Hello and welcome to this session in which we would look at asset retirement obligation known as ARO. This topic is covered in intermediate accounting class as well as the CPA exam. This topic gives students many problems for few reasons. One, you are dealing with a plant asset. Two, you are dealing with time value of money. So when you combine those two, students will find difficulty because if you don't understand plant assets, you're not going to understand asset retirement obligation. If you don't understand the time value of money, you will find difficulty in this topic. Three, you're dealing with a long-term liability. Okay? Basically, when I say time value of money, you are dealing with long-term liabilities. And you're going to see how all those three topics interact with each other. As you understand your asset retirement obligation, don't worry, I will explain this to you in details. Whether you're an accounting student or a CPA candidate, I strongly suggest you take a look at my website, farhatlectures.com. I don't replace your CPA review course. I am a useful addition to your CPA review course. I can help you understand the material better, as I will do it in this session, helping you understand the ARO. Keep your course. I will help you increase your understanding, increase your grade. Your risk is one month of subscription. Your potential gain is passing the exam. If not for anything, take a look at my website to find out how well or not well your university is doing on the CPA exam. Also, I do have other courses that I cover, intermediate accounting, of course, auditing, managerial accounting, taxation, governmental, so on and so forth. My CPA supplemental courses are aligned with your Beckel, Roger, Gleam, Wiley, so it's easy to go back and forth between my material and your CPA review course. Also, connect with me on LinkedIn. If you haven't done so, take a look at my LinkedIn recommendation. Like this recording. Share it with other. Connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. So what is the, what's the idea of asset retirement obligation? Well, it's an obligation. It's some sort of a liability incurred with the disposition when you need, when you need to get rid of some sort of a property, plant and equipment, or some disposition related to some natural resources that you are extracting. The best way to illustrate this is to give you a quick example and illustrating this concept.  And notice what they did. They erected a platform. They removed the, they removed the trees. And what happened at the end of its life, at the end of the life of the contract, after extraction is completed, that could take several years, British petroleum will be required by contract to restore the land to its original condition. What does that mean? It means they have to remove this platform, plant trees, make sure the area is safe, so on and so forth, safe for living. So those are, that's going to create an asset because that's going to increase the cost of the business, the cost of operating this business. But also it's going to create an obligation. So once you have this obligation to remove the platform, to restore the land, well, guess what? That's additional cost. The cost of doing so is an asset, but that asset creates an obligation. So simply put asset retirement obligation, we're going to see it's an asset and it's a liability. That's how it starts. So you have an asset, the asset is the cost and the liability is how much you're going to have to pay to satisfy your obligation. Okay, so then you, once you see an example, it will make more sense. So other examples of asset retirement obligation, it could be decommissioning of nuclear facilities when you do so you have an obligation at the end to clean up closure and post closure of landfills, cost of removing mining facilities. The best way to illustrate this concept is to actually work an example with my favorite journal entries. So let's assume British Petroleum, just working with that example, is required by contract to remove the oil platform in order to restore the land to its original condition after the oil extraction is completed. This is what we're talking about here. So they need to remove this, basically plant trees, take care of the land. So this is, they have an obligation. How much is the obligation? Because that obligation is not due until three years from now. This is what we're saying. We have three years to extract the oil, then put that land, make that land, go back to its original condition. Well, how much? Well, we're going to estimate the total cost and we're going to estimate to be 100,000. I just throw this number. In some textbook, what they do is they give you, you can estimate the cost through the probability. For example, they would say scenario, it's going to cost you 100,000. And there is a 60% chance. Scenario B, it's going to cost you 80,000. And this is, there is a 50% chance. Scenario C, a certain amount of the percentage. So you have to find the weighted probability or you could be giving the number itself. It doesn't really matter. The point is we're going to use the 100,000 as far as we're concerned. Therefore, not Adam, British Petroleum, rather than Adam, British Petroleum, is obligated to come up with $100,000, three years from now. So we estimated the liability to be 100,000. Simply put, this additional 100,000, this additional 100,000, three years from now is a cost to us. That cost is part of doing the business, part of the platform. So what we do is since we're not coming up with this money today, so remember, we don't have to come up with the money until three years from now. We have year one, year two, and year three. We have to come up with this money three years from now. So simply put, we have a liability. So how much is that obligation, is that liability? We cannot record the asset at 100,000. We cannot record the liability at 100,000. We have to discount this 100,000 to the present because we have to come up with that money. That money is a part of doing business cost of the oil platform, but we don't have to come up with it until three years from now. Well, we need to know that we discount. We're going to discount and we're going to just throw 10%. You can throw any number. You're going to discount the 100,000 and equal to three. Three periods are equal to 10%. And the factor, the present value factor is 0.75132. Simply put, we'll take 100,000 times 0.75132. Today, we have an obligation of 75,132 dollars and the cost to the drilling platform. So this simply put, this additional cost is added. So notice we have an asset and we have a liability. What we did is we establish an asset. The asset, why did we establish an asset? The cost of doing business is the asset. It's going to, we're going to benefit from this land for the next three years, but there's a cost to it, 75,132. We're not paying this amount now. We're going to pay it later. We have a liability. Now, so we're going to debit the drilling platform or some sort of a plant asset. Now, once we have a plant asset, remember plant asset get depreciated. We use a straight line depreciation. We're going to take the 75,132, depreciated over three years and every year we're going to depreciate 25,044 dollars. So the journal entry over the next three years will be depreciation expense, credit, accumulated depreciation. Well, simply put, let me just kind of finish this. So if we have the drilling platform as an asset, okay, the drilling platform, and we have in that drilling platform 75,132. Three years later, we're going to have an accumulated depreciation and we're going to have in that accumulated depreciation 25,044, 25,044, 25,044. Simply put, we're going to have exactly 75,132. Why am I doing this? I'm doing this to show you that this asset after three years will be gone, will have a zero book value. Basically, the asset, the drilling platform minus the accumulated depreciation will give you an asset of zero. So simply put, this asset will take care the accumulated depreciation, will take care of it for the next three years. So this is basically what's done with the asset. Well, guess what? We also have a long-term liability. A long-term liability of 75,132. And guess what? Every time you have a long-term liability, whether it's a bond, whether it's a note's payable, whether it's a pension liability, you have a note, you have a long-term liability. It means you have interests you have to account for. So now we have to account for the interest. So we have to record the interest component of the long-term liability. So the first year, we are computing the interest at 10%. Therefore, we're going to debit interest expense $7,513 and start to credit. Now let me start to keep track of the asset retirement obligation. We have a 75,132. This is what we started with, 75,132. Okay, 75,132. So a year later, we're going to record the expense. Well, the expense is 7,513, which is 75,132 times 10%, which is the liability balance times 10%. We're going to debit interest expense and some textbook, they debit accretion expense. That's fine, it's an expense. And we're going to credit the account, the asset retirement obligation, 7,513. Here comes, this is year one. This is for year one. Well, what's going to happen after year one? The balance becomes $82,645. So if we count the balance here, it becomes $82,645. Now again, for year two, we're going to have to accrue interest expense. How do we accrue interest expense? Since the balance is $82,645, we're going to multiply it by 10%. And that's going to give us interest expense $8,264. So we're going to debit interest expense $8,264 in credit, ARO $8,664. This is for year two, this is for year one. Then we're going to add $8,264 to the previous balance. Now our balance is, let me put the balance here, $90,909. Year three, we're going to take the $90,000 time, $90,905 times 10%. And it's going to give us interest component of $9,990. If we add this amount, $9,990, you guys got it. We're going to have an ARO of $100,000. So if I add $9,090,000, then I'm going to have, I'm going to write it up here, we're going to have an ARO of $100,000. We're going to have a balance of $100,000. Now rounding it's going to be a dollar or two difference. But the point is your ARO becomes $100,000. Remember the asset after three years, I showed you it's gone. Now we have an asset retirement obligation of $100,000. So notice over the three years, over the next three years, this is the year three interest, the ARO becomes $100,000. Now we cannot keep the obligation. Now we are ready to remove the obligation. So we contracted with someone, and Adam, which is British Petroleum, paid $97,000 to dismantle the platform. So we thought it's going to cost us $100,000. It costs us $97,000. Well, we're going to credit cash $97,000. We're going to debit the liability asset retirement obligation $100,000. And guess what? This asset retirement obligation is gone. So notice the drilling platform, I told you the accumulated depreciation will take care of it. We paid $97,000, but we get a route of $100,000. Now we need, we have $3,000 hanging. That's going to be again. So basically because we saved $3,000, it's considered again. Let's assume we paid more than $100,000. Let's assume we paid $105,000. Let's assume we paid $105,000. Then we will have a loss of $5,000, if that's the case, if we paid $105,000. And this is basically the asset retirement obligation. I show you how it's created. We started here with the drilling platform, an asset, and we got rid of that asset by depreciating the asset over three years. Then we had an asset retirement obligation and this asset retirement obligation, every year we kept adding the interest component until it became $100,000. Then we paid this $100,000 by only issuing a check for $97,000. We happened to be lucky to find someone to remove our liability by only paying $97,000. We have a gain of $3,000. And this is basically the asset retirement obligation we created it. Then we got rid of it. At the end of this recording, I'm going to remind you again, if you are an accounting student or a CPA candidate, take a look at my material, farmhatlectures.com. I can help you pass the CPA exam. I can add those 10 to 15 points that you need. Don't shortchange yourself. Your CPA exam is a lifetime investment. Good luck, study hard, and of course, stay safe. The CPA exam is worth it.


