The proposals for you, they both deal with the issue of the plan equivalency. I don't know if Damien has given you those. I will give them on the table. I see, I'm just looking at the nurse requirement, education and outreach. Here's a packet for you. A re-opener. And audit language. This one. The other section is not ready for prime time yet from our perspective. And you don't have, do you have other? So you have two. I have all these. I think Damien put them in little piles. You have two for us, which is Senate proposal requiring determination of alternative plan equivalency. And a Senate proposal regarding state BSA plan equivalency. We have five. You have five, but several of them are not ready to prime time. So what we're going to talk about right now are the house proposed notice requirements. House proposed changes to re-opener language. And house proposed changes to audit language. And we had a misunderstanding about the issue regarding qualifications. And so we just want to clarify before we, we want to clarify that before we move forward on that conversation. So we just, the three of us contacted and we'll settle that. So we have five amendments then right now? Three, three house. Three house to Senate. I don't see the Senate. Why don't you go first on that? Senate ones with paperclip. If I could interrupt, Mr. Chair. We only have Joyce until tour 30. So if there are financial questions, the committee may want to ask her. And then the only other question is whether I should ask the editors to stay late tonight. I don't think it's necessary. But they should be here early in the morning. They're always here early in the morning. All right. Do you want to go first, Tom? Do any of those, none of these address the effective dates of the PIA, of the, of the... I assume we'll do that. Okay. I saw the chart. We haven't discussed it. There are so many dates that need to change throughout the draft. I'm going to hold off on that until the conference committees agree on dates. And then I'll make the changes throughout. Okay. Who presents first? Before going to that, I do think that if we can, for the next time that we meet, if we have a little chart of the dates for our conversation, because when Representative Shah and I went through all the dates, it was helpful to conceptualize the difference between the last bill and this bill. So I think as part of the conversation, that would be helpful. And we didn't have 100% of the dates, but we had the major pieces of the process. So we will have that ready for tomorrow morning. I'm thinking, we haven't until 10, I would think it would be safe to meet at 8.30 and wrap this up. That's fine with me. We just have to make sure we... We may have to wait for the printers to come back, but I think we can shake hands. We can conceivably aim for that absolute end. So 8.30 tomorrow morning we can set that so we don't have to... race at the end of the day today. So 8.30 tomorrow morning is fine. All right, you'll be here. You can be here. All right, so the House proposal of amendments, we have three to consider this afternoon. And this goes... I'm sorry, Damien, how would we handle the one that we also didn't have, because I thought it was a conversation, how do we... What is it that has to be deleted if we were to consider the moving from combined 16 weeks back to 12 individuals? That's the one we don't have on the paper. That's not the not ready for primetime one. That was another one. But we have that already. I mean, if you want to draft, you already have it. I actually have not drafted that yet, but it is literally it just means that on 575A1A, I delete everything out for the common. It's a very simple change. That was just... that you had asked me to see that, and I just didn't... So the first one is the notice requirements. So as Damien testified, there was a thought that the thoroughness of the notice requirements hadn't been... had slipped through the cracks in the bill so that basically what this will... Damien, can you read it? That'll be the easiest in the first case. Can you just read what you... or talk us through what we did? Sure. So the notice requirement here, there's two things to split out. A new section to the paid family leave law requiring employers to post notice in a conspicuous place of the provisions of the new paid family leave law on a form provided by the commissioner of labor. And then it would also require the employer to provide a printed notice of the provisions to new employees within 30 days after the date on which they are hired. That could actually be changed to a written notice. And then the second piece here, the education and outreach. So we already have a timeline for the commissioner of labor to develop information and materials related to the program. So this adds a model poster and pamphlet providing notice of the provisions of the law to those requirements. And then it requires... within a month of that being prepared, employers have to provide a copy of either the model poster or the pamphlet of the employee who was employed on the date that that notice was the deadline for publishing that notice. So that covers all current employees and then going forward all new employees will get notice, plus it should be posted so people will know what their rights are. We felt like this was a technical change that this is the kind of notice we give for programs.  Yes, you can post it. But be careful that the only poster ones we're talking about, okay? Pay fees are the ones to not post it. To not post it. But we are posting this. Yes. So on V, is that in vision that each employee is going to get a copy of the model poster? It would be a model poster or... That could also be changed to just the employer shall provide written notice within 30 days and then the employers can do it however they want. E-mail, copy of the poster, prepared by labor. The other thing is you could provide that it's just a model poster for labor so they don't have to provide two things. There is one law where labor is provided both. They're essentially identical. One is in multicolored format and the other is in a traditional poster list. But I just, I went broad and we can always bring it back. We want this model poster to be posted, right? That exists in the bill. Labor typically prepares a model poster. Employers are not required to use the model poster, but they can if they want. So the model posters out there, as we discussed earlier, a lot of employers will pay for a service that updates all of their posters and provides a laminated color copy that they can post each year. But then other smaller employers or employers who are trying to save a little bit on expenses will print out the model poster for labor. If we're going to the effort to make sure that older employees are notified in written fashion, might we not also set the expectation that this is incorporated into employee handbook? Or is that just assumed? I think that's assumed. I mean, I'll use personal experience. My son worked at a local gas station and even the local gas station had an employee handbook. It's a convenience store. But failing that, it's a notification that they're notified within the first 30 days of their employment. And this was important to me and to us, the House, to go beyond just the poster aspect of things because it gets lost. And given the fact that if we are settling, even if it's mandatory or voluntary TDI, that employees deserve to know that this is available. Is there any reason why B just can't say written notice? Yes, that's what we're giving you. B on page two? Yeah, on page two. On page two or B on page two? Shall provide written notice as opposed to model poster or pamphlet. Line 10. Line 10. What are you talking about? Line five on the second page. There are two Bs that say printed. Right, I said page two. I think Danian had suggested that instead of printed, he would say written on line 10. That's right. Page one. And wherever else the word printed is used. That's fine. Model, you can change model poster or pamphlet for written notice. So I think what Senator Ballant is getting at is if you look at page two, lines three to five, it says shall provide a copy of the model poster or pamphlet. And you could just change that to a written notice of the provisions of subchapter. Subchapter, et cetera. That's satisfactory to me. And then on the front, you could change printed notice to written notice. That's satisfactory. Save a word. And just with respect to the employee handbook piece two, it's just worth noting that a lot of employee handbooks will just say the company follows the state law with respect to. And then just list it and rather than going into all the details. Because oftentimes the law changes and the employee handbooks are hard. So to keep them from being outdated, it's simpler to just say we follow the state law. Okay, enough on that proposal. Let's move to audit language. All yours. We have audit language already. This is just to clarify what would appear in the audit and how it would be reported to the audit. The audit language was in the senate version but not the house version. Yes, so the audit language was added in the senate. And then this builds off of the language added by the senate. So what was the language that the senate had? The senate language was, if you take the first sentence, it's related to the provision of family and medical insurance pursuant to the sub chapter audited annually. And then it said and the commissioner of financial regulation and shall provide a copy of the annual audit to the commissioner of financial regulation after that. So the second sentence in 7A is entirely new. And then after commissioner of financial regulation that is new. So the new sentence in 7A provides that the audit shall also include detailed information regarding the number of claims submitted, the number of claims that were denied, the number of claim denials that were overturned on appeal, and any changes in those amounts with respect to the prior year. So either of you know, I assume that this is in some ways some suspenders in the sense that both are useful too. In the sense that this seems like pretty commonplace stuff that you would be looking for in an audit. I'll let Hal's kind of talk about that. Yeah, so kind of reading the language that you all had of books and financial records, books could be a lot of different things and so wanting to be clear that the audit was included the financial health of the company and the processes that they were doing as an insurance company, but then also what were they doing with the claims and how are they, how many claims are coming in, what's their claim return rate and all of that. And so having us be clear that that is what we're asking for and then having it be clear that we can get, as committees of jurisdiction can get oversight as well getting a summary of that so that we have that oversight often. The second part is in subsection B, requiring the Commissioner of Financial Regulation to provide a summary of the audit results to house appropriations, general and ways and means and senate appropriations, economic development and finance. So tracking our RBA I would like to see it not just the number of claims but by category and the duration of the claim. So because we want to I think we want to, I think that for the first couple of years really get a sense of which of these categories are being taken which are being used most, how long are people needing to deal with each of those and yeah. Numbers isn't enough for me, I would rather we discuss this in