Podcasts about Walmart

1. It's been just over one year and one month since you became a DBC…and the moment you made the team was one of historical significance for the DBC and the Broncos organization. Explain why that was so 2. Just a few months ago, you and some of your teammates went on a military tour that included stops in Portugal, Spain and Italy. What were some of the major highlights from that adventure? 3. As we mentioned in the intro, your full time job is teaching kindergarten. What made you want to pursue a career in elementary education? 4. What do you think is the most important responsibility of elementary school teachers during these times? 5. We are just three weeks removed from another historic moment in Broncos history. On June 7, it was announced that the Broncos would be sold to the ownership group led by Rob Walton, heir to the Wal-Mart fortune and his son-in-law Greg Penner for a record $4.65 billion. Another key member of that group is Mellody Hobson, who is the current President and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, Vice Chair of Starbucks and a Director at JPMorgan Chase. If the sale is ratified, as expected, Hobson will become the first black female to be part of an NFL ownership group. What are your initial thoughts on this sale and these soon-to-be new Broncos owners? 6. How did you react when you first heard the news that the Broncos traded for Russell Wilson? How high are your expectations for the Broncos this season? 7. Earlier this month, you and your teammates have already begun practicing very hard for the season. Describe for us what a typical DBC practice is like from start to finish 8. COUNTRY MUSIC SUPERLATIVES -Best song to get you fired up before a game: “Lil Bit” by Nelly & Florida Georgia Line -Best song to celebrate a Broncos TD to: “Get Ready” by Blake Shelton & Pitbull -Best song to celebrate a Broncos victory to: “I Like It, I Love It” by Tim McGraw -Best Luke Combs song to perform a Quarter Break routine to (a song you haven't performed to as of yet): “When It Rains It Pours” -Best Darius Rucker song to perform any type of on-field routine to (either Quarter Break or sideline vamp): “Homegrown Honey” -Song that best describes the person you are: “Stars In The City” by Old Dominion -BONUS “THIS OR THAT”: Which of the following Brooks & Dunn songs would you prefer to perform a Quarter Break routine to, Honky Tonk Stomp or Boot Scootin' Boogie? 9. What are the qualities that set the DBC apart from all other pro sports cheer/dance teams? (Photo of Sophia by Laura Murray)

EP293 - E-commerce leadership changes and news Episode 293 previews Amazon no good, dirty, rotten, Q2. Including why Amazon's much hailed SCOT software may have led them astray (not a surprise given the name). We also discuss the recent leadership changes at Amazon, Google, Pinterest, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Episode 293 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday June 30, 2022. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 293 being recorded on Thursday June 30th 2022 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason this is a start-up land it's like a triple witching we have the end of the month the end of the quarter and the end of the first half so too it's a big day to be making sure you're hitting your opening so that's what I've been doing today how is your summer been. Jason: [0:59] Less XLE than yours it sounds like. Scot: [1:02] Oh I've seen you in that department of Commerce data comes out so. Jason: [1:13] I don't know maybe I feel like we should move it to like python or are something more more hip for the geeky kids. But I am I'm having a great summer there's been plenty of New Avengers and Star Wars content on in it's fun to see some people in person there have been a few more in person events, I'm a little stressed tonight though there's a big day for listeners is being recorded on on June 30th, and Twitter is sun setting my Twitter clients that I use numerous times a day tonight so it's, it's possible that a lot of people that are used to getting spammed all day by me on Twitter are going to go into withdrawal tomorrow. Scot: [1:56] No you're gonna have to use the app like the rest of us mere citizens. Jason: [2:01] Yeah yeah the neophytes I have to jump in with the unwashed masses and the vanilla Twitter client or some other third-party client if any listeners have a personal favorite I'm open to suggestions. Scot: [2:15] Yeah they're not a lot of good ones whatever you do don't sign up for that paid service because it just makes your tweets take 10 times longer to go out it's like the opposite of a feature. Jason: [2:25] Yeah doesn't sound that appealing. Scot: [2:27] It's supposed to keep you from drunk Tweeting or something but then like you just kind of forget that they're all cued up out there waiting. Jason: [2:34] My best Tweets are the advised ones. Scot: [2:37] Yeah yeah your best ones are grumpy grumpy old Jason once where you're like all right digital on the get the most interaction. Cool well we wouldn't be a Jason and Scot show without some Amazon news. Jason: [3:00] News new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [3:07] Yeah there's a lot going on at Amazon one of the. If you kind of remember back in our queue to 2022 recap from their earnings they talked a lot about how they had over built their capacity for warehouses so that's the first time they've done that since, oh I don't know 1995 and that was just like a line in an earnings call well now we're starting to see that they're closing warehouses there's been reports of them closing between five and ten warehouses I've heard they're closing delivery stations and figuring all that out one of the funny topics is a lot of folks started contacting me and realize said things like hey did you know your mention and this Amazon article is like what, what turns out they have this technology they've developed called the supply chain optimization Technologies, abbreviated sco T which happens to be my name. Jason: [4:04] And for newest nur's that's actually the correct way to spell Scott is it not. Scot: [4:08] It is yeah it was the 60s and my dad thought it would be fun to have a unique name and it's he was right it's made me infinitely google-able so I have a lot of very easy to find on the Google. I'm very envious of my friend Michael Jones who is impossible to find on Google so so no anonymity for me, but anyway you know what's interesting is and I want to read this little excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article a thousand or something, you and I both know at Amazon because they have this engineering culture they try to take people out of most decision-making process sometimes they call it hands off the wheel so they have all these AI like one time we had a guest on that told us how you know frequently a vendor will be negotiating with an Amazon buyer through a chat and it's a bot on the other side of the the chat not a human. So they have this technology called Scott and what it does is it makes three different projections for basically the orders for looking out into the future it does a high medium and low and during the pandemic. [5:12] The high wasn't high enough so they were kind of taking the high and adding some percentage to it and building out the Fulfillment infrastructure and everything based on what this a I did well because the a I had never seen a pandemic and it obviously it couldn't keep up with the upside of the pandemics demand curve it didn't see the downside of the demand curve coming either, and then I think the humans you know when you when you have your, pilot like six to eight quarters into adding 10% to what this thing does and nailing it. You know they also didn't anticipate this in the bottom fell out and that's one of the reasons why you know they just kind of too, kept taking the Scott forecast adding 10 to 20% and then suddenly they found themselves kind of with their skis out over a cliff. This is really interesting that kind of in a way that the an AI gone wrong kind of caused some of the problems here so I thought that was kind of funny. Jason: [6:09] Yeah I mean like the synopsis here is that Scott is the biggest money sink in Amazon. Scot: [6:18] It's true yep I like to think because they listened to the podcast they named it in honor of me and somewhere in there is a robot named Jason I'm sure. Jason: [6:26] Because you are their Nemesis yeah. Scot: [6:28] Yeah retailgeek it's hard to do an acronym for retailgeek but I'm sure someone there is is working on. Also you know as listeners know there's a new CEO and the jassy and there have been a lot of high-profile departures and it's not clear if he's cleaning house or. Um you know these these issues stocks down a lot of the compensation that Amazon is from stock-based compensation and then, you know someone has to be accountable for these problems so they had there was kind of this domino effect so there was right one Jesse took over there was two other people that were are parents Bell and Wilkie and they left, and then just recently this year a 23 year old veteran Named Dave Clark left and he ran the whole consumer business. Interestingly he went to a company that's been in the news a lot called Flex Port their CEO has been on CNBC and the all in podcast talking about how to fix the supply chain problems. So that's that's interesting that he was able to see your Flex Port was able to lure away a 23 year old Amazon bet. So there was some Sour Apples on the way out Dave Clark told someone that Jesse's just a, terrible micromanager and yeah he'd been there 23 years and shouldn't have to be micromanage and that kind of thing. [7:51] And then they announced that this the guy that ran North America consumer who previously had reported to Dave Clark his name is Doug Harrington he was moving up into that role, what caused a further chain reaction for those people that didn't get the Dave Clark opening one of those was Alicia bowler Davis she was SVP of global consumer, and she went to this online pharmacy called Alto Pharmacy and then Dave Bozeman he went to he was the VP of Amazon transportation services kind of the middle mile so she was if I understand she was Last Mile and he was middle mile, so they both left so that's interesting that the Fulfillment center they've been building out and to the key Executives for the last five years or so left those not clear if that was because of this build out and someone had to be accountable or if they got picked away or what's going on there, so a lot of changes in Amazon at the upper echelons and yeah some chaos here as they re adjust for the new post covid normal. Jason: [8:54] Yeah and I mean almost feels like there's a little bit of a perfect storm of reasons for that senior leadership to start to turn right which historically they have had very little turn by the way right through most of their history but you know the the founder departs as you point out there's a ton of the overwhelming majority of compensation is, stock equity and is that becomes less valuable like those jobs are. Are less sticky you know and there's just the rates of growth at Amazon are are naturally slowing down and it's, you know for a lot of people that you know are used to being the Rockstar that's you know constantly doubling your business and growing really fast it's not as much fun to. To manage their downturns and you know at best slower rates of growth. Scot: [9:45] Yeah and then you notice some changes coming in the grocery side. Jason: [9:50] Yeah so grocery ends up being kind of a really interesting part of this whole Amazon churn so the first thing to know is the new head of consumer that did win Doug Harrington, had previously started Amazon Fresh at Amazon so so, he is a grocery guy and his pre Amazon experience is with webvan which is sort of the original digital grocer. So he is a pure digital grocery guy obviously he's had brought more recently he's had broader roles it. It Amazon. Then then just grocery but you know one would assume that Amazon Fresh is near and dear to his heart that's the only brick-and-mortar concept that still. Sort of in play and growing at an Amazon so that's kind of interesting and historically there's been kind of a tension between Amazon Fresh which is. The grocery business Amazon built organically and Whole Foods, the grocery business that Amazon bought right and there have been times when they seemed like they were smashing them together and then there are times when they're pulling them apart and at the moment they're opening a chain of Amazon Fresh doors that compete with Whole Food. [11:02] You would assume Whole Foods is kind of upmarket expensive grocery and Amazon Fresh is meant to be well Market but like when it washed Amazon Fresh was a little more mid-priced, then we expected and Whole Foods is kind of moving down price a little bit more than you might expect so it's all, it's all been interesting they fight a lot over over Revenue recognition for online grocery orders and it's I would argue it's a confusing customer experience right now because you can order a. Assortment of items with different prices and different service levels from Amazon Fresh and from Whole Foods. So it'll be interesting does Amazon fresh wind because that's Doug Harrington's baby or you know does he at least. [11:44] Put more more stock in solving that problem you know I would argue digital grocery is the biggest white space in the kind of digital retail thing and so it. It's not bad for Amazon that they have a senior leader that understands that space so it's that's going to be interesting, and then on the whole food side the you know the founder of Whole Foods has remained in places the CEO which is kind of surprising given that when was the acquisition 2017. [12:12] Five years ago so five years sounds like a suspicious number for an urn out but. The you know he stuck he was the founder he stuck with a company for a long time like culturally he's, kind of different than Amazonian so when one might not have expected him to last that long but now there's a new CEO which is a long time Lieutenant of his Jason Bushnell boo shell rather and, whether this is the first initiative from Jason or it's a coincidence like Whole Foods has kind of announced that they are pivoting their pricing strategy in really focusing on, improving their value prop and reducing their prices and obviously there's a lot of Economic headwinds and there's kind of a. You know a big big segment of consumers that are concerned about the economy so superficial you go oh yeah it's obvious. That Whole Foods would want to get cheaper but I would actually argue. That we've really seen and shout-out to our friend Steven Dennis we've really seen like this very overt bifurcation of the consumer and there's a bunch of consumers that like do not appear to be changing their shopping Behavior based on inflation and, economic concerns and then there's a bunch of value-oriented consumers that are very overtly changing their shopping behaviors and you would. [13:33] You know a lot of luxury brands are actually raising their prices right now and doing quite well and so you'd almost expect to see Whole Foods lean into that affluent consumer, and Amazon Fresh you know try to try to Target that that value went into consumer but it appears they both have decided to go after value. Scot: [13:51] Yeah it's super confusing as a consumer to figure out and sometimes what I want I want for things and it'll split the cart between the Whole Foods in the prime and like then then it's a hot mess at that point. Jason: [14:04] Yeah I can't get my weekly shop from either one like I like some of the items and my weekly shop are not available from Whole Foods and some are not available from Amazon Fresh it's annoying. Scot: [14:14] Yeah. Jason: [14:14] To add further customer confusion so Amazon Fresh is Amazon's grocery store concept what you might have thought that there'd be a bunch of benefits to being a Prime member and shopping in Amazon Fresh. But you'd be wrong until recently like there were no special Prime benefits for Amazon Fresh Shoppers and so they just launched last week a new program which is kind of a. It's I would almost call it like a traditional retail grocery Affinity program you basically get 20% off on a lot of. On an undisclosed random list of thousands of items where they call everyday essentials if you're a Prime member shopping at Amazon Fresh So this is you know I mentioned that Amazon Fresh didn't come out. Quite as good a value as I was expecting well this is the big move to maybe make them you know compete more directly with with Aldi and. Scot: [15:08] Caught another thing I wanted to pick your brain on is a couple folks have tagged us on social media because they have seen the prime pay badging and new payment mechanism out in the wild have you had a chance to play with that. Jason: [15:22] I have and I confess I'm I'm a little more perplexed than I was when it first launched so maybe like the 30-second recap, um you know Amazon announced this new beta pilot called Prime pay and it's essentially letting third-party sellers that are not selling on Amazon. [15:46] Accept Amazon pay and. Offer Prime benefits and have your orders fulfilled from fulfillment by Amazon. [15:59] Like if their Prime members right so if your Shopify Merchant in you're selling cat litter, you know you can have a bad you know and someone's a Prime member and they're on your Shopify site you can say hey check out with your Amazon pay and and you know get your goods in one day or even same day, if our cat litter is in the Amazon Fulfillment Network and that's that was when they announced this beta and they didn't provide a lot of the details. You know my first reaction was that's a shot directly across the bow of Shopify. Who had been making a lot of traction with shop pay and was making a lot of noise if not traction with their fulfillment systems and now you know Amazon swooped in and said hey don't screw around with these, you know barely scaled fulfillment things just put all your goods in the Amazon's fulfillment and when you sell it from Shopify will ship the order or when you sell it on Amazon will ship the order, and will give you access to the. The biggest bet best digital wallet in the US market which is Amazon pay right and I thought that was super interesting and I was frankly really curious. If Shopify was even going to allow its Merchants to use it which. It would have been way off brand for Shopify to not allow that but you have to imagine they didn't want to vote. Scot: [17:18] Yeah. Jason: [17:20] And so now fast forward a few months and we've seen the first betas in the live in in, live in the world and they are all Shopify Merchants so first question answered at least for now Shopify is allowing its merchants, to use prime pay but there's a huge Nuance in Prime pay that I kind of missed when the beta was first announced but now it's glaring at me, um Prime pay will only fulfill your goods if you're already a Prime member. So when they first saw this I thought oh my gosh they just captured the whole 3pl market and no other 3pl is going to have any room because you're not going to be able to compete with the service level of Amazon and the convenience of the aggregated inventory and then the bonus of. Of the Amazon digital wallet on top of all that that it was just going to be too compelling a value prop and so everybody every small seller in the world is just going to rely on Amazon for all those Services game over. But. There's about 100 million Prime members and there's about 240 million households in the US so there's still an awful lot of households that do not have Prime. And if you're a Shopify Merchant and you want to sell something to any of those households that don't have Prime. You can offer Prime pay for the Prime members but you have to have an alternative 3pl to fulfill for the non Prime members. So they really haven't put any of the other 3pls out of business at all they've just stolen some of their volume. Scot: [18:49] Yeah yeah Anderson more more complexity. Jason: [18:53] Yeah yeah so it's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out, but it yeah shout out to our friend Joe a Marketplace poles they always have great content and, he was the first one in the made me aware of some of these betas in the wild and he found the cat lady's.com and I'm not going to ask how he he. Scot: [19:14] Put me there. Jason: [19:17] But Joe I'm a fan and props to you. Scot: [19:21] Your fan of Joe or the cat ladies are both. Jason: [19:23] Now both originally Joe but now I my my love has expanded to the cat ladies. Scot: [19:29] Do they really sell kitty litter. Jason: [19:31] I believe they do or at least like artificial grass. Scot: [19:35] Yeah that's definitely in the crap category hey hey I'll be here all night, another thing that Amazon announced that I know you're excited for because you're actually moving so this is a great time to buy some cabling and some new mesh network key things they announced Prime Day this year it's going to be July 12th and 13th and then they promptly have started pushing the deals out like right now like just today and yesterday I've been getting flooded with emails that say, they have a new brand for it and they call it early Amazon Prime Day deal exclusives so it feels feels a little desperate to be honest with you that you know they set up this big shopping holiday and now they're kind of, pushing the deals out with a before then I don't know if they're trying to juice Q2 or if there. One school of thought is if we're going into this recessionary period the more dollars you can grab out of that shrinking wallet due to inflation as well, get them sooner versus later so maybe they had set this up before things the macro deteriorated now they're kind of like wow I wish we could set this earlier let's go ahead and get some deals out I may be reading too much into that but I don't ever remember them kind of they've always had you know. Black Black Friday and January or early October kind of things holiday deals in early but I've never seen them, push Prime day as hard and early as they are now. Jason: [21:00] Yeah I mean they always have had some pre-primed a deals like it's not completely unheard of but I agree with you the volume seem significantly higher and it's funny that we still call it Prime day right because for a long time is over it went from like Prime day to Prime 18 hours to Prime two days and now it's starting to feel like Prime month. Um which is interesting I don't know this comes into play, there are some consumer surveys out there that show less interest in Prime day than years past right and you're comping against a tough Prime day in a very different economic environment and so like it's possible that there's some concern like Amazon's rate of growth has slowed and everything else it's possible possible that there's some concern, that. That you know Prime day won't have the it's for sure going to have a spike but that it won't have the same spike it has in years past, um and you know so they're they're trying to you know find ways to Goose it more I you know. I don't know I do think one of the interesting Dynamics there's kind of like two opposite forces that happen on Prime day like secretly. The stuff that sells best on Prime day are Amazon. [22:20] But the penetration on those Amazon products you know continues to be higher so that that like. The what the law of large numbers just means like. You know not you can't sell a smart speaker to as many people as you used to be able to do because everyone has a heck of a lot of smart speakers right and they're they're frankly getting so cheap that it's not as big a win when they do sell one. And so then the other half is this long tail in there like one of the problems there so many sellers on Amazon there so many Lightning Deals that like the signal-to-noise ratio in the, the awareness of some particular good deal and the scarcity of a deal like all of those things that you would normally do that a normal you know brick and mortar retailer with you know constrain inventory, would do for a sale like they just don't work as well. For this Marketplace model and so I do think it's tricky to keep the hype and you know we've seen you know Prime day was modeled after singles day we've definitely seen singles day lose some momentum still a big deal but rate of growth slowing significantly and reasonably that will see that at Prime Day to all that being said the way to think about prime day is it's it's two days of sales in one day which is kind of a big deal. Scot: [23:38] Yeah and then I thought this was interesting that Amazon announced that they're going to use some of that data that we've been collecting in their stores that don't have a check out the just walk out technology and they're going to be selling some of that data to Brands so they can basically say to our brand hey 800 consumers walked by your product three picked it up and put it back on the shelf and you know of those three they read the ingredients and then they put it back on the shelf and and then presumably there are some action ability to that data what what do you think about that. Jason: [24:16] Yeah so I think it's really interesting you know way before there was just walk out technology like we were starting to get some some very early technology to give us some insight about how consumers behaved in stores right so you were starting to get some like, smarter people measuring things that could do heat mapping and and you know we were getting these I could GI tracking technologies that we'd put on on a small subset of customers to kind of understand how they browse through a store, because you know frankly for the last 100 years of Shopper marketing we mostly have been based on these like urban legends about how Shopper shop, and not having a lot of data and then e-commerce comes along and suddenly you've got super granular data about how people pick products and what they glanced at and didn't buy and what they added to their card and then check out and what they you know added to their card and then took out of their car like all of this pre buying behavior that we get in e-commerce, we've never really had in the store and you know the Technologies and the methodologies these match Panel test all these different studies we used to do we're really sort of Kluge, and so a lot of us have said hey one of the secret benefits of just walk out technology is that by accident, it collects all of this really valuable consumer data about how people behave, before they get to the cash register or before they consummate their purchase since they're I guess there is no cash. [25:41] Um and you know we've talked about that being a useful Advantage for Amazon and that they're probably using it too, um sort of inform how they design these new store Concepts, and so now like so many other things than Amazon does they take this this. [25:59] Like you know competitive advantage that they have and they turned it into a product and sell it to other people so now they're selling those. Those Shopper insights to cpgs and you know you're a cpg trying to figure out how people decide to pick your cat litter versus someone else's cat litter on the cat litter shelf in a retail store. Um [26:21] Kroger won't tell you a lot about how they make that decision because Kroger doesn't know but now you can get real data from Amazon about how they make that decision and Amazon and you can probably assume that there's a similar path to purchase at Kroger so, suddenly like Amazon becomes the market research firm for all of the Shopper marketing so I do think that's super interesting, um they're not alone Walmart actually has a store that's heavily instrumented like this that they watch first that's called them, the intelligent retail lab store that you know it's kind of a it doesn't have just walk out technology but it has thousands of cameras and sensors and they sell data from that store through their data licensing arm which is called illuminate if I'm remembering right. And then you know Amazon launched a new product. [27:09] Nine days ago on the 21st that I'm really excited about this called Amazon marketing stream and Amazon marketing stream is, a much higher volume more granular api-based, access to all of the marketplace shopping data so that's you know data on traditional Amazon shopping that like, previously was locked up or you could only get for your own brand or you could you know you can only get in Amazon premium services. Now it gets plugged into pack view in all of these of these digital media tools you get all this real-time visibility to have people are making purchase decisions and then at the same time. They're rolling out this that same kind of data for how people are making purchase decisions in a brick-and-mortar store, super long answer but I think this is kind of a big deal and I do think this is the future is kind of replacing, like urban legends and opinions about how consumers behave with actual data about how they really are. Scot: [28:11] You do you think this stuff is kind of stand-alone or they're going to build this is going to be kind of feeding into this ad Network because they seem to be really putting a lot of effort into Excel. Jason: [28:20] Yeah I do so I think there's only so much so many brands that are so I'll tell you who's not in a position to buy that data is all the digital native startups that then cut a deal to get you know distribution through. Right against the big cpg brands that can afford like have budgets to buy that data and then you know they have so much like institutional. Impediments that then you know they all talk about how much wonder they are with that data but it's really hard for them to act on that data and do anything different than they historically have. And so I think the best way to make that data actionable is you know to filter that data into. New audiences and new ad formats for retail media networks right so like I think there's a natural. Fit between those. Those two products so I'm sure we'll see more Integrations in that but I do think for really smart marketers and in particular the folks that are involved in customer experience design, the the raw data is is super useful and and you know gives gives Brands a competitive advantage that are able to get it and take action on. Scot: [29:30] Cool did you so that's where we are on Amazon any non Amazon news. Jason: [29:39] Yeah just a couple of things to keep our show in its it's tidy timebox format we talked a lot about executive changes so in my mind there are two other huge executive changes, in our industry this week. There's a guy that we've talked about on the show several times Bill ready who's the in X PayPal guy in X PayPal mafia guy. That red Commerce for the last couple of years at Google and he just announced that he's leaving Google to become the new CEO at Pinterest so the, the founder is stepping out of the CEO role at Pinterest and they're bringing over Bill ready, and to be honest that has the pundants whipped up into a lather because everyone's like oh man Bill ready is a Commerce guy he was PayPal he was head of Commerce a Google Now the fact that the Pinterest is bringing a you know a dedicated Commerce guy in the lead the company, it's the most overt sign yet that you know Pinterest thinks it's future is Commerce. Scot: [30:39] Yeah which I think it's driven by the IDF a stuff don't you. Jason: [30:44] Yeah yeah again harder to make a living on ads when you can't show the efficacy of the ads quite as well and you can't Target the ads quite as well and so it becomes much more appealing to say, you know let's monetize our Audience by selling stuff to our audience directly and also that you know gives you that first party data that then you know keeps you, well immersed in the in the advertising business so I think for any of these. Free hydrographic social media sites it's a, it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis to explore to say hey we got to figure out how to play really well at Commerce and make Commerce part of our core offering and certainly you know Pinterest is doing that they've talk forever about how, how much higher buying intent that their users have then other other social networks Tick-Tock is leaning heavily into it snap is leaning heavily into it it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, the one unfortunate truth is nobody's been particularly successful at it yet and. Have they not been successful because they just haven't gotten the execution right or is it because the consumer doesn't really want that like I honestly think that's an open question I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that Commerce can save all these social media networks I mean it's worth trying, but I think the jury's going to be out and I will say the. [32:10] The sort of part of this the bill ready transition that's not talked about that I'm frankly more interested in is to me one of the companies that. His best position to win a Commerce and is underperforming at Commerce the most is the company Bill ready as weaving its Google and you know, bluntly like I don't think Google has made a ton of Commerce progress over the over the last two years that bill ready has been there it's going to be interesting like will Google replace him will they replace him with a, Google Insider will they replace them with another Commerce person will that person have some new ideas like you know will they be able to find a way to kind of Marshall some of the inherent assets Google has and be better at Commerce oh my God I'd love to see Google lean into in-store Commerce more and help solve search and you know all of these retail media Network opportunities for brick-and-mortar retailers like I feel like there's a lot of untapped. Opportunity there that I've been surprised to see Google not succeed at and so it'll be like is this a new chance for Google to start anew. Scot: [33:20] Yeah and then you know it's also interesting so if your Pinterest board and you're like we need an e-commerce Guru the PayPal Mafia thing is good but that was quite a while ago and Google hasn't. Done a ton so I would be hiring somebody to Amazon expects you know it'll be interesting to see what if. Because there's so many floating around what if some of them one of them ended up at Google that would be dug be kind of really interesting to see if Amazon has own Minion. Jason: [33:49] Especially when yeah if Flex Port can get a super senior SS team member. Scot: [33:53] Yeah why can't Google yeah it's kind of weird right, yeah and then you know to watch someone that maybe had a chip on their shoulder that said hey I didn't get a promotion I'm gonna I'm going to you know use all these assets that Google has and bring them to bear I think the reason why is when these people interview at these bigger companies be at a meta a Google or whatnot. You know there's not a board sea level and board level focus on it you know 21 if you're a Google. The sacred cow is the add thing and if you if you say something like you know what I want to divert 20% of traffic to this new thing then you know if you're not going to do that so so startups from probably more attractive because they have more flexibility and they're not stuck kind of in that innovators dilemma like some of the other systems are. Jason: [34:50] Yeah think about that that'll be my deep thought for today yeah so I think that one is super interesting I'm gonna continue to follow that closely one side note like Pinterest has previously hired a bunch of other, I'll call them like Commerce stars and like one that stands out to me is. The chief technology officer from Walmart I moved to Pinterest Jeremy King and so I mean there's you know this is not the first. White indication that Commerce is an important Initiative for Pinterest so we'll we'll see how Bill does there I hope he does well so one other transition that I'm getting a lot of calls about these last couple days, is Bed Bath & Beyond just had their quarterly their Q2 earnings report and it was atrocious, so their same-store sales were down like 24 or 25 percent their e-commerce was down like 23%, um and you know folks may remember like a year or two ago they forced out the. [35:52] One of the founders is CEO and they brought in a turnaround CEO this guy Mark Triton and I talked a lot about Mark Triton he was like very credibly one of the architects of targets exclusive, brand strategies and so he was, the chief Merchant that helped launched a bunch of products at Target that were wildly successful and he left Target to become the CEO of this struggling retailer, Bed Bath & Beyond shortly after they hired Mark Triton they got a new activists board member Ryan Cohen who bought a big chunk of. Bed Bath & Beyond Ryan was one of the founders of chewy and made a bunch of his money there he was like a principal shareholder and on the board at GameStop during all the, the craziness with Robin Hood and GameStop and Bone all that stuff and so, like Ryan kind of inherited Mark as his turnaround CEO and simultaneous with these like very disappointing Q2 earnings, they announced that Mark would be leaving and they appointed an interim CEO who's a Sugo of who's a, already a board member at Bed Bath and Beyond and former CEO from like Goff Smith and several other retailers. So [37:20] What I have found interesting about all this it's a really difficult situation but Bethenny on Xena in a tough situation. [37:29] And they certainly aren't performing very well and they have a lot of cooks there at the moment with with conflicting ideas about where to go but I have seen a lot of pundits kind of. Like dancing on Mark Triton's grave and talking about what a horrible higher this was and how stupid it was for Bed Bath and Beyond Beyond to go after this this. Exclusive brand strategy that Mark was trying to execute and how like oh obviously this was doomed from the beginning and anyone could have seen this wasn't going to work. Um and kind of writing him off and personally I feel like that's a little unfair like II. Mark certainly turned out not to be the right CEO for the circumstances the Bed Bath & Beyond was in but I actually think that that, you know Bed Bath & Beyond needs to invent a reason for people to go there and spoiler it's not the 20% off coupon anymore, um it's not the treasure hunt anymore, like you're not going to win on assortment as a big box like against Amazon right and so one of the smart ways to win against Amazon is to sell stuff that people want that Amazon doesn't have and if you can invent desirable products, that's a smart strategy and every big retailer in America is trying to execute that strategy and Mark like frankly has been better than most of executing that strategy I think. [38:52] That strategy kind of sucks when you're hemorrhaging your customer base people don't have a reason to come to your store and then you, execute the first wave of your private label products and they all get trapped on a boat off the coast of Long Beach and never make it to the store right and so I don't know of in a different era if Mark strategy would have worked. Ed Bed Bath & Beyond I don't think it was an unsound strategy you know it just right you probably needed a CEO who's a lot more focused on being good at supply chain and cost-cutting and was willing to make some hard decisions about. Curating the store assortment and stuff like that to kind of cut costs. Before you got around to launching these products and you know horrific timing that you tried to launch all these products like you do as a. During a huge supply chain disruption so I don't know what do you think you think it was a doom strategy. Scot: [39:47] I don't think the externalities are hard to pick out you know so you go from a supply chain crisis into a inflation. No stagnation spiral this is like a it's a really rough rough rough hand that he was dealt for sure. Jason: [40:04] Yeah yeah so I don't know I do think they're a bunch of other retailers that really aspire to launch more products so I have a feeling that you'll see Mark glance I'm somewhere pretty soon because I think he has a skill set that. That will be in demand and then it does not appear they're calling Sue an interim CEO I don't think anyone thinks she's the, the future of Bed Bath & Beyond so I think they're they are out there doing a CEO search it's going to be interesting to see what kind of person, what you know will step up to that challenge right now. Scot: [40:33] While you were talking about it kind of the crazy idea popped in my head you know these these Amazon FBA acquisition vehicles have all seemed to hit the skids pretty hard thrashy oh and what not, yeah there's a there's a path where maybe they buy one of those if you wanted to like parachute in 500 private label Brands to try and restore that, that's one acquisition path that you can take to become interesting I don't know if you know if that makes any sense for the categories or whatnot but that would be an interesting, way to solve that problem with an acquisition. Jason: [41:09] Yeah no I do think there's something there and I think just the. You know I'm not sure you want to hire a traditional product Centric Merchant driven CEO. You know for a traditional product Centric company you know that's kind of losing its way right like you probably need some complementary skills they add something new to the mix and you're right like there's kind of a big remix going on in the world right now there's a bunch of digital Talent from you know the Amazons and Google's of the world this spinning off there's a bunch of digital Talent from all these, kind of startup ecosystems that you know we're we're playing in the Amazon Echo System and now we're less appealing and in the the you don't have to be a roll ups are a perfect example of all those, you know I think a bunch of those guys you know and and women will probably find, their next career opportunities taking what they know and taking it to a different kind of business than kind of just recreating what they've been doing. Scot: [42:10] Totally agree we will see. Jason: [42:12] In e-commerce guy solving Carwash for the world or. Scot: [42:15] Crazy crazy talk you do cat litter I'll do car washes. Jason: [42:20] That sounds like a great plan and that sounds like a great place to leave it because it's happened again we've used up all our allotted time, but as I always have you found the show helpful or it was entertaining to scream at how wrong we were into your podcasting client then you could reward us for that entertainment by jumping on iTunes and leaving us that five star review. Scot: [42:44] Thanks everybody and until next time. Jason: [42:48] Happy commercing.

