Welcome to the Tuesday, February the 20th, 2024 meeting of the ModPillier Design Review Committee. We'll let staff and members introduce themselves. Meredith Crandall, staff. Martha Smersky, member. William Russell, member. Steven Everett, member. Rebecca Owens, member. Is Eric there? He is. Eric, you need to unmute yourself. Eric Gilbertson, member. Okay. At this point, we'll let Meredith review the remote meeting procedures and process. Okay. As most everybody is aware, this is mostly for people who are attending or attending watching via Orca Media. For those viewing tonight's design review meeting via Orca Media, you can participate in the discussion via the Zoom platform through either video or telephone access options. If you want the full video experience, you can type this link into your web browser and I will get a little notification that you want to get into the meeting. 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Otherwise, if somebody gets on and has a question about an item on the agenda, please raise your hand, either physically if you have the video turned on or by using the raise hand button on your toolbar. If anyone calls in, you can press star 9 on your phone and this will let us all see it raise hand. In the event the public is unable to access tonight's meeting and I would get notice of that through my email. The meeting will need to be continued to a time, place, and certain. From now, hand the meeting back over to the chair. At this point, do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? I'll move to approve the agenda. This is Martha. All in favor of the agenda, speak your names. Eric. Martha. William. Rebecca. Steven. Yep, that's everybody. Okay, agenda is approved. Unless anybody has anything else to add at this point, we'll go forward with the first application for 27 East State Street. Welcome, Paul. Describe your application. The application is a new front porch on 27 East State Street. And the process is the same thing that I've done on the barbershop building, which is to adhere to the historical, you know, norms. As I try to put it back with the same lumber in the same way that it was originally built, it had, I talked to Jimmy's brother who had repaired the porch in 1971 and said it desperately needed repairing. And the bottom line was 30 years the postman had put his foot through the decking at the top of the stairs. And the two uphill posts had completely rotted out because there's a river that comes out of the backyard when it rains. And during the flood, we lost that whole end of the porch and the roof was sagging. And it was just, you know, I would have come over and gotten a building permit, but I kind of had to do it right away. It's 2 by 12 skirt all the way around. It's 2 by 10s in the center. The only thing that's not from 1850 is the Joyce hangers. It is built up to code. It's got techno metal posts supporting the front beam across the front. And the only thing that I didn't do, the original historic posts were set on the railing and that's why the whole thing was falling down. So I opted for the square posts that come all the way up from the deck to support the roof. And then I did the framing around those. The posts are not done. We ran out of warm weather. It is going to be painted to match the house blue and white. The posts, I put a little schematic of what I'm going to do with the posts. I can't make them around, but they are going to get the original Florida Lee braces on the top. There's going to be a crown molding element on the top, a baseboard on the bottom and a chair rail for lack of a better term in the center. So the posts will be painted blue and white. The molding will get painted blue and the posts will be painted white just like the old posts. So it will, except for the squareness of it, it will be exactly the way it was back together with the original Florida Lee's. I'll get that done in the spring. And I really did try to do it historically. If you'll note, if you can see close on the thing, it's got a traditional hardwood drip edge made out of wood at the bottom of the shingles. I mean it's an 1850s porch. And you anticipate painting the shingles? The shingles will be blue, the rail, the hand rail will be white all the way around. The posts itself will be white and the trim elements on the posts will be blue. And that's what the original was. I'm just trying to keep it up with that three color Victorian paint job. One thing you can do that we have done successfully to make it look a little closer to what it was before was just to take a router and either round the edges or scallop. I will be glad to use the edge. If you look at the detail on the rail, on the hand rail, the 2x12 hand rail, I've done that all the way around and matched that. I'll be glad to do that no problem at all. It won't, I'll have to do it after I add the trim pieces because I can't, it won't flush out if I round it and then do the trim pieces. But I'll do the trim pieces and ease the edges all the way around. I'll make it as round as I can. We don't have to cut too far. But if you, it just takes about a half to three quarters on either side. And again, it can either round it off or you can cove it. I got a three quarter inch, quarter round router bit that will run right up that and just put a nice rounded edge on it. It'll also, if you do some of the trim detailing rounded, it looks continuous rather than the edge. Yeah, if you look at the hand rail, that's what I did. There's a continuous eased edge all the way around on the hand rail. I'll be glad to do that on the posts. I'm not, I mean, it's my house, it's my house. So I'm going to make it look really nice. I like to do work myself. Is there any reason when you replace the shingles on the front that you didn't do them staggered to match the original? No, they didn't have them at sticks and stuff. That's not a matter of having them. It's a matter of the carpenter just nailing them on there that way. No, I didn't do that. I'm the carpenter. So I did not do it that way. Would you like me to redo the shingles? Probably because they match that then they would match those up in the gable end, which are staggered. And that's the way it was designed. What kind of condition are the turn posts you took off in? They are not in good condition. And they are not original either. They do appear to be from the 1970s. They are hollow fabricated posts. And the bottoms of all of them are rotted out. Those turn posts are pretty readily available. I think Miles has them. I don't know about sticks and stuff. But did you look and see if you could find turn posts? Yeah, but like I said, I couldn't get a turn post. Well, so first of all, it's a considerable amount more money. And second of all, they did not have a post that would go from the deck to the roof. And I did not want to set a post on top of a railing again and have it.  So I was within a, I was within a good storm of losing the roof. And, and it's just not a good construction technique. The, the, those square posts are framed into the deck and framed into the railing. They're not going anywhere. They'll be there for 200 years. Yeah, what other a decent timber frame or a carpenter could splice. The extensions on the bottom of posts. It's not, not a difficult joint to make. You could make a lap joint and reinforce it. There's a number of different joints you can do. I, so I do do timber framing. I'm quite good at it. And I would agree with that, except why not just use a square post. It's 100% stronger and cheaper. I think there are plenty of examples of. Turn posts and on porches that are, that are bucklings in this and. So, I don't know if we necessarily need to ask the, or just for a structural slot, if you re to read, be redone. There are a lot of porches with post balancing on railing. And there are a lot of them are a lot of them. If you're effectively putting a hinge in there, rather than a fixed fixed joints. I'm just having a problem because the turn posts are really distinctive feature in the building. It was pretty easy to see in the as built. Or the original photographs. Okay. I mean, I would like to see the original original photographs because, like I said that post that porch was built in 1971. So, I don't know the last time I was here at design review we ran up into the same problem because I wanted to replace windows on the barbershop building with energy efficient windows and I was told that I could not replace those windows I had to have them rebuilt because they are original. And when I did the demo and pour into the windows the windows were from 1975 and they were single pane, and they weren't in good shape. So, um, I, I, I don't want to get Teske about it but I try really, really hard to put these. Let me let me put it this way when I bought these two buildings, they were not anywhere near original condition. They did not look like they were from 1850 that house that I bought from Jimmy was wrapped in fake red brick tar paper. I pulled all