the previous but by category and by now. The third is house proposed changes to the re-opener language. Looks good. Thank you. And that is just what are the additions to this and what's in the bill. So after the words in the event the general assembly and acts legislation and originally it said requiring mandatory leave for the employees on illness or something to that effect now it says amending the provisions of chapter 5, sub chapter 13 of this title that should actually just say of this sub chapter but that's a drafting error or any other statutory provision related to the family medical leave insurance program that the contract has to require the commissioner and the insurance carrier to reopen the agreement to make any amendments that are necessary to ensure the agreement continues to comply with the law. So is that just, can I consider that just the larger included but not limited to the, in this case I mean the mandatory language was in there but this encompasses mandatory and it can include any scheme that the legislature decides to do. Right so for example if the legislature decided to change the appeals process or to require the insurance carrier to provide notice or training or something like that this could allow the agreement to be reopened to address those issues including funding changes and so forth. And is this language that applies to almost any other contract that we have in terms of how we deal with third parties or whatever I mean if we notice that there's a flaw in a contract or a flaw in a process that we've contracted with do we not have that right, I don't know I can't answer that State contracts are not my area of expertise. I know with collective bargaining agreements the parties have to agree mutually to reopen the agreement and in the contracts that I worked with in private practice typically you have to agree to reopen agreement This is information instructing that this be a part of the negotiations between DSR and this has to be a term of the contract so this is something that potential insurance carriers that are bidding for this contract will understand is going to be a term if they get the contract so it's not necessarily 100% locked in there may be law changes that require the contract to be amended and this provision isn't there to allow for that amendment in that case without requiring the parties to reach some mutual agreement to reopen the contract or otherwise reach the point where they say the contract because the law has changed the contract we can't actually execute the terms of it so we have to amend it and in this case what this is saying is anytime the law is amended they have to look at the agreement to see if it needs to be amended to keep in compliance with the law and if it does they need to reopen and amend it Does this does this open the contract only for those amendments or does it therefore allow the whole contract to be looked at in the event that it is opened I would think that the parties could if the parties agree they can look at any part of the contract and amend it so specifically that are necessary to ensure that the agreement complies with the requirements of the legislation this just addresses reopening to comply with the legislation but in any contract the other thing is the parties can always say you know that provision we had around notice that's not working we need to amend that language and then if they agree that that's the case they can create an addendum to the contract and revise that provision in the contract so I think what you're concerned about is this going to potentially cause problems in the plan because something significant will change the terms of the law are still that the contract has to comply with the law and the contract can be terminated if the insurance carrier falls out of compliance with the law so that's your protection in there is that the contract has to include a term in there that provides that it can be terminated at any time if the insurance carrier fails to comply with the law is this how the app will evolve to the contract between the state and the insurance carrier that's going to administer the plan it doesn't have anything to do with the equivalent plans that people sign up with this is just for the state's administrator the equivalent plans for the insurance carrier and that's what we have for right now yeah, go ahead so may I just revisit the audit because I forgot that Kerry Brown was in the room and I'm going to channel my intertip with my and also ask that we track it by gender that we do by category length of lead and by gender so I think if we're getting specific on demographics then we should include demographics because also looking at what are the race categories that are being included or denied and in terms of age that's helpful so I don't know if there's another right now there's another demographic that jumps out for me but that would also be very clear if there were disparities or discrimination that was happening from the insurance company we tracked those two additional demographics the only thing I would point out here is the insurance carrier may not have all that information so or maybe revealing individuals to get if you're looking at if you're looking at race and if there's anything else that's attached to it it might not be able to be anonymous so there would be something that would need to be and I just question our roles here about what can we do now given the parameters that we're working with and which I think this can fit given that we've already we've already proposed an audit and what can we revisit as we move forward even in this session I definitely agree with that I don't want to go too far on some of these things without taking any testimony because I'm looking at this last one and there's a concept in law about interference with contracts and I get a little nervous that the person if we do hire a private entity to do this and then the law changes and they say well we didn't anticipate that in our pricing and we don't want to have any more part of it then it disrupts the whole thing as opposed to grandfathering until the next contract renewal but as you say I think there are things like this we could continue to look at during the session and get witnesses in and add to the law and the law gets signed and this is something that DFR is this is their job this is their understanding of these and I see Joyce leaving thank you see you in the morning so if we so right now the way that the re-opener language stands is that we we're on re-opener back to re-opener I took us back to audit just because for me measuring who takes advantage of this how long they take advantage of it by what is of great interest to us as we try and sort of leave but I think for the purposes of what we need to do on this bill for this year I think again we can by the time we even if we wait until 2021 right there's time for us whoever's here to address this but I there's a small list of things that I would like to see if we can add on not to this but as an addendum upon further review that we discuss at a later time that with witnesses that I think we've all had seven months to sleep on this bill and know that it's got some really good stuff and some flaws and I think we've addressed this process is addressing some of those but when we start getting into that level of detail it may just hold us back for now but it's something that we I actually think the Government Accountability Committee would really support our getting more needed just so I think at least the first two things lengths of staying in category would be very important for us to understand I mean I don't care what we include I just think we need as many measurable as possible as we do and no disagreement with that I don't have any problems with the suggestion of the anime so I've been getting into getting further in there without hearing from people the capability is length of category I think are critical okay so claims submitted by category average duration of claims by category number of claims denied, number of denials overturned on appeal any change in those amounts in comparison to the prior year but no demographics is that what I'm hearing I think so for now I just want to make sure and I would say we hold off on this one which one is that the reopen or reopen because you're concerned about the changing the deal I'll put perfectly all kind of people in a lot of find out it's not a problem we can add it later which leaves the reopener language as it allows us only for it only allows this provision for moving from voluntary to mandatory if the general assembly passes that change and to die so that's something so you're saying if we move to mandatory that we change the contract essentially discontinue the contract so it wouldn't be the language that is in your version of the bill simply says it implies if the general assembly which means the House and Senate have to approve it and it has to become law moves the bill, moves the program from voluntary to mandatory then the contract can be reopened this is broader but right now it's only limited to if I'm not mistaken it's only limited to the mandatory voluntary versus mandatory the required reopening of the contract is just in that scenario that's required to be a term in the contract parties agree the contract can be reopened in this case this would change that to the parties agree that the contract can be reopened if any statutory changes amending the law which would take the contract out of compliance are there one way to address that we do this a lot with collective bargaining agreements is we just say this law will take effect for the next contract so it won't change the contract you're in currently right here for example it's going to change the material term of the contract with the VSEA or with the teachers union a lot of times what we'll say is this change applies from this date into all contracts entered into on or after that date so that's just it seems to me that's just more words than that we can if we just didn't put this in that would be the result anyway right so that's what I'm saying is if we left it the way it is now that's probably what you would do for other things that might materially change the contract that's not to say that the state and the third party insurance carrier couldn't agree to reopen the contract on their own this would just not force the reopening in those cases so that also mirrors again the world right now in the world right now a contract can be reopened with mutual agreement yeah you can always mutually agree to revisit your agreement and potentially adjust it what you can't do and what Senator Sorokin was getting at here is the state in particular cannot unilaterally change the terms of its contracts because it's unconstitutional for the state to do that putting in the re-opener here puts the puts them on notice and makes the term of contracts they know going in which is different than the state coming back two years later and saying surprise we're gonna pay you less money to do this or something like that which is usually where the contracts clause issues come in as the state agrees to something one times are good the economy turns south and it tries and not this state but other states have gotten into trouble when they've suddenly tried to pull back on what they paid to unionized employees or something like that without actually getting agreement from the union to do it this state the last time the economy went south sat down with the union and they negotiated a change so that they avoided that