Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to San Jose State University's School of Informations Fall 2014 Colloquium Series. This is Dr. Bill Fisher on the coordinator of our colloquium series, and it's my pleasure today to introduce to you our speaker, Michael Grunberg, who is the president of Grunberg Consulting. An organization he started in January of 2012 after a very successful career in the information industry. Mike has worked for ProQuest, which some of you may know as the organization or the company that owns the dialogue search service. He's also held positions with OneSource, with Disclosure, with Oxford Analytica, and other organizations. And in this time, Mike has dealt with numerous libraries, individual libraries, academic corporate consortia customers, and has gained a phenomenal amount of experience with regard to the buying and selling of information. And he is with us today to share that expertise with us. So, Mike, let me turn things over to you. Thanks, Bill, and thanks, everybody, for coming today. My name is Mike Grunberg, and I have been in this business 35-plus years. In that time I have called on virtually every kind of library throughout the world, and called on libraries in U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, and so on. And over the years, you gain a little bit of knowledge about the relationship that one needs to have with the library to be successful. And so, when I saw it in my company about two and a half years ago, I had a little more time on my hands because I wasn't working for a big corporate entity. And so I wrote a book. And the reason I wrote the book was because I felt as though in many of the places that I had visited, there really wasn't an understanding of the sales process on the other side of the desk. You know, salespeople are taught how to prepare themselves and so on, and I got the feeling more than once that it might be a little bit help-us-ing on the other side. So I wrote the book, and when I put together this presentation, I was trying to think of a good title, and that's one of the tough parts in writing, and I write a column for music site also, and the toughest part is getting the title of the piece I'm going to write. And so for this, I said, well, this is really the information professional-vendor relationship. Or maybe I would say it's learning how to work and thrive as a professional librarian by working with and understanding vendors. And so that's too long. I don't like that one. And then I guess the one that I like the best is we're in it together. And that's really the basis of what I'm going to talk about today, that I've read articles that say the relationship between the library person and the salesperson should be adversarial. I don't believe that for a minute. And so I'll talk a little bit about that and kind of go through that. But before I get to where I have to get to, I think it's important to understand where I've been. Because I don't think you can understand how to get somewhere if you don't understand where you've been. So when I started, my first job out of college, I was a teacher in New York City. Reason I did that, even though I had a political science degree, was that I needed a job very quickly and they were hiring teachers. And prior to that, I'd been a musician. And so you think about, OK, is there any kind of a way in which to say that being a musician playing in a band prepares you for being a teacher? And strangely enough, there was a lot of ways in which that one profession helped the other. And when you think about it, for both professions, the teacher has to have lesson plans. Well, the musician has to have sheet music. Clearly both people have to know the subject matter, the musician has to play the song. And for both, you have to be able to impart wisdom. And in sales, we say we entertain and then we inform. So there's an entertainment thing in sales as well. You know, you have to know the songs by heart. We have to practice a lot. And certainly, when I was a teacher, I do a lot of practicing before I got into the classroom because kids kind of know if you're faking it. And so you have to be really careful of that. And you can't be afraid to speak in front of large crowds. And you've got to like people. And I think that really held me well in that job. And I loved being a teacher for about six years. And in that time, I got my master's degree in administration. I became a licensed principal in New York. And virtually, around the same time I got my degree and my principal certification, I got another notice in the mail from Board of Education. And at the time, New York City was having a severe budget crisis. And they said, well, congratulations on being a principal, but we don't have a job for you. And that was kind of upsetting considering I just recently got married and had a child on the way and so on. So I couldn't figure out what to do. And I spoke to a friend of mine. And my friend said, hey, you ought to be a salesman. And I said, no, I don't want to be a salesman. That's really not something I want to do. But I had no choice. And I figured out it would last a couple of months. And so then all of a sudden, I became a salesman. And interestingly enough, oops, then I became a salesperson. And I thought, OK, what does a sales guy have to do? Again, have long arms to knock on doors. And you've got to press buttons on doors. But actually, it was interesting because I didn't know any better. And the job I got was with a company called Disclosure. And we were the archivist for the SEC in Washington. What that meant was we filmed documents filed there by public companies. No calls to the government in return. We got to sell the data. And we sold our microfeeds.  And so we started doing that. And when I got the job, I said to my boss, I said, OK, well, what do I need to know? And he said, well, you're going to sell to librarians. I said, OK, that's fine. It's microfiche. I said, well, that's not so fine because I remember that doing my master's degree. And microfiche is not the greatest medium in the world. And he said, and also, by the way, people can get this for free if they go to an SEC reading room. So here I was trying to make a living. And all of a sudden I realized I've got to really do some hard work here because I don't think it's going to be easy to sell this. And really what happened was I was at, and I must tell you, I really feel very blessed to have the job I had because dealing with library folks was just a great thing because it's by and large one the nicest group of people in the world. And what I also realized going back to my music and my teaching days is that both professions, being an information professional and a salesperson, are in fact very similar. They're similar in the sense that both professions are there to help people. Both professions not to be knowledgeable, and you have to know about the latest trends. Both professions are constantly answering questions. Both need to be fully prepared to do their job properly. Both have to deal with the public and you have to get good people skills. And guess what? For both the salesperson and the information professional to be successful, you guys need to work together. And I have found in all the years I've done this that my most success came when I did work very closely with the library. So the answer to the question of are they similar? Yeah, they sure are. And so for the next 35 years, I've called on libraries throughout the world. I've gone to virtually every library that I can think of, large ones, small ones, public ones, special ones, and so on. You'll notice Stanford over there is in the picture nearby where you are. And I learned that there are three things that both the librarian and the salesperson have in common. And what they have in common is they both have to be good communicators. They both have to really prepare for the job, and they both have to manage expectations. You know, sales guys are taught that they have a goal every month of a certain amount of money. You know, in the library, you have to answer questions and make sure that you have the proper materials for your patrons. But the reality of it is that both professions, and when I did this slide originally, I didn't have the plus and the equal. And then I realized that absolutely that's part of it because the salesperson has certain metrics. We are given goals every month about a certain amount of sales that have to come in. You in the library have certain metrics that measure your success by the number of questions that are answered, that the number of resources that you have. And what that equals is that both people, both people really are aiming for the same target. They're aiming for a successful target that they both will be able to get their job done. And when I thought about it, I said let me put a slide in the talks about let's get the proper perspective. What does a salesperson do? How does that relate to the information professional? Well, the salesperson is paid to represent a product, my old company ProQuest, the sales guys there have multitudes of products that they have to know that they'll be able to present. They are the liaison between the library and the company. Not an easy rope, but not an easy rope to walk across because on one hand you want to keep the company happy and on the other hand you've got to keep the client happy and sometimes it just doesn't work out the way you think it's going to work out. The salesperson needs to know everything about the product. And finally, the salesperson, when they visit you in the library, they're coming to sell you something. I have friends who are sales people and they say well, I'm not really a salesperson, I'm a consultant.  Now sometimes we call the library and it's just on a hello, hello, how are you, visit for a few minutes just to see if everything's okay. But for the most part, the sales guys show up. And what a lot of my information professional friends don't realize when they're in graduate school is that there will be a stream of sales people coming to visit you once you get a job at whichever library you're going to get a job at because there are sales people who sell databases, chairs, desks, technology, janitorial equipment. I mean, there's a whole host of things that these guys show up. And to be successful, you really have to understand the process and understand who you're dealing with. So for the information professional, you know your service to users of the people in your organization at your library. Your job is to acquire the best source of information. To do that, you have to evaluate products. You have to negotiate with vendors and you have to buy and renew products as well. My colleague and I do a course now on negotiation skills for librarians and we do it at Charleston and internet librarian and computers and libraries. We did that course last year in Charleston and they had scheduled us on a Friday afternoon at 2.15 which I said nobody's going to show up and we had a full house, it was standing room only because people really look for those skills in negotiating with vendors and we'll talk a little bit more about that later but this is to me, this is the most important part of understanding of what people are doing. So to get it down to the most basic of elements, there are literally three elements to every library sale. There's the information professional, there's a salesperson and there's a product or service that's going to be presented for consideration to be purchased. Now what happens then is the information professional needs to get the product they need at the price that they can pay. The salesperson has to properly represent the product because their job is to sell something and they're going to earn a commission. Quite honestly, if I stayed in teaching I would not have made the kinds of income I made as a salesperson. So there's the other part of that equation. Finally, the product or service to be presented has to be the right product at a reasonable price and more than likely will be used by your patrons and the fact of the matter is that's what happens. Now on the other side, oh yeah and by the way, and to be