From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Dell Technologies World, digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Tech World 2020, the virtual Dell Tech World and of course, the virtual CUBE with me is Allison Dew. She's the CMO and a member of the executive leadership team at Dell Technologies. Hey there Allison, good to see you. Hi David, good to see you too. I'm gonna see you in a live but it's so good to see you on the feed. Yeah, I miss you too, it's been tough but we're getting through it and it's at least with technology, we're able to meet this way. And for us to continue theCUBE, for you to continue Dell Tech World reaching out to your customers. But maybe we could start there. It's like, I said the other day, Allison, to somebody. I feel like everybody I know in the technology industry has also become a COVID expert in the last six months. But it changed so much, but I'm interested in, well, first of all, you're a great communicator. Many, many members of your team, they're a really motivated group. How did you handle the pandemic, your communications? Did you increase that? Did you have to change anything? Or maybe not because like I say, you've always been a great communicator with a strong team. What was your first move? So obviously there's many audiences that we serve through communications but in this instance, the two most important are our customers and our team members. So I'll take the customers first. You have likely seen the spoof reels going around the internet of, here's how not to talk to customers, right? So you saw early in February and in March and April, all of these communications that started within these troubled times. We are here to help you. And we're all already in a crisis every single day, all day long. I don't think people needed to be reminded that there was a crisis happening. So you've got this one end where it's over crisis mongering and the other side where it was just ignoring the crisis. And so what we did was we really looked at all of our communications anew. So for example, in our small business space, we were just about, days away from launching a campaign that was about celebrating the success of small businesses. It's a beautiful piece of creative. I love it. And we made the very tough decision to put that work on the shelf and not launch it. Why? Because it would have been incredibly tone deaf in a moment where small businesses were going out of business and under incredible struggle to have a campaign that was celebrating their success. It just wouldn't have worked. And what we did very quickly was a new piece of creative that had our own small business advisors lower production values than working from home and talking about how they were helping customers. But frankly, even that then has a shelf life because ultimately you have to get back to your original story.  And that was a very heavy lift and something that we had to continue to do. And I'm really proud of the work we did to pivot quickly. Then on the employee side, if you'd asked me in January, was team member communications, the most important thing I was doing? I would have said, it's an important thing I'm doing and I care deeply about it, but it's not the most important thing I'm doing where there was a period from probably February to June where I would have said, it became the most important thing that I was doing because we had 120,000 people pivot over a weekend to working from home. You had all of the demands of homeschooling, the chaos, the stress, whilst also we're obviously trying to keep a business running. So this engagement with our employees and connecting with them through more informal means like Zoom meetings with Michael and his leadership team where once upon a time we would have had a more high value production became a key piece of what we did. So it sounds so easy, but this increase of the frequency with our own employees while also being really honest with ourselves about the tone of those communications. So that's what we did and continue to do. Well, you've done a good job and you've struck a nice balance.  So it seems like Dell has a, I don't know, there's a methodology. I don't know if you use data or it's just a lot of good, good experience. How have you been able to sort of nail it? I guess I would say, is it, is there some super method that you use? I'm just like cautiously optimistic and the superstitious part of me is like, don't say that. Yeah, okay, I'm not going to. All right, right here. So it's both, it's experience obviously and then what I talk a lot about is this intersection of data versus data and creativity and you spend a lot of time in marketing circles, those two things can be sometimes pitched as competing with each other. Oh, it's all about the creativity or it's all about the data and I think that's a silly non-argument and it should be both things. And this timeline, this point that I make about ambulance chasing and not re-traumatizing people every single day by talking about in these troubled times is actually from a piece of research that we did, if you believe it or not, in 2008 during the middle of the global financial crisis. When we started to research some of our creative, we found that some of the people who'd seen our creative were actually less inclined to buy Dell and less positive about Dell. Why? Because we started with those really hackneyed lines of in these troubled times and then we went on to talk about how we could take out IT costs and we targeted IT makers who basically we first played to their fear function and then we said, and now we're gonna put you out of a job. So there's this years of learning around where you get the sweet spot from a messaging perspective to talk about customer outcomes while also talking about what you do as a company and keeping the institutional knowledge of those lessons and building and refining over time. And so that's why I think we've been able to pivot as quickly as we have is because we've been data driven and had a creative voice for a very long time. The other piece that has helped us be fast is that we've spent the last two and a half, three years working on bringing our own data, our own customer data internally after many, many years of having that with a third party agency. So all the work we had to do to retarget, to repivot based on which verticals were being successful in this time and which were not, we were able to now do in a manner of hours something that would have taken us weeks before. So there's places where it's about the voice of who we are as a brand and that's a lot of that is creative judgment. And then there's places about institutional knowledge of the data and then real getting to real time data analysis where we're on the cusp of doing that. Yeah, so I like the way you phrase that it's not just looking at the data and going with some robotic fashion. It reminds me of, you know, the book Michael Lewis Moneyball, the famous movie, you know, for a while it was in baseball, like whoever had the best nerds they thought were going to win, but it really is a balance of art and science. And it seems like you're on this journey with your customers together.  Absolutely, Dave. And one of the things that has been really interesting to watch is we have had a connected workplace program for 10 years. So we've had flexible work arrangements for a very long time. And one of the things that we have learned from that is it's a combination of three key factors. The technology, obviously, can you do it? The culture and then the processes, right? So when you have the ability to work from home doesn't mean you should work from home 22 out of 24 hours. And that's where culture comes in. And frankly, that's where this moment of cumulative global stress is so important to realize as a leader and to bring out to the open and to talk about it. I mean, Michael's talked a lot about, this is a marathon, this is not a sprint. We've done a lot of things to support our employees. And so if you think about those three factors and what we've learned, one of the things that we found as we got into the pandemic was on the technology side, even customers who thought they had business continuity plans in place or thought that they had work from home infrastructure in place found that they didn't really. So there was actually a very quick move to help our customers get the technology that would enable them to keep their businesses running. And then on the other two fronts around processes and culture and leadership, we've been able to have smaller, more intimate conversations with our customers than we would have historically because frankly, we can bring Michael, Jeff, the other parts of the leadership team, me together to have a conversation. And one of the benefits of the fact those of us who've been road warriors for many, many, many years, as I know you have as well, suddenly found yourself actually staying in one place. You have time to have that conversation. So that's, we continue to obviously help our customers on the technology front, but also have been able to lean in a different way on what we've learned over 10 years and what we've learned over this incredibly dramatic eight months.  I think Dell, you're the percentage of folks that were working from home pre COVID was higher than the norm, significantly higher than normal. It wasn't that long ago that there were a couple of really high profile companies that were mandating coming to the office and the clear that they were on the wrong side of history. I mean, that surprised me actually. And you know what also surprised me? I don't know, I'm just going to say it is there were two companies running by women and I would have thought there was more empathy there, but Dell has always had this culture of, yeah, we could be productive no matter where. Maybe that's because of the heritage or your founders still chairman and CEO, I don't know. You know, those companies, obviously we know who they are. Even at the time, what I thought about them was you don't have a location problem. You have a culture problem and you have a productivity problem and you have a trust problem with your employees. And so yes, I think they are going to be proven to be on the wrong side of history. And I think in those instances, they've been on the wrong side of history on many things. Sadly, and I hope that will never be us. I don't want to be mean about that. But the truth of the matter is one of the other benefits of being more flexible about where and how you work is it opens up access to different talent pools who may or may not want to live in Austin, Texas as an example. And that gives you a different way to get a more diverse workforce, to get a younger workforce. And I think lots of companies are starting to have that realization. And as I said, we've been doing this for 10 years. Even with that context, this is a quantum leap in, now we're all basically not 100%, but mainly all working from home and we're still learning. So there's an interesting ongoing lifelong learning that I think is very, very