I was giving myself one year to try this out, and I would know in a year if it was working or not. And if it wasn't working, I could always go grab another sales job. And it got to be the point where it's like, if I don't do this now, am I going to look back when I'm 45 and have a bunch of kids and, you know, and say like, God, I had this kind of fun thing going on, and I never did it, you know, and would I really, really regret that? And that's what I was so afraid of the regret. This is Startup to Storefront. Today's guest is Christina Party of Shit That I Knit, a company that creates high-quality knitwear, accessories, and puns. Seriously, you don't name your company Shit That I Knit if you don't have a great sense of humor. You should go check them out at ShitThatIKnit.com, and while you're there, you'll be glad to know that they've given our listeners a discount. And you have a special thank you promo code for all the listeners. Yes, if you guys want to use Startup 15 at checkout, that'll get you 15% off on a roadside. Once again, you can use the code Startup15 at checkout for 15% off your order. So listen in as we cover everything from how she outsourced her production to a team of highly skilled women in Peru, why building a great team around her has alleviated any fears of taking maternity leave, and how sliding into Katie Kirk's DMs led to a friendship and more exposure for the brand. Now, back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. We're here with Christina. Hi, Christina. Hi, Diego. Thank you for having me. It's ShitThatIKnit. I love it. How did you start ShitThatIKnit? It's kind of a long story, but I started knitting when I was 10. My mom taught me how to knit, and so it's always been something that I love. And in college, I was knitting a lot, not doing a lot of my work.  And they were definitely making fun of me. And you did? And I did it. I got a WordPress blog. I was knitting really weird things. I mean, I was knitting mittens and hats and normal, your normal accessories, but really what I got addicted to was knitting these little toy bats. They looked like bats that had arms. And at the same time, I was binge watching Breaking Bad and not writing my final art history paper. I almost actually failed out. So this is more than a hobby, you were legitimately. I was a little bit having an addiction problem, but so I was having fun also uploading photos to the WordPress blog that no one read. And what year was this when you started the company? That was 2012. That was just starting the blog. It was just silliness. Graduated from college, got a real nine to five, and it was always my fun fact. Like I'm Christina. I'm 22 and I have a knitting blog, ShitThatIKnit.com, and people would always laugh. But it wasn't until the fall of 2014 that I went to a market in Boston to see if I could sell the shit that I knit. Yeah, so have you been? Yeah, I have. I have a bow tie company. No way. About 10 years ago, and we would, so it was actually how we launched originally. Really? And so we'd go there every Sunday and we would sometimes make like $1,000 selling these bow ties. That's really cool. Our gimmick was we gave free bow tying lessons. That's a good lesson. That was the gimmick. I can tie a bow tie. My dad only wears bow ties if you have any extras. Self tie, self tie bow ties. Oh, what do you mean? Yeah, yeah. So you're saying your dad only wears like once he can tie himself. Oh yeah, yeah. He's a bow tie guy. That's great. It says a lot about him. So Sowa was great. So people don't know who are listening. Sowa's kind of like the Melrose Trading Post of LA.  Yeah. So you started, you brought products to Sowa? Yeah, we did that for two weekends a lot because you know, selling hats, you can't be there in the summer months when it's like 95 degrees up. It's a seasonal product. Yeah. Actually starting to sweat wearing this hat. Yeah, you can actually wear it. Yeah. It's a very hot Moreno hat. That's the one downside to them is that I want to wear them in October, but it's just too hot. But we did the last two weekends in October and it went really well.  Like we had a pop tent from Walmart and a tablecloth from my mom. My parents house, like it was, you know, like some flowers and a sign from Vista print and I was like, oh, I don't know. And it went really well. People love the name. Yeah. I mean, it was pulled out within those two weeks. So that's how we got our first, but it still had a job at the time. Okay. Yeah. It was not paying the bills. Right. And then at that point, were you like, how do I make more of this product? Yeah.  So after those October weekends, we got picked up by a store, like very local stuff, but couldn't keep up with holiday demand, just filling orders on, on again, my very dinky website and decided in February to see if I could get women to knit for me.  If so, you're, you're my kind of girl, you know, knit for me. And I figured that no one would sign up that it would just be embarrassing. But in the morning, have like 30 applications from girls my age who love to do exactly what I like to do, which is Netflix and knit and, you know, Netflix and knit. What kind of a following did you have at this point? Not a huge one, but like it was very knitting heavy following. So it made sense that we had this like concentrated group, but probably had like 2000 followers on Instagram or something. So to get 30 people willing to sign up for that is not a bad ratio. Yeah, it was, it was surprising. So did you hire them all? Just slowly, but surely yeah, I had a team of about 30 women here in Boston. And it was really a huge learning curve for me. I had never done anything like it. And the business model was a complete mess. I mean, we were, I was buying yarn retail, meeting these women wherever it was convenient for them. So whether it was like a coffee shop before work or a bar after work or swinging by my parents' house, just to grab yarn, go home, knit it from home and bring it, bring back the finished product. And then actually trying on that hat once they brought in the finished product and realizing like this wasn't knit properly. I was going to say the QAQC must have been a nightmare, right? It's all tough, yeah. Everyone knits a little bit differently. Yeah, yeah. And like, I didn't want to not pay someone for their work. And I'm not like super detail oriented. So I'd be like, this doesn't totally fit, but here's your money. And you know, I don't want to deal with this. So it was, it was great and a great experience to learn anything about quality control or just production on a very small scale. But it was, it was how we got our like first inventory built up. And are you still doing SOA primarily or is it everything online now? No, we just did those two weekends back in 2014. Our price point was definitely a little too high for SOA. I mean, even now our hats are 125. A lot of the stuff being sold there now is like a little more gift of like candles and soap and like lower price point items. So our price point was definitely a little tough. It looks, you know, for that. Especially at SOA. Yeah, so thinking like everything needs to be 30, 40 bucks. Right, yeah. And there are hats being sold there for 30 or 40 bucks. And it's just a little more of a premium product. So no, we haven't done any more SOA. Got it. And so then what happened after? So now you have your 30 knitters. 30 knitters. I still had a full time job. I was not doing a very good job. I was doing sales for a digital retargeting company. OK, for real. This is really thrilling stuff. It's really exciting. Exciting. I can see why you left it. Yeah. Don't tell them that. They're very nice people. But it was really good money. I mean, sales is great money. I had been at another tech company prior to that. So I was used to having a pretty cushy paycheck. How hard was it leaving? It wasn't that hard. I mean, I had had a lot of conversations. I had been doing this for about eight months. And I had talked to a lot of different mentors and said, what do you think of this idea? And finally, I got to the point where one of my mentors said, what are you doing? You can't be doing both things. You have to give this a shot. So I went in the next day and told my boss. And they totally got up. They were like, yeah, you're knitting in the conference room. Please sleep. Please sleep. You're fired. You have not had your quota in months. But they were very nice and excited for me and said, you can come back when it doesn't work out. But they didn't say that. They didn't say that. But they said, you can always come back. Most companies do. They're like, yeah, we'll leave the door open for you. Yeah, that's a good way to leave. And I was like, OK, sounds good. And so I told my parents. I was giving myself one year to try this out. And I would know in a year if it was working or not. And if it wasn't working, I could always go grab another sales job. Yeah. And what was the advice your mentor gave you? Just like you have to do it 100%? Yeah. I mean, he and I were meeting at that point every twice a month or something or more and just having all these conversations.   And I never did it. And would I really, really regret that? And that's what I was so afraid of, the regret. The regret. I think that's valid. I think that's so true. When I meet old people or older people. Old 45-year-olds.  I was invited to a party recently. And my friend was turning 50. And her father was there. And he was actually on the Syracuse football team that won the championship in 1959. And just to hear all of his stories, he had been on the trading floor in New York. And then I was like, you know that? It's cool to hear the stories. And that's really all you have at the end of the day. But when you're older, so in hearing it from him, there's no ego. You're removed of all the ego and all the competition of it. And so I was like, oh, it's just so nice to hear it. Whereas you're meeting, if you need someone of your own age, there's usually some ego or there's some like, oh, I gotta be the best or I need it now. Yeah, afraid of failure. I was like, it was just so refreshing to hear that perspective. Did you save a little bit of money before you left your job? Or what, okay. Yeah, I had saved a good amount of money. I also moved home with my parents. Smart. Super smart. So they're great roommates. The amenities that they're having are very nice. Dinners are delicious. But it was a hard thing to do as a 25-year-old, obviously. It's like, oh, God.  Yeah, put on pause. It was really a luxury to be able to do that, I think if I weren't able to move home. I am always willing to admit that I'm very, very lucky to have supportive parents who allow me to do this and who when I said I was quitting, they were like, okay. But they didn't say, no way. Right. I'm not gonna support you. It's such a big piece. I think I lived at home for two years just to save money before moving to Boston. And it was so, it's a game changer. It completely gave me a runway that I would have never had. And it wasn't like I saved 100 grand. I maybe I saved like 30 grand or something, but it was enough for sure to make it easy. Really helps. And the dinner also. Yeah, it's huge. Laundry. Yeah. There are some perks to come along. There are some serious perks. My mom's really fun. We got our nails done. So I had about 25,000 saved. And so I was able to put that towards buying yarn and paying for the knitting team. But so when I quit in May of 2015, knowing that I would spend that whole summer working with the team in Boston to work up an inventory and launch Kickstarter in September. So. Oh nice. We ran through my savings pretty quickly. Yeah. And. But then you did the Kickstarter campaign. How did that go? It went really well. I had only planned to raise $15,000. We did it in like 14 hours or something, like under 24 hours. Kickstarter is so much work. Have you guys ever done a Kickstarter? No, personally. No. I just think it's more work than people assume you just throw up a video and people will come. But I really, while the video was being made, I was working so hard on getting influencers to agree to post about on the day of the launch media, anyone who would talk about it so that when we launched it wouldn't just fall in deaf ears. And that took a lot of work. Luckily it was back in 2015 when Kickstarter was still. It was kind of hot. It was kind of hot. There still are very successful campaigns, but I think much harder today to get an influencer to say yes to posting about Kickstarter launch. For sure. So was lucky for that timing. And yeah, so when we launched we had like a Forbes article come out and a couple of local publications. That's amazing. Yeah, so we were able to hit that goal. In the end, raised $25,000, which all went towards hats at a discount. So people just bought hats at a discount price. And it was great.  