Alhamdulillah, this amazing day today, Alhamdulillah, Allah Ta'ala has allowed us to gather again on the day of Jumu'ah, the day of the Eid for the Muslims, and in addition to that, Allah has joined between the day of Friday and the day of Arafa, Alhamdulillah, which the Prophet ﷺ said about the day of Arafa, that Al-Hajju Arafa. So, if we could have only been in the sacred precinct yesterday for only 10 minutes, that would have been sufficient for us to have performed our Hajj this year. So, Alhamdulillah, Arafa has amazing blessings, which I'm sure we all have know of. But one of the interesting things about Arafa is that it's linguistically related to the word ma'rifah, which is that you have, it could mean perception, or it could mean knowledge, or it could mean really intimate knowledge. And one of the important things about this day is that it reminds us of how significant ma'rifah to Allah is, that the gnosis or the knowledge of Allah Ta'ala is. And it could have, the phrase could have been phrased as ilmullah, the knowledge of God. But rather, it's phrased as ma'rifah to Allah, because ma'rifah is a higher level of knowledge. It encompasses just ilm. It's a bit more than that. It's a bit more experiential than that. And the people who have ma'rifah, who are termed as the Arafeen, the people with gnosis or with this intimate knowledge of God, they are quite few in humanity because Allah Ta'ala tries to veil them. But nevertheless, we can still seek them out. But there are very amazing individuals in that. They have immense and complete trust in their Lord at every single moment of their lives. And to this effect, one of the early sages of this ummah said that the Arafeen are like earth and they're like clouds and they're like rain. They're like earth in the sense that they allow the righteous people to walk on top of them and also the worst of the worst people to walk on top of them. They're like the clouds in that they cover everybody, right? They cover their mistakes. They don't sort of differentiate. They treat everybody as a creation of God, right? That's one of the qualities of the Gnostics. And then they're like rain because they give rain to those that love it and to those that don't love it. So just amazing individuals Arafeen. And these are exactly the people that we are told to be like because when Sina Ibn Abbas, when he was asked to give Tafsir of the ayah, He would say this means we didn't create human beings or jinn except to worship me, right? Allah Ta'ala says. Ibn Abbas says who's been termed as the translator of the Quran, he said that meant you haven't been created except to know me, right? To have ma'rifah of me, right? So ma'rifah. It's one of the sort of the hallmarks of this deen that no other deen has sort of an understanding of this type of concept is that the ma'rifah of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, alhamdulillah. One of the things about that we can also glean from the uduhiyyah that we are tasked to carry out tomorrow is that when we look back historically what happened at this time and sort of where the sunnah of uduhiyyah comes from, the relationship between Sina Ibrahim and his son and how Sina Ibrahim had a dream that I've been commanded to sacrifice my son. And he tells his son this and his son says, well then I suppose you should carry out what you are being commanded to do, to carry out from your Lord, alhamdulillah. And then they go ahead and they do it and the Quran says that when the son was laid on his face then Allah told him that both of you have passed the test, you've both passed the test of obedience to me, right? And that even though, I mean who in their right mind does that, that's not something normal to do. But yet both of those in the father and son they didn't renege, they didn't stutter in carrying out Allah's command. They said, Samirana wa Ata'ana, that's the response of the Arafeen when they speak back to Allah when Allah tells them, Samirana wa Ata'ana. And then so Allah tells them that you've passed the test and that then the son was replaced with a lamb or a sheep. So this is one of the things that we can glean is that sacrifice is one of the important things of this day, right? Sacrificing. What are we willing to sacrifice for this deen? And have we sacrificed anything? One of the scholars said that when you sacrifice something of yourself for God's sake, God will replace it with something better, right? God will replace it with something better. So sacrificing in the interesting words, in the English of sacrifice, it comes from to make sacred. That's the root meaning of the word, it means to make something sacred. And it's a beautiful word, it's an amazing meaning. And I was once in a class titled Philosophy of Islam and the instructor was an atheist. So we were talking about the story of Abraham, and he actually said that the Qur'an says that he was asked to sacrifice his son. But then he said, well really, it's just you're asking them to kill it. And this is the sort of idea, the sort of mentality that when you don't have, when nothing really exists, when you don't have a certain type of perception to understand reality with, then this is the type of reductionist idea that you come with and you see sacred things with that type of idea, where murder and sacrifice are equivalent now. So that's nowhere near is that the case, right? But rather we believe in meaning, right? We believe there's meaning in the world and there's meanings in our lives. And that there's a reason, there's a purpose for our lives. And the purpose was, We haven't been created except for worshiping or what that really means is for having intimate knowledge of Allah SWT. So it's a blessing day, right? It's a blessed day, it's an amazing day. It's a day where the Prophet ﷺ said that Dua'z are accepted on this day. And so it's, insha'Allah, we are engaging in that to any needs that we have, any needs that any of our brothers or sisters have, any people that in the community that they have. We make Dua' for people, because we know that the angels, they say amin for us when we make Dua' for somebody else. So we get to take care of ourselves and other people when we make Dua' right? So Dua' is part of generosity when you make Dua' for somebody else. These are the things that we still have some time until Maghrib comes in. So these are the things to be engaged in. And it is to this effect that if we are unable to, right? If we're unable to, the Prophet ﷺ said that that actions are judged by their intentions, and then that every person has what they intended. He didn't say every person has what they did. وإنما لكل مريئن ما عميلة. He didn't say عميلة. He said ما ناوى. Whatever they intend. And it's also narrated that the Prophet ﷺ said that نية المؤمن خير من عمله. Right? The intention of the believer is better than his actions. And so if we are in any way, unable to carry out the task that we would like to carry out, we have some people today who, some of us, we weren't able to fast today. But we do have intention to fast, but for whatever reason we weren't able to fast. That's, you know, it's اجزأوه, right? It's received, it's done. So Allah تعالى looks at the intentions, not at the actions. Alhamdulillah. So عرفة. It's a day of related to linguistically معريفة of knowledge of Allah ﷺ. So let's, inshallah, we open ourselves up to allow the mercies and the معريفة of Allah ﷺ to take place and take root in our hearts, inshallah. And from that we give further meaning to our lives. Right? Because that's really the point of all of this, is to give further meaning to our lives. Imam is usually translated as a word that means belief, right? Imam. There are three statements that the Prophet ﷺ made that are quite popular in regards to Imam. And Imam is really the thing that sort of binds us all together, is that we have a certain common level of belief. We have common things that we believe in, and then we have varying levels of iman, right? There's tafawud amongst creation and iman. And then we have means of increasing our iman. So for instance taqwa increases our iman, always being vigilant of meeting Allah ﷺ's commands upon us, what he's told us to do, meeting those, and then staying away from the things that he told us to stay away from. So iman increases with good actions, right? The iman increases with better taqwa, iman increases. Now the Prophet ﷺ, in one way they're scary statements because he sort of pulls our card where he takes our membership card, the membership of Islam, in a sense.  