Hi everybody! I am Liz Trotter. I am here with Smart Business Moves. I've got Tricia Lake as my co-host today for those of you who are super excited. And then as our guest today, we have Kurt Kenton, one of our all-time favorites. Yay. That's true. No, that's true, Kurt. And I'll tell you why. A lot of times I'll tell somebody, hey, you're one of my favorites. And I'll tell you what makes somebody one of our favorites. It's somebody that comes, they're prepared, they love the topic that they're talking about and they're excited about it, enthusiastic about it, and they want to share or then just talk. They don't just want to talk, they want to share as well. This is my favorite. Cool. Yeah, it's true. I think people that can carry the show. That's probably good. All right. So, I do want to talk to you. You're welcome. I'm so happy to have you on here. I do want to remind everybody that's on for the podcast, you can't see, I think the topic is selling with persuasion without sleaze. No sleaze. People like some sleaze. Yeah. We're going to do, we're going to do it without sleaze today. Trisha, we'll bring you on on a different day for our little sleaze, right? All right. All right. Trisha, I would say that you're using sleaze in a different, with a different definition, because you sometimes have a little bit of, I'm not sure the word sleaze is right, but I mean, I one time did put myself on our company social in a bathtub. I mean, but yeah, but see, I'm not thinking that sleaze though, still.  That was. It depends on how big the account was. I mean, joking, joking. Yes, I know you're joking. I do remember the post. It was amazing. You locked yourself out of your house. Is that right? Something like that. Something like that. Yeah, I used my dad's shower. And so I brought my children over my dad's shower. Oh, I think our water was out or something was happening. Yeah. And so I went to my dad's house to shower my children and me. And then being a parent, I got them all their clothes and forgot to bring me clothes. And so I said, you know, screw it.  So do you think you can overcome Trisha's desire to post about her sleaze? Listen, here's what I always tell people. You sell to your unique self. Some sort of really great unique thing that she wants to put in the limelight. You know, we all have our own businesses, you know? That's very true. I missed what you said when you froze, but I think I I'm sorry. I hope I'm not freezing like crazy right now. No, you only froze one time and it was only when you said the key part of your message. Your unique selling proposition. I said, if Trisha's got something unique that she wants to present to her customers, that's her prerogative. Trisha, do not take this as a tacit. I sell that all of us are hot messes in the world today and that's why we help. Oh, look, it's all freed in there now. Paul, you can't call him a hot mess, though. He's a styling guy. Hey, Paul, good to see you. All right, Kurt. So you're going to share with us some great, so I know that you do a ton with responsibility with persuasion and not, hey, Don, and not with obviously not not the sleaze, but talk to us a little bit about that. I know you always have a lot of a strong philosophy behind what you do and so feel free to chat with us about that. Well, I mean, my philosophy on sales is that you basically are trying to help a customer get as much of what they want that you can get for them. And sometimes when I say that people are like, Oh, but Kurt, I don't want to be everything to everyone. And I hope that no one misinterpreted to mean that because that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, is when you become the expert at what you do, I think that, well, it depends on probably how you're raised and your attitude around salespeople. If your attitude like me when I grew up, if your attitude around salespeople is that they're manipulative people who bang out as much as they can to get as much commission as they can, then you probably will combat that by being a very soft spoken salesperson, which I created a whole software to help me get past this so that my cold and heartless software could follow the proper best practices because my own emotional psyche was keeping from doing it. So if emotionally you find that you're constantly pulling back, trying to save your customer's money, not presenting all the things that you can do, not allowing your customer to get all the things together, they should in order to have the best possible experience, then you're probably coming from a similar place that I did originally which is to say that you're so watching out for the customer that you end up not taking care of them and so watching out for the customer that you're actually running a charity that for some reason can never make a profit. So I think that resonates with a lot of different people. There's some people who are natural born salespeople who didn't grow up with some of these stigmas that I did.  I did grow up with that stigma as well. Like if you heard just the term salesman, salesperson instantly I'm thinking, I'm thinking somebody who's going to drive hard, be really pushy, they don't really care what I care about, they talk too much and they're just pushy. Basically I think pushy. Yeah. More than sleazy pushy. How about you? I think that, no I didn't grow up like that. My dad was a salesman and so I grew up like watching hand-to-hand the entrepreneur and salesman and so I didn't have that thought process. Now as an adult I see two different directions of salespeople. I see the very aggressive, very pushy side but I think in our industries we believe in what we're doing and when we believe in what we're doing we can be thinking of our sales tactics as a way that we're helping our clients and so by not giving them all their offerings and all the things you're actually hurting them that way. So if you believe in your service I think that having good sales systems is just taking care of your clients. And I think that's where I really lived in a weird spot. When I started my window cleaning and fresh washing company I knew I needed to feed my family, I knew I was going to do a good job, I knew that I had to do this work and then the first thing I figured out is I had to sell the work and I was at this weird conundrum. Trisha I believed in it a ton. I knew I could work hard. My mom taught me to work hard, my dad taught me to work hard but as soon as I get into that sales situation I would turn into a totally like I would undersell myself so much. I would constantly tell, oh you don't need to worry about that. I'll just throw it in for free or I won't do it. You don't need to pay for it. And it's almost like a guilty or like a guilt of like you know but the same thing with people that's in home estimates and give pricing in person they tend to have a hard time delivering the actual price. Like in the past for my company it used to underbid things in person because you'd be staring at the client going I'm sorry you know. And it's I think as you point out that anyone who is resonating with this right now I think it's important that they understand that it's all in your head. Like I actually have had I probably should have gotten therapy but in the retrospective I actually believe that I in person undersold jobs because I was afraid of rejection. I was afraid of feeling like I wasn't their friend. Like we made a connection in person if they didn't accept my bid maybe they don't think I'm a good person or like I'm not worthy of being their friend or something. Or that they are that is their vote for whether or not you're a good person or a vote for whether or not you're a good job. I buy yes check you're good I don't buy no you're bad. And then that invalidation sort of can really you know one non sale against 10 sales stands out like it's still like it's so much more potent. So Paul makes a good point here I see you just highlighted this and I feel like what Paul's referring to is sort of something that I found out which is sort of how the how I started working toward the whole responsive bid software was I saw that people were going on to Amazon and buying things more than books. I saw people were going to eBay at the time and buying all sorts of crazy things off offline and people were getting a taste for this sort of like no pressure but in my own house in my underwear experience and it started to become more of a like you can write anything you want about this thing and I'll fall in love with it to the extent I fall in love with it and and make a decision yes or no. And I think that that flipped something in my brain to go this isn't about I think when I identified as a sales person I had a personality complex for the same reasons that Liz brought up earlier about like ooh the word sales person it's so evil and and you know Trish I think you were super blessed to grow up in a family with an entrepreneur who's a salesperson because you saw that a good man would go to work and provide for your family doing that I didn't have that and and so as time went on I started realizing wait wait wait my website could be a salesperson or this form could be a salesperson or just this process I would go in person and I would just go check check check check and then I had a little blackberry storm with a excel sheet on it put the numbers in I would write the numbers in I would go all right according to the calculator salesperson right I am now presenting to you yes yes or yes right and in that moment that was a major transformation for me to help people understand that we have a process you've now entered into the process and I'm going to be the one who's presenting the process to you well that opened up this whole idea of with persuasion the ability to bring in best practices that are systematically being applied and allowing customers to sort of move into this new world of choice buying like you know back in the day you walk into a general store and you would buy the toothbrush that that general store carried now we can choose from millions of do you want it to be electric do you want to be ultrasonic do you want it to be you know any color you want yeah and and so now this new economy is really a customer driven economy we're checking out our own groceries at the grocery store we have millennials that are coming up spending money now that don't even talk to humans anymore the text and if you're not my circle of 15 friends or one of my 4,000 followers I'm not interacting with you and so this is posing sort of a new buying cycle it's not to say that the old one doesn't work anymore it's to say there's a lot of people you you may not even interact with anymore if you don't move to this new sort of model that people are buying in and uh it it just opens so many doors to open some new best practices to be able to provide customers a way for them to give themselves reasons to upsell up buy more and as Trisha put to get the best experience like to take care of them the best you possibly can but it was their idea and that's where the power really lies and I know about you guys but like the times that like I have available to do stuff like you know get a quote for different things like that it's when I'm laying in bed at 10 o'clock at night I have like I'm thinking in my head okay what do I need to do like that's when I would be getting a quote for housekeeping or lawn care or things like that so having a simple way to be able to get those instant things is really actually beneficial because you're not going to get salesperson on the phone at 11 o'clock at night right but no actually people are the same way where that being able to self serve is really nice to them no you're actually that is one of the points of persuasion is being able to meet the person where they're at and when they want and where they want yeah so if you did pick up the phone at 10 o'clock at night which is highly unlikely because number one your expectation is the phone can answer it anyway and the number two there's probably people in the house that you wouldn't want to disturb and so you wouldn't but some people will say well I want to be more