Club Membership Plug: Let’s stop and take a moment to talk about Fight Laugh Feast Club membership. By joining the Fight Laugh Feast Army, not only will you be aiding in our fight to take down secular & legacy media; but you’ll also get access to content placed in our Club Portal, such as past shows, all of our conference talks, and EXCLUSIVE content for club members that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. Lastly, you’ll also get discounts for our conferences… so if you’ve got $10 bucks a month to kick over our way, you can sign up now at flfnetwork.com Ford Us Sales increase 32 percent https://www.wsj.com/articles/fords-u-s-sales-increase-32-in-june-outpacing-broader-industry-11657034435 Beto has a chance to oust Abbott https://www.newsweek.com/beto-orourkes-chances-beating-abbott-5-months-election-polls-1713577 Walmart tells suppliers new fuel and pick up fees are coming https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-tells-suppliers-new-fuel-and-pickup-fees-are-coming-11657056794 More companies join the great migration https://www.theepochtimes.com/more-companies-join-the-great-migration-to-red-states_4572422.html Bosses Offer Midyear Raises to Retain Employees https://www.wsj.com/articles/bosses-offer-midyear-raises-to-retain-employees-as-inflation-takes-toll-11657013401 Commodity Price Slide Raises Hopes Inflation May Ease https://flipboard.com/article/commodity-price-slide-raises-hopes-inflation-may-ease/f-de8e433f72%2Fwsj.com Classical Conversations Classical Conversations supports homeschooling parents by cultivating the love of learning through a Christian worldview in fellowship with other families. We provide a classical Christ-centered curriculum, local like-minded communities across the United States and in several countries, and we train parents who are striving to be great classical educators in the home. For more information and to get connected, please visit our website at ClassicalConversations.com. Again that’s ClassicalConversations.com.

US equity futures are indicating a lower open as of 05:00 ET. European equity markets are higher, aided by a retreat in gas prices after Norway's oil & gas strike ended. All Asian benchmarks were negative, as recession fears returned and the US dollar hit 19-year highs. China's reopening is under threat as several regions battle Covid outbreaks. UK PM Johnson's position is under threat after two senior ministers resigned late Tuesday. Companies Mentioned: Amazon, Just Eat Takeaway, Walmart

* Dems begin ammo "registration" as federal agencies buy up massive amounts to keep ammunition off the market* The number of people killed in Chicago each weekend dwarfs the number killed in the 4th July parade and only half of priority 911 calls are taken by Chicago police* How do we, who are pro-life, respond to 10 yr old, pregnant by rape and denied abortion?* Born on the Fourth of July? 1776 was when America got pregnant but it's birth was the Constitutional Convention. What would happen with another Con-Con based on the one and only historical precedent?* GreatReset agenda of starvation hits Netherlands and Spain as they demand 1/3 of farms close to stop "nitrogen emissions" from cows and natural farming* Walmart patents autonomous/drone deliveries. Another link in the chain of GreatReset slavery* Bette Midler says surgery can't make you a woman. Can laws make you a Christian? TX Attorney General Paxton says he would enforce law banning homosexual acts* Biden's "nuclear waste" poster-child defends child prostitution. The groomer has hung out for a long time as part of a project focusing on LGBT youthFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughZelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at:  $davidknightshowBTC to:  bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Mail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764

* Dems begin ammo "registration" as federal agencies buy up massive amounts to keep ammunition off the market* The number of people killed in Chicago each weekend dwarfs the number killed in the 4th July parade and only half of priority 911 calls are taken by Chicago police* How do we, who are pro-life, respond to 10 yr old, pregnant by rape and denied abortion?* Born on the Fourth of July? 1776 was when America got pregnant but it's birth was the Constitutional Convention. What would happen with another Con-Con based on the one and only historical precedent?* GreatReset agenda of starvation hits Netherlands and Spain as they demand 1/3 of farms close to stop "nitrogen emissions" from cows and natural farming* Walmart patents autonomous/drone deliveries. Another link in the chain of GreatReset slavery* Bette Midler says surgery can't make you a woman. Can laws make you a Christian? TX Attorney General Paxton says he would enforce law banning homosexual acts* Biden's "nuclear waste" poster-child defends child prostitution. The groomer has hung out for a long time as part of a project focusing on LGBT youthFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughZelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at:  $davidknightshowBTC to:  bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Mail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764

Laura Jones is the Head of Marketing at Instacart, the leading grocery tech company on the continent. Instacart is a 10-year-old business that makes it easier for millions of people to get their groceries through partnerships with more than 800 national, regional, and local retail brands to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 70,000 stores. Laura is in her first year at Instacart. She previously held a long-term position with Uber, along with working at big-time companies like Google, Visa and Deloitte.Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Jim and Laura talk about the importance of creativity and how "design thinking" informs her creative process. Laura also discusses how painting re-charges her mind and inspires her. CMOs often hold one of the most innovative and challenging roles in business today. Those who excel can operate at the highest level to drive growth and create value for their organizations. To learn more how Deloitte helps bolster the value CMOs deliver, visit www.cmo.deloitte.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode 576 of #LocationWeekly features PepsiCo hosting “Summer of Giveaways” in New York City, Mini USA appeases long customer wait times with puzzles, Petvation - The Ring Doorbell for pets & Walmart partners with Instacart on 30 minute delivery in Canada.

Roughly a dozen states are giving out tax rebates to ease the impact of inflation on their residents. Some economists are critical, saying more money to spend could make the problem worse. Plus, how long it’ll take to see oil from drilling on federal lands, how credit score algorithms exacerbate inequality and who ultimately foots the bill for a new Walmart transportation fee.

Schweezy attempts to cancel himself by talking about wheelchair basketball, putting the toilet seat down, MGK's Life In Pink, HBO's The Way Down (part 2), Trump being too fat to grab a steering wheel, the Minions Meme going too far, Garth Brooks picking his Stranger Things Vecna Song, a kitten rescued from Walmart, and advice on having sex with girls if you're gay, pop songs being about toxic relationships, deleting social media, and being happy and single. . . . Patreon: Patreon.com/TheSchwegCast . . . Follow Schweezy: linktr.ee/TheSchweezy . . Sponsors: Novilla: https://www.novilla.net/?rfsn=5637876... FNX Fitness: fnx.grsm.io/schwegcast​​​​​​​ Privacy: https://privacy.com/join/2N62A Drizly: drizly.com/i/rkqax​​​​​ Honey: joinhoney.com/ref/odmta0f

Stocks rise; job openings still remain elevated; Walmart planning new supplier fees; mortgage applications fall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roughly a dozen states are giving out tax rebates to ease the impact of inflation on their residents. Some economists are critical, saying more money to spend could make the problem worse. Plus, how long it’ll take to see oil from drilling on federal lands, how credit score algorithms exacerbate inequality and who ultimately foots the bill for a new Walmart transportation fee.

Claire Babineaux-Fontenot (CEO, Feeding America) and Justin talk about her family's extraordinary story, how she grew up with more than 100 siblings and how she found her way from Walmart to Feeding America.Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/lifeisshort.Please help us by helping our sponsors!Thuma - Go to Thuma.co/long to receive a $25 credit and free shipping with the purchase of a bed!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Have you struggled with figuring out how to price your product or service? This is a common challenge for entrepreneurs. However, if you use the 4 Pillars for Pricing, you can price your product or service with confidence that you will attract the right buyers and clients. How to price your product or service is dependent on several factors within your business, as well as your revenue goals. Charging your worth and value If you have a calling and aren't acting on it you are doing a disservice to those who need your service, your help. Likewise, if you don't charge for the service you provide, you are doing a disservice. Why? Because if people don't pay for something, they aren't going to be as invested in it and won't act and do the work that will create impact. Your knowledge, your value, and your time are worth charging for. If God is calling you to something, it is okay to charge for it. Even in the Bible people made money. The key is to use that money for good, creating a ripple effect of good in the world. About Ruth-Joy Connell Ruth-Joy noticed that she had a passion for helping others succeed. She didn't know exactly what she wanted to do, but she took action and trusted that eventually, she would figure it out. Her ultimate goal was to overcome financial insecurity and be a good steward of money. Using her own experience with money, growing up the daughter of immigrant parents, and her corporate background in sales and marketing, she helps her clients have the financial backbone to succeed and be their vision while having financial security. What is corporate revenue? Corporate revenue is working with companies who are willing to invest 5 figures or more. It is the company that is hiring you not necessarily an individual. Corporate revenue streams begin at 5 figures and go up from there. Even one of these contracts for an entrepreneur has a major impact on growing your business and allowing you to propel forward and have financial security. Robyn shared the example of a coach. Instead of working entrepreneur to entrepreneur, having a corporate revenue stream is working for a corporation and serving their employees. Even within corporations, there are intrapreneurs. They have the expertise, but they are working on behalf of someone else. Companies want the person take ownership, to run the team or project as if it were their own. This opens the door for entrepreneurs to work with corporations and position themselves to do that, while not having to change their business model. Entrepreneurs can go to companies and say that they want to partner with them to advance their individual employees, or partner with the company to provide resources and training. These companies often have resources set aside for this purpose. If you aren't reaching out to larger corporations, you are missing out on revenue opportunities. Robyn mentioned using LinkedIn to connect with corporate employees to open the door to connection opportunities within corporations. How to price your product or service Robyn emphasized creating a pricing structure that is aligned with your soulmate client. If you price based on your soulmate client and their financial resources, you may not attract them. This will result in frustration. Confidence We often present with fear around charging. This most often stems from a lack of confidence in our service and what we are providing versus our ideal client. Listen to episodes on money mindset here and here. The experiences we have had with money are valid and true. It is important not to discount them, but to work on money mindset around those experiences. If someone says they can't afford our fee, it will be a trigger for us. Therefore, it is important to navigate your own money mindset upfront, to deal with them separately from the work we are doing in our business so that we can show up as the best version of ourselves. This will help us help our clients navigate their money mindset issues when they think they can't afford something. If you are resourceful, the resources are available. Because we are human, confidence, fear, and our emotions have an impact on money mindset. The Pillars of Pricing Note that each pillar builds on the previous one to position your business for profitability. Profile Understanding who your target client is. Whether this is an individual or corporation, referred to as a profile. Understand the problem, challenge, or goal this person/company has that you can help them with. Problem – something that is causing their business harm. Challenge – something that they are struggling to overcome Goal – something that they want to achieve. You want to have a deep and thorough understanding of their problem, challenge, or goal and what they have tried, and what worked and didn't work for them in the past. What are the key factors that influence their buying decisions and what they are considering about investing in the solution they are looking for? This pillar is foundational for your understanding of what you are selling to the company and what they need. This is foundational for your confidence and for creating content that helps them understand how you can help them. By doing so, you will knock down barriers of objections because they will be confident in what you will provide for them. When you do the pre-work the numbers won't matter, they will know and understand the value you will provide upfront. Positioning This refers to a company's ability to influence the perspective of others and the work that they do. Another level of positioning is prestige. Prestige refers to how you influence your buyer's perception of your business. Ruth Joy used the example of Walmart, Target, and Nordstrom. Each one of them targets a unique population. They make sure that their profile is aligned with their positioning. Each one has its own level of success. Likewise, they attract the people that they are going to best serve. Listen to the episode on differentiation here. Proposition - Unique Value Proposition  Process – methodology you use  Results –outcomes you produce for your clients  Experience – the environment you create bringing people into you and how they feel when working with you. This answers the question of why a client should choose to work with you. Where do you put a stake in the ground to say you are the best? Which one are you excellent at? Robyn suggested looking at testimonials you receive from past clients to determine where your excellence lies. Profit margins You are not just talking about numbers when talking about pricing. What is left over after bills and salaries? Make sure that there is a minimum of 30% profit margin baked into the pricing of your service. This also must consider the time you are putting into serving your clients. What amount of time goes into creating and delivering your service. In addition, know your financial goals so that you can make enough revenue so you can achieve your overall goals for growth and future hiring. In other words, can your pricing cover your needs until the volume is achieved? To increase profit margins, use the free version of tools and systems, and processes until you know exactly what you need for the long term. Learn more about and connect with Ruth-Joy Connell: Ruth-Joy Connell's website Ruth-Joy's quiz Profit Scale Podcast Instagram Facebook LinkedIn Would you like to know more about building a successful foundation for long-term success? Download my free eBook on the Purpose to Results™ Method and the Success Equation. 

In today's podcast, we are talking with Celia Van Wickel, Kantar's eCommerce and digital commerce expert, leading syndicated insights focused on digital commerce trends, including last-mile delivery players and Amazon. Celia and Kiri talk about takeaways from Kantar's Digital Commerce Conference. Celia is an insights veteran who has focused on shopper and omnichannel insights in her time with Cars.com, Walmart, Lowe's, and Mattel.  Prior to Kantar, Celia was with Coca-Cola where she was the eCommerce insights lead, influencing eCommerce, DTC, and digital foodservice strategy. Celia has been quoted in various industry publications such as Grocery Dive and Business Insider and is an active contributor on LinkedIn focused on the latest digital commerce news. 

Olé Mexican Foods is one of our incredible suppliers – and a truly inspirational American success story. Veronica Moreno started the company in her home with just one tortilla machine, and today she employs hundreds of people across several communities. I recently had the pleasure of touring Olé's Texas facilities and talking with Veronica and her son Edgar about the Olé story, and how they're continuing to expand and invest. Walmart is passionate about supporting American entrepreneurs and businesses. This week, we held our ninth annual Open Call where more than 1,100 businesses from across the country pitched their products for a chance to see them on store shelves, Walmart.com, or our Walmart Marketplace. And we've pledged to spend an additional $350 billion over the next 10 years on products made, grown, or assembled in the U.S. That investment will support the creation of an estimated 750,000 new U.S. jobs. It's amazing to think of the difference we can make for so many lives by buying and selling products that support American jobs. I hope you'll join me in reflecting on that this weekend as we celebrate our nation's 246th birthday. Happy Fourth of July, and thank you!

