Podcast appearances and mentions of tim well

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2023 33:23

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

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Empathy Driven Management and Engagement with Tim Banks

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2022 36:25

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

new york amazon google ai zoom management drop engagement mvp empathy software cops cloud driven boy roi banks context oracle developers slack mfa api irl kpis smaller screaming poc aws github larger helm devops brazilian jiu jitsu invent us marines dns ides pipelines deploy rds unix trusted advisors honeycomb terraform repos cli observability edp ecr eks snyk ec2 yaml site reliability engineering launchdarkly dynamodb corey quinn american national timone cloudformation tim banks tim oh tim it tim yeah duckbill group tim no tim well chief cloud economist last week in aws humblepod corey is

The Multi-Cloud Counterculture with Tim Bray

The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2022 41:50

About TimTimothy William Bray is a Canadian software developer, environmentalist, political activist and one of the co-authors of the original XML specification. He worked for Amazon Web Services from December 2014 until May 2020 when he quit due to concerns over the terminating of whistleblowers. Previously he has been employed by Google, Sun Microsystemsand Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Bray has also founded or co-founded several start-ups such as Antarctica Systems.Links Referenced: Textuality Services: https://www.textuality.com/ laugh]. So, the impetus for having this conversation is, you had a [blog post: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/01/30/Cloud-Lock-In @timbray: https://twitter.com/timbray tbray.org: https://tbray.org duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by 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: Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service is flexible, full-featured and fully managed with built in access via key-value, SQL, and full-text search. Flexible JSON documents aligned to your applications and workloads. Build faster with blazing fast in-memory performance and automated replication and scaling while reducing cost. Capella has the best price performance of any fully managed document database. Visit couchbase.com/screaminginthecloud to try Capella today for free and be up and running in three minutes with no credit card required. Couchbase Capella: make your data sing.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today has been on a year or two ago, but today, we're going in a bit of a different direction. Tim Bray is a principal at Textuality Services.Once upon a time, he was a Distinguished Engineer slash VP at AWS, but let's be clear, he isn't solely focused on one company; he also used to work at Google. Also, there is scuttlebutt that he might have had something to do, at one point, with the creation of God's true language, XML. Tim, thank you for coming back on the show and suffering my slings and arrows.Tim: Oh, you're just fine. Glad to be here.Corey: [laugh]. So, the impetus for having this conversation is, you had a blog post somewhat recently—by which I mean, January of 2022—where you talked about lock-in and multi-cloud, two subjects near and dear to my heart, mostly because I have what I thought was a fairly countercultural opinion. You seem to have a very closely aligned perspective on this. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Where did this blog posts come from?Tim: Well, I advised a couple of companies and one of them happens to be using GCP and the other happens to be using AWS and I get involved in a lot of industry conversations, and I noticed that multi-cloud is a buzzword. If you go and type multi-cloud into Google, you get, like, a page of people saying, “We will solve your multi-cloud problems. Come to us and you will be multi-cloud.” And I was not sure what to think, so I started writing to find out what I would think. And I think it's not complicated anymore. I think the multi-cloud is a reality in most companies. I think that many mainstream, non-startup companies are really worried about cloud lock-in, and that's not entirely unreasonable. So, it's a reasonable thing to think about and it's a reasonable thing to try and find the right balance between avoiding lock-in and not slowing yourself down. And the issues were interesting. What was surprising is that I published that blog piece saying what I thought were some kind of controversial things, and I got no pushback. Which was, you know, why I started talking to you and saying, “Corey, you know, does nobody disagree with this? Do you disagree with this? Maybe we should have a talk and see if this is just the new conventional wisdom.”Corey: There's nothing worse than almost trying to pick a fight, but no one actually winds up taking you up on the opportunity. That always feels a little off. Let's break it down into two issues because I would argue that they are intertwined, but not necessarily the same thing. Let's start with multi-cloud because it turns out that there's just enough nuance to—at least where I sit on this position—that whenever I tweet about it, I wind up getting wildly misinterpreted. Do you find that as well?Tim: Not so much. It's not a subject I have really had too much to say about, but it does mean lots of different things. And so it's not totally surprising that that happens. I mean, some people think when you say multi-cloud, you mean, “Well, I'm going to take my strategic application, and I'm going to run it in parallel on AWS and GCP because that way, I'll be more resilient and other good things will happen.” And then there's another thing, which is that, “Well, you know, as my company grows, I'm naturally going to be using lots of different technologies and that might include more than one cloud.” So, there's a whole spectrum of things that multi-cloud could mean. So, I guess when we talk about it, we probably owe it to our audiences to be clear what we're talking about.Corey: Let's be clear, from my perspective, the common definition of multi-cloud is whatever the person talking is trying to sell you at that point in time is, of course, what multi-cloud is. If it's a third-party dashboard, for example, “Oh, yeah, you want to be able to look at all of your cloud usage on a single pane of glass.” If it's a certain—well, I guess, certain not a given cloud provider, well, they understand if you go all-in on a cloud provider, it's probably not going to be them so they're, of course, going to talk about multi-cloud. And if it's AWS, where they are the 8000-pound gorilla in the space, “Oh, yeah, multi-clouds, terrible. Put everything on AWS. The end.” It seems that most people who talk about this have a very self-serving motivation that they can't entirely escape. That bias does reflect itself.Tim: That's true. When I joined AWS, which was around 2014, the PR line was a very hard line. “Well, multi-cloud that's not something you should invest in.” And I've noticed that the conversation online has become much softer. And I think one reason for that is that going all-in on a single cloud is at least possible when you're a startup, but if you're a big company, you know, a insurance company, a tire manufacturer, that kind of thing, you're going to be multi-cloud, for the same reason that they already have COBOL on the mainframe and Java on the old Sun boxes, and Mongo running somewhere else, and five different programming languages.And that's just the way big companies are, it's a consequence of M&A, it's a consequence of research projects that succeeded, one kind or another. I mean, lots of big companies have been trying to get rid of COBOL for decades, literally, [laugh] and not succeeding and doing that. So—Corey: It's ‘legacy' which is, of course, the condescending engineering term for, “It makes money.”Tim: And works. And so I don't think it's realistic to, as a matter of principle, not be multi-cloud.Corey: Let's define our terms a little more closely because very often, people like to pull strange gotchas out of the air. Because when I talk about this, I'm talking about—like, when I speak about it off the cuff, I'm thinking in terms of where do I run my containers? Where do I run my virtual machines? Where does my database live? But you can also move in a bunch of different directions. Where do my Git repositories live? What Office suite am I using? What am I using for my CRM? Et cetera, et cetera? Where do you draw the boundary lines because it's very easy to talk past each other if we're not careful here?Tim: Right. And, you know, let's grant that if you're a mainstream enterprise, you're running your Office automation on Microsoft, and they're twisting your arm to use the cloud version, so you probably are. And if you have any sense at all, you're not running your own Exchange Server, so let's assume that you're using Microsoft Azure for that. And you're running Salesforce, and that means you're on Salesforce's cloud. And a lot of other Software-as-a-Service offerings might be on AWS or Azure or GCP; they don't even tell you.So, I think probably the crucial issue that we should focus our conversation on is my own apps, my own software that is my core competence that I actually use to run the core of my business. And typically, that's the only place where a company would and should invest serious engineering resources to build software. And that's where the question comes, where should that software that I'm going to build run? And should it run on just one cloud, or—Corey: I found that when I gave a conference talk on this, in the before times, I had to have a ever lengthier section about, “I'm speaking in the general sense; there are specific cases where it does make sense for you to go in a multi-cloud direction.” And when I'm talking about multi-cloud, I'm not necessarily talking about Workload A lives on Azure and Workload B lives on AWS, through mergers, or weird corporate approaches, or shadow IT that—surprise—that's not revenue-bearing. Well, I guess we have to live with it. There are a lot of different divisions doing different things and you're going to see that a fair bit. And I'm not convinced that's a terrible idea as such. I'm talking about the single workload that we're going to spread across two or more clouds, intentionally.Tim: That's probably not a good idea. I just can't see that being a good idea, simply because you get into a problem of just terminology and semantics. You know, the different providers mean different things by the word ‘region' and the word ‘instance,' and things like that. And then there's the people problem. I mean, I don't think I personally know anybody who would claim to be able to build and deploy an application on AWS and also on GCP. I'm sure some people exist, but I don't know any of them.Corey: Well, Forrest Brazeal was deep in the AWS weeds and now he's the head of content at Google Cloud. I will credit him that he probably has learned to smack an API around over there.Tim: But you know, you're going to have a hard time hiring a person like that.Corey: Yeah. You can count these people almost as individuals.Tim: And that's a big problem. And you know, in a lot of cases, it's clearly the case that our profession is talent-starved—I mean, the whole world is talent-starved at the moment, but our profession in particular—and a lot of the decisions about what you can build and what you can do are highly contingent on who you can hire. And you can't hire a multi-cloud expert, well, you should not deploy, [laugh] you know, a multi-cloud application.Now, having said that, I just want to dot this i here and say that it can be made to kind of work. I've got this one company I advise—I wrote about it in the blog piece—that used to be on AWS and switched over to GCP. I don't even know why; this happened before I joined them. And they have a lot of applications and then they have some integrations with third-party partners which they implemented with AWS Lambda functions. So, when they moved over to GCP, they didn't stop doing that.So, this mission-critical latency-sensitive application of theirs runs on GCP that calls out to AWS to make calls into their partners' APIs and so on. And works fine. Solid as a rock, reliable, low latency. And so I talked to a person I know who knows over on the AWS side, and they said, “Oh, yeah sure, you know, we talked to those guys. Lots of people do that. We make sure, you know, the connections are low latency and solid.” So, technically speaking, it can be done. But for a variety of business reasons—maybe the most important one being expertise and who you can hire—it's probably just not a good idea.Corey: One of the areas where I think is an exception case is if you are a SaaS provider. Let's pick a big easy example: Snowflake, where they are a data warehouse. They've got to run their data warehousing application in all of the major clouds because that is where their customers are. And it turns out that if you're going to send a few petabytes into a data warehouse, you really don't want to be paying cloud egress rates to do it because it turns out, you can just bootstrap a second company for that much money.Tim: Well, Zoom would be another example, obviously.Corey: Oh, yeah. Anything that's heavy on data transfer is going to be a strange one. And there's being close to customers; gaming companies are another good example on this where a lot of the game servers themselves will be spread across a bunch of different providers, just purely based on latency metrics around what is close to certain customer clusters.Tim: I can't disagree with that. You know, I wonder how large a segment that is, of people who are, I think you're talking about core technology companies. Now, of the potential customers of the cloud providers, how many of them are core technology companies, like the kind we're talking about, who have such a need, and how many people who just are people who just want to run their manufacturing and product design and stuff. And for those, buying into a particular cloud is probably a perfectly sensible choice.Corey: I've also seen regulatory stories about this. I haven't been able to track them down specifically, but there is a pervasive belief that one interpretation of UK banking regulations stipulates that you have to be able to get back up and running within 30 days on a different cloud provider entirely. And also, they have the regulatory requirement that I believe the data remain in-country. So, that's a little odd. And honestly, when it comes to best practices and how you should architect things, I'm going to take a distinct backseat to legal requirements imposed upon you by your regulator. But let's be clear here, I'm not advising people to go and tell their auditors that they're wrong on these things.Tim: I had not heard that story, but you know, it sounds plausible. So, I wonder if that is actually in effect, which is to say, could a huge British banking company, in fact do that? Could they in fact, decamp from Azure and move over to GCP or AWS in 30 days? Boy.Corey: That is what one bank I spoke to over there was insistent on. A second bank I spoke to in that same jurisdiction had never heard of such a thing, so I feel like a lot of this is subject to auditor interpretation. Again, I am not an expert in this space. I do not pretend to be—I know I'm that rarest of all breeds: A white guy with a microphone in tech who admits he doesn't know something. But here we are.Tim: Yeah, I mean, I imagine it could be plausible if you didn't use any higher-level services, and you just, you know, rented instances and were careful about which version of Linux you ran and we're just running a bunch of Java code, which actually, you know, describes the workload of a lot of financial institutions. So, it should be a matter of getting… all the right instances configured and the JVM configured and launched. I mean, there are no… architecturally terrifying barriers to doing that. Of course, to do that, it would mean you would have to avoid using any of the higher-level services that are particular to any cloud provider and basically just treat them as people you rent boxes from, which is probably not a good choice for other business reasons.Corey: Which can also include things as seemingly low-level is load balancers, just based upon different provisioning modes, failure modes, and the rest. You're probably going to have a more consistent experience running HAProxy or nginx yourself to do it. But Tim, I have it on good authority that this is the old way of thinking, and that Kubernetes solves all of it. And through the power of containers and powers combining and whatnot, that frees us from being beholden to any given provider and our workloads are now all free as birds.Tim: Well, I will go as far as saying that if you are in the position of trying to be portable, probably using containers is a smart thing to do because that's a more tractable level of abstraction that does give you some insulation from, you know, which version of Linux you're running and things like that. The proposition that configuring and running Kubernetes is easier than configuring and running [laugh] JVM on Linux [laugh] is unsupported by any evidence I've seen. So, I'm dubious of the proposition that operating at the Kubernetes-level at the [unintelligible 00:14:42] level, you know, there's good reasons why some people want to do that, but I'm dubious of the proposition that really makes you more portable in an essential way.Corey: Well, you're also not the target market for Kubernetes. You have worked at multiple cloud providers and I feel like the real advantage of Kubernetes is people who happen to want to protect that they do so they can act as a sort of a cosplay of being their own cloud provider by running all the intricacies of Kubernetes. I'm halfway kidding, but there is an uncomfortable element of truth to that to some of the conversations I've had with some of its more, shall we say, fanatical adherents.Tim: Well, I think you and I are neither of us huge fans of Kubernetes, but my reasons are maybe a little different. Kubernetes does some really useful things. It really, really does. It allows you to take n VMs, and pack m different applications onto them in a way that takes reasonably good advantage of the processing power they have. And it allows you to have different things running in one place with different IP addresses.It sounds straightforward, but that turns out to be really helpful in a lot of ways. So, I'm actually kind of sympathetic with what Kubernetes is trying to be. My big gripe with it is that I think that good technology should make easy things easy and difficult things possible, and I think Kubernetes fails the first test there. I think the complexity that it involves is out of balance with the benefits you get. There's a lot of really, really smart people who disagree with me, so this is not a hill I'm going to die on.Corey: This is very much one of those areas where reasonable people can disagree. I find the complexity to be overwhelming; it has to collapse. At this point, it's finding someone who can competently run Kubernetes in production is a bit hard to do and they tend to be extremely expensive. You aren't going to find a team of those people at every company that wants to do things like this, and they're certainly not going to be able to find it in their budget in many cases. So, it's a challenging thing to do.Tim: Well, that's true. And another thing is that once you step onto the Kubernetes slope, you start looking about Istio and Envoy and [fabric 00:16:48] technology. And we're talking about extreme complexity squared at that point. But you know, here's the thing is, back in 2018 I think it was, in his keynote, Werner said that the big goal is that all the code you ever write should be application logic that delivers business value, which you know rep—Corey: Didn't CGI say the same thing? Didn't—like, isn't there, like, a long history dating back longer than I believe either of us have been alive have, “With this, all you're going to write is business logic.” That was the Java promise. That was the Google App Engine promise. Again, and again, we've had that carrot dangled in front of us, and it feels like the reality with Lambda is, the only code you will write is not necessarily business logic, it's getting the thing to speak to the other service you're trying to get it to talk to because a lot of these integrations are super finicky. At least back when I started learning how this stuff worked, they were.Tim: People understand where the pain points are and are indeed working on them. But I think we can agree that if you believe in that as a goal—which I still do; I mean, we may not have got there, but it's still a worthwhile goal to work on. We can agree that wrangling Istio configurations is not such a thing; it's not [laugh] directly value-adding business logic. To the extent that you can do that, I think serverless provides a plausible way forward. Now, you can be all cynical about, “Well, I still have trouble making my Lambda to talk to my other thing.” But you know, I've done that, and I've also deployed JVM on bare metal kind of thing.You know what? I'd rather do things at the Lambda level. I really rather would. Because capacity forecasting is a horribly difficult thing, we're all terrible at it, and the penalties for being wrong are really bad. If you under-specify your capacity, your customers have a lousy experience, and if you over-specify it, and you have an architecture that makes you configure for peak load, you're going to spend bucket-loads of money that you don't need to.Corey: “But you're then putting your availability in the cloud providers' hands.” “Yeah, you already were. Now, we're just being explicit about acknowledging that.”Tim: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that's highly relevant to the current discussion because if you use the higher-level serverless function if you decide, okay, I'm going to go with Lambda and Dynamo and EventBridge and that kind of thing, well, that's not portable at all. I mean, APIs are totally idiosyncratic for AWS and GCP's equivalent, and Azure's—what do they call it? Permanent functions or something-a-rather functions. So yeah, that's part of the trade-off you have to think about. If you're going to do that, you're definitely not going to be multi-cloud in that application.Corey: And in many cases, one of the stated goals for going multi-cloud is that you can avoid the downtime of a single provider. People love to point at the big AWS outages or, “See? They were down for half a day.” And there is a societal question of what happens when everyone is down for half a day at the same time, but in most cases, what I'm seeing, your instead of getting rid of a single point of failure, introducing a second one. If either one of them is down your applications down, so you've doubled your outage surface area.On the rare occasions where you're able to map your dependencies appropriately, great. Are your third-party critical providers all doing the same? If you're an e-commerce site and Stripe processes your payments, well, they're public about being all-in on AWS. So, if you can't process payments, does it really matter that your website stays up? It becomes an interesting question. And those are the ones that you know about, let alone the third, fourth-order dependencies that are almost impossible to map unless everyone is as diligent as you are. It's a heavy, heavy lift.Tim: I'm going to push back a little bit. Now, for example, this company I'm advising that running GCP and calling out to Lambda is in that position; either GCP or Lambda goes off the air. On the other hand, if you've got somebody like Zoom, they're probably running parallel full stacks on the different cloud providers. And if you're doing that, then you can at least plausibly claim that you're in a good place because if Dynamo has an outage—and everything relies on Dynamo—then you shift your load over to GCP or Oracle [laugh] and you're still on the air.Corey: Yeah, but what is up as well because Zoom loves to sign me out on my desktop whenever I log into it on my laptop, and vice versa, and I wonder if that authentication and login system is also replicated full-stack to everywhere it goes, and what the fencing on that looks like, and how the communication between all those things works? I wouldn't doubt that it's possible that they've solved for this, but I also wonder how thoroughly they've really tested all of the, too. Not because I question them any; just because this stuff is super intricate as you start tracing it down into the nitty-gritty levels of the madness that consumes all these abstractions.Tim: Well, right, that's a conventional wisdom that is really wise and true, which is that if you have software that is alleged to do something like allow you to get going on another cloud, unless you've tested it within the last three weeks, it's not going to work when you need it.Corey: Oh, it's like a DR exercise: The next commit you make breaks it. Once you have the thing working again, it sits around as a binder, and it's a best guess. And let's be serious, a lot of these DR exercises presume that you're able to, for example, change DNS records on the fly, or be able to get a virtual machine provisioned in less than 45 minutes—because when there's an actual outage, surprise, everyone's trying to do the same things—there's a lot of stuff in there that gets really wonky at weird levels.Tim: A related similar exercise, which is people who want to be on AWS but want to be multi-region. It's actually, you know, a fairly similar kind of problem. If I need to be able to fail out of us-east-1—well, God help you, because if you need to everybody else needs to as well—but you know, would that work?Corey: Before you go multi-cloud go multi-region first. Tell me how easy it is because then you have full-feature parity—presumably—between everything; it should just be a walk in the park. Send me a postcard once you get that set up and I'll eat a bunch of words. And it turns out, basically, no one does.Tim: Mm-hm.Corey: Another area of lock-in around a lot of this stuff, and I think that makes it very hard to go multi-cloud is the security model of how does that interface with various aspects. In many cases, I'm seeing people doing full-on network overlays. They don't have to worry about the different security group models and VPCs and all the rest. They can just treat everything as a node sitting on the internet, and the only thing it talks to is an overlay network. Which is terrible, but that seems to be one of the only ways people are able to build things that span multiple providers with any degree of success.Tim: Well, that is painful because, much as we all like to scoff and so on, in the degree of complexity you get into there, it is the case that your typical public cloud provider can do security better than you can. They just can. It's a fact of life. And if you're using a public cloud provider and not taking advantage of their security offerings, infrastructure, that's probably dumb. But if you really want to be multi-cloud, you kind of have to, as you said.In particular, this gets back to the problem of expertise because it's hard enough to hire somebody who really understands IAM deeply and how to get that working properly, try and find somebody who can understand that level of thing on two different cloud providers at once. Oh, gosh.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: Another point you made in your blog post was the idea of lock-in, of people being worried that going all-in on a provider was setting them up to be, I think Oracle is the term that was tossed around where once you're dependent on a provider, what's to stop them from cranking the pricing knobs until you squeal?Tim: Nothing. And I think that is a perfectly sane thing to worry about. Now, in the short term, based on my personal experience working with, you know, AWS leadership, I think that it's probably not a big short-term risk. AWS is clearly aware that most of the growth is still in front of them. You know, the amount of all of it that's on the cloud is still pretty small and so the thing to worry about right now is growth.And they are really, really genuinely, sincerely focused on customer success and will bend over backwards to deal with the customers problems as they are. And I've seen places where people have negotiated a huge multi-year enterprise agreement based on Reserved Instances or something like that, and then realize, oh, wait, we need to switch our whole technology stack, but you've got us by the RIs and AWS will say, “No, no, it's okay. We'll tear that up and rewrite it and get you where you need to go.” So, in the short term, between now and 2025, would I worry about my cloud provider doing that? Probably not so much.But let's go a little further out. Let's say it's, you know, 2030 or something like that, and at that point, you know, Andy Jassy decided to be a full-time sports mogul, and Satya Narayana has gone off to be a recreational sailboat owner or something like that, and private equity operators come in and take very significant stakes in the public cloud providers, and get a lot of their guys on the board, and you have a very different dynamic. And you have something that starts to feel like Oracle where their priority isn't, you know, optimizing for growth and customer success; their priority is optimizing for a quarterly bottom line, and—Corey: Revenue extraction becomes the goal.Tim: That's absolutely right. And this is not a hypothetical scenario; it's happened. Most large companies do not control the amount of money they spend per year to have desktop software that works. They pay whatever Microsoft's going to say they pay because they don't have a choice. And a lot of companies are in the same situation with their database.They don't get to budget, their database budget. Oracle comes in and says, “Here's what you're going to pay,” and that's what you pay. You really don't want to be in a situation with your cloud, and that's why I think it's perfectly reasonable for somebody who is doing cloud transition at a major financial or manufacturing or service provider company to have an eye to this. You know, let's not completely ignore the lock-in issue.Corey: There is a significant scale with enterprise deals and contracts. There is almost always a contractual provision that says if you're going to raise a price with any cloud provider, there's a fixed period of time of notice you must give before it happens. I feel like the first mover there winds up getting soaked because everyone is going to panic and migrate in other directions. I mean, Google tried it with Google Maps for their API, and not quite Google Cloud, but also scared the bejesus out of a whole bunch of people who were, “Wait. Is this a harbinger of things to come?”Tim: Well, not in the short term, I don't think. And I think you know, Google Maps [is absurdly 00:26:36] underpriced. That's hellishly expensive service. And it's supposed to pay for itself by, you know, advertising on maps. I don't know about that.I would see that as the exception rather than the rule. I think that it's reasonable to expect cloud prices, nominally at least, to go on decreasing for at least the short term, maybe even the medium term. But that's—can't go on forever.Corey: It also feels to me, like having looked at an awful lot of AWS environments that if there were to be some sort of regulatory action or some really weird outage for a year that meant that AWS could not onboard a single new customer, their revenue year-over-year would continue to increase purely by organic growth because there is no forcing function that turns the thing off when you're done using it. In fact, they can migrate things around to hardware that works, they can continue building you for the things sitting there idle. And there is no governance path on that. So, on some level, winding up doing a price increase is going to cause a massive company focus on fixing a lot of that. It feels on some level like it is drawing attention to a thing that they don't really want to draw attention to from a purely revenue extraction story.When CentOS back-walked their ten-year support line two years, suddenly—and with an idea that it would drive [unintelligible 00:27:56] adoption. Well, suddenly, a lot of people looked at their environment, saw they had old [unintelligible 00:28:00] they weren't using. And massively short-sighted, massively irritated a whole bunch of people who needed that in the short term, but by the renewal, we're going to be on to Ubuntu or something else. It feels like it's going to backfire massively, and I'd like to imagine the strategist of whoever takes the reins of these companies is going to be smarter than that. But here we are.Tim: Here we are. And you know it's interesting you should mention regulatory action. At the moment, there are only three credible public cloud providers. It's not obvious the Google's really in it for the long haul, as last time I checked, they were claiming to maybe be breaking even on it. That's not a good number, you know? You'd like there to be more than that.And if it goes on like that, eventually, some politician is going to say, “Oh, maybe they should be regulated like public utilities,” because they kind of are right? And I would think that anybody who did get into Oracle-izing would be—you know, accelerate that happening. Having said that, we do live in the atmosphere of 21st-century capitalism, and growth is the God that must be worshiped at all costs. Who knows. It's a cloudy future. Hard to see.Corey: It really is. I also want to be clear, on some level, that with Google's current position, if they weren't taking a small loss at least, on these things, I would worry. Like, wait, you're trying to catch AWS and you don't have anything better to invest that money into than just well time to start taking profits from it. So, I can see both sides of that one.Tim: Right. And as I keep saying, I've already said once during this slot, you know, the total cloud spend in the world is probably on the order of one or two-hundred billion per annum, and global IT is in multiple trillions. So, [laugh] there's a lot more space for growth. Years and years worth of it.Corey: Yeah. The challenge, too, is that people are worried about this long-term strategic point of view. So, one thing you talked about in your blog post is the idea of using hosted open-source solutions. Like, instead of using Kinesis, you'd wind up using Kafka or instead of using DynamoDB you use their managed Cassandra service—or as I think of it Amazon Basics Cassandra—and effectively going down the path of letting them manage this thing, but you then have a theoretical Exodus path. Where do you land on that?Tim: I think that speaks to a lot of people's concerns, and I've had conversations with really smart people about that who like that idea. Now, to be realistic, it doesn't make migration easy because you've still got all the CI and CD and monitoring and management and scaling and alarms and alerts and paging and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, wrapped around it. So, it's not as though you could just pick up your managed Kafka off AWS and drop a huge installation onto GCP easily. But at least, you know, your data plan APIs are the same, so a lot of your code would probably still run okay. So, it's a plausible path forward. And when people say, “I want to do that,” well, it does mean that you can't go all serverless. But it's not a totally insane path forward.Corey: So, one last point in your blog post that I think a lot of people think about only after they get bitten by it is the idea of data gravity. I alluded earlier in our conversation to data egress charges, but my experience has been that where your data lives is effectively where the rest of your cloud usage tends to aggregate. How do you see it?Tim: Well, it's a real issue, but I think it might perhaps be a little overblown. People throw the term petabytes around, and people don't realize how big a petabyte is. A petabyte is just an insanely huge amount of data, and the notion of transmitting one over the internet is terrifying. And there are lots of enterprises that have multiple petabytes around, and so they think, “Well, you know, it would take me 26 years to transmit that, so I can't.”And they might be wrong. The internet's getting faster all time. Did you notice? I've been able to move some—for purely personal projects—insane amounts of data, and it gets there a lot faster than you did. Secondly, in the case of AWS Snowmobile, we have an existence proof that you can do exabyte-ish scale data transfers in the time it takes to drive a truck across the country.Corey: Inbound only. Snowmobiles are not—at least according to public examples—are valid for Exodus.Tim: But you know, this is kind of place where regulatory action might come into play if what the people were doing was seen to be abusive. I mean, there's an existence proof you can do this thing. But here's another point. So, I suppose you have, like, 15 petabytes—that's an insane amount of data—displayed in your corporate application. So, are you actually using that to run the application, or is a huge proportion of that stuff just logs and data gathered of various kinds that's being used in analytics applications and AI models and so on?Do you actually need all that data to actually run your app? And could you in fact, just pick up the stuff you need for your app, move it to a different cloud provider from there and leave your analytics on the first one? Not a totally insane idea.Corey: It's not a terrible idea at all. It comes down to the idea as well of when you're trying to run a query against a bunch of that data, do you need all the data to transit or just the results of that query, as well? It's a question of, can you move the compute closer to the data as opposed to the data to where the compute lives?Tim: Well, you know and a lot of those people who have those huge data pools have it sitting on S3, and a lot of it migrated off into Glacier, so it's not as if you could get at it in milliseconds anyhow. I just ask myself, “How much data can anybody actually use in a day? In the course of satisfying some transaction requests from a customer?” And I think it's not petabyte. It just isn't.Now, there are—okay, there are exceptions. There's the intelligence community, there's the oil drilling community, there are some communities who genuinely will use insanely huge seas of data on a routine basis, but you know, I think that's kind of a corner case, so before you shake your head and say, “Ah, they'll never move because the data gravity,” you know… you need to prove that to me and I might be a little bit skeptical.Corey: And I think that is probably a very fair request. Just tell me what it is you're going to be doing here to validate the idea that is in your head because the most interesting lies I've found customers tell isn't intentionally to me or anyone else; it's to themselves. The narrative of what they think they're doing from the early days takes root, and never mind the fact that, yeah, it turns out that now that you've scaled out, maybe development isn't 80% of your cloud bill anymore. You learn things and your understanding of what you're doing has to evolve with the evolution of the applications.Tim: Yep. It's a fun time to be around. I mean, it's so great; right at the moment lock-in just isn't that big an issue. And let's be clear—I'm sure you'll agree with me on this, Corey—is if you're a startup and you're trying to grow and scale and prove you've got a viable business, and show that you have exponential growth and so on, don't think about lock-in; just don't go near it. Pick a cloud provider, pick whichever cloud provider your CTO already knows how to use, and just go all-in on them, and use all their most advanced features and be serverless if you can. It's the only sane way forward. You're short of time, you're short of money, you need growth.Corey: “Well, what if you need to move strategically in five years?” You should be so lucky. Great. Deal with it then. Or, “Well, what if we want to sell to retail as our primary market and they hate AWS?”Well, go all-in on a provider; probably not that one. Pick a different provider and go all in. I do not care which cloud any given company picks. Go with what's right for you, but then go all in because until you have a compelling reason to do otherwise, you're going to spend more time solving global problems locally.Tim: That's right. And we've never actually said this probably because it's something that both you and I know at the core of our being, but it probably needs to be said that being multi-cloud is expensive, right? Because the nouns and verbs that describe what clouds do are different in Google-land and AWS-land; they're just different. And it's hard to think about those things. And you lose the capability of using the advanced serverless stuff. There are a whole bunch of costs to being multi-cloud.Now, maybe if you're existentially afraid of lock-in, you don't care. But for I think most normal people, ugh, it's expensive.Corey: Pay now or pay later, you will pay. Wouldn't you ideally like to see that dollar go as far as possible? I'm right there with you because it's not just the actual infrastructure costs that's expensive, it costs something far more dear and expensive, and that is the cognitive expense of having to think about both of these things, not just how each cloud provider works, but how each one breaks. You've done this stuff longer than I have; I don't think that either of us trust a system that we don't understand the failure cases for and how it's going to degrade. It's, “Oh, right. You built something new and awesome. Awesome. How does it fall over? What direction is it going to hit, so what side should I not stand on?” It's based on an understanding of what you're about to blow holes in.Tim: That's right. And you know, I think particularly if you're using AWS heavily, you know that there are some things that you might as well bet your business on because, you know, if they're down, so is the rest of the world, and who cares? And, other things, eh, maybe a little chance here. So, understanding failure modes, understanding your stuff, you know, the cost of sharp edges, understanding manageability issues. It's not obvious.Corey: It's really not. Tim, I want to thank you for taking the time to go through this, frankly, excellent post with me. If people want to learn more about how you see things, and I guess how you view the world, where's the best place to find you?Tim: I'm on Twitter, just @timbray T-I-M-B-R-A-Y. And my blog is at tbray.org, and that's where that piece you were just talking about is, and that's kind of my online presence.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to it in the [show notes 00:37:42]. Thanks so much for being so generous with your time. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.Tim: Well, it's always fun to talk to somebody who has shared passions, and we clearly do.Corey: Indeed. Tim Bray principal at Textuality Services. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment that you then need to take to all of the other podcast platforms out there purely for redundancy, so you don't get locked into one of them.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.

god amazon google ai uk starting pr service british canadian zoom office microsoft exodus sun software cloud cd boy ip oracle i am saas solid cto crm salesforce cgi permanent api google maps screaming werner aws linux java snowflakes iso apis stripe devops azure kafka bray ubuntu amazon web services counterculture dns google cloud s3 glacier sql dynamo git kubernetes envoy lambda microsoft azure capella xml mongo deployments gcp vms multicloud cobol ris snowmobiles andy jassy jvm aws lambda distinguished engineer kinesis istio launchdarkly dynamodb exchange server corey quinn tim oh tim yeah google app engine vpcs haproxy duckbill group tim well eventbridge forrest brazeal reserved instances chief cloud economist tim here tim right last week in aws tim people humblepod

Episode 100: Our 100th Episode!

ArtBeat Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2022 9:37

Welcome back to Artbeat Radio! You're listening to our 100th episode! We started in 2012, posting about one episode a year. In September of 2020, quarantine inspired us to find a way to interact more with our greater community. Unable to go on community outings or leave our homes, we decided it was time to post on a weekly basis to maintain our connection. Listen in as we share our favorite moments, our hopes for the future, and interview one another on our accomplishments! Thanks for listening and tune in next time! For more information about our organization, please visit our website www.ableartswork.org Audio Transcription: (Please listen on Podomatic or Spotify to view the full transcript) *Intro music by Artbeat Radio staff* Music, stories, and more! You're listening to Artbeat Radio, a program of Able ARTS Work. Stephanie: Hello and welcome to Artbeat Radio! My name is Stephanie! This is our 100th podcast episode. Wow, that is crazy. Our 100th episode! Looks like we made it! Thank you for listening to our podcast. Hope you like the episode. Alison: Okay, now I remember there was one time when we were doing something and it didn't turn out right and somebody dropped a box. I don't know what was in the box but somebody accidentally dropped a box and then in class somebody got the words backwards. Like they accidentally screwed up the words and that was my favorite part. Brian: Well, I loved Katie Jo also. Interviewed her about her country music and she actually performed for us live. My favorite was interviewing the guy who played Spiderman. He was really interesting. Eric: Guess what folx, the interview with spiderman will be available as of next week! Brian: Stephanie. Stephanie: Yes? Brian: What podcast did you enjoy? Stephanie: I liked “Summer Sounds” because it was really upbeat and it was really nice and I also like that I have my professional headphones. I would like, in the future, to meet my goal, which is to be a person on the radio but talk about my play, which is going to be awesome. Hey Renee. Renee: Yes? Stephanie: What's your favorite part of the podcast? Renee: I loved interviewing Spider-man, Ricky because we have a lot in common and are the same age. Brian: Yeah, I really enjoyed the interview with Ricky Mena, who played Spiderman. Stephanie: I think the interview with Julianna and Matthew was my favorite. And I just like podcast because I just like it. I like it because I get to produce the episode about my play. That's why. My goal is to be on a radio station and be the head podcast talker and to talk about my musical and my jewelry business. And that's going to be fun. Go podcast class! Brian: What I love about working with KLBP a lot is getting my voice heard. Getting my thoughts across. To have some of my thoughts that I have not illustrated before and that's very important to me. It's a terrific radio station to air what we've learned. Tim: Well, I like the guests that we have and then talking about our program and sharing all our details. I enjoyed interviewing our staff and then others from- different staff from different sites and music instructors. I like the most about it how we come together as one. Alison: This is our 100th episode! Well, what do you think of it? Stephanie: I think that it's amazing so far. Alison: I didn't think we'd go this far. Stephanie: I know right? Brian: Aaron, what do you think about the 100th podcast episode? Aaron: I like it. Brian: Did you think that we would make it this far? Aaron: Yes. Brian: It's a real honor to interview you, Aaron. Stephanie? Stephanie: Yes, Brian? Brian: What do you think of the 100th episode? Stephanie: I think it's cool. Brian: Did you think that we would make it this far? Stephanie: No! That's crazy, Brian! Brian: Yeah! Stephanie: Wow. Brian: I'm-I'm with you. I can't imagine that we're up to the 100th. Stephanie: We gotta' keep going. It'll be 101! Brian: Yeah! *laughs* and maybe 102, 3, 4, 5 and so on. *laughter* Stephanie: How do you like this class? Brian: I love it. So much so that I took it last semester and I'm taking it this semester. I can't remember if I took it the semester before. Stephanie: Yeah. Brian: How do you like this podcast? Stephanie: I think it's great! I like- I like my first- I like my classes this year. They're fun! Renee: How long have you been on the podcast, Stephanie? Stephanie: Um...not very long but I think I like it. How long have you been in podcast? Renee: I'm not sure. I just started *laughs* Stephanie: Just started? Renee: Yeah. Stephanie: I wanna keep working on podcast! Renee: Me too! Stephanie: Sorry, I'm just stoked! I'm so sorry *laughter* Artbeat Radio was created in 2012 at the TAP II location in Gardena California. Brian: Here's a clip of our first podcast! *Dead Man's Bones cover plays softly behind voices* Alison: This was made in 2012. This was the first podcast of Artbeat Radio. it was posted on October 18th 2012. *Dead Man's Bones cover plays louder* *Song fades out* Stephanie: I thought it was awesome. The way that it was presented and the way that they were singing. Brian: I liked it! Alison: It was beautiful. I think the song was great considering it was our first one. Brian: Hope you enjoyed our 100th episode! Have a wonderful day and thank you for listening to our podcast. Stephanie: Thank you! Renee: Thank you for listening and thank you for coming. Have a beautiful and wonderful day. Brian: Here's to 100 more episodes! Thank you very much ladies and germs. *laughter* Renee: Gentlemen! Stephanie: That's so funny, Brian! Renee: I like that Brian: Thank you! Renee: “germs” that's so funny! I like that *laughter* *Outro music by Artbeat Radio staff* We hope you enjoyed this episode of Artbeat Radio. For more information, please go to our website. Ableartswork.org. Thanks for listening and tune in next time!

music family spotify art interview song spider man bones spider map unable dead man abr podomatic aaw ceca katie jo brian it brian yeah brian how brian well tim well stephanie yeah stephanie how aaron yes klbp stephanie thank stephanie no brian hope los ang

Conversation on Replenishing Your Creative Energy with Emile Pandolphi

Create Art Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2022 31:30

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

Conversations On Community with Mike Porter

Create Art Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2022 55:13

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

When Consolidated Agencies are Not a Holding Company

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2021 30:13

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.

Field of Dreams: Closing the Tech Gap in HR with Tim Meehan from Pontoon

The Recruitment Hackers Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2021 20:58

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.

Working on the Whiteboard from the Start with Tim Banks

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2021 44:10

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

ceo amazon netflix australia focus drop bitcoin offer cloud pinterest saturday night live eat banks jeff bezos context route excel slack api generally foolish screaming poc aws github tam reinvent apis conversely devops brazilian jiu jitsu cpu ninety us marines dns s3 sql conduit whiteboards trusted advisors honeycomb periodically observability ris ebs boolean ec2 isengard site reliability engineering ppas dynamodb corey quinn american national timone tim banks tim it tim yeah duckbill group liz fong jones tim well tim there mike julian tim so tim thank chief cloud economist tim right last week in aws humblepod

