If you look closely at the world today, you will observe that a lot of people are afraid to take risks. They would rather play safe than move out of their comfort. But as the old saying goes, the greatest risk in life is not taking any risk at all. So in this video, I will share with you 7 risks you should take every day. 1.   Are you scared that they may not like you? Well, the truth about life is that you don't need everyone to like you.  Ultimately, it is your opinion of yourself that matters, and if someone doesn't like it, it is not your fault. This does not mean that your idea about yourself is always correct. Of course, someone can always point out the truth. It only means that you are truly living. Many times, individuals become people-pleasers just so that everyone will love and hang out with you. Every day, you must take the risk of being your true self in all situations. The truth is that your value doesn't decrease based on someone's inability to see your worth. It does when you don't allow people to see you for who you are. So be careful to not give so much of yourself to others that you end up completely losing yourself. In the end, you alone can decide to become better. 2. Helping others without having expectations. As American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it, The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. Happiness doesn't come through selfishness, but through selflessness. The good thing about nature that many people fail to understand is that everything you do comes back around, be it good or bad. But then, the rewards tend to delay when you expect them. So as you go about your daily life, learn to give out love without expecting it to be reciprocated. Give more to people who cannot return the favor presently. Giving is not just limited to money or material things. Smile to those who may not be able to smile back at you. Encourage people who do not have the right words of encouragement to give to you. The more happiness you help others find in life every day, the more joy you will find. 3. Taking full responsibility for your happiness. A lot of people tend to believe that happiness is free. But the practical truth about life is that happiness is not free. It comes with a price. As we go through life, we tend to place our happiness on certain factors, both external and internal. It may be from putting a smile on other people's face. It may be passing an examination or even winning a jackpot. However way, remember, happiness comes from your own choices and actions. So whatever you may have placed your happiness on, you must be ready to take full responsibility and embrace it, even when it does not bring as much joy as you desire. The more you take responsibility for your happiness, the more you understand that the things that can make a person happy aren't hard to find. Stop blaming others for what you have or don't have, or for what you feel or don't feel. Happiness is a choice and you alone can make that choice. So when you step out, determine to be happy and be ready to accept the full result of whatever makes you happy. 4. What are the consequences for your actions? How do you react when you make a mistake? Do you own up to it, or do you look for the nearest person or situation to blame it on? One fact about life that many people feel to understand is that the more you take responsibility for your past and present, the more you can create the future you seek. But when you blame others for what you are going through, you deny responsibility and perpetuate the problem. Blaming is just another sorry excuse, and making excuses is the first step towards both misery and failure. You and only you are responsible for decisions. Some consequences may not be pleasant, but every day you must take the risk of facing them. After all, results are nearby products of action. When you take consequences for your efforts, you'll learn more and become a better person. 5. Being vulnerable to being hurt? As you grow up, you will learn that even the person who wasn't supposed ever to let you down probably will in some small way. You'll have your heart broken probably more than once. You too will inadvertently break some hearts, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You will occasionally argue with your closest friends.  These are the realities of life, and the best way to experience them is with an open heart. Many people tend to see vulnerability as weakness, but then, being vulnerable takes courage, and only a few people are bold enough to open their hearts and become defenseless. You may assume that shutting your heart to every form of pain is the best way to live. On the contrary, going through life with a closed heart is equivalent to not living at all. American novelist Chuck Polonyak once said, The only way to find true happiness in life is to risk being completely caught open. Nothing could be closer to the truth. Anybody capable of living and loving is bound to get hurt at some point, but that's a risk that's well worth the reward. The result is a life filled with honesty and love.  Don't be afraid that your days will end in pain. Be afraid they will never begin with honesty and love. Life is too short to let it pass by. Take the risk and be open. 6. Taking the Lonely Road Not until I was true with my university education, I never realized what the poem, The Road Less Traveled, by Robert Frost meant. Of course, I knew the poem, each line and every word, but I couldn't place a meaning to those words. The road less traveled is a scary road to take. Previous footsteps haven't worn in it, so getting lost is a cinch. The brush has never been trimmed nor tended to, so you're likely to get caught in a branch and stuck in places for a while. The road less traveled haven't yet been mapped out, and therefore, the only thing you have to go on in hopes of reaching your destination is your intelligence, your logic, perseverance, and a bit of luck. However, the road less traveled has much richer plunders. Your risk is never getting there, but once you do, it is well worth your trouble. In your daily life, one thing you should do is to dare to be different. Don't be conformed by the norm. Instead, seek the right path and follow it, although you are most likely going to travel alone because it is much easier to go with the crowd. In the end, it pays to follow the road less traveled. 7. Admitting that you don't know It is quite baffling that many individuals would prefer to remain ignorant than attest to the fact that they don't know something. Come to think of it, what do you even stand to lose if you admit that you don't know something? Will your friends make fun of you? Or your pride? At that moment, you may feel embarrassed about not knowing something, but after you have been informed, there is nothing to be ashamed about. There is a very fine line between knowing and not knowing. For example, one second you may know absolutely nothing about a topic, and then two minutes later, after someone explains something to you, you instantly know something new. Imagine how fast it took for you to transcend from knowing to not knowing. Knowledge is the easiest thing to accumulate, but only if you ask questions. If you want to grow, then you risk admitting that you don't know. Risk-taking is a fundamental part of a good life. Going through life without taking risk is just like existing without actually living. The successful men you see in the world today are those who take this little risk every day.


Hi, I'm Sarah Purvis and I'm here at the One of a Kind show showing people my abstract art. I started painting because corporate world can be very stressful and it's nice to be able to just do something that's creative, that's for me, nobody's telling me what to do. I'm actually a graphic designer as well but recently I started going back to my roots and painting again and it just makes me feel good. The colors that I use make me feel good and I hope that that translates to other people as well. When I started using Art Res and I couldn't believe how much it pulled out the vibrancy of the color, it just is shiny, it's rich, it's almost juicy, it makes the color look like you just want to bite it so I've been using it constantly now. Just being around the colors and the textures, it's a really good therapeutic outlet for me and I accumulated so much work that I thought, you know what, I'm gonna try and sell this and turns out that my work makes other people happy so it all worked out in the end.


Pride is the communal resistance to that, where we recognize our love for each other, our bodies, our deviation from the so-called norm as holy. Maybe today the lies get the best of you, but there's someone else who refuses to believe those lies on your behalf. Maybe you can't love yourself today, but some other trans or queer person's heart is bursting with pride just to be associated with you. You are loved, you are celebrated, and we would always out if you were any different.


One thing I would really recommend doing before you hand any work in is go and see your tutor. And this is so important and nobody does it. But the few times that I have done it, I've been amazed at how much it's helped.  Once you've been slaving on a work for a week or an essay for a week, it's quite hard to see the big picture. But you've got to remember that your tutor is the one marking this. They're the one that's going to be giving you your final grade and popping into their office hours for just 5 or 10 minutes. Just to get a bit of feedback on that is really invaluable and I would highly recommend that you guys all do that.