And there's definitely easier ways to get $25,000. But what was great about it was it was a great marketing tool. We had this amazing video made. No equity. No equity. And we had 200 people wearing our hats the first season. By Christmas, we had all these customers who were already brand advocates. Yeah. And at this point, was your company mostly local? Like, are the people buying your hats mostly from New England? They were at the time, yeah. It was definitely friends of friends of friends. But we still have some customers today who still have their Kickstarter hat. They're like, I support you in the very beginning. And it shows the quality of the hat. Although when I see them, I'm like, please, let me give you a new hat that looks very beat up. I was going to ask what the differences were between that product and the one that you're putting out now. It's just like a slightly different yarn. Yeah, they're just nicer now. Very nicer. So whenever companies launch, let's say locally, right, it becomes really tough to get into other markets. So in this case, getting into the West Coast, are there any things that you did in particular to get out to the West Coast in terms of sales? We've done a lot. I mean, our hat naturally fits really well into the ski scene. And my sister lives in Jackson Hole. So we've done a lot out there. So we have actually our best markets go Boston, New York, Chicago, Jackson Hole. And it's a small community, but I cannot walk down the street there now without seeing five or 10 hats quickly. And Instagram has been huge in allowing us to have more of a national reach. Yeah, Instagram is pretty unbelievable. I mean, it's amazing how you can connect with literally anyone as you scaled your company. So were you still working with the 30 knitters after the Kickstarter campaign or what started to shift so that we could really create high volume? After the Kickstarter campaign, we had that season. We got everyone their hats by the promised time and didn't have a lot of money left in the bank. So looking at the business plan and talking to people, it just wasn't very scalable. And I definitely wasn't going to be able to raise a ton of money having this sort of mixed group here in Boston and the prices we were at. So I started doing a lot of research on South America and it's where we were getting our yarn. A lot of yarn comes from Peru. So started doing some research and I literally was Googling something and found this nonprofit in Colorado who connects artisan groups to brands. And I called this woman out of the blue and she put me in touch with our group that we still work with in Peru. But it's not that much cheaper to produce it down there. What it really is is they have the infrastructure, they have this network of women who are so incredibly talented, all these networks of women around Lima who can knit for us so we can scale versus having 30 people who go on vacation or...  Actually, we started the relationship just on Skype. We just chatted. So from February of 2016 to October, I just was on Skype and then we went down in October to visit, but it was all just like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Right, right. Did you raise money between those two years? I raised like a very small friends and family around just to finance this inventory. Still was living at home, wasn't that glamorous. Got it. What was it like going to Peru and meeting some of the people who knit for you? It was pretty incredible. I think I just couldn't even imagine what that looked like. And so going down, all the women that we employ can knit from home. So they live, Lima is a huge sprawling city. You're not from... From there, yeah. You're from Lima, yeah. I was born there, yeah. It's a huge city as you know and the traffic's terrible. So for these women to go to work doesn't really make sense for them to drive two and a half hours back and forth. They may have two or three kids. And so this enables them to stay in their community, create a new community, which is these women that they knit with and take care of their kids and not leave kids with unreliable childcare. So to see that impact, like I definitely need to brush up on my Spanish so I can understand a little bit better. But the hugs and the crying and the impact that we're making that other brands are making by employing these women is pretty incredible. So it's definitely, every time I go down, I have to like sort of like guard myself emotionally because I think I would just cry too much. It's just too nice. Peru's that kind of place. It'll get you on all the emotions. Yeah. You're such nice people. I'm gonna cry now. Yeah. I don't want to. I'm gonna cry. Yeah. In terms of like, is the wool made in Peru too? Okay. It's been out of quipa. Oh, out of quipa, yeah. That's like the ski city of Peru. Yes. Yeah, that's where you go to ski if you're interested. Yeah, it's big mountains. Huge. Much bigger than I. And it's so funny when we, last summer down there, we said we're going to our quipa to visit the yarn facility. And everyone in Lima was like, oh, ooh. Like, and they're like, why not Cusco? Like they're, and they suggest other places and like, cause it's for business. Like, I'm not, it's not for fun, but it's a beautiful city. It is. It's totally gorgeous. I don't know, it's got this bad rap. There's two versions of our quipa that a lot of people love. And so I've had friends that have gone and experienced both different ones. The people that experienced the not so good version never want to go back to Peru again. Interesting. And the people who experienced the other version are like, oh, this is great. It's almost like they get an Aspen type feel. Yeah. You look up and there's this map. What's that mountain? I don't know. I forget the name of it. It's insane. It's beautiful. And the monasteries, and it's just like gorgeous. And we drove all around and saw where they actually hand-died some of our yarn and like watched the women how they like hand-paint it. And it was just a really cool experience and they make, I mean, Peru has an amazing textiles industry. So they make other types of yarn for a lot of different things. But my aunt runs a company there and they used to produce all of La Costa's merchandise there. Yeah, you would never know. Which people don't know yet, which is pretty cool. Huge designers and making like very industrial type of thread and yarn. They took us on a tour and I was like, I could have used just the tourist version of this tour. It was like five hours long through like football length facilities and like all the different ways they pick up Paca. And it was really very educational but I was like very tired. But I was like, oh my God, this is. When you first got into knitting, right? What, did you ever think the company would be this big or what kind of products did you always intend to focus on? Well, it was 10 at the time, so. So you knew. So you had it snapped up. I knew, I had the whole plan. But even when I started it, I don't know, I think I've always had like dreams of something big for myself. So I think like embarrassingly, like yeah, I kind of thought maybe we could get to this point but I never envisioned the kind of work it would entail or. And how has your product line changed from when you, let's say, 2015 to today? Today, I mean, honestly, not, not like in a crazy way. We've always stuck to a very simple product line. One from a capital perspective. I've never, we never had enough money to like test out new products and be like, now we're gonna do belts and now we're gonna do. Sure. And I always wanted to stick to one size fits most. So from an inventory perspective, we weren't dealing with small, medium, large. It makes it a lot easier. A lot easier. Inventory still really hard. So I can't imagine mixing sizes into the group. But so we've really stuck with hats, mittens, like winter accessories. And then we have tested out some summer products. Our summer wraps made of baby alpaca have been really popular. So that's helped even out the sale cycle a bit. But nothing compares to the November, December buying of hats and mittens. Totally. And then in terms of how you think about scaling your business, is it getting into more shops or is it growing the, obviously it's a mix of both. But what do you prefer? I prefer the direct consumer. I think it allows us to really control our brand story. Obviously like the margin better. So I think our goal right now is just to continue to grab up different geographies. We still are, we've grown a lot but we're still very much a New England brand. And so grabbing New York and the Midwest and the out west even more is definitely a goal of ours. That's awesome. And then we work with lots of stores and hopefully a big retailer at some point. And recently you met Katie Couric. Yeah. What was that like? Well, I met her last year. I slid into her DMs. And I, cause she was doing a gift guide for gifts that give back and I figured she'd obviously love our story. Of course. So this is perfect. So emailed her and then once I sent her the information and she got back to me, I was like, why don't I grab your email? So I can send you more information. So once she highlighted us in her little Instagram gift guide, I asked her out on a date. I asked her if she wanted to grab coffee and she said yes. That's so cool. So she's so nice. She's the loveliest person in the entire world. I just adore her. And she's been such a great brand advocate. This year they put us in her, she has a newsletter that started this fall. So she added us to her gift guide and her newsletter. She Instagrams about us all the time. She connects me with great people. That's great. And she's just. She's a fan. She's a fan. And I'm a total diehard fan of hers. So she's just been wonderful. And on the business side, have you seen that help tremendously? Yeah, it really has.  So a lot of customers have come to us saying like, oh, I found you in Katie's gift guide or I saw she Instagramed about you. This is so cool. And people send it to me as if I don't know. They're like, look, you're in Katie's gift guide. I'm like, I know. As if she wasn't going to tell you how to tie you. I know. Or like as if I don't stop her. I'm like. Oh, Katie. I'm aware. Katie does again. I've got a lot of messages like, look. I'm like, yeah, cool. But so we've gotten definitely a lot of customers out of her. Who was your first hire outside of people that were knitting? Sarah, she's actually not here right now. Sarah started as an intern for me a couple of years ago. She went to BC. So did a summer internship and then stayed on part time, helping me fulfill orders. So it's just me and Sarah. And then she started full time after she graduated. So she's our operations manager. She actually runs this business. Yeah, all the inventory management. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, she's on the phone with Peru every week, at least. And then just like. Does she speak Spanish? No, I don't need to get her to. Where were you guys working out of? We were downstairs in this building, had a much smaller space. So we love this little building. They've allowed us to hop around to bigger as we grow. So we're moving in two weeks. Same building. Same building, just literally next to the studio next door. Yeah, so people are listening. We're in Austin, Massachusetts, and probably a 3,000 square foot space, something like that. And there's about six, seven people working here, right? Yeah, we're very collaborative. There's a ton of inventory, which is great.  