core to the Dell culture. I want to ask you about the virtual events you had the choice to make. You could have done what many did and said, okay, we're going to run the event as scheduled. And you would have got a COVID mulligan. I mean, we saw some pretty bad productions, frankly, but that was okay because they had to move fast and they got it done. So in a way, you kind of put more pressure on yourselves. And I guess, we saw this with VMware, I guess it was just recently, this last couple of weeks. Yeah, and so, but they kind of raised the bar. They had some great action with John Legend. So that was really kind of interesting, but kind of what went into that decision? As I say, you put more pressure on yourself because now you, but you also had compares. What are your thoughts on that? So there was a moment in about March where I felt like I was making a multimillion dollar decision every single day. And that was on a personal note, somewhat stressful. It's kind of wake up and think what not just on the events front, but as I said on the creative front, what work that my team has been working on for the last two years, am I going to destroy today? Was sort of, I mean, I'm kind of joking, but not entirely how that felt for me personally at the moment. And we had about, we made the decision early on to cancel events. We also made the decision quite early on that when we call that, we said we're not going to do any in-person events until the end of this calendar year. So I felt good about the definitiveness there. We had about a week where we were still planning to do the virtual world in May. And what I did together with my head of communications and head of events is we really sat and looked at the trajectory in the United States. And we thought, this is not going to be a great moment for the US. The week we were supposed to run in May, if you looked at the trajectory of diseases, you would have news be dominated by the fact that we had an increasing spike in number of cases and subsequent deaths. And we just thought that don't just gonna care about our launches. So we had to really very quickly repivot that. And what I was trying to do was not churn my own organization. So make the decisions, start to plan and move on. And at the same time though, what that then meant is we still had to get product launches out the door. So we did nine virtual launches in nine weeks. That was a big learning curve for my team. I feel really good about that. And hopefully it helps us in what I think will be a hybrid future going forward. Yeah, well, so not to generalize but I've been generalizing about the following. So I've been saying for a while now that a lot of the marketing people have always wanted to have a greater component of a virtual, but the sales guys love the belly to belly, close the deals, but so where do you land on that? How do you see the future of events we expect to continue to have a strong virtual component? I think it's gonna be a hybrid. I think we will never go back to what we did before. I think at the same time, people do need that human connection. Honestly, I miss seeing the people that I work with face to face. I said at the beginning of this conversation I would like to be having this discussion with you live.  So I never thought I'd be that interested in like, let's go to Las Vegas, who knew? But so I think you'll see a hybrid future going forward. And then we will figure out what those smaller, more direct personal relationship moments are that over the next couple of years you can do more safely. And then also frankly give you the opportunity to have those conversations that are more meaningful. So I'm not entirely sure what that looks like. Obviously we're gonna learn a lot this year with this event and we're gonna continue to build on it. But there's places in the world, if you look at what we've done in China for many, many, many years, we have held an overabundance of digital events because of frankly, just the size of the population and the geographic complexity. And so there are places that even early into this we could say, well, we've already done this in China. How do we take that and apply it to the rest of the world? So that's what we're working through now. That's actually really exciting. You know, when you look at startups, it's like two things matter, engineering and sales. And that's all, anything else is a waste of money in their minds. When you, and all I talk about is lead gen, lead gen, lead gen, you don't hear that from a company like Dell because you have so many other channels and ways to communicate with your customers and engage with your customers. But of course, lead gen is important, demand gen is important. Do you feel like virtual events can be as effective? Maybe it's a longer tail, but can they be as productive as the physical events? So one thing that I've always been a little bit Ken Tankers on within marketing circles is I refuse to talk about it in terms of brand versus lead gen because I think that's a false argument. And the way I've talked about it with my own team is there are things that we do that yield short-term business results, maybe even in quarter or in half or in year. And there are things that we do that lead to long-term business results. First one is demand gen, the second one is more traditional brand, but we have to do both. We have to, if you think about our legacy as known primarily for many, many years as a PC maker in order for us to be successful in the businesses that we are in now, we love our PC heritage. I grew up in that business, but we also want to embrace the other parts of their business and educate people about the things that we do that they may not even know, right? So that's a little bit of context in terms of you got to do both.  So the interesting things about digital events is we can actually reach more people than we ever could in an in-person world. So I think that expands the pie for both the perceptions and long-term and short-term. And I hope what we are more able to do effectively because of that point that I made about our own internal marketing digital transformation is connect those opportunities to leads and pass them off to sales more effectively. We've done a lot of work on the plumbing on the back end of that for the last couple of years. And I feel really fortunate that we did that because I don't think we'd be able to do what we're doing now if we hadn't invested there. Well, it's interesting, you're right. I mean, Dell of course, you know, renowned during the PC era and rode that wave. And then of course the EMC acquisition one of the most amazing transformations if not the most amazing transformation in the history of the computer industry. But when you look to the future and of course we're hearing this week about as a service, new pricing models, just new mindsets. I look at, and I wonder if you could comment I look at Dell's futures, you know not really a product company becoming a platform essentially for digital transformation is how I look at you. Well, how do you see the brand message going forward? Absolutely. I think that one of the things that's really interesting about Dell is that we have proven our ability to constantly and consistently reinvent ourselves. And I won't go through the whole thing but if you look at started as a direct to consumer company then went into servers then and started to go into small business, meaning business, blah, blah, blah, blah when private acquired EMC. I mean, we are a company who is always moving forward and always thinking about what's next. Oftentimes people don't even realize the breadth and depth of what we do and who we are now. So as, even with all of that context in place the horizon that we're facing into now is I believe the most important transformation that we've done, which is as you see historical IT models change and it becomes yes about customer choice. We know that many of our customers will continue to want to buy hardware the way they always have but we also know that we're going to see a very significant change in consumption models and the way we stay on top of our game going forward is we lean into that huge transformation and that's what we're announcing this week with Project Apex, which is that commitment to the entire company's transformation around as a service and that's super exciting for us. Well, I was saying before you're sort of in lockstep with your customers, maybe we could close by talking a little bit about Dell's digital transformation and what you guys have going on internally and maybe some of the cultural impacts that you've seen. So you touched on it. It's so easy to make it about just the IT work and in fact, you actually have to make it about the IT the business process change and the culture change. So if you look at what we did with the EMC acquisition and the fact that there was a lot of skepticism about that at the time, they're not going to be able to absorb that and keep the business running and in fact, we have really shown huge strides forward in the business. One of the reasons we've been able to do that is because we've been so thoughtful about all of those things, the technology, the culture and the business process change and you'll see us continue to do that. As I said in my own organization just to use the data-driven transformation of marketing, historically we would have hired a certain type of person who was more of a creative breath bent. Well now increasingly we're hiring quants who are going to come into a career in marketing and they never would have seen themselves doing that a couple of years ago.  How do we hire them? How do we do performance evaluations for them and how do we make sure that we're not putting the parameters of old on a very new type of talent? And so when we talk about diversity, it's not just age, gender, et cetera. It's also of skills. And that's where I think the future of digital transformation is so interesting. There has been so much hype on this topic. And I think now is when we're really starting to see those big leaps forward in companies real transformation. That's the benefit of this cookie year we got here, Dave. Well, I do think the culture comes through, especially in conversations like this. I mean, you're obviously a very clear thinker and good communicator, but I think your executive team is in lockstep. It gets down to the middle management and to the field. And congratulations on how far you've come. And also I'm really impressed that you guys have such huge ambitions in so many ways, changing society, obviously focused on customers and building great companies. So Allison, thanks so much for- Thank you, Dave, great to see you virtually. I'm very grateful. Great to see you, hopefully. Hopefully see you soon. It's hopefully next year we can beat together. Until then, virtual hug. You'll see, virtual hug. See you later. Thank you for watching, everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. Keep it right there. Our coverage of Dell Tech World 2020 will be right back right after this short break.