Leading at the intersection of diversity, inclusion, and workplace culture, in her role as Executive Advisor and Diversity Strategist, Stacey Gordon coaches and counsels executive leaders on DEI strategies for the business, while offering a no-nonsense approach to education for the broader employee population. Stacey's book, UNBIAS: Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work debuted at #1 on Amazon's Hot New Release list and is also available at Barnes & Nobles, and wherever books are sold. Stacey is the creator of the second most viewed course across the LinkedIn learning platform, surpassing more than 1 million unique learners, which also includes her popular resume course. Her unconscious bias course has been translated into at least four languages and she has worked with people managers and executive leaders from companies such as American Express, ADP, Kia Motors, Hewlett Packard, Walmart, GE and many others to deliver notable sessions that support their D&I efforts. She earned her MBA from Pepperdine University Business School and her SHRM-SCP certification, as well as the SHRM Inclusive Workplace Culture Credential. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/ Website: https://jondwoskin.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/ Email: jon@jondwoskin.com Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!   Connect with Stacey Gordon: Website: http://reworkwork.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/reworkwork Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reworkwork LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceygordon/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reworkwork/

Last week, we started a conversation with Carter Cast, author of "The Right (and Wrong) Stuff: How Brilliant Careers are Made and Unmade," clinical professor at the Kellogg School of Management, former Walmart.com CEO and Fortune 100 executive. On this episode, Cast discusses five personality archetypes that derail careers, plus he discusses three traits of highly successful leaders. Finally, he leaves us with a strategy for our own leadership development. ---- Do you have a question? Looking to get help on a business decision? Know a great guest for our show? Email roipod@iupui.edu so we can help your organization make better business decisions. ---- Ready to take your next step? Find out if a Kelley MBA is right for you: https://bit.ly/35cLVqy

You guys. My cheeks hurt from laughing and smiling so much with this week's guest, Jenny Roth of Jenny Roth Copywriting. She is such a super mom, wife, and PERSON.   Today, though, our talk centers on her small business as a copywriter. She has great experience to share as a small business owner as well as copywriting tips FOR small business owners.   We've been “DM friends” for awhile but this is our first time chatting in person! I loved our chat and I know you will too.  Key takeaways Jenny lives in a rural South Dakota town with only 300 people. (Rural like 45 minutes from a Walmart rural!) Her husband farms grain and cattle and they have three girls, born within four years! Jenny was a stay at home mom and even homeschooled until a few years ago. She started to wonder how she could contribute to her family's income in the little pockets of time she found. She started by writing one article each month for a magazine and later moved up to editor. People started approaching her for writing help and her business was born. Jenny's focus has always been her family although she feels a little guilty for admitting it. Her first goal was to make just $200 per month to put her girls in dance lessons. Jenny struggles with indecisiveness but realized “You can do things scared.”  Her biggest business challenges are taking on too much and keeping everything balanced. Jenny realized that hiring copywriters to work under her made her an editor, which she doesn't enjoy, so she switched to hiring copy editors instead. In the future Jenny would like to help others get started in copywriting. Some copywriting tips from Jenny Copywriting is to connect customers with businesses who solve problems. Copywriting is anything you write that connects to your customers. Copywriting should have your voice. Write it for you first, then edit it for your reader. Read it back out loud to see if it sounds like you! Avoid “word salad” copy. Be very specific! What a copywriter can do for you Learn your “voice” to create copy that sounds like you would speak Do a target audience deep dive with market research Give your words a fresh set of eyes Connect with Jenny Find Jenny on Instagram @jennyrothcopywriting or on her website. Join her email list for a free 15 minute master class to create your email welcome sequence. Follow for More Follow Molly Knuth Media on Instagram and Facebook Follow Small-Minded on Instagram and Facebook

Today, we welcome Carrie and Michael Lebhar to talk about some exciting things happening to the Walmart platform, some new Amazon launch strategies and more!

“My body is healed. My body is whole. I am worthy.” You've heard a term used for people who have a life changing experience and they receive “a new lease on life.” What about receiving two?!! On this weeks show business man Michael Collins talks about his journey with God. It began with living in rebellion against God, living a life of the flesh and doing what he wanted to do, with who he wanted to do it with. One day, in an aisle at Walmart, little did Michael know that the meeting of a stranger would change the entire trajectory of his life. Just when he thinks his journey couldn't take any more twists and turns, Michael receives a phone call on Labor Day weekend from his doctor that sends him down the path he never imagined, physically or spiritually, which resulted in having his hand held by God in his most painful moment, and he's here to talk about it! (This is a repeat episode - enjoy!)