that tar paper off I put it back to the original siding and I've rebuilt that porch, so it matches the house. I did the best I could with what I had. I've tried to keep, you know, I'm a labor force of one. Multiple projects I have to do. I can't spend, you know, an entire year rebuilding a front porch. And yet I try very hard to put it back to what it was originally. I think I did a good job. The neighbors think I did a good job. Yeah, you understand the difficulty it makes for design review. When we're reviewing something that's already been done. Got it. Didn't mean to do that. I really didn't. I've gone through the design review process several times I pull permits. I'm not. I'm not I apologize for that. I really do. The flood took out the two uphill post I was going to lose the roof. I had to get the fort short up. That's what I did. City Hall was shut down. I just, I just went ahead. I pushed ahead. I think there's a lot of examples of my work on those two buildings and I'm not. I want those houses to look like they're from 1850. That's what I want. I suspect the staggered shingles were added lonely after that, but they're part of the historic character of the house. Are you willing to redo the shingles on the On the front and staggered. No, you haven't even the old pictures of the house. Have a picture of the porch I think on there. I don't have a historic picture of that house of the front of it. I have a historic picture of the roof line. I think it's looking from the top of the hill. But that's the only one I have. I suspect those shingles are were originally staggered in the gable and sometime in the 20s. And then they were rebuilt the porch and 71. We matched them again.  I didn't really think about it. I mean, it was November 15th and it was getting quite cool. So I did. I did try to button it up for the winter. Yeah, I'll just say that I'm personally less concerned about the staggered shingles. I know that it's an historic mark, but we do. But it's, it looks like it from the photos haven't been by it looks like it's nice quality shingle work. It's of a similar scale and texture. And then you have some of that up on the on the gable. I think what, you know, what, and I do, I understand that the, that round, like, I wouldn't want to put a round post in my on a railing in my, in my own house, just because that I know it's going to move. And at some point, the, I think the concern for me is that you're a lot of these, a lot of these posts are like the color of the paint and the photos not clear enough for me to see here, but the, a lot of the color comes out where the woods taken away. And so you're, it's kind of at the where it gets smaller. Your detail is actually kind of pushing it out and making it. So I have a detail of how the post is going to look on. Right. It's, it's in the, it's in the packet. Yeah. Right. So it will be, I mean, it's not going to be as tapered in the center in between those, but it is going to go wide. You know, wide, skinny, wide, skinny. One thing that's, you know, just one, one option might be to take a small kind of a thin piece of trim and, and just mark the top and the bottom of where that color changes. So it doesn't become kind of, you know, it's going from being where it's blue, skinnier, where it's blue, it's like, big. Well, so the, but the only thing that's going to get painted blue is the actual trim pieces. Right. And then there is a, there is a delineation line where it will end and come white. Sure, but you're kind of inverting the previous. Oh, the previous way it was. Oh, so I didn't so I didn't see the pattern on the old one. You want me to paint it white, blue, white blue. No, in the sense that if you look at the, you know, look at the original photo where, and actually you can see that it appears to be square at the top and square at the bottom. Right. So, so there's some precedent for a square thing, but it's come, it comes down square. And then you have some, you know, obviously a lathe has been used to take material away from that. So where it's become the word where it's white, it's, it's the thicker part and where it's carved away. It's, it's blue. Right. So where it goes from thick white to skinny blue. It's kind of hard to see that I pulled it up. Oh, there it is. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Here, right. And here where skinny and rounded. Yeah, so dark.  So if you, I didn't, I didn't really think of it. Meredith caught me by surprise. This is, I need a square piece so that I can get the little braces on. So I'm kind of set on that on the top, like I need to have this. I need to have that. So it either needs to go on the bear post. If you want me to just forego that this upper trim piece and just put this 40 the trim element on it on straight onto the post, and then come down.  I can run two small bands of chair rails and then a larger band of chair rails. It won't be a turn post, but it will match that paint job exactly. What if you rounded the edges enough to give somewhat of adherence of a rounded post, and you would just be, you would leave the top, the top and the bottom basically square.  Yeah, you still have the old. Yeah, I got the post that you'll be able to even put them up next to it to get the right same general location.  Yeah, and then take more off in the center section where the original post was rounded. Well that three quarter inch. You look at the pictures online. It'll be rounded. Yeah, it will be rounded significantly. To be near the end. Yeah, I did the finish work, the detail work near the end of the packet. It's quite a, it's quite a there I have one see. And I did that where all the continuous rounded edge. And I can even go one larger than that. Yeah. And so, square at the top in the top and again, come as close as you can to match the profile of the original posts. Yeah, okay. You can use the original post as a template. You just set it decided to, to market. I will come as close to the original post I can. I want to suggest a simpler solution, I guess, because I don't think this adding pieces. It is going to work out real well but I would just say do a significant chamfer of, you know, leaving some square space up at the top for your bracket and some at the bottom and do a pretty severe chamfer and on the corner, not round it, but just make a chamfered with a nice taper into the square. Okay. Sit on a straightforward. Rather, do it rather than add trim again, you can just paint the stripe around to match what was on the original post. So, from many angles, it will appear to be as close as you could get to what you had. Okay, I can match the paint job on the original post. And you're firm and not redoing the shingles staggered. I, I just, I won't have time. I just won't have time. About planting some tall shrubs. So, the garden, the garden's coming back. There's a huge perennial garden there that comes up every year. So, when it was completely redone and replanted and mulched to go with the new porch and the planner boxes are back in. Most of that's going to be completely covered. I have. I understand your desire, but that that seems like an easy thing to fix relatively easy. Most know would be hard to fix. But fixing this. The staggered shingles is not a terribly difficult task. Any suggestions from anyone else. About the shingles. I don't have any objections to the shingles as they are. I would leave them as they are and put. Planner boxes and some shrubs out in front of that. There's 2 planner boxes already there in the, in the things and. And 2 large planners on either side of the stairs and there's, and like I said, there is a. Well, established perennial garden that comes up easily to the height of the chair. I'm okay with, I mean, if he's got shrubbery that's between planner boxes and shrubbery that's hiding. 80% of it, I'm fine with it the way it is. Leaving the shingles away. They are, I don't feel as wrongly about it as there as Eric does. It would have been nice to stagger it, but. At this point.  