It's near impossible to look at anything or consume anything that's not gonna leave you comparing yourself. It's not just that somebody has something that you don't have. You also have things that other people don't have. Ooh, I'm about to preach. Wait a minute, this is good. I didn't even fully, okay. Sorry. Hello, hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Walk Podcast, Episode 21. I am your host, Sam. If you are new here, I post all things, lifestyle, faith, and occasional vlog here and there although I have been slacking on that front. But this channel is essentially a video diary of my life. I started this podcast a little over a year ago and it has just been talking about navigating my faith, navigating, dating, new friendships, and just how I'm evolving as I get older. Hence the name, The Walk. This has been my walk, my journey, and it's been really cool to share this part of my life with you and be able to relate to some of you on similar topics that we're kind of going through at the same time. So this podcast has been a blessing to me and I'm glad you guys seem to be enjoying it and I will be here for as long as you will have me really quickly. I want to remind you guys that you can listen to this podcast on Spotify. I will leave the link down below. All the episodes go up at the exact same time the video goes up on YouTube. So maybe you don't want to sit and watch the video but you want to listen. I've gotten a couple of messages recently that are saying, you know, I listen to the Walk podcast when I'm on a walk or when I'm driving or this and that, which is so wild to me because I listen to my favorite podcasts when I drive or when I'm doing my makeup or whatever. So it's really cool to hear where and how and when you guys listen to this. I would love for you to comment down below because I'm curious and let me know what you do when you listen to the podcast or if you just sit there and watch it, which is cool too. And if you could, if you don't mind if you wanted to rate the show I'm not gonna tell you to rate it five stars you can rate it whatever you want. But if you want to rate the show on Spotify it really helps me one, see how you guys are feeling about it. And two, it kind of drives the show forward in the algorithm. So I will leave the link to that down below as well as my Instagram, TikTok, all the things. You guys have really been reposting the TikToks that I post on my podcast, TikTok account and I really appreciate it. And I'm just having a good time with this. So I hope you guys are too. And I hope everything is going well. We are entering spring or we are in spring and I'm looking out the window right now as I film this and the trees are getting like the buds on the branches and it's the sun is shining finally. I live in New York, but lately it's been feeling like I live in Seattle cause it has just been raining for weeks on end. But we're finally getting a good spring week and just the serotonin is just, is just going. What else has been going on? I had a really good weekend. You guys are gonna be seeing this on a Wednesday but I'm filming this after a long weekend and it was a busy weekend but man, it was a good one. Saturday, my best friends Joanie and Dom they have been on the podcast before about actually exactly a year ago now it was last April that they were on the podcast. And they have had their first child since then and so their baby got baptized on Saturday and I got to attend that. And I actually, I have to tell you like I was sitting there and I had a little moment it was mostly like their family and then like me and another one of our friends that we've known each other since the fourth grade we all grew up together.  And I had a little moment where I got choked up like because of like happiness for them and it's so wild that we're at that stage in our life now. You know, I went to high school with Joanie and Dom I've known Dom since I was a freshman in high school and they ended up going to college the same college together and it was there that they started dating. I don't know why I'm telling you their whole dating story but it was just so wild in a beautiful way to see how they've matured and grown and created such a beautiful life for themselves and oh, the most beautiful baby in the whole world and it was just so beautiful and I was really, really blessed to be a part of it. And then after that, both Saturday night and Sunday I really had a couple moments of like stopping where I was and really realizing that like I was walking in answered prayers this weekend. Some of you guys may remember like I sat on this very couch and I used to cry and pray for like a good community, a community of like like minded people who were also like people of faith not to replace my friend, you know my friends from college and high school I loved them all dearly I wouldn't trade them for the world but I also wanted friends that I could go to church with and sit with and hang out with, you know on a Saturday night if I didn't have any other plans you know what I mean like I just wanted it was craving that community for a long time and Saturday night I was sitting here and I hosted like a movie night and a couple of my friends came over and we watched the whole Planet of the Apes franchise so we sat and watched movies for like six or seven hours and my friend brought his son and he was playing with Luna and it was just so like it was just so much love in this apartment and then Sunday after church our whole young adult group went to a park nearby and had a picnic together it was like 20 of us and I took a video of it like again like one of those panned videos where I just like panned the whole group and it was such a beautiful day and I was just sitting and I was just like in awe of like wow I prayed for this and it was just such like a like a testimony moment and so I just wanted to share that because I feel really blessed and it's crazy what can happen to your life in just a year I think I've mentioned this in September I filmed a video to myself for myself didn't post it anywhere don't plan on posting it anywhere but I was essentially talking to myself and I was like okay right now it's September and I was like I'm praying and believing for you that your life is gonna be filled with so many beautiful people your house, you know your apartment that's been feeling a little lonely lately it's gonna be filled with love and fellowship and new friends and I said in the video I can't wait to watch this in a year to like see how much your life has changed and it's only been what that was maybe like seven, six or seven months ago and already like so much has changed and it's just really cool to see how everything unfolds so I guess all of that to say like if you're going through a hard time or like things are changing or you're in uncharted territory or you're feeling a little lonely I promise you your story is unfolding exactly the way it's supposed to and good things are coming new memories are coming I've said this before you know you have not yet met everybody that's going to love you and I think that's such a beautiful thing to hold on to and I wasn't even planning on saying any of this at all but I don't know I just felt led to say it so anyway feeling really, really thankful and really happy and really fulfilled which is important so anyway that has nothing to do with what we're going to talk about today but I wanted to talk today about the topic of confidence and most specifically or more specifically confidence in a world of comparison things I want to touch on today I want to talk about you know looking at somebody that may have something that you don't in thinking that you need it more on like a materialistic level because we live in a very material consumer world so I want to talk about that I want to talk about how hard it is to or how hard it can be to root for people that have something that you want that you don't yet have and how that you know how that jealousy can creep in there and I also want to talk about physical comparison and feeling like you are not enough the way you like by your default settings right the way you were born that you're not enough and that you physically you know you are not up to society's standards and you compare yourself to all these people and it makes you feel horrible we're going to talk about all that today so I have a couple of things I want to like share and we're also going to kind of do it's not going to be like a Bible study but I definitely want to get into the Bible a little more I actually have like my physical Bible here I want to read from it and like get into it more specifically we're going to read from Romans and we're going to read from Isaiah I just finished the book of Isaiah like on my own time my own reading time and it was a rough one it was a rough one it's not rough and like as in bad it's just kind of tarred a little bit and a little meaty but I finished it and it was in reading that that I came across a specific like parable or not even a parable but like a metaphor the Bible uses a lot of metaphors for things to like teach to teach lessons that's a parable okay fine but I was reading it and I was like that that like so feeds into the topic of comparison and I would love to talk about that on the podcast so that's how this episode came to be so let me get my notes because you know how I do so that was Corinne James sorry so like I said we live in a world where it is pretty much impossible to not compare yourself to others we have 24 seven access to people's achievements people's appearances people's milestones and we all know we all know that social media at this point I hope we all know that Instagram, TikTok all social media in general even YouTube is a highlight real take me for example I've been on YouTube for nine years I don't post the bad stuff not really I post the good stuff you know I post you know morning routines that look all nice and fluffy and peaceful and they're not always like that you know so social media is a highlight real we know this we live in a society where on TikTok an attractive person can look at the camera and do nothing and this is no shade it's just it shows where our society is now they could do nothing except be pretty or in a man's case have abs or whatever wear grey sweatpants whatever it is if you know you know and get two million likes for it or more and then someone could then post a similar video maybe doing the same thing or looking at the camera or using the same song and they might get ten ten likes you know or whatever and then that leaves you with the feeling of like well what's wrong with me I did the exact same thing am I not pretty enough am I not