In the previous lessons, we spoke about the 6 criteria for finding a good product to sell. We spoke about how to search and find successful Shopify dropshipping stores. And before we move on to the next lesson on product research of how to find the best products that are selling within those stores and in others, we need to make this small lesson in the middle and it's a very important one of how to find the best dropshipping suppliers to work with in our stores so that our products will ship out really quick and so that we can get very good customer support in case of item cancellations and returns. We want to streamline the whole process, we want everything to be working smooth within our business and we do not want to deal with unsatisfied customers and other subjects that will simply cause our business to stop growing. Many people are dropshipping from Chinese suppliers, which is totally fine, it's a very good working method, the items are very, very cheap when they're coming from China, but there are a few problems when working with Chinese suppliers. The first one being that their shipping times are considerably slow when compared to US suppliers. The second problem is on returns and order cancellations, they usually want proof of if the product arrived damaged, show us pictures, if the product is not working, show us how it's not working. So there's usually a lot of ping pong with Chinese suppliers, return shipping is also usually not free. So the customer on the other end is just unsatisfied and he just wants to get this thing over with and he'll probably not buy from you again. But when working with US suppliers, this is usually a different situation. The returns process is usually a lot easier and the products ship out much faster. Most of the customers receive their products within a week. Let's get on with the list and start talking about the best dropshipping suppliers that you need to work with in your dropshipping stores. So the first supplier that I want to recommend, a lot of people are not working with the supplier yet, but this supplier is on the rise. It's a huge online marketplace with a lot of sellers inside of it. And this supplier is called Etsy. Let's see what Etsy is and what it's all about. So here's the main page of Etsy. Once again, it's a huge online marketplace and it's on the rise. Let me show you guys Etsy stock to show you exactly where this platform is going. So as you can tell in the past year, there's a huge rise. If we take a look at the maximum real quick, you can see that Etsy has been here for a few years, but only in the last year was there a huge significant rise. If you look at the last year, in the last one year, you can see that the stock was around $45 in the beginning of this year. And today one stock is around $130, which means it more than tripled its stock just this year. A lot of people are using Etsy to buy products from. A lot of people are using them to source their products for their dropshipping stores. And as you can tell, they have a whole bunch of categories. It's very easy to find something that you need for your store, for your niche, or to get product ideas. For example, if you go inside the listings, you can see that there are product reviews, free shipping. There's also high ticket prices, which you can make great profit from, but not in the beginning. We're going to go for lower price items. But as you can tell, there's a great selection. Go ahead and browse around Etsy. I'm not going to go into it too much because I want to keep these videos very, very short and very, very informational. So Etsy is the first one on the list. They're browsing them now and check out all of the stuff that they have. If you ask me, they're going to get very close to Amazon size in just a couple of years. So go ahead and start working with them before your competition does. The second supplier that I want to recommend to work with on your dropshipping stores is Amazon. On Amazon, there are tons of products. You can find anything and just about everything on Amazon. I'm sure that you've browsed them around. I'm sure that you've heard of them. I'm sure that I don't need to get into detail of what Amazon is all about. But if you sign up for their prime account, you're going to get free shipping on all of their orders instead of the $25 minimum. All of the products will ship in in the first couple of days and the products will arrive within the first week of the order. It usually takes about three or four days. And if we go back to Etsy for a second, if you go inside each product, you'll also be able to see how long it takes for the items to ship. So let's just go inside this product listing really quick. If we just scroll down, ready to ship in two to 10 business days shipping from the United States. So you want to find products that are shipping from the United States. Two to 10 business days is not good in this particular example over here. But if we just click on another product, for example, this picture over here, once again just scroll down and see how long it takes and where it's shipping from. This is a good example, one to three business days from the United States. It's very easy to find these products. You have the reviews. So using Etsy is really, really easy. So on Amazon, if you have the Amazon Prime membership, all of the Prime products will ship in the first couple of days and the customer will get his product within that same week that he ordered the product. The third US supplier that I want to recommend that you guys work with on your dropshipping stores is Walmart. A lot of people are also dropshipping from Walmart. This is nothing new. But the products are refreshing really, really fast on Walmart just as they are on Amazon. So it's another huge marketplace with a lot of sellers inside that are selling their products and you can benefit from it on your dropshipping stores. So Walmart is the third option that I want to recommend to you guys. And I only want to recommend one more supplier for you guys to work with because I don't want you guys to get too confused in the beginning. I want you to focus on one supplier and then two suppliers and then maybe three suppliers at the most. If you're going to work with five or maybe even 10 suppliers, you're going to see that it's not going to be beneficial. It's very, very confusing and just very complicated. Work with two or three suppliers. It's more than enough. So the last supplier that I want to recommend that you guys work with, this is the fourth supplier. It's a supplier called Banggood. Many of you have heard of it. Many of you haven't. This is a very dropshipping friendly supplier with warehouses in the U.S. and also in China. So when you're searching for a product, for example, cat toys, when you get the search results, you have your ship from. Click on that and choose only United States warehouses. Now you can see all of the cat toys that they have from United States warehouses. Do that on each and every one of your searches. And there you have another supplier with thousands of products in U.S. warehouses. So those are the four dropshipping suppliers that I recommend that you guys work with. Go inside each one of their sites right now, especially the ones that you guys haven't heard about. Learn about them. See how fast they ship their products. Make sure that they're shipping from the United States. And this is where you're going to find the best dropshipping products to source with the best shipping times and very easy and convenient customer service. So we have Etsy, we have Amazon, we have Walmart, and we have Banggood, the top four U.S. suppliers to work with on your dropshipping stores. Bookmark them and in the next lesson, we're going to learn about how to find the best dropshipping products in the Shopify stores that you spied on the last lesson and new methods of finding more products that are selling well in other stores. That's it for this lesson. See you in the next one.


Hi, everybody. Happy Thursday. I'm Joe for jasphyscasebreaks.com, and we've got some 2122 Panini Mosaic basketball coming at you. Six-box half-case picker team four, which is the second half of the case for the first half we did yesterday. Big thanks to this group right here for making it happen on a Thursday, the 26th. Thanks for spending a bit of your Thursday with me. I appreciate that. You have a little rooftop symbol next to your name that means you won that spot in the filler. And, Sean, you ended up with last spot mojo before we pulled those teams for the filler. There you go. Good luck, everybody. Now, full disclosure, we did see a stained glass in the first half. But there could be two, because last case I did, we saw a stained glass in one half and a second stained glass in the second half. So, two could be a possibility. And, what, one autograph of box on average. A lot of parallels in here. No vet commons ship. I'm going to give you an example of that in this first box here, but I think most of you know what that means. But, obviously, all parallels, inserts, rookie cards, numbered cards, obviously all those are going to ship. Alright, so for example, John Collins is not going to ship. These guys aren't going to ship. Those are commons. Alright, Horace Grant will ship. That's a hit. Bulls. Ben, with the bulls. The famous goggles and everything. Nice Horace Grant. Santiago Dama obviously ships. That's a red parallel, so that'll obviously ship. Inserts ship. Dame will ship. Alright, National Pride Donovan Mitchell ships. That's an insert. Alright, but these guys won't ship. I think you get the idea. Tatum will definitely ship. Got a Blue Owl Horford. 