In fact, he said that in Arabic it's لا يؤمن أحدكم, none of you believe, right? That's what it translates, that's what it, right? So that's a scary statement when, and then after that really comes the conditions of, well what you can do to, or what are some signs that you know you have iman. So then the Prophet ﷺ, so one of the statements that the Prophet ﷺ made is that, لا يؤمن أحدكم حتى يحب ليخيه ما يحبني نفسه. None of you truly believe until you love for your brothers in humanity what you love for yourself, right? So brothers right here, it doesn't refer to just us in here in this building right now, but rather all of the most commentators of this hadith have said that, brother in this statement here refers to your brother in humanity, right? Bani Adam, right? Bani Adam, because at the essence of Bani Adam is a soul and that soul on, at some time in history was asked, along with our souls, every soul, أَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ قَالُوا بَلَا شَهِدْنَا Right? That our Lord Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala asked all the souls, am I not your Lord? And everybody's replied, yes, we bear witness to this, right? It is true. You are our Lord. And it's to that effect that the pros and cons wants us to want good for other people. Is that we need to have, right? It's to have, and so then that negates having other things for other people, right? With the opposite of that. You can't want good for somebody if you hate them. You can't want good for somebody if you envy them. In fact, that's the definition of envy. You want them to lose their good. Or you can't, it doesn't work out like that. And you can't want good for somebody if you don't know them. If you don't know somebody, why would you want good for them? So that doesn't make so much sense. So this is part of allowing us to have conviviality in our everyday lives with the people that we come across. Is to not have hatred and that to have love for your brother and to love good for them. That you want good is that it's human nature to fall into the pitfalls of you make fun of somebody when something unfortunate occurs to them or we laugh at people's unfortunate circumstances. But in reality, if the pros and cons was alive, he would not have done that. He didn't laugh at the Quraish for the things they did. He was made fun of the Quraish, made fun of the pros and cons. But the pros and cons didn't, he didn't return it back. He didn't return the negativity back towards them, so that's one thing. That bears upon our Iman. La yu'minu ahadukum until you do that. None of you, your Iman is incomplete until that is satisfied, until that condition is satisfied. The second popular hadith that the Apostle of Samsa said, La yu'minu ahadukum is when the Apostle of Samsa said, La yu'minu ahadukum hatta yakuna hawahu taba'an lima jitubih.  And so what did the Apostle of Samsa come with? He came with the sacred law, right, the shari'a. And there's people, and I'm talking about Muslims. There's Muslims that have issues with the shari'a. They pick faults, or they attempt at least, pick faults at the points, minute points in the shari'a where it doesn't sit well with them. Well, according to the hadith, as Khun Surah Paul said, that's deficiency in Imam. If there's anything that in the shari'a that is not in line with what you like to do, it's a deficiency in Imam. Because the shari'a, it is in line with the rationality that we have. It is in line with rationality. And so anything opposite of that is a sign of deficiency of Imam. And one of the examples of that is when Ibrahim A.S., him and his son, again, right, is that when the Amr came, the command came, you got to do this, that was it. There's no stuttering, there's no half-stepping. You have to take care of the command. And then when you do that, and then what happened? He didn't even fulfill the action, and yet still, he was rewarded by having it substituted. The son was substituted for an animal. And then the last and final hadith where the, really the purpose of Ma'arifah, or one of the fruits of Ma'arifah, where it leads you is that when the Prophet S.A.W. said, لا يؤمن أحدكم حتى أكون أحب إليه من والده والناس يأجمعين. None of you believe until I am more beloved to you than your parents, your children, and everybody on the planet. And you can add to that things on the planet as well. Because before our time, people didn't love things more than they loved people. But in our time, it's a bit opposite. There are people in our planet now that they love things more than they love individuals. So things are also included in that. So loving the Prophet S.A.W. more than anything. Once there's Ma'arifah of who Allah SWT is, then it necessitates that we understand who the Prophet S.A.W. is. And then when understanding who the Prophet S.A.W. is, there's nothing other than loving him, S.A.W. Right, that's the connection. And that is why Allah SWT's name and the Prophet S.A.W. name are connected until يوم القيامة when we say لا إله إلا الله محمد الرسول الله. Their names are connected and they will always be connected even after يوم القيامة. On the day of judgment, it will be made manifest to everybody that this was real. It's not a joke or a game, it was real. So loving the Prophet S.A.W. That is the fruit of knowledge, right? That's the fruit of realm. And then we have Ma'arifah and then we have حب and then that is it. The Qur'an says, The ones who believe, their love for God is more intense than what other people love. The people that believe, their love for Allah is more intense than the people that love other things of this world. So that is really the point of all this, right? We have عرفة, we have حج, we have يوم الجمعة, right? Which is gathering, جمعة, right? It brings us together and that's what love does, is that love brings things together. Is that we have, we know opposites attract and we know that even at the minute level that protons and electrons are attracting at the minutest of levels. So it's all the way through, it's everywhere. We can't escape it, we can only just acknowledge it and then realize it. And حكذا. الحمد لله إن الله وملاء إنكته يصلون على النبي يا أيها الذين آمنوا صلوا عليه وسلموا تسليموا اللهم صلي على سيدنا محمد صلاة تنجين بها من جميع الأهوال والآفات وتقضي لنا بها جميع الحاجات وتطاهرنا بها من جميع السيئات وترفعنا بها على درجات وتبلغنا بها وتبلغنا بها أقص الخيات من جميع الخيارات في الحياة وبعد الممات. ربنا آتنا ملادونك ورحمة وهيئ لنا من أمرينا رشداء ربنا آتنا في الدنيا حسناتهم وفي آخرات حسناتهم قينا عذاب النّار ربنا لا تزيغ قلوبنا بعد إذ هديتنا وهبلنا ملادونك ورحمة إنك أنت الوهاب اللهم إنا نسألك العفاة والعافية والمعافات الدائمة في الدنيا والدنيا والآخرة اللهم إنا نسألك الهودة والتقا والعافاف والغينا والسعادة في الدارين اللهم أرحم أمة محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم والحمد لله رب عمين سبحانه ربك رب العزاة عمين وصيفون والسلام علي المرسلين والحمد لله رب العالمين وأقب الصلاة


What's going on guys? It's your boy DPJ here today with another Destiny video. In today's Destiny video I'll be showing you guys how you can get this epic new exotic hand cannon, the Ace of Spades. Now if you guys do enjoy the video and it helps you out if you couldn't leave a like at the end that would be absolutely epic and subscribe for daily destiny content. Now the Ace of Spades is a new exotic hand cannon that come with the Taken King and to obtain it isn't very hard at all. Basically all you need to do is rank up your gunsmith to a rank 3. He gives you an exotic quest, this being the reward. Now this weapon and the quest is exclusive to the Hunter so if you want it a Hunter you must be. I tried to transfer it to my titan and it would not allow me. Now I have videos on the Titan and Warlock exotic exclusives coming soon so stay tuned for that. Now the gunsmith rank 3 exotic quest for this Ace of Spades is actually very easy to do. There's two main steps and the first one being get 100 kills while having a primary telemetry active. I did this on the dark beyond mission and it took me about five minutes. The second main step is to dismantle rare or legendary hand cannons. I simply dismantled two old legendaries, I never planned on using again and it took me seconds and that's it. Once this step is done you can head back to the gunsmith and collect your reward. If you don't have any spare hand cannons I'd suggest rounding strikes and try and get them in engram drops. Now the Ace of Spades in my opinion looks absolutely amazing and it has some quite decent perks too. It has third eye where radar remains active or aiming down sights. It has firefly that legendary fake room the perk where precision kills cause the target to explode and it has maverick precision kills move one round from the ammo reserve into the magazine. I'm in love with this thing I really am. Imagine this thing when it's maxed out it will be an absolute machine. Imagine having a group of enemies coming towards you this thing could take them all out and if you are accurate you'd never have to reload absolutely amazing it really is. When I fully max this thing out I'll probably do a proper review on it so stay tuned for that. But guys if this video helped you out if you couldn't leave a like I would appreciate the support. Subscribe for daily destiny and I'll catch you on the next one. Thanks for stopping by as always and peace out until next time. Peace!