talented enough even though I'm sorry I know I said no shade but like staring at the camera and making a funny face like isn't really talent you know that's what that felt mean to say but you know you know what I mean so you know that's just the society we live in so it's near impossible to look at anything or consume anything that's not gonna leave you comparing yourself right so now since we know it's kind of unavoidable you have to figure out ways to to deal with that and I wrote down my favorite quote I reposted this on TikTok a long time ago and I never forgot it this quote says social media is designed to make us feel like maybe I should be somewhere else doing something else with someone else but if you think that your happiness is somewhere else then it will always be somewhere else it will never be with you you'll never actually have it if you think about it that's so true I am guilty of that oh am I guilty of that I scrolled TikTok I like TikTok if TikTok is used properly I think it's really good I learn a lot recipes all the things like if it's used properly I really like TikTok and some of you may know like I'm very active on TikTok and I post a lot of things too but I'm guilty of it or somebody has like how many times you're scrolling and somebody's wearing like a nice dress and you're like whoa I want the link to that I want to wear that or I like accessories so if I see someone wearing really cool earrings I immediately go try to look for the same pair and I'm like why? like they're their their their own person that's theirs like I don't I don't need it but it's so easy to fall into that so the first way to like go about it you hear people talk about it all the time is like be very careful of the way that you use social media be very careful of the people that you follow or the accounts that you follow and that's very true you know I I have tried to practice that myself where if I'm scrolling on my feed and I see something that makes me feel bad fills me with a not so good thought about myself about my life about people in my life whatever it is I unfollow or like I mute or whatever so that it doesn't come up so that I don't see it I've actually in the last year I have unfollowed a lot of accounts not like personal people I know but like famous accounts or like influencers or whatever because it was really affecting my my mental health but I'm reading Janina Mapola's new book I've talked about her before I'm a fan of her and her book actually talked about this and she says something very important she said yes you can unfollow the things you can unfollow the accounts that make you not feel great but the important part comes with how can you see that and just accept it and just be happy for the person that that's the way they look or that's the thing that they have or that's the vacation they went on and still be okay with like who you are and that's the meat and potatoes of kind of what I want to talk about I say meat and potatoes a lot on this podcast that's the meat and potatoes I don't say that in real life I don't know where that comes from but anyway so yeah oh the other thing I wanted to say before I lose this yes unfollowing is good I would say also be very careful of who in like real life off of social media who you surround yourself with the friends the friends that you keep you want to try to have people in your life that don't see things as a competition all the time that will root for you despite what they're going through the first example that comes to mind say you got a promotion but your friend just got fired that's really hard like it's really hard for your friend to like cheer you on in that situation just for any human you can't help but feel that pain in your chest of like oh that sucks like I don't even have a job and you're getting promoted but if you can find people that despite what they have going on and this is not just for jobs this could be for anything if you can find people that root for you despite what they have going on and you do the same thing to them those are the healthy friendships that you want to keep because it stops your environment from constantly feeling like a competition a comparison game it's just like you are your own individual people on your own individual timeline doing your own and dealing with your own individual things so I would say also try to implement that as well or like you know talking to the friend group that you have now if it doesn't feel that way and you're like hey guys we need to change our mentality like this is how it how it should be you know what I mean so anyway we're gonna get into the Bible a little bit so let's talk about physical comparison real quick we live in a society where it's very normal now like if there's something you don't like about yourself you know your face or whatever it's very easy to just change it you know if you have the means to do so now I want to tread lightly here because I never like listen, listen, listen I'm on TikTok I am aware that Christianity is kind of becoming I don't know if you guys have noticed this and this is something I might want to talk about in another episode I just have to tread lightly Christianity is becoming trendy which in the grand scheme of things is great as long as it's genuine but some accounts can, can you tell I'm treading very lightly can come across as holier than now and I think I have been guilty of that sometimes on my podcast too and I never want to feel like that so I never want this to be like judgemental I never want this to like I'm not perfect I have made my mistakes but it's just that I'm learning so much and I see the way what I am learning is changing my life and it just feels so good that I want other people to experience it as well but I often have to like sometimes I have to check myself and be like Sam maybe there was a different way to say that so I want you to know that I'm not sitting here like I'm perfect I'm not sitting here like I'm judging anybody for anything that they have done or want to do or anything like that okay I have I mean maybe I've never gotten a nose job or anything done to my face but like I've dyed my hair I've been blonde was I born blonde no you know what else have I done I mean I haven't really changed too much but you know what I mean like I have done I'm guilty of it too okay so I never want to sit here and be like judgemental but we live in a world where you know again if you have the means to do so because these things are really expensive but you're like I hate my nose I really like her nose I want her nose it's very sad like I see a lot of and the reason I say it's getting sad is because it's getting younger and younger these ages are getting younger and younger I saw a girl on tiktok she's like 19 years old she had nice teeth and she got veneers and again no shade like if that's what you want to do like do it but I hate that people feel that they need to do that is what I'm saying and I would love for everyone to get to the point but in our society it's so hard I would love for everybody to get to the point where it's like I was born this way and that's it like this is the way I was supposed to be born there's nothing wrong with me that person looks like them and I look like me I love the I've heard this comparison when I was in high school and I never forgot it it's like a rose and a daisy are both beautiful flowers they smell good they're beautiful colors but they look absolutely nothing like one's beauty does not take away from the other's beauty and vice versa and that's how that's the way I would love for people that's like where I would love people to get to that point and I wish like I want to get to that point too because of course I'm human I compare myself all the time so I'm working on this with you okay so let's let's get into the bible before we get into the actual like bible study part because I'm actually going to like read a little bit more than I usually do but I will say transitioning into this bible talk now we were made exactly the way we were supposed to be by our creator right this is the truth that I believe right so that I'm going to speak on on my truth I believe that I was I was made by my creator and my creator doesn't make mistakes so the hair that I was given the nose that I was given my nose is crooked that's the nose I was born with this eye I think it's this eye it's this eye I don't remember one of my eyes looks a little more like closed than the other one if you look really carefully I'm like pointing out all my insecurities like look at my face but those are things that I have this side of my mouth actually droops a little bit more than this side and I was born that way and I'm okay with it it took me a long time even now sometimes like this is I always say this is like my bad side this is my good side like I still feel like that sometimes where like I want to take pictures on this side of my face you know but like that's just the face that I was born with and so I wanted to talk about Luke 12 verse 7 it says the very hairs on your head are all numbered so don't be afraid you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows I know the whole flock of sparrows thing might seem a little random but the main point of this verse is like he knows every single hair on your head because he created it Ephesians 2 10 tells us that we are God's masterpiece and that's I've read that a couple times throughout the Bible in various different places that we are called God's masterpiece he made us exactly the way we were supposed to be and we go through experiences exactly the way we were supposed to it's all part of his plan because we are his masterpiece and he sees you as so valuable he sees you as so beautiful whether you are a man whether you are a woman it doesn't matter he thinks that you are beautiful like he made you and then he stands back and he's like I did a good job right so let's look into the book of Isaiah and like I said I read that on my own time there's 66 chapters in it so it took me like a month a month to get through it a little over a month and if you don't know it's basically Isaiah I wrote it down it's a beautiful prophetic picture of Jesus the Messiah the one who would come to save redeem and restore people to God so it's all about all about that about how you know like the ruin of Jerusalem and how that there's there's the Messiah coming that's going to restore everything back to normal and make a new kingdom of God and all the things okay so let's look at Isaiah I don't think I had it bookmarked which I should have here it is so I want to look at Isaiah 45 versus 9 through 12 I believe okay here it is and if you're if you're new to the Bible or reading the