renewable, we are in what is called an annuity business and the annuity business means that if I sell you a database in September of 2014, I'm going to be back in September of 2015 to renew it. And it's not in my best interest to present to you something or sell you something that you're not going to be happy with. So it's not a one-shot deal when the sales guy shows up. But let me go a little bit further to tell you what's on the other side of the desk and what the company views it. Companies like the ones I worked for and they're all very good companies, they devote an enormous amount of money in the budget to train their salespeople and executives. Remember salespeople by virtue of who they are are fairly gregarious people to begin with. So we're now helping them to get even better than they are and we teach them sales techniques. We teach them sales strategies. So I was, I'm part of a, I've gone to Xerox School of Selling, I've gone to IBM School, I've gone to Miller Hyman School, all these things and they're all different strategies and different ways in which to teach us to be more efficient to salespeople. We go to negotiation skills training. We're given books to read when there's a new product coming out inevitably what happens is the product manager, the VP of sales, all the sales managers, all the sales people get together and they teach us about the product and how to sell it. We talk about the client constantly talking about the client and saying okay what do we have to do to sell this thing and what do we have to do to make it right and we have yearly meetings, there are quarterly meetings, there are monthly meetings, there are weekly meetings and that's what we're talking about. We talk about what is the strategy, how do we get the job done and how do we service our customers better. We have CRMs to track the sales activities. So I can look on my computer and look at salesforce.com, one of many and find out name, address, phone number which is easy but how many emails have I sent you, how many proposals have I sent out, what is the name of your partner, what is your favorite color, how many children do you have, all that kind of stuff and it's done for one reason, one reason only to be more efficient but even more so so that if I leave the company on Tuesday, the guy who replaces me on Wednesday knows all the information and when I talk about this at my sessions at computers and libraries in those places, I start this slide and I say okay, all of that is done for one reason and one reason only and that's done to deal with the information professional. Our job as salespeople is to sell something to our information professional friends and the two questions I then ask the audience is how much money does your library spend to prepare you to deal with salespeople? What training course did they send you to? And secondly, how many courses did you take in library school that were devoted to prepare you to work with the vendors? And guys, you know the answer, the answer usually is around zero. That just does not happen and I found that to be the case quite a while ago where I realized that you guys are not trained to deal with guys like me, it's that simple and I've always thought about writing a book about this stuff and the idea of writing a book The Genesis actually started about 20 years ago or even more and I was managing an international sales force and we had our meetings about who we wanted to sell to and so on and there was one really great prospect we had in London and we had spoken to her many times. It was a great prospect, perfect application for our service and it dragged on for some time and then I think it was like a Wednesday after noon or Wednesday morning the salesperson from London called me up and said, Mike, so-and-so just called, they seemed ready to buy, they liked us to come in the next Tuesday at 10 o'clock. I said, great, have a great meeting, you need to know she wants you there as well. So okay, so going that time to live in New York so at that time I said, okay, it's Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, okay, so I left Sunday night, flew all night, got there Monday morning, went right to the office, we went over everything, we had everything prepared, we had all of our arbed ducks in a row, we go there Tuesday morning, 10 o'clock, within 10 minutes of the meeting beginning the librarian says, oh, Mike, something came up, I have to go but don't worry, Jeanette will take you the rest of the way and I looked at Jeanette and Jeanette looked like the deer in headlights and of course Jeanette had no idea and of course as we left the offices a little while later the salesperson looks at me, I look at him and I thought the guy was gonna cry and I said, look, you're not to blame, you were prepared, the problem was she wasn't prepared and she didn't want to admit it or whatever the reason was but she was not prepared and I said to myself, among other things, I said to myself, I gotta write, somebody's gotta write a book about this thing so fast forward to two and a half years ago when I saw it in my company I wrote an article for SLA and the article appeared in this issue of information outlook and basically what I said in the article was that the vendor and the librarian should have a unique relationship that produces results that are acceptable, reasonable and cost effective for both parties and I wrote it just because I felt like writing something and my friends at SLA had asked me to do an article for them. Well, I was absolutely shocked and amazed that I got all these calls from people who said love the article, great stuff, do you think you might want to write and turn it into a book? I had no idea but I said, okay, I could do that and I started with a dear friend of mine who was editing the book for me and we were gonna self publish until I found information today and they said, well, why are you doing that? We'll publish it for you and they did and that's how the book came to pass. So we'll talk a little bit more about that later but the idea of the article and the idea of what I talk about in many of my sessions is that it's all about preparation. How does the information professional prepare for the sales meeting and on the other side of the table how does the vendor prepare for that same meeting? The fact of the matter is if both parties want to accomplish something and cut through all the nonsense and all the stuff on the side, get down to business and I believe by reading the book and understanding what we talk about that we can achieve mutually beneficial results for both parties because again it's not adversarial to me it's working together and so when I started talking about preparation for the sales meeting which we talk about a lot in the book there were some pretty simple hints of what to do. The first one of course is for the information professional do the research. Have a basic understanding of what the product entails so you say, well, I want to see the database on astrology. Okay, take a look, go to the company website take a look at what they've got have some questions. You will find that you're probably going to know a lot more than you think and you're probably more of an expert than you think you are and if you're not, pretend to be. You know, you should know a little bit going into the meeting and the other part of it is have an idea of what you want to spend. When we did the negotiation skills training in Charleston last year we had Carl Grant from the University of Oklahoma with us on stage and he said to the group, he said, look, if you don't have the money then say it, you know, say, look guys I'd love to buy this product it sounds really good but we don't have the money at that point it's up to the sales person to decide whether to come because at the end of the day you don't want to have the person come out there just to say hello and because their job is to sell you something. So have an idea of what you want to spend and if you can't then say so up front. Similarly, express the actual needs of the library. Here's what we need. We have a new school of nursing. We don't have the right elements for research. We have, you know, the Dean of Business wants to get a certain whatever. Again, express the actual needs. Have a working knowledge as we said of the products to be discussed and please be an active participant. Too often my library friends with such delightful people sometimes are kind of passive. As I talk to young library students and I've given this talk at Catholic University and University of Tennessee and I'm pleased to see that a lot of the young librarians are much more active than some of the older ones and I love it because be an active participant. Tell the sales person what you want. And the other thing is be a coach. If, and what that means is this in many organizations every organization is different in the way in which they purchase a product. If you like the product, if you think it's good, if you think it has the wherewithal to be in your library and the sales person will say, well, did you like the presentation? You will inevitably say, yeah, I liked it. It's always great. The good sales person will say, well, what do we do next to get this done? Every organization is different and every organization has ways in which to navigate through there. Help the sales person navigate through your organization. You may say, well, you know, Joe, the way we do it here is there's a committee, there's three people on the committee, two of them are never around, but the third person is always there. I'll introduce you or whatever. Do, you know, be the coach to help the sales person navigate through the approval process. Be realistic about the funding situation and also tell the sales person what your feelings are. You know, Bob, I didn't like the last sales guy your company sent in here or I love your company. It's a great bunch of people. You've done a great job for me. Whatever it might be, good, bad, or indifferent, be, you know, let the sales person know how you feel. Because on the other end of the equation, ladies and gentlemen, your organization has expectations of you. They expect that you've conducted the best research in selecting the best products for the library. They want to feel confident that you are part and understanding of the latest trends in your industry and they want to have the assurance that you've negotiated the best possible price. And guess what? The sales person can help you achieve these goals. You work with the sales person, they can help you. So how can you guys work better together? Well, one of the things that I'm kind of crazed about is the use of an agenda. And I'm always amazed when I talk at SLA, ALA groups of senior librarians and I say, before the meeting, do you have an agenda sent out? And a lot of times they say, no. The agenda is probably the most important part of beginning the sales process because the agenda says to the sales person, here's what I want to do. So here, for example, the sales person may say to you, I'm going to visit your library next Tuesday at 10, I'm going to talk about a solar power database. Anything else you want me to talk about? You may say, no, I'm fine. Or you might say, you know what? I want to talk about the renewal. I want to talk about your other products. Or the librarian may say, Bob, I'm happy to see you next Thursday at 11, and my library director is going to join us. And all I want to talk about is renewal. Well, if Bob is a good sales person, Bob will bring his boss because people on both sides of the equation will get things done a lot faster if now Bob has to go back to his boss and say, hey, you know the library director said. So let's be clear on what's going to be discussed and what we're going to do. And now all of this is so easily trackable on our phones and our POM pilots and whatever. So it's kind of easy to do that now. And I think if you do that and if you learn one thing today from me throughout what we talk about today, the use of an agenda as far as I'm concerned is one of the most important things that you'll learn. And the other thing is, and we talk about this a lot in the book, but the other thing is, what should a typical salesman look like? Well, ladies and gentlemen, if it's anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, more or less, if it's more, there's a mistake being made unless it's serious high-level negotiations. It's real simple. First, five or 10 minutes is an introduction. If you've been there before, review what was said last time. If it's a new, kind of get to know each other. And then 30 minutes, 25, 30 minutes on fact finding because how would the salesperson know what to sell you if he doesn't know what you want to buy? So there's this back and forth of the questions and in the book I give 10 to 15 questions as examples that each side can ask. Then at the end, there's 10 minutes as a wrap up and demo.  