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In this episode of the IC-DISC show, I speak with Tim Loney about his transition from airline industry professional to IT services entrepreneur. He shares his path from working at Continental Airlines through major mergers to establishing Solutions Information Systems, explaining how his experience with severance packages motivated his shift into entrepreneurship. We discuss the importance of business continuity planning, particularly for companies in hurricane-prone areas. Tim tells me about a Houston client whose facilities experienced severe flooding, highlighting how proper data recovery systems made a crucial difference in their ability to resume operations. Managing sensitive data is a key topic in our conversation, as Tim's company works with high-net-worth families, family office sectors, as well as companies in a variety of industries. He explains how word-of-mouth referrals have helped build trust with these clients who require careful handling of confidential information. The conversation turns to Tim's approach to business acquisition, where he focuses on purchasing IT firms from retiring owners. He describes his method of maintaining and growing these businesses post-purchase while sharing insights about how remote management tools have transformed IT services over the past 35 years.     SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I discussed Tim's career evolution from working in the airline industry with Continental Airlines and American Express to establishing his own IT services firm, Solutions Information Systems, in Houston, Texas. Tim shared insights on how his managed IT services company has established a national presence by utilizing robust remote management tools and enterprise-class processes. We explored the importance of business continuity and rapid data recovery, highlighted by a story of a Houston-based company that faced severe flooding and required effective disaster recovery solutions. Tim's firm specializes in managing sensitive data for high-income families in construction and family office sectors, emphasizing the importance of trust and credibility built through word-of-mouth referrals. We discussed Tim's strategy for acquiring small businesses from retiring owners, focusing on enhancing the value of these businesses post-acquisition to ensure continued growth. Tim reflected on his entrepreneurial journey from modest beginnings, emphasizing the significance of diversifying income sources and the evolving importance of data protection in the digital age. The episode concluded with an exploration of the evolution of office communication over the last 35 years, showcasing the technological advancements that have redefined the IT industry.   Contact Details LinkedIn- Tim Loney (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sis-tloney/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Solutions Informations Systems GUEST Tim LoneyAbout Tim TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hey, good afternoon, Tim. Welcome to the podcast. Tim: Hi, Dave, good to see you. Dave: So where are you calling in from today? What part of the world are you in? Tim: I'm in Houston, Texas, just north of Houston, in the Tomball area. Dave: Okay. Tim: Up in our corporate headquarters for the company. Dave: Okay, and now are you a native Houstonian. Tim: I am not. I'm not a native Houstonian. I should be probably classified as a native Houstonian because I've been here for about 35 years or more. Dave: Okay. Tim: But my background is I migrated from Canada the day before my 21st birthday. Dave: Oh, you did. Tim: Yeah, I became a permanent resident here in the United States. And what caused you to want to do that? The economy was pretty bad in Canada at that time and I was working for a commercial airline that had gone through a severance package and they released me with my severance package and I said you know, maybe I should try another country, not just a job, but maybe another country. Dave: Okay, so when you came to Houston then did you stay in the airline? Tim: business I did. I worked for one of the large international airlines called Continental Airlines at the time, which has since been acquired by United Airlines. Dave: You know, to this day I can still tell a legacy Continental flight crew from a legacy United flight crew. Very different cultures, very different cultures, or, as I say, the Continental folks are nice and the United folks are not so nice. Tim: Correct, yeah, I was there during the heavy competition years between Continental Airlines and United. I was actually there in the process with Continental Airlines during a very large merger and acquisition of multiple carriers. We acquired Frontier, people Express and New York Air and put them all under the umbrella of Continental Airlines. So I was there during those years. Dave: Okay, so were you there in the late 90s. So were you there in the late 90s. Tim: I was there from 1985 to 1990. Dave: Okay, yeah, I was only asking because I'd worked at an executive search firm in the late 90s and we worked with Continental during their like, go forward initiative or move forward initiative. Tim: Yep the go forward plan with Gordon Blithoon. He was Yep. Dave: Yep, that was it. So then you left the airline business. What did you decide to go do then? Tim: So I left the airline business and I went to work for one of the largest credit card companies in the world called American Express. Dave: Okay, I think I've heard of them. Tim: Yep and because I had a lot of automation knowledge of how the airlines work. From an automation standpoint, American Express was interested in me and understanding the automation behind the airlines and travel agency systems and they brought me in to be a systems person for the airlines to help them in kind of standardizing a lot of procedures within American Express. Dave: Okay, well, that sounds like a fun opportunity. Tim: Yeah, very rewarding, very educational. I learned so much during my term at American Express. Dave: Okay, but you decided that at some point you wanted to unfurl your wings and see what you could do on your own. Is that right? Tim: unfurl your wings and see what you could do on your own. Is that right? Yeah, you know now that I look back at it. You know I was. I grew up in a family where you were encouraged to go work for a large organization and a big fortune 100 firm, and through your entire life, and leave with a gold Rolex watch and have a great retirement plan. Dave: Yeah. Tim: But as I followed that path, I found myself continuing to get severance packages over and in my experience with the Fortune 100s I received three or four severance packages and those packages kind of educated me on that. It was maybe not the right gig for me and, you know, I was smart enough to be able to exit out of the Fortune 100s and do something on my own, and that's when I decided to start my organization. Dave: Okay, and what's your company called? Tim: So my company is Solutions Information Systems Solutions IS to abbreviate it and we are a managed service provider of IT services across the United States, managing about 175 customers across the US oh wow. Dave: That's interesting. I would have thought you'd have your clients would all be in the Houston area. I guess this newfangled internet thing lets you serve clients remotely. Is that, I guess, how it works? Tim: Yeah, yeah, and we can talk a little bit about what makes us so successful, but the ability to manage and monitor and remediate issues remotely has come a long ways over the years that I've been in IT. Now it's pretty much if you can't do that, why are you in this industry, right? So yeah, and you know it's a lot of like the entire work from home program that the whole world has kind of moved to. We have that ability to do exactly all of that stuff, not only from our corporate headquarters, but remotely as well. If one of our employees needs to work from home, they can do remotely as well. If one of our employees needs to work from home, they can do that as well. So it requires a massive tool set, and I'll refer probably to our tool set a lot, because that's what makes us successful, right Is the tool set that I've been able to put together and build a toolbox full of tools to be able to manage, secure, maintain these infrastructures that we're responsible for. Dave: Well. Tim: I thought IT service firms were. Dave: I thought that was a commodity service. I thought they're all the same. Tim: Oh no, there's quite a bit of difference in how these managed service providers operate and I'll tell you, I would consider us probably in the top 100 nationally and probably the top three in our region of service providers, and the reason I kind of give us that grade and that's a grade that I've given us is that we've been at this for 25 years. I started this practice 25 years ago. I started this practice 25 years ago and over those 25 years I not only brought in enterprise class processes and procedures from my 10 years at American Express, but I've improved upon those processes and procedures over those 25 years. Dave: And we continue to improve on those processes. Okay. Well, what? Yeah, I'm guessing that you're. The clients tend to stay with you for a pretty long time. Is that like until they sell or go out of business or some significant event occurs? Absolutely. Tim: Yeah, and that and that's the type of client that we want to have in our portfolio, right? This is not a consumable product that you go and buy once and go away this is a partnership with our customers. Dave: It really is. Tim: You have to think about the IT infrastructure of any business out there. It's number one, a foundational piece of the business, and it is an instrumental piece in continuing to do business right. A lot of conversations I have are around data protection and security, and that's a lot of what we do right Is how do we protect the data that the customer has and how do we make sure that it remains secure and that nobody compromises that data or extracts that data or modifies that data that's on their infrastructure. Dave: Okay, and I'm guessing you're not trying to be the low-cost provider. Tim: We are not the low-cost provider. I wouldn't say we're the most expensive organization out there, but we are in the higher side, and the reason that we're the higher side is we bring a huge value to an organization. There is a lot of components within the IT support model that our lower competitors don't provide or don't understand, and those are the weaknesses within an organization that will cost them considerable damage to an organization if they get exposed right. Dave: Yeah. Tim: And then kind of go through those if you want to cover some of that stuff. Like let's just give an example of a business continuity plan right. If a company doesn't have a business continuity plan, that should be something that they should have in place, and they should have worked with their IT service provider or internal IT team to make sure that they've got a business continuity plan. If they don't, when an event happens, it's a total dumpster fire right, because they don't know what to do and they're very disorganized and it takes them an extremely long time to be able to recover, if they recover at all. So that's one example. Another example is compliance. There's a lot of compliance that's out there and that compliance is in place for a reason. Compliance is in there because somehow something got compromised and this is a compliance requirement that you now have to be in compliance with. It may be an access control compliance thing. It might be a reporting compliance to a legal agency. Dave: So talk to me about the first thing you refer to as the disaster recovery plan or the disaster recovery and business continuity. Okay, so my listeners love stories, so could you give me an example, like of one of your clients you know anonymously, that maybe went through a situation or maybe a company who was not a client but after they had an issue they hired. You guys give us a sense of like the elements of a really good you know continuity plan. Tim: Sure. So I'll give you an example. I had a neighbor that was in my neighborhood that you know. We would see each other at the neighborhood community pool. Our kids would play together, you know weren't real close to them. But you know you get into the conversation of having hey, what do you do by? The way, and you know, I told him I ran a managed service provider, an IT service firm, and we manage customer networks and we keep them secure. Dave: And he goes oh, okay, okay, Well, we got a guy. Tim: We got a guy he's good, he's been with me for five years. At that point, and you know, and wow, that's great. Well, if we need anything we'll call you, right, the conversation went away and that was about 15 years later. So the guy had been working for him for 20 years managing his stuff, managing his infrastructure, managing his backups, making sure again going back to data protection and security making sure that everything was safe and secure and we could recover it. Well, lo and behold, 20 years later he calls me up it. Well, lo and behold, 20 years later he calls me up, not him, but his wife calls me up, and his wife, you know, worked in the business for a period of time but it exited out. She called me up. She said by the way, I still have your cell phone number. I'm wondering if you're still doing IT, was their question. Dave: Okay. Tim: And I returned back and I said absolutely, I'm still doing IT. What's going on? She goes well. He was afraid to call you because he's embarrassed and we were in a very bad situation. This is a second generation builder supply company, probably doing annual revenue about $10 to $15 million in annual revenue. Dave: I said OK, what's going on? Tim: And she goes. Well, we've been ransomed and our data has been held for ransom and we don't know what to do. And our IT guy doesn't know what to do and he is really stressed out. And so the next step was is like well, I can jump in and I can help you. Let me know if you need my assistance. But these type of scenarios we've worked with before and we know how to be able to either negotiate with the criminals and negotiate the ransom to a point where you can actually pay it. If that's your only option, that's your worst option. But if we can recover your data from some sort of backup, we can go through the recovery process. Kind of summarize it we spent that particular client was not a client at the time and so they didn't have any of our backup or recovery procedures in place. They didn't have any kind of policy in place. They didn't have retention policies, they didn't have off-site backups. They had a lot of things. They didn't have offsite backups. They had a lot of things that were missing in that internal IT person's procedure. So what happened was is we came in and we immediately got on site and determined that they were using tape backup, and this is like way tape backup had expired like a long time ago. They had tape backup, they had ancient equipment, it was really. They obviously had put no money investment into their IT. Okay, the recovery for that client was about a week and a half and we were able to recover about 90% of their data. So it comes down to what we call RTO or recovery time objective. The recovery time objective is how long will it take us to recover your network based on our backup and recovery procedures? That particular customer we were able to get back up. Like I said, it was an extended period of time that they were out and they weren't able to do stuff. They were writing sales orders on paper and going back to a paper process. So they could continue their business, but we did get them back up and operational. We got them recovered and they became a customer and today we run very successful trials of the recovery system, as well as continue to make sure that their data is protected and secure. Dave: Did they end up paying the ransom they? Did not Because you got them close enough to 100%. Tim: We got them close enough where they had physical paper backup of the information that they were able to put back into the system. Dave: Okay, now help me understand the other end of that spectrum with somebody who was a current client that something like that happened to, and what was the difference as far as how long it took before you had them up and running? Tim: Well, you know, our current clients knock on wood have not experienced that. Dave: Because they've got a tighter IT infrastructure. Tim: Right, we've got the security and controls and again going back to the tool set to detect and have early detection of these type of events before they happen. So we have the security operations center that is constantly monitoring the security of the networks and the access to the networks and they look for anything that's kind of out of order. Dave: When something's out of order. Tim: then we identify it. We either isolate that system or we investigate it further and see is this a normal procedure that should be going or not? A normal procedure and a lot of this stuff is becoming part of AI now. Part of the AI capabilities is to be able to identify those things very early and stop them before they get any further into the network. So prevention is obviously a whole lot better than remediation. Right and that's what companies hire us to do is to prevent anything like that, a catastrophic event, from happening. Dave: Okay. Well, what about something that's more like a hurricane hits and wipes out their building? I assume you've had some kind of like natural disaster kind of thing where you've had to enact a continuity plan. Tim: Yep, yep, yep, absolutely so. Hurricanes here in the Gulf Coast of Texas, with the Gulf Coast of Texas being in a hurricane zone, we've had customers that their facilities have gone underwater. So one particular customer was on the south side of Houston and their facility went about five feet underwater. They, interestingly enough, had the server on a brick, thinking it was high enough. Well, it wasn't quite high enough, it was a foot off the ground, but it needed to be five feet off the ground. So that server went underwater and it was on when it went underwater. So it shorted out a lot of the components on the server, in which case, you know, they were like we don't know what to do In that scenario. We actually brought the hardware to our facility and we found out what component had failed and we replaced that component on the system and we were able to recover that system oh, wow, okay yeah, that's what we always want to do, is we want to try to use local recovery as much as possible just because of bandwidth or um, no, because of the time it takes to get the data transferred over from a replication process right. Gotcha If you're dealing with terabytes of data. You have to transfer that terabytes of data from either our data center facility or a cloud infrastructure, and that can be time consuming. That can be hours, if not days, depending upon the data. Okay, so some great stories. I mean, obviously we've had events happen. It's not uncommon for events to happen, but how we handle those events and how quickly we can recover from them is critical to a business to continue business for our customers and they can get back to business and be doing what they're doing selling things, manufacturing things, distributing things, whatever it is Okay. Dave: And are there any particular industries that you have, like you know, kind of particular expertise in where you know you would say that people in this industry might look out to you for yeah? Tim: There is. We're a very horizontal organization so we do have multiple industries that we play in. So we do play in the construction industry A lot of construction firms are in our portfolio, but also kind of an area where we've proven to have not only expertise in what we do but also the trust factor is in family offices. Dave: Oh, really Okay. Tim: Yeah, either high income families or ultra high income families. Obviously the privacy of those organizations, the privacy of the families, absolutely critical, and then the data that they're working with has high confidentiality. So, you know again, if that information was to leak out of the network or leak out of the system, then it would be a serious issue. So we've dealt with some of the highest wealth families in the world, oh interesting. Yep Obviously can't name them, but some brands that you would know, some organizations that you would know. It's amazing when I look at our portfolio, the amount of business like when I'm driving around town and I see companies around town and I'm like been in that building, worked in that customer, handled that particular customer, things like that. So yeah, you know, it's our high income or ultra high income. Families are probably a good percentage of our business. Okay, because they have multiple entities that we can support, consistent across all of those entities. So it's very standardized the way we do our business and very proceduralized so it makes it easy for them to understand. They get a quarterly report that provides them with the details and data that they know what we did for them previously and then we also forecast with a forecasting budget in the October November timeframe to provide them with a forecast so they can budget for their future IT needs and know what they're going to need replaced in the future. Dave: Okay, so was this just a case? You happened to stumble across, you know one of these family offices and then you know they run in the same circles and we're just got around that you guys were the go-to folks. Tim: I will say it has helped right In the. You know, in that particular market referrals are a huge thing. Our first family office we did stumble across. We didn't know we were working with an entity, one of their businesses, and then we, you know, they introduced us to another piece of their business and then they introduced us to the family office. You know we're having troubles with, you know, my buddy, my other firm over here, and we'd like you to kind of help in that area. So that expanded out quite a bit. And you know, again, there couldn't be. Our organization has to be the most trusted organization as a vendor that any company is going to hire, right? Sure, because you have to think about the access to the data that we have. We have access to absolutely everything. We're the administrator of your network, right? We have access to your email account. We have access to your email account. We have access to your employees' email accounts. We have access to your data, your financial data, your payroll data, your bonus data, all of the data that's out there on the network we have full access to. So you have to trust our team to the utmost in order to keep that information private, and I always approach a customer with. We're here responsible to secure and maintain that data. We're not here to look at what that data is. We don't know what that data is. Okay. Dave: Well, that's interesting here. I thought I figured you picked up that first client when you were on your mega yacht at the Cannes Film Festival. It didn't work that way. Tim: Huh, no it didn't work that way. No, it didn't work that way. I don't have a mega yacht and I wasn't at the festival, so okay, okay, yeah, not that I don't enjoy that stuff. I do have a house over at tpc, sawgrass and the players club and I do enjoy the country club life. You know I probably have the least expensive house in the neighborhood but I do enjoy the life. Dave: So nice, nice, I like it. So what do your clients tell you that makes your firm unique, like folks that have moved from another firm to yours, then they've been with you a while and I imagine you'll have a conversation hey, how's it going from your end? Are we meeting your expectations? I imagine you have conversations like that. What are they? What are? Are there any common themes? When they end up comparing you to the prior provider, they had, or how does that go? Tim: Yeah, there's a couple of scenarios there on why customers come to us and leave their current service provider right. One of the biggest things that I found with a customer that may be using a smaller service provider is they are really good at the tech stuff. They're not good at the business or the accounting side of the business, sure. So there's a delay in billing or an inaccuracy in billing and it's all of a sudden they get a stack of invoices three months later for work that was performed that they have no idea whether it got performed or what, and so there's a huge problem with the office operations of those particular service providers. So there's a pain point there and they're like I'm done, they come to me and they go, I'm done, this guy doesn't bill me. And then he bills me all at once, and then I got to try and back that information back into my financials and it totally screws up my forecast and my monthly reporting. So that's one reason that customers come to us. The other one is they don't get a response or the response is like unpredictable. So when they call in, they may get the guy right away, they may get the person like return their call the next day or three days later, so response time is really huge. I have a service desk here that is operated 24 hours a day, so our first level response is within minutes. So if you call my office, you'll get a response within minutes. If not on the first ring, it'll probably be the second or third ring. Dave: Oh, wow. Tim: Yeah, very rarely does any of our calls sit on hold or back up in the queue, so that's one way that customers come to us. The other way that customers come to us is that we have acquired eight other companies in the past 25 years. Dave: Oh, wow. Tim: Yeah, we completed our last acquisition in 2024. And we've gone out and found other service providers that may be struggling. They may not have the right business acumen to be able to run the business, so they're either marginally making money or they're losing money because they don't have the standard operating procedures that we have in place and the true business acumen to be able to run the service as a company. They've got customers, they're doing the work, they're getting paid, but they're not profitable. So we end up with firms like that that have come in through acquisitions. Dave: So yeah, I can see that and that's probably where your American Express background was helpful. Right Because you've had exposure to, you know, enterprise grade operations billing HR. Right operations billing HR right To where? Because American Express strikes me as just a well-run, well-oiled machine? Tim: Absolutely yeah, and I will say yeah, I will give them credit for that. You know it was a great run over there for 10 years and I learned not only about you know my job role and continuing to build on my experience in my job role, but how a company operates from a branding perspective, in branding your organization and keeping that brand consistent, but also in standard operating procedures and standardized deployment of systems. Right. I always refer back to not only my American Express days but the Southwest Airline days of standardization. If you can standardize the particular piece of your business that you're running, then it makes it so much easier. So we have standard software applications that we put out from a security tool set. We have standard equipment that we sell out to our customers, all on the Dell platform. My team is trained on the Dell hardware. They're trained on the tools that we use. The security tools, the management tools and all of those things integrate together to make a successful business. Dave: And again it goes back to enterprise level policies and procedures and way things that are, you know, repeating things that are successful you know, repeating things that are successful, okay Well, it sounds like like the first two parts of your success just seem mind blowing to me how you thought of this. But answer the phone when clients call and invoice timely Wow, I mean that's, that's quite a that's quite as. I mean I can't believe, to be honest, that you shared that secret sauce with me. I mean, my goodness, I mean that's. If you're not careful, there'll be other companies will start answering the phone and invoicing timely with that, you know inside knowledge. Tim: Yeah, I hope that we can improve the rest of the service providers out there, right. Dave: Sure. Tim: Competition is good. I like competition. It keeps us going. It gives us something to work towards as well. Dave: Yeah, so you talked a bit about some of the acquisitions and it sounds like you're kind of in a place where you're always open to the right acquisition. What are kind of the ideal characteristics of like the ideal acquisition? I'm guessing you're not going to try to acquire like E&Y's consulting group. I'm guessing you're looking for smaller operations than that. Tim: Yeah for sure you know. So an organization, the organizations we have acquired, have been anywhere from a half a million dollars to two million dollars in revenue. Those organizations the owners may be getting older, they may be getting ready to retire and they're not sure what they want to do with their business. What they do know is that they don't want to continue to run it Right and that it's marginally. They're making the same amount of money or less than if they had a corporate job Right. So it's sad to see, because they love what they do right and they want to place their customers in with a firm that has a similar culture, that takes care of their customers and really make sure that they're doing the right thing for their customers. So a firm that might be in a half million dollars to two million dollars in annual revenue, or the firm might be a five employee firm or smaller, and that they're getting to that point where they're kind of tired of running the organization and they'd like to transfer. They've taken care of their customers over the years and they've made relationships with those customers over the years and they like to put them with an organization that will take care of those customers and make it a seamless transition for the customer base sure, and I bet, I bet these sellers would probably be shocked if they were able to come in and look at the finances of their business like two years after you've acquired it. Dave: Right, because I'm guessing? Tim: Historically, yes, I will tell you, in probably at least half of those transactions that we've done in the either 12-month or 24-month payout period, they've made more money in that 12-month or 24-month period than they've made in the last three to four years. Dave: Oh, because that earn out ends up being a function of how much you bill over those 12 to 20. And you dramatically increase the revenues, so they're automatically getting participation in that. Absolutely. If they'd known that they would have sold to you 20 years earlier. They just wanted to work for you had their payout and then just become an employee. Right, they want to come out way ahead. Exactly, yeah. Tim: Yeah, now it's really good to see that. I mean, you know, that's one of the things that my competitors don't do. They try to come in and offer this ridiculous number for a business and then the earn out. They beat them up on the earn out and end up with anything. They end up with an initial payment and then maybe they'll get an earn out, maybe they they'll get an earn out, maybe they won't get an earn out, but they're going to tell them how horrible their organization was and how bad the customer base was and how it's not profitable and you know, it's just not how I do business. Dave: Yeah, and I'm having done. Did you say eight acquisitions? Correct, yeah, I'm guessing you've done enough now. That now you have the ability Correct? Yeah, I'm guessing you've done enough now that now you have the ability, the same way that I understand you know when Berkshire Hathaway acquires a at that same point. Now You've got enough success stories that you can point to those as another differentiator, right? Tim: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We're not at the Berkshire Hathaway point, but we got a couple under our belt and a couple of examples that we can refer back to and have some validation around our acquisition process. Dave: Yeah, because I'm just like, as I'm just playing through some hypothetical numbers, like you know, if a company had, say and you don't have to confirm these, but say a company was doing half a million in revenue, the profit is say you know 50 grand and you buy them, is say you know 50 grand and you buy them, and it wouldn't surprise me if, like, two years later, you know that revenue number doubled and the profitability number like quintupled probably, and or you just you know dramatic increase. Just because you know I mean, quite frankly, you just have a better run business model but they had you're able to plug them in and so that's absolutely our goal. Tim: Yeah, and so your win isn't so much we like to see play out right. Dave: Yeah, and so your win isn't like other folks where you promise the moon and then you figure out all of these ways to not pay them. It sounds like your process is just like hey, because in your mind, being a strategic buyer, that business is worth way more to you. You know two years later, once you've done your magic to it, that business is worth way more and so you're okay paying them on an earn out, on a growing revenue number that maybe they didn't even contribute to, because at the end you know, as a I mean like on the front end you might pay, say you know, one times revenue, let's say just to pull a number out but by the time you get to the end of it, if the business is doubled and the profitability is quadrupled, you really ended up paying only one third or one half revenue. And so all of a sudden, whether you know found a way to squeeze them to where the imputed value you paid was one third annual billings or it was half of annual billings really doesn't matter, because the real value for you is like, year three after the earn out. You've got this great profitable book of business that you know you didn't pay much for in comparison to what it's worth two, three years later in your enterprise. Is that right that's? correct, yep, absolutely but the reason you didn't pay much, though, in in all honesty, was because the business wasn't very valuable. Tim: And it really wasn't right. Dave: Yeah, I mean they had owner value. Tim: Street value had a zero valuation on it right. Dave: Yeah, they had probably owner concentration risk. They may have had customer concentration risk, poor processes systems. You know the type of company that you know. There weren't people beating their door down to buy their because, effectively, you're just buying a job. If you bought that business, all right. How much do you pay for a job? Most people don't want to pay very much for a job. Now, what do you look for in an employee, just like you know the most techie person you can find. Is that really all that matters? Tim: No, it's not necessarily you know the most skilled technical guy out there, right? So one of the strategies that we have and maybe I shouldn't share that because my competitors may hear it, but we are a strong supporter of our veterans, so we have veterans that work in our organization. We're probably a 75 percent veteran organization. Dave: Oh, wow, ok yeah. Tim: Yeah, and we enjoy that. They come to us with technical skills and abilities but we build upon those we really do Right and we develop those particular individuals to be much better at what they do. But having our veterans on our team has been hugely successful from a reliability standpoint, as well as a dedication standpoint and the understanding to be able to follow orders as given, right Okay. So that's how we've been able to do that and our retention rate is extremely high. I would say that our culture is very good. We're very family oriented. We're very you know when work has to get done, work has to get done. But we also realize that the family comes first and there's family things that come in the way that need to be addressed. Right. You can't. Your kid gets sick. You have to go take care of your kid, you can't be at your job, right? Those kinds of things and being able to balance that. That was one of my challenges at American Express. I was a new father in my ninth year at American Express and I realized that, even though it was written in the book and preached on the values of the company, when it came time to actually exercise that it wasn't as flexible as I had hoped I was like you know. This is another reason I kind of need to get out. I need to raise my daughter and I need to, you know, and I plan to have other children. So family values and longevity of employees, it makes a huge difference you have to think about. If you have an IT guy in your organization and they're only there for a year or two years, they've gained a little bit of knowledge about your business and how it operates and what computer systems are, what systems and software you're using in your business. They get intellectual knowledge right that walks out the door when that employee leaves or you release that employee. Dave: Yeah. Tim: With maintaining our staffing. I've got people on my team that have been with us 15 plus years and they have a history of our customers that is like you can't buy that right. Sure, you've got that knowledge of that network, of when it was built, like we've built some of these companies, so we know it from day one and what we've done to different applications and how we've modified them over the years. So just having that knowledge be maintained with your service provider is huge, so, and we can go back and look at you know, oh, here's a ticket from 15 years ago that I worked, that I resolved this issue, wow. Dave: And how do you know? You know, cause it sounds like the company has been growing both organically and through acquisition. How do you know when it's time to hire? Do you wait till? Like people are working a hundred hours a week in complaining and quitting. Tim: Is that? Dave: the point you say oh geez, we probably should get somebody hired and we should probably hire in a hurry. The first person we come across Is that your growth strategy? Tim: for your people? No, definitely not, definitely not. So we have a lot of KPIs in the business that we can measure the performance of our organization, and mainly that's around resource utilization. Okay, so we have a lot of tools in our toolbox that give us an indication of when an employee is overloaded or when they have too much on their plate, so we can shuffle that within the business and be able to see who's got the workload and who doesn't have the workload, be able to move things around within the organization. But then we can also look at our utilization levels and, number one, make sure that we're profitable with those utilization levels but also staff appropriately to those utilization levels and know when it's time right. It's like okay, we acquired a company with five big customers and we didn't get any employees with it. Do we have the bandwidth or do we need to increase our staffing? So we really have a lot of KPIs around measuring that to make sure that we don't stress our existing resources and we balance it out that our people are profitable but they're not overworked. Dave: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And then how do your new employees come to you? Is it referrals from other employees mostly, or no, we do have. Tim: I sit on the board for one of the technical colleges and I use that technical college as our you know more or less recruiting platform. We find the best of the students. You know the kids that are shining. You know they kids that are shining. You know they're showing up on time for their classes, they're interested in developing their skills and they're really, you know, the top students in the tracks right Okay. Yeah, and then we recruit them out of there. We recruit them in at our first level, our entry level, on our service desk team and we build them up in our organization over a period of time, so lots of opportunity for them to grow once they come into our organization. Dave: Yeah, that sounds like a great way to bring new folks on. You can train them the way you want trained with your processes and systems. Tim: And then keep them right. Keep them you can give them a growth path and keep them so that they can be. They can get better at what they do, get a higher compensation, be successful in life. There's nothing makes me happier as an owner than to see an employee grow from where they came in the day they started with us to being successful in life. Buying a home buying a car, having a family, all of those kinds of things right, those are really important for me. They're kind of like energy for me to see a person develop over the course of their career with our organization. Dave: Some of my guests. When I ask them, like what's the most satisfying or gratifying part of the job, it seems to fall into two categories. It's either the satisfaction they get from serving the customer or the satisfaction they get from watching their team grow. It sounds like you're probably more on that watching the team grow and that and then they. I think it was Herb Keller that had the idea of take care of your employees, and your employees will take care of your customers Absolutely. Is that right, that your satisfaction comes more from taking care of the employees, and then the happy customers are just an expected outcome? Tim: Yeah, that is a result, right, absolutely. So you know, when I started started this organization, I started in the spare bedroom of my house. Oh okay, I had two analog phone lines. One was for my phone and the other one was a backup phone line, but it was also used for my dial-up internet to be able to help, oh wow, remote into into customers. Right, and looking back, I walk in now to our operations center and we have a pretty impressive organization and a pretty impressive facility that we own. And walking in now I'm like, holy crap, what the heck did I build? Dave: right that's awesome. That's super satisfying right, super yeah I can imagine well I cannot believe how the time is flying by. I always tell my guests it's like the fastest hour of their life is being on the podcast. Tim: How are we going to fill that hour, Dave? Dave: Yeah, I know. So I've got just two questions just to wrap up. If you had a time machine and could go back and give some advice to like your 25 or 30 year old self, what advice might you give yourself? Tim: Ooh, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. What do I give myself? I probably would have started my organization sooner. Dave: Bingo. That's the answer that 90% of the people have. Tim: Yeah, I would have started my organization sooner. I needed that enterprise expertise, but I would have started it sooner. Dave: Sure, yeah, it's yeah, because the funny thing when you're an employee and if you follow the career path that your family suggested is actually they think it's a low risk, safe career path. But it's actually a high risk path because you have a customer concentration issue, meaning you have one customer, your employer and, as you learned three or four times that if they decide they don't need you anymore, you basically lose 100% of your income. They don't need you anymore, you basically lose 100% of your income. So it's actually less risky to have you know, even if you're just doing like consulting and all yours, just like a contract employee working 10 hours a week for four different companies, doing whatever. I find that that's far less risky, because if one of the companies doesn't need you, then you know you've only lost a quarter of your revenue. Tim: Yeah, I call it a scenario of I get hired multiple times a month. I hope I never get fired, but occasionally I get fired. But it should have an impact. I like it Well. Dave: so here's my last question. So you're a naturalized Houstonian, like I, am Tex-Mex or barbecue. Tim: Ooh, I like both really well. But yeah, tex-mex thing. If I don't have Mexican at least once a week, I'm going through withdrawals okay, so Tex-Mex? Dave: yeah, now, one person answered that question. I borrowed this from somebody else. One person answered it. They told me about a Mexican restaurant that has great brisket and they make like brisket enchiladas and brisket tacos and brisket quesadillas and he said that was like the best of both worlds there. And I thought, boy, that sounds like it. Tim: Yeah, there's nothing better than a brisket taco, for sure. Dave: That is awesome, I make some of those myself. That is great. Well, hey, as we wrap up, is there anything? I did not ask you that you wish I had Tim. Tim: No, I'd like to close by saying I shared with my team today and I'm always trying to come up with something that I share with my team every day and today I came up with solutions as a defense system designed to protect the most critical assets of your business the data. I like to just kind of close with solutions I as a defense system designed to protect your most critical assets your data, think about think about if your business lost access to its data, regardless of the circumstance. If they lost access to the data, what would that do to your organization? That's what we protect from. That's what we protect from. That's what we protect from happening. Dave: Yeah, Charlie Munger talks about the number one key to recognizing a great business opportunity is finding a company who's riding a wave that's only going to grow and increase over time, Because really all they have to do is just stay on the wave. Well, that certainly has applied to you, right? Because 25 years ago you probably had some companies that said ah our data is not that important. You know, I've got a Rolodex with all my clients' phone number and email, and you know, so the importance of data has only increased during that time, right? Tim: Oh yeah, it's dramatically increased yeah. Dave: Well, it's also. Tim: Everybody trusts that data will be there when they're ready to use it. Dave: Yeah, well, and also the other fact is digitization right 25 years ago, most of their data may not have been digital, it may have been analog or paper or whatever, but now virtually everything is digitized, which makes the data even more important. Tim: I go back 35 years in this industry and when I go back and look at it, I replaced the inner office envelope. Oh yeah, people would type up a memo on a typewriter, put it in an inner office envelope and put whoever was going to and put it in their outbox and the mail guy would come by and pick it up. I replaced that guy. That's true? Dave: Well, that is awesome. Well, Tim, I really appreciate your time. This has really been fun and you've really given me kind of an insight into what makes a really well-run IT services firm operate. So I really appreciate your time. Tim: Yeah, I appreciate your time as well, Dave. Always good to chat with you and good to catch up and appreciate your time today as well. Thanks so much. Dave: All, right, yeah, you too. Special Guest: Tim Loney.