Hey foundation lovers, I'm Bianca Renee and you're watching Bianca Renee Today and it's Foundation Friday where I review new foundations every Friday. So today's foundation I'll be reviewing is by Bare Minerals. Now if you saw my video last week I just reviewed the Bare Minerals Matte Powder Foundation but I really think I'm more of a liquid foundation type of girl so I got the Bare Minerals Bare Pro. So they have about, I think at least three different liquid foundations. One says like sheer to full coverage, one says medium to full coverage but this one is their full coverage one and I'm just a full coverage type of girl. Now if you saw my Snapchat story you saw me go to four, no five different stores to try to find my color. For some reason Sable number 21 was just trending in the valley over here so I had to eventually go to the Bare Minerals counter in Macy's to get it. But it all worked out because this foundation is $34 but I got it for 15% off because Macy was having a sale so I got it for $28.90. So this definitely would be considered a high end foundation sold at Ulta, Sephora or the Bare Minerals counter at Macy's probably even Nordstrom's or on the Bare Minerals website. And this bottle is a glass bottle. It's one fluid ounce just like the rest of the foundations I review. Yup, pop off the top and it has a pump which is my favorite way to dispense liquid foundation. So there are 30 different shade ranges to choose from for this foundation and there are nine shades darker than my skin tones. So the cool thing about Bare Minerals that they're not your average foundation they actually have really good ingredients that really focus on the skin. So the creamy liquid foundation contains bamboo stem extract for a naturally matte soft focus finish. I will agree I'm very matte right now and my skin does have a very soft focus finish if I do say so myself. While papaya enzymes, oh fancy, gently improve skin's texture both immediately and over time with good first skin ingredients it won't clog your pores. That's a big one for us acne prone skin girls. This foundation is heat, humidity, water and sweat resistant. That's a lot of claims. I might have to just go jog in the rain to test that theory. Eh, never mind. So what all that means is there's some good stuff in this bottle and it's supposed to be actually helping our skin over time. But without further ado let me show you exactly how I applied this foundation to my face. Okay so my skin is already moisturized but now I'm going to apply my primer. This is the Veil Mineral Primer by Hourglass. When I do a high-end foundation review I like to use a high-end primer. Okay so now I'm going to grab the foundation, fresh out the box. I'm going to be using a damp beauty blender per usual and let's see what one twist it to unlock it. That's important. And now I'm going to apply, alright that was kind of one and a half pumps. Let's see, interesting. So it does kind of have like more of a yellowish undertone but I look really pale on this side and I'm definitely losing all of my color this winter so let's go ahead and even this out. I'm getting some really good coverage though. See look at that, covered up all those blemishes. So so far I'm already liking the coverage of this liquid foundation more than the Bare Minerals Matte Powder Foundation. Okay so first impression of just the foundation on its own, I feel like it's a little yellow for my skin tone but this was kind of the best match when I was in the store but I can make it work. Coverage wise I do think you get some good coverage, it's probably like more of a medium with possible full coverage but as you guys may know my major test is to see how long this makeup lasts so let me go ahead and put on the rest of my face. Told you I could fix it. So although I did look pretty yellow with just the foundation, now that I finished my whole face I think it looks really good. I think I was able to blend it well with the rest of my skin tone. I did set it with the Bare Minerals Matte Powder Foundation. So although technically this is called a powder foundation, I then used two foundations, I used a liquid with a powder foundation on top of it but look at my skin. I look super matte right now and I think it's actually kind of like blurring my pores. I really like this finish, it says it's supposed to have a soft focus finish and that's really what I'm getting. So as of right now I am loving the results, I will admit that I was kind of like whatever about the powder in my last review but I have been using this powder over other foundations and I've been loving it on top of foundations so it only makes sense that it should look amazing on top of its sister, the Bare Pro Foundation. The Bare Minerals Bare Pro Liquid Foundation claims to last a total of 24 hours. I don't really want to stay up for 24 hours but I will wear this foundation for as long as possible. So right now it is 3pm so I will come back at the end of the day you know as late as possible and I'll show you exactly how well or horrible this foundation looks. Now I'm back, it is now 12.30am, I told you I wouldn't stay up for as long as I possibly could. So that means I've had on this foundation for 9 and a half hours and I must say that I think it looks really good. I'm pretty matte for the most part, per usual, I always get a little shiny right here and right in the middle of my forehead but it's really not that bad. I think that my coverage is still there. I don't really have any blotchiness, did not get that oily, I'm very impressed.  Not that bad. Okay so here's the amount of oil, there is a little bit of transfer happening but now I'm completely matte once again. So I think if I would have blotted at a regular hour on a normal day like I normally would, this foundation would be just fine at any hour of the day, I just stretched it to 9 and a half hours for this video. But this foundation does claim to last 24 hours and I do think I would continue to wear this foundation for more hours if I really needed to. So first impressions, I am very happy with it especially since it does have so many natural ingredients, this is probably a great option for someone that is dealing with acne or if you have very oily skin. This is working well for the health of your skin and for keeping us oily skin girls matte. So I'm definitely excited to continue to wear this foundation for the rest of the week so make sure you follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat at MizBeyondGrenet so I can give you any daily updates and you could see how this foundation does on different days. So that is everything I have to say about the Bare Minerals Bare Pro Foundation, I'm very happy with it and I definitely would recommend this especially matched with the Bare Minerals Matte Powder Foundation. If you are a Bare Minerals fan, please let me know what are your favorite Bare Minerals products, what you think I should try next, have you used it over a long time, do you notice a difference in your skin? Please let me know because I'm curious. If you want more foundation reviews, make sure you come back next week. I post two new videos every week, once on Friday and once on Sunday. So I hope to see you all next time. Thanks for watching Beyond Grenet today.


Well, good morning, everyone. There we go. I'm George Ray. I'm the Dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. And let me begin by stating how honored I am to be in your presence today. It's always good to be back with old friends, but it is truly a good day for me when I can be locked in a room full of people that are interested in leadership. So if you will just pretend that you're really interested in leadership for about the next hour, we're going to have a great time together. I want to talk to you today about some of the darker shades of this construct that we have built around leadership. I'm going to be talking to you about concept of toxic leadership.  And then for about 15 minutes, we're going to have a Q&A. So I want you to be thinking about some questions and answers. And then we're going to have a panel up here where we're going to challenge you even further to think perhaps in different ways than you have thought about leadership in the past. The thing about leadership in most military organizations, certainly in terms of our doctrine, is that it is pitched as a universally positive construct. Leadership is good, leadership is good, leadership is good. That's the mantra. Good leaders do that. Good leaders have this kind of impact on an organization. And in any military organization, I can almost guarantee that there will be two solutions to any problem. One is leadership. If something goes bad, it's a leadership problem. The other one is training. So if we can't lead our way out of a problem, we can certainly train our way out of a problem. That is the level of importance that is attached to the notion of leadership. The problem is that not all behavior that's done in the name of leadership is positive. And some of it is, quite frankly, rather horrid. So we're going to shine some light on that particular corner today. So these are the three constructs that we're going to be playing with today. The first one is leadership style. What's your style? Have you thought about that? What adjectives are being used in relationship to the pattern of behavior that you exercise in your organization over time? Leadership style is the pattern of behavior as perceived by the targets of influence. You don't get to tell me what your style is. You can think you know what your style is. You can tell me what your intentions are. But when it comes to leadership, leadership is ratified in the hearts and the minds of the followers. So your followers, the targets of your influence get to tell you what your leadership style is. Second construct, organizational climate. Organizational climate is how it feels around here. And that's different from organizational culture, which is deep, relatively unchanging over time. It's learned behavior that's passed from generation to generation. So organizational culture tends to be rather stable. Organizational climate is rather surface level. It changes pretty quickly. And my example for organizational climate is, how many of you have played sports? Played on a sports team of one type or another. Okay, you got most of you, okay. Well, you've won all your games all season. And you're getting on the bus and you're going to go to the state championship. What's the bus feel like? Yeah, a lot of, yeah, a lot of tension, a lot of anxiety, a lot of excitement. You're going to the big game. You're getting up for the big game.  What does that bus ride feel like on the way home? That's climate, okay, that's climate.  