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In Episode 496 of the Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb open with a rich discussion on the theology of congregational singing — including the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, the Getty's Sing!, and why psalm-singing belongs at the heart of Christian worship. The main event, however, is the first installment of their study of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30). Tony and Jesse argue that this parable is widely misread as a lesson in personal productivity or spiritual gift deployment, when in fact its center of gravity is entirely eschatological and theological: the wicked servant's failure is not financial incompetence — it is a catastrophic misunderstanding of who the master is, and therefore, who he himself is as a servant of that master. Key Takeaways The parable is eschatological, not motivational. Situated in Matthew 25 as the second of three eschatological parables in the Olivet Discourse, the Parable of the Talents answers the disciples' question about the sign of Christ's coming — not a general lesson about using your abilities for God. "Talents" refers to an enormous monetary sum, not personal giftedness. A single talent represented roughly 20 years of a laborer's wages. Even the least-endowed servant received an immense, unearned gift — which makes the wicked servant's inaction all the more indefensible. The wicked servant's problem is theological, not financial. He doesn't bury the talent out of ignorance or fear alone — he actively mischaracterizes the master as exploitative and unjust. His failure is a failure of theology: he does not know who his master is. The commendation "Well done, good and faithful servant" is the basic reward of every believer, not a tiered prize for the most productive. The five-talent and two-talent servants receive identical commendations, suggesting the measure is proportional faithfulness, not absolute output. Faithful stewardship is active, not passive. Both faithful servants are marked by immediacy and energetic engagement. The parable does not explain how they doubled their talents because the mechanics are not the point — their disposition of active, risk-taking faithfulness is. The parable resists works-righteousness readings. Whether one is Augustine or an anonymous deathbed convert, every justified believer enters into the same joy of the master. The parable is not a theology of graduated heavenly rewards but a distinction between those who understand their master and those who do not. The talents represent the stewardship of the Gospel and the Kingdom itself. The master entrusting his servants with his property is a picture of Christ entrusting the church with the message of salvation — ownership remains with the master, the servants are stewards, not proprietors. Key Concepts The Wicked Servant's Problem Is Who He Thinks the Master Is The most common misreading of this parable locates the wicked servant's failure in laziness or timidity — he was simply too afraid to act. But Tony Arsenal argues compellingly that the servant's own words expose something far more serious. He says, "I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow." This is not a confession of fear; it is an accusation. The servant has constructed a theology of his master as an exploitative, unjust overseer who doesn't deserve a return. What he catastrophically misses is that the very possession of 20 years' worth of wages — an unearned, unimaginable gift — is the master sowing into him. His refusal to act is, at its root, a refusal to acknowledge the master's generosity and authority. This is the parable's most penetrating theological edge. "Well Done" Is for Every Believer, Not Just the Most Productive One of the episode's most pastorally significant observations is Tony's argument that the commendation "Well done, good and faithful servant — enter into the joy of your master" is not reserved for spiritual high-achievers. Because the five-talent and two-talent servants receive word-for-word identical commendations despite wildly different absolute returns, the logical entailment is that the one-talent servant, had he been faithful, would have received the same words. This means the commendation is not calibrated to productivity — it is the basic inheritance of every believer who enters glory. The soul-winner and the deathbed convert, Augustine and the unknown faithful, all hear the same welcome. The parable is therefore not teaching a graduated hierarchy of heavenly reward, but a binary distinction: those who know their master and act accordingly, and those who do not. The Parable Cannot Be Detached from Its Eschatological Context Jesse Schwamb is careful to anchor the parable in its literary and theological context: this is the second of three eschatological parables in Matthew 25, all part of the Olivet Discourse, all delivered in direct response to the disciples' question about the sign of Christ's return and the end of the age. Detaching the Parable of the Talents from that frame — and reading it instead as a general productivity principle or a theology of spiritual gifts — drains it of what Jesse calls its "gravity." The master going away and returning after a long time is a direct image of the ascended Christ and his parousia. The servants' task during the interval is not self-improvement or career stewardship — it is watchful, active discipleship in the time between the first and second comings. Everything in the parable, including the staggering sums of money, is calibrated to that eschatological frame. Memorable Quotes The real difference is that the former servants understood that their master had trusted them with a task and expected something of them, and the unfaithful, wicked, lazy servant had a total misunderstanding of who the master was — and therefore what his role as the master's servant was. That's the point of this parable. — Tony Arsenal Well done, good and faithful servant — that's not a special commendation that only the most amazing Christian servants get. That's the basic commendation that every Christian who enters into glory will receive. Whether you have been the most productive soul-winner in the world... you're going to receive the same commendation as the person who dies, and on their deathbed the last thing that they think is, 'I trust Jesus.' — Tony Arsenal God's measure of faithfulness is proportional, not absolute. The two-talent servant is not judged by the five-talent standard. He is judged by what he received. — Jesse Schwamb Full Transcript [00:00:08] Tony Arsenal: that's not a special commendation that only the most amazing Christian servants get, right? That's the basic commendation that every Christian who enters into glory will receive. Whether you have been the most productive soul-winner in the world, whether you are the most, you know, the most sanctified Christian who's ever lived, whether you are, the most amazing person and millions of people have come to faith because of your ministry, you're going to receive the same commendation as the person who dies, and on their deathbed the last thing that they think is, I trust Jesus." Right. And they've produced no converts, no ministry, and maybe no one even knows that they were justified, because in their final moments before the lights went out, they trusted in Jesus, right? They hear the same well done, good and faithful servant when they enter into glory. Welcome to episode 496 of the Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  And I'm Tony, and this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey, brother.  [00:01:19] Jesse Schwamb: Hey, brother.  [00:01:21] Parable Teaser [00:01:21] Jesse Schwamb: You know, the parables just keep coming for us, like we've said. And on this episode, to, just to tee it up, to whet everybody's appetites, we've got three servants, one absent master, an uncomfortable amount of money. What could go wrong? Yeah. As it turns out, quite a bit, especially if you're the kind of person who responds to divine generosity by finding the nearest shovel. So we're gonna get to all of that in this, what I call, this now sandwich of eschatological parables or teachings of Jesus in Matthew 25. So hopefully you're curious, hopefully you're stoked. But you can go put your thumb right in the scriptures there, because you're gonna meet us there very, very, very, very shortly. But first we got business. It's always the business we must do, the part of the podcast where we affirm with something or deny against something. And as always, I'm really curious what you have, and now I understand you have a list, or you're keeping a list. So- I do ... never again will there be something like that falls to the cutting room floor, brothers and sisters. Tony is always gonna have for us whatever was- ... what came to his brilliant mind as an affirmation or denial at any point, day or night.  [00:02:29] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. Do you, Jesse, do you ever have... I know the answer to this question is going to be yes- Yeah. That's good ... but I'm gonna ask it- All right ... mostly for rhetorical effect here. This is good podcasting.  [00:02:38] Psalm 67B Praise [00:02:38] Tony Arsenal: Do you have, do you have those situations where, like, the, the so- a song hits you, and it's just, like, the right combination of words, but also the right combination of, like, musicality?  [00:02:49] Jesse Schwamb: For sure.  [00:02:50] Tony Arsenal: Where it just, like, it just, it just feels- For sure like, right and good in every part of your being. So- All the time, yep ... I, I'm affirming, um, th- this is like the most Presbyterian thing ever. I'm affirming the, the arrangement in the Trinity, uh, psalter hymnal for Psalm 67B. Now, I'm not gonna try to sing it for you, but I wanna read the words, because obviously it's, it's a paraphrase of a psalm. So, like, that's the first thing. Like, people, like, calm down. Like, it's okay to sing paraphrases. It's okay to sing. No one is actually singing the Hebrew psalms. Right. Amen. So, like, just calm down a little bit. Amen. Uh, there is a place for us to dedicate specific focus to psalms and songs that are from the psalms, but that can be something like Better Is One Day. Like, that's a song from a psalm. Anyway, that's a whole different, that's a whole different thing. Yes, I'm affirming psalm singing. Uh, yes, I'm denying overly rigid understandings of what that is. But here's the words for Psalm 67, Setting B. That's important It's, "O God, show mercy to us and bless us with your grace and cause to shine upon us the brightness of your face, so that the whole world over may truly know your way and so that your salvation all nations see displayed. O God, let peoples praise you. Let all the peoples praise. Let nations come rejoicing and songs of gladness rise, raise." Then, um, stanza two, "For you will judge the peoples with perfect equity. To nations of the whole Earth a governor you'll be. O God, let the peoples praise you. Let all the peoples praise. The Earth has brought its bounty throughout its harvest days.  [00:04:24] Why Sing Psalms [00:04:24] Tony Arsenal: Since God our God will bless us, yes, God will blessing send, that all the Earth may fear Him to its remotest end." Now, there are lots of really great, uh, theologically sound, edifying hymns and worship choruses, but there's just something about the Psalms, right? It's inspired- Um- ... it's perfect. Again, like I said, nobody is singing the actual Hebrew Psalms, or even, I shouldn't say nobody, most people are not singing, like, the Psalms from the ESV, right? These are almost all paraphrases. They're, they're translations. But there's just something about the Psalms that I have grown so much to appreciate since joining a Presbyterian church. That's not to say other traditions don't sing Psalms in their own right, and again, like, we would sing Better Is One Day and other songs that were based on Psalms. Um, even, like, real direct translations or real direct versions of Psalms, like Better Is One Day or Create In Me A Clean Heart, there's all sorts of them. But there's just something about singing the Psalms, and this particular musical setting, it's triumphant, but not in the, like, fanfare kind of triumphant. Do you know what I mean, Jesse? Like- Mm-hmm ... it's, it's a triumphant melody, and it has, like, really interesting rises and falls and... So I, I'm gonna probably try to put this at the end of the episode. So listen. Hopefully I'll get the whole thing. Let me just, let me just do this. Hold on a second. It's just gorgeous. It's just beautiful. So I, I, I don't know what it was this morning. Uh, it's, I wasn't, like, promo- particularly emotional. It didn't, like, make me cry. Yeah. But all of that's fine. Like, I've been brought to tears in worship before, and that's, that's all good and well. There was just something about it that resonated, and I was like, "This is just good." Like, this is just good music. It's good singing. Something about hearing, uh, the whole congregation singing together. Like, it was just beautiful. It was just a beautiful moment. So if you are not in a psalm-singing church, first of all, why aren't you in a psalm-singing church? Uh, no worship leader on Earth, no, no person who is worth... Uh, when I say worship leader, I mean the person who's responsible for leading musical worship. No one who's leading worshipful music, worshipful? Worship music, if you approach them and say, "I would like to sing more songs that are based on the Psalms," if they say, "We don't wanna sing Psalms here," then you just go somewhere else. Like, someone who tells you, like, "We don't wanna s- we don't wanna sing God's Word," that doesn't make any sense to me.  [00:06:56] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:06:56] Tony Arsenal: Um, now again, like, there's a way to do it. Sometimes musically they're challenging, especially if you're singing out of something like the hymnal. But again, there are plenty of really good modern style songs and hymn style songs that are either based on the Psalms or are paraphrases, very similar to what you get in the, in the Trinity Psalter Hymnal. Or most, most people who are leading in musical worship are competent enough to just sort of take the sheet music and figure out how to do it on guitar or figure out how to play it on piano. Um, they're not that difficult. So you will be edified if you do this. Your church will be edified. There's probably a lot of people out there responsible for musical worship that actually would really like to do this, and they're kind of probably, like, just waiting for that nudge, so you may even be benefiting them. But yeah, this, this psalm is beautiful. It's just a gorgeous arrangement, and it's, it's perfect, inspired words. Really was a, just a, a balm to my soul this morning.  [00:07:51] Jesse Schwamb: I love it. And o- of course, a lot of that is still happening, which is such a glorious gift to the church. The couple of times that I've had the privilege of writing music for my own church has been right from the scriptures, and for me recently that was, like, Ephesians 1 and Psalm 16. And that's mainly because, like, as a lyricist, I'm not that creative, and I'd rather go direct to the source. And all those end up being a paraphrase, like you said, anyway. Es- especially if you wanna get turn of phrase or if you wanna have a little bit of rhyming, which is always a beautiful thing. I love the Psalter, and my, my hot take on that is I sometimes find that I like, I don't wanna call them, like, the alternate, but, like, the other secondary arrangements-  Yeah and  lyrics better. I don't know why. I don't think that's purposeful, of course. It's probably just my taste. But I always find them to be, like, super fire. I, I don't know why. The, the B and C versions always kinda grab me, especially if... And here's another thing that I appreciate about the Psalter, as you know, is sometimes those B or C versions will be written in an alternate key or a minor key. Yeah. And that's even more awesome, because there's not a lot of, let's say, like, cla- I don't wanna say classic. Classic slash contemporary, uh, Christian music or wors- quote-unquote worship music that's written in minor keys. But it's good to lament, as we've talked about before. So- Yeah ... you're gonna get that full breath and scope in the Psalter there. [00:09:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:09:07] Beyond Music Styles [00:09:07] Tony Arsenal: A- and, you know, maybe let me put in one more little plug here. Um- I am not one of those people that is gonna say that there's like a particular style of music that's more godly than another. I've heard people try to make arguments that there's like certain kinds of rhythms or certain kinds of like beats that are- Right either, either more godly or somehow demonic or less godly. Um, I think there might be an argument to be made that some styles of worship are not suited well for congregational singing, so they may not be appropriate for like a, a congregational worship service. Like, you're probably not gonna go in and do a lot of hip hop and have the congregation be able to like stick with you. Right. That doesn't mean that you can't worship God through that or that it somehow is less like intrinsically beautiful. But, um, there are a lot of Let me just put it this way. In modern contemporary Western Christianity, uh, there's a lot of songs that are basically just the same thing musically. You know, you'll find, um, if you go to, like, YouTube, and, and maybe, like, be careful, 'cause sometimes some of these are, they're funny but they're a little bit crass. But if you look up, like, a video about how, like, every song is Pachel Bell's Canon. Right. Right? Every song follows the same basic arrangement of chords, and this gets even more pronounced when you're talking about modern worship music or contemporary mu- worship music, because it's designed to be able to be very simple and very easily played. Um, a lot of times worship directors are not super classically trained. Um, you think of, like, the youth pastor with the guitar around the campfire. Like, those kinds of songs have to be easy, 'cause they're not, like, classically trained guitar players. They probably picked up a chord book and figured out how to play a couple easy songs like Jesus, Lover of My Soul and things like that. That's how I learned how to play guitar. That's the extent of my skills, so I'm not, I'm not banging on that person. Um, but there are a lot, there's a lot more to music. Um, there's a lot more to singing, and there's a lot more to choral music than, you know, GCDC kind of like worship courses. Uh, and singing something like the Psalter, or even just singing out of a good hymnal- Right will actually expand your musical horizons. And there's something to be said about the creativity of our God being reflected in the creativity of His people that I do think we miss out on when we are locked into really simplistic worship styles. Um, again, like, I interpret Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to mean, like, sing in the vernacular of the people. Um, and I, you know, that's a different episode. We can talk about that sometime. But th- that, that requires the songs to be singable, and I think sometimes, uh, sometimes some of the song- some of the Psalters, some of the songs in the Psalter hymnals, and sometimes hymnals in general, are very difficult to sing. And so I think a congregation, the people leading in music need to be thoughtful of that. But I think you would do well to, like, open your horizons a little bit to something a little bit more challenging and a little bit off the beaten path. Like, this melody, I don't know the chords behind it. It may not be anything crazy, but that, like, musicality and that, that sort of, like, melody is not a typical... And this might be why it resonated with me. It's not a typical kind of melody you're gonna find in contemporary music. Um, it's, it's very different. It's older. It's more classically styled. The, it's, it's meant to sort of bring you up to these crescendos in ways that modern music is not necessarily. So enough about that. I don't know a lot about music theory, so I might be totally wrong and, and- ... people might be rolling their eyes. But I, I do think that there's something to it. Like, a lot of the older hymns- utilize chord progressions and melodies and harmonies and things like that that we're just not used to. You're not gonna get that listening to, you know, even something like, like the more musical kind, uh, more technically proficient music like something like Bethel or Hillsong, which is at times musically very good. Uh, I don't know that I would recommend listening to it, but the music is actually, like, technically very good in some instances. Uh, even there you're not gonna find a lot of this stuff. So instead of going there for, like, really nice sounding musical worship, just go to something like the Trinity Psalter app. You know, for $10 on a- on your iPhone you can sing with it. Um, yeah, enough about that. I, I, I could talk about how great the Psalms are and how great psalm singing is for an entire episode. We should do that episode- We should ... when we're done with the parables, 'cause I know we've done a lot of episodes on, like, uh, on, on, like, the regulative principle and- Right I, I think we're still both in the same spot that, like- Right ... exclusive psalmody is probably not where we would land. Right. But I think I'm coming to the conviction that the psalms should have a much greater portion of our worship diet, uh- Hmm ... than they do in most churches. Um, and I really only came to that conviction when I was in a church where psalm singing was the norm. Uh, I know that we try to have at least one s- one canonical psalm for every single worship service. Usually there's multiple, but, um, even in a, a, a setting where we normally wouldn't be so focused on that, we still try to have at least one, and it's been a, a really huge edifying thing to my soul.  [00:14:06] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. I absolutely love that. You'll find no complaint from me on that. I think that that's a good reminder for all of us.  [00:14:13] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:14:14] Book Sing Recommendation [00:14:14] Tony Arsenal: Jesse, what do you have?  [00:14:15] Jesse Schwamb: Well, it's, we're not gonna stop this conversation, just so you know. Because we don't sync up on these things ever, but it just so happens that I'm affirming with a book that it's a really simple primer on congregational singing-  There you go that has  long been on my list and overdue to read, and I am coming in hot with a recommendation for this, and that is the book entitled Sing! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church by Keith and Kristyn Getty. And really, it covers so many of the things that you already talked about. I, I think at the foremost, it's a reminder that God cares whether in what we sing, but he does not mind how well we sing. Yes. But it is, like, the, this... What's true is that our voices might not be of a professional standard, but they are of a confessional standard. Yeah. And so it is incumbent upon every Christian to sing. And if you need just, like, a little bit of inspiration, so to speak, or a reminder of why that's important, I highly commend this book to you. In fact, in the back they have what's called, like, these bonus tracks. It's like four or five separate chapters that they've written just to particular people in the church, pastors, laypeople, musicians, even the people that help produce the sound. I found that bit to be so lovely and pastoral. It, it's gentle, the tone is encouraging, but it is also strong, and I appreciate that. So a lot of it is some of the themes that we've just talked about, but my conviction grows all the time of just how important congregational singing is, and how everything you just said, the music, the liturgy that we bring forward- has to be of a deliberate kind to strengthen that exercise, to make it easy, so to speak. And that does come into practical things like if you look at the psalter, and I, I don't... I have it on my phone, but I don't know where my phone is, so I was gonna look at the one you were referencing. My guess is it's, it's in probably a key with a couple of sharps in it, because those are the ones that are easiest to sing. So even little things like that matter. What you hear on the radio often is, or radio? People still listen to the radio? What you hear, like, in, like, contemporary music, like, often is not necessarily for congregational singing just in its key, and, and that's okay. And so even in my own church, we transpose things to make it reasonable and approachable. But what I think was, like, the critical question put forward in this book that I absolutely loved as a great reminder was: how did the congregation sing? It's very interesting that they kind of bring forward this thesis that that's how you should be judging your music. How did the congregation sing? And I think if we started asking that, it might slightly tweak or maybe change altogether, to your point, the methods and the practices that we use when we undergo worship by way or through music. So this is really great. It's easily readable, and it's for everybody, and it, there's a chapter on family worship as well, how to bring singing into your home and music into your home all the time as an act of worship so that when you get to the Lord's Day, your kids are like, "Yeah, this is our jam." Uh, especially maybe even recognizing some of the pieces of music and be excited about that. So there was a lot that made me think about here. It's fantastic. And to your point, Tony, I would say the Gettys, especially in, like, "Christ Alone," some of the other things, this is probably the closest to what you're talking about, where they've taken and imported kind of the classical hymn structures-  [00:17:26] Tony Arsenal: Yeah [00:17:27] Jesse Schwamb: but modernized a little bit just the language while without sacrificing any of the theological richness or the musicality that draws your ear to those beautiful rising and falling melodies, the swelling of the vocal there, without, like, distracting from anything that's going on there. It's not emotionalism- Yeah but it certainly is filled with the emotion of what it means to be a Christian and to sing in response as an act of praise to God.  [00:17:50] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:17:52] Family Worship Singing [00:17:52] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, I mean, I can't underscore enough the importance of congregational singing. We, we've, we've actually talked about, about it in context of, like, how important it is for the men of the congregation to sing, which is something I, I really appreciate about my congregation, is, is the m- the men just go all out. Like, people are, like- Love it ... nobody is, nobody is ashamed of the fact that they squawk on a note that they're not used to or anything like that. And where this really pays out, um, at least in our congregation, but I'd, I'd be willing to bet if you go to any congregation where the, where the men particularly are passionate and active in musical worship, right? Um, I think where this plays out is you see the children very quickly picking up those songs and learning them and singing them. And the, the favorite part of my day, this is gon- any parent of toddlers is gonna be like, "What are you talking about?" Bedtime is one of my favorite times of day, not just because it means that, like, in a little while I'm gonna get a little peace and quiet. Like, that's part of it, too, but there are two songs that we sing almost every single night, and Augie leads them, which is really great. He always wants to start, and he always wants to sing, and it's the Doxology and the Gloria Patri. And these are songs that he has just picked up from being in the congregation, and, you know, I, I don't remember consciously teaching him any of these songs. And now, now Adeline, who is, uh, my two-year-old daughter, almost two, she's starting to pick those songs up, and she's starting to sing them, and she recognizes them, and she responds very differently to those songs than she does to other songs. Um, it's funny because I don't, I don't know where she got this. Neither my wife nor I are particularly, uh, charismatic, emotive people. Like, we don't raise our hands when we're singing, but she, she does. She, she, when we start singing- My girl ... the Gloria Patri or the Doxology, her hand is in the air, and she's looking at the sky, and she's waving her hands around. Yeah. And, um, she recognizes that those songs have a different place than a Miss Rachel song. She doesn't put her hands in the air and wave and look up at the ceiling when Miss Rachel comes on or when Baby Shark comes on. She knows those songs. She can sing those songs. Um, but she doesn't- Respond to those in the same way. And that is a direct result of the fact that congregational singing is an important thing in the life of our church and in the life of our family. And I think a book like Sing, I haven't read it, but I've heard very good things about it, and the, the Gettys are rock solid, like- Right ... theologically. Yes. Musically. They're, they're well within our Reformed tradition, at least broadly speaking. Um, and, and they have a, they have one of the strongest sort of theologies of praise music that you're gonna find. Mm-hmm. It's not quite like a liturgiology or something like that, but it's, it's, it's a theology of praise worship, praise and worship music. Right. Um, and that's not something that's super common, right? There's a lot of theology of liturgy. There's a lot of practical theology on liturgy. Um, the Gettys have developed a really unique kind of place in things in that they've really developed this idea that congregational singing has a specific theological import, and they've developed it in a way that's approachable. So yeah, I haven't read it and I sh- I probably should, but it, it sounds like a really great book. And, um, I c- just can't underscore it enough. And- Maybe this is my little plug. Like, uh, family worship is really tough, and it's not something I've mastered. Like, we don't, we, we don't have a regular rhythm. But what we do have is we have a consistent, uh, we consistently pray at night before bed, and we consistently sing one or both of those songs. And that by itself, like, the kids are learning and they are, they're absorbing that by osmosis. Um, they're picking up the phrasing, right? Augie can tell you who the three persons of the Trinity are, and that's partially 'cause we do catechism questions, but it's also partially, and I would actually argue probably more, because of the Trinitarian structure of those two songs. Right. He's picked up the language of the Father, the Spirit, and the Son from the Gloria Patri and from the doxology in ways that probably I wouldn't have been able to teach him otherwise. So yeah. Anyway, I, I just co-opted your affirmation. But, um, but yeah. I'm here for it. Congregational worship, family worship, singing, uh, to our Lord is commanded, and it's commanded for our good- Right and for his, his benefit and his blessing. Um, and so any book that is, is solid and will help you do that, I, I'm wholeheartedly behind.  [00:22:17] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. This is... All that is fire. This is fire.  [00:22:19] Reclaim Congregational Song [00:22:19] Jesse Schwamb: God designed our psyche for singing, and we're probably, uh, I would say contractually obligated since Reformed is in the name of the title of the podcast- to remind ourselves and everybody else that one of the things the Reformation did was reclaim the singing of God's word by his own people. Yes. Taking it out of that performatory space back into literally the voice boxes of the people who are sitting in worship together. So sometimes we might have to do that again. You know, there is a little bit, I think, of... There, there is in some places, not everywhere, this kind of tilting of that time of worship through music to be vouchsafed or relegated to those who are, uh, let's say, like, the most, like, talented in doing that, and somehow we participate merely by observing or by- Yeah just, uh, you know, being an audience spectator of that, and that's totally backwards. So I get it. The thing is- We're all singers. We may not all be very good singers, but we're all created to be singers nonetheless. This is what the Bible tells us. So we need to lean into that. We need to invest in that. Yeah. And so I, I like, of course, what you're doing with, uh, your kids because you're not only teaching them to sing, and this makes me so happy, but you're teaching them to love singing to the Lord. Yeah. And so that is, I think, what a lot of our congregations miss, is sometimes we do it, and I'm among them often, but grudgingly. And so to get to a place where we come excited that our reasonable response, our reasonable preparation on the Lord's day is to sing together, to hear that gospel message in melody in the ear of our... You know, the voice of our neighbor in our own ear is a wild thing. It's just, like, un- unheard of. And it's like, uh, we gotta stop, right? It's one of those things also that, like- ... we've, we've talked about how it's just kind of otherworldly. Not, not only in the sense that it gives us this really kind of foundational sense of God's, you know, kind of transcendence, of what it means to participate in the worship of someone who is transcendent because it is all these voices together, but also this is something that rarely happens in any other way, especially in the Western culture anymore. This coming together to express and to participate in something where we're all reading literally from the same sheet music is just an entirely different experience, increasingly relegated to this kind of experience. So we, we must protect it, not only because God says that we ought to, but also because, again, it is, it is our reasonable response. Yeah. And it is something, like you've just said, that brings Him glory and is certainly for our good. So, uh, this is the Singcast, so everybody- ... everybody get to it. You can make your own music. God has commanded us to sing. So the sooner we just understand, like, hey, it's, it's... You know. Uh, but... And the last thing I'll say is this is one of those things that's, like, practice too. A- and I get it. Like, you may say, like, "Listen, I can only hit two notes, and that's all I'm gonna hit no matter what the music is." Well, then belt the two notes, and also know that, like, the more you practice that kind of thing, honestly, the better that you'll get and the more comfortable that you'll become. The voice is an instrument like any other instrument that takes, like, a little bit of practice and a little bit of work. But even that can cause, I think, great benefits and build a little bit of confidence. But just the example of singing and doing it from a heart that is keen to worship God and that is filled with passion to respond to Him with gratitude and, you know, adoration is really the key thing. And so I, I'd rather have a entire group full of worshipers that are singing off-key but, like, with just resounding passion than to have this performance of just a handful of voices because they feel like they're the most capable to do it. Yeah. I think we'd, we'd rather have everybody else, and to hear the congregation mixed as one of those instruments. So sing. Yeah.  [00:26:05] Everyone Can Sing [00:26:05] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and y- you and I have made the point in the past, too, like- I, I don't think, uh, maybe I'm wrong. Uh, we are a top 50 healthcare podcast, so maybe some doctor- I'm sure you're correct ... is gonna... Right. Like, I don't think being tone deaf is actually a physical condition. Like- Mm. I, I mean, I, I mean, obviously, like, some people have hearing problems, and that means they have trouble singing. I hear what you're saying. But, like, the people who are like, "Well, I j- I just can't sing. I'm just not capable of that," uh, like, I think the, the physical conditions that would make you incapable of singing are not usually what people are talking about. Like- Right. Yeah ... you know, some people have, like, vocal fold disorders or they have hearing problems, and I guess maybe, like, if perfect pitch is a thing, which it, it is. Like, perfect pitch is a... I don't know what causes it, but some people are born with perfect pitch. I suppose in theory that means some people must be born with, like, the opposite of perfect pitch. But I think most people who say, like, "Well, I just, I'm just tone deaf. I can't carry a tone," that, that's probably not true. Like, it just means you need practice. Um, and some people's voices, like physically, their bodies are more, more designed by God to produce a pleasant sound than other people. But I, I think actually just about anybody with a little bit of practice, and mostly I think this is probably just the confidence to actually sing and a little bit of practice to learn how your body works, like how your voice works, um, could probably get to a point where singing is not only very relatively comfortable and easy, but it's something that is pleasant and is not overly challenging. This is actually something that I think we've lost in the church. We should... This, I mean, this is about to come the episode, but, um- ... something we've lost in the church when we have sort of changed from a true genuine congregational singing model, which was the norm- And I've heard people make arguments about the importance of hymnals, and I, I agree with those arguments, although I know some people have moved them into almost like a realm of, like, divine mandate- Right that you have to use hymnals because it trains people to teach. But we have lost something with both the sort of commercialization of worship music and the pro- like making it a professional thing, and we've lost congregational singing. The, the people in the church throughout history have learned to sing. Many of them have learned to read, learned the scriptures, learned theology, not in the seminary and not in the monastery, but in the pew as they sing God's word and as they sing- Right ... the great theological hymns of, of the church. There's so much you can learn through that process that I just think we've lost. And I think going back to something like a hymnal or the Trinity Psalter Hymnal or whatever, whatever standard music your church is gonna use, and I mean standard music. Like, whether this is a collection of worship choruses that has been curated for the church or it's a published hymnal or something like that, going back to something like that teaches the church how to sing. And I don't remember who wrote it, but the trellis and the vine, like the worship that we sing, I know Mike Horton makes this point. The worship that we sing is the tre- is the trellis that the vine of our wor- of our- Yes ... faith grows on, right? That's true. Like, what the, what the church lex credendi, lex orandi. Like, the church, what the church prays, the church believes. What the church sings, the church believes. So all of that to say, like, the, the importance of congregational singing can't be under-emphasized, and it's... I, I mean, I don't know that I would I don't know that most theologists say technically s- like, congregational singing is an element of worship, but praising the Lord through song certainly is. Yes. It's, it's evidence. Um, and, and so I think that's definitely something that the church has lost in general. Um, and I know there are churches... I- it's funny, when Ashley and I were between churches, uh, very briefly after, um, our previous church closed down, um, we went to a local sort of, like, high, high, uh, production, seeker-sensitive church, very Steven Furtick-esque, and we only lasted, like, 10 minutes in this, in this service. We went in and the production value was great, and the music sounded great, but we couldn't hear ourselves, we couldn't sing- Right ... and it was very performative, and we just left. We were only there for a few minutes, and we left. And I think that's something we've lost as we've sort of migrated worship to almost, like, a professional class. So yeah, bring it back to the pews. Bring it back to your- Bring it back ... bring it back to your house, bring it back to your kid's bedroom when you're tucking them in. Everywhere. Bring it back to the car on the way to work, in the bus. Right. Like, just let's everywhere we go, let's sing and worship the Lord. [00:30:30] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's right.  [00:30:31] Train Your Voice [00:30:31] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, so as a final thing, let me compound your hot take and say that I agree with you, that I... And I think professionals would as well, and I'm gonna stand on a resource that I'm gonna recommend to everybody here in a second, that in fact the Getty say, "If you can speak, you can sing." And there are a f- a few conditions that would prevent you from doing that, of course. And even there, they wanna explore opportunities for you, for instance, signing, for instance, to ensure that you can participate in worship. Uh, the hot take is I do think that because the instrument that God has given us in the vocal cords is exactly that, that it can be trained, and that actually most people can sing. And if you're serious about that, if you think, "You know what? I'd like to be able to do that. How can I explore that?" Here's a book for you. It's called Set Your Voice Free by Roger Love. The full title is How to Get the Singing or Speaking Voice You Want. Roger Love is, like, this amazing behind-the-scenes vocal coach. He has coached, like, a ton of really talented recording artists, and this is his very contention in the book, is that everybody can sing. It's really about how much or little work you wanna put into it. And in fact, this book comes with, like, these exercises that you can listen to and then record yourself. And then he, from a distance basically, can give you some pointers based on allowing you to kinda evaluate what you hear in your own recording back. So if you really are the kind of person that's like, "Listen, I, I dare you. I cannot sing," I would challenge you, I would double dog dare you to get this book, Set Your Voice Free, and if you're really serious about wanting to try and see if it can make a difference, I, I think it can. And I've, I myself have enjoyed this book, gone back to it many times, use it in my own work and practice because I found it to be helpful. So there you go. Sing, sing, and sing again.  [00:32:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:32:07] Singing Apps and Practice [00:32:07] Tony Arsenal: And if you're not a reader, first of all, why are you listening to the podcast? But second of all, if for some reason you're not a reader I'm, I'm joking. I'm sure there are people that are listening to the podcast who are not readers. That was, like, a super smug thing to say. How dare you. I'm sorry about that. How dare you. Um, if for some reason you don't wanna read that book or you're not a reader, um, y- you can do something as simple as looking up Yousician on your Yousician, Y-O-U- Yeah ... S-I, like the word musician, but U instead of, like, Y-O-U instead of, uh, musician. Um, there are plenty of apps out there. I just, I mention Yousician just because I've used that on, like, a free trial basis with some guitar teaching, and it's a reputable source. They also have a vocal module. So, like, if you wanna learn to sing, there are plenty of resources out there who can help you train your voice. A- and it- Again, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a vocal coach, I'm not a professional singer. I'm not even that great of a singer, and I, I probably could be a better singer if I wanted to devote the time to it. Um, it doesn't take much to, to be able- Right ... to become a competent singer. Um, I think most of us, you pick up one s- just like I learned guitar, you pick one or two songs that you really like and you wanna learn, and you learn to sing those songs, and then those skills will develop over time. So enough about that, Jesse. We've got, speaking of talents- ... we've got some talents to talk about. There it is. Boom, bazinga. Baza-bazom. I'm  [00:33:27] Jesse Schwamb: back. There it is. Yeah, so- I was excited  [00:33:31] Tony Arsenal: about that one ...  [00:33:32] Jesse Schwamb: that, that was really good. And, and we should just h- honor everyone. That's it.  [00:33:37] Tony Arsenal: That's it. Tip your waiters and waitresses, folks. It  [00:33:39] Jesse Schwamb: was so good. We're here all week.  [00:33:41] Parable Context Setup [00:33:41] Jesse Schwamb: So we're in Matthew 25, uh, verses 14 through 28, and this is at least gonna be a two-parter for us. This goes by the name you might be familiar of, which is The Parable of the Talents. But before we get to it, just a quick reminder that we've been speaking about this parable, not like in a special way, but hopefully in the more contextual sense. So this is the second of three eschatological parables in Matthew 25. So the first was The 10 Virgins, which we went through. We're in The Talents, and then we're coming up to everybody's favorite, The Sheep and the Goats. All three are part of this Olivet Discourse, which is, of course, Jesus' final teaching block before his Passion. And I think it h- behooves us so that we do not get distracted from, like, the center of gravity of this thing, that this is delivered in response to the disciples' question about the sign of his coming and the age to come. Because I've heard so many, like, little talks, maybe homilies is more the right word, on this particular parable that lack gravity. So little gravity that basically NASA could train their astronauts in it. So we wanna stay away from that and I think get into, like, the, the proper context. So Tony, do you have it in front of you by any chance? And would  [00:34:50] Tony Arsenal: you- I do. I do, yeah. Yeah. Read it for us? I'll read it here.  [00:34:52] Reading the Parable [00:34:52] Tony Arsenal: So this is, uh, starting in, uh, Matthew 25 verse 14, and I'm gonna read down through, uh, the end of verse 30 here. So it, it reads here, "For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted them, entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward bringing five talents more, saying, 'Master, you delivered to me five talents. Here I have made five talents more.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.' And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, "Master, you delivered to me two talents. Here I have made two talents more." His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master." He also who had received one talent came forward, saying, "Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed. So I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours." But his master answered him, "You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him who gave it, who give it to him who has 10 talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. For, uh, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness in that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."  [00:36:56] Watchfulness and Stewardship [00:36:56] Jesse Schwamb: So it starts with that amazing connective, which we really spoke about in the last episode, in verse four- 14, starting with four. So it's tying, like we said, this parable directly to verse 13, which we know is in the, the parable of the ten virgins. But it's this idea of watchfulness. "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour." So th- I think this is the point we really drove last time, that we really felt highly convicted about, that this parable is not like a detached economic lesson, but it's really like an expedition, exposition, not expedition- ... of what watchful discipleship actually looks like during the interval of the master's absence. Like, that's the whole setup here. So it's starting with this idea of like the master goes away, but here we have these slaves or these servants who are entrusted. And to me, again, that's like such a linchpin in this whole thing, 'cause it's, it's carrying the sense that of course, like, he's handing over stewardship. It's a deposit held on another's behal- I love this parable because it has some banking language in it. It's, it's a deposit held on another's behalf, and that's like the key covenant concept of the entire thing. Ownership remains with the master. The servants are stewards. They're not proprietors. And that language, I think, really anticipates, like, the entire New Testament theology of stewardship, which is developed by Paul. So like when Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, "This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful." So like all of that, that's like just one verse for me. Like, that's an incredible setup.  [00:38:27] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:38:28] Common Misreadings [00:38:28] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and you know, I think it bears saying, too, um, I wanna be careful how I say this because I don't wanna impugn, uh, poor motives or anything like that on, on the, the people that I'm about to speak to. And I say this a little bit tongue in cheek, but also I say this as someone who used to be deeply involved in youth ministry. There's kind of like a, a youth ministry, um- international version of the Bible, I guess, if you wanna put it that way, where, like, there are certain, certain passages and parables that s- for some reason seem really prone to misapplication- Sure in, in some context. And I would say, like, youth ministry is the one I have in mind. Like, um, one of them is, like, in Matthew 18 where it's like, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." Like, that's a, that's a statement about God's, God's presence in the judgment of the church and excommunicating an un- like, a, an unrepentant, uh, person who identifies with Christ. And, and ironically here, maybe not ironically, but, like, casting them into the outer darkness of excommunication, which is representative of casting them out into the actual inner darkness of damnation. Right. Like, th- there's a, there's a misapplication of that, that like, well, you know, like, if only a couple people came to youth group tonight, like, it's still worth meeting because where two or three are gathered, there I am in the midst of them. Um, this, this parable has a very similar kind of misapplication that is maybe a, a little bit less of a misapplication. Like, I think there is something to say in this parable about the fact that God entrusts us with abilities, talents, treasure, t- our time. Like, He's entrusted us with resources, and He does expect us to use those resources, uh, in a way that is honoring to Him and beneficial for the, for the gospel and for the kingdom. Um, that's true in a broad sense, but I don't think actually that this is what that... But, like, that's not what this passage- Mm ... is teaching. Right. I think I, I kinda joked last time, but, like, I've heard more than one sermon that draws the parallel between the word talent here and our talents in terms of, like, our spiritual gifts or our ability to play guitar or, like, to bounce a basketball and, like, thr- like, throw a free throw. Like, that's not the kinda talent we're talking about here. So I wanna, I wanna sorta, like, point that out just to sort of exclude that from the conversation. Yes, God gifts His people, and He expects His people to use those gifts for His glory and for their own benefit. Um, but that's not what this parable is talking about. This is a parable about the fact that God has entrusted the kingdom of heaven on Earth to His people.  [00:41:08] Jesse Schwamb: That's right.  [00:41:08] Tony Arsenal: And He expects His people to make use of that in a way that expands the kingdom and also in a way that does not... And this is, this is, I actually think, the main point of the parable. In a way that properly understands the nature of the king. The, the punchline or the main point of the parable here, it, just to sort of, like, I don't know, give away the ending or, like, unbury the lead, I don't know, whatever that is. The point of this parable- It's not that, like, it's a really good thing to double what God has resourced you with. The point of the parable, the reason that, just like the, um, just like it wasn't the virgins falling asleep in the last parable that was the problem because everybody fell asleep, in this instance, uh, the amount of money or the amount of return on investment that the servants produce is not the point of the parable. That's not the real difference between them. The real difference is that the former servants understood that their master had trusted them with a task and expected something of them, and the, the unfaithful, wicked, lazy servant had a total misunderstanding of who the master was- Right ... and therefore what his role as the master's servant was. That's the point of this parable, and I think, this is the last thing I'll say before I, I, I take a breath here. There's a lot of people that would look at this parable and might read some sort of works righteousness or, um, and this is more understandable and I think has a place within the Reformed tradition, although I don't necessarily hold this view. But would look at this as sort of like a theology which would, would argue that we receive some sort of enhanced rewards in heaven based on our faithfulness. There's plenty of good, faithful Reformed Bible teachers that would hold that position. I actually think whether or not that's true, this is still also not what this passage is getting at. [00:43:00] Jesse Schwamb: I, I totally agree with you there.  [00:43:02] Talents as Huge Wealth [00:43:02] Jesse Schwamb: I, I think one of the reasons that we know that is because we can look at some of these details and let the details speak to us about the magnitude in their representation, why they're given. So of course, whenever the scripture gives us detail, especially in a context like a parable, it can be helpful of cour- of course not to overanalyze them, but to respect their place in the context of the story, and that's why verse 15 I think is so important. So to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability, then he went away. Now, this, this varies slightly, but there's a lot of, I think, very common historicity here that points us to understanding, like, the talents as a unit of monetary weight, and there is some discrepancy about its exact weight. But what we can say for sure is this: that we're talking about, as I teased at the beginning, a huge sum of money. So in other words, like, this is a gift from God himself. It's a divine gift. Yeah. It's something that's not earned. It's something that's given and something that's entrusted. So in the first-century Roman world, a talent was roughly equivalent to, like, 6,000 denarii, depending on who you talk to, which would mean that a single talent represented approximately, like, 20 years on average of a laborer's wages. So the sums then here we're talking about are staggering even at the lowest one. So the five-talent servant is receiving essentially approximately equivalent of a century's wages, and the one-talent servant is receiving 20 years' worth. There's no such thing as a small gift in Christ's economy, I think is the point here, and even the least endowment is immense beyond our reckoning. Yeah. So the distribution also is deliberately unequal. It's five, one, two, and the text doesn't offer any apology for this inequality. The master distributes to each according to his ability, which as I say that, I realize that could probably be its own episode, that we could talk about what that even means. Yeah. But he is matching and entrusting to capacity, and that's not arbitrary. Of course, that's wise and personal, and even the Greek here for this idea of capacity or power suggests the master knows his servants intimately and calibrates the stewardship accordingly. But nonetheless, it proves the point you're making here, which is not just about, like, well, do you have some kind of innate ability that's above average that God has endowed you with here? That's not even what we're talking about. Again, the whole point of this is to answer the question eschatologically about what the end means and when the time is coming and what good discipleship looks like. And so in that way, we understand then these talents to be these divinely appointed and massively generous gifts of God, essentially, like you said, the stewarding of the gospel in the story of salvation itself unto his people, and then to make something of that, so to speak, by the power of the Holy Spirit that earns a return for the kingdom, that is all empowered by God, that is under the volition of the person, uh, the Christian who says, "As a disciple, it is my responsibility to steward these gifts." That is really what we're after. So we do kind of get in this place where when you take this and say, "Well, what are you doing with," let's say- your home, if you have a nice home, are you being hospitable enough? If you have, let's say, a good singing voice by talent, are you using that to make sure that you're on the, quote-unquote, "praise and worship team," is not, like, entirely wrong, but it's not right either- Yeah to use this passage- Yeah ... for that purpose. There's a bigger theme here. There is, there's a much stronger and widescale framework that God is drawing us to and examine, and it's about the stewardship of the church itself.  [00:46:30] Tony Arsenal: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  [00:46:31] The Foolish Servant Exposed [00:46:31] Tony Arsenal: That's really key, and this is what struck me as, as you were speaking about that, is like we see in so many of the kinda like, uh, like the chump in the parable. Like, there's- Yeah ... a lot of these parables have like a chump- Right ... where like you're looking at and you're like, nothing about what you've decided to do makes any sense. We're talking about people who've been given, in the first case, 100 years worth of, worth of wages. Right. Right? Any one of these people, and again, we're talking about a timeframe where, like, you could just take that money and run and, like, nobody's gonna find you. There's no digital trail on any of this, right? If I stole, if I stole 100 years worth of labor from my manager or from my, my employer, they would find me, right? That's not the situation we're talking about. So even the chump who decided, "I'm not gonna do anything with this," he could've just take- taken off with the money and had 20 years worth of labor. Right. Just 20 years worth of wages. Right. This is a, this is a sum of money that makes all f- all three of these servants unimaginably wealthy instantly, right? The point of this is, in part, that the final servant has no idea the amazing blessing and responsibility that he's been given. And again, I come back to this. It's not because he is dumb or because he is, um, somehow less competent in a strict sense, right? It, it's so funny to me, like, we also gloss over the fact that, like, the guy who has five talents, he's got 100 years worth of money, 100 years worth of wages. Right. And he just goes and gets 100 more. Like- Right he just goes and trades and- Right ... comes up with 100 years worth of wages that he brings back. Like, that's, in itself is, like, phenomenally, amazingly outrageous. We ran into this too with the, um, the parable of the unmerciful servant, right? We've, we've got one guy who's got this unimaginable debt, like, like, thousands of years worth of, uh, worth of wages that he could never make up, and he thinks he's gonna somehow come up with it if you just give him enough time. It's kind of like the opposite here. This guy's got this unimaginable amount of instant wealth, and he just buries it in the ground. First of all, how much... We're also talking about an era where money was a physical, entirely physical.  [00:48:53] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:48:53] Tony Arsenal: There were no, there were no digital banks. Like- No zeros and ones most of our money exists as ones and zeros in a computer program right now. Right. Like, in reality, like- Right ... my money doesn't exist. We don't have, like, a physical gold standard anymore in America. Jesse could probably s- I'm probably making dumb things up right now. No, that's that's- Like, it used- Right on to be that, like, every dollar that the United States government printed had, like, a piece of gold sitting at Fort Knox- Yes ... uh, like backing it up, but we just don't have that anymore. Most of the money that exists in our system is entirely imaginary. It's an entirely, like, made-up digital currency way before, like, Bitcoin was a thing. That's not the case in this timeframe. This dude who buried 20 years worth of money in the ground, that's a significant amount of labor in and of itself- Right ... to even be able to do that. So we're not talking about, like... And I think this is the thing we miss when we, when we read the word talents, and one, when we obscure it and we, like, we misappropriate the word talent to mean, like, abilities, 'cause it, that's a convenient, like, illustration tool. We're talking about a huge sum of probably gold or silver that this dude just buries in the ground, and then, like, digs it up when the master comes back.  [00:50:01] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:50:01] Tony Arsenal: And I think, like- When we don't realize how much money this is, we miss the force of the master's like, "You stupid, dumb, wicked, slothful servant." Like, if you had even taken this money to the bank and done the least imaginable- Yes ... effort. Exactly. Like, if you had done anything at all, like how mu- how difficult, granted more difficult back in this age than it is now, but like if you had even done something as simple requiring as little labor as possible and just brought this to the bank and let them collect interest on it, we'd still be talking about a huge return. [00:50:35] Jesse Schwamb: That's right.  [00:50:36] Tony Arsenal: And he doesn't even do that, and that's, that's the point. There's the people who do, and they gloss over this. The parable totally glosses over the amazing effort and work that it must have taken to take 100 years worth of la- of wages and turn it into 200 years worth of wages. Right. Or to take 40 years worth of wages and turn it into 80 years worth of wages. That's an amazing, probably almost miraculous return on, on investment. Whatever they did is amazing, and the parable's like, "Yeah, they did that." They just took it to the traders and they brought back five more talents. Like, it's nothing. And then this idiot, and I say idiot in like the most like, like exegetically sound, idios, like, like foolish idiot person. [00:51:20] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:51:20] Tony Arsenal: This idiot just buries it in the ground and doesn't even bother to bring it to the bank where he's gonna get some return on it. This is the picture of the fool who does not make use of the means of salvation. This is the picture of the fool who refuses to receive Christ as savior, who refuses to make use of the benefit and blessing of salvation that is available to all who will trust in Christ and turn to him. This is the same picture as the idiot virgins who didn't buy enough oil and just fell asleep when they knew that the bridegroom was coming, right? Right. It's not that they fell asleep, it's that they didn't do the most obvious, simple,