issue okay that's okay hopefully tomorrow morning will be prime time for this other amendment that we have and for the senate amendments let's hear the senate amendment so in reading over the bill I think both sides in terms of the equivalency plan we didn't include this came up on the state employees when we testified we didn't include the fact that something can add as many people say to the value of an equivalent plan if it covers TDI there was no there was no consideration of an alternative plan providing for TDI in terms of whether it met equivalency to the state's plan and Damian and I picked that up that's what the short version talks about do you want to explain a little bit sure I just want to make sure we're looking at the same piece here here so this piece here this is where the commissioner of financial regulation reviews any alternative plans and then alternative plan is the state has a plan that will be administered by under the scenario okay it's not the state run plan per se right or it could be I suppose so there's the state's plan and then the insurance company says hey I can buy my insurance company has offered this product to me for this price can I do it they have to get clearance from the state exactly to do this they're going to show the brochure and the charge list and the benefits list to DFR DFR is going to determine whether it's okay or not when Senator Sorak and I were looking over this piece is when we've done this in the house the language was just fine because TDI was mandatory so reviewing the benefits and the length of leave and the cost that worked out just fine but under the senate's plan you're going to have some employer plans that offer TDI and bundled up and you'll have others where it's opt in and so what this says is in making the determination of equivalency the commissioner can consider the relative value of any medical leave or TDI that's provided to employees and then the subdivision cross references the reference to basically the provision that says you have two options one is to say you can opt in or the other is to say I'm just going to provide this to all the employees and so if the employer is opting to provide it to all employees that will be considered for purposes of equivalency so under the proposal from the senate how do you qualify or quantify the relative value of the voluntary TDI where it's opt so if I take it it has value if Deanna doesn't take it it doesn't have value and so what is the mechanism for some for a disinterested reviewer to say huh well if again the plan that's on the table in twin state is six weeks of this six weeks of this at 60% flat and this plan is 12 and 8 and 6 but the 6 is a maybe and the 8 is a definite I mean all those those are the prices for this how does that work so in both the house and the senate plan cost to employees is a factor to be considered I think I'm not sure it's going to be a scientific assessment I mean it's going to be sort of like veggie and vebsie throw everything into a black box and come out with the product but I guess these actuaries have ways of doing it and the next provision we're suggesting deals with the issue you're talking about and that is I we don't want to particularly upset the state employee contract and they've got all different moving parts no cost to them they have TDI they got shorter weak benefits and so instead of in that one we just say instead of doing that full analysis with the potential that it could blow up even though they all agree to it we're saying let's just move on and let them at least the commissioner can say that that's an equivalent plan and that's what he would have to do in a case by case basis but all we're really adding here is in this amendment from what we have is the TDI the issues of other relative benefits the length of the lead the wage replacement rate the cost to the employee those are all complicating factors already in terms of coming up with the equivalency but it just seems to be fair that there probably will be plans out there that have that are like the state plan that includes TDI so my understanding is correctly you're trying to capture and lump in the potential employee employer offered benefit of TDI when looking at paid family leave and so say there's an employer who offers paid family leave of 5 weeks and TDI of 3 weeks those numbers don't add up but I'm just trying to get a sense of what this proposal is that that would be an equivalent or you know those numbers add up to the paid family leave that we're looking at that's the intent of this so I think the way to think about it is so there's value to each type of leave and this is saying if the employer is lumping that TDI and that value should be considered versus the state plan where your mandatory value is only the first two that's basically what this is looking at and that was out on the senate side last spring probably just in the rush to get things done and something else just overlooked so that's all this is saying I mean we have a bunch of senators that came to us and said you know are you upsetting existing plans in terms of someone buying into this equivalency and what they were saying was what if they have slightly different benefits make sure the benefits so this is what and it doesn't have to be a paid I mean it's possible that it could be partially paid by the employer then that would be another factor that they weigh in I mean one of the things that we looked at in terms of the state employee program that made me think of it is that as you heard in the same testimony they got a 0.25 wage replacement if their plan didn't go forward and under this thing under our proposal it's 0.20 so I was thinking if I got my facts right that they're probably getting a slightly better benefit because they're getting state employee to pay them back that kind of money if they don't go through so should we be sticking our nose into that contract right now well the other thing that VSEA proposal has was in a classic collective bargaining situation the state put this plan on the table and the VSEA returned with their cascading issue which I don't know if you've heard about where they wanted to be able to use the crude sick leave to care for family members which is an integral part of this in which they would be able to get reimbursed at 100% and so that is that you know getting the classic sense of at least the way that I understand the way that the contract has been proposed and agreed upon by the union is that the language says if this leave plan is implemented this is what you'll get if it's not implemented you get to 0.25% but that equivalent negotiation has also provided them with a backstop of at least being able to use a crude sick time for helping a family member which is a bonus to them and I don't know what limitations there would be on that but the fact that they were able to negotiate that as a union I think may just help alleviate your concerns about how that might work for them that's not just about the increase in salary but that it is this option that they're able to use their own time and the administration's testimony on why they included this is because of course new employees don't have a crude leave time to the level that an older employee might have so I don't know which way or the other whether it's better or worse if we put it into the black box I guess we could get a determination but this is sort of a development that's taken place in the last eight or nine months since we passed it out so now we have to deal with it I think we just can't say nothing about it so is that that's the second one that's the second one the first two paragraphs the first one that you're proposing is simply for regardless of the program that the state implements on its own accord someone else still a business still has the option to have it different which is similar in some respects to what New Jersey does is that right well I think it was in both versions of the bill all we're doing in this one is adding another factor which is I'm just clarifying that this is something that the notion of having a private plan so these companies that already contract with other people and by doing this alternative plan this is the part that gives them a waiver that says that they can that they and their employees don't have to pay into the system California and New Jersey both definitely already have this there may be one or two other states too but those of you that I know for sure have an alternative plan option their language around it is a little different but they do offer employees the option to get a private plan I need a question I wanted to go back to the state employees plan equivalency and then we had put in and the senate kept in the very last paragraph on page 55 of the senate proposal we had put in about an employee that subject to collective bargaining agreement shall not be required to pay contributions subject to the provisions until the effective date of the next collective bargaining so we addressed the union issue at the time and so I don't know if that actually would have ever addressed the state one or if we have to also say notwithstanding the state do they have to be connected in some fashion or are they at cross purposes in any way I don't think there are cross purposes so this language that was put in last spring affected both the state employees contract because April 1, 2020 was during the collective bargaining agreement and their agreement wouldn't start until July 1 but there's also other unions in the state that are going to be affected and school districts are on a variety of different schedules municipalities same thing they're on a variety of different schedules and then the other thing is you have any sort of private unions that are under the national labor relations act they're under a variety of different schedules too so having this language in here is still probably important because it's going to prevent the unions and the unionized employers from having their contract go out of compliance and also prevent them from having to figure out so we owe all these contributions but we haven't actually agreed who's responsible for them and so I think that's still important the new language on the the SEA state plan equivalency I don't think is that cross purposes to that because what it provides basically is that they've already negotiated something for the time being and so that'll be the equivalent for this first contract to go around and they're not going to be required to negotiate but they're not going to be required to conduct additional negotiations under the law which says they have to negotiate all this stuff for that contract so they've already negotiated that contract they can do it for the next one so would they revert to the last page the next time they come out for contract negotiations would they automatically have to revert to that or be it forever more deeming as equivalent so the way this is worded here it says the paid family and medical leave program agreed to by the state and its collective bargaining unit that takes effect July 1, 2020 shall be deemed to provide equivalent benefits that's only going to be agreed to for the contract and then again this is the bargaining agreement or the bargaining requirement which says 638 that is is in the law that this is creating so they're required to bargain with the union on how they're going to deal with family leave each time through that's just not applying to the contract that they've already negotiated so the next time around the union is free to say we didn't like