Yesterday I received an interesting quote from someone on my YouTube channel that I wanna share with you and I think it's fascinating. But the quote says, and I don't know who actually made this quote, it says, women are not rehabilitation centers for broken men. Women are not rehabilitation centers for broken men. And as I pondered that for a little bit, I thought to myself what happened to me after my divorce. And if any of this resonates with you, please hit that like button, please let me know. Because after my divorce, I found myself desiring companionship, connection and sex. I was in the motive, I had this hole inside of me and I needed it filled. So the first thing I did, literally days after I moved out of the house, I went on and created an online dating profile. I think back then it was called Yahoo! Personals. I also know AOL Personals was one of the top sites. In fact, it eventually became match.com. And while I was on AOL Personals, I would start connecting with women. I began starting with an email and believe me, I was so inept. In fact, back then I was so inept, I didn't know how to actually upload a photograph. I mean, it was like, this was before smartphones where we had the capability of doing that. Does anyone remember that when you had maybe a blackberry or a flip phone and you weren't able to send and take a picture and send an attachment? Well, that's where I was at in my life back then. So what was interesting and I was in my early 40s, so I was, I think I was a little bit younger, a little bit more attractive and I got a lot of action. And what I mean to say, I've got a lot of interest because it was like so brand new internet dating back then. And I'll never forget, I met this really nice woman, had a really nice date, but something wasn't right. And a few days later, I need another woman. I'd have a nice date and something wasn't right. What began happening though, and if you know my story, I had over a hundred internet dates after my first year of moving out. And I realized that something wasn't right was me. During that course of the year though, I was engaging in conversations with so many different women, practically stringing them along and not from an intentional conscious place. What was happening for me is I was communicating, I would start a telephone, first I'd start an email exchange that led to a telephone call. And sometimes I get on the phone with someone for hours and hours at a time. In fact, I remember specifically starting a phone call at 8 p.m. in the evening with someone, only to finish at four in the morning. That is eight hours, eight hours of conversation. And during this conversation, we're sharing our lives, our divorces, our past experiences. And sometimes, I remember when instant messages used to be on dating apps, sometimes I'd have three or four or five instant message boxes going on communicating with so many different women at the same time. This went on for over a year. I was having incessant communication. And what I didn't realize why I was doing this and how I unconsciously was stringing women along. Now in some cases, I developed friendships with these women, but in other cases, there was this desire to connect from that companionship level, that connection level, that desire for physical intimacy, which clouded my judgment during this time because what was actually happening, and I didn't realize I was stringing someone along while this was happening, was I was using them as my therapist. What I mean to say is opening up emotionally about my marriage and all of the hurt that I experienced. And they were doing the same thing. They were sharing their hurt from their previous relationship or their marriage. And all of the fears and anxieties that were going on regarding raising children at that time. And I had younger children at the time. I was going through a divorce. And I didn't realize that what was happening during this period of time is I was using this person as a pseudo therapist because I couldn't tell my male friends what was going on. I was so, because men, we just weren't trained or prepared to share our vulnerabilities with another person, our fears and anxieties with other men. And it became really easy to do this behind the screen of our telephones, behind the screen of our smartphones. Back then it wasn't as much text messaging as going on today.  To women, that's like music to your ears. I've heard it said that men fall in love through their eyes and women fall in love between the ears. And while you're not actually falling in love with the person, you're becoming quite attached because this man is emoting from an emotional perspective. And that's what was going on for me. And what I didn't realize is I was doing this habitually with so many different women because I had so much anger and not anger. I don't want to characterize it as this violent kind of thing, but that all the disappointments and all the frustrations, it was bubbling up. And I just wanted to release that.  I didn't, I wasn't going to erupt in anger. I want to retract that. But I was releasing all the gases through the vents by communicating with women because women, as I said earlier, have this beautiful capacity to be nurturing kind and supportive. And during the course of a year, I didn't realize that I was using women as therapists. I was stringing them along as my therapist. And then it was after a year, I realized that the common denominator and the problems were all me. At that time, the movie, The Secret came out and a lot of other Tony Robbins was all over my feeds and on the internet and such. So I began exploring personal development, self-help, and spiritual work. Was actually all of the work I did prior to my son passing away, prepared me to write my book, What the Heck Is Self-Love? Anyway, A Journey of Personal Development, Self-Help, and Spiritual Work. What I'm sharing this with you is when a person shifts by doing the healing, by doing the inner work, particularly about their past relationships, you can be better prepared for any new relationship. So it's interesting, the woman who wrote me that shared with me women are not rehabilitation centers for broken men. She went on to suggest something else, and I really like this. I have to look at my notes. She says, do an autopsy of their past relationships. And I went up, so do an autopsy about someone's past relationships. So you've met someone online. He begins to start to emote, share all these feelings about his past relationships. And usually that's where it stems from. What you need to do is an autopsy of that past relationship, but more importantly, much like a detective, much like a coroner, much like an examiner, you have to be able to read between the lines. Is this person simply stringing you along as his therapist because so often when men dump, emote, vent to a person, they do so because it feels safe. However, and this is the critical, however, put on the brakes, most men who have dumped, emoted, vented to a woman whom they barely even know rarely actually want to pursue a relationship with this person. They may, there may be a level of sexual desire that may happen between the two of you and you explore the physical realm. But what happens is when a man goes about and does the work to heal himself and ladies, you have to recognize this. If he has trust issues, if he has abandonment issues, if he's had a contentious childhood, if he has childhood wounds and traumas or adult traumas within his life, if he has done no healing and you're in relationship with this man, even if he goes on a journey of healing which could take years, Allison Armstrong calls it the tunnel, the tunnel. If you're not familiar with the work of Allison Armstrong. Where is the Queen's Code? Oh, I don't see the book handy. Okay, I highly recommend checking out Allison Armstrong's book called The Queen's Code to understand the tunnel we men go through. Another version of the tunnel is called Midlife Crisis. When a man is caught up in his midlife crisis, he may be able to emote his emotions to you. Again, unconsciously using you as his therapist. And many of you are even a little bit skilled when it comes to therapy. Maybe you have a psychology degree. Maybe you have some background in life coaching. And because of that, you're appreciating his vulnerability, but that doesn't mean he's capable of a relationship with you. And furthermore, if and when he does healing, which could take years, the tunnel, the tunnel for me started in 2005, 2006, and I didn't get out of the tunnel until really, I started to make the curve about five years later. And I don't think I was out of the tunnel for another five years after that. For many men, this crisis, if you will, this emotional crisis we go through could last a decade or even longer. And what usually happens is, while we appreciate that person that held space for us during the tunnel, and again, this is all unconsciously speaking, what happens is that they want to become a bright, shiny penny to someone new. Now, let me just say this about inner work, okay? Oftentimes you can do a lot of work prior to meeting someone. And what's gonna happen is when you're in a relationship, you can get re-triggered all over again. The difference is, just much like my sweetheart, Marie and I, she triggers a lot of my stuff. Thankfully, I have the tools because I did the work prior to. Ladies, if you're engaging in a relationship with someone where you're communicating incessantly and especially if you're unpacking the past relationship, your job is to read between the lines. This is where my coaching comes in. I help to design the questions you should be asking someone prior to ever giving your heart to another person. And so I always recommend schedule a discovery call with me to see if working with a coach is right for you. Because the fact is, as many of you have not, don't have the skills to be discerning, to discern is this person that's going to possibly string you along, unconsciously speaking. And I recognize that it can be music to your ears when a man is vulnerable to you, but that doesn't mean he's capable of long-term commitment with you. And if you don't recognize it, this is a strongly prevalent experience today in the dating marketplace, particularly for those of us in midlife. In midlife is after baby making years and before retirement that we actually tend to bond with each other through our traumas. Through our traumas we might bond with one another only to have a house built on a very weak foundation. The fact of the matter is most human beings are dysfunctional. Rather, some are more dysfunctional than others. Your job is to figure out which is the least dysfunctional guy. That's why doing an autopsy of their past relationships and learning how to read between the lines. I call it laying your cards on the table. If you cannot understand who a person is without knowing their past, I want you to think about this for a moment. Let's say you'd been friends with a man or you knew a lot about a man because you're in the same social circles and you heard all the stories about his past relationships. You would probably operate completely differently in any relationship where you're with him. So when we go in naively about past relationships, recognizing the person's gonna give you their story but it's not the whole story. Their narrative, not the narrative from both people. You might find yourself empathizing or sympathizing with his side without really knowing what's the real story behind this. This is why you have to learn to read between the lines. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating? Please let me know. Listen, there's nothing easy about giving our heart to someone or inviting someone into our heart only to find out that they're incapable of actually supporting a healthy relationship. This is the reality of human beings. The fact of the matter is is most human beings don't have the skillset to be in a romantic relationship with another person. Certainly we're capable of companionship connection and sex but without the tools, it's gonna make it very difficult and I just don't want you to fall for the guy who is opening his heart through his traumas because what you might feel like is you've been strung along and he didn't do it intentionally. But I want you to be better prepared before you ever enter into a connection with another human being. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating? Please let me know if it is. I'd like to hear your thoughts. Please post a comment below. By the way, folks, being part of Midlife Love Mastery, I invite you to tell your friends about Midlife Love Mastery. There's a link right there. I'd like you to invite them to our group by sending them to my website, jonathanazley.com. Have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group. And I'm gonna sign off this videos I always do.  I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone, a pet, a teddy bear pillow and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love and let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Bye.