5/27/26 Mike and returning cohost, Legendary Bassist Leland Sklar welcomed 13 year old bassist Ellen Alaverdyan to ConversationsRadio Ep.219. Originally from Los Angeles, Ellen was born to Armenian parents and now lives with her family in Las Vegas, Nevada. A lifelong lover of music, Ellen discovered the bass at 8-years-old Soon after watching Australian bassist Tal Wilkenfeld on TV, she felt inspired. At first, she thought the bass was a guitar but tried it out and fell in love. with it almost instantly. Initially, her father Hovak – an accomplished musician and producer taught her some bass basics but, Ellen began honing her skills with Yousician and watching YouTube. For the most part, Ellen is learning on her own while Hovak is always there for help and guidance. But basically, Ellen is self-taught.  Having attended the annual NAAM show, Ellen's had the opportunity to talk shop with fellow bassists Tal Wilkenfeld, Leland Sklar, Victor Wooten, Marcus Miller and others. Ellen is making a name for herself and getting noticed for her impressive music skills. Her respect for her craft is obvious! Ellen's videos have reached millions with over 700,000 YouTube subcribers. Her music videos reflects her eclectic taste. She often chooses songs that resonate with her personally, occasionally drawn by a compelling bass line. Early on, Ellen appeared on Steve Harvey's show, and has played at a Golden State Warriors game. A huge moment for Ellen was meeting guitar legend Steve Vai. Vai's guitar tech introduced Ellen's videos to him and she soon found herself on stage performing with him in Vegas. Victor Wooten stands out as Ellen's primary musical inspiration. “He was there my whole life,” she shares. Ellen also considers her dad a significant influence. Despite being a huge fan of The Beatles, Ellen believes inspiration can be found everywhere: “Anything you discover can inspire you and make you want to play.” Her new bass project is Jaminai! The bands first album 'Take Off' is set to release 6/1/26! Check out EllenPlaysBass.com for details. You can can find Ellen's videos on YouTube  You can follow Ellen Alaverdyan on Instagram @ellenplaysbass Enjoy the Podcast!          

