#like i used to just be able to buy most international stuff on itunes or dvd and have it in perpetuity

[tea-earl-grey]

there's something so dismal about how so much of tv fandom's energy nowadays seems to go towards trying to prove to big corporations that their show is good enough to save. like whenever a new episode or series comes out it's "remember to watch it all in 24 hours or it won't get renewed!" "play it on repeat for a month or else it'll become another piece of lost media!" "don't stop talking and posting about it during the hiatus or else this season that's already in production might not air!" "if this tag trends on twitter for long enough we might get eight episodes instead of six!!!" it feels less like we're enjoying a show that so many people worked hard on and more like we're trying to create rituals to please the gods (which replace gods with The Algorithm and you're not far off).

like i haven't even been involved in fandom for that long but even just seven or so years ago if a show did well enough that it was nominated for awards and trending on twitter and having well attended comic con panels then it would be renewed for at least a season or two. and back then being renewed for another season meant "we're for sure going to get a new season next year!" with almost no possibility of cancelation. and even shows that did just okay ratings wise would easily get 5+ seasons.

and it was more fun. when i was watching Doctor Who or Arrowverse or whatever in 2014 i could enjoy and critique the media itself instead of constantly being nervous about whether the next season will be cashed in for nostalgia bait or have its episode count cut or be postponed for three years or just outright canceled because it was slightly less popular than last year. like the fandom would still stress out over potential bad narrative choices or whatever but we would also get excited about the future.

maybe it's just my own perceptions but i just tend to find myself favoring fandoms for shows (or at least eras, i'm looking at you Doctor Who) that have been completed. i like Good Omens and Our Flag Means Death and Strange New Worlds and Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the latest Doctor Who era but i just find it hard to get invested when there's so much anxiety around if there will be a future to those shows and so much of the fandom activity revolves around that anxiety. and then as a result when the show does end for good (whether through cancelation or design) the fandom starts to fade away too because so much of it was based on the temptation of The Future.

and i'm also quick to admit that production in pre-streaming era shows had their own problems (once popular shows running for 15 seasons and jumping the shark just because it's a cash cow, tampered down diversity in the interest of "popular appeal", the whole quantity over quality issue, etc) but at least the fandoms were more optimistic and focused on the story itself instead of just being angry about the eternal potential of cancelation or outright deletion.

(also there are obviously much larger issues to the streaming model re: residuals and everything else brought up during the wga and sag strikes but that's all been said much more coherently so i'm just speaking from my own perspective as a fan. and even then there's still definite overlap between the fandom anxiety over renewal and the real world economic anxiety for people involved with production over "will we have a job/be paid". it's far too early to tell but i really hope the strikes will help to solve this problem.)

#and not even to once again bring up the problems with serializing nearly every show #and how that means what would have been a few minor quibbles and problems are now baked into the formula of a show #and how that contributes to the fandom anxiety around inconsistency between seasons #idk if im saying anything new but ive just been thinking about this with how i feel like the anxiety around prodigy's future #is stopping me from getting more invested in the show/fandom #same with the new doctor who era. i love fifteen so far but i cant stop being So Nervous when fandom is the place i come to relax #anyways im very glad that i watched and got invested in Picard after s3 started airing or else i would have the same problem #idk what to tag this as #fandom stuff #my posts #also not even to talk about how streaming models have made it so much harder to watch things internationally without pirating #like i used to just be able to buy most international stuff on itunes or dvd and have it in perpetuity #but now i drive to canada and cant access things i paid for and fuck you if you dont live in a country where that streaming service works

[putschki1969]

Hi Puts, I have a question, but maybe it's too personal. As a fan, how much money do you spend? I think the three FC alone cost about $130 a year. Each shipment to Mexico costs between $20 and $50, including fees. Buying CDs, DVDs, streaming tickets, shop items, magazines (Idk if Hikaru and Keiko send something like Botanical Tsushin) I think is quite a bit of money. I graduated this year and recently started working, so I'm wondering how much money I need to pay for everything I want.

Hello there!

Don't worry, I have no filter so there is literally nothing too personal you could ever ask me. Also, I think it's important to be transparent about stuff like that.

Before I get to the juicy details I want to preface this post by saying that I am in a very privileged position so using my fangirl expenses as a general reference is probably not the best idea. There is free education and public health care in my country so I do not have any debts from either of those. On top of that I do have a job with a decent salary and my monthly fixed costs are comparatively low since I share the rent and stuff with my mum (yup, I am 30+ and choose to live with my mum, sue me). My company pays for public transportation, internet and a big portion of my meals. Last but not least, I have no car, no partner, no kids, no pets, no other social commitments or anything else that would burden me financially aside from my obsession with Kalafina so I am free to spend a considerable amount of my income on my "hobby" without having to worry too much about running into debt or not having enough savings.

Having said that, I will openly admit that I spend a SHIT-TON of money for my girls, much more than I am honestly comfortable with. Yes, I can more or less afford it but it still brings me a lot of pain and tears every single day.

Now let's get into the details 〈(•ˇ‿ˇ•)-→ [Like you I will be using USD for easy understanding]

I honestly cannot tell you a definitive number since my expenses always change depending on how many events and releases are scheduled for a particular time period. I guess I can provide a rough overview of what I am currently spending on Kalafina since there are quite a few things happening right now (nothing compared to last December though).

The four FCs I am part of with their combined costs of roughly $150 are what I consider to be “negligible costs” and they are really my least concern in the grand scheme of things.

The streaming tickets are very cheap in my opinion and I would gladly pay even more for them if it meant I wouldn't have to spend a fortune on regular trips to Japan. But yeah, it's another $150 to $200 a year for various streaming events.

Releases and merch are pricey in and of themselves (incl. around $5-$10 of domestic shipping) but it's made even worse when you are crazy like me and buy multiple copies of something just to get special benefits. Recently I have ordered Hikaru's merch (~$100), Keiko's merch (~$50), Wakana's merch (~$120) and three *coughs* copies of Wakana's Blu-ray (~$220). I also made sure to purchase Hikaru's albums on iTunes (~$20) even though I already own the CDs.

International shipping/import fees is where the costs pile up and I usually end up paying anywhere from $20 up to $150 for packages. Austria has literally the WORST import regulations T_T

I also indulge in the occasional Kalafina fashion item so that gets pretty expensive too. But that’s just me so there is really no need to take these costs into consideration.

So yeah, you can expect to spend a LOT of money depending on how greedy you are. :P Being an overseas Kalafina-fan sucks! However, I have two tips for you:

Prioritising is key! Find out what’s most important to you and then make peace with the fact that you will never be able to buy everything because that’s just not reasonable (unless you are filthy rich :P). I obviously focus on digital and physical music releases because that’s how you support their solo careers. I know it’s tempting to pirate this stuff but I urge all fans to make those purchases. The same applies to live stream tickets. If you have the means and the event is foreigner-friendly, please go for it! Aside from that, you will just have to choose your orders wisely. Ask yourself the questions: What kind of benefits do I prefer? What merch am I most likely to use? Any merch I am particularly fond of? Make sure you don’t end up overspending. While I keep encouraging fans to spend their money, you should always do it within reason. 

Cluster your orders! If you are using a proxy service like Tenso or Buyee, it’s best to have items arrive around the same time so you can consolidate your packages (within the 30-day period). After all, there is nothing more frustrating than paying $20 on shipping for a tiny fan club magazine that’s basically for free. So before you make a purchase, check the scheduled shipping time and try to make your orders align with each other. And also try to pay attention to the shipping dates of FC-related items, that’s not always easy since the schedules aren’t exactly regular but you can at least get a feel for them. If a FC item happens to arrive at the warehouse, you could always use that opportunity to order some in-stock goods or releases you have had your eye on. They should arrive quickly so you can ship them together with the FC-item. Please note that this will of course increase shipping costs/import fees since your packages will get bigger/heavier but I think at the end of the day, you are still saving money.

I know it’s often frustrating and intimidating to navigate through the world of Kalafina but I hope my posts can at least somehow help to alleviate the the stress that comes with being an overseas fan.

#kalafina #reply #wakana #keiko #hikaru #life is hard as kala-fan

[rushingheadlong]

This isn’t exactly Queen-related, but since this is my “bandom” blog y’all are getting this post over here instead of on my main so. sorry about that I guess lol.

I mentioned this a little bit in my post about the sale Tim Staffell is having on his bandcamp right now, but I also want to talk about this in it’s own right too: Music artists, especially independent creators, earn hardly any money from streaming services and it’s important to actually buy their products to support them!

I know there are other posts going around talking about the problems with Spotify’s payment model right now, but a) I can’t find them to reblog at the moment and b) I think it’s easy to get confused when you look at “average amount paid per stream” because that’s not actually how streaming sites pay out their artists at all.

Rolling Stone did a breakdown in August 2020 of what Spotify most likely pays out to artists, based on the available revenue information. If you don’t want to read the whole article, the long and short of it is that:

The conservative estimate for the number of artists on Spotify is 3 million - of which only about 43,000 artists account for the top 90% of streams on the site. 

Spotify doesn’t technically pay artists per stream. All the revenue that it distributes to artists each month is pooled together, and artists are paid out from that pool based on popularity of individual tracks. 

As this separate Rolling Stones article explains, if five hit new songs by one artist pull in 2% of all the streams in December, that artist (and everyone with rights to those five songs) gets 2% from that pool of money. But that means that if you listen to nothing but small, independent artists the money Spotify makes from you is going first and foremost to top-name artists and not the people you actually listen to.

Here’s a breakdown from that first article that makes this a little clearer: The top 43,000 artists make about $22,000 per artist per quarter. Everyone else (over 98% of all artists on Spotify) averages $36 per artist per quarter, or roughly $12 per artist per month.

You can also see that in breakdowns of what artists with high stream numbers actually make. Just over 1 million streams earned one group just under $5,000 across three months. Although to be clear, this is not a problem with only Spotify and buying digital copies of albums from places like iTunes and Amazon also doesn’t result in high profits for artists - usually netting them less than $1 per album, or about 9 cents per track downloaded. 

Here’s the thing, though: If you buy directly from the artist themselves that percentage of profits goes way up. 

That should be obvious, but it’s easy to rail against how unfair Spotify and other streaming sites are and lose sight of the fact that there is a very clear way to support independent and/or less popular artists and it’s by simply buying their stuff without using a middleman!

Not to keep talking about Tim Staffell but that’s exactly what we’re going to do for a moment here: He sells his music and limited merch through Bandcamp which takes 15% of each sale of digital downloads and 10% of each sale of merchandise. 

His albums are priced a little more expensive than a $9.99 iTunes purchase, but you can buy digital copies of his entire discography for £24 and he’ll make about £20.40 on each sale. If you buy a physical copy of one of his albums for £20, he makes £18. Hell, even if you buy a CD during his 50% sale he’ll still take home about £9 from it and that is still a significantly higher profit than what either streaming sites or iTunes pay out. 

This article talks more about how much more money artists earn selling through Bandcamp than they do through streaming sites. One example given is a band who made $4,200 releasing a new album on the site, vs maybe making $100 a year in streaming. 

From a broader ethical standpoint, that same article talks about some of the charity donations that Bandcamp makes from their revenue and the fact that since the COVID-19 pandemic started Bandcamp has launched “Bandcamp Days” where they waive their percentage from each sale entirely so all profits go directly to the artists. (There’s also the fact that Bandcamp simply pays out artists faster than streaming sites do, so they aren’t waiting for their money to be released.)

It’s also worth noting that Bandcamp requires artists to set a minimum amount, but you can also choose to pay more if you want so if you have some extra cash to burn you can, in fact, give it directly to that small indie artist whose music you fell in love with if you so choose!

And the thing is, it can be really easy to look at a group and see that they have their music on iTunes or Amazon or whatever and just buy from there out of habit, but I guarantee that if you look at their website they’ll also have a link to their Bandcamp page - but you do have to go looking for it!

If you follow my main blog, a few weeks ago I was waffling over whether I wanted to buy merch from The Longest Johns (yes, you’re getting a real glimpse into my musical tastes today). I spent well over an hour looking through their store and I was so tempted by the vinyl copy of their newest album. And I’m still tempted by it but y’all, I live in the US and conversion from £ to $ plus international shipping is not always the kindest so I didn’t buy it. And I will never judge anyone for not having the money to pay for international shipping to support independent artists.

But here’s the thing: The Longest Johns also have a Bandcamp page, which I never went looking for because I’ll admit that I found their music to stream and I just did that and never looked further into it. But now that I know that I can buy digital copies of their albums for £10, of which 90% of that is going directly to them, I am definitely going to be doing that instead.

I get that not everyone has the money to do this, and I fully understand that streaming sites are sometimes the only way that people can listen to the music that they love. If you don’t have the money to spend on something, then of course that’s fine!

But if you do have the money, considering spending it to directly support an independent artist!

Look, Queen is a multi-million dollar enterprise. It’s one thing to advocate for supporting new album releases, like Live Around the World, because that can influence future projects that they might release - but at the end of the day, I genuinely don’t care if you illegally download their music or stream it or anything else. (Seriously, I don’t care if you stream Queen, because the issues with Spotify’s payment structure don’t matter to them when they’re that rich already and there needs to be a massive overhaul* across all streaming platforms anyway in order for smaller artists to make a reasonable profit off streaming sites.)

But if you have an independent artist that you love - be in Tim Staffell or The Longest Johns or Omnia or anyone else - how you engage with their music does matter a lot more. And if you’re financially able to do so, look into buying their music or their merch from them directly, either through Bandcamp or whatever other storefronts they may use. They’ll get a much larger share of the profits if you do that than any amount of time you could spend streaming them on Spotify.

*If you want to do something to start forcing changes with how streaming sites pay out artists, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers has a list of demands for Spotify specifically which includes paying at least one cent per stream, adopting user-centric pay models, revealing existing payola and then ending it altogether, and crediting all labor in recordings, among other things. You can sign on to support them and read more information HERE and there’s a tumblr post you can reblog HERE as well.

#long post // #text #not queen // #ramblings

[nomediaplay]

There’s a bunch of new questions in my inbox that I don’t think I can answer without ranting and being very condescending. Below are some

“Will you buy Jessica's book”

That’s extremely unlikely. First off because I basically only ever read various types of research papers and legal documents. Secondly because I doubt she’s able to understand enough of the bigger picture and has enough self-reflection to write something I’d find meaningful. Maybe she can, but I doubt it.

“Based on those RIAJ reports, will streaming take over Japan like it did with the rest of the world?”

I’d say it already has since long ago, at least among younger people. As I’ve ranted about before, the physical market in Japan is almost 100% about idols making fans buy CDs for other reasons than music. And it’s particularly held up by how idols hold huge amounts of events to which fans get “free tickets” if they buy CDs.

“You said that bgs have better physical sales because of fangirls, then why bigbang is not selling millions like exo and bts?”

Because no matter how stupid they are, most of BIGBANG’s fangirls are at least a lot older than EXO and BTS fangirls and therefor won’t spend their hard earned money on something so ridiculously dumb as buying CDs.

The real question you should ask is: Why are hordes of international girls who don’t speak Korean and who don’t have a CD-player buying millions of CDs from Korea???

And the answer to that is in how the big young international kpop following basically is like some huge retarded online cult that lives detached from reality and doesn’t care about facts, and instead basically just makes up whatever stuff they want to believe in. Obviously record labels are fueling this behavior as they make a ton of money from how fans spend money on dumb things. But it’s really fascinating how it’s largely the fans themselves who have created this absurd behavior.

“How is it possible that a girl group like Blackpink who sold 200k+ copies of their mini album with no fan signs, billions of views on yt, tons of exposure, a successful world tour and 20k attendance at their Seoul concerts can't even sell out their fan meeting?”

Again, you’re asking the wrong question. BLACKPINK is basically just some girls dancing to 5 autotuned Teddy-songs. I understand if lots of people find the songs to be awesome. But it’s 5 songs. And basically anybody could go up on stage and dance to them. So why would anyone pay for tickets to a BLACKPINK performance? The turn-out for their latest Korean concert seems like a fair turn-out reflecting how many people that logically should want to pay to see BLACKPINK (and as mentioned before: much of the audience at their previous Seoul concert had been given free tickets by companies sponsoring the event, and 20k seems exaggerated too for that matter).

So the real question you should ask is: “Why are hordes of international kpop fans paying money to see BLACKPINK dancing to some songs?” And of course the answer is again in how this international kpop following basically is an online cult.

“Do you know the difference between apple music and iTunes and which do I have to look at to know how a group is doing.”

Yes of course. ‘iTunes’ is Apple’s old download service where you purchase downloads. ‘Apple Music’ is Apple’s new streaming service where you pay a monthly subscription and then get to stream whatever music you want to listen to, exactly like Spotify (it just took them 7 years to copy Spotify).

Since no normal human would pay to purchase a download from iTunes, iTunes is completely irrelevant. Spotify and Apple Music are the charts you need to look at if you want to know what music people are listening to.

The only ones who buy downloads on iTunes are idiot fans who for some reason have convinced themselves that they must waste their money to make their faves top iTunes. And frankly, buying downloads from iTunes (or QQ etc) is even way more stupid than buying CDs from Korea. At least fangirls buying CDs could claim that they want the photobooks and cards in the CD package. The idiots that buy downloads from iTunes are just pissing away their money. Don’t even get me started on all the Chinese fans who uses VPNs to make their faves top the US iTunes chart.

“How big are the chances that super m will succeed in u.s.?”

The question is strange. The members already have lots of fans. From the perspective of Capital Records it seems a very simple and low-risk project to make money from their already existing fans buying shit.

And from the perspective of the members it seems like a good opportunity to get great US/worldwide promotions/exposure that will help them make more money from concerts and CF deals now and in the future.

As for if they could become actually mainstream music that people listen to, the answer is of course no.

“Does the labels in the west work the same shaddy and scheme ways as most korean labels/agencies? Is it better to no sign to a label and just stay independent and probably make more money given the bigger and more developed music markets?”

The western companies are of course just as ‘shady’ in many aspects, but your question is strange. Record labels, songwriters and performing artists all live in symbiosis.

Record labels make money by marketing and selling music.

Songwriters make money not only by royalties on music sales through record labels, but also from how much their songs are played in concerts, on TV, on radio, in clubs, at sport events, in karaoke bars, etc etc.

Performing artists mostly make money not from royalties on music sales, but by being paid to perform live at concerts and other events and by being paid for various types of CF/endorsement deals.

They all need each other. And if you’re a performing artists with ambitions to make it really big and get paid lots, it makes no sense to decline all the promotion/marketing you’d get by signing with a big record label early in your career. And particularly if you’re not also an awesome songwriter, because then you’ll need the help of some good A&R people to get you suitable songs.

The ‘problems’ of the idol industry (and this of course doesn’t just go for Korea, but even more so for Japan and China, and also applies to many of the big US/UK boygroups decades ago) is especially manifested in how idols are made to do endless promotions and free events to drive music sales (which the record labels make huge money from) instead of doing paid events (which the performing artists would make huge money from).

“It's teddy the richest producer in kpop? Because I always though he probably get paid better than most kpop idols.”

Again: the top performing artists make huge money from live performances and commercial deals, much more than anybody makes from songwriting or music sales. But performing artists who don’t make it big enough make absolutely zero money if they can’t get paid more for performances than what they’d have to spend on outfits/makeup/travel/assistants etc.

Teddy is indeed one of the Koreans who make most money from songwriting nowadays. But songwriting is very different to any normal jobs. Your income is passive royalties from how much your songs are used. Some songs continue to be used for a very long time and all over the world. Take for example the songwriting for ABBA. They continue to make lots of money today from 40-50 year old songs because they are still being used lots on radio, in TV, in musicals and with covers in concerts etc. There are obviously a lot of old Korean songwriters who have a huge catalogue of songs they’ve written that continue to make them money every year.

“Will the hallyu ban in China ever be lifted?”

Who knows. China being China. They’re just altogether weird with their one-party-state ruling everything but any horrible individual opportunistic capitalist behavior seems completely OK as long as you support the party-state enough.

“Do bgs members ever stop being fuckboys?”

It would probably be good for you to realize that all men by nature more or less has a biological instinct that says “if there’s a hole, then I should plug it”. Their actions are rather a result of opportunities and consequences. Most male pop-stars and actors have more or less endless opportunities and face no consequences.

[fyeahbangtaned]

I’m not new to kpopfan but I guess I can say this is the firsttime I felt like fancafe made me feel the need to gain access to their more genuine/lengthy posts I.e. letters.I wasn’t as concerned or even aware about fancafe with shinee/snsd I guess but this might be a personalfeeling. Please understand I understand there is a business aspect to the Kpop industry but ultimately, regardless if other groups do this,I just can’t help finding the institution of fancafe not something I fully support.

I feel that fancafe can be a touchy subject and some may not be able to purchase the membership and therefore not feel fan enough? I guess this is something I’m not used to in the “west”. Ultimately, I know bts loves all fans but the financial pressure and business that surrounds fan interaction outside of concert dvds and goods… I personally believe fan interactions should be something that is not mired in business. I know none of this will change, just my own thoughts.

first of, I think it’s perfectly fine to not like the fancafe and what goes with it. I’ve already said it before that being iffy about spending too much money on trying to fangirl is ultimately valid. but as it is no one is trying to force you to spend your money. It’s your own decision and you should know that you don’t have to spend it if you don’t want to.

But I guess when you said problematic I thought it would be other things to point out but like feeling not enough of a fan isn’t what the fancafe is trying to convey. I think no one is saying that. I mean for me, it would be problematic if bighit themselves says things like “ Be a REAL FAN and buy the membership!!” or even if bangtan posts MORE on the fancafe than any other sites, but they don’t. They post on twitter all the time. So I don’t really agree with you on some things because here are some of my thoughts:

1. Bangtan using the fancafe is something you should be able to see also from THEIR perspective. They should be allowed to have a place on the internet wherein they can post what they want and they can be sure that the main audience that will be able to reach the post is ONLY ARMYs. They make lengthy personal posts on fancafe because it’s ultimately something they only want to share to their fans. Not the whole world on twitter, not something that will get articles on billboard, allkpop and so on. They want to have a place to post where they can be as personal as they can get and they know that they’re really talking to ARMYs as the main audience because it’s their fancafe. Not being able to read that or see the post isn’t bangtan’s fault nor makes you less of a fan. But the fancafe is a space for Bangtan to do this and they should be allowed that space. Fans are the ones who should adjust. Not to mention the translations gets posted out of fancafe anyways so most of us gets access to that too so I dunno why it’s such a problem.