Health governance challenges can make or break universal health coverage, UHC, reforms. One of the biggest health governance challenges is ensuring meaningful participation and adequately reflecting people's voices in health policies and implementation. Recognizing this, Iran's Health Transformation Plan, HTP, lays out the country's blueprint for UHC with an explicit emphasis on the socialization of health. Socialization is seen as a key means to contribute to HTP objectives, meaning the systematic and targeted engagement of the population, communities and civil society in health sector activities. Given its specific cultural and historical context, we sought to discern what notions such as civil society, non-governmental organization, etc. mean in practice in Iran with the aim of offering policy options for strengthening and institutionalizing public participation in health within the context of the HTP. For this, we reviewed the literature and analyzed primary qualitative data. We found that it may be more useful to understand Iranian civil society through its actions, defined by its motivation and activities rather than the prevailing international development understanding of civil society as a structure which is. This article was authored by Deepa Rajan, Muhammad Hadi Ayatsi, Mazir Morata Lake, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


In the States, UK and Canada, well, in Australia and New Zealand, in Western Europe, all of these places which people thought were pre-countries, individual rights, have been run roughshod over. And Zubi Udizeg, better known simply as Zubi, is a rapper, podcaster and author known for an engaging mix of personal uplift and political provocation that led to a highly publicized, temporary suspension from Twitter back in 2020. Born in England to parents of Nigerian descent and raised in Saudi Arabia, he now spends much of his time in the United States, where he criticizes identity politics on shows like the Joe Rogan Experience. He's built a massive following on social media and has just published a children's book designed to showcase the benefits of good nutrition, exercise and self-control. Earlier this year, Zubi spoke at a Mises Caucus event at the Libertarian Party Convention in Reno, Nevada, where he said he was overjoyed to be, quote, talking about freedom, liberty and all of that good stuff, end quote. Reason caught up with Zubi at Freedom Fest, the July meeting of libertarians held annually in Las Vegas, where we discussed his experience of the pandemic in eight different countries, his defensive tweets mocking transgender athletes and his support of rights for trans people and why he's bullish on the future of individual responsibility and freedom. Zubi, thanks for talking to me. Let's start by talking about a new project. It's a book subscription for kids, brave books that you're working on. Tell us about that and what are you hoping to accomplish with? Yeah, sure. So Brave Books is a company that was founded in 2021 in Texas and they work with different authors to release new children's books every month with different themes. It's a conservative leaning company. Some of their books have been more on-the-nose, socio-politically, but not in a way that it kind of beats children over the head with it or anything like that. Although you could beat children over the head with the books. Potentially. I don't advocate for that. And I wrote and released a book with them called The Candy Calamity, which just came out recently. That one is totally apolitical. I actually told them specifically that I didn't want any political messaging in my book at all. It's on the subject near and dear to my heart, which is health, fitness, and taking care of your body. And is the calamity that they're eating too much candy or there's not enough candy? It's that they're eating too much candy to begin with and they run into an encounter where their lack of fitness and self-discipline has some bad results. And so they go back and they start eating better and they start exercising and training and they learn their lesson and they're able to face the challenge better the next time around. So it's a really fun book. It's about great illustrations. It all rhymes as a rapper. I had to make sure my first children's book was all rhyming. And it was a great opportunity to reach a different demographic. I have a lot of people asking like, oh, why did you write a kid's book? Or how did that come out? Are you a groomer? Is that what this is about? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Gosh, no, I'm joking. So, you know, I've got, I don't have children myself. Yeah, I've got nine nieces and nephews and I do, I'm going to have children in the future. And it is something I think about a lot in terms of raising that next generation. And I think that the message about health and fitness across society, I mean, for adults, it's necessary. And I think it's something that should be spoken out about a lot more in a real, open, honest, and informed way, especially considering the past two and a half years, which supposedly has been all about health. But there's been very little communication about health. And a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people just sat around getting fat. Exactly. And also stressed and anxious. Yeah, let's go from that, because one of your earlier, another thing that you were doing was a kind of work, I mean, to say it's a workout plan is wrong, but it was kind of a fitness program and book and system that you were selling.  Talk a little bit about what that was and, you know, how you came to be focused on that kind of issue. Yeah, sure. So in 2019, I wrote a book called Strong Advice, Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody. It was a completely independent release, sold over 10,000 copies of it now without it even being on Amazon, which has been way more successful than I anticipated. And it's really the book I wish someone gave me when I was 15 or 16 years old, and I started going to the gym about the basics and fundamentals you need to know about mindset and motivation, nutrition and training. That's how the book is split up. So whether someone is trying to build their muscle, get stronger, lose weight, even gain weight, burn fat, whatever your goal is in terms of your health and your physique, it shows you how to optimize your training and your nutrition and also your mindset to achieve that. So I'm big on, as you already alluded to, I'm really big on the concept of personal responsibility and accountability. It's something that was ingrained in me now that I think about it, certainly implicitly and I guess somewhat explicitly all throughout my childhood and throughout my life. It's kind of an ethos within my entire family. It's something that my parents definitely instilled in myself and in my siblings all through my time in school and then university. And with everything I've done now, I mean, at this point, I've been self-employed for 11 years. I've been, I went left my corporate job in 2011 to go pursue my music full-time and it's all been on me. I've really just been, you know, been a one-man army for the past 15, 16 years with everything that I've built and created. And I also want people to understand just how empowering it is. I think there are so many people who don't realize how much they can do. So many people think that, you know, it's great to have a team and I'm not saying I'm not against having a team or people having people who help them or anything like that. But I think the vast majority of people greatly underestimate what they themselves are capable of doing. And I mean this on every single level. I mean this physically. I mean it mentally. I mean in terms of the positive impact and change that they can make in the world and in their communities. I think that I love this idea of potential and I often think of what would, what would things look like if more people recognize their potential and took strides to maximize it. One thing about potential is you can never, you can never actually reach it. But if people thought, okay I have the capacity to do this. Maybe I'm only doing 30% of what I'm capable of. What if I push that up to 50%, 60%, 80% and strive towards that then I think that's how you really change the world.  There's a lot of, hey I'm going to put this hashtag in my bio and I'm going to shout this slogan and I'm going to go out there and I'm going to screen this.  Right. I'm going to, I know how to fix the system. I know how to fix that person, how to fix this. These are people who don't even oftentimes have their own life in order to any degree. So I think that you start with yourself. You start with yourself, you start at home.  Don't outsource it to the state or the government or this person or that person because the big things are going to make the biggest difference in your life and even those of others is what you're capable of doing. There's so much in this world we don't have control over, not directly.  You're of Nigerian descent, right? But you were, you were born in England and then you grew up mostly in Saudi Arabia. That's right. You know, what were your parents doing and what was it like?  Yeah, man. I mean, it's interesting because throughout my childhood I didn't think of stuff this way at all. And I know my background in upbringing is atypical, but for me it's just my life. So I don't really think about it that hard. What did your parents do? My dad's a medical doctor and my mom was a journalist. So we moved there. We moved to Saudi Arabia when I was just a baby. All my earliest memories are from Saudi Arabia. And I was actually in an international school there from kindergarten up until fifth grade. So one, people always get confused by my accent. One reason why I don't sound British and never have is because I actually went to an American school during those formative years of my life after that. And yet you can speak well and you can read. Yeah. Yeah. And then I went to boarding school in the UK for a while, you know, got when it talks with university and studied there. So I've had heavy exposure from the beginning to four really different cultures and ways of doing things. So being British by nationality, also being Nigerian, having Nigerian ancestry, going to an American school, being in that school system for a long period of time, and then of course living in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia. These are all really different countries in many different ways. And I was blessed to be able to meet and interact with such a range of people all my entire life. I mean, people like to talk a lot about diversity. It's a very popular buzzword these days. But my upbringing was really, truly diverse from the very beginning preschool onwards. I was surrounded by people of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, backgrounds, religions, just, just everything. So for me, that's always been the norm. That's actually one reason why I speak out against some of the divisive racial narratives that people are pushing in the USA or in the UK, or these ideas that you, our skin color is deeply important. And some people call it critical race theory, but there's all these ideas that are floating around.  