News On The Flipside Week 3 Invasion Kamala W Her Mighty Robot Tim No Nuts Walz

In today's episode of The Milk Check, we're joined by Tim the Dairy Farmer, a farmer, speaker and ag comedian. If you think dairy farming is no laughing matter, then you haven't met Tim. Tune in for a special episode of the podcast, where Tim and the Jacoby team discuss: Strong harvest likely leading to lower feed prices Could dairy heifer prices rival Black Angus prices in the near(ish) future? Could the milk price reach $30? Things you should never plan near the cow pasture Plus, learn how Tim got into the comedy biz and how he silences the hecklers. Don't miss this episode of The Milk Check with Tim the Dairy Farmer. Intro audio (with music): Welcome to the Milk Check, a TC Jacoby & Co podcast where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind. Ted Jacoby II (T3): Welcome, everybody, to the Milk Check. This month we've got a very special episode, we have a special guest, Tim the Dairy Farmer is with us today. Tim is going to ask us what we think is going on with these dairy markets, and we're going to do our best to give him an answer, and we'll see where the conversation goes from there. Tim, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Tim the Dairy Farmer: I've been in the dairy business for 30-something years, taken my licks, started doing standup comedy as Tim the Dairy Farmer about 22 years ago, and I speak at agriculture events. I'm a standup comedian, I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm horrible at marketing myself there, Ted. So basically I'm a dairy farmer that does standup comedy, and they hire me to come to meetings, to wake up after guys like you talk. And here's another thing, this podcast is called the Milk Check, correct? T3: Yes. Tim: All right. This is how you know I'm a dairy farmer, y'all call it the Milk Check, I'm just happy my last milk check had a comma. T3: Well, that's why we call it the Milk Check, because we want to talk a little bit about markets and what's affected dairy farmers' milk checks. Hopefully most dairy farmers do have a comma right now because prices are halfway decent. But before we go to markets, Tim, I've got to ask, tell me about one of the most interesting agricultural events that you participated in. I'd love to hear a good story. Tim: Oh, man. I've got so many. It's not the good ones that you remember, it's the horrible ones. There's three shows, there's the one you planned to do, the one you do, and the one you wish on the drive home that you would have done. I've had all kinds of stuff go wrong. No, for the most part they're always fun. T3: All right. Josh White: So Tim, how often are you on the farm versus having to hit the road for comedy? Tim: I probably go off and do 30, 35 shows a year. Normally I fly out the night before and I'm back the day after. My brother's always been my biggest supporter, he covers while I'm gone. I couldn't have made it this far doing comedy without my brother's support, because we're partners in the dairy and he's always covered for me when I'm gone. T3: Where is the dairy located, Tim? Tim: Central Florida. We're actually over between Fort Myers and Tampa, where all the elderly people go to pass away, you take a right and that's where we're at. T3: When that hurricane came through Fort Myers last year, that affect you guys at all? Tim: No, it affected a few of my buddies. Nobody lost any cows, but barns were just crinkled up like aluminum foil and tossed around. I think over the years I've lost three barns to hurricanes. T3: Oh, really? Tim: Yeah. They tell you how it's rated for 80 mile an hour or whatever, and then when the tornado or the hurricane comes through it wads it up like a piece of paper and chucks it 100 yards. You're like, "Well, that wasn't rated right." Anyway. Go ahead, this is your podcast. T3: Tim, if you have a question to get the market discussion started, why don't you go ahead and shoot?

In today's episode of The Milk Check, we're joined by Tim the Dairy Farmer, a farmer, speaker and ag comedian. If you think dairy farming is no laughing matter, then you haven't met Tim. Tune in for a special episode of the podcast, where Tim and the Jacoby team discuss: Strong harvest likely leading to lower feed prices Could dairy heifer prices rival Black Angus prices in the near(ish) future? Could the milk price reach $30? Things you should never plan near the cow pasture Plus, learn how Tim got into the comedy biz and how he silences the hecklers. Don't miss this episode of The Milk Check with Tim the Dairy Farmer. Intro audio (with music): Welcome to the Milk Check, a TC Jacoby & Co podcast where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind. Ted Jacoby II (T3): Welcome, everybody, to the Milk Check. This month we've got a very special episode, we have a special guest, Tim the Dairy Farmer is with us today. Tim is going to ask us what we think is going on with these dairy markets, and we're going to do our best to give him an answer, and we'll see where the conversation goes from there. Tim, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Tim the Dairy Farmer: I've been in the dairy business for 30-something years, taken my licks, started doing standup comedy as Tim the Dairy Farmer about 22 years ago, and I speak at agriculture events. I'm a standup comedian, I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm horrible at marketing myself there, Ted. So basically I'm a dairy farmer that does standup comedy, and they hire me to come to meetings, to wake up after guys like you talk. And here's another thing, this podcast is called the Milk Check, correct? T3: Yes. Tim: All right. This is how you know I'm a dairy farmer, y'all call it the Milk Check, I'm just happy my last milk check had a comma. T3: Well, that's why we call it the Milk Check, because we want to talk a little bit about markets and what's affected dairy farmers' milk checks. Hopefully most dairy farmers do have a comma right now because prices are halfway decent. But before we go to markets, Tim, I've got to ask, tell me about one of the most interesting agricultural events that you participated in. I'd love to hear a good story. Tim: Oh, man. I've got so many. It's not the good ones that you remember, it's the horrible ones. There's three shows, there's the one you planned to do, the one you do, and the one you wish on the drive home that you would have done. I've had all kinds of stuff go wrong. No, for the most part they're always fun. T3: All right. Josh White: So Tim, how often are you on the farm versus having to hit the road for comedy? Tim: I probably go off and do 30, 35 shows a year. Normally I fly out the night before and I'm back the day after. My brother's always been my biggest supporter, he covers while I'm gone. I couldn't have made it this far doing comedy without my brother's support, because we're partners in the dairy and he's always covered for me when I'm gone. T3: Where is the dairy located, Tim? Tim: Central Florida. We're actually over between Fort Myers and Tampa, where all the elderly people go to pass away, you take a right and that's where we're at. T3: When that hurricane came through Fort Myers last year, that affect you guys at all? Tim: No, it affected a few of my buddies. Nobody lost any cows, but barns were just crinkled up like aluminum foil and tossed around. I think over the years I've lost three barns to hurricanes. T3: Oh, really? Tim: Yeah. They tell you how it's rated for 80 mile an hour or whatever, and then when the tornado or the hurricane comes through it wads it up like a piece of paper and chucks it 100 yards. You're like, "Well, that wasn't rated right." Anyway. Go ahead, this is your podcast. T3: Tim, if you have a question to get the market discussion started, why don't you go ahead and shoot?

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

The Team Is joined by heavy metal host and mental health activist Tim No. 37 Martinez. He shares his wealth of knowledge as far as horror and nerd talk go before we pivot to bring you yet another installment of America's Least Favorite Game Show, 'NAME THAT RACIST'. And because we love YOU we are going to ask that you PLEASE listen closely to the mental health talk at the very end! We'll get you through the Hollow Daze! Like Wakanda, BWS is forever!

“Human evolution is largely a tribe on tribe competition. So being a tribal loyalist and transmitting that cultural package reliably, that's our survival edge,” explains Tim Ash, founder of Primal Brain, international keynote speaker, and bestselling author. Tim's career path from exiting his digital marketing agency to consulting and speaking was largely influenced by his background in evolutionary psychology. Today, Tim speaks on how to leverage evolutionary psychology to your advantage within your business.Successful entrepreneurship is primarily based in storytelling, which is all about transmitting cultural knowledge to others. Transmitting this information was a matter of life and death in the early days of humanity and even now, humans are hardwired to seek this tribal connectivity. Great digital marketing should build off the basic principles of storytelling. If you are looking to sell your product or service, appeal to peoples' emotions through sharing your story, as people inherently make decisions based on their emotions. In addition to using psychology to guide your sales and marketing strategies, it can be applied to managing your business as well. For example, Tim recommends starting with your hardest task that takes the most conscious thought first, as there is a limited amount of brain energy available to you. He also shares the shocking fact that caffeine is not actually a stimulant, nor does it act as a replacement for getting enough sleep.When you understand how the brain works and why it evolved to function in these ways, it becomes easier to understand how to build connections with others and how to influence their decision making process. No matter how far humans have come since first evolving, the brain continues to work in the same ways, constantly scanning the environment for danger, seeking tribal networks for a sense of security, and making decisions based on emotional response. Quotes“Never take criticism from someone you wouldn't go to for advice.” (5:00-5:05 | Tim) “Human evolution is largely a tribe on tribe competition. So being a tribal loyalist and transmitting that cultural package reliably, that's our survival edge.” (8:11-8:20 | Tim)“All major psychiatric conditions involve a sleep disturbance.” (10:03-10:08 | Tim)“No decision gets made without emotion.” (18:17-18:19 | Tim) “Tackle your hardest problem, the one that requires the most conscious thought, first.” (24:46-24:51 | Tim)LinksConnect with Welcome to ElomaInstagram: @welcometoelomaWebsite: WelcometoEloma.comWeekly Email Newsletter: bit.ly/RIXEmail Connect with Tim AshTim's website: https://TimAsh.comPrimal Bain: https://PrimalBrain.com Details here: https://acetheagenda.com/tim-ash-for-event-planners/Connect with KileySocial: @kileypeters + Linkedin.com/in/kileypetersWebsites: RAYNEIX.com ,

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.

Welcome to Jenna and Alex's epic equestrian journey through the trails, pastures, and rings of nostalgia as they attempt to turn Tim into a full-fledged Horse Girl! Come along and ride with us as Amy goes to Australia... oh right no sorry Lou and Scott go to Australia and Amy tags along! Welcome to the very 90s tm tm Australia episode in that it takes place in Australia and not so much in the way where there are boomerangs and kangaroos. NO, TIM, DON'T TRY TO LOOK IN THE POUCH! TIM NO! YOU CAN'T KEEP YOUR BOOMERANG IN THERE! New episode every other Wednesday!   Old Fashioned Auto Piano by Razzvio Link: https://freesound.org/people/Razzvio/sounds/79572/ License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

Tim Ringle is Global CEO of Meet the People, an “international family of unified but independent agencies. In the three months since its inception, Meet the People has acquired 3 agency brands. Tim has bigger plans. He intends to bring in a total of up to 15 agencies, reaching from Canada and the US to Europe and Asia. “We have 400 people in North America right now. We want to be 2,000 people in at most 18 to 24 months globally.” Even though he is acquiring agencies at a fast pace, Tim says what he is not building a holding company. He explains that holding companies have been consolidating the industry, the trend a “survival response” to complications from the digitization of processes and channels and, more recently, because covid has changed how work is done. He says small agencies may need to hire one or more people “just to handle the benefits, taxes, payroll, inflation, and salary increases” of those employees who now want to work from “anywhere,” where “anywhere” has different laws, tax rates, and costs of living and working than at an agency's home office. Tim sees holding companies as a powerful trend. Even though there are 14,000 independent agencies in the United States, six major holding company networks “own sixty percent of the entire media industry within the agency space.” However, Tim says, they often don't act in the best interests of their clients because they are driven from the top by financial rather than client interests. He claims that both small, independent agencies and holding companies often fail in communicating when passing clients from one agency or holding-company-entity to the next. “They're only going to talk to each other if there's some money to be made in between . . . there's a lot of lost information . . . .” In Meet the People's “family,” the agency owns its affiliate agencies, but the people within those affiliate agencies also “own a part of Meet the People.” The network structure provides “a fully integrated approach for brands . . . to cross-pollinate across multiple services,” the opportunity for the agency to build multi-brand micro-offices, and scalable support for dealing with “anywhere” variances. Tim says, “Keep the brand, be the best you can, but let us create connective tissue between the different companies to see if we can increase share volume with a client.” Tim has a lot of experience building global agencies. He says he has learned that it is extremely important, “especially in the beginning of the engagement,” to build trust with the client. To do this, his team of disparate agencies will need to work as one. Tim is bringing his people together physically to take time to create “a deep understanding and culture between all the different offices, people, trades, and brands,” building what Tim describes as an “integrated DNA.” They also will be discussing the implementation of individualized OKRs (Objectives, Key Results), a tech tool for tracking accountability. Tim says his agency is very focused on operational excellence, on brand positioning, on bringing really good entrepreneurs . . . and on hyper-goals. He says it is important to make the right decisions now because, “if you build something with small cracks, they become massive gaps when you are at scale.”  As his agency network continues to grow, Tim is excited about finding “really talented entrepreneurs who want to change the industry who can't or are tapping out” with their skills/abilities/finances and being able, through Meet the People, to provide the experience, capital, and structure and small-enough scale “where they can actually still move things.”  Tim can be reached on his agency's website at: https://www.meet-the-people.com/. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast I'm your host Rob Kischuk and I'm joined today by Tim Ringle, Global CEO at Meet the People based in New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Tim. TIM: Hi, Rob. Thank you for having me. ROB: It's great to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about Meet the People, what is the business, and what are you all best at. TIM: I think, to understand what we are building with Meet the People, you have to understand a bit of my background. I've been an entrepreneur in the agency space – primarily digital agency space for 24 years. That sounds long but I'm also 45 years old so I can carry that. I started my first agency literally in the basement of my friend's house. We started as a SEO agency digital marketing agency, very much focused on performance marketing. I was blessed to be able to do that in '98, '99 – when this industry was about to develop and therefore was able build that business to 150 people and then sell the business. After that, I did a reverse takeover of the company that bought my business –and that got me to around 400 people in Europe. So, I started my first business in Germany – my native Germany – and we scaled the 400 people agency that was all across Europe into 1,000 people. It was stock market listed in beautiful Paris. I left that to move to the dark side of the ad industry as I call it. Having built multiple agencies as an independent agency entrepreneur, you were always battling the holding companies, right? And I swore to myself many times because they beat me and sometimes I beat them. That's how it works, right? I swore to them I would never work for them. So, I ended up moving to New York City and working for 1 of the holding companies who always wanted to acquire my business. So, I did that for 3 years within IPG. I have to say the experience was amazing. I really learned a ton of stuff that I couldn't learn from being someone who was leading 1,000 people. Now I was part of 65,000 people. I inherited an agency there – once again, a performance marketing agency – around 1,000 people – and then left it after 3 years scaling it to 3,000 people. So, I've done this a couple of times and what we're building with Meet the People is what I would say is version number four of my vision of what an independent agency network should look like. We're building it with my 24 years of experience of what I liked and disliked in the agencies that I've built in the past. What I liked the most was that people in the advertising industry are mainly driven by culture. If you're good in your trade in advertising, you can get a job anywhere on the client side in tech companies. You can build your own company because marketing, just like legal, is a service that you always need everywhere. So, selling a product, branding a product, coming up with a marketing strategy is something you can use pretty much in every business in the world. It's 1 of the integrated parts. Why do people choose to work for an agency? Because they love the culture in agencies, right? What we're doing at Meet the People – when we looked at the industry and I had – I still have the same vision. I'm building a global agency network as an alternative to the large holding companies. I figured that nobody's talking about the people anymore. Everybody's talking about technology, data, automation, and how computers will replace us, how AI will come up with creatives – all this kind of stuff. It's true that the technology has enabled us to be extremely more efficient. But, in the end, the new Coke logo or the new “just do it” from Nike does not come out of AI or a computer, it comes out of the brain of a human being a creative strategist. So, we believe (or I believe) that we have to remember in the ad industry that it's all about the people. We are a service industry. Without the people who are sitting behind the machines and using the machines, tech enabled, we're not going to produce disruptive, new ideas that actually put a brand on the map. That's why we're building Meet the People. I can obviously talk much more about it. But that's kind of it in a nutshell. ROB: When you say an agency network . . . what does that look like when it's an agency network? It's not a holding company. I'm curious about the differentiation of some of the different agencies within the network and how you think about that – because your website is very people-centric. It's more about the people, the partners, than it is about this brand and this specialization and this other thing we just acquired and all that you see in the holding company world. TIM: Correct. So, why am I not calling it a holding company? A holding company has one purpose – and it is a financial orientation. right? So, a holding company is most a holding company because it is actually managed by finance people. I don't necessarily I don't want to diss anyone. But I would say that a finance-led company most probably will be struggling with creating the best strategy, best creative, and best outcome for their clients. They might create the best outcome for themselves, right? That's why we're not calling ourselves a holding company. We are running this network of agencies who, don't misunderstand me, we do own the agencies – and the people within the agencies own a part of Meet the People. That's the concept. We are building this, first of all, to fulfill a fully integrated approach for brands so, instead of just servicing one client within one specialty with one agency, we are allowing the conversation to be elevated and to cross-pollinate across multiple services. For example, when our creative agency, VSA Partners, out of Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Beautiful, creative design work and strategy. When they come up with a brand refresh or rebranding or brand strategy – I would love to see that through until you actually can see it on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn – wherever that brand comes to life besides on brochures, in magazines, or the logo or the CI. Many independent agencies, because of their size and their financial scrutiny because they're small, can't invest a lot of capital into innovation or additional services. They can't see that journey through. That means you have a lot of inefficient handshakes in between. That happens in holding companies because they're structured that way, but it happens in independent agencies as well. One independent agency is a hundred people might be excellent in creative. The next one might be excellent in social media. But they're only going to talk to each other if there's some money to be made in between. There's a lot of lost information when a chief creative officer comes up with a brand strategy and somebody implements that on social media in community management. We want to make that a much more seamless flow with less barriers for the client but also more excitement for the people involved because you actually see the product living there and a colleague of you in another agency – but it's part of our structure – has basically put that on the social channel or billboard. ROB: When you come to thinking about – there's, obviously, within a holding company lots of capabilities, you're talking about these more seamless handoffs. How do you think about building that team? Did you go out hunting for best of breed agencies to bring them into the group or did you build some capabilities from scratch? How did you think about this? TIM: We were going to do both. We started Meet the People three months ago and since then we had 3 agency brands join us – so we acquired 3 brands. Three agencies and we're going to bring more than 10 – probably 15 plus – companies into Meet the People as a group. We're going to do that in North America – so we already have US, Canada, some capabilities. We're going to do it in Europe and then we're going to do it in Asia. How we decide what to go for depends on what services we need next in that journey. Right now, we have a very strong creative agency with VSA Partners and we have a very strong experiential agency with Public Labels. We have certain services that sit in a similar bucket where the client sees the service, so that adjacent service is part of the scope. If we don't service that ourselves. then we should basically fill that gap either with another agency joining us or with building these capabilities organically with the acquire or actually hire before revenue. Ultimately, we want to have a seamless handshake between the different trades. ROB: We have 2 former guests who have been acquired into a similar opportunity recently – which is interesting. We had Chantel from Imagine Media and Techwood Digital were both acquired. Jared Belski, who was the CEO of 360i, has rolled up 3 or 4 agencies. That's all I know. Is this a trend or is this just 2 people that happen to have done a similar thing and why now? TIM: No, it is a trend. As much as I don't like the traditional holding company model, we have to respect that the holding companies have created an industry. Because there's 14,000 independent agencies in the United States alone. Fourteen thousand and there are six networks and the six networks own sixty percent of the entire media industry within the agency space, right? So they've created an industry. We all live in that ecosystem and that industry. The trend right now and primarily driven by the extreme success of what whatever intention Martin Sorrell, Sir Martin Sorrell, had to bid as for capital. If it was ego, if it was revenge, I don't know. He only knows. But he has been extremely successful from a financial perspective doing that because there is a gap, a vacuum in the Market. So, there's models like that that are older than the S4 Capital MediaMonks model. MediaMonks is only 3 years old but Stagwell MDC by Mark Penn is 5-6 years old and You & Mr. Jones is also 7 years old, I think. So, there's a couple of these what we call an agency rollup network model. They existed for years. What has changed in the industry is covid has accelerated the fact that independent agencies got scrutinized because of their size. Before, when you were 100 people, you could live a very good life as an independent agency. There's two real trends. One is the digitalization of processes and channels. At the same time covid is putting extraordinary pressure on talent, new work. This is all very complicated for smaller companies to handle because now your people tell you, “I want to work from anywhere.” How are you going to do that from a benefits perspective . . . tax perspective? It creates complications. Clients are the same. “Oh, I don't need you to come into my office anymore, but I want to take T&E out of your expenses.” Economy of scale becomes more and more important. A couple of people have understood that, so these networks are created over the last couple of years. But they're also created all over the planet. So there are networks in Asia, networks in Europe, networks in the US. There's only very few who can bridge multiple continents. This is one thing we're going to do with Meet the People. We're going to bridge multiple continents because we believe (or I believe) that our clients want the same quality of service across multiple jurisdictions that are not only North America. So, I've not invented this model, right? They exist. They're very successful. The main reason why they're successful is that, when you have, as I said, 100 people on your P&L, it's very difficult for you to invest a million dollars into innovation technology. You might only have a million dollars of profit and you want to keep some of that. Usually, it's very difficult for them to hire before revenue, to anticipate bigger jumps. In economy of scale, it's easier for us to say, “Ten, twenty percent of our EBITA goes to a business strategy consultancy layer that most agencies can't afford or a technology IP that you actually own as a company. We can make these investments. And that makes it extremely attractive. ROB: How do the capital markets feel about this sort of arrangement? I know there's a lot of money out there looking for yield. I could also see the case that you just have to self-finance this sort of thing if you want to. Where is the money side of the world? Are they looking to fund this sort of thing because they need something to believe in and something that's going to give them better than inflation? Although inflation is getting pretty good now. TIM: Let's make a relatable example. Let's imagine you have a million dollars excess capital right now. You have it lying around. Where are you going to put it? You can put it into crypto. Very risky. You can put it into NFTs. Even riskier. You can put it into traditional venture capital. So, there's a lot of money in the market. But there's also a lot of options in the market. You know pre-IPO, post-IPO, or FinTech, software as a service, space – there's so many categories. The service business as a sector in general or the advertising industry service side of it – not MarTech AdTech – it's not the most attractive industry to invest money. Why? Because you have no tangible assets. The desks, the computers – they're all at home right now. As people, as a company, you maybe own intellectual property. But mostly you have a lot of walking assets and that's your people. For the longest time, the ad industry was not super attractive for larger investors. That has dramatically changed because of the pressure coming from tech. Tech has gotten so heavy on advertising and so relying on advertising. Same time that there's more capital in the market and that a couple of people, including Sir Martin and others, have proven that you can make real money there. Most of the investment in this space is private equity and I would say large family offices. ROB: It's fascinating just to see this emerge. I think I hear what you're saying that you know there's all these different factors in play, right? You have some firms that are a little bit “walking wounded” due to . . . it does get complicated when people want to be in different states and now you're having to pay taxes on your payroll in different states. There's an economy to having 1,000 people, 10,000 people where you know what there's a department that handles that baked into the margins of the overall business. I totally get it. TIM: Yeah, and you don't go through this alone, right? If you have a 50-people business and 20 people decide they don't want to work from New York anymore or LA, they're going to work from anywhere, you need to hire at least 1 more person just to handle the benefits, taxes, payroll plus inflation increases plus salary increases. So, it's complicated. What's important about Meet the People is we give that layer at scale, but the agency brands stay independent in their DNA. We're not changing their brands. VSA Partners that joined us at the beginning of the year is VSA Partners. They've done that. This work for 40 years . . . successful. They're an incredible, talented shop and great people. Why would we change any of that? Doesn't make any sense. Keep the brand, be the best you can, but let us create connective tissue between the different companies to see if we can increase share volume with a client. You're already sitting on an amazing client. You define the strategy. Why don't we talk about who actually builds the website, who actually manages social media? Why don't we talk about it because we already have that relationship? That is very attractive to companies who don't have that client access. There's a lot of independent agencies who are very specialized, who would die to get into a client like Google or IBM or Ford who just can't because they don't have the gravitas.  ROB: When it comes to new and existing business, it sounds like you have some thoughts about the role of location. But the role of location is different from what it used to be. On the one hand you mentioned having offices and having people in these different geographies. But you also had this dynamic where some of the agencies that are joining the network may have played very much off a home field advantage that may not be the case anymore. So, how are you looking at the strategic role of geography? TIM: I think geography stays extremely important. I'm someone who grew up with in-person meetings and built businesses within in-person meetings. I do believe in-person meetings to create chemistry. Especially in the beginning of the engagement with the client, it's extremely important because you're not only buying a service, you're buying the trust into the person across from you. Because there's so many agencies out there. So many service providers out there. Who are you going to go for if the service is extremely comparable and they sadly so are? In the creative space, not as much, but in the digital execution, who does better search than that person – there is a chemistry factor to that. I think in person will stay extremely relevant. Our strategy here is to say, instead of having large headquarters, we're going to have more micro-offices. When we have 10 agencies, let's say in North America, it's extremely likely that we end up having 20 offices all over the place. Instead of having one person in a WeWork, we're going to have 20 people from maybe 5 different agencies in Austin, Texas. Or we're going to have the same in Dallas, or we're going to have the same in San Francisco. We already have 5 offices in North America and anyone from these companies can really work from anywhere within these proximities. We also hire outside of these proximities because we want to have at some point an office in Miami, maybe in New Orleans, and whatnot. So, I foresee that we have certain client-centric larger footprints in New York, LA, San Francisco. We have Boulder, Colorado, we have Chicago, we have Toronto . . . but we're going to have a lot of micro-offices because we need to have flexibility. That's new work. This is part of that. Maybe one of the things we got from covid . . . besides covid. ROB: Really fascinating. Tim, we quite often ask people what lessons they've learned and what they would do differently, but it strikes me that you are actually in the process of getting to do things differently. You know we say, what would you do if you were starting over? You, you have had a chance to do that in some cases. An interesting thing about this model is you're kind of starting on third base but you have agencies who have made it here on their own journeys and you're having to coalesce something together. What are you doing differently in the structuring of Meet the People that you learned in your past and said, “It's got to be different”? TIM: One thing that we're doing the same is creating a deep understanding and culture between all the different offices, people, trades, and brands. I've done this before. The last business I managed for IPG, I ended up having 72 offices around the globe. The business before had 25 offices around the globe and we made sure that these people met physically. It sounds counterintuitive during covid but, the fact that you spend time together workshopping. For example, let's say we have five companies and all their creatives can come together in one location for three days and talk about the differences of their work approach. That would be such a forming experience for them because they all are going to learn from that. You have some people who have done this for 40 years. You have some people who are doing this for 4 years. It's that culture of respect, of understanding, of bringing the different traits together. I think that is extremely powerful. I learned through this journey that you can have you can have the best product in the world. If your people don't believe in it, you're not going to go anywhere. Creating that belief and creating that culture and creating that integrated DNA is a little bit of magic that's extremely important to build a successful business. That's what I learned. What I go to do different, and I kind of promised my wife I would, is travel less. I don't think that's not happening. What I try to do is travel a little bit less because covid allows for that new model. The second thing that I learned is to run an agency a little bit more like an agile tech company. Not because I want to strip away the creativity or anything – none of none of that. The problem in many agencies is that there's a lack of accountability because of a mutual understanding that the creative process is complicated. You know what I mean. Building a tech product is as complicated and needs as much creativity. But somehow there are better levers or control mechanisms in there that allow you to achieve a target in your planning session a little bit quicker and more agile. We want to apply a little bit of startup thinking to a very traditional industry. ROB: I think anybody in the startup industry would claim the same degree of creativity and the same degree of craftsmanship. I'm very much from a software development background and if you want to talk about something that resists measurement. People always say, “Building software is not the same as building a house. You can stamp out houses, but software is a different thing.” Yet within technology there are certain constraints that you talk about. You don't get to just walk away and say, “Well I'm sorry. It'll take some amount of time and we'll show up and it'll be great. There's process to it. TIM: In the advertising industry, that is not always the case. People walk away and they say, “I'm going to come back in a week or two because I don't know when I'm going to come to a product.” I get that because it's creative and it needs time but in many of these trades you can have OKR's, for example. So you can have certain accountability factors or set certain targets. That's how you can manage a large company. A bit more agile and efficient.  ROB: Yeah, so to talk about OKR's for a moment because they're popularly said, but I think sometimes poorly understood. Where did you come to a good understanding of them and how do you think about deploying them? TIM: I've got to be honest with you. This is why I got my management team together in New York this week. They're all here in the office in New York – came in from Germany, London, Connecticut. Sounds like a long trip but we're all coming together. ROB: Can be. TIM: We are coming together right now, here in New York, to decide “how do we implement OKR's within an agency environment” and we're not done with that journey. We're not done with the discussion, but we do know we want to approach it a little bit different than the last 3 times we did it together. I think in six months' time I can answer that question much better. I do believe that OKR's need to be very individualized. Your overall underlying principles are the same, but you have to individually craft it towards your organization because you don't want to over-engineer it as well, right? You need to give people the freedom. So, I will be able to answer that question in three to six months ROB: Sounds good, sounds good. Tim, as you're thinking about what's next for Meet the People and for this evolved holding company model, what's coming up next? What are you excited about? TIM: For us, it's hyper-goals. We have 400 people in North America right now. We want to be 2,000 people in at most 18 to 24 months globally. So, we are very much focused on making the right decisions now because, once you build something with small cracks, they become massive gaps when you are at scale. So, we're very much focused on operational excellence, on our brand positioning, on bringing really good entrepreneurs. When I look at companies, we have to do the financial background checks and stuff like that needs to be in order. But I'm looking much more for entrepreneurs who see that the industry needs to change. That is where the minds are aligned with the companies we are looking at and acquiring and partnering with. That's what I'm most excited about, finding really talented entrepreneurs who want to change the industry who can't or are tapping out with their skills or their abilities or financially and asking, how do I get from 50 to 100 people? How do I get from 100 to 200 people? We bring the experience. We bring the capital. We bring structure where they can actually still move things – because we're not 10,000 people or 5,000 people like our competitors are. So, that's what gets me most excited. Then, obviously, there's always something new in our industry, there's always something new, right? It never stops. I remember when I built my first agency, I thought, when I master search, I'm going to be done with this. Affiliate marketing comes along. Oh well. Then I master affiliate marketing. Then social came and I mastered social. Programmatic came. It never ends – and that's also, to some extent, very exciting because you keep having to learn and adapt. At some point, I will age out, where people will tell me, “Tim you know what? Just drink your coffee. You know we have got it because you don't, and you don't get it anymore.” ROB: (Laughs) Ah, so it's always a struggle to try and figure out what things you might be aging out of and what things are just a little weird. It's always a little bit of both. TIM: That's right. And what's the little bit of bullshit right now in the industry that you can just face over. You don't need to go deep. ROB: I think there were moments early in social where it felt very experimental. It felt very strange. It felt very frothy. We've been through that on an influencer. You were around. I was around. You look at the crypto world and it seems almost like – I could be dead wrong – I think the thing that's most misunderstood but also well observed now about the dot Com era is everything happened eventually. But it didn't happen then. That's maybe where we're at with crypto. I'm not sure. TIM: Well, like crypto is one thing, but then think about NFTs, right?  ROB: Yeah, I'm lumping that in. Yeah TIM: Okay, if you lump it all into one OKR, fair enough. I can talk for hours about my diverse opinions on NFTs and the NFT world. Nevertheless, we have clients who are extremely excited about and who really want to deploy capital, being part of that industry because there's the strong underlying belief of making something really good at the same time. There is this unnecessary social hype on certain topics where I'm thinking, “Guys, you're destroying something that was meant to be really good. I think blockchain and crypto is falling or has fallen into a similar trap where the underlying idea . . . because technically I'm an engineer, right? I got my first pc when I was eleven. Taught myself coding and all this kind of stuff. So, I love the idea of blockchain and decentralized holding of assets and accountability and ledgers. That's amazing. It could solve so many problems in world. The problem is that when dodgecoin comes along in Shibona or whatever, the next thing is, it drags it in the dirt. The underlying technology is incredible. The sad story is people want to get rich fast and lots of them don't. ROB: That's right. It happened before. People built the worst websites in the world for a couple million bucks back once-upon-a-time early internet. TIM: But you remember when you could buy 1 pixel on a website or something like that for a thousand dollars and there were these crazy businesses out there and it's coming back, just differently now. My hope is that just like the dot com bubble . . . yes, there was a hype. Yes, there was a crash but, after that an actual industry developed. So, I'm hoping that we're going to go through the same thing with NFTs and some of these offsprings of crypto. ROB: That makes complete sense. Well, Tim, Thanks for hopping on. Thanks for illuminating us on what's going on in this holding company opportunity, what you're doing with that. I think it's interesting you started and you kind of knew what it looked like to run a large organization. I can imagine starting with 2 people in a closet might not always be the best use of those skills. It's neat to see the industry lining up in a way that that lets us see so much happen so quickly. So, thanks for coming on. Good to have you, Tim. TIM: Thanks Rob for having me. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. ROB: Alright, be well, thanks, bye.