Culture much more enduring and hard to change. Then the last one, organizational effectiveness, which is the sine qua non of military service. It's what matters most is getting the job done, being effective. My question is, what's the relationship between the three? And is there a relationship? And for our purposes today, what style got to do with it? Which is a blatant rip off of a pretty good I can Tina Turner song, right? What's got to do with it? All right, so that's what I'm interested, the relationship between those three variables. So we start off with this problem. This is a distribution of leadership style or impact, if you will, over time. And on one end of the spectrum, we have all of these good words here. Wonderful leadership, inspiring, confidence building, constructive leadership behaviors. And there are a few of us in any organization that are just off the hook good, genius level good. And that's why this is a normal distribution here, because not all of us are there, but there are a few that are just genius leaders. Then most of us are pretty good. We're right here in the middle. I think Martin, the great philosopher, Martin Cook once told me that the only thing that the behavioral sciences can really say about ethics is that most of us are average, right? Well, statistically speaking, that's what the distribution's all about. And then over here on this far side, we have what I'm kind of interested in, which is awful belittling destructive and demotivating behavior. They're all in the same spectrum. Most of us are to the positive. A few of us down here, a couple of standard deviations to the left are awfully bad. They're the ones that I'm interested in more than anything else. Let's talk a little bit about why people do what they do. Why are you in this organization right now as opposed to someplace else? Why do you, when you have the ability to, why do you choose to affiliate with organization A versus organization B, C, or D? That's the kind of affiliation that we're interested in here. So I have a theory about that. It's called READS 4F affiliation theory. It's called READS because I made this stuff up. And in the academic game, when you make stuff up, you publish it and you get tenure and it's a really good thing. So that's why it's READS 4F affiliation theory. The 4Fs will become apparent. The first F is funds. And let's not underestimate the importance of funds because it is the way that we get our survival needs met in a modern society. In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, this is almost a survival need. So we gotta get money so we can get the basics. And if you don't have enough money to pay your mortgage, you don't have enough money to pay your car payment, it's a problem, okay? It will occupy your attention. It will divert you from other things that this organization deems are important. So funds are important, but it's insufficient to explain a lot of behavior. Explain some behavior, but we're not all as straight up economically rational as others might have you believe. Because in my case, for example, what I do, who I do it with has always been more important than how much money I make. Isn't that evident by the fact that I had 27 years in uniform and now I'm an academic? Neither one of those are particularly high paying positions, right? So it was about money, then a different line of work would be appropriate. And if there's one thing I know about the people in this room, you're not driven exclusively by money. There's something else in play that we must take into account. The second F is fund. Fund. We don't talk about fund nearly enough. Fund is an important motivator. There is a social wage associated with having a good time and enjoying what you do. It is important. And people will stay in a job where they could get paid more someplace else if they're having a good time. And sometimes what we need to do as leaders is remind our people that they're having a good time. We do, we have to remind them of it. How many of you have seen master and commander, far side of the world?  I just did this in a group of students recently at the Air Force Academy. They have not seen your movie, okay? They have not. But it's a great movie and I use it to demonstrate leadership principles all the time. I like to teach leadership through film. And there's this one part in the movie. Check me out on this and see if you remember it. They're being chased by the much superior friendship and they're about to be sunk and the dark is coming on them and they create a decoy that they feed out behind the ship and at the right moment, a young lieutenant pulls off the covers to the lanterns on the decoy as they douse the lanterns on the ship. And then he jumps in the water and they haul him back aboard. So he's up on the deck, he's shivering. He's scared to death because cannonballs have been splashing all around this thing while he was out there riding on it. He's up on the deck, he's half-drowned, he's freezing to death and what does Russell Crowe say to him? He leans down, he says, now tell me, lad, wasn't that fun? Yeah, okay, it's fun, it's adventurous. And in this business, you and your people get to do things other people don't get to do. Sometimes you get to jump out of airplanes, you get to operate multi-million dollar pieces of equipment, you get to blow stuff up. I mean, come on, it's a hoot. Give yourself a break and acknowledge the fact that there are times where it's okay to have fun. It's important. Now I work with law enforcement as a military police officer for so long, I speak to a fair amount of law enforcement groups. And when I start talking to them about fun, I get pushed back. Unlike you who are all attentive, facing forward and they will cross their arms, further browse, lean back and say, now, George, don't denigrate what we do. This is serious business. It's lives and livelihoods, it's protection of the community. And I say, okay, I'll give you that. And I certainly don't mean to denigrate. I said, but let's talk about high-speed chases for a second, shall we? Okay, so you're ripping up the interstate 110 miles an hour, you're chasing the bad guy, the stop sticks come out, the tires explode, it goes sideways into the median. The guy jumps out, it's a foot pursuit.  You want to tell me that's not a good time? I'll say, okay, you got me there. Yeah, that part's fun. Yes, of course it is, and acknowledge it and accept it. The third F is fellowship. Fellowship, by fellowship I mean social cohesion, the bonds between shipmate, the bonds between soldier and battle buddy.  And I tell you, of all the things that I miss about being in uniform is that. Because my academic colleagues will tell you that academia is more like a loose confederation of independent contractors on its best day. There's not a lot of team and camaraderie, right? I miss that and it's important, it motivates some extraordinary behavior and I'll give you an example in just a second. The fourth F is feeling, a feeling that you are a part of something that's bigger than self, which I believe is a fundamental human drive. We are not house flies. We do not become birthed and consume, defecate, procreate and die. That's insufficient for human beings. We want to have a legacy, make a difference, have an impact that is enduring. I believe that to be fundamental human drive. So the issue with this and something that I want you to think about is, what if you have a deficit? What if you have a deficit in one of those Fs? What if, I don't know, maybe it's a deficit of funds? Well, my suggestion is that you work on the other three. If you want to attract and maintain high quality, talented people need to be thinking about all four Fs. Because if you're in a job where you're not having any fun, you're not making any money, you don't like the people that you're with and you don't think it makes any difference, what's the only rational thing to do? Anything else, right, exactly. All right, there we go. Now here's my example of the power of fellowship. How many of you have heard of Ross McGinnis? One, two, oh, there's more than usual. I'm pleased to see that there's so many people out there who are insignificant that we hear a lot about through the modern popular media. But Ross McGinnis is a person of importance and I want to tell you his story real quick. The picture on the right was taken three days before he was killed in Iraq, so it's not a happy story, but the way he died is important for illustrating our point and I think it's a tribute to him in the telling of it. So that picture on the left is his induction photo. The picture on the right, he's interact with the Third Armored Cavalry Squadron, he's on patrol, it's an urban area, you can see that by the background. That picture was captured by a Stars and Stripes reporter, like I say, about 72 hours before he was killed. On patrol, an insurgent throws a grenade, the grenade hits McGinnis and then goes into the open ring mount of the up armored Humvee that he was riding in. So at that point he had a fateful decision to make. Do I bail out of the vehicle to almost assured safety or do I go after the grenade to almost assured self-destruction? It's nothing we train, he went after the grenade. He yelled, grenade, it's in the truck. There were three other people in that vehicle, including his immediate supervisor who was behind the wheel. He yells, grenade, it's in the truck. He goes after it, locates it by the radio mounts toward the back of the vehicle. The sergeant who was driving the vehicle turned in time to see McGinnis cover the grenade with his chest. The grenade went off, McGinnis was killed instantly, but all three other people in that vehicle are alive and walk in the face of this earth today due to an instinctive decision that was made by that young man. Now we know as much as we do about it because he was awarded posthumously the Medal of Honor and his parents received that medal on his behalf in ceremonies at the White House. So the event has been very well documented and if you wanna go to the Medal of Honor website you can see the story. His parents said something very interesting at those ceremonies. They said, our son was average. You believe that? Our son was average. He certainly wasn't average on that day. But why did he do what he did? How do we explain that? Funds, do you think it was funds that provoked that kind of behavior? Not enough money in the world. No, it's not about money. Fun, it's not fun, although he was funny. People in the unit talked about his sense of humor. I mean, think about the job that you enjoyed the most. You probably laughed a lot. McGinnis had an ability to make other people laugh. He had a rise sense of humor that other people in the organization appreciated. How about fellowship? Ding, ding, ding, right? It's all about fellowship. And the interesting thing is he wasn't in the service that long, right? He was a junior enlisted person. He didn't have a lot of time to inculcate the values, but he sure did as translated into his various obvious actions. A feeling, I don't think Motherhood and Apple Pie is what gets you to do something like he did. I think that might get you into the recruiter's office. But that thing there, that I got your back, you got mine, since we began studying actions on the battlefield, we know that it's care for the person to the right and to the left that drives that kind of behavior. Ross McGinnis. Now, why do I talk about the 4Fs? I'm interested in the question, and it's a legitimate question, as to whether or not leadership style really does matter, because do you have to be happy in order to do a good job? The literature says no. Depends on how you define organizational effectiveness. So if all we're interested in is getting the job done, the last mission or the next mission, maybe morale doesn't matter that much, maybe happiness doesn't matter that much, because if you're a professional, I mean a real pro, and you really care about what you do, does it matter if you have a bad boss? I mean, maybe it shouldn't matter, but we've been looking at this for a while. And this short-term mission accomplishment, just I'm only focused on the next task without being concerned of the long-term health and welfare for the people in the organization, kind of has some negative ramifications in a large and complex organization. So we're gonna talk a little bit about those. This is where we get to do a little interaction, okay? So I'm gonna ask you the question, how many of you have left a position or seriously considered leaving a position because of the way you were treated by your supervisor? Can I see a show of hands? Stick them up there, okay? Be proud, be proud, okay? You're the survivors, okay? What do you think that is, about a third? About a third of the audience? Okay, okay. Rough, non-scientific sampling there, but nonetheless, a lot of you have had this experience. So what bad happens when you have a bad boss? We'll call it a destructive leader or toxic boss. I'll define it in a minute. But what bad happens?  