So you are going to have certain experiences and you also need to have certain thoughts. That is what gets under you. It's hard to trigger me. And that's, that's one of my triggers when people come with that, like, I'm not the guy to do that with because you're going to get. Can I ask before we continue with that though, it's, you know, of the things that you mentioned, I'm kind of familiar with them. I'm curious what, particularly for people, and I guess this would have maybe been your parents or grandparents, but like of the Nigerian diaspora, or, you know, what if, you know, Americans are like, well, we're, you know, rugged self and, you know, we're rugged individualists or something like that.  Wow. Well, the first thing to recognize about Nigeria is one of the most diverse countries in the world. And a lot of people don't know this. There are over 500 languages in Nigeria. There's no such language as Nigerian. There's dozens, hundreds of different ethnic groups, different tribes, and so on, which all happened to some years ago. Someone drew a line and decided that this should all be a country. Right. Not someone. I mean, European. Yes. Yes.  My family is Ibo. There's, you know, Halsa, Yoruba, there's many different tribes. But in terms of things that are somewhat consistent, I think a strong focus on family values. The south of Nigeria is predominantly Christian, whereas the north is predominantly Muslim. There's a lot of people of faith in the country. Education is a big one. Respect, especially respect for elders, is a much bigger focus there than it is, say, in Western society. And there's a lot of focus on, yeah, just hard work paying off. And that notion of personal responsibility. If you want to be successful, that comes from you. And Nigerians are one of those groups, at least in the West or in Europe and America that do extremely well. Wherever they show up, they're doing well. Overall. And a lot of that is, I mean, there's many, there's multiple reasons for that. There is a selection bias there in the Nigerians. Yeah, wealthier Nigerians who come over. Yes, they're more likely to be more highly educated and so on. But also it's part of it is recognizing the opportunity. I mean, even being from the UK, when I'm in the US, my mind is blown by the opportunities here. And one of the, if there's one thing I can recommend to, I say to all my American friends, American is to travel. Travel and see the world and see how people live in different places. And it will give you a whole different level of perspective and gratitude and appreciation, both for the world, but also for your own country. Because if someone is born and lives in the America their entire life, and they never really leave it or go outside of it, honestly, most people end up with a really skewed perspective of what the world is like. And you end up often undermining your own country and your own potential achievement because you don't recognize how special it is. As human beings, if we take something for granted, we often devalue it. Yeah, we devalue it. But the USA has many problems. Every country has its problems.  Yes, there is history and 100 years ago that statement would not have been so true. But you can't say that about everywhere in the world. And so that is one of the strongest points in the USA for sure, but across the West and in developed countries in general, just that level of opportunity. So that's why you do get many people who immigrate here and they crush it because it's like, oh my gosh, look at all these opportunities. There's so many places in the world. Do you think people on the left, well, you know, it's weird because there's a right-wing critique of America. But let's look at the left wing first, you know, where they say, no, America, there is no opportunity here.  Is it because they don't, you know, in a weird way because left progressives seem to be better educated, they seem to be more worldly, but is it because they really don't understand the exceptional nature of America? Well, man, that's a fantastic question. And I think it's multiple things. First of all, I don't think many of the people who espouse those views are as educated or as worldly as they really think that they are, let alone as open-minded as they think that they are. Bernie Sanders did travel to the Soviet Union on a Sunday, so he knows the world, right? But do you know one of the biggest differences I notice between, I don't like to use the terms of the left and the right, but generally one difference I notice say between people consider themselves progressive liberals or people who consider themselves more conservative or right leaning is what they compare things to. And a lot of people on the left tend to compare things to utopia, whereas more people on the right tend to compare things to history and to the rest of the world.  Most people, right leaning, I imagine would say, no, no, it doesn't mean there's no racism. It doesn't mean that there wasn't severe racism in history, but right now in 2022, no, the USA is not a racist country because compared to what? Compared to history? Absolutely not. Compared to the rest of the world? No. Absolutely not. It's one of the most tolerant countries in the world. It's literally the most racially and ethnically diverse country in the world. So and people generally get on fine and there's not, there aren't major issues. There's no laws that are discriminatory against racism and so on and so forth. And if anything, I mean people are so sensitive to even potential racism here. Like there's been an overcorrection in fact, but many people on the left would say, yes, absolutely, America's one incredibly racist country because they're comparing to something that doesn't even exist and has never existed. They're comparing to a magical land where there is zero, zero bigotry, zero discriminations. And so, and you know, and there are pros and cons to those different types of worldviews. Right. The benefit of that, you know, the latter of course is you do always want to be striving to make things better in a society, but you have to be really careful with how you do that because oftentimes if you go too hard or too quickly or too aggressively or you don't really think through what it is that you're proposing, you can end up with the opposite effect. And I think this is what we're living through right now. I think for the past seven years or so, we've been in an overcorrection. I think we're in an overcorrection on race issues, on gender issues, on some aspects of socioeconomic issues. I think there was an overcorrection on the pandemic response, just everything, overcorrect, overcorrect, overcorrect. And when that happens. What do you think is driving that? You said it like over about the past seven years. Do you know what I think it is? And yeah, was there like a particular event or something? Do you know what I think it is? I think for the first time and the first place in all of human history, we've actually, essentially achieved very, very close to true equality under the law and social equality. This has never happened before. And it hasn't happened anywhere else besides a handful of Western countries. I think the very final law on the book that someone, regardless of someone's moral position on the issue, that someone could argue was discriminatory, was gay marriage. And I noticed that once that was legalized, that's when the left became unhinged. And I think it's because that was the final bear. If you think back to any previous decade, the role of progressives or liberals, it was always obvious. There was always a group that wasn't being treated fairly. Hey, these people are not allowed to vote. These people are, we have segregation. We have these people not being allowed this. We have this all sorts of discrimination with sexual minorities, people of different races and ethnicities, women, so on and so on. And just recently, it's like, oh, actually. So there's actual kind of legal equality. Yeah, we've achieved legal equality, even socially, even socially. Again, human beings are not perfect. But regardless of who you are, like, this is an incredibly tolerant country. So why would that, I like what you are saying, or it has the ring of truth. Okay. Why would that unhinge the left? Like, suddenly, everybody, you know, we've won. We've reached the promised land. Yeah, I think number one, I don't think people have realized it. And I think that you have millions of people who make, for some of them, especially people who are older, perhaps their entire lives, they've been, you know, progressive activists of sort. They've always been fighting for some type of cause or who they believe is marginalized and so on. You'll see at the same time, this is when that there was this, there's been this strange latching onto transgenderism. Ten years ago, no one was talking about transgenderism, let alone pushing things in the way. But they've decided this is their new civil rights thing. And in their blind efforts, and myopic efforts to force, they've actually started losing ground in many areas. They've started infringing upon other people, infringing upon women in this, infringing upon people's general freedom, people's freedom of speech, people's ability to, it's become a very cultish thing where people must fall in a certain line and have a certain belief system, or they want to punish you. And so I think a lot of it is from all this energy that people have had. And I think some people are wired to have a sort of activist type mentality and they want to have a battle. They want to have an enemy. It gives them meaning. It gives them purpose. They need to have that direction, something to orient them in something to fight against. And I think right now, that's just not, it's not, it's not necessary. It's not necessary. Or if there is a target, it's not being, it's not being chosen well. So there's so many people there where they want to fight for some cause. Do you think the right response to that are conservatives? Because right and left are a little bit vague. But you know, because right now in America, and this has been coming for 20 years plus, but a lot of people on the right, a lot of people in the Republican Party don't like difference. They, you know, they talk about, we, you know, we need a timeout from immigration because the types of people who are coming here are not traditional Americans, meaning, you know, they're not Irish and Italian and Jewish or they're not from Europe. Are they unhinged by, you know, a kind of new world where things are pretty wide open? I'll be honest. I don't think so. Yeah. Okay. I don't think that's true at all. I think that the right side of the aisle has become much more tolerant and open to that. If anything, the right has shifted somewhat more liberal. And what was liberal has just gone. So you're saying because a lot of people say the right is far more extreme, but then what explains thing, you know, like Donald Trump's ascendancy, you know, was very much predicated upon Mexicans, Mexican rapists, drug dealers and sick people coming through the border. You know, he, the way he phrased that comment was not particularly articulate. Yeah. But that's no one voted for, people didn't vote for Trump because of his comment on, they voted for him despite comments like that, not because of them. The notion that Trump rallied this hidden racism or white supremacy or something in the USA and rallied all these tens of millions, apparently, of horrible Americans who have been living next to everyone, apparently. It's BS narrative.  