Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins.   So come on in the studio with me. There's lots to learn in this tutorial and it's just a really fun subject matter. And Jackson's thinking, okay how about doing a painting of me one day, right? I definitely have to do that. Alright, let's get started. I'd also really appreciate it if you would take a moment right now to like, subscribe, and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos. And I'm able to keep these free lessons coming because of the support from my patrons on my Patreon page. If you would like to consider becoming a patron, it's only $5 a month and you get extra goodies and extra content. And by the way, I do have a tiny painting or small paintings playlist. I'll include a link to that playlist in the description of this video and I'll add all these videos that I'm doing this month to the playlist as well. Let me share some product info with you. The surface I'll be using is pastel matte. I love the surface for pastel painting. It's awesome. Here it is on DickBlick.com and I'm using the, it's the darker colors that are in a pad. My pad I got was the 9x12 with 12 sheets. It's $40 for that pad. Now, that sounds expensive, but you can literally wash this stuff off if you're not happy with your painting. It's great. The color I'll be using is the color called sand. And I like working on the colored surfaces, but sometimes I buy white pastel matte as well. And I have cut one of the sheets into multiple 5 inch by 4 inch little squares to start this painting on. The soft pastels I'll be using is a 40 piece set of Sennelier pastels. I love this little half stick set of 40. It has such beautiful colors and I almost exclusively used this set for this painting. I think with the exception of maybe some purples, I'll talk about that as I paint. I also like on the DickBlick.com site how you can literally click on all of the colors in the set and see the actual names of those colors. So that's really convenient if you're just trying to find a particular color. And as I often say, use what you have. You do not have to buy these products. Many of the things that I teach can be used even with other mediums. But if you want to explore other soft pastel painting products and many of the products I use in my videos, check out my Amazon page. I have some photo images of some sets that I use, pastels and papers. I also have some product review videos and I have groupings called Idea Lists where I group together products of a particular category and you can explore and learn a little bit more just from my Amazon page. So check that out. Now look at this adorable reference image. I haven't painted animals in a while and I thought I'd love to do some tiny paintings of animals and this Fox was just so sweet. So I got this reference image from a site called Unsplash.com. The photographer was Nathan Anderson. Looks like he got the photographer of the year in 2017. He has some beautiful photography. So thank you Nathan for this lovely image. As I previously mentioned, I'm using a size that's a 5 inch by 4 inch. I really loved all of the softness of the background around the Fox. So I came up with an idea for an underpainting and I'm going to share that with you right now. All right, here's what I'm going to experiment with. I want to get some soft color down and not get so tight with this Fox too quickly. So I thought, you know what, I'd love to blend some soft colors in this and I thought, you know what, I have these neat tools that are from Pan Pastels. I really do like Pan Pastels and I always forget to use them, but they're literally pastels that come in a little, it looks like a blush container, like a little makeup, and you can grab with these little spongy tools, grab the pastels and paint with them. So they have other tools you can use too. They have some that looks like an eye brush applicator, but I'm going to see if I can literally, these Sennelier pastels are so soft that I'm just going to see if I can just grab some color right here, like a little palette of color, and do some blending. I've also got some chamois claws here. I use chamois claws a lot, so they may work as well. So here I go experimenting again. Go figure, right? All right, so I think what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead and get some of these pretty greens down. Let's see if hopefully this will refocus and show you. I'm just gonna see what happens. Oh yeah, that's kind of cool. I like it, and it's kind of mixing in some of that other green in the back of it, so let's just go with it. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's working. So I'm just gonna get some of this color in. Maybe I should do my left hand. Any other lefties out there? I hear from you guys sometimes as we're, as I'm posting videos, you guys shout out lefty power, but you probably are like me in that. I can use both hands, but that's mostly because you grow up in a right-handed world, and you kind of have to learn how to do that. You know, I think I'm going to leave this is really light back in there. I don't think I'm going to do a lot in that area, but over in here, this is a little darker. I think I'm going to grab some of these, even this dark blue right here, and I think I'm gonna get some of that in. Now, these pastel applicators here for the pan pastels, they will really stick to some surfaces. They don't apply good if they're too textured. If they're, if the surface is like a U art or a fissure, and that one's, this color's not applying so great right now. So I'm going to try one of these. Let's see what this does. Oh yeah, that's pretty cool. Again, just an experiment. I want to get, I know he's got kind of a halo or silhouette of dark around him and back in here. So see what that does? I'm already kind of creating a mood, and you can do the same thing with literally just putting the pastel down. I think I'm going to do that a little bit here. This one is a little dark, but it's okay. So what I can do is I can see how it applies so nicely, and I'm just looking at some of the ways this is kind of moving and going, and now we're already getting something happening here. Then you can take your chamois cloth and you can blend once you've added it, and you can add water to this. You know, if this feels like it's too, I don't know, too much, not blended enough, you can get some water and add to it. Another fun thing is just to get a spritzer bottle of water and spray in and let it drip and move around. Maybe I'll do that too. There's a little bit of dark back in here. I think there's like a, this is like a really nice, really dark green. I'm squinting my eyes to look at where some of the darks are, and I want him to feel like he's nestled down in here, so I'm going to get some of that in here. Kind of here there and everywhere, and then there's dark back here, but it's not going to feel that dark. So I'm going to grab some of this really pretty sagey green. Yeah, there we go. It's kind of way back in the distance. And things with the rules of art and nature, things typically get lighter in value and cooler in color as they go off into the distance. So I'm getting me kind of a nice little halo effect, going around, getting ready to get that box nestled in there. I want him obviously to be the focal point, okay? So he's going to be kind of right in here. I'm looking, it's not quite center. His nose is going to be right about in here. So, but that's kind of fun. I almost feel like I want to get get some water or some alcohol. I think I might just get that a try. I think I'm going to spray it and see what happens. That's what, you know, to me the fun part of art is just playing and remembering that it's all right. We always have this end goal in mind that the painting is what matters. And it's also the experience. So let me get some alcohol. All right. So I've got this little spritzer bottle of alcohol, literally just a body mist sprayer. It's not vanilla sugar body mist. And I'm just going to spray someone here to see what happens. And now I've got a brush that's a really kind of a course. What is this called here? Something from China. But I like to get a brush that's got some texture to it and just have some fun. So let's spray this and see what happens. I sprayed a light mist of alcohol kind of consistently around. And I just started moving the color around with the brush. You see how it's starting to drip and run. And what that's going to do is it's going to create that more moody, subtle, subdued type of background, which definitely you got that feel from the photograph. And before I did this, it was a little bit too detailed. So I definitely will use this technique again. You don't even need to use, I had fun trying with those little pan pastel applicators. But really you could just lay down some pastels, maybe blend it around a little bit, and then try some alcohol. But now we have this nice moody beginning for the painting. Alcohol dries quickly anyway, but I decided just to blow it dry before getting in the sketch. And I don't always or often use a pencil for sketching, but I kept this really light. The reason is because sometimes pastels won't stick to the pencil. But I felt my charcoal sticks would be too big for this little small surface. So I got in just a little basic shape of the fox. Now if you want more instruction on sketching, I'm going to have another tutorial coming up where I give you some tips. And I do stress to get better at drawing. Drawing is a core foundation for beautiful painting. You just really need some to learn some drawing skills and don't cut those things short. Now when I begin any painting, when I'm finally getting to you know laying down some of the elements and the big shapes in the painting, I focus more on the value than the color. Fortunately this little set of Sennelier pastels had some really nice colors for this little fox.  Can you see how the fox on the left side from our view is really in shadow? Okay, it's pretty dark and the light side is going to be the top of his head. Obviously we've got a source of light that's kind of coming from up and above and a little bit to the right side, our right side. And of course when you have a subject matter that's an animal or a person, it does take longer than a typical landscape painting. You've got to get some of these features and bone structure and things correct for it to render, you know, accurately. And so I'm taking some time on this. This is real time. But can you see how I have added the darker colors to the left, especially the left lower side of the fox because he's, you know, got the grasses around them and everything. And I often mention that with pastel painting, it's a good idea to work dark to light because we can layer lighter elements on top to create the contrast. And so I know that it looks a little dark often when I first start, but I know that I'm going to lay the lighter fur on top of that. And just like I say with the landscape painting, I know this is a small, it's a tiny painting anyway, and the fox is kind of small on the painting. So it seems like it could be difficult, but I'm still focusing on the same principles of big shapes, blocking in is what that's called. I'm not going in right now and trying to get anything so specific with the fur going this way or that way. I'm literally just looking at the value first, value as king. Even if you don't have the right color, often you can choose a value. For example, that blue that I've added in the dark areas under his neck and down in the shadows. If you pulled that color up like in Photoshop that's actually in the photograph, I mean it's going to lean a little cooler probably, but it's not the exact same color. But if I get the value right, that's already going to be in my favor.  