00:00.00 mikebledsoe Welcome to Monday morning with Mike and max and today we're going to be talking about freedom because you know what it is the fourth of July and we are americans and so of course not only are we totally into the conversation today but we're into it. All the time max and I are both lovers of freedom and in our own ways which is kind of like how freedom works you get to do it your way. So thanks for joining me Dave Max so you are begin this topic with you since I think you and I are both. We've spent a lot of time focusing on this topic. 00:41.30 Max Shank Well thanks for having me once again, it is certainly my favorite topic. It's also what I would like to impart or share with people. Basically when I think about what I would like to share with folks I would like to help them become more free because I don't. 00:54.71 mikebledsoe Hang on. Yeah. 01:00.59 Max Shank I don't I don't I don't want to be your Mama I don't want to be responsible for you and that's the beauty of freedom is there's you are responsible for yourself and this other person is responsible for themself and there's interdependence that comes through agreements. 01:03.23 mikebledsoe I am. 01:19.29 Max Shank Volitional choices and I think that's amazing. That's what allowed us to get everything going. That's what allowed us to do so well basically hands writing and cooperation. Otherwise we would still just be you know lion food pretty much. 01:30.17 mikebledsoe I. 01:37.50 Max Shank You know I'm saying Ah so I I think I would like everyone listening to this to become more free and I think a good way to understand it would be the different types of freedom and then also what's the opposite of freedom and who are the key players and how this all worked. 01:37.97 mikebledsoe Definitely. 01:56.30 mikebledsoe Yeah, um. 01:57.16 Max Shank So if you don't mind I'd I'd love to kick things off. 02:00.43 mikebledsoe Kick things off when you got more to say right now is that what you're saying oh well None I want to mention if you want access to the pre-show you have to go to go over to the bloodso show dot com we'll have a link over there to. 02:03.16 Max Shank Yeah I mean ah yeah I Just I don't want to drone on and on too much. But I think about it like free freedom is a new go for it. 02:20.10 mikebledsoe Sign up. Ah, we're taking it's a donation based thing I hate word donation. It's value for value pay what you want if you find what be what you want look pay what you want to be in there. Whatever you however, much value you find from this show just you know. 02:24.56 Max Shank Um, pay what you want I like that phrase. That's that's a better 1 pay what you want. 02:37.52 Max Shank Well, they can't pay that much. This show is invaluable so pay the intersection of what you value the show and what you can afford. 02:39.37 mikebledsoe Make it make you know pay as much as you possibly can is. 02:50.61 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah, so that keeps us ah, trucking along. And yeah, if you go up there if if you're listening on the day that we post this that link is not going to quite be up yet. But if you're listening in a few days from now I should have that up in the next week so 02:57.20 Max Shank It will have. 03:08.77 mikebledsoe We're Goingnna give some exclusive content there posting some short videos of our pre-show which sometimes I think what's happening in the preshow is more valuable than what's happening here. There's a little more put together. But you miss all the ramblings. That ah happened and in fact, if you go listen to today's pre-show you get to hear max's poem that he wrote this morning. Yeah yeah, so he shared a poem to kick that off. So I just want to mention that first. Ah so I appreciate everyone who's I've had. 03:30.89 Max Shank Oh that's right. 03:44.95 mikebledsoe I've had ah people already reach out in the Dms asking me how the hell do I donate someone asked for venmo accounts I was like hold on I was like hold off we're gonna set something up I want to do this proper from the very beginning. So um, they do like us. 03:47.58 Max Shank Um, oh Wow cool. 03:57.65 Max Shank They like us. They really like us. Thanks everybody. That's so nice I feel validation that I I used to only feel from the affection of a woman I'm sure no other guys out there ah tried to get all their validation from the affection of women right? That's a mistake. 04:02.88 mikebledsoe Yeah. 04:14.70 mikebledsoe Yeah I've never done that I've never done that. Yeah yeah. 04:17.39 Max Shank I mean I think that's only a mistake I've made I don't think anybody else talk about a type of slavery right? you you are your sense of self is ah enslaved by the whims and affection of women that's brutal. 04:31.70 mikebledsoe Yeah, which I mean women are pretty much the whole reason we do anything at the end of the day. So yeah, and you know what if I'm a slave to that then fuck it I'm I'm down. 04:37.70 Max Shank Yo Absolutely for sex and food. 04:46.22 Max Shank Um, yeah, they're they, they they look and feel nice. Don't they totally worth. Ah, ah. 04:50.78 mikebledsoe Totally worth it. Totally worth it. Well um, we we had a little conversation during the pre-show that really lights me up which is ah max brought up the word. No. Which I think is at the center of the freedom conversation and there is the internal experience of saying no and that is ah being willing to disappoint others or not meet the expectations of others when someone asks you to do something or be somewhere. 05:25.62 Max Shank The. 05:27.57 mikebledsoe You say? No I don't want to um and then there's um, and then there's the the lack of violence when you tell somebody? No,. There's the the external experience of freedom which is. The ability to say no and people actually honor that. Yeah. 05:48.43 Max Shank Well, it's drawing a line in the sand right? I'm I'm pretty sure the origin of drawing a line in the sand was basically if you cross this I will fuck you up and that's that's really if we have ah differences. That's how we resolve them. We can do it like you and I are doing right now we can talk it out say no and if that knows not respected The only thing left is physical violence which force is the language of cells and the language of life and ah. Even inorganic stuff like rocks I mean force is really what what moves things along which sounds like a funny phrase. But if you draw solid boundaries. You also won't become resentful. That's a big part of it and the biggest part I think. And it's a really hard concept to understand and I bring it up all the time which is opportunity cost if you neglect to say no when it matters then you will prevent yourself from saying yes to things so the cost of not drawing boundaries. Is that you don't get to use that energy for the things that you really want to say yes to so freedom and focus are both related to the word. No and this is true with your health. It's true with your finances. It's true with friendships. It's. Really really important. Um, so that's a big part of it I would also like to today just thank everybody involved for the freedom experiment that you and I are now enjoying in America I think a lot of us. Ah, it's very easy to forget that this is a pretty new concept in terms of how nations are organized. This is a big big group of people united around the concept of freedom. Probably the biggest None ever actually and. Certainly deteriorated a little bit but before that the only type of freedom there was was probably like nomad nomadic tribes and stuff like that. But you're still going to have some sort of a hierarchy. So this idea that everyone is free to do what they like. The pursuit of happiness is a type of magic really and that code and all those people involved set in motion a series of events that allowed for the greatest possible comparative advantage and specialization. 08:37.41 Max Shank If You are super ambitious about baking muffins and that is all that you want to do you can do that and no one can tell you to do anything otherwise and the cumulative effect of everybody being free to choose out of love what they most want to do. Led to the highest advancement Possible. You're always going to get a much higher passion and performance if the reason or the mission is derived from a place of of love right? so. 09:09.79 mikebledsoe Yeah, wells gone. 09:13.44 Max Shank It it wasn't just the people who thank you? It wasn't just the people who wrote the declaration of independence it was a lot of people before that also a lot of it was actually just because of the book common sense by Thomas Paine ah from what I've read and understand. A lot of the guys who signed the declaration of independence just earlier that year were basically thinking. Yeah, we should get back with England we should. We should get back with them and then common sense came out and it's it's worth a read. It's still good. It was the most widely read book ever at the time it it sold more copies than the literacy rate it was outrageous how popular this book was and so it just goes to show the power of an idea. 09:57.40 mikebledsoe Oh. 10:05.58 Max Shank Ah, so I I thank Thomas Paine I think the people who who risked a lot I mean there was a lot of bloodshed There was a lot of risks being taken and it's like freedom is basically never given right. It's only taken. And so I I guess I really because I don't have a frame I've ever been to war I've done none of fighting like in a ring with the rare scuffle outside in the world but man I have a really deep appreciation for. All of the people involved and it's still right now there are a lot of people involved with preserving this idea that we are free to do as we please and everyone else is free to do as they please because that's that's not how it went right? right? before this experiment. That's not how it went and I think. 10:56.43 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 11:02.51 Max Shank A lot of what happened there was a catalyst for the industry and technology that give us different types of freedom I mean you are free from doing your laundry by hand if you have a. 11:21.48 mikebledsoe But well tech What ah tech comes um I mean I've seen instances where the tech is what preceded the freedom. So for one we can agree on that. 11:21.48 Max Shank A washing machine and a dryer. It's incredible. So all that tech was because of the freedom I believe. 11:34.39 Max Shank Freedom Freedom is a technology. Also I think we can agree. 11:40.81 mikebledsoe Yeah but ah so there's 2 things that really led to ah the the declaration of independence and following that the constitution and ah, what the 2 things that I see that led to that one was the enlightenment period. And that's where guys like John Locke and some other philosophers really laid the groundwork. Um for there was a lot of things happening in Europe and there was these ideas this idea of equal rights was emerging ah in Europe. And it was causing a lot of friction and that's None reason a lot of people came to America was like you know what? I don't want to deal with all this stuff in Europe let's get out of here. Yeah, it's three or four weeks on a boat we might die but fuck it. Let's go and so ah, very bold but the. 12:32.97 Max Shank Bold very bold. 12:37.88 mikebledsoe There were these ideas from the enlightenment period that that took hold and the idea of equal rights is that no one person is more has more rights than somebody else which in the end means that I have no right to tell you how to live your life as long as you're not impeding on my. 12:47.32 Max Shank Oh. 12:57.50 Max Shank Right. 12:57.22 mikebledsoe Right? to do what I want so the idea of negative rights comes into play which never exists before. So if you go to Europe now the it the way the their minds work and a lot of americans it works like this too because the the european mindset is you know. I think you and I as long as we've been alive. It seems like a lot of americans think that europe has it more figured out than we do which is kind of weird. Um, yeah, and so. 13:23.16 Max Shank The grass is greener on the other side. Um, but they don't consider the fact that you pay like a 20% value added tax on like basically everything you know so we have like fractional servitude with these taxations and it's just different place to place right. 13:31.92 mikebledsoe Everything every step of the Way. Ah. Yeah, so the um, ah so the idea of negative rights comes into play and that is ah everybody had the the negative right is I don't have the right to do anything to cause you to do you know. 13:42.27 Max Shank Yeah. 13:57.99 mikebledsoe To stop doing anything you want to do as long as we're not harming each other is basically at the end of the day. That's how negative rights work and this was not a concept that existed prior to about None it was new up into that point everyone believed that the king. 13:59.72 Max Shank And a. 14:17.80 mikebledsoe Or the pope or somebody had been granted this authority from god and this is why Ah, this is why so many almost every country has this official religion that's affiliated with and America was the first one that came along. It was like you know what we're not going to do this whole religious thing. Because we're not going to try to tie up the idea of authority with the government and so um and so this whole thing of negative rights comes along and there was if you read the federalist papers and this is a thing that most americans I think really miss out on is they don't. Get the context of the constitution. They don't have the context for the declaration of independence both are are very important I took constitutional law 1 year and the the none month we spent studying the declaration of independence and I was like what is like they told us at the very beginning. 15:11.48 Max Shank The. 15:16.62 mikebledsoe We're stuck in declaration of independence first because this actually laid the groundwork for the constitution. So first a lot. Yeah, a lot of people are only looking at the constitution with 0 context. So then so you have the context of the declaration of independence so you need to have that context first. 15:22.91 Max Shank It's like the sperm and the egg. 15:35.58 mikebledsoe Most people don't have that and which you know today is the day that you know the the declaration of independence was was made a thing and then um, which was primarily written by Thomas Jefferson I believe and i. 15:42.17 Max Shank Right. As I understand it. Yeah. We don't know for sure of of course. Well you said something big too which is content without context I Think that's one of the biggest traps that people can fall into like it's It's fine to. 15:53.88 mikebledsoe No, there were no cameras. It's not an Instagram it's not on Facebook who knows. 16:10.67 Max Shank Believe you whatever you want to believe but I'm pretty shocked Still you'd think I'd be desensitized to it by now by the by the strength of opinions held based on Absolutely no context whatsoever. It's it's just ah, it's basically just ah, a bird sound. 16:23.36 mikebledsoe Right. 16:29.15 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 16:30.60 Max Shank That is repeated like they hear this combination of sounds and then that comes back out again and it's impossible to take into account all of the variables. But ah, it really is if you want to understand something.. It's so important to have context for. What that is and when that might actually be correct. 16:49.83 mikebledsoe Yeah, so so the context of something like the constitution is really um, a big topic right now because the supreme court whose primary job is to find out if a law is constitutional or not. That's that's about it. 17:05.89 Max Shank Right. 17:09.18 mikebledsoe They don't create laws. They just they make rulings on whether this law is something that could be upheld or not so. 17:15.39 Max Shank And let's get clear real quick. What's the point of having a state and laws in the None place. It's just to protect property rights that's it. It's that part hasn't changed that is that's the core purpose. 17:29.84 mikebledsoe That was but but the. 17:34.56 Max Shank Same with pirates and gangs. It's like basically the guys are like hey we'll offer you protection in exchange for a little bit of your stuff. So It's really like no different than that and when you were talking About. Um. The interplay of negative rights. It. It made me think like okay, well yeah, that's that's the rule is that according to the law. You can't infringe on somebody else's property which is their self and their stuff. 18:09.51 mikebledsoe Include your body. Yeah. 18:12.94 Max Shank Yeah yourself and your stuff and but here's the thing like natural law is anyone can do anything. They want any time. So this whole idea of law is really just about consequences if they catch you and that sounds like a little funny but but that's really that's really all it is. If if they catch you. There are consequences if they don't There are basically no consequences So natural law is anyone or or everyone always does what they want and they can they can kill you they can punch you they can say mean things to you. They can steal your stuff. Doesn't matter the whole reason we would put faith in a higher power is if we believed that they would improve our property rights and decrease friction and decrease assault on our persons and so you have to look at the cost Benefit. Of What you're giving up versus what you're getting and I think it's really, um, certainly has split the crowd because a lot of people would agree that for what we ah give or for what we have taken. The ah return on that investment is very bad and not transparent either. 19:29.55 mikebledsoe Yeah, very bad and and that was actually and that was that was definitely not transparent and that was one of the reasons that you know the the revolutionary war was fought was he's not doing shit for us. He just and just taxing us. 19:41.72 Max Shank Why should we pay the King he's not doing shit for us over here. He's an ocean away fuck that guy. Yeah, right totally imagine. Yeah. 19:49.55 mikebledsoe No protection, not providing enough for what he's taking and so that was one of the things that that motivated them. Um, but so I like to bring up the idea of negative rights because there's no such thing as rights outside of negative rights. There's. Anything. That's not a negative right? is what I would call a wrong and so self logic man I'm I'm sorry so I'm really twisting you up here. The thing is is when I talk to people about this sometimes they do. 20:12.65 Max Shank This is tough logic to follow. Honestly, you got to write it down. 20:21.61 Max Shank Um, the opposite of a negative right is a wrong. 20:30.83 mikebledsoe That's right. 20:31.36 Max Shank I'm pretty I'm pretty sure a negative right is a wrong. But anyway that mathematically. 20:35.16 mikebledsoe No Ah negative. Well the the the reason well negative rights are rights and you have to the reason we have to use the language negative rights when we used to only have to use the word rights is because a lot of politicians have twisted up what rights mean. So people are confused that yeah that they've confused privileges with rights and you have the right to a really easy one to break down is medical Care. You have ah the right to medical care. It's like that's actually not. 20:53.73 Max Shank Oh privileges. 21:12.40 mikebledsoe True now because you have to take it from somebody else. So if if some authority figure comes along and says you have the right to medical care and then there's you walk into the doctor and the doctor says look I really. 21:12.73 Max Shank I see now because you have to take it from somebody. Yeah. 21:31.76 mikebledsoe I Can't afford to serve you right now for whatever reason the doctor doesn't want to do it and then an authority figure comes and says no doctor. This person has medical rights. You have to perform whatever it is on them that doctor that doctor has now become a slave. He's has to. 21:43.78 Max Shank Right? Which is coercion word. 21:51.90 mikebledsoe He has to conduct labor against his will and when I bring this up a lot of times people get really upset with me when I bring up that example because they're like but it would be wrong for the doctor to turn him down like look from an ethical standpoint when a doctor makes his his or her. Ah. Statement of what the hippocratic oath or whatever it is and they make the statement that they're going to. You know, help people who are in need and not turn anyone away. That's that's an ethical thing. 22:18.24 Max Shank Right? That's worth going to look at by the way the hippocratic oath you can look it up is really cool. It's like a really awesome little bit of Linguistic magic. So. 22:29.22 mikebledsoe Yeah, So so what? I'm what I'm getting at is like this whole this whole that you have rights to somebody else's labor cause at the end of the and and the medical thing is really touchy because people people do feel like everyone should have access to this like emotionally, it's like. Oh yeah, everyone should have access to this but the thing is is not everyone has access to this. 22:52.19 Max Shank It's just the image. It's just the image of it that sways people with rhetoric right? it like hospital rooms are scary death is scary. We don't want to face it so we have a scary enough image and then people are like you know what we should ah like steal from the neighbor. 23:02.60 mikebledsoe Yeah. 23:09.48 mikebledsoe Right. 23:10.90 Max Shank For the greater good right? And here's how you cut straight to the core of any issue like this and you know I'm gonna let the I'm gonna let it fly today because fuck it here's the deal every day in the media. There's some new bullshit that is trying to ensnare you. 23:18.57 mikebledsoe Ah, perfect. 23:28.64 Max Shank And enslave your attention and that's already a fucking bad bad thing right? here's the deal though if you want to cut straight to the heart of any issue you ask None question who decides that's it doesn't every everything else take it off the table. Who decides and then you'll figure out what the deal is going on. You just ask who decides and then eventually you go oh so that other guy decides for me. Yeah, no thanks and me saying no, that's that's freedom. But if you want to cut to the heart of. The important issues. What's really important. Ah I don't know if ah if it's important like ah there are so many things that are made to believe to be important. It's make-believe we make believe that these things are important. But the None thing that is important is who decides that's all cut through the bullshit. That's what freedom is is who decides if I can say yes if I can say no, that's freedom if I cannot It's some form of slavery fractional or otherwise simple as that. 24:38.10 mikebledsoe Yeah, totally agree I mean I think we're what ah probably around I'm like a 33% slave I think you're probably closer like a 48% slave because you're in California. 24:51.48 Max Shank Fucking rubbing it in look at him do that to me Jesus Christ wow good god I'll tell you what though I'll tell you I'll tell you. 24:56.30 mikebledsoe Um, just come to Texas already. Um, um, um, not only am my older but I'm less of a slave than you. Um. 25:07.95 Max Shank Oh you're way more of a timela than I am folks for those listening and don't know I have way more ah agency and autonomy over my schedule than Mike here does. But you know you're going to talk about California. Let's talk about it. Imagine. 25:12.83 mikebledsoe If. 25:26.80 Max Shank Being one of those guys who owns a business in California they shut you down and then they don't protect your shop while it gets looted what the fuck are you doing the whole purpose that you're there is like whoa so they they steal none your shit. They don't come to your aid when you need it and they stop you from doing business. It's like the antithesis of freedom. So oh my god look we could talk about this all day but let's let's get back to something practical. 25:55.21 mikebledsoe Um, a. 25:56.47 Max Shank Otherwise I'm just gonna sound like an angry old man I'm only 34 fucking years old for Christ's sakes 26:02.35 mikebledsoe Ah, all right? So ah, we'll get back to some ah something' a little more philosophical that'll help calm me down. So Ah anyways I bring up the the medical freedom because there's a lot of thing or medical rights Because. You got to watch out I want I want people to be aware so when they do come across these conversations when if they do get exposed to something a politician says and they say you have the right to this think about do they have to take something from somebody else to give it to you and if that is the case then it's not a right. 26:18.49 Max Shank And. 26:37.69 mikebledsoe Because you're you were in the end enslaving the other person. So yeah, another one that's popular in California is and I've had this experience because my my ah my fiancee Ashley she. 26:40.44 Max Shank Yeah, you're just getting the loot from their fucking plunder. 26:56.10 mikebledsoe Sold She had tenants in a building and she sold the building and she inherited the building from her grandmother and so she inherits like this commercial building. It's It's like mixed use commercial and residential and these she's like you know. Well if the tenants she's having to like she's learning about all this stuff in real time and going. Okay, the tenants don't make rent because sometimes they're late. She's like it's like can I kick them out because she's also trying to sell the building and if you have tenants not paying Rent. You're trying to sell a building then it's a fucking problem right? so. 27:26.81 Max Shank Totally yeah. 27:31.92 mikebledsoe She goes and talks to the lawyer to find out if she can kick the tenants out and they have to be so many months behind on rent then not only do you not get ah ah, get your money for what you own because that's her property she has to pay the tenants to leave. 27:49.62 Max Shank Oh yeah, oh yeah, right right. 27:51.31 mikebledsoe She has to pay them. It's like the opposite of ah property rights. it's it's crazy so um there's just another I wanted to bring up a None law. We'll we'll call it a statutory law that means it's ah it's an opinion of a group people not actual law that have been put in place. 28:06.72 Max Shank Well, there are so many things like that right? and it's all for the illusion. It's all for the illusion of the greater good. This is the only way you can understand how these things happen you have to imagine 3 neighbors and they all get to vote. 28:10.64 mikebledsoe That Ah, there's so many. 28:25.90 Max Shank And if None neighbors vote to Rob the none then majority rules and that's basically the problem is if enough people you know None people vote to Rob the none that's majority rule. It's also called mob rule. In ah in a different term but it's the same thing so you can yeah but that's what I'm that's exactly what I'm saying a democracy is not a good thing and people don't understand that because if you have the majority vote to Rob the minority I don't think that's like a constructive solution and it builds resentment in the. 28:46.80 mikebledsoe It's also called Democracy It's a pure democracy. Yeah. 29:03.84 Max Shank The group it doesn't allow I mean they're look. We could go off on that tangent for too long, but. 29:06.46 mikebledsoe Well well here's the thing is I think it's worth mentioning I'm glad you brought up democracy because the United States is not a democracy. It's a republic and the reason that it was not a democracy is because the founding fathers fathers were smart enough. The first republic I want to say was Greece. 29:13.54 Max Shank Republic. 29:26.29 mikebledsoe Um, and took a lot of the concepts from Greece in order to create what we have a lot of the same stuff but the idea is you got a lot of people who want to get rid of something ah like the electoral college They think the electoral college is robbing people of their votes and this and that. 29:29.22 Max Shank Um, lot of the same stuff lot of the same stuff big time. 29:43.31 Max Shank And those people live on the coasts and want to make decisions for everybody else I get it like of of course like you know you don't hate the player don't hate the player don't hate the game either. That's just like the the thing we're in like we could have just as easily been born in a feudal system. 29:45.35 mikebledsoe But yeah, yeah, if you're part of the majority. 30:00.43 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 30:01.33 Max Shank Of some kind where we had to like pay to a lord and he could fuck our wife on wedding night and all kinds of shit like that. So like look you got to you got to compare Apple's apples everything's relative but ah things are overall like awesome, but it's largely due to technology. 30:10.94 mikebledsoe Yeah, thank you. 30:20.20 Max Shank And our ability to trade easily and in fact, so you could say ah trade and technology are kind of the the work of the private sector and it's kind of like um, the public sector tries to fuck everything up. Maybe with good intentions by the way I don't know like that Handlin's razor idea of don't attribute to malice what you could attribute to ah incompetence sometimes yes sometimes no probably more people are stupid than evil and no one thinks they're the evil one. They always think the ends justify the means. Um, that's why that's why I'm not surprised when stuff like this happens because if you get a very powerful ambitious person. They can spin a story in their own mind and if they believe that they can improve. The life of 90% by murdering 10 probably they would do that and I and I could understand that it doesn't make it right? but I can totally understand and that's why it's never a good long-term choice to consolidate power into one area. Because you'll get more speed faster decision making so if you have ah an authoritarian or a dictatorship or some sort of ah collectivism where it's like None or None people in charge. You have a single point of failure which is a problem. So if you have an insane guy can like kill. Ah, 0 people with a famine just by accident right? Just by being a fucking retard. Ah like that's killed way more people than religion is just people who think they're smart getting in charge and thinking that they can make all the decisions that. We should all be individually making on our own that's the that's the value that's one of the major values of freedom is that it's like ah a shock absorber that can work in real time you know, supply and demand cost and benefit are made on an individual basis which is relative to. The individual values and it can adjust things much more quickly. You know if the if the Ceo of Target came out tomorrow and said I don't want any like jews blacks or anyone shopping at Target everyone be like holy god damn we don't like that and we would all go to Walmart. Out of our own free choice probably and and that's why it comes back to who decides. So if it's None guy at the top you can get things done a lot faster. You can boom declare war one None word kill that fucker and there's no. 32:48.40 mikebledsoe Yeah. 33:05.52 Max Shank There's no ah diversification of that decision making so you can get things done way faster hey ah clone those people over there and they're like yes, ah yes, dictator man I will I will clone those people over there hey kill those people and and you will so you can get things done way faster. 33:06.54 mikebledsoe Yeah, um. 33:24.48 Max Shank Which can be an advantage in the short term. But ah, you know now you're at the mercy of 1 guy and that's pretty scary stuff. So diversification is a big part of freedom. 33:30.40 mikebledsoe Yeah I don't get back to yeah I agree and I mean that's one of the I say the byproducts of freedom that that actually is in service of the whole over time. Um, so I me go back to. 33:46.91 Max Shank It's also profitable transactions. So if every transaction is done Volitiony then there's always ah, an energetic surplus like I trade you voluntary choice. Yeah volition means voluntary choice. But. 33:52.83 mikebledsoe He say he's volition. He means voluntary so be using such big words. Yeah, ah so ah. 34:04.35 Max Shank Dude, let me use my word a day calendar. Okay I bought the thing. 34:07.33 mikebledsoe So They ah it it being a Republic I mentioned the electoral college but congress the senate the Supreme court. All these things are set up to have checks and balances and everything is based off of the.. Basically the declaration of Independence in the constitution are these these base ah basis of all the laws that are written and most of them are not constitutional that are floating around these days but the whole point was to ah they realized that the average person. Needed to feel like they were involved in some way but they they do not. They shouldn't have like ah I guess an equal voice in how things should ah like be controlled by others because not everyone can see. View and there's there's That's why there's representatives and not everything's just yeah, it's a specialization. 35:00.19 Max Shank Um, it's specialization right? like an Electrician is good with electrical electrical work. A politician is supposed to be good with political work. Of course there are a lot of problems with that. But that's the idea. 35:10.90 mikebledsoe Yeah, and so that's why in my opinion up until this point a republic is the greatest form of government that's going to give somebody the greatest amount of freedom now. Ah you know. Is there something better probably with the with the way technology is moving with the decentralization of governance so things like the decentralized autonomous organizations daws. There are going to be things that we're going to be able to do with decentralized governance. And with Ai that is going to actually be able to make decisions that and ai is going to be able to croc information that no one human being can consider and so with the advancement technology. What I believe is we're going to be stepping into. A greater amount of freedom. Um, and there's also dangers that come with that of course. Ah and so going back. So I just want to make that statement about it being a republic not a democracy so on the news when they go oh this is a danger to our democracy which happens all the fucking time. Ah. Like sometimes youre like some I've had people tell me that I'm like well it's good thing. We're not a democracy and they they're like ah we're this one guy this german guy he yeah that this german guy he was like ah he was arguing with me on Facebook about something some guy went to burning man with. 36:30.79 Max Shank Um, yeah, well there's semantic precision for you right? People don't even know what the word means. 36:45.25 Max Shank Ah, yeah. 36:47.40 mikebledsoe I mean this is years ago and he's like he's like something about democracy this and democracy. Yeah I was like well None off, you need to know that you're living in a country that's not a democracy. We're a republic and he's like what's that have to do with anything um like like you know, ah. 37:00.21 Max Shank Ah. 37:05.75 mikebledsoe The entire basis of your point is is being built around the idea of democracy That's that that doesn't actually exist here. So um. 37:16.43 Max Shank Basically the Republic that was set up with Independence was to try to put as much shit in the way as possible from the government doing anything and and that's and that's the correct choice by the way it's. 37:26.17 mikebledsoe Yeah, if you and the and the constitution was the constitution when you read it was it doesn't grant any rights to anybody it limits the government from impeding upon the rights that every individual has. 37:31.86 Max Shank It's way more stable. 37:40.40 Max Shank Exactly and isn't it Yeah isn't it funny too. We even havent I think it's the ninth one that says ah there are also more rights that we didn't write down. 37:46.15 mikebledsoe And so yeah. 37:58.54 Max Shank Basically, there's there's one like that. It's like you know, free speech and firearms. And honestly, if you have those 2 eventually it'll rebalance. It'll be a little turbulent but the whole like you know troops in peace time and not ah incriminating yourself and all these things that ah go on up. Ah, to that one where it's like Also we this this list is not Complete. We have even more than we wrote down. 38:23.89 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, hopefully you get the idea and then people didn't but but the thing is yeah um. 38:31.69 Max Shank It's because they traded freedom for security and there's a quote about that people who trade freedom None security will lose both and deserve neither I think that might have been Jefferson I think it might have been Jefferson but maybe ah. 38:41.00 mikebledsoe So Benjamin Franklin I think I put money on franklin yeah, but I mean nonetheless. Um, yeah, that that is what's happened so the other thing I want to hit on which what we were talking about the technology leading to freedom or freedom leading to technology I think. 38:48.40 Max Shank Maybe it was Franklin I don't okay, yeah yeah. 39:06.12 mikebledsoe I think the desire to be free is what does drive a lot of technology but an example so what created so I'm going to go back to the 2 things that created the situation in 76 when the founding fathers go you know what fuck you? we're doing our own thing. Is they had 2 things they had the enlightenment period so they had the philosophy which was the the development of consciousness to the degree in which they they recognized equal rights amongst every human being That's why it was written was it executed that way. Absolutely not. But guess what? we fast forward to today. It's been corrected. Tremendously. Um I think that if anyone were to argue that it's not as good now as it was two hundred years ago they'd be an idiot um and then well I would say as far as. 39:55.52 Max Shank A lot of things are better and some things are worse. But I think Net net is better. 40:01.58 mikebledsoe Say as far as like equal rights like there's not we don't have discrimination. Ah you know discriminatory laws based yeah well you know? yeah you know people of color and women being able to vote and all these types of things. 40:06.17 Max Shank Oh that's a funny one. It's like the bros before hose amendments. You know that one. 40:18.22 Max Shank Well isn't it funny though that we gave recently ah freed slave black men the right to vote long before women like I think that's a funny thing and I I feel that too I mean right now there's a lot of tension. Ah between men and women. 40:19.82 mikebledsoe Um. 40:27.26 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 40:37.49 Max Shank Mostly manufactured. But I think there's a lot more commonality between men of different races than a man and a woman of the same race I don't I don't I don't really think ah I don't think that's it's really more about upbringing but Gosh ah being a man or a woman is like a really. 40:45.51 mikebledsoe I agree. 40:56.77 Max Shank Different thing but having a different but having a different skin color in and of itself is not really a different thing and the only reason I believe that is because I'm not a racist and I cannot be a racist and think that generally black people Run faster. 40:57.76 mikebledsoe It's a very different experience. 41:02.47 mikebledsoe Not in. Um, what. 41:16.84 Max Shank Asians are better at musical instruments and math and they become doctors more regularly I mean can't we all agree that this shit happens and not be racist at the same time seems so easy to me. 41:26.44 mikebledsoe Yeah, easy to you but not to people who were had their amygdala hijacked by the media. But ah, so so the 2 things the enlightenment period that gave rise to the philosophy and the way of thinking of equal rights. 41:33.10 Max Shank Oh. 41:45.59 mikebledsoe And the None thing that made the revolution possible was the decentralization of violence through the invention of the rifle and so hour to the people and so before the rifle came along. 41:53.85 Max Shank Power to the people. 42:02.64 mikebledsoe The amount of training and the cost of Weaponry and armor was too high for the average person to have the rifle comes along you require less training to kill somebody right? You don't need that much training to use a rifle fairly effectively like you can become deadly. 42:09.31 Max Shank Um, ha ha. 42:22.29 mikebledsoe You know in an afternoon of practice and exactly and so and. 42:24.70 Max Shank And totally fuck up some guy who's done martial arts for 40 years with a sword that that changed my whole outlook on martial arts training I remember when I had that realization I was like I got to stop this I got to go start learn how to use a gun I'm not going to let some fucking. Hundred and ten pound asshole shoot me dead after training martial arts for 20 years that's ridiculous so it's it's the great equalizer right. 42:43.83 mikebledsoe No, no, it is a great equalizer I think Smith and Wesson there's a quote from Smith and Wesson from the gun company has said men and women were created equal and. Smith and Wesson keeps it that way or something like that. Yeah yeah, it's like empowering women to carry a gun. You know like oh you, you don't want to have to rely on men for your safety. Well here's here's ah the great equalizer as you say so yeah, the the rifle would pierce the armor that was. 43:03.47 Max Shank Oh That's pretty fun. Right. 43:16.54 Max Shank Down. 43:21.92 mikebledsoe Previously made to deflect swords and and arrows but a bullet you know, traveling at a thousand feet per second you know it it makes it through and so it really changed how warfare was ah conducted and actually what was that Mel Gibson movie with ah. 43:25.13 Max Shank Ah. 43:41.73 mikebledsoe No no the patriot I just saw a clip of it on Instagram and in that movie one of the things that that happened is they ah in a revolutionary war is when guerrilla warfare really started up until that point it was like. 43:41.77 Max Shank Braveheart no the patriot. Yeah. 44:00.50 mikebledsoe I've got my army and we're going to just March up to your army because that's what worked when they had like swords and and arrows and all this shit but like warfare actually didn't ah didn't really ah evolve. 44:03.98 Max Shank Honorable. 44:13.12 Max Shank In many parts of the world in sophisticated warfare. It was like we're going to March in a line at each other and what's funny is in bravehe heartt another Mel Gibson movie it's also all about freedom like he gets disembowlled and he like yells freedom and. 44:18.95 mikebledsoe Um, yeah. 44:26.31 mikebledsoe Yeah. 44:29.89 Max Shank They're like doing sneaky shit and coming around the flank and all that stuff. So it's kind of funny how ah those movies really parallel each other under the same banner of free of freedom. 44:37.58 mikebledsoe Oh for sure for sure. So ah, yeah, just thinking about that and like the scene I saw on Instagram ah, you know I follow ah an Instagram account called zulu fucks. So ah, you know it's a military you know some veterans put that shit together. Some sick fucks and who I enjoy and the ah you know they they have the scene where you know he's killing them with you know, rifles and hatchets and you know that was that was the weapon of his of choice right? He had the the hatchet he could throw and and all that um. 44:58.62 Max Shank Yeah. 45:10.68 Max Shank Right? It's like John wick. It's like murder porn right? for dudes John Wick 3 Keanereves fucks people up for 2 hours 45:14.95 mikebledsoe But yeah, yeah, it is dude I finally watched I watched I've been wanting to watch John Wick for like 10 years and the last time I flew it was on the screen I was like oh fuck I'll watch it now. Um good movie. 45:32.13 Max Shank It's funny. Yeah, yeah. 45:33.74 mikebledsoe Actually I really enjoyed it. Ah so ah, so yeah, the the this decentral ah decentralization of violence through the invention of the rifle really is what allowed. Ah the Americans to get together and be able to. Hold the British back and everyone can fight that did not happen back in the day you were either a trained soldier or you weren't and if you weren't a trained soldier. You weren't fighting. Yeah yeah, mostly farmers. 45:53.17 Max Shank Everyone can fight now I think that's even happening in Ukraine pass out a gun to everybody like. 46:07.57 Max Shank You're probably a farmer. You know you said something really cool there which was that philosophical change and I often have thought about the fact that slavery is largely due to the definition. In the Dao. Ah 1 of the none passages is that ah naming is the origin of all particular things. So when you say there's this philosophical enlightenment shift. What that means is without that adjustment. People will go on believing the same thing that they have been believing. It's just like momentum. There's ideological momentum just like there's physical momentum. So. It's interesting to look back and see how many people were controlled with. With the threat of violence mostly I think of like ah a plantation in the south right? or or you know even before that just using a whip. You know you got maybe None people ah fully commanding None people and all they have is like whips and these people don't even think ah a. They think I'm I'm a slave and this is normal and this is what slaves do this is like a superior man and this is a slave even the code of hamurabi allegedly the oldest text for law which is basically like if you steal something we'll chop off your hand if you poke a guy's eye out. We'll poke your eye out if you rape his daughter you got to marry her and pay the dad fifty Silver shekels that kind of thing but it would it would refer to people as a superior man or an inferior man or a slave and so there were different classes of people and the reason there were different. 47:45.91 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 47:59.12 Max Shank Classes of people was because that they believed and accepted those Classifications. So if you accept the classification of that. Ah, and you're and you don't have an. Imbalanced force kind of bringing it back to physics and Momentum. There's no reason that you would stop doing that. 48:19.20 mikebledsoe Yeah. Um, I just did a quick search for a quote that I saw circulating on on social media which was a quote from Harriet Tubman saying I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves. 48:40.91 Max Shank Oh yeah, that's what I was trying to say but in a worse way I was I was saying it worse. 48:44.65 mikebledsoe Yeah, but then you know of course if I go to one of the things that popped up I Want to do a search on it to be you know to confirm I was correct and there's ah, a politifact. Um. 48:53.14 Max Shank A. Oh yeah, very reliable source. 49:00.73 mikebledsoe That this this is hilarious actually like I never I I rarely ever do this, but it's like I end up on um, http://politifact.com to fact checker right? which is bullshit. Yeah, um. 49:10.18 Max Shank I Want that job that seems easy I Just get to say right. 49:17.63 mikebledsoe So. What's what's funny is like um, there's this explanation of how it was ah it was discredited in the none the none time ah like the the way it starts arguing that it was discredited is because um Facebook said it was debunked. And and fake like and then um, yeah, like their their primary sources and opinion from Facebook um, but ah, you know I don't know there. There is some more references and people. 49:39.34 Max Shank So that's their source is that Facebook said it wasn't real. 49:56.95 mikebledsoe Think that the comment's ridiculous. But of course if you don't know that you're a slave then of course that's going to sound ridiculous. 50:02.52 Max Shank Right? The most effective chains are the ones that you don't notice and you can be a slave to different thing I think addiction is kind of like slavery in a lot of cases. Um you become a slave to that behavior or substance or or person. 50:06.23 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, yeah. 50:21.28 Max Shank Right? Like a code-dependent relationship like you're just totally totally a slave but you can't get out because you don't know. Ah what that would even look like. 50:29.83 mikebledsoe Yeah, well that that quote makes me think about I remember reading um I took ah by the way I took african american english literature in college. There were 2 white people in the class at the beginning at the beginning of the semester. 50:42.79 Max Shank Seems like a woke flex. 50:49.11 mikebledsoe And then I was the only white person left at the end of the semester. Ah so to the beginning one was left ah I was really curious I was really yeah I was really really curious. Ah I enjoyed the class I thought it was fun. 50:57.52 Max Shank Talk about being a minority. 51:08.16 mikebledsoe I like english lit no matter what like any type of literature. Um I just love it. Ah, but None of the things that I realized in that class because we were reading you know well african american english lit and is that a lot of slaves when they were freed really didn't know what the fuck to do. And the same thing would happen now as if the government took off. You know people are like well what would we do? if there wasn't if nobody was taking care of this this this and this what would we do like we need to have that and and basically what I got from what I had read back then the the general theme that I saw was that. 51:36.60 Max Shank Totally. 51:46.97 mikebledsoe A lot of slaves didn't really want to be freed because they didn't know what to do with the freedom like there was a certain level of comfort and safety and knowing that I do this thing I go to work and I work work I work. However, many hours in the field. And there's going to be a meal for me and there's gonna be a roof over my head and yeah, like some things really Suck. You know if you step out of Line. You might get whipped or whatever it is but what was more scary was the uncertainty of freedom. 52:11.75 Max Shank Right. 52:19.65 Max Shank Um, I think that that's the only thing people fear is unknown. Um, like if you knew for sure that you were going to die on a certain day you wouldn't even fear it you had just accept it as reality. So it's the uncertainty. 52:21.63 mikebledsoe Ends. Mostly. 52:36.99 Max Shank That's why people are more afraid of a shark in the water than a bear on the land because you can't see it right? um. 52:39.75 mikebledsoe I agree I've had the experience of both. Well I had the experience with the shark is like when I surf and I'm on top of the water. There's a I'm a little more like oh my God if something popped up I'd freak out but I've been diving with sharks and I was incredibly calm because I could see them and I was present with them and. 52:46.43 Max Shank Um, yeah for right. In the epic of Gilgamesh. That's the scariest part is he's in a tunnel where you can't see a foot ahead or a foot behind and I think that's the oldest epic novel written down was ah was the epic of Gilgamesh but that was you know he's fighting all these like gods and monsters and shit. 52:58.86 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah, encounter with bear recently and that wasn't so bad. 53:09.97 mikebledsoe Um. 53:18.72 Max Shank Not afraid. It's just when he's in the pitch black tunnel. He can't see what's ahead or what's behind and that's what the fear is really about I Think if you take what you're talking about um as ah as a leader something of a leader myself and often in the past very a very bad leader. 53:24.70 mikebledsoe In 1 53:38.71 Max Shank Ah, a lot of people are are craving direction. They're craving direction they want so they want a director just tell me what to do. 53:44.61 mikebledsoe Yeah, Ashley and I had this conversation yesterday we were talking about marketing. We were talking about marketing I was like like really we we were. We were driving down the road and analyzing billboards and I was and and um because it's a fun exercise for me, but ah. 53:55.72 Max Shank Ah, ah, ah, sounds really fun. 54:04.53 mikebledsoe Yeah, and ah I was like oh they could have said it way better and people would have taken the action they want them to if they would have said it like this and it was simply changing the language ah to tell people exactly what to do instead of telling people what I do like. 54:16.47 Max Shank Right. 54:21.77 mikebledsoe If I want you to work with me I don't tell you what I do I Tell you what you do with me and so. 54:22.94 Max Shank Well and even more you're gonna say here's what you're gonna do here's what it's gonna look like here's how it's gonna feel this is exactly because what you're doing I think of it like. 54:32.24 mikebledsoe Um, yeah, um. 54:40.82 Max Shank You're taking someone from one shore across a river to another one and that other shore across the river is basically like the the pot of gold at the rainbow. It's everything they want and everything you have and what you're doing is you are creating and manifesting. An image that helps them believe and see how they are going to cross that potentially very turbulent river so it's bringing certainty through imagination and having a direct action that is really clear to take. Like call this number now for your free blank is ah is a way better call to action than what I like to do is blah blah blah blah blah it's like whoa. No people do crave that direction I can absolutely understand. Why being ah freed after a life of servitude would be bad. It would be like ah Batman Batman telling Alfred to fuck off basically right and he's like whoa. No I've been I've been serving the batmans. The Bruce Waynes and all that stuff for years I think a similar example is ah. 55:40.95 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 55:50.40 mikebledsoe Well I want to I want to leave I go around. 55:52.85 Max Shank Ah, stay a stay at home mom a stay at home. This is my last example on this thing because like a stay at home mom you're 20 years as part of a functioning family unit and now suddenly you're like I think I'm going to reenter the workforce and that was a lifetime ago so that that uncertainty is. 56:05.98 mikebledsoe Yeah, my mom did that sheet I think she didn't work for 1819 years and then went back in and I think it was a little overwhelming for her at the beginning. But yeah, the yeah yeah. 56:11.51 Max Shank Very pf. 56:17.63 Max Shank What do I What do I Do tell someone tell me what to do and we're trained that way. You know we're crate trained in school obedience school I mean to do what other people tell us to do So it's no surprise that most people fall in line. 56:35.83 mikebledsoe Yeah, and I I bring all this up because um, you know some people are going to hate me for saying it. But like people we weren't joking at the beginning of the show. We were kind of joking we were weren't joking that we're fractional slaves in that if you don't. 56:36.34 Max Shank With that ideology. 56:52.70 Max Shank Yeah. 56:54.82 mikebledsoe If We don't if we don't voluntarily participate with paying taxes and doing some other things and we're going to get beat down with a stick and stuck in a cage. Ah so like so like I think a lot of times. It's hard. For people to hear a statement from a white guy about ah such things. Yeah. 57:17.77 Max Shank Only for racists only for racists if you discount the opinion of a person based on the lack or presence of melanin their skin. You're fucking racist just because someone's black doesn't mean we should think what they have to say matters and just because a guy is white. Doesn't mean that what he says doesn't matter the whole the whole idea of anti-racism is just racism by a different name that that is like a huge ah that's a type of ideological enslavement is thinking that that. Bullshit matters and those are burdens those are chains that you got to wear and like I was saying at the very beginning the news cycle is making you care about so many things that are outside your control and you're just going to get a greater and greater separation. Between your locus of control which is literally just you and then your radius of awareness of what is going on and they're like hey this important thing is happening a million miles away hey this important thing is happening to this ah gay something black. Whatever guy. And I'm not trying to like demean anybody it's just like those things don't matter. That's a person who should have rights just like another person. The idea that they should be different like adjusted up or adjusted down based on None of their features. That's fucking retarded basically like I don't know ben. 58:47.78 mikebledsoe Ah I agree I agree because and because at the end of the day is you? You are one of the few that actually believe in equal rights and anyone who who you know that's that's how I've I've started making a lot of my conversations lately when someone makes. A statement about something that's political I go Oh well, do you believe in equal rights and then I go tell me about like you know do do you have like a definition for equal rights and they never do and then I provide them with a definition and then. 59:16.80 Max Shank And. 59:24.50 mikebledsoe And then usually we can't get very far after that because the definition of equal rights is is so difficult for them to even have a conversation about that because it because it challenges all the ideas it it challenges their ideology because before. They heard equal rights and they that they don't know what equal rights means and then they build a whole ideology that assumes that it's based on equal rights. But then when you go and visit that that um that that thing at the core that everyone thinks they agree on and then you say well let's define it. And now we're we're taking the foundation of what they believe to be the foundation of their ideology and we just fucking take it out from underneath them. It. It gets a little shaky. 01:00:11.20 Max Shank Well, it's it's like is the game Fair I mean I used to do that and I thought it was pretty smart. It I thought it was like fun and kind of sporting to like ah slowly ah help people realize that everything they believe is fucking stupid and doesn't have any basis in reality. But it's not even fun anymore because it's so Common. It's not even difficult. But um, basically it does come I mean who who decides who decides? That's all who decides all of the other stuff So That's why I say it's It's not about so people conflate. 01:00:37.63 mikebledsoe It's so easy to be. You know these days. All you got to believe in equal rights and be weirdo. 01:00:49.91 Max Shank Or as you say there's a collapse distinction between equal opportunity and equal outcome and that's the big mistake because if you're looking to create an equal outcome then by definition the game can't be fair because you're going to be adjusting the rules based on the players. 01:01:05.40 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, you can't have equal. You can't you can't have equal opportunity and equal outcome. They can't exist at the same time. 01:01:08.77 Max Shank And that it takes us right back to who decides who if I'm a fucking referee in a boxing match and anytime one of the guys gets punched I stop the fight to give him a little rest. That's not a fair game. But I can make the outcome equal right? So basically comes back to who decides Well now the referee gets to decide the fight who would fucking watch that game. It's It's ridiculous and I I think what helps a lot is just to imagine a smaller. 01:01:28.60 mikebledsoe Um, yeah. 01:01:47.25 Max Shank Group of people you know who is the None doing the stealing who is the None being stolen from who's the None profiting from that stealing you know you can easily sort these things out but trying to change someone's mind I think that's mostly an energetic loss unless you're really going to. Dedicate yourself to it. The best thing you can do is to free yourself from this idea that talking about that shit even matters I mean Mike and myself were hoping to illuminate this topic so you and us can all be unburdened. So that we can go do. What's really valuable and value as individual. Ah you know, bottled water at Coachella extremely valuable bottled water at Lake Tahoe Not very valuable. But if you focus on value. And values within yourself. That's good and you're going to get a much better return on your energy. But if you like spend time having these like arguments. It. It just takes away that that joy I mean if you find it fun like for sport. Ah you know, go nuts. But you're not going to. 01:02:55.21 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 01:03:03.18 Max Shank Make a really significant ah change in people's minds unless you're like okay I'm going to like there are people out there like Russell Brand for example he is like basically making a career out of illuminating what's going on in a pretty humorous way. So like. That's why I'm not going to try to do something like that is like he's already handling that plus is not really a good way for me to generate the most value because after freedom and love the best thing is to be generous really like. If you if you already are kind of wealthy. You already know this if you're not very wealthy yet you might understand this but I guarantee for those of you who are like on your way up to being like really wealthy. You're going to buy yourself a bunch of fucking toys. This is what happened to me at least. You're going to go god damn that is not nearly as fun as taking my friends out to lunch and you'll realize that the the generosity is what fuels you to do more things. So love freedom and then sharing that generosity is where it's at. But. If you get tripped up by all this bullshit about like genitals and colors and sexual orientation like is fucking. Tiresome freedom is about who decides and if it's you it's freedom if it's not then it's some slavery and it can be fractional. And I'm not I don't it's not that I don't appreciate what I have I am super appreciative what I have I am grateful every day and like let's not kid ourselves. There are a lot of things that happen that are just fucking stupid and it's okay to to recognize that. 01:04:51.17 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah I think at the core that is just um or what for me is ah, not having any expectation around say changing somebody's mind. It's like I'll engage in the conversation. But I'm not. 01:05:05.95 Max Shank Ooh Yeah, now you're talking. 01:05:08.97 mikebledsoe If I have the expectation there there should They should be thinking like me by the end I'm going to suffer. It's gonna I'm gonna be miserable. It's not going to be fun and the only way I can have fun in these types of conversations is to realize that I'm not going to change their mind and that's okay. 01:05:13