Honestly, I think people who claim that still have no idea why he won and had nothing to do with that. People tried to make the same claim in the UK, by the way, with Brexit. People tried to say the same thing that oh, it's because there was this hidden racism and xenophobia and people just hate him.   There are certainly economic factors, just those standard. I mean, his campaign was, besides the bluster and his personality, it was a fairly standard, solid, conservative, Republican platform. So, a lot of the people who just like those policies will go towards that. I think, of course, there was also a socio-cultural element. And I think for, from about, I don't know, 2010 through to 2015, there had been this rising up of what people now consider wokeness or certain attacks on what people consider traditional American values. And I think many people were looking for someone to put a pause on that. I think also, if you're talking about Trump, you can't talk about the vacuum. You also have to talk about who his opponent was, Hillary Clinton, right? And she has, just like Donald Trump has many flaws and imperfections. So, does his opponent wasn't like, okay, there were- He didn't win. He won against a very specific- Yes, yes. It wasn't a vacuum. Similarly, if you're talking about Joe Biden's victory in the last election, I think it was largely a referendum on Trump. I don't think it was because people were super enthusiastic about Joe Biden. I think it was just, are there so many people who Trump has annoyed or rubbed the wrong way or just don't like him and his personality that they all vote? I think people voted against Trump rather than for Biden. So, I don't think you can look at these things really in a vacuum. You have to consider them. So, what has gone wrong? Because then we're looking at at least the past 10 years or so, where America has kind of gone pear shaped. Or it's just, nobody's voting for somebody, you're voting against the other. You're voting against whoever is in power because they're not delivering. Obama didn't deliver the hope and change. So, you get Trump. Trump didn't deliver. So, you get Biden. What's done off the rails? That's a good question. I think shared values. I think one of the tricky things with a country like the USA, and I don't know how much people think about this, but the diversity in itself, and when I say diversity, I don't just mean the superficial people having different skin colors. I mean, ideological diversity, religious diversity. Then, of course, you have racial, ethnic, national. This is a truly diverse country. It's also a massive country. It's huge, 340 million people or so. And it's hard to get people on the same page. A big question is, what do Americans have in common? I think we spent a lot of time saying, what is a man, what is a woman, but what is an American? What's the commonality? And I think, due to the history of the USA, and I've made this point before on Twitter, and actually, when I pointed out to Americans, they're often, they've never really thought of it this way, which is, there's a lot of labels here. Here, people say black American, white American, Latin American, Latino American, African American, Hispanic American. There's all these terms. In England, we say British. This person is British. If someone said, I'm African British, black, but he'd look at them like, what? That's such a weird thing to say. And so, in the media, in the lexicon, in everyday language, it's even more fragmented in the way people talk about things. And I can understand from history, why some of that exists. But it further serves to keep people in all of these little camps. And I think people do need shared values. People do need shared values in order to have a country and in order to have a culture. It doesn't mean everyone agrees on everything, or that there isn't a lot of diversity. But I think, and I don't know who this is a mission for, but I think the USA as a country needs to decide what all Americans have in common. What is it about the USA? What is it about being American that unites everyone?  What is that commonality?  America was a nation of immigrants for about a century. That's how we talked about ourselves. We were for the, we were the free world versus communism. We, you know, but certainly over the past 30 or 40 years. It was also a Christian country. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And not that there was a state religion. No, no. Right. But it was, okay, just like Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country. Right. So with that can come some of its own challenges. Right. For sure. But it's kind of easier to govern because everyone's on the same page. You're all, you're all kind of following the same rule book and the same text that it goes back to. Whereas now you've still got the fumes of that, but you have people who are openly hostile to that, whoever think it's a bad thing. People don't even agree on the constitution. I see people many, again, many people on the left side of the aisle saying, is the constitution even a good idea? It was written by, you know, white men in hundreds of years ago, many on them. Audible. Nobody reads anymore anyway. Right. So nobody reads anymore. It should be unaudible. Yeah. Well, you're, you are rolling with the Mises Caucus within the Libertarian Party or, or. I didn't, I didn't event with them. I'm not explicitly part of it. They invited me to speak. Yeah. Let me ask, at the Libertarian Party Convention in Reno recently, you spoke at a Mises Caucus event there. Can you tell me what, what's attractive about that or why you chose to speak there and kind of rehearse your comments to the audience? Sure. Largely because they invited me. And I, I'm happy to, I'm happy to speak to all different kinds of audiences. Right. If the democratic socialists of America invited me and wanted me to give a talk, I'll go and I will talk to you. I think, especially in light of the past two and a half years, liberty and freedom and base, very basic civil rights and individual rights have been run roughshod over in all of our countries in the States, UK and Canada. Well, in Australia and New Zealand and Western Europe, all of these places which people thought were free countries. A lot of that went out the window. I, I, I don't think in, I mean, certainly not in my lifetime, I've never experienced anything. Right. Never experienced anything like that. Where did you spend most of the pandemic for you? I went to eight countries during it. Oh yeah. Most of it, most of it in the UK, but I actually managed to travel quite a lot throughout it, which also gave me an interesting perspective because you really saw the global nature of everything that was going on. So I was talking about freedom and liberty quite a lot prior to, prior to any pandemic situation, but I think it just brought to light. It really brought home why, why this stuff is important, because oftentimes we talk about ideas and people know, you know, people have an idea of freedom of speech. Right. But how often do people really think of, okay, well, why, why is freedom of speech important? What are the, why, how and why may it be infringed upon? What happens if you don't happen? What is the danger of censorship? Like we have an idea that certain things are just good and bad, but it's like, okay, why, why is that something that is so bad? What, what is the answer to that during the pandemic? Spin that out a little bit. Why is, you know, freedom of speech? Yeah, why is freedom of speech particularly important in light of what we've gone through? I think first of all, because you need to be able to, that's how we sense make. That's how we make sense of things. If we're not able to speak and have conversations and debates and challenge ideas and have all these conversations, then how can we get to the truth? Right. There's nothing to orient ourselves. We don't have a compass, but if you can talk to other people and you can discuss ideas and someone can challenge your ideas and, you know, you have that whole discourse, then you get closer, hopefully, over time to what is actually correct. Right. If you stifle certain voices, if there's a scientist, if these three scientists are saying, you know, we think this, and there's a scientist, they're going, no, no, I think this.  We're just going to silence you. He could be the one who's correct. Right. He could be the one who's right. And this has happened many times throughout history and in the world of medicine. And then it just gets ossified. And then this now becomes the science or what people perceive as the truth. And it's actually incorrect. And then everything downstream from that, if you diagnose the wrong problem, if you go to a doctor and he thinks you've got disease X, when you actually have disease Y, he'll give you the wrong prescription and everything from there downstream could be harmful. I also think more broadly, there's only three ways you can solve any conflict. Number one is discussion, discussion, conversation, debate. Number two is separation, segregation, divorce. Number three is physical violence. That's all. So I'm a big fan of the first option. Right. I'm a huge fan of the first option. Because if you suppress it for too long or for too many people, either you need to just part ways, right? You could be talking about a friendship, a marriage, a relationship between two nations, any group dynamic. Either people have to separate and just say, look, I'll do me, you stay over there. We don't interact. And therefore, we don't have conflict. Or it's a fight. It's a war. It's a fist fight. And I would like to avoid that option in as many cases as possible. So by letting people talk, even though it can be uncomfortable, people can get offended, not everyone likes to have their ideas challenged, people don't like to change their minds and so on. But all of that, even though it's messy, free speech is a bit of a messy concept. Because sometimes people say things you don't like and you can hurt your feelings, but it's better. It's much better than the alternatives. In speaking of free speech, in 2019, you are an incredible power lifter. And your personal best is for a deadlift is 606 pounds. Okay, which I hope people understand what that means. The bar is bending significantly. But in 2019, you lifted like 530 pounds or something around there. That was the video that went viral. Yeah. And then you said that you had just set the women's, you know, the UK women's deadlifting record because you identified as women and that became a big kind of controversy and things like that because people thought you were making fun of transgender people. You ended up, I think you were kicked off of Twitter for a while? No, not for that. No, no, no, no, I had no repercussions from that. Okay, but what were you trying to do with that?  