Welcome to our What's On at EVGU webinar. It's now 11 days from this year's virtual assembly. So we'll be looking through some of the content attendees can expect and what to consider when planning a program. My name is Simon Clark. I'm the EDU's committee program coordinator. And today's structure we have two speakers of slight change in the program. After all speakers have finished, we'll have a Q&A session. If you have a question, please enter it by clicking on the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen. In that tab you can also upload questions. The questions for the most votes will likely to be asked to the panel. We'll try to get through all questions during this session. Just to let you know this webinar will also be recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel, which is EuroGIS. So, following from that, I'm just going to introduce our guest speakers for today. Our first speaker is Chloe Hill, is the EDU policy officer. She has also convener of multiple use of HOSIA short courses and networking sessions. And our second speaker for the slight change program is Jenny Atherton, who is the incoming Deputy Unified ECS representative today. So, without any further ado, I'd like to introduce Chloe to discuss subjects and policy. Great, thank you so much Simon. So, hi to everyone. As Simon mentioned, I am the EDU's science for policy officer or just policy officer. And I will be running a couple of different science and policy activities throughout the general assembly this year. And today during my presentation, I'm just going to talk firstly about what science and policy is because I know some of you are listening today. You might not have heard the term before. Secondly, about why you should come to these sessions, why you should want to learn more about science and policy. And then I'll just be sharing a few of the different sessions that we'll be running throughout the general assembly. So to do this, I'm going to share a PowerPoint, which I'm going to do now. So, firstly, like I said, what is science for policy? Policy is a process of transferring information or knowledge or research from a scientific community or an individual researcher to policymakers with the intention to create evidence informed policy. Now evidence informed policy is ideally the result of science or policy. This is a policy or a decision that is guided by evidence. Now evidence is just one component of any policy decision, but from my perspective it is an important component. And it helps policymakers to find the pathway that has the most beneficial outcomes. So this is a very theoretical sort of description and I don't expect that you understand what science or policy is with these two sentences. But if you do want to learn more about what it is comes to one of the sessions and I'm about to talk about. And there's a couple of other reasons why you might want to come to these sessions too. So some of the benefits of actually being a scientist who engages with policy are also on the screen. I'm going to talk about some of those now. So these are reasons why you might want to come to some of the sessions I'm about to talk about and learn a bit more about what science or policy is and how you as a scientist can engage with the policymaking process. So the first one is to assist in evidence informed policymaking that benefits society. So a lot of scientists actually really want their research to have some sort of impact that's beneficial for society. And one way of doing this is actually sharing your research with policymakers and telling them how they can make these decisions in a way that has the least negative results. So this is one reason why scientists do engage in science policy. Another one is to is less altruistic but is to increase the impact of your research. So when we are publishing research in journals, a lot of the time the only people who read the research that's published in a scientific journal are colleagues. So other scientists who are researching the same area as us and very often if it's not communicated to a broader audience, it won't be seen by the public and it won't be seen by policymakers. And the impact is really within the scientific community. And of course, you know, we add to the knowledge of humanity, which is great, but there's a lot of other ways in which you and your research can have an impact in society. And that might be through sharing it with the public in a broad sense in a way that they can understand so limited amounts of scientific jargon, but it also might be with policymakers. So that is another motivation for a lot of scientists. Now the third one I have here is to expand your network and opportunities. So once you start engaging with policy, you're going to meet a lot of different people were not just policymakers but other stakeholders, people who are working in the private sector, people who are working with NGOs. And once you start meeting these people and seeing the opportunities that exist, you have many doors open for you. So that is another reason that you might want to engage in science of policy and another reason why you might want to learn more about it. So how can you learn more about it can attend these sessions. So I'm going to present a few different sessions. I'm starting out with the Union wide sessions. So in this case, it's Union symposia and it's great debates. These are the two I think are most policy relevant. Both of these have policymakers speaking in them. And you can join them to see how Geoscience connects with different policy issues. So the first one is integrating Geoscience into the European Green Deal. Now the Green Deal is a really hot topic in policy right now, but it's also really connected with the Geosciences in a lot of different ways. So the Green Deal talks a lot about climate change, for example, mitigating climate change, a lot about biodiversity. And there you can connect it with soil biodiversity, you can collect it with pollution and all of this kind of thing. And there's a huge range of topics where Geoscientists are actually really important. And the second one is a climate emergency and ecological emergency, how the pandemic can help save us. So this particular session will look at how scientists, how we as a scientific community have reacted to the pandemic. And you know how we've actually communicated the issues to the public to policymakers, what we've done really well as a scientific community and what we haven't done so well. And what we where we can improve when we're communicating about other crises, such as the climate emergency. And both of these sessions will have policymakers in them. So there'll be a couple from the Commission, David Ma from the Joint Research Center of the Commission, as well as Andrea Hinwood, who is a who is the Chief Scientist for the United Nations Environment Programme. So some quite high level policymakers will be there. And you will actually have the opportunity to ask them questions as well. So the vast majority of these of these two unions symposia will be presentations you'll be hearing from policymakers and from scientists who engage with policy, but you'll also be able to ask some questions towards the end. So if you do want to have more of an interactive perspective, I recommend these short courses. So I'm sure if you're attending this presentation, you've probably been to a general assembly before. You probably know there's a lot of different types of sessions, there's scientific sessions where you present your research. There's these union wide sessions that are quite high level, but then there's also short courses and short courses are really, really great for expanding your skill set. They might not necessarily be exactly on your area of expertise or your area of research, but they will help you develop in other ways. So these are the three that I think probably relate to science policy the most. The first one is your handbook to science for policy. And this session directly relates to the handbook that you can see on the side here. Now this handbook was written last year by the European Commission's Joint Research Center and if you haven't already taken a look at it, I really do recommend it. It's hugely beneficial. It is free online.  It's really long. But basically this session invites two of the authors, so Martha and Lena, to present on a couple of the chapters that they think will be most relevant to each of you members. So they'll be presenting on how you can interact more effectively with policymakers and what scientists need to look out for. So this particular session will obviously have a couple of presentations, but will also be very focused on Q&A. So you can come along and ask people who have written this handbook your own questions and have them answered. The second one is how to influence policy through engaging with parliaments. Now, again, this one is quite interactive, but it will focus on the parliament rather than the commission as in the previous short course I mentioned. Now the commission and the parliament are two separate policy entities and both have very different opportunities and different methods for engaging with science and policy. So if you're a scientist, you can engage with both of these different institutions, but in very different ways. So this one really focuses on the parliaments. And again, we'll have two guest speakers, one coming from the UK parliament, from the UK Knowledge Exchange Unit, and the other will be coming from Stoa, which is the European Parliament's panel on science. Basically, and they try and work with scientists to get more science into policy. So that will be presenting on how scientists can interact better with parliament and a couple of the opportunities that exist for you to do that. And the third one there is more broadly about communication. Of course, this is also relevant for when you're communicating with policymakers, but it's also relevant if you are talking to the public. So those are the three I would recommend. Now, these are all linked in a policy blog that I'll put in the chat after I finish presenting. So if you have any questions about these, obviously you can ask, please put your questions in the Q&A box. But I'll also link a blog post that has a bit more details about all of these sessions once I finish speaking. Okay, so the third thing I want to just talk about quickly are the networking sessions. Now, these networking sessions are something that's quite new and quite unique to this general assembly and something that I'm really, really excited about. These networking sessions are the opportunity for you to actually meet other EU participants as well as experts. And they're very interactive. So instead of being a webinar format like we have today, there'll be a mostly there will be a zoom meeting format. So you'll be able to talk to each other. You'll have the opportunity to turn your own microphone on and really get into some discussions. The first one I have listed here, all of these are in the second week of the general assembly as well. So at the same time that you'll be maybe presenting your research. The first one I have listed here is a science of policy meet and greet. Now this session will have 10 science of policy experts that have been hand selected by me to come in and talk to you in small breakout rooms about what they do at the science of policy interface and answer your questions that you have. So this is the aim of this session is really so that you can meet some of these people, but also so you can meet others who are also interested in engaging and sort of bounce off each other. It's only for an hour, but I hope it'll be very relaxed, very informal, and just a good way to meet some of these people. The second one will focus on the EU's science of policy pairing scheme. This is an annual pairing scheme that the EU does every year that supports an EU member going into the European Parliament for a week or a couple of days and actually working directly with an MAP and their team. So we actually have two of our former pairing scheme members joining us for this panel discussion and they'll talk about some of their experiences, the lessons they learnt, how they think they could have potentially, you know, improve their experience and things like that. And we're also hoping to have someone from the Parliament side as well, although that's not confirmed yet. And this will also give you the opportunity to talk with them and ask your own questions as well. And if you are interested in participating in this pairing scheme, I'd really recommend that you attend this session so you can learn a little bit more about it. And the third one we have here is just pitching your policy ask to a policymaker. So this one is, again, run by