So on that case I did grab, it's a Terry Ludwig Eggplant pastel that you saw me use there for the inside of the ears and the nose. I had it a little sharper on the point. Now here's where I grabbed, I do grab a few colors that aren't in this set. I realized after I started rewatching this, this purple, it's a broken piece. I had all of my pastels fall over a couple years ago in the wind and I have these little shards of pastels and some of them were my favorite colors. So I work with them, but this is a Terry Ludwig. It's just a beautiful warm lavender purple and this color definitely you don't see in the Fox, but I know because it's the right value. It's kind of medium value, not too light or not too dark and it's cooler and things get cooler in the shadows. So I often use that little strategy of using blues and purples for shadowy colors and my Fox comes out looking perhaps a little bit whimsical, but I felt that the the general photograph and the the mood of this was a little bit whimsical and I really just loved how he was looking up. Someone mentioned I shared this on Instagram. I share a lot of little stories and reels on Instagram sometime before I even make a video like this. So find me on Instagram and follow me. I would love that. You can find me at Susan Jenkins Artist. One word, Susan Jenkins Artist. And so somebody said on there it says it looks like he's watching you paint him and I was like that's so cool. I kind of felt that way while I was painting. Now this is another one from the little forty-half stick set of Sennelier's and I'm just kind of getting in some of the values on his ears and again it looks a little bit weird right now and even as as long as I've been painting I still go through the phases sometimes. I think I literally said out loud verbally while I was painting this. Oh my gosh this looks terrible. I walked away and came back and and just was like oh no this is what I what how it works. You just have to get things blocked in before it starts coming together. So be patient with those stages that are often called your painting goes through an adolescent stage sometimes where it's it's not grown yet it's not mature yet so definitely be patient with that and now I am really studying the reference image to see how his little mouth goes and at the he had a little curve like right at the bottom of his little mouth line there and and it does it looks a little odd right now but I'm going to start layering some of the other values on top and shaping him up a bit more accurately with regards to his anatomy and it eventually comes together. So I I don't know why I started this particular series of tiny paintings with a subject matter that's a little more time consuming. I do have another the next one in this tiny series is going to be a bull a cow bull and he's really loose and impressionistic and then I have what I do is when I have a month of painting a theme I try to I like to get on a roll and I like to paint paint paint paint and then I start uploading the videos so I've already got like four paintings done for this month so you know you'll have a lot of content coming but I want you to notice here how I have layered some of the lighter values now where the light is hitting and also too I resist the urge to grab white. Our brains tell us okay the fox has a little white area around his face around his nose and his mouth area he has a white area around his ears and a little bit on his chest and so when you're a beginning artist and I did the same thing I'll grab white but often almost always white is not white because it's being influenced by other colors it's being influenced by where it is with relation to shadows and so that's why you'll see me sometimes now this one is this is a gray actually and I wanted to get a little bit oh well let me tell you what this pastel is these are prismacolor new pastels spelled in you pastel and they are harder and you can get finer lines and because this was such a small little subject matter I found I needed to resort to using my prismacolor new pastels because some of the other ones were just too darn chunky and you can do quite a bit with chunky pastels believe it or not let me zoom in here a little bit and show you this little layering that I'm doing now like I said this is actually it looks white here you know just because of what it's next to but it's kind of a grayish white it's a light gray and that's the area where the sun is shining so I'm just kind of scumbling in little bits of this lighter value now on this area if you don't have the right color you see how I I'm just lightly glazing so that it's just a little lighter I'm not pressing hard so it's not as if you want to call it white as the part that's above it so often we can layer to kind of get new colors or new values even when we don't have that many pastels I use that technique often if I if I need something that's kind of a middle value and I don't have that color I'll lay down a dark value first and then scumble in a lighter value to produce more of a middle value I'm looking for so while you can't really mix pastels like you do with other mediums to get new colors and values you can have ways that you can accomplish that by layering now I am speeding up the remaining portion of just the fox and then I'll go back to real time when I get to the background you know when you're doing elements like this animals and people you do have to you know make sure you get it right and it does take a little bit of time so I didn't want the video to be too awfully long so I'll be talking about that more in an upcoming video now I'm using these new pastels just to kind of build up the fur once again I've got my values in first kind of big shapes right it's going to look a little wonky and crazy at first but as long as you get your values and your shapes in pretty accurately your painting you build upon it and I find that I tweak things as I go sometimes I see wow his ears need to be you know a little taller a little shorter we do have a lot of flexibility when we're painting with pastels now I use a cooler blue color this is another new pastel and I used the cooler color why do you think I would do that well I used it on the sides that were a little bit more in shadow and here he is at this point I did you can see I kind of worked with him I missed some footage and kind of changed his face a little bit and now I'm getting in that little white highlight in his eye and a little bit of orange sorry for my big head his eye did have some orange in it as well now I couldn't do this if I didn't get my head closer so I am so sorry that you can't see this but this is the point where I decided all right it's good enough I need to move on I felt pretty good with how he looked and I needed to get to the background and a lot of times I don't even spend this much time on one part of the painting but when it's a subject matter that's an animal or a person you know you got to get those things right so let's move on to getting this lovely very impressionistic background of flowers now a lot of times flowers that are kind of this purpley color they have more blue in them than you realize and I've found a good strategy for doing those flowers is to get in the darker value first kind of the same technique that you know I talked about with a fox and I know some of these flowers are a little closer and some of them I want to give more focal interest one of the strategies for focal point is contrast and to get good contrast with these flowers I need to get some darker values in and then gradually layer my lighter values on top of them now I wanted these flowers obviously he's looking up what's he looking up at well it's it's a combination of the sky but maybe some of these flowers sticking up so I'm just kind of scumbling in the little dark areas these are just shapes you know I'm just thinking of what the general shape of these flowers will be now I even got in a little bit darker in just a couple of areas now you're going to see me this is back to real time you're going to see me gradually layer these and I work some of them look like they were a little now change my mind there they're bluer and so I'm just scumbling that just means to kind of randomly move your pastel around in these little random marks and I'm scumbling in on top of some of the darks just to get I'm using the reference image as a guide and at this point I was really having fun I really love painting landscapes with a sense of freedom I had spent so much time trying to get this fox's elements correct and him to look like a fox that the flower part was just piece of cake you know it was just so fun to just get expressive and have some freedom in painting so I did notice that some of them were more purple than than blue and I just decided to give a little color interest by varying that up a bit I think those other two pastels or the ones I've been using before were Sennelier and Terry Ludwig now this one is a lovely Sennelier from the 40 half stick set that I've mentioned at the beginning of this video I love this color I happen to love a color that is right at the cusp between purple and blue kind of a periwinkle color but look how that vibrates on top of these flowers and I kept it really light as I got down to the bottom because these flowers are a little more berry a little more in shadow I don't want to get it too light down there but look how that's just looking so beautiful with the contrast of that red fox or orangey red fox with those purples and I just really enjoyed painting these flowers so I'm going to finish this up you watch I'm going to add some music then I'll be back at the end to share a little bit more of my final touches well I really liked the stage of how loose and impressionistic the background was but if you've watched my videos long you know I fiddled with it and fiddled with it I added lots more little flowers which I'm still very happy with the final but I have lots more tiny painting tutorials on the way I hope you will subscribe if you haven't already like this video leave me a comment I love to hear what you have to say become a patron if you would like to support this channel because these videos that's how I'm able to bring them is because of the five dollar a month support from my patrons god bless you patrons god bless all of you watching and happy painting


On the bison tenure of the United States Constitution, and... It's good to see you again, 500 young people with... people with aches and pains that have bothered them with arthritis for many, many years. And I've been the co-host for six years for the Telethon in Nashville, Tennessee, and we've raised several million dollars. And we want to say thank you for assigning the executive order in 1985 that's helping the arthritis prevention. We appreciate it. Well, this is Chris here. Thank you, Morgan, for what you're doing. Souvenir's here. Feel upon the inside what's important is jelly beans. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. One more is coming. Thank you. We have two more members of the foundation. This is Betsy Casey. Yes. Can you tell us a little how are you? I'm so pleased to meet you, sir. Nice to see you. My grandfather was Senator Brewster from Maine. Oh, I'm Brewster. I'm Peter Mathan. Hi, everybody. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, sir. I appreciate it. There. Nice to meet you. I had a key ring. When I handed out these into the seals on them, I always like to point out there's a little history evident in this room about the seal. That old desk, which goes way back, you'll notice that the eagle in the seal is facing toward the claw holding the arrows instead of the olive branch. After World War II, President Truman changed that, and that more recent one, the eagle now faces the olive branch. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Mr. President, would you please sign this form? Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you all. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you all for what you're doing. Thank you. Judy, welcome back. Thank you very, very much. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Glad to see you here. Well, I appreciate it all the longer. I feel like I get down to my feet. We can miss you. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I've been in a lot of prayers. Well, thank you. I've been in a lot of people's prayers, and that means so much to me. It's just a little sooner or later. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. I want to tell you that the support that I've had from this building and everybody, it's just absolutely incredible. It's really impressive in the United States. It's the way we learned it in December. As I say, thank you again. I appreciate it. You want to get one with your other boss? Oh, yes. All right. Sure. Stay right here in the middle. Okay. I don't fall. Thank you, Judy. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. I hope I stay longer this time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Congratulations. Yes. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hello, sir. I'm Deborah Anderson. I'm Travis. How are you doing, Mr. President? Yes, I'm good. I'm coming over for his base cancer. Nice. Nice to have you here. Hello, sir. I'm Debbie Garza.  Well, give her my best. I will, sir. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Great call. Good to see you. Thanks, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'm going to put this up at the single desk. Well, this is my entry test. We've been sitting here for years. Who's it there? Key rings. I think we're still around.