What were you hoping to spark? What kind of conversation out of that? Men and women are different, or sexually dimorphic species. We men and women are different. We have different physical capacities and different bodies. Men are physically stronger, faster, not an average tribe larger, so on. Yes, especially that once you get to a top level of any sort of sport, it's going to be all men at that level. And for again, for the past few years, there have been people pushing this idea that men and women are merely social constructs and anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman, anyone who identifies as a man is a man. And instead of doing what many people have been doing and are still doing and having these philosophical and biological debates as to why this is not correct, I thought, okay, I'm going to just take that and run with it. You said, you told me, wait, what's a woman? Anyone who identifies as a woman? Cool, I identify as a woman. Boom. There we go. Checkmate. So for someone who pushes this ideology, they really have two choices at this point. They can say that I'm not really a woman, which by their own argument is transphobic, right? That's what they've been saying to everyone else. So either that or I am a woman, and I am the British women's dental tracker holder. There's no other direction to go here. So I was just making a point using satire and using a video just to make a salient point in a funny way in a very non-aggressive way of here. This is why it's a silly idea. We have male and female sports. So it's really about sports because you're also a critic of biological men competing in women's sports. Under, should trans people or is there a larger harm that should be dealt with legally of people identifying as one gender or the other? Should transgender people be given full equality under the law? They already have it. So that's not what you're talking about. They've never not had it. When did they not have it? Well, there were times in the U.S. where if you presented as the other section, it could be arrested. There were laws against that into the 21st century. I assume this is back when white and black people can get married. Yeah, it's a little bit like more. I'm talking in recent years. So you would not say that you're transphobic? Of course not. I don't even believe it's a real word. I think every human being should have equal rights. I don't think anyone should be, I feel silly even saying this because it's so obvious. I don't think anyone should be mistreated or harmed or unfairly discriminated against or subject of violence because of anything. I don't care what that thing is. I'm against aggressive violence. So yeah, needless to say. Everyone's included in that category.  I support human rights, period. Why has that position seems, why has that, it seems like that's become obscure, but that's a basic, certainly a libertarian perspective, but I think just a kind of basic human rights perspective. What's been muddying that? I think what's been muddying it is this obsession with identities and labels. And again, this is something that is honestly is predominantly pushed by people on the left side of the aisle, which is this obsession with splitting humanity into groups, white, black, brown, men, women, even though that ones, they're not really keen on the binary there anymore. LGBTQ, I can't even keep up with the acronym, right? I don't need to do any of that. And no one else does because I just support equality. Frida, I don't need to pander to one group or another group or say I'm an LGBT ally or I'm, it's just like, no, I'm not putting any rainbow flags up. I'm not putting any whatever hashtags. I support humanity. And so I think that's what's been muddying the waters with people feeling like they need to explicitly cater to this group and then this group and then this group and this group. Whereas actually, you could just say, hey, I support human rights. I support equality. I am against aggressive violence. I am against unfair discrimination. I am against people being insulted or harassed or badly treated. Again, based on anything, whether you could be hype based, right? Just how silly would it be if you came out? You know, I support the rights of blonde people or I support the rights of short people. Of course I do. You're human. Let me ask you a question because your world, like the empire that you've built for yourself, the audience you've built for yourself, is really enabled by the breakdown of kind of legacy media and the breakdown of kind of centralized institutions, whether it's book publishing or music labels. Your music is, I believe, all independent. You mentioned the exercise and fitness book that you didn't even go to Amazon, which itself creates a marketplace where hundreds of millions of books are sold, whereas before it was harder to break into publishing, really. And you're wearing Bitcoin socks and Bitcoin in particular, but crypto more broadly. These are incredible marvels that are about distributed information, distributed opportunity, decentralized power, barriers to entries get lower and lower. And it seems like that leads to, I want to ask you about attention. It leads to people being in more kind of fragmented niche cultures and niche economies and everything. And at the same time, it seems that the, which is all good. It's very liberating. It's been incredibly empowering for you. It has been for me and for reason and whatnot over the past 50 years for reason. But then you're also talking, and I think you're right, there's a crisis of kind of unified meaning. Is this, do we just need to come up with a different way of talking about stuff? Or do we have too much distributed freedom? Or do we, how do we solve this kind of puzzle? And you had a tweet storm recently, there's like 20 tweets that got what, millions of impressions on Twitter that kind of went through a lot of different things that you were talking about that seemed to kind of touch on this. But how do we square this circle of, we are freer than ever to be individual, but that also might make it harder for us to ever, to be a kind of community at the same time. Yeah. Do you know what I think? Do you know what I think people really need to do is act out what they claim to believe? So again, there are really some really popular buzzwords in the UK and USA right now, diversity, inclusion, equality, tolerance, kindness, all of these words. And oftentimes the people who like to use them don't embody them, right? They don't embody them. And this goes from the top, from the top, from the top down, from the media and politicians who oftentimes actually set an example, perhaps more than they even realize. And then just everyone, I simply try to, I mean, I don't try to, I just embody the things that I say and that I believe. And I wish that more would do that. I think that if you are a media outlet and you claim to be objective or you claim to be interested in the truth or you claim to be a pro-free speech, then be it. If you claim to be someone who supports diversity and who is tolerant and who loves humanity and is kind and so on, not just to people who agree with you on absolutely everything, really be that. Think of what tolerance means. Tolerance doesn't mean I just tolerate people or I can deal with people who have the exact same worldview or sociopolitical views as me or share my religion. It's like, no, I can get on with everyone. And even when we disagree, you know, I will still be civil to you. I will still be polite. I will still treat you with respect. I'll treat you as a human being. I will be decent to you. That's really what it means. But a lot of people deviate from this. And oftentimes they think it's okay because they create this straw man of the person, that other person being something bad. Right? Again, we saw this horribly in the past year with the demonization of people who didn't want to take the vaccine. Right? You saw families splitting up. You saw friend groups. You saw people advocating really awful things. Right? Oh, that person, you know, they have a different opinion on me, or they want to take a different action. So now it's okay. I've now got the green light to want to trample their rights or to treat them badly or to insult them or to attack. That's not cool. That's not okay. And we've seen this throughout history that it goes wrong. So that was one of the things that was most mind blowing to me where it was just like, Hey, if you're going to talk about tolerance and inclusion and being kind of, then do it. Let's be that. And I think if people could take that personal mission on, then actually, I think we'd all be better off. I think what people refer to as the culture war or the political polarization, it would become a lot less heated. It would bring the temperature down. Because right now the rhetoric's just been, I feel like over the past decade, the rhetoric's gotten increasingly nasty. And yeah, there have been leaders who haven't helped with this. One of my one of my biggest criticisms of Trump, as someone who generally liked most of his policies, would be that, you know, he's very petty and a lot of the rhetoric that came out of his mouth was not becoming of a president at the same time, nor was the media's right. So the media is there pushing this and he's pushing back against them. And you just have the temperature going up and up and up and up. And then people start modeling that and replicating it. And the next thing you know, you just have people at each other's throats far too much. And honestly, in the real world, things are mostly still pretty cool. You see a lot of this on social media, because people are disembodied. And it's much easier to straw man people.  And that's just a new challenge. We've only really had that technology for about 15 years. So I think we're still in the baby stages of, okay, how do we have these online interactions in a decent and humane and civil way without just treating each other in horrible ways. And one of my one of my personal things I do my best to do online, and I'm not perfect at it. But I have a general code of conduct that I follow online. And one of them is to not say things that I wouldn't say in real life and not treat people in a way I wouldn't if they weren't there. Now sometimes it can be tempting because as I said, you can't see the person or someone says something is really nasty to you and you want to lash back out at them. And you have to it's a daily thing where you have to kind of recenter yourself and go away. Hang on. Let me not let me not be that guy. Let me not do what I'm criticizing other people in doing. Let me not try to add to the flames. Yes, I can say things that are sometimes polarizing or controversial or I dip into subjects which some people don't want to wait into. But I'm careful not to go after individuals. If I'm critical of something, I will criticize an idea. I won't criticize everyone who attack everyone who believes in that idea, let alone go after a specific individual. So that's generally how I try to operate. And I am aware that you know, I don't see myself as a role model per se, because it's kind of a weird thing. But there are millions of people who follow me now and know about me. So I also do try to model what I would like to see in other people. I'm not perfect at it. But I do my best on a daily basis not to just be out there just being a flamethrower and jacking up people's emotions and getting people angry at each other all the time. There's enough of that. Let's cool it down a little bit and we can have great discussions. We can have good debates. It can be, you know, you can debate things that are hard topics, but it can still be enjoyable. It can be completely polite. It can be civil. And even if people still leave with very different ideas, you can at least have empathy for the other person's position.  All right. That's, I think a great note to end things on Zuby. Where's the best place for people to go to consume all things Zuby? Yeah, sure. If you go to ZubyMusic.com, you'll find links to everything. And on all social media, I'm the same handle at ZubyMusic, ZubyYMusic. If I'm you there. All right. Thanks so much for talking to me. Appreciate it. Thank you.


