So I just wanted to welcome everybody to TechSoupConnect. This is the Ontario chapter event and I am Sandra Amar. I'm your local TechSoupConnect host here for Ontario. And TechSoupConnect is a global network of tech for good meetups and it's a nonprofit that has other nonprofits to get, implement and use technology effect a little bit about me. If you haven't met me before, I've been working in the IT space for many years. I help nonprofits and other businesses better use their technology to create efficient digital workspaces. And I'm also currently the national president for the One Parent Families Association. Although I will be stepping down shortly and but I will be continuing my work here with TechSoupConnect and helping you bring amazing resources like we have here today and all the ones we've had in the past. And we'll get to that in a moment. A little bit about our values. We welcome everyone. We put our community first. We're here to support each other at the end of the day. We are going to build stronger nonprofits using technology. And I always invite participation so we can all learn from each other. If you have any ideas for sessions or topics that you would like me to look into finding resources to come and present on, please let me know. And obviously we treat each other with kindness and respect. A little bit more about TechSoup. It helps to connect you with donated discounts and discounted product such as hardware, software, a whole bunch of items to help you run your organization. This is some examples of things that you can get at prices you can afford. Some of them are also free for nonprofits like Google Workspace. So you're Google for nonprofits account. You would validate through TechSoup to get it. That is good to know as a nonprofit. This is an example of how much you can actually save versus retail cost versus what you can get through TechSoup when you're a nonprofit. And if you're not aware, TechSoup has a forum on forums.techsoup.org and it's a great place to ask questions about different technology help that you may need and we all help them learn from each other. I mentioned if you're interested in participating or doing anything, please let me know. Now that we're getting back out there, I'm in the Toronto area. If anyone has a location where we could do an event, maybe we can actually get together and meet in person one of these days. And we're here today for most digital transformations fail, make your succeed. And this is an exciting topic for me and one of the, because of my passion for digital transformation and using technology effectively, that's how I came to meet Kevin. And I'm excited to have him here today to talk about digital transformations and how you can succeed at it. And before we move on, just to note that our next session, I'm taking a break for the summer. I've got a lot of colleges planned and I need to get out there. So I won't be holding any events over the summer, but we will be back in September with another great topic about taking your data to action and making your data visible and useful so you can learn how to tell a story with your data. Keep an eye on your email for more information about that. But right now I'm going to turn it over to Kevin to introduce himself, introduce himself and take us through what we need to know to go through digital transformation. Yeah, Sandra, to your point, it's an area of passion, I think, for you and me because we see the value that technology can bring to organizations of all types and sizes, especially the nonprofit sector. I'll talk a little bit about my background and why I have a certain perspective on how to create a successful digital transformation, having been someone that worked within cloud technology companies and seeing how things went right and how some things went wrong. And that's kind of what I'll bring. So really what we're going to focus on today is how to create good, strong relationships with technology providers because if you're trying to be successful with their solution, it's got to be based on a foundation of true partnership where both sides are trying to be successful and both sides are trying to win. So let's dive right into it. Excuse me, yeah, my name's Kevin. I've got 15 years of experience in the technology sector across a bunch of different areas. The last 10 or so have been spent as a SaaS, a software as a service or a cloud customer success manager or a CSM for short. Now I'm an advisor with Green Merits Consulting. So I took a step out of the for-profit side of the house and decided to take all this tech knowledge and know-how that I've masked over the past couple of decades and applied specifically to the nonprofit and small business side of the house with Green Merits Consulting. To give you some context about the CSM role, I want to help you understand like what a customer success manager does and where they fit into the picture, what it comes to technology and how you buy technology and then how you subsequently use technology, okay? And so when you talk about the sales process, you've identified that you need to buy some HR management software or a CRM software or event management software. Typically what happens, you're going to talk to a sales and the sales rep at that technology company is going to talk about your motivations. They're going to help you create a vision of what the solution can do. They're going to pitch and negotiate with you and then they're going to close the deal or the contract. What happens next is typically you'll get some kind of implementation team or process that goes on where you get set up on the product. You're going to go through some development, some testing, you might have some training of course on how the new system works and you're going to make sure that your processes are working in alignment with that new technology, obviously. And then after you get to the implementation phase, this is where the customer success manager typically comes into the picture, okay? It's after the implementation. It's after the sales process has been done and the customer success manager is usually focused on the usage of the application. Are you being successful with it? Are you getting your return on investment? Is it actually giving you the reward that the benefit that you're seeking? Are you willing to be an advocate for that solution? So are you willing to tell your colleagues and coworkers and your peers about, oh, we got this great new HR management system that we just implemented, you should check it out. You should use it. CSMs will help to solicit that information, that feedback from you. It'll also be included on some of the processes regarding support and escalation. So if things are really going wrong, typically a CSM is the person that you'll reach out to and say, hey, we've had a lot of technical issues, we're working with a support team, but we need some extra oomph behind these challenges we're having, can you help us out? And then CSMs are also part of the ongoing education piece and then the final one is contract renewal. So typically when you think of cloud-based solutions, you're subscribing to them for a certain term. Sometimes it's month to month, other times it's a year, two years, three years, but typically the CSM, the customer success manager, has been responsible for renewing the contract. So at the end of that one year term, someone has to come and present you a renewal order form that you're gonna be asked to sign. And with the belief for understanding or hope, I guess, that you've actually gotten some value out of the solution, you like it, tell your peers about it, it's working for you and you want to continue using it. And so keep that in mind when we go through this conversation because I was the CSM, I was that person that kind of had to help my customers understand how to use a solution, but how to help them with escalations, how to help them make sure they were getting educated and staying up to date on the solution and all the changes. And then I was the one that was helping to get the contract renewed so they would continue being a customer, okay? And so I bring that perspective as a CSM to what I'm seeing in the nonprofit space and what I think can be done to help set up customers to have really beneficial and meaningful partnerships with their technology providers, okay? So now I'm gonna do a little quick poll just to get the juices flowing and it's gonna speak to where I think technology is going, but using your little icons in Zoom, using the notifications or the ability to kind of raise your hand. Raise your hand if you've got a computer that has a CD or DVD drive in it. If you're looking for it, I think it's called Reactions on. Reactions, that's where I'm gonna fail it. The word is failing me. Reactions is where we're looking for it. Alternately, so another one, if you have a Yahoo Hotmail or AOL account, email account, and I think I'm dating myself on this one for sure, because I've got one of those. I'm not gonna say which one, but I do. You've actually read through an entire software of terms and conditions. We buy these software solutions. We get them all the time. Have you actually sitting down and sat down and read through the actual terms and conditions? If you have kudos to you, I would imagine that a lot of people probably haven't, but those terms and conditions are important because they dictate how you're gonna be able to use the software. And the last one, you'd be just fine if your internet connection had to go back to dial up. And this one, I'm not gonna age my, I don't wanna age myself necessarily on this, but I grew up in the dial up period, right? Where I see a crying face of frowny face. I area, Penny. I grew up in that period and it was great. I remember when High Speed First came out and was like, oh my gosh, I can download information and navigate the web and do all this things so much faster. But you get where I'm coming from. The point is that like times have significantly changed and our relationship with technology has changed as well. Okay. It's not a case where we're out buying a little CD, slapping into a CD drive, installing software and then we never have to talk to the vendor anymore. This subscription based approach, this internet enabled approach, it's really changed how we look at and how we use technology. And that's really what we wanna drive at to today. Okay. What is digital transformation for nonprofits? So I borrowed this definition from our friends at salesforce.com and I've tweaked it with a little bit of the highlighted items that I put in green because they seem to have a much more focus on CRM and like for-profit organizations and businesses that are running a sales team. But I wanted to make sure we acknowledged or inserted some verbiage in there that speaks to what we see on the nonprofit side as well. So digital transformation is the process of using digital technology. So you think about SaaS or cloud kind of solutions to create new or modify existing business processes and culture and customer or stakeholder experiences to meet business or organizational and market