this we want 888 or we want 70% wage replacement or whatever it is and then at that point they can go through the equivalency so is that our segue to this I mean that's it except for the effective dates yeah the effective dates I've updated dates in here obviously these dates may change again based on the conversation this morning and the only other change in the effective date section is we now have 22 sections instead of 21 so I have to make a change in subsection A to add that section the new section 21 which used to be the effective date section would take effect on passage just like most of the rest of the bill it's not a material change in that effective date area okay and it's definitely different than what the chart that I sent you definitely different from the chart that you sent me I figure until everything gets ironed out with the conference committee I'll hold off on putting that in so based upon what we talked about today are you able to do a committee conference report we have at least one other issue that we need to talk about and potentially insert but other than that are you pretty much there? right so let me just confirm what I'm going to be adding to it and I would just like a few minutes before we break up before we agree that we're all I just want to talk to my colleagues specifically go ahead and give you an opportunity to talk about the amendments that have been presented and I want to to be continued but I just I don't want to okay but I mean that speaks I mean Damien based on whatever we end up with now for tonight you can have that I guess the questions you can have that starting a conference report can be formed there you go right yeah let me just the 12 week okay so I have removed the 16 week count the BSEI equivalency the plan equivalency the audit language and the changes to the notice requirements those are the five changes plus I've already drafted the beginning basis for the conference report with generically just move out all the dates forward one year so I'll have those highlighted and then we can work through those tomorrow unless you agree on dates tonight is there anything I'm missing so tomorrow when we see the next the next report anyway I mean we don't we well we know that in order to make it 12 weeks and 12 weeks rather than 16 weeks it requires just a deletion but we will see that on paper when we see that you'll see that is it alright with the committee if I do the conference report as a strike on does that work for everyone or would you like to see instances of amendment because there will be dozens of them there will be dozens of them yeah with all the dates I think a strike will be easier let me just understand so if we did house the seats to the senate version with the following amendments you're saying because right now we don't have that many and as opposed to something appearing on the calendar except I don't know with the all the amendments on the dates where that you have to bring in every section and all this stuff and then it becomes really long I'm interested in brevity if we can highlight the changes in a conference that way as opposed to what a strike on why don't I try to do instances of amendment it'll take a little longer to draft but I mean ultimately the length will be shorter there will just be you're going to have a lot of and it'll also highlight the five changes we're making as opposed to but if we were just thinking I mean my concern with just only having the amendments is that it's been a while since people have seen the whole bill and so if there's if the whole bill appears in our respective calendars that gives people an opportunity to read cover to cover and then if the what we have to present is are the instances I mean I would simply say this bill is roughly the same as it was last year except and then make them and then go point to point I mean that would be a report that I would get from them I wouldn't have to go I mean I would go through a substantial portion of the bill in general but I would highlight the changes we would be able to highlight the changes what's the best way to do it that way this is what I think and I'm willing to defer for you guys it may make more sense to do a full bill because we sent you over something that we already voted on and we're making just five changes to that bill you know we have a lot of agreement at the end of the year on what we sent you over there but maybe your full body and not aware of all those changes so maybe you I think that's an accurate statement I prefer I could get up there and say these are the changes we made for what you already voted on and be done I agree and I think in this case on a bill that's just important I think it's important given the time difference between the two just to give I don't mind if a few branches on a tree provide people the opportunity to read the whole bill again if they have this is a conference report there will not be further amendments that people have to have an opportunity to voice their support or opposition to what we've agreed upon so I just I'm just trying to adhere to more information in this particular case better than less and you know I'm assuming that don't say it out loud don't say it out loud I'm going to write in a rare mode I'm writing it what I can do is prepare a strike all amendment then I can also prepare an outline that says in section X these changes were made which is roughly what you do for any bill I think that upon request well the bills but I'm not concerned with I'm asking you to do more work but also so if we can take if we can take five minutes now just a five minute break can you just go back to what you just said I thought actually they didn't thought that a strike all would be simpler for him and would be better for you which I think would be quite honest that's where we are but then he would present us with when we asked Damien for a bill synopsis that builds the foundation of any floor report that we do Damien will basically give us this he's already done some changes some way of changes and we're older now so bump up my font 18 could we request 16 or 18 no they're still 18 hey I have to buy I'm like the biome so if we can take five minutes before we adjourn we'll leave you here we'll go to another room actually we're going to go across the hall because I have a room alright do you agree or do you want it we are fine the proposals that you proposed and with the language the amendments that we've made so we will see what appears tomorrow and continue on with the job quality with the employee qualification language tomorrow and and then the dates of the specifically of the all of it well the RFI then it becomes available that was the major question in terms of other dates outside and that might affect the dates all the way through we can talk about that with a fresh brain I'd like a fresh brain why don't we look for you in the cafeteria and I will take care of you


Hey everyone, this is Carlos. I am the founder and CEO at Product School today. I'm here with Ryan Glasgow Who's the founder and CEO at Sprig? Welcome Ryan Thank You Carlos and thanks for hosting me once again. I think those are a third or fourth time now doing an interview over the course of many years You and I go way back Even before you started your company, you also have the honor of being the first guest That we had on the podcast when your company was called UserLip and a lot of amazing things have happened since then So let's kind of catch up the audience Can you tell me more about your background and then we'll dive into your current company? Yeah My background has been in product management and I actually really got started with some early-stage companies You know pre-product and you know at the time if they're so early They actually didn't have a product manager. It was too early for these companies you know writing their first lines of code and figuring out their first concepts and so I really cut my teeth as a Product designer and also a front-end engineer But given that there was not a you know product manager at the company I was able to really fill that gap and get that exposure and then quickly moved into formal product management capacity before eventually starting in Sprig where I'm now CEO and And you mentioned front-end development you mentioned design What was the status of user research was waiting that had back in the day? Back then it wasn't done very often because product management was still in the technology Space a new function and product man back You know over a hundred years the problem gamble but in the technology space It is still very new and you know pioneers like product school are helping really bring that role to life and Educating folks in that role. But at the time, you know, it was there weren't very many often would show up at companies They'd ask what does a product manager do? You know, why are you here? And so it was really help actually at the time helping form that role and define that role at many of the companies I was joining I Can imagine that based on your own experience building You will be starting to scratch your own each and create a company that was solving one of your problems So there's a bit more about that problem that you saw in the market that you know, no other solutions out there were really covering You know as a product manager, it was certainly You know research was just so critical for everything that we are working on and You know what I found is that companies either don't have researchers and so the product managers have to do You know the research themselves, but then I'll see if companies where they do have researchers So researchers can only cover a small fraction of the product questions and the research that the product managers are looking for And so a sprig what we're doing is we're just really focused on if you have a research team helping the research team and the product management team work Faster and you know really work together on reliable research and getting research and Insights into all the decisions that you know product teams are making and then for companies that don't have researchers It's really about how we can have the designers product managers marketers conduct their own research and you know as a product manager You know to your earlier question it was up to the product manager to do all the research and you know, I've seen you We always want really great research That can be difficult to do with people who don't have the time or the expertise in that field and so spring We're really focused on really bringing research to life and companies of all sizes Helping include everyone in that research process But also give researchers the full control to support all the stakeholders that they're working with on a day-to-day basis you know I've It sounds to me similar to what happened with a intersection between engineering and product or design and product where Back in the day PMS would have to rely heavily on another team just to get stuff done And that might be the right approach when your company is speaking up and has the resources, but we saw how some Tools were able to bridge the gap and allow PMS to be a little bit more self-sufficient And be able to get some stuff done and at the same time be able to delegate when needed And that usually happened engineering data. I've seen it with design user research Wasn't at the same level at least based on my own experience I'm glad to see that now there is something out there that is allowing PMS and other teams that are not researchers To do a little bit of research