Alright, so I'm going to do my best here. Again, I apologize for the delay. I'm having a couple of technical challenges, but what I'll do is I'll just do my best with what I have and hopefully you can see it. My name is Matthew Fredrickson and I am the open source project lead for the Astros project. I'm really, really glad to be here. This is the first time I've spoken at Fozdom. Some of my predecessors have done that, or I've been here and talked a little bit about Astros, but this is the first time I've done it. I just want to start off and ask a quick question. How many of you have used Astros before by raise a hand? That's good. That's good. I was thinking about my talk and how I wanted to do it and I wasn't sure how to target towards my audience and who they're going to be. Alright, so that's comforting to hear. So most of you are probably familiar with what Astros is in the background and things like that. I thought that that was probably a pretty safe assumption and so I'm not going to go into a lot of details on that, but mostly what I'd like to do is kind of cover a few things about what's going on with the Astros project. So just as some background, I started doing this a couple of years ago. My name is Matthew Fredrickson and Matt Jordan, for those of you who remember him, was my predecessor who led the Astros project and he got the opportunity to move around within Digium, the company that sponsors Astros and to kind of move into a more oversight role within the company as a CTO. And with that, they needed somebody to step in and to be able to take care of the day-to-day management and run you the Astros project and they asked me to do that. I've worked at Digium since about 2001 in various developmental capacities doing lots of different things. I've worked on Digium's hardware. For those of you that go really far back and use asterisk in a hardware environment with old ICDN cards or analog cards and things like that, I worked a lot on the hardware, specifically the device drivers and design of that hardware as well. Through the years, I maintain a lot of the telephony interfaces within Astros, the traditional telephony interfaces like the DOTI channel driver or the Zaptel channel driver. I maintain the Zaptel or the DOTI kernel device drivers and things like that and extended those and improve those and things of that nature. I also maintain LibPRI, which is the ISDN stack for asterisk. For those of you that remember what ISDN is, I guess ISDN is kind of going away in a lot of places. And then at some point, a number of years ago, I realized that there was no SS7 or C7 stack for asterisk. So you couldn't talk to really big phone switches and things like that directly. And I thought that that was a shame. You know, I really had a strong passion in my heart for old dead telephony protocols. And I felt that Astros would not be complete without being able to talk directly to an SS7 switch or a C7 switch. And so I decided to start working on an SS7 stack for Astros, which was called LibS7. I got pulled out of dead telephony land for probably about five or six years ago now to go work on some new world WebRTC related initiatives as the technology started to percolate and to become more interesting. And so Digium wanted to build some tools and infrastructure related to WebRTC and I got to be able to do that. And that was really a lot of fun, kind of turning my face a little bit more forward. And after that they asked me to manage the Astros project and that was about two years ago. And so it's been an honor and it's been very exciting to be able to work with all the really smart people, not just at Digium, but all over the world who consider to be valuable to themselves and to those around them to donate other time to work on that project and extend it, things like that. So I'll talk a little bit more today about a little bit of history. If you'll remember, actually let me ask a question, how many of you used Astros when it was in its 1.0 version? Oh man, that's more hands on expected actually, that's really good. All right, so it was a really long time ago. You know, that was probably early 2000s, it was quite a few years ago. It actually was, it was surprisingly feature, at least spec wise complete, right? It had like ISDN support, it had, which back then that was very important. It had H223 support, it had MGCP support, it had a SIP channel driver. It had some programming interfaces that we still use today like the AGI and ARI interfaces for doing application based programming with Astros. So it was a surprisingly well rounded version of Astros, right? And you could look at it and say, well, we could just stop right there, but obviously progress doesn't stop. And so we moved forward and did a lot of things to it. And eventually the 1.6 version came out, which included not just support for old school 8 kilohertz, you know, narrow band telephony, but we decided that we wanted to extend the core of Astros to support wide band telephony. So your call sound a lot better and you can hear the difference between different, you know, consonant sounds and things like that better and the quality is better. Obviously, since I implemented SS7 support, I feel a shameless obligation to plug that that was the version that we merged in SS7 support into Astros. And then some more time passed and we had many more versions and things happen. These are just some highlights, but Astros 11 came out and it was, it had the beginnings of WebRTC support, which is kind of the next big thing in, in I would say that the real time communication space in the last few years. And so we started to implement that in the SIP channel driver to be able to extend the SIP channel driver to interoperate with browsers and things like that, that's where WebRTC. Astros 12, we decided that the SIP channel driver that we've been using for like 13 years or whatever it had been had gotten the point where it was very difficult to work on. It got to the point where we, where we tried to make changes, we tried to fix a bug or something like that. And it was, it was built in such a way and it had, had not been redesigned in such a way that it was easier to work on that we, you know, if you tried to fix a bug, you ended up creating like three or four more. That was very, it was, it was the point where we were not happy working on it and we decided to take a step back and to write a new SIP channel driver that was better architected and better suited for extendability and for changing and for bug fixing and it had a better, from the get go, a better tested implementation. And so we did that and that's where the PJ SIP channel driver came from. It's based on the PJ Project SIP stack and you know, it's worked very well. We, in Astros 13, we added a new interface called the REST, ARI REST interface because REST interfaces are very popular. They make a lot of sense and they're, you know, from a program perspective and that's kind of where the industry was going. So we built a REST interface for Asterisk. We did some more work on the PJ SIP channel driver as well and Astros 14, which was the previously released version of Asterisk, included more ARI improvements, so more fleshing out of APIs and capabilities that you could do with the REST interface in controlling Asterisk. More PJ SIP improvements and we moved asynchronous DNS into the core of Asterisk, which is, which is a good thing for a lot of people. So Asterisk 15, that's what I want to talk about. That was the most recently released version of Asterisk, which was in October at Astrocon. So we kind of looked at kind of where things were going and what Asterisk had been doing. And Asterisk lives in this land which is, which merges old and new worlds, right? That's kind of where it gave its birth, is you could connect to really old telephony protocols and you could merge them with new world telephony protocols. Like, you know, in early 2000s that was maybe talking ICDN or something like that and then being able to connect it to a SIP call, or even an H323 call, which, you know, now seems like dinosaur technology. But, you know, that's kind of where Asterisk has lived and we kind of realized that there was a space that we needed to fill in terms of bridging these old and new worlds again with Asterisk and video. And Asterisk actually has had video support for a very long time. It just, it's been limited and there have been some areas where, you know, given how the market has changed and the requirements of people for applications have changed, we decided that there need to be some changes within the core of Asterisk as well to be able to keep up with that market. And so, you know, traditionally you'll have this kind of single video experience. I'm going to try to be quick because I'm a little bit late. But this, it's called the MCU experience where you have, you know, a central mixing box for video conferencing. And you have a box and what it does, it takes everybody's video streams and then it decompresses them and then it mixes them all together into square or something like that. And then it'll re-encode it and send it back out, right? And that, you know, seems like it worked for a very long time and actually it still works for some use cases. Or some cases where that's a better environment or a better situation to do. But, you know, with all the really cool browsers that came out, you know, the browser technology with WebRTC and things like that, they brought this really awesome new client that you could do things that really traditionally you had like proprietary client and, you know, somewhat proprietary client, somewhat proprietary mixer or full proprietary, right? And the browser kind of brought this really programmable open client that you could do really cool things that weren't really possible before. And so, you know, the MCU experience works, but it doesn't allow you to build really rich client experiences in the browser, right? Because that video experience is fixed for the most part. And so we realized that, you know, this is an area we wanted to improve upon and do some things better. What we did with Astros 15 is we started to remove some of the limitations that kept Astros where it was. Previously in an Astros video conference, it was a video switching experience. So you had multiple video streams coming in from different participants and it would switch between whoever the active talker was. And everybody in the conference would receive a single stream and it would be a switching experience. And so we kind of, we took some of those limitations out. We decided that was the limitation we wanted to get rid of to be able to support some of these new conferencing experiences. We allowed renegotiation of video streams and things like that in the core of Astros and to be able to, you know, dynamically add and remove streams on a call session and things like that. That was kind of a requirement. And then we added some support for, in the conferencing application, to not just do video switching, but to be able to do simultaneous showing of all video streams at the same time. So everybody in the conference was allowed to receive everybody else's stream at the same time, as long as the client permitted that. Much like what Janice and some of the other video projects do as well. And so that experience is called a selective forwarding unit experience. And if you see my diagram, kind of the way it works, so if you see each of the browsers, they're sending one video stream back to asterisk, and then each one's receiving two more back, and that's the other participants. And so you can imagine that that is a really, you can do some really neat things with that. So if you're a client and you're watching a presentation, let's say one of those, and you have two streams coming in, and one's the presentation, the head, the person, the head of the person talking, and one's say the slide feed from the presentation. As a client, let's say you as an individual are watching the conference, and you like to take notes with your