requirements, okay? It's the adoption of technology to make how we operate and how we work easier, faster, more efficient, more effective to give us a bigger impact, okay? I wanna make sure that we level set on what it means to go through a digital transformation because it's not just buying software, it's really having technology being much more pervasive in terms of your business process, your culture, your stakeholders and other key factors. And so why are we talking about cloud technologies in the first place? This is a study from B2B Tech Reviews. It shows that in 2018, 51% of organizations were running purely on SaaS and the expectations that's gonna continue to grow through 2023, okay? I'd say upwards of 86%. And again, this is running purely on SaaS or cloud solutions, right? So we're not slowing down anytime. The unfortunate thing, it's not all rosy. So the biggest challenges for organizations that are using SaaS today are things like security, governance and compliance, staff lacking cloud experience. What does it mean to actually have applications that are sitting on the internet versus having applications that you install locally on your computer? Privacy concerns is always a big one. Vendor lock-in. So I talked about that whole renewing the contract. Sometimes organizations feel like they're locked in, like they don't have a chance to try and get out of that contract or things aren't going out of cost. Lack of visibility, unplanned outages, support challenges and what happens when the system goes down. But despite its importance, organizations have a tough time when it comes to being truly successful with cloud technologies or software as a service. And so this kind of takes us to that next step. When you look at those factors that are really challenging about being successful with cloud tech, this other study was pretty interesting by N10 and it's talking about Manjul non-profit technology change in 2022. But this is the most important and unfortunate least known metric. And it's really a look at what is the return on investment of your investment in technology? Okay. And this question was posed to the survey respondents and was how often do you evaluate the ROI of your technology products and services? And the unfortunate piece if we're looking on this biograph is 46% very rarely or not at all and 19% don't even know. So we're going out and buying all these different technologies and solutions. But when it comes to actually taking a look at whether or not they're delivering what we wanted them to deliver, what would be the reason we bought them? We really don't know. We're not doing the best job of going back and really evaluating whether or not we're successful whether we're getting that ROI or not. And so the ultimate outcome when we take a look at this study by the Boston Consulting Group, just another example, only 30% of digital transformations are considered successful and success meaning are they creating the value, the return that we thought we were going to get when we first bought them, okay? And this is where, we talk about this title of why most digital transformations unfortunately fail. It's because they're not delivering the value that we thought that we're going to deliver when we first bought those solutions. And this study by Boston Consulting Group really shines a light on that. So for the remainder of today's session what we're going to cover off on is what contributes to a strained relationship with technology provider, signs that it's not going so well and then how to write the ship if possible, okay? Again, this is from the perspective of how do we work with and identify true technology partners so we can both be successful, right? They want the contract renewal, we get it. Their business is based on selling software, having successful customers and our benefits, our success is driven on increasing our impact, running better events, increasing donations, all the things that we look for in our nonprofit organization to be considered successful. How do we create that win-win type of partnership between the two of them? All right, so what contributes to a strained relationship? First and foremost, poor communications. So when it doesn't seem like the other side is really listening or may not understand the challenge you're trying to solve there's that misalignment between what you're really trying to do and really understand it and having the other side really understand it. That can often contribute to miscommunications and ultimately a strained relationship with your technology provider. Team changes. And I'd be interested to show hands who's ever undergone team changes either internally at your organization or at the vendor side. And there was a bit of, there was some lost knowledge or some gaps. It was like, oh yeah, Frank used to know how to use this software really well and now they're not around anymore. Or yeah, we used to really work with this awesome rep at tech company XYZ and we lost that person and now they don't really understand why we bought the solution in the first place and like I'm seeing some hands go up and I think that's something that we've all experienced. And it's unfortunate, it's good nature of the beast with changing organizations, career development, but it's something that we have to acknowledge that can contribute to a strained relationship with a technology provider, misaligned objectives. And this really stems to the poor communication side of the house but keeping in mind that the motivations that I alluded to for a technology company, they're not always perfectly aligned with what your goals might be as a nonprofit, right? The technology side is gonna be more focused on selling more users or more modules so that you will increase your adoption and increase what we call your annual contract value in the use of that software. That's what they're motivated to do. That's what they're compensated on but we have to understand that metric, those metrics that are related to increasing sales on the technology vendor side, they don't necessarily align with your metrics, your business metrics around increasing efficiency and maintaining security and all the other things that you try to deal with in your nonprofit. So it's not a bad thing but we just have to acknowledge the fact that they can be misaligned. I think really forward-thinking technology companies are starting to realize that if they wanna be successful, you have to be successful and this was kind of the role of the customer success manager. It's one of the kind of fastest growing post-sale roles within the cloud and SaaS realm because we realize that if customers are gonna be successful, that will in turn yield success for the technology company. So it becomes a kind of symbiotic relationship but just understand that those misaligned objectives can factor into your conversations. Now this one is rough. So broken promises, those always strain a relationship, dealing with expectations versus reality. Often this is uncovered typically during or after the implementation. We saw the demos, we bought the software, we signed the contract, we're implementing it. And now, wait a second, we saw some features in the demo or we saw some things in a PowerPoint presentation and they're not showing up in the actual software or we have to get really creative and really tweak things to make things work that we thought we're gonna just be pretty turnkey when we got the solution in the first place. So things like that can really strain a relationship too. I'm gonna pause, Penny, I see that you've got your hand up. Did you wanna ask a question or say something? And if you are, you're on mute. I think just to raise hand. Sorry, yes, I just forgot to take it down. Gotcha, no, been there, done that, not a problem. Okay, all right, we'll press on. So technical issues and we all know that they're gonna happen but it's when they happen too often and they're not resolved fast enough. I'm sure everybody would raise their hand. Dealing with technical issues is a headache. If you're locked into a contract with technology vendor and there's constant technology issues, when they come to you with that renewal, you're gonna start thinking, are we happy here? Is this working out? What should we do? So we wanna try and mitigate those as much as possible. And then surprise costs and this stems into technical issues and stems into all the previous buckets. But that conversation where it's, oh no, to do X, Y, Z you're gonna have to pay additional money to do it where you had thought, you know, we thought that we bought this solution that was gonna do all these great things. We saw it in the demo, we saw the great presentations, all that stuff but then you're surprised to hear that you're gonna have to spend more money to get core functionality that you thought was gonna be out of the box that you weren't prepared for. And it could be not just add on users or modules, it could be, no, you have to get professional services from our team to configure the solution to do it the way that you wanna do it. Those surprise costs never make anybody happy, especially those that kind of hold up her strings and dictate how our budgets are actually spent. Okay, so we've talked about things that can strain the relationship. And I'm sure we've seen some or hopefully not all but some of those elements in our relationships with our technology providers. The signs that it's not going so well. So that's what I wanna focus on next. And these are the kind of clear cut signs that all of those things that contribute to a strained relationship end up leading to, okay? And the first one that comes to mind is decreased usage. So when you realize your team isn't utilizing the solution to the extent you originally thought they would. And I've seen this, it's an example would be we went out, we bought this fancy CRM system but we've still got our team members that are relying on Microsoft Excel to keep track of their contacts, clients, et cetera, or donors. So we invested in the solution. We made that decision as an organization but we're still relying on this other solution that doesn't really tie into what the overall strategy was. That's not a good sign, okay? No or low responsiveness from the technology vendor. So when you call for support or assistance or training or even best practices, right? What are other customers doing with your solution? How can we solve this problem? And those responses, you know, they go unanswered or are very delayed. Constant escalation. So we talked about technical challenges before. If those escalation, if those technical issues are ongoing and they're not getting resolved, what happens is you often have to try and escalate. We've worked with support but now we want to talk to a support manager or we want to talk to a VP because we're still not getting the results that we expected to get as a result of all these technical challenges. This one is interesting. So complaints versus collaboration. This was a sign that I learned about that kind of told me that things weren't going so well either. And I look at this in terms of fixing a list of problems. So when you come to your technology vendor and say, you've got a list of 30 problems that we want you to fix and you throw it to them to resolve them. And it's a legitimate concern because you're paying for the solution and you want it to work the way that it should work. Obviously, of course. But I think the mentality here that I'm trying to articulate is there's a difference between sending a list of problems and saying go fix them versus having a list of problems, taking a look and really articulating what the impact is and how it's negatively impacting your organization prioritizing them and giving some sense of urgency to say, we've got this list of 20 challenges. Here are our top five or six. Here's why, here's the impact, the quantitative impact that we're having with them. And we really want to partner with you to help find a resolution to them. What that does is that it shows that you're willing to come to the table and really collaborate on how to find resolutions to these things.  