On the podcast: about the cost of not tracking your experiments and decisions, how refunds and chargebacks quietly erase your paywall wins, and why stacking A/B test wins should compound your growth, but almost never does.This conversation is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps report. Each episode in this series will explore one crucial topic and share actionable insights from top subscription app operators.Top Takeaways:

Hadley Spanier's career in the music industry spans interning at Sony Music to heading up Brand Marketing and Artist Relations at Yousician. So yeah, she's seen it all. And get this - her love for marketing started way back in middle school when she was geeking out over Gap's ad campaigns. Hadley was made for this. In this epsiode, David Jaffin and Hadley Spanier have a chat that is equal parts enlightening and entertaining. They dive into the nitty-gritty of the music business, from working with legends like Tony Bennett to partnering with icons like Metallica. But don't worry, this isn't some sugar-coated PR spiel. Hadley's not afraid to pull back the curtain on the less glamorous side of the industry. Here are some of the key topics covered: - The Human Side of the Music Industry - The Power of Relationship-Driven Marketing - Tech Meets Tradition: The Yousician Revolution - Creating Super Fans Through Interactive Experiences - Navigating Cultural Differences in Global Marketing

TOPICS: The benefits of getting into podcasting, even without a big audience; copyright holders are suing NBA teams for using music in social media videos; we interview Hadley Spanier, the global head of Global Head of Artist Partnerships and Industry Relations for the music education platform Yousician.Find out more about our guest's work by visiting yousician.com.Rate/review/subscribe to the Break the Business Podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play. Follow Ryan @ryankair and the Break the Business Podcast @thebtbpodcast. Like Break the Business on Facebook and tell a friend about the show. Visit www.ryankairalla.com to find out more about Ryan's entertainment, education, and business projects.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's workplace is one where change is the norm. Learning is critical in this environment, but supporting learning isn't just about creating content.  In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, JD Dillon joins Ross Dickie and Ross Garner to discuss his book, The Modern Learning Ecosystem. We cover:  Why JD's book includes ‘learning' in its title, even though it's not really about learning;  The role of influence, and what L&D can do to earn it;  The six key tasks of L&D, and how to build a modern learning ecosystem.  To find out more about The Modern Learning Ecosystem, head to jdwroteabook.com.  In ‘What I Learned This Week', Ross G referenced ‘The Long Goodbye to Saturn's Ring', published in The Atlantic.  JD mentioned the Space 220 restaurant at Disney World, and talked about how he is using Yousician to learn guitar.  For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit  mindtools.com/business/ There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.    Connect with our speakers     If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:  Ross Garner  Ross Dickie  JD Dillon 

In this week's episode, I explore whether Yousician is the best way to learn guitar. Yousician is a Finnish interactive and educational music service that offers instant feedback to users as they play their instruments. With a gamified interface, the app offers courses, songs, and challenges to supplement their main learning pathway. Sounds good but is it the best way to learn guitar as Yousician claims?

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://thecitylife.org/2022/11/08/amazon-and-leading-music-education-platform-yousician-collaborate-to-create-the-ultimate-bundle-for-beginner-musicians/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/citylifeorg/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/citylifeorg/support

In this episode I talk to Joona Hasan from Yousician about the latest Metallica course available on Yousician. He lets us know what was involved in developing the course and interviewing the guys from Metallica. Download the app here.   If you are enjoying the podcasts and would like to donate to the show where you will receive a thank you on the podcast please click the donate now button. Every little donation helps with keeping the podcast going to bring you great guests and interviews. DONATE NOW   If you are interested in hearing my playing click Roach & Weyden   Thank you to my sponsors: Arnaud Krakowka Custom guitar picks Yousician   https://becomeaguitaristtoday.podbean.com

G'mornin! Hope everyone is keeping it together; not an easy task these days.This week the buds keep it simple (with Dave out of town) and plenty of new gear to discuss: Fender going All-Hog with their new Acoustasonics, Jack White's Fender Custom Shop gear, a unique new fuzz from Anasounds, Palmer jumping into the pedalboard game, and digging deep into the Dirtywave M8.Also discussed: moving pianos, crummy Craigslisters, more Yousician news, Teenage Engineering's Pixel app, Waves moving to V14, Tears for FearsShout, shout, let it all out.

Hello buddies - wanna talk about some fresh gear?Good thing that, because this week we've got all sorts of new and ole gear, big numbers for big boys, and rim bims on a Bass VI.Also discussed: Metallica partnering with Yousician, PayPal offering payment plans, JT selling his song catalog to Hipgnosis, Big Star, Reverb My Collection with Classick Studio, Vertex debuting their first amplifier, Gibson Lizzy Hale Signature guitar, the Moog Mavis synth, EHX Synth9 strings pedal, Ciari travel guitars, and Eminent Technology debuting the Model Twenty flat cabinet.They were just literally ghouls!

In this episode I talk to guitarist/vocalist Jacob Deraps from the band “Deraps” about their new album that is coming out on Friday 17th June. Jacob breaks down some of the songs and talks about some of his influences plus lots more. Deraps website   If you are enjoying the podcasts and would like to donate to the show where you will receive a thank you on the podcast please click the donate now button. Every little donation helps with keeping the podcast going to bring you great guests and interviews. DONATE NOW   If you are interested in hearing my playing click Roach & Weyden   Thank you to my sponsors: Arnaud Krakowka Custom guitar picks Yousician Get 30% off Yousician by entering the code bagt30 at the checkout. To download my online guitar course and all other contacts visit my website:  https://becomeaguitaristtoday.com

In this episode I talk to Martin Sweet and Peter London from the band “Crashdiet” about their new album “Automaton”. We discuss the recording process, writing songs, influences plus lots more. Crashdiet Website "Together Whatever" video Interview on Youtube   If you are enjoying the podcasts and would like to donate to the show where you will receive a thank you on the podcast, Yousician discounts plus more, please click the donate now button. Every little donation helps with keeping the podcast going to bring you great guests and interviews. DONATE NOW   If you are interested in hearing my album Roach & Weyden   Thank you to my sponsors: Arnaud Krakowka Custom guitar picks Yousician   To download my online guitar course and all other contacts visit my website:  https://becomeaguitaristtoday.com

Seguí las recomendaciones tech de Juli Schulkin en Punto Caramelo: descargá Yousician, borrá ICQ New. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/urbanaplayfm/message

First there was the neighbourhood music teacher. Then along came instructional videos on YouTube. Now Helsinki-based Yousician dominates music education with more than 20 million users tapping the service each month to learn and play music. In this episode we learn about Yousician, the world's largest music education platform. Yousician turns learning into a game (sort of like Guitar Hero, but with real instruments) offering gamified music education for guitar, bass, ukulele, piano and voice. Recently they've started to roll out ‘Spotlight courses with renowned artists like Jason Mraz and Metallica, and a collaboration with language-learning app Duolingo and GRAMMY-winning Colombian singer-songwriter, Juannes. Taking us through Yousician is Hadley Spanier. Hadley is Yousician's Global Head of Brand Marketing and Artist Relations, where she oversees the New York City office which is focused on brand marketing. Hadley was previously the Head of Marketing at Verve Label Group (Universal Music Group) where she oversaw campaigns for artists including Diana Krall, Andrea Bocelli, John Coltrane, Tori Amos and her campaigns there resulted in multiple #1 debuts, Clio and Grammy Awards. Find Yousician at yousician.com and follow Hadley on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hadleyspanier/. ... Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/ Learn more: beatseeker.fm Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com

Today's episode features Jennifer Bonita. In Jenn's new role at Yousician she fulfills her passion of connecting artists with their fans. Coming over from the label side, Jenn has worked with all sorts of artists including pop, comedy, k-pop and more… strategizing new releases, distribution, and marketing. Listen in as she shares what it's like to climb the ranks at major labels including Universal, Concord, and the Orchard. If you're looking to tips on how to grow your own career as an artist, or just looking to break in on the business end, this episode is one you don't want to miss!

Today's episode features Jennifer Bonita. In Jenn's new role at Yousician she fulfils her passion of connecting artists with their fans. Coming over from the label side, Jenn has worked with all sorts of artists including pop, comedy, k-pop and more… strategizing new releases, distribution, and marketing. Listen in as she shares what it's like to climb the ranks at major labels including Universal, Concord, and the Orchard. If you're looking to tips on how to grow your own career as an artist, or just looking to break in on the business end, this episode is one you don't want to miss!

Today's episode features Jennifer Bonita. In Jenn's new role at Yousician she fulfils her passion of connecting artists with their fans. Coming over from the label side, Jenn has worked with all sorts of artists including pop, comedy, k-pop and more… strategizing new releases, distribution, and marketing. Listen in as she shares what it's like to climb the ranks at major labels including Universal, Concord, and the Orchard. If you're looking to tips on how to grow your own career as an artist, or just looking to break in on the business end, this episode is one you don't want to miss!

Employee well-being in growth companies is the topic of this Auntie Talks Podcast with Yousician's HR Director Tiina Hahtovirta who is talking with Auntie's Head of Growth Johanna Varje. In growth companies the work environment is energetic, fast and even hectic, constantly changing, filled with learning, growth and development opportunities. There is passion and a strong feeling of belonging also. What kind of well-being challenges are there when things move at a fast pace? How to make sure remote workers are ergonomically as well as mentally safe? Yousician came up with a home office set-up to address the first, and for the latter the openness about mental well-being matters is very important. What happened to the community and culture during the pandemic? Listen to Tiina's tips for employee well-being in growth companies.

Johanna Varje has Yousicians Tiina Hahtovirta, HR Director as her guest. Yousician is the world leading music learning platform, with 20 million users worldwide. Yousicians 130 employees were located in studios in Helsinki and New York but the pandemic changed all that, and now Yousicians 28 nationalities work fully remotely around the world. Leading well-being remotely has become a key topic. Work practicalities had to be made safe for the whole team. Excellent leadership is their goal and training was conducted for the managers. How to have 1-2-1 discussions, how to support the employees? What are the signs a team leader can pick up if someone is not feeling well mentally? Listen to Tiina Hahtovirta's tips on leading well-being remotely.

"Sometimes you get energy just from putting yourself in the environment where there's inspiration." - Leah HarrisIn the season FINALE, episode number 7, we chat with my dear friend, the fabulous soul singer-songwriter Leah Harris. Leah grew up in Canada but with a view of Detroit- whose musical legacy influenced her in a major way. She's been a professional musician since she was 15 and has since toured all over the world. But she's not only a musician she also helped develop the  world's most popular piano learning app - Yousician.  She's a multi-talented, multi-passionate person whose heart beats softly, like a Ray Charles song. I'm so excited to share our conversation with you today!She gets super real with us in this episode and we talk about SO much, including:✨How our souls can easily & slowly drown in the day-to-day and what to do about it.✨How covid helped her restructure priorities. ✨How to build a sustainable life as an artist. ✨How authenticity will probably be a bit isolating, if only at first. ✨The immense power of simply showing up. ✨How no action is neutral. ✨How habits and identity are kinda the same thing. ✨How to not abandon yourself.And SO MUCH more! This episode will inspire your socks off!Quotes & Resources Mentioned✨“Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt” - African proverb✨“There's no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you” - Maya Angelou✨“Unused creativity is not benign and doesn't just disappear. It lives within us until it's expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.” - Brene Brown✨“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” - Mahatma Gandhi✨Atomic Habits by James ClearWe would both love to hear from you!Leah's Links:InstagramLeah's dog Luka's InstagramSpotifyWebsiteGet in touch with me!WebsiteSpotifyInstagramSupport the show (http://www.paypal.me/hannafrancis)

Music That Listens. Wait... what? I know. How does THAT work? Well in this interview with composer and technologist Aaron Labbé, co-founder of LUCID Technologies, Aaron describes his company's amazing technology that actually listens to "where you're at" emotionally, and curates custom musical experiences based on where you want to go emotionally.  Interactive technology using our phones is something I wrote about in THIS BLOG POST. I've also reviewed the music lesson platform Yousician that listens to your playing and scores how well you're learning the material, and that blew my mind when I first encountered it. Aaron's app, called Vibe, blew me away in a similar way.  What makes this technology more powerful than just a playlist, is that you give the app realtime feedback on how you are feeling, and the music changes (or doesn't) based on how you are feeling in the moment, so as you start to feel 'better' the music moves in the direction of your mood to further support the change in emotion. It's what a music therapist does in real time, but through an app. I've honestly never seen anything like it. I'm also excited to announce that this is the first episode we are posting on my youtube channel as well, because Aaron's technology needs to be seen as well as heard, it's that cool. My apologies along the way if while you're simply listening to the audio version of this interview you feel a little left out of the conversation… I was geeking out in screen share mode showing off some cool videos and visuals and I forgot in that moment how to describe what I was seeing to YOU my dear podcast listener.  So, head over to my YouTube Channel to see what all the fuss is about in the video. And I'll tell you what, I'll hook you up for doing so. If you head over to the channel, like and subscribe, and tell me the name of the band poster behind Aaron in the interview, I'll send you a copy of my ebook, Sonic Recovery: Harness the Power of Music to Stay Sober for free, and I'll pick three of you and send you a signed paperback version of the book as well! You can just email your answer to the easter egg to office@timringgold.com. To learn more about Aaron, Vibe, and Lucid, check them out at www.thelucidproject.ca Sponsors: www.McConnellMTS.com www.DrNeecie.com

What a great conversation with Tom Allen, the founder of AI Journal. We cover a lot of ground. Tom discusses artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and the metaverse, blockchain, and so much more. We spend a lot of time on the mindset that helps people find opportunities *now* for success in the future by being able to capitalize on all of these new innovations. Connect with Tom Allen and the AI Journal: Email: tom.allen@aijourn.com Instagram: thallen LinkedIn: Tom Allen Twitter - TheAIJournal1 Apps for learning to play music: Fender Play: https://www.fender.com/play Yousician: https://yousician.com/ AlphaGo - The Movie: https://youtu.be/WXuK6gekU1Y Links to Free (and inexpensive) online courses so you can take part in the future: EdX: https://www.edx.org/ Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/ Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/ Udacity: https://www.udacity.com/ Skillshare: https://www.skillshare.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/digital-skills-programs Google: https://grow.google/certificates Unity: https://learn.unity.com/courses Pluralsight: https://www.pluralsight.com/ Unreal Engine: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses Book: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson: https://amzn.to/3wHneP9 Book: Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil: https://amzn.to/2R4UYab