personal with my customer well where they're at is they're laying in their bed yes they don't want to call it that moment yeah and so if they do a google search and it says get a quote for house cleaning if the best option available to them is put your name your phone number and your email address here we'll call you as soon as we can that serves the customer to a certain level but it doesn't meet them where they're at yeah it doesn't when you call or email them back they will be in a different place when you guys communicate again right now it might be a similar place it could very well be a similar place oh did I freeze again no you know okay it might be a similar place but it probably won't be the same place and um so anyway I think it's a good point Trisha to bring up is that like you need to meet that customer to be fairly persuasive you have to hit them in a moment of their most sort of emotional compelled state towards you now the cool thing is is that some place they don't want to talk on the phone they want to I mean I'm a phone person so I would much rather pick up the phone have a 10 minute conversation and be done but there's a lot of people that would much rather just email back and forth when it's convenient for them or text back and forth but if you call them they'll be like why are you calling me you know so again having a system like this allows it to be where they can you know they can call into your office to get close or they can do this right you're you're meeting your needs of whatever they want options and at the risk as you say at the risk of this turning into a responsive commercial I think that the most important psychological thing to identify is how are you meeting the person where they're at when their thoughts are like this or when the conditions at night are like that or when um you know whatever for a business that has to maybe call and get several quotes how are you meeting them where they're at I was just on an airplane talking to a a guy who owns a window cleaning company here in Arizona he cleans the sky harbor airport and he talked about what it means to meet them where they're at it's it's a massive amount of hoops you have to jump through and it's it really was fascinating to hear um but you know meeting them where they're at allows him to charge and I don't I probably shouldn't share very much specifics but he charges far more money and your eyes would pop out of your head if you knew how much he charges for one single cleaning more than the next lowest bid which he was by far the highest but um because he understood every single thing that the airport needed in order to like score the the bid and that cost only accounted for like like I think 30 or 40 of what it was less than half um of their scoring system but he had taken the time to figure out he designed that particular quoting process to be around what their needs were and how where they're at and I feel like that's what you were just talking about Trisha for the for the homeowner there's a person who is like this that's our avatar where are they at we have another person we have a scheduling time but almost everyone calls in at this time will be at this place and if you are designing your sales process to be there for that person it's just going to flow to you at that point right so Kurt I have a horrible lag here um I have a question also you had referenced a couple of times uh a a point of persuasion making it seem like you have maybe a list of points yeah yeah do you want to share I would love to um there are there are many many of them um maybe I'll just share a few of my favorites we can hone in on anything you guys want Trisha if you've got any that you want to share too I don't want to like dominate this whole conversation there is one that comes right to mind the moment I think about it and that is is when you present your pricing to your customer it needs to feel like a whole entire solution now the problem that I had in my window cleaning company is that I would give people estimates that said upstairs windows this much downstairs windows this much inside downstairs windows this much inside screen cleaning um track cleaning uh and then and it looks so cool because it was so customizable my customer could like go through but it wasn't a solution it was like a chore it's sort of like when you go to a restaurant and like you guys want an appetizer do you want a uh a main course what you want for all of your sides what you want it is nice and customizable but for a guy like me like the friction of all these decisions will cause me to order far less than when I sit down in the restaurant they go this is our chef's uh chef's recommendation this is uh well and I can just make one single choice um that will solve my hunger problem and my enjoyment problem with my company that I'm sitting with and so I would highly encourage when we're talking about good better best there's a reason that it's in the three good better and best allows for enough information to make a choice but not so much information that I feel like I'm being crippled and it's a very online overwhelming to the client uh let's believe at that point because now instead of solving their problem now we're creating another problem and they're all going to be overwhelmed for clients come to us because they need help whether they're overwhelmed with you know time in their lives you know everything else they're coming to us to solve the issue and so yeah getting processed difficult they'll just say forgive it I'm doing myself yeah yep well and it's and it's even more than that to to the point of like persuasion like Liz was asking about um if the customer feels like they uh they're given a solution that solves their problem from an expert's perspective and you come to them like oh yeah we know people like you and people like you always seem to just love it when we do this kind of thing now people like them might live in their neighborhood and have similar uh economic status people like them might be lawyers who make many dollars per hour and do not want to be bothered for more than 10 seconds about this or it might be someone who and there are there are busy person who just want to think about it anymore people like you could mean so many different things and that's where I'm saying your customer base and making these expert presentations is your perspective of what solutions you provide and how they pair together and it's your perspective of I know my customer base you are a sally and that sally avatar just really needs to have these options put before them and the friction just goes away I love that one of the things that you are mentioning right here is that you don't just have one avatar a lot of times people are thinking that they just have one avatar one client this person doesn't fit in okay I don't want them but I love the idea multiple avatars and these are all people that want your same basic service yeah should you have one that is like your main one that these are the people that buy the most of my service but you have other ones that also buy a lot of your stuff if you let them I love that and you probably shouldn't have 100 avatars I think you're right like you should have one you focus on probably no surprise to you I believe you should have three avatars three distinct avatars that you're trying to sell usually three different options to each now that doesn't mean that one option for avatar wouldn't carry over another one because it probably would actually but if you can serve three distinct avatars that you think you know inside and out you're probably focused enough to do a good job and not leave people hanging and you're probably diverse enough that you're going to be able to have a fairly large market nice I love it I'm a big believer in the power of three there are a lot of things that you know there's a lot of research out there too about the power of three three is just awesome little number right there so I think that makes really good sense um I uh I just realized that Tricia and I we know you really well and so just started chatting with you but some people have never heard of you I know right and they probably have never heard of response a bit either and they probably are like who are these people and what are they talking about right now how about you just give us a real quick and I'll I'll pop your I'll pop your website up in the chat for everybody but maybe you can just quickly give everybody who you are what you do yeah I started a window cleaning and pressure washing company back when I very first got married a number of years ago like gosh I guess I'm married like 24 years now 23 years so um back in the very early day I started a cleaning company and um sort of dealt with that identity crisis I was talking about earlier as far as oh my gosh I'm an entrepreneur sales person um and I immediately started trying to figure out like how to sort of like sales I'm not getting away from sales I gotta get this done but how am I gonna do it in the best way possible and I started doing a lot of study in how successful companies were were doing it and I started building my process around sort of making it about the process and eventually that ended up sort of creating a software and now uh Responsibit is the software and I've actually sold my cleaning company gosh I guess we're almost like maybe eight or nine years ago now um and I've just been in the software game but my focus with the software Responsibit is on quoting follow-up and scheduling now we don't we're not a CRM so like you wouldn't use us like as a standalone software we're a sales funnel that goes on top of a CRM so um companies like Jobber and um House Call Pro we connect with the service monster um unfortunately we still haven't gotten something that's made service CRMs like Made Central and um some of the others that I know a lot of people are super like using a lot we just have had so much going on we haven't been able to like really deviate out into other CRMs but um but the software is designed even if you're not integrated with it the whole point of the software is to quickly and efficiently get a quote that a customer can quickly and efficiently make a decision move from research mode to decision mode and then from there if you are integrated with your CRM we actually can read your calendar or even a google calendar and we can find the most efficient drive times so that when they're when they make that decision we can quickly commit them to a date and time of service so that um you know it's efficiently scheduled to the right crew who can do the type of job that you're scheduling for the right amount of time at a place where you're not driving around too much and that's sort of what Responsibid is in a nutshell most people know us as an online quoting software even though that's one of three ways that you can give a bit of Responsibid online in person or over the phone um so I've been doing that for so long now and now my kids have all grown up everybody at my house wears Responsibid shirts people joke we don't even have like any other brand shirts when we go to church on Sunday we wear button-up like shirts and ties and then like we're immediately home back in Responsibid clothes so um it's just part of our family at this point yeah it is who you are obviously yeah you eat sleep and breathe Responsibid uh okay so um thank you for giving us that it's super helpful uh for a lot of people but I have a couple of questions you said that there are some software programs that you do integrate with that would like it's kind of a no-brainer for those businesses right that are using that software can you list those offers again sure um customer factor jobber house call pro service monster um I know I'm forgetting a couple others those are those are some really big ones though honestly um if you're a jobber user or a service monster user and you're not using Responsibid um that's like our house call pro even I guess like we are so deeply connected to those those companies oh market is it have you guys heard of the market CRM and ARK ATE market um that's another one that we