Tell me some negative impact that happens when you work for a bad boss. Come on, be brave. Demoralized, it's humiliating and belittling.  Raise your hand. That's almost a litmus test for toxicity. I think the same people raised their hand both times. What's up with that, right? But nobody likes that, okay? It's humiliating, it's demeaning. And so that tends to be suppressed. What else? What other bad happens, bad impact from working for a destructive boss? Communication shuts down, why? Well, not only communication, but I would say innovation and creativity shuts down because it's too risky. Because if you go out of your way and you do something creative, look, the failure rate of experiments is about 75%. Okay, so if you're gonna try something new, then you have to have a relatively high tolerance for failure, okay? Because the likelihood is, statistically speaking, you're more likely to be wrong the first time out of the gate than right.  And that can be a narcotic to looking at things in new and different ways. And let's face it, the work that you do is hard work. It's hard enough as it is. But under a toxic boss, the tendency is to comply. To comply. So you do what they tell you to do because it hurts too much to do otherwise. But that does not equal commitment. In order to be committed, you have to be able to take some risks. And commitment tends to be suppressed when you work for a bad boss. How about this one? You think you drink more or less if you have a bad boss? Higher levels of attendance or higher levels of absenteeism if you have a bad boss. Domestic violence? You think you're more prone to have more domestic violence or less if you're working for a bad boss? All right, these are things worth thinking of. And here's some ideas. I talked about the 4Fs for a reason. Because when it comes to toxic leadership, when you're working for a bad boss, there are some known impacts. The first ones are, it's no fun. It's no fun. Matter of fact, it not only does it impact the workspace, but it carries out into the family as well. And family dynamics can suffer when you're working for a bad boss. Fellowship, some research that I and some colleagues have conducted indicates that all forms of relationships tend to degrade when you're working for a toxic leader. Now, you would expect that relationship with superiors would degrade as a result of that. That makes perfect sense. But why would relationships with peers also go down in terms of quality when you work for a bad boss? Guess what they do? We've measured it's statistically significant correlation. How about relationships with subordinates? Yeah, that goes down too. It goes down too. There's not a direct reason perhaps why it should other than people tend to be very unhappy when they're working for a bad boss and that tends to translate into relationship behavior. And it's hard to realize that your work is noble and worthwhile when you feel as though you're being taken advantage of, demeaned, humiliated and abused. So feeling is also degraded. Okay, organizational citizenship behavior is a concept that goes to that issue of commitment that I talked about earlier. Organizational citizenship behavior is from the managerial sciences and it is a construct that explains what happens when people do more than they are required to do, OCB.   Do you pretend you don't see it and keep on walking? Or do you walk 20 feet out of your way, pick it up and throw it into the trash can? The walking over, picking it up and throw it in the trash can would be defined as organizational citizenship behavior because you don't have to do it but you choose to do it. Well, what we know about toxic leadership is when you have a bad boss, they don't go pick up the trash, right? So they comply but they don't exercise that extra. Satisfaction, no matter how we choose to measure it, is negatively impacted when you have a bad boss. All levels of satisfaction. Even satisfaction with pay and allowances because the perception is they don't pay me enough for this. So it does translate even into the funds aspect of things. At least the perception about funds. Student of mine, Lieutenant Colonel James Dobbs, now on the faculty of the Air Force Academy did his dissertation on the relationship of toxic leadership and cynicism. Cynicism, which is different from skepticism. Skepticism is when you question everything and I would submit to you that's a good thing. We call that critical thinking and I want you to be questioning. I want you to be skeptical about everything I say today. Skeptics don't get suckered, okay? That's a good thing. Cynicism is when you impart a malevolent purpose on just about everything that happens and that's not a good thing. That is, I'm walking down the hallway and my boss comes down the other side and she said, George, that presentation you did last Tuesday, that was fantastic. Good job. And my immediate thought is, oh geez, here it comes. She's buttering me up. Something bad's getting ready to happen. What's this all about? Boy, this is gonna hurt. That's cynicism and that's not particularly helpful. And the thing about cynicism is there's different types. There's individual cynicism and then there's organizational cynicism. Organizational cynicism tends to be a particular problem with toxic leadership because the targets tend to think not only that their boss is bad under those circumstances, but they also attribute that badness to the organization.  Okay, that's how that gets translated. Why? Because, well, the organization obviously knows this is a bad person and they're putting them in charge of me. Therefore, the organization is complicit in this problem.  Whenever one of these toxic leaders gets promoted to a high level of responsibility, there's a collective head slap in the organization and people go, oh my God, I can't believe they did that. They promoted this guy or this gal. Can't believe they did that to my organization. That's a fairly common phenomenon. Cynicism is problematic. Retention. Well, I'd love to stand up here and say that talent flees toxicity. That's what I wanna say and some studies have suggested that but it's a little bit more complicated than that. That the decision to stay or leave is a complicated one moderated by factors such as do I have a better opportunity, right? What's the strength of the local economy? Those types of things tend to impact that. So in some cases, people that suffer under toxic bosses leave. In other cases, they just stay and stay disaffected. And then the poison spreads. But it's complicated because we did a study of senior military officers, Lieutenant Colonel's and above, and we found that they experienced toxic leadership at significant rates, at least as they do experience a fair amount of bad leadership but they don't leave. There is no correlation with inclination to remain in service. Now why would that be the case? Well, they've been around for a long time so they have perspective. They've had good bosses and bad. They know that the bad bosses leave and the odds are they'll get a good one the next time because there's more good leadership in the organization than bad overall, okay? Maybe it's also a matter of identity because typically very senior officers totally identify with the organization. What they do is who they are. It's totally ingrained. And so they're not gonna let a bad supervisor mess that up because they're all in. So we said that's really interesting finding not what we thought we were going to find. Let's go talk to some junior officers now, people that have been in before 10 years. Guess what? They're out of here. There is a strong correlation, statistically significant between having a bad boss and leaving the organization. And here's a question for you. Who leaves the best and brightest or the ones that couldn't hack it in the first place? The internal narrative is sometimes they left and therefore they couldn't cut it. But there's another possibility there and it's that we may not be retaining our best and brightest. I know that's a hard thing for this organization, this group of people here to hear, but you are the survivors. That's what you are. You are the survivors in this room. So retention is a little bit more complicated. How about suicide? I am unwilling to say that there is a connection between toxic leadership and suicide. But there is a gentleman out there by the name of Doc Matsuda, an anthropologist who was tasked to do a study of suicides in Iraq. It's interesting because it's one of the few studies done in a combat zone. And what Matsuda did was he looked at eight individual cases of suicide and in all eight cases found a person or a group of people who was making the life of the person who committed suicide miserable. And he asserts that there is in fact a relationship. That's a small end. There has to be a whole lot more study done before I'm comfortable making that case. But I will pose to you that it's an interesting question.   So I'm unwilling to say, I think it's a much more complex phenomenon. But look at some of these productivity numbers up there. Will you, when we look at toxic leadership and we look at the impact, that's a study that was published in the Harvard Business Review by Porath and Pearson. And look at some of those numbers. They're looking at behavior after a toxic experience. And any enterprise leader of any organization is gonna look at those kind of productivity numbers and say, gulp, that's not something I wanna mess with. I don't want that kind of impact in my organization. I have too much work to do. I have too many important, dangerous things that need to be done to have 48% decrease work effort. That's, those are real impact numbers right there. And then we have the problem of stress. I know it's very difficult to come and talk to an audience like this and tell you that stress is bad because you have it for breakfast. You thrive on stress and it's true. Stress can be positive or it can be negative. It can have a positive impact or a negative impact. But long-term, chronic exposure to high levels of stress have very well-known physiological implications on the human body. I mean, it's well established. It's, so the problem with having a toxic boss is it's a slightly different kind of stress. There's a stress associated with an adrenaline inducing event. Somebody shooting at you or a high stakes experience. The problem with toxic bosses is that it's, it doesn't go away. And it's almost a sense of betrayal because you've been told all these wonderful things about having great leadership and you're doctrine on leadership. You're what is written about it is outstanding. Peter Drucker said that the best thing he ever read about leadership was the Army Field Manual on Leadership, FM 22-100 at the time. And when I first heard that, I was a faculty member at the Army War College and I said, oh hell, I better read this thing. I never had. But if Peter Drucker's gonna say it's a great thing, I'll go pick it up and I'll read it. You know what? Our doctrine, what we write about leadership is extraordinary. It really is good. And it sets up an expectation that it's gonna be good. And then when it's bad, it feels like betrayal. It feels like organizational betrayal. So some leaders add energy. They come into the room and the place is uplifted. Some drain energy.  