Okay, so this first call kev is again going over the basics, but just really touched on the most important things that you'll ever click on because as you come to this as manager, it can be very, very overwhelming.  And then that's what we're going to learn we're going to learn what to do right now on this call, because at the end of it, at the end of the day when it comes to this whole platform.  And so we're going to bookmark those so you can have them up in a folder and always be able to reference them right away you want to be able to get to them right away. And so this is one of them. So let's start here. And also one, one thing to you want to make sure you're always in the right account so that that drop down up there at the top where it says Kirk Mason, that one one two four nine. Is that the account that you're running everything out of. So, there's a person in Los Angeles area she's someone of a Facebook person. And so I didn't really want to create a Facebook profile for myself, but I need to have a business account. Okay, this is something fictitious, but it's tied to my business account which is Kevin my vet. Yeah, for sure. So, so that's the account will work out of that one. And then real quick before we dive into it.  Those ads are off, but what you want to get in the habit of is shading them to gray. They completed whether they ran its course on the budget or whether they ran it ran its course on the on the date, and they're and they completed they're off, but but getting the habit of turning them to gray. So that first one or that third one down sellers in Los Angeles, like on that completed $10 daily. Let's just let me just show you how to do it so turn it a gray right there. So we've got three tabs. So, as we go through and learn more it's always about these three tabs, right the tab that you're in now is campaigns, the middle tab is ad sets, and then the third tab to the right is ads. So as you click on that green button and you go and create an ad, everything is in these tabs. So this campaign tab go ahead and shade that one to gray, that blue one right there go and click that and shade that to great. And then click on the middle tab, shade it to gray over there in the middle tab. Yeah, click on that middle tab right there. And then shade that one to gray. And then let's click on that third tab and shade that to gray so that blue right there that blue dot click that blue dot. Yeah, the blue dot click that one. And then and then click on the third tab to the right ads for one ad set click on that one and shade that to gray as well. That's how you fully turn off an ad.   So now you're trying to figure out okay which ones are really on because they're all blue. You know what I mean. So so again the habit of shading them all gray when they when they're off shade them all to great. And then all you do is just X out of the one selected at the top of the blue on each tab. X out one selected one selected one selected and just and then and then yeah click out that third one to the right that one selected. And then and then just come back to that first campaign tab. So that blue one selected click X off that one to the right, right above. I can't see it because the cat. Oh yeah move that you can move that thing out the way get that way out the way. So now come back to the first tab. And that's just what you want to do later on like come in here and shade all of those on each tab shade them all to great. Because again as you start to run active ads you're going to get confused on which one is really on. Okay, so this is doing quick recap of this so like basically let's let's do this one so you go like this shade to great to click on the middle tab leave the box checked. Click on the middle tab shade that to great. And then click on that first tab and shade that to great to the to the left from the first campaigns to the left. Right there to the left.  And now turn on go to the first tab campaigns the first tab up. Yeah, click right there. And then shade that one to to to great. So you just want to start doing that with with all of them. Okay. I have to go to this one and select this as for one answer. So you'll you'll start with the first one with campaigns, you'll, you'll start on that one, and then you'll go from from left to right. So this fourth one down lead generation for condo long, long down. You'll start here you'll shade that blue to gray. And then you'll go to the middle tab, and then you'll go to the tab to the right. Okay, so all three at the top right. Yes, the tabs yep campaigns ads that's ads but you start with checking that or start with that blue and shade that blue and a gray, the fourth one down. This one. Yeah, so shade that to gray, and then go to the middle tab. And there it is there again shade that to gray, and then go to the third tab and shade that one to gray. I see. Yeah, and then you can just X out one selected one selected one selected yeah from from from right to left now we come back to the left perfect perfect hit that one. And then now click on that first campaigns tab. Because you're in the third tab. So click right there. And then and then you can keep going down. Oh, I see. Okay, perfect. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so so here's what we're going to do we're going to um, and then also whenever you see that blue button in the top right review and publish for you always want to clear that out. So let's take a look at what's what's what's their pending or what's stuck whenever there's an ad that stuck, then then you'll see that that that publish review and publish blue button lit up. So right here it's just telling you you have one ad with errors, items with errors may not be published. So it just gives you a go to check the box to the bottom left try to publish items with errors and then hit the green one. Actually, so it's not it's not letting you yet. So all we got to do is just turn it off we got to just turn it off. I don't know which ad that is but go and click on fix air. Yeah, click on that. And now I'll actually bring you to where. And if anything this is the third tab. So over here to make edits to the ad budget and schedule. Okay, so it's just the calendar, the budget and schedule section of your ad set and change the end date. So, so anytime you have any error, whether whether it's the date whether it's it's the credit card whether it's your targeting whatever you'll just see you'll see it there in the top right. So in this case, if you click on so so our tabs it's all about those tabs right it's all about those tabs, but those sections are also right there in the top. So you got sellers in Los Angeles 90016. And then the second one down you have sellers in Los Angeles. And then the second one down right there where the red triangle is that to the left, up left that that that right that those are attached to the left. Those are tabs right there to the left up there at the top to but to the left to the left left left right there down right there those are three tabs. So, right here we're in the third tab, and the third tab is the ad. So, what it's just telling you is it's telling you that the date so click on the top in the middle sellers in Los Angeles. That's your second tab. So this right here it's saying that the date has already passed like let's scroll down scroll down. Let's go look at the calendar. The date is just a little off right here. So September 1 to September 8. So that's, that's, that's what's what's going on with this one so all we want to do is just delete it we're going to delete it anyways, I mean or just fully turn it off. So, and that's why you have those errors because the dots are still blue.  So we want to make sure that they're gray we want to fully shut them off gray gray gray gray gray all across so let's just exit up here that's fine. Let's exit out of this and then you'll just later on just come back in here and and and turned all those blues to gray. Okay, okay, so exit right there. Okay, perfect. So here's what we're going to do let's start now so it's all about knowing what to click on and where to click on everything so I'm going to have you bookmark the most important pages and as we go into our next calls, we'll go into all of those pages and really really you know deck them all out and put everything we need to put into them but I want you to bookmark them right now because again they'll be the only pages you'll ever need to know of. So let's bookmark this page it starts here and let's create a folder at the top. Can you create a folder at and do you have a bookmarks bar at the top where you can bookmark stuff to bookmark is this right here. Yeah, but what we want to do we want to create a folder. So hit that yeah in fact you can do it there and then let's just go let's go new folder click on click on more click on more right there and see if you can. Yeah, new folder perfect right there. So hit new folder, click on new folder and we're going to name this one ads manager, and we're going to dump a bunch of stuff inside of this folder. So this is your ads manager folder, and you'll always be able to you know, refer back to this for for all of your ads. So as manager FB perfect save. And then what we're going to do is we're going to. Okay, so hit that check or hit that star again. Let's see. Let's make sure it was in there. Perfect. Okay, perfect. So now we're going to name it now we're going to name it and we're going to name this one dashboard. So it's in the right folder. Let's just rename it. So take away the ads manager manager ads at yeah take away all that and just name it dashboard. This is your dashboard. So you'll always be able to get to this real fast and just go to just go to hit done. Okay, perfect. So now what's really really important to man next to bookmark is our billing, but but but also knowing the billing date, knowing when you're building date date is because the last thing you want men is to wake up and Facebook you know slaps your credit card for a fee that you weren't expecting like that's happened to me many times that's why I think it's important because you don't want to be surprised with the with the Facebook Facebook charge. So click on those dots to the left in the top left you see those dots right below the home. Yeah, there you go. Let's go to billing real quick knowing the billing date is very very important and then and then making sure that that credit card that's on file is always good because Facebook ads it's like a click on payment settings to the right Facebook ads is like it's like a damn credit report man it's not in a way where where there's negative marks for anyone to see you know discharges or anything like that click on payment settings in the top right. But but but when you start missing payments or when a credit card fails. Facebook kind of slaps you in a way where they lower your threshold and they like right like right now. I don't know what we could see what your threshold is click on manage. Okay. So your threshold is 75 bucks and you want to keep it there like like for example not knowing a credit card billing date or maybe not having the right credit card on file. And if that credit card fails when that on on your billing date that threshold goes down to 25. And then all that means that you start getting a bill every 25 bucks and if you don't mind that then whatever but but I don't I kind of rather have one bill a month and that's on your December 31 for example. But but if you miss a payment, then that that that threshold drops and you'll start getting a bunch of payment payments every every 25 bucks, which I kind of don't like. So that's that's fine right there 75 bucks leave it at that X out of that and just bookmark this page bookmark this page know that credit card that's on file know your billing date every 31 and just call this one billing. If you ever need to change