tie into I we don't hear as much about them but they they've been growing um quite a bit lately okay I yeah I want to look into them uh so when you were talking about um jobber or I think it was house call pro is that the one that you're really into I have to tell you that the image that popped into my head was and you said if you're not using us the image that popped into my head was Julia Roberts with all those bags big mistake you should be doing a commercial actually into my head y'all need to be using well big we do have circle members that are using jobber and also house call pro and I will make sure and let them know that this is like a no-brainer they they got to jump on board here what do they do Kurt do they just go to responsibid.com and what's the easy way you can go to responsibid.com and schedule a demo um you can actually we have a guy uh John does basically all of our demos he will walk you through sort of what your process is uh like you will understand all of that and then he'll sort of show you how that would look inside of Responsibid and different best practices that you might be able to to change that and then if you decide to move forward uh with John basically the next step is that you would actually work with an account success rep the success coach and their job is to take you through the six steps of setup um we just recently coined it so six steps to success and basically they walk you through systematically sharing your screen of getting all your automation set up one of the biggest pain points of responsibid is that you have to download your brain into the software and it does the same thing every time you know it's a process but it has to do the right thing every time if it does the wrong thing every time it's super annoying as a business partner and even your customers so what we've done is we've really doubled down on our investment into the screen share setup and really customizing what comes out of your head it goes into your software so that you can like know that it's going to work the day you start using it and it works really well I use Responsibid um I pushed over from um the in-home estimates every single in-home estimate and but kind of five years I was kind of one of the last people that was building in-home estimates because I believed in them and I loved the bonding with the clients and um I think I had finally burnt myself out of attempting to do them for so long so I made wanted to make that switch over to like online system um I was slow to go but Responsibid was really great um it was definitely awesome so did you did use it in person as well or did you only use it when you went to online um you know I think we all have our quotes for this yeah so also yeah okay so that was how our service team got the price instruction everything so every quote went through that's my my recommendation is usually like if someone says I want to do online quotes that's why I'm here like okay cool let's get 15 in-person quotes under your belt using it you'll build the trust with the system to know that it's doing what it's doing you don't want to have two systems to the same thing otherwise you don't have a system at all so um you you want to use it for that in person stuff but Trisha I think that that burnout that you said that resonated so much with me um I have been I was in a conference last week in Nashville I was talking to a friend and he's like Kurt you want to start back over again I'm like do I get to bring on my knowledge he said yeah but you have to be just as tired as you are now I said no I don't know about that I don't know if I have the spirit in me anymore to ever like to rewind time to start again why don't you Liz you never run out of energy I like to start new businesses I think that sounds more fun but you know what I know quite a few people that had a cleaning business and then they moved and they had to start over oh I was going to say all of them but that's not true but the vast majority of them were able to grow their businesses so much more quickly because you have that knowledge you know what you did right and you know what you did wrong that's what I'm saying no is if we were around time but it has the knowledge like now you know to go start another company after 13 years for me everything in my head okay yeah no problem I don't know what to do but 13 years ago I had no idea what I was doing so but the tired thing does come in but if you're starting a business with I think you never get as tired again as you were initially that's I think you're right about that I think you're right about that I will say we're watching businesses at response we're seeing him hit a million dollars like it used to be a very rare thing to see a business had a million annually and it's happening so fast like every day now people are just skyrocketing and I think it's just the new ability to share knowledge people to avoid the school of hard knocks a lot better but but yeah I think you're right that like when I first started I graduated from ASU's business college it's called the WP carry school of business at ASU I graduated as the outstanding graduating student of my class Rachel my wife was like when I came home that night she's like we were going I wasn't planning on being at graduation but they called me and they're like you need to be here like you need to be yeah so um I go up I get the award I'm like shocked holy cow you guys are very low standards then I get in my car we go home and my wife's like we're gonna be rich aren't we I guess so I'm pretty big and then I started my cleaning company and they're like okay LLC s-corp c-corp I'm like I don't know and they're like okay well um how do you want to like you want to set up quick books and I'm like all right accountant I'm out of here I don't know what you're talking about like so I just felt like I left business school thinking that I had all of the stuff that I needed I literally had yeah maybe maybe a two percent advantage over someone who hadn't been to school and it was such a bummer um and now I look at what people are getting this real knowledge this real coaching this real advice from people who are veterans in the industry and I'm like that's what I need that's what I should have been going to so fast so easy nobody's making those same mistakes and and really another really big thing is they're not entrenching in the big mistakes you know back in the day people would make a big mistake they didn't know and they would just entrench in this really big mistake and keep it going for years and I don't even have a quarter now if you go entrenched now you're stubborn right because there are enough people out there telling you stop doing that that you're just being stubborn right and I see some of you know like some of the smaller businesses are still trying to make it you know I see them like looking for all this advice and stuff and I'll recommend different classes or you know our courses or literature courses and feels like oh mash that's that price and I'm like that is so cheap that's giving you 13 years of knowledge and mistakes and like oh my gosh and you're gonna grow so much yeah well actually Trisha that's a great segue into the program that we're putting on uh in July can you tell people about it real quick because I hate when I'm at in any kind of any one of these presentations and then the whole end is a whole big gigantic pitch so we we never do that here but if you have some time somewhere along the road share it so why don't you go ahead and share the event in July Trisha okay so we're gonna deploy the ROI events in the end of July and it's going to be in my office part of North Dakota and so we're going to be bringing in entrepreneurs and they can be bringing their managers that they'd like as well it's going to be a two to three day course so two days of class time we're actually going to be working on and building career ladders we're going to be building um nurture programs for staffing we're going to be building development basically all the hard things that are difficult for our industry is employees employees is the hardest part of our industry and so if we can teach a room full of people how to conquer that problem then um it'll be awesome so two days of classes of you know you're going to walk away with all kinds of different stuff um and then the third day we're going to do a VIP day at the lake which is going to be some barbecuing chilling boat rides jet skis and then round tables where we will talk business we'll have them drink um but some of the things we're really talking about here is uh or teaching anyways we're going to have marketing to your most important clients um designed by culture organizational goals and what do they make sense we're gonna be teaching you okay because i want to turn into just every single thing right what's what's the um what's the cost tisha oh it helped me out again i can't remember either i know i know it's under two thousand dollars it's insanely cheap i thought it should be way more natural i know sorry so this this goes to your point okay i paid thirty thousand dollars a semester for garbage yeah sorry um so tell everybody you can go find out all the details that trisha is talking about at core profit builders dot com i'll put the link in um but i'm trying to pull up the price here real quick because i don't like it when people don't tell you what the price is i know i i remember it was under two because i was thinking yeah but the point what she just said kurt was how she thought it should be a lot more and i fall into the trap just like you said of oh no can't we need to keep it lower we got we have to do that thing so um okay i got the pricing regular price is nineteen ninety five anybody that's a member of one of our circles uh it's sixteen ninety five and then you can bring a guest for nine ninety five right so i do want to get that out there um and then what is lodging what is lodging like in north dakota like you guys have like big hotels and stuff there yes we have hotels no do they have to bring tents it's fargo i've never been in north dakota i'm so afraid and you said it's in july i'm like oh my gosh that would be amazing yeah so yeah yeah so we have great beautiful hotels and normal lodging places they're also restaurants and cars here too not cars no dog what what about the dogs how do they get around yeah i don't even know i haven't seen you in a while but first you're also thinking they're gonna have a lot of weird people there right no actually i've met i've met so many people from north dakota it actually seems like a bunch of like super chill people hanging out maybe even like they're basically canadians in america or something super fun people so i knew it wouldn't be weirdos but uh i did wonder like how does the i'm in phoenix arizona so just to be clear like snow is like it's freaky to me can you know in july it's beautiful in july we're gonna be okay yeah so on the first day we're gonna be going to the lake and hanging out at the lake and jet skiing no no no i mean july in north dakota sounds like you know july and phoenix is like yes very hard i need to live in phoenix yeah okay okay like every year i have lived here for 43 years my whole life it happens every year one day in july i'll open the door and walk outside and i'll be like you gotta be kidding that's how hot this is it's unbelievable we have a lot of clients that like usually go back and forth from fargo to phoenix like you know every six months whichever weather is better it's it's it's too too crazy in phoenix i expect if you live there because you acclimate if you try to visit phoenix in july or august i almost can't breathe yeah it's hot it's so oppressive that he's gonna have this event in fargo in january that would have been fun no no it's so hilarious to see all of our southern friends like coming and crying all right so um so i i wanted to share that with everybody because i to to kurt's point and to your point also atricia it's so true you gotta take advantage of the knowledge that is here today there's it there's just no sense in not taking in all the wisdom as long