation that decriminalize prostitutes altogether, absolutely. Every prostitute, in my mind, should be treated like a victim. Mark: So, you are saying legalize prostitution? Tim: I am not saying... No, you don’t legalize prostitution at all. You legalize prostitution and that means that the pimps and the johns get away. Mark: Ah. Tim: You criminalize 100% for pimps, for johns. Mark: But you can’t criminalize the prostitutes... Tim: You don’t criminalize the prostitutes. Mark: I like that. Tim: Yeah, I mean, there is Norway and Sweden who have both adopted that, and it is very effective. What happens there, when you do that, is those countries and those cities stop becoming havens for sex, for paid sex. Because you are criminalizing the johns and the pimps, johns and pimps don’t want to work there. Mark: So what you’ll have are a few entrepreneurial women who are kind of like 'Ma and Pa' stores, but you wipe out the industry? Tim: Yeah. You would wipe out the industry because the pimps and johns can’t... They are scared to go there. Mark: Yeah. Tim: And this is a huge debate right now going on with the Amnesty International’s new policy this summer they came out with in August, I believe. They came out with the sex worker shield where they are basically wanting to decriminalize prostitution for everybody - pimps, johns, and what they call sex workers - and make it legal. The idea is bring it all out into the light, and then you can take care of the sex workers and treat them like legitimate workers. You know, it is all focused on helping the sex worker. That’s their choice - they want to be a prostitute, support them, help them. And to do that, you can’t criminalize the pimps who, in Amnesty International’s words... This is very controversial. I mean, this is Amnesty International who is supposed to be looking out for the victims. And they feel like sex workers - who they call sex workers, others might call prostitutes - have been victimized and demonized and not supported in their occupational endeavors. And the problem is, is by decriminalizing this - and I see this in my work - by decriminalizing the whole process so that the sex workers can be seen as legitimate workers, like any other professional in the world and be given all the benefits... Mark: I think the middle management and HR and marketing...they get all the departments wrapped around them: "Hey, go see the marketing guy!" Tim: That is right! Mark: "Make a brochure on this chick." Tim: That is the idea! That is the idea, like you are not letting them live their dream. Mark: Wow. Tim: And then the argument is this - let’s play with it a little bit because there is a strain of logic to it, right. So, the idea is you get them structured that way and then the government...because then my question is, "Ok, what about the kids?" Two million kids or more are being trafficked, sold. How do you protect them in this? Amnesty International says, "It is very easy!" All you do is you tell these jurisdictions and the police officers... These pimps get licensed; they are a licensed business. You go to them and they have to show that they are not selling minors: "We don’t sell minors. Here, look - it's all willing adults." Mark: "Look at our brochure!" Tim: "Look at our brochure! It is very clear." Mark: "No kids!" Tim: And I am thinking to myself, "Ok, you are talking about these underdeveloped countries that, at Operation Underground Railroad, we are filling up their gas tanks so they can drive from point A to point B. You are telling me that your police force is going to have enough resources, time, manpower, so forth, to go and regulate these legitimate brothels to make sure that there are no minors?!" Do you know how easy it is going to be if you are Fuego, right? Fuego, who is the guy… Mark: I remember Fuego. Tim: We met Fuego on the beaches of Colombia and... Mark: And you took his hat! Tim: I still have his hat. I still have his hat. Mark: That guy is such a douchebag. Tim: Can you imagine… Can you say douchebag on this show? Mark: Hey, if I put a little E next to the...we are now explicit. Tim: Ok. Mark: No, douchebag is not explicit. Tim: Is "Slave Stealer Radio" an R-rated show? Let’s just talk about this and figure that out. Mark: I think we are PG-13ish. Tim: I just want to know what I can get away with. Mark: In context, we’re probably considered like an X-rated show just given the general theme, but we don’t really get explicit yet until we get you on the wrong moment. Hopefully we edit that out. Tim: Ok! Mark: Yeah. Tim: So, Fuego... You imagine Fuego, right. How hard is it going to be for Fuego? This is Amnesty International’s plan - Fuego should be a legal vendor as long as they are adults. The kids will be safe because they are safe with Fuego, aren’t they? You spent time with Fuego. Would you trust a 12-year-old girl to Fuego? I mean... Mark: Friendly guy. Tim: Here is what is going to happen: he will line up his 18-year-olds and 20- year-olds, and he’ll say, "Here’s all I got!" And those cops are not going to go the two miles down the road into the little storage facility, right, or the tractor trailer with the ten 12-year-olds and the three or four 9-year-olds. Mark: And they are not going to check his phone to see... Tim: No! Mark: ...you know, all the 10-year-olds with pagers. Tim: Right! He will have those, he will sell those. They are premium! You are going to sell those for $1000; these 18-year-olds you are going to sell for $300. He is going to have those. The infrastructure to sell those little kids is now supported by the state. And he will be able to make money, he will be able to invest whatever he makes legitimately, he will pay his taxes and everything else. He will be a businessman! He is going to sell the premium because it is too easy and now you have just supported his infrastructure. How are you going to protect those kids? Amnesty International decided to ignore those kids. Those twelve kids in the back of the tractor trailer down the road - they have ignored them. And now, guess what? You have created an absolute sex haven. And let's say that they decriminalized it like this everywhere in Cartagena. Every gross tourist from America, Canada, and Germany, and everywhere else - they are going to go to Cartagena, they are going to enjoy the adult sex, and then they are going to make a deal with Fuego on the side and say, "Hey, where do I get the 11-year-olds?" "Well, you come to this other place down the road." And it is a booming business. I am absolutely just astonished and sickened that Amnesty International could be so incredibly short-sighted and idiotic that they don’t see that they are completely neglecting the children. They are creating safe havens. They are making it so easy for the johns and pimps to rape children. Mark: That is pretty inflammatory. Tim: It is inflammatory! Mark: You just called them idiotic. Tim: They are idiots! Mark: What if we need their help? Tim: Well, we won't need their help. Mark: Ok. Tim: But do you know who does need their help? Fuego needs their help, and apparently he is going to get it. Mark: So, an entire industry... You might shut down an entire industry. There might be jobless Fuegos all over Colombia, all over Mexico. Tim: How sad. Mark: Have you ever ordered the 'Sin City'? Tim: No. Mark: Smashburger. You go down, and it is kind of like In-N-Out burger. You can show up and there is the menu, right, there is a Smashburger menu (and they are not a sponsor of this show), but you can order the ‘Sin City’ which is not on the menu. And it is kind of a niche thing for people to go in and they give you the wink and they say, "I’ll take the Sin City." Tim: It is like In-N-Out burger, it is the same thing. They have their Animal Fries, Animal Burgers. Mark: Yeah, the Animal Style. Now, I see prostitution becoming like that. Tim: That is exactly right! Mark: Under the Amnesty plan. Tim: Absolutely! It is exactly what it is. Mark: I’ll take Sin City (wink, wink). Tim: It is exactly what it is. Mark: She is in the back alley. Tim: It is exactly what is going to happen. Mark: It is a brand extension. Tim: It is exactly what is going to happen. And we know this! I know this! I know these guys! I have negotiated with them undercover, I sit across the table from them. And if it was legal to sell, for him to sell adults - which it is not in Cartagena frankly, ok. But if it were, if we all follow Amnesty International, and if they make it legal, and I am sitting across from him... Think about this, just play it out in your head - I’ve been there a hundred times. "Hey Tim, come to my office with the sign that says, 'Beautiful women for sale,'" right, because this is a legal business. I walk in there... I mean, we have set him up, he is totally legitimate. And you don't think we are going to have that little 'Sin City menu' talk? Absolutely we are going to! Because he is going to make double or triple off this sick, horny American who is sitting across from him. Mark: Yeah. Tim: Right? It is so unbelievable! When I saw Amnesty International’s policy, I thought there is no way, there is no way they are going to vote. Sane minds will prevail here. And they didn't. Mark: Who voted for it? Tim: It is the board of Amnesty International. This is a powerful organization that has done good in the world - they are all about human rights. They have done good in the world to protect innocence. Mark: Well, traffickers are humans. They have the right to traffick. Tim: Traffickers have rights too, I guess. Mark: Apparently. So now... Tim: It is unbelievable.   Mark: So now, Amnesty International, for the uninitiated like me, Amnesty International now goes and lobbies the UN, they lobby Washington, they lobby... Tim: They lobby countries all over the earth. They will be going and saying, "You need to decriminalize prostitution!" And don’t get me wrong, I totally believe in decriminalizing prostitutes. They should all be treated as victims, absolutely, even if they are saying, "I’m here because I want to be - arrest me!" No, we are going to treat you like... We don’t know your story. I agree with that, that’s right. But what they do is, because the sex worker can’t provide her service if johns are scared to come buy them. So, who they are really protecting are the johns and the pimps. And they say that in their legislation, or in their proposed legislation. They say that... They don’t call them pimps, they are very careful with all the wording, but they call them 'security': 'security for the prostitutes'. Mark: They call them security? Tim: They need to have their infrastructure, they need to have their security, which means that there could be other people helping and facilitating in their business. So, it is unbelievable. Now, will there be a prostitute that would benefit from this? Will there will be a prostitute that would say, "I truly do want to be here"? Absolutely! I believe there are prostitutes who want to be there. And might they say, "We need this policy so that we can sell ourselves freely and be sex workers by choice," and all this, and this would help them. Yes, that would help them, but you have to weigh that against the twelve 12-year-olds who are sitting in the tractor trailer down the road from the legitimate brothel. Mark: Whom you have seen. Tim: I have seen them! They are everywhere! There are 2 million of them. And you have completely thrown them under the bus because you are so worried about the few prostitutes who want to be there, who love their job, and whatever. Mark: The company guys. Tim: I can’t say I am completely unsympathetic to that - maybe that is what their choice is and I am a libertarian in that way. I want people to be able to choose. But it is a balancing act and when you are choosing that over the children who will now be raped because you have provided the infrastructure for them to be raped, you are in the wrong. I mean, it is so clear that you are in the wrong. I know from our perspective, you know, we spend a lot time in the trenches and we see this. Perhaps the folks from the Amnesty haven’t. I have to assume they haven’t seen this, and see how easy they are making it now for children to be raped.

