Welcome, thanks so much to all of you for joining us today for another episode of the nonprofit show.  And just like yesterday today's guest actually comes to us from one of our sponsors bloom ring so thanks so much for for connecting us to today's guest and thanks to all of you for elevating the conversations around our globe as we move into the recovery phase. Thanks to Julia Patrick for having this crazy idea I shouldn't say crazy having this grandiose idea. I'm just saying let's do this for two weeks and see what happens and as you all know we are we are coming up on our 300th episode so so glad to be here. I'm Jarrett ransom, the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group and yesterday we talked about mascots today we're talking about something even like cooler or equally cooler. And as we discussed do come to us from bloom ring so thank you so much Steven Shaddock, and welcome, Sarah Olivia are we're so glad to have you join us today, and yeah, welcome. Well, thank you so much for having me here and thank you blue marine for sending you my name I always love the content that Steven gets. So I'm sure this is going to be a fantastic show. It's really cool to have you on and I think that it's really important, especially as we do move towards this recovery, and from so many pandemics, not just the health pandemic social justice, natural, you know the natural environment and the economic situations that our nonprofits have been enduring. So this is really a masterful thing for you to share with us how we can be looking at some of our strategies, and not just as I look at your fire buckets running to the fire with the little bucket of water.  Take a deep breath, and then look at the bigger picture. And so am I putting too much pressure on you. No, no, we got this covered. But what is the impact method, because we need impact. Yeah, I mean, we're all making an impact right that's why all of us nonprofits around here and I created the impact method before the Coronavirus because the crisis that nonprofits are in actually was already happening to a massive extent. But a lot of nonprofits didn't really see it. They were like, we're fine, we're fine and I was going around being like, you're on a sinking ship and then COVID hit and they're like, Oh my God, we're on a sinking ship. And I'm like, I know, here's the lifesaver. So and a lot of this if anybody's heard Dan Pilata's Ted talk, he sums it up really well. And there's so much like nitty gritty that I kind of found myself getting into right we don't we're always the executive directors the leaders are always feeling overwhelmed right. And I really believe that feeling great and having your job feel okay and actually fun and a little bit easy maybe it goes hand in hand with making a bigger impact and running your nonprofit really well. And I just kept saying to myself there's got to be a better way. There's just got to be a better way I have been an executive director I've been a program director a conference coordinator. I've been the first executive director of a foundation. So I've seen a few things and all that experience when I started working with nonprofits and marketing I was like this is, this is not good and when I started to realize that the large nonprofits had the same problems as the small nonprofits this wasn't just a we're small we're new we don't have a lot of money issue, because the we were a $10 million $15 million operation has the same issues. Yeah, and so I created the impact method I had learned so many things from the for profit industry about how to run businesses better. But what I knew about my nonprofit colleagues was that they were so overwhelmed that unless it was packaged up so it was super easy to learn and implement, they weren't going to do it. They can't read I know there's some if they're any fans of scaling up or the. What's the other name for scaling up the Rockefeller tendencies or practices something like that. It's like a list of tools, but they leave you to put the tools together. And I like that no nonprofits going to do that. They're too busy, putting out those fires too fast. So the impact method is both a list of a set of tools, and it's like a recipe and the method the process for using those tools together and I spent a lot of time figuring out how do we kill as many birds with one stone so that every action we take has the biggest impact. And we'll go in a little later about like what the three pieces of the impact method are and how we really get to that because I think we've got that plans for that. I love it and part of one of the things that you talked about is focusing in on the issues. And that can be really hard talk to us about that. Well, this actually so I said there are three pieces of the impact method and one piece is an organization has to have a process of improvement. You have to have a way of always getting better. And there's three levels at which you have to be good at tackling issues because there's lots of kinds of issues that pop up. And the amazing thing about getting good at finding issues like being really proactive about finding those issues is when you find an issue early, it's usually can be turned into an opportunity. When you wait on an issue for it to come up and whack you in the face. It's never it's never an opportunity emergency emergency. It's a fire. You're like, Oh my God, but that same issue could have been an opportunity. A few weeks or a few months ago, and it is possible to find them so issues could look like roadblocks like we're on our way and this thing came up and now we don't know what to do. It could be tactical they could be our your approach to doing something could be like, ah, we just, you know, wrong approach, or issues can be strategic right we you've got, you need to set a goal that you didn't have before, or you had set a goal that was just, it seemed great at the time, but two months down the road. It's not so good anymore. So, so much about a process of improvement is not just having a way to tackle issues, but a way to find those issues as soon as possible, because you go looking for them. And then truly then right like use them as an opportunity use them to, I've been using the word ideate lately you know like let's ideate some of these possibilities. And, and for those of you that may not be familiar with that term it's kind of brainstorming you know everything goes on the table everything goes on the flip chart. And then we get to parse out later, if it's a yay or an eight or even if it's like a right now or not right now. Yeah, I love that I like to think about very similar word dialogue right you have to get in a room with people who have information about the issue at hand, and you got to talk it out and understand, you know half the battle is just understanding what the real issue is getting to the bottom of the issue. I had a client recently who was saying, we've got some DEI issue and my employee left, and because they were all uncomfortable and a board members all sensitive. And so I started probing in the real issue was how they addressed issues, because they attempted to address this issue without the executive director in an email thread. And so I said the issue is, you need everybody in your organization to know that when there's an issue you have a meeting, you know, in person or face to face over zoom, you have to dialogue about it and you can't dialogue in an email thread. This isn't really a diversity equity and inclusion issue. This is a team communication issue in your approach to it. And that's actually an easy a lot easier issue to solve. You know, that leads me into then having you talked about understanding efficiencies, because that's a prime example, you know, thinking that one tool is going to be the the Yeah, the tool and so this is a really interesting part of this discussion. Yeah, you know, I think I love efficiency like I used to always want to say I want to make nonprofits effective and efficient. It just didn't sound really sexy to anybody they all want to like to make an impact. But I get excited. I think that's totally sexy. So you're clearly my people and one of the ways we do this is by assuming they're going to be issues and going after them and looking for to create systems and processes that create efficiencies and, you know, if anybody's hearing the word systems and processes and going, Oh, we don't want those. You've been experienced a bad system or process a good system of process should bring peace of mind. It should lighten your load. It should make everything better, more consistent right. There are plenty of bad processes out there for sure. But in the impact method I focused a lot on efficiencies right because I had to do a lot of work really well, really fast. And one of the ways is by doing all three pieces of the impact method at once which are so we talked about a process of action. You have to have a truly actionable strategy we can go into that but you have to have both. You have to know your big goals and you have to have that tied down to like what are you doing today so you're not completely overwhelmed. You have the biggest goals on the planet. Be hags, you know, go hang out over there, because the nonprofit world of be hags is like beyond be hags I call them. And just for those that are like what the heck is a be had that sounds horrible. The big Harry audacious goal. Yeah, that's a that's a Jim Collins one right I think. Yeah, so beyond big Harry audacious goal I call the mission impossible so the overwhelm is going to be real if we're doing our jobs right unless we have a way to tackle the day to day and the third thing we need is a great. MMO your modus operandi, your way of being it's who your organization is right that has to do with your mission, and how you tie yourself together cult with culture or beliefs have we call it the heart of the brand and the impact method. Again I'm always refining I'm like how can we take this set of tools about self identification and tackle them