as you do one thing take the advice do the thing yeah too often and i want to talk to you a little bit about this kurt because i know you have this experience too you go you get the advice you take the advice but you don't actually put it into place and i know you did say that trisha to make sure that it was clear to people we're going to be building stuff on site right people are going to go home with it i think that's really helpful because i went to a lot of classes i've done a lot of things myself because i love learning and um it's easy to like go back into your company and get into whirlwinds of things and then i mean i have a class recently i went to a couple months back that i still have things on my to-do list um because i've got back into whirlwinds of things and so it's nice to be able to when you're away from your business you'll actually start building stuff to implement because if you don't implement the stuff the course is worthwhile you gotta implement it yeah yeah all right so also going to the expert right um taking the advice and and doing the thing i want to talk to you a little bit about that kurt do you run into that with response a bit because people come to you with fully formed businesses and they've already been doing sales their way i'm sure you have to be running into situations where people think their way is the best way yeah yeah it i mean it's fair too like if you've got a 25 year old business and you come in do another company that is recommending you tweak it or something like you're comfortable where you've been and you know you know the devil that you know right even if you don't think it's perfect you know it and you're comfortable around it um but yeah that's certainly i would say when someone signs up a response of it and then doesn't stick with it for you know let's say three or six months something like that yeah usually that is a big sign that somebody was already super comfortable and they we call it building the hang glider and not jumping um so basically they come to the top of mountain their success coach they build everything all out they're super excited about how it's looking and then when it's time to launch what'll inevitably happen is they'll be like you know i'd like to tweak this a little more this week and you can see it coming like a freight train you know what's getting right to happen and then at some point they do a quote with it and then it's not the way that they like because they want it to be different right that's why i signed up so they'll set up a response of it and then they'll they'll do the quote they're like i'm just i'm more familiar with it being this other way or whatever and and um that's usually a sign of someone who's got to figure out are you gonna jump you're enjoying watching everyone else flying around the hang glider are you gonna jump and frankly the fear of heights is so real i worked at a girls camp um as a repelling instructor and those are the most exhausting repelling are you familiar with like uh going down a mountain like on a rope repelling down oh okay i was thinking like no repelling but no no no no so we'd be at the top of this cliff and uh and uh like let's say she's 12 12 to 15 year old girl would be clipped into a harness and then she'd be clipped into two ropes um one rope by control one rope that she can control we teach them all how to do it in our classroom setting and then they get their helmet on they got all the stuff and they're all at the edge of the cliff one rope can hold 5 000 pounds two ropes can hold 10 000 pounds these girls weigh about 17 pounds they're like these little tiny featherweight children but inevitably there's some girls that are getting at the top and be like yeah they're like going down and like they're having a great time and then right behind that girl is me and never mind the fact that we could pick the car that they came up with yet we could pick that up on the mountain with the ropes but it doesn't feel that way it doesn't feel like that when you're looking over the edge and you're like that's like 200 feet down like don't worry i catch you at the top i'm going to control it this is so strong i'm watching you the whole time i can't do it i can't do it and um you know they miss an experience but you know because you're not going to force someone down like you want to get them a complex so see a lot of these girls they'll come back up to the top well i know okay we'll send them off and they'll miss the experience and it's a shame but at the end of the day like that's sort of our right as an entrepreneur is to sort of like push our limits break through the ones that we can and then like sort of like just let like the stuff that we can't like if you just can't do it build the business build the best business you're capable when our company values is we're building the best company we're capable of and you know some people might look at our business and go wow you guys should have taken on investment money and grown really big really fast and hired 7 000 engineers and stuff and but you know that for me that's the cliff that i'm like i want to know every employee i want to know i don't i don't know everything that's going on the business even though i'm not doing it all i just love the organic-ness of a company that has no politics and that everyone loves each other and that everyone loves the product and our customers and everything and so um and so i look at people who don't jump off the cliff with their hang glider and i go it's a shame but i'm you know i'm not jumping off with a hang glider with uh venture capital you know so what are you gonna do and sometimes it's just a matter of yet right maybe they're not jumping off today but there's nothing i know that you've had this situation as well people come to respond to it they don't they don't jump off and then three months later they come back now they're ready to jump yeah right and sometimes it's a while atrisha you were actually just talking about this today in the circle right you were talking yeah you were not the jumping not the not the hang gliding jumping thing no no no um oh shoot i totally lost my point i lost it to you i don't remember so Trisha was talking about about what tell me what she was talking about thank you thank you for that that's helpful uh so when you mentioned that you didn't want to jump because you wanted to be in a company where you know all the people the people like themselves you know like each other and there's not like the drama and all of that you were talking about that today Trisha when people were talking about hiring and um you know what do they do and you kept making the point hey i if you have a company where everybody likes each other and they they have a great culture they they stay you don't have to worry about this other problem so that's kind of back to responsive i know it doesn't sound like it it it's seamless but it feels like it to me because today um i mean with responsibid when you have people that don't want to do it once they do see what it's like and they experience it how many people leave well our retention rate if someone's been with us for like eight months i think it is they're with us basically for life forever yeah it's a setup that takes a minute to understand it but once it's like solid it's good you know and so i can see that yeah and every single person i've said this multiple times every single person that i personally know that uses responsibid loves it loves loves loves it and has only glowing things to say about not only just sales which is of course awesome that's what they need to be getting right the sales but also the back end i also know how how the process works how the system works i can tell you that that is not the experience that you're gonna hear if you are talking something about onboarding with my circles and be like what a track i'm not even kidding right it's true it's so horrible right it's something that we're working on but that's not what we hear with responsibid not we hear smoothly everything runs we actually we actually just got we don't get very many bad reviews we did just get a bad review and it was an interesting one um he said in the review and it was and it was a very well thought out google review you can go read it on our google he said if you don't absolutely love the product they will keep trying to get you to cancel and he goes on and on about how i wish they would have just stopped trying to make me cancel well he kept asking us to do stuff i guess with software that it wasn't really designed to do and and one of the things that we are really passionate about is we want you to have an amazing experience and so our support reps are trained to say you know what like if at any point you feel like you're not getting your roi or this isn't the way you want to go like we don't want you like we have to earn your money every month like we want to like we want to have a 10 to one roi and we want to be able to produce that for everyone and so i guess the the trainer like they would meet regularly and the trainer would say if you want your money back i'm happy to do that i really i feel bad that i'm telling you we can't do the thing you're trying to do that's not the kind of software we are and all of that and the review was a two star review and it really hurt my feelings because i'm personal like that and i'm you know like oh man but the more i read it the more i was like you know what it's it's me it's the extension of who i am and what my people are trying to do that he actually says at the end i'm i've invested so much time and energy i am going to make this work i'm not going anywhere and i'm like so i'm like you know what i'm glad you're telling you but but honestly our approach to a fault obviously to a fault is uh you know we just don't want to be pretending to be someone that we're not and um and i think that's that's important i think for you know i've been in business for many years and you know these two different businesses uh i guess i'm going on probably like what 15 years of no i guess 20 years of entrepreneurship and uh i feel like one of the things i've learned the most is that your business is an extension of who you are if you don't like going to work it is your fault and that's a crazy thing to like most people can't say that most people who work for the man like if they if you don't like where you work work harder shut up they'll work you know out of sight of other people do whatever you got to do to make it work but like we get to like change our environment i we literally get to change our customers we could say i fire you as a customer because of x y or z it's not worth not enjoying my job so it's sometimes harder to practice than to preach but it's it is the truth of it well totally that's my favorite thing about having my own businesses is i can do it the way i want to do it even if you don't think it's smart doesn't matter i get to do it my way i get to do what i how i want to do it i i know i know somebody i was just having this conversation with somebody else that was he was irritated because a friend of his is not making as much money as he thinks she could make he thinks she should be making a lot more money and he's willing to help her and invest and do all the things to help her make a lot more money but she just wants to do it her way she's not her her focus is not on making more money her focus is on doing things the way she wants to do them that's where she's finding her value so you know what are you going to say to that person like that's like oh you just want to live a great life well you don't have to have money all day every day yeah but you won't have enough money you know money's not going to be end all forever yeah one of our company values is that we don't we don't live to work we work to live and um that that's really twofold like one is i don't just i i don't obsess over work because it's the only thing in my life i want to be a well-rounded human individual yeah but i need to be compensated in a way that i can live life the way i need to that's the one part of it the other part is is that i work