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.

Max: Hello! Welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster. And today all the way from Plano, Texas, I'm delighted to welcome on the show. Tim Meehan who's VP and Global Head for Talent Acquisition Innovation Lab at Pontoon which is part of the Adecco Group. Tim, welcome to the podcast.Tim: Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to chat with you, Max. Max: Thank you. Thanks, Tim. We met years ago in the real world and we were just saying how a business is now keeping us at home, which is lovely. And it's mostly lovely. How else is Pontoon Solutions affected? You know, changed its business over the last couple of years? Can you maybe start off by telling us how Pontoon Innovation had to adapt to the new normal, which is not new at all anymore?Tim:  What do I have? Two hours, right?Well, first on the Pontoon levels. Thanks for asking. I would say our business has been very strong even through the pandemic. We're fortunate to have a portfolio of customers in the technology area so that business remains strong for us. But you know, as we were talking a little bit earlier, Max, I think there's a couple of trends that increasingly occupy my time, my mind, my thought focus in terms of how to bring, not just Pontoon for it, but our entire industry.Because I think we're at an inflection point, an important point in time where the way talent is acquired in our industry is changing radically. And we all understand digitization and the automation that's occurring in homeport experiences, but there are some trends that I increasingly look at and say, you know, I think there, if we're all aware of them then perhaps each of us in our own individual spaces can be thinking about how we work within theMax: And the Talent Acquisition Lab at Pontoon is, correct me if I'm misdescribing it, is like a consultancy practice focused on helping companies crack the case of how to bring in new tech in their talent acquisition tech stack, and how to work within their existing IT architecture. So yeah. Does that sum it up?Tim: Yeah, it does. And it's important to explain it. So for us, at Pontoon Talent Acquisition encompasses all the workforce categories.So certainly RPO, or we call it RXO, the full-time talent acquisitions is a big part of what we do. MSP or contingent labor talent acquisition is another part of our portfolio offering that my team supports, but increasingly statement of work or service procurement. So people coming in on fixed deliverable basis, those are all different ways for companies to access a growing and very powerful talent pool.Then my team, which is a team of technologists, product marketers and, solution designers are responsible for figuring out how to simplify it to our customers because this stuff is really hard. Steve Jobs once said simplicity is the answer, make it easy. And so that's what my team is trying to do. Make a little less confusing for our customers to understand and decide what to do. Max: Yeah, it's so complex for companies, especially when they have a broad variety of job types from blue-collar, white-collar, graduates and, and so on. And almost for every job category, you need a different partner on the sourcing side, on assessments, on the process and, and a strong case could be made for a company to buy 30 different technologies just for talent acquisition, right? I mean, you must have these kinds of, I wouldn't call them horror stories, but customers that are heavily loaded right? Or overloaded?Tim:  Yeah. I think one of the trends I see is some of the tech companies in our space are trying to simplify it by bringing the entire tech stack to the customer.So I look at like Phenom people or an eight folder, and I sense a little bit more ATS, but certainly the capabilities of Symphony Talent. So their pitch to our customers is I bring the stack to, you know, one buy and I can plug you into a whole architecture and ecosystem of capability. And we are seeing companies look at that.The key issue is a lot of times the applicant tracking system is owned by eight. IT, the career site may be run by the marketing department internally developed, and then you've got HR with the room budget as well. So you've got kind of a challenging cross-functional challenge to break those, take those pieces, and have them all into one buy.But I am seeing that trend. I call it the field of dreams, where these big tech companies are going out and they're building it and hoping companies come and we are seeing some interest in that. And certainly, as an outsourcer, we work with those vendors when that's the case.Max: And maybe five, ten years ago, IT had a little, relatively to today, a little bit more power, and it's shifting a little bit to the marketing function.Tim: Well, the other one is my other joke is Love Actually, where Hugh Grant says to uh... where Billy Bob Thornton says to Hugh grant, “I'll give you anything you want as long as that's not something I don't want to give you.” And in some ways, that's sort of the IT group. HR, go out there and look at everything you want. But only if it's within the framework of what I'm willing to let you do, which is to say data, privacy, data, security, data governance, the vendors have to pay a certain threshold. So IT is increasingly empowered, ITN, data privacy, certainly with the  data privacy regulations that are coming out, not without good reason. So you have to be able to operate increasingly. HR has to be able to operate both. Understanding the language and needs of an IT organization in their company, as well as the technology needs of the many vendors out there that can help them supercharge their recruiters.Max: Okay. I thought it was going in the other way, because I thought, well, it's so easy to buy software now that nobody needs to know IT or be an engineer to be able to buy it. And you know, the cloud story of everybody can be a buyer now. But you're seeing it, the counter-trend to that movement. Tim: Absolutely, I am. I think about my career and my early career recruitment. My expertise we're building source two plans with which job boards, how many recruiters in which job boards in a couple of ratios. And today I'm doing data mapping, integration design, architectural reviews, and granted, this is all I do. But any program we want to do, that's what we have to do. And so, you know, I think we're going to have a… no, I think the language of HR in the future, certainly talent acquisition is increasingly require a digital mindset, a digital skillset.But you know, if it's something like, you know, I don't want to do that, that's not my area then I would probably say, make a decision, either build the competency so your TA person listening to me right now, and you're not familiar with Talkpush and all the Talkpush's competitors in the HR tech landscape, and you don't want to be then I would suggest you're going to struggle. And what you should either do is say, I'm going to ramp up and build the competency early or myself, or call me. Honestly, or call one of my competitors. This is what we're doing. We're building out an entire ecosystem of capability to help you through that gap.Max: If you walked into HR on talent acquisition, because you wanted to get inside the psychology and the human and touchy part of recruitment and, and stay away from flow charts and Excel sheets. It's going to be tough, right? You know, you'll have to ask for help some way. Tim: And you know, so my team, we're involved in some of these very big bloggers complex deals. Our HR sponsors will bring us into dialogue with their IT org, and these get extremely technical. But that's what we can bring to the table. Now we've got other clients that they have that competency within their organization. So you know, and if you don't outsource it, you don't have the competency, then you're going to struggle a little bit.Max: And that's when, I guess, that's when companies or TA teams, they call their IT team and say, “Please come and help me out”. And when IT comes in, they come in with a whole new set of requirements, which will change the scope and perhaps tilt the conversation towards having a one standalone system that can do it all. They'd be more likely to consolidate all under one architecture, perhaps. Yeah. And so now let's give some advice to the TA listeners who are dealing with maybe one system to rule them all. And they wanna create some flexibility for their local team, maybe for their local sourcing team. How do you navigate these necessary IT architectures and convince some of your customers to open up?Tim:  Well, I would say, first, self-assess. Where you're at and what your competency is. And if you're in a company where maybe you have an IT organization that's very helpful and wants to be supportive, that's different than maybe you have a discussion with IT, and you don't understand what they're saying.So I would suggest rely on your vendors. So certainly there are in Asia, you know, mature organizations, a big company well-respected, well thought-out. You've got the resources that can command and have the discussion with your HR contacts, technology people to help them get them through these gaps. And we can have that discussion and certainly, Pontoon can have that discussion. So I'd say rely on your vendors. For certainly our HR tech trade shows, hopefully, it will be coming back on their virtual ones. I think just self-assess would be my biggest recommendation. How big is your, if you're having talent, acquisition pains, can you perceive or believe your technology may be a challenge. If you don't have the ability internally to do this, then I would start talking to either outsourcers or significant point solution providers that can help you.And then the only other thing I'll say specific to Asia is, you know, what do you have for the world? Two thirds of the world. It's Asia, right? How many languages? How many countries are there?So even in Asia, the trends for Asia are different. So you'll have the ability to do maybe some work. You can be a little more creative in parts of Asia than you can in some of the Western continents.Max: You were saying in Brazil, for example. A whole different... You typically end up with a completely different architecture than you would for global brands, right? They make exceptions market by market. Those exceptions are would you say they dictated by language barriers or behavior? Yeah. What's your take on those differences? Is it well...Tim: If the case in Brazil specifically. If you're trying to do it… If it's a Brazilian company that is looking for TA innovation, you cannot lay her in a San Francisco technology solution. The cost structure is hysterical. So, you know, you have to find a Brazilian technology companies that can support you in Brazil because their cost structure is lower. In fact, we're talking to them and bring them outside Brazil and come to the rest of the world because they've been developed in a low cost country and they're successful.But certainly the same with India. I mean, you just cannot lay her in an extremely expensive tech stack. If it's only in India or only in Brazil. Now the big multinationals, they're going to spread that cost across their entire organization. And so the cost impact to say Brazil or in India isn't significant.Max: But we are going to make some adjustments for internal accounting and they'll say, “Well, yeah”. They use more seats in India and Brazil, but we'll adjust the cost, the cost per seat.Tim: Yeah, you can. Or you know, the allocation model could be not even specific to that tech, right? So the corporate IT may allocate its cost over all of the businesses in a different way. So I just say certainly when you're talking about multinational and certainly Western countries, IT technology, IT barriers become a big issue.If you're talking to emerging economies, there, I think, there's still a lot of opportunity for point standalone solutions, country-specific technology solutions. Max: Yeah. We've noticed very different candidate behaviors from one place to the next, which communication channels they use. Obviously, the language is a barrier but also almost every country has a different leading job board.With, of course, Indeed being maybe at the top of the mountain and, you know, number two, a number three in a lot of other markets, but companies... Job boards that otherwise nobody would have heard of outside of the US. And they have different levels of openness. So when you have a global customer come to Pontoon and do you... First, put a map of the world? You try to figure out, yeah, where they could... Do you work mostly on global contracts and then you have to map out the whole world and figure out so, you know, how to help them at every pit stop? Tim: No, I would say... boy, I don't know the statistic off the top of my head, but certainly a chunk of them are multicountry. But I wouldn't call them multi-region. Multi-region which to me, it starts to talk global. Those are harder to do. That's a big change management, but to get an Americas deal or a MIA deal, part, you know, parts of Asia, maybe three or four countries in Asia, that's pretty typical whole all or one, not quite as common.Though I will say, we're, maybe part of my self promotion here, part of our answer to what we've talked about today is within my team, we have built out a product portfolio that's very scalable, and it starts with a top of funnel sourcing, highly automated sourcing capability. And then we can layer in various texts using our backbone technology and the cost model is extremely attractive. So it's, it's going to work for us in Brazil. It'll work for us in India. But you know, for me, for us, we need a lot of bullets in our holster. And so the client is you know, they're wanting to just start with a couple of steps. We've got an offering and then as they evolve, we can expand that offering.Max: Okay. So it sounds like you're saying it's more cost-effective even though it's more work and that's where you guys come in, but it's more cost-effective to find point solutions that are, you know, best in class for each stage of the recruitment funnel and then assemble them. And thenthat will outperform, cost-wise, having a, you know, a single platform that offers to do everything.Tim: Well, I wouldn't quite go that far, but I wouldn't disagree that, you know, it's a messy world. And so if you're a… If you're going to be a regional or a global talent acquisition company, and you want a single experience for your customers, then you're going to have to layer in a pretty complex technology solution, not point. But if you're a single country, standalone, then it gives you more flexibility to pick tools that are specific to that country or your use case.And then you got to layer in. Maybe I only want to outsource blue-collar. Or I've got a new ability I'm building. And I only want to... I only want these roles in this location, but this amount of time. So there's besides the technology, there's, you know, customer use case scenarios that you're going to be almost solved for too.Max: Yeah. It's for the RXL business that you cover. You come into our company saying, which part of the talent acquisition defines your brand and you want to own a hundred percent of it, versus something which is something you have to do, but it doesn't necessarily define you. And then it's a little bit easier to outsource, right? Tim: Yeah. Yeah. Max: Great. Well, one question that I love to ask my guests is to share with our practitioner listeners a mistake that you've made--a hiring mistake that you've made and to kind of try to dig it out forgotten raised a memory of yours. Somebody you hired and it just didn't go right. And, you know, we know in a long career such as the one you have, it must've been more than one instance. I mean, you can't hire without making a few mistakes. So is there one that comes to mind without giving names that you can draw an experience from on a lesson for our audience?Tim: Well, I will just say for me personally, hiring somebody is a sacred responsibility and I personally have been hired into a role that I wasn't successful at. I, at the time,  did not know I couldn't do the job. I thought I could. And I believe the person who put me in that role made a bad hiring decision and it had a pretty bad impact on me personally.So that was a learning for me. And yes, I have hired people that didn't work out. And I view that as my failure. I absolutely hold myself accountable. I'm with the team I manage, I view their success as a reflection of my leadership and management competency. So…Max: I applaud your humility  in answering the question. I've asked this question to 50 plus people, and nobody's said that they were the wrong hire. So you've given everybody something to think about there. And I think I might have been the wrong hire once or twice to myself. Tim: Oh, how do you know? I mean, the enthusiasm, you know, so I'm pretty good now about thinking through a couple of things to help me make sure that the person is making this good decision and cyclic. I am. Max: Yeah. And to go back to that time when you were the wrong hire, what was the mistake that the manager did or that your employer did then? Was it they were trying to paint too rosy a picture, or they had written the wrong description?Tim: Well, it was when I moved into the temporary staffing industry many, many, many years ago. I had a career before this industry. I was in recruitment. I did... Max: Good thing you got out thereTim: It's gone. It's, in fact, every company I've ever worked for is bankrupt. So it wasn't my fault, but the industry collapsed. And so when I moved into this industry, they put me in a very important role and the staffing company, and I had to learn the industry. I had to learn the people and I was remote and it was just a lot. And the environment itself was challenging. So I think anybody who would have struggled and I didn't kind of walk through it though.I was asking like really stupid questions. You know, I got an order from a hundred people and I didn't ask what the pay rate was like and you're the leader. So you know, it was a humbling experience, but fortunately, here I am. I'm not going to tell you, but it's decades.Max: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, today remote hiring is a lot easier than it was back then. It was a lot more people are better at it. So maybe if the same scenario played over today, you know, it would have worked better, but certainly industry experience and, you know, never underestimate, I think, the importance of training. Your talent acquisition team and your recruiters on the industry, on the lingo. So they don't sound stupid. I mean, that's pretty essential again.Tim:  I would say don't put your need to fill the job ahead of that person, that human you're trying to hire. Always think about that first.And that comes back to pays dividends. I have amazing people. I'm very proud of the many senior leaders in this industry that I hired and developed and I played a role in their career. And so I, again, it's hiring somebody as a sacred responsibility and if you hire people that don't work out, you gotta own it.It's like Colin Palisson. You break it, you bought it. So just take... Don't think about your mistake. Take it as a personal reflection of your leadership and hiring competency. Max: Strong words. I think we'll wrap it up on that. Thanks so much, Tim, for sharing. Where can people get ahold of you? I guess LinkedIn?Tim:  LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn. Max: Tim Meehan. M-E-E-H-A-N from Pontoon Solutions. And thanks. Thanks very much, Tim. It was a pleasure.Tim: Thank you very much for having me on your show.Max: That was Tim Meehan from Pontoon Solutions, reminding us that if you got into Talent Acquisition and recruitment, to stay away from doing too much technical work and, you know, building technology stack if it's not your cup of tea. There is help out there. There are providers such as Pontoon Solutions and others that can be your partner and help you put together a best of breed solution. Hope you enjoyed it. And that you'll be back for more and remember to subscribe and to share with friends.