Where does it say that we're free at all? Inflation making us suffer because we're not wealthy or well to do? Weather already ruined some holiday because of a dam hear advisory in place! YouTube don't like freedom of speech at all on their platform I support the first and second amendments but try to ruin a country by taking away freedom is wrong! A evil robber took my wrestler crush purse on a airplane and try to use her card to buy a TV at Walmart!! How evil is that??? Here's a go fund me page that Natalia Markov set up to thank her hero Bryan Idol for stoping the robbery. https://www.gofundme.com/f/surprise-for-a-hero?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bigdcountry/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bigdcountry/support

This week's story involves a 19-year-old woman named Brittany McGlone. She grew up in Winnsboro Texas. After she graduated from high school, she decided to take some time off and work before attending nursing school at Baylor University. Her goal was to become a nurse like her mother Patricia Tice. Unfortunately, May 4, 2007 would be the worst day of Patricia's life. She had a tight relationship with her beloved daughter Brittany who was working two jobs when she was murdered. During high school, she played trumpet in her high school's marching band, and graduated with honors. She said Brittany was the perfect daughter. She didn't drink, do drugs, have any legal issues or cause her any trouble. Patricia's life was destroyed when she learned that her daughter was brutally murdered. Brittany had begun dating Jeff Stogner, the son of a coworker at a local business that was similar to a mini-Walmart. After getting off work, Brittany left work and stayed overnight with her boyfriend. The morning of May 4, 2007 began with Brittany's boyfriend Jeff and his stepfather traveling to Dallas to pick up a relative and take her to the airport. Since Brittany had just gotten off work hours earlier, Jeff let Brittany sleep in. Hours later, Jeff returned home to a horrific scene. He found his girlfriend Brittany's nude dead body. Someone had entered the home, sexually assaulted and then murdered Brittany. Law enforcement believed Brittany was killed sometime between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. According to her mother Patricia, the killer left with the murder weapon and Brittany's clothing. During the investigation, law enforcement learned that Jeff's sister dated a man named Chad Carr who had previously been convicted of various crimes which included burglary of a building, sexual assault and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He is considered a person of interest in Brittany's death. Patricia Tice has said she never thought her daughter's case would go this long without being solved. The only positive note in this case is that Wood County Sheriff Kelly Cole has taken a serious interest in solving the case. According to Brittany's family, several other sheriff's have come and gone. She said previous ones wouldn't return calls or express much interest in the case. Sheriff Cole has said it's possible that two people may be involved in this horrific crime. He isn't ruling anyone out so everyone remains a suspect. Patricia Tice has said that Sheriff Cole has been the only Law enforcement officer the family has trusted. Today, her killer remains free. Someone out there knows who killed this young lady. Could it be you? Do you know who killed her? If you do, please help this family get justice and contact the Wood County Sheriff's department at (903) 763 - 2201 or you can leave your tip with Crime Stoppers at (903) 850 - 9060. And if you would like to know more about Brittany's story, there are two Facebook pages created by the family. They are Brittany Danielle McGlone (1987-2007) and Who killed Brittany McGlone.Note*** Opening audio provided by KETK.com Please also visit my website for more information about my true crime and paranormal newspaper columns at www.themarcabe.com. You can also help support my podcast by purchasing a cup of $5 coffee every month. To help support the podcast, please visit https://www.buymeacoffee.com/catchmykiller. If you would like to contact me about this podcast, please visit my websites www.catchmykiller.com or www.themarcabe.com where you can submit a case.

In this episode we discuss pillows, scrotums, and being a mayor. Advertise on If I Were You via Gumball.fm. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode features Danielle Lombard-Sims, Vice Chancellor & Chief Human Resources Officer at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). Here, she discusses how UAMS is recruiting & retaining staff through programs & partnerships, how they are working with Wal-Mart on the academic side of medicine, and more.

What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen.Listen to every full episode for $10 a month. The key ideas you'll learn pays for the subscription cost thousands of times over.WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE SAYING:“Founders is the only podcast I pay for and it's worth 100x the cost.”“I've now listened to every episode. From this knowledge I've doubled my business to $500k a year. Love your passion and recommend your podcast to everyone.”“Without a doubt, the highest value-to-cost ratio I've taken advantage of in the last year is the Founders podcast premium feed. Tap into eons of knowledge and experiences, condensed into digestible portions. Highly, highly recommend. “Uniquely outstanding. No fluff and all substance. David does an outstanding job summarizing these biographies and hones in on the elements that make his subjects so unique among entrepreneurs. I particularly enjoy that he focuses on both the founder's positive and negative characteristics as a way of highlighting things to mimic and avoid.”“I just paid for my first premium podcast subscription for Founders podcast. Learning from those who came before us is one of the highest value ways to invest time. David does his homework and exponentially improves my efficiency by focusing on the most valuable lessons.”“I haven't found a better return on my time and money than your podcast for inspiration and time-tested wisdom to help me on my journey."I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”"I can't get enough of your podcast. You add a new layer to the books I've already read and make connections to ones I haven't, but now must read."“I have listened to many podcasts on entrepreneurship (HIBT, Masters of Scale, etc.) and find Founders to be consistently more helpful than any other entrepreneurship podcast. David is a craftsperson, he carefully reads biographies of founders, distills the most important anecdotes and themes from their life, and draws commonalities across lives. David's focus is rightfully not on teaching you a formula to succeed but on constantly pushing you to think different.”“I highly highly recommend this podcast. Holy cow. I've been binge listening to these and you start to see patterns across all these incredible humans.”Listening to your podcast has changed my life and that is not a statement I make often.“After one episode I quickly joined the Misfit feed. Love the insight and thoughts shared along the way. David loves what he does and it shines through on the podcast. Definitely my go-to podcast now.”“It is worth every penny. I cannot put into words how fantastic this podcast is. Just stop reading this and get the full access.”“Personally it's one of my top 3 favorite podcasts. If you're into business and startups and technology, this is for you. David covers good books and I've come to really appreciate his perspective. Can't say enough good things.”“I quickly subscribed and it's honestly been the best money I've spent all year. It has inspired me to read biographies. Highly recommend.”“This is the most inspirational and best business podcast out there. David has inspired me to focus on biographies rather than general business books. I'm addicted.”“Anyone interested in business must find the time to listen to each any every Founders podcast. A high return on investment will be a virtual certainty. Subscribe and start listening as soon as possible.”“David saves you hundreds of hours by summarizing bios of legendary business founders and providing valuable insight on what makes an individual successful. He has introduced me to many founders I would have never known existed.”“The podcasts offer spectacular lessons on life, human nature and business achievement. David's enthusiasm and personal thoughts bring me joy. My journey has been enhanced by his efforts.”"Founders is the best self investment that I've made in years."UPGRADE to listen to the rest of this episode and gain access to 263 full length episodes.You will learn the key insights from biographies on Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, John D. Rockefeller, Coco Chanel, Andrew Carnegie, Enzo Ferrari, Estee Lauder, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Phil Knight, Joseph Pulitzer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, P.T. 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Hour 1 * Guest: Bryan Rust – Over the past 50 years, Rust Coins has been working to educate customers about precious metals – RustCoinAndGift.com * Guest: Kelly Finnegan, Senior Chemist Joins us on air. * Honest Money Report: Gold: $1824.50 Silver: $20.71. * Norm Franz: “Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants – but debt is the money of slaves.”! * Inflation Forces Central Bankers to Ponder a Global New Normal – NYT. * Bitcoin in a dumpster fire: Massive liquidations, Nasdaq correlation. * Bed Bath & Beyond – one of the first companies to stop selling Mike Lindell's MyPillow products because he challenged the result of the 2020 presidential election – now is curbing the air conditioning in its stores to compensate for slumping sales, according to a report from Bank of America – Art Moore, WND.com * The nationwide retailer's decision in January 2021 to quit selling Lindell's products was met with a boycott. * Earlier this month, Walmart discontinued Lindell's MyPillow product at its stores. * When you go Woke, you go Broke! * Podcaster Joe Rogan revealed he would support Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the 2024 presidential election because of the governor's stance on personal liberties. Hour 2 * Guest: Tom Jones, @QuitProof1 – The Run for Freedom is on! Why he's running 76 marathons in 76 days! – UnitedWePledge.org * Guest: Ryan Murtha, Film Maker with Tom Jones. * WIRM: Witness + Interdict + Redirect + Maintain! * It's a Team Thing! GoodNewsNetwork.org * He Planted a Giant Sequoia in the UK to Offset His Carbon Footprint for Life – And 700 More to Make a Forest! * Smell of Desert Rain May Be Good for Health. * Eating Oily Fish Like Salmon May Cut Risk of Developing Alzheimer's by Nearly 50%. * Dedicated Volunteer Works in Charity Shop Despite 4-Hour Commute – And He's 100 Years Old! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/loving-liberty/support

Maller and his 5th Hour homie Danny G. have a fun Saturday broadcast for you on this holiday weekend, talking the Shell Game, Wal-Mart or Target, contraband, back scratcher, Scientifical and more!  ...Subscribe, rate & review "The Fifth Hour!"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fifth-hour-with-ben-maller/id1478163837 Engage with the podcast by emailing us at RealFifthHour@gmail.com... Follow Ben on Twitter @BenMaller and on Instagram @BenMallerOnFOX ... Danny is on Twitter @DannyGRadio and on Instagram @DannyGRadio ...  #BenMaller See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Maller and his 5th Hour homie Danny G. have a fun Saturday broadcast for you on this holiday weekend, talking the Shell Game, Wal-Mart or Target, contraband, back scratcher, Scientifical and more!  ...Subscribe, rate & review "The Fifth Hour!"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fifth-hour-with-ben-maller/id1478163837 Engage with the podcast by emailing us at RealFifthHour@gmail.com... Follow Ben on Twitter @BenMaller and on Instagram @BenMallerOnFOX ... Danny is on Twitter @DannyGRadio and on Instagram @DannyGRadio ...  #BenMaller See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we are featuring The Divisional's- Gled, Angelo, & Terrence for an exciting episode to kick off the month of July. Listen in to what exciting campaigns are coming up and running as we approach a very important month to celebrate Walmart's 60th Anniversary.