to live i am expressing myself in the work i do and so it's sort of a play and i mean obviously that's why there's sentences afterward in our company values so that people can all catch the drift but i want my people to live while they're at work and then of course we have to figure out the economics of it which is you know for some people they need to have a lot of economics in order to do the expensive things they like to do to live and then other people uh like me i can get on my tractor and 12 hours will disappear like that and all i've had the time of my life digging a hole like that's all i need during in the hole more properly bigger pieces of land so we can make bigger holes we don't need any more holes you just have to find somebody whose passion is filling in holes so i think we're all kind of of the the same mindset right that you you if you're an entrepreneur you need to be able to do things your way so that you can enjoy your life but i do still want to say that find a way to like like the way that it should be done so my husband had to go on a diet one time to show you'll be able to appreciate this right he had to go on a diet and his doctor gave him this huge list of things that he could eat and tim asked him so like like what about all the other foods like the other foods that i normally like no you're gonna learn to like this food because this is the list that you can eat off of and i think that that's true if you're gonna lose the weight you gotta learn to like what's on the list so if you're gonna use response a bit same thing do it this way this is the smart way this is what works you guys have the proof you have the data that says listen if you do it our way then you're going to have what'd you say 10 to 1 ROI 10 1 minimum 10 to 1 ROI minimum 10 to 1 ROI but the minute people are going off script my guess is that ROI goes down because the reason why you have it set the way you have it is because this is how you're getting the max ROI would that be accurate yeah and we do i mean i should point out it's very customizable we can usually match up what someone does and then sort of output it in a way that's more presentable and help with all that but yeah you're right you're right like it's a it's a fine line we want to take all the things you're doing that work and like bring that in to the customized side of it yeah and we want to take all the best practices and sort of output those yeah take what you want to do how you want to do it and bring it into the system that you know works and do it the best way possible you know made central also is in the same exact boat you know it runs a certain way and if you use it this way you'll make a ton of money now if you modify it yeah will it still work absolutely and there are some modifications that will work great but you still have to get it the way it's intended to you know you don't you don't buy a uh oh what's that machine that's with uh the exercise machine with the big polies do you guys know what i'm talking about are you talking about like the fly the fly machine yeah there's like a machine it does all of these different things you don't buy that machine and then the only reason i'm really saying this is because i have seen so many people use your program and have massive success and sometimes what holds people back is they're like yeah but it doesn't work my way get over yourself right do what you want in some other places get on the program i just i really want to push that everybody that uses the program has excellent success and you can do it your way so you see here i posted in the notes it's responsive arie sp on si like responsibility and then on the end i saw somebody putting response of it a while back so responsibility yeah that's not yeah response a bit dot com and um that's it do you have any last words for the audience here we're top of the hour we're actually a little bit late i think i think i've talked so much that my final words are this thank you for joining us thanks for sticking around um it was super fun chatting with you liz and trisha you guys are awesome thanks for your missland award in the background what'd you say my fine work award no you gotta be a dunder missland like that's it it's a real paper i have my fine work award though that's my dundee okay did you get a from responsive fit no i just get people just bring me gifts all the time of like all the office stuff oh my gosh because i had a toilet award we had this competition in our office a couple years back for sales and it was it was the award it was trophy of a toilet and it was the funniest thing and we actually ended up playing like the office where each one of us was a character and then like we had failed work all right a little bit a little bit a little bit all right y'all well thank you so much thanks for the curve for coming and joining us thanks trisha for helping out today talk to you soon bye


Training every Monday at two and one of the biggest weeks of our life with a presentation insurance both conference And you knew that I would not forget about you today because every Monday at two I come to you Whether it's on Facebook whether it's on YouTube if I even have the phones, right? I know that every Monday at two you are relying on me to help you be better in this business as an insurance agent focused on growth expansion The woman people up so today is all about the warm-up Arguably arguably the biggest part of the sales presentation. We go through this agent training workbook For the last several weeks. We've been going through some really tight Stuff Teaching you how to warm up prospect so today. I want to kind of dive in a little bit deeper Then just kind of face value Especially when it comes to warming up because the warm-up process is extremely Extremely extremely important a lot of people would say you know what no the fact finding is important No, no, no the clothes is important. No the follow-ups important the referrals all the in stuff I'm here to tell you the warm-up is as important as it gets because what happens is the warm-up It gets it gets everything started down the right path. I believe That prospects do not make decisions and purchase from agents until They trust them like them and see the value so a couple of those are earned early in the warm-up Because the warm-up starts literally as Soon as you pull up Soon as you get out of your car Soon as you start to walk to the door all of it starts immediately so as soon as you pull up You get out of the car One tip is when you pull up to a home don't sit there for a long time you pull up Grab your stuff get out. Don't be rummaging for papers for minutes and minutes and minutes Don't sit in the driveway for 10 minutes.   I love this whether I'm door knocking whether I'm going to show up and I'm waving You know hey as if they know me as if they remember I'm coming and as if hey, I see you so you can't hide So you're waving at the window at the door all that on the way to the door You're showing up.  Hey, it's Cody here for a two o'clock. How are you and we go in you know and generally I want to sit where? Generally, I want to sit if I can I want to sit at the table all this stuff matters It's all psychology. It's all stuff that you need to know to close a prospect down I want to sit at the table because it's more of a business type atmosphere I would say if I had to do a quick comparison and I've read a lot of points in In the in the living room on the couch at the recliner But if I had to say hey, which of you close more deals at at the table at the kitchen table Or in the living room on the couch more at the kitchen room table I probably get a higher closing rate at the kitchen room table. So if I've got a higher closing rate and we can play the Statistics and numbers in our favor as an as a self-person that we want to do that So that's why I want to sit at the table and then for the next five ten minutes. It's all about what? It's all about getting them to like You and trust you and for you guys to get to know each other There's an old mess. There's an old. There's an old I get a lot of times like I don't know what to ask like hey, you have a beautiful home How long you left here? Have you always looked in this area? Did you move from here? You have any kids grandkids? You know how often do you read the horses out back? How have you always looked on a farm? Did you go up on a farm as a kid? Wow, that's amazing picture on the wall, you know, man Did you remodel this place? It looks awesome. Thanks for allowing me in. Hey, rejected glass sweet tea I'm so freaking lovely. Like it is a rocket science. It's just knowing it and then doing it But those it's those agents to the right now. They're saying hey, dude. I don't know what to say I don't know what to ask I'm gonna give you an example of what to do and say don't script it Don't don't say hey, this is all I'm gonna do. This is all I'm ever gonna ask because the warm-up Doesn't need to be scripted. The warm needs to be genuine and for something to feel genuine needs to feel less scripted Now you're gonna learn a lot of this at the 8% nation insurance wealth conference We've added over 40 attendees today We're up over a thousand attendees for the event and you want to be there So what is that what what is that little trick that I use early in the warm-up to decipher? how to warm someone up and that is F O R D The old Ford method is what I like what I like to call it so with the Ford method I'm gonna ask if I don't know what to say. Hey Did your family live around here? How long you guys been married? Wow?  I mean you guys always this happy and excited and so love each other so much You have any do you have any grandkids? How important is family to you guys? Get to know their family. I got you care, you know, and they say we've got we've got four kids Wow, I grew up with three younger sisters. I know all about four kids. That's that's that's rough, isn't it? It's a lot going on. It's a busy time family People love to do what they love talking about their family. The purpose of a warm-up is to get Not only them to like you and trust you but even more important The purpose of the warm-up is to get the prospect used to answering your questions getting to know you and Get them used to talking when they talk more than I do. I make sales. It's my job to ask questions and listen family All right family The oh stands for occupation. That's their work. That's his career. That's their job. Hey, wait, you're retired down. Yeah I'm 72. What would you do for work? Yeah, I drove a you know train.  Did you love it? How long do you do it for? Well, how many do you work for? I think there's there's layers to each one of these you think you know, I don't know what to do I don't know what to say. I'm telling you what to do and say what because when you get occupation There's three four or five questions around occupation if you needed to go there People want to talk about what themselves their family their job Stuff they're passionate about stuff. They love stuff. They're excited about the same way for you guys watching right now You want to talk about yourself and stuff in your life? So do other people and the prospects that you're seeing every single day so Let them talk That's why I love asking open-ended questions when I'm fact-finding because it gets them To tell me what I need to know. So the third one is recreation What do they like to do for fun? Maybe it's horseshoes like my grandfather in Arkansas Maybe it's reading books. Oh great. I love reading books. Okay. What's your favorite book of all time? Everyone's got things that they enjoy doing man. Maybe it's gardening. I don't get it, but some people do Maybe it's maybe it's going on a run every morning. Maybe it's been time with her grandkids Maybe it's crocheting, you know Whatever you do there Whatever it is. Everybody's got stuff that they like that they enjoy. I love playing basketball. I love playing golf I don't have time to play any golf lately, but I love it I would talk about it I'm a big fancy football fan and it fails. You guys probably are too.  