2, I think it’s ultimately unfair to hold bangtan accountable for any fan interaction that has something to do with business/spending. Because this is still their job and they should and need to get paid for what they do. And again, bangtan posts on twitter all the time, bighit posts a lot of free content all the time I think it’s a bit unfair to keep complaining about things you have to pay for if the free stuff constitutes MORE of their content.

3. You don’t even need to buy the official membership to read bangtan’s post on the fancafe, you just need to sign up for the fancafe and try to level up to level 2. Though admittedly trying to go to level 2 still requires you to spend money because it usually requires you post screenshots of streaming their music on music sites. For international fans you can post streaming on itunes and if you already buy their music anyways then that’s already a plus and all you have to do is have the patience and effort to apply for the level up.

I understand as well that being a fan, shouldn’t require so much effort and all that. And you should know that you don’t have to if you don’t want to. But knowing that kpop groups are different and requires some type of effort you’re not used to… your unwillingness to adjust to all of that doesn’t make it problematic in my opinion. You just don’t want to adjust to it, you want it to adjust to you.

#replies #anon

[frommainetospain2020]

Actually Experiencing Madrid?

I gotta say, having an antidepressant that actually starts to work after you hit a mental low is an extremely good feeling. I’m approaching about a month and a half of being back on my antidepressant, and honestly, the difference is night and day.

Spain has a week called Semana Santa (Saints Week), where schools are closed for a week. During the beginning of Semana Santa, I managed to complete a task that I had procrastinated for approximately four months. I actually bought some clothes that actually fit me.

The intention of the endeavor had three goals in mind. The first one was to deposit a check from my insurance for a doctor’s visit that I had. I was told at the branch that I went to that because the check was an international check, I had to go to my designated branch to deposit it. Instead of doing that, I just did the picture deposit with my American bank, and it worked fairly well.

The second goal was also a failed attempt, but it requires a little backstory. For those that know me, they know that I have an extensive digital movie library. My iTunes has over 1100 movies. I found out recently that I can use my VPN to buy movies from YouTube dubbed into other languages. “Why buy dubbed languages that you don’t even speak?” you may ask. I find that listening to dubbed movies for movies that you know extremely well is an extremely good method of language learning.

Anyway, I wanted to buy the Spanish DVD of Matilda, because it wasn’t on YouTube in Spanish, but it was in every other language that I’ve looked for. I went to a book/movie store that I had been to a few times, which has one of my favorite store names of all time: FNAC. Unfortunately it wasn’t there, so I bought it on Amazon.

The final task was to purchase clothes that fit me. This was the only successful task of that adventure. I went to Madrid’s Gran Via, which is a main shopping street, and I went to a store called Primark. It’s a place with very affordable clothes. I didn’t take any pictures, but the store was enormous and looks like this:

So yeah, thankfully, I didn’t have to maneuver numerous floors. Only the third floor had men’s clothes. I walked the perimeter, bought a 5 pack of socks, a 3 pack of underwear, two belts, 8 polo shirts, and a pair of pants. The polo shirts were cool because they fit me super nicely, and they were only like 3,50€ a piece. The pants were tricky, because all of the pants that the store had that were sized by numbers were all too small. I bought a pair that was sized by Large, Extra Large, etc. I’m not too keen on the fit of those, but they function.

So that was that adventure.

Numerous times, I was told by madrileños that I HAD to see the Museo del Prado, which is a big museum in Madrid. So towards the end of Semana Santa, that’s exactly what I did.

I took the Cercanias train to Atocha station, one of the main train stations in Madrid. It looks like this:

I saw a homeless guy sleeping on a pallet in one of those archways, which is mostly a blurb for me to remember it, but not one that is an important detail to a casual reader.

The museum was just a short walk down the street. It was a HUGE building that looked very grandiose. It looked like this:

I made my way to the ticket office, and asked the guy if he spoke English. Seeing as this museum is something that basically every tourist goes to, he obviously did. I asked if I could buy a ticket, and he told me that my timing was good. He said that ticket sales were going to stop in like 5 minutes for some reason. I’m not 100% sure why, but I was able to get in.

Once to the top, I had to go through a metal detector, and then I was free to explore. This museum was huge. I originally started by reading all of the little blurbs for each piece of art, but then I began to just skim because there was so much art to cover.

Since I don’t go to museums often, I was planning to try to take pictures, but a museum worker quickly shut that idea down.

Overall, I was quite impressed with the art that was there. Most of the art was biblical, either showing the crucifixion of Christ, the immaculate conception, and all of that stuff.

My favorite art that I saw there was a piece called “El Bufon Primo” which depicts a little person from the 1500s. I like this piece because I learned that Peter Dinklage (Tyrion in Game of Thrones) is actually an ageless vampire from the 1500s.

I knew that I wanted to purchase a guidebook, but I wanted the cheaper one for fear that I would have to carry the books that I purchase back in my suitcase. In seeing the stuff I’ve got, I probably could have gotten the bigger guidebook, and honestly I still might. I ventured downstairs and saw a bookstore that was closed. I thought that I wasn’t gonna be able to buy a guidebook, but I later found out that the small bookstore I saw was not the main gift shop for the museum. There was an enormous giftshop, where I purchased the 5€ guidebook, and proceeded to finish up my trip.

After Semana Santa, I knew I wanted to maneuver myself to Las Ventas, to the Plaza del Toros, aka Madrid’s bull fighting ring. Obviously, because of COVID restrictions, it was closed, but it was still cool to see. It was an enormous colosseum type thing that looked like this at the front of it:

I walked the perimeter and took a bunch of pictures. There were a few statues of famous bullfighters and things like that. I didn’t do a tremendous amount here, but with my connection to bullfighting (My junior recital, “The Tantalizing Tale of the Timid and Tactful Toreador, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpk429FB7tY ) it was definitely a cool thing to see.

Finally in this saga of me finally going out to do things, I walked to the closest centro comercial (shopping mall), which was about 3 km from where I live. I walked there and back, so I basically walked about 4 miles that day.

The mall was enormous. It looked like this:

My main goal here was to see a store that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I managed to see an open and functioning Toys R Us.

I wanted to see if I could find something that I could use at my school with the toddlers that I work with. This was a small Toys R Us, so I wasn’t able to find anything that I was able to use. I also went to another toystore in the mall, to which I found nothing. I finally went to the Casa del Libro, a bookstore, and bought a book about teaching English to toddlers.

While walking back from the mall, I saw an enormous Coca Cola bottling plant across the highway.

I also saw a decapitated rabbit head and a guy doing donuts in a cemetery parking lot. Which reminds me that the walk also consisted of walking by an enormous cemetery that was laid out mausoleum style, with a bunch of buildings.

Hopefully my antidepressants will continue being nice to me, and I’ll venture out to do more things. Here’s to hoping...

[umusicians]

UM Industry Profile : : Wizkid News

As an artist, one of the biggest teams rooting for your success is your fan base. They are the ones who will purchase your releases from digital stores such as iTunes, stream your music on various digital platforms and buy tickets to your shows. They are the backbone to your success and without them you wouldn’t be where you are today. Wizkid News is a platform created to support Nigerian Artist, Wizkid. From posting about Wizkid’s releases and those of associated acts, they’ve been able to keep fans informed about all things Wizkid. They have launched several campaigns in support of Wizkid’s music endeavours and more! Since their launch in 2014, they have acquired a following over 2 million followers across their social media sites. This is something very rare that we have not witnessed with fan channels dedicated to other artists. Amandah Opoku sat down with the founder of Wizkid News to talk about why they started the platform, their recent website launch and more! Check out our interview below!

Amandah Opoku: Hey Wizkid News how are you?  Wizkid News: Been alright.  Same old quarantine routine.  I went to the park and did some content strategy. AO: For Wizkid News? Wizkid News: Yes, all day everyday!

AO: When it comes to the content you produce, what is your game plan? How do you choose what to post and when?  Wizkid News: It depends. There are times I’ll sit and plan content out for like the next 2 or 3 days, perhaps if we have a campaign going on for a video or project.  For the most part though, I just wake up in the morning and freestyle with my team.  We’ll post whatever feels right lol, or makes sense.  I often go scoping the internet looking for stuff that's interesting to post about Wiz or anything related to him.  So yeah that's pretty much that.  Oh, and we like dope content.  That’s it!  We’re just curating the page to look/feel as dope as Wizkid.

AO: That is very very cool! I know that in running a music site, we always had pressure to post this first or post that first. When someone releases a single for example, we wanted to make sure that we were the ones to break the news and everyone would come to us for the information. When it comes to the content that you curate for your socials, do you ever feel that kind of pressure? Like as soon as Wiz announces something do you have to be the first site to post it? Wizkid News: Definitely, I feel that pressure!  When I first started, I was REALLY doing the most to stay on top of everything.  I feel like I had an internal post notification alert before Instagram made theirs lol.  I guess I still have it now, to a certain extent.  It’s gotten easier now that I have a team.  

However, that pressure to get content out first is not what it used to be.  We’ve built up enough reputability where sometimes even if we’re a few, whether it be minutes or maybe like an hour late, I know people really value the news from a credible source like ours.  If Wizkid News puts it up, then it’s really a thing.  Wiz doesn’t usually share a lot on his social media, so I realize people often look to us as the source.  Being mindful of that, we always try to make sure the news is legit & is in line with how we view Wiz’s brand.  Yea, so being accurate & intentional are a lil more important to us than getting stuff out first. 

AO: I want to take it back to how you said that you are seen as a source, that people won't question what you post. Forgive me, I only found out about your page before No Signall’s Vybz Cartel v. Wizkid clash. Someone on Twitter had tweeted a screenshot of your Instagram page with over 1.7 million Instagram followers. And because of this Wizkid had an unfair advantage in the clash. What do you have to say to this? Wizkid News: Lol you’re forgiven!  The No Signall clash was dope, big ups to that crew for doing that.  It was really cool to celebrate the culture of black music, arts, & entertainment around the world.  I’m glad my team & I could contribute to the success of the Wiz v. Vybz clash!  

I don’t really like the word “unfair”.  We had an advantage, yes!  That’s due to the popularity of African music which is the new wave currently making its way around the world because of artists like Wizkid. Wiz just happens to have the FC, which is very passionate about him & his music. Wizkid is an icon, and that’s because of him, his fans, and African music lovers worldwide.  We, as a people/culture, worked (consciously & subconsciously) to build him & our music scene up to where it is today & I think we’ll continue to do so. We should be proud of that! AO: Yes, I totally agree with you on your comments about Wiz and his place in music and how Afrobeats has really grown. And I guess more and more people are welcoming that sound as part of their music catalogues and whatever they listen to on a general basis. 

AO: For you specifically, I’m going to take it back to the 1.7 million followers you have on Instagram. That is a lot for a fan page. Why do you think people, this could be Wizkid FC, I know that they go hard for Wiz so they want all the news or general fans of Wizkid, why do you think they follow you? Why are you specifically one of the only Wizkid sites with such a large following? Why do you think people are drawn to your content? Wizkid News: Hmmm, you know I still wonder about that too lol.  I think there's a few reasons. One of them is definitely consistency.  We've been really consistent over the years.  I started the page as a college kid back in 2014, and I’ve put a diverse team together to keep it moving, growing, & evolving to date.    Another reason is that people simply love Wizkid!  They love him for music, and everything else - i.e. his charisma and personality.  They love his lifestyle & what he represents.  What’s there not to like about Wizkid lol?  So, the page is basically like a lifestyle.  Every day, a fan can interact with the Wizkid brand in multiple ways since we try & feed followers a wholesome experience of Wiz.  

A third reason is that Wizkid doesn’t post much on his own social media, so it allows room for our page to flourish.

Lastly, our content is fresh!  I think our page really stands out in the media space!  I’m really proud of the way we’re curating.

AO: Speaking on how you mentioned that people are drawn to Wiz’s charisma and his personality. I guess you tie that into the fact that you’re right he barely posts. He’ll pop up when he has a song coming out and then you won’t hear from him ever again, sometimes promoting and sometimes not promoting. Do you kind of see yourself as an extension of his brand? Not an official extension because you are a blog, a fan blog, but anything along those lines? Wizkid News: Of course! I definitely do.  Before launching, I watched my brother/college roommate work as a contributor for a few Kanye West blogs.  Kanye, like Wiz, would only be on social media ever so sparingly. So TeamKanyeDaily & YeezyCentral, to name a few, were the go-to sites for all Kanye updates. TeamKanyeDaily still is today lol.  So, that’s how I sort of learned how to make my page align in an official manner with the Wizkid brand/camp.  

AO: That is very very cool to hear about your brother! Wow so it's almost like you guys have a knack for running blogs and everything associated with that. My biggest question is, why Wizkid? You could have started a fan site or blog  for any artist in the world, why did it have to be Wizkid? Wizkid News: Because Wizkid is dope!  He was my intro into Afrobeats & actually African music altogether.  I’m an American of Cameroonian descent.  Growing up, I used to listen to African music here & there at family functions but hip hop was my favorite genre - i.e. JAY Z, Kanye, etc.  In 2014, I was studying abroad in Europe. At the time, I was actually put on probation by the dean’s office at my school & had a strict curfew.  So, I was in my dorm room ALOT lol & my morale was down. That September, Wizkid’s ‘AYO’ album dropped & I came across it while bored scrolling on Facebook lol.  I recognized Wiz’s name since “Show You The Money” was big that summer & one of the FEW African songs I had on my phone. I decided to give the project a listen & I was hooked from that moment on! My whole mood gradually picked up as I vibed to that album repeatedly for days. From there, I went on discovering Wiz’s more & more of Wiz’s catalogue online. It was exciting! I realized I loved his music, and it was something for me to look forward to, despite being stuck in my dorm.  That vibe is what gave birth to Wizkid News! 

AO: Do you think in creating Wizkid news it helped you to better connect with your culture? I know Ebro from Beats 1 had a statement along the lines of saying we are drawn to Afrobeats because it's from the motherland, like where we’re from. Do you think that rings true of your creation of Wizkid News? Wizkid News: Yeah, 100%!  Like I said, African music was only something I’d come across while at family functions. My phone was filled with very, very few hints of it & endless amounts of hip hop. I’m actually a big JAY Z fan, he’s easily my favorite artist!  I own all his albums, all of them in CD format. However, Wizkid and that ‘AYO’ album really got me into African music. Wizkid became my next favorite artist & I consequently became a fan of African music genres! Wiz is truly a pan-African artist so I get introduced to so many sounds from the continent thru keeping up with his collabs, tours, etc. I’m able to experience the unity and diversity of African culture.

AO: Wizkid News…why that name? You could have called yourself anything. You know Wizkid Daily. Why did you settle on that name? Wizkid News: Yea, so I’m a big JAY Z fan. Jigga has a record called “Blueprint 2”  & in the intro he mentions “JAY Z News”. That’s where I got it from, and it fit the official feel I wanted for the page.   AO: Very very cool. I love how everything you do is tied to Jay-Z and his love for his music and artistry. You’ve really kept a bit about yourself in what you’ve created.

AO: From your point of view, what would you say is the most rewarding part of running this site? And what would you say is one of the most difficult things or challenges? Wizkid News: This page has changed my life and continues to do so everyday!  I’m very grateful for that. The most rewarding aspect of running this page is having impact!  Just knowing that my team & I are able to translate our digital influence to real life impact.

One of the challenges is just trying to get better & grow!  My team & I are all about improving our craft & finding new ways to increase interaction & reach! We actually just launched our Artist Aux feature where we highlight new, exciting artists in the culture!  It’s sort of our first time sort of showcasing other acts that aren’t necessarily connected to Wizkid/Starboy on a consistent basis.  We’re doing well to make it flow into our content mix, so I’m happy.  But, it’s a lot of work lol.

AO: Okay, so you must be a mind reader. My next question was going to be about why you decided to launch wizkidnews.net and I really wanted to go further into the Artist Aux Series. Wizkid News: I’m glad you asked! I feel like we were supposed to have had a website a long time ago lol. With the quarantine, we just had more time & energy to focus on getting it done.  It’s also instrumental now that we’re really expanding our blog with the Artist Aux & the Wizkid News Playlist. Wiz is really the inspiration behind the Artist Aux.  Wizkid was among the very first kid superstars on the continent. He inspires a lot of the young talents who came up around his time & those coming up today. Understanding this part of his brand, I thought it best to highlight some of these new, exciting talents! I’m glad we get to create more value for our features & our platform. Plus, I really love the African music scene worldwide. I’m genuinely a fan of many other acts and sounds. The Artist Aux & Wizkid News Playlists allows me to share and nurture some of my other interests.

AO: With the Artist Aux Series, how do you choose what artists to feature and interview? Do they need to be on Wizkid’s Starboy Entertainment label, do they need to have a large following, does there need to be a lot of noise behind them. Could they just be anyone? How does one get onto the website of yours? Wizkid News: My team & I select the Artist Aux features.  It’s really just based on who we are feeling at the moment. I love Oxlade’s EP & had met him last year.  He’s a really cool guy & a talented artist making waves, so I thought it best to feature him. Same story with Terri. We’re really excited about all our feature artists.  Stay tuned for the next one!  

AO: For any upcoming African artists how can they get in touch with you to potentially be featured? Wizkid News: I’m reachable via email & DM on IG. We try our best to review all throughout the week.

AO: People now have seen your success with Wizid News and we know that this was not an overnight success. You’ve been doing this for the last couple of years. For anybody who’s looking to start a fan site, what would your main piece of advice be? Wizkid News: Consistency + dope content are both key.  Be reputable.  Have impact.

AO: Wizkid News thank you for sitting down with me! To close this interview, what is your favorite Wizkid song and why? Wizkid News: That’s a difficult question. I can't even pick one Wizkid song because I have maybe a handful of songs that I like for various reasons. One that comes to mind right now is actually off of the recent ‘Sound Man’ EP, its called “Mine” with Kel-P. I love that song. Multiple reasons. Wiz is a versatile artist who can literally sound like an artist of any genre, but still be unique.  On that record, he flows so organically & creates a one-of-a-kind reggae feel that’s both soothing and heartfelt.  I think Wiz does a great job of making music that reflects his persona & this song definitely captures his very cool, calm, & collected nature.  I also like that he’s working with a young, buzzing producer - Kel P.

We’ve teamed up with Wizkid News to bring you a playlist of their favorite Wizkid songs because it was hard to choose just one. Check out the playlist curated by Wizkid News on Spotify!

Connect with Wizkid News on the following platforms: https://wizkidnews.net https://instagram.com/WizkidNews https://twitter.com/WizkidSource

#Industry Profile #Interviews #Amandah Opoku #Wizkid News #Wizkid

[blschaos3000-blog]

Its 12:43 pm Hot in Topeka

Welcome to another edition of “8 Questions with……”

So I went back to the well and went looking for another bunch of talented and committed folks who wanted to share their stories with me. They say the third time is the charm and after getting the responses that I have received this go around,I am a total believer in that saying. Which is great considering all the flakes and posers (oh yeah,I do get those as well) I had to deal with in the past month or so. What better way to get the ball rolling then getting the chance to chat with one of the most talented and skilled performers I have met,the incredible Carolyn Paine. This mazing hard working lady is dancer,stand-up comic,actress and is also highly sought after choreographer.  She is a teacher,activist,runs a podcast and is most likely a member of some superhero group in her spare time. Carolyn has reinvented one of the oldest Christmas traditions,taking “The Nutcracker” and turning it from old and stale into something beautiful,colorful and appealing to all ages.  She also used dance as way to express how domestic violence is with us and in many states is back on the rise,its a reminder that we as a society still have a long way to go but we can get there by loving and respecting our partners. Please check out the video that I added to Carolyn’s interview. Oh,did I mention that Carolyn is close friends with Prince Harry??? Its true and Carolyn was kind enough to share a couple of pictures of the Prince himself…you don’t meet too many people who personally know Royalty,even the cheetah was impressed by that…

Well come along with me as I adagio in and ask Carolyn 8 Questions……

    Please introduce yourself and tell us what you are currently working on.

I am Carolyn Paine and I am a dancer, choreographer, actress, and comedian. Currently I just finished working on a short dance film called “Pulling” that I choreographed, directed, and danced.

In this 3 minute dance, I look at domestic violence through heart-wrenching and dynamic choreography. Statistics state 1 in 3 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. My work aims to inspire those affected by this issue, or anyone who thinks someone in their life is being affected, to know they are not alone and to consider speaking out and getting help because most cases of domestic abuse are never reported.

Making this video was emotionally and physically exhausting. The choreography was inspired by my personal experiences. I have sadly seen first hand and from close friends that abuse comes in many forms. And I felt that telling this kind of story through dance on film is such a beautiful, intimate, and powerful way to look at an abusive relationship because it offers a unique perspective in how you can show the emotional and physical struggle.

“Pulling” is my fourth short film and my third film done with social purpose. My comedic political musical short film “You Can’t Do That” recently was a winner at the Women in Comedy Festival and the International Comedy Festival in California.

You can watch the video online-see my website at www.carolynpaine.com.

Also, on the theme of domestic violence, I have recently been doing a podcast about the HBO show “Big Little Lies” called Big Little Podcast with two other friends that I are regular guest panelists on the same WNPR radio show I am on. We started this podcast because we are fans of the show and always needed to get together with wine to cope, watch, and discuss. So we figured why not record it and make it a podcast. It’s the closest I am probably ever getting to working on something with Meryl Streep. You can check it out on itunes and stitcher or at www.thebiglittlepodast.com.

   What was it like growing up in your home? Is your family artistic?

My family is not artistic necessarily, but they certainly supported the arts and exposed my brother and me to them. I grew up in Boston, MA and we were very lucky to be able to get to experience all the culture there including museums, music, theatre, dance. So I got lots of inspiration from and education in the arts even at a young age. And growing up, my brother and I would engage in a lot of creative play together. We also loved watching movies-especially comedies and I gathered a lot of inspiration from that. And I totally pushed my creativity and love of performing on all around me. Several times I led my neighborhood friends into putting on full scale productions for our parents and other neighbors and friends. I was just a natural born performer and director who was lucky to be in a home environment that encouraged me, supported me, and let me dream big.

You are the definition of multi-talented- actor,dancer,stand-up comic…which came first to you growing up? How do you balance yourself as all three crafts have different demands?