and at the same time have the full capability to then go out there and really involve a research team Is that is that's the approach? That's exactly correct. Yeah, and you see engineering We're shifting to no code where everyone can be more involved in the building process You know, I think figma is a great example of bringing more people into the design process You know, I remember ten years ago You know, no one wanted to get your 200 megabyte photoshop file just to review, you know What it looked like or be able to leave a comment It was incredibly cumbersome and difficult to bring other people into the design process And so you know the data analysis process more and more people can be involved by new tools and business intelligence and analysis and you know, absolutely with Sprig It's bringing more people into the research process In some cases bringing people to help do the research themselves But other cases really used to be involved in the data and the results and the insights Just knowing how critical all the data is how can you really ensure this data permeates through every every organization? So let's break down the concept research because from the outside might sound scary like there's so many ways you can approach Research so in your own experience, what are some of the different like avenues for for pms to get some insights from their users We and you know what I hear and talking to Marty Kagan He was on our podcast a couple months ago And and he said that 90% of product management is actually a value to research, you know It's really evaluating the value of whether you should move forward with a particular feature Maybe you have an idea or Hunter hypothesis And so really making sure that this is something that's the top of the prioritization set But the second part of the value to research is actually evaluating existing experiences that you've already shipped and really Understanding that feature that you launched last month or the feature that you're about to launch maybe next week Making sure that it's going to meet customer needs and they're going to understand it And it's going to really achieve the outcomes that you're looking for There's also some genitive research, you know very early on about doing, you know, more one-on-one customer interviews more moderated But given that most product managers, you know You have a set of features that you're looking to build and you're really honing on what maybe the exact prioritization And then again evaluating whether you're delivering those features in the right way And that's really where we focus with sprig is on the evaluative research knowing that's the bulk of what most companies are doing today For me something that was really Transformational was when I realized that it was possible to run research Inside the product what I mean by this is that traditionally when I hear that term I would default to okay Let's run a survey, right? Let's kind of strategize on identifying certain users Sending them something taking them out of the experience give them an Amazon gift card to respond and then get the insights But that was really and of not organic what we are seeing different products now Is that you can get those insights on the spot while the user is to executing any specific action? Like maybe they purchased something and you ask them how was that experience or they found the back you ask them What happened like allowing the user to give you information on the spot? I think it's really really powerful because the time to value is much shorter Yes, and that's the key innovation really was spring and that was really the aha moment for me Is can we actually get the insights in the moment? And I think everyone's tired of getting that 50 question survey You know that you described with that $50 or $100 or even you know $103 Amazon gift card and it's asking you questions about things from three months ago You know with spring what we're doing is in context research and really breaking those research questions up into bite-sized pieces of just one or two questions at a time and really Spreading around all those different questions to thousands of different people and you know Carlos Maybe you you know try a product for the first time or you try it and don't come back And those are great contextual moments where we can ask maybe just one or two questions And it really allows the users to co-create and really help you shape an award-winning product and through in-context research And that's really what again what we're focused on and it really pioneered here at Sprig I like the term used to co-create because I think there's a lot of emphasis on oh We're going to ship something new we should do some research to validate if if users will want it or not And that's that's okay There's also a bunch of other users who are already in your product who are already interacting with it And I think it's also important to apply research to them to understand how you can make the existing product Better to not just bring on new users because at the end of the day as we think about growth Yes, it's important to acquire more, but it's also even more important to retain and provide value for people who are already inside Yes. Yeah, and that's one of the key, you know prior to starting Sprig I had used panels where you talked to hypothetical people and you put them in hypothetical situations and Carlos You could imagine maybe talking to an analyst and let's say they want to switch to you know product management Hypothetically and you did research with them You know you wonder how valuable that would be putting people in those hypothetical situations Where with Sprig, you know our very strong opinions on doing research with people who are actually in those situations And so, you know, let's connect you with people with Sprig in the marketing website You know in your marketing website, maybe if her product school check the people considering product school, you know in that moment right now Let's actually talk to those people and build relationships and ask them questions And so, you know, we see with Sprig Asking people in, you know, the actual situations that they're in and getting those really key Questions asked in front of them as opposed to the hypothetical which have I personally seen, you know steer people the wrong way And so definitely a big focus for us and our customers So Ryan give us an update For your company for the last year like last time we spoke It was a very different stage of your company and I saw a really awesome post and on your LinkedIn recently. So please give us an update It's yeah, thank you. It's been a fantastic 2021 for us. We started the year with 16 You know full-time employees and ended last year with 70 full-time folks and with around 20 to 30 contractors So around a hundred total on our headcount and then also looking at, you know, revenue We grew revenue a thousand percent, you know last year alone and we signed on some really great marquee customers dropbox loom Adobe shift and open door are the ones I can publicly mention. I wish I could mention a Many more, but we don't have unfortunately the logo rights for some really great customers that I Fortunately cannot mention today And then we won five, you know best place to work awards. So we're you know hiring across the board It's a thing that's interested in helping us really evolve and transform the research industry with courage you to apply on our website sprig.com And you know number one on product multiple times. And so that was also nice validation for just the market interest and really what we're working on as a company So let's talk about what's happening in the market because 2021 has been Incredible for a lot of other companies that are targeting product managers. Some of them went public Some of them grace grace amounts of funding you also close an amazing funding round So what do you think it's it's happening across the board for these type of companies We're definitely seeing research being more and more involved in the product development process And again, like, you know, 10 years ago 15 years ago It was just very informal. Maybe some product managers were conducting research But we're seeing a huge growth of research teams And so, you know, people are hiring researchers earlier in the company stages. They're also hiring more researchers They're also encouraging everyone to be involved in that research process designers product managers marketers to really ensure that they're shipping The best possible outcomes for customers And I think the main driver is the end user has far more choice and control than ever And I think product led growth is one of the key trends that's driving that And you talk about, you know, Slack is one of the fastest growing companies and Twilio and Datadog And they're all employing product led growth But what that means that the end user has all the control in the buying process And so, you know, B2C research is becoming more and more critical and research teams are growing significantly within B2C Because there's just more companies, you know, maybe 10 years ago a user had a choice of five, you know Digital banks now there's going to be a hundred different digital banks that they can choose from But I think the more surprising trend is actually the increase in research for B2B companies And what we're seeing again with product led growth is that the buying decision is often made by the end user And so, you know, right now we're even looking at a task management solution for our engineering team Any engineers are the ones actually doing the research and trying the different vendors to see Which ones to choose it's not, you know, our head of engineering who's doing a few sales demos and making that decision And so a lot of B2B companies are now coming to us and saying, hey You know, we we really understand what's working and not working with the decision maker or the buyer with our software But we have hundreds or thousands of end users And they're ultimately making the decision of whether to renew With this vendor or not, you know, with this customer's software And so we're seeing this shift of research increasingly becoming critical for B2B And the product team is actually going out to the end users And actually oftentimes skipping the actual buyers and admins of those accounts Which has been a really interesting trend of how research is now becoming more pervasive In the enterprise and B2B space in addition to historically where it's been mostly run consumer spaces I agree. I've seen this shift in how business is done In many many different industries Based on what you said a product-led growth approach B2B mostly just really allowing the end user Make their own decision because they don't need an approval for that Like we're seeing a lot of these companies that are offering users It could be a free trial It could be even a free version of the product where they can get value They can invite others they can get to a point where they validate that this is good And by the time that bubbles up to actually the person who's supposed to try to sign the check It's just a no-brainer right because the adoption is there And and it's not that we're taking a big risk to sign a big contract and see if people use it Like people are using it the question is what are you going to do about it? Exactly and that's exactly what we're seeing and I think a surprise definitely and that's why we're seeing now And big influx of B2B companies coming to us and where we've been a part of their transformation So