If you're contemplating reigniting a relationship that has ended, I want to strongly urge you to make sure that that decision is based on more than hope. Hope alone, without a new relational reality and awareness of what needed to change and be upgraded in both of you, really leads to a fulfilling outcome. I think it's good to keep an eye on that stuff. I'm all for reconnecting with people, but not just based on hope things will be better next time around. Alright, love you guys.


Turn it up, everything's good. All right, it says 350 in the little clock here, which means it's time for me to go. So hi, everyone, I'm Julian. This is my first real conference, great to be here. We're not going to talk about rails at all. We're going to talk about space. This is one of my favorite pictures ever, right? It's the Earthrise picture from Apollo 8. And my whole life, I've just loved space. When I was a little kid, it just inspired me so much. I know it inspires tons of other people. I know I got into a technical field because as a kid I love space. Raise your hand if you think it's the same thing for you. I know I've talked to so many people where it's the case. Awesome. And I mean, just space is really cool, right? There's just everything about astronomy or manned space exploration is just really, really awesome and inspiring. And there's one thing above all else that inspires people just so much. And that, of course, is the Apollo program. Landing on the Moon is maybe the greatest thing that humans have ever done. And people will talk about awesome rockets, right? Like the Saturn V. It generates 7 and 1 half million pounds of thrust on takeoff. That's a lot.  Or they'll talk about mathematicians and awesome things they did for the guidance equations and stuff to get people to the Moon safely and back.  We landed on the Moon with less computing power than in a wristwatch or something. And as a software developer, that makes me sad. For a long time, I didn't really think that there was anything in the Apollo program to inspire our software developers. And fortunately, it turns out that is not at all the case. So this is the Apollo guidance computer.  I think it's like 9 by 9 inches. So this thing was built to take people to the Moon. And it is awesome in ways you might not expect. So I only had 2 kilobytes of RAM, I think. Not very much. It was really, really, really slow. I did some back of the envelope calculations. And it turns out all of the computation done on all the Apollo missions ever could be done by my little laptop over there in under a second. But my laptop may or may not make it through this talk. The Apollo guidance computer never hit an unknown bug in thousands of hours of time and space. It never failed. Despite the fact that space is pretty hostile, right? There's gamma rays. Anything metallic that floats around will find the one place where it can short things out and cause lots of problems. And so this thing is pretty amazing. It worked really, really well. But what's even more amazing is that it was built at a time when we didn't know much about making software. They started working on it in 1961. And they finished in 1968. So to put that into perspective, in 1965, the MIT Instrumentation Lab, that's the department of MIT that was building this thing, they got this new computer. It's called an IBM System 360. Anyone heard of that before? It's one of the more famous computers in the history of computing. So there's one particularly famous person that worked on it. And anyone know who I'm talking about? Anyone have an idea? Come on, I know you all know. Fred Brooks, right? And he wrote this book. What was the book called? Anyone? The Mythical Man Month. So when did he write that book? Not until 1975. And by then, we had been gone from the moon for many, many years. So think about what that means. The software developers writing code for the Apollo Guidance Computer were learning the same things as Fred Brooks at the same time.   You say, OK. Whereas today, you might say, no, read the Mythical Man Month, and you know that that won't work. So another thing. The word software was first used in 1950. It was used in our research paper. And there's some backstory here. So it's pretty important.  So the first computers in the 20s, 30s, 40s, they were built by men, like predominantly, overwhelmingly men. And they built these computers. And the computers did one thing. You would build a computer to calculate the Fibonacci sequence or something. And if you wanted a computer to calculate prime numbers, you built another computer, or you took the computer you had and modified it really heavily. And over time, computers got a little bit better, and then they could be configured. You could flip some switches and set some bits, and then the computers would do different things. And the men building these computers, they hated this task. They thought it was boring, and that it was easy, and that it wasn't very interesting at all.  And only later, as time goes on, did they figure out that this task of configuring the computer that the men had built was actually the entire field of software development, and that it was actually really, really hard and challenging, and it was a field alone to itself. And only then did men start coming in and start saying, hey, I would like to do this. During the Apollo program, one of the managers of one of the software teams when he was assigned to that team, his wife was told by him, hey, honey, don't tell any of our friends that I manage a software team, because it wasn't cool for a guy to write software yet in the 60s. It was getting there. So it's kind of interesting, right? So here's my takeaway from that.   Your grandma was writing code. And she did a damn fine job. So don't worry about that.  They're not as good at writing code as men, stop. Stop saying those things.  It does not stand up to the history of computing. So it's a little aside there. Anyways, OK, we were talking about the Apollo Guidance Computer and things that people learn from that. So let me ask you guys a question. How many of you have built some sort of web app, maybe a Rails app or something, and you depend on someone else's service, an API or something like that? Someone, another team your company built or something external, right? And what happened to your site the first time that thing went down? Yeah, I heard a very sad noise of something breaking. Yeah, exactly. Your pager goes off, although maybe in the 60s I don't think they even had pagers. So what did you do after a while? The first time you fixed that one thing.  And then something else happens and something else happens, and hopefully after a while your system is smart enough that anything that this other system throws at you, something you've never even seen before, it doesn't matter. You'll keep running just fine. And so the same thing happened during the Apollo 11 landing. So this is the lunar module. So picture, this is the most critical moment of the entire Apollo space program, right? Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are in this little thing. They're heading down towards the surface of the moon. And the last 10 minutes of this are by far the most, absolutely the most critical and high-intensity part of the entire mission. Neil Armstrong said that those last couple minutes on a difficulty scale of 1 to 10 were 13, right? And he's a pretty good pilot, so that means a lot. So they're cruising down towards the surface. They're busy. They're in the zone. All of a sudden on their dashboard, big light comes on, the master alarm, everything is wrong, and their computer is giving them this error, this like 1201 error. And the astronauts are distracted in mission control. They're freaking out. They're trying to figure out what this is. You know, what does this mean? One of the MIT engineers in mission control had very wisely made a little cheat sheet of every error code that the computer could throw out. Very, very smart. And he looks up, OK, 1201, what does it say? It says, if nothing else seems wrong, you're good to go for the landing. And he actually was too scared to form words. So when he was asked, are we good to go, he just like made a thumbs up. And then he was awarded a medal from the President of the United States for his decision to not abort the moon landing. So what happened?  So today we're pretty lucky with our computers, right? If you write some code that does an infinite loop or something, your computer will probably handle it just fine, right? You have to do something pretty crazy to crash your computer. The very idea that multiple programs could even be running on a computer was new in the 1960s. They didn't have words like scheduling or tasks or processes like we have today. They called it time sharing, right? And up until the Apollo guidance computer had been built, they didn't do anything sophisticated like have priorities assigned to different tasks. They just said anything that wants to run will let it run for a little while, and then we'll run something else. And a lot of engineers thought that this approach was safe, because it was more predictable, right? It was easier to reason about. But it has a downside in that with something like priority-based scheduling, you can figure out what are the most important things that need to be running, right? The program to fire the thrusters should probably run exactly when it wants. The program to update the display for the astronauts if it's a couple milliseconds late, I think they'll be OK. And so this is a brand new approach for the Apollo program, or for computing in general. So the takeaway here is handle failure gracefully. Just do a little bit of extra work so that something unexpected can come up and you'll handle it just fine. Step two of that, by the way, is if you get to the point where you can handle an unknown failure gracefully, don't throw like a master caution alarm and raise a ruckus when you're actually handling everything great. OK, so who would have ever thought that in a Rails conf, talking about testing would be weird. But I have an entire segment about testing. Thanks, DHH, for that. So there are lives on the line. They're traveling into space, which is pretty difficult. There was a ton of testing for the software for the Apollo guidance computer. They had unit tests. They actually even called them unit tests, but with quotes, because it was a brand new word for them. But the engineers didn't really talk much about the unit