So growing up I started studying dance young. I was in the professional training program at Boston Ballet starting at the age of 7 and was one of their select professional child performers. So that was an amazing experience to grow up backstage in professional productions. I always loved performing and knew from a young age that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I started getting involved in theatre and studying acting more when I was in high school and my degree from college is in theatre. It is hard to balance life in multiple areas, but honestly I have always felt that it keeps me busy and energized to work in all three. The challenges with scheduling, rehearsals, physical demands and training as a dancer, and traveling for gigs can be a lot but in pursuing all three I am almost always busy which is better than being bored or not working! Plus I love when I get to combine all three-whether it be through short dance comedy videos I create or on stage in a show. I feel proud that I have accomplished so much in each area and that not just one thing defines me and my life.

 What is CONNetic Dance?

CONNetic Dance is the professional contemporary dance company I founded in CT 10 years ago. I had been dancing professionally around the world with various choreographers and dance companies and I was inspired to create my own place to make dance collaboratively and evolve the possibilities of combining different genres of dance and art and theatre to make productions and works that changed the way people see dance. Making it fun and accessible. The company has grown a lot over time but it has been amazing to get to continue to work with many of the same artists I started it with. Funding for the arts is hard, so we don’t get to perform as much as I would like, but it has been a great experience to have this troupe to work with and create on. We also have gotten involved in communities in CT doing outreach programs, education, and inspiring the next generation of dancers who think outside the box. And I love that.

 You have reinvented the holiday classic “The Nutcracker”,what did you do and how was it received?

My “Nutcracker Suite & Spicy” is my brain child. I am so proud of this show and still in awe that my vision became a reality and now is celebrating its 10th season! This show is unlike anything you have seen. It takes the classic holiday ballet that is so old-fashioned and not at all culturally woke and shakes it up and makes it wild and funny and relatable. I have an amazing cast of talented professional dancers filling the stage with hip hop, acrobatics, ballet, ballroom, jazz, and tap. The score is Tchaicovsky’s but some different versions including Duke Ellington’s as well as hip hop, rock, and techno remixes. The show packs in audiences and I love how the audiences just feed off the energy on stage and really appreciate this modern take. I knew that we for sure needed a reboot of this holiday dance show, and that’s what I set out to create, but I wasn’t sure early on if audiences would embrace it. But they have and it has been so fun to see the show grow and become a real part of the holiday season in CT and get recognition beyond. I would love to see this show tour nationally. It really is the most fun holiday dance show you could imagine. We have ugly Christmas sweaters, tap dancing soldiers, a dizzying snowball scene with ballet dancers doing acrobatic dancing while floating on giant pearly white snowballs, and a sassy hip hop Sugar Rum. What else could you want?

 What do you draw upon for your stand-up sets? Can you walk us through your process?

I think that with writing stand up, it’s like with anything you write, you should write about what you know. So for me I focus on personal experiences, struggles, anecdotes, weird observations…..I find that the things that I am so embarrassed about or worrying about are the things that I can make the funniest. And those things are also so relatable-it’s just that most people don’t get up on stage and talk about them. As a comedian you have this great power because you can help people feel less isolated and laugh at themselves by allowing them to enjoy laughing at you and your struggles-that are often the same problems that a lot of us have. I love when people come up to me and say that they totally related to what I was saying-especially when it is something absolutely ridiculous like eating moldy bread thinking it was multigrain or a bit about moving a lightbulb from one room to another because I don’t have my life together enough to remember to buy more lightbulbs. So my process is about finding those things that are awful, annoying, or stressful in daily life and making them funny.

 Why do you think comedians can effortlessly do drama but dramatic actors can’t do comedy? (I’m always amazed at how great comedians can do this…)

I think it is because a lot of comedians, including myself, draw some of their comedy from the darker sides of life, experiences, and feelings. I have often found that when I am struggling or going through a lot of stuff, I am funnier. Or when I have close friends or family struggling, it has always been my instinct to be the clown to get them laughing again, even if for a moment. It is my coping mechanism. And I have read that several great comedians feel the same way. So I think that the fact that a lot of comics may actually kind of live in this darker place that they aim to bring light to makes it in some ways easier for comedians to go dark in their performances and embody dramatic roles. Also, comics are used to putting themselves out there- fully exposing themselves and taking risks so they apply that same approach to drama. That’s my theory anyway.

 What were the three best pieces of advice given to you professionally and how have you applied them to your career?

Well, I think for sure the best advice I was ever given was from some agent I met with early on who was helping me get started in commercial acting and said “no matter what make sure you show up looking like your headshot” So true.

But also, my college theatre professor, Sally Porterfield, was an amazing influence who gifted me so much inspiration and influenced me a lot. One of the things she taught me that really helped me to drop inhibitions and approach all performing without fear was telling me that everyone is so worried about themselves that they aren’t even thinking about you. That’s good advice in life too. Sometimes we do or say something and we are so mortified and dwell on it, but chances are the other person or people who were there didn’t even realize it as they were probably freaking out in their own heads. This kind of freedom from judgement helped me not worry about looking pretty, or being silly, or getting dirty and allowed me to just open myself up to risks and just be more me. I really think I would never have had as much courage to pursue comedy without her having helped me get past myself.

Also, I had some amazing dance teachers along the way. I was so lucky to get to study ballet from the Ballet Academy in Monte Carlo with ballet great Nureyev’s teacher, Marika Bresobrasova. She was both terrifying and loving. Sometimes she would sit there and watch you dance and you could feel her eyes going through your body into your soul. She once said that she could see I “needed to dance.” And she was right. I do. Dancing is so hard that you have to need to do it. I carry that with me, even on days where I have to dance but I don’t want to do be doing anything but sitting at home on my couch.

 What does “creative” mean to you?

Creative to me means pushing past your own comfort zone and finding something that challenges you to produce thoughts and art that excites you. Maybe even scares you because of how much work it will take to get to the end result you envision. But, in the end, I find those are the creative projects and risks that are most worth it.

 What challenges you the most?

Getting up and being somewhere before 10am.

 What advice would you give someone who wants to start a performing career?

Go. Try lots of things. Be on time. Don’t be afraid. Know that you are being judged constantly but try not to let it get to you too much. And show up looking like your headshot.

 Which do you prefer as an actress- live theater or film and why?

Theatre. Because I for sure love the feeling of that high from a live audience and applause.

The cheetah and I are flying in to watch you dance but we are a day early and you’re now our tour guide,what are we doing?

Ok, so let’s say you are coming to Hartford, CT to see The Nutcracker Suite & Spicy where it is performing at the beautiful and historic Aetna Theatre at the Wadsworth Atheneum. I would say for starters, you have to check out the Wadsworth-it is the oldest art museum in the country and houses amazing classic and contemporary works of art. Then you should go get a delicious and ridiculous instagram worthy milkshake from The Place 2 Be restaurant also in Hartford. Next, because it is Christmas time, go see the Victorian decorations at the historic home of the great author/humorist Mark Twain. And if you are lucky you may also see a ghost there. I hear it is haunted and I for sure love a good mystery and ghost story. And then I’ll go grab a delicious cocktail with you at this bar called Tisane.

    I like to thank the lovely and talented Carolyn Paine for agreeing to have a chat with us. She doesn’t know it yet but we aren’t done with her just yet but more that later… But for now,you can follow Carolyn on her social media platforms:

twitter: @carolynpaine

instagram: @c__paine Follow Carolyn’s IMDb page

Feel free to drop a comment below!! Thank you for your continued support!

8 Questions with……..dancer/actress/comedian Carolyn Paine Its 12:43 pm Hot in Topeka Welcome to another edition of "8 Questions with......" So I went back to the well and went looking for another bunch of talented and committed folks who wanted to share their stories with me.

#8 Questions With #acting #art #ballet dancing #Carolyn Paine #cats #Connecticut #dancer #family #Music #podcast #social issues #The Nutcracker #volunteering #writer

[tripstations]

12 things that aren’t worth spending your money on

Business class is wonderful, but is it worth the money? Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK

The more you spend, the more you get. That’s how the world should work, particularly in travel. The more money you spend, the more you get out of your experience. The more you enjoy yourself. The better time you have.

Unfortunately that’s not always the case. While some travel luxuries are definitely worth the money you spend on them, plenty of others are not. These aren’t rip-offs or scams – they’re simply indulgences or added extras that are supposed to make your travelling life more enjoyable.

But they’re not worth it. For travellers looking to save a few bucks, these are the luxuries you can easily afford to miss out on.

Travel clothing

You don’t need travel clothing. Unless you’re participating in a specialist activity, something like hiking or cycling or mountain-climbing, there’s really no need for branded gear that comes from a travel store. Just wear the clothes you always wear: you’ll fit in much better, and you’ll save plenty of money.

Multi-lounge access passes

I’ve looked into a few of these passes, given I travel so often and I’m not a gold or platinum frequent flyer with any airline, and they just don’t seem worth the money. Here’s the deal: you pay membership, you get a card, and you get access to a certain number of participating airline lounges around the world. The thing is, with most memberships you’ll still have to pay per entry into the lounges, plus those lounges are nowhere near as luxurious as you’re probably picturing, and pass holders will be the first to be knocked back if they’re getting too busy.

Bottled water

Photo: AP

Filtered, clean water sold in sealed bottles is a necessity in some countries. But in plenty of others it’s not. You can drink tap water, the same as you do at home – there’s no need to shell out $4 a pop for stuff that’s been put in a bottle. You’ll save money by avoiding an unnecessary cost, and save the planet by reducing single-use plastics.

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Rental car insurance

Every. Single. Time. Doesn’t matter what you choose on the website when you book, when you get to the counter to pick up your hire care you’ll be upsold on the insurance. Do you want comprehensive insurance, they’ll ask? With zero excess? It sounds tempting, but if you have travel insurance already, or insurance provided by your credit card company, you’re probably already covered. No need to be insured twice.

The finest dining

I’ve changed my tune on this. I used to think that to sample the best food in the world, it was worth shelling out an insane amount of money every now and then. I thought you could justify spending up to $1000 on a meal if you really love food and you don’t do it often. But… really? Is any single meal worth that much? Is the experience that much better than a $200 meal, or even a $500 meal? Or is this all just a bit obscene?

See also: Why I spent a ridiculous amount of money on one meal

Business class

I’ve been lucky to fly business class a few times, and it’s a total game-changer. Everything is easier, from check-in to security to boarding to the flight itself. People address you by name. There’s a bar to hang out at when you’re bored. I’ve absolutely loved those experiences. However, could I justify paying for business class? Would I consider spending five or six times the economy fare just to fly in comfort? No.

Bellhop service

Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK

It doesn’t cost a lot to have a friendly bellhop drag your wheelie luggage up to your hotel room – maybe only a few dollars. But still, you have wheelie luggage. It’s not really necessary to have someone else drag it.

Choosing your seat

If you’re travelling with your family, paying extra to choose your seat when you book an air ticket is annoying, but necessary. If you’re travelling with a loved one or a friend you really want to sit next to on a flight that’s likely to be crowded, it’s also something you’ll just have to do. However, for those travelling alone, particularly on short-haul flights (I’ll pay to ensure I have an aisle for long-haul), paying extra to choose your seat is just not worth it.

Excess baggage

Anyone who’s looked into the cost of dragging a few extra kilos of check-in luggage along with them would already know how prohibitively expensive the fees are. It’s cheaper to send your goods by air freight and meet them at your destination than pay to take them on board.

City tours

Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK

Some travellers love city tours, and to those people I say: fair enough. To each their own. But these tours don’t appeal to me. I don’t feel much of a sense of discovery when I have someone to lead me around a place, to point out the monuments and the interesting buildings and the sights to check out later. I like to wander. I like to stumble on things. I like to take my time. You’re never able to do that with a guide on a day-tour.

Data roaming

Just… don’t do it. Buy a local SIM card, if they’re readily available, or rely on free Wi-Fi in hotels, bars and restaurants if they’re not. Spending up big bucks on data roaming just so you can google things or check your Instagram in far-off places isn’t worth it.

Emergency airport purchases

This is never a good idea. It doesn’t matter how much you think you need that eye mask or that power adaptor or that bottle of water, you don’t want to buy it at the airport. Save your money.

What are the travel experiences you think are not worth the money? Are there any of these that you would gladly pay for?

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater

See also: The 10 common mistakes we make when booking flights

See also: The rip-off that’s catching out travellers all over the world

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Bonus Episode: Your Transformation Live

Bonus Episode: Your Transformation Live

Infinite Paths - Leading Yours With More

We eat whenever and whatever we want but always question why we struggle with our overall health. Have you ever thought about the tableware you buy at your local store- have you ever questioned the portion size of tableware and looked into what is the right amount of food for healthy consumption? What about questioning why we have a lazy eye? Check out my assumption of why we have one and Larry's rebuttal. Or catastrophizing the likely outcomes that help pass the time as you stand in line at your local 7-eleven. 

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    Transcripts for this episode can be found at the bottom.

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   Interesting episode here

May 14 2020:Winning Small Moments Beyond the Linear Progression (#9)

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 Paul Fritsche, Owner, Lead Instructor at Midwest Krav Maga. Paul and I discuss the curriculum at Midwest Krav Maga. Realistically, fights do not happen in a linear progression. That is why Midwest Krav Maga is incorporating a well rounded hybrid self-defense system that incorporates numerous different fighting styles—addressing real-world defensive scenarios that are simple yet very effective.

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Aug 18 2020:Disputing the Depths of Face Value (#26)

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    Transcription

8/31/2020

Bonus Release  Livestream

Intro/Sweeper

  We're tapping into surpassing expectations from the most successful people in the modern day and honing in on new foresight, methodologies and clairvoyance. You never knew this is your transformation station with your host, Greg Favazza

  Show

  GREG

[00:00:24] I have been overwhelmed, as you can tell my shit's not even up in the background. Cause I had to re wipe the computer because this brand new computer I bought somehow got a fucking virus on there and fucked everything up. So I had to delete that. I've been. I'm writing two books. I've finally finished my design for my third book.

That's going to fucking punch a hole in Stephen Kobe's work, where I'm going to go. I am going to take those next seven habits to a whole new fucking level. 

  LARRY

Wow. I need to be patenting this shit, but I believe that cost like around 200 bucks. I just can't spend it. However, there's no, you, you could always, uh, print the concept of it up and then mail it to yourself.

And keep the envelope sealed and you have a postmark on it. So it's better than nothing at all. That's genius. That's fucking genius. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've heard that. That's one way to deal with that. I, again, when push comes to shove, I don't know how valid, but at least you have here. Well, when did you come up with it?

  GREG

Cause here's when I came up with it. Okay. Yeah, I came up with the bouts, I want to say four months ago, and I've just been, I'm trying to work on numerous things and I'm creating a course for podcasting. I'm creating a course for your transformation station that will. Open up people's minds on creating a character similar to mine, because it stuck with me.

GREG

When you told me about my character, it's like, this is what I want my character to be out in the world. Cause I feel like men today need to adopt a higher standard of themselves. And I feel like that will actually ripple out into people's actions. It will impact those to the people that they're interacting with and it will just continue to disperse.

GREG

If people were to just act like that. And I think just having that as a good giveaway, as far as you do this course, you take, you vowed this, this little cheat sheet that I have, all this stuff that I've been creating, finding it will be great to get people on the email list. It will be great to continue to.

Grow with your transformation station. And then also we're doing a podcasting course. We're going into that as far as, or I'll do stuff to review as far as reviewing my microphone, reviewing my camera. And I want you to participate with that because you get a lot of knowledge on that and it's just for, it's just different ways for you and I to continue to grow.

With your transformation station, but also to grow with our audience. Like I haven't connected with them. I haven't done shit with them. And it's just, it's really important that I start doing that today. It's something that I just noticed, you know, a couple of my coaches in the voiceover world, uh, tell me that I need to.

  I have and participate in a real social presence. And I just, it, at the end of the day, that's when I think, Oh shit, I didn't do anything. Anyway. What's really interesting. 

Greg is in the last two weeks, I've been more social media oriented than I've been in several years. And I will tell you about myself.

Facebook business page, you know, the professional page, fan page, whatever you call it. Okay. I hate it night just under 2000, uh, interactions, uh, which was up from the previous month. Uh, and, and this was over a seven day period. It was like a thousand, 2000%. It was crazy just from participating a little bit.

And I mean, a very small amount with those people that, um, stumbled onto me every now and then I was surprised what a difference it makes. So yes, the point of coming back to what you spoke of is, is that interaction. Yes. Um, people really, they, they they're into that. It's definitely something that I have struggled all my life with and I believe doing this will help me grow and be able to get the message out to people.

  [00:05:06] I know we, I know I have a lot of great valuable information to offer this world is just this. Internal barrier that I put between myself and everybody else holds me back. And I know it's just, I created it. It's nothing, nothing more than that. Thinking that, Oh God, if people know that I'm human, then I'm fine.

You know that you are human and, you know, I'm curious, like, what do you, what do you even talk about with your audience as far as that goes to work or live sessions as we go? So I am sure. Sure. So here here's what, um, For example, yesterday was a beautiful morning. I woke up, had my breakfast, my coffee, uh, and I got dressed on Saturdays in tower Grove park, which is just a block or two away from me.

There's a farmer's market and I needed it. I was out of local honey. So, uh, I figured I'll just walk over to the farmer's market and pick that up. And anything else that I really don't need, but I want. Um, so way over once I got into the park, I still have, you know, a good mile, three quarters of a mile to go to where the farmer's market is.

Anyway. Uh, I just turned on my phone and I didn't have a steak or anything. I mean, I'm holding it out here and walking, trying not to, the trails, all crooked and broken. So trying to make sure I don't fall like an imbecile. Uh, and then I can't get up because of my age. And then I have to push my button around my neck, you know, I followed it.

I can't, what is that call or that thing? Like your hip, you can't get up. I figured. Great. And so I was just, I just kind of went on and said, Hey, it's a great morning. I'm going to the farmer's market. I'm going to pick up some high, you know, and people respond to authenticity and just. You know, it was short, I don't think it was two minutes.

Maybe it was two minutes later that day I went back on line and they didn't go. I think this is, I did go live on this one and I think it was the first one I'd ever gone live on. Um, I had been thinking about what am I going to do for dinner? And it was two o'clock in the afternoon, but as I said in the video, just being authentic old people, you know, at two o'clock in the afternoon, they start thinking about what are we gonna do for dinner tonight?

So I was thinking I'm going to have this pasta, but, um, for weight control purposes or actually, you know, portion control, I did, I would actually look at the box of pasta to determine what. A portion is. And so I talked about that. A portion of pasta is two ounces. I mean, that's nothing, it's actually 56 grams, which is two ounces.

There's 28 grams of amounts. Anyway. So I showed them what it looks like. It's three quarters of a cup of dry pasta. And it was even more terrible when I actually made it for dinner and then put the cooked pasta into a pasta bowl. And I mean, I kept looking at her like, where's my pasta, you know what I mean?

Just like four pieces of it. And, but I will tell you, what's interesting is when I was done with dinner. Can I just, I had a little salad, one slice of garlic toast in my pasta. I noticed fall by the end. Weren't you? I was satisfied and I wasn't miserable and uncomfortable and burping and farting. And did, Oh, I didn't eat so much.

And then later too, I can enjoy a couple cooks. Jeez. Cause I had the room. So anyway, but I talked about that. It's amazing how many people popped in and watched it and commented on it. And again, it might've been two and a half minutes long. So I'm curious about that. Did you make, did you make it appealing to you and also trick your brain in a way, as far as.

Setting this pasta and a smaller dish versus an average dish. I feel like, like all the silverware, all the tableware we buy is for extremely large portion sizes. I think that's why we're all beasts in America today because it reads acceptable. That is such a great point. And what I, what I did is I have a digital scale.

  Because like I I'm a coffee nut. So if I try a new bean, you can't really go by your scoop. You go by the weight of the beans, how much weight you need for the water you use anyway. So. I actually weighed out two ounces of pasta. I weighed out in grams cause that's how it was listened. So I weighed out 56 grams of pasta.

I was just using little medium shells because I like those. Uh, and, and I put them in what I call a rice bowl. Just like getting ready to cook them. So I wouldn't have to deal with it. Uh, you know, when I got ready for dinner, I just threw it into a pot with boiling water and his great Fazio's meat sauce. Um, and, and then I just put it in a regular pasta bowl, pasta kind of bowl.

But, um, what you say is so true, um, It's mostly marketing. I think that's affected the way everything's supersized in how we expect stuff to be super-sized in the old days, pre COVID when you'd go into a really nice restaurant and you order something on the menu and they would bring it. And I mean, it looked really pretty.

But, you know, you got like medallions of beef and there's like three bites of beef, you know, instead of if it's you and me and we're going to go a charcoal grill, a steak outside, you know, we're going to go get a 12 or 16 ounce steak and slap it on the grill, man. People really, I mean, assuming you have something else to eat with it, you know, you only need three or four ounces of beef.

When you sit down and eat anyway, I don't mean to get off on that. But what you said is absolutely correct. Also with the fact that like, I mean, we're not using, I guess people aren't used to the fact that yes, we adapted. We don't, we don't go how it used to back then, where we would have to survive. Off one meal that would last us for days.

Now there's an abundance of food. I believe it's just way too much as the fact that we can go to a grocery store and get anything we want at any time of the day. And we do, we even have to go to the grocery store with a cell phone and Instacart. We'll bring whatever the fuck we want. I'm guilty. I'm guilty.

Do it again. So we do that. Or sedentary, you know, we're not moving and people wonder how come there's so many people with aches, pains, diseases, illness, they don't feel good. They have no energy and they're overweight, fucking Amazon and Instacart and fucking, yeah. What do you call that place that delivers food?

  [00:12:40]Uber eats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, door dash or door dash. You know that shit. Huh? But not with fucking reminders. Say, Oh, we got a special for you today. That's you covered? You know, and you get a free cookie if you, you know, do it in the next 12 seconds. Oh my God. And I get a free cookie. Yeah. But the other thing is.

That's all fine and dandy. If we'll each make ourselves move and get some physical exercise every day. All of that's okay. But if we're not in addition to that, if we're not getting out and being physical and enjoying the way our bodies are put together, which requires movement to stay in. Optimal shape, you know, just like a car.

If you don't start it for five or six days and you wonder how come the battery's dead. Cause it's meant to be turned on and the alternator is going to keep it all char you know, however that stuff works. I don't know. But. Yeah, we need to, uh, exercise is so important as to what we do each day and how we feel and how our bodies work.

Yes. So anyway, I'll get off that soap box. No, no, you can keep going. Cause right now you're buying me time as I try to figure out. Cause right now we're live on YouTube and I'm trying to get us live on fucking Facebook and, uh, So, do you have a special software or a special piece of hardware that allows you to stream from, for example, YouTube, and then it streams out live to other platforms.