Bible if you're reading this on your own it may look a little different the words might be a little different there are different translations they all say the same thing pretty much but some are they use different words so some are easier to understand than others I use the new living translation which is one of the easier ones so if you read this on your own it might look a little different but the message is the same so 45 verse 9 through 12 what sorrow awaits those who argue with their creator does a clay pot argue with its maker does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it saying stop you're doing it wrong does the pot exclaim how clumsy can you be how terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father why was I born or if it said to its mother why did you make me this way this is what the Lord says the holy one of Israel and your creator do you question what I do for my children do you give me orders about the work of my hands I am the one who made the earth and created people to live on it with my hands I stretched out the heavens all the stars are at my command so there's a lot to unpack here the beginning is the part that I really wanted to talk about does a clay pot argue with its maker does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it saying stop you're doing it wrong so he is the creator he has a vision he is creating you exactly the way he intended to you wouldn't say to a painter who made a beautiful painting right on display for millions of people to see right let's just say it's a really really famous painting the Mona Lisa let's just say would you tell the artist you did that wrong no because you can't my sister is an artist for example okay take this take this example this is better my sister is an artist she had one of her pieces of art displayed at an art show and the art show the people who work at the exhibit itself they hang up all the pieces of art so she went for a walk through before the art show was supposed to start and her painting was flipped on its side it was supposed to be vertical they thought it was supposed to go horizontal and she looked at it and she said that's wrong that needs to be fixed because it was her vision she knew what her piece of art was supposed to look like and to them it didn't look wrong but to her she knew that it in fact was wrong and no one could argue with her because it was her vision and she made it exactly the way that it was supposed to be made and that's what he did with you and with me and I want to go to Romans chapter nine and that the really cool thing about the bible is that a lot of things I'm still learning where things are in the bible guys the cool thing about the bible is a lot of things are like reiterated there's a lot of repetition in the bible and I always take like the things that are repeated as like the really important things because you reiterate what is important so this clay potter thing comes up elsewhere in the bible so we're going to look at Romans chapter nine verses 20 and 21 so verse 20 says no don't say that who are you a mere human being to argue with God should the thing that was created say to the one who created it why have you made me like this when a potter makes jars out of clay doesn't he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into now this is interesting because the clay pot that part's the same right the second part can't the artist make one jar for one purpose and one jar for another oh i'm about to preach wait a minute this is good I didn't even fully okay sorry the potter is making out of the same piece of clay he's making two different objects for two separate purposes okay not to say I'm not going to say one is garbage and one is that's not what I'm saying it's just it's a metaphor right so from that I take that to say he can make me for one purpose and you for another that's why we're supposed to be different we're not supposed to be the same you can't compare it because they weren't meant to be compared I have a friend who I would love for you guys to meet him on the podcast one day and I think he will at some point I've talked about him before I think he has been through some stuff he has seen some things he has done some things and there's no shame at all because and I've told him this he can now reach people now knowing what he knows and now having the Holy Spirit in his life now having God as a part of his life he can reach people that I would never be able to reach he can reach a whole other type of person he can relate to them in a way that I never will be able to that's not a coincidence that's not a mistake God had that happen on purpose yes he makes us all the same like foundation-wise but he uses us for different purposes so you may go through something and you're like this is the most painful thing I have ever gone through why am I going through this and no one else in my life has to deal with it there could be there's a reason there's a reason why because now you can take what you have gone through and you can be sympathetic to people that have gone through something similar that other people can't reach whether that's I mean that could be anything that could be you know and this is going to be sensitive I'm just I'm not going to talk about it I'm just going to name them you know the loss of a child miscarriages being cheated on so many things you know the loss of a best friend like so so many things illnesses illnesses is a big one you can take all of your experiences and use them in a way that nobody else can that's why we're supposed to be different we're supposed to look different we're supposed to do different things we're supposed to think differently you know by all biologically whoa signs from that might think biologically yes our brains are all like made the same right but our minds are different our experiences are different I feel like I'm repeating myself but you understand what I mean you were made this way for a reason and again it's tricky because like little things like dyeing your hair right like I've done that do I think that that's the worst thing in the world no right we all dye our hair we all not we all but like we all do little things like that or we get like piercings and like I have two tattoos you know like little things like that and I get it um and I I'm not the type where I think you know that you get a tattoo you're going to hell like that's not that's me personally that's not what I believe but I know you I have to tread carefully like I said before um but like the big things where you feel like you're not good enough or you you don't look good enough or you haven't experienced certain things that you think you should have at this point that other people have it's all I was about to curse it's all it's all bs it's it's just it's not accurate and I just want I want to drive that home to you and to me that what somebody has you don't necessarily need it that's their story that's their timeline and you know you have things you have to keep in mind that it's not just it like it goes both ways it's not just that somebody has something that you don't have you also have things that other people don't have right that make you you and that's the beautiful thing and that's the way it should be so I hope that all makes made sense um and I just really love this analogy of like the clay potter the potter and the clay and you know the artist and he makes no mistakes guys he makes no mistakes and I promise you that you are beautiful in his eyes as well just like we all have different passions like those passions were put in your heart for a reason those passions those things you feel that like really fulfill you and make you happy those are from God those were put there on purpose for your purpose and for your calling right for example I have such a passion for social media and content creation a lot of my best friends literally the opposite like they don't need some of them don't even have social media I believe it was put on my heart for a reason because I want to do things like this and this fulfills me and this makes me happy and this makes me feel like I am a vessel to you guys from God right like this is not coming from me I'm just the vessel speaking these things to you does that make sense so those passions that are in your heart pay attention to them don't ignore them because they're there for a reason and it's okay to have different passions than the people around you that's the way it should be and you know if you are in a time in your life where you really don't feel comfortable in your own skin or you don't feel like you know adequate enough or whatever it's okay to just ask for peace to just pray about it like I've told you before prayer shouldn't be scary it's not a big thing it's not it shouldn't be this super dramatic thing just talk to him like you were talking to me like talk to him like you're talking to a friend just ask for peace you know lord if you would help me feel comfortable in my own skin if you would help me feel comfortable with my appearance if you would you know fill the void that's in me that makes me feel like I need to be something else or someone else and little by little you'll see that it'll change for you and maybe in the beginning you might have to fake it till you make it but then it's going to become part of your routine and you're actually not going to have to fake it anymore and so all of this helps too with like cheering people on when you have when they have something that you don't you know for example you guys know one of my dreams perhaps the biggest one is to get married and have a family one day right that's not a secret I'm very open about that and yet I'm at a point now and last year it might have been a little bit different just because I was going through more of a painful time last year but I've gotten to the point where now I can sit at my best friend's baby's baptism and I can cry tears of joy for them because I know that that's their story and mine is different I know that maybe there are more things that I have to do before I get to that chapter of my life right maybe more things online maybe more exploring more passions that I didn't even know I had yet you know everybody's timeline is different and my hope and my prayer is that we could all get to that place at some point so I think I will leave it there this was a little bit of a shorter episode I think which is fine I'd rather it be you know quality over quantity so I hope that this video touched you this episode spoke to your heart and remember that you are beautiful and you are exactly the way you're supposed to be and I love every single one of you I love reading your comments I love reading your Instagram DMs I love all of it thank you for your support on every platform that I am on I really appreciate you guys and I feel so blessed so thank you for being here and I will see you guys in my next episode