tests. They said they were OK, but they didn't rant and rave about them. And I have a theory as to why that is. And that's because most of the code for the Apollo guidance computer was functional code, not in the programming sense, but also in the mathematical sense in which it's based. You have code for guidance equations. And furthermore, you have mathematicians writing them. The idea of a computer science degree did not exist in the 1960s. I think the first computer science degree was actually awarded in the late 60s. So no one writing these computers was trained as a software programmer or as a computer scientist. They were trained as mathematicians, and they were writing code to implement mathematical equations. And as you can imagine, eventually they'll get it right. So what they do talk really, really highly about is their integration tests. And now I have no idea. I should be called these system tests or some other kind of tests. But anyways, in 1972, they published a retrospective on basically the entire software development effort. And they said things. They talked specifically about things that plagued the software development effort throughout the entire program. And they listed two things. And they're both really interesting. I have a link to it at the end of my slide. So definitely check it out when you get a chance. The first thing that they just could not get right was estimating schedules. And we don't get that right today. So great. We've made a lot of progress there. One cool thing they did actually was they cataloged a bunch of different ways in which they can go wrong. Like if you have two projects competing or two projects that are running in parallel, and one of them is going to take longer. And you make the one that is not going to take as long happen even faster. You haven't actually made your whole project progress any faster, right? Just to give an example. The other thing they talked about that plagued their whole project was getting up-to-date specs and requirements and information about different systems. The Apollo program was in a rush throughout its entire development. Every part of every system in the spacecraft was constantly changing. And getting up-to-date information about these other things is hard, right? You have to go out and talk to every team. And if they don't happen to tell you that something's changing, you might not know. Again, they didn't come up with a great way to solve this. And again, we still struggle with this today. I think communication is the hardest part of software development. But they did find out a great way to figure out if you have it wrong. And that's to write integration tests. You take everything together, right? Every part of your system.  So what happens is a really interesting thing where your unit tests will test your own code. And then you'll have integration tests, which are also code. But they're not there so much to test your code. As they are to test your communication. So to put it another way, if your integration tests are failing, what it means not necessarily that you wrote bad code, but you wrote great code that does the wrong thing, right? So that's the takeaway there. Another great thing they did that we don't do today is they tested what they call the off-nominal cases. Which is just an awesome word. We don't use nominal nearly enough anymore. So they said for every one test they had that tested like the normal case. If things are going right during a mission, they had 100 that tested things going wrong. So how many of you guys have a test in your Rails app? Something like if a user logs in with the right username and the right password that they get logged in, right? I do, right? A lot of hands go up. How many of you guys have a test where if someone puts in the right username and the wrong password, they don't get logged in, right? A few hands go up. I didn't have that test until I was making this talk. So I mean there's so many different tests for things going wrong that we don't write today, I think. Anything from security related or checking of all sorts of inputs and stuff like that. But the Apollo guidance computer team got it right. And there were all sorts of cases during the Apollo program where something went a little bit wrong and something unexpected happened in the guidance computer because they had done all these off-nominal tests came out just fine. So let's talk about their teams. In 1961, when the instrument lab signed the contract to deliver the Apollo guidance computer, that contract didn't mention software at all. It said, you just have to give us this box with a computer in it that can take men to the moon.  They didn't know in 1961 what a spacecraft that goes to the moon would look like at all. They didn't know would it be one giant ship that goes all the way to the moon and then comes all the way back, would it be several little ships that are combined together, would they build two rockets and have them meet up in space and then go from there, would they build one giant rocket, no one knew. No one knew if even in principle, it would be possible to navigate to the moon. They didn't have the math to prove that you could go to the moon. And no one knew even given math that can help you navigate to the moon if a computer could be built to do it. So there were in these early days, there were no deadlines, no managers, no requirements, very little communication with other teams. And what that means is they were free to experiment and figure things out, right? A couple years later, okay, now they know we're gonna go to the moon, one giant rocket, two little spacecraft, one is just for landing on the moon. We have figured out that just like at sea, you can use a sextant and measure the angles between like stars and part of the moon or part of the earth and figure out exactly where you are. And now we know what the math looks like to take those navigation measurements and plug them into a computer, which we now know how to build and we know it can fit in a spacecraft and it can take you to the moon. So now there's 400 software developers in the Apollo guidance computer project. And now there's lots of managers. There's lots of deadlines. There's lots of requirements. There's lots of documentation. So what happened is they had teams that were the right shape and size for what they were trying to accomplish, right? If you were talking to someone who was founding a startup, it was brand new, and they said they had 400 employees, you might be a little worried. Likewise, if you were talking to a programmer that happened to work for your bank and he said we have a team of 20 and we don't really have any requirements for security or anything like that, you'd probably find another bank. So teams have to be right shape and size for what they want to accomplish. Another, a correlation to that is switching between those team sizes will be difficult and at any given time, there will be people unhappy with how your current team is shaped. So NASA and the other contractors building the Apollo spacecraft did not like that there were these rogue engineers over at MIT just fooling around doing whatever they wanted, and then that they were gonna somehow have to deliver a guidance computer. Likewise, as the team grew, a lot of the smartest engineers, they left the guidance project once, especially once Apollo 8 had gone to the moon. A lot of the engineers said, okay, we've done it. A couple of years ago, we had this cool challenge and now we figured it out onto the next thing. But the mission to the moon was successful. The goal was accomplished. We landed on the moon before 1970. So the team was always the right size. What's next? Let's talk a little bit about working with users. Except in this case, it's actually working with astronauts. So who's seen the right stuff or read the book? Right, they're both great. Okay, lots of you. How did they describe astronauts? Anyone? What's that? Reckless. Reckless, okay. Cowboys. Cowboys, yes. There was a lot of scenes of them riding horses around and stuff. Let's see.  They were extremely talented. They were hard to work with. They're just like software developers. So just like any other users, astronauts don't know what they want. One of the most important things you can learn about working with your users is they won't tell you what they actually want. There's a great example of this. So the Apollo guidance computer was not just a guidance computer. It was also an autopilot. It could take you from Earth orbit to a couple feet above the lunar surface and it could take you from the lunar surface all the way back to Earth. So the engineers at MIT would talk to the astronauts and they said, hey, astronauts, you know how at the end of your mission you have this re-entry process and it's pretty dangerous, right? If you're coming in too steep, you can burn up. If you don't come in steep enough, you can ricochet out into space and you'll never come back. But we know we can write an autopilot that will do this for you automatically. You just have to press a couple of buttons and we'll get you right through every time. And the astronaut said, no, do not do that. You will be wasting your time. We are astronauts and we are trained to do these hard things like do a manual re-entry. And astronauts, by the way, were very distrustful of all automation, partially for good reason. In the 50s and 60s, a lot of early flight tests with especially analog computers flying, aircraft had gone wrong and a lot of their friends had died. But on the other hand, also, astronauts are super macho, right? They don't like the idea of a computer taking away something that they use to show their skills. So the astronaut said, no, don't even bother building this re-entry program because we'll never use it. So the engineers built it anyways and then it was used on every single mission.  