Welcome to episode 22 of podcast UNKNOWN! In this episode we cover everything from the violence around the globe, the Steam Deck,Candace Owens grifting, the "Freedom Phone", Officer Tatum not understanding there is a difference between religion and politics, a cop punches a woman in the neck, the moons orbit causing high tides, a trans couples losing battle with biology, and much more. Make sure to follow us on all of our social media. Daylan: Twitter- Yamaken726 Instagram- izanagi26 Josh: Twitter- JDWayt Instagram- JDWayt Tim: Twitter- timplaysdrums Instagram- kujatphotography Follow the podcast: Twitter- THE_podcast_UNK Instagram- the_podcast_unknown --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Welcome to episode 22 of podcast UNKNOWN! In this episode we cover everything from the violence around the globe, the Steam Deck,Candace Owens grifting, the "Freedom Phone", Officer Tatum not understanding there is a difference between religion and politics, a cop punches a woman in the neck, the moons orbit causing high tides, a trans couples losing battle with biology, and much more. Make sure to follow us on all of our social media. Daylan: Twitter- Yamaken726 Instagram- izanagi26 Josh: Twitter- JDWayt Instagram- JDWayt Tim: Twitter- timplaysdrums Instagram- kujatphotography Follow the podcast: Twitter- THE_podcast_UNK Instagram- the_podcast_unknown --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

LinksPete and Jesse Talk Account ManagersTranscriptCorey: If your mean time to WTF for a security alert is more than a minute, it's time to look at Lacework. Lacework will help you get your security act together for everything from compliance service configurations to container app relationships, all without the need for PhDs in AWS to write the rules. If you're building a secure business on AWS with compliance requirements, you don't really have time to choose between antivirus or firewall companies to help you secure your stack. That's why Lacework is built from the ground up for the Cloud: low effort, high visibility and detection. To learn more, visit lacework.com.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 we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today, we're going to be talking about, really, a couple things; building your relationship with AWS, really. This stems from one of the questions that we got from a listener from a previous event. The question is, “How do the different companies that we've worked with work with AWS? Is the primary point of contact for AWS at a company usually the CTO, the VP of engineering, an architect, an ops person, a program manager, or somebody from finance, a [unintelligible 00:01:00] trainer? Who ultimately owns that relationship with AWS?”And so we're going to talk about that today. I think there's a lot of really great content in this space. Pete and I, back in the day, recorded an episode talking about building your relationship with your account manager, and with your TAM, and with AWS in general. I'll link that in the show notes. That's a great precursor to this conversation. But I think there's a lot of great opportunities to build your relationship and build rapport with AWS, as you work with AWS and as you put more things on the platform.Amy: I think one of the things we always say right off the bat is that you should introduce yourself and make a good relationship with your account manager and your technical account manager, just because they're the ones who, if you need help, they're going to be the ones to help you.Jesse: Yeah, I think one of the things that we should also take a step back and add is that if you are listening to this and you're saying to yourself, “I don't have an account manager,” that's actually wrong; you do have an account manager. Anybody who's running workloads on AWS has an account manager. Your account manager might not have reached out to you yet because usually speaking, account managers don't reach out unless they see that you're spending a certain amount of money. They usually don't start a conversation with you unless you specifically are spending a certain amount of money, have reached a certain threshold, and then they want to start talking to you about opportunities to continue using AWS, opportunities to save money, invest in AWS. But you definitely have an account manager and you should definitely start building that rapport with them as soon as possible.Amy: First question. How do you actually engage your account manager?Tim: So, there's a couple ways to do it. If you have reached a certain spend threshold where your account manager will reach out to you, it's real simple: you just reply back to them. And it kind of depends. The question most people are going to have is, “Well, why do I need to reach out to my account manager? If I just have, like, a demo account, if I'm just using free tier stuff.”You probably don't ever need to reach out to your account manager, so what are the things, typical things that people need to reach out to their account manager for? Well, typically because they want to grow and want to see what kind of discounts are offered for growth, and I want to see what I can do. Now, you can open a support ticket, you can open a billing ticket, but what will end up happening is once you reach a spend threshold, your account manager will reach out to you because they want to talk to you about what programs they have, they want to see how they can help you grow your account, they want to see what things they can do for you because for them, that means you're going to spend more money. Most account managers within a little bit of time of you opening your account and reaching a lower spend threshold, they're going to send you an email and say, “Hey, this is my name, this is how you reach me,” et cetera, et cetera. And they'll send you some emails with links to webinars or other events and things like that, and you can typically reply back to those and you'll be able to get your account manager sometimes as well. But like I said, the easiest way to get a hold of your account manager or find out who it is, is to start increasing your spend on AWS.Jesse: So, then if you're a small company, maybe a startup or maybe just a student's using AWS for the first time, likely that point of contact within a company is going to be you. From a startup perspective, maybe you are the lead engineer, maybe you are the VP of engineering, maybe you are the sole engineer in the company. We have seen most organizations that we talk to have a relationship with AWS, or build that relationship or own that relationship with AWS at a engineering management or senior leadership level. Engineering management seems to be the sweet spot because usually, senior leadership has a larger view of things on their plate than just AWS so they're focused on larger business moves for the company, but the engineering manager normally has enough context and knowledge of all of the day-to-day specifics of how engineering teams are using AWS to really be involved in that conversation with your account manager, with your technical account manager, or with your solutions architect, or whatever set of folks you have from AWS's side for an account team. And I think that's another thing that we should point out as well, which is, you will always have an account manager; you won't always have a technical account manager.The technical account manager generally comes in once you have signed an enterprise discount program agreement. So, generally speaking, that is one of the perks that comes with an EDP, but obviously, there are other components to the EDP to be mindful of as well.Tim: So, let me clarify that. You get a technical account manager when you sign up for enterprise support. You don't have to have an EDPs to have enterprise support, but when you sign up for enterprise support, you automatically get a technical account manager.Jesse: And, Tim, if you could share with everybody, what kind of things can you expect from a technical account manager?Tim: So, a technical account manager, I mean, they will do—like, all TAMs everywhere pretty much can liaise with support to escalate tickets or investigate them and see what's going on with them, try and, kind of, white-glove them into where they need to be. AWS TAM's, they also have the same—or a lot of the same access to the backend. Not your data because no one at AWS actually has access to your data or inside your systems, but they have access to the backend so they can see API calls, they can see logs, and they can see other things like that to get insight into what's going on in your system and so they can do analytics. They have insight to your billing, they can see your Cost Explorer, they can see what your contract spends are, they can see all the line items in your bills, they have access to the roadmaps, they have access to the services and the service teams so that if you need to talk to someone at a particular service team, they can arrange that meeting for you. If you need to talk to specialists SAs, they can arrange those meetings for you.With a TAM, you—and if you have enterprise support, and they're looking you for an EDP, you can have what's called an EBC or an Executive Briefing Council, where they, in non-pandemic times, they will bring you to Seattle, put you up for a couple of days and you'll have a couple of days of meetings with service teams to go over, kind of like, what the roadmap looks like, what your strategy for working with those teams are or working with those services are. And you can get good steps on how to utilize these services, whether it's going to be some more deep dives on-site, or whether it's going to be some key roadmap items that the service team is going to prioritize and other things like that. And the EBC is actually pretty neat, but you know, you have to be larger spender to get access to those. Another thing that a TAM can do is they can actually enter items on the roadmap for you. They have access to and can provide you access to betas, or pilot programs, or private releases for various services.You'll have access to a weekly email that include what launches are pending, or what releases are pending over the next week or two weeks. You'll have access to quarterly or monthly business reviews where you get access to see what your spend looks like, what your spending trends are, support ticket trends, you know, usage and analytics, and things like that. So, a TAM can be quite useful. They can do quite a lot for you, especially in the realm of cloud economics. That said, every TAM has their specialty.I mean, depending on how many customers they have, the level of engagement you may get. And, you know, some TAMs are super, super, really good at the financial aspects, some are better at the technical aspects. So, to be fair because the TAM org is so large at AWS, you don't always have the same experience with all your TAMs, and the level of depth to which they can dive is going to vary somewhat.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by ChaosSearch. You could run Elastic Search or Elastic Cloud or Open Search, as they're calling it now, or a self hosted out 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, cyber security. If you're using ElasticSearch consider not running ElasticSearch. They're also available now on the AWS market place, if you prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count toward your EDP 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. Amy: So, let's say we got the best TAM—even though he technically works for us now—when trying to envision what our relationship with the world's best TAM is going to be—and I just imagine that as a nice little block text on a white mug—what is that relationship going to look like? How are we going to engage with them? And even, how often should we talk to them?Jesse: I used to work for an organization that had, I believe, quarterly meetings with our account manager and our TAM, and every time we met with them, it felt like this high stakes poker game where we didn't want to show our cards and they didn't want to show their cards, but then nobody really was able to do anything productive together. And I have to say that is the exact opposite of how to engage your account manager and your TAM.Tim: Yeah, that doesn't sound great.Jesse: No, it was not great. I do not recommend that. You want to have an open, honest conversation about your roadmap, about what you want to do with AWS.Amy: They're not getting that mug.Tim: No, no.Jesse: [laugh].Tim: So, if you have a super-engaged TAM—and I will use my own experience as a TAM at AWS—that we had office hours, routinely, bi-weekly. One customer I had, I would have onsite office hours at their offices in LA, and I would have virtual office hours in offices in London. And those office hours, sometimes I'd have—we—that—we would use those to bring in, whether it was specialist SAs, whether we go over roadmap items, or tickets, or something like that, or we do architectural reviews, or cost reviews, we would schedule quarterly business reviews aside from that, typically sometimes the same day or on the same group of days, but there was typically be different than office hours. I was in their Slack channel so they needed to ping me on something that's not a ticket but a question, we could have conversations in there. A couple of their higher points of contact there had my phone number, so they would call me if something was going on. They would page me—because AWS TAMS have pagers—if they had a major issue, or, like, an outage or something [unintelligible 00:11:05] that would affect them.Jesse: I'm sorry, I just have to ask really quick. Are we talking, like, old school level pager?Tim: No, no, no. Like on your phone, like PagerDuty.Jesse: Okay, okay. I was really excited for a minute there because I kind of miss those old-school pagers.Tim: Let me say, it was like PagerDuty; it wasn't actual PagerDuty because AWS did not actually use PagerDuty. They had something internal, but PagerDuty was the closest analog.Amy: Internal PagerDuty as a Service.Tim: Something like that.Jesse: Oh, no.Amy: So, you know, if you have a very engaged TAM, you would have regular, several times a week, contact if not daily, right? Additionally, the account team will also meet internally to go over strategy, go over issues, and action items, and things like that once or twice a week. Some accounts have multiple TAM, in which case then, you know, the touchpoints are even more often.Jesse: I feel like there's so much opportunity for engagement with your AWS account team, your account manager, your TAM. It's not entirely up to you to build that relationship, but it is a relationship; it definitely requires investment and energy from both sides.Tim: And I would say in the context of who's working with a TAM, ideally, the larger contact paths you have at an org with your TAM, the better off it's going to be. So, you don't want your TAM or account team to only talk to the VP of engineering, or the DevOps manager, or the lead architect; you want them to be able to talk to your devs, and your junior devs, and your finance people, and your CTO, and other folks like that, and pretty much anyone who's a stakeholder because they can have various conversations, and they can bring concerns around. If they're talking about junior devs, your TAM can actually help them how to use CloudFormation, and how to use a AWS CLI, or do a workshop on the basics of using Kubernetes, or something like that. Whereas if you're going to have a conversation with the VP of engineering, they're going to talk about strategies, they're going to talk about roadmap items, they're going to talk about how things can affect the company, they're going to talk about EDPs and things like that. So ideally, in a successful relationship with your TAM, your TAM is going to have several people in your org are going to have that TAM's contact information and will talk with them regularly.Jesse: One of the clients that we worked with actually brought us in for a number of conversations, and brought their TAM in as part of those conversations, too. And I have to say, having the TAM involved in those conversations was fantastic because as much as I love the deep, insightful work that we do, there were certain things about AWS's roadmap that we just don't have visibility into sometimes. And the TAM had that visibility and was able to be part of those conversations on multiple different levels. The TAM was able to communicate to multiple audiences about both roadmap items from a product perspective, from a finance perspective, from an engineering architecture perspective; it was really great to have them involved in the conversation and share insights that were beneficial for multiple parties in that meeting.Tim: And oftentimes, too, involving your TAM when you do have this one thing in your bill you can't figure out, saying, “We've looked and this spend is here, but we don't know exactly why it is.” Your TAM can go back and look at the logs, or go back and look at some of the things that were spun up at the specific time and say, “Oh, here was the problem. It was when you deploy this new AMI, it caused your CPU hours to go way, way up so you had to spin up more instances.” Or a great one was a few years back when Datadog changed its API calls and a lot of people's CloudWatch costs went through the roof. And then several TAMs had to through and figure out, it was this specific call and this is how you fix that and give that guidance back to their customers to reduce their spend. So, being able to have that backend access is very, very useful, even when you are working with an optimization group like ourselves or other folks, to say, “Hey, we've noticed these things. These are the line items we want to get some insight into.” I mean, your TAM can definitely be a good partner in that.Jesse: All right, folks, well, that'll do it for us this week. If you've got questions that you'd like us to answer, please go to lastweekinaws.com/QA. Fill out the form; we'd be happy to answer those on a future 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, did Tim pronounce the shortening of ‘Amazon Machine Image' correctly as ‘ah-mi' or should he have said ‘A-M-I?'Amy: I heard it and I wasn't going to say it. [laugh].Jesse: [laugh].Amy: I was just going to wait for someone to send him the t-shirt.Tim: Just to note, if you put beans in your chili, you can keep your comments to yourself.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: You're just going to keep fighting about everything today, is all I'm—[laugh].Jesse: [laugh]. Oh, no.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

  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.  