Yeah, we like to keep all the inventory in house. I think because I started making it all, I still need to touch it. I need to feel it. I need to see it. It really drives me, like in August, to see all the inventory come in. It's like, OK, we got our work cut out. We got to sell, sell, sell. It's at your time frame, so for all the winter stuff, you wanted it in August? Yeah, latest August. And that's when you do product shots. Yeah, well, we get product shots done ahead of time, but our first big shipments come in in July and August. So in terms of scaling a company like yours, you mentioned CERA, operation side of it. What other things become super important? Because it sounds like you have a pretty good control. The scalability of the relationship with Peru seems there. And so at least from a volume, you can tune it up or down. But in terms of bringing people in house, is it marketing? Is it? Yeah, so our second hire was marketing, Torres Rd. Director of Marketing, so helping with all things digital marketing from ads. And we had never done Facebook or Instagram ads before. So learning that landscape, email marketing, we redid our website. Obviously, the website's very important when you have a direct consumer brand. Want to make sure it's shoppable. And then we have events and communications and customer service and fulfillment.  No. No, and we really just started to dip our toes into it. It's a whole new world. And really the way that people find us is definitely more organic. We do a lot of earned media, which is where Meg, our director of communications, comes in. So shout out to Meg. Shout out to Meg. So making sure that people are seeing either stories about our team in Peru or the brand story or just product placements for gift guides or on influencers. We have a lot of influential people wearing our things. So it takes a couple different touch points for people to buy. So the ads are sort of the follow-up, like what I used to sell, digital retargeting. Right. Yeah, I always think about that with the yield, right? And so as an entrepreneur, you want to put your time on to where you're going to have the most yield. And it's even on our podcast. We think about this like, oh, if we got Katie Kerrigan as an easy example, then you don't have to spend $1 million on, let's say, Facebook ads because you can get someone with an audience. And then it's much easier to do that. Yeah, much cheaper. Much cheaper, right? And it's like a 2020, 2019 totally different landscape than when you first started. Right. Which is crazy to think about. Yeah, and influencers have always been a big way, but we haven't paid anyone to wear our stuff. So it's very cheap, which also makes it kind of interesting when we go to raise money. People are like, what are you going to spend? Like marketing, where are you going to spend this? Because we don't have any marketing spend. We're like, you know, it's going to go to much scrappier different ways of getting our name out there than just putting money behind a Facebook ad. Yeah, no, I love it. So are you raising money? Do you plan on raising money? We raise money this summer, and then we'll probably raise more in like a year. Is it like a seed series A? A seed round. Yeah. We did convertible notes, so I will be doing more. Yeah. How much do you want to raise? I'm not really sure yet. I have to figure that out with our CFO. That's another hire that's been really helpful. Yes. On-demand CFO, for any entrepreneurs out there, I highly recommend Googling an on-demand CFO. That's a new term. I've never heard of an on-demand. Yeah, on-demand or fractional CFO. How did you find your CFO? Actually, my sister-in-law, he worked at a company where my sister-in-law was. So he comes in once a week, and he's not an accountant or a bookkeeper. We're talking about like bigger projections or how to raise money or stuff. I didn't go to business school, so what is a convertible note? You don't learn that in business school. OK. Tell me. And then obviously learning about it, but having someone to sort of guide that and make sure that we're making good financial decisions.  Hourly. That's amazing. Yeah, that's great. Peter, I'll go with him after this, actually. This is the new thing, I think. There's the gig economy, right? But then there's a tremendous amount of executive CFOs, chief revenue officers, people like that, that for sure you should just be able to hire. Yeah, because you don't even all day. And if you're a CFO, you really don't need to be in a chair all day for one company either. No, he works for five or six other companies and it's like a curious guy. So prior to this was not in the knit hat industry.  But he's got a wealth of knowledge on it.  So she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, I joined a knitting company. Yeah, it's dreams. They came true. Finally, yeah. So now that you've got all the ladies in Peru working for you, what is the amount of time that it takes to go from getting the yarn to a finished hat? Like how much lead time do you need to have one product roll off the line? Our yarn takes a long time to make. This yarn that we make is not typical of peros. It's not stock yarn. It's our own creation. So that takes anywhere from a couple months, especially if we're picking our new color. So like two or three months ish. And then it takes about a month to knit all the things. Depending on the order size though, I mean, we start, we order for our that July shipment. We order that in like April. From a cash flow perspective, kind of tough. Right, and then that's a really. Really hurts in April. Really hurts in July as well. That's when your babies do. Yeah, exactly. It'll be fun, stressful time. Yeah. All happening at once. I'll be on maternity leave. I won't deal with that. Smart. And then from a shipping perspective, shipping from Peru up here and then you're just kind of holding on to them until they start selling out. Yeah, and then we ship them all out from here. So I never thought I'd be so into freight forwarding. Really tight with our freight forwarders from Peru. And then, yeah, it comes up here. We keep it all in house. And then we ship it out to our customers. Because I mean, it's an expensive product. It's special. I want to make sure that when it reaches the customer, which might be their first ever interaction with us, it's a really great experience. They love it. They have all the, we have dust bags and great packaging and stories about our knitting team and reusable materials and everything like that. So we want to make sure it's not just picked by some warehouse and sent down a plastic bag. On the podcast, I think we've had over half of the founders that we've interviewed have been female. Really? From your perspective, there's a lot of female listeners. So you're pregnant currently? Yes. There's so many women that we speak to that are always worried about that, like, what happens when I get pregnant? What happens to my company? Do I have to quit everything? Is it the end of the world? How are you going into that? What advice can you give? I would have felt that way if I didn't have to get team now. I think I feel so confident in our team that I feel really good about taking a break. I feel like I can be gone for weeks and the bus is still moving. And people are so much more talented than me on what they're working on. And so I feel great about trusting them with my baby. I also don't think I'll be taking a full four-month maternally. It might be like two weeks. And I'll be back on my emails. But it is different because even from a raising money perspective, I wonder, am I going to go into meetings super pregnant? And people are like, wait a second. Is she really serious about this?  But we also have a company that's so female focused with selling to women and made by women and this incredibly female team that I feel pretty supported. It's part of the story. Yeah, it's part of the story. And I think that's important. That's great. So you set up the system for yourself to be able to at least take the time off. Yeah. If needed, you're good. I think we'll be good. I hope so. Knock on wood. I don't know. I also have been so busy that I keep forgetting I'm pregnant. So I keep being like, OK. After Christmas, I'll deal with that. So I was just meeting with a friend. And she was like, so what's the nanny? What are you going to do? I was like, I don't know. Haven't gotten to that. I need to sign up for all these moms groups and stuff. Yeah. And you got to sign them up for school immediately. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. I've got a lot to do. But we'll get through Christmas first. You have some time. Deal with that. Yeah. And so you're raising. What else is on deck for 2020? For you, the company? Just like a lot. I mean, we've been doubling year every year. So the more you double, the harder it is to double next year. So we just need to. It's funny that you look at it that way. Yeah. But it's so true. It's like easy to double when you only do 100 grand. Right. It'll be good. But now we're hitting numbers that are a little loftier. And right now, I think our focus still is to stick with what we do really well, which is our hats and our winter accessories. So how are we going to go into new markets and create what we have in Boston, which is like this great cult following where people own 10 of our products and are obsessed with it and tell all their friends and buy it as gifts. Like, how do we create those customers in different markets? Yeah. We're definitely really focusing on the Midwest. And we're opening up these pop-ups that have been great. So that will be busy. Pop-ups in different markets? Yeah. So we've had them in Boston and New York. So we're probably in a couple new ones for 2020. You can see these in Aspen, no problem. Yeah. We do really well in Aspen, yeah. These hats are amazing. Thanks. And I like how it says knit with Amor inside, which is really cool. The one Spanish word. And there is an alpaca here. Shout out to your designer. This is beautiful. Thank you. This looks really, really good. Yeah. And it's not itchy.  We have Claudia, who's our events manager. So she headed up our New York pop-up. And then we hire people to work in the stores, especially here in Boston, where we sort of understand the area, and we're able to fill that in with part-time people. That's definitely a struggle, and I think for any entrepreneurs opening up pop-up shops, they know that getting this part-time retail help is really difficult. So we're going to need to improve that system for next year to make sure that it's people who really are great for the brand and are excited to be there. That's the hardest part. Yeah. It really is. Especially if it's a new market, we want to make sure that when people walk in, they're getting the whole brand story. Yeah. They're your ambassadors and the first point of contact. Yeah. And when it's a month-long gig, it's a little harder to. How did you decide on the price point? Was that something that you came early on? I knew I wanted to be a higher price point. I had bought a hat.  But I knew that there was a market for a higher-end price point. But there's really no other hat in the market at this price point. And it's either your J Crew or Gap for $40, and it's made of 100% acrylic yarn and polyester, or you've got literally a $600 hat in even markets that's just like a black cashmere toque thing. Like, you know, it's like a little, I don't know. And it's $600, and people buy it. So it's sort of both end-to-spectrum. Yeah, so you view it as like an affordable luxury. Yes. And they're really high-quality. I stand behind that they're hand-knit. They are pieces, works of art. They're pieces. They're legitimately pieces. Yeah, pieces. And they're meant to last for a very long time, and they're incredibly warm and soft. When you meet with investors, what's the one thing they always ask you, or the couple things? Are they like, what's your product line? Where's it moving? Yeah, product line is definitely a question how to make it less seasonal to round out the year. Right, because we have a lot of seasonality right now. Yeah. And the cash flow is tough where we're buying things in April and not really selling them until November. And then from a scalability perspective, it is hand-knit, say, some insane celebrity warrior hat. Tomorrow, how would you keep up with that demand? You can't just turn the machine on higher and pump it out. Yeah, what's a happy problem? Yeah. Although people always say, what a good problem to have. I'm like, yeah, you try having this problem. It's still a problem. It's still a really big problem. I mean, we've run out of stuff already this season. And it's just not. It's like, yeah, good problem to have. Do you guys ever do sales with excess inventory? We just do Black Friday, Black Friday, Super Monday. And then we do a one-summer sale for our summer products. But trying not to train people into just waiting around for a sale. Yeah, that's super smart. When we started our company a long time ago, we actually ended up running Groupons. Really? We were a New England-based company. And so we had sales coming from DC, all the hubs. And then we had no sales coming from LA or San Francisco. And Groupon was a thing at the time. And so we ended up running Groupons just to get to the West Coast. Yeah. And so we were OK devaluing the brand, let's say, on the West Coast for access, but not on the East Coast. And then it ended up working. And it got us into these new markets. But we were always so cognizant of that. Once you start any sort of sales, any sort of giveaways, it's like, people all just wait around for it. Yeah. It's really bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so we're trying to make sure we don't do that. And I think what our customer now knows is that we sell out of the most popular things. So a lot of people won't wait around for the sale. What's an example of some of the most popular things?  