in the best order with the bed though you know the least number of tools that we needed to get the job done and it's also how your team is structured how your leadership is structured how your people work together, and that is the number one area where nonprofits I see are inefficient. Always say money's our biggest problem, and every nonprofit I look at it's always how their organ their mo is usually where they have the most efficiency to pull out. I love that okay. No, yeah. I'm like I'm like stuttering just a little bit, because I don't know if we've ever had a guest actually say that. No, and I love that you did. I just like truth bomb right like it's not that we need. Yes we need more money we could always do with you know with more money, but there's so much more to that right and you just, you just said it so awesome. I'm like, Oh wow okay that is like up your jaw right now I know. I'm like, I gotta get to this next slide and I'm still just like stunned at the previous slide so put this into the framework and talk to us about that because what you said is a total mindset shift. Yeah, so many ways. What is the framework then. So I'll talk about the framework and I'll say if you're listening going but we need we need we need more money we just need to fix the money problem is that this is this framework is all about the foundation and most I rarely meet a nonprofit that just some nonprofits do they've got their great and they just need a little fundraising training and they're good but most organizations who are really struggling with money problems. They have a foundation issue and as soon as they fix the foundation, the money just starts coming in. You know, my clients can be all the time and I say, I'm not specifically addressing fundraising but time and time again I run this year long coaching program where clients learn the impact method they implement it and we do a full year of coaching. Usually around month six money just starts coming in like doubling at a client like she reached out to a community foundation that was super competitive during the middle of coven and not only did she get this really competitive grant but they gave her twice which she asked for, like, why, why, because, and this was someone who was like a one person organization that was about to fall apart six months before, because they had their act together internally and they knew how to present it externally as well when you have your act together internally it just starts to show right you don't even have to be that amazing at presenting yourself. So the three pieces to the framework are having a process of improvement and actionable strategy and a modus operandi. So I'll tell you about the pieces of each. So what is a process of improvement look like on the ground. It's literally meetings. It's that we follow there are three types of meetings and the impact method one that happens every two months so we put it in the calendar that's the really hard part, you got to put that meeting in the calendar. Every two months we call it a cycle a 60 day cycle, and that's our strategic cycle. So every two months we're actually building out the strategy, the strategic plan we call it an impact strategy and we actually write it out like a mind map. So what I learned building strategies is that the way you write it and the way you review it. We need different views to access the information and if you write it out in a big fancy like PDF or a long document. You can't take all the information in at a glance but if you write it as a mind map with everything radiating out from the mission. So brains can take that information in really quickly, and you can't have mission creep if you have to physically draw the line about how one thing is affecting the other. And eliminates this conversation of who likes it or whether or not it's a good idea. We only want it we want to be focused on driving that mission forward. Every two months we have a meeting. It has the same agenda every time, and it's designed to pull out strategic issues and move ourselves a little farther into the future. I'm a huge believer that it different goals have their own natural timelines, some goals have really short timelines, some have really long timelines like if you replaced your roof on your building with a 30 year roof. We've got that goal right now to be changing that roof in 30 years, but you might have a goal that, you know, should be completed in a month or two so we're doing an iterative planning and we're getting rid of that whole strategic planning cycle. One thing that happens here that's a big shift that's needed is shifting the ownership of strategic planning from the board into the hands of the executive director and the staff who are all feeding information in it. Love it. Now, I wanted to ask when you meet, you know, this, this cycle, who's meeting who's who's in this conversation who's in the dialogue. Great question. It kind of depends. My goal is to get organizations to the point where at least all of the leadership staff, if not all of the staff are able to participate. And so it depends on the size of the organization. So it's hard to have deep dialogue with more than seven people in the room. A team can get really good at it and maybe have a dozen people dialoguing once they've gotten really comfortable with it. If the organization is much bigger than that, then you can kind of have smaller dialogues repeat the process in a few different lower levels and then that information is feeding up. I say up but I don't, we don't part of the MO piece is we don't organize in hierarchies of who's in charge of who really encourage nonprofits to organize in terms of what are the core functions that need to be attended to. What are the outcomes that make that function work. Who's going to own those outcomes, not tasks, and some outcomes some kind of functions naturally affect a whole bunch of other functions so usually build it sideways and to the right or left you know so an executive is making decisions around, you know, probably big vision and direction and, and that's probably going to affect everybody when they make them. You might have someone who's making programmatic decisions like this program's working this program's not we need to change this program we need to change this program that those decisions aren't going to affect everything else, whoever's making decisions around money. It's going to affect a lot of people so that there's just this natural effect effect, I guess, decisions in place so yeah. Yeah, we don't have a lot of time left which is like, shocking because we have. I'm so intrigued with so many things that you've said to Julia, right. I know, I know because I think I just knocked over my whole computer here. I think that I'm going to be asking questions or formulating questions, you know, all day for you after this show. One of the things I'd love to get into is talking about the investment of time and money, and all of this because one of the things that I think, and again I'm so drawn to your comments. We've been in this burning building mentality, and to pull back and say, we're going to take a deep breath. We're going to think about this, and we might be really uncomfortable and we might have to embrace fear, but we're going to do things differently. Yeah, how on earth. Do you do that when so many organizations are used to the board event is Eric Ryan what it was talk about that one. Okay, we're going to work hard for a weekend and then we're going to be good. Doesn't quite work though does it. Shock. Yeah. So you got to invest, you have to invest time and money. A lot of nonprofits are afraid to invest time and money, especially money, then they end up actually wasting more money than they would have if they just spent the money in the first place. So what is a big topic, but I'll give people like a few, a few nuggets. First of all, one way to start getting out of this problem is to start thinking of your expenses into in two categories, income generating expenses, and your actual expenses. And I can tell you that the only fleshing money down the toilet expenses that there really are are like payroll taxes, insurance, and that's basically any money that is going into Oh, and then there's a third category of impact generating expenses. So those are the ones that are helping you make your mission come true. Those are super important.  These are all income generating expenses and just sometimes by changing the way we call things like who wants to cut an income generating expense. That doesn't sound so good. Right, because that's what's generating the income. So we want to actually spend more on income generating expenses. One big area where organizations waste a lot of money is keeping bad fit employees. That's one way to dump a lot of money down the toilet. It's hard though to know what to do and you don't really have a clear sense of who you are as an organization and what a good fit employee is. And if I want to be really bold, as much as I want your board not to be dysfunctional because that draws everything to a halt. I don't think it makes sense to spend a lot of money on board development beyond preventing them from mucking things up, because most of the work of the organization happens in the people who are doing the day to day work. And that's where you really need to invest the money. And the board needs to be watching and saying, Okay, everything makes sense to us logically and pulling the emergency break if it doesn't. But they're not the ones doing the day to day work. And so they've got diminishing returns on what you might invest at the board level. I feel like you need a toilet behind you to like a little node sitting next to your bucket. I was looking I was like, Is it there and maybe I'm just not finding Waldo a toilet seat back there. Oh my God. Well really interesting. I would love to talk about the aspect of institutional change. So the timing of this. If we're looking at really shaking things up and getting a new