Welcome back to HPE Discover 2021, the virtual version. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE. As the saying goes, follow the money and with me to talk about HPE financial services and the value that I can bring to customers are two great guests, Brad Shapiro is VP and managing director of the enterprise business at HPE financial services and Paul Sheeran is managing director of worldwide channel and SMB for HPE financial services. Gents, welcome to theCUBE, come on in. Thanks, Dave, really appreciate you having us. Hi, Dave. So Brad, why don't you start us off? Give us the rundown on HPE financial services. What's the scope of your services? Should we think of you as a bank? And maybe you could talk about some of the things that you do beyond financing. Yeah, that sounds great. So look, we are so much more than banking. Our mission is to create investment capacity to help customers accelerate their transformation. And maybe you could think of us as kind of like a two-in-one partner. We're part CIO, part CFO. We kind of refer to ourselves as the CIFO, if you will. And we've got expertise in a number of different areas. Of course, we'll start with financial and yes, we offer financial services and we do an awful lot of financial solutioning. We finance, you know, in our portfolio, it's over 13 billion of assets that have been financed. So that is a core competency for us, but we're more than that. We focus also on the technology side of things and we have expertise in asset management and we deal with multiple generations of technologies and all major manufacturers as well, not just HPE, but we understand technology in all different types, all different ages of technology. And lastly, we play a pretty big role around sustainability. HPE takes a leadership position when it comes to sustainability and a lot of our capabilities around the circular economy and putting assets back into reuse play an important role in not only helping customers financially but helping them meet their sustainability goals. I want to come back and ask you more about that, but Paul, I wonder, first of all, I like the CIFO. That's a great little nomenclature.  So maybe you could talk about the role that you guys play for SMBs and also channel partners. Channels hold different ballgame, right? They want to make margin, they want to grow their business. So maybe you could discuss some of the differences in that channel. Yeah, sure, Dave. Well, starting with the SMB customer is really a critical part of our portfolio. As you said, they cover all the roles for CIO, CFO, and their budgets can be tight. And especially given the last 18 months, you know, if you read some of the data out there, you know, the budgets are really constrained, especially for the SMBs customer. So what we try and do, and what our mission is, is what we call creating investment capacity, giving budgets a boost, bring that vitality to the SMB customer base to all our customers, but especially SMB customers to help them be able to invest in their digital transformations going forward. So crucial now that all our customers are able to continue to invest in technology and the pandemic clearly brought it home, how important having a digital capability it is. So SMB budgets are tight and what we try and do is give them that boost, give them that vitality to actually continue to advance ahead and make the right investments for the future. And then from the partners, we actually deal with four and a half thousand partners around the world. As you said, partners are there also, not only looking for financial solutions, but how we differentiate ourselves is to try and help that partner move to a digital platform. We have invested heavily in our digital tools over the last couple of years. So in terms of offering solutions, it can be literally zero touch, low touch, so the partner community can plug into our platforms. We also help them on that journey to as a service. So technology is moving to as a service. People want to consume technology as a service like they do in the rest of their lives. It's all about subscription. And partners need help to be able to move to an as a service way. Hopefully GreenLake is the answer. So we support HPE's GreenLake offering. But there's different parts along the way for partners that we look to help them. And last but not least is helping them about asset management. As Brad said, it's all about the assets and understanding how those assets are managed and helping the partners having a relevant conversation with their customers as to how best to put in an asset management strategy for their customers. So three areas that we look to differentiate ourselves, Dave. I've got a lot to talk about so I want to come back and talk about as a service as well. But Brad, I want to come back to sustainability. So is it just the right thing to do? What's the financial case? Is it good business as well? And where do you fit? Yeah, so we believe that sustainability is good for the environment obviously but it's also good for business. And when you think about what we bring to the table and those assets back into reuse. So we handle between three and four million assets a year and over 90% of those we put back into reuse with about 10% going into recycling. Putting those back into reuse, the customer that has those assets, we can monetize those assets and help accelerate transformation. So we monetize the asset and we fund that transition and that transformation. So we can really help customers get more budget than they were expecting by leveraging what they would deem to be end of life assets but we find another home for those assets. So it definitely helps customers accelerate the transformation while being good for the world, good for the environment. And that's true, Paul, for SMBs, just maybe on a smaller scale and that definitely makes sense for the channel, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Sustainability now is key. It's certainly key for our channel partners. It's moving from a nice to have to a must have. So absolutely, totally agree. Yeah, and it's almost like gain sharing. I mean, sometimes we sell used equipment on eBay. It helps fund future business or future transformation. So let's get into the transformations. Everybody talks about digital transformations. You know, coming into the pandemic, everybody talked about it but there was a lot of complacency and we've all seen the wrecking ball and the acceleration we talk about all the time. But what role does HPE financial services and do you have any specific solutions that support digital transformations? Any examples there? Maybe Brad, you could start it off. Yeah, yeah, so I'll start off and then Paul, feel free to jump in. Look, Dave, what I would say is the pandemic taught us that every company is a technology company. And where HPEFS comes in is, we're looking to provide the investment capacity which is the lifeblood of a company's digital roadmap. So if you don't have the investment capacity, there is no transformation. So when something like the pandemic comes up and you can't budget for a pandemic and revenues are down and budgets are getting squeezed, you really need a partner to help you with that. How do you uncover that investment capacity? So we've talked to lots of customers. We've also done some research and the ESG group and analysts basically found that 73% of organizations not surprisingly either delayed or canceled projects around IT transformation because of all the uncertainty. So what we're looking to do is leverage all of our capabilities in a timely fashion. Last year, we announced the idea of payment holidays and deferred payments so you could keep your transformation going and not have to pay for it for a full year. And now we look at it as we're coming out of the pandemic and what we're looking to help customers with is one, help them transition their existing infrastructure into a modernized consumption model like GreenLate. Also looking to accelerate the velocity of the transformation programs by leveraging our capabilities around asset upcycling as well as our accelerated migration program. And last, looking at our existing customers really doing some financial engineering with them so they can stretch their budgets more and expand the budget to be able to handle new projects. Yeah, I mean, Paul, I think Brad nailed it. You're right, the transformations are strategic. They had to fund VDI initiatives or endpoint security or find some cash to buy laptops to support people at home. People were pulling out their servers and sticking them in their trunk and driving to their home because they couldn't get laptops for a while. But, and so what are you seeing now, Paul, particularly in the channel? And of course, you know, again, SMBs were squeezed. Maybe they don't have the liquidity that some of these large public companies have. They, you know, a lot of people just short up their balance sheets during the pandemic. Maybe the SMB doesn't have as much advantage to do that. But what are you seeing in regard to the sort of bounce back of spending more strategic areas like transformation? Well, I think what we're seeing right now and what we're hearing is, especially for SMB customers, cash, cash is king. It's all about cash preservation. It's about making sure that you'll hear some studies where some SMB customers only have three or four months left of cash in their kitty. You don't have to keep their businesses running. So that is really top of mind now. But they have to invest. If they don't invest, they're going to be dead in the water to stay ahead of the competition. So, you know, what we're looking to do is really help those customers preserve that cash and reach in and look for different ways about how to boost their budget. There's actually nothing better than an example. You know, Brad laid it out very nicely in terms of what we can do, bringing it to life. Not so much an SMB customer, but there is UNAD. And UNAD is a university in Columbia based in Bogota. And their mission is very simple. It's all about excellence and learning. But as they went into the pandemic, they needed to invest in their distance learning platforms to really help their students. And like most businesses, you know, cash and the budget was being squeezed, revenues were tight. So it would have been very easy to postpone that investment. But what we did with UNAD and working with UNAD and their IT team was firstly to understand their existing IT estate and really see what assets are being utilized, what are not being utilized, what assets have reached their end of their useful life. And you'd be amazed and it's not just a data center. You know, we can work right across their whole estate. So as well as the data center, we look at the PCs to your point David, we look at even their print estate. And we identified many, many assets that were being underutilized and other assets that were end of life. So we're able to take those assets back and actually release value and boost UNAD's budget. And some of those assets could not be, they had no value and sustainability was top of their agenda as well. And as you'd imagine the university wanted to lead and show their students that sustainability is key. So we're able to take those assets back and actually recycle them in a very environmentally sound way. So that was the first step to actually inject some cash into their budgets. The next step then was to look at their existing financial contracts that they had in place with maybe some of their banks and actually restructure those contracts to actually give them additional capacity to invest right now in technology. And I'm delighted to say they partnered with the HPE team and with Aruba to actually continue their five year roadmap and actually improve their distance