Slave Stealer
005 THROWBACK THURSDAY, IMPERIAL VALLEY CA

Slave Stealer

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 9, 2016 16:40


Interview w/ Tim Ballard & Mark Mabry Tim: The guy’s name was Marble. Mark: Marble the child molester. Tim: His name was Marble, and he looked like a marble. El Centro childporn... Mark: Child Fugitive Caught in Calexico? 'Child Pornography Fugitive Caught in Calexico Port' Tim: No. Mark:  Imperial Valley Press. 'A man suspected of having child pornography was arrested in Calexico, El Centro, indicted in child sex crime'. Tim: Is his name Marble? Mark: Man, Imperial... "An Imperial man was arrested on suspicion of possession of child pornography on Tuesday, after authorities allegedly found child pornography on his computer. Homeland Security investigators, special agents began investigating local internet activity about child pornography."   Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer. "It is a world that I know I understand better than most people, but you don’t even know how real and how huge it is. There are laws put in place to protect kids, and one of the laws, surprise, surprise, is you can’t sell them. If you guys are traffickers, you’d come in just like this. This is what happens. This is the core of the problem."   Tim: Welcome to Slave Stealer podcast. I am here shouting too loud for... Mark: You broke the mike! Tim: ...with co-host Mark Mabry, but we welcome you, and this is our kind of Throwback Thursday version We’re just going to talk about couple of interesting things that we think you should know about.    Mark: One in particular... People ask, "Do you do domestic work?" "Is everything overseas?" So, I want a domestic Throwback Thursday. Tim: Yeah, we... See, it’s interesting. We... I say about half our, half our case load right now is domestic, but the domestic cases are the ones we cannot readily talk about because they are generally more sensitive, because they require more... They require a different set of tools, they are law enforcement sensitive - a lot of software, a lot of techniques that require us to go online and do things that we can’t reveal to the public because there are countermeasures that the bad guys could utilize if they knew what we were doing. So...  Mark: Like what? Tim: Well, let me...let me just tell you and ruin every case we have pending! So yeah, we do a ton of domestic work, but because of the nature of it, we don’t get to talk too much about it. We let our law enforcement partners talk about it. They come out with a press release, and then we just point our donors to it. And they are usually kind enough to mention us in it, and we leave it at that.   Mark: Yeah. What do you find... Before we jump into that, give me like kind of a glossary of key elements for this story that...a few little background tidbits that will help us understand things that you are going to say in the story. Are there any like technical things we need to understand? Tim: No, I mean, you should just know that things like child pornography and acquiring children, in the United States in particular, are readily available on the internet - mostly in the dark web. These are the places that Google is not going to reach.    Mark: You mean Google does not reach everything? Tim: Google does not reach everything. There are many parts of the internet that are impossible for Google to reach, and these are the places where the pedophiles flock to. They network, they trade in child pornography, they negotiate child sex deals, and we are way behind in terms of our response to this. And so - when I say we,  I mean the nation, law enforcement in general - and so we are working to better the solution to that problem - building software, working with some of the most advanced technology companies on the planet, working with the top U.S. officials in this area. And we are building tools that will allow law enforcement to go into these dark places and root out these bad guys.    Mark: Are there...on the market right now - or not on the market, in the space right now - there are software solutions that are good. What are some of the good guys out there with great software that are busting... Is Thorn? Tim: Oh, absolutely yeah! So Thorn, which is Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore's foundation - they have internet computer gurus/engineers who are constantly in a think tank developing software. They have developed tools, for example - and they have been open about this - tools that allow law enforcement to identify when a child is actually soliciting himself or herself. And the reason... And it has to do with how they are writing the post. Now, the posts look like they are coming from some pimp, but the pimp takes the kid and forces them to write their own advertisement on Backpage or Craigslist, or different social media networks - Facebook. And so it looks like it is coming from an adult.   Mark: Or a kid. Looks like it is coming from an adult, but it’s a kid. Tim: They are trying to make it look like it is coming from an adult, or that a pimp is negotiating the deal, when in fact the child himself or herself is writing it. Mark: Under duress. Tim: Under duress. And so the software actually has...looks for key identifiers that would indicate that it’s a child.   Mark: Voiceprint things. Tim: And then they would...yes, and verbage and different things. And then that would allow law enforcement to go solicit that individual in their current capacity to pull them out and find them. So that’s some software that Thorn is involved in building.    Mark: That’s cool! Way to go Demi and Ashton Kutcher - on the good guy list. Tim: Good guy list. Mark: Ok, that’s... Let’s storm straight into the story that I’d like you to tell today. It happened in Imperial Valley. Talk to me. Tim: So it was, again it was... We identified somebody through means I can’t reveal, but it was somebody who was dealing in the dark net. Mark: Now, we were there doing some training. Can you reveal that? Tim: Yeah. I mean that’s how...that’s how it started. We were training... Mark: Yeah, walk me through the whole story. Tim: We went down to Imperial County and we trained law enforcement - several agencies - on how to go on the dark net and find people who are trading in child pornography. And during the training, we found this manual, this 'how to' manual. And it was multiple pages - I want to say somewhere between 40 and 50 pages long. Mark: How to what? Tim: Well, I am getting to that, ok. It’s 'how to'... Mark: Oh, you are saving that? Tim: I am saving that, yeah, the punchline. Mark: Awesome. Stay tuned. Tim: ...how to court and ultimately rape a child. That’s what the manual was. And it said things like - and this is something that had been traded amongst many pedophiles... Mark: So this manual has a title on it in pretty script that says, 'How to court and rape a child'? Tim: I don’t...I can’t tell you that that is the exact language, but that is what the manual was. And it talks about everything from how do you find a child - "well, find a niece or nephew that has friends and invite them over," like starting there. And then from there, these are the kind of gifts you can give them, here's the kind of things you can say to them so they trust you...and then it takes you down this whole dark horrific path to the point where you are controlling this child completely and abusing them sexually. Mark: So you had... You found this manual in the training on the dark web. Tim: On the dark web, being traded by someone who was in Imperial County. And then following up... And again, I can’t get into details of how we did this, but following up, we were able to - in an undercover capacity - able to ascertain the same person also possessed quite a bit of child pornography: child rape videos and images. Mark: And then what? Tim: And then, after that, we decided that this training should end with the search warrant for this individual’s home being at least mostly written. And that’s what we did. And so we were able to do the training, come back a week or so later after they got the paperwork in place, judge signed the warrant, and we were able to accompany the Imperial County sheriff’s office as they raided the home of this individual and seized his computer and talk to him. Mark: Are you allowed to say his name? Tim: Sure, yeah! He’s been convicted, it’s open, it’s public - his name is, his last name is Marble. Mark: That is such a creepy pedophile name. Tim: Why? Mark: Marble. I don’t know, that’s like a movie character name. Tim: Yeah. Mark: "Mr. Marble, we’d like to have a look around." So, were there any big or little surprises at the house? Tim: So, yeah, a couple funny things... As law enforcement breached the door, he instantly said - we didn’t tell him why we were there - the minute the door was breached, he said, "Other people have been using my computer too!" "Well, we didn’t say we were here for your computer," you know, "I’m not the only one, who uses it!" So it was obvious - he ended up confessing everything. And it was... Some of these cases get depressing, you know. You want to hate these guys completely because of what they are doing and the threat they pose. He actually told one of the sheriff deputies: "It’s a good thing you caught me," because, he said, he was in the process of being a foster parent to a 7-year-old girl. And he said, "If I got that little girl, I was going to rape her. That’s why I was doing it. So it is a good thing you caught me." And a lot of these guys, from my experience, do say that. They admit that they are monsters. And they don’t like that they are in this place. And some are almost relieved to get caught and be put away before they can really hurt somebody. I mean, it’s like they’ve lost control of their lives - they are so addicted to this horrific desire and passion and everything else. And so this guy in the interrogation, the thing that made it kind of sad... And we have video of him, we can probably put at least part of the video up on the website - he started talking about his life and how he was sexually abused as a child. You know, we talk a lot about how people can become addicted to child pornography because they start looking at pornography and that changes their brain - it basically creates brain damage, shrinkage in the brain, because of the overstimulation of the frontal lobes of the brain because that’s what people are going for, right, trying to get this chemical reaction and they overuse it and they overrun it and that ruins their life. It hurts their opportunity to have a normal, healthy, romantic relationship, you know, because their brain is now demented, and porn is the only thing that they recognize as fulfilling that need. It’s really sad. That’s a choice people make, like drugs. And it takes them to a dark place where they end up in jail. And all the guys - everyone who is a pedophile abusing children - are a threat to children and need to go to jail. But this case was a little bit different, and we see this often too. When you are abused as a child and that becomes your first sexual experience... And I’ve talked to so many psychologists to try to understand these guys - these guys that we're investigating, interrogating. And they said it is absolutely true: when your first sexual experience as a child or a teenager, whatever that experience is, that becomes what your brain, as it’s still forming... It’s still, really physically hasn’t formed completely and so it’s still taking ideas and concepts and ingraining them into your person. And so sex becomes, to these kids who are being molested, can become a relationship that is defined by an adult and a child. And that’s what their brain recognizes as sex. So when they get older, and they start developing their sexuality, what they know to be that sexuality is relationships, sexual relationships, between an adult and a child. So they then become the offender.    Mark: Now, to be clear, not every child that was molested grows up to become an offender... Tim: Absolutely. Mark: ...or has that predisposition. Tim: Absolutely. That’s not... Yeah, it’s not every...it’s certainly not every person who is abused, but it happens quite a bit. Mark: It’s a factor in a lot of people we catch. Tim: It’s a factor, and in the case of this man, that’s what he was telling us - that he had been abused. And I mean, you listen to the interrogation and it makes you sad. You know he needs to go to jail because he is a threat. He admits himself he needs to go to jail and he’s a threat. But when you hear his story, you realize how tragic this whole thing is. It’s so cyclical.   Mark: Is there a more... And I love to hear you say that and it breaks my heart too, because there’s...seems like it’s really easy, and we do it frequently. Some of the bad guys, like Fuego and these guys that we bust that are selling kids - they are horrible monsters. And then there are guys like Marble who...there’s a high degree of sympathy where you're like, "Man, I’m just sad for your ruined, shattered life that started out ruined and shattered and you were left to try to pick up the pieces." Like, how do you go about your job sympathetically or empathetically? You know what I am saying?   Tim: You just carry that sadness with you, but you don’t regret for one second putting the guy behind bars. Mark: Yeah. Tim: Because there’s nothing more important than children and their safety and the preservation of their innocence. So they have to go to jail. And you just look at them and you are sympathetic to their plight, and you hope that they can have redemption and they can somehow be healed from their brain damage.   Mark: You know, it’s interesting. Our intro music on the Slave Stealer podcast is - you know the intro sequence where you are talking about, "They look like you, and this guy and that guy" - that actually took place in an interrogation room in Haiti. And you can see it on "The Abolitionists", the documentary that is coming out on April 8th, that you are actually lecturing me. It was our very first op that I accompanied you on and we busted those two ladies who were selling kids, and I said to you, "Man, I’m a little torn up here." Do you remember that?    Tim: Yeah, absolutely! Mark: And you went off and you were like, "Listen, this is hard," and you essentially said the same thing. But I understand it now with a little more time under my belt.   Tim: Yeah. Look, you never... And it’s, it was a shocking thing for me when I started doing these cases - and this is outside even child cases, drug cases, any kind of case. There is an element of human sadness when you are taking someone from their family - even as bad as they are, there are people that love them and can’t believe they made these decisions. And you are the guy taking them away in handcuffs and putting them in jail for a long time. And you can’t help but feel an element of human sympathy, you know. And you don’t know what decisions led, you know, what things happened to this person that led them to make these decisions. But that doesn’t mean for a second that you don’t wish they were in jail. Mark: Yeah. Tim: You know they need to go to jail, but it’s rarely this total victorious, just, "Yeah, we did this!" You know, it’s... There can be some of that, but the whole thing is sad. The whole thing is tragic. It is tragic for everybody involved, especially for the victims, especially for the children, the parents. But also, in some ways, for the bad guys... Mark: Yeah. Tim: But it doesn’t mean you stop doing it. Mark: I think that’s a great little Throwback Thursday moment. Sign us off, man. Tim: Thanks for tuning in, and we will see you next time on Slave Stealer podcast.