So your users don't know what they want. And now let's talk about interfaces. Let's imagine you've built this computer that can go to the moon and you've got your astronauts ready to go to the moon. How do they talk to each other? Keep in mind this is the 60s. The field of human computer interaction isn't invented until 1980. You can't use a CRT screen because they're too heavy. You can't use an LCD screen because they haven't been invented yet either. And you can't actually use any type of screen at all. It turns out the Apollo guidance computer doesn't have the power for anything like that. So you can use little seven segment LEDs and you can use dials and stuff like that. So what do you build that astronauts can use? It has to be powerful, right? It can't just be one button that says take me to the moon and maybe another button that says take me back. There's a little bit more going on. And it has to be something that astronauts in space suits can deal with, right? So I don't think an iPhone would have worked even if they had it. It has to be something that you can operate very quickly, right? There's a little bit of time pressure when you're moving it, you know, five miles per second. So I wanna show you what they came up with and it's this thing. And this is not a very pretty picture but it's here just as insurance because I have a live demo of it actually working. So this is the display and keyboard unit. So we're gonna switch over here. So some very smart people who are not me have used ASM and taken an emulator running actual Apollo guidance computer code. We have all the code by the way and you can take a look at it online. And they've built an actual functional interface in your web browser to the guidance computer and I'm gonna show you guys how it works and I'm gonna see what you guys think. So you can see here this thing on the left pretty much is the actual interface. And then this stuff on the right is just for running the emulation. This sort of represents the simulated environment. They didn't get this thing. So what do we have here? We've got a bunch of lights for warnings and status and stuff like that. We've got just a couple little bits of display down here and then we've got just a couple buttons. So let me give you an example of how this works. So what you can do is you pick a verb and then you pick a noun. So a verb is something like show me some data. So that's verb zero six. And then a noun is something like basically the current system uptime is noun 65. You hit enter. And it shows you, you don't get any decimal points. So you don't get any labels. So you have to know what these mean. So I'll tell you. So this means this computer has been running for one hour, 31 minutes and 49.88 seconds. Okay, let's try something else. Let's hit another verb. That's verb one six. So that's similar to verb six. Except what it means is show me some data and then keep updating it. And then we'll do noun 65 again. So now again, one hour, 32 minutes and the number of seconds are going up and you can see this activity. So can anyone think of anything that maybe we use every single day, some of us at least, that lets you take verbs and nouns and combine them in all sorts of interesting powerful ways? Anyone? Well, all right.  A computer program that we use every single day with verbs and nouns. HTTP is a good one, but no. I was thinking of Vim. Vim, let's hear it for Vim. Yes, exactly. I would love to find out that the interface in VI was influenced by the Apollo guidance computer. I don't think it was. If someone happens to know, please let me know. That would be awesome. But a funny thing, by the way, is that this interface was intended to be temporary. All the engineers said, well, we don't really know what to build, but we'll build this thing with these verbs and nouns and it's kind of clever and we'll use that until we build something better. And of course, we now know if you want something to stick around forever, just say it's temporary. But it's cool that the astronauts were actually became very adept at this and it actually functions really well. And the fact that we still use something similar in Vim today, like raise your hand if you use Vim as your primary editor for all the code you write. Exactly, it's maybe 25% of the people in the room. So I just think that's really, really cool. Let's see, what else have I got for you? We're gonna go back to the slides here, but just to say, I'm Julian Simione. I work at 42 Floors. You can tweet at me there. I am a pilot in real life and it's really fun. Again, another thing I was inspired to do by the space program. And I would love to take some questions. Okay guys, thank you so much.


I'm sitting across from them and I say, what's your best price? Go. Knock knock. Andy says, hello? Go. Most of you in here, you get nervous when people ask for a better deal. It's no big deal. You guys get it? All right, guys. So, here we go.  Okay? So, let's do this. Number one. What do you do? Kitchen remodeling. Okay. Kitchen remodeling. Come here. All right. So, he grabs my mic. Somebody grab my mic. So, he says he does kitchen remodeling, right? What's the number one objection you got? Probably, I got to talk to my wife. Okay. Cool. So, this is simple. Ready? Hey, by the way, have I given you all the numbers? Is this where you give them all the numbers? Yeah. Okay. So, we sit down. He's present. He's presenting all the numbers and I'll say, hey man, I really appreciate it. Thanks for so much. This is going to be a kitchen remodel. I'm going to talk to my wife. I'm going to get back with you. Go. Hey, I completely understand you're going to talk to your wife. I believe you spoke with your wife that you were going to come here. We're going to look at the cabinets, choose the stone. That was the decision you guys made together before coming here, right? Okay. So, I believe if you were to pick this stone or this cabinet and move forward with this decision, I don't think that's something that she would be frustrated about, right? No. I just want to talk to her because it's a lot of money. I completely understand. When is it that we could get together and I can meet with you guys so we can... Okay. Now, listen, I'm going to ask you guys a question. Just a question. Do we want to close them now or do we want to close them like later on? Okay. If a customer leaves, are they going to return? Guys, listen, I want to tell you something. I want to really believe in people. Okay. But there's someone else somewhere else that's better than you. And what I've learned is this. A lot of people, they do a really good job and a lot of people just, they say what he said. Heck, I talked to my wife and they drive right across the street and they buy across street. Why? Just how people work. I don't know. Well, no, no, it couldn't be the real objection, whether it is or it's not. If you don't close them right now, what does it matter? Someone else will. Okay. Now, how can we close this? Number one, obviously we wouldn't have a conversation if this wasn't important to your wife. Would you agree? Yes or no? Is that important to establish that? Look, you wouldn't have taken the time to drive out here today if your wife wasn't important enough for us to get into that kitchen. Would you agree? You guys hear what I'm saying? Okay. Now I'm going to ask you a question. You spend your money on a lot of things in life, which most of them probably don't make your wife super happy. If your wife's anything like mine, when she loves being at home, her favorite place to be is in the kitchen. You guys got children? She probably loves cooking them food. She probably finds her time in the kitchen when she loves the kitchen. Now, obviously, because you're out here, there's a dream kitchen that she wants.  Your wife sounds pretty easy to please. If we had her a dream kitchen, she'd probably be happy as hell and happy wife, happy life. You work hard for your money.  If you could find the courage to say yes, regardless of what it costs and you went home and you said, hey baby girl, didn't matter what it cost, your number one to me and to prove that, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the kitchen remodel because your number one in my life. Do you think she'd have a problem with that? Okay, so what do we want to do? Move forward. Get the credit card. Move forward. Listen, here's what I want to tell you guys. Again, again, everything's common sense. Okay? By the way, listen to me. Does the kitchen even cost you any money? No, because it increases the property value.  So basically you just made your wife happy and it's free. It increases the appraisal value. Dude, it's a win-win for everybody. It's not costing you a dollar. Okay, that's it. By the way, let me ask you another question. What if you end up talking to your wife and she's like, I don't know. Listen, I don't know. It sounds like it's a lot of money. How many more times are we going to keep pushing the things that are important to her to the back burner? How many more times are we going to keep pushing the things that are important to her to the back burner? Do you know what your life would look like when your wife says, no, I don't want to go out for my birthday? What she really means is I want to go out for my birthday. Listen, listen, I need you to understand something. There's a lot of times in your life where you pull the trigger on things that you wanted to do. This is a time where it's a selfless act that you're going to pull the trigger on something that she wants to do.  This is called a selfless act. It's called a selfless act. I know you want to talk to your wife. You know what she's going to say? Don't know. She's going to say, don't do it. You know why? Because she's used to getting put second. No, no, listen, I know I'm going to be honest. She's going to say, don't do it. You know why? Because we've made business decisions in front of her. You've been at work all the time to earn this money and you've proved that your work, you spend way more hours with them than you do with her. Like, she's used to being second. This is the time to prove to her that she is number one. This is a very easy decision. One that only the best man in the world can make. Hey guys, what's going on? It's Andy. A lot of you leave comments telling me that you need help. Do me a favor and tell you the best way to get a hold of me. Shoot me a text message right now,<PHONE_NUMBER>.<PHONE_NUMBER>. I'll help you with whatever you need.  Let's get back to the video. Okay, so if you've got a wife like mine that takes good care of me, supports me and allows me to do the things that I want to do, getting her a kitchen remodel is not your wife's decision. It's your decision. Do you believe that she's worth it to have it? Yes or no? Okay, has she done a good job raising your children? Okay, what else would we want to do but show her massive appreciation or by giving her something that she'd be happy enjoying and take care of the children and finding and spending her time then, right? It's an easy decision. It's one that needs to be made now and it's important. Okay, let's sign this. That's it guys. That's how you handle stuff. All right, now I'm going to move on. All right, you need us. You ready? Okay. What do you do? Mortgage. Mortgage. Ready? Okay. Hey, by the way, this is how I like to train. Okay, now do you sell homes? No, I finance them. Okay, you finance them. All right, cool. Number one objection. Two years until he comes down. Okay, so he says rates too high. So, let me ask you a question.  