They walk into the room, everybody bursts into sweat, right? And they have names. We could throw names out here and you'd probably recognize some of them. By the way, toxic leaders typically have nicknames. They have nicknames like the Zapper, I don't know. You know the nicknames. White Tornado, one guy was called. One guy I ran into was called Nukum because he nuked people in place all the time and so just had the personality of a blowtorch. So yeah, they had nicknames. But does our system of performance evaluation permit or encourage the promotion of those who are toxic at a similar rate as those who are not toxic? In other words, does our performance evaluation system distinguish between those two types, the one who adds energy and the one who takes energy away? I submit it doesn't necessarily do a particularly good job of that, right? Which results in the head slap phenomenon. And here's the real problem I'm interested in. Some have an interpersonal style. Now this has nothing to do with competence. They can be equally competent, but just by virtue of how they treat other people. Some people have a style that's so disruptive. They do not add value. As a matter of fact, the job gets done in spite of them, not because of them, but because they rotate every two years. The implications of their actions do not catch up with them. You get compliance in the short term and somebody else usually comes along later to clean up the mess. So here's my definition of toxic leadership, three-part definition. The first one, an apparent lack of regard for the welfare of subordinates. So these people are typically very receptive to missions, very responsive to their supervisors, no job too hard, no task can't be done in no amount of time at all, and they just don't care about the welfare of their subordinates. There's this famous dichotomy in leadership studies. On one end we have task-oriented behavior that's getting the job done, hard driving, mission accomplishment. On the other hand is taking care of people, that relationship-oriented behaviors. So what we really want are people that are high drive and good at taking care of people, but that's a tall order, not everybody does that. Many of us tend to value one side or the other.  Highly effective, hard driving organization, but broken people left in the wake. On the other hand, if all you have is relationship behavior without any focus on getting the job done, that's a country club, right? Where everybody's concerned about everybody's feelings, but the work doesn't get done. Both of those are unacceptable. The second element is an interpersonal style that drives down organizational climate. So if you have those two things, we probably have a toxic leadership problem. And notice that the key element of the definition is impact on the organization. Climate is driven down.  Can you see how that would have a negative impact on climate as well? See, so they're both bad in that case. Why? Because they have a negative impact on the organizational climate. Now the third element, a conviction by the subordinates that the leader's motivated by self-interest that is getting ahead at their expense, that makes it worse or better. Better because remember I mentioned Newcombe before? Newcombe was a human blowtorch. He was a very difficult person to work for. He had one attitude, it was bad, and he had one volume and it was high. Okay, that was just that kind of human being. But all of us who worked for him and around him knew that he was completely selfless. There was no self-aggrandizing behavior at all. He wasn't trying to get ahead at anybody's expense. He was simply trying to get the job done in a large complex organization that was lumbering and lethargic. So he acted like Tyrannosaurus Rex because he felt he had to in order to have an impact. Now none of us liked it. None of us would volunteer to go to work for him again, but we didn't hate him because we understood what it was he was trying to do. But if people perceive that you're getting ahead at their expense, that you're just working for your next fitness report and your next duty station, they tend to resent it. And that tends to magnify the problem and make it worse. All right, how do you know if you're working for one of these? I try to avoid using profanity in my presentations because it represents the lack of vocabulary and that's a problem academics should not have. But I was in the military for 27 years and I do understand the baser notes of the human vocabulary. Robert Sutton wrote a really good book called The No Asshole Rule. He's from Stanford, pretty prestigious university, so he can use the word, I'm gonna use the word. Test one, after talking to the alleged asshole, does the target feel humiliated, de-energized? I did not pay him to use that word, but it's a good word, fits in with the presentation, or belittled by the person. Does the target feel worse after the exchange? And secondly, two-part test. Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than more powerful? A key characteristic of toxic leaders. They kiss up and they kick down, which explains perhaps why they tend to be perpetuated in the organization. They look good to their bosses. They look good to the boss, looks down and says, wow, you know, when George says jump, everybody jumps. When George says he's gonna do something, by God, that thing gets done, I like George. Of course, you don't look to see that they gotta put bars on the windows to keep the subordinates from jumping out, right? Because their perspective is completely different. One of my favorite Beatle Bailey cartoons, the men are having a going away party, sorry, because Sarge is going to an advanced course, wins the party as soon as he goes away. I've been to those parties, I've organized those parties, where the celebration is not what we accomplish together, but the fact that there is light at the end of the tunnel. This guy knew something about leadership. You don't lead people by hitting them over the head, that's assault, not leadership. And he did some pretty difficult things in his career. Now, this is a very important caveat that I have to throw out there for you. Just because your boss barks at you, just because a person has a loud and demanding personality does not necessarily mean that they're toxic. Remember, three-part definition to toxic. Lack of apparent regard for the welfare of subordinates, negative impact on organizational climate, and a perception makes it worse if the boss is getting ahead at your expense. So just because you're hard driving doesn't necessarily mean that it's a toxicity problem. There's a place for every kind of behavior, we call that situational leadership. So if the building's on fire, I'm yelling and screaming and you're moving and everybody's happy. You know, when the enemy's inside the wire and you're handing out the last rounds of ammunition, it's not the time to call a focus group, right? I don't need to hear your opinion about whether or not this is a good idea. I'm telling, you're moving, okay, we're executing here. There's a place for that. But that same behavior in a different situation is going to be completely inappropriate. Even a broken clock is right two times a day. So if you only have one style, you only have one default approach to leadership, sometimes the situation will match up with that and it'll be the right time, right thing to do. But a lot of the time it won't be. So the responsibility is on the part of the leader to change their style based upon the needs of the followers and the demands of the situation. So sometimes it's a hug and sometimes it's a boot in the keister. But it's the art of leadership in determining which one is appropriate, which one will have the most positive organizational outcome. That's the art of it all. That's why it's not reducible to a formula. All right, so I submit that this is an organizational problem. And one of the issues I have when I'm making a case to the Army, Navy, Air Force Marines and Coast Guard that toxic leadership is a problem that should be addressed in their organization, that it has negative impact and therefore it ought to be dealt with as a developmental matter. I get this response. The higher I go in the organization, the more likely I am to get this response. You know, George, you're right. I hear what you're saying. 15 years ago we had a real toxic leadership problem but it's a whole lot better now. Oh, it's a completely different game now than it was then. And I say, yeah, for you, there's less people to poop on your birthday cake at your level of the organization. Go talk to these guys. Never confuse your place in the organization with a generalized institutional perspective. So it may be really good for you but we know life is different for an 04 than it is for an 01. It is different. And so don't confuse where you sit and what you see as an institution-wide because the folks at the bottom of the organization say it's just as bad as it ever was. So here's some questions that you may wanna worry yourselves with. From an institutional perspective, if it is an organizational problem, are we creating toxic leaders? You saw how many hands went up at the beginning of the presentation. Are we creating these people? What are we doing that is manifesting in this way?  Are we tolerating them too much? And if that's the case, what should we do about that? These are the questions that stewards of the profession will worry themselves about and think about. I have a few ideas just to get us started and thinking about some solutions. One of them is to name the problem. So we've done that. We're doing the work right here, right? So we know that if there's this thing, we're gonna call it toxic leadership. We've created a construct and that gives us a vocabulary to talk about it because who here wants that badge? Nobody wants to be rated as the toxic leader, right? It's not something we aspire to. That's behavior inducing in itself. That may be the start of developing some culture around this idea. So name it, talk about it. And in our literature, in our documents, let's not be so focused on the positive aspect of it. Let's at least leave ourselves open to the possibility that people in positions of authority may engage in behavior that is not in the finest traditions of leadership. Just because you have the position doesn't mean you're a leader. And I know some people don't like that idea. Right, man? I am the whatever, therefore I am a leader. No, you're not. You have a position. Your leadership is ratified in the hearts and the minds of those who follow or those who choose not to follow. You've seen some of the other ones up there.   I don't care how brilliant you are. I don't care how well you drive a ship. I don't care how well you drive a plane.  And I had this problem, I had to do a search, a faculty search, and I had some faculty members that argued with me about this. They said, no, George, wait a minute. This is an academic institution. Don't we want to have people here who do great research, who get grants, who do wonderful academic things, they're brilliant. But so what if they're a little quirky? Don't we want to have a place for them?  No, tenure is for life.  I'm gonna have to put up with them for the next 15, 20 years.  