Slave Stealer
004 MARISOL NICHOLS

Slave Stealer

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2016 31:19


Tim, Mark & Marisol Interview 00:00 Tim: When you rape a child, you lose rights forever. That’s it! You lose rights forever. Somehow we don’t understand this. And again, you can serve your sentence and everything else, but you still have lost rights. One of those rights you lose is you don’t get to travel around the world with anonymity. We are going to talk about where you are. We are going to watch you. Is that so unreasonable? I mean, the argument is that, well if they travel to some place like Iran and we tell the Iranian Government, they might kill him. Well, you know what, that is his choice to travel to Iran after raping children. Don’t rape kids! How about that?! Let’s start with that. 00:36 Mark: If you do it twice, we are sending you to Iran with a big tag on your head, ‘I rape kids’. 00:40 Tim: That should be the punishment, right? That should be the sentence. 00:42 Marisol: We do that for terrorism and we give up their rights that way. It should be no different. Intro 00:50 You are listening to Slave Stealer. 00:54 Tim: It is a world I know and understand better than most people, because you don’t even know how real and how huge it is. There have been laws put in place to protect kids, and one of the laws - surprise, surprise - is that you can’t sell them. If you guys are traffickers, you have come in just like this. This is what happens, this is the core of the problem. Tim: Marisol, thank you for joining us on Slave Stealer podcast. Marisol: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Tim: Marisol Nichols is our friend, and actress, and social activist. She has been on ‘Criminal Minds’, ‘24’, ‘Blind Justice’, ‘NCIS’ - all these cop shows. Does that have anything to do...or is that just a coincidence with your passion to fight crime?   Marisol: I am sure it does. I am sure it does. I did so much resource playing different kinds of cop roles and agent roles and stuff that it just kind of, by default, dealt with me into this world.   Tim: Tell us about your foundation, and we’ll talk about how we met and what we are doing together with you. Marisol: Sure! So I have got involved in trafficking maybe three or four years ago, and the whole reason I started my foundation was... Well, there are a couple of reasons. One was, like, the more I learned, the more I found out about it, the more I was like, "I have to do something." I can not do something. It can’t be something that I can sit back and say, "Those poor people over there, how horrible for them." That’s… I can’t sleep at night unless I do something. And there were many, many, many nights that I wouldn’t sleep because the more I learned, the more, you know, horrific it is. So forming my own foundation - it was sort of a natural thing that came out of meeting with different organizations and legislators - you know, the people that live and work in this field - to see how I could help, what could I do. I have, you know, many, many friends in the business, both in front of the camera and behind the camera, and anyone and everyone I would talk to were like, “What can I do? How can I help?” And because of that is how I started doing these briefings and big events, educating a particular audience about what is happening not only in our world and on our planet, but also in our own backyard. Tim: So, question for you, because I don’t know the answer to this question but it bugs me. I mean, this is the greatest plague on the planet. There is nothing worse than this and yet, we, our presidential candidates, aren’t talking about it. It is kind of still a vague word, you know, people, trafficking… What is going on? Why can’t people see it? Marisol: Two reasons. And I don’t actually even blame people for not seeing - I blame the people that are in charge of our entertainment. I blame...I really do, I truly do, because I think that we have created a world where we can’t get purposely distracted by Kardashians and social media and whatever other things that they want coming down the line as a buzzword of the week. So we don’t pay attention to what is really really going on. And that our news channels are not very forthcoming - some of them are really wonderfully, will do pieces on it and pieces on it, but to me, like you said, is nowhere near fit to what is needed. And I am sure that you have had this strange [inaudbile] that when you do meet people that find out about it, their world is completely rocked and they are completely changed and they want to help. Tim: Yep. Marisol: And I honestly believe that there are, you know, certain forces out there that don’t want to see this end. Mark: Name names. Marisol: Well look, who is profiting? I mean, you can follow money: who makes the most money from this? Whether it is sex slavery or labor bondage or what. Who is making money from this? And you can trace it back and trace it back. And Tim hit it right on the head - why aren’t our presidential candidates talking about this? This is a huge issue; it is bigger than anything. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: He is right. Why isn’t there a giant spotlight on who is profiting from that? Who is benefitting and keeping people enslaved? Tim: It boggles my mind, but I do believe like you believed it - if we can get people to see it and they become converts, our politicians will have to start talking about it if there is a demand for that subject.   Marisol: Exactly. Tim: And we are not yelling loud enough yet. We are trying to yell loud and be a voice for these victims. Now you got to come with us - we took you down to visit some of the victims that we had rescued in Haiti, and then on our way back we stopped in an unnamed city. Marisol actually went undercover with us, and... Tell me, tell me about the whole experience, how you felt seeing those kids. And then, I mean, you kind of got this cool experience where you got to see these victims and, all of a sudden, you are thrown into this - one of the people who travels and abuses these kids, one of the partakers. What was that like?     Marisol: It is haunting because it is one thing to read about the issue, talk about the issue, hear the stories, look at videos; it is another thing to see it firsthand, and particularly meeting the abuser... I mean, this was... You know, you wouldn’t recognize him down the street. You’d think this is your college guy, this is your neighbor, this is your… You know, he looks like an everyday Joe. And the casualness in which he would talk about doing these things to girls was astonishing and also heart-breaking. You realize that these are human beings, right? You realize that you are talking about someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, one day hopefully...   Tim: Yeah. Marisol: And it was....you know, it was haunting because you go, “Ok, that is the mindset that allows this to occur.” That is the mindset - partyyy, woohoo, or whatever it is. It was haunting; it stayed with me. Tim: And can you tell us...what was the role you were playing? You were awesome, by the way, and it was obviously natural. You know, it’s funny... People think like, you know, like undercover operators... Just because you are a cop, you think you are going to be good in undercover work. It is not true. And when I was in the law enforcement, it was difficult to find good undercover operators because, again, it is not inherent to a police officer. It is more an actor or actresses, and that is where you were being able to pull it up. So, tell us what role you played in that?   Marisol: Yeah. So, I was playing the person who sets up the sex parties basically, who sets up the situation for men to come and abuse these girls. You know, it was very, very like spur of the moment. I think we had, what, half an hour to plan it or something. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: You know, when I saw that the only way I am going to pull this off with this guy is if I pretend to be one of those people that just don’t care. Mark: What did you do? Give me some lines. Marisol: You know, I have... I did things like, “Hey, yeah, you know, it’s all good.” Tim: Yeah, she was sitting like really sexy, like just loosey-goosey. It was perfect. And the guy was like watching her more than anything else, and he understands that she will be able to get girls for us, better than we can get them on our own. Marisol: One of the facts that I was surprised to learn about is that some of the traffickers are girls - they are. And they lower young girls just as men do. Tim: Even better. Mark: Let’s say you get a big role as a trafficker on a film coming out in a couple of years. What do you do to prepare? Marisol: It is interesting because prior to coming into this world, you know that there are evil people out there, but you think, you know, you just don’t have that much reality. And then playing the trafficker or playing someone like this...now I’ve started to play some sort of, you know, one or two bad guys here and there, and I am like, “Oh no, no, no, it is 100% evil with no remorse and no feeling and no nothing.” That is how you would have to be to do this. You have to be one of those people, that ‘there is nothing left’. Tim: You are looking into their eyes when you see these people - I mean there is no soul. I mean, it is like past feeling. It is just unbelievable. Like the woman we have talked about, the trafficker, the beauty queen, who was going and luring these girls at 9, 10 years old, telling them that she will teach them to be famous. She is famous, she is also in music videos, and the families were sending their kids with her. And she is going and selling them to us who she believed were men coming down to violate. And Marisol, you talked about this guy we met and you played your undercover role... I mean, I am literally sitting here, we are late for the podcast, I have twenty dudes sitting here, and they look just like that guy. I mean, I have a couple - I am not kidding you - I have a couple right now who are coming together to abuse who they believe to be a 13, a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old. And they are all excited - they tell me what they are going to do and they both want to do it together. They will be arrested next week when they show up. Marisol: It sound like how can you not do everything you possibly can, and, like, why aren’t there writings on the streets, why aren't we talking about this? It should be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. And I believe that if we did, it really would end it fast.   Tim: Yes. And the problem is this concept that people think, "Well, I have heard of it, but law enforcement is taking care of it. The government can take care of it." And not to slam the government, but it is too big of a problem. There are 30 million plus slaves, depending on what numbers you look at, 2 million at least or more, probably, kids in the sex slave industry. If people knew… And it reminds me of the slavery in the 19th century where it was the same thing. They were not talking about it. It was just like people knew what was happening, but: "Oh, the government will take care of that." It wasn’t until people learned through, like, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote "Uncle Tom’s Cabin." It wasn’t until the people rose up and it got so loud that the government said, “Oh crap, we better do more, we better do something.” And then you start to stop it. We can do it, we can stop it! Marisol: And it comes down to people demanding that the government do something about it. These are just demands that it will end, and it will end it. But you need multitudes and multitudes of people demanding, showing more, and educating others to really put an end to this. But it can be done. I believe you, 100% it can be done. Mark: I have a question, Marisol. In your dealings with trafficking, who were the good guys? Why don’t we just start shouting out people that are amazing? You may have worked with them directly or not, you have known them or are friends of yours. Marisol: Yeah, ok! Well, first of all, Tim, Tim Ballard, whom I met at Osborne - for sure, 100% top of the list. Tim: Thank you, you are so nice. Marisol: What they do is incredible. And I have mentioned it before, but it is when you first learn about this, you are, “Let’s go get the kids. Can we just go and just get the kids?” And that is what they do. Mark: Yes. Marisol: And I mean that is vital. There is, obviously, a lot more they are doing. There are so many people doing this particular fight. There is Kim Biddle, from an organization called Saving Innocence in Los Angeles, that has dedicated her life. She is this beautiful, brilliant, brilliant girl, gorgeous, and she has dedicated her entire life to saving girls from trafficking and then rehabilitating them and seeing it through, like seeing it all the way through - not put them in a home and walk away, but seeing all the way through until the girl graduate from the home, goes to college and has her entire life back. She is dedicated. Mark: More influencers... Anyone in your world, acting world? Who are the good guys in trafficking? Marisol: There was this one movement that Sean Penn and other celebs got involved in and it was quick, but it really made a difference. It was "Real Men Don't Buy Girls." I don’t know if you remember that, but it was a whole Twitter and hashtag thing, and they got giant celebs to do this. And I thought it was really effective because people look up to actors, musicians, incredible artists as opinion leaders. For these guys to stand up there and say real men don’t buy girls... I thought it setted up a little bit which was really, really good to set a precedent of like, "Hey, who are we looking at that really does this?" and maybe, maybe make someone think twice about it. There needs to be more. I mean, just to be honest, we need more shows focusing on it. We need more episodes of crime shows focusing on it and really telling the stories. On "Law and Order: SVU," they have done a fairly good job on that because that is their ‘Sexual Victims Unit’ - that is the entire title of the show - but I believe we need more.  And recently - I don’t know if you saw "Room," but "Room" did a really good job of taking you through a girl’s experience, what it would be like to be trapped and under the control of someone else who is monitoring your every single move. I don’t know if you know the story, but she was trapped for seven years and had a baby by the trafficker and eventually escaped. And this particular story in this movie did such a good job. But it is based on so many cases of girls being trapped in the exact same way, having children from their traffickers, all of it… And it really... I thought they painted a really great picture of what it is like for the victim, and they do sort of wake up, like, “Wait, this exists. This happened.”       Mark: Are there certain writers or studios or groups that do a better job of talking about trafficking, and are they getting the ratings when they do it? Marisol: That is a really good question. There are definitely episodes that focus on it, but not anyone where I can, “Oh yeah, this particular writer," or, "Fox is dedicating an entire series to this,” or anything like that. It is still not there. And, like anything right now, it is just an episode or two that would be dedicated to it rather than an entire show. Is that make sense? But when they do air, they make just as equal ratings as they would any other crime, because it usually goes on crime shows. What I would like to see is that at the end of those things, "To find out more, go to www..." or statistics. Mark: Yes. Marisol: Or, like, “Hey, this is actually based on a real case,” to get the audience going, “I had no idea.” Because anything that is based on real life events will always get more interest. Mark: Do you feel like we speak about trafficking correctly? In general, how it is messaged? How should it be messaged in your opinion, if you were PR for the movement? Marisol: If I was PR for the movement, I would call it slavery. I would call it modern-day slavery and I would make sure that it was on the forefront of everything. And I would really, really, really validate the people who rescue the kids - not only OUR, but also police officers, FBI agents, sheriffs...because when I would tell people, they would go, “Why isn’t the police doing anything about it?” I am like, “Because the police is the same people who have to respond to a burglary, to a murder, to a cat caught up in the tree, to all of it.”     Mark: Yeah. Marisol: And I think if we started validating more and more the officers and sheriffs and agents that are focusing on this, and on getting results, freeing girls, and, most importantly, putting the traffickers away... I think the more validation you give that, or anything, the more of that we will get. Mark: Yeah. Marisol: You know, there is a fascination with murder. You know, there are a thousand TV shows about murder, about this, and I have been in all of them, so I do know. And I think we need to shift our focus, because, for one, I think you get whatever you validate. So, if you validate that, you are going to get more of it. We can use that to our advantage and validate those guys that are doing this, and not only getting the girls, but arresting those traffickers and making sure it sticks. Because it is not easy. And I know this from law enforcement, I know this from meeting with different legislators, and all of that. It is that trafficking is not an easy thing to prosecute.   Mark: It is not. Marisol: It is crazy to me, and I have certain ideas that I am working with to make it a lot easier and what I think could be done. But we will get to that whenever you are at that point of the program.   Mark: Well no, if you have certain ideas, let those out. Marisol: What is hard, at least in this country, is you have to get a victim to testify against her trafficker and the johns just walk free: "Well, she approached me," or, "I don’t know… answered an ad," blah blah blah… There is an existing law in the book called statutory rape that doesn’t matter if the girl was consensual or not. It doesn’t matter at all. So if you would start prosecuting johns and traffickers with statutory rape, you don’t have to get the girl to go through a whole testimony, and how he forced her, anything. Is she under the age of 17 or not? Tim: Yeah. Marisol: That... It is done. And when you start prosecuting johns and traffickers with rape, that is a different story now. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: And charging traffickers, by the way, with facilitation of late, where you are creating an environment, where a girl can be raped extremely easily, should be under the age of 17, it is done. Tim: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. In fact, a lot of our approaches to this is all about figuring out how to prosecute these cases without needing to put the victim on the stand. These victims are so... They have been so terrorized and so rewired. For their own well-being, you don’t want to put them on the stand to have them have to relive this. Also, they are not the best witnesses because they do not know who they are, they don’t know who to trust. And so, this solution of prosecuting different crimes to get around that is one approach. Something we are doing, especially in foreign countries, is we do these sting operations and film everything. And they don’t really do that, especially in developing nations. We film every part, from the day we meet the trafficker until we buy the kid. And so, at the end of the day, we just give a hard drive to the prosecutor, and it is like they are watching the movie, and they say, “We don’t need to put the kid on the stand because we have the true intent of this trafficker from seventeen different angles."    Marisol: Yeah. And you know, Tim, I have had these conversations with Lieutenant Mark Evans, who is head of all Los Angeles Vice and all of the trafficking in Los Angeles on the Valley side, and he is like, “We would do this if the DA/district attorney would prosecute.” So my next step is to meet with DA and go, “Would you prosecute them?” Because all depends on are they going to prosecute a case like that or not. The cops can actually charge them with anything that they want, so if we just start instilling the mindset... And also johns... Can we just take a moment about the customers? Because if, right now - and I don’t know if this is the case all over, but at least in California, you know - let’s say there is a 12-year-old-girl. Someone answered an ad on Backpage and went to a motel and had sex with the 12-year-old girl. And the guy is 55 years old - he gets a slap on the wrist and he goes to john school and he gets a misdemeanor and gets it wiped from his record, just like traffic school. I don’t understand - how that is ok? Tim: Yeah… It is not ok. Marisol: And if we started prosecuting the johns with statutory rape, and you advertise that, you are going to take away the demand a lot faster. Tim: Absolutely. Marisol: Because people don’t like to be charged with rape by any means. But right now, there is no consequence. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: There is no consequence. They walk free. It doesn’t matter. So there are mindsets and things that can be changed within our already existing laws, at least in this country, that I believe can go a long way towards making a difference. Continuing with the customers... And then, as the johns get arrested and as they do get prosecuted, or even just arrested, why are we protecting them? If you look on the back of a newspaper, or whatever, you can read like who got arrested for what, drunk driving, blah blah blah blah, but you can get arrested for this and it is not there.    Tim: Yeah. Marisol: So I think we should make the johns, particularly the rich white guys, pay for a billboard with their face and their mugshot in their neighborhood. Tim: The Queen of Sweden did this. She did this thing where if you got caught trying to have sex with a child, you got your face plastered on a billboard for everyone to see. And guess what happened? They stopped. They stopped soliciting kids in Sweden. They left. It is exactly what we need to do. Marisol: Exactly. Tim: Unfortunately, there are a lot of groups out here who would stop us from doing that. Trying, worrying about child rapist rights. Marisol: It is insane to me. And I think, I honestly believe, Tim, that if we could get the certain people in the government that are not scared of that, we could push something like that through. But what I have run into in meeting on the local state and federal level is you get guys that are just, "Oh no, we can’t do that. We will be fought,” and they don’t even try. But I believe if you would try hard enough, we could push something like that through just based on the statistics alone that you ended this.      Tim: These politicians answered to the people. If we would get the people loud enough, then they would say, "Of course, I will put their face on a billboard!" Because the people are demanding it, and that is where we need to start this, right. And that is what you are doing - that is what we are doing - is trying to create this grassroots movement - get so loud that these guys have to start doing stuff like this. History tells us that they will do it if we get loud enough. Mark: You mentioned politicians that are scared, and we don’t know what the exact story is on H.R.515 right now, which is before Congress, which is a big cause that we are going to take up.     Marisol: Which one is that? Mark: It is International Megan’s Law. Marisol: Oh great, yes! Ok. Mark: It will allow better communication between governments as bad guys travel abroad and come in. Right now, you cannot really get the information quickly enough to be actionable intelligence. Now, it went through the House, it went through the Senate, the Senate put some amendments on it, threw it back to the House - now it has a 15% passage rate. We have got a brilliant girl from the Podcast Congressional Web that just dissects bills. She is amazing.    Marisol: Who? Who does she work for, do you know? Mark: She is, totally... It is just her, totally independent. Marisol: Oh, ok. Mark: I don’t know what her politics are. I have listened to her shows - I have no idea, which is beautiful to me. She just dissects bills and sees what the [inaudible], sees what the hold-ups are in...what day, I think February 10th, we are going to be on with her and she is going to walk us through the bill and dissect who is holding it up and why. Marisol: Great! Mark: That is going to be awesome, right? Tim: This thing has been in Congress for over a year. It is ridiculous. Now, I actually testified with [inaudible] of Utah. We testified before the House on this bill because we were so frustrated, like, “Why can’t you pass this?!” It is a place that actually creates what is called the Angel Watch Center, a center where non-profit, private groups, government groups all get together and they talk about... They bring intel together, they start communicating better. And like Mark was saying, it is a notification program. If some French child rapist/former convict comes into our country, they are going to tell us, “Hey, this guys is flying into JFK. You might want to either deny him entry or watch him,” you know. We did the same for other countries. And again, what the issue is is their rights, the criminal’s right to travel without being notified. Mark: As we start to find more about H.R.515, maybe we engage you. Marisol: I am looking at it right now and I am kind of seeing where possibly the hold-up is because they are talking about any sex offender, and what I found in the past of certain other laws was that the definition of sex offender also includes, like, the person who was caught urinating in a park drunk, and he is labeled a sex offender for the rest of his life. And they are using those cases to cause an uproar to stop the whole thing, and say it is discriminatory against them. It is a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense, but that is where I am guessing - it is a guess - some of the hold-up is. One of the things that could go a long way is we will prosecute people for aiding and abetting. If they knew about a murder or they knew about a robbery that was taken place - so they were the driver but they didn’t do it... But we don’t do this with [inaudible].     Tim: It is a great point. It is true. Marisol: That would be another angle to getting the johns going, "Hey, you knew about this?” to get prostitution illegal in this country. So, did you really answer an ad for a massage? Do you know what I mean? And cast a wider net when you can actually prosecute people for aiding and abetting, for helping along, for being an accomplice...you know, looking in terms of existent laws that we already have in the books and prosecute differently to make a bigger dent. Tim: Agreed. We could make a list and shout it out to the world: "So, here are the things that need a change," and just be loud. Get the footage, get entertainment industry, get everyone to be so loud - Harriet Beecher Stowe thing, right - and then say, "What do we do?" "Here is the list, call your congressmen, get this stuff changed." Let’s do it, we are going to do it! Alright. Thanks so much, Marisol, we will have you back soon. Marisol: Alright, thanks guys! Thanks for having me! Tim: Alright, thank you! You know, the thing done is at least there are people out there because what this requires to save kids... You have to think outside the box. Just like to get rid of slavery in America, you had to think outside the box. And the model we are proposing is this private public partnership where we need our law enforcement. They have the badges, they have their prosecutors, they have the jail system, they have the judicial system, they can do this. But the problem is, this is such a unique problem and it is so enormous you have to be proactive and creative. Because these…the bad guys are being creative, and most law enforcement agencies don’t have the wherewithal to cover the homicides, the drug dealers and all the things they have been fighting for years and years and are trained to do. And now, you have trafficking problem on top of that. It is relatively new in terms of trying to react to it and most don’t have the tools they need. And that is why I left the government. Because I recognized all the gaps in the agencies that were fighting this problem. Again, not to slam them, but there are gaps everywhere. I got turned down by half the time when I put out request to do an operation. I got shut down because of X,Y, or Z. I always kind of understood the reasons, and I thought, “Alright, I don’t see the government fixing these gaps anytime soon, so I am going to leave - start my own organization that fills those gaps.” So I can go to any agency and say, “I know your problems because I had them, and I am going to solve them for you. We will do this, this, that and the other.” And the law enforcement agencies that want to save their kids are like, “Yes, come on in!” and we go and conquer together in the private-public model.  There are other law enforcement officers who... I will not name them right now, but have them in my head right now, and I am pissed off at them. So close-minded. Mark: What did they say? Give me a conversation. Tim: "You shouldn’t be doing this work. This is just for us. This is for a SWAT law enforcement." "I was a SWAT law enforcement for 12 years, I know how to do this." "Well, you cannot do it. I do not like you doing it." “The parents of the kids, who are being abused - they like that we are doing it. And where we are working, no one is doing it." So there is no answer, no answer to it. It just the partners we work with - they are not this way. If you are this way, we don’t work with you. But you would be surprised how many come back and say that they literally gave up the opportunity to rescue more kids because of pride, because of ego, because if you don’t have a badge, you shouldn’t be consulting or helping or anything like that. They can’t see outside the box. And it is sad because kids are getting hurt. I have had a conversation, actually - and I will not name the people, the agency - but I have literally had a conversation that went like this: "So you are telling me that you or your boss would rather let these kids continue to be raped than work with a private organization that you know together we can solve the problem?" And they said, "Yes." Mark: Wow. Tim: They said yes. It wasn’t them... The person I was talking to said, “I want to do it, but yes that is... My boss has made that deliberate decision.” They don’t want to admit that they need help or that they don’t have a handle on it. It is sick, it is sad. But you know, you have all sorts of people, and the good news is that there are a whole bunch of law enforcement agencies out there and prosecutors all over the place that put the kids above everything else, and that is who we work with. Yep, that is who we work with. And there are so many of them that we don’t run out of work. So, you know, I was talking to some folks at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who are a wonderful asset - all law enforcement works with them on so many areas to find kids, to find child pornographers - such an amazing organization. And I was talking to them about some of my frustrations and they said, "You know what? We did the same thing." They went through the same thing in the 80’s when they created the organization. There was a major - and I won’t name the agency - a major agency in the United States government that actually put out a policy/memo to their agents, to their law enforcement, saying, "You will not work with this new National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. You will not work with them. We got this. We don’t need help."    Mark: Farm Bureau. Tim: Yeah. That was a farm bureau. You got it.    Mark: Gosh…you know, the pressure was their heyday. Tim: Between that and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, yeah... They just went...yeah, unbelievable. But now, guess what? That agency has agents in their office that work inside the National Center. And so they say, "Just don’t worry. Buck up, little Timmy. Just work with those that will work with you. And success will be built upon success." And so we just have to put the negative aside and put the haters aside and we will work with those who see the vision. And they are the best ones anyway. They are the ones who are getting it done. Mark: Today, more than any other day, in talking to you, I feel momentum. I feel really pumped. And I don’t know what you had for lunch, or what your pre-workout was, but you are on fire, man. You are going to kill it. Tim: You didn’t feel that before? Mark: I did. Tim: You jerk. Mark: I didn’t... I felt like... Tim: ...how to take a compliment and just throw it in the trash. Mark: No, listen. I have felt like you are pushing a boulder uphill before, but now I feel like the boulder is moving. You know what I am saying? Like, we were getting people and we're shedding light on the problem, but really I just feel a new energy and not sure what it is. Tim: Well, what you are feeling probably is... I am in the middle of a case. I am back in my... Mark: You are... Tim: ...I am back in my agent days right now as an employee of this law enforcement agency. It is… I have been given authorization to get back and get my hands dirty back in this. And when I do that, I get very energized. Well, friends, sign us off, Timmy. Buck up, little Timmy. Tim: Thanks for joining us, guys. Looking forward to see you again on Slave Stealer Podcast.