They're humans It's your job in the warm-up to relate with them Because they're a fellow human and humans do business with other humans When they like the human that they're going to do business with. Desires F-O-R-D Family Occupation Recreation Desire. Remember the Ford method? I'm not saying somebody some veteran agent told me this one time They're like hey if you were struggling to warm up try this, you know And honestly, there's times where I'll go to it when I'm meeting someone at a networking event or like a you know Hey, what do you do for work?  What do you like to do for fun and What are your desires? dreams Goals your mission your why? Everyone has things that they enjoy differently People love doing different stuff and desires is what Talk about fancy football My mission why I do what I do why we do this stuff and why you guys watch this stuff And why you guys are trying to create wealth in your life and make a hundred grand or make a million bucks or Provide for your family or enjoy your work or love your work or see people or learn how to warm up prospects at the end of the day The warm-up is all about the relationship that you're building with the prospects If I do a poor job in step number one The warm-up the rest of my presentation is going to suffer Because I can't ask them the questions that I want to ask because we're not relating on a personal level and we don't get along Super super well So my challenge to you is just remember you may be a salesperson But they don't know what he buys from anybody Unless they like the process they feel comfortable in what they're doing and they're okay Doing business with that other individual I could walk into the mall and want to buy a pair of jeans if the salesperson is horrible and the experience sucks And I'm getting annoyed that I'm gonna walk out. I'm gonna go buy jeans somewhere else prospects of the exact same way my last Little challenge for you from insurance agent training today is hey remember Everyone wants to do business everyone needs your help everyone needs insurance They will buy with the right time When they relate with the right person they have the relationship and once value finally exceeds price So remember relate with these people on a human level. They are Just like you and you can be great at the warm-up by applying some of these methods these questions these tips Go relate with people go build incredible relationships with people and remember That when you don't know what to do when you don't know what to say when you're having a bad week when you're struggling as an insurance agent But everyone it's great to mentor putting myself proteas is that you're back Everyone do to a car on insurance agent training. Thanks for watching


Think Tech Away. Civil Engagement lives here. Thanks for joining us at Supporting Your Tech. My name is Greg Jackson. I'll be your host today. I'm with Matt Darnell, the owner of Comtel. Thanks for joining us. Good to be here. This is, as a part of your host, I'm going to be helping with the mini-series that we have for going through Networking 101. We're going to be talking about routers today. The first part will be a little bit of the current events, and the second part will be the routers itself. Before the show, you and I were talking about jokes. Did you have a joke? A joke? Yeah. If not, that's okay. What goes oom, oom, oom? A cow walking backward. Awesome. Does that count? That counts. You can tell that one at Thanksgiving Day dinner. I was going to tell you a joke about UDP, but I didn't think you'd get it. Right. You're not sure if I would get it. I might get it or I might not. Nobody knows. That's for all you nerds out there. I got it. I like it. I like it. So this is... I don't want a 10. I give it. No, it's a seven. Well, you know my value. I like that one a lot. Just so you know, folks, this show is to help viewers like you simplify tech and help you feel comfortable about making IT decisions in your business. So let's just start off with current events. And Matt, I know you've got a list of stuff you want to talk about. What's on your mind? Okay.  And I really thought it was a joke. I mean, I spent probably 30 minutes researching it, looking at it. And the company that's selling it, it's called The Boring Company. And I thought, oh, as opposed to the exciting company, but The Boring Company is actually, you know, he's building that tunnel. Was it from LA to San Francisco? He's building an underground train, high-speed train. So did you order your flamethrower? No, I actually saw some flamethrowers on YouTube and there's some pretty crazy stuff out there. Is it stuff crazy? It's supposed to be legal. Apparently, if it's... if the flame goes less than 10 feet, it's not considered like a weapon. I can see how that'd be legal. Right? Hello. Anyway, so go to theboringcompany.com and they sold 20,000 of these flamethrowers. I thought that was pretty interesting. What kind of fuel do they use? Flamethrower fuel. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's like JPA or something. Right, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And in shocking news, Microsoft paid for a study and Edge beat Chrome in a battery test. Yeah, in their own study. When was the last time a company paid for a study and they got a result they didn't like and they published it. Yeah, I guess you're right. Edge does stay compared to Chrome. And I always like to say that Edge is a fabulous browser to download Chrome or Firefox or even Opera. Edge is painful. But you use Edge. That's your primary browser? No. No? It's emergency use only. It's the parachute that I use when Chrome doesn't work. Okay, so you're Chrome first. Yeah. And Edge second? I'd say... What's the difference between Edge and IE? Edge is supposed to be faster. I don't even think IE ships. They just ship with Windows 10 anymore? I thought it did. I don't know if it's... I had to do Chrome, IE, Firefox, Edge. Okay. Oh, really? You go IE? Because a lot of people don't realize that the icons are similar. Yes. Edge icon versus IE icon. They think they're in Internet Explorer but it's Edge. I mean, it's... Microsoft's doing a good job of slip-streaming that. So it starts off with, do you like Microsoft Edge? Would you like to... And then the answer is yes. Would you like to taste this? Exactly. Absolutely. And I kind of go Chrome first then Firefox and Opera then at the very last resort, it is going to be Edge. But I am more and more every day... I mean, when I open Chrome, I have like eight tabs, the sites that I go to all the time. The autoload. These are my startup tabs, right? So it's kind of annoying when I want to go to one tab. And then if I have YouTube in one, I'm watching a tech video like this one here or other places. I mean, if you look at the Task Manager, they're like 500 mega-ramp and there's like 30 processes and they're huge. And then I do the same thing in Firefox and it's a fraction of it. So I literally am switching. It's kind of hard because I have Chrome, I spend a lot of time with that plug-ins and the add-ins and I know just exactly how I want and all my saved passwords are in there in Firefox. It tries to pull them out and do that. But really, it's a goal of mine by the end of the year to queen myself off of Chrome and over to Firefox. It's open source. I really like that. To have that, there are a lot more open, not from open source, but as far as plug-ins and what you're able to do. And the memory utilization is so much less. That's huge. Yeah. Chrome, I think, is still faster. When I open the same pages in Chrome, seven tabs and seven same tabs. It's probably 10%, 20% faster. I don't think real-word you'd be able to find that. But I think as Chrome, I mean, it used to be so fast. That's when I first started using it. This is Windows XP, Windows Vista days, kind of when Chrome first came out. It was just so thin. There was nothing extra. None of this bloatware added in there. It was so lightning fast. But it just happens. It just adds something out. Another feature, another feature of this rendering engine and there's this plug-in and that plug-in. And I just don't see that happening with Firefox. So I'll definitely keep you informed of how that goes. But it's tough. I mean, changing, it's like just hard. It is. You go first. It is, exactly. I absolutely do that. And another interesting thing, I don't know if you saw, but Papua New Guinea, what they want to do is they want to ban Facebook at the country level for a month. Literally, no Facebook coming in. Like checking your cell phone in at the hotel. Exactly. No Facebook in, no Facebook out. And they want to look at productivity of the country. They're so worried that Facebook is taking over the lives as a government. They want to get rid of that. And they want to see how people react.  But it's just interesting how much it's taken over people's lives and they can't do anything without checking in. And Facebook isn't what it used to be.  Yeah, going to high school. He doesn't even have a Facebook account. It's all, it's Insta. And they call it Snap. I have a short name. Those are the two things that they're in. So I think it would be really interesting if they stopped all social media. You know, there is things like Twitter. Governments use that for notifications. Like, you know, I don't think why Governor David E. Gates ever lived down that he didn't know his Twitter password after the false North Street nuclear missile strike. So Twitter, those kind of things, there are definitely, that's a very quick and easy and effective way to get information out. So I don't think they should block everything. But I would, I really want to follow that and see what happens.  Yeah, absolutely. So that will be interesting for sure. And on the techie side, so you know what a dim is. And inside your computer, you've got these little, they call them sticks and ram. They're about this tall, really narrow and about this long. I can clearly remember this was 1996, 2007, if I'm talking to someone, and I heard that Microsoft's, their big mail server had 512 megabytes of RAM. And to me, that just seemed like the most, I mean, why would you ever need more than 512 megabytes of RAM? I mean, that was, because my computer, I had maybe half a mega RAM. And Intel just released one of these dims, single memory slot, with 512 gigabytes of storage in one slot of RAM. It's just, you know, that Moore's law, that, you know, number of transistors is going to double every 18 to 24 months. It just, that's got to stop. I mean, 512 gigabytes of RAM when computers, people used to think 640 kilobytes, you know, so that's about 10, 10 times 10 and it creates a factor of 10. So it's just amazing, you know, where that's going, okay? Now, if I was to ask you, what's the third most visited? Well, let me ask you this. What's the first, the number one, the top site visited worldwide on the internet? What would your guess be? Google. So that's number two. What do you think number one is? Number one? It's owned by Google. And you watched videos there. YouTube. YouTube! Do you want, you got that, right? So that's number one and two. Number three used to be Facebook, but it just got surpassed by Reddit. And if you've been on Reddit, but it's a forum where you can discuss things and there are a lot of things called subreddits where, you know, there's probably a subreddit on our show here. I mean, we have thousands of, you know, both of our followers are in there and you and I are there. And it's a shock to me that that's number three now that such a transition from a Facebook is very media rich and all the memes and the pictures and the videos. And on Reddit, it's text-based. And I think a lot of that goes to mobile and Google kinds of devices. How are the younger people, you know, the people 25 and below, how do they consume information? We're not sitting at a computer. I mean, if I'm sitting at a chair with my computer here and my phone there, even my tablet, I'll reach for my computer. My son is not even a choice. He reaches for his phone. I mean, that's just how he's used to consuming. I remember, I've been saying that a lot today, I remember, I remember when we had, I tried to turn on my first book report, printed on a dot matrix printer. It wasn't typed. It was on a dot matrix printer. It was probably, it was a Commodore 64 printer. It was before Oki data. But in the teacher, I can't read this, you know, because it wasn't very, you know, the dots were really big. But yeah, that's just, people are just used to it. And our generation, the screen, the dual monitors, but they're just used to having that there in their hands. So I think that that's a huge thing. And I feel sorry for, you know, things real media rich kind.  