245: Hacking Reality with Rony Abovitz

Greater Than Code

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2021 80:18

03:03 - Rony's Superpower: Being a Space Cadet: Free-Willing Imagination, Insight, and Intuition 06:54 - Becoming Interested in Technology * Science + Art * Star Wars (https://www.starwars.com/) * Solar Power 10:30 - Unstructured Play and Maintaining a Sense of Wonder and Free-Spiritedness * Geoffrey West on Scaling, Open-Ended Growth, and Accelerating Crisis/Innovation Cycles: Transcenden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnxpqecbpOU) 15:15 - Power Structures and Hierarchies * Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow) * Order vs. Disorder * Greater Than Code Episode 125: Everything is Communication with Sam Aaron (https://www.greaterthancode.com/everything-is-communication) 35:04 - Using Technology to Decentralize Social Structures: Is it possible? * Hacking Reality * Enlightenment and Transcendence * Somatics (https://www.healthline.com/health/somatics) * Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis by Stanislav Grof (https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Emergency-Personal-Transformation-Consciousness/dp/0874775388) 01:05:19 - The Game of Capitalism * What It Means To Win; Mimicking Desires * Reorienting Around Joy, Creation, Learning, and Experiences * Self-Actualization & Community 01:09:39 - Are We Technology? * Survival of the Fittest Reflections: Tim: We as a global community, need to bring our drums to the drum circle. Chanté: How do we build decentralized guilds? Arty: 1) Breaking out of nets and creating opportunities to innovate, invent, rethink, and enable new things to happen. 2) How do we create more entrepreneurship and enable more entrepreneurial innovation to happen? Rony: Empathy, Compassion, Imagination, Freedom, Courage. BONUS: The lost classic "Fire" (from one of Rony's early bands) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/5575o58xzm2kh28/fire.wav?dl=0) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: Software is broken, but it can be fixed. Test Double's superpower is improving how the world builds software by building both great software and great teams and you can help. Test Double is looking for empathetic senior software engineers and dev ops engineers. We work in JavaScript, Ruby, Elixir, and a lot more. Test Double trusts developers with autonomy and flexibility at a 100% remote employee-owned software consulting agency. Are you trying to grow? Looking for more challenges? Enjoy lots of variety in projects working with the best teams in tech as a developer consultant at Test Double. Find out more and check out remote openings at link.testdouble.com/join. That's link.testdouble.com/join. CHANTÉ: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Greater Than Code, Episode 245. My name is Chanté Martinez Thurmond, and I am here with my friend, Tim Banks. TIM: Hey, everybody! I'm Tim Banks, and I am here with my friend, Damian Burke. DAMIEN: Hi, I'm Damian Burke and I'm here with my friend, Arty Starr. ARTY: Thank you, Damien, and I'm here with our guest today, Rony Abovitz. This is actually the second time Rony has been with us on the show. The first time we unfortunately had some problems with our audio recording. We had a really great conversation so, disappointing, but I'm sure we will have an even better conversation the second time around. Rony is a technology founder, pioneer inventor, visionary leader, and strategic advisor with a diverse background in computer-assisted surgery, surgical robots, AI, computer graphics, and visualization sensing advanced systems, media animations, spatial audio, and spatial computing XR. Rony has a strong history of creating new technology fields in businesses from the startup garage onward, including Magic Leap, the world's leading spatial computing company founded back in 2011. His new still start at Sun & Thunder he plans to launch in 2021 and prior to Magic Leap, he also founded MAKO Surgical, a medical software and robotics company specialized in manufacturing surgical robotic arm assistance technology. He is deeply into film, art, animation, music recording, AI, robotics, ethics, and philosophy. He is also a senior advisor at the Boston Consulting Group advising a small group of deeptech startups and a few Fortune 50 companies, a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, and a two-time World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. Welcome to the show, Rony. RONY: Thank you for having me again. ARTY: It's a pleasure. So our first question we always ask on this show is what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? RONY: I think my superpower is not being able to do a podcast the first time correctly. Actually, I think I had a really good response last time, but I think the main one is I'm just like a space cadet and you could translate that into just, I have a very freewheeling imagination so I think that's always been my superpower. I could always imagine, or have a creative idea around a problem and really imagine things that don't exist, that aren't there yet. I think that's been always really helpful in anything I've done. So that's probably my main superpower. I don't know what that would look like as a superhero outfit. I think I gained a second achievement level, which is some level of insight, or intuition into knowing things, which I think it's really hard to explain, but I feel like I didn't have that. And then in college, it was a really interesting experience, which I probably won't get into a lot of detail here, but I think I gained that achievement level. I feel like I have both of those now. I feel like I leveled up and gained this insight intuition kind of thing that I didn't have before and I think those two together have been helpful. So there's probably many more achievements to unlock, but I think I got those two so far in the game. DAMIEN: You leveled up on intuition as a result of an experience in college. RONY: Yes. It was an interesting experience. I had a transcendent experience. DAMIEN: [chuckles] Well, that sounds exciting. ARTY: I think before my question was, how did you develop that? Tell us a little bit about your background. What kind of family did you come from? Was this something that you think was cultivated in childhood, or was this something that happened as you got to adolescence and then to into college? RONY: My mom's a painter. So she's an artist and she was pregnant with me walking around the campus at Kent State during the Kent State shootings and had to run away to not be shot. That was kind of there, but not there. She was an art student at Kent State at the time. I think she said to me at some point, there was difficulty in the pregnancy such they had to give her some morphine, or something. It probably got into my brain [chuckles] so probably scrambled it a little bit. I'm not sure if I had all that, but who knows what they did back then. So there's a little bit of that, but my mom's a freewheeling artist so I grew up that way. Dad passed away a couple of years ago, but always entrepreneurial, also artistic. So had this freewheeling imaginative household where no one told you, you couldn't do anything. I think that actually helped a lot. Nobody was born with a silver spoon. Both my parents were born but I was dirt poor as you could imagine. My Dad grew up in a house that had no windows so when we'd visit, my grandmother's chickens would literally fly through the window [laughs] and knock your head. When you're a kid, you think it's the greatest thing in the world. I think I swam in a bathtub that also served as the place to cheat fish. I think my Dad's mom would bring fish to the market and sell them, like a carp, or something and I thought they were my friends and didn't realize they were turning into dinner. I think that's why I became a vegetarian. So we grew up really poor on both sides. Everyone was self-made, freewheeling, and imaginative so that probably did help. CHANTÉ: Yeah. I think for myself, too. Just growing up poor helped with my imagination; I just dreamed of all these amazing things I would one day have as an adult. So I happen to think it's a superpower, too. It's pretty cool. Thanks for sharing all that. TIM: So I guess, what I'd like to know is when you're coming from that kind of background, what first was your jumpstart into using technology, or being interested in technology? RONY: I think I was always simultaneously interested in science and art at the exact same time, which is odd, which makes for a good misfit because either you're the art damaged kid in school and you hang out with the art crowd, or you're the science nerd and you hang out with – but I liked both so there's not really a good place where if you're both to hang out. Probably just being really curious about how everything works and what's going on behind the scenes. Like, why are things the way they are, trying to imagine them, but I'm not totally sure. I just sort of always was into both. That is a very good question. It's kind of asking if you're a fish, how did you get fins? I'm like, “I guess, they grew?” But I don't know, I just seem to be equally into that. Probably Star Wars, if you really get down to it. I saw Star Wars as a kid and suddenly, that's what you want to do. You want to build an X-wing, fly an X-wing, blow up the Death Star. That probably had a lot to do with it. Actually got to meet George Lucas, which was super awesome and I'm like, “You're responsible for my entire path in my life. Science and engineering, wanting to do all these crazy things. It's all your fault.” He was like, “Oh my God, don't blame me for this.” [chuckles] CHANTÉ: Wow. RONY: But no, it was in a funny way. CHANTÉ: That's funny because the last time the conversation we had, Rony, we talked about all these cool people that you've met that have influenced you and I asked you like, “Is this a SIM? How are you meeting all these amazing people?” [laughs] RONY: I'm pretty damn sure it's a SIM at this point. [laughter] Definitely a SIM. I'm very close to that. [overtalk] CHANTÉ: Become convinced now, for sure. RONY: We can get into that later, if you want. I think it's a SIM. I'm not sure who's running it right now, but it's a SIM. [overtalk] CHANTÉ: [inaudible] wanting to do that. ARTY: So with all this creativity, what were some of the first things you started dreaming about building? RONY: I think as a kid, I wanted to make a solar-powered airplane, which sounds like an odd thing, but I was weirdly into solar power. Like, I wanted solar-powered cars, I started to get solar cells from Radio Shack and soldered them up in stuff and spin motors. I'm like, “That's so cool, it's free, there's no battery needed,” and then of course, you need batteries to store it if there's clouds. But I was thinking that was really neat. It was just like this magic of sun on this thing, on this chip and suddenly, you get electricity out of it. It was like, whoa. I think my uncle gave me some Radio Shack science kit when I was really small. I started messing with it. I had a solar cell and I figured that was magical and I got really into it. I don't know why I didn't pursue that because it seems like that'd be a good thing to do today. But I was like really into in the very beginning, solar-powered, building solar-powered everything, especially solar-powered airplanes. I wanted to build some perpetually flying. Actually, I designed something that won a state science fair award that pretty much looks like later on and after that, it was a plane that I think flew across the United States, a solar-powered plane, and it was very similar design. So I was actually kind of happy I was a little bit in front of all of that, maybe 5 years or 10 years ahead of that one. ARTY: Just thinking about there's so many things like that that are magical. Just you've got this conversion of sun energy to electricity and there's so many things now we take for granted that are just kind of there like, “Oh, I have the internet in my pocket.” I feel like we've lost some bit of that wonder with taking some of these things for granted. I was talking with Chanté a little bit earlier about how dreaming gets stifled, how creativity gets stifled, and we ended up in this mode where we're doing things the way the world expects us to. We've got jobs in this path of life that we're supposed to follow and these rules, or the ways that things are supposed to be versus that passion of creativity, of discovery, of wonder, of wow, isn't this amazing that sun energy can be converted to electricity? I wonder what I could do with that. I wonder what I could build. I wonder what I could create that doesn't already exist. Where do you think that spirit comes from and is there a way that we can create more of that in our culture? RONY: It's a great question because I think there are still kids who have this experience, but I think less kids. I think it was just totally unstructured imagination, unstructured play. All my friends when we were kids – I didn't let my daughter do this, but we were like 8, 9, 10 years old, we'd grab a garbage can lid, make a sword out of a branch, and then we'd run around in the woods fighting dragons. There's no adults around, dozens of kids having some kind of like full on whatever we wanted. Like, we're just running about till almost nighttime deep in the woods like the kids from Stand By Me, the movie, or something. We got our bikes; we're riding miles away. We'd do whatever adventures we wanted. I remember a couple of friends of mine and I, we'd walk along the highway, which was incredibly stupid, collecting beer cans because we thought, “Wow, look at that, we can collect beer cans.” I don't know why. We're like 9 years old, we thought that would be a cool thing to do and we would figure it and then we'd cut them and make airplanes out of them and just craft stuff. That's probably dangerous. I won't recommend kids do that right now. But the idea of unstructured play; there's not a game, there's not something someone designed, you're not watching television. You're just running around in the world, doing stuff and your brain and your imagination have to fill in the gaps, I think that's what people really should be doing. Whereas, I think a lot of kids do this now, here's a tablet. It forces you to think in patterns; you're thinking in a certain way and that's actually scary because everyone's copy pasting the same device and running on the same popular app, or whatever and that's patterning your brain to be caught in a certain way of thinking versus this unstructured thinking, which is more rare right now, I think. DAMIEN: So that sounds like something that would be lovely to get back as an adult. Do you have any techniques? Is this something you do? Do you have ways of structuring that? [chuckles] Of getting to that unstructured play as an adult? RONY: I'm an anomaly because I don't think I ever got structured, which is, I think unfortunate. Not unfortunate, I think it's fortunate that I never got structured. So trying to think if you got caught and how would you break free. But I think I really never got caught in that net. I think I've always been like a wild fish in the ocean, but – [overtalk] DAMIEN: How do you stay out of the net? That's also something I'd like to hear. RONY: That's an interesting, I never had a job, like an actual job job. College, I started my first company and never really worked for anybody. I figured I'm unmanageable so I can't work for anybody, I might as well start my own companies. That was a saving grace because I think it would have been difficult to work for somebody. To conform and work in somebody else's system rather than to build something and try to make that a place people want to be at. But then it's weird, it's like you become the man and you're like, “Oh my God, what am I doing?” That's a whole another topic I won't get into this second. DAMIEN: But do you provide that sort of structure and patterns for people who work for you? RONY: In the beginning of all the companies I started—and I'm doing this again with a new one—it's always been freewheeling, awesome – I think the people that are beginning, that was the greatest time ever. But then as you get bigger, once you get to pass 20, 30 people, even 30 people unstructured, big, crazy, some folks start to come in and crave that structure. This is chaos, like what's going on and then you're like, “Okay, we've got to order this and we've got to processes and operating plans and all these other things,” and then next thing you know, there's 2,000 people working for you. I'm still trying to figure out how do you maintain that wonderful, free-spirited, freewheeling environment at bigger scale because at bigger scale, it feels like you've got to create all this framework and all these boxes for people to be in and processes. People are demanding it like, sometimes employees get upset that it's not there because they're so used to being in that cage for somebody else that they're not used to being free and they want to run around and go back to that cage and I'm like, “Be free,” and they're like, “No.” People who worked for me in the past will tell you that. They'll basically say it was this odd thing that I was pushing them to be more free than they wanted and then the ones who really liked it, got shunned as the things got bigger because what's that person not conforming? They're supposed to follow the procedures and why are you spending all your time with them because they're the ones that don't follow the rules. I'm like, “I don't like following the rules.” So I guess, what is a good technique? I have a recording studio, so I think playing really loud guitar helps. It lets you feel like you can like do anything. Really loud guitar through a big amp, a lot of fuzz pedals, or things like that, or you go on a long hike. We would do ocean kayaking, go a whole day ocean kayaking where there's sharks and weird stuff and some of you are far away from a computer. There's the universe and wild animals and you're back to primal nature again; you feel like you're just a wild, free spirit. I try to do that as much as possible. I think those things help, but it's hard, though and then you've got to go back on a Monday morning and there are some office space type manager asking you for TPS reports. That's really difficult. I feel bad because as the companies I've built got bigger, I probably had someone who had someone who made someone do a TPS report and it always bothered me. But it's like, you can't run at a certain size without the TPS report even though nobody knows what a TPS report is. If you don't know what it is, watch the movie but it's like why at some point you'd have someone two, or three levels below you make someone else do a TPS report? ARTY: Yeah. That's a great question. It's like who created this damn report? And why are we so coming to the demand of a report, or empirical data to move forward and work it in our life? As you were sitting there talking and everything, it brought me back to that comment I had again of Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe Institute who talked about his concept of scaling, how that happens in all things that exist in the universe. There's a ratio of scale that we can't really escape and it's an interesting phenomenon that I'm still trying to understand, but I think, Rony where I feel really kindred spirited to you is I hate to be tamed and then once I feel like we have to scale, or tame, I'm like, “Oh, this I want out of this.” Get me out of this game, get me to the new game where I get to germinate something and start it, and there's no form and I love that. I wonder, though. Somebody like you who's created all this amazing technology, aren't you the guy who could maybe make this a reality where we can create those experiences [chuckles] using technology to help us get in and out of these dreams, dates in and out of these waking and normal states that the society has locked into? RONY: Well, here's a couple things to think about from what you're saying. One of them, I have a notion of can you build a gigantic decentralized—I won't even call it a company, but a guild—of free people who are connected through blockchains? And it does not look the pyramid of structure of a company, but it's some kind of guild of artisans and we blockchain to each other and emerge and do things together? Like orcas will form packs because it's the right thing to do but there's no – well, there actually is an alpha orca so you do have a small pyramid. So it's the alpha orca have fights and then you become the ronin orca. There's a little bit of that. But is there a decentralized guild blockchain thing that could have hundreds of thousands of people that could build totally new tech platforms that are not the central power tech companies? I've always been pondering that and wondering how is that possible and every time I've thought about it, it seems like people collapse back into the same structure of the pyramid. Like they want a king, you try to create something that doesn't have a king, or a queen, and they want the king again. Why do we keep doing that? But somehow, I believe that there is a way to do that to have that democratic free-spirited thing. I think that's what the United States was founded on. Let's not have a king. Let's just have someone who's kicked out every 4 years. They're nothing special. Don't make a big deal about them. But now, 200 years later, we made that person more into a king. We give them special powers; they can do things and they don't get – they're above normal citizens. How did that fall apart? But I just keep wondering, is that possible? Because I think big tech companies reflect more of a monarchy. There is a central figure that have massive power, there's the inner court that have massive power, and then there's the serfs who all work for the central authority. It's basically, we fought against that to free ourselves of monarchies, but our companies and tech companies look more like monarchies. They could be benevolent, or not benevolent, but we still have not been able to get past that king over people thing. It perplexes me and why we keep repeating that. TIM: Well, I think there's a few things with that. You mentioned scale, like as you get bigger and as you add more people, you add more ideas and you add more notions on what the right thing to do is, or what the right way to go is. Obviously, as you do that, more folks are going to agree, or disagree on it. You're going to have various ways of opinions; you end up getting factions, or tribes, or whatever it is. Certainly, this is where people think that way, this group of people think that way, and then you introduce politics because you have to find some way to get all these folks with different ideals to agree on a common purpose, or a common goal. When you do that, once you introduce politics, then you start to introduce the notion of leadership like that. But I think it's interesting when we look at it in the guise of big tech companies and how we have these regions, a lot of this ends up coming is because of the people that ended up profiting the most off of the tech company are the ones that get to make all the decisions. It would be an interesting thing if there was a truly democratic company where everybody from top to bottom made the same amount of money, had the same amount of equity, have the same amount of say in the company. And then if you are a leadership role, it's more like maybe a strategic vision, but your CEO is going to make the same amount of money as your junior developer. Because unless you do that, you don't have a democratic, you don't function; you have a hierarchy by definition. DAMIEN: What we're talking about is power structures and every time there's a power differential, there's going to be a power structure that supports that. The reason why you said earlier when you were about talking how you were having to be like, “No, be free. There are no rules here. It's not a cage.” People resist that because they've been lied to. They say, “You don't have to stick to my rules.” All that really means is I'm not going to tell you what the rules are, which is horribly traumatizing. So until you have that equally distributed power, you're going to have that hierarchy and that structure and somebody is going to want a TPS report before they can go forward on something. RONY: Are there any examples where that's existed for some period of time, even in a small form? Like the equally distributed power, anything? DAMIEN: I've seen it in co-ops. It requires a lot of trust and the more people you involve, the more differentials you're going to find. [overtalk] CHANTÉ: And I think there are some [inaudible] in this communities. ARTY: I think scale. [overtalk] RONY: Like a small co-op. CHANTÉ: We can definitely do this. RONY: A small co-op. ARTY: Yeah. There's definitely people that are trying to do the sorts of things that you're talking about from an organizational structure standpoint, but as you've also pointed out, there's dynamics of resistance to it of it not necessarily being what people want. I mentioned this book before, Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book and the thought that comes to mind as we're talking about this dynamic of being pulled toward wanting order and structure is a big part of his thesis in the book is that we have a desire for order in our consciousness and we have a gravity toward wanting order in that chaos and disorder is uncomfortable. So when we're in that uncomfortable situation, we can learn skills to create our own order out of the disorder, to be creative, to think about ways to construct new ideas and stuff in our head and make new games. But our brain wants some kind of game to play, wants some kind of order to build around, and I feel like, we were talking about these nets that we get caught in and the way that our education system is structured, the way that we learn in school is a net in itself. We learn how to play the game of school and teach people how to follow the rules and be really good at following the rules and in playing the game that's given to you. I feel like if we want to teach people how to create order out of disorder from their own consciousness, through creative play, that we need a learning environment that is oriented toward those things so that we can get practiced at it. Being in a situation of being uncomfortable, being around people that are good at those kinds of things that we can learn how to mimic perhaps and shift those shifts, those things around that way. An acquaintance of mine, we had on the show a while back, Sam Aaron, he does Sonic Pi and he teaches little kids how to code, learn how to be a music DJ and it's the coolest thing. I was reading this post about a little 6-year-old, who was super excited about DJing it at her next birthday party coming up and she was going to get really good at DJing and mixing her own beats. She's 6 years old and I'm just looking at this how beautiful it is and that seeing that fire, that inspiration to create light up in someone, once that fire's lit, it keeps fueling itself. It keeps fueling that desire. I feel like there's something very powerful about music, because you've got some basic rules of how things work, but this huge space to create in, and almost everything we can relate in various ways to music. What if we changed the way that we educated to focus on some of those musical principles and this could be something that's adult learning, too is how can we learn to riff together in a musical context and learn how to do jazz? RONY: That's very cool. DAMIEN: What I heard is that we should all start jazz bands. TIM: Yeah, same. RONY: That's all good with me. TIM: Let's see if they get too big, then you have to have a conductor. [laughter] DAMIEN: Like a quartet, big band at most. No orchestra. [overtalk] TIM: You see, big band has to have a conductor, right? That's one of the things. DAMIEN: I have played in a big band without a conductor. TIM: I was in a couple of myself. We'll talk about that one later. RONY: Well, actually that's a good thing because if you have a trio, or a quartet, everyone can go and it somehow works. You all have to pay attention, but if you try to do that with 10 people, 20, 50, a 100, it turns into noise. DAMIEN: I also think it depends on what kind of music you're making. A symphonic orchestra generally needs a conductor, at the very least a concert master who can wave the bow and get people on time. But I've been in drum circles of 300 people that made beautiful music with absolutely no leadership, or any sort of control like that. TIM: Well, I think the difference is that in the drum circle, I don't think there's a preconceived plan that's being executed. It's all improv, right? It's all made on the fly and then you pick a direction. I think it's different when you have a set task, or a thing you're going to accomplish. In the case of a symphony, or any other thing where we have we're not making up music on the point on the spot, we have a set score. We know what notes they're going to be and we're going to be done. I think there's space for both of those. There's space to say that we're just going to see what comes out of this and then there's another bullet that says, “Okay, well we have to do this.” One is very much creative and I love that. The other part is executive. You don't want, for example, surgeons to just go in there willy nilly and just saying, “We're just going to see what we find and just do whatever.” There has to be a plan. There has to be something that gets executed. Any kind of engineering feat, it has to be done with a plan and structure and different things that have to be done at certain times. So I think there's a place for both in any healthy culture and society where people that create and people who design certainly should not be encumbered by definitions of structure. But if you're going to create, or design something that's going to withstand a hurricane, there obviously needs to be some concerns about a structure and how things are put together. RONY: But let me give you guys a comment on power structure and I'm a bit of anomaly because I've always been super uncomfortable being in that alpha power spot, but I've always had to be there to build a company. Some of them got quite big and the bigger they got, the more uncomfortable I was because I didn't think a human being should have that power. By the way, the question about smart people and billionaires, I've met a bunch of those billionaires that you've mentioned, I've also met some incredibly smart people; they're not always directly correlated. There may be a smart billionaire, but it's not one-to-one—a billionaire who's someone who's highly optimized at a certain function. Some of those brilliant people I know are super poor and they have built-in things in their mind that they don't want to do the things that they might see oppress others to get to a certain place. They just don't. So they're more happy in their lot making $25,000 a year, or whatever they're doing. But I think what's interesting about trying to not have a power structure is how people just default go into this algorithm in people's brains. I'll give an example. When one of my companies was small, I had a largely empty office and a couple cool collectible vinyl toy things. I love weird, those kind of animate vinyl toys and then just Star Wars thing. I just have a couple of my shelves. When people would visit, like new employees, or partners, they would bring something and put it on the shelf like an homage offering. I'm like, “That's weird,” and then the more that people thought now it was required to bring one of those and make an offering and leave it on my shelf. So a few years later, my shelves are covered the hundreds of these offerings and I'm like, “What in the heck is going on here?” I didn't ask anyone to do it, but people felt like if you're going to go see the alpha wolf, you have to bring them a dead rabbit and leave it as an offering and it was just amazing. It's like all this stuff and I would give most of it away, but it was really weird how everyone has this algorithm that they feel like if you're going to go visit the alpha leader, you've got to bring a gift, an offering, a moose, whatever you happen to have caught. Even when we dealt with people from outside the US, it was even more extreme like you'd have this whole formal exchange; you had to bring them a gift and they would bring you this gift. I was like, “What is going on here?” This is thousands of years of evolutionary biology wired into people's brains making them do things. I'm like, “I don't want to be that!” Like, that's not what we're doing. We're totally building a different social order, no one's paying attention to me at all, and everyone is just like, “Nope, we have this code built into our brain and we're just going to do that.” I found that to be really strange to the point where I build two decent sized companies and each time, I felt like I had to throw the ring into the volcano like in The Hobbit, or Lord of the Rings, because if you don't, it just kind of gets to you. I felt like if it started to get to me, I just need to throw it into the volcano and start over again. Hand the ring to someone else and go back to base camp and try it again, which I'm doing now. But I found that both times I built successful tech, but not the nonhierarchical culture I had in mind at the beginning, which I'm trying to do now again. I'm not sure how do you fight human biology? I'm like, “Don't do that. Stop bringing the moose and the rabbits by! What on earth are you people doing?” and they just keep doing it. I don't know what it ism or why, but it's like, we are hard wired as humans to follow an alpha wolf. In fact, the alpha two and threes feel like they actually have to challenge you in a tribal fight and if you don't put them down and show the rest of the wolf pack that you're the alpha, then they'll try to eat you. It's like what is going on? But that is what happens at every company, in every country, in every government, and it's so weird that we have not evolved past the way we were thousands and thousands of years ago. CHANTÉ: Is it possible, Rony the endeavor that you're working on now to use technology, to dream of new futures and realities that does decentralize social structures in the sense – because my feeling is the collective consciousness is why we're doing this. Like, we can't escape ourselves. So if we give ourselves new experiences and we know what it feels like to have decentralized collectivism, then we may choose to build new cities, families, and companies in a decentralized structure. Because that power and oppression, it feels like a human instinct that we can't escape it. but I'm just not convinced that that's real. I think it's been something, a story, a narrative that we've been stuck in. So I think we have to build a new story, or create a new story and a new reality and I think technology can allow us to do that and people like you and everyone on this call, we can do that together. ARTY: Yeah. I was thinking about that, too of software gives us this ability of reality construction and if we've learned certain ways of doing things, if we operate in a certain net in a certain rails playing certain games and we don't have a template for anything else so that outside of that is just disorder and unstructured and unknown, then we're going to cling to the familiar structure. We're going to cling to what feels safe and known and predictable, and that we know how to operate. I feel like the way to escape that is to create an alternative that offers structure of a system that gives you a set of rails that reorients things and creates opportunities for creativity, for entrepreneurship, for ideation, but creates new structures where those things can thrive. I don't think we're going to get away from technology, but we can reinvent our interface with technology. We can reinvent the shape of our social software infrastructure and how we relate to one another through technology. I feel like to overcome that gap, what needs to happen is a vision, really, is the putting together a vision of what that might look like such that we can build it. RONY: I spent the last decade going really deep into that, about as deep as you could possibly imagine, and it started out actually a few years earlier, 2008, 2009, working on this call it a Miyazaki film world project with my friends at Weta and we spent a few years on that. And then one of the things I felt was if you're going to – I won't get into the details of the project is actually something Sun & Thunder will hopefully be releasing. But if I was going to go into this idea of hacking into reality, what is that? I actually needed to go do that in order to be credible about making a story about it, or making a film about it, or film world. So I'm like, “Okay, I'm going to go on a tangent.” So I started a tech company with the idea that we're going to be reality hackers. Like, we're going to figure that out and we're just going to go all the way. We're going to hack into the visual cortex, we're going to go full on, and it was amazing because all these people, like people who created The Matrix and Neal Stephenson from Snow Crash, all these people started showing up. And then some of the very early stuff we did, we started to go really there, like really deep. That's stuff that you can productize, but we're starting to unlock things about how the human brain works in our connection to this weird connection between the physics and how our brain constructs reality. What does that mean and how do you actually get in there and actually hack it? We did some stuff that freaked me out so much. Everyone in the early days was like, ‘Whoa, maybe we need to take a step back.” I think that's actually what happened. We had those whoa moments. “Let's take a step back and let's not unlock full atomic fusion right now. Let's do something that you can actually maybe ship,” but we're going to places that were not ready for as a species. We really had those moments where we would see over the horizon. That was intense. One of the things that made me walk back and I think a couple of early folks that we just felt like human software, our human biology is totally unprepared for this. Like, we're not prepared to hack reality. We are not equipped. We're not ready as a species. We would screw things up beyond all belief. Look how badly we're doing on social media, which is so thin and almost nothing. When I think of digital realities, whether it's AR, spatial computing, VR, those are simulation training grounds for the real thing. It scares me when people are talking about neural implants in the brain like, no, no, no, we are not ready for that. In our SIM testing on social media and digital reality, we're not doing a good job. We're creating fairly awful places with occasional cool places. I thought, “Okay, we're going to unleash this like Renaissance of art and imagination.” It's like, no, that's not what's going on. It's going on in little pockets. But for every art and Renaissance thing, you've got like nine, or ten horrible things. Some things I can't even mention. I used to tell our investors, “Someone's going to make trillions of dollars doing the things we refuse to do” because the level of control and weird stuff you can pump into someone's brain. There are companies I'm not naming; you could imagine why they're spending $6 to $8 to $10 billion a year trying to conquer digital reality. Why they have reality labs. You should be really frightened about why they're doing it. L ARTY: Right. RONY: I started out with a notion of can there be this real creative imagination Renaissance and I actually believe there can. But at the same time, it's like every time you have a superhero, there's something else like the super villain appears. It's a law of the universe and I feel like the more we were trying to do good in hacking reality, you would have bad equally emerging and equal strength, maybe sometimes even larger. I don't know what's going on, but it did get me to take a step back and wonder. The human software is totally unprepared and so backwards. Like we're running Dos 1972 right now, or even worse than that. Our software is like Middle Ages and it's so easily manipulatable and triggerable and all kinds of horrible – the human, we have not transcended. We are not where we need to be collectively. That doesn't mean there's not individuals, or groups who are transcending and becoming more enlightened and evolving in a good way. But the net human condition seems to be quite in the bad place right now. It actually scares the crap out of me. So I did take a step back from the notion of I don't know we're ready and maybe we just need to take a breath and figure out our social system, our human biology, like what's going on because we are evolving at so much slower pace than the rapid accelerating pace of our tech capabilities. We're building insane tech. AI will pass us all in this decade, like, what the heck are we doing to ourselves? We're unleashing things in the world we have no idea and society is not capable of predicting. The nonlinear event impact is really scary and we just keep doing it. I don't mean to be all pessimistic, but I think the hope of this creative Renaissance is something that's a beacon—it should be a beacon for some—where you're free, you're decentralized, you're not controlled by this monarchal power. But too much of the other side is actually winning right now, too much of the other side is dominating everything because they're playing the game that I think our brain is wired to. We're wired to a pyramid structure. The people who realize that manipulate it, they take advantage. They do all the things; they've figured out the social psychology, they've hacked the code of the human brain, and they're making tons of money doing it because they know how we are. I don't know if that's just how it will be forever, or is there going to be an actual enlightenment for people. That made me take a step back from hoping that everyone will just have this inner artist wake up and now, I'm not so sure. CHANTÉ: I love that question now. I think it makes me go back to something I continue to say, it's just like, do we get off of our technologies, or get off of the things that we believe connect us? Because we are ourselves technologies so, do we need to be constantly manipulating something else? There's a lot of power in just being together in real time, in real life together and I think if we can go back to some of that, we can remind ourselves because—and this is coming from somebody who spent a lot of time and money in meditation and self-transcendence. Now I'm at this place where I'm like, “Do I need to transcend, or should I just be right where I am because the past, the present, and the future are actually all one and should I pay attention to who I am and what I am and where I am a little bit more versus constantly thinking in the future? This is so hard for me because I'm a futurist. I love to think and imagine new possibilities. But I just wonder. That's kind of one of the mantras I've been sitting with in the last six months, or so. RONY: Thinking of what you're saying, we had a pretty high-level of Tibetan Buddhist who built one of the great temples in Tibet where monks meditate and they built it from memory. There's no architectural plans and he was one of the leaders that he came by and I showed him some stuff we were doing. It was maybe 5, 6 years ago. He's like, “That's amazing and you're cheating.” He goes, “We take years to learn how to do that, but we could do more than what you're doing. You're just level jumping.” I get what you're doing, I understand it but you're taking the elevator, the sky tram up the mountain, and there's something about – but you're not equipping people to know,” or. I didn't really understand what he was talking about at the time. I think I have a better grasp now, but we're not spiritually ready for what we can do and they spent a lot of time doing this. They have their own virtual reality. In fact, it was interesting was I said, “We're not really building technology. We're simply trying to unlock what's in the human brain, which is an amazing computer, best GP in the world is the visual cortex. Best display is our brain. That's all there, we're just trying to tap into it.” He's like, “We do the same thing using different tech, but you're kind of cheating.” I thought that was interesting. It's like you don't really have the satisfaction of climbing up to mid base camp on Everest; you just took the elevator and suddenly, you're there. But your lungs aren't ready. You didn't climb the mountain. You're not fit. I feel like technology is doing that for us. Spiritually, we're just not ready. CHANTÉ: Yeah. I spend a lot of time in somatics. I'm in a couple of somatic communities and we talk a lot about those somatic reps. There's a lot of wisdom in experiencing something firsthand and witnessing somebody else do it alongside you in that community because we learn that way, too. If you're picking up on other people's energetic vibes and feel, you collectively whoever's in that space, in that room, It is something that cellularly somatically, you will become a little bit wiser from. I can't describe it. It's only when I'm in a collective with my yogis who we're doing deep breathing together, or we're doing POS in a practice together and there's just this thing that I experience that I've never had on any drug, or any kind of tech, using technology, what do I put on a headset, or something? I can't describe it. It feels out of this world and it's almost like only those of us in that room would ever be able to describe it and maybe indescribable, but it's powerful. So I keep going back to that. RONY: One of the things he told me was, “Okay, you'll help people realize that reality is just an illusion, but are they equipped to understand that?” That will just freak them out, they're going to break down, and now what? When you actually really get that, when you really understand like how reality is constructed, if you go deep and get into that, which we had to do to build some of the things we were doing, it does weigh heavily on you because you're like, “What the heck is actually going on?” A lot of things you were taught growing up that your parents, or grandparents might believe and then you're – where you might read in a book and you're suddenly facing that the reality you know is not stable; it's liquid, it's hackable, it's editable. You're like, “What is going on?” That kind of opening up of your mind is an interesting place, but no one's equipped to really go there. You almost got to step back and say, “I'm going to forget I saw that. Let me just go back and watch a football game,” and it's way easier to go back and play X-Box right now. [laughs] DAMIEN: Those sorts of discoveries have been happening for all of recorded history and I think farther. People get there via gyms, they get there via sitting on a mountain in the modus pose and sometimes, they come back and go, “Okay, I'm just going to pretend that it's real. [laughter] And sometimes, they don't and die under a Bodhi tree, whatever. But these are things that these are not new realizations, or discoveries. RONY: No, they're not. But what weird is that the vast majority of people have not had that. CHANTÉ: Right. RONY: Vast majority like, think about how many people in this country are not even on the first step of any form of enlightenment. The actions they take, the things they believe, the people they vote for, you're like, “They're so orthogonal and distant from that.” So you do have pockets of people who've had enlightenment and transcendence over the last thousands years, but it's a fractional minority and that's what's like why are the rest stuck? Where is everybody's stuck on and why? DAMIEN: Because they want to be. CHANTÉ: Well, I don't know. [overtalk] DAMIEN: Ego death is death. Nobody wants death. CHANTÉ: We're programmed to be. I think we're conditioned and makes me think, too also Stanislav Grof, I'm not sure if you all know him, a famous transcendent, or transpersonal kind of. RONY: What's his last name? CHANTÉ: Stanislav Grof talks about the spiritual emergency. I'll drop the link here. Really interesting, too and did a lot of holotropic breathwork to get people through transcendence and used a lot of other, I think drugs and synthetics to have those transcendental experiences. But talks a lot about the spiritual emergency and I think you're right, Rony talking about when we have this realization that oh my God, what is reality? [chuckles] Because reality is something that we all can define differently and even this is something that I think quite a bit about what the future of work and technology and all of us coming together, this convergence of who am I without that role, without that title? Who am I without my computer and without my phone with the internet in my pocket? I don't know that we've spent enough time examining who we are going in. We're always looking out and I think we have to come back into ourselves to be home and I'd like to see and I am trying to do more of that, trying to cultivate those experiences with the communities that I run circles with, or the things that I have influence on is just, let's go back into ourselves because there's so much power there. DAMIEN: I talk about this as the high school basketball version of reality. If you've ever been to a high school basketball game, championship, league championship, whatever, and you got the crowds yelling and screaming and everybody's enthused and excited about what's going on. If you were to go down to center court and wave your hands and go, “Hey, hey, hey! Hey everybody, everybody, whoa, whoa, none of this matters.” That's really rude. You're right it doesn't matter. It's high school basketball, but we have chosen to make it matter because that's what makes the game. If you don't care about the rules, you don't have a game. If you don't care about the characters, you don't have a movie. If you don't care about the desk and the computer, you don't have a job. So we make these decisions. We can see through it, if we choose to and see that it's an illusion, it doesn't really matter. But if that's what you're here for, go for it. Have fun. If that's not – RONY: Here's a question, just because it's an illusion, does it mean it doesn't matter? DAMIEN: Exactly. RONY: Actually, just a hint at that. We made this digital person, her name was Micah, and people's reactions to her were unbelievable. They began to have relationships and we had to change behavior code around Micah and if you actually broke her personal space, she would leave. She'd walk away and actually open up a door in a wall and disappear. If you behave badly around her, you would lose access. We had to create this social code of conduct because people were – it was odd. I won't get into all of it. But then we fixed that and it was just interesting that people would want to be with her because she would gaze into your eye and pay attention to you. Looked amazingly real, but almost hyper real, like the most real person who was totally focused on you and that attention level from this illusion made people feel good. Even though she is an illusion, that feeling was real and reality is illusion anyway so is she just as real as anything else, or was something going on? It was kind of odd, like is what you feel, or what you carry with you actually that thing anyway, even if it's all an illusion? DAMIEN: And you get to decide that for yourself with and among your culture and your peers, your group. ARTY: Well, I think joy matters for its own sake. Connecting with one another, having fun, experiencing joy, it's a reason to live, it's a reason to be. And if we're playing a basketball game together, it's fun. The people that are in the crowd, enjoying the game and getting involved with it emotionally, too, it's fun and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with having fun and enjoying those experiences and then being meaningful for their own sake. If we have an experience with a digital person and figure out ways to have some feeling of connection, of being paid attention to, of being listened to, there's definitely some risks with regards to dynamics of attachment and just messing with us as humans that I think are definitely of concern. There's just risks with creating emotional love attachments to digitalness that I think is unexplored, unpredictable riskiness because heartbreak is a real phenomenon experience that can be devastating. That aside, I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with experiencing good feelings from those things happening in our lives. TIM: I just wonder, though what does it say about the human condition when with 7 and a half billion people on the earth that we need to be with, we would think that we need to create a digital person with which to interact? There are so many of us out there with which we could be interacting and probably should be interacting. We've gotten this far as a species without needing to have an artificial person. [overtalk] DAMIEN: Well, we have our emotional people. We have our pet canines, we have the robot people, people make friends with Roombas. Before that, people made friends with stars in the sky. They'll look back to Orion and that's Ra, Ra loves me and so on. TIM: Sure. DAMIEN: It's the same relationship we have with other human beings. TIM: To some extent, but we were still, the person who was having that relationship was the one who actually defined what that person is, who that was, was essentially the imagination. With an artificial person, or artificial intelligence, you don't have that; someone else is deciding that. So would you want to have that type of interaction? I feel like we could probably, as a society, do way better of devoting our resources to improving the human condition among each other by interacting with each other and understanding each other's hopes and dreams and heartbreaks and struggles than if we were going to spend the resources and the time to develop an artificial person with which to interact. If I think of what we want to do to help people, we want to help everyone to help the human condition, to help and just improve lives and create joy around people? I feel like spending toil creating an artificial person is a fool's errand to that end. DAMIEN: Well, what you're describing would be more effective, but it's outside of our skillset. [chuckles] We need George Lucas for that. RONY: Let me agree, but disagree on one thing, I'll give you a couple examples. Imagine your family has, let's call it an artificial person who's with your family for hundreds of years and is the keeper of the cumulative wisdom of your great, great, great grandparents and is that wise uncle, or aunt, or grandparent that just has the whole history of your family all the way through and can be pulled up and is that kind of totem with the family all the way. It's just an example, something a human being can't do, but could be interesting. It's like we keep photo albums. Now we have video albums of family. What if you had almost like a shaman of the family who you could talk to and it could give you the accumulated wisdom of all your ancestors? Wouldn't that be kind of interesting? TIM: We've had that accumulated wisdom passed down without having the demonstrable technological privilege of being able to afford to purchase not only an artificial person, but the means with which to property to keep that artificial person going. They've had books and scrolls, they had cultural passed downs, they've had just word of mouth passing down these stories that have been great and rich stories for those of us who are descendants of slaves. I know who my family members were not because they were written down anywhere, not because of any technology preserved, but when they were preserved through word of mouth. Linnaeus was written in Bibles somewhere. So we have that and we have the stories behind that, that to me, it speaks to why carrying those things forward is important, but it also speaks to that even if such technology existed back then, it would still be only to the very, very privileged. I think that we need to acknowledge that with a lot of the things we're talking about, talking about why people haven't become enlightened, it is definitely, almost certainly an essential clue that you have the time and the ability to be able to spend time enlightening yourself versus trying to survive. I think if we spend the time to improve everyone's conditioned to where survival is not a struggle, then we will see much more enlightenment. We would actually see, I think, a dramatic leap forward in what we're capable of as a culture and as humanity. But we spend time shooting billionaires in the space instead. RONY: When you say moving people from survival not being a struggle, what is that level that you think everyone is beyond the day-to-day struggle and is in that place? What does that mean you think across our collective country, or countries? TIM: I know for me, I have been in a place where I didn't know where my next meal was coming from and I haven't had that worry in decades. I don't think any of us here probably have worried about really, are we going to eat today? Are we going to have a place to live today? Maybe we've had those struggles before, but right now, we're five of us sitting around here talking on the internet. Those are probably not our struggles. But there are people in this world that we can all imagine, we have folks that don't have that they are wondering, like, am I going to have the lights one day in the country we are on that only has the power on for 4 hours a day as our food going to spoil? There are various conditions under which people struggle, I think if we could get a baseline and just have a baseline opportunities where people have power, they have access to clean water, they have access to healthcare, they have access to what we define the basic needs of food, health, power, access to the rest of the world via the internet as a baseline so that when they're not concerned with what we take for granted as the basic things. Like, I know if I get sick, there's a hospital I can go to. I don't know how much could it cost, but I can go right now and I can ask the hospital. To have those kinds of things handled allows people the privilege to be able to really then look beyond the essence of struggle, taking care of the animal brain, and we can now look beyond those things. We can now say, “Hey, what does it mean now?” They can examine the condition a lot better when they're not hungry. I feel like for us, these things are all great to talk about, but I think if there's a place where I'm going to turn my attention, if I can, beyond the basics of feeding my family, I would love to do that and then see what the world becomes in 50 years, or a 100 years when so many more people are freed from having the struggle of survival and we have now the point where we talked about before, where now we're all equal people in this society of the globe and now we all have our equal ideas that we can contribute to moving us forward instead of so many of us just trying to stay alive. RONY: I'll tell you what's interesting. I agree with you. The thing that I wonder about first of all, I think it would be great if there is a way – by the way, I think technologically, there is a way to get everyone on the planet out of their survival mode. I really think we have the smarts, the capabilities, the resources to actually do that. Why we can't organize to do that, I'm not sure, but I totally believe we can. There's zero reason. In fact, I was at this thing in 2005, it was the World Economic Forum where it's just the biggest billionaires and people that run the countries, the world, they get together. I was there as a technology pioneer. So every year, they'll pick a number of startup people and they want you to co-mingle with the people that run the biggest things on the planet. It was a very weird experience. But one of the things they were talking about was this issue, how do we solve that and I'm just sitting there going, “All of you in this effing room could actually solve this today. Right now. You really could.” There's meetings, there's dinners, people are talking about it. I'm like, “That's good that you're doing, but you literally can. All of you have the means to do it.” Like, where is the – but they didn't. They didn't do it, but they were talking about doing it. I'm like, “Do you like talking about doing it more than doing it?” So that was one thing. I don't know why we haven't able to organize, but the other piece is my grandparents, my great-grandparents, everyone was as dirt poor as you can imagine. But they were more spiritual and transcendent and enlightened and that as we got up, I look at my cousins, everyone's struggled and then my parents did a little better and we did a little better. People seem to be less concerned about becoming enlightened and improving and more concerned about what's the next car they're going to buy and we do need to bring everyone to that baseline, I totally agree. But I haven't seen it make people get spiritually better, get themselves together more. It's more of they go down a different path of just wanting more cars, more things, and less enlightened. It's kind of weird. I don't know why. In fact, the more money, maybe the inverse proportion that the whole enlightenment, it's a weird phenomenon. Not that you want people to be impoverished like, we want to pull people out of that. I think that's important. But as you go to the other side, you almost zap that part of your brain away. You have too much money, it makes you not sensitive anymore to what's happening in the world. ARTY: There's this game of capitalism that is this game of business of how much money can we make and you see different folks at different tiers of playing these various games, whether you're in the workforce and you're thinking about how do I get the highest paying job and be able to buy a nice house and there's a set of rules and thinking of how to excel in that. Then you've got this world of investment and just playing at another level of abstraction. But in both of those dynamics, there's this game and these rules and this idea of what it means to win that seems to anchor people's thinking and drive. And then as we learn from others, what it means to win and we see other people being successful in that and they go and buy a new fancy car and then we're like, “Whoa, they want a fancy car. Well, I want a fancy car, too.” So we mimic these desires from other folks in our culture at whatever game we're fascinated by and I feel like some of those things are some of the fundamental things that need to shift is these game mechanics that we're incurring around. One of the things from the Flow book is Csikszentmihalyi talks about how symbols are deceptive and they have a way of distracting us from the realities they're supposed to represent. So there's these symbols of things that we chase—a better job, a bigger house, more money, et cetera—and these symbols are things that are supposed to make us happy and then we end up chasing the symbol. Often, people that have all kinds of money playing these games, doing all this stuff, they still haven't found a way, even with all these things, to find happiness, to find joy in their lives. I feel like if we can learn and reorient around the experience of joy, the experience of creation, of creating with other people, of learning how to have and how to experience these really cool highs in life and turn those kinds of experiences into the goals that we have, that maybe we can break free of the chains of things that we play of what it means to win, what it means to win at life. This is effectively what we're talking about here. CHANTÉ: I was going to say, as you were describing that, it's like okay, then how do we rebuild – maybe not rebuild as a word – it's how do we cultivate a culture amongst those of us who are interested

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AWS Isn't a Threat to OSS

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2021 18:46

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. Today, we're going to be talking about AWS, an open-source software. Now, that's kind of a broad topic, but there have been some specific, recent events I'll say, over the last year maybe or maybe even less, related to AWS and open-source software that really got us talking, and I wanted to have a deeper conversation with both of you on this topic.Tim: Well, you should probably start by going over some of the things that you're mentioning, when you say ‘some of these things,' what are those things, Jesse?Jesse: Yeah. So, I think the best place to start is what constitutes open-source software. And specifically, I think, not just what constitutes open-source software, but how does that differ from an open-source company?Tim: So, open-source software can be anything: Linux kernel, bash, anything like that, any Python functioning module. If you make a piece of software, whatever it is, and you license it with one of the various open-source licenses, or your own open-source license or whatever, it's something that the community kind of owns. So, when they get big, they have maintainers, everything like that, but at its essence, it's a piece of software that you can freely download and use, and then you're free to modify it as you need, and then it's up to the specifics of the license to whether you're required to send those modifications back, to include them, or to whatever. But the essence is that it's a piece of software that's free for me to use and free for me to modify under it's license.Jesse: And one of the other things I want to add to that is, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't a lot of open-source software is very community-owned, so there's a lot of focus on folks from the community that is using this software giving back not because they need to under the licensing, necessarily, but because they want to continue using this and making it better over time.Amy: I think one of the issues is that becomes a very opinionated kind of statement where there are a lot of people in the open-source community who feel that if you're going to use something and make changes to better suit what your needs are, that you should be able to submit those changes back to the community, or back to whoever owns the base of the software. But that said, it's like the community edition of MySQL before Microsoft bought it, where the assumption was that there's essentially a candidate of it that anyone can use without the expectation of submitting it back.Jesse: So, that's a broad definition of open-source software, but how does open-source software, broadly speaking, differ from an open-source company? I'm thinking specifically there is the open-source software of Elasticsearch, for example, or I should say, previously the open-source software of Elasticsearch that was owned by the open-source company, Elastic. So, what does that relationship look like? How does an open-source company like that differ from the open-source software itself?Tim: So, there are typically a couple of ways. Usually, a company that is the owner of an open-source product still has some kind of retention of the IP in their various licenses that they can do that with, but essentially—and this is in the words of one of the founders of Elastic—that they're benevolent dictators over the software. And so they allow folks to contribute, but they don't have to. And most of those open-source software companies will have a commercial version of that software that has other features that are not available, packages with support or some of the things like that, some kind of value-added thing that you're going to wind up paying for. The best way to describe—like you said—there's the company Elastic and then the product Elasticsearch.I relate back to before: there was Red Hat Linux, which was open-source, and then the company Red Hat. And I remember when they went public and everyone was shocked that a company can make profit off of something they gave away for free. But while the core of the software itself was free, the support was not free, nor was the add-on features that enterprises wanted. And so that tends to be kind of what the business model is, is that you create the software, it's open-source for a while to get a big user base, and then when it gets adopted by enterprises or people that really would pay for support or for other features, that's when the license tends to change, or there's a fork between the open-source version and then the commercial version.Jesse: And it definitely sounds like there can be benefits to an open-source company essentially charging for not just the open-source software, but these extra benefits like supports and additional features because I know I've traced multiple code bugs back to a piece of open-source software that there's a PR or an issue that has been sitting open for months, if not longer because the community just doesn't have the time to look into the issue, doesn't have the time to work on the issue, they are managing it on their own, separate as a side job, separate from their day-to-day work. Whereas if that is a bug that I'm tracing back to a feature in an open-source piece of software, or I should say software that I am paying for through an open-source company, I have a much clearer support path to a resolution to resolving that issue.Tim: And I think what the end up doing is then you see it more like a traditional core software model, like, you know, a la Oracle, or something like that where you pay for the software essentially, but it comes packaged with these things that you get because of it, and then there's a support contract on top of it, and then there's hosting or cloud, whatever it is, on top of that, now, but you would still end up paying for the software and then support as part of the same deal. But as you know, these are for-profit companies. People get paid for them; they are publicly traded; they sell this software; they sell this product, whether it's the services or the hosting, for profit. That is not open-source software. So, if company X that makes software X, goes under, they are acting like the software would then go under as if the software doesn't belong to the community.So, a business that goes after a business is always going to be fair play; I believe they call it capitalism. But when you talk about going after open-source software, you're looking at what Microsoft was doing in the '90s and early 2000s, with Linux and other open-source challenges to the Windows and the other paid commercial enterprise software market. When folks started using Linux and servers because it was free, customizable, and they could do pretty much everything they wanted to or version of it that they were using commercial Unices for, or even replacing Windows for, you didn't really see the commercial Unices going after it because that very specialized use cases; the user had specialized hardware. What folks were doing, they're buying Wintel machines and putting Linux on them, they were getting them without Windows licenses, or trial licenses, throwing Linux on it. And Microsoft really went after open-source; they really went after open-source.They were calling it insecure, they were calling it flash in the pan, saying it would never happen. They ran a good marketing campaign for a long time against open-source software so that people would not use it and would instead use their closed-source software. That is going after open-source, not going after quote-unquote, “Open-source companies.”Jesse: Yeah, I think that's ultimately what I want to dive into next, which is, there's been a lot of buzz about AWS going after open-source, being a risk to open-source software, specifically, with the release of AWS Managed Services for software like Elasticsearch, for example, Kubernetes, Prometheus vs. Other open-source packages that you can now run as a managed service in AWS. There's a lot of concern that AWS is basically a risk to all of these pieces of open-source software, but that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case, based on what we're talking about. One of the things that I want to dive into really specifically here is this licensing idea. Is it important to end-users? How would they know about what license they're using, or if the license changes?Tim: I'll let Amy dig in on it because she's probably the expert of three of them, but I will say one case in point, I remember where licensing did become very important was Java. JDK licenses, when Oracle started cornering the market on enclosing all the licenses, you had to use different types of Javas. So, you had to get, like, open JDK; you couldn't use Sun, Oracle Java, or whatever it was. And so that became a heavy lift of replacing packages and making sure all that stuff was in compliance, and while tracking packages, replacing them, doing all the necessary things because if you're running Java, you're probably running it in production. Why you would, I don't know, but there are those things that you would have to do in order to be able to just replace a package. The impact of the license, even if it doesn't cost a dime for usage, it still matters, and in real dollars and real engineering time.Amy: Even free licensing will cost you money if you do it wrong. The reason why I love talking about licensing is because I used to work for the government—Jesse: [laugh].Amy: —and if you think a large company like Amazon or Microsoft loves doing anything to rattle the cage of smaller businesses, it's not nearly as much as they love doing it to the government. So, any company that has a government-specific license, and the government is not using it, they will get sued and fined for a bunch of money, which sounds like a conflict between a super-large company and the government and who the hell cares about that, but this also translates the way they handle licensing for end-users and for smaller companies. So, for the most part for the end-user, you're going to look at what is generally sent to you to use any piece of licensing, the EULA, the End-User License Agreement, and you're just going to say, “Yeah, fine, this thing is 20 pages long; I'm not going to read this, it's fine.” And for most end-users, that is actually, you're good to go because they're not going to be coming after small, single-person users. What these licenses do is restrict the way larger organizations—be it the government or mid to larger companies—actually use their software, so that—this is a little dating—someone does not buy a single disk that does not report home, and then install that one disk on 20 computers, which is a thing that everyone has seen done if they've been in the industry long enough.Jesse: Yeah.Amy: Yeah. And it means things like licensing inventory is important, to the single you're using this license at home and you install Adobe on three computers, you would think it's not… would not hurt their value very much, but they also make it so that you can't even do that anymore. So, in purchased software, it makes a big deal for end-users; if it's just something free like being able to use some community SQL workbench just to mess around with stuff at home or on personal projects, you're usually going to be okay.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at ChaosSearch. You could run Elasticsearch or Elastic Cloud—or OpenSearch as they're calling it now—or a self-hosted ELK stack. But why? ChaosSearch gives you the same API you've come to know and tolerate, along with unlimited data retention and no data movement. Just throw your data into S3 and proceed from there as you would expect. This is great for IT operations folks, for app performance monitoring, cybersecurity. If you're using Elasticsearch, consider not running Elasticsearch. They're also available now in the AWS marketplace if you'd prefer not to go direct and have half of whatever you pay them count towards your EDB commitment. Discover what companies like HubSpot, Klarna, Equifax, Armor Security, and Blackboard already have. To learn more, visit chaossearch.io and tell them I sent you just so you can see them facepalm, yet again.Jesse: Yeah, this is a really big issue. There's so much complexity in this space because Tim, like you said, there's some amount of capitalism here of AWS competing with open-source companies; there's business opportunities to change licensing, which can be a good thing for a company or it could be a terrible thing for a company's user base. There's lots of complexity to this issue. And I mean, in the amount of time that we've been talking, we've only really scratched the surface. I think there's so much more to this space to talk about.Tim: There really is, and there's a lot of history that we really need to cover to really paint an accurate picture. I think back when web hosting first became a thing, and everyone was running LAMP stacks and nobody was saying, “Oh, no, using cPanel is going to kill Apache.” That wasn't a thing because, yeah, it was a for-profit company that was using open-source software to make money and yet Apache still lived, and [unintelligible 00:15:00] still lived; MySQL still made it; PHP was still around. So, to say that utilizing open-source software to provide a service, to provide a paid service, is going to kill the open-source softwares, at best it's misrepresentation and omits a lot of things. So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff we can dig into, a lot of things we can cover.And the topic is broad, and so this is why it's important for us to talk about it, I think, in the context of AWS and the AWS, kind of, ecosystem is that when you see companies with big crocodile tears, saying, “Oh, yeah, AWS is trying to kill open-source,” it's like, “No, they're not trying to kill open-source.” They may be trying to go after your company, but they aren't the same.Jesse: And it feels to me like that is part of the way that the business world works. And I'm not saying that it's a great part of the way the business world works, but how can you differentiate your company in such a way that you still retain your user base if AWS releases a competing product? I'm not thrilled with the fact that AWS is releasing all these products that are competing with open-source companies, but I'm also not going to say that it's not beneficial, in some ways, for AWS customers. So, I see both sides of the coin here and I don't have a clear idea of what the best path forward is.Amy: As much as I hate the market demands it type of argument, a lot of the libraries, and open-source software, and all of these other things that AWS has successfully gone after, they've gone after ones that weren't entirely easy to use in the first place. Things like Kubernetes, and Prometheus, and MongoDB, and Elastic. These are not simple solutions to begin with, so if they didn't do it, there are a lot of other management companies that will help you deal with these very specific products. The only difference is, one of them is AWS.Jesse: [laugh]. One of them is a multibillion-dollar company.Amy: Oh, they've all got money, man.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: I mean, let's be real. At our pay grade, the difference between a multimillion-dollar and a billion-dollar company, I don't think affects you at your level at all.Jesse: No.Amy: I'm not seeing any of that difference. I am not. [laugh].Tim: Yeah, I definitely think if you all want us to dig into more of this—and we could do a lot more—let us know. If there are things you think we're wrong on, or things that you think we need to dig deeper on, yeah, we'd love to do that. Because this is a complex and nuanced topic that does have a lot of information that should be discussed so that folks can have a clear view of what the picture looks like.Jesse: Well, that'll do it for us this week, folks. If you've got questions you'd like us to answer please go to lastweekinaws.com/QA, fill out the form and we'll answer those questions on a future episode of the show.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review, give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us your thoughts on this conversation, on AWS versus open-source software versus open-source companies.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

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AWS Application Cost Profiler

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2021 14:57

christmas amazon discover cost santa field ga cloud app application excel api ui aws qa devops equifax s3 klarna profiler blackboard elasticsearch edp ec2 kinesis launchdarkly amy it amy you tim how tim well elastic cloud jesse yeah jesse you last week in aws humblepod

Should I Attend re:Invent?

