Hello. Welcome. So glad to have you here. You're joining us for another episode of The Nonprofit Show. And today we have with us Erica Wasdorp, president with A Direct Solution. And you're going to hear more from Erica here soon. In fact, she's here to talk to us about small and mighty monthly donors. So I'm excited for this conversation, Erica. Before we do jump into conversation, we want to remind you, our fantastic viewers and our fantastic listeners, who we are, Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, is actually a way today. So you're only going to hear my voice with Erica and see my face with Erica. I think Julia might have had a little too much candy last night. She's enjoying some time away, but we're so grateful she created this platform. And I'm Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group and honored to serve alongside as co-host each and every day here for The Nonprofit Show. We're also honored to have the continued trust and support from our amazing presenting sponsors, Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Be Generous, Your Part-Time Controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, and The Nonprofit Nerd. If you haven't checked out these companies, I encourage you to do so. In fact, if I could assign homework, that would be the homework that I would assign. Don't do it yet though, because you don't want to miss what Erica is going to say. But in about 29 minutes, would be a great time to check them out, because they're here to help you elevate your mission truly. And again, if you missed any of our episodes, that's okay. We've got you. You can find us on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, as well as Vimeo.  Erica, I always like to ask our guest, are you a podcast listener? Not as much as probably I should be, but I'm more like a video watcher. So I'll go on the video. Yeah. I got into podcasting during COVID as a listener, walking, exercising my dog, things like that. And it's like, oh, I want to listen to something besides my heavy breathing from being out of shape. So that was good for me. But yeah, you'll have to download it and share far and wide. So again, Erica Wastore, thank you for joining us. Erica is the president at A Direct Solution. And for those of you listening, the web address is adirectsolution.com. So welcome, Erica. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about you. We've had the chance to talk and I appreciate that. But our viewers and listeners haven't. So share us a little bit. Yeah. So I'm originally from the Netherlands. I don't know if you knew this, Jared, but yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to be celebrating 30 years come April, 30 years in this country. So really excited. Love it. Love it. Love it. Was a good move. And there, I got involved in monthly giving subscriptions. So when I moved to this country, I started working for a nonprofit. And that's where I took on the monthly giving program. And I've loved it ever since. I'm absolutely passionate about monthly giving because I can see the power, these small, mighty monthly donors that continue to support your mission, keep the lights on. And if nothing else, that's definitely what we've seen in COVID. Yeah. So true. Yeah. No, absolutely. So I'm excited to nerd out. That's what I call nerd out with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Definitely check out the website, adirectsolution.com and, and thanks for sharing. I did not know you were originally from the Netherlands and you're coming up on a big 30 year milestone. So yeah, it became a citizen. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It became a citizen in 2008. So it's a little bit shorter than that. But yeah. Yeah. So in a voting citizen, correct? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, actually, they asked me to vote before I was a citizen, which was kind of interesting, but yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Can't do it yet. Yeah. Not yet. Not yet. Well, hey, let's dive deep. Profiles of a monthly donor. What does that look like? Like, how do we identify who these monthly donors could be or currently are?  So, so monthly donors tend to be like smaller check writers, you know, like smaller donors. They're not your big, big potential donors yet down the route. They may very well give, give a big gift, but they're typically like less than $250. They're your multiple givers. So if you have, you know, if you're reaching out to your donors, try to ask them for money multiple times a year. Those are your donors that are giving two or more gifts a year. But again, not the, not the big amount. So those are your prime prospects for monthly donors. If you look at what profiles, I mean, again, they're all over the map. They're younger, they're older, they're single, they're married. There's not really a, like a particular, like, these are your perfect monthly donors. But as long as they give more, more than once, if they've identified that, you know, then you know that they care enough. And then, you know, try to convert them to, to give monthly. I love that. And you're right. It's, it's the, the individuals, the constituents, the donors, the supporters, I tend to use that vernacular interchangeably. Yeah. They're the ones that do help to keep the lights on because throughout the year, when it's a high, high and low lows, it's like, but we know we can count on you. Yes, absolutely. And again, during COVID, man, we saw that those organizations that had monthly donors, they were like, wow, this is great. The money keeps coming, kept coming in. And, and even, you know, like people would call up and say, can I upgrade my monthly gift? What do you need? Oh yeah. Yeah. What do you need? How can I help?  Okay. You caught my attention. Um, and you, you kind of already answered this, do monthly donors ever increase gifts? So what you just said, Erica, is yes, they do. And it happened often, perhaps during COVID. How, how does this come about? I mean, because I can't imagine all of the donors are calling and saying, I would like to increase my gift. No, so there's a couple of ways that you can do that, right? So in, in, um, so you can ask them for an extra gift. So especially now, hey, we're, you know, giving Tuesday, giving days, um, if you have a match, you know, something special, something that you say, Hey, I want my, I have, as a donor would want to know about this special opportunity that I can help some more, right? So, um, so to ask them, send them a request for a special gift at year end or at a match or giving Tuesday. Um, but make sure that you recognize them as a monthly donor in whatever you say. So you want to make sure that you say, thank you, I know you're already giving monthly, but I have this special opportunity. Uh, if you have a special project or a capital campaign, you can ask your monthly donors to participate in that. Um, and, you know, events you can, you can ask them for an extra gift. So that's one way of upgrading. The other way of upgrading is asking them for an upgrade. So, and hey, you know, everything's getting more expensive right now. So, uh, if you're a food organization, well, ask your monthly donors to say, well, food's become more expensive. We want to give more people, um, you know, special holiday basket or, or, you know, do something special for Thanksgiving for the, for the holidays. So can you consider a small, uh, increase in your monthly gift? What's the worst that can happen? People can say, no, we're not doing it, but 12% of monthly donors make, uh, upgrade when asked. 12, we love stats. We love data. Yeah. I think it's super sexy. So 12%. And I have to acknowledge, um, one of our thought leaders that's been on multiple times here on the show, um, and Macaulay Lopez, I'm going to call her out. She, and the chat box said, I give $25 a month to my alma mater and I increased. So this is, you know, 10 dollars per month. I'd love to increase again. Oh yes. I'm a sucker for extra gifts. Yes. That's, that's fantastic. So, so it's, so again, 12% upgrades when asked. And then 6% of monthly donors makes at least one extra gift a year. I mean, I work with organizations, they have like a pretty substantial number of monthly donors and, and, uh, especially religious or animal organizations, they tend to get a lot of extra gifts from their monthly donors. Oh, I bet. Now, how do you even start a monthly program? Because I unfortunately know many organizations that have not taken this path, right? Like, they really count on the year-end donors. So how might you establish this monthly donor opportunity? Well, yeah.  If you have a website and you have a donation platform, you have the opportunity to ask for monthly gift, right? So that's one, right? So you have the systems. I mean, when I wrote my first book in 2012, that didn't exist yet. Now, all these recurring giving platforms, these donation platforms, you know, you can work with the website, right? So start there. So take a look at what you have on your website now and then, um, create a, what I call like a monthly only page. So that way, like that's, they're very specific. That's where you want people to go to when you ask for a monthly gift to be really, really specific. And then take a look at what are some of your opportunities. If you have a welcome email series, which a lot of nonprofits are starting to create now, right? So you get all these donors from year-end, put them in a welcome email series, and then one of those emails will be an invitation to consider a monthly gift instead of just an extra one-time gift, right? So that's, that's one opportunity. Again, it doesn't cost you much money. It just needs, requires a little bit of time. Then take a look at your emails, add a button, linking to a monthly giving page. And again, literally I have clients who have multiple buttons in an email, give monthly, give now, and they're generating monthly donors because of it, right? But you got a link to that, that special page. And again, I know everybody's busy, so don't worry too much about doing it at year-end, but like come January, jump on it. I mean, maybe do a special Valentine's Day campaign, a special day of that, that fits with your organization, Earth Day, you know, environmental, something like that. We say, hey, I really want to build a little campaign around it where you have multiple emails, maybe a postcard, and perhaps even some phone calls. Again, remember, these are your smaller donors, right? So you want to get them to, to give more often and, and ongoing. So that's, that's what you're trying to get to. No, I'm curious and thank you for the permission to not do this right now at end of year. Yes. Yes. Don't do it. Don't worry about it right now. Just don't worry about it right now. But how do we take that data and the analytics, like how do we analyze it to say, okay, if we want to do this January, February, how do we take what just happened and the data from these annual donors to move them into monthly? That might be a curveball and I know I'm asking it on the fly, but can you address