And sometimes I've been there myself, sometimes that's how I feel if you want to get it done. So I'm paying for the software, how can we get this solution up and running and to the point where it's being effective for us. But I really want to focus on the mentality here because the focus is on partnership, right? Not just flipping things over to the other side, the kind of them versus us kind of perspective. Lower, unclear return on investment. So this one is, this one's obvious. This is coming back from that intent study that I showed you, right? Where you can't prove that you're being successful with the use of the software. And this one's challenging because after a year of having the implement, after a year of having the software in-house and using it, you want to avoid those situations where someone is coming to you and saying, okay, so we bought and we're paying for that software. It's 10, 15, 20,000 bucks a year, whatever it is. Is it really delivering what we thought it was going to deliver? And how do we prove it? Show me, where's a report that says we're getting that ROI? You want to be able to really articulate or show that message using data. And then this one, not referenceable. This is a really big sign that things aren't going so well. If the technology vendor or partner reaches out to you and says, would you be able to jump on a reference call for us and working on this other account? They're about the same size as you. They're trying to do similar things, but they want to hear from an existing customer. And you don't want to or you hesitate very much to offer up that reference. That's not a good sign. If they're saying, can we use your logo on a sales presentation? And you're saying, no, don't do that. That is also not a good sign, right? That's a saying that you're not ready or willing to be in habit. And there's some privacy things around here, around where you can put your logo and that kind of stuff. But think about your internal thought process if a technology sales rep comes to you and asks you those kinds of questions. That is usually indicative of something that, of a relationship that's probably not moved in the right direction. All right. Sandra, just tell your comment. Yeah, I once had to search LinkedIn to find an escalation point to get something resolved. Yeah. So things like that, when you have to start getting creative and really going outside the norm, all of these technology providers and vendors typically have some kind of support process. It's when it's unanswered or it's really delayed and you have to start getting creative and looking on LinkedIn or talking to your peers and finding out who knows who to get, touch with somebody. Yeah, again, not a good sign, right? Definitely not a good sign. Okay. So how to write the ship? And I alluded to this one. So consider using verbiage related to partner versus vendor. Vendors are easily replaced and partners are in it for the long haul. When you think about these SaaS or cloud subscription agreements, usually they're one, three and I've seen as high as five years, right? What that means that you are, you're tied to that organization, that technology partner over a period of time, right? It's not just a one and done thing. So start using the word partner and start thinking of them as a partner as opposed to just a vendor. And I know we often get caught up in the use of the word vendor when we start thinking about RFPs and RFIs and going through the whole process, like what's our list of vendors? Who are we gonna reach out to? How do we source vendors? How do we contract with vendors? We use that word just naturally because that's part of the process, but start thinking about changing your mentality and thinking about the term partner, not only internally, but even when you're talking to a potential technology partner that you're thinking about signing on with. Be transparent. So kind of part and parcel of having a technology partner is that you're in it together and therefore you should be able to openly talk about goals, challenges, timelines and your expectations. The key thing here is when you're talking about all those things, you wanna document them so that everybody's reading from the same page and you wanna keep it really close to the contract, the final contract that gets signed, okay? Because you wanna acknowledge the fact that there are certain goals that you wanna hit, right? Certain metrics that you wanna hit and using their technology. There are timelines, there are challenges that you wanna overcome, and then you have expectations of what that partnership is gonna look like, okay? You wanna start getting those things really formalized and documented. And like I said, you may not be able to attach them directly to the contract. If you've got a folder where you keep all your technology vendor or partner contracts, that one should be right next to it because we'll get into it, but it's something that's gonna come up through the course of the partnership, okay? The next one, build a roadmap to success. So again, in the spirit of true partnership and transparency, you wanna collaborate with your technology partners on what it looks like to become successful with the solution. And I have this little image here of a roadmap. I've literally seen presentations where it's like, this is what the roadmap is gonna look like in terms of buying the solution, implementing, training, go live, product updates. And it's actually mapped out step by step to say, okay, we are in this together. We're gonna be riding alongside with you to the point where you get success and value out of the solution. What's key with this is that you wanna document this and you wanna share areas of responsibility.  Other parts are gonna fall on the technology vendor. You're gonna be responsible for things like internal change management, getting your staff to the meeting, making sure they're going through the trainings, putting policies in place and putting processes in place that have your employees or your staff use the solution the way it was designed and set up. That's gonna be heavily on your side as a nonprofit technology user. On the vendor side, on the partner side, the technology partner side, there is overcoming technical challenges, making sure that the product works, making sure that new features are coming out, making sure that they're making training available to your team. Accountability on both sides and you wanna document who owns what and make sure that, again, you're keeping that really close to, really close to retired to the contract, right? Again, it keeps everybody open and honest with each other. Taking a step further in the next piece, when we start thinking about how to get value and ROI, is you wanna monitor the metrics together, okay? This one's really important. What you really wanna do, this is, I would say is probably best practice, is after you've talked about where your goals are and what you're trying to do and what you're trying to achieve with the solution, you wanna sit down with the technology partner and say, okay, how can we build reports or how can we extract data from this system so that when I get asked if this solution is proving value, it's easy. I run a report, I do an extract, I come up with the data that shows how we're getting that ROI, how we're getting that value and that technology partner should be there to help you really understand how to build and work with that report so that you can subsequently take that back to your staff and your higher ups to show them the value that you're getting. The key is to do it together because you wanna be able to quickly and easily equate your goals and your challenges with the metrics that you can pull from the system, okay? All right, now have regular and quality meetings. So I suggest tactical touch points at least once a month, sometimes they're optional. If we can't meet this month, let's meet up next month, that's fine. Those are more short, kind of short windows or shorter calls. Then you wanna have strategic meetings at least once every three months. Now, the reason why I try to go for this cadence is because during these strategic meetings, that's where you're gonna talk about the metrics, right? You're gonna take a look at that report and say, okay, this is the report that we built together, how are we doing? This is when you're gonna take a look back and see who's accountable for certain things based on our roadmap. This is when you're gonna talk about the goals and challenges and timelines and expectations.  