I think neutrals usually sell out. But all of our new colors sold out really quickly this year. Our kid stuff. We did some really cute animal ball clavvas. OK. Yeah. Was that new? Yeah. It's our little shit's line. Your little shit's line? So we have mommy and me matching hats. So those sell pretty quickly. People spend a lot of money on kids. Oh my god. We had Eva Chen, where our unicorn ball clavva. She's the head of fashion at Instagram. So once she posted about that, we sold out of our unicorns. I didn't know Instagram had a fashion. Yeah. She's pretty cool. She's very fashionable. I guess that makes sense. So when you sell out of products, are you increasing that order for next year by X amount of percent? Is that how you kind of like look at it? For sure. And it's, but it's still at the end of the day. It's like a mix of art and science. So it's just not perfect. One year, we hardly sold any pink hats. No one was buying them. And then next year, it's all people wanted. And I'd gone super conservative on our order because I don't want to have excess inventory.  So it's just, you don't really know. And this year, we did order a lot more of our white motley and we haven't completely sold through because we ordered so much more. But you just don't know. Do you ever think about making a product with a celebrity?  That would be great.  Oh, that's good. Dan Levy, that would be great. Yeah, I actually sent him a hat. I don't think he wore it, but just because I'm a super, I've been a super fan since the beginning. It's a good show. It's really funny. It's so funny. But yeah, we actually did our kids ball clavas with Lauria Baldwin. She's Alec Baldwin's wife. She's got a great mom following. So that was our first foray and two collaborating with a celebrity. And I think we'll do more of that. When you ship it, does it come within a certain, like if someone unboxes it, what does it come with?  I came with that because my sister's all I steal my things, so it's fine. So, and also as a way to store your hat during the summer months, or if you want to like shove it in your bag, you have something to put it in. And then it has a card like about us and a return card. And then also a card about our team in Peru. So one of their stories. And then actually people can go onto our website and write a thank you note to our team down in Lima. So we can share how much people love their hats. That's such a good idea. Yeah, it's really nice. And then you guys print them and send them over? Yeah, and they read them out loud to each other. And it's just kind of nice because they don't see the finished product. They don't see how crazy people are about them. And so it's nice to share that success with them. I love that. Make sure they know how much we appreciate it. Where can people find your company? www.shitthedineit.com. And what are you guys on Instagram?  Is it with an X or is it with an I? It's with an I. S-H-I-T. Shit the Dine It. Shit the Dine It, yeah. I love how explicit this is. Yeah, it's so fun. On our branding though, it has the aspects, you know. Yeah, well thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for sharing your story. Yeah, this is great. We here at Startup The Storefront would love to hear feedback from you. Reach out and let us know what you think, either through rating us on the podcast app or by sliding into our DMs. You can find us both on Facebook and Instagram at Startup The Storefront. Our theme song is composed by DoubleTouch. If you want to learn more about the products and businesses featured on today's episode, check out the links in the show notes. And if you enjoyed the episode, consider subscribing because we've got a lot more great guests coming up that you won't want to miss. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.


I appreciate it now. That concludes the news. Let's get a little chat and see how we're going. And that's it. Thanks so much. If you got to go, I'll see you. Okay. Yeah. Jao says, look at Starless. Yeah, that is based on so on, right? Starless is going to be a triple iron rank game. Problem is with Starless, Star Atlas, excuse me, is I don't believe they have a working product, full working product right now. I think it's going to take a little bit of time. So again, you know those games I just showed you? The ones that look goofy like this. Look at these games. Hold on, let me pull one up. Baseball boy, like this one. Cube Crusher, 3D, whatever it is. How much time do you think it takes to create that game if you want a blockchain? Not too long, right? Now you can do a triple iron rank game and that's going to take a long time. But something like this, no time at all. I'm pretty sure you can get a coder to do that in a day. And that's where I think things are going. If there's so many casual gamers, that's where Gala Games is going, so why not? Thank you, Dinosaur, for coming back. What asset beats Bitcoin? You missed it, it was nothing. Nothing beats Bitcoin as far as an asset. You could read a book, Rob. I did read a book actually. It was a pretty good one called Love Clarence. It was a great book, but only so much time I could do that. And I try to rotate things to calm my nerves.  How about Salt of Dash? Yeah, exactly, Jerry. The people selling the shovels, exactly. Cardano, a lot of good games being built on Cardano actually. Cornucopia looks very promising. And they actually have a working product right now, which is pretty great. Yeah, that was the serving. Ben, Tiffany Fong, and Mishinsky. I don't know, man. I don't know. So the question, what's the coin that beats Bitcoin? Tomato coin. It's a coin that I created. And we just signed a partnership with SpaghettiWorks and the Olive Garden. So that's the one to probably beat Bitcoin. Hello, French. Yeah, Jesse says, and this is another thing. I saw the last week you talked about the gaming industry now being bigger than the movie and music industry combined. Is there anything about the Rona network? I've seen a lot of things about a lot of different network. And it's, again, it's not so much about this or that, but what are things being built on? That's what I'm really trying to look for. Coin Bureau Live. Uh, yeah, 100K. I'm looking forward to Dan diving in the pool very soon. I feel like coming the next few months. Well, if Bitcoin hits 100K, sure, why not? I just don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon. I could be wrong. Beardy. Robbo, I have to do the gate crash, the Coin Bureau Live VIP day. You gotta get past the bouncers, I guess. Ahmed said, what's your thoughts on Aptos? I don't really have many thoughts. I'm just waiting to see how it goes. I know it's, correct me if I'm wrong, it's a bunch of developers from Meta or Facebook that have binded together and now they're making this great crypto. I don't know, time will tell. But me, honestly, it's, I don't know. Maybe it's something to invest into, but like for me, like I dial across average every day, the same thing. It's Bitcoin and Ethereum, near Avalanche, Cardano, Chainlink, and a host of other ones. So for me to really get things in there, it's gotta take a lot. I know they're in their top 30, so congratulations, but I just don't, I got enough to do to instead of chasing another crypto. Toch had a good run. Toch had a great run after Elon Musk changed the logo on Twitter. I don't know about you, but if I owned a bunch of, if I owned a bunch of Dogecoin, I'm not saying he did this. And I changed the Twitter logo because I could. That'd be a great way to really, really heighten my position, I guess. Spaghetti works. Juggernaut. Did you ever talk with Steve Orlick after they filed for bankruptcy and asking about that loan of three of his capital? I sent a message. I said, how did you do that? Why did you do that? Didn't get a response. Not surprising.  They didn't, Steve didn't come out and do like walk around and be in like Twitter spaces and stuff like that. I gotta tell you the balls on that guy.   It was businesses first and real estate first. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't get into Bitcoin and crypto until 2017. So I was terminally unemployable all the way back in 2014, essentially. Cause I just stopped working for other people and just worked for myself. Mmm. Richard Maurice says, Rob, for DCA, if you consider using the fear and greed index as a guide and avoid DCA and greed, you can do that and people like to do that. I just, for me, it's just another thing to think about and go, well, I can take a look at a fear and greed index and then I can also look at a bunch of on chain metrics and see what it is and just, to me, I just think it's like this. If I, me personally, if I just dollar cost average and I just buy and then wait, I think things will work out. I can do that. I'm just not going to do it. I know me. And some people will like, they'll, they're okay with like looking at fear and greed, okay. Today it is super greedy day. So I'm going to start selling, right? Like extreme greed. You can do that, but then you think about this. In 2021, when there was extreme greed, how far up did we go from the lower, let's take a look actually. This would be a good one. And let's steal some data from Ben's website. I don't think he'll mind. Just don't tell him. So let's see. Oh, if you want to sign up for Ben's website, it's like a 10% discount. Link in the description. So I'm going to look at crypto. I'm going to take a look at fear and greed index and what I want to do, okay. So here. So right here. So in November, 2020, again, you can use fear and greed index, but look at how far we went for extreme greed, extreme greed. You're like, okay, it's extreme greed. It's now it's at 15,000. And that's fine. You could have done it or 14,000, 14,8. Yeah, 14,8. What is roundup? Cause I'm a simpleton. And extreme greed, extreme greed, extreme greed, extreme greed. See what I'm saying? You went from extreme greed at 14,000 all the way up to 40,000. You can sell on here, I mean, as long as you bought down here, still a good, still a good day, right? Ah, still a good day. But what happens to this?  There's a lot of different ways to do that. You can do it such like that or you can ladder in, ladder out. But it's up to you. So again, be cautious with just the fear and greed type of thing. Hope that made sense, Richard. Sorry, Ben, stole your data again. Are you bullish on Cosmos? Yes, actually that's one of the DCAs I actually buy every day. Yeah, I don't like flying either. And I got to fly to Vegas next weekend. No, two weekends. And then a month after that, I got to fly to London for Guy's event. Richard says, fun fact, Doge outperformed Bitcoin so far since day one. Interesting. Maybe it'll keep doing it. Richard Murray says, look at the Doge Bitcoin chart. You'll see Doge comes out on top. I refuse to believe it at first. Everybody have fun. Take a look at that. Bitcoin makes you unemployable, maybe. Depends on when you got into it. You buy Bitcoin at the price you deserve. That's just it. I bought the top. When more Tyler's spaulding, I'll be releasing there throughout the week. It's not gonna tell you like, I know there's a lot of people who really love AMP and they really talk about AMP how great it is and they really wanna hear about Tyler has to say, but the majority of the things that we talked about as far as the upgrades and the things that are happening was in that interview. Tyler's very guarded on the things that can be done and he's right because things take a lot of time. But the other parts are just little snippets of wisdom that you talked about as far as the history of crypto and digital assets and a little of where things are going on AMP but not to a greater degree. Jay Davis says, Rob, you think we're out of the woods in the 15K Bitcoin?  