Slave Stealer
002 Meet Timothy Ballard Part II

Slave Stealer

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2016 39:09


  Interview w/ Timothy Ballard Mark Mabry January 11, 2016 Final Transcript   Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer. Tim: Welcome to Slave Stealer podcast, where we take you into the dark world of trafficking so you can help us find the solution. We are talking here with co-host, Mark Mabry. Mark: That’s me. And we did a little change in format. This is part two of our ‘Meet Tim’ series, because he has had a really interesting story. And what I found amazing in getting to know Tim over the last few years, is that sacrifice of peace of mind, sacrifice of kind of this level of innocence that 99.9% of the rest of us enjoy. And, to recap, we talked about Tim’s story a little bit, how he got into child crimes, and how he was invited by HSI to be on that team, and then we talked about his family. He has got young kids, and his son is now 15. And, the birds and the bees talk is awkward enough. What about that talk about what dad does for a living?” Tim: Well, you know, yeah..Let me say this first: I was scared to death some 15 years ago when I was asked to enter this dark world of child crimes. And the thing that scared me the most was the fact that I had kids, and I didn’t know how that would affect me. Would I see an image that reminded me of my kids, would that make me a paranoid father, would that turn me... My wife was scared to death that I would turn into just some cynical, just bitter old dude. And I was scared to death. I mean, you’ve got to wade through the sewer to find the crap. Mark: And what if the pornography took, I mean, worst case scenario, you turn into somebody that is actually into it? Not that that would happen with you knowing you, but... Tim: You know, what I have found that’s..a lot of people think that, and they go there, but... Mark: Those people are stupid. Tim: The people who had that suggestion are really idiotic. No, but it’s a logical conclusion. But what I have found is, frankly, kind of the opposite. Because when you are exposed to children - unless you are a pedophile, right - when you are exposed to that, it makes you want to distance yourself even more from all things pornography. At least that was my experience, and as I watched other agents who I have worked with, who have to be exposed to this. It turns you off so much to the whole industry, even the legal part of it, because it’s so, frankly, similar that it actually, at least for me, it has had the effect of major deterrent, even from any temptation my own part to even look at regular pornography. Does that make sense? Mark: Yeah! Tim: And, for the child stuff, it is just a punch in the stomach every time, and it is worse and worse every time. And you learn how to cope, you learn how to be able to see this stuff and still move on. But, like in the last show, I was talking about how the first thing I want to do when I saw particular images or videos, is just grab my kids and bring them to the safest place I know, which is my home, and just hold them. And so the whole concept, the whole idea to your question of how I bring together these two worlds, of what I do outside versus what I do inside - you have to factor in all these things. But my kids do start asking questions. I was addressing a group that was doing a benefit for Operation Underground Railroad just two nights ago. And they had the kids there and they wanted me to talk about it, and it was so hard, because I’m sitting there, and they say, “Tell us what you do!”, and I’m going, “All right, well I’ll start...”       Mark: How old were the kids? Tim: Oh, the kids were as young as five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Mark: Oh, geez.. Tim: It was like all these neighborhood kids. And their parents wanted them to know that there are kids who are less fortunate and that we need to help them. That was the idea. So, I thought to myself, “I’ll start with the software that we are building.” The software is called ‘Stars’. It’s a pretty name. Until one of the kids says, “What does STARS stand for?” And it stands for Sex Traveler Apprehension Retention System, right? So, I say SEEEE ugh...I can’t say it, I can’t even say the name of the software! Mark: Super Terrific Apprehension... Tim: Yes! So, I couldn’t, and it was so..it’s so difficult. A little kid raises his hand after I’m talking about slavery in general terms, and he said, “Why would someone want to steal a child? Wouldn’t they rather steal an adult because they’d be better at being a slave and a stronger worker?” I just looked at this little kid, I was like, “I know exactly the truth of your question, I know how to answer that, but I cannot answer that.” And so these issues that I was grappling with at this charity event, are the same issues I grapple with every day with my kids. When they see something on the news, and with my small children I just tell them, you know, I help kids, we help kids, we help kids who’ve been kidnapped. That’s all they know, and they seem ok with that. But as they get older, they start asking questions. And it intersects at the same time that I need to start talking to them about the birds and the bees. My wife and I are very open, I mean, I think my job has made me the most desensitized to all things sex, like I can say anything to anyone, because the conversations that I have had with people, with perpetrators especially during interrogations, where we were talking about things, or undercover, where they’re selling me kids. There is nothing that makes me blush, right. So, I can just take my kids and sit down, and say, “Hey”, talk about everything, embarrassing things, everything from pornography to masturbation to dating and all this stuff. It is rare that we talk about that, somehow it leads to the fact that - again these are my more adolescent, teenage kids - it always leads to some kind of an explanation that they are asking me for about, “Why would an adult want to do that to a child?”      Mark: When they say THAT, what ..I mean.. Tim: I mean they kind of..they know, I mean, they figured it out. Mark: Yeah. Tim: They do, because they know what is what we’re talking about. And so, I think, in the world of child pornography and sexual abuse of children, you don’t want to be graphic with the kids at all, even with my teenage kids. I kind of let them just figure it out and let their brain stop them where they should be stopped, because the brain will do that. Mark: Oh, adults don’t even grasp it. Tim: Adults don’t grasp it. I was sitting with my father-in-law - a brilliant man, PhD - we were in his kitchen, this was when I was an agent, and I heard him, he started talking.. What had happened was that I arrested one of his friends - not like a close friend, right, but... Mark: ”So, what did you do today, Tim?” “Well, I busted Larry.” Tim: Right! Mark: I have heard this story. Tim: He knew this guy, he had been to his home. So he knew this guy, and he started saying, “You know...I kind of feel bad for this particular individual, because it’s not really their fault. I mean, these girls dress in a certain way that is provocative, and it is not totally their fault.” And, I’m just dying. I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! You are telling me that a 5-year old puts on clothes, and now it’s not the pedophile’s fault that they look at the 5-year-old!” And his eyes almost popped out of his head! He says, “Five years old?! Why are you talking about 5-year-olds?!”     Mark: He’s thinking the 17 ½-year-old. Tim: He’s thinking 17, 16 years old, where you can’t really maybe tell the difference between a 17- and an 18-year-old, right. His eyes popped out of his head, and he says, “What?!” I said, “Yeah...Dad, you don’t know this, but what George was looking at was 5- to 7-year-old children, boys and girls, being raped, ok?” Mark: They sent a picture in the tub. Tim: Exactly. Being raped by adults. And he just kind of put his head down, shook it, and he said, “Now, that is weird..” I remember he said, ”That is just weird...”, and he walked out of the kitchen. He couldn’t handle it, and I don’t blame him. Our minds don’t even let us go there. And this is the problem. This is the problem that, frankly, is the obstacle to the solution. And the problem is we don’t want to see, we don’t want to believe it. I remember in the very beginning, in the early 2000s, when we were taking cases, child porn cases, to the judges, federal judges and state judges on pornography cases, on child pornography cases. And they were sentencing them to the most minimal sentences. Like this one guy had this collection that was unbelievable, categorized it by the names - he would name the kids in the videos, and create little files for them. It was unbelievable. He had hundreds of thousands of videos, images and everything else. And when the judge sentenced him, he sentenced him to four or five months in jail, but weekends only.            Mark: What?! Tim: And, I thought, “What is going on?!” The prosecutor I was working with, she said, “You know, the problem, Tim, is they don’t get it.The judges don’t get it!” They don’t get it. And we asked the judges if we could please show..during the sentencing they brought me in, and said, “Agent Ballard wants to show you the images.” He said, “I don’t want to see that junk! I don’t want to see that junk.” He’s embarrassed to even look at it. The human side of him doesn't want to even watch him looking at it, so he says, “I don’t need to see, I don’t need to see it!” So, we didn’t show it to him, and then that sentence came out. I guarantee you, I guarantee you that he doesn’t want to accept it. You know, the reports indicated that the kids were as young as five or four years old. His brain - my theory - wouldn’t let him grasp it, wouldn’t let him grasp it. And so he just gave him this super light sentence. But if I would have just opened that laptop, and say, “You have to watch this, you need to see this.” Now, I’m not advocating for showing child porn to people.    Mark: Exactly. Tim: At all! At all! Mark: But, maybe we emphasize, highly illegal: if you download this, even for altruistic, I’m-going-to-expose-myself, but...   Tim: You will go to jail. Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Mark: Yes! Tim: But what I’m telling you is, be aware that it is there, and we have got to talk about it. It hurts...You mentioned that when you talk about this, and this is why people don’t want to talk about it, you hit the nail in the head: you lose part of your own innocence. Mark: Absolutely. Tim: And every time you talk about it, some more of your innocence, even as adults, it goes away. You have to sacrifice that, but you sacrifice it for the kids. Because if we don’t sacrifice a part of our innocence to know this is happening, they have no hope, because we are the adults, we are the ones who will...if anyone’s going to save them, it is going to be the adults, that have the power and the influence and the ability. But if we don’t know about it, we are not going to save them. But to know about it, you must sacrifice some of your innocence. And so that’s what we ask people to do: sacrifice some of your innocence, listen to this show, go to our website, learn about trafficking. It’s the fastest growing criminal enterprise on earth. Two million children, and more, are being sold for sex, over ten million children sold for labor. Add all the adults, we’re on a 30-40 million range. I mean, wake up! Help them out! But it does require a sacrifice of innocence.     Mark: So, back to the question at hand, did you actually have, have you had a sit-down, “Ok, let me talk to you about this, son”? Like, let me ask it this way: have your kids seen the documentary? Tim: Here’s my policy and my wife’s, I mean, every kid is an individual, right. Every kid you treat differently, because it is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution to raising kids. Mark: You have how many? Tim: I have six kids. Mark: That’s awesome! Tim: So, our kind of general policy, guideline on the documentary, which is ‘The Abolitionists’ documentary, which films my team going into different countries and helping the police infiltrate trafficking rings and so forth... Mark: Catching you soliciting pimps for underaged girls. Tim: Right. Mark: Asking “Hey, will she do this, will she do that?” Tim: Oh, yeah. Mark: Your kids have to hear you saying that. Tim: My kids are hearing that, yeah. So, what we’ve decided is, generally speaking, if this particular video or this particular documentary includes children, who are being sold, who are, say, 12 years old, then I’m going to let my 12-year-old watch it. And that is because I think it’s important for him to see what he has and what someone else doesn’t have. “Someone your age is being trafficked. You get to play football; they are being sold for sex.” And, I think it’s important for kids to recognize what they have, and then it instills in them a sense of responsibility: “How can I help that kid, who doesn’t get to play football? What can I do?” And it makes them aware of the world and aware of what’s happening. So, that is kind of how we deal with it. And then again I let them watch it, I don’t rehash it with them, I don’t bring it up too much, at least graphically.           Mark: Yeah. Tim: I let their mind stop them where it needs to stop. Mark: Smart. I like that principle that you said with adults, with kids, with everyone - they will go to a point that they are ready to go to.   Tim: Right. But here’s the point that I was making too - once you are an adult and you have real influence to help, it changes a bit in my mind, right.     Mark: Especially if you are a judge. Tim: Especially if you are a judge. I don’t want it to stop where your mind wants it to stop. And this is our job at Slave Stealer podcast and other places, other people’s responsibility, who are in the know-how, who have seen it, you’ve got to say “No!” No, I’m not going to let you stop. I am not going to let you shake your head and walk out of the kitchen. I’m going to make you stay until your mind grasps this enough to where you are going to act. And that’s the problem, is people hit that point where their brain wants them to stop, and they shake their head and walk away. We can’t have that. If we do that, these kids will not be liberated.        Mark: If that happens in 1860, you have still got millions of slaves in the South. Tim: Absolutely! Mark: Because we have talked about it. Tim: Absolutely. That’s why, because people shook their head and walked out of the kitchen. Mark: Yeah. You have got to show it to them. There are so many questions - I’m trying to think of a logical order here. You talked about it with your father-in-law, and we are not talking about 17 ½-year-old girls.    Tim: Right. Mark: We are talking about kids that are groomed, And, maybe.. let’s define the term. We kind of need to have like a trafficking glossary on our site. But grooming, and, maybe in the case of Lady, that we talked about - that’s when you explained it to me, you know, when I was going to go be a scoutmaster. I had to go through the whole ‘how to identify a perv’, right, and one of the terms they used was grooming. And they’re like, “Well, when you prepare a child for…” whatever. But you really broke it down for me in the case of this 11-year old virgin, who was sold to you in Columbia. I was there watching, she was a virgin. Tim: Right Mark: However, she knew exactly what was going to go down. Tim: Right.. Mark: What do they do to groom a child and how were you made aware of it? Like, give me how you came to that knowledge. Because this episode is kind of about you and the topic. Tim: So I came to the knowledge the only way I think anyone can, and that is experiencing it firsthand. For me, that was going undercover, pretending to be someone, who is interested in that black market, and getting into that market, becoming a player in that market. So, in the case of this little girl, who they were calling ‘Lady’ - and that surely wasn’t her real name, it was a name the traffickers gave her - in that case, we were pretending to be solicitors of child sex. We were working with the Colombian police pretending to be Americans, who travel to Colombia to engage in sex with children. And what had happened in this case, because we were working in that capacity and because we presented ourselves as wealthy Americans, I hinted to the trafficker that we would be interested in sharing profits and investing in his trafficking business. The reason we did that was because that all of a sudden, if they believe us, that pushes them to open their books and open their business and explain the business plan. And that’s how we learn how they do this. I would say things like, ”Look, I could probably get you a million dollar investment in this, but I need to know how it works; I need to know how you get these kids; I want to know you maintain the kids, how you groom and prepare them,” and so on and so forth. And the guy was more than happy to tell me what he does. Mark: I have a photograph of your hands around this little pattern napkin. It was like a napkin business plan...     Tim: Sure, yeah. Mark: Of a sex hotel for kids. Tim: That’s right. Mark: I have a picture of that. I’ll post it, because it is so disturbing when you realize what those numbers represent, volume and quantity and velocity of children and child rape.    Tim: Yeah, it was the dirtiest, most evil business plan that anyone could ever dream up. Mark: Yeah. Tim: ..on that napkin. That’s right. Mark: I’ll post that. Tim: And that was like our third or fourth discussion about how their business operations work. So, what they explained to me was, “Look, it’s easy to get the kids. You find poor families.” You don’t want to do a hard kidnapping, you know like the movie ‘Taken’. Does that happen? Yes. Is that the likely scenario? No. Why? Because you kidnap a kid, a hard kidnapping - meaning go into their house, like what happened with Elizabeth Smart, go into the house, pull them out. Well, you are going to kick up a lot of dust around you. Why do that if you are a trafficker if you can instead make it a peaceful kidnapping. Not peaceful for the child, right.          Mark: Yeah. Tim: Hell for the child, peaceful for the trafficker. In other words, they can kind of do this without fearing much consequence. So, what they do is they go to poor families, and these guys had actually hired or were working with, contracting with, a beauty queen in Cartagena. She had won a pageant, a beauty pageant. So, kind of people knew who she was; she had been on the news, she showed up in music videos, and so people knew who she was. So, they walk into the house with this beauty queen, and they say, “Look, look at this beautiful woman. She doesn’t have a worry in the world. She is paid, she is wealthy, she is beautiful, she is famous.” And then they point to the 9-year old daughter, and say, “we focus” - they told us “9 years old is where we start”. And they say to the mother and father: “Your 9-year-old daughter is just as beautiful as this girl; we just got to train her. We can train her, and she can become a model and an actress.” And they fill the parents with all sorts of dreams that they never believed were possible for their child. And certainly this is legitimate, because they are looking at the star, who is in their living room saying, “I can do this for you. And we’re going to give you a scholarship. You can come to our school and learn how to be a model for free.” At that point, they bring them into the modeling school, and they teach them some things. And when they get comfortable, they say, “Now you are going to watch this video.” And the video will be pornography. “This is part of being an actress, it’s part of…you need to understand this world.” And when kids are at that age - nine, ten, eleven - their minds are still developing and forming, and if someone tells you this is right, this is right, this is right, eventually your mind develops as a 9- or 10-year old into believing, “Ok, this is right, this is right.” And so they start seeing that. We had evidence that some of them were being drugged, you know, threatened: “If you go back and tell your parents that we are doing these things, you are going to be in big trouble.” And again, kids are very… Elizabeth Smart, when we get her on the show, she can talk about this, where a police officer walked up to her, while she was in captivity, and said “Are you Elizabeth Smart?”. I mean that, it would have been over! Mark: Yeah. Tim: And she said, “I am not. I am not Elizabeth Smart.” Because she was scared to death because they, her captors, had told her, “If you ever reveal who you are, we will kill your sister, and your family.” And as Elizabeth tells it, everything they had told her they are going to do to her, they did it. They told her they are going to rape her, and they did it. They told her they are doing this particular thing - sex acts - and they did it. They told her they’d chain her up, and they did it. So, when they told her that they are going to kill her parents if she reveals who she is, why would a 14-year-old not believe that they are going to do it?                        Mark: They’ve got all power. Tim: All power. And she has received criticism for that, you know, like, “Why didn’t you run away? Did you want to be there?”, you know... People just can’t comprehend how the mind of a child works. And that’s what these kids go through - they are scared into not revealing what is really going on. So, they groom them, and they said it, it will be a year and a half, or more, while they are grooming them, all under the hospices of this modeling school. And of course they are being trained to be models as well, and then eventually they say, “Ok, so this is your test. You are going to this party on this island, and these men are going to come from America, and you are going to do the things that you have seen being done in the pornography videos, and do whatever they want.” In a nutshell, that is how it works. I mean, that is how it works, that is the reality. Mark: And variations of. Tim: And variations of that.   Mark: So, they can do everything up until the point that she is not a virgin to claim... Tim: Right. Mark: “Hey, it is a virgin.” Tim: And they can, and they want to do this because their virgins are premium, right.  