hands, and you're watching that slide feed. And in a fixed experience where the client didn't have access to both those streams, that if the presenter decided, okay, I want to swap back to my head, instead of I'm done with this slide, everybody else better be done with it. I want to swap the feed back to my head, that's kind of what you get. But with an SFU type experience, you have access to both streams, and you as a participant can say, no, I want to hold on to the slide stream longer, so I can finish writing my notes and things like that. So you have the ability to make a lot more powerful from a client perspective experiences with the SFU environment, which is really compelling. So anyway, that's kind of what we did with asterisk is we took that approach and we tried to make asterisk into a video selective forwarding unit. So let's see, I'm going to talk a little bit more about some other things in asterisk 15, but if you'd like to play around the SFU support and things like that, they're on the asterisk GitHub repo, we have a sample client, a browser-based client that you can download, and you can hook it up to asterisk and things like that and see, you can connect your friends to it and everybody can see each other and wave at each other at the same time and things like that. It's really fun to see. I'm going to talk just a couple of minutes about some of the general improvements in asterisk 15. Okay, I got to get moving quicker. All right, so this is just going to have to be really quick, but we had a number of platform improvements in asterisk 15, improvements for GCC7, build fixes for free BSD, build fixes for the herd, which was pretty cool to see because I hadn't done anything personally with the herd in many years. There's a limbic support for MSSQL, which is our database migration layer, a limbic that we use, and then the PGA project for those of you that build asterisk currently, it's downloaded and built by default as part of the build process, so you don't have to go and find it and things like that. We also have some new sounds for asterisk. We added the 2.0 OAuth protocol for XMP motif, the channel driver there. We added, we merged in some patches that were contributed by a gentleman called, named Dennis Goussay, and there's another gentleman, I think, in Berlin that also worked on that, but he had to do stereo support in the Confepridge application. So if you have an endpoint that supports stereo audio, you can listen and you can have people positionally be in different places in the conference and you can hear it being in different positions, it's kind of neat. There's some more debug utilities. We added support for some more WebRTC technologies that were necessary as part of our SFU support, like RTCP Max, VP9 codec pass through, you know, some convenience options for setting up WebRTC and things like that. We also added support for a technology that we've been really holding out on with asterisk which is called Bundle, which is a technology used in the browser to multiplex audio and video streams over the same socket and the same RTP session. And that was something that we needed to do to do a lot of the video things. So just as a quick heads up for Astra 16, you may be wondering what's coming out. I apologize, it's so brief, but I think my time got eaten up by technology stuff, but some of the goals for Astra 16 are we're going to continue to flesh out Astra's SFU APIs. So from an ARREST API perspective, being able to control Astra's better with, you know, REST and things like that and be able to manipulate and change the, mutate the conference experience that you're having. We're planning on improving Astra's video resiliency in poor network environment, so we discovered that after we did the SFU support that there were some technologies that made the experience a lot better when there was high packet loss and bad Wi-Fi networks and things like that, so we're working on some of those. And then we're going to be continuing to improve the PJ SIP performance. And so I think that's pretty much it. As far as my time goes, I don't want to run over and take much time. There was some really, is Alexander Trout here? Did he come this morning? Okay, there are a few contributors that contribute the Astra's. I always try to give props and shout out to them, but it looks like maybe Astra's is a huge project. Lots of people contribute to it. There's a lot of statistics and things like that. I can't understate how big it is and how much it is to, how many people are involved and things like that, but I always try to recognize them. So just as a reminder, if you're running Astra's 11, it's time to get off of it. It's end of life, like as of last year, like in October, November. That means it doesn't receive security fixes anymore. So if you're running it on a public network, you don't want to do that, right? So Astra's 15 was released at the same time. So get forward on to either Astra's 13, which is the current LTS, or 15, which is the current, you know, most recently released version. Just as a heads up, typically the odd versions of Astra's releases become LTS. Astra's 15 is an exception. We changed it because all the video work we did, we decided to wait to make Astra's, make it into an Astra's LTS release until Astra's 16 instead. And so this presumably next, this year in October, Astra 16 will be LTS. Anyway, thank you very much. Sorry to take so much of your time. If you have any questions, feel free to come afterwards and ask me because I don't want to take too much of the next speaker's time.


One of my first bosses in corporate America, she was also a kid of immigrants, and she was telling me I was lucky that I was born in America, you know? And you only can make it in America if you really, really, really take the bull by the horns and then you action, you take action on it, you know?   And I was like, why he means like that? And then I... I'm getting chills because that's so good. Yeah. It's so good. And then I realized... Pay attention to this, guys, I'm telling you, this is cold. And then I realized, you know, the fact that I didn't sell one policy right now is my fault. The fact that I didn't push hard enough is my fault. The fact that the customer left me and he went somewhere else is because I didn't provide something that they were needed. So it's my fault. The fact that an employee left me, that means that it's my fault. Everything is my fault because this is my company. So the one that is running the chip is me, right? So at the end of the day is everything my fault. So I have to put systems in place, right? I think that that's what you were driving to write. I have to put systems in place so then I don't get surprised by the consequence of situations. And we got a special interview today with the Medicare legend, Miss Tatiana Torres. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me, Cody. All the way from Jersey to the big city of Springfield, Missouri. I know. Isn't that great? Oh, that's amazing. Thank you for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm very grateful. What you've done is pretty remarkable. For those that don't know Tatiana and everything that you're doing up in Jersey, share how long you've been in the business and what you've accomplished. I've been in the business for six years. And when I started, I didn't have no clue what Medicare was or how you sell it. I never sold Medicare before. And it just seemed like a good way out if you want to call it. I come from corporate America. I did 16 years in corporate. Wow. Wall Street. That's very different from what you're doing now. Oh, yes. So I want to stop you because when you say Wall Street, okay? We talking like, were the Wolf of Wall Street? Or like, what were you doing on Wall Street? Well, I was doing a lot of employee benefits and I was doing a lot of accounts and the advantage of New York City is that you have one big building here, the next building next door and the next building. We are so many people cramped up in one little area. So employee benefits at that time, if you think about maybe seven, eight years ago, that's what when Mr. Obama decided, well, if you want to sign up your employees for a plan and they don't understand the language, then you have somebody that has to speak Spanish to them. I believe well, obviously. And you have to have somebody that speaks the language and explains the plans and you have to give them different options. And New York City is one of the few cities left with a lot of union plans. So then there's many union plans, they're left like the carpenters, the plumbers, you know, the MTA workers, the subway guys, you know. So you went door to door selling employee benefits. I used to knock on the door of the brokers. Wow. So I used to make connections with brokers. You're gonna be a good sales person and good with people to connect with a Wall Street broker like right there, cold, right? You have to and you have to find out that point that they're looking for, how much money they're trying to make here. Do they want 5%, do they want 7%, do they want 6%, how much do they want? And then you have to be willing to compromise because at the end of the day, it's better to have a three or 4% of something and you are talking about maybe 5,000 or 10,000 lives, you know, that having zero of anything because nobody's willing to give you anything for nothing. Right. You have to be willing to give something. So then you transitioned into insurance six years ago. Yes. Have you always sold Medicare the whole time? No, it was my first. Well, the six years has been all Medicare, yes. Yes, which in a way, that's kind of how I met you because I realized, you know, Tatiana's doing Medicare only and that's been good but what else is out there? You know, why I only have one product? I just have more products, you know. What happened with life insurance? What happened with? And at that time I didn't know how to sell Medicare so I was kind of focused on learning that craft and being good at, you know, what I wanted to do and I didn't think too much of it but then in a way it became a clutch, you know. And you've done very well by the way. Would you say more Medicare Advantage or Medicare Supplement? I do both, but I live in a very condensed Medicare Advantage area because there's a lot of Latinos and- You have a lot of Medicare Advantage for Latinos? Yes, yes. It's sad, but many of the people that they come to this country, their first generation, so then they work in a factory, they work cleaning, you know, they have a very, very hard time, you know, working for many hours, you know, I mean, using it, they work in construction sometimes and sometimes they are not all paid in the books.  Right. And what they're gonna do with that money, you know? So then trying to sell a plan G at $150 something dollars plus a par D Medicare, plus dental and vision, you're gonna, and plus par B, you're talking about good $400 a month when somebody makes only $800. Wow, that's tough. It's very tough. And how many clients have you sold or how many clients have you sold the last six years or what kind of book do you manage? I closed last year at $984, $984 clients. $984 clients, nice. So far we have 71 on the books as per last month. 71 new ones? Yep, new ones. Well, last month. Yeah. You wrote 71 Medicare plans last month. No, from January to now. Oh, good. Yeah. That's awesome though. That's phenomenal. Yeah, I didn't know that the average sales person in Medicare sells only $100 a year for me, that's crazy. If that, yeah, if that, it's true by the way. That's crazy. If that, which is nuts. Yeah. And you're gonna sell probably $300? Yeah, that's normally my average. I do between $350 and $400, that's kind of, yeah, a year. That's awesome. How to sell $350 to $400 a year, that's strong. And what kind of? But I wanna sell $1,000. A year. A year, yeah. How would you do that? Well, I realize thanks to you again. I need a team of people. I need to grow in a different way. It's good. I was lucky enough to go to the event that you and I, we connected. That's right. That's right. Just since events, right? Yes, that was awesome. That was awesome. If you didn't go there, you should go. Kudos to Justin, he did a great event. No doubt. Events are hard. People don't realize how tough events are to pull off, by the way. Yeah. It is hard, but for the visitor, like me, right? It's just all about the connection. The fact that you feel that you are not alone. You are not the only one with the same issue.  