50 out of 99. Matt with the Celtics. Jalen Suggs and a red Evan Mobley. Nice. NBA debut, Evan Mobley. That's going to be for Daniel. There you go, Dan. Clear flag. This is for you. Got a National Pride Scotty Barnes for Toronto. That's for Alan. And the Jalen Suggs will be for Walter. Also a National Pride card. Jalen Green, straight fire. Insert. Rising stars. Jalen Green. Scotty Barnes, NBA debut for Alan. Josh Giddy for Matinee. Alright, hey, it's Ian Michael. I'll go to a man. 65 out of 99. Will Barton. That's for Denver. It's going to be for Daniel with the spot that he won. Next box. Good luck, everybody. We've got more mosaic in the store. We've got half case random team. That's almost full. We've got some single digits. And another half case picker team, which is going to be a half case from a fresh case. Let's see what's going on in the basketball world. Looks like LeBron Giannis voted as All-Star Game captain. Zion, Nikol Jokic, Steph Curry, Luganon. She's joining LeBron James as West starters. Do they not draft anymore? I don't know what they're doing this year. Donovan Mitchell, Kyrie Irving, Jason Tatum, and Kevin Durant joined Giannis in the East. Are they not drafting teams anymore? Is this just a straight West-East battle? So, Damon Lillard scored 60 last night, and apparently it was historically efficient. We were looking at the numbers yesterday. It did look pretty efficient. Lillard needed just 29 shot attempts and 10 free throw attempts to score 60, putting him in an elite company. Just two other players, Malone with 26 shots and James Harden 24-19, have reached 60 points on fewer shot attempts, but both scored a higher percentage of points at the foul line, taking 23 free throws a piece. Wow. Pretty amazing. Box. That's Jalen Suggs, National Pride, Orlando. Got Kevin Muter to 99. That's for Tristan and the Hawks. We've got a Josh Giddy, OKC, and we've got a NBA debut, Scottie Barnes. Should we just sleeve up Damon Lillard for today? Just in honor of his, not even top-load him. Normally don't do this for this guy, but this for this parallel, but hey, for the 60. Let's show some respect. That goes to Daniel on the trailblazers. Next half, I think that's the autograph coming up here. It is. It's a Facundo Campazo for Denver. That's going to be for Daniel in Denver. John Morant, Swagger, I thought that might be number. That looks pretty cool. Gordon Hayward Blue, 97 out of 99 for Charlotte. That'll be for Brian. Got an NBA debut, Evan Mobley for Cleveland. Jalen Suggs. Alright, another box down. Let's get another one going. Let's see, any finals in basketball today? No, no final scores in basketball. A lot of games in progress. In Boston, the Knicks are up 80-37 with 4-30 left in the third. In Brooklyn, Pistons are up 89-81 with 3 minutes left in the third. At the end of the third in Charlotte, the Bulls are up by 2, 79-77. And at halftime, Rockets are up on the Cavs. No, check that. Cavs are up on the Rockets in Houston, 74-48. 74 points already, but the Cavs had 37 points in the first quarter. 37 points in the second quarter. Later tonight, Mavs at Suns, Spurs at Clippers. Who's doing the work for Cleveland? Evan Mobley is. You've got 18 points, 7 rebounds, a couple assists, a steal, a block. Plus 20 on the plus-minus if you're into that sort of thing. Darius Garland's 15 points, 6 assists. Carousel Vert has 12 points. Jared Allen has a few steals. Alright, we've got Rudy Gaubert for the Jazz. 22 out of 25. Me for Jeremy. Oh, Donovan Mitchell. Is he out, I guess? Got an NBA debut. Jalen Green. That's for Daniel and Houston. And a silver Evan Mobley NBA debut. Go to Daniel. Nice. The parallels is the kind of stuff we want to see. You can find a regular rookie card of him, Silver. That'd be nice, too. We've got a National Pride Cade Cunningham for Sean in Detroit. We've got a Zion Williamson autograph. Pelicans. Michael. With the pals. Nice. This might be another one of these. I might be another one of those guys. Sort of like Anthony Davis. If you could say healthy. Things that he could do. Another NBA debut, Evan Mobley. Got a Jalen Suggs for Orlando. That'll be for Walter. Got a Cade Cunningham. Rookie card for Sean and the Pistons. Get well soon, Cade. Got a Yanis Stairmasters to 25. Kai Jones to 49 for Charlotte. That'll be for Brian. All right. Three boxes down. Three more to go. The Pistons are leading the Nets, though. 93-86 with a couple minutes left in the third. Still a long ways to go, but they're doing all right. Even with Bogdanovich going 0 for 5 from 3. Sadiq Bae, 23 points. Four rebounds, two assists. Jade Naivi, 16 points. Three rebounds, five assists. Steele and a block. Kiel and Hayes, how many Diallo both have double-jit points? Ten each. Nets, of course, without Kevin Durant for a little bit. Looks like Kyrie has 28 points. A few rebounds, five assists, a couple steals. Yeah, Boone. So far, so good. All right. Jalen Green, National Pride. Jalen Suggs. Jalen Suggs, NBA debut. Jalen Green, National Pride. So those are considered inserts, I guess. NBA debut, Cade Cunningham. NBA debut, Josh Giddy, red. That's for OKC. That'll be for Matine. Scotty Barnes, Raptors for Allen. All right, see you, Evan. Thanks, man. Miles McBride. Is your rookie autograph. That's for the New York Knicks. It'll be for Tristan. Got a James Weissman to 49. Matt with the Warriors. LeBron James, National Pride card. Those are pretty cool. Matt with my Lakers. Got a National Pride Cade Cunningham from Detroit. NBA debut, Jalen Green for Daniel and the Rockets. And a red, National Pride, Evan Mobley. Daniel with Cleveland. Picked him up straight up. All these parallels do add up. It'd be nice to see something low numbered, but all those do add up. That's a proper rookie card for Cade Cunningham. You want to find parallels of him, too. Or Ankeven. Josh Giddy. Silver. Rookie card. Nice. Matt's an A. OKC. And a Blue Trey Young, 49 out of 99 for Tristan and the ATL. All right, two more boxes to go. As much as I want to watch the second round Farmers Insurance Golf here on a beautiful course, Tori Pines. We'll flip over to TNT for Nick Celtics. A little more action there. All right, got NBA debut, Scotty Barnes. Another Josh Giddy. And the autograph, that's Brandon Boston Jr. Clippers, that's going to be for Daniel. One of the Clippers in the team random, the filler. Sugs. Hachimura.  Although that addition won't matter if Anthony Davis can't stay healthy. Definitely need that to happen if the Lakers even want to make the playoffs, let alone make any kind of noise in the playoffs. There's PJ Tucker to 99. National Pride, Cade Cunningham. Sean Maddock, Detroit. Got an NBA debut, Evan Mobley and a Jalen Sugs. Final box coming up. Again, we've got more in the store, jaskyscasebrakes.com. Check it out. Mixer up, 91.87. 10.50 left in the game. Celtics were minus eight at the start of the game. Now they're plus three and a half. Live line according to FanDuel, according to the TV broadcast. Who's doing the work today? Julius Randall. 28 points, six rebounds, a couple assists. Who's, uh... Is that Jericho? That isn't Jay Sims? Jericho Sims, yeah. Jericho Sims only has two points, but he's got 11 rebounds already. Or 11 rebounds leading all rebounders for the Knicks at the start of the four. That's pretty good. Jalen Brunton has 27 points. A few rebound, a handful of assists. A block as well. RJ Barrett, 12 points, a couple rebounds. A steal. Manual quickly, 17 points. Four rebounds. That's off the bench too. All right, what's happening with the Celtics here? Celtics, Tatum's got 22, Jalen Brown's got 18. That's really all the offense are getting. Al Horford only has six points. You know, they're not getting a lot of work from the other guys. All right, the auto is Josh Christopher. That's our last auto of the break. Rookie autograph for the Rockets. That's gonna be for Daniel. All right, we've got a Cade Cunningham for Detroit. We've got an NBA debut, Jalen Green for Houston. We've got a Luca Garza Blue to 99 for Detroit as well. Let's see if we can find something really, oh, nice. Look at that. Got a Cade Cunningham. I think they call that a mosaic parallel in mosaic. It's a good-looking card. Sean, stuff like that braids out nicely. Dot, dot, dot. He comes back strong next season. That's the kind of stuff you want to see to get a great return. Jalen Green, Jalen Suggs. National pride for Green, Suggs. There's NBA debut. This side wanted to happen. It's Jalen Suggs for Orlando and an NBA debut, Evan Mobley. Last little stack here. Moses Moody, Mirkic. And we've got a Cade Cunningham. National pride card. Last little stack. Anything crazy here? Davion Mitchell, Red. The Cell, Mo Bamba. And that is that, my friends. That is 21-22. Penini Mosaic, basketball, hobby edition, half case, picker team number four. Thanks, everybody, for joining the break and for making this happen. We've got more mosaic hoops in the store. Just a quick look at some of the top tier rookies and the autographs. And we've got a ton of other numbered cards and inserts to ship out as well. So thanks very much, everybody. I'm Joe for jaskiescasebreaks.com. I will see you next time for the next basketball break. Bye-bye.