Au programme :Résultats financiers : les trucs pas chiantsNos jeux du moment : Game Pass, Yousician, R-Type Final 2Dates et annonces : Lost Judgement, Burning Crusade, New WorldNews de l’industrie : Stadia, Fortnite, ruptures PS5Du côté de la VR : PSVR 2, HTC Vive Pro 2 et Focus 3Et le reste…Liens :😎 Soutenir l’émission sur patreon.com/RDVJeux !📰 S’inscrire à la newsletter de Patrick.Rejoignez-nous sur Discord.La chaine gaming sur YouTube et ma dernière vidéoCommentaires et plus sur frenchspin.fr (page de l'épisode).Infos :Animé par Patrick Beja (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook).Co-animé par Maïté “Eskarina” (Twitter).Co-animé par Christophe Camicas (Twitter). Musique libre de droit par Musicincloud.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What's the science behind apps like Duolingo and Yousician? Gamification! And what happens when you apply this science to ... scientific discoveries? Join Dodi and Conor and their guests, Zoran Popovic, University of Washington and Helen Spiers, Zooniverse. Reading material: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/protein-puzzle-game-called-foldit-turns-99-promising-ways-confound-coronavirus/ https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1412171/1/p79-eveleigh.pdf https://dragonbox.com/about/algebra-challenge https://stemforall2020.videohall.com/presentations/1810

In this episode I talk to Rick Chapple from the band “Devil Sold His Soul” about their new album “Loss” which is out April 9th 2021. Rick gives us a great insight to the album and his influences.   Check out their YouTube Links: Burdened Beyond Reach The Narcissist   To preorder the album click  here   Thank you to my sponsors: Shredd Guitar Worx - Ernieball  - Yousician - Custom guitar picks   To download my online guitar course and all other contacts visit my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.com

Penelope Restaurant is located right below one of the startup centers of Helsinki, Epicenter. Penelope is a great escape from the daily grind to a world that is warm and welcoming, like the Tapas places you've come to love in Spain. Together with me sharing the plates in Penelope for this episode is Udo Szabo, a multi-talent t-shaped persona with startup and corporate war stories under his belt. Today (post-Apple) Udo is running the product management in Yousician, the world-famous guitar tuning / learning game app maker. Udo and I go at length at what makes Apple the most amazing company, and what is required to make great products. Even if you are not into nerding, you might get kicks out of the conversation that we share over beers and medium-sized plates.  This restaurant works so that you can choose between small (one or two bites), medium (about twice as large) and large plates (kinda the size of a main course normally). All the food we had was amazing, but to tell you the truth, the conversation got me lost of all we had. At least we did Boccarons, Scallops and something great. My favourite of the dishes probably was the sweet and salty caramel goodness served as dessert. Penelope is located on the Top 50 restaurants list position number 40, but I did like it more than that. Would I want to go back here? Absolutely. Do I understand why this place has such a low rating in TableOnline? I don't. This place is highly recommended for a good relaxed meal out with a friend, posse or your colleagues.  

Speial is back after missing a couple of shows from being sick. Stoners are vectors. Yousician is cool. Bernie Sanders' recent experiences with Elizabeth Warren and Joe Rogan are telling and stupid.

Special talks about keeping it together for the new year, and his New Years Party. Also, he talks about his adventures with Yousician. ***** Thanks for listening to the Nonsense Password podcast which is available at the podcatcher of your choice: Podbean, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, PlayerFM, ACast, Castbox, Himalaya, Radio Public, Castback, Luminary, and others.    The weekly show is released at 12:01 AM on Sundays and it's pretty random with anything from comedy clips, other clips, ranting, politics, movies, and whatever. There are also special releases of waveplays AKA audiodramas, radioplays, audiofictions, audiononfictions, and other things, including the experimental stuff which may be impossible to explain.    If you enjoyed the show, please like, rate, share, subscribe, or whatever it is you do to spread the word. Despite his best, and continuing, efforts, Special Character is terrible at advertising and desperately needs your help.   Nonsense Password merchandise and other designs by Special Character are available at RedBubble, in the Nonsense-PW store, and at TeeSpring, in the Nonsense Password store.   There is also Nonsense Password YouTube, Facebook page, Instagram, and now even a Soundcloud.   The official website is nonsensepassword.com and you can email Special Character at specialcharacter@nonsensepassword.com.   Good luck, Twitter: @nonsensepasspod

Nikki Glaser comes back into the studio to help us answer some fan questions! But first, she shares a dating horror story. Then we talk to a listener who isn’t sure if she should break up with her boyfriend before Christmas, a woman who doesn’t want to sleep with the dog in the bed, and someone with a weird relationship with her boss. If it’s hysterical, it’s historical. Send your sex and dating questions to asknick@kastmedia.com.  THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:  BUTCHERBOX: https://www.butcherbox.com/viall/ YOUSICIAN: https://yousician.com/viall BETTERHELP: https://betterhelp.com/viall ROOT INSURANCE: https://www.joinroot.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joe Randazzo (The Onion, Adult Swim, @midnight) stops by the show to talk about working with Tiffany Haddish, growing up in New Hampshire, smoking, kids, Brooklyn, Charlie Rose and other disgraced men, Charlie Rose's crappy table, meeting his wife, Gen X, getting kicked off Twitter, his book Funny on Purpose and so much more. Check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/alisonrosen   Buy Alison's Book: Tropical Attire Encouraged (and Other Phrases That Scare Me) You probably need to buy a new ARIYNBF Legacy Shirt! and the HGFY ringtone! This show is brought to you by  http://Yousician.com/Alison (for an extended 14 day free trial of the premium plus package) and http://Ancestry.com/BESTFRIEND (for 20% off your AncestryDNA kit). Try Amazon Prime Free 30 Day Trial

The post E1004: Yousician CEO & Co-founder Chris Thür created an interactive platform to master musical instruments, shares insights on acquiring 1M+ users, increasing retention through gamification, using profitability as leverage while attracting investors as an international startup appeared first on This Week In Startups.

The post E1004: Yousician CEO & Co-founder Chris Thür created an interactive platform to master musical instruments, shares insights on acquiring 1M+ users, increasing retention through gamification, using profitability as leverage while attracting investors as an international startup appeared first on This Week In Startups.

Dennis Quaid has been a Hollywood leading man for decades, fronts a band called The Sharks, and now stars in a new scripted musical podcast called Bear and a Banjo. What We Discuss with Dennis Quaid: Whether or not getting rejected for a coveted job in Hollywood ever gets easier -- even when you've been getting cast for decades. Why Dennis considers fear his greatest motivator -- and what this indicates to him when he feels it upon being offered a role. The hardest place to get respect, the greatest things our kids teach us, and where dad jokes go to die. Listening versus improvising, and how Dennis brings his characters to life without strictly memorizing his lines before arriving on set. Accents, biographical misinformation, and how learning to play a real-life astronaut led to Dennis learning how to fly real-life planes. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/279 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Xero is online accounting software that can make running every type of business so much easier -- we swear by it in house here at The Jordan Harbinger Show! Try Xero free for 30 days and, if you like it, get 25% off your first three months at xero.com/jordan! Get two months of Skillshare -- unlimited access to over 18,000 classes in design, business, technology, photography, entrepreneurship, film, writing, and more -- for free at skillshare.com/harbinger! Yousician allows you to learn an instrument at any age -- whether you're a complete beginner or just a little rusty. Unleash your inner musician and get an extended 14-day free trial of Yousician's premium plus package at yousician.com/jordan! FIGS knows nurses, doctors, dentists, and other awesome medical professionals deserve to wear scrubs that are antimicrobial and comfortable! Agree? Head to wearFIGS.com and enter code JHS at checkout for 15 percent off your first purchase! Are you trying to hire the right person for your business, but the best candidates keep slipping away? Let ZipRecruiter -- the fastest way to hire great people -- help you screen only the best at ziprecruiter.com/jordan! Yousician allows you to learn an instrument at any age -- whether you're a complete beginner or just a little rusty. Unleash...

In this episode I am joined live in Las Palmas, Spain, with the CEO of Yousician Chris Thur. Chris informs us on how Yousician first started and to what it is today, the worlds number one music educator app. Previous episodes about Yousician: Episode #68 Yousician Bass Guitar Syllabus: https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-3zfhv-b2460a Episode #67 Yousician Guitar Syllabus: https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-98aeu-b16570 Episode #61: Martha (Product Manager): https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-7dg4b-9f001d Episode #58: Yousician Premium + review: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-r2ti3-9c98d8 Episode #39: Yousician questions: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-s66x2-8eae04 Episode #31: Yousician Top Players: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-b5q7z-861949 Episode #16: Yousician Around The World Part 2: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-3mu65-7a61a8 Episode #15: Yousician Around The World Part 1: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-5k7k2-79f564 Episode #3: James Neilson from Yousician: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-d4knc-6f18b1   Podcast Intro music “Monkey Fingers” by Marcel Yammouni. Check out Marcel’s website here: marcelyammouni.net   Thank you to my sponsors: Yousician: Your Personal Music Teacher. yousician.com Living Music: livingmusicstores.com Custom Guitar Picks: www.customguitarpicks.com.au Roach Music School: https://www.facebook.com/roachmusicschool/    To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.com Or on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast. https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/   email: adroach1@hotmail.com

Joe Kwaczala has returned—what a speedy return!—and he once faked a limp until his mom intervened. He also has a crazy track record of calling into radio stations and winning. Jordan Morris doesn't know anything about how to fix your phone so stop asking him. Also, he's denim jacket guy now and he's here to talk about rinses! Alison once split her pants on the way to The Cheesecake Factory to see a guy who had a crush on her friend. Plus a New Zealand quiz! Play along at home! Check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/alisonrosen   Buy Alison's Book: Tropical Attire Encouraged (and Other Phrases That Scare Me) You probably need to buy a new ARIYNBF Legacy Shirt! and the HGFY ringtone! This show is brought to you  http://Ancestry.com/BESTFRIEND (for 20% off your AncestryDNA kit), http://Casetify.com/BESTFRIEND (to get 20% off your purchase), http://Bitsbox.com (enter promo code BESTFRIEND for $25 off plus free shipping) and http://Yousician.com/Alison (for an extended 14 day free trial of the premium plus package). Try Amazon Prime Free 30 Day Trial

In this episode I talk to Stevie D from the band “Chuckberry”. We talk about their new album “Warpaint”, the latest tour and Stevie shares some great stories about his playing and influences. Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cABZfkRcQ6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHGVolN7qyc Podcast Intro music “Monkey Fingers” by Marcel Yammouni. Check out Marcel’s website here: marcelyammouni.net Become A Guitarist Today Podcast playlist: https://music.apple.com/au/playlist/become-a-guitarist-today-podcast/pl.u-4JomXgDCmArr6K   Thank you to my sponsors: Yousician: yousician.com Living Music: livingmusicstores.com Custom Guitar Picks: www.customguitarpicks.com.au  Roach Music School: https://www.facebook.com/roachmusicschool/    To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.com Or on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast. https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/   email: adroach1@hotmail.com

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates words were profound but straightforward. Being able to attract and convert new customers systematically keeps companies healthy and growing - and investors happy - but the unhappy ones can push your product forward. Today’s guest is Sam McLellan, head of growth at Yousician. Sam is a seasoned mobile gaming expert who has led product and marketing teams responsible for multiple top-grossing free-to-play games. Sam is currently utilizing his expertise to help his company build its growth team and take their products to the next level. He couples their organic and performance marketing efforts with an optimized monetization strategy to maximize growth. Questions Sam Answers In This Episode “Are there any other methodologies you can implement to find interests within a consumer group?” “After a user installs an app, it can be difficult to get them through the funnel. What can you learn about them to influence their journey?” “How often do you test out the free trial period? Is that something you are constantly iterating?” “How does an app like yours fight redundancy?” "Do the licensing fees factor into your acquisition strategy?" “Does using licensed content make it easier for you to get people down the funnel initially even? Does that play a role into your actual advertising campaign and getting people through the front door?” “If there was a single core topic that you would hang your head on in your experience, what would that be?” Timestamps 00:42 Sam’s background 02:58 How Yousician developed its product 05:48 Facebook targeting groups 07:19 Methodologies for finding interested consumer groups 08:57 Big changes in Google UAC campaigns 10:17 Differences between gaming (app purchasing) and app subscriptions 12:05 How to keep users engaged with the app 13:24 Incurring costs to license a content 14:40 Role of licensed content in Yousician’s advertising campaigns 16:20 Exciting news for Yousician this coming year 22:00 Availability of Yousician in other countries 23:02 Parting thoughts “You’ll always want to give them enough time to be able to experience the app and you obviously don’t want to give away your product for free at some point.” Sam McLellan