So when I tell them, I cannot come to them and say, you know, look, this is what happened with this client. That thing doesn't, I don't have that support. So when I go to events, for me, that's the beauty of it. Finding other people that they have kind of the same issue. What do you do with this, stuff like that, you know? So the goal now this year, thanks to you and your dad and Dallas is to grow and then have at least 20 agents by the end of the year. Boom, I love it. You heard it here first. We're gonna look back and that's gonna be a reality, by the way. Yes. How much, how much money did you earn?  I already passed a half a million, which for many people is like, wow, you know? A million bucks!  Once you get to know Tatiana, she is the last thing from Conceited Error again. Crazy humble, she's driven though. Right? Yes, I'm very driven. I think you like a lot of people, I think we have this in common. For me, it's like, I always want to be a millionaire before I was 30, right? I'm 30, we're gonna do 13 million bucks plus this year, right? I'm not, if it was about the money, I would stop and slow down. It's really about the journey. Yes, I was gonna say, it's not too much about the money per se, it's just what you can do with that money. How many people you can help? You know, it's very different if you talk about making 100,000, making half a million, making a million. So if you are making that impact, even in your employees, you know, the fact that you can pay good salary to somebody and that person can support their families with the money that you make, things of the good decisions that you make in your business, I think that that's very powerful. I like that. You've noticed, what point did you notice that you need people to start to scale this thing, to start to really grow what you're doing? When I got to 300 clients, and then I realized I'm working like a dog, and then this cannot continue like that. I have a family, I have five year old. Do you feel like you've capped without people? You kind of capped down what you're capable of doing? I would say that the day is only 24 hours, you know, out of that day is good for me. I noticed that I don't work very well with less than six hours of sleep. So I need to have at least six hours. I also need to work out every day, at least 20 minutes, you know, my body needs to move for me to actually work. That's right. I should have had you join my workout this morning. I saw it, I saw it, I saw it, I saw it jumping jacks. Yes, I saw it. I was gonna take my shoes off and then start jumping jacks. So I noticed that me personally, that's just me. I understand that not everybody wants to do that, but I need to drink water, you know, I need to exercise 20 minutes a day. I need to sleep at least six hours. And then that all cuts into the 24 hours, you know, and I also have a family and a young family, a five year old. And I wanna spend time with a five year old, you know. So then if I wanna get to the 1,000 policies that I wanna have a year, I would have to be working more. And the idea, I think that is working smarter, not necessarily harder. I like that, that's right. And it's good to share what you know. Like we that we are in the insurance industry, we will think that everybody knows about insurance, right? I mean, at least that's what my preconceived idea that how come not people, I mean, I'm not from here, you know, so let's get, you know, obviously have an accent. I was born in Peru. So when I came here, when I was 21, the first thing that crossed my mind is just becoming corporate America because that's what you see. And I came to New York. So then I saw in the movies people, you know, briefcase suits and that was my idea of making it here in America. What age did you move? About 21. From Peru to New York. Yes. And did you think when you're moving, did you have dreams to kind of be where you're at today? Or, cause when you were in Peru, you were probably making a lot less money than you were making today. Yeah. I mean, it was crazy to believe that what it was good money for me in Peru, here was gonna last me maybe a day or two.  Were you always this driven? Did you always like, were you always like this entrepreneurial spirit or did it come alive when you came here or it was always there? You should know what to do with it. I always was considered a black sheep of my family. Like people didn't know what to do with me. You know what I mean? Like we don't understand where this girl gets these ideas. We don't understand. You have tons of energy too. Yeah. And I used to be more hyper than now.  You know, like you have a lot of energy to understand that. You have all these ideas. But, and it was a very corporate America. They tried to scale you back. Yes. Because they said that it was not good for the corporation to loud to go. You know, it's- Not sad, isn't it? How crazy that is. But the insurance industry is mainly a main oriented industry. So, and I'm not the person that I'm quiet in a corner either. You know, so I can imagine those people having a 21 year older in their office, jumping off the wall saying, which will do this and which will do that and which will do this. And you know, I want to work 10 hours one day. Tomorrow give me 14 hours.   You know, which planet are you coming from? You know, so here I felt free to be that person. In Peru was more, you have to walk this path because that's what a woman should do.  And I was like, but no, yeah, that's not my future, man. If that's what it means to be here, I don't want to be here. So, yeah, I was like, yeah. So you probably loved the morning meeting here then. Oh yes. Because you were able to be yourself. Yes. We've got a lot of people that are loud and fun. And so for those that haven't been here, what was your experience of the first hour of being here and being a part of some of our morning meetings and trainings? I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. I think that I mentioned it also in the meeting. It's different to see it in a YouTube video, right? Yes. It's very different to see it. And they didn't think that might be true, but I don't think that it's true. Maybe just doing it because they're filming it, you know? But I can tell you guys, it's real. It's all real. He's not lying. He's just the same way here inside, you know, in the meeting or in a video. It's very refreshing to see that you have a good team.  And I like that. I like the energy, the energy that they put in and the desire that they have to keep moving forward. I think that that's important.  That everybody talks about, but they don't know how to describe it. I think that that's unusual, you know? It's fun to hear you speak to the team this morning too and share some of your thoughts because I mean, most people don't realize how much you really need. Like you talk about how we have an amazing team. Well, it wasn't always like that. I mean, literally three years and probably, I'll get close, eight months ago. Probably, what's that? 44 months ago? No team. Wow. Just me. Zero people. Wow. Now we've got over a hundred between all the companies. That's amazing that you accomplished all that in such a short period of time. Anybody can though, right? Yeah. So that's what the hope is, right? Well, that's what I'm kind of relying on you guys.  I think that you mentioned it before too. You know, we don't want to reinvent the wheel. We just want to follow the path, you know? And you guys have a system and I do believe that that's the system that I should go. I try myself, you know, like going back to the question that you asked me. It gets to a point that you want to work six, eight hours, 10 hours, but you also want to unplug. That's right.  Just something that can re-energize you and feel hungry again for, oh, I want to do my next sale. You know, I want to make it. I want to sell it. And I think that that's important. There's more little break in between. Yes. And for that you need a team to support it. Nobody became a millionaire by themselves. There's not even one person. That's a really good point, actually. That's a really good point. Most people don't stop and think about the fact that they, like, because you talked about in the morning meeting going from a half a million now, which is amazing, by the way. Thank you. But it's nowhere near where you can go either. But to go from half a million to two, the goal is now a million bucks. Yes.  And she told me seven million.  That's another level. This bitch, sorry, I'm sorry for the cursing. But this girl wants to make seven million dollars. Yes. And here I am, me thinking about what billion dollar? Yeah. Chug, chug, chug. Exactly. What does that do? For those that are out there watching, they may think, well, that's just one person, right? But for people like us, and a lot of you guys are wired this way that are watching, by the way, people like us that are wired that way, when we hear that, that's why I love events and the power of it, the superset nation, all the retreats, all the workshops, all the stuff we're doing, because what happens is you get around big time people like that and it freaking wakes you up. It's crazy what it can do. And so for us, it's actually motivating. So some people would hear a chick say, I want to make seven million dollars and they would get demotivated. No, why? For us, it's incredibly motivating, right? It's not a jealousy factor. It's a factor that we have confidence in ourselves. Yes. And if they can do it, I can too. Yes. And I think that's the real message. If she confident enough to think that she can get to the seven million, good for her, man. You're ashamed of me that I was thinking too small. That's right. You know, she wants to go to seven million, let's do it together. You know, I believe that the insurance is one of the industries that we're lucky that there's enough people here for everybody and we're not enough agents. I heard an statistic before that they said for every senior, you know, do you need like 10 seniors for one a day? You know, so every 10 seniors, it might be half of an agent. So then you need 20 seniors. So then that means that I can really technically sell 20 policies a day. Wow. Each one of us, you know what I mean? So then that means that if I only said one policy, I was shorting 19. That's good. Isn't that something? Yeah. I was like, so then, because many people will say, but there's too many of us, you know, like you say in the events, oh, I'm getting a lot of competition. It wasn't like this before. And I said, I can tell that you have not been in another industry.  Yes. They're cut through right there. That's right. Have you been in a lawyer's office? That's cut through right there. That's right. We're not that many. No, you mentioned something this morning in ourselves made me think too. The same thing that Brian Tracy and Les Brown had said in the past that you said, I think it's very applicable. I'd love for you to share it. That is all my fault? That's right. Yes, it's all my fault. Talk about that because for those out there, because I talk a lot about accepting responsibility. The most successful people in the world, they accept responsibility. And what were you talking about in the meeting? I don't even remember, but you said it was your fault and that it was up to you. And it was like, what were you talking about? Well, it's because at the beginning, it's very easy to, and I used to have one of my first bosses in corporate America. She was also a kid of immigrants and she was telling me, I was lucky that I was born in America. And you only can make it in America if you really, really, really take the bull by the horns and then you take action on it. So I thought about it and I think that you and I would follow the same people, Gary, Grant, everybody else.  