TranscriptCorey: 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.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 we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today is a very special episode for two reasons. First, we're going to be talking about all the things that you want to talk about. That's right, it's time for another Q&A session. Get hyped.Amy: And second as is Duckbill's customary hazing ritual, we're putting a new Duckbill Group Cloud Economist Tim Banks through the wringer to answer some of your pressing questions about cloud costs and AWS. And he has pretty much the best hobbies.Tim: [laugh].Jesse: Absolutely.Tim: You know, I choke people for fun.Jesse: [laugh]. I don't even know where to begin with that. I—you know—Amy: It's the best LinkedIn bio, that's [laugh] where you begin with that.Tim: Yeah, I will change it right after this, I promise. But no, I think it's funny, we were talking about Jiu-Jitsu as a hobby, but my other hobby is I like to cook a lot, and I'm an avid, avid chili purist. And we were in a meeting earlier and Amy mentioned something about a bowl of sweet chili. And, dear listeners, let me tell you, I was aghast.Amy: It's more of a sweet stewed meat than it is, like, some kind of, like, meat candy. It is not a meat candy. Filipinos make very sweet stews because we cannot handle chili, and honestly, we shouldn't be able to handle anything that's caramelized or has sugar in it, but we try to anyway. [laugh].Tim: But this sounds interesting, but I don't know that I would categorize it as chili, especially if it has beans in it.Jesse: It has beans. We put beans in everything.Tim: Oh, then it can't be chili.Jesse: Are you a purist that your chili cannot have beans in it?Tim: Well, no. Chili doesn't have beans in it.Amy: Filipino food has beans in it. Our desserts have beans in it. [laugh].Jesse: We are going to pivot, we're going to hard pivot this episode to just talk about the basis of what a chili recipe consists of. Sorry, listeners, no cost discussions today.Tim: Well, I mean, it's a short list: a chili contains meat and it contains heat.Jesse: [laugh].Tim: That's it. No tomatoes, no beans, no corn, or spaghetti, or whatever people put in it.Amy: Okay, obviously the solution is that we do some kind of cook-off where Tim and Pete cook for everybody, and we pull in Pete as a special quote-unquote, outside consultant, and I just eat a lot of food, and I'm cool with that. [laugh].Jesse: I agree to this.Tim: Pete is afraid of me, so I'm pretty sure he's going to pick my chili.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: I could see him doing that. But also, I just like eating food.Tim: No, no, it's great. We should definitely do a chili cook-off. But yeah, I am willing to entertain any questions about, you know, chili, and I'm willing to defend my stance with facts and the truth. So…Amy: If you have some meat—or [sheet 00:03:19]—related questions, please get into our DMs on Twitter.Jesse: [laugh]. All right. Well, thank you to everyone who submitted their listener questions. We've picked a few that we would like to talk about here today. I will kick us off with the first question.This first question says, “Long-time listener first-time caller. As a solo developer, I'm really interested in using some of AWS's services. Recently, I came across AWS's Copilot, and it looks like a potentially great solution for deployment of a basic architecture for a SaaS-type product that I'm developing. I'm concerned that messing around with Copilot might lead to an accidental large bill that I can't afford as a solo dev. So, I was wondering, do you have a particular [bizing 00:04:04] availability approach when dealing with a new AWS service, ideally, specific steps or places to start with tracking billing? And then specifically for Copilot, how could I set it up so it can trip off billing alarms if my setup goes over a certain threshold? Is there a way to keep track of cost from the beginning?”Tim: AWS has some basic billing alerts in there. They are always going to be kind of reactive.Jesse: Yes.Amy: They can detect some trends, but as a solo developer, what you're going to get is notification that the previous day's spending was pretty high. And then you'll be able to trend it out over that way. As far as asking if there's a proactive way to predict what the cost of your particular architecture is going to be, the easy answer is going to be no. Not one that's not going to be cost-prohibitive to purchase a sole developer.Jesse: Yeah, I definitely recommend setting up those reactive billing alerts. They're not going to solve all of your use cases here, but they're definitely better than nothing. And the one that I definitely am thinking of that I would recommend turning on is the Cost Explorer Cost Anomaly Detector because that actually looks at your spend based on a specific service, a specific AWS cost category, a specific user-defined cost allocation tag. And it'll tell you if there is a spike in spend. Now, if your spend is just continuing to grow steadily, Cost Anomaly Detector isn't going to give you all the information you want.It's only going to look for those anomalous spikes where all of a sudden, you turned something on that you meant to turn off, and left it on. But it's still something that's going to start giving you some feedback and information over time that may help you keep an eye on your billing usage and your spend.Amy: Another thing we highly recommend is to have a thorough tagging strategy, especially if you're using a service to deploy resources. Because you want to make sure that all of your resources, you know what they do and you know who they get charged to. And Copilot does allow you to do resource tagging within it, and then from there should be able to convert them to cost allocation tags so you can see them in your console.Jesse: Awesome. Well, our next question is from Rob. Rob asks, “How do I stay HIPAA compliant, but keep my savings down? Do I really need VPC Flow Logs on? Could we talk in general about the security options in AWS and their cost impact? My security team wants everything on but it would cost us ten times our actual AWS bill.”Rob, we have actually seen this from a number of clients. It is a tough conversation to have because the person in charge of the bill wants to make sure that spend is down, but security may need certain security measures in place, product may need certain measures in place for service level agreements or service level objectives, and there's absolutely a need to find that balance between cost optimization and all of these compliance needs.Tim: Yeah, I think it's also really important to thoroughly understand what the compliance requirements are. Fairly certain for HIPAA that you may not have to have VPC Flow Logs specifically enabled. The language is something like, ‘logging of visitors to the site' or something like that. So, you need to be very clear and concise about what you actually need, and remember, for compliance, typically it's just a box check. It's not going to be a how much or what percent; it's going to be, “Do you have this or do you not?”And so if the HIPAA compliance changes where you absolutely have to have VPC Flow Logging turned on, then there's not going to be a way around that in order to maintain your compliance. But if the language is not specifically requiring that, then you don't have to, and that's going to become something you have to square with your security team. There are ways to do those kinds of logging on other things depending on what your application stack looks like, but that's definitely a conversation you're going to want to have, either with your security team, with your product architects, or maybe even outside or third-party consultant.Jesse: Another thing to think about here is, how much is each of these features in AWS costing you? How much are these security regulations, the SLA architecture choices, how much are each of those things costing you in AWS? Because that is ultimately part of the conversation, too. You can go back to security, or product, or whoever and say, “I understand that this is a business requirement. This is how much it's costing the business.”And that doesn't mean that they have to change it, but that is now additional information that everybody has to collaboratively decide, “Okay, is it worthwhile for us to have this restriction, have this compliance component at this cost?” And again, as Tim was mentioning, if it is something that needs to be set up for compliance purposes, for audit purposes, then there's not really a lot you can do. It's kind of a, I don't want to say sunk cost, but it is a cost that you need to understand that is required for that feature. But if it's not something that is required for audit purposes, if it's not something that just needs to be, like, a checkbox, maybe there's an opportunity here if the cost is so high that you can change the feature in a way that brings the cost down a little bit but still gives security, or product, or whoever else the reassurances that they need.Tim: I think the other very important thing to remember is that you are not required to run your application in AWS.Jesse: Yeah.Tim: You can run it on-premise, you can run at a different cloud provider. If it's going to be cost-prohibitive to run at AWS and you can't get the cost down to a manageable level, through, kind of, normal cost reduction methods of EDPs, or your pricing agreement, remember you can always put that on bare metal somewhere and then you will be able to have the logging for free. Now, mind you, you're going to have to spend money elsewhere to get that done, but you're going to have to look and see what the overall cost is going to be. It may, in fact, be much less expensive to host that on metal, or at a different provider than it would be at AWS.Corey: This episode is sponsored by ExtraHop. ExtraHop provides threat detection and response for the Enterprise (not the starship). On-prem security doesn't translate well to cloud or multi-cloud environments, and that's not even counting IoT. ExtraHop automatically discovers everything inside the perimeter, including your cloud workloads and IoT devices, detects these threats up to 35 percent faster, and helps you act immediately. Ask for a free trial of detection and response for AWS today at extrahop.com/trial.Jesse: Our next question is from Trevor Shaffer. He says, “Loving these Friday from the field episodes and the costing”—thank you—“I'm in that world right now, so all of this hits home for me. One topic not covered with the cost categorization, which I'm tasked with, is how to separate base costs versus usage costs. Case in point, we're driving towards cost metrics based on users and prices go up as users go up. All of that makes sense, but there's always that base load required to serve quote-unquote, ‘no users.'“The ALP instance hours, versus the LCU hour, minimum number of EC2 instances for high availability, things like that. Currently, you can't tag those differently, so I think I'm just doomed here and my hopes will be dashed. For us, our base costs are about 25% of our bill. Looking for tricks on how to do this one well. You can get close with a lot of scripting and time, teasing out each item manually.” Trevor, you can, and I also think that is definitely going to be a pain point if you start scripting some of these things. That sounds like a lot of effort that may give you some useful information, but I don't know if it's going to give you all of the information that you want.Tim: Well, it's also a lot of effort, and it's also room for error. It won't take but a simple error in anything that you write where these costs can then be calculated incorrectly. So, that's something to consider as well: is it worth the overall costs of engineering time, and maintenance, and everything like that, to write these scripts? These are decisions that engineers groups have to make all the time. That said, I do think that this is, for me I think, one of the larger problems that you see with AWS billing is that it is difficult to differentiate something that should be reasonably difficult to differentiate.If I get my cell phone bill, I know exactly how much it's going to cost us to have the line, and then I can see exactly how much it's going to cost me for the minutes. The usage cost is very easily separated from—I'm sorry, the base cost is very easily separated from the usage cost. It's not always that way with AWS, I do think that's something that they could fix.Jesse: Yeah, one thing that I've been thinking of is, I don't want to just recommend turning things on and measuring, but I'm thinking about this from the same perspective that you would think about getting a baseline for any kind of monitoring service: as you turn on a metric or as you start introducing a new metric before you start building alerts for that metric, you need to let that metric run for a certain amount of time to see what the baseline number, usage amount, whatever, looks like before you can start setting alerts. I'm thinking about that same thing here. I know that's a tougher thing to do when this is actually cost involved when it's actually costing you money to leave something on and just watch what usage looks like over time, but that is something that will give you the closest idea of what base costs look like. And one of the things to think about, again, is if the base costs are unwieldy for you or not worthwhile for you in terms of the way the architecture is built, is there either a different way that you can build the architecture that is maybe more ephemeral that will make it cost less when there are no users active? Is there a different cloud provider that you can deploy these resources to that is going to ultimately cost you less when you have no users active?Tim: I think too, though, that when you have these discussions with engineering teams and they're looking at what their priorities are going to be and what the engineering cost is going to be, oftentimes, they're going to want metrics on how much is this costing us—how much would it cost otherwise? What is our base cost, what's our usage cost?—so that you can make a case and justify it with numbers. So, you may think that it is better to run this somewhere else or to re-architect your infrastructure around this, but you're going to have to have some data to back it up. And if this is what you need to gather that data, then yeah, it is definitely a pain point.Amy: I agree. I think this is one of those cases where—and I am also loath to just leave things on for the sake of it, but especially as you onboard new architectures and new applications, this should be done at that stage when you start standing things up and finalizing that architecture. Once you know the kind of architecture you want and you're pushing things to production, find out what that baseline is, have it be part of that process, and have it be a cost of that process. And finally, “As someone new to AWS and wanting to become a software DevOps insert-buzzword-here engineer”—I'm a buzzword engineer—“We've been creating projects in Amplify, Elastic Beanstalk, and other services. I keep the good ones alive and have done a pretty good job of killing things off when I don't need it. What are your thoughts on free managed services in general when it comes to cost transparencies with less than five months left on my free year? Is it a bad idea to use them as someone who is just job hunting? I'm willing to spend a little per month, but don't want to be here with a giant bill.”So, chances are if you're learning a new technology or a new service, unless you run into that pitfall where you're going to get a big bill as a surprise and you've been pretty diligent about turning your services off, your bill is not going to rise that much higher. That said, there have been a lot of instances, on Twitter especially, popping up where they are getting very large bills. If you're not using them and you're not actively learning on them, I would just turn them off so you don't forget later. We've also talked about this in our build versus buy, where that is the good thing about having as a managed service is if you don't need it anymore and you're not learning or using them, you can just turn them off. And if you have less than half a year on your first free year, there are plenty of services that have a relatively free tier or a really cheap tier at the start, so if you want to go back and learn on them later, you still could.Tim: I think too, Amy, it's also important to reflect, at least for this person, that if they're in an environment where they're trying to learn something if maintaining infrastructure is not the main core of what they're trying to learn, then I wouldn't do it. The reason that they have these managed services is to allow engineering teams to be more focused on the things that they want to do as far as development versus the things they have to do around infrastructure management. If you don't have an operations team or an infrastructure team, then maintaining the infrastructure on your own sometimes can become unwieldy to the point that you're not really even learning the thing you wanted to learn; now you're learning how to manage Elasticsearch.Amy: Yeah.Jesse: Absolutely. I think that's one of the most critical things to think about here. These managed services give you the opportunity to use all these services without managing the infrastructure overhead. And to me, there may be a little bit extra costs involved for that, but to me that cost is worth the freedom to not worry about managing the infrastructure, to be able to just spin up a cluster of something and play with it. And then when you're done, obviously, make sure you turn it off, but you don't have to worry about the infrastructure unless you're specifically going to be looking for work where you do need to manage that infrastructure, and that's a separate question entirely.Amy: Yeah. I'm not an infrastructure engineer, so anytime I'm not using infrastructure, and I'm not using a service, I just—I make sure everything's turned off. Deleting stacks is very cathartic for me, just letting everything—just watching it all float away into the sunset does a lot for me, just knowing that it's not one more thing I'm going to have to watch over because it's not a thing I like doing or want to do. So yeah, if that's not what you want to do, then don't leave them on and just clean up after yourself, I suppose. [laugh].Tim: I'll even say that even if you're an infrastructure engineer, which is my background, that you can test your automation of building and all this, you know, building a cluster, deploying things like that, and then tear it down and get rid of it. You don't have to leave it up forever. If you're load testing an application, that's a whole different thing, but that's probably not what you're doing if you're concerned about the free tier costs. So yeah, if you're learning Terraform, you can absolutely deploy a cluster or something and just tear it back out as soon as you're done. If you're learning how to manage whatever it is, build it, test it, make sure it runs, and then tear it back down.Jesse: All righty, folks, that's going to do it for us this week. If you've got questions you would like us to answer, please go to lastweekinaws.com/QA, fill out the form and we'd be happy to answer those 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 whether you prefer sweet chili or spicy chili.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Improving movement options is legit, but at what cost? We know that this breathing stuff works, but are there drawbacks to this approach? Can we really make the changes “stick?” These are a few of the many problems that Dr. Tim Richardt and I sift through, in a podcast where the script is flipped and Tim interviews me. In this podcast, you'll learn: How I structure my own training What's better, time management or energy management? Forget following your passion, focus on this instead What my biggest failure was and what it taught me? The dichotomy of the type A personality Movement behaviors: How do we get them to "stick" The dark side of internal cueing The best way to communicate effectively to clients and more! Is there a darkside to all this movement stuff? Is there a better way? Look here to watch the interview, listen to the podcast, get the show notes, and read the modified transcripts. Learn more about Tim 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 More Train, Less Pain Podcast – Tim's podcast that is specifically designed around engineering the adaptable athlete. Instagram: @Tim_Richardt_dpt Show notes Here are links to things mentioned in the interview: Elevate Sports Performance and Healthcare - Where ya boi works Francis Hoare - An excellent coach who works with me at Elevate. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams - One of my favorite books. This book taught me to emphasize systems over goals Millionaire Fastlane by Mj DeMarco - This book completely flipped all that I know about business upside down. Unscripted by MJ DeMarco - This book will keep you pushing forward in all things business Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink - A book that helped me take ownership of all my own problems. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday - If you are going through a tough time, this read is essential. The Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday - This book will help squash any ego issues you may have The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck - Basically modern Buddhism. A must-read Everything is Fucked: A Book About Hope - Why hope is BS and how to start a religion. It's an awesome book. Aline Thompson - One of the best PTs in the Denver area. Georgie Fear - My incredible nutrition coach. A master at behavior change Lorimer Moseley - One of the best pain researchers in existence. David Grey - An excellent physio Gary Ward - All things foot, he's the guy Seth Oberst - One of the best at all things trauma-related from a movement perspective. I reviewed his course here. Michelle Boland - Coach Bo. One of the best coaches in da game. I reviewed her course here. Boo Schexnayder: Rehab Insights from Track and Field - This podcast made me appreciate intensity and its importance How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - The OG book on interacting with others. The Truth Detector by Jack Schafer - An awesome read on elicitation and interaction with others. Bill Hartman - Daddy-O Pops himself. My mentor. Modified Transcripts How I structure training Tim: So, my man, I thought we could start with your own training. And I'm wondering if you could describe the last workout that you personally did? Zac: Well, that would have been yesterday. I train mostly at night after work. Yesterday, it was chin-up day. I start with vision exercises because I did some vision therapy, so I'm just trying to maintain the visual skills that I currently struggle with, which is the ability to diverge. So, divergence is the eyes moving apart. You basically stretch them out, which is kind of like external rotation of the eyes, if you can think about that way, which is expansion. And guess who doesn't have that? Ya boy, same thing with everyone else. So, I do some moves to work on divergence, but then focusing within the divergence, which is accommodation. I spent a few minutes doing that. And then my warmup, I kind of do the same thing. I just roll around on the ground for a while, do just a few moves to - yes, I just literally - they were finishing class at Elevate and Francis is like, "Don't worry about the Ninja who works here in the background." Which was funny. So, just warm-up and then... Tim: Just some spinning flying kicks? Zac: Yes. Something like that. Tim: Yes. Like three sets of five...? Zac: Nunchucks. Tim: Sure. Zac: Yes. Tim: Yes, of course. I saw those in your office. Zac: Yes. Tim: I was going to ask about that. Zac: Once I do that, then I do my main move for the day, which yesterday involved post-activation potentiation combo. So, I'll do med ball throws up against the wall, rotational-style, and then chin-ups with some weight. I did these in the 3-6 rep range until I can't do that anymore. And then I ended up doing a trap bar squat and overhead press. https://youtu.be/CJgcqP_X8jM And then I usually do like a circuit of some - like something single leg. I did like a single-leg squat off a box. I do pushups. I do one-arm dumbbell row. And then, like the body saw. I did a circuit of that with just, you know, whatever reps I need. https://youtu.be/uBRYEyebmAY And then sometimes I'll follow with conditioning. But I did my favorite conditioning yesterday, which is kicking my man Francis ass and spike ball. Boom! You heard it internet. We usually play spike ball once a week and we have some good competition. We both have gotten pretty good. We did this thing where we were just playing Spikeball one on one for months because we both sucked. Tim: Sure? Zac: We didn't tell anyone. Tim: One on one spike ball? Zac: Yes. It's weird, but it's fun. And so, Francis was killing me and I can't have that happen because I hate losing in all things. So, I'm like consuming YouTube videos and figuring out how to serve. And so, now I can serve with both hands... Tim: Walking around with the spike balk all the time and go for it? Zac: Yes. And so, now we have some great games and we're just like hitting it way good. And we finally played two on two, not together, but it was way more competitive than we ever did. So, that was the skill that I learned. And that was my training session. Tim: How do you think kind of in the macro about structuring your own training? Like, do you have short, medium long-term training goals, and you kind of period eyes to accomplish those? Or are you more like a fly by the seat of your pants kind of guy? Zac: I have my main moves that I alternate between. So, what stays the same, and I got this, it's the mass effect program from Daddy-o Pops himself, Bill Hartman, just with some slight modifications. It looks like this: Lift one: 4-6 reps Lift 2: 6-8 reps Lift3: 10-12 You do each of these until you fatigue out of those rep ranges. And then I just do, you know, two to three rounds of whatever else I feel like I need, which can be like eight to 12 reps. And if there's a day I need to condition, I'll do that. If I want to do some extra arm farm, I do that. So, the three mains are there. I keep trying to get better at them. But the other stuff just varies depending on what I'm feeling. Because my main goal training-wise is just to look good naked. Tim: Okay. Zac: And maintain decent body comp. Tim: No, more fat Zac? Zac: Yes. Fat Zac is done. Tim: Fat Zac's not coming back? Zac: He's done. Tim: That guy was fun though. Zac: He was fun. Yes. He had the beard. He is like a young Santa. Tim: Couldn't touch his toes. Zac: Yes. Definitely couldn't squat. I still can't touch my toes, but I can squat now. So yes. And then like, you mentioned like periodization, I need to train enough that someone can take me seriously from a movement standpoint. It's kind of like looking the part when you're being a PT because I do think that that matters to some extent. https://youtu.be/UEZZEWyBN78 Tim: Yes. Zac: But right now, the highest priority is work, teaching, all that stuff, learning the craft. And so, that's always going to be the A1 for right now. Tim: The A1 of life. Yes. A2 is fitness. Time management vs energy management Tim: You gifted me a Scott Adams book about five or six months ago. In it, he talks a lot about this myth of time management and argues that time isn't necessarily the resource that we should be seeking to manage, but it's instead energy. And that in managing your own energy and taking on projects that seem to give you energy rather than drain them or tackling endeavors that seem to increase energy, you can get a lot more done versus just trying to very efficiently kind of micromanage your own time. So, you're one of the most kind of efficient, effective, prolific people that I personally know within our field. What do you think about this energy management concept? Is that something that kind of lets you do the amount of work that you do? Zac: It's very easy to waste time on frivolous things and I try to do my best to minimize that now. But I think because I have a little bit more freedom to do that now. I can, I think, for example, a couple of years ago I had the shackles of student loans, so it's like, I'll take on anything I can do to try to manage that. But I do think about that when I'm thinking about things that don't bring joy into my life, like social media, for example. Tim: Sure. Zac: I try to stay off that as much as humanly possible. Because it does take energy, even answering texts. Like I'm horrendous about getting back to people via text message or phone calls because I eliminated notifications on that. Because even that takes energy out. Tim: Yes. Zac: Even being around certain people who suck the life out of you... Tim: Exactly the black hole type of thing? Zac: Yes. But at the same time, I do think time management to some extent is important as well because, sometimes you might have to do things that are energy-draining, but they help move the needle forward. Does he talk about following your passion as well and how that's BS? Tim: Yes. Zac: Okay. Tim: And I've probably had that conversation with like 10 people over the past week that like passion is fleeting. It's, you know, rocket fuel, but it's not actually going to sustain you over the longer. It opposes a lot of advice that you conventionally hear. Zac: Yes. Well, what you have to do and there's another good guy you should read it. I might have an extra book. I'll give it to you. MJ DeMarco. He wrote "The Millionaire Fast Lane" and "Unscripted." He talks about that as well in the sense that you don't want to do things that you're passionate about. You want to do things that are going to have a positive impact on the world and change things forever. And then if you do that and you make enough money from that, you eventually will become passionate about it becauseyou're making an impact. Tim: Yes. Zac: I love video games, but I'm not going to be making money, playing video games unless I started... Tim: I was thinking about Twitch and Onlyfans. And I'm like, is there a way to combine those concepts and maybe have people pay you to watch you play video games in a reduced amount of clothing? Zac: Haha right? But even with that, sure, you can make money, but Twitch is not going to change the world. Tim: Sure. Zac: And I want to try to make the little world that I'm in, that we're in, a better place in that sense. And that's really the crux of what I do. That's why I try to take complex things and simplify them so most people can carry it out. I have a lot of good friends who are really smart, but they might not be able to devote the time and energy to diving deep into topics because maybe they got kids to worry about and all this stuff and well, they still patients to take care of. Tim: Yes. Zac: And so, if I can help that person get better a little bit faster, then I think we all win. Tim: I mean, and is doing that something that you find gives you more energy than it drains or drains kind of a minimal amount of energy? Zac: Yes, absolutely. I could teach, talk all the time. I love that. Even doing these podcasts. It's so much fun and then it's just time flies by. Because then it's also, you're just interacting with people and... Tim: Also real-life people. Zac: I know. Right? The failure that changed everything Tim: That's useful. I think along the same lines of that book, it's in the title that he's amassed a massive amount of failures and yet still is an extraordinary success. Thinking about kind of your own life professionally in the past five or 10 years, what are some of your favorite failures? Zac: Professional basketball. The thing that I had going into that was getting to pro basketball kind of a big deal. And I probably let that get to my head a little bit. I think I had a little bit of a Dunning-Kruger effect kicking in. Even though like I still would say back then, I was a pretty good practitioner. I'm much better now. But I think I let that get the best of me that I was in that setting. I can't say that that's why I was fired, but after that happened, it completely flipped everything. I did a lot of soulsearching during that time period. And there were four books that I read that just like changed everything. Tim: I bet I know one of them. Zac: Which one? Tim: "Extreme Ownership." Zac: That was definitely one of them. That was one, "The Obstacles is the Way," "Ego is the Enemy” both by Ryan Holiday and then "The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck." by Mark Manson. I read those four and that's when I realized my behaviors, my issues were the problem. And I was able to do things to flip that and just be more humble, reacquire the beginner's mindset, interact better with peers and people who I'm working with. And it really made a big difference. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that I was out of that situation. It pushed me towards more of what I really like, which is this. And the fact that now I have a bit more freedom flexibility than I did in the league, was huge. That's probably the biggest failure that has flipped things for me. [caption id="attachment_13675" align="aligncenter" width="375"] the failure that led to this[/caption] Tim: Going back to something that we discussed, like removing things in your life that are not really serving you. The hard truth is those are people and probably people that you've known a really long time. And you know, If you can't kind of reflect back on your own life and make a decision about which people you're spending time with, you're liable to get trapped in a lot of, and trap is probably a strong word, but waste the resource of energy on relationships that aren't getting you to where you want to go. Zac: Is that something that you ever struggled with? When you knew you had to move on from a situation or a person? Tim: Yes. The job I took right out of school being a director of rehab in rural Colorado. That was so nice because it was lucrative. It was flexible. I think I could still do a lot of the things that I wanted to, because it was a three-day work week. In a lot of ways, it was the perfect situation, but it didn't have any upward trajectory to it. I started at the ceiling. I'm immensely grateful that I had that opportunity. And I think it changed me for the better, in many ways. But after my three years and change out there, I knew it was time to do something else. Something that had a little bit more of an avenue for growth. Zac: Yes. It's hard when you get comfortable like that because the chance of getting stagnant is significantly higher. And so, you always got to put yourself in slightly uncomfortable positions, I think, to really grow. Tim: Yes. It's a really interesting juxtaposition. I mean, that's something I think about all the time that type A people, kind of people like you and I, a lot of what drives us is we're not happy with the way things are. But if you let that mindset pervade everything, then you never really enjoy what you have. So, it's a really interesting tight rope to balance kind of, as physical therapists, as athletes, as human beings, how do we hold these two seemingly opposing ideas in our head simultaneously and not kind of fall apart? Zac: Yes. That's hard. Tim: Yes. Zac: I definitely let that bleed into areas that it shouldn't bleed into. Tim: Yes. Some things in life are just fine and they're okay the way they are. They don't need to be optimized. Zac: Yes. There are some things too that you got to just keep pushing. Tim: Absolutely. I mean, that's how people do great things. You're not going to just get this great opportunity kind of plopped in your lab. Zac: How do you find the balance? You probably are better than me. Tim: I don't know. I don't think I have a really good answer. I was talking to a mutual friend that we have, Aline Thompson. She was mentioning this friend that she has an incredibly high-powered tech broker of some type, makes boatloads of money. But he's a really, really good chef. And he says that the second he no longer has time to cook each day, that's the line in the sand that he draws between. That means he's striving too much. That means he's packing so much into his day that he can't just enjoy what he already has, which is quality time doing something good for himself, for his family, for his children. That really hit home. I love to cook as well. I also like to play Frisbee with my dog, Molly. If I can't take 10 or 15 minutes to do that like that's another - like I just want that to be built into my day-to-day. And then if I can maintain these things and then continue to strive and see certain life, key performance indicators trending in the right direction, I am doing an okay job. Zac: That's something I probably struggle with because I'm thinking about like, as you were saying that I'm like, "That's brilliant. Like everyone needs to find their cooking." And I don't know what mine is. Tim: I think for a lot of people it's working out. Zac: Yes. Tim: Probably not in our industry, because I think we are the people that will probably sacrifice in order to train and train at very inconvenient times. But I think for 99% of the American population, that's one of the early things to go. Zac: Yes. That's very reasonable. See, I can't fathom not having that. It's so automatic at this point that - there was one time where maybe I didn't work out and I'm like, I'll notice that one day, if I had a plan to workout, I can't do it. But I've never gotten to the point where I've worked so much that I've had to cut that out. Tim: And you do, and it's like a super power. But you go about the rest of your day supercharged, you know that you've done something that's probably more difficult than 90% of the people that you're going to interact with have completed that day. Especially for people like I'm a big morning trainer. Zac: Really? Tim: Yes. I'd love to train at like 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM. And that's recent. That's as I've gotten older, but in terms of the Scott Adams concept of adding energy to your life, it's like, that is something that so acutely drains you of energy and yet so quickly fills you right back up. Zac: Yes. It is interesting how that works. Isn't it? Can we get postural changes to stick? Tim: You and I, both physical therapists, we commonly see people that present with particular movement behaviors or positions. And I think one of the most pervasive ideas in our industry is that there's a bad posture or a bad position. Right? Like extension, anterior, pelvic tilt, rotation. What have you? Zac: Oh sure. Tim: There's this idea that there are these bad postures and people have bad postures and well just swap it out for a good posture and they're going to be good to go. Something you and I have talked about before is these postures positions, movement behaviors emerge in order to solve a particular problem? To manage gravity, to breathe, to better prepare you for a training stressor that you've experienced before. So, I guess how do you think about replacing a less than ideal movement behavior or pattern with a better one, because that's kind of what we do with these resets, with these drills to regain mobility? And how do you think about making that intervention like quote-unquote, "sticky" enough so that a person doesn't revert back as quickly as possible? Zac: I don't think it's replacing one for another. I think the key is giving more options. So, for example, if we go with like the forward head, I'm sitting at the chair for an extended period of time, you do that long enough, something might get cranky just because of tissue ischemia or whatever. At the same time, if you sit perched upright and have a good posture, and you hold that long enough, you could probably run into similar issues. [caption id="attachment_13676" align="aligncenter" width="376"] Cranky AF[/caption] But if you can get into each of those and a bazillion more, well, then you're never really overloading any specific areas. And I think it makes you more adept to surviving in several different environments. And I think really that's the key and that's like, what movement variability is all about is you need as many different ways to perform the task as possible even if you're getting the same consistent output. So, like if I did 10 squats and even though they looked exactly the same to the naked eye, if I have to remove that variability, there should be subtle differences with each one of those squats, but it's when I don't have those options available that problem ensue Tim: In both coordinative and endpoint variability. Zac: Exactly. I think that's really where the money is. Now, how do we get that to stick? It's basically, getting people into positions that they can't normally get into or struggle maintaining into and then being able to demonstrate that at progressive intensities and complexities. So, for example, you know, if we look at you and you know because we worked together for a minute. In the beginning, we started with some simple drills, some single leg positions, more supportive, really emphasized breathing. And look at where you're ay when we worked together the other day. Now we're giving you loaded-based strategies... Tim: Kicking ass, taking in? Zac: Yes, yes. Getting you a ridiculous pump. But the thought process is still there because you have the same needs, but can you maintain the positions that we had you get into that we'll get you those needs under higher intensities? Yesterday he did. Tim: And I like that. It's just it's incredibly intriguing to me, this notion that human beings lose movement options, either via physical structure or secondary training adaptations, lifestyle factors. And then it kind of, and I say this as a physical therapist who makes these changes on a daily basis, it shocks me that anything that we do has the power to override whatever stimulus came before to lead to that decrease in variability. Zac: Yes. Tim: You know what I mean? Zac: Yes. Because you're looking at reps time, all that stuff. Tim: Right. I mean, it's almost to think anything in the gym could actually have that prolonged, have an effect. I mean, it also brings up the issue of in a perfect world. Nobody would need activities to regain movement options. That would be the goal, right? You just walk into the gym and you train and your body adapts to the training with no deleterious secondary consequences. That's obviously not the world that we live in, but it does seem like some people need a far lesser volume of these reset low-level types of activities. And they can kind of progress away from that over time. Whereas some people, for whatever reason, you know, need that consistent manual therapy, stimulus or consistent low-level stimulus in order to make these changes stick. Zac: Yes. Well, I think the key is the body has to deem it meaningful and novel and salient. And I'll give you an example. If let's say, you witnessed something terrible happened, anything. Something of 9/11 proportions and it happened right before your eyes. You would remember that for the rest of your life. And it might be just one moment, one instance. And that could shape and shift everything that you thought before that. And I remember when I listened to Lorimer Moseley, he was talking about - I think my buddy Eric was talking about how taking NSAIDs could impair learning. And Lorimer gave the analogy if someone shot a gun right by you, you would remember that that happened, even if you were dosed up on NSAIDS. Tim: Sure. Zac: Of it's meaningful and novel enough, I think it could still lead to long-lasting changes. Tim: Right. Zac: Right? Now, does that mean the equivalent of you doing quadraped breathing is something like witnessing a horrific event? No. But your body might deem it novel and meaningful enough that it does remember that. And it does stick for some people. Tim: Yes. Zac: So, my point by bringing that up is we just don't know what's going to cause things to stick. Whereas some people might need continual reinforcement over and over and over again to get meaningful change. Tim: Something that, like David Gray and Gary Ward talk about all the time is, essentially that same thing, putting people in positions. But then if the nervous system likes that position, it'll remember that position and there's no need to revisit it as long as that's what it reaches for the next time it tries to solve a particular environmental or movement task. And that kind of makes some sense to me because if we think again about the Genesis of these like maladaptive, postures and positions, they are trying to solve a problem, get air in, maintain your ability to view your monitor while you're sitting in a chair, they don't emerge for no reason. This is a Seth Oberst quote, but everybody's body is doing exactly what it needs to do. The dark side of sensorimotor cueing Tim: What you and I do with people involves a high degree of sensorimotor cueuing, right? Having people maintain particular positions. Do you think that there's a potential dark side to sensorimotor cueuing and that it might put people sort of two in their own bodies if kind of left unchecked? If most of their program is find your heels, tuck your hips, breathe this particular way, shift left. Do you find yourself needing to pull that out at certain times for certain people when you design programs? Zac: Yes. I definitely think there's definitely a certain portion of people who can fall victim to that. Tim: Yes. What are those people typically like? I think I know what you're going to say, but I'm interested. Zac: Yes. They're almost hyper-aware of everything in a negative sense. And then that becomes their identity essentially. I feel twisted. I feel twerked. It's the person who gives me the laundry list of anatomical terminology that they shouldn't know, but they know. That can definitely be a problem because it's almost like when they get so intune to their bodies, but focusing only on the negatives. So, with those people, yes, a lot of it is education "It's no, you do not have to tuck your hips with every step you take every move you make." Tim: Because Zac's going to be watching you. Zac: Yes. In the creepiest way possible. Tim: From a deep squat with a really long beard. [caption id="attachment_13677" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Like a boss![/caption] Zac: Yes. And then just like, no, you don't have to feel your heels all the time when you walk and stuff like that. And it's educating them that, "Look, we're just using this as a strategy to increase your movement repertoire." And yes, I think if you can do that and frame the right mindset that can potentially mitigate some of that. Or I think that could also be where, especially when you get to loaded activities, a focus more towards external queuing might be useful. You know? Tim: I like that. I think something that Michelle Boland, Coach Bo, and I talk about frequently. Shout out to coach Bo. Is the need to have things in a programmer or in your life that just make you feel like you're a strong, capable human that doesn't need to think him or herself into positions to be able to execute a task. All of my practices have always been in CrossFit gyms. And I think that this is something that CrossFit gyms do incredibly well. And no CrossFit gym is perfect. And I have my issues with the moves that are commonly prescribed the over-reliance on barbells, but they do a really good job of getting people that haven't been doing anything intense and getting them to not fear doing a hang snatch, doing a deadlift from the ground. And I think that's really impactful in a completely different way. Because I think people like you and I take into one extreme sort of becoming those clinicians, those practitioners that are really potentially propagating a lot of this like fear of movement. Zac: It's something I definitely think about as well. Because I do get people who come to me and it's like, they've learned similar things to me, but they think about it in such a negative way. Like "I have to fix this anterior tilt." Well, if you're standing against gravity, you're always going to have that because that's the norm. There's a good podcast that Doug Kechijian did with Boo Schexnayder. He mentions that you should always be exposing them to intensity. And in order to produce intensity or move fast, you can't think, and relaxation is paramount. And I think if there's one thing it's probably shifted this year, is really appreciating that. But and here's where I still think respecting biomechanics comes in. You have to make sure that you choose activities that are appropriate for that individual, that they can execute without having the risk for potentially performing it in a negative manner. So, that could be doing a seated box jump, which it's almost like the constraints of the activity, get them into positions that they need to. Or, I've been using a lot of fake throws lately. https://youtu.be/riB-dGofs98 Tim: To load a cut? Zac: To load a cut or just to get them rotating pain-free or anything like that. Because you have to relax enough and move fast, but then you also have to stop fast. So, it kind of hits everything or just med ball throws. Like even though I talk a lot about biomechanics and stuff like that, if you look at how I actually program for someone, it has all of those other elements. And I keep the concepts the same and the progressions appropriate with within movement options that they have available. But they're not always having to think. They might think about the setup, but then when they're executing the movement, I don't have to think about anything. Because when you are thinking you can't move fast, that's when you get beat. Tim: Yes. That's what I like. I mean, one of my favorite lifts of all time is a single-arm dumbbell floor press, for that reason. Because like there's still enough range of motion to load and you can let 98% of people that would ever walk into your training facility can do that drill. https://youtu.be/oGKufR-a4Mg And the single-arm just forces some innate sense of not having the weight, rotate you off your back. T he goblet squats is another one. It's like, it's these things that people in our industry have been doing for a really long time, because they're just so simple and people can try hard, like you said, relax not think. Zac: Yes. Or like sleds, med ball throws, and carries. Those are all - if you have someone who is not exposed to much loading, that's a great way to produce intensity and not have to think "Oh, you know, man, I love machines." Love them. Tim: I know. We know you do. Zac: love them. In fact, one of my training is I'll load up the BFR cuffs and I'll go into my complex and just go ham on a leg press and all that. That's great. I look good for one day of the week. And that's my day for about 20 minutes. Tim: Got a sick leg pump. Zac: Yes. Just the veins out... Tim: Bursting out of your khakis? Zac: Exactly. How to maximize patient communication Tim: Speak to your journey in regards to your communication. How have you arrived at your current strategy for how to best communicate with probably both your clients and colleagues? How has that changed over the past five years? Zac: A lot. I was for a while, obsessed with learning about how to best interact with people. I think I was a pretty shy kid growing up. Quiet, uncertain of myself. But I found that whenever you got someone else talking, people would end up really liking you. Tim: Dale Carnegie. Zac: Honestly. Exactly. Yes. I forget the phrases that he says in his book? There's another one... Tim: Is it be interested, not interesting? Zac: Yes. Another quote I heard somewhere or this woman had met like these two higher-ups in English government and she talked to them about the first one. And she was like, "When I talked with this person, I thought he was the most interesting person in all of the UK." And then she said, "But when I talked to the other person, I thought I was the most interesting person in all of the UK." And that really hit home for me. And I try to, when I'm interacting with people, get that vibe. But at the same time too, the issue that I've run with when I've spent all of this time, learning with my interactions is in the beginning, I was just asking a lot of questions, almost interviewing people. And sometimes that can be off-putting if done in that way. So, to mitigate that, instead of asking a bunch of questions, there's a technique called elicitation that I've been experimenting with. And how people are going to be like," How is he eliciting me?" But basically, it's like getting information out of someone without coming off as a threatening thing. So, like if I come to Tim and I say, "Did you do this?" And say you did something wrong, whatever. Your inclination might be to go on the defense. And so, you might lie or you might say, "Well, yes I did. But it was because of this, this, this, this, and this." And that's not good. But if I wanted you to admit to that, I might say something or like a presumptive statement. It's like, "So what was it like when you did that?" Or "So you did X." And almost making assumptions to try to understand the other person or inferences based on what they said. I think helps build a greater connection because it shows that you not only are listening to them, but you're also understanding where they're coming from. And I think that's really important when it comes to human interaction and what I really focus on. And here's the cool thing about it. And there's actually a really good book by this FBI agent that goes into this, "If you're wrong about the assumption that I make..." Tim: The inference. Zac: The inference, that's still, doesn't lead to a negative interaction because people are so willing to correct any mistake that you make, but you'll still get the interaction. Like in the book, he talks about, if you're talking politics with someone, you might actually say someone has, I don't know, they say something and they're a Republican and you make the inference like, "Oh, well it sounds like something you might've gotten from FDR." And they might get so adamantly taking it back to like, "Like no, that's because Ronald Reagan did this, this and this." And so, then now you actually know their political bias and you didn't even have to ask... Tim: That direct question. Zac: Yes. And so, I think not having direct questioning can provide a lot more useful information because when you question can come off as interrogation. That's like some of the logistical things. But I think even more important than that is having good body language with someone. We were talking about Bill Clinton. One of my clients knows Bill pretty well; has met him multiple times. Everything you read about Bill in a positive light, obviously he's done some questionable things. But from an interaction standpoint, is a hundred percent true. And he has five different things that he thinks about when he's interacting with someone to build a rapport: Eye contact Close proximity The person's name Direction facing Tocuh Tim: Okay. Zac: So, like now if you do all of that at once, that can be a bit much. But if you're alternating among all of those variables, you can build an intimate connection with someone and have good rapport. And so, when I'm interacting with someone, I do think about those things. Not so overtly that it's like, "Okay, let's hit point number five." But those are things I think about incorporating whenever I'm interacting with someone, you know? And there's a reason why I try to sit on people's left most of the time, aside from it makes my neck more comfortable. And that's because the right hemisphere of your brain is where your emotional centers are. So, in theory, if I'm sending more information to that side, I could potentially build a greater emotional bond with you. Tim: Yes. Zac: You might be hearing this and it's like, "Oh gosh, this just sounds like every interaction is Zac making is this calculated thing." But it's not that. It's not if it's genuine. I think the reason why I dove into that so much is that I just wanted to connect with people, you know? Tim: Yes. Zac: I think back in my younger days, I was not in the best place mentally. I'm shy. And I didn't want that because human connection is something that we crave. So, if you can do anything that maximizes that, so it's beneficial for both parties or all parties involved. I don't think there's anything malicious about that. And that's something we should practice as a skill just like anything else. Tim: And it's intentional until it becomes automatic. Zac: Yes. Tim: And then it becomes automatic because frankly, a lot of those things are probably some of the best ways to connect with people. And I'm right there with you. Like you know, I think 90% of the reason why I do what we do is the ability to connect with people. I used to think it was the biomechanics and it's not, that evolves, that changes, but that connection... Zac: Absolutely. Tim: You know, we're in kind of rarefied air in terms of healthcare practitioners. Zac: Yes. And that's why I always wax and wane with manual therapy, but I always come back to it to some extent. Because touch is a form of connection. Tim: Yes. And its proximity without threat. Right. It's not this interview type of vibe. Zac: Yes, absolutely. Tim: Although we have a good 90-degree angle situation going on right now, [caption id="attachment_13679" align="alignnone" width="810"] Bruh on the left has it figured out (Image by uh_yeah_20101995 from Pixabay) [/caption] Zac: And there's a reason for that. So, and especially too, this is an interesting, a little difference between the sexes. If women, when they're interacting with each other, they generally face each other. And that's probably because they're generally more social creatures than us. They have more agreeableness and things of that nature. So, if you think back to like Hunter-gatherer times, that would be a useful thing. And so, that helps build more intimacy, but men who are close generally do not face each other. And the reason why is because when you're facing a man directly, it almost comes off as aggressive. Like you're going to challenge someone. So, that's why like, you know, bros, when they're hanging out, they're always like sitting. Right. And I think that there's a reason for that. And so, you can also based on whether it's someone's male or female, that can also influence the interaction depending on what direction you're trying to go. So, it's important. It's an important thing to recognize if you're working with people. Sum up Choose activities and people in your life that bring more energy, whioch will allow you to be a more productive member of society. Failure allows you to learn from your mistakes and create the life you want to live. You must push to great, but reconcile that some things are good as is. Movement beheavior change requires novelty, which is different for everyone. Sensorimotor cueing can have negative impacts on certain people; mitigate this through education and appropriate exercise selection. Pleasant interactions are acheived by being interested, elicitative language, and effective nonverbal communication.

Personal aviation is awesome! Aviation has been a source of inspiration and a symbol of innovation since the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, to Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, to today's dreams of colonizing Mars. Unfortunately, it's been very hard for startups to make money in aviation. Even the Wright brothers did not do particularly well in business. But things might be changing. Today we sit down and talk with Tasuku Nakai, co-founder of Tetra Aviation, and we discuss how public research incentives, support from the aerospace giants, and the changing infrastructure needs might have just tipped the balance to startups. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes How Tetra's eVTOL aircraft came to be and what it might become The steps needed to bring a new aircraft to market Why it's so difficult to innovate in aviation The main hurdle in expanding the personal aviation market Fundraising strategies and exist options for aviation startups When investing is considered "evil" in Japan Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Tetra Aviation Friend Tasuku on Facebook Connect with him on LinkedIn Follow Tetra on Twitter @Tetra_Aviation Check out a video of their prototype VTOL aircraft 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 talk about flying cars. That’s right, flying cars. We sit down with Tasuku Nakai, co-founder of Tetra Aviation and we talk about what it takes to bring a new aircraft, especially a new personal aircraft to market, and it’s not easy. The Tetra Aircraft is an electric vertical take-off and landing, or VTOL aircraft, which they believe will form the backbone of a new aerial intercity transport system. You know, I have a real soft spot for these kinds of startups. I have a private pilot’s license and I love the idea that the age of affordable personal aircraft might almost be here. But as I mentioned, it’s hard, and as Tasuku explains, these kinds of companies don’t fit the traditional VC model for a number of reasons. We also talk about the possible business models open to aircraft startups, the release of Tetra’s new prototype, and the crazy world of experimental aircraft pilots who fly newly designed aircraft as a hobby. But you know, Tasuku tells that story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview. Interview Tim: So, I’m sitting here with Tasuku Nakai of Tetra Aviation who makes personal electric aircraft, so thanks for sitting down with me. Tasuku: Thanks for inviting me, Tim, and this is a really great moment to introduce myself and introduce my business. Tim: No, the pleasure’s all mine. I think what you guys are doing is really interesting and I’ve had a passion for, like, aerospace startups for a long time, so actually, I mean, you can probably explain what Tetra Aviation is and what the product is better than I can. So basically, what are you building? Tasuku: We are building personal electrical VTOL aircraft, so vertical take-off and landing, so wherever you want to come, just simply ride on it and fly to the air and arrive on your destination exactly. Tim: And we’ll talk about the history later. This is kind of like the flying cars that startups have been teasing us about since the 1950s, but what you’ve built, is it considered an airplane or a helicopter, or a drone, or how is it classified? Tasuku: Well, a really difficult question about that. There’s no category anymore. There’s a lot of class, almost 50 or 60 classifications, but basically, you think it’s similar for helicopter and the drone, to combine the helicopter and drone, so I mean, the people can ride on it and also, it has a distributed propulsion system as a drone has. Tim: Actually, just today,

“No Ar com a Galvão”, TIM abriu a porta de casa e leva-o a conhecer a história destes “vintes”. O álbum… a vida… a experiência… os amigos! Veja o vídeo e descubra esta e outras surpresas.