vocabulary and new structure, the framework that can be really uncomfortable. How do we help navigate our team during that time that's fraught with, you know, I want to say almost use fear or maybe lack of confidence is a better way. Yeah. So, you know, there's a number of takes on institutional change I even have managing transitions it's down there you probably can't see a famous book on change. I think one of the best things we can do is, if we get get those results fast. If you dip your toe into the world of coaches they're always talking about get your clients a big win right away. Right. And it's the same for your team. If your team start getting a result that they want fast, they're gonna be like okay I'm in for more. I had an executive director who she was a full time nurse and running her nonprofit and between the two she worked seven days a week, and like eight weeks into doing the impact method she got a whole day back just to herself. So she was in right she's like okay I have a day to like go out in the garden or like right like I'm seeing that truly is positive reinforcement. Yeah, you've got to see some results right away is one thing. You know, and I think some some teams do run into I think I like to work on their MO first and specifically the heart of the brand because if you don't really know who you are as an organization as though your organization was a person if you don't know what you stand for, then you can't figure out who on your team is aligned with you, because you could have a bunch of people who are not aligned. And if they're not aligned, no matter what you try to change they're going to be uncomfortable because they're really already uncomfortable So I get that right I totally drinking the Kool-Aid on that. I would foresee honestly Sarah some organizations say no no no we know who we are we don't need to spend time there we certainly don't need to spend money there we need to go to this step first so what do you say to those people. I say let's let's do a double check. We can do a double check in an hour and a half.  But I put money on that if you're having money problems or people problems or any kind of problems chances of you not having it as much as you thought. But you know to spend a couple hundred bucks and to just do a double check. That's what I would say we're just going to we're just going to check and make sure and I like to draw people this picture of how a nonprofit works it's like a little diagram they draw. And I show them with arrows and circles how your understanding who you are is literally this linchpin that if you have that right it affects your fundraising it affects your programming. It affects your team and it affects your systems and processes it affects whether or not you have the right board and whether or not you get grants. So it's worth checking because if it's wrong, nothing else is going to work that well. Wow. Well you have been great I mean you've totally shaken up some processes and thoughts that I've kind of fallen into and and just held this is truisms. Here's Sarah's information check her out. She's got a great website, and I love your energy. I think that it's a wonderful thing to have this outside voice that can come in and kind of help us through again going back to your fire buckets. You know, getting us outside of that immediate problem that is in such a swirl that we can't pivot that we can't look for new things. And so what a pleasure it's been to have you join us today.  My digital fire bucket in which you may put the fires that are distracting you and let them burn themselves out because they probably don't really need your attention. So, for me, absolutely. Okay, I love that. That is great. Thank you. Yeah, that's fabulous. Well again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy I've been joined today by my trusted sidekick Jared ransom the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group. And again we want to thank our presenting sponsors. You allow us to have these conversations to bring new ideas and new approaches to our beloved sector. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We also want to announce that we're launching a new program. Crazy, but we are a second program, just about fundraising events. This is going to be co hosted by myself, who I've been on the rubber chicken circuit since age what for with Jason champion so it's going to be very fun very different. So we'll be talking more and more about that as we move forward and we hope you can join us for that. Jared. Wow, this week has blown by. I can't believe it is Friday Eve. So tomorrow, join us for the ask and answer episode. We've got so many amazing questions and of course if you have any questions for Sarah or any of our other guests do send those to us we can't get them on tomorrow but we will get them on for a future ask and answer. Yeah, it's a we have some doozy questions. And what's really fun for for most of you who don't know the insider secret to ransom the nonprofit nerd does not see these questions before we air. So that means I do not prepare right I'm always prepared to wing it. I do use my 20 plus years of experience but I'm in the hot seat. And yeah, I answer them just like in the moment. It's really fun and we almost had a little bit of a duke them out last week. So sometimes there's a part there are fireworks which makes it even more fun. But as we say thank you to our wonderful guests Sarah today and to our beloved sector. We want to remind everyone to stay well. So you can do well. Thanks everybody and we'll see you back here tomorrow. Thank you Sarah.


From London, England, it's theCUBE. Covering Coupa Inspire 19, EMEA. Brought to you by Coupa. Welcome to theCUBE, Lisa Martin, coming to you from London. I'm at Coupa Inspire 19. Pleased to be joined by one of Coupa's spend setters. With me here is Al Williams, the Managing Director and Chief Procurement Officer at Barclays. Al, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, Lisa, thanks for having me. So, Barclays is a 300 plus year old bank. 335 years, I think. 335. Somewhere in that ballpark. I also was headquartered in London. I didn't know this until I did some research. Barclays is the pioneer of the ATM and the credit card. In the UK credit card. Wow. Right, the first credit card in the UK and the pioneer and inventor of the ATM, correct, yeah. So, when we think of an organization that is 335 years old, we think how agile is that organization? How transformative can it be? Talk to me about what it's like at Barclays from a digital perspective before we get into some of the procurement stuff. What's that appetite and culture like? That's a great question, right? Because you think about a 335 year old bank, how innovative can it be, right? How agile can it be? And the market and the sector we work in requires us to be very agile because banking is a disrupted sector, especially on the retail and consumer side. Expectations around technology and mobile capabilities and digital transformation are the most significant they've ever been in the sector. And so for Barclays, it's absolutely key that we deliver on those capabilities both in terms of our front office for our consumers and our corporate clients as well as for our own employees within the bank. How influential is the consumer side? Because as consumers, we are so used to being able to get anything that we want. We can buy products and services. We can pay bills with a click or a swipe. On the business side, it's harder for businesses to transform and innovate. It's a lot of other risks and security issues. How influential is to Barclays? Is your retail, your consumer business in terms of your B2B work? And that's a great question, because I think the experiences that shape people's expectations come from their interactions in retail and consumer when it comes to B2B. And traditionally, business to business commerce and financial transactions haven't been nearly as sophisticated, streamlined, or frictionless as you would in a consumer model. So the expectations are built on the consumer side in consumer to business type models and then the business to business models have been playing catch up for the last several years as a result. Talk to me about now the role of finance leaders. I was reading a survey that Cooper did recently of 253 UK-based financial decision makers. And a big number of them, I think it was 96%, said we don't have complete visibility of all of our spend. So there's a big opportunity there to work with a company like Cooper. But talk to me about how the role of the Chief Procurement Officer is changing.  