that, Erica? Yeah. So yeah, again, so you've got all these donors who just gave, you know, a year-end, right? So number one, you send them a thank you letter, right? You send them, if they gave online, they'll send a thank you email. Well, in, you know, like the stats and the research shows that the sooner you can get a donor to give monthly, the better off you are. So if you've got all these donors coming in year-end, come January, send them a special email inviting them to consider a monthly gift, send them maybe a special thank you letter in which you invite them to make a monthly gift. And again, take a look at those donors who've given you less than $250 and say, let me focus on those to try to convert them to make a monthly gift. So yeah. I was just part of an organization and a big ask and they wanted to ask, you know, the attendees to do $1,000 a year. And we, you know, say it said that is $83.33 a month. Exactly. Yes. You know, that's what it is. And so I love taking those $250 donors and under to say, you know, it could be $7 a month, it could be $10 a month, whatever that looks like. And then I've heard and I'm curious if you could speak to this, oftentimes when you move someone from an annual to a monthly, they actually tend to give more over. Oh, oh, absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, if you look at the fact that on average donors tend to give like one and a half to two times a year, right? Even those organizations that have that mail more often. So, so if you can get them, like if you look at the fact that even an online gift is about $111 right now, right? So if the donor gives an online gift to $111, well, if you can convert them to $25 a month, now they give you $300. You know, again, if you look at like mail donors, they give, they might give on average like $58 bucks. So now if you get them to give $25 a month, $300. So you've just quintupled, six-tupled the value of your monthly donors by doing that, right? And the impact of that, right? Like the impact of that increased gift. Now, I'm going to flip the script because I've also heard from fundraisers that are nervous in doing that and actually feel that that's being disrespectful. Can we just like talk about the elephant in the room and say, and say like, okay, here's why we're doing this and we're not discounting their gift. Like, we're really just saying, we do see the value of going from annual to monthly and then even from monthly to an increased. But I've heard of so many people saying, I think that's really disrespectful. How do you address that? You know, it's interesting. I haven't heard that too much that they say it's disrespectful to go from an annual donor to a monthly because I think especially now, and monthly giving is really actually very donor centric because you say to them, look, I understand that you can't give as much money as maybe you used to or you would love to step it up, but it's really a hard time to do that right now. So consider a smaller monthly gift and that fits your budget. You don't have to worry about it. It comes in automatically. It helps support the organization on an ongoing basis. And so it's just a different way for them to consider making a gift in a smaller amount. So of course, if somebody says, no, I just want to continue to write my $250 at the end of the year, totally fine. But it's typically like the number one reason why donors want to give monthly is because they want to help. The monthly is just it's a way that's more comfortable for them. To your point is like they would love to write that $1,000 check, but they can't. So now $85 or $83.33 a month is something that they can get away with. And you know, like a lot of times organizations even have they look at their board and board members, some may be able to write the big checks, but not everybody, especially if you have a very mission focused board. So starting with a monthly gift is a way to say, oh, I can do that. I can do $25 or $50 a month. And it doesn't negate their value. What I love from that too is the cash flow forecast. That's where I also nerd out. It's like, but now it's more if you can forecast the income as opposed to one big lump sum at the end, you can really start to see what that looks like. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's what again, it's like, you know, I mean, I've been doing monthly giving for 30 years. So it's been well, but even for the organization I worked at, you know, that 9-11 happened. And, you know, all of a sudden they couldn't get out in the mail and they're like, whoa, this is great. All this money keeps coming in and I don't have to go out in the mail, you know. So and that's after after that, they really said, we got to step this up because this is a wonderful, wonderful program. And they had a lot of small donors, right? So I think if you're an organization that has a lot of big donors, you know, it may not be as relevant per se. But even so, there may be some major donors that says, look, I wish I could do more. Well, they may not be able to write the $1,000 checks every month, but they may be able to do $250 a month or what have you. But that's more like part of a conversation that you have them and they say, okay, well, how can I how can I do more in a way that's helping you keep the lights on and keep your mission going? I'm curious. And this just came to me with inflation, with, you know, we say pandemics plural. So much and just kind of gone everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. And with the election and everything coming up, like, I'm curious if people are saying, you know, I don't know my finances, and if I can give this big lump sum, like, it would actually be a little bit more consistent for me, my own personal budgeting purposes from the donor. This is what I can commit to. Are you seeing that start to take place? Yeah, I see that as well. And I think, you know, like, there's a couple of organizations that have started to test, like asking for smaller amounts, you know, during this time. And what they're seeing is that, you know, like they're saying, well, okay, as little as $5 a month will make a difference. And then when the donor gets to the page where there's multiple options, they might still self-identify and say, oh, I'll pick $25 a month, right? But they're getting more people to go there and thus more monthly donors by asking for that smaller amount, like just as little as, you know, $5 or $7 a month can make a difference. So I think it's just a really donor-centric way of giving. Do you see that tied into any milestones? So here's here's an example, you know, 50th anniversary, you know, then do you ask someone to give $50 a month? I mean, I, you know, it could be one of the questions, but you're better off like saying just even as $5 a month or 10 or, you know, and then 50 is an option on the form. Because again, if we look at industry average, it is $25 a month. But there are organizations that are seeing $60 a month on average, you know, so, but there's also organizations like the ones, I mean, if you look at it, the public TV and public radio stations, they've been some of the, and some animal welfare organizations, they've been sort of like the leaders of the pack, if you will, and they're getting like $12 a month. So they're having more, but smaller amounts, right? So, but again, they, you know, they have grown tremendously. So we have a live question. And so I'd love for you to address this. Can you speak on best practices for processing these monthly gifts? Okay, that's a great question. So the big, the first question, though, is what's your system? Because there are so many systems out there. So take a look at your donor base, CRM, and your, and your donation platform. But in terms of processing, like, so you want to make sure that, and I always recommend that if you haven't done this in a while, test it first. So make, make a gift, make a monthly gift, and say, what is your thank you landing message say, then what is your thank you message say, is that as warm and fuzzy as you want it to be, right? All of those are built into your system. Okay, they're ready there, but you have to customize it a little bit, perhaps, to make sure that it's as warm and fuzzy as you say. And then I always recommend, no matter how somebody came in, that you have a thank you letter that you send out. I mean, some people call it a welcome kit, you know, it does, you don't have to go very shmancy fancy, as long as it goes out quickly. And that will have, sorry to interrupt, is that a digital or snail? No, that's a snail mail. So they're online, you know, the landing page and the the thank you message is digital in most cases. But no matter if they came in digital, I always recommend sending something in the mail that they can hold on to that has your contact information. And, you know, preferably an email, I don't send a phone number so that if they have questions, they know whom to find. So again, you know, because they may have questions about your mission or what you're doing, they may also have questions about their gift, right? So those are a couple of key things that I recommend that you have in place. You don't need to send them thank you letters in the mail every month. But I do recommend that you have a tax receipt in January for all of their gifts. So and again, yeah, yeah. And that's, I mean, some systems will be able to pull that online, you can send it digitally, others, you may just have to send it by mail. Again, I'm still, you know, I'm old school, I love mail. So I still hold on to it. It's not an invoice, right? Like that's when we love mail. Exactly. Exactly. It's not an invoice, right? It's just an overview of your gifts and it's for your taxes. So it's a courtesy, it's a service that you're doing to your donors, right? So those are just a couple of things in processing. But, you know, at the end, I'll share my email address. So happy to, you know, talk one on one on that, because unfortunately, I wish they were the same, but they're not. Unfortunately, I don't know why, but every system is different. So and some systems do one thing really well and others, you know, not so much. So and I even work with like systems to help saying, these are some of the best practices. And then now here is how you actually implement, like, for example, with Blumerang, I've done work with them where we did an academy thing.  And then it's like, how do you now do it in Blumerang? How do you then process it? So how do you do it? We have another live question. You're very popular, Erica. So this one's very brief, but I think what they're asking is for monthly, do you recommend checking account debit card or credit card payments? All of them. Yes. Yes. All of them.  That's going to be one of my questions, because if you're having these monthly donors, I know credit card fraud happens, identity theft, you know, and I'm just as guilty that I get a new card and I forget to update it. Absolutely. Totally. Yes.  