Of course not. No, I vote no. And the rest of the committee kind of saw it the same way that I did. But there's certainly a counter argument there to be made. And if you're thinking critically, I hope you're thinking about that argument right now. How about 360 degree feedback? I'd like 360 degree feedback. It could be done well. It could be done poorly. What some military organizations have done in recent years, however, is not good practice. What they have done is put all of these instruments at the disposal of people and you're expected to go online, complete the surveys, evaluate yourself, have other people evaluate you. And then given the data, the assumption is that you will make behavior change just by being exposed to the data. Wrong. That's not how people change. Change is difficult.  So simply giving them the data that points to their flaws, here's what a toxic leader will do. They will discount the opinions of subordinates. Oh, they don't understand what I'm up against. They don't understand this thing and they become dismissed. Toxic leaders are very skilled at dismissing subordinate feedback. So it is a very little impact. What is effective? Here's the hopeful part. Toxic leaders are influenceable from the top down. So if a supervisor looks them in the eye and says this behavior will be unsuccessful, your career is about to terminate if you don't change your behavior, guess what? They will. They will change, at least for the short term. You won't change their personality, but I don't care about personalities. I care about behavior and behavior is influenceable from above. This is one where you have to attack the problem from the top down. And by that I mean a toxic chief petty officer is a problem. A toxic admiral is a tragedy because of the wake that is cast behind them, because of the example that they represent to the organization. So when you promote a toxic leader to a very senior position, you're basically telling the rest of the organization this is what success looks like. And there are more than enough to look at that example and say I know what I gotta do. And that transmits the problem. That's part of the problem, not part of the solution. All right, now it's 916. I promised myself that at 915 we would go to questions and answers and have a little dialogue. But before I do that, this is the kind of bottom line. What kind of leadership do the people in your formations on your ships and planes and units deserve? And what is expected of them, what is expected of you as leaders by the American public? Now I'm a father and a taxpayer, a former member of the profession. I still use the word we all the time. I hope you'll forgive me for that. It's a hard habit to get out of. But nonetheless, I care about the profession. This additional weight that I put on in this facial hair, that's all part of my disguise to infiltrate the system of higher education. Underneath all of this beats the heart of a soldier still to this day. I want you to understand that up front. But what kind of leadership do they deserve? Well, as parents, we know that we give you our sons and daughters. And we also know that there is no guarantee that you can assure their safety. We go into that with eyes wide open. But we do demand that they be treated with dignity and respect. I don't think that's particularly negotiable. And also that is part of the fundamental underlying values of your service. No matter which branch that you're uniform that you typically wear. Fundamental values include respect and dignity. So that's my pitch. Now what I want to hear now are some questions. So let's have


Is it safe to drink coffee every day? I've found an article titled, 10 Reasons Why You Might Want to Quit Coffee. The caffeine in coffee increases catecholamines, your stress hormones. The stress response elicits cortisol and increases insulin. Insulin increases inflammation and this makes you feel lousy. Well, that's funny. It turns out that coffee drinkers around the world have some of the longest health spans have the longest brain health, best brain health and that's because of the polyphenol content. Now, catecholamines are actually pretty doggone good for you. As a heart surgeon I know that if I need to get the most out of my heart function in a patient with lousy heart, I will actually give them intravenous forms of catecholamines. So the idea that catecholamines are bad for you and particularly for your heart just doesn't fly in the way of how catecholamines work. By the way, cortisol does not increase weight gain. I follow cortisol levels in all my patients and believe it or not cortisol levels do not correlate with weight gain another myth. Number two, habituation to caffeine decreases insulin sensitivity, making it difficult for your cells to respond appropriately to blood sugar. High blood sugar levels lead to arterial deterioration and increased risk of mortality related to cardiovascular disease. High blood sugar levels do lead to arterial deterioration and that's something I address in my new book. It turns out that blood sugar elevation actually damages the protective lining that guard all of your blood vessels from damage and it's the blood sugar that is the problem. But not so fast. You can blunt the effect of any elevation of blood sugar by adding a sweetener called allylose to your coffee or do like the Viennese do and add cinnamon to your coffee. That'll completely block that blood sugar elevation and you can keep having your coffee. Number three, unfiltered coffee has the highest amount of beneficial antioxidants yet also leaks the most diaper genes into your system. These dieterpenes have been linked to higher levels of triglycerides, LDL and VLDL levels.  Is that a bad thing? It turns out it has no relationship with heart disease whatsoever. One of the great myths of heart disease is that LDL contributes to the development of heart disease. What's important is whether that LDL is activated, whether it's rusty or rancid or oxidized. And the more polyphenols you have in your system including from coffee the less your LDL oxidizes. So we're missing the boat. We don't need to focus on LDL. We need to focus on not oxidizing your LDL and that's exactly what coffee consumption does. Number four. The helpful chlorogenic acids that may delay glucose absorption in the intestine have also been shown to increase homocysteine levels, an indicator for increased risk of cardiovascular disease which tends to be elevated in diabetics. Well, I don't agree with that either. Number one, chlorogenic acids cause sources of mitochondrial uncoupling. And the more we uncouple our mitochondria the less chance we have of diabetes. Moreover, homocysteine is primarily a problem with changing homocysteine into methionine and that's dependent on methylfolate and methyl donors like methyl B12 or with SAME or trimethylglycine and not with your coffee consumption. If this was a problem then habitual coffee drinkers would have the worst cardiovascular disease and the worst brain health and the exact opposite is true. Number five. The acidity of coffee is associated with digestive discomfort, indigestion, heartburn, GERD and dysbiosis in balances of the gut flora. Well, sorry, study after study shows that coffee consumption improves dysbiosis because it's a rich polyphenol substance that is an impressive prebiotic for good gut bacteria. Now, yes, the caffeine in coffee can lower esophageal sphincter pressure.  Caffeine in certain people can lower that resistance and make that kind of spring open. That's why having coffee after dinner in my humble opinion is one of the dumbest things you can do because that will lower your resting esophageal sphincter pressure and cause reflux. Number six. Addiction is an issue with coffee drinkers and makes it really difficult to rely on the body's natural source of energy.  You can get habituated to coffee, particularly the caffeine in coffee. That's why it's important to watch your coffee consumption. But here's the good news. Studies show that people who drink five cups of coffee a day have better cardiovascular health, better brain health than people who drink less than that or people who drink none at all. Choose your poisons. Seven. Associative addictions trend with coffee. Who doesn't immediately think of warm frothy sweet cream and sugar when they picture coffee? I don't. Surely the business of coffee has inspired a culture addicted to the sugary fatty taste of what has become more of a meal than a drink. That morning latte is the epitome of food lacking nutrition density yet packing energy. The problem is we as a society run from bitter taste. And big food knows that to cover the bitterness they put in sugar and they put in milk products. The problem with adding sugar is sugar. The problem with adding milk is that any of these milk products whether it be half and half, or it be 2%, these milk products bind the polyphenols in coffee. So it negates any possible benefit.  Number eight. Five HIA and organic acid and component of the neurotransmitter serotonin, the happy chemical, seen in the brain tends to be elevated in coffee drinkers, which means they may be at risk for lower levels of serotonin synthesis in the brain. Serotonin is necessary for normal sleep, bowel function, mood and energy levels. It is a vicious cycle as caffeine can disrupt sleep and promote anxiety and depression. We all know someone who tends to be tired, wired and over caffeinated. That's partially true because primarily coffee drinkers are probably not drinking coffee like it's supposed to be made. And you can't make these associations. Remember association does not mean causation. For instance, we've known for years that skinny people had a higher incidence of cancer. But it was because most skinny people were smokers and it was actually the smoking that was associated with cancer not being skinny. In addition, we didn't know the effect of the microbiome on our health outcomes and we didn't know that most of our serotonin comes from manufacture by our microbiome. And again, your microbiome needs the polyphenols in coffee to get the products like serotonin to your brain. Number nine, elevated urinary excretion of important minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium have been noted in coffee drinkers and imbalance in your electrolyte status can lead to serious systemic complications. How come all the Italians aren't dead? How come all the Greeks aren't dead? How come all the Turks aren't dead?  Look, we as a country have profound electrolyte disturbances because we've been told to have low salt in all of our diet and our soils are depleted in all of these trace minerals. So please get your trace minerals from food. Don't be afraid of the salt shaker and have your coffee. Last but not least, number ten, constituents in coffee can interfere with normal drug metabolism and detoxification in liver, making it difficult to regulate the normal detoxification process in the liver. Another issue to be aware of with coffee intake is how certain medications such as levothyroxin, which is a thyroid medication, as well as tricyclic antidepressants are poorly absorbed, making symptoms curiously work for patients. Well, first of all, I give plenty of thyroid medications and no, we do not give medications with any food or any liquid except for water for at least 15 minutes. Same way, antidepressants, it turns out we now know that antidepressants primarily work by altering the gut microbiome favorably. And if you want to alter the gut microbiome favorably, there's no better way than with the polyphenols in coffee, provided you're not putting the milk, sugar, and cream in it like most people do. I think you're going to love this one.