What are some of the trends that you have seen that you've really jumped on and said this is the direction we need to be going in? Right. So I've been the Chief Procurement Officer of Barclays for two and a half years and the CPO of a large global technology company for nine years before that. So I think the role of the Chief Procurement Officer has changed significantly over the course of the last, say, 10 years, five years, two years. We're at a point now where the Chief Procurement Officer is seen as a source of, and the organization of procurement is seen as a source of innovation. It's seen as a source of capacity creation for the organization for the company. And it's also seen as sort of a steward of the portfolio of spend for that particular organization to ensure we're maximizing the utility and value of that spend and of that supply chain. So the expectations for procurement have tripled, quadrupled, or more fold in the last four or five years. Some of the interesting things that we're hearing from Coupa and from their customers and partners today is beyond simply, and I shouldn't say simply, but beyond dramatically improving procurement and invoicing and dispensing and leveraging the platform as one source for visibility of all that spend. But it's being transformative to completely other areas. Like I was hearing a story of a customer who redefined procurement and is actually positively impacting corporate sustainability. You think, wow. So talk to me a little bit about, I know one of the things that you really thrive on is competition. How are you leveraging that, and maybe your old American football days, to build and maybe foster a sense of collaborative competition within your team to transform procurement at Barclays? Yeah, so I think that whether it's in sport or whether it's in business, I think the concept of teams is key. And effective teams are built on trust. They're built on empowerment. They're built on collaboration, open communication, limited asymmetry and information that's passed from, and that's all about kind of driving agility for whether you're on the football field, American football or other football or in the business environment or business context. So it's really, as a CPO and for all of the leaders on my team, it's also about being a player coach and knowing when you need to be a player, when you need to sort of roll up sleeves contribute in a particular area or particular solving a particular problem. But more importantly, when you need to be coach and help those players sort of and those team members in on the team sort of step up to the challenge and coach them to be more successful. So you've been at Barclays a couple of years now. Talk to me about your use case that Barclays has with Koopa. What are you guys doing together and what are some of the transformations that both internally and externally you've been able to achieve? Yeah, so the relationship with Koopa's been great. Again, I joined the bank a couple of years ago. One of the sort of first pillars associated with our overall transformation journey of centralizing procurement from five different procurement or six different procurement organizations really to moving to strategic locations, to building out a new organization structure and operating model for procurement. I won't go into all that but one of the key pillars was around technology. And we didn't have a common procure to pay or source to pay capability that extended or threaded throughout the bank for managing its supply chain. So early on when I joined Barclays, partnering with Koopa working, both of our teams working very effectively together to deploy sort of country by country and region by region. And we're now in 11 countries with the Koopa source to pay platform. We're deploying to six more by the end of this calendar year. And over 95% of our spend is flowing through Koopa as a multinational bank. So it's been a significant component of our overall transformation journey for Barclays. And part of that transformation journey, the technology piece is important but a lot of it's cultural. We talked about a history of a 335 year old organization but also going from five different procurement organizations down to one using a central platform. That's challenging to get folks on board being comfortable with change. Is your spirit of competitiveness, was that a facilitator of getting adoption so that you could get the 95%? Well, I think so. I think to get the most out of teams and the most out of any organization large or small, you need to galvanize around a common set of goals and objectives, the adage we all have to be pulling on the rope together to achieve the end result. And I think in the case of sort of our Koopa journey, both in terms of its strategy and overall deployment, it was something more or less our entire procurement organization was able to galvanize around and feel like they were a part of. And it created an identity for us within Barclays as a procurement organization as well. And kind of put us front and center with our business units and our stakeholders in a way we had never been before. So in terms of procurement, having a seat at the board table, is that something now that you have the ability to do with Barclays and be much more of a strategic driver of business? Yeah, and look at Barclays, compared to some of my other experiences, it's not an issue of not having a seat at the table. We might have a seat at too many tables at times. There's a lot of attention on procurement within Barclays to help it deliver on its strategic objectives. So with that seat comes a lot of responsibility. So I often will coach my teams to ensure that they understand kind of that component of, it's not just about having a seat at the table, it's about what we're going to contribute. What are we going to do differently when we're at that table, when we're helping shape the decisions for the organization? And what are the accountabilities and responsibilities that we'll pick up as a result and deliver on those promises? That's absolutely critical. One of the things that was talked about this morning is trust. Rob Bernstein talked about it. They also had a guest speaker, Rachel Botsman, who's a trust expert. It was such an interesting conversation. You know, we talk about at any tech event that theCUBE goes to, you always talk about trust. Got to have trust in the data, you got to have trust in your suppliers. But what they were talking about here was really being an enabler of trust, but Cooper really working to earn the trust of its customers. Tell me about how Cooper has earned your trust and also allowed you to have those better discussions at the board table so that you have more trust of relationships with your executive and your peer teams. Yeah, I mean, it all starts for Barclays at the very top of the house in front of us because we're in the business of trust. I mean, a bank is in the business of trust. That's what we deliver and promise to our consumers and our corporate clients. And I think, you know, within procurement, we need to make sure we're sort of delivering on that same promise around trust and building trust with our teams and with our suppliers. In the case of Cooper, frankly, it was about asking them to ensure they appropriately set expectations with me and with my team in terms of what we could or couldn't do with the capability, right? Don't over promise and under deliver, but actually be very prudent and practical about what we're gonna be able to get done and then deliver on those promises to the best of your ability. But if something, and they always do, if something goes sort of not according to plan, right? It's be open, communicative and direct with the issue and how we're going to address it. That, to me, is how we build trust in any team. And that's how we build trust with Cooper through our transformation over the last two years. That's critical, because to your point, no deployment probably ever goes critically according to plan. There are always things that happen, whatever the software or hardware is that we're talking about. And I think for companies to address that, confront it, help the customer through those challenges. To me, that's more valuable. I'm saying everything went beautifully, it was flawless. That's not reality. Right, I completely agree. And I think that's what separates good from great companies too, right? Is their ability to build that trust, whether it be within their supply chain, with their clients, with their employees. And look, it's a journey. It's not something you're one and done and you can say, okay, we've got the trust. You can lose it as easy as you can obtain it and you have to keep a focus on those trusting relationships. That's a great point though that folks should think about that. We've earned this trust, but we have to focus on it so we don't lose it, so we grow it. Having the focus on that, because you're right. Whether it's a deployment of software, it's not one and done. It's the same thing with any sort of trusted relationship. It's maintaining that. It's ensuring that there's value being delivered on both sides. That's right. Tell me a little bit about your ability, Barclay's ability as a spend setter in this program that Coupa has to influence technology directions. I think they talk a lot about the community, all the insights that they're able to deliver to the community because of the community. Is Barclay's able to be a strategic partner with Coupa rather than just a customer? Yeah, I feel we are. I mean, Rob and his team, Raja Ravi, the entire crew are very receptive and they're very collaborative in hearing from an organization like Barclay. I'll be the first to admit, Barclay's and banking and banking specifically in the UK, it's a different animal than many other companies and sectors that Coupa would work in. So what might work for other companies doesn't always work for us. And kind of flipping that around, there's certain things that we need from Coupa that we've been able to partner with and deliver over the course of the last two years. And the relationship with Coupa's been fantastic. They hear us, they listen to us, they help us understand what the solution can do, what it can't do or won't be able to do in the near term. And then how do we augment that in the right way so that we don't create cottage industries of activity within procurement when we can be leveraging the capability of Coupa to deliver on those services. Right, so you mentioned a little bit about what's next for you guys in terms of rolling out the deployment a little bit more broadly. Last question for you is some of the news that came out today with the expansion of Coupa Pay with American Express, for example, and just some of the other innovations that Coupa is making. What are some of your thoughts? What are some of the things that excite you about the direction they're going in? Well, yes, so on the Coupa Pay front, I'm actually gonna be on stage with Ravi tomorrow talking about Coupa Pay. Excellent. Because Markly Card is also a key component of that capability. Is that the first virtual card that they integrated? Probably, I believe it was, yeah. And so I think about payments is sort of the one, not the only, but one of the next frontiers from a source to pay or a procurement perspective. And it's about how do we innovate in the payment space to get away from