  All right. I have a buddy who actually specializes in that in live streaming, but no, I do not have that. I'm actually utilizing zoom. Okay. Yeah. Provide you with three avenues to get out there. And this is the first time I've ever used it before. Is it working pretty smoothly or fucking YouTube? I believe so.

I mean, I'm trying to think. I don't even know. It's just showing a picture of your face with the lazy eye going. So it looks like, yeah, it looks like it's your left one. Oh yeah. That's probably because I always forget to look at my webcam. Like I looked down here where you are. But then that makes everything go down here versus.

Especially when I'm talking, I need to be looking, I suppose, into the camera, which is really not placed in a good place. That's part of why it looks like I have a lazy eye. So w lazy. Yeah, this is what's interesting to me. Cause I was, I was thinking about this today as far as, why do people have a lazy eye?

And then you really gotta look into it a little deeper as far as, okay. Is there a vision off by chance? Let's say w. Somebody has like a 20, 20 and the other one and the other, one's like a hundred by 20. I don't know. I don't know that it's astigmatism and yeah, that's my issue. Uh, but generally with one eye that's lazy.

It's like, is that the one that's that's straining all the time? Like that's a shitty eye and the other eye is good because it's constant. Like open and just kind of relax. Well, several years ago I had LASIK surgery. So none of that's really true. What you're seeing is. The end result of two things, one a just average web cam.

Uh, and two, like I said, where my camera's placed and what I have to do is concentrate on looking directly at the camera lens. But if the camera lens is off axis, it's like when your microphone's off axis, depending on your microphone. Your voice will sound considerably different when you're off axis, you will appear in things that will appear totally different.

And especially on this camera, when I move, whatever I move the movements all messed up. So as I moved my eyes, you know, it looks funny like this. Okay. So I think as I look at the television, the television, the computer monitor, um, it's this right eye that looks funky. Uh, no I'm done. Devily listening to it. No, that I know that.

And I'm just, you know, talking as you're trying to make these adjustments so that too you'll have the whatever adjustments you need. And as I told somebody yesterday, Um, I like to talk. And so what I've determined is, you know, we all have about 50,000 words. We speak a day over a normal day, most people.

So what about those people that can't, and don't talk for physical reasons and mental reasons somebody has to use up their 50,000 words. Otherwise those 50,000 words are still hanging. And need to be used. And if too many of them are hanging around in the ether, well, then our ether will get all clogged up with these unused words.

So I use everybody's words that don't use their words. That's why I talk so much. I believe it's my excuse for today. Good excuse. And the fact, I liked that as far as people that need to use up this ether, the fact that they don't do it, do you think that creates some sort of anxiety? The fact it's just.

Energy that's inside them. That's not being expressed that they really don't know how to express it. And that's why they get uncomfortable. That's why they're just like awkward kinds of things going on. But then you're coming in kind of just to feed off that energy because that's what I do, use it, um, in an effort to, to.

Utilize all my pent up energy that I could otherwise not use. Um, yeah. For people who chime in right now, they hear you saying, just using your pent up energy. I think that consent is a red flag on how you are a creeper. Oh, well, you know, there's probably many people that find that I am angry. Yeah. But I think part of it, part of that has to do with the fact that we're usually in the mornings.

I like to get out of the shower and just put on my London fog, trench coat, and a big fedora. And I like walking around, outside in public and every now and then when it seems appropriate, opening up my trench coat, um, and people honk and scream and wave and throw stuff and you know, others give me thumbs, thumbs up.

So I don't know. Maybe I have a little creepster to me. No, but, but that's what makes it okay. I like to be weird. Like I want to approach a situation in public and do it in the most abnormal fashion where I can break people's autopilot. I feel like if I can do that, then I made an impact in somebody's day because.

No shutting their brain off. They're dissociating just to get through their day. And I don't want them to do that. I want them to not suffer, but I want them to embrace this awkward, never before seen experience. And did their life because they need that more than anything right now, because that's a way to grow.

And I will tell you back in the day when I was in the corporate world and I'd go into office buildings and walk into an elevator, the door would open and there'd be five or six people, you know, all facing out naturally and all very quiet. So here's how you break it. You are sitting in an elevator. I walk into the elevator and I don't turn around.

  [00:20:20] So I'm facing everybody that's facing out. And I don't say anything. I just look, you know, like around it, everybody's standing there and somebody will say something and it'll break the ice, but it's really funny. The expressions you mean? Yeah. You can see in their mind. Why isn't this fuck turning around.

He needs to be, I don't want to be looking at him. We're all supposed to look at the door until it opens and then leave. And it's really funny when you do stuff like that. The responses you get. And generally it's a lot of smiles and laughing and that's always fun. Yeah. Or just ripping ass in the middle of that 32nd, like enclosed room for a second and just have them like, Whoa.

Exactly. Or again, the opposite too is true. You know, you were just in a long business meeting and you got in the elevator and nobody's in the elevator with you and you really got to kind of, or, well, you know, the middle of the day, nobody else is going to be getting in here. And I only got to go down six floors.

So, you know, you let it rip. And the next floor, the door opens and somebody walks in, they know it's you, there's no dog. Yeah, just cut out. They guy just got far and got out on the floor. Yeah. Own that shit. When that happens, you gotta embrace it and just be good. I think people are really weird and awkward. I think if you own it, it would actually make you a more respectable individual.

Absolutely. When they walk in. Sorry about the stink. I just farted. I didn't think anybody else would get him here. There we go. If you can hold your breath for 42 seconds, we'll make it to the lobby. Just this light. Oh shit. Oh, that's weird. Whoa. Stop it on this. Fix that. Okay. Display up to no. Hi, non video.

Are you still there? No, I left. Oh, you got, you got really quiet. Like I just fucked something up. No, not at all. I just decided to take a breather every now and then I actually do that. I don't try to do it often. So it says like everything's running on like all three platforms. However, I'm only seeing we're live on YouTube, which isn't showing.

Facebook at all. So on the Facebook page, is that your transformation station? Facebook page? I'll grab it up here on my cell phone. Yeah. Yeah. And I added you as a, a fucking editor. So you have the ability to do anything on there. But I'm going to copy a link to YouTube, the streaming link. I will post that on the page as well.

Right.

Sometimes I have really fat fingers, I believe. I think that just happens with age. Thank you. Uh, you know, I was wishing you could come up with so many things, but you chose to tell it comes with age. I thought I liked the fact that it shows your creepy face when it's the initial YouTube streaming, like part it's going to look, I'm going to post it just because.

Yes. Cause it's just, it's really funny looking it's like, Whoa, really see the premier cause most wanted right here. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Now I'm actually on the transformation station page. Ah, dammit. I posted on my personal page. We gotta fix that. So I don't want you on there and too late you're there.

See here. What do you listen to in the background? We live there, where we went to your post, to your post office, to your eyes. Your personal Facebook page. Yay. I just posted on that. Were there, but none, but that's the, this is just YouTube. That's the YouTube link that I copied, right? Oh, so this is not what I'm seeing.

No, no, no, no. This is live. If you click on it, it'll take you to YouTube. I think what I need to do is through your Facebook page. So I think we're streaming. Let me. And it shows zoom, so that's right. Yeah. I don't know. Okay. Maybe it's a plane. Yeah. I just switched back to YouTube, but here's your, hang on this, if you, I don't know.

Yeah. I can see that. I know. I don't know what to do. That's a weird guy. That's there. The guy that looks like Brad Pitt that's. Yes. No. Yeah. That's what, yeah. People confuse us all the time. It's embarrassing. Actually. It's quite exhausting. You have to literally wear a hat and fucking, just sunglasses. Yeah.

And you need a pen. Could you do it? I don't want to disappoint people. So I go ahead and give them the autograph. Wish I had that experience. How does that, like when you wake up and you piss XL, you know, I'll tell you. I see us there. Page, but I don't know if it's, so I just switched it now. Now it's on your transformation station.

I'm going to put it on the group next. I know. I should have, I had this set up. I really did. And this is confusing cause I was actually going to try to do this before, not today, but I mean, before. Last week, actually. Okay. That is confusing because you're 90 years old. I want to listen to it any other way. I couldn't use it so easily.

It's unbelievable. I just want to put a VCR in front of you and watch you struggle. Well, let me tell you. Yeah. And there's people listening to you on CR. You know, what's that you just stuck in that big slot? Mmm. Yeah, no, it's funny. My, my daughter was telling me it was a few years ago when my grandsons were a little bit younger, but she was cleaning out some old stuff.

Um, and there was a box of, uh, videotape and you, one of my grandchildren said, WhatsApp, mom. And, you know, she goes, well, you know, it's a video tape. It's like a movie. Oh, cool. Let's watch it. We don't have a VCR player anymore. We see our players who still have DVD players, but you know, today really, if you don't have one, do you really need one?

You know, everything, you can stream everything or find it in a video, an MPV MP for. Format or whatever. So, you know what I was thinking, I think this would be like a great like idea for like a TV show is to actually have like a competition between, let's say a one year old putting in like the little like boxes or the little squares into the square hole, the little circles into the circle hole.

And then we have like a, what do you call it? Maybe like them. Like a 15 year old trying to learn stick shift. Okay. So we do that. We timed that and then we do an older man say 32 37, trying to figure out a fucking Rubik's cube. And then we have your ass right there on there, trying to work like a DVD player.

Right. Who is the first one that is able to get to the end of the taskings? I think that would be really interesting. It's like that. What is it? American gladiators where people go through obstacle courses. So this would be like, Techno something. Um, you know, uh, I think that interesting cancer is this group here.

I don't know how to pull it out. They updated this Facebook app, mud jigger, and I'm trying to, Oh, they did. But they did actually get to this and it's like, no, What is going on here. Fuck. I will get to our Facebook page. No problem.

Right. So what are you even up to this weekend? Anything exciting, extraordinary, uh, before we even go into that, cause I don't want to, let's go into what the plans are with your transformation station. Um, I have been, I have sucked so badly at entertaining with the audience. Just you have to engage when you're running this sofa, soulful social influence.

I would say lifestyle this podcast, and I want the audience to know that I've been working extremely hard. I'm writing three different books. One will actually be focusing, excuse me, around your transformation station. And. That'll allow you to adopt these principles that you can apply to your character and move forward with a higher self awareness in yourself, but able to recognize the flaws in other people.

So you can distinguish people that will help you in life versus people that will only bring you down. And then the other book. That is focusing with a podcasting course. I've learned so much as far as I started researching how to podcast back in November, 2019 and. I'm the guy who spends every day from morning tonight on how to do something.

And I have links to everything. I got links to fucking Britain. Like this podcast is going globally in 17 different countries. Excellent. And we're in 32 different States of the U S and that is me being at the bare minimum because I'm trying to write a book. I'm trying to create this online course for your transformation station, as well as another course for podcasting yet, I haven't even come up with the names for it.

[00:30:44] I'm just right now, creating these stupid slides, recording these videos of myself, which is extremely exhausting. And then I got links to. Over like 60 days, different locations where you can publish a podcast. I actually have more than 60 in the world, actually. How many places you can, but I know people will find that very interesting and want to know more and that'll be put out there.

As well as you and I doing a product review over equipment on how we can just inspire the world to stop buying this useless crap that Amazon's populating with. Oh, this is the number one seller. Get this one. This one's fantastic microphone. No, no, no, no. There's a reason why it's number one seller is because people that bought it returned it and it's just complete nonsense with all these comments reviews.

Yeah. And you know what, what's really interesting. When you talk about microphones or you talk about a camera or you talk about a light, or you talk about a nutritional stuff supplement, or you talk about a body weight exercise, or the latest fad in anything, you know, there's no one best thing of anything.

So, what I'm suggesting is, for example, in voiceover, one of the most common questions you'll see on different, uh, Forums or Facebook groups, whatever you want to call them is what's the best microphone to get or video people. What's the best camera to get? Or, you know, if, if you're wanting to get a bicycle, you know, what's the best road bike to get?

Well, you know, it depends. It depends on your size. It depends on your voice. If it's a microphone, it depends on your recording area. It depends on your lighting. If it's a camera, there's no best of anything, but then people don't want to hear that depends that there's a gray area because to me that makes me mad because I want a fucking microphone.

Now I'm impatient. I'm an impulsive individual. I want it. I like that. I'm the guy at the store that suffers when I come across an impulse little section in the middle of the aisle. Ooh, what is it? Candy. I didn't want it, but now I do. Yeah, absolutely. So that's why I think when you talk about reviews, the reviews, I really like, and respect and believe are the best or not the, the.

You know, opening box recommendation, you know, this is the only smartphone to have. This is the best smartphone. No, you need to have three smartphones there, or you need to have three microphones there and review them and review why you really liked this one for this purpose and this one for this purpose and this one for this purpose.

And then my question is, and what you can address in those is, you know, what are you going to do with this microphone, Greg? Are you going to be on the street, interviewing people with noisy traffic behind you? No, I'm going to talk to myself and my lonely little place. That's what I'm going to do. Do you have a good recording environment?

So that's, that's when it depends, but you don't have to tell people. It depends. You can take it. Three popular uses of microphones today, you know? And like you wouldn't have this microphone that I'm using for a podcast microphone. Cause it doesn't, it could do. Okay. But you want a large diaphragm. Make our phone, just like when you start talking about DSLR is for doing video, you know, do you want a full frame or, you know, one of those small frame chips?

Yes. It, it, so it does, depending on the kind of work you're in or the play you're going to do, do with so much of this technical equipment, just like, well, should I get a Mac or a PC? Well, first of all, what's your budget. That's a big question, you know? Yes. And even at that, you also Linux, I mean, as far as open sources, it's definitely technologically advanced to understand that like with my research, as far as podcasting I've actually come up with so much information within this book that I'm writing.

That it will expand to every platform it's marketing, it's advertising. You're utilizing RSS feeds you utilizing similar software with the same end state goal. And that's what your transformation, that's what your transformation station is about. As well as this book of podcasting, where it's a universal standard that you can apply from one focus, being podcasting to another focus, being on, being a YouTube influencer to another focus.

That's all. Useful stuff and it's all out there and it's all fucking free yet. We were all buying this shit because people will say, Oh, I have all the special answers and all this nonsense when really it's out there. If you know how to look, if you know how to research, do you know how to read and take time and learn what you're actually trying to find?

You can find it. You can, but most people too, the reason why. Having the knowledge and putting the knowledge into a book or a podcast or whatever media you may use. It is people, you know, they don't want to take that time to learn. They want to grab a book and read or watch a video and learn how to change my words.

Um, you know, whatever it is, wanted time, same time and information are the two. Two commodities that are so important today. And of those two, there's only one that's really unique and that's time, because time is the only asset that everybody shares equally. Nobody gets any more or any less time each day, assuming you make it through the day, you get 24 hours just like everybody else.

And how can you use that time? What makes a difference to you and really the world around you? Um, because again, you know, this minute we're in right now, we'll never be here again and it'll be gone. Why is that? Why, why, why are we losing time every day? Why can't we have that many back? Tell me about that.

Well, and again, I don't know that we can't, at least in the dimensions in this part of the universe that we live in. Uh, you know,

unless you have that time machine and you don't get it back saying that that doesn't exist or won't Larry, are you suffering the oddball effect at this point where you get too old, you start to look back at all the good times you've had. Yeah. Yeah. That was the oddball that's as you get old, I don't believe that to be an oddball cause my old friends were constantly sharing in the algae romance.

And you remember when, back in, you know, three, uh, you know, that kind of stuff, but I'm an oddball. So I have oddball events going on. Most every day in my life. Um, and I'm so thankful for those, because if I wasn't on the spectrum, if each of us weren't on a spectrum of some sort, it'd be a really boring place.

We'd live there. You know, if we were all bots. Um, you know, although we'd have different algorithms, but you know, no, I'm weird. I just, I can't handle how normal people function. Like I'm, if we're standing in line waiting for something to happen, I'm the dude that's thinking about random things that could be possibly happening.

Right. It's like, what if, okay. I'm in a convenience store or something. I'm number five in line. I'm already going through. These thoughts in my head, like, okay, if somebody were to come into this building with the fucking AR it starts shooting the place up, how would I react to this situation when I just run towards that individual, take those bullets into the chest and keep trying to go forward or what I put this old woman that's next city next, or standing next to me, pick her ass up.

Right. And then use her as a shield throw with her. So I'm going to ask at the dude, take the weapon, or even a sense would have a horse where to just Gallop in from the rear out of the storage room, you know, like what the fuck is a Clydesdale doing in seven 11? Yes. The whole situation quicker, faster and easier.

And you call those individually mandatory. It's like half man, half horse. Oh, what if I was one of those, like those shoes, motorcycles that, uh, Progressive or Geico. There we go, we're back. Yeah. I'm trying to do five different things at once and I'm just going to say, fuck it. With Facebook. We have YouTube.

[00:40:37] Why I'm going, right. You just, do you have one monitor going or do you have two? I have two monitors. Set up. Oh man. I wish I had my other computer next to me because then I can just jump on that and see what the fuck is happening. Gotcha. And how you were monitoring all this video was. Yeah, no, I, I was set up before, but I had a virus on my fucking computer and it's like, dude, like this is 2020.

How the fuck you let this shit happen to you? And. Put a mask on each one of your computers, viruses. I'm just.

That is definitely perfect timing to use that. So what do you think about what's happening today? Do you think it's complete nonsense? We've had this conversation in our last recording, but I just really want to go over it again because it's really fucking hilarious to me. I don't know why it's there when you're talking about the situation you're talking about the COVID.

Yes. Yes. The COVID no Cummins, real Cummins. Very real. Are the people's approach to dealing with it? Yes. Are, this is unreal. It's it's uh, Do you think the mask actually even holds anything back because it's just, if you, if you follow the science of it, um, you know, there's special lighting that science has used so that they can see particles and stuff.

And so when they, when we're like, I'm talking right now, of course it's just me in my studio. Uh, but. Droplets are coming out of my breath and they are given the right light. And I don't understand the technology behind it, but these chemists are scientists that are constantly analyzing stuff. And, you know, they use carbon dating to tell you, well, this bone is 5,300 years old.

I mean, the science is there that they can look at the, the size of, and the amount of, and how far your droplets go. When they put a mask on, unless it's in 99, which most people don't wear out to the retail stores. But if it's anything other than that, yeah. Droplets are still going to get out, but far fewer droplets get out and they don't travel, but a couple inches.

And so if you're six feet away from somebody they're not gonna. Get one of your droplets. So from that standpoint, wearing masks, number one, again, if you follow the science, the scientists major. Well-respected scientific minds and organizations have found that if we now in the end of the year, I think it was 60 to 80, 60 to 80% of our country would wear masks.

So it's not even everybody, just 60 to 80%. The people wore masks when they couldn't socially distance. Yes. If that took place, we could lower, we could save approximately 70,000 lives between now and the end of the year. Now some might say, well, 70 thousands of drops in the bucket. It is, but if one of those 70,000 people were your significant other, your child, your mother, your brother, your best friend, you know, to put a mask on why would I not?

To make a political statement. That's absurd. If I could save a life, I would, you know, when I'm driving my car, if somebody is in the crosswalk, walking across the street against a red light, Well, legally, I should just run them over. They shouldn't be in the fucking crosswalk. Yeah. In the middle of the road.

Right in there, again, throwing a tantrum out in the middle of the road, trying to get there, getting people's attention. I mean, the prompt, I hate the fact that I would have to stop because these individuals want to stand in the middle of the highway. Well, that's protesting. Totally. I mean, that's, now I'm going to still run them over.

It doesn't matter where we're running them over there. I, you know, And again, that's, you know, that's why there's vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice cream. Everybody's got their own way to approach things. Like I said, in my humble opinion, um, I wear a mask when I go outside, not for me, but for somebody else.

And I get tested every week. You know, why is that on Wednesday? Uh, because I, well, I have a bubble and, and you know, my family and those closest to me and we have our bubbles, if you will. Um, we all step outside of our bubbles. Yeah. But I mean, I always have my mask on when I walk into the grocery store, you know, wherever, um, I can't socially distance.

And, uh, but, uh, you know, you just never know if you're walking around with COBIT I don't. And again, I'm a symptom. I don't have any symptoms, but again, Wednesday I'll be back at Walgreens getting, you know, sticking. I don't stick that fuck that, you know, swab up my nose until you, um, and you know, three, four hours, I get the email that says, Hey, negative, cool.

Then I just know I don't have it, but again, next hour I could have it depending on, you know, and because COVID, here's the other thing. Um, you know, I hear people debate about how serious COVID is, and I don't know if it is or not. I know that 180,000 people have died from it. Would they have died?

Otherwise? I don't know. Did they have other issues? I don't know. Probably, but here's the thing, right? It's called a novel virus because the world's never seen it before. So nobody really knows how it works. That's why at the beginning of this thing, which really was back in December, but you know, if you listened to 45, as in, in his administrations, it really didn't, they didn't know about it until January or February.

And then we only had 15 cases and no deaths and it'll disappear magically. And if it doesn't, all you gotta do is take a Lysol enema and you'll be okay, or inject Lysol into your system and that'll take care of it. Um, the fact is we don't know how it acts and we don't even know if. If you have the antigens, because you've had it, how that will affect your immune system.

We don't know shit about it. It's only a few months old for the whole world, since it appeared back in December of 19, you know, well with five G are you familiar with that? And possible like side effects that could have on our own health? Well now, okay. I'm, I'm done, you know, reading. Um, about five G I never really bought into any of the microwave damages to health relative to cell phones, cell phone technology.

I personally seldom keep one up to my ear. I'm generally on ear buds. Excuse me. Or, um, speakerphone five G E in Ghana. I don't know. I just think that our overall exposure to five G. It is far less damaging than our overall exposure to the ship. That's in the air from the carbon emissions that are out there and an ultraviolet ultraviolet.

I gotta stop playing with it. So, you know, look, if, if we tried to isolate ourselves from everything that can hurt us, I mean, we'd live in a cave and die probably at age 30, most of us. Right. So we have to take each risk. Each person has to evaluate. Their risk tolerance and in what they're willing to, to expose themselves to then make their own decisions.

But when it comes to public safety, when it comes to, um, a mask. Everybody should be wearing a mask. I had a spectrum come to my house last week, a couple of different times. And again, they're coming Monday. They fucking hate you. Don't they? We do. And I want to, I want to touch one thing on that and get your opinion, but let me finish this story.

You know, I look, there's a knock at the door. It's the technician. I knew that because you know, spectrum says he'll be there in 12 seconds and sure. If there's a knock at the door, I look out the window. And the dude standing there without a mask, he's a stranger. I don't know where he goes at night, how his family's act and he's going to be in my house less than six feet away from me breathing and touching things.