Most of it. You're not going to notice the difference. I really appreciate your recognizing that it's difficult for us when someone has already completed the job. And then we. Are asked to approve or not approve. This is my, this is my 3rd time through and I sincerely apologize. I didn't. I am a firm believer in the design review process. And I'm. The firm believer in city planning. Unfortunately, it's happening more and more. Yeah. And I did, you know, and it, you know, in my own defense, it doesn't happen with me. It did this time. It was a bit of a crazy summer as you know. And I just. Yeah. Building apartment was closed. I understand it relocated fairly quickly. But I didn't know that I was not aware of that. All I knew was city. So. The biggest part is that the, your process listed on the national register of starting places as contributing. So there's it sort of. Nails a special sign on your building that you should try to preserve it as much as you can. If you're doing repairs or replacing. Components. So in my defense, I would say pulling the. Big red brick. Siding off it was a good thing. No, that was a good. We're better off than we were. You couldn't see those staggered shingles before they were wrapped inside. So the whole house was wrapped inside. Yeah, so nobody was. I try, I try hard. I try hard to put it back to what it was. Well, but again, between the flower boxes, if you again, rounding the post as much as possible in the center or leaving it square at the top and the bottom and. Rounding it as much as possible and then painting that to recreate the pattern that you have before. This is what, and this is what I'm saying. I mean, the goal. And I talked with Meredith about this briefly to the goal is also. To have things net zero. Yeah. And so for me, and if it doesn't apply to this porch, but for me, it's always. My, my goal is really, I like old school carpentry and I like old houses. So my goal is to put it back to what it was. And yet we do have modern things that we have to do. There's better framing techniques. There's better support techniques. There's better insulation. There's better windows. There's things that kind of have to change. That's why I do like coming here.  You know, if I'd come here first, if we hadn't had to flood this summer. It was going to be a fall project and I was, you know, I would have just gotten on design review and done it and you would have said, staggered shingles and I would have said fine. So do the best you can cover it with landscaping. I have extra B bomb going in there. And you need new shingles later. Well, yeah. I think we made the point. Yes. The shingles take the brunt of the weather. One, one thing you, one thing you could do to simulate that. And I'm not, I'm not a fan of like, you know, painting something to look like it was old necessarily but you could. So in detail you'll, you will see in a number of places you can take a darker shade of blue. So if you look at the gables shingles, they're a little faded now. But that is a Sherwin Williams boutique blue on the body of it and then I picked all of the other blues in the in the color on that color wheel. And I painted the upper gable and goes from the next blue up to the lightest blue. And I'm more than willing to do that on the, on the porch to make it match the upper gable. No problem at all. And even if you like skipped every other. Yeah, every, every couple of shingles gets a different color. And I like it. I really like the effect on the top. It's faded. It's hard to notice. If you stand in front of the house and look up, you'll notice it. There's there, it is five different blue colors on the upper gable staggered in. So, and I'm more than willing to do that on the bottom. Yeah. Yeah, I think maybe people are watching on this. You can see it's almost white in that little triangle up above the window and it's, and it's a, and it's a darker blue on the bottom. Yeah. Yeah, I'm more than willing to do that. I can probably only do three on the porch instead of five, but I can do. Yeah, I'll do. In my opinion, since the, the shingles are not going to match the top gable, I would rather see it the same color. The body color. Yeah, just let it blend as much as it can. That was my, I was going to, that's why I didn't really think about it. I was going to wrap those shingles in color wise right into the main body of the house. That'd be my preference. I think the darker color anchors the building better. I do too. Then a lighter color. Again, just go with the landscape and as much as you can dark blue and landscaping. So nice. I mean, that's what it was. I like the dark blue on the bottom. Are you going to put any railings on the stairs? There's a metal railing. I got a call back from the metal bat guy. There are, there's two metal railings going on the bottom. They're very simple. I can provide you. I can email you a picture off the guy's website. It's tentative. None of it's planned yet. It's simple. It's a, it's a metal railing that anchors at the bottom and anchors to the main post and it's just a rectangular metal. It's a three, three by one metal railing. It's, it's very simple. It's very plain. And it's going to be powder coated white. It's going to be what? Powder coated white. I can give thoughts on that. If you have any comments on the railing, because technically the railing would come back to designer view otherwise. But because we'll also have to have Michelle look at that for building code. Okay. In this packet, but we can. Well, that's why I went with the metal railing because I can bolt it on and it's better in my opinion than a wood railing, which is going to fall apart over time, but I'm more than willing to put a wood railing on too. It's much cheaper for me to build a wood railing. I don't know if you've had dark blue. I don't know if you'll want to think of the railing is trim, but just a black black. That would be. It was okay. All right. Something disappears visually. Yeah, I mean, I would be more interested in the, the, the, like the connections, the details of that than, than the railing itself. Okay. Yeah. So it's a, it's a rounded plate that bolts to the. To the square post and to the, and to the step. A white railing on East state street quickly becomes a gray really. So if you start with black. Those were the, those were the options he had. He had black or white. So he had a. What it was, it was like, it looks like oiled bronze. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a perfect combination. Okay. I liked it. It didn't have any. Didn't have any real design element to it. It was very, it's a very simple rail. It almost disappears. Yes. So it'll be up to the committee to decide whether or not they want to put in an option for that tonight, or if they want. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want anybody falling through a railing. Believe me. Okay. And we can, and again, we can do the black iron railing as an option. Black iron or dark bronze railing as an option. We can just do an option for a simple black iron railing. Black iron railing. And again, just. Check with. Check with the building respectively make sure that. It meets whatever. Right. Codes they are. Yeah, I don't want anybody. Falling through a railing. Believe me. Black iron railing is an option. Okay. That you can add. I can go through the criteria for all projects. Exterior design and materials of new construction or alterations of existing building shall be consistent and compatible. With the characteristics of the existing building or other properties in the district. The removal of historic materials or alteration of features and spaces that characterize historic property shall be avoided. Character defining features finishes and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that characterize an historic building shall be preserved. The deteriorated character defining features shall be repaired if they can rather than replaced. Where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a character defining feature the new features shall be replaced in kind. Any treatments that cause damage to historic materials, including but not limited to chemical or physical treatment such as sandblasting shall not be approved. This is acceptable with your treatment of the posts. As you described, and also again with the will suggest plantings that cover as much as possible of the shingles to to avoid trying to replace those with staggered shingles. Existing buildings shall be recognized as a physical record of their time place and use. Any new development shall be differentiated from the old but shall respect and be compatible with a massing size scale architectural features detailing an overall character of the primary historic building and nearby historic properties. Acceptable architectural features including but not limited to cornices, windows, shutters, fan lights and tabulator trim and other forms of molding or character defining detailing prevailing on the existing building shall be considered in the alteration of a building. Architectural features on any addition shall not duplicate but shall respect. This is not an addition. The replacement of a porch that's acceptable. Outdoor lighting fixtures. Is there any lighting added or is there something that's already there. There was there was lighting on the front porch and what was added was can lighting that goes around the outside. Recessed can day there. Okay. Question on the ceiling ceiling of the porch ceiling of the porch. So it doesn't show from the outside it just there's a downlight that you know but you're not lighting outside of the porch and the and the there's two step lights that light up automatically when you approach the steps at night only at night. So I saw that. Rebecca, I think I had a question Rebecca. What did you know I do and actually it's it is specifically about the step lights and I understand how they ended up white. If you were going to go with a white railing and I don't know if it's possible or not but I was thinking that if the railings go dark, the step lights really jump out to me as white. Okay. That's an easy switch I can use.  