Thank you everyone. Hello. Good afternoon. I hope your day was good so far and the second day will be even even better So today we'll talk about performance marketing. We go to some best practices We go really deep as you heard with some hands-on examples on like how we faced Challenges and how we try to solve them Basically with some good examples on how we try to achieve growth and how performance marketing can be a growth growth lever So I'm just from the Netherlands originally good to be here next to that the stand Previously I was at 312 building the team from the ground up. I have an engineering background That is also where my performance marketing inspiration comes from and Currently I'm at Colvin Barcelona based company as you heard and we were redefining the flurry culture industry by Connecting all the different stakeholders in a new digital ecosystem So retailers growers and wholesalers Let's talk about performance marketing So let's start with your challenge. Yeah, the first thing is what is your challenge? Then we'll talk a bit about the roadmap and then we talk about what does good look like but let's start about Your challenge. What is your challenge? Let me guess what is on the top list of your challenge? It's probably how do we grow? How do you grow fast? Your product team if you have a product team might be talking about how do we think about delivering customer value? But what keeps you awake is probably growth. How do we grow faster? And we cannot grow fast enough. How do we grow? Week-on-week, how do we grow year-on-year and these are very important topics? And if you want to speed up performance marketing can help you with that But it's not a holy grail. It's not a silver bullet. So today we're going to look at how can you apply performance marketing in your journey? So let's take a step back when we talk about performance marketing and I think historically it has a really broad meaning But let's zoom in what performance marketing means and also if it's right for you Because initially if you want to grow you need to understand what your growth model is and there are several models that you can apply Usually a company or their every stage that can happen naturally. So you found your Growth channel it can be word of mouth can be refer a friend referral models It can be expansion if your marketplace for example that relies on supply You really need to build both side of the marketplace. So expansion is a big lever and can be one of your growth models Again SEO can be one of your growth models one of your organic organic growth strategies Etc. And there are very very many growth models you can apply and your performance marketing is one of them And how I define performance marketing here It is basically paid growth or ads in some companies and some areas It has a broader meaning you could also say okay SEO is is is growth Life cycle or a CRM CRM is performance marketing, but that's Keep stick to the definition of okay paid growth. That is performance marketing And usually you would pick one or two that you really want to develop From your from within your business and performance marketing can be one of those But before you scale you really need to understand what are some of these models you can apply Just an example Yeah, you might have seen this or might have heard it that Airbnb Well, the IPO'd pre IPO pre-covid They really wanted to ramp up their their their booking numbers and they invested Billions extra in their performance marketing And what does it say? I think there are a few articles you can find it find about it It was visible in the IPO documents But Airbnb fell flat last year on the marketing plan inspired by booking.com So you really need to understand what is your growth model and just copying it Without having the foundation how big you are does not work so if you Found or if you think that performance marketing can be one of the growth levers for your business First step is zooming out. How do you actually plan your journey? What do you need to think about? so I'm going to explain you a few principles that I think of and That might help you to get to this journey and the overall journey starts with It's more of a marketing challenge. I think in growth challenge and we're getting better at this, but how You make sure that your marketing team your performance marketing team moves away from being a cost center Into a revenue driver that is really really measurable. So you become a true business partner Let's get some examples. So if you have a performance marketing team, the first thing you need to think about is Be at the forefront of the month that team your experts They need to know what is happening. What are people searching for? How are campaigns performing? What is currently trending? They are very close to the data I'm giving you some examples later on of how does it impact your your business? But the performance team is really at the forefront of the month. They have all the data. So use it The next one is using the right Metrics and we're using the right metrics and KPI so Some of you might have heard of good hearts law which says when a measure becomes a target It's easy to become a good measure and with targets. You can change it to KPI There are a few good examples on that But this is just what I found is if you measure people on the number of nails made what the team will do or what the people Naturally will do they will create thousands of nails That might not be of good quality on the other side of you at a KPI or a metric which says Okay We measure you on the weight of nails what they will do is probably Create a few giant nails. So Understanding the difference between a metric and a KPI is really important when you want to start measuring performance marketing Just another example of real life I I I moved countries and had to open a bank account and I've seen this a couple of times I was at airports and after We opened the bank account the employee. He clearly had on the bottom of his screen a nice print out Where it's at a green smiley, which is a 10 and then the eight nine and below was a red smiley Why this happens? It is Probably he's measured on NPS. So he was clearly asking me say if you think I'm going to do job 10 is good The rest, please don't rate me because that will hurt my hurt my metrics so if NPS for example becomes a focus area people will definitely move try to game the system again for Machine learning really important for performance marketing. We are living in a world where automation is important So the team can just put a metric in whether it's app installs or cock And the system will optimize the system will optimize without knowing your business So the team needs to become an operator of that system. So if you want to have app installs, for example please Understand and together sit down with the team if that is the right metric Otherwise the team will optimize specifically for getting app installs, which might not be relevant because the current system and ecosystem They don't know your reasons if you're Google if your Facebook you need to be operating You need to understand what the team is is building or what the team is doing Then how do you set right metrics? So I'm going you to different metrics we can use from leading metrics So a leading metric is something that will set you up for success, but does not really tell you An output so ideally it starts with profit and revenue contribution if you do performance marketing You really want to understand the output of your campaigns and In the end it is it should start with profit, right? So if you have a team that is talking about conversions or is talking about CTR's Try to make sure that everybody's focused on one metric which is which is profit because in the end the marketing investment You do and the marketing investment you make It costs money and in the end you want to understand what the ROI is of this of these campaigns So start with profit The second one you have efficiency metrics so aside from Leading metrics efficiency metrics tell you tells you something about the quality for example going back to the nails example To put a quality metric in place really helps you to understand the absolute numbers the volumes, but also measuring the quality Then you have lift metrics So how much do you spend in marketing and how incremental is it? It's really important to understand that do not focus on averages with how much Incremental value can you deliver and then of course you have the lagging metrics which are more closely Related to the output you want to generate, but they don't tell you why or how just to Put down some metrics here that might be relevant for a subscription or DTC models You might be looking at several metrics some of these could be your KPI It doesn't mean that these are all of your KPIs, but you could look at conversion lifts. So for example if you run campaigns What do people do what how do you behave if they haven't seen these campaigns? So how incremental is your marketing investment? For apps obviously app installs is a good probably Leading metric of how successful your app is how much revenue you will generate I think investors Still look at app installs. Why because it might be a proxy of your future profit or your market share compared to pet competitors It's not something you would optimize for but it's still an important Leading metric that can lead to revenue in the future Cost for installs, of course you want to look at efficiency like what is the cost you're paid per install?    But this is a good proxy of Having a good metric on how efficient is your marketing investment? For B2B and SAS you might be looking at cost per leads obviously then the sales team Will come back to you and say okay, but these leads are not converting so hey You might align with your sales team around what how do we define a qualified lead? What is a qualified lead? Pipeline contribution how much does marketing contribute to your to your pipeline? And then obviously of course also for a size cock LTV on a on a more like generic generic level The next one facilitating transparency with your CFO really important I think what set us up for success is that we with the marketing team had an ongoing Relationship and check-in with the with the finance finance team. So we build a rolling forecast We constantly and monitoring cocks. We constantly kept the finance team up to date around our upper funnel investments because that directly Has an impact on on the cocks so building a good solid ongoing communication stream with your finance team is I think key for Setting up your performance of marketing team for for success They need to know what is going on They need to be able to access the data and currently with all the bi tools you can give them that data and you can really Engage with them And for me that is the most important part just share everything you have at a very detailed level With your finance partner with your CFO you have nothing to hide It's your data and everybody should be looking at how you're performing at a daily level engage with them Just an example of how we did it At treat well how we were managing budgets together with the finance team the beginning of the year They come up with the finance model. We had a city-based strategy The finance team allocated a certain certain level of investment by city based on the projected growth But actually it is linking back to be at the forefront of the month An expansion But what we were seeing is that the team was more busy with managing budgets and stakeholders of like are we going to spend Understand the overspend of this the rest of the the rest of the month and not driving company performance So what we did we sit down with the finance team We redefined the financial plan and what we really saw is that We build a model where the performance team actually would come up with suggestions of where could we find the most incremental growth? Where could we find the the the the next? Customer at the cheapest price so the cost per incremental order So it's really important that you work together with the finance team to redefining like where do you think the growth opportunities are? And in the end we ended up with a central budget allocation, which helped us to Grow faster more on that an example later And then breaking down channels So obviously you have your PPC campaigns You have your bottom of the funnel campaigns. They're really good, especially I think when everybody's online It's COVID you turn on PPC and you capture all the demand that's there but it doesn't scale but you cannot just scale paid search and That is one important topic. You need to build a full funnel strategy So you need to think about your current demands your current demand You can obviously with paid search with retargeting you can capture that demand But at the same time and convince your CFO convince your financing You need to invest in future demand driving up a funnel campaigns invest in YouTube display work with influencers You need to work on both legs and it's really important that both work together and that drives future success the next one we talked about it, but Data so build a modern data stack. There are too many companies that have