give me an example on how you are applying product-led growth for some of those big Enterprise clients who might not be you know like that going through digital transformation They're not like your typical high-tech companies who are really familiar with user research Yeah for us and how we're employing PLG Yes, please. Yeah. Yeah, so um We you know PLG has been critical for us strategy And we want to again just really proud of our product and want to get in the hands of our customers as soon as possible And so that's why today anyone can sign up for a free account They can try a sprig, you know on the room without talking to us And so, you know, that's where we've seen companies, you know fortune 500 You know, some of the fastest growing tech companies all the way down to very early stage startups all Signing up and try and sprig and really experiencing the value on their own And so it's been a part of our growth last year and something that we'll continue to focus on um into 2022 Yeah, and I I want to send a message of um Presurance for the sales folks out there. This doesn't mean that sales is disappearing by any means, right? It means that now There's an entry point for anybody to To to get value from a product directly You need to wait to schedule a demo or see a power point to see if this makes sense or not Ultimately, I I'm sure when when the deal is big enough requires a certain level of customization or anyway Sales team is important to to kind of push through the through the finish line But I think that seeing how the product can be part of that Growth channel how people can use it upfront before they commit to something. It's ultimately good for the user Yeah, and we're seeing the rise of sales assist as well So, you know, anyone can create that account sign up for the product But introducing sales as really someone to help support and answer those discussions And questions along the way and just be a resource as people evaluate Products on their own and so that's you know one area where we've really invested in is how can you really Have our product and our sales team actually work together to ensure that that individual Is able to have all the information that she needs to make a decision So at the beginning of the conversation we talked about how there's some No code tools that are allowing pms to bridge the gap with design with data with engineering Figma was an example for designers data analytics. There are so many examples So, how are you thinking about integrations and making sure that the data that you collect in your product is also easily accessible from other places That's definitely a focus for us in 2022 and last year we established partnerships with amplitude And so, you know, they wrote a fantastic blog post about us at the time. We were called user leap So if you're looking for you'll have to look up user leap and amplitude And did a webinar as well about how companies like open door have been able to really bring together The quantitative and qualitative insights to make better decisions and grow faster And so we did a webinar with a growth lead at open door about some really key insights that helped unlock growth For open door. And so that's accessible If you just google for that and you'll find that webinar and then product board as well Product boards have been a key partner for us and you know at sprig We're really focused on the research space and so we've been Establishing partnerships with other companies that product managers also use and those have been two that are from top of mind for us and Our zapp year integration that we launched last year that was Yeah on product time has been another key way to get all of the Sprig data into all the other tools that product managers use and that could be into a slack instance it could be Into you know, we've seen companies push data into data warehouses as well And what they're able to do is actually look at all their qualitative research data In conjunction with all the other data that they're collecting And so it's something that has been super powerful for our customers because they can pass the user ID and the event And attribute data all into sprig But then when they take the data out of sprig they they know those user IDs They know those emails. They know those events and attributes and timestamps of when that data was collected It's able to get the holistic data of the customer. It's not only the revenue data, but also the The qualitative data the analytics data and pull that all together And and so it's just been fun seeing our customers Take sprig's data Enrich all the other data sets as well And it's that's one of the main ways we've been helping product managers You know not have to do so much coding, you know with traditionally epis and other types of Manual integrations to stitch those data sets together and get a more complete picture of their customer base Yeah, those days are gone like I remember remember those days when we had to piggyback on like a photoshop And power points and like whatever tools, but there was in anything really built from scratch for for pms Now we're seeing an entire product is stuck out there That's allowing pms to really pick the best products for different use cases and that seems to be the the most popular approach where there there seems to be winners In research sprig is a really good example Or in design with figma you mentioned product board for road mapping or amplitude for analytics How all of these tools are making it easy to Integrate with with each other instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and and try to cover all kind of use cases And giving the pms the flexibility To pick what they think is best for each case and at the same time to have a unified view of the data So they can make decisions in an easy way Exactly, yeah, I think the more that you know other companies can forge those partnerships You know we're starting looking for those and if companies think they're the right partner for us Love to hear from them because you know in jobs to be done. You're never going to be the entire You know you're going to be the vendor to complete the entire job There's always the other vendors involved and so you know you you create more value by Building those relationships and then helping the end customer Ideally without any code like you said no code to really complete those outcomes and have that data shared across All the other workflows that someone might be using So if you think about the evolution of user research in terms of technology We went from maybe pen and paper and mystery shopping to some sort of surveys and user groups to now Pure technology that is visual that's allowing people to to see stuff without throwing a single line of code What is kind of the next big way for user research? That's a yeah, so we're obviously a huge believer in in context research And so we think that we're just scratching the surface and getting more and more of the research out of long email surveys and out of You know one hour Interviews that people also don't have time for and getting it more into you know bite-sized in context research experiments You know, hopefully everyone is listening is nodding their head that they would prefer to do You know a short async video question for one or two minutes instead of a one hour Interview and so I think we're just getting started with you know shifting Companies from this longer research that you know, can't really all people don't have time for And customers becoming less and less interested in to more in context, you know bite-sized research Where there's just a huge appetite from the end consumer and and customer to participate in And and so you know, I think that's really the the main focus for us and there's just so many different requests around You know now it's ar and vr headsets How can we actually integrate into those experiences and we have a lot of customers now that have apple tv apps And so integrating sprig into, you know the living room I feel like we're just getting started with you know collecting that research in the moment and something that Is going to take us a while to really accomplish Something that I I saw from your product was Opportunity to gather insights from open-ended questions Just pretty incredible because usually in service you want to put like close-ended questions So you can group information and come to conclusions. So when you mention ai and other technologies How are you able to kind of collect or merge information from people who are giving different answers on an open field? Definitely something that we've been working on since the very beginning of the company is our in-house developed artificial intelligence and so have an amazing team of Ai engineers now we have four folks building this and what it's able to do we had a customer actually Just uh last week they collected four thousand open tech responses in a single day And so many of our customers now at scale they're collecting 10,000 20,000 responses in a given week across their sprig Studies and what the ai is able to do is look through all the responses for a single question And it's able to group all those responses into themes Unique to that survey question And so, you know, it's going to be specific to the customer It'll be specific to the study to be specific to the study question We don't reuse any of the themes across our customers. It's all Custom and really developed by the ai looking through all the responses that, you know, we're collecting And it also does that for the voice and video data as well And so if you do an asynchronous interview and we've seen customers get hundreds of video responses and you know 20 different languages it's able to translate and Transcribe all the audio data Run that through the ai and then surface up the themes across all those responses And so technologically it's something that, you know, we haven't seen done before We're really proud and impressed with what we build and we're seeing so many new use cases from our customers of Having these conversations of voice and video With people around the world in different time zones in different languages And again connecting research in a way that, you know, we haven't seen done before but also Our customers. I've just really enjoyed for the first time really understanding that international audience So as we grab up this interview I want to go back to talk about you because I've known you even before you started this company and you've mentioned How much it's grown right so as a as a founder CEO product person How have you had to evolve to be able to stay to keep it up to continue innovating While also creating space for other leaders in your organization to shape your vision That's a great question And you know one of the biggest things I would say for any high growth startup Whether you're someone who's just joining as an individual contributor, you know in management or you know founder or CEO yourself is That growth mindset You know and Carlos, I think you're the first instructor at product school and you're now you're running a global organization, you know with You know, it's very well funded and it's on this rocket ship growth and I'm sure for you you had to really figure out, you know each step of the way from being an instructor to now, you know managing managers and leaders of instructors themselves and You know spring is no different in the early days I was designing and coding and you know building a product and then the second phase was really selling You know founder led sales and