Everything else they get is through Snapchat or through Instagram. They're just short little 10, they don't watch a 10 minute video on something. They'll watch it, you know, somebody getting posterized in the NBA or Steph Curry doing this. There's an interesting kind of turn with how we digest information these days. I think when you look at the younger generation and how they receive information, it doesn't have to be in long segments. It can be in very, very short segments. And, you know, part of me wants to say, you can see part of it, part of that data coming through and be successful in understanding it and digesting it.  So I think there's some advantages to it. But, you know, how people manage that influx of data. So Reddit, I find it very interesting that there's a craving for information rather than entertainment. But then you've got the YouTube at number one slot. So maybe that answers the question. There's a lot more old people than young people. But I mean, pretty few more years, the old people, the young people are going to be the old people. And you know, that's interesting what you just said because you just talked about how they consume information. Okay, school, the way they learn in school is no different than the tools they use. They have computers now instead of textbooks. But you have a 45 minute class and you have six periods a day. That's exactly like, I mean, I had computers, at Kalaheo, there are two computers for the whole school. There are Apple, two EEs down now in the library, right? But there are computers there. And how come education isn't keeping up? Why don't they give them, feed them in little bits and constantly changing and rapidly changing. And the way that they, because they can consume information at a tremendous rate. But we're forcing them to sit down at a desk, read this book, do this assignment. And when we go to the grocery store and I ask my son, okay, let's look at the Diet Coke and look at the Diet Pepsi. Which one's the better deal? The three, four, you know, $7 or buy one, get one free for $10. And he has no patience for that kind of real, real kind of amount. I think that should be one of our show segments. We should do a whole segment on education and how they use technology. I appreciate that, Matt. Thank you. We're going to cut for a short break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about routers. This crazy thing going on today, I was just walking by and all these DJs and producers are set up all around the city. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making me... So we'll do it. All right, welcome back. We've got Matt Darnell from Comptail. My name's Greg Jackson, your host. We are going to talk about routers. And last week we spoke about ISPs. And if you visualize or you have an idea of how that works, information is coming in and out from your internet provider. And it's got to be managed by something. And today we're going to talk about how that information is managed and we're going to talk about routers. So how would you define what a router is, Matt? Yeah. So I think first if we can kind of show where someone can look at a router. So what I'll be drawing here is there's... In a small business there's two main types. What I'm going to have in this cloud is my internet provider and that's going to come into my house. Now it might be fiber, it might be it might be coax, but that's going to go into a box. And this box is owned by your provider. And what's that box called? Yeah. So depending on what it does. Is that a spell provider? I don't know. There's no spell check. That's good. That's a small O. Exactly. It's a small O provider. And provider C. And so with that this box here usually is also your router. Right. And that can be. So coming out of here, I'm going to have my devices. This might be my computer here. It might be my printer. And those type things can plug right in and have that. Sometimes my phone too, right? I got a phone at the house. Absolutely. So I can have a phone if you have a phone for those kind of things. So sometimes that router can be in there. And what that does is it lets good traffic go out and keeps the bad traffic from coming back in at a basic sense. So that's what my router is doing. What's the advantage of having a router? I mean you've got one, the information is flowing. Yeah, absolutely. So with the router, what that allows you to do is control a variety of things. The router it will allow me, so let's say like a very common application. Very few times, a lot of times the router you don't have to touch. You leave that here. But if I have a camera assistant, let's say I have a camera. And that's coming out of a camera system right there. And I'm over here in the world and I want to view it from my mobile phone. Right? How do I let my mobile phone here go through the internet into my router and over to my camera? Right? I've got to allow that to happen.  Okay? From the outside world. So it's kind of it's a barrier between inside of my network. Trust all my equipment. I trust everything. And the big bad world. Think of it as a front door to your house. It's a barrier there. Not saying people can't break through. As you know that there's that issue we have the FBI wants everyone to re-reboot their routers just because they might have been affected. But for the normal person, it's that front door it's that barrier. I can let in who I want to let in. But it's going to keep just the average person from coming into my house. So I've worked with some businesses they've got an ISP coming in. They got the provider that you were drawing. They give it to me for free but I don't have enough ports on it. Some of the things that I talked to some of my customers about are Wi-Fi not enough ports. The term firewall comes up. How does router fit into all that? So do I just use theirs? Do I buy something? I'd say in most of the small business that we work with what they give you is not enough is not good enough for that. There's not enough ports in it for all my devices and you don't have that control that a business needs. They're really the ones that they give you for free. Again, you're getting exactly what you paid for. It's just very basic access. It's the tricycle. I don't get you there. I won't get you there very fast but it will get you there. So we generally recommend to people that you don't use what the company gives you for the router as their starter kit. And you want to buy the external router for that. You have a favorite brand? I think it's more based on what you want to do. I think brands of routers in most cases kind of like cars. Or Honda versus Toyota those types. People have a favorite. But I think functionality wise they kind of come into two different layers.   What should a small business owner expect to pay for say a router? I would think the two levels for just a router that might have some Wi-Fi built into it and maybe four ports. I think between $100 and $200 is... It's a commercial grade. Well I wouldn't call it commercial grade. It's commercial but it's probably the home level version of that. And that is going to do those things. It's going to let you view your cameras from your mobile phone. It's going to keep the bad guys out. It's going to give you secure Wi-Fi. But what it's not going to do is that next level of doing things like when you are going out to the website. It's not going to look at every single website you go to. Like packet sniffing or something like that. UTM is one of those things that you could use to... That's some of the things that we've pitched to some of our customers. Yeah, so the unified threat management it can be built into the router. It can be things like your computer has antivirus and has spam built it right. But it's got to come through the router first. So the router before it even hits your computer, before your computer can even think about opening that email the firewall can stop it there. But the LinkSys or a Netgear from Costco will or will not do that? Will not do that. Yeah, so that $100 it's going to do routing it's going to do basic firewalling type of functionality. But it's not going to do that deep level looking at what it's like watching the movie versus reading the book. The book has got so much more detail and describes things a lot more. It goes by a lot. Deep packet inspection, unified threat management. It's looking at the context of what you're doing at the router. If you're trying to go to a website that's trying to give you a virus, again it doesn't get to your computer and your antivirus on your computer says whoa, you got a virus it stops that at the router. So that but now we're talking about $600 or $700 for that kind of a router. If you're a company I mean that doesn't seem like a bad investment. I mean you're willing to dump a $600 into your home. Why not $600 into your business, right? I mean you're dealing with people's financial information PCs make sense? Absolutely, and we definitely recommend that for every user and it's something we're going to talk about later as backup but it's like I read somewhere that 98% of all backup hardware software is bought after someone loses data. That's worth it. There's a value with that and that makes sense. So I think the same with the UTM so it's your blocking, it's your antivirus before that even to the point where and it's getting harder though because now a lot of people have their mail in the cloud and so it's trying to intercept those streams that are encrypted so you really want to have the next layer of security which I think is all, I mean if you're more than three or four people, especially if you're dealing with credit cards I've heard people saying that they embed malware in pictures and you download a picture and it's got bad code in it and make sure your computer do bad things. I guess the UTM would pick up something like that? Yeah, absolutely and there is an ongoing cost because as you can imagine the threats are constantly changing. Like a subscription base. So the threats are constantly changing so there's someone out in the world that just like your antivirus software you have a subscription for that because you want to keep updated with the latest viruses and the signature so you know when you have one. We're the bad websites. When you try to go to a website that's known to provide malware sometimes Chrome will tell you hey you don't want to go there based on what you're doing but before you even get that far it won't even let Chrome get there because as soon as you say I want to go there nope, I'm not going to let you go there because you have that and then with that you can have more policy based kinds of things where if you wanted to okay know YouTube from 8 to 5 except these two computers you're able to do those kind because it knows more about what you're doing rather than just letting people go there a lot smarter today. I mean even my Netgear has an app on it that I can remotely manage it I mean when you and I started working with some of the customers now we use cloud managed devices talk a little bit about that. Yeah so how you manage those can be directly onto the device you plug into it and you do a screen the kind of stuff we work with now you plug the device in it checks in with the cloud so then what you do is you program this website in the cloud down all the program. I was really happy with the performance. Yeah so as soon as so no matter where you are you're able to go to this always accessible cloud site and make a change so if we want to make a change to every one of our customers in 30 