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2021 20:52

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: I'm Tim Banks.Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways that we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today on the show, we are going to be talking about AWS re:Invent. Now, I know that most of you know what re:Invent is, but I just would love to set the playing field level for everybody really quick. Amy, Tim, what is AWS re:Invent.Tim: AWS re:Invent is AWS's week-long corporate conference. It's not really a user conference; it's certainly not, like, a community conference, but it's a week-long sales pitch in the desert. It's like the worst version of a corporate Burning Man you could ever imagine because they even have a concert.Jesse: It is in Las Vegas. Now, I personally have mixed feelings about going to Las Vegas in general, but this adds so much to the conference in general because it's not just in a single conference venue that's centrally located near the hotels. Is it is across the strip—Amy: It's the entire strip.Jesse: It's the entire strip. So—Amy: They block every hotel and they buy every piece of ad space.Jesse: Yes. There is no escaping AWS re:Invent for the entire week that you're there. And sometimes that's a good thing because you do want to be involved in what's going on, but other times, it is a lot.Tim: So, I'm trying to figure out which LP that ‘buy the entire Las Vegas trip' covers because it's certainly not be frugal.Amy: No. [laugh].Jesse: No, not at all. But we do have new information. We decided to do this episode specifically because new information was just released about re:Invent for this year. Amy, what is that information? What do we know?Amy: They've decided, in having to go virtual last year, due to some kind of horrible global crisis, to return in person to the world's most densely packed tourist spot, Las Vegas, and host this huge event from November 29th to December 3rd—that's right after Thanksgiving—and just, what do they say? Return to normal. Return to normal.Tim: That way everybody can get exposed to COVID before they go home for the holidays.Jesse: [laugh].well, you at least get one holiday in, if you celebrate or recognize Thanksgiving, and then you get to bring everything back after that.Amy: Yeah, people bring enough things back from Vegas. I'm not sure we'd have to find more reasons. [laugh].Tim: [laugh].Jesse: I know that there's that great marketing tactic of, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but—Tim: That's not what they say at the clinic.Jesse: Nope. Mm-mm. Now, I will say, I know that almost every conference event was completely virtual last year due to the pandemic, and this year, a lot of conferences are still trying to straddle that line between what's acceptable, can we do maybe smaller events in person, some kind of a hybrid online/in-person thing. I have mixed feelings on this. I appreciate that I can still attend AWS re:Invent from home this year digitally, I can still watch a lot of the main keynote events and a lot of the other information that is being shared, but I don't know, it's always hard because if you do a hybrid event, you're automatically going to miss out on any of that in-person socializing and networking.Tim: Well. So, I think it's interesting. AWS re:Invent suffers from the same issue that pretty much all other conferences suffer from is that there's not really value-add in the talks, at least for attending.Jesse: Yeah.Amy: If you're going to be able to see those talks afterwards if the announcements are going to be publicized afterwards which, that is true in both cases, then what's the point of spending the money, and the time, and the possible exposure to go watch them in person? So, then the other thing is, “Well, we want to go for some of the training seminars,” or some of these other things. Well, those are also offered online, often. Or, like, copies of them online. These are the same kinds of tutorials like that that you can have your TAM or SA run if you're an AWS customer currently; that's what they're doing there.The other thing is, too, those in-person sessions get filled up so quickly that there's no guarantee [unintelligible 00:05:08] anyways. And that's one of the complaints they've had about re:Invent in the past is that you can't get into any of the sessions. And so, you couple all that along with most of the reason going being—if it's not the talks and is not the sessions, it's the hallway track. And then you got to kind of wonder, is the hallway track going to be valuable this year because if it's hybrid, what percent of the people that you would normally talk to you are going to be there and what percentage aren't? And so there's a lot of calculus that's got to go into it this year.Jesse: I've always struggled with any vendor-sponsored event, all the talks feel either like a sales pitch, or they feel like a use case that just doesn't fit for me. And that may just be where I'm at in my professional journey; there's definitely reasons to go if you want to see some of these talks or see some of this information live, or be the first person to talk about it. Or even the people who are going to be the news sources for everybody else who want to be the first person to talk about, “Oh, we attended, and we saw these things and were live-tweeting the entire conference.” If that's your shtick, I fully support that, but I always struggle going to any kind of vendor conference because I just feel like the value that I get from the talks, from training if I go to training, just doesn't feel like enough for me, personally.Amy: So, I've done some of the AWS-led training when Summit was in Chicago, a couple years ago, and I'll be honest, you lose a lot in these large AWS-led trainings because these classes, it's not going to be like the ones that you would sign up for even being hosted either by your company or by your local user group chapter where you will have at max 100 people. You have well over that. You have an entire conference room full of people, and they're asking questions that are across the level of expertise for that topic. I went for one of the certification training seminars and straight-up 15 minutes was spent talking about what a region is. And given that's page one of any training material, that was a waste of $300.Jesse: Yeah.Tim: I think you run into the problem because it is, in fact, I mean, let's be honest, it's a multi-day sales pitch. It's not a user conference, it's not user-generated content. It's cherry-picked by the powers-that-be at AWS, the service groups. Is a big push for account executives to encourage high-level or high-spend accounts to participate in those so they get logo recognition. And so that becomes more of the issue than the actual cool user stories.And that's fine if you're using it literally just a sales conference because it's very compelling sales material, your account executive will go there and try and close deals, or close bigger deals, or sign EDPs or something like that, but from an engineering standpoint, from a technical standpoint, it's remarkably uncompelling.Jesse: Yeah, I think that's one other thing to call out, which is, there is definitely this networking opportunity that we talked about from a hallway track perspective, but there's also a networking and business opportunity to meet with your account manager, or your TAM, or your SA in person and have conversations about whatever things you want to talk about; about future architecture, or about closing an EDP—or I should say, about an EDP because the account manager will try to close that EDP with you—and then basically use that as next steps for what you want to do with AWS. But again, all of those things can be done without flying you to Las Vegas and being amongst all these other people.Tim: I mean, let's not take away, there's a certain synergy that happens when you have face-to-face contact with folks, and a lot of these conversations you have in hallways are super, super organic. And so I think that's indicative of conferences as a whole. One of the things that we learned in the pandemic is that, yeah, you can have talks where people just, like, look at a screen and watch talks, and a lot of conferences have done that. But that's not why people want to go to the conference; they want to go to the conference to talk to people and see people. And if you want to have a conference where people talk to people and see people, and that's the whole point of doing it, then the business model behind that looks dramatically different, and the content behind that looks dramatically different.You just have a bunch of birds-of-feather sessions or a bunch of breakout sessions. You do a keynote at the beginning, you do a keynote at the end, and then you just let people mingle, and maybe you have some led topics, but you don't generate content; you shut up and you let the people innovate.Jesse: I also want to add to that. It is one thing to have a conference that is in one venue where everybody is going to be gathered in the same space, creating conversation, or creating easy opportunities—Amy: Five miles worth of content isn't exciting for you?Jesse: Yeah. So, in Las Vegas because the entire conference is spread across the entire strip, you're going to have opportunities to network across the entire strip basically, and sometimes that means you're going to only spend time networking with the people who are in the same hotel as you at the time of the track that you are waiting for, or the time of the event that you are waiting for. It is unlikely that you are going to run all around the strip just to be able to network with everybody that you run into.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more visit lumigo.io.Amy: The other issue I have, not just with re:Invent, but this is really any larger conference or conferences that rely on the kind of content where it is a person speaking at you and you don't get to meet these people, is that without any level of Q&A or interactivity—and this is true especially for AWS-led events—is that it is no different than watching someone on video. You can go to these talks, and you can perhaps have conversations with people as they filter out of the room, but there's no way you're going to be able to talk to that person who was delivering that content, unless you can track them down amongst the sea of people in re:Invent or [unintelligible 00:12:16] in Las Vegas.Tim: What typically has to happen is that after someone has given a compelling talk and you really want to talk to them, you have to go and talk to your account manager; your account manager will then set up a meeting that will happen at a later time where you're going to all call in over Chime, and then you will quote-unquote, “Meet” that person virtually. And if that's the case, you could have just stayed home and watched [laugh] the talk online, and then done the same thing.Amy: Conferences need more Chime. That's what [laugh] the problem is.Jesse: [laugh]. I think my eye just started twitching a little bit as soon as you said that, Amy.Amy: I'm glad. So, then why would people go? There's the hallway track, but is that worth the heavy price tag of going to Vegas? A lot of us live in areas where there is either going to be an AWS Summit or there are AWS user groups. What do you get from going to a larger event such as re:Invent and having that level of communication that you can't get from those smaller groups?Tim: I mean, the importance of networking cannot be overstated. It is extremely important, whether it's for laying groundwork for future deals, laying groundwork for future collaborations. I've been at conferences where a hallway track, just folks meeting up in the hallway and having a really organic discussion turned into a product within three months. So, those kinds of things are important. And, unfortunately or unfortunately, they do happen better quite often, when people are in-person and they've had a chance to talk, maybe even a couple of drinks or whatever.So, I mean, people ink deals, they shake hands, they get, you know, a lot of work done when it comes to maintaining and managing relationships, and to some people, that is worth it. But I do think that you have to be very, kind of, eyes-open about going into this. It's like, you're not going to go in there to get a lot of technical insight, you're not going to go in there to talk to a whole bunch of people unless you really have a relationship or establish some kind of rapport with them beforehand. Because just to go up and blindly like, “Hey, I'm going to grab you in the hallway, and this is who I am,” that's not always great, especially nowadays, when people are, kind of, already averse to, you know, talking to strangers, sometimes.Jesse: I've always struggled with talking to strangers in general at conferences because I'm predominantly introverted, so if I don't have an open introduction to someone through a mutual third party or mutual friend, it's just not going to happen. And I've gotten better at that over the years as I go to conferences, but it's going to be especially tough now in cases where folks are not just averse to, I don't want to say strangers, but averse to physical contact and adverse to people just, kind of, approaching them out of the blue. It's tough. I want to be more mindful of that and I want to be better, but it's hard, especially in cases where you're in a crowd of hundreds of people or, you know, thousands of people across the strip, that it just gets overwhelming really quickly for some folks.Amy: I do want to loop this round, if anything, just for a poll for Twitter. Do not close an EDP in Vegas. You're probably not of the right mind [laugh] and have the right people to do that. Wait till you get back to work. Please. That's just me. [laugh].Jesse: I would also like to add—we talk about why people go; I think that there's definitely a solid contingent of folks who attend re:Invent because it is the one time a year that the company sanctions them getting away from their family for a couple of days, getting away from, you know, the day-to-day routine of whatever work is going on for a couple days, and go to Vegas. Now, I know that the company is not going to sponsor them drinking every night, or gambling, or whatnot, but they're likely going to be doing those things anyhow, so it is this company-sanctioned opportunity to just go experience, you know, something different; go take a vacation, basically, for a couple days.Amy: Corporate Burning Man.Tim: Corporate Burning Man, exactly. A vacation in Vegas.Amy: I am not a fan of ever working in Vegas. If I'm on the clock, I cannot be in Vegas, not because I'm prone to excessive behavior when I'm on my own, but more that I cannot be productive in that much noise and that much flaky internet. It drives me absolutely batty, and I'm only going to be, as far as implementations, so productive in a crowd that large.Tim: I will say this, especially in regards to Vegas, there are other places you can go, other places that need the money more. AWS wants to rent a city, rent a city that needed the money. Put that money where it could be to used, where it really makes a difference. I don't know if Vegas is the right place for that, if I'm being honest, especially after all we've learned and dealt with in 2020. And so that's why in 2021, yeah, no for me, continuing to have re:Invent in Vegas is very, very tone-deaf.Jesse: I still think, Amy, you and I just need to—actually sorry, all three of us should attend and basically keep a running Waldorf and Statler commentary through the entire conference. I don't know if we can get that little, you know, opera booth that's kind of up and away from all the action, but if we can get something like that and do some sports commentary—ohh, maybe on the expo hall—Amy: That would be great. That would be great if we don't get banned. [laugh].Tim: I think what would be even more fun is to give a MST3K—Jesse: Ohhh.Tim: —treatment of the keynotes afterwards, you know what I mean?Jesse: Yeah.Amy: Yes.Jesse: I mean, Amy and I had also talked about playing some Dungeons and Dragons while we were there, and I feel like if we can find some, I'm going to say, tech-themed RPG—I realize that is a broad category, and everybody's going to spam me afterwards for this, but—Amy: I got that. Don't worry about it.Jesse: Yeah, I'm on board. I feel like anything that we can do to create a roleplaying game out of this conference, I'm down.Tim: I'm still waiting for you to explain to the audience in general who Waldorf and Statler were?Jesse: Oh, yes, that is fair. Okay. Waldorf and Statler are two characters from the old-school Muppets Show, which is amazing and delightful. It's on Disney+; I highly recommend it. They are basically—Amy: They're two grumpy old muppets, and they have been roasting people since the 70s. That is—that's all it is. [laugh].Tim: All they do is they sit up in the upper booth and they throw shade, and I love it.Amy: Yes. And they just show up in random parts in different movies. They'll be, like, on a park bench, and there'll be a serious moment, and then they'll just start talking crap for no reason. And it's great.Jesse: They're the best. They're absolutely fantastic. I adore them. I hope to be them one day.Amy: One day.Tim: Really, both of them? I don't, I don't know how that's going to work.Jesse: I am hoping to clone myself. One of me is going to have fabulous hair and one of me is going to be balding. Probably the clone is going to be balding; sorry about it, future me. But—Amy: [laugh].Tim: Well, I mean, and have just a magnificent chin, right?Jesse: Yes, yes, that's the trade-off. Losing the hair up top but absolutely fantastic chin.Tim: Here's what I want to see. I want to see the listeners submit things that you think should be on the re:Invent bingo cards.Amy: Ohh, yes.Jesse: Yes.Amy: I would love to see that.Jesse: So, for those of you listening, you've got two options for submitting things that you'd like to be on the re:Invent bingo cards. The ideal option is going to lastweekataws.com/QA. Fill out the form and let us know what you think should be on the bingo card. You can also respond to the social media post that will be posted for this content, and we can take a look at that as well. But that'll be a little bit harder for us to follow because I'm unfortunately not like Corey. I can't absorb all of Twitter in a day; it takes me a longer time to read all that content.Jesse: 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 what you think about AWS re:Invent.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

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Listener Questions 6

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2021 21:13

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.

amazon loving field cloud saas dms enterprise iot listener questions chili jiu jitsu aws amplify qa devops copilot hipaa fairly deleting filipinos sla alp terraform elasticsearch ec2 launchdarkly extrahop tim oh tim you tim yeah amy it lcu elastic beanstalk tim no tim well jesse yeah jesse it last week in aws amy they amy okay humblepod jesse all

Return to Triathlon Racing with Tim Delss

Hilary Topper On Air

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2021 28:07

After a year of shutdown and no racing, it looks like racing is happening again with some variation. Today's guest is familiar with all the new protocols, especially, in triathlon racing. I’m Hilary Topper, and this is Hilary Topper on Air. Today I have the great pleasure of speaking with Tim Delss of CBMultiSport. Tim is also the head coach of WeREndurance. Tim, Welcome to the show. Let's talk about the return to triathlon racing. Tim - Thanks for having me, Hilary. Hilary - So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? Tim - Sure, I am the owner and coach at CBMultiSport, which is a company that I operate here in Maryland focusing on coaching age group triathletes of all ages. My specialty is people like you and me, that work normal jobs and have lives and families and things to schedule work around. In addition to that, I am the head coach for you guys over, WeREndurance. I'm also a business partner with AJ Baucco coaching. And then I also helped the first time Ironman athletes at iron man Maryland, and do the secrets to success clinic and help with race staff there as well. Hilary - So, can you talk to our listeners about what to expect from Iron man and other long courses, this racing season 2021? Tim - Yeah. First of all, it's great that we're seeing transitioned back to racing. The return to triathlon racing is very exciting. Last weekend I was actually down at a race in Virginia, the kinetic triathlon festival that had sprint Olympic at 70.3 distance. So, it was fun to be back at a race and see what was going on. There's a lot of variables and what's happening because, obviously, CDC guidelines are changing, each state they're managing their guidelines and their standards all individually. And then, below that, it funnels down to counties and local jurisdiction. So there's no real, set protocol. It depends on where your races are, but, the most important thing is racing is coming back. And from what I've seen, what I've heard, as races are taking off is that the race organizations, the race directors and the staffs are they're putting a lot of time and effort into making things as safe and reasonable as possible. I know, and this may change since the guidelines were just changed by the CDC. But, prior to this weekend, races were requiring you to wear masks, to pack and pick up their space and people out to maintain social distancing. I know for Eagle man, 70.3, which is our first Ironman branded race. Now this season here in Maryland, we are going to be having people call or schedule their packet pickups. So that'll be coming soon. For those athletes, and their return to triathlon racing, they will be getting an email to schedule when they actually want to pick their pack up to try to minimize crowding. And will be doing the same for bike racking. We'll see how that progresses into the year with other races like Maryland or things like that, but that's just one of the things that Angie and the staff is doing, for Eagle man to make it as efficient, as easy as possible, but, I'm sure you noticed that so many things are in flux right now, especially with the new revisions by the CDC. So, pretty much everything I thought we were going to talk about when we set this up last week, it is about to change. I find it's changing. So, being an awesome podcast, I'm going to give you a lot of “I think” as opposed to “I know”. Hilary - Yeah, yeah. I know. It's just, it's crazy. Every day something comes out that's completely different than two days before. And, in that vein, what do you think about triathletes? I mean, should we all get vaccinated? Let's take politics out of this and just what do you think in terms of these long races and that type of thing? Should we protect each other and ourselves in order to return to triathlon racing? Tim - Sure now there's a lot of things to consider there. Some people have cultural beliefs, religious beliefs, their own opinions. Right, and I'm never going to tell someone what they should or shouldn't think. And, unfortunately, in the climate we have here, almost everything is being politicized and the vaccine is… Those are waters that nobody really wants to wait into and rightfully so. But, from a pure triathlon standpoint, if you have access to the vaccine, if you can go get it, like I know here in Maryland, mass vaccination sites are walk up now and we bet we're actually getting to the point where in a lot of places we have more vaccines and we have appointments being filled. Because the initial rush kind of over, everybody can get one versus you have to be a certain age or have a certain predetermined health issue or things like that. If you have access to it, unless you have a very specific reason not to get it, then I don't really see why you shouldn't. I can't tell you not to, but from an endurance sports standpoint, triathlon, especially a long course, it's very hard on the body with the training and the racing, it wears you down, it makes you more susceptible to illness and injury and things like that, and so yes, we are that small percentage, generally of the most healthy people in the country, right? Because we're incredibly active and most people are pretty decent about their eating in some form. And we generally take care of ourselves, which, on the surface, makes us less predisposed to get an illness than someone who smokes two packs a day and doesn't take care of themselves or whatever. When you're going out there and training hard and racing hard and doing all that stuff, you compromise your immune system, that's why recovery is so important. You know, and that's why triathletes and during south fleets come up sick within, oftentimes, a couple of weeks of a race cause their immune system's down or they're immunocompromised at that point. So to return to triathlon racing, the vaccine can be a tool to help in that regard. I personally got my second shot, last Thursday. So, after my two weeks lapse, I was fully vaccinated and I was never worried about myself. I'm 36 years old. I'm a healthy guy. I don't have, I wasn't worried about me getting COVID, but what I was more worried about is me giving it to someone else or, you know, something like that. So, that for me was an easy personal step. So it's, unfortunately, it's something that everybody has to decide for themselves most Americans have at least one shot at this point, the majority of people that are eligible, right? Not, it's not accounting for children who aren't yet eligible or things like that. And I think that's why we're starting to see things open up and seeing more racing coming back. And, you know, we're getting towards that level of herd immunity that people have been talking about for so long. And, but we're doing it more by vaccine than we are by you catching it and me catching it and everybody else catching it. So that's why things are starting to open back up. I know that's why the CDC relaxed their guidelines because we hit some percentage that they wanted to see. So things are on the up and, hopefully, within a year or two, it's going to be kind of like the flu. In that, they understand more about it. And every year they have a shot that people can get if they want to get it, based on what the strands are doing and the evolution and all that stuff. And it'll just become a small, but normal part of our culture, like the flu. Hilary - Do you think, sorry to interrupt for a minute, but I just, I'm curious to know your thoughts about whether or not race directors should require either negative test or proof that you got the vaccine in order to return to triathlon racing, is that happening? Tim - Not that I know of, I know some people in the industry, not necessarily race directors, but bike fitters like chops, stuff like that that are requiring things like that for like bike fittings and stuff like that. As a small race team, if you're a local race director or anything like that, you run a private business and as private business, you're allowed to allow to require those things and request those things. There's been debates on whether or not someone asking you if you're vaccinated to violation of HIPAA laws or whatever, and I'm not a lawyer, I don't study medical law. But I was like, well, I mean, you have to provide proof of vaccination that your kids have had a their measles, mumps, and rubella if they're going to go to school, and that's not a violation or, you know, at the same time, I've read a couple of things that were like, well, there's a, if you're a business owner, race director, whatever, you have an obligation to keep your employees and volunteers safe, that's kind of a counter argument, so to speak. But I don't know of any race directors doing that to return to triathlon racing. The couple of running races that I've done during COVID time has been, you have to wear a mask until the race starts, they're spacing out, starting times. The race I was at this past weekend, they did the same thing. Everybody had to wear their masks in the corral. And then they did like time trial start. And as you were going up to the edge of the beach, they had a trashcan there for you to throw masks. And they also provided two masks to the athletes, and then once you finish, before you lead the finisher shoot, you had to have a mass back on, so I think that race directors are in a really sticky spot because it's, it's a business. Everyone has personal opinions there, but they're also trying to be as safe and welcoming as possible. They're really in kind of a situation that they can't win, so they're kind of trying to balance everything to allow us to get back to racing. And I certainly don't envy the position that they're in with having to make their decisions. But the few that are the ones I know that I've talked to in a couple of races, I've seen, they seem to be doing a pretty good job of doing the best they can. Hilary - Before we move on, I have to say that I am so appreciative of our sponsors and must take the time out to thank them. Please support our sponsors and tell them that you heard about them on Hilary Topper on air. Special thanks to the Russo law group, the Profit Express with Tim Healey, Pop international galleries, Gold Benes L L P and the Pegalis law group. Now back to you, Tim. So we're talking about racing and triathlons and the return to triathlon racing. Can you tell me if you think this year is a good year for a newbie to race? Why or why not? Tim - Every year is a good year to try something new. In my local tri club here in Maryland, I actually run a beginners program, where I provide a group focus training plan, they're not individual fully customized, like I do my normal day to day work, but, kind of a group focused plan that leads towards a race that our tri club. And it's a way to welcome the men, give them a little guidance. It allows me to be there to answer their questions and, and kind of help them on their journey. Like someone helped me when I got into this sport. It's never a bad time to try something new and to get in. I don't know how long you've been in the sport, but you know, if we go back 10 years ago, when the triathlon exploded, there were always new people coming in. There was always a rush of excitement. Like there was an atmosphere in the sport that was pretty amazing. And everything kind of settled in the sport retracted a little bit, like most things do after they boom, to what it has been the last few years, which is good, has been steady. Races are still selling out and things like that. So that’s great. It's not like it's just falling off a cliff, but there is something that new athletes bring to the sport that the anticipation, the anxiousness, the nervousness, the excitement that they bring that really kind of excites all athletes, even people that have been doing this a long time. And so I love seeing new people in, the other thing that's happening is with COVID, with the pandemic, the race directors have had to get very creative in trying to figure out ways to bring race and back last summer, fall, and now for 2021. And so, the new athletes can actually use that as an advantage. There are more races popping up. There are different formats popping up, they're now spreading races, instead of having one big race on one day, they're spreading it out over two days. So there are things that are happening that kind of take a little bit of that entry pressure off. Cause like when I got into this sport, you had to sign, you had to commit to something a year in advance, sign up right away, know everything sold out fast. You had to jump in the deep end just to guarantee that you could get to a starting line. Then you had to work your way back, no matter what distance you were racing. But now there's so much more variety and variability and option that an athlete can really kind of way into the water instead of jumping in or immersing ourselves at kind of their own speed. And after a year off of racing, the seasoned athletes and experienced athletes, they're all really just kind of happy to be getting back to racing. And so the dynamic it's reminding me more of when I first got into it, the atmosphere in the sports, a little different. So, it's more inclusive and it's less, the pressure is less intense. Like people are just happy to be back racing. And so I think that's a great atmosphere for beginners to come into. Hilary - Absolutely. Now let's just, I just have a question about the pandemic. How should triathletes be careful during racing? I mean, you know, is there anything that you think, advice that you would give a triathlete or an athlete when they are racing with hundreds of other people? Tim - Well, the biggest thing is, and this we're talking about the pandemic, but this is always going to apply in or out a pandemic is don't do something that you're uncomfortable doing. There's a certain level of discomfort in triathlon. Whether it's tackling a new distance or your legs are tired or lungs are burning, right? There is a saying in triathlon that you get comfortable being uncomfortable and that's very true. What I mean is don't do something that you fear, don't put yourself in a situation that you're worried would be harmful to you. So it's one of those people who has an underlying medical condition or has older family that you're really worried about while everything's still happening with COVID or whatever, then wait a few more months and see how things progress, right? Like there's no reason that you have to just rush into something that you're unprepared for. As far as the racing standpoint goes, the truth is like, I could tell you, make sure you're staying away from people, make sure you're legally not drafting, right. That's more than six feet, right. That don't run close to people when they're sweating and breathing and all that stuff. And I can say all those things, but I think for most of us, once we get into a race, you're not really thinking about a lot of those things. You're kind of you're in the race. So it's like, you're thinking about making sure you get your water and you get your nutrition and you're staying on your pacing and there's so many you just kind of do when you're racing, and for the most part, like being in the water is not really that concerning of an issue right. On the swim portion, on the bike portion, you're not actually supposed to be close enough to really have any issues. So, the biggest sticking point would be the run from a safety standpoint. And, in that case, it's like, well, don't grout around an aid station. You know, things like that. I haven't raced yet this year, so I can't say personally, but like when I've done running races during COVID we've been required to carry a mask in case we needed to stop at an aid station for the safety of volunteers. I don't know if that's some race directors are requiring that for triathlon aid stations or if they're going self-serve and you know, some of them are doing self-surveyed stations. You know, where someone pours the water and puts it on the table, and then they stay out of the way so you can just run through and grab it, but it's pretty, for the most part, it's pretty easy and triathlon to maintain a reasonable distance. There's been very few times that I've ever been shoulder to shoulder with someone on a run or something like that. Like most things, common sense serves you best, you just have to, you just have to think about it. And unfortunately, it doesn't really seem so common anymore, but, just practical, common sense will serve people well. Hilary - Absolutely good, good advice. Could you talk a little bit about how you personally help triathletes grow and develop? Tim - Sure. Triathlon is a sport that rewards two things: time and consistency, and by consistency, I mean, whatever your distance, whether you're a sprint athlete or an iron distance at one 40.6 athlete, or the more consistently you can train over a longer portion of time, the better you will be. It takes years to reach an aerobic peak and things like that. It’s a sport that rewards consistency. So, whether, if I'm coaching an athlete, then obviously I'm managing their day to day training schedules and things like that. So we're shooting, my job is to make sure that they're consistently training, hitting their progressions in their training plans, things like that. If I'm not, if we're just having a conversation and I'm talking to some new athlete at a race venue or something, then usually the advice I give is to find a training schedule that fits your life. You know, it has to fit within your life. I could build the best training plan on earth for you. For example, you know that they'd be like, oh man, we're going to blow some things out of the water and, in a year, you're going to be awesome. But if the schedule doesn't fit into your daily life, it's really helpful to you at all, cause you're not going to do it as it was intended, so you're not going to see the improvement. So there would need to be revisions made, so they need to pick a schedule that fits. The second thing is don't be afraid to take your time. There's been kind of a rush of athletes that come into triathlon and they jump in and they want to get right up to do an iron man because they saw on TV in December when NBC aired it. And you know, it becomes a bucket list item. So they jump in and they want to do it. That's fine and good. And that's a great goal and a great ambition. There's also an extremely high likelihood of injury. If you come from not doing this to try to jump in and do 140 mile race. So don't be afraid to take your time. It should take a few years for you to get to the point of doing an Ironman and then the last thing is don't take it too seriously. Like generally we're kind of type a people, right? We care about data. We care about the numbers. If you use training peaks, you want your work out to be green at the end of the day you don't want to miss stuff, we want to improve. We want to get better. And, and all those things are good traits and there, it can be good and positive. But you still have to remember that this is supposed to be fun for 99.9% of the people. This is a hobby and so while it is good to want to be better and to focus on getting better, don't beat yourself up if you have a bad race, they happen. Or if things don't go the way you want, or, there's always going to be another race on the horizon and it's still supposed to be fun. So enjoy the fact that you're able to do it and take in the experience because if you pay attention to the experience around you while it's happening, it, it really is. Triathlon is an amazing world to live in. Hilary - Totally. I totally agree. And coach Tim, can you tell our listeners how to get in touch with you to learn more about your services? Tim - Sure, guys can reach me just about anywhere, you can find me on Facebook, my coaching pages CBMultiSport, or you can look me up by my name. Tim Delss, you can find me at www.cbmultisport.com or www.ajbcoaching.com . For my partnership with A.J. Baucco Coaching, you can also find me roaming the grounds at most triathlons in the Mid-Atlantic area, you can join the WeREndurance team. You can find me there and you can find me on Instagram at CB multi-sport or you can if you don't remember any of that stuff, you can contact Hilary and she can get you to. Hilary - Absolutely. And I just want to thank you, Tim. This was a great show as always talking about the return to triathlon racing. You're always an amazing guest. I also want to thank our sponsors, the Russo law group, the Profit express, Pop International Galleries, Gold Benes, LLP, and the Pegalis law group. And last but not least, I want to thank you our listeners for tuning in. If you want more information on this show or any other show, you can find us at hilarytopperonair.com or you can find us also at Spotify, iTunes, apple podcasts, Google play, even Amazon Alexa, have a great week and we'll see you next time...

covid-19 tv spotify google olympic games americans maryland pop nbc profit iron man air cdc racing eagle races russo triathlon cb hipaa triathletes amazon alexa llp mid atlantic tim healey tim yeah tim well tim thanks pop international galleries

184|Becoming a Leader With Tim Stokes

Business Built Freedom

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2021 27:05

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

第1205期:The Runner

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2021 1:26

Todd: OK. Tim, we're going to talk about running.Tim: OK.Todd: Now, we've been running the last couple of nights.Tim: Yeah, that's true.Todd: And, you're much faster than me. You're a fast runner. How often do you run?Tim: Well, now I only run about four days a week but when I was younger every day.Todd: Oh, really? Wow! Did you run in high school or college?Tim: I ran.. I started when I was six years old.Todd: No kidding?Tim: And I started running and I ran all the way through the university.Todd: Really?Tim: Yeah.Todd: OK. So what events did you do?Tim: Middle distance. The middle distance is 1,500 meters to 5,000 meters.Todd: Wow! Are you a better short-distance runner or long-distance runner?Tim: Middle distance runner.Todd: Middle distance. OK, how far is a middle distance?Tim: Oh.. 1,500 meters, about.Todd: 1,500.Tim: Yeah.Todd: OK! What's your fastest time in the 1,500 meters?Tim: Ah, 3.... about 3:47.Todd: Three minutes and forty-seven seconds.Tim: Yeah.Todd: That's pretty fast.Tim: Yeah. I did that in high school actually. I wasn't so fast in the university.Todd: Oh wow, man you can fly!Tim: Yeah.Todd: Now I don't feel so bad when you run so much faster than me.Tim: I've been slowing down. I've been drinking beer so I don't run so fast anymore.Todd: Yeah, we're getting older. Actually, I'm 33. How old are you?Tim: I'm 27.Todd: 27. Oh, OK. So, do you think you'll be running your whole life?Tim: I think so, yeah. I grew up running in the woods, every day in the woods and so I really want to get back to running in the woods every day. I think it is really healthy thing to do.Todd: Yeah. That's nice. OK. Thanks a lot, Tim.

runner tim oh tim yeah tim well todd yeah

第1205期:The Runner

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2021 1:26

runner tim oh tim yeah tim well todd yeah

第1200期:Road Trip

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2021 2:05

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.

united states america american california japan mexico colorado oregon new mexico road trips wyoming tijuana hokkaido ciudad juarez niigata tim it tim yeah tim no tim well tim all tim so todd yeah todd so todd well

第1200期:Road Trip

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2021 2:05

225: Uncovering and Breaking Patterns with Tim Banks

Greater Than Code

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 10, 2021 63:03

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

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Gerald Ratner: 'I don't think it's right that there's such a stigma attached to failure. It's a British disease'

Small Business Snippets

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2021 18:44

In this episode, Tim Adler talks to Gerald Ratner, author, motivational speaker and businessman. Discussion topics include the decline of the high street and how Gerald reinvented himself after one of the biggest setbacks of his career. You can also visit smallbusiness.co.uk for more on retail and business strategy. Remember to like us on Facebook @SmallBusinessExperts and follow us on Twitter @smallbusinessuk, all lower case. Would you prefer to read Gerald Ratner's podcast interview instead? Hello and welcome to Small Business Snippets, the podcast from smallbusiness.co.uk. I'm your host, Tim Adler. Today we have as our guest author, motivational speaker and businessman, Gerald Ratner. Gerald inherited his father's jewellery business in 1984. Within six years, he turned a small retailer into a multi-million-pound empire. Every British high street seemed to have a Ratners in the ‘80s. I myself remember buying a snazzy gilt tie clip from Ratners as a teenager. Gerald made Ratners so successful that it seemed that every British high street had one of his stores, or one of the associated companies he had bought up, H Samuel or Ernest Jones. Ratner seemed the quintessential ‘80s British success story, which saw Gerald mixing with Margaret Thatcher, until one fateful day in April 1991. When he was guest speaker at the Institute of Directors, he addressed 6,000 businesspeople and journalists at the Royal Albert Hall. In a moment of what can only be described as hubris, Gerald managed to undo not only his entire life, but his empire, in less than ten seconds. Gerald was describing how his company sold a cut-glass sherry decanter for just £4.95. ‘People say to me, “How can you sell this for such a low price? I say because it's total crap.”’ Ignoring the maxim that if you're in a hole, stop digging, Gerald went on to say that his company sold a pair of gold earrings for less than £1. ‘Some people say that's even cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer. I have to say that the sandwich will probably last longer.’ Now, this got an enormous laugh in the Royal Albert Hall that afternoon, but the next day, the tabloids eviscerated him. Now I have to disclose some tiny sliver of connection to this moment, as my wife worked on Gerald's PR account, and I remember the panic which went on in her office the next day, how Gerald was pushed onto TV for a mea culpa interview with Terry Wogan, but the damage had been done. Shares in Ratners lost £500m within a few days, 2,500 shops had to shut and Gerald was left both clinically depressed and ousted from his own family business. But in a lesson to us all in resilience and reinvention, Gerald bounced back as a health club owner, which has sold for nearly £4m in 2001, before launching an online jewellery business. Gerald has reinvented himself multiple times throughout his life, from jeweller to gym owner to online retailer, and now to public speaker and author. Oh, I should mention that last month, Gerald had a new book out: Reinvent Yourself: A Brand New Guide for Reinventing Your Life. How to Be Successful, Achieve Your Potential, and Create Lasting Opportunity for Business Success. Tim: Hi Gerald, welcome to the podcast. Gerald: Hi, Tim. Thanks for inviting me. So, you've obviously had a lot of time to think about this. In hindsight, what were the lessons that you learned from that moment? Gerald: Yeah, I’ve had 30 years to think about it and as they say, sit in haste and repent at your leisure. What I've thought about it is that I should have been a bit more careful when I was invited to make that speech at the Albert Hall. I tried to put in a couple of jokes, to get people to laugh, because somehow when you're doing a speech, it breaks the ice. It was before I was doing speeches, really, so I was a bit nervous to do it in front of all those people. And once you've made a joke, when people laugh, they're on your side. So you know, you feel more relaxed, the nerves go away a bit more, you’re more confident. That's how you getting feedback from the audience, approval from the audience. But then, I suppose in hindsight, why try and take that option? You don't need to do it. I was, as you said, I was very successful businessman at the time, I didn't need to feel so insecure. But there you go – I was quite young at the time, about 40. It was just a mistake. What can I say? Well, it's interesting. It may because I mean, obviously, you've very successfully reinvented yourself since. And it does make me think that we British have a strange attitude towards business failure. I was reading an interview with a Dutch boss – this American tech company, snowflake. He said recently that in the US failure is seen as a badge of honour. While in Europe, there's a huge social stigma about it. He said that you go bust in Europe, you end up in economic slavery until the end of time. Do you think that Britain's got to change the way that that we think about business failure? Gerald: Well, I do think that failure is part of success, that you're quite right. In the States, if you look at all the successful – including Amazon – all these successful businessmen. Amazon lost 90 per cent of its value, after the .com boom, but it didn't really bother Jeff Bezos, because he had faith in the business. Nobody's going to sail through life without making any mistakes or failures. And certainly, I've learned a lot from my failures. And you are a better business. I'd rather be richer and not as good, but the fact is that you do learn lessons and you're better for it. I don't think it's right that there's such a stigma attached to failure that you're written off. And, you know, the first mistake you make I think that it's a shame, and it's a bit of a British disease. No, I agree. I think you talk to Americans and they have a completely different attitude towards business failure. Now, obviously, we've been all stuck in this dreadful pandemic. One of the things that we've seen is conscious support from shoppers, for small businesses and independent retailers. Do you think that's going to be a permanent change? That there's going to be a permanent change away from the big retailers? Or is this just a flash in the pan? Gerald: Well, we're all creatures of habit. And once we get into a certain way of doing things, we like to repeat them. I don't think in any way, anything will go back to normal. Having said that, it's not going to stay the same – there will be a shift back to the way we live before. But I don't think a complete shift back. My business of doing speeches in front of audiences, I don't think that they'll be as many and a lot of them will be done online, retail is exactly the same. I think that the share that the online businesses have gained through this, they won't lose completely on day one of the recovery. Hmm, I know. I mean, before the pandemic, you said that the high street was pretty much dead. And the out of town shopping centres would survive, and out of those, John Lewis would probably be last man standing. Is that you still your view that the high street’s dead? Gerald: Well, I wrote that article – it was a page in the Mail on Sunday – this year, believe it or not, just seems a long time ago, but it was before the pandemic. Yeah. And I said that the high street is dead. Turn it into homes. And I think that that's even more relevant now since the pandemic. I think the high street is dead and it won't recover. And it's just the weakest of all the ways that we can shop. I mean, there's the shopping malls. There's the internet, there's the out of town shopping. And then finally, there's the high street and the high street offers the least. It's the least convenient in terms of parking. It's the least convenient in terms of walking around in the pouring rain. And it's the least convenient in terms of the fact that it's tired. A lot of the high street stores comprise of charity shops, which the government made a mistake allowing them in with no rates and reduced rent, because they didn't do anybody any favours, because they're not an attraction. For you to go to the high street, you need quite a lot of things to attract you – maybe the banks, but they've gone. But a charity shop is not something that you make a special journey for, as are betting shops, and they’re now closing, as are the loan shops that opened up lending you money, pawn brokers and stuff like that. There's just nothing there. I think with the strength of the internet, it just can't be sustained. I mean, I definitely feel the high street is gone. And I don't think that'll be the first member of the four ways we shop to go. You know, I think it's when you look at Next results today, they've made up for all their lost sales from the high street online. You wonder why they bother with all those expensive shops and all the staff and all the costs that go with it. But do you think do you think there are any retail sectors that that will survive as in-store experiences? And I'm thinking there are certain things that you have to physically touch or try on, like shoes, I would have thought it's difficult to do that online, or perfume? Gerald: Yeah, I mean, strangely enough, when I had my hair cut, my barber was saying that he's very lucky that his is the only business that is not affected by the internet. He's not a competitor. Now, he's one of the few people that cannot substitute his business with online. So sometimes, you know, be careful what you wish for. But yeah, I just think there will be obviously something out there for people to buy. But it'll just be it'll be just like when we started with online and online was about five or ten per cent, and bricks and mortar was 90 per cent. I think that could well reverse. We could get sort of 80-90 per cent online, five or 10 per cent bricks and mortar. I know that sounds absolutely extreme. But everything is pointing [that way] as technology is getting better and better. And then we've got this green issue about travelling in the whole time. I think people will want to travel less. I just think that's, I can't put a time on it, but I just think it's inevitable, though. That is the trend. Okay, so I'm guessing that if you were starting again, now, as a young man, as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial young man, you probably wouldn't go into retail. Gerald: No, not in retail. Tim: If you were starting now, which business would you go into today if you are starting again? Gerald: Well, I think that you've got to do something. And the timing is very important. Because I was in the jewellery business in the ‘80s. Now, we became the world's largest jewellery business, and we were very successful. But it's not all down to what we did. We were lucky in terms of the fact that the ‘80s was a great time to be in selling jewellery in retail. There's never been a time like it. Basically, because young people, the demographics in the sections of 16-24, had a lot of disposable income, and we catered for them which the other jewellers didn't. But nevertheless, we couldn't have done that so successfully today. Then went into the health club business in the ‘90s. That was the right time because there wasn't a lot of competition and it was just building, you know, people just becoming health conscious. Not like they are today – a lot of people were not health conscious. There was a growing market there, not much competition Then I went into online business at the turn the century, long before it became fashionable. And it became very cheap to get your product online, pay per clicks (PPC). We were selling an eternity ring. Because there were only about 50 jewellers out there, it only used to cost us about £3 to buy pay per clicks for that. Today, that same eternity ring cost us £250, instead of £3, because there's so much competition, so I'm not interested in that. The business I would go in is somewhere where there isn't a lot of competition. In the growing market, where I think the market is going to grow, but there's not a lot of people that have cottoned on to it yet. And you're not going to share which business you've identified? Gerald: Well, it might not be anything to do with the internet, believe it or not, even after what I've said. A friend of mine is just sold his business who supplies hangers to Marks and Spencer. He just sold his business for £60m. There's nothing particularly high tech or disruptive about hangers. I think the key is if you do something differently, and you do it well, that's all you need to do. You need to be an expert in your field. I mean, I like to think that I know a bit about jewellery, whereas other competitors at the time didn't. We basically displayed all our diamond rings at 42 inches from the ground because the average woman was 5”4, and the trajectory of our eye would fall perfectly at 42 inches. Other jewellers wouldn't bother with niceties like that. It’s the silly little things like that that are important in business. Oh, yeah. It's the details that are important. And in a similar vein, if you could go back in time to yourself as a young man, what advice would you say? What would you say to a young Gerald Ratner about how to behave in business, or if you have a maxim in business? Gerald: Well, what I did was right up until the speech, what I did was take risks, which you need to do. I mean, we're not schoolteachers or policemen or hospital workers, however wonderful they are. We’re people who can get make a lot of money very quickly or lose a lot of money very quickly, we’re born in a risk business. So I was prepared to risk everything. I went to America, was told that America was a graveyard for British retailers. And my shareholders said, ‘If you fail, we'll turn on you with venom.’ I didn't really need to go to America, because I had 1,000 shops here that were making a lot of money at 50 per cent of the jewellery market, but I wanted to go to America. I like taking risks. I think that, as my co-author in my new book says that, if you don't risk anything, you risk everything. And your business is about risks, calculated risks. I don't smoke – I'd like to, but it's a risk. If it was only a slight risk, I would smoke. But as a businessman, because it's a quite a big risk, the odds are not in my favour. So that's something I can't do. I look at the odds. But then you can back a horse that's three to one on and it can lose, but it's unlikely to. That's the way I look at it, as a young Gerald going into business is, don't try and think about your pension. Don't try and think about safety. Go out, if you feel you're confident that you've got the right formula, go for it, and do whatever it takes. Tim: Well, that's a very good note to end on, Gerald, and thank you for your thoughts and advice. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. And you can get in touch with Gerald at geraldratner.co.uk. You can also visit small business co.uk for more insights on the future of retail and business strategy. And thank you for listening.