On-board of different systems whether your BTB company and you need you need a lead generation tool You need a engagement tool you need an outreach tool But actually then after a few weeks or months like what do we do with all the data? How do we connect it and there are a few steps and a few elements that a Modern data stack consists of which is the first one is all your data sources So you want to have all your data sources offline conversions spent data in one place You will want to collect it you want to store it in probably your cloud data warehouse And then you want to apply intelligence on that so you want to transform it You want to connect it visualize it to the business visualize it to the finance team So they're on a daily basis you understand what is happening and the technologies out there currently are quite easy You don't need a big dated data team anymore to implement all the different data sources Tools like stitch or 5-tran can easily pull in all the data from Salesforce from Google ads You're at spend at a daily level and then of course you need to visualize that However, you also need to date to send that data back to your to your systems If you know the life and value of a customer you want to have that visible in the customer service team and Salesforce so By applying these principles you will build a modern data stack which sets you up for a success An example of like how how you can leverage that? Just a hands-on example, which is the budget allocation we did Again at retail we had a budget constraint We had with the finance team beginning of the year we set up specific budgets for specific cities And we really were seeing that we are we could we were missing out on opportunities to grow faster So what we did is we took away all these constraints we build a spend curve to get over the data team And marketing team of like how much can we spend per week and how much new customers do we expect? That then is applied was applied automatically on a weekly basis to all the different markets So we moved from a financial forecast On a spreadsheet towards a demand driven model That was allocating budget on where can we find? incremental demand At the cheapest way and then initially we looked at the cost border and then that moved more towards a revenue and lifetime approach This saved us in six months two million euros without any without any Lost customer so the same order level we saved two million euros by applying this data-driven budget allocation model Next one is defining your operating system. So probably you will start with a local structure That's what we saw at From my experience is that there are many companies that go from Sensualization decentralization localization centralization, but in the end I'm a high believer in building functional expertise on the right side why Because it gives your team the opportunity to learn to grow in their careers They don't have to less quats might change on a quarterly basis, but building deep functional expertise Within performance marketing is the key to key to success Again, it might not be applied to your specific situation But from my experience deep functional expertise is really important to make sure your performance marketing team is set up for success Creative excellence We had a session about brands. You cannot go without brands anymore. So on the left side You will see masterclass really high production value high production content Good example of how to engage with your which audience on Instagram and Facebook on the right side You have textile. It's a it's a it's a US company and they are Subscription service and they really iterate with almost like crappy ads. You need to find out what's working for you You need to find out what is working for you test different ads test different creatives run Creative feedback loop with your creative team But as you can see You will probably push brands to the limits and then the creator economy so Performance marketing at Colvin where I'm currently at sits With performance marketing the interest team sits with performance marketing. We do brand influencers But it's the second biggest channel all those marker micro influencers You need to engage with them and they are currently Platforms where you can engage directly with your creators I think in most of the European markets now the greater marketplace is launched from tick tock Great opportunity to connect directly with some of your potential creators that can promote your product Okay, what does good look like if we know some of these principles? How do you apply them to the business and where should you start? What is what should where should you start with building the foundation? We've touched upon it Very briefly and for example how to build a data stack But I want to give you a bit of a roadmap of what does good look like and what is best in class? Okay measurement creative KPIs Data and automation How do we set the foundation and what is next level so when you talk about measurement? Let's start with a single source of truth. Let's start with Google Analytics last click is okay It is perfect. You need to set the baseline last click is better than better than nothing If you understand that last click and you understand what the limitations are Continue to use it. It's a good baseline Creative as I said brand and creative are really important. Make sure you have a creative team in-house or facilitate quick iterations You can work with an agency, but don't make it a waterfall model. You need to build those feedback loops What are some of the good KPIs as a foundation?  Why if your campaigns are not profitable, that's okay But if tomorrow someone asked you to scale those campaigns What will happen? Your contribution and and the profit will plummet so it's really important you understand the profitability of your marketing campaigns at a Paid cock level ideally at an LTV level ideally at a segment level, but start with paid cock That's the only way you can understand you make your campaigns Scalable, otherwise if you scale you'll be of course burning more money if you only look at blended cock models Data on automation, okay, make sure you it's very ambitious to have this here at the foundation There's a company here called Supermetrics amazing does the job it automates a lot of spreadsheets This is an ambitious North Star, but have a look at it and they're very Good automation tools I can pull data also in a spreadsheet. It's wonderful Targeting Important start with easy targeting just on an H. What is your customer? And then culture okay file fail fast and and and cheap if you want to take it to the next level There's some steps in the middle on the measurement side You will probably want to have an in-house attribution model. You want to implement lift testing, but what? Do you want to do you need to do to take it to the next level? What is best in class and for every company that means probably something different? but Best in class is on the measurement side last click goes away attribution goes away attribution doesn't exist anymore, so you need to combine your different data points different different resources you need to Or we look at your brand tracker you need to look at yes your attribution model You need to look at surveys like how did people find out about you ask it in a checkout ask it wherever you can How do you understand the accountability of your marketing spent?  You also want to create a feedback loop and send it back to sales for send it back to your CX team So best in class is having the data collected connecting it and then I in an ideal case Send it back to the systems so they can make better decisions So these are some steps that you can take to build a best in class roadmap on several areas We did it at scale a treat all again just an example We were in 13 markets spending tons of millions in Performance marketing and we had something that changed really quickly. We had partners onboarding partners off-boarding Salons in this case and there was a team that they did everything manually in spreadsheets So we build a tool that connects our paid search campaigns with the data warehouse So including translations, so we had our use translation database And this was really the start of our automation journey So make sure you think long-term and build things in a scalable way There are lots of things you can automate in in paid search and across all the different channels Together with your data team and together with some of the teams how to get there so Performance marketing is about automation. We talked about creative But if you want to scale you need to think about how do you want to set up your team so by seeing success of The automation we drove from the data warehouse with automating that paid search campaign creation We were able to scale the teams care campaigns without adding people But without adding people in the performance team. We did add people in the automation team. So We really thought about it is also years ago I think many companies now have a marketing technology team But we really opted for these three areas so performance operations daily campaign management And then marketing technology and marketing analytics These were the three pillars of the team where marketing technology really drove the roadmap How can we automate? How can we build things at scale and then obviously you need to create a feedback loop with the brand team What it's created success. How do we measure our creatives? How do we build our naming conventions in our Facebook campaign? So you can actually drill down like the differentiates between a name and a review video an unboxing video, etc An example or chart of like how it can look like together So hey your performance marketing work at vertical or some companies. It's a growth marketing vertical depending on sink the sector You're in That's quite an overlap. You have any retention vertical and then you'll have a brand for But performance marketing can't live on its own You need a product team. You need the brand team and you need an engineering team So the key is yes, you need the finance team But this is what creates success performance marketing cannot live on its own And you need the entire organization to build success. So again the basics Get the basics right Being a driver seat find where there is demand And then it's all about data data data and automation There's a lot of things you can automate and think about it invest in an marketing technology team invest in marketing technologists They will Help your performance marketing, but they will also help to connect the dots They help your CRM and lifecycle team and then pursue creative excellence And again performance marketing is at the heart of the business. Yeah, it's a data driven It should be the data driven area of of the business so I hope that you have these takeaways and that will help you to get it started and I really want to thank you for the talk and enjoy the rest of slush. Thank you very much


my goodness friends if you could see the amount of products that are sitting in front of me and I can't wait to share them beauty, lifestyle, fashion, home. I can't wait to share with you what I found from Amazon this month. Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining me for today's video. I am super excited to show you everything that I've gotten recently. We have a lot of new people joining and I am so thankful that you're here with us. If you are just stopping by and you just happened upon this video I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe. We'd love to have you a member of our little YouTube community here. We have an amazing bunch of women that support each other and are so good to each other and I love the positivity and the kindness that is here. Now that being said I did a video just very very recently where I opened up about my health struggles and my mental health struggles and I am so blown away by the support that I got from that. There was almost 2,000 comments on that video. It got so many watches immediately and I believe it's because we as women go through so many of the same things but we're always feeling like we have to be tough. We have to be on top of things. We have to keep it together because we're the caretakers for everybody else.  