that card you can do it right there. So let's let's name this one billing. Let me go inside this folder. Yeah, that's the folder as manager FB. So how do I enter the folder. It's already there. It's already there. So all you gotta do is just rename it ads manager just name it billing. Perfect. Okay, cool. Now what we're going to do is we're going to go into go to click done. And then let's click on the dots to the left and let's go into the business settings let's make sure all that stuff is up to date. And this is all the important stuff before we even learn how to run these ads you got it you got to have all this stuff in order so yeah business settings. And let's go in bookmark this page right here as well. So in here, in here is where you can always add yourself to different pages yeah name this one business settings that's fine business settings. And then let's click on, let's click on add accounts right there. Towards the bottom in the middle to the left add accounts, click on add accounts. Okay, so adds account disabled all add accounts owned by this business account are disabled and new ones can't be created. Okay, so hit that, hit that drop down right where it says your name. See how, and this is another thing to as you navigate Facebook. Sometimes they'll throw you a lot of times they'll throw you in a different account. And so you'll always want to come up here to the top hit that drop down and make sure you're in the right account. And by default it just threw you back in the Kevin one when we should be in the Kirk one. You see that. Yeah, but the Kirk one I don't want the Kirk one is fictitious doesn't matter or no no not at all that's where you're running everything out of so let's let's let's stay in there then. So, yeah, so the Kirk one going to hit that drop down hit Kirk. Yeah that's where you're running all your all your ads out of so it's this one that we need a bookmark. So, I thought we was running the ads. Oh, there it is. Okay. Yeah see so Kirk is where we want to be at. And so let's let's go to the folder real quick where's your where's your folder at the bookmarks folder. I think we might have been saving a few a few of these pages in the Kevin account when we need to be in this Kirk one. Here's a folder. Hit. Actually, let's X out of that real quick. Where's the hit those hit those three dots to the right.  Favorites. Yeah, see if it might be favorites. Okay, so where's the ads manager favorites bar.  That folder should be at the bottom. Okay, so let's let's grab that. Okay, so click on it. Okay, so let's get let's go ahead and hover over you don't got to click on it but but scroll to the left and hover over hover over business settings and right click just right click and delete it and then hover over dashboard and delete it. And then that third one to ads manager. What about billing. It might be billing to because I think we were in that we're in your Kevin account. So let's go ahead and yeah we'll just go to do it again delete it. Yeah, we'll do it all over again it's no big deal. So let's let's let's get out of here and let's just bookmark right here so we're in Kirk Mason we're in the right account we got a bookmark this one bookmark this one name a dashboard. So let's just click on the dots to the left and let's go to audiences now we're going to get into some details. So, this right here man is is where your ROI is really at with Facebook advertising let me just make that clear like your, your ROI is going to come from retargeting these audiences. We'll get more into the audiences on call number three. But that's where your money's at. It's when people are watching your videos and or when people are landing on your pages. So if you're running an ad and I click on that ad and I go over to your page to give up my name and email because I'm interested in a listing or I'm interested in a seller guide or whatever it is. People who are landing on these pages need to be put into a bucket.  So as you start to run ads you're going to always retarget these people or exclude them like for example if I go to let me share let me share my screen real quick. Let me show you show you this real quick as an example. These custom audiences are the most most important man. So for example if I'm running a Facebook ad and you click on that ad let's actually let's let's let's go to the real let's let's really go from the beginning. So if I'm over here on Facebook. Am I supposed to see your screen or. Yeah, go ahead and stop sharing your end you should you should see my screen. Okay, so let's say I'm over here on Facebook and I'm just scrolling through scrolling through see what everyone's up to, and then I come across a sponsored ad. This guy right here Joel. Okay there's the text. There's the video. There's a learn more button. This video is a four minute and 41 second video. Now what he's doing right now because I know of this guy I know I know this guy knows what he's doing. What he's doing right now is as I sit here and I watch 20 seconds here he has me in a custom audience. Those are people who watch 20 seconds of his Corey's marketing agency video. Like that could be the title of it that's literally the title of his custom audience probably very basic the name of the video and and everyone who's in this audience are people who watched 40 seconds of it. That's crazy powerful because now what's going to happen is he knows that X amount of people watched 50 seconds of it and for me to sit here and watch 50 seconds of anything. That's a long time in social media world. It's a long time.  And they stopped they stopped and they started watching what Kevin was was was doing whether it was a listing whether it was an open house whatever you were filming they sat there and they watched a minute and 15 seconds. Let's just say for example they didn't click. They just kept going but you stop their scroll right you stop their scroll for a good amount of time. You want to put those people in an audience because when you put them in a custom audience you're going to be able to show them your next video, which is what you want to do. I don't want to I don't want to create audiences around people who only watch three seconds. If it's a four minute and 41, 41 second video all create an audience of people who watch at least a minute. Let me ask you a question. I thought about that. And, you know, things I'm trying to do in the near future so if someone watches the video but they don't take action. As far as retargeting is the per person costs different is it yes yes yes good good good question kept heck yeah it is because now Facebook. Let's say for example again. I sat here and I watched two minutes of the video. And he runs another ad, and he retargets everyone in this audience who watched two minutes of his last video. Facebook is looking at looking at that as a warm audience, which is a lower cost per lead or lower cost per click, or lower cost per view. Okay, so yeah, so that's why retargeting is what it's all about retargeting the audiences. That's one type of custom audience. The other type of custom audience and again we'll go into more of this on call three, but the other type of call audience is when people click learn more, and they come over to your landing page. Let's say you were promoting a seller guide, or let's say you were promoting a listing. Let's say you were promoting a listing, you were on video talking about a listing. I click on the ad, I click on learn more, I come over to your page, get instant access to the price and photos of this property. Homes in this market move extremely fast schedule your private showing before the bidding war begins a few bullet points, click that button. Here's what's going to happen. And it happens with anything. As people see your ad they click X amount of people are going to come here and leave. And that person to get that far. You saw my video you click the button you came over here. You just didn't fill out the form for whatever reason you might have been driving babies are screaming in the backseat food is burning on the stove, whatever you're you know you couldn't you couldn't fill it out for whatever reason but you landed there. These are people who are put in a custom audience and we name that audience web page visitors. So now when I go run my next ad, I target them. Because those are people who landed here but haven't thought the form. Now let's say for example, a person comes here. And they fill out the form, they put their name and email, and they come over here to this page. Every page is very specific every page has its own URL. Another custom audience are going to be people who land here. So now as I go set up my next custom audience, I'm going to name this custom audience listing leads. And those are people that now as I go run my next ad, I'm going to exclude that audience from ever seen another ad. Because I already got their information already got their lead if anything I need to be communicating with them via email, I don't need to be spending money targeting them on Facebook anymore, because they're already a lead. I don't want to exclude them from seeing future ads. So your audiences is what it's all about your audiences retargeting your audiences, which, which, which, which is another form of including them in your future targeting, and then also excluding audiences from future targeting as well. This is one page that you'll always want to exclude. You don't want to keep hitting your leads on Facebook, right. They're already leads. So that applies for listing that applies for an open house that applies for a seller guide a buyer guide whatever anyone who goes through your pipe and lands on the destination page, put them in an audience and exclude them from seeing future ads. That's going to make your that that's what also makes your ad budget drastically drop because you're you're no longer targeting people who who don't need to be targeted anymore. So, so go ahead and share your screen so that's that's what I wanted to show you on the audiences are very very important video audiences landing page visitors only audiences, and then, and then people who land on that thank you page audience that you'll always exclude. So go ahead and bookmark this page this is we're going to bookmark this one and we're going to call this one custom audiences. That's what this is going to be custom audiences. Perfect. Okay, cool. Now here's the next one hit that hit those dots again to the left. And now what we're going to do is we're going to click on. Let's go to let's go to events manager there's a couple things in the events manager that we're going to we're going to we're going to bookmark. And one of them is going to be your pixel. So knowing where your pixels at being able to get to your pixel right away because that pixel is going to go on everything on all your pages. That pixel goes on everything so let's go ahead and we're going to set it up and we're going to set this up on our second call so our second call is going to be all pixels, but I want you to bookmark it just so we can get to it quick. Because this is a page you'll always want to get to quick is your pixel. So go to bookmark this one and let's name this one Facebook pixel. Perfect. And so, as you click on that that blue button which will do on our second call. Do you have what are you using for lead capture pages do you do you have anything, any, like do you have a KB core or anything like that. Um, most far as lead capture whatever feels it populate. So, like if I ran it out on Facebook right now whatever forms they have, whatever the dropdowns, then I would select the questions are you trying to buy the next nine days. Okay. Well banker also have a relationship with some third party tiger pistol or something like that I have done ads through them as well. But what I notice is, sometimes it's not successful and yeah, thank you for various reasons so yeah, running the ads organic through my account makes more sense because they charge like $129 for seven days like yeah no man yeah is 714 and then 30 so. Yeah, you're now you're going to know how to do everything yourself like you don't need any third party like that. And so what you've done in the past then is you've ran lead generation ads where you're using Facebook's form. You're using their form and the little questionnaire whatever that's Facebook's lead generation ad form. So what you want to do is you want to get your own you want to have your own landing page type of software, because there's many different pages that you can you can build that you're going to want to build for is like an open house a listing a seller guide whatever you can create different pages and that's what you want to drive people to so as you click on ads and you can you can even put this to the test like as you're in your news feed and do this later on go to your news feed and start clicking on ads.  