Is that right? Do you do loans most of the time when people are going to buy stuff or do you do normally refinance? Purchase buying. Purchase buying. You guys ready? So, a real estate agent finds someone that wants to buy a home. They contact you. You get in touch with them. Am I right? Correct. Okay, and then you provide the financing. I want you guys to understand what he does. And then they say, we love the house but you know our rates are too high. We're just going to hold off. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay, and by the way, he gets paid a lot of money to get people to sign on these rates.  Because you've seen the interest on a mortgage contract, right? Correct. It's a big, big number. Okay, so my goal is he needs to get people to say yes. Are you ready? I'm going to test you. All right, what's your name again? Will. Will, all right, here we go. So, hey, Will, I really appreciate it. I love the home. Unfortunately, this rates just too high. We're going to hold off. Go. So, in two years, I can show you how you're going to build generational wealth and have a lower payment. Is that interesting? Sure, but right now, I mean, I love this house. I just, the rates too high. Okay, whistle, whistle. Okay, all right, Will. Are you ready? Will, tell me the, Will, tell me the rates too high. Guys, you ready? Everybody, Will, tell me the rates too high. Hey, I totally understand. However, Will, you date the rate, you marry the payoff. Listen to me. 10 months ago, Will, if you'd have bought the same house, you'd have been in a bidding war with about 19 other people and you'd have probably paid an additional $300,000 to $400,000 more. That would have been a problem. Am I right, Will? However, there's never been a better time for a consumer to make a deal on a home than right now. The fact that it's not a bidding war and the homes are back to where they should be, Will, you can buy this house now at a better deal than you could have ever made in your life. But 10 months ago, when it was a bidding war, rates were a little less. What would you rather have? A way higher payoff or actually a lower interest rate? You'd rather have a what? A good payoff and do what? Pay a little higher on an interest rate. Look, 10 months ago, whenever the prices on homes were up, loan devalued was so out of whack, you would have had to put $300,000 to $400,000 to $500,000 down even to do the loan on a fair rate. However, today we can leverage the bank's money. You don't have to put more money down than needed, right? And by the way, you date the rate, you marry the payoff.  You've already done the research, you've already done the time, you know it's a great deal. The bank's going to give you the money. You're not going to have to front it out of pocket. You're not going to put more money down than you need to. And then when the credit unions lower the rates, whenever the feds drop the rates again, all you're going to do is refinance it. You got your dream house, your mortgage is in line, your payoff is right. And guess what? You get a better rate when they come out with one. Averka-daver. You take care of your family today. Anything that should be done today shouldn't be put off for tomorrow. Wouldn't you agree? Let's go ahead and wrap this up. Okay. So what I want you to understand is I said, I said you date the rate, you marry the payoff. Am I right? We're seeing the same thing in the automotive industry right now. Automotive sales people are walking around, rates are high.  People were paying 50 grand more for cars a year ago. Like, where were you at? And they said, well, they want a better rate. Dude, listen to me. If you put in front of somebody, would you rather pay a little higher interest rate and not overpay for the car? They'd be like, yeah. You know what I'm saying? People don't want to overpay for shit, do they? Well, due to year ago, everybody overpaid for everything. The only offset is now the rates are a little higher. Dude, are rates permanent and forever or can you refinance one if you qualify? Yeah. So what you need to say is that listen to me. You date the rate, you marry the payoff. That's it, man. Dude, if you'd have bought a house 10 months ago, you'd have been in a bidding war. You'd have paid additional 300, 400 grand more. Okay. However, today, there's never been a better deal. If I was in the automotive industry, I'd say there's never been a better deal in the history of time for a buy on a vehicle being a consumer. Now, the interest rate's a little higher, but who cares? Right now, you're getting 20 to 30% more for your trade-in, right? That's never happened before. You're getting a fair deal on my car and the only thing we got to have an exception to is the rate's going to be a little higher. Credit unions drop the rate. You refinance it. Man, it's a dream deal. Okay. Never been a better deal in the history of time to make a deal on anything than right now. And by the way, are you having to pay cash for it? Are they going to give you the money? They're going to give you the money. Okay? So, when they lower it, just refinance it. You date the rate. The rate's never permanent. It's only as long as you want it until somebody offers something's better. Can you refinance a payoff? Well, you can refinance a payoff but they don't bring the payoff amount down. You got to bring cash out of your account to bring that payoff down. So, listen, getting a good deal on a home right now has what you've always wanted. Dude, if it was 10 months ago, you would have overpaid. Could you imagine if you'd bought the same house you'd have bought 10 months ago and you'd have paid an additional 300 grand and then you would have saw now that it's worth 300 grand less? It's everywhere, isn't it? Yeah, that's not going to happen to you. We're going to make the client feel comfortable to pass, go and move forward. You guys feel me? No, listen. Hey, maybe some of you in here are like, dude, I would have said something different. Totally cool. Listen, here's what I'll tell you. I believe I can close anybody anytime, any place anywhere and I'm going to tell you why. Number one, common sense. Common sense. Number two, word play. A lot of you that are in different industries, you need to learn some new language. I'm going to show you.  You know why? If I had a dealership?  So you know what I would do? I would train my team to speak differently. I would train my team to talk differently. I would train my team to act differently, to work differently, to believe differently. And guess what? When they came to my place, they would see different and they would buy. Okay? Dude, I promise you man, if your team hasn't had any new training within the last 12 to 24 months, the art of selling doesn't exist in most businesses anymore. The art of selling is dead. You get it? We're going to bring it back alive. All right. Good job, Will. All right. All right. Where's Brian at? Here, come here. I want you. I want this guy. Come here. Okay. Now I'm going to grab James. James, what do you do? So I run ticket sales for a lifetime. So he sells tickets. Does everybody get it? Okay. So you sell tickets to events. Would you agree? I agree. Okay. So here's what he does. I'm just going to give you an example. Like my company, we sell our tickets. Does that make sense? Okay. You guys bought a ticket from someone that works at the LA Group. But other companies, they're like, man, I want to do this event. I need help selling these tickets. Okay? Ready? What's your number one objection you get? Well, listen, people don't reach out and say, hey, I'm reaching out. I can't stand talking to these people. But sell me a ticket. Give me a real objection. Scheduling price points. I'm like, I'm busy that weekend. Price is too expensive. Okay. Cool. Hey, by the way, you ready? So I'm going to hit him. Hey, man, I really appreciate you. Thanks for taking my call. By the way, they request information on tickets. Does that make sense? Just so you guys are aware, I request some information on this event. He reaches out. He's like, Hey, man, what's going on? I've got this event. It's going to be bad. I'm like, cool. What date? He tells me, damn, I can't do that, man. I got something playing with me in the family. You know what I'm saying? Is that right? Right. Okay, cool.  Hey, I mean, I really appreciate it. It sounds like you're cool then I want to go to. But I just can't do it that weekend. So I'm going to have to pass. Go. I agree. I agree. Won't let me that. What are you calling the other? No, no, no. I mean, I like it. I just, we're going to be busy that weekend. What are you guys doing? Let me ask. We're doing something with the family. I agree, man. I love my family. No, I must spend some time with the family. I love that. I love that. How many kids you got? I got three kids. Three kids. It's awesome. Listen, what we're doing, man, close the school really quickly. And we're looking to really provide refrigeration and love, whether it's through solar, roofing, contracting. And I would say that you like, thank you for trying to get a generation. Okay. Are you closing me? Okay.  All right. Listen to me. Hey, hey, question number one. Listen to me. Hey, everybody's busy. Question number one. Everybody's busy. Listen, I always say this. Everybody's busy. But obviously things that are important should come first. And I'm glad you said that you're doing something with your family because it's about time that people in this world need to start doing it putting their family first in a world full of people who actually where there's a shortage of commitment, you sound like somebody who's like super committed to hitting your dreams and your goals and taking your family to another level. Would you agree? Yes or no? Okay. Now I'm going to ask you a question. There's 365 days in a year and all 365 of those days you should be spending with your family. But I'm going to ask you one question. Okay. Can you grab a penpiece paper while I'm with you on the phone? Can you do that? Can you grab it? Okay. Write this down. Write down your mortgage. Okay. Write down your cars. I want you to write down your bank account. Okay. I want you to write down how old are you right now? 29. You're 29 years old. You've probably been working since you're at least 18. Am I right? Yes. If you've been working since you're 18, you're 29 years old. You've been working for 11 years.  