having to, through the old traditional methods of adding suppliers detailed information to our vendor masters so that we can then eventually get an invoice and then reconcile payment remittance to invoices and sort of work through. There's a lot of cost in that and a lot of time and very little speed. We wanna move the dial on speed, the value. We wanna move the dial on efficiencies and eventually get to a point where we can offer things like early payment discounts so by having control over our payment process. And that's where Coupa Pay and the Markly Card partnership with Coupa Pay has really played a key role in making that happen. So in Q1, we made our commitment to deploy Coupa Pay in Q1 after we're through some of our deployments through the rest of this year on the basic Coupa platform and look forward to continuing that journey next year. On the payment side, one last thing that just popped up, I was doing some research and the B2C side is transformed much faster. A lot of demand from the consumers. We talked about that a minute ago. Do you see what the direction Coupa Pay is going in with Markly Card, for example, as bringing in some of the consumer influence to start facilitating the acceleration that's needed there? I think yes, I think that's exactly right because again, when you think about the consumer side of payments, we're all using our phones, we're using other digital means, we're using wearables, we're using different ways of buying and paying, especially in retail. And the first question we have to ask ourselves is why can't those innovations be applied in a B2B space? Now, Coupa Pay is I think a start of sort of that journey. It's certainly not the end destination but certainly I think it sets us off in the right direction. Yeah, we as consumers are quite demanding. Yes. I'll thank you for joining me on theCUBE and sharing the Markly's spend setter success story. Good luck tomorrow in your keynote. Thank you for having me. Thank you. My pleasure. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Coupa Inspire London 19. Thanks for watching.


Hello and welcome to my latest policy review. I have a look at the for Britain manifesto of 2020, best manifesto in the country. Now like so many of our policies I feel really really strongly about this one. It's something that touches me quite emotionally, this issue generally and it's a very short policy, very simple policy proposal but a very powerful and very important one and I'm talking about pensions and the reason this hits me and the reason that it's I feel really strongly about it is because I feel really strongly that after working for 50 years of our lives for you know after contributing for all those years to our society to be thrown on the scrap heap at the end of that and left with very little to me is beyond morally reprehensible. It's akin to in fact when our military put their lives and limbs on the line for this country go off, see terrible things, have terrible things happen to them and then they come back and they are thrown on the scrap heap with nothing. It's again morally reprehensible and we cannot and should not tolerate it under any circumstances. We can give 14 billion pounds a year to countries on the other side of the world while our own pensioners and veterans are choosing between heating and eating or sleeping on the street absolutely unacceptable and intolerable. I feel so strongly about that. So as with the others I will read this is very very short I will read from the manifesto and say a few words. So first of all to start, for Britain understands that our country's pensioners are the people who have built and maintained our country and that they deserve, deserve a retirement that is comfortable, dignified and reflective of their contribution to the nation's wealth and status. You know we still have elderly people in this country who remember World War II and who have lived through extraordinary change, often extraordinary hardships and the likes of which my generation doesn't actually understand. The respect we ought to give to our elderly people is increasingly missing from our society and it must must be brought back. To allow as I said at the start to allow our elderly people, our pensioners, to live in hunger is utterly, utterly disgraceful and you know part of the reason it's so utterly disgraceful is the lack of respect and it's a you know when our our state pension is a lot lower than other countries in Europe for example. What message does that send to society in general? That we are our pensioners, millions of our pensioners are in extreme difficulty but we're not helping them. Instead we're sending billions overseas. What message does that send to our society in general about respect for the elderly? Not a great one I would suggest it also doesn't send a great message of respect for ourselves as a country. We are deeply concerned about changes to pension provision for women. The state pension age for women used to be 60 but has risen in recent years and is to be raised to 66 by 2020 and 67 by 2028. Many women argue that they were not given sufficient notice of these changes to their pension plans and as such are asking for transitional arrangements to be made campaigners challenge the government and court but lost the challenge. Some of this is somewhat previous if you like as we're already in 2020 and these changes were to take place in 2020 however what they do show what this episode does show is how quickly the government can make changes and make us work longer. Now I agree entirely that men and women of time and age should be equal but there were great complaints from women for example that they weren't given enough notice to make financial arrangements given how quickly the age they would have to work to and the age they would get their pension out changed and they weren't given sufficient time to make financial arrangements. So a bit of a mess and suddenly often unsurprising from governments that they make messes out of things like this and it says something doesn't it that you know you don't expect this kind of shambolic transformation of people's lives and transformation of people's pensions and transformation of people's ability to put food on their table unless you know a government who makes those kinds of changes it doesn't tell me that they really take into account the needs and the entitlements and the respect the respect it's really what it's all about there wasn't consideration given to the financial arrangements that women would have to to make but more significant in this section is the rise to 67 people will have to work until 67 by 2028 so the age we have to work just keeps going up as it does in other European countries what's extraordinary is that while this happens refugees keep coming asylum seekers keep coming and they keep coming to European countries are you know we're not alone here and even the Conservatives have said that they will open up the door to more and more asylum seekers and refugees which would be bad enough if not for the fact that most of them aren't even actually asylum seekers or refugees many who are coming here and who are being prioritised over and above British people now I don't believe it's a coincidence that we are being asked to work for longer at whilst we seem to think we have some duty to feed the whole world at our own elderly people's expense I think it's scandalous and how much how how long is this going to go on for how much money are they going to drain out of Britain's pocket to pay for the rest of the world how much longer are they going to expect us to work to pay for the rest of the world because that's what this is about it is always the native Brit who has to pay the bills while everyone else with the whole world is looked after and even prioritised over the Brits just as a starting point 14 billion in foreign aid scandalous utterly utterly scandalous for Britain seeks major state reform that is fair to both men and women and which provides for a higher standard of living in line with pension rates in other European countries now there every European country has its own way of doing this there are various and pension as you can imagine state pension private pension the combination of the two complex and different countries have their own way of doing this however when it comes to take home when it comes to money in the pocket Germany France Spain are all considerably higher than we are now we need to know why why is it that British pensioners are so much poorer than French or Spanish pensioners we want to know this and we want to figure what we want to do what they're doing we want our pensioners better looked after that means we can stop wasting money for a start so we can have the money to fund better lifestyles for elderly people so for Britain will just four points here equalize the retirement age for men and women at 63 we should not be working until 67 it's frankly scandalous and it's only happening because the taxpayer is being more and more broadened in order to pay for walk political projects no raise state pensions in line with other European countries yes and yes we can afford it to if we didn't waste so much the NHS wastes seven billion a year and as I will say for I think the third fourth time in this video 14 billion is going overseas yes we can afford to pay better pensions it's just that the elderly are not a priority that's actually that's the harsh truth prevent means testing of pensions unless the combined amount of state plus private is above 30,000 now there is discussion and has been for some time about means testing the state pension that in itself will add another massive layer of bureaucracy and I don't believe it should happen in in most cases certainly in the poorest people's cases above 30,000 is an idea that's been floated and I think it's it's probably a decent compromise reevaluate tax bands for retirees and this is part of of what we need to do I think to get us into a similar level of to Germany and France for example because at the moment 25% of your of your pension is tax-free 75% is taxed and there are various different ways it can be taxed but that needs reevaluation that's all we're asking for is for us to reevaluate this because two major points and I'll end on these two major points one we are lagging far behind our counterparts in other European countries why and what can we do to fix it and two these are our British people these are the people who built this country and the people before them and the people before them for Britain stands for honouring those who went before us in the name of those who are yet to come this is key it is a mark of who we are it also is a mark of who we are when our elderly people are starving or sitting in the freezing cold it's unacceptable it should touch us all it should shame this country's government after government who have allowed hundreds of thousands of our pensioners to face a choice between heating and eating it shall not shall not shall not continue and our starting point our starting point has to be revive a revival of the respect that is due to our elderly people the people who have built this country let's reward them let's show our gratitude with a much higher standard of living certainly in line with the rest of Europe I think that's the least we can do