Saving 79% on PrescriptionsMicrosoft Outlook Attack in Progress! Does Your Business Use eMail? FBI Warning About one-third of Americans are taking a prescription drug -- And this is kind of the scary part. The average person who is on a prescription has four prescriptions and we're paying dearly for it. But mark Cuban has an answer. [Following is an automated transcript] Well, you know, I do a lot of stuff in cybersecurity and I've got a few different courses coming up. [00:00:22] And of course, we do a little bit of weekly training for anybody who's on my email list, you know, on the free list. Absolutely free as well as you get my insider show notes. And if you got my show notes, you probably noticed this. Tidbit here on Tuesday when I sent it out. And that is mark Cuban. Now for those who don't know mark Cuban, he started way back in the internet. [00:00:48] Boom days he lucked out. He had a, a company called broadcast.com. and he was able to turn that into, I think it was well over a billion dollars. I don't remember the exact amount, but it, it was a very, very big chunk of money. And then he's gone on to become an investor. You might know him as the owner of a basketball team. [00:01:10] You might have seen him on a TV show called shark tank. He's been out there and he's a bright guy. He's been helping a lot of people and causing a lot of problems too. Right. But he has a new business that he has started with his billions of dollars only. He has at least 1 billion and it's called. Cost plus drugs. [00:01:35] Now this is where it comes into affect every American, because I mentioned, you know, how many Americans are on various prescriptions? Well, many of the prescriptions that we could be taking are actually generics. So for instance, if you go to the Walmart pharmacy or Walgreens or wherever it. Be you'll find that they have options for you. [00:02:00] If the doctor says, yeah, generic's okay. They'll say, Hey, listen, I'll give you the generic and you can save a whole lot of money. I don't know if you've looked at good RX at all. But good RX. I have saved a ton of money with that. And what they do is help you find free coupons. Compare the prices at, at Walmart Walgreen, CVS Rite aid, you know, at the major pharmacies. [00:02:24] And we'll tell you where you can go to get your best deal. Plus. They also have some really cool discounts. So it, it acts kind of like a discount card. So I'm on their site right now. Good rx.com. And I look, I'm looking up their number one drug, which is Lipitor, apparently it's used for coronary art or coronary disease and high cholesterol. [00:02:51] So they're saying, well, wait a minute. Now here. You can get a few different, uh, options. I'm looking now, for instance, CVS pharmacy nor normal retail, by the way is $126 at CVS. You can get it using a good rx.com card. 76% off for $30 instead of $126. Walmart, $15. Uh, Walmart neighborhood market, $15 now, Walmart, that's what they consider to be their retail price. [00:03:27] Although, as I mentioned, some of these other ones have much, much higher retail prices. So you can see that going. For instance, for Lipitor, you might be. Paying a premium for a brand name. Now there, there's a good reason for that. There's a reason why prescription drugs can be expensive and, and they're called patent drugs. [00:03:48] And the reason they're call patent drugs is they've put a lot of money in. They've put a lot of research time. They've, they've put up with a whole lot of regulation and going back and forth with various government agencies. And they finally were able to come forward with a drug that works. Put all of that together. [00:04:09] And you've got a very expensive research and development product, right. Or project, frankly. So I don't, I don't really hold it against them. If we're having some of these drugs being rather expensive. You might remember that, uh, epi epinephrine a few years ago, this guy got a hold of the company that made epinephrine and the, um, You know, the, the whole problem with I'm looking it up right now, like EpiPens, they used to be expensive and then they became crazy expensive. [00:04:44] So let me see here, EpiPens, EpiPens, and who needs it? There's a whole lot of information. It's not telling how much they are, but he raised the price. Like what was it? 2000% or something insane, again, a prescription drug and one that some people really need in order to save their lives. You know, I'm a beekeeper, right. [00:05:08] And I used to have a really bad reaction to be stings, wasp stings. Now we just. Reaction, right. We thought at the time I was allergic, but no, it was just a bad reaction, which I still have. Right. It gets stung multiple times a year, but, uh, it still swells up. When, when, uh, our friend mark Cuban started looking at this, he said that this is kind of crazy. [00:05:31] So what he's done now is mark Cuban has built, uh, I think it's all up and running just outside of Dallas. Let's see here. Yeah. Okay. Just outside of Dallas, a huge, huge building. It's a 22,000 square foot plant. Now most of the pharmaceuticals are actually easy to make and. To make. And that's what kind of gets confusing because you've got all of the R and D and the government regulations, everything else that's expensive, but actually making them is pretty cheap, but he's built this $11 million plant near downtown Dallas. [00:06:14] And he says right now, looking at what the expenses are that Medicare could have saved as much as are you ready for this? 3.6 billion per year. Now that's where we're talking about everybody. Because if you pay taxes, you are paying for some of this Medicare money, 3.6 billion per year in savings. By buying it from cost plus drugs. [00:06:46] So there's something else I want you to check out. So the first one was good. rx.com. The second one is cost plus drugs. They have over a hundred generic prescription medications right now. And what they're doing is they're taking the actual cost of production. And I'm sure that includes right. The loan on the building, et cetera, but the cost of production, plus a 15% margin because you need to keep the lights on. [00:07:13] You need to be able to expand. Profit is not a bad word. That's how people save for retirement by investing in companies, buying stocks, and that profit then becomes their money for retirement. I think that's an important thing. So. 15% margin and an $8 pharmacy dispensing and shipping fee. That is absolutely cheap. [00:07:41] So this is, uh, Husain Liani who did the research on this? And he published it in the annals of internal medicine. Looking at that just absolutely amazing. And that's something you can do too. One third of Americans, again, we are on prescription drugs and the average person is on four. Wow. So researchers compared the price charge by cost plus drugs for 89, generic medications to the cost for the same drugs paid. [00:08:17] Medicare in 2020, they found the government program could have saved 37% on 77 generic drugs by buying from Cuban's company cost plus drugs. Once in January drug to consumer bypasses, wholesalers bypasses, pharmacies bypasses, I PA passes insurance. All of those are driving up the cost of medicine. So direct to consumer. [00:08:43] Uh, how easy could that be? And I'm on their website right now, looking at a couple of things here. Let me see, let me go back there. Cost plus drugs, and I'm believing this go to cost plus drugs.com. Yes you can. I am there as we are talking. So he's got, oh, here's one tib. Uh, which is the generic for gleek I'm. [00:09:08] Now I'm not familiar with that myself retail price, $2,502. cost. Plus, are you ready? $14. Can you believe that that is crazy. Yeah. Wow. And it'll look, it'll look different obviously, cuz it's a generic. So you saved $2,488 for a 30 count supply. That is just amazing. So when I, I, I was talking about the savings here, where. [00:09:41] Okay. They could have saved 37% on 77 generic drugs. But when you start getting into these really expensive drugs, that's where the 3.6 billion really, really starts to add up in savings. This is something so what you can do once you're on cost plus drugs.com, you can contact your doctor for a prescription. [00:10:04] They've gotta get started button. They have the strength that you want in this case, a hundred milligrams or 400, the quantity you want. And then all that has to happen is your doctor has to approve it. You pay $14 instead of $2,500 and it gets shipped straight to you. Wow. Now, is that cheaper than Medicare part B right? [00:10:28] Or your regular insurance? Wow, sure. Is just absolutely amazing. So you can find all of this stuff. This is mark Cuban doing this, and I gotta say, I am impressed. He is going to help a whole lot of people. Yeah, I'm, I'm just looking at this. Wow. Here's another one retail price. $9,600. And at cost plus drugs, you can get it for 39. [00:10:57] So there you go. Two options, mark Cuban's new venture, which is online now at costplusdrugs.com and goodrx.com. Wow. It's just amazing, right? This world. What's it coming to? Great little great little drug company. So we're gonna talk if you are a user of outlook, this is important to you because a major attack is underway. [00:11:26] Major scam underway. If you are an outlook customer, you are in the crosshairs of a very successful credential stealing campaign. So I'm gonna tell you about that, what it means, what you can do and, uh, how you can stay safe. [00:11:43] This is a very big problem for people who are using Microsoft 365, that is really common, used to be called office 365 and you pay a, a flat monthly fee, 20, 25 bucks. [00:11:59] It kind of depends on what level you get. They have some real cheap ones as well, and it lets you use all of what Microsoft used to call Microsoft office applications. And one of those applications is outlook. And I've never particularly liked. they have gotten better in recent years. And I actually do use it right now, as well as MacMail I use both of them, but there is a hack going on against Microsoft 365 and outlook customers in the us. [00:12:34] Here's what's happening. They are sending you an email and the email really does look like it's ti voicemail that somebody left. This is called a voicemail fishing attack and it follows, what's kind of a classic fishing flow. If you will, the ways they've been doing fishing here over the years, and what fishing is, is basically. [00:13:02] Getting you to bite at something that you shouldn't bite on. You, you will respond to an email. You'll click on a link. You might call a phone number. You might click on a text message. That's another one that's going around right now. How do you tell a fake text message from a real text message? And I'm afraid to say nowadays you tell by just not clicking on the links that are in text messages. [00:13:30] It's, it's so disappointing. I was talking on the radio this week. It, it, it, because it just, it bothers me so much about this very thing. I've been on the internet for decades now. Right? I, I started back in 81. I think it was maybe 80. Two and we had email and it was the best thing ever. If you had somebody's email address, you could send them a note and you'd be pretty darn sure they'd get it. [00:13:58] In fact, they probably would get it within just a few minutes and respond to you. And there, there wasn't any spam. Back then the idea was, Hey, listen, the internet is for research government research, university research, and that's the way it should stay. And indeed, we were kind of keeping it that way for, for quite a while. [00:14:21] And then some people who were marketers got on the internet. And they would start to advertise, Hey, we have a special session for you at, uh, UC Berkeley this week only $500. And of course that went be beyond what the internet was for. In fact, at the time you could not use it legally. For any sort of financial purposes. [00:14:47] So what we would do back then is we would send the script to the Monty Python routine of spam. Remember that spam, spam, and egg spam, and hands spam, spam. Uh, yeah, we would send them the whole. And they, sometimes, if somebody sent out a little thing that was trying to sell something that they should not be selling online because it was illegal to use the internet for business in case you didn't know until about 1991. [00:15:20] And that's when I started. Putting businesses online and really started focusing in on cyber security because almost immediately the bad guys started getting on there. So this is, uh, this is really what happened. This was the script, right? Uh, well, what have you got waitress? Well, there's egg and bacon, egg, sausage, and bacon, egg, and spam, egg, bacon, and spam, egg, bacon, spam, sausage, and spam spam, bacon sausages, and spam spam eggs, spam spam, bacon spam. [00:15:51] Do you remember that? So. We would send this to people who kind of broke the rules written or unwritten on the internet. And sometimes somebody would get just a hundred of these things, maybe even more. And what would happen back then of course, is it would fill up your mailbox and it would slow down your check connection. [00:16:10] Cuz a lot of us were just connected to the internet via dial up modems. So it, it really kind of hurt you to get all kinds of spam. Emails coming in. That's where the term comes from. I remember it well, so I don't care what they say on some of these websites or they're trying to do little research on it and figure it out. [00:16:31] Well, now things have gotten a lot worse because it isn't just marketers that are trying to solve something. And I don't have a problem with marketers, I guess, in a way I am one myself. Right. I, I have a business and I provide cybersecurity services. For a high net worth individuals and for businesses. [00:16:50] And if you are a regular person, you have a question. Please ask, just send an email to me, me Craig peterson.com, no matter who you are. And I will try and answer the question for you. And I have a lot of stuff that I've written over the years. That'd be more than glad to forward to you. There are some training courses that I. [00:17:10] Put together that I will be more than glad to share with you. And you probably know I did all of the training for the FBI's Ingar program for a couple of years. I, I ran that online, all of their webinars. So I've been doing this for a long time and I'm more than glad to help. That's why I am here. Right. [00:17:31] But now we got bad guys. and the bad guys are trying to get you to do something against your best interest. So in this case, what happens is you get a missed voicemail notification via email, and a lot of times it'll look pretty legitimate. It might even be coming from someone inside your company, whose account they have hacked. [00:17:57] Now on that email, there is an HTML attachment. Now HTML attachments can get past a lot of email gateway filters because they aren't in and of themselves malicious. So they're not raising big red flags for users in a, in a voicemail notification setting because that's how office Microsoft office sends you legitimate notifications. [00:18:24] Anyways. Now, these from fields are set up specifically using the organization's name. As I said, sometimes even a valid email address. Now, if you go ahead and click on that attachment, it will run a program on your computer using a language called JavaScript and that's embedded in every browser out there nowadays. [00:18:47] And that JavaScript code is going to redirect you to an attack. Controlled website. Now this website set up to get you to give up your credentials. So, what they'll do now is as you go to the website and the website might look like it's Microsoft office and it might look like it's your business website, and it'll ask you to log in. [00:19:15] It might ask you for other information as well. It is trying to get your username and password that it can then use to go after other people. You see what's happening here. So each of the URLs, these guys are creating these websites that they're sending you to are created to match the targeted company. [00:19:39] It's it's incredible how good they're getting, and they even have one of those Google recapture. Pop ups. Now this is a, an increasingly popular technique to evade these auto mail, automated URL analysis tools. So for instance, with my client, an email comes in, it goes through Cisco's. Email filter. We have an advanced email filter from Cisco, but we run our client's emails through. [00:20:10] And what happens is they look at the URLs, they visit the website that the URL PO points to, they try and verify if it's legit or not. And you you've had captures, you know, it's, um, click every box that has a bicycle in it, sort of a thing. It's kind of a touring test, test puzzle. So once this is solved, We'll tell you what happens next, cuz we're out of time right now. [00:20:36] Uh, make sure you visit me online. Craig Peter son.com. I'll keep you up to date. You can get my free newsletter and trainings. Craig Peter son.com. And I want to talk too about businesses in the, the big business of email compromise. [00:20:55] Yeah, I think most of us know what a big business is. Well, how about a business, an industry that has racked in 43 billion, according to the FBI. That's what we're talking about right now and what you can do about it. [00:21:11] We were talking about, what's been happening with Microsoft outlook users right now, a major campaign underway that has been extremely successful because these bad guys are using some rather advanced technologies. Absolutely crazy. So they get you to click. HTML link that is there while filed that is there as part of what looks to be a voicemail notification for you. [00:21:43] And then it takes you to a website that's specially crafted for you and your company. So you work@bigco.com and you click on that HTML and it'll take you to big co.com. Well, at least that's what it looks like, but it distracts you now because it wants to give you this capture as well. So this Google captures, you know, these things, these little mini touring tests, click on all of the trees in the picture, sort of a thing, right? [00:22:18] And you've got the nine things well with, uh, or maybe it's some blurred or distorted text and you have to type that in. And the whole idea behind that is normally to weed out these bots on eCommerce sites, online account sites. But what they're doing here is. They're making sure that the email, the, the software that checks the emails to make sure they are legitimate, that is going out to the big co dot or big co fake.com website. [00:22:54] They wanna make sure that that email checker does not find out that it's not the real site that you wanted to go. So the computer that's doing the checking will go to the site and it'll say, oh, there's a capture on there. And then it'll stop because it can't solve the capture. It needs you, it needs a human, right. [00:23:15] So this is kind of cool here. Uh, Eric. K. He's a security awareness advocate with no before. No. Before is a company that does training for people, for employees here about some of these, uh, these hacks and things are going on. When faced with a login prompt, it looks like a typical. Office 365 login. The person is likely to feel comfortable entering their information without looking at the browser's URL bar to ensure they are at the real login site, this familiarity and the high odds in an attended victim regularly uses office 365 for something in the Workday makes this a great Lu. [00:24:02] For attackers, this is from an article over on dark reading.com. This isn't, uh, a new technique, but let me tell you, it is B a very successful one. They have seen a resurgent, uh, resurgence of this starting a couple of years ago, back in July, 2020. And it is really targeting human nature. And of course, Microsoft 365 is quite the target. [00:24:29] So I mentioned. $43 billion industry. I'm looking right now at a public service announcement from the F FBI and they are calling business email compromise the $43 billion. Scam. This is crazy. A sophisticated scam. It targets businesses and individuals who are performing legitimate transfer funds requests. [00:25:00] It's carried out by people who are compromising legitimate businesses and individuals. Now, what they're trying to do with this business email compromise is get someone who has. Control of funds to do a transfer. What happens is they will do a little research on the business that might go to the website and see on the website. [00:25:25] Oh, let me see here. Okay. The president's name is Craig Peterson. Uh, the CFO is Mary Jane and, uh, the accounting department head is manly. And, uh, so now they got that information. So they'll go online. And to look at LinkedIn, find out who all else is at the business. Maybe things have changed, you know, maybe try and find an email address by doing an open source search for the email address of people there at the business. [00:25:57] You see where this is going here? Yeah, it, it gets pretty bad. So, uh, let's say they befriend the CEO on Facebook or on LinkedIn, but Facebook more likely, uh, and now. They're they can see on Facebook or maybe they don't even have to because your Facebook profile and posts are not hidden from the public. [00:26:20] So they just go there and, oh, let me see. Okay, great. He's gonna be out of town next week. And then what they'll do is they'll get into somebody's email account at the business. And once they're into somebody's email account, they can start looking through the emails and sending emails that look perfectly legitimate to other people within the organization. [00:26:43] Now, I, I did a whole story on television about this one on news program, and one of the people on staff, one of the talking. received an email like this, and it asked him to, uh, to buy some gift cards. This is very, very common scam right now, the gift card scam, and they try and get you to go ahead and. Buy gift cards for other people in the office are gonna have a little party and we don't want anybody else to know about it. [00:27:15] It's supposed to be a surprise. And I had some real fun with him. One of these days, I should probably share all of this in one of my newsletters. I think you guys would really appreciate it, enjoy it a little bit, but, uh, we really led them on and sure enough, you know, it was a total scam and we kept playing with them and it, it was something, any. [00:27:38] That was one thing. This is another because they will eventually get to the CFO, somebody who has the authority to transfer funds and get them to transfer funds to. Them. And then they use mules to move the money around these, uh, useful idiots who will sign up. And yeah. Yeah. It's kinda like the Nigerian scam. [00:28:05] All I need is access to your bank account and I'm gonna wire in, uh, $10,000. And I, and what I need you to do is transfer 8,000 of it over here to this PayPal account because my grandmother's dying and she needs the money. There's similar scams that are going after lonely people and getting them to send money because somebody needs an operation, et cetera. [00:28:33] So in this case with the business email compromise and the 43. Billion dollars that have been stolen from businesses. They'll usually get to the CFO and send a story like, Hey, uh, we have this new vendor and we've had 'em for three months and we haven't been paying them and we gotta make sure we pay them. [00:28:54] And, uh, we need to wire 43 million to this account that actually happened. And they did wire the money. It happened to Barbara cran, another person who wa is on shark tank. Uh, it, it happens to a lot of companies out there. And I've got a couple in the last month that we've worked with the FBI on the, these companies hear me on the radio. [00:29:21] They sent an email to me@craigpeterson.com and they had had their operating account. Emptied. Uh, the latest one is a, a lady 77 years old who had her retirement money stolen from her over $70,000. This stuff's real people. We've got to pay attention. We can't let this continue to happen. Make sure you sign up online. [00:29:48] Craig peterson.com so that you can get my insider show notes and we can keep you ahead of the bad guys. When we come back, we're gonna talk about this row overturned and what senators are asking the FTC. [00:30:05] We've got some senators who are saying they were spurred on by the row overturned. And they're asking the FTC to probe, apple and Android, and what's happening with tracking. Now I have a suspicion. That's not really right. [00:30:21] We've got, of course the recent overturn of Roe. You, you of course heard about that. it was pretty much impossible to miss if you pay any attention to the news. [00:30:36] Well, we've got three Democrat, us senators and a Democrat us representative that asked. The federal trade commission to investigate apple and Google for engaging in unfair and deceptive practices by enabling the collection and sale of hundreds of millions of mobile phones, users, data, the FTC should investigate apple and Google's role in transforming online advertising into an intense system of surveillance that incentivizes and facilitates the UN. [00:31:11] Train collection and constant sale of Americans' personal data. These companies have failed to inform consumers of the privacy and security dangers involved in using those products. It is beyond time to bring an end to the privacy harms, forced on consumers. Buy these companies. Now I have been talking about this on the [00:31:38] radio for 20 years. Because do you remember when Congress forced telephone manufacturers and cell phone companies to put GPS coordinates into the receivers, into the phones? Do you remember that you could no longer use your analog phone? You had to use digital phones under federal law. right. It, it's just amazing. [00:32:09] We can go into all of the reasons that they've given for that in the past, but anyhow, that's what they did. So immediately decades ago, now, many years ago, they started collecting data. Now it's okay for the government to collect it, even though it's illegal. For them to collect this data. So what's happening here? [00:32:30] Why have the Democrats for so long? Well, and frankly, a lot of Republicans been big on collecting data on all of us. Now, I I've gotta say when I've looked at the stats, the biggest. Purveyors of the surveillance society have been president Obama followed by president Biden. Now you could argue that president Bush was won too, because of course they passed an act that allowed for all kinds of changes in surveillance. [00:33:02] So, okay. So we'll put him in there too. So we got a Republican in there. Obama put that program that president Bush had put in place on steroids and then president Biden did the same thing. President Trump tried to cut it back because he was a victim of some of the surveillance that they were doing. So what's going on here? [00:33:25] Well, these Democrat senators are saying, uh, we don't want people who are trying to get abortions to be. okay. I can see that. Uh, I can also see that I don't want to be tracked and you don't want to be tracked. And it's one thing to have an advertiser know a little bit about us, you know, Hey, we just visited the Ford dealer and the Chevy dealer and the Honda dealer. [00:33:52] So maybe he's looking for a car let's let's try and advertise a car. Right. So Honda and Chevy and Ford all start putting ads up for you. Okay. So that's. Thing if I'm in, if I'm interested in buying a truck. Okay, great. Show me ads on a truck, but we've seen already misuses of this data over the years, one of the earliest ones I talked about here on the radio was this guy who went to an emergency room and all of a sudden started seeing ads for what you might call ambulance, chasing lawyers saying, have you been injured? [00:34:30] right. You've seen those types of ads before, but once he was in the emergency room and he was geolo geolocated in the emergency room, they started selling advertising to lawyers. I, I, I'm not real fond of that one either, but I think there's an ulterior motive here behind what these Democrats are saying. [00:34:52] If you have seen the movie 2000 mules, you understand what I'm talking about here? what ended up happening here is they looked at trillions of data points. You see, they went out and bought databases of smartphone data where these smartphones were located. And then they started doing some serious analysis on it and they were able to say, okay, this smartphone went to. [00:35:28] Different Dropboxes for the election for ballots. And in between each visit to the Dropbox, they went to a left wing organization where they did something. Right. So they, they go to a Dropbox drop off ballots and they're on video doing this, dropping off ballots. And then they go to a left wing organization and then they go drop off more ballots at a different Dropbox, and then they go back again and then it's on video. [00:36:02] And some of these people are taking pictures of them, stuffing the ballots into the box, supposedly, so they can get paid. So now there are some criminal investigations that have been started. I don't know how far they've gotten yet over some of this information that was gathered. And that was documented in the film by Danes. [00:36:24] Dusuza called 2000 mul. And if you haven't seen it, no matter what side of the aisle you want, you need to see it. Absolutely need to see. And whether you believe or not, when president Biden said that we have the best, uh, what was it? Um, election stealing organization that's ever been made? I can't remember his exact words right now. [00:36:49] Uh, he was serious about it, right? So now all of a sudden, the Democrats are concerned that people who visit abortion clinics might be tracked, cuz they could be. Right. You could buy data geotagged with an abortion clinic's location, GPS coordinates. You absolutely could do that, but that's been true for a long time. [00:37:15] Why now? Well, maybe because of Roe V Wade, but I look, of course it wasn't just that one decision that was overturned, but I, I look at some of this and really, really do wonder because it really looks like some number of people were caught illegally stuffing ballot box. So it's, it's fascinating to me that all of a sudden now out, they come with this. [00:37:45] Now apple has stopped enabling the tracker identifiers. By default, if you have an apple smartphone, it is much more. Private than the Android phones are by far, right? Google makes its money by selling your information. That's how they make most of their money. Apple makes its money by selling you services and selling you hardware. [00:38:13] so that should tell you something right there. And the fact that Senator Elizabeth Warren is one of the ones who is proposing this legislation makes you think even more about this. Now, Google, uh, this is an article from ours. Technical apparently responded to this whole concept in an article that ours was writing, saying that it's had all kinds of efforts to block apps and violate Google play policies. [00:38:41] And. the bands it's imposed on companies that are apparently sold user data, and they say Google never sells user data in the play at Google, strictly prohibits a sale of user data by developers and, uh, goes into the advertising ID. So it it's fascinating to me that all of a sudden, now the Democrats are interested in stopping the data collection. [00:39:08] It really is. I don't like it. As I said, I've talked about this for more than 20 years now on the radio. It, I think it's a real problem. This data collection, because also the federal government, even though it's illegal for them to collect information on American citizens, they do it every. And some of the largest, like the, um, immigration people, Homeland security are the biggest collector. [00:39:37] They have more information about you than anyone else. Even if you're here legally, you were born in the United States, et cetera, etcetera, because they are buying all of this information from what are called data broker. So, yeah, they say, yeah, we're, we're not collecting it. You we're forbidden by law to collect it, which is absolutely true. [00:39:59] But what they are doing is buying it from private businesses. So I think we've got to completely. Reconsider how this all works. Apple has been working on it. You can go into your apple phone and make a