both someone from Stowa and someone from the UK Parliament directly after the short course on the previous slide. And this will actually be more of a workshop. So you'll be able to ask your own questions, but you'll also be asked to bring a pen and paper or just your computer screen so that you can actually work through some of your policy asks and how you would go about doing that. So the overarching aim of all of these is to meet and interact with those on the interface of science and policy, get practical tips, work out how you can put them into practice and to have your questions answered. The second final thing I just want to mention quickly is another opportunity that we're piloting this year, never has it been done before and I'm quite excited about it. But it's pairing people up so you as scientists as members as people who are attending our general assembly with an expert who is working at the science and policy interface. Now this is, we're going to see how we go with this there will be limited spaces, but essentially, there is a submission form which I'll also link in the chat that you can use. And you will submit your questions in here, I will take a look at the questions you have and try to find the right expert to answer those questions. And once I've paired you up I'll try and find a time that suits both of you. And you can have a 15 minute zoom meeting with this person and just have a chat with them. It's a really good way of getting to meet someone who's working interface and maybe you know, make that connection for later on. It's also a really good way to get some personalized advice, because a lot of the time in these sessions we do talk quite generally about tips that are useful for everyone. But if you want some more individualized advice you can ask these questions. Please do submit them before April 14. If you can do it sooner do it sooner because there are a limited number of spots obviously. And once we've reached that limit we won't be able to take any more. So do, as I said, I'm going to put that link in the chat. You better read more about it and you'll also be able to submit your questions. Final thing is, regardless of what division you are in, take a look at some of the scientific sessions that also focus on policy. There are actually quite a few of them. This is just sort of three examples that I picked out that might be of interest to you if you are, you know, in natural hazards, for example, if you're a hydrologist and add them to your personal program, because we do have a function on the program where you can start different sessions and create a personal program that way so that if you can't remember the sessions that you liked, you can just click that button and you can go directly to the list that you selected earlier. So that is all from me. And yeah, I'll pass back over to Simon. Excellent. Thank you, Chloe, for that. So I'm going to quickly move on to our next speaker, who is Jenny Turton, for discussing ETF orientated activities and events at the assembly. Yeah, thank you, Simon. Yeah, my name is Jenny and I'm one of the early career science representatives at EGU.  So firstly, what is an early career scientist? If you're a student, a PhD candidate or a practicing scientist who received your highest certificate or degree in the last seven years, you are class as an early career scientist. And where appropriate we can extend this seven year period for things such as parental leave disabilities and the other things listed here. So currently I'm currently the division representative for the cryosphere, but starting in April, I will then become the deputy union level representative, taking over from Anita. And she will then take over from a nook as the incoming union level representative. So for the next two issues, you'll see our faces around EGU. And if you want to get in contact with us, please email us at ECS at egu.eu. The 22 scientific divisions at EGU have at least one representative. And this is the way that you can communicate your requests or ideas for how EGU can better represent you. And if you don't know who your representative is, I recommend that you find out on egu.eu slash ECS slash representatives. Early career scientists make up around 50% of the attendees at the General Assembly, and we've been increasing in numbers over the last few years. And now we can even see which sessions we're involved with and which might be an interest for you with the ECS logo that you can see just here. This logo is also used for highlighting which sessions are convened by early career scientists so that if you wanted to convene a session, that would be something you could do in the future. You could do during the conference that isn't related specifically to your science, and there are a number of different options that I'll run through from short courses, networking, great debates, career development opportunities, and of course just some fun events to attend. There are some interesting short courses, particularly for first timers and early career scientists. So the first one, if you're maybe new to EGU, you've maybe not been to a conference before, is how to navigate EGU tips and tricks. It's on the first Monday at 9am. And there is also the idea that you could get involved with EGU. Perhaps you yourself would like to be a division representative, or to be involved with some of the committees. Then I recommend that you attend the short course on how to get involved in EGU. As I mentioned, there are some career development opportunities that are specifically tailored for early career scientists who are perhaps thinking about what in which direction they want to take their career path. One of the short courses is careers inside and outside of academia, a panel discussion, and that is convened by myself on Wednesday the 21st at 4pm. There are many, many different short courses, not just the ones that me and Chloe have both listed here, but others as well, including ones that are specifically tailored for skill development in data analysis software, or research portfolio, and other things like that. So take a look on the program with the SC tag, and so you can filter out your results. Then there are two great debates which are of potential interest for early career scientists. The first one is a panel discussion on slow versus fast science. And so this is going to cover the theme of things like how often you should publish, or is there this idea that you should be publishing a lot of papers, but with a smaller impact versus papers not so often with a higher impact. And then the second one is a roundtable discussion where you'll be broken up into different zoom breakout rooms and you can have a discussion amongst yourselves about bullying in academia towards creating a healthy and safe working environment. Now at a normal conference there are no like lots and lots of networking events, you know, you are attending perhaps ones that are organized but also you bump into somebody in a session and you decide to go out for food or drinks and then it becomes kind of a networking event. And we wanted to bring this kind of more in person attitude to the online conference this year. And so firstly there are a number of organized networking events both in the division and outside of the divisions. And these are mostly going to use gather town or zoom. And you can have a look at all of them by looking at the net and ET tab on the filter for the program. The only the ones that I'll run through here are some division networking events. So each division will have two networking events. Firstly, an early career science specific event where you can meet other people who are early career scientists and your peers. And then there is a second event which is open for all division members, regardless of your career stage. And if you check the program you can find your division specific event. There are events tailored for early career scientists in every division. So the ECS Union wide networking event, and also the ECS forum, and the ECS forum is a way for you to interact with your division and early career science representatives and hear the changes that have been made in the last few years and you can put forward some ideas for things we can work on in the next few years. There's also EGU wide events such as the first time attendee icebreaker can be a little bit daunting to enter a zoom call with people you don't know. And so if you are aware that other people are also new to EGU conferences, perhaps that might make it a bit easier. So the first time attendee icebreaker is on the Monday morning, Monday lunchtime, and I recommend that you attend that if you've not been to a EGU conference before. Then there are also some public events. This scheduler should come live in the next few days.  Anybody who's registered can create their own networking event. And you'll just need to link to something like zoom or whatever account that you use. So keep your eyes peeled in the next few days for some information about that. There are other networking events which are more general or not scientific socializing but more general socializing. One of these is the EGU pride event where you can meet other members of the LGBTQIA plus community and allies. And then there is also the Geoscience games nights and the rhyme your research where you can create some science communication from your results. So in terms of career development and job opportunities at the conference, we now will have a specific job and career area or part of the virtual interface. And so on this area you can go to find out all the information about careers. One of the events is meet the exhibitors and we're just still organizing what day this will will happen so keep looking back at Twitter for more information. So this is where you will be paired with an exhibitor. So for instance, someone from a journal, someone from a data instrument company, and you can ask for some specific career information if you're interested in going down that route. Then there is also the meet the talent elevator pitches. And this is where you can create a two minute short video, basically pitching yourself to a potential job job employer potential employer. So a two minute video with some examples will be available on the YouTube channel in a few days. And there will also be a blog post this week to give you a bit more information about this. On your profile, you can also add a number of buttons or stickers to your profile this year. And one of those is ask for my CV. So if you are looking for a job and you would like to give your CV to somebody. You can do it. And so this is the profile that just an example of my profile to show you what I mean. At the top of the registration page is a my profile button, and then you can add these stickers here. And there is also one for ask for my CV. Finally, there is an art project that happens every year, usually in person conferences, it's in combination with the kids. So it's not babysitting, but where the kids go for their daycare. And we wanted to continue this. So we now have the IGU art kids program. And this year, the theme is extreme earth. And so in the last 12 months, there's been a lot of extreme weather events and phenomenon happening. For instance, right now, part of Iceland. There's volcanic eruption. It was a record break in hurricane season, different things like this.  In the past, it's mostly been painting, but really you can use whatever material you have at hand. Take a photo of your creation, and you can send that to ECS dash nh at edu.eu because the natural hazards division is running this event, or you can tweet it with the hashtag edu art kids hashtag and then we will retweet it.  