Transcript:  Hey everyone, welcome to the Launch and Scale podcast. This is episode five, and I'm Khierstyn Ross. This episode is brought to you by the Launch and Scale program, which if you are looking for a done with you program that is a proven step by step system and support that we have put together to get you the support that you need throughout your product launch, be sure to head over to khierstyn.com/schedule and book a strategy session with myself, or my team where we're going to be able to help you map out your roadmap for your campaign and ultimately see if the program is a right fit to get you the support you need to smash your product launch goals. Khierstyn Ross: In this episode, we are taking a look at ... Essentially this is really the first interview that we're doing for launch and scale, and I've been friends with Marcus for the last four years. Marcus Rader is the CEO and co-founder of Hostaway, which is an enterprise solution in the travel space. We'll get into that a little bit more. But really what this interview focuses on is how they were able to go into a market, property managers and assess where the solution is and ultimately create an MVP around customer needs and customer interviews. And so, we're going to talk about that process of how he went from the conception of an idea to an MVP and really how he was able to scale that very quickly over the last two years to a company that has raised multiple millions of dollars through VC and angel funding. But they're now, they work out of five different countries with over 38 employees and growing. Khierstyn Ross: Hostaway, is now one of the fastest growing enterprise tech solutions in the travel space, and really stoked to cover this interview because it does really cover that fast growth period and how he was able to iterate based on customer feedback in the field. And so we have a lot of juicy tidbits to go into it. So I'm really stoked to launch and kick off our official first interview of the podcast. Khierstyn Ross: If you've been a listener for a while, you will know that this show has evolved from Crowdfunding Uncut where that was primarily interview focused, and what I'm looking to do with this show is have a range of teach you the stuff, answer your questions, but also bringing on valuable guests from different niches that have either a great results or they're doing great things. And I have Marcus Rader from Hostaway, which I'll get into what Hostaway is in a second. But Marcus and I have known each other for about four years now, I think. And we met when mutual friends brought us to a baseball game, and ever since then, we've just been friends hanging out in the startup space. Khierstyn Ross: What's been really amazing about Marcus is I've seen him move to Toronto from Finland and start Hostaway from nothing to over a two year period, maybe two and a half, bring Hostaway from nothing to one of the fastest growing tech travel on enterprise solution software on the internet and in the world, which is just fascinating to see his journey. And I thought, what better way to kick off our first interview of this show than get into the mind of someone who has taken something from nothing to 38 employees in five different spots over the last two years. So, Marcus, I'm really stoked to have an officially recorded conversation with you and instead of just over beer. So welcome. Marcus Rader: Well, thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on the show. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, we're still good. So, let's give some context, what is Hostaway? Marcus Rader: So, Hostaway is a software service platform for vacation rental property managers. So software as a service is a concept where you buy a piece of software as a subscription model. Typical examples include Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, even Stripe. What our software does, it allows vacation rental property managers to grow faster, so through our one in all solution that's completely cloud-based, we connect to their partners, Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, VRBO, TripAdvisor, Expedia, and within our platform, they manage all their stakeholders. So they manage their guests, they manage their cleaners, they manage their real estate investors. They manage their staff, they make sure their response times and ratings are good. And they, of course, do financial reporting as well. So pretty much everything needed to run a vacation rental business can be done through our platform. Khierstyn Ross: So I used to host on Airbnb, but it was my living room. So I wouldn't be a prime customer for you, but just to do context, if I were someone that had multiple properties and multiple listings on Airbnb, I want to maximize my listings by posting on Expedia, a ton like Booking.com, a ton of other platforms. But imagine trying to manage five or six different booking platforms for five-plus listings, it gets to be a freaking nightmare. It's like managing multiple calendars. So your solution to be able to manage that all on one platform is phenomenal. So, I know when you first started with this, you weren't so heavy on the enterprise, but you were trying to do more like smaller property managers and that that evolved. Who would you say is your ideal customer now that uses Hostaway? Marcus Rader: So right now we only target what we consider professional property managers. But, like a lot of real estate business, the term professional is a bit vague. For example, there's a lot of real estate brokers who actually have another job on the side or maybe they're real estate brokers on weekends only. So, the way I define it is those who consider their time valuable. So let's say they spend an hour or 10 hours, they have an actual price on that because that's what businesses have. When you take in employees, and you ask them to spend 10 hours on something that's actual money away from your bank accounts. And if our software lowers that 10 hours into just 30 minutes, that's nine, and a half hours saved time. Marcus Rader: And that's why, you when you were renting out your spare room, probably the 15 minutes a week you spent on it, you didn't consider yourself losing a single dollar on that 15 minutes. But if you had to pay someone or even a team of 10 people their salaries for a full-time job, that would be a substantial amount of money. And if you can save them time and focus on growing your businesses then that's where the value of the software like ours really come in. Khierstyn Ross: So, taking this back, how did you get the idea for Hostaway to begin with? Marcus Rader: I'm not really a strong believer in business ideas. First of all, there are not many success stories of someone who had a great idea and then decided to implement it then it became a massive business. Usually, those ideas go through a lot of iterations. And on the other hand, some of the most brilliant ideas I've ever heard when it comes to business, they never become a success at all, or they don't even try. They're just an idea. Unfortunately, I knew that when I was starting out, I knew that ideas are worthless. I had a couple of different ideas, but what I really focused on before fully committing to this, what I considered a project back then was doing extensive research, checking overall business trends, macro trends, and then doing very in-depth interviews with actual property management companies in the industry. Asking them everything from, what do they first do when they wake up to what are their biggest challenges? Marcus Rader: And, it wasn't very solutions-oriented, it was more focused on what area do we want to be in, and then we started looking at the industry as a whole, what is Airbnb doing? What do we expect to happen? Can we find any proof on this? Can we find any scientific papers proving that our theory is right, and we had enough evidence, and we had enough research done, we decided to do an MVP. And eventually, that led us on to a couple of iterations and funding rounds, and to get where we are today. Khierstyn Ross: So, when you focused on interviewing property management companies, even taking it a step back, did it start with you deciding you wanted to start your own company and then looking for trends and then narrowing down on the property management company type, or did you just know that you wanted to go after property managers? Marcus Rader: I gave it a lot of thought. I think it was more about me wanting to start a company that actually finding an opportunity. So, I knew there were a million opportunities out there, I just wanted to choose the right one. So, it wasn't that an opportunity presented itself and then I evaluated whether I take it or not. No, I was actively looking for opportunities, and the markets that I found was big enough, growing fast enough, going through a lot of changes and consolidation, and that's why I decided to start the company and exactly this industry in this part. Khierstyn Ross: So how did you know that this was the right direction for you? Marcus Rader: It came actually from personal interest. A lot of the trends that we're seeing in the world are very similar to my own experience. For example, one of the trends is remote work. People like to work in different locations and if I'm not wrong Khierstyn you have also ... You don't spend all your days at the same office, you tend to work from different locations around the world. I have moved around, lived in many countries, and I know that you need flexible living solutions. If you go somewhere for a couple of months, you can't rent the place for a full year. Marcus Rader: Another major trend is travel. There's a massive middle class growing, even though people always say the middle class is dying out, but actually, globally it's growing at a massive pace. There's a huge amount of people, especially in populous countries like China and India that are traveling, and that is a trend that's not going anywhere anytime soon. And, back when we started out a couple of years ago, it was also not going anywhere, and it turns out that all the predictions are correct, people are traveling more and more. So, those were the trends that we found evidence off, and we believed in. But yeah, it came out of personal interest. I like to travel, I like living in different places. Khierstyn Ross: Honestly, I think that's so important because if you are going to devote so much of your time to build something, it has to be something you have a personal interest in or else you may not be driven as hard to do the thing. Marcus Rader: That's very true on one hand, and some of the most successful founders that I've met today always have a personal interest. If you can align that with somehow making the world a better place, that's usually really nice touch as well. Unfortunately, I haven't found that alignment. I don't know how making business operations more efficient will, for example, reduce child poverty. But, having somewhat of an interest, whether it's an interest in technology or finances, that definitely helps. So, if you don't care about money then just don't start an accounting software company. Khierstyn Ross: For sure. And there's something I want to clarify. I know you don't believe in business ideas, but when you narrowed it down to property management companies, something in flexible living space and solutions, did you have the idea for Hostaway, like you knew in your mind it was this hosting platform for property managers? Or did you just decide to go talk to property managers and figure out what was the one thing they really needed the most help with and then the solution was born out of their feedback? Which of those were you? Marcus Rader: Actually neither. We did want to do exactly what they were asking for, they had multiple problems, and we had a couple of different solutions for that. But, those solutions were pretty difficult to build and when we did more research and found out that every single company on earth that has tried, has failed in building those solutions. And by failed, meaning that they only had done a couple of iterations and maybe in a few years they'll have a good solution in place. So, we decided to simplify it as much as possible and go very heavy on marketing and sales first while building the MVP, because a lot of people think they need a product in order to sell it. But well as you know in our crowdfunding space, it can be the exact opposite. First, you sell it, then you see if we can make the product. And that's what we did, and we were actually quite successful with our first iteration. We got a bunch of customers. Marcus Rader: One of the common breaking points of young software startups is when you talk to customers, and they're willing to pay for a solution and then you provide the solution and suddenly they're not willing to give you any money. For us actually, we did not have that problem. Our first customer suggested to us, that how about they start paying us so that we can afford to improve the software. Which was a nice thing because we didn't plan at that point to charge money for it. When we did start charging money for it, we quickly got up to about a hundred customers and found out that the target audience that we have they're way too demanding, and they're not tech savvy enough to, for example, read the documentation for a fairly complex solution. And at the price that they're paying that we were charging, we just didn't see any way this business could scale. Marcus Rader: But, what we did find out is that there's a lot of companies out there with much higher demands, but they're also willing to pay for it. And that comes back to what I said earlier if you value one hour of your time as $0 probably any software is going to be expensive. But if you have to pay a $20 salary to someone else, suddenly one hour's worth exactly $20. And, that's when we started targeting those customers. Khierstyn Ross: Okay. I want to clarify something. Did you build an MVP and then focus on sales? Marcus Rader: Well, I think- Khierstyn Ross: Or sale and then MVP? Marcus Rader: I think a lot of companies say, well, Facebook is a good example, if you launch a product, and it doesn't work, just launch it again. And I think Facebook did seven launches and that's a fairly common story, but it's not actually the truth. The truth is that it's somewhere in between. There's not an exact launch. You constantly do sales, marketing, product development, market research, and at the pace that you're going where you basically reinvent the company every single day, you can't really define lines. Sometimes you find that you're pitching an idea that's already two days old and sometimes you find that you've sold a solution that's only going to be available tomorrow. But by doing quick iterations, you can't really draw any lines. But if you do enough of them eventually, you'll find a recipe that scales, which is all that matters when you're dealing with software. Khierstyn Ross: Because something that it's not very clear to me is that you mentioned before that most, actually every software solution in your space that has tried to do what you guys are doing has failed. So you focused on sales and marketing, but then you go on to say that you actually had to have a customer offer to pay you and then you got a hundred people. So, where's the line with that? Marcus Rader: That's what I was trying to say. The line is very, very thin, and I wouldn't say that our competitors have failed. It was more that we found one niche within niche markets that were completely uncatered to. And that's the first one we attacked, and then found out exactly the reason why it's uncatered to. A bit like you'll find a hundred dollar bill lying on the streets, and you wonder why nobody picked it up. Then you pick it up and find out it's fake. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. I think what you're getting at is you focused on developing a very, very, very basic and simple MVP that did the job instead of focusing on building this amazing, beautiful product right away, you did bare minimum to do the job and then focused on sales and then used sales to gradually improve it as opposed to the bloat of having like product devs to design something amazing and not focus on sales right away. Marcus Rader: That's very, very true, and it's sometimes hard to ... I mean, if you want to build a very simple product, then you can take it quickly to market, and you can quickly sell it. But that also means that if it's like a fidget spinner, that's very simple to build. When it first came out, it was a big success, but suddenly you had a thousand other companies producing them, and the price plummeted and now they're worthless. If you want to build something very complex, there's a certain threshold, you need to invest a certain amount of time and money in order to make that complex solution work. But, what often happens is once you're ready with that complex solution, nobody wants it or they don't want it for the purpose you thought, or they don't want to pay what you thought. Khierstyn Ross: Or the other thing happens, which is exactly what happened to you is you found out very quickly that you are actually serving the wrong kind of ... Not the wrong kind of person but the person at a price point that wouldn't allow you to scale. So, the other point that I want you guys to take away from this listening is that you don't want to focus on creating this beautiful, amazing full solution product right off the bat. You need to focus on getting the job done and bringing an MVP to market because you're going to take real customer feedback, paying customer feedback, customers that are using your product, or the software that are going to help you create the iterations for that customer ahead of time. So, that you can really build onto the product as you grow as a company. Marcus Rader: Yeah. That's a great summary right there and something that I find a lot when I talk to people who actually want to become entrepreneurs, so have a good idea and have all the basic skills needed. They tend to do exactly the same thing that I did as well, which is set up these mental barriers. For example, if I just had $1 million or if I just had a development team or if I just had a co-founder, and they focus so much on that they bind themselves down. They can never get to the next stage, and that's actually what took us forward instead of looking at what do we want to become in the end and how do we get there? We were looking at, okay, what is the next step? Can we get a million? Can we hire 10 developers? No. Okay, well what can we do realistically? What can we do? And where would that take us? Marcus Rader: And that's exactly what we did. We found out that, okay, there's a hundred things that we should do, but if we just do three of them, we'll not get to the next stage. And if all three of those work out fine, then we can get enough resources to do 10 more. And if those workout fine, then we can do to 90 others. And that's a much nicer approach because that's where you actually can move forward with something more tangible and realistic. Khierstyn Ross: No, that makes so much sense. How did you find ... If you have a hundred things, how do you decide what those three are? Marcus Rader: In reality, in hindsight it's always going to be those three. But in practice you have to try 20 of them. If you're successful at the end, you can go back and say, oh, I was so good. I looked at the list of a hundred things, and I managed to pick the three that really mattered. In reality, I haven't really seen that with anyone. You have to try a little bit, and I think luck is a big factor there. Trying to do as much as possible, as many different things as possible and dismiss the opportunities, try to get any proof or this proof of concept as fast as possible so that you can move on to the next thing and constantly hope that you happen to stumble upon the right one, and that will bring you to the next stage. Khierstyn Ross: It sounds like when you started, you were bootstrapping to an extent, but at what point did you decide that you needed to go after investment? Marcus Rader: I think it was at the point when I wanted to pay for nice things in life, like rent and food, electricity and heating, they are perhaps luxuries, but especially rent and food is something that's really nice to have. Something that I definitely knew I did not want to do is have a job and then try to set up a business on the side, because I felt that then I wouldn't be committed to the job, and I wouldn't be committed to my business. I wanted to make sure I put myself in a position where I'm 100% committed because I have not seen successful side projects. I have seen people who are very determined to create a business and have managed to create it and are fully committed and people who have been determined and failed. That's a more common story, but I haven't met many people who have done a side project that turned into a massive success. Khierstyn Ross: So you go full time with Hostaway, did you quit your job to go full time? Did you have investment going into Hostaway? Marcus Rader: No, I quit my job and moved to a new country with a lot of expenses and no job. So it was very easy for me to start a company because I didn't have to give anything up because when I arrived in Canada I didn't have anything to give up. Khierstyn Ross: So it was just saving for a little bit, and then you looked for investment essentially, and then it worked out. Marcus Rader: Yes, it did work out. Khierstyn Ross: So coming from Finland to Toronto, Canada, where do your investors come from, is it primarily Finish investors or have you been able to tap into North American market too? Marcus Rader: I haven't spoken to many US investors yet, I have a fair bit of experience in the Canadian investor landscape. It's worth noting that I moved here four years ago and most of the VC's in Toronto are only two or three years old. So, there wasn't a lot of investors living around here. But based on the conversations I had back then, I found a lot of them really want stable businesses, which I didn't want to build a stable business. I wanted to build a fast growth business, which is the opposite of stable. And it turns out that I managed at least so far to do a fairly good job at it, but it's very risky route for investors. And so far we've been relying on Finish investors through most literal networks and cold calling as well. But, they have a lot of success. Marcus Rader: I mean, Toronto unfortunately doesn't have a single company worth more than a billion, and that's younger than 10 years, which is a shame compared to Finland or Helsinki that's only 1 million people, and they have, what is it? Four or $5 billion companies that this VCs have managed to even cash out on. Khierstyn Ross: So in Finland, I know that, what I've learned from your tech tio talk that Angry Birds came from Finland. What are some other heavy hitters that have come from Finland? Marcus Rader: There's lots of let's say mid sized, but I think, was it three years ago? The Super Bowl, the most expensive ad was a Finnish tech startup. Unfortunately it was also in the same space as Angry Birds, it was a mobile games. It was Clash of Clans. There's many others, one of my favorite is the biggest music educator in the world, Yousician. I think they have 100 million users now. It's basically a mobile app that allows you to learn how to have to play any instrument as a game. Khierstyn Ross: It's awesome, I use it. Marcus Rader: Really? Khierstyn Ross: I now play guitar very badly, but I play guitar. Marcus Rader: That's nice. Is Yousician good to you? Khierstyn Ross: They are very good. Yes. I'm like, oh, I can do this. Marcus Rader: That's good to hear. Yeah. And, there's a lot also in the region, not specifically Finland, but for example, in Sweden and Estonia there's a couple of pretty heavy hitters like Skype and Spotify. Khierstyn Ross: So knowing that Canada VC is a little, they're risk adverse a little bit. They want more established companies, but Finland, because so many fast growth massive companies have come out of it, do you see a cultural difference in how investors treat your company between Finland and Canada? Marcus Rader: I think for most VCs, they don't really have the luxury to choose their investments. They have certain criteria they need to meet, and if they try to go with what they think is good based on numbers or something, they later on re iterate, then come up with more strict profiles. So for example, if they only invest in technology related to health, then it doesn't matter if we're the best company in the world, they can't invest in us because we're not into health. And if they only invest in US based companies, then they can't invest in us because we're based in Finland. But outside of that, I think definitely the VC landscape in Toronto has moved massively forward. I was just that coalition and all my days were filled with VC meetings most from Toronto, and the feedback was good and they also seemed to have caught up. They were very professional, asking the right questions. It felt like they were trying to sell themselves as an investor, just like it should be. Khierstyn Ross: Excellent. Can you tell me about how you got your first investor? It doesn't have to be VC, just first investor. Marcus Rader: Definitely it wasn't the VC, it was ... I remember once I asked my father ... I felt really good, and I asked my father, hey, why am I so lucky? Why does everything go right for me? And he said, "You know what? You're just fooling yourself. You're not lucky, you've been planting these seeds for so many years. And most of them died, but now some of them are giving fruit and that's not luck. That's just planting enough seeds." So, when I lived in Amsterdam, I went to online marketing conference in Germany. There I happened to see a guy, and when I saw him I thought, well, he doesn't look German or British. He looks very Finish. So I went up to him, I said, in Finnish, sorry, are you from Finland? And he said, yes, I am. Marcus Rader: And that's how I met one guy who later on turned out to introduce me to our angel investor who got so excited about the project that he gave us that sweet salary for paying rent and food, but more importantly he's actively working in the company and he's helping us a lot in strategic things in finances and has helped us find other investors as well. Khierstyn Ross: So how did that conversation happen? You meet the Finnish guy at a conference and then how does he suddenly, not suddenly, but he introduced you to someone. So tell me about that. Did you ask, were you going around your network looking for connections? Did he just know what you worked on and said it just happened organically or what? Marcus Rader: That's a really good question. I think if I would have to reproduce that now, I don't know if that even would be possible, and I don't think I can give any advice. It's exactly like you said. I think he asked me what I'm doing or maybe I posted something on Facebook, and he reached out and said, hey, this sounds interesting. I could talk to you. And then, he said, hey, I actually know someone who wants to buy the product. And, I think our meeting was even set up, so then I was supposed to sell the product, but I happen to sell the idea of the company instead. And that's what led to it. Marcus Rader: But how to find an angel investor, I think that's going to be very hard. I think if you go out to your network and ask, that's probably the wrong question. A bit like asking your parents if you can move back in with them. It's something that they don't want, and you don't want to do that, and it's, yeah, usually not a good outcome. Khierstyn Ross: So what is the right question then if you're looking for an angel investor? Marcus Rader: Oh, I wish I knew how to find an angel ... Actually, yeah, there's a network in Toronto, I think it's called Maple Leafs Angels. Khierstyn Ross: Yup Maple Leaf Angels. Yup. Marcus Rader: Yeah. So, there's a lot of those and of course there's things like Dragon's Den as well, but that's- Khierstyn Ross: Shark Tank. Marcus Rader: Yeah, Shark Tank. But those are more for companies, well they want to put on a good show. So usually the companies that end up there are actually not just starting out, they are, for example, seasoned entrepreneurs who have done this many times before. Khierstyn Ross: So maybe the question is more, if you had to go out and find an investor tomorrow, which this is your job now, how would you go and find a new investor? Marcus Rader: For a new company, I would definitely not go out and find an investor. I would do everything I can to set up the company for growth, and by taking the smallest steps possible. For example, if I speak to 100 people, how many have the problem that I'm trying to solve? Then let's say it's 40 out of them, how many of them would be interested in hearing and talking about my solution? And then how many of those would be in theory willing to pay something. You can find yourself 10 then see what would be the shortest way to build that solution and then test them on whether they're able to buy and pay for that. And if you're able to do those steps, you're able to move forward, and it's, yeah, I think we could have done a lot of things differently and faster and better. But on the other hand, we invested heavily into technology and into the research part, which is now paying off. Marcus Rader: So, it's very hard to go and say that we could have done things better, there's a million things we could have done better, but then maybe if we hadn't done those things, other things would have failed. Khierstyn Ross: Makes sense. My last topic I want to talk about is the pivot from, I think it was the $9 a month solo person you were going after to now enterprise solution. When you realized that your pricing structure didn't make sense for where you wanted to take this, how did you start to pivot toward the higher end solutions? Marcus Rader: Very good, good question. I remember we had a long hard meeting I think three or four days where we really evaluated the market size and the options. We tried to figure out can we automate certain parts of the process, what are the challenges? And eventually we decided that I think even at that stage we realized that we don't have enough time or money. We have one shot at making this happen, but if don't do it, we're probably going to fail anyway. And we made that decision, it was one of the most stressful summers, especially for the development team, which back then was three people to build all the features. And yeah, we did the decision in May and we could confirm that things looked good by September, November. But when things look good, that usually means that it feels good. It doesn't show up on the bank account yet. Marcus Rader: Now, feeling good doesn't pay anyone's salary either, which is a problem when people want the salary. It doesn't matter how good it feels, but sometimes that's what you have to go with. And to us it felt good and we just had to sell the idea that it feels so good that in a couple of months we'll see some money on the bank accounts and that's exactly what happened. So, we were able to scale up our product or change it in a way so that bigger companies were able to utilize it and pay more for it. Khierstyn Ross: Because I can't imagine that being easy conversation where you decide internally to pivot away from something that's already proven to make revenue, have to go to your VCs, or your board of directors and say this is the move we want to make. I can't imagine that was an easy conversation. Marcus Rader: Yeah. Fortunately we didn't have to do that at that stage. We were so early on, that there wasn't really pressure. But of course for us it was massive pressure because we knew that our current business is not going to take us to the next stage and we have to make this change, but it's going to destroy a lot of what we built. And what nobody told us at that point is that the experience that we gained in the first couple of tries is going to make everything so much easier. So we actually thought it was going to be harder than it eventually was, but it would've been nice to have an outsider to come and say, look, you built this business already a couple of times and I need to rebuild it from scratch. It's going to be much easier. But it sure didn't feel like that when we made the decision. Khierstyn Ross: When did you know ... Can you go back to the moment when you realized, I think we made the right decision. When did that happen? Marcus Rader: I think, for me it was when ... I don't know, I had a realization one day, I don't even remember when it was at what stage, when I realized that we have gone from being an idea to being a startup, to struggling to survive, to be a company where we are in charge. We are not going to go bankrupt because we have the flexibility to make changes necessary, whatever happens. And that was one of the happiest days in my life because before that I had been constantly focusing on when are we running out of money. And the funny thing with a runway and with fast growing revenues is that things change every day, but you can also make future plans and then change them later on based on what happened yesterday when you have the actual information and that way you can adjust your own runway depending on how things are going. Khierstyn Ross: So, you would say this pivot gave you confidence to make massive business changes in the future where necessary. Marcus Rader: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But, I would not look forward to doing a pivot any time soon because it's a lot easier when you don't have employees, when you don't have customers who rely on your product, you can make a lot of changes, and more importantly you can make mistakes. But once you have customers who rely on your product, and once you have employees who rely on either your leadership or in some cases maybe rely on getting a paycheck or I don't know what the employees appreciate more, then you can't just go around making a bunch of mistakes all the time and testing things out because it can upset a lot of people. So the changes have to be better planned and they have to be executed way better as you grow. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah. Well said. What's next for Hostaway then? Marcus Rader: Oh, that's exciting. I wish I could tell you, but we have a couple of exciting announcements coming up and you can see them on our social media on the upcoming months. Khierstyn Ross: Excellent. It's funny because when it's not a recorded conversation, maybe we'd go for beer, maybe over the raptors game on Friday, maybe I can find out from you. But anyway, I'll leave that for another conversation. So this has been awesome. I think I like to end this off with, do you have any famous last words or a piece of advice for your younger self? Marcus Rader: I've been Googling a lot on how to hire and recruit the right people and apparently that's something you're supposed to ask at a job interview. And I always thought that it's funny because nobody's asked me that question. No, I really don't have any advice for my younger self, I wish I could say be more confident or take charge and move forward at full speed, But that's pretty much what I've been doing anyway. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, but still, what people need to hear. Marcus Rader: Yeah. I mean, I would like to give myself the advice to be more mature, but I also know that if someone from the future would come and tell me now, hey, you need to be more mature or do things in a more effective way then I wouldn't really believe them. And even if I did, I wouldn't know what that means or what to do. So, hopefully one day I'll be able to say that I can give advice to my 10 year younger self. Khierstyn Ross: Well, we all have lots to learn, right? So, well I'm going to wrap this here. If anyone listening wants to learn a bit more about what you guys are doing, what is a good spot to send them? Marcus Rader: The best spot and the best approach here, if you want to learn how to be amazing at life is to go to hostaway.com and look at the open jobs positions. Find the one you like and I guarantee you will find satisfaction. Khierstyn Ross: I agree. It's a fantastic company to work for and you guys are hiring for virtually every position right now. Marcus Rader: Yes, so every position, everywhere. Khierstyn Ross: That wraps up another interview. Thank you so much for listening. If you are planning a product launch on Kickstarter, I want to know if that platform is right for you for your product launch goals, whether you are just starting and this is your first product or you are a current brand and want to see how Kickstarter can help you build your audience and get your brand in front of more customers to really give you more street cred and momentum, really help you build as a brand. Then, you should head over to khierstyn.com/schedule and book a free strategy session with myself and my team to really look at what your product launch goals are and your branding needs essentially to see what we can do to help you build your audience. Khierstyn Ross: Apart from that, this wraps up another episode and because my name is so hard to spell, you should grab a pen and paper because how you spell it is K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N. So again, to schedule a free consult with our team, please go to khierstyn.com/schedule, and there will be a link in the description in the show notes, which you can get at khierstyn.com/LS05.