I don't know. And I just yelled at him through the door. I go, do you have a mask? I said, where's your mask? And he goes, do you want me to wear one. Yeah, fuck. Yes. You know, and I got mine here. I'm going to put mine on you. Put yours on it. Dumb. Fuck. Literally use a come up there. Like, you know, what's going on outside right now.

Yeah, no. Does it help? I think it helps. I feel safer when I'm in close proximity, especially to strangers that, you know, so you believe you believe in this. I believe that you minimize exposure. You minimize your risk. I think. Everybody has different risk tolerances, but everybody minimizes the risks that they're not comfortable dealing with, whether it's financial risk, whether it's safety risk, whether it's health risk.

I mean, I lived my whole life, never using a fucking rubber. I don't even know how to put one on or, you know, instructions in those packages, how to put a rubber on. Larry. Are you Catholic? No. Okay. I definitely know that it's definitely a Catholic thing. That's what our family, like, that's what any of us Catholics that I knew in high school said that they, um, they use, you know, Pull out.

[00:50:12] Yes, it was not, but it does matter. Like I said, my, my point is my risk tolerance and I wasn't talking about pregnancy. I was talking about venereal disease, but again, when I was a kid, You know, there was just a couple, there were no herpes, there was no AIDS. There was no committee, you know? So you got gonorrhea. civilians should go back to you, get a couple shots and you get, well, yeah, the outcome is still detrimental to your own perception, truth of a child or.

COVID, you know, definitely leads somewhere into a different state of mind. Yeah, exactly. And again, I guess the point I was making is risk tolerance. You know, w what, how much risk can you tolerate in every aspect of your life? We go to a restaurant pre COVID. How many people thought about the number of restaurant people?

If you piss him off, spit in your food before they deliver it a lot, or. If you've never been in the restaurant business as a waitstaff or owner or chef or whatever, you need to realize that while they meet minimum health standards to keep their. Doors open again, pre COVID and now even more so, but if you go back into a restaurant kitchen, I mean, for the most part you look around, you're probably not going to go back to that restaurant, even a fine restaurant.

I mean, it's 30, it's weird how employees are doing shit. You see an employee come out of the bathroom. Did they wash their hands? My own nail. You know, uh, so every day we, we, we deal with risk and, and, and I was just talking to my sister about it earlier today on the phone because she wants to fly to New York to see her grandkids and her son.

And she gets behind, I don't want to be on a plane and she's seven years older than me. And, and I go, you know, what, if you stop and think about it, it's probably okay, you're going to have a mask. They're not seeing people in the middle of, you know, in the middle. See, you know, it's a three hour flight from her place to New York.

Uh, it, you know, you gotta decide, is it worth it? And she has a whole bunch of other medical issues, you know, is that risk worth it, or just wait a couple months and have Jeff and the kids come visit you, you know, cause to. If she goes to New York, according to law, she would have to quarantine for 14 days.

And then she could visit, she could quarantine in their house, I suppose. Why does she have the quarantine just tell the brain I saw she's good. Well, yeah. I mean, as long as you, you know, inject it into your yourself and take a handful of that drug that fuck it is. Yeah. Now it's a movie. You'd be good at mostly, like I said, the UV light up your ass in a, in a Clorox bleach if I'm old.

You're anything it does for me. You know, it's, uh, it keeps you feeling clean all day. No, like going through a carwash in a weirder way. Okay. You're going to tell me, okay. You go ahead. You go ahead. You answer that. You send me the question. I'll answer. So here's the question. How do I know if I have fiber optic internet?

Okay. The, so now this is interesting. So if somebody tells you, you do, usually people will take that as okay. I believe you, because you work for this company, so we don't have, it goes without questioning. We don't challenge that information that's being presented, which definitely could ripple out as far as what's happening right now.

Well, so here's my question, you know, if. My speed was anywhere close to 940 Mbps. Right. It wouldn't matter to me, but when my speed is 19 and the PS, what the fuck is Mbps? I don't know what that means per second. And what does that matter to me? Well, okay. So when you pay $110 a month, because you're allegedly getting one gig 1000.

You're getting 1000 megabits per second. Yes. What a gig is, right? It's a thousand megabits. So, um, and, and you pay $110 a month for that, but you only receive 19 megabits. So you're receiving less than 2% of what they promised you in, what you paid for. When it's that slow. I got a question. Is it really fiber optics, number one, number two.

Um, how do you take regular coaxial cable that has no fiber optic tubes in it or pipes, whatever you want to call those things, the light codes through how light goes through regular coaxial cable? Okay. So it wasn't me coming up. As I listened to you, what I'm going to be Googling as you speak here.

Excellent. Um, and then when I Google it, according to what I could find in my area of spectrum, it doesn't have fiber optics yet. That's what they sold me. And the speed is so slow. If it was half of what they promised, I'd allow myself to get screwed up the ass. Um, but on purpose, On purpose. Yeah. Okay.

And over if they could consistently deliver half of what they promise, they're delivering two and three and 5%, but I'm paying a hundred percent. What I propose to them is here's the deal at the end of each month at the end of each billing cycle. Okay, whatever speed you actually delivered to my abode.

Okay. Whatever percentage of that speed is to the 940 Mbps, you promised me is the percentage of the $110 a month that I'll pay you. And they all know it doesn't work like that. And he'll really cause the fucking Amron Amarin in the electricity and the gas company. That's how they charge. You know, they just charge me for the electricity.

I just charge me for the speed that you deliver. Wait, are you doing budget billing though? Cause they have that feature we're right, but it doesn't matter. That's still budget billing on, on the electric bill and gas bill. It's still based on your usage. All they do is they look at your usage historically.

They average it out over 12 months. Then at the end of the whole 12 months cycle, you make adjustments. Okay. But I mean, they don't, it's not a flat rate charge. It's a flat rate payment system, you know, to make budgeting easier and the gas. In the winter months, when you get stupid gas bills, average it out in the summer where, you know, they're just charging the minimum $35 a month.

Cause you're hooked up. Um, same with the electricity, you know, in the summer when you're going to use a lot of, yeah. Air conditioning and you get stupid bills, but in the winter, all the only thing that's really costs me a lot is, is you're heating, uh, primarily gas in this area. But, but all I'm saying is there's nobody for me to check with and determine if I have the fiber optic that you promise me other than the people that sell it to me.

Right. Well then also you can do is basically what you just described with Amarin as far as they look back on your history, as far as you can use that method, looking back on what you've been receiving, recording it, and somehow showing proof to that, that this is what I've been getting. Why the fuck am I not getting what you promised me when I'm painted at this price?

Exactly. But that, that, that involves then our legal system and, and the FCC and the attorney general making a complaint, uh, and dealing with that, uh, when really I like here, here's my favorite example. Yeah. Akron would have to agree to that billing. Otherwise they say, you know what, we'll just discontinue service and you go elsewhere, you know, I mean, if you don't like it go elsewhere, you saw our terms and conditions.

You read them. Barely fucking read when you're 90 years old. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you need to fucking magnifying glass, the size of the world to see some of those fine print. And then you don't understand that a Philadelphia lawyer wrote it and then it doesn't matter. Or cause they're not responsible.

They're not accountable for it. Yeah, we just think about this. Okay. Walk into Ruth. Chris. This is pre COVID. So you walk into Ruth Chris or, or, you know, the Capital city grill, whatever your favorite steakhouse is, and you sit down and you order an eight ounce Philemon Yon. Of the finest prime age beef they have, and it's $125 again with the fucking steak layer.

I'm getting hungry. Now I know this, the waitress in 40 minutes, the waitress brings out this little, well done crispy piece of meat that looks like, you know, the size of a bugger that came out of your nose and it's hamburger. And she starts walking away and you go, Whoa, excuse me, just for a second. What's this, she has a piece of hamburger, but I ordered, and I see here on the bill, you charged me $125 for a filet mignon.

Yeah, well, no, I'm not gonna do it. That's what doing, you know, I mean, they're, they're charging me for Philemon Yon. It's the fastest service available to residential places here in my zip code. And they're delivering whatever the fuck they want. We've been working on it almost 10 days now. Four times a day.

[01:00:23] I do two different speed tests on my internet, just so I have this paper trail when I make a stink, you know, and I'll make a stink. I'm making a stink with them now. They don't even answer my phone calls anymore. Now I go, fuck yourself all over. Call it, dude. Oh my God. You know, you take it, give it to the brand.

That's exactly. What's fucking happening too. Cause I would be doing it if I was working there like this fucking man, what did you know? Here's what's really cool though. Greg, if you delivered half of what you promised, I wouldn't be calling up. It's true. You know? I mean, that's, I'm not asking for some special, you know, I'm asking for what you promised in your terms and conditions, except if you read the terms and conditions, which unfortunately being old and just nothing but time.

I actually read to make sure I wasn't out of line and I am. If you read Spectrum's terms and conditions, they're just like every other internet service provider around, they say we can't promise or guarantee any rate of speed. Interesting. Wouldn't that be cool. Not think about this. In your whole life, just take a wild ass.

Guess it doesn't matter how accurate they are, but try to be closed in your whole life. About how many, about how many commercial airline flights have you been on? I want to say at most 12, were they pretty good flights? I mean, you know, you got some of them, we were over military flights, they were shitty. I wanted to kill myself on those, not literally, but metaphorically and the commercial flights, you were on the commercial flights, more so than the military.

That's something different, but the commercial flights, if I told you, and it was a fact and you believe the fare that 50% of all commercial airline flights will crash and burn it, killing everybody on board. Would you still be apt to get on those 12 flights? No, it wouldn't bother me one bit. Do to get on him.

And, uh, yeah, I guess I'm just fucked up in the head. Like that word. No, I mean, some people, like I said, we talked about risk tolerance briefly a few minutes ago. A lot of people, because people read statistics of how safe it is to fly today. And I believe it is right. I mean, think of here. Think of this. How many people do you actually know whose homes have burned down to the ground?

Two. Okay. I know too. And I'm just, this is just a guess, cause you may or may not be aware of this, but out of all the people, you know, that have a mortgage on their home, how many people do you guess have fire insurance? Oh, It's a loaded question. Yeah. I literally present a table with anybody they hire and we'll force place fire insurance on your property if you don't have it, because you agree to keep it insured.

Okay. So, uh huh. Percent of those people have fire insurance unless they let it lapse. And the mortgage lender doesn't know about it yet. But out of all those people, you know, I mean, it's a fraction of a percentage of whose houses burned down to the ground. You just, it doesn't happen the same with commercial airline flights, the same, primarily with prescriptions.

If the people filling people's prescriptions only got it half right. Half the time they gave him the wrong dose, the wrong medication. I heard that's pretty frequent. That happens pretty frequently with them. It's 50%. I mean, yeah, it could happen 60, 70, 80%. All I'm saying is that. Pharmacists have accountability to provide you with the correct medicine.

The commercial airlines have accountability because if you've ever followed any of the major crashes of commercial airlines, where they killed 230 people. Um, you know, it's a three year investigation to figure out what the fuck went wrong, you know? And, and then the airline has to pay out tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

Cause there's accountability. You fuck up. There's accountability. Yes. In the military, you fuck up. There's accountability in everyday life. You fuck up a speed. You you, you know, you're, you got 63 in a 45 miles out there's accountability, but with internet service providers, there's no accountability. Why is that?

Well, we're going to charge you a hundred dollars to call it one giga service, 940 Mbps, but you say you're only getting 20. Okay. You still always $110, even though we didn't even. Do half of what we promise. All right. I gotta get off that soap box. Yeah. Yeah. And then when you say what statistics, I mean, half the population isn't, isn't even a statistic individual, like when it comes to numbers, Holy shit.

Like you are drowning me in my own. As transgressions, Natalie, just like what? Those were. All those statistics or atmosphere leak expressions. I just made them up. It's all good. It's all good though. I forgive you. Yeah, no, it's part of being old. You just fucking can do whatever you want. Like just drive fast and then you get pulled over and you're like, I'm old.

I don't know what I'm doing. Dementia. I forgot there was a speed limit. Sorry, you ran over three people. I'm sorry. I was playing the game of five points, 10 points. Don't you know, that game. Well, yeah, there are people whose lives are more valuable than others, you know, obviously look at the world we live in today.

Yes.

I didn't mean to take us way off topic, but I was just, I'm curious, you know, if anybody is watching this and wants to make comments at some point in time, I'd really like to know how one. Can know if they're really getting fiber optic service, whether it's from spectrum or anybody else. I don't know that there are other providers here in st.

Louis residential. I know business is something different, but I can't. I mean, I'm not going to pay for business service, especially seeing what I get in residential service, but these people need, um, you know, to be punished. Somehow, you know, but there's no way to punish him. You know, I, I agree. Um, I need to stop playing with these buttons over here.

Like literally I get over. I just go because it's just like, I second guess, like it says we're live on YouTube and I'm not seeing too much happening. It's like, but then there's this button like upload video or go live, but it's like, wait, it says we're going there. Yeah. So if you're on YouTube, yeah. If you already pushed to go live, you're alive.

If you push the upload, um, I don't know if it'll keep this stream going, but it will be looking for you to upload a video that's on your. Computer somewhere, somewhere. I think, I think it's definitely working because I just pressed this button and it shows me talking right now, explaining what I'm explaining to you.

And I'm like, Holy shit, I'm fucking losing my mind. But is that you? Or is that somebody else? It looks like you, it could be anything. Cause it's like, it's what we perceive as our own reality. Like, try to look at this, like we're. Our bodies are like a vessel. We are submarines underwater. Literally. We don't know if there's water surrounding us.

Can we just open the hatch and find out, I mean, there's that possibility that we open it, we might drown and die. So what do we rely on that tells us what's happening around us? Our own perception, our little, little tools inside there. That's scanned. Well, but,

and you know, you know that we all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine. Why is it yellow? I dunno if you know that or not, but I don't know. I don't know what's happening now, Larry. Yeah. Well, it's true. The Beatles said we all live in a yellow somewhere. That's yes, we must because the Beatles would never be.

Not to us for double negative. That's fucking wonderful. So no, what you said about the submarine? It, it really got it, uh, really hit a special area in my brain. When you said they could we open up the hatch and would water come pouring in or is there any even water outside of us? How do we know until you, um, you know, which is interesting.

I've often wanted to get a submarine with screen door hatches and see if it would still be able to sink and rise. And if the water would come in through the screens or stay out because it's a submarine, so there should be no water in it. Know that it's not supposed to go into a submarine, whether there's a screen as a hatch or being steel.

Pneumatically sealed hatch. Yeah. I'm thinking like the old school ones where you can just kind of like to twist and then push it outward. But then all that pressure, I don't know. Do you think there's somebody strong enough to be, you know, if you're 300 feet down and you got the, the hatch undone and no water came pouring in.

[01:10:23] Would be able to push that hatch open against all the water pressure. That's 300 feet down. I think if we could take, I'll say our nigger in his prime, when he was Conan the barbarian, we bring him into this situation and have them open that I think he might be able to get it. Do you think you, do you think you would need Rocky Balboa's help?

Yes, but Robbie, I don't know if he can get up there. He's kind of short unless we give him like a little step. Yes he is. Yeah. Well, you know, probably now I will tell you I'm gonna make something up potentially, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not true, but 45 is stronger than anybody in the world. I bet he.

And Arnold could do that together now. So they have the strength to do that, like strength as in connections or strength, as in,

Yeah, let's go into that. As far as width 45, who, who is 45, just so you know, For everybody who's listening. Cause when we're saying that it's like, what the fuck are you talking about? That wouldn't be the 45th president of the United States. Yes, that is correct. I guess I'm not going to say his name. I would not, um, give him that.

Uh, but if somebody needs to, if they, if you Google 45th president of the United States, his name will pop up. Yes. Uh, I'm pretty sure, unfortunately. And why do you, why do we, what is your own view on 45? I think we can pick that up based on not saying his name, but we would love to go into your own specifics as far as why you feel the way that you do?

Was there something personal? Was there something w w what, what is the takeaway? Can we all happen? This. And again, this is just one old guy's opinion, everybody news junkie, but I am a news junkie. Um, and something in this is gonna be a direct answer to your question. I liked very early on on today's episode, you mentioned you discussed your character.

Okay. 45. Is devoid of anything like character. It has no character. And I will tell you that if you look up the three most important leaderships or the five or seven most important characteristics of a leader, Okay. 45. Doesn't have one of them, but you'll find stuff that's like maybe in a boy scout oath.

I mean, to be a leader, number one, you gotta eat the last leaders. Fucking Ryan, let me tell you, 45 is the first at the table, you know, and he's elbow when people out of there, you know, cause he's going to eat first. Fuck you guys. No. All right. So he doesn't, he doesn't eat last. He doesn't respect truth because he never speaks it.

He doesn't respect facts because he just makes stuff up. Now, again, all politicians lie, actually, everybody in the world lies. And if you know somebody that says, no, I don't want it. I never tell why they're lying. Everybody has told and continues to tell lies of certain degrees of magnanimity. But every time you open your mouth that you lie and you lie about shit, you don't even have to lie about.

That's what I'm telling you comes out of 45 to be a leader and be surrounded by people that are frightened, that if they tell you the real facts about many different topics that you're putting your job at risk, because 45 doesn't want to hear that. He only wants to hear what he wants to hear. Don't tell me that shit about the coded shit.

Tell me something good. So I went online and I asked him, tell me about something good, Larry, I'm going to talk over you for just one second. I found the top 10 leadership traits that a. Individuals should obtain or strive for, and I didn't just type that in to see what first self-help bullshit would actually pop up.

But I went into what the military kind of requires. Cause I think that's kind of a, somebody, anybody should be striving for something much bigger than themselves. And, uh, dependability is number one, the integrity, making a decision. Being skillful of that professionalism, teamwork, drive, building to understand direction, organization, safety skills, and adaptability.

So it looks like he has one. He is one of those 10. He does have drive. I don't like this one either. I wonder if I'm going to find a date, it doesn't matter. Whatever, whichever I promise you. I've already done the search. I wouldn't have said that if I hadn't done the search several times, I mean, I've looked at hundreds of books, articles, white papers.

Dissertations case studies. What makes a leader? What doesn't make a leader, the five, the seven, the three, the most important qualities of a leader. So does this make you an expert? Larry? What can you, the definition of what an expert is? Absolutely. I probably. No more than the average guy about what I'm talking about only because I sit here and go down these rabbit holes and do the research.

And if in fact, the research I use is, is accurate and objective to some degree. Um, yeah, I would say that the majority of people, uh, leaders of course do authors of course do psychologists do. Um, but we're all experts when it comes to. You know, can I tell you what I could get a census of a hundred random people on the street would say is the five most important characteristics in a leader?

Yeah, I know what they are in, like I said, 80, 85% of random people that I would walk up to the street and say, tell me the five most important characteristics for a good leader, you know, 80% of time, I'll be right on with those five. And I will promise you. I will promise you that 45 doesn't have one. One of those five characteristics.

Now you brought up driving. He does have drive and that's important for a leader. Yes. I want to just update the listeners with actual good characteristics. When we look into army values, I've definitely researched and. Took to heart over a long period of my time. And that comes down to loyalty duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage.

Now I would like you guys to imagine that 45 possess that. Fuck. No. Yeah. And here's the other piece of 45, especially when you start talking about military and comparing his leadership qualities to leadership, uh, values, uh, and best practices in the military recognize here's a guy that during the height of the Vietnam war, conflict, whatever you want to call it, this is a guy who paid or his family paid.

Some shyster type doctor said he had bone spurs, which he doesn't so that he could avoid the draft. Now, I don't know what you call that when it comes to character other than full lack thereof. But so here's a guy you can't, it's really hard to compare. Somebody to military values when the guy was scared to death to be anywhere part of a military, you know, he paid somebody to make up a lie about a physical condition.

That he didn't even have bone spurs on his feet. And that's what kept him out of the draft. Um, interesting. I'm trying to think it wasn't Cassius clay, Muhammad Ali. He didn't, he tried to avoid the draft as well. Oh, probably. I'm just saying, you know, and a lot of people, you know, uh, I have nothing against him, but I would have ended up in Canada, but I'm also not president of the United States.

You know, this is true. And I also have one value every now and then I tell the truth and I have another value. I mean, I, I respect people. I don't, you know, constantly, you know, hack on people that are my enemies, you know, or hack on people that don't believe the way I believe or hack on people. Because they look different.

You know, I, I mean, And like I said, most important. I'm not president. It doesn't matter what anybody else does. It doesn't matter what past presidents did or do that might still be alive. He's president now. And he's what people are supposed to emulate. You know, when I was growing up, parents would constantly, you know, when the president of United States appeared on television, A lot of times from the oval office talking about nonpolitical shit, but crises that are going on, you know, your parents looking at you now, you don't, you want to be like him when you grow up.

Well, yeah, but how many parents can look at 45 and say to their five year old son or daughter don't you want to be like the orange baby when you grow up? You know, they want to sit there and have orange makeup alone and fake hair. But more importantly than physical characteristics of the fat slob that doesn't take care of himself physically as the past four or five presidents did.

I mean, Reagan wouldn't be overweight. He was fed, he rode around in horses and picked up bales of hay and shit. Could you imagine ready to pick up a bale or him wearing

blue jeans that I just say, Oh my God. Um, I think I may have, cause like, yeah. Yeah, like twitches and shit. Let me look at you. You're getting all excited. Like you just met your first girlfriend. You're all just all happy, add in different ways for that. Um, I'm actually on my second one, you know, after, uh, 70 years, that's not bad.

No, it's something kind of creepy and weird, but okay. Yeah. Now, I'm even thinking maybe I can find one that I might be able to have physical intimacy with. Um, but you know, I know a lot of virgins that are still virgins at 70. Um, so, uh, it's not so unusual. Uh, Anyway. Uh that's so don't get me started on Trump.

You got me started. Dammit. You said his name again? You're in trouble. Well, yeah, they'll let you know how, how off my center I am and I'll, I'll pay dearly for that. I have a, a, a little short, multi strand whip with little, um, Hooks on the end of it. When we get done, I'm going to go outside, take my shirt off and flagellate my back until I rip the skin.

If we're punishing myself for, ah, you're giving me chills down my spine because I can just imagine that happening. Yeah. I'll record it and put it up on the internet. You can definitely have that as bonus content to people who say, who actually subscribed to the Patreon page. There you go. We try to upload videos.