You know, but then credit card, debit card, and, you know, PayPal is still, it's also very popular, you know, Google pay, Apple pay, that is starting to get more popular, but it's not quite there yet. So if you don't have it, if you can't handle it, that's totally fine. Just these people can always pay by credit card, right? So, but yeah, so because if you have credit card monthly donors, you need to make sure also that you have some systems in place to follow up. And this is where a lot of organizations, you know, they might miss out on those things because they think, oh, it's all processing great.  Whoa, geez, you know, we got a hundred monthly donors, they were $30,000, you know, it's a lot of money if you look at it, annualized, right? And then say, what is, what's the value at risk? How many monthly donors, their payment didn't come in because their credit card expired or declined for some reason, right?  And you're doing the donor service by doing that. It's not a nag. I know people are like, oh, I don't want to nag my donors.  Even if you get reminders, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't like sink in, right?  Maybe you got a new card. And then if you talk to them live, they're willing to talk to, you know, give you their updated information. Sometimes they may need an email, sometimes they may need another email, right? Sometimes they may need, you know, like a letter. So, so do all of those things. Because it's kind of what they call like in subscription world, right? You know, so it's like, it's involuntary churn, right? So in other words, they didn't tell you that they wanted to stop, right? Their card payment didn't come in. So, you know, so it's really important to remember that. We're coping that commitment. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I don't want to forget this. And our time goes fast, Erica. I warned you. And I knew we were going to nerd out and just connect and have a great conversation. Give us your email address because we have your web address here. Yeah, directsolution.com. But what's your email? It's, it's Erica at a directsolution.com. Okay, Erica. Erica, E-R-I-C-A at a directsolution.com. So, but if you go to my website, you can contact me there as well. So, yeah. Well, I love this stuff. Lots of resources right there on the website. So download it, you know, so. I love it. The passion shows through. It's just, yeah, it's, it's, it's addictive. So thank you for bringing the passion. You're welcome. Yeah. And again, I always say this, like, I learned from nonprofits like you, because you're doing it, right? So you're coming with these questions like, Oh, yeah, let me write a blog about that. You know, or, hey, this is like, you know, or yeah, geez, I haven't thought about that in a while. So let me just take a look. You know, so one of the things I'd love to, to our, our viewers question is how do we get the bank account? Right? Like, how do we move them from debit credit card into bank account? Because I'm thinking, you know, maybe that's not our first ask if they are not so easily giving us that. But after a long term, you know, commitment, how might we move them to that? So. Well, again, most, you know, most systems are starting to add it now. So it's, it's, it's on there.  Well, again, that's a perfect group to try to convert them to say, Hey, well, if you know, you did this via ACH, electronic bank transfer, we would save a lot of money and more money can go to help the animals or the clients or the individuals we serve, right? So. Great information. Do you check out a direct solution.com and check out Erica Erica at a direct solution.com. Thank you so much for that. It's been a pleasure. Julia is probably still snacking on the Snickers or at least she is, but I've enjoyed this conversation. I'm Jared Ransom, of course, the nonprofit nerd. And we, of course, also want to honor our amazing presenting sponsors. Now's a good time to check them out. In fact, Blumerang, American nonprofit Academy, fundraising Academy at the National University, Be Generous, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, nonprofit thought leader, as well as the nonprofit nerd. So thank you to our sponsors. Thank you to our guests. It's been such a pleasure. And I appreciate you spending some time with me. Yeah, you're welcome.  I know we've got to do that. And I love that you said not now, but not now, January. Yeah, January, February. So for all of you that joined us as we end every episode, we ask you to stay well so you can continue to do well. I appreciate you, Erica, and I hope to have you back on. Yeah, we're welcome.


Hi everyone. My name is Amy Schwann-McCoy and I'm here to talk to you today about moving backward with R. Not moving backward in your programming skills or techniques, but moving backward in your courses. So using this idea of backward court design to build an R ecosystem for your programs, classes, or workshops. So start by just defining backward course design. Backward design starts by asking two questions. So as the instructor, you'll ask yourself first, what do you want your students to be able to think and do by the end of the course? So what are the knowledge areas or the competencies you want your students to achieve and how will your students be different? What's changing or what do you hope changes about your students by the end of the semester or workshop? So essentially when you're designing your class using backward design, you start with the learning objectives instead of a topic list or a book chapter. When you're designing things backward, you go through a three-step process of first identifying what you want your students to be able to do. So what are the goals? For example, in a math stats course, one learning objective would be that my students can simulate data using a Poisson distribution and then use that simulated data to answer research questions. After you have that list of results, you'll then think about how to assess it. So how will the students show you as the instructor what they've learned? And then once you've got all that down, you'll plan your learning experiences and your instruction for the semester. So what are some benefits of this approach? For the instructor, right away you've highlighted the most important outcomes of the course and you know what you want your students to work toward. You also have a guide for assessment. Those most important outcomes are the ones you should be using formative assessment to help reinforce and summative assessment to help grade at the very end. For the students, this provides an aligned and purposeful experience. So students feel that the course is more cohesive and more purposeful. There's less busy work and of course, designed this way. This also helps your instruction become transparent and more explicit. You're clearly articulating what you want your students to get out of the course because you've already thought about this. So how can we use this course design model to teach students to program in R? Well, we always have to remind ourselves that we are not our students and this is especially true when we're teaching programming. So for learning R for the new user, there are tons of obstacles.  Some students will, but for most, this is just simply not effective. Okay, so what makes it hard to learn R? Well, R is open source. We love that about R, but we also hate that about R because the open source nature means that there are a lot of resources to getting packages in R, a lot of resources to learning about them, and one really needs to become familiar with all of those separate resources. As we've probably all learned, and as Jenny Bryan made perfectly clear, it's the best talk at our studio conference. Help files and error messages just simply aren't always helpful.  Just done with it. Non-standard syntax is an obstacle. The caveat here is that the tidy verse has helped this pretty dramatically in the last few years, but not everything is tidy verse syntax friendly, so students still have to have some understanding of that base syntax as well. Non-standard output, output from every package looks a little bit different. Non-standard conventions. Here are just a few examples where capitalization is different from similar functions, punctuation changes. You add in packages, version control, function conflicts, and then all of a sudden these are the students. So we need to be purposeful about how we're bringing R into the classroom. This backward design model can really help us avoid some of the pitfalls of teaching and learning in R, and to illustrate that I want to show you a little bit about how we incorporated this when we designed the data science program at my institution, Creighton University. So what you're seeing here is a diagram of the data science program, and our data science sequence is really split up into four different tracks. Our students complete a computer science sequence, specifically introduction to programming, object-oriented programming, and data structures. All students complete calc 1 and calc 2 along with applied linear algebra and diff eq. All students complete stat modeling, intro stats, so a two semester statistic sequence, and then we have five dedicated data science courses. We have an introduction to computing and scientific thinking for data science, intro to data science itself, machine learning, data visualization, and then a capstone. These shaded courses here are electives, students either take two computing electives or two math stats electives. Now from the statistics side of things, these six courses incorporate R. So we have R in our intro stats course, our stat modeling course, math stat one and two, intro to data science, and machine learning. So we have six different courses that all are using R in some way, eventually a seventh with applied linear algebra. Here's what really makes this challenging. There's multiple entry points into the statistics or data science curriculum. There are actually three places where a student could come into the class or into the program. Students could come in, get excited from their intro stats course. We have a basic intro stats. We also have a health statistics course at Creighton as well. So they could come in through one of those intro pathways. They could also first be exposed to R in introduction to data science, or, and this happens with many of our math majors, their first exposure to R might be in mathematical statistics or probability theory. Not only that, but we have different pathways through the program. So thinking to our math majors instead, they might just take math stats one and two and never see any of these applied courses. Students might take intro stats and then go to stat modeling. They might take intro stats and then go to machine learning if they've also taken data science. So there are lots of different student experiences in this curriculum. These students who are coming in at these multiple entry points need to be well prepared to succeed later on. And also they need to be not bored. So that means that these three different entry points need to have some differences as far as not just the content, but the computing that's in the courses