seconds we can do that. We just go there we say execute and it's going to push that out to all of the folks that we want so it's a very very easy way and it allows you know people to you're able to monitor yourself you know what's happening with those. So when you think about the small business and you think about how much a small business let's just say you have an office of you have a small business and it's got 10 to 20 people it's 6 to 700 bucks still going to cover it and then maybe you know service fee for keeping it going. Yeah I would think you'd probably want to budget maybe $1500 okay the first year you know buy the device. This is not an EYI I mean you want to get somebody you trust to install it right? I would think so. And it's people say well what's your most important asset you know it's not your people it's not your money it's your information you know I mean and what they say is oh I can always get more people I can go borrow some more money but if we lost all of our information somebody stole it or if we lost credibility like Zippy's just had a data loss where people got in somehow and took all credit card information from there so keeping those bad people out so I mean people are critical cash flow is critical but without information you know if your information is I mean from ransomware where someone gets in and they encrypt all they encrypt all of your files and you have to go through that so it's really it's almost like marketing you know people say I can't afford it but can you afford not to exactly so it's just got to be a line item security is so important in today's connected world that's also security on on because somebody think oh I've got antivirus I've got that but what happens when somebody brings their laptop from home and it's just riddled with viruses they plug it in and they start trying to attack things so it's the internal vectors the sideways vectors all these attack vectors coming at you and that that helps a lot that was really helpful I appreciate it Matt thank you thank you so I'd like to thank you for being on the show thanks for letting me be host this time pretty great job thank you for every of all our viewers thanks for joining us supporting your tech and we will see you in a couple weeks


Hello and welcome to NewsClip. The opposition alliance led by the ADMK has faltered down. The Patali Makhalkarchi, a very strong party in the northern part of Tamil Nadu, have walked out of the ADMK alliance. The BJP is also marked by different issues within the party and from outside. To discuss more in detail, we have with us Mr. R.K. Radhakrishnan, senior journalist and political analyst. Welcome sir. Sir, talking about the opposition in the assembly, do you think that the ADMK was good enough in the assembly session or they fell short of their expectations? I think the current ADMK is being controlled by the BJP. That's BJP in Delhi, not the local BJP but the BJP in Delhi. So what we see is that though the ADMK wants to support and did finally support the state government on the new resolution, it staged a walkout and said all kinds of things which is unnecessary to be said at that point of time. We again saw the same kind of approach when it came to the Citizenship Amendment will where again the government passed the resolution condemning the centre and also condemning the new form laws which have been implemented. What we see is the ADMK which is much more keener on pleasing the BJP than catering to its constituents and keeping the constituency happy. I think that is because of the pressures that is on them and we already have seen some 4-5 former ministers being raided. Even all those circumstances what we see is a disjointed action by the ADMK in the assembly and they did not raise a lot of questions which needed to be raised. They were trying to score political points and even individual MLAs were trying to score political points trying to raise issues. You didn't do something earlier. You said you promised this and you did this and all of that. It was very easy to point out mistakes that happened in the past and holding the government to account. But remember this is only the first session of the assembly. The government when the assembly started was just over a month or month and a half into power and in that particular session it is impossible to hold a government to account for anything because they have just come into power and anything that has gone wrong was because of the previous government. We didn't have a kind of say through 2D shooting or any other law and order issue or whatnot or a terrorist attack or whatnot to hold the government accountable. Given that context I am very sure that what the ADMK could have done is to actually nudge the government in a particular direction which it failed to do during the session. I think that is the saddest part of this ADMK. It had a chance not to be confrontational and at the same time get some of its agenda approved and the ADMK simply failed to grab that chance. Second question is about the coordination within the opposition in the assembly. Recently the PMK has also walked out of the ADMK alliance but even before that we can see we saw that there was no coordination between the ADMK, PMK or even with the BJP. What is your opinion on this discontent among the parties? I don't think there can be any coordination between these three parties because the three are pulling in different directions. The ADMK in substantive issues like CAA or whatever the central government is interested in will definitely take the BJP line. In that way it is a practically a BJP party. But in other issues which are of importance to the state or when one of their leaders is subjected to a raid or whatever they take it is a completely different stand. Now the state BJP is hamstrung because going along with the protesting against some of the raids that happened on the ministers will mean that the BJP also is supporting the wrongdoings of the ADMK ministers and the state BJP itself knows what happened during that period. You should remember that between just end of December, 29th of December and 14th of February, I think just before the announcement was made more than 64 crores was spent just on advertising across the media by the ADMK government. There are hundreds and thousands of these examples which show improper impropriety if not wrongdoing. There is nothing wrong in spending for advertisements. But the point is that this amount of money has never been spent before by any government including a gelata government so close to an election with an eye to influencing the election. I think that is what is extremely wrong about what happened in the recent past. So you look at each one of these instances the BJP is actually in a blind spot I mean is completely in a rigid place between a rock and a hard place trying to figure out how to negotiate this particular path because it does not want to be identified as a corrupt political party. It does not want to be seen as supporting a corrupt political party or for political individuals. Now it cannot do without the support of the ADMK and even for the local body elections they have tied up with the ADMK. PMK is a completely different problem. If it wants to go ahead and be relevant today one number one it has to implement get the 10.5% reservation for one year implemented which is which Tallinn has already done and of course the second thing obviously is that it has to prove that it is still a viable political entity in the state. For both these reasons it cannot be with the ADMK one to get anything I mean you can have the 10.5% approved but then under the rules and regulations are framed on top of the act it is impossible I mean you cannot get the act implemented at all. Now for that you need the ADMK sorry the DMK government which is in power now to get it done and that so that it has to support the ADMK government I mean DMK government at right now and that is why they didn't work out during the CAA protests. At the same time if they do not go it alone in this particular election the local body elections it will seem as if you know the PMK is nothing without the support of the ADMK because already we have seen in the previous 2021 assembly elections that the PMK is lost ground and only five of its people won out of the 23. So what we see now is the PMK one trying to protect itself as a political party and trying to you know play both sides when it comes to the question of its own survival. So it wants the ADMK because the BJP is in it it wants to help out the DMK or be supportive of the DMK because the DMK is in power it is playing the game both ways and I don't I'm not sure how long that will last and where the where it will take the party. So it is a force of circumstances that all the three can are unable to that is the DMK sorry ADMK BJP and the PMK are unable to work with work with one another. Talking about the BJP it's an as you said it's in a tight spot or in the hard spot but we all know that when Mr Annamalai was appointed as the president of the state unit there were a lot of dissenting voices from the senior leadership as well and with the current scenario with the videos of senior leaders coming out even perpetually with the approval of the state president what do you think is the condition of the BJP because it when four members of its four members were elected to the assembly they were all celebrated but all those things seems to have died down now. Yeah right now the situation in the BJP is that there is a Brahmin-Brahmin fight going on and there's a Brahmin-OBC fight going on the Brahmin-Brahmin fight has led to some of the Brahmins being you know either thrown out of the state or have had to take a vaccine Raghavan was a KT Raghavan was a victim of that particular fight and then we say Ilaganation being moved as a governor of another state so I think effectively that lobby has declined so to speak now it is the OBC lobby which is trying to gain the upper hand and I think to a large extent they've been able to gain the upper hand as well now the next question is that you know there are fights within the OBC community itself within the BJP and of course there is also Ilmurugan who belongs to the schedule cast so that fight will start now and the way anomaly approach of issues also is not particularly liked by many of the senior leadership with the party so they have to figure out a way to you know swallow their pride and listen to what anomaly says because it is impossible to replace Annamalai he's BL Santoshas and Amish Shaspik so he's not going anyway they're going to persist with him despite the fact that he has the propensity to say a lot of things which are not really in the realm of truth or has any particular relevance to the state of Tamil Nadu but I think they will have to accept the fact and work with him there is no other way out and the BJP is a very very long way to go before you know it becomes a substantive political party in Tamil Nadu itself. Thank you so for joining us. Thank you so much. That's all we have time now. Thank you for watching Newscript.


There's a number of different mechanisms that you can use to add things to your SPF record. The most commonly used ones are the ones that I have listed here. So the IPv4 mechanism would allow you to specify a single IP address or one of those CIDR ranges. The A mechanism performs a DNS lookup for the A record for that domain, which is essentially your website. So if you're using your website to send email, like maybe you have a web form and it sends email directly from your web server and not through another service, then the A mechanism is the easiest way to include that. MX would be added if you are sending email from the incoming mail servers for your domain. In your case on Office 365, that would never be the case, so we shouldn't have to worry about that. And the include mechanism allows us to include a DNS lookup for anywhere else on the internet. So for example, those other sources that we were talking about like CRM or mailing services, we would always get an include from those services to add to our SPF record.