And what do we need to do to get it back on track? Or what do we need to do to, unfortunately, pull the shoot, which is the last piece? And the conversation on pulling the shoot and having to look at another vendor, another partner, it's easy if you've done the previous five steps. Because there's no mystery to it. You've already been meeting and sitting down and talking with your technology partner and saying, okay, yeah, we're good here, but on these other things that were really critical, we're not doing that well. So when the renewal contract comes up, when that renewal discussion comes up, you have all the information there. Everybody knows what's going on because you've been open and transparent and you've been reading from the same playbook, okay? And so these are these kind of key elements that I want you to focus in on. As you look at really, before you buy a technology solution or subscribe to that next technology solution, or even as you're looking at your existing relationships with your technology vendors now, like start to think about how you can elevate the partnership beyond just a vendor customer one. It's one where it's like, oh, we're in it together, we're gonna work on this together and we wanna make sure that we're mutually successful out of it. All right. Now, should you need assistance, I should say, sorry? One of the things that my company does green merits consulting is, given my background as a customer success manager, working within technology organizations and helping my customers and clients learn and use and adopt the technology and be successful with it, my SaaS or software as a service subscription assistance, what it really does is provides an experienced set of eyes on your cloud subscriptions, okay? Someone who can understand the nuances and things that go on within a technology organization and how they can apply to what you're trying to do to be successful in the use and adoption of that solution. Someone on your side, at the someone on your side of the table, I should say for purchase or renewal. So you're, you've seen a couple of demos, maybe you're thinking about buying a particular solution, but you want someone that has seen it and in through that process before multiple times to kind of weigh in and provide some guidance or insight around what you should do or what you should think about or talk about before you actually put pen to paper, either at the initial purchase or the renewal of your subscription contract. And then while I'm not a lawyer, I can provide some contractual insight into the business, legal and technology elements or clauses in those subscription contracts that may or may not impact how you plan on using the solution. A perfect example, when I was doing a contract review with the nonprofit just late last year, there was language in the, what we call the master subscription agreement, the MSA that actually limited the ability for that nonprofit to use the solution in a way that they expected to. Now, again, I'm not the lawyer, but this is one of those things where I flagged it and said, okay, I think you want to get your legal team to do a review of this because there are legal elements in here that limit your ability to effectively use the solution to achieve your desired outcome of the solution. So it's things like that where I can provide some insight and say, okay, I understand how you want to use solution. I understand what challenges you're trying to resolve or trying to overcome. How does that manifest itself? How does that line up with what we see on the actual contract that you're about to sign? Okay. And so this is a service that I put together really to focus on and help nonprofits get more value and become more successful with their technology investments, especially when it relates to cloud and software as a service technology subscriptions. All right. So with that, I think by the time, the one quote I wanted to quickly leave off with was, this is from Kevin Kelly of Wired Magazine. Since a relationship involves two members investing in it, its value increases twice as fast as one's investment. And this really speaks to the importance of partnership, the importance of working on things together, coming to the table together, not in us versus them mentality, but really in it together because ultimately, your investment will just increase drastically when you have that mentality and that perspective. I've got my site there, greenmerits.com. Feel free to jot down my email and reach out anytime with questions, thoughts, concerns. I'm also active on LinkedIn. And thanks again for giving me some of your time to go through this very important topic as we see more and more, I'll say nonprofits, but organizations of all types really leaning into and having to adopt technology solutions, especially because of the world we've lived in over the past two years and seeing if folks having to work from home and work remotely and all that kinds of stuff. So an important topic that I'm glad I can share some insight with that Sandra. Yeah, that was awesome Kevin. I'm not sure if anyone has any questions. If you want to raise your hand or put it in the chat, come off mute. I'm going to make a comment on MSAs and everything you were just talking about because I've worked with organizations of all sizes. And I think the bigger you get and the more you adopt some of these solutions that aren't just cookie cutter out of the box, okay, Google Workspace, you can't really bargain with them. You don't really have that kind of relationship with that kind of vendor, but especially when you're talking about your CRMs and your HR payroll software, your accounting software, and you need that special kind of support and making sure that your organization grows. Having somebody to review that MSA because it can be tweaked. And I think a lot of us that start small and get big, take it for granted that we can't change things because we've always just clicked yes, exactly. Click yes, right. And as you get bigger and as you're, especially if you're talking to any sort of sales rep who's trying to sell you something, it's not just check off the box. You can actually negotiate those contracts and having somebody who's an expert in it guide you through that and call out those things. I've had to read many MSAs. I'm not on the customer service side, I'm on the IT side, but trying to enforce things after the fact is a lot more difficult just because you use a term wrong. You called it one thing instead of another and you have different definitions as to what an application means versus what a platform means. And getting those things cleared up upfront before you push forward with any implementation is that will help set you up for success and use that software to meet the solutions you need. Totally. You raised a really good point, Sandra. I was working with another nonprofit and it was interesting to see how things were defined on the technology partners website versus how they defined it in the contract. And this was about support. And the support was basically on the website, it was like, you'll get access to dedicated resources and this and that and the other. But on the contract, it was like, you'll get access to dedicated resource, but it wasn't a named person, which is different than what was alluded to on the site. So if you didn't read between the lines and really been and raised some of these questions to that vendor, you would sign the contract thinking, okay, like who's gonna be our, who's our support contact person where we can take all of our issues to and you'd be told, I don't know, you have to log a ticket online and then you'll get here back in 20.  We thought we're gonna get this, but we're not actually getting it. Those are things that, like I said, can really strain a relationship and sometimes you gotta get to the weeds to do it. I've been on calls in my for-profit kind of technology life where going through an MSA with the legal team, like my legal team at the time and the customer's legal team at the time, contentious discussions over and versus or. Oh yeah, our legal team is always never use the word or, never read it. Right, but it's so small things. And to your point, we default to saying, okay, they're a technology vendor, yeah, let's sign it, let's just get this, let's get this going. We're excited, we wanna use the budget up before it disappears, but there is room to talk about those things and make sure that everybody's clear. Some things you won't be able to negotiate, some things you can. The point is being able to go in eyes wide open and really understand and talk about it really transparently. Yeah, and I think the other thing for nonprofits to be aware of, especially if you're a smaller nonprofit that maybe been using free subscriptions and starting to move, I think sometimes there might be a fear of moving to picking up that phone and calling that salesperson and getting sold to versus, let me just try it out. But that can really make a big difference for the way you use technology and the way you transform digitally in your organization because having, like maybe you're upgrading a bit, maybe the cost isn't even that different. It's just they have a different sales model and you need to call them to make that sale and make that relationship, build that partnership, but the value you're gonna get back is gonna be a lot more than if you just sign up for a QuickBooks account, for example. And you don't think anything of it, but you go with another solution like the bigger ERP solution where you can have a customer success manager, they can actually help you better use the product and figure out solutions and guide you to help your organization grow. Yeah, totally. I'm seeing a lot of things, even on the smaller side, I'm working on another contract with HR management software and in contract, in subscription term, price changes that were unexpected for the numbers of I think 75 to 80% increase because there was no contract in place. So they went, this nonprofit was going month to month because you get the flexibility of month to month because they can leave whatever you want. And I get the allure of that. The problem or challenge with that is that if you don't have anything written down and signed to, you're subject to whatever whims and price changes come up. So that ended up being an interesting conversation. We were able to work out some things that helped mitigate some of the pressure of that kind of knee-jerk price change. But unless you have the comfort or the confidence to go into that conversation and really articulate what the challenge is, besides just saying, this isn't fair, it's too high, sometimes you might not be able to get much with or with them. But it's all about having that conversation for sure. I spent the majority of my career implementing HR payroll software. I understand those MSAs and the challenges that come with that and same thing. I get the allure to going month to month, especially when you're small and maybe you only have 10 people. But when you're talking about your HR payroll data, that's core to your organization. It's what manages people. It's what pays people. It's what keeps you operating pretty efficiently, taking that extra time to set up that MSA properly and making sure even data retention, right? Like a lot of these options out there that have anything related to attachments, not just HR payroll, but anything that has an attachment. You need to know, where's that data?  So I've seen a lot of help organizations do system selection. That's one of the things I look at. Are you going to be able to take that information with you when you leave? How is it easy to extract? And that's something that would be in an MSA to ensure that, okay, you'll get a data dump of all those files and we'll transfer it however. But if you don't take the time to think ahead and have somebody try to really review it, then you can feel the headache later on, right? An ideal world and the perspective I'm coming from is you don't want to get to that spot. Like ideally, I always go back to both sides that are successful and happy and you're renewing and you love the solution and maybe you are buying more modules or new add-ons because you see value in it. But yeah, those things that you don't consider when they come up and things aren't going so well. So we should have talked about that before. Like now we're in a tricky spot, right? Yeah, and you don't know what you don't know. I think you and I have had the benefit of having done this many times and hopefully we can impart some of this from today. So I thank you again, Kevin, for sharing all that with us and thank you to everybody for joining us.