And that's all from me. So I'll pass you back to Simon. Hello, yes. Thank you, Jenny. I just want to quickly reiterate that if you have a question, simply to click on the Q&A tab below, type in and we'll get around to it after everyone's speaking. So the final speaker, who is Kelly Stanford, he is one of our artists in residence, or I suppose not a resident given that it's virtual, and also one of the conveners for the science and art events. Yeah, so Kelly would like to take it away and discuss your artistry. So I am the main convener for exploring the art science interface EOS 7.4. Basically this session is an amazing hybrid session combined in both science, science communication and art. The idea around this was to try and give like a level playing field to both science papers and to the art that they may contain, because there's a lot of overlapping science communication community of using art as a tool for science communication in various projects and such. So we just wanted to better represent that in a dedicated EOS session. And luckily we had an amazing turnout. So originally we had 30 abstract submitted which have been weaned down to 28. So as you can imagine it's quite a long session spanning from 9am to 1230 on Wednesday the 28th of April. So essentially it takes up two time blocks, but it's quality all the way through like we've got amazing papers like I've just been scrolling for him just to like refresh my mind. We've got people making science quilts. We've got people who've done photography projects on astrophotography. We've been using like music to express various geoscience topics. So we'll be running that on Wednesday the 28th. And throughout will also be highlighting various artworks in sectional blocks so people can submit from outside of session their own side art, and we can highlight and discuss it. In these two minutes sections throughout. Also, we are we are organizing some panels as well to be hosted before each year. So people display their work and display their abstracts at this session can have a formal discussion online discussing how they use art and science together, what their experiences are with it and what their personal opinions are on the matter. We'll also be having various social breakout rooms such as Animal Crossing we've actually created an entire Science Island dedicated to each year. There will be rooms where people can jump in explore places and it'll be like a treasure map as well so people can find various hidden Easter eggs throughout the island as just, you know, something to break the ice and something to do for each of you this year. Also, as mentioned, I'm the artist in residence this year, so I've already started creating some portraits, mainly of those participating in the great debate. I'm currently looking for more people to do portraits of. I'm currently doing an open call for conveners of sessions at age you who want their portrait doing so if you message me at the lab artist on Twitter. I can take your details down look into what research you do and if it's interesting enough, no pressure. I will turn your portrait into a science and art portrait. So basically your portrait will be combined with your scientific research in a visual manner. That's totally free of charge I'm not looking for anything for doing that it's part of the artist residency. We're also doing the EDI scientist coloring book so basically a group of us on the EDI team are putting together a coloring book of each of you participants so we're literally like making line art illustrations of scientists in their workfield, not like in the fields like working. You know, next to volcanoes next to like the lab spaces and search I think it's a really really nice initiative, and we're also accepting requests for that as well so as with the scientists portraits. If you know someone who you'd like to be represented or if you yourself would like to be represented in this EDI coloring book. Please just drop me a message on Twitter, and I can get back to you there. The animal crossing Edu Island sounds really enticing incredible. Sorry, I want to reiterate. If you have a request or any in terms of portrait or a drawing for her book. You can visit her at the lab artist that the lab artist on Twitter. So now we're going to move on to questions. Coming in. I think the first one I have is for clary, which is, or attendees interested in science policy, but who are unsure where to begin or even what to ask. How should they best approach the conference, which I guess could be summarized as where's the best place to start if you're interested in science policy. Sorry, I meet myself. Yeah, so I think the best place to start is probably the short courses. The short courses like I said, will really give an overview of what science policy is to start with they won't have any knowledge assumed. And that will give you some some idea of what science policy is but also what opportunities actually exist for scientists to engage. So once you have that foundation, a lot of the other sessions like the union symposia won't necessarily make more sense, but you will be able to connect the dots a little bit better about okay. What does this mean in terms of science policy what does this mean in terms of scientists engaging more in the policy making process. So you definitely recommend attending a few of the short courses that I mentioned and I did actually put the link to that in the chat as well so you can have a look at the blog with all of the all of the sessions I mentioned just there. But I would also recommend going to some of the networking sessions as well. So I mentioned these will be a little bit more informal. But it will give you the chance to hear other people speak about their own experiences and also talk with other people who just getting started themselves. Yeah, and again if you have any like if you if you would like to participate in that ask an expert activity as well you're more than welcome to even as someone who doesn't have any prior experience or knowledge. That's actually if you have a question it's very general that is an easier question to answer for the person that you'll be matched with. So don't hesitate to apply for that either. Excellent. Thank you. Our next question is for Jenny. And it's just asking for people looking to get involved in kids. Who should they contact. Yeah so the natural hazards division are organized in the event but also in combination with the cryosphere division which is the division that I am part of. So what I would like to do is to either email the natural hazards or the cryosphere account, which is ECS dash CR or NH at ease edu dot EU. So that's the main email account. If you want you can also find me on Twitter and drop me an email there if the email account is, yeah, if I said it wrong or yeah you'd rather just have an informal chat, then you can find me on Twitter that's fine. Thank you Jenny. Another question for you was for the jobs and careers events. How can ECS or any other people looking for jobs and careers help them self stand out for future employers. I think this was kind of relating to that pairing scheme as well just ask more about how that is going to work. Yeah, sure. So I think one of the ways that you can definitely stand out is by trying to attend one or two of the sessions where there are going to be potential job opportunities or future employers. So the meet the talent is where you can upload your own two minute video, which exhibitors can look at but if you also attend the meet the exhibitor event you could maybe meet them one on one in a zoom breakout room so that you can talk to them. If you've got a face to a name it really helps for remembering who someone is in future job opportunities, for instance if you then applied with them a little bit later on. You could also attend any of the short courses that are about the careers events and hopefully we will have some more informal pop up events after those, so that then you can approach somebody in that way as well. Excellent. Thanks Jenny. Thank you for you. And it's asking. How should attendees looking perhaps to start off in science or who interested in even collaboration. Where do you think they should start out. There's a lot of events, they all sound really great but where's the first place to go to if you've not really engaged inside. Well, I recommend attending our session as that's a good start because then you get a general ideas for different mediums and such and different ways to collaborate on these projects because like I mentioned we have such a wide range like just looking through the program which I've linked in the chat. Yeah, that will give you a few ideas, but mainly it's just, it's just talking to scientists and artists and just opening the dialogue between the two and just figuring out, you know, as you go along there's no right or wrong way to start doing science. I would just recommend, you know, network as much as possible just like look into different projects that had happened before, and then think how can I take my scientific subject and possibly, you know, combine it with art. I would highly recommend discussing this with artists because they might have, you know, different insight on how to do this. Excellent, so I guess that means just look through the program and if there's something that draws you go to that and that's the best way to kind of engage inside art if you're not sure where to start, but if you're looking to build your own skills, find the artists and talk to them directly, that's the best way to do it. Yeah, I mean like networking like doesn't hurt, but if you're a scientist wanting to make your own site, I would recommend still going to artists discussing what mediums they use and also just experimenting with different mediums as well because different people have different things that be like, I mean, just because I do digital illustration mainly doesn't mean that everyone else will enjoy, you know, using that area. Can use like sculpture, can use textiles, like there's like so many different options so I would just say, you know, diastrate in and explore. Sure, that sounds, that's good advice. Thanks Kelly. I have a couple more questions there. This one's for you, Chloe, and they're just asking how formal or informal these one-on-one meetings. I mean it's really up to you and the questions that you ask. I would say they're probably going to be pretty informal like the experts that I know, I know quite well. And most of our conversations are relatively informal. And actually I think you'll find if you ever engage with a policymaker directly, that communication after the initial emails can also be quite informal in itself as well. So it would be me doing the coordination of it, for example, setting up the Zoom session and emailing you the times and making sure that both people within that pair can actually meet at that time. But after that, you know, you can email them afterwards, you can really chat about anything. And if you submit a couple of questions and then you think of some others afterwards, that's also fine. The important thing is to submit the questions now, make sure I can actually have the time to pair you up and then if you think of others before your actual meeting with the person, which again it's only 15 minutes, you can also ask those as well. Excellent. So if people go to these events and feel questions after the fact, how should they best relay those questions should be perhaps contact you should be trying to make a lasting connection with the policy advisors what should we do.  If you have any questions and either you decided to not do the meeting with the one on one meeting with someone, or you just rather email me you can absolutely email me any questions that you have. I do get quite a few emails from different people just I mean some of them I can't answer myself and I can just give some direction. And someone more able to answer more concretely, you can email me my email is policy at egu.eu I'll also just put that in the chat as well. Or alternatively if you want to just keep up with what's happening in Europe in terms of science policy, you can also sign up for the monthly newsletter that I send out, and you can do that by joining the database of expertise. And I'll also link that in the chat. I'll also send you the link Simon so you can add them to the YouTube description. Thank you very much. And Jenny I think the final question relates. It's similar but relates to ECS is one once engaged engages with ECS content at the conference and is looking to continue to do so afterwards, how best to go about it. Yeah, I think the first step would be contacting your division representative. So, yeah, say you're in the atmosphere science division you can speak directly to your division representative using the same email as the ones I put in the chat there so depending on which division you're in. So that's always useful because they can also link you with somebody else if you are interested in being involved in the equality diversion and inclusion committee for instance they will be able to point you into the right direction. Most of the division representatives are also checking their Twitter account so you can also feel free to drop the respective EGU division and a tweet and I think that should be fine. Thank you. That's all the questions I have for today. I think that's a good time to wrap up the session. So I want to thank you all the attendees for coming and watching this webinar. Thank you all speakers for doing all that information. I should note there's also a lot more of a content out there than just mentioned there today. For example, there's your magic science photography competition. So make sure when you're attending you also put your votes for a photo. But otherwise, I will see you in 11 days. Thank you very much for attending.