164| Are You a Leader With Tim Spiker

Business Built Freedom

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2020 40:40

How to Work Out If You Are a Leader With Tim Spiker Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. Are you a leader, a lagger or a micro manager? I've got someone here to talk to you all about the best ways to work out what it is the voodoo that you do in your business. With Tim Spiker here from The Aperio, and he's going to go through what it is and how to work that out. So Tim, tell me, how do you work out if you're a leader, lagger or micromanager? How do you make sure you're doing the right things? And you're not being under spoken, over spoken, I think or any of the other ways that you could be? Learn more about leadership with Tim Spiker at dorksdelivered.com.au Tim: I want to share a little research to start this off. But I know when you start to talk about numbers and research for some people, you know, their eyes glaze over and they say, just get me to the punch line. But for other people, it provides some background so that we know that I didn't show up on the podcast today and made up some ideas that I thought were true, it's going to be ground. So if you don't like numbers, hang in here for about, you know, 90 seconds and we'll get to the punch line. So here's the story about how that research happened. I was working for a small boutique consulting firm, and we had people for a week at a time on the west side of Pikes Peak in Colorado in the US to do leadership development with them out of doors. And we gave them a number of assessments. And we had enough assessments and our clients were asking the question, is there any connection between personality style, natural abilities and leadership performance? And because we had all that data, we could run the numbers and look for those statistical connections. And so we did, and I was excited to get the answer. And my colleague, Vanessa Kiley, she crunched all the numbers and I went into her office one night, what did we find? And she said nothing. She found no correlations between personality style, natural ability and leadership effectiveness. But I turn to go out of her office that night, I remember it vividly. And she said, but we did find something. This is a great part of statistical software, it will look where you're not looking. So we weren't looking for what we found, but it's going to look for any correlation it can. And what it found is within our leadership assessment, we had eight different areas that were being measured. And what she found is that just two of those eight areas were driving almost 70% of the variability, and two out of eight, if everything is equal, that should be 25%, and it was almost 70%. And then years later, we had 10 times the data points with 20,000 data points at that point. She ran the data, and that number went up to 77%. So the issue was, is that there were just two areas that were driving over three quarters of a leader’s effectiveness. And many years after I left the firm. I was looking at those two areas, and I said what is unique about those two, and this is the punch line. So if you don't like numbers come on back with this now, here we go. Here's the punchline. Is that those two areas were about who the leader was as a human being, who they were as a person. The other six that we were measuring were about what a leader does. And that's when it clicked with me, that three quarters, or 77%, if you want to be really technical, but three quarters of our effectiveness as leaders comes from who we are, not what we do. So, if we want to be the very best leaders that we are capable of being, doesn't matter what you're talking about a leader at work or at home or in the community, we have to work on becoming well developed human beings. And we could talk about those two categories that were the big ones, but that's the main punch line. Three quarters of your effectiveness as a leader comes from who you are, not what you do. So we have to work on who we are. Josh: Okay. So what does it mean to then be that leader? How do you find the who? Tim: So I'll give you some really specific examples here. So we can make this actionable for everybody. But the two big buckets that were the drivers were a category that we want to call inwardly sound. And another category that we want to call others focused. So if you think about, I'll just ask you, you know, Josh, if you think about a boat, if I were to say, hey, we've got a really sound vessel here, what are the things that come to mind for you, when you think about a boat, that's really sound? What kind of characteristics does it have? Josh: Sound vessel means that it's has a high level of integrity. Tim: Yeah, keep going. Yeah, keep going. Let's brainstorm a few of these. So that's a great high level of integrity in the vessel. What else? Josh: Yep. So high level of integrity. A sound vessel, if you're talking and that that is already has the prefix that we know we're talking about a boat, is that right? Tim: That's right. Yeah. Go with the boat. Josh: So if you know it’s a boat and you've got a sound vessel, I always say that it's a high level of integrity. Yeah, that's probably the most of it. Like, besides thinking about them, you know that it's going to be able to achieve the objectives that you put forward through. So if you own a boat that was not a sound vessel, it might be leaking, it could be having issues across water or whatnot. You're smiling at me like I've given you the answer you want. What’s going on? Tim: Yes, you may have given me the answer I wanted, but in fact, and gave the answer that everybody gives, which is, I can trust this thing. Like this thing is sound, it's going to get hit by waves, it's going to get hit by surf, who knows it might even get hit by a fish. But ultimately, this is a well constructed vessel that can take a beating, and still be stable. And this is what when we talk about being inwardly sound, it's exactly that. I was doing an interview a few weeks back. And we were talking about this concept of being inwardly sound. And the person who was interviewing me said, so what you're telling me the person is not a dumpster fire as a person? Like, you know what, that's probably a fair description. But the idea of being inwardly sound is that I'm secure in who I am, comfortable in my own skin. I'm not looking to my followers to validate me every single second of every single day because I'm so insecure. You get somebody who's self aware, they understand strengths, weaknesses, here's where I excel. Here's where I need some work. You got somebody who's principled you use the word integrity that falls into that category. Is this a principled person who I can trust? You got somebody who's relatively, you know, they're an emotionally healthy person. They're not swinging up and down with every move. I mean, we are living and leading in some very turbulent times right now. So you know, unprecedented is the most common word I think I hear these days. Do you want a leader who is wildly swinging back and forth with all the ups and downs that are going on in the marketplace right now? Or do you want somebody who's got a steady hand? Of course, we want somebody who's not emotionally being blown all over the place. And you want somebody who has a sense of purpose. So these are the things we kind of talked about. What does it mean to be an inwardly sound person? And these are the things then that we have to work on. This is the part of our message, the part of the research, frankly, that is a little bit out of the norm. And, you know, I went to graduate school for business, and we did not talk about this in graduate school. We talked about finance, we talked about marketing, we talked about some organisational behavior, but we didn't talk about how sound we needed to be as human beings in order to lead well, in order to provide that stable foundation that others can trust. So, that's half of the equation on the inwardly sound side, so you want to jump over and talk about the others focus side or do you have a question on inwardly sound? Josh: That makes sense. I was interested to hear what the Yin to the Yang, maybe or hopefully another cool boat analogy. Tim: Probably won't be with the boat this time. But others focused means that when I roll out of bed in the morning, to go and read in the places where I read, that it is not about me. Endeavor is not about my ego, the endeavor is not about my bank account, my next promotion, that I am here to steward something. You know, I love that word, because it means that I don't own it forever and ever, I'm here to be a caretaker of it. I'm here to move it along. I'm here to move the people along, you know, that are under my charge, that I'm here. I'm not here as the leader on high to be served, but actually I'm here to reverse that role. I'm here to bring up and train up and be about the people that I'm leading, not just about myself. So the things that we talked about there where we encourage leaders to do significant personal work, it's about being curious. So this isn't like, I don't have all the answers and I'm willing to admit that. We talked about being empathic. You know, my emotional state’s not the only one that matters in the organisation. We talked about being attentive, which I'll say on that one in particular, and more and more, as the world gets more and more distractible more and more easily, you know, easily moved. And you know, when you, on your podcast with Oscar Trimboli, he talked about the art of listening. He talked about, you know, not being distracted. With technology, it's actually becoming easier and easier to stand out as a leader if you'll simply give somebody your attention. I mean, it's kind of a sad state of affairs, but it becomes a strategic advantage. And then the last two bits in there are a Greek word Agape, which means to selflessly care for others, and it's got an unconditional nature. So it's not about how you're behaving, it's I'm going to treat you with dignity and respect regardless of how you treat me. And then finally, an idea that lots of people are familiar with, but it's kind of elusive in the human condition, which is humility. And so when you combine those things, now, you've got a leader who's not only inwardly sound, but they're showing up not for their own gratification, not for their own enrichment, but they're showing up so that others in the organization and the mission can move forward. And when you bring those two things in combination, that’s 77% of leadership. Josh: That's amazing. So I know myself I started off thinking 13 years ago when I start a business, am I doing the right thing and I was the only cog and the only person in the business so it's easy to lead yourself, you'd think. You have to have a little bit of discipline to not jump onto Netflix or the like that are some of these other distractions, but as the business has grown, you brought up Oscar earlier and definitely being able to listen and hear is very, very important as opposed to just being present, I guess, with being present in the now and hearing exactly what someone's saying and understanding where they're coming from to be able to shift what you're doing. And I guess, from what you've been saying with being a leader, you did touch on it a little bit earlier, being leaders doesn't just stop at work, it's about being a leader at home as well. And I'd imagine being a leader isn't just about a hierarchal change between yourself and other staff members, as much as it can also be a shift in focus between the family of the business and the way that you speak and deal with clients. Would that be fair to say? Tim: Oh, yes, it's 100% true, because when you break leadership down to its most core components, it's a relationship. It's a relationship between the leader and those that he or she is leading. And so when you start to think about what creates great relationships, anything that's going to create healthy relationships is also going to be a huge addition to effective leadership. So going back to those two things, if I am a stable, sane, safe person that you can count on, and then I add into that, that it's not all about me, that's great for any relationship. And so whether you're talking about work or whether you're talking about at home, I'll say one of the most gratifying things that we get through experience in the work that we do with leaders is we pause quarterly, we go through a variety of those things that we were talking about, the makeup, you know, what does it mean to be inwardly sound and others focused? We pause quarterly and say, hey, let's take a step back from the mosaic of the last 90 days. And let's take a look at what we've seen, good and bad. And I get to hear amazing stories. And I will tell you probably in the neighborhood of 25% to, you know, probably 35% of the stories that I hear from our clients don't come from work, they come from home. One of the reasons that's gratifying it's not just because we're, you know, helping to make a contribution there. But, you know, families, it's weird to talk about families in a bottom line, because it's obviously very different than a business. But there are some bottom line things that we're after in our family just happens to not be finances. And when you see greater effectiveness and greater health coming into the family, you see better results, just like in a business. And what our clients begin to understand for their own betterment and for the betterment of the people they're leading, we come at it through the context of work, because we're able to show a measurable bottom line impact in work. But the truth is, if we're going to work on who we are, we got to work on who we are. Like, this is not my work self that I'm working on, it is the whole of me that I'm working on. So whether that most obvious first bit of progress happens at work or at home, we don't care, that indicates progress for the person as a whole human being. And that's going, if it shows up at home, it's going to begin to show up at work and vice versa. So we love all of that progress, because it's helping people lead more effectively, regardless of how they measure their bottom line. Josh: How do I know? Or how do we, do you have some tool or ability to measure to understand or is it how well I am leading or other people are leading that are listening at the moment. And the reason I asked this is, I find that people are always talking about being happy on Facebook or probably the ones that need to tell everyone that they're happy because they obviously don't feel happy. Does that make sense? So how do you have a sincere self reflection on if you are doing a good job with leadership or not? How can you find your who and make sure that that who is able to be understood, so that you once you understand that that's something you want to have changed, you have to understand it to be able to change it and then migrate from that spot in your mind and your mindset and your belief systems through to the new spot that you want to be and the goal that you have? How do you work out that transition? Or how do you find out where you start out really? Tim: Yeah, in the Google age where the search, the search box wants to finish what you're typing before you even put it in there, I have a very wildly unpopular answer, which is it takes three things. And we're going to talk about depth community and time for us to really grow and who we are. And I'm going to start with the last one, it takes time. Think about the analogy that we use with our clients with our leadership model is that of a tree. And I want you to think about the biggest healthiest tree you can imagine. I mean, I'm now thinking of some of the trees that I've had a chance to see in the Botanical Gardens in Sydney, they're right next to the opera house. Those are some of the most magnificent, amazing trees that I've ever seen in my life. Josh: Ah, we can be friends! Tim: Good, good. I'm glad. Josh How long did it take those trees to become that big and that strong? It took a while. [Yeah, absolutely] There was no little matrix blue pill that the tree was given. And magically, you know, it came up. So the disappointing news for many people is that there's no tip or trick for becoming a well developed who. It takes work and time. And if I could make that different for people, I promise you, I would. Like I would wave the magic wand. But that's not how humans develop. That's not how life works. So the first part of it is understanding to really work on who we are, it's going to take time. It also takes, and we'll go back to the first part now, it takes depth. We have to be willing, and this is the scary part. And I'll just put it out there because there's a lot of people be like, you know, if I can't do it quickly and easily then I don't want to do it. But what have we ever done in life? That was a great value that was done quickly and easily, like almost nothing. On the depth part, we have to be willing to pull up the rocks and look underneath. So we're not just looking at our outward behaviors, but we're looking at our motives and we're looking at our perspectives. And we have to be able to, you know, it's not just a question of how do we come off to other people, but you know, if I'm working to be more others focused, and part of that is becoming more humble and part of being humble is an eagerness to give acknowledgement and recognition to other people. Then one of the things we want to do is, is take a look at that over the course of, we usually use about 90 days per subject and to say, I'm going to look at myself through the prism of humility, and see, do I get excited about giving acknowledgement to others when I could kind of hug it for myself? If I don't get it excited about that, look, that doesn't make you a horrible person. That just means you have space for growth, and we all have space for growth. So welcome to the human condition. We all have ways in which we can grow. But that pointed focus over a period of time, in this case, I'm suggesting 90 days for each one of these subjects, that's what we do with our clients, is to really look deeply and I mentioned that you pull up those rocks and say, what really is my motive? What really is my intent? Am I just trying to look good? Or am I actually trying to be, in this case, for this example, am I trying to be a more humble person, a person who is willing to you know, here's another thing, look at any 90 day period, and ask yourself, how many times have I said, I'm sorry, or I was wrong? You and I both know people that cannot put those words together. You know, they they get there. They're like, you know, can't say I was wrong. I can't say I'm sorry. Those are indicators that we have space to work on. So you know, you know one activities I could just keep track of that for 90 days. How many times did I say I'm sorry, how many times again, what were analysing is the condition of our hearts. We're analysing the condition because what happens is people want to bring the whole of themselves on board for people that are that are on board for them. And so this gets back to the others focused idea. So let me hit on the last thing here community. Let's say I want to get healthier. And I'm going to start a workout practice. And I say, hey, Josh, will you be my workout partner, my workout buddy? And you say yes. And the alarm goes off at five in the morning, and we're supposed to meet at the gym at 5:30. If I know you're going to be there, my chances of showing up go way up. Way up. Some would suggest as much as five times up. And this idea because this is hard work, and because it takes time. We need people around us on the journey with us that are willing to tell us the truth about ourselves in a way that won't break the relationship, and who are also willing to be a little bit vulnerable and share about their journey as well. So imagine that you had a group of three or four people and say, hey, we're going to work on being more humble over the next 90 days, we really want to become that, we're going to trade some stories and how we're working on that. And we're going to travel in this way together to encourage people because it's hard. It's not easy. It takes time. We're going to see some stuff we're not proud of, let's do this together. You find that people have a much greater follow through on the inner development of who they are, when they have community around them. So I would say those are the key three things that we involve with our clients and all the work we do. But people don't have to work with us in order to apply those three things, you know, you can go do those things on your own. Depth, community and time are essential if we're going to work on the core of who we are as people. Josh: What you said, their own community pretty much comes down to accountability, doesn't it or not? Tim: Yeah, that’s part of it. There's also learning element. Yeah, you get to learn from others as well. Josh: I know. Just only what you're saying with the gym membership. I was a member of a gym for six years. And weirdly when the card set in my wallet, I didn't lose any weight. The moment I changed gym. Tim: That is strange. Josh: I know. I was paying the same price, I changed gyms. And when there was a class to go to and they're expecting you to be the class, you've been speaking to people in the class and you have in the nicest way possible have some fun competition, you don't necessarily go hey, I'm going to do more reps, I'm going to say sorry more times in your or whatever the case may be. But you have to okay that person that there is this you're looking at their body types about the same as mine. They're about the same fitness as me. Next week, I want to make sure I'm a better person, you definitely have that community and that feeling that definitely grows. I could totally see five times as a very achievable number because you have that and that's really cool. Definitely, with being able to build that into your business, and do you have much pushback from different people within the business structure that might be old fogies, dead wood or otherwise, that they're not really interested in applying and becoming that new person that is interested in being in the back of the warehouse or the number push or whatever they're doing the Voodoo that they've been doing for 30 years, or what do you do with that? Tim: You know, not nearly as much as I would have thought, honestly. Occasionally, you get somebody that can't get over the hump of how they've thought previously and how they've oriented. What I've seen many more times, is people who are open to the research. And I think it's really important to remember that that's where this comes from. And it's not only research that I got to be a part of with this group. A few years ago, Harvard Business Review published a really telling article from a consulting firm called KRW. And what they were measuring was positive character qualities of executives and executive team. They wanted to look at the financial performance. And what they found in that study was nearly again, the five times in a company, I believe was 4.8 times return on assets from the highest rated executives and executive teams on characteristics. And I'll find that in just a second from the lowest. And so what they were measuring. This is really interesting in terms of the parallel, they were measuring integrity and responsibility, remember those two together, and they were measuring compassion and forgiveness. When somebody said somebody is measuring compassion and forgiveness from the executive suite, really, somebody is actually doing that research. I was blown away that it existed. But think about this for just a second. They're measuring executive and executive teams on those four things, integrity and responsibility, that's about being inwardly sound. Compassion and forgiveness, that's about being others focus. So the words in the research was a little bit different, but it points in the exact same direction. And so, there's other works. David Byrum, who is a consultant who works out of Sydney with Human Synergistics. They have done longitudinal studies. They have over 2 million data points. They've been around for decades, and they're cut across all cultures, any demographic split you can imagine, they have found this exact same trend in their work. They call it constructive styles. But it's the same content. And so you look at these various pieces of data. And when you start to look for it, you're going to begin to see it everywhere. And that is to say, back to your question, do people really push back against that? Once they understand that there's research behind this, and not somebody saying I had a dream and therefore I woke up one day and decided this is what leadership is really about. We weren't even looking for it. We were not looking for this. The statistical software found it. There's other places who have found similar stories. And I'll just put this as the sealer for it. If you want to go around and ask people who is the best leader you've ever followed personally, and they do that thought process and then you ask this question. Why is that person on that list? Why does that person come to mind? If you listen to the answer, the vast, vast majority of what people will say it when they answer why, you're going to hear them talk about who that person is, as a human being. I have never had somebody answer that question by saying, you can't believe how great he was at Microsoft Excel. Never. Not in the history of that question. And what's even more amazing is rarely in the business space do people even talk about profit, they immediately start to talk about the quality of the human being that was the best leader they've ever followed. So when people look at the data, and then they start to look at their own history, and they see alignment, I think many of them become open to the idea, then they start to do it, then they really see how it has worked and has been working and it's working whether they're aware of it or not. It's working all the time around them. It's a question, are you going to go ahead and embrace the fact that gravity exists or you're going to ignore it? And, of course, we want people to embrace it so they can move the leadership forward. Josh: Cool. So don't we ask the question around this time of the podcast around what's your favorite book? But I think you've got a bit of an interesting answer to that one that I think I already know what the answer is. Tell me about your book, unless it's not your favorite. Tim: Well, hopefully, I've got some other favourite books. But, I'll take you up on the question anyway. So the book is called the only leaders worth following. And what it does is it outlines the research. So that's the first part, let's understand what we're talking about. So it goes into greater depth of the themes that we've been talking about. And then it spends the rest of the book diving deeply into these various realities of being inwardly sound and others focus and how they play themselves out to create a more effective leader. And so ultimately, we want to give people not only the data, but also the anecdotes. I think we need both. I think stories help us understand data, data helps us understand stories. I think we need both. But that is the idea of the book, to help people understand the research and then see it in real life stories and begin to think about what are the things that I need to work on? What are the things that I need to do to become a more effective leader? Now there's a different readership for the book in addition to that, which kind of the title handset which is, you know, the only leader worth following. And if you're somebody that says, Look, I don't even know that I'm interested in leadership as something that I want to do. But I bet you're interested in choosing the right leader to follow. I bet because leaders have a profound impact on our day to day experience they can make life really, really rewarding and fulfilling, even when the work is hard. They can also suck the life out of us. And that's not just the work life, they can suck the whole of life out of us. And so to really help people orient towards how they evaluate the leaders they want to follow, that's another quality, that's another way that this book can be put to use. So the only leaders worth following is about unpacking what we've been talking about what we call the who, not what principle, it details the research on that and then digs deeply into it so people can really understand the truth of that 77% about leadership. Josh: What we're going to do is we're going to make sure to have a link there so that people can check that out on your website. I definitely think that sounds like a very good quality first step towards going down the path of leadership and finding out your who. Who is the leader that you look up to, Tim? Tim: Oh, my goodness. Well, there are a lot of leaders that I have looked up to over the years, and I've been very blessed to, I've been very blessed to be around some really exceptional leaders. One of those leaders is my father. My father, started a business. And I kind of watched him about, you know, one of the great lessons I learned from my father, fell into that category of humility. I would watch him interact with the top people around him, and then I would watch him interact with the cleaning staff, and it was identical. He didn't treat them any differently. And I learned, you know, learned about humility from him. I think probably for the rest of my life I'll be striving to get like halfway on that scale to where my father is. He's definitely significantly more well developed in that arena than I am. I played basketball collegiately and I played for a Hall of Fame coach here in the States named Gene Keady. He was another person who was really sound person, a quality person. And I know perhaps not a lot of folks in Australia will have heard of Gene Keady, but he's a great person to follow. Now, I've got somebody in Australia that well, not technically in Australia, but I'm going to say a name that the business community in Australia is going to be familiar with, who was very, very well known in Australia, and then recently has in the process of leaving his current position that is a bit controversial right now. But I'm going to name out this person because he has been an incredible leader in my life and he is a great example of these two things of being inwardly sound and othes focused. And that is Mike Kane, who is in the process of finishing up his post at Boral. Now, you know, I've read all the things that are in the Australian papers about Mike, and I know Mike personally, and he's been a huge influence in my life. And I'll just say that there is so much more substance than what is reported in the paper. So I'll just, I mean, perhaps the listeners aren't shocked to learn that there's more to what's being written in in a paper whose goal is to sell ads. So I'll say that. But Mike Kane had an incredible run up at the start of his time. I understand that some people watch the stock price have Boral in the last couple of years and they have some questions. And I get that around the strategy side, but as far as somebody who I would personally run through a wall for because he is those two things of been inwardly sound and others focused, Mike Kane is near the top of my list. Even though you’re going to ask me that question. And I realised that there are a variety of opinions about Mike right now flying around in the business community, especially in Sydney. But I will tell you, he is a first-rate leader. Josh: Different leaders for different reasons. Your father is a big figure, you've got Mike Kane there as a business figure as well as then health fitness and recreational stuff. I like that, I didn't know what you're going to say. So I was very impressed with that. Because when you said it earlier, it sounds like ooh, who would be my leader, I don't know Tim: Well, think about that. That's worth thinking about. Josh: I thought dad definitely, Nikola Tesla, not Elon Musk, the car guy. I'm like, no, he helped the world in so many ways with the technologies that he created. And his name wasn't even really mentioned or heard of for another 80, 90 years. And the money that he had, he died in poverty. He wasn't lavish with the money that he got, and he didn't want war. And so you'd go to several countries and give them the same presentation. So he was funded by lots of countries that no one had a different, more unique approach to be able to jump into war. So I thought Nikola Tesla would definitely be up there for me and that's as high level humility. And dad has always been there to teach me very much what you're saying. It doesn't matter who they are in business, everyone's at the same at the end of the day, just blood and bones. And we need to be able to have that knowledge that everyone's here for the same amount of time. We all live the same way, and they be there and everyone has a story and it doesn't matter who you're talking to, you should not talk down. You should make sure you're always there and present to hear what they're all about. Tim: I'll encourage you with this and maybe some folks who are listening, maybe they've done this, they started to do this exercise with us as well, who are the best leaders that you've ever followed? And you begin to think about for many people and family members and coaches and teachers at young ages are folks that especially influences earlier in our careers, as you think about who those people are, and you begin to maybe even make a little list of the whys. Why did that person make it on your list? I'll encourage you to do something that will bless you, the listener, as well as the other person is call them up and tell them, write them a note. Tell them that I was asked this question, and you came to mind and here's why. That kind of stuff in life is priceless. Don't miss that opportunity. You will never be sorry for letting somebody know that they came to mind, that that person came to mind when they were asked who's the best leader you've ever followed? Josh: I love that. That's fantastic. And when I started the podcast many, not nearly two years ago, I thought, who would I like to have on the podcast? And I thought of the people that really changed my mind and changed the way of my thinking. Are you familiar with Bob Berg from the go giver? Tim: I'm not. I'm not. Josh: Bob Berg from The Go Giver. Fantastic book that I read that goes through and describes how to make sure that you're giving more than you're receiving and you're doing the things the way that business should be done. And it's not all just about numbers. And the other one was by a guy named Dr. Larry Little, Tim: You did have him on the show? Josh: I did. I had them both on the show. I reached out to them, and I said you've impacted the way that my life has worked, and the way that I've done business, and I've bought your books many times as gifts for clients because the readings have truly influenced me in the direction that I've gone and I thought I'm going to ask them like they're not gonna say yes, they got better things to do with their time. And they both said, sure, I'd love to be on the show. That was my American accent. And it was fantastic. Tim: I'm not even going to try an Aussie accent because it would be awful. It would be awful. So, you had them on and they both came on and you got to do those interviews. Josh: Both came on both go to do the interviews and very, very blessed to be able to have them on the show and be able to hear one on one what they were all about. And I thought, no way would this Nikola Tesla is going to be harder to say I really like his leadership skills, I have to do some ulterior method. Tim: That would be a creative interviewing process. If you think about what Dr. Little talked about. He talked about servant leadership. And he talked about the question of why are you leading and that leads us right back to that others focused piece that we were talking about earlier. He He's on to onto that part of it that's so very important. So yeah, I'm not as familiar with Bob Berg, but Dr. Little's interview with you, yeah. Josh: If there's anyone out there in podcast land that's keen to hear a bit more information, Tim has been nice enough to give us a link, theonlyleaders.com. If you jump across there, he's got a fantastic opportunity for you guys to have himself and his team deep dive in with 20% off for your digital journey through them. Is there anything else you'd like to go through on that offer that I haven't quite covered off on there? Or do you want to jump into a bit more detail on what they're looking forward to seeing in that? Tim: Yeah, well, you know, in the internet space, you have to be very clear on what the website is, right? So in terms of, you know, you punch it in to the search, you're like, oh, I hope it's available. I hope it's available. So what's really important about what you said is the only leaders, you got to get THE, and so theonlyleaders.com. And you mentioned the 20% off we take leaders on what we call journeys. You can imagine given what we've talked about, I keep talking about how hard and difficult and challenging it is. So we thought, well, let's just call it what it is. It's a journey. And it's challenging. As we take leaders on that, we do have the 20% off there for your listeners. So what they do is they would put in a promo code there. And if you put in the BBF, for the name of your podcast, then that will lock in when we get those digital journeys ready to go. And then also, if you're not interested in buying anything, we certainly want to be of help regardless of whether somebody's buying something. So you go to that same website, you can sign up to get a free copy of our study guide that goes along with the book. I suppose now that I say that then I guess it's only valuable if you buy a copy of the book, but you would also receive other free material that we're putting out as well. So there's opportunity to just sign up to be a part of the email list and get some free information, free content from us that we're producing as well. Josh: Tim, I've loved having you on the show. And is there any other questions you had for me or our listeners, I can only answer for me though. Tim: You can only answer for you. Well, you know, I might just go with a rhetorical question that parrots back with Dr. Little says, and that is if you're a leader, why are you leading? I mean, and that is, and I mean, to me, that's a question to think about. What is the purpose of my leadership? Is it just to enrich myself? Is it just to make money? Is it you know, what is it? Is it just some of those things? And look, there are people who are successful at making money, successful in their businesses without having kind of a profoundly positive answer to that question. However, what I would offer as we close out and think about that question, for all of us to think about, why am I leading, is that if we're not able to get to a spot in our life, where the answer to that question has something to do with others, we will never truly know what our full potential was. And I don't mean that in like an esoteric out in the universe kind of way, I actually mean that at the bottom line. Even at the bottom line, you'll never know what your potential was, so long as you're only in it for yourself, because we don't get that discretionary effort out of people. if we’re there for ourselves, they're well aware of it. No matter what words we use, no matter how we try to cover it up. And so why are you leading? Yes, perhaps there's a fulfillment question that lives within that question. But there's also hey, what's possible? What could you and your family or your organisation, what could you see if the answer to that question was, well, part of the reason why I'm leading is for the sake of others, for the sake of what they get out of being under my leadership. So it's tough to answer those questions honestly, because we want the answers to be really, really nice. And really, really positive. But we have to be honest with ourselves if we're really going to grow and develop. So I put that question, the final question is perhaps not one to answer today, but to sit with maybe for the next couple of weeks. What if you were to take a piece of paper and just put it somewhere where you saw it repeatedly that said, why am I leading? And you put a little energy into thinking about that, and challenge yourself to think about being more inwardly sound and others focused. Josh: That's brilliant. I'll be having a bit of think about it myself. I've got a quote wall that that I have there and that'll be getting added to it so that I can make sure to continue thinking about the who and the why. That's really good. Anyone out there that's been listening, if you have enjoyed this episode, make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us some love, give us some feedback, and stay healthy, stay good. And thank you very much for being on the show. Tim. Tim: Thank you. Really, really great to be here with you.

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#23 - Tudo sobre o Disney+ (com Tim Well)

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2020 97:38

Um dos assuntos mais comentados dos últimos dias, o Disney+ finalmente foi lançado nos EUA e o seu podcast favorito sobre desenhos animados, o Papo Animado, traz o nosso amigo Tim Well (@meusegredo) pra falar tudo que você precisa saber sobre o novo serviço de streaming da poderosa Disney! O que tem disponível? Como assinar fora dos EUA? Quando o serviço chegará no Brasil? e muitas outras curiosidades você confere aqui, então da o play e divirta-se!

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#14 - O que rolou na D23 Expo 2019 (com Tim Well e Fernanda Schmölz)

corona viruses ufc effecting tim well

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2020 71:17

Dos dias 23 a 25 de agosto deste ano, aconteceu a D23 Expo, um dos maiores eventos de fãs da Disney do mundo, que é realizada bienalmente na cidade do Anaheim, na Califórnia. Nesta edição, seu amigo Léo Francisco se junta aos fãs Tim Well e Fernanda Schmölz (do canal Sugar Rush!), que estiveram no evento deste ano, para falar um pouco da edição que apresentou as novidades dos filmes, animados e seriados da Disney, Pixar, Star Wars e Marvel. Quais as novidades apresentadas? Será que vale a pena ir na D23 Expo em 2021? Então, aumenta o som e vem curtir o novo episódio do PAPO ANIMADO, seu podcast favorito de animação.

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148|How to Restructure Your Business With Tim Wilshire

Business Built Freedom

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2020 54:04

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

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Ep. 87 - FFW - Corona Virus Effecting Sports Pt 2

Bro Down Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2020 15:05

On this episode of fight fan weekly, we retract our statements from earlier this week since UFC is now officially shut down for the next 3 events. Andy: We are going to attempt a collective effort to not be doom and gloom in the coming weeks. Were going to do our best to try and turn this looming depression around and talk about some happy fun shit amidst all this chaos. Stay safe everyone. Tim: Well, we've had happier podcasts in the past. And you know what, we'll have happier podcasts in the future as well. We can get through this together together. Stay safe out there.

Japan leads the world in this one important branch of AI

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2019 44:22

Technology develops differently in Japan. While US tech giants have been grabbing artificial intelligence headlines, a business AI sector has been quietly maturing in Japan, and it is now making inroads into America. Today we sit down again with Miku Hirano, CEO of Cinnamon, and we talk about how exactly this happened. Interestingly, Cinnamon did not start out as an AI company. In fact, when Miku first came on the show, the company had just launched an innovative video-sharing service. Today, we talk about what lead to the pivot to AI and why even a great idea and a great team is no guarantee of success. We also talk about some of the changing attitudes towards startups and women in Japan, the kinds of business practices AI will never change, and Miku give some practical advice for startups going into foreign markets. It's a great discussion, and I think you will really enjoy it. Show Notes How Miku invented TikTok before TickTok and why it didn’t work How you know when its time to pivot a startup Why companies will never go digital and will always use paper Who will benefit most from AI The four categories of AI How AI will change the legal profession How japan is actually ahead of US and China in some kinds of AI What's really driving business innovation in Japan Can AI actually reduce overtime? How enterprise clients treat women founders Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Cinnamon Follow Miku on Twitter @mikuhirano Friend her on Facebook More about Cinnamon Miku's original Disrupting Japan interview Eliminating Repetitive Office Work through Disruptive AI Miku on the John Batchelor Show - Part I Miku on the John Batchelor Show - Part II 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 sit down and talk about artificial intelligence with Miku Hirano of Cinnamon. Now, Cinnamon is actually a great example of a successful Japanese startup pivot. When we first sat down with Miku four years ago, she had an innovative micro-video sharing company called Tuya and really, you should go back and listen to that episode. I've put a link on the show notes and it was really a good one. Anyway, Miku basically started TikTok a few years before TikTok and we talk about why things didn't work out, why even with the same idea, one startup will become a multi-billion dollar brand and the other will pivot. Of course, the pivot to AI and the rebranding to Cinnamon has led this to their current success in using AI to read and to understand common business forms. In fact, for reasons that Miku will explain during the interview, Japan is actually ahead of the US and China in the area of business AI. We'll also talk about how attitudes towards women are changing here and how Japanese men at traditional companies treat women founders, particularly women founders with children, and I think it might surprise you. I mean, it surprised me and it surprised Miku as well, But you know, Miku 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 Miku Hirano of Cinnamon and it's great to have you back on the show again. Miku: Yeah, thank you so much for having me here again. Tim: Well, so much has changed since -- it was three years ago, right? Miku: Yeah, yeah, and I had a totally different business at the time. Tim: Well, not only a totally different business but you've gotten married and you've had two kids. Miku: Yeah, yeah, and at the time, I think I was living in Taiwan and now, my business is in Tokyo, so everything has changed. Tim: And so, we're not even going to cove what we talked about last time even though in the in...

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#23 - Tudo sobre o Disney+ (com Tim Well)

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 29, 2019 97:44

Um dos assuntos mais comentados dos últimos dias, o Disney+ finalmente foi lançado nos EUA e o seu podcast favorito sobre desenhos animados, o Papo Animado, traz o nosso amigo Tim Well pra falar tudo que você precisa saber sobre o novo serviço de streaming da poderosa Disney! O que tem disponível, como assinar fora dos EUA, quando o serviço chegará no Brasil e muitas outras curiosidades você confere aqui, então da o play e divirta-se!

disney brasil tudo eua tim well

#14 - O que rolou na D23 Expo 2019 (com Tim Well e Fernanda Schmölz)

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2019 71:22

disney star wars marvel pixar ent quais anaheim calif d23 expo schm rolou sugar rush tim well

第549期:Saving Energy

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2019 1:56

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.

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第547期:Snow Shoes

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2019 2:15

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So, you do winter sports?Tim: Ah, yeah, really, I just do snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.Jeff: Snowshoeing!Tim: Yeah.Jeff: That sounds interesting. What snowshoe? Is that like a boot?Tim: Well, it's kind of hard to explain but it's kind of like a big - I don't know how you would say it - kind of like a big paddle that you strap on to your boot. You have a regular boot, your good boots and then you put a big flat kind of round thing on the bottom of your shoe.Jeff: What's it made of?Tim: Well, it is made out of kind of webbing. It's made out of webbing and basically, it spreads out your weight so that you can walk on snow, cause if you don't have them and you just have your regular boots you're gonna fall into the snow, so it distributes your weight out onto the snow.Jeff: So are they heavy?Tim: They can be, but like a long time ago they used to have huge ones that were made out of like skins and stuff like that from seals but now they're pretty light. They're made out of metals and good materials so they are pretty light now.Jeff: Are they expensive?Tim: They can be, but not too bad and you can rent them probably almost anywhere.Jeff: And how deep is the snow when you're walking with snowshoes? How deep is the snow?Tim: Well, it depends on how much it snowed really. You know it can be really really deep: something that is going to cover up a car, or it can be barely deep at all. Like I've taken snowshoes out on my pack - I was hiking Yosemite and we hiked up and there wasn't any snow at first as we got, there was more and more and then it got to the point where we were sinking in the snow and it was time to put on the snowshoes.Jeff: So, they're not heavy. Do your legs get very tired when you are walking in snowshoes?Tim: Not too bad really unless sometimes the snow isn't really dry. It's really wet snow and sometimes it will kind of clump on the snowshoes and then the snow will make it really, really heavy, so you got to knock them off and that can get really heavy and your legs can get tired.Jeff: And how do you put them on? How do you attach them to your boots or?Tim: Well, you just lay them down and they're some straps on them and you just put the straps on pull them tight. It's a lot like snowboarding really except you don't have click on boots. They're some straps you just pull on.Jeff: Cool. It sounds pretty cool.Tim: Yeah, it is not bad.

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第542期:Bad Jobs

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2019 2:54

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Tim: So, Jeff, you asked me about what kind of job I'd like. Well, what about a job you definitely you wouldn't want to do. There are lots of jobs out there and some of them aren't so good, so what would you not want to do?Jeff: That's a difficult question. I don't like working period, really.Tim: Yeah, but who does?Jeff: Yes, that's right, but I think a type of job I wouldn't like to do would be an office job, a straight desk job, where it is just task work, where you get paper - maybe sort of like an accountant - where you are doing nothing but sitting at your desk sort of by yourself all day, crunching numbers or putting things into the computer. I think it's very anti-social, a little bit boring, not so healthy, and even if the pay was good, I still wouldn't want to do it because you're compromising your life, which is short, to something that's not so fun so maybe a desk job, something at a desk, I wouldn't like to do. How about you? What job would you not like to do?Tim: Well, to be honest with you I don't think I would make a very good police officer. I really wouldn't want to be a police officer. I know it's exciting and it's always different but I kind of feel like I would be judging people and I'm not anti-police. I think they're needed but sometimes I don't agree with everything that a government believes in and I think it would be difficult for me to be busting people for something that I don't agree with. And I think that you know, it's a hard job. It's a hard job and you've got to deal with people that you know need help in different ways, and a police officer is just coming and putting them in jail.Jeff: Another thing, sort of related to police officer is I wouldn't want to be a nurse or a doctor.Tim: Oh, I'm surprised.Jeff: A great job and it would be rewarding to save people's lives or to make them better if they're sick, to make them healthy again, but I hate blood.Tim: Oh, really.Jeff: I can't stand blood so if there is... I can't even stand somebody with a bloody nose so I think in a situation where there is any blood around I wouldn't be your man.Tim: Well, I think another job I wouldn't want to be is a garbage man, to be honest with you.Jeff: Oh, a garbage man would be great.Tim: I understand. Like, I like the idea of driving from house to house. I think I would be a great post office worker, and I don't mind the manual labor of just lifting stuff up and stuff.Jeff: A bit smelly though.Tim: Yeah. That's the biggest thing. I think the smell would really get to me, like kind of like you were with blood. I think that eventually, that smell would sometimes make me sick, and you'd be surprised what people throw away. I mean, needles, all kinds of things, dirty diapers. Things like that. I don't think I could deal with that very well.Jeff: OK, so you'll never be a garbage man and I'll never be a nurse.Tim: Ah, fair enough I suppose.

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第541期:Cool Jobs

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2019 3:18

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Jeff: Tim, I'm a teacher, but you can have many, many jobs in the world. If you could pick any job, what do you think would be a cool job?Tim: Well, to be honest, I think it would be pretty cool to be a fisherman.Jeff: Fisherman!Tim: Yeah. Believe it or not I really like the ocean. I like spending time in the ocean and I think if you go out on those boats and get away from the land, you really get in touch with the sea and I just think that you get to work with your hands.Jeff: Is it dangerous though?Tim: Oh, it is dangerous. For sure. You can hook yourself. You can get caught in storms. It can be not so good.Jeff: Do you get paid a lot of money?Tim: Not so much, but that is not necessarily so important. You know. You can work with nature. You can catch your own food. Provide for yourself and I think that's really rewarding. How about you? What do you think would be a cool job?Jeff: I think I would like to be a writer.Tim: Why is that?Jeff: Because a movie star would be good, or a rock star but there is too much fame. Too many people always want to talk to you or want your autograph, but I think a writer, you are doing something you love without all that pressure or media coming after you and you can sort of make your own time and do it where you like. You can write in the country in a cabin or you can write in the city anywhere you like so I think it is a very flexible rewarding job.Tim: Yeah, you got to have the skill for it though. Do you think you have that skill?Jeff: No, I'm a terrible writer, but if I could have my pick of jobs, I'd like to be a writer. How about you? You would like to be a fisherman. Any other jobs you would like to be?Tim: Another job that I think might be cool is a fireman to tell you the truth. Again, you kind of working with nature. I'd really like to be a sort of a slash and burn fireman. Someone that goes out where there's wildfires, things like that, cause you're working with nature.Jeff: Those guys, the slash-and-burn fireman, they get to jump out of helicopters sometimes.Tim: Some of them do yeah, but that's kind of the glamorous one. Yeah, I wouldn't mind just being the guy that's on the ground, and the nice thing about it is you work really, really hard and you get paid pretty well for the time you work but then you get a long time off.Jeff: But, I'm a little bit scared of fires. You don't mind fire?Tim: I don't mind fire so much. You know. It's hot and it can be really, really dangerous but I don't know, it's kind of exciting and I like the idea of being out there in nature and just working hard to survive and working in a team. I think it would be good.Jeff: I want to be an astronaut. I think an astronaut would be good.Tim: Why is that? It's a dangerous job. A fireman's dangerous but it sounds like and astronaut would be pretty dangerous as well.Jeff: A little dangerous but I'd like to go to the moon to see what's on the moon. I think it would be kind of neat to be on the moon and looking back at the earth. They call the earth the blue planet. I think it would be neat to sit up there and look back on the earth and it would be kind of neat I think.Tim: Sounds like you like the ocean. You should think about being a fisherman.Jeff: No way! No thanks.

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第539期:Oregon People

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2019 1:47

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

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第538期:Oregon Beauty

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2019 2:31

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

america california washington real beauty oregon portland west coast fishing portland oregon corvallis ranching tim it tim yeah tim there tim well jeff so

70 : Workforce of the Future (w/ Tim Salau)

Living Corporate

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2019 19:09

Ade sits down with community builder and career/life coach (and Mentors & Mentees founder) Tim Salau to talk about what it means to take ownership of your career. They also discuss the future of the workforce and what shape it will take in the next 5-10 years.Connect with Tim on IG, Twitter, or LinkedIn!https://www.instagram.com/timsalau/?hl=enhttps://twitter.com/timsalau?lang=enhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/timsalauTRANSCRIPTAde: Hi. Welcome back to the show. If you're listening, this is Living Corporate. My name is Ade. I'm one of your hosts for the show, and with me today we have one of our favs here on this show, Tim Salau. Tim, you want to say hello?Tim: Yeah. Hey, y'all. It's Tim Salau.Ade: How are you doing? How are you doing, man?Tim: I'm doing well, Ade. I'm doing good.Ade: Welcome back. How have you been all of these days? Like, you just dipped off, left Living Corporate Land, haven't, like, shown your face back around these parts.Tim: I've been doing well. Some big, great things have been happening since then. I've recently started working with WeWork, leading product marketing management and focusing on really unleashing the future of work.Ade: Wow.Tim: Yeah, and I continue to grow the Mentors & Mentees community and have onboarded a few brand partners since then, including Living Corporate as one of them. So a lot of great things have been happening.Ade: That's amazing. That was a perfect segue into the conversation that we're having today. When you say the future of work, could you talk a little bit more about that?Tim: Absolutely. So the future of work is this really general, broad view of how, in the next 5-10 years, we're no longer gonna be working in a workforce where things are static, where you only see salaried employees. More so you'll see a mix of freelancers, salaried employees, and even contract workers in the workforce. So it's this very broad view with most of--you know, that looks at how the organizations of the future are gonna look, that thinks about how the gig economy is gonna affect, you know, what the workforce is gonna look like in the future, and most importantly, how will workers have to adapt in this future. And when I think about the future of work, I often define it as, from a worker perspective and a professional prospective, you being able to take control of your career as a worker, as a professional, and I think there are other elements of it where you can look at it from a gig economy perspective, you can look at it from an organizational design perspective and a more business perspective. How do organizations adopt and adopt a leveraging AI and all of these different tools that will allow them to stay digital in an ever-changing digital landscape? But my definition of it is more so taking control of your career as a worker and pursuing the opportunities that are tailor-fit for you.Ade: That's awesome. So question for you, then, to follow up on that. What does taking control of your career look like as an individual? I want to come back to what it means for organizations to make this kind of [C-?] change into the workforce of the future, but as an individual, as someone who's gonna be working for a few years, I want to know what it's like--what taking ownership of my career looks like and what that means for an individual.Tim: Well, you know, there's a lot of elements to that, Ade. I believe that taking control of your career, first and foremost, is starting to invest in what you can control. I think I often talk to professionals, and they don't realize that the future of work you have to be pushing yourself towards being an asset, not a commodity. So really starting to outline what are the strengths, the skills, the unique aspects of you that are fit for a role that you're interested in, right? For example, if you are someone looking to get into product management, right, and potentially work for a media podcast company, you would have to take control of the opportunities or the platforms that allow you to put yourself out there, whether it be a LinkedIn, you're having a website or networking the right circles that give you visibility to that network of media podcast professionals and product managers who are working within that industry, right? So I think that, for a long time, there's been traditional expectations, traditional behavior, that workers have adopted in which we no longer see our careers as in our control, as being proactive and really working towards where we want to be by doing the right things. Instead it's always been you wait to climb the corporate ladder, you wait until your manager says you can get promoted. You wait until, you know, you see the opportunity that comes to you instead of really taking that self-agency and pursuing the right opportunity. So I think that's one element of, you know, you taking control of your career. And I think another element of it is being very clear at investing in your personal brand. I do believe, from a worker's perspective, that personal brands are gonna matter in the future, 'cause your personal brand is what differentiates you. It's what allows people to start seeing you as an asset. Ade: Right. Okay, well, now I have to put some thought into my personal brand beyond, like, jokes and talking about food. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna put that on my to-do list. So you mentioned earlier the Mentors & Mentees community. Let's talk a little bit more about that. What are the top three tips that you give within Mentors & Mentees about the intentionality that you put into your career?Tim: Yeah. I think, first and foremost, it starts with introspection. I don't believe that, you know, you have to force your personal brand. I don't believe that you have to start investing in things, whether it be courses or coaches, who tell you that this is your personal brand, yet it's not. It's not something that you feel is true to you. I believe that one of the best ways, and what I often tell my community, is that you start realizing your strengths, what your gifts are, by really going deep, going deep and evaluating "What are prior roles that I've had that have led me to this point in my career?" "What do people that I spend my time with intimately--family, friends, coworkers--what do they think are some of the unique strengths of me? Let me ask them those questions," and then from there you get to a point where you start--and then you soul-search and say, "Okay, what am I great at? What do I want to be great at? What do I want to be known for?" And then when you take all of those different factors--what your coworkers say about you, your prior experiences, and then you dig deep, you start to see--you start to see some patterns, and you, more importantly, start defining what is it that makes you unique. Is it your cultural background? Is it certain industry experiences that no one else in your domain has? Are there certain skills that no one else wants to do or has acquired that you bring to the table when it comes to being, you know, an employee for a company? You really get that holistic perspective. So I always tell my members of my community and my friends that look, dig deep, right? And then from there, start being a giver. Start finding opportunities where you can give your strengths away, where you can really stand out because you're playing in your zone of greatness. So that's really when your personal brand starts unlocking for you. I'll give you an example. For me, I realized my purpose and kind of what I wanted to kind of be uniquely known for and that I wanted to kind of live day in and day out two years ago when I was at UT Austin pursuing my grad degree. And, you know, I had deep moments of reflection, and I realized, "You know what? If there's anything I want to be great at, it's to strengthen the bonds that people share through compassion and empathic action," and, you know, I eventually found a title for it in kind of an area that I really, really love, which is community building. From that point on, I created a community. I've invested myself in that community day in and day out, and to a degree now people know me as that. That's my brand because people know how great I am at it, right? So I've uniquely differentiated myself, and I also operate within this overlap where I do product management work and I'm in tech, so now I have this really unique characteristic of me where I stand out. I'm not only a community builder, but I'm somebody that can talk to you about product management. I'm someone that can talk to you about how to get into tech, so I get hit up about that a lot. So that's really how you go about saying, "Okay, how do I stand out in such a competitive job market so I can thrive in the future of work?"Ade: Right, and I love the phrase that you used earlier, "zone of greatness." I'm probably gonna--I'm gonna co-op that for my own use a little bit later on. Thank you. Snatched. [both laugh] All right, so before we go--those were some really great points that we're gonna take forward, and I'm probably gonna start sending, like, surveys around to my friends and my family members, like, "Hey, take this three to five question quiz about what I'm good at, 'cause I'm trying to develop my personal brand."Tim: Yeah, and you should. You should.Ade: So if you are my friend and you're listening, please note that you will be receiving a survey within the next three to five business days.Tim: And you know what? The ones that do, Ade, the ones that answer that survey, they care about you. They want you to be great. The ones that don't, you gotta question that relationship. [laughs]Ade: My woes. Listen, if you receive a survey from me and you do not respond to my survey, our friendship is dead. DEAD. [both laugh] All right. So before we go, let's talk about WeWork really quickly. You mentioned at the beginning of this interview that you now have a position or relationship with WeWork. I personally attend a ton of events at WeWork, especially at Flatiron School. Tim: [woos excitedly]Ade: Yeah, I'm a huge fan. So talk to me. What attracted you to WeWork? What are you doing there? How can I get a membership for the low-low? [Tim laughs] Tell me all about it.Tim: So I'll see what I can do about the membership, but to give you a little bit of clarity as to, you know, why I'm really excited to be working with WeWork is that what WeWork does in the community space in terms of their core business, which is, you know, obviously selling space to entrepreneurs and creators who want to, you know, do the best work of their lives and build their business and connect with others. The fact that WeWork is really just a framework for creating community, that's what attracted me to the company, and as a community builder, someone that is obsessed with community and someone that does it day in and day out as my life purpose--it is what I'm building my legacy around, 'cause that's what drives me, I saw that there was a unique opportunity for me to contribute my value, contribute my perspective as a black man in tech, and as someone who's an avid community builder and understands there's strength in numbers, there was great potential in me, I believe, working with a company like WeWork that's really building that next generation of what community will look like, right? Whether it be at work, in cities, and at a global level too, because we work as a multi-national company, and I felt as if, you know, I'm at a point in my career where I want to be able to do the best work of my life, and I know what my strengths are, I know what my gifts are, so the opportunity now for me to really lead the future of work, something I talk about often online with my community, with my friends, and what people know me of, it was a perfect fit. And, you know, that's why I encourage people to think about too--when you think about the future of work and you think about how you want to build what you're known for, you have to think about what are companies, what are the opportunities that are a unique fit for you? Because I could say working with WeWork is a unique fit for me. This role that I'm in, I'm gonna be doing a lot of community building. I'm gonna be doing a lot of evangelizing about the future of work. I'm going to be doing all of the things that really unleash all of the best aspects of me. So when you find that fit, you know, you become on another level.Ade: Right, right. That's awesome. I think an additional thing that I love about WeWork is that as a space it's almost inclined to support interaction, right? Like, you come in, and there are a lot of open spaces. Like, yes, you can find your privacy, and there's some really interesting areas and nooks and crannies that you can hide yourself if you are, like me, not interested in extended human interaction, but there are also times where you walk into WeWork and there are a bunch of people there who are complete strangers, or were complete strangers 20 minutes ago, and they're now talking about their interests and their companies and "Oh, I formed Such-and-such LLC, and I can help you form an LLC," and all of these really amazing conversations, particularly with young professionals in tech, many of whom are transitioning, many of whom aren't even sure what the vastness of the possibilities exist within tech. So yeah, I'm gonna wax poetic about WeWork a little bit more later on, but yeah, thank you so much for sharing that experience and sharing your purpose in that manner. And I especially think, for those of us who are underrepresented in tech in general, no one who wants longevity out of their career goes at it alone. It's one of the things that I discovered when I started self-teaching, is that isolation will hurt you more than it will help. There's some times where you need to shut the entire world off and really, like, buckle down and focus, but more often than not somebody has done what you're doing. They--Tim: Someone has done it.Ade: Right, you're not the first person in the world to be stuck on binary search trees or hash tables. [both laugh] And it's probably a better use of your time to seek out the wisdom of those who have done it before than to kind of bang your head at it for six months at a time, not because there's no utility in teaching yourself those things, but because you're joining a community, you're joining a community of learners and teachers, and there's no better place to be than people who are eager to share their experiences within their understanding with you, which does not minimize your experience as a learner. Again, waxing poetic. All of that to say that WeWork is such an important space, and building a community for yourself is such an important aspect of your career.Tim: I couldn't agree more. You need to come work with us at WeWork. [both laugh]Ade: Is that how I get a space? Tim: That's it.Ade: Because, I mean, I'm down.Tim: You got the job. You got the job! [Tim laughs]Ade: Just like that. See? 2019, getting jobs I didn't even interview for. Look at me. Shout-out to God. Okay. Before we go, Tim, is there anything else that you'd like to add, anything that you'd like to touch on that we haven't spoken about?Tim: Absolutely. For all of y'all listening right now, join the Mentors & Mentees community if you want to take control of your career and achieve career fulfillment. That is the focus of our community. We are in growth mode, and, you know, we are booming. As a community builder, I will welcome you, I will show you love, and our members will do the same. And I also want to share that if you've got a friend that needs a career coach, let them know I am a career coach as well. Aside from all of the things I do--I do a lot of things 'cause I'm living in the future of work literally as I speak about it--so if you need a coach that will take care of your career and help you, position you to thrive in the future of work, that is moi. So, you know, hit me up on LinkedIn. For y'all who are following me on LinkedIn, thank y'all. For y'all who are not, please get to it. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook as well if those are your preferred channels. But connect with me. I would love to continue to carry this conversation with you all.Ade: I just want to add that your hustle is unreal, because, like, I think I've counted--I think I've counted, like, the three positions just now. [Tim laughs] I think the only--like, the only people who work harder than Tim are, like, Jamaicans and Beyonce. Tim: I've gotten that before. "Are you Jamaican?" I said "No, I'm Nigerian. I'm Nigerian-American."Ade: [laughs] That's hilarious, and know you're doing Nigerians proud. Very happy to have you in your corner. Tim: I am happy to be a part of the Living Corporate family.Ade: Thank you so very much for joining us, yeah. So happy to have you. Please don't be a stranger.Tim: Oh, of course not.Ade: That's it from us, guys. We're signing off. Remember, per usual, you can catch us on pretty much, you know, everywhere. If you're on Facebook, if you're on LinkedIn, if you're on Twitter, if you're on Instagram. We are Living Corporate everywhere. You can also catch us at www.living-corporate.com. Tell Australia to free livingcorporate.com for our use. That's it for us today. I was so happy to speak to you today. Thank you so much for joining us, Tim, and until next time, Living Corporate family, go out and be great.Tim: Be great!Ade: Peace.