Live from Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE. Covering OpenStack Summit 2016, brought to you by the OpenStack Foundation and headline sponsors Red Hat and Cisco. Now here are your hosts, Stu Miniman and John Wall. And welcome back to Austin, Texas as we continue our coverage of the OpenStack Summit of 2016 here on theCUBE. We're very pleased to welcome in a couple of guests from Red Hat with us. John Alessio, who is the Vice President of Global Services, and Nick Hotman, who's a senior director as well of Global Services. And gentlemen, welcome to both of you, to theCUBE. We appreciate the time. John, I'll start with you. You think about Global Services is about consulting and training and a lot of business facilitation, if you will, with your partners. What's your vision? How do you couch all that? And what do you see as being the next steps or the broader vision for Global Services? Sure, John, great question. So when we look at Global Services inside Red Hat, first of all, there's really three key parts to the overall organization. It's our training and certification business, which we've had really since the late 90s. That's grown, had a nice trajectory and growth in our modality of education, as well as the breadth of our training. Our consulting team, and we have a global team across all of our major geographies for consulting, as well as our partner enablement. And we look at our kind of foundation for our overall Global Services business. Really, our focus is in on client success, deep expertise in Red Hat technologies, as well as driving our emerging technology agenda. And so everything that we do within my organization is focused on those three key pillars, client success, expertise, and our emerging technology agenda. And as OpenStack now has become more prevalent, obviously, in your offering. Nick, have you seen within your client base an heightened interest or need for education, training with particular, with open source and architecture and how all that comes together? Yeah, very much so. I mean, obviously with open source, but OpenStack is a good example of where, as we see the demand continue to grow, we see obviously the demand for the resources and the skill set. And so, I mean, John can probably talk some about the specifics around the training and the enablement, but the number of, I guess, we're enabling our people internally, but the number of the ecosystem that we need to enable and provide other capabilities for is just growing exponentially over the years. And this last year, I think we saw, you know, probably that curve continue to grow even more and more. Yeah, for sure. Maybe I can make a comment. So if you look at kind of some of the investments we've made over the last year, specifically to OpenStack and training and enablement, we've refreshed the entire curriculum. So we now have a three-level curriculum OpenStack, you know, 110, 210, 310, that offer certification, both a system administrator certification, as well as a certified engineer certification around OpenStack. And that's all been completely refreshed over the last year. Through both our customer and our partners, we've trained over 10,000 individuals, which is up significantly year on year. And then in the certification space, which is our performance-based certification, that's up 130% from our fiscal year 16 over our fiscal year 15. So we're seeing a lot of demand from customers, partners, individuals, looking to get OpenStack training over the last year. So John, 10,000, I mean, that's a great number. Congratulations on that part. Couple areas I'm wondering if you can expand on. So, you know, number one, I guess it speaks to the maturity of OpenStack if you can train that many. Number two, how much is it a Red Hat training and how much is it something that's just general OpenStack that I could use Red Hats? You know, there are other options out there. You know, so if you could speak a little to those dynamics. Yeah, I think it's a great question. So our focus, there's a lot of training obviously in the industry around OpenStack. Our focus has really been around training our clients and our partners on the Red Hat version of OpenStack. That's what they're looking to come from Red Hat and that's what we think is one of our key differentiators. So all of our offerings are specific to the Red Hat technology and all of the certifications that go along with it are also specific to the Red Hat technology. Now one of the areas that we've seen some really great uptake in is customers who are looking for OpenStack training are also looking for adjacent technologies and so we've also completely refreshed the entire cloud management portfolio as well as a whole new set of offerings around Ansible, one of our more recent offerings. And we've introduced this through a new modality called Red Hat Learning Subscription which actually gives our clients access to all of the Red Hat technology. And what's been really, really great to see over the last year is as we've sold Red Hat Learning Subscription and we kind of look at how our clients are consuming this because it's consumed online, over 50% of the consumption is in our emerging technology space, including OpenStack. So Nick, I'm wondering if maybe you can expand there's so much going on in this space. We've got containers, Kubernetes, which Red Hat is the largest contributor, not named Google for that. What are you seeing out there? How does that fit into the overall environment? Yeah, so I think it's interesting. I mean, what we've been doing in my focus is around the emerging technologies and creating these emerging technology practices and with all the conversations with our customers, they'll catch on to something, whether it's DevOps, whether it's CICD, OpenStack, you name it, and they want to go, oh, we want to do that or we want to build out the next generation cloud. And so we go into a lot of the conversations with the discovery session and really understanding what they're trying to do. And so I think that's one of the things that we're seeing with how does that lay into the entire Red Hat portfolio? Where do they need to adopt? Where do they want to adopt? How does it meet their goals and their business objectives? And so the discovery session is really kind of this use case driven business challenge conversation to try to map it into that. And as we do it from a consulting perspective, it's also looking at the services, obviously the products and also our partners and then bringing in, how are we bringing in all those different tools to the table to really solve their problems and deliver a real good customer success story. John, big day for you and all of Red Hat with the innovation lab being launched today. I know you made a fairly significant announcement in that regard. What is that all about the Red Hat innovation lab? You know, what was the genesis of it and then what do you look to get done there? What's the overall mission? Sure, so maybe I'll start with a few opening points then Nick have you kind of fill in some of the details. So the idea here was a lot of our offerings in the consulting world are by design custom to the client. And many of our clients were coming back and saying Red Hat, we're looking for more leadership around the application development agenda. What are some of the best practices around application development and how can you help us get up and running much more quickly, a much quicker time to value. So they were looking for a more prescribed offering. And so we worked with many of our clients on our strategic customer advisory board to define an offering. I'll have Nick take you through the detail but it's a residency style engagement that is prescribed. We have all the infrastructure pre-built ahead of time so that from day one you can begin getting some guidance and actually produce something at the end of the engagement that has real value to the business. So Nick maybe take them through the push button infrastructure as well as the idea around doing it on a client site or a Red Hat site. Yeah, sounds good. No, so I think from the kind of alluded to the discovery session, it's a similar kind of starting conversation with the customer what they're trying to accomplish but really being able to focus in on saying, hey, you know what, we have a more prescriptive approach to lay out all the infrastructure, all the technology. You know, Red Hat usually comes to the table with our technology. But we're also now coming to the table. If you look at kind of the innovation labs page and see the stack that we're bringing to the table, it shows other things that are not Red Hat specific. So it shows other tools, other technology and then we're really putting together the complete methodology. So we're not changing it and delivering it in that custom environment that we typically do but you know, customers really want to see what's Red Hat's best practices? How can they further and accelerate their adoption of these emerging technologies? Open stack being a prime example from an infrastructure standpoint. Ansible, open shift on our side, our entire middleware stack. And so through that kind of, you know, the initial discovery session, we really key in on some areas where they can take their existing applications or existing environment and how are they going to bridge it and move it over into their new modern contemporary kind of cloud native application development? Are they trying to build in that new, you know, mobile applications or a mobile infrastructure? And we're going to work with them during that eight week residency and show them how they can build that out in a very efficient manner. And kind of to your point, even before saying, you know, we want them to take this on long term. We're not trying to be there for the long term maintenance of it. We're not trying to be there. We're trying to give them the tools with our training. Teach them how to fish. Exactly. That's exactly the idea. And so through that, we can deliver it either on their site, you know, with our team. It's a collaborative cross functional team from their side and our side and even tying into our engineering team. And you know, either on their site or in our site. So it's kind of that virtual or, you know, onsite offsite presence. How is this different than from what you already are doing? Because I know you're very extensive in terms of the consultant work that you do, the training work that you do. You go onsite, right? I