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You don't even have like a sidewalk Subscribe mission for the scrub one give me a thumbs up and do not skip those ads It is May 6th It's time to get those seated it's the car came through in the cut yet again for two days in a row y'all already Know that he was on the road I hope you guys know the video also if you want chance to win some of the free merch All you have to do is to email me at wrongshausenviewsatgmail.com See me please subscribe to the channel and earn your chance to win all you have to get to them If it is come up below and let me know let's go order number one. You know, we're about to get it done Walmart to all this three miles is only for 1198 be the way it go. We want to get this cake. Let's go Order number one. It's time to get it done. This rain is no fun, baby It's been raining a lot this week, baby Either way go. You already know what time we about to get to the door Let's go to get busy We go number two what it do this one has we need to get a signal on this one. So we're not gonna hit the door knock on the door So they can come on and get it we keep on getting busy We also have order number two which all the way sports. I'll tell you guys that when we get to the car I'll take it back to the store They didn't tip you on this one either. So They're gonna Bob dig it back Let me try to call him Hello How you doing? I'm doing great to yourself Yeah, we can't catch a break home And then if you don't mind signing all righty, thank you. You have a great one Walmart two orders five miles for 1808. We back to this cake. Let's go. Thank you, sir Yes, sir, thank you Most people just don't look at you You know, there's a lot of world work Sit back I don't throw smack we don't Here's our order number two what it do I'm moving kind of fast today cuz we trying to get this money here. I can get out this rain and this is But it's all good baby. I got my rain jacket on and we're gonna continue to get it on We also have order number three which all the way sparked about two guys about that when we get in the car You know, we're about to go far Oh They put the milk strawberries and yogurt all in one bag This turn to get stuck step back and I'll follow Order through up one of our two orders a poor one miles for $28 we are holla You know, we gonna pop our collar or number four is a spot Walmart one order one mile for 1914 we out like scorching.   We maintain. We'd like to do our thing and get these water. I'm trying to get this The hand with the left this with the left baby and boy structure. They need this with the lab This ain't even right about to get right. Oh, come on. I don't know why some houses don't have stuff like that It's kind of weird, but either way gonna bring it to everyone gets it gonna come over here and get busy I'm gonna put everything right here because I'm gonna block the door then you gotta get So waters to take out big piece of water So Hello, how you doing, sir Yeah, there's no problem sir, don't give me doggy You're welcome And if you want to I could take it to the kitchen for you sir if it makes it easier for you whatever works best for you Yeah, that's fine Oh, it's this way. I'm going the wrong way Hello, I'm doing great in yourself besides the rain and we cannot catch a break Yeah, and we skip spring spring just nowhere to be found Really how long we were Arizona? I Don't know why you came back here. Is it very hot out there Oh, yes, yeah, I don't like the heat.  And here's your eggs I'm Jerome Nice to meet you Chris. We go and it's time to get it on My name is wrong. I'm on a microphone I don't know why they didn't make They got these That one might break I'm not trying to get one of this awesome. Yeah, baby one of this on one of that arm and then we got to go One more time and get that other thing of water I really don't want to be stuck on the carpet I'm gonna go back to the third one. So I don't have to make no more trips. I just get the best stuff Don't give me doggie The small dogs are always the one that bark the most Oh, yeah, it's okay dog. Oh, and this is the last two things sir All right, you guys have a great afternoon. Nice to meet you. We're number one. It's time to get it done.  So we got to be careful, baby. You got that hundred out of format. Y'all see that they didn't pay Get paid young and that money, baby Nobody coming so we're gonna drop it keep on moving Y'all know we win sometimes they be losing getting with the photo we're going to have order number two. Look at this, baby And it's raining. Hopefully think I'm on how to rain the door But hopefully come outside because it's not that much room on the court Put the groceries and everything so I might have to put it on the side. Well, I actually came to this house before I Really don't want to put these stuff off side like that. You know them out. They got a lot of stuff, baby Loan Dodo I ain't you tell us about So to the subscribe they knew exactly what I was talking about when I was talking about that blowin Dodo Yeah Yeah, yeah About to be okay. I'm gonna take this back to Hang on try and take it back to That right there The bread and eggs right here these dark ones on the floor right here Okay Go back to the car and get busy Sales come 6.7 miles for 1693 get with me, baby order number eight is one more to order 6.2 miles for 22 77 Thank God for his blessings. We won't enough this money. We ain't stressing. 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is TFNN, The Tiger, Financial News Network. Hi everyone, Basel Trapper here on this Friday, January the 28th. We're looking at the Dowdown 303 points at 33,858. I'd mentioned to subscribers to my opening call. One of the reasons why we were staying short is that every rally just seemed doomed to fail. Couldn't get above the nine period exponential moving average. And another thing that's really important about this is that it's the fourth day after a low and the V-shaped patterns that I always look at for a good kickoff for a wonderful rally. This is important. Yesterday actually was, I made a little concession because of the Fed day on Wednesday. Then maybe yesterday could be shaky, but you didn't want to see weakness today through down 334. You want to see exactly the opposite. And even that wouldn't be good enough. If the Dow right now was up 334, I'd be saying, hey, up 334, I want to see it push as close as possible to all the pink nine period moving average and the 200 period 14 moving average were just about to cross negative at 34,521. 700 points above where we are. Days young, anything can happen, but this weekly chart is saying if we continue like this, we've got a sell mode in place in the day, in the daily and the weekly. And now we can go to the S&P because we can at this point in the day, half an hour into the trading day, we can start to surmise a little bit, sell mode in the daily of the S&P down 32 at 42.94. And the weekly chart has definitely given us a sell mode because it's underneath the left side low of the back in October. It doesn't have to close it, but it's gone underneath and that confirms the sell mode. And you also got a crossover negative in the nine under the 14, still egg B in the monthly chart. QQQ, we did this with John and fully just a moment ago. The analysis says, this is really important. It needs to get not a 338 down three, it needs to be up at the 359, 363 level by Tuesday or so. Otherwise, it's a real problem. Sell mode, daily, sell mode weekly and maybe a sell signal by February, we'll see. In the meantime, the monthly chart. IWM, IWM, sell mode daily down 250 at 189 at 189. Sell mode weekly and that monthly chart, looks like it could be gold. Is it coming back yet? Gold, no, it's still down sharply. Sell mode, daily, just a hundred sideways in the week. We'll have to talk about bonds when we get back, they're down 57 cents in the TLT. That's what happened. Thank you, Mr. Sauer, coming up and my...