You need to Ignore the Worst Advice being given to Female Founders

reThink Real Estate Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2019 39:06

Everything about employment in Japan is changing. Lifetime employment is gone. Skilled workers are discovering that they have job mobility and large Japanese companies are increasingly confused by the fact that many new graduates don't want to work for them. Wantedly has been one of the companies that has changed the way corporate recruiting works in Japan, and today we sit down and talk with the founder and CEO Akiko Naka. We first talked with Akiko a few years ago when Wantedly was starting to gain traction, but since then Wantedly has grown, IPOed and become of the most highly valued public companies in Japan. We talk about her journey, of course, but we also dive into how the nature of work is changing in Japan, the best way to promote yourself and your company in Japan, and the one terrible piece of advice that women founders need to stop listening to. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes Why Japanese companies can’t hire creative employees How to deal with startup copycats The advantages and dangers of diversification The secret to making change happen in Japan How to brag about yourself in Japan The best advice for companies wanting to expand outside Japan Unconventional advice for women entrepreneurs Why Japanese millennials really are different Links from the Founder Everything you wanted to know about Wantedly Checkout Akiko's blog Friend her on Facebook Follow Akiko on Twitter @acanocic 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 sit down with an old friend. Well, I mean, actually, she still a very young friend, but we’ve known her for years, so she’s – anyway, she’s Akiko: Today, we will be sitting down and catching up with Akiko Naka, CEO and founder of Wantedly. Of course, we will talk about Wantedly’s amazing growth and the IPO that has happened since the last time Akiko came on the show, but there is a much more important story here, and before we get to that, I should let you know at other than a brief overview of Wantedly’s business model, this show is all new content and conversations. If you want to understand the crazy ideas and questionable positions that led to Akiko creating Wantedly, and believe me, that’s a story you want to hear, I urge you to listen to the original episode at disruptingJapan.com/show008. I’ll have a link up at the site as well. But today, ah, today, we will be talking about the best way to sell genuinely new product to large Japanese companies, some practical advice for anyone trying to take their company into overseas markets, including into Japan, and why the most common advice given to aspiring female founders is actually terrible, terrible advice, but you know, Akiko tells that story much better than I, so let’s get right to the interview. Interview Tim: So, I’m sitting here with Akiko Naka, the fearless founder of Wantedly, so thanks for sitting down with me again. Akiko Naka: Thank you so much for coming. Tim: You know, it’s really great to have you back on again. So much has changed since we sat down over three years ago. Akiko: Yeah, I can’t believe it has been three years already. Tim: Well, listen, we have a lot to catch up on, but for my listeners who did not follow my advice during the intro and go back and listen to our old interview, why don’t you explain what Wantedly does. Akiko: Wantedly is a platform where we match users and companies based on vision and values, not only salary and benefits. When we compare our platform with traditional media, traditional job matching platform, traditional ones values more salary and benefits, but our platform focus on why the company do what they do, so more value and culture of each company. So, that way, we believe users and company can meet people casually,

ceo japan advice friend japanese lifetime ipo skilled female founders akiko ipoed tim you tim well disrupting japan tim romero wantedly

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

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2019 36:43

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

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#033 - Why Not? w/ Tim Ng

My Wax Museum

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 2, 2019 53:05

Tim has gone around saying "why not?" about a few different things... This has gotten him backstage at rock concerts, presenting a paper as a college freshman, and a job at Google! His life started off unconventional, being born to a very British mother and a very Chinese father - at least as far as lineage is concerned. What else is unconventional about Tim? Well, for starters, he left a great job at Google to move to Rexburg, Idaho... This episode has some incredible stories, so we hope you enjoy it! Take 5 minutes today to listen to a friend and make the world a better place! Follow us on www.knightworthy.com (http://www.knightworthy.com/cover) Thanks again for listening! As always, you can send feedback to mywaxmuseum@gmail.com and support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/mywaxmuseum) . Listen to "My Wax Museum" on your favourite app! Spotify: spoti.fi/2zNZcWO (http://spoti.fi/2zNZcWO) Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2OCYbWY (http://apple.co/2OCYbWY) Google Play: bit.ly/2DA9KgT (http://bit.ly/2DA9KgT) Stitcher: bit.ly/2T1ucvm (http://bit.ly/2T1ucvm) YouTube: bit.ly/2MoCOrm (http://bit.ly/2MoCOrm) Archive: http://www.knightworthy.com/podcasts/mywaxmuseum-archive (http://www.knightworthy.com/podcasts/mywaxmuseum-archive) Support this podcast

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DJ Selects: Japan’s Airbnb for Satellites – InfoStellar

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2018 31:05

The aerospace industry has been particularly resistant to disrupting in Japan. In the rest of the world, launch vehicle and spacecraft technology has made incredible gains over the past decade, but here in Japan its still mostly the same government contracts going to the same major contractors. Naomi Kurahara of InfoStellar, has come up with an innovative way to leverage existing aerospace infrastructure and to collaborate globally by renting out unused satellite ground-sataion time, Airbnb style. You see when an organization launches a satellite, they also build a ground station to communicate with it. The problem is, that as the satellite obits the Earthy, it’s only in communication range of the ground station for less than an hour a day. The rest of the time the ground station just sits there. By renting out that unused time ground-station operators earn extra income, and the satellite operators are able to communicate with their satellites as often as they need. It’s a great interview and I think you’ll enjoy it. Show Notes for Startups Why the Airbnb for satellites startup model makes sense The demand-side problem Why this market is much larger than it seems today The key growth drivers in the satellite market Why the Japanese aerospace industry can't innovate How to run a startup as an expectant mother What challenges women scientists still face in Japan How Japan could better support working moms Links from the Founder Learn about InfoStellar [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Disrupting Japan, episode 56. Welcome to Disrupting Japan - straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Aerospace in Japan is particularly resistant to disruption. Over the past decade, the rest of the world has seen incredible gains in both launch vehicles and spacecrafts. But Japan has been moving slowly. Sometimes it seems as if she’s determined to stay the course with the same government contracts going to much the same corporate heavyweights year after year. Naomi Kurahara of InfoStellar once had plans of changing the Japanese aerospace industry. But along the way she went out on her own with a plan that bypassed Japan’s major players and targeted the global market. You see, when an organization launches a satellite, they usually also build an antenna and a ground station to communicate with that satellite. The problem is that as the satellite orbits the Earth, it’s only communications range with the ground station for less than an hour a day. The rest of the time the ground station just sits there. So, Naomi decided to pool all of the unused ground station time together and rent it out to satellite operators, Airbnb style. Everybody wins by sharing resources. The ground station operators get income by renting out their facilities and the satellite operators get to communicate with their satellites far more often. But Naomi explains it 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: Cheers! I’m sitting here with Naomi Kurahara, the CEO and fearless founder of InfoStellar, so thanks for sitting down with me. Naomi: Thank you for inviting me. Tim: Now, InfoStellar is basically time-sharing for satellite ground station, or Airbnb for satellites, but it’s a complex idea so why don’t you explain a little bit about what InfoStellar does. Naomi: Okay, the reason I started this business is the aerospace space has an issue for cost. Like satellite is expensive, and rocket is expensive, and ground station is expensive because, maybe, not many people are using. Tim: Well, aerospace is incredibly expensive but actually I think before we get into InfoStellar’s business model, I think it’s going to be best if you explain what ground stations are and how th...

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How a Rumor Can Destroy Your Business in Japan

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2018 36:51

Japanese thoughts on risk are changing, but they are changing slowly. Many people still consider failure to be a permanent condition, and that makes it hard to take risks, or in some cases even to be associated with risks. Today we talk with Hajime Hirose, one of Japan's new breed of serial entrepreneurs. Hajime has started companies in three different countries and several different industries. We talk about the challenges and importance of going global and how a Japanese founder ended up running a Chinese company that IPOed in New York. And of course, we also talk about how difficult it is for startups to combat rumors in Japan, even when everyone knows those rumors to be false. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The road to China runs through Seattle Today's management crisis in Chinese and Indian companies Why leave Japan to start a startup Why not all publicity is good publicity in Japan Why the truth cannot fix lies How to survive when your competition is giving away their product for free What startups are best started outside Japan Links from the Founder Connect with Hajime on LinkedIn Hajime's latest project, Datadeck PTMind's PT Engine 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 aren’t many serial entrepreneurs in Japan. The reason for that is, well, the same reason why we don’t have a lot of angel investors in Japan. Until very recently, the idea of both startup success and startup failure was permanent. If your startup succeeded, you were expected to be running it until either you or the company expired, and if you failed, well, if you failed, you were done. Until very recently, failure was considered a permanent condition. No one was inclined to give you a second chance, but things are changing, and today, I would like to introduce you to Hajime Hirose, a Japanese serial entrepreneur who has built and sold startups and also bankrupted them. We talk about how Japanese attitudes towards startups are changing, but how in Japan, a bad rumor, even a completely unfounded rumor can kill and otherwise promising startup. We also talk about the importance and the difficulty of going global, and the unlikely tale of a Japanese man running a Chinese startup that ended up IPOing in New York, and we also talk about Hajime’s old startup story that wheezed its way through London, Shanghai, Redmond, Jakarta, and yes, of course, Tokyo. But you know, Hajime tells that story much better than I can, so let us get right to the interview. [Interview] [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ] Tim: Cheers! Hajime: Cheers! Tim: All right, so I am sitting here with Hajime Hirose, the what the future founder of BuzzElement, and a few other startups as well, so thanks for sitting down with me. Hajime: Well, thank you. I’m really excited because I’m a big fan of your show and I’m really thrilled to be on this side of the show. Tim: Well, listen, I’m excited to have you here because there are relatively few serial entrepreneurs in Japan. So, I’m looking forward to this conversation. Your first real international business was in China, but before we get to that, let us back up and talk about how you wound up there. Hajime: So, I was born in Tokyo, grew up in Yokohama, and I went to CIO for university, and I’ve been living outside of Japan for the last 26 years. Tim: And, you ended up working for Microsoft, right? Hajime: That’s right. Tim: Back when MSN was still a thing. Hajime: That’s right, yeah. So, that was back when Microsoft just bought Hotmail back in 1998. Tim: Oh, the good old days. Hajime: Yeah, that was good, that was really fun. So, I was lucky to be the only two Japanese guys on the project.

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26 : Tim Salau

Living Corporate

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2018 13:38

We sit down with social influencer, entrepreneur, community builder, public speaker, blerd, and AI subject matter expert Tim Salau to discuss his journey into tech.Learn about Tim Salau here:http://www.timsalau.org/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and yes, you're listening to a B-Side. Now, yes, of course we've introduced the purpose of a B-Side before, but every episode is someone's first episode. So for our new folks, B-Sides are essentially random shows we have in-between our larger shows. These are much less structured and somehow even more lit--that's right, even more lit--than our regularly scheduled shows. Sometimes they're discussions that the hosts have, sometimes they're extended monologues, or sometimes they're, like, a one-on-one chat with a special guest. Today we have a very special guest, Tim Salau. Now, this is from Kathryn LeBlanc, who did a profile on Tim. "Tim Salau is an ex-Googler, UX wiz, and LinkedIn video creator extraordinaire. Tim somehow manages to spare enough time to run a Facebook group called Mentors and Mentees. The group provides high-quality advice for young professionals looking to launch or level up their careers. Tim is also a LinkedIn campus editor and recently just began his journey with Microsoft as an artificial intelligence product manager, AND on top of all of that, Tim is Living Corporate's first brand ambassador. Tim, welcome to the show, man. How are you doing?Tim: [laughs] I'm doing well, man. You boosted me a lot there. I appreciate it.Zach: Okay, look. So today we're talking about non-conventional entries into tech. Talk to us about your journey into tech.Tim: Man, my journey into tech was very, very interesting. So my background is in psychology. I went to Texas Tech University to get my psychology degree, and then from there I started learning a little bit about digital media as well as, you know, how psychology can apply a lot to technology. Around my junior year I realized I really wanted to get into UX as a vertical, and since UX is really big in the tech arena I decided that I wanted to go make a career out of that because I really enjoyed an internship I had that junior year, the summer before my senior year. So from there I decided I wanted to go to grad school at the University of Texas in Austin and study something called a Master's of Information of Studies, which would allow me to develop kind of a deeper understanding of UX and kind of the psychological principles of how information and people work together. And, I mean, from there I've just been pretty much practicing and learning as much as I can in the field, whether it be on my own accord or at school or, you know, going to any kind of event that will allow me to just soak up as much knowledge as possible. And now I find myself really focused on artificial intelligence, and I think I was able to break in by just talking to the right people, man, and kind of being in the right spaces at the right time.Zach: So, you know, you talked about--just now you talked about how you're leaning into and learning as much as you can. So you and I have joked about this, but you have, like, I don't know 70 bajillion LinkedIn training certifications, right?Tim: [laughs] Yeah, man. I'm working. I'm working. I think learning is--learning is the easy part. Applying it all is the hard part, right? But I think some people find it hard to start learning and find the sources, but I think we're in an information age where it's incredibly accessible.Zach: Right. And let's continue down the path of being self-taught, right? So I think it's easy to assume that being self-taught is easy because you're creating your own rules to follow. Like, there isn't a pace, and the content is there for you to stay engaged how you like. For some though that's more immobilizing than anything else. What advice would you have for folks who are struggling with the idea or just the anxiety of that type of learning?Tim: I think find out what learning methods work for you. Being self-taught, for me I found that it's a--it's not just one learning method I use. I go from watching YouTube, LinkedIn learning videos, to, you know, finding hands-on ways to apply what I've learned, to talking to people who are the experts and just kind of getting their perspective on the field and, you know, seeing what they've gone through. I think for people--usually they think that they have to go straight to being experts. They have to go straight to really, like, being able to--like, for example, let's say create some sort of machine learning model, right? Like, it would scare you because you're like, "What the hell? A machine learning model?" Like, "How do I get started doing it? That seems like such a hard thing to do." So, like, the initial thought is that "Oh, man." Like, "I can't do this," but if you literally go on YouTube and search "how to," right, there's a five-minute video, I guarantee you, that will kind of walk you through it step by step, right? And you may not even master it after you watch that video, so what you do then is--okay, you go ahead and you go apply that knowledge, right? And you may not even master it after that, but what you do after that is you go to talk to someone that's actually done it, right? And let them know, "This has been my experience," and I think it's really a matter of making experience of learning, right? Put yourself in a position to either, you know, go offline and visit one of the events or wherever this knowledge is being shared, and really put yourself in this mindset that learning isn't one-dimensional. It's not monolithic. It's just not me, you know, just watching someone do it, it's me making an experience of it.Zach: So let's talk about Mentors and Mentees, right? So what and how--what is it, and how does it fit into your other work in tech?Tim: So Mentors and Mentees, about a year ago I was--I mean, a lot of people were reaching out to me about career advice and, you know, kind of my career path and everything, and I've always been into mentorship. I've actively mentored many people, probably too many people, because I always have--I have an executive board of mentors myself, so I understand how valuable it is. So I created Mentors and Mentees, a community group for people who are interested in kind of finding different perspectives, to help them kind of nurture their career paths and whatever problems that they may have. So right now the group is on Facebook, and I have plans to kind of create more around it in the future, and it's essentially a resource for anyone that is kind of confused on whether it be their job search, right? You know, whether it be salary negotiations or how to--how to transition from a different position into a new one within the same organization in a totally new industry. So the whole notion of Mentors and Mentees was just to create that space, that community, and it was actually something that was missing not only on Facebook but at large, right? Kind of, like, this very democratized space where you get an international audience and a wide variety of different perspectives to kind of, like, come to the table and share their experiences. So it was just a passion project, but now it's growing into a brand for me, man, and, you know, I have a lot of work that I have to do to continue to grow it. Zach: So continuing on that path talking about just working. So I know, you know, recently you announced, and you've been celebrating--again, congratulations again--around the placement with Microsoft.Tim: Thank you, brother.Zach: Yeah, no, you're welcome. In your IG story, you talked about being--like, just being an African kid and, like coming from the mud so to speak, right? And building this path for yourself. So what advice do you have for minorities who come from all sorts of backgrounds and see tech as, like, this far off, distant, mythical--like, it's too obscure to even grasp. Like, what advice would you have for them?Tim: I think first thing is a change of perspective. Tech permeates everything. I think a lot of people see tech as only a centralized thing, but more so see it as a--technology as a distributed kind of vehicle to a lot of different change, whether it be in the health sector, in the transportation sector, in the education sector, right? So change your perspective. It's not just like--everyone says "I'm trying to get into tech." Really in whatever capacity you're working in or whatever field that interests you, you will be affected by tech in some, you know, way or form, right? So it's a matter of understanding, "Well, if I really want to build my technical aptitude," or "If I really want to get into this field, how do I apply tech to a problem I want to solve? How do I apply tech to where I'm going next? How do I bring in the knowledge that's being shared, whether it be in the space of artificial intelligence, in the space of bot design, in the space of UX, how do I bring that to the work that I do as someone who wants to be a health practitioner or someone that wants to go into journalism, right? So I think changing that perspective is the #1 thing I encourage someone who wants to get into tech, quote-unquote, to do, right? See how they can apply it to a problem they want to solve and they where they want to go next. And once you make kind of that change of mindset, once you set that stance to change your mindset, you'll start to see that, "Okay, wow." Like, [inaudible] tech. It's a component of tools that I could use to really actually do better, not necessarily in my job function and role but also within my community. What really got me into tech is the fact that I was obsessed. I was really obsessed with the fact that one, UX and psychology was a way where we could create digital experiences that people would understand, and it would follow them throughout their day, throughout their life, and it could be shared, and as I grew and developed my passion, I developed a deeper obsession with this whole notion of community, right? How does technology really integrate into our communities? How do we build that digital aptitude, that digital literacy, and how does it extend beyond just, you know, one person being able to do it to multiple people and then an organization and so on forth? And I think me being really obsessed with community but being obsessed with the topics, I found ways where, "Okay, there's a lot of different ways I can use tech to scale what I'm trying to do, the problem that I'm trying to solve." The fact that, you know, I don't think a lot of people have that, you know, digital aptitude to really maybe start their own business or find themselves successful in that first role after their job, right? How do I one break down that education block, right? And how do I use tech to scale my solution. So changing your perspective and then seeing how you can use the tools that you have across the tech landscape, whatever it is that you're interested in to kind of scale your solution, is the best way to go about it. Zach: Man, this has been awesome, man. Before we let you go, do you have any shout outs, any other parting words?Tim: Man, I think that you gotta stay hungry. [laughs] You have to stay hungry and really find your obsession, find what you really are interested in and the problems that you want to solve. Zach: Now, where can people who want to learn more about Tim Salau--where can they engage you?Tim: Well, [laughs] I'm not a great [omni-channel?] presence, so you can find me on my Facebook page and profile at TimSalau, on Instagram at TimSalau as well, and especially on LinkedIn, one of my favorite platforms, at TimSalau as well. Feel free to connect with me, send me an [in?] mail, let me know if I can be of help to you in anything, as well as join the Mentors and Mentees community if you're a professional and you have a perspective to share and you have a story to share. The community is for you, and it's a great membership base for you to learn from others as well. So definitely join our Mentors and Mentees community.Zach: So a couple of things. First of all, yes, definitely. We're gonna put some air horns right here for Mentors and Mentees. [Sound Man complies]Zach: But also, Tim has been super gracious as I've been jacking up his last name this entire conversation. He hasn't corrected me one time, so shout out to you for being gracious. So air horns to Tim on that as well.[Sound Man complies again]Zach: So for the audience one more time, can you pronounce your name? The first and last name so we all have it right.Tim: Tim Salau. So it's T-I-M, my first name, and my last name is S-A-L-A-U. Tim Salau.Zach: I've been saying straight up Salu this whole time. You did not correct me one time. The humility is so real. All right.Tim: [laughs] It's okay.Zach: All right, so to be clear, that does it for us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Zach, and you've been talking with Tim Salau. Peace.Tim: Yeah. [laughs]Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

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This Japanese Startup Is Using Your Phone to Make Insurance Social

Software Defined Survival

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2018 34:54

The insurance industry has proven very resistant to innovation. In fact, it has not really changed much in the past 200 years. The way insurance is sold and managed has changed, of course, but from the point of view of the consumer, things remain surpassingly like they were a century ago. Today we talk with someone who is changing that. Kazuya “Kazy” Hata is CEO of JustInCase, a new breed of Japanese insurance company that offers insurance over the smartphone and then monitors how you use your phone, your lifestyle, and your social connections to determine what your premium should be. We also talk about the next logical step for smart-phone-based insurance. Being able to ensure specific activities or possessions at will, maybe just for a few hours or while you are on a trip. It’s a great conversation, and I think you will really enjoy it. Show Notes Who actually buys long-term cell phone insurance What behavior might make you a "risky" smartphone user Why there are so few life sciences startups in Japan The future of insurance on demand Why P2P insurance presents a unique market opportunity Why it is so hard for insurance companies to innovate How Japan's FSA is working to encourage insurance innovation Links from the Founder Everything you wanted to know about JustInCase Kazy's blog (Japanese) Follow Kazy on Twitter @KazyHata Friend him on Facebook Genome Link Online Hackathon [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] 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, the insurance industry is really resistant to innovation. The modern insurance industry was largely developed in the 17th and 18th century and it's not changed a whole lot since then. Oh, the tools have changed: insurance is sold very differently today, risks are better understood and better quantified, better measured, and the emergence of the global reinsurance market has made the system far more stable, but the way insurance works from your point of view, from the way you and I see it, things have changed very little over the past hundred years. Most of the change in the industry is driven by regulatory changes rather than entrepreneurial innovation, and for insurance, I've got to say, I'm pretty much okay with that. Insurance firms need to remain solvent for decades and theoretically forever, and the fail fast, fail forward philosophy doesn't really work when it comes time to pay out life insurance or after a natural disaster, and yet, there needs to be a way to innovate and that's what we're going to talk about today. Kazuya Hata or “Kazy” as his friends call him is the founder and CEO of JustInCase. JustInCase offers insurance over the smartphone and the first product they're insuring is your smartphone itself. JustInCase then uses artificial intelligence to analyze your usage profile and your social connections to determine the premium you should be paying. We also talk about the next logical step for a smartphone-based insurance, being able to enter specific activities or possessions at will, maybe just for a few hours or while you're on a trip. The cellphone interface and the personal rich data which we continuously share about ourselves online, whether we know it or not allows companies to build up a personalized risk profile and both offer customized and flexible products and replace the number of fraudulent claims. But you know, Kazi tells this 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] I'm sitting here with Kazy Hata of JustInCase who offers not only insurance on your cellphone but actually sells insurance on the cellphone. Does that make sense? Kazuya: That's actually right, yes. Tim: Well,

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

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2018 71:32

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

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2017 35:12

Japanese fashion is unique, and so is the entire Japanese fashion industry. Today I would like to introduce you to a Japanese fashion startup with a genuinely unique business model. Tsubasa Koseki and his team at Facy, have created a fashion marketplace based on instant messaging and relationship building between shops and consumers. Interestingly, this market is not dominated by major labels or global companies, but by more local, mid-market brands. Tsubasa and I talk about his plans for Asian expansion, Facy’s chances for global domination in this niche, and the major differences between fashion retailing in Asia and in the West. It’s a fascinating discussion and a great inside look at fashion retailing. Show Notes What is the last untapped fashion market The reason behind the recent boom in startup founders from Todai How SNS use differs between Asia and the West Why you may not be able to trust Japanese e-commerce reviews The biggest mistake fashion startups keep making Why the global fashion brands will be at a disadvantage over the next 10 years Links from the Founder Check out Facy Follow them on Facebook More about Facy on The Bridge [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] 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. Every once in a while, I come across a startup with a business model that only exists in Japan. Now usually, this is because the startup is responding to a market need or a consumer behavior that also only exists in Japan. Occasionally however, only occasionally, I come across a unique startup with a genuinely good idea that has potential to make a global impact, and today, I'd like to introduce you to one of those companies. Tsubasa Koseki is the CEO and founder of Facy, and Facy has developed a fashion marketplace based on, believe it or not, text messaging. Consumers with questions about fashion can ask for advice, and fashion brands and stores respond to those questions. Yes, yes, I know, messaging is already widely used in the fashion e-commerce industry, but Facy has a wonderful and minimal approach to it that really deserves attention. Now, I grant you that the fashion industry as a whole is a bit outside of my core competence and in truth, I have a fashion sense that is perfect for podcasting, but Facy's results really speak for themselves, and Tsubasa and his company have big plans for expansion as well, but you know, Tsubasa tells that story much better than I can, so let's hear from our sponsor and get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ] [Interview] Tim: Okay, so we're sitting here with Tsubasa Koseki, the CEO and founder of Facy. So thanks for sitting down with us today. Tsubasa: Yes, thank you, Tim, too. I'm very happy to present our project. I'm a big fan of your podcast. Tim: Well, thanks. Let's get right into what Facy does, so you talk about o-to-o means in offline-to-online support services for fashion and apparel stores, so how does this work exactly? Tsubasa: On our service, user can ask their fashion needs like Quora. Tim: Quora? Like the Q&A site? Tsubasa: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. User can ask their own fashion needs. For example, I'm looking for sneakers for the office, shop staff can reply to the post by uploading their item in their stores. User can ask additional questions. If it's okay, they can buy or reserve item. Tim: I really think you got an interesting approach to e-commerce in general, but fashion in particular where it is this kind of calling response where you got customers texting like just random questions, and how detailed are these questions? Are they simple things like, "I'm looking for a new pair of sneakers for basketball"? Or do you get people saying,

ceo kids japan west japanese startups fashion asian bridge consumers user quora tsubasa tim well disrupting japan tim romero west why

Leading with Love - Interview with Tim Sanders

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2017 35:14

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

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28 The Psychology of the Trainer/Client Relationship

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2017 41:12

Inform Fitness Founder, Adam Zickerman, welcomes Clinical Psychologist and InForm Fitness Strength Training Instructor, Joshua Cagney to discuss the varied psychological and emotional aspects encountered by both clients and trainers and how high-intensity strength training can be a cathartic experience.We want to reward you for listening to the InForm Fitness Podcast by offering a free training session at an InForm Fitness location nearest you plus an opportunity to qualify for an InForm Fitness Prize Pack.Earn one FREE SESSION when you leave a review for InForm Fitness in iTunes, Yelp, Google+, Facebook, & Amazon! Simply write a review and send a screenshot to podcast@informfitness.com - that's it! For each review you leave, you will receive and entry for the GRAND PRIZE!One lucky listener will receive a personally autographed copy of Adam Zickerman's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. That listener will also get decked out in InForm Fitness apparel including an InForm Fitness T-shirt, hat, and a hoody jacket. And we'll top off the prize pack with an Amazon Echo! Click here to see the Amazon Echo in action:http://bit.ly/2InFormFItnessGrandPrizeContest ends May 31st, 2017. Listen for more details!To find an Inform Fitness location nearest you visit www.InformFitness.comIf you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question. The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTenIf you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com28 The Psychology of the Trainer/Client RelationshipJosh: The truth is that if we're doing our jobs effectively as instructors, that's entirely placing the clients' needs ahead of our own. We each have an innate need to want to sympathize, to want to offer our sympathies whenever someone suffers a loss or a stressful period of time emotionally, but the longterm consequence of that is we blur those lines. The goal is making sure that you know the client well enough to understand what is going to be most conducive to getting her through a really productive workout. That's when an instructor is really showing his or her metal, when they're able to put the clients' needs ahead of their own.Tim: Hey InForm Nation, can you believe it? We are already at episode 28 of the InForm Fitness Podcast: Twenty Minutes with New York Times bestselling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network and I'm a client of InForm Fitness, and in just a moment, we'll hear from the founder of InForm Fitness, Adam Zickerman. Sheila Melody, the co-owner of the Toluca Lake location is back with us, and still on vacation is Mike Rogers. Looking forward to having Mike back with us next week, as we interview one of his clients from the Manhattan location, Gretchen Rubin. Next week's episode is bound to be one of our most popular episodes, and I'll explain that at the end of this one. Also at the end of the show, I will remind you of our May 2017, exclusively for InForm Nation. We have a really cool prize pack, valued at over two hundred bucks, but let's not get ahead of yourselves. Remember that voice you heard at the top of the show? That was InForm Fitness trainer/instructor, Joshua Cagney from the Restin, Virginia location. Joshua also happens to be a clinical psychologist, which is why Adam invited him to join us here on The Psychology of the Trainer/Client Relationship. Sometimes after a period of time, those who are being trained become so comfortable with their trainers, they might start to share some intimate details of their life, and the trainer, in essence, becomes their therapist. So where do we draw the line? Can this type of relationship actually help, or hurt the progress of your strength training? Let's join the conversation with Joshua Cagney, Adam Zickerman, Sheila Melody, and myself, with The Psychology of the Trainer/Client Relationship.Adam: So first of all, I've had this conversation with Josh in person, a resident clinical psychologist/exercise instructor. I was talking about — I was there giving a certification course, and many times when I'm talking with trainers, we talk about how to motivate, how to inspire, how to keep people on track. How to make them feel that, I know this is hard but you can do it anyway and stick with it. During that conversation, we were talking about the relationships that develop over time and that there is a definitely a psychology involved in maintaining these relationships and motivating your client. Then lines start getting blurred, and I hear very often, it's kind of a pet peeve of mind, and maybe it's a pet peeve of mine because I've been doing this for twenty years now and I've seen the damage, I guess. The pet peeve is when I hear that you're more like my therapist, the client would say. I come here and it's like a therapy session, or the trainer would say, I feel like I'm a therapist sometimes or I act like a therapist. People come to me, they talk about their problems, they lay it all on me, they can tell me things that they can't tell anybody else, and I get all that, but when I hear that, the hair on the back of my neck goes up a little bit. Maybe because it's my twenty years experience, and the reason that the hair goes up on my neck is just because there's a psychology involved in motivating and working with your clients, doesn't mean that we're psychologists, and that's when Josh said, unless you are a psychologist. I realized that Josh is not only an exercise instructor, which was what I was talking to him as, but I then realized that he's actually a clinical psychologist. So I guess that doesn't apply to him, he is a psychologist when he's dealing with psychology of training clients, and we have to be careful, both as clients and trainer, to make sure we're not blurring those lines, and the instructor doesn't get all full of himself or herself, thinking that they can actually solve these people's problems. I think that the client themselves needs to know what their boundaries are as well, and as much as you connect with your trainer, as much as you appreciate your trainer, as much as this trainer builds you up, not just physically but mentally, as much as all of that happens, they're not their therapist. The reason this is important to me and the reason the hair goes up on the back of my neck is because we end up, both client and instructor, we end up not doing our jobs. What we find happens during the exercise session is a lot of chit-chat going on, there's a lot of wasted time, and the workout suffered. It's a twenty-minute workout, and there's no way you can be a therapist and a trainer in twenty minutes. So then you lose a client, and this is where my twenty years experience comes in. What ends up happening is one day, the client wakes up and says, what the hell am I going there for. I'm getting bored, I'm not feeling the results, I'm feeling a plateau. It's becoming a chore to go there. Maybe the time before that, the quote unquote therapist trainer said something they didn't like, the way therapists sometimes do, and then you've got your patient not wanting to come back anymore, when they weren't your patient in the first place. They were your client, the person you were supposed to train, and now that they don't like you as their therapist anymore, they don't want to come back. So it's a slippery slope, and if you've been a trainer long enough, you've been there. If you're listening to this and you're not a trainer but you're a client of a trainer, and if you've been doing this for any amount of time, you might also relate to this trap that we tend to fall into. If you're listening to this and you've never hired a trainer, when you do, or if you do, this is an important thing to keep in mind. So Joshua, being both an instructor and a clinical psychologist, am I making sense? Am I right?Josh: I think you are absolutely right. From a clinical perspective, one of the things that's important for a therapist to understand is that we each specialize in something that's unique. So if I specialize in trauma based therapy, it does not mean that I'm a good marriage counselor, doesn't make me a good family counselor, and the inverse is true. So when we look at what the specific goal is for any kind of relationship that we have with a client, we need to keep that goal premiere in mind when we develop that relationship. There's blurred lines that come to play when, based on vulnerability and the relationship that you've built, and this is something that you commonly see in a clinical environment when you're dealing with long-term therapy, where clients will be opening themselves up in ways that make them vulnerable, exposed, and it's very easy to misassociate or misassign feelings that a client will have towards a therapist based on that vulnerability. Being in the studio isn't a whole lot different in that regard. You're in physically compromising positions, you're in incredibly intense situations under a lot of physical and emotional stress, so you feel incredibly vulnerable for those twenty, thirty minutes at a time. So the net result is, people tend to feel, when they're working out, open and extremely emotional and extremely anxious and stressed at different points, and the one person that they have contact with is their strength trainer, their instructor. So it's easy for those lines to get very blurry and it's absolutely critical for the strength training instructor to be in a position where they have clear boundaries and clear guidelines about what's appropriate, what's not, and leading that relationship. I think that you're actually really on target, I think that's pretty insightful. Whether it's twenty years of experience or whether it's something you're able to impart to people, it's important.Tim: Speaking from the client's perspective, as a client of InForm Fitness, as you mentioned Josh, it's a very intimate relationship and connection with that trainer. As you said, we're vulnerable, we're hitting muscle failure, but also the environment at InForm Fitness is conducive to building that relationship with your trainer because it's not a crowded gym. It's a very private, one-on-one situation so I guess it's incumbent on the trainer to manage where those lines are, where that blurred line stops.Josh: It is important, and those boundaries again, they're not always very clear, and there are certainly things that are critical for the client and the trainer to both bare in mind. Ultimately that is what is contributory and what is conducive to achieving the goal that my client is here for in the first place. If you have a client who walks in after having been thrown out by their spouse the night before, they're not going to be in a position, chances are, to exercise. So that may be an appropriate time to say, you're just not ready for today, and that's alright. Take a day, take as much time as you need to be able to put yourself in a position where you're ready to focus, but that's part of the boundary. Not saying, please talk to me about what it is that is going on and how can I help, but instead, staying focused on the goal and supporting the client back to what the real mission is.Sheila: Yes, people come in and they may have gone through something or they may have just received a very disturbing email or phone call or something like that, but they want to continue on their schedule because it helps them to stay feeling normal. I have had people come in and they're not revealing to me what happened, but then in the middle of the workout, you're in that really intense position, and after a couple times of exerting that, they can't hold it in anymore and they start crying because they cannot hold that emotion in anymore, because you're letting all of that energy go.Adam: This workout definitely brings out, for me and I've seen it with others, it definitely brings out your emotions. It's an emotional experience with such intensity, and if you have something going on in your life like you just mentioned Sheila, that's going to pull right on out.Sheila: We do need to be prepared to deal with situations like that, and understanding the difference between being a therapist and just being encouraging or being able to tell the difference of this person shouldn't be working out right now. Sometimes just quietly allowing them to move to the next exercise and get through it, we've had people say, thank you so much. For instance, after the last election, it was very emotional for a lot of people, and some people came in the day after. Especially in L.A, and it was like, we just took people through. They were all saying thank you, thank you for helping me to do something good for myself even though I'm really upset right now, but maybe because in L.A, everybody already has a therapist. Josh: That's different than Washington D.C. where everybody needs a therapist.Tim: For somebody who has been working out at InForm Fitness for quite some time, say with one trainer in particular. You can't help but have that relationship build. You're seeing that person every single week, you're vulnerable with them. There is a little bit of time between some of the machines and the exercises, and a good trainer, I believe, will find their client's interests and use those interests to motivate them through those exercises, so there's a connection that's made there. As in any relationship, it grows, there's ebb and flow, but do you think after a certain period of time, where it gets too comfortable, maybe it's okay or you should shift to a different trainer to kind of mix it up a little bit or start over again? What do you think about that?Josh: I think that's a healthy question to ask, but I think there is no one size fits all answer. This is really entirely dependent upon what the client is like, what their disposition is, what their needs and goals are, and then what the trainer is able to give them. So when we're talking about someone who is developing a relationship and a degree of trust, that's not really something that is easily transferable to another trainer, because we personalize that. So outside of that, when you're looking for something that's ultimately going to be most enhancing component of a relationship for a specific client, maybe it is breaking away from that personal relationship and creating something that's much more concrete and core.Adam: When you're a sole practitioner and you don't work for a company like InForm Fitness and you're the trainer, it's hard to give them to somebody else, one of your colleagues, and kind of swap out. So that's not even always an option.Josh: Particularly if your income is based on client retention.Adam: That's what you mentioned earlier before, Josh, the mindfulness of knowing when to speak, when not to speak. Knowing what to say, what not to say. They're coming in in a very emotional state. It reminded me of a client that I have whose sister passed away, and she's a client for a year. When I first met her, her dog had passed away, and I remembered how as soon as it brought it up with her, how are you doing with the dog, she'd get all teary eyed and the workout kind of suffered. Now her sister passed away about a year later, and I knew better this time. So it was interesting how I didn't say anything to her. Now here's somebody whose sister died, she comes to her workout, and I don't even give her a hug like hey, sorry, because I just know how that sets her off. It might have seemed insensitive but I think she really appreciates it because she comes in, we go in there, we work out. I don't say much, and she leaves and every once in a while, we'll talk after the workout, and I'll say next week, we'll talk about the future of her plans and stuff like that because we are friendly, and she says I'm not quite ready for this or that, she'll say. I've had a tough year. She knows I know what she's talking about, yet I've never even sent her a condolence. I know when I see it in her eyes, she looks at me when we talk about these things, that she appreciates the fact that I'm not talking about it. Sheila: I know I can be like that.Adam: This is one of those cases where you just don't bring it up. She knows you know, she knows you care, and because you care, she knows this is why you're acting this way.Tim: Well that's because of the relationship that you've build with her through the last year or so, but there might be some others that think how insensitive for them to act as though nothing has happened.Adam: Including me. I'm listening to this conversation with us right now, and I'm finally — this is like therapy for me, because I'm realizing I'm even judging myself. Like I can't believe I didn't say anything, but I just didn't feel right to say something, I don't know. Maybe it's just my own discomfort that I didn't say anything and my own avoidance. So if you're listening to this and you just listen to this podcast because you want to learn about techniques of training and health, and how exercise is related to that, so why this conversation? How is this going to help me, you might ask yourself, if I'm not a trainer or I don't have a trainer. At first, I think Josh hit on something, and that is knowing whether you should work out or not. We have somebody come in here after some kind of bad news or tragedy, and it might be too soon. I know they want to keep their schedule, I know they want to keep their routine, maybe but maybe not, you have to make that judgment as a trainer, to say to somebody, maybe today is not the day. Let's sit down, let's have a cup of coffee, no charge, let's just sit down and talk for a second and I'll see you next week. Other times, you might say to yourself as an instructor who is confronted with this particular person, say you know what, let's go in there, let's workout, let's not talk, let's just get this thing over with and do it. Let's just focus on the workout, that'd be the best thing for you. Let's face it, this is meditation. A high-intensity workout done properly — I had one client who I loved to death, he's definitely somebody I admire and has influenced me in a lot of ways. Very successful business man, has a great mental fortitude, discipline, and he knows himself, a guy I admire, and I remember him saying to me, I love this workout because it's the only time in my week that I'm concentrating on just one thing for twenty minutes, it's amazing. It's freeing for him, and I was like wow! Here's a guy who is very disciplined in his life always. He always has his stuff together, and he's saying that this is the thing that he has that keeps him totally focused on one thing and one thing only. So coming from him, that was like a big statement. So I get sometimes you might want to just do that with somebody who has all this stuff going on. I remember during a financial crisis, especially in Manhattan, I had guys that worked for [Inaudible: 00:18:53], guys that worked for Bear Sterns, coming in and I'm thinking these guys are going to cancel left and right, and gals for that matter, and they weren't. Matter of fact, they looked crappy, they looked beat up, but they came in and said, thank god I have this.Sheila: I also think it's very important to maintain — to remember that it's good to make people laugh and to feel like they're having a good time. That's how we kind of — we're like a family environment in Toluca Lake, and make people have a good time because I've recently heard, even in that Secret Life of Fat book and in some things that Gretchen Rubin's podcast and things they've done, studies that they've done about people who watch a funny movie or laugh about something, and they actually become stronger. They can maintain a little longer, so I think it's important to keep that mood fun and happy, and that's kind of what we try to do, and then the clients are competing with each other and things like that. So we try to keep that environment like a fun place so that they want to come in and they know they'll be uplifted.Adam: Good point. Levity in the face of a very intense workout can be very helpful, just not while they're in the middle of a set.Tim: Agreed. When I'm in failure, I do not need to laugh.Adam: I'm guilty of that. I think we might all be guilty of that. I am so guilty of like saying something to a client when in the middle of a set, it cracks them up and they laugh and I'm like, why did I just say that, that was the dumbest thing I just did.Tim: Agreed though. As a client coming in, I love the levity, I love the family atmosphere, that can only be achieved through connection. That's one of the reasons that I like to keep coming back, is because of that connection, those friends, that community that you instill over there at Toluca Lake and I'm sure at all of the other locations as well.Adam: Well it's important, but it's a bit of irony because it is a very intense, serious workout. Twenty minutes in and out, we're not wasting your time. It's not necessarily a coddling thing, but at the same time, we should all be excited that — first of all, as instructors we're doing incredible work and for me, it's very fulfilling to do this kind of work, very rewarding, but also it's fun. In a way, even though it's a serious workout, we're rejoicing in this fact, this idea, that we're getting incredibly strong and healthy from a twenty-minute thing. Whether it's InForm Fitness or any of the other great practitioners out there who are understanding brief intense workouts are where it's at. There is joy in that, that there is rejoicing, there is fun. We have lightening in a bottle and I almost feel like to a lot of people, it's still a secret in a way and I don't want to it to be this way, I want the whole mainstream to be understanding. In the mean time, I feel like I'm in an exclusive club, that we know something that nobody else does, but there's too much at stake to keep this a secret. So many people are not working out at all because they think they have to do everything. There's people working out too much, and listening to your advice that intensity at all costs and more is better and you got all those problems. So not only are we helping one person at a time, but wouldn't it be unbelievable if all of a sudden, as a society, the paradigm shift is what we're doing and everyone understands less is more? That would be fantastic. For the person who is listening to this that doesn't have a trainer, who is not a trainer, your emotions are important. Your emotions when you go into a workout are really important and it's okay to miss a workout if you're just not mentally up for it, that's okay. It's a once or a twice a week thing anyways, so it's not like you're not going to lose all your gain so to speak if you miss your Monday workout. As a matter of a fact, if you're an emotional wreck and you try to do it, you might lose focus, you might get hurt because you don't have the focus. It'll be a sub-par workout, it's just not something that you necessarily have to do just because it's your day and you want to keep your routine, and you don't want to think about it.Tim: So how much of this do you bring into your training when people are being certified, this component of managing the relationship.Adam: I end up talking about this stuff a lot, sometimes to the detriment of what it needs to be taught also. Sometimes two days of the workout will go by and I'll find that we talked a lot about these types of things, and then I realize oh darn, I didn't go over glycolysis with you guys did I?Sheila: One of the number one things you tell us —Adam: And that's on the test, so you need to know glycolysis here.Sheila: One of the number one things you tell us and teach us is to connect with that client. We have to connect with the client in order to understand what their needs are and to be able to design the workout for them, to make it work for them.Tim: The client, I can just speak for myself, we don't want a robotic experience so again, that's where the lines come in, the blurred lines. How close are the InForm Fitness trainers supposed to get to the clients? Would you encourage outside activities between the trainer and the client, is that something that shouldn't be approached, or is there a definite yes or no answer to something like that?Josh: I think honestly that one of the most critical things that we have to embrace at InForm Fitness, and I think this is more true than it is for conventional exercise personal trainers, is that I work with every client to teach them about mindfulness and self-awareness. This isn't just about a philosophical abstract idea of mindfulness, it is about being conscious of what is going on so that your mind controls the pattern of thought, throughout a stressful situation. So that there is judgment removed from what's going on associated with pain or discomfort, and instead, the mind is able to be focused purely on breathing. Focused on what muscles are being used, focused on the position of the shoulders relative to the hips. The goal ultimately is to create maximized performance. There's just a tremendous amount of research that's been done in the last 30 years or so about mindfulness training for top performance and top athletes. The relationship between the head and the body is overwhelming. That's something that I think we commonly understand to be true, but the mental gain, the metal component, the mental skill set of what we're trying to help InForm Fitness clients achieve is the level of awareness of what their body is doing, and a level of calm, devoid of anxiety, when they start to feel the anxiety build. When they start to feel the tension to build in their body, to be calm in the moment, to focus on letting go of the results and instead, let the results be what they are, and instead just be calm and focused on breathing, presence, and that's about it. So outside of that, I would suggest that the relationship that we build and the sort of contact that we build with our clients as Adam talks about is something that is being very conscious of the fact that we are instructors. I sort of pull back a bit when somebody refers back to me as a trainer. I'm not training anyone, I'm instructing someone on how to be calm in a time of high stress and tension. Outside of that piece, the physical benefits follow, but the mental piece has to be there at least at a basic level in order for them to build to a point, because without that, intensity can't come. In every consultation, I encourage clients to follow what I have found, and that is, this is a purely meditative and monastic time. You're in a very intimate environment where it's very calm and very peaceful, so to connect yourself with the environment such that you are focused entirely on just a handful of things, the phone, the iPad, the computer, the children, the family, the job, the dead car, all the things that are bothering us emotionally when we walk into the door, they stay at the door of the studio. They do not come in, they're not allowed. Everything in the studio is purely the relationship between the instructor and the client, and what the client is focused on doing at any given exercise.Adam: The idea of staying focused, the idea of working out when the conditions are good. Don't use the excuse not to work out every time you have a little bit of strife, then you can very easily say, I'm not in the mood today and Adam said it's okay if you're not in the mood, if you're emotionally — and then use it as an excuse not to work out. Obviously, sometimes you have to kick yourself in the pants and pull yourself from the bootstraps and say Adam, go work out. Right now. Do it, and focus, and try to be meditative. Try to block out all of that stuff, which is exactly what meditation is supposed to be also. You're focusing on one thing, and understanding that while you're working out or while you're meditating, things break through that you don't want to have break through. Acknowledge it, move on, and keep going. Bring it back, bring it back to what you're there for. Sometimes, as a trainer, we have to understand that the best thing we can do is get out of our client's way and I think sometimes we are too empathetic. We try to be more empathetic, and we end up not giving them what they need which is a really good, kick butt workout that doesn't allow all these distractions to come in, and helping them to really focus.Josh: Adam, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think what we're really looking at when we look at the example you spoke about earlier with the client who had suffered a death in the family, where you were judging yourself by not being more empathetic, not offering your sympathies for the loss. The truth is that if we're doing our jobs effectively as instructors, that's entirely placing the client's needs ahead of our own. We each have an innate need to want to sympathize, to want to offer our sympathies whenever someone suffers a loss or a stressful period of time emotionally, but the long term consequence of that is we blur those lines. When those lines and those boundaries stay clear is when I'm placing the client's needs ahead of my own, as you did by recognizing that your client is going to most benefit from not talking about something, that she talks about probably the other twenty-three and a half hours out of the day.Adam: My wife has to know this. I have to put somebody else's needs ahead of mine.Josh: The goal is making sure that you know the client well enough to understand what is going to be most conducive to getting her through a really productive workout. That's when an instructor is really showing his or her metal, when they're able to put the clients' needs ahead of their own.Sheila: And luckily, our workout is only the twenty minutes or the thirty minutes, so you can completely focus, you don't have to think about — I have to go in there for an hour and not think about this or not think about that email, phone call, or terrible thing that just happened. So that's what's so great about our workout for anybody who is listening and want to give it a try. It's just as effective and yes, it's a very cathartic thing to just say okay, for the next twenty minutes, I'm just going to focus on me.Josh: The truth is that when we talk about — rest is a good segway — when you talk to clients that you only have to work out once or twice a week, I actually suggest to clients that you may only work out once or twice a week. It's not that you don't have to do it once a week, you may not do it more than once or twice a week. So then when they walk in with any kind of emotional stress or whatever it is that's bothering them when they walk in the door, I tell them you may not bring it in here with you. This is your opportunity to not think about it, I am absolutely demanding of you that you leave this at the door. You can pick it up on the way back out, but for the thirty minutes that you're here, you're focused solely on what it is that we're doing together.Adam: Question that comes up very often with me and clients of ours. When we talk about how you shouldn't be working out so often, like once or twice a week, and each workout is twenty or thirty minutes. How do you respond to the client that says, but I need exercise for stress relief and I'm afraid once a week for that purpose is not enough. How do you respond to that saying, I want to come three, four times a week but you're telling me not to. Part of it for me anyway, they'll say, I need more exercise for stress relief. You're telling me that I shouldn't do anything else, and I can't come here more than once and it's only twenty minutes. I don't know if this is for me.Josh: I think a that's healthy question to ask, but I think that the simple answer is something that we preach very heavily at InForm Fitness and that is creating a very clear line between constitutes exercise versus what constitutes recreation. With every client, I encourage them to walk, run, bike, swim, whatever it is that they enjoy doing that provides them some physical benefits, but that's not the primary purpose behind why they do it in the first place. People who run regularly, at some point, they cease to do it purely for the physical benefits, they do it for the endorphin rush, they do it for the stress management, they do it because they disconnect from the world around them. That's good stress management, so stress management from the physical manifestations, how it builds up our blood pressure, how it builds up muscle tension. Those are all things that we can address concretely here at InForm Fitness, but recreationally, those are the things I encourage clients to deal with. If they really want to do some good stress management techniques, get outside. Go for a walk, take your dog out, take your kids out to a park. Do something that is going to provide stress management and be recreational in the process, that's good mental health.Adam: Josh, do you have trouble separating the different hats you wear? Do you find yourself acting like a psychologist with your clients from time to time, do you catch yourself?Josh: Well yes, but having said that, I think it's more of an asset for me in the long run, simply because I'm relying on my clinical expertise and education to be able to keep clients focused on what it is that I want them to do. I let my expertise and my experience influence the way that I navigate a relationship with a client, but I never sit down and say, step into my office and tell me about your mother. That's not what we're trying to do here, but I think that the point simply is in any environment, when you're working as a therapist or as an instructor, the goal is going to be to keep the client focused on the specific set of goals. In the studio with InForm Fitness, that specific set of goals is entirely about getting the absolute best performance that I can get out of the client for a thirty minute stretch at a time, so that they're deeply fatiguing the muscles and achieving a level of intensity that is appropriate for what it is that I'm asking them to do. That environment is totally different in a correctional setting or in a therapist's office or something like that, but ultimately the drive to achieving those goals, whatever those goals may be, is the same.Adam: Like I've always said, there's definitely a technology involved in training people. Like Sheila pointed out, it's so important as an instructor to make that connection. I know plenty of instructors that are technically very good, they can put somebody through an incredible workout, but the experience overall for the client is left flat. They don't feel a connection to the person that may just seem like they're just dialing it in. As good as they are. So you can be the greatest technical instructor in the world, if you're not making that connection, if you're not figuring out how to motivate, to inspire this person to do what is arguably a very, very hard thing to do, even for just twenty minutes, you're not going to succeed. You're not going to be able to really help these people because they're not going to stick with it, they're not going to want to see you. So there's definitely that psychology that's really important, so I don't want people to misunderstand that psychology isn't involved in being a good instructor. Knowing people listening, being a good listener and hearing what they're saying, but also knowing what not to say sometimes is also very important, and just to be a listener. Not to be so full of yourself, and think that you're going to be able to solve all of their problems. The best thing you can do for them, the best thing that I think I can do for them in times is like that is to really, even more so, double down on the quality of the workout at that moment, and even pull back more from a friend position. Almost like a tough love type of thing saying hey, let's go there. This is for you right now, let's just go in there and do it. Even if you're training yourself to maybe have that same attitude sometimes and let it go. When you sit down at that machine or you pick up that barbell, take a deep breath, visualize, let it go, and do the job, be in the moment and do the job.Tim: Many thanks to InForm Fitness trainer and clinical psychologist Joshua Cagney for joining us here on the InForm Fitness podcast. Hey, if you're in or around the Washington D.C. area and would like to have Joshua as your high-intensity strength trainer, head on over to informfitness.com, click on the Restin, Virginia location, and request Josh. You'll also find six other InForm Fitness locations across the country, and you'll see Adam's blog, InForm Fitness Videos, and every single episode of the InForm podcast there at informfitness.com. Okay, next week: author, award-winning podcaster, and happiness expert, Gretchen Rubin joins us here on the show. Gretchen has a new book coming out titled The Four Tendencies: Learn How to Understand Yourself Better, and Also How Influence Others More Effectively. Utilizing the Four Tendencies framework as mentioned in Gretchen's book, we'll discuss how those tendencies might affect how you approach your workout, and why exercise is an important component to happiness. And one last thing before I let you go. Remember, here in May 2017, we are giving away a personally autographed copy of Adam's book, Power of Ten: The Once a Week Fitness Revolution, InForm Fitness apparel in the form of a hat, T-Shirt, and a hoodie jacket, and a device to listen to all the InForm Fitness podcasts, Amazon books, Audiobooks and more, using the Alexa voice service. I'm talking about the Amazon Echo, and if you haven't seen the Amazon Echo yet, check out the link in the show notes for a full description and even videos explaining what it does and how it works. This is a really cool prize pack, worth over two hundred bucks. Okay, so what do you have to do? Step one, leave InForm Fitness a review here in iTunes or on Facebook, Google Plus, Yelp, and even Amazon. If you do, you'll receive a free training session at an InForm Fitness location nearest you. Step two, take a screenshot and email your review to podcast@informfitness.com. That will be your entry into the grand prize drawing for the all the items I just mentioned, so here are the rules. You can only receive one free training session for your review, however, you can get an entry into the grand prize drawing for each review that you submit, thereby dramatically increasing your chances to win. For instance, if you leave us a review here in iTunes and then one in Yelp and Facebook, you only get one free training session, but three free entires into the grand prize, but you better get on it. You must emails to us by 11:59PM Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 31st to qualify for the free session and the grand prize. The winner will be announced on our Monday, June 5th episode here on the InForm Fitness podcast. So good luck, and thanks again for joining us. For Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and Adam Zickerman of InForm Fitness, I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network.