I think in my head they would, they would look great matching whatever the railing ends up. That's on the screen that's these right here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love I mean I you know step lights are great. I use them all over. Are they wired or solar.  He came in and put in a new 200 amp panel in the house and brought it kind of up to modern standards those were two existing circuits that were replaced on the old Sam there's to 20 amp circuits. And one was driving the, the existing external plugs, and one was driving the existing lighting, and, and that has. And I just, I did extend the lighting from the center light out into the camp light, but, but that's it and then the, the step lights are running off that last plug, the last exterior plug they're hardwired in, because they have a solar switch they only come on at night they only activate at night. They have a motion and solar so when the sun goes down if you approach them they'll come up. Is that a downlight. It's a downlight. Yeah, it does not glare out in your face at all and puts the face of it. If you're going to. If the face of it isn't part of the light itself I mean it's just a shield. It's a cover plate. Yeah, you could either paint that to match your risers depending on what you're going to do with the risers on the stairs. Where were you, were you going to paint those. I don't need so those are stained that's stained. Oh, it's treated with stain and I don't the honest truth is the stairs were the things that fell apart first. Yes. And it's not tall enough for a for a stair riser. So I built. I had when I bought the house there was I don't know what they were for but they're these big beautiful four inch thick pieces of granite so I dug out around it underneath and I put two granite slabs underneath there. So those steps aren't technically sitting in the in the dirt, but I built. I built two by 12 boxes. Those things are very, very sturdy and they have two by 12 treads on top, but eventually they're going to rot out like every other pair of stairs are out there and they're easily replaceable like I can just walk them out. So, I didn't know I did they're unfinished right now they could be painted I don't think the paint would hold up well to them. They have an exterior stain that I've used in the past that works really well for preserving the wood. And it's it's a natural it's like a oak stain it's kind of a gold light gold, but it fades to a natural wood color. How tall are the stairs. The stairs are code so they're they're 11 inches for each step that was the hard thing because they weren't code before. The trends 11 how high are the risers how high are the stairs, the stair itself is 11 inches up to that first step and then 11 and then six to the top. Before you do too much more work on a check with the building inspector. Yeah, they're better than the steps that were there before. I was just talking about the height up. Yeah, so usually the code is 711. So, yeah, seven in and 11 up seven up and 11. And again if you were to change the I mean you can certainly that's an option as well change the covers either paint them or put black covers on black or dark. I'm in a like a dark brown oil bronze type. Okay. I'll just swap them out when I put the railing up. So the outdoor lighting fixtures structural design of outdoor lighting fixtures shall be compatible with the architectural design and function of the building and compatible with the neighborhood. And lastly, porches and stairs on historic structures. The location of porches ramps and stairs shall be placed in a manner that does not impact or undermine the original and significant ornamentation or detailing of the existing building. Stairs ramps and porches shall employees suitable detailing to connect to become compatible with the historic and important design features of existing buildings and new construction. Stairs and ramps shall be designed in a manner with details and materials that provide the most sensitive and compatible structure that fits the building design and lay up. And again with the modifications that you had agreed to that would be acceptable and those those stairs are the original stairs lined up exactly with the front door and those are in the same location. So for Eric and Rebecca who aren't here in the room. Steve's filling out the recommendations and optional chain. Yeah, optional changes section on the form. Thank you. We have a few tonight. So it'll be minutes. I postman who uses those stairs more than anybody approves of the stairs. He thanked me for them. Is Michelle been over yet? We take a look at things. I know she's looking through all the photos that Michelle said. Okay. I think she wanted to see what design review. They had anything to say. But I'll be seeing her tomorrow. So I'll let her know how to make one that she should be in touch to set the meeting to come over and I'll let her know about the rally to. Okay. So I made that several comments. One was the structural posts on the front porch will be modified to closely represent the original turn post as much as possible in painting to also match as much as possible. The original paint patterns. And then I wrote that the applicant has the option to install black or dark brown simple metal railings for the front stairs, which meets code requirements. Anything other suggestions to add or. Do you want to add on changing the plates and those lights? Sure. Small matter, but it's a matter. Thanks for catching that. And just said that the stair light. Plates will be either a black or dark bronze color. Okay. And based on those, does anybody have anything else we should add. Comprehensive. I'm sorry. Sounds comprehensive. Okay. Sounds good. All in favor of the application with those modifications. Speak your names. William. Martha, I'm in favor with the modifications, but I also have a personal preference that the porch shingles be painted to match the body of the house to make it blend as much as possible. I agree. I think that was the proposal that was in the proposal. So that's fine. That was the original proposal. And I vote in favor as well. I'm voting no, based on the staggered shingles on the front. Cover them up with. Which doesn't do any good. I think the treatment on the post should also be simpler. Rebecca, let me just be clear on the post because I thought we were going with that simpler. So square at the top and the bottom. Yes. To accept the Florida Lee. Detail at the top and then a nice chamfer. In the middle, you can chamfer in the middle. Right. And then by the time you paint the stripes around, right, you'll come as close as possible. Yeah, that's good. That's good. I'm still going to vote no because of the staggered shingles. Okay. And then Rebecca, your vote. I'm going to vote. Yes, I'm in favor with changes. So the vote is four to one in favor. That's a, that's the ultimate yes. Because you just need three yeses. And you can sign. If you can sign, you're good with these recommendations. You can sign it applicant part. And then what I'll do is I'll coordinate with Michelle tomorrow so that she can meet with you and we can get one packet for you with the zoning permit and the building permit. Okay. And then she'll probably, you know, hash out some, some code details on the railing with you, but we'll get that out. They're 90% of the time I have to pop up to Burlington tomorrow in the middle of the day. Well, and I have your phone number. So we'll be in touch. Yeah, I'm pretty easy to find over there. Awesome. Thank you, Paul. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming and good luck with your finish. Finishing. Thank you. Bye bye. Thanks. Goodbye. Is everyone had a chance to look at the minutes from February the fifth. We have. Yes. And I'll make a motion to accept them the way they are. Oh, second. All in favor of approving the minutes. Speak your names. Martha. No. Eric wasn't there. So he can abstain if you want to solve the problem. So minutes are approved. Does anyone else have any other business? I just have one little reminder because I didn't, I didn't send out another email about it. The second hearing on zoning regulation changes is going to be next week on the 28th before city council. There were no major changes made or suggested at the hearing on the 14th. There were some little tweaks. But the, the big one that design review might care about. Even though these don't come before them is the demolition provision just because that does have to do and changes some of the process for demolition of historic buildings in the city. So it's worth to just take a look and see. See what that's what's going on there, but the design review provision doesn't have any major changes in it at all. So the regulations that you guys actually apply. They're going to be proposed to change except. Yeah, those don't apply, but the keep in note that you may be seeing. Your projects because they're going to get rid of residential density restrictions in the design review district if it goes forward as proposed. Thank you for the heads up. So there might be, there might be a lot more development in downtown. If that goes away. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? I moved to adjourn. I second that. All in favor of adjournments speak your names. William. Steven. Rebecca. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For. Oh, you. I don't control when I mute. So, yeah, just a reminder next meeting, March 4th. I don't have any applications yet. So I will let you know next week. If for some reason the meeting is canceled. Thank you. Have a good night, everybody. Thank you.