And I was like, why he means like that? I'm getting chills because that's so good. Yeah. It's so good. Pay attention to this, guys. I'm telling you, this is cold. And then I realized, you know, the fact that I didn't sell one policy right now is my fault. The fact that I didn't push hard enough is my fault. The fact that the customer left me and he went somewhere else is because I didn't provide something that they were needed. So it's my fault. The fact that an employee left me, that means that it's my fault. Everything is my fault because this is my company. So the one that is running the chip is me, right? So at the end of the day, it's everything my fault. So I have to put systems in place, right? I think that that's what you were driving to write. I have to put systems in place so then I don't get surprised by the consequence of situations. So I put myself always in a situation that this can be very bad. And I think that you are also in that land, you know, this can go very bad, right? So if it goes very bad, what is going to be my exit escape from this? So if I know that I have, I don't know, a hundred clients or already past a thousand, I can lose half of them tomorrow. So then what I'm going to do to avoid that because something can happen tomorrow. I mean, COVID happened, right? And I had customers that they died from COVID, you know? And that's horrible. Yeah, that's horrible. But that's sadly in the business that we are in, we're in life insurance business, people die. You know, we are in the Medicare business. Older people die, you know, more, and they get sick, more often than younger people. And sadly, you know, this happened and it's horrible that we are going through this process right now. But you know, it might happen that somebody might lose probably half of their business. And what are they going to do about it? A lot of people did. I mean, there was a company in Springfield. We went and looked at their space because we thought it was taking it over. It was a marketing company. And at the beginning of COVID, they lost, I think $2 billion.  And it was, and so we had early COVID, we were actually touring their space to see if we wanted to move our entire operation there. It wasn't big enough. But it was crazy to hear. But that goes to the point that it's better, it pays to be bigger, you know? And take responsibility. And I think that at the end of the day. That's what the impressive part is. Sorry to interrupt, but that's the impressive part. I love to just saying that because literally I'm walking through that and I'm hearing about how they lost $2 billion. And I'm like, I don't want to be in a position to where I could actually lose $2 billion. Truthfully, that's the message. I love that you said that. Yeah, I mean, it's a nice problem to have. Oh my gosh. You know what I mean? Because think about it, if you only make $100,000, then that's, I think, the average Medicare agent that they make $100,000 a year. Not even half, not even half. $650,000 or $660,000. If you lose half of your practice, what is that? You lost $50,000? How you can believe in America? Exactly, then you can't. Then you gotta move to Springfield because everything's so cheap here.  It's not only about you. So it's about not being selfish, and then. Do you believe, because now that you said the word selfish, I wanna ask a question, I'm gonna think about something over here. Do you believe that if someone has the ability to expand and grow outside of them, and they have the ability to add people, and they don't, are they selfish? Yes, they are. They should expand because it's their responsibility with their community too. You know, like me being bilingual and being able to see so many people that they don't understand the language, and they don't even know how Medicaid works, they don't even know how social security works. I think that's my responsibility. I made it. You believe everything's your responsibility, which is why I love you. Well, but I made it. You know what I mean? Like for many people said, oh, look at Tatiana. Tatiana came, she wasn't even born here, right? Because I wasn't born here. And then I came speaking English. I mean, my English is still broken, but it was more broken at that time. How much money did you make in Peru? Oh, forget about it. In American dollars, probably $8,000 a year. So from $8,000 a year to over half a million dollars a year. Yes. That's freaking amazing. That's the American dream. That's what I take responsibility for it because see, many people are still over there, or even here. I'm surprised when I meet agents here that they are working for a company, that they provide leads or something, and they are asked to write four policies a month. I was like, a month? I write that in a day. I mean, I was like, how you can live with four policies a month? You can't. It's just, they are crippling you already because they are making you think that four policies a month is a good ratio. And that's below mediocre. It's bad. I'm sorry. If you were to be outside in the street, there's so many opportunities here, you're going to tell me that you only can sell one policy a week. I used to have a boss that she used to tell me, you have to pay your right to be here. Like she gave us a salary, obviously. And we used to sit there. Her name is Yvette Le Despanes. She watches this video ever. I love her. We are still friends. She used to be my boss. But I consider her one of my mentors because she showed me something very important, how to be a woman in business in a man world and how to show by actions what you can do. Because it's very easy for a man to say, oh, she's just a woman. Maybe she cannot do it or she's being emotional or whatever, right? But she showed me if you work hard, nobody will outwork you and you will be on top. And people will remember the first person. They don't remember the second or the third or the fourth. So I'm one of those people that I like to look at the board and they see my name on the first. And when I see my name on the first, I feel good. But she showed me that you have to work for what you want.  And she used to say, well, I give you a salary. At that time, I think it was like $55,000 or something like that. And she used to give me commission. I said, but think about it. $55,000, that cost me like around, I don't know, maybe $5,000, $6,000 a month. And then if you divide that by four weeks, it's like a thousand something. If you divide it by five days that you're working here, then that means that you're costing me $200 a day. So what you're going to do to make up to that money? Because I have to find value in you. Otherwise you're going to be out, right? That's good. And that made me think, I was like, OK, she's paying for me $200 and she used to say all the time, well, you have to make more than $200 a day in sales. That's right. In order for you to justify, in order for me to pay you, because you don't want me to tell you, I don't have enough money to pay you because you didn't make enough sales. I depend on yourself to pay your salary because nobody gave me a salary, right? And I was like, you know what, she's right. That's right. And all those things, I mean, all those mentors that I have along the way and be very lucky to meet excellent people and to go to events and to have the open mind to go to events. Many people ask me why you go to, somebody asked me the other day, why you go to so many events.   I would have paid double that money in a heartbeat. Easy, easy. The people that I have met through the events. Yes, and you'll be at eight percent. I'll be at eight percent, yes. I already bought my tickets.  I bought a package with Mali, Maliah. Maliah gave us a group ticket, Maliah Rogers, yes. Yeah, I love Maliah. Yeah, I love Maliah too. So she's the one that said, you know, we're going to go in a group so she got to deal with Andy, I think that it was. That's right. So we already bought that ticket. I bought that ticket as soon as you finished the other eight percent. Virtual, good, good. We already finished that, yeah. Here's something I've been thinking about. You're going to be here the rest of the week. Yes. The business expansion workshop starts Wednesday night. Yes. And Friday and Saturday and Friday. Yes. What are you most looking forward to from that event and why that event for you right now? Just a name itself, you know? I wanted to expand, you know? So when I met you, you promoted that event and that was exactly what I was looking for. I was looking how. I think that it's very difficult for a solopreneur like me that has been doing this for five years all along with our team. It takes some time to understand that, you know, I cannot do it alone. And that I need a team and I need support and how can I merge all those personalities together? I think that that's the biggest fear, you know, what happened if, you know, I don't like that person and I already hired them or. But that can happen anyhow, you know what I mean?  And that's what I'm looking for, you know? And that's what I thought that that event was worth it.  And I remember when you announced it last minute and I asked people if they were going to go and some people were saying, look, oh, I don't know. And I said, but it's a mastermind. You don't understand it's a small group of people. That's right. So if you want to get close to Cody, if you want to meet people that they are really willing to put money in what is meaning for them, the most important thing that is their business, right? I want to be in that room. You know, I don't want to be in a room when people are going to be making less money than me. I want people that they make more money than me. Totally.  Well, I went to I went to grants conference back in 2018. First one I went to, I thought I was hot stuff and I go there and all of these people are just destroying me. Oh, yeah. And I'm very competitive and driven. So I'm like, gosh, what is wrong with me? I mean, at that point, we were we were we were on pace. We were going to do over seven figures in 2018, but all these people are running like 20 million bucks. I know it's not crazy. 50. I mean, I'm I mean, one of the things I write down now every day when you talk about driving people, I do that too. I write my goals. I write. I write that our total revenue is over a hundred million dollars. Wow. It's like, why not? Yeah, why not?  I love that you say that because most people are like, well, you fell. I'm like, no, 70 million bucks. Yeah, I really fell. You tell me. Yeah. Well, here's one thing I want to add real quick. We got a couple more minutes. What steps are you going to take to get from half a million to a million? Well, definitely more people, you know, I just we just started with dollars, you know, the words with your dad. And we just hired somebody in Texas, another person in Florida, with 80 people team, which that was like a huge grand slam for me. Yeah, boom. I was like, how many people you have? Yeah, I was like, Jesus, thank you, Jesus. Yeah. And then we have another firecracker for me that you're going to meet her. Her name is Senia. She's coming. She's coming. She's coming for next week, because your dad is making another event after you that it should be the same. I know we should have staggered. I mean, now you're going to come back in two weeks, right? Are you coming back for the main event? I can't because the other agent is. Yes, the other agent is. But that's what I was telling you guys that I wish it would be. There's all these events in Springfield. You're like, I'm in Jersey. How often can I really come to Springfield? That's my point. You know what I mean?  My husband is going to have a heart attack if I disappear for half of the month. You need a house here. Or should you just move? That's what I have to do, right? Yes, I'm thinking. That half million bucks would go a lot further.  