That's okay. I still don't think that we're out of the woods. I still think there's at least a soft recession coming and I still think we can go down. Having said that, people will say, Rob, you don't know what you're talking about because Bitcoin's gonna keep going up and the bull market is confirmed and you're a dinosaur, maybe. I still think you can go down. However, does that change the strategy? No, it doesn't. This is the beautiful thing about dollar cost averaging. I don't know if people get this, but I don't know if you can tell, but I'm not a genius. Not even that smart, quite honestly. But I'm smart enough to know that even though I think the market's gonna go one way, it can go the exact opposite way. So when I just dollar cost average, let's say that I'm wrong and Bitcoin goes to 100K. Well, that's pretty cool because I was buying Bitcoin at, well, I even bought the bottom because I was micro-DCing back then and I bought it at 17, 18K. When I was regular DCing and all the rest of the alts that I was buying. So if I was wrong, well, I'm wrong, but I'm rich, so that's great. If I'm right and things go down, well, great. Because just like we took a look at the timeframe, if it goes, this is what between us, just between us. I'd rather it go down so that I can buy because it's much more appealing to me to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum. Like Ethereum below 1,000, that's great. Or Bitcoin below 15,000, again, fantastic. Cardano below a dime, near protocol, below a dollar, Avalanche below three. I mean, all these things, like that's great stuff. So if I'm right and it goes down, well, I'm right and I just can't sell for a while. That's okay because like we was taking a look at four year cycles, if we get a recession, how long do recessions last? Roughly 10 months. We get a recession in Q3, Q4. That means we go into 2024 into recession. What happens after 2024? We go into an all-time highs for Bitcoin. The market rebounds, market and economy rebound and we're in 2025, everything's good. It's crazy how that would line up if it does line up like that. Quit time's got a good question. Seems everyone's, everyone hotels Bitcoin like gold not using as payment with the original ideas. You're 100% correct. Do you think this is healthy for Bitcoin? I think that we've all realized that Bitcoin wasn't great for payments unless we use another layer, like lightning network for payments, lightning is great for payments. It's fantastic for payments. I don't know why it hasn't really caught on because it's next to nothing. And me personally, like I'd rather take payments in on the lighting network on my online stores but not too many people are paying like that. So me personally, that's what the Bitcoin white paper was for. If you read the Bitcoin white papers, nine pages is very short, peer-to-peer transactions. That's what it was all for. It did nothing about store of value but it became a store of value. But in all honesty, same thing in the, when man discovered iron and steel, what do we use it for in the beginning? Arrowheads, shields, swords. But then later on, maybe we should make this into like siding of buildings, space shuttles, different compounds. So maybe it's like we discovered it, Bitcoin was made and then we're like, maybe it's a better store of value. Remember, store of value is very simple or money is very simple. Money is just two things. It's a medium of exchange and a store of value. Bitcoin does that quite well. A little bit expensive as the network gets congestion but congested, but store of value is doing pretty good. It's a lot better than the US dollars, that's for sure. Everything's good, Matt. Bullish and that, yeah, sure. Tesla, beardies here somewhere looking in the shadows. Como said, I thought we were already in a software session. However, they wanted to find it. Some people say, Rob, you're a morn, we're already in a recession, don't you know that? That depends on where you look at it, the day that you're looking at. If we go for the old ways of defining a recession per se, two consecutive quarters of GDP decline, well, we haven't hit that yet. And then people say, well, they're fudging with the numbers, Rob. And I'm like, look, that's what I got. So, you can talk about it all day. Is it a recession? Is it not a recession? Are we in a recession right now, soft recession? Prices are going up, I don't know. Some days it feels like it, some days it doesn't. Of course, once we're out of a recession, or once we get into a recession, it'll pretty much be, you know, we're already in the middle of it and then we're already going to get out. So, who knows? Yeah, I think it's a recession, there's no one to tell you. Hello from sunny Florida, hello. XRP, XRP is going to do great since they won that lawsuit. Harmony won, yeah, okay. We only accept a hard recession. Of course, this would mean it's not too late to DCA. Look, if you're here now, probably not. I can't give you financial advice, but when I take a look at it, I'm like, you know, if you think about it, what do you want to invest into? Like, if you want to be an investor and everybody's different, right? If you're 18, 19 years old, 20 years old, like, your goals are vastly different from somebody who's like 60, 70, 80 as far as an investor. That's why you really can't talk to people on the same level. It's all different. Some people are like, I got a long horizon. Some people, I don't have a horizon. Tomorrow might be my last horizon. So it all just depends. So as far as like leading to DCA, look, that's what everybody said when I got in in 2017, actually in November. And I was pretty ecstatic because I got Bitcoin at $8,000. I was super happy. No one went to 20,000.  To me, it was still a pretty good deal. I'm like, wow, I had an 8,000 and a 20,000. I'm a genius. Then people were talking about, you know, cycles. I didn't know what they're talking about. Now here we are.  However, having said that, having said that, look at 2021, that was a pretty crappy time to DCA. I was doing it at that point. I was micro DCAing, but, you know, probably make it up later on. Who knows if all those projects will come back. Doubt it very much. We're all George. Yeah. It makes me laugh when they say it's not Bitcoin. If it's not Bitcoin, it's an S coin. Light and Nailwork runs on app and Flexa, they never mentioned that. Interesting. Yeah. Hey, James. James Malarious. You got me on that one. Good one. That's great. Hello from the best mountains and beaches in the entire world. I think it's still low. Hey, from Portland. Damn it. Got it at 3,500. Good for you. They don't want you to buy low. No, they don't want you to buy low. Of course not. Whatever, Paul. Paul says, apparently, why not perform most assets too? Just did a video on it. It came up on my notification. Paul Barone Network is interviewing blah, blah, blah from the wine network or from the wine, whatever. I was like, oh, really? Invest in the things that you are well-versed in. Like if someone tokenizes Miller Lite, then I will be like, that's something I should definitely get into. But if you're looking for the more advanced stuff, go watch Paul and his network as he talks about cool stuff like wine. I talk about goofy stuff like casual gaming and tokenizing Miller Lite, which is ridiculous. That was pretty funny, Colin. No way. I got in at 2011 because my buddy needed to help buying groids and Silk Road LOL. See, now it's easy to get steroids or test Ostrone. Just go to the doctor, get a little blood work, see what your total and free test is, and go from there. Thanks, meme. Thank you so much. I don't know if you guys want to go walk the dogs, but they're doing it still over there in Puerto Rico. Nah, I don't really drink as much as I used to back in the day, which is good because as you get older, you can't keep doing that.  Always wondered why Dan, the descriptor, your name is Rob. Nah, digital asset news, Dan.  Doesn't the atom APY scare you? Yeah, it does, but if you take a look at this, the yield on atom, if you go to stakingrewards.com, let me show you something. So we go to stakingrewards.com, and if we look at view all assets, take a look at Adam. See here, it says that the reward or APY for staking is ridiculous amount, 22%. Rural rates calculate by tracking block reward minus community tax, multiply the portion, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, it's actually 4%. This is the adjusted reward. The adjusted reward is adjusted by the inflation of the network supply. So you gotta imagine how much is Cosmos pumping out to give you that 22%. Super inflationary, that's what it comes down to. Avalanche is negative 100%. That sounds kind of crazy. Someone verify that. Solana negative, ooh, Cardano's only 0.19%. Watch out everybody, that's not great. I'll, hey, Ethereum's looking pretty good. Reward 4.52, adjusted reward 4.68. Why is that? Well, glad you asked. Ultrasound money. It's a website, ultrasound.money. And you're gonna see that as it starts to burn things, you can take a look, you can simulate the proof of work by clicking this on. If it was still proof of work, this is how things would look. Oh, it's a little bit of inflationary. But you can see that it's actually going in the negative as people start to use it and burn all the transactions. Issuance, let me say here. So they burn 19,000, ooh, and 12,075 ETH. Supply change is negative 6,000. Damn, negative 6,537 ETH. But that's in seven days, mind you, so. Just be aware, there's a lot of things to be into a, take into account. It's not just 22% and leave it at that. It's the adjusted rewards and so on and so forth. You can invest in whiskey. I don't really know much about whiskey. Geez, I get 7.5% of ledger. William O'Leary's gallery going to zero. I don't know if that's going to happen. Gallows got a lot of great games coming out. And you know what they're focusing on? Casual gaming, AI tokens, perhaps. Kiggs said, how is that sustainable? It's not sustainable. It's sustainable if they keep pumping those out. Inflationary. The US government does it all the time. That's sustainable, they say. As they start pumping out dollars, that's inflationary. So the US Treasury does. Jeff's got a great question. Do you think Sam and Alex are going to get away with it? In today's, look, if OJ could get away with it, anybody can get away with it. But if you take a look at, the thing with Bernie Madoff, there is so much proof that it was a Ponzi scheme that he had to go away. But with this one, and he lost everybody's money, he just lost it, he spent it, dwindled it, whatever else. Unfortunately, I think that, I've seen a lot of people get away with a lot of things. How many bankers went to, were imprisoned in the 2008 Great Recession? One, weren't they subject to a lot of negligence and a lot of people losing a ton of money? Probably so, right? But they got away with it. So, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But there's things that I can change and there's things that I can't. And that's the things that I can't deal with because I can't change it.  Hopefully it works out, but I can only control my circle of influence and that's it. Yeah. I see a lot of wrenches, Amy Johnson. Alex will walk just because next blow on, he will not be the hot topic and just fade. It's got a point. You know why? Because people have the memory of a goldfish, unfortunately. How many people you think will still invest into a new company that he does? Who's that guy? WeWork, the CEO of WeWork, which lost a bowl of money. He just made a new, or just came up with a new idea and looking for investors just raised like billions of dollars for a new company. Like, didn't you just lose all the money from WeWork? Oh yeah, but that was not my fault.  And that's it. On that note, that's all I got for today. So look, it's Sunday, coming up on 46 minutes or so, but that's all we got for today. So look, like today's video, I know it was a little back and forth, but again, before I finish, I think we're in the right place, right time. If we just take a look at just how well Bitcoin and crypto market has done and how much runway we have, this is a good time. And not to say that we can't fall off a cliff and have some rough turbulence, but I think in the long run, we're gonna be doing pretty well. That's it for today. So look, like today's video, sign up, subscribe, like, and all that good stuff, but that's it. So thanks so much for stopping by. I appreciate every one of you. And I'll see you guys on the next one. Adios.