Hey there polycasters, I'm Elliot. Welcome back to our series on how to build an element in Polymer 2. Last time, we used pre-made elements and styling to make our element look great. But the checklist doesn't really work yet. If we take a look, pressing the Add Task button doesn't really add tasks. So let's make that work. So when you click the Paper button, we want something to happen. And what you want to do is add a ClickListener. So Polymer has a nice way to do this. If you look again in your dependencies, go into the Polymer directory, back into lib. But in the Utilities section, you'll see something called gestures.html.  And in this case, we want to add a ClickListener. So let's import that. So Polymer, Polymer directory in the lib, but it's in Utils. And it's called gestures.html. Cool, gestures.html allows us to add listeners to the events, like this. You type in on dash, and then the type of event that is happening. So on click. And on each click, we're going to call the method Add Task. All right, but now we have to create Add Task. So here, we'll go into our Polymer Checklist class and create a Add Task method. All right, so in the Add Task method, what we're going to do is add to our task list. Our task list currently is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We'll make that empty for now. And let's define a new task, so const new task. And for now, we'll make it an empty object. And then we will add that to the task list. So in normal JavaScript, you would simply just push onto a variable. You would do that by doing this. You'd select the tasks list, which in Polymer, you can select a property by doing this dot, then the name of the property. So this dot tasks. And then in JavaScript, you would just do dot push, and then the new value, new task. The problem with this is the Polymer data binding system doesn't necessarily know when you want to update the template. So here, we're going to do something a bit different. We're going to call the this dot push method, which is defined by Polymer, then give it the name of the property that you want to push to, which is tasks, and then push the new task value. Now let's define what goes inside of our task. So each task has about two things in it. It has a checkbox and an input. And we're going to need two properties to define this. So let's say the name of the task. For now, we'll leave that as an empty string. And then whether it's completed or not. And we can do that with a completed value. And for now, we'll say it's false because you're creating a new task, so I don't think it's going to be finished. Let's go refresh. And let's add a few tasks. Oh, all right. We're creating tasks now. We just have something wrong with our data binding. Let's go change that right now. So now let's go back to our DOM repeat. In the DOM repeat, you'll see that we're actually just passing in the task to the paper input, which is now an object. So actually, we want to pass in the name into here, task.name. And in the paper checkbox, we want to see if it's checked. And to that, we want to data bind whether it's completed, task.completed. I can't type. Completed. Let's go refresh. All right. That's starting to look a bit better. Let's see if our data binding is actually working. So we'll go down here and we'll change completed to true. And we'll add a test, task, test name, refresh and task. And there you go. It's checked and the value is in there. All right. So now let's go reset this back to an empty string, set this to false. And that's good. So now that we have this going, when you check things, it doesn't seem to go into the completed section. So let's go change that right now. So what we want to do is we want to first get rid of the things that are in the to-do section when they're checked. So if you mouse over DOM repeat, you'll see a bit more documentation. And at the bottom, you'll see something about filters and observing. So let's type in the filter property. And you'll see that the Polymer IDE tells you that it takes a function. And this function is used to filter an array that is passed in, the array being the tasks array. So we'll filter with a function called isNotCompleted. And then we'll define the isNotCompleted function, isNotCompleted, and it will pass in a task. The way the DOM repeat filter function works is the same way as an array.filter works. You pass in a function that returns a boolean true or false that if true will include the current task in the array and if false will exclude it. So in the isNotCompleted function, we will return NotTask.Completed. So it'll be the opposite of completed. And then one more thing is that we have to add the observe property. The observe property is a string that tells the data binding system when to recalculate this filter. And we want to recalculate this filter whenever task.Completed is changed. So we'll save that, go over, refresh. We'll add a few tasks. We'll call this hello, polycast. And we'll leave that one empty. And if you check one, it disappears. It's getting filtered out. Cool. Only one step left. Add them to the completed section. So here we have R2DU, the addCompleted stuff, which, as you saw earlier, looks very much the same as it did to the 2DU section. So we'll just copy this, paste it right over, and fix the tabbing. All right. So the completed section is basically the exact opposite of the 2DU section. So what we have to do is remove this filter and make it isCompleted, rather is not completed. So here we'll define it isCompleted, takes in a task. And then it just returns the opposite of isNotCompleted. So task, return, task.Completed. Save that. Give that a refresh. Add a few things. Hello, world. Click that. And there you go. We have a functioning checklist. All right. Now how do you actually use this checklist element? So if you look back in our demo directory, you'll see that we have a polycast checklist, an element that we just defined. So you can actually just copy this multiple times. You can make as many as you want. Let's make a bunch of checklists because we're such busy people. And here you go. There's a lot of different stuff on the page. Let's scale it back a bit. Let's add a quick title to this. So we'll add an H2 title. And we'll call this name. And this will be the name of the checklist. So creating a property should be pretty quick. Name type is a string. And the value, this will be the default value. We'll call this toDoList. Cool. Let's refresh. We have a toDoList up here. It's data bound in there. And then we can change the demo. Ooh. Didn't mean to close that. You can change the demo and change the name. We'll call this shopping list. All right, so now let's test out that this actually works. Here you can add a few tasks. We can add tasks to create a shopping list, finish the polycast, and add a few tasks over here, add some tomatoes, add some lettuce, check, check. And it looks like it works. And the nice thing about having a Polymer element is that you could just import the element and put it on your page. And then you're done. Great. That completes this tutorial on how to build an element in Polymer 2. For more tutorials, you can go to the start section of the Polymer project site, which I'll link down below. If you have any questions or ideas for future Polycasts, leave us a comment on this video or tweet us at hashtag askpolymer. See you next time.