Okay. Thank you everybody. My name is Shua Khan. I am going to be talking about discovering Linux kernel systems in use. I think Kate mentioned earlier when she was doing the welcome talking about how we are doing this for open in open APS case. Let's start to talk about why is it important understanding workload requirements? Why do we care? The reason we care about this is multiple really sizing and memory and storage for a workload. We want to be able to especially when we are talking about automotive talking about medical we want to be able to size the system memory storage and all of those and then also configure and tune the kernel. And that's important as well and configure and tune the system. So we want to make sure that we have two different things tuning the kernel, enabling the right configuration options in the kernel that work for us. Say for example stack protection. We want to be able to do that if that is important for the workload. And the other things is configuring and tuning the system. Say our workload requires large number of files. We want to make sure and processes maybe it kicks off when we have our system is configured when we have maximum load or when we have when the system is in heavy use. So we want to be able to tune that. And then the lastly this is really important aspect is that we want to be able to identify tests that we care about to avoid regressions as the new releases come out kernel bits and then also be able to write tests. If we think that the existing tests need to be either enhanced new tests to be written. So for two different things avoiding regressions as we keep taking new kernel bits and the platform to and then evaluating safety. So then so we first of all we need to understand what our workload requirements are and resource usages. So we do that system information gathering at three different points. One is before starting the workload. While the workload is running and after stopping the workload. So those are the three different points we take pulse of the system. What do we gather? These are the things that we want to gather. We have supported system calls on the system. We have a few tools that we can use to do that. Usages call, which is part of RDD tool set that can dump all of the system calls for a particular architecture. And then also this the second script checks is calls script is part of the kernel that it can it can tell us the system calls supported system calls on architecture. Then the we also want to check the features supported features. So we can do that using a script that is part of the kernel sources, which is get feature. Get feature.pl is get feed.pl. And then the other thing is. Cisco can tell us information about system parameters, the limits and so on and schedule what kind of schedule reasoning, priorities, et cetera. And then lastly, we also want to understand what modules kernel modules are loaded loaded in the system. So we use LS mod for that. And there are other obviously other things LS USB tells you USB ports available and then LS BCI tells you other things, but for now we'll talk about these things. And while the system. So we talked about what we want to get before we start our workload. That tells us almost like a baseline what is running currently. And then we want to gather. We start our workload and then start gathering system parameters and then loaded module currently loaded modules. It causes some workloads. The one that we played with extensively open APS it does go and load and unload modules. So we want to see the differences in what is the workload. How the workload is changing things. Is it loading new modules or loading some and so on. And then also how it's changing the system parameters limits, schedule or priority, et cetera. And we let the workload run for however long we want to run it. We'll get into a little bit into how we want to trace the system. But right now we are talking about the when do we gather system information. So after we stop the workload, we probably run it for 30 minutes, two hours, doesn't matter. Then we after stopping it, we go and look at system parameters and loaded currently loaded modules. So this tells us a couple of things. One is, is the workload behaving correctly? So a good workload, good well behaving workload would probably set the system back to the state. Is it doing that? And then also we find out what's happening. Is it loading modules and tons of modules and leaving them loaded? Or is it upping the system limits and leaving those left? I mean, not cleaning up after itself. Okay, so with that, I will walk you through a couple of what the output of these things looks like and how you can use. I mentioned a uses call. You can actually ask it to say, tell me all of the timer related system calls that are supported. So it can tell you when I ran this on my system, it tells you these are all things. And then the number associated with it is a system call number. System call numbers can change from architecture to architecture. So it is this information and the number associated with it is important to us. And check system calls.sh what that does is it tells us the ones that are not implemented. Like you can see on my system and I ran it on my system. These are all the ones that are not supported or not implemented. And it's a longer list. And then now we switch into the other tool I mentioned that the feature list tool. So you can list the features. You can also check and see. This I ran it on x86. It shows you what features are supported. Some of the important ones. Like for example, BPF related ones there that is showing. And then stack protector. I am looking for specifically I'm saying here you can see I am looking for grep. I'm looking at the feature list. I'm looking for stack protector. What kind of stack options or does it have enabled? And it shows me have stack protector on. And then what else is available? And then memory leaks. So you can get up for specific features like DMA and so on. So you can do get up for specific things. So, and then lsmart. If you look at the lsmart tool that I mentioned before, you can look for specific modules or have if you don't have that grep in there, you can it'll dump every single module that's currently loaded. And in addition to that, it'll show you what does the what's the usage count of those. Like for example, video buck to common has four users for other modules have are holding reference to it. So until all of those modules are unloaded, you cannot unload video buff to common, for example. Okay, so what we do is we have gathered a different information. We gathered all of the things that we talked about, like for example, the modules, modules configuration option, especially the modules and system parameters. So we look for changes in between two points before loading the workload before starting the workload. And once we start, we are continuously saving this information. We find differences so we can figure out what exactly is the workload footprint lack of better word. Let's let's use a different word. What are the resources the workload. Uses and we can narrow the subsystems that way and say these are the subsystems. We want to care about more when we are running regression tests and when the new releases come out are these, we're watching those. It's like our watch points. Okay, so I will continue tracing. Okay, tracing is not for just debugging tracing is traditionally used for debugging and we are using tracing in this context for a very different purpose. When I say tracing workload, I'm talking about the event tracing feature available in the Linux kernel. You can enable system-wide tracing and say, give me all of the events that you can possibly trace, generate trace for it. And before starting the workload, we enable system-wide tracing and we can disable the system-wide tracing after stopping the workload. So we'll get a snap shot of all of the events that have happened after, while this workload is running. So you will see the reference here. You will see this is one that's, some system used by we have done a couple of blogs about this and then you can take a look at those in details on how we did the gather cases. So once you have that, now we know the system calls that are supported on our system, when we know the system call numbers associated with them and then in the traces we see the system calls that are system calls that are used by the workload, then we can go and look at identify functions and system calls, usages and map them to kernel subsystems. Like for example, if you see get timer call, for example, being called, then we know that the timer subsystem is being used. That's one of the