So then I'm going to probably be the mayor of the city and own the. Oh, I definitely will know people. Oh, I definitely will see me meeting people in whatever. You know, so I already hired somebody and two people in Florida, like two teams in Florida, then somebody in California, somebody in Texas. So I'm actually was making a joke with Dallas that I'm going to go to the bar and maybe I will hire somebody there, you know. You probably would. Yes, just, you know. She's looking. She's a machine. I'm looking, yes, I'm looking. Everywhere that I go, I go and look for it. But, but the goal for me is 20 people before the end of the year to, and I think that that will be a solid number to start. You know, the goal is obviously over a hundred people, but, but, but, you know, to start, I think that 20 people saw it before the end of the year. It will, it will propel me fast, farther than a million dollars. Yes. I already did my calculations and should. If there's an agent out there that is struggling and their backs against the wall, they feel like they, they're making 50 grand a year. And they're like, man, I'm struggling. I don't know what to do. I'm not Tatiana yet. How do they become Tatiana? What advice would you give to them? Don't give up. That's what I would say. Don't give up. Many people think that this industry is about just picking up the phone, calling, and then somebody say, yes, I want to buy insurance. That doesn't happen. I mean, I never met somebody, but if you met somebody like that, please let me know. I want to meet that person. But I never met somebody that says Tatiana every time that I call somebody in the first phone call they pick up. And they say, please. And they say, please sell me. That, that I haven't met. And if somebody tells me that, then that's a problem because they say, what the hell is wrong with that person? Yeah. You know, they might have some illness or something, that's what they want me to sell them, you know? But I would say, don't give up. And I would say, it's easier than it looks if you really pay attention to every move you make. Like, I will tell you a quick story. I went to the supermarket and I saw a Hispanic lady. She needed help. You know, I talked to her briefly. And I said, you know, by the way, how old are you? And she said 62, 63. And I said, this is my car. If you ever need me, call me. Can you believe that a lady saved that car for three years? Wow. She must have liked you. Well, but it's because we make a connection. That's right. You know what I mean? It was in a non-plan, you know, way. I was looking for something in a supermarket that it wasn't even my area. The lady was looking for something. I help her because she didn't know how to read English. I said, oh, this is right here. This is what you're looking for.  And we just made a small little chit chat for what, like five, seven minutes maybe. And I gave her my time. Most people don't have the courage to do that. You seem to have the courage to ask anyone, anything, anytime. You're very likable, very outgoing, super driven, but you're also really good at connecting with people. But I think that that can be learned, to be honest with you. I don't think that, I think that that's a craft that you start developing with time. I don't think that you are born, I mean, there are some lucky people that they're born with it. But I think that the more, it's like, it's like exercise. Like you, when you were saying about your triathlon, right? Probably at the beginning you were thinking, oh my God, how I'm going to do this? You know what I mean? This looks like a mountain task. I'm never going to be able to train for this. But you don't need to do it all at once, right?  But the moment that you realize, you're in 10 miles one shot, you know? So you turn around, you look, oh yeah, last year. I did it? Yeah, last year I was only running half a mile. So it's like a muscle. If you start looking for opportunities at the beginning when I became, coming from corporate and then being dependent and not having the salary, you know, I was making a big salary in Wall Street. I was making $150,000 just salary. Most people think that's pretty good. I'm complacent, right? That's pretty good. That's what I was saying in the meeting too. It's so easy to get complacent because you get to a point that, okay, I'm making good money. I have a nice car. I have a nice apartment. At the time it was an apartment in New York City. I have a nice apartment. But a what point is enough, you know? And when I was removed that salary, when I was removed that comfort blanket, I was like, okay, how am I going to get clients now? Because I need, I need 40 clients a month. How am I going to do that? How do you do that? And I start realizing that you have to ask every single person. So good. Like everywhere you go, if you go to the same laundry mat, go and ask the laundry mat lady, this is me, this is what I do. If you know somebody that needs my help, there you go. That's awesome.  Right, courage. Yeah, and think about it. The worst thing that can happen is they want to say, oh, I'm good. Okay, take my car. Doesn't matter. Take my car, put it there. Or can I put it here? I used to go to restaurants and I used to put, you've never seen those billboards that they put the cards? I used to put three or four cards. Four board or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to put like three or four cards there, you know?  You have problems with Medicare call me. You're extremely persistent too. And I'm persistent, yes. I don't give up. Very persistent.  And that's it. And I have those, yeah. You guys gotta get like that. They gotta get like Tatiana. She does not give up. Okay, last question. What does 8% mean to you? 8% means the people that really make it. You know what I mean? We are sadly not that many. I have worked in many, many corporations. And I see many people, I used to hire people for a corporation too. So I hire many people and it irks me. You know what I mean? You have no idea how many people now call me sometimes for a job because they see now what I post online and stuff like that. And recently I had a guy that he said, and he is my age. I don't think that I'm old, I'm 44. But I don't think that I'm old, right? You're a similar age to Dallas actually. Yes, I think that Dallas is 43 or something like that, right? But I don't consider myself old or finished or I mean, I think that I'm just starting, you know? But I have this guy calling me, he's 45. He just got fired from his job in corporate America because of COVID in New York City. And he calls me, he said, I was wondering if you know somebody can give me a job that I can make 100,000 dollars a year and I just wanna take it easy. And I was like, oh, I'm not the person that I can recommend you that kind of job. I'm sorry. Not take it easy. No, but why do you wanna take it easy? That's my, that's kind of my point here. Why? Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't think people really deep down wanna take it easy. I think it's just the easy way out is to just be like. But why? Because I used to tell myself like, if I can just make $5,000 a week, this is years ago. If I can just make $5,000 a week, I'll be set for life. And when then I got to $5,000, I'm like. But see, at least you've realized. Yeah. That you wanted more. But this guy was already making a hundred and something thousand dollars a year. And he wants to go to another job. Making hundreds of dollars. And make a hundred and something thousand dollars a year and just be there. And this is a 45 year old man that probably has a family. Exactly. Right? Maybe he has kids that are 15 or like Dallas, right? 14, 15 years old as the average.  If they wanna go to college, right? You don't wanna take that away from your family. I mean, you don't want your kid to ask you for something that you cannot provide. You are the parent. That's right. It's your responsibility. Give them the opportunity that your parents gave you. So if your parents gave you for college, gave you money for college, or gave you the possibility to go to college, the least that you can do for your kids is giving the same opportunity that you were provided. Absolutely. When you were in that place. You have to. So why you're gonna settle for so little? Show some respect to your family, to yourself. You know? And I told him, I felt bad for him because I was like, listen, but I'm not a person I wouldn't wanna recommend you. Yes. How I can recommend to my network. Somebody that is telling me I wanna take it easy. Mm. Don't do that. Right? How that looks as my reflection. Yeah, not good. No. I've hired too many people that are close to me that come here and just wanna take it easy and I'm like, I'm done. I was like, no. I'm sorry, but no. It's unacceptable that you are that age. 100%. Are thinking like that. You have what? Probably 15, 20 years to retire and probably you don't even have a 401K or nothing that you can show for your life. I mean, what do you have now? That it can be a legacy. He didn't have no answer and he said, don't call me for BS, I'm sorry. I'm not a person. And then some people label me as too rough, but I don't think that I'm rough. I just think that. Yeah, I think that sometimes honesty can be taking us rough. Oh, totally. But I don't think that it's rough to be truthful. You know? Totally. I don't wanna be average. Do you wanna be average? No. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing this. That's right. You follow me? You're gonna leave a legacy to you. You're gonna build something special. We have to. You know? You guys can build it too, can't you? Yeah, I have to. It's my responsibility. From Peru. Yes. To millionaire. Yes. That's the book. Yes. That's a story. And you and I were gonna make millions with the agency things, remember? That's right. Yes. I'm still waiting for your call. I love it. I'm sitting here, you know? Okay, she's right. She's close. I'm waiting for Cody to send me a text that they're not ready to buy this. You know? That's right. See? You forgot about it already. I've got a lot of ideas too. I know, but I don't forget about anything. I'm sorry, you know? I have you in a speed dial. You know? Boom. Yeah, Cody. She's incredible. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Cody. I love it. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, your expertise. Thank you for having me. You're very welcome. I love it.  You don't have any excuses, accept responsibility. Yes. And get after it. Yes. Responsibility, yes. Everything is your fault. And just a small thing. Some people say Tatiana is bilingual. That's what she's so successful. And I think that that's just a BS excuse. I'm sorry, no. Everyone has the same opportunity. I was gonna say yes. You know, everybody- Whether they believe it or not, they do. There is a lot of people in the U.S. It's 10,000. Now I think there were to 12,000 people, right? 12,000 people turning 65 every day. You are gonna tell me that people think that there is not enough people. This is the only business that I know that for the next 10 years, the number is gonna keep increasing and we're not gonna have lack customers. It's 360,000 a month. I know. People turning 65. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. And they all can be rich through the home. That's right. Or through mail, or in person, or knocking doors. All of them work. Some people ask me, what works? Everything works. Do everything. That's right, do it all. Do it all. We can all make money like Tatiana, okay? Thank you. I wanna make more money. Thank you. Okay. No, thank you, Cody. Go do it. Thank you. Meet Tatiana. I want you in the hot seat. Yes, thank you. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're gonna love. It's right there. Click on it. See you in there. Who heard when we first started today that the best people in the world have a coach? Was that Bill Gates earlier that said everybody should have a coach?  That's amazing. That's crazy. Ridiculous in a good way.