Thank you all for coming, and I just want to take a quick picture Because I don't think my wife would believe this many people come to listen to me say stuff, right? so Yeah, we got to do a selfie with everybody Well, thank you. Thank you all for coming We're back at word camp again exciting times, right? The energy is bristlin here at word camp So today we're going to talk about leveling up your wordpress development business So I'm going to talk about seven ways. There might be a bonus way Through here to talk about how you can make a profitable second half of 2019 So you can download slides and other goodies here Jason MCC comm Backslash or slash WC atl 19 And it's also at the bottom on your right The bottom right of every slide just in case you missed this slide All right, so we ready to take it to a whole nother level All right now let's go So who is this for? Are you a freelancer solopreneur solo operator? Digital marketing agency that handles any wordpress development. Do you then? Do you need to get clear on who you seek to serve in the marketplace? You want to work with the right type of client how you can quickly deliver value and get paid on time right and You need to set up a basic sales page So you'd rather cut off your right arm then set up a sales page I have a very basic formula for you here in this presentation So here's what you're going to learn customer clarity, right? You're going to learn who you need to target and how to speak to them You're going to learn how to define your unique value that speaks to your customer's needs How to communicate it in a in a unique way and how to write a basic sales page, right? That speaks to your customer's pain point or their frustration So my promise to you at the end of this talk you'll know this formula right for defining your value and writing a sales page And I'm also going to give you free stuff, right? So I'm going to give you two So all the stuff that I'm giving you today is stuff that I use in my personal business To my master financial spreadsheet templates all with formulas that are going to auto calculate your finances, etc client email templates and a dream client tracking template So when you want to find that dream client here's a way for you to find them and track them You're on it. I don't control the speaker. Oh, okay I'll try to speak up So some rules. This is not a push-button technique, right? So it's going to take some hard work It's going to take some self-discovery, right? So it's going to take at least an hour or two of your day over a week period of time for you to Implement this formula into your business and this is only going to help you if your skill set or your service Actually helps people on the other end, right? So this is not for the mediocre, right?  Let's keep learning But this is not for you. So this is for hustlers and people who are sharp at their craft So does this sound familiar right? You're generating leads, but you're not getting any sales So almost everybody you talk to they want to haggle on that price and or You get a payment you're excited to get started, but you find out you've just been hired by the client from hell right, right or They're just so slow To bring in that money, right the checks always in the mail, right, right? Or pay pals down right like the McDonald's shake machine is always down, right? Or you'd rather cut off that right arm again because you don't want to write a sales page So does any of this sound familiar? Good So the actual problem What you've been doing isn't working because it's based on flawed principles and have some notes here So you're not focusing on that expensive problem and how you can be an out How you can be a true asset to your client and I'm not I'm not just talking about that dream The dream client that just pays on time, right? It's deeper than payment right is deeper than money Working with that dream client You know both of your goals aligned, right? It's a project that you want to work on so that's What I consider that dream client so there's six pillars. So these are things that you need to These are six things you need to get clear on right so today I'm going to walk you through how I completely changed the way that I position myself and how I sell my products and services today So everything that I'm teaching you today is something I've been using for the past few years So to make this work, there's six critical steps and I want to walk you through that Everybody ready to rock? Do it. All right. Who am I? My name is Jason McCullough and I'm an online marketing expert and I specialize in helping high-level experts sell their products Slash services more effectively. I also teach freelancers how to raise their rates get more clients and make better business decisions I'm the national marketing leader for the Freelancers Union and I host a free monthly workshop right here in Atlanta, Georgia And that's my beautiful family right there So there was a woman out there that said I want to spend more time with you, right? Not only that but I want to help you raise a family so hashtag blessed So just ten years ago My business my solo business was just full of complication, right? So many moving parts Full of complication. I was busy selling my skills for peanuts, right? So I was creating websites for Joe the plumber, right? He thought his twenty dollars was worth a hundred dollars, right? Is everybody familiar with that? So I was performing a skill set extremely high-value skill set But didn't know how to charge more for it So or I didn't even know how to find the people that would charge the amount of money that I needed to charge To really make it profitable. So as a result, I was a highly effective developer slash marketer And I was you know really making peanuts, right? I was barely eating ramen noodles even though I was getting people big results on the other end So my light bulb moment. I read two books ten years ago one the 22 immutable laws of marketing number two Duct tape marketing. So these two books showed me what I was doing wrong I was marketing myself as a generalist and As enough as a commodity. So I'm sure you're familiar with the job boards. It used to be odesk now. It's up work Elats freelancer, etc. I was on those job boards, right?  So now you're a commodity and I was marketing myself as a commodity instead of a specialist So that's what I was doing wrong So what do things look like now for me? I do have a successful business. So I help people get rid of their headaches Or their expensive problems I make a good living of that so shouts out to Matt Mullenweg right and shouts out to everybody who makes WordPress possible because you've helped me pay mortgages carnotes and Set up a retirement account So I've worked with over 200 really really great clients in the past 10 years And even though I specialize it's not been a death sentence I still get work from other types of businesses and other business genres So just because you specialize in one area doesn't mean it's a death sentence for your business You're going to get work from other places So I call this my purple unicorn strategy My daughter Adeline likes unicorns and she likes anything with a color purple So I call this my purple unicorn strategy. So here's an outline or an overview of that And we're going to break down and dive deep into all six critical steps here I'm sorry. Everybody needs to take a picture. Okay. Yeah, go ahead Right. So these are things these are six critical things that you need to get clear on and so once I got clear on this I was I was just it's like I was stumbling onto my dream client And I was stumbling onto these people that wanted to pay me a lot of money, right? But again, I had to put in a lot of work a lot of self-reflection on who I am What are what I want out of my business and what I want out of clients. So it's not easy So pillar one You always want to go three layers deep on who you seek to serve you want to get really specific and here's an example I want to work with Marketing directors or slash managers in the medical device industry who are looking to increase their patient outreach programs That's super specific, right? But again, it's not a death sentence. I'm still going to work with other types of businesses, but this helps me Raise my rates because this is very specific. It's a very specific problem that this type of client has We're going to hold our questions to the end. Yeah, so make sure you hold your questions to the end and I'll make sure to answer them so Here's a formula right so from Jonathan Stark if anybody's and not Game of Thrones, right? He's just he's a real dude named Jonathan Stark You can find him at Jonathan Stark comm Really great guy. He's a software developer, but he's a pricing authority slash expert in pricing solopreneurs in the development space So check him out, right? but he has a formula which helped me get clear and so I Am a discipline who helps target market with expensive problem unlike my competitors and here's a unique difference And so here's an example of that I'm a web developer or web designer who helps fortune 500 retailers with abandoned shopping carts on their e-commerce sites And unlike my competitors I use a B split testing to focus on the bottom line Instead of wasting my time with arbitrary design changes. So That helps you stand out from the crowd, right? It helps you stand out from You know, all the other people in the marketplace and it gets really specific, right? I mean just this you can charge 10 grand alone just for that that statement So pillar two what problem do you want to help them with right? So they got 99 problems. You just got to choose one of them, right? So just make sure you choose one problem and make sure that that's an expensive problem that way you can raise your rates, right? so You want to help them with something really expensive and the exact ways that you want to help them with that Right, so what are the three to five to seven to ten to twelve? What are the listicle ways that you can help them with that expensive problem, right? So these are the features and benefits, right? So the idea here is to create a product-size service with a fairly limited scope a fixed price and a fixed delivery deadline Right so that way you can create a repeatable process that you can execute on over and over again And you're confident that you can quote them on price So I specialize in PSD to WordPress and my white space or my pocket is Quoting people over the phone. I have a fairly limited scope and a fixed price So unlike my competitors who have to quote you, right? Well, it depends. Can you send me the PSD? I need to quote you. I'm gonna give you a flat rate price right there on the phone and nine times out of ten I'm getting started by the end of the day because I've already gotten a payment through fresh books So find that pocket find that white space and figure out that limited scope with that fixed price So when can they expect the result so? Every business runs on time time is money and any Down website cost them money correct. So you want to Define when are they going to expect this result that specific business result, right? And so when I speak about the specific result so when clients give you a testimonial They're not going to say well that was beautiful code, right? They're going to say my website helped increase calls to my sales department, right? So that's the type of stuff they're going to say and that's the type of business outcome that you want What's it going to cost to get that result so again notice I said result and limit your scope instead of fixed price Exactly how are you going to deliver this help right so? Traditionally you might set up a staging site or a development environment and then migrate that over right are you going to zip it up and Send it to them or are you going to send them a flash drive are going to are you going to mail it off via pony express? How are you going to deliver this help you want to get really really clear on how and when? You're going to deliver this help so that's the last step in these critical Purple unicorn strategy So here's an overview of that again if you missed the picture the first time you can get another picture But that is the purple unicorn strategy and again These are six critical steps that are going to get you clear on Who you seek to serve and how you serve them and how much you're going to get paid? So now we're going to go on to a basic a very basic sales page formula So here's my easy sales page formula right? So this is a this is an overview again I do have another overview so in case you missed this picture you can get another picture so The first part of this sales page is the pain you want to lead with the problem you want to lead with the frustration right so Like I said, it's it's you know referred to as a problem section or the headache section right and it's literally just you Describing that pain that your ideal customer is facing right you're explaining