Already, a child, in most black markets, a child will go for about a double or more than double of what an adult prostitute will go for. But then, if that child is also a virgin, then it’s quadruple, or more of that price. So, it’s a premium to sell a virgin child. Mark: Wow...Give me, you’ve talked about it - like pulling people’s blinders off, and those moments where people are opened up, and the one with I think your father-in-law, who gets it now - that was pretty dramatic. What about..give me another one. You don’t have to name names, I just like hearing about people’s response. Are there any high profiles that you are allowed to share, that, maybe change the name, change the whatever? Somebody that you have shocked, that should have known?        Tim: Yeah. I was in the office, probably a year or two ago, of a governor of a certain state. We were explaining who we were and what we did, and he was absolutely shocked. And, kudos to him for being honest, saying, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! There is how many kids? There is how many kids being hurt and trafficked in the world? And what does that mean? They do what?!” He didn’t know, he didn’t know anything! And again, I’m not blaming him for not knowing. It is not something you go seek out, right? It is not something that your advisors seek out to tell you. It is hard to talk about. And I don’t know that you know the answer - why aren’t we talking about it more? Why, why, why, why? I really believe because it is that.. it is so dark a topic. It is not even...you know, slavery in the nineteenth century - it was politically divisive. It was a political nightmare to get involved: go back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and everything. I mean, it was a divisive and a political issue. This is not even a political issue. There is nobody standing on the side of the pedophiles - well there are some: NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, which deserves its own show someday.         Mark: Do they have a logo? Tim: Well, there are all sorts of different..Look them up: nambla.org. Mark: Is that weird? Tim: You might have cops knocking on your door tonight. Mark: That is what I am saying. Tim: No, no, no, you won’t. You can look them up. Mark: What are the pop-up ads I am getting after that? Tim: Yeah, be careful when you go: nambla.org. I mean, it is a legitimate organization, legitimate in terms of legality, right. And, they are just a group that is pushing for a.. Mark: Oh hell! Tim: What did you find? You got...I told you to be careful when you go to that... Mark: No, it is not...and luckily, I’ve retained that innocence: I have never seen child pornography. It is a cartoon on the front their page - it is an adult asking a little boy, “What can I do to make you happy?” And the little boy says, “I like hugs.” Tim: Boom! And that’s their whole message. If you go into...When I was an agent, I would go all into it and learn about it, what they believe in. And they actually talk about how kids, psychologically and emotionally, need sexual healing and sexual exposure from adults. And why not adults, who know what they are doing? And so they make it sound as though the kid wants to be hugged, the kid wants to be touched. Why is it so bad? And they bring up science, where they show that children are sexual beings based on this story and that. Of course, they are human beings! Their sexuality is attached to everybody; we are born with it. But that doesn’t mean you are ready to bring it out and force it on a child, because that’s what you would be really doing, forcing it on a child. Their brains aren’t developed to the point where they can make those kind of decisions, or comprehend the kind of consequences of that activity. I mean it destroys...I’ve seen kids destroyed over this. And here they are saying they just want to hug, “Just hug me, that is all I want.”      Mark: Oh, here’s the other one, right. They are just headlines and we’re not going to go off on NAMBLA forever, because it does deserve its own show. Maybe we bring one of these idiots in.   Tim: Yeah, bring them in, let them take it. Mark: Or, we bring in some of the people they are attacking. And I thought of this this morning, ok. I’ll read a couple headlines: ‘When Labor Loved Liberty (And Before They Changed Their Minds)’ about the labor unions formally supporting..whatever. ‘Remembering Michael Jackson’, and they’ve got the old black version of Michael, ‘Remembering a Lover of Boys’, ‘Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘The Non-Wisdom of Crowds: Defender of Anonymous Outraged by our Lack of Passivity’. Now, this one’s interesting: ‘Hipster Vigilantism and the New Populist Attack on Free Speech’. That is what they are calling it: speech, right. And then, they say ‘Anonymous Decidedly Illiberal Campaign to Silence Us’. Dude, is Anonymous getting on these guys, because they would be an awesome ally.   Tim: I don’t know, but let’s check, let’s look into it - let’s absolutely look into it. But these guys have conventions; it’s a political movement to legalize this kind of behavior. Mark: They called Oprah a liar, by the way. Tim: And so... Mark: Saying she wasn’t, she wasn’t molested as a child. Ok, I’m off on NAMBLA. Tim: Ok. So, we’ll go back talking more about that, but the point is, that, except for these few total whackjobs, who think that this is a healthy thing for children, it is really just obviously serving their own selfish lust and pleasure and evil. Dark, dark souls...But, for the most part, this is not a political issue, right, it is not a political issue. Everyone will be on the side of solving this. So, what is the obstruction? It is simply, “I don’t want to know; I don’t want to see it.” It’s the ostrich, the ostrich effect, sticking our head in the sand: “I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to...I have kids, grandkids. I can’t think about it.” And that’s where we have to make the change, that’s where we have to convert people to look at it.    Mark: What are the more offensive things that people have said to you? Maybe on purpose or not on purpose. I don’t need the top three, because it’s hard to think in superlatives, but give me five offensive things people have said to Tim Ballard, unknowingly or knowingly.   Tim: Offensive, in terms of just this topic in general? Mark: Yeah, that you’re like, “I used to respect you three minutes ago, before that came out your mouth.” Tim:I think the one time I can remember where I got the most offended...and frankly, you actually just did it to me earlier today, accidentally. I wasn’t so mad. Mark: Oh, when I wondered if you would turn into a perv by looking at... Tim: Yeah, it was so...I felt really bad because... Mark: That wasn’t a personal attack, by the way. Tim: No, no no, it wasn’t. And I want to clear this up. I don’t have a whole lot of examples of people, who say things offensive in terms of why this should or shouldn’t be legal or illegal, right. I mean, I’ve had perpetrators during interrogations defended, you know. A guy named Ernst Luposchainsky, for example - you can look him up, we arrested him in Minnesota... And he was pretty, I mean he was offensive, but I mean, geez, he was just such a joke. You are looking at this guy and you are almost, almost...somewhere in between laughter and vomit. You know, you are just like: “Are you serious? You are saying this?” You know, but he would talk about like the benefits of child pornography and how it helps the poor kids. “These kids get paid, they get paid for their sexual services, and we are helping them, we are helping their families.” He would talk about the tiger and the meat analogy. I remember we talked about, and this is all during his interrogation, where he would say, “Look, you have got to feed the tiger meat. If you don’t feed the tiger meat, he will eventually attack human beings.” So, he is actually saying, “Children are being raped, that’s horrible! Now, a consensual sex with a child, that is a different story. But, children are being raped against their will, I’m against that. Oh, I’m so against that!” You know, he would say...       Mark: Just for the record, you were quoting him on the “consensual sex is a different story”? Tim: Yes. Mark: Ok, just making sure it wasn’t like... Tim: Yes, quoting. Mark: You, parenthetically saying “Hey, consensual sex...” Tim: I’m sure some out there would love to misquote me on that and accuse me. So, the tiger and the meat, right. “You have got to feed the tiger meat, you have got to feed the tiger meat, and then he will never rape the kids.” And the meat is child porngraphy. “Make it legal. Let them look at it, because then they will just look at it, and then they will get satisfied and the kids will be safe.” Mark: Oh, yeah, totally! Tim: Because it doesn’t, it certainly doesn’t fuel your evil passion by looking at it, right? Like for example, a man who watches pornography, he never watches pornography with an int to actually engage in sex with a woman. He just watches it for, you know, for the pleasure in itself. Yeah...baloney! Any dude, who watched porn will tell you, right, “I would like to translate this to my bedroom,” right. It is no different with child pornographers. They are looking at this, and they want to act out. So it is just the opposite - you are fueling the fire, not putting it out. But, I mean, that was offensive. And, by the way, that Ernst Lupochainsky case, we got to do a show sometime on that. That was the hardest case I have ever did. In the middle of that interview, ok, while he was telling me all this stuff, he would not break, he would not break, he would not break. So, what I had to do...because he believed that all men were closet pedophiles, he just believed that story... Mark: I love this story. Tim: He just believed that. It was his way to justify his own feelings, of course. But this puritanical society - that is what he called it - has stopped the natural flow of love between a man and young, little girls. But on this show, I have got to read...he had this postmortem message he put on all his child porn collection. We will prep and I will read his message.      Mark: Oh my gosh. Tim: It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. But the point I am making here is, I had to go undercover - this is just a teaser - I had to go undercover... Mark: Don’t blow it, because I know the punchline, and it is unreal. Tim: Yeah..as myself. So, I pushed my buddy away, the other agent, who was interviewing the guy. I was still wired up undercover, you know, and I said, “Hey, listen man, listen Ernst, help me out. I mean you are right. Reading your stuff - it makes me trust you. I have got to look at this stuff all day long. What do you think that does to me? It makes me want that. But there is no one I can talk to. Can you talk to me? Can you help me?” Sure enough, his eyes just light up. He believed it! I couldn’t believe he bought into it. I was...I was...It is one thing when I am Brian Black, you know, or I’m some alias in an undercover operative.          Mark: That is a cute name. Did you make that one up? Tim: That was the name that I used to use, yeah...Brian Black. So, here I was, Tim Ballard, U.S. agent/pedophile. So it was a totally different thing. I was myself, and that went on for...and then you know, I reported it to my supervisors; they loved it. And that kept on for at least a month, until we could get all the information out of this guy we possibly could about his contacts and networks. And he opened up to me, thinking he was helping me enter into, you know, induct me into the beautiful world of pedophilia. So, someday we’ll do that story, because that is an amazing story. The guy is still in jail.     Mark: Good. Tim: So, that is kind of somewhat offensive, but the time I blew up...the sweetest lady on earth - she was, she was just...Lived down the street, sweet kind lady, and I was working in child porn cases, kind of mad - you know you’re just mad a lot, thinking about it. And she said to me, “So, how many agents, you know, end up…?” And again, the same thing you just said, but I didn’t blow up at you.    Mark: Good grief! I feel like such a schmuck, especially in context of the story you have just told me. Tim: Yeah, it was the first time... Mark: Because I know you are not susceptible to that. Tim: Right. And, I would honestly argue that unless you are predisposed and you enter the child crimes group so that you could access it, I think it is just the opposite. And, you know, she said, “So, how many end up pedophiles themselves, being exposed to this?” Mark: Legit question! Tim: Yeah...I mean it sounds like a legit question, unless when you are in it, you are like “Wait, whoa, whoa.” Yeah so, by the hundredth time I am watching a child scream in pain, by that time I am like, “I am digging this.” But, I went off, I went crazy. I said, “Do you think it is that?! Or maybe it is, ‘I can’t believe I have to watch this again! I can’t believe I have to subject myself again to this video, and my stomach is punched again and again and again.” It was so bothersome to me, because it is just the opposite of what she was saying. It is like, I have got to endure this. It is like saying this, here is a good analogy: someone who has been doing chemotherapy for a year, right, and every three months they got to go get another dose of chemo. It is like someone saying, “So, how many cancer patients become addicted to chemo? Even after the cancer is done, they still take chemo just because they are addicted to it?” Right?! That is analogous right there. Mark: Yeah... Tim: Ok? And, it is just like, “Wow, wow,” you know, it killed me. I get it, but it was just, it is...What they don’t understand is the potency of this. It is not! What they think is, she was probably still thinking 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds. I was like, are you kidding me?! It is not what we are talking about! If there is a 16-year old in a child porn video, we wouldn’t even prosecute that, unless you absolutely knew it was a 16-year-old, in like specific cases where, you know, uncles taking pictures or something. Mark:Yeah. Tim: But otherwise, you wouldn’t. You would be like “Eh...” If you can’t tell...The majority of the child porn cases we prosecuted: 5 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old, that range, right. I know, it’s just... it is just things the vast majority don’t have to see, and I don’t want them to see it. Mark: Yeah. Tim: I don’t want them to see it. But they need to know it is happening, so that they can be part of the solution. Mark: On that same thought of things that people unintentionally say that are offensive, how about this? And I have got this one before, even with my little bit of involvement: “Well, she looks like she wants it.” Tim: Oh, yeah...I get that quite a bit. In fact, right in our documentary, in “The Abolitionists”. Mark: Yeah! Tim: I have heard a couple of people say that. In an early screening that happened, and my wife who was in the room,  it was a very early screening, we brought some kind of influential people in to watch. Mark: I was there! Tim: Oh, right! You were there. That’s right! Mark: I was sitting by your wife. Tim: You were there. A sweet lady - I think you know her, I think you know who she is - totally innocent, you know, she just...she said, “Can’t you show like a little darker side to this, so that people know? Can’t you show us some kids who are not looking like they want to be here?” And, if you remember my wife, she’s like... Mark: Oh yeah. Tim: “Alright! This is tragic, what is happening to these kids! This isn’t a scripted film, this isn’t - we can’t make this up. This is real, and it is their hell. And just because you can’t see it, because you are not the spirit inside of that body,”... know, my wife just… bless her heart, she went crazy.   Mark: She is not outspoken. Tim: No. Mark: Right? For her to... Tim: For her to do that... it touched a nerve. Mark: Yeah.. Tim: And again, back to the misconceptions. Are you going to find cases of kids chained up and locked in closets? Absolutely, you are going to find that! The vast majority, the vast majority? No, that is not what it looks like. And in the documentary - most people get it, it is not usually a big problem - but in the documentary, I mean, you are watching the filmmakers put the ages of the kids - of course cover their identities - but they put their ages, their numbers like over their blurred faces. And so you are watching this 12-year old-girl, it says twelve, you know, and I remember that little girl, I remember that she actually had fear in her eyes. But if you weren’t looking straight into her eyes, she did walk into the party, and she knew what was going to happen to her.   Mark: And she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. Maybe not her, but some of the others. Tim: Some of them were, that one wasn’t, but some of them absolutely... This little girl was wearing like long basketball shorts and a white t-shirt, and you will see that in the documentary. But others were, the 12-year-olds...    Mark: They are not picking their outfit here. Tim: Right, right. Mark: For the most part. Tim: And they are walking in and people say, “Looks like they want to do that! They want to do it! Look at, they... No one is forcing them to walk in.” And again back to Elizabeth Smart. When you will bring her on the show, we can talk to her about it, and she...If you thought Catherine, my wife, got passionate, wait until Elizabeth answers that question. And she says, because they bring it u, she had plenty of opportunities, in theory, to run. She did. She was in public areas, policeman came up to her, right, but what they don’t understand is trafficking, slavery, so much of slavery is mental. These traffickers enslave these kids mentally, emotionally, not just physically. In fact, they don’t want it; if they can get away with not enslaving them physically, all the better. Remember, they don’t want to kick up a lot of dust around them. So, if they can figure out how to enslave them mentally and emotionally, that is always the first choice, and they do it by the grooming process that we described earlier. They groom them, and then they control them. They control them! And this is why the rehab part is so important, because you have got to undo the damage, and that doesn’t happen overnight. It is a long process. I don’t know, I mean, I have talked to a lot of victims of trafficking, who are adults now and have families of their own, and they have told me, “You know, you don’t ever fully, fully heal.” I mean, there is always something there you have got to battle. And that is what happens, that is why when Elizabeth’s father runs to her, she still denies who she is for a second, and then she opens up. Because it is like a spell, and if you haven’t been through it - and I haven’t, so I can’t fully comprehend it, but I’ve been around it enough to know that you can’t comprehend it, unless it has happened to you. And a child’s mind is not like an adult’s mind. Children don’t think like adults think. Their minds are at different levels of development, they don’t have a lot of experience, they don’t understand the consequences like adults can and do. And so, it is not so difficult for the traffickers to play those mind games, warp them, brainwash them, and make them slaves.      Mark: Well, I think that...we’ll get into, I think, in shows down the road, we’ll have Throwback Thursdays. We’ll go revisit missions and do things, but I feel like that can give our listeners a little bit of insight into your passion, your feeling for what it is you do and how it affects your life. It is not a job you leave at the door, as you are hearing. And so if you have any parting shots along the lines of ‘Here’s Tim’, ‘Get to know Tim’, let’s go and leave our listeners with that.    Tim: You know I...I’d say this that I understand completely. We are talking about awareness, we are talking about people’s ability to see this problem. And I can’t sit back and judge and say, “Come on, open your eyes, open your eyes!” I was the worst of everybody; it was right before me and I was denying. I was denying it. I didn’t want to do it. It took me a long time to say yes, and even after I said yes, I was very apprehensive about how far I would go in this. So, I get it. It is a hard barrier to get around. And even when it is in front of you almost...you know, and then, when it is not in front you, of course, it is sometimes near impossible to get around. So, I get it, I get it, but I also understand that when you see it, when you allow yourself to open up to it, you become converted. And part of that I think is from God. I think God, more than anybody, wants these children liberated. I think he weeps more than anybody for these kids. So, if he can find an adult, who is willing to open their mind enough and not walk out of the room, he will help convert you, and put that passion into you, fill you with his spirit, and call you. He will call anybody, if you are going to help save his kids. And I just want people to go through the same conversion that I went through. I am kind of a missionary for trafficking, right. I mean, I am trying to evangelize here and get people converted to the cause, because that is who I am. I have been converted to the cause. And it hurt!        Mark: The cause of freedom. Tim: The cause of freedom. But it hurts to be converted, because you must leave something at the door, and that is your innocence. You must leave it. And who wants to give that up? But you must do that. You must make that sacrifice. And it hurts, and you cry, and you have moments that are embarrassing - and we’ll get into some of these. There were times, when I was like a child in my wife’s arms weeping and she is holding me, and I am just shaking. Still happens to me... I used to not talk about it, but I just talk about it now. It hurts, it hurts to get into this cause, because the cause of freedom requires you to fight evil, and evil hurts. But what we want to do here on this show is make converts, because I know this: converts to this cause equals liberty to children. And what greater thing can we do than bring liberty to children?   Mark: Thank you. And, because your last words were so good, I’ll sign off for you from OUR headquarters. Good night!    