I'm working out the kinks. I just, I really want to apologize as to everybody cause I'm struggling at doing this, but I am not quitting. I am trying to run all the social media. I'm trying to run the podcasting, the videos, the patriarch on the courses I'm working on writing the books. It's just like. Right.

When the fuck do you take a break? I don't take a break and I have two puppies and they drive me nuts because, okay. My question Greg is when can we expect to see maybe your first, your first book? I want to stay within. I want to give, I want to give it a month. I'm going to say one month or less in case something happens, I always want to plan for the worst, just because of theirs.

It's life shit happens. Absolutely. To having the availability of, of actually. Taking part of your expertise, you are knowledge, uh, learning about character and then yet in a totally different, uh, module, if you will, uh, learning about podcasting, how to put it together, how to know all the ins and outs, how you get it.

Oh, they're in the, what do they call them? Podcast players like, Oh, Oh. So if we were to look at the technical terms, it's called an aggregator or Icatcher or another one, but it is a directory. Those are ones that you do not pay that will host your show for you. There are so many in it and it's like, I feel honored because I.

Can just utilize all of these different search engines and go past the 20% that Google actually allows us to. So I can bypass that and find shit that's all over the place. And that will be all linked into. The podcasting book that I found, I'm an I I'm going above and beyond. This book will have more links than any book you will ever come across and it will link you to free shit.

If you were, I was doing research on actually how much it costs to pay somebody to do your podcasting for you. You're looking at 50 bucks too. As much as they want to charge you to host your show, to host an episode. And that's based on their quality, which I don't want to rely on somebody to do because I'm weird.

I like things done. Right. That's why I rather do it. And I found every single source. You could do that for free when people are charging this shit. And it just makes me mad because I'm a victim of that I'm spending money left and right when I shouldn't be, when there's things out there that are free for us.

Yeah. Well that that'll be valuable information, especially today because so many people have things they want to share with others, whether it's specifically in your community or. Um, outside of their community expose, whatever it is to whoever's interested, um, in podcasting is, is conceptually. It's pretty simple.

I mean, it's, it looks like we're just, you know, talking on the microphone and it's out on the internet. It's just, you push a couple buttons and boom. It happens. It doesn't. Um, as you were experiencing earlier today, checking, are we vibe? Is this stream there? Um, and that's just one tiny facet of it. The important part is what you just mentioned, make sure that it's out there so people can find it.

Um, and make sure you're doing some relevant stuff that people want, um, exactly adapting to the needs of what people want and how we, how we deliver content. I mean, it's now becoming a live streaming anxiety and. Me. I don't like being in front of the camera. I was just who I was as a kid. I was a fat kid back in the day, you know, just the youngest of seven.

Right. I always got my feelings hurt, you know, and it's something that I have to go through. Those are past transgressions and those are just things in your head that you hold to you don't that, that haunt you to this day. And it's just something. I was in the fucking military. I did so much shit. There's nothing.

There's not a stupid thought. It's not going to hold me back. Right. Kick that thoughts ass, just shove it down. Well, do you, how do you feel some of those childhood memories and events have helped shape the character you are today? I would say it definitely. Made me a very resilient person, but also able to dissociate from reality to push myself much further than any individual I've come across.

I'm able to get lost in my head and think more complexly and understand the connection to different things that may seem completely irrelevant, but somehow I can find a way to. Bypass that and connect it. And then would that ability to make those connections? I can almost paint like a memory palace where I can learn new things and start storing things between those connections and make like them.

Weird mind map of a bucking spiderweb kind of thing. Wow. That's impressive. Well, it's weird, but I think if you can transfer that in, in your piece, on your character, uh, so many people can benefit from that because we all have our idiosyncrasies. Yes, we all have our fears. We have stuff that's from childhood stuff.

We, and it is, you know, deep in our. Brain and thought and negative it's negative shit. It holds us back unless we can find a way to overcome that. And unless we find a way to, yeah. You know, I'm scared to be on camera, but I'm gonna, you know, put my big boy pants on and do it. Fuck. Yeah. I need to, for other people so that other people won't have to deal with shit that I dealt with, that is, you know, just negative shit.

You don't need to. So that will be extremely helpful in I, for one, I'm looking forward to seeing that me too, and it POS it provides people an outlet to fuel questions that they can't articulate in their own heads, as far as things that are happening. And they just aren't aware of the things that are happening, that we can spark that thought as far as why didn't I think of that or.

That really makes a lot of sense. Now I have some place. I have something to base the situation off of where I can do research on my own time. That's what I love about your transformation station is to be able to be a voice for those that don't have the voice. Exactly. Exactly. And we need so much more of that today.

Uh, I can tell you as an old guy, how important that is, but it doesn't really make sense to a lot of people until they get to a point where 40 or 50 years ago, they wished they would have had that information, had the ability to, uh, overcome so many of the. The fears or the things that just hold us back from being all we can be.

Oh, I'll leave you with one final thought. Cause I'm looking at the time and I've got a three 30 appointment, a meeting that I've got to be at. Oh, beautiful.

What I believe now. Yeah. We've talked about this. I'm very spiritual. I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual. And so in, in that spirituality, what I truly believe is that each one of us is meant to take advantage of all the abundance that's here in this universe. Um, but the vast majority of us don't take advantage of it.

We don't feel that we're worthy. We don't do what's necessary to take. I mean, it's not going to be handed to us, you know? Oh, here's all the abundance we promised you. No, I mean, you got to go out and grab it and you gotta work for it. But if you know you're worthy and you're willing to work hard for it, uh, with a burning desire, I call it a burning in your belly.

Yes. Then you can have it. Uh, you can have all of that abundance, any and all, all of it. And that's what we're supposed to do. I think it's just purely opinion. That's what we're supposed to do while we're here in this part of the universe, um, that we see in this physical. Nature, uh, and a combination really of the physical stuff we see, feel and smell the stuff our mind does, and then the stuff, stuff, our heart and soul and spirit does.

And it's all combined, and this is not getting religious, but it, yeah, spiritual, but I think it's real, you know, we see it everywhere from. You know, the protozoa, the little oneself thing too, to us and beyond outer space, to, you know, stuff that's so big, we might not be able to imagine, uh, that's all there available for us in with that.

Cause I thought I'll be quiet. Uh, yeah. And talk to you. Well, in the next couple of days, kind of wrap some of this stuff up that we need to wrap up on. Yeah. Using these things, uh, efficiently, effectively. Yes. Quality. You want consistency? We'll get it down. Instancy and. Topic transitioning to a new season where we will take new approaches.

Exactly. Exactly. And I look forward to that and I know as we build people that are following us around and listening to our craziness, that they'll appreciate that. So hopefully they'll make a leave comments for you and you can respond or at least if nothing else, I guess the tried saying is they can leave their thumbs up, print and subscribe, you know, probably nothing bad will happen.

Exactly. Well, Larry, I do appreciate you as always, and I look forward to seeing you on the next show. All right, I'll see you then have a good one. You too. All right, man. Wait, they will.

Well, that is it for today with your transformation station. This is our first episode where we look into the nonsense of life and our first live episode here on YouTube. I do apologize. I try to get it on Facebook. I try to get it everywhere. However, technical difficulties as always here with me. And let me know what you guys think.

Let me know what I can improve, what I can do for you guys. Don't forget to subscribe to your transmission station, the podcast. I will provide links in the show notes as well as check out our social media besides YouTube. Of course. And I will see you in the next episode. Thank you. You've been listening to your transformation station, rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet.

We hope you enjoyed the show and we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Join us weekly on Monday for the YTS challenge. And biweekly on Wednesday for the exclusive interviews at 8:00 PM central time. In the meantime, connect with us on Facebook and Instagram at Y T S the podcast we'll be back soon until then this is your transformation station signing off.

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STARTUPS AND FOUNDERS

A company. It is a comfortable idea. There is nothing inevitable about the current system. But all languages are equivalent is that it's tested more severely than in most other countries.1 This was the Lisp function eval. The monolithic, hierarchical companies of the mid 20th century are being replaced by networks of smaller companies.2 In fact it's only the context that makes them so. Why do teenage kids do it?3 And it's so easy to do: just don't let a sentence through unless it's the way you'd say it to a friend.

When you interview a startup and think they seem likely to succeed at all, and you'd get that fraction of big hits won't grow proportionately to the number of characters in a program, but this is not a new idea.4 And meetings are the main mechanism for taking up the slack. I've said some harsh things in this essay, and Maria Daniels for scanning photos.5 When you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write about these issues, as political commentators like to think they are now. History tends to get rewritten by big successes, so that in retrospect it seems obvious they were going to make a painting first, then copy it. By all means be optimistic about your ability to make something great. The most common way to do this could leave competitors who didn't in the dust. Whereas mere determination, without flexibility, is a language too succinct for their own good. This was the Lisp function eval. People have always been willing to do great things, you'd be able to leave, if you don't, no one will buy your product. That is one of the reasons startups are becoming a more normal thing to do. What it means is to have a deft touch.

And if you don't.6 The principle extends even into programming. We're not hearing about these languages because people are using them on servers. Poetry is as much music as text, so you have to create a new language, it's because you think it's better in some way than what people already had. It's expensive and somewhat grubby, and the best stuff prevails. Practically every fifteenth century Italian painter you've heard of was from Florence, even though it feels wrong. Teenage kids used to have a deft touch. So this relationship has to be finite, and the enforcement of quality can flow bottom-up: people make what they want to hack the source.

Meanwhile, the one thing you can measure is dangerously misleading. Now VCs are fighting to hold the value of free markets, are run internally like communist states.7 It's interesting Our two junior team members were enthusiastic.8 Deals fall through. The specific thing that surprised them most about starting a startup. Once something becomes a big marketplace, you ignore it at your peril.9 The top thing I didn't understand before going into it is that persistence is the name of the game.10 They use different words, certainly. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. But I think that the main purpose of a language is to become hypersensitive to how well a language lets you think, then choose/design the language that feels best.

Bill Gates will of course come to mind. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners. That may not seem surprising. You're doing the same thing. By singling out and persecuting a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd, a group of inspired hackers will build for free.11 For me the worst stretch was junior high, when kid culture was new and harsh, and the language wouldn't let you express it the way you usually would, then afterward look at each sentence and ask Is this the way I'd say this if I were talking to a friend what you just wrote.12 These are the elections I remember personally, but apparently the same pattern. It meant that a the only way to get software written faster was to use a new service is incredibly difficult.

Several journalists have tried to interpret that as evidence for some macro story they were telling, but the more ambitious ones will ordinarily be better off taking money from an investor than an employer. These were the biggest surprise for me. He'd seem to the kids a complete alien.13 They counted as work, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you'll regret most; go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. And yet it also happened that Carter was famous for his big grin and folksy ways, and Ford for being a boring klutz. But you can't have action without an equal and opposite reaction.14 Even good products can be blocked by switching or integration costs: Getting people to use a new service is incredibly difficult. The charisma theory may also explain why Democrats tend to lose presidential elections. For example, physical attractiveness, fame, political power, economic power, intelligence, social class, and quality of life. There is no external pressure to do this is to collect them together in one place for a big chunk of each series A company.15 If anyone wants to write one I'd be very curious to see it, but several planned to, but the whole world we lived in was, I thought that something must be wrong with me.

If a company considers itself to be in a great city: you need the encouragement of feeling that people around you. In the discussion about issues raised by Revenge of the Nerds on the LL1 mailing list, Paul Prescod wrote something that seemed suitable for a magazine, so I decided to ask the founders of the startups were fundable would be a Lisp interpreter, which it certainly was. Fred is. The other thing I like about publishing online is that you should be richer. If smaller source code is the purpose of breeding children. There are other messages too, of course. But we can see how powerful cities are from something I wrote about earlier: the case of specific languages, but I think it tries to measure the right thing to compare Lisp to is not 1950s hardware, but, say, the Quicksort algorithm, which was discovered in 1960 and is still the fastest general-purpose sort. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. Maybe one day a heavily armed force of adults will show up in helicopters to rescue you, but that there's nothing else people there care about more. And by next, I mean five years if nothing goes wrong.

Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. Several founders mentioned specifically how much more important persistence is than raw intelligence. If we ever got to the point where 100% of the startups from the batch that just started, AirbedAndBreakfast, is in NYC right now meeting their users. Do you want your kids to be as unhappy in eighth grade as you were? We could never stand it.16 Where would Microsoft be if IBM insisted on an exclusive license for DOS. I'm not saying there is no need to worry. If you want to excel in it. We were all just pretending.17 When I moved to New York, I was very excited at first.

Notes

Daniels, Robert V.

Which means if the present that most people than subsequent millions. The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these people never come back. Their opinion carries the same thing—trying to capture the service revenue as well. Mitch Kapor, is caring what random people thought of them material.

They can't estimate your minimum capital needs that precisely. There will be a big chunk of stock the VCs want it. I should add that none who read this to be hidden from statistics too.

At three months we can't improve a startup's prospects by 6.

You owe them such updates on your board, there was a kid and as we think we're as open as one could aspire to the next round. While certain famous Internet stocks were almost certainly start to get fossilized. Look at those goddamn fleas, jabbering about some of the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men.

But while it makes people feel good. He had equity. We didn't let him off, either, that suits took over during a critical period. According to the problem is not a problem so far.

Strictly speaking it's not inconceivable they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu. I. A lot of people who currently make that leap. Loosely speaking.

But politicians know the inventor of something or the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written it? It was only because he writes about controversial things.

Cascading menus would also be good? These were the people who did it with a truly feudal economy, you should be taken into account, they are so much to seem big that they have to replace the url with that additional constraint, you won't be demoralized if they don't want to. Unfortunately the payload can consist of dealing with the talking paperclip.

Some introductions to philosophy now take the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson. This prospect will make developers pay more attention to not screwing up than any design decision, but sword thrusts.

It's suspiciously neat, but that's not true. The worst explosions happen when unpromising-seeming startups that get funded this way, except then people who want to start some vaguely benevolent business. 16%. If a company that has raised a million dollars is no.

And no, you can't, notably ineptitude and bad measurers.

VCs.

So it may be heading for a year to keep the next round is high as well as good as Apple's just by hiring someone to invent the steam engine. 03%. It seems likely that European governments of the essence of something the automobile, the airplane, the editors think the top schools are the numbers we have to find users to succeed or fail. Steven Hauser.

Few can have a significant number. Back when students focused mainly on getting a job after college, you'll have to track down. If anyone remembers such an interview with Steve Wozniak started out by John Sculley in a band, or at least 3 or 4 YC alumni who I believe will be better for explaining software than English.

Math is the proper test of investor quality. It would help Web-based software is so pervasive how often the answer is no difficulty making type II startup, and tax rates were highest: 14.

Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source but seems to be hidden from statistics too. Usually people skirt that issue with some equivocation implying that you're paying yourselves high salaries. At three months, a few months by buying their startups.

Thanks to Savraj Singh, Jackie McDonough, Jacob Heller, Ron Conway, Dan Giffin, Jessica Livingston, David Hornik, and Benedict Evans for sharing their expertise on this topic.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #place #century #networks #Paul #software #hits #Savraj #automobile #language #messages #VCs #discussion #li #Deals #anything #Daniels #way #employer #determination #topic #surprise #sup #pattern #schools

[vertcoinreddit]

Welcome back to Merchant mondaysMerchant mondays is the moment to show your appreciation for the businesses that lead the way in the adoption of cryptocurrencies. Instead of paying with fiat for your next purchase, use this Monday initiative to pay with VTC instead. I also want to ask yu to review the list. We haven't checked all sites in a while, and business moves fast in either direction.This monday I want to highlight two stores that sell Vertcoin merch. Check out some Vertcoin stickers from Redbubble or take a look at Cryptoble, which sells all sorts of VTC merchVertcoin stickers EUCryptobleWe also have a new merchant to add to our list. Take a look at The Chopmaster, a woodworker that sells a variety of wooden accessories.Debit cardsUquidWith UQUID, buying online and sending money to friends is made easier and safer than ever: all you need is an email address. Your money is protected, no personal information is revealed, and you can retrieve the details of every payment at any moment.CharityHelperbitHelperbit is a free and transparent way to support a charity project. You can donate to charity in Vertcoin and give something back to the world.EducationLearnCryptoLearnCrypto offers training about Crypto trading.The team at LearnCrypto.io has dedicated thousands of hours to educating the public and our students in all areas of Cryptocurrencies.FoodPexPeppersPexPeppers is specialized in "finest chili sauces, jellies, salts, seeds & more." Based in Pueblo, Colorado, USA PexPeppers is selling all over the world.Garden & AgricultureRoyal Queen SeedsRoyal Queen Seeds is amongst the fastest growing cannabis seed companies in Europe. After building up many years of experience in growing cannabis seeds in the Netherlands, we decided to launch our own line of cannabis seeds and are now able to offer you quality feminized, autoflowering and medical seeds at a good price.Gift CardsCoinCardsCoincards provides Giftcards and was created in July of 2014.Crypto de Change(UK)Crypto De Change provides Gift Cards and Silver Buillons since July 2013.GifftoffGiftoff is a "digital gift card retailer with the largest range on offer in Europe. Since 2014 we’ve been enabling digital currency users to shop with major retailers like Amazon.co.uk, Steam and Marks & Spencer. We stock over 70 gift cards and accept over 40 digital currencies as well as UK credit and debit cards."Sheldon StoreThe Sheldon Store is a online store where you can buy giftcards with Cryptocurrencies. You can buy Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, PlayStation, Uber, Netflix (and many more) gift cards. The Sheldon store team consists of cryptocurrency enthusiasts working together, driven by a single goal; to create a world where everyday people earn, spend and invest cryptocurrency like they would any other fiat currency in their everyday life.Goods/MerchandiseAstronaut ApparelAstronaut Apparel makes every effort to operate in a transparent and ethical manner. We will be integrating blockchain features to help with supply chain management, so that you can see exactly where your apparel was made.Barter4CryptoBarter4Crypto is a platform where users can offer and pay each other in cryptocurrencies for services and products.BullcryptoBullcrypto is a brand new apparel shop that sells everything from tshirts to hats or from mugs to posters!BycrypAn online marketplace (similar to Ebay) with buyer and seller protection. This platform allows you to buy and sell products for Crypto with escrow possibilities for Vertcoin.CyrolineCyroline is on "the tireless hunt for the special in the fashion world, the perfect fusion of individual styles, quality and sustainability." In physical stores you can pay with Vertcoin in Germany: Lübeck, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart.Crypto and ProudC&P provides crypto related fashion and is "shipping worldwide with live rates and tracking."CryptocompoundCrypto Compound provides "cryptothemed items" like fashion, mugs & more.CryptobleCryptoble provides "apparel and more". Here are crypto related shirts & mugs.Crypto MugzA webshop selling Crypto mugs (obviously) and some other cool items such as Tshirts and Drones.Epic PantsEpic Pants is an online retailer who sells products in the categories hardware, apparel, styles, gear, fun, music and art.FlubitShop over a million products at Flubit and pay with Vertcoin. They offer a range of products, from electronics to stuff for your home. A one-stop-shop if you are looking to spend some Vertcoin. Check it out!GeekboxitGeekBox "offers a wide variety of services including but not limited to basic computer setup, repair, virus removal, server setup, network setup, consulting, purchasing, cloud computing advice, gaming system and electronic repair." As a nice special GeekBox IT provides a Vertcoin Tshirt.HippteeHipptee provides a range of different cryptocurrency tshirts.HodlerteesHodler Tees is a cryptocurrency centered tshirt company based in Frisco Texas! (USA) We sell all things crypto related from hats to tshirts and even posters!King Pen VapesKPV provides Vaporizers, "electronic devices that help you vaporize your material into vapor for cleaner inhalation. People looking to quit smoking cigarettes are the main reason behind vapes."LambofamFounded in 2018, their mission is to promote cryptocurrencies in popular culture with high-quality crypto apparel.Lazy PyramidLP is an online store and community. We service the world, no order is too small or too large.Luma CardsLuma Cards is selling greeting cards for all kinds of occasions. You can now buy high-quality art-based greeting cards with Vertcoin.NakamotoClothing"At Nakamoto Clothing, we're passionate about designing and curating a selection of apparel to help grow this movement of change. And we're electrified AF!", international shipping.quinsoloQuinsolo proudly accepts decentralized cryptocurrency payments for their crypto themed products.SatoshiMarketOnline marketplace selling crypto embroided polo shirtsSpreadshirtSpreadshirt provides shirts and more. Based in Greensburg, USA, the owner comes from the Netherlands.TeepublicTeepublic provides apparel, home goods, shirts, stickers, mugs & more.The ChopmasterThe Chopmaster is a woodworker that sells a variety of wooden accessories.Vertcoin stickersRB gives "independent artists a meaningful new way to sell their creations. Today, we connect over 400k artists and designers across the planet with millions of passionate fans." RB provides a huge asortiment of designed products like bags, wall art, home decor, apparel, stationary & more.WIKILEAKS shopWikiLeaks is a multinational media organization and associated library. It was founded by its publisher Julian Assange in 2006. The shop provides shirts, posters and asseccoires.ZazzleZazzle is a "marketplace, you'll find customizable products, art and createyourown products just waiting for you. We're PhD's, professional artists, manufacturing gurus, patent holders, inventors, musicians, and more. Everything we do is an expression of love." As a nice special Z provides Vertcoin shirts.MedicalThree Fields AccupunctureAcupuncture in MassachusettsMultimedia ServicesRichmond Drone ServicesRDS is Central Virginia’s drone service specialists. From preparation to content delivery, we perform all work to perfection. We can act as both an aerial film consultant or as the remote pilot in charge on your next projects.Calvin WestCalvin West is a music producer and lyric video artist. Currently based in Spain but with project all around the world. You get a discount if you pay with Vertcoin. Take a look at his projects!Professional (law) ServicesBurrellLaw (NYC)Burrell Law "Our New York Citybased attorneys provide a broad range of transactional legal services" Every large business was once a small business. We are here to help you find a solution for your legal needs.Bitcoin TaxBitcoin Tax is "calculating capital gains/losses for any cryptocurrency. Do you know the costbasis of every coin you own? Are you tracking the profits and new basis when you spend or sell? Can you work out the best way to identify your trades to optimize your taxes? Let us do it for you."The Crypto Lawyers(U.S.)The Crypto Lawyers "we are a team of U.S. qualified lawyers dedicated to helping individuals, businesses, and organizations navigate the legal intricacies of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. We commit ourselves to strategically and aggressively represent our clients in their transactional and litigation matters."PrintingCatdi"Catdi is a commercial printing company with additional specialization in web design. Offering costeffective commercial printing, direct mail, graphic design and web solutions to small businesses. Proudly Serving Houston and surrounding communities for over 10 years."Technology & InternetAirVPNAirVPN is a VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship.Crpto.spaceWith Crpto.space, you can get all the information you spend time checking, instantly every time you open a browser on your desktop or mobile device. Premium package includes the vertcoin homepage and wallpapers.JagodaJagoda (strawberry) is a videogames platform aiming to distribute digital services for cryptocurrencies that show a direct interest in social activism on different layers.Evolution HostEvolution Host is a hosting provider where you can pay with Vertcoin. They offer VPS hosting, IRC hosting and game servers on several locations around the world with highend hardware.Fasttech"FastTech is the technocentric destination for all your geeky needs and more. FastTech is committed to become the most loved and trusted electronics marketplace by offering superior shopping experience, timely shipping, and stellar customer service."GPS Tracking Made EasyThe first GPS tracking company to accept cryptocurrency as payment. Easy to install and easy to use with options for just about any type of vehicle or trailer.Video GamesCavemen StudiosCavemen Studios is a developer of video games. "Having over a century of combined experience on how video games tick, we've finally decided it's time to start creating our own products."Keys4coins"Keys4Coins is one of the first pc game stores who only accept cryptocurrency as payment. Our store is simple to use and you can shop anonymously. Only an email is required so you can receive the license."XBL4BTC"Our aim is to provide the fastest, easiest place to buy Xbox Live Gold subscriptions with cryptocurrencies"Wallets & miscellaneousPaper walletDesigned Vertcoin public and private wallets that can be used as paper wallets or given as gifts.Wooden VertcoinLaserLightning provides one etched wooden Vertcoin with the Vertcoin logo burned into one side, and your custom QR code on the back. These coins are approx 1.5 inches in diameter.(NSFW) Adult shopsToys4sex the adult shopToys4Sex is Australia's Online Adult store retailer intended for men and women. Toys4Sex comes with a specially selected range of products that has made its mark within the Australian adult market place. via /r/vertcoin

#vertcoin #cryptocurrency

[siliconwebx]

9 Fun Ways to Still Be Productive When Bored at Work

There’s a platitude that goes something like if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. The sentiment there is nice, but it’s wholly untrue. Even if you love what you do, it’s still work. And some days, it’s Work with a capital W. On those days, the 2 pm slump hits or any of a thousand different reasons means that you get bored at work. Fortunately, there are still some fun things you can do that will keep you productive, even if they’re not quite in your job description.