how frustrating it is for them and so if we were using an umbrella or a rain analogy, right you're cold and wet out in the rain and That seems pretty frustrating So the dream right so In this section you present the reader with the mirror image of the pain right sticking with a rain example a Dream would be You're warm and dry But notice I didn't explain how they got from cold and wet to warm and dry house way right So the fix this is also the offer section right so you want them So when you're in that dream section you you just want them to picture You know their ideal scenario right which is that business outcome on the other end But now you're going to go into the fix right and this is where you're explaining how you're going to fix that right so And in the Umbrella scenario or the rain scenario we're talking about They could get inside of a taxi they can get into the breezeway or hallway They can get a raincoat a poncho a hat or an umbrella Right, so that's the fix to their solution So the first call to action so make sure that you have some sort of specific Purpose right so you can only move people along one step at the time in your sales process right So you can't ask them to do six or seven things on one page Make sure you're asking them to do one specific thing is that to schedule a sales call with you is that to fill out your Multi-step nine page form or you know, whatever it may be or to download some sort of content upgrade Is it a checklist? Is it a PDF? Is it a presentation? You know, whatever it may be Make sure that it's one step one call to action and make sure that call to action is consistent throughout your page So social proof which are called trust signals so if People have been leaving you Facebook messages take a screenshot of that Facebook message And you can now embed that on your site if people send you a tweet and they think your service is awesome Screen cap that embed that right or if you have Google my business Reviews embed those as well or Facebook review wherever you're getting your reviews and however you're getting them So fresh books has a built-in review system. So when you send an invoice off, they pay the invoice It asks them for review or testimonial and of course that gets emailed right to you You can screen cap that and then put that on your sales page.  So you want other people to believe that So Any objections right I'm sure we all get the same type of stuff like why are you so expensive right or why is your price so high or How are you going to deliver this or or how are you you know? How do you work or how do I pay etc? So there's some there's some common objections There's some common questions you want to have an FAQ section in your sales page, right? So this is going to educate The person aunt that's viewing your page before they even talk to you over the phone So that way you've eliminated that education portion of your 15 minute or your 30 minute call And I get right to the business and asking them You know, you know all about their project And then here's what makes you unique You want to make sure that you put something on your page that makes you stand out from the rest and Make sure unique if not you're just a commodity and you look just like everyone else and They're going to go down the street and hire the other person Your second call to action again, it has to be consistent with the first call to action and Make sure it's just one step Schedule a call so through Calendly or Vc to or you know, however you book your calls It can be through there or again. It can be your form or content upgrade however you want it to be But just make sure that your second call to action is consistent with your first call to action Or it can just be an anchor link that takes them back up to the first call to action However, if you want to work that And then urgency sprinkle in a little urgency, right? I only take on one new client a month. You better hurry up, right? So limited supply even though it's all digital, right? The first 10 people etc, right sprinkle in some urgency to get them to at least Book that call or take that for that call to action step and again that's the overview of the easy sales page formula and so I Urge you to just pull up like a Google document or a Word document whatever your text editor is right pull that up and Just put all the text in your text editor. Don't worry about Designing a fancy sales page right now just put all the words in a document and then worry later About laying it out and looking fancy, right? Don't get fancy up front just put it in a document or write it on a cocktail napkin if you want to right just make sure you Just get the words down and then sleep on it Let it breathe overnight come back to it again, right and so that's really important because this is going to be You know the tool in your utility belt that's going to help sell your services or your products and That's just an easy sales page formula So I want to help you move forward, right? I'm just hard-wired to help people who help other people and And because of that, I just I want to help you Move forward and I host a free Monthly workshop the first Wednesday of every month and you can go to Atlanta Freelancers Union spark comm It's free to sign up. It's free to attend. There's free beer so The Chambley Dunwoody area is where we usually host the first Wednesday of every month from 6 30 to 8 30 the next topic is Financial or finance best practices for Freelancers So if you're like me, you're terrible with money and you need to learn how to manage your money better So that's the next topic. So I am done Let's get to these questions I mean Three layers deep Okay, let's go back to that Yeah, so so when When you're trying to figure out who you seek to serve you want to make sure that you go three layers deep, right? So instead of I do web design services. I'm looking for you know, like it says here Yep, very very specific With a very specific problem. So make sure you go that three layers deep In the bet When you said you seek to serve, did you already kind of like know your niche and go up to them? Or was it kind of just over time? I know I just I was like throwing a spaghetti at the wall in the beginning So I just learned it over time. I learned who I like to work with over time So it in the beginning it was it was I was just doing everything Sorry, and then second question. So did you go to people or was it in the beginning just word of mouth through friends? So I actively pursue Projects or clients so especially like here like marketing managers and marketing directors. You have to actively pursue them So I go to trade shows and conferences in that particular niche So like the medical device industry I will attend a medical device conference either by invite of a current company I'm working with or I'll just pay to go and I will actively pursue Targets so I'm reaching out in advance Or I'm researching in advance via leaked in to find out who the marketing managers With the big booths and the sort of medium booths there and I'm approaching them right so I'm trying so in my research process. I'm finding out Do they like alcohol or do they like coffee? Do they like steak or do they like burgers? And then I'll invite them out for dinner Or drinks, of course, that's all expendable, right? And I try to walk away with $50,000 or more leads from any trade show or conference Can you show us your home page or an example of like something that kind of shows what you've just talked about like as a good example That statement, I mean because what you're what you're calling a sales page Mm-hmm. I'm a little confused. Do you mean that is it like a home page? No, it would be a it would be a sales page for a specific service So your home page is completely different your home page is your receptionist, right? That's your admin Pointing people in the right direction throughout your site, but your sales page. That's a deep link inside of your website So let's say for your web design services, right? So your home page slash web design And it's a it's a specific page built and created specifically to sell that service So if it's PSD to WordPress it's specifically for PSD to WordPress. Does that make sense? Okay You can call it a landing page or a sales page, right? Yeah, it's the same principle Some people call it squeeze pages landing pages Sales pages. Yeah, you know the the object the object Objective is to get them to take one action on the page, right? Whatever that action is for you and your business We got we got a whole 30 minutes people Yeah Yeah, so the so a General overview of the freelancers union. So we help with freelancers advocacy so non-payments insurance benefits retirement accounts, right so we have IRAs and It's all at no cost, right? So it's just partners that are vetted through the freelancers union and so that's what the freelancers union is all about is Advocating for your rights as an independent worker or slash freelancer Yeah, so there been Well, there's been movements for freelancers isn't free to help with non-payment Is that's but that's not what you're talking about, right? Got it I Right so I have a have something Right, so I have something very similar in one of the sheets that I give you on the freebies page There's a paycheck divider worksheet inside of the entire workbook So the master financial spreadsheet there's several workbooks and one of them is a paycheck divider And it's doing what you're talking about. So if you have separate bank accounts You can take a percentage of that and you know, you enter in Your income on one worksheet and it's going to automatically divide that paycheck or that payment And that's how I handle my books. It's an Excel spreadsheet. Yeah, I'm still I'm still old school I just I don't do fancy software Except for fresh books Yeah, my CRM is actually a spreadsheet Yeah So there are times I get pushback, you know, you know, why are you so expensive or and so I'm handling a specific problem and so My main objection to that or I always put it back on them and I say compared to what right and so they They say well, you're you're so expensive or You know, why are you so expensive and I say well compared to what right? And Depending on their answer, right, you know, I'll hit them with another objection, right? But that usually makes them think for a second. They're like, oh, well, you know, there's really nothing to compare this to right, right? It's not like a There's not a price comparison out there for web design But there are but yeah, there's plenty of objections, but I have a in objection Like formula. So if you want to get with me after the talk, I can actually send that over if you want. Yeah Yeah, how do you nurture your leads and What about a lead what once you get to your lead, how do you nurture that along? So I use active campaign Active campaign has a CRM feature in there. So, of course, I have my My standard fancy CRM in an Excel spreadsheet, right? So that's my preset my pre-sales process, right? And then once I qualify them and I get them to the point like oh, I need to put these Subscribers into a nurture process. That's when I upload You know that one or ten or five into active campaign and I have a sequence of emails Depending on what service I've qualified them for there's going to nurture them through that process So about seven to ten emails is going to nurture them through that process And if we if they don't hit the goal by the end of that seventh or tenth email Then I'm going to recycle them through another like anti follow-up sequence Can you give a short example? so So for e-commerce So I'm Talking about an expensive problem like cart abandonment right so cart abandonment is an expensive problem. It's a common problem and How much it could cost them right so I use statistics and stats and I have links out to sites that they can read those stats and So for email marketing so for I do a quarterly newsletter service And there's in that nurture sequence. It's taking them through You know stats and figures about quarterly newsletters, and then it's telling them This is actually a quarterly newsletter that you're on You know, so it's it's it's telling them you are on this service Right now you so it's always asking why right so when you get to the like qualification call or You're researching So in the research phase without talking to them You're you know, you're finding out what their business is right? And I'm pretty familiar with that the two or three industries that I work in the most and so I know I sort of know those Expensive problems just by working in the industry But if you don't you can talk to them and you can keep asking them You're like how does your business work? You know, is there is there people that help you along the process do you have product managers? Well, what are the product managers do? And and how are they expense products and do they travel and you know, what's the sales process like? So just always it's like my three-year-old