I never worked at a company with a sales person before And so selling a product to you know, high growth tech companies like square and dropbox You know, it's certainly something I had to learn, you know on the fly and no pressure your company You know fails if you can't figure it out Um and then now though we're 70 people and it's really thinking around, you know culture and You know making sure that everyone's you know doing their best work here at sprig and bringing out the right people And and so it's really that growth mindset if you're someone who you know Really enjoys figuring out new things and can really stay ahead of the company needs That's probably going to be the main limiting factor of your company's growth is You know as a CEO or founder or someone on the leadership team How quickly can you figure out the next phase of growth and that's certainly looking outside of you know your company? It could be podcasts or articles or advisors and mentors And so I'm just so focused on the learning, you know, I'm described as a hyper learner Um and that's I think really what's enabled the growth that we've seen at sprig And something that as we grow and cover new uncharted territory will become increasingly important For me to really think through Love that ryan and I can attest to that and and I love that attitude of like, okay This is what we need to figure out. I'm going to go and make it happen And I think it's also very important to realize when when it's enough when it's time to Delegate or hire so you can focus on that next big challenge and I've seen you do that kind of Time after time And and I like you talk about culture because I think that's one of those Underrated terms that sound very wishy-washy especially at the very beginning because the first employees know each other They're working from the same room Maybe and now as you are building a global organization with so many different perspectives in mind It's really important to capture those those insights and kind of drink our own champagne and make sure that people are feeling Productive happy and there's also room for them to to grow So thank you so much for your time ryan. It's it's always a pleasure to see you grow and I hope we can have you again At some point Happy to join any time. Thanks again for having me and yeah cross has been fun Seeing product school grow into what it is and really excited to continue uh following your journey Thank you


Hey guys, it's Ledrub from Road to Riot and today I'm really excited to share with you speeding operations This is a short film that Team Cockatoo invited us to be a part of and the idea behind this project was to create a short action sequence involving car chases and FPV drones to promote the Ford Mondeo It was sponsored by Yichou and Ford and I really appreciate them seeing the excitement of FPV and Helping us share this hobby that we love so much with more people with their advertisement So I hope that you all really enjoy our short action movie I'll give you a mission to find this place and then rescue it I think they should have thrown it away There's no one here I'm not sure, I'm really not sure Isn't this the old man? Congratulations to all of you who have passed the test Now it's time to complete the mission Let's do it. Okay, let's go


What's up navigation traders today is Friday, August 3rd I hope everybody had a great week of trading welcome to this week's video update Before I jump in just want to make note. You've probably been receiving some emails We are increasing the price of our pro membership got a tenant brought on a bunch of several new people We're gonna be accelerating The stuff that we bring out to you guys so got some really exciting stuff If you if you are a monthly subscriber and you want to jump into the annual membership at 499 a year Do that before Saturday August 4th, so tomorrow Because then the price is going up from 499 to 997 but anyone who locks in before tomorrow Will be grandfathered in for the life of your membership Definitely do that if you're interested just if you're a monthly member just email support at navigation trading calm and they'll take care of you And then if you're already a annual member you are locked in for life, so There's a little bit of confusion probably wasn't as clear as we needed to be in the emails But you are locked in at whatever you're doing. So if you're doing the monthly you're locked in the monthly for Life if you're doing the annual you're locked in the annual price for life. So no action is needed from that standpoint so Let's jump. Oh actually one more one more thing. I wanted to mention. We've also updated our blog. So if you go to our blog Just click on blog here at the top menu of the site Hopefully this is a little bit more user friendly. We've got some different topics So you can kind of go just to the monthly performance blog posts some of the different trading options for income strategies directional strategies Backtesting studies and posts that we've done tasty works videos and then just other topics of video blogs we've categorized those and then of course they're all in order from the newest post first and So hope you enjoy that let us know if you have any feedback on that or any suggestions or topics that you want us to cover We'll be continuing to add stuff to our blog here in the coming months as well. So Exciting stuff here and it's super excited about a couple things we have coming for you I can't mention it yet, but it's coming soon. So stay tuned Let's jump into the alerts for the week Starting with Monday First trade was a closing adjusting trade in wheat So that we closed out the put vertical side as price breached our upside break even and So let's take a look at where we're at here So here is that remaining call side price has been really strong and wheat wheat has been my Nemesis for the last year basically every time I think we're about to close it out for a profit We end up having to extend duration and make some adjustments, but it's kind of cool Once this is closed out. It'll be a good example of a trade I'll do kind of a recap of the entire trade going all the way back to last year and You know, this is this is part of the game Not every trade is gonna be a winner right off the bat and knowing how to manage Those trades and make the necessary adjustments is critical to being consistent. So Anyway, here is the short call vertical You can see prices way out here and you need some downside movement still got a decent amount of time here 21 days to expiration before We need to do anything there And then we've also got this other full iron condor, which is out in October You can see we're making some profit there not enough to take off yet So we're just playing the weight game waiting game and wheat at this point Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in qqq. So we closed out one of our sets of short call verticals That's previously part of an iron condor Booked a profit on that piece of the trade and so we ended up just closing it out Booking that profit on that piece because we're still holding our other two sets of short call verticals We were starting to get a little bit too short biased in our portfolio overall So it just made sense to take off some of that short Delta. So we just closed that out If we take a look at the key actually, I'm gonna go back to the cues here We've got another alert on the queue. So I'll go back to the platform once we hit that one Next trade was a opening trade in EEM IV percentile at the time jumped up to 55 So we sold some premium sold a strangle in EEM That trade is still fairly centered got a little bit of profit here as you can see But not enough to take off yet. So just waiting for some more theta to decay in EEM Next trade was an opening adjusting trade in IWM So what we did is we simply added an iron condor in September IV percentiles at 69 at that time and then and then we also Hold our other piece of that trade Which is so here's the iron condor You can see we've got a little bit of profit there But not enough to take off yet and then we've got this other piece Which is a short call vertical from our other iron condor just you know continuing to Look for a little bit of downside to benefit that piece We are we're right at about break even maybe down a little bit on our IWM trade overall Assuming price stays relatively stable should be out of this here in a couple weeks for a profit But we will see what happens. Obviously if we need to make additional adjustments, we will Next trade was an opening trade in Goldman Sachs, so we haven't done many calendars for a while because implied volatility hasn't been low enough to warrant doing it, but IV percentile on Goldman Sachs at this time was right at three so super low We like that IV percentile IV rank to be under 10 is when we really like to start putting these calendars on so Gonna look for about 20 to 25% profit. We've got about 10% profit at this point. You can see it's still nice and centered a little actually about 8% and almost 9% profit at this point But you can see we'll just like let's more time to pass if we look at the chart You can see implied volatility is super low in Goldman Sachs next to zero here so if we get a little bit of a pop and implied volatility and prices stay relatively stable within our range We'll be able to book this profit if remember On calendars if it does go outside of our range We'll most likely add another calendar and turn that into a double calendar and And continue to manage that so nothing to do here yet in Goldman Sachs except for weight Next trade was an opening trade in Disney. So we did a pre earnings long straddle in Disney looking for some price movement and expansion of implied volatility Going into earnings they announced on 8-7 so we want to be out of the trade by then So if we take a look at Disney We've gotten let's see. Let's take a look at the chart So in implied volatility we did have one pop yesterday up in implied volatility Which helped offset some of that theta decay Which is why we are pretty much break even right now down to slightly But we need some price movement to really benefit this thing either up or or a big move down we're going into Earnings on 8-7 so we've got so we'll be taking this off early next week So hopefully we can get a little bit of a price movement before then to Book a little bit of profit Next trade was an opening trade in Google. So we did a short put vertical and Google and We did this a couple reasons one We're anticipating a little bit of an up move in Google obviously and then second Again, we are starting to get a little too short in our overall portfolio So adding in this bullish trade some long Delta helps balance that out We took a look at our Google trade right now. It's down about three quarters of a percent today, but we're still In the profit a little bit up about 120 dollars Looking for a little bit of up movement to benefit that trade and And from the charts, here's kind of what I was looking at. So after earnings It jumped up pretty significantly Not quite enough to warrant putting on a post earnings short put vertical However, it would have worked had had you done that because we did get a couple days of up movement, but it pulled back Down to this down to this level here and just Look so for any time when you get a decent up move and a little bit of a pullback on that first move I like to that that that tends to be a good point of entry. I'm not saying it's a super high probability Not looking at any specific technical analysis indicators or