change, share identifier if you want to, which makes it harder to track apple also. And Google has this, as I believe is an option. [00:40:25] But apple also will give you a different Mac address every time you're connecting to wifi networks so that you can't be tracked that way. Because just, if, if you connect to the network at target the wifi at target, for instance, they will know when you return because your phone has the same Mac address that's used for the wifi. [00:40:49] So they know. They know where you go in the store. They know what you're looking at in the store, in some cases, depending on how the tracking works. So it's fascinating to me, this is a, a real privacy issue that could easily turn into something much worse because this data, this same data that's available to marketers is available to government is also available to bad guys. [00:41:17] and you talk about the ability to potentially frame someone and it, it, it just gets extremely, extremely scary. Right now, last month, more than 40 members of Congress called on Google to stop collecting and retaining customer location data, the prosecutors could use to identify women who obtain abortions. [00:41:37] Again, tied into this, uh, abortion anytime any day. Uh, and as the governor of Virginia said, even after the baby is born and delivered it, you should be able to abort it. Uh, so wherever you fall in that spectrum, obviously the Democrats in the us want abortions far more than the Europeans that every European country I can think of has much tougher restrictions on abortion than we have here. [00:42:05] But. Privacy is not an abortion issue. Hey, join me online. Craig peterson.com. Make sure you are on my email list. And, uh, you can ask any question you want. Just email me, [00:42:20] me@CraigPeterson.com. [00:42:26] I really appreciate all the emails I get from you guys. And it is driving me to do something I've never done before now. I've always provided all kinds of free information to share on my email list. Great stuff. But now we're talking about cyber punch lists. [00:42:43] So they know what's hot because who really, really tracks technology, not too many people. And I get, uh, you know, a little off put by some of these other radio hosts that call themselves tech people, and they're actually marketing people, but you. That's me. Right. And that's why, if you are on my list, you've probably noticed I'm not hammering you trying to sell you stuff all of the time. [00:43:09] It's good, valuable content. And I'm starting something brand new. Never done this before, but this is for you guys. Okay. You know that I do cybersecurity. As a business and I've been doing it now for more than three decades. I don't know if I should admit that. Right. They say, never say more than 17 years. [00:43:30] Okay. So I've been doing it for more than 17 years and I've been on the internet now for. Oh, 40 years now. Okay. Back before it was even called the internet, I helped to develop the silly thing. So over the years, we've come up with a number of different strategies. We have these things that are called plan of action and milestones, and we have all kinds of other lists of things that we do and that need to be done. [00:44:01] So what we're doing right now is we're setting it. So that you can just email me, me, Craig peterson.com. And I will go ahead and send you one of these punch lists. Now the punch lists are around one specific topic. You know, we got these massive. Punch list with hundreds and hundreds of things on them. And those are what we use when we go in to help clean up the cybersecurity in a company. [00:44:28] So we'll go in, we'll do scans. We will do red team blue team where we're attacking. We do all, all kinds of different types of scans using different software, trying to break in. We use the same tools that the hackers use in order to see if we can. Into your systems and if the systems are properly secured, so we do all of this stuff, so, and, and then it goes into all of the paperwork that needs to be done to comply with whatever it might be. [00:45:00] Right. It might be, they accept payment cards. It might be that they have hip. Information, which is healthcare information. And it might be also that they're a government contractor. So there are hundreds and hundreds of things that they have to comply with. Most of them are procedural. So we have all of this stuff. [00:45:18] We do all of this stuff. And I was talking with my wife here this last week about it and said, you. So much of this could be used by small companies that can't afford to hire my team to come in and clean things up. Right. And I don't want them to suffer. So here's what we're doing. We're starting this next week. [00:45:42] We have a punch list for you on email. So what are the things you can do should do for email? Just very, very narrow on email so that you can recognize a fishing. Email, what you might wanna do to lock down your outlook, if you're on windows or your Mac mail. So we're taking these massive spreadsheets that we have and we're breaking them up. [00:46:10] So the first one that's available to you guys, absolutely. A hundred percent free. Is the one on email. So just send me an email. Me M E Craig peterson.com. Now, remember I am, my, my business is a business to business business, right. But almost everything in these various. Punch lists applies to individuals as well. [00:46:34] So I got an email this last week from a guy saying, Hey, I'm 80 years old and, uh, retired and I don't know much about computers and that's kind of what got us thinking about this. You know, we need to be able to help him. We need to be able to help you out. Okay. And if you're a small business and we've dealt with a lot of them over the years, and as a small business, you just don't have the funds to bring in an expert, whether it's me or somebody else, although yeah. [00:47:03] What you want the best. But anyways, , it, it, uh, it is gonna allow you to do it yourself. Okay. So absolutely free. All of these punch lists on all of these topics, we're probably gonna end up with more than a hundred of these punch lists. And all you do is email me, me, Craig peterson.com. Just let me know in there what you're interested in. [00:47:29] So even if we haven't got that punch list broken down for you yet, we will go ahead and put that on the. To do right. We need the priorities. What kind of a priority should we have as we're putting these things together for free for people. Right. Uh, and the only way we know is if you ask, so the first one's on email, you can certainly ask for email. [00:47:50] We've got, as I said, more than a hundred others, that we think we're gonna be able to pull out of the exact. Plan of action worksheets that we use so that you can go through this yourself, whether you're a home user or you are a small business or even a big business, right? We we're talking with, uh, a gentleman who's probably listening right now, who has a business. [00:48:17] They have three offices, they have some requirement because of the military contracts for high level. Cyber security and it would work for him too. All right. So they, this is all of the punch list stuff. You probably know what a punch list is, right? It's using the construction industry a lot, but in our case, it's you need to do this. [00:48:39] You need to do this, you need to do this. Okay. So that's what that's all about. So enough rambling on that. It's gonna take us some time to get 'em all together. I'm also. We're gonna do more video stuff again, training. So just like on the radio show where we're talking about what's in the news, we're gonna talk about what's what's in the news. [00:49:01] When it comes to small businesses, what you should be paying attention to with of course, an emphasis on cybersecurity and we're. Putting those up on my website@craigpeterson.com. In fact, we've already got some up there already, and then we are going to also be putting them on YouTube and rumble. So if you don't like YouTube and Google, then you can certainly go to rumble. [00:49:25] You'll see them there. But if you're on the email list, I'm I'm. Starting to put links in the bottom of the emails. So you can go and watch those videos. If you are a video type person that you know, more visual. So it's, I think all good. And it's good news for everybody. And this is what happens, I think, as you get more mature, In the business. [00:49:48] Right. Um, as I said, I've been on the internet for more than 40 years, helped develop some of that software that, uh, some of it's still in use today and now it's time to do more give back. And I really am trying to give back, okay, there's this isn't. This isn't a joke. So, uh, no joke. Right. So go ahead. Email me at Craig Peterson. [00:50:12] Tell me which punch list that you would like. And I can also put you on my email list so that you get my insider show notes, and you can just do that yourself by gonna Craig Peterson dot. Com you'll see right up at the top of the page. If you scroll down a little bit, it'll kind of pop up. It's a big red bar that goes across the top. [00:50:32] I try not to be too intrusive and you can sign up there for the newsletter. So you'll get some of these trainings automatically. You'll get my insider show notes, all of this stuff. It it's absolutely free. Okay. This is my giveback to help you out. It really is. Okay. I, as I mentioned at the very beginning, I, I. [00:50:52] Peeve by some of these people that represent themselves as tech experts. And in fact, all they are are marketers. We've got a client that decided that, uh, I was too expensive. My team. So they went out and shopped around, tried to find the cheapest company they could. And so now the, the company that they're bringing in is saying, you're saying, uh, Hey, um, uh, so how does this work? [00:51:15] How do you do zero trust? Uh, why do you have a firewall here? Uh, why do you bother to have a direct fiber link between the offices? All this stuff? Well, because they need it. Okay. I get it. You use. Barracuda spam firewalls and Barracuda firewalls. It, it, yeah, this is a different league. Okay. So you are gonna be getting these punch lists from me that are really gonna help you understand and secure your systems. [00:51:47] Right? This isn't your average run of the mill so-called managed security services provider or managed services or break fix shop. You are getting it from the guy that the FBI. Ingar program went to, to do their trainings. That was me. Okay. So for two years I set up the program. I ran it. And if we ever are sitting down having a coffee or beer, sometimes I'll tell you why I left. [00:52:13] Okay. Uh, but think about FBI and I, I think you might have a clue as to why I decided not to do that anymore, but I trained thousands of businesses, government agencies, state local. Federal, you name it. So you are getting what you really need, which is another problem. I keep hearing from people, you do a search for something on YouTube or Google and you get what a million, 5 million pages, right. [00:52:43] As supposedly that it says are available and they give you, okay, here's the top one, but what you need is an integrated single way. To do things where everything works together. And that's what I'm trying to do for you guys, because there's so many little products, different products that just don't work so well together. [00:53:06] So we'll, we'll be covering that as well in these, but you gotta be on that email list. Craig peterson.com. Craig Peterson. So n.com/subscribe will take you right to the subscription page. And I'll keep you up to date. This is not my paid newsletter. All right, stick around. We'll be right back. And I promise I'll get to Russia, Russia, Russia. [00:53:33] Some of the high tech companies and others pulled out of Russia after the Ukraine invasion, but one stayed Google. What is going on with Google? And now they're in big trouble with the Russian government. Wow.  [00:53:50] Here's a list of companies according to CNET that have pulled out of Russia because you remember Russia invaded Ukraine, February 24, we had Adobe, these are the guys that make Photoshop, Adobe reader. Airbnb, Airbnb has kind of an interesting story too in Ukraine because a number quite a number of Airbnb customers went ahead and rented rooms and homes from Ukrainians, even though they had no intention of going and they told the Ukrainians, Hey. [00:54:23] I'm not gonna show up, just take this money. I'm sure you need it. Can you, can you imagine that that's fantastic. Good for them, Amazon, they suspended shipments of all retail products of customers in Russia and Bella Russ, and also suspended prime video for users in Russia. Apple stops selling its product in Russia's it's halting online transactions, including limiting apple pay. [00:54:50] It's also disabled. Some apple map features in Ukraine in order to protect civilians, Amazon web services. They don't have data centers or offices in Russia, but it's allowing new signups for the service in Russia. BMW four GM Honda. Have all scaled back their operations or stopped them. Ford suspended its operations in Russia effective immediately until further notice. [00:55:19] GM is suspending business in Russia. Honda has suspended exports to Russia, Disney halted, all theatrical releases in Russia, including the new Pixar film, turning red, also pause content DJA. The drone company that's gotten in trouble here in the us for some of its practices of sending GPS information to China while they're not doing it over there. [00:55:45] Uh, electronic arts. They make a bunch of very popular, uh, games, epic games, another one Ericson FIFA body band Russia from this year's world cup formula one canceled its plan planned Russian ground pre Fujitsu, Goldman Sachs. Now Google that's where I want to go. We'll stop at Google here for a minute. [00:56:10] Google. Suspended their ad network in Russia. And the idea was okay. Uh, we're not sure how payments are gonna work because Russia of course has had this kind of this lockdown by foreign countries on their banking system. We're not sure we can get the money out. Right. Um, uh, that's what they're apparently doing now. [00:56:36] They're still there. Google's YouTube. It's search engine on and on still running in Russia. Now that is really disturbing. If you ask me, why did they not pull out? It doesn't make sense. So Google did stop accepting new customers for Google cloud. In March. YouTube said it's removing videos at denier trivial trivialize, the Russian invasion, but what finally got Google. [00:57:09] Out of Russia, Russia seized their bank accounts. They froze, they transferred their money out of the main bank account in Russia. We're talking about a 2 billion per year business, Google Russia, that that really upsets me. So I did a little more research online about all of this, and I was really surprised to see that Ukraine now has given the Ukraine peace prize to Google. [00:57:40] and it says, uh, quote on the behalf of the Ukrainian people with gratitude for the support during this pivotal moment in our nation's history. So what is it? I, I, I'm not sure. Right? So there, uh, one of their foreign ministers, I guess, and, uh, Koran. Baha I think, uh, said thank you from the beginning of the war, Google has sought to help. [00:58:05] However, however we can through humanitarian support of our tools will continue to do as long as needed. So I dug in a little more and tried to figure out what's up. Well rush or Google left its Russian search engine online and YouTube online and was using it in Russia in order to. Control the narrative in Russia. [00:58:31] Now, unlike what they've done here in the us, where Google has been caught, many times controlling the narrative in various elections and taking certain ads and not taking others and taking certain business and not taking others, apparently in Russia, it has been. Blocking a lot of the stuff that Russia itself has been putting out. [00:58:55] So the, the federal government there in Russia. Interesting. Hey, so they also have helped Ukraine out by providing them with mapping GPS and rumor has it satellite services. Yeah. Interestingly to track Russian troop movements, uh, Al also Ukraine saying the Google news component has also been tremendously valuable. [00:59:24] Google's also helping to raise money for the cause of Ukraine. Like many companies are doing right now to help people displace due to the war and Poland. Wow. They've been doing Yemen's work and, and bringing. People in, by the millions, into Poland from Ukraine. It reminds me when I lived in Calgary, Alberta, my Cub, one of the Cub masters Cub troop leaders was a woman who came from Poland many years ago. [00:59:52] This was back during Soviet occupation of. Poland. And I, I remember talking to her about what was happening over there. Why did she leave? And it is just so, so impressive. The polls have done so much impressive stuff over the years. So they're also saying that Google's done a lot of other things in order to. [01:00:13] Help protect Ukraine, including Google's block domains. They've prevented fishing attacks against Ukraine. They've warn targeted individuals that they are being targeted. It's really something what they've done. So my first knee jerk was why is Google? Still doing business in Russia. Well, now it's become clear because they have a special page for Russians that gives correct information, at least, you know, Google's claiming it's correct. [01:00:47] Uh, I don't know which fact checkers, checkers they're using, but. That gives Russians real information about the war what's going on in Ukraine. What's happening with the Russian soldiers. Did, did you see this just this last week, apparently Russia removed the age limit for volunteers for the military. It used to be, I think it was 40 years old. [01:01:12] If you were a Russian citizen and 30 years old, if you were foreign national, now the Russian military will take anybody. Any age from anywhere. In other words, Russia is really getting kind of hard up if they want people like me, right. To fight, to fight their wars. I'm sure they don't really well. I don't know. [01:01:32] Maybe they do want me, right. That every, every war needs cannon fodder. So it is fascinating to see good job Google. I am quite impressed. I did not expect them to be doing that. They've also. Uh, uh, provided over 45 million in donations and grants to various groups. They've done pro bono work for various organizations over there. [01:02:01] So this is really, really cool. So that's it. That's what's happening over there in you? Crane and Google, you can of course, find out a lot more. Get my insider show notes. So you had all of this on Tuesday morning. You could have digested it all and be ahead of everybody else out there. And then also don't forget about my new offer here. [01:02:27] Free, absolutely free for. Asks by emailing me Craig peterson.com. I'll go ahead and send them to you, which is I think a pretty cool thing now. What am I gonna send you? Well, you gotta ask first, right? You gotta ask. And what we're gonna be doing is taking what I have been using for years to help secure my customers. [01:02:54] And we're making available for free my cyber punch lists. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. [01:03:02] Bit of a hubub here, a B Biden's infrastructure bill $1.2 trillion. And, and it's in there is this thing that Bob BARR is calling an automobile kill switch. Well, I did some more research and we'll tell you the facts right now. [01:03:19] What are you supposed to do? If you are trying to pass a bill to stop drunk driving deaths, and you've got all of the money in the world, you know, well, I guess 1.2 trillion, isn't all of the money in the world. [01:03:33] What are you gonna put in there? Well, I did a search on this and I I'm chuckling because this is craziness. This is the AP associated press. And they've got this article claim. President Joe Biden signed a bill that will give law enforcement access to a kill switch that will be attached to all new cars in 2026 APS assessment false. [01:03:59] Okay, so we've got fact checkers here while the bipartisan infrastructure bill Biden signed last year requires advanced drunk and impaired driving technology to become standard equipment in cars. Experts say. Technology doesn't amount to a kill switch. Hmm. Let me see. So I can't start the car. If the car's computer thinks I might be drunk or impaired in some other way, but that's not a kill switch. [01:04:31] What, what is that? Then if I can't start the car, because I have a disagreement with the computer. How about these people that I don't know, maybe their eyes can't open all of the way. Maybe they have problems with eyes on nystagmus, the eyes kind of jittering back and forth. Right. And now what are they gonna do? [01:04:50] Argue with the computer? That's a kill switch. I can't believe these crazy people that are like AP here, coming up with fact checking on things. So, yeah, I'm sure there's some distortions in some articles out there, but they contradicted themselves in two paragraphs. I guess they figure people are just gonna see false. [01:05:14] Okay. I'm done. They're not gonna bother reading the rest of the article. Yeah. Kind of crazy, isn't it? So according to an article written by remember former us representative Bob BARR in the infrastructure bill, is this kill switch. Now the, the big question is what is the kill switch? How far does it go? [01:05:39] So I decided, well, let's look up something I remember from years ago and that is GM GM has the OnStar system it's yet another reason I won't buy GM, there are a number of reasons, but this is another one. OnStar system, you know, they've got an advisor, isn't that great. And if your car is in a car accident, a crash that advisor can hop on and ask if you're okay. [01:06:08] And if you want emergency services coming, they'll come, uh, OnStar will call them for you. And if you are just fine, they won't bother calling. I mean, if there's no answer at all, they'll they'll call emergency services and let them know where the vehicle is. Cuz the vehicle has with OnStar built in GPS. [01:06:30] Well, one of the features of OnStar is that it can send a signal to disable cars, engines, and gradually slow the vehicle to an idle speed to assist police in recovering the vehicle. Now they will only do that at least right now for vehicles that have been reported stolen and have been confirmed by the police. [01:06:58] So in, in reality, that's kind of cool, right? It slows down. Hopefully the bad guy, if he's on the highway, makes it over to the side of the road and while the car slows down and eventually stops. So, uh, all of this stuff sounds good. This kill switch. Sounds good. Doesn't it? Because you know, we're gonna keep drunk drivers off the road. [01:07:24] Now in reality, of course, they're not gonna be able to keep drunk drivers or other impaired drivers off the road. I really don't care what kind of technology they put in. And they're not talking about putting in one of these blow in the tube, things that checks your blood alcohol level. They're talking about having a camera facing you as the driver and probably other occupants of the vehicles and that internally facing camera. [01:07:53] It's going to evaluate you. It's gonna look at you. It's gonna look at your face. Is something droopy. Are, are you kind of slow to respond? It might have a little test that it has you take right there. The, the law is very loosey goosey on any details. There really aren't any, so it's gonna be up to the manufacturer. [01:08:15] So they put this in the car step. Just like OnStar, step one, put it in the car and they'll tell you when to turn. Remember how cool that was the GPS with OnStar. And you'd say, yeah, I want to go to this address. And then the, uh, the assistant goes ahead and sense programming to your car. And now you can go and if you lock your keys in the car, they can unlock the car for you. [01:08:41] All, all kinds of cool stuff. And then next up what happens. Well, but they can stop the vehicle. So there's another technology story related to OnStar. And this is from 2009 from Kelly blue book book, OnStar stolen vehicle, slow down forts its first carjacking. So again, doesn't that sound fantastic. This was a Tahoe OnStar. [01:09:10] And, uh, the driver and his passenger forced out of the vehicle robbed by a shotgun wielding perp who then drove off in the SUV. And the OnStar dispatcher was able to locate the vehicle using GPS advised police of exact location. And as soon as the police established visual contact, the stolen vehicle slow down system is activated available on a number of GM cars and trucks. [01:09:36] Right? So this was over a decade ago. That this happened, but the technology's evolved hasn. so we initially have all of these car companies trying to decide, okay. So we've got this kill switch law, which AP says is not a kill switch law. Cuz they talk to experts just like the, what was it? 52 people, uh, heads of intelligence. [01:10:01] Committees and agencies said that this wasn't a collusion hoax, right? So they talked to experts who said, no, no, no, this isn't a kill switch, but that's today you can argue, it's not a kill switch. I would completely disagree with you. Day one. It's a kill switch cuz you can't start your car. Right. It's a kill switch. [01:10:21] A kill switch is often something you hide somewhere on the car so you can kill the engine. So it can't be stolen. It's a kill switch. Come on. People fact checkers aside. This could potentially allow law enforcement again, to shut down your car, remotely track the car's metrics, location, maybe the passenger load, because remember now cars are tracking all of this. [01:10:46] They've already been. Tickets issued by police that did not see anyone speeding. The car was not caught on a traffic camera, but they hook up a device to your car's port that talks to its computer. And the computer says, yeah, he was doing 80 miles an hour or, uh, five minutes ago. And all of a sudden you got a ticket, right? [01:11:08] Massachusetts wants to go ahead now and say, uh, yeah, yeah. Let's charge by the mile that you drive and mask. Because of course they're not getting enough revenue from gasoline because of the electric cars, right. Electric cars are not paying their fair share when it comes to road taxes. So let's do it that way. [01:11:27] So how are they gonna collect the information while. They're gonna hook up to your car's computer. The next thing coming down the road, and it's already in most cars is wireless data connectivity. You might have found already. If you have a Nissan, a Honda, many other cars that. You have to get a major upgrade. [01:11:49] It varies 600 bucks up to a few grand for an expensive car, but the two G data network, we talked about this on the show already is being completely shut down by the end of the year. So we've gotta replace it and switch you over. To the LTE data network, which of course eventually will go away as well, or at least 3g what happens once it's all hooked up? [01:12:16] Well, the next easy step is just feed all of that information straight to the government. Craig, Peter son.com. [01:12:27] If you've been afraid of ransomware before I I've got a good example for you where a whole country now has been ransom. Absolutely crazy. So we'll talk about that. What is the state of ransomware? And the NSA is asking us to trust them again. [01:12:43] Of course staying up to date means that you get my insider newsletter pretty much every Tuesday morning and, and the only way to get that is to go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. [01:12:56] And I will keep you up to date. You'll get even more insight information. The Costa REAN government has declared a state of national emergency. And to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time a government has done this because agencies of the Costa Rican government have been hit so badly by the K ransomware. [01:13:22] That the new incoming president immediately declared a state of emergency. So now the country has expanded law enforcement powers and they are trying to go after the KTI ransomware group. Now between you and me. Good luck on that one. They are based in Russia. There's a number of different articles out this week. [01:13:44] This one from ADV Intel at tech target. But according to their research, the Kati ransomware groups attack on Costa Rican government was part of a rebranding effort. So this ransomware gang has seen a lot of their payments, just dry up. Because it's harder to get the money in. Right. And what are you gonna do with cryptocurrency? [01:14:09] If you are the KTI group, can you turn it into anything useful? Well, it kind of depends on the country you're in, but for most people, no. Okay. Absolutely. No. So we were able to knock the KTI ransomware groups. Offline. And we talked about that before here. The us government did that, but now this is marking a new chapter for the cyber crime landscape. [01:14:37] Interesting. Isn't it? So there are some investigations that have been going on. They've been trying to figure out what happened. What was the cause of the downfall of the county ransomware group? Are they really gone? Why did they pull their website offline and also. They declared publicly support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. [01:15:00] And so now the Canti ransomware group got hacked and held ransom. They suffered major leaks. As a consequence. So other hackers went after KTI, which is a hacking group and they, they showed here from internal in documents that were stolen, that the KTI ransomware gang's primary Bitcoin address, which was found in the leak, showed that they had taken in over 2 billion in cryptocurrency over the last five years. [01:15:34] Isn't that just amazing and anonymous leaker has published more of the gangs communications, but you know, that can help that's for sure. But you think with that much money, they'd be able to protect themselves right now on top of it, because of the hack of Costa Rica and the major damage it's caused, the us government has offered a couple of bounties here. [01:16:00] Against the KTI ransomware group. So there's $10 million available. If you can provide the feds with information about the leaders of the KTI ransomware group and $5 million that you can get leading to the arrest of anyone involved with a cont ransomware attack. Isn't that something. So ransomware has been really outta control for years. [01:16:25] There's no signs that things are actually slowing down. Definitely been enhanced law enforcement efforts to track them down. But ultimately here, the core members of these groups have been escaping these law enforcement activities. They've been using mules kinda like 2000 mules. Have you seen that movie? [01:16:46] But the idea is they get people primarily in the us cuz that's where most of the money comes from. They do ran. Of people and businesses information here. In fact, last year, it's estimated that 60%, six, 0% of small businesses were hacked, which is just crazy. Right? Well, no wonder it's got $2 billion, but. [01:17:09] What are, what are we supposed to do? What are they doing to, to, uh, really come after us? Well, they're doing many of the same things. These mules will, uh, be hired saying, Hey, I just need to, uh, use your PayPal account. And, uh, all you have to do is transfer some money. You can keep. 5%, 10% of the money I put in there. [01:17:29] And they've always got these excuses, you know, think the Nigerian email scams from years past, and frankly still kind of go around a little bit here, but large bounties are really becoming a part of the toolbox, a law enforcement's been using in the us and abroad to try and track them down. And that's really what they're hoping for down in Costa Rica, because what are they gonna do? [01:17:57] You know, frankly, really? What are they gonna do? Well, I don't know. And they obviously are relying on the United States to help them out with this. The internal structure of the K group has been highly organized. They've got the same type of structure of a legitimate corporation would have it takes its work that needs to be done. [01:18:18] They hire contractors that may not even know who they're actually working for to write small pieces of, of, uh, code here that gets tied. so it's not too surprising that a KTI affiliate is going to