Hello, and welcome to this presentation of the STM32-MP1 Co-Processor Management. It describes how the processors interact through commands and events, exchange data, and share resources. The STM32-MP1 multiprocessor system allows independent firmware to run on two CPU cores. The master ARM Cortex-A7 processor is optimized to run Linux-based OS. The slave or co-processor ARM Cortex-M4 processor can run RTOS optimized for microcontrollers or a bare metal application. In addition, several integrated STM32 peripherals can be assigned to one of these processors. Then, two internal memory regions are shared between the master and the slave processors. These memories are used to load and execute the co-processor firmware, but also to define common structures, like shared buffers for inter-processor communication. Furthermore, for inter-processor communication, a specific peripheral named inter-processor communication controller, or IPCC, enables signaling by dedicated mailboxes. Finally, a hardware semaphore, or HSEM, can be used to protect shared resources from concurrent accesses. Before entering into details, it is important to understand the concepts involved in the management of a co-processor in a multiprocessor system. The first one is the load and the control of the Cortex-M4 core. The Cortex-A7 core is in charge of loading the Cortex-M4 firmware and controlling the Cortex-M4 core reset. Then, the inter-processor communication is ensured by the RPMSG protocol that relies on shared memory and the IPCC peripheral. Finally, a resource management service is proposed to provide facilities to assign a peripheral to a core and control the exclusive access to this peripheral by this core only. Change access to the common or system resources shared between the two cores, for instance, clocks or GPIOs. In terms of software, the management of a co-processor is done through three main frameworks. The responsible processor, or remote proc framework, is responsible for loading the firmware and all resources required by the Cortex-M4 co-processor to properly operate. The remote processor messaging framework, named RPMSG, is used for the inter-processor communication and relies on the Virtual Input Output or VIRT-IO framework. This Virtual Input Output framework provides a mechanism to manage the shared ring buffer pool named V-ring. On Cortex-A7, these frameworks are native in the Linux kernel distribution. The remote proc framework is also integrated in the U-boot, allowing the preload of the Cortex-M4 firmware before the Linux firmware. On Cortex-M4, the frameworks are available by integrating the open amp library for bare metal and real-time OS. This slide shows the several RAM banks available on STM32 MP1 devices and the typical mapping applied on the STM32 MPU embedded software distribution. The RET RAM is used by the Cortex-M4 to put its vector table plus some code and data. The MCU SRAM1 and SRAM2 can be used to put the remaining Cortex-M4 firmware code and data. The MCU SRAM3 is typically used to map the inter-process communication buffers that are further described. The MCU SRAM4 can be reserved to put DMA buffers for the Cortex-A7 when high bandwidth is needed when using the DMA1 or DMA2 instances. It is not mandatory to align this mapping on region's borders, but this can represent an interest since hardware isolation for Cortex-M4 memories is supported with a per-bank granularity. The trusted boot chain is the default solution delivered by STMicroelectronics with a complete feature set. The Cortex-M4 firmware can be loaded and started by the Linux OS or by the secondary boot loader. For instance, U-boot. In normal mode, the firmware is stored in the file system and is loaded by the Linux user land through the remote proc file system interface. In early boot mode, the firmware is installed in the boot FS partition and is loaded by U-boot before the Linux firmware starts. The Cortex-M4 firmware is stored in ELF format to be loaded by the remote proc framework from U-boot or Linux. In addition to the code and data sections, a specific section can be defined to support features related to the coprocessor management. This section consists of a resource table structure, which is parsed by the remote proc Linux framework during the firmware load phase. The first feature declared in this table is the remote processor trace buffer that offers the possibility to output the Cortex-M4 logs to a ring buffer. This buffer can be monitored on the Cortex-A7 side. The address and the size of the ring buffer is declared in the resource table. The second one is the inter-processor communication protocol. To enable the RPMSG protocol, the VIRT-IO device and associated VIRT-IO ring descriptors have to be declared in the table. The Cortex-A7 remote proc framework, acting as a master, is in charge of allocating the associated RPMSG buffers in MCUS RAM and completing this table in consequence. The inter-processor communication between the Cortex-M4 and the Cortex-A7 processors relies on the RPMSG messaging service. The RPMSG and VIRT-IO frameworks are in charge of managing the buffers involved in the communication. Then, a doorbell or mailbox mechanism is in place to inform the processors that a new message is available. This signaling is generated thanks to the inter-processor communication controller, or IPCC. The IPCC peripheral integrated in the STM32MP1 offers six bi-directional channels for the communication between the Cortex-A7 and the Cortex-M4. The principle is as following. A core, for instance the Cortex-A7, sets a channel flag which generates an RX-occupied or RxO interruption on the other core, here the Cortex-M4. The Cortex-M4 clears the flag to free the channel. This generates the TX-free or TXF interrupt on the Cortex-A7. It is important to understand that the IPCC peripheral does not manage any buffer. It works only like a doorbell. The RPMSG messaging uses two bi-directional channels. A channel is used in one direction to inform that an RPMSG buffer is available and in the other direction to inform that the RPMSG buffer has been released. In the STM32MPU embedded software distribution, the IPCC channel 1 is used for messages from the Cortex-M4 to Cortex-A7 core, and the IPCC channel 2 is used for messages from the Cortex-A7 to Cortex-M4 core. On Cortex-A7, the IPCC is controlled by the mailbox software framework. On Cortex-M4, the IPCC is controlled by the HAL IPCC software driver. In the STM32MPU embedded software distribution, the RPMSG protocol is used for the inter-processor communication. This slide is a presentation of the RPMSG protocol and its associated concepts. The RPMSG protocol consists of sending a message from a local address to a remote address. The message is stored in a buffer in the shared memory. The VRT-IO layer is in charge of the management of the buffer lifecycle using ring buffers with associated descriptors named V-rings. On each Cortex, an RPMSG client offers a service. The client is identified by its service, defined by a service name or its endpoint, defined by an address identifier and operating callbacks. On service registration, the RPMSG framework sends a name service announcement message to the remote processor. In this message, the address of the client endpoint is provided. On the remote processor side, the RPMSG framework checks if a local client has registered the same service. In this case, a channel is created between both RPMSG clients and the local RPMSG client is informed that a channel is bound. The virtual UART is an example implemented for STM32MP1 devices to demonstrate an application using the RPMSG protocol. The aim here is to simulate a UART over the RPMSG protocol. On the Cortex A7 core, an STM32RPMSG TTY driver is an RPMSG client, implemented to expose to Linux UserLand, a serial TTY console, and to perform the adaptation layer between the UART and the RPMSG protocol. On the Cortex M4 core, a virtual HAL UART service is the RPMSG client. It provides an HAL UART API for application and also provides the same adaptation layer between the UART and the RPMSG protocol. The RPMSG channel is created by the initialization of the virtual UART on Cortex M4. This triggers the creation of an endpoint for the TTY RPMSG service and the sending of the new service announcement to the Cortex A7. On the Cortex A7 side, the message is processed and the corresponding service is associated to the STM32RMPSG TTY driver. The Linux driver is probed to create an endpoint and a dev TTY RPMSG0 file system interface is created. From now on, the Cortex A7 core is able to send messages through the virtual UART channel. Note that it is possible to create several instances of the virtual UART. In terms of RPMSG protocol, this action consists of creating a new endpoint per instance. The result is the creation on the Cortex A7 side of a dev TTY RPMSGX interface. The co-processor resources management corresponds to the implementation of a mechanism for the management of the peripherals in a multi-core system. First of all, to understand the resource management, some concepts have to be defined. The term peripheral assignment means the action to assign a set of peripherals to a Cortex context. For instance, an I2C peripheral can be assigned to either the Cortex A7 or the Cortex M4 core. At the opposite, some peripherals or resources must be shared across several contexts. The shared resources are typically system resources, like RCC for the reset and clock control. This slide presents the possible peripherals assignment on the STM32MP1 platform. In line with this concept, the legend of this diagram distinguishes two possible states for each peripheral. Assigned means that only one hardware execution context is using the peripheral at runtime. A single-color box means that the assignment is static, whereas a double or triple-color box with vertical separator means that a user choice is needed to assign the peripheral to a given context, depending on its application needs. This assignment can be done with the STM32QBMX tool or manually, and it is reinforced by hardware isolation for the Cortex A7 secure and for the Cortex M4 core. Shared means that the peripheral can be concurrently used by two or even three different execution contexts. This mode implies registers banking or other mechanisms that ensure no contention can happen between the given contexts when they access a common resource. For instance, TIM instances on the left can be assigned to one runtime context and will only be used by this one. The RCC block just below is a system peripheral that can be concurrently accessed by the three runtime contexts. The purpose of the following slides is to explain the concepts implemented on the STM32MP1 platform for the management of the assigned and shared resources. All the mechanisms involved in the assignments are further described in STWIKI pages. Note that this diagram shows the STMicroelectronics recommendations or choices of assignment in the STM32MPU embedded software distribution. Additional possibilities might be described in the STM32MP1 reference manual and may be considered later on in this distribution. To understand the implementation of the resources management, it is important to understand the associated challenges arising in a multiprocessor environment. On STM32MP1 microprocessors, two contexts are running in parallel. When a peripheral is assigned to one context, this peripheral has to be managed only by this context, so the coherency of the global system has to be ensured. To achieve this, the STM32 CubeMX tool offers an interface to assign the peripherals. The STM32MP1 also offers the possibility to isolate a peripheral to the secure part or the Cortex-M4. The isolation is managed by the Secure Firmware TFA