Okay, welcome everyone to this CUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here to talk about the state of MarTech and AI. We're here with the co-founder and head of AI for BlueShift, Menya Malaya. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. Thank you John, thank you for having me. Excited to chat with you. BlueShift is a company you've co-founded with a couple of other co-founders and you guys have a stellar pedigree going in data AI back before it was fashionable in the old days. Web 1.0, if you want to call it that. So, you know, we know what you guys have been doing in your careers. Now you got a company on the cutting edge solving problems for customers as they transition from this new way of doing things where users have data and power and control, customers are trying to be more authentic, you got walled gardens emerging everywhere but we're supposed to be away from walled gardens so there's a whole set of new patterns, new expectations and new behaviors. So all of this is challenging but yet it's an opportunity. So I want to get into it. What is your vision and what's your view on the mark tech today in AI and how do you guys fit into that story? Yeah, great question John. We're still in the very early innings of where every digital experience is informed both, you know, creatively from the marketing side of the organization as well as the AI doing the heavy lifting under the hood to be able to create those experiences at scale. And I think today every digital customer and every user out there are leaving a trail of very rich, very frequent interaction data with their brands and organizations that they interact with. You know, if you look at each of us, you know, many, many moments and hours of our digital lives are with these interactions that we do on screens and devices and that leaves a rich trail of data. And brands that are winning, brands that we want to interact with more have user privacy and user safety at the center of it. And then they build that authentic connection from there on. And, you know, just like when, you know we log into our favorite streaming shows or streaming applications, we want to see things that are relevant to us. They in some sense knowing, you know kind of intimately our preferences or changing tastes and how does a brand or organization react to that but still make room for that authentic connection? It's an awesome opportunity and it's a lot of challenges and it's just starting. I totally agree. Let me ask you a question, Manny, if you don't mind how did you guys come up with BlueShift? I know you guys have been in this game before it was fashionable so to speak with solving web 1.0, 2.0 problems and then Walmart labs, everyone knows the history of Walmart and how fast they were with inventory and how they use data. You have that kind of trajectory. When you saw this opportunity, was it like the team was saying, wow, look at this, it's right in our wheelhouse or how did you guys get here and then how did it all come together? Yeah, thanks for, you know, offering me an opportunity to share our personal journey. You know, I think prior to starting BlueShift with my co-founders who I've worked with for almost the past 20 years of my life, we were at a company called Cosmix which was a Silicon Valley early AI pioneer. We were doing semantic search and in 2011, Walmart started their Silicon Valley Innovation Hub, Walmart Labs with the acquisition of Cosmix and we went into Walmart Labs and until then they were already an e-commerce leader. They had been practicing e-commerce for a better part of 12 years prior to that but they're certainly behind in compared to their peers, right? And the peers to be named. But they saw this lack of, what it is that they were doing so well in brick-and-mortar that they're not able to fully get there on the digital side. And, you know, this was almost a decade ago and when they brought in our team with a lot of AI and data systems at scale building things at the cutting edge, you know, we went into it a little bit naively thinking, you know, hey, we're gonna solve this problem for Walmart scale in three months. But it took us three years to build those systems of engagement despite Walmart having an enormous amount of resources being the number one retailer in the world and the data and the resources at their disposal. We had to rethink a lot of assumptions and the trends that were converging were, you know, users for interacting with them across multiple formats and channels and, you know, both offline and online, the velocity and complexity of the data was increasing. All the marketing and merchandising teams that even a millisecond delay for me is unconscionable. And how do you get fresh data and activated at the moment of experience without delay is a significant challenge at scale. And that's what we solve for our organizations. It really is the data problem, it's the scale problem, it's all that. And then having the software to have that AI predictive and, you know, it's omnichannel when you think about it in that retail and that brick and mortar term used for physical space and digital converging. And we saw the pandemic pull forward this same dynamic where events and group behaviors and just interactions were all converging. So this line between physical and digital is now blurred, completely blended. The line between customer experience and marketing has been erased. And you guys are the center of this. What does it mean for the customer? Because the customers out there, your customers or potential customers, they got problems of self. They're going all digital, cloud native applications, the digital transformation. This is the new normal and some are on it, are starting it, some are way behind. What are they, what's the situation with the customers? Yeah, that's certainly the maturity of, you know, the each brand and organization along that, you know, both transformation and from transformation to actually thriving in that ecosystem and how do we actually win, you know, share of mind and then share of like that market that they're looking to does take a while. And many are, you know, kind of midway through their journey. I think there was initially, there is a lot of, you know, push towards, let's collect all the data that we can, but then, you know, how does the actually data becomes something useful that changes experience for Monium versus John is really that critical moment. And that moment is when, you know, a lot of things come into place. And if I look at like the broader landscape, there are certainly lines of hours, like discovery, like audacity and lending tree and jumper, car pods across all these industries who would have thought like, you know, all these industries who you would not think of actually as solving a digital engagement problem are now saying that's the key to our success and outlook. Yeah, it's absolutely the number one problem. This is the number one opportunity for all businesses, not just verticals here and there, all verticals.  You know, what are the challenges that they face? You're in the middle of it, you're solving these problems. What are their challenges that they face and how do you guys solve them? Absolutely. So I'll talk through two examples, you know, one from a finance industry, one from online learning.  They offer tens of millions of customers, finance products that span from home loans, students loans, order loans, credits, all of that and let these people come into their website and collect information that is relevant to the loan that they're considering, but engage them in a way for the next period of time. So if you typically think about engagement, it's not just a one interaction. Usually that follows a series of steps an organization has to take to be able to explain all their offerings in a way that is digestible and relevant and personalized to each of those millions of customers and actually have them through the funnel and measure it and report on it and make sure that that is the most relevant to them. So in a finance setting that is about consuming credit products, consuming loan products, consuming, you know, reporting products in an online context, I'll give you an example of one of our customers, you're asking, imagine you are a marketing team of two people and you're in challenge with how do you engage 20 million students? You're not going to write 20 million communications that are different for each of those students, certainly. I think you need a system to say what did actually all these students come for? How do I learn what they want at this moment in time? What do they want next? If they actually finish something they started two months ago, would they be eligible for the right course? Maybe today we are talking about self-driving cars. That's the course that I should put in front of them and that's only a small segment of the students. But someone else may be on the media and the production side. How do I personalize their experience so that every single step of the way for that student is, you know, created and delivered at scale and that's kind of the problem that we solve for our brands, which is they have these millions of touch points that they have. How do they bring all their data very fresh and activated at the moment of action? So you guys are creating the 10X marketer.  You guys are bringing a lot of heavy lifting to short staffs or folks that don't have a data science team or data engineering team. You're kind of bringing that 10X marketing capability. Absolutely. I think that's a great way to put it.  