This week I decided to reconnect with one of my first contacts in NYC; Tim "No. 37" Martinez, an original badass, gay and fabulous host, promoter, veejay, and a jack of all trades in the NYC Metal scene. We dished about the industry, reality tv, his future plans, and so much more. Please give it a listen, give Tim a follow, @TimNo37, and hey, tell a friend. Be safe. Be calm. Feel free to reach out if you need someone to talk to! Take care of yourself, see ya later! Find me on the socials: https://twitter.com/sidebradio https://instagram.com/sidebpodcast https://www.facebook.com/sidebradio/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/side-b-radio-the-podcast/message

Are you a business owner who wants to get good at financial decision making and CEO-level accounting? How can you build a runway to opportunities? By navigating mindset, expenses, and cash.  Today’s guest is Tim Francis from Great Assistant and Profit Factory. Tim’s training, Know Your Numbers, shows how businesses can deal with cash crunch and cash flow. You’ll Learn... [02:48] Free Upcoming Event: Navigate the Cash Crunch. [03:20] Entrepreneurs: Like Indiana Jones, running as fast as possible from expenses. [06:00] Pre-built Spreadsheet: Adding and subtracting, red boxes and green boxes. [06:40] Beyond Profit First: In motion and cutting expenses when DoorGrow sales stop. [10:23] 3-Step Method: Navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash. [11:29] Mistakes of sloth, and mistakes of ambition. [12:19] Step 1 - Navigating Mindset: Be good to your body, protect personal and professional relationships, and early action is crucial. [22:51] Step 2 - Navigating Expenses: Business's profit margin and bloat factor involves how many dollars to be sold at top line for $1 at bottom line to spend/buy something. [30:08] Survive and Thrive: When sales go down, create a situation where you don't have to sell as much. You can meet it at a lower sales level and still get by. [31:52] Step 3 - Navigating Cash: The Cash Flow Forecast figures out how much cash can you touch now? There's a big difference between cash and free cash. [45:38] Opportunities for Growth: If your business doesn't cash flow, it will fail. Cash flow first, then focus on growth. Cash comes from different places. Tweetables Entrepreneurs confuse revenue, sales, top line, or top of the P&L statement with cash. There's actually a way to navigate the cash crunch, even if revenue is going down. Property management industry has a massive opportunity due to big shift in the market. Panic isn't productive. It's important to be urgent, not anxious. There's a big difference between cash and free cash. Resources Navigate the Cash Crunch with Jason Hull and Timothy Francis Tim Francis on LinkedIn Great Assistant Profit Factory Know Your Numbers Keith Cunningham Verne Harnish DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. I am hanging out here with Tim Francis. Tim, welcome to the show again. Tim: Good to see you Jason, again. Jason: Tim and I just started trying to do this on Crowdcast the normal platform. It didn't work out. The internet gods were not kind to us for some reason so we're starting it over. I wanted to introduce Tim to this audience again. Tim has been on the show before because he was talking about his company, Great Assistant, a fantastic company. I've hired assistants through it for US based assistants. His parent corporation, or company, or whatever you want to call it is Profit Factory. I recently went through training with him called Know Your Numbers. One of my goals for this year was to get really good at this learning financial decision making, maybe more business owner, CEO level accounting. Tim is the go to guy for this. He has a program on this that I went through. He had a really cool thing that he showed us how to deal with cash crunch and cash flow. He reached out to me and is putting this out to audiences trying to help businesses out right now. I'm excited to expose my audience to this idea of how they can navigate the cash crunch. Tim, welcome. Tim: Thank you so much for having me. Jason: We're going to do an event here in about a week. I'll just plug that now up front, just get that out of the way. It's for free and we're going to go into greater detail about these things. You're going to be sharing your screen, showing spreadsheets, helping them figure this out. But let's start with talking about the problem. What's going on with the market right now, the cash crunch, and why is this relevant? Tim: Yeah, you bet. If you think of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, there's this amazing boulder scene. Jason, I have to give you credit for giving me this visual of this boulder rolling behind us as entrepreneurs. We're running as fast as we possibly can, and that boulder, that's expenses. Jason, full credit to you, every time I use this analogy now I'm giving you credit. A bit of the secret here is that there's actually a simple three step method that we can actually turn this into a different Indiana Jones scene. In the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones, there's this like leap of faith scene where he's standing on the very edge and he's looking at this massive chasm between him and where he needs to go. It looks impossible, it looks impossible that he’ll possibly be able to cross this chasm, but then he gets this idea. He takes some sand, and he throws it out and it covers, and there's this hidden balance beam, it's invisible, this invisible balance beam to walk across. That's exactly the three step method that I teach as a passion to entrepreneurs. I think a lot of entrepreneurs confuse revenue, sales, top line, or just that top of the P&L statement with cash. The thing is that they’re two extremely different ideas. Yes, one can lead to the other, however they're not necessary. There's actually a way to navigate the cash crunch, even if revenue is going down. I've helped many, many companies, I think I’ve had 139 board meetings now. I've helped over 70 companies, and at least 7 of them I've helped to escape bankruptcy, including that with them following the exact process that I'm going to teach today. Whether someone despises accounting and numbers, feels pretty good about them but maybe not a pro, or even if someone's an absolute pro at numbers, I think the perspectives that we share today are going to be really, really powerful. Also just in case anyone's afraid of like oh, my god, here we go, numbers and accounting. I hate that topic. I avoid my accountant like the plague. I'll tell you what, I was rejected from Business School three times. I couldn't finish calculus. I don't know my brain wasn't wired that way, and the good news is you don't need any of that to be able to navigate the cash crunch. If you know how to add and subtract, in fact Jason, you don't even need to be able to add, subtract. If you know how to use a calculator to add, subtract, we can make this happen. The tool that I'll go more in depth with you on our webinar coming in about a week from now, everyone will actually get access to a prebuilt spreadsheet. All you got to do, it takes maybe 20 to 30 minutes to put your own info in. Literally where you see a red box is a crisis line, and where you see a green box, you're good to go. That's it. It's adding and subtracting, and red boxes and green boxes, that help you to navigate. To build your very own—personalized to your business—path to navigate the cash crunch. Jason: Before we get into this, I want to touch on and create a little transparency in this. A lot of entrepreneurs are fearful. There's a lot of shame around admitting that something doesn't look perfectly successful. There's a lot of shame around finances and money. Like oh, no, I've got debt or I've got this. I'm going to share what we're experiencing at DoorGrow. Leading up to this, one of my goals for this year was to get control of finances, really understand and get into financials, which is why I did a training with you, Tim, and I'm working with you on different things, because that's a step beyond the Profit First. I've got my Profit First coach and accountant that I work with as well. I've been doing lots of calls with her getting all these different loans that are coming out, getting everything going. I'm glad that I was already working on this stuff prior. We started cutting expenses dramatically, we started doing shifts. As I was getting control of things, I was like why are we paying for that? If we weren't in momentum already—you used the analogy of the airplane flying over the trees—we probably would have hit some trees. We probably would have crashed. We were already in motion. Sales, March just stopped. Property managers stopped buying products and services from DoorGrow because they were holding their wallets tight, they were scared, and that's about half of our revenue. We had to tighten our belt really quickly. We weren't really ready for that, we haven’t budgeted the beginning of our month to do that, so we had to get really creative. Using some of these strategies helped us to keep that plane above the tree level, navigating the cash crunch, or in my Indiana Jones analogy, outpaced the boulder so that we were able to make it through the end of the month. I'm really excited to share this property management. I'll point out that I believe the property management industry has a massive opportunity right now. There are property management companies, especially in California, Florida, and Hawaii, that they are growing. March was one of their biggest growth months in adding new doors, in acquisitions, period, simply because there is a whole big shift in the market. A lot of people are going to be needing property managers. We won't get really into that now but there's a lot of opportunity right now. Property management is a really safe place to be hedging against the market right now. Most property managers will probably have pretty good cash flow. It's only the third and we're already seeing most people are paying rent on single family residential. They're not noticing much of a difference. They've had a few people reach out for payment arrangements, but all things, I'm saying is that it's basically normal. They're a little concerned about May, so this May become even more hyper relevant in the next month or beyond. I want everyone to pay attention to this. Property managers, you guys are blessed right now, while a lot of businesses are just done. They're failing, their revenue is cut to zero, especially luxury markets, vacation markets, restaurants in a lot of situations. Businesses are closing, failing. This also is the perfect excuse for entrepreneurs that are not really committed to their business to get out, perfect excuse. A lot of people are going to take it. If you are not one of those people, and you're committed to making this work and you want to grow, reach out to DoorGrow, I want to make sure we help you capitalize on all this. Tim, let's get into these three things that we need to pay attention to. Tim: There are three things to navigate, navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash. I don't normally share this piece, but because of what you just so wisely shared just around the shame that sometimes entrepreneurs feel around money or like oh, I'm a failure or whatnot. I'll tell you what. I think that being a leader is a lot of responsibility. Even if you're a leader of 1 or 100, it doesn't matter. It's that classic man in the arena story. It's not the critic who counts. I think that there's actually something incredibly skilled when an entrepreneur sees that things have changed, and they're ready to change with it. I think that that's actually a sign of prescience is the word, when we can see things that are coming and to act accordingly. I also think that Verne Harnish has a great expression, he says, "Growth sucks cash." If you've been spending a lot of money to grow your company, and that's why you don't have a lot of cash to show for it, there's no shame in being ambitious either. There are mistakes of sloths, and there are mistakes of ambition. Mistakes of sloths are when we make mistakes because we're sitting on the couch not going for it and life passes us by. Mistake of ambition is when we were really going for it and things didn't work out. Mistakes of ambition, it's even arguable to say that it's even a mistake at all. I just think if you're in a position where you’re a little tight on cash, or maybe a lot tight on cash, I get that the shame narrative is available and I don't know that I'd go there. First of all, it's not accurate, and secondly, it's not productive. This leads us into our whole first of our three steps mindset, navigating mindset. Before anyone decides to tune out and say mindset is going to be the secret or some law of attraction, maybe more airy type topic. I assure you, it is not. I assure you that it is not. In 2008 I had a real estate portfolio of my own, not a big portfolio, just four houses, but I ended up losing around $100,000 mostly of other people's money. Around that time, I also had a mentor who ended up being one of the two leaders of a $12 million Ponzi scheme. Didn't start as a Ponzi scheme but it became a Ponzi scheme, that's typically the way they go. His business partner is convicted in court, barred folding securities for 25 years, and ended up actually leaving the country. This is in Canada, where I'm from. It was extremely exhausting and stressful to go through all that and to see everything that was happening around me. It led to me developing an illness called Erythema nodosum. Erythema nodosum is something there's no real cure for. You just have to wait it out. It's just bed rest. Your body really swells up and becomes so painful to walk that you can't, then it becomes so painful that you stand that you can't, and you end up just lying in bed every single day. 50% of cases are stress related. There's no way to know for sure, but I'm pretty sure mine was stress related. If you think an economic collapse like 2008 is bad, or an economic collapse like 2020 is bad... I'll tell you what's even worse is having economic collapse and also having a health collapse, where you actually can't do anything about your situation because you're in bed. Thankfully, at the time, I had very, very, very few dependents, I had no teammates and so the impact, the blast radius was small, it was just on me. Had my mom not paid my mortgage for me for three months, I would have gone double bankrupt, my personal finance, my business finance. Talk about an eye opener, and I was only 28. I was only 28 at the time. When I talk about the importance of managing mindset, this is absolutely crucial that we manage stress. I'll tell you, I've been not just through economic collapse, economic plus physical collapse, and it is not a pretty situation. You do not want to go through that. Along the lines of how do we go about managing mindset, I think that there are a few important perspectives in addition to some of the obvious practices. I'll just start the obvious because it's pretty straightforward. Make sure you're getting some exercise even if it's just a walk on a treadmill, or a peloton bike, or something like that in your living room, whatever the case may be. Get some sunshine if you can, even though we're all locked indoors, that sunshine is super important. Diet, take care of that. Make sure you’re getting lots of water, maybe ease off on the booze a little bit too if you're someone who enjoys to imbibe a little bit. Be good to your body. Probably the biggest of all, for most people, is actually sleep. Sleep is something that we can lose very quickly in times of turmoil and stress. You might need to turn to things like small meditation, reading, journaling, or something before bed to help take your mind off of some of the challenges of the day. I'm telling you that it's absolutely crucial. When I look back at my sleep habits and actually have been keeping track of my sleep for years and years and years. Jason, I'd sleep for four hours and lay on the floor next to my computer, sleep. I'd work till 5:00 in the morning, I'd sleep four hours on the floor next to the computer and I would stand up, go pee, and go back to the computer and start working again. Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures, but there is such a thing as too high a price to pay. Remember that this too shall pass. September 11th came, the world changed, and we got back to business in a new normal way. The housing crisis came, the world changed, and we got back to business in a new normal way. Jason: Tim, I'm going to touch on what you just said real quick, interject. These are really basic things but they're showing some significant correlations between COVID-19 and melatonin, and nitric oxide in your blood, vitamin D. These are the basic principles of health. I have training for our clients called health secrets and it's these basics. We talk about getting sleep, that's when melatonin starts to get produced in your brain. It's much higher in children, it gets less. You may want to supplement with that but getting good sleep, getting some sunlight, finding a way to get sunshine and sunlight on your body is going to be a big deal that releases nitric oxide from your skin into your blood, if vitamin D gets produced, these are basic. Sleep, nutrition, some physical activity, exercise, some sunshine, water and hydrate. This and all of that lowers your stress levels and it lowers our pressure and noise significantly. I love that you're sharing that. Keep your stress levels as low as possible and start physiologically. Tim: I think along with stress is this idea of engagement. I don't know if I need to share this part, but I'll say it just to be responsible. If someone is not engaged enough right now, you're not paying attention to what's going on in the world. If you're only at about a 6 or 7 out of 10 engagements, goodness gracious, it might be time to pick it up a bit. If you're also to 9 or 10 engagements it's probably too high, you're over stimulated, you're over engaged. We need that 8 out of 10 where we're focused, pupils dilated just a little bit. Eye on the prize. I always say that panic isn't productive. It's important to be urgent, not anxious, to be urgent, not anxious. Jason: I'm too Agilent right now. I'm excited and that's where I'm at. I love chaos, let's be honest. Maybe there are other entrepreneurs like that but when chaos happens, that's opportunity. That's where we get to be a light and we get to stand out, so I'm enjoying this even though it's uncomfortable. Tim: Very nice, very nice. I think that two other mindset pieces, one is that it's important to actually protect relationships. Yes, I mean the personal relationships that we have in our life because they can be such a source of security, joy, and comfort. I also mean business relationships. We're going to get to the other side of this, and unlike other past catastrophes that were measured in years, I think, yes, our economic catastrophe is going to be measured in years on this one for sure. I think that in terms of months, I think this pandemic is going to be measured in months, not years and years and years. One of my questions at each point is what is the state of the relationships of suppliers, vendors in the case of property managers, tenants, if you're managing on behalf of other people like your clients, your investors, and owners. What's the state of those relationships going to look like in three months from now, or six months from now when we're on the other side of this. You might make it through, but do you still have people that respect you? I heard a story the other day of an entrepreneur that just cancelled all their credit cards and said well, everything's just going to fail in terms of expenses and I'm going to add back one by one the few things that make sense. It's a shortcut to just cutting expenses. That's a way to go about it, but are you going to just supremely piss off everyone in the process? I think that protecting relationships is important to keep in mind. That doesn't mean that you're always bringing good news to everyone along the way, especially in the cutting expenses part of our presentation today. I think to be respected for being accountable, navigating agreements that you have with people rather than just abandoning them. My other mindset piece is that early action is crucial. If you discover that you need to get alone, act now before more businesses are closing, and possibly soaking up some lending capacity, or even just work capacity that bankers have to fill out applications and whatnot. If you discover you need to reduce a teammate's hours, tell them as early as possible so they can start making plans of their own personal and family finances. So that if a dip comes for them income-wise, they're prepared for it. If you can help them find a new opportunity elsewhere, do what you can to manage those relationships. I got an interesting perspective from someone who used to have a business helping individuals, not businesses, but individuals navigate bankruptcy. He said one of the most common patterns he saw with people going through bankruptcy is they didn't cut expenses deep enough or soon enough, deep enough or soon enough. I think that that's a very interesting perspective and maybe a usable guideline would be to say anything that's not going to help increase the profitability, and specifically cash coming into your business in the coming six months, I'd probably delay it. If you're thinking of a new website, if that's not going to immediately give you a bump in cash in the next six months, then let's put that on pause. We'll see if we can renegotiate it, put it on hold, delay it, or even cancel it. I think that's a really powerful way and maybe for you, the number isn't six months, maybe it's three months or eight months, whatever. But if we can keep an eye on what's going to bring cash in, in that timeframe, that really makes decision making a lot easier around what expenses you can continue with and which do not. This leads us to our second of the three steps of what we need to navigate and that is expenses. I think that something I'd say in my path of learning accounting and I even went and took night classes at the University of Alberta. I finally did go and take University accounting classes. It was not for credit though, they wouldn't let me into the for credit version, but they'd let me still sit in the classes and study. You know what, Jason, I got 100% of my midterm. I wanted to throw up my middle fingers as I walked into the room. I can't complete calculus, I can't get into business school, but here I'm getting 100% of my midterm. How about that? How do you like them apples? One of the big ahas that I had is that in my brain, because we all grow up thinking about personal finance. I think in personal finance, we think if I make $1, I can spend $1, and $1 in is $1 out. If I want to go buy a car, a pair of jeans, or a pair of shoes, I just need to get that amount of income to be able to pay for the shoes, the jeans, or the car. When it comes to business finance though it's a little bit different. To be able to buy $1 of expenses, we can't just make $1. It's because there's other expenses in the business. That's why we always talk about profit margin. If I have $100,000 in revenue, and I've got $50,000 in expenses, then I have $50,000 in profit. My profit margin is 50%. What that means is at the end of that year, or quarter, that month, for me to have an extra dollar to go buy something the next month, quarter or year, I don't need to make $1, I actually need to make $2 because my profit margin is only 50%. I have to make the $2 at the top, 50% gets stripped away by expenses. I'm left with $1 to now go and spend in the next month, quarter, or year. There's this idea, I invented it, it's called bloat factor. How many dollars do I have to sell at the top line to have $1 at the bottom line to be able to use and go and spend and buy something else in the coming month, quarter, or year? It's very simple math. If you're at 50% profit margin, which very few businesses are—very, very, very, very, very few businesses are—then you'd have to earn $2 to have $1 at the bottom to be able to go and spend in the coming period. If I've got a 25% profit margin, I have to make $4 at the top to have $1 to go and spend. If I'm at a 10% profit margin, which a lot of businesses around that 10% margin mark, I have to go make $10 to be able to have one at the bottom. Jason: This is super important for people to realize. A lot of us entrepreneurs, we look at our bank accounts and we think well, I've got $1 that we made. Now I can go buy this thing for $1. They think it's a one to one relationship. That's a huge mistake. Tim: Whatever your business's profit margin is, you got to figure out the bloat factor. Let's just say for example, you're at a 10% profit margin, that means you have to make $10 to keep $1, your bloat factor is 10X. If you cut $1 of expense, you now don't have to sell 10X that in revenue to be in the exact same place. For example, this is actually an extraordinary story Jason, this going to blow your mind. I talked to one of my private consulting clients here. He and I had like uh-oh, the crisis is coming call like three weeks ago. He cut $9,000 a month in recurring revenue. Does that mean that he doesn't need to sell $9,000 in the coming year? Well, of course not, because it's recurring expenses. Jason: I was going to say he lost them? Tim: No, no, no. He cut $9,000 per month of expenses. At his profit margin, his bloat factor is 8.7. $9,000 times 12 months in a year times 8.7, he does not have to sell $944,882 in the coming year. He cut the need to sell a million dollars just by cutting $9,000 a month in expenses. That is mind expanding. Jason: We have pretty healthy profit margins at DoorGrow, we’re pretty tight. We're a virtual team but we cut a ton of expenses. Maybe if we have time, I could list some of the crazy actions that we took to help make sure that we cash flowed. It makes a ton of sense to me. Tim: Big time. I'll just take a super simple example. I actually set up a calculator which we'll play with in the free webinar you and I will do. We'll play with the bloat calculator a little bit. If I have a profit margin of 10%—not uncommon for businesses—my bloat factor would be 10. If all I removed was $250 a month, that's it, $250 a month of recurring expenses, canceling subscriptions, canceling unused services, access to different websites and whatnot, I would not have to sell $30,000 in the coming year. $250 a month does not sound like that much to cut, and yet a 10X bloat factor, that's $30,000 you do not have to sell anymore. You tell me what's easier, finding $250 a month and cutting it, or going out and generating $30,000 in new revenue in the coming year? Jason: Especially right now for us. My accountant was really impressed with me. We cut $10,000 in monthly expenses, depending on what our profit margin is. That can be pretty significant for us as well in terms of how much sales we don't have to do to make it each month. That's made it breathable for us significantly. Tim: When you talk about being able to survive and thrive even when sales go down, you just created a situation for yourself where you don't have to sell as much. Even if sales go down, you can still meet it at a lower sales level and still get by which is really incredible. Jason: I met with my accountant last night and we mapped out the month with all the recurring revenue that we have coming in. If we do no sales this month, we will make it. Tim: I love that. Jason: We’ve pivoted quickly and reduced the expenses, but right now it’s a great opportunity for property managers to grow and we're offering some crazy deals. Hopefully, we'll also be doing some sales this month and making a big difference. Tim: I love that. I think you were sharing offline about how all these Airbnbs are now switching to long term rental. They got smoked out of the market and now they just want to go back to traditional long term rentals. So there's all this flood towards property managers. For a property manager that knows how to convert an Airbnb into a standard long term rental, ready to rock, and knows how to find those deals, goodness gracious, this could be a really revolutionary time. Jason: There are several channels right now for growth and each one is going to get bigger. Property managers right now, they can capitalize on it. We're pushing our clients aggressively to start taking action on these things right now. Tim: That's so exciting. There's another way that we can navigate the cash crunch even if sales go down. It's not just by managing expenses but it's also by navigating cash. Let's get into the third and final step in navigating the cash crunch. The free webinar that we're gonna do in approximately a week from now, we're actually going to do live exercises. We're actually going to share screens and you're actually going to see this spreadsheet in action. It's super simple. Anyone can do it. It can be a game changer. Of the multi-million dollar companies that I've helped save, some of them I didn't even do private consulting with. They just came, they know your numbers, or they heard me talk about just this one tool, The Cash Flow Forecast. They use it religiously when they're in a tough spot and it helps them get through. It's very exciting. There's actually two parts to this. The very first is actually understanding how much cash can I actually touch right now? There's a big difference between cash and free cash. Cash is the amount of money that's in the bank if you add up your checking and savings accounts. That's cash. Free cash on the other hand, we have to deduct some money out of that total cash to get the free cash to know what we can actually work with. From our total cash amount, we need to set aside committed costs. Committed cost is any amount of money you've promised that you're going to pay. Let's say for example a website, I've signed a legal agreement to get a new website done. If I don't manage that agreement to delay the project, I'm on the hook for it. If that's a $10,000 cash outflow that's coming up in two weeks from now, that is a committed cost. I haven't received the service yet but I've committed to receiving the service or the product for that matter. Jason: It's money that's earmarked. It's money that is going to disappear. If you can't pay it, it could cause some serious problems. Tim: Big time, getting all the way back to that whole topic about managing relationships even through the tough times. The second category that we need to earmark some cash is payables. Let's say that you already had the website built. It was finished last week. You've enjoyed the service. You've received the service or the product for that matter. You're on net 30 terms or net 60 terms and now you got to pay that person. That's a payable. Now, one of the biggest payables that is unavoidable is death is taxes. Thankfully, the payment deadline in the United States has been extended, which allows for some cash flow breathing room for entrepreneurs, which is very important right now. I would do my best to get clear and make sure that I've got a separate account for tax. I actually have a separate bank account. It's a little profit first esque or Richest Man in Babylon esque that there's a separate account for income tax and that's where I would hold my income tax. Jason: I have that too. The idea is to have it at a bank that is difficult to get into. That's completely a normal thing. Tim: You don't know the pin. You give it to someone else. Two keys to authenticate and turn to open the vault. Jason: The worst online bank ever or something like that. Tim: Or the brick and mortar bank that has no online, something like that. After committed costs and payables including income tax, we also need to remove or set aside any deposits that we've got. This is huge in property management because we have deposits from tenants. You can't really spend that money, it's not money that you've earned. It's just money that you're holding as a deposit so we got to park that on the sidelines. Then from there, whatever amount that you've got to pay in credit card debt or any other very short term, high interest debt. Most credit cards are 10% more. If you've got all kinds of rewards on your card, you probably are facing 19.99% or 21.95% interest. We really want to make sure that we're getting that paid off at the end of each month or else we're facing colossal interest rates. I would earmark that money to hold to the side as well. Then from there, there's two more. The next one is ultra-short term debt that you need to pay. Short term debt in accounting refers to any debt that's due this year. A Tim Francisism ultra-short term is in the next 30 days. If there's any portion of debt that you need to pay down in the next 30 days, I would earmark that cash as well because if you don't pay it, a lot of small business loans have liens or guarantees against your house. You might lose your house if you don't pay it, or you don't renegotiate that payment because there are some circumstances now where banks and different lenders are allowing you to skip the payment right now because of what's going on. Our last category where we need to earmark and subtract cash, I actually have a whole separate account in my bank for this particular category, is what's called Unearned Revenue. I don't think that's as big in property management candidly. For example, for someone who's offering other services, unearned revenue can be the difference between life and death to know what is earned and what's not. For example, if someone hires me for a year of consulting and they pay in a block amount of money at the start of the year, they pay the whole year in advance, I can only touch 1/12th of that with each month that goes by because it's unearned revenue until I've delivered that guidance for the year. Understanding our starting point of actual free cash is the first part of managing cash, and then the second part is to build out what we call a cash flow forecast. It's very simple. It's 13 weeks which is 90 days, just three months. We simply plot into the cash flow forecast where we've got cash coming in and cash going out. Jason, would it be appropriate for me to just show a screenshot of a cash flow forecast or should we wait until the webinar? Jason: The podcast listeners won't see it so let's get that, we’ll show it on the webinar. They'll just be listeners but it's pretty cool. I'll give you a testimonial related to this. I met with my accountant. We're mapping out all the recurring revenue that we have at DoorGrow and figuring out what expenses. We basically went through this. She started doing this manually in a spreadsheet real time, basically doing exactly what your spreadsheet does. She was figuring out which things are going to hit, what are the due dates for these. We're figuring it all out. I was like that's so funny because Tim has a thing that does this. She took me through it manually to make sure that our cash flow situation is going to be good because it's not just hey, this month we're going to make X number of dollars. We're going to have X number of expenses and we're okay. It's maybe at the beginning of the month, you have a whole bunch of things that are running and you're making that revenue later in the month or however it might work. You need to make sure it's all going to be timed perfectly. That's the brilliance of your cash flow thing because if it ever dips below zero, you're dead. It goes into the red, that's death. You have to make sure that you always know when things are going to hit and this is what your spreadsheet does, which is pretty brilliant. Tim: I agree. I totally agree. I'll tell you, when people are calling you every single day to collect money, 29 days is an extremely long time. It is an eternity. Being clear about when money is arriving, not just by the month to your point, but to the week. To be very clear about when cash is leaving to the week, and making sure that not you or anyone in your team is sending cash out the door too soon especially without other people like a bookkeeper helping or an executive assistant helping to pay different bills, if you don't direct your team on when to pay bills, people in your office or on your team, they might just pay the bills when they come in. They just might pay it exactly the same day that they open the envelope or they get the statement online. They're like oh, well, I was just doing my job. I was just paying this because it came in. You got to give your teammates leadership, guidance, vision, and direction on items like this especially in a cash crunch. People oftentimes ask me Tim, this tool is brilliant. How often should I be looking at it? I say that you look at the tool as often as you need to, relative to two factors. Number one, how low is your plane flying relative to the treetops? This is just the analogy we talked about earlier. If your wheels are clipping the tree tops and those trees might take your plane down, then you're looking at that cash flow forecast possibly every single week to make absolutely damn sure that you're getting the money in that you're expecting on that week, and you're not sending money out any earlier than you're supposed to on that week. Jason: Even daily. Tim: A hundred percent. The clients that I have that weren't had multimillion dollar businesses which can have a lot of complexity, moving parts, people, teammates, products, clients, and all the rest, they would literally have it open every single day just to make sure things were coming and going, that all the trains are running on time because there was no margin for error. The other reason why you'd want to have your cash flow forecast updated in front of mine regularly is if there's a lot of turbulence in the air. Whether you're flying close to the trees or not close to trees. If you got a lot of altitude, that's great. But if there's a lot of turbulence, that can do a lot of damage to your plane as well. Maybe you're not looking at it every single day, maybe not even every single week, but at least once a month. I hate making absolute statements because there's always an exception to the rule, but more or less 100% of entrepreneurs are in turbulence right now because of the climate that we're operating in. This is not a situation, it's limited to a city, a state, or even a country. This is worldwide. The cash flow forecast is how you make sure that you've got oxygen in your tank and that you can keep moving. Without that oxygen in the tank, doesn't matter how big and fast your flippers are to generate revenue. You got to have the cash in the oxygen tank. If you do hit any spots where you've got red on your cash flow forecast and you need to manage that crisis line, there are a lot of different strategies. Some of the more obvious strategies would be applying for some of the SBA loans. The only downside to that is we don't know when they're going to arrive. Secondly, bank lines of credit or if you've got access to them already and they're just sitting unused, that becomes an option. There's raising money from family and friends or an investor. If you wanted to, this is maybe less attractive for most entrepreneurs, we can actually sell shares in your company to raise money. There's also just the simple renegotiating if you need to pay something. Let's say it's $5,000, it's in three weeks from now, and that's when your first red square hits on the cash flow forecast, that's your crisis line. If you're going to be short just $1,000 or something, maybe you could call that person that you owe the money and say can I make it in two payments? I'll pay you in three weeks half, and then one week after that the other half. Lo and behold, just by splitting to 2 payments over 14 days instead of once, all of a sudden you've made up the difference and now all your squares are green. Now you've got not three weeks of safety, but five weeks of safety. Jason: The plane can fly through all of those and knock at the trees. Tim: Hundred percent. The thing is there's a lot of conversation out there about how we have to pivot our businesses and how we have to change our sales and our marketing. I think that is all extremely important conversation to have, absolutely crucial conversation to have. Inevitably, if we're going to pivot our offerings in any way, shape, or form, it's going to take time to roll them out. If it's going to take, say, four weeks to come up with a new offering of some special for an Airbnb owners that want to convert into long term rental, if you need to create a marketing campaign to identify those people, if you need to train up your staff to call certain Airbnb to see if they're distressed. Whether it's people, projects, processes, offers that you're rolling out, it's going to take some time. Even if you do it really quickly, it will probably still take at least a month, if not a few months, to be able to make that pivot and to make that implementation. It doesn't matter if you've got the best idea. It takes four weeks to roll out, but you only have two weeks of cash. That's like building a brand new airplane that's the world's fastest, sexiest, coolest, most comfortable, smoothest plane in the world, but if you only give it 100 yards of runway, it's not going to take off. It's just not. Jason: To boil this down real simple for those listening, all these opportunities for growth, it does not matter if your business doesn't cash flow. It's going to fail. Cash flow first and then let's get you focused on growth. Tim: Cash can come from different places. It can come from loans and other places, not just from revenue. To your point, Jason, I just think there are so many opportunities on the other side of this. We just have to make sure we have enough runway. Surprisingly, amidst this entire thing, I'd say the thesis of all of this is that the most important factors in navigating a cash crunch is actually not cash itself. It's actually time. Time is what we're playing for and cash gets us time. By getting time, we can now get out of panic. We can get back to being calm, clear because we've got a cash flow forecast. You can see what's coming down the pipe. We're confident because you know the exact steps you need to take and because we're clear, confident, and calm, now we can be creative to take advantage of the opportunities that are coming down the pipe. That is the name of the game. Those three steps, navigating mindset, navigating expenses, and navigating cash are how we build the runway that we then can launch off whatever the new opportunities are to take us into the new economy. Jason: I had Michael McCalla on the show. I've worked with Al Sharpton as a coach. One of the things Al would say is if you lower the pressure noise for an entrepreneur, that's where their brilliance and genius comes out. One of the things Michael Mccalla talked about is that when we have constraints or limitations which this market is creating, it's going to create innovation. If you give somebody the Pareto principle, if you give somebody an endless amount of time to do whatever, they don't have to innovate. We're innovating crazy inside DoorGrow. My team members are getting new ideas. We release some contractors. Our salaried staff are figuring out new ways of doing things, ways to save money, ways that are more efficient, ways that are faster. These are big opportunities right now for you and your team to give them some constraints, have them work with you on lowering expenses, solving the cash crunch crisis that you may be experiencing, and allowing innovation creativity to happen. If you can keep your presence calm, your team will be there as well. This is a step towards that. Tim: Did you want to share with folks maybe a little bit about our presentation we're doing next week? We're actually walking people through building a cash flow forecast. Jason: Yeah. Let's just touch on the details. It's going to be on Thursday, what day is that? Tim: April the 9th. Jason: It's going to be on April 9th. It's going to be 11:00. Our time, we're both in Austin, Central, which is 9:00 AM Pacific noon Eastern. What are we going to be sharing during this? What are you going to be sharing with everyone? Tim: You bet. First of all, folks, go to navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow. I know podcast listeners won't be able to see this, but Jason, I'll just share my screen so you can see it. We've got Navigate the Cash Crunch with Tim Francis and Jason Hull. It's happening Thursday, April 9th, 2020 at 11:00 AM Central, which is Chicago time just like Jason just shared. In it, we'll be sharing the three step process we've talked about today. We're not going to go into as much detail into mindset because we talked about it here today already. We'll cover a few tools around expense management. The real star of the show is building your very own cash flow forecast. You can register for that webinar at navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow. What you'll get is access to the training. You also get the cash flow forecast template as well, which you can just drop into your very own computer and get to work with seeing where your crisis line is. Hopefully, it's not too close and from there, seeing the exact path to navigating safely. If you happen to be listening to this podcast episode of the DoorGrow Show after the webinars already happened, so after April the 9th, 2020, no problem. You can still go back to the exact same URL. You can see the resources and the replays there so that you are not left in the dark. Jason: navigatethecashcrunch.com/doorgrow. Tim: Yes, indeed. Absolutely. Maybe you guys can throw that in the show notes or something like that for anyone listening to the podcast. Jason: Absolutely. Tim: That's that. I think that somewhat as a final thought on my end over here. It's just that deep down inside, we as entrepreneurs, we take on a lot to be great leaders. I do view property managers as entrepreneurs. I hope they do too, because they are there. They're doing the courageous things of entrepreneurs every single day. Sometimes leadership isn't easy. Sometimes it has uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes it has uncomfortable moments. I think that there's something really beautiful about getting clear on where we are. Oftentimes we talk about our goals and what's the most important to us, but we also have to be very clear about where we are. Getting to Austin, Texas is very different if you're starting in Chicago versus Waikiki. Knowing where we are right now with free cash, and then from there being able to map the path with our cash flow forecast, it really creates calm, it really creates clarity. Therefore, it really creates confidence which then creates creativity that we can now take on this new economy. Something I am very sure about is not anyone including myself could have specific data around this. I just know my gut, Jason, that the economy that we had two months ago, it's over. It's gone. I don't just mean bull versus bear. What I mean is the way we did business once upon a time is forever changed. I'm very nervous for what kind of discomfort is coming for anyone who thinks that how we used to do things is coming back to what it used to be. As we chart into these new territories, I think being able to be calm, clear, confident, and creative is the path. It takes courage and just a couple simple tools to be able to have that. I think that if we're operating from clear facts and confidence, we become lighthouses that can attract what we need to attract into our worlds, and also fend away what we need to fend away. We're not left making super emotional decisions. One of my mentors, his name is Keith Cunningham, he talks about emotion and intelligence often working inverse of one another. The more emotional we are, which is really saying the more that we're in our amygdala, the less that we're in the frontal lobe of our brain, the less our executive functioning is there and the less that we're able to make intelligent, clear, confident decisions. On the flip side, the more that we can make calm, clear, confident decisions, the less that we become really emotional about what's going on. That's not to say we're not passionate. We are so passionate about our businesses. Yes, emotion has its right place. We just don't want to get stuck making decisions or taking action that we may regret down the road. Jason: Absolutely. Tim, thanks for coming on the show. Everybody else, make sure you tune in when we do our presentation. For those listening, watch the replay. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. 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Some of the most important startups are ones you never hear about. Some industries are so complex and arcane that its hard for people on the outside to understand the problems that startups are solving or the long-term gain of solving them. Freight forwarding is one of those industries. Today we talk with Taka Sato of Shippio, a startup trying to change the way freight forwarding works in Japan.  We talk about the challenges involved in trying to disrupt a low-tech, low-margin industry and also the potential rewards if Shippio succeeds. We also cover some of the bight spots in Japanese entrepreneurship and talk about how one large company, in particular, has had to change their hiring practices to respond to the fact that so many of their best young employees are leaving to found startups. It's a great discussion, and I think you will really enjoy it. Show Notes What is freight forwarding and why is it important? The biggest advantage of moving from corporate life to startups Why so many startups are coming out of Mitsui The challenges of building a platform in a low-margin industry How to decide between a service-based or SaaS-based business model Why there is finally enough pain in Japan to drive change How the logistics industry reacts to new technology Why the global logistics industry is a myth The paradox of Japanese logistics quality Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Shippio Connect with Taka on LinkedIn 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. You know, there is nothing more interesting than startups in boring industries. They are the ones that are taking on entrenched interests and business convention, and because so few outside of their industry really understand what they do and the problems that they solve, they tend to get a lot less funding and a lot less media attention than consumer-facing startups. No, the startups in boring industrial B2B spaces are old school startups. They may not have the party atmosphere or the easy customer adoption, but the truth is that on average, they have the best chance of success. Today, we sit down with Taka Sato, the co-founder of Shippio, a Japanese startup trying to change the nature of the freight forwarding business in Japan, and if you're not exactly sure what freight forwarding is, don't worry, Taka explains it simply and really well at the start of our conversation. We also talk about the challenges of pivoting in a B2B space in Japan and how to balance the very real trade-offs between the scalability of offering B2B SaaS products with the stability of offering a service direct to the customer. And if you're interested in the freight forwarding industry, and by the end of this interview, I think you will be, we also talk about how the global market is likely to play out. Freight forwarding might seem like a winner take all marketplace, but Taka explains that this is probably not going to happen. Oh, the industry is going to be disrupted -- that's already happening, but it's not going to play out quite the way that Silicon Valley thinks it will. But you know, Taka tells that story much better than I can, so let's get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] Interview Tim: So, I'm sitting here with Taka Sato of Shippio. Thanks for sitting down with me. Taka: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today. Tim: No, it's been great. We've been trying to make this happen for a long time now. Taka: Yeah, I know, I know. Tim: I'm glad you're finally here. So, Shippio is a digital freight forwarder, but for the audience, let's explain what freight forwarding is, so let's say for example, I've got some construction equipment sitting in a factory in China,