relationships amazon power google new york times washington dc psychology clients manhattan trainers ipads focused twenty earn audiobooks fat utilizing acknowledge yelp t shirts secret life inform comif clinical psychologists gretchen rubin amazon echo google plus grand prize four tendencies ext levity mike rogers inaudible free session tim edwards toluca lake josh it tim well bear sterns adam so adam well josh well tim so josh adam tim for inform fitness inbound podcasting network sheila melody

25 Adam's 90 Day Transformation

The Partner Channel Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2017 36:49

Adam Zickerman discusses his 90-day journey of religiously dedicating himself to following a ketogenic diet here in Episode 25 of the InForm Fitness Podcast. Adam reveals the challenges of sticking to the ketogenic diet along with some misconceptions and the dramatic results.Here is a link to the website Adam mentions in this episode: http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/ketosis-advantaged-or-misunderstood-state-part-i Don't forget 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 Reston.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 transcript to the entire episode is below: Adam: You know when you're wearing clothes, my lean muscular build, it's hard to know that I was getting a little bit of a spare tire underneath them, but I was getting a little bit of a spare tire, but besides that, there were two things. One, my chronic back problems which you covered last episode, and I wanted to do whatever I could to ameliorate these back issues. Consistent and safe back exercises are one of them, and the other thought I had was maybe my diet is affecting my back, because I was reading a lot about the typical American diet and it's inflammatory. I'm thinking I might have an inflammation issue going, my back keeps going into spasm, it's probably chronically inflamed. If I can not only exercise my back properly but maybe reduce my chronic inflammation, that might be my answer. Tim: InForm Nation, welcome to episode 25 of the InForm Fitness podcast. Twenty minutes with New York Times bestselling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network and a client of InForm Fitness. Joined as always by Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and of course Adam Zickerman. Okay team, at the time of this recording, spring has just sprung, summer is just a few months away, and I'm sure a good portion of InForm nation is already thinking about summer which means they're thinking about slimming down a little or in some cases a lot, so dieting is on their minds. We've all heard of, and I'm sure participated, in at least a few nutrition plans, like the paleo diet, the Atkin's diet, or the one that I really enjoyed a few years ago was the slow carb diet from Tim Ferris. Most recently I had tremendous success by just eating cleanly as you describe Adam in chapter three of your book, Power of Ten: The Slow Motion Fitness Revolution.So Adam, you visited LA. just a few months ago when we recorded the Adam in LaLa Land episode and frankly, you looked extremely fit. So in the last episode, you mentioned that we're going to talk about a diet that you've been on for the last X amount of days, and my question is why did you even consider going on a diet in the first place because you don't look like you need to go on one.Adam: I picked up a few lessons from my female friends and I know how to dress to hide it.Tim: You wear Spanx, that's what you're telling me?Mike: Spanx and New York black. Everyone in New York knows how to hide it.Adam: Hide our emotions.Tim: You don't hide your emotions in New York, come on.Adam: The people in L.A want to hide their emotions.Tim: We're the passive aggressive ones.Sheila: Oh no, we want to talk about our emotions.Tim: That's down in the south where they're passive aggressive, but anyway, we digress. You mentioned the diet, and here's a guy, the guru, the InForm Fitness and you're fit. So what prompted you to go on a diet?Adam: I'm so glad you asked me that question, because you know the other question I get asked in a similar vein is why do you work out Adam, you look great. Sheila: You say because I never want to look like you.Adam: That just reminded me of something Yogi Bear once said. Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, it's always too crowded. So listen, why did I go on this diet. Well first of all, diets are not always about weight loss, fat loss. Diets are about health, or they should be. Now I know that anyone who goes on a diet, their number one concern is I want to lose body fat, which is a noble goal because being overweight has health problems associated with it. Now I did want to lose a little weight first of all, because I always said that I hide it well half-jokingly, because the other half, I did need to lose a couple of pounds and it is true that when you're wearing clothes, my lean muscular build, it's hard to know that I was getting a little bit of a spare tire underneath them, but I was getting a little bit of a spare tire, but besides that, there were two things. One, my chronic back problems which you covered last episode, and I wanted to do whatever I could to ameliorate these back issues. Consistent and safe back exercises are one of them, and the other thought I had was maybe my diet is affecting my back, because I was reading a lot about the typical American diet and it's inflammatory. I'm thinking I might have an inflammation issue going, my back keeps going into spasm, it's probably chronically inflamed. If I can not only exercise my back properly but maybe reduce my chronic inflammation, that might be my answer. So for years, I've been reading about the ketogenic diet, and for years I was poo-pooing it.Tim: Why?Adam: Because I had a vast misunderstanding about what a ketogenic diet was. Basically using ketones for fuel. I'll get into what a ketone is a little bit later, but my understanding of ketones was when your body is using ketones for fuel, or if you're producing a lot of ketones, I always understood that to be very dangerous. In my mind without realizing it, I was really thinking about what they call ketoacidosis, which is much different than nutritional ketosis, using ketones for fuel from a nutritional point of view, as opposed to something very dangerous called ketoacidosis. That was where the confusion comes in. Whenever you talk to a doctor or a nutritionist and say I want to go into ketosis, they say it's dangerous, and being in ketoacidosis is very dangerous but you cannot go into ketoacidosis just by eliminating carbohydrates or going to what they call nutritional ketosis. Ketoacidosis, let me explain what that it is. It usually afflicts people with Type I diabetes. Type I diabetics cannot produce insulin, and when you cannot produce insulin, when you eat carbohydrates, the sugar starts building up and building up, and what happens is the body can't utilize that sugar, because the insulin is not there to use that sugar and bring it into the fat cells and the muscle cells, or bring it into any cell that needs that for energy. So the body, if it can't get glucose for energy, it starts metabolizing fat for fuel. That's where it's going to get it's energy from, and it starts going crazy producing these ketones. You see ketones come from fat, the metabolism of fat. An alternative sense of energy for the body are ketones, fat gets broken down into ketones, carbohydrates get broken down into glucose and when the body breaks down carbohydrates for glucose and those glucose molecules can't be used, the body will say okay, let me go break down some body fat, get some ketones out of it, and utilize that for fuel. So it's another source of currency if you will, and if you're a Type I diabetic, your body goes crazy producing these ketones and you end up having so many ketones that you go into an acidic state, a dangerously acidic state where basically all functions of the body cannot produce and cannot function when you're in such a high acidic state. In other words, we have to have a pH level that's very, very stable, like about normal, about 7. Our pH is about 7, that's the normal functioning pH of the human body. When you start having all these ketones that start going through the roof — ketones are acidic by the way, and ketones that are not being checked or regulated, start going through the roof and you are in a very dangerous state. So a Type I diabetic can very often go into ketoacidosis and they have to go the hospital, they have to get the injections, and usually it's a diabetic that's not taking care of themselves. You cannot go into that acidic state being in what I have been in the last ninety days which is called nutritional ketosis. Nutritional ketosis is a state in where you body instead of using glucose for fuel, not because there's no insulin, but because you're not eating anything that's going to produce a lot of glucose, your body says well I need energy, so I'm going to start using fat for fuel. Every cell cannot use actual fat for energy, they have to break down the fat. Just like we have break down carbohydrates for glucose, we have to break down fat, and we're breaking them down into fat and these ketone bodies are being used for fuel. Well there's a lot of evidence right now that's showing that these ketogenic diets which are to break it down into macronutrients about 70-75% fat, about 10% protein, maybe 15% protein, and then the rest which is about 5% carbohydrates.Tim: Now immediately, red flags are flying all over when you say the diet is made up of 75% fat. Now let's drill down on that a little bit more. We're not talking cheeseburgers.Adam: Well we're not talking cheeseburgers with the bread, but we are talking cheeseburgers. I will have red meat, I will have cheese. Red meat has to be grass fed, not this factory raised cow. So the quality of the foods that you're eating is also very important, so I eat grass fed beef and beef, the fat in the beef is very good for you. What you have to be careful of, this is what I realized and this is a very common mistake that people make on ketogenic diets, that they think it's a high fat, high protein diet, but it's not really high protein. Having too much protein can actually produce an insulin response or produce sugar, because protein can be converted into glucose, it's called gluconeogenesis, and it can be almost as bad as actually eating carbohydrates. A lot of people will eliminate their carbohydrates and they'll end up having tons of red meat, which is a lot of protein.Tim: That sounds like the Atkin's diet to me.Sheila: That's what I was just going to say.Adam: The Atkin's diet, in essence, a ketogenic diet and the misinterpretation of the Atkin's diet of a ketogenic diet is that the image is like a bunch of caveman sitting around gnawing on a dead animal or something like that and just eating fat and bacon and protein all day long. It's not like that, it's mostly vegetables that are saturated in fat like olive oil, or coconut oil or avocado oil. Salads that are doused in that kind of fat, so getting vegetables or other types of oils and avocados in general, grass fed meat, pasture raised chickens, eggs, and of course wild fish. That is my diet, and it's not like I'm eating tons of meat. I'm eating six ounces of a steak, I'm eating tons of brussel sprouts that have been roasted in coconut oil.Tim: All sounds good to me so far.Sheila: Probably 85% of the time I eat exactly what you just described.Adam: I committed to eating this way without exception for ninety days. I started at the beginning of this year. Here we are. Tim: Where are you now at the time of this recording?Adam: It's a coincidence but I am literally, today, on my 90th day. It started January 3rd, which is a Tuesday. So I don't know if it's the 90th day, but I just finished my twelfth week starting January 3 and this is a Tuesday. So today is the last day of my twelfth week.Mike: I don't think 90 is divisible by seven.Tim: Well he's close.Mike: I've got my advocates in the corner there.Tim: So nonetheless, let's review.Adam: By the way, at the beginning I said why I did this. I thought it'd help my back, anti inflammatory. Ketogenic diets are well suspected to be anti-inflammatory. The second reason why I wanted to do this diet was because I had my annual checkup and I'm in my early 50s now, but 50s nonetheless, and my blood work is creeping the wrong way. They're starting to get on the high side of normal.Tim: Let me ask you, is that prior to going on the diet?Adam: Prior to going on the diet, I had my annual checkup and the results came in and he said to me hey, nothing to be alarmed about at this point but you're trending the wrong way. You're C-reactive protein is creeping which is an inflammatory marker, and he said your cholesterol is creeping up, it's not too high per se but it's on the higher side of normal. My A1C which is an indicator of your blood sugar was creeping up again on a high side of normal. I was like wow. These are all things that indicate that I'm going towards what many Americans go towards which is metabolic syndrome. It reminded me the same situation that Dr. Peter Attia, his story when he started his quest on ketogenic diets, and he was in the same situation. He worked out all the time, he thought he ate well most of the time. We think eating well is eating whole grain breads, and fruits, and occasionally what's so bad about having a beer here and there, and next thing you know, in a day you're still ingesting 250 grams of carbohydrates without even thinking about it. So he started taking control of it as well, and when I saw that my blood numbers were going up and then I read what Dr. Attia went through as well, I was like holy cow that's me. So that also prompted me, I wanted to see if going on a ketogenic diet would change these numbers. Well this is the 90th day so I'm about to get those numbers checked, so I'm going to report back on this but when I can talk about now is how I feel. Tim: Let's start with your back.Adam: And what has happened. First of all my back, in combination with what I've been doing with my lower back exercises and staying consistent with that, my back has never felt better. I can sit for hours in a car, or I can sit for hours at my desk, and get up sideways.Tim: And you're giving this ketogenic diet credit for assisting with that.Adam: First of all, I'm a sample size of one, so this is scientific at all, but I am giving it credit. That in conjunction with taking care of my back with the exercises. So I don't know where the cause and effect is because I've been doing a couple of things at once, but the big teller is going to be obviously the blood work that I get done soon. Besides that and besides the fact that my back feels better, I've lost fifteen pounds of weight that you didn't think that I needed to lose. So I look a lot better naked now, so I don't have to wear clothes anymore. I don't have to wear a T-Shirt to the pool anymore.Mike: You know when your body gets a little bit smaller, it gives the illusion that other things are bigger.Adam: You have that as well. Big thing that I noticed was my digestion. My digestion changed dramatically. I don't have upset stomach, my elimination if you know what I'm talking about has been undramatic, it's been beautiful.Sheila: It's a beautiful thing.Tim: Well your good friend Dr. Oz would be proud of that.Mike: Maybe this will get edited out, maybe it won't, but I'm just curious. What does beautiful mean? Tim: That actually is so it will not be edited out, so describe beautiful? You mean like one clean long — Adam: Exactly, tapered on both ends, perfect.Tim: Dr. Oz was his thing right?Adam: It's embarrassing, especially since you're talking about me.Mike: You don't sound like you're embarrassed.Adam: I am. You've got to remember that this is someone who is too shy to urinate in front of his wife. Mike: I'm going to remind you that you're the one who is talking about himself right now. Tim: So nonetheless there's a lot of fiber in this diet and it's really helping Adam a lot, so good.Sheila: That's really, really very interesting and I want to ask a question about is there a difference in how women react to this diet as opposed to how men react to this diet? Coming off that interview we had a few weeks ago with Dr. Sylvia Tera and The Secret Life of Fat, and how different men and womens' makeup is and how we process fat and everything. It sounds like something I'd like to try, and I feel like I've been kind of doing this for the most part.Tim: I think she's committing, I think she should jump on 90 days.Adam: I'm not sitting here saying everyone should jump on the ketogenic diet bandwagon first of all. I need to make that disclaimer. First of all, women are different and we're all different. I'm different from another man, and women certainly have their issues. When you talk about nutrient partitioning and that no matter what you eat, some of it is going to be partitioned to fat. Hormonal issues with women as they get older, all kinds of things. Genetics for men and women are different amongst ourselves and all these things play into it for sure, but having said that, sugar is bad. Sugar is bad, sugar is inflammatory. There is nothing good that comes out of sugar and excessive carbohydrates. I don't believe being in ketosis is dangerous anymore, and this idea of eating a lot of fat, even if it's saturated fat, especially if it's saturated fat, is not bad for you. It's been shown over and over again that dietary fat does not raise your cholesterol, so just check that box off. It's not true, it is just not true that eating egg yolks and eating red meat raises your cholesterol, that is not what is raising your cholesterol. The last ten, fifteen years have been really showing that. My blood work will show this, if I go to my blood work and my cholesterol is through the roof I'm going to have to eat my words. It might even be another cause of it, but the thing is if all my triglycerides are good and inflammatory makers are lowered and my cholesterol happens to stay on a higher side, and everything else is really, really good, I'm not going to worry about high cholesterol. High cholesterol, high LDLs are not a very good marker on heart disease.Mike: On its own.Adam: On its own. Now there's this other test that Dr. Attia actually told me to get which is an NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance test, to test for your LDLP. See when you go to the doctor and you get your cholesterol and blood work done, you're getting blood work for your LDLC. LDLC is how much cholesterol, low density cholesterol is in your blood, whereas the LDLP is showing you how many LDL proteins are in your blood. I'm getting technical right now, but it's a different marker and a much better marker and indicator of potential heart disease, this LDLP. So I'm going to get that done, and see if my LDLP is nice and low, and if that is, regardless of what my LDLC is or total cholesterol is, I'm not going to be worrying about it. Again, my A1C, my C reactive protein, these markers, if they stat going down after ninety days of eating, I'm not kidding you, 70% of my diet being fat, I'll be pretty convinced. At least for myself. Let me tell you about my experience psychologically.Tim: I'm curious how you managed this, because it seemed like a lot of drastic changes.Adam: This is why I'm not necessarily telling people to just go on this ketogenic diet. First of all, I'm not a nutritionist, I just play one on TV. So I'm a nutritionist, secondly, I'm not going to lie, it's not easy to adjust to this type of diet. If you're used to eating grains and carbohydrates — I'm essentially a vegetarian that is saturating their vegetables with saturated fat and all kinds of fats, and having small portions of animal protein, whether it be a chicken or a fish or a cow, all well raised, but they're small quantities. I'm not eating a lot. I'm also intermittent fasting. I'll go at least two or three times a week, I'll go anywhere from eighteen to twenty four hours without eating. I'll be drinking lots of liquids, I'll be drinking homemade beef broth or chicken broth, and that's it. So that's all I eat, one meal all day.Tim: So tell us your schedule Adam. So with this intermittent fasting, what time are you stopping eating at the end of the day?Adam: I'll eat dinner.Tim: At what time?Adam: Anywhere between five and seven most days. So let's say I finish eating seven. I won't eat again until at least two or three o'clock the next day. On some cases I won't eat again until dinner the next day.Mike: When you work as much as we do, I've got to be honest with you, time flies and you sometimes forget about food. I'm not as strict as Adam is, but I'm probably doing about 85% or 90% of what he is doing in regards to the ketogenic model, and the fasting model without even trying to.Adam: We work a lot and that speaks to one of the techniques that people recommend to help you through these intermittent fasts and that's distraction techniques. So when your mind keeps saying eat, eat, eat, distract yourself, pick up your guitar, write a letter, do something else. Distract yourself. A lot of this hunger by the way, is psychological, we're just not used to it mentally, but besides that, at the beginning, your body is physically wanting that food but once you start utilizing your fat for fuel and you become what they call keto-adapted where your body is primed to really use fat for fuel, and that takes a couple of weeks. Three weeks, four weeks sometimes. The first there or four weeks was the toughest because I was not adapted yet, so I was very hungry. Now, well it's 4:30 and I haven't eaten yet today. Last time I ate was dinner time around five yesterday.Mike: That's a lie, he had two celery sticks from me.Adam: That's true, it's two celery sticks so I broke my fast. Honestly I grabbed them because they were there, it was not because I was dying to eat something, and if I was dying to eat something, I certainly wouldn't have picked that.Sheila: When you say you're fasting, so you mentioned the broth though. So you have that when you're fasting, or you just have nothing, you have water.Adam: I have water mostly, but yeah, we serve bone broth here, we're making our own bone broth now. We can talk about that at a later date, but yeah, that doesn't count as cheating. It's 99.9% water, it just has the minerals and the amino acids in it. So I don't consider that really cheating, but come on. Even if I was to have a small meal, the gist of it is going long periods of time without eating, and that from my understanding is the real anti-inflammatory aspect. I mean sugar causes inflammation, and eating a lot also causes inflammation because you're breaking down all this stuff and getting all these free radicals and all this oxidative work going on, and that's what causes a lot of the inflammation. Now I'm reading and I'm learning that intermittent fasting forces the body to regenerate its cells at a lot faster of a rate. There's something to that.Sheila: I also read that an easier way to do the intermittent — well, for a sixteen hour fast that you can basically do is just stop eating at seven, and then don't eat again until eleven AM. That's sixteen hours.Adam: Basically skipping breakfast.Tim: A lot of people do that anyway.Adam: But this is the problem with intermittent fasting. When I go 24 hours, I'm hungry by then. A lot of people say they can go days without eating and these are people that are really and truly keto-adapted, maybe they've been doing it for a year or more. I don't know, but so far, I haven't been able to go more than seventeen hours without all of a sudden having all those hunger pains, and at that point I just deal with it for another few hours. At that point, when I do eat, this is the hard part. You have to eat a regular, small meal. Tim: No binging.Adam: It's so easy when you're famished like that and you've gone all day without eating, it's like you want to eat lunch, breakfast, dinner, and snacks all at one time in one sitting. You have to stop yourself from doing that.Mike: That's probably one of the differences to what was going on even before you did this 90-day thing. Our lifestyle really lent itself to — none of us eat that many carbohydrates ever. Adam hasn't for a while, but when you were, you probably — I'm just guessing because you're like me, I do these all day fasts also. If I don't have some snacks or prepare my food throughout the day as I did this week, I will come home and I will eat like seven pieces of chicken and I'm not proud of it afterwards. Unless you can control that voracious urge, you're not going to get what Adam is talking about here.Tim: So Adam, as we come to end of this episode, I really would love you to encourage you to get those tests done quickly, and if you don't mind, share some of them with our audience so that we can gauge your success. The question that I have for you right now as we put the wraps on this is okay, we're close to or at day 90. Are you going to continue and forge ahead with the exact same plan that you've had for the last three months or so, are you going to augment it a little bit, what are your plans?Adam: I'm going to continue, I'm going to stay on this. I might eat a little bit more often at this point, because I don't really need to lose anymore body fat. I've got the six pack going for the summer, that's all good.Tim: Look at you, he's in his 50s and he has a six pack, that's impressive.Sheila: Do you drink coffee, can I ask that?Adam: I drink coffee. Let me speak to something Mike just said. He was saying that we're generally very good about not eating carbs, and that's partially true, with me anyway. What I mean by that is I have two young kids and I grab the M&Ms. My wife buys five-pound bags of them so she can make pancakes for the kids. Don't get me started, my wife will not let me put my kids on a ketogenic diet.Mike: My wife is a nutritionist and she would never let it happen either.Adam: Because they're afraid of ketoacidosis, but anyway what I wanted to say was this. My diet before I started this, yes, I'd go three or four days really good, and then I'll eat a whole pizza. I would never really string along many consistent weeks or days. I'd eat well one day, not very much the other day, summers come, barbecue, hotdogs, hamburgers, I just went for it. I can get away with it. You said at the beginning of this piece, Adam you don't look like you need to lose weight, why'd you start this diet? I was creeping up, and even though it appears that I eat very well, and I obviously eat well most of the time. I certainly eat good foods but I also supplement them with not such good stuff. This last 90 days, I made a commitment not to deviate from that, to be really consistent with it. Yes it's higher fat than I would normally do when I did eat well. Less protein than I would normally — that's what I learned about a ketogenic diet, that most people make the primary mistake of eating too much protein on a ketogenic diet, and so this has been the first time in my life that I've been this disciplined in my eating. I'm older now, I can't get away with what I used to get away with. The other thing that I want to say before we wrap this up is about cravings. I always hear about how you go on these low carb diets and when your body starts getting used to and primed for utilizing fat for fuel, they say you eliminate all your cravings. Bullshit. To me anyway. Maybe the physical cravings aren't there and I told you I could go all day and not really be hungry, but the truth of the matter is, I'm craving the foods that I've been giving up nonstop. To this day, 90 days into it give or take, I still crave the pizza. I still see my kids eating the pizza, I still see the buns on the hamburgers and I want it, I want it bad. I say no, the cravings are there. Maybe the physical cravings aren't there as much.Tim: What do you mean by physical cravings, define that.Adam: My stomach growling and saying man you're hungry, you've got to eat. Or feeling a little lightheaded, or physically feeling the effects of hunger. Now that I'm keto-adapted I don't have those physical — when I'm 24 hours in I start to feel them, but eighteen hours fasts, it's a no-brainer for me, it's as easy as it could be. Even though those physical things aren't there, I pass a pizza place, I pass chicken wings at the Superbowl, hot dogs at the baseball game. Beer, alcohol, I want it all, those cravings have not subsidized. I don't look at them and say ew. I want it badly, but I don't do it.Sheila: It's easier to not do it.Adam: So going forward, I'm going to continue my strict ketogenic diet for at least another 30 days. I might eat a little bit more food, but not the foods I'm not supposed to be having on a ketogenic diet. The foods I can have, add a little bit to my portions, but that's the extent of it for the next thirty days. By that point, I'll have my blood work done and we'll talk about this some more.Mike: I just think before we wrap up, I think blood tests aside, that's data that we all need. It's great to get all that stuff, but the bottom line is you've taken an educated approach to selfexperimentation and troubleshooting your body to figure out how to improve it, and your back has felt better. Do we know it's because of the ketogenic diet, maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but regardless you're in a trend where you feel so much better. Your body feels better, your back feels better. You like the way you look, you feel, it's like I almost want to say — if the tests are completely negative or there's no improvement or any markers have been changed, who cares. Looking at someone who looks healthy also. They say that they feel great but they don't look healthy, but this is not the case.Adam: Like vegans. First of all, I want to say that this is not a ringing endorsement or a push for people to go ketogenic. I'm not going to be that bull at this point to say something like that. It's definitely a viable option, and before you go into something like this, check with your doctor and do a lot of research, because compared to the recommendations by the ADA, the American Diet Association, this is not what's recommended. I want to make this disclaimer. Look into it for sure, do your research. If it sounds like you, if I sounded like you, definitely look into it. Like Mike just said, I'm very well researched. I have a background in biochemistry, I know how to read these things. I'm a little bit different than your average bear when it comes to this type of thing. If you're not in that world, you should get advice when you do something like this.Sheila: Can you give us a starting point?Adam: Yeah, I do, I recommend the doctor that I mentioned earlier. Dr. Peter Attia, and his website is called the eating academy. Read everything this guy writes, and he also refers you to other things he reads so that is a great start. The eating academy by Dr. Peter Attia. So if you're interested in possibly doing this for yourself, well pay attention to our podcast, we're going to be reporting back on this in a little while when I get my blood work back and we'll take it from there. Good luck.Tim: Okay. So don't forget to check out the show notes for a link to the website that Adam referenced, spotlighting the research done by Dr. Peter Attia. That's eatingacademy.com. Looking forward to the results of Adam's blood work to gauge the success of his three-month ketogenic dietary journey, and we should have that for you coming up in the next few weeks. Also on the way, we have a couple of interviews that we're really excited about here at the InForm Fitness Podcast. In two weeks, we'll be speaking with happiness expert, Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen has authored several books and has sold more than two million copies in thirty different languages. She has been a client of InForm Fitness for many years, and she has a popular podcast of her own, titled Happier with Gretchen Rubin. So give it a listen and even subscribe to her podcast so you can become more familiar with Gretchen before she joins us here on the show, and in the process, pick up some valuable tips on being, well, happier. Next week, we'll be talking to Dr. Martin Gaballa, the author of the One Minute Workout. Adam and Dr. Gaballa will contrast and compare high-intensity strength training like we do here at InForm Fitness, and high-intensity interval training, as described in Dr. Gaballa's book, The One Minute Workout. If you'd like to find an InForm Fitness location nearest you so you can give this high-intensity strength training workout a try for yourself, please visit informfitness.com and at the time of this recording, we have locations in Manhattan, Port Washington, Danville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg, and in Restin. If you aren't near an InForm Fitness location, you can always pick up Adam's book via Amazon: Power of Ten, The Once a Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. Included in the book are several exercises that support this protocol that you canIf you aren't near an InForm Fitness location, you can always pick up Adam's book via Amazon: Power of Ten, The Once a Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. Included in the book are several exercises that support this protocol that you can actually perform on your own at a gym nearest you. We'll have a link to Adam's book in the show notes as well. Thanks again for listening, and for Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and Adam Zickerman of InForm Fitness, I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network.Thanks again for listening, and for Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and Adam Zickerman of InForm Fitness, I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network.

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Create an Ecosystem; Don't Become a Commodity

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2017 23:31

Jen: Hi, everybody. Welcome to "The Allbound Podcast." I'm Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Allbound. And today, I am joined by Tim Harmon, Managing Director at Nuvello. Welcome, Tim. Tim: Well, thank you, Jen. How are you? Jen: I'm doing great. I'm loving living in Arizona in February. It is gorgeous. So my apologies to any listener who is knee-deep in snow right now. Come on out to Phoenix. It's beautiful. You know, Tim, so glad to have you here on this podcast. You know, most people in the channel space know you as being a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. But then, earlier this year, you announced this new endeavor, that you've launched a new analyst consulting firm called Nuvello. So this is really exciting for us in the channel technology space. Tell us more. What's this all about? Tim: Well, it is. I did leave Forrester in January and I am building Nuvello, which is essentially a new type of analyst consulting community and a new type of analyst consulting network really focused very much on channels. When I say network, the reason I use that term is because I don't profess to do everything that's knowingly in the Nuvello vision or plan all by my lonesome. And there are a plethora of very, very good and sharp independent channel consultants, I think, across the globe, and the intention is to bring them into the Nuvello network and to, in essence, create a more, you know, concerted analyst and consulting capability for, you know, both the chan-tech vendors that are attempting to support the primary target in our channel professionals. Now, I use, also, the term, community. So the reason I did that is because the tech vendors themselves are going to have, hopefully, a lot of involvement in Nuvello. I'll just give you one example. I have believed for a long time myself that some tech vendors, a lot of tech vendors create a wealth of very good content, educational, you know, content. And I saw what you guys published in the last couple of weeks in terms of your own study and benchmark. I think that's a great example. So we want to source tech vendors' content to nuvello.com. You know, you could consider, for example, Jen, yourself, as another [inaudible 00:03:35] channel for your content, where, you know, Nuvello will ultimately, hopefully, become the ultimate go-to resource or channel professionals and practitioners, you know, for knowledge, tools, and benchmarks. Jen: I think that's great. I mean, I know...I was speaking with one of the product marketing managers over at Salesforce a couple of months ago, and he was asking me, you know, "Where do people go to learn about, you know, channels sales and marketing? Where do they go to [inaudible 00:04:07] best practices and hear, you know, from each other?" You know, and I looked at him, I said, "Well, we're trying to create that ourselves, right?" So there hasn't been, really, a really strong kind of third-party resource for a channel professional to consume, you know, current content. So I think it's awesome. I think it's a really great resource that this community truly needs. Tim: Well, thanks. You know, so combined with, you know, the knowledge content that Nuvello produces and the Nuvello network produces along with that the tech vendors produce, a lot of it is...well, in fact, all of it, for 2017, is going to be, you know, free. And, you know, ultimately, if we get to the point maybe next year where, you know, some of the Nuvello research, you know, might be, out [inaudible 00:05:17] associate with it, it's still gonna be, you know, very, very inexpensive. We're targeting companies really $50 million and above in revenue. So, again, one of the goals of Nuvello is to reach what we call the mass mid-market, which is different than other approaches, you know, taken in the industry. Jen: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, I have you here. I wanna pick your brain about a couple of topics related to channel and related to, you know, sales and marketing technology. The first is that, you know, you've been, over the years, very passionate about the fact that far too many channel organizations underutilize technology and enablement and growth of their channel partners. So, you know, I wanna dig in a little bit. What have you seen or what have you experienced that's particularly concerning about this? Tim: So I had the opportunity...just giving you an example, Jen. I had the opportunity, a couple weeks ago, to moderate a panel at a channels conference. And one of the things that I did, I ran it kinda like a jeopardy game, at least [inaudible 00:06:33] beginnning. I asked, you know, digital transformation, you know, and so that was the answer. You know, what is the question? And you could well imagine that, you know, the three panelists came up with three, you know, quite different definitions for digital transformation, which tends, you know, to be the watch word of 2017, right, 2016, not [inaudible 00:06:55]. When I drilled down with folks that I'm working with and this particular topic comes up, it usually winds up being in the area of how we are going to, you know, change some of our process, just automate those process who's using modern technology for our customers. Almost always the case. It never comes up that we want to apply some of this digital transformation-thinking to our channel partners. Now, what's ironic, though, is that if you...I mean, the same sort of benefits could be realized, right? So why do you want to affect digital transformation capability for your customers? To have more loyal customers, right, to have them do more business with you, to have them spread the word as advocates. You know, the same exact benefits and results can occur if you apply those sorts of principals and techniques and technologies to your channel ecosystem as well, more loyalty, more loyal channel partners, more invested channel partners, bigger advocates of what you do. And the very few examples I've seen of tech vendors and manufacturers and other B2B companies that have made this sort of chan-tech investment have reaped big benefits in doing so in terms of, you know, loyalty, productivity, and/or advocacy. Jen: I think it's a really great...actually a great bridge to...I wanted to ask you next about customer success. And you've sort of hinted about, you know, building advocates and evangelists some under your channel partner group in SaaS in particular. When you think about like those $50-million, you know, fast growing mid-market organizations looking at channel, a lot of those players are gonna be software as a service organization. There's a lot of talk in the SaaS industry about customer's success, you know, evolving beyond just like client services or support. So can you share a little bit about where do you think channel sales and customer success either have been or need to intersect, you know, like today and then moving forward into the future? Tim: And it's a great question. One of the things that I would kind of warn against is there is...and I've heard there's starting to be a slight little backlash, for example, the managed services provider segment of the channel industry. The very reason is that customers are saying, "You know, we had a three-year contract with you and we never saw you," right? "You know, you may have done a good job but, you know, there's someone else that's come along with greater economies at scale who can do the same, apply the same service at a lower price." And you drive yourself into a commodity type of a business environment, which is where I think most SaaS vendors and most channel partners don't want to be. So, you know, I think channel partners have a vital role in, you know, kind of what their original purpose was. And one of the original purposes was that they had reached into segments of the market. And I'm talking about physical live face-to-face reach in the segments of the market that a tech vendor perhaps did not. And, you know, automation is great. You know, digital transformation is great. But I think, you know, channel partners have to maintain that personal relationship and that full life cycle enablement of technology solutions from, you know, building the business case to, you know, driving adoption that is ultimately what's going to make the difference between customer success or not. Jen: That's a really great point. I think, you know, the key that I see there is continual collaboration, you know, between the vendor nor the supplier and those partners. As those partners have that face time with those customers, ensuring that that knowledge is transferred from the partner back up to the supplier. You know, typically, when we talk about knowledge transfer challenges, we tend to be a little short-sighted and think about it only from the perspective of how do I get all of this information about my product to my partners versus also looking at how do I get feedback and how do I get, you know, consumption information from customers via partners back up to, you know, the supplier who's creating the product. So... Tim: Yeah, I think that's a key point, Jen. Most solutions, I think, today going forward are going to be ecosystem-delivered and supported solutions, right? So it's not that, you know, a tech vendor...I mean, you know, you turn back the calendar five years and there was this great fear that cloud software as a service was going to disintermediate the intermediaries, right? Who needs the channel partner? But that's turned out not to be the case. And, you know, the solutions are so involved and, you know, have so many tentacles even beyond the software aspect itself that you need to have all of your ecosystem forces aligned so that it appears to be an ecosystem of one entity even though it's really not. And that's, I think, where technology can really benefit. And it's absolutely required to provide one aligned phase to the customer where multiple ecosystem parties actually maybe involved in delivering value to the customer. Jen: You know, one of the questions I get asked by a lot of CEOs at SaaS startups, you know...people are listening to this podcast or they're consuming content and they're talking to their colleagues about, you know, building these ecosystems, and a lot of them say, you know, "When do I start to build a channel partner program? Like, is there a certain revenue size I need to be at? Is there a certain gross stage I should be at?" You know, I'm curious. Like, you know, what do you think? You know, for a company who's just thinking about going to market via a channel partner program, is there a better or a best time for them to actually execute? Any words or wisdom that you have? I know a lot of our listeners are more emerging companies. Maybe they're not at that like $50-million a year stage yet. You know, what advice can you give them? Tim: Well, and so that $50-million number is kind of, you know, the magic mark, right? I think that's when most companies do start to consider channels. And I think the reality is that most companies wait too late to start building their channels strategy and their channel programs. And they only do that when they see, you know, this revenue curves begin to flatten out a little bit. They wanna keep it going in a true northerly direction. I actually think that companies should probably start, well, I would say at the $20-million market peak mark. But, you know, if it was me, if I was the CEO of a SaaS startup, I'd start from day one. I'd have channel be part of my strategy. I don't know if you ever, you know, watch "Shark Tank" on [inaudible 00:15:12] or if any of the audience, but one of the common questions, you know, that Robert or Kevin or Mark will ask is, "What is your distribution strategy?" You know, and these are pretty small companies on "Shark Tank." So I think there's a lesson to be learned from that. Jen: Yeah, you know, and I like to take a page out of [inaudible 00:15:37], you know, she asks, "How does your customer want to buy?" And I think, you know, that's something that I'll always kind of go back to those CEOs and say, you know, "How are people buying your product now? How are you supporting them right now? You know, what's working for you in this direct environment? And make the channel an extension, a natural extension of what you're already currently doing." And, you know, we're starting to see a lot of the companies, you know, building channel programs or thinking about building channel programs, you know, quite a bit earlier. You know, that's faster a few weeks ago. And it was a big topic of conversation which, for someone who geeks out on channel partners, that's awesome for me to hear. So I think we're gonna see that number, that kind of typical revenue number for starting. I think we're gonna see that drop especially with these companies that are just growing really fast and wanna maintain that momentum. Tim: I think that would be good for all parties involved, tech vendors, channels partners, and particularly customers, if they did that. You know, the one thing that I would kinda leave on this note is think about some of the largest companies in the world, you know, consumer-oriented companies. Just take, you know, Coca-Cola. You know, one of the things about Coca-Cola is you can buy Coca-Cola products almost everywhere in the world through various different types of channels. And, you know, take a lesson away from that in that, and you said it, different customers want to buy in different ways from different entities in different geographies, and try to serve them all or as many as you can, you know, with the resources that you have at your [inaudible 00:17:30]. Jen: Perfect. That's a great example. So, Tim, you know, you're just introducing this firm, Nuvello. I know you've already got a few roadshow symposiums that are on the docket for this year. You've got one just kicking it off in San Francisco. You got it going to Boston, Atlanta, going over to London and Singapore. It's super exciting. So who's the right kind of person to attend one of these symposiums? And then, you know, if I am that kind of a person, you know, what can I anticipate by attending? Tim: Well, yeah. So, again, we're hoping to help, you know, channel professionals and go-to market professionals in terms of, you know, their strategies, their models, their recruitment, their onboarding, their technology, utilization. That's gonna be a key, key factor. You know, those people that are involved in those sorts of decisions and the execution of those decisions. So, you know, we hope for a pretty broad audience. Different symposiums will have slightly different audience flavor. I'll give you an example. You know, we'll address this later in the year. We are going to try to actually bring in a couple of ex-CEOs, retired CEOs that were at the helm when their companies became quite successful via their channels. You know, that might indicate a different type of audience, you know, slightly. But, you know, for the most part, particularly for these few roadshow symposiums, we're looking for those people that are, you know, really involved, I think, in, you know, the fairly early stages of their channel-taking and their channel-development. Jen: Wonderful. And so if people are interested in, you know, taking a look at those symposiums, they just go to nuvello.com? Is that correct? Tim: Yes. Yeah, that's right. Jen: Perfect. Perfect. Well, so, before I let you go, Tim, you know, we talked channel, but I like to ask some more personal questions of all our podcasts guests here, just to learn a little bit more about you. Are you opened to that? Tim: You should go for it. Jen: All right. Okay, so my first question for you is what is your favorite city? Tim: My favorite city? Jen: Mm-hmm. Tim: I'm just going to...my favorite city...it's not Phoenix. I'm sorry, Jen. Jen: That's okay. That's not mine either. Tim: [Inaudible 00:20:26]. One of my favorite cities is Ottawa, Ontario. Jen: Oh, nice. I have to dig. Okay, what do you love about Ottawa? Tim: You know, I think it's like the [inaudible 00:20:43]. So it's not too big, it's not too small. You know, there's lots to do. The people are great. It's safe. It's a four-weather climate, obviously, which I like. And it's got, you know, a lot of culture in it and a lot of sports activities, so professional sports, participant sports. So it just had a lot of things, you know, going for that I like. Jen: Awesome. I love it. Second question for you, are you an animal-lover? Tim: Well, yes, in general. Yes. Yeah. Jen: Okay. But you're not gonna be inviting any into your home anytime soon? Is that what I'm hearing? Tim: I have a couple of animals, actually. Jen: Oh, you do. Okay, question number three. Mac or PC? Tim: I'm neutral on that. I have one of both and I actually use them both about 50% of the time. So I'm an agnostic when it comes to that. Jen: Oh, nice. My last question for you is, let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to? Tim: Probably African Safari. Jen: Sounds very nice. Well, thanks, Tim. And thanks for answering some of those more fun questions. Thanks for diving into some of those deeper questions about channel. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally after hearing this, what's the best way for them to do so? Tim: You know, there's a contact us at nuvello.com which, you know, if they wanna email me, the phone numbers are there. And, you know, you can also book my calendar at nuvello.com as well. So if you wanna, you know, actually schedule a time to talk with me, I'm open to that as well. Jen: Wonderful. That's a really good resource, and we'll go ahead to link to nuvello.com from this podcast. Again, thank you for your time. I greatly appreciate it, Tim. It's been great catching up with you. And thanks, everyone else, for tuning in. And check us out next week for an all-new episode of "The Allbound Podcast."

11 Calm Down Ladies, You Won't Bulk Up!

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2017 18:09

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

amazon power speaking new york times colorado ladies southern california manhattan honestly naturally reboot crying boulder colorado compare genetics michelle obama plain thornton hm bulk calm down thrive market ext mike rogers tim edwards toluca lake tim it tim well no small children tim do inform fitness inbound podcasting network sheila melody