mean, you're in 35 countries around the world and obviously very ingrained in North American operations. Well, how is this different though? Or what is this doing to improve, I guess, what you're already offering? Sure. Do you want to go ahead and address it? Well, no, go for it. Sure. So I think first, from a training perspective, one of the things that's different is we, as we look to enable our team and grow our team internally, we came up with a whole set of skills assessment processes and best practices and how we would actually, you know, interview and skill our own practitioners within our organization. We've integrated that into this skills process for our clients that we bring into this engagement. The second part is some of the prerequisite training is exactly the same. So as part of a Red Hat Open Innovation Lab's engagement, a client gets access to our Red Hat Learning subscription and all of that same rich content. So it's integrated in by design upfront and then we offer the client a reduced fee on the back end if they'd like to continue to access that material for a period of one year. So that piece is very similar and it takes the best practices and leverages it. But the second piece is that makes it a thing very, very different is in a typical consulting engagement, we would work with the client's infrastructure on their site and we may have to build that infrastructure or platform out as part of the engagement. So with our push button infrastructure install, all of that's already pre-built and it's a pre-prescribed stack of software that includes Red Hat software, but also other industry software as well that we think are best practices across the industry. So we bring that stack and best practices to the client so that day one they can begin doing productive work. So in the open stack space, it reminds me that you guys purchase Enovons, which is kind of in the monitoring tool, gives the update on that, how that fits into the story you were just talking about. And maybe you talked about Ansible, how do all of these acquisitions that Red Hats do impact what's going on? It's a great question. So starting with the Enovons team, it was about two years ago now. And when the Enovons team came into Red Hat, they brought a very, very strong skill set obviously around open stack. And so some of the Enovons team were very focused on more development oriented activities that fit very, very well within the products and technology organization or engineering organization within Red Hat. And in fact, that's where many of the employees are. Today they're in that team helping to develop and advance the open stack agenda for Red Hat. Whether it's in engineering or product management, what have you. The services oriented individuals that were part of Enovons, we announced about one year ago, a little over a year ago now, we call our Red Hat Cloud Innovation Practice. And it was a global practice to help bring to Red Hat leading edge skills around open stack as well as agile development methodologies. And what that allowed us to do is then build in the Americas group to service North and Latin America, our Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and our Asia PAC group regional cloud practices that were then supported by this global cloud innovation practice. And so now those regional practices are fully up and running in APAC, AMIA, and in North America, supported by the best practices coming out of what was at the time the Enovons team today is called the Red Hat Cloud Innovation Team. I'm curious, Nick, for you, the fact that open stack is perpetually changing. And we're hearing this week, right? All kinds of different projects, releases, and all that's going on. What does that do to your team in terms of keeping up with the very latest, not only with what Red Hat's doing, but as you said with these adjacent technologies and all that's going on, I mean, you've really got to be on your toes, and you've got to be at the edge of the cutting edge, I would say. Yeah, I think the funny thing is, is quite frankly, that's what motivates most of our employees. I mean, really, what we're targeting is really the emerging technology, but the focus on, a lot of our stuff with our partners, we want to show them how to fish, we want to show them how to deliver on these things, but internally, our team, and like with the labs creation, everybody's sitting there going like, I want to work on that, that cutting edge, that N plus one implementation, that the first of its kind kind of implementation, and open stack really does just epitomize all that. So, one of the things that we're trying to do with Red Hat as a whole is really just expose people to the engineering, what it's like to work within the open source community, what it's like to be sitting there, how do you become an upstream contributor to the code base, how do you really do that? And that's what our consultants really want to become anyway. So, being able to do that, they're not just consultants, they're developers, they're engineers, they're operations people, they want to be able to do all that stuff. So, I think it's really just kind of giving us another platform to say, hey, how can you further your career? It's not about being consultant or professional services, it's about really just working within an open source community, community powered innovation, all those things really just drive the mission of Red Hat, but open source as a whole. And I think the other thing it's allowed us to do is kind of take a play out of the Red Hat book from a standpoint of community. So, one of the things we need to do is obviously move more quickly, more agilely, because the product is changing a lot, and quite frequently. And my clients, our clients are expecting the same service delivery capability around the globe in every country, because they're doing just as, they're doing complex projects everywhere across the globe. And so, one of the things that we created about, now, 15 months ago, is what we call our communities of practice. And so, what we have is like-minded individuals from those open-stack communities, or open-stack practices, or the CloudForms practices, or the CEP practice, all in these communities of practice, sharing ideas, sharing best practices, sharing work products coming out of engagements, so we're not reinventing the wheel and kind of rediscovering things across the globe. And what we've been able to do is get participation from our engineering team, from our pre-sales team, and our services team, all in these communities of practice, so that we're sharing these best practices across Red Hat, and that's allowing us to move a lot more quickly, and a lot more like a globally integrated organization. I hope you build a big lab. Yeah, I mean- We have lots of labs- We're talking about a huge tent. But, I mean, is it portable? I mean, can you take it to the client? Can you take it to the customer? The Innovation Lab I'm talking about, because that's one fixed site, but I mean, virtually, can you take it out wherever? Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about that. Open Innovation Lab's perspective, I mean, it really is around taking our tools, our technology, and our methodology wherever we want to go. Now we, I think that the physical site is where we're testing things out, we're playing with different things, where we're trying to say, hey, this is where we're proving out the capabilities of this innovation capability, this innovation space. Then from the technical aspect of it, it really is a shared public infrastructure, either in, you know, you can access virtually or remotely. So it's not really something we have to box up. It's not a stack that we have to go travel around. It's really the people. And the people can either be brought into our infrastructure and into our physical location, or we can go and work with the customer. And quite frankly, you know, we'll be able to even work from a virtual aspect, but when you're thinking about this kind of cross-functional collaboration and working together and mentoring as a team, you know, I think we want to try to keep the people together, either on the client site or on our site, but giving them the access to the infrastructure is going to end the technologies virtually. And Jen, I think what was interesting, when we did some kind of early discovery work with our customer advisory board, we talked to probably what, eight or 10 clients, something like that, represented virtually across every geography. And the feedback we got on this specific point of, you know, do you want to come into a Red Hat facility to do this, or do you want us to come onto your facility? It was completely mixed. And depending on the client, some said, you know, absolutely we want to come into a Red Hat facility because that will be better for us to kind of get away from our day job and just focus on this new methodology. And other clients said, you know what, in order for it to work, it's going to work much better in our environment. And we even had another client say, this sounds really great. We want to run through one of these engagements with you and see how it would work, but then we want you to help build a center of excellence that will be our own innovation lab inside our company. So they kind of wanted to do a bit of both. And so I don't think there's one consistent answer. And so when we built it, we built it to be flexible in the cloud so we could do exactly that. We could do it virtually or we could do it on a Red Hat site. And it's really not our focus to scale it out just for ourselves. I mean, it is trying to teach them and help them create that capability in there, so it's really trying to open it up. And I think the biggest thing is, you know, really just showing them how we're eating our own dog, but how we're engineering our products, how we can show you how to do that and really just be open and free with all the information around it. Well, it makes sense, right? Learn how to drive in your neighborhood or mine, but you're going to learn how to drive. And congratulations on a big day. Thank you. Good announcement. And thanks for being part of the show today. We appreciate that. Well, thanks for having us and enjoy the rest of the conference. We'll do. All right, we'll be back with more from the OpenStack Summit 2016 here in Austin on theCUBE. It's always fun to come back to theCUBE because, you know, the discussion is always interesting and relevant. It's not script.