I have a numbering system that I use that I hope helps all of you. What I do is I put the number up on the screen of the product so all you have to do is if you see a product that I'm holding up or that I'm talking about that number comes up in a prompt and if you just jot down that number then when you open up the description box everything is numbered and you can go to that number and it's much easier for you to find the product that you are interested in. I hope that helps you. Let's get started. Let's start with beauty. Through the Ulta's 21 Days of Beauty the Centro Pay Self Tan Purity Facemist. This was on sale for half off then unfortunately we can't get it for half off but I was so pleased to find it for almost a third off on Amazon. But what this is is this is a super fine mist. I really feel like the mist on this is the secret to how beautiful you get your tan. It is super duper fine. It has kind of a nice citrusy fragrance to it but this is so even and there's so less fuss than anything I've ever used before. You just spray it on. I do this at night right before I do my skincare. I'll spray it on my clean dry skin. I even have been using it on my arms which I think is fantastic. I would love to use this everywhere around my body because it's been such a beautiful tanning product. It doesn't turn orange, doesn't streak. It's just awesome. I'm so in love with that. Now I also wanted to tell you as far as a beauty item goes everybody is kind of going gaga over the L'Oreal True Match Nude Serum Foundation. But it does come with this weird goopy you know squeezy top or dispenser on the top. I picked a set of three of these pumps up to put down in that. The one is already in the Estee Lauder but I wanted to show you how nice this is. I had to get a wipe out to put the goopy on here. So I wanted to take that out and you can discard that top part and then you just put that down in and it just it's perfect size for it. And then you have a pump dispenser for that bottle instead of the dispenser with just the dropper. And I think it's so great. Comes in a package of three and they're very inexpensive. You can buy black ones if you prefer that. Of course I'm gonna go for the blingy gold. I'm gonna always go for something that's blingy. Now I discovered this during the Sephora sale. I had heard everybody talking about that is when they stock up on their cinema secrets makeup brush cleaner. And I was really skeptical about this. So I bought the little size, right? And it comes with their little tin that you actually dump some of the product down in. Well I loved it so much that I got the Mac Daddy size. But I do want to do a little demonstration for you. So I'm going to pour just a little bit into here. You don't want to put your brush all the way down in it. Just do the tip so you just barely touch it in there and then you take a rag of any sort and you just go across it. I hope you got to see how dirty that brush was before I started. But it just is amazing. You get a clean brush in seconds and you don't have any drying time. You just let it dry for a few seconds and then it's like a brand new brush. Isn't that awesome? I'm so excited about this stuff. Now I wanted to talk about X Lash. I have talked about this so much on my channel before. X Lash is a company that reached out to me probably at the very beginning of my channel. So six years ago, maybe five years ago, and they sent me one tube of their eyelash growth serum. And I'm telling you I was hooked ever since. I went from my eyelashes being nothing stubby, not thick at all, to my lashes being lush and beautiful. And they just have grown and they are super long. Not as thick as I would like them to be, but you can only work with what you have, right? But they really have thickened up a ton and my eyelashes are really just fluffy and I love this stuff. Now what's different about this, and I'll tell you there's a lot of them on the market that are around the $25, $30 price point, but this one is a double tube.  The other beautiful thing about this particular product is that you only have to use it once at night, which I think is really good because most of those say use it morning and night. Now I do know that I have tried using this morning and night and you get even better results. So after a month, you're going to see a little bit of growth. After two months, you're going to see a noticeable change in your eyelashes. And I have had so many of you pick this up and love it. And when we couldn't get it during the pandemic, people were just like, where do we get it Melissa? So it's back in if you're interested and I will not be without this. If you love this and you use it, leave us a little testimony about it down in the comments section so everybody can hear. Next thing is, don't you hate this? I hate this when I get to the point when my lip glosses are so empty. You can't get the Do-Food applicator down in the bottom because it doesn't reach the bottom and that is so frustrating. But and these are not new. These are something that I've had around for a while, but I don't talk about them enough. Amazon has these. They have them in all different lengths. These are makeup spatulas. So on one side of this spatula, you have what is like a normal rubber spatula that you use in your kitchen. And then the other side is a spoon. And even though I do take out the stoppers out of my lip glosses or whatever I'm using, sometimes you can't get that stopper out. It's really hard and buxom glosses are one of that exact problem. But this will go down in there and then you just use it as a regular spatula and you get every last drop out of the bottom and then you have a lot to work with. Now I've already done this once, but you can see all of it that came out on there and then you get to use up the very last little bit of your product. And this is great for foundations because, you know, a lot of times we can't get to the bottom of a foundation or concealer and those are the expensive products. So I have loved these. They're indispensable. And you know, whether you have a long tube of, you know, shampoo or something that you use or anything, they have different sizes and it comes in different colors. So that's great as well. If you ever saw Tati do her little velour puff thing that she had, those were great. But honestly, they weren't much different than these little puffs that you can get. I get a package of 10. I give them out to my friends or I use them up.  But these can be washed as well. It's just a velour puff. You will see Wayne Goss use these all the time. Most makeup artists do use these to rest on as they're doing another, you know, thing they kind of rest their hand or whatever they're doing. And these are just great. So if you want to like pick up any excess that you're, you know, you have on your face, if you have excess oil, these are perfect to throw in your purse and have them to do that.  But I do want a little bit to set that concealer, especially in the summer. So being able to get a huge package of these is great. And I just can't live without powder puffs. There's something that I've used for years. Our grandmothers use these. They're indispensable in the makeup industry. And this is very inexpensive. Now switching over to the guys a little bit. My husband, I got a kit for him from Harry's. This is the shaving kit that I got for him. He loves this. He makes me buy the shaving gel in a big two pack. So this is the big one. I don't think it comes with the big one. I think it comes with the smaller one. But Harry's has a ton of different kits that you can buy.   They're a super close shave. I do use these on my legs and steal it from him. And it is a really nice smooth shave. It does have the conditioning bar on top and then the five blades. And I love that I can get him a bunch and they're not that expensive compared to even the Gillette that you can get when you say when you go to Walmart or something. So I love those. That's part of his routine. We'll kind of switch over to lifestyle a little bit. Do you have an electric toothbrush? Most of us own an electric toothbrush. But we're always forgetting that we need to replace that head every three months or so because they do get soft and then they don't do their job as well. I love my electric toothbrush. My husband bought this for me one year and I think it was probably the best gift he's ever given me. I absolutely love how clean my teeth get with it. But the little heads that you buy, even when you get them on Amazon, mine is a Phillips Sonicare and they're so dang expensive. So I found a replacement head replacement. Instead of buying the Phillips Sonicare, you can buy replacement heads and each of these will tell you whether or not it will fit your model. So this one is a six pack.  This one's pretty new. I just used it. I just changed this one out. But then you have a whole new toothbrush again. And these are not very expensive. I can't remember the exact amount but I want to say they're well under $20 for six of them. And what a great way to be able to continue to use your toothbrush, your electric toothbrush, and love it and not have it cost you so much to change out the head. So I will make sure that that's linked for you. Also in lifestyle, last month I showed you this cute little, this is called Bear August and this is a foot file. This was my best selling item in the last month because I was telling you how nice this is to have in your shower.  I'll either get in the shower and then while I'm in the shower you can take this in there. I will buff off my feet or my toes or whatever needs it on my feet and then you know my heels are the worst but then the water will wash away the excess skin. But I also have learned that once I get out of the shower and I have maybe my damp towel next to me I can still continue to do that and if you just pop that on the towel the excess skin will come right out into the towel and you'll have that clean for your next use. And it's really nice to have the cover that it has too because then it's not roughing anything up if you put it in a drawer or anything like that because that is kind of a sharp little file right there. It's very easy to hold in your hand because of its shape. It's just really easy so you can get a really good grip on it especially if you have hands like I do that shake or you have kind of gripping problems with your hands if you have any sort of a disability there. So this has been wonderful. My husband loves it as well and yeah can't go wrong with that. Let's talk about a little bit of fashion. The very first thing I want to talk about are these adorable slippers. I call them my Walmart slippers because they have the Walmart happy face on them. These are so comfortable and I did see these on TikTok but they're so nice and they're warm and they're fluffy they do have a rubber sole so you can wear them outside to get the mail if you need to and they come in all different colors. I just think that they're so much fun. Warm cozy slippers. I have to have two or three pairs of slippers around anyway and why not look down at your feet and think happy. So I like that so much. I will of course list and link my top. I always do. This is a very soft fabric. I believe it is cotton poly blend with a little bit of spandex in it but I love the cold shoulder effect or the cut out on the shoulder and it's just going to be great for going into the summer months because it's very light. It might run just a little bit big. I actually have mine in a medium and in a top. I usually wear a large. I have been amassing quite a little horde of butterfly earrings. These are so sweet. These are a little gold earring with the hoop that goes facing forward instead of a hoop that goes this way back towards your hair but they have that little tiny butterfly on it. They have blue pink and green I believe and the purple and last time I showed these they sold out really quickly so if you're interested in those make sure that you jump on that. I also have shown these. I want to show them again. This is an enameled butterfly earring that has the tiny butterfly up here the bigger butterfly and then the little tassels that hang down. I love these and whenever I wear them I get people commenting on how cute these are. They're so fun and then in my last video I did show you these. These are just a cute little again enameled butterfly very small on these with the little string the little chains that hang down I should say but what is so fun about this is the little butterfly sits on the top and then the little tassels or the chains go in the back and that's a lot of fun because it creates a lot of dimension on your ears and then the last one I have to show you is so sweet and dainty. This one is a little rhinestone right here at the top and then little chains with the butterflies on them down at the bottom and I love these. These are so pretty and they catch the light when you're wearing them and I'm somebody that really loves the dangle earrings because I have shorter hair even when I had my longer hair everything got lost all of my earrings got lost so I'm a bigger earring wearer so I really love those as well. This purse is faux leather or the vegan leather and this one has a couple of compartments inside it has the divider with the zipper the zipper in the back and then you have two compartments for your sunglasses and your cell phone up here in the front. I love the color of this it is a very light blush color so it's the pink but it's kind of a muted pink and I like that about it I love all the details on it the details are in gunmetal there's a zipper over here these are pockets that you can use for pockets I have a tendency not to do that very much but then it has the buckles on it and in the back it also has another um just little pocket that you can use. This does come and I couldn't find it this does come with another little makeup bag that you can throw in there and if you wanted to put like maybe your credit card and your phone and your keys in that and you had your purse you could just take that out and take that with you if you wanted to. By the way I will put up a picture so that you can kind of see what that