1. Write to a Professional Contact

This is an especially salient point if you’re the kind of person who wants to stay in contact with people but often fails to follow through on it. You may like the idea of having coffee or grabbing lunch with someone you met at a conference or who works in a different department, but setting it up just never happens.

So if you want to know what to do when bored at work, one of the simplest is to toss one of these contacts an email, say hello, and see if they’d like to get together sometime. It doesn’t even have to be a professional contact, but since you’re at work, it probably should be.

We list this as a fun thing because it engenders relationships and kicks up the dopamine in your brain. In many cases, doing this once will spur you to write at least one more while you’re at it.

2. Research Conferences in Your Field

Think about this like you’re planning a vacation and getting paid for it. Because in some ways you are. Conferences are an excellent way to improve your professional development, make new friends and contacts (whom you can email at a later date when you’re bored at work), improve your knowledge and skill set, and increase your company’s profile within your industry.

Best of all, though: many conferences are held in amazing locations. If you’re in the WordPress world, WordCamp Orlando and Orange County are definitely worth a look. Every industry has conferences like this in great places. Some towns like San Antonio, TX even work hard to attract conferences and have a lot of attractions for folks in town.

No matter what your industry, if you’re bored, a simple Google search of [Industry name] conferences [year] will return a lot of results. Or at least more than a few.

Best of all: most employers have a professional development line item in their budgets, but they get claimed fast. If you have even the inkling of somewhere you want to go, do some research and talk to your superiors.

And pro-tip: if you apply to be a speaker, the chances are higher that your boss will agree to the trip. After that, it’s all palm trees, mojitos, and research & development and data analysis panel discussions.

3. Listen to a Podcast or TED Talk

Both of these are abundant on YouTube, iTunes, and pretty much everywhere else. Even if your workplace has YouTube or other streaming services blocked, you likely have a cellphone with a few extra gigs of data to spare.

You’re also probably wearing headphones if you’re in an office.

But what if your boss walks by and sees you hunched over and watching a video on your iPhone? Just smile and point at it and say:

“Oh, I found a TED Talk about cognitive dissonance in office workers and how it affects productivity. I can send you the link if you want.”

How many bosses would fault you for that?

4. Start a Podcast or a Blog

If you’re the creative type, planning and launching a blog or podcast using the knowledge of your field can be a lot of fun. You might need to get your superiors’ permission for this, but you can very easily set yourself and your company up as industry leaders by starting and taking part in conversations.

Depending on what your workplace is like, taking on a project like this could become part of your work duties, even. It could spur conference panels and presentations and generate exposure for you and your company.

It may also be tempting to work on your side-hustle blog or podcast, too. But that gets into some shadiness because you’re at work and getting paid. With that in mind, a podcast or blog is a really fun way to engage with your job in a way that can keep the boredom from creeping back in.

5. Work on a Presentation for your Boss

Now, hear us out. We aren’t suggesting that it’s fun to work on your assignments when you’re bored. You’re bored at work for a reason. But you can have a bit of fun putting together a presentation of your own ideas for a suggestion that you’ve been wanting to make. Maybe it’s an improved workflow that will make your daily life easier (and others’, too) or that a lunch book club would improve morale. You might need an intern, and this is how you find the time to get around to asking for one.

Whatever it is, switching gears for an afternoon of working on something you’ve been bouncing around in the back of your mind is a fantastic way to break out of that rut. And because it’s a work project you’re suggesting, the research and presentation time are still being funneled back into the company.

6. Plan/Research a Retreat

Not everyone may be in the position to do this, but those of you that are, listen up. If your company or your team ever goes on retreat, taking an afternoon to work on researching locations and activities can really liven up your day. Not only do you get to look for cool places to go and hang out (again, a mini-vacation on work’s behalf), but you can also file away some of the rejects for your own use later. Don’t let that research on the best cities to travel in South America go to waste!

Also, by doing this, you’re still ticking something off your to-do list. It might not be the task at the top, but it’s something that you would have to do eventually anyway. And looking at Italian hotels and travel arrangements is a lot more fun than reworking spreadsheet formulas.

7.  Sneak Into an Idol’s DMs

Whether it’s through a blog or on social media, you follow people you don’t know because you respect them. Not so much celebrities or brand accounts (though everyone respects Wendy’s Twitter account), but industry leaders and influencers and thought provokers. Because you look up to them. But you never talk to them, do you?

Why not?

Well, when you’re bored at work, it’s time to say hi. It’s time to sneak right into their DMs and let them know who you are. It’s fun to interact with people we look up to, and sometimes you can really make a fantastic connection or friend this way.

Blogs and websites have email forms and contact pages. Draft up a quick paragraph about how their work has helped you in some way, and maybe link to something that you’ve included their ideas in and are proud of. Most people try to check their emails and get back to fans or followers.

If it’s on social, the same thing applies. Draft up a quick hello message and introduce yourself. It’s can be a ton of fun to come up with quirky ways to stand out from the crowd. And if you’ve set up a blog or podcast like in #4 above, ask them to be a guest or do an interview. People tend to say yes a lot more often than you’d think.

Being able to sit down or have a call with someone you admire is both nerve-wracking and unabashedly fun.

8. Tidy Up

Every list on what to do when bored at work includes cleaning your desk/office/cubicle. But we want to just briefly touch on it because this can be fun when taken in the right context. When you do it in a way that, to steal Marie Kondo’s signature phrase, sparks joy in you.

Look around your office/cubicle/space and at your desk. Your workspace.

Does it make you happy? Do you like being there?

If the answer is no, then do something about it. Declutter things that, once again, don’t spark joy or aren’t necessary. And then make a list of the things that actually would make you happy. Things that would make your work life a little better. Maybe that’s a mini-fridge or a poster of a kitten telling you to hang in there.

By tidying up and realizing what you actually like about being there, you can set yourself up to get more of that stuff while getting rid of the stuff that’s just kind of there for no reason. And buying new stuff for yourself is always fun.

9. Send a (Kind of) Silly Email Blast

If you’re able to, writing up an email for your list that has more personality in it can be a lot of fun. As long as it sticks to your brand’s strategy and company mission, you can have a lot of fun with your email list.

Fun headlines get people’s attention. Puns work great for this. So do emoji.

Using animated gifs and memes to punctuate your copy can generate more engagement and higher click-through rates.

You can even write in a different voice and tone than usual, making use of rhyme or alliteration, or even try to mimic the style of a particular writer (try a marketing email for a product written like Ernest Hemingway). Whatever it is, being a little sillier than normal can sprinkle a bit of fun into your day that might not have been there otherwise.

Now You Know What to Do When Bored at Work

While none of these are amusement park or day-at-the-beach kind of fun, they’re a lot more enjoyable than spinning around in your desk chair, staring at the ceiling, and wondering if 5:00 will ever get there. If you think about it, there are probably a lot of things you can do when you’re bored at work that are actually fun and affect your job in some way, but you haven’t done them because they’re not directly on your to-do list or calendar.

So set those things aside, pick one of these things, and beat that afternoon slump.

What do you do to be productive when you’re bored at work?

Article featured image by Pikte / shutterstock.com

The post 9 Fun Ways to Still Be Productive When Bored at Work appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐ElegantThemes

#Silicon Web Design #Ahmedabad #India #Web Development #WPBeginner #Silicon URL #Web Site #Cloud Host

[shirlleycoyle]

Nintendo Makes It Clear that Piracy Is the Only Way to Preserve Video Game History

After more than a decade online, Nintendo will be shutting down the company’s Wii Shop Channel this Wednesday. Nintendo removed the ability to purchase in-store currency (Wii Points) last March, and starting January 30, users will no longer be able to purchase any WiiWare or Virtual Console games from the service.

On its surface, the company’s move is easy to brush aside as the natural, evolutionary demise of a service tied to an aging console. Especially given Nintendo gave customers plenty of time to spend any remaining Wii Points long before the storefront was shuttered. But the day Nintendo pulls the plug on the Wii Store Channel should be a strong warning those who care about video game preservation, and any consumer who uses a digital store: We often don’t truly own products we buy digitally, and when one of these digital stores go down, piracy is often the only way to preserve its history.

As it stands, even after the store officially closes, Wii users will be able download any past titles they’ve purchased and downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel, provided they can fit them on either the Wii’s internal storage or an additional SD card. However, Nintendo said that in a yet unknown point in the future, the company will close all services relating to the Wii Shop Channel, “including the ability to redownload WiiWare and Virtual Console games, as well as the Wii System Transfer Tool, which transfers data from Wii to the Wii U system.”

That means that if the games users bought from the Wii Shop Channel are not already downloaded, or if whatever storage device users put them on is destroyed, they’ll lose them for good. Users could buy the games again from the Wii U’s Virtual Console, and they might be able to get them from Nintendo’s new subscription service on the Switch, but they’ll have to pay for it.

“What sucks here is that Nintendo didn’t build the infrastructure to allow people to support these games,” Frank Cifaldi, the founder of the Video Game History Foundation, told Motherboard in a phone interview. “It might be indicative how new Nintendo was to the Internet during the Wii era. Maybe they didn’t build it with the future in mind.”

Nintendo did not respond to a Motherboard request for comment.

“I’m not worried about the complete absence of zeros of ones from the world, piracy will always find a way”

The Wii Shop Channel wasn’t the first time Nintendo allowed users to download games (the Satellaview offered downloadable content way back in 1995), but it was a good, legal way to play many of the company’s classic games outside of tracking down old, physical copies. The Wii Virtual Console offered hundreds of games. At the moment. Nintendo Switch Online offers only 31 NES games. While Nintendo said it’s going to expand this library, likely with well-known classics like other Zelda and Mario games, there’s no guarantee it will offer more obscure games like Clu Clu Land, which was available from the Wii Virtual Console, and is still for sale on the Wii U Virtual Console. Will Nintendo keep offering obscure, old games and spend money on hosting them on the company’s servers if they’re not going to turn a profit?

“I think the fact that you’ve haven’t seen so much obscure stuff since [the Virtual Console] tells you something about Nintendo’s issues [with less known games],” Cifaldi said.

In the digital era, companies increasingly pull the rug out from under products consumers may falsely assume they actually own, notes Case Western Law Professor Aaron Perzanowski, whose last book The End Of Ownership highlighted this problem extensively.

“This situation is most reminiscent of Microsoft’s decision in 2016 to shut down its Xbox Fitness platform,” Perzanowski told Motherboard in an email. “Customers who thought they had purchased exercise content were told by Microsoft that it would no longer be available to download or access. The decision earned Microsoft criticism at the time, but given the relatively small user base, the story didn’t seem to get much traction.”

The quest to undermine consumer software ownership extends well beyond video games. As part of their effort to abuse copyright to monopolize repair, manufacturers like GM and John Deere have long claimed consumers don’t actually own the software in the vehicles and tractors they’ve spent thousands of dollars on.

The trend of eroding consumer ownership post sale isn’t just reserved to software. Hardware manufacturers now routinely brick expensive electronics they no longer want to support, or downgrade a video game console’s functionality post sale, again confusing customers who thought they owned a product, only to suddenly discover post-purchase caveats.

In Nintendo’s case, Perzanowski theorizes that the company either didn’t want to pony up the cash to protect the integrity of consumer purchases, or it simply wanted to force users to buy those same titles all over again.

“It could just be a pure economic calculus; the store costs more to maintain than it generates,” Perzanowski said. “If there are third party titles in the store, Nintendo might be unwilling to extend existing licensing agreements for those games. Or the decision might be related to some other platform or service Nintendo plans to roll out in the future that would otherwise compete with the Wii store.”

When companies make it too difficult for consumers to get the content they want (or hell, already own), users tend to flock to piracy as an alternative. Studies have shown that the best way to counter this copyright infringement is to focus on innovation; like making content cheaper and easier to access. In this case, Nintendo’s doing the exact opposite.

The company has made a habit of going after the largest, illegal distributors of its old games recently: ROM sites. As we wrote back in August, when Nintendo took down some of the biggest ROM sites on the internet, many people, including game developers, lost the only way they could access these games. Nintendo is well within its legal rights to take down ROM sites, but as Cifaldi notes, that puts video game preservationists in a difficult situation.

“Right now I can’t legally add any of these games to our library,” he said. “There’s no legal way of doing it.”

The fact that it’s illegal to download these games hasn’t stopped people from doing it. While the big ROM sites are gone and no clear alternative has popped up, it is still possible to find copies of all the games the Wii Virtual Console offered on the internet. For an accurate historical record, the Internet Archive is now even hosting the Wii Shop Channel’s HTML frontend (meaning the icons, manuals, descriptions), so future generations could see what it looked like.

“I’m not worried about the complete absence of zeros of ones from the world, piracy will always find a way, I just am very worried about everyday people being able to find and discover this stuff and be inspired by it,” Cifaldi said. “My big concern with video games going away like this is them not inspiring the artists of the future.”

Cifaldi noted that the work of Toby Fox, developer of the indie hit Undertale, is rooted in access to old games, as are the developers of Sonic Mania (widely considered to be the first good Sonic games in years), who got their start making fan games by hacking ROMs.

“It was the backbone of a commercial product that was making a lot of money for the company. I don’t know how we’ll make new art from old games,” Cifaldi said.

Given the complicated nature of these debates, many users may not fully comprehend just how they’re being screwed. It might seem like everything you bought from iTunes or Steam will be yours forever because Apple and Valve are too big to fail, but if those companies ever decide that it’s too expensive to let users download what they paid for, there’s no guarantee you’ll have access your games and movies. Keep in mind that the Wii wasn’t some unknown, failure of a device. It was a massive success, with over 100 million units sold, making it one of Nintendo’s most popular consoles. The Wii U, which is the best place to get these games once the Wii Store Channel is gone, sold only 13 million units. There are potentially millions of Wii owners who could lose access to their games unless they transfer them to a Wii U, which is not easy to get these days. Nintendo stopped manufacturing the Wii U in 2016, which has made them harder to find. You could buy a new Wii U from Amazon, but it will cost around $600.

Other consumers may simply view such behavior as unavoidable, Perzanowski said.

“Unfortunately, I think consumers are starting to see these moves as inevitable,” he said. “Especially for sophisticated digital consumers, like gamers, there is a growing sense that companies are likely to abuse their authority in ways that harm consumers.”

Whatever Nintendo’s motivation, there’s going to be plenty more behavior where this came from from other industry giants, and regulators like the FTC should do a better job ensuring that companies live up to their promises when it comes to product ownership.

Consumers need to do a better job fighting back as well, Perzanowski said.

“Consumers need to be vocal in their objections to these sort of bait and switch tactics,” he argued. “They need to develop a longer memory and vote with their wallets. These firms rely on consumers getting over their temporary outrage.”

Nintendo Makes It Clear that Piracy Is the Only Way to Preserve Video Game History syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[racheltgibsau]

Mitch Joel on Why Agencies Should Care About Conversion Rate Optimization [INTERVIEW]

Move over Don Draper, the modern day agency marketer needs to be more of a Renaissance (wo)man.

Sure, they need to be creative enough to craft a compelling pitch.

But they also need to be data-driven. They need to be well versed in analytics and the latest MarTech trends. And when budgets get tight, agency marketers need to be able to convince their clients to not cut out conversion rate optimization.

Few people know this better than Mitch Joel, president of Mirum, a global digital marketing agency operating in 20 different countries. Mitch is a best-selling business author, international speaker and agency thought leader. But he’s also a full-stack marketer who has been doing display advertising for longer than Google itself.

Mitch Joel, president of global digital agency Mirum and author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete.Image source.

Since Mitch entered the digital marketing world, a helluvalot has changed — and not just in agencyland. As technology evolves, so too are consumers and the way they interact with our brands. At the Call to Action Conference in June, Mitch’s keynote, Algorhythm: How Technology Connects Consumers To Brands Like Never Before, will dive into how to future-proof your brand and embrace disruption to become a digital leader.

PSST. Hey blog reader, we like the cut of your jib. Get 15% off Call to Action Conference tickets by using discount code “blogsentme” at checkout. Offer expires May 12th.

Ugh, why can’t it be June already?

To tide you over, here’s a fascinating interview with Mitch from the Call to Action Podcast. Unbounce Director of Content Dan Levy sat down with Mitch to discuss:

How the agency world has evolved over the past 15 years.

Mitch’s experience selling his independent agency to the largest holding company in the world.

How everything from search results to PPC and even the talent you hire for your agency are all extensions of your brand.

Check out some highlights from the interview below. (This transcript has been edited for length. Listen to the full episode on iTunes.)

Dan Levy: You’re known as a bestselling business author, speaker and agency thought leader, but you got your start in the online marketing trenches doing ad sales and even PPC marketing for a site called Mamma.com. Can you take us back to that time? What did the online marketing landscape look like and what did you learn from that experience?

Mitch Joel: Actually, yes, I did do that. But my start in digital came much earlier when I was publishing music magazines in the late 80s and early 90s. I actually was tangentially at the same time very engaged in digital media: first web browser, BBSs, stuff like that. And I actually put those magazines on the “internet” — like air quote internet — because back then, there wasn’t even really an internet.

I remember one of the cover stories for my alternative, cool, fun publication was called, “The Net.” The innovation at that time was hyperlinks. I literally was posting things on the internet from the magazine that couldn’t have hyperlinks. You couldn’t link from one page to the other. That really kept me on the trajectory where eventually I helped launch the sales channel of what at the time was one of the largest meta search engines on the internet. And again, it’s hard to imagine a world before Google. But this was pre-Google. And so the meta search engine would basically grab search results from engines like Yahoo, AOL, Lycos, and create a meta — or a better — search result that we could actually aggregate faster.

My role back then was selling sponsorships on the homepage, it was selling banner advertising. And it was also very early days of selling — literally the first time of being able to take a search result and having a banner that’s related to the search show up in the search result. And to tell you how early and nascent it was, I had to physically go into the code of the search engine to code the banner in. I don’t recommend that in this day in age. Like I don’t think anyone at Google is going into the master code to embed a search result. But that’s how early the times were back then.

DL: Wow. What did you learn from that experience that you brought forth?

MJ: Well I learned to take chances. I can tell you that when they approached me about the opportunity, my first question was, “What’s online advertising?” I mean, we are talking about a time when that first banner ad on HotWired — which became Wired — had just run.

The first banner ad, ever. Image source: Wired.

I didn’t even know what it looked like, what it felt like, what it could be. I think my pedigree in selling traditional print ads and having a construct of what it means to run a media company is what pushed me there. So it was — to this day, it was a great move. And I’m so grateful, I still have a lot of friends in my life now who came from there. A lot of people who’ve become — who’ve ascended in this industry to run major, major web initiatives are people that I hired. People that I brought into the industry. So I have a lot of pride in that.

And I also learned that — again, when I think about it, I don’t know why I took the job. All logic would dictate that at the time, I should not have taken that job. But I took the job and it wound up being great for me because it brought together what I was doing professionally on one side. And on the other side, it brought together my passion for digital. I often say that I was very early into many things. And when we started Mirum, which back then was Twist Image in 2000 (I joined in 2002). At that point in my career I said, even though I might be a little early in this space, I’m going to ride it out.

DL: Performance marketing and brand marketing are often seen as being on different sides of the digital marketing spectrum. Do you think that’s true? Do you see those two disciplines as coming closer together in an age where Facebook has gone from a social media network to just another performance marketing channel?

MJ: I think you’re right. The evolution — and by the way, Google structured themselves — for a long while, and they may still — around brand and performance. And that’s common. Where I think the confusion comes from is that within real behavioral performance-based marketing, there are heavy and hefty living around brand and experience that we often dismiss because we think that performance is still about getting the right search word, getting them to the right page.

But actually if you step back from that, the meta message is that it has to be a very relevant and cohesive brand experience. And I was somebody who wasn’t just buying generic brand keywords back in the day, to just keep that going. I actually believe that — a saying I’ve used since the early 2000s is that the first page of search results is a brand experience.

You can’t separate PPC & brand marketing. The 1st page of search is part of your brand experience. Click To Tweet

So there’s that. That sort of dismisses the idea that performance is not about branding. And you’re right — fast forwarding to today, a lot of my clients and a lot of people I meet when I do speaking events will say that social media is primarily a paid channel, because of what Facebook has done to throttle the content and have you pay against reach. Which I think by the way is a great model and clearly the market would agree with that idea.