This person has the Migos flow, right? You remember when the Migos flow popped off and then there are all these O-heads that are like, well, this person had that flow and this person had that flow, right? Yeah, they got it from Gogo. The youth don't care, right? Because it was first in their head, right? It might be nice from a historical standpoint and say, oh, well, I can see where it originated. Even if you're somebody who's more respectful, like, okay, I see it originated back there, but it doesn't hit the same. When I hear from this person, then I do from the older person or just the originator because I got it from that new person's delivery first. You know what I'm saying? So first to mind is far more important than actually being first. Kanye wasn't the first person to have a floating stage, but most people's experience, at least over here, right? America was Kanye with a floating stage. And oh my gosh, he's so genius. He's so visionary. And guess what? When you find out there's a guy over in Africa that did a floating stage, it doesn't deduct Kanye's genius points in people's mind enough to actually matter because I knew about his first. And for some reason, there's the cognitive dissonance that just still lasts. And I think a lot of people even understand that, especially some of these people on the pop scale, they're like, all right, cool. I might lose five culture points when they find out the truth, but I gained 20 from it. So what is it? It is what it is. New people coming in from the look of outpacing the people that remembering that this was something else first. And overall, they didn't get so deep into that person's fan base that did it originally to actually truly care long term. You know what I mean? So that's the way that marketing works, right? It's not just the reality of ownership. So ownership are two things actually. So you can legally copyright something, but if everybody knows me for this, right, I have a level of ownership in the people's minds. So Jacory, you wrote this song. Well, this is the reality, right? There might be a songwriter who writes the song and for whatever reason, they own it.  Everybody sees my face and knows me. It's my song in their head, though. I get that technically, Jacory wrote it, but this is Sean's song, man. Like, I don't even care that you can sing better than him. Like Pharrell says, Celo has a, his version of happy is better than he is, right? Pharrell says that. It's like, hey, bro, it wouldn't hit the same. It might have hit, if I heard his first, but it's too late. Yours is already in my mind. That's just, that's just the way it go, right? That was part of the process. Remember when Jacquees had the Buddha remix?   Like you getting traction and it's hitting some people first before Ellis does everything that it needs to do. Oh, we're going to show like, sing that Jacquees version. You mean the version of my shit? Right. Right. So it's one thing if you waited like a year or this thing that already hit his main accolades, now it's giving the song an extra lift that's truly a tribute to the song, but it's the wrong, it's a distraction at that phase. I understand, you know, why they stumped that out, but, but then that version was hard, bro.    That's why they didn't know it. Like, how is this remix?   See, but that was a song that made me think about it. There's a, there's a, because I want to get back to the first stuff and really break that down, but there's a remix or alternate version of, um, dang, I wish I knew you wanted me. What's the actual official name? Yeah, I forgot the actual official name, right?  I cannot find it on the internet. I cannot find it. It has like extra bass to it and everything. And they play it so much. And it seems so regular for a second. I actually started it out.  And I forgot. I thought I had to go back to the regular songs. I knew this didn't have bass in it like this. And it's, it's, it's perfect. I found out sped up versions, but it's more like the hyper pop sped up. It's not that it's, it's a high, uh, like a, you know, faster pace and there's just this bass dropping back. That's all, that's it. There's no feature, nothing. Where it goes so hard though. It goes so hard. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I made, I haven't checked TikTok. I've looked at like a Spotify and YouTube, but that small switch, yo, it goes hard. I don't know how to find stuff when it plays on the radio though. Now, with that being said, imagine if I heard that first, right? And then I was like, dang, this shit's slow. That's just not weird. It's a, oh, perfect example. We can go back to some first artists that we worked with. And remember when she dropped the, that teaser, right?  I was like, what's that?  It's a song song. You're like, nah, it's just a little teaser thing she did, but everybody loves this song or this teaser. And they're like, can we drop a full song, make it a full song? She didn't really want to make it full song. And then she drops a full version. And I'm like, oh shoot, she dropped the full version. I'm with, I'm just straight fan mode. I'm not even thinking of client because you're working with her more.  What's the beat? Why is it so different? The production is different. It's like, that wasn't sped up or something. I feel like it was sped up. It was a faster beat. It wasn't a somber. I was like, you took all the emotion away from this shit, man. Me hearing that one version first, maybe the second one, maybe the second version. I would have liked it if I didn't hear that first version. But boy, did the rest of the fans agree with me. That's all I know. I was like, how could you do that? And what did you say she said? Like, why she redid it? It was something with the instrumental, like the one that she used the rights to it. It got embossed. You know, like, arts and music. I didn't know that part. It was like, she got beat to it. So she had to go get her producer that she know that completely remake it for her.  And then the song was different. So yeah, I thought she said she just didn't, I thought she just didn't like the, the pace of it and wanted to be sped up or something like that. Yeah, I think that's what made her go with the sped up version. But that's why she didn't use the original instrumental. The original instrumental was, yeah, I think because she, she didn't get it, but the pace. I forgive her more. I forgive her more. Now, now that I know that, I thought it was just like, I don't like this. I see people want it, but I don't like this. That was part of it. That wasn't all of it. That was maybe 20% of what let me take a quick second to say, if you're an artist trying to blow your music up, or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral completely free step by step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply. It's completely free. But the thing is, we're not going to let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com. Check it out back to the video. Okay. I think not getting the first beat in her head was like, Oh, that's a song. That's a song. Oh, then this shit's sold out. So yeah, I should have switched it up and go this direction. Okay. Okay. Yeah, man. Man. Man.  It's almost more upbeat. I mean, it's grown on me over the years. I was able to come up on my show. I'm going to give it a try. Maybe with separation. You know what I mean? No time in between now and then. Because I vaguely remember it only because I was looking at the post not too long ago. So the post reminds me of what it sounds like. But by this point, I almost forgot what it sounded like. So I'm almost at the point where it's completely fleshed out of my system. Oh, man. Yeah. Well, artists, look, if a fan acts or something, don't give them that except whatever adjustment you think you should change. Or if you are like looking back on it, I think if we could have done that differently, if I could have advised her differently, I don't even like do both like do like an OG version of it and then maybe drop like this second version of it and call it the something else mix or something. Right. So you can just get that out to the system. Like give the fans what they want just so they can have it and they can champion it and then give them what you want right behind it. Yeah. Could have made a nice little two piece out of it. Yeah. No, I don't know that. I didn't think about it. I can see that. And then maybe even give it a little narrative of why she did this version is more somber and speaks to X, Y, Z. And this version is more upbeat because it's me finding myself and walking towards it. You were better than I was gonna go. I was gone for the Aver. I couldn't get the official beat. So I got to do this other one with the truth. Yeah. The truth is a good narrative sometimes. Right. I feel like bands don't believe that. The truth sometimes sounds like a lot because we hear it a lot from so many other artists. All right. That is true. Yeah. I'd rather go with the creative law because at least they don't. They don't. The line is blurry. They don't even know what you think. That's true. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that would have helped there if you just, you wouldn't have been able to put it on the regular platform. It was like, I just can't put it there. But y'all can listen on YouTube or whatever. But yeah. So look, that's the impact of the first stuff. Right. And it's so important to realize, again, it's like, first doesn't matter by itself. I got to make an awareness of the fact that this first happened. That's why you'll see a lot of products that are far better marketed do better than a higher quality product. Right. It's like, yeah, people are like, oh, this is so much better. It doesn't matter. Nobody knows about it. Yeah. Period. The tree falling in the forest. Yeah. Exactly. Who cares, who knows, except for whoever the tree fell on when it hit.  But so people have to be aware. And then, especially if it's something like the pyramid situation and things like that, you have to create awareness of the meaning of it as well. So now I know about it. Why is it important? Oh, Russ performed at the pyramids. Oh, but it's important, even more important, not just dope. Because that right there is dope, period. Yeah. Right. But it's even more important because I'm the first solo rapper, apparently. Right. And by the way, if y'all are listening, y'all past pod listeners, as well as that number four clip listeners, let me, I'm going to pull something up on Google real quick. I want y'all to see something. Artist who performed at pyramid. Look at this. Y'all talked about that one group. Y'all talking about me. Y'all didn't mention Louis Armstrong. Y'all didn't mention Frank Sinatra. So y'all were acting like y'all were going for the first.  But know what? You were not aware. You were not aware. So you did not care.  