Radio Free
interview With Tim Timmons

Radio Free

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2016 23:22


Where do you even start when describing an interview with Tim? It's as fun as you would think, but more serious than you might imagine. There is no doubt this man makes great music... but he is passionate about helping people find the freedom that comes from truly believing that Jesus knew what He was talking about when He said "seek FIRST the kingdom of God"

The Path to Performance
Episode 08 with Sophie Shepherd of Ushahidi

The Path to Performance

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 17, 2015 55:26


This week, we have a brief discussion about how third party ad networks affect performance on news sites before talking with Sophie Shepherd. Sophie is a Senior Designer at Ushahidi, a non-profit software company that develops free and open-source products for information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping. We discussed the challenges of designing for international users with minimal data speed, how Ushahidi brings data and information to regions with nearly no connection, designing with task completion in mind, and more. ##Show Links: Sophie Shepherd Follow Sophie on Twitter Ushahidi Lara Hogan - A List Apart - Showing Performance Global Mobile Book Eric Meyer Crisis Design Rust Belt Refresh ##Transcript Katie: Welcome. You're listening to Episode 8 of The Path to Performance, the podcast dedicated to everyone to make the web faster. I am your host, Katie Kovalcin. Tim: And I'm your other host, Tim Kadlec and yeah, you nailed it; this is Episode 8. Well done! Katie: I was like, oh yeah, I totally know which episode it is. Wait: no, I don't. This is Episode 8. Tim: I mean, it's understandable; the numbers are getting higher, it's getting harder and harder. Katie: Totally out of control it's on more than one hand now! Tim: Yeah, once you've thrown that second hand, things get really complicated. It gets worse when you have to start taking off the socks and using your toes as well! That's where I always get hung up! Katie: You can wear flip-flops and then you don't have to worry about it. Tim: True, true. Katie: How are you, Tim? Tim: I'm doing OK; I'm actually wearing flip-flops right now! Yeah, I am! Katie: It's warm in Wisconsin? Tim: It is warm, for once. Yeah, I'm doing good; enjoying my day. And you? Katie: I'm good as well. The sun is shining here, which is a very rare thing in Ohio this summer and I feel like I have been whining about it for so long but today, I'm not whining. Tim: That's good! That's good! I'm guessing, we could maybe one of these times maybe we'll have an episode where we just kind of whine all the way through, but otherwise I think people probably enjoy the non-whining better. Katie: We can just have a bummer episode! Tim: Yeah, just a downer of an episode where we just air all our grievances about everything… Katie: We just talk in emo voice, just like…mwww…yeah, the web does actually kinda suuuuck… Tim: Yeah, exactly! I think this goes over well, I think this is maybe like a special Christmas edition. Katie: That is a really good idea. Tim: Right in time for the holidays. Katie: Christmas Bummer Episode! Tim: This is brilliant. That has to happen; I'm writing this down. Anyway, but glad to hear you're doing good now on this totally not Christmas at all episode. That's good. Katie: Yeah, on this summer-sunshine flip-flop fun-time episode! Tim: Yay! Katie: So, on the note of cool things, there's this episode from the Washington Post where in kind of a similar fashion, I know we talked a couple of months ago about Vox sort of declaring performance bankruptcy, Washington Post kinda did the same thing and talked about in an article the other day and that was pretty cool. They mentioned it sort of being in response to the instant articles and talking about just ads on news sites generally kind of sucky for performance, but I really liked this quite that it ended on that we have very little control over ads that load late or slowly but we wanted to make the core use experience as solid as possible because that is what we have control over and that's kind of a cool way to think about performance, just focusing on making good the core part that you do have control over. Tim: Yeah, and I think that's just generally awesome advice for anybody, because the ad work stuff comes up a lot and you have very little control over those third party ad networks and unfortunately a lot of them are super-slow right now but also essential for business but I like that they made the clear distinction between their core experience and understanding that the ads is just something you're going to have to tack on afterwards but mitigate the issues as much as possible. I think that's just really solid advice for any publisher. Katie: Yeah, absolutely. It's a nice article, it's a quick read; I recommend giving that a little skim or browse. Tim: Definitely. And then of course, Lara Hogan, who has made a habit out of writing good things over and over and over again or providing good performance advice in general, she wrote a post for A List Apart about showing performance; basically getting into some of the things she talked about way back in Episode 1 with us and also in her book about the importance of making performance visual: going into the dashboards and things like that, that they have up at Etsy and making sure that people can actually see the difference in performance. Katie: Yeah, she tweeted a little quick video a while ago and it might actually be in that article, I haven't had a chance to read it yet; it's on my to-do list but she posted a video of their video systems and it's really cool, it's really awesome to see that. Did I tell you that Lara, she talks about donuts all the time and donuts being her reward for good performance, achievements, good things like that, and when I saw Lara in New York a couple weeks ago, she took me to The Donut Spot that's in her neighborhood and I was so excited! Tim: Yeah, you told me. She's never taken me to The Donut Spot. I'm a little disappointed. I'm excited for you though: that sounds really cool. That's kind of… Katie: You know what? It was a really good donut because she says she's not a fan of the hipster donuts with a bunch of stupid toppings like cereal and candy bars and crap. Tim: Like the voodoo donuts thing in Portland? Katie: Yeah. These are just some straight-up home-town donuts in Brooklyn; I guess not really home-town but they were good! Tim: That's good. This is just like plain glazed? I want to know how far down the rabbit hole you went. Katie: We got banana…no, not banana: they were like custard-filled ones with the chocolate icing. I'm not a donut expert but those good ones! Tim: Gotcha, OK. That's a safe choice. Katie: Not the white sugary whipped cream-filled, the kind of yellowy-custard cream-filled ones; those are good ones. I don't know the distinction: is one cream and one custard? Is one icing and one cream? I don't know. Tim: I think it's usually like an icing and cream thing. Depending on where you go, it's almost like pure frosting is what it tastes like you're eating… Katie: Yeah, like you bite in and you're just like, oh my… Tim: Yeah, it's like there's frosting on the outside of the donut and frosting shoved down the inside as well and you just feel the cavities forming as you're eating them. It's great. It's a really good experience. But that's good. No, I did not…you did tell me this and that's very awesome, very cool. It's kinda like… Katie: Sorry; I'm obviously still thinking about that. Tim: I don't blame you. Katie: It was an experience. But, back to today's episode! We are talking to Sophie Shepherd and the big reason we wanted to get Sophie on here is not only because she's an awesome designer but because she has experience with working on products that are primarily used in developing countries that typically have the less than ideal device scenarios that we kind of always talk about in theory but she has some really great insight on talking a bout it in practice and actually designing for those devices and scenarios so it's going to be really interesting. Tim: Yeah, it'll be a nice fresh take, a different perspective than we usually get. Very cool. Katie: Cool. Well, let's go hear from Sophie. Katie: And we're back with Sophie Shepherd from Ushahidi. Sophie; can you tell us a little bit about Ushahidi and what exactly that is? Sophie: Sure. So, the what exactly it is, it's a Swahili word that means "Testimony". A lot of people are like, "Usha-what?" so it's not English so don't feel bad if you can't say it. And the company was founded in 2008 in Kenya so in 2008 what was happening in Kenya. there was an election that was fairly corrupt and there was quite a bit of violence broke out and some bloggers who were in Kenya and living in Kenya realized that they needed to do something to help out as well as just writing about what was happening, so they made a product in which people could submit reports of different places where the election was happening, different polling stations and this way they could say, there's been violence here, someone was killed here or this is a safe place where you can go to vote, or there's fraud happening. And what Ushahidi does is it takes all of these different reports and collects them into one place and provides a list and a map for them. So that's how it was founded; it's now a number of products but the name of our main platform is still Ushahidi and the purpose of it is still too collect data, crowd-source data. It's oftentimes gets mapped but isn't necessarily, we're re-doing the platform right now so that it's not only map data; it can really be anything that users submit. Katie: Awesome. So, spoiler alert, I know Sophie really well so I know the details of what she does and what really struck me and why I wanted to get her on the podcast so bad is because you deal a lot with users that are in places that have really poor connectivity and the products that you're designing are really crucial information that they need to get to. Can you talk a little bit about all of that and the challenges that you face when designing for that? Sophie: Sure. So, I think something that's really interesting is that it's not only poor connectivity but the kind of contexts in which people are using our products are unique. Not exclusively, but oftentimes they're used in crisis situations, so people don't have a whole lot of time. A lot of the time, the power could be down or internet could be down, so it's not only we have to think about connectivity but also ways that people are submitting information. This has been the first project I've worked on where it's not just, when we talk about performance, it's not just people needing to load something fast but it's about access and accessibility so, built into our product is people can anonymously text stuff in and that'll become a part of our system so it's really thinking about this whole ecosystem of access and ways of submitting information rather than just a website. Katie: Can you talk a little bit about what that means exactly, more than just a website? How else are you working around those connectivity and accessibility issues? Sophie: Yes, well, Ushahidi as a whole, not only with our platform but we have a lot of other companies that have spun out from the product itself, so there's a company Brick which is really, really awesome. It was founded by someone who was also a founder in Ushahidi and they make wifi devices that are super-rugged; they work off 3G connections so you can take those anywhere. We were in Kenya and they have all these attachments so it can be solar-powered wifi, so we had a group meeting in Kenya and we were all accessing the internet in the middle of nowhere on a beach from this device we had. So, it's thinking more about getting people information. Similarly we do a lot with SMS so if someone only has a phone they can text in a report or receive a response saying, OK, this has been confirmed, through their phone. Tim: This is fascinating stuff. I always think it's very interesting to hear the perspective outside of what we're used to in the little bubble that we get to live in here in the United States tech industry. This is taking everything in terms of the importance of building something that is going to work on different devices and the importance of building something that's going to perform well and this is really scaling up the importance of doing that, the vitality of doing that from just business metrics to, like you're saying, people's lives at stake in some of these cases. I'm curious; you mentioned being in Kenya and using those devices to get access. You can't obviously develop all the time in Kenya, so how are you finding ways to get that experience here, when you're building stuff from the United States so that you're feeling what it's going to be like on those, a 2G or a 3G connection or whatever it happens to be? Sophie: It's definitely a challenge for me because not only am I working every day on a really good connection but I've never really not had that; maybe five years ago my connection was not as good as it was now but I think I've always been as far as connection speeds in the one per cent, but we have a really great user advocacy team at Ushahidi so this is not only thinking about performance and website metrics, but we have a whole team that is dedicated to making sure that our users are satisfied, listening to what their needs are and responding in that way and also helping them, because this is a product that then gets extended and they can download it and set up their own deployments to use the product so we have a team that works really closely with people who are actually using it, which is terrific because we get a lot of feedback through that. Tim: I was going to say, are some of the team members in Kenya? Sophie: Uh-huh. Yeah, we have one person in Kenya, one person in Canada and then we have as part of, we have a specific user testing wing that's in Kenya but what they do is, since they are so in touch with people who use this stuff all over the world, they're good at being able to not only test it in Kenya but test it elsewhere and talk to…we have a large group using this stuff in Nepal right now because of the earthquake so they're in touch with them, checking that everything's working OK, getting any feedback from them. Katie: Do you tend to look at what specific devices the majority of users in these areas are using and start building and testing there or how does that work out? What's the size of an iPhone, that tends to be our default? What devices are you really thinking about in those areas? Sophie: It's interesting because right now, we are in the midst of re-building this product and so a lot of the people out there who are using it right now are using Version 2 which is the older version and at this point I don't even know how many years old it is but it's fairly outdated. It still works really well but it's not responsive; it's hard, we've noticed that quite a lot of people are using it on a desktop but that's only because it doesn't work very well on a phone so it'll be really interesting, we're launching the new one which is fully responsive and a lot more modern in this way to see how people end up using it. But it's tough because we can't say, iPhone users use this because it's used really everywhere in the world so maybe if it's used in the US it is going to be on an iPhone more, whereas elsewhere, it's Android but we try to cast a really wide net so there's an Android app that will be used for collecting information, you can submit by SMS. The new version's going to be totally responsive so what we try to do is not really focus on one but make sure that everyone can use it. Katie: So, you've been working on a responsive re-design and everything we've talked about has been the poor connectivity and all of that. How has performance played into those decisions when building this site or the product again for this new version? Sophie: It's a continuous consideration and process of checks and balances. One thing is that, thinking about images: part of this new system is we're able to have people submit images as part of their reports so that's something that we still have not quite figured out how we should work with how to then deliver those back to people and also thinking about different JavaScript libraries that we're using. It's a constant balance, so I think we're still figuring it out. We've done quite a bit of user-testing but more UX user-testing but the application itself is not totally done, it hasn't been built yet, so I think that's to come in terms of optimizing how it's going to work exactly. But from the design and front-end, we've definitely been keeping things really light and really the only question that we have is how we're going to treat images. Tim: Is it primarily a matter of using them or not using them or is it a degree of compression in terms of getting them to a point where maybe they're a little pixilated and ugly but they're balanced: the trade-off is that they're going to perform well on those types of networks? What are you battling with, with the images? Sophie: Well, I think basically every single image that is ever going to be on the site is going to be submitted by a user, so we don't know exactly the sizes of images that are going to come in and then at what point we are then going to compress them or shrink them and how we're going to do that and then how they're going to then be delivered back out. Yeah. Tim: So it's getting a system in place for all the user-generated content? Sophie: Exactly, yes. Tim: Gotcha. OK. Katie: So, you talk a lot about style guides and patter libraries and Sophie I know that's how you like to design and work. What is that process looking like? Do you do testing as you go on designs and see how performing it is or how fast it's loading under those different circumstances? Can you just talk a little bit about your design thinking? Sophie: Yeah. What we have been doing is we did all the UX fairly separately, thinking about just user flows and how things were going to be laid out and how things should work and then we did some visual design and then we started combining these by building the pattern library, so we took out patterns from visual design and eventually we've just started building templates and designing in the browser because we have enough of these patterns to build upon and it's been really great; this is the first time that I've worked in this way and what I really love about it is that each of our patterns and components basically stand on their own so it's really easy to look at them and understand exactly where certain weights are coming from. By designing modularly, we can pull those out rather than seeing a page as a whole and not really understand what's causing what. Tim: In a prior episode, we were talking to Jeff Lembeck of Filament Group and he mentioned what he called the "Jank Tank" which is this big box of basically ugly, horrible, slow devices. Considering how wide the net you're spreading, do you have anything similar? Is there a Ushahidi Jank Tank that you guys go to? Sophie: There isn't, but I love that idea. Tim: Yeah, I think we were fans of that too. Sophie: Is it like…what does he mean exactly? Tim: The idea was having… Sophie; …lowest common denominator kind of devices? Time: Yeah, basically grabbing cheap devices or old devices and firing those up: things that are going to be maybe a few years old and are probably going to be a huge challenge to make things feel fluid and work well on those and you have those handy to test them out and see what honestly might be a more typical user would experience than the high end stuff. Sophie: Yeah, we don't have that here in the States; I feel bad calling it a Jank Tank because that's negative-sounding, but in the office in Kenya, they have…they all work in a building and there's quite a few tech companies that work in there and they have something like a Mobile Device Lab and I think it was sponsored by a mobile company there but I was there earlier in the year and it kind of blew my mind; I put a picture of it on Twitter that we can refer to in the Speaker Notes. But that was all of these phones that were phones that I hadn't even necessarily seen, that they don't sell in the States, and they're all used for testing so at some point probably now that I'm talking about it, I'm realizing we should do it sooner rather than later, they have a whole testing lab there that we can test this product on. Tim: Nice. A mobile device lab does admittedly sound a little bit more ??? serious. Katie: Everything that you're saying sounds like, just tying in that accessibility and performance are going hand in hand and it sounds like you've just learned a great deal of empathy in your time there. Is that true and has that influenced your design? Sophie: Yeah, definitely. I think something that has really changed in my mind is thinking about when doing the design, what actions are people going to want to take, so I think that goes with performance too: if we can only load this one button that says "submit a report" and skip all of the images then that's the most important thing, so, really thinking about where to guide people and what the most important and crucial actions are before loading and everything else, so as a designer that's been definitely something that, previously I was doing client work and it was like we had this long list of requirements that we had to fit in and now it's kind of re-assessing and re-prioritizing what requirements actually are and having different levels of this is the one thing they need to really use this app and then here's all of this other helpful stuff that could be called crucial but isn't actually life or death crucial. Katie: That's really interesting. Do you think that there's any way that, for those of us still working on client projects, to have those conversations with the client to try to be like, "no, really, but the marketing video isn't truly required"; exercises in priority and stuff: do you have any tips for paring down those requirements? Sophie: I think it's tough if your talking to a marketing person because they'd be like, "no, literally I'm going to die if I don't get this on there." Katie: And you're like, "no, literally, people are on our products like…" Sophie: Yeah. I think any time it's easier to say, "does this go above this in the priority list" people are willing to answer that question rather than either or. So, in general, communicating and deciding things I would recommend ordering rather than choosing people to sacrifice things. Tim: And it seems like that's clarified too in, I would guess one of the reasons why it works so well where you are is because that task, if you're looking at what the most important thing for the user to do is, it's so very clear and so very critical whereas on maybe on a more traditional thing where you're working with marketers or whatever, they may not have as clear a sense of, what is the ultimate purpose of this site? And then it becomes a lot harder to do the prioritization without that. Sophie: Yeah; it's funny because we're in the process right now of re-designing the company site as well as re-designing the product itself and it shouldn't be, because there's no life or death, but it's so much more complicated to prioritize stuff on the company site because there's so many different types of audiences and services that it needs to provide whereas on the app itself, it's pretty clear to say, what's the most important action for someone to take. Tim: Within the new site, do you still have to take into consideration a lot of the same sort of constraints in terms of the different devices and connectivity because that's who your audience is that you're marketing to, or are you marketing to a different group through the site? Sophie: Yeah, the site will be, well that's up for debate; that's I think what we're still trying to figure out. I think by default it's a good idea to not ever say, "oh well only people in the States with nice phones are going to look at this" just because that's a dangerous attitude to have, but it's possibly less of priority for the site itself. Tim: So, going back to prioritizing performance within the actual apps and stuff that you're doing: did you have set targets that you were looking at when you were working V3 of this? Were there hard-set goals; we are not going to go over this amount of weight or we are not going to take