I'm talking about my experiences around my secondary school age.  I guess like, was there a point in which you kind of realized that something was a bit off with me? Was it like a one day kind of clicked and I just didn't talk anymore and I loved really dysregulate and unhappy or was it kind of a gradual? I think this was a tough one because we'd always kind of had quite, you know, we had this little boy that, you know, would chat, talk and we could kind of guide and support and then, like I said, you almost went through this tunnel backwards, but all of a sudden you kind of left, we lost you and it was almost like that. Like an instant kind of. Without even realizing that we'd lost you and I thought it's teenage years and everybody used to say, oh it's teenage. It's all about it, it'll be fine. Whereas I'd done a lot of reading and I knew that with that spirit you could develop mental health difficulties because of high anxiety and social demands and so forth.  But actually what I didn't see was that you could not find your place.  You did not know where you fit.  The first time I knew about your arming was, it used to be a brilliant swimmer. And all of a sudden you didn't want to go swimming. And we thought it was because of the sudden light could be through, but actually which was probably one of the hardest things for me as a parent was you were actually arming and again, selfishly, I thought it's something I've not done or have done that's caused that. You kind of put yourself as the blame for it. Selfishly, yeah, probably. I didn't quite understand self-harming. I didn't, I kind of knew that I had to let you do it. And as a parent, that goes against the grain completely because you want to protect your child and make sure your child's okay. But yeah, you have to just make sure all these supports in place and then you kind of move through it. I think that's one of the hardest things ever really. And yeah, yeah, that was difficult. And then we just, the only support we had really was the school nurse. It was great, but the school didn't really understand it. Secondary school, I was saying, didn't understand it. So it was still doing okay academically, wasn't it? It was still career in a head and that was fine as long as you were performing academically, you know. Actually, it's not, you know, a priority that you were okay emotionally and that didn't seem to be a priority. So I thought it wasn't a great deal of support out there apart from Cams and you got referred to Cams and you would talk to your health worker, but you wouldn't talk to us as a family. To be honest, I didn't really say much to her either. Which was fine, which was not criticism, you know, you had to go through with that process, didn't you? But I didn't find it very helpful. There was little guidance and support, there was a very little guidance and support for you as a young person, if I'm honest. It's better now. And I think if I'd known about social care and how they could have supported other side, maybe I would have gone down that route to get you a PA or support. But I think there was always a stigma with social care that there isn't now that. So social care is a really positive thing to actually add support to the family, you know, and to make sure that everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing and that there's a network around you and around the family. Was there was the person who was supporting me? Were they autism trained? Like, did they know much about autism? No, autism training just didn't really happen at that time at all. No, no, because I just, you know, obviously, I look back with all the knowledge and the research that I've done in adult life and stuff like lexithymia and cognitive empathy and all sorts of different things. Never was never really touched on or used in the context of support that I was getting because that I'd come away with these sheets of what to do, like when I'm anxious or what to do when I've had low mood. And they just they just didn't work because like, how am I supposed to regulate my anxiety when I don't know that I'm anxious until I'm at the point where I'm having a meltdown or a panic attack. It's like, it just didn't didn't work for me. And I really felt sort of during those sessions, I didn't talk talk to them very much at all. To be honest, I didn't open up about hardly anything because it just kind of felt a bit. I just felt like they didn't really understand me. And I didn't understand me, but I knew that they didn't like they couldn't really offer me anything that I felt was I don't know. I didn't feel like that they could offer me anything that that would help. I think there's some stuff around methods to like stop, stop with the harming behaviors, which kind of worked a little bit. But no, it's kind of like one of those situations where I thought I had to kind of go to these and let them know that I'm okay rather than to talk about the feelings I was having. I think that also, there was not a bunny going on at school that you again didn't share. And actually through your podcast, we've kind of got to know about it. And sometimes they're a bit heartbroken because we didn't know because I think you didn't want to share it. No, I didn't tell anybody about anything. I even like my friends about the bullying and things like that. It was more like it was it was skull should have picked up on that really. There should be more vigilant because the only thing that school really did that was quite helpful was they allowed me to go to the sort of like the special needs department area that they had. But they didn't do anything with me. Like they didn't support me of anything. They just let me sit in there and have them melt down. And now and again, I talked to some of the teachers and stuff. But it was never something that was like proactively given to me. I had to like seek out the support from the teachers. And some teachers were really bad with understanding my difficulties and allowing me to like go outside when I'm having issues with my sensory stuff. And those some teachers were great. And some teachers were not so much. And I remember one of the one of the issues that I had, particularly around P is that I didn't like to get changed in front of the other the other kids. And so I'd always wait until the end of the thing to get changed. And I would always get like told off by like the teachers when I came late.  They're a bit rowdy. And, you know, I was in the top set of PE. So as we've like all the kind of popular footbally kids and I was just kind of constantly aware of just like that stuff up until the point where I realized that when everyone started leaving, I was like, oh my god, I haven't got changed.  No sense of urgency. No. And I hated PE.  Because she did so well. I know. I think that don't be part of a team really turning things around for you. Yeah. It was kind of a bit of a random thing, wasn't it, trying something else to take over from the swimming? Just because I liked the anime. Yeah, you went into it. Because your special interest has always been sort of Japanese. Is that good risk? Because they did an exchange. If you actually went on the exchange, didn't you? It was around the time that Fukushima incident happened, wasn't it? So as we were having an exchange to exchange program with the schooling Fukushima and it was, it's a bit hard. It was it was a lot different to like what was planned. But it was good. It was a good experience for me. It was one of the only times that I really felt like accepted by group for like a in a long time. Because the Japanese students, they were like, really impressed with like my academic stuff. And they're really impressed with my Taekwondo. I was like, Oh my God, I just never get this like in my school. And it was kind of like, wow, like they actually see me and they want to talk to me. It's like, it was, I think that was the most. That was the most transformative thing for me. And I was talking to somewhere recently about like, this, I think I was talking to Timmy about the sort of how the American schools work versus British schools, because in like the American schools, like if you do well academically and you go to sports, you're like instantly just the popular person. Whereas in the UK, it's not like that at all. No, no, it's not. Sometimes the opposite. Yeah. But I think Taekwondo, I mean, you tried a few kind of martial arts. And then me, yeah, you did. You tried karate. And then eventually Taekwondo, when you just, that was it. You just took to it and it kind of the exercise and the routine and the formalities around it was good because it kind of helped your mental health. But then of course, you took it too far in terms of doing too much exercise, even brushing your teeth, you'd be doing squats and kind of yeah, he's really obsessed with it. And also, there was a weight category she had to be in and lose weight for and you lost a bit too much weight. So that's a bit healthy, but all the, but you faced a lot going into competitions and so forth. And have like a lot of meltdowns and panic attacks before. And you would use mindfulness and kind of focus on time. You were amazing. You've achieved so much really. And yet you and your dad have been like amazing with like helping me get to like, because they're Taekwondo clubs, like the sport Taekwondo clubs, because I started like a traditional one, like around Harrogate. And then I think, you know, one of our friends kind of encouraged us to kind of go to a sports place, try it out. They kind of head under me and started training there. We used to like travel back and forth after school. Yeah, two hour round trip to train. I don't know. I felt like I kind of, I remember my secondary school as secondary school experiences feeling kind of worthless. Like people to really, I didn't feel like people really saw me or found me interesting.  Like if you're looking to be happy all the time, it's not always something that you can do, but you can always have a goal or a meaning that you strive to do. And I think that's what Taekwondo and what the academic stuff was about. Because I was like, all right, I'm going to prove myself. You know, I'm a good person. I am good at stuff. And I kind of thought that, you know, when I started getting awards and medals that people would I guess once talked to me more, be more social and that did happen within Taekwondo. And with the teachers, like in the top sets and stuff, but not like with the kids at school. So I always just felt like every time I went to school, it was kind of like, right, this is a task. And any time that I was actually in lessons or in the library revising or researching, I felt good. But then it was the stuff around it that I just couldn't cope with. And I tried to be social now and again, I got involved in different groups, but I was very much like a drifter. Like I didn't really have like a, like a best friend or like someone that I could rely on or something that I could, you know, talk to about my feelings. Which I think I found really difficult. But was nobody you could really trust whilst they're at that point in terms of talking? No, not friends, not people in my social circles. It was a hard time, wasn't it? Really hard on you and bittersweet with all the Taekwondo and the positive things and the traveling. So you learned to be more independent because you were traveling to different countries and working with a team. Working with a team and then that kind of set you up to kind of... Oh, with Taekwondo, yeah. I think we always kind of said, give it a go, Tom. You know, and then we did the prep around it in a way and tried to kind of find the best way to kind of support you to do those things, even though they were a challenge. I think that was the good thing about you is you would always give it a go. Well, you mean you taught me from UNH to give stuff a go. We always said, have your autism in your pocket kind of thing if you need it. But don't say I can't do it because just give it a go.  