daughter like why right? She just asked why why why right? Why is the sky blue? It's blue because this oh, why right? You just keep it's you know The three-year-old sales tactic right you just keep asking why Over and over again and just always stay curious, right? I'm just curious by nature, and I just want to know You know what makes their business tick and you'll eventually find out that You know that home page that they've self diagnosed their self with is really just them trying to get acquired in the next nine months Like oh, we're just trying to clean up our business to get acquired in the next nine months Oh, that's then you don't need a home page. You need something else, right? So we need to clean up these other areas first right so then you'll find out what that really expensive problem is To get them over that hurdle Way in the back How do you figure out if someone likes a beer or a cup of coffee? So it's a it's stalking them on social media, right? So it's easy nowadays So if I see a martini in their hand On social media, that's a easy giveaway, right? But if I you know if I stalk through and I don't see any alcohol pictures Then my first lead-in is going to be a coffee, right because you're never going to offend somebody with a coffee, right? They might tell you oh, I don't drink coffee But you're not going to offend them with coffee so I have an active campaign sequence for onboarding and the And the freebies that I give away the client email templates. There's an onboarding email sequence in there as well But it's telling them, you know, you know welcome, you know, thank you for you know trusting me with your project Thank you for your payment because if they're getting The email sequence that means they've paid me already. So thank you for your payment And then here's how to work with me, you know bullet points. Here's an email primer Here's a best so one of the next emails there is an email primer Like here's how to best work with me over email, right? Because I don't want to box them into this project management solution, right? Because they have enough going on, right? They have their own database and their own work, right? So let's just work via email, right? Just old-school, right? Because I'm a I'm a solo operation So it's not like I'm managing a hundred different clients. I'm only managing a handful of clients a month So and that helps, you know That helps me get along So I don't have to do like I don't have to box people into my project management process I just work with them and they may have their own right They may they may already be working in a sauna and they might they might want me to come into that And I have no problem with that so but the onboarding process is you know thanking them, right? You know for trusting me with their project and thanking them, you know for the payment Walking through how to work with me over the next, you know 10 12 14 or however many weeks this project may be And then what it looks like during mid-development. So I have it timed So for certain services, I have it timed where at the fifth week mark That email is going to go out at the fifth week And so here we are at your stage of the project blah blah blah and here's the next steps for that And then here's what your website is going to look like where here's what your project is going to look like for launch So I have that timed as well. So towards the end of the project. They start getting emails That's talking to them about what this launch process is going to look like they need to start gathering All the info that I need like cPanel login information Domain registrar login information etc. So it starts priming them and prepping them to to get that information over to me And anything else that I may need and so that's what that onboarding and nurturing process as a client looks like Sorry, I know another question. So you mentioned you did PSD to HTML Someone was telling me I should look into Adobe XD for responsive design But I was wondering it's kind of a two-part question One do you make like do you do you make them? Do you make the web design portion and then a mobile design portion separate in Photoshop? Cuz I'm more of a Photoshop person or do you Like use whatever software tool and then second question Sorry is do you send them the mock-ups or do you kind of already have it done and show them? So when I get the project, it's been designed by someone else and I'm just creating a custom child theme From that design So I'm not actually doing any of the design work Does that make sense No, I'm not outsourcing it. It's like a so like a traditional marketing agency here in Atlanta would have their in-house designer Designed the web page You know the desktop version of the tablet version and the phone version And then they would come to me to to create a custom WordPress child theme from that design So I'm just getting the PSD files, right the Photoshop files. That's what I'm getting Correct. I am the developer not the designer Okay, can I get your contact cuz I'm kind of the same boat where I'm more of a developer than a designer I didn't even know you could do that. I thought you had to have both Yeah, yeah, definitely see me after out in the hallway. We'll talk Getting those designs and then translating I mean do you sit with the designer and the client I guess I mean often I don't do any content. I just do Laura Mipsum, right? I just I dummy text the whole thing It's up to them. That's where that's what happens in my fairly limited scope Projector so it's a fairly limited scope at a fixed price. I don't do any content, right? So for e-commerce, I'll set up three products, right? Three dummy products I created a tutorial video out of that, right? And so out of those three products, it's three separate types of products so it might be a standard product a variable product and Any other type of product that they have but I create three tutorial videos for them really quickly and then they Do all the the hand work for their own products and their own content Do you I guess There are times yep, so if I'm brought in early, I definitely guide them right so here's some I send them You know like some articles and you know knowledge base links to some standards Right Right, right Right Because I use Genesis for development, right? So I'll send them, you know a lot of Genesis resources, right? So here's some standard practices for your header here's some standard practices for your footer And if you stick to these we're gonna have an easy smooth project. Yeah, and that's if I'm brought in early if I'm not Then I mean I just do what I'm told right so I may I may dig into it And I might find it difficult and so I'll just go back to the designer Or I may go back to the client say hey, this isn't really working, but here's a solution. I always come Yeah, I always come with a solution But then services you're saying you're doing the development of design Those two things work together. Thank you. You're just working off of someone's design and developing And the reason I'm asking is because I often Building out and automation campaign on the back end where I feel like One of my strengths is building is you know kind of plucking that into an existing strategy And I so I struggled with how to talk about the results. I'm creating I feel like the result I'm creating is sort of the efficiency of the process versus the money right So PSD to WordPress or development is just one service offering in my utility belt. So marketing strategy Or the brainwork is really like the cash cow, right? And so for them in the medical device example, I work with him very early on and I developed the patient Outreach strategy Because they had a focus group and they did research and they found that in that particular Type of surgery which is heart surgery The patient had direct influence on what goes in their body in terms of heart valve And so it was it was a no-brainer to create a patient outreach strategy In tandem with a surgeon Outreach strategy as well. And so that's that's what I developed early on So I was able to develop everything from scratch like the automations The informational sites, etc. Yeah, so that's yeah So that's that's the best for me right here If you follow that You'll probably make an extra $60,000 this year, right? Just Defining, you know, what it is that you do and what makes you unique and stand and stands out, right? And this can be your LinkedIn summary, right or your LinkedIn bio So you can go through past projects, right? So, you know one way is to go through, you know, like your your roster of past projects So and then find out what was the business outcome like what what happened on the on the tail end of that project Was it a better website? Was it a paper-click campaign? Like what was the what was on the other end of that? project and then if possible reach out to the person or your contact and find out what happened like did you know did did sales increase did you know Support calls increase like what happened after your project, especially if it's you know You've wrapped up the project for a significant amount of time, right? So reach out and get some feedback and find out what that is and go through your past projects And if you don't if you're just starting and you don't have past projects Just think about a project that you would want to work on and try to reverse engineer that and find out what would be the outcome to that project Problems instead of them spending two days figured out I figured out for me our So that they can continue moving on and I found once I'm niche Yeah Yeah, and again, it's not a death sentence, you know It's not like you're gonna be stuck in that niche forever, right? You're going to get other types of work Because you've become an authority or an expert in that one topic and other people are going to want to hire you for other things, right? Well, why don't you do Shopify, right? Tell me why, right? And so you'll you'll end up getting worked in other areas But you'll you'll make a bulk of your money in that in this one area So if you follow this formula or this template, you're gonna get Generalize you're gonna find out because it's gonna take some work to get here, right? So this is not an easy task. But once you get this down Yeah, everything everything is going to be clear for you, right? So the content that you need to create for social media is gonna come out of this It's gonna be really clear like everything is going to start to become crystal clear to you, right? How you how you should go out about networking or what events you should go to, right? You're like, well, I've been wasting all my time at these events, right? Once you get this down, everything gets clear to you. Yeah Yeah, yeah, and it's it's easy to get Right Well, we know the person who builds the blueprint gets the money, right? That's the most profitable part of the project is building the blueprint. You're building the house, right? You know You're not you're you're getting a larger sum of money, but over time is going to diminish, right? It's it's less profitable. So you're at building the blueprint You're probably at you know 60 to 80 percent profit margin. You're building the house You're probably at 30 or 20 percent profit margin, right? Over a period of time. So the most profitable part is your brain work Yeah $80,000 Yeah Yeah Yeah Right Yeah And I've found that it in order to get to this point to find out what it's worth Just keep asking them why the why conversation. So why you know why hire someone so expensive like me? Why take on a risky project and you know go through six or nine months of development? Why even do this? Why not go to Upwork and find someone? Why not go to Fiverr and hire someone there, right? And then through that they're going to tell you the reasons why right? Well, we tried that already and it didn't work out or We need to do this now instead of six months from now, right? Because we're we're bleeding cash at the moment and we need to fix this Button problem that's happening on our site, right?  You can hang up the phone and go back to what you were doing, right? At any point so If there's no more questions, I'm a I'm done Thank you for showing up to hear me talk and I hope you level up


Many interviewers ask who is your role model, who influenced you to join this career path or IT industry or we can say like Salesforce ecosystem. So there are two aspects of explaining your role model to your interview. You know recently I had went to a business seminar when they highlighted that there are different types of personalities which we need to gauge. Sometimes your interviewer is kind of an emotional type of person. So if you will tell them that for me actually my role model is my father, right? He was not into IT and all of that but still he pushed me to work in IT and that's why I'm here today. But you cannot say this answer to a person who is practical in your interview. They might not take it positively.