This week, we're exploring why it behooves businesses and business leaders to look at their users, consumers, customers, etc., as humans first. Slightly shifting perspective to consider the humanity behind purchasing decisions can lead to greater loyalty, more frequent use, and genuinely happier users, all of which add up to more business success and better outcomes for the world. Together with my guests, we discuss how human-centric decisions apply to various industries and how you can build better relationships that lead to success for all of humanity. Guests this week include Charlie Cole, Neil Redding, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Ana Milicevic, Cathy Hackl, Marcus Whitney, and David Ryan Polgar. The Tech Humanist Show is a multi-media-format program exploring how data and technology shape the human experience. Hosted by Kate O'Neill. Produced and edited by Chloe Skye, with research by Ashley Robinson and Erin Daugherty at Interrobang and input from Elizabeth Marshall. To watch full interviews with past and future guests, or for updates on what Kate O'Neill is doing next, subscribe to The Tech Humanist Show hosted by Kate O'Neill channel on YouTube, or head to KOInsights.com. Full Transcript Kate O'Neill: When you buy something, you're a customer. But — to paraphrase a line from the movie Notting Hill — you're also just a person, standing in front of a business, asking it to treat you like a human being. Over the last two decades plus working in technology, I've often held job titles that were centered on the experience of the user, the consumer, or the customer. In fact, the term ‘customer experience' has been in use since at least the 1960s, and has become so common that a recent survey of nearly 2,000 business professionals showed that customer experience was the top priority over the next five years. And while generally speaking this emphasis is a good thing, my own focus over the past decade or so has shifted. I've realized that the more macro consideration of human experience was a subtle but vital piece missing from the discussion at large. Because when we talk about experience design and strategy, no matter what word we use to qualify it—customer, user, patient, guest, student, or otherwise—we are always talking about humans, and the roles humans are in relative to that experience. In order to refocus on human experience instead of customer, you have to change the way you think about your buyers. You owe it to yourself to think not just about how people can have a better experience purchasing from your company, but also what it means to be fully human within the journey that brings them to that moment, and the uniquely human factors that drive us to make decisions leading to purchase or loyalty. A recent piece by Deloitte shared in the Wall Street Journal echoes this idea and offers five ways to be more human-centric in business: 1) be obsessed by all things human, 2) proactively identify & understand human needs before they are expressed, 3) execute with humanity, 4) be authentic, and 5) change the world. That's what today's episode is about: using empathy and strategic business-savvy to understand what it means to be human, and how that intersects with the worlds of technology and business. Neil Redding: “When you look at everything that has to do with buying and selling of things, it's so closely tied with what we care about, what we value most, value enough as humans to spend our hard-earned money on. And so, the realm of retail reflects something really deeply human, and profoundly human.” Kate: That was Neil Redding, brand strategist and self-described “Near Futurist” focused on the retail space. He's right—buying and selling things has become deeply entwined with humanity. But when we purchase something, it's not because we think of ourselves as “customers” or “end users.” We buy because we have a need or desire to fulfill, and sometimes that need is purely emotional. A ‘customer' buys your product—a human buys your product for a reason. 84% of consumers say that being treated like a person instead of a number is an important element to winning their business. It does seem like business professionals are catching on, as 79% say it's impossible to provide great service without full context of the client and their needs. But understanding something isn't the same as putting it into practice—only 34% of people say they feel like companies actually treat them as individuals. One major difference is the question of framing. Customer experience frames the motivator as, ‘how effectively the business operates the events related to a purchase decision.' It drives companies to focus on improving their own metrics, like bringing down call center wait times. These may yield worthwhile outcomes, but they're inherently skewed to the business perspective and aligned to the purchase transaction. Focusing instead on human experience shifts the perspective to the person outside the business, and what they want or need. It allows consideration of the emotional state they may be bringing to the interaction, which leaves greater room for empathy and context. A human experience mindset suggests that each individual's unique circumstances are more important than aggregate business metrics, because the reason why that person is interacting with your company probably can't be captured by measuring, say, how long they might have to wait on the phone. You could bring that wait time to zero and it still may not have any impact on whether the person feels heard, respected, or satisfied with the outcome — or whether they want to engage with you again. But as fuzzy as it is to talk about human experience, we know that measurement is fundamental to business success, so we have to find a way to define useful metrics somehow. For each business, that number is likely a bit different. So how do you know whether your customers feel like they're being treated as humans instead of just numbers? Charlie Cole, CEO of the flower delivery website ftd.com, believes one answer is obsessing over customer satisfaction metrics. Charlie Cole: “The best way to win this industry is just kick ass with the customer. We obsess over NPS scores, uh, as kind of leading indicators of LTV scores.” Kate: If you're not familiar with the acronyms, allow me to decipher: NPS stands for Net Promoter Score, which measures how likely the customer is to recommend the business, and LTV in this context means ‘lifetime value,' or the amount a customer may spend at your business over the course of their lifetime. Charlie Cole: “But remember, it's not the receiver's lifetime, it's the sender's lifetime. I mean, think about it. My stepmom is—just had a birthday April 9th, and I sent her a plant. If I went on a website and picked out a Roselia, and she received an Azelia, she's gonna be like, ‘thank you so much, that was so thoughtful of you,' and I'm gonna be pissed, right? And so like, we have to make sure we optimize that sender NPS score. It was shocking to us when we looked into the NPS, when we first got to FTD, our NPS, Kate, was in like the teens! My CTO looked at it and he goes, ‘how is this possible? We send gifts, who doesn't like receiving gifts?' And so we were looking at this stuff and we realized like, this is how you win. And I think when people look at the world of online delivery, there's very few companies that are extremely customer-centric… and in our world it matters. It's births, it's deaths, it's birthdays, it's Mother's Days… it's the most emotional moments of your life that you're relying on us for, so I think that gravitas just goes up to the next level.” Kate: Net Promoter Score offers directional insight about the customer experience, but it still isn't quite measurement of the broader human experience. The typical NPS question is phrased, “How likely is it that you would recommend [company X] to a friend or colleague?”, which forces customers to predict future actions and place themselves into hypothetical or idealistic scenarios. It is also measured on a 1-10 scale, which is pretty arbitrary and subjective — one person's 9 would not be another person's 9. A clearer way to ask this and gain more useful human-centric data would be with simple yes/no questions, asking people about actual past behaviors. For instance, “in the past 6 weeks, have you recommended [company X] to a friend or colleague?” Other alternative measures include PES, or Product Engagement Score, which measures growth, adoption, and stickiness of a given product or service, and doesn't require directly asking customers questions about their past or future habits. Instead, data comes in in real-time and allows for a clear measurement of success relative to a product's usage. While these metrics are useful in various ways, one thing missing from them is emotion. As humans, we are animals deeply driven by our emotions: research from MIT Sloan finds that before humans decide to take an action—any action, including buying something—the decision must first go through a filtering process that incorporates both reason and feelings. Reason leads to conclusions, but emotion leads to action. And if a customer feels frustrated by the customer service they're experiencing—perhaps they feel like they are being treated like a number, and not a person—they'll file a complaint, share on social media, and tell their friends and family to avoid the business. These actions can be quite time-consuming, but people will give up their time to right a wrong they feel they've experienced. All this is to say that if you want to retain human loyalty or attract new people to your business, you have to create a positive emotional response in your customers, which means understanding more about who they are than simply what product they might want. Many businesses have discovered that one of the best ways to create an emotional connection with people is through branding. A great brand image can forge a permanent bond with someone who feels strongly that the company shares their values and practices what they preach. Once someone has connected a brand to their own identity, it becomes much more difficult to convince them to switch to another company—even if that company provides the same product at lower cost—because switching companies feels like losing a part of them. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, Director of the Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability team at Twitter, explored the concept of branding with me when she came on my show last year. Rumman Chowdhury: “Human flourishing is not at odds with good business. Some of what you build, especially if you're a B2C company, it's about brand. It's about how people feel when they interact with your technology or your product. You are trying to spark an emotion. Why do you buy Coke vs Pepsi? Why do you go to McDonald's vs Burger King? Some of this is an emotional decision. It's also this notion of value. People can get overly narrowly focused on value as revenue generation—value comes from many, many different things. People often choose less ‘efficient' outcomes or less economically sound outcomes because of how it makes them feel. A frivolous example but an extreme example of it would be luxury brands. Apple spends so much money on design. Opening every Apple product is designed to feel like you're opening a present. That was intentional. They fully understand the experience of an individual, in interacting with technology like a phone or a computer, is also an emotional experience.” Kate: If you're able to understand what people connect to about your brand, you can invest into magnifying that image. If your customer loves that you invest into clean energies, it becomes less important how much time they spend on the phone waiting for a service rep. Operational metrics can't show you this emotional resonance, so instead you have to think about what makes you stand out, and why people are attracted to you. Sometimes, however, human emotion has nothing to do with the product or brand in question, and more to do with the circumstances surrounding it. There's perhaps no better example of this than flowers, which can be given for myriad reasons, and usually at the extreme ends of the emotional spectrum. I'll let Charlie Cole explain. Charlie Cole: “For us, it's buyer journey by occasion. So, you are sending flowers for the birth of a newborn. You are sending flowers for the tragic death of a teenager. You are sending flowers for the death of your 96 year old great grandfather. You are sending flowers for your wife's birthday. I would argue that even though the end of all those buyer journeys is ‘flowers,' they are fundamentally different. And you have to understand the idiosyncrasies within those buyer journeys from an emotional component. You have to start with the emotions in mind. You're buying running shoes. The buying journey for like a runner, for like a marathoner, a guy who runs all the time, is emotionally different than someone who just got told they need to lose weight at the doctor. Someone who travels for business all the time versus someone who's taking their first ever international…travel. Like, my wife retold a story the other day to my aunt about how her first European trip was when she won a raffle to go to Austria when she was 17. And her, like, single mom was taking her to Europe, and neither of them had ever been to Europe. That's a different luggage journey than me, who used to fly 300,000 miles a year. And I think that if you take the time to really appreciate the emotional nuance of those journeys, yes there's data challenges, and yes there's customer recognition challenges, so you can personalize it. But I would urge every brand to start with like the emotional amino-acid level of why that journey starts, and then reverse-engineer it from there. Because I think you'll be able to answer the data challenges and the attribution challenges, but I think that's a place where we sometimes get too tech-y and too tactical, as opposed to human.” Kate: Another challenge unique to flowers and other products usually given as gifts is that there are two completely different humans involved in the transaction, each with different expectations and emotions riding on it. Charlie Cole: “There's two people involved in every one of our journeys, or about 92% of them: the buyer, and the receiver. So how do I message to you, I don't want to ruin the surprise! But I need to educate you, and oh yeah, I'm a really really nervous boyfriend, right? I wanna make sure everybody's doing it right, and it's gonna be there on time, and I need to make sure it's going to the right place… So the messaging pathways to the sender and receiver are fundamentally different. If you kind of forget about your buying journey, and imagine everything as a gifting buyer journey, it just changes the messaging component. Not in a nuanced way, but darn near in a reciprocal way.” And while some businesses struggle to connect emotionally with the humans that make up their customer base, the tech industry—and specifically social media companies—seem to fundamentally understand what it is that humans crave, in a way that allows them to use it against us. They thrive because they take something that is quintessentially human—connecting with people and sharing our lives—and turn it into a means for data collection that can then be used to sell us products that feel specifically designed for us. Like most of us, Neil Redding has experienced this phenomenon firsthand. Neil Redding: “We spend more and more of our time in contexts that we are apparently willing to have commercialized, right? Instagram is kind of my go-to example, where almost all of us have experienced this uncanny presentation to us of something that we can buy that's like so closely tied to… I mean, it's like how did you know that this is what I wanted? So myself and people close to me have just said, ‘wow, I just keep buying this stuff that gets presented to me on Instagram that I never heard of before but gets pushed to me as like, yeah it's so easy, and it's so aligned with what I already want. So there's this suffusion of commercial transaction—or at least discovery—of goods that can be bought and sold, y'know, in these moments of our daily lives, y'know, so that increasingly deep integration of commerce and buying and selling of things into our self-expression, into our communication, works because what we care about and what we are willing to buy or what we are interested in buying are so intertwined, right? They're kind of the same thing at some deep level.” Kate: Part of the reason this works is that humans crave convenience. Lack of convenience adds friction to any process, and friction can quickly lead to frustration, which isn't a mind state that leads to more business. The internet and social media has made keeping up with friends and gathering information incredibly convenient, so an advertisement here or there—especially one that looks and feels the same as everything else on our feed—doesn't bother us like it might in other contexts. And when those advertisements have been tailored specifically to our interests, they're even less likely to spark a negative emotion, and may in fact encourage us to buy something that we feel is very “us.” The big question for business leaders and marketers then is how do you digitize your business so that it emphasizes the richness of the human experience? How do you know which technologies to bring into your business, and which to leave aside? There are plenty of established and emerging technologies to choose from: Interactive email helps marketers drive engagement and also provides an avenue for additional data collection. Loyalty marketing strategies help brands identify their best customers and customize experiences for them. Salesforce introduced new features to help humanize the customer service experience with AI-powered conversational chatbots that feel pretty darn close to speaking with an actual human. Virtual and Augmented Reality website options allow customers to interact with products and see them in their hands or living rooms before they buy. With all the choice out there, it can be overwhelming. And t oo often, businesses and governments lean into the “just buy as much tech as possible!” approach without thinking integratively about the applications of said technology. Many companies are using that technology to leverage more data than ever before, hoping to customize and personalize experiences. David Ryan Polgar, a tech ethicist and founder of All Tech Is Human, explains why this method may not yield the results you think—because humans aren't just a collection of data points. David Ryan Polgar: “Are we an algorithm, or are we unique? I always joke, like, my mom always said I'm a, a snowflake! I'm unique! Because, when you think about Amazon and recommendations, it's thinking that your past is predicting your future. And that, with enough data, we can accurately determine where your next step is. Or even with auto-suggestion, and things like that. What's getting tricky is, is that true? Or is it subtly going to be off? With a lot of these auto-suggestions, let's say like text. Well the question I always like to think about is, how often am I influenced by what they said I should say? So if I wanna write, like, ‘have a…' and then it says ‘great day,' well, maybe I was gonna say great day, but maybe I was gonna say good day. And it's subtly different, but it's also influencing kinda, my volition. Now we're being influenced by the very technology that's pushing us is a certain direction. And we like to think of it, ‘well, it's already based on you,' but then that has a sort of cyclical nature to actually extending—” Kate: “Quantum human consciousness or something.” David: “Exactly! Exactly.” Kate: “Like, the moment you observe it, it's changed.” Kate: It's so easy, especially when you work with data, to view humans as output generators. But we're living in an age where people are growing increasingly wary of data collection, which means you may not know as much about the people whose data you've collected as you think you do. Becoming dependent on an entirely data-driven model for customer acquisition may lead to faulty decisions — and may even be seen as a huge mistake five years from now. Instead, I always talk about “human-centric digital transformation,” which means the data and tech-driven changes you make should start from a human frame. Even if you're already adopting intelligent automation to accelerate your operations, in some cases, very simple technologies may belong at the heart of your model. Here's Neil Redding again. Neil Redding: “Using Zoom or FaceTime or Skype is the only technology needed to do what a lot of stores have done during COVID, where their customers expect the store associate interaction when they come to the stores, they just create a one-on-one video call, and the shopper just has this interaction over videochat, or video call, and kind of does that associate-assisted shopping, right? And so you have that human connection, and again, it's nowhere near as great as sitting across a table and having coffee, but it's better than, y'know, a 2-dimensional e-commerce style shopping experience.” Kate: As a parallel to video conferencing, Virtual Reality has opened up avenues for new human experiences of business as well. Cathy Hackl, a metaverse strategist and tech futurist, explained a new human experience she was able to have during COVID that wouldn't have been possible without VR. Cathy Hackl: “I'll give you an example, like with the Wall Street Journal, they had the WSJ Tech Live, which is their big tech conference, and certain parts of it were in VR, and that was a lot of fun! I mean, I was in Spatial, which is one of the platforms, hanging out with Joanna Stern, and with Jason Mims, and like, in this kind of experience, where like I actually got to spend some 1-on-1 time with them, and I don't know if I would have gotten that if I was in a Zoom call, and I don't know if I would have gotten that in person, either.” Kate: Virtual Reality and video technologies have also opened up new avenues for healthcare, allowing patients to conference with doctors from home and only travel to a hospital if absolutely necessary. Marcus Whitney is a healthcare investor and founder of the first venture fund in America to invest exclusively in Black founded and led healthcare innovation companies; he explains that these virtual experiences allow for better happiness, healing, and comfort. Marcus Whitney: “Going forward, telehealth will be a thing. We were already on the path to doing more and more healthcare in the home. It was something that they were trying to stop because, is the home an appropriate place for healthcare to take place? Lo and behold, it's just fine. Patients feel more secure in the home, and it's a better environment for healing, so you're gonna see a lot more of that. I think we're finally gonna start seeing some real breakthroughs and innovation in healthcare. Most of the lack of innovation has not been because we didn't have great thinkers, it has largely been regulatory barriers. Remote patient monitoring was a huge one that came up in the last year, so now we have doctors caring about it. What moves in healthcare is what's reimbursable. They were always trying to regulate to protect people, but then they realized, well, we removed the regulatory barriers and people were fine, so that regulation makes actually no sense, and people should have more choice, and they should be able to do telehealth if they want to.” Kate: And that's just it: humans want choice. We want to feel seen, and heard, and like our opinions are being considered. There's another technology on the horizon that could give people more power over their technology, and therefore freedom and choice, that will likely cause massive change in the marketplace when it is more widely available: Brain-computer interface. Cathy Hackl explains. Cathy Hackl: “So I'm very keen right now on brain-computer interface. The way I'm gonna explain it is, if you've been following Elon Musk, you've probably heard of neuro-link—he's working on BCI that's more internal, the ones I've been trying are all external devices. So I'm able to put a device on that reads my brainwaves, it reads my intent, and it knows that I wanna scroll an iPad, or I've been able to turn on lights using just my thoughts, or play a video game, or input a code… I've been able to do all these things. And I'm very keen on it, very interested to see what's going on… I think the biggest thing that's stuck with me from studying all these technologies and trying them out from an external perspective, is that my brain actually really likes it. Loves the workout. Like, I'm thinking about it, and I'm like, the receptors here, pleasure receptors are like lighting up, I'm like ‘ohmygosh!' So I'm still sitting with that. Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing? I don't know, but I think these technologies can allow us to do a lot of things, especially people with disabilities. If they don't have a hand, being able to use a virtual hand to do things in a virtual space. I think that's powerful.” Kate: That story also illuminates the fact that there are many different types of people, each with different needs. Digital transformation has given people with disabilities a new way to claim more agency over their lives, which creates a brand new potential customer-base, filled with humans who desire freedom and choice as much as the next person. Now, let's talk about some companies who are doing at least a few q things right when it comes to the digital transformation of human experience. Starbucks, for instance. One of the worst parts of shopping in-store was waiting in line, and then the social pressure from the people behind you wishing you would order faster. If you weren't a regular customer, the experience could be overwhelming. When they launched their mobile order app, it tapped into a number of things that made the experience of buying coffee faster and easier, with all sorts of fun customization options that I never knew existed when I only ordered in-store. Now, even brand new customers could order complex coffee drinks — meaning in that one move the company may have brought in new customers and allowed the cost per coffee to increase — all without people feeling pressure from other shoppers, and without the inconvenience of waiting in line. Then there's Wal-Mart, who during the pandemic instituted ‘Wal-Mart pickup,' a service where people can shop online and pick up their goods without ever having to step into the store. The service is technically operating at a financial loss, but Wal-Mart understands that solid branding and convenience are worth more to their company's bottom-line in the long run than the amount of money they're losing by investing into this particular service. Of course, some businesses are better suited for the online-only world than others. As more companies attempt to digitize their businesses, it's incredibly important to tap into the human reasons that people wanted to engage with your business in the first place. In some cases, businesses have failed to make this connection, assuming that “if people liked us as a physical product, then they'll continue using us when we're digital,” or worse, “if we simply make people aware of us, they will become customers!” This assumption ignores human nature, as Ana Milicevic, a longtime digital media executive who is principal and co-founder of Sparrow Digital Holdings, explains. Ana Milicevic: “To be relevant in this direct to consumer world, you also have to approach awareness and customer acquisition differently. And this is the #1 mistake we see a lot of traditional companies make, and not really understand how to pitch to a digital-first, mobile-first consumer or a direct subscriber. They're just not wired to do it that way, and often times the technology stacks that they have in place just aren't the types of tools that can facilitate this type of direct interaction as well. So they're stuck in this very strange limbo where they are committed to continuing to acquire customers in traditional ways, but that's just not how you would go about acquiring a direct customer.” Kate: Acquiring those direct customers requires an understanding of what humans want—a large part of which is meaning. And how people create meaning in their lives is changing as well. Long before the pandemic, trends were already pointing toward a future where we live more of our lives online, but those trends have also been accelerated. So beyond digitizing your business, it may also be useful to invest time, money, and energy into discovering how the humans of the future will create meaning in their lives. Cathy Hackl discussed some of the trends she's seen in her own kids that show how today's children will consume and make purchasing decisions in a very different way than most modern businesses are used to. Cathy Hackl: “Something else that I'm noticing… y'know we're going to brick and mortar, but we're going to brick and mortar less. So you start to see this need for that virtual try-on to buy your makeup, or to buy clothes, and it's also transitioning not only from the virtual try-on into what I'm calling the direct-to-avatar economy. Everything from virtual dresses that you're buying, or custom avatars, y'know you're starting to create this virtualized economy. And this is the reason I always talk about this now, is my son recently did his first communion, and when we said, ‘hey, what do you want as a gift?' he said, ‘I don't want money, I want a Roblox gift card that I can turn into Robucks,'—which is the currency they use inside Roblox—'so that I can buy—whichever gamer's skin.' And, y'know, when I was growing up, my brother was saving up to buy AirJordans. My son doesn't want that, y'know, he wants Robucks, to buy something new for his avatar. This is direct-to-avatar; is direct-to-avatar the next direct-to-consumer?” Kate: Our online avatars represent us. We can customize them to directly express who we feel we are. Part of the reason this idea is so attractive is that many people—increasingly so in the context of online interaction—seek out meaningful experiences as our ‘aspirational' selves. We gravitate to the communities that align with facets of who we wish we were. And perhaps less productively, we may also choose to present the idealized version of ourselves to the world, omitting anything we're embarrassed by or that we feel may paint us in a negative light. But honestly, all of this makes sense in the context of making meaning, because humans are generally the most emotionally fulfilled when we feel empowered to control which ‘self' we present in any given interaction. With this much freedom of choice and expression, and with the complications of the modern supply chain—which I will talk about more in depth in our next episode—it's important to acknowledge that creating convenience and improving human satisfaction aren't going to be easy tasks. Behind the scenes, there is a tremendous amount of work that goes into providing a satisfying customer experience. Let's go back to the example of flowers and see what Charlie Cole has to say. Charlie Cole: “If it's too cold they freeze, if it's too hot they wilt, if UPS is a day late they die. And then, the real interesting aspect—and this isn't unique to flowers—the source is remarkably centralized. So the New York Times estimated that 90-92% of roses that are bought in America for Valentine's Day come from Columbia and Ecuador. And so, if anything goes wrong there, then you really don't have a chance. Imagine the quintessential Valentine's Day order: A dozen long-stem roses, New York City. Easy, right? I used to live on 28th and 6th, so let's say Chelsea. Okay, I've got 7 florists who could do it. Who has delivery capacity? Roses capacity? The freshest roses? The closest to proximity? The closest to the picture in the order? Who has the vase that's in the order? Did they buy roses from us? Because I like to be able to incentivize people based on margins they already have. And so without exaggeration, Kate, we have about 11-12 ranking factors that educate a quality score for a florist, and that's how it starts the process. But then there's all the other things, like how do we know somebody didn't walk into that florist that morning and buy all the roses, right? And so there's this real-time ebb-and-flow of demand because our demand is not ours! They have their own store, they have their own B2B business, they might take orders from some of our competitors. They might have their own website. We have no idea what any given florist happens in real time because they are not captive to us. What we've learned is the place we have to get really really really really good is technology on the forecasting side, on the florist communication side, and the customer communication side. Because I can't control the seeds on the ground in Columbia, but I can really control the communication across the entire network as far as we go, as well as the amounts the we need in various places.” Kate: Creating that small-scale, emotional human moment where someone receives flowers requires immense computing power and collaboration between multiple businesses and workers. Which is part of why Charlie Cole also believes that in some cases, the best way to help your business succeed is to invest in helping other businesses that yours interacts with. Charlie Cole: “Small businesses… I think it's our secret sauce. And I think COVID has shined a light on this: small businesses are the core of our communities. Right? They are the absolute core, and I think it was always nice to say that, but now we know it. And so here's what I think we do better than anybody else: we've invested more in helping our florists run their own small business independently of us than we have about optimizing our marketplace. We launched new POS software. We launched a new local website product where we're like the first person ever to become a reseller for Shopify because we made a custom platform for florists. We're just their website provider. They're actually competing with FTD.com in a lot of ways—but I think that's where we're gonna differentiate ourselves from all the other people that are perceived as, by small businesses, (their words not mine) leeches. Right? I think to actually effectively run a marketplace which is fulfilled by small businesses, you need to invest as much in helping them win their local market independent of you.” Kate: You could make the case that there is no more evolved human experience than choosing to help others. So if your business is engaged in activities that allow other businesses—and therefore humans—to thrive, you may also be building your brand in a direction that creates more customer loyalty than any exit survey or great service interaction ever could. Beyond understanding human emotions and needs, you can help your business by leaning into understanding how we create meaning. At our core, we are compelled to make meaning. Whether we realize it or not, meaningful experiences and interactions are the driving force behind many of our decisions, financial or otherwise. Meaning is different for everyone, but having it is vital to our happiness. If you are able to engage with potential customers in a way that helps them create meaning, or allows them to use your product to make meaning on their own, you are aligning your success with your customers' success, and that bodes well for the long term. At the end of the day, making any of these changes starts at the very top of your business. Leadership needs to set the tone, creating a culture that allows room for workers at every level to engage more meaningfully with customers, and with each other. (By the way, for more discussion on creating or changing work culture, you can check out our last episode, “Does the Future of Work Mean More Agency For Workers?”) Your effort will benefit not only your business, but society as a whole. Remember the Deloitte piece in the Wall Street Journal I mentioned at the start of the episode, with ways to be more human-centric in business? Number 5 on that list was “change the world,” and research from Frontiers suggests that the well-being of any society is directly linked to how the people living within it feel about their lives and purpose. How we do that may be as simple — and as complicated — as helping people to experience meaning at any level. While the technologies around us keep changing, the opportunity becomes increasingly clear for people who work around creating customer experiences and user experiences to open up the aperture to see humanity through a fuller lens. This way, as you set your business up for longterm success, you also advocate for making human experiences as meaningful as possible — and you just might be changing the world for the better. Thanks for joining me as I explored what it means to think of customers as human. Next time, I'll be exploring the supply chain and how, despite the vast technology involved, the closer you look the more you realize: the economy is people.