So it feels like a lot of parents, a lot of people, kind of going like to the two extremes, the river like, they can't do anything. So we're not going to expose them to it or they're like, they have to do everything that's expected of them. And they have to do all these things. And if they don't do it, then that's a bad thing and that they should be punished or they should be, you know, whereas with, with you, you know, growing up with you as my mom, it was kind of like, I was exposed to that stuff, but then if I needed to, I could exit and it wouldn't be like an expectation or an issue that I couldn't cope with it. I think that, that's the kind of dynamic that really works for me because I still got the experience of it, but then I felt safe enough to exit if I... I was quite often will say to kids, right, if we're going to commit to this, we're going to do it week after week. Yeah, week after week, you have to. Actually, it doesn't work with old, maybe with my younger son, it did, but not with you. Absolutely. But I also recognize that some parents will really struggle with their child with autism going to activities and doing things like that because maybe you're on your own, maybe your child has no sense of danger and that kind of thing and that is tricky. So I do recognize you can't always do that with your children. No, but it's about, it's about the adjustments though, isn't it? It is doing something that challenges, I'm a little bit. Yeah. It's not so exposing that it just causes them to find life just overwhelming.  So the next time I do it whether I like it or not, I know how predictable it's going to be. And eventually I'll be able to cope with that because I know about that and that experience or that sensation and I can deal with it. It kind of things get worse before they get better, I guess, and it's writing it down sometimes. I hope you guys can hear me okay. You're doing great. You're doing great. So not a full voice to listen to for a little bit. Well, I mean, going a bit further because I know we were talking about how it was hard to get me support, like in an ideal world, what would you have wanted for me or what do you think would have been helpful either from the school or from mental health systems?  So it's not kind of one size fits all kind of got had the chance to get to know you and and kind of fed that back into school and into the family as well. So it was more joined up. I think that would have worked better and also I think which is really powerful and particularly in schools is peer awareness. And other kids, you know, so you identify this child's being bullied for whatever reason just being their voice to say, this is the reason why this is what you can do to help. Is it what you could do to support them and kind of turn it on inside a little bit. So that's something else that I found with my teaching as well. This is so powerful. But I've done in primary schools before with teachers, the child has always become more powerful and kind of has a voice that is able to change things because while they're not, they're able to tell their story and what they find difficult if other children are aware then they don't. It's kind of more normal. I hate to use the word but more normalised and then it just becomes accepted, you know, and accepted. I think it would have been really good for me to have like a, like a role model that was autistic that, you know, like when I went into into schools and seeing the, seeing the other the kids and stuff. There was no film. There was Rain Man wasn't there. And that was it.  And that's just not the case of very stereotypical.   It's hard for us to get into those positions where we're able to to be active role models for the kids. And I think it's changing. Overall, I think I think kids are kind of looking, you know, and finding my place easier, you know, some more diversity. But it's taking a long time coming, isn't it? Yeah, there's so much like work that needs to be done for like preparing like autistic kids for manipulation and bullying. And I don't know exactly how the best way to go about doing that is, but I think it just it definitely needs to be tackled because we know that like long term anxiety in formative years leads to development of depression and mental health. You know, it's it's something that really needs to be tackled. And I think that that bullying and social isolation and the sensory elements, social elements at school, they're absolutely just so impactful on like someone's long term mental health.  You know, to find every aspect of life scary isn't really I can't imagine what that feels like, really, just find everything and everyone and every sound and every feeling really scary.  I think it's so important that we have that not awareness, because awareness is just that top flip surface saying oh yeah, no, about autism. I've read a bit about it. It's about about doing something about actually being proactive and saying look, you know, there's a kid over there or there's a mate over there or there's a kid over there that actually people are bullying or they're not being not being supported and actually just going look if you want to join in, you know, come and join in with those who'll be part of it. Our children and young people have just got so much to offer as friends, as children as as colleagues, you know, and just so much to offer, really. To offer? Yeah, completely, just to do it all sometimes, really.


we would look at the elimination of unrealized gain or losses on specifically non-depreciable asset and to be more specific we're going to be dealing with land. Now why am I starting with this non-depreciable asset because eventually we're going to look at depreciable asset. So it's very important that you understand how non-depreciable asset work because it's easier to understand how depreciable asset work and this is basically a series of one of five lectures I will having. This topic is covered in advanced accounting and obviously this topic is covered on the CPA exam the FAR section. So make sure you understand this before you move into the depreciable asset. Okay now before we start I would like to let you know that I would like to connect with my viewers. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I post lectures as well as other related accounting and CPA posts. If you are a Facebook user please like my Facebook page accountinglectures.com. All my lectures are housed on my YouTube. Therefore make sure to subscribe to my YouTube and I do have a Twitter account. I'm not very active but I should be more active on Twitter and obviously you could reach me or find lectures on my website. So let's go ahead and get started with the first topic which is intercompany sales of non-depreciable property specifically non-depreciable property can be substituted by land. Okay when there's an intercompany sale of non-depreciable property work papers entries are necessary. Now what are we discussing here? Okay we have a parent company and we have a sub. Here's the general rule. Well what's going to happen sometime the sub the parent company will sell to the sub. Sometime the sub will sell to the parent company and when we have a sale we might have a gain slash loss. So we might have a gain or a loss because of the transaction between the parent and the sub. When we consolidate when we prepare the consolidated financial statement gains need to be eliminated losses need to be eliminated because there are intercompany gains and intercompany losses and we have to bring the asset back to its original basis. So this is the overall idea of what we're trying to do eliminating any gain or losses. Okay so so work papers are necessary to include gains and losses on the sale and the consolidated net income only at the time the property is sold to an outside affiliate group. Remember I have the P and I have the sub and any gain or losses between those two eliminated the only gain and losses is recorded the one that's to the out with the outsider. So we have to eliminate the gain and losses that's that's within the company and only sold to parties outside the affiliate. Okay and that that amount should be the difference between the cost of the property that the affiliated group and the proceeds received. So at the end what we do we see what was the selling price what was the proceeds minus the cost and the cost will be the one to the affiliated group the original basically the original cost. Also we have to present non depreciable property in consolidated balance sheet at its cost to the affiliated group so always we have to go back and report the property at the cost to the affiliated group when we consolidate and we'll see this in an example the topic I believe it's straightforward but again you want to make sure you understand this very well before you move into depreciable property. So we're going to look at an upstream sale and what's an upstream sale upstream sale is when the subsidiary sell to the parent the parent is up there and it's an upstream upstream going upward. P company owns 90% of the outstanding stock of S company on January 1st 2011 S company sold the land to P company for 350 000 that had originally purchased the land on June 30th 2007 for 200 000 okay so let's just think about it for a moment the the subsidiary sold the land for 350 the cost of this land for the subsidiary is 200 000 therefore the subsidiary is going to book again of 150 000 hopefully we can all see this that's the subsidiary. P company plans to construct the building on the land bought from S in which it will house its new production machinery that's fine and that's not really relevant for us the estimated useful life of the building for the new machinery is 15 years we're not really dealing with the machinery so that's also not relevant so what entry do we make on the parent company what entry do we make on the sub company so what would the sub company record well the sub company will have to record the cash the sub company received cash so they will debit cash 350 000 they will credit land they remove the land for 200 000 and they will book again of 150 000 this is the sub the parent company bought the land at 350 at 500 000 I'm sorry at 350 therefore they debit land 350 they will credit cash 350 so this is the transaction that took place on the parent company and this is the transaction that took place on the subsidiary now you have to understand that the parent company owns remember we own 90 percent of us what does that mean it means out of this gain out of this gain we are going to receive in a sense 90 percent why because we own 90 percent so we're going to be allocated 90 percent of this gain so what is 150 times 90 percent that's 135 000 well what do we have to do we're using the equity method so what's going to happen is this okay what we have to do is we have to debit equity and income 135 basically we have to reduce our income by 135 and credit reduce our investment by 135 why are we doing this because the gain on the sale of 150 the gain on the sale of 150 will be reflected in our investment but this is an intercompany gain therefore we have to eliminate it okay this is to reduce this is the parent company to reduce to reduce its income from the subsidiary by its share of the intercompany gain now the parent company will that will not do anything until the lens so sold to an outsider now what is what do we have to do at the end of the year at the end of the year remember this gain here cannot be on the consolidated financial statement so simply put remember what we talked about earlier we said the only gain the gain to