subsystems all workloads use. That's not a great example. But if you see calls to setting priority, for example, or any kind of scheduler changes it might be doing priority levels on different processes and thread priorities, then you will know some of the useful information that's coming up. So far, this is all high level information. We do not know specifically, we do not know what the low level information is, meaning fine grain information. For example, we have done analysis of overall open APS load. We ran it. We enabled system wide tracing in its open APS init in the current tab and then we went in and it has the init script. So we enabled system wide tracing in the init script and then we let it run for a couple of hours and we stopped the workload. And then we took this snapshot of this entire two hours worth of log and we analyzed system calls and modules it's loading and we have seen a couple three modules it does load and then unload. We have determined what exactly does it use and we have done these experiments on a Raspberry Pi running open APS workload. However, what we do not have is we wanted to also understand what happens, say for example, when individual open APS commands are run, for example, open APS might go and say, user says, tell me, give me pump history. What has happened with this insulin pipe pump in the last hour or two or whatever. And then also how much insulin is left in the pump. Those are the ones it will be lost if we have just this large gain system view. We won't be able to isolate when the tracing or resource usage happens just for those individual command runs. And then this and when errors happen also. So for this, we used a different tool, S trace. S trace what S trace does is again, this is also heavily used for debugging so far, but we wanted to use this for a use this for a different purpose. In this cases, we want to understand run S trace run various commands with S trace and say, hey, what are we seeing what kind of system calls this particular command is using and what kind of system resources it's using the files it's opening, for example, and then also pay attention to failure cases as well. So this blog that link I put in here talks about more in detail about all of that. Okay, let's see S trace command, you can trace system calls and signals and you can run it in multiple different modes. One is the full mode where you can get the full complete information and you can run it in summary mode where it'll identify, summarize the system calls and see invocations of those. What we have done for this is we looked at open APS commands and we pick the ones that would make sense to us get insulin pump model. For example, that would be something that that would go out and then open APS will query the pump and then at the time and then battery levels and if you commands that we want, we're interested in and more of that and you can look at this pump history, insulin pump, temporary basal rates and then insulin. This is how we wanted to kind of find out what happens when we run these commands, what system activity is associated with these command runs. And this is a list of various commands in here and let's go to where we have information about these. I have some slides that show pump information. So like I mentioned, s-dash-c will give us summary of the activity and then the full, if you remove this dash-c option, it gives you a full case. When we run pump history command, what we have seen is that the output on this left side, you can see run pump history command. So it prints all these, this is output from that command retrieving pump history since when we run this command and it's telling us that it cannot connect to the pump. It's trying to open dev SPI dev and it cannot open that and it's also saying pump is busy. So this device is in use. So this is one of the busy paths we traced and then what corresponds to it. This is the right side, what I'm showing is the analysis we did. Process startup course that has to happen management and then it goes and opens sys-suffice file associated with this device. Then it opens the pump device and then these are the two it's trying to read. Say these GPIO, active low and the direction, these two are associated with this device and then it'll try to open them. That's when it detected that it cannot open it and it's busy and then it goes and closes the files and exits the program. So that's how we mapped the subsystems with individual command runs. So in addition to that, this is a flow chart, we developed flow chart to it that what happens. So we have anybody that's familiar with software engineering, I mean this is a general software flow, a flow chart that shows the command flow or a process flow. It is showing here and that we try to open it, we couldn't open it, detecting device busy condition and print status and close files. So that's what one of them is. So and if you were to look at, there are two aspects to it. We took the command output that we have gotten and we mapped it and then you can see that from this S trace output, you will see everything else that has happened in that system during that time. This corresponds to this output corresponds, you can see the device in use right here. So it corresponds to that and then it shows us how many percentage of time it spent and how long each one of those system calls took. So and it'll give us activity on what has happened and you probably saw map map too in the previous slide and then we can corresponding on map. So you can get a feel for what is all happening while this running. Any questions at this time before I switch into it? Go to the next slide. Okay, just go ahead and type here, just ask questions or type them in the chat. So this is a runtime context for what we have done. Raspberry Pi system, we ran it on Raspberry Pi and then during that time, we have identified common kernel functionality, these are all the subsystems that were invoked. SPI driver is the one you noticed that when SPI dev is being opened, that's where SPI dev driver comes in and then you have SysFS, the driver files, driver interfaces that are available that it exports and then you have a GPIO and or the GPIO we are talking to insulin pump. And then outside right outside, you'll see continuous glucose monitor and night scout, night scout is the device. So that's, this is the hardware part of it and then how Raspberry Pi Linux running on Raspberry Pi is managing that device. So from looking at this, a few things we can already identify as important in the next kernel subsystems for us. One is that we, SPI dev driver, if there are any changes to the SPI dev driver that we know that we have to go and look at our workload and see our workload is, there are no regressions and that our workload is functioning. And then the GPIO subsystem for example. So those are the kinds of the high riders besides the other things that could have regressions. The other areas are common to process management. I mean, if you can't start a process that you would already know. Some of the process management things, I put them in a different bucket of a common functionality and whereas SPI dev driver and interfaces and then GPIO would be something that we cannot, our workload will not run if there are problems or regressions in that area. So I will leave you with these two blogs in here to read more about this. The bottom one, we uploaded this to, I mean, we upstreamed this. This is part of the kernel documentation now. So you can see that we went and documented and may upstreamed it so that it's available for people in the kernel. So that's pretty much end of my presentation. And if you have any questions, go for the questions. Sure, I would have a question. If you go one slide back, there was the picture of the continuous glucose monitor and also the night scout, is there some interaction between the Raspberry Pi and the night scout or the, I guess also with the glucose monitor, they need some interaction. Is there some wireless connectivity then? So this means you would run depending on the commands, you would see the different subsystems then. Correct. And is there a wired connection then from, it looks like there is a GPIO and then there's a direct connection to the insulin pump. My understanding was it was wireless kind of thing. Oh yeah, I mean, so yes, the rig connection is wireless connection. So you will, that would be, that happens on Broadcom, Ethernet interface, network driver interface. So when I'm showing this, I'm just showing the connections. This is not the real connections, but what I mean is these, these arrows indicate input and output process. So yes, you're right. It's a wireless connection. Okay. And do you consider to add other tracing mechanisms, tools to get a deeper knowledge? Or do you say we're standing here and we would go for ftrace or adding some other tools? From the automotive work group, we recently also discussed if we maybe add system tab, tab track on it to just get also another representation of it because I know it's used in automotive to get boot time optimization, track down bugs and so on. You can do more. ftrace, for example, we can use a functional level tracing with ftrace and say any specific functions we are interested in at the kernel level, if we can identify that and system trap is another good one to be able to use that. So for us, what we are running into is we might not do anything more with open APS unless we have access to a rig. We are running into some issues with having access to a rig. So however, that is for a medical working group, right? And then the other areas that we can start looking at is I'm currently doing analysis for RT Linux, real time Linux one. In that one, I might be able to do more tracing with one of the, during part of that analysis, which we are planning to present. Ilana and myself are doing that work and then we'll be presenting that in Prague. So we are continuing it, not on open APS. So to answer your question completely. Yeah, thanks a lot.