Click on it and see where they take you nine and a half out of 10 people and I don't know where I get the half from but nine and a half out of 10 will take you to a landing page they'll take you off of Facebook to a separate independent webpage. That's a landing page. One person out there will be running ads like you and using Facebook's form. So the biggest difference is the fact that when you use Facebook's form there's just more more things involved because once that once you do capture that lead that lead is now in Facebook. So as you go to your business page you can look at the leads on your on your business page and and those were that's where you capture all the leads. But what you have to do is you now have to export those leads and you're going to have to put them in some type of email auto responder. That's where everyone drops the ball man that's where most drop the ball that's where 99% of people drop the ball is they don't have any follow up game. Because upfront not everyone's going to give you their phone number. So those leads if you're capturing leads to the through the Facebook form, not everyone's going to give you their phone number. They'll all give you their email but not everyone's going to give you their phone number now if it's a listing maybe maybe for sure you'll get phone numbers if it's a listing someone's interested in that property for sure call they want they want to call right back. So, if it's something like that then then maybe you can get phone number successfully but most of the most of the campaigns that you'll run phone numbers are not people are not giving up their phone number right away. So it's the email that we're getting so if I'm getting that email, I need to have an email automation in place because I can't be physically emailing these people every damn day. Like I'm not going to do that, especially if I'm capturing a lot of leads. I need some type of automation. So the reason why I don't use the Facebook lead form is because I then have to go get a software called Zapier, and you got to pay for that it's like 3035 bucks a month for just an inter just it's a third party integration. And all it all it does is it is it, it automatically transfers the lead off of Facebook into your email auto responder. So you need that type of software to take to export that lead or you're going to do it yourself. And so that's why I just don't even go that route I just I just go and get my own landing page software, and then I make sure that it comes with an email auto responder, which which it does and then and then, and then and then that all happens automatically so the moment they click on my ad, they go to my landing page, they enter their name and email that name and email is already in my CRM it's already in my email auto responder, and that leads already getting emails. Like instantly without me doing anything. Mm hmm. Like that's what you need you need a landing page software. You need an email auto responder. And then the third thing that you need for sure because of your business, you need an online calendar. Because we're trying to get people to schedule calls I'm trying to get people on the phone right like like I need to talk to people regarding buying and selling so an online calendar is the most important. We'll get into more of this on our second call because that pixel is what you want to put on all these pages so as we start to build out landing pages that pixel is what goes on it. That's how Facebook starts tracking everything. So let's just we bookmark this we'll get to this on our second call.  Most landing page softwares out there are about 100 bucks a month. So you want to you want to budget for that as well if you're going to be running Facebook ads like if you're going to be running Facebook ads, you need landing page software. But the one that I recommend is the same it's it's 99 bucks a month, but it comes with everything else. So it's my landing pages, it's my email auto responder, and it's my online calendar. All three of those are all in one for the 4999 bucks a month. And so, if you're running ads, you need that. If you're not running ads all the time then maybe you can maybe you won't necessarily need it. But but trust me if you're running ads if you're running ads your caption leads, that's going to pay for itself. Yeah, so so you want to budget for for that and you want to budget for your ads obviously. But we'll get into that on our on our second call. And what I what I highly recommend you do is just is just activate a 14 day trial. I'll send you the link and just set up a 14 day trial but don't do it until until our second call so whenever our second call is maybe that morning. Click on the link and activate it activate a 14 day trial. Okay, just so we could play around with it you can keep it if you want you don't need to but but the good thing as is if you do keep it then we're going to be capturing a ton of leads with it, but you also for sure get all my time for free on teaching you how to use it. So that that's another another good investment man is that that's when I really get into it with you and I teach you everything about that you can schedule the many calls as you want. My whole job is to help you succeed with that software so the company sends me a little kickback. I'll charge you for my time like they'll just they they pay me a little kickback to help you be successful with it. And it's needed for Facebook advertising and that's where the pixel goes the pixel goes on all those pages. So so we bookmark this we'll get back to this later. What we're going to do now is we're going to click on, we're going to click on our hover over the blue triangle to the left. We're going to bookmark another one over here, which is custom conversions. And where the magic is that man it's custom conversions. So as you went in. In fact, you know what. Okay, let's yeah let's bookmark this real quick. And then and then and then let me let me and then we'll come back to it so call this one custom conversions. This right here is where the magic is man when it comes to generating leads. So this is what, again, I'll call it I mean it isn't 10 out of 10 people because, you know, you're the one for example that would use lead generation type of ads. But let's just call it nine nine out of 10, nine out of 10 Facebook advertisers create a custom conversion. And I'll show you what that is. And then they run conversion ads so click on the dots to the top on the top left click on the dots and let's go to the let's go to the ads manager real quick, which is the dashboard. Let's just click on the ads manager, click on the green button. So once we set up a custom conversion which I'll show you what that is. But once we do that, and we're going to do that on our third call so as we go into our custom audiences and as we go into setting up a custom conversion. I don't want you to bookmark it now, but we're going to fill it out on our third call, but click on that green button. This one is this create. Yeah, yeah, click on the create. This is this is where it's all at man. This is where it's all at. So when we set up a custom conversion, we're going to only be running conversion ads. So you're going with lead generation before. Yeah, I was thinking this one. Yeah, yeah, the magic is conversions. You're going to capture more leads than you can handle conversions. But again, the reason why the landing page and the email auto responder is so important because as I capture these leads, I don't want to have to lift a finger. Like I don't want to have to export nothing. I don't want to have to import anything like manually. That's what you would have to do with lead generation. Those leads are inside of Facebook. Now you got to export them and import them into some CRM. I don't, I ain't got the time for that. I don't want to do that. So I'm going to run conversions. I'm going to set everything up automatically, and I'm going to let these leads continue to be dripped on via email automation. And that's where again, that's where everyone drops the ball. They capture the lead, but because they're not getting the phone number right away, they just got maybe an email. You'll try to email that lead. They don't reply. You'll try to email them again. It's like, dude, that's too much physical work. Like we need to automate those emails. And, and, and, and tell them a story via email automation to get people to schedule appointments. So, so it's conversions. That's the one we're going to go with. Here's what a conversion is. Let me, let me share my screen. Again, go ahead and stop share. And let's go back to, let's go back to this page over here, the listing one. Okay, so for example, here, here's, here's the ad, right? Here's the ad again. When it comes to Facebook, man, Facebook is very, very specific, like very specific when it comes to what we're looking to do. Okay. When it comes to what our objective being a real estate agent, our objective is to capture lead bottom line. I need an interested buyer or I need an interested seller. Bottom line, there's really nothing else to it. Like I need a damn lead. That's, that's what I'm shooting for Facebook is a lead, generate me a lead. Okay, so if that's, if that's the goal, here's what's going on. As we run the video ad or the ad image ad, whatever, and I click on learn more, and I come over to this page. That's goal number one. Goal number one is to get them to obviously watch a little bit of it or just a click forget about watching it. Goal number one is to get them to click learn more. They click on learn more they come to our one page. That's our goal. Right. That's our goal. We accomplished our goal. In Facebook, they want to know what's Kevin's ultimate goal. Like what is your ultimate goal? The ultimate goal is to get them to click the button and land over here. Okay, well what is here? Here is here. This specific link right there. So I'm telling Facebook, Hey man, I'm not going to pay you just to get me people here. I'm only willing to pay you Facebook. If you can get me people here. And I'm going to tell you where here is. And so I take this link and I go set up a custom conversion. So when we go and run conversion ads, we're telling Facebook about this page. Now we're going to give Facebook this link over here as well because when they click on learn more Facebook needs to know where they where they're going. So Facebook's going to know about this link as well. But when we run that ad, we're only running it to pay to get people here. That's a conversion. Anyone that lands over here must have filled out the form. Right. Very specific, very specific. So this is a custom conversion. A custom conversion is based on the link that you're trying to get them to the ultimate goal, the destination. And the same thing applies for a calendar. So if I'm running running ads and I'm trying to get people to schedule appointments with me. Let's say I'm shooting for appointments. I need people to schedule a call. Okay. Well, when they come over here, let's say they see my ad, they click on the ad, they come to my calendar. Okay, that's one link. But where's what's the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to get them to schedule and go through the process. So here's the deal. They come here, they schedule, they click on next. They're going through my process. They confirm here. And this is the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to get people to this page. So the same with appointments. If I'm shooting for appointments, I'm going to set up a custom conversion around this link. I'm going to go and run a conversion ad based on this page. So now I'm telling Facebook where I really need them to get to.  