size truly is on someone and then I decided that during the summer I didn't really want to carry my big purse around that much when my back hurts or my back aches I don't like to carry around a ton of purse and I have a tendency to fill my purses until they're like 80-90 pounds with everything but the kitchen sink in there so I have loved having this again this is like a blush color but it's kind of along the lines of purple as well you have the zipper pocket in the back it is the faux leather again and you have the buckle right here that is so cute but it's actually just a snap pocket and another zipper pocket these two zipper pockets on the side right here they do have pockets that go in as well and then you have the inside and the inside is kind of just one pocket but you do have the back zipper pocket and then again the two pockets up at the top right here yes two pockets up at the top right here that you could keep your phone and possibly your wallet in or your keys or whatever to find those I love this one it's very light and it really has been great for me to just carry just the bare essentials in I'll put a lip gloss my phone my wallet and my keys in here and that's all I have in there so it's not heavy at all so I have been really liking this one and again I will put a picture up on the screen so that you can see it on a person and what how big it is on a person okay these aren't fashion but I wanted to talk to you about them because I think that these would make the cutest gift when kids are going back to school if you know somebody that loves to write in a journal if you yourself like to have pens around and you don't want to lose them look how stinking cute these pens are first of all they have that big huge fake crystal on the top and so they're like these are kind of bougie they come in these velvet holders that you can give them as gifts but they come in a set well they come in all kinds of different set sizes but this is so much fun there's a silver one in here there's a polka dot rose gold there's a plain rose gold there's a regular gold one and then there's a white one with the rose gold on it I am in love with these they are so fun it is just a twist up pen that you can write with and it also comes with five refills that you can use I just thought these were so stinking cute when I saw them there I've never seen anything like it and for being so inexpensive in a pen that you can actually use how much fun is that I just was really excited I also want to show you one of my husband's favorite things that I have found lately we bought these pepper and salt mills the grinders so you can see down in the bottom that it has the peppercorns and then the big grains of salt now let me show you this is so much fun so I have to get like a little towel here so that you can see these are automatic ones and you turn this upside down and it does the grinding for you did you see the light that came on at the same time look at the light that's on there so you can see how much that it's dispensing onto your food is that the coolest thing or what these are battery powered and you can adjust them in the top right here you can adjust them if you turn them down tighter you get a finer milled salt or pepper if you let it out looser it's a little bit more coarse these are just the funnest thing my family has just loved them I love having them just because they look a little bit bougie sitting on my countertop but it's also a fun thing when people come over and I think this again would be a fantastic gift for a guy and I also think it would be a great gift for a couple on their anniversary so I just I love those I think they're just one of those things that yeah that's bougie but hello I think that's adorable the very last thing that I'm going to talk about are something that I love now I know we don't you know want to eat a lot of candy or anything but these candies right here are absolutely yummy and I first found them at marshals and it was like a seasonal thing when you could get them and then I had to find them I mean I was like these are so good okay so if you don't like sour you're not going to like these these are a hard candy an orange hard candy and then they have this sour that releases while you're sucking on them it is just so good my whole family loves these my brother-in-law asked me to get him some of these my mother has asked me to get her some of these after they I gave them a few of them so this is great on amazon you can get a huge bag of them and don't tell anybody but I buy it in the huge bag I think it's five pounds it might be three pounds but whatever it is they're so good and every person that I've ever introduced to them wants more so this can be a great gift as well or you know something that you want to just stick into a bag as a little bit extra you know part of what you're doing so these are really good really yummy I definitely suggest those all right I think that's it for my amazon finds I hope that you did enjoy seeing all of these I have so much fun on amazon all the time and it's just one of those places that I can go down you know the tiktok rabbit hole the amazon rabbit hole it's all real it's all real for the girl here so I hope that you guys are all doing well do you have things on amazon that you get over and over again or that you got and you were surprised at how good they were I would love to hear that from you down in the description or down in the comment section that would be great don't forget everything is listed in the description box and you can go there and shop with a number thanks so much for being with me today please give the video a thumbs up on your way out of here I will talk to you very soon come back and visit with me in my next video I love you friends I'll talk to you soon bye bye


Well, let's take a look at the projected Yankees line up right now and give people a sense of what it would look like. And it's got Judge batting second nestled between DJ LaMahew and Glaber Torres. Aaron Hicks and John Carlo Stanton could very well be healthy and back. And this is a fluid group. You've got to remember that in a 60 game season, Yankees did have 155 different lineup combinations last season. We talked about the impact of Judge. But how about a healthy John Carlo Stanton and the impact flash that he could have in that DH spot? Yeah, I think it's going to be huge. And one of the things that raised my eyebrow the other day when I listened to Aaron Boone and he talked about Stanton, possibly DHing early on. I don't know if he's still coming back from that injury and they want to take it slow. But the first thought that came to my mind is the Yankees are a better defensive club if John Carlo Stanton is DHing. Obviously the big bat in the middle of the lineup. But it's a way where you can get Gardner in the lineup and Hicks, who has come back so quickly from Tommy John. You start looking in that defensive outfield with Gardner, Hicks, and Judge. And you could put it up against any threesome in the league. So I think Stanton, if he can stay healthy, DHing early on, maybe he starts working his way into some outfield drills and some outfield play as the season progresses. But I think that lineup that we just saw defensively is the best lineup the Yankees could put out there. John, as I look at that lineup and I'm thinking, how are opposing pitchers going to try and navigate through that lineup? There's a guy who's missing. Miguel Andujar isn't even in that lineup. And we know the Yankees are going to figure out a way to get him some action. 2018, 850 OPS, 27 homers, 47 doubles. Obviously the right shoulder injury in 2019. You're Aaron Boone. How are you getting Andujar some at bats this year? Well, it's going to be somewhere in the outfield. Some played maybe some days at third base, maybe some days at first. And maybe some DH days. You've got to find a way to get his back back in the lineup, guys, because when you look at that lineup as an old catcher, the names jump out at you, OK, I don't want judge to beat me. I don't want Stanton to beat me. And then all of a sudden you're going down and you have Gary Sanchez waiting. Aaron Hicks, guys like that, or Shella, who had a big year for the Yankees last year. And I think of Andujar and how he kind of burst onto the scene and was hitting down in the lineup. And he wasn't the focal point of the opposing team's game plan. Well, now he's going to be doing the same thing.  And when you don't really pay attention to Andujar, he's such an aggressive hitter early in the count that he'll ambush you and do some serious damage. So Aaron Boone is going to have so many things early on this year that he's going to have to pay attention to and be careful with. But one of the situations with Andujar, finding a way to get him at bats because it's such a valuable bat that you would love to have in your lineup. You know, we've talked at least about last season and the season before about so many injuries and how they impacted the club and the time that guys missed. We've already touched on them, but Aaron Hicks, just the ability to stay out there healthy. And the fact that, and I found this interesting Jack and I when we talked or listened to Garrett Cole earlier, he pointed out he's the only position player he knows of in history that won't miss a game after having Tommy John surgery. That for the Yankees could be huge, that healthy arm, and hopefully every other part of him, including his obliques, staying healthy and the impact he could have. Yeah, I mean, health, that's going to be such a big factor for every club, but Aaron Hicks coming back this quickly from an injury is great news. I think about him in center field, you know, the gold glove type of center fielder he is. The switch hitter in the lineup is so valuable because you can hit him in so many different spots. And, you know, if you're going to point out a weakness and I don't really think it's a weakness in today's game, the Yankee lineup is very heavy right-handed hitters. So Aaron Hicks mixing in there as a switch hitter is going to help out. Brett Garner getting some reps in left field being a left-handed hitter. That's going to help Aaron Boone out. But to your point, Bob, Aaron Hicks is such an important part of this team, not only for what he does on the defensive side, but the quality of that, seeing a lot of pitches grinding out of bats, working some walks, he's going to be a valuable piece no matter where he slots in. I think you could probably make the statement that a lot of players, and this is a one-year anomaly, 60 game season, everybody hopes that, but they'll benefit from that and the ability to play with a sprint to the finish. How much do you think Gary Sanchez could benefit from that? I'm intrigued to watch how this is going to play out, because Gary Sanchez over the course of a long season has had his share of injuries. And now if you only play 60 games, will he have a better chance to stay on the field day in and day out? And again, I go back to Aaron Boone.  Or are you still going to treat him the same way that you have in the past? Give him some days off. Try to give him some DH days so you can keep his legs underneath him. Again, in a 60 game season, if I was an everyday catcher, I would love to be out there for 50 of those games. If you have the right mentality and you can stay out on the field, I don't know if Aaron Boone is going to do that, but I'm kind of intrigued to watch over a shortened season if Gary Sanchez can stay healthier than he has in the past. Obviously it would be a big bonus for the Yankees. So, John, I'm crediting you and me and Bob with our first error of the year because we're this deep into the discussion and we haven't even mentioned DJ LeMayhew, who was only fourth in the AL MVP voting last season. How probable do you think it is that LeMayhew can duplicate what he did last season and what about the fact that he has a walk year looming? He's a free agent after this year. Yeah, I'm sure he's happy, obviously, to get back to playing because of that, Jack, but I think it's easy to overlook DJ LeMayhew and the only reason I think people do is because his personality is so level, there's not a whole lot of ups and downs and he's just one of those players that he produces every day, but there's no fanfare about it. So I think that's why maybe we've been so deep in this conversation and finally his name is going to come up, but to your original question, I don't think there's any doubt that DJ LeMayhew was going to do what he did last year. Lead-off guy who kind of flies under the radar, like I just said, if I'm catching against the Yankees and LeMayhew comes up to the plate, I have to go right at him because I know I have the big boys coming behind him. With all that being said, he's going to get a lot of pitches to hit. He uses the whole field, he drives the ball the other way and from a teammate's perspective and a manager's perspective, he's a dream teammate because there's no fanfare, there's no drama. He just goes out there every day and he does it on both sides of the baseball. Flash curious how to feel putting a shirt and tie back on again. You know what?  Well, you stand out as well and that's what we always count on here at Yes.