the outsider if you remember this slide here we only we count the gain to the outsider therefore the 150 thousand dollar gain will need to remove this and remember the cost the none the present the non depreciable property at the cost of the affiliated group the cost of the affiliated group is not 300 000 the cost of the affiliated group is 200 000 therefore we have to prepare a journal entry okay to remove the gain and reduce the land to its original cost because let me show you what happened from a t-account perspective from a t-account perspective the land is listed at 350 at the parent company okay why because they bought it at 350 this is incorrect the land is over overvalued why because the land supposed to be at only 200 000 therefore what we have to do is we have to debit gain on the land on sale of land this is to remove the gain to remove the gain and what's the gain the gain is 150 right here to remove this gain let me just clear this to remove this gain we debit the gain and we have to credit the land why because the land is listed again let me show you the t-account the land at p company is listed at 350 but the affiliated group it should be only 200 000 simply put this transaction here will act as if the sale never took place why well we're back the land is back to 200 000 and the gain is gone therefore the gain is gone so simply put this gain is gone the land is back to 200 000 because this is basically we reduce the land by 150 the land is 200 000 and credit the cash and debit the cash they cancel each other out so basically we're back the land of 200 000 that's basically what happened as if the transaction never took place as if the transaction never took place and this is how it's supposed to be when you have an intercompany gain or loss it needs to be eliminated so this entry is made to eliminate the gain reported by s company and to reduce the balance at at the parent company from 350 to the cost the affiliate which is 200 000 now what else do we have to do in an upstream sale prepare the the work entries for the end of the year december 31st 2012 by the end of the year of the following year remember this was this is december 31st 2011 a year later what's going to happen we basically have to do the same thing however the gain account is no longer with us remember we debited gain here okay to remove the gain on the sub but what happened by the end of 2011 this gain is closed so the gain will be gone okay but but remember the gain this gain went into the sub retained earnings so the gain went into the sub retained earning okay and the land the land was on the parent company so let me go back to the land the land was 350 at the parent company so land at the parent company would still be on the parent company books 350 therefore what we have to do is this the following year we have to debit if we're using the cost or the partial equity method we have to debit the beginning the beginning retained earning 135 why 135 because this is the controlling interest and non controlling interest 15 000 a total of 150 000 simply put at the beginning of year two this is year two which is 2012 we have to reduce the the beginning retained earning of 150 why because the gain the gain that we eliminated year one we eliminated for the consolidated but it's still on the sub's books and retained earning of the sub therefore we have to debit the beginning retained earning of 150 to eliminate that gain and we have to credit the land of 150 because remember on the individual books of the on the individual books of the parent company the land at the parent company is is 350 therefore we have to we have to reduce by 150 so it goes back to 200 000 so we have to do this entry every year until the asset is sold until the asset is sold let me eliminate erase okay now if we're using the the complete equity method the complete equity method we update our investment rather than the rather than the beginning beginning retained earning therefore what we have to do is we have to debit the investment account 150 000 because we deal with the investments and we have to reduce the land 150 000 so again this is if we are using the equity method this is if we are using the cost or the partial equity method what we do in year two and again these entries would repeat themselves every year until the asset is actually until the asset is actually sold so simply put let's summarize the p company continue to report the land on their statement at the intercompany selling price of 350 remember the individual and i keep i am doing i did this several times the individual company the parent company would still show the land at 350 however and the consolidated will have to show it at 200 000 and that's why every year we have to do this entry we have to reduce the land and we have to remove the earnings from the earnings from the retained earnings if the intercompany seller has been the parent so if this was a downstream sale so because this i showed you this is an upstream sale if this was an downstream sale what is downstream sale if we switch the subsidy the sale going from the parent to the subsidiary then the entire 150 would be to the controlling interest we would not have any non-controlling interest resulting in a debit of 150 to the beginning retained earning of the company simply put if this was a downstream sale so this is downstream it means the parent company sold it then non-controlling would be gone and this will amount will be 150 because we will not have a non-controlling interest because we are selling to the subsidiary therefore the gain will need to be eliminated from our books okay there is no nci simply put okay now let's take a look at another example to compute the net gain when we sell to an outsider so a p company owns parent company owns 90 of the outstanding common stock of s company on january 1st s company sold land to p company for 600 000 so this is basically an upstream sale okay that's fine the company has an originally purchased the land for 400 000 so the s company the subsidiary they have a gain of 200 000 400 600 minus 400 equal to 200 000 remember this gain will be eliminated at the end of the year okay on january 1st 2012 p company the parent company now sold the land purchased from s company to a company outs to an outside affiliate of four seven hundred thousand now p company the cost they sold it for 700 000 their cost is 600 000 therefore p company would would report a gain the third party from third party this is a gain from third party we don't eliminate this gain this gain will stand because it's a gain to to to an outside party now if i ask you what should be the total gain reported in in 2012 well if you really think about it the gain reported is should be 300 000 we already reported 100 000 okay we still have to report the other 200 000 why because the total gain for the group for the for the basically for both the sub and the sub for the sub and the parent so we have first we went from the the we we have a gain from the the subsault the subsault to the parent and we had a gain of 200 000 then the parent sold to a third party and we have a gain of 100 000 therefore the total gain for both is 300 000 okay so let's compute this compute calculate the gain on the sale of the land that's recognized on the books of p on the books of p for that year they would recognize 100 000 calculate the gain that should be recognized and they consolidate that financial statement and they consolidate that financial statement the gain should be 300 000 simply put we should show total gain of 300 000 when when all all said and done the total gain will be 300 000 of which 100 is from 100 is here 100 coming from here if 100 coming from here how much left to be recognized 200 000 therefore what we need to do we need to book an additional entry at December 31st 2012 to credit gain on the sale of 200 000 and debit beginning retained earning if we're using the cost or the partial equity method and a non-controlling interest 200 000 now you might be saying hold on a second why am I doing this what's the purpose of these entries remember in 2011 in 2011 in the sub what the sub did in 2011 the sub-debted cash the sub-debted cash they sold it for how much they sold it for 600 000 so remember in 2011 the sub-debted cash 600 000 credited the land 400 000 and the sub recorded again of 200 000 recorded again of 200 000 this is year one for the sub now this gain was eliminated year one and they consolidated but it stayed on the books of the sub therefore this 200 000 went into retained earnings so what we have to do when we actually sold when we actually sell the when we actually sold the asset we have to take it out of the sub retained earning and and and transfer the gain into the affiliate which is that's why we credit gain on the sale of 200 000 okay now also what we did so this is so this is a gain of 200 000 so this is basically will be part of the consolidated financial statement and we have another gain here of 100 000 so when the when we sold it when we sold it to the third party the parent company debited cash 700 000 credited land 600 000 and credited gain 100 000 therefore we have a gain of 100 000 here and the gain of 200 000 here therefore as i told you the total gain for the affiliated group is 300 000 that should be reported and they consolidated financial statement now for using the complete equity method the only difference is rather than using the beginning retained earning everything goes to the investment account so the investment account because we're using the equity method so it's basically the same thing except you know the difference is this let me highlight the difference between the two method because you might be using the cost method you might be using the you might be using the the cost versus the equity method so i want to make sure i highlight the difference between the two here's the highlighter so it's either you'll debit this account or you'll debit this account depending what entry what method you are using now again if there was a if this was a a downstream downstream sales the whole thing will go to beginning retained earning because we will not we'll not have nci okay if you have any questions any comments by all means email me or see me uh well if if i happen to be teaching the class see me in class if you need additional lectures please go to my website and if you happen to go there um please consider uh make a donation if you're studying for your CPA exam as always study hard it's worth it good luck