as well. So here I've listed some learning objectives that we have for our students at Creighton from a programming standpoint. So we want our students to be able to make data visualizations using the tidy verse. We want our students to be able to do data manipulation also using tidy verse, but we also want them to be familiar with the base packages. So base our data manipulation, so the bracket syntax, lattice plots and so on. We want them to have an understanding of both. We want our students to be able to do traditional inference and simulation based inference. We want our students to be able to calculate probabilities, simulate data. We want them to be able to do some modeling, both basic regression modeling and advanced modeling. We want our students to be familiar with machine learning. We want our students to know about deep learning and we want them to be able to do some matrix calculations. This is a long list of learning objectives. And if you broke this learning objective list out into packages, the list would get even longer. So using those backward design principles, we've started with this list of topics, specifically this list of computing topics. Once we have this list, we can figure out where to put them throughout the curriculum so that the sequencing is logical and there's not a lot of overlap in those three entry points. So for example, let me highlight the difference here between the intro stats courses and the data science courses. So there is some overlap here and the overlap is in visualization. So students taking that introductory course do their visualization primarily in ggplot2. They do a little bit of manipulation as needed with that introductory statistics course but the basic emphasis in that class really is inference and modeling. We use a lot of the mosaic package to help us out with that because it provides standard and simple syntax for a new R user. The overlap here with visualization is a little bit. We're definitely doing that ggplot stuff in intro to data science, but it's not enough overlap that the student would be bored. Moreover, we're doing a lot more customization in intro to data science than we are in introductory statistics. Both of these classes are a prerequisite for taking machine learning. So at this point, students have that tidy syntax. They also have a strong understanding of inference. They can jump into machine learning packages like carrot mlr3 seem to be tidy models and have a basic idea of all of the R syntax that they need to accomplish things. So the programming isn't the learning object or isn't the obstacle to learning. For students that are taking stat modeling, the only prerequisite here is that visualization and mosaic from the intro stats course. So these students are well prepared to work with that modeling syntax in R, y till the x. On the math stats side of things in probability theory math stats one, we focus on sort of the base syntax. So base probability distributions, things like R norm, P norm, Q norm, base plotting plays well with that syntax as well. So that's where we've chosen to incorporate some of those base R structures. We also revisit ggplot a little bit in math stats two, because that's the point where students are now no longer satisfied with base R programming. So they get a little bit more visualization at this point. They get some base modeling to complement the theory of inference the math part of the course. They also get some matrix manipulation content here as well. So that's how we've structured our course using this backward design thought process. If you're thinking about doing this in your own programs, your own courses, your own workshops, what do you need to think about? The first thing you should think about is what your student looks like. So try to visualize your student in terms of a learner profile. What does a student look like at each entry point? The student who starts with intro to data science probably looks pretty different than the student who starts with math stats. And we need to be aware and prepared of those differences. What do they need to know? And also what don't they need to know? What can you maybe read out for a later course or experience? Certainly think about what's the scale. If you have a single workshop, your learning objectives are going to be a lot more precise. You're probably going to cover much less content, much fewer packages than you would through a semester course or even a course sequence. What is beyond your control? So what are your students going to learn from other sources? For us, since our students that are majoring in data science are taking a lot of computer science courses, we leave some of the more technical details of programming to our colleagues in computer science. If that's not what your students look like, you may need to cover more traditional programming concepts like loops, if else statements in your courses with R. You also might not want to count on that. Certainly there's variability from semester to semester workshop to workshop. So how much do you want to take for granted that a student knows? Next thing to think about is the support. So how will you help your learners catch up? How will you challenge the advanced students? What wiggle room is there in this new model or curriculum once you've built it? So finally, when you are designing your next course, your next workshop, even if you are designing a full curriculum like we did, always remember that some things are funnier backward, some things are better taught or better designed backward. And I will leave you with probably the best gif on the internet. Thanks for joining me.


Well, with that ladies and gentlemen, it is time for me to call forward our first speaker of the evening. Now our speaker joined Titan in 1990, over the last 15 years, he's held various positions of responsibility in marketing and sales in the watches division of Titan. And in 2005, he moved over to head the jewelry division. Ladies and gentlemen, this evening, he's here to deliver a special address on re-inventing retail. Please help me welcome Mr. C.K. Venkatraman, CEO Jewry Titan Company Limited. Good afternoon, it's good to be here. I have called my talk, Brick and Mottel, re-inventing retail, there's been a lot of conversation on this subject of Brick and Mottel versus online and how online is going to swap, swamp physical stores, and it's just a matter of time and all that. And coincidentally, there was a very large half page story in the economic times today on being Amazon, it's a new term that's been coined in the US, where being Amazon means destroyed by Amazon and sort of ground to dust, and there are many companies, some industries which are going that way. And there's a lot of fear and paranoia relating to being Amazon. And in the same paper, again maybe a coincidence, was the news about the shutting down of toys or us, all the stores in the US, and a business which is virtually gone out of fashion, not perhaps because of e-commerce, but certainly because of digital. So it's in this context that I've put together, these are thoughts, obviously it's an evolving subject, nobody's got the last word on it, and even as I was thinking about it, it's useful for me to reflect on what it means to our own company and what we could be doing better and stuff like that. So it's in that context. Now I just want you to imagine, I'm sure many of you here are familiar with the Pali cafe on Pali Hill Road, and I've been there once, but I'm talking about a restaurant of that type. Imagine ordering some very, very sumptuous Italian food from the Pali cafe on the phone or on the net, and somebody from Swiggy driving to your house on a bike and delivering very tasty, but reasonably cold Italian food in a box with the sauces in a polygene cover with a rubber band, and then you open it all that, get a little messy, and then you eat it. As opposed to actually going to Pali Hill cafe or any such restaurant and sitting at the typical wooden furniture with that blue and white striped napkins, a smallish round porcelain plate with the fork and spoon nicely wrapped in a tissue paper, the waiter in those slim types that they employ these days, in an apron waiting for you to take the order, and you can try and speak penne arabiata in the right kind of cadence, you know, trying to get the accent right and trying to impress that person thereafter, the steaming penne arabiata arrives at your table. Now, if the votaries of the online world were to be believed, then the second picture would vanish from our world, and everybody would probably be sitting at home opening that polygene bag and taking off the rubber band. But the joy of going out to consume things will always be there, and therefore, brick and mortar will always be there, and I am talking about how in various categories that you operate in, you could leverage the intrinsic strengths of your categories and actually even embrace online, certainly embrace a lot of digital and actually not be carried away by the paranoia that is perhaps in the interest of the, you know, online world, in the interest of the technology companies which actually sell online solutions and all that. So, the first thing and the very, very critical thing is, you know, category expertise and the brand strength. How much, how deep in whatever category you are, how deep is the category expertise that you have built, because that category expertise is not really available to online companies. Online companies are typically generalists, they are horizontals selling all kinds of products and it would be impossible for them to develop category expertise, every vertical that they operate, whereas you and most of us are in one, two, three, four categories like my company is into three or four categories. Therefore, the developing of that category expertise is a huge moat to contain, you know, anybody who comes in. The second thing is the strength of the brand. Now, the category expertise may be high, but the brand strength may start, you know, getting diluted because the categories themselves are evolving and maybe we will talk about it in the, in the Q&A session, I'm sure some examples on that will come up. But this whole thing of category expertise and brand strength and if I take a brand like Raga which is a brand of ours, it's a very unique brand in the sense that one is the mastery of making a very high quality watch is not easily, easily acquired. It takes years, it takes high technology, takes a lot of investment, therefore no new person can come into that category and try and disrupt like he could do in a category where the entry barriers are very, very low. The second thing, second thing is the, the advantage of the merchandise curating capability. If I take the online world versus the brick and mortar, you know, how do we, we have a 1500 square feet weapon with us in the store and we have to fight a 15 square inch, you know, iPhone 6 or 8 on which, you know, somebody is seeing the products. Now, you can see one product at a time. You can't get the whole, for example, if I'm in a shoe store, the smell of the shoes, you know, the ability to bend the shoes and get a feel of how flexible they are and the overall storytelling that is happening in the surround that I am part of, all that is, you know, just impossible in a, on the phone. Now, we have just entered a new category which is very amenable to online buying.  