through the Extended Trust Zone Protection Controller or ETZPC Table Configuration. The STM32 CubeMX tool can also manage this by configuring the TFA device tree involved for the isolation. Lastly, some of the resources are shared resources. These resources are generally required to operate the peripheral. Depending on its type, the system resources have either to be protected by a hardware semaphore or exclusively managed by the Linux content to ensure coherency in the system, for instance, the clock tree management. In the same way, the STM32 CubeMX tool can help to correctly configure the shared resources. This screenshot shows the example of an assignment as it can be done with the STM32 CubeMX tool. USART4 is assigned to the Cortex-A7 non-secure context for Linux. USART5 is assigned to the Cortex-A4 context for STM32 Cube. Depending on the configuration selected, the STM32 CubeMX tools assign the peripheral to a Cortex context by isolating the peripheral by configuring the TFA device tree, configuring the Linux device tree to enable or disable the node depending on the assignment, declaring the system resource involved to operate the peripherals assigned to the Cortex-M4 core or generating CUBE firmware initialization code for the peripheral assigned to the Cortex-M4 core. To help control and check the resource assignment, some services have been implemented in the STM32-MPU embedded software distribution. The first service is the peripheral assignment check implemented in the STM32 Cube firmware. This utility relies on the ETZ-PC table and allows the check of the peripheral isolation before its initialization. The second service is the shared configuration set. Implemented on the Cortex-A7 core, it allows the configuration of the clocks and regulators associated to a peripheral. These shared resources need to be managed by the Linux OS for the power management optimization. Then each Cortex firmware is in charge of the configuration of the GPIO and EXTI resources. The protection of these shared resources are ensured by the usage of the hardware semaphore relying on the HSEM peripheral. Lastly, a dynamic resource reconfiguration service has been put in place to allow a co-processor to change on the fly the clocks and regulator settings. The peripheral assignment request service relies on the bus firewall controlled by the Extended Trust Zone Protection Controller or ETZ-PC table. Core modes are available depending on the secure non-secure context and the assignment to the Cortex-A7 or Cortex-M4 contexts. Note that the isolation of the non-secure Cortex-A7 at the opposite of the other modes is not a real hardware isolation but a software protection, as accesses from the Cortex-M4 core are still possible. The ETZ-PC table is filled by the TFA's security firmware based on its device tree. Then during the initialization phase, an access is granted. On the Cortex-A7 core, the U-boot updates the Linux device tree according to the ETZ-PC table. Depending on the assignment, it enables or disables peripheral nodes declared to the Linux usage. On the Cortex-M4 core, the application has to verify the peripheral assignment before initializing it. The Resource Manager utility provides services to grant this access. This picture gives an overview of the software architecture related to the check of the peripheral assignment. In this example, the TFA firmware has isolated and assigned the peripheral X to the Cortex-M4 core and the peripheral Y to the Cortex-A7 core. On the Cortex-A7 core, during the boot stage, U-boot has enabled the peripheral Y node and disabled the peripheral X node. As a consequence, only the STM32 driver for the peripheral Y is enabled. On the Cortex-M4, the application grants the access right to the peripheral X thanks to the Resource Manager utility and then calls the HAL API to initialize it. The main purpose of this service is to correctly manage the configuration of the shared resources in the multi-core system. To protect these resources, two strategies have been implemented. The protection of the shared resource by a hardware semaphore and the management of the shared resource by only one Cortex. The protection by hardware semaphore relying on the HSEM peripheral is used by default. This consists of getting a hardware semaphore to grant exclusive access on the critical registers of a shared resource. This is the case, for instance, for the GPIOs and the EXTI configurations. Some other shared resources, like clocks and regulators, need to be managed by the Linux OS. The main reason is the integrated power strategy natively implemented on Linux OS. Indeed, the clocks and regulator chaining can be represented by a tree with parent and children nodes. This tree is monitored by the Linux OS to disable or enable parents depending on the state of their children. For instance, Linux needs to be informed about clocks used by the Cortex-M4 core. Without this information, it considers the clock is not in use and could stop the PLL clock as the parent node. This slide shows the software framework involved in the configuration of the shared resources by the Linux OS on the Cortex-A7 core. The remote processor system resource manager, or RPROC SRM framework, has been developed by ST to declare and configure shared resources used by the Cortex-M4 core to operate the assigned peripherals. This framework parses the device tree for nodes associated to the Cortex-M4 peripheral and configures the shared resources accordingly. An SRM device driver instance is enabled per sub node. On the Cortex-M4 side, the clock and regulator resources are not initialized. Only the peripheral clock is gated as clock gating registers are Cortex-dependent. This slide shows the software framework involved in the protection of shared resources by the hardware semaphore. On the Cortex-A7 core, accesses to the GPIOs and EXTI configuration registers are protected by the hardware spin lock that gets an HSEM semaphore if free or waits for its release. Please note that the U-boot bootloader also uses the same hardware semaphore during the boot stage. On the Cortex-M4 core, accesses protection has to be managed by the application, granted by the Lock Resource Utility API. This utility offers a simple interface to lock or unlock a semaphore depending on the resource to protect. Regarding the code configuration, the STM32-Cube-MX tool generates the code to manage the shared resources. This slide describes the generation of the shared resources for an I2C port assigned to the Cortex-M4 core. In the Cortex-A7 device tree, the resource manager node is declared with an I2C1 sub-node defined with its associated clock and GPIOs declaration. Please note that the I2C1 node used to assign the peripheral to the Cortex-A7 core has been previously disabled. Note also that the pins used for the I2C port are also declared in the device tree. This part is optional, as GPIOs are protected by a hardware semaphore. But this declaration can be used for debug to allow Linux OS to cross-check that pins are not reserved for another peripheral. On the Cortex-M4 side, the clock initialization is protected by the System Resource Config allowed service. Indeed, in some specific cases, the Cortex-M4 core may have to initialize the clock tree. This is the case if the Cortex-M4 is loaded by the U-boot stage and so started before the Linux firmware. Using this service allows the use of the same firmware independently from the booting mode. In this example, the GPIO configurations are protected by a lock service that gets a hardware semaphore. Here is a more complex example using most of the concepts previously presented. It explains how to share an I2C port between the Cortex-A7 and the Cortex-M4 cores on an STM32-MP1 platform. In this example, the I2C peripheral is managed by the Cortex-M4 core. This means that the I2C has been isolated for the Cortex-M4 thanks to the ETC-PC table and that the Linux firmware SRM framework has configured the clocks needed to operate the I2C buzz. To transfer the I2C flows between the Cortex-A7 and the Cortex-M4 cores, a virtual I2C link over RPMSG can be implemented, with the same principle as the virtual UART proposed in the STM32-MPU embedded software distribution. On the Cortex-M4 core, an I2C proxy is required to enable the sharing of the I2C resources from the Cortex-M4 application or from the virtual I2C-HAL. For more details on coprocessor management or on the STM32-MP1 product itself, please refer to the STM32-MP1 user guide available on ST.com.


Want a Jeep? Get it cheap at the Summit Chrysler 2021 Jeep Stravaganza. We're celebrating 0% for 84 months. Get your Jeep for as low as $349 on select models. Only at Summit. Summit delivers.


Our eighth presenter is Satvik Divi whose title is role of latches and latch mediated spring actuation systems for high-acceleration movements and small-skiller robots. A grasshopper can jump to about 20 times its body size. If I, as a human, would have to match that, in a single leap I would have to cover more than a third of a football field. Yeah, that's definitely not happening. And in fact, that's not the only fascinating thing about these grasshoppers and other such small insects. We often use the phrase in the blink of an eye to describe something that's really fast, right? Well, the blink of a human eye, on an average, can take about 200, 300 milliseconds long. The jump sequence that powers the jumping movements of these small insects, that happens in a millisecond. That's orders of magnitude faster. In fact, that's not just fast at this point. That is ultra-fast, right? So imagine if we can take inspiration from these small insects and build a small one-gram jumping robot. We'd ideally want it to be able to do three things, right? One, of course, jump in a given direction. Number two, have the ability, in spite of its size, to be able to control the jump distance, right? Maybe instead of jumping a meter, have a meter. Or maybe just jump two meters, right? And number three, we'd want it to be able to reliably do this in different environments. Because ultimately, we want these devices deployed out to the real world, right? So imagine if this robot was out there on the cut, right? There's different environments there. There is grass, there is sand. There's also the pavement, which is as hard as a rock. There was snow a couple of days ago, right? So there's whole different environments that the robot would have to adapt its jump to be able to navigate, right? Which is similar to humans as well, right? Me jumping on the stage is going to be different from, let's say jumping off of a diving board by the pool, or jumping on a trampoline. So how do we do all of these things while keeping in mind the ultra-fast nature of these movements? That's where my research steps in. It does three important things. Number one, it helps establish a framework that's useful for analyzing these ultra-fast movements in biology, and help translate these principles into the realm of engineering, especially small robots. And number two, by building on this framework, we can show how to control these ultra-fast movements. And number three, by further using this framework, we can design these small resource constrained robots in such a way that they can adapt their jump based on the environment they're jumping from. And we fundamentally are able to do this by relying on the design architecture of these insect-inspired mechanisms. And by addressing these three key research areas, what we are able to do is push the boundaries of our current capabilities when it comes to making these small insect-sized resource constrained robots where we are able to overcome not only the size limitations, but also the time limitations of operation.  Thank you.