Learn more about the content discussed...No Boss Talk:https://nobosstalk.comTim Farrant’s Website: https://networkmarketinghusband.comTim Farrant’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Shes-Selling-WhatMonday Morning Routine: https://www.bethholdengraves.com/routineThe Camp Elevate Facebook Group:hereBeth’s Instagram:@bethholdengravesBeth’s website:https://www.bethholdengraves.comProfit HER Way Course:https://www.bethholdengraves.com/profitKeynotes discussed:I was really my wife's obstacle for the first few months that she was doing this business. I did not make it easy for her and I've apologized to her for that. And yet she persevere through and she crushed it and she's doing great. (05:01)Getting the husband to understand that compensation plan by someone who's been successful and can answer their questions. (10:01)When we don't include the spouse in that, we're kind of setting ourselves up for more obstacles than we need to or even for failure. (12:57)And so you are going to put in a lot of work early on to build the business and then ultimately as you stick with it and you don't quit, you know, you keep going. Then ultimately the income far exceeds the hours that you're putting in. (17:06)I tell a lot of women when I have opportunities like this, to have these conversations that if your husband or partner believes or thinks that you're going to quit, they're not going to get on board. (20:39)When Did It Air...January 06, 2020Episode Transcript...Beth:Welcome to ‘You’re Not the Boss of Me’. If you are determined to break glass ceilings and build it your way, this show is for you. I’m your host Beth Graves and I am obsessed with helping you to not just dream it, but make the plan, connect the dots and create what you crave. Are you ready? Let’s get started.Hey bosses and welcome back. It is episode number 20 is that so exciting? It is for me. I hope you're as excited as I am. And this week in honor of episode 20 we are doing a giveaway, and this is all you need to do to get boss swag in the mail from us. It's Mandy, my boss that mails it out. So, what you're going to do is leave a rating and review. If you've already left a rating and review, share this on your Facebook or in your Instagram stories and just send me a DM over on Instagram or over on Facebook messenger or sent to our email that's listed in the show notes and just say, I shared it. Let us know how and when. And we will send you our brand-new boss swag that you are going to love. So, I want to read to you from Bridget a review for this week and she says, thank you for this podcast.Beth:I love the energy Beth brings. Every time I listen to her, it seems to be spot on. Always the message I'm needing to hear. And that leaves me anxiously waiting for the next one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bridget, for this review and I am hoping that this episode is exactly what you need to hear today. So, without further ado, let me tell you what we're doing on episode number 20 it's a privilege for me to have Tim Farrant with us today. He is the author of, She’s Selling What? a skeptical husband's guide to supporting his network marketing wife. So, he will talk to us about how to have those conversations with your spouse, his story about helping and watching and supporting his wife's Epic rise in network marketing and his own journey from shock and skepticism to understanding and support. And you are going to love the actual ideas and spot on things that he's going to help you to do.Beth:That not only will help your spouse and your family to understand your network marketing journey, but to have a better marriage overall. So here we go with Tim. I can't wait for you to hear his story. Hey everyone. I am so excited today because, well, the last time Tim and I were together, we had like a cosmic disruption in our interview. And as you heard in the intro, Tim is the author of, She's Selling What, and I'm so excited for you to not only hear about how this book and this movement came about, but also most of my listeners, I have a few, a few guys out there. And women, and I hear so often, I'm not sure how to talk to my husband. I didn't really tell him I was doing this thing. And Tim is here to give you guys all of the behind the scenes, how to make sure that it's a partnership to get your spouse on board and also to create something together, not just as you know, you up in your office, your husband downstairs feeling annoyed, irritated and agitated because I've been there. So, Tim, welcome.Tim:Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.Beth:All right, so we know that your wife has had a meteoric rise in the industry. So, can you take us back at the end? Not the end, but it's like the beginning of the next phase. You have this amazing resource, this book you're speaking at Top Summit. I get to see you there. Yay! And you're all over the place as the network marketing husband, so take us back. You haven't always been the network marketing husband. Give us a little background of how all of this came to be and a little bit about you.Tim:No, that's great. In fact, I would have probably been the anti-network marketing husband when my wife started, which is, you know, where so much of this passion comes from now. So, I remember sitting at the table, like I remember the restaurant we were at, and the table when my wife looked across and I love my wife, I love her to death. We have a great marriage. She looked across the table and she was like, okay, I think I want to do this business. And I literally, it's one of the reasons why I named the book. She's selling what? Cause I literally looked at her and I was like, you want to do what? Like come on. At the time she had another business that she was successful in. And I was just like, seriously, you're going to do this? And to be honest, Beth, it was because I carried with me a bunch of the skepticism, like a U haul truck full of skepticism and all of that with me that a lot of other husbands have and spouses and partners have about the network marketing industry.Tim:And so I was really my wife's obstacle for the first few months that she was doing this business. I did not make it easy for her and I've apologized to her for that. And yet she persevered through and she crushed it and she's doing great. But what we have found is that there's so many spouses that the truth is they end up giving up because their husbands are significant obstacles instead of really being fuel on their fire in their business. And so, my passion is not only for people that have been in business for a while, but especially for newer people to get the spouse on board as soon as possible. And if you can, it will fuel not only your business, but align yourself in marriage in a way that could be really incredible. So anyway, that's my heart and passion.Beth:Okay. So, I'm visualizing the you haul truck and all of the skepticism. And I hear so often, and I, you know, I deal with it all the time myself now, I have such unshakable belief in the mission and what I do and the people that I'm helping, people will say, well, it's easy for you. Well, so some people will say, well, it's easy for Becky. It's easy for Beth and Tim because they've built these ginormous teams and networks. But it's every single day staying, staying like you're a pastor. So, I always say it's staying in the word, staying in the stories, staying with what we see, amazing things happening. I just had somebody send me a silly article, I think, I don't even know. It was in a popular little online magazine about why the network marketing industry is ruining women. And, and again, the skepticism. So, tell me about this is you had a U haul truck full of skepticism.So did my husband, my husband Don, he was supportive, but he was like, Oh yeah, okay. He thought it was me, this little thing, right? And all he said was, Oh, like do you have to pay a monthly fee and how much do you have to order and how long are you going to stick with this? And I was fueled because I, the name of this podcast is, You're Not the Boss of Me. And so as being the youngest of three, I was always trying to prove that I should be the first pick for kickball I could win at tetherball. So, I, I was going to win. They're going to win, but not everyone has that tenacity. I think it was kind of, I think my two older sisters for that, because you know that was my birthright is, I'm going to show you. So, tell me the skepticism is there.Let's walk. Let's, let's just get right down to it. You're listening today, your spouses and on board. You can also use these strategies if it's a parent, if it's a best friend. If you, and I know that you and Becky work with her new distributors when they signed on, so let's call our person Sarah. Sarah's just signed up. She has an incredible experience with the product. She wants to see if she can make a go of it and she doesn't even want to tell her husband that she bought some product to get started. So, walk us through what you would, how you would counsel a new person to bring their spouse, their husband, their boyfriend onboard, and what does that look like?Tim:Yeah, that's really a, it's a good question. One of the things that we do, and even if you don't have no a husband who's supportive with you right now, but you have a team of people, we always engage the husband or partner of the person before they start the business. So if they've already bought some product and they're already ready to go for it, like one of the worst things that you can do is hide it from your husband because if you try and hide it out of the gate, then how does that ultimately end? Right? Like ultimately they're going to figure it out and then when they figure it out, if they already have skepticism, then you saying that, I know I was hiding this from you, but like that's not going to build more trust with them. That's only going to erode it more.So right out of the gate we sit with spouses and we ask them for what their questions are like, let's get it all out there, let's have the conversation. And so, trying to address those concerns right out of the gate is really, really important. Or I would say to the people listening to this, like if you don't feel confident doing that yet with your team as you bring people on it with someone in your upline, right? Someone who's been successful and say, Hey, would you engage my husband as well? And having a conversation. And what we do first that is incredible is we always help the spouse, the husband, the partner, understand the compensation plan. It's so important because until they understand that they have no idea how to talk about the business because we have been trained since we were like 16 years old to trade hours for dollars, which you know, Beth isn't the way this business works?And so getting the husband to understand that compensation plan by someone who's been successful and can answer their questions ultimately, then that even gets more of them on board and they can answer questions and then they begin. I've seen, many times or the husband starts looking at the wife and going, is this what you want to do? Like, why don't we try and go for this rank? Or when, what's your goal to try and get to that? And you start to see them be engaged when they start to get how the business works also.Beth:Absolutely. And one of the pieces that when one of my upline, is also Blair Critch, and they also have a passion for marriage, and she had brought to my attention in the beginning, she said every Sunday night have a family meeting. So, I would sit down and write in understanding the comp plan and the goals. That is so huge. And when we talked the first time before we were interrupted by the thunderstorm and wifi, you had said to me that piece of the comp plan and since we started that when someone new comes aboard, I always say to them, listen, let's schedule a zoom with your husband in the next four days so that we can talk about this first bonus. We'll look at the comp plan, he can ask me questions and I also have had my husband have some personal phone calls without the spouse there because he'll say, let me, you know, let me give them a quick call.And it's really, I've heard back from the people that have engaged with us to say the whole process has reunited them in a way in their marriage, like the beginning, because you're working toward a common goal, you're communicating your sharing. I will say to Don, I will say, here's my goal this month. Here's what I need to do. And I give him permission to push me a bit because you know I do that when I'm, when I'm on a fitness journey right now I'm, I want a Peloton and I could go out and buy one. But I said, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to run to the red line every day, give it, and we have the goal because we want to redo the garage. So, it's like the network marketing piece. So, the communication of the goal and having that. Now do you bring your kids into, to part of the celebrating of when you reached certain ranks or milestones, do they come into play as well?Tim:Yeah, absolutely they do. And I want to say this to everyone just to summarize what you're saying to Beth because it's so good. We don't like this truth sometimes, but the truth is no other person will impact your success more than your spouse, positively or negatively outside of you. Right? There's no other person that's going to impact your success more than your spouse, whether positive or negative. And so, and that's true for both sides of it. And so, when we don't include the spouse in that, we're kind of setting ourselves up for more obstacles than we need to or even for failure at sometimes. And so, I love the fact that you're getting husbands involved in and having those conversations. It really, really is a huge part. But with the kids, absolutely. So, we do little milestone things with our kids. We have a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old.And so, you know, we do everything with them from vision boards to they know, you know, mom's going for a particular rank this month or a particular goal. So, we're all going to sacrifice. And then, you know, when we get to the end of it, we've done like mini shopping sprees with them or when it's been really big. We've taken a trip together and it's fun because when your kids know that, especially if they're younger, if your kids know that, they're like pushing my wife, you know their mom also, where they're like, mom, how's it going with the goal? And you want some accountability and your goals, get your spouse and kids involved. They will hold you accountable, you know, if there's kind of a carrot or prize on the other side for sure.Beth:Oh absolutely. For sure. They love that piece. I have an almost empty nest and so when I started in network marketing, I had one in junior high and one in high school. Donnie was in junior high and McKenzie was in high school and we did that. We looked at, okay, and this is what I'm working toward. And I was really clear too, we talk a lot on this podcast, him about not dropping the glass balls, your spiritual life, your family life, your health goals, because all of those pieces have to be a part of your success with your business. And so having the communication with your spouse of like, Hey, this week, and I told I have a retreat this coming weekend and it's been planned and we talked about is this a good time, is this, how does this work with our son's schedule? How does this work with your schedule and feeling as though it's a team effort and the goals and they are all a part of the whole family piece.So I want to back up because something just came to me. I was looking at my notes before I got on of frustrations that I've heard from women that are starting in the business of helping that spouse to unpack that U Hall of skepticism. So, I always like to let people know like here are the reasons why the network marketing industry is good for women, especially women who want flexibility and freedom to perhaps be at home with their kids to not have that glass ceiling. What I saw when I first got started is I didn't have to figure out a distribution channel or build out a technology platform or hire a marketing team or HR, the zillion things that our family business had us doing because building a traditional business requires all of those things and all I had to do was talk to people, share the love of the product, share the company, build community and culture. Those were the pieces. It was like, I could start making money from day one. What are some of the ways that you help spouses to understand when they have that skepticism? Oh, nobody makes money in these businesses. Oh yeah, blah blah blah. What are, what are your go to points?Tim:Yeah, yeah absolutely. Because it's a huge issue. I mean some guys come into it and they think their wives should make like thousands of dollars the first month or if not it's a scam of some kind. You know? And I think one part is definitely understanding the compensation plan so that they have that as a framework for their, just their knowledge and understanding of how it all works. So that's a big one. But also, like you got to explain to your spouse and help them understand that building a business like they can't expect year 10 results on a month one business. Like it's not going to happen. And so, you are going to put in a lot of work early on to build the business and then ultimately as you stick with it and you don't quit, you know, you keep going. Then ultimately the income far exceeds the hours that you're putting in.But it's real work, like it's hard. And so, having that conversation early on for them to understand this is going to be difficult. So, I always encourage women that are coming into the business and starting their business to look at their husband and just literally look in the eyes and say, would you support me for six months? Would you please support me in this for six months? I'm not asking you for like the rest of your life, but for six months because it's going to take time and it's going to take hard work and I'm not going to make a bunch of money early on. But that's the way a business works. And obviously the lower investment, right? Like you said, not the complication and the lower investment to get a business is what makes network marketing such an incredible opportunity for so many people. So, is that, does that answer the question, Beth?Beth:Yep. And I love, I love that piece of it. If I went to my husband and said, listen, I want to go back to school and become a physician's assistant. That's what my sister did when she was 35 years old. So, did she make money right out of the box? No, she invested. I mean, you're going to make money right away in network marketing. You can start earning while you learn. But I like to say that. So, we always hear, Oh, she became a six-figure earner. She became this, she became that. And so, people think it's immediate success like you said. And so, I always say, what would happen if you invested five years? You said one, and I would say if I told you that showing up consistently, and maybe we did people, I always say, how much time do you have to invest?Well, okay, so a teacher that's making $1,000 a week or $1,500 become much time. Is she investing and preparing her lesson plans? How much time do you invest in preparing your sermons and working with your youth groups and helping everything in the church? So, I always say that the time commitment will reflect the income. And also, there's a piece of it too that we have to look at. People don't get lucky that some people walk in and have a larger network. Like Becky walked in and she had a blog following, right? She had people that were, that were curious and interested in what she was doing. She still had to have conversations, but someone that might have just started on social media or just started marketing will have a different path.So I'm always saying keep your blinders on, believe it can be you ask for spiritual guidance, always right? As for, I always say in my prayers in the morning, I take action with faith and clarity. Who will I serve today? And then having the spouse on board, the family on board, and being exceptionally coachable. These are like all pieces. So when you see someone that comes in into your space and wants to have you, we're going to talk about one last thing and wants to have you talk to their spouse and they're excited, they've got belief, they're ready to go, they've got the desire, and then it doesn't go as planned. The success isn't immediate. How do you then revisit, do you revisit that conversation? Because the last piece is commitment to go until no matter what. So, can you talk a little bit about commitment as a family, what you've seen with some of the couples that you've worked with?Tim:Yeah. In fact, I also, I tell a lot of women when I have opportunities like this, to have these conversations that if your husband or partner believes or thinks that you're going to quit, they're not going to get on board. And if you're just objective about it, can you blame them? Right. Like if you, if the tables were returned and they wanted to start something, but they were always, you know, complaining or they weren't putting in the work or they weren't setting the goals or they just were super negative or whatever it is, you would look and say, are you about to quit this? You know, and so your mindset on even the person building the business to say, I'm not going to quit. I'm going to keep building this. I'm going to keep going. Builds faith in your husband, builds faith in your kids.And when that's there, of course they're more likely to get around it and to keep going. And when you are struggling, reach out to, again, someone in the upline or someone on your team to have the conversation with you and your spouse. So, to sit together with both of you again and say, okay, so you set some goals and they weren't there. Well let's revisit it. Like you said that, is it the time you're putting in, you know, did you have too high of expectations of how much time you could put in or do you need to readjust some things? You can put some more time in, you know, what are those income producing activities? Are you doing them or are you not doing them? And having that honest conversation with the both of them together helps again, just realign, re-establish a baseline, and then setting new goals together and then helping them run towards that for a season. So, the struggle happens when those conversations happen in a silo and the spouses aren't talking with each other because that's not going to build more alignment and trust with them.Beth:And this is a big piece too, is not bringing the negativity and that using the second, then we open ourselves up for the complaining, the negativity, the doubt, and using your spouses as kind of the punching bag for that. Then they're like, well, this isn't making you happy. So, making sure that positive mindset, let's jump to you dealt with this personally. You started to see it in Becky's business. You started to see that there was really a need to educate, to inform, to support the spouses. So, you jumped into a book project, talk about the book, how can people get their hands on it and share a little more about that journey. I love it. I've read it, I've shared it. It's in my, when I send out a new person, joins my team personally, they get a package from me and that is always inside of there. It's kind of like the fab fit and fun box. That's one of my pieces inside of their welcome box. So, share a little bit more about your book and where people can get their hands on that. And you know that was a huge project for you.Tim:Yeah, it was a huge project and now we're having this conversation. We're seeing how marriages were being hurt, women were giving up. And so, I couldn't understand why nobody else was addressing or talking about this or getting resources. And so, after several months of like me personally wrestling and like fighting with God, because I felt a calling to write this book, you know, and I didn't want to, and I got enough going on in my life. Like all of that, I ended up, you know, writing this book. And I mean literally thousands of people and thousands of husbands that have gotten their hands on it, you know, weekly. Now I'm getting messages from people whose marriages are being helped and businesses are growing because of it. And it's just been a humbling, humbling journey and we'll see where this all goes. But my heart and passion for it is to see women build more successful businesses and see their marriages and families thrive in the process. So, you can get the book anywhere you can get on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or anywhere you want as well as I record it on audible. And so that was a big part cause a lot of husbands don't read. And so, guys are engaging it and it's just been received really, really well. And I'm humbled to be a part of it.Beth:Well, I thank you so much for that resource for thousands and thousands of spouses that just needed to hear and have it in their audible when they're walking the dogs when they're at the gym and also for that push to create conversations and to create a way to bring the whole family on board. So, it's huge in my business as a shift to help spouses. It's also brought to light that when someone comes aboard, we don't have that in our onboarding process. That question, and I've added it. Tell me about your family. Tell me about the support. What, what does support look like for you? So, I like to leave everyone with a good question. And that question I always would say to say each week is how does support look? And being able to ask to ask your spouse to say, listen, this is what support looks like for me and what you need from me.Like have that open level of conversation instead of being reactive, be proactive. I know that when life feels aligned for my family, it's when I'm in a proactive state, when I've really, really blocked my calendar. When I'm not running from here and they're trying to be on the phone, having a conversation with my spouse, checking messages. I always say this, Tim, be wherever your feet are, if you're with your spouse, be with your spouse, not with your team on your phone. If you're with your kids, be with your kids and block that time and there will not be resentment if you are so mindful of that time being spent and go to the date night, keep your phone in your purse, your team will survive, right? So, I want to end with three ways. I'm just throwing this out at you. Three ways that you can tell people to keep their marriage alive and vibrant while building a successful network marketing business.Tim:Oh, you're asking me three ways. Three ways. I thought you were…I was waiting for you to give the magical three ways Beth. Three ways. Okay. Three ways to keep your marriage alive while you're, okay, so you said this, but one is definitely a regular date night, right? Regular date night, family night. You got to do it. You got to carve out the time. Like you just said, your team will survive, and your spouse won't resent you. So that's number one. Number two, you have to include your spouse. We've talked a lot about that in this, but the spouse, can I talk about this a ton in the book? Like the spouse can't just sit on the sidelines and just observe from afar your business, they got to have a couple of small contributions. You got to share the wins with them. Ultimately, you want for your wins to become his wins as well as you go through this.So there's got to be some, some contribution on their part. And then, let's see, what's a third one? Oh, this is so good. Okay. You've got to treat your spouse. You got to be the spouse that you want your spouse to be. So just kind of an overall, as you're building this business, flip the script and say, you know, how would I want my spouse to react when this is going on? Or if, or if I was building a business and things weren't going like maybe you had even hoped, like how would I hope my spouse would respond and then respond that way or what would I hope they would do if the tables were turned and then act that way with them as you're going through this process, because it's a journey and building a business is hard. Anybody that's going to tell you that building any type of business is easy is lying to you.Beth:Amen to that. It's hard and I love it. You want to be, that's huge for sure. Marriage, longevity. I'm going on 25 years of being married. I love those pieces and yes, it is hard and be the spouse you want to be. And here's one that I'm going to add to it, because I didn't do this in the beginning and this just came to mind is, you know, you get teams on the West coast, she get teams in London and I would go up to my office at night and I would, you know, work and he would go to bed without me. And so I'm going to add that there may be one night a week that you're working on a different time zone, but 99% of the time, shut down, create a boundary around your time together and, and go to bed at the same time.Like have that ritual of whatever that because that's where you start to feel that disconnection. And so that's been a big piece in terms of being the spouse that I wanted to have was how would I have felt if he was working all night, didn't come downstairs and check on me. And they hear you in your office, you're on zooms, you're laughing. You know? So that shifted a year ago and I felt this complete reconnection. And so, I appreciate that so much. Be the spouse that you want to be. So, Tim, any closing thoughts you have for our podcast listeners today?Tim:No, I think this has been great. I just want to encourage everybody, and I know you do this Beth, and it's been part of your journey as well, but if you make it to the end and you've been super successful in your business, but you turn around and your marriage and family is in a destructive place, you haven't won and you haven't been successful. A definition of success, somebody shared with me years ago, success is when the people closest to you respect you the most. And so yes, you need to build a business. Yes, you need to work on it, but you really can do it in a way that you see your marriage and your families thrive in the process. And so, I guess maybe that's the closing thought.Beth:That is a perfect closing thought. Thank you so much Tim, for being with us today and grab his book, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. There's still time for you guys to get tickets to the Top Summit. It's in February, it's in Naples. Go to the topsummit.com you'll be able to hear Tim and Becky speak onstage on this very topic. I'll also be speaking on another topic, but it's a whole lot of fun. I don't even want to give a sneak peek, but it has to do with finding your spouse, but we're relating it to how you find the perfect recruit network marketing, so it's going to be a whole lot of fun. And Tim, thank you and I will see you in February and real life.Tim:Absolutely.Beth:All right, cool. Hey, you guys, check out the podcast next week because it is going to be something you don't want to miss. I have another exceptional guest who is also an author and we will catch you guys all next Monday.Thanks so much for hanging with me today on the podcast and remember, you can create what you crave. If you're looking for a supportive sisterhood, I would love to see you over in our free Facebook group. As most of you know, I love camp. It's part of, 'You're Not the Boss of Me' because when we're building this thing, we're doing this thing. We need a supportive sisterhood and I also crave more fun and more connection. Join us at camp over in the Facebook world, thecampelevategroup.com or just click on the link above and we will see you around our campfire and help you to create what you crave.