longer than this for the map of data to appear or anything like that? Sophie: Yeah, so we set a performance budget and we've set a few of them; we set one for the front-end so what we've done is build this pattern library and we have all of our, we're calling them "weight-outs" which are basically our different views within the app itself. So we had an initial goal for that, that we've met and then we set a separate one for the build itself and that's still in process, so hopefully we can get around that target. I like this too because instead of having one end-goal we can really check as we go. Tim: Yeah, it's nice to have it broken down like that. Can we ask what the targets are, just out of curiosity? Sophie: I can look them up but I don't know them right now. Tim: That's fine. Just curious. Was it in terms of the weight or is it a different sort of, more like an experience-focused metric or anything like that, that you're targeting? Sophie: Yeah, we did a weight and a load time. Tim: Gotcha. OK. Katie: It sounds like you've worked in some of the perceived performance thinking too when you're saying, what's the critical information to load first. Sophie: Yeah, for me as a designer, that's definitely something that I can relate to more and I think in some ways it's possibly more important. I think they work as a team but… Tim: I think it is. And I think that's…I think or I hope that that's what, within the performance community, the people who really that's what they do focus on, I think that that's where everything is starting to, we're starting to wake up to that and certainly to shift towards understanding that it really is about the experience and making sure that the critical things are coming in, whatever the top task, whatever the most important features are on the page or coming in and measuring those sorts of things, instead of this blind race to the finish that we've kind of had in the past. Sophie: Yeah. I'm curious to see how that thinking changes because I love the idea of a performance budget but I think sometimes it can be a little limiting and you wouldn't want to sacrifice certain things just to fit into the performance budget. Not limiting, but I think it's very concrete whereas it should be a fairly fluid depending on context of the site itself. Tim: Sure, yeah, it doesn't dictate what goes on; it's another consideration or it's part of another piece in the puzzle. Sophie: Right. At the same time, it's the easiest way to communicate goals. Tim: True. It's hard to without it having a hard set thing, it's very hard, yeah. Sophie: Yeah, until you have the design done, you can't say, OK, our goal is that this is going to load and then this is going to load this much later. It helps to have a number that everyone can refer back to. Katie: So, when you say for everyone to communicate, who is that? Is that between you and the developers? Is this something that your leadership is really that's close to their heart as well? Sophie: Yeah, I think when I said that it was more coming from my experience with client work, where you're using this number as a kind of tactic to force a client to decide on certain things. For us, since we're all working internally, I think definitely any…basically, everyone wants to see it be as fast as it possibly can, so we're all working towards the same thing. Katie: Is there ever a push-back to even like, "OK, now that we've hit that, let's try another goal that's even faster"? Sophie: Not yet, because we haven't launched it, but I wouldn't be surprised if we launch it and get certain feedback that it wasn't loading or it wasn't working quite right on something. I'm really curious to see once it's out there and people are using it, how people respond. Katie: Yeah, I'm really curious to see what metrics you find out from that. Tim: Did you make a distinction…there's the cutting the mustard approach that the BBC popularized which is the core experience goes to maybe older, less capable browsers/devices and the enhanced experience goes to everybody else. One of the things that that fails at, or that doesn't take into consideration which seems like it would be really important for Ushahidi is the situation where you have somebody is on a very nice device but the connectivity is really awful. Did you have to make any distinction between different experiences or do you just have one experience and that experience itself is extremely lightweight, no matter what the scenario is? Was that enough for you to accomplish or you needed to do? Sophie: Yeah, that's funny; we had our company retreat in Kenya so it was I think maybe about half, maybe a little less of our company is in the US so we all went there with our snazzy iPhones and still couldn't connect to anything and it really, I think in terms of empathy, made us realize: oh, wait a second. But in terms of yeah, I think we're just going to try to make it fast for everyone. We don't have a whole lot of enhancements for people on quicker systems yet. Katie: When you were in Kenya, were there any things that were especially awful to try to load, like you're used to just being part of your everyday life? I'm just curious. Sophie: I remember reading Twitter, on the Twitter app and everything loaded except for the pictures and it made you realize just how often people supplement their tweets with pictures; I remember getting really frustrated about it. Katie: That's interesting. Sophie: But I didn't even really try to do a lot of stuff because it really didn't look very well. Same thing on Instagram; it's like sometimes this progressive loading thing; I would rather it not load at all than, oh, I see all of these people posted great pictures that I can't look at. I'd rather not know than… Katie: Or like the tweets having fomo, oh, you had a joke and I can't see the punch-line! Sophie: Exactly! Katie: That's really interesting because when we're just designing here in a bubble it's like, "well I think that would be fine for you to just know that it's there but not see it" but then when you're actually using it, you're like: no, this sucks. Sophie: Yeah, it's like actively frustrating. Tim: How often do you get to Kenya? Sophie: I'm new to the company; I've only been here since the beginning of the year but I think they do a retreat every year but not necessarily always in Kenya; I think every other year it's in Kenya. And I think other people on the team, it depends, we'll do these what we call Hit Team Meetings because everyone is remote and then mini-teams will get together and all work together for a week so those have been all over the place since people live on opposite ends of the world, depending on who's meeting they usually choose a place that is fairly central for everyone to get to. Katie: We'll start to have a list of sites, Sophie, how much is this really crappy, wherever you end up going… Sophie: How long does this take? Katie: Look it up and tell me how much it sucks. Sophie: It is cool to have people on the team everywhere for that reason. Tim: Sure, I bet that gives you a really nice overall picture of a whole bunch of different landscapes from a technical perspective. Sophie: Yeah. Katie: I know, I didn't prepare a list of questions like I should have! Tim: It's all right, I'm actually having a lot of fun just going off the cuff on this, knowing almost nothing. I did a little bit of research and I had heard of Ushahidi from this big fat book about mobile on a global scale that was put out a couple of years ago. Sophie: That's cool. What was that book? Tim: It's called Global Mobile. It's six hundred pages and each chapter is written by a different author on a different topic and I think Ushahidi came up twice… Sophie: Oh, that's awesome. Tim: …in the book. Sophie: Do you know what they referenced or what it was…. Tim: One was just talking about how…I don't remember one of the references in much detail. The other one I know that they were talking about a variety of different mobile technological solutions that were out there; I think they were focused primarily on Africa in that chapter or similar areas and they were talking about the different services that are making use of technologies that we might consider a little bit more simple, but they're doing really powerful things with it and so I think that they were focused on the SMS aspect, if I remember right. Sophie: Yeah, it's been definitely challenging, but also interesting that designing a product that is not used for one specific thing; it's very much user-focused and people will download it and decide how they use it, so it's been a challenge to design for that and to keep it well designed but also really, really flexible. Tim: Which is why I guess it's so important I guess that you are getting a chance to experience at least a little bit every once in a while because everybody talks about front-end design perspective, from a development perspective, how important it is to put yourself in your user's shoes and when you're talking about what Ushahidi is dealing with, and it's not just the devices or the browser or the connections: it's the situations; it's just so hard. It's so hard to put yourself in those sorts of shoes and understand what it must feel like to use the application or the site in those sorts of scenarios; that's such a huge challenge. Sophie: Yeah, there's no way that, well it sounds selfish saying it, but hopefully there's no way I would ever actually be able to experience that but I think that is why we have such a strong and valuable user advocacy team so that they can really communicate with them when people are in those situations and as they're using it in those situations. Tim: Do you get feedback from the users that are pertaining directly to things like how quickly they're able to report something or how quickly they're able to get access to the data that's been reported, in terms of it takes too long sort of a thing, not just a usability thing but from a performance perspective? Sophie: We haven't. Or not that I know of. Tim: Well, maybe that means you're doing an awesome job! Sophie: We'll see. It's also tough because the new version is yet to be used on a wide…by a lot of people, so we'll see, but it is great because we have the product is also open source, so we have a lot of community submissions and ideas so this is again the first time I've worked on something like that where I'll just be in my normal task list that we use internally as a team and I will get one from…I'm in Katmandu and this thing is not working; can you add this? So it is really cool to see that people care about improving the product. Tim: That's awesome. Katie: Is there anything that you've learned from going through this process and being hit with all of these pretty heavy design constraints that are just, oh man, there's no way I can ignore that. Has that changed your view on design, even outside of this product in particular? Sophie: I think that this has, compared to how I used to design, I'm keeping things a lot more simple, not even necessarily visually; visually as well but also just in how they work and not trying to dictate how something should work. Oftentimes we'll, with other people in my design team or sometimes with our developers, we'll discuss how something, spend hours doing flows and then just realizing, why don't we just let people do what they want to do and take a step back and not define so much how this should be used, so I think just the fact that so many different people are using it for different ways, I've found that it's often best to leave things open and then to not over-complicate them. Katie: Is that kind of freeing? Sophie: Errr….it's been difficult because I'm so used to not being like that. But yeah, kind of. For me as a designer it's been kind of hard to let go of control. Katie: Yeah, that's usually I think our downfall as designers is wanting to control everything and that's kind of a big part about embracing performance too: it just sounds boring to design for performance, even though it's not and it's just like anything else. Sophie: Yeah, I think that I talked to ??? about this a long, long time ago and I remember it's stuck with me in terms of performance but also it's kind of user advocacy side of design, which is that it's not in conflict with the design; you shouldn't think of performance as taking away from visual design but it's just a piece of design so it's just another aspect of UX and if it loads faster, then that'll make the design better. Katie; It means you did your job well! Sophie. Yeah, exactly. Tim: At the end of the day it's about, especially in your case, but at the end of the day it's really about how quickly can the people using the site or the application get the task done that they came to the site to do and so that makes performance comes right up front and center along with any other bit of the process really, information architecture, clear content structure and good visual design; it all contributes. Sophie: That's what design is, right? Getting people to be able to do what they want as easily as possible. Katie: Is this something that you were thinking about before having these experiences in these other parts of the world, or was that the eye-opener of, oh-whoa, my designs should encapsulate this? Sophie: Yeah, I think it's always something theoretically that I could be like, your designs have to load really fast, of course, but selfishly I've always wanted them to look really cool or try out some latest thing that's trending on the web. So I think it's helped me step out and realize I'm not designing this for me. If I want to try something, I can just do it on my own site. Katie: So, I'm wondering if that's maybe the first step for designers that are not wanting to think about it… Sophie: Make them design something for someone in crisis. Katie: Yeah! Sophie: At an agency, every junior designer has to design for… Tim: Oh man! Sophie: …life or death situations. Katie: It's part of the interview process, you need to whiteboard a crisis design. Sophie: Yeah! Tim: Talk about no pressure right off the gate, that's what you're dealing with! Sophie: Have either of you seen Eric Meyer's presentation? Tim: I have not, but I've heard it's excellent. Sophie: I really want to. Katie: I want to see it as well. Sophie: It sounds really… Katie: Everything you are talking about is making we think of that. Sophie: I would really, really love to hear, I don't know if he would…he could be a good guest on the podcast just to talk about his experience. Tim: Yeah, I'd love to talk to Eric. I've heard the presentation is just fantastic but I haven't had a chance to catch it live. I don't know if it's recorded or not anywhere but if so, I haven't seen it. Katie; I think if any of you want come hang out in Ohio, I believe I would have to double-check, but I think he's giving that Rustbelt Refresh in Cleveland in September. Tim: I do like that conference. I did that last year, it's a lot of fun. Katie: So, you want to come hang out in Ohio and see it? Tim: Sunny Cleveland! Katie: Where the lake caught on fire! Sophie: Oh my God! Tim: I don't think I heard this. Katie; I think it was before I ever lived in Ohio, ten or so years ago. It may have been the river, it may have been the lake, I can't remember. One of them was so polluted that it caught on fire at some point. (45:11) Tim: That sounds a lovely! Sophie: That's terrifying! Tim: My only knowledge of Cleveland, which I think is probably upsetting and insulting to all people who live in Cleveland… Katie: Drew Carey Tim: Yep. So, I apologize for that! Sophie: I've been to Cleveland; I spent two weeks in Cleveland. Katie: What? Sophie: I was going through, you know, being young and wanting to work for Obama during the election but even then, I don't know what's in Cleveland, even after spending time there. Katie: I have been to Cleveland twice and I don't know. I live two hours from it; I couldn't tell you what's in Cleveland. Sophie: Really cheap houses if I remember; lots of empty, cheap houses! Katie: One time I tried out to be on The Price is Right this is when Drew Carey was the host and because I am really bad at being like, wooow, cookie-crazy person to be on The Price is Right, they interview every person that goes through the process and like, "why should we pick you?" and my only response was just like, "I'm from Ohio. Just like Drew. Cleveland Rocks, right?" Sophie: Certainly good for TV. Katie: Yeah, well, we'll talk about Ohio. Obviously I did not make it! Tim: That's sad! Sophie: There's still hope; you could try again. Tim: Don't give up on that. Katie: No, that was actually…. Sophie: Don't give up on your dreams. Tim: No, you've got to follow through. Katie: That was horrific; you're just like cattle being herded for six hours through this line as they interview every single person that goes in the thing, so if you're ever in LA and thinking, it would be fun to go on The Price is Right: it's not. Sophie: Think again! Katie: Sophie, you never did that when you lived there? Sophie: A lot of people I knew did. Katie: Did anyone ever get picked? Sophie: They did it…I grew up in LA and they filmed Jeopardy I think right next to my High School and they would do it as a fundraising thing where you would…they'd get a group things of tickets to Jeopardy and then the cheerleading squad or whoever would try to sell them individually. Katie: Whoa! Sophie: That's the closest I've gotten. Katie: Growing up in LA sounds wildly different from anywhere else! Was it? Sophie: We didn't have any lakes that lit on fire! Katie: Wasn't your High School the one from Grease? Sophie: Yep! Katie: Oh man. Sophie: And Party of Five. Is that what that show was called? Katie: Yeah. Tim: That's kinda cool. Katie: I'm more interested in Rydell High though. Sophie: I think they filmed it in partially different schools but the stadium was our stadium. Katie: The track where Danny's trying to be a jock and running around? Sophie: Yeah, yeah. Katie: Aw man, that's the worst part when Danny's trying to be a jock! Sophie: Wonder Years. Wonder Years, that's the block I grew up on. Katie: Really? Sophie: Yep. Katie: Dang, you have Wonder Years, Alison has Dawson's Creek. Sophie: Dawson's Creek. Way before my time. Katie: I want to grow up on a teen drama! Sophie: The Yellow Brick Road was also the street, from the Wizard of Oz. Tim: Where was the Yellow Brick Road? Sophie: Before the houses were built, they filmed it on the street that my house was on. Tim: What? Sophie: And then years later, they had a reunion for all of the oompa-loompas that I accidentally walked on and I was sort of….what? Katie: Were they dressed up? Sophie: No. Tim: Wait, wait, wait…you just said oompa-loompas, but isn't that…that's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, right? Sophie: Not oompa-loompas. Munchkins! The Munchkins! Tim: I was like, wait a minute… Katie: Glad you got that 'cos I didn't! Sophie: I didn't either, I was like, this sounds right. Tim: Yeah, OK, I just wanted to clarify which movie it was. Sophie: Can we cut this out? We're going to get complaints from Little People of America organization. Tim: Yeah, that's fine. Actually we could use a few complaints. We haven't got many or any yet. Katie: Thanks for bringing it up. Now we're going to….well, if you're looking for feedback, let me tell you...you can lay off the chit-chat. Tim: We've gotten plenty, plenty of negative feedback and complaints so please don't bother sending those emails or letters. There, that should… Katie: I'm going to write you a strongly worded letter about your podcast! Tim: It happens. Sophie: This really went off the rails! Tim: It did, but you know what? That's cool. That's all right. I feel like… (50:03) Katie: It was getting really heavy, so you know we to lighten it up. Tim: It was, we had to lighten it up and I feel like it's kind of weird that we had gone this far without talking about Drew Carey so, you know, however many episodes we're into this and Drew Carey had never come up; seems wrong. Katie: Really? Sophie: Give us some Drew Carey facts, Katie! Katie: Actually, well I don't know any Drew Carey facts but I'm sure Tim has lots because that seems like that's your era of TV. Tim: I'm not that old, all right? Katie: Yeah, but Everybody Loves Raymond, you'll never… Tim: Yeah, I actually had…. Sophie: Are you Everybody? Tim: No, no. Am I? Sophie: Do you love Raymond? Tim: I do love Raymond; I do. It was a good show, all right? It was a good show. Under-appreciated by the current generation! Sophie: It was the most popular show ever at the time. Tim: It was really popular; really popular. Sophie: Did you just watch it on multiple TVs over and over again to up the ratings? Tim: Errr…. Katie: He had it going on every TV in the house, the whole day and night! Sophie: The syndication too so they're getting those checks, all from Tim! Katie: Tim loves Raymond! Sophie: New TV show! Tim: All right, all right; neither one of you are ever invited back on this podcast; even you, Katie. That's it, that's the end of it. I'm going to go start my own podcast where we're going to talk about Everybody Loves Raymond and The Drew Carey Show and things like that. Katie: Indiana Jones Tim: Indiana Jones, yep. This really did get off the rails. My gosh! Sophie: Yeah, feel weird going back to talking about crisis. Tim: So, well, you know, maybe we don't, there was a lot of really good, like Katie said, it was getting really serious and really awesome discussion, I think, around performance and it was really cool to hear somebody who is coming at it from that global perspective which, it's just not something that we commonly think about a lot, for most of us aren't dealing with on a day to day basis, so it's really interesting to have somebody come in and burst the bubble a little bit and give us a broader perspective. Katie: Yeah, it's great because I think like you said, Sophie, earlier: in theory everybody's like, it's nice and stuff and obviously we talk a lot about performance and everything and it's one of those things that I think everybody is like, yeah, yeah, in theory yeah, we want it to be fast because we don't want to be shamed by Twitter, but… Sophie: Other web designers! Katie: Yeah, basically. So it's great for you to come in here and give us the perspective of what that actually means and hopefully shed some light on that empathy. Sophie: Yeah, thank you for having me. Katie: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. Tim: Going forward, it anybody wants to follow along and hear more about what Ushahidi's doing or about what you're doing, how do they do that? Sophie: For Ushahidi, I would recommend following Ushahidi on Twitter, ushahidi.com for a lot of information about all their different products and blogposts and then for me, my website is sophieshepherd.com Tim: Very cool. Katie: What about any social media that you may have because, I might be biased, but I think Sophie you have a pretty good account that's pretty funny! Sophie: My Twitter unfortunately is sophshepherd, because there's a British teenager named Sophie Shepherd who took that from me. So, don't follow her unless you want to hear a lot of complaining about tests and boyfriends. Katie: Do you follow her? Sophie: Occasionally! Then I get too mad about it and then I think, what if they think it's me? Katie: Is she also blonde and kind of looks like you? Sophie: Yeah, I've sent her a message; she does kind of. I sent her a message on Facebook once and she went, what are you freak? And then that was it. Katie; Really? Sophie: Yep. Katie: She called you a freak? Sophie: Yeah. I'll put a screenshot in our speaker notes! Katie: OK, well follow the real Sophie Shepherd then. Sophie: Yep. Tim: Well, thank you and we'll definitely have to have you on again to discuss because I feel like there's a lot more we could get into in terms of Drew Carey and Ray Romano, so in a future episode. Katie: You can do that on your separate…Everyone Loves Ray. Tim: And Tim Loves Raymond. Yeah, that's good. It'll be the initial episode. Sophie:: Tim and Ray. All right. Thanks. Bye. Tim: Thanks; bye. Katie: Thanks. Bye. Tim: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Path to Performance podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or on our site pathtoperf.com; you can also follow along on Twitter @pathtoperf. We'd love to hear what you thought so feel free to drop us a note on Twitter or leave a raving and overly kind review on iTunes. We like to read those. And if you'd like to talk about being a guest or sponsoring a future episode, feel free to email us at hello@pathtoperf.com