Juice bro fans an extinguished I messed up Juice bro fans an extinct species meaning there's not that many of us I'm trying to find more but each day that goes on it gets harder and harder and harder So that's led me here. Do y'all know where you throw fans are? I need to find them. I'll go anywhere to Atlantis to the Bronx To your mom's crib I'm joking. I already been there As y'all know it's your boy burnt. Um, I don't know stay for me in the comments cuz I don't remember Let's find these fans Hey, excuse me. What's on what you listen to a lot a lot. Yeah, bye. Do you want savage? Oh, so you like Ralph? Have you heard of juice world? Everyone has. Oh, do you like juice world? Yeah, so I'm gonna sing you some lyrics and I want you to give me the song What's your name my friend and tomorrow? All right? What's up? Oh my best visiting car. All right, so, um, you accepted the challenge All right bet best out of three. So let's see what let's see what you can get so for the first one I'll go somewhat easy. We'll say I don't need no Molly to be savage. Huh? What is that song? Dude, I just came out of the gym. I'm dead No, that's a strike. Oh, whoa, that was that was that was crazy. Oh, that was a warm-up.  I wanted to make sure you get one now. This is the last one. This will decide Yeah, this is the recovery round recovery round.  Oh, I've listened to this last night Who is the song also with if you listen last night, you should know who it was with right You got me It's blast off with trippy red in it, but that's me. That's all me. I'm in town Party's going down You know a little bit more than you let Yeah, you don't doubt yourself next time. Hey, I'm in the middle. Yeah going somewhere in a rush I want to ask you a question for tiktok.   What's your name, but George George? Okay, so George, what type of music you listen to country rap rock all of it. You listen to country What's your favorite country song check? Yes, we know by George straight. Do you let me know That's a w a song or not in the comments below do any of y'all like juice world Y'all like juice real quick. Okay, best like how how fond of y'all gonna stop from one to ten How are we talking about eight eight? That's pretty high. I would actually I would have gave him a nine or ten I'm gonna start off medium difficulty. You know I'm saying so Toxic toxic toxic I don't I literally don't know though.  That's not lean with me What that's not lean with me That was syphilis Okay, okay. Okay. I'm gonna give you. You know what I think you prove yourself. I'm gonna try him again I need to get Jake. All right. Do me Jake. I need you to come on. Come on. I'm gonna step easier.  Yeah, try close a okay. Yeah, jk Tell Jake to get his knowledge a little bit up. I want I need to see in his comments. I don't need no Maybe it's not black. I think everybody just thinks I'm Tyrone or something. I don't know. It's crazy Hey, can I ask y'all a question? Y'all listen to juice world? You for real? So if I recite to you some lyrics, would you be able to do for real? Okay, this is the first confident when we got here. Okay.  I know that's cheating but give me the song. What's the song name syphilis I know syphilis. So send any lyrics. Give me any lyrics from syphilis then. I'm just this is so mad I come on. You you were so confident to be here. Come on. She's making a name. Give me one. Give me one different lyric Give me one from any other song All right, I'm gonna go easy possible then I still see your Shadows of my own but hey, you could never I said what was that song?   Uh, it's hate me with Ellie Let me give you one All right. Yeah, this is I like this. I like this. I know every song Hold on. Let me I'm just give me like five seconds. Take as long as you want. I'm ready The longer he takes the more out my brain generates all the songs. He's told me to put my heart in the bag And nobody gets hurt. So okay, best of what I'm getting out of this chat robbery And lucid dreams are the most known songs sipping. I think it's sipping on this Tennessee Oh, now you turn it to my enemy. Here we go again All right, one more one more. Okay hands up in the fire Would you want to shout any social media or anything? I'll let you win if you can name me another juice song other than those other just name just name another one You win armed and dangerous Okay Andrew nice to meet you. Andrew.  I did work on this video Let me know if y'all like the editing. I've actually tried in this one. So let me get back to it Thank you. Now go win some more You have ear pods incorrect. So that means you like music, correct? Yeah, can I test some of your music music knowledge for a tiktok? Absolutely. All right. How do you feel about juice world? Um, he was good. He was good. Yeah Gotta give you one I know a lot of juice world So the first song i'ma do for you i'ma start off easy. I admit it Another hoe got me tripping toxic toxic toxic. Is this song released? Very released Really? Yes I respect it because I can't respect that actually empty. I feel so goddamn empty Okay, okay. Okay. Beep beep beep empty Is that just the I feel so goddamn empty. There you go. I mean you could either see, you know You could have just said empty again. It wasn't the same thing from the unknown No, oh wait, can I just hit the song title?  I'm like other sister. It's like I ran away. I ain't going back home Yeah, that is the lyrics. I ain't gonna lie though. I just gave you the same song twice in a row though Hey, do you listen to music? Yeah, can I ask you a question? All right there. I like this. Yeah, I love the volunteerity. All right So without a word you in college Tim without a word was volunteer Oh smart busy in the building. How do you feel about juice world? I like juice world. You like juice world? I do like juice world I want to test your knowledge on some juice world song No, yeah Either you can finish the lyric or you can just simply tell me the song. Okay. Okay. All right. You ready? Yeah I'm ready. All right. Beep beep beep. You know, I must not be easy. I still see your Shadows in my dream I admit it another whole never finished never finished I don't need no molly to be savage. I still see your Shadows in my room. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's toxic toxic toxic No, I did honestly I don't need no friends Maybe maybe it's a song I ain't heard of Do I not know that one y'all like music can I ask y'all question real quick for tiktok 30 seconds. Come here. Come here. Slice I know about juice I like jokes. I like a few of the stars. I like one is you too, bro Yeah, what about you his freestyles are crazy.  I want to recite some uh, you know songs some courses songs are verse And I want to see back to you to give me the song name or just one of the bars in the song the next bar I still see your Shadows in my room. They even pointed at him like you knew he was gonna get it like So why you was getting on the No, it's in between y'all Everything Enemy Yeah, don't like he's an enemy. You know what I'm saying? Don't lack around the end. I admit it Another hose. I admit it. Another hole got me finished What's the song name? It's um I thought you said you like juice. I said he must he must have been orange used to he must have been orange used to Yeah, all right Oh No, that's crazy. Okay.  He's over. He annihilated you. Shout out to my man. Xavier frill No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no because he actually put me on to a lot of a lot of good music Do you want to shout out any of your stuff in the instance he shouted you out? I've got to shout out Aiden back. Okay, we do it. We do it


Hey guys, Matt here, checking in from Southeastern Minnesota, Western Wisconsin, but we call God's Country. You're watching Trucker Josh Vlogs on YouTube. Let's get her. The rest of the world, wherever you are watching this, good morning to you, good afternoon, good evening. Trying to get to my customer where I gotta deliver. And I'm pretty sure Karen took me the long way, but I checked to work, and this did seem like it was the most direct truck road. Now I got a lane closure deal with here. What? Tarnation. It's going on here. We're slowly making our way there.  Still not there. A lot of traffic lights on this road. Wasn't there a quicker way? I am convinced there must have been a faster way. But anyways, yeah, Calgary is a beautiful, beautiful city. I always go on and on about it when we're here, because it's my favorite Canadian city. It's clean. It's safe. Lots to do here.  That's a thing. Well, everybody, let's skip ahead a little bit here. I've got my next load on my trailer now, and I had to tarp it. That's all I want to say about that, but I'll show you. There's a lot of sharp edges underneath the tarps. I should have shown you before I tarped it. I was muttering to myself under my breath all morning while I was tarping this, and didn't think of, hey, maybe I should show them what I'm going to be talking about. Anyway, here, let's take a look at it. So the load is a whole bunch of like low gauge steel, very sharp edges, and it's all under here. I got four big rolls of insulation under here that's tied down, and the rest of this is all just like very fine steel, very, very sharp edges. So I used all of my equipment, all of my rug, all of my extra rubber pieces, and protected my tarps the best I could. See if we can give you a look under here, what I'm talking about. See, I tarped it. Good. I can't even get under there to show you. Can you see it? Can you see it over there? Oh, this is good. If I can't get to it to show you guys, that means I tarped it. There, see? This kind of stuff here. And it's got very sharp edges, very, very sharp edges. So we got rugs on all the corners and stuff here up here as well. We got some rubber pieces under here. Make sure those sharp edges don't push through my tarps. Oh, there's a sharp edge here that's not protected. Uh-oh, that's touching. That's touching. Okay, I got to put something underneath there. Okay, I missed that one. Got to go grab another piece of rubber and quickly throw that in there. I'm glad I walked around here again with you guys and noticed that. That will eat through all the sharp edges there. That'll cut through my tarp before I even leave Calgary.  