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.     

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.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So, you are pretty in tune with global warming. You are pretty in tune with the environment - conscious, environmentally conscious. What do you do to do your part for help protecting the environment?Tim: Yeah, well, I think I do quite a bit. I grew up in an area that's really environmentally conscious. Oregon is pretty environmentally conscious, so I recycle. It's pretty easy to recycle in Oregon. They just pick it right up at your house. You don't have to separate it. They separate it for you, so I recycle as much as I possibly can.Jeff: But maybe those are traditional things. Do you do anything sort of more advanced or more modern than just recycling? Is there anything in your life that's more modern?Tim: Well, one thing: I recently bought a hybrid car.Jeff: A hybrid car.Tim: Yeah.Jeff: What's a hybrid car?Tim: So it is a car that basically gets better gas mileage cause what my car does is I have to put gas in it. I have to put gas in it but when I break it takes the energy created by the heat from the breaking and it charges the battery, and then the battery can help power the car, so it's half gasoline, half - just electric energy from the battery.Jeff: Really. Electric and gas.Tim: Yeah.Jeff: Really interesting. So do you have to charge the car at night? Do you have to plug it in or anything like that?Tim: No, my car just by breaking it charges the battery completely. Occasionally, I've heard of some people that if they leave their car for like a year or something they have to go back and they'll have to plug in the battery and it will charge up, but for the most part, I don't have to do very much at all.Jeff: So that is a fancy watch you're wearing as well. Is that environmentally friendly at all?Tim: Oh, yeah. This watch actually doesn't take batteries. It's solar powered and so it just gets energy from the sun.Jeff: Wow. So you pretty environmentally conscious dude.Tim: I try.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So, Tim, you live in a nice natural spot.Tim: Yeah, that's true.Jeff: Lots of nature around where you live?Tim: Yeah, I'm from Oregon. There's lots of nature. There's not a lot of towns really.Jeff: And do you take advantage of it by doing any outdoor sports or activities or anything?Tim: Yeah, I try to, like me and my friends, we go hiking. We camp. We backpack. Snow camp. Snowshoe. All kinds of stuff.Jeff: Really. You snow camp?Tim: Yeah, we snow camped before, yeah.Jeff: So do you stay out or do you stay in a cabin or?Tim: No, usually we go out. A lot of times it's snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. We go out and we build a little hut basically by digging down and go underneath and stay there for the night and come out. It's really cold.Jeff: So, do you pull a sled behind you or do you carry your stuff?Tim: Usually, we just put a pack on your back. Yeah.Jeff: I want to try that.Tim: Yeah, it's a lot of fun, but it's cold and usually, you don't enjoy a lot of it until you done, and when you're done you think, "Ah, that was a great experience."Jeff: Yeah, yeah. I think it would be good but, so is it very different from summer camping?Tim: I think that the biggest thing is that when you go out there it's really, really silent. You don't see a lot of things out and about because it's cold. So it's just really quiet and it's really, really peaceful.Jeff: Is it safe? Can you die?Tim: Yeah, it is relatively safe. People do die doing it. For the most part, it's really safe. One time we were caught in a pretty bad storm and we were coming back. The biggest thing is we came out and our car was covered in snow and we couldn't get out so that was a pretty big deal. Luckily the cellphone worked through and we were able to eventually get out but we had to dig the car out and call some people to come out and help us.Jeff: So do you follow a trail?Tim: Sometimes. It just depends. Sometimes we just use navigation systems and just go out and go and pick points and go for it and sometimes we follow like ski trails that have like little diamonds on trees and you can point towards them and look for them and find them.Jeff: So do you recommend winter camping to people?Tim: Not unless you've had some outdoor experience. Not somebody who's just gonna go out there because you really got to look at the weather. You gotta have the right gear. If you don't have the right gear you'll freeze to death.Jeff: So city people, don't winter camp.Tim: Mostly yeah. I'd say city people better not winter camp unless you've got somebody who's really experienced with you. I've taken my girlfriend out there and so you can do it as long as you're with somebody that knows what they are doing and you have the right gear cause if you don't have something that's waterproof and things that are going to keep water out you can't do it.Jeff: Great.

We've been talking about smart homes and smart cities for a long time. However, it turns out that we are not willing to pay very much for simple convenience, so the technology is coming into our homes bundled with different agendas. We've seen this happen with the success of Alexa and Google Home, and we are now seeing it here in Japan with Nature Remo. Today we sit down and talk with Haruumi Shiode, the founder and CEO of Nature, and we discuss not only what the future of home automation will look like, but who will be paying for it. It's an enlightening conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The real motivation behind smart home purchases How hardware entrepreneurship went mainstream The one way in which crowdfunding is still relevant Why Nature decided to launch English-first How to outsource hardware production without going bankrupt Nature's real business model for the future The importance of demand-response in Japan The growing significance of corporate alumni networks in Japan Why Kyoto might be Japan's next innovation center Links from the Founder Everything you wanted to know about Nature Remo Friend Haruumi on Facebook Follow him on Twitter @haruumi524 Read about Haruumi's transformational sailing journey. It's a pretty cool story. 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. Smart homes and smart speakers have not really changed our lives in the way that was predicted. I mean, it’s not that they have not sold well. Amazon has sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices and the technology is a really amazing, but voice assistance remain a novelty rather than a real step forward, and here in Japan, even with Japanese language support, the adoption rate has been low. I think a big part of that is the lack of conductivity, and by conductivity, I don’t mean the ability to connect to a computer or interact with other programs. I mean, smart speakers don’t connect us to each other in new ways. In the end, they are just an input device. They don’t provide something that we don’t already have in our lives. Well, today, I’d like you to meet Haruumi Shiode, the founder and CEO of Nature’s created a new smartphone device, the Nature Remo. Now, the Nature Remo provides some immediate utility: the ability to control your life and your air conditioner from your smart phones or based on rules that you set up, but the real reason that Nature is so interesting is what comes next. It’s a lot more than just turning your lights on and off; it’s a new way of connecting with each other and a new way for power companies to manage the power grid during times of peak load. But you know, Haruumi tells the story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] Interview Tim: So, I’m sitting here with Haruumi Shiode of Nature, so thanks for sitting down with me. Haruumi: Thanks for inviting me for this podcast. Tim: No, I’ve been looking forward to it. So, Nature makes the Nature Remo which is a really interesting device that you can probably explain a lot better than I can, so what is the Remo and how does it work? Haruumi: Nature Remo is basically a very small tiny device that can turn your AC or TV, or lighting through smart device. It communicates with those appliances through the infrared and they connect to Wi-Fi, so that you can control from your smart phone or smart speakers. Tim: Okay, so infrared means it’s sort of – it’s emulating the remote control for your TV or your air conditioning? Haruumi: Yes. Tim: Ah, okay, cool. So, if it’s infrared, and so if I wanted to outfit my apartment with these and control or my air-conditioning units and my TV, so would I need one Remo in each room? Haruumi: Yeah,

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]  

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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it's ALL about JESUS (#3 in a 4 part series) “No Other Name!” Acts 4:12

As the Founder of InForm Fitness' Power-of-10 Workout, Adam Zickerman makes the claim every day that InForm Fitness offers the safest, most efficient strength training program around. But Adam has a confession for InForm Nation. Adam suffered an injury while exercising that resulted in acute, knock-you-on-your-butt, back muscle spasms. You can imagine Adam's dilemma as to whether or not he should fess up or cover up his recent injury.Hear the whole story in Episode 23 beginning with the surgery he experienced as a child, the details of his injury, and how he seems to have found a cure for his lifelong ailment.Click this link to read Adam's story at INFORM INSIGHTS: https://informfitness.com/back-spasms-exercise/Pick up Adam's Zickerman's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution.  You can buy it in 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 Resten.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. For information regarding the production of your own podcast just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.comThe complete transcriptions for this episode is below:Tim: And we're back, InForm Nation! Glad you're doing us once again here for episode 23, on the InForm Fitness Podcast. Twenty minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends. For those  joining us for the very first time, let's go around the horn and introduce everybody. I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network, and a client of InForm Fitness, and joining me here in person at the InBound Studio is co-owner and general manager of the Burbank InForm Fitness location, Sheila Melody. Sheila, nice to see you three dimensionally instead of 2D via Skype nowadays, thanks for joining me.Sheila: Yeah, this is fun!Tim: And still in boring old 2D through the magic of Skype is general manager of the Manhattan location, Mike Rogers, and the founder of InForm Fitness, New York Times bestselling author, Power of Ten: The Once a Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, also affectionally known as the guru, Adam Zickerman. What's up fellas?Adam: Hey.Mike: I've never called him the guru.Tim: No, ever? Mike: I'm going to start calling you that now, matter of fact, the guru.Adam: Mike was booking some guests on one of our podcast episodes, in his letters he writes, and he refers to me as his boss. I meant to talk to Mike about that, saying boss. Refer to me as your — I don't know — Tim: Your superior. The boss, the founder, Adam.Adam: Your colleague and the founder of InForm Fitness. Mike: You're going to go there, okay. You're going to wish I said boss next time.Tim: Alright well the boss has been having problems with his back, or at least he has in the past, and here in episode 23, we're going to refer back to a blog post of yours Adam from June of last year, 2016: Back Spasms From Exercise, which we'll have a link to in the show notes of course if you'd like to read them. In the blog post Adam, you offer up a confession, and you mention a back injury that you suffered as a kid. Now we'll get to that confession in just a moment, but let's start with the injury you suffered; what caused the injury, back many, many decades ago?Adam: Yeah I was a teenager, and I don't know exactly what caused the injury. I think it was a combination of sports and being active, but I also had this weird obsession about jumping staircases, and when I think back on my childhood life, I really think that my back injury was from trying to jump down ten stairs or fifteen stairs. I started to keep increasing the amounts of stairs I could jump.Tim: I did the same stuff, I really did.Mike: You probably hit your head one time and that's why your memory is —Adam: I do remember where it manifested itself. It could have been the stairs — when the back problem happened, I didn't feel it right away. It was during actually a basketball game, I was a point guard, and up until that point I was a pretty good point guard. At this particular game, I couldn't cut to my left. There was no pain, I was just very slow cutting to the left, and the ball kept getting stolen from me at mid court, and my father who was watching the game was like, and my coach and everybody was like, that's very unusual for Adam to get the ball just taken from him like that, every time he brings the ball up. It was that night that all of the sudden the back pain started. Now I've been saying for years that I think it was the basketball game that hurt my back, but very likely it was probably something before that that led up to it, and I'm thinking that crazy idea I had about jumping off of staircases.Tim: So 35, 40 years ago is when this probably began. Adam: Yeah, the symptoms were numbness in my right leg, radiating down my leg. I couldn't bend at all, I couldn't bend at my waist at all. I couldn't sit for more then a couple of minutes without the pain, I had to stand or lie down.Tim: As a kid.Adam: I was a kid, and the back of my leg was in a lot of pain and numb at the same time, my calf was numb. To this day, there is slight numbness to my slight calf compared to my left calf. I can feel some sensation, but it's definitely dulled; to this day, it's never recovered, so there's probably a little bit of nerve damage back then.Mike: So did you go to the doctor and find out what exactly happened?Adam: So we go to a doctor and remember I'm eleven, and when you have these symptoms as an adult, right away they say let's look at the back, but as a child, the last thing they were thinking about was a nerve compression of a herniated disc. So they were looking for everything else, including tumors of the spine. So there was a point there where I was meeting with oncologists and getting tests at NYU at New York University Medical Center. The tests for everything but a herniated disc, and when they eliminated all those things, they said could this kid have a herniated disc, and they performed a procedure called a myelogram. Which is a crazy procedure where they inject a dye into your spinal column, and they turn you upside down on a table, literally upside down, and let the dye kind of go down the spine or really up the spine, and when they see the fluid, this dye that they inject into your spinal column. When they see that dye deviate to the right or the left, that's where the herniation is, and that's how they were able to  determine disc herniations back in the day, in the 70s. They still do that procedure but much less so now. So a myelogram is more or less an archaic methodology now, MRIs have pretty much taken over that. So when they saw the fact that I had a disc herniation, they were like holy cow, and I had surgery. I had surgery by a neurosurgeon, the surgery is called a laminectomy, and in part of the spine vertebrae, there's something called lamina, and the lamina was removed to pretty much reduce the pressure that was being pushed against it by the disc, pushing a nerve into the lamina. So they took away the lamina, no more pressure against the nerve, and the pain went away, but there was a compromise there. There was a structural compromise done when you remove structure from your vertebrae. So ever since that surgery, I've been able to bend and I've been able to play all my sports, and I've lived a fairly normal life. However, probably ten years into post surgery, I would start getting back spasms. These horrible, horrible, bring you down to your knees, can't move, and if you move, you go into another spasm. It's almost like being hooked up to a car battery and every time — you sit and you're kidnapped, and every time you say something wrong, they hit the switch and you're shocked. That's what a back spasm is, where there is sometimes I would be suffering spasms and if I tried to move out of my position, I would go right back into position. It was just nonstop spasm after spasm after spasm, and this can go on for hours. They're excruciating, it's literally like being shocked.Sheila: It sounds like torture.Adam: It's very painful.Tim: And this is something you experienced in your twenties now? These back spasms.Adam: I've been experiencing those from my twenties up until now. Mike: I've seen Adam over the years about half a dozen times, during the workday, they kind of come out of nowhere. I don't know if he worked out earlier that day or whatever, but I've seen him have to go down to the ground and put a tennis ball, just lay down on a tennis ball and stuff like that. Adam: Those are for the good ones. Sometimes they got so bad that I would literally get nauseated and want to vomit, and it's just relentless, it doesn't go away. The only thing that makes it better is time. A couple days on my back, it finally starts to subside. I also take Flexeril, which is a muscle relaxant, and that seems to take the edge off when things are really bad. Alright so that's the history.Tim: Let's fast forward a few years now, right, because Adam, let's jump to the confession now. I'll tell you, if I'm listening to this and I'm hearing you, Adam Zickerman, the founder of InForm Fitness, suffering from back spasms, my first question honestly is, well did that happen as a result of high-intensity strength training? Adam: No, definitely not. Although I've tweaked it during workouts, the confession that you're referring to, this blog that I wrote, I was doing leg press, and I was pushing myself. I set a new weight, it was a new seat setting that put a little bit more strain on my back apparently. I was training myself and probably my thought went somewhere else, and my hips lifted a little bit, and all they have to do is lift a millimeter, and bam, I felt something. It wasn't the spasm, but I felt something, I was like oh boy. Usually, you feel something and it just progressively gets worse, and I know I'm in for it. Sometimes you feel that pain, I've been dealing with this for so long in my life, you feel that initial pain and you say to yourself, okay, five more hours from now, I'm going to be on my back. I've got to get my ass home, put that ice pack on, and hope for the best. Of course, it comes, it does come, and it came this last time, and this was less than a year ago.Tim: I remember we recording some podcasts last year, and you were really struggling with your back during one of those episodes that we had. So this happened, that's your confession Adam, in your blog post was —Adam: The confession is here I am, exercises quote unquote guru with a bad back. It's like being an obese nutritionist or something.Mike: They're out there.Adam: I interviewed one, not to change the subject, but somebody came looking for — making some nutrition referrals and she was overweight, I was like come on. Tim: So here you are, again like we said, founder of InForm Fitness, on one of your machines. You just lost focus, and maybe one of the mistakes you made I guess was training yourself, and someone not watching you as closely as all of the trainers at InForm Fitness do with their clients, and this happened. So there's that confession. So since this incident Adam that you mentioned in your blog post, have you had any back spasms?Adam: No I haven't, and I think there are a couple of reasons for it. One reason we'll talk about now, and another reason we'll talk about in another episode of our podcast.Mike: Real quick Adam, is this the longest period you've gone without a back spasm?Adam: This is — I'm approaching the longest period I've gone without a back spasm right now. The last five years, I've been getting about maybe two or three back spasms a year, now it's been about a year since I had one. When I was in my twenties, I only got one a year. The difference between when I was in my twenties and recently was they came more often, and they healed a lot slower when I got older. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I would get one, a couple of days later, back to new. Now, been lingering, my wife has been saying, wow Adam, it just seems like your back is always hurting now, always crooked. Even when I wasn't in spasm, my posture was just off, and there was always this like — I would say, I would give it a 4/10 in terms of pain, just ongoing. So I was always feeling something in my back at a level four, spasms are a ten plus. When I'm about to go into spasm, sometimes there's an eight and seven, and I can work. I can go into work with an eight and deal with it, and I kept saying this is muscular, this is neuromuscular, this is not structural. I know my body, I know an MRI is going to be what they say in medicine as remarkable, it's not going to show much of anything, but of course, because they were lasting longer and becoming more frequent, I was like what do I have to do lose? Go get an MRI, what's the big deal? So I got it, and I got it about a year ago, and it showed some slight herniations, grade one vertebrate slippage, but there are MRIs out there that show a lot worse, and the patient is asymptomatic and they don't have any back problems. And there are people that don't show anything that have severe back problems, so my MRI was basically unremarkable, and it didn't indicate anything major that would be causing all of these spasms, let's put it that way. So I was frustrated, I trained people day in and day out with safe exercise, and I strengthened their lower back, and there's that expression that cobblers' children don't have any shoes. I have to — here's another confession, I was not doing my back exercises that I keep imploring my patients or clients to do, to do that regular back extension, back strengthening exercise, and I wasn't doing any follow up type of work like pelvic tilts, hip thrusts, things that could create movement of that hip and lower back area. I was working all the time, I was sitting, I was commuting long commutes, and I really wasn't doing what I thought I should be doing. I just couldn't take it anymore, after the MRI came back and showed that there was nothing to really write home about, I said you know what, I've just got to start taking care of myself. I was doing all of the major exercises, the leg presses and the chest presses and all of the things that guys like to do, but I was ignoring the lower back. So I've been doing that regularly now, absolutely regularly for the last year, and I have to say especially in the last four or five months, I am, well, for the first time since I was in my twenties, I can say that I don't feel my back anymore. I don't feel that thing there that's been following me around like a black cloud. I have literally no pain in my lower back, and it hasn't been this way for quite a while now, knock on wood, because it can come at any time, but I don't remember the last time that I could say that I have no pain in my lower back.Sheila: And would you say consistently?Adam: I was at a three or four for months at a time, I can keep it at a three or four. The one long airplane ride or car ride and I'm back to a five and six, or funny enough, when I would do sports, it would feel better. So there's something to that movement that would make it feel better. I remember going to skiing and thinking to myself, I don't know if this is a good idea dude. I know you love skiing, but maybe it's time to hang up the bindings, and well I went, and I'm telling you, it felt batter. My back would feel better after something like that, or long bike rides, my back would feel better. So there was something to that movement, and all these things together made me say let's take care of your back finally. Get on that lower back extension machine on a regular basis, do your pelvic tilts. Ice, I would ice my back on a regular basis. I would get massages on a regular basis, and now here I am.Sheila: You say on a regular basis, are you talking weekly, weekly you're doing a routine that supports your back?Adam: Yes, weekly and daily. The weekly thing is the high intense, lower back extensions. The daily is the icing it once a day for twenty minutes or so. I would do pelvic tilts, I would do some light stretches, and I would also on a weekly basis, I'd have some manual therapy. Some deep tissue massage, and the combination thereof — I've been doing a lot of things, so it's hard to know which one of those things is the answer. It's probably the combination, and the reason we're doing this podcast, this episode of the podcast right now is because I think I'm onto something.Tim: You see a very dramatic change.Adam: Mike has also been doing a lot of this stuff recently with his patients or clients.Mike: The thing is, I think all around health, this is from my experience and I've talked to chiropractors, physical therapists, orthopedists, and we've read lots of books on the matter, and I've taken other courses in fitness, and what I've learned is there is our weekly exercise that we need to do for our strength, and we've found a nice, safe, efficient way of doing that, but Adam mentioned some daily exercises, and I've prescribed very, very simple little things that take about five minutes on a daily basis, and people who are compliant to these little things — and these are just mobility exercises, activation of the muscles, nothing intense at all, and they involve little pelvic tilts. Whether you're laying down on your back or you can be on all fours, like a child pose, bird, dog, some little glute bridge leg raises type of things, and very light stretches of the hamstrings and calves, and I've found unbelievable results from people, in addition to their workouts that they come for once a week. The ones that are compliant, doing it three, four or more times a week, within two weeks they're feeling a lot better. So I think the formula involves some small daily exercises as well.Tim: In addition to that Mike too, I'll just speak for myself. I had some lower back issues and when I first started at InForm Fitness, the leg press was really giving me some problems, and Anne Kirkland, one of the trainers at the Burbank location, went in and made some adjustments to how I was sitting in the leg press. She put something behind my back I believe.Sheila: A lumbar pad. Anne has additional certification in low back.Tim: And immediately fixed whatever issues I was having with the leg press, so you do the same thing there I'm sure as well in New York.Mike: I'm sorry to interrupt — if you're in the wrong position, things are not going to be good no matter where you are, and I think that's the benefit to being here is it's one on one, it's slow motion. We have time to sort of assess and see where we are, first of all, to make sure that the seat position is correct, and then to monitor your form throughout the set.Tim: That's right, and that's what happened to me as I mentioned a few moments ago. I was on the leg press, having a few issues with my back, just a few minor adjustments from my trainer and the back pain went away. Hey guys, as you can tell by the music, our twenty minutes allotted for this episode is up, so it's time for us to wrap it up. It also means that for you, on the other side of the speakers, if you began your high-intensity strength training workout at an InForm Fitness when we began this episode, you too, would be wrapping it up. For the entire week, now you'll be wiped out, but you'll be done, and you can begin enjoying your rest and recovery, to prepare for next week's workout. We'll do the same here at the InForm Fitness Podcast, we are going to continue our talk regarding back pain. We'll also be joined by Dr. Louis Fierro, a chiropractor who works with Adam in the InForm Fitness Active Rehabilitation program. Dr. Lou will offer up his suggestions and solutions for those experiencing back pain of their own, plus we'll dive into the psychological aspects of a negative diagnosis, such as a back problem, and how that alone can prolong an illness or an injury. We'll share some interesting data that supports the notion that a simple attitude adjustment can change the course of your rehabilitation.If you'd like to give this workout a try for yourself, to find an InForm Fitness location nearest you, just visit informfitness.com. At the time of this recording, we have locations in Manhattan, Port Washington, Denville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg, and Reston. If you're not near an InForm Fitness location, you can always 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 at a gym nearest you.Hey we have a lot planned here at the InForm Fitness Podcast that we can't wait to share with you. In the next few weeks, we'll be speaking with Gretchen Rubin from the award winning Happier podcast. We'll also be talking to Dr. Martin Gibala, author of the One Minute Workout, and in another episode, Adam will be discussing a diet plan that, in his words, has changed his life, and of course as I mentioned earlier, chiropractor Dr. Lou Fierro joins us next week. For Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and Adam Zickerman of InForm Fitness, I'm Tim Edwards, with the InBound Podcasting Network.

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.

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.

  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!    

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