We're going to No Man's Land. And the No Man's Land is very uncomfortable. And it's not very welcoming, which is where Agile started. And I think we've gone 180 degrees back to what originally the problem Agile was trying to solve. Was anyone here in 2014 when we had Dave Thomas do his talk? Dave Thomas was one of the guys who wrote the Agile manifesto. Since he wrote the Agile manifesto, he never went to a single Agile conference because he said that was the end of Agile for him. And I played and I literally went and fell on his door steps. And I said, we really want to hear your perspective. And he had some very interesting insights into on similar lines. So I'm going to try and build up on that and some of my own thoughts. I'm going to make a statement, a very strong statement.  That's the statement I've already made. If you're using Agile in this day and age, I think you're really, really late to the game. We'll talk about what that means, but that's a statement I'm going to make, and I'm going to defend that for the next 45 minutes. Every single person here, I believe, has read the Agile manifesto, knows word to word what's in the Agile manifesto. That's a safe assumption to make. All right, perfect. If you were to summarize in one line what Agile is really all about, what would that be? I want you to think about for a minute, right? Manifesto is great. There are lots of different Agile methods that have come out. A lot of frameworks that have come out. There's a lot of interesting stuff that's happening out there, but what does Agile mean to you? If you were to think about it in a word, in a phrase, a line, just think to yourself. You don't need to tell anybody else. Just kind of go through this zen moment of self-realization. Everyone's got in their head what they think of Agile. Yeah? To me, Agile was and is about embracing uncertainty. How many people read Ken Beck's white book which came out about extreme programming? What was the subtitle of the book? Embrace Uncertainty. Yeah? Does that make any sense? The first time I read that book I was like, yeah, I mean like so what, right? And now when I revisit the book, I'm like, yeah, so what? It's obvious, right? But there's been a time when I went and I went crazy about extreme programming and a lot of other methods. And I kind of came to realize that the origins of Agile were very deeply rooted in antifragile thinking. I'll define these terms in a minute, but I think Agile was about embracing uncertainty and change via simplicity. Those things are important. And the roots were very antifragile. Over the period of time, I think Agile has just become extremely fragile. What are these terms I'm throwing at you? Antifragile, fragile, right? These terms come from Thalib's last book which is antifragile. He defines three terms in his book or I mean there are a lot of other things he does, but there are three terms that he defines in his book. One is fragile, robust and resilient, and then antifragile. If you were to ask anyone, what's the opposite of fragile? People would say robust or resilient, right? That's the opposite of fragile. It's actually not. And we'll look at what that means, right? Everyone understands what antifragile is. Sorry, what fragile is, before we jump to antifragile, right? Easily broken or damaged by applying stress. They're built for a particular use case. If you try and apply, if you try and use it in a different use case, they become really vulnerable to break down, right? That's when we say this is fragile. If you're shipping something with wine glasses is what he talks about in his book, then you would ask the person at the airport counter to put a tag on it saying fragile, right? Handle with care, because if the glass works beautifully as long as you're pouring wine in it or beer in it and drinking, but if you're gonna take and try and play drums with it, good luck, right? It's not meant for that. So that's basically fragile. Let's quickly look at the properties of what fragile is. Can anyone tell me what are the properties of fragile from what you've seen so far, what do you understand so far? I want this to be interactive, because I get bored talking to myself. Delicate, easy to break, highly constrained, difficult to put together back. Cool? Let's quickly run through. One of the main things about what defines a fragile system in general, something that's fragile, a fragile system, is it dislikes variability? It dislikes stress, right? This could be any form of variability or stress. It seeks to eliminate noise, variability, tension. That's what these systems try to do. Things that we say are fragile systems that try to seek to eliminate these things. They are kind of very driven by consistency and standardization. It works for a particular use case and it's standardized for that particular use case and it's very consistency and standardization driven. Overly optimized for a specific use case. Works beautifully for one use case, try to use it for something else, ain't gonna work, but very beautifully optimized for one, right? That's how you drive consistency by optimizing it for a specific use case. And the way you optimize is to optimize, you need to have some amount of prediction. You need to figure out what is the likely use of this, how people will use it. You need to plan things based on that and then you build something that's highly optimized, right? And that's where it is very prediction based. You have to predict how it's gonna be used. People didn't think people would use glasses for playing drums, right? Hence it's fragile. And typically they are large, right? Systems that are fragile are typically large. You can take any large governments, large companies, they are typically very fragile because they're optimized for a particular use case, they're optimized for a particular problem, they are highly prediction based and they seek to eliminate noise variability and stuff like that. That's very quick rundown of what fragile is. Does everyone agree with this definition of fragile? Yes, no? Cool. What's resilient then? Resilient is basically the ability to withstand or recover from a particular distortion or of a different form to come back to its original shape, right? An example that all of you might be very familiar and it's easy to explain is our whole infrastructure deployment is very resilient. How is it very resilient?  So we say this system is very resilient, right? This is what we mean by resilient, coming back to its original shape, being able to withstand stress. Fragile systems, so a fragile version of this would have been just one server and server goes down and the service is down. So we say this is services fragile.  What's anti-fragile then? So we understand fragile, we understand resilient, yeah? What's anti-fragile? Anti-fragile is basically systems that gain from disorder. They don't only just come back to their original shape, maybe they never come back to their original shape, but the important thing is they actually gain from stress, they gain from randomness, they gain from chaos, they gain from uncertainty. They thrive on complexity and ambiguity. Is anyone, can anyone give me an example of a system that's anti-fragile, that gains, that doesn't try to resist, but actually gains from uncertainty? Of a brain, beautiful, you jumped already, man. What happens if you start using a calculator to do simple maths? Then it becomes more and more difficult to do simple single digit multiplications as well. Anyone's experienced that? And the more you practice, the more you put stress on, the more the better your ability to actually do calculations. My previous startup, failed startup, was about helping kids get better at mental arithmetic. We had kids who could calculate faster than a calculator, 200 calculations per second, literally at that speed. And this is about putting a lot of stress on them and they're able to cope up with it. They get better with stress. If you go to a gym and work out, what are you doing?   You're putting stress, you're damaging something so that it becomes stronger. So this is leveraging something that is actually causing damage to you. Of course, in certain thresholds, there are thresholds for all of these things. But within those thresholds, they actually leverage the stress. They leverage the pressure that is put on it. Imagine these buddies who are going on a one month tour. They've packed every single thing that they need on the tour. And they've planned exactly what the itinerary will look like. What do you think their holiday would look like? Very safe, as in the scaled agile safe or the actual safe. Compare this to these guys. Has anyone ever tried to plan a complete trip with exactly 15 minutes break between one activity to another activity, dot to dot plan, and then executed that? It's not a vacation. But some people think that's a vacation. Everything has to go as per the plan. But there are some people who believe that I wanna actually go with the flow. Let me get there, figure out what's happening. I'll take advantage of that and I will do the best I can with the given options I will have when I arrive there. And that's a different kind of, that's like a hitchhiking kind of a trip, right? And so to me, the first one is a very fragile example of planning something, while the second one is a very anti-fragile way of planning something. Let's kind of talk about something more realistic, right? Venture capitalist. Typical venture capitalist puts money in 10 startups, expecting that nine will make a loss. But one will give an exponential benefit, right? So there's a constant small loss. They make consistently for an exponential return on one of them, right? So venture capitalist in my opinion are a wonderful example of being anti-fragile. They leverage the uncertainty. They don't know which of these ideas will click. But let me put something in each of these, expecting that 90% of them will blow up in your face. But that one 10% that will actually work is gonna give me 200, 300 X return, which is well worth the other 90% gone for a toss, right? So this is an example of again, anti-fragile. I shouldn't be putting this slide up, but this is again another example of anti-fragile. You try and bring them down, they become more stronger. You try and talk a lot about them, they gain more publicity, they become more stronger, right? So this is again an example of something which is anti-fragile. They leverage you trying to destroy them. And they've come back in things that you never expected. They leverage that uncertainty that exists, right? So with these examples, let's talk about what are the properties of anti-fragile. I'm going a little theoretical to get the foundations put in place and then we'll switch to agile and we'll kind of deep dive into what it means in the agile context. So from what you've seen in the examples, what are the properties of an anti-fragile system? Adoptive situations, adoptive situations of be adaptive, benefits, being opportunistic, okay? You put stress and actually leverage stress. You use it as a stimulus to actually get better. Adversity makes them strong, right? This is very different from robust. This is very different from robust. This is very different from, this is kind of taking advantage of uncertainty. So if you were to actually look at it, they build layers of redundancy. They build layers of redundancy to create localized impact. This is basically achieved through decentralization and through building buffers and inventory, exact opposite of jit, just in time. This is about building inventory. This is about having layers of fact built in so that when you have a black swan moment, when you have something unexpected happen, you actually take advantage of it. They dislike consistency and standardization because consistency and standardization are prediction-based and this model does not work in a prediction-based system. They believe in less is more, as small is beautiful. That's kind of the mantra. So something that's very small is ideally more anti-fragile than something that's large, right? Encourages optionality. This is a very important point. It encourages optionality by differing things to the last responsible moment. By differing things to the last responsible moment, you can be more opportunistic. You can take advantage of something that you had not planned before, right? So this is about encouraging optionality, disliking prediction, and finally it's about safe fail experimentation. It's about fail frequently. Failing is important here, unlike what we think, right? Failing is actually important. Failing is an important part of an anti-fragile system. If you're not failing, then you don't know what state you are in, right?  