Now I want to ask you a question. If you could make the commitment to come to this event and we could guarantee and ensure that over the last 11 years, I don't know how much money you saved but you're going to write that down right now.  And I guarantee that your wife and your kids, you probably made a lot of false promises to them that one day that you were going to get ahead.  I'm recommitting. See there's a time to recommit. I'm recommitting honey to the promise that I made to you and the kids. And by the way, listen to me. We're going to buy a ticket for her too because she's going to come here. But if I had to go there, I'd go there. But we're going to recommit to the dreams over the last 11 years that you said you're going to hit and guess what you're going to do. You're going to come out to this event. We're going to show you. We're going to give you the information that you need to have what?  Listen, I promise you one normal weekend with your family or a total transformation to show your family that you could take your family to another level in life, that's what you want to do. By the way, you wouldn't have reached out. You wouldn't have made the call. You wouldn't have entered the information if you weren't willing to make the trip, okay? There's always a reason why you can't make it, okay? There's always a reason why. Look, I'm going to ask you a question. Is your family worth it? Do you believe you're worth it?   You wouldn't have reached out about this ticket if that person you wouldn't have looked up to them as a mentor. The way that life works right now in 2023 is that you find people who have gone where you want to go. And you get as close to these people as possible and you get in proximity to these people. And then what happens is you actually become what these people have. Do listen, I love to compress time frames. I love to turn decades into days. And what I would do is that I would literally paint a picture of like, you're going to spend time with your family. And by the way, if it was me, I'm going to tell you because if it was my event, you guys already know what I would say. It's like, hey man, I can't come to this Andy Elliott event because I'm doing something with my family. I would say, well, if you know anything about Andy Elliott, he would tell you you're going to buy a ticket with your kids and you're going to bring your family. Okay?  And that's probably something you've never done since you're 18 years old. You've probably went to training and you left your family behind. But since you understand Andy's core value and how he believes, you're actually his wife's going to be with him too when he's training. So you're actually going to bring your family with you. That way they can help support you and hold you accountable and you can take your family with you, which nobody does. The success you've been trying to get, the reason why you haven't got it is because you haven't been taking your family with you. And since your family is going to be with you at that weekend, we actually want them to. So let's sell everybody a ticket. Okay? I'm just telling you right now when I say this, dude, whatever objection you get, does it sound like you're trying to sell somebody? I mean, does it sound like it? Right? Like when somebody says no, you notice how a lot of us will stutter step, we dance around? You feel me? Do you think people can feel that? Yeah, they can feel it. Okay? What do you do? Oh, you sell cars? Okay. Cool. Watch us. Okay. All right. How long have you been selling for? About two and a half years. Okay. Guys, what's the number one objection you'll get an automotive? Okay. But that's easy. We already covered that. Huh? Ready? Okay. Hey, we're on a pencil. What does that mean?  And they're like, and they're like, what's your best price? Hey, guys, what's going on? It's Andy. A lot of you leave comments telling me that you need help. Do me a favor. I'm going to tell you the best way to get a hold of me. Shoot me a text message right now,<PHONE_NUMBER>.<PHONE_NUMBER>. I'll help you with whatever you need.  Let's get back to the video. And they look at you, you're sitting across from them. That's what we're going to do right now. You bought a car before, right? Cool. We're looking at them and I say, hey, I saw it on the internet for $29.99. I'm sitting across from them and I say, what's your best price? Go. Hey, Andy. I'm so glad that you asked that. So, you came in on this vehicle for a certain reason. You came in on this vehicle for a certain reason. Obviously, this vehicle suits your needs. It sounds like it's just a matter of the price, right? Yes. Okay. So, you wouldn't have chosen us if we weren't priced accordingly. My dealership, we actually use active market pricing. So, that way, when the market changes, we adjust the price for you. We actually listen to what our customers wanted and we actually make it super, super easy for you that we don't have to work for the best deal. Have I offended you in any way as giving you my best price upfront? Okay. Good job. Hey, by the way, you're doing a good job. Okay. So, anytime you're looking at somebody in the face and they say, what's your best price? Number one, I love what he said. He said, I'm so glad you asked that. Okay. Is your company different? Yes or no? Yes. Okay. You need to take your hand, put it on your chest and say, I'm so glad you asked that. What we do at our company is a little bit different. We're not like everybody. Everybody else. It's 2023. It's the age of transparency. You know what we've learned? We've learned that most of our customers want to get the best price upfront and they don't want to negotiate and have them. Okay. Isn't it 2023? Everybody wants the best deal upfront? That's why we have what? Very expensive tools. We have accurate technology that finds vehicles in the marketplace just like the one that you're looking at right now. This 2019 Ford F-150 with 38,000 miles. Then that technology finds that vehicle and ensures that we're the lowest price within a 500 mile radius. So, all the research has already been done for you. By the way, we don't want to sell you one car.  If I was to take this car and mark it back up $3,000 just like they did back in the old school days and then turn around and bring it back down $3,000 when you ask for a better deal, would that be trustworthy or respectful? No. We're looking for a further relationship than just today. So, what are we going to do? We're going to ask them a simple question at the end. Have I offended you in any way? In any way at all by giving you my best price upfront? Have I? No. Thank goodness. Take your hand, put it in your chest. They signed right here. Let me get your new car cleaned up. By the way, when did you want your first payment due? Towards the beginning of the month, the middle of the month, what's going to work best for you and your family? Roll right into a close. Listen to me. People ask for a better deal. Does that mean they want one? They just ask. I ask all the time. Can they get a better deal? Is that your best price? That's what people ask. When they ask, they're going to look in your eyes. When they look in your eyes, they're going to see if you believe. Most of you in here, you get nervous when people ask for a better deal. It's no big deal. You guys get it? Are people allowed to ask for a better deal? Is it scary? No.  We should literally, as managers, hit ourselves people 15 times a day. What's your best price? What's your best price? Can I get a better deal? Until they absolutely feel comfortable in their skin answering that question. I'm so glad you asked that. What we do here is a little bit different. They need to believe it. Guys, listen to me. I'm going to explain something to you. Can you get somebody to believe something that you don't believe in your own eyes? You know what I want?  And I want you to literally look in the mirror and also I want you to record yourself while you say them. And I guarantee when you watch the video when you're done, you're going to be very upset. I guarantee you don't look the way you want to look. But you know what I know? I know the more you do it, the more you practice it, the better you're going to become. And I know that's how badasses are made, okay? And dude, this little simple thing, what we're doing in this room right now, this is called growing. This is how we become badasses. What do you do? Okay, solar. Let's hit them with an objection. Okay? So, he's going to go through all the numbers with me. And then I'm going to go to this side of the room. Okay, we go through all the numbers. Are you a setter? Okay, he's a setter. What does that mean, guys? He's at the front door. Okay? What does that mean? He's setting appointments for closers to come in. Now, how long have you been doing solar for? One year. Okay. If he's setting appointments and he's been doing setting for one year, right? I know you know your script. Am I right? Yeah? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to have... Remember when I scripted it right there up front? Okay? Watch. Come with me. This is what I want you guys to do. I want...  They know where it's going to happen. They know what to expect. The reason why your team doesn't like training is because you're not training them all the time.  I train my team every day. I don't train them. Sometimes they know when I train them. When do I train them? First thing in the morning. First thing in the morning every morning. First thing in the morning every morning. Dude, if I come in, they're like, hey, I got a deal.  Get over here. You're not getting out of this. I need everybody to be on their game in our company. If our company wants to increase, what do we need to do? Be the best. Always train in the morning.  Okay? So cool. These are your customers. Knock, knock. Andy says, hello, go. What's going on, man? Good. What's up? I'm Spets. I'm Limeo's project manager. I do all the solar in the area. And I'm curious, you don't have any on your house. What's kept you from working into it? Well, hold on. Hold on. If he knocked on your door, would you know what he's saying? Relax. Come here, man. I got you, baby. Relax. Tell him to relax. Come relax. Okay. Here, take your hand. Okay. Relax. See how calm it is? Now do me a favor.  