And then the wrap up, and the wrap up basically says, okay, here's what you're gonna do, here's what I'm gonna do, and that's when we're gonna meet next. And by the way, if the salesperson opens up his laptop within the first 10 minutes of the meeting, there's one thing and one thing only you should say. Please close it. How can you know what I want to buy if I don't tell you what I want to buy? Because mostly when they open up the laptop, it's a demo. It's usually something from the marketing department with birds flying and fish swimming and children singing and not a whole lot of substance. So let the salesperson know what it is you want to buy by answering the questions. Or, and if they're not asking a question then you ask questions of the salesperson. Because it's just like going to the doctor. When you walk into the doctor's office, the doctor doesn't look at you and say, oh, I know what's wrong. What does the doctor say to every one of us? Man, woman, child, anybody. The first thing the doctor says to any one of us is, what brought you in here today? Why are you here? Well, I'm in because my arm hurts. Oh, your arm hurts, I understand. Let me try to work with that. So the salesperson to me is like the information doctor. You know, where does it hurt? I need to probe for pain. I need to understand what it is you guys need here. And the way I do that, by the way, is 10 to 15 questions that I can ask you. And once those questions are answered, then here's the solution I recommend, much like the doctors will take these two pills and call me in the morning. It's the same thing. The salesperson is much like the information doctor. Now, at the conclusion of the meeting, at the very end of the meeting, let's review. Here's what we said. What are my responsibilities? What are your responsibilities? What happens next? Because what we want to get to is a final approval. Okay, so that's kind of the way to get started. But once we go from preparation, and this is something we talk a lot about in the book and we talk a lot at our seminars, we talk about preparation. Let's talk about leverage. I don't know whether you're aware, but outsell is estimated that the information industry is a $550 billion industry. That's B for billion. And you guys know better than me there's a finite amount of libraries, there's a finite amount of vendors. So there's a small amount of vendors that are servicing these libraries and deriving an enormous amount of revenue. They don't want to lose that revenue. And a lot of their revenue is based on renewals. Remember, we talked about that. So when the salesperson comes to renew, you have a lot of leverage in negotiating the price. And that's a story for another time, but just keep that in the back of your mind. And I was watching the US Open here in New York and I thought about leverage and I thought about momentum. And Bill and I, Dr. Fish and I were talking about baseball earlier. And the example, I put the tennis guy in so remember it was the open. But the example I gave, and I hope you guys are baseball fans, I'm not gonna pour you to tears. But if you think about it, let's say your team's winning. The home team, you're winning three to nothing. Top of the ninth inning, the visiting team has done nothing. First guy gets up, it's a single. Okay, gets on base. Second guy up, walks. And I got first and second, nobody out and it's a problem. So next batter hits a ground ball to the shortstop and you're thinking double play, we're practically out of this and the ball goes right through his legs. Base is loaded, nobody out. Inevitably the next guy gets up and hits a home run and the game is a one. And your team gets up in the bottom of the ninth has no idea what hit them. The momentum shifted incredibly once that ball went through that shortstop's legs. And if you think about it, the same thing in dealing with the library. The initial call to your library the advantage is to the salesperson because the salesperson has determined to whatever means that your library is a prime prospect for this guy's product, whatever it might be. When you have that first meeting and you come to the point where you like the product, you actually need the product and you have the money to buy it, all of a sudden that momentum shifts to your side. You are now in control and there are four elements. And we talk about this in the book a lot of organized negotiation. There are objectives. There's a timetable, there's a team you'll assemble and what is your strategy. And when all those four are in concert, then you're gonna have a successful product acquisition. And by the way, this slide alone, we could talk for the, for, you know, half a day. But just to give you the brief overview of it, what are your objectives? Well, I wanna buy a database in archeology. I wanna buy a nursing collection, whatever it might be. My objective is I don't wanna spend more than $10,000 and at the end of the day, I wanna narrow it down to three possible vendors. Those are your objectives. What's your timetable? Well, I wanna buy this within the next six months. How many times will a salesperson say to you, if you signed by Friday, I'd give you a special deal? Really, Bob? How about if I signed by next Tuesday? You can bet Bob will still give you the same discount. It's your timetable. Say, Bob, I can only buy this within the next three to six months, so don't be bothering me every day. Again, it's your timetable is not theirs. Assemble a team. You know, when I started doing this, it was a lot of one-on-one. When I would go in to sell a product, it was me and the head of the library or the subject specialist or the collection development person or whatever. Now, you know, with money being as tight as it is, there are more people involved in the decision. So you have to assemble a team to help you as well. And then what is your strategy? Well, I want to try to keep the total spend to 11k, but I'd be willing to spend a little more if the contents of the database I want to buy is really great. And actually, the database is more important than the price. So these are all things that you can wrestle with, but at the end of the day, it's your objectives, your timetable, your team and your strategy. And you'd be wise to understand that because as salespeople, their job is to have it their way and have their objective and their timetable and their team and their strategy, but you're the buyer. And so when we talk about team, and just to give an example, this is kind of a mock-up of a template that we put together and they're different people. And some people here can be the same person or two people, but whatever, you're the team leader. So you organize it because you're the person that wants to buy the product or is the person entrusted to do that. You know, who's the financial authority? You know, that's the person with the budget. You've got to make sure that you have the money to buy this thing. The technology person and every organization there's a technology department and there's always a guy who really understands this and can say, oh, if you buy that database and you put it on our system, it'll blow up. And believe me, I've had that happen to me as well. We have the experts. There's always somebody in the library who has a certain discipline, knows archaeology better than anybody else or knows music better than anybody else. We call that person the Mr. Know-it-all. The legal person needs to be involved. Your supervisor needs to be involved. And most of all, in your profession, you guys talk a lot amongst each other. Use your network of people to help you. You can say, look, the sales person from ABC company is coming in tomorrow. Do you know anything about the company? Do you know anything about this guy? Whatever. Use these resources to help you when you're doing the negotiation of the price. So all of this, if you put this all together, that's why I wrote the book. The book really talks about all of these things and I take it through and I've divided into three parts. There's a relationship between the information professional and the sales person and how does that work and how does that get you to the sales meeting? And once you have the sales meeting, well, what happens then? And then what happens afterwards? You know, in sales, we say it's easy to make the first sale. It's very hard to keep the sale. And nothing could be truer than in our industry because, as I said earlier, this is an annuity business. And as an annuity business, I gotta come back to you each year to renew the business. And if you're unhappy, then you're not gonna renew it. And so it's up to me to make sure that you are happy throughout the process. The forward is written by a visionary guy, St. Clair, who's been a dear friend of mine for many years and I was honored that he would write this forward. There's a preface to conclusion and the epilogue. And all of the stuff that I've written, it's really about me. Well, not so much me, but things I kind of experienced. Their vignettes, their stories, it's all lessons that I've learned. There is no ivory tower, hypothetical, hoo-ha kind of stuff. This is what happened to me. The only thing I had to do was not use the names of the people because the publisher said I might get sued. So I didn't do that. But it's really what happened, how did I deal with it? And sometimes I didn't deal with it well and sometimes it wasn't solved the way it should. But this is how the situation came to pass. This is how we resolved it and what were the results? And so when I wrote this, it was really for both the salesperson and for the information professional. It wasn't one or the other. That's the way it works. And so when information today said, look, we want you to write for both sides, that really was an interesting part because I did a lot of interviews of library folks around the country and got their perspectives as well. So what are the topics covered? Well, there's so many. I mean, I've had to tone this one down as well. But basically again, what should typical salesman look like? You know, how to use the agenda before, during, and after? Talk about the information doctor. You know, I give the 10 to 15 questions by both sides of the table.  When is price discussed? Now, a lot of times, the situation or price can actually introduce at the wrong time. I'll give you an example. At the end of the presentation, some library folks feel compelled to say, so Bob, I like the product. Give me a ballpark of what this would cost.  And Bob then feels compelled to say something. And Bob will say, well, ballpark's around and throws out a number. Librarian says, wow, that's way more than I could spend. And says, forget it, don't ever call me again. And that happens. And both parties were wrong. Both parties should not have done that until they got to that final point in the equation where the questions were answered that the salesperson knew everything there was to know about it and the librarian was comfortable with those answers. Coaching the vendor, you know, as I said, every organization has a different modus operandi of how to buy a product. And it's important to coach the vendor to help them get through there. You know, how to deal with difficult salespeople. I mean, I've known, I know that when I was a VP of sales, sometimes people called up and said, you know what? Don't send Bob to our library ever again. Bob was a nice guy, but, you know, there was a personality conflict. Guess what? You're allowed to talk to the company. See, you know what? I don't like this person. I don't like that lady. They're not people I want talking at the library. There's also when to engage and when to walk away. I do a lot of music analogies in the book. And I always use the Kenny Rogers gambler.  And sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes you can't make a deal. And you have to know that. A lot of salespeople like to put in their forecast a whole bunch of stuff. A lot of that is nonsense, but they don't want to say it. And they don't want to say, well, I got a chance. No, you don't. If you ask the questions, if you did your homework, if they were truthful with you, then you know which are real and which are not real. And at the end of the day, there's a checklist at the conclusion of the meeting for both the information professional and the salesperson to go over what's happened. And finally, using leverage and understanding momentum. If you learn anything in addition to the agenda, but how do you use leverage? How do you understand momentum? Because the momentum always works in your favor. Because again, there's a finite amount of companies, finite amount of libraries. And basically that's it. So I thank you for your time. If anybody has questions, I really thank you Mike. Wonderful presentation. I don't know if any of our participants have any questions. As they may think about things, I just want to reinforce a couple of things that you mentioned. First of all, with regard to, because it was on your last slide, dealing with difficult people, that I think it's important for people to understand that every company is different and every salesperson is different. And you may, as the buyer, have a bad experience with one salesperson, but you shouldn't sort of let that carry over to your next experience with the next salesperson who contacts you, who may want to come and visit you because you could have an entirely different experience. And yeah, that's exactly right, you know, because look, we're all people and you know, and we all know in our professional lives and our personal lives that we try to get along with everybody, but sometimes there are certain people in our lives and we don't get along with as well. You know, the company is not interested in personality conflicts. The company is interested in selling their products. And if you say, you know what, Joanne came to me the other day and she's a very nice woman, but I really don't want to deal with her until you send somebody else, inevitably they will. And sometimes it's in everybody's best interest. The other thing that's interesting, which is sort of a, part of that is we're in a business where there's a lot of competition. And I can tell you, working for ProQuest, which is a great company, sometimes, you know, the products that EBSCO might have might be a leverage you can use when you say, look, I'd like to buy this particular database, but I know that EBSCO or Gale or some of the other companies have something similar. Don't be afraid to say that. The other part of it, with the sales people, sales person sometimes says, you say, well, how'd you get the price? Sales person needs to defend their price. You know, if you say, sales person says, it's gonna cost you $20,000, but whatever they say, you know, you have the right to say, can you defend your price? Can you tell me, how did you guys get to that? Because there is, at the home office, I guarantee it, at the home office, there is a price sheet and there is a rationale for the way in which that price was developed. So never be afraid to ask that kind of question. That's a tremendous question coming from the library. And the fact is it's very legitimate. It's not being difficult. You're asking a very legitimate question. That's a great thing. And again, I think another thing is that as educators, don't do a good enough job getting students ready to understand is it's their job to spend that money. That they hear something like $20,000. First of all, you need to understand it's not $20,000 coming out of your account. It's coming out of the library's account, even though I've got a story for you in a second where that may not always happen. But, you know, it's your responsibility to, in jobs, spend that money. It's your responsibility to get the best product you can for that money. So turning away a salesperson because of a price or something like that, out of hand means you're not doing your job. A quick story that I think Michael appreciates because it has to do with disclosure. As Mike said, disclosure got started by putting the 10K or the formal annual reports that companies had to submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission on microfeesh. And they did that rather than microfilm because they could replace them and pop new ones in and out more easily. And they were, again, this information was publicly available, but not easily available. And so they got started as making this set of corporate information, which a lot of people needed readily available. And I happen to be working as a business librarian at the time in Southern California. And at a small university library, but we signed one of the first contracts in Southern California to get disclosure in our library and had people coming in specifically to look at the feesh, which was all well and good, until we got that first renewal. And it came with my name on it, which I was not aware of. And I took the price that was something like $12,000 at the time. And once my heart started working again, I got that over to our acquisitions department as quickly as possible and asked them to pay the bill and also to make sure that it came with their name on it in the future rather than mine because that was a bit of a shock. Really? I can understand that, but it's funny because I can give you, I had a salesperson at disclosure and she was great. I mean, really good woman. And I gave her the corporate market and we had a product at the time and it was a perfect fit for them. It was a Fortune 100 company on Park Avenue in New York. And so big time. And she goes and I said, this is a sale.  Comes back, she says, Mike, they didn't want to buy. And I said, well, why didn't they want to buy? And she said, well, it was too expensive. She said, too expensive. I said, you know, I think it was also $20,000 at the price. It wasn't huge. And I said, Leslie, how could that possibly be? And it turned out that she had some financial problems at home. And so she was thinking of $20,000 or $20,000. I said, for this Fortune 100 company, $20,000 goes into the Pepsi machine in the morning and, you know, when people, you know, get coffee and soda. So it's true, as Bill says, it's really a matter of, it's money that the organization wants you to spend on resources. And that's really what it says. So it really, you know, it's nice to believe it's your money, but it's not. It's really theirs. So that's, but that's, I didn't know you were a former disclosure subscriber. With the fish, I loved it when it finally got online. God bless you. With dialogue. Yeah, I know. You know, I saw a lot of fish in my life. I was, I was affectionately known as a fish. Anyway, Lyon, Crystal, and Kathy, you got any questions for comments for Mike? Well, it looks like Ryan may be writing and Crystal. So we'll wait a second. Thank you for that. But, you know, the other point I think I want to make is that, you know, everybody's a salesperson. That now, because people can get information from so many different places, whether it's good information or bad information we won't necessarily get into now. You know, every time the librarian deals with a customer or a client over the phone, online, in person, they're making a sale. Whether money changes hands or not, you know, they have to think like a salesperson. And, you know, it's only getting more and more, I think, along those lines rather than less that everything that you've talked about today and probably is in the book, I think will not only help people negotiate for information products a little better, but if they, you know, sort of take the right perspective, we'll help them do their jobs better, whether they're buying or selling information or whether they are using the information that they just bought in filling their job responsibilities. Absolutely true. And again, part of what's been very gratifying for me is going around the country and talking about this. And the first place I went to to speak about this was Hawaii. And, you know, my friends laughed at me. So, yeah, that must have been tough. But actually, I have a friend who teaches at the library school and the local SLA chapter invited me to come out. And so I did two presentations when I was there. And there was a one woman in my friend's class and she said, you know, I'm a librarian during the day. I'm going for my MLS degree and all this.  And they're 10 different products. We only need four of them, but they've been unwilling to unbundle it. And I said, well, here's what you do. Go to the library director and call, and jointly call the sales person. Bring them in and say, look, we want to unbundle. We only want four. And we want the same discount. And she said, can I do that? And I said, yeah, you really can. It's, you know, and so about three, four weeks later, I got an email from her and she thanked me. She said, I didn't believe you, but I did what you said. And the vendor came in, couldn't have been nicer. And I said to her, the reason is he doesn't want to lose the business. He'd rather get part of something than all of nothing. And so, you know, we have to be much better as consumers when we're buying things to the library, because, yes, it's not our money, but, you know, it's our responsibility, you know, as information professionals to get the best possible price. But as you say, spend the money and have a good part of working with the people who are selling the car, which I don't know anybody who really enjoys that experience, but at the end of the day, if you go home and your money's still in your bank account, and that car dealership still has inventory on the lot, then something's gone wrong, because unless you live in New York or Chicago, you probably need a car and they want to move inventory. So, you know, if it's one of these things, I can give you this price, you know, for the next 30 minutes kind of thing, you know, walk away, because you still have money in the bank and they have inventory and they don't want that. So, the sales person has done something wrong in that regard, and you have a lot of control and a lot of... Right. I don't know if power's the right word to use as a buyer, and, you know, people just need to understand that. Well, I hope if the book encompasses anything that empowers more of library people to be more resilient and be more demanding and not being difficult, because I don't prescribe to being difficult.  I haven't changed this, whether I'm talking to the CEO of a Fortune 100 company or I'm talking to the collection development person or I'm talking to whomever at the library. This is who I am, and I think with the way in which that you now understand a little bit better what goes on the other side, again, I think it's empowering for both people because the last thing the sales guy wants to do is, you know, get in the plane, rent a car, stay in a hotel, you know, walk up and down the campus or wherever and what come away empty-handed. So, I'm trying to make it good for both people. I remember I wrote the book, my sales friend of mine called up and said, oh, thanks, Mike, you know? And I said, you should thank me because I'm making it better for everybody concerned here.  I mean, I've had a charmed life with this profession. It's taken me all over the world and there's a thought of me and income that I never dreamt I could have. So, as far as I'm concerned, I think it's great. And if I can help people and make it something that's worthwhile for both sides and I've accomplished what I wanted to do. And again, I want to thank you for sharing this information with us and spending some time with us and good luck to you and good success with the book.