Library Rap: The Hip Hop Interviews with Tim Einenkel
261: The Library: Gods'Illa Interview (Part 1)

Library Rap: The Hip Hop Interviews with Tim Einenkel

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2015 29:13


This week on The Library we hear part one of Tim's interview with Gods'Illa, a hip hop group consisting of three actual brothers, Acem, Truth and Powerful. Their new album, “Believe In Gods'Illa” is out now on HiPNOTT Records. Asked about the track “Plugged” (feat. Stic Man of Dead Prez& Joe.D) which addresses police brutality and how it came about. Truth tells Tim “It's what we know from growing up in Forestville. It's what Powerful knows from growing up in Brooklyn. It's what we know from having uncles and fathers. It's been this way since the abolishment of slavery in this country. It's always been black men trying to get to a status to be considered a citizen in this country. So, that track is natural. All the music we make, we try to make it universal. It's our experience in comparison to yours. “ #BelieveInGodsIlla #ChuckD Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

All JavaScript Podcasts by Devchat.tv

Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.

JavaScript Jabber
035 JSJ node-webkit

JavaScript Jabber

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2012 44:30


Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.

Devchat.tv Master Feed
035 JSJ node-webkit

Devchat.tv Master Feed

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2012 44:30


Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.

GameCritics.com Podcast
GameCritics.com Podcast Episode 54

GameCritics.com Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2011 128:26


Have you ever considered which games were the turning points in your gaming career? WHY NOT? This week, we reflect on ours. Plus: The "Hypothetical Pre-Order Game," two grown men fight over Tom Welling, and barely a peep about Wing Commander. You're welcome. With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard Naik and Tim "It's a T-Shirt!" Spaeth.

t shirts wing commander tom welling spaeth tim it mike bracken gamecritics brad gallaway