All right. Now talk to him and keep your hand like that because you're going to relax. Okay. Do you hear me? Okay. Who are you? Spencer. Okay. Say hi. My name is Spencer. Hi. My name is Spencer. I'm with Lumeo. I'm their project manager. And why are you here? I do all the solar in the area. Okay. Do you want to say solar right when they open that door? Yep. But why? Gives them room to just let them know I'm direct straight to the point. And it's going to give them every, every homeowner is going to say I'm not interested. So it's going to start off. You don't know that they're going to say that because, because if you handle it right, they don't have to say I'm not interested. Like I don't want you to say I'm not interested. I'm just going to be honest with you. I don't like that. So I'm going to be like, hi, my name is Spencer. My company's been allocated to this area because research shows in the next 12, 18 months, utility bills are going to double or triple. Look, I just got two quick questions to ask you. Then I'm going to be on my way unless you have some additional information. Okay. Question number, number one, do you believe you're going to have energy all the days of your life? I do love the energy. Will you always use it? Will you always pay your utility bill? Yeah.  Like you're always going to want energy. Would you agree? Yeah. Okay. Cool. Question number two, do you believe inflation is real? Do you believe things are costing more money? Yeah? Cool. Well, since you'll always want energy and you believe inflation is real, I got a third question. If your current energy company was to triple your utility bill, if you didn't pay it, you would run your house off candles. And by the way, if they did triple your energy, you would have to pay it because there's no secondary energy option. There's not one. My name is Andy Elliott. I'm here with Lumio Solar. I'm the project manager. What we've learned is that a lot of these houses in this area are qualifying for solar, which is a secondary energy option. It allows you to be inflation proof and it actually saves you money per month. And as a homeowner, I notice you don't lease or rent. You actually can own your own energy. I noticed you had a car in your driveway. Is that your car? Yeah. You have a car in your driveway. I'm guaranteed there's a contract in which there was an end date on payments that would be due on it and then you would own it after that. Am I right? Would you drove that car that you have if the payment was 450 month? If they didn't tell you that it was... There was an end date. It was 60 or 72 months. They said it was for the rest of your life. Would you have bought it? No. No. Is there ever an end date to your current energy bill? No. What if I told you, and I'm guessing you're probably 40 years old, that you're probably going to live to at least be 80. So for the next 40 years, you're going to be paying energy. What if I told you that you could literally opt in to like a 25 year agreement at a lower current energy bill and then you'd own it and never make a payment for the rest of your life? Would you be interested in learning more about it? Whatever it is, your job is to create interest, not create an objection. Like, I'm seeing salespeople that want to create objections. People are like, I try to create objections, why get them to say no? I'm like, why? Like, why would we make it easy to say yes to hard to say no to and make it their idea? Like, why wouldn't we? You know, I see salespeople just in the automotive industry. Do you know that most sales people don't even know how to shake a hand? Do you guys know that? Give me an automotive guy. Okay, come here. I want to show you something. Isn't it crazy? Some of you in here expect that people should know how to handle stuff. Okay, come shake my hand. Here, I just got out of my car. I just got out of my car. I step out, go. Here, hand on that real quick. Welcome in to Jerry. Oh, my name is Austin. Austin. Austin. Awesome. Anybody in particular? No, I'm just driving by. Relax. First of all, relax. Hey, hope you're having the best day of your life. Andy Elliott, what's your name? Austin. Austin. Nice to meet you, sir. Have I like to hold his hand? No. Why? Because he's important to me. Okay, have you guys been waiting for a client all day long to come in here and roll up and buy a car? Why are we treating it like we haven't been? We don't care. Right? Dude, have you ever walked up Brett and shake somebody's hand and they say, Hey, what's up, Andy? How you doing? Hey, it's like, Hey, Andy Elliott. Nice to meet you, man. It means everything to me that you're here. You can tell when I hold that hand just a little bit longer that I am grateful that you're here. Am I right? You know what I know? COVID disconnected everybody. You want to win? How you doing? My name is Andy. I'm glad you're here. What's your name? Austin. Nice to meet you, sir. Okay, I don't care how old he is. Look at me in the eye. Okay. Are you here for sales or service? You're here to see somebody in the service department or you're here to see somebody in sales? How can I serve you today? How can I serve you today? Looking for a vehicle. Looking for a vehicle. Is there somebody particular that you're here to see or do I have the honor of helping you today? Well, no, you're already, you're already mirroring me. But do you see he's already mirroring me? Who's running this show? I'm going to tell you the craziest thing. Page your sales teams. Page them into the sales hours. Say come shake my hand. You're going to learn this what you get. I'm Andy. What's your name? Austin. Austin, nice to meet you. What are you looking for today? They can suck. You wonder why people don't love us because we're not full of love. We don't even care. It shows on our face. We're so transactional.  Do you guys feel me?  Go look at your bank account. Look at mine.  Clearly, you're missing so many key important things to the art of selling, okay? Sir, by the way, my name is Andy. What's your name? Austin. It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. Can I help you find somebody? You looking for someone in service or you looking for someone in sales? Okay, look at my eyes. I care. I genuinely care.  I just want to make sure you get helped. We're not going to sell anybody. We're going to help people. He says, I'm looking for service. You don't say over there. You say, awesome. Sir, my name is Andy Elliott. I do work on the sales side. Unfortunately, I won't be able to service your car, but I would. I'm going to walk you over here. I would like to give you my card. If you need something, you holler at me. You need a cup of coffee. You text me, I'll bring it over, okay? Smile, walk him over to service. Half of those people reach out to you. Okay. Once he doesn't say service and he says, sales? What do I say? Awesome. Again, my name is Andy. Is there someone that you're here to see or do I have the honor of helping you today? Okay. Do I have the honor? What does that mean? You're special to me. Could I be the one or do I need to get someone else? No, no, no. We're not here to see anybody. Awesome. Well, again, and hey, dude, I'll reach my hand out. I'll say, my name is Andy Elliott. So I want to put a name with the face and shake your hand again since I'm the one that's going to be serving you. My job, I tell them my job. My job is to give you world-class customer service and to take care of you and your family and all the highest levels that are important to you. It's an honor to help you today. I'm grateful. So what brings you in? What are we looking for? What am I going to do? I'm going to set the tone. Does that make sense? Sales people don't do this no more. That's why they're broke. Sales people don't crush records anymore. This is why they're broke. Dude, and by the way, leaders' job are to see if their sales people know this stuff. Like I see people not hitting their quotas and you know what they're doing? They're literally lowering the bar instead of training higher. Okay? Like it's so crazy. I see people in the automotive space right now bitching and complaining that you can't buy cars. Dude, there's cars everywhere. You're just trying to buy in the old fashioned way and you don't have buying centers. I would literally, if it was me, I would literally open a buying center in my company and I would hire people that their job all day long was to call everybody on Craigslist, everybody on Facebook, every place around us in a 50 mile radius and try to buy cars. But that would take too much energy or that costs us money. It costs you money to buy a car. No, you pay them on the buy.  Hey, it's Andy Elliott down here. We're at the Morden Group. I don't know if you've driven by one of our 90 stores we have, but we notice you have a vehicle for sale. We've noticed we got lots of clients that are interested in just like your vehicle. We wanted to ask you a question. If we offered you more money than it was worth, would you mind if we got an opportunity to look at it? Would that be okay? Awesome, man. I'm over here at X, Y, and Z address. Could you bring it by? My name is Andy. I'm the deal coordinator. I'm the inventory manager. I just want to take a peek at it. Literally take five minutes. By the way, if we do like the car, I mean our money's good today.  We don't care. We just want to see if you'd be willing to drive by. We are the best buyer in town right now. I mean, we love buying inventory. Just want to know when you can make a buy. Do people be driving cars by your store all day long? I'll bet I'll bet half those people end up buying something on your lot too and driving out. We won't do that though. It's too much work. We got we got deals to work.   You're lazy. And by the way, you know what's crazy? Is this how easy it is to smoke everybody's ass? Am I right? Okay. Hey, appreciate you, man. I know you got up here a little nervous and hey, I appreciate you. Come on. Let's grab something else. Let's come over here. Hey guys, I just want to tell you, you're the true one percenters. You made it till the end of the video. Do me a favor, share it with the friend that wants to go to another level. Make sure you like the video, comment below so I know who you are. Set your notifications and then subscribe to the channel. We got daily sales training videos dropping. I'll see you soon.