This is the animation minute Welcome back to animation minute and as always to start with jobs here is one for a rock star Then you have a junior mid and senior and lead animation roles Here's another one for games animator. Lightbox has another senior animator position Super Spline Studios is having internships and last but not least here is a senior gameplay animator position Moving on to animation. This is awesome This is by item school which frequently has really cool shots. Check this one out. This is a cool piece Spoilers and Very cool. Love all this here. Look at this and Very cool of it. That's also super cool. This is the beginning. This is a longer piece. This is 49 seconds. Watch the whole thing with sound It's very very cool. Here's another one. That's really really cool. Definitely watch it with headphones There's some cool sound there as well and another one. Oh, it's cool. Everything is about some ball. Nice and solid This is very cool. I saw some of these separate shots a long time ago and now we go bit by bit What is this 42 seconds sequence? Very cool. Check it out. Can I ever go wrong with stop motion? This is as always bonkers this whole account is bonkers check out check out all their work. It's so good also nice This is on ones as you can tell it's very smooth. This is very cool. This is to what is this? 221 progress reel over time and you go on and you go on It's really really cool to see how some progress is like that love seeing these here concepts draft animation and cleanup Very nice and speaking of facts always check out Mitch's post You can see is always a threat working all of this and a link to the many many tutorials that are offered We got this one. I love this one cool design. It's very cool also great account. Definitely check it out Speaking of which does another one be cool to animate. I like it. This is super cool This is the new auto animatronics and you can scroll down a little bit Here's the full episode on YouTube very very cool for sure recommended then we have a tales of the Empire trailer This is two minutes nine. It's crazy town. How much better the renderings have gotten is pretty bonkers effects rendering Everything's very cool. Here is the poster for it This is very cool here an expansion of the Rottenberry archive if you go to the site You can see this here. There is more to see this the discovery bridge, but especially more objects And so on but deep space nine you got the promenade as well. It's very cool There's a lot to look at super cool. I love this project. Definitely check it out. If you're using a thousand sounds This is a cool thread. I'm very very curious. This comes out.  That's awesome. I like it. He was man. I like it This is great to you got a link for the wish list Boxing it's awesome. And that's when at least here is a super cute announcement trailer. This is for cast away This is absolutely my jam. The the look is just so cute. I love that kind of pixel art Great little scenes. There's great posters while there is a poster. I believe either later on there we go Super cute the sound is cute So definitely go on there wish list it and get it when it comes out and that is definitely a minute You can find it every Monday every week on my channel


Hello and welcome to the Daily Roundup, I am Sumedha, take a look at our top stories of the day. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi had his first press conference in the last five years in New Delhi. The last phase of the general election is taking place day after tomorrow and we will be focusing on the violence in Bengal. Dalit houses were bulldozed after Narendra Modi's Varanasi visit. We will be taking a look at our ground report as well. In our international segment, we will be looking at Trump administration's hostile moves towards a legitimate government in Venezuela. Our first story of the day is the press conference that Narendra Modi had in the BJP's New Delhi office today. He was accompanied by Amit Shah along his side and interestingly, the Prime Minister did not choose to answer any of the questions himself. All the questions were taken up by Amit Shah and also there were a lot of other media houses that were not given an invitation to this press conference. And this is the first time that the Prime Minister in his five year long term held a press conference. And he had been criticized across spectrum for not speaking to the media and to reach out to the people. And Amit Shah while addressing the press conference stated that the BJP and Narendra Modi have made any attempt that they could possibly make to reach out to the people and the Prime Minister had travelled the length and the breadth of the country to be able to connect with the people. We'd be following the story and the kind of reactions that come in to Narendra Modi's first ever press conference on the daily roundup in the following days as well. But currently, we'd be focusing on the last phase of election which is supposed to take place day after tomorrow. And the significance of this press conference coming in just a day before the final polls come to a conclusion. Day after is the last phase of the Indian election and the stakes are extremely high with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself in the fray. As about six Karaw people are eligible to cast their votes in 59 constituencies which are spread across seven states and one union territory. The BJP is aiming to defend 30 seats out of the 59 that it had won in 2014 while in Bengal, Trinamol Congress is seeking to increase its tally from nine seats followed by the Shurmani Akali Dal and the Amadmi Party who are tying four and three seats each currently which are held by the Congress. At least four seats are held by the All India Trinamol Congress in West Bengal and are in high stakes race where the party is struggling to retain its foothold. Seats like Basilharth, Diamond Harbor, Jadavpur and Jainanga. The state has witnessed a series of poll violence since the very first phase. The campaigning was also cut short a day in advance in West Bengal on the orders of the election commission following the clashes between BJP supporters and Calcutta University students which also led to the serious damages done to the bust of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. On February 10th as well sitting TMC MLA from Kishan Ganj Satyajit Viswas was also shot dead from point blank range in West Bengal's Nadia district. The TMC held BJP responsible for this murder while the BJP rubbished it by saying that Viswas was probably killed due to the infighting between the TMC. Earlier on March 28, a BJP leader's brother was allegedly murdered in Malda district as well. News clicks Bhasha Singh had traveled to West Bengal to understand the sentiment on the ground and she spoke to us exclusively about what she feels. Take a look at this conversation.  Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's top attack and the people who are talking in the opposite direction. Later on Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in the other direction. But it took a whole day to talk about it. So you will see that Bengal Urf Hinsa, Bengal Urf violence, Bengal Urf means if you go to put that, then what will happen? A different kind of fear has been created and Bhashpa has achieved a lot in this. The message he wanted to give from the top to the bottom, through his money and goondas, is that all the losses that are happening to him, from the UP and from the other places, they all have to be paid. And Mamta has to be surrounded from all sides. And I think for Mamta too, there is a situation that they have fallen from all sides so that they can call the Bengali pride or they can call it the last two days. But the current situation seems so clear. And the Bengali people have to believe that Bhashpa has surrounded Bengal from all sides and he wants to show that in a time, he was the son of Bihar. That there is nothing in Bihar. Bihar has a boom, Bihar has a cut. In the same way, in Pashtim Bengal, he has made the whole view that there is violence here. There is nothing other than violence and that is why politics can be done. So this whole violence, there is a way to do it. There is a trap, a trap has been set up. And Bhashpa, and not only Bhashpa, TMC, they also want to see his competition directly from BJP. And they see the fight from BJP. So are these two people not doing the whole business of Bengal? They are trying to How are they taking this whole thing? Look, I have to believe this very clearly. And at least as much as I have spent time in Bengal, especially in Kolkata, that Bhangal has planned to make the second Gujarat Bhashpa. It is a sign and it is associated with all the organizations. And for this, he has done a lot of Sunuyoji Dung. He has worked at the booth level. Panna Pramukh is there, who is in the gym. And you will see all the slogans, that quietly, quietly. All these slogans, the slogans are very subtle. That you keep saying TMC outside, because you will see that you are scared of TMC. And by doing this, the left and secular forces, you completely get them out of the whole industry. Many of them cannot talk. Because now at this time, and it is quite true that at this time, the situation in Bengal, Mamta Banerjee is fighting in it. And Bhashpa has also been hit. And especially Modi and Amish Shah's whole game plan, is that if this one woman is stood up and she is dropped, then the whole of Bengal will be captured. So this is a very Sunuyoji conspiracy, to make Bengal the second Gujarat. The religious emotions, the way they are getting angry, the way Mamta is fighting against Mamta, that they are half Muslims. People like that, they meet you on camera. That they don't know what they are doing. Like being a Muslim is a sin. Being an Christian is a sin. And the claims related to Vampanth and Vampanth, by threatening them directly, and in making Prasangik, the whole of Bengal's politics is showing success. At this time, Dhruvi Karan is very strong and very dangerous. For Bengal, for the liberal section of Bengal, for the lands of the Andhulans, there is no option for them. Either you are with Modi, or you are with Mamta. These views are dangerous for the politics of Bengal. And this is the most beneficial for the nation. It is happening with Bhashpa and Sangh. Like we mentioned, a key constituency for the polls, which are to take place day after tomorrow is Banaras. Narendra Modi's seat. The constituency has been in the spotlight for multiple reasons. For his rally earlier in April, it was reported that over 1.4 lakh litres of water was used to wash the roads. His rally was also made into a huge spectacle as well. We spoke to the voters on the ground, where Dalit families told us how their houses were bulldozed to pave the way for Modi and his supporters. Take a look at our exclusive ground report from Varanasi. What is the most difficult part of Modi's life? When we come here, we run away from our homes. We live in Prasad. What is the most difficult part of Modi's life? We don't have a house here. We don't have a house for the people. We don't have water. Where do you get water from? We have to get it far away. We run away from our homes. When Modi comes, we run away from our homes. We stay in our homes, in our homes. We run away from our homes, in our homes. We run away from our homes, in our homes. We stay in our homes, in our homes. Moving on to our international story, Trump administration's hostile moves against the legitimate government in Venezuela continue. Yesterday, in a brazen violation of the established international law, police entered the Venezuelan embassy and arrested four members of the embassy protection collected. The members of the collective were guarding the embassy for the last 37 days from the expected intrusion by the person's loyal to Juan Guaido, the opposition leader in Venezuela. Juan Guaido has been recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela by Trump's administration in January this year in a move to unsettle the legal government of Nicolás Maduro. Police action in an attempt to help Guaido appointed Carlos Vecchio to take control of the embassy. Condemning the arrest of the activists, Venezuelan foreign minister George Arrasa tweeted and I quote, Today our diplomatic property in Washington was taken and invaded by a police operation without precedence. They disrespected their obligations of the Vienna Convention and violated the human rights of the activists that have protected our embassy with our authorization. The move has been widely criticized by social governments and organizations worldwide. That's all that we have for you today on this episode of The Daily Roundup. To follow these stories and many more, log on to our website, www.newsclick.in, subscribe to our channel on YouTube and follow us on Facebook as well as Twitter. Thank you for watching.