In this episode I break down the Yousician Bass Syllabus and play examples from each level. I also play some examples from the Premium version and the weekly challenges. Yousician.com   Thank you to my sponsors: Living Music livingmusicstores.com http://stores.ebay.com.au/livingmusiconline   Custom Guitar Picks www.customguitarpicks.com.au   To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.com Or on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast. https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/     Check out my Youtube channel and subscribe for free guitar lessons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5Xhalxi2c email: adroach1@hotmail.com

In this episode I break down the Yousician syllabus from level 0 to 10 and demonstrate what is involved in each mission. yousician.com   Thank you to my sponsors: Living Music livingmusicstores.com http://stores.ebay.com.au/livingmusiconline   Custom Guitar Picks www.customguitarpicks.com.au   To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.com Or on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast. https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/   email: adroach1@hotmail.com

Thank you do Yousician for sponsoring today's show. Visit yousician.com/DOUG to try Yousician with a 20% discount using code DOUG SUBSCRIBE to Doug's channel here: http://bit.ly/1anmdMe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Boy oh boy, one of my favorite vocalists of all time decided to hang out with all of us and I couldn't be more excited. Tim Singer was the vocalist for Deadguy, No Escape and Kiss It Goodbye. We discussed a ton of stuff including anger, stability and playing against the grain. Pull up a chair and enjoy the in depth discussion! Yousician is the best way to learn a musical instrument. Download the app and get 20% off by using the code WORDS at checkout. Download the Podcoin app and get paid to listen to podcasts! Get 300 bonus Podcoin's when you sign up using the code WORDS.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Vanessa Gonzalez & Billy Wayne Davis sit down for another episode of Getting Doug with High. Thank you do Yousician, BlueChew, ButcherBox, and Popchips for sponsoring today's show. Visit yousician.com/DOUG to try Yousician with a 20% discount using code DOUG Visit BlueChew.com and get your first shipment FREE when use our special promo code DOUG Go to ButcherBox.com/DOUG OR enter promo code DOUG to get the Ultimate Breakfast Bundle – that’s 2 packages of Bacon and 2 lbs. of Breakfast Sausage – for FREE in your first box PLUS $20 off your first box Go to amazon.com/popchips and use code 20DOUG (the number 20 + DOUG) at checkout to get 20% off your order of nutter puffs SUBSCRIBE to Doug's channel here: http://bit.ly/1anmdMe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christina Hendricks can relate if you had a lousy time in high school. Between moving around a lot to her goth fashion style and music choices to her time spent with the school theater crew, Christina was a target of bullies and wanted to get as far away from school as possible. She tells Marc how this alienation led to careers in modeling and acting, and how her agents dumped her when she insisted on pursuing a role in a little show called Mad Men. Christina talks about growing along with the character of Joan and why she made the creators of her new show, Good Girls, make a promise to her when she took the gig. This episode is sponsored by Yousician, Ramy on Hulu, and Stamps.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast.

Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt feels anxious about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Patton and Conan sit down to talk about remembering comedy misfires, SNL’s best hosts from the sports world, getting screwed over by decency, the importance of spellcheck, and recapturing the magic of breakfast cereal. Plus, Conan gets to the bottom of a sweatpants mystery during a game of True or False with Sona Movsesian. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (323) 451-2821. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. This episode is sponsored by Yousician (www.yousician.com/CONAN code: CONAN), State Farm (www.statefarm.com), Instacart (www.instacart.com code: CONAN), The Great Courses Plus (www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/CONAN), Quip (www.getquip.com/CONAN), ZipRecruiter (www.ziprecruiter.com/CONAN), and Calm (www.calm.com/CONAN).

Comedian and actress Nicole Byer feels excited about being Conan O’Brien’s friend! Nicole and Conan sit down to chat about loving the people they torment, marriages of convenience, Ayahuasca side effects, Conan’s dateability, and making your own tattoos with Microsoft Word. Later, Conan recaps a texting miscommunication during a game of True or False with Sona Movsesian. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (323) 451-2821. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. This episode is sponsored by VRBO, Yousician (www.yousician.com/CONAN code: CONAN), Robinhood (www.CONAN.robinhood.com), State Farm (1-800-STATE-FARM), Mizzen+Main (www.comfortable.af code: CONAN), Fracture (www.fractureme.com/CONAN), and HotelTonight (www.hoteltonight.com).

Actors and comedic couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally feel ambivalent, yet hopeful about being Conan O’Brien’s friends. Nick and Megan join Conan this week to discuss lovemaking in the woods, unusual fashion choices, cute sociopaths, revenge fantasies, and Nick’s Survivor goals. Plus, Conan contemplates his own mortality as he and his assistant Sona check out the latest reviews of the show.  Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (323) 451-2821. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. This episode is sponsored by BAKblade (www.bakblade.com), NHTSA, Palm (www.palm.com), Hair Club (www.hairclub.com/CONAN), Yousician (code: CONAN), Robinhood (www.CONAN.robinhood.com), Campaign Monitor (www.campaignmonitor.com/CONAN), and ButcherBox (www.butcherbox.com code: CONAN).

Actor Dax Shepard feels very optimistic about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.  Dax and Conan sit down to talk about manhood, being made fun of, tycoons, shyness in comedy, and making plans to hang out. Plus, Conan finds out where his assistant Sona disappeared to while they were on tour during a game of “True or False.” Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (323) 451-2821. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. This episode is sponsored by Yousician (code: CONAN), MeUndies (www.meundies.com/CONAN), ZipRecruiter (www.ziprecruiter.com/CONAN), Roman (www.getroman.com/CONAN), ButcherBox (www.butcherbox.com code: CONAN), Audible (www.audible.com/CONANOBRIEN or text CONANOBRIEN to 500500), and Campaign Monitor (www.campaignmonitor.com/CONAN).

Episode 328 - BURIED TREASURE ALERT! I have my friend Justin Maranga from the band Ancestors and the label Dune Alter Records on the show to discuss a bunch of stuff including some records or bands that you listed to at one point, thought sucked but are actually really good. Dive in and enjoy! Ray New Bomb Turks - Nightmare Scenario  Iceburn - Firon The National - S/t Justin  TSOL - Change Today Leatherface - Mush Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town Dive into YouTube Music and their new app, it’s the BEST place to stream all of your favorite music and discovering your new favorite bands. Start trading stocks now with Robinhood! Get a free stock when you sign up today! Download the app, Yousician, today and start learning how to play guitar, piano and other instruments immediately! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Episode 327 - My new friend Luis Aponte from Jesus Piece is on the show today. Jesus Piece are an incredible hardcore band from Philadelphia that you must check out. We discuss his life in and around Philadelphia, Krishna consciousness and using visual influences to affect art. It’s a really great chat and I urge you to check out.  Dive into YouTube Music and their new app, it’s the BEST place to stream all of your favorite music and discovering your new favorite bands. Download the app, Yousician, today and start learning how to play guitar, piano and other instruments immediately! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

In this episode I talk to Martha, the product manager from Yousician. She goes into tell about all the different departments there are at this 100 plus people app business.Martha lets us in on what Yousician are up to now and what we can expect really soon with the updates. Thank you to my sponsors:Living Musiclivingmusicstores.comhttp://stores.ebay.com.au/livingmusiconline Custom Guitar Pickswww.customguitarpicks.com.au To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.comOr on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast.https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/  email: adroach1@hotmail.com

Episode 326 - This is a big one for me, Ben Nichols from Lucero comes on the show today to talk about the DIY scene in Little Rock, AR (where he grew up), making adult like decisions and owning your own business. We also discuss his contributions to his brothers films (Mud, Take Shelter, Midnight Special etc…) and how the band has been able to remain relevant for as long as they have. I loved, loved, LOVED this discussion and I know you will as well. Enjoy!  Dive into YouTube Music and their new app, it’s the BEST place to stream all of your favorite music and discovering your new favorite bands. Download the app, Yousician, today and start learning how to play guitar, piano and other instruments immediately! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Episode #195 -  The Most Pathetic Little Pumpkin  00:00:39 - Books On Tape  00:21:22 - Babs  00:23:07 - A Star Is Born  00:39:15 - Ex Machina  00:43:29 - UpGraded  00:45:41 - Critters  00:49:00 - Chips Ahoy  00:54:20 - Hollow Ween  01:00:00 - MERC MERCH MERCH 01:02:00 - Amid The Madness  Music  #Operation Ivy #Limahl #DeadEnding #HueyLewisandTheNews #Phoenix #CojackandCompany  Mentions: #IHuntKillers #Grindhouse #HarveyWoodlawn #ABCMOUSE #Yousician #ElHefeTacos