And now you're interested with this really massive challenge and how do you actually get there? And it's that 10X marketer who are embracing these technologies to get there. Well, I'm looking forward to challenging that because I imagine you get a lot of skeptics out there. I don't believe you, it sounds too good to be true. And I want to get to that in the next segment, but I want to ask you about the state of Martek and AI, specifically, Martek traditionally has been on a web 2.0 standards, DNS, URLs. It's a naming system of the internet, it's the internet infrastructure. So what needs to change to make that scale higher? Is there any new abstraction or any kind of opportunities for doing things and just managing tokens that need to be translated? It's hard to do cross talk. I mean, there's a lot of problems with web 2.0 legacy that kind of holds back the promise of high availability of data, privacy, AI, more machine learning, more exposure of data. Can you share your vision on this next layer? Yeah, I think there's a lot of excitement about what web three would bring us there in the very earnings of that possibility. But the challenge of, you know, data that leads to authentic experience still remains the same, whichever metaverse we might actually interact with the brand name. Like, you know, if I go to a Nike store, in the metaverse, I still need to understand what that customer really prefers and keep up with that customer as they change their preferences. And AI is the key to be able to help a marketer, I call it the, you know, our own brew, call it like IPA, you know, which is ingest all possible data, even from metaverse, you know, the protocols might change, the formats might change, but then you have to not only have a sense of what happened in the past, I think there are more than enough tools to know what happened. There are only emerging tools to tell you what might happen. How do I predict? So ingest, predict, and the next step is activate. Actually you have to do something with it. How do I activate that experience for you, whether it's web three or web two changes? And that IPA, kind of our own brew of AI marketing that we're taking to market. And that's an enablement piece. What's so, how does this relate to the customer's data? You guys are storing all the data, are they coming in? Is there a huge data lake involved? Can I bring in third party data? Does it have to be all be first party? How is that platform level enabling this new form of customer engagement? Absolutely. There's a lot of heavy lifting that the data systems that one has to bring to bear upon the problem. Data systems ranging from distributed search, distributed indexing, low latency systems, data lakes that are built for high velocity AI, machine learning, training model inference, that validation pipeline. And we certainly leverage a lot of data lake systems out there, including many of the components that are provided by our preferred partner AWS and open source tools. And these data systems are certainly very complex to manage. And for an organization that with a five to 10 people team of marketers, they're usually short staffed on the amount of attention that they get from the rest of the organization. And what we have made is that you can ingest a lot more raw data. We do the heavy lifting for both data management, identity resolution, segmentation, audience building, predictions, recommendations, and then give you also the delivery piece, which is, can I actually send you something? Can I put something in front of the user and measure it and report on it and tell you that this is the ROI? How do, if all this would be for nothing, if actually you go through all this and there's no real ROI and we have kind of our own forester did a total economic impact study with us and they found 781% ROI for implementing nutrition. And it's a tremendous amount of ROI you get once you are able to reorient your organizations towards that.   It's basically a data plane, essentially for data. And you guys have done that, been there, done that. But now that's in play, you guys have this. You got all this semantic search built in into the system, all this data ingestion, it's a full platform. And so I need to ask you how you see this vectoring into the future state of customer engagement. Where do you see this intersecting with the organizations you're trying to bring this to? Are they putting more investment in? Are they pulling back? Where are they and where are you guys relative to this technology? And first of all, let's get your reaction to the semantic layer first. Right, right. It's fantastic. As a technologist, I love kind of the ontology and semantic differences. You know, how data planes, data meshes, data fabrics are put together. And I saw this kind of dichotomy between a CIO org and a CMO org, right? The CIO says like, I have the best data plane, the data mesh, data fabric. And the CMO says like, but I'm actually trying to accomplish something for this campaign. And they're like, oh, that doesn't actually connect the both of pieces. I think the CMO org suddenly will need purpose built applications on top of the data fabric, on top of the data lakes, on top of the data meshes to be able to help marketing teams both technical and semi-technical to be able to accomplish that. Yeah, and the new personas, they want turnkey, they want to have it self-service. Again, the 10x marketer is someone with a small step that can do the staff of 100 people, right? So this is where it's going. I mean, this is the new normal. So we call them AI marketers. And I think it's like you're calling it 10x marketer.  I think like guys, once these tools are available, then we'll have AI marketers out in the market. Well, Menya, I'd love to do a full, like one hour podcast with you. You can go for a long time with these topics, given what you guys are working on, how relevant it is, how cool it is right now, and with what you guys have as a team and solution. I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE to chat. For the last minute we have here, give a quick plug for the company. What you guys are up to, size, funding, revenues, what you're looking for, what should people pay attention to? Give the plug.  We have raised $65 million to date to build out our vision. And over the last eight years of our funding, we have served hundreds of customers and continuing to take on more. I think our hope is that over time, the next 10,000 organizations see this as a very much an approachable problem to solve for themselves, which I think is where we are. AI marketing is real, doable, proven, ROI. Can we get the next 10,000 customers to embrace that? You know, as we always used to say in the kind of web business and search, it's the contextual and the behavioral. You had to bring them together here. You got all that technology for the sites and applications for the behavior and converting that contextually into value. Really compelling solution. Thanks for sharing your insight. Yeah, thank you John, really appreciate it. Okay, this is CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto. Thanks for watching.


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Photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film base coated on one side with a gel of emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystal. The sizes and other characteristics of the crystal determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film. The emulsion will gradually darken if left exposed to light, but the process is to slow and incomplete to be of any practical use. Instead, a very short exposure to the image formed by a camera lens is used to produce only a very slight chemical change, proportional to the amount of light absorbed by each crystal. This creates an invisible latent image in the emulsion, which can be chemically developed into a visible photograph. In addition to visible light, all films are sensitive to ultraviolet, x-rays and high-energy particles. Unmodified silver halide crystals are sensitive only to the blue part of the visible spectrum, producing unnatural-looking renditions of some colored subjects. This problem was resolved with the discovery that certain dyes, called sensitizing dyes, when adsorbed onto the silver halide crystals made them respond to other colors as well. First orthochromatic sensitive to blue and green and finally panchromatic sensitive to all visible colors films were developed. Panchromatic film renders all colors in shades of gray approximately matching their subjective brightness. By similar techniques, special-purpose films can be made sensitive to the infrared IR region of the spectrum. In black and white photographic film, there is usually one layer of silver halide crystals. When the exposed silver halide grains are developed, the silver halide crystals are converted to metallic silver, which blocks light and appears as the black part of the film negative. Color film has at least three sensitive layers, incorporating different combinations of sensitizing dyes. Typically the blue sensitive layer is on top, followed by a yellow filtered layer to stop any remaining blue light from affecting the layers below. Next comes the green and blue sensitive layer, and a red and blue sensitive layer, which record the green and red images respectively.  But in the color film, the byproducts of the development reactions simultaneously combined with chemicals known as color cutlers that are included either in the film itself or in the developer solution to form colored dyes. Because the byproducts are created in direct proportion to the amount of exposure and development, the dye clouds forms are also in proportion to the exposure and development. Following the development, the silver is converted back to silver halide crystal in the bleach step. It is removed from the film during the process of fixing the image on the film with a solution of ammonium phylosulfate or sodium phylosulfate hypofixor. Fixing leaves behind only the formed colored eyes, which combine to make up the colored visible image. Later color films, like Coca Cola II, have as many as 12 emulsion layers, with upwards of 20 different chemicals in each layer.