What's going on everybody is Stas here welcome back to another video so in today's video We're going to be doing an overall market update taking a look at the Dow Jones the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq We're also going to be doing a trading update talking about what I did today in the markets What are my plans here towards the end of August heading into the month of September? We're going to be going over my thoughts on the market and some other stocks and ETFs that I'm watching Right now as well as some news that we got regarding the US China trade war and the tension between The two countries at this point so if you guys find value in this video Feel free to go down below and hit that like button consider subscribing if you want to see further content for me Content involving the stock market trading investing personal finance that red button you should click it So guys let's get right into it the markets today Were absolutely amazing the markets were green all across the board the S&P 500 was up 36 points 36.64 to be exact up 1.27% at the close very strong day there the Dow Jones up 326 points up 1.25% and the Nasdaq Let me pull up my phone very quickly guys and pull up the Yahoo finance app to tell you an exact figure Let's see right here Nasdaq up 1.48% up 116 points So you may be asking yourself what what ended up moving the markets like this? What ended up moving the markets like this? Well, we got some news that the trade war is easing between China and the US and oh boy have we heard this many times in the past, right? So in a couple of minutes, we'll get into that but first let me just break down some technicals You know on the S&P on the Nasdaq on the Dow's we can kind of see what is going on here on a technical basis So today with this big strong green move this gap up We actually ended up breaking the 50 SMA on the four-hour chart here as you guys can see this green line And honestly now that I'm looking at it We've broken above the 180 SMA as well, but overall we're trending under this resistance at about 2930 and we've been talking about this horizontal channel on the S&P over the past couple of videos and at this point guys We're testing it again So it's going to be important remember this trend line that I drew over on the previous couple of videos It might have been yesterday or the day before, you know This can very well play out in terms of the candles breaking out But we need to first break above 29 30 and then we'll be testing upwards to 29 50 Which is the next resistance, but let's say we gap down tomorrow We start to get you know rejected right now the futures are slightly down So if that heads into tomorrow morning pre-market that could be telling us that the S&P may be heading back down to retest Maybe 2900 flat and then maybe the bottom of the channel here, which is at around 2850, right? This range has just been bouncing You know, we've been hitting the supports three times in the past you guys can see like multiple times and we've been hitting the resistance So like I've said yesterday, you know, whichever spot we break out of whether it's we break out of the resistance or we break Down below the support, you know, that's going to determine what the direction is going to be on the S&P 500 in terms of the short term here So that's kind of the breakdown very simple here guys, you know again if we pop We may be going back up to the mid 29s maybe, you know, high 2900 dollar level, you know in terms of the S&P here So going over to the NASDAQ guys, we can see here unlike the S&P The NASDAQ is actually trending below the 180 S&A right it broke above the 50 S&A Which again is this green line on the four-hour chart, but we're trending below the 180 S&A You guys can clearly see over the past couple of weeks. This is a point This is a level. This is a point of resistance where we've struggled to break out of pretty much the whole month of August We've been trending below that level and honestly trending below 77.50 which we've gotten rejected at once twice three times four times five times in the past And if we let's say start to push up a little bit tomorrow, whatever it may be We may be retesting that level yet again, and if we pop out of there, that's going to be a very very Bullish move for the NASDAQ and of course if we get rejected we may be pushing back down a 7400 74.50 ish that is roughly the area of support that I'm seeing right now on the NASDAQ So these technicals guys to be honest They're not too hard to read because all of the indexes it seems like they're in this horizontal channel And it's very simple. It's a very simple pattern to understand if we pop out of the resistance That's a bullish breakout move But let's say we get rejected and start to head to the support again of the channel and we bust through the support That's a bearish move. So a lot of different things can happen here We just have to keep up with it keep an eye on it throughout the day and of course pre-market hours is very important You know as you're looking to potentially plan any any trades whether it's a day trade a swing trade You know, whatever it may be so going over to the Dow Jones Industrial average we can see that we gapped up above the 50 SMA of resistance today on the four-hour chart That's a very good sign But just like the NASDAQ we're actually testing the 180 SMA of resistance now, which is also a resistance Where we've gotten hit down before more towards the beginning of August. It was at about what level is this? 23,000 or 26,000 rather 350 we got hit there once twice and now it seems like we're retesting it We're literally right at that level right now in terms of the close price of the Dow So tomorrow is going to be interesting guys just keep an eye again on the futures What are we doing? What direction are the futures pushing that could give us a indication of what could happen at least Early on in the day tomorrow before we start to pick some more direction and honestly guys I like waiting just a little tip here I like waiting 30 minutes to an hour after the market open to kind of decide what I'm going to do for that day for the most part Sometimes I'm hopping in some stocks or ETFs within 10 minutes of market open But most of the time I like to see where the market's pushing what direction it's picking and kind of how it's reacting That specific date to whatever news catalyst there are or if there's anything crazy going on in the media with a specific stock That has a huge weight on an index or the economy in general. So that's kind of what I do I wait 30 minutes an hour and from there I end up taking a position or just not trading for that day So overall guys that is what is going on right now in the stock market in terms of just the prices today What the technicals are looking like through my personal perspective now? Let's quickly hop into this Google Chrome article that I have pulled up here to talk about very briefly What ended up pushing up the markets today pretty obviously, you know, it's this right? Look at the headline US indexes soar on hopes for improved US-China relations, right? And if we look down here, you can see stock shot up Thursday on hints that China wants to reduce the tension in It's trade fight with the United States So going down here the rally was prompted by comments from China's foreign ministry that Beijing would not retaliate for now against President Donald Trump's latest Tariff moves, but the spokesman also said that China wants to see some of those rolled back So that the two sides can negotiate in September and he's referring to some of the tariffs So I feel like this trade war. It's like a cycle, right? There's a tariff slap from the US to China China to the US There's a big feud on in the media on Twitter, whatever it may be the market tanks And then in my opinion in hopes to save the market They come out and they say oh now we're starting to ease up now We're looking to meet and really settle things and make a trade deal. I feel like it's a cycle This has been going on nonstop over the past year and literally guys whenever it pops up in the media The markets tank just keep an eye on this This is literally a cycle and then they come out a week or two later And then they're like, okay now we're going to make a trade deal And I guarantee you in a week or two maybe not a week or two probably like a month in September Maybe three weeks from this point or whenever the next meeting is we might get some Twitter Tweet from Trump. We might get something in the news that's saying oh now They're not coming to a deal again now They're the tensions are starting to rise again, and then the market will tank again. It's really just like a cycle I would love to know what you guys have to think about that and just keep an eye on how these Political, you know, even if you're not into politics I'm definitely not taking sides here at all because this is not a channel where I talk about politics But keep an eye on how that stuff affects everything the economy affects the stock market These are just things that can push it up push it down and it's very very important for you to understand this So now that that's out of the way I would love to know what you guys have to think about that actually in the whole market in general down below in the comment section Again, I love talking you guys in the comments So do not feel shy drop that comment and let's just talk about what I did today in terms of my trading So BAC is a stock. I think I called out yesterday or the day before I talked about it in the video I know you guys caught that if you were watching whichever video that was it was this week But BAC is one that I was looking at for a swing Position and it's very simple look at this pattern that BAC is on right now It's a horizontal pattern kind of like the S&P is but on a stretched out time frame This is over like a six-month spin and the horizontal pattern is between 2650 