In this episode I talk about the new Yousician Premium + that is now available. I break down some of the techniques and songs that are in the new package. https://yousician.com   Sponsors: Living Musiclivingmusicstores.comhttp://stores.ebay.com.au/livingmusiconline  Custom Guitar Pickswww.customguitarpicks.com.au  To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.comOr on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast.https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/ email: adroach1@hotmail.com

Why people block out the serial number when selling guitars online?NEW! KNOW YOUR GEAR STICKERS!https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Freverb.com%2Fitem%2F13573766-5-know-your-gear-stickers&h=AT2-HmosHyuE4C3f4BrEqzzFS0jkvRSp2WPV8kngdLy26wioi8KTGDOzBFy8wAwwArIUscXX2t_RgYg0y78sQheO4A2KfR3o6oGNsUpDu6LwWgoGYPzzl_tjbR4-0yAY8SqH3e1dQcDviChXgsVVDvzm7OTq7AftQfNcICO3YZuvNEW! JULY OFFSET T-SHIRThttps://teespring.com/stores/know-your-gear-shop-2Question Index0:00 Intro and thank you to the Friends of KYG3:45 Thoughts on my old PRS 513 and now 5095:39 Boss RV67:18 The Rob Chapman Music Man factory video was greathttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWd9nx3IYOE12:18 Why I think Eddie Van Halen left Music Man?15:38 Why people block out the serial number when selling guitars online?19:23 Thoughts on 80s USA made Peavey guitars21:39 Do you think Fretboard radius is important for speed?22:56 Will a PRS USA switch work on a PRS SE?25:21 What pedal do I like more than the SL drive?26:43 You Tube gear reviews can prompt you to buy and not buy gear29:00 Upgrades on the Sterling St Vincent31:35 sometimes it is time to leave. lol32:58 Do I have a Diamond guitars?35:28 You should do a Warmoth build37:08 The July shirt and another shirt https://teespring.com/stores/know-your-gear-shop-237:44 I have stickers now https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Freverb.com%2Fitem%2F13573766-5-know-your-gear-stickers&h=AT2-HmosHyuE4C3f4BrEqzzFS0jkvRSp2WPV8kngdLy26wioi8KTGDOzBFy8wAwwArIUscXX2t_RgYg0y78sQheO4A2KfR3o6oGNsUpDu6LwWgoGYPzzl_tjbR4-0yAY8SqH3e1dQcDviChXgsVVDvzm7OTq7AftQfNcICO3YZuv38:54 Guitar with floating tremolo for metal and jazz under 1k?41:30 The Restring clinic in AZ and others are just finishing up the dates45:44 How will the New Fender Players Series effect used Fenders?52:33 Tim Shawbucers in a Tele, thoughts?53:37 Why you should leave your guitar alone until you know it inside and out56:20 Jackson VS PRS S2? US vs Indonesia?59:57 What do I think of Yousician?Please put suggestions and thoughts1:03:21 Is it a good idea to trade a guitar into Guitar Center?1:06:10 Dead frets, do it yourself or take it to a pro?1:07:45 The Alice Cooper Rock Solid Foundationhttps://www.alicecoopersolidrock.com1:10:01 Best way to clean electronics in your guitar?https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I3G272M/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=knowyourgea0f-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00I3G272M&linkId=f86e82e2d0cdb3f61ee1a7d3d40c73d21:11:50 Fender Pro, MM Cutlass, or Classic Suhr?1:13:07 Helix or Headrush?1:15:49 Shout out to KYG Friends1:16:34 What picks do I use?1:17:15 Do better transformers make a difference in ampSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/phillipmcknightKYG)

In this episode I went live on the Yousician Friends facebook page and answered some questions about the app and guitar playing. yousician.com At 13:10 I also Interview Rick Varlet from Living Music, my new sponsor for the podcast. Check out their web site and their ebay store for some great deals. livingmusicstores.com http://stores.ebay.com.au/livingmusiconline https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEGts_lu80XLps_0fSXBvNg   To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.comOr on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast.https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/  email: adroach1@hotmail.com To become a patron go to: https://patron.podbean.com/Adguitar

In this episode I talk to some of Yousician’s top players who are all at the top of the leaderboard in many of the songs, especially the level 10 songs.3 of the top players have already been on my podcast:James Neilson in episode #3:https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-d4knc-6f18b1 Alexis Nery and Jonathon Reichart in episode 16:https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-3mu65-7a61a8   Here are the guests on this episode: Juan Valencia (Mister V) who is also the director at guitar starz club: http://www.guitarstarzclub.com Eric Degenaar:https://www.reverbnation.com/ericdegenaar Paul Watson;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srLdwdGNGYc Tomek Timo Pakko Download the Yousician app here:yousician.com   To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.comOr on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast.https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/  email: adroach1@hotmail.com To become a patron go to: https://patron.podbean.com/Adguitar

Manflu and weak tea… Squeaky doors… Alien Station… Ukulele cases and piano passions… Shooting Dom… Perfectionism and 10,000 hours… Yousician and tricky chords… Simon’s words… Skye and piano pedals… Apple Watch, Google Home and Arkansas… Jumpers, comparatibility, Mario and Zelda… Caymans and Uber… Philips Hue and Raspberry Pi… Intel bugs and iPhone batteries and other rambling chat

Guests: Jon Howard, Chris Russell Hosts: Stuart Yoshida, Doug Brown We made it through another year of Podcasting, and we KNOW there'll be lots of new ukuleles for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or just because it's the Winter Solstice. So this episode is dedicated to ukulele technology and all manner of gadgets for the ukulele. You will not believe how much fun we can have talking tech with first time guest Jon Howard, plus Doug Brown and Chris Russell! Jon Howard: * The Ukulele App: http://theukuleleapp.com/ Chris Russell: * Technology in Music Education blog: https://techinmusiced.wordpress.com/ * YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/ukuleletenor Doug Brown: * website: http://den-uke.com/ Links: * Andrew Kitakis and Jake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYN80VB0Xxs * Apps for Ukulele: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/learn-ukuele-songs-chords-apps-guides/ * Fretlight software: https://www.fretlightwired.com/pages/fretlight-studio-software * Populele: https://popuband.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIweOurO6R2AIVEHR-Ch0hOQP2EAAYASAAEgKYs_D_BwE * Populele accessories: https://popuband.com/collections/frontpage/products/populele-with-accessory * Tuning apps for stringed instruments: http://agilepartners.com/apps/guitartoolkit/ * Kala Ukulele app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kala-ukulele/id1064893690?mt=8 * Peterson Strobosoft tuner app: https://www.petersontuners.com/products/istrobosoft/ * TonalEnergy tuner: http://tonalenergy.com/products/te-tuner/ * Ukulele Underground: https://ukuleleunderground.com/app/ * Review of Populele: https://ukestuff.wordpress.com/2017/10/15/what-do-you-do-with-a-popuee-populele-review/ * Chris Russell skateboarder (not the same person): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI31idnRu4w * Ryan Reviews Toys Age 6 $11 million per year: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChGJGhZ9SOOHvBB0Y4DOO_w * Luongo Ukulele Experience: https://luongoukulele.com/ * Ukulele Store “Ukulele Republic”: http://www.ukerepublic.com/ * ENYA Ukuleles: https://www.amazon.com/ENYA/b/ref=bl_dp_s_web_9310698011?ie=UTF8&node=9310698011&field-lbr_brands_browse-bin=ENYA * The Ukulele Site: https://www.theukulelesite.com/ * Mim’s Ukes: http://mimsukes.com/ * Southern Ukulele Store in UK: http://www.southernukulelestore.co.uk/ * Denver Folklore Center: https://www.denverfolklore.com/ * Duo Lingo language learning site: https://www.duolingo.com/ * Learn To Play Like Jake Shimabukuro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugbvvkpa2tw * Uber Chord app: https://www.uberchord.com/ * Yousician app: http://yousician.com/ * Rocksmith app: https://rocksmith.ubisoft.com/rocksmith/en-ca/home/ * Xvive wireless rechargeable system: https://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-XVI-U2BLACK * Pageflip Dragonfly Bluetooth Pedal: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DragonFlyBT * AirTurn PEDPro Bluetooth Pedal: https://store.airturn.com/products/airturn-ped-pro

This week Apple released the iMac Pro, purchased Shazam, updated Final Cut X Pro, Logic Pro and Motion. Patreon reversed course and apologised to users. Disney bought most of Rupert Murdoch's empire, and the FCC voted to remove the Net Neutrality rules in the US. We are joined by David Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software the makers of the excellent Super Duper!, and we wonder if Mark can still hold back on the Quo... On this week's show: Dave tells us about Shirt Pocket and SuperDuper! and his other products. APPLE Apple released yet more updates and Betas... -Whoops, iTunes won't be available in the Microsoft Store this year, after all – The Verge- Apple begins selling $4999 27-inch iMac Pro with 8-core CPU, deliveries arrive Dec. 27 – Apple Insider Apple buys Shazam – CNet IN THE NEWS Patreon scraps new service fee and apologizes to users – The Verge Nemo's Hardware Store (XX:XX) Fusion Guitar With integrated amp, speakers, battery and iPhone dock, the Fusion is redefining what an electric guitar is, and what it can do. Combining the Fusion with guitar apps unleashes unlimited possibilities for learning, playing, creating and sharing music. Do the effects pedals and amps on the guitar apps sound authentic? They sound incredible; we have built this guitar because they sound so good. There are YouTube videos of people comparing the sounds produced by the apps to the sounds of the actual hardware amps and effects and it's' almost impossible to tell the difference. For example checkout what people say about Bias by Positive Grid on YouTube. Which apps work with the Fusion Guitar? Almost all currently available apps will work with the Fusion Guitar including any app that works with a guitar interface like the Jamup Plug, iRig, Apogee Jam etc. Any guitar app multi-effects processors with amp & FX modeling are compatible; Amplitube, Bias, JamUp, Ampkit, ToneStack and more. All tuition apps; Yousician, Guitar Pro, Guitar Master Class, GuitarToolkit, Jammit Recording and song creation apps include; GarageBand, Studiomini Charby Sense – World's Smartest Auto Cutoff Cable Support The Essential Apple Podcast by contributing to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/essential-apple-show This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Primer on Practice Hey everyone!It’s been a long time, but I’m back. This time I’m talking about practice, teaching, great new ukes, and some ideas for musicians to check out.Here‘s an article/video about effective practice by NPR and TED-Ed.The metronome app I use when I practice is Tempo. The Ukulele App is another nice app for practice/learning ukulele. Yousician is another app for learning uke. It also teaches piano, guitar, and bass. There are so many resources out there for learning! What are your favorites?Ukulele Fretboard Roadmaps is a book that helps makes sense of knowing the entire fretboard and how to play scales, chords, and melodies everywhere on the fretboard.Ledward Kaapana and Honoka and Azita are two artists I think you should check out if you haven’t.Ledward played a concert in July that you can see here. He’s also on Spotify here. Honoka and Azita are on Spotify as well.A great resource for hearing ukuleles if you can’t actually play them (great for buying too!) is The Ukulele Site. Another great place to hear ukes and read reviews on them as well is Got a Ukulele.The GHS baritone-tuned Tenor strings can be found here. Living Water Strings can be found here. There’s many more other special sets than I mentioned on the podcast. Thanks for checking it out. Let me know what you think of the podcast so far!Next month I’ll sit down with the great Jim Beloff to talk about ukulele and orchestras.Aloha!Join the conversation on Reddit.Support the podcast by donating to the tip jarSend us your feedback online: https://pinecast.com/feedback/abes-ukulele-podcast/3bf0a72a-2145-4b6e-b17c-7de84914c64b

In this episode I talk to 4 different people that use Yousician from around the world.  Crispan - Cape Town South Africa Wa’el - Jordan  Jonathan Reichart from Canada Alexis Nery from Vancouver Canada yousician.com http://www.customguitarpicks.com.au https://www.facebook.com/BungPaiThaiMassage  https://www.facebook.com/guitarworldnorthcote   To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.comOr on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast.https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/  

In this episode I talk to 4 different people that use Yousician from around the world.Jonathan Mason (ClaptonMayerHendrix) - Melbourne Australia, Mish (CavalryPK) - Seattle USA, Karl Hunt (kh74) - UK and Nicholas Simon (Boldo1) - Vienna, Austria. Stay tuned for part 2 coming out real soon. yousician.com http://www.customguitarpicks.com.au https://www.facebook.com/BungPaiThaiMassage  https://www.facebook.com/guitarworldnorthcote   To find out more about all my podcasts and who is coming up on future episodes check out my website:  becomeaguitaristtoday.comOr on facebook Become A Guitarist Today with Adam Roach podcast.https://www.facebook.com/BecomeAGuitaristTodayWithAdamRoachPodcast/   email: adroach1@hotmail.com

I am honored to have the great pleasure of speaking with one my favorite music teachers, Corey McPherson. Corey and I discuss the value of music in education and ways music teachers can use technology to light a spark in their students. References from the episode: Corey on Twitter - https://twitter.com/coreyonthekeyz Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - One of Mr. Mullaney’s favorite tools for teaching about Vietnam and Richard Nixon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PrUU2S_iw Smart Music - Great app for teaching students music and assessment - https://www.smartmusic.com/ Soundtrap - Great for students to edit music. I edit this podcast in Soundtrap. - https://www.soundtrap.com/ Adobe Spark - https://spark.adobe.com/ Canva - https://www.canva.com/ Yousician - learn how to play guitar in an app! Google Play - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yousician.yousician&hl=en iTunes Store - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yousician/id959883039?mt=8 Corey on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/corey.mcpherson9

Welcome to episode 3 of the Become a guitarist today podcast. In this episode I interview James Neilson from the number one guitar learning app in the world, Yousician. He explains how Yousician works and how students and teachers can benefit from using it. A very informative podcast for anyone wanting to know more about the app and to anyone that doesn't know about Yousician then you will now. All the songs in my book “Become A Guitarist Today book 1” are also uploaded to Yousician so you can practice along to the app as well as along to the book. yousician.com https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fapp%2Fid959883039&h=ATPGz_T1pMn4DYFeUtMplNOL6h1PAwjRFteLnocJhkcbbAPYZAhHxhkQGtk2suRma80NvYlOV5gNSvc8gb7AEzeJ6LovhiSI2wLxD6w4UbwdUTWDPqJKORe17Dw883yJ3_8hHCNTCTh8WkdkXdC_fWWAWEEclIhe&s=1&enc=AZOnblCnL1r2xGG4jRjSTXDPlfyT-6Q3wUWOSfGaY5fAfIbQGts5wTpUHz9IOQbxHyfJLpc2nniIyFzfqhesHnSW   becomeaguitaristtoday.com

Justin and Jason discuss why Justin wants a Vive and why he's excited about the future of VR, Justin's new swimming routine and his super-low heart rate, Jason's "new" New Man Plan, the show's Patreon campaign, how Jason is learning to play the piano using the app Yousician, the Nugget pivot of 2017, Mr. Robot, the latest with the Math Academy and some related publicity.

Visszatértünk jó sok game ajánlattal, produktivitás APPal, iOS10 bétázással és persze megosztottunk néhány gondolatot a Groteszk Kreatív belső életéből is. App ajánló Pokémon GO őrület  https://appsto.re/us/XnIpbb.i Day of the Tentacle Remastered  https://appsto.re/hu/1xoAcb.i Auto Warriors  https://appsto.re/hu/zce17.i Grim Fandango  https://appsto.re/hu/NEXu6.i Dead Venture  https://appsto.re/us/fHoccb.i CSR Racing 2  https://appsto.re/us/4fq70.i caRRage  https://appsto.re/us/pJVk-.i Produktivitás appok by XaB: Fantastical 2 for iPad  Calendar and Reminders  https://appsto.re/us/7M5GX.i Airmail  https://appsto.re/us/jYMm7.i (http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10881470/airmail-ios-email-app-launch) iThoughts (mindmap)  https://appsto.re/us/r4HQZ.i Ha hangszeren tanulnál itt Yousician  https://appsto.re/us/FCQn5.i Ha lakást / házat rendeznél be: Houzz  https://appsto.re/i6h856M Az ígért vicces videó: The Expert https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg

4. yılında M. Birgin ve gitarı... "El Condor Pasa", "Old MacDonald" ve "Red River Valley" çalışmaları gitarla çalınmaktadır. Ayrıca Guitarbots ve Yousician oyunlarından bahsedilmektedir.