So go to share your screen again. And we'll, and that's why the custom conversion and the custom audiences are based around pages. You're going to need some type of landing page software. And again, the one that I have is there's a 14 day trial so we can play around with it for 14 days and really get the hang of it. And then you can, you know, if you really go all in with Facebook ads, you can decide to keep it from there or not. You know, so, but I highly recommend it, man. It's what I built my entire YouTube channel around is talking about that landing page software. It's the best of the best man. And there's, there's great ones out there, but the thing is with most of them is that most of them are 100 bucks just for the landing page. So I click funnels, for example, very, very popular one click funnels in the marketing world, very, very popular, but it's 99 but or it's, it's like, yeah, it's 100 bucks, 97 bucks a month, just for the landing pages. Then I have to go get an email auto responder. Then I have to go get an online calendar. There are two more fees monthly fees. So I don't want three monthly fees. I'd rather just have one and have it come with everything. Okay. And so that's the one that I'll send you a link on but so let's look at the folder real quick. Where's the folder. Let's go back to the folder and let's see what we got bookmarked. Actually, no, not that one, but click on. Yeah, that should have already been bookmarked, but let's click on the folder. Let's go back to your folder, your ads manager, FB folder. I think we got to click on the dots to the right, the top right, click on those dots and let's go look at your folder above those dots above. Yeah, that one. So favorites. I wonder if you can bring your folder up normally you can bring it up to your bookmarks bar, or just maybe see if you could just drag it up to the top. There's ad manager. See if you could just click on it and drag it up. Yeah. Yeah, maybe put it again right there by Zimas or whatever. That way you can get to it quick. That's all. Yeah. Yeah, not the star, but it would be go back here. Yeah. Favorites. Yeah, you wanted to drop it right below the Zimas or something like that. Or unless I mean it's up to you. It's up to you. I mean I just want you to be able to get to it quick. That's all. Just, just, just fine. Okay, so let's let's look at it one more time though. Let's see what we got bookmarked in there. Let's just review that real quick. So let's just go back down to it. So normally you have, you have seven, which will which will bookmark the seventh one will just bookmark it to bookmark it but what we got is we got dashboard we got billing we got custom audiences. We got your pixel. We got the custom conversions and then we got the golden get rid of that that bottom one adds manager to the left, the ads manager dash manage ads dash campaigns. It's not. It looks like there's nothing in there. Well it's to the left it's to the left. You see everything to the left. No, it's there it's just to the left you see it to the left. No, I'm clicking. No, you don't got to click on it. It's already pulled up. It's everything to the left dashboard billing. I see everything to the left. I mean my screen is frozen. I see it now. Okay. Yeah, there you go dashboard billing. So get rid of that bottom one adds manager right click and just delete that one. Yeah, so so we got, yeah just hover over it we got dashboard we got billing custom audiences pixel custom conversions so 12345 and then the one that we're missing is the the ad accounts and the business settings. So let's just let's click on let's click on the dots to the left and the top left. Let's go to let's click on ad accounts. So over here, like, I like I mean I I don't mean to like, I mean I'm not I'm not all that in this at all like I know a lot but I don't know at all like I'm a keeper real like I don't know everything about this damn thing like there's so much more to learn but at the same time I've me myself I invested thousands of dollars in coaches to learn all the stuff so I know a lot I know a lot but every now and then every now and then. You'll have some random freaking thing that happened and you'll have to reach out to Facebook. You're going to always be able to reach out to me like I'm always be here for you like you, you could schedule a call with me whenever you need me for any of this stuff. And it'll help you every way I can but sometimes I'm stuck myself on on what the heck, like, like if an account gets disabled, and they shut down your account for whatever reason, like that's a that's a Facebook issue you got you're going to have to reach out to them like in cases like that. Whenever you reach out to Facebook. The most important number is that at account number that you see right there one one two. That's that's your that's like your ID number that's like your driver's license number in the Facebook world. So if you reach out to them they're going to want to know what is your at at account ID number. So bookmark this page this page is very very important or that number is very very important. Bookmark this I even went the extra mile and I even emailed it to myself. So I have it saved in my email, you know just for just just for another backup, you know, because that's that's that's a very important number call it add I add account ID. Perfect. Add account ID so that's that's it right there. And then the last one will click on is the business settings so click on the left the dots, and let's just go to the business settings. That, that's your business settings for the Kevin. However, everything else is in here as well so so click on like click on for example, do you have an Instagram account. Yeah. Okay, so click on click on pages right there to the left click on pages. Perfect so you got your name all tight up right there that's good click on Instagram accounts. Okay, so you're good. You're good here you're good here so so any ad that's ran on Facebook can be ran on Instagram. And whenever you do do that in the future like you want to run them separately and we'll get into that more on on call number four. But when we run ads, you want to run one specifically only to Instagram, and then one, you know, other ones straight to Facebook, a lot of people try to mix them. You want to you want to separate them and we're going to go into that on call for when we go into multiple ad sets and really how to start targeting our audience will do that on call number four. But what I want you to do here is just click on click on people right at the top and then bookmark it from there. Click on on people right above users there you go. And this is bookmark it from right here let's let's call this one this bookmark this one and let's call this one business settings.  Okay, so now what we just looked at Kev were the only only seven things so let's go click on the dots to the top right. Let's go back to favorites. Let's look at that folder one last time. These are the only seven things man you'll ever ever ever need to click on like all this other stuff to the left.  That is it. There's nothing else know about Facebook. Now as we go into our future calls, we're going to start filling all that in. We're going to start filling in our custom audiences we're going to set up our custom conversion. We're going to take our pixel and put them on all the pages. We're going to go to the dashboard on call number four will go into the dashboard and run some ads. Actually, we run our we run our actual add on call five but but but on call four on call four is when I teach you how to target and teach you how to set up different targeting. It's what it's what they call ad sets on how we run multiple ad sets, which is our targeting. We're going to do all that on call four and then on call five will really go to the dashboard and run a real ad and run it the right way. So, so that's this call kev where we just bookmark, I give you a tutorial on all this stuff and show you the most important things you'll ever need to know. And it's those seven buttons right there. So, on our next call, we got it we got to set up that landing page software. So I'll just email you the link I'll email you link now so you can you can just kind of take a look at it.  Okay, right, like I don't want you to set up now and then we don't talk till Thursday and then boom you know there's already days wasted on the trial. You lost a few days, you know, yeah, yeah, so I want you to take that full fourth day trial. But with that with that system, with that landing page software you got all of my support you got all my time for free. Also the company, and that's to teach you how to use all of it I can give you we can, you know, set as many calls as needed I could teach you everything about that and then I have a ton of funnels that are already done for you. So I have all the listing funnel open house seller guide I have I have so many funnels that are already done for you, where all I got to do is transfer them to your account. So that's another added bonus but then also the company has live Q&A coaching calls every Tuesday and Thursday at 1pm Pacific. But if you can't make them live they send you the recording. So that's where I learned everything I've been on that software for two years now, and I just I just jump on these calls every week and that's how I learned but now I'm teaching people how to do it you know how to use it. But then all and then also we have a Facebook group with like 21,000 people in it that are all on that software. So you can ask a question on Facebook and boom someone will reply you know you'll have like 15 people reply right away. So the support with the landing page software is ridiculous is all I'm saying. Activate all email the email you the link here when we're done and then I'll I'll send you the recording for this video tonight. Okay, so you'll get this recording tonight and then just schedule our next call. When you can man let's let's chat let's let's knock these calls out so you can get these ads going and start making some money. Will you send me a link to make an appointment or how to. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I'll I'll I'll send you that and then I want you to bookmark my calendar as well. I want you to bookmark my calendar maybe throw it in the ads manager folder, you know bookmark my calendar so you'll always be able to you know schedule calls on needed. Okay, cool. All right, Kevin, any any any questions on any of this. I think it was good I like you know step by step you're setting the foundation. Yes, man. Yes. Let's see how many I could cause I can schedule next week to kind of ramp it up and yeah, maybe do something for the end of the year and so let's do it man let's do it. I mean, an hour and a half or so so have a few deals I'm working on but I'm excited about getting this. Yeah, let's do it man. Alright kev have a great weekend man I'll email you everything shortly. Alright boss, you're welcome. Bye bye.