ish and around 30 to 31 dollars and you guys can see that's a clear resistance We've gotten hit there once twice three times four times five times six times in the past six to eight months and the support 2650 we've held that once twice three times four times and remember what I said about that double bottom Double bottoms typically indicate a potential bullish breakout and now we're getting that bullish breakout So that's four times that we've held above that level of support and what did I say in that video guys? I was saying once and if BAC was to break that 50 simple moving average here on the four-hour chart That was when I was going to pull the trigger on a swing trade and are for this particular stock And that's exactly what I ended up doing guys So if we go here to the one day one minute very simple right today We kind of gapped up just like a bunch of other stocks out there in the markets because again The markets were very green today pushed up a lot of stocks and we can see we gapped up from 2685 that was yesterday's close and we kind of gapped up about like a percent and I'm not even a percent like point five point six Point seven percent from the close You know to the market open today and we started to pull back and it's and I saw how we were making a higher low from yesterday's Close and if we just drag this out a bit to the five day five minute actually Let's see if we could get that double bottom for you guys here. Let me see. Yes. Look at this double bottom This is the double bottom, right? I'm pretty sure so we got the one two and then we started to pop previous two days You know you can see the pop the break above the 180 SMA the pullback the retest This was actually after market hours yesterday and when we gapped up that was a higher low Right, this was kind of the continuation of the uptrend and the trajectory the Trajectory the momentum at this point was pushing up because of the pattern that was forming So I ended up hopping in BAC this morning Ended up getting in not late, but kind of as it continued to push up here. So I took an initial position I believe it was there at around like 27 25 I only I've only taken one position and what I mean by that is you know I've only taken about 20% of my goal position in BAC and you maybe ask yourself why did you do that? Why don't you go in all the way? Well one of my kind of my main swing trading strategy and it's not anything crazy fancy mystical It's literally just scaling into your position is to mitigate risk for potential downside if the stock doesn't go your way Right, that's pretty much really it think about it if I went in a hundred percent. Let's say I want to take a swing trade Let's use a whole number of $10,000 and I went all in with 10,000 and all of a sudden the stock doesn't go my way It goes down 2% whatever it may be. What am I going to be down? I'm going to be down $200 and I'd cut my losses at 2% because that's what I typically do, right? So instead of taking a $200 loss, right? I scale in with 2000 at first let's say for example So if it went down 2% and I had to stop out of that position I would have lost 2% of 2000 which is what that's like 40 $50 whatever it may be So the whole idea is if you scale in slowly your Your dollar risk is not as much as if you hopped in with the whole position size And I do have a whole video Dedicated to that strategy and I'll link it down below in the description box for those of you guys that are interested But that's pretty much it right I like not fighting the trend when it comes to swing trading So by that I mean you know tomorrow, let's say we dump below here I'm most likely going to cut losses, but let's say we gap up again tomorrow We pull back we start to retest a higher low That's me not fighting the trend because we're gapping up the trend is clearly pushing up and I would add more money Kind of moving with the trend it makes sense, right? So that's what I'm looking at for BAC to continue to add money in the goal to sell At this point it is to get up to $30, right? That's my goal sell point, but I'm thinking I'm probably going to start trimming off profits If we get under this 180 s may just to play it safe. I'm thinking around 2850 to around $29 that's the rough area that I'm looking at right now So that's all I did today to be completely honest with you guys. I've been swing trading a decent more amount recently To be completely honest with you guys day trading still here and there But I just love swing trading. That is my bread and butter to be honest with you guys so BAC I'm watching that one for tomorrow. This is probably the number one stock that I am watching You guys is another one here that did very well today And then we'll talk about Tesla here in a second to do a quick breakdown because guys I've been getting a flood of questions about Tesla and my DM So we'll talk about that and break it down in this video You can see you guys first and foremost has been doing very well and you guys for those of you guys that don't know It goes up whenever natural gas is going up. So natural gas. We talked about a 230 level yesterday I believe well, we've hit that 230 level today. We we popped up We're seeing a bullish cross 50 SMA crossing above 180 SMA seems like moving averages are acting as support levels now Which is a very good sign of a potential upwards move here So now to draw out some resistances. We see 230 is clearly one. We see 240 is one We see 248 250 is one. So these are just points and zones that I'm watching So let's say tomorrow we pop up hold 230 as a support We may be pushing up to fill it a 240 which would be amazing for you guys It can literally offer 10 15 20 percent potential from that point So that is an ETF probably the main one that I'm watching on tomorrow So let's get to that Tesla analysis because I know you guys love Tesla stock right a lot of people talk about it I'm in the community and we all a lot of youtubers I know make videos on Tesla because literally it's like the most hot talked about stock I don't know guys honestly just people love love love just talking about Tesla and there's a lot of questions revolving it and Let's just break it down. So Tesla overall. It's downtrending. That's very clear. We all know this at this point 377 is the high 176 is the low that's pretty abysmal for a six-month performance They literally lost half of its value more than half at pretty much if my math is right Yeah, roughly half whatever it may be but ever since we found that bottom We've been breaking out of moving average resistances very briefly and then we ended up dumping again So at this point guys honestly Tesla is not looking too attractive Maybe if we gap up tomorrow again hold the 50 SMA as a support Maybe we could fill up to the 180 SMA. That's what I'm thinking right now That's a potential move of about 5% But we need to just see the break of this downwards trending pattern because if I just draw it out for you guys It's very obvious that although we did break the 50 SMA. We're still overall in a downtrend Lower highs. This is technically a lower high from the previous. It's highs at about 221 Previous was at about 227 So I'd need to see at least a break into 224 before 223 224 before even considering a position and 227 break that would be pretty good. We may be reversing to the upside at that point You know that could be a short-term bottom here on Tesla Maybe at about 214 but overall I'd wait to see a break out of that Downwards trending trend line that I just drew for you guys Maybe we fill up again like I said to the 180 SMA about 5% and move there that could happen, but overall guys You know, I just need to see a pop and eventually a break above the 180 SMA Which is this gold line that would be very very good and bullish in my opinion to take a swing position on Tesla so guys that's really pretty much it right tomorrow You know on the watch list. We definitely have you guys like I said, we definitely have Tesla Bank of America I'm definitely loving that one right now from a technical perspective some other ones that I was watching You know at V. I traded this one the other You know, I held it as a swing for about a week from last week This was doing quite well, but now we're seeing a resistance at this point So maybe this could be the bottom for at V $39. We all know the moon I was about to say the movie stocks the video game stocks have been getting killed right on the one year You can see at V lost half of its value So if this is the bottom guys and now we're starting to see an upswing and video game stocks at V in particular Right, this can end up leveling up or gapping up from $52 Maybe if we hold that as a support and it can move up to $56 That could be the next swing trading zone that I'm looking for in terms of that V overall in the one year one day chart It's looking attractive, right? We're breaking out of moving average of resistances right now The 50 SMA is crossing above the 180 SMA, which is very bullish. This is looking pretty pretty good in my opinion So let's take a look at Chipotle Mexican grill very quickly. This is one that I'm watching for the pullback We didn't get it today. I would love to see a pullback and a retest on the 50 That could be a point in time where it could be an entry for a swing trade So those are just a couple that I'm watching guys I'd love to know what you guys are watching down below in the comment section So if you enjoyed this video, feel free to go down below and hit that like button Consider subscribing if you want to see further content for me again I make videos on the stock market investing trading Entrepreneurship personal finance all of that different stuff business. This is the channel That's really what the channel is about and if you found value in this video and you want to share it with the friend That would be greatly appreciated. So I'll catch you all in the next video again. Thanks for watching. It means a lot. Peace out