These are kind of in a nutshell what I believe are the core properties of anti-fragile. If you were to actually take this and think about the original motivations behind agile, what do you think? The sense, and the resilient things go, because they just kind of bounce around. But even resilient things need to sense, because if a server is down, they need to monitor that, they need to figure that out and bring it up again. Actually, anti-fragile, in my opinion, you don't need to sense. This is where I think action precedes clarity. You do something and you figure out what happened later, right? This fits into the more of the complex adaptive systems thinking, where you probe the system, you sense what's happened, and then you respond, right? If you were to take each point by point, I'll guarantee you agile will score 100 on 100. Agile, what it originally meant, not the bastardization of agile today, right? If you talk about the layers of redundancy, how do we achieve layers of redundancy? The whole concept of cross-functional teams, right? You have all the roles repeated in every team. That's a way of creating a localized impact. That's a way of building that redundancy, so they are kind of self-managed, self-controlled, right? If you talk about dislike consistency and standardization, we say, we talk about each group figuring out what works for them, and basically having an overall alignment, but within that, they can do whatever they want to do, right, so it's a very anti-standardization or consistency kind of an approach. That was the original intent. If you read the first line of the manifesto, it says, people and interaction over processes and tools. Let people and the groups figure out what works for them, and let's not try and standardize something that works for everyone, because there is no such thing that works for everyone, right? If we talk about less is more, there's a lot of philosophy of, so if you've read the manifesto, there is a simplicity thing which talks about maximizing the amount of work not done. It's about doing less. It's about less is more. Optionality, how do we encourage optionality? Do we commit to the entire release right at the beginning? Ideally we don't, because we work on small iterations. When we get there, we figure out what is the new information we have, what do we decide, what do we do next from there, right? So you are building in optionality at every small cycle that you do. In fact, you're building optionality at a daily level. You're building optionality at every small task level. So there's a lot of optionality that's been built. Dislikes prediction, so the whole idea around story points and moving away from velocity-based systems was, or the whole no estimation approach, was all about disliking prediction. And safe fail experimentation. If you did an iteration, you blew up. It's absolutely fine. It's a safe fail experiment. You do another iteration. Hopefully you will go in the right direction, right? That's correct. What original statement I made is the origins, the roots, where from an antifragile thinking, right? And next I want to dedicate a lot of time talking about why this is not true anymore, where we are kind of going in a wrong direction in my opinion, right? So quick commercial break. My name is Nareesh Jain. I live in Mumbai. Don't act yet in Bollywood someday. I was a partner at a company called Industrial Logic. We built eLearning. After that I started another company called Adventure Labs where we built games for kids to learn mental arithmetic. Did a bunch of other random stuff. I started the agile movement here.  My latest startup is ConfinGen. We're building a platform or a marketplace for conferences. As we speak, I'm actually a consultant at Hike. I'm a messenger. I'm helping them with the product engineering. Basically kind of figuring out some of the antifragile thinking how we can bring into Hike messenger. That's kind of what I do in my daytime job. And that brings us back to the original topic. Over the years, in my opinion, agile has become very fragile. We're gonna talk about 10 points specifically. It's a long list. I can rant for the rest of the evening, but I'm gonna focus on 10 top most important points in my opinion that's making agile very fragile. And I'll talk about what is the antifragile way of thinking about it, right? So you'll have some takeaways at the end of it. I want you to take a minute and write down, in your opinion, what's the biggest problem with agile today? Agile has no problems, is a perfectly acceptable answer. But I'm hoping that you would actually have figured out some things that are actually not working very well. And anytime someone says it's not the agile's problem, it's people's problem, ask them to please go read the manifesto. This is no such thing like people's problem. That was the point about agile. I want you to write down the points so that as we go through my list of 10, I want to see how many people have experienced one of those, right? So it'll be a good way to kind of check for me. Am I completely off track, living in my own world under the rock, or are there actually many people who have the same thing? Is like that slide, right?  All right, I have 20 minutes to go, so I'm gonna jump ahead. My first stop it, stop doing this, is this whole nonsense with story points and velocity.  Fundamentally flawed. The guy who came up with it discarded it, the rest of the community seems to be going running crazy with it, right? It's fundamentally flawed. Why do I make the statement that it's fundamentally flawed? Total silence. I've touched someone's nerves over there. It's not just about prediction. It's fundamentally flawed. Let me talk about the story of why this is fundamentally flawed. How do we, what was the thinking behind story points? The thinking behind story points is effort estimation is very hard, it's very people dependent, and we can't do effort estimation. So what are we gonna do instead is we're gonna do relative size estimate, right? That's the whole idea behind story point. So we are good as humans. If I were to ask you which one is longer, without a second thought, every single person who's seen in this room would say this is longer. If I asked you how many centimeters, you'd take a guess. But you're not taking a guess here, right? So we're good at relative estimates. We're really bad at absolute sizing, right? That was the thought process behind story points, right? And the reason we chose Fibonacci series are a non-linear sequence for story points was because you cannot apply arithmetic on it. The reason we chose a non-linear scale is because you cannot apply arithmetic on it. Something that's a two point story does not mean it's two times more effort than one, right? Clear? And then how do we calculate velocity? At the number of story points, oops, wait, add, is there arithmetic? You just said story points, the whole point was a non-linear scale, you can't apply arithmetic, and then you just turned around and said velocity is the total of all the story points delivered in one sprint. Something seems to be fundamentally wrong over here. No one seems to agree with me, I'm gonna go on, but it's a total disaster. And story points and velocity are so much focused around output, they don't care about outcomes. Why do I care about output? You deliver 20 story points, what does it mean? Means nothing. What was the original sinking behind agile, right? Customer value. Is story points customer value? I'm saying story points is fundamentally flawed. I don't think so. Story points are calculated at the end of the sprint or end of the iteration, not when you actually push something into production and when you get real feedback from users. They're two completely different things. So story points are calculated when the team says I am done and it's verified and we are saying it's ready. It's potentially shippable increment, but it's not shipped in the hands of users and they're loving it. There's a big difference between the two. I've worked on enough agile teams from 2001 to tell you how many times we thought this is potentially a shippable increment that will delight customers and it did not, right? There's a big difference between the two. So let's not fool ourselves saying something that is story points complete is agile business value, it's not. Axial business value is when people use it, they realize it, right? One of the typical challenges as a product company a lot of us face is 87% of the features that we build are rarely or never used. Sure, your company can decide that what is valuable and to whom it's valuable. All I'm saying is value has to be looked at when actual it's consumed, not when a team says it's done. That's absolutely. Up to your team, what it makes sense to them, but all I'm saying is that you, I mean as a team you decide what value is for you guys and measure value when actual people are using it, not when the team says we are done, right? There's a big difference between the two. That's all I'm saying, okay? I'm gonna, sorry, cut off because I have 10 points to make. I know this is the most uncomfortable topic to bring up but I have nine other equally uncomfortable topics to bring up. If you've not read Velocity's Killing Agility, please go read that. It's a beautiful article. It's by Jim Heismith. He's one of the person who wrote the Agile Manifesto and he will explain a lot of viewpoints on why he thinks velocity is killing agility. The way I think you need to deal with this, which is more of an anti-fragile way of thinking about it, is forget your estimations, forget what the team feels, ship it to the customers. Get the customers to use it and then say whether it actually added value or not, right? Now, for different companies, this could mean different things. I'm not trying to generalize saying every single company should be shipping to production every single hour. That's up to your context but you need to figure out what works in terms of what should be your feedback cycle. What's your market cadence? How quickly you need to get. At hike, we cannot push something into production every two days even if it's ready because it'll burn the data packs of the users that are using the apps. So we can't do that. So for us, a market cadence is slightly different. We've figured out ways to work around that but what we are focusing on is let's get it to 0.5% of the users in the 100 million users that we have. Let's measure what was our hypothesis and whether our hypothesis is met or not, right? And that's when we will say value is delivered and we will decide that, okay, from 0.5, we're gonna roll it out to 1%, 5%, 20%, 100% of the users. That's what I mean by this thing and we've completely done the companies. About eight years, I've not done any estimates and I've actually been successfully delivering products. So I think this is something we can kind of focus on. The next point, I'm gonna try and move little quickly. The next point I had here which was kind of an interesting visual, it was the definition of done. There it is, at least on my monitor. Definition of done, definition of done. Blank, it's given up on me. I have seen definition of done on Scrum Alliance website on a bunch of other websites and I was like, really? Like wow, this is amazing. A developer needs to be told that they need to write code for definition of done and a developer needs to be told that they need to check in code. Only then it's done. I am afraid we are hiring people off the street. Like who are we building this definition of done for? Definition of done is not when the team says I am done and I have this checklist and I've checked off all of these things. Definition of done, again, as I was saying earlier, is when you actually put it in hands of customers and you see them use it. That's definition of done, right? You can have a fancy elaborate checklist of things that are done. It means nothing. So stop focusing on that. Instead build, have built pipelines and have safe rollout strategies and that's the antifragile way of thinking. Like let's just get this as quickly as possible to people, to get it into hands of people. Let's not waste our time