10 "Stretching" the Truth

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2017 26:44

It's almost sacrilegious to say you don't need to stretch before a workout or a sporting event because it's part of our culture. However, recent studies suggest that stretching does not improve performance, prevent injury or reduce soreness. Check out Adam's blog post to the link below for Adam's Twist On Stretching: https://informfitness.com/twist-stretching To find an Inform Fitness location nearest you visit www.InformFitness.com If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question. The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Once-Week-Revolution-Harperresource/dp/006000889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485469022&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+10+book If you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com The transcription to this episode is below: 10 Adam's Twist on Stretching - Transcript Intro: You're listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life-changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that's so effective, you'd get a week's worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high-intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1. Alright. Welcome back InForm Nation. And thanks again for joining us here on the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards with the Inbound Podcasting Network joined as always by Sheila Melody with InForm Fitness in Toluca Lake. We also have Mike Rogers from the Manhattan location and Adam Zickerman, the founder of InForm Fitness. This show is chock full of info to help you supercharge your metabolism and increase cardiovascular endurance which will in turn make you leaner and stronger. In addition to the many health benefits from the high-intensity training you'll experience at InForm Fitness you'll also enjoy the time you spend with your trainer and other members of InForm Nation such as John. My trainer, Sheila, very knowledgeable. Incredibly friendly and warm and conversational and, you know, when you come here, you know, obviously you feel like a client but you feel like you're coming back and just hanging out with friends. Like, “Hey, here's what we're doing this week. Cool, alright. How you been?” It's always very conversational. So, that adds a fun element while, you know, you're burning your muscles. [laughs] [laughs] I know John is awesome. He's been coming for about a year and he takes it very seriously. And so therefore he's getting a lot of benefit from it. You know, so, he's a great client. He's achieved so much. He's doing like over 300 pounds on the pull-down. Very proud of him. Wow. That soundbite you heard from John is just one of many soundbites that we're going to include here in the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends. And that came from a series of testimonial videos that my company Inbound Films is producing for the Toluca Lake InForm Fitness location. And if you'd like to see more of John's story and maybe grab a glimpse of what this slow motion high-intensity workout looks like, jump on over to informfitness.com. We'll have a bunch of videos over there for you. And while you're there you can also check out Adam's blog which has over 30 informative topics regarding this protocol. And one of the topics Adam tackles stretching. And, Adam, I got to tell you, at first glance, when you first look at Gumby there at the top of [laughs] the stretching blog post. You would think that your twist on stretching your muscles prior to exercise is something you should do. But after reading the article that's not necessarily the case. It seems to -- [siren] it's almost sacrilegious to say you don't need to stretch before a workout or a sporting event because it's part of our culture. Speaking of culture. So -- [laughs] You hear that siren in the background? Just -- Yeah. Just, you know, if you're listening to this podcast while you're in your car, you're not being chased by a police officer. They're -- Well, there's the thing, stretching is so much part of our culture, even talking about it sends the police over [laughter] to where we are. I got to tell you. I've listened to a few of our podcasts and I do hear sirens in the background and I look in my rearview mirror and I realize that, oh, well, Adam and Mike are Skyping this podcast from New York City and they're right next to windows. So, that is a sound you hear all the time, all day long in New York City. So, but you're talking about how it's almost sacrilegious to mention that you should not stretch prior to an activity. The bottom line is it's been looked at a lot. This is not one of those subjects that has been ignored and we don't know much about it. What we have been finding out over and over again is that all studies that talk about stretching and the efficacy of stretching have not proven out. And maybe it's still true, these ideas that we have about stretching, but we haven't proven it yet. And I don't think we will. I think, I'm not saying we know everything there is to know about stretching the benefits or lack thereof but it's not a topic that I spend a lot of time on anymore because I'm pretty convinced. I've seen it and what are we talking about? We're talking about the idea that number one, stretching prevents injuries during sports. That has been a big reason why stretching has entered athletics because it will warm up the muscles and prevent injury. Has not been proven to be true, at all. At all. Tim: Wow. See, every time I walk into the gym it's just natural for me to just start stretching just because you know my whole life playing sports that's just what we're taught and told to do. Adam: Doug McGuff talks about that a little bit. Doug McGuff talks about the idea that the reason we do all that before a sporting event especially when you have teams involved -- Tim: Mhm [affirmative]. Adam: It's cultural. It's preparing for battle. It's no different from what -- Doug McGuff points it out in the movie, Gladiator where he grabs sand in the pit and rubs it in his hands before he starts the fight. What was the actors name again in Gladiator? Tim: Russell Crowe. Adam: Yeah, Russell Crowe. So, Russel Crowe before every fight, if you remember, he picked up some dirt and rubbed it in his hands before that. Doing that didn't give him any actual advantage from a physical point of view. Didn't add more friction to his hands for some reason that he needed. And Doug McGuff points out that the stretching before sporting events you're doing it together. You're all on the sideline. You're all doing your stretches. It's a comradery thing. It's a team thing. It feels good to do that together and prepare. Even if you're all doing your individual stretching but you're all doing it together, you're all stretching and doing -- it definitely has a sociological element to it. Tim: But not a physiological element is what you and Dr. McGuff is saying. Adam: No. And remember we have to differentiate, I mean, and maybe define what we're talking about when we talk about stretching. What is stretching, right? We're not talking about the kind of stretch you do in the morning or a cat or dog does when they wake up in the morning and that [stretching noise] downward dog yoga kind of just feel good stretch. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, we're not talking about and some of that stuff will straighten your spine a little bit and get you moving but it doesn't warm up your muscles. It doesn't warm up your muscles. And one of the things that I talk about in my blog and research has shown in regards to warming up your muscles is -- what you're actually doing when you're stretching -- the kind of stretch where it's a static stretch and you're holding a position that's somewhat uncomfortable for a little while until it's not uncomfortable anymore, that kind of stretch. That kind of stretching for a cold muscle actually it's very dangerous and not only is it helpful but it's many times detrimental. To take a muscle and put it at its most vulnerable position which is the stretched position, that is when the filaments of the muscle are at their most vulnerable and weakest point where they're most vulnerable to tear and here you are going into a static stretch thinking you're warming up the muscle. Stretching actually takes blood away from the muscle. Only contraction actually brings blood to the muscle which is what you want to do. So, warm up -- you're much better warming up just by, kind of, you know, light jog in place or, you know, walking around even. You know, just walking around if you just got out of bed and move a little bit. But actual stretching, static stretching has been shown to also make you weaker, not just maybe just tear a muscle and hurt you but if you're not hurting yourself, at the very least you're making yourself weaker after a series of static stretches. And think about this. You're making yourself weaker going into a sport that you're about to play for 60 minutes or so. Something where you need as much power and speed and endurance as possible and you are doing this ritual beforehand, making yourself weaker before you enter into it. It's not logical. It doesn't make any sense. That's -- and this research is out there. It's not like these coaches don't know this but you're never going to see an athlete not stretching before an event. Tim: Well, let's use -- if you don't mind, Adam, if I could interject. So, I'm a softball player and I've been playing baseball my whole life or softball and so before the game we warm up. We take the ball and we, you know, we loosen up and we play catch to warm up. And I find I certainly get much more benefit from that and I can throw harder after about maybe two, three minutes of some light toss and then we start firing it and it feels good. Adam: Right. Tim: Now, the other type of warm up is, you know, when you're almost 50 years old like me and your legs are like they are and I feel really tight and so maybe this is, I'm just conditioned this way but I do stretch my legs and I feel better or looser. Do you think based upon the research off some of the references, that you include at the end of your blog post, indicate that's all in my head than it is in my body and stretching my legs before I sprint down to first base and pull a hammy? Adam: Maybe a little bit in your head but maybe it's also because you're not doing the kind of stretching I'm talking about. Again, we have to make sure we understand the kind of stretching we're talking about. Light stretching before you're about to go into a game where you're just kind of bending over a little bit and stretching your back and your hamstrings a little stretch and you're not doing it very much or very painfully. You know, it's a little side bends here and there, throwing the ball around lightly, you know, walking around and chatting. If it's not a serious stretch,you're okay. And that's fine. Like, I said, you know, like the way a dog or a cat stretches when they wake up in the morning. That's all good. I'm not talking about that but if you ever sat and watched a bunch of soccer players before a match or if you sat and watched a bunch of football players before a match, they are doing all those hurdle stretches where their leg's behind them and their quadricep is totally stretched and they keep it there for a while and they're bouncing and they're trying to make it looser and looser and doing the other leg and they're all these serious static hold stretches that really are damaging their joints and they don't realize it right away because they're athletes and they're flexible and -- But maybe it catches up to them later. They don't, they don't even understand the insidious damage that they're doing and then they're going into a sport that's ballistic and then, you know, by the time they're retired or way before that actually, their careers are cut short by an injury. They never connect all that stretching to the possible injury. They actually might say, “Well, I might have got injured sooner if I hadn't done all that stretching.” I mean, all the research is not showing any of this to be true, any of it. You're promoting ease of mobility. I think the warm up is not in the stretching itself but in a very slow progression of the movement that you're trying to do. You know, Adam -- So, there's the difference between stretching and warming up and that makes sense. I can visualize that. Having played softball where instead of, you know, getting down on the ground and doing those hurdle stretches which we were taught to do, get to the point where it hurts and then hold it for 15 seconds and then switch legs. Right, the damage that can be done there really just kind of go through the motion of the sport loosely until your muscles get warmed up. Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah. Exactly, you are. What about with yoga? Okay. So, let's go with the yoga. Sheila, I know that you've done yoga for many, many years and participated in Bikram yoga and other forms of yoga. How does stretching tie in with yoga and high-intensity training? How does that all fit together? I do yoga for totally different reasons than I would do strength training and yes, it adds -- but you're doing yoga, you're specifically, kind of, trying to -- there's more of a core balancing and you're holding positions while breathing and kind of releasing, you know, tension. That's kind of how I look at it. [Crosstalk 12:06] -- Well, Tim, you just -- yeah. Tim, you just brought up a question that indicates a common misunderstanding about yoga in general which is yoga is good for your flexibility or good for stretching Right. That's how I've always perceived it. I've never participated. No, I mean what -- Yeah. Yeah, what Sheila is saying is it's really more about holding certain positions and it's kind of like static weight training in a way. It's just holding positions. Yeah. And sometimes they're not hard positions to stay in and that's why you do focus on your breathing and all kinds of other things. It has a meditative, I think, benefit to it. And I'm more of somebody who feels that the more the meditator breathing yoga is more beneficial than let's say some of the more physical yoga like a Bikram yoga, for example, is very physical. And that is on the continuum of exercise is getting closer to what weight training is. So, if you're going to go towards weight training you might as well just do weight training because yoga is quite inefficient than when it comes to that. I do -- the yoga -- yeah. I mean, for me I feel like the balance is perfect to do this Power of 10 workout and then if I want to do yoga I do that separately and actually the Power of 10 helps me in my yoga. Like, if I do Bikram yoga it is an hour and a half class and it's very -- there's a lot of endurance and I'm using my muscles. As I said in a previous podcast that I do not get as sore as I used to if I, you know, miss my yoga class for a couple months because my muscles are strong. So, just one more question as we get close to wrapping up this topic on stretching is, where does flexibility factor into the Power of 10? Of course, I imagine, like myself, most people figure that the only way to become flexible and pliable is through a rigorous stretching regime. Can flexibility be acquired through high-intensity training like you do with the Power of 10? Yes. The flexibility will be enhanced through strength training. A lot of times our reduced flexibility comes from the fact that we're just weak. So, getting stronger will enhance your flexibility but you have to make the differentiation between enhanced flexibility and improved flexibility. Strength training or stretching for that matter will not improve your flexibility or very, very little. And anything that is improved is nominal. You know, even if you can improve your range of motion a little bit through stretching. I mean, I think the most anyone has ever really observed is like 20%. You know, and most people way below that. So, for what purpose? And -- If you're going beyond 20%, you're often times creating an injury in the connective tissue probably. Wow. If you're going -- yeah, I probably say, if you're going beyond 10% you're [crosstalk 14:55] -- Yeah, or whatever the number is. You know, but it's a very low tolerance for it and then the question is, is there any benefit to that? And again there doesn't seem to be any benefit. Matter of fact studies are showing the opposite. When, you know, they went into these studies thinking they were going to prove that flexibility is good and then they find -- and then these studies end up finding out the opposite. Wow. That flexibility, not only, isn't it good but it creates joint laxity and joint problems. And that's -- And isn't there a whole thing to about as far as the understanding of what is flexibility. Like, you're born, basically, it's just like your muscle, you know the DNA and your genetics and how you're born, some people are just a little more flexible and they always will be, right and then -- Of course. Yeah and -- And a lot of people say they lose flexibility as they get older. Though that's not necessarily a problem either or a bad thing either. And it might not have to -- it doesn't probably have anything to do with your muscles. It has to do with your bones are changing. Your hip sockets are developing more and deeper and your femur gets larger as we get older and quite honestly you end up becoming less flexible because of that. Which is a physical thing. It's not something you can change. I think the word flexibility sometimes is -- it's the word that everyone's used to but it's not necessarily I think how we should be thinking about it. I always think about ease of mobility to do whatever you're trying to do. The more stable you are, the less flexible you are. The more flexible you are, the less stable you are. This is reminding me of a story I heard once about this woman who was really into yoga and she was just like, you know, really flexible and everything and then by the time she was in her, you know, I think late 50s she literally had to get hip replacement because she had totally overstretched and, you know, ruined her hips. Mhm [affirmative]. And, you know, so what we do is protect your joints and hips with you know, this by strengthening the muscles to support them, like what Mike was saying making them stable. So, to sum up, let me just list once again the things that we expect from stretching that we don't get. Okay, first of all, stretching does not improve your flexibility. Stretching does not warm up your muscles. Stretching makes you weak. Stretching leaves joints and ligaments vulnerable to injury and overstretching causes injury. So, those are the things that we are finding out happens from stretching. So, buyer beware. Buyer beware. And again we invite you to head on over to informfitness.com to review the blog posts that we discussed today. It's really easy to find. Just click blog and then look for Gumby. At the bottom of the article you'll find references to additional articles that support the science behind Adam's approach to stretching. Alright. Coming up in a mere 60 seconds we're going to hear from another member of InForm Nation, Nicole, regarding the convenience of her once a week workout and we'll read an email we received from the Santa Rosa, California area with a question regarding cardio in fitness fact or fiction right here in the InForm Fitness podcast. You know, we spent a lot of time on this podcast discussing the important of high-intensity slow motion weight training and getting the proper rest so that you're ready to jump back into the gym a week later but let's not forget the ever so important component or pillar to this lifestyle. It's nutrition. You got to feed those muscles and be very mindful over what you put in your mouth. Adam does an excellent job simplifying the nutrition system necessary to supercharge your metabolism, burn fat and build muscle in chapter 3 in his book Power of 10. And you will find plenty of InForm Fitness friendly feed at thrivemarket.com. And at wholesale prices. If you're into the Paleo diet or perhaps you might be leaning towards being gluten free or even exploring a vegan lifestyle. You'll find everything you're looking for at thrivemarket.com. In addition to simplifying the buying process, it's much more affordable than the grocery store and they deliver your items right to your door. Plus, with all orders over $49, you get your shipping absolutely free. You can try it for yourself, just visit thrivemarket.com. Register for free. You can start your 30-day free trial and if you're happy with the service and the products you can join the community. It's only $59.95 and most customers will save that amount in their first order. And then you can continue to save a bunch of money and grow healthier in the process. As a matter of fact, I'm going to save you some more money right off your first order. Simply email me directly at tim@inboundpodcast.com and I will send you a code that will shave 15% off your first order. Thrive Market's on a mission to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone. Alright. Let's get back to the show. Let's hear from InForm Nation member Nicole who absolutely loves the convenience of a once-a-week workout. The convenience is huge. I do work a full time job. So, having, you know, only one day a week that I have to commit to a workout has made my life less stressful because the pressure of having to think you have to work out three to five times a week can kind of take a toll on you. So, the once a week it definitely works with my, you know, job, personal life, and it's been really great. So, there you have it, the psychological benefit of this whole workout. Just the thought of working out five days a week can raise your cortisol levels. [laughter] True. Just at the stress of just thinking about what you have to do and the -- she said a key thing, something that I wrote in Power of 10 and that is the pressure is off. That's huge. That is so huge. Not to mention the fact that it's sustainable because you come, you do your hard workout, it's hard. I get it. You don't even want to do that one workout but it's one workout 20 minutes a week and you do it because you have to do it and it is relatively stress-free and it's sustainable. Something that you can do. You can kick yourself in the butt to say just do your 20-minute workout once a week, you wimp. And you get yourself to do it. It's not as easy to get yourself to psyche yourself up to do your five day a week workout every single Monday that you start your week. I got to tell you, Adam, I've been trying various types of workouts my entire life, all of them required me to participate three to five times a week and I quit all of them. [laughs] And now that I've been doing the Power of 10 workout at the InForm Fitness location in Toluca Lake, I've been going since November, the middle of November and I've only missed one week because it's doable. It's easy. It's easy to fit into your schedule. If you can't fit it into your schedule, then you probably have some other time management issues you need to deal with for sure. Alright. Time for another feature here on the InForm Fitness podcast. It's fitness fact or fiction. We've got an email here from Rachel from Santa Rose California. Rachel writes: "Hello, InForm Fitness podcast people. I just --" [laughter] We're the "podcast people" [laughter]. "I just subscribed to your podcast and listened to the first five episodes. How come I'm not hearing anything about adding cardio to your Power of 10 workout? I've always thought that cardio is necessary for optimal health. I hope I hear my question on the show. If so, does that make me an official member of InForm Nation?" Yes, Rachel, you are an official member of InForm Nation and we certainly appreciate you listening to the podcast. So, I guess the fitness fact or fiction question is, is cardio necessary for optimal health. Well, that is not a very quick answer. But to give you one, no, it's not necessary, not in the conventional form that we all think of cardio. So, give us examples. Such as? Jogging, biking, walking -- Treadmill. The treadmill. These conventional forms of steady state cardio that we have mentioned a little bit in previous podcasts. Tim: There are definite cardiovascular benefits through this slow motion high-intensity strength training system. Adam: But I also have to add that it is very controversial. And if you think that the idea that you don't have to stretch is controversial, you know, that's nothing compared to the controversy that swarms around the idea that you need to do cardio. Mike: The thing I want to emphasise is that strength training is cardio. It's not an addition to cardio. It is cardio. You're getting your cardio in it and your heart has to support your muscles in order to do that. And if you do something that is a mechanical work, that considered mechanical work that is outside its comfort zone, what's it's conditioned already to do, then which is what you are doing when you're doing high-intensity strength training big time, then your heart is going to have to work a lot harder. And until it gets conditioned to do so, you are doing cardio. Tim: And Rachel, we dive deep into cardio in episode eight, titled the Cardio Conundrum. So, you might want to go back into iTunes and download that episode. Better yet, you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and that way, every new episode as it's released is instantly downloaded to your phone or whatever device you might be listening from. If you'd like to join InForm Nation like Rachel did and have a question for Adam, Mike or Sheila with fitness fact or fiction, send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. You can even give us a call at 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. That's 888-983-5020, Ext. 3 and you can leave your comment, question or even a suggestion. All feedback is welcome. Hey, we have three really cool episodes on the horizon here and we hope you'll join us. Next week is for the ladies. Especially for the ladies who might be concerned about bulking up with the Power of 10. Many women don't want to bulk up or have that body-builder look. Adam, Mike, and Sheila will weigh in on that very topic next week. And in two weeks we will be talking to InForm Nation member Joanie Pimentel. She is also a member of the LA-based band, No Small Children. For a glimpse of Joanie and to sample her music head on over to nosmallchildren.com. The reason we'll be talking to Joanie is she lost 118 pounds over two years with the Power of 10. She is a ton of fun, incredibly talented and can't wait to get her on the program. You know, when Joanie's on tour with her band she takes Adam's book Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution and performs the exercises by herself in a local gym. And you can do the same if you are not near one of the several InForm Fitness locations across the US. You can order Adam's book through Amazon. To see if there is a location nearest you just click on over to informfitness.com. Hey, thanks again for listening to the InForm Fitness podcast. We really do appreciate it. For Adam, Mike and Sheila, I'm Tim Edwards with the Inbound Podcasting Network.

amazon time california new york city power speaking new york times strength dna manhattan register reboot buyers twist gladiator stretching incredibly paleo russell crowe treadmills santa rosa jogging thrive market russel crowe ext gumby bikram crosstalk mike rogers skyping mhm tim edwards toluca lake doug mcguff mcguff adam it stretching the truth adam yeah tim there tim well adam so no small children inform fitness inbound podcasting network sheila melody

02 Is Recreation Exercise?

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2017 23:23

The purpose of exercise is to build muscle as quickly and as safely as possible so you can live the life you want. So, does performing the physical activities you enjoy like hiking, cycling, playing basketball, golfing or gardening count as legitimate exercise? ___________________ If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question. The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Once-Week-Revolution-Harperresource/dp/006000889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485469022&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+10+book Ilf you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com The transcription to this episode is below: 02 Exercise vs Recreation Rough - Transcript Intro: You're listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that's so effective, you'd get a week's worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1. Alright. Welcome into episode two of the InForm Nation podcast with Adam Zickerman. If you stumbled across this episode in iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher Radio or YouTube and have not yet had a chance to listen to our first episode, we invite you to go back, give it a listen because in that episode you'll hear some important foundational information to help you understand the mission of this podcast and be formally introduced to all the members of the podcast team but we'll quickly run through the room here and reintroduce everybody. I'll start. My name's Tim Edwards. I'm the founder of the Inbound Podcasting Network and have been training with the Power of 10 system at the Toluca lake location in Southern California. Joining me here in the Los Angeles area, just a few freeways away from the Inbound Podcasting studio, is one of my trainers at InForm Fitness, Sheila Melody. Hey, Sheila. Hi, Tim. How ya doing? I'm coming here from sunny Southern California. It's a beautiful day. It's perfect today. Maybe not -- [laughs] Yeah. I'm just going to rub that in to our -- [laughs] Well -- To our New York cohorts here. Yeah. As we record this through Skype we can see our other cohorts here wearing sweaters and jackets. So, probably a little chilly over there across the country on the East side of New York City. We'll start with the GM of the Manhattan InForm Fitness location, Mike Rogers. What's up, Mike? Hey, what's up? Yeah, it's like an arctic 50 degrees here right now. It's hell. [laughs] No, it's actually not so bad. I just came back from Vegas over the weekend. So -- Nice. You know, I'm ready to sort of recharge, restart and -- And recoup. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but I'm excited about the podcast today. [laughs] And of course, the reason we're all here, the founder of InForm Fitness and author of New York Times Best Seller, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, Adam Zickerman. How you doing, Adam? Hey guys. Looking forward to this. We got one under our belt and here we go with number two but before we drill down into today's topic, the definition of exercise, Exercise vs Recreation, let's quickly recap what we discussed in the first episode. Adam, if you don't mind for our listeners who have not yet listened to that show, what is the Power of 10? Well, it's the name of my book, Power of 10. There wasn't a Power of 10 until the book came out actually. It was just Inform Fitness. The premise of InForm Fitness and then the book was to understand and put exercise in its proper perspective and what we should expect from exercise. Ultimately, the premise is that the sole purpose of exercise is to build muscle, to maintain muscle mass as we get older. That to me is the number one priority and the exercise plan. The whole book Power of 10 and the whole technique starts there. The technique, of course, enters into intensity and safety considerations as well as balancing exercise, with proper nutrition and rest. There you have the Power of 10, balancing exercise, rest and nutrition, the three pillars we call it. On there that's the foundation. Then there all your recreational pursuits, the life that you want to life, sits right on top of that. If you want to life the kind of life you want to live, an active life, a happy life, a pain free life, it starts with exercise, rest nutrition and everything else follows from there. Adam always says like, you know, the mission of InForm Fitness is to provide people with the exercise they need to give them the life that they want, you know, so -- I could have just said that. [laughs] Could have said that but -- We need a little more [laughter], a little more detail. Of course InForm Fitness -- Sheila, why don't you chime in on that? If you don't mind, why InForm Fitness? I always say there's a couple reasons for that. One is that we want to inform our clients always. We're all informed. We're informing them about why you're doing this exercise, what it, you know, even to the point of what muscles are working at that particular time. Then we also are real sticklers on performing the exercise in proper form. So, I might find, you know, myself saying, “Okay. Stay in form.” Then I'll go, “Oh, yeah. That's our name.” [laughs] It's perfect. That is -- we are calling our community, that we're building here through the InForm Fitness podcast, to InForm Nation because that's what we're trying to do. If you're listening to this podcast and you're enjoying what you hear and you're becoming educated, becoming informed, we invite you to join InForm Nation. We'll have more details on how you can do that at the conclusion of the show. Now, this show is geared towards those who are looking to build muscle, lose fat, maintain cardiovascular health and maybe even improve whatever it is that you love to do which really ties nicely into today's topic, Exercise vs Recreation. Briefly, let's go around the room and discus, what are some of the physical activities we all enjoy that might be confused with exercise. Let's start with you, Sheila. What I really love to do, around LA especially, is hiking. Lots of hiking, lots of canyon hiking and tennis and yoga. Those are things I actually enjoy doing. So, when you're hiking do you ever go up to Runyon Canyon? Is that right? Up there off of Mulholland Drive and see some celebrities. Yes. [laughs] I've gone up there. It's definitely a very busy hiking area actually. It is. I prefer to kind of be out here in Malibu Canyon area because it's way more wide open. That's kind of the city hiking area but there are plenty of places here in Southern California to hike. As I'm sure there's plenty of places in New York and the Upstate New York and surrounding areas too. Are you a hiker, Mike, or what do you do for exercise or for recreation, I should say? You know, I like to take a hike often times in life. [laughs] [Crosstalk 06:43] -- You're told to hike often. Yeah. [laughs] I love hiking. I don't do it on a regular basis. It's usually if I'm away or wherever. If I was in California, I'd probably be taking a hike. You know, I grew up with a lot of -- very, very active. Every sport and I did soccer and lacrosse very competitively. As I've gotten older, I sort of phased into triathlon sports, like, biking, swimming and running. Love cycling the most there and even more recently, tennis and golf over the last few years. So, I do a lot of, a lot of stuff. I just have a problem sitting still. So, being active is extremely important to me. You know, using my body is very important to me, so -- Adam, what do you do? I know -- I thought you told stories in the past, you liked to ski. I'm a seasonal, recre-ator. I mean, during the winter I pretty much are limited to skiing. In the better weather I like to hike. Actually, I go fish. I do a lot of fly fishing. I love fly fishing. We just got a puppy, just got a puppy. [laughs] What kind of dog? A golden doodle. So, we're going to -- we have some beautiful preserves by our house and we're going to start doing some more of those walks and hikes with the dog now. Walk the dog. It will force you outside. Then in New York City too, do you drive through the city or do you do a lot of walking to and from somewhere? Well, that's another thing. It's a walking city for sure. Yeah. Mhm [affirmative]. Boy, I got to -- We're on the move all the time. Tim: I got to take up hiking just to keep up with all of you. That's not something that I've really explored. All I do outside of what I do at InForm Fitness in Toluca Lake is I play softball once a week. Outside of that basketball with my kid and that's it. So, I probably [laughs] need to get out a little bit more often and add to my recreation list. How is all of this different from exercise? All of these things that we're mentioning, one would say, “Well, isn't that exercise?” You're playing tennis a few times a week. You're hiking. Tell us the difference Adam. This is really -- it seems like a relatively easy concept to grasp but you say there's a difference between exercise and recreation. Adam: I think once it's explained it seems easy but you still have a push back. It's hard for people who have been told their whole life that you have to be active and be out there. They've been playing tennis their whole lives and playing soccer their whole lives, to tell them that's not exercise. They're not wrong by thinking it is in some sense and that is there's an exercise effect. Again, exercise, specifically is to build muscle and get stronger. There's no doubt that a lot of these sports and recreational pursuits have an exercise affect in the sense that they do make you stronger. A tennis player is going to get stronger legs from it, a stronger arm or upper body in general from that sport. That's not necessarily the goal of that recreational pursuit. The goal of that recreational pursuit is to enjoy that recreational pursuit is because you love it. Alright. That is the goal of that. The goal of exercise is to make you stronger. The problem with recreational pursuits being perceived as exercise is that's not the goal of recreational pursuits. They can get you stronger to an extent but it comes with its risks. It's not comprehensive. It's not going to do what you really want exercise to do. It's not going to build your muscles from head to toe. It's going to build them in a very specific way for that particular sport. That's not a general conditioning program. You don't have to spend a lot of time to get strong. 20 minutes once a week without the risk of getting injury. As opposed to being a weekend warrior or maybe even more so and thinking that, you know, you join a bike club and you're biking on the Wednesday night bike trips and you have the weekend stuff. You're thinking you're doing all of this because it's in place of your exercise. Tim: For people that are saying, “Well, I don't need to work out,” or, “I don't need to lift weights or do anything because I play tennis three times a week,” or, “I golf every week.” Right. That's the problem, people who think -- We hear that a lot. We hear that -- I'm sure Sheila and Mike and myself, we hear that a lot when we do an intake. We say, “So, have you exercised in the past?” They'll say, “Yes,” and they'll start listing the sports that they play. [laughs] Right. We get into that discussion. I said, “Alright, well, great. I mean, those are great things and I hope you continue to do them or maybe will want to do them again once you feel up to it.” That's one way I make that distinction with people, to help them make that distinction. That this exercise program might get -- especially if they haven't done their recreational pursuits in a while because they don't feel like they're in shape to do them. [laughs] Or they may have hurt themselves in the process of doing them. Tennis players constantly, we have them all the time, like they had tendonitis, tennis elbow or golf -- [Crosstalk 11:35]. Golfers with back problems and it's just like and it's keeping them off the course. I mean, and to -- and so I mean, that's the thing. It's walking like four miles and they get to miss out on type of thing. It's unfortunate. So, what's -- I have an interesting story just personally as far as I did -- I'd done a lot of yoga and I was always doing yoga. Then I started to get into do this. Then when I got certified and I opened the Toluca Lake facility. Then it was like, you know, my life got very, very busy and I couldn't go to my yoga class for over a year. So, and I go to this very hot, you know, the Bikram yoga which is an hour and a half. It's very, you know, intense, kind of. So, I finally made it to a yoga class after a year and this was the testament to me that this works as far as just building your muscle because I used to like go to the yoga class and then I'd be off for a couple months and go back and the first time back the next day I was so sore. You know, just from doing it. This time I hadn't been in a year I went and even though, yes, it was a little more, like a different kind of endurance getting through that class, the next day I was not sore. That was like, “Oh my gosh. This is because I have been building my muscle and I'm strong.” So, it was a whole different eye-opening thing for me. Yeah. I noticed it when the first time I went skiing and I went to high altitude and when you're coming from the East Coast and you go out to Colorado and you're at 12,000 feet, 11,000 feet, and you do a couple of runs you really feel it. My ski mates that were living in Colorado were always impressed that the East Coaster, me, actually hung in with them until about 3 o'clock. They went till five but the fact that I even lasted until three doing the runs that I was doing with them coming right off the plane from the East Coast, they were impressed. Yeah. I get that as a testimonial. So, like, probably more often than any other in regards to sports performance or recreational type of performance in regards to their strength and endurance and ability to stay out on the slopes. I hear it all the time and I just heard it last week from one of our clients. He specifically said, “It's night and day. Night and day.” He's a very athletic person already but he said, “It's absolutely so clear that the strength training that he did here,” for only a couple months too, maybe about 8, 10 sessions previous to his skiing, he said, “It was unbelievable.” Frankly, over the whatever how long I've been here, thirteen years, I think I've heard that the most. At least, you know, a few times a season I hear that. Especially from new clients. Yeah. So, this is a thing I want to say. Alright, what Mike just said is very interesting as far as what I would want to know is why. Why? What is happening? What is it about this exercise in particular that is actually preparing somebody in some sense to be able to handle a ski trip at high altitudes for the first time even when in the past they would need at least three days to adjust to the altitude. What's actually happening there physiologically and what is it about our exercise program that's causing that? Before we get right to that I just want to sum up the difference between exercise versus recreation. Alright, again, exercise has a very specific goal to build muscle and to do it without undermining your health at the same time. When I say not undermining your health, I'm not necessarily talking about getting hurt right there on the spot. That is part of it of course. The acute injuries that can happen from lifting something too fast or the wrong way and then boom, herniated disc, torn muscle. That happens. I'm also talking about the insidious things that occur that when you don't realize are happening. When you go for those runs and runs and runs, five days a week and everything feels okay but you know, your knees are sore from time to time but you know an ice pack, an Advil later and it's okay. You're feeling that year after year, next thing you know it's getting a little worse. It's getting a little bit worse. Fast forward another five years or so and you're still doing all that, you're being told you need hip replacement, knee replacement, you have arthritis here, you have arthritis there. Your neck is hurting you now. Your shoulder's hurting you from the repetitions. Tennis isn't fun anymore. Alright, the back is killing you after a tennis game, the knees are killing you, the shoulder is killing you, the elbow is killing you -- These are our experiences. These are direct observations. We've heard these all through the years. It's unbelievable. You know, I think we have a front row seat to these type of complaints too all the time so. These are primarily -- these are people that looked upon their recreational activities as their exercise as opposed to making their exercise foundation. And now they're realizing -- exactly. Yes. But now they're saying, okay, this is great. So, the pressure's off. I don't have to look at these activities or feel guilty that I didn't play tennis this weekend or I didn't run this weekend. I don't have to feel guilty about that. As long as I took the time, 20 minutes, about and worked out really hard, really intensely which is the whole reason and the whole way you should be exercising because what we're finding is all this magic that occurs. All the strength that we get, all the endurance that we build comes from the magic of pushing your muscles to a level that they rarely get pushed to. When that happens, all that magic happens. All that change, all that positive change actually occurs. Having said that, also, exercise is not about entertainment. The purpose of exercise is to build muscle as quickly and as safely as possible so you can live your life. If you want to have something that's not boring, join a book club, join any kind of group where you can have fun but when it comes to your exercise just work out. Do what you have to do. You know, trying to make exercise not boring is kind of like trying to make brushing your teeth not boring. You know, you don't consider that because it's ridiculous to try to change the way you brush your teeth just so you're more entertained during the process despite the risk you take of having rotten teeth. This is the challenge though. Like, Adam's points are absolutely valid and that's the way it is. I mean, people have to consider that if they're really, really taking seriously their health and thinking about it. I think some of the challenges sometimes is A, helping people believe that you can actually get a workout in 20 minutes. And we know you can and we have hundreds and hundreds of testimonials that you can but it's -- but sometimes people I think just plain don't believe that you can do it in 20 minutes. That's A. B, I think some people, they really, they need to feel like distracted if they're exercising unfortunately. That's why they need to be in a spin class with the music pumping and the candles and whatever. That's the challenges that we do have being, you know, before you experience InForm Fitness, it sounds very counterintuitive to what you've been taught to make yourself healthier but when you experience it you realize that what Adam said is absolutely right. It really is just like brush your teeth, you know, you want your teeth to be healthy? Brush and floss and you know what, drink water. You know, on that note, from a female perspective, I have found it to be very fun. Are we stopping? [laughs] I found it to be very fun because it's challenging. Women don't typically go to the gym and try to like, you know, compete or lift heavy weights or I mean for the most part. I never did. I feel like it's just kind of like a fun little victory every week when I come in and you see other clients -- our clients have developed friendships. You know, they're seeing each other coming in and out. They love telling a new client, you know, like, “Wow, I've been coming for 62 sessions.” You know, and it's just -- they're so proud of themselves. You know, that's what I see. It becomes fun. Not the process. Not when you're in that leg press. What's fun for you -- True. [laughs] Is the results from it. What's fun for you is the culture of InForm Fitness because we all feel we have lightening in the bottle and we have this big secret and no one knows about that you can get in the best shape of your life in just 20 minutes. That's all fun. That's all something to be very proud of and very enthused about but when you're on a leg press, those last ten seconds on a leg press, I mean, I don't know, I'm not thinking fun at that moment. That's not fun. No. [laughs] [laughs] To me, again, I think a lot of people appreciate the very direct approach about this as far as, you know, saying listen, I understand that you think exercise has to be fun and I can understand your reasons for wanting it to be fun especially if you're going to spend three hours a week doing it. [laughs] Right. Adam: You know, I get it. I get that feeling. Here's a relief for you, you can have fun without the guilt. You can have fun without mixing it up with your exercise and just do your exercise for 20 minutes not thinking about fun but get it over with in 20 minutes. I'm going to show you and convince you that 20 minutes is enough for that. That's how you start the consultation. That's how you start your introduction. Right now you have to believe or want to believe that 20 minutes is enough. All it's going to take for you is to follow my lead for six weeks and you'll get it. You won't have to have me have to talk you into it anymore. Then you'll be like, wow this is great. Now I can have fun the other how many minutes or less in that week. Tim: Well, that certainly is what first attracted me to this workout, minimal time investment, great returns. In just a few months I've shed a few pounds, my clothes are fitting better, and more importantly, I'm getting stronger. As a matter of fact, we'll include the PDF of my progress in the show notes. That way you can see how each week I'm lifting, pulling, pushing more and more weight. I love it. Alright. There's the music which means that we're close to the 20-minute mark in the podcast. So, if you began your slow motion, high-intensity workout at the start of this podcast, you'd be finished by now for the entire week. So, as Adam just said, you can have fun the remaining 10,060 minutes of your week. Great discussion today. Remember, if you'd like to ask the team a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10, it's very simple. Just shoot us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. You can also leave us a voicemail by calling 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. That's 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. All feedback is welcome. Speaking of which, if you enjoyed the show, the best way to support it and ensure that we continue producing additional episodes is to subscribe to the podcast and please rate the show and leave us some feedback and a review right here in iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher Radio, Acast, YouTube or wherever you might be listening. To join us here at InForm Nation, give this work out a try for yourself. Just visit informfitness.com for phone numbers and locations nearest you and please tell them you heard about the Power of 10 from the podcast. I'm Tim Edwards reminding you to join us in the next episode, The Importance of Muscle, and we're not talking about just looking good at the beach but all the physiological benefits that come from losing fat and building muscle. For Adam, Mike and Sheila, thanks for joining us here at the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends, here on the Inbound Podcasting Network.

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04 High Intensity Training Defined

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2017 21:13

What exactly is high-intensity training? Is high-intensity training safe? In this episode we'll hear from a longtime Inform Fitness client, who is 72 years old, describe the intensity of his slow motion strength training at Inform Fitness in Toluca Lake, California. Adam continues his explanation of muscle failure in high-intensity training and the value of having a personal trainer guide you through your 20-minute workout. ___________________ If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question. The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Once-Week-Revolution-Harperresource/dp/006000889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485469022&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+10+book Ilf you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com The transcription to this episode is below: 04 Intensity Defined - Transcript Intro: You're listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life-changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that's so effective, you'd get a week's worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high-intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1. You know, I like the philosophy of the program of taking each one of the muscle groups to meltdown [laughs]. Surely what it is and you know there's a certain amount of emotion that goes along with these meltdowns. So, you kind of have to be willing to get into that thing where, okay, the sabre tooth tiger's got me and it's going to bite off my head and it's -- but it's a slow bite and you just got to be willing to stay there [laughs]. You know, I mean, anybody can do half an hour a week. Anybody can do a half hour a week of a sabretooth tiger biting down on your head. If that doesn't define intensity, I don't know what does. That was Keith from the Toluca Lake InForm Fitness location. He's one of the clients. He's been coming for quite some time, I believe. Is that right, Sheila? Yeah. He's been coming for probably a year and a half now, I would say. And Keith is how old? Keith is almost 72 years old. And he has been doing this for quite some time and that's how he describes high intensity strength training and great selling point for InForm Fitness and that's exactly what we're doing here today. Welcome to episode four of the InForm Fitness podcast. My name is Tim Edwards and of course joining us again is Sheila Melody from the Toluca Lake location. We have Mike Rogers from New York City and across the hall from him, the founder of InForm Fitness and the author of Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, Adam Zickerman. This episode, intensity, could probably turn itself into two, three, maybe even four episodes because this is kind of the foundation of what you put together with InForm Fitness, Adam. Yes, and that description of a sabretooth tiger biting down on his head slowly -- I'm almost cringing thinking about what people who've never heard about this work out and they come across this podcast and if they listen to this they'd be like, “Screw that.” Well, it's a slow bite, Adam. [laughter] It's a slow bite but you know what, you got to listen to what he said. Yeah. Anybody can do anything for 20 minutes and the last episode that we had, The Importance of Muscle, is the result of what happens when you're able to just do something for 20 short minutes a week which is also the length of our podcast as well. So, just to kind of give you an idea of how little of an investment it is for some long-term bigtime gains. So, yes, we don't want to scare anyone away with the sabretooth tiger comment but here's a 72-year-old man talking about something he's able to endure 20 minutes a week and I think that's just a fantastic testimonial, maybe not the most accurate description. [laughs] No, no, no. I don't want to -- listen, I was smiling and smirking and kind of cringing at the same time. I mean, I understand why he's saying it and the fact that you just pointed out that he's 75 and doing it should say it all that -- It does. You know, if he's 75 and enduring this kind of intensity, it should give you -- Well, let's not give him that much credit. He's 72 but -- [laughs] [Crosstalk 03:53]. But close enough. [laughs] 72 years young [crosstalk 03:57]. He's an intense guy too. He is. Now, you know, this is such an incredible topic because what I'd want people to get from this episode today, is understanding that, as important as intensity is for exercise, it doesn't mean danger. Doesn't mean I can't do that because I'm out of shape or I'm not that strong right now. I can't work out that hard or I'm not young enough to work out that hard because that's not where the danger lies. It's not intensity that causes the dangers of exercise. It's intensity coupled with high force crazy movements, ballistic movements, high repetitions. It's this force associated with that intensity. So, we don't realize that you can have a very intense experience weightlifting and have it be of the utmost safety at the same time which is the real profound thing about this. I think we talked about this on the first episode, about the safety and intensity. Mhm [affirmative]. So, the thing about intensity is you can get there. I mean you have to get there and if you can get there in confidence that you're not going to get hurt, like our friend Keith just mentioned. Mhm [affirmative]. At 72 years old being able to work out that hard and not worry about hurting himself, that's the beauty in this. That is the true beauty in this. Things that are generally worthwhile often times are not easy and that goes with everything I think we do in our lives and I think it's just, you know, if you want to do something that's worthwhile that's only 20 minutes once or twice a week, I mean, the bang for your buck, this really, really hits hard there. I mean, and we hear all sorts of different scenarios. Like he's mentioned being bit by a sabretooth tiger. The most common one I think I hear especially for women is childbirth and things like that. [laughs] you know something and it's not and they go all over the place. Another really attractive description. Yeah. [laughing] Definitely. People are going to be lining up. Sign me up. Yeah. [laughs] Well, let me just say, you know, as a, you know, as someone who never really went that intense before I started doing this workout and when I was opening InForm Fitness in LA here and our trainer -- I brought our trainer, Ann Kirkland on and she's amazing and we were doing each other's workouts and there was one moment that I'll always remember because it was doing the leg press and the leg press does get scary. Like what Adam says, we don't want them to think that intensity means danger but in your mind it is a little scary when you're lifting the heavy weight and you're feeling in your body that you can't go on but I remember I was getting a little scared, you know, because I was going up towards 200 pounds at that point and Ann said, don't worry nothing bad is going to happen. And that just all of the sudden, that's was like an ‘aha' moment for me because we go so slow, we're watching you the whole time and nothing bad is going to happen. I'm not going to die. I'm not -- the worst thing that's going to happen is I will not be able to push that weight any longer. I will not be able to hold it. The worst thing that would happen is that I suddenly, you know, just stop doing it and drop the weight a little bit. That is the worst and that's what you have to kind of have to work through in your head is just this -- to me it's a very great mental conditioning, you know so. Tim: And that's the value of having a trainer like the three of you and the rest of the staff you have at all the InForm Fitness locations is the fact that there's a trainer with you one on one for that 20-ish minutes or so. And then the part that got a little scary for me like you Sheila was my very first time through the workout is when you hit that point of failure where you can't move that weight anymore, well our natural response is just a boom let it down but as Adam has said, that's where the magic happens. And so then you say, “Alright you're at that failure point, 10, 9, 8,” and you're counting down to one and we're holding it and we're sitting there struggling. That's the pinpoint of the intensity that it doesn't necessarily hurt, there's that burn. It's intense and you want to beat it. You want to be able to hold it as long as you can and then you let it down and there's that amazing release. That to me is the intensity and as Adam, you said in previous episodes, that is where the magic happens. Adam: It is and, you know, again we talk about failure too. The word failure, muscle failure and that scares a lot of people. If you're not careful to define what failure is and that failure is a good thing, people can feel, “Oh, I suck at this,” or, “I'm too weak. I can't do this,” and working out to that level of intensity and muscle failure will do that to you. So, you have to educate. You have to understand that there's a totally different mindset, totally different objective to what we're trying to achieve when we do a set of exercise here. We're lifting weights slowly because it's safer. We're going to safely lift this weight until our muscle has nothing left and that can be a scary proposition. There's a natural survival instinct that I want to kick in, this fight or flight thing but we're smart people. Right? And we're human beings and we have thinking capabilities. So, we're going to overcome that fear. We're going to overcome that temptation to panic and we're going to stay in the pocket and we're going to push that level of intensity where we can't lift the weight anymore and push a little bit beyond that and endure that burn, embrace that burn if you will and then just expire and then like you said Tim, that's where the magic happens but it's also where the exhilaration comes in. You actually get it that you focused on it and the whole experience is only a minute in a half and really it's the last 20 seconds or so that will be uncomfortable part. So, it's 20 seconds of what I like to just call, severe discomfort. That's right. That's really all it is. Severe discomfort. And when Ann said, “Well, what's going to happen?” Because as soon as you stop, the severe discomfort goes away immediately. Yup. It goes beyond just goes away. It's almost exhilarating. [laughs] Exactly. It really is. Yeah. There's seven times a workout where I'm like, “Oh, that feels really good for that to stop.” So glad you're done. [laughs] [laughs] Yeah but -- You know, I think the word sometimes -- you know, like Adam is a very, very direct and I appreciate that and the truth is I actually am attracted to that term ‘muscle failure.' However, over the years I have noticed a lot of people, they don't connect to it and it's something I think we do have to work on with some people. They just won't stick around and sometimes the concept, especially with type A people, the word failure does not sink in quickly. Even if they love a good challenge. I mean, I play around with the terminology. I almost always go back to muscle failure also but -- That's a big hurdle to overcome when I was first exercising with Sheila and she was training me through this, I didn't like the failure. I was like, “Oh, I failed.” Right, you know -- Right. But after a while, once you learn to manage that and understand it as failure, that is the goal. It's the only option and then we're able -- Right. Yeah. Well, that's how I like to approach it. I call it what it is and I say, “But that's okay because failure can have different meanings.” That you can have personal failure, we're not talking about that kind of failure. We're talking about different types of failure. The threshold. Kind of like the word ‘shalom' in Hebrew. It can mean goodbye and hello. You know and the thing is failure can mean several things also. Alright. So, we're smart intellectual people. We're all big boys and girls here. Alright. We're using the word failure in a different way. Alright, get over it. Stop being so touchy feely sensitive, you know. You know a lot of people will say, “Well, I'm not really in great shape. I haven't worked out in like six years.” I mean, I'm very careful -- we all are very careful explaining when you start this workout we're going to kind of build you up to that. We're not treating you like an advanced client from day one. We're going to teach you what muscle failure feels like. We might not even go to muscle failure the first couple of workouts. We might get close to it. We'll bring you up, we'll bring you into it. Then I always like to say to people, we're not going to go anywhere where you're not willing to go yourself. I'm not going to make you do anything. You're going to feel confident enough to do this the right way. You will go to muscle failure and confidently go to muscle failure. Not because I'm imploring you but because you feel safe doing so. Well, what you just said supported what I was about to say and I'll just follow up with this. I really struggled with understanding A, what failure was until after a full week of going through all the exercises, understanding I can't move that weight anymore. Then dealing with the fact that oh, well I failed. I wanted to go more. I believe it takes a couple of weeks at least for me it took a few weeks to my brain around what failure was and my trainer Sheila helped me get there to understand that. And then the beautiful thing about reaching that failure, that threshold, that limit, is understanding those limits later were pushed just a week or two later when you go up weight in maybe two to four to five pounds up on the amount of weight that we're pushing, lifting or pulling. When we passed that threshold that helped me understand it and that's the goal and it's wonderful to push yourself to the limit because otherwise, you don't know how far you can go. You're not going to see any strength and I have seen incredible gains over the last four months. You know Adam talked about educating and talking to people and giving credit to our clients and he's absolutely right about that because you know when you -- like failure if we look at in exercise or all aspects of our lives, like when we look back on times we've failed we've always grown from those types of things in everything. They're always -- when we look back it's always a very positive aspect of our life and we've -- I've conveyed that to clients and reminded them about, “Hey, what about the time when you lost that job but you got a better one later?” Or this thing happened but then the next thing came as a result of that. I read something that my brother wrote years ago and he said something like, I trust my failures much more than I trust my successes because they happen much more often, you know. And I think as a result of just life experience and I think that's what -- like, literally, most things that are worthwhile are difficult. They are challenging. They're -- and this workout is a part of that. This is not a recreational fun activity. I mean, it can be because the trainers are all fun and we have a wonderful environment but when most people come to do is to work out safely and efficiently so they can get back to their life, their work or whatever. And, hey, well, that's my take on failure. I think it's a good thing and we should be looking at it in a very positive light as we educate the clients. So, Tim, you talked about your relationship with failure and how you kind of learned to embrace it and it took you several workouts and several weeks to kind of understand where we were going with this and where you should be going with it. And it made me think about any process whether it be a language, guitar, martial arts. The thing about -- martial arts is a good example because you get your black belt but you're not done learning. Black belt, you're considered fairly proficient at that particular martial art but you've got different degrees of black belt. So, there is no ends in this process. I'm doing it 18 years this way and I am still learning about myself and I'm still finding out things about myself and it's interesting because it's a simple thing going to muscle failure in a way it's a simple, you know, just go until you can't go anymore. I mean it doesn't get simpler than that. I mean there's no degrees of muscle failure. Either you go until your muscles don't have anything left. Done. So in one sense, muscle failure is very simply just go until you can't go anymore, where your muscle just fails. At that point you can't lift the weight anymore and there's no degrees of failure. You didn't almost fail. You either failed or you didn't. It's like being almost pregnant. There's no such thing. So, it's very simple in one hand but then it gets kind of sophisticated on the other hand where there are nuances to going to muscle failure, your breathing, the way you approaching it mentally. It's kind of like meditation in a way. The idea of meditation is very simple, just focusing on your breath and staying focused on your breath. Very simple premise but you never perfect it. Even the gurus of meditation never perfect that. I think a lot of it is reading your client and their attitude towards a challenge and some people are very excited to about this 90 second challenge ahead of them. Some people have a mediocre attitude towards it and some people have a very poor attitude towards it and among other -- even if you have poor attitude towards it a lot of them are here because they know that what they're doing is very, very good for them still you know. And I think we have to work with that and that's where we set the level of intensity. So, we don't -- so they can continue doing it and they can get the stimulus that is necessary. It's a little bit of an art form from the trainer's point of view. Adam's right though, inevitably the goal is to get to the point where you just can't go anymore and as you evolve as a client or in just doing the technique on your own or with a trainer you get better at it. At tolerating what is an unpleasant feeling, what's a lot of discomfort which people sometimes use the word pain dare I say, but it's like it's just a hard activity. It's a hard stimulus but the good thing is it's over quickly. It's a worthwhile stimulus. It's very challenging but it's over fast. And then the other thing about that too is they might be a little afraid to go to that level of intensity. We do have to guide them through it and it takes a few weeks for you to really kind of mentally get into it but you will leave that first session feeling something and that is what, “Wow. Oh my gosh. I'm going to go back and try a little harder next time.” You know and then they get to know themselves better that they can handle more than what they thought they could. And after six to twelve sessions you start to notice and feel and see benefits like the changes in your body and people feel it. So, it's all very worthwhile. Adam: When I give a consultation I'm not trying to push them as hard as they ever worked out in their life before. I'm not trying to prove to them how tough I am as a trainer. I'm not trying to get them to prove to me how tough they are. What I'm trying to do the first workout is to get their attention if you will. Like, “Wow. I can't believe how my legs feel after just two minutes of doing it.” When they say how amazing it is after their first workout and I know they didn't go into muscle failure and I know they have a lot of experiencing to do. I always say to them, I'm glad you just said that to me. If you think this is crazy cool now, I'm going to ask you how you feel about it in six to twelve weeks and you're going to look back on today's workout as like, “Wow. I thought I was doing it back then. Now, I see I'm doing it.” You know, so, you're going to look back on today's first workout with fond memories if you will because it's never going to be so easy ever again. Tim: Well, there's definitely something special about that first workout. It is an eye-opening experience and a first step towards rebooting your metabolism, burning fat and building muscle. Thanks team. Alright, here's our music composed and performed by our very own Mike Rogers, the GM at the InForm Fitness location in New York City. That music means that we're close to that 20-minute mark in the podcast. So, if you began your slow motion high intensity workout at the start of this podcast, you'd be finished by now for the entire week. If you'd like to ask our InForm Fitness experts a question or have comment regarding the Power of 10, it's very simple, just shoot us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. You can also leave us a voicemail by calling 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. That's 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. All feedback is welcome. Chances are strong that you'll end up right here on the show. And if you're learning from the show and enjoying it the best way to support it and ensure that we continue producing additional episodes is to subscribe to the podcast and please rate the show and leave us a review right here in iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher Radio, Acast, YouTube or wherever you might be listening. And to join us here at InForm Nation and to give this work out a try for yourself just visit informfitness.com for phone numbers and locations nearest you. Please tell them you heard about the Power of 10 from the podcast. Don't forget to join us in our next episode as we continue the series on intensity. We'll provide you with a very descriptive and detailed definition of a high-intensity workout from Ken Hutchins, one of the pioneers of this protocol. We'll also discuss how this type of workout will enhance your performance in whatever activity it is you enjoy. I'm Tim Edwards. For Adam, Mike and Sheila, thanks for joining us on the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends right here on the Inbound Podcasting Network.