From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. It's been an interesting month in the cybersecurity space. The sector has been somewhat less affected by budget tightening these past 20 foreign months. And at the same time, it's benefited from AI tailwinds. But in the past several weeks, we've seen some separation in key high-flying cybersecurity names, specifically, Palo Alto shocked the street with a $600 million Billings shortfall forecast last month and sounded the alarm that there were cracks in its consolidation strategy. This dragged down other consolidation players in sympathy, namely CrowdStrike and Zscaler. But our research shows that the dynamics facing these companies is quite different. But particularly know CrowdStrike's earnings print highlights the company's impressive momentum while recent negativity around Zscaler is a bit of a headscratcher for us, which we'll try to explain. Hello and welcome to this week's theCUBE Research Insights powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we take a more narrow look at the information security space and dig deeper into the continued success of CrowdStrike. With recent survey data from ETR, we continue to advance our premise that platforms beat products and we identify several levers that are powering CrowdStrike's path to $5 billion by fiscal year of 26 and to $10 billion by the end of the decade. Now, if you take a look at the stock market, we've seen some really interesting trends. In the last four months, there's been some divergence, but since early 2022 and into most of 2023, CrowdStrike, Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks, three high flyers and three consolidators all exhibited pretty quality performance trading in similar patterns. So they were pretty closely aligned. As well, through the second half of 2023, they significantly outperformed the NASDAQ, as you can see here in the orange line. In fact, on February 15th, the week before Palo Alto's earnings, CrowdStrike was trading at 157% above its March 8th, 2022 level. Zscaler was up 120% and Palo Alto up 95% while the NASDAQ was only up 37%. Now, what we saw was Palo Alto surprised the street to the downside, they hit their quarter, but their forecast had some concern. So on February 21st, after the close, Palo Alto announced its earnings and while it beat investors who normally used to Palo Alto's consistent and predictable performance, heard about a delayed or perhaps lost government contract that took down fiscal year 24 buildings guidance by 600 million at both ends of the guide range. This is directly gonna hit the income statement and not surprisingly took the stock down, took down more than 100 points. Now you can see in my tweet the day after the earnings print, I corrected my initial take to reflect this is part of the guide and not the current order. Thunderdome is the Defense Information System Agency or DEESA's Zero Trust Network Architecture Project. Palo Alto had reallocated significant resources to that project given the likely event that it would get the deal. But as we've seen with other large government contracts like JETI, remember that things can change quickly. So we wanted to understand what the spending data was telling us and this chart from ETR shows net score or spending momentum on the vertical axis and pervasion or account penetration in more than 1700 respondent accounts. This is just the cybersecurity sector and we've cherry picked some of our favorite names and several of them that compete with CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks. Now, what's interesting is that if you look at the basket of cybersecurity stocks such as those in the bug ETF, you'll actually see that unlike CrowdStrike, the C-scaler and Palo Alto are three consolidators, the group is actually traded much more closely with the NASDAQ and it fell behind after the Palo Alto earnings announcement. And as you can see by the squiggly lines in this chart, the entire group, including our three consolidators, have been pushed down on the vertical axis since January, 2022, which is the beginning of this time series. Now, remember anything above 40% on the vertical axis is considered highly elevated. And so you can see everyone was pushed down. The one exception is of course Microsoft, which continues to be ubiquitous and is seen as the good enough security companies with many people who say good enough is not good enough in cybersecurity. And the recent recent announcement of the Russian hacks inside of Microsoft and getting to source code underscore that good enough may not be good enough, but we'll save that detail for another day. The point is in looking at this data, we thought, well, maybe the combination of AI sucking up all the budget and can the continued macro headwinds are gonna have an impact on the entire sector and particularly these other two companies besides just Palo Alto that we've been following quite closely, these consolidators. But so we wanted to keep digging and spending fatigue was the watchword. It sent the shock into the system. So the big topic on the Palo Alto call, one of them anyway, and subsequent discussions at various financial conferences were comments made by Palo Alto's CEO, Nikeshia Roro. He said, the part that is new, so he talked about how demand drivers were great. So despite the many demand drivers that we're seeing we're beginning to notice customers are facing spending fatigue in cybersecurity. That was on 220 after the close. Now we have some other data that we're showing here that tells the story in a bit more detail from the customer side of things. It's a CISO at a mid-sized services company coming out of an ETR round table. This individual said, the pain points that I've had with Palo Alto have always been once they figure out what to sell you they try to figure out how to sell you more. Okay, well that's fair. And what you buy from Palo Alto two or three years works great, it's fine. And then all of a sudden now you gotta spend more to get kind of where you were get back to that baseline. And they've done that over and over again and I think people are quite honestly just tired of that. This individual said this on 216 four days before Palo Alto announced. So kind of interesting confirmation just prior to the earnings print. Now the other tidbit from the Palo Alto earnings was that as part of that spending fatigue Palo Alto was having trouble converting customers consolidating them to its platform. And the problem they cited is that customers they have existing licenses for legacy point products that maybe haven't expired or they're not willing to take a risk on digesting all the modules in a consolidation play at once. So Palo began offering free trials to bridge customers as these licenses expired and it gave more time for customers to absorb the budget hit. Now associated with this consolidation is waning across IT. So what does it mean for cyber? Of course, free trials they're not a new tactic from Palo Alto or others but it is a recently new dynamic that Palo Alto was facing consolidation headwinds. So we look deeper into the data and put together this chart. Try to understand, look if a consolidation is waning what does it mean for stocks? This chart shows the percentage of more than 300 customers in an ETR survey they're actively cutting budget and that said consolidating redundant vendors was the primary means of cutting costs. Now this isn't specific to cybersecurity it's across the entire portfolio. So it hits our heads but note the steep decline from 36% of customers just one year ago, January down to 12% in January 2024. And you can see in my tweet I said this doesn't necessarily mean CrowdStrike and Zscaler are gonna be hit in a similar way that Palo Alto was because their history is much different than that of Palo Alto. Palo Alto was a company started essentially as a hardware company it pivoted in software. It entered many, it had a pivot to the cloud it had troubles doing that more so than those other two and it really has entered many new markets by stitching together a number of acquisitions. You know, very successfully by the way but definitely a heavier transformation challenge than CrowdStrike