In here, I got to find my equipment. And we'll use a piece. See, I got a lot of these rubber pieces.  It's dirty, but it does the job. All right, so we need to put this in there underneath here. Go under there with our hand and push that up into there to protect that corner. I'm going to need two hands here. Sorry, guys. See, that was not that sharp point. I just hope that it stays there. Keep an eye on it. Let's get going. We're on to trying to scan it off the deer foot here. As I go around the corner, the tarps are still where they're supposed to be.  All the straps are still tight. Make sure my tarps are still where they're supposed to be. Make sure all of my edge protectors are still in place. Make sure my tarps aren't being cut open. So this trailer is going up the winter roads. I'm not going with it. I'm just taking it back to Winnipeg. All of my equipment is going to go with it. The way our system works is that the equipment all stays with the truck and the driver. I pay for all of that equipment. It's all mine. So instead of taking my tarps and all of my equipment off, it took me a couple of hours to get this work done and making another driver do it all over again with his equipment.  They usually put it on like a pallet for me in our yard and I put my name on it or truck number and they let me know when it's back there. In the meantime, I'll see if I can get another set of tarps. So at least the next guy will have a little bit of time saved. You won't have to tie the low down one up to tarp it. It was quite difficult because there's so many sharp edges over there on the left because you didn't want to miss your turn. You know, there's such a thing as a U-turn. Fast U-turn and U-turn. Come back. Oh, we're heavier than I thought we were. It didn't look that heavy, but man, I know it's Volvo, but come on, just got a little bit more in there than that. Working hard, working hard. I'll be able to quite make it home tonight. I could make it, oh, if I could do the speed limit, let's say I could make it then. Barely. Speed limit is 110 kilometers an hour or a hundred and, or I mean 70 miles an hour. I can only do about 62 miles an hour or 100 kilometers an hour. So it is what it is. We'll get as far as we can. At least we have home at the end of this trip. I'm going to enjoy some time at home there. Get some work done. The half of the medicine. I need to get into this lane. This, this, this lane. Oh, it was awkward. There was someone right beside me. Thanks, bud. I want to go that way. Can I get past this guy here? Yes, I can. All right. Where else would we stop, right? Maybe we stop at Petra Pass. They actually have some really nice truck stops. Husky or Essel or whatever you call them now. They're pretty nice too, but this is my favorite, Flying J. Pilot isn't in Canada, but Flying J is weird, right? But it's all the same company, Pilot Flying J. But in the US, you'll see Pilot and you'll see Flying J. Same company. And that's the reason they're my favorite, because they're on both sides of the border and it makes it really easy for me to collect points on my points card, free showers. They always have really nice showers, clean sanitary. I'm happy with them. They have good internet service, partnered with them in the past and they were pleasant to work with. Not partnered with them anymore. I'm not partnered with anybody. If you guys notice, I haven't done any ads or any shoutouts, like paid shoutouts or any thing like that in like a long time. I mean, I'm thinking it's been like almost two years, right? No, I'm not going to get fuel here. I'm going to keep going. We'll get fuel in Balgoni or Mostar or something. I'm just grabbing a coffee here. But I haven't done any ads or anything and that's on purpose. Not saying I'm never going to do them anymore, but I'm just saying that I've had a lot of offers. Honestly, every day when I go into my inbox on Facebook or sometimes my email address, I have a different message from someone saying, Hey, they're really nice people too. They're saying, Hey, we'd love to partner with you. You know, we can either pay you X amount if you do this ad for us or if you mention us or stuff like that. And I've refused them all for a long time. So I'm not picking and choosing for those of you watching that would like to partner with me. It's not personal. I haven't been just avoiding you. I've been avoiding all sponsorships and stuff. And it's, I don't want my channel to become one of those channels that's just constantly every day doing sponsorships, but I'm thinking of doing them in the future again. I'm not totally against them. I mean, I understand. I need to put food on the table too, right? And every little bit helps. I've got a lot of repairs to do to my house, a lot of renovations. Got to keep this truck running. Got to keep this boy fed. It's a hungry weasel over here. Hey, man, don't bring me in today's pain. But in the future, yeah, if you guys do want to get a hold of me for something like that, my email address is always below the videos, tjv at email.com. I only partner with brands that I would use myself. So I'll take a look at the brand. And if it's something that I would actually use and would benefit me, I'll partner with you guys and I'll share it with my followers because I don't want to promote something that I wouldn't even use myself. That wouldn't be real. That would totally, I think it would take away from my integrity on this show. And also, I might lose faith in you guys, the audience. I want you guys to know that if I ever promote a brand, if I ever promote a product, it is something that I would use myself. That I'm not just doing it just because they're paying me for it. It's actually something that I would use and do use myself. So just heads up for the future. If I do do some, I don't have any lined up right now. I don't have any talks going on. I've been avoiding them all. But if it does happen, then know that it is something that I would genuinely use myself. And I'm not just selling out to anybody, not just anybody, just the certain people. Because to me, a sell out is someone who will take money from a company to promote a product that they wouldn't even use themselves and that they don't even like. That's a sell out to me. But otherwise, there's business, right? Don't worry, my vlogs aren't going to be coming out. Don't worry. You already got enough of those from Google, don't you? I would also like to give everybody a happy update on my financial situation as a farmer, as Farmer Josh. I should probably put a hat on. My hair is probably a mess today, isn't it? It's because I was tarping before. And so excuse that last clip. I was talking for a while too. I'm just going to leave it in there. This is real, real life. I don't do my hair every day, okay? But my financial situation in my farming game here has improved significantly. The last time we talked, I said I was far in debt. And, well, let's just collect this money here that I earned for fertilizing that Good Man's Field. Mr. Farmeres, you're welcome. Thank you for the money. I'm only $25,000. Actually, I'm going to pay off 5,000 of it. I'm only $20,000 in debt now. Last time we talked, I was $480,000 in debt. So I've been a good conservative and I've been paying off my debt. I'm a good farmer, right? We're coming up to the end of our day here in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. This is where we're going to lay our head down tonight. I wanted to get a little further, but here we are. It's 11 o'clock right now, so I'm getting tired up and up since pretty early. Tomorrow we have seven hours to drive to get to home. It's still like a full day, but we're going to try and get up right, like between seven and eight in the morning and get a good early start. Ninth what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to go here into Flying Jay. We're going to grab some fuel tonight first, so I don't got to do it in the morning because I'm going to be lazy in the morning. It's my last day before I go home. I don't want to do nothing. I just want to get behind the driver's seat. Well, I've tried to do my pre-trip. Get behind the driver's seat and go home. That's all I want to do. Off over here. It's courteous to turn your headlights off once you get into a parking lot. Just be careful because obviously pedestrians won't see you as easily, so if you want to leave them on, understand why, but I don't know. Maybe I have like a sensitivity to light. I don't like people with lots of bright light. I like the dark. I'm not this one. I'm going to go over here to this one. There we go. There we go. Is that guy seriously just parking right there? Dude, that's not a parking spot. That's the driveway where people drive through to get to the other side when all these pumps are full. But go ahead, park there because you're flying to your priority parking. I get it. I get it. We're at Flying Jay. Why is there two pumps here? Let's dive diesel. Oh, that's for the farmers. This one's free. I'm not a farmer. Not technically.