This is $500. That's right, a university offered me $500 for every student that I helped to enroll there. But I said no. Today I wanna tell you why I said no to that offer and I also wanna help you understand how you can get real help if you need help applying to college. When I do university episodes, I interview international admissions counselors and every once in a while they make me an offer where I get paid for every student that enrolls in that university. The University of Windsor was actually the first one to ever make me an offer like that and I gotta be honest, it was tempting. I mean, what's the harm in it, right?  Is that so wrong? It is, it's actually very wrong and let me explain why. Score makes money when families and individuals pay us for college counseling services. If universities also were paying us then we would have a conflict of interest. I would have an incentive to recommend a specific university to you instead of looking for the best university for you. It wouldn't be the personalized service that we promise you because we would have these other financial incentives. Taking money from both families and universities is called double dipping and it's not okay when you're at a restaurant eating chicken nuggets with your friends and it's also not okay for college admissions counseling but how can you be sure that the company you're gonna work with is not double dipping? How do you know that they really want to help you? It helps to understand that there are basically two kinds of companies in this $2 billion college advising industry. There are consultants and then there are recruiting agencies. I'm gonna help you figure out how to spot the differences between the two. Consultants will let you apply to any university that you want but of course they're going to make recommendations based on your profile and your chances of getting admitted. They also expect you to do most of the work. A consultant is not going to write an essay for you and they're not supposed to do all the forms for you. You're supposed to do it and they're supposed to help. Consultants won't guarantee admission because they have no control over the admissions process and they don't have any sort of inside connection which means though that they are gonna charge higher fees because they don't get paid from universities so they need to make their money from you. Now compare that to a recruiting agency. A recruiting agency is gonna force you to work within a network of universities. Basically any university where they have an agreement to get money every time they send a student. They're also probably going to decide where you can apply because they have to balance how many students they send to different universities but recruiting agencies will do most of the work for you. If there's an essay requirement, they'll get it done. If there are forms to fill out, they'll do it for you and they'll probably guarantee admission to those universities because they have an agreement with someone inside the university. If they send a student that meets these requirements, they're in and they'll probably charge you lower fees since they're getting paid by universities. Some recruiting agencies don't charge any fees at all. I wanna make it clear that there's really nothing inherently wrong about one method or the other. Recruiters or consultants are not automatically bad. They're two different ways of approaching the same problem but I also understand why agencies can seem so appealing. I mean, if someone comes up to you and says, hey, I can guarantee admission to this university, all you gotta do is sign here, baby. That sounds like a pretty good deal. And if you just wanna get the hell out of your country like this guy and found hidden in the wheel well of a plane, the stowaway somehow went undetected and made this dangerous journey all the way from Guatemala. Then I could see why an agency might seem like the best choice for you. But there are some problems with the recruiting agency model. First of all, transparency. Recruiting agencies almost never tell you that they're getting paid by the universities that they recommend. And a lot of them present themselves as if they were consultants, trying to make it seem like they just perfectly selected a list of universities for you when in reality, all of those universities are in their network and they're getting paid by them. The consultant world isn't perfect either. There are many companies that are double dipping and they will never tell you that they're getting paid by certain universities but they always seem to find their way onto your college list. So that takes us back to our opening question. How can you figure out which companies are really there to help you? Well, look for this logo. The International Association for College Admissions Counseling brings together international counselors from universities, school counselors, and companies like ours. And I say ours because SCORE is now a member of the IACAC. The IACAC tries to promote a set of ethical codes that all of their institutions have to follow and one of the rules is that we cannot take money from universities. That is the reason why I said no to that offer over a year ago because I've intended for SCORE to be part of this organization from the very beginning and I knew that if I took that offer from Windsor it would compromise our values and make it impossible for me to be part of this organization in the future. And now we're in. And that's gonna bring a lot of benefits not only for us but also for you. Joining the IACAC is gonna definitely help this channel make more of the content you love. I mean, a lot of our most successful videos have actually been with IACAC members. For example, Pittsburgh, Purdue, and IE University, Rochester Institute of Technology was the first university to say yes to a university episode, also in the IACAC. These are great people who have shown a spirit of collaboration and a desire to work with even tiny companies like ours. Next week the IACAC is having an international conference at the University of New Mexico and I'm going. You're gonna see a video about that coming up soon on the channel and I'm gonna be reaching out to international missions counselors from a ton of universities, both in the United States and abroad, to set up visits so that the rest of this year I can churn out some of the best content you've ever seen. Well, it won't be the best you've ever seen.  And the reason I'm doing this and the reason I said no to, you know, $500 is because I want what's best for you. And what's best for you is working with an organization that doesn't have other interests. The only interest that should matter is you. And so whether you get help from Score or from some other company, I just hope that you get it from someone that actually wants to help you, not someone that's looking to put another 500 bucks in their pocket. Thank you for making it to the end of this video. I appreciate it. If you wanna see more about the conference that's coming up or you wanna see some of the new university episodes that we're gonna be recording soon, hit that subscribe button so that you can stay up to date with the channel. I appreciate that a lot. It really helps us out. It's a lot easier to convince a university to let me come on their campus if I got a bunch of subscribers. Thank you guys for watching. I will see you next week.