We have launched a brand called Tanera and it's a beautiful villa in Bangalore that we have set up this store in. And the, the curation that we have done and the whole concept is India under one roof. So we have curated saris from all over India from different kind of clusters. There is the whole aura of each cluster which comes alive in the 1500, in fact, 15,000 cubic feet that no amount of work on a phone can do that. And therefore, even though a six yard is the only size in a saree and therefore there is no size issue when you're buying a saree at all, we can create an environment which is something else, something so special that no amount of, you know, online convenience can actually compete with it. And we are seeing the kind of draw that a physical store of Tanera is actually, in a way, it is reigniting the interest in the category of saris itself. The third is distribution control. A lot of companies who are either over-distributed or whose control on their distribution partners is low suffer because those partners typically go online, become part of marketplaces, discount the products and create a lot of tension in the industry. And if your distribution control is very strong and if you're very, very, you know, brutal in dealing with people who are offenders, who rogue, you know, partners in terms of discounting and all that, then that's a very, very critical thing and companies like Samsung particularly on the mobile phone have discovered, rediscovered in a way the exercising of distribution control over their dealers and recovered a good part of what they initially lost to online threats. The other is technology in retail itself. Like I said, on the one hand there is e-commerce. On the other hand, as Mr. Bhattra spoke about, the influence of digital. Without doubt, the influence of digital is pervasive, even in a category like jewelry, you know, our sense now is that maybe certainly more than 50% maybe as close to two-thirds of the customers who come to a Tanishk store actually come after browsing. You know, they have done some research on the product. They would still like to buy the jewelry in the store only, but they have certainly done a certain amount of research online on the products. And therefore the role of the website and everything that you do in the website for whichever brands you are managing is very, very crucial and the role of technology in the website is very, very crucial. But other than that, multiple things, and we are as a company, even though we are a very strong brick and mortar company, and we're going to depend substantially on brick and mortar sales for the next 5, 10 years, we're investing hugely in digital, we're investing in CRM, we're investing in Omni, we're investing in experiences inside the store which enhance. For example, the typical bride who comes into the store to buy, you know, expensive, exquisite Padmavati jewelry is, you know, likely to be coming in jeans and the top, but she's going to buy a, you know, exquisite Kundan necklace, which she's going to wear with Belanga or Banarasi saree at the wedding. Now, how is she going to imagine that beautiful necklace on top of a top? And therefore, if there is a way that, you know, there is an application that I saw in study by Janak in Delhi, which, and they have a huge range of langas, so you stand in front of that magic mirror and keep trying, you know, Lange after Lange, and then you shortlist maybe three or four which you really like and then try them on or something like that. Now, so we're trying to combine, can we get that application so that the jeans and the top disappear that she's suddenly wearing a Lange, and on top of that, she's wearing the, you know, Padmavati jewelry so that it's visualizing for her what the real thing is going to be, and she's going to take her decision based on that rather than on a pink top, we totally sort of even color mismatched and so on and so forth. So the role of technology and digital technology in brick and mortar is going to be very, very high. For example, what Omni is going to help us do, help you do, is actually, I mean, if I take the world of Titan, which is our watch store, we have 1,000 worlds of Titan across the country. That means that practically all over India, we would be half hour from any customer. So in a full blown Omni situation, which I mean is under development and hopefully in 2019, we will be able to offer that, is that we can customize if you are in Ghatkopar, if you live in Ghatkopar, and if you are needing a half an hour delivery, and hopefully the Ghatkopar showroom of the world of Titan has got the piece that you're looking for. So if we can customize the inventory, customize meaning if we can show that inventory to you, if you want it in half an hour, and we can deliver in half an hour, no e-commerce company can come anywhere close. So therefore the advantage of the brick and mortar companies is that that the entire inventory of your network is very close to the customer. You don't have to depend on warehouses to service. You can just connect and if the customer is in even bigger hurry, she or he can walk to that store in Ghatkopar, pick up the piece and go wherever she has to gift or something like that. Or the endless aisle, some companies are already into endless aisle, but the applications are still developing. The quality of the images are still, for example, when you're in a W store or a Will's Lifestyle store and there's a magic mirror and you try on a shirt, it's still a little clunky, it's two-dimensional, the sizes are not matching, so for example, your shoulders sticks out or sticks in depending on if you're slim or bigger built. But I'm sure companies are working on the applications to overcome these. So when you have endless aisle and you're a brick and mortar company, there are 10 stores of yours in Mumbai City and a customer who's in Phoenix is able to see all the inventory that you have in Mumbai City. And by evening, you have the piece that she wants. Maybe the color that she likes is not in the store in Phoenix, but she likes the fit, she likes everything else. The color she likes is in Thane, maybe three hours away, she has the particular piece that she wants. This is going to be impossible for pure online company to deliver because their warehouse for all you know is in Pune. So therefore, the advantages of Omni and technology in various areas, for example, analytics, we are again investing in a lot of analytics. And we have a very large, nearly millions and millions of customer database, which numbers millions. And our understanding of every customer, various things about every customer, that whole thing is developing. And therefore, based on a certain deep understanding of what we call predisposition, which is the manner in which a particular consumer has been buying products of Titan. So if I combine and therefore I can predict her next product that she's likely to buy. So predisposition is one aspect, context to the other aspect, which is the special occasion in our life. It could be the anniversary, it could be the birthday. It could be the kind of festival that she celebrates, that she has told us through the information that we have collected from her. So if you combine predisposition and context, we have a marketing, a direct one, n is equal to one kind of marketing program, much, much greater accuracy, much greater likely effectiveness. Now this advantage, again, knowing your customers, because typically, I'm also involved in e-commerce companies. E-commerce companies are so much focused on visitors, clicks, and the way the funnel comes into the final add to cart and thereafter order return. But their understanding of consumers in the flesh and blood aspect of consumers is very low and it's only starting to develop. Whereas naturally, brick-and-mortar companies have been very consumer oriented right from the beginning. They have profiles, they have faces, they have addresses, and they have connections the staff have with consumers. So every which way this power can be catalyzed, can be really cranked up to great advantage. The other is the power of personalization, the power of the warm body, the power of the relationship. Now these things obviously will differ from category to category. In the category that I am in, which is jewelry, it's very high. The relationship between the customer is not only with the store, not only with the brand, not only with the store, but with a particular member of that store, with a particular sales person. It's that close and that tight. And therefore, it can be really milked to advantage. Now if you're in the ready made garment space, it may not be that strong. If you are in a large format department store, it may be even less strong because you just go there and the sales person is perhaps not even in your site.  But imagine, even in a situation like that, if there is a fair amount of training that is given to that sales person in a shop or a shop or a lifestyle or a central about the new collection that that particular brand has launched. And that person is taught to be a little more on the front foot without being intrusive on the customer space.  And helping the customer and therefore creating a certain experience which is more than what it is today. There's something sitting there. Obviously, each category is being disrupted by online very differently today. So I'm not that familiar with so many categories to comment. But I'm only saying that the power of the human touch in small, medium, very large ways is there. And if you can identify the role of that in your business, then you can really crank it up and get something out of that. The last thing is about the installation and service advantage. So there are many categories where the product sales does not stop with the sale in the store. I know, for example, a company like Chroma, how Chroma actually wins over online companies on products like refrigerators, air conditioners, even televisions.  