So, I'm in the office today, guys, and I thought I would do one of these studio Setup kind of videos where I show you guys my office set up some of the equipment I've got because I've had people request this mainly because obviously I've got a lot of new equipment in here in the last Four or five weeks since moving into the new office. You guys have probably seen some of it on camera You guys probably noticed that I've been experimenting with a lot of things on camera, you know changing Camera angles playing with the lighting doing a lot of different kind of video formats the last four or five weeks of making Content on the channel have been really fun. I've really enjoyed it and honestly It's been refreshing. It really has is completely recharge me I'm not burnout at all and uh, you know, it's it's been great I this is probably the best move I ever made was renting this office and getting a proper Studio space and there's only really one downside to this location is sometimes the internet Kind of craps out on you the internet the connection is strong when I have internet But today I got here this morning and I was going to do another video I had something else planned but I needed to be able to connect to the internet to do this video and the internet Was down this morning. So I went to the gym. I had my gym bag over here I'll see you guys can see my gym bag sitting on the floor. I always have a set of clothes I changed into, you know, some sweatpants and a t-shirt my under armor athletic shoes I went to the gym, which is just two miles away from my office That's part of the reason why I chose this location is really close to the gym I work out at so I went and spent two hours at the gym come back The internet is still down and I didn't want to I didn't want it to be a completely wasted day. So since people have asked for this video Let's look around the office a bit Now when you first walk into the office, the first thing you'd probably notice Is that all four walls are covered in these acoustic panels not completely covered But I created these sections of acoustic panels. They're two foot by three foot in dimension And there's about 10 inches of space that I put in between each and it covers all four walls here Except for obviously I have a window that I've got a curtain behind because obviously the sunlight Would really affect lighting for the videos But really it took I think 16 of these two by three sections to cover the four walls And I really have to say that they turned out really well for not really knowing what we were doing I had help from one of my sisters. She's kind of a arts and crafts kind of person and without her It probably would have turned out a lot worse. You can see some gaps here in between the panels So what these are these foam panels these black foam panels, they're one foot by one foot And we attached it to foam poster board and it turned out great But the only problem is you do see some of the white poster board in between the black panels And what I've been doing is I've got some paint here I've got a paint can and a small paint brush and I've been trying to fill in those gaps Every so often every few days. I'll go around and just fill in some of those gaps Like this one here had a really bad gap But you can't really tell because I've actually painted the gaps in yet But this one here I haven't got around to yet. I really need to fill that in The ones I filled in immediately were the ones that are typically on camera So you get my camera over here behind my monitors So, you know those in that area of the video I've touched those up because everybody You would immediately see the big white gaps between the panels if I'd left those But some of these that are not usually in the camera frame. I need to touch these up Probably the next thing most people would notice is the lighting in the room because I have three very tall LED light stands. So this one here is an umbrella light from Lemo studio. These are not very expensive lights I have two this size and I have a third one that's about half that size And to be honest, they're okay, but they are not You know, I mean, they're cheap because they are not adjustable. You can't adjust how bright the light is This is just a standard like compact fluorescent bulb behind the umbrella But the better purchase I made and I've had these lights for a couple of years now or these fava tech LED stands here and these are great because you can actually adjust the brightness It can be very very dim light or it can be actually quite bright You can also adjust the color temperature on the fava tech You can have it, you know, this bright white light or you can adjust it to more of a daylight Orange-ish kind of color moving on. I've got this bookshelf that was actually in the office when I moved in I just threw some boxes and some equipment equipment I either don't use or in some cases these are just empty boxes that you know I've got equipment that is you know, for example, like the audio equipment here This is my ecu that is actually on the server rack here That's just the box for it. I just thought it made a nice decoration instead of having an empty shelf You know put something on it and I learned this trick Oh, one really when I first started the youtube channel back in the day You know, I used to just get empty boxes from equipment and I would just put it like on the wall behind me Just so I had some kind of backdrop, you know, you never want like a bear or an empty backdrop It just doesn't look good on camera. Of course, I have my c-matrix server there. That is a Is that the Lenovo think pad? That's the e5 35 And it's a very old laptop. It doesn't have good specs. It's not something It doesn't have a battery that holds charge either. That's why it's not at home Why I tell you guys I don't have a home computer right now That thing is strictly to serve up c-matrix for backgrounds on my videos You guys see my Buddha statue that makes an appearance in most of my videos And then just more boxes such as the ilgato boxes there Those are the ilgato master mount and the ilgato flex arms and I purchased these Just in the last month or so and I purchased a bunch of them when I purchased the first one I was so blown away by it that I actually purchased a bunch. So let me show you what the ilgato Mount is so this is the ilgato. It's just a clamp mount And it's really cool because it's got adjustable heights It's got these flex arms that you attach to it and you can bend and move around and then you can tighten and they hold Really tight. They're they're really fantastic arms And then you know, I bought one I bought the master mount and the flex arm Just for this camera because I needed a camera mount in this office And then once I put it together I was so blown away by it I ordered a second one And even though I had no real use for it I ordered a second one and then when I got it I was like wouldn't it be cool if you could actually use the ilgato master mount and flex arm for a microphone stand because This desk here is actually a very wide desk is three foot wide And the typical like scissor arms that you would use for a microphone like the road ps a one there You know, there's no way it's going to make it three foot across this desk You know, if I mounted it back here and then it had to go over My three monitors to make it to where it would be close enough to where I could actually speak into the microphone There's just no way even even adding Like an extension. I had a one foot extension that I tried to use with it It still just didn't it didn't make sense. So I needed something that would actually You know rise above the three monitors and then go at least three foot across the desk So I could actually speak into the microphone and this ilgato Actually works what I did is I I bought the master mount again So just the standard arm and of course I raised it Not as high as it can go but I raised it pretty high and then I added The flex arm to it plus one extra piece I actually took one section of flex arm from the camera flex arm here because I didn't need it And added the extra section to that and it just does work And it's perfect. And then because that one worked so good I actually ordered a third one. I ordered a third set the master mount and the flex arm I've got it actually mounted to the top of this bookcase here because I just unscrew this here And this mount pulls out and then all I do is I go and unscrew this last section of the camera mount And then just put it right there And that's the video you guys saw me recording yesterday that angle was my camera was attached to that arm I just simply unscrew that one and then go put it on that these things are just so cool So I've ordered three of each of the master mounts and the flex arms from ilgato And they're by far the coolest things ever I may actually order more because there's just infinite uses for these things now one thing is they are designed to hold cameras So the the last section here has a quarter inch male Receiver there and of course that is to screw in a camera But to do a microphone You know, I had to get a little creative not that creative because they're pretty common pieces of equipment There is an adapter. You can get a quarter inch to a five eighths inch adapter And then of course it would screw in to your microphone receivers now for microphones I've had the same microphone for a while now. This is the electro voice re 27nd and It's fantastic microphone. This is a dynamic microphone because I'm not in a place that is well treated as far as sound You'll hear other people in some of the other office suites in this building. Also, there is a train track Very close to this building and the train does run on occasion And and you guys will hear that even on the dynamic mic You'll probably hear some of the noise in this office, but on a condenser mic. It would be Very noticeable. So dynamic mics are best if you're recording in a Noisy environment, let's say and before what I was using was I was using the blue baby bottle sl Which was a fantastic mic. I love the sound on the blue baby bottle But it was a condenser mic and therefore it did pick up a little bit more Background noise than I wanted. So I wanted to move to dynamic mic. So I moved to the electro voice re 27nd Now this particular microphone, it's not terribly cheap. I want to say typically you'll find it around 500 But then it's actually more than $500 because that's $500 just for the microphone and the little shock mount the little rubber bands and the frame there You also need the actual mount the mount's going to cost you I want to say nearly a hundred dollars itself And then most people are going to want a pop filter and the pop filter that's actually designed for the electro voice Microphones, you know this little clamp that then has the metal arm with the You know the ring the pop filter at the end that is not terribly cheap either. I want to say I paid 40 or 50 bucks for that thing. So you're looking at about you know Six 700 dollars, especially once you you got to add a Some kind of arm to it a scissor arm or some kind of boom arm if you didn't already have a microphone arm So, you know, these are expensive purchases, but they're well worth it I I do think the audio has been Improved a lot by you know the microphone decisions as far as moving to the electro voice I do think for noise, especially I I think you guys hear less of the Ambient background stuff that goes on then when I was using the old blue baby bottle And obviously I'm using triple monitors. I've used triple monitors for years I I just can't get away from it, especially when you're recording. You're recording in obs I like