and Zscaler. Those two companies are also very acquisitive as I said had a much less complicated path to the cloud because of the proximity to the cloud in terms of when they were launched. Much simpler time than did Palo Alto which really struggled and we've reported on that several years ago it struggled with its cloud transformation earlier this decade and then as we expected they figured it out but nonetheless it was a heavier lift. Now we saw that Zscaler they beat they raised but the stock got hit. So this was something we were watching closely waiting for Zscaler and CrowdStrike to announce earnings Zscaler announced you can see here and Silicon Eagles Zscaler announced earnings on the last day of February the 29th leap year and despite a strong print the stock has been under pressure. Why is that? Well, analysts are essentially citing concerns about billing being below the high end of the range. Guidance that is back loaded was another concern and difficult comparisons in the back half. As well Zscaler is really the only pure play vendor in the Sassy space. Sassy stands for secure access service edge as a capability that converges network and security as a service. It's got SD win in there. It's got cloud native security functions. Think gateway security, think brokers, firewall as a service all part of a comprehensive zero trust network access framework and Zscaler signaled that it's going to spend aggressively on go to market to secure a moat as a pure play in the field. Now personally we like that move because it's going to pay dividends in our view down the road. Wall Street is cutting estimates and as a result of these added expenses and so they're taking their price targets down and that's why the stock is getting hit. At least we assume so. That's the explanation that makes most sense to us but again we always like it when a company like Zscaler has conviction. You can see the future and invest in whether it's R&D or go to market or base. We like that because it'll pay dividends in the long run. We think that's a great use of capital and a good capital allocation. Okay, so we got Palo Alto was the big shock. Zscaler announced earnings. I said it was a bit of a head scratcher but kind of squinted through and can explain it. Then CrowdStrike happens. The analyst community was eagerly anticipating CrowdStrike's earnings and wow, did they get a gift? 3.44 billion in ARR, that's 34% growth, better operating margins, free cash flow margins improved and an impressive 66 in the rule of 40 calculation i.e. free cash flow margin plus growth. And so what you're seeing here is a real true platform expansion, true platform expansion that CrowdStrike is demonstrating. And the real metric that's getting people excited that underscores this for CrowdStrike is expansion beyond the core endpoint. People think of CrowdStrike as an endpoint security company. That's how it started. Next generation endpoint security and antivirus going beyond antivirus. Remember George Kurtz came from that warrant. And so he had this vision of a new way to stop the breach that's kind of their mission. Anyway, 25% of its $850 million Q4 ending ARR, which by the way, that was more than double over the previous year. More than 25% came from or 25% came from modules outside of endpoints, specifically cloud, identity and next gen set. And the goal is that by the end of the decade, the non endpoint parts of CrowdStrike's business will comprise half of a $10 billion ARR. That would put CrowdStrike on a path to become a next great software company much in the same way that we've seen in the ascendancy of service now and even before that Salesforce. So this is the power of a platform. CrowdStrike CFO said that new customers are averaging almost five modules. I think it was 4.9 modules when they come onto the platform. And the number of customers deploying five, six, seven and eight or more modules is growing consistently. CrowdStrike gave a number of metrics on that. So there seemed to be hitting on all cylinders. George Kurtz, the CEO of CrowdStrike, he's very fond of saying that these three businesses aligned cloud, identity and next gen SIM are each in and of themselves IPO-able, which is very impressive. Of course, George Kurtz, he ceases the moment here. If you know George Kurtz and I've gotten to know him a bit over the last few years, he doesn't miss a chance to cross the finish line first. Here's what he said on the earnings call. Well, what organizations inevitably realize is that vendor lock-in leads to deployment difficulties, skyrocketing costs and subpar security. The outcome is shelf wear and sunk costs. ELA and bundling addiction become the only way to coax customers into purchasing non-integrated point products. If the organization is trapped in these fragmented pseudo platforms and riddled with bolt-on point products, those are the ones that are suffering from fatigue, essentially implying not us as a really a mic drop moment for George Kurtz on the earnings call. Now, the other little tidbit that we pulled out of that call, which came up a couple of times, was the Dell deal starting to produce results. And this is something that we've been reporting on for a while. Late last December, we touched on it. We picked it up last year at CrowdStrike's Falcon conference. CrowdStrike said that its Dell partnership has produced $50 million of total deal value to date. Now, that's not a lot, but this is in its early days. Dell is standardizing on CrowdStrike's Falcon platform to build its MDR service, specifically targeted at small and mid-sized customers. MDR has managed detection and response. Now, there's a neat capability in the ETR data that lets us investigate overlap between accounts. So in this case, overlap in Dell accounts with CrowdStrike. So what this chart shows is 314 Dell accounts out of those 1,700. And you can see we've selected the client products. And because this deal was done between Daniel Bernard, who's CrowdStrike's chief business officer and Sam Bird, who's Dell's president of CSG, the client group, EC group. So the chart shows net score or spending momentum on the vertical axis and CrowdStrike's overlap in those 314 accounts on the horizontal plane. And this is only SMB accounts, which is what this deal is targeted toward. And you can see we plotted the trajectory, those squiggly lines over the past two years for each or several of the companies, or this one company in this case. And it tells an interesting story. Now specifically, CrowdStrike back in 2022 had 30 Dell SMB accounts, or a 15% overlap in the data set with a very robust net score of 67%, really, really high. And remember anything over 40% is considered highly elevated. But two things happened over the course of two years. First, CrowdStrike, look at it, the net score in these accounts plummeted and it bottomed late last year. Maybe SMBs found it too complicated to deploy and manage their own CrowdStrike instances, or maybe they felt the price was too high, but clearly something needed to change and these two companies got together last year. And the second change is CrowdStrike's penetration went from, despite the decelerating spending momentum, went from 30 Dell SMB accounts to 73, with a 23% overlap up from 15%. So the net score, while CrowdStrike's net score in Dell SMB accounts went from 67% two years ago, or 11 points above the CrowdStrike survey average, dropped to 38%, which is 10 points below CrowdStrike's average. So the performance over the last couple of years has not been stellar in that SMB space, but the fact that CrowdStrike's talking about this partnership gaining momentum tells us the company took action to solve whatever problem it was facing and is now in a much stronger position to compete in that SMB space. Dell is definitely a bellwether and a winner in the SMB marketplace, so we see significant upside there. So let's talk about, let's close out by talking about why CrowdStrike is thriving and look at some of the critical success factors that are powering the outstanding execution of this company. First of all, they're a true platform company. We've said many, many times, platforms beat products. And if their platform comprises a single lightweight agent, same agent for all the models, they've also got agent lists. So they've got a unified data model. It's a unified data platform for years. They've used knowledge graphs, which apply very nicely in security. And so that's rippling through to their AI piece of their business. So that is something that a lot of companies, AI wash, we don't believe CrowdStrike is one of them. They've been in the AI space forever. We reported on that a couple of quarters ago showing their AI journey. We think it's legit. Companies founder-led and very much mission-driven. We've talked about the importance of founder-led companies before. You think about Dell technologies. You think about Oracle. These are mission-driven companies. Of course, CrowdStrike's mission is to stop the breach. They