So y'all didn't have to come at me like that, man. That's all I'm saying. All y'all did was prove the point. And that's why, look, that's why we come at the kids so hard when you think of society, when it comes to marketing and products, let's get them so we can get in their minds first because they're still experiencing first. So it doesn't matter that this old music might be. It might be. I'm not even objectively saying. I'm just saying it might be better than this new music. But if they hear that new music first and that new style first, that's going to change your perspective of that old. You know what I mean? All that type of stuff, we literally build society, basically from a marketing standpoint, off of the youth for that reason. That's always the big money opportunity. And that's why there's always articles like, oh, the way millennials think, the way Gen Z thinks, because it's a new opportunity. Yeah. And it may make sense when you look at it that way, right? Because how many people are going to do the research if you tell them the truth or not? Like we don't condone lying, right? Like I'm not, but I get it sometimes in the world of entertainment. Sometimes there's a clear cut narrative that you know that by the time people start to figure out that this isn't 100% true, I'm already, I've already won. I'm already, I've already cashed out. This is one of those things, right? Like I said, like how many people will scroll past that response? I was like, oh, that's cool. And I didn't even think to go look into it. My first thought wasn't to go verify, right? We fall for the trick sometimes. That's the beauty of it. You know, the bullet coming, but you don't step out of the way for whatever reason. This one's too enjoyable. Yeah. Let me see what happens here. I won't be taken out of the way out. But yeah, I think that's the biggest lesson, bro. It doesn't matter who did it first. It matters about who talks about it first. You know what I'm saying? Oh, we talked about the loudest and convincing people that were first. Because like I said, by the time people started looking into the truth and especially with the way the internet works, but a month of tweets and shit, that should be trending and viral by the end of the day. And then by the time somebody comes out, how many times have we seen things go viral and narratives be spun into these crazy moments that like the truth comes out a day or two later and like the truth doesn't go anywhere near as big as whatever the initial narrative was, right? Like this, bro, like they're probably someone who posted to that rush quote like, no, you weren't the first. This guy was first.  I already put my capacity about caring into caring that he did it. I don't have the room to go care about this new random person that maybe did it, you know what I'm saying? 2030. I don't know how long it was, but how long ago, right? Like you said, like people are looking for the first in their time. It's just like history, bro. Like we're not, it's cool to learn that people did all these things back then.   The motherfucker that's showing me them doing the same thing on YouTube right there or something has more impact than the people I learned about doing in the past, because I can experience it and see it in real time. And that's what we always take it back to that. I think ours don't think about bro. Like from a consumer standpoint, we just care about who we heard about doing it first. And if we happen to know that that person wasn't first, then we care. You know what I'm saying? We talk about it, right? If we don't know, then we probably most of us probably just take the narrative and run with it. You know what I'm saying? Truth was how people are. And then even the ones that do know, they're still contributing to the conversation to that conversation. I wrote, hey, he wasn't actually first. This guy was first, but you're still talking about it. So even in that situation, you still win because then the narrative change enough people find out the narrative switches to oh, Russ was not actually the first artist to perform in the pyramids here. Five other artists that actually were first, but you just extend the conversation by another week. You know what I'm saying? Another week or two. So hey, exactly, bro. Exactly. That's the old person's dilemma, right? As we all get older, how many times have we all heard somebody older say, well, no, first you hear somebody younger say, oh, that's so unique. This artist is so dope. They're doing this and that. And then the old person like, man, oh, X, Y and Z been did that. They been did that. And you're like, I hear you, but doesn't really connect like the true fact that they aren't as unique. No, like they're unique in your time. It's hard to unsee them as that. Why? Because I can't unexperience my experience. They was first to me. It's too late. If the cherry gets popped, you can't unpop the cherry. It just doesn't work that way, bro. It was like, well, so what you want me to do not feel as amazing as I felt because that amazing feelings now always going to be associated with that artist, not these other people. I can build some appreciation for those people who already have done it. And I could truly love like a lot of things I'm hearing from them, especially as I experienced first with those older catalogs, right? There's a lot of old artists that, you know, their catalogs are amazing to me, but still growing up. You hear one thing first. It's like, dang, this is it for me. This is it for me. I hear what you're saying, Pop, but this is it for me. But yeah, man, that being first is, I think, and that's what I love about a Margaret conversation and kind of like how we think, because a lot of times I like to say the way consumers care about stuff, and we'll see all in the comments a lot of times, is completely different than how we say stuff. We will literally be talking about something and saying something like a first doesn't matter or this is first and that. And then they'll think we're hating. It's like the Travis Scott bot situation. Us talking about Travis having bots, they think it's hating and all these other things, but for us, yeah, that's part of the game for us. We're not even thinking, like, this is like, oh yeah, no, man, well, he should have did it that way. Like in that conversation, you were basically like, man, you all need to try to find some people who can do this, right? And in a way that matters, right? And we talked about the music success and all that stuff. But it's like, when you, if you want to be in the game, actually in the game, you don't have the luxury of viewing the game with that same level of romanticism that fans think. That's why everything's like hating or love. It's like, hate or love for us is like, there's so much great space. Yeah. It's like, bro, I'm with it, man. I think that's a that's a very important distinction. So to make is that, you know, there are a lot of marketers on the internet who are like that, right? They're very like, you know, we only do the positive things and, you know, nah, this is wrong. This is bad. Artists, the artist gang should be pure and everybody should get an equal chance starting at the same point on the starting line.  But I feel like we're one of the few marketers that I mean, we don't encourage it, but we acknowledge it, right? Like it's like, I've worked with clients before and seeing impact of box set up on that backhand. We've had clients, but we look, we get access to that back and she was like, oh, this ain't nothing like we thought it was on the front end. Like, I don't hate it. Like, I've we've done enough to understand that like any game there, there are things that you won't understand how to play well within it until you're at the level where it matters. Exactly. So when you're down here looking up and you wondering why the motherfuckers at the court got on this special pair of shoes, why they all wear the same pair of shoes? And you get that level.   I can jump a little bit higher. You know what I'm saying? It clicks for you when you get to that point. Yeah. And so I think a lot of artists are like, jump or quick to jumping, call certain things like bad. And at your level, it might be bad because you're not a point to where you can take advantage of certain things. But you might get here.  You know what I'm saying? And so that's how I look at a lot of the marketing stuff. All of it, I don't condone. You know what I'm saying? All of it, I wouldn't recommend to a client or a particular client. But I respect it. When I see a game play well, you know what I'm saying? No matter how fair or unfair that game was played, I respect it, bro.   I can't get lost. Hey, look, man, to me, especially something like bots. Yeah, bots or whatever at this point. That's like, to me, it's irrelevant, right? If it works to get you where you need to go. Who's talking about bots? What are they talking about? I don't know, something serious. He's like, oh yeah, he got an extra few fake numbers. And now he's a big artist. Like, who did that hurt? That's the way I think of it. Like, what mattered to me, if anything, especially if it's a social proof thing. I always blame that stuff on the fans.  Even this whole industry plant thing, that idea of that.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we shall discuss the following question and the question says that Jim and George are diving at 22.6 feet and 18 feet respectively below sea level. Show their positions on the number line. Let us proceed to the solution. In this question we are given that Jim is diving at 22.6 feet below sea level and George is diving at 18 feet below sea level. Now we shall show their positions on a vertical number line. We have Jim who is diving at 22.6 feet below sea level and George who is diving at 18 feet below sea level. On the number line 0.0 will represent sea level. The numbers below 0 will be negative and numbers above 0 will be positive. And we have to plot 18 and 22.6. So we have taken difference of 4 between 2 integers. As we have to show below sea level we will consider numbers below 0 that are negative numbers. So we have to plot minus 22.6 which lies between minus 20 and minus 24. That is minus 20 and minus 24. It is slightly greater than middle of minus 20 and minus 24. So we have plotted her and hence we have got the diving point for Jim. And now we shall plot the diving point of George that is 18 feet below sea level. Now 18 feet below sea level means we have to plot minus 18 which is exactly in between minus 16 and minus 20. So we have plotted here in the middle and hence we have got the diving point for George. And hence the number line shows the required positions. This completes our session. Hope you enjoyed this session.