having one monitor dedicated to having obs on it all the time where I can actually see exactly what I'm recording It's Especially useful for live streaming You know, I want to see exactly what you guys are seeing because you know I'm not going to have a browser open on youtube and listening to it because it would kind of Cause a feedback, but at least in obs I can actually see the scenes as they're being streamed to you guys So triple monitors, I could never go back to just a single monitor not for doing this kind of work I've had these three monitors for like six or seven years. They're AOC is the the brand I I don't know the model number. They're 24 inch monitors and uh Like I said, I've had them for a while They're getting kind of old and what I was going to do is I was going to replace these I actually ordered three Of the newer AOC Monitors so I've got three of these these are 24 actually 24 and a half inch, you know, slightly bigger, but Mostly the same and what I'm going to do is three of these monitors probably the three old ones Probably stay here at the office. So these three here I'm probably not going to move but the three new ones are going to go to my house and uh, because I will eventually have a computer that can do some work at my house and I Will need three monitors there because again, I'm just so used to using three monitors Uh, it just there's no way I could go back to a single monitor. Now this particular I wish I had the box so I could tell you the model number of this particular, uh monitor It wasn't terribly expensive though. I want to say I paid about 130 140 bucks for each monitor Now looking at this disc, let's just go over a little bit about The equipment that's on this disc this keyboard here this very strange looking keyboard Is the ergo docks easy? I love this keyboard. I bought it about two years ago I made a couple of videos about the ergo docks easy And uh, the company that makes the ergo docks is a company called zsa. They actually interviewed me one time I'm just a Email interview where they asked me some questions and it's actually published on their website So if you go and uh, want to purchase either the ergo docks easy or their new model the moonlander You will see an interview of me on their website. So that was very cool But the ergo docks easy and the moon lander both They're not cheap keyboards, but once you start using these split keyboards You kind of get used to them and you could never go back to a standard 110 key keyboard. I just couldn't do it the ergo docks easy when I bought it I want to say I paid about 365 dollars for it the moon lander that I bought Just a few months ago. Uh, maybe six months ago. The moon lander cost me About 350 as well. There's not cheap keyboards, but honestly They're built really well and I just love the things and there's not much difference between the ergo docks easy And the moon lander the only real difference is the thumb clusters There's six keys here on the ergo docks and on the thumb clusters Where on the moon lander you only have four keys And I think that's a smart decision just going with four keys on the thumb clusters because really your thumbs can they really navigate Six individual keys probably not I think four is plenty Some of the other stuff that's on this desk You saw earlier the road psa one scissor arm. This is just a microphone arm This works nicely on desks that are not terribly wide again the three foot wide desk here It just didn't work on I've got two of these psa one Scissor arms though. They're really well built and they hold weight like a you got some heavy microphones They'll actually hold them up, you know, they won't sag that much and you can tighten them up You can adjust them a little bit and uh, right right now. It's holding another electro voice 27nd I've got two microphones in here because sometimes I may want to actually Uh be able to record two people at the same time either me interviewing somebody or outsourcing some work Somebody wants to do some kind of podcast and wants me to record it And maybe them and a partner I can do that here I've actually already talked to some people about doing that And I've actually done some test recordings in this uh this room with people actually Using these microphones and me editing a little audio for them I don't know how much of that kind of side gig I will do But the fact that I have some microphones and I have some audio equipment Does allow me, you know some flexibility, you know when people, you know Are willing to pay me for that kind of work. Obviously I can do that for them This random microphone stand that's just sitting on the desk. This is a gator stand And uh, it's just a short little microphone arm I've had that for a while right now. I don't really have a spot for it I guess I could put it on a shelf or something right now. I just threw it on the desk just to have it sitting there Behind that we have the Furman power conditioner. That's basically, you know your surge protector It's got six plugs and I've got three of the Furman power conditioner strips here Because and these are uh, I believe 15 foot cords that come with them because I wanted to be able To get anywhere I wanted to in this office So so I've got that I've also got two other ones that are Filled with the equipment behind all of this there's two there And those two I've had for a while because obviously I had all this equipment most of it anyway Plugged in at my house where I was recording and I really like the Furman power conditioners. They've got good reviews They're not cheap though. They're not they're not terribly expensive But I mean for a power strip. I mean, I want to say I paid 30 or 40 bucks a piece for these I could be wrong about that, but I remember They're they're not cheap as far as your standard surge protectors But you know, I'm trying to protect some of this expensive equipment So that's why I went with that also Furman is also the power conditioner strip That is on my audio server rack here and it's got eight plugs in the back Plus it's got one here in the front. So nine total plugs And how I power this thing is actually with the Furman power conditioner It's got a on off switch and because everything on the audio server rack is plugged in to the Furman power conditioner I just hit that button and everything powers off or turn it on and everything powers up So that's really convenient now for you guys that have been following the channel for a while You guys have seen all the equipment that is on this audio server rack before So I'm just going to very briefly go over it really quickly. This is the pin lcom It's a led strip and you have your choice of blue red or green right now I'm going with blue all it does is just shines a blue led strip some lighting across the face You know just for effect just for effect on the videos because obviously the audio server rack is in the backdrop of most of my videos And then I have the Mackie pro 12 FX mixer that thing cost about 250 300 dollars And it's a 12 channel mixer So I've got plenty of stuff to to work with there And then the Furman power conditioner Then we've got the Behringer sonic exciter Really cool piece of equipment there you can use that to boost The base range or you can use it to boost or excite the mid ranges Which is really what it's for us to add, you know a little more excitement to the mid ranges Which is typically what you may want to do on some instrumental recording Or you know what I found that it works really nicely with voice below that we have just an empty spot Because I probably will eventually get a patch bay for this audio server rack Patch bays are typically one you unit. So I left room For that particular spot and when and or if I get a patch bay below that is the natty preamp So this is where the microphones the two microphones you guys saw earlier That one and that one they are plugged in to the natty preamp. They're actually plugged into channels seven and eight Just because that was the closest ones to the wall one and two obviously are on this side And then below that I have two dbx 231 s's those are 31 band eqs dual channel So I could you know potentially plug four microphones Into those two units and below that I have the two of the dbx 166 x s Those are compressor limiter gates And those are also dual channel meaning because I have two of them I could plug as many as four microphones into those and one interesting thing I didn't mention is the server rack itself. I forget the brand But it is well built. It is solid steel. It's heavy. It's built like a tank. It is five foot tall so Not a small rack One other thing I didn't mention is at the bottom of all the audio equipment I do have some two u drawers and these just hold random You know like that's a cable drawer I forget a bunch of xlr cables in that thing Just anything related to audio cables is in that drawer the one above it I've got you know like video cables hdmi cables and you know some other peripheral devices on the side of the rack I have some really really cheap black plastic Pig board Why do I have that there? Well, it's it's really not it's not even screwed into place I've got you know some some wing nuts here for the server rack and I just Put there just So I could actually hang that right there And the reason is you know in the videos just for sake of having that as a backdrop in the videos I didn't want that wide open and you guys to see the mess of cables that is behind this thing Because you know with this much audio equipment obviously A lot of cables going on back there I've got a lot of it tied up. I've tried to manage the cables So they're just you know, they're easy to work with when I have to get back there But it's still it doesn't look good in the videos you guys seeing that So I ordered six of these very cheap plastic pegboard panels. I got three hanging on that side I haven't bothered putting any on the other side because nobody really sees that But if I need to I've got the other three Plastic panels there, so But you know, I'm putting them there. They're not fixed in place. They're just kind of temporary Obviously, you need to be able to get behind the server rack occasionally and work with those cables So the again the pegboards, they're just hanging there. I can quickly remove them and put them back anytime I need to Looking around the room. I did have a chair in this office when I got in here I do not like this chair And I did not find this chair very comfortable uh So what I did is I decided I was going to order a couple of chairs and I've already got one You guys have probably seen this one in my recent videos Now that is a gaming chair and it is made by a company. I want to say the company is I could be wrong about that. It's a o f s e s s Gaming chair and that is their black and gray Gaming chair and it typically on amazon it's it's got great reviews like five star reviews and It runs around 120 dollars. I think for the suggested retail price on amazon I got a deal on it when I bought it I want to say they were they had it on sale for like 80 or 90 bucks when I bought it So not an expensive chair, but surprisingly comfortable now It is not a office chair like you're going to be sitting up straight and doing working And you can see it kind of has an angle to it sit back relax do some gaming So this is a sit back and be comfortable watching Netflix on a monitor kind of chair This is not something where you need to be sitting up straight doing a lot of typing all day kind of chair What I'm going to do is I'm probably going to order a second chair And I'm going to have that as an actual working office chair and a gaming chair because I need to in here Anyway that