are cloud native. They really pivoted very heavily to the cloud at a point where that was not a heavy lift. Of course, Zscaler is all about cloud. They never had to pivot, but CrowdStrike made those investments early on because they saw the opportunity in cloud. And we see significant upside, as we said in SMB, with the Dell relationship is important because SMBs need help. They generally clearly don't have the resources that large organizations have to combat cybercrime. So CrowdStrike saw this clear opportunity to bring security to the cloud. We haven't talked much about AI, but CrowdStrike is a true AI practitioner as we alluded to a minute ago. As are many other cyber firms, by the way. Cyber is really about a data problem, and AI is all about taking advantage of data, but CrowdStrike has real AI chops in our opinion. It has begun, announced, it's begun shipping. It's Charlotte Gen AI product, which is gonna license on a per endpoint basis, which could be a nice boost to the company's income statement. And we believe the more important piece of this is we think that Gen AI capabilities like Charlotte are gonna transform the security analyst experience and dramatically simplify the many of the manual and really error-prone processes that occur today for the security operations analyst. To CrowdStrike, they are executing on a true platform play better than any firm in the cyber space in our opinion. Its main competitor is Microsoft, and by all accounts that company has an inferior offering to CrowdStrike, that said, again, some customers tell us they're priced out of CrowdStrike and they're forced to go with good enough. But as we saw again today from the news on the Russian hack of Microsoft's platform, good enough may not be good enough in this space. But as cyber more than any of the market, the ROI is much less a function of the CapEx and OpEx costs. Well, those are vital to any ROI calculation. The value of cybersecurity is a reduction in risk and the reduction in corollary expected loss of revenue, expense costs to recover, and of course, reputation. With cyber threats continuing to escalate and the probability of breach near 100%, reducing the impact of a breach by either stopping the breach again, CrowdStrike stated mission or responding as fast as possible because times are compressing and the adversaries are getting faster, they're using AI, they're getting better, but these are the key drivers of ROI and generally organizations are gonna find it's worth every penny. Okay, that's it for now. Thanks to Alex Meyerson and Ken Schiffman who are on production and in our podcasts. Kristen Martin and Cheryl Knight helped get the word out. Social media and in our newsletters and Rob Hoff is our editor-in-chief at siliconangle.com. Remember, all these episodes are available as podcasts wherever you listen, you're gonna do a search breaking analysis podcast. I publish each week on thecuberesearch.com and siliconangle.com. You can email me at david.valante at siliconangle.com or DM me at divalante or comment on our LinkedIn posts and please do check out etr.ai for the best survey data in the enterprise tech business that continue to add more granularity, more features, more companies. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE research insights powered by ETR. Thanks for watching everybody and we'll see you next time on breaking analysis.


Hello there, I'm So I'm back again from another meeting and in my suit and so I decided to do another video I don't know why I do that actually I actually I kind of do I fit I felt bad usually because I'm if I'm working from home and just in a t-shirt or whatever and I'm doing these videos and I Feel like I should look a bit better for you guys, but so now you get me in a suit again. Anyway, I Today though, I want to talk to you about something else Something that's been going on with me and and that I wanted to share with you And I know I've had this request a couple times before and so I thought it might be interesting to get into it as some of You know I my background is as a translator Italian to English translator But what I've have been doing more so recently is kind of trying to expand from that and become more of an agency and More of a project manager where I work with other translators for an end client and I'm able to offer all that and so you know along those lines I do have an agency and And that's what I've been trying to do and trying to build it up I don't talk about that much because I feel a lot more insecure about it because I'm still figuring it out as I go along and So I don't want to you know start giving out advice and find out that it's wrong or that I have no clue What I'm talking about or you know, this that and the other but I also thought that maybe It will be interesting to do. Maybe it'll be interesting to share My journey along you know as I go along with you and to share things that I learned as I learned them Even at the risk of maybe them being wrong At least you can see my thought process and and what I go through because I know I imagine quite a few of you or I know quite a few of you Are getting into freelance saying freelance translation well for very various different reasons Some of you want to do it because you want to be location-dependent and you want to be able to work from home Or maybe you want to be able to spend more time with family or something along those lines but you know other ones like me maybe at some point will be thinking we'll wait is there any way I can expand this and you know, maybe try to do a little bit more and And yeah, you know so for what happened for me was I got contacted by you know long-term client and they said Okay, can you do this translation? I do Italian to English and they asked okay Can you do this? We need this translated into German and French as well? I think and you know Is there any way you can do this and I know other translators in different languages and so I was like yeah I could probably do that and they're like, okay Look, can you figure it all out and we'll just pay you and do it through you So I was like, okay And so I contacted these other translators and I got a price quote from them and so then I quoted my price and so yeah Actually, I had been asked to do this once before and I and I quoted the price to the client and then lost money on it so this time I made sure there was enough of a margin to make sure I didn't lose money and Anyway, you know got it got it done I paid these these people and then and and then got paid by the client in the meantime I got back some translations in French and German and I got really paranoid about Are these done correctly? Are they not done correctly? Why is this like that? But at other places I see this that and you know this that and the other I think I bothered those translators with so many questions. I'm surprised. They still work with me I mean, I still work with them and and it seems fine but I felt really bad because you know, I was just really insecure really paranoid about everything that could go wrong and So I just wanted to now talk about What I think you should do if you're just starting out with this if maybe you're a freelancer Yeah, and you know my point of view is freelance translator But actually this works with any type of freelancer and you kind of want to see if you can become More of an agency or see if you can you know kind of get into project management Quote-unquote where you're dealing with other freelancers other freelance translators and so you can offer that and and You know because that's what happened with me. I got my gears turning I was thinking if I can do this, you know, I offer this in three languages instead of one I was like, what if I do this in like 23 different languages and then I can make some money off each language And that's how I earn a living blah blah blah blah You know, obviously it's not that I had that much of a margin on each language and it was a lot of work And so I want but I still wanted to figure out a way to make this work. So anyway This is this will be my first lesson to anyone who asks me How do I get into this? How do I if this is an avenue that I want to pursue? how do I start with this and So here's what I would say I would I would say, okay, if you want to start Hiring freelancers, let's say, you know for your business and if you want to start sharing what you do or delegating What you do to other freelancers so you can you know grow your business as an agency or something like that What I would start with is start with What you do best if you are say a Portuguese to English translator You want to hire a Portuguese to English translator? And I know this might seem it might sound really stupid and I seem completely counterproductive Well, you're like, okay I need a freelancer for all the other languages, you know or freelancer to design my website or to do market research or to You know literally everything else besides what I do best and why would I hire someone to do