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07 Machines vs. Free Weights vs. Body Weight

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2017 21:23

In Episode 7 of the Inform Fitness Podcast, Adam Zickerman, Mike Rogers, Sheila Melody and Tim Edwards discusses the pros and cons of high-intensity strength training with free weights versus machine weights versus your own body weight. You will learn more about the type of equipment you can expect to use with your very own personal trainer at Inform Fitness. To find an Inform Fitness location nearest you visit www.InformFitness.com If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. You can join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question. The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Once-Week-Revolution-Harperresource/dp/006000889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485469022&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+10+book Ilf you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com The transcription to this episode is below: 07 Working Out with Machine vs. Free vs. Body Weights - Transcript Intro: You're listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life-changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that's so effective, you'd get a week's worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high-intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1. InForm Nation, thanks for being with us once again. I'm Tim Edwards with the Inbound Podcasting Network. We have Sheila. We have Mike. And we have Adam, the founder of InForm Fitness and New York Times best-selling author of Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. That's what this show is all about, supercharging your metabolism, increasing your cardiovascular endurance and getting you leaner and stronger to enjoy your health and your life to the fullest. In today's episode we'll discuss working out with free weights versus machine weights versus your own body weight and the equipment you can expect to see when becoming a member of InForm Nation. Mike, let's start with you. Give us a quick rundown on the type of equipment InForm Fitness uses to support the Power of 10. In regards to the machines versus the free weight versus body weight, you know, InForm Fitness, here in New York, we have the Rolls Royce set up here as Adam said many times before and all of the locations in California, Virginia, etcetera. Our machines, they're outstanding. They're made by Nautilus. They're made by MedX and they're all retrofitted for our style of weight training to accommodate for the strength curves of the body. I never knew what a strength curve until I got certified and went through all this, you know, information. Basically, it's like when you start out a movement, like what Mike just said, you know, you go through this movement in the muscle group that your isolating. At the start of it you're normally a little weaker and then there's a point in that movement that you're the strongest and then there becomes another point where it's weaker. And what we want to do is stimulate that strongest part of the movement. So, if you're in the middle of this, you know, compound row and in the middle of it where you're strongest you can do 150 pounds but at the back you can't or at the very beginning it -- the equipment allows for the resistance to fall off where your strength curve is the weaker part and then you get that -- the best stimulus in the middle of it. If that [crosstalk 02:59]. And this cannot be accomplished, I'm sure, with free weights or regular machines that you would see at a conventional gym. There are tricks. You can simulate cams on free weights if you know how to use them properly. Like a lateral raise, you wouldn't be standing straight up. You lean to the side while you did a lateral raise, you actually in effect create a cam that's proper and congruent. So, if you know what you're doing, if you understand the limitations of free weights and how to work around them, you can have a very intense and safe workout. One thing that I think we overemphasize that people give more importance in, is actually needed is this thing, this concept called full range of motion. That we need to go through a full range of motion and some people in the older generation might remember this but there used to be, you know, a protocol called statics or isometric training and that's where you don't move at all. They don't go through any range of motion at all. You just fatigue the muscle just by pushing and using the muscle in a stationary position but pushing as hard as you can until it exhausts and you got good results from doing statics or isometrics. The range of motion for a lot of situations in trying to maximize that range of motion can end up being a very dangerous situation. When you're at the extremes of the range of motion, those are the most vulnerable parts of the muscle, the most stretched position. That's where things tear and go a little and get really dangerous. I like to stay right in that midrange and if unless you have specialized equipment, you should stay in that midrange and avoid the extremes. Only with retrofitted equipment where the machine makes it actually lighter where we're right in our most vulnerable and weakest positions. So, the weight is not being taken over by the connective tissue because the muscle can't handle it all right in that position. So, that's why we retrofit our machines and we do get a little bit more range of motion using machines like that. But again, I'm -- I don't really care about maximum range of motion. It doesn't matter. You can strengthen a muscle group or single muscle by just working it really deeply in a static position. In its strongest position. In the middle position. I think, you know, Adam I think one of the best examples of that is the leg extension because of all the controversy and all studies and all of the, you know, it's -- over the last -- as long as I've been a trainer there's been a lot of news articles and studies that said the leg extension is absolutely the worst machine and one of the most dangerous machines in the gym and the thing is -- well, the question is, how are you doing the study? How are they doing the exercise? How is the leg extension set up? And, you know, for example, our -- you know, Adam can describe probably the best exactly the alignment of the seat and how it drops off at the top and you know to -- I mean where if he doesn't do that, if you are going through a fuller range of motion, you are putting your knee in a lot of jeopardy at a regular gym versus at -- our leg extension makes that accommodation if you're going to a fuller range of motion but as Adam just sort of stated, it's and often in many cases, it's not necessary to do so. A leg extension is a rotary movement. The rotary movements are more challenging for free weights and the leg extension does have risks associated with it if you don't -- so our leg extension machine has a lot of retrofits done to it to make it a safe machine and exercise. Without getting into all the details, if somebody was to say to me, I want to do this exercise on my own and I belong to a gym, what should I do? I would not have them do the leg extension machine because I don't know what kind of machine they have and it's harder to use that correctly. I would stick him on -- I would keep them on the basic leg presses. That's what you can do on your own or a wall squat is even safer in these compound movements versus the rotary movements. So, right there would be how somebody can do this on their own just knowing what machines to avoid, what exercises to avoid and what is more effective given that you have crude equipment or free weights available to you. There's ways, again, of having an incredible workout in a full gym and avoid 90% of the equipment that's in that gym. Adam, you have state of the art equipment at all of the InForm Fitness locations across the country. Can you briefly just kind of run through this type of equipment that you have? What makes it so special for InForm Fitness and this type of workout? The key to this type of workout -- the impotence to this workout in general, lifting weights slowly was to make it safer and the special equipment is just one more step in that direction of making it safer. And one way you make exercise safer is making sure that while you're fatiguing a muscle, you're not doing anything harmful to the joints around that muscle and that's where the specialized equipment really shines. Because when you go through a range of motion through a particular exercise, let's take the bicep curl for example, when you start the bicep curl when your arm is straight versus when it's bent at a 90 degree angle that change and range of motion, your muscle is not the same strength. It's much weaker when you start to position -- 20%, about, weaker, than it is in the 90-degree angle. So, if you could handle 100 pounds in the strongest position, that means you can only handle about 80 pounds in the week position. And what does this macho, tough guy do when he wants to do bicep curls? He takes the most weight he can handle which is 100 pounds in the strongest position. So, he takes 100-pound dumbbell and he starts in the week position that can only handle 80. What's going to make us the other 20%? Well, I can tell you this, whatever is making it up, it's not good. [laughs] Because that's the connective tissue of the elbow, of the shoulder, of the back needing to heave and hoe just to get that extra 20%. And there's no good that comes from that. And if you do that regularly for all these kind of exercises for all the joints, all the time, there's an insidious negative effect to all that because you might not have tendonitis on day one doing that but if you keep doing it where you're straining the joints and in order to lift a weight in a certain position, over time it's going to bite you. So, our equipment just makes it lighter in the weaker points and makes it heavier in the strong point so it matches that strength curve. And therefore, you're not straining the joints and connective tissue is not doing the work of what the major muscles should be doing. Tim: So, as we wrap up this episode on machine versus free weights versus body weight exercises, Adam, you did say that you don't need to be at an InForm Fitness location in order to perform a high-intensity slow motion strength training system. There are safe ways to go about this with free weights and body weights but you do need some type of a trainer and some education before you take this type of a workout outside of an InForm Fitness gym. Adam: Yes, you do. And it doesn't take a lot. Knowing some of the pitfalls of free weights and certain exercises, knowing to stay away from some of the dangerous things, it wouldn't take too long to know more than most trainers out there actually. [laughs] Tim: Well, a good first step might be to pick up Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once- a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. Inside the book you'll find several workouts that support this slow motion high-intensity strength training system whether you use free weights, your own body weight or are fortunate enough to live near an InForm Fitness location. By following the three pillars Adam discusses in his book along with just a small investment of 20 to 30 minutes a week, it won't be long until you start seeing some measurable results and achievements from your newfound strength. Adam: How about, “Hey, Adam, guess what, for the first time I was able to put my stuff in the overhead compartment in the airplane without some young gentleman offering me any help. I did it myself.” How about that small achievement that is a big deal to a lot of people right now? Just the everyday tasks alone is worth it. A very small price to pay, truly, 20 minutes -- [Crosstalk 11:36] that's the real functional training right there. [laughs] Yeah. And then I'll take it to the, you know, older, to the senior crowd I heard one of our friends Greg Burns who had some very senior -- they were probably in their late 70s. They loved going on cruises and the wife had been very upset because they couldn't go on cruises anymore because she had to -- she couldn't, like, walk around that well. They started working out, doing this workout and within the next year -- like they did it for about a year and they went on a cruise and she was so happy. She felt like she had their life back again because she didn't have to have a wheelchair. She could walk around on her own. It's that kind of a level. It goes from snowboarding, gardening, whatever to simply being able to walk and balance yourself. Yeah, I've heard -- I've recently also same thing, senior used to have to go up the stairs, like, you know, up one step and meet the other foot with the other foot and then up the next step and so like -- and then would go on from that to one step to the next step to the next step to the next step. So, it's like little stuff like that and -- Right. It becomes very noticeable. And what is this older person going to do if they didn't have us? Like what other kind of strength training that involves the necessary intensity. What are they going to do if it's not this? What is an older person that has problems walking up a flight of stairs, for example, as simple as that one flight of stairs they have major pain and problems with it, what are they going to do if they are that far gone already that they can't even walk up a flight -- what else are they -- what is their option? A walking program? I don't think so. What is it? No. They got to strength train. How about -- they going to join a CrossFit class? [laughs] Like physical therapy is the other option. [laughs] They may find other exercise alternatives but probably one that's not going to -- they might not hurt them along the way, you know, I mean, it's very difficult to do that and that's why we -- They have to strength train. They got to strengthen the muscle. They got to do it without any force because they're so week already the last -- they can't afford any additional force that's not necessary. They can't afford it. They'll break. So, let me ask you this then. So, how old is too old to call InForm Fitness and say, I'd like to sign up for a high intensity slow motion strength training program. How old is too old? That's a good question. Dead. [laughs] Honestly, I don't think we can answer that question. [laughs] I don't know if there's an answer to that question but we can say we have people in their 90s. We have a 92-year-old woman who's on our website. We have a nice video of her and we've had another 90-year-old who would still be here but she moved to Baltimore, remember, Adam? Yeah. Yeah. So, it's like -- we have several in their 80s, several in their 70s, lots in their 70s. More than several. Yeah. More than several. Yeah. Lots and lots. It's -- so -- We forget they're in their 70s, Mike. Yeah. Yeah. I mean -- It's unbelievable. That's true. Adam: Honestly, like, anybody that's over 60 and working out here, I think they're all 60. Like I basically say, yeah we have a lot of people in their 60s but it turns out that a lot of the people that I think are in 60s are actually in their 70s. Tim: So, we found the fountain of youth at InForm Fitness and is not a magic pill. There's work that goes into but like Adam was saying, a 20 minute a week investment is about as minimal as it gets. It's safe and it's effective and we've interviewed people over the last couple of months, Sheila, with the videos that we've been producing that I think they're in their 50s and I'm not kidding, with no exaggeration they're in their late 60s or early 70s and Keith comes to mind in particular. Sheila: Yeah. Keith is [crosstalk 15:10]. Tim: We're going to be talking about Keith here coming up shortly in another episode, a very charismatic gentleman and I think he's 70 something. Is that correct? 71? Sheila: 72. Tim: He's 72 for goodness' sake. My gosh, I thought he -- Sheila: And he's like solid muscle. Tim: Yeah. Sheila: And talk about intense. He just really goes intense. You know? Tim: So, if we have people listening we know just looking at demographics a lot of older people, baby boomers don't necessarily listen to podcasts but we know their kids do or their grandkids do. So, if you're a child or a grandchild of somebody that you love that you think could use some physical conditioning, you might want to give InForm Fitness a call or check them out on the website so -- Sheila: Well, not only that. I don't want to seem like we're only for old people too. We have, you know, younger people that are -- you know, we have 15-year-olds. We have a number of, like, in their late 20s to, you know, early 30s. And they don't have time. You know, they're trying to build their lives. They're working. They're starting to get into their, like, the peak of their, you know, careers. And they love this workout. You know, so, we have a, you know, grandson and a grandmother coming in and, you know, it's funny because he was like, look, you know, my grandma can lift more weight than some of the girls I know. Tim: [laughs] That's awesome. You know, which is true because she's been coming in religiously and just doing it, you know. Just slowly building and consistent. The workout is certainly for everybody. I have an 11-year-old client. I have athletes, very serious athletes here and it's for everybody. The whole point before was just that because a lot of people get very concerned about how much they can actually exercise when they get into their golden years and even up to like their 90s, which we have them here and they're thriving so. The limit is pretty much nowhere. There is no limit. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think the only limit -- there are two limits. There are definitely some orthopedic or medical [inaudible 17:17] indications to exercise that. True. True. That's how we gauge whether there are limitations to this, not age. Age in of itself, it doesn't matter. It's really the state of the person. There are some medical issues that needs to be dealt with and cleared with some medical doctors but the other limitation that I think that exists more than anything else is the mental limitation. Mhm [affirmative]. You know, I mean, if you can get somebody to kind of let go and really push themselves to an uncomfortable level that they might not be used to, if you can get them to break through that barrier, it opens up a whole world in a profound way, way beyond just getting stronger actually. Not just to their physical abilities but if -- you know, when you're physically pushed to the point of failure in a specific movement, I know for a fact that that mental shift can also take place in anything you do in life. I believe that what we learn in those seven or so exercises in that 20 minutes can be applied outside in every area of your life not just in your body. I mean, I think absolutely, when we push ourselves in almost any capacity and then afterwards we take a proper rest, our body grows, our mind grows, our, you know, like, you wouldn't -- if you didn't sleep, your memory wouldn't improve. All these things, all of your cognitive abilities and it applies to everything and that's where, how do you do that in a safe fashion is and I think that InForm Fitness and the method that Adam has developed here is your best option. That was really cheesy. I kind of liked that moment for a while. Yeah. [laughs] Were we getting deep? You know a little cheese every once in a while, you know, as long as you're not lactose intolerant. I guess. [Inaudible 19:01]. [laughs] Never underestimate the power of cheese. I'm not lactose intolerant. I'll go there all day, Adam. [laughter] Yeah. Just cut back on putting that cheese in your mouth if you're looking to shed a little fat while you're building your muscle with the Power of 10. Again, check out Adam's book for a simple and handy list of food that you should avoid and enjoy in chapter 3, nutrition, the second pillar. We'll provide you a link to Adam's book in the show notes. Well, that episode went by fast. If you started your high-intensity training with InForm Fitness at the start of this episode, you'd be wrapping it up about now just like we are. Hey, we're going to be kicking off a new segment called, Fitness Fact or Fiction, in the next couple of episodes. So, if you would like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question, maybe you have a comment regarding the Power of 10 or maybe you saw something on your Facebook feed regarding the many fitness trends that are making the rounds, send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. You can even give us a call at 888-983-5020, Ext. 3 to leave your comment, question or suggestion. All feedback is welcome. And seriously, this is very important to us, the best way to support this show and keep it free is to subscribe to the podcast right here in iTunes or wherever you might be enjoying your podcast. Of course, it is absolutely free to subscribe and we would love it if you left us a review. Hey, our next four episodes promise to be both entertaining and educational. In this podcast you've heard a lot about weightlifting but not a lot regarding cardio. Should you hang onto that treadmill that's collecting dust in your garage or continue paying for that spin class you hardly ever go to or is the cardio you need included in your 20-minute workout with InForm Fitness? We'll discuss the cardio conundrum and fat loss in the next two episodes. Plus, we'll be speaking with a very talented musician who's lost 118 over the past two years by adding the Power of 10 workout to her weight loss program. We'll catch you next week right here on the InForm Fitness podcast. For Adam Zickerman, Mike Rogers and Sheila Melody, I'm Tim Edwards with the Inbound Podcasting Network.

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03 The Importance of Building Muscle

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2017 20:58

This episode Adam discusses the importance of building muscle beyond just looking good at the beach or in a cocktail dress. You will learn about of the profound effects building muscles safely has on all the organs of your body. Some questions answered in this episode are: Will I become more “toned” working out with low weights and high reps? What is muscle failure and is it necessary to build muscles safely. What is the dose-response relationship and how does it apply to building muscle? If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question. The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Once-Week-Revolution-Harperresource/dp/006000889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485469022&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+10+book Ilf you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com The transcription to this episode is below: 03 The Importance of Muscle - Transcript Intro: You're listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life-changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that's so effective, you'd get a week's worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high-intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1. Tim: Alright. Welcome back to the InForm Fitness podcast with Adam Zickerman. My name's Tim and we are at episode three, The Importance of Muscle. We'll get down to that in just a minute but listen to that music in the background. Just kind of get that -- it's got a good groove to it. Don't you think guys? Adam: Mhm [affirmative]. Tim: Yeah? Mike: I sure as hell think so. Tim: [laughter] And of course was Mike Rogers, GM of InForm Fitness in New York City, who wrote and performed our theme music. What's the name of that song, Mike? Mike: That song is called, “Allergic To The Medication.” I actually co-wrote that with my partner, Brian Lord, who currently lives in Portland, Oregon and hence the demise of the Hypertonics, that was our band. Tim: [laughs] Mike: But, you know, every once in a while, we pop out and we have a show every once, you know, to bring back the love but yeah, that was one of our favorite songs. Tim: Well, we're going to put you on stage at our one-year anniversary show perhaps, maybe and we'll have a show in New York and LA because that's where we're broadcasting from or podcasting from. Alright. Let's get into it, guys. Let's dive in. So, we've had a couple of episodes under our belt now. And if you haven't had a chance to listen to episodes one and two, we invite you to go back and do so. Episode one, we talked to Adam Zickerman in great detail about Adam's history, what led him to building his empire at InForm Fitness and this slow motion high-intensity workout which is what this podcast is all about. This show is for those that are looking to supercharge their metabolism, increase cardiovascular endurance and build muscle. That's what today's episode is all about, building muscle or just, The Importance of Muscle, beyond the obvious, guys. The obvious is, you know, functionality. We want to look good and get as many right swipes for all of you single people out there [laughs] I suppose. Adam, walk us through the importance of muscle. Not just the obvious, the things that we're all aware of. Well, actually I do want, you know -- yeah. First of all, the obvious is not so unimportant. I mean, there's so many things but let's start with the obvious. Mhm [affirmative]. I mean, I guess the one obvious thing about building muscle would be looking better. Right? You know, looking chiseled, looking defined, looking strong, looking fit and that's an aesthetic thing and that's probably the obvious one. To me though, especially for baby boomers, I'd have to say that's probably fifth on the totem pole of importance, you know. To me, probably the most important thing about muscle is the strength aspect that it gives you. To me, that is the foundation of any fitness program. Do you find that that is more prevalent, the importance of strength to, say, baby boomers because that's when the age group that starts to notice that they're not nearly as strong as they once were, is that why that's at the top of their list? That's exactly when they start to realize what's important in life. [laughs] They have the family. They got the girl or they got the guy. Right. You know? They sell the BMW. They get the minivan and now they don't want to be in pain anymore. [laughs] Now they want to be able to go play sports with their kids and not be in pain and to enjoy life and to not exacerbate or have the injuries they've had of their youth start creeping up on them. What this does, what strength gives you, it buys you more time to be pain-free because those injuries they're lurking and as soon as you start getting weaker, those injuries start becoming more pronounced. The main way I think to keep those things at bay is just to not lose any muscle strength as we get older. You know what I've noticed from all the years I've been training and really, really thinking about this and living it as well is that around age 30, you know, people, both men and women are losing muscle just from the nature of aging. Maintaining that has become and should become the priority in our life. I mean, everything sort of slows down a little bit. We start to store a little bit more fat. Our joints get a little weaker. When we're playing sports, the little injuries that used to go away in a day or two sometimes linger a little bit longer, those little aches and pains and I mean, I'm an active guy and so that happens. A lot of it, what women think is toning, “Oh, I want to tone up. I want to tone up. I want to tone up.” Well, girls, that's muscle. That's what it is. It's muscle and you get, you know, and you're not going to bulk up, you know, and get -- you're going to be the best you can be. Right, Adam? Why don't we talk a little bit about bulking up? Alright. The thing about muscle is this, we all think that if you work out one way, the muscle will respond one way and if you work out another way, the muscle will respond the other way. For example, if you do -- the old adage is if you do heavy weights low reps, you'll bulk up. Your muscles will get big and bulky. And the other thought would be if you do high reps, then you get toned. You get cut. That's like ridiculous. Alright. When a muscle gets stimulated, when a muscle is fatigued, it makes itself stronger and the way it makes itself stronger is by creating more, what they call, myofibrils which are the cells within a muscle fiber and the muscle fibers get thicker and thicker and stronger and either it's stimulated enough for that to happen or it's not stimulated enough for that to happen. Period. It's not like it's going to bulk up one way -- a myofibril is a myofibril. It's the same. That's the reaction. More myofibrils, thicker muscle fibers. So, Adam, when I started my workout with Sheila several months ago and she was explaining this work out through the Power of 10, the slow motion high-intensity strength training system that you developed at InForm Fitness. Sheila did a great job. I loved the word she used when I was in the middle of the workout. I was getting a dose. I feel like I'm getting a deeper penetration into the muscle. Am I visualizing that correctly? Are there different types of muscle fibers that are being stimulated through this protocol? Right. Well, first of all, let's talk about dose and usage of the word dose. I'm so glad that you that resonated with you. Very much. That that made that kind of affected, “Oh, like,” because, you know, Doug McGuff author of Body by Science talks -- had a whole chapter in his book, Body by Science, about the dose-response relationship. And Sheila, you used the word ‘dosage' because in her head that's how she sees it. Mhm [affirmative]. Because that's exactly what it is and the dose-response relationship that McGuff talks about is a relationship that every medical student, every doctor has to know and deal with. And that is understanding the dosage of a certain medicine to get the proper response. And doctors all know that they have to balance just the right dosage to get just the right response because if the dosage is too little, there's not going to be a response. Or too much. And if a dosage is too much, it becomes toxic. So, this it's balancing act of having exact right doses deal with whatever needs to be dealt with. Now, exercise is exactly the same way because medicine is a dosage and a high-intensity exercise experience is a dosage. And while we need to do it individuals, understand what dosage works best for us to get the response we need. And that dosage in general, on a bell curve of the human population, is about once a week that dosage. It can vary for the individual by days and even weeks for that matter but you have to start somewhere. When you look at the general population, it seems that one week, one work out per week, you start seeing progress, you start seeing muscle strength and muscle gains. Wow, that fast. But this type of workout. Not just any workout, right? If anything -- And the analogy works really well with more or less than you need. If you have too much exercise, well now we're getting into my personal story about how my boss said I didn't look very good even though I was always very fit because I was tired, I was overtraining. I was getting hurt a lot and then you have the opposite. You have people that, you know, they do it half assed. Let's face it. They go through the motions. They go to the gym. They're talking and reading People magazine and they're not really getting any real doses even though they might be spending a lot of time. Point is, they're not going to get any response. The dosage is too weak. Yeah. I think we're always trying to figure out how to create this balancing act and it is a little difficult sometimes because we're all individual. We're all very different. Some people can benefit from going two times a week, sometimes one time a week is absolutely appropriate. And the thing is, I think depending on what you're doing and how intense you're doing it, we have to try and figure this out. And figuring out the right dose, you know, we always start on a conservative level when we're trying to understand peoples' bodies but then -- and then it usually becomes very intense very, very quickly. But understanding this dose-response relationship I think is one of the most important things in how we think about our health in all aspects. From what we're eating, to how much we're sleeping, to the how much in the frequency of our exercise. So, it's something that is worth everyone thinking about a little bit. And one of the thing that, you know. I -- that really had an impact on me when I first heard this is, and Adam said it, was the fact that muscle dictates to the rest of the body what happens. Basically, the muscle is the most demanding tissue in your body. So, when you place a demand on that muscle, it makes the rest of the body stand up and pay attention. Mhm [affirmative]. Right? Well, now you're bringing up something different now. So, we got the dose response thing which means, you know, you have the right stimulus. Alright and therefore you're waiting for the right response. The response that we're looking for is strength. Now, what does strength, getting back to the beginning of this podcast, what does strength give us? Why is strength -- why is muscle so important? That's what Sheila was referring to now when she talked about the demands of muscle. Right? The demands of muscle -- another analogy I like to make is like the demands of a population. What happens when a lot of people start moving into a new town and start developing a new town? Alright. The more people that move into that town, the more services need to be built to service those people. Alright. You'd have to have more restaurants. You'd have to have more supermarkets. You'd have to have a better transportation system. Everything has to improve to meet that demand. The utilities, new electrical units whatever that they call that stuff when they build out a city. So, that's the demand and demand is the people. So, when you're building muscle let the demand [inaudible 11:54]. The more muscle that you put on your frame, the more demands you're making on your body to meet those demands. And what does that mean? That means the heart, the transportation system, has to become more efficient. The infrastructure of the town has to improve. The roadways what do you -- well that's our bones. That's our skeletal system. Once again, that's it's more of a common fact that people understand that building strength will help with bone density. The idea of strength training and exercise and staving off the effects of osteoporosis has been known for a while now. Well, it's because when you have strong muscles, again, the bones have to support those new stronger muscles and they become more dense. So, question I have, is you bring that up and that's a fantastic analogy of the demand and supply and using that city analogy and you're talking about with the building of the muscle, the strength training and its effect on various parts of the body like Sheila introduced a minute ago. What about organ functionality? You mentioned the heart as well too but does that also -- does building your muscles and becoming stronger also help you with other functionalities? What, like say, for digestion? Exactly. [Inaudible 13:07] digestion, our ability to utilize -- our glucose metabolism improves. That's a very interesting point because when I talked about these factors that I wanted to have separate podcasts about. One of those things, the research being done on myokines. Myokines are these proteins that are generated from the muscle after high intensity exercise. They have anti- inflammatory properties but they also have what they call organ crosstalk. Your muscles can release these myokines and talk to other organs in your body to have them perform better. Mhm [affirmative]. Like the pancreas is actually utilizing insulin better. The liver's ability to store more glucose improves. All these types of things, the mobilization of body fat for fuel improves as a result of these myokines being generated from the muscles. That really high intensity exercise can only do for you. So, and this is recent stuff that we're learning about. So, it's called organ crosstalk. So, when you never thought in the past that high intensity strength training -- it only lasts 20 minutes once a week mind you, have these profound effects. Not just on our strength and getting rid of our aches and pains and allows us to put something in the overhead compartment in an airplane, but to be able to actually improve a digestion to be able to help us mobilize body fat in a more efficient way. Fantastic stuff that we're just learning about, anti- inflammatory properties. It's beyond what I ever thought possible. And the thing that just really, really turns me on about this is the bang that you -- [Crosstalk 14:52]. Tim: [laughs] Adam: The bang that you get for your buck. I mean we're talking about yes, an intense experience but we're talking about a 20-minute intense experience on an average of once a week to have these really profound effects occur. I mean you'd think that for those types of positive effects you'd have to work out every single day, hours at a time, to have these things happen. Tim: Mhm [affirmative]. Adam: But, no. So, to wrap up what we're talking about as far as the importance of muscle, of course we started with aesthetics. Everybody wants to look good and one of the challenges that we have as trainers in our field, in our particular business, because we're not selling the pipedream about you're going to look amazing. And this is the problem because everyone expects exercise to give them the body that they want and to lose all the, “In once a week I can look like this?” Well, no. I mean body fat loss is also another part of it and nutrition is as important as the strength training part. Now, what I want to point out all the time to people when they say because you can see the disappointment in their face when you hit them with that dose of reality that no exercise program is going to make them have that hard body that they're looking for if they're not watching what they eat. Everyone wants that exercise to be the magic bullet for them So, they first go, “Ah, are you kidding me? You're telling me that this once a week work out is not going to like give me -- and I'm not going to lose 30 pounds the next 30 weeks this way.” Well, no. Not from the exercise alone but let me tell you something, if you don't lose a single ounce here but you come here once a week and you work out really hard, you're going to be getting so many other benefits and you're going to have a lot of benefits and still be overweight. [laughs] I'd rather be strong and overweight than weak and overweight. Tim: Mhm [affirmative]. Adam: Now, if you want to be strong and svelte, then you got to do the nutrition part too. And you can make that decision whenever you want to make that decision, but if you just did this. If you make the decision to do this once a week, you've found the fountain of youth and you might be overweight but you found the fountain of youth. Your bones will be stronger as a result of it. Your glucose metabolism will be a little bit better because of it and these are things that people don't see and this is the challenge. When I try to tell people, forget about the fat loss, you're getting all these other benefits, they're like, “Eh, I just want to look good in a cocktail dress.” Like that's almost all that matters and it drives me nuts because there's so many more important things about strength training than just losing body fat especially since weight training or any other exercise [gets louder] is not all that good at helping you lose body fat anyway. Mhm [affirmative]. I mean I just never got that. It's about these incredible profound things that we're finding out are happening, just from 20 minutes of intense exercise. That's what I want to say in conclusion of all this. That you should understand that there's so much more than meets the eye. I mean, the weight loss and looking good is a tip of the iceberg and when you go underneath it's like, “Oh my God, look at all this.” Just do it. Well -- just do it and all this takes is, I don't know. What? Five to seven exercises to supercharge your metabolism, increase cardiovascular endurance, and it will make you leaner and it will make you stronger if you follow those three pillars. Again, Adam, tell us what the three pillars are please to support the Power of 10 in this protocol. Exercise, to maintain muscle mass. Nutrition, that will help foster fat loss. And of course, the secret weapon, and what came up in a way with our discussion on dose response, enough rest. This is the third pillar, rest and recovery. Which is the response part of the dose and response equation. Now, that is all explained in detail in Adam's book which you can get at amazon.com. It's right here, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. I've got highlights. Everything's highlighted in here. I've got tags. I'm going through it and really digesting this information and it's changing my life and you can do the same thing as well. There are several locations if you'd like to try to work out for yourself in California, Colorado, Virginia, New Jersey and New York where Adam and Mike are. We invite you to join InForm Nation. And to find an InForm Fitness near you, just visit www.informfitness.com and when you call, please mention the podcast and maybe they'll throw some swag your way. I think we're working on some swag. Aren't we Sheila? You talked about some InForm Fitness shirts and what do we got? Yup. We are. Yeah. Tim: Alright. Sheila: We're working on some InForm Nation shirts. Yeah. Tim: InForm Nation. That's right. We're looking for you to become a member of folks is InForm Nation. And now, if you have a question for Adam, Mike or Sheila or a comment regarding the Power of 10 or something we've talked about here on the podcast, you can shoot us an email to podcast@informfitness.com. You can also record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. And pretty soon we're going to start including some phone calls, some questions and some comments from our listeners. The phone number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3 and hopefully we'll go ahead and get some of those pretty soon to start including those on the podcast. And finally and very importantly, if you wouldn't mind, please, if you like what you hear, if you want more of these shows to continue to be released through iTunes and SoundCloud and Stitcher Radio and Acast and wherever you might be getting your podcast from, please leave us a review and subscribe to the show. That will ensure the success of this program and make sure that we have more episodes coming your way. Alright guys, great discussion today on muscle. The definition of muscle and why it's so much more important to build and maintain than just to look good in a cocktail dress. Thanks guys for joining us today. Good job. Adam: [laughs] Tim: I'm Tim Edwards reminding you to join us again next time as we open up a series on intensity, high intensity in your work out. We'll define it and discuss the many benefits that await you by joining InForm Nation. Thanks for listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends on the Inbound Podcasting Network.

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Dealing with the Bad Things First – Expedia Japan – Hidemaru Sato

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2016 58:25

Expedia had a hard road to travel when they decided to come into Japan. The Japanese market turned out to be nothing like they had ever experienced before. Not only were consumer attitudes and behaviors towards travel booking completely different than it was in their home market, but they were up against some very powerful and well entrenched companies, including both online giants Rakuten and Yahoo and traditional powerhouses like JTB. Today Hidemaru Sato, or “Maru" as his friends call him, will explain to us how Expedia managed to overcome the odds on a ridiculously tight deadline and how a few tweaks to the core product turned out to be key to their success. Maru also shares some great advice for both western companies looking to hire a Japan country manager and for people who are Japan country managers and want to do their jobs more effectively. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it. [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Friend Maru on Facebook Connect with him on LinkedIn Maru's advice on successful market entry Maru's advice on how to hire a country manager Partial Transcript Disrupting Japan, episode 64. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from the CEOs breaking into Japan. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for listening. Travel giant Expedia has their work cut out for them coming into the Japanese market. Not only was the online travel game played very differently in Japan, but they were up against some very strong, very entrenched competition in Japan, both from the major online players like Rakuten Travel and Yahoo Travel, and from traditional players like JTB as well. Today we sit with down with Hidemaru Sato, or Maru, as his friends call him, and he explains how he had to change both Expedia’s marketing message and he product itself to make it attractive to Japanese consumers. In both cases, you’ll see why less is actually sometimes more. Maru also provides framework for both western companies looking to higher a Japanese country manager and for people who are Japanese country managers and want to do their jobs more effectively. Once you get to know Maru, you won’t be surprised to see that he has a very personality-driven approach on both counts. But you know, Maru can explain that much better than I can, so let’s hear from our sponsor and then get right to our interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ] [Interview] Tim: So, we’re sitting down with Maru Sato, and you’ve brought a number of companies into Japan, but today we’re going to talk about Expedia. It was a while ago but let’s go back to when Expedia was first thinking of coming into Japan. What did they see that was important about the Japanese market? Why did they want to be here? Maru: Okay, I think back to maybe the early 2000s, and basically it’s kind of the boom. It’s a lot of successful U.S. companies who enter the Japan market because Japan was still strong. Tim: Well, it still is. The Japan market is still pretty big. Maru: Then also, the Japanese market is something like new IT technology or internet-related business just starting. The first company I just helped come into Japan market is America Online, AOL. This is 1999, so this is when AOL was the world’s biggest internet service at that time. So they expand to Europe first, U.K., Germany, France, and also the Asia Pacific. Tim: In both AOL’s case and Expedia’s case, it was just part of the natural global expansion. Maru: And then U.S. companies, or global companies, they expect the Japanese market is big. So now it’s the same thing. Basically the Japanese market is big but usually they do not understand the cultural difference, and also business difference, and also user difference. So a lot of our conflict— Tim: I want to talk about that a lot. Before we get to that, though, how did Expedia pick you?

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Japan’s Airbnb for Satellites – InfoStellar

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2016 31:20

ceo earth japan japanese airbnb satellites aerospace earthy tim well disrupting japan tim romero

008 MISSING: ELIZABETH SALGADO'S FAMILY SPEAKS

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2016 19:31

Tim: Several months ago, a woman named Elizabeth Salgado was last seen walking down the center street in one of the safest cities in the United States - Provo, Utah - and she went missing. Somebody apparently took her, and that left a family in absolute shambles. I have two members of that family here: Elizabeth’s mother, Libertad Edith, and Elizabeth’s uncle, Rosenberg Salgado. Thank you both for coming on the show today. Can you tell me what happened, or at least what we know about what happened to Elizabeth, and how that affected you and how that affected your family? Rosenberg: First of all, just so you know, Elizabeth Salgado was a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She wanted to come here to Provo, Utah, because she wanted to be associated with people that they had the same religious beliefs, and wanted to progress in her life and be able to open more opportunities in her life, and wanted to be in a great place, safest place on earth. And she thought that this would be, like, the best place on earth for her to be learning English. Unfortunately, three weeks later, on the 16th of April, she went missing, and as of right now we don’t have any leads, nothing that can help us believe to be able to find her. We are working also with the police department. They said the FBI is also involved, but right now there are no leads at all. Our family has been suffering a lot. My dad died because of the stress that we haven’t been able to find my niece. My sister is having high blood pressure problems and the father of Elizabeth is having high blood pressure problems as well because of the stress that we haven’t been able to find my niece. So it has been a terrible experience for a family. It is something that we never thought this was going to happen to my niece, especially in a city that is so safe. I mean, to me, we felt like probably Utah was just the safest place on earth. Tim: Sure, yeah. You know, I’m so sorry. We’ve been working on this investigation as you know, and it is a difficult case. It’s like she just vanished in the thin air. You know, it’s something that we, at Operation Underground Railroad - we see this all the time. We see it everyday. It doesn’t do anything to normalize the situation or to downgrade the pain at all. But I want to ask, before you lost Elizabeth, what was your idea or thoughts on things like trafficking and this kind of crime? Was it something that even touched you or affected you or that you knew about? Rosenberg: Honestly, before my niece went missing, I didn’t even think that existed that kind of problem here in the...I mean in this country, or any country in the world, because I think it’s something horrible, you know, people they go through that. I honestly didn’t even think it existed, to be honest. So I wasn’t even aware of that until right now, that now we are going through this, and that I feel like I want to even help out more people to be able to rescue these people because it’s terrible that you are going through this experience as a family. As a family member, we are desperate, we are... I mean, you can’t even live a normal life - you can’t even sleep thinking where your niece is, what happened to her, and why are they doing this to an innocent girl. So it’s something that we actually didn’t even think that this problem existed, to be honest. Tim: Yeah...I’m so sorry. Again, thank you so much for being willing to talk. What we are seeking is a solution, right. The purpose of Slave Stealer podcast is to make people aware. Unfortunately, the way you learned about it was absolutely horrific. There’s no worse way to learn about it. Have you learned anything? Have you... Could you help us? Because we don’t claim to have all the answers, right. But we are trying to find those answers. And so I ask you, and in a minute, I am going to ask you to talk to your sister - of course she speaks Spanish and we’ll have you translate her feelings about this as well. But again, I am speaking here with Rosenberg Salgado, the uncle to Elizabeth Elena Salgado, who, in April, was apparently kidnapped. She vanished in one of the safest neighborhoods in the world, in Provo, Utah. Rosenberg, what do you think needs to happen to minimize this kind of crime? Rosenberg: To be honest, I mean I feel like if a lot of people that were contributing to be able to rescue more people and now that I am aware that this organization exists, I’m even trying to see if there are any companies that they can donate time and money for you guys to be able to help out and rescue all the people in the world that need to be rescued. Because it is just terrible that families...they go through this and I feel like if there are a lot of people trying to contribute just a little a bit, it can make a better world. Tim: Right, right, and I couldn’t agree more with you. If everybody knew how large this was... And they just don’t. It is hidden. But it is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. It is billions of dollars into the kidnapping and selling and abuse of people, whether it’s slave labor or sex trafficking. People need to know because we can’t solve this problem unless everybody knows. When we talk about these numbers, millions and millions, it’s important not to let those numbers desensitize us in any way because each of those numbers has a story attached to that, right, like yours. There is pain attached to it. There is lives altered and changed forever because of that, and it is important to know and recognize that there is that kind of a story behind every single number that equals and adds up to millions. That’s the kind of pain and suffering we are talking about. I think that your story really will help people to see it and wake up. Now, in terms of Elizabeth herself, what can people do? What can people do to help you specifically? I know that there has been an award offered for information. Tell me about that. Rosenberg: Right. There is a $50,000 reward that whoever gives us a lead that will help us find my niece, they get the reward. And also, I feel that a lot of people... If they are on the streets or, you know, they can be looking around to be aware if they happen to see her. My niece went missing during the day. I am sure that somebody knows something or somebody saw something. We are just asking the community that whoever knows something just please have compassion on this girl and just tell us what they know. I mean, they need to put themselves in our own place, and if this was your niece, you would want the whole world to help you find her. You will want everyone to be looking for her. And if they even knew - I mean, you know - the pain we are going through... It’s just terrible. You can’t even describe what we are going through. I mean, I can’t even find the right words to be able to describe what we are going through because it’s just impossible to describe everything that we feel as a family...besides that, praying and also fasting to be able to help us to find my niece. I feel like if they see also anything suspicious in their neighborhoods, even if it isn't significant, it can be significant to us. Tim: Yeah. Rosenberg: Just whatever they know. Because sometimes people, they might feel, "Oh no, I mean, I don’t think that this is something that can help them to find her." I mean, you know, for people that they have the experience, they might be able to be, "Oh, yeah, this is significant so let’s try to look at this lead," and so whatever they know, they just need to tell the authorities. Tim: Thank you so much. I’d like you to please ask your sister if she has any message to the world. If she has the whole world listening right now and she wants to tell them about what she’s learned about this problem, or if she has a message she wants to share about Elizabeth or even to Elizabeth - what would she say and would she be willing to say it? And if could you please translate that. Libertad: Muy buenas tardes a todo los, a todo la comunidad y a toda las lugares en que me están escuchando. Rosenberg: Good afternoon to everybody, everybody who is listening to me. Libertad: Este, quiero decirle que antras corrido ocho meses desde la desaparición de mi hija Elizabeth Elena. Rosenberg: I want to tell you that it has been almost eight months that my daughter disappeared. Libertad: Es mos passado muchos desafíos. Rosenberg: We have been going through very hard times. Libertad: Ansi de muy llenos de sufrimiento, de angustia y de dolor. Rosenberg: A lot of suffering, a lot of anxiety and a lot of pain. Libertad: Es un dolor inexplicable. Rosenberg: It’s a...pain that is...that we can’t even explain. Libertad: Nosotros hemos hecho estan impossible... Rosenberg: We have done the impossible... Libertad: ...por buscarla. Rosenberg: ..to be able to find my daughter. Rosenberg: We have gone through events to be able to pass flyers. Libertad: En mos sido a Palo Alto, California. Rosenberg: We have gone through Palo Alto, California to Facebook to be able to see if they can spread up the word for her. Libertad: Y hemos tocado puertas. Rosenberg: And knocking on doors. Libertad: Es una búsqueda incansable. Rosenberg: It’s a tireless search. Libertad: No vamos a parar... Rosenberg: We won’t stop... Libertad: ...a encuéntrala. Rosenberg: ...until we find her. Tim: Rosenberg, could you ask her what she has learned about this problem in general? I imagine she’d never imagined...she never thought this would touch her life. Tim: And, if she knows, what she would do... If she were the king of the world, what she would do to help solve this, not only for Elizabeth, but for everybody? Libertad: Como reina del mundo, le pediría ayuda a todo los...a todo los medios de comunicación de cada país... Rosenberg: As the king of the world, I would like to ask all the countries to be able to help us find her. I mean, you know, the communication, like any probably news and all over the world to be able to help us find, I mean, you know, people who are missing. Libertad: ...para que difundiera sus photos. Rosenberg: So that they could spread out the word. Tim: Well, I think she hit on it, I think she hit on it. I like what she said. She said there needs to be more communication with countries, right? And that made me think of something that... I don’t know if you are aware of this. The House passed a bill last year. It’s H.R. 515 - it’s International Megan's Law. Megan's Law, of course, is a law that takes criminals who have been convicted as sex offenders - child sex offenders. And after they finish their sentences, they are not allowed to live near schools, they are not allowed to live in certain places. And that’s Megan’s Law. And most states have adopted that law. The International Megan’s Law does it internationally. So if we, in the United States, have a known convicted child sex offender and that person is traveling to Mexico, then the U.S. government will notify the Mexican government. And tell them: "Hey, this guy is coming to your country. You should know this." It also creates something called 'angel watch', the Angel Watch Center. And what it is...it’s a place where government officials and non-government officials like Operation Underground Railroad - we can all meet and talk and make sure we know who the bad guys are and be in communication. I mean, I think that, Libertad Edith, I think you have... I mean, that’s what you essentially said. And the problem is right now, if you can believe this, it has been sitting in the Senate for months and months and months and they can’t get it through the Senate to create what is a solution - the very solution that the mother of a victim has, on her own, naturally kind of brought out as one of the solutions to this problem. Here we have this and it’s sitting on these senators' desks, and they are not even caring about it. They are worrying about things that are far less important than the kidnapping and the abuse of children. To me, it is absolutely outrageous. And I want to ask you both if you would help me with something. We are starting a campaign to finish, once and for all, this bill and get it passed and get it implemented: International Megan’s Law, H.R. 515. Would you be willing to help us? Would you be willing to be witnesses in this and be a voice from someone who knows the reality of this problem? Would you be willing to help us be loud and get the Senate to pass this bill and get it implemented and use it to start saving kids? Rosenberg: Of course we will be willing because we know what it's like when you are going through this pain. So it’s been, it’s been very hard like I’ve told you before. It’s impossible to describe what we are feeling and I feel like if they pass this bill, I mean, it will be... It will actually help out the whole world. And I think, I mean, you know, when my sister was saying about having other countries communicating, I mean, you know, to be able to help us spread out the word so a lot of people they can be aware that this problem exists. Because I’m sure that a lot of people...they are not even aware that this problem exists. Tim: Right. Rosenberg: They don’t even have an idea that we are going through this right now. I mean, before my niece went missing, I didn’t even think that there was sex trafficking at all until now that we are learning more about, "Ok, what could have happened to her?" Tim: Right. Rosenberg: And so, you see all the options and now we are like, "Let’s make this world a better place, and let’s try to save everybody that is going through this." Tim: And you are now in a position of influence. I mean, you are in a position because of what you have been through. You are witnesses. Rosenberg: Right. Tim: You are witnesses in a way that most are not and you can stand up, and I appreciate you doing that. I know you both. I’ve met several times with you, and I know you are willing to do that and we appreciate that. Another question I want to ask you is have you seen social media make a difference in the search for Elizabeth? And is this something that you think we should be utilizing more, perhaps the police should be utilizing more? Because it’s all about communication, right? You start this investigation - I know because I’ve been on many of these. The first thing you look for is a witness. You need information: where is she? Someone knows. Who knows? It’s all about disseminating information, requesting information, finding information. How do you do that? I mean, we do it every day with social media. Have you guys utilized social media at all in your efforts to find Elizabeth? Rosenberg: Yes. We have tried to put a lot of advertisements on social media, you know Facebook and - everybody is always on Facebook - but I feel like the police and the FBI, they can also get... When these cases, they happen, they can actually spread out the word and have a connection also with Facebook: "Let's stop the crime." I mean, you know, let’s actually... "Whoever knows something about this person, please let us know,"or "If you guys have seen this person, just let the authorities know." I feel like that would help out a lot, because a lot of people... They are using social media, they are always there, they know what’s going on, and I have known that...I mean, you know, like for example - when on the news they are trying to find somebody that social, they put it on social media, and then people, they start commenting, and they say, "Yes, I have seen this person," or whatever. And that would help out so much. I mean, you know... So if the police...they can actually have also connections with all those big social media networks. I don’t know, I mean, I feel like it can be a big help. Tim: Well, let’s work harder to make sure we are utilizing social media to the best of its ability. We are building software here at Operation Underground Railroad that will help the police identify where these people are, who are the perpetrators of this most heinous crime, and it really is the way you need to attack this problem. So I want to thank you both for coming in, and this is by no means the last meeting we’ll have with you. We know we have so many things; we’ve talked about so many projects that we want to work on. Most important, of course, is the search for Elizabeth; after that is what else can we do, what else can you do with us to help others? Because like I said, there’s millions in this position. And just because we don’t know about it - because it is such a hidden world - doesn’t mean that it is not there. People need to know it is there and people like you who are willing to come out and talk about it - you are the best witnesses because you are going through it. You are going through this hell. So I can’t thank you enough for having the courage to come on and talk about this because we believe that what you are doing is saving lives. Rosenberg: Thank you so much for inviting us and we appreciate everything that you do to make this world a better place. I feel like if there were more people like you in this world, this world would be a better place. And if everybody can contribute to be able to rescue these kids that are slaves, if they can contribute to be able to help you out, this world would be so much better. And thank you very much for doing what you are doing. Tim: Well, thank you both so much. I have a wonderful team that makes it happen, and of course the contributions are what keep us in place. So please, everyone, check us out at ourrescue.org and help us. Help us so we can help people like the Salgado family. So thank you both so much - thanks for coming on and let's continue this fight together. Libertad: Y a Elizabeth Elena... Rosenberg: And Elizabeth Elena... Libertad: ...si me estás escuchando... Rosenberg: ...if you are listening... Libertad: ...quiero decirte hija... Rosenberg: ...I want to tell you... Libertad: ...que no nos vamos a rendir hasta encontrarte. Rosenberg: ...that we won’t stop looking for you until we find you. Libertad: Tenemos buscado por cielo y tierra y mar. Rosenberg: We have been looking for you all over the place. Libertad: Y desde el día que desapareciste... Rosenberg: And from the day that you went missing... Libertad: ...nuestra vida cambió completamente. Rosenberg: ...our lives have changed a lot. Libertad: Te amamos. Rosenberg: We love you. Libertad: Te extrañamos... Rosenberg: We miss you... Libertad: ...y queremos ver tu cara angelical. Rosenberg: ...and we want to see your beautiful face. Libertad: Necesitamos tenerte en nuestros brazos. Rosenberg: We need you in our lives and be able to hug you. Libertad: Sentimos a nuestro corazón... Rosenberg: We feel in our hearts... Libertad: ...un gran vacío... Rosenberg: ...an empty hole... Libertad: ...porque nos has te falta. Rosenberg: ...because you are missing in our lives. Libertad: Te queremos tener de resto con nosotros. Rosenberg: We want you back in our lives. Libertad: Te extrañamos mucho... Rosenberg: We miss you a lot... Libertad: ...y queremos volver a ser feliz como antes. Rosenberg: We want to be happy the same way that we were when you were with us. Libertad: Necesitamos encontrarte. Rosenberg: We need to find you. Libertad: Y a los que te tiene... Rosenberg: Whoever has you... Libertad: ...les pido por favor... Rosenberg: ...I’m asking you ... Libertad: ...que tenga compasión de nosotros. Rosenberg: ...please have compassion on our family. Libertad: Nos han hechos sufrir mucho. Rosenberg: You guys have caused a lot of suffering in our lives. Libertad: Y les suplicamos... Rosenberg: And we are begging you... Libertad: ...que la entreguen. Rosenberg: ...to please give us our daughter back. Libertad: Que lo consideren como si fuera el hija de ustedes. Rosenberg: To please have compassion on this girl like if she was your own daughter. Libertad: Le pedimos al padre celestial... Rosenberg: We ask our Heavenly Father... Libertad: ...que mandes de ángeles celestiales. Rosenberg: ...to protect her with her angels. Libertad: No le hagas daño. Rosenberg: Please, don’t hurt my daughter.

united states jesus christ family california church english house law mexico spanish missing utah fbi saints mexican senate heavenly father libertad rosenberg palo alto provo salgado operation underground railroad tim you tim yeah tim well tim thank megan's law tim right slave stealer angel watch center

006 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, C'MON NOW.

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 12, 2016 16:34

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

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005 THROWBACK THURSDAY, IMPERIAL VALLEY CA

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 9, 2016 16:40

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

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004 MARISOL NICHOLS

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2016 31:19

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

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003 Pornography! A Root Cause of Child Sex Trafficking.

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2016 5:12

Timothy Ballard has met and arrested hundreds of child traffickers. They are different genders, ethnicities, ages, and religions, but what was the one thing they all had (have) in common? An addiction to pornography that started years before. In this bonus episode, Tim sites recent research about the effects of pornography on the human brain. He and his team, known as Operation Underground Railroad, often begin investigations into trafficking by following the trail of child pornography directly to traffickers on their way to act out the very things they have been watching in the videos. [caption id="attachment_12137" align="alignright" width="49"] In Episode 003 of the Slave Stealer Podcast, Timothy Ballard points to pornography as a root cause of child sex trafficking. This infographic, by FightTheNewDrug.org supports his claim with anecdotes and evidence.[/caption] Full Transcript: Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer. Timothy Ballard: Ok, welcome to Slave Stealer podcast, this is a bonus edition. This bonus edition has to do with the topic of: Pornography. Not something people love to talk about, especially, the evil effects of it. But it was a tangent, that we started talking about as a result of the Vicente Fox interview, that we did recently, and it is my opinion, and I think science backs it up, that pornography is, in fact, creating a lot of the demand that we are seeing for child sex. This is me diverging from a conversation about Vicente Fox, and I am hitting pornography, and talking about the true evil that it can be, and creating sex addicts who hurt kids. So, roll it! If you saw the amounts of child pornography, that are being transferred and distributed every single day, and we know this, because we have worked these cases with our partners. It is stunning! It is mind-blowing! And, the largest consumers of pornography in the world are from the United States. So, we are producing these sex addicts. And what are we doing about that? And, I am not satisfied with what the U.S. Government is doing about that. Mark Mabry: What do you propose they would do? Tim: Well, one thing is, we need to start talking about the evils of pornography. This is not popular. Why? Because 98% of guys are stuck in pornography. Mark: Do you think 98%? Tim: I think so. That is what the studies say. Mark: 98%? Tim: Yeah. Mark: Of guys? So, between me and you, you are looking at pornography a lot? Tim: I am in the 2%. Mark: Me too! Tim: Ok, well, congratulations! Mark: It must be Chris over there, our sound guy. Tim: Yeah, Chris. How is your porn use these days? Chris: I guess, I am in that 98%. Mark: Oh, great! Wrong answer! Tim: So, what is hard about porn, the porn issue is, that not everybody, by long shot, who looks at pornagraphy, is getting end up raping children. But, I would say, 100% of men who rape children are porn addicts. And so, like anything else it needs to be education around it, like it can be a drug. Pornography can be a drug. Mark: Yes. Tim: Especially if it is in certain levels, and it becomes an addiction, like any other drug. Like alcohol is a drug, right? So, people need to drink responsibly. We need to educate people, kids especially, about what pornography could lead to. I have arrested dozens and dozens of pedophiles. I have interrogated dozens and dozens of pedophiles over my career as a special agent, and also in the work we are doing with Operation Underground Railroad. And every single time when they talk, they talk about how it all started when they were 12 years old, when they picked up a Playboy, or they looked at this naked picture or whatever, and their mind starts going there, and then it is a progression. And, the science backs it up. You can go to our friends at fightthenewdrug.org, and they talk all about the science behind what this pornography... how it is in fact a drug. I mean, it over-stimulates the frontal lobes of the brain, it creates shrinkage in the brain. It creates brain damage. And, what happens to people who are addicted to it, it is not the naked pictures they are addicted to. What they are addicted to is the chemical reaction, the dopamine, the endorphins that the images produce in their brains. That is what they want, and they will do anything to get that. And, when the naked pictures aren’t working anymore, just like marijuana eventually starts to wear off on the use - I need to progress to something more powerful to get that same chemical reaction - and, frankly it is very similar chemical reaction to pornography. So, they need something to... they just want that reaction, they want that dose of dopamine. They know their brain can give them, but they have got to shot their brain now, because the adult stuff, the legal stuff ain’t working. Mark: When we were… Tim: So what they do..wait! Mark: Dude! I heard what you were saying. I am not interrupting.. Tim: But, I am about to end it. I am about to give my final line and you cut me off. So, what they turn to is Mark: It is a long final line. Tim: Well, it is powerful. Mark: Alright, let’s go. Tim: What they turn to is child pornography. That becomes their heroine, their crack, cocaine, and it shots their brain enough to get the reaction they need. And, these guys are almost brain-dead at this point, but they need something, and then when that wears off, they travel to Cancun, Mexico to find a child. And, again, a very small percentage of porn users end up in Cancun, Mexico, but there is enough, that there is 2 million children who are being sold for sex in the world. Ending: Get more Tim and Mark at slavestealer.com.

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002 Meet Timothy Ballard Part II