way depending on what kind of Task I happen to be doing that day I can switch between two different chairs And finally the last bit of the office that you guys haven't saw is some of the other furniture that was in here Was this drawer here? There's not much going on here. I've got Just some some office stuff some copy paper some computer papers and post it sitting there You got a lamp there. So occasionally I will turn this lamp on sometimes you guys see that it's you know Got an orange lamp here this a glass here um, and of course next to it is the Sofa that I put in here you guys saw when I got the sofa and moved it in here And this along with of course all the acoustic panels along all four walls Really helped soak up the reverb the echo here. So that is the main reason why that is there Although I have recorded one or two videos of me actually just sitting on that couch, you know And then I'll just you know move one of the Microphone boom arms somewhere where it can actually get to me here And of course because of the flexibility of the Elgato mounts and how easy it is to move You know camera around I can put that camera wherever I could put that right there If I wanted to I could sit Right here Let me flip that camera around and now All right Now you guys can see me, but yeah, there's so many Little things I had to buy like it was strange like you when you you guys probably know, hey, you know, obviously Furniture, right? You need desk you need chairs Yeah, maybe you need things like lighting cameras microphones if you didn't already have some of that stuff But it was the little stuff. There were so many little things I had to buy that really added up in cost And like cables I had to buy so many cables power strips XLR cables for microphones because I'm running microphones much further away from my audio server rack now You know at my house I only needed you know six feet of cable. Maybe you know here You know, I'm running nearly 15 feet of cable from the audio server rack to my main microphone So I didn't have cables that long. So I actually the other day I went and bought three I think 25 foot XLR cables just so I had three cables that Could comfortably run, you know anywhere Probably a long three walls of this room if I needed to just Just to have because it's this stuff you never even consider until you need to make a run like that And then you realize I don't have the cable for that And then ethernet cable I had to buy ethernet cable the other day cat six cable because I had Some cat six cable at the house an extra one and I brought it up here. It was six foot long Maybe maybe even four foot long But there's only one ethernet port in this office and where that's at and where my computer is at I needed like 15 foot of cord So I made a run to best buy I've made a lot of runs to best buy just for little things adapters and cords and Cable ties zip ties, you know things like that Overall though, I've been just really happy about this decision. I think the last month I I felt good like I I really I'm not burnt out in any way. I don't feel Overworked in any way, you know having home separate from work. I think it's been a great decision I think the content of the channel has been good I know it's been a weird month right this this first month has been weird because as you're moving in You barely have any equipment in the office and the audio was bad You know like that first week there was so much echo in this room And then I started adding acoustic panels and it got better and better and better added the couch It got better, you know moving the furniture playing around with the lighting You know every video I've made for the past four or five weeks if you looked at it, you know Probably every single video is different than the one before as far as the format where I met in the camera frame where the camera is angled, you know where I'm actually shooting it and uh, that's been fun to experimenting and the cool thing is I like experimenting with this kind of stuff because I want to grow obviously as a video content creator And you know making a decision a big decision like hey, I'm gonna go get an office and record and that a lot of people are Man, that's crazy. No, it's not No, you got to you got to expand right you got to You got to take chances even occasionally even though this wasn't it's not a major expense renting an office as far as I can comfortably afford that But you know sometimes it's good to branch out. You don't want to keep doing the same thing that you were doing a lot of content creators Are grinding right you see people on youtube. It's just all about the grind right? I'm just going to keep doing the same thing twitch live streamers It's all about you know me sitting here playing this game on a live stream every single day And if I do it enough, you know a million people are going to sub to me And I'm going to make all kinds of money because one day one day. It's all just going to catch fire Yeah, it's just me doing the same thing. It hasn't worked yet. You know, I've been doing this for a year or two years Three years, but if I keep grinding one day, no no It's you're just going to be exactly the same right you got to change right if you know You got you need to constantly be growing and learning I made a video about this the other day about the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset You know, don't be don't be happy.  Obviously, I don't do a lot of show notes You know most of the time I'm speaking off the cuff because I think that for me That's more natural for some people They actually need to actually have an actual script that they read. Anyway, I've rambled on long enough So again, this was just a quick tour of the office and people have asked me to make this video And I couldn't make the other video I wanted to make today because again, there's no internet currently here at the the office We've been without internet for a couple hours. So I figured I'd just make this video today And uh, I don't need internet obviously to record on my cell phone Right And I'm going to edit it in kaden live. Thankfully kaden live doesn't need internet connection It's not like audacity the audio editor which has to have internet connection so it can send your data to russia You know, thankfully kaden live doesn't do that. So I'll do a quick edit here This obviously I'm not gonna it's not a video that's going to require any real editing and probably spend 15 minutes In kaden live and then render it and then I'll probably just put it on a flash drive and take it with me And I'll upload it from somewhere else if the internet's still out here. But anyway, uh enough of me rambling. All right guys peace


All right, let's jump into the questions. Actually, we had a question come in beforehand, so let me post this. OK, bear with me one second. Here we go. All right. Question. Jonathan, I heard another dating coach say, men need space to chase you. Does that really work? Men need space to chase you. Does that really work? I love this question. And I was listening. I've heard this from many dating coaches, both men and women like talking about, you need to create space within the dynamic of man to create a level of doubt on your part. Let me repeat that. To create a level of doubt on your part that you're actually interested in, and that a man will chase you when there's that space, when there's that tension, when you're playing hard to get. In fact, the book, the rules, if you've ever heard the book, the rules, it's all based on the idea of playing hard to get as a technique to attract a man. Here's what I have to say to all that.  Playing games never, ever, ever, ever, ever works in the long run, folks. Here's the problem with this notion of creating space to create tension so he chases you or pursues you. Now, here's a couple of things you must know. So stick around here for a second. First off, avoidant personality men. People have what's known as avoidant love attachment. If you're not familiar with the book Attached by Amir Levine or Rachel Heller, I highly recommend checking this out. The book Attached talks about three attachment styles. Anxious, avoidant, and secure. Let me repeat that, anxious, avoidant, secure. So if you have a man who has an avoidant personality type and you're playing hard to get, and it's the early stages of a relationship, here's what's gonna happen.  What that means is it's almost akin to being emotionally unavailable. So while it might temporarily hook him, he's gonna go back to his default unless you have to continually create space, not after you, once you're in a relationship with him, you're gonna have to continually create tension, otherwise he's gone, okay? Now, here's the other thing. If it's an emotionally needy guy, he'll chase you, but let me tell you something. He's gonna be so needy, you're not gonna be attracted to that if he's chasing you. The problem with this particular type of advice, it requires you to constantly be playing a game to create a healthy, happy relationship with someone. And I am all against playing games. This is why I continually recommend the book if the Buddha dated, if the Buddha dated, this is a great book to connect at a heart-centered spiritual way with a guy that has nothing to do with game playing. The game playing techniques. By the way, I've heard dating coaches say, take out, go out with your girlfriends and go out of town, that will make him miss you. Folks, a guy could temporarily miss you and want to have you, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to be in relationship with you full-term. The healthier way to approach a relationship is not using the space technique or playing hard-to-get technique. I recommend something different and that is the four A's. Attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance. Attention, affection, appreciation, acceptance. And if you need some help learning this, I highly, highly, highly recommend the book by Barbara DeAngel, it's called Making Love All the Time. These are tried and true healthy, healthy, healthy ways to create a bond between men and women. And ladies, let me just tell you this. I know you love the idea that men are the leaders of the relationship and all you have to do is sit back and you're feminine energy and he will just naturally claim you. Folks, let me tell you something. It's not about leaning back, it's about leaning into your sovereignty, your self-worth, your self-esteem, your self-confidence. Coming back to my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway? Links below to all the books I recommend.  When you're intentionally creating tension so they miss you, that will temporarily work but not for the long run. And I want you to have a healthy, happy, long-term relationship. So again, I invite you to look at this dynamic from the eyes of what would love do. And how would love respond? And you know what love does and what love responds? It invites everybody to be vulnerable, authentic and transparent. I'm gonna repeat that, vulnerable, authentic and transparent. That is how we're going to build healthier, happier relationships. And that's again, why I continually recommend the book, Eight Dates by Dr. Jean Julie Gottman. Because if you want to have a healthy, happy relationship, it's time to be an adult in relationship. I'm gonna wrap up this one segment with another book you should check out, How to be an Adult in Relationship. All right, we covered a lot. So going back to the original question, should you use space to get a guy to really chase you? Hell no, no, no, no. All right, does that make sense? All right, hope it does. Thanks for that question, I really appreciate it. All right.