Good evening everyone and welcome to the Stock Swiss Show play of the day, which is AEO. Only play I did today, took a long, long, long time to go, it seems, but it worked. And another test of conviction between yesterday and today, really seeing the level of advancement, even for myself, of my own personal level of conviction, because I'm doing trades and I'm calling trades and I'm sticking with them, even against the market, even when they're taking a while to go. And they've both paid off between staples and this, it's just been a really nice week. And I could not have been more exact on the target with this. I don't remember where I found it, but, you know, I do all my work in the morning. When I get up in the morning, I'm a morning person. And I think very clearly, looking at the stocks, deciding what I want to trade, getting the numbers written down, the target on this today was $10.50. The low of the stock today was $10.50. And yeah, this could have gone to $10, but by the time it started breaking, I said, no, it's not going to make it there today. I said $10.50. And boy, was I right. I mean, this was exact, exact, exact, exact. So let's look at it. Nice way to go into holiday weekend. I am taking the next few days off and really nice way to go into the holiday weekend. Super duper duper. Let's go back to it here. This actually I don't think was the open. It was one little bar that didn't really move without a lot of volume. And sometimes these stocks and I exchange open late. I think this was the open. Weird, but happens sometimes. And I'm getting more used to that. Anyways, this is a big bar if you look at it, if you just look at the bar. But then when you look at the numbers, it's really not that bad. And I have a rule. I have something that I teach in the class. It's called a reverse whoosh. This was not a reverse whoosh. It wasn't because even that the bar seem aggressive. If you look at the numbers, they're not. And interestingly enough, this went to the maximum, maximum level of resistance. If it had got one penny more, I wouldn't have done it, but it didn't. So I did it. And I did it here. I mean, this was like a perfect entry.  And it's hard to see right now because this is actually not moving in a lifetime. It's actually stationary. But in the trading room, when I was watching it, calling it and seeing it set up, this happened slower than this happened. This happened aggressively and fast. It was a good sign. And so what happened was selling came into the stock at this number. Selling came in and pushed it down in the resistance that made the stock go down. And the powers that be that are controlling the stock decided that stock was not going to go above this level today. And that's what happened. It got sold off. It was a really nice trade, except for the fact that it took a long time to go, which is unusual for most of the trades that I do, which is funny about this week. Anyways, some people in the room killed it because they lost conviction because it took so long to go and then it did this green bar here. I stayed with the trade. Stay with the trade. Stay with the trade. Stay with the trade. I even lowered my stock. Not at break even, but I gave a little bit of a cushion over here. And the funny thing was when I saw the 15 minute, when it was rallying back, and this is all happening, the market's rallying too. I still lose conviction in this. It's actually their 15 minute buy set up, but I knew it was still okay. Really got to give myself a round of applause here for the trades that I've called lately. I mean, the gaps have been good. The gaps have been solid this week, but the entries have been tough, tough to find, tough to spot, tough to do, tough to hold, tough to stay with, to really get paid. Because if you did the trade that I did today and stayed with this to the target, you really got paid. It was a nice, nice day. Something yesterday to the staples. One of the key things that I'm going to talk about this in the next webinar that I do, one of the key ingredients to making a lot of money as a professional day trader in the market is, or just as a day trader in the market, if you're going to do it for part time or full time, no matter what kind of income you're looking to get out of this. If you want to make a lot of money, whether you're doing it as a secondary source of income or full time source of income or retirement, if you want to make serious money, and I mean several thousand dollars a week, ten thousand dollars a month, twenty thousand dollars a month, I mean serious money that could equate to a regular job, you have to have one thing that you do extremely well and you have to be very good at it. And you have to do that one thing with size and conviction, and you also have to hold it to the target. Now that doesn't mean the whole position to the target some days. It means a chunk of the position to target. Although some days you will hold the whole thing to target, which is actually what I did with this today, held the whole thing to the target, and I was already up in it. When you're up on a train from the time that you take it, it's not hard to hold it. Many people take trades at bad entries at bad places and don't know what they're doing, and also they lack conviction. They lack total conviction and the directional bias of what the stocks must be doing on the day of the gap. They buy it, they short it, they do a million things, and they lose conviction. They don't hold it, and therefore they don't make any money in the full-on move. I mean I'm getting the full-on move as much as I can. These things 80% at least, most of the days. And like days of today you get the whole thing. So you know every once in a while you will hold the whole trade to the whole amount, and that takes conviction. How can you do that? You have to understand the basis for your strategy and really have a skill that you mastered, which I do, which is gaps. There's trading rooms in short this stock today. I mean that's one of the amazing things when I look at this, and I talked about this in the room. And that's probably why I took a while to break. And I told everybody, stay with it. Traders aren't going to be looking at short this today. Most traders aren't going to play this today. And if they are, they're going to try to buy it, not short it.  It was a great, great, great call. So what happens is a lot of people see a bars like this in the beginning part of the day, see a stock gapping down as well the way this was in Delhi chart, and I'll go back in a minute. And they'll make an attempt here to buy this. And they put the stock under the low. And if you did that, you're actually with the push and you stayed in it. And some people then when it retests a little buy here, you can see that this got some sort of lift off of here buying this bar, but it wasn't institutional buying. That's the difference. It's so important to read what is institutional buying and what is buying by some traders, a couple of people. Because as you see, the institutions were controlling this. It never got over the high of the day and actually held the stock where we lowered it. That I talked about this before I closed up the room, which was actually before the stock broke. Although I gave everybody the numbers. I said this stock will not go over the high of the day today, 100% conviction. It will not go over the high of the day. And if you want to keep the stock, just keep the stock over the high of the day. You'll stay in it all day will not go over the high of the day. I knew it wouldn't and it didn't. And it actually went red and it closed red. This is lower tomorrow. Absolutely. And really nice fall through in this today. And you didn't have to stay in it like a thousand bazillion, bazillion hours. I mean, sometimes you do a stock and it goes so quickly in the morning and like by 10 o'clock, you'll have like 80% of the move. But every once in a while, you do have to stay in the thing.  I mean, you knew it was going and going to break. And it's just a matter of them where you're going to get out of it and how you can hold to. And this could have gone to 10 today, but it was just by the time broker was late. And it went to the exact number that I said, which is really hilarious. Anyways, let's look at the daily chart. A lot of traders didn't do this today. They didn't. And if they did, they bought it. They bought it. What a terrible buy to buy this today. People bought it, could stop it in the middle of the day, and they got stopped out. That's what helped push this move down here. You can see it. Actually, you can see it. The selling comes in here. Selling came in here. Selling came in here. Here's where the long, the people that are, traders that are long are getting stopped out. That's what makes this big red bar then pushed down even more. And of course, the selling continues that's being sold in the trend of the stock for the institutions that are pushing it down on the day. The trend of the stock on the day is bearish. It is a bearish gap. There's no reason to buy something that is bearish on the day. This is a bearish day. This is not a bullish day. You don't buy something that is bearish. You want to buy things that are strong on the day. This was weak on the day. Now, that's not to say that every gap down works. Not every gap down works. But again, this goes back to the same thing. You have to have a way to qualify the gap. If you find a way to qualify the gap, you'll know if the gap down is going to continue lower from where it opens, or you'll know if the gap up is going to continue higher from where it opens to buy it. You cannot buy every up gap, and you cannot short every single down gap. But I have a way to qualify that, the 26-point reigning system. So I knew that the stock, the directional bias for the day, for today, because I'm playing it today, I need to be in the right direction today, May 21st, if I'm playing it. So regardless of what's going on in the whole totality of the bigger picture here, I must be in the right direction today, or I won't make money. So I have to read that correctly. And how do I do that? I'm rating the gap. And the gap told me the stock would sell off on the day, on the live day today to the 21st, because that's all I really care about. Okay? I don't care if this is tomorrow, the next day or the next day. I care what it does today the day I want to short it, the day that it gaps. And so what happened here was a lot of people tried to buy this, and I know where people are coming from when they look at buying this. It's so great to understand what other people are doing that are trainers, because I know they're going to get taken out by the institutions, and my rating system really reads institutional pattering. It reads institutional setups, whether or not they're going to sell something on the day or buy something on the day, whether the gap is down or up or whatever. And when it gap gaps down and doesn't rate well, I know that one or two things is going to happen. If it doesn't rate well, I know that either A, institutions are not going to sell it, therefore it's not going to go lower, or B, institutions are going to buy it, in which case it's going to go higher, not lower, in which case I don't want to do it, or C, the best case scenario, which is what I'm looking for every day when I rate a gap with a 26-point rating system, I'm looking for 20 points or more to determine if the gap is going to get sold off on that day, because that's the day that I want to make money in this stock, the day that I short it, the day that I'm looking at the gap. So great call by me today, great, fantastic way to go into the holiday weekend, great call by the stocks, with show, live trading room, today great call by me, Melissa Armo, and if anyone is interested in the next golden gap class, it is June 7th and 8th, let me just make sure that day, June 7th and 8th, I'm writing a special for fleet week, for the holiday week, for the holiday weekend, if anyone wants to sign up for the class for June, you have until Memorial Day, May 26th, if you sign up for the June gap class by then, you can get two months free in the live trading room, which is a fantastic deal, because you can get all my calls and calls like this and staples yesterday. It's June 7th and 8th is the next class, so if you want to sign up and pay and register by May 22nd, May 26th, I'm sorry, Memorial Day, it's Monday, for the next golden gap class, you will get two free months of the live trading room, which is a fantastic deal, and it's an early bird special, I did it last month, I'm doing it again this month, it was a good idea, I don't think I'm going to do it again for a while, so if you want to do it, now's the time, and the cost of the class will be increasing as of July 1st, and I'll be sending out emails about that starting next week for everyone that's interested. So people that want to do the class, June is the month to do it, it should be a busy, busy month for trading, there's a lot of things going on, market has really been slow the last couple of days of movement because of the holiday week, but once back from the holiday, after Memorial Day next week, things should pick up again, and I was really happy to get some nice gaps this week in a slow holiday week, so very happy. If anyone wants to email me, you can email me at melissaatthestockswush.com, have a fantastic holiday week in everybody, have a great Memorial Day, have a great Fleet Week, enjoy yourselves, email me if you're interested in the Golden Gap class, lots more to come, a lot of exciting things happening this summer, website rolling out, some other new things, a video library, video membership, lots of exciting things going on this summer for the Stock Swish, going to be the summer of the Stock Swish, have a great night everybody, and I'll see you next week.