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So Blackmagic Design has released a new camera application that competes directly with Filmic Pro. The new Blackmagic camera app is 100% free, which does have an advantage over Filmic Pro, which requires a subscription. But is Filmic Pro worth the cost due to the additional features that the Blackmagic camera app lacks? Let's explore the differences and similarities between these two popular camera apps to help you determine which one is better for your needs. So let's start off with the similarities. Personally I find both interfaces to be user-friendly and intuitive. They offer simplicity and easy navigation so that you can access settings and features without any hassle. Both apps give you the option for automatic and manual controls for focus and exposure, letting you adjust settings like ISO, shutter speed and white balance. Plus you can easily change lenses and tweak the frame rate on both. And what's more, you'll find different stabilization options on both apps and guess what? They both offer advanced settings too. You can change things like resolution, codec, color space, audio settings and so much more. And here's the cool thing, both apps support recording in Apple Log when shooting on the iPhone 15 Pro Max allowing you to capture the full dynamic range of your video. And if you want to take it up a notch, they also support external USB-C recording. But wait, there's more, you get advanced features like Zebra, focus speaking, aspect ratio, false color, exposure monitoring and the ability to import and preview LUTs. Especially when shooting in Apple Log where the image appears flat and desaturated, using a conversion LUT like Apple Log to Rec.709 will give you a much better visual of what you're filming. So let's now dive into the dissimilarities between these two Pro video apps. First off, let's talk about the edge that Filmic Pro has over the Blackmagic Camera app. When it comes to compatibility, Filmic Pro is available for both Android and iOS users while the Blackmagic Camera app only supports iOS. Now, Filmic Pro offers two radicals for controlling exposure and focus while the Blackmagic cam only has one radical for both, following a more traditional layout like the default camera app on the iPhone. Having two radicals allows me to quickly set and lock the exposure on the brightest part of the image and leave the focus in auto. This feature is great for capturing quick shots if you don't want to use the manual controls. With the Blackmagic Camera app, there is a little workaround, just tap and hold on the screen to lock the focus and exposure and then go to the camera settings and set the focus to auto. This way the exposure is locked while still having the focus in auto. However, it would be awesome if the Blackmagic Camera app had a focus radical so that it could autoset focus on a specific subject in the frame. The Filmic Pro app offers extensive hardware support, including features for gimbals and more. In comparison to the Blackmagic Camera app, it is limited in this aspect. But they actually have a cool feature that they support, which is the Nucleus Wireless Lens Control. So if you're considering some focus pooling, you're good to go. Now one feature I really like in Filmic Pro is the ability to save settings as presets, which saves you time when switching between different shooting scenarios. Filmic Pro also offers more advanced options like multi-camera recording using the Double Take app, which is included in their subscription plan. It allows you to record with two cameras simultaneously. Another handy feature is the ability to stitch recorded footage, which lets you pause your recording and continue. Once you're done, Filmic Pro merges the clips together as one. Filmic Pro is also supported on the Apple Watch, which is helpful for monitoring shots. Additionally, you can remotely start and stop recording without touching your iPhone. Oh, and there's an app called Filmic Remote that lets you use your iPad as a controller and second screen. And that's pretty cool. But who knows, maybe the Blackmagic Camera app could adapt that. All right, let's now dive into the benefits that the Blackmagic Camera app has over Filmic Pro. Now, first of all, obviously the price. Filmic Pro offers a subscription model with two options. You can pay $2 per week or go for the whole year at $39. The Blackmagic Camera app, on the other hand, is free. It's completely free. Next up, the Blackmagic Camera app has the ability to shoot in a landscape while the phone is mounted vertically, which is kind of exciting and might be helpful in some scenarios. But you can also enable the regular vertical mode if you plan on making videos for social media platforms. Next up is the Blackmagic Cloud. The Cloud option on the Blackmagic Camera app is really incredible, especially for DaVinci Resolve users. It allows you to directly upload video clips to the cloud, saving you time from manually transferring files from your phone to your computer. And guess what? The Cloud function also lets you edit and collaborate remotely with real-time communication. And this could completely change your workflow. I believe this is a total game changer and the best part is this feature currently is free. Now, Filmic Pro does offer this camera to cloud feature using frame.io, but again, you will have to be subscribed to Filmic Pro's plan. So there you have it. These are the major differences I see between the Blackmagic Camera app and Filmic Pro. Now, for those who used Filmic Pro several years ago, like I have, you can use the Filmic Legacy app for free, which allows you to continue using the original features you paid for and includes all future updates. The release of the Blackmagic Camera app is really exciting for me, as it offers a professional-level tool for recording high-quality video on your iPhone that shares similar functionalities as the Filmic Pro app and it's free. And I'm really excited to see what updates and advancements they bring in the future. Personally, I'm not a fan of subscription models. I prefer sticking to the free legacy version of Filmic Pro that meets all my needs. Now, Filmic Pro is a well-established camera app that has generally transformed the mobile filmmaking landscape over the years and I'm grateful for that. While I understand the need for Filmic Pro to generate revenue and continue developing the app, I believe they should offer users the option to purchase a lifetime license and perhaps provide payment options for only the more significant updates. Even though Filmic Pro has more features, for now, it's still a subscription-based model. Personally, the Blackmagic Camera app has caught my eye. It's free and has many features on par with Filmic Pro. It's probably one of the best alternative to Filmic Pro out there. I think the reason Blackmagic Design can offer this app for free is perhaps because they have the budget for it. Being a well-established company in the film industry, they have other sources of revenue like Filmic Pro, which solely focuses on their camera app, I guess. Now, let me know guys in the comments if you have tried the Blackmagic Camera app and what your thoughts are on it compared to Filmic Pro. Are there any other camera apps that you prefer or recommend for mobile filmmaking? Let me know as well. Now guys, if you're interested, you can join my complete smartphone filmmaking program and learn how to capture amazing videos with your iPhone. I'll teach you how to use the default camera app, Filmic Pro, and the Blackmagic Camera app to unlock your phone's full potential. Don't miss out. Click the link in the video description below. If you have any questions, guys, let me know and I'll be happy to help. Thank you so much for watching and keep creating and experimenting. See you the next time.