Welcome to this presentation where we will talk about cross-plane which is an infrastructure as code tool that enables us to use Kubernetes to manage and provision infrastructure. My name is Vijin Palazi and I am the head of technology and a trainer at CodeCloud which is a learn-by-doing platform specializing in DevOps courses. CodeCloud is a CNCF silver member and a certified Kubernetes training partner. So let's take a look at the agenda of this talk. We will start with an introduction to cross-plane and see how it differs from other popular infrastructure provisioning tools such as Terraform and Pulumi. We will go over the installation steps followed by an overview of the fundamental cross-plane concepts such as provider, packages, managed resources and composite resources. This will be followed by a quick hands-on demo where we will make use of cross-plane to deploy resources on the AWS cloud. And we'll wrap up the session with a round of Q&A. Before we begin, let's go over some of the prerequisites and assumptions. Since cross-plane installs on top of Kubernetes, a basic understanding of Kubernetes is expected. I'll be using some examples of core services in AWS cloud so a basic understanding of AWS or cloud computing in general would be helpful. In some of the examples, I'll also be making use of simple Terraform configuration which is written in HCL. So let's begin and get introduced to cross-plane. So when we start talking about infrastructure provisioning, one of the commonly used tools today is Terraform. And then there are tools such as Pulumi that have gained popularity in the last few years. Now these are some fantastic tools that allow us to provision and manage infrastructure on almost all platforms such as AWS, Azure, GCP or on-premise infrastructure such as VMware. And while these are some really great tools, they do have some certain limitations. Let's take Terraform as an example. It uses HCL or Hashacop configuration language. So here we have a sample configuration file to create an EC2 instance and an S3 bucket in AWS. And it is written in the HCL language that Terraform understands. And although it is a simple declarative language, that's yet another tool that the users need to learn. Let's see another example. This configuration, when applied, will create an EC2 instance in AWS with the tag of app version is equal to V1. Now Terraform will also create a state file that will hold all the details of the AWS instance, including the tag app version is equal to V1. Now, if this tag is manually updated to say app underscore version is equal to V2, then Terraform will not detect this change unless the Terraform workflow is invoked manually the next time. What this means is that these tools, such as Terraform and Pulumi, do not automatically detect drift. And as a result, they do not reconcile back to the desired state of the infrastructure with our manual intervention. And these are the types of issues that Crossplane aims to fix. Crossplane is an open source tool that is installed directly on top of Kubernetes as an add-on. And we can quite literally make use of any Kubernetes distribution, even the minimal distribution such as Minikube, MicroK8s, or clusters that are created using the kind utility or the QVADM tool. Once installed, Crossplane enables orchestrating infrastructure or managed services on multiple platforms such as GCP, AWS, Azure, Alibaba Cloud by making use of the Kubernetes API. And this is done by the means of providers. We'll discuss what providers are in detail in the upcoming slides. The platforms that are supported are not just limited to cloud providers alone. Crossplane supports several providers such as Helm, GitLab, Argo CD, etc. And you can also package your own provider for a custom platform as long as it has an API that supports Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations. Once Crossplane is installed and the provider configured, we can now define the configuration of an EC2 instance in AWS using a YAML file like this. And most significantly, we can make use of native Kubernetes commands such as kubectl create or kubectl apply to provision the instance. To check the status and check for the events of the resource that was created, we can run commands such as kubectl get or kubectl describe like this that we would normally do with native Kubernetes objects such as spots, deployments, persistent volumes, etc. And as you can see here from the output of the kubectl get command, we can now see the status of the AWS instance. And similar to native Kubernetes objects, controllers constantly check to see the status of these external managed resources and reconciles them in case of a drift. We will see more about these in the upcoming slides and then the demo towards the end. So let's now see how Crossplane works and talk about some of its fundamental concepts. So we already talked about how Crossplane can be installed on any Kubernetes cluster. Typically, it is installed using the official Helm chart in a new namespace called Crossplane System. And once it is installed, we can see the deployments and the associated pods running in the Crossplane System namespace. We can also optionally install the Crossplane CLI tool that extends the native kubectl tool, enabling it to do things such as installing, building and pushing Crossplane providers in packages. In the upcoming slides and demo towards the end, we will make use of this to install the AWS provider configuration in our Kubernetes cluster. Earlier, we touched upon the concept of providers a little bit. Providers in Crossplane are similar in function to providers in Terraform. They facilitate Crossplane to provision the respective infrastructure resource on a specific platform. However, in Crossplane, provider is a package that bundles two components together, a controller, which runs as a pod in the Crossplane System namespace and a set of managed resources that are installed as custom resource definitions or CRDs. The managed resources are the fundamental building blocks in Crossplane that has one-to-one mapping with a resource in the external system. For example, if we take the case of AWS provider, when it is installed, Crossplane also installs CRDs for instance, RDS instance, security group, subnet, VPC, bucket to name a few, each of them corresponding to the actual service within AWS. Now, depending upon the platform, the corresponding provider must be first installed on the Kubernetes cluster before we can start provisioning and managing resources on that platform. Now, this can be easily done by running a one-line kubectl command provided that the Crossplane CLI plugin is already installed. Now, in this case, we are installing the AWS provider with the version of 0.27.0 in our Kubernetes cluster. Once it is installed, we can see that the controller is installed as a deployment in the Crossplane System namespace. And we can also now see a bunch of CRDs installed on the cluster corresponding to managed resources in AWS. Now that the provider is installed, we need a way to authenticate to the platform. So in this example, Crossplane should be able to authenticate with the AWS account where we want to deploy the resources. For AWS, this is done by creating an account key file that contains the access key ID and the secret access key, and then creating a Kubernetes secret in the Crossplane System namespace using the key file. Now, this is different for every cloud provider, so the steps should vary for each provider and make sure that you refer to the provider documentation before setting up the provider config. Next, we can create a provider config type object to configure credentials for the AWS provider. Now, this object references the Kubernetes secret that we just created, and it facilitates the authentication with the AWS account. We are now all set to provision infrastructure in AWS using Crossplane. And to understand this better, let's make use of the same example of the EC2 instance that we saw in the previous slides. The object configuration for this managed resource in its simplest form would look something like this. The API version for this object is ec2.aws.crossplane.io with the version of v1, alpha1, and the kind is instance. Now, under the metadata, we have the name of the object which is called web server in this case. And just like any other Kubernetes object, we can also add additional fields such as labels and annotations under the metadata. Now, under the spec section, we have fields to define the desired state of the resources. The for provider field is a mandatory field, and it is used to define the desired state of the external resources, which in this case is the EC2 instance. The only required instance parameters are the region and the image ID, which have to be supplied in this definition file. There are several other parameters that can be supplied such as the instance type, security group, and subnet information, but these are optional. And if it is not supplied, a predefined default value are used while provisioning the resource. Another field that we have used under the spec section is the provider config reference field. Now, this is used to reference the provider config object that we created earlier, and it is used to authenticate crossplane to the AWS provider. And that's it. Once this configuration is applied, we can now successfully create EC2 instances or any managed resource in AWS. So how do we know the different required or optional fields under the spec section that can be used for a managed resource? For this, we can make use of provider-specific API documentation and look up the managed resource that we want to provision. In this example, we are searching for the CRD of kind instance within the API documentation page for the AWS provider. Here we can look for all the fields that are supported under the spec section for that specific CRD. And the documentation shows that the for provider is a required field. And the field called image ID is required for the instance type object, whereas fields such as block device mappings and CPU options and things like that are optional. We'll see how to make use of this in the upcoming demo. Before we head over to a demo, let's look at one other fundamental concept in cross-plane and that is composite resources. On