anything like that We're just simply a adding some long Delta in our portfolio and be this look like a good entry For a little bit of a bounce higher. I mean if we get up to 1260 or 1270 Which would be pretty easy to do pretty realistic You know, we're looking at You know booking 40 50% of max profit on that trade. So that's kind of what we're looking for here on Google Next trade was a closing trade in Facebook. So last week We put on a post earnings short strangle in Facebook and we were able to take it off just a few days later Five days later to be exact booked over 30% of max profit So nice trade in Facebook and if you remember what happened in Facebook, let's just kind of go back Let's go back to that chart to to recap FB So what we're looking at is, you know after earnings the stock was down about 20% so a huge move down and What happened is after because it moved down so much We did not get that implied volatility crush right after earnings that we typically do So we we sold some premium with those Price option prices that ivy still elevated And and then the very next day we got that little bit of a collapse That popped up and then continued to decline. So worked out nicely price kind of stabilized around that level And we were able to book a nice quick winner. So good trade there Next trade was an opening trade in Nvidia. So we did a pre earnings long straddle in Nvidia Again kind of like Disney looking for some ivy expansion and price movement Leading up to earnings. They don't announce until 816. So we still got some time in this trade If we take a look at Nvidia We have not gotten any expansion implied volatility It's continued to decline So if we can see a little bit of a pop-up and then a little bit of price movement should be able to book a winner You can see we're still basically at break even here. No profit or loss at this point So we'll see what happens next week in Nvidia Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in apple. So we went ahead and held this trade Through earnings. Unfortunately apple did make a move higher So let's go to the chart here. You can see prices out of our range So looking for some downside to benefit this trade You can see apple has just been, you know, really strong So we're looking for a little bit of a turnaround to to benefit that piece And again, the whole reason we put that trade on to begin with Was to add some short delta in our portfolio. So we still need that short delta. So we'll continue to hold that for now Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in fxi So we closed out one of our butterflies booked almost 50 profit on that piece of the trade And then we're still holding our other september butterfly So if we take a look at fxi here What you'll see is this trade is still fairly centered We'll hang it out a little bit towards the upside range, but Still just fine and then our other butterfly here And remember one of the reasons we we use puts in call is to help separate them So right now we're clicked on just the call butterfly So you can kind of see what that is here and then to keep them Separate to make it easier for tracking. We did the other one inputs, which is the one we The one I just showed so Just waiting for some more time to pass more theta to decay This one could use a little bit of upside movement And the other one could use a slightly downside movement. So if we click on all these What you'll see is this basically Mirrors kind of looks like an iron condor, right? You've got this Span here where we can profit. We've got our defined risk. So it's just two butterflies Combined almost looks like an iron condor from the risk profile. So Just overall with both of them together you can see we're very centered So just waiting for some time to pass before we do anything here Next trade was an opening trade in tesla And what we did here is we did a post earnings short put vertical in tesla So just like we teach in our earnings course If price moves up beyond the expected move And so for those of you who are newer and may not understand what the expected move is Let's go to tesla So if you go to your trade tab, you can look at this a couple different ways You can look on the very far right hand column And what you'll see is depending on which cycle you're looking at the in parentheses It shows the plus or minus the expected move. So that's basically plus or minus one standard deviation move So you can see with just today. There's an expected move of about four dollars Plus or minus either way If you go out to august for example, there's an expected move of around 28 dollars So right before earnings Let's go to the chart here. I actually marked it Oh, no. Oh, yeah, there it is So I just what I'll what I'll do is The if the stock is going to announce earnings a lot of times I'll just mark kind of where that expected move is to the upside And if price opens above that Just like we teach in our course Then what we then what tends to happen is price will stay above that level or go higher in this case We got in right here And the same day it shot higher and then we ended up getting out today And booked a nice profit. So We uh, I'll get to the closing trade in here in a second, but booked over 40 percent in just one day. So Nice trade in tesla. I played nicely with us for that trade did what it was supposed to Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in iwm. So we just rolled our short call verticals I already went over that just to recap. Let's go back to that real quick And this is our short call vertical So just continuing to keep that short delta on for our portfolio looking for a little bit downside to benefit that piece Next trade was an opening adjusting trade in fxi. I already went over that We just added a butterfly. So I showed you both butterflies both our call side and our put side We looked to close these for around 20 25 profit So just waiting in fxi And then here's the closing trade in tesla where we booked over 40 percent in just one day that I just mentioned And lastly today we did a rolling adjusting trade in qqq So what we did here, which is slightly different from what we usually do on a roll is we we rolled from Uh, uh, august to september Which is normal But what we did here is we actually widened out the strikes a little bit So we went from three strikes wide to five points wide, okay And we did that to lower the cost of our roll. So we paid a smaller debit to to do that roll Uh, and then we just you know, we continue to keep this on for that short delta in our portfolio So if we take a look at the cues And the reason we did it today is just because with the with the up movement that we had especially yesterday in the cues It kind of went out of our range So we wanted to get back to a positive theta position And so let's go ahead and click on that. So that's what this looks like now So now we're in a positive theta position as you can see right here And just looking for some some downside to benefit that piece now. We still have our other One on in august Which is still in our range still in a positive theta position So that's why we have not rolled that one yet If we can get a move next week Lower than we might either close that or roll it depending on Where our overall portfolio is In respect to a short delta position so Right now our overall portfolio Is at about three to one Of our short delta to theta ratio So remember for every dollar of theta that we're collecting We we like to be anywhere from one to one to five to one as far as short delta And we're right at three to one. So in a good spot And so we'll just continue to manage that as needed So those are all the alerts from the week. Let's take a look at some of our other positions We've got a strangle on in oil We're up a decent amount in this trade overall, but this piece of the trade Still very centered just looking for some more time to pass before we close that out So if it stays in our range here and we get to about 40 50 of max profit will close that out Uh, but let's take a look at a chart of oil To get an idea of where implied volatility is right now still still fairly elevated We are at the yeah, still at the 60 level on the IV rank Which in this case IV rank is higher than IV percentile Typically you're going to see IV percentile be the higher of the two But in this case you can see it's IV rank based on just where the option prices have traded over time Next trade we'll take a look at is es forward slash es, which is the s and p 500 Futures, we've got an iron condor on here still pretty centered Just waiting for some more time to pass there And then we've also got a Short call vertical, which was previously part of an iron condor Price moved out of our range. So we closed out the untested side Just looking for a little bit of downside to get back in our range there And then a separate trade in es was not part of our iron condor trade But this is a long put vertical that we originally put it on just to add some short delta in our portfolio And just still continuing to keep that on we've we've rolled it several times Uh, this is yeah, this really strictly to keep some short delta in our portfolio So looking for some downside to benefit that piece And that's an august which has Still has 14 days left. So we will potentially roll that one next week We like to once we get into the week of expiration or the next two weeks, I should say Once we get into the week of expiration depending on where things are That's when we like to uh to roll those out Another trade we have on is z n which has 49 days to expiration. This is a strangle Spread this out a little bit so you can see it a little bit better We are pretty centered got some profit here Just waiting for some more waiting for about 40 to 50 percent of max profit before we book that one I mentioned apple di a So the dow etf we've got a short call vertical here looking for some downside to benefit that piece That's in august and then we've also got one in september So that that one's well within our range could use a little bit more downside to benefit that piece I mentioned disney mentioned eem e w w. So here's a here's a trade that we've Made a few adjustments to uh, this is an adjusted strangle and just looking for some downside to benefit that piece I haven't added to this even though price was up here kind of you know near our near our break even point typically I would add another one, but Uh, I've been waiting for implied volatility to pop its head up a little higher and it hasn't and we got a contraction today So just managing Excuse me just managing the current piece at this point. Uh, not looking to add quite yet E w z we've got a strangle on here You can see prices hanging out near the upper end of its range, but no need to adjust yet Just kind of waiting there if we take a look at the charts You can see we've still got fairly elevated implied volatility levels So if we need to add to this one if it kind of moves more towards our short strike We may look to add another piece to this Uh, we're just going to hold to see what happens early next week and make a decision at that point I mentioned fxi mentioned google mentioned goldman mentioned i w m in vidya mentioned that one mentioned the cues and then lastly xl k We've got this long put vertical on just looking for some downside to benefit that We will we'll be looking to roll this one or close it out next week depending on where price is So that's all the alerts. That's all the trades. Hope everybody has a great weekend And we will talk to you next week. Have a good one everybody