What the Tories are saying now is that, oh, it's all very well to say this in hindsight, but we were doing what the science told us at the time. For you, what do you think the Labour Party would have done differently? Not so much in the long term in terms of ending austerity, which would have made our healthcare system better, but what would you have been doing in January and February that would have made us better prepared for where we are right now? We were beginning to raise then our concerns about the seriousness of the potential pandemic and what its implications were, and so we were then, and we took the line that we'll try and work with the government as best we can, try and ensure that we provided our advice to government, and then if we felt work wasn't being undertaken, yes, we would raise issues with them. And actually, yeah, if necessary, criticize our line all the way through at that stage, I was dealing with the economic implications, but our line, John Ashworth was dealing with the health side, and Shamu Chakrabarti and others were dealing with Diane as well with some of the issues around civil liberties as well, depending on the type of legislation that might need to be developed. And our line at that time was follow the scientific advice, but if you go back and look, search the records, John Ashworth at that point in time, quite rightfully, was saying you need to be open and transparent about the advice you're getting, both in terms of the science, but also the clinical advice too. And actually also what we're suggesting then is if there are differences of opinion, would rather those differences of opinion were published and that we could understand there for how judgments were being made. And when you're in this sort of situation, of course, what you've got to do is try and just try and ensure you're not into knock about politics or anything like that, you're trying to be as constructive as possible. But at times you have to draw a line in the sand and say, well, you're not doing it right. And that's it. And what was interesting on a whole series of issues, we were putting issues to them and recommending things. And then if they didn't follow it, we would go public. And interesting enough, they usually fell into line. So, for example, the daily press conferences, that was us. We actually said that at the very beginning, your communication strategy, that's to be absolutely key. And we pushed them into doing a daily announcement of some sort, either in the major or to the House of Commons. And they did, they started the daily press conferences. When it came to the financial response, I kept the record of the statements I made. First of all, I can remember doing a Thursday and a Friday, some weeks ago, where I was actually saying just how urgent the need was to put in place the economic protections for workers, et cetera. And also, at that point, I was strongly arguing that we needed to have this as an international globally coordinated strategy. And we published a sort of, I published a sort of five point plan. And we submitted a detail of that to government. Rishi Sunak delayed, he did his budget and it wasn't nowhere near enough. And we said that at the time, the protections weren't good enough. The following week, they started, I think they went into a bit of a panic. They then start bringing forward proposals. Each one of them just wasn't good enough. It wasn't, but what's interesting, Rishi Sunak publishes the first proposal, which is the job protection scheme. I responded within half an hour of his press conference and actually said there's huge gaps in this. It's not going to protect people, particularly the self-employed. It wasn't going to protect someone. The way I got a tsunami of attacks then, it was just extraordinary. It was like, it was like I was being accused of treachery, betraying the country and all to claim party politics. No, it wasn't. I actually went out there, welcomed his proposals and said, actually, they just don't go far enough. And also, the point I made then as well, waiting for the people to wait till June for the money as well, wasn't good enough either. I got really savaged in both the mainstream media and also all the social media stuff as well. But so you had to be careful as you raised issues that you actually did preface it by saying, look, I welcome this, but let's go further. So our attitude was always constructive engagement, but increasingly it got really frustrating because, like for example, the lockdown, the Monday, the weekend before the lockdown was announced by Boris Johnson, we'd had a discussion with a shadow cabinet subgroup with Jeremy and myself, John Ashworth and Shami and others. And we just, we got to the point, I think it was the Sunday. I said, this can't go on like this because this isn't working, people being forced into work. It was clearly the social distancing that advice wasn't working. And so we actually then, on the Monday, we told Johnson that we needed a more thorough lockdown. It had to happen. And that we couldn't wait for them. We were going to go public. So in the Monday morning, we sent John Ashworth out on a media round. He made it clear. And then in the evening, they delayed their press conference and then they announced a more thorough lockdown. And if you look at the pattern of behavior by the government, that's exactly, exactly happened at each stage. On the testing was the WHO said test, test, test, test and track. We've consistently argued that all the way through on the PPE, we were already get submitting things to the government saying, actually, the distribution of PPE is well, first of all, the principles of on how it's used is absolutely critical to get them clear. And then PPE distribution wasn't working. We've got what's happened up until literally, I think this, this last week is that the attitude of trying to work with them, be constructive, push them to take decisions has worked to a certain extent. But then you realize actually, this is getting much too much too serious. And so over this last, last few days, this last week or so, and I did it over the weekend as well. Actually, this argument that, you know, opposition for opposition's sake isn't right. No one's doing opposition for opposition's sake. People have just had enough. People are dying out there. And the stuff in the stuff, for example, in care homes, which I think has been completely neglected, I'm really worried about really what the number of staff that are now self-isolating, number of staff that are real, and the number of elderly residents in residential homes now who are suffering and who have tragically died for a large number of them. I think that's been absolute failure of policy and prioritization. And who else can you blame? You have to blame the Prime Minister. You have to blame the government. Whether they're still pursuing this herd immunity theory or not, the policies that they've been pursuing certainly haven't worked. And it looks as though we could have the worst instance in the whole of Europe, of the scale of death in relation to population. So it clearly hasn't worked. A couple of tweets you did on the weekend because they got a lot of attention. I want to see, you know, what the thinking was behind them. So I'm just going to get them up now for the audience to see. So on, I think this was yesterday, had enough now with government failures. It's not opposition for opposition's sake to call out government's failure to pursue a effective test and track program and supply basic prediction to frontline staff and to neglect support for care homes and care workers. People are dying as a result. Of course, we also need an open discussion about eventual exit strategy, but people are dying and being put at risk by government failures. Also, I fear in exit planning, we will see business lobby override health considerations and profit yet again be put before people's safety. And so when I read that, I was wondering if you were, you know, suggesting that potentially the current shadow cabinet haven't got the balance quite right. Obviously, it's a difficult moment for them to decide how oppositional can we be, but do you think they're potentially deferring too much? Well, it's like walking a tightrope in all of these things. But the point, actually, I wasn't criticising Keir Starmer or the front bench. I was trying to say, look, you're going to get criticised. People are already saying, you know, this is partly political. It's not about its opposition for opposition's sake. And I say, no, it isn't actually. It isn't.  People are really suffering. And we've got to be, I think, we've got to be, we've got to call it out. And we've got to call it out. I think now we're at that stage where we need to call it out much more thoroughly and more directly. And, you know, the press conferences where we're told the large volumes of PPE are being delivered and then we discover they haven't or they're on a boat from Turkey or on the airplane from Turkey and they're not being delivered. I phoned around my local care homes to see how they were and they were struggling with PPE. My cousin up in Liverpool, she's been working with volunteers where they're creating their own and distributing because the government's supply isn't enough, both in terms of care and the NHS itself. So my first tweet was saying, just I've had enough now. I've listened to all the press conferences. It doesn't seem to relate to the reality of what's on the ground full stop. And saying these things isn't opposition for opposition's sake. It is just being honest to force the government to act. That's the first thing. The second thing was on the exit strategy. They've been raising this issue about what the government's exit strategy is. My own view at the moment, the exit strategy is secondary just to saving lives at the moment. Just concentrate as much as possible on saving lives. And the best way of doing that isn't just the PPE is getting the testing done and doing mass testing and tracking. That's the best way in which I think you can deal with this crisis. And the government just, I don't think they've appreciated it, just haven't appreciated the scale of testing that needed. And give John Ashworth his due consistently he's been calling for that and made representations to government directly to the Secretary of State to do it as well. But I just don't think the government understood the scale upon which it was needed. And then in the organisation of the testing and arrangements, I don't think have been in any way competent about going about. That's the first thing. But with regard to the exit strategy, I'm worried. And you saw some Tory politicians that build up about how we should now start relaxing the lockdown and getting back to work, etc. Well, in the early periods of this last month, in the first weeks this last month, it's still happening.  Because large numbers of workers were still being forced into work on construction sites with no social distancing. It's almost impossible. And very little sanitation as well. And what I've had case after case, people contact to me where they've been forced into work in inessential roles. And they feel they're being put at risk. And my worry was is that I think there's a number of Tory politicians and others who'll be arguing that we start sending people back into work. And my fear is in doing that we're going to put people's lives at risk. It's as simple as that. So my view is concentrate on the real issues at the moment, which are getting the PPE out there for protection, making sure that we're developing the testing on a mass scale now, then start talking about the exit strategy, but fend off those who actually, as we've seen even up until now, are more interested in making profits than protecting people.