exactly what I do best? I mean that makes no sense Bear with me. This is why you want to do it because First of all, if you hire someone your Portuguese to English translator and you're hiring another Portuguese to English translator It will take you longer than if you did the translation yourself I can guarantee you this you'll also make less money because you're gonna have to pay that other translator and you'll be able to you know, take a bit of a margin maybe but it won't be that much and And so it'll take you longer it'll you'll make less money and it'll also be a lot harder for you because You will You know, you'll be very paranoid about about the quality that comes out you'll be looking over everything with a fine-tooth comb even more so than when you do the translation yourself and You know, you'll also be a lot tighter with time because usually if the client gives you two days Suddenly you need the translator to do it in one day so you can look over it for a day or something like that Anyway, you're gonna have that time margin there and anyway, it'll be more stressful as well So why the hell would you do it, right? Well, here's why because Things can go wrong and they will go wrong and if you are the person hiring Chances are whatever goes wrong is on you It's your fault. Basically. I mean you can you can lay the blame wherever you want But if you're the person hiring you're the one that has to deal with it And so the best way to deal with all these issues is if you hire someone To do something, you know already if your Portuguese to English translator and you hire another Portuguese to English translator At least, you know how the translation should be done the pitfalls and the problems that can arise the problems and translations that might happen You know that there's a very common mistake that can happen with Portuguese to English or whatever they are and so you know to look out for them So all that's taken care of and you don't have to worry about that. You'll have plenty to worry about but at least it lets you not have to worry about that section about the translation itself and you worry only about the project management part the delegation part the hiring part and that's what you want to concentrate on now because plenty of things can go wrong and will go wrong and Once again, most of them will be your fault. I don't want to sound mean but you know not so much even your fault But your responsibility you're gonna have to deal with it and figure this out So in an ideal situation, this is what I would wish upon someone if they want to start off the best way to do it and The easiest way to do it really in the long term is to if your Portuguese to English translator Hire your next Portuguese to English translation hire someone else to do it and in fact have them do it a couple times if they're good if you want to keep on and then Find another completely new Portuguese to English translator and hire them to do a job a couple times Because at this point then if you then want to branch off and start doing other languages like say then Spanish to English or Italian to English or French to English then suddenly at least you have quite a bit of experience with the project management side and the things that can happen and A lot of things can go wrong.  Then what do you do? You know, at least there in a pinch You can do the translation yourself because that's your that's what you do Or maybe they you know that they do a good job, but it takes them too long and you're right down to the wire You know at that point what do you do? Do you hire them again? Because you know, maybe you just need to a lot more time and figure it out or maybe they're just bad with deadlines in general You how what do you do then? What do you what do you need to do? Or maybe they do a good job and they're on time But you find out that you lost money on it because because you were project managing that you couldn't work on something else And then or maybe you you're not sure about what they do and so you want to have another editor look over it This is where you can save by the way because if you you can be the editor yourself if you know the language But you know or maybe anyway, so many things can happen and go wrong That it's just a lot better if you're hiring someone doing something that you know best And if you hire this person to do these translations in your translation combination so in your area of expertise and And they do it a couple times Maybe you hire someone else so you get used to a different set of problems and that issues that might arise and then And you have that set then you can branch off and you can start hiring other people And and that's the way to do it just to build up gradually Because if you hire someone off the bat to do a Japanese English translation You because this is another thing I did I hired someone someone asked me. Oh, can you do Japanese English? I'm like sure I can do that I'll figure it out and I found luckily I found a very good Japanese English translator I didn't and that's the thing he did the translation send it back to me. I'm like, okay Sorry, it was English to Japanese. Yeah, so, you know, he sends me back this thing in Japanese I'm like I have no idea how to check this So obviously I hire an editor the editor writes back with corrections and then I'm like, okay So do I just do these corrections or what so I wrote back to the editor and I'm like, okay I saw your corrections are these like bad mistakes or are they more recommendations to make it sound better or you know what what what is it and Luckily most of them were recommendations. She said, oh, no, it sounds good It's just a couple things here and there and then I was like, okay, I guess that's fine But I still wasn't sure so I sent him back to the original translator and I said look this other editor said that it was very good And she just recommended here here and here. What do you say and he wrote back and he's like it sounds good Just one thing I don't think I don't agree with right here and you're still there I'm like, well, do I take his recommendation the other persons? I don't know. I don't know and Anyway, so save yourself all that stuff because it really it gives you a headache because if these are languages You don't know what are you going to do with them? And likewise if you're hiring to do completely different things to hire to make a website or to do this that and the other You don't know the issues that can arise and so at least you want to know the project management issues that can arise You need to be used to hiring people to hiring people to do a job and to expect them, you know to be able to Tell them what you expect to be able to receive it to be able to judge what they do and people to get back to them In case their problems and issues that's all the project management side And I keep calling in project management because I for lack of a better word But you see what I mean not with the work itself, but with the managing itself And you need to get past that and the best way to get past that is to hire someone in your area of expertise Doing something that you know how to do you will lose money at the beginning I mean you won't be making much money You'll it'll take you more time than if you did it yourself, but it's an investment and you can use this investment later So if you are thinking of branching out, that's precisely what I would do I would find someone who does exactly what you do and that's the best way to judge them on it and So yeah That's my advice for my first step in terms of delegating or you know setting up an agency or if you want to expand or something along those lines Let me know if you find this useful if you want more advice like this if you want me to talk more from the like the agency's point of view and and about my journey that I'm going through there because It's very interesting. I should say you know But it is a bit different from what I usually talk about and from what I consider to be more my area of expertise so Anyway, let me know what you think about it Or yeah, if you have or if you disagree with what I said or anything along those lines I'm happy to hear about it. Just let me know in the comments below Otherwise, I'll talk to you in the next video actually before I sign off. I wanted to say there is the conference the a it annual conference going on in Atlanta on April 21st, so if you aren't Atlanta for the Atlanta Association of interpreters and translators They're having their annual conference. I plan on being there So if you're gonna be there if you know someone's gonna be there, feel free to let me know it'll be good to catch up and Otherwise, that's it. Let me know if you find this interesting if you find this topic interesting by giving me a thumbs up because then I can tell what works and what doesn't and Don't forget to subscribe if you want more videos about freelancing freelance translation stuff like that Otherwise, I'll talk to you next time. Thanks. Bye