Today we're going to be working with Blender and we're going to do some video editing in this series and we're going to, you know, I'm just going to show you some basic video editing stuff, stuff that you might do in any other video editor, can be done in Blender and it does it fairly well. There's a few things weird about Blender which I'll go over. If you're not used to Blender, you should just get used to Blender, go to Blender website, learn how the keys work because in the video editor it works pretty much all the shortcut keys and how things are handled are similar to the rest of Blender which a lot of people complain about but it's just different. It's not that it's right or wrong, it's just different and you play with a little bit, you get used to it. I've been using Blender for years and I use the controls without thinking about it. So let's go ahead and get started. I am using Blender 2.7a in this video and let's go ahead and get started. So I'm going to come up here and I'm going to change my little scene from the default view to video editor or video editing which is also known as the sequencer. Now the nice thing about Blender is you can rearrange all this which we might go over in a different video you know and you can actually have like a library of videos up here and stuff like that but this is the default set up so let's start working with this, your timelines down here and we're going to go ahead and we're going to say add and I'm going to go to movie and then I'm going to go to a folder where my movies are and here they are listed and I'm going to go ahead and click this little icon view or thumbnail view here and it will give me a thumbnail view and I got some video from last summer of my daughter playing in the sprinkler. Off to the left here you can see we have some options for importing so if you want to import the video clips without the sound you can uncheck the sound clip here and then also you can see this is where it's going to start and what channels start channel basically tracks is what's called most video editors is basically what track or where on the timeline is going to be and what frame it's starting at and so I don't have any videos in there I'm just going to leave it at one. Now this bottom check box is great back in the day with Blender if you imported a video and it was different frame rate then your project by default Blender is 24 frames second and most digital video at least here in the US is 30 frames a second your video would be a different length in your audio because it would adjust the video length that well this little check box will automatically change that so before you had to change your projects frame rate to match your video frame rate before you started and if you have multiple frame rates in your video clips like you took them with different cameras I suppose that'd be a problem still might be a problem but this will use the frame rate the movie will change your project to the frame rate of these videos so I'm going to go ahead and I'm just going to select two of these clips and I'm going to say add and you can see it added it at frame one because that's we set to and it started on track one or channel one here now one of the things for the most part I like the Blender video editor things one thing I think it's really missing is most video editors when you have a video timeline here it gives you thumbnails down here so you can quickly see what clips or what this doesn't I'm not sure if there's a way to do that also it puts the audio above the video which is the opposite of all video other video editors not that it's right or wrong it's just weird because that's not what I'm used to and I'll quite often like go to edit the video clip and I know doing something with the audio clip but you can either you know right click this and hit G and grab and put it somewhere else I'll just skip to get that or when you select one or two I'll shift click to select both of those you can see over here on the left you have a channel thing and I guess only moves one at a time you can move it channel wise there and that way you don't mess up where it is at the location wise as far as seconds or frames so now I put the video up at the top here we're going to talk about trimming up these clips and for now I'm just going to delete the audio there as an example because you do move them independently or together depending on what you're doing so you have these little handles at the end of each clip so I can right click this and hit G just like you do in any other part of blender to grab and I can resize this video I'll hit control Z twice to undo that or three times to undo that but that's one way to resize a video but no other ways to cut so I can left click and put my timeline marker wherever I want so let's say right there now I just have the video selected here I can hit K and we'll cut what's selected on that line and then I can grab move this out and there are two types of cuts there's hitting K like we did which is a soft cut and then shift K which is a hard cut and I'll show you the difference here in a moment but if you want to let's say cut the audio and video together I can you can also group things here which will get to a later video but I'm gonna hit A B to unselect all and then do a box select then I can left click and here I can hit K and we'll cut both those clips for me so we can do that let's undo all that just hit control Z a couple times so let's let me show you the difference between a hard cut and a shortcut so I have this video selected I'm going to go ahead and hit K like we did earlier and then I can grab and move this you know as I can grab this and if I want to resize it I can resize it back out and it's just adding those frames back in so basically I have two copies of the same clip just the different sizes in different locations go ahead and delete that one or actually let's just undo everything again control Z a couple times now if I shift K with that selected now I can move this and we did a hard cut now I can grab this I can make it shorter but I can't make it go past that you see how it's kind of grayed out there same with this one here the video does not play see it's kind of it's giving you a still frame there so you can't resize the video back out past that so you can see let me just play here I'll hit control A to play and you see it's playing and then you get a freeze frame and then continue playing over here I hope that makes sense I don't think I feel like I explained fairly poorly but you can see once you cut it with a hard cut the video is clipped at that point and if you pull it out you can do a still frame which is which is useful if you want to have a freeze frame at some point but you're not going to accidentally drag the video back out if you wanted to make sure that video was clips that's that shift K like so and then you can see it's great great out there and those are how to clips let's quickly review I'm going to let's just delete everything I'll grab everything delete and you notice my timeline markers here in the middle now if I go to add and I again go to movie you can see by default down here it's saying start at frame 93 so if I was to grab a clip and import it it's going to move it to frame 93 I could have changed that to one so keep that in mind it's going to drop it where you have that timeline mark unless you change that number I can grab that though and I can drag it back to frame one here if I hit control it should clip to it there we go oops and I let go of control there we go you can also if I was to grab like my video here again you can change the start from over here so if you want it right when you don't have to drag it you can just click here hit one and hit enter I can do the same for the audio one hit enter and you can also adjust the length here so off to the side here you have a bunch of options that we're gonna go over in the next few videos on on changing aspects of your clips so that's the first look at it next video we're gonna look over different types of fades so I do thank you for watching please visit filmsbychrist.com that's Chris the K there should be a link in the description if you enjoy these videos think about supporting me over at patreon.com forward slash metal x1000 and as always I hope that you have a great day


So why do I keep making these videos? It's been 12 weeks now, video every day, and I sometimes ask myself why, but the first reason is that I committed to doing it. I simply said that I am going to make a video every day and release it. And so just doing it itself is a discipline for me. I don't know if that really counts though because I could commit to doing anything. It didn't have to be this. Why specifically this? Well, the first reason for specifically making and releasing videos is that I want to practice speaking publicly. Because the thought of putting this camera and microphone up in my face, pointing at my living room here and my face and talking about it, talking about things, and having this be published on the wide, wide internet, that to me is a very unfamiliar territory. And it does not seem like a normal and automatic thing for me to do. The idea of this camera lens here being like a window for the entire world, you could say anybody could choose to see me talking about stuff. And normally when I'm in my living room, there is nobody seeing me talk about stuff. So just getting used to being able to talk about things publicly and get used to opening up. That is a big part of what this is about for me, this training. Especially as I'm talking about some of these things are relatively personal topics. And I'm training myself to be more open about sharing these things because I believe that it can be helpful. Second reason is that by talking about these ideas, I am exploring these ideas. I mean sometimes I don't really know where I'm going to finish when I start talking. And sometimes I end up in a new place with a new thought that I hadn't considered before I began. So just by talking about things and especially out loud, it helps me to think clearly about this topic. Or about any of these topics. If you cannot explain something to somebody, then there's a good chance that you don't really understand it. Explaining a topic is a great way to understand it more deeply yourself. And this connects to what might be called the third reason, which is to train myself as somebody who is able to talk about things.  Open to the world. But number three is this idea of improving, training my ability to talk about things to become a better speaker, to become a better communicator, to be able to discuss these topics in ways that are both understandable and hopefully even sometimes inspirational is my ideal to inspire ideas in other people and help to communicate some of what, some of the way that I see the world and what I believe in. And these ideas are ideas that can be, I hope, built into future work. The things that I talk about, these are almost like simple notes, preliminary notes for something that I can in the future put together into more complete material, bigger projects, bigger content. And these are the preliminary building blocks that I'm setting up every day that may be useful in the future to be used in something more complete. And of course really a big part of what made me start this is that, you know, why am I speaking publicly? I want to connect with other people. I want to build a community. I want to reach other people that are interested in some of these topics. People that care about these things and like to discuss them. And so I want to reach some of these people so that we can have some great conversations about some of this material, some of these topics. And we can help each other explore this stuff more deeply. And that's really why I feel it, that's really what pushed me to actually get out there and publish this. Because there's nothing like actually reaching out and having other people actually hear what you're saying to make an actual connection between people rather than me simply recording notes on my own that I might use later. So I'm always happy to have that kind of discussion about these topics. I'm hoping that each of these daily videos could be some kind of a spark for some kind of conversation and further investigation. And last of all, I hope that possibly perhaps even a few of these might be actually helpful to somebody. I may say something that can maybe help somebody to have a shift in perspective, look at things a little differently, have some new idea to apply to their own lives, something that could make even a small change in improving somebody else's life. And if I can do that, then I would be very pleased at the results of my efforts. So for all those reasons, and maybe some others that I haven't clearly thought of yet, I have been doing this and I look forward to continuing to do this. When I started, I said I would give myself the option to stop once I reach a thousand and one days. Well, still got a while to go.