learning platforms. So I just thought that was a really good example right now in the current climate as to show when we work together with our customers, what's actually possible. So let's talk a little bit more about GreenLake. I mean, for decades, I mean, even back to the 80s, I saw financial instruments to sort of rent essentially, but it's different. GreenLake, HPE has pivoted its entire company as a service. And I want to understand better what role HPE financial services plays in making that transition. It's obviously a crucial part of the financing piece, but Brad, maybe you could tell us a little bit more there. Yeah, sure. And I think the great thing about GreenLake is it's more than just a consumption model. It's really providing that cloud experience on-prem and being able for customers to really manage a hybrid cloud experience. But where HPE FS plays a role, again, it's around our knowledge and ability around assets. So we're underneath GreenLake doing financial engineering, managing the assets. But the biggest thing, when you think about how does a customer transition? If they're in a traditional cash purchase paradigm, the cost of change and figuring out how to move into a new type of paradigm, a new consumption model can be daunting. So HPE FS works closely with our GreenLake team and the customer, and we can take those existing assets and look to accelerate the migration into a GreenLake. A great example of that, a public sector customer, Kern County, they were in that cash paradigm, they had lots of assets, like most entities, they were under pressure from a budget perspective. Tax revenues were down for a couple years in a row. So not only did moving to a GreenLake model provide some cost savings, and cost savings are important, but it also allowed them to deliver the services they needed to their constituents because they had that pay for use type of flexibility. They were able, they didn't have a long delay in procuring and provisioning equipment when they needed to roll something out. And again, once again, HPE FS was able to monetize their existing assets, roll those into a GreenLake solution and help self-fund that transformation and really accelerate it to get from that cash paradigm model to a new GreenLake consumption model. Paul, what about the channel? I mean, on the one hand, I could see the channels loving GreenLake because there's a lot of services involved and it's sort of an ongoing drip of cash as opposed to the sort of big hit. But on the other hand, it's the ongoing drip of cash as opposed to the big hit. What's the conversations like with the channel? How is that going? It clearly is the future, but how do they see it? Well, I wouldn't say drip of cash. We would call it an annuity revenue where it's very predictable, which is actually also a good thing rather than the sort of a one and a done solution. So clearly GreenLake is very important to our channel partners and we're seeing some really good adoption across the world. And again, we underpin that. The other thing to say is a lot of channel partners as you rightly say, want to sell services and become service providers. And what we also do is support not just the data center, but also workplace and print. And what you'll see on the printing side for many, many years, the print partners have been selling a contractual type of model. But a lot of partners now are moving all of their core portfolio into as a service. And there's different parts. It's sort of a, it's nearly a cash to as a service journey and there's different parts of that ladder on the way. And we all look to help our partners get along that ladder and hopefully positioning GreenLake. But there's also more simpler solutions like subscription that we can position on that journey. So it's really helping that partner get the confidence and the financial wherewithal and the infrastructure to get on the as a service journey. How about solutions?  Maybe Brad, you can take us through sort of what the highlights of those were. Sure, so the first announcement was really the example I just provided, which was how do we transition customers to GreenLake? So again, that's a really important step for many customers. And something that we can help them with is moving from that existing paradigm to GreenLake. The second is really helping customers create velocity to move their transformation programs faster. And we do that in a number of ways. But again, all around the asset in our asset management expertise, whether we look to put those assets back into reuse in their facility, or if we look to monetize those assets and put them into reuse with a different customer, really it's all around how do we accelerate the customer's transformation as we come out of a pandemic. And then lastly, the offering is really focused on how can we help the customer look at existing budget and really financially engineer where they're spending their money to create new pools of budget and cash so they can fund new projects. So it's interesting, because when I look at the customers that we're doing these things with, it really spans every industry. So we're dealing with financial services and insurance companies, communications and broadcasting, travel and hospitality, you name it, manufacturing. So the interesting thing is, while sometimes you come out with solutions that are very industry specific, I think our circumstances today really span lots of industries, both in the commercial and the public sector. And we're finding that these offers are really relevant right now for customers. Let's zoom out for a bit. And Brown, let's start with you. And then Paul, I want to get your unique perspectives from the standpoint of SMB and the channel. Summarize your overall strategy in that context. And then I'm interested in, how important do you feel the HPE financial services is with regard, of course, you guys are biased, but that's okay, I want to hear your biased view. How important is it in the grand scheme of actually doing business with HPE? And I'm interested in why HPE and how much of a competitive advantage you bring relative to some of your major competitors. Yeah, sure. So, okay, the strategy, in my mind, I'll start with HPEFS, it's really making sure that we're working closely with our customers, understanding their needs from a business perspective and what business outcomes they're trying to achieve and then marrying both the financial planning and the technology planning to help those customers deliver and achieve those business outcomes. Doing that, also in a way that is sustainable and is good for the environment and helps customers achieve their sustainability initiatives. So, kind of marrying that financial technology and sustainability portion of it. From my perspective, I think HPE is a fantastic partner. One, we've been at Green Lake for quite a while and it continues to evolve. The experiences that we can provide customers now are significantly advanced from when flex capacity came out years and years and years ago. So, I really think if a customer took a look at Green Lake a few years ago, you need to keep looking at it because it really has evolved, really creates a unique experience. But I think it's the combination of our technology. We have great technology in our portfolio. We have a fantastic model in Green Lake and then we have all of the financial engineering expertise around assets and life cycles and how to get the most out of your IT investment.  If you have sustainability initiatives, I mean, HPE talks the talk, we walk the walk. We do all of this for ourselves and then we bring those practices out and share best practices with customers. So, I really think it's a great time to partner with HPE if you're a customer. Great, thank you for that, Brad. Paul, what would you add for your constituents? Brad said it beautifully. So, just a couple of points I'd add and from a partner perspective, we are actually in every corner of the world. So, we have that global footprint and as you see consolidation in the market, that's very important not only for our customers, but also for our partners. More and more solutions are going cross-border and involve different regions. And we look to make sure that we're globally consistent in how we work with our partners and work with our customers. And the final thing I'd say is we get very excited about supporting our HPE colleagues. But from a channel perspective, we actually also support HPI, HPE Inc. You will recall before separation that the companies did. So, we also support the workplace and print environments, plus third-party vendors, which again is important for the channel community where you need a one-stop shop and where you'll often have a mixed technology and a solution. So, we're there for that as well. And always helping. And I think the partner community love our consistency there. It's a nice arrow in your quiver. And of course, we've seen laptop demand explode. And it looks like it's gonna sustain for a while here. It's hard to predict, but Paul, stay with you.  Well, I said we have a global footprint and every country is in a different place right now as we sort of come out of the pandemic. Some countries are still in the midst of it. But what gets me jazzed up and what gets me excited is the sense of optimism. I think we sort of figured out how to navigate our way out of this pandemic and the current environment. And customers all recognize the need to invest in technology. Technology is the way forward. So, that means having the capacity, the investment capacity, the investment vitality to make that investment. So, what gets me excited is what we do is important and we're there to help. Great, thank you. And Brad, two part question for you to bring us on. So, what are you excited about and what do you got going at Discover? Yeah, so in terms of my excitement, I think Paul said it well, every company is a technology company. And when we see the, you know, everybody's going through a digital transformation. Quite frankly, we at HPEFS are going through our own digital transformation. You know, Paul mentioned earlier about Technomics. We have omnichannel ways of engaging with us that are consistent. We're looking at our customer and partner experience and continuing to improve those. So, we're not resting on our laurels and what we've done in the past. We continue to change, to modernize, to create new and better ways of doing business with our customer base. So, the exciting part for me is that change that comes with innovation and technology. And I just think HPE is a great place to be right now with all of that innovation going on. So, you asked about Discover. So, we're really excited. We've got a spotlight with Irv Rothman, focused on investment agility and key to growth and regeneration. So, that's really exciting. We have a few breakouts making technology a force for good, you know, getting back on track to create the investment vitality to take on the world and investment strategies to accelerate innovation in a disruptive world. So, really excited about that. And then last, we've got some demos. We have a live interactive demo on our technology renewal center, as well as some on-demand demos of those renewal centers as well. So, we've got a lot going on at Discover and we're really excited about it. Great, gentlemen, thank you for that. So, I mean, look, cost of capital is low, but to have a technology partner with you that also has financial expertise, that to me is a killer combination. Guys, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. I really appreciate your time. Dave, thanks for having us. Thanks, Dave. All right, and thank you for watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of HPE Discover 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there for more great content.