But you can’t have any results — whether you’re paying for it or it’s organic — unless it’s a really good experience.

Whether or not that’s through a search result, an email marketing initiative, a great landing page *hint hint wink wink* to you guys, or a good old piece of content. I really don’t care. I’m actually agnostic to that.

DL: Where do performance channels like PPC and landing page optimization and conversion rate optimization come into the picture with the kinds of big brands that you work with? Are those things part of your offer? Do you factor them into how you pitch and bill clients?

MJ: Well it depends on whether someone’s going full bore with us or not. Like any other agency, we work on specific campaigns, specific projects, longer initiatives and then full-on mandates. And even the full-on mandates have sort of splits and fits and starts.

The way we started our company, we only wanted to work with large national and multinational brands and we’ve stuck to that model for what’s coming up onto 17 years. Because of that, being of startup size back in the early 2000s, most brands already had large media companies at play. And those media companies even back then were feeling very threatened by digital and would make those offerings.

So we would come in and grab pieces and parts of it and really focus on the behavioral side. Let us handle the drive to optimization, landing page, unique spaces, unique experience while the media companies were really checking boxes around “online video,” “search,” affiliate marketing” and stuff like that. So from my pedigree, I stand very firmly and aligned with what performance can do in terms of optimizations and moving things forward. I feel like I’m banging against the wall when everyone says, “Well we do that.” I think people do do that, but they don’t really do it.

I still really believe that a lot of the work we see is what I call “rearview mirror.” You know, we did it, we’re running these keywords to a landing page, and let’s see how it did. Post. I believe, and I know that Mirum as an agency believes it, all of that optimization, all of that data, all of that opportunity is now in the passenger seat. When you do it well and you actually are optimizing and driving and creating unique experiences on landing pages and stuff like that, you’ve moved it from the rearview mirror to the passenger’s seat and you can fix it and go so that there always is a positive result, not a result that says, “Oh, that campaign just didn’t work.” I can’t believe we still use that language in business today!

DL: Right, as if a campaign or an experience is a success or a failure — only if it meets your hypothesis. And the learnings aren’t a factor or don’t have anything to do with it at all.

MJ: Right and it’s frustrating for me because I feel like we often lose business or can’t grab the business because there’s a sentiment that we already have someone doing that work. But when you dig into what that work is, you see that there actually isn’t a lot of that stuff that we’re really talking about. They say they do that, it’s on their decks, and it’s on their site. But — and I don’t know if it’s a failure of the brand or a failure of the agency. I’m not sure where it happens. But there is a vast majority of very powerful brands really not doing enough.

DL: Do you think the problem is that optimization is seen as a discipline or a branch of marketing instead of just a mindset?

MJ: Yeah. One of my close friends is Bryan Eisenberg, who I really believe is one of the forefathers of this optimization space. He’s written books about it, “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?” and intent and scent and all that.

My relationship with Bryan is going on for close to 20 years at this point. And he would often say things like, “You know, here we are talking about all this stuff. And the first thing a brand will cut on a budget is the optimization. Hands down.”

And it’s mind-numbing and it’s mind-blowing to both of us — and years later it still remains the same — because that’s actually where you make money. And I don’t know why brands, agencies don’t get it. I don’t get how they don’t get it.

DL: Can you talk about the role content played in getting Twist on the map? I imagine that your book and your blog and your podcast were all part of ultimately attracting the attention of WPP and making that acquisition happen.

MJ: It’s a yes and no story.

It’s a yes story in the sense that it’s very interesting when they’re doing financial and product assessments to see an agency that has been so consistent for a decade. Creating the blog, the podcast, Six Pixels of Separation, that lead to 50-60 paid speaking events a year. That lead to two best selling books — and I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but represented by a major New York literary agent, onto a major — largest book publisher in the world, onto the global deal. And other things that come from media appearances and stuff like that.

DL: Yeah, I think that from my perspective, Twist Image and Mitch Joel were kind of one and the same.

MJ: Totally. And we built it that way. We always saw from day one, back in 2003ish, when we started the blog, that Twist Image (at the time — now Mirum) would be managing three brands:

that Mirum brand,

Six Pixels of Separation (which we sort of considered the sort of “content engine” — so blog, podcast, articles, speaking, books)

and then Mitch Joel, this media face. This warm, hopefully friendly and personable face to an agency, which again, now seems very obvious.

But if you go back 10+ years, nobody was really doing that. They didn’t really have that. So the fact that we were sharing content, having conversations with people who just didn’t have a voice before — you know, we were having hour-long conversations with business or marketing thought leaders. That you didn’t get an hour with. You’d be lucky if you had one famous enough to get 10 minutes on Charlie Rose. Suddenly, someone is spending an hour with them, having a conversation like they would over a coffee, and publishing it to the world.

There were these assets there that were built over time, and again, I do know that when it came to the opportunity for us to be acquired, one of the metrics was the fact that there is revenue generation that comes out of the content engine. That doesn’t just create media attention and a level of fame, whatever that might be. But that there actually was revenue behind this thing. And that was very surprising and shocking to them.

DL: Meaning what? It gets clients in the door?

MJ: I mean, yeah, think about it. You pitch for business development, you spend weeks, months pitching. And business development is a cost center. It costs every agency a lot of money to business develop. You don’t win every pitch. It’s a very small percentage. And you hope that the ones you win make up for all the money you spent. When you’re offsetting that cost with speaking gigs, book deals, article writing and stuff like that, it’s really interesting that you’re creating this voice and building a platform and it actually is driving business, it’s driving revenue — both in terms of client and raw revenue. We get dollars to speak and write books. It’s not vanity.

It was always about creating equity in the brand, that would have one of two roles. That one day, we would be acquired. Or if we’re never acquired, we’re running this business in a way where all of the top players would want to acquire it. And there would be extreme value in the brand.

I like building businesses that build equity as they grow. And this channel of speaking, writing, etc — it wasn’t a core component of what we were acquired for, but it was definitely on the list.

DL: It reminds me of the Rolling Stones model, where you’re the front man, but ultimately, you share those profits evenly. I know they’ve credited that as their longevity for them as a band. It sounds like the same thing for the longevity of Twist, and now Mirum.

MJ: Yeah, and I try to not have it be ego-driven. I look at it like — my job, as a media entity, is to be extremely personable. And to know that I’m managing Mirum, Six Pixels and Mitch Joel. And I conduct myself accordingly. If you look me up on Facebook, there isn’t a ton of personal stuff. There’s a ton of personable stuff.

DL: If you had to give agencies who are looking to set themselves apart from the crowd and spur growth for both their clients and their own business one piece of advice, what would it be?

MJ: I really think it is much like a great book. A great book works not because the topic is unique. I feel like more often than not you’re reading a topic that somebody else covered in one shape or form.

It’s the voice. I don’t see that much in terms of agencies having that unique voice. Do I think we achieved it? Partially. And I think it’s because it’s a journey — you’re constantly changing it, moving it along. But if I were to go across — and we did this exercise when we were trying to figure out the branding for Mirum, Twist Image — I would jokingly tell people, “You could take the website of all our biggest competitors, take off the logos, throw them in the air, and whatever website they fall on, you’d still be pretty much right.” The services, types of case studies, type of work we do. And still to this day, I think that story rings true.

The ones that stand out, though, are the ones that have a unique voice. It could be a unique individual — I’m thinking of people like Bob Greenberg at R/GA. It could just be a unique story to tell. So if you look at an agency like WK, the fact that they’ve been large and independent, the type of work that they’ve done it’s like the voice of the agency is the work that they do. That type of thing is the only component of your business that you can have that is the defendable against a competitor. It’s how you express yourself, tell your stories, the type of team members you bring in, the type of work that you do, the stories you tell in the marketplace, where you network, what you attend. That’s the big one.

The secondary one is get involved in your industry. What  drove this business at Mirum was the fact that we got involved in places like Shop.org, the National Retail Federation, Canadian Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising — I could go on and on. And we didn’t just join and become members. We got involved. In fact, we just had a conversation at lunch about an association that I’m super interested in. And the answer we all came to was: “Not unless we can get deeply involved.” So, what you find out is that by giving (because you love this industry and you want it to be better), you do wind up in some way receiving. We don’t get involved to get results. By getting involved and being active, it just happens.

DL: Well Mitch, it’s always a real treat to talk shop with you. Thank you so much for taking the time.

MJ: My pleasure! Thanks for having me.

This transcript has been edited for length. Listen to the full episode on iTunes.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://unbounce.com/call-to-action/mitch-joel-interview/

[littlemarketingproject]

Mitch Joel on Why Agencies Should Care About Conversion Rate Optimization [INTERVIEW]

Move over Don Draper, the modern day agency marketer needs to be more of a Renaissance (wo)man.

Sure, they need to be creative enough to craft a compelling pitch.

But they also need to be data-driven. They need to be well versed in analytics and the latest MarTech trends. And when budgets get tight, agency marketers need to be able to convince their clients to not cut out conversion rate optimization.

Few people know this better than Mitch Joel, president of Mirum, a global digital marketing agency operating in 20 different countries. Mitch is a best-selling business author, international speaker and agency thought leader. But he’s also a full-stack marketer who has been doing display advertising for longer than Google itself.

Mitch Joel, president of global digital agency Mirum and author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete.Image source.

Since Mitch entered the digital marketing world, a helluvalot has changed — and not just in agencyland. As technology evolves, so too are consumers and the way they interact with our brands. At the Call to Action Conference in June, Mitch’s keynote, Algorhythm: How Technology Connects Consumers To Brands Like Never Before, will dive into how to future-proof your brand and embrace disruption to become a digital leader.

PSST. Hey blog reader, we like the cut of your jib. Get 15% off Call to Action Conference tickets by using discount code “blogsentme” at checkout. Offer expires May 12th.

Ugh, why can’t it be June already?

To tide you over, here’s a fascinating interview with Mitch from the Call to Action Podcast. Unbounce Director of Content Dan Levy sat down with Mitch to discuss:

How the agency world has evolved over the past 15 years.

Mitch’s experience selling his independent agency to the largest holding company in the world.

How everything from search results to PPC and even the talent you hire for your agency are all extensions of your brand.

Check out some highlights from the interview below. (This transcript has been edited for length. Listen to the full episode on iTunes.)

Dan Levy: You’re known as a bestselling business author, speaker and agency thought leader, but you got your start in the online marketing trenches doing ad sales and even PPC marketing for a site called Mamma.com. Can you take us back to that time? What did the online marketing landscape look like and what did you learn from that experience?

Mitch Joel: Actually, yes, I did do that. But my start in digital came much earlier when I was publishing music magazines in the late 80s and early 90s. I actually was tangentially at the same time very engaged in digital media: first web browser, BBSs, stuff like that. And I actually put those magazines on the “internet” — like air quote internet — because back then, there wasn’t even really an internet.

I remember one of the cover stories for my alternative, cool, fun publication was called, “The Net.” The innovation at that time was hyperlinks. I literally was posting things on the internet from the magazine that couldn’t have hyperlinks. You couldn’t link from one page to the other. That really kept me on the trajectory where eventually I helped launch the sales channel of what at the time was one of the largest meta search engines on the internet. And again, it’s hard to imagine a world before Google. But this was pre-Google. And so the meta search engine would basically grab search results from engines like Yahoo, AOL, Lycos, and create a meta — or a better — search result that we could actually aggregate faster.

My role back then was selling sponsorships on the homepage, it was selling banner advertising. And it was also very early days of selling — literally the first time of being able to take a search result and having a banner that’s related to the search show up in the search result. And to tell you how early and nascent it was, I had to physically go into the code of the search engine to code the banner in. I don’t recommend that in this day in age. Like I don’t think anyone at Google is going into the master code to embed a search result. But that’s how early the times were back then.

DL: Wow. What did you learn from that experience that you brought forth?

MJ: Well I learned to take chances. I can tell you that when they approached me about the opportunity, my first question was, “What’s online advertising?” I mean, we are talking about a time when that first banner ad on HotWired — which became Wired — had just run.

The first banner ad, ever. Image source: Wired.

I didn’t even know what it looked like, what it felt like, what it could be. I think my pedigree in selling traditional print ads and having a construct of what it means to run a media company is what pushed me there. So it was — to this day, it was a great move. And I’m so grateful, I still have a lot of friends in my life now who came from there. A lot of people who’ve become — who’ve ascended in this industry to run major, major web initiatives are people that I hired. People that I brought into the industry. So I have a lot of pride in that.

And I also learned that — again, when I think about it, I don’t know why I took the job. All logic would dictate that at the time, I should not have taken that job. But I took the job and it wound up being great for me because it brought together what I was doing professionally on one side. And on the other side, it brought together my passion for digital. I often say that I was very early into many things. And when we started Mirum, which back then was Twist Image in 2000 (I joined in 2002). At that point in my career I said, even though I might be a little early in this space, I’m going to ride it out.

DL: Performance marketing and brand marketing are often seen as being on different sides of the digital marketing spectrum. Do you think that’s true? Do you see those two disciplines as coming closer together in an age where Facebook has gone from a social media network to just another performance marketing channel?

MJ: I think you’re right. The evolution — and by the way, Google structured themselves — for a long while, and they may still — around brand and performance. And that’s common. Where I think the confusion comes from is that within real behavioral performance-based marketing, there are heavy and hefty living around brand and experience that we often dismiss because we think that performance is still about getting the right search word, getting them to the right page.

But actually if you step back from that, the meta message is that it has to be a very relevant and cohesive brand experience. And I was somebody who wasn’t just buying generic brand keywords back in the day, to just keep that going. I actually believe that — a saying I’ve used since the early 2000s is that the first page of search results is a brand experience.

You can’t separate PPC & brand marketing. The 1st page of search is part of your brand experience. Click To Tweet

So there’s that. That sort of dismisses the idea that performance is not about branding. And you’re right — fast forwarding to today, a lot of my clients and a lot of people I meet when I do speaking events will say that social media is primarily a paid channel, because of what Facebook has done to throttle the content and have you pay against reach. Which I think by the way is a great model and clearly the market would agree with that idea.

But you can’t have any results — whether you’re paying for it or it’s organic — unless it’s a really good experience.

Whether or not that’s through a search result, an email marketing initiative, a great landing page *hint hint wink wink* to you guys, or a good old piece of content. I really don’t care. I’m actually agnostic to that.

DL: Where do performance channels like PPC and landing page optimization and conversion rate optimization come into the picture with the kinds of big brands that you work with? Are those things part of your offer? Do you factor them into how you pitch and bill clients?

MJ: Well it depends on whether someone’s going full bore with us or not. Like any other agency, we work on specific campaigns, specific projects, longer initiatives and then full-on mandates. And even the full-on mandates have sort of splits and fits and starts.

The way we started our company, we only wanted to work with large national and multinational brands and we’ve stuck to that model for what’s coming up onto 17 years. Because of that, being of startup size back in the early 2000s, most brands already had large media companies at play. And those media companies even back then were feeling very threatened by digital and would make those offerings.

So we would come in and grab pieces and parts of it and really focus on the behavioral side. Let us handle the drive to optimization, landing page, unique spaces, unique experience while the media companies were really checking boxes around “online video,” “search,” affiliate marketing” and stuff like that. So from my pedigree, I stand very firmly and aligned with what performance can do in terms of optimizations and moving things forward. I feel like I’m banging against the wall when everyone says, “Well we do that.” I think people do do that, but they don’t really do it.

I still really believe that a lot of the work we see is what I call “rearview mirror.” You know, we did it, we’re running these keywords to a landing page, and let’s see how it did. Post. I believe, and I know that Mirum as an agency believes it, all of that optimization, all of that data, all of that opportunity is now in the passenger seat. When you do it well and you actually are optimizing and driving and creating unique experiences on landing pages and stuff like that, you’ve moved it from the rearview mirror to the passenger’s seat and you can fix it and go so that there always is a positive result, not a result that says, “Oh, that campaign just didn’t work.” I can’t believe we still use that language in business today!

DL: Right, as if a campaign or an experience is a success or a failure — only if it meets your hypothesis. And the learnings aren’t a factor or don’t have anything to do with it at all.

MJ: Right and it’s frustrating for me because I feel like we often lose business or can’t grab the business because there’s a sentiment that we already have someone doing that work. But when you dig into what that work is, you see that there actually isn’t a lot of that stuff that we’re really talking about. They say they do that, it’s on their decks, and it’s on their site. But — and I don’t know if it’s a failure of the brand or a failure of the agency. I’m not sure where it happens. But there is a vast majority of very powerful brands really not doing enough.

DL: Do you think the problem is that optimization is seen as a discipline or a branch of marketing instead of just a mindset?

MJ: Yeah. One of my close friends is Bryan Eisenberg, who I really believe is one of the forefathers of this optimization space. He’s written books about it, “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?” and intent and scent and all that.

My relationship with Bryan is going on for close to 20 years at this point. And he would often say things like, “You know, here we are talking about all this stuff. And the first thing a brand will cut on a budget is the optimization. Hands down.”

And it’s mind-numbing and it’s mind-blowing to both of us — and years later it still remains the same — because that’s actually where you make money. And I don’t know why brands, agencies don’t get it. I don’t get how they don’t get it.

DL: Can you talk about the role content played in getting Twist on the map? I imagine that your book and your blog and your podcast were all part of ultimately attracting the attention of WPP and making that acquisition happen.

MJ: It’s a yes and no story.

It’s a yes story in the sense that it’s very interesting when they’re doing financial and product assessments to see an agency that has been so consistent for a decade. Creating the blog, the podcast, Six Pixels of Separation, that lead to 50-60 paid speaking events a year. That lead to two best selling books — and I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but represented by a major New York literary agent, onto a major — largest book publisher in the world, onto the global deal. And other things that come from media appearances and stuff like that.

DL: Yeah, I think that from my perspective, Twist Image and Mitch Joel were kind of one and the same.

MJ: Totally. And we built it that way. We always saw from day one, back in 2003ish, when we started the blog, that Twist Image (at the time — now Mirum) would be managing three brands:

that Mirum brand,

Six Pixels of Separation (which we sort of considered the sort of “content engine” — so blog, podcast, articles, speaking, books)

and then Mitch Joel, this media face. This warm, hopefully friendly and personable face to an agency, which again, now seems very obvious.

But if you go back 10+ years, nobody was really doing that. They didn’t really have that. So the fact that we were sharing content, having conversations with people who just didn’t have a voice before — you know, we were having hour-long conversations with business or marketing thought leaders. That you didn’t get an hour with. You’d be lucky if you had one famous enough to get 10 minutes on Charlie Rose. Suddenly, someone is spending an hour with them, having a conversation like they would over a coffee, and publishing it to the world.

There were these assets there that were built over time, and again, I do know that when it came to the opportunity for us to be acquired, one of the metrics was the fact that there is revenue generation that comes out of the content engine. That doesn’t just create media attention and a level of fame, whatever that might be. But that there actually was revenue behind this thing. And that was very surprising and shocking to them.

DL: Meaning what? It gets clients in the door?

MJ: I mean, yeah, think about it. You pitch for business development, you spend weeks, months pitching. And business development is a cost center. It costs every agency a lot of money to business develop. You don’t win every pitch. It’s a very small percentage. And you hope that the ones you win make up for all the money you spent. When you’re offsetting that cost with speaking gigs, book deals, article writing and stuff like that, it’s really interesting that you’re creating this voice and building a platform and it actually is driving business, it’s driving revenue — both in terms of client and raw revenue. We get dollars to speak and write books. It’s not vanity.

It was always about creating equity in the brand, that would have one of two roles. That one day, we would be acquired. Or if we’re never acquired, we’re running this business in a way where all of the top players would want to acquire it. And there would be extreme value in the brand.

I like building businesses that build equity as they grow. And this channel of speaking, writing, etc — it wasn’t a core component of what we were acquired for, but it was definitely on the list.

DL: It reminds me of the Rolling Stones model, where you’re the front man, but ultimately, you share those profits evenly. I know they’ve credited that as their longevity for them as a band. It sounds like the same thing for the longevity of Twist, and now Mirum.

MJ: Yeah, and I try to not have it be ego-driven. I look at it like — my job, as a media entity, is to be extremely personable. And to know that I’m managing Mirum, Six Pixels and Mitch Joel. And I conduct myself accordingly. If you look me up on Facebook, there isn’t a ton of personal stuff. There’s a ton of personable stuff.

DL: If you had to give agencies who are looking to set themselves apart from the crowd and spur growth for both their clients and their own business one piece of advice, what would it be?

MJ: I really think it is much like a great book. A great book works not because the topic is unique. I feel like more often than not you’re reading a topic that somebody else covered in one shape or form.

It’s the voice. I don’t see that much in terms of agencies having that unique voice. Do I think we achieved it? Partially. And I think it’s because it’s a journey — you’re constantly changing it, moving it along. But if I were to go across — and we did this exercise when we were trying to figure out the branding for Mirum, Twist Image — I would jokingly tell people, “You could take the website of all our biggest competitors, take off the logos, throw them in the air, and whatever website they fall on, you’d still be pretty much right.” The services, types of case studies, type of work we do. And still to this day, I think that story rings true.

The ones that stand out, though, are the ones that have a unique voice. It could be a unique individual — I’m thinking of people like Bob Greenberg at R/GA. It could just be a unique story to tell. So if you look at an agency like WK, the fact that they’ve been large and independent, the type of work that they’ve done it’s like the voice of the agency is the work that they do. That type of thing is the only component of your business that you can have that is the defendable against a competitor. It’s how you express yourself, tell your stories, the type of team members you bring in, the type of work that you do, the stories you tell in the marketplace, where you network, what you attend. That’s the big one.

The secondary one is get involved in your industry. What  drove this business at Mirum was the fact that we got involved in places like Shop.org, the National Retail Federation, Canadian Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising — I could go on and on. And we didn’t just join and become members. We got involved. In fact, we just had a conversation at lunch about an association that I’m super interested in. And the answer we all came to was: “Not unless we can get deeply involved.” So, what you find out is that by giving (because you love this industry and you want it to be better), you do wind up in some way receiving. We don’t get involved to get results. By getting involved and being active, it just happens.

DL: Well Mitch, it’s always a real treat to talk shop with you. Thank you so much for taking the time.

MJ: My pleasure! Thanks for having me.

This transcript has been edited for length. Listen to the full episode on iTunes.

Mitch Joel on Why Agencies Should Care About Conversion Rate Optimization [INTERVIEW] syndicated from https://unbounce.com