the previous slide, we saw how to provision a single managed resource in AWS, which is an EC2 instance. However, while provisioning infrastructure in the real world, you would usually need to deploy several resources together with some resources depending on one another. For example, we may need to provision a VPC, a subnet, a security group that will then be used by the EC2 instance. Now, each of these is an individual managed resource that has one-to-one mapping with the actual services on the AWS cloud. So instead of provisioning them individually and writing YAML files for each of these resources separately, they can be grouped together into what is known as a composite resource with a shorthand of XR. Now, in the interest of time, I will not be going over composite resources in detail, but I wanted to mention it all the same as it is a concept that promotes effective collaboration between the platform or the SRE team that manages the cross-plane environment and the application team that requests for infrastructure. At a very high level, this is how it would work. The composite resources are configured by the platform or the SRE team that manages cross-plane. And while designing the composite resources, they define which managed resources should be created by the composite resource. And this is done by using another cross-plane-specific resource called Composite Resource Definition, which is XRD for short and Compositions. Now, the XRDs and Compositions are used to define things like which managed resources should be created by the composite resource and which parameter or parameters for the composite resource should be fixed and which one should be user configurable. For example, it can be enforced that the instance type of an EC2 instance resource be always be set to T2 micro, but the image ID can be something that the consumers of the composite resource can configure themselves to any AMI of their choice. So, who are the consumers of this composite resource? Now, these can be an application that typically does not have access to create the composite resource directly, and instead, they would use something known as a Composite Resource Claim. This is similar to the native Kubernetes object called Persist in Volume Claim, when application can request a Persist in Volume of specific class, size, or access mode. Similarly, when a composite resource claim is created, it would contain the reference to the composite resource along with the user configurable parameters that are configured for the composite resource. All right, now that we have gone over the basic concepts of crossplane, let's jump into a quick demo where we will use crossplane to provision a bunch of services in the AWS cloud. Now, for the ease of use, I'll be making use of code cloud crossplane in the Playground environment that has a single node Kubernetes cluster and crossplane installed already. And it also has an integrated AWS cloud playground that we can make use of to deploy our resources. So here I'm making use of a crossplane Sandbox environment which already has crossplane installed within a Kubernetes cluster. And it also has a short-lived AWS environment integrated that I'll be making use of to deploy resources. Now, I want to point out that you can pretty much use this on any Kubernetes cluster, even a local cluster running within your laptop. So let's first inspect this environment. So you can see here that this is a single node Kubernetes cluster that is running the version 1.24. Now, let's also inspect the namespaces which are available here. As you can see, the crossplane system namespace is already available within this cluster. Let's inspect all the objects which are created within this namespace. As you can see here, there are deployments for the crossplane as well as the crossplane provider for AWS. This means that the AWS provider has already been installed. And to validate that, we can run kubectl getProvider. I can see here that the crossplane provider AWS is installed and it is in a healthy state. Now, this environment is integrated with an AWS sandbox which makes use of a limited user with limited permissions so that we can deploy certain resources for this particular demo. Now, let's open up this console and see what is currently configured for this particular account. So we have opened the AWS console. Now, let's go back to the terminal and let's create the key account file that we can make use of to create our provider config reference. Now, this has already been created within the system and we can make use of this to create our covenanted secret that we will use to authenticate from the crossplane to our AWS account. And so to do this, we will use the kubectl createSecret command and pass in the key file. So now that the secret has been created, we can create the provider config reference. And to do that, we will make use of the provider config.yml file. And as you can see here, it's referencing the secret that we just created called AWS credits with the key of credits. So let's create this object. So now that this particular object has been created, crossplane can authenticate to our AWS account. So we can now go ahead and create resources in AWS. So I've created some sample configuration files in YAML for the managed services that we want to create inside the EC2 directory. And here you can see that we've got different YAML files and these are the resources that we are going to create. So we're going to create a VPC, a subnet, a security group, a route table, an internet gateway and a route table, and finally the EC2 instance. So let's go back to our AWS console and first take a look at the VPCs which are currently available in the Virginia region which is US each one. And here we can see that there is one single VPC right now in this particular region. So let's go ahead and create a new VPC. Now, before we create, let's just inspect this YAML file. So the API version for this is EC2.aws.crossplane.io which is the API group and the version is V1, beta one and the kind is VPC. The name of the VPC is going to be sample-vpc and under the spec section, we have four provider field which is mandatory and within that we have parameters which we have defined. The region is going to be US each one, the cider block is a custom one that we have selected which is <IP_ADDRESS> slash 16 and we have also opted for some additional parameters such as enable DNS support is equal to true, insistency is default. Now you'll also notice that we have supplied the provider config reference here which is the name of the object that we just created which is called default. Now let's go ahead and create this VPC using kubectl create command. So now the VPC has been created. Let's inspect the status by running kubectl vpc and you can see that the status is ready and it has synced. So let's go back and refresh. As you can see here, the new VPC has already been created. So similarly, let's go ahead and create the rest of the resources. So I'm going to first create the subnet. So using the same command kubectl create dash f subnet subnet and next let's create the internet gateway followed by the root table. And finally, let's also create a security group. But the security group is going to be called sample SG and it has a reference for the VPC that we created and a firewall rule of type ingress or to the port 22 from anywhere. So let's inspect the status of all the managed resources that we have created so far. And so here we can see that we have created the VPC the subnet, the internet gateway, the root table and the security group. Now all that is left is for us to create the instance which is the EC2 instance. And in here we can see that the name of the instance is going to be demo dash EC2 instance and under the for provider section we have the mandatory parameters which is region set to US East one and image ID set to Amazon Linux image MI. And we have also optionally selected for creating an EBS volume of size 30 GB. And here we are referencing the security group that we just created called sample SG and the subnet that we created earlier. So let's go ahead and create this instance. But before that, let's also go and check the image ID that the instance tab that is going to be created for this instance. So here we have not supplied instance type for this particular managed resource. So it will offer a default instance type which has been configured for this managed resource and a CRD. So to see that we can actually go to the cross-plane documentation and in here navigate to API documentation and go to provider AWS. And we are making use of the version 0.27.0 and in here let's look up the CRD that we are looking for here which is instance. And if you click on that under the spec section we can see that the for provider field is required and it only has two required parameters which is image ID and the region. Now the instance type is optional and if we do not supply it, it will by default create an instance type of M1 small. So let's go ahead and create this instance. Now let's inspect the state. I've just run a watch command here and run cube CTL get instance. So let's wait for it to be provisioned. So after a while you can see that the instance state is in pending state. Let's go back to our AWS console and navigate to the EC2 dashboard. And if I remove the filter here you can see that there is indeed an instance that has been created with the instance type of M1 small. Now once it's ready we can also try and delete it from the AWS console and once that is done you should be able to see that crossplane continuously monitors it and sees that it has been deleted and it'll try to bring it back up so that it reaches the desired state. So you can see here that the instance has been terminated and here the instance state is reflecting as shutting down and soon crossplane will bring up another instance to bring it back to the desired state. There you go, you can see that the instance state is now pending, a new ID has been created. I can see here that another instance has been spun up in place of the old one. Well, that's it for this session. I would like to thank each one of you for attending this talk. I hope that you found this session interesting and useful and a special thank you for KCD Chennai for hosting me. Thank you.