Hi, this is Dr. Don, and this video is going to give you a quick start on how to use Statcrunch in my Statlab. This is a homework problem in chapter 2, and it may be one of the first problems you see that requires you to do some calculations with quite a few numbers here. You can do it manually with an old-fashioned calculator, or you can use Statcrunch. The way to do that is to click on this little icon there, just copy the table, open in Statcrunch. Okay, once Statcrunch is open, I'm just going to show you how quickly you can solve this. We need to find the mean, medium, and mode of these 13 students, and we just go to Stat, Summary Stats, Columns, because our data is in a column, select the name of the column, and I'm just going to select all of these, just to show you we can get a lot of data there, and click Compute. I'm going to expand this to show you that we have all those descriptive statistics calculated very, very quickly. There's our mean, there's our count, there's the median, min, max, and I think if I scroll over here somewhere, there's mode to the far right side. So there's our answers just that quickly. Going back to the main menu and then selecting the Statcrunch tab opens this page, and since you're inside my Statlab and already signed in, you can just click on this Statcrunch website link, and it will take you to the Statcrunch.com website and log you in where you have access to a lot of information. I would point out that if you sign out and just navigate back anytime to www.statcrunch.com, you can put in your password and your ID there, and sign in with that, and you're at the main Statcrunch site. Now I'm again just going to focus on quickly getting started and click on Open Statcrunch to bring up the Statcrunch interface that we need, and it is really pretty straightforward. If you look at it, it resembles a typical spreadsheet such as Excel or Google. We've got rows and we've got columns. The columns are labeled variables, just give it a name, and you can change those names by clicking on it and renaming it to give the variable a name that makes sense to you, and then you can enter your data manually. You can open Statcrunch inside my Statlab, and when you see the little blue icon, have my Statlab enter your data for you, or you can copy the information and paste it into these cells. Just a few more things I want to show you in this quick start. Here I just have some data that I've created, and the logical question is, can I save this data and reuse it? Yes, you can. Just click on Data, Save, give it a name, and click Save. You note there that it says the data was saved to your My Data folder. Remember that My Data folder. When you want to load data that you've saved previously, you just go to Data, Load My Data folder, and there is the data that you can load. So you can recover things. I would point out one other thing, once you get doing a lot of analyses, and I've got a lot of videos to show you how to do those, so don't worry about that right now, but you can save those analyses. Let's just say that I've gone in here and I've gotten summary stats on variable 1, click Compute, now I've got these summary stats there, and I can go to Statcrunch Session, Download, and give it a name, click Download, Save that file, and what it does, it creates a snapshot of everything I've done to that point, so I don't have to recreate it. Okay, I've opened up Statcrunch, and I want to recover that session. I just go to Statcrunch Session, Upload, choose the file, find the file where you saved it, upload it, and then we've got that session back, left exactly where you stopped so you don't have to recreate everything you've done. Now I know I've breezed through Statcrunch, and it may be a little bit intimidating, I'm sure it is. If you look at these procedures there, how in the world do you do all these things? Well not to worry, I've created a number of how-to videos that will show you step-by-step how to do all the things you need to do in 233 using Statcrunch. Let me show you that. Since I've been teaching Statcrunch to students at Excelsior, I've created over 200 how-to videos on YouTube which you can access, but I found that it can be a little bit cumbersome trying to find the right video in all of those videos I've made as well as all the thousands of other videos that are out there. So what I've done on my website, DonwrightPhD, which is just www.doctordonwright.com, and I'll give you a link to that. If you link into Benz's 233, Benz's 503, click on that link, and it opens up a table that contains all the videos on Statcrunch, and I've also got videos on Excel for folks who want to use Excel. But all you have to do is to type in a problem number, just start typing the problem. I'm just going to start 5.14, don't have that one, I'm just guessing here. But as you start entering the problem numbers in homework, options will start coming up, and you can hopefully find the problem number that you're looking for. This is the column for 233 problem numbers, there's the column for 503 problem numbers that may be similar.  You can also type in keywords there, let's just say mean, see if I've got something on the mean there. And there it will start popping up, ANOVA, confidence intervals for mean, fine mean, standard deviation, et cetera, confidence intervals. So you can type in keywords, and it will help you find the videos you need to give you step-by-steps for a particular problem number. So I think that will be helpful to a lot of people. I really hope you will try Statcrunch, just jump in, here's another problem you're going to hit pretty quickly in chapter 2. You've got to get the 5-number summary, draw a box and whisper plot, there's your data, let's click on open in Statcrunch. We've got our data, all we need to do is go to graph, box plot, select the column, we want the information there, and we're just going to click compute. And there's our box plot, our box and whisper plot, solved pretty doggone quickly.


The organization of petroleum exporting countries, OPEC, is keeping its growth projections for global oil demand unchanged for this year and the next. In its August market report, the Cartel OPEC this year has demand at 96.6 million boroughs per day, but the group has lifted its forecast for supply on the back of rising production quarter of its members. This bullishness is based on the assumption that road transport activity recovers following the slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic.


Hi and welcome to the session and we pick up here. Let's discuss the question differentiate the following function with respect to x Log x raise to power x plus x raise to power log x. So, let's start the solution Let's assume Y is equal to Log x raise to power x plus x raise to power log x Again put U is equal to log x raise to power x and V is equal to x raise to power log x Then our Y will become is equal to U plus V Now differentiate both the sides with respect to x dy by dx is equal to du by dx plus dv by dx So, let us take this as number one. So, let us consider first U is equal to Log x raise to power x. So taking logarithm on both sides we get We get log U is equal to log U is equal to x log of log x Now differentiate both the sides with respect to x Using product rule. We have one by U Into du by dx is equal to x into derivative of log of log x plus log of log x into derivative of x that is 1 So this implies 1 by U into du by dx is equal to x Now derivative of log of log x. Now we know the derivative of log x is 1 over log x So derivative of log of log x is 1 over log x Into derivative of this log x. So this is 1 by x plus log of log x So this implies du by dx is equal to So here we have du by dx is equal to u into 1 over log x plus log of log x Substituting value of u here we get du by dx is equal to u as a log x raise to power x into 1 over log x plus log of log x Now consider x is equal to x raise to power log x Again method is same taking logarithm on both the sides log v is equal to log x log x into log x is equal to log x whose square is to power log x into 2 log x upon x. Now substituting value of du by dx and dv by dx In equation 1 we get dv by dv by dx is equal to du by dx plus dv by dx. Now du by dx is log x raise to power x into 1 over log x plus log of log x This is dv by dx is x raise to power log x into 2 log x upon So this is equal to dv by dx is equal to here take log x as a LCM so we get log x raise to power x minus 1 into 1 plus log x into log of log x plus x raise to power log x minus 1 into 2 log x So hence we have differentiate our given function and our answer is log x raise to power x minus 1 into 1 plus log x into log of log x is to power log x minus 1 into log x. I hope the question is clear to you. Bye and have a nice day


Why are there two votes? If you're eligible to vote, in Scottish Parliament elections, it's really important that you do. Why? Because it's one way that you can have your say in how Scotland is run. And on who represents you. OK, but how? We don't have quite enough seats in the Scottish Parliament for the entire population of Scotland to fit. Instead, you're represented by eight people, your members of the Scottish Parliament. This is how they are chosen. At election time, you'll get two ballot papers. One is for the local area, the constituency that you live in, and the other is for your region. Regions are just larger areas made up of multiple constituencies. The constituency vote is straightforward. You choose the person you want to represent you. The person with the most votes in that constituency wins. Hooray! You might recognise this system because it's also used in UK Parliament elections. This is called first pass the post because only one person can win. So, even if it is really close, or the combined votes for all the other candidates is bigger, then it's still just one winner. This is where your other vote comes in. It helps make elections more representative and the final result more proportional to the number of votes. So, with your regional ballot, you choose the party or independent candidate, you want to represent your region. This is where things get interesting. The constituency votes are counted first. So we know who has been elected for all the constituencies in your region. This affects how many additional MSPs a party can gain in the regional vote. We take the number of MSPs already elected and use it in a formula to calculate who will represent the region. There are several rounds of calculations. Each time, votes are divided using the formula, resulting in a new winner to represent the region. These calculations continue until all the regional MSPs have been elected. Still with us? We hope so. The percentage of MSPs each party has broadly matches the percentage of votes they won. Smaller parties and independent candidates still have a chance to be elected, so voters are able to choose whoever best represents their values. You now have one constituency MSP and seven regional MSPs. All eight MSPs represent you, and you can contact any one of them if you need their help. Ta-da! We now have 129 members of the Scottish Parliament representing all of Scotland.