thinking about what is definition of done. If we have to do that, I think we have a fundamental problem we've hired monkeys off street and we're not gonna build awesome products with that. This comes from another famous website. This talks about all the ceremonies and the process you need to be successful with Scrum. How many people here had written down in the problems that they get hardly any time to actually do real work now? Few people. Where is all the time going? Ceremonies. It's all the beautiful how they chose the word ceremonies. And I love it. Throw away practices. I keep telling people, challenge yourself. Throw away training wheels. Training wheels are only meant for a two-day class. Once you're done with the two-day class, throw away the training wheels. They are not meant for real life, right? Throwing away things, reducing your downside is actually the most antifragile way of thinking about it. I stopped doing test-driven development. I don't write tests. If you've used Confingene, we've done over three crores of transaction. Not a single penny is lost, but that entire system has zero automated tests. It was a challenge I took to myself saying, what happens if I throw away test-driven development? I've been teaching people how to do test-driven development for 10 years. And I took a challenge saying, what happens if I stop writing automated tests? And to my surprise, I found that when I stopped writing tests, suddenly I felt I have lost the safety net. I had off-test around me. So what do I do? No, I try to simplify things. I don't try to complicate things. With test-driven development, I could get away with complexity. Now I can't afford to. So it really made me think of how to simplify things. It really made me, oops, throw away code. It really made me do certain things that otherwise I wouldn't do. Fourth thing, collaboration amplified. I actually have a whole talk tomorrow. Tomorrow's keynote I'm gonna be doing on this topic. I'm gonna talk about why one of the biggest problems in agile today to me is the amplification of collaboration. And what do we even mean by collaboration? I think we've kind of lost account because everything has to be collaborative. People have to go to bathrooms collaboratively. Everything has to be collaboratively. I think this is a total disaster because solo deep thinking and autonomy is so much more important than collaboration. And I'm gonna go into details of this, but just to give you a trailer, let's quickly look at this. I want each of you to think about your work-related best idea you've ever had. Think about the best work-related idea you've ever had. Everyone's had one, hopefully. Yes, absolutely. Where did you come up with that idea? Were you collaborating with people when you came up with that? Maybe, right? But most often, right?   Doesn't work that way. I don't think you should collaborate, is the point I'm trying to make. I don't think it should become muscle memory. I think we are losing a lot of... One of the biggest challenge, and you can look across survey that's done across the industry, is companies which have adopted agile are complaining that they have lost innovation. This is one of the biggest complaints. You can look out the surveys out there. It's quite out glaring. And that's one of the biggest complaints. And you ask why?  And there are enough case studies of failed companies trying to do this over and over again. So my talk is just, don't take everything I'm saying. Think of this as food for thought, and take one or two points and ponder upon them. And you can discard everything saying, this guy knows nothing what he's talking about. That's perfectly fine. But this is where I think. Let's talk about another thing. How many people wrote the agile manifesto again? 17 white men got into a room in a skiing resort, drank some beer and wrote the agile manifesto is the story we heard in childhood. Reality, two people wrote the manifesto. 17 people argued, left, two people wrote the manifesto. Since that day, the 17 people have never come back together in a single room. That's collaboration amplified. Stop it. What we have been doing, which has worked really well for us, is what we call a set-based development. We take the same problem. We have three individuals, three teams go and solve the same problem. They have a fixed time, fixed budget, and they operate within that. At the end of that, they all come together and we pick the best solution out of the three. And this is actually worked really well because this gives people the autonomy they need. This gives people the time and space that they can work creatively and do their solo deep thinking. And there's a lot of power in doing parallel, say, fail experimentation that I can spend the whole evening talking about. I have four minutes and I have six points to cover. Technical debt, I don't think I need to talk too much about this. What's the antifragile way of dealing with technical debt? How many people have technical debt? Are you guys doing agile? No, you're not doing agile. If you were doing agile, you wouldn't have technical debt. I have heard this argument many times that if you were doing agile, you wouldn't have technical debt.  I don't think that's true. The way we think about technical debt and we've completely misplaced the metaphor in the first place. Who came up with the technical debt metaphor? What can I have? How many WOD one here? How many people have programmed with WOD? Just me, okay. And I have worked with WOD and when we came up with the metaphor, the idea was that debt is good. Small, low-interest debt is good. That's how you run business. Long-term, high-interest debt is bad. But short-term, low-interest debt is actually good. And we've completely misplaced the metaphor, in my opinion. We think now technical debt is a bad thing, but actually taking technical debt, small technical debt is actually a good thing. It gives you the advantage that you need. So an antifragile way of thinking about this is throw away code frequently. Use full-stack programmers and build microservices. Like, I'm being very prescriptive, but that's one thing that I have seen that's helped us immensely in a lot of companies. We've been throwing away code very rapidly. When you throw away code, and one thing if someone asked me what I wish was there in code is self-destructing code. Every two weeks, the code disappears. And then the way you approach the problem is very different. You take technical debt more rigorously, but then you replace it very quickly, right? And that's an antifragile way. Be more opportunistic, take advantage of this rather than trying to resist it. I'm gonna skip this slide. It's pretty obvious. I'm gonna talk about this. This is one of my other favorite things. How many people like the Scrum Master and Product Owner role? I think it's one of the most badly conceived idea in my opinion. I have seen serious problems of ownership and accountability because of this. And you might say I don't understand the roles and I have not done it correctly. Absolutely, all credit goes to you guys, but I have seen serious problems caused because of this. I think the whole notion of having one product owner who's static, who will have the vision throughout, is just fundamentally flawed in my opinion. The way you think about this is think about how startups run. Startups run where you don't have a product owner and a Scrum Master. That's not how startups run. Startups have what we call as power centers emerging. If someone had a great idea, they become the product owner for that idea. And someone else had a new idea and they become the product owner for that. And then they form these small tribes and they go solve the problem. That's how people solve this. And I think that's a scalable model.  And it's actually worked really well. We've completely done away with the product owner as Scrum Master role. And I don't think we are missing anything. In fact, the Scrum Master role is very dicey because on one hand you're saying that this person facilitates and enables the team.  Scrum Master. I mean, in India, the connotation obviously means that, okay, this is the person I'm reporting to. Right, it just doesn't work. I am almost out of time. All right, there were a bunch of things that I had. I kind of skimmed through some of these things. That's okay, I'm bad at estimation. I told you upfront. The list goes on, the slides are up. You can see them in more detail. I don't have time left, but I'm gonna sneak in a couple of quick questions and then I'm gonna be outside for more questions. All right? So a couple of quick questions before they throw me off the stage. It's not a human being. It can't say anything. It's people, it's snake oil salesmen who are saying all kinds of crap. People who've never actually shipped real products in production. These are the people who are telling you, agile says this, what does that mean? Who said this? Absolutely. Be opportunistic, take the things. What makes sense to you? But be careful not to get dogmatic because there's a very thin line. Very soon, something becomes very dogmatic. Some soon you become standardization centric. Soon you want everyone in your company to do things in a certain way. That is a very slippery slope. I have been there enough number of times. I can tell you it's just very hard to know when you've crossed that line, right?  But when do you take off the training wheels? When I'm learning a bicycle because I'm an individual, I can decide. But if there were thousand people that were all learning bicycles and we put training wheels for them, how do you decide when you're gonna take off the training wheels? I think you should attend, listen to people and ask them questions. You're getting confused, which is a good thing. I'm making you think. If you walk out of this session saying, this guy confused the heck out of me, I think mission accomplished. Meet me offline. I'll talk about 10 stories of real organizations blown up millions of dollars, failed because of agile. All right, I'll tell you in detail. Actually, see, once again, before I jump off, let me close that. Agile is a placebo, something somewhere in the slide I should have put that. Agile is a placebo. How many people know the concept of placebo? Most people know the concept of placebo. Agile is a placebo. Any new tool or technique is a placebo. It is a tool meant to get you to think, right?  Sorry. See, the confusion is not only to me now, so I think I'm afraid I'll carry this confusion to the team. From 2008, I've been talking about Agile is dead. You need to, it's getting too dogmatic. Guys, watch out, guys, watch out. I've been trying to invite people from different places every year to try and bring that message that, hey, are we getting too dogmatic with this? Are we just going too much with on the process side of things and we're forgetting the original meaning of it? And what we want is certainty. What we want is all of that stuff. But the point was that this was, you know, trying to solve the problem of embracing uncertainty, right? And a lot of times we want answers, but honestly answers are within yourself. You need to go back to your organizations and figure out. The place to start is start questioning. Why are we doing something? Is it actually helping us? Look at it critically, look at it as a scientist, right?  What happens if I stop doing the stand-ups today? For example, try those experiments at your organization, right? And see what happens. I don't think that's true. And if that's the case, life is too short to waste time on such organizations.  So why do you want to work for such place? That's your issue. Agile is not gonna solve that problem unfortunately. All right, I'm gonna get off the stage, sorry about all the ranting, but this is what it is.