Howdy guys. All right, so in this next intro to vex video, what we're going to do is talk about vector rotations. All right, so how do we go about controlling our rotations when we use something like the copy to points? All right, okay. And so let's take a look at how we go about rotating a normal. That's probably the best way to visualize it and to begin with. So we're going to build something like this. All right, we're basically going to rotate our objects in a very controlled manner. Usually, you know, in a lot of the videos I've done in the past, we just, you know, fill in the orient or the at rot attribute with some random number, which usually looks good, you know, when you're working on levels and stuff like that for games, usually you want sort of some sort of random rotation. In this case, I want to know how to control my rotations in a custom way. I want a lot of control over it. So we're going to build up that. So let's create a new geometry node and call this just custom rotation or whatever you want to call it, you know, so say custom rotation, and we'll hit enter to jump inside. Now let's turn on the grid just so I have something to look at. And I'm going to drop down a line. All right, and by default, I have my line set up with the x direction. All right, and I've also made it sure that it sits right in the middle. Now, you don't have to do that. I just have that as my default because I use it quite often that way. And I'm going to go and add a couple more points to this guy like so. Okay, cool. And let's initialize these points with some normal. So I'm going to drop down a point expression node. This is a great way to initialize an element or a component of these points, when you just need to really set one of them. So in this case, I'm going to set the normal by hitting this attribute drop down right here and selecting normal from the drop down. You can see by default, I get a normal attribute attached to my points, but they're all zeroed out. So we need to give it some sort of default value. In this case, I'm going to point the normal in the z direction. So this vector right here defines a z pointing normal. All right, so I'm just going to hit enter on that and turn on my normal display so we can take a look here. Okay, so what I want to do when I go and copy points or copy an object to these points. All right, I want it to, you know, rotate around the y axis, let's say. So there's a little green axis right here. I want it to rotate around the y axis in a controllable manner, along this point, okay, or along the line. So a way to do that, let's drop down a wrangle node. The way to do that is with quaternions. Okay, so quaternions are really hard to explain, you know, the actual math behind. I probably would do a terrible job explaining it, but it's basically an efficient way to model rotations in 3D space. All right, it was developed many, many moons ago, I think in like 1843 or something like that by a person's name, I can't remember off the top of my head, but they were developed so that we could rotate things efficiently. And it's, you know, largely used in the CG world. So to do that, to build a quaternion vets, we need to do a couple of things first. We need to first just determine what angle or how much rotation we want to do. So I'm going to create a new local variable and call this angle. All right, so we're going to declare a new channel float. All right. And I'm going to hit the spare parameter button there. So now we have a way to control that value down here interactively. And I'm going to set it to something like, I don't know, 45 degrees. All right, I'm going to start in degrees because that's usually easier to think about, you know, when we're talking about rotations, I usually like to think in degrees. Okay, so to make a quaternion in vets, we need to declare a new vector for, all right, because the quaternion function that we're going to utilize returns a vector for. All right, so this local variable is a vector for, I'm going to call it rot. And we are going to utilize that quaternion function. All right, so let's go and pop open the help for this guy. So that way we can see it. Let's have it for reference. Okay, so we have a couple of overrides for this particular function. So we can provide it a matrix three, we can provide it a float or a vector, or we can provide it just a vector. All right, so we're going to use the second one that that's, I find the easiest one to utilize, it makes most sense, you can visualize it pretty easily. Okay, and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to feed it our angle value. Okay, and then I need to feed it some sort of axis. Now, like I said before, I want to rotate these normals on the y direction. Okay, currently they're all pointing in the z direction. If we look at our little gizmo down here, so I need to provide it the y direction as an axis. And we can do that because we can just type in 010, that's the world up axis. Okay, cool. So now we have this quaternion. And then one thing we need to make sure that we do is read the documentation because you can see down here is it says that the quaternion, it creates a vector for representing a quaternion from angle axis. Okay, and what it's not telling us is that the angle here needs to be fed in as radians. Okay, so there it is. It's actually right there. The angle is specified in radians. Okay, and currently my angle channel is coming in as a degree. So we just need to convert it to radians like so. So you utilize that radians function. So now we take those degrees, and now they're in radians. So now we have a proper quaternion rotation around the y-axis. Okay, and now what we can do is we can rotate these guys. So if I come down here, and I say that at normal is now equal to a new vector that's rotated with this quaternion right here. So to do that we use the q rotate function. And all we need to do is feed it the rotation in quaternion format and the current normal or the current vector we want to rotate. All right, so when I do that and turn on this attribute angle, you can see we are now rotating around the y-axis. Look at that. How cool is that? All right, so now when we go and create a object to copy onto those points there, so let's just make a box. Something simple. All right, and now I have my box here. Cool. And what I want to do here is I actually want to go and make one of the faces or at least this face that's facing in the z-direction blue. That way we can see our orientation on our box. Okay, so what I'm going to do is drop down a color node and we'll set some base color. All right, I'm going to assign this to the primitives and let's put kind of like an orange color on this like I did before. And I'm going to copy this guy and we are going to then colorize primitive two. And this one is going to be blue. All right, because when we copy an object to points, the copy to points node is going to use this normal as the way to orient your models. All right, and this normal basically represents that forward direction in z. So that's why I colored the primitive blue there so we can see that rotation or that orientation happening. So now if I put in the copy to points node and then feed in these two guys like so, you can see now we are rotating appropriately. Let me turn off my normals now. We don't need those or the primitive numbers. So if I come back to my wrangle node, start playing with this angle, you can see when I get to 180, we should be all the way around. All right, 270. We should be all facing this way. How cool is that? Let's make this a little bit smaller. All right, there you go. And we can take this even further by basically multiplying the angle by the gradients along the curve. All right, so we're going to create some u value or a value that goes from 0 to 1 based off the length of the curve. And to do that, we can just say float gradients is equal to our point number. So at pt num divided by the number of points coming into our input 0 there or the first input minus 1. Okay, and then we have to make sure that we cast all these guys to floats because they come in as integers and we need a float value for our gradient. Cool. So now we've got this gradient. I can just go down here and multiply our angle by the gradients. Oh, look at that. We now have a nice smooth fall off. So if I were to start rotating these guys, you can see they're rotating more where we're at the end of the curve. Pretty cool stuff. Awesome. All right, we could take this even further by rotating a second vector. In this case, let's say we want to rotate our up vector. All right, so let's do this. Let's create our up vector. I'm going to say v at up is equal to world up. So we're going to start there. So we're just going to initialize it there. All right, and then I want to basically do the same thing. All right, we can take any number of these vectors and rotate them and you get really crazy effects when you start to layer all this stuff together. So let's just copy this whole section here and we'll paste it down here like so.  And we're going to take in the angle. And what I want to do this time is rotate along our normal. So you can see here if I turn on my normals again, I actually want to use this as my axis. All right, so we're going to basically rotate this way now because our up normal is facing up. And we can actually take a look at this. So if I select this attribute or angle now to hit x on the keyboard, it'll automatically throw down a visualized node for me. And I can come in here and set this to a marker because I want to look at a vector and that vector is going to be up. So currently our up vectors pointing straight up and y. So let's actually pull this guy down just a bit. It's a little big. And now what I want to do is I want to basically rotate this yellow vector the up vector using the current points normal as the axis. Okay, so this time I'm going to say rot b is equal to this quaternion now, but around the normal axis. All right, so all we need to do now is just say that at up is now equal to the q rotate of our rot b and at up because that's the vector that we want to rotate. So give it the quaternion and then we give it the vector that we want to rotate by that quaternion. And when we do that, you can see we're now rotating that y vector as well. Now all of our boxes are being rotated along that vector as well. Pretty cool. All right, then what I did, you know, just for the demo purposes, I went and created a copy to point or not a copy to points, a copy and transform. There we go. And pump that guy into there. And then I think I just put like 0.1 here, a little bit more.  That's all I did. All right. That's a really cool way to get a bunch of really cool, you know, visualization type animations, whatever you're doing, you know, these types of patterns are really cool. But it's a great exercise and just learning how to rotate your normals or any vector for that matter. All right, so one thing I wanted to point out before I actually close out the video is let's say you're not really sure, you know, how the code for VEX actually works. All right. Well, what we can do is we can actually utilize VOPs for all this stuff. Okay, so let's throw down a point VOP and take a look at the version without writing code. Okay, so in this case, what I'd have to do is jump in here. Let's actually turn on our points and our normals. So we have our initial normals there. So inside of a point VOP, what we would do is we would come in here and drop down a parameter because we need to define our angle, just like we did in VEX. Okay, so this is going to be called angle. And I want this to be within zero to 360, let's say. And it's going to be a float. That's good.  So let's take that quaternion. All right, because we need to build a quaternion to feed into our rotation. Okay, so the axis then is going to be a constant. Okay, and this constant is going to be a vector, or not all that would work too. There we go. So now we got the up VEC. And I need to convert my angle now into radians. So let's do degrees to radians. We'll feed that into the angle, use that as the axis, the world up axis. So now we have our quaternion.  So now we can pump in the quaternion here and pull in the normal, our current normal right here. And we'll pump that result out into the normal like so. All right, so if I were to jump up and out, and take a look at the angle here, you can see we are rotating very, very little. That is odd there. And that's because I put in the bound angle. All right, there we go. Cool. So now we are doing the same exact thing. Cool. So if you ever, or if you are comfortable point bops, and you want to see, you know, what the code is in VEX for that, you can always just click on this guy and say, view VEX VOP options and say, view VEX code. And usually, right down at the bottom, you'll find how to make the actual VEX on your own. All right. So that's pretty much all you actually need to write. Cool. So just a couple of ways to go about doing all that stuff. But that is what I wanted to show. Hopefully you guys like that. All right, thanks so much.


Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video. And today we're going to talk about how you can level up your airbrush game. We're going to take it to the next level and use this tool as more than just something for priming and base-coding. We're going to really get into it and I'm going to show you the tips and the tricks and the ways you can utilize it to its fullest potential. Let's get into it. The strict technomancer that is Vinci Vee. Let us get into the technique and learn it Vinci Vee style. If you're a long-time fan of this channel, you know I love my airbrush. I've integrated it in lots of videos and in lots of different points in the process. Not just priming and base-coding, but throughout. And using your airbrush leveling up your skill is really a matter of two different things. One is techniques and that's what the majority of this video is going to be about. When we head over to the painting desk we're going to get into all those tips and ways to get the most out of the tool. But the other part of it is the tool itself. A quality airbrush that's really precision machined with a nice fine needle really can make all the difference in how precise you can be. Now recently our friends at Harder & Steinbeck reached out to me with a project they're working on. With the invasion of the Ukraine and that ongoing war there, Harder & Steinbeck wanted to help. And they wanted to help those people who are most in need. The displaced, the suffering, the refugees, the women, the children and so on, who've been pushed out of their country and are now left without anything to their name. Harder & Steinbeck worked with a local artist in the Ukraine who couldn't leave, who uses their airbrushes regularly to do all sorts of amazing art, including things like the entire children's ward in her local hospital. They made a special airbrush in her honor focusing and using her art as inspiration for this infinity. It's a great airbrush, I've used it a lot, you're going to see in this video, I absolutely love it. Now Angela is her name and they drew from Angela's heart, her art to make an amazingly beautiful airbrush. Not only is it beautiful on the outside, but the inside is made of gold because in response to the war Angela's art didn't get dark, it was instead hopeful, full of heart and full of the belief that everybody does have good inside of them. That's a beautiful message. Harder & Steinbeck takes the profit from these airbrushes and gives it directly to a local organization that is working to take food, supplies and other important things down to the border directly. This isn't going to some big nameless charity. This isn't middlemen soaking this all up. Harder & Steinbeck knows the two people who do this directly, they actually work with them quite regularly. They literally load up their own vans and trucks with these supplies and drive down to the border to help those the most in need. So if you were looking to get a new airbrush, if you were looking to have a quality tool follow the link below to this limited airbrush where you can both pick up a high quality product that could really do some amazing things and also help out an incredible cause and those who are the most suffering and in need. Alright with that out of the way let's get to those aforementioned tips and tricks. Let's head over to the painting desk. Alright so I wanted to start here by talking about the airbrush itself. Now of course with the airbrush this new airbrush is based off the infinity model so things like the cup is still removable, it has the standard sort of two teeth, you can backflow that by just pinching the little top, it has the airflow control on the back so as you screw that in it restricts the movement of the trigger. If you have problems pulling back too far you can always just you know twist that in and that'll stop sort of its arrest its movement. The inside of this thing as I mentioned before is completely plated in gold because of the the heart of gold that the artist talks about that she believes is within everyone. Now the trigger itself is of course there in the Ukraine colors with the yellow and the blue and it has very very precise movement and generally that's what's going to define a good airbrush as we'll see throughout this video. You'll also notice there's an art design on the side and this is some of the art from Angela that was made right in after the invasion of the Ukraine. So just beautiful stuff now let's talk about our first tip for getting more out of your airbrush and doing more precise work. So the first tip is thin your paint a lot more this is one drop of paint to 10 drops of thinner one to 10 now I know I know a lot of times people will say it should be like skim milk but no if you look at this this is very very thin and there's a reason why that is as you'll see the other thing you want to do is it's in how you grip it I put my thumb up under the trigger my index finger on the top and then my middle finger gripping underneath so I'm actually holding the trigger with two fingers how you hold this thing matters a lot as you can see when you have a 0.2 millimeter needle which is what this comes with you can do really sharp lines now theoretically you can do something down to you know not much wider than 0.2 millimeters but that's just not actually possible you'd have to get your airbrush like right up against the surface and we have to be back a little bit so the cone is going to spread out but we work thin so we can build the color up now we can be precise with lines and we can build up the color and that's what you're going to see me do here you notice how I can hit the individual parts of the armor and I want to talk a lot about trigger movement throughout this thing I am just barely pushing the trigger down against my thumb which is locked in place and barely pulling it back so it's the slightest movement and you notice that I'm rocking it one of the ways that we as miniature painters will use our airbrushes differently than how sort of traditional canvas artists who use airbrushes is we will do this rock and and spike mechanism think of your airbrush more like a normal brush so you want to be just slightly rocking the trigger just barely down just barely back and then you actually push the airbrush toward the thing you need to operate very very close to the model notice how close I'm operating I'm like an inch away from this guy sometimes even closer than that now when you have very thin paint you might see say hey I have some troubles with spider webbing when I do that I understand that means you have too much airflow if that's a problem use that guard on the back to restrict your airflow so you can only barely pull the trigger back use the mechanism that's there you'll see as I build up this red I'm working very very close and that leads me to my next tip build up your colors I think with the airbrush we often work so fast and make these big jumps because we think hey it's an airbrush it's fast I'm supposed to just spray all over the model but that doesn't have to be that way there's no reason I can't work in these subtle gradations with very thin paint and build up the layers just like I would with the brush because then I can get very soft very very smooth transitions of colors really easily and the key to working that close and working that thin is all in that trigger pull that soft slight trigger pull now what not to do here I'm doing his face and I probably should have done his face first but here we are either way you notice I have a little bit of overspray always be aware of your cone and this isn't easy enough fix but I'm going to show you better how to do this later in the video if when you first try some of these things you're not getting the same results that's okay it is tougher to get your airbrush to do the things I'm doing here it takes time and it takes practice and it takes mastery of the tool but just like with your normal brush when you first pick that up you probably couldn't do a smooth layer or you couldn't create a smooth glaze maybe that's still something that challenges you but as you worked with that tool and learn how to use it and engage with its multifaceted nature you became better able to get the effects you wanted it's the same thing here so don't be discouraged keep working at it it is a powerful tool it can do this and remember those tips that I'm talking about throughout this video as I continue to build up the face I want you to see how close I'm working and I'm still working in this nine to one ten to one thin ratio the other thing you can do so easily with an airbrush to level up your skills is if you overspray one time you can go back in and build in your shadows the next the sort of leveling up your airbrush skill is also a matter of using it for filters here this purple red is thinned even more than my last color this is like 12 to 1 and it's very very very thin I'm just filtering this purple tone over the shadows and then I added a tiny bit of black to just really build it up and you can see how small I'm working the airbrush is very close you notice I'm barely rocking the trigger I mean we are talking the tiniest amount of airflow that's what lets me work this thin so you want to work very thin work very close barely barely barely rock the trigger now if you've ever had a problem glazing light colors this is how you do it easily here I'm glazing some silver gray onto the edge of his chainsword this with a brush would have taken me forever to get a smooth glaze with an airbrush it took me five seconds I thinned down that silver glaze and was good to go now sometimes no matter how precise you are you've got a mask it is still a cone leveling up your airbrush masking is as easy as going out and buying some silly putty now here I'm using the ak version of this which is just black silly putty because I wanted to try it out a long time ago but you can just go buy the dollar egg by covering it up you can easily hit the areas you need to even when you're being small and precise now during this sped up footage the last thing I'll say is that no matter how much of a surgeon you are with your airbrush there's always things you must do by brush use the tool for what it's good at here with the brush I'm doing things like all the edge highlights all of the texture on the leather all those things where brush strokes are valuable and precise and needed your airbrush can never be the complete replacement for your tool but by working thin working close barely rocking the trigger and working in repeated layers to build up intensity of color use the thinness to your advantage with one paint with one cup load of paint you can do entire transitions by doing all of that you set yourself up to make your brushwork easy and fast there we go there's our blood angel he's going to roll over the top here it was fun to paint this guy the airbrush this was a super quick process this only really took a couple hours tops and that's because I was doing a lot of filming set up and things like that really I could probably get that whole thing up to this level in less than an hour to produce a really ultra smooth marine and that feels pretty good to me don't forget the link is down below if you're interested in the airbrush and helping out a really good cause with again money that's that's going directly to people who are putting it in action with those suffering in a need this is a way you can do it while also getting yourself an amazing and I must say beautiful beautiful airbrush that reminds you every day when it's on your desk just how important it is to have hope and to have a heart of gold even in times that seem dark or troublesome because there is always beauty in the world and in people's hearts that's uh I think a message we can all get behind so if you like this give it a like subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future we have new videos here every Saturday if you're interested in up at your hobby game even further don't forget there's a patreon down below where we focus on review and feedback and taking your next step on your hobby journey as always though I thank you so much for watching this one and we'll see you next time