And surely and very clearly, they have benefited from that advantage. So if you're in a business of that type, then if you maximize that aspect which is a big move as far as the online companies are concerned. If you maximize that the power, the effective delivery of that particular area, then you're raising the barrier for them to enter into that. So therefore, the answers are not simple. But what we are certainly realizing is that there is simply no need to get worried and certainly not paranoid about the assault of online at all. And if you really look at your own behaviors, what you have graduated to buying more and more online, it certainly says something. Wherever ticket sizes are small, we are very clearly graduated to online. Wherever the products are almost like commodities, you're certainly going to online. Wherever the buying is a chore for the younger generation buying groceries is perhaps a chore. So why do I now want to waste my time going to the market in that dirty area or a crowded area certainly by groceries? So groceries, no, I'll buy online. Tickets online, holidays online, expensive but very specific iPhone online, MacBook Air online. Because I've already experienced that product somewhere else. Either in a MacBook store, iPhone in an Apple store, or I've seen it with a colleague. So it's easy for me to decide that this is the product I like, then I'll just buy it. But any product which is got a range, like jewelry, watches, shirts. But the disadvantage that shirts would have is that low ticket and I can take a chance. The role of brands is perhaps becoming less than this. So it depends on the kind of category you are the role of online will be large or small.  So I would stop here and- Thank you very much, Mr. Menkant Raman for that fantastic way to kick start with CMO. Please take a seat sir. We'd like to extend this conversation ladies and gentlemen to a one-on-one chat for which I'd like to invite on stage CEO South Asia and Middle East Kinetic Advertising India, Mr. Suresh Balakrishna. Good afternoon everybody and Menkant as usual inspiring talk and a very different take in this era of e-commerce and digital and all four techno peasants like me, it's very reassuring to know that even five years down the line, I can go to a shop and buy. It's a scary feeling if you can't go into a shop. So thanks so much for that insight. Having said that, the more one is hearing from like rightly said, from readymade garments to iPhones to MacBooks, sure. So it covers the complete technology and price range and everything that is being bought online. About two weeks ago I was in a discussion with a very large car manufacturer in India and the topic of the discussion was will you buy your car online in India in the next two years? There was a lot of discussion, there were seven of us, we were discussing it. And a lot of examples were given. Tesla, for example, has launched a car which is only available online abroad, right, there's no showrooms. And this large car manufacturer in India was saying that five years down the line they expect that even in India almost 15 to 18% of their car sales, especially their popular models, will be online. So isn't there a dichotomy there between, so what's so different about jewelry then, if cars can be bought online? The difference would be that I'm reasonably certain that nobody's going to buy that car online without actually having driven it first. So how do you get to drive it? So you have to either pick it up from a neighbor of yours who has it. And you have driven it and then you found it to be good enough. And then you buy it online, cool. Or you go to a warehouse of that car manufacturer somewhere outside the city. Because the car manufacturer has chosen not to invest in expensive retail. And taken a test drive and then come back home and ordered it online. But without driving that car either of these ways, I suspect that purchase is not going to happen online. But the difference between a jewelry and it may be a 10 lakh necklace, which is like a 10 lakh car, is that you have to see some 20 necklaces before buying one. Now, if there is a way that you can see 20 necklaces somewhere else before buying that one, then the same thing can happen in jewelry. If the technology has developed that much by then of visualizing the necklace on yourself also, perhaps. But even in a country like the US where e-commerce has been huge for a while, a company like Tiffany still single digits e-commerce. So therefore, so like the car example is no different from the iPhone or the MacBook example I spoke of, which is you know what exactly you're buying. So you're buying it online, so you've discovered it some other way. But if you don't know what exactly you're buying and it's expensive, then you end up going to the store. Okay, another experience I'd like to share with you, kinetic in London handles Macy's. So when we were there, we were interacting with the Macy's marketing team. And one of the first things they shared with us when the digital e-commerce business hit the UK first, initially Macy's ignored it, saying it's just a flash in the pan. Then they realized it's a threat, it's going to impact their business. And they started doing various things to make the shopping experience better within their fabulous shops. But very soon they realized that you can be made an ally of the e-commerce. What they did was they actually, because it's convenient if a lady wants to buy something at 2 AM in the night, you can go to the Macy's site and buy it. So they actually embraced e-commerce. And today they're saying, we don't care, it's just another channel. At the end of the day, the consumer is buying into Macy's, right? They're not going, it's just another channel, they're actually buying into Macy's. Similarly, I think if you tell us what are the things that a marketer needs to do, therefore that at the end of the day, e-commerce is only a channel. Relegate it to the point of a channel rather than it deciding for you what brand you should be buying. So therefore, the consumers are buying, they are buying air conditioners, they're buying phones, they're buying shirts, they're buying cars, right? So if you're the best car in that particular segment, then they will come to you. So which means that if this company, whichever company said 20% of its sale is likely to be online. Now, if it's not as if that some disrupting car company will now come online and take that sale away. If this car continues to be a preferred car in that segment, online is just a manner or a method of buying, like the Macy's example. So if Macy's is the best store of a premium category and continues to be, but people are starting to change, they're buying habits. For example, there was a time when EBOs ruled before shoppers stop, central and all those came in, exclusive brand outlets ruled. Then the department stores came and people in a way wanted to go to a store which had multiple choices, but in a similar retailing ambience. So that choice drove traffic towards the MBOs, but the brands inside the MBOs were still chosen best on their pull. Therefore, keeping the pull, the desire in whatever dimensions for your brand is even more key, even more key because in the e-commerce era, many, many small brands which were earlier unknown, which were not able to get physical presence nationally can actually disrupt because their access to consumers is much easier today online. In categories where online is becoming more the known, like garments, online is certainly becoming more the norm and small brands from maybe Ludhiana or Tirupur potentially, because entry barriers are low, can disrupt bigger brands. One last question before we throw it open to the house. That is your own purchase of Carrot Lane. Isn't that, I mean, Carrot Lane is largely an e-commerce online jewelry shopping vertical. Isn't that a futuristic move by you because you also see some amount of jewelry buying, going online? Wasn't that one of the reasons? Certainly. So if I look at holistically, the Tanishk brand is actually moving more and more up in terms of the ticket sizes, into the wedding space, into the high value diamond jewelry space, which is more and more frankly, more and more brick-and-mortar because those women are relatively, certainly older, relatively more traditional in their thinking. The shopping is group shopping. I mean, can you imagine 10 people buying for a wedding, sort of huddling around an iPhone 6? It's too small to accommodate 10 people around it. So they have to come to a store. So the manner in which or the direction in which Tanishk is going is very clearly brick-and-mortar, but with more and more digital technology enablement. Whereas there is a growing young women audience to whom jewelry is accessory, it's fashion, it's daily wear, and she is spending a lot of money on grooming. And therefore for us to get a bigger and bigger share of that pipe, we need a different strategy and that strategy is Carrot Lane, that strategy is Mia, a brand which we already had. So we're betting big in all parts of the overall time. Thanks, thank you very much. Audience, any questions? I see one hand has gone up straight away there on the right. Yeah, hi, I'm Jayesh from Market Power. I would like to understand the pattern in which the million, million kids would be taking up this kind of buying patterns in the future because we are from a psychology, hello, am I audible? Yeah. It will be pertinent to understand the way the million's would be taking up this kind of approach because brick-and-mortar, we as age group are used to that going to stores and buy, but then in the train in the future, probably five years down the line, the million's would be the guys who would be having a purchasing power. So in that context, if you could throw some light. I think, I'm not very sure how much it is to do only with the age. I think it's an, for example, I have started buying shirts online, okay? Now I have all the time in the world to go to a store. I'm not so pressed, given my age, I'm not so pressed for time, for example. But I'm also starting to move because the simplicity of buying a shirt online is, in a way, driving me towards that. It's a small share today, but I can imagine, I'm like, I wear Levi's most of the time. So I know it's 501, 511, so I know my fits.  Now, the millennial is doing 100% of some of these categories online. And therefore, she's moving in that very, clearly that direction, correct? It's more becoming an habit. But in categories where that decision is not going to be that easy, and the categories where the frequency of purchase is low, the decision making is more complex, the cost of the decision is high. There, the store, and there is a certain celebratory aspect to shopping, because it's a reward in itself kind of thing. So therefore, the critical thing is for each category to immerse itself in its customers, have a very deep conversation on what is happening. Otherwise, if you're not doing that, then we can be either over-imagining the problem in our category, or to be very complacent about, no, it won't happen in our category. Both can happen. I think what I'm saying is that, of course it is happening, but the paranoia is uncalled for. And you understand it, then you can actually embrace it to your advantage, rather than get spooked by it. Thank you. Well, Mr. Venkat Raman and Mr. Balakrishnan, in the interest of time, we will not be able to take any more questions. So we're just keeping up with our schedule. But thank you so much for starting PitchCMO with such a fantastic address. And before I let you go, I'd like to request Mr. Vivek Sharma, CMO of Pidilite Industries, to kindly join me on stage to present a token of our appreciation to Mr. Venkat Raman and Mr. Balakrishnan. And another round of applause for our special address, Vika. Mr. Venkat Raman, thank you very much once again.


I've now been in business for 13 years and I have had the honor of coaching, consulting with at this point over a thousand people. I've lost account, taught many, many students, worked with many, many clients. And I have noticed basically three ways to approach solopreneurship, which most of you watching this might consider yourselves a solopreneur. You would love to, you are working on building a true livelihood, you know, using your skills, your passions, your interests, your authentic voice and personality to be able to make money, make a living that feels worthwhile and fulfilling. So in short, being a solopreneur and because you don't have, you know, venture funding or anything like any other investment, you're kind of bootstrapping it from your own savings or your own maybe family support or something like that. OK, so three ways of approaching solopreneurship. Ready? Let me know which one you find yourself doing. The first way, and by the way, these are kind of like the ends of the spectrum. I'll say one in the spectrum and then the other in the spectrum and then there's a middle way. So one end of the spectrum is wait to respond. We've heard that phrase before, wait to respond. I always think that's kind of interesting because, yes, if you wait long enough, the universe will give you some opportunities, some interesting contacts, some client inquiries, some synchronicities that will allow you to, you know, get more experience in your work and make some money and things like that. But wait to respond is really how so many service providers do it. We don't even hear about them because they usually just get a few clients a year, maybe, and they aren't really making. Obviously, they're not supporting their livelihood from their service business. They're just it's more like a hobby and or, you know, they're they wish it was more than just a hobby, but they are afraid of doing marketing or the resistant to doing marketing. Maybe that describes some of you or they're not consistent with it. So they're basically waiting for the universe. They believe maybe you believe that I'm a good person. I'm I'm I'm connected to my divine source. I try my best to help other people. And shouldn't I just get the client inquiries and cliently? I'm just such a nice person. I try to help others. Shouldn't I get enough clients? Shouldn't the universe be good to me? Don't I have good karma? Yeah, you you probably are building great karma, but it might not appear in this life in the next life. You might be really lucky and just be able to wait and get all the clients you want. But maybe not in this life or maybe it's in three or five lifetimes from now. So we don't that karma doesn't necessarily work that fast. So wait to respond is a very well, it's it's the default, right? Like if you if you don't learn marketing, if you don't take initiative, if you don't stretch beyond your comfort zone in business, then you are waiting to respond and well, how is it going? For most of us, it it never goes past a hobby level type of business. And it might take you 10 years, 15 years to get enough experience where you're more confident and now you're going to start doing your marketing, something like that. Right. So wait to respond 10 or 15 years. And then you might jump over to the other side of the spectrum, which is what I'm going to call funnel hustling funnel hustling.  And you've gotten some opportunities in the last 15 years. And now you're tired of barely scraping by in your business.  I'm good enough to have more clients. I should have more clients. The world needs my skills and they do the world does. So then you start to learn marketing. And when you start, you probably are going to see the ads and hear from people who are funnel hustlers. And what I mean is they say, all right, listen, you can get all the we can help you get all the clients you want. It's so easy. You just simply let us build you a marketing funnel, a sales pipeline. Let us do the ads for you. We will do the calls for you.  Oh, and by the way, it's it's five thousand dollars or eight thousand or ten thousand or more.  Yeah, we'll do the marketing for you. You don't have to do the marketing. We'll do everything for you. We'll we'll do the we'll help you with your branding, your copywriting. We're going to create the funnel for you. We're going to do the even feel the calls for you. We'll we'll do the outreach for you. We'll do the ads for you. Just pay us the the, you know, two thousand a month, five thousand or ten thousand or more.  It's basically this idea that if you just create the right sales funnel, which is what is the sales funnel? It is a carefully crafted set of experiences for a for someone to become your client. So they might see a Facebook and Instagram ad or LinkedIn ad or YouTube ad.  But it's basically someone somehow discovers you usually through an advertisement or through a collaboration with someone you're already following that person's already on someone's email list and they promote you. So someone discovers you. OK, that's the first part of the funnel awareness.  And it's, you know, there's a webinar eight minutes from now or or 14 minutes from now. Oh, my gosh, I better sign up, you know, and it's really a replay. It's a replay. Sometimes they're honest that it's a replay and sometimes they lie to you that they they pretend it's live. And these days, you can use a chat box to make it seem like a live webinar. It's it's easy. It's been easy for years, actually. And so it's basically it's a setting up a machine, supposedly, right? Setting up a machine to, like, interest new people, get them even more interested in your work by having a webinar experience or having a video series or having a series of emails or other kinds of communications that show them why they need your type of service and why you're you're the one to provide it. OK. So, you know, so that's the funnel. And then by the end of the funnel, they get to talk to you or talk to one of your salespeople who will sell them on your twenty five hundred dollar program or eight thousand dollar coaching or whatever it is that that you you'd like to get clients for. Doesn't that sound so good? Yeah, couldn't wouldn't that be great? Why? Why don't we all do this funnel hustling? Well, you know why? You know why we don't all do this because most of it fails. Did no one tell you this? It was supposed to be an ATM machine.   All the design and copywriting and is does that sound great? Don't you have ten thousand dollars? If you had ten thousand, would you spend money on that to have everyone do it for you? The marketing, you have all your clients? Of course, who wouldn't want that? We all dream of that. But why? Why doesn't it just work for everyone who do who does this? It doesn't work for most of the people who do this. Actually, to be honest, I have talked to, again, hundreds of people who've done funnel hustling as a service, but also have clients. They, you know, the clients who told me they paid tens of thousands for these things. And I can't remember one person who has said it's consistently worked. Yes, I paid the fifteen thousand and that's it. That's all I had to pay and I've gotten all the. No, usually I paid the ten thousand and I feel like I was lied to because it didn't work. Maybe it got me one or two clients, but that was an expensive ten thousand dollar lesson. And I'm just thinking, my ten thousand dollars, you really spend ten thousand on that. My premium program, my most, the most you can spend with George Cow is approximately twenty five hundred two thousand five hundred dollars per year. So you can be with me for four years at my highest level of service at my greatest level of support on my courses. And that would be four years for ten thousand. And you would have learned so much more and actually gotten a lot done. But it's like people, people, and then they feel they paid the ten or fifteen thousand and they're like, my God, I, I feel like that was completely unauthentic, not really. It's not really showing my voice and how I want to show up in the world. But I trusted these people who said, don't worry, we just have to do it this way. This is how marketing works. Don't worry about it. This is how they all do it. All the successful people do it this way.  I know it feels a little strange to you and a stretch. You had a stretch beyond your comfort zone. Don't be so shy.  Have more of an abundance mindset. No, of course we want an abundance mindset. Of course we want to stretch beyond our comfort zone, but we never have to manipulate people like the way that the funnel marketers are teaching you to do. Stop with the funnels, people. Seriously, what is a funnel? It's a carefully crafted manipulation system. Let's just call it what it is. George, don't you have a funnel? Isn't this video part of a funnel? No. Why is this video part of a funnel? Am I trying to sell you something?   You, you watch this video and so what? I'm not selling you anything. I'm not going to say at the end of this video. Now you can go to my website and sign up for this wonderful webinar or sign up for this wonderful report. No, I'm not going to. I watch any of my videos. Do I say that? No, I don't have a funnel. What I do have is an organic discovery system. I do use paid ads. I'll tell you that I use. I spend usually hundreds, sometimes thousands a month on paid ads. But most of my ads are content like this that don't try to sell anything. Yeah, most of my advertising dollars is content just like this. And so I believe in blessing the world through content trying to change minds or help them in a way that I believe is helpful and inspire, educate. I spend a lot of advertising dollars on this stuff. And I believe if someone is educated or enough people are educated, a few of them will go, let me see what this guy's website's about. And then they go to my website and they don't have to sign up for the newsletter. It doesn't. There's no pop up. There's no funnel anywhere. They go to my website. They can check out whatever they want. Oh, there's courses. Sure, I'll take a course or whatever or not. Or I'll read some articles or I'll watch them, whatever. There's no there's no design system to get you from first, take this thing. And then after that, I want you to take this. I want first sign up for the email list. And then you'll get this email and this email that's designed to sell you into my low cost product. And then that's designed to sell you in the higher thing. And that's designed to sell you into the higher thing. That is a manipulation engine. And that is not innocent. It's not generous. It's not authentic. And also, by the way, it's not effective. Like I said, I've known hundreds of people who use funnels and most of them just about all of them, I could say fail. They spent so much money, time and manipulation to destroy their brand. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Right. I mean, yeah, it gets you a few clients, but that's a huge cost to get you a few clients with a lower reputation, right? Lower reputation and weird feelings in your conscience to say, did I, that's an authentic marketing, right? It's like it damages your conscience. It damages your reputation. And you probably spent a lot of money and time on it.  Number one, and number two, it doesn't work. And number three, it's not good for your soul. And in whatever way you want to say that, it's not good for your soul, soulfulness and authenticity in your brand and marketing, but it's also not good for your soul, spiritually speaking, and how you how you look at other people, how you because what a funnel treats people like a number. A funnel treats people like, oh, just move them through this. And then they'll like an ATM machine. Ah, now they're going to buy. Now I can do my spiritual work. George, I know, no, no, you've misunderstanding, George. I use the funnel only because once they get in front of me, then I'll do my spiritual and authentic work with them. I'm really authentic when I'm with my clients. So therefore you're not authentic in your marketing then? Is that what you're trying to tell me? Why can't you be authentic the whole time? But it doesn't work, George. Your way doesn't work. I have to use the funnels to, you know, sure I have to do some manipulation, you know, to get my clients and then I'll be authentic and then I'll be a good person. I have to be a bad person first and then I'll be a good person. I have to use a means to an end, which is the beginning of wrongdoing. Means to an end mindset, which is I'll have to do this shortcuts, manipulation, deception, hype, scarcity, stuff, FOMO and then I'll be a good person and I'll be, then you'll see that I'm a good person. It doesn't work, life doesn't work like that, does it? Plus it doesn't even work most of the time. It's too expensive of a lesson. No, so let me tell you the middle way. So I told you the way to respond, which is what most solopreneurs do, which is very sad to me. It takes 10, 15 years to finally get sick of it and say, I got to do the funnel thing, right? So they jump way over to the other side because that's the peak that those are the marketers that they're getting messages from and they spend money on them. And after you spend all your money, then you come to George Cow, which is sad for me, but that's what happens to many of you, right?  Like you should not be spending money at that point. But I've seen this so many times that I just, I mourn for so many soulful solopreneurs because they just get, they swing from one side to the funnel side and then they get so disillusioned, discouraged and cynical and they finally find me and say, George, I wish I would have been with you 15 years ago rather than now, which I've spent all this time and money and now let's find the middle way. But essentially that's how a lot of people find authenticity is they have to try many different things and maybe hit rock bottom before they then say, commit to, okay, I'm gonna commit to authenticity.  I can still be soulful and be a consistent soulful person. Like I don't, it's somehow structure and discipline is not the enemy. I've written out, now you learn, oh, structure and discipline and being consistent and being somewhat robotic, not AI robotic, but someone, that's not the enemy, right? That's not the enemy. The enemy is your own illusions, your own delusions and your own patterns that are not helping, helpful to your soul's growth. That's the enemy if there is such an enemy. So the middle way says this. If the middle way is a way, if I may say, to marketing enlightenment, marketing enlightenment, I'm not claiming to be enlightened either in spirituality or in marketing or whatever I'm not claiming to be enlightened, but I do claim to have discovered a path that I feel really good about that's leading me towards the land of enlightenment. And that path is to practice expressing your authentic skills, experiences, personality, voice on a consistent basis in service to your creativity and in service to others' enlightenment and to others' inspiration, to others' encouragement. And by showing up consistently through content and through offers, you find marketing enlightenment.  On the one hand, and you secondly, you care so deeply for every being in this world. Like that's like this paradox of enlightenment.   On the other hand, number two, you care so deeply your heart breaks for every suffering being in this world and you see the potential of every being to become their most thriving actualized selves. So the middle way is to no longer fight against structure, your own created structure, not the structure I give you, no. Every time I teach a structure, I always tell people, please feel free to completely rearrange this into your own pattern. That is most authentic to you.  I'm just giving you some of this and a possible, yo, you could take this Play-Doh and create a castle from it. Or you could play through the Play-Doh and create a little garden, a fruit garden, a fruit orchard from it. You could use the Play-Doh however you want. I'm just showing you how I created it. But then you also see people who work with my stuff, they create a little drawbridge. They create a little family of elves.  It's a structure and a system that reliably encourages and activates you to show up and explore your authenticity in service to humanity. And by doing that consistently, you will find you don't need a funnel. You don't need to wait to respond. You are continually growing every day and every month, at least in your creativity and soon also in your client leads because you're showing up consistently with your content and with your offerings. Both are important and you're always noticing which ones work. It's not just content, content, content, content forever and never selling anything. You know me, I mean, look, watch what I do. I do content, content all the time, but I also sell to you all the time. Have you noticed that? Every Wednesday, go to my Facebook business page. I sell there every single, not every Wednesday, most Wednesdays, you'll see me selling something or pre-selling something. Oh, I have a course coming up. What do you think about these topics? What do you think about this title? I'm always selling or pre-selling something on Wednesdays on my business page. It's consistent. That's what you also need to find a rhythm that you can dedicate yourself to. Doesn't have to be my rhythm, but it's gotta be yours. It's gotta be a structure and a rhythm that activates your consistency of showing up in service to your higher creativity and also in service to the growth of your ideal clients. So if you do that, that's the middle way. That's the middle way. It takes patience in the beginning for sure as all middle ways do, right? It's not as exciting as one way and it's not as completely inactive as the other way. It's the middle way, but it takes patience, right? It doesn't seem as glitzy and exciting as the funnel hustling way, but it works for the long-term because you build your conscience, you build your integrity and generosity and skills. And therefore that also builds your reputation with your network and with everyone who starts to follow you. So I hope this is interesting and helpful. And I look forward always to seeing what your reactions are, your thoughts from watching this. I look forward to seeing it below. Thanks so much.


charge into the first turn, Mattson gets there, Bartosz-Smalswick electing to go very wide, Max Frick there in second place, Marzlik now coming through, Willy around the outside, commits to it through turns three and four, Mattson's in front, he was marginally quick. Last time, view is at the back and here we go now with Bartosz-Smalswick once again electing to go very wide indeed, Mattson under pressure from Smalslik. Smalslik actually throw everything at Mattson here, Mattson was the winner last time out. He's out in the deep stuff, this is what we want to see for Bartosz-Smalslik hanging on to the gas there, even though he was right in the berm on the fence, what a cutback, he's up the inside, he's coming through. Wow, what a ride for Bartosz-Smalslik, fans on the feet once again, runs wide, coming out of turn four, Neil Mattson trying to repair the compliment of coming through in the third place, Mattson again on this what a speedway race you've got here at 8.16.


What's up everybody welcome to SPM bars and I'm right here to welcome you to the second edition of the juice party so I'm standing right in front of the entrance and I want to take you guys around so that you can see the venue before the show starts at 6pm so come along. Alright guys so I have Asha Dew inside the event and this is the first setup that you get when you come into the event. So as you can see this is Grand Acres. They are the grand sponsors of the second edition of the juice party. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful setup. There's some grass, some plants, some flowers and a nice table setup. So make sure you pick it up. So let's go to where the goodies are. But the goodies I mean the merchandise. Alright guys as you know the famous line by Mkuru Genzi Makosa Niyangu. So I'm right here where the merchandise is gonna be sold. So make sure you get yourself Makosa Niyangu t-shirt by Mkuru Genzi. Then also we do have a couple of hoodies. These are hoodies I guess yeah and we also do have lots of t-shirts. So you know guys you need to tell your, sorry. You know guys the only evidence that you can carry from the juice party is getting yourself Mkuru Genzi merchandise. There are lots of t-shirts in different colors. So make sure you grab one and for your loved one. So let's go to the dancing area. Alright guys so this is where the dance is gonna be happening and if you are a true follower of Mkuru Genzi you can also tell this was actually the official poster. Juice party second edition powered by Grand Eggers. So there is a 360 booth on the make here. It's gonna be done in a few out a few minutes rather. So make sure Mkuru Genzi Makosa Niyangu t-shirt. So let's go inside. I show you guys the setup, the VIP, the VVIP, the regular and all the juice. Guys we are inside the edge convention center and this is where the guests are gonna be sitting. As you can see it is a grand grand venue. They are gonna be hosting at least 1500 guests. Can you imagine guys? And the subject to note is that the tickets were sold out about two weeks ago. But if you are right there at home and you are not able to get the tickets you can actually live stream. So follow Mkuru Genzi Jodin Yawera for more updates. Let me take you guys to the stage. Come. Alright guys so we are inside the venue and this is where Mkuru Genzi will be serving us the juice. Guys look